Jean Grainger Box Set: So Much Owed, Shadow of a Century, Under Heaven's Shining Stars

by Jean Grainger

  When the taxi had dropped her at the door of this huge, sprawling house, she was sure there’d been a mistake. This vast stone edifice, with wings stretching off to either side of the main part of the building, looked more like a country house than a military base. She hadn’t known what to expect, but it certainly wasn’t this.

  The enormity of what possibly lay ahead struck her as she walked down the ornately-decorated corridor. She had to put it to the back of her mind and take it one step at a time. Her shoes were silent on the deep-pile scarlet carpet, and the view of the sweeping driveway from the huge windows was obscured by the gold velvet drapes, held back by heavily tasselled swags. Alabaster busts and dark, brooding oil paintings lined the walls. She felt intimidated and very much out of place. She wanted to run home and tell Solange everything, but she stiffened her resolve. She was just at the preliminary stage, she told herself. They might deem her unsuitable and throw her out after a week and then she’d have made a big fuss over nothing.

  The house, unlike the one in Belfast, was a hive of activity with people walking purposefully up and down stairs, and in and out of the many doors leading off the corridors. Juliet doubted if she would ever get the hang of how to find her way around. The whole house was a warren. The woman walking briskly ahead of her made no further effort to communicate until, after ushering Juliet into a room on the first floor, she instructed her, again in French, to wait.

  The room was carpeted and had a large leather couch, a sideboard, and some easy chairs. There were dark patches on the walls where some of the paintings were now gone – she presumed in storage. This was clearly the house of an earl or a lord or something like that. He must have given it up for use by the defence forces. Rather incongruous with the other sumptuous furnishings, there was a plain wooden desk and some functional office chairs between the two windows which overlooked the lawn outside, looking totally out of place in what was a beautiful drawing room. Far off in the distance, telephones rang, car doors slammed and conversations were had, though it was impossible to make out the words spoken. She felt nervous about her French. Solange had always assured her that her French was perfect, but she’d never spoken to anyone else in that language. She couldn’t stand the nun at school who got cross with her for not being able to explain the passé composé. Sister Xavier had nearly had a fit when Juliet had refused to learn French grammar – she spoke perfectly already, she’d explained to the nun. Juliet smiled at the memory. That stunt had earned her Saturday evening detention for a month for insubordination.

  A woman in her forties entered the room and greeted Juliet with a smile. Asking her to sit, she explained the rules of the house. She was at no time to communicate in any language other than French, whoever spoke to her. Nor was she to reveal anything about her life before coming here, nor was she to ask any such questions of her fellow students or instructors. For the purposes of this training, she was to be known as ‘Marine’ and would respond only to that name. Instruction would begin at eight in the morning and would take place every day. She had from now until then to rest and prepare. Her room was on the top floor second last on the left, number 131. Dinner was served in the dining room at seven.

  She missed dinner due to exhaustion but was wide awake at five the next morning. After a solitary breakfast – the dining room was empty so she helped herself – she stood in the large hallway of the house along with several more people whom she assumed were new recruits like her. She tried to catch the eye of one of the other girls – there were only three altogether, among about fifteen men – but nobody seemed to want to make eye contact or any effort to communicate.

  ‘Right, you lot. Let’s get started.’ A man with a broad Yorkshire accent emerged from a room to the right of the front door and addressed them loudly in English. The French rule only applied to the students it seemed. ‘Now then. ’Ow many of you ’ave ever fired a gun before?’

  The uniformed officer, who Juliet judged to be in his fifties, had a florid complexion hidden for the most part by a huge moustache; his uniform with rows of glistening medals and gold braiding, combined with his huge physique made him a formidable character.

  One or two of the men raised their hands, and Juliet did too. She was a good enough shot after years of shooting rabbits in Dunderrig with Eddie. In fact, she was a better shot than James.

  Looking at her with a smirk and a raised bushy eyebrow, the Yorkshire man said, ‘’Appen we shall soon see, shan’t we?’

  They were led to a barn, which had been converted into a shooting gallery. She was chosen first, and the rest of the class waited while she was given a pair of earmuffs and a rifle by a younger officer. She was glad it wasn’t a handgun as she’d never fired one of those. The cut-out figure of a man, already riddled with holes, was placed at the other end of the barn.

  ‘Quelle partie du corps?’ she asked.

  The younger officer looked at her quizzically and said in a Cockney accent, ‘Let’s just see if you can ’it him at all first, shall we? We’ll worry about the logistics of anatomy later.’

  Juliet stood squarely and took aim as Eddie had taught her since she was seven years old. Taking a deep breath, she focused on her target. Eddie used to say: ‘Breathe in deeply, draw a line between your eye and the target, let out the breath, and fire along that line.’ It worked almost every time on the lightning-quick rabbits of Dunderrig. Surely, it would do the same on a static target. Juliet exhaled and squeezed the trigger. The recoil wasn’t as severe as the old service rifle at home. She saw with relief that she’d hit the target directly in the heart.

  ‘All right, duck,’ the officer was clearly taken aback. ‘’Appen you can shoot right enough. Now aim for ’is ’ead.’

  Juliet repeated the motion and shot the target in the middle of the forehead. She returned to her class and noted their looks of admiration. That was one test over with anyhow.

  They spent the rest of the day learning about different weapons – how to assemble and disassemble them quickly and how to clean them ‘without shooting yer bloody toes off’. No contact was made between any of the students, each focused on the task at hand. Juliet was, along with one of the men, the only student that could shoot with accuracy.

  They were taught the two-shot rule, which meant that while they were not to waste ammunition nor draw attention to themselves with excessive gunshot noise, they should always shoot their victim twice. Even if they were sure he or she was dead. The second shot breaks the nervous system down completely. The sudden realisation that they were being taught these skills to use on real people was sobering.

  ‘Ow d’ya learn that then?’ the Cockney officer asked her as he fell into step beside her on the walk back to the manor.

  ‘Oh, we live in the country, in West Cork, and when I was younger, the man who looks after the grounds, Eddie, used to let my brother and me shoot rabbits.’ She was glad to have someone to talk to. Instead of responding, he simply looked at her, and she realised she’d broken the first rule. She’d spoken in English, and she had just revealed her entire family situation. As she sat down to dinner in the large dining room, having washed up, a young woman touched her elbow and asked her to follow her. The other students glanced at her but continued eating and making polite meaningless conversation in French. Juliet walked down the warren of corridors behind the woman. She stopped at a large oak-panelled door, knocked and walked away.

  ‘Entrez.’ A male voice came from within. Juliet opened the door meekly. An attractive older man in a tweed suit with swept-back grey hair sat at a desk, writing.

  ‘Asseyez-vous.’

  Juliet did as she was told, her heart thumping. This was so much worse than being called to Sister Gertrude’s office at school. He was writing something and only looked up briefly.

  ‘Je vous remercie pour le temps que vous avez consacré à cette formation. On n’a plus besoin de vos services. Un taxi vous attend devant pour aller à la gare. Bonne soirée, Mademoiselle.�
� Without waiting for a reaction, he returned to his document.

  This couldn’t be happening. It was only the first day.

  ‘Monsieur, tout d’abord, j’ai commis une grave erreur et je m’en excuse. Je comprends bien qu’il est interdit de parler en anglais et de révéler des renseignements personnels. Je n’ai pas réalisé les conséquences de mes actes et je vous implore de me laisser rester ici.’

  He stopped writing and sat back in the chair examining her. His craggy face was impassive. She knew he was the officer in charge though he wasn’t in uniform, but none of the normal rules seemed to apply here. He stared at her for a long time before he eventually spoke.

  ‘Convainquez-moi.’

  His voice was quiet, his eyes never moving from hers. Juliet was unsure if he was just a lecherous old man or if it was a test; either way, she was probably being sent home, so it was worth a shot. She returned his stare and allowed a small smile to play on her lips. She stood up and walked as seductively as she could to the grand piano, which sat in the large bay window of the room. Lifting the lid, she was relieved it wasn’t locked – that would have made her look simply foolish. Sitting on the stool, she ran her fingers expertly over the ivory keys.

  The opening notes of the famous French folk song ‘Les Temps Des Cerises’ filled the empty space in the room. Juliet began to sing in a deep, husky voice. She noted the slight look of surprise on his face. She knew her singing voice was nothing like her speaking one. In fact, she had been asked to leave the school choir because the nun who taught singing didn’t approve of her low alto. Throughout the song, she maintained eye contact with him, the playful smile never leaving her lips. As she struck the last note, she simply sat, awaiting judgement, though she tried to suffuse her being with stillness. She knew instinctively that shows of hysteria or begging to be allowed to stay would achieve nothing.

  ‘Tout á fait charmant, Mademoiselle,’ he said eventually as the last note hung in the air. His words were complimentary but his expression remained impassive. Juliet was unsure whether he really found her charming or just a foolish girl making a last ditch effort to be forgiven. She sat at the piano, determined not to speak, waiting for him to pass judgement.

  ‘Bon. Ma décision est prise. Vous avez de la chance. Vous pouvez rester, mais attention, Mademoiselle, je ne supporterai plus ce genre de transgression. Ce sera tout.’

  She heard the tone of dismissal in his tone. Hiding her relief, she got up to leave.

  ‘Merci.’

  Back at the dinner table, she joined in the light conversation of her fellow students. They discussed the weather and the latest films but nothing of any significance. She noticed variations in their French accents but since she was only familiar with one dialect, that of Amiens, she could not have placed them. She realised that her narrow experience of France would surely be a tremendous disadvantage and resolved there and then to work hard to overcome it.

  The weeks flew by in a blur of daily classes. The students rose at seven each morning and spent until six in the evening learning things Juliet never could have imagined herself doing. The instructors did not mince their words when it came to the more gruesome aspects of the course.

  Lieutenant Llewellyn from Cardiff had been most specific as he demonstrated a double-edged knife. ‘The knife is a silent and deadly weapon that is easily concealed and against which, in the hands of an expert, there is no sure defence, except firearms or running like hell. Here you will learn how to hold a knife, how to pass it from one hand to the other, how to thrust, and how to then use the disengaged hand to feint and parry.’

  Juliet tried not to wince as he demonstrated the vulnerable points on the human body, emphasising the importance of getting at the abdominal region. She learned how to make an opening for a thrust to the stomach by slashing across the face, hands, wrists, and forearms, by flinging gravel, a stone, a hat or even a handkerchief in the opponent’s face. She couldn’t picture herself ever doing it but as the training went on, she became more determined than ever to do whatever it took to defeat the enemy. She did better than she imagined she would in the ‘killing without a weapon’ section of the course, quickly learning that with the right technique any sentry could be eliminated from behind. In practice classes, she consistently managed to disable her opponents, despite the fact that she was so much smaller than most of them.

  After tea each day, there was further instruction in forgery and how to lie convincingly. She enjoyed identifying military insignia, though map reading was something she found difficult to master. She was better at explosives and paid close attention as the instructors taught them how to assemble incendiaries of various capabilities for a range of potential targets. She learned how to blow out a door lock and blow up a bridge. During the day, she had no time to think about the real possibility of needing to employ her new skills but at night as she lay in bed, she thought deeply about what awaited her. The instructors at Wanborough never underplayed the level of danger they might face, though they never clarified exactly what that might entail. The only time she had heard the word spy mentioned was at that second meeting in Belfast.

  She wondered how everyone was in Dunderrig. Once she was in England, she had written to tell her family she’d joined up. She had been instructed to say she had joined the WAAF and to give them the address of an RAF base near Brighton so that they could contact her by post. She was also to warn them that wartime communications were patchy at best, so they were not to expect any further letters for a while but that the RAF had their address in the event that they needed to be contacted. These letters were the hardest she had ever written. Poor Auntie Kitty – she was going to be so lonely without her. James would be so worried. And she felt sadness every time she thought of her father and Solange. Every time she pictured them reading her letter together in the kitchen in Dunderrig, she experienced a stab of guilt – not only had she done the one thing her father had begged her not to do, but she had lied about it. She could just hear Solange trying to calm her father down while all the time being heartbroken herself.

  She wondered when she would be allowed to write again. She longed to write again, to ease their pain, but she knew that was forbidden.

  Chapter 29

  James was painting the little inlet harbour at Castletownshend, trying to replicate the luminescence of the water on his canvas. The sunshine danced on the surface, and the clear water reflected the blue sky. Ingrid had gone for a walk along the rocks. She loved walking along the seashore and could just do it for hours, especially now she had a camera. Helmut and Elizabeth had given it to her for her twentieth birthday, and she snapped constantly. James had no interest in photography, it was so rigid, whereas with painting, you could add or subtract from an image as you pleased. Still, he was delighted such simple pleasures kept her happy.

  At first, he’d worried that Dunderrig would be boring for her – she was so lively and outgoing and had so many friends in Dublin. Yet she seemed more anxious, even than he was, to get back to West Cork whenever they’d been any length of time in Dublin. He still hadn’t told his father or Solange about Edith, and he had definitely decided not to take up the place in the National College of Art. Not only did he not wish to be away from Dunderrig and his father, he had also been further put off by the fact that his mother’s contact in the college was the head of sculpture, Dr Gurther, a vocal member of the Nazi party. James had met him once at a gallery with Otto, and the man was insufferable.

  Though he wanted his mother in his life, and Ingrid was fundamental to his happiness, he was finding spending time in Dublin with Edith and Otto increasingly trying. After the horrible dinner party, after which he’d lashed out at Edith, he had distanced himself from the social occasions in their house. He just couldn’t stand the endless evenings where the conversation invariably led to the war and how Hitler was doing such a wonderful job. He wished once again he could just meet with Edith and Ingrid and forget he’d ever met the rest of th
em.

  The longer the war raged in Europe, the more the world was becoming increasingly appalled at Germany, and Edith’s social circle were starting to feel the waves of disapproval. They complained of people’s rudeness to them and dismissed it as ignorance of the true facts. Only last week, Edith herself was outraged because she was convinced she was being followed by the Gardaí. Otto had calmed her down, saying it was her imagination. They were not doing anything wrong, so why would the Irish police be following her? James believed Otto was right on this occasion – he was a nice man, who just wanted a quiet life and for the war to be over. James liked Otto, he’d been so kind and welcoming to him – only the company he kept was distasteful.

  Edith had shrugged on hearing Juliet had joined up and had made no further reference to the subject. She never asked about Juliet anyway, a fact which hurt and confused him. To know he was the chosen twin didn’t give him a sense of superiority over Juliet; if anything, it made him love and wish to defend her more. On the one occasion that he brought up her apparent lack of interest in her own daughter, his mother had been circumspect.

  ‘James, my darling, Juliet has made her feelings towards me quite clear, as is her right. She wished to have nothing to do with me; I am simply complying with her request.’

  The two women were similarly stubborn, if only they could see it.

  Solange and his father, on the other hand, were living in constant terror that Juliet would be killed. They needed him around, now more than ever.

  He still couldn’t believe it, his sister working for the British war effort. He wished she’d confided in him earlier so he could have talked her out of it – but then, she was head over heels in love with this Ewan fellow, so probably she just wanted to be near him. James couldn’t judge her too harshly; if the situation had been between him and Ingrid, he’d have done the exact same thing.