Shadows over Stonewycke

by Michael Phillips

  Suddenly she remembered an earlier waking. How could she have forgotten? A porter, his uniform smattered with blood and torn in many places, was leaning over her.

  “Are ye wakin’, mum?” he asked compassionately.

  “My granddaughter . . .” was all Joanna could say. “My baby . . .”

  “’Tis many youngsters in this car, mum, but none dead. We’ll find her.”

  “No . . . not this car . . . two ahead . . .”

  Suddenly the man’s tender expression became stricken with pain.

  “Two cars ahead, ye say?”

  But Joanna, clutching at the man and ignoring the pain from injuries she would later discover, tried to pull herself up.

  “I have to get to her!”

  “But, mum—”

  Paying no heed to the man’s entreaties, Joanna staggered to her feet, then attempted to run, stumbling along and climbing through the debris to make her way through the appalling disaster. All the while the kindly man hurried after her.

  Somehow she managed to get free of what was left of the railway car and into the open air. She ran along the dirt where already the injured and dead were being dragged out and tended to.

  Suddenly she stopped. The porter who had been close on her heels came up sharply at her side.

  Several cars, one on its side and half blown apart, were engulfed in uncontrollable flames.

  She started to run toward the blaze, screaming, “No!” But the porter grabbed her firmly.

  “’Tis no use, mum,” he said wearily. “Them cars ahead o’ yers took a direct hit.”

  With the fatal words of the porter still ringing in her ears, mingled with the incoherent voices of nurses and doctors, and the blurry whiteness of an unfamiliar ceiling spinning around above her, Joanna lapsed again into unconsciousness, and remembered no more.

  ———

  Sarah Bramford came the moment she had received Allison’s call. She had been out of town, however, and could not be reached for nearly twenty-four hours after the accident.

  The moment she walked in, Allison’s appalling appearance told more than any words could. Where she sat in the brassy light of the hospital’s waiting room, with dark hollow eyes and pale skin, she appeared so lost, like a stranger in some bizarre foreign land where all was against her. She had often complained about her dreadful pallor, calling it the Duncan curse. But the look on her face went far beyond any familial inheritance.

  Sarah rushed immediately to her side and threw her arms around her friend.

  Allison said nothing, but burst into fresh tears.

  Both women held each other tight and wept; then Sarah finally managed to speak through her tears.

  “Your mother . . . is she—?”

  Allison nodded. “She’ll be fine,” she replied haltingly. “A mild concussion, a broken arm, some broken ribs—”

  “Oh my!” exclaimed Sarah, “the poor woman!”

  “She’s just come out of surgery and is asleep—oh, Lord! I don’t know what I would have done had I lost her, too!”

  Gently Sarah stroked Allison’s head, her own tears of heart-wrenching compassion flowing without restraint.

  “Oh, Sarah!” sobbed Allison, “what am I going to do!”

  Thirty minutes later some calm had been restored to Allison’s grief-stricken heart. She looked at Sarah, still with that empty, wasted expression of loss on her face. But she had to talk; it seemed the only way to accept the reality of what had happened.

  “The bombers were apparently after some military installation on the other side of the tracks,” she said, her voice cracked and tentative. “But some of the bombs came in low, and . . . hit the train—”

  She stopped and could not go on for several minutes.

  “My little Joanna was in one of them,” she sobbed. “Mother had left for a few minutes . . . to visit Olivia in another car—”

  “Olivia Fairgate?”

  “Yes, she was on the train . . . she and her children. But they’re all fine. Their car wasn’t . . . they didn’t get a direct hit—”

  The words caught on Allison’s lips. “Oh, Sarah!” she moaned, then was silent for several minutes.

  “You don’t have to tell me now, dear.”

  “No . . . it’s all right . . . I’ve got to get it said . . .”

  “Tell me whatever you want to,” said Sarah tenderly.

  “It took them hours to account for everyone. Some went to nearby farms for first aid . . . the Army came out to help, but of course they had their own casualties. . . . But now they know—I just heard it—over two hundred injured . . . sixty-three dead. . . .”

  Again the two friends fell silent. Sarah waited, silently ministering the tender sympathy of true compassion.

  “God knew what He was doing when He gave you to me for a friend,” said Allison, speaking at last. “Thank you, Sarah.”

  “Let’s go get something to eat,” said Sarah brightly. “When’s the last time you had a good meal?”

  “I honestly don’t remember,” answered Allison. “I haven’t been hungry.”

  “Come on,” urged Sarah, rising. “You must have something.”

  “Well, maybe I could use a change of scenery.”

  Arm-in-arm they left the tiny, comfortless room, found the stairs, and eventually located the dining room. The tea proved adequate, but everything else was bland and tasteless. Allison toyed with a bowl of soup until it was cold besides. The tea was soothing, however, and when Sarah poured out a second cup, Allison accepted it gratefully.

  “I should probably get back upstairs,” she said, “in case Mother wakes up.”

  “I’m surprised she’s here in London,” commented Sarah.

  “There were no adequate facilities in the rural area where the bombing took place,” said Allison. “So they brought most of the casualties back to the city.”

  They both concentrated on their tea for a few moments.

  Then Sarah reached across the table and gently placed her hand on Allison’s.

  “Why don’t you come stay with me while your mother is in the hospital?” she said. “Even after she is released, you would both be welcome. You know I have scads of room.”

  “Thank you, Sarah,” Allison replied. She proceeded to stare into her cup a moment. “But I . . . I . . . feel I should stay at the flat. I can’t leave. If Logan should come, I must be there.”

  “But we can leave word for him.”

  “No, I have to be there. I don’t know how this will affect all we might have had. I don’t even know if I’ll ever see him again. But I just know I have to stay there.”

  “Of one thing we can be sure,” said Sarah quietly. “God doesn’t cause such tragedies, but He can use them in ways we in the midst of our grief can never imagine.”

  Allison smiled, for the first time in many hours.

  “You have grown so much, Sarah. I can’t tell you how much it means to me to have you right now. I don’t have much to cling to, and I’m so thankful to God that I do have you.”

  ———

  Over the next days and weeks, Allison did manage to endure the emptiness of her grief. Sarah stayed with her in the Shoreditch flat until Joanna was released from the hospital nine days after the accident. After that, Allison’s loneliest moments were relieved in eager service to her mother. By the time Joanna was ready to return north, Allison too seemed back on her feet emotionally, at least enough to go on with life.

  God had, and would, continue to use her grief. He was calling her to a higher level of faith, a new plane of trust in Him.

  She had heard about such things many times from her great-grandparents. Her own mother and father had told her that the pain of loss and separation was the very thing which had cemented the young love shared by Maggie and Ian into an eternal legacy of love. She had heard, she had read—so many times, in fact, that the truths had little impact for her personally.

  In her spirit now, however, she began to discern that the
truth of those words was what her own life now desperately required if she was to grow through this time and be strong again.

  Now was the time when her trust in God, her love for Logan, and her belief in God’s ultimate goodness in the face of black circumstances all around must be stretched to humanly impossible limits. Now was the time when she would have to decide to what extent she was willing to give God her trust. Daily she opened her New Testament to read the words at once so painful and yet so full of hope:

  “We rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces patience, and patience produces strength of character, and strength of character produces hope. And hope will never disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. . . . Consider it joy when you face trials, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance, which must finish its work, so that you may be mature and complete, and lacking in nothing.”

  To allow this process to work its maturing and strengthening in her heart, she needed to depend upon God more than she ever had in her young life.

  “Father,” she prayed one evening in the quiet of her room, “following your ways has never been easy for me. Please—help me, dear Lord! I want to trust you, I want to believe this is all for the good! I want to believe that that scripture is true, and that you are working it out in my life. Help me, even if not to believe it completely, at least help me to want to believe it! Help me somehow to trust you in spite of my own unbelief. I want to trust you, Lord, but I am weak on my own! And more than anything, please, dear Lord, keep your loving hand on Logan. He needs you, too. Let these separate paths we are on help us both to see the light of your Spirit illuminating the way before us.”

  62

  The Paris Express

  They called this rattletrap The Berlin to Paris Express.

  Some express! The word was more likely a euphemism for simply making it a thousand kilometers without encountering a bomb! The phrase could certainly have nothing whatever to do with speed! Thus concluded Jason Channing with a disgruntled smirk.

  He wondered about the necessity of his current decision to travel to Paris. If for no other reason, he was going because the Führer had encouraged him to see the city—how did he phrase it?—under the “guardianship” of the Third Reich. Hitler may have been a maniac in many ways, but he did possess a tenderness for the arts. Probably it was his way of deflecting attention from his common birth, and perhaps relieving the sting from the memory of being twice rejected by the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. The struggling young artist had turned instead to surviving as a street painter in the Austrian capital, and now, thirty-four years later, fancied himself a connoisseur of things fine and cultured. He carried with him such a bloated impression of his own skill that several years ago he had gone on a campaign to round up and destroy what he considered forgeries of his own early work. As if any of them were good enough to forge! And now in his vision for the Reich—purified, as it was, from the stains of both Jews and forgeries—he perceived Paris as the crowning glory.

  Besides, the Führer was not a man to be refused; even Jason Channing had the sense to recognize that.

  Hitler’s major goal with Paris had been to see that the cinema, the theater, and other arts should continue to thrive. The world would see that the Reich did not ultimately bring destruction, but culture.

  Well, thought Channing, perhaps the tyrant has succeeded. Even in the midst of the war, France led the world, even America, in publishing. The stage still attracted some of Europe’s biggest names. The Louvre was still the world’s greatest art gallery and the Left Bank still attracted many up-and-coming new artists. Parisian night life seemed to be flourishing. Jews were verboten, of course, from participating in any of this. But who needed their money? There were enough other Parisian artisans and German financiers to keep the creative hub of the world bursting with the appearance of health and happiness. The peasants had no bread, but the Führer saw to it that they had art in abundance.

  Channing was no sentimentalist like the Führer. He would never have made this ghastly train ride just to see some ridiculous pictures on canvas, or to hear Karajan conduct Tristan and Isolde, although he would no doubt be willing enough to take advantage of some of the other diversions Paris offered a man of the world.

  Most of all, however, he had endless business deals to cement. “Thank God for the war!” he was known to have said on occasion. He was scoring a bundle. He may have been black-listed from American industry and unwelcome in certain parts of Britain, but who cared? Germany had proved a veritable gold mine. After the crash of ’29, he had taken a chance with his remaining bankroll and invested in aircraft. His associates all called him crazy, but Channing’s greed smelled another war in the not-so-distant future. If everyone else back then chose to ignore Germany’s steady buildup of armaments, Channing was not one to be duped by soothing words. He knew what was going on, and where the world was headed.

  It had been rough at first, until the government contracts began pouring in near the end of the thirties. Now he couldn’t produce enough Messerschmitts or Hurricanes, not to mention his growing contracts with the Japanese.

  Because of the war, Channing was now a millionaire in just about any currency he chose.

  And since he wasn’t a patriot, it caused him no particular qualms that the fortunes of the Third Reich were steadily plummeting. All along he’d known the arrangement would end one day. He made sure not to invest too much of his own money in the factories, at the same time funneling the cash profits in his own direction. When the end came he wanted to make sure he would be able to beat a hasty retreat to some nice neutral spot like Morocco, out of sight of the Germans, out of sight of the Americans and English, and live like a king while setting up some new ventures.

  And the Third Reich did seem to be plummeting. Last month the Eighth Army had squashed Rommel at El Alamein in Egypt, a major victory for the British, insuring Allied protection of the Suez Canal. And only a few days ago, on November 8, of this pivotal year of 1942, the British and the Americans had launched their long-awaited invasion of North Africa. Churchill had recently declared, “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

  Why couldn’t the pompous snob come right out and say it? thought Channing. The Reich was doomed. Not only in the south but in the east too. There they were slowly crumbling before the rallied might of the great Russian bear.

  But to Channing none of the world’s political fortunes mattered. He had his wealth secreted away in the safety of a Swiss bank. No matter which way the war went, he would come up smelling like a rose.

  So much for the business end of this visit to the City of Lights.

  He was also looking forward to seeing his old acquaintance, Martin von Graff, now a general in the S.S. For beyond business and finances, there was a still more vital thrust to Channing’s existence: power. It was his reason for being, what kept him driven with the passion of men thirty years his junior.

  To the end of possessing power over men and situations and circumstances, Jason Channing had over the years developed a finely honed network of international “eyes and ears.” He had in his clutches more dirt on more well-placed personalities than he could ever use in one lifetime. But even if it went unused, the mere fact of its possession was what really mattered. You never knew when it would come in handy to expedite a deal, or encourage a man of influence to close his eyes at the proper time. To know more about another than he knew you knew gave Channing a hidden measure of control. And with control came power!

  One of the focal points toward which he had directed his spying activities was none other than his old nemesis, Stonewycke. By now Channing’s vendetta was not limited merely to that feisty snip of a girl who had laughed in his face thirty-one years ago, and then run off to marry a ridiculous, manure-sloshing animal doctor. That affront he would never forgive! He would carry out his revenge on
anyone associated with the place. Of course, the pressing demands of the war had limited his diligence in this area. But he had instructed his people at least to keep a watch for any unusual behavior.

  And what could be more unusual than a nervous young woman slipping out in the dead of night to rendezvous with a sinister German at a deserted pub near the Thames shipyards? The daughter, no less! To have something on her might even be better than a direct hit. Parents were so sentimental! That was the perfect way to really make them hurt—get to their children!

  Yes, sir! You just never knew what was going to turn up! The noble Lady Joanna MacNeil’s own daughter meeting with Germans!

  Channing had to know what it was all about! This was fraught with cunning possibilities!

  Thus he directed his antennae toward that little part of the globe. He kept a man watching the girl—what was her name? Allison. But he’d come up consistently empty. He’d stuck a man immediately on the kraut, too. That was more promising.

  The name was Gunther. His code name, at least—in reality his informant identified him as one Rolf Pingel. Not that his real name mattered. He was a double agent, ostensibly working for British intelligence. However, the man was a slippery fellow; even Channing was not sure which side of the fence he really called home. Probably both sides. “I like the guy already!” Channing laughed to himself.

  Channing put his best man on Gunther. But even at that they had a beast of a time keeping up with him. They lost his track several times, but then caught a whiff of him again as he boarded a plane for Lisbon. Suddenly things began to look up. For in Lisbon, who should he meet but Martin von Graff, just before von Graff switched his lot to the S.S.

  From the submarine off the northern coast of Scotland—where Channing himself had returned with his dredging equipment some time later—and now to his association with a spy who had links to the MacNeil daughter, the name of Martin von Graff seemed to keep bearing in on the fortunes of Stonewycke, and Channing’s schemes.