Now she said, a chuckle in her voice, ‘Will I be all right by myself? How do you think I managed before you came?’ But she touched Jed’s cheek in a swift caress to soften the words. While they had waited for Jock’s foot to heal sufficiently for them to be on their way, Jed and Neville had busied themselves doing numerous little jobs about the house – mending a kitchen cupboard, sweeping the chimney in Etta’s small sitting room, replacing a couple of rotten floorboards, whitewashing the cellar and so on. They had also repaired a gaping hole in Oriel’s little barn at the end of Etta’s garden, and made the hen coop more secure for the night-time. It had been the least they could do for the diminutive old lady who had not only taken the three men in at great risk to herself, but also looked after them exceedingly well, pressing second helpings on them at every meal and checking Jock’s foot umpteen times a day to make sure all was as it should be.
Each of the men had a lump in his throat as they walked down Etta’s garden path and out into the lane beyond the front garden. This little house had been an oasis in a sea of violence and madness, rest for their minds as well as their bodies, and she would never know just how much she had done for them, Jed thought as they turned and waved for the last time. If he had told Etta that meeting her had given him hope for the world in the future she would probably have thought he was mad, but it was the truth. They had witnessed such horrific things, unimaginable cruelty and suffering and hatred, but Etta was the other side of the coin.
Jock summed up what they were all thinking as he said, ‘If things had been different, if we didn’t have to try for home, I could have stayed there for ever. She was a grand little body.’
‘Aye.’ Jed smiled at his two friends and they smiled back. ‘She was that.’
As well as packing them up a large rucksack full of food Etta had provided them with a map which was even more precious than her bread and hard-boiled eggs and cheese. They were heading in a south-westerly direction and were going to walk at night and lie low during the day. They had no idea how the war was progressing as Etta had no wireless, a conscious decision on her part. She and her husband had been perfectly happy without the intrusion of the outside world in any shape or form, and she saw no need to change that, she had told them. Jed didn’t blame her. After what he had been through it sounded ideal.
They walked steadily across wild, open country that first night, crossing the border into Germany as the sun rose and spending the day sleeping in a forest area that had plenty of cover. It set the pattern for the following days. They were careful to avoid settlements of any kind and keep off main roads, supplementing what was in the rucksack with anything from the fields and hedgerows that could be eaten. The three of them were in far better shape than on the march, thanks to Etta, but even so they found it hard going at times. They were underweight and still well below par from their time as POWs, and Jed and Neville were more than happy to adjust their pace to accommodate Jock’s foot which still had a little healing to do.
Days and nights merged together as they walked deeper into Germany, and now they were relying on what they could steal to eat. Eggs from hen coops, vegetables from gardens and fields, and anything they could lay their hands on when they found a door unsecured in the occasional remote dwelling off the beaten track, places like Etta’s little house. They had felt awkward, almost like criminals, the first couple of times they had stolen from someone’s home, but they’d told themselves these folk were the enemy and this was wartime. Etta was one in a million, besides which they were in Germany now. In the very lair of the wolf.
They often heard the drone of planes overhead but no sound of bombs falling, but as they were concentrating on avoiding built-up areas that perhaps wasn’t surprising. They hoped they were getting closer to the Allied lines all the time and they had seen no German troop movements, but again, the fact that they were skirting any towns or cities meant it was unlikely they would run into any German soldiers.
They had lost track of how many days and nights it had been since they had left Etta’s, when one day they were awoken by what were clearly American voices. They had spent the day resting in a copse of trees on the outskirts of a town. From Etta’s map, Jed thought the town might be Neustadt but it could just as easily be Rothenburg or Uffenheim. Etta had advised them to avoid Nuremberg – the city was a hub of Nazi activity – but looking at a map and working out a route in Etta’s kitchen was very different from working their way through an alien land in darkness whilst attempting to give a wide berth to its inhabitants.
Jed lay for a moment on the dense bracken and moss he’d slept on, unable to believe that what he was hearing wasn’t a dream. But no, they were Americans. He could even hear one of them singing ‘My Heart and I’. Badly.
He shook Jock and Neville awake and the three of them wriggled on their stomachs and peered out from their cover to the road some fifty or sixty yards away. A convoy of American soldiers, complete with jeeps and tanks, were rolling along, and from the noise they were making they weren’t too bothered about German snipers.
As Neville tried to scramble to his feet, Jed and Jock pulled him down none too gently. The last thing they needed was to be mistaken for part of a German ambush. Trigger fingers could be a mite too quick in wartime and a bullet was a bullet whether fired by friend or foe. Instead, and still under cover of the trees, Jed shouted, ‘We’re British POW. Don’t shoot ’cause we’re coming out, all right?’
He repeated it twice and heard someone, a commanding officer presumably, give the order for the unit to halt. Then someone shouted for them to come out with their hands in the air.
As they stumbled from the copse Jed was aware of several soldiers coming towards them, including an officer who was asking their names and ranks; of the convoy beyond, and – which added to the unrealness of the sudden turnaround in their fortunes – of the sudden flight of a large bird, a pheasant perhaps, in the field on the other side of the road. It rose straight up into the vast expanse of the dusky evening sky, soaring away until it was just a speck in the distance, unconfined and at liberty to go wherever it pleased. He watched it fly into the setting sun and as he blinked he knew that if he lived to be a hundred, the moment and the intensity of what he was feeling right now would be just as vivid. He was free.
Compared to how the Americans were clothed and how they looked, the three of them were poor specimens, Jed reflected wryly, as two soldiers presented them to the officer. The American grinned at them before asking how they came to be sleeping rough. As Jed explained their story he saw a look of gradual amazement dawn, and the officer interrupted to say, ‘You don’t know then?’
‘Know?’
‘The war’s over, guys. It’s been over since May seventh, a few weeks. Signed and sealed. Their precious Führer took the easy way out and killed himself, Mussolini was shot by partisans and strung up, and we’re in the process of rounding up hundreds of the German generals and hierarchy. It’s just the Japs left to be brought to heel now.’
‘It’s over?’ Jed gazed into the young, clean-shaven face. ‘Thank God.’ He turned to Jock and Neville who were looking equally stunned. Then the three of them were laughing and hugging, oblivious to the Americans who stood there grinning at the three British soldiers who had survived not only Auschwitz but also weeks on the run from the Nazis.
After the three of them had climbed into the back of a truck they were given food and bottles of water and the convoy was on the move once more. Jed had no idea where they were going and he didn’t care. The war was over, the Allies had won, Hitler was dead and the Nazis were beaten. What else was there to know?
It was dark when the American tank unit trundled into their camp which had a small airstrip attached to it. It had clearly been used by the Germans until fairly recently when it looked as though it had received a direct hit by the Allies. The airstrip was undamaged but a number of buildings to the north of the camp were blackened shells. However, there were more on the south and west side th
at were intact, and Jed and the others were taken to one of these on the margin of the site and told it would be their home for a couple of days or so until they were flown out with some other former POWs. The barracks were constructed of wood and would no doubt be freezing cold in the winter, but on a summer’s evening like this one they were pleasantly warm and the bunk beds were comfortable. Furthermore, they were in American hands which meant there would be good food and plenty of it, and this was confirmed a little while later when a soldier arrived to escort them to the mess tent where they enjoyed a substantial meal of beef stew followed by rice pudding. It might have come out of tins but it was hot and tasted wonderful.
It was three days before the planes – there were four of them – arrived, and Jed didn’t think he’d seen a more beautiful sight than the RAF Dakotas bumping down on the airfield. He and Jock and Neville had got to know the forty or so other POWs who were waiting to go home, and a couple of them they recognized from Auschwitz. These men told Jed they had escaped from the Germans shortly after he and Jock and Neville had, and had made it as far as Nuremberg before the Americans had picked them up. Of the POWs who had continued on the march there was no news. Strangely, the five of them didn’t talk about Auschwitz. There was no room for reminiscing about something so ugly, so unbelievably horrific. Even the American commanding officer, when they had been asked where they had been prisoners, had simply put his hand on each of their shoulders in turn and asked no questions when they had said the name of the concentration camp.
Instead, each of them had talked about home, loved ones, even their pets, along with their gardens and allotments and in Neville’s case, his prize racing pigeons. Jed had described the farm at this time of the year and how, as a warm summer sun sinks and shadows lengthen, the dark forms of bats appear, fluttering in the half-light and twisting and turning as the edge of night approaches. He’d talked about the ears of barley and corn appearing, the hill-scarp to the north of the farm at dusk marked by the sunny crowns of trees and long, deeply fret shadows, of meadows ripe with buttercups and daisies and cow parsley, but he didn’t mention the one thing that dominated every thought of home. Cora. Or what he was going to do the minute he got back.
As he walked towards the planes, sandwiched between Jock and Neville, he was conscious of other POWs whooping and cheering as they ran past them, eager to get on board. Some of them were carrying their belongings in bags or parcels but apart from Etta’s rucksack, which Jock had, the three of them had nothing. Nothing except their lives – which was everything.
The other three planes had already taken off when they climbed into the last Dakota, sitting down on the narrow seats along the side of the ribbed metal interior. This was it, they were going home. Jed looked round. Everyone was smiling but no one was saying much. Perhaps, like him, they still could hardly believe it was happening.
The roar of the engines reverberated through him as the plane began to taxi down the airstrip. He leaned back and shut his eyes, not because he was worried about takeoff or flying but because he didn’t want anyone to see the tears in his eyes.
Chapter Twenty-Three
‘What a shock for poor Wilfred, his mam going so soon after his da, and just when they’d got the house nice and things were settling. He was beside himself when he popped in to tell us earlier, Cora. You’ll have to go round and see him later.’
Nancy, Gregory and Cora were sitting at the kitchen table. It was a bitterly cold Thursday afternoon in the first week of November, and Cora’s half-day from the shop in Crowtree Road where she now worked; Thursday being the least busy day of the week according to Mrs Gray, the owner of the premises. Despite knowing she was paid well for what she did and that there were plenty of worse jobs, Cora hated every minute.
The sign on the shop door said ‘Mrs Gray, Millinery, Mantles & Costumes, Exclusive Fashions’. Mrs Gray and her assistant, Miss Williamson, a tiny, shrivelled-up, birdlike woman whose whole life revolved around her job, were excellent dressmakers and hat-makers. They largely worked in the back of the premises while Cora dealt with clients – ‘We don’t have customers, Miss Stubbs, only clients’ – who came in the front door of the shop. Mr Gray had been dead for a long time. Cora wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d died of boredom and was mummified somewhere in the flat upstairs.
Mrs Gray’s ‘clients’ were from the top echelons of Sunderland society, most of them wealthy matrons who had patronized her for donkey’s years. They were, without exception, outstandingly aware of their own importance and extraordinarily dull. If nothing else, the last weeks had made Cora even more determined to look into a nursing career, but for the moment the household was in desperate need of her weekly wage and that was that. Her reward for slowly suffocating day by day was on a Saturday evening when she came home and gave her mother her wage packet unopened. Her mam’s face would light up with relief, and although her mam had a way of making a penny turn into two, by the next Friday Cora knew she’d be dipping into the little pot on the mantelpiece that held the rent money; it would be replaced as soon as Cora handed over her next wage packet. Her father had been out looking for work but with just one functioning arm it had been hopeless, and his war pension didn’t amount to much.
Cora took a bite of her mother’s stottie cake. The bread was fresh from the oven and still warm, just the way she liked it. ‘And the doctor reckons that Wilfred’s mam just went upstairs to sleep and didn’t wake up?’ she asked Nancy.
‘That’s what Wilfred said. Poor lass. Mind, as I said to your da, there’s worse ways to go, and –’ here Nancy lowered her voice as though there were umpteen other people present – ‘you can’t drink like she did and it not do something to your insides, can you?’
‘No, I suppose not.’
‘But it’s Wilfred I feel sorry for. Poor lad.’
Cora looked at her mother. ‘Mam, he’s never got on with his mam an’ da, you know how they were.’
‘Oh, I know, I know. Course I know. Didn’t we bring poor Wilfred up most of the time, bless him? He practically lived here, didn’t he? But still, it was his mam. And like I said, he was cut up about it when he came round after they’d taken her away. He’d put so much work into that house to make it nice for her, and I think with his da gone the two of them were getting along fine.’
‘It might have been a shock but I don’t think he’ll be too upset in a day or two.’
Nancy’s reply to this was to look at her daughter and say for the umpteenth time since Cora had walked into the house, ‘Poor Wilfred.’
Cora glanced at her father and Gregory winked at her. Wilfred had always been ‘poor Wilfred’ as far as Nancy was concerned and would for ever remain so.
‘Pop round and have a word with him when he gets back from the docks,’ he said gently. ‘It’ll keep your mam happy though personally I agree with you, lass. I can’t see Wilfred’s mam’s passing as anything but a relief to the lad.’
‘Gregory!’ Nancy looked askance at her husband. ‘That’s an awful thing to say.’
Obviously Wilfred had still gone in to work then, Cora thought, as she smiled at her father. He’d got a job at the docks through his brothers who both worked there, and had started about the same time she had begun at Mrs Gray’s. Both his brothers were married with bairns and he had asked her a couple of times to go round to their respective houses with him and meet everyone, but she had made some excuse or other thus far. She had been trying to distance herself a little from Wilfred but it wasn’t easy, especially with him living next door. She had been hoping that once Maria left school next year and got a job, her younger sister could take her place as the main breadwinner and she could go away somewhere to do her nurse’s training, a hospital where she could live in. It would be a natural break from Wilfred without her having to say anything to upset him. She had discussed this with Maria who was doubtful.
‘I can see him following you wherever you go,’ her sister had said flatly. ‘Look how he was when you
wouldn’t commit to seeing him every Sunday afternoon once we were home, and he always manages to pop up anyway.’
Cora sighed. It would be worse now with his mam having passed away and her own mam feeling even sorrier for him. As a sudden thought struck her, she said, ‘Mam, don’t invite Wilfred round to eat with us every night or anything, will you? I mean, sometimes, of course, but not as a regular thing . . .’
Her voice trailed away at the expression on her mother’s face, and when Nancy said, ‘All right, lass. What’s going on?’ she stared at her parents. She had confided in her mother about Jed, everything, right down to him leaving to fight because of what he had done to Farmer Burns to protect her, but she hadn’t said a word about Wilfred asking her to be his lass. She had told herself that was because it didn’t seem fair to Wilfred and it was a private matter, but now she had to admit the real reason was that she thought her mam, liking Wilfred as she did, would be all for the match and try to push her into his arms. Whether that was right or wrong, she realized now she had to make her position clear.
Taking a deep breath, she said, ‘It’s like this . . .’
It took a while to tell the full story because she found herself going right back to when they had first been evacuated and Jed had come onto her horizon and how Wilfred had been strange for a time, through to the events of VE Day. When she finished there was silence in the kitchen for a moment or two. She was all prepared for what she thought her mother’s reaction would be, so when Nancy said, ‘But of course you couldn’t think of poor Wilfred in that way, lass. He’s not the one for you. Anyone who knows you would see that,’ it completely took the wind out of Cora’s sails.
‘I thought you’d want me to be his lass,’ she said lamely.
‘Wilfred?’ Nancy shook her head. ‘No, no. He’s a nice enough lad and he’s got a heart of gold – look how he was with his mam in the last weeks despite how she’s always been with her boys – but you and him. Oh, no, lass.’
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