by Anne Doughty
CHAPTER SEVEN
In the weeks that followed Emily and Alex’s evening visit to Chris and his lieutenants, suddenly it did seem as if hope had been rekindled. Spirits lifted as each news broadcast reported the German army in North Africa being driven back yet further as Operation Torch proceeded. Then came the news of General Montgomery’s resounding defeat of the Afrika Corps at El Alamein and the Eighth Army’s hot pursuit of the enemy, now in full retreat.
In all this heart-lifting activity, local regiments had played their part, along with the Americans and Canadians everyone in Banbridge had befriended.
December proceeded, wet and sunless, but the many thanksgiving services that followed the victories were well attended and the feelings of both relief and hope were very obvious. Alex reported a better atmosphere in the mills. He said Christmas decorations had suddenly appeared in unexpected places, draped from rafters and wound round pillars. He had asked the managers to make sure they were firmly attached if they were suspended anywhere near moving parts of machinery, but he told them on no account to have them taken down.
Try as they might, Emily and Alex found it hard to share in the general rejoicing. In the middle of November, Cathy had written to say she could now tell them that Brian had been moved to London, to the School of Tropical Medicine. She had told them the previous year that he was working on a new preparation for the treatment of serious infection, but neither of them had any idea then that the work would suddenly be moved forward with such urgency.
He’d been given a bare week’s notice to move to London. With a class of forty in a one-teacher village school, there was no possibility of Cathy’s going with him, though she said she’d be able to join him in his lodgings for the Christmas holidays.
Emily was torn between wishing Cathy could stay in the relative safety of Cheshire and hoping that Brian would be able to find them somewhere to live as that was clearly what Cathy wanted. Uneasy about the feel of Cathy’s letters, Emily arranged to ring her on the school telephone in the lunch hour or if she wasn’t free then, after school.
Calls to Cheshire were often unavailable, even more liable to be cut off than those to the capital itself, but Emily persisted. When she did manage to get through, she was quite sure that something was badly wrong. There was a tone of anxiety in her daughter’s voice that had not been there before, not even when she and Brian had lived for a time in Manchester itself and had been driven regularly to the air-raid shelters.
Cathy had never been one to share her troubles, however, even though her mother had always encouraged her to talk about what made her anxious, so Emily was left to wonder whether it was a problem between her and Brian, the burden of coping with so many children and only an untrained, part-timer to help her, or some fear she couldn’t speak about, because she herself couldn’t even recognise it.
When a quick scribbled note from Lizzie arrived saying she had a 48 hour pass for the first weekend in December, Emily breathed a sigh of relief. With only eighteen months between them, Cathy and Lizzie had always been close to each other. Their closeness had increased after Jane was born, for though Jane was the most good-natured of children she never asked her older sisters to play with her.
She was always perfectly happy to be by herself, talking to an imaginary friend, or singing to herself as she moved objects around. Toys, or clothes pegs, or scraps of left-over dough which she made into small figures, it was all the same to Jane, as she created stories for them and acted them out. She loved flowers, arranged daisies, dandelions and leaves in jam pots and lined them up on whatever windowsills she could reach. And as soon as Johnny could walk he attached himself to her. He’d seek her out, watch what she was doing, then sit down smiling and simply wait for her to amuse him.
Jane had always loved looking after him, and didn’t mind a bit when, in due course, he went off to play with other little boys. Even when he went to Banbridge Academy and made lots of friends, Ritchie especially, he still came looking for her the very moment he came home, to tell her what he’d been doing or who he’d been with.
To Emily’s surprise Lizzie arrived the following Saturday morning, on foot and in uniform. She looked exhausted.
‘Oh love, you do look tired. Did no one give you a lift?’
‘No cars, Ma,’ she responded, as she parked her small suitcase on the floor, dropped down on a kitchen chair and took out a packet of cigarettes. ‘But I wanted to walk anyway,’ she went on quickly. ‘I haven’t seen the light of day for weeks. D’you mind me smoking in your kitchen?’ she asked abruptly, as she was about to strike a match.
‘No, no,’ replied Emily, flustered.
She didn’t know Lizzie had started to smoke, but she supposed it was the stress of the long hours on duty. As she watched the practised way she lit up and inhaled deeply, she also noticed the tone of her skin and hair. Though not as perfect as Jane, both the elder girls had good skin, the tone warmer as with anyone dark-haired. Cathy and Lizzie had both had masses of dark curls as children but Lizzie now wore her hair so short few curls survived. Although it was so short, normally it still shone and had a spring in it, but today it was dull and lifeless. As she looked down at her through the haze of cigarette smoke, all Emily could think of was the Before and After pictures in those shampoo advertisements one saw in the newspaper.
‘Extra duty?’ Emily asked casually, as she made tea and reached for the cake tin.
‘Training course. Endurance was part of it. If you’ve got a complex situation, you can’t just hand over. You may have to keep going regardless,’ she said, turning her head to blow smoke away from her mother. ‘Got a stripe though,’ she added. ‘Thought I might ask you to sew it on. Always lousy at sewing.’
Emily smiled and offered congratulations as enthusiastically as she could manage, but she felt little joy. However successful Lizzie had been, there was something different in her whole manner and in the abruptness of her comments and replies, that worried her.
She did indeed seem pleased by whatever it was she’d done that had gained her a stripe, but there was a withdrawnness about her that was quite new and made Emily feel she had put up a fence round herself. One might approach and look over to see what one might see, but entry was forbidden, even to her. Like Chris’s camp, unless you had your authorised pass, there was no possibility whatever of getting beyond the guards.
‘Heard from Cathy lately, Ma?’ she asked, as Emily put mugs of tea on the kitchen table and offered cake.
‘Yes. I finally managed to get a call through on the school phone on Wednesday. She can’t answer it unless her helper is there. They only have it in case of an emergency with a child and they need to ring out. Mostly it just rings and rings when there’s no one but Cathy to answer it.’
‘But you persisted?’
Emily nodded and drank thirstily. She noticed that Lizzie had ignored the cake, so she put it back in the tin.
‘How was she?’
‘I was going to ask you that,’ Emily replied. ‘I wasn’t very happy about the way she sounded. I hoped maybe you’d know more.’
‘She thinks she’s pregnant,’ she replied, drawing vigorously on her cigarette. ‘It was an accident, but she blames herself and Brian is worried silly about having to leave her behind in Cheshire.’
Emily took a deep breath and told herself it could be worse. At least it wasn’t another marriage breaking up under the strain of war.
‘But surely if she’s pregnant she can’t go on teaching, so she can go with him,’ she said, thinking of the local country schools she knew. ‘I know teachers are short, but surely no one is allowed to go on teaching once it becomes the slightest bit obvious.’
‘Might be different in England, Ma. Pregnancy is a form of sinfulness in this province,’ Lizzie replied, as she stepped over to the sink and stubbed out her cigarette butt fiercely on a metal soap dish.
Emily watched in silence as she ran the dish under the tap and followed the course of the butt disintegra
ting under the flood of water which swirled the fragments down the drain.
‘No use worrying, Ma,’ she said with a brief smile. ‘She’ll end up in London with Brian sooner or later and then I’ll be able to go and see her.’
For one happy moment, Emily simply thought how good it would be for the sisters to be together again. Then the implications of what Lizzie had just said dawned upon her.
‘How come, Lizzie?’
‘Posting. Probably south coast to begin with, but Air Ministry later. Official Secrets and all that. But it’s even better than what I’d wanted when they kept me here in Belfast.’
‘When are you going?’
Emily heard herself ask the question as if it were a polite enquiry about a perfectly normal arrangement, as if Lizzie were off to see a friend or merely taking a day in town to do some shopping.
‘Sometime on Monday afternoon. As soon as I get back to base, depending on flights.’
Emily was almost grateful when Lizzie explained that she was very short of sleep and needed to catch up. Even apart from the Official Secrets Act, which meant she couldn’t talk about her work, it seemed to Emily in the hour they’d spent together that she was very reluctant to talk about anything very much at all.
Emily had tried to share her own activities, organising Sunday visits to families for Chris’s boys and indoor picnics, when they could meet and play games with local primary school children. She spoke of their friends and their neighbours who’d once been such a part of Lizzie’s life and told her about some recent local events. To all of this, Lizzie listened politely, but made no response.
Late on Saturday afternoon, Lizzie was still in bed when Alex arrived home to find Emily puzzled and concerned. She told him what she’d observed and suggested he might do better at conversation than she had. She went as far as to remind him of the story Jamie Macpherson had told him about his own daughter, an old school friend of Lizzie’s.
‘Oh yes, Olive,’ said Lizzie indifferently, as they settled by the fire on Saturday evening after supper, a pot of coffee in the hearth. ‘She joined the Land Army, didn’t she? Wanted to get away from that awful mother of hers, I expect. Where did she end up?’
Emily saw Alex’s eyes widen as the cigarettes came out, but he had promised not to say a word.
‘Well, I knew it was Gloucestershire somewhere,’ Alex began, ‘but when I met Olive’s father shortly after she went, he told me it was one of those stately homes the Ministry of Defence took over as a centre for injured Airmen. It seems they specialised in treating burns and doing plastic surgery.’
He took his coffee from Emily and settled back in his chair.
‘Well, you probably won’t remember your Aunt Sarah, Lizzie. She used to come and visit us before she and her husband were posted to Germany with a trade mission. Sarah had an older sister, Hannah, who married the son of Lord Harrington who’d inherited this huge mansion in Gloucestershire called Ashley Park …’
Emily watched Lizzie as she inhaled and then flicked her ash into the saucer she’d provided for herself.
‘Apparently Olive and her colleagues were drafted in to grow vegetables in the parterres of this place. When the old gardener who’d stayed on to help run things heard Olive speak, he spotted the accent right away and said his Lady Hannah was from Ireland too, just like she was.
‘Well, of course, the mansion was Ashley Park. Lady Hannah was brought up at Ballydown as you know, only half a mile away from your friend Olive at Lisnaree.’
Lizzie made no response at all. For a moment, she just looked into the fire, then she took a long pull at her cigarette and looked from one to the other.
‘The war does throw up some strange coincidences,’ said Lizzie slowly. ‘Sometimes it’s hard to believe just how differently people behave. I must say I never thought a sister of mine would apply for a transfer to a military hospital to be able to look after a German spy.’
Emily sat stunned, her coffee going cold as she heard Alex ask Lizzie quietly what she meant. She registered the replies and the interchange which followed but what she was seeing was Jane’s face, Jane smiling at her as she arrived for her first weekend break almost six weeks after her interrupted birthday lunch.
She’d written quite openly about what had happened between her and Johann. Now she sat down at the kitchen table, curled her hands round a large mug of tea and told her the whole story.
‘Ma, Johann has asked me to marry him,’ she said, her eyes shining, her face radiant.
Emily opened her mouth to speak, but Jane jumped in and began to reassure her.
‘Oh, Ma, we know it will be ages and we know it’s going to be difficult, but as long as we know we’re going to be together we can manage. Lots of couples are parted in wartime and most of them are in danger, far more danger than we are.’
Emily laughed.
‘That wasn’t what I was going to say,’ she said, shaking her head.
‘Sorry, Ma,’ she apologised. ‘I should have known you wouldn’t say I was too young, or he was German, or any of the things other people might say. What were you going to say?’
‘I was just going to ask how Johann managed to propose, given how little English he has.’
Jane clapped her hand to her mouth and laughed happily.
‘Ma, I couldn’t believe it either,’ she began. ‘You remember he wasn’t on my ward at Musgrave, don’t you? Well, it took about a week before I was able to visit him after work, though I had been able to send him some little messages with one of the male nurses I knew from the Royal …’
She paused, took a large mouthful of tea and broke a small corner from her cake before she went on.
‘I walked into the ward and found him sitting in the bedside chair, the leg sticking straight out in front of him and the bed covered with books and pieces of paper. And, do you know what he said?’
Emily waited patiently.
‘I am so pleased to see you, Jane. I have been employed. But I have some operational difficulties. I hope you will assist me.’
Emily laughed, as much at Jane’s face as at Johann’s English, but she felt her heart lift as she recognised that Jane had found the man she wanted and whatever the difficulties, she would master them. The language problem might well be one of the easiest.
Indeed, after that unexpected gift of four weeks under the same roof, it had not been easy. Johann was moved to a camp at Dungannon, some fifty miles away, a slow bus journey up through County Armagh and into Tyrone with a long walk to the camp at the other end. It had taken weeks of negotiation between the Red Cross and the Camp Commandant to get permission for a monthly visit. Their letters were limited to one a week and had to pass through the censor.
What had been a delight to Emily was to see how happy her daughter was and how the obvious difficulties of the situation seemed to melt before her. Jane’s letters were often brief and hasty, but she told her how she was contacting anyone she thought might be able to help Johann. It was no surprise to her at all when late in the summer Jane reported that an elderly solicitor had taken on the task of considering a plea of ‘political asylum’ for Johann and had said he would be pleased to explore the situation for his own interest and would therefore not be requiring the customary fee.
Johann had played his part. His command of English had proceeded by leaps and bounds and he was now able to help other prisoners as well as the staff with whom he got on very well. As his leg healed and he was able to join the work parties, he made friends with local people and discovered great pleasure in the work of creating a new park, planting trees and shrubs, which one day in the future would be complemented by herbaceous borders. The spaces for flower beds had been laid out, their curving shapes a part of the whole plan, though for the present they were filled with vegetables.
‘Well that’s a matter of opinion, isn’t it? As far as I’m concerned, the enemy is the enemy, and that’s that. There’s no such thing as a good German.’
Emily heard t
he sharp edge to her tone, which Lizzie made no attempt to conceal. Her heart sank, for she knew that tone of old and it always meant the same thing, that Lizzie had made up her mind and would not be persuaded to change it.
It was the bitterness that upset Emily most. She just couldn’t understand what had changed in Lizzie, so that the facts of the case had no bearing at all upon her response, when she had been the one who was always so coolly logical. Lizzie wasn’t listening to a word of what her father was telling her about Johann. Or perhaps she was, but refusing to give them any weight.
Alex pointed out that Jane’s transfer to Musgrave Park had been mentioned on the day of her birthday, though possibly she’d had not been able to tell them till after Lizzie left. Jane hadn’t known then whether it would happen or not.
Besides, no one that day had any idea what would happen to the young airman. If he hadn’t had a broken leg, he would almost certainly have been sent straight to a Prisoner-of-War camp, so there was no question of Jane planning a move to Musgrave to be with him. As for his being a spy, common sense suggested he’d hardly have been picked for the job if he couldn’t do better than run out of petrol and risk killing himself in a crash landing.
If that wasn’t enough evidence for her, what about the grillings he’d had from Army Intelligence? Surely, if they were satisfied after their rigorous interrogations that should be enough for her.
But there was no talking to her. She had found out from a friend at Musgrave that Jane and Johann had spent every possible moment together while he was there and that she was still running up and down to Dungannon to see him. He had her on a string and God knows what information he was getting out of her.
