by David Mark
‘I wanted to see the camp,’ I said. ‘I think I picked the wrong day.’
He smiled. He was maybe forty but it was hard to say for certain. Handsome, if you liked the sort of men favoured by Renaissance painters. He had pale skin and a full beard, pale eyes and long features. He had a woollen hat perched on top of his dark hair and was wearing blue overalls beneath a brown leather coat. I didn’t recognize him.
‘The camp? POW? Not much to see, love.’
I squinted at him. The rain was still coming down. The sides of the narrow road were running with brown water and the bushes by the stone walls were sinking in on themselves; collapsing like cardboard. The rain seemed to hang in the air. It felt like walking through a fishing net.
‘Just a bit of a history project,’ I said, trying to seem like it didn’t matter, even as I stood shivering in the rain. ‘I wanted to know more about the camp.’
He smiled. Looked at me like I was charmingly mad. ‘You need a television, love.’
‘I have one. Can’t get it to work.’
‘You have an aerial?’ he asked. ‘Up proper? Should pick up the signal, love.’
I smiled again, hoping he wouldn’t push it. My husband had sent me a splendid television in a wooden case. All I had to do was get a local in to set it up for me. The only picture it had ever shown was my own reflection, puzzled and frustrated and cursing my own incompetence. Feckless, that was the word for it. I was utterly devoid of feck.
‘Am I going the right way? I know it’s through the castle and into the next field but I haven’t seen any signs.’
He laughed. Showed me a pointed pink tongue, protruding over his bottom lip like a terrier’s. ‘A sign? No, love. You’ll be lucky to see owt anyways. Bulldozers took it down years back. Not the sort of place you want to mek a fuss about.’
I could understand that. Nixon had said as much. A few mounds and a couple of outbuildings; some peculiar shapes in the grass. I felt suddenly silly; abruptly aware of the folly of setting out to see this place for such an absurd reason. I’d seen a corpse, of that I was certain. Fairfax had died not long after I alerted him to it. Fairfax had a son who died in the war and he had a habit of asking questions. Through design or accident, Gilsland sat between two edifices that had a vested interest in keeping their secrets buried: a Prisoner of War camp a couple of miles up the road and an RAF base on the other. It only made sense that I go and poke around. What the hell else was there to do with myself? But the idea of saying that to anybody else suddenly made me flush with colour. I was doing nothing but getting wet and looking silly.
‘Yer far from home?’ he asked.
‘Back in Gilsland,’ I said.
He looked me up and down. Put a couple of pieces together in his head. ‘You’ll be Mrs Hemlock,’ he said, and tugged at the imagined brim of his hat.
‘Cordelia,’ I said, surprised.
‘I’m Loz,’ he said. ‘Loz Gladwin. I’ve got farm at Park Burn. Near as neighbours to the castle, like. I were sorry to hear of yer sadness,’ he said.
‘Thank you,’ I said, and realized I had started to appreciate the simplicity of the sentiment. People genuinely were sorry for me. They wished it hadn’t happened. Is that not the truest expression of regret? I filed the thought away. I would chew it over at leisure.
‘Is it through the castle then?’ I asked, squinting into the rain.
‘Aye, ye can see what little there is if you ye push on down this road and go through the courtyard and over the wee wall. Go through the next field and ye’ll see where the river widens. There’s about eighty head of beef in there though and I know ye won’t see owt worth the walk.’ He paused and looked at his watch. ‘If ye hop in I’ll show you in the dry.’
Instinctively I shook my head. I had been told too many times of the dangers of getting into cars with strange men. I thought of the sisters. I was a wicked thing; a product of desire and illicit, sticky fumblings. I had been made from a wanton act. I was not a creation of love but of temptation and lust. I heard such accusations throughout childhood. I knew of my wickedness. Knew how filthy a thing I was. Knew what I would become if I did not keep my heart open to God’s love and my legs closed to the attentions of weak-willed men.
‘I’m fine, thanks. I can only get so wet, can’t I? And my skin is waterproof.’
He looked at me oddly then gave in to a huge laugh that ill-suited his delicate frame. So too did the idea of him working in a manual job. He looked slender and flimsy, like fine porcelain.
‘Love, I can’t let ye gan on in this weather. And I swear, ye’ll be home quicker and without yer death of cold.’
He could see me pondering it. I was soaked. Frozen through. My teeth were chattering and my hands were so cold that I was struggling to feel their tips. If this man meant me harm he would be able to get me into his vehicle without much of a fight. And he would have to be a very opportunist killer to be driving down this road at this time in the hope of finding a lone female.
‘If it’s no trouble …’
‘Please, ye’ll be daeing me a favour.’
Decision made, I walked around the front of the vehicle. There was black mud and torn grasses snagged in the grill. A streak of rusty red on the broken headlight. He leaned across and opened the door and I gratefully climbed inside. It smelled of outdoors brought in. Damp earth. Wet leaves. The tang of gunpowder and wood polish.
‘There’s a flask under yer seat. Get it in ye.’
I did as he suggested. The thermos was a red tartan and warm to the touch. I poured thick brown liquid into the plastic cup and took a slurp just as we set off. I scalded my lip but laughed it off. There was brandy in the coffee and it warmed me as if I had swallowed hot coals.
‘This some sort of tribute to Fairfax then?’ asked Loz, sitting forward in his seat as the wiper carved a sail of visibility in the cascading water. I shot a glance at him. He wasn’t looking at me. Was focussing hard on the road ahead.
‘You knew Fairfax?’
‘Aye, course. Everybody knew Fairfax. Were a sickener to hear on it. Tellt him that car were a fool’s toy but he wouldn’t be tellt.’
‘Tellt?’
He glanced across. Narrowed his eyes as if doing sums. Then snapped his fingers. ‘Told, I means. Sorry love. Ye must think we all talk like cavemen, eh? Where ye from yersel’?’
I stared ahead at the road. Watched the castle growing larger. The rain had darkened the stone and cleaned the windows and it was hard to believe the fortress was hundreds of years old.
‘Nowhere in particular,’ I said, keeping it vague. ‘I studied at Oxford. Nuffield.’
‘Aye? Get a good job off that, did ye?’
I finished the coffee. Savoured the richness. ‘I didn’t finish,’ I said.
‘No? Married life call, did it?’
‘Something like that.’
I could feel him watching me. I became aware of the scratchiness of the seat covers. Felt prickly and agitated as my clothes started to steam.
‘Fairfax,’ I said, changing the subject again. ‘You asked if I was doing a tribute. What did you mean?’
Loz swung the vehicle right through a gap in the hedge just before we reached the main entrance to the castle. It looked deserted. There were no vehicles in the courtyard and the curtains at the windows I could make out through the rain all hung askew or were entirely missing. We ploughed on, into the neighbouring field.
‘He were the local history fella,’ shrugged Loz. ‘Always asking questions and scribbling away. Planned a book, so he said. Were gonna be the width of a kerbstone if he ever published it. But he were good to talk to. Liked knowing what ye thought of things. Liked yer stories.’
‘What did you and he talk about?’ I asked, jolting suddenly as the vehicle clunked into a dip in the surface of mud and grass and rock.
‘Family,’ said Loz. ‘Who we were, what brought us here, how long we’d had the farm.’
‘The camp?’ I asked, gently.
‘And Fairfax was interested in your memories?’
‘Aye, like I said, he were always after a tale.’
‘What did you tell him?’
‘He knew most of it,’ said Loz, taking a hand off the wheel to rub his chin. He didn’t look strong enough to control the big car. ‘Opened in ’44. Garrison for the Yanks. Didn’t have that many pass through, thank God. Then they went off for D-Day and the prisoners started arriving. Italians at first and then we started getting the serious buggers. Real hard-case Nazis. The ringleaders went to Nuremberg and it felt like every bugger else came here. Black, grey and white. That was how the camp commander divided them up. Thousands of the sods over time. The Black Nazis were the ones you had to fear and I don’t mean black like the colour of their skin. I mean that’s how they was labelled, like. The Black Nazis were the ones who believed in Hitler to their bones. These were the U-boat crews and the Western Front heroes who had worn the brown shorts and shirts and Heiled Hitler all their lives. It were up to the camp to make them decent people. How did you do that, I ask? But it worked, near enough. Treated ’em fair and they appreciated the respect they were shown. Was a decent enough place. They got good meals and a nice view and went out to work the land. There were a couple of escapes and the odd pagger now and again …’
‘Pagger?’ I said, gripping on as we swung left moments before we were going to plough into the churning white-peaked waters.
‘Fight,’ he said, apologetically. ‘Odd scrap with the locals and between themselves but they were just people really. We got letters from a few lads after they went home. Said how much their time here meant to them. They went home to all kinds of hell. There won’t be many folks around here that didn’t get a letter or two from somebody they used to know. They wanted food parcels and the like. Berlin was just rubble. No work. There were plenty who envied the lads who stayed.’
‘And there were lots of those?’
‘No shortage. Married a few of the locals. Even wrote home to tell family they should come and give our part of the world a try. Your neighbour for one.’
I was about to ask him to elaborate when he suddenly hit the brakes and the vehicle slid to a halt on the soaking, muddy grass.
‘There ye are,’ he said, waving a hand. ‘Not much, like I said.’
I followed the sweep of his arm. He was right. There were long, rectangular humps in the grass and a handful of tumbledown outbuildings but if I hadn’t known what once stood there I would have presumed it was no more than the ruins of a farm.
‘Shame to knock it down but it looked wrong when it were empty, as if we were waiting for trouble to start again and wanted to be prepared. Brought a load of workmen in and dismantled it all in a few days. Some of it’s ploughed back into the land and some of the stone went to prop up other buildings or put up walls. There’s not much goes to waste up here, love. Up there, that were the barracks. And ye can mebbe see the shape of what used to be the church and theatre.’
‘Church and theatre?’ I asked, surprised.
‘Aye, like I say, they made the most of their time. People here showed them the first kindness they’d known for a long time. I’d like to think none of ’em went home a Nazi.’
I sat in silence, watching the rain scythe down into land that had known the rhythm of so many different soldiers over so many centuries. The thought nearly took my breath away. I found myself thinking of Picts in furs and blue woad, battling the red-and-gold splendour of the Roman invaders. Saw the blonde hair of the Vikings who brought hell from the seas. Began to see the ceaseless surging of invasion and repulsion; a tide of men in different uniforms, clinging to different gods, flinging themselves upon this landscape like waves upon a shore. I sensed bones beneath my feet. Felt light-headed at the torrent of blood that had been spilled upon this quiet, pretty place.
‘We get ’em coming back,’ said Loz. ‘Old inmates. Proper association now, y’know. Organized trips about once a year. Men who were prisoners here – they come to see old friends and soak up the air they remember so fondly. Doing OK now. It could turn your stomach if ye let it, the way Germany’s pulled its socks up. Ye wouldn’t know they’d lost the bloody war. But then ye see the lads and their families and ye realize it’s all just luck, really. Who knows what we’d have said if a Hitler had cropped up here, eh? It’s all an accident, I suppose. We were losing the war for a long time, remember that, love. It could all have gone different. It could be me going to visit some rural POW camp in Germany and remembering the good times.’
I glanced at him. He looked a little deflated. His eyes were dark.
‘Did you say all this to Fairfax?’
He barked a one-note laugh. ‘Aye, he had a way of getting you talking did Fairfax. Sometimes you don’t know how you feel about things until after you’ve said them and then you find yourself agreeing with your own words.’ He glanced at me, half-smiling. ‘That probably sounds mad to a university girl.’
I shook my head. ‘I never know what I think about things. I tell myself I do but it’s just bravado.’ I sniffed. Shivered. Wondered why I was telling him this. ‘It shook me up, what happened to Fairfax. I don’t know, maybe I just feel as though I’ve missed out on somebody who would have been good to know. Maybe I was wrong to try and stay out of everybody’s way. Maybe I could have made a friend.’
He considered me and I saw myself reflecting in his eyes. Saw the twin outlines of my ridiculous self.
‘You’re young to be so clever,’ he said, at last. ‘And aye, ye’d have got on with Fairfax. Ye’d probably have reminded him of his boy.’
‘Christopher? I’ve heard he was a writer.’
‘Aye, he were a good lad. Looked a bit soft but he weren’t. Put Pike on his arse.’
‘I’ve heard of Pike …’
‘Off his ’ead, he is. And he liked winding Chris up. Chris were quiet as ye like but Pike pushed him a bit far and Chris nearly took his head off. Took half a dozen of us to get him off. Pike took it better than ye’d think, to be honest. Didn’t burn the house down or cut his head off the way you’d have feared. Got on OK with Chris after that. Not exactly friends but some kind of respect if nowt else. I reckon Pike were as upset as any of us when Chris got killed.’
‘Did Pike go to war?’
Loz gave a grin. He took the thermos from me and poured himself a drink. ‘So he says. Certainly went away for a couple of years and came back more bloody off his ’ead than before but for all we know he could have been doing a stretch in prison. He says he don’t like to talk about it but he talks an awful lot for somebody so keen to be silent.’
I nodded. Eyed Loz’s cup. He passed it to me without a word. His finger brushed mine as I took it from him. His skin was rougher than I expected, like a cat’s paw. I found myself wishing that mine felt the same; that I was somebody who knew this land and worked this land and bore its scars and callouses upon my hide.
‘Harvest moon,’ said Loz, suddenly. He was looking past me, at the darkening sky. ‘Be a hell of a view from your place tonight if clouds lift. I’ve seen ’em red as blood, love. But weather like this, it’ll look like a bruise. I’d best get ye back before God pulls the curtains closed.’
I found myself smiling. I liked this man. Wondered what he thought about me and then instantly despised myself for thinking it. I found myself becoming flustered.
‘It was kind of you,’ I said, more high-pitched than I wanted. ‘That you stopped, I mean. Some men I know would have waited until they saw me passing a big puddle then driven through it at ninety.’
‘This thing doesn’t do ninety,’ he said, and the shadows in his face lifted as he smiled. ‘I likes the company. I likes a yarn almost as much as Fairfax did and it does ye good to hear a stranger’s thoughts.
Stops you becoming an inbred simpleton.’
I bit down on my lips, wondering if he was quoting something I had written. He turned away from me, squinting at the darkness. Sheep were moving in the grey and purple air like storm clouds.
‘I sent him a few decent tales,’ said Loz, putting the vehicle in reverse and looking over his shoulder as he began tearing backwards across the field. I got a whiff of him. Sweat and baking, peat and gunpowder. I found myself wanting to curl up in the pocket of his shirt.
‘Tales?’ I asked, settling back into the seat.
‘Aye, stuff ye hear in the pub, blokes with a story to spin. Some on the road, some at the sales.’
‘Sales?’
‘Cattle market. Always told them to have a chat with Fairfax.’
He span the car in a wide arc and started making for the castle. I found myself enjoying a fantasy. Had flashes of running up the stone steps through the rain; laughing and shivering in the echoing hallways; standing goose-pimpled and pink in a darkness lit only by the golden flames of a great open fire; wrapping ourselves in blankets and one another and watching the branches and coals burn to ash. I felt silly at the girlishness of it but could not bring myself to will the vision away.
‘… charver out Glendue Burn, couple of miles away.’
I realized I hadn’t been listening. Cleared my throat and made a theatrical pretence of cocking my head to better hear what he was saying.
‘I missed that,’ I said, and felt the reassuring whirr of a real road beneath the tyres.
‘Bloke I sent Fairfax’s way,’ he said, not minding repeating himself. ‘Thought he were one of the old POWs to be honest but he were French, not German. Not that yer’d know it, like. Just a flicker of an accent. Got himself turned around and was heading for nowhere at all when I stopped to pick him up. Grateful for the lift but quiet as a mouse til I got him talking. Birdwatcher, he said, and I suppose the binoculars and the bag were a give-away, even if the suit made him look like a bank manager who’d got lost. Had this contraption with him too. Recording birdsong, so he said, which aint my idea of a party but must be nice to listen to. Said he were recording it for friends back home. Real sounds of the English countryside.’
