Sisters at War

by Milly Adams

  ‘By the light of the silvery moon’ played again and again through his head as he stood his watch, though why it should in this nothingness he had no idea. Where are you now, Bryony Miller – not under some moon with Eric? Do you ever think of me? Can I wait until you come to Scotland in a training aircraft? As he scanned his world of salt spray and upheaval, he knew he couldn’t.

  He glanced at the charts in the corner, and took a mug of cocoa from Seaman Trout. He sipped it, balancing as they hurtled into a trough, and out at a kilter. He took his bearings from a flashing lighthouse. He darted behind the blackout curtain in order to plot the position on the chart, then back out on to the bridge, his eyes aching from the need to see any looming bulk of shipping before it was too late.

  Behind him the Asdic rating was dimly silhouetted in the light from the binnacle, Noddy Thompkins was stirring on lookout on the wing of the bridge, the wheel and steering engine were rattling as the helmsman in the wheelhouse below kept the ship on her course. This was his world, for now. But he would not give up on Bryony. How could he, when life without her would be meaningless?

  Dawn eased the blackness and it also eased the storm. As Geordie took over his watch, Adam saw that to port was the Mary Lou. He had breakfast in the wardroom while the skipper examined signals. It was then the call went up, that a lifeboat had been seen. ‘All hands on deck.’

  The lifeboat was empty of men, though a cap floated on the water that slopped in the bottom. They picked it up with the derrick, the water gushing back into the sea, and Adam felt again the cold of the sea off Norway, the terror of being perhaps forgotten and left to drown, the lifeboat that had headed for him, the grappling hook that had saved him.

  His eyes met Geordie’s. ‘Poor bloody buggers,’ Geordie muttered.

  Adam nodded, reminding himself that this was war, and it was not a priority to know whether or not Bryony loved him. It was life and death that was important, and she was alive. That was enough.

  That afternoon, as they set course for the convoy again, having hunted further for survivors, the Asdic picked up something that behaved like a submerged U-boat.

  The skipper ordered the Mary Lou to be signalled, but she was already on the case. A pattern of depth charges was being dropped following each skipper’s grid and each one took with it the anger of the two crews. Oil came up, in quantity. The Mary Lou signalled, ‘Looks like we’ve an early catch.’

  The Asdic tracked the U-boat as it powered beneath the Mary Lou but then both trawlers turned to starboard and followed the trail of oil. The Asdic told the story as he tried to escape but then, with the Mary Lou in the charge, they attacked, three times in quick succession.

  Adam gripped his hands into fists, wanting the submariners dead, but knowing they were men. Bubbles of air came to the surface. The skipper looked at Adam, who hurried to the gun platform, where the gun crew were readying. ‘Keep alert, lads.’

  They nodded, watching the bubbles, but then – nothing. Just oil, and death, as the submarine presumably sank to the depths where the hull would be crushed like an eggshell.

  Adam looked from the oil to the lifeboat lying on the foredeck. ‘It’s war,’ he murmured. The men nodded. Above the gulls wheeled and called, heedless.

  Just to make sure the debris was not a feint, the Mary Lou attacked twice more, and twice the sea split with the hammer blows of TNT. On the third attack, a waterspout of destruction shot skywards, bearing oil and debris. It was finally done.

  The crew of both trawlers watched as the spout faded, the oil and debris settled. The waves allowed the debris to cling together for a while, and as Adam lit a cigarette, and handed the packet round to the gun crew, the remains of the submarine began to disperse. Soon it would be as though it had never happened. But it had, and a lot of Germans had lost their lives. The men inhaled the last of the cigarettes, which were burning down fast in the wind.

  ‘There’ll be the midday rum ration soon.’

  The skipper called for their course to be altered to meet up with the convoy, and the engines took on the load again as they forged through the rising wind. ‘Does it ever bloody stop?’ Geordie muttered before going on watch, leaving Adam in the wardroom. He meant the wind, probably.

  The skipper came in, after hanging his waterproofs outside. He was pale with the cold and rubbed his hands together. ‘All well with you, Adam? You looked a bit peaky when we sailed. Affairs of the heart have a way of seeping, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Seeping, sir?’

  The skipper slumped down. ‘Ah, indeed they do unless we put up a bulwark, for sanity’s sake.’ He winked at Adam. ‘Yes, these old girls seem to be sailed by a load of similar old girls whose gossip gets around faster than this damned gale.’

  They braced themselves as the High Ground tilted. The skipper, wiping his face as if hoping to remove all traces of tiredness – he failed – said, ‘Hope the helmsman’s got his wits about him and doesn’t let her broach to.’

  She skidded back into the trough. ‘That’s the thing, see, Adam, mustn’t let the girls make us broach to. I’d suggest a trip down to Devon when leave allows, no standing about hoping the other bloke fades. Get your oar in, if you get my drift. We’ll probably be heading into Portsmouth at some stage, to rendezvous with convoys from the starting gate. Poor buggers’ll be having it tougher and tougher getting through once Herr Hitler and his gangsters really start getting into their stride, supposing the RAF hold ’em for now, that is.’

  Adam checked his watch. He needed to get to the ratings’ wardroom to supervise the rum tot. The skipper closed his eyes. Adam eased himself up, but then Lieutenant Cobham murmured, ‘I was on submarines between the wars. Hate to see ’em downed. Needs must, though. Nasty death.’

  Adam sat down again. The skipper opened his eyes. ‘Off you go, laddie. Give the blokes their rum. They’ve deserved it. Keep ’em busy, they don’t care for dealing in death any more than the rest of us. I’ll bear you in mind when we’re to sail for our old friend, Portsmouth, or Pompey if you prefer, then you can go across, all guns blazing.’

  In the ratings’ mess, Mick was waiting, the rum divvy all ready. Adam stayed while it was doled out. The mood was forced. He talked of the weather, of the summer, which seemed to have come and gone, if it had been there at all. That got them grumbling.

  A shout came down from the deck entrance, ‘Messman’s brought dinner from the galley. Dry hash, followed by prunes and egg-substitute custard. Then how about some bread and margarine? Lovely grub, eh?’

  There was a universal groan, and now Tom, Derek, Andy and Dozey went to pass the dinner down from the deck. The food would loosen tongues, and get things in their place, especially for the new boys. For a moment Adam was glad he’d been in Norway, and Dunkirk, because that was his blooding, and he could process things more quickly. What’s more, it was a further tie with Bee.

  He smiled at Mick, who nodded, ‘The crew will be all right, sir. It’s the new ones who just need a moment to get their minds round it. They’re used to fish, see, and can whack the head off one of those without a murmur. The others already take it in their stride. We’re in for the long haul, I reckon. I also reckon the skipper will let you off for a couple of days when we call in to Pompey.’

  Adam sighed. He’d thought a submarine sinking would take everyone’s mind off his love life, or lack of one. Mick winked. ‘Know what you’re thinking, but it’s the little things that turn out to be the lifesavers for the crew. There’ll be something else tomorrow, don’t you worry.’

  There was: Seaman Tom Seaton slipped and tore a ligament. His language was imaginative, as the skipper called it, and the remedies suggested were many and varied. Adam breathed a sigh of relief, and shelved the whole bloody business until he could do something about it.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Early December 1940

  Jersey

  Hannah pulled up her scarf against the wind that was swirling in her uncle’s cobbled farmyard. It carr
ied bits of straw and hay, and the dust caught in her eyes just as her sketch pad slipped from under her arm. It splayed at her feet in the mud, the loose pages flying.

  ‘Damn it!’ she shouted, and snatched at them as they took off, gusting higher and higher, this way and that. She caught all but two pages and these soared higher still, heading for heaven knows where.

  ‘What are you doing, girl?’ Her uncle was standing in the barn doorway. What did he think she was doing, having a cup of tea?

  She picked up the pad and shoved the loose pages back in. They were smeared with mud. Well, she hoped it was mud.

  ‘Coming to find you, Uncle Thomas. I wondered if you had a few potatoes we could have for our tea at the cottage. Mum fancies one baked and stuffed with scrambled egg.’

  He had disappeared back into the barn, and was closing the door on her. She sighed, hurried over, caught the door, opened it, and slipped in after him. He spun round. ‘Shut the bloody door,’ he bellowed.

  She did. ‘Well, can we, or not? Aunt Olive sa—’

  ‘Oh, never mind that. Help me get this darned weaner back in its sty, girl.’

  Her uncle, his arms outstretched, his wellington boots kicking up straw dust, was herding a squealing weaner towards the other end of the barn. Hannah dumped her sketch pad on the step of the pony trap. ‘What’s he doing here? He should be in the sty with the others round the side.’

  ‘Just you mind your own business and give us a hand.’ She pulled a face, and flapped her hands. He barked, ‘Take the left hand side of the barn, and be quick about it, lass.’ Together they pressed the weaner back towards the hay and straw bales.

  It was then that she saw the opening in the brick wall. It was a doorway. The door was brick-faced. She understood after a moment and said, ‘Hang on, this must be the piglet you reported to the authorities as having died. Uncle Thomas, what the hell will you do if you’re rumbled? You’ll be imprisoned or something, and by the Germans probably.’

  The weaner darted between them. Her uncle made a grab and it squealed. He said, ‘Let’s get the little devil behind the wall, and then we can talk.’

  The weaner headed for the left of the straw bales. Just as he lurched after it, they heard a shout from the yard.

  ‘Good morning. Is any person there?’

  It was a German. Her uncle paled, spun round and whispered to Hannah, ‘For God’s sake, go and keep him talking. It’s the patrol that Old Davy warned me was on the way, before he went on to Sonny Jim’s place.’

  She looked from the pig to her uncle, and then to the huge barn door, which was ajar. She was due to start a job at the nursing home tomorrow, where it was warm, and she could eat the leftovers from the patients’ plates and maybe food in the kitchen. If her uncle was caught and they were disgraced, that could be the end of that.

  Her uncle had grabbed the pig. As he hurried towards the brick doorway, his hand clamped over its muzzle. She ran to the barn doors, picking up her sketch pad on the way, and slipped out, barging straight into a German soldier, whose patrol were gathered on the edge of the yard. The bump shocked them both: she dropped her sketch pad, and he stepped away. She reached behind her and shut the door, then leaned back against it.

  She’d never been so close to one of the enemy. His corporal’s grey uniform was spotless, he was young, tall, broad-shouldered, and laughing. She’d never seen the soldiers laughing. Well, amongst themselves they had as they strolled in the town and bought up goods like ravening hordes, or so her Aunt Olive had called them, hate in every word. But they had not smiled or laughed at anyone she knew. But then she remembered how an airman had knocked old Mrs Bertram off the pavement as he strutted along. She fell into the gutter and, oh yes, then he’d laughed.

  Hannah heard a squeal from the barn, and coughed. ‘My uncle’s just trying to catch the rats. We have to grow grain instead of potatoes to feed the islanders, he’s been told, so he’s . . .’ She stopped.

  The corporal moved back another step. ‘Yes, he kills rats but how strange, that they squeal?’ His laugh had died. He was looking from her to the door.

  Her mouth dried. ‘But they do,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t know if you haven’t spent time on a farm.’ She looked at her sketch pad lying on the ground. More loose pages had escaped, and though two were stuck in the mud, others gusted up into the air.

  ‘I was just showing my uncle my sketches.’ She daren’t move from the door. He made a grab for a page, snatching it. He looked at the view of the hawthorn tree by the cliff, bowed over in the wind. ‘Is good. But, how strange again, that you show him as he rats?’ He returned it.

  The other pages were being wafted towards the patrol. He shouted in German. The soldiers caught them, guffawing as they did so. Hannah used the distraction to leave the door to its own devices and reach for her pad, but the German saw, and did the same. They banged heads. It hurt and she fell back against the door. He reached for her just as her uncle opened the door, pushing her off balance so that she slipped to the side and fell into the mud.

  ‘For God’s sake, Hannah, what’re you doing down there, girl?’ Her uncle stood above her with his shovel over his shoulder and a rat’s tail in the other hand. ‘Got one of the little buggers.’ He waved the tail at the German. ‘Pesky little beggers. Get everywhere, they do, spoiling things for ordinary people.’ Blood dripped on to the ground.

  Lying in the mud, Hannah hardly dared breathe because she knew her Uncle meant the Germans, especially after the order issued in October insisting that Jews register with the authorities, and then the news that wirelesses had to be handed in. He still had his hidden up the chimney, silly old fool.

  She started to scramble to her feet, and the German hauled her upright. She wanted to break away, and hide behind her uncle. The German smiled. ‘Ah, we all feel the same about rats, I think.’

  His eyes were deep blue. He released her.

  He turned to her uncle. ‘I come to give you this. It is an order that your two cottages are to be used as billets for the German troops. It informs you that you must move the occupants into somewhere else.’

  He shouted something to his patrol. One of them strolled across, his rifle slung over his shoulder, Hannah’s pages in his hand. He handed them to her. He too was young. He half bowed. His boots were muddy. Her pages were, too. She took them. Her hand was shaking. The pages, and her mac, and hands, stank of foul mud and echoes of cow and sheep dung, and awful pig poo. Her tears began. The German said, ‘War is hard. But our bombers do not come again to hurt you, they fly to Britain which still stands against us. Such fools. Perhaps to be muddy is not a bad state, Fräulein, when they are to be very pummelled.’

  Her uncle said, ‘Stand up straight, and get some self-respect. Stop them tears, for the love of God.’

  The German looked from her to her uncle. ‘I will leave you to your rat catching and wish you a good hunt. I was in England for a year of my university. I wish that we were friends, and not this.’

  He turned on his heel, and walked away, the rest of the patrol following. Her uncle watched until they had left the yard and were on their way along the road again. He muttered, ‘But you damn well are “this”, and loving every minute.’

  Hannah held her sketch pad at arm’s length. ‘Can I have those potatoes, then, and a few eggs? I want to go and wash, and what’s going to happen to Mum and me now?’

  ‘Oh don’t start your blessed tears again, girl. You’ll come to us, of course. Your mum’s here most of the time anyway. Good girl for helping. The pig’s not for us; well, a bit is, but when it comes to it there’ll be others more in need, like your nursing home, you mark my words. We’re cut off right and proper now. Our people are out of work, no tourists, not much call for help in shops, fishing carried out only with a ruddy German on board, and for limited times at that. There’s that lot of Nazis to feed too. I bet the Jersey authorities will have to ask for credit from France, which will mean the Boche, because who runs France now? It’s a bl
oody pig’s ear, that’s what it is.’ Uncle Thomas moved to the edge of the barn, checking that the patrol really were long gone. They were. He said, ‘They bombed Coventry, you know.’

  She shouted at him. ‘No, I didn’t bloody know, and you shouldn’t be saying, because you’re not supposed to have a wireless, and someone will tell, and then we’ll all be imprisoned or taken away to one of their camps, you stupid old man.’

  There was no way she was going to live with a load of old miseries who hid a pig and then were going to give it away. The least they could do was have the gumption to sell the ruddy thing. She was young, eighteen now, and she was covered in mud, and what the hell was going to happen to her, and for how long? And how could someone just come and take your home away, like these Germans were doing? She wept as she walked, wishing Bee were here, wishing she had come for her because . . . Well, because she was Bee.

  That afternoon, after feeding the weaner, Thomas took a calf and six pigs to the abattoir to be offered for sale, as decreed by the Germans. While there, he saw the official, a Jersey islander, who had certified as lifeless the dead piglet that Thomas had received from a nearby farm, and which he’d registered as his own, before passing the carcass on to Peter’s father to do the same. It had enabled them to secrete a piglet from their litters, and bring on to fill the bellies of family and friends.

  He tipped his cap at Thomas, shaking his hand and whispering, ‘I’m being replaced. They’ll be clipping the dead pig’s ears, so that’s the end of that. Pass it around.’ He hurried on. Thomas sighed. It had been good while it lasted. Now all he had to worry about was the silent killing of the beast when the time came. He dug his hands in his pockets, then drove home, wondering how often he would be able to use the Morris, what with the fuel rationing and all. It would soon be the pony and trap.