by Milly Adams
She walked back down the path, glancing up at the window. A German soldier stood there, shaking his head and shrugging into his braces. She entered the kitchen and grabbed her bag. She laid out a nappy on the kitchen table because she daren’t take Elizabeth to the bathroom upstairs. The front door slammed, Cheryl barged into the kitchen in her silk lookalike dressing gown. She threw open her arms. ‘Well, doesn’t this just get better and better? That’s disgusting. Get her off the table, Hannah, for God’s sake. And you owe me two Reich Credit Marks. All that fiddling about with the fat idiot, who not only stinks but doesn’t know his arse from his elbow, and you come home to put him off further. The bastard wouldn’t pay, and I don’t blame him.’
She stormed across to the sink, grabbing the stubbed-out cigarette from the ashtray, and relit it. She leaned back against the sink, her arms crossed, smoke rising in a straight line as Hannah sat down, exhausted. She lifted Elizabeth from the table and held her in her arms, like a barrier. Cheryl sighed. ‘The bloke knew it was a German’s. You need to get rid of her, because they could come and take her back to Germany, or that’s what Bobby told me they did sometimes, in some of the other countries.’
Hannah clutched Elizabeth tighter, staring. ‘No, she’s mine.’
Cheryl inhaled so strongly that her cheeks sank. She lifted her head and exhaled up into the air. ‘Hannah, she’s a bloody Boche.’
‘That’s not fair.’
Cheryl inhaled again, twisted, and dropped the stub in the sink. It hissed. She came to the table, leaned on it, shoving her face into Hannah’s. ‘Why the hell don’t you grow up? Life isn’t bloody fair, but you have to deal with it. You didn’t have to open your legs, you didn’t have to be so damned stupid as to have a child. It might not be fair, but it’s your fault. Yours, Hannah Miller. No one kept you here when you could have left, no one buggered up your relationship with your family. That, my girl, is all down to you.’
Hannah reeled back. ‘That’s not fair.’
Cheryl drew back her hand and slapped her across her face. ‘That is all totally fair, and so is the slap. Now get the kid out of here, and get over it.’ She stalked to the kitchen door, yelling over her shoulder, ‘And get that disgusting nappy out of the house.’
It was mid-afternoon as Hannah arrived at Haven Farm. Uncle Thomas would be out at work, but Aunt Olive would be in the kitchen, or not far from it; either that, or in the vegetable patch. But what if she’d gone into town? Hannah carried the painting she had done after Cheryl had left. It was a watercolour because she couldn’t wait for oils to dry. She was going to leave it when she left Elizabeth on the doorstep with the nappies.
In the wrapping paper around the watercolour was an envelope containing the remains of the money Hans had left, and every bit of jewellery Hannah possessed. It could be sold for Elizabeth’s keep. Hannah’s breasts ached, but there was milk at the farm, which Aunt Olive could use if she could find a bottle. But what if she couldn’t?
Hannah hesitated on the path. Elizabeth stirred. She would bring one from the nursing home. Yes, that’s what she’d do. But dare she just leave her child? What if Elizabeth was found by a fox? She wanted to cry, but bit down on her swollen lip. Not now.
She had written an unsigned note with her left hand, because there must be no way to identify this child. The painting should be identification enough for her aunt, who had requested a painting of the view so often. So, at last, she thought, Hannah Miller had done something for her aunt, but it had also been for herself, as usual. She felt disgust at the girl she had been, and probably still was. But then paused. Well, she had created the painting not quite for herself, but for her child, because Elizabeth mustn’t be taken. Perhaps that made things slightly better.
She started to walk down the path towards the house, the lavender scent heavy as it always was at this time of year. In her note she’d written that if her uncle could hide a pig, he could hide a child when it was necessary. She’d admitted that she’d done nothing to deserve their kindness, but she was begging for their help. She’d told them to destroy the note immediately.
‘Hannah, what are you doing here?’ There was surprise, but not censure, in her aunt’s voice. Aunt Olive was on her knees over by the wall, weeding. For a moment she looked like Bee.
Her aunt pushed herself to her feet. ‘I heard you’d had the baby and so I often wondered how you were. Did you receive our flowers?’
Hannah looked all around, then hurried to her aunt. She thrust the painting at her. Aunt Olive took it, looking from it to Hannah. ‘Are you all right?’
Hannah whispered, ‘I have brought you Elizabeth. Cheryl told me that Bobby said the Boche could come for her and take her to Germany because she’s half German. She also told me I had to leave the cottage when I said I wouldn’t work for Bobby. Please take her. I will work at the nursing home. People think we are not friends, and Uncle can hide her if they come looking.’
She placed the bag at Aunt Olive’s feet. Elizabeth stirred. Her aunt stared from her to Hannah, dropping the weeds and hand fork she still held. The fork fell with a clunk to the hard ground. ‘Hannah, no, I’m sure that’s not the case.’
Hannah shook her head. ‘But how do we know? Several people have said this, and how do we really know what the Germans will do? Hans is dead, you see, and this is a child of the Fatherland.’
Aunt Olive reached out, tugging Hannah to one side. ‘No, no, we need a cool drink, and to talk about this. It can’t be right.’
Hannah resisted. ‘But who do we ask?’
Aunt Olive just shook her head. Hannah whispered, ‘I have painted the path, for you, but because I want you to have her. So I am still selfish.’
‘No, I think perhaps you’re not.’
‘Please, will you take her?’
Elizabeth started to cry, it was that high-pitched wavering cry, with fists that shook. Hannah’s milk started to come in. She touched the skin of her child’s cheek. ‘It’s so soft. Please just look after her for now, and I’ll stay away until somehow she is forgotten. I will come back for her, Aunt Olive. I promise.’
She pushed Elizabeth into her aunt’s arms, and left, looking left and right, half running down the road but even at the cottage, as she packed her clothes and the sketch she had made of Elizabeth, she could hear the cries of her child. She packed her skirts, and could feel her in her arms, and smell her skin. She clicked shut the lid of the case and thought that perhaps it would be better to die than to endure even the remains of this day without her, let alone all those to come.
Olive Charlton looked at Elizabeth. She didn’t have a baby bottle but she did have one that they used for lambs, with a selection of new teats. She always sterilised well after the lambing season, but they’d need doing again. ‘You’ll have to wait, little Betty.’
She carried her niece, well, her great-niece, round to the kitchen, and put the pan on to boil, while Betty settled and slept on the seat of the armchair. Olive unwrapped the painting. It was excellent. There was money and jewellery in the envelope, with a note, written in a strange, almost childish hand, in which Hannah said she would be earning more and would leave it under a stone at the back door. She also said that Bobby had overheard her talking about the wine, so perhaps it was her fault, but she hadn’t meant it to be stolen. Olive looked across at the baby. ‘I just don’t know, just as I know so little any more. Would they really take you now your daddy’s dead? Have they taken anyone’s baby?’
She had heard whispered rumours about what was supposed to be happening in occupied countries, especially Poland, so could they dare to ignore it, or even ask about it? The answer was no. All they could do was to wait and see. But for how long? She had no idea, but for as long as it seemed wise. Aunt Olive had her nieces’ old pram in the loft. She had kept one for when they came across from Combe Lodge, all those years ago.
Betty was whimpering, and just then Thomas arrived at the back door, easing off his wellington boots. Olive sighed. ‘Thom
as, sit down, please. We have something we need to talk about, and you might know the answer.’
Betty woke them in the night, and Olive slipped from bed, leaving Thomas to groan and turn over. She heated the milk, thinking about Thomas, who had said, ‘Who knows how they think, but surely they’ve better things to do than take away babies. On the other hand, there’s talk of them bringing workers over to the islands to build some sort of fortifications while they’re up to their eyes in fighting a war on two fronts. So perhaps they would take children to reinforce their country. The Nazis are mad, remember. Did I tell you the doc had asked a Nazi private how many children he had, just because he couldn’t think of anything else to say to him while they waited for a convoy to pass? The lad said he had none, but his cousin in the SS had the Lord knows how many, because he was in this insemination scheme to boost the Aryan race. It chills the blood, so we’ll keep her safe until we know different.’
Olive soothed Betty. ‘I wish you’d told me earlier.’
‘Why, so you could lie awake at night wondering what hell was stalking the earth?’
Now, in the light of the kitchen, she tested the milk. ‘For now, I’m your mummy, Elizabeth, but we must remember that you have a real one. Every day I will remind myself of that, and we must pray that no German ever asks whose child you are, because I won’t know what to say.’
Chapter Twenty-Three
November 1941
Adam and Mick stood on the well-deck forrard watching the morning mist lift over the east coast harbour. The replacement skipper, Lieutenant Neston, came out of his cabin. ‘Let’s not stand about watching the gulls poo, Number 1.’ Gilchrist followed him out. ‘Get ’em up, coxswain.’
Mick put his head down the mess deck hatchway, shouting, ‘Tumble up. Stand by wires and fenders.’
The High Ground came to life, hands almost pouring to their stations. Adam, as Number 2, was in charge of a party of ratings and moved off aft as they stood by to cast off the wires and ropes. The helmsman was on his way to the wheelhouse. Neston, megaphone in hand, stood on the wing of the bridge and looked at everyone, and everything.
Adam nodded to himself, as the gulls clustered, then soared, some gliding on the wind as though in sheer joy. He was tired, they were all tired. Cobham was dead, so too, Tom, Mick’s mate, both caught in the same burst of Luftwaffe gunfire. Hitler had almost reached the gates of Moscow, and had taken the city of Kharkhov in the Ukraine. Still there was no British advance, except in the Western Desert, around Tobruk, where the Eighth Army was nibbling at the Nazis. ‘But we’re still holding,’ he muttered. ‘Threadbare, but holding.’
It was better than being in Norway anyway, which was being threatened by the Germans with starvation if anti-Nazi unrest continued. How was the agent they’d rowed in to the shore near Oslo getting on? What was happening on Jersey and the other islands?
The bow of the High Ground swung round into the convoy stream.
On the telephone yesterday evening he and Bee had spoken of it. Darling Bee, so worried though she never actually said, but so was he. Were Olive and Thomas all right, and Hannah? Collaboration was a risky business, almost more so than resistance, because you could lose some of your soul, and be taken behind the bike sheds, or something similar if someone took exception. But did young Hannah have a soul?
The engine-room telegraph jangled ‘Midships’.
The helmsman repeated, and then reported, ‘Helm amidships, sir.’
Three hoots sounded on the siren, and High Ground slipped through the mist. There was another trawler ahead of them, and several behind. They were heading towards a merchant convoy. How many had survived on this trip? How much produce would find its way into the hands of the spivs? How many of these would be rich men by the end of the war? How many of the merchantmen would be dead? Adam beat down the hate. Love and hate: when one wasn’t consuming him, the other was.
The breeze was dispersing the mist when they finally cleared the harbour boom: the cloud was low, ideal for enemy attack, the weather mild. ‘Nice and warm for a dip, then,’ he murmured, head up into the breeze.
‘Let’s not,’ Mick ground out as he passed.
Visibility was good. Adam looked again at the sky. He hoped the cloud layer was higher for his darling love, but he tried not to think of it because it was Britain, and therefore there was invariably cloud of some sort. Would they go somewhere hot when this was over and live beneath a hot sun and blue sky? It was bloody tempting.
He shrugged beneath his duffel coat, his binoculars scanning the sea. The channel had been cleared but magnetic mines could bob up the moment the minesweeper had cleared the decks. He spotted the masts of two shipwrecked boats sunk by mines earlier in the war. They reminded him of the denuded stalks of Bryony’s sprouts after harvest. He swung the binoculars back again, and there was the convoy of small merchantmen, each flying its own small barrage balloon just below cloud level. He wasn’t sure it provided an iota of protection against dive bombers but it just might.
As they hove into sight he felt the usual stirring of love for the dirty little smokestacked beggars, heroes all. He snatched a look at Gilchrist, whose face reflected his own thoughts. He shrugged again. Rabbie Burns was rearing his head again, or were they getting too bloody soft.
A signal lamp winked from the bridge of the destroyer at the head of the convoy. The High Ground took her place as did the other trawlers, and they herded their ducklings on until midday. Lunch was taken, a tot too, talk was desultory, tasks fulfilled, and eyes always searching, ears always listening. The cloud hadn’t lifted, and as the afternoon wore on, and dusk approached, conditions for the enemy could not have become more ideal. On the merchantmen the tension would be rising. Or would it? Had they become so used to ever-present danger that they had achieved a state of acceptance?
As dusk fell, gunfire was heard. Gilchrist set the alarm bell ringing throughout the ship, the men tore to action stations. Adam joined his gun crew. The lookout shouted, ‘Aircraft on starboard bow, sir.’
The Nazi dived out of the cloud, and escort and merchantmen alike opened fire. A collier was hit, the scene hidden by a deluge of spray. A nearby merchantman’s master was still letting fly with his guns. Acceptance, my Aunt Fanny, Adam thought. Dozey’s gun was rattling, the barrel would be hot. The raid ended. One loss. Another trawler was sent in to pick up survivors. There were none. High Ground’s crew were stood down for now.
Darkness fell. It was Adam’s watch and he stared out into the darkness ahead. To port he saw the vague outlines of two merchant ships. He heard the swish of the bows, the muffled beat of High Ground’s engines, the distant thump of the propellers of a merchant ship, which seemed to be in ballast and riding high.
The alarm bells rang again. The men tumbled up from below. ‘The buggers,’ moaned Derek. ‘I were having a dream about the wife and for once she wasn’t bellyaching.’
‘Take it up with them up there, sailor,’ Adam called as Derek joined Dozey on the gun.
‘We should give ’em a bunch of roses. They’ve stopped your snoring,’ Dozey called, searching the sky, and the sea.
Mick came past. ‘Give ’em a blast instead, lads. Keep your ’eads down. You too, Adam.’
‘And you.’ Adam was scanning with the binoculars, to be joined by Geordie. Out of the darkness a destroyer was racing towards them, hailing High Ground. ‘Fall back, pick up survivors. Another collier’s gone. Torpedo.’
The skipper headed towards the stern of the convoy. An aircraft dived down, bombs fell, U-boats targeted more merchantmen, the destroyer let fly. To the west two trawlers were depth-charging. It was a scene from hell. Dozey opened fire with the four-inch, as the German flew over. They had reached the area of the survivors; the collier was on fire, illuminating the scene, before it upended and slipped, steaming, beneath the waves.
Men were picked up and hauled on board, coughing and spitting, before being dragged down below. And so the night crawled on. The skipper receive
d orders to peel off for Portsmouth. Why? God knew, but they’d drop off the men there, and at last he could see her, his love, his world.
Bryony was based at Hamble, near Southampton, in the all-female ferry pool, but for how long? Who knew and what did it matter? Trixie was with her, sharing the same billet, but Joyce had been posted to the Midlands.
She collected her ferry chit and ran for the taxi, clambering on board. She was dropped off at Cowley to fly a Spitfire to Tern Hill. She adored these aircraft, and there it was, waiting for her outside the hangar as a biting wind bore across the runway. She climbed into the cockpit, gazing at the instruments. Adam was coming this evening. It was two months since they’d met. Adam. Adam. She saw his face, not the controls, not the clouds scudding across the sky.
The High Ground had come into Portsmouth to offload some survivors and he’d be there with her overnight. The landlady, Mrs Windsor, turned a blind eye to visiting boyfriends, because life was ‘too bloody short’, she would say, patting her hair, a twinkle in her eye.
Bryony laughed in the cockpit. ‘You’re my kind of girl,’ she muttered, meaning both the landlady and the aeroplane, for how could anyone think this beauty was anything but a woman? The seat was made for a female; the cockpit fitted like a glove.
She started her up, feeling the power coursing through the frame. The Merlin engine had its own throb, one that seemed to say, for goodness’ sake release me from this hidebound earth.
Quite, Bryony thought.
She taxied to the downwind end of the field, using the brakes sparingly because they were touchy. ‘As befits a woman,’ she murmured. Within seconds, it seemed, she was airborne and had to restrain herself from making the plane dance, roll and spiral as it was begging her to do. The ground fell away at a fantastic speed, the Spitfire responding almost before she asked anything of it. Finally clear of Cowley she gave it its head, spiralling, twisting, climbing and diving, in love with its power, its elegance, its joie de vivre.
