Somewhere Over England

by Margaret Graham

  Ed’s pick-up was there, slewed in at an angle to the sidewalk as she had known that it would be. She drew up her hood, stepping out into cold which dug long-fingered into her lungs. She shouldered her way up the steps, across the sidewalk where snow had drifted against the walls and in through the wooden slatted swing doors like some mockery of an old western.

  Cigarette smoke was thick and heavy in the room and the colours of the juke box which played ‘Chattanooga Choo Choo’ spun across the ceiling: blue, red, green. Blue, red, green. She walked into the room and the men stopped talking. Chris was there sitting on a stool at the mahogany bar. She watched herself in the mirror which stretched behind the bar, walking so slowly towards the man she loved whose face sagged in the dim light and her son who held a glass of Scotch to his mouth. She looked old.

  She saw the labels on the bottles of whisky ranged in front of the looking-glass and the glasses which rested mouth down on the shelf.

  She looked at the nuts in neat packets and the naked woman on the calendar which hung from a rusty nail. She watched the barman pulling the spigot, steadily, carefully, and now she had reached them and took the glass from her son’s hand, took it away from his mouth. The saxophones were playing in perfect time as she put her sodden son’s arms around her neck and heaved him from the stool. He was coming home.

  She saw her husband turn now and look at her, his eyes narrowed, his glass to his mouth. She passed by, saying nothing, dragging her son back out to the truck, pushing him in, propping him in the corner. She used the clutch with the gearshift, crouching behind the wheel, hearing the wipers, seeing the snow which had stopped falling but now drifted in waves like the sea and ripples like the shore. She drove back carefully, saying nothing to Mom and Pop as she dragged her son to his room, lying him on his stomach.

  In the lounge their faces were grey with shock and shame but Helen came up to Mom and hugged her. ‘Don’t worry, it will be all right. Now go to bed and don’t get up, whatever you hear.’ Remembering that she had once said this before, long ago.

  They did go, and alone, in front of a stove that she replenished with logs every hour, she waited. He came home at two in the morning and stood in the doorway, bourbon spilt down his shirt, his eyes sunken, his lips loose.

  ‘You are coming to the mountains with me tomorrow,’ Helen said, full of love for him, wanting to take him in her arms because he was in so much pain, but she did not. She kept a hardness in her voice, a command.

  ‘For goddamn why?’ he said, still slumping against the doorframe.

  ‘Because I say so,’ Helen replied, not standing, just sitting up straight, her hands on her knees. ‘Now go to bed.’

  He didn’t move to the stairs but walked towards her, standing in front of her. ‘Don’t you go giving me orders, you little bitch. You little English bitch. We came and saved your little two-bit country.’ He was shouting and the smell of alcohol reached her. ‘We came and saved you and now you take your boy away and he was only having a drink, a little friendly drink.’

  ‘I know you came and saved us. But you’ve lost something of yourself and I won’t let you go on without finding it. We are going to the mountains.’ Her voice was level and she never took her eyes from his face even when he reached down for her, gripping her arm, pulling her up to him. She felt his spittle as he shouted.

  ‘I don’t need you.’ He shook her then and her head rocked back. He slapped her and her lip cracked.

  Again she said, ‘We are going to the mountains, to the cabin where you once found peace, because I love you more than life itself.’ Her voice was still level. ‘And I don’t care how many times you say no, you are coming with me. I won’t leave you to fight this alone.’

  She tasted the blood from her lip, felt it run from the corner of her mouth, felt the pain.

  Ed stumbled back, looking at the red on her chin and reached out his hand. He touched it, then started to wipe it on his shirt, again and again and again, and now he was crying and Helen held him, rocking him as though he were a child. Listening as he choked out words, sentences, curses. She pulled him down on to the settee, feeling his tears, until at last he slept. She stayed with him, sitting before the stove, listening as he dreamt and mumbled and groaned but tonight he did not scream and she dared to hope that the cold hardship of the winter would bring release.

  At seven they left, Helen and Pop harnessing the workhorses to the hay-sled, working the stiff webs of leather across each wide back, fastening the ice-cold buckles with numb fingers before passing the reins to Ed who sat bowed and limp on the driving seat. They drove off into the white shadowless snow, heading up for the homestead which was hidden behind the frozen jackpines.

  She had left him at five to stock up the stores, to wake Chris and explain and ask him to come, if he wanted to. He was pale. His head ached, his mouth was sour, and anyway, he said, he did not want to come because Ed must get better. Besides, he had things to do. She had kissed him, holding him, telling him she loved him and that it would only be for three months and she could come back at any time, or he could come to her. That there were no bombs keeping them apart, no bullies hurting him. He had smiled and so had she, but the guilt at leaving him was great because he too needed to be freed from the hate which he carried like a torch.

  She had taken pen and paper and written once more to Germany before she left.

  Chris took the schoolbus the next day, carrying his lunch in his bag, lugging it over his shoulder, his earflaps down, his hat low. It was cold and the air was sharp in his chest and on the bus he waved to his buddies but did not talk because he had something to do.

  All morning he listened in class, answering questions, chewing gum until the sugar was gone, then he unwrapped another strip and chewed again. At lunchbreak he ate in the dining-hall, eating peanut butter and jam sandwiches and cakes.

  ‘Which you guys call biscuits. Crazy Americans,’ he said to his friends and then threw the ball in the sports hall but he didn’t talk to the coach; not yet.

  At recess he listened to the talk all around; the ball game scores, the high school prom, but he was thinking of his mother and Ed. Her face had been swollen this morning when they left and he had heard the shouting last night, though his head was swimming from the bourbon.

  How far had they gone? Up beyond the timber line? Why should they have to go? It wasn’t fair. Ed had fought his war but it wouldn’t leave him. He knew that now because Ed had cried last night after he had shaken his mother. He had wept and said, I can’t wipe it out. I can’t forget the missions, the blood. It’s all over my body, my face and I can’t wipe it off. And now I have yours.

  Chris sucked on his straw. His Coke was almost finished. He put it to one side and walked down corridors lined with lockers to the sports hall. His coach was there, bouncing a football, up and down, up and down. Chris walked up to him. He wasn’t a very big man really, he thought, as he hit him where his abdomen was soft and unprepared. It was the same punch that Ed had shown him when the war was raging and the gang was taunting. He hit him again and chopped his legs from under him.

  The coach lay on the floor and Chris turned and walked away, but before he did so he said, ‘You’re a German bastard. You people killed my real dad and now you’re trying to kill Ed.’

  He spent the afternoon in the Head Teacher’s office waiting until old Mr McDonald came. He didn’t mind. He sat on the chair thinking of the air raid sirens, his father’s face when he had kissed him goodbye. The letter from Willi. He thought of Mary and Laura and it all seemed so long ago and far away. His head hurt and he missed his mother and somehow life had gone wrong again.

  He sat nursing his sore hand as Mr McDonald explained to the Head Teacher about Heine and Ed. Chris looked at the picture on the wall. It was of the school’s winning ball game last season. He would never play for the team now but he’d had to do it, whatever they said or did, he could have done nothing else.

  The snow was falling again outside the win
dow, great thick flakes as the talk flowed to and fro between the old man and the younger one and Chris felt older than fourteen. How far had his mother got, he wondered. Were they there yet?

  The Head was talking to him now, his voice dry and angry, his fingers picking up and putting down a wooden rule.

  ‘Well, Chris. I guess that you’ve been through some things in England that we must make allowances for. I shall delay all action until your mom returns and then we shall decide what to do with you. You have until the spring to settle in again. No one knows about this but you and the coach. It shall remain this way. You may not practise for the team. You will take sport under another teacher. So. We shall wait until the spring.’

  Chris nodded. It didn’t matter, it wasn’t as though bombs were falling, as though anyone was getting killed. He looked out of the window again. Would his mum save this dad? Would she save him from the Germans? He knew he had to wait for the coming of the spring.

  He looked out of the window again. How far had they got?

  CHAPTER 22

  Helen slapped the reins against the horse’s back with numbed hands. She sat next to Ed on the planks which Pop had lashed on to the front pair of sled runners and there were blankets heaped beneath and around them. She pulled her hat, tugging it down and her collar up. There was more snow now but at last she could see the cabin in the distance, though all she could hear was the sliding of the tracks, clean and clinical, and the jangle of harness.

  Ed sat with his head down on his chest saying nothing. They had travelled all morning with the dog leaping in and out of the deeper drifts, then jumping up on to the seat, its hot breath on Helen’s face. The provision boxes were heaped with snow, their weathered rawhide a stark contrast where they speared through settled flakes at the corners. They didn’t stop to eat but swished along behind the horse which heaved and leaned against the harness, pulling steadily uphill towards the pines which were laden with frosted snow. There had not been one word between them.

  It was three in the afternoon before they reached the cabin, its varnished logs coated with blown snow on the east side, its roof hung with icicles as they would hang on the roofs in Hanover – if there were any roofs left. Helen dug her chin deeper into her coat as she tied the reins around the brake. Would Frau Weber receive her latest letter?

  She pushed aside the blankets. The temperatures were lower than any she had imagined. The blanket was encrusted with iced snow and it cracked and fell in large clumps on to the sled.

  ‘Come on, my love,’ Helen said, touching his arm. ‘Let’s get the things inside.’

  She moved towards the unlocked door, opening it, hearing the creak of the hinges. It was dark inside but not as cold and the wind could not pierce her body as it had been doing. The stove was where Pop had said it would be, the logs too and coal and kerosene. She pulled her mitts with her teeth, shaking the snow to the wooden floor, letting them fall at her feet. She turned and kicked the snow from her boots on to the step and then walked, hearing each step, and then there were his behind her. She did not look but opened the black stove door, soaking the coal with kerosene, throwing in a lighted match, hearing the burst of flame through the closed iron door.

  She turned and watched as Ed put the rawhide boxes down and went out into the cold for more. Still they had not spoken. She picked up logs and threw them into the stove, lifting the metal jug from the first of the boxes, walking back out into the cold, heaping snow into its mouth with her bare hands and then she felt his around her waist.

  ‘Let me, honey. And get those mitts back on. I don’t want you to lose your fingers.’ He didn’t look into her face, just crouched where she had been and rammed in more snow.

  He carried the jug on to the stove and she heard the hiss as the snow which clung to the base melted and was then heated into steam. She fought her way back out to the sled through the wind, bringing back the saws and wedging them in the corner. One fell and the noise was loud, though the wind was wailing as he left again to rub down and stable the horse. The dog was in front of the stove and its smell rose dankly from its coat.

  The sky was darkening now, sucking the daylight from the room. She lit the kerosene lamp and put it near the window. Its yellow glow would reach the valley and Pop and Mom would sigh and so would Chris. She moved heaped dry blankets from one of the boxes on to the bed, and sheets too because for the next three months they would live and eat and sleep in here.

  He came in then, his moustache ice-encrusted, his hat thick and white. He knocked it against the doorpost, kicking his boots off and then coming to her, taking her hands in his, breathing on them, rubbing until the feeling burned in her fingers and in her heart because he had touched her. After so long he had touched her.

  That night they lay together though passion did not rise. He dreamt and cried and called but there was no bourbon and so he did not breathe sourness into her face.

  As dawn settled into the day they used a pick to cleave an earth closet behind the cabin and ate oatmeal cooked on the stove. His hands were shaking and his face was pale but they took the saws and the sled and worked on the pines one hundred yards beyond the cabin. They chose one that was long and straight and nicked one side of the trunk, then sawed the other, one on either end, pulling and pushing, hearing the teeth driving and tearing, feeling the snow drop around them and on them from the tree’s branches. When the saw stuck they eased in a wedge. Her breath was cold in her chest and her back ached and so did his, but they didn’t speak, just worked.

  The tree fell where he had intended it should and then they lopped the branches; neatly, efficiently, while the dog ran around, yapping and barking and chasing his tail. Helen laughed but Ed did not.

  He tramped back to the cabin and she could see his breath billowing in great gasps as he brought the chains and the ropes. Together they pushed the chains through the packed snow beneath the tree, wetting their sleeves but not noticing. Round and round they wound it and now Helen went back for the horse, into the warmth of the dark stable, harnessing her, easing her out into the dazzling white silence of the day, hearing the crunch of the snow packing beneath her hoof. She steadied her up as Ed hitched the rope to the harness and then they led her as she dragged the tree to the skidway, plodding down the slope, leaving great sliced marks in their wake. Down they inched to the flatness of the ledge and the saw bench where they released the tree, slipping off the chains, sawing it into sections, heaving them on to the bench, then sawing again. One two, one two, one two, while the horse waited for the hour it took and the sawdust mounted, the logs too.

  Then back up to the stable and another tree and so each day they worked and the logs grew and Helen slept with the smell of pine in her clothes and her skin and her hair and it was the same smell as the pines in Heine’s forest so long ago.

  Each day too they checked the bawling cattle which drifted on the lower slopes amongst a whirling mass of whiteness, searching for buried sage. As mornings turned to afternoons they carted hay from the barn behind the cabin, carrying it between them to the hay sled, tossing it with pitchforks towards the cattle before returning to the saw which became hot to the touch as they pulled backwards and forwards.

  Christmas came and went but they did not stop and each night Helen looked down into the valley, seeing the lights where Chris slept and woke and played, and missed her son and longed for him, but Ed would have been lost if they had not come. She could not have allowed that to happen as it had happened to Heine. And so she worked and watched and hoped, but the days went by and the dreams continued and no contact was made between this man and herself.

  In January the sun was bright on the last day of the first week and they tossed out to the cattle hay which they had harvested in the valley, in the long hot summer and Helen talked as she always did; this time of the harvest in East Anglia. He looked at her and she saw him smile and he replied in a voice ragged and unused.

  ‘I love this kind of a day,’ he said. ‘Nothing bad can ev
er happen when there’s this feeling in the air.’

  He told her then of the winter when the cattle had eaten the willows by the creek and died of starvation, lying in dark heaps, like mole-hills on an English lawn and she hardly dared to breathe as, slowly, he came alive.

  ‘We brought in hay and saved them but it damn near broke us,’ he said, wiping the breath which had frozen to ice on his scarf.

  That night he did not dream but held her and in the morning he touched her face and kissed her.

  As they worked that day he told her of the square dances they had held in the town with his pop calling, ‘Now swing your corners, twirl your partners and mosey on down.’ And then his mom had dished up the punch.

  ‘They were good days,’ he said. ‘Good clean days.’

  The next week, as they slid a long tree down the slope he slipped and gashed his knee and the blood was vivid against the snow. The cut was deep and clean, Helen saw, as she cut the trouser from his leg in the warmth of the cabin.

  ‘In the Fortress the blood froze before it spouted,’ he said, as he sat on the chair and looked into the open stove. ‘Except in the cockpit where it was warm, and then it flowed like Joe’s all over him, all over me.’

  Helen laid the scissors quietly on the table, taking the cotton wool, bathing the cut gently, listening as he told her again of the blood and of the guilt.

  ‘The bloody, bloody guilt and the cross stuck so goddamn crooked in the rubble,’ he said, looking at her as she took his hand. ‘Help me, Helen. I’m going kind of mad. I can’t get it out of my head.’

  She came to him, holding his head against her breast. ‘I’m here. I’m always here. You did the job you had to do. What else could you have done?’ She was stroking his hair, wiping the tears from his cheeks, feeling them soaking through her blouse. And then he pulled away, jerking his finger at the lint on the table.