Somewhere Over England

by Margaret Graham

  ‘Come on then, Helen. For Christ’s sake, we’ve got work to do.’

  He wouldn’t look at her again, wouldn’t listen to her voice and so she knelt and dressed his knee, sewing up his trousers again, knowing he would go out again into the cold because his face had closed. He would not talk any more of the darkness today, but perhaps tomorrow? Oh God, she hoped it would be tomorrow and that the darkness would escape for good.

  It did not. Instead he talked of the tadpoles he had scooped into his hands in the pools of the creek when he was barely six and the summers were long and hot. The water had run through his fingers and dripped back into the pool and it had been so cool and so clear.

  He talked of the igloo he and Pop had built, hacking out February snow which had frozen so hard it was ice. How white and cold it had been to build but so warm inside, and silent.

  All day they sawed but then the dog barked and called and they found a cow by the barn toiling with a breech birth. They moved her into the barn. Ed heaved and pulled until the calf slipped into the straw, slippery but warm and alive and then he turned to her, his face gleaming with sweat.

  ‘I would like a child, Helen, a daughter that looks like you.’

  She stood still as the cow nuzzled the calf and Ed rubbed it with straw, and they shared the cry of the newly born.

  He came to her then and they walked back to the cabin, to the bed, and he held her but did not love her, not then, but that night he held her and stroked her.

  ‘I love you, I love you,’ he said, his mouth finding hers and every touch of his body against hers was tender and all that night he loved her and then he talked of the raids, the bombs, the people, and again the next night and the next. Each day the lines grew less and the trembling left his hands and Helen knew the taste of happiness again.

  In February the cold was at its most intense, deep and bitter, and now they sat before the stove, talking and listening, and she told him of the cupboard and her own fears, her own guilts. He told her of his first loves, his first kisses. They checked the cattle in short bursts, pinching their own cheeks to make sure that there was no frost-bite. She drank coffee, her hands around the tin mug as he took the hay sled to the cattle by the lower pasture, hearing the wind whipping round the cabin. It grew worse as the day got older and then she blocked out the draughts with old sheets, newspaper, anything, and the smell of beet came back to her; over the miles, over the years.

  He came back as the afternoon ended and she rubbed his hands and feet, listening as he told her of the horses he had broken, how he had worked them gently until they understood, how he had been tossed and hurt but had come back again, gripping with his knees, never shouting, never hitting, as his father had shown him. She learned of the hill horses who were not mongrel mustangs but pastured and forgotten ranch horses who had grown stronger from their wildness. And these were his first love. They looked gentle and kind but were too proud for a saddle, too proud for a man.

  ‘Until they understood that you weren’t about to own them, just use their greatness,’ he said, his face ruddy from the stove, his voice gentle as it should always be. Each night they lay in bed, loose limbed and free from the shadows.

  ‘For now, free from the shadows,’ Helen whispered against his skin while he slept. But would it last? She looked round the one-roomed cabin in the yellow warmth of the kerosene lamp, smelling its scent, hearing the breathing of the dog. Snow had built up at the windows and the wind was blowing drifts whichever way they looked but in here was warmth and love. For now there was love which reached out and held them both. She looked at the rawhide boxes which held two more weeks’ provisions.

  It was the next week that the calf drowned, down by the great pine where in the summer the mountain stream turned and followed the boulder path. They were laughing, holding the horse by its harness as the sky rose, clear blue above them when they heard its mother’s bellows across by the stream.

  They ran then, across the skidway’s packed solid snow, slipping, falling, rising, then plunging through the drifts up to their knees and out again until they reached the snow path the calf had taken.

  He was gone when they reached the broken ice, and there was just jagged blackness scythed out of the frosted ice where he had jumped and broken, then died. They followed the stream down but never found him and Ed remembered that he had left the barn door open. There was no laughter again, no loving, just the dreams and the calling of the cow, night after night after night as he slipped relentlessly from her grasp.

  On the first of March they came back down through the forest because there was no point in staying any longer. She steered the horse through the lower pastures, seeing the road from the ranch to the town stretching away like a dirty ribbon. It had been cleared by ploughs and the snow heaped like swollen waves on either side.

  She drew up the horse before they reached the ranch, holding his hand and kissing it where the mitt ended and his sleeve began, smelling his skin.

  ‘I love you,’ she said. ‘But I am not enough. You need something else. You need absolution and I don’t know how I can give it to you.’

  He kissed her lips and looked towards the house where his parents waited. He loved her so much but she was right and he despaired, because how could anyone here give him that?

  Chris hugged his mother and then Ed, knowing his new father was not better. He could tell it from the tension in their bodies, their faces which were drawn and tired. He stood as they pulled off their clothes and hung them in the laundry. He stood as they sat and drank coffee and talked of the cattle, the calf, the logs but not of themselves. He stood as Mrs McDonald told Ed and Helen of Chris and the coach and in his mother’s face he saw despair and anguish.

  She took him into the lounge, holding his hand, listening as he told her that he had to do it, and he couldn’t understand why she ran to her bedroom and wept until the next morning; not eating, not speaking, but howling as a dog would do when there was nothing but horror all around. She didn’t see the rose wallpaper, the new curtains. She didn’t think of the bulbs she had planted, the rose bushes she had buried because the darkness of the cupboard was in her and outside her.

  It was then that Chris took her up the letter which had come in February. It was from Germany, from his father’s father and he read it to her, loudly above her tears, shouting it into her face.

  Hanover

  December 1946

  My dearest Helen,

  It is with such relief that we receive your letter and forgive my language. I do not use English since you left but now I must begin again to practise and I shall.

  We have not received others of your letters and thought that war had taken you also, as well as Heine.

  Yes, we survive. Oma is thin but lives. That is all we can do, is it not? There is hunger here and nothing, not even a bird sings but we deserve nothing more.

  It is glad news that you have another man you love. Perhaps it is a time for new beginnings.

  I cannot ask you to come to see us because our shame is too great, such terrible things have been discovered. Did we know? No, but perhaps we guessed and did not wish to know? But I wish you peace, my dear. Peace for you and your husband and your child.

  With loving thoughts from your father.

  Wilhelm Weber

  Helen stayed in her room all day, holding the letter, listening to the sounds of the farm, seeing the sun reflected off the snow lightening the room, and then she rose, sitting on the bed, feeling old now, hearing again the news of her son and his hatred, his confusion. She grieved for his lost youth. She heard again the screams of her husband and the years which had gone from his life and which perhaps would never be regained and then she read the letter again.

  CHAPTER 23

  Helen drove into town that sunless day, down the sanded and salted road, between high drifts where no shadows carved and cut. She rang Claus from the old hotel lobby, talking in a low voice, listening as he agreed. She drove back then and into the
yard, through the kitchen, past Ed and Chris who looked at her, but she did not stop.

  She walked up the stairs, going into Chris’s room, throwing open his cupboard, heaping clothes on to the bed, hauling out the case they had brought with them from England, because Chris was going home. She folded the clothes, knowing that now her son and husband were at the door, watching, but still she said nothing. She put in his baseball mitt, his ball and then looked at Chris.

  ‘Do the case up.’ It was an order but she did not wait to see him force it down and click the locks. She marched instead to her own room and took Ed’s clothes and hers, folding them, pushing them into her case and his, then she looked at him as he stood silent in the doorway.

  ‘Do the cases up.’ It too was an order and again she did not wait to see him zip his own and lock hers but went down into the kitchen, sorting through cupboards as Mom watched, bringing out elastic which she knew would be needed where they were going. She put toothpaste, soap, cotton, needles, cigarettes, cans of ham, sugar, coffee and flour into a rucksack which she pulled out from the drawer in the laundry room. She told Mom and Pop where they were going then and they nodded, for what else could help?

  Helen showered then, raising her face to the jetting water, letting it drench her hair and her skin, letting it take her breath and her thoughts away, just for those few moments. She felt it sting her skin and ease heat into her body. The towel was rough and the mountains clean and snow-laden as she rubbed the condensation from the window with her hand, her tiredness gone now because she knew now where they were all going.

  She told them that it was to Germany that they were travelling as they stood on the platform, stepping backwards as the Pullman roared in, so loud and large. She and Claus had arranged that her share of this year’s profits from the agency would pay, but she didn’t tell them and no one asked. She took Chris’s arm as he spun round away from her, from the train.

  ‘You will come because you need to, and I insist.’ That was all, and her voice was hard and angry, but there was love in it too. She looked at Ed and there was shock in his face.

  ‘You will come because I can think of no other way of clawing back your life and if you don’t then I will go alone and never return.’

  They both boarded the train with her, heaving up the cases, then sitting, watching the white valleys and mountains merge into night. They slept and woke and ate and slept again but did not speak. The train rattled and jerked and Helen felt Ed’s arm against hers but it was stiff and afraid. Chris watched America, not her. He read comics which they bought from the stations they halted at, flicking the pages, his head down. Helen did not try to reach him. She could wait.

  They reached Chicago and changed trains and travelled again and slept again until New York loomed, cutting out the light, its tall skyline one of the few left in the world which was untouched by the war.

  They caught a cab to the docks where Claus met them in the shadow of the liner. He held her and his body was warm, and she wanted to lean into him, rest on him, but she could not. There was no time. Until they had been home, there was no time.

  ‘So, my dear Helen. You have heard at last.’ His smile was kind and his face no thinner than it had been last year.

  She nodded. ‘And you?’

  He shook his head. ‘There is nothing. I never will, I think. But you, at least you have heard.’ His eyes were deep with distress but there was a certain acceptance. ‘It comes in the end, a sort of acceptance,’ he said. ‘It has to.’

  He looked at Ed and Chris. Chris looked away but Ed put out his hand.

  ‘I’m grateful,’ he said. ‘It’s good of you to do this for us.’ His hand trembled and there was stiffness in his every movement.

  Claus smiled and shrugged. ‘My friend, it is so little. You did so much for us. Do not forget that as you travel back.’ He turned now to Helen. ‘I have the press pass. You have your camera? Good. Present it if you need to bypass the occupying regularities.’

  Helen took the pass, stepping to one side as a passenger pushed past them up the gangplank. There was movement all around and the noise of traffic and ships and tugs. Their liner hooted, long and low, and she looked at the ship and then back at Claus.

  ‘I will try to find out what I can, my dear friend,’ she said, holding his arm and kissing his cheek. ‘Really I will.’ A steward was beckoning to them, his face red as he gestured from the deck.

  ‘Auf wiedersehen, my friends,’ Claus called as they started up the gangplank and Helen turned, her eyes meeting his, both wondering what she would find in the Germany they had once known.

  The voyage to Liverpool lasted ten days and the weather was rough. They lay in their bunks for the first three days and then walked the decks and still Chris would not speak, though Ed held her arm and they breathed in the air together, feeling the cold on their skins; the wind whipping their salt heavy hair. As the days went by she felt him loosen and his walk became his roll. He bought more cigarettes to take as currency but smoked some too. They sat in deckchairs and talked a little and his hands grew still as his face took on the look of someone who could not turn back now. His cigarette glowed in the wind and the smoke was brushed away before it became visible, and its smell with it. He did not drink. But he did dream.

  They docked in Liverpool and drove by taxi to the airport through drizzle-drenched streets, passing women in head-scarves and streets gouged by bombs, the ruins laced with rosebay. There were queues outside shops and now Chris turned to her.

  ‘Remember what they did,’ he said. ‘And you are making me go back.’ His face was set and his lips were thin.

  ‘I am making you go home,’ Helen said. ‘Because you have to face yourself, you and Ed have to face yourselves.’ She reached for her son’s hand and held it, though he tried to pull away.

  ‘Listen to your mom,’ Ed said. ‘She loves you. Listen to her. She’s right. We’ve got to face it.’

  But Chris would not listen and so Helen looked from him out to her homeland, its smallness, its hardship. It looked broken, like Ed, but it wasn’t, she knew England better than that. But what about Ed? Was he broken?

  She sat back, feeling the streets and rubble pressing in on her as they followed behind small cars driving on the left-hand side. She had forgotten how comforting such closeness was, how England clustered, keeping the great vast spaces out of view. She loved it, but she loved Ed too.

  She reached for his hand and he squeezed hers and smiled but there was a distance between them which would always remain until he had come to terms with the past. Would Germany do that for him? Would there be absolution?

  ‘Anyway, I want to see Laura and Mary,’ Chris said, looking out at a park with no railings, his breath misting the window. The drizzle had turned to rain and it jerked down the window as the taxi rattled along the pot-holed road.

  ‘We shall see them, on the way back,’ Helen replied, looking at her watch. Claus had arranged for a flight at four and it was now two o’clock. She looked up into the grey sky. We shall also visit Heine’s grave, she said to herself. This was something they must both do at last.

  The arrived at the airport at three-thirty and as Helen strapped herself into the small Dakota she looked at Ed who was at the front talking to the Captain. He was investigating the controls, sitting in the pilot’s seat, getting the feel again, and she saw life in his face, in his hands which moved quickly, competently and knew that she was frightened. She had never flown before.

  Chris sat next to her with Ed in front and Helen couldn’t speak as they took off, rearing up into the air, the bucket seats hard, the air pockets bumping her so that she was lifted from the seat. She gripped at Chris and screamed.

  Chris and Ed turned and saw her face, so pale and fraught, and they laughed, looking at one another and then at her, and Chris put his hand on hers while Ed explained the rudiments of flight, though she heard not a word. She did feel her son’s hand, though, and feigned fear long after it had gone.
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br />   There was a steady drumming of sound in the plane and they looked down through the narrow window as they skimmed over the North Sea, seeing the waves rippling and breaking.

  ‘Just like the snow, Mum,’ Chris said, leaning across her to see more easily and she liked his closeness and touched his hair where it stuck up at the back. He didn’t feel it and so did not pull away. She looked up and Ed was watching. He smiled and for a moment there was no distance at all between them.

  The plane bumped its way through the overcast sky and the sea seemed to last for hours. Helen looked around at the plane. It was small and cramped and seemed to be held together by wire, but it was quick because she could see a sandbank ahead already.

  ‘This is the coast of the Netherlands,’ the pilot called.

  They flew over the island of Walcheren, most of which had been under water, though the floods had now receded, the pilot told them, as the gaps made in the dykes by the RAF had been closed.

  ‘The fields will be barren though because of the salt,’ he added and Helen looked at Ed but couldn’t see his face because he had turned towards the window.

  They flew over bomb-damaged woods, in one of which a wrecked plane still lay. There were bridges and railways sprawled beneath them, some still useless and in disarray. Long stretches of electric railway lay grass-covered and unused. The pilot brought the plane down lower so that they could see.

  ‘The Nazis looted miles of copper wire which was needed for the cables,’ the pilot explained and now Helen looked at Chris who just stared at her.

  They landed and drove through the once flood-ravaged streets of Holland, sometimes breathing in the smell of sea-saturated earth and there was magenta rosebay here too on the ruins, though clearing and rebuilding had begun. They stopped to buy milk and the Dutch pastor told them how the Dutch had eaten tulip bulbs to survive but that Canadian rations had entered and the children were beginning to put on weight.