The Lines We Leave Behind

by Graham, Eliza

  ‘Yet,’ Naomi murmured.

  ‘This unit is not well armed, and we haven’t unloaded the cylinders yet.’

  ‘Let’s do it then, let’s take the guns out,’ Daniel said.

  ‘In the dark? Without making a noise? Unpack the guns, assemble and load them?’

  ‘We should do something,’ Daniel said sullenly.

  ‘Ah, the newcomers seek to tell the Partisans how to conduct themselves?’ Branko had moved silent as a panther to crouch beside them.

  ‘No,’ said Amber. ‘We’re happy to follow your lead.’ She glared at Daniel.

  Naomi let out a sharp breath.

  ‘You think we like letting our enemy get away?’ Branko almost snarled the words. ‘But in the meantime, one of the wounded is haemorrhaging. Can you remember which cylinder had the medical supplies in?’

  Amber went over to the ponies, shining her torch on the cylinders to read the markings. ‘This one.’

  Branko ordered the pony to be unloaded. As he unpacked the cylinder a small, dark, middle-aged woman took the bandages and a bottle of antiseptic from him. The medic, Amber guessed. She followed the pair and saw the woman wipe an oozing leg wound with antiseptic and unroll a bandage to dress it, simultaneously hissing quiet but effective instructions at a colleague holding an improvised drip above a patient.

  Murmuring behind her made Amber turn. The Partisan boys who’d run ahead were returning. ‘The Chetniks have moved on,’ the first said.

  ‘A large group,’ the second added. ‘Mounted on fresh horses and well armed.’

  Naomi had approached as the boys returned. ‘What are they saying?’ she asked Amber. When she’d heard the translation, she looked down at the ground for a moment. ‘So you were right,’ she told Amber. ‘It would have been a mistake to engage them.’

  The break was over. Men drew themselves to their feet. The packhorses shuffled in protest as their tethers were undone and their harnesses tightened. Directed by the medic, the stretchers were lifted up. Amber stood back to let them pass ahead of her. The ground was steeper now and it took longer for the column to progress. The carriers must be weary. How long had they travelled before they’d even reached the drop site?

  ‘Should we help carry the stretchers?’ Amber asked Naomi, who narrowed her eyes.

  ‘You want us to tire ourselves out helping to carry people in the wrong direction?’

  ‘I think we should show willing.’ Amber’s tone was sharper than she realised. ‘We need to show these people we’re on the same side. I’m going to offer myself.’

  Naomi blinked and nodded. ‘No need. It makes more sense for the men to do it.’ She muttered to her team and Daniel and two other men offered their services to the female medic. She waved them towards a man lying with a bandage over his eyes.

  ‘Unconscious,’ Branko said. ‘Head wound. Chetniks.’ He spat the last word out. ‘When we’ve unpacked all the guns you’ve sent, we’ll have a chance to retaliate.’

  ‘You are thinking that this is a perplexing country.’ The voice was low, female. The medic. ‘My name is Ana,’ she said, giving the clenched-fist salute.

  ‘Amber.’ Again Amber returned the salute in the conventional manner.

  ‘The bandages and antiseptic were urgently needed. But did your plane drop the other medical supplies for us, Amber?’ There was the hint of something in the older woman’s voice: a threat? No, more a wary expectation that she might be let down.

  ‘Our controller told us they’d packed anaesthetics and blankets. Syringes and sheets, too. There’s another cylinder of medical supplies.’

  Ana nodded. ‘When we reach our camp, we shall unpack all you have for us. I hope very much it will not be as it has in the past, when we have found such oddities as mis-paired boots.’ There was still the hint of a suggestion that she would hold Amber personally responsible if the supplies failed to live up to expectations. How could she have predicted that this Partisan medic would be glaring at her, holding her personally culpable for every missing jar of pills?

  ‘When we move, we take our wounded with us. We don’t leave men or women behind.’ Ana seemed to stand taller. ‘Sometimes it means carrying them for hundreds of kilometres. We have set up field hospitals for them, hidden in the forests.’

  ‘It’s impressive.’ Amber hoped her words expressed that she was moved by the thought of injured people being borne along by their comrades.

  ‘Sometimes we take civilians with us, too. When the Italians capitulated and the Germans were moving in on the Jewish internment camps on some of the Dalmatian islands, Partisans liberated the Jews. We took old and sick people with us.’

  ‘That must be difficult if you need to be quick and agile to fight the Germans.’

  ‘That’s the dilemma.’ Ana’s voice grew harsher. ‘We signalled the British and asked them to pick up the sick Jews from the coast or inland where there were suitable landing strips and take them to Italy. They wouldn’t come.’

  It was complicated, getting agreement from the RAF and the navy to mount such a rescue effort. Complicated, but perhaps not impossible. Amber translated into English for Naomi.

  She said nothing in response, but moments later Amber heard her telling Daniel that she would take over his end of the stretcher.

  ‘It’s not far now,’ Ana said in English. She gave a half-smile at Amber’s surprise. ‘My son and I speak your language.’

  ‘Your son?’

  ‘Branko. He is one of the youngest leaders in the whole Partisan movement.’ A note of pride entered her voice. It was too dark and too much concentration had to be given to the uneven track to look for family resemblances between the two. Ana strode forward to Branko, asking him what he thought he was doing, setting such a brisk pace that her stretcher bearers would collapse before long. Beside her tall son the medic looked tiny. Ana hadn’t seemed so small when she’d interrogated Amber about supplies. ‘We have been fighting the Germans all the time you British were waiting to take them on,’ she said, falling back to walk with Amber and Naomi again.

  ‘You didn’t want to fight just then,’ Naomi said. ‘You let those Chetniks go.’

  ‘We know when to pounce. You will learn, young woman.’

  ‘I already know that it is necessary to destroy the enemy,’ Naomi said matter-of-factly.

  ‘Perhaps you thought you could come out here and teach us unruly Yugoslavs how to do their job?’

  ‘We didn’t think that,’ Amber said, interjecting before Naomi could answer. ‘They told us you were the experts at blowing up railway lines and roads and disrupting supplies. Some of us are trained to do those things, but you have done them for real, in your own country. You have experience and local knowledge, and we will learn from you. Perhaps there are things we can show you, too.’

  Ana said nothing, moving forward to the stretchers. Amber hoped the moment had passed.

  ‘That was well handled,’ Naomi said softly over her shoulder. ‘She’s prickly.’

  More than prickly. Terrifying.

  ‘Perhaps I would be too, in her position,’ Naomi went on. ‘As you say, we will learn from these people. Ana’s obviously very . . . professional.’

  The track wound its way uphill and became looser underfoot. Even the ponies seemed to struggle. A mist had fallen, blanketing the trail so that Amber could barely see the people ahead of her now. She kept her eyes on the rucksack on Naomi’s back, trusting that Naomi was paying similar attention to the person in front of her. In Amber’s own rucksack she carried only essentials: a change of underwear and socks, spare shirts, a toothbrush, a bar of soap, emergency rations. Don’t flash luxuries in front of the Partisans, some of them have lived rough for more than a year now. In her jacket pocket she had her torch, code book and compass, and a lipstick, carefully chosen to be a brand available in the Balkans. You never know when a dab of cosmetics might help morale. Or impress some male who needs buttering up. Her knife was in her belt and her pistol, a Ballester-Molina sp
ecially imported from South America for SOE on grounds of its accuracy and reliability, in her holster. Her rifle was in one of the canisters.

  Amber must have fallen into a trance as the group scrabbled along the track. She found herself nearly knocking into Naomi’s rucksack when the line came to an abrupt halt. Someone called out a password. An answering call followed softly.

  ‘We’re here.’ Branko pointed at a dark opening, just visible through the mist, illuminated by a faint and flickering lantern. ‘The cave entrance is there. Women sleep inside. Men in the open. The wounded are in a second cave. Put your things inside. We’ll heat a pot of food on the fire after we’ve fetched water from the stream.’ Metal pots were unloaded from ponies and men and women disappeared with them down a slope leading, Amber assumed, to a stream.

  Naomi and Amber found themselves spaces on the floor of the cave, nodding politely at other women, who ranged in age from schoolgirls to the middle-aged, undoing belts of grenades and pistols as quickly and confidently as any male combatant. It might have been the first day in a new dorm at the beginning of a school term.

  ‘We should help with getting water and firewood,’ Amber said.

  Naomi nodded, looking approving. Perhaps she really was getting the message that Amber understood the importance of teamwork.

  They grabbed cans from the pile beside the ponies and followed the track. As they passed the cave where Ana was organising a field hospital, the medic watched them. Amber thought she detected surprise in the older woman’s face. Maybe she thought the newcomers would believe themselves too good to carry water? Mist still obscured the side of the mountain, but the faint clink of metal indicated where the Partisans carried the pots down to the stream. The sound reminded Amber of camping trips with her father: waking to hear him return to their tent with water. The difference then had been that he had not attempted to muffle the sounds he made as he went about this task. Naomi must have been thinking something similar.

  ‘I remember youth camps when I was younger,’ she said. ‘Back home.’ There was a vulnerability in her tone that Amber had never noticed before. She hadn’t heard Naomi talk much of her youth, and as Robert had never encouraged too much personal revelation between his operatives, she hadn’t liked to ask questions. She didn’t even know Naomi’s real name. But something about the dark trees around them, the adrenaline still flowing in her veins after the parachute drop, and the trek here made Amber push aside the reticence.

  ‘I liked camping, too. I used to go with my parents. It always seemed an escape from everyday life. Even now . . .’ She stopped, feeling foolish. Surely she hadn’t been about to say that she was enjoying this first night on enemy territory?

  ‘Our past lives follow us.’ Naomi sounded solemn.

  ‘We’ll go back to them when we’ve done our work.’

  ‘I hope so,’ Naomi said. ‘I’m not really sure where I’m from any more, or where I’ll go back to. Hungary? That was a good life, with my parents, lots of comfort, intellectual challenge, music. Or Palestine: in the countryside, doing farm work. Not intellectually challenging, but being with so many other young people, all so optimistic about what we can achieve . . .’

  They rounded a boulder and joined the other women standing at the edge of the cold, fast-flowing stream. One of them, an older woman, said something disapproving.

  ‘What was that?’ Naomi asked.

  ‘She says we’re guests and should not be working.’

  Naomi made a tutting noise. ‘In the kibbutz if you don’t do your fair share, you’re in trouble.’

  Branko was standing by the fire as they came back into the camp, looking surprised at the full cans of water in their hands. ‘I was looking for you,’ he told Amber. ‘When you’ve had a chance to . . . freshen up, come and find me here.’

  A woman standing by the fire handed Amber a can of warm water. In the cave she switched on her torch and examined her face in her hand mirror. Her hair, which she’d endeavoured to keep tied back, had escaped from its bindings on one side, hanging lankly over a cheek. At some point in the trek she must have put a dirtied finger to her face, which bore a black smear. She tidied up as best she could in the gloomy interior of the cave and went to find Branko. He offered her his flask. She took a sip and wished she hadn’t, trying not to gasp as she swallowed the liquid.

  The scent of the goat stew warming up in a pot over the fire wafted round the camp, aromatic and rich. Amber’s stomach gurgled. For a moment she was back in a childhood kitchen, with a Serbian or Croat cook stirring a pot on the stove. Game, pastries, fruit . . . How she’d missed those dishes in wartime Britain.

  He motioned her to a bench constructed from a plank of wood on two upturned buckets. ‘We will unload the supplies that arrived with you.’

  ‘I hope it’s what you need.’

  ‘So do I.’ His tone became sterner and he looked older suddenly. ‘It is very important that Cairo supplies us regularly. We cannot keep up this pressure on the Germans without support.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And you’ll transmit tomorrow and tell them this?’

  ‘Tomorrow night. We have an agreed time for regular signals.’

  ‘If you go up the slope you should find it easier. We will stay here for a day to let the wounded and pack ponies rest. To stay any longer is dangerous.’

  ‘Which way will we go then?’ Naomi had approached them silently.

  ‘South for a bit.’

  ‘That’s no good for me,’ Naomi said. ‘It takes me even farther away from the border.’

  ‘It’s the same for us.’ Branko rose. ‘Our objective is to press north. But we cannot get through the Chetnik positions with our wounded and we will not leave them.’ He said it with passion. ‘You should get some stew now, before it is all eaten.’

  They queued for bowls and spoons and ate in silence. When they’d finished, they rinsed out their bowls in the pail of warm water by the fire and retreated to the cave. Naomi sat down on her sleeping bag, pulling objects out of her rucksack: a frock, a powder compact and lipstick, along with a beret.

  ‘Very pretty,’ Amber said.

  Naomi folded the dress, which was wool, obviously well cut. It would show off her figure.

  ‘Would you wear your boots with it?’

  ‘I brought stockings. A thick pair for the hills and some lighter ones for the city. My boots are a bit clunky, but it’s not a bad look.’ She removed a cigarette lighter from her rucksack, a different make from Amber’s and black in colour, not silver – probably Hungarian to fit in with Naomi’s cover story. Amber felt a guilty relief. ‘Robert gave me this, but as I don’t smoke I’ll leave it here.’

  ‘When we move on?’

  The other girl looked over her shoulder. The cave was empty apart from the two of them. Everyone else surrounded the fire or was clearing up the supper dishes and making sure the pack ponies were securely tethered.

  ‘When I move on. Alone. You’re not going to send a signal until tomorrow morning. That’s too late.’

  ‘You’re leaving us?’

  ‘I’ve been thinking it over while we ate, making calculations.’

  Amber wanted to grab Naomi, to force her to stay, not to leave her. She linked the fingers of her hands together to stop herself from acting on the impulse.

  ‘I can’t wait for Daniel’s ankle to heal. Anyway, it’s probably safer if I’m by myself.’

  ‘But you can’t go alone, you—’

  ‘I’m just a love-sick Magyar girl who followed the Hungarian troops over the border when they annexed the northeast provinces.’

  ‘Pretty dangerous. Would a civilian girl really do something like that?’

  Naomi gave her a sideways look. ‘You know how it is when there’s someone you just can’t stop thinking about?’

  Amber felt her cheeks burn.

  ‘Someone you’d do anything for? Someone you fall for in wartime, when feelings suddenly run hot? You’d do anything, go anywhere
, wouldn’t you, Amber?’

  ‘You know about him?’ She felt shame. This relationship with the officer who had recruited and trained them, who was directing their operation, it had been so wrong. She’d known it at the time if she were truthful. But she’d hoped the others hadn’t found out about it.

  ‘About you and Robert? Yes. I guessed.’

  ‘The others?’

  Naomi snorted. ‘Those boys are about as obtuse about matters romantic as it’s possible to be. Don’t worry, your secret is safe with me.’

  Amber let out a breath.

  ‘Can’t say I thought it was the most sensible thing to do, but the man has a certain magnetism about him, I suppose. Just be careful.’

  ‘Careful? You’re a fine one to talk.’ This conversation had to be turned back to Naomi’s dangerous proposal. ‘Those territories that the Hungarians occupied are hundreds of miles away. If you’re caught, they’ll want to know what you’re doing over here.’

  ‘Oh, I drifted around looking for work.’

  ‘What happened to soldier boy?’

  ‘He disgraced himself in a brothel. Now I’m out of money so I’m going home to my mother.’

  ‘What’s your planned bearing?’

  ‘North for a bit. Then east. I haven’t decided yet whether to make for Zagreb. There may be more chance of getting rides from the city to the border.’

  ‘You won’t have a wireless operator with you if you go alone.’

  ‘Having a man with me wouldn’t exactly fit my lovesick maiden story.’

  ‘Robert thought it all through. There were reasons why you weren’t to go into Hungary alone.’

  ‘But the original plan’s been thrown out, anyway. We didn’t land near either the Slovene or the Hungarian border.’ Naomi frowned. ‘And I’m still not sure why.’

  ‘Increased German reconnaissance flights, Robert said. You need to wait until we’ve heard from Cairo.’

  ‘I know what Robert said.’ She sounded sharp. ‘But I’m hundreds of miles away from where I ought to have been. I can’t afford to have my mission derailed like this. I’ll be less noticeable alone.’