The Star and the Shamrock

by Jean Grainger

  She and Rudi had to keep their relationship under wraps. If the nuns thought she was seeing anyone, they would have had a fit. And a Jew? Impossible. So she and Rudi saw each other when they could. The night she was found out was printed indelibly on her brain.

  She’d gone back to the residence after meeting Rudi for a walk and a cup of tea. She lived in an annex of the convent with teaching assistants and nurse’s aides who worked at the adjacent St Catherine’s Hospital. She was called to the Reverend Mother’s office.

  Mother Gertrude was terrifying in her white cornette headpiece and black tunic, scapular and cowl. Only her eyes, nose and mouth were uncovered. The Sisters of Charity ran a school, a hospital and an orphanage from the same campus, and they were feared and respected in equal measure. Elizabeth had never been in the office before.

  The nun began without preamble. ‘You have been keeping company with a young man, who I believe is of the Jewish faith.’

  She might as well have said Elizabeth was cavorting with a mass murderer.

  The nun went on in her monotonously ominous voice. Someone had told on her, reported that she was seeing Rudi and that he was a Jew. The nun had written to her mother, expressing her horror and disgust, and she had received word that Elizabeth was to pack her things and go home immediately. Her mother wanted to see her.

  She was dismissed.

  There was no opportunity to explain, and anyway, what the nun said was true. She was seeing Rudi, and he was a Jew.

  Elizabeth dreaded going back to Ballycreggan, as she knew that her mother would be furious. But perhaps if she explained how nice and how respectful Rudi was? He didn’t try to grope her in the back row of the pictures like other boys. They’d kissed a few times, and it was lovely, but he would never push her.

  She ran to Rudi’s house and told him everything. There and then, he got down on one knee and proposed. He even had a ring. He’d been planning it for weeks, but now that she was going back to Ireland, maybe if her mother knew he was serious about her, it would make her understand. He would have gone with her, but he had been called up to his regiment that weekend.

  With a heavy heart, but with a tiny diamond on her left hand, she crossed the Irish Sea.

  The last conversation she ever had with her mother still rang in her ears all these years later.

  ‘If you go off with that Jewman, then let me tell you, my girl, you will be dead to me, do you hear me? Dead. I’d rather you were. So don’t you come running back here to me when he gives you a couple of brats and turns out to be a conniving scoundrel. They all are, mark my words. They’d sell their own mother for a shilling, so don’t say you weren’t warned.’

  Elizabeth had pressed hard on the small diamond ring Rudi had given her. How could her mother decide she hated him even though she’d never even clapped eyes on him? Elizabeth had come home to tell her she was engaged, and while she didn’t expect the red carpet, the visceral hatred against Rudi because he was a Jew shocked her.

  Her indignation and hurt on his behalf gave her the strength she needed. ‘Well, Mother, I will marry Rudi, and if you don’t want anything further to do with me, then that’s fine. Goodbye, Mother.’ She walked out the door.

  She could still see the scene. She had been wearing a lilac coat and matching cloche she’d bought – she’d saved her salary for months to buy it – and carrying a small valise.

  Margaret and Elizabeth never said another word to each other. She had thought her mother might soften. Elizabeth sent a Christmas card every year, signing it just ‘Elizabeth’, but she never got a response. She wrote to say Rudi had died, but again, nothing. Her mother was like granite, and now it would never be resolved.

  It was funny – she had never really felt like she fit in anywhere. Back in Ireland, she was a Catholic in a largely Protestant community, so she was the outsider and not to be trusted. In Britain, she was seen as Irish, and if she were to go back to Ballycreggan now, they would surely see her as English. She was a widow of a Jew, but she wasn’t a Jew herself, so she didn’t fit there either.

  She knew people found her a bit distant, and she supposed she was, but it was just easier than all the explanations. She found talking about Rudi and the child she lost hard even now. It was easier to keep a distance. A woman without a husband or a child was an oddity. Most of the war widows she knew had remarried, and many either had children before their husbands died or had them subsequently. She didn’t fit in. She hadn’t really at any time in her life. When she was small, maybe she had felt something like contentment. Her father was lovely, but he died, and that was the end of that.

  She had never felt like that with Rudi. He was her home. And now with the children, she felt that familiar warmth of belonging as well. It frightened her to think how much she loved them. Any day, their mother could turn up and reclaim them, and of course, she hoped she did – it was what Liesl and Erich wanted so very much. But the thought of letting them go now that she’d opened her heart to them… Well, it was horrible. It struck her how, in such international chaos, she had found something like peace for the first time since Rudi died.

  She locked up and went to bed, nodding off into a peaceful sleep.

  Either the siren or Liesl’s scream woke her. She sat bolt upright in bed and realised the bedroom was bright, though the bedside alarm clock said three a.m. Before she had time to process this, the entire street shook. She ran to the landing, colliding with her young charges.

  ‘They’re coming, Elizabeth, they’re coming!’ Liesl was terrified, and Erich cried and clung to her.

  ‘Don’t worry, my darlings, don’t worry. Get your dressing gowns and slippers – we need to see what’s happening.’

  She tried to remain calm, but her hands were trembling as she tied the knot on her own dressing gown and shoved her feet into her slippers under the bed.

  She ran downstairs and opened the front door, the children behind her. Her neighbours were out on the street, and the skies were full of what seemed like hundreds of enemy planes. It was petrifying. The air was filled with dust and acrid smoke that stung their eyes. She didn’t know whether she should go back inside or make a run for it to the bomb shelter a street away.

  Before she had time to make up her mind, she heard someone call her name. It was Mrs Lewis from three doors down.

  ‘Mrs Klein, bring those kiddies in here! My Stan built a shelter in the garden, and it’s the safest place. We’ve got plenty of room - come on, come on!’

  Elizabeth ushered the children through the Lewis house, shouting over the noise to cover their mouths and noses with their hands. It was hard to see where she was going, and she clung to Liesl and Erich as she followed Mrs Lewis out the back door and into the shelter. The structure was built of concrete blocks and corrugated iron and covered in earth. Elizabeth and the children followed Mrs Lewis inside.

  It was large, as she had said, surprisingly so, with a bench running around the inside walls. Elizabeth greeted the rest of the Lewis family, three little girls between five and ten and a boy of around twelve. She’d taught the boy, James, last year.

  ‘Stan’s on air raid duty. I just pray he’ll be all right. He made me promise we’d come down and bring whoever we could with us. I’m glad I saw you, Mrs Klein –’ The rest of her sentence was drowned out by the horrific screech – like some horrible banshee – of a bomb falling, and as it hit, the entire shelter shook. Dust and splinters of wood fell on top of them, and Erich screamed.

  ‘It’s going to collapse on us, Elizabeth! We are going to be crushed!’ He clung to her, terror in his eyes.

  Elizabeth tried to hold him to her breast as tight as she could as bomb after bomb fell. Talking was impossible.

  On the other side of the shelter, Mrs Lewis assumed the same position, clinging to her children as they alternately screamed or went rigid with fear.

  Mrs Lewis was a chubby chain-smoker who wore a kerchief on her head and seemed to spend most of each day scrubbing her front step
. Elizabeth, despite being neighbours with her since she moved into Barrington Street, had barely ever spoken to her.

  ‘It will be over soon,’ Elizabeth said, but her voice was drowned out by an ear-splitting boom that caused more shuddering and dislodged earth.

  ‘What if this collapses on top of us?’ Liesl shouted urgently.

  ‘It won’t, don’t worry!’ Elizabeth yelled back, trying to make herself heard over the cacophony. ‘Mr Lewis is a builder. He knew what he was doing when he built this.’ She snuggled closer to the girl, gripping her arm on one side, Erich on the other.

  On and on the pounding went. Sirens screeched and shouts and whistles filled the air. It was the loudest night of Elizabeth’s life. There was nothing to do but sit and huddle and hope for the best. It was too loud for conversation, so the two women sat with their arms around their children, trying to look confident.

  After several hours, the pounding stopped, and a few moments later, the all clear was sounded. Elizabeth released the children, stiff and sore from holding them so tight, and she caught Mrs Lewis’s eye. What were they going out to? Could anything have survived that unmerciful pounding? All of the children looked to the two women, desperate for reassurance.

  ‘Righto. Best get out there and see what’s what.’ Mrs Lewis tried to inject some authority into her voice, and Elizabeth took her lead.

  ‘Thank you so much for sharing your shelter. Mr Lewis is certainly a fine builder, isn’t he, children?’ Elizabeth forced a smile, and Liesl and Erich nodded uncertainly.

  Elizabeth removed her shawl from her shoulders and placed it in her lap. ‘Now, there’s going to be a lot of dust and smoke, so if we tear this up, we can each place it over our nose and mouth when we go out.’

  She tore the garment into strips, handing a piece to each of the children, saving the last pieces for herself and Mrs Lewis. The women helped the children tie the fabric around their faces, and then James pushed at the shelter door. It wouldn’t budge.

  ‘Somethin’s blockin’ it outside,’ he said, trying to keep the panic out of his voice.

  Before either Elizabeth or Mrs Lewis could reassure him, they heard muffled voices and scraping and sounds of shovels. Someone was moving rubble and stones from the bomb shelter entrance. The door was pulled open from the outside within minutes, and Mrs Lewis expressed her relief. ‘Stan, oh Stan, thank God you’re all right!’

  ‘I’m fine, Kit. How about the little ones? Everyone all right?’

  Stan Lewis’s face was black with dirt, and his ARP uniform was very much the worse for wear, but he looked relieved his family were safe. His daughters ran to him and he held them tight.

  Elizabeth allowed the family their reunion and went past them, clinging tightly to Liesl and Erich. Stiff, sore and chilly from the damp air in the bunker, they emerged, blinking in the morning light. The air was hazy with dust, and the pungent smell of smouldering material assailed their nostrils.

  They gazed around in horror. The whole street was flattened. Immediately, Elizabeth looked to where her house had once stood. The entire terrace was gone. Furniture, clothing, curtains…all smouldering amid bricks, glass and flames. It was a horrific sight. They could see all the way to the docks, as the buildings that had until the previous day obscured their view had been demolished.

  ‘They broke our house, Elizabeth,’ Erich said, tears pouring down his little face.

  ‘They did, darling, they did. But we’re still here.’ She hugged them close and surveyed the scene. Everything was gone. Her home, all her memories, her only photograph of Rudi, the children’s pictures of Ariella and Peter…everything they owned, gone.

  Chapter 8

  Ballycreggan, County Down, Ireland, September, 1940

  Talia cycled up the hill in the predawn light, the sweat causing her thin dress to stick to her back. She’d kept the bag of painting stuff as light as she could, just a few watercolours – she preferred oils, but they took too long to dry and smudged more easily – a little easel, a pencil and some brushes. There was no canvas anyway, but she’d managed to find some paper in the draper’s shop in Ballycreggan, so that would have to do.

  Finally, she rested, laying her bike on the grass and sitting down. She perched on a clifftop overlooking the Irish Sea, and it was almost possible to see the Scottish coast. It was breathtakingly lovely.

  Vienna was beautiful, and the architecture never ceased to impress her, but this wild, rugged beauty was not like anything she’d ever seen before. Ballyhalbert Bay with its sandy beach stretched out before her, and she took out her pencil and began to sketch. The area was unusually busy, with lots of army vehicles and cars, but that didn’t distract her. Using her pencil to determine scale and perspective, she quickly had the entire scene drawn.

  There seemed to be some sort of construction going on just behind the beach – that would explain all the traffic. Land was being cleared and earth-moving equipment was in situ, ready for whatever it was they were doing.

  Once she was happy with the scene, she placed the paper on her small easel that Daniel had made for her. He’d seen her trying to balance her paintings on stones and offered to build one, and it certainly made life easier. It was easily folded, and she could pop it in her bag with her paint and brushes.

  He’d seen some of her work, all landscapes, and had been impressed. Her two years at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, interrupted by the war, had served her well. She had a lot more to learn, of course, but she had a natural flair. Daniel had been so complimentary, she’d blushed.

  She really wanted him to like her, and he seemed to…but not like that. It was early days.

  She mixed her paint on the little palette and got to work.

  Cycling back, she realised it was coming close to nine a.m. and she needed to get back to the farm. She was in charge of the chickens, a job she detested because of the nauseating smell, but everyone had to take a turn because nobody liked it. She would have loved to have stayed up on the cliff painting all day, but that wasn’t how things worked.

  As she passed through the village of Ballycreggan, she saw Daniel coming towards her, a group of children beside him. They turned to go into Bridie’s sweetshop. He gave her a wave, and she waved back enthusiastically and instantly decided to go in and join them.

  Elizabeth tried to hide her nervousness from the children as, for the first time since 1918, she put her key in the lock of the house she grew up in. They’d lost every single thing they owned; they had no clothes, no personal possessions. They had what they stood in. She was trying to make the move sound like an adventure, a new start. The children were worried. What if their mother came and couldn’t find them? But she assured them that Ariella had written to her originally at this very address, so she would look here once she realised they were not in Liverpool.

  The Bannon home was a handsome double-fronted house on the main street, with a large garden behind. It seemed smaller than she remembered – in her mind, it was enormous – but it was a substantial house nonetheless, and certainly far bigger than the little terraced house in Liverpool she had called home for so long. The grey cut-limestone façade hadn’t changed at all, though the dark-brown front door needed a lick of paint. Perhaps she’d paint it red or blue or something more cheerful. Dark brown would be just the colour her mother would love.

  The generously proportioned sitting room to the right of the large square entranceway smelled instantly familiar. What was it they said about smells? So much more evocative than the other senses? Nobody had been inside since her mother died, but there was that unmistakable aroma, and instantly, she was transported back decades. Baked soda bread, sunlight soap, lavender-water perfume. She closed her eyes; it was 1917 again, and she was standing in the doorway, leaving for England to work at St Catherine’s. It was a lifetime ago.

  As if in a trance, she walked into the sitting room. Liesl and Erich ran off to explore the house, but she just stood there, allowing the feelings to wash over her.
<
br />   The ornate mahogany mantlepiece had the same photographs she remembered, now covered in a thin layer of dust. The faces of her parents on their wedding day – him smiling, her stern. Another of her father with a cup of some kind – she didn’t know what it was for and her mother couldn’t remember. Elizabeth’s memories of her father were warm, and seeing his picture brought back the pain of loss she felt when she was only ten years old. The images of her mother elicited a different response; Margaret Bannon was a lighting demon by everybody’s standards. She smiled at her recollection of the uniquely Irish phrase. She’d not called anyone a lighting demon for years.

  Her mother was a woman who drew no pleasure whatsoever from life. Elizabeth regretted the relationship she never had with her; it had been a lonely life, an only child, a widowed mother, all culminating in an almighty fight that never got resolved.

  She turned slowly, taking it all in, listening to the sound of footsteps upstairs as the children explored.

  The brown fabric suite with the impossibly low seats was still there, yellowing antimacassars on the backs. Nobody could get up from the pieces with any degree of dignity. That was why, if they had visitors, her mother always sat on a hard kitchen chair. She said it was because of rheumatism, but the truth was it made her feel superior to see the parish priest or the neighbours or whoever called trying to drag themselves up from the sofa.

  The curtains, also brown – who on earth chose brown as a default colour for decorating for goodness’ sake – would need to be replaced.

  Unusually in Ireland, and especially among Catholics, her mother too was an only child. Her father had a brother, Paddy, Liesl and Erich’s grandfather, and she thought there might have been a sister as well but wasn’t sure. Her father grew up in Cavan, but she was never taken there as far as she could remember, and Mother claimed she knew nothing further.

  She wondered about her extended family as she wandered out of the sitting room, past the parlour and the dining room and into the bright kitchen that ran the width of the house at the back. The kitchen was immaculate, everything in its place, exactly as she remembered it. This was her home now.