Wives at War

by Jessica Stirling

  Newspapers were spread on the kitchen table. Dougie cut away the insulating tape with a sharp knife and unwound the oilskin covering just before the Petty Officer delivered Angus to the door.

  The boy came running into the kitchen.

  ‘What a bang,’ he crowed. ‘You should see the hole, Dougie. It’s miles deep. Uprooted all the trees. Blew away the rooks’ nests, too, an’ there’s a dead squirrel hanging…’ Confronted by Polly and the stranger he became cagey. ‘What’s up now? What’s that? Is that another bomb?’

  ‘Will I take him upstairs?’ Polly asked.

  ‘No need,’ Marzipan answered. ‘Let him stay.’

  Angus approached the table and stood by his Aunt Polly’s side and watched Dougie slide the big glass preserving jar from its oilskin wrapping. The jar was sealed with a spring clip, the rubber edges protected by yet more tape. The walls of the jar were moist as if the contents were sweating and all Polly could make out was an icy grey mass, like slush.

  Dougie cut the tape, released the clip and pulled off the lid.

  He tipped the jar and trickled the contents on to the newspaper.

  If Polly had expected glittering gemstones all cut and perfectly polished like the diamonds she had admired in jewellery store windows, she was disappointed.

  Angus glanced up at his aunt. ‘What is that stuff?’

  ‘Diamonds,’ Polly said, ‘I think.’

  ‘Diamonds! They’re not diamonds,’ said Angus.

  ‘Ah, but they are, young man,’ Marzipan told him. ‘Industrial diamonds, uncut and unpolished but highly valuable nonetheless. Look at them, three, four, five carat stones, worth a fortune in the right hands.’

  ‘Are they yours, Dougie?’ Angus asked.

  ‘Naw, they belong to your Uncle Dominic,’ said Dougie. ‘Aunt Polly’s taking them to him. They’re for the war effort.’

  Unmoved by the appearance of a small fortune in gemstones on Miss Dawlish’s table, Angus nodded. Compared to discovering a live German mine in the woods, diamonds were nothing to get excited about. He watched the stranger run his fingers through the stones, sifting and weighing them.

  ‘Are they genuine?’ said Polly.

  ‘Oh yes, I’m sure they are,’ Marzipan said.

  ‘Worth how much?’

  ‘Much more than forty thousand pounds,’ said Marzipan.

  ‘Will that be enough?’ said Polly.

  ‘More than enough,’ said Marzipan. ‘Clever chap, your husband. It appears he’s contrived to deliver on his promise without spending one penny of his own money. I assume you have the forty thousand snugly tucked away in your bank account, Mrs Manone – forty thousand that I and my associates are supposed to believe went on the purchase of this little lot?’

  ‘I don’t think I’m going to answer that question,’ said Polly.

  ‘Very wise of you,’ the officer said. ‘And, to be candid, I don’t think I’m going to pursue it. As far as I’m concerned Manone has delivered what he promised the Americans and that’s an end of it. The rest is up to you.’

  ‘How do we get the diamonds past Customs?’ said Polly.

  ‘Customs won’t be a problem,’ said Marzipan. ‘One reason we’re sending you to Portugal in a convoy ship is because the Portuguese police are more vigilant at airports and our friends in the American embassy aren’t entirely omnipotent. We British do have a little leeway on the docks, however. We’ll be able to slip you through without official involvement. The ambassador wants no part of it, you see. He doesn’t much care for treading on thin ice.’

  ‘Thin ice,’ said Polly. ‘Is that what you call it?’

  ‘What’s Dom goin’ to do with this stuff?’ Dougie said. ‘He’s not givin’ it to the Americans out the goodness o’ his heart.’

  ‘Trade,’ said Marzipan. ‘He’s going to trade.’

  ‘In Lisbon?’ Dougie said.

  ‘Lisbon, Spain, Italy,’ the officer said. ‘The diamonds will be his calling card, a means of proving that he’s no more honest than anyone else. Once he’s accepted as a dealer then the Americans can safely use him as a go-between.’

  ‘For how long?’ said Dougie.

  Marzipan shrugged. ‘For as long as it takes.’

  He ran his hands over the stones once more, stroking them as he might stroke a cat, then he began to scoop them carefully back into the jar.

  ‘What,’ said Polly, ‘do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘Taking them away.’

  ‘Oh no, you’re not,’ Polly told him. ‘They’re mine.’

  ‘They’re not anyone’s at this precise moment,’ Marzipan said. ‘You’ll get them back, every last carat, on Friday evening after you board. What’s wrong, Mrs Manone, don’t you trust me?’

  ‘Trust you! I don’t even know your name.’

  ‘McGonagall,’ Marzipan said. ‘William Henry McGonagall.’

  ‘You’re kiddin’,’ Dougie said.

  ‘Of course I am,’ said Marzipan.

  * * *

  It was late now, very late, and there was no light in the upstairs room. They lay together in the big bed listening to the wind drone through the holes and fissures that the raids had left in the fabric of the solid old house that Carlo Manone had purchased almost forty years ago.

  Polly clung to Christy, pressing her breasts against his chest, twining her legs with his. They were both naked and slick with the sweat of lovemaking but the tension between them had not been relieved. She wanted him to make love to her again, to so stun her with sex that her fears would be carried away on a tide not of love but exhaustion.

  He felt big beside her, bearlike. She stroked him, softly at first then, digging her hand into his hair, pulled him to her and kissed him with desperate passion. She was still wet, sore and swollen with need of him, of someone, anyone who would calm the myriad little anxieties that throbbed and tingled in her head.

  When he rolled away from her, though, she experienced no great ache of disappointment and when, fumbling, he switched on the lamp by the bedside and sat up, she was more relieved than not.

  ‘Listen to that wind,’ Christy said. ‘I sure hope it calms down before we strike out into the Firth tomorrow night.’

  He lit two cigarettes.

  Polly kissed his shoulder, and sat up.

  Sweat dried on her neck, on her breasts. Her fears had eased slightly now that there was a light in the room. She accepted a cigarette, drew in smoke and lay back against the crumpled pillows.

  ‘Are you scared?’ Polly asked.

  ‘Sure I am,’ Christy answered. ‘I’m a lousy sailor. I get sick on boats.’

  The wind flailed at loose slates on the roof and rain drummed on the boarded windows. Polly could hear the drip of a ceiling leak, the pat-pat-pat of droplets falling somewhere just beyond the bedroom door. She would have to deal with the mess when she returned from Lisbon unless, that is, another crop of German bombs took it all away and left nothing but ruins.

  She had lingered long enough at the farm to say goodbye to Bernard and Mammy and help tuck her nieces into bed, and had driven home very slowly with headlights dipped, navigating more by instinct than by her senses.

  Christy had been waiting for her in the kitchen, a pan of stew bubbling on the electric plate. He had used up every last scrap of food and had opened the very last bottle of Italian wine. They had eaten supper in the parlour, seated on the carpet before the fire, had eaten and drunk wine and talked of what had happened that day and what would happen tomorrow, sharing the little secrets that each had kept from the other until now.

  ‘I don’t know what sort of sailor I am,’ Polly said. ‘I’m not like you, darling. I’m not a traveller. I’ve never been abroad.’

  ‘You could have picked a better time to start.’

  ‘That’s true.’

  ‘At least it’ll be warm in Lisbon.’

  ‘How warm?’

  ‘Like summer,’ Christy said.

  ‘I’ll pack accordingly.’r />
  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Summer things.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I have a passport, you know, a proper one. Fin got it for me.’

  He nodded as if he knew that already and retreated into an uncharacteristic silence. Polly felt no compunction to cheer him up.

  She said, ‘The officer’s going to pack the diamonds into two bottles of Scotch and make sure they’re properly sealed. We’ll be given them as soon as we’re on board the Tantallon Castle, then it’ll be up to us to keep them safe until we hand them over to Dominic.’

  ‘If they don’t wind up on the ocean bed,’ said Christy.

  ‘That’s morbid,’ Polly said. ‘Stop it.’

  ‘Imagine all the stuff that’s down there already, all the gold, all the silver, all the cash-boxes and jewels…’

  ‘Stop, darling, please.’

  He glanced at her. ‘So you are afraid of drowning?’

  ‘No,’ Polly said. ‘I’m not.’

  ‘What are you afraid of then?’

  ‘Meeting my husband again,’ she said.

  * * *

  A late-evening sun had broken out from beneath the rain cloud and spilled a prophetic trail of fire across the Firth. The tallest tenements in the coastal town caught the slant of sunlight and stood stark against a tar-black sky. The wind had backed to the north-west and even from the road you could see vessels bucking and angry waves punching against the shore. Seven cargo ships would leave the Clyde as soon as night fell. Three were moored at the quayside taking on fuel, the others rode at anchor in the deep-water channel.

  Babs had packed lemonade and biscuits in case April got hungry but her daughter was too excited to be interested in food. She sat on Christy’s knee in the rear seat of the Wolseley, her nose pressed to the window glass, and stared at the ships, the seagulls and the hurrying waves, and uttered small cooing sounds as if the trip had been arranged just to please and amaze her. Now and then she would turn her head, purse her lips and frown at Christy as if she couldn’t understand why he too was not astonished by the textures of the world.

  Polly occupied the passenger seat. She had given the wheel to Babs, who was a much better driver than she was and would be required to find her way back from Greenock in the dark. She watched Babs covertly out of the corner of her eye, envying her middle sister’s confidence and resilience. Separated from three of her children, obliged to work every day, even losing her husband had failed to drag Babs down. It hadn’t occurred to Polly before that for all her tough talk Babs harboured no cynicism and that the life she had chosen was the life that she, Polly, had deliberately renounced. Loving and being loved had not been enough for her, and none of the men who’d loved her, not even Fin, had given her what she sought, not excitement, not variety, but a nameless, shameless need to punish herself just for being Frank Conway’s daughter.

  ‘Wish I was going to Portugal,’ Babs said.

  ‘It’s not a holiday, you know.’

  ‘Beats catchin’ the tram to Cyprus Street every morning.’

  ‘I thought you liked your job?’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Babs said. ‘Keeps me out of mischief, I suppose.’

  ‘I wouldn’t like to work for him,’ Polly said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The fellow with the glasses, at the funeral.’

  ‘Archie? Archie’s all right.’ Babs drove on into the heart of Greenock and the walls of shipyards and warehouses closed about them. ‘I quite like Archie, actually, now I’ve got to know him.’

  ‘He’s a boy, just a boy,’ said Polly.

  She was making conversation mainly to allay her anxiety. Behind her she could hear Christy chatting to April who, now that the canyon walls of industry and commerce had closed off the view, had become bored.

  ‘Archie’s older than he looks,’ Babs said. ‘He’s only a couple of years younger than I am, in fact.’

  ‘Did he tell you that? If he did, I’d take it with a pinch of salt.’

  ‘I looked up his employment file,’ said Babs. ‘Employment files never lie, at least not often. He worked in the Co-op warehouse as a clerk for five years to save enough to put himself through university. He’s a teacher, or was until the war came along. Did I tell you that?’

  Polly had no interest in Archie Harding or her sister’s defence of the man. April wasn’t alone in finding the town oppressive. It smelled of the sea, of grease and petrol fumes, horse manure and burned dinners, of beer from quayside pubs and fat frying in fish supper shops.

  ‘Where exactly are we going, by the way?’ said Babs.

  Stirring himself, Christy said, ‘Look for a gate on the right with a navy patrol on guard. It’s just past the next turn, I think. Got it?’

  ‘Yep,’ said Babs and, fisting the wheel, swung the big car up to the gate and braked.

  Two sailors came forward.

  They didn’t really look like sailors.

  They had webbing belts cinched around their waists, wore puttees over black boots, and steel helmets. One of them carried a rifle.

  Behind them in the window of the guardhouse Polly could see the tall figure of the plainclothes officer whom Christy referred to as Marzipan.

  She rolled down the window and said, ‘I’m Mrs Manone. Mr Cameron and I are expected, I believe.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ said one of the sailors. ‘You have baggage?’

  ‘In the boot.’

  One of the sailors, the one without the rifle, disappeared and a moment later Polly heard the boot being opened.

  She said, ‘Can’t we take the car on to the quay?’

  ‘No, ma’am. Listed personnel only.’

  Polly turned to Babs. ‘This is it then.’

  ‘This is what?’ said Babs. ‘Goodbye?’

  Christy got out of the car, April clinging to him.

  Through the maze of low buildings and tall cranes the ship was visible – the Tantallon Castle, fully laden with coal and making ready to sail. Deck officers were visible on the rail and the patch of grey hull that Polly could make out between the sheds had dirty water pouring down it from a drain high up on the side. She knew nothing of ships, nothing at all, but moored at the quay the Tantallon Castle looked big and solid enough to withstand anything the Germans could throw at it.

  She watched Christy kiss April on the cheek. Heard the boot lid slam. Felt vibrations shake the car. Saw the pathetic pile of luggage that Christy and she had brought with them lying on the edge of the pavement.

  Marzipan came out of the guardhouse and stood on the cobbles, smoking a cigarette, watching through the gate.

  ‘All right,’ Polly said, brusquely.

  She kissed Babs, fumbled for the door handle and got out.

  The wind caught her, almost spun her round.

  She braced herself, legs apart, and clutched her hat with one hand.

  Christy came around the bonnet and lowered April into the front seat. He leaned over the child and spoke to Babs, spoke softly, then, with a hand on her shoulder, kissed her on the mouth, backed out, and carefully closed the door.

  The sailor with the rifle unlocked the gate.

  ‘This way, ma’am, please.’

  ‘What about our luggage?’

  ‘We’ll see that it’s stowed aboard, don’t worry.’

  She looked at the gate, at the ship, at Marzipan waiting by the guardhouse – then at the car. For a split second she was tempted to give up, to let Dominic down as she had let him down so often in the past, to yank open the door of the Wolseley, jump in and yell at Babs to take her home.

  She could see her sister’s face through the windscreen, a strange tearful little smile compressing her lips.

  Babs waved.

  Polly waved back.

  Christy took her arm.

  She turned away from the motorcar and let him lead her through the gate while Babs, her duty done, reversed the Wolseley out on to the main road and swiftly, all too swiftly, drove away.

  Apr
il

  19

  The weather that Sunday could have gone either way. Pearly cloud covered the hills and sifted down into the valley of the Clyde, drifting and wavering in the windless morning air. Dougie, out planting leeks, thought that the mist would thicken into rain and insisted that the children take their raincoats to church, but by the time they returned from Breslin, accompanied not only by Miss Dawlish but by Bernard and Lizzie too, the sun had broken through and Babs and April arrived off the lunch-time bus to find the farm bathed in pale sunshine.

  As soon as they’d been fed, the girls wandered off into the big field in front of the house to look for buttercups under Angus’s watchful eye. He was very attentive to his sisters now, to April especially, for the praise that had been heaped upon him – much to June’s chagrin – for his prompt action down in the woods had reminded him of his role as ‘the man’ in the family. Babs, in fact, was very proud of her son now that he had quietened down and even at age ten he seemed in some ways more sensible and mature than his father had ever been.

  The adults were still in the kitchen, still seated around the table drinking tea and smoking, when Angus reappeared in the doorway.

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘Yes, honey.’

  ‘There’s a man out there.’

  ‘A man?’ said Miss Dawlish.

  ‘Where are the girls?’ said Bernard, making to rise.

  ‘He says he knows you, Mum,’ said Angus.

  Puzzled, Babs followed Angus out into the yard.

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘I told him it was private property,’ said Angus, ‘an’ to wait at the gate. He’s over there, see.’

  Babs looked up and laughed.

  ‘You know him?’ said Angus

  ‘Yeah, it’s only Mr Harding from the office where I work.’

  ‘Does he always dress like that?’ said Angus.

  ‘Fortunately not,’ said Babs.

  Angus’s less than warm welcome had obviously daunted Archie Harding and he had stayed right where he was at the open gate at the turn of the track. He had one hip braced against the gate and one foot on the ground and the bicycle, like a centaur’s legs, almost seemed to be part of him. He wore shorts, a ribbed sweater and a yellow sou’wester. Babs grinned and walked across the yard, Angus trailing some yards behind.