It was Hannes who spotted the conning tower of the U-boat gliding towards us. The gun was manned and three men in heavy coats stood on the deck, one looking straight at us through his binoculars. ‘Take the wheel, Agnes,’ Duncan shouted, jumping towards the gun, but Hannes stood up and waved. ‘Es lebe Ossian!’ he shouted. ‘Es lebe Ossian.’
His voice carried over the still, cold water. The gull cried.
The gunner on the U-boat lowered his sights and looked towards his captain, who raised a hand. I was close enough to see he was bearded, and then the black wall of the submarine passed in front of us, the propellers churning the water with a low humming sound. Duncan cut the engine and hove to. We were sitting in the water, rising and falling on the swell. The water gurgled in the heads as the huge machine passed in front of us, its black back shining like a whale.
‘They let us go,’ I said, but Duncan was not happy. He stood looking after the sub, which was submerging, hiding from the sea planes at Lough Erne. ‘They are hunting, Aggie. They probably have bigger fish to fry.’
He spat into the water and turned to face Hannes. ‘What did he say?’ he asked me.
‘Ossian,’ said Hannes. ‘Ein Held der Schotten. A Scottish hero.’
‘Never heard of him,’ said Duncan. ‘What the hell are we doing, Aggie?’
‘Wagner,’ said Hannes. ‘Schubert.’
‘Get him back under the nets,’ said Duncan, ‘before I kill him.’
He went into the wheelhouse and slammed the door, coaxing the engine back into life. I remembered stories of old scores settled at sea. The accidents that weren’t questioned, although everyone knew they were the last page of a longer story. As the sun rose higher, Ireland appeared as a thin, grey line on the horizon and grew steadily bigger. The moon still floated behind us, growing paler in the light.
We put Hannes ashore above Dundalk Bay. ‘Go to the authorities,’ said Duncan. ‘They will find you a place to stay, or lock you up. Either way, it will be an end to this madness.’
‘Herzlichen Dank, Agnes,’ shouted Hannes as he jumped into the shallows to wade up the beach. ‘Meine kleine Zauberin.’ He waved and turned away. He looked very small, alone on the shore.
‘What did he say?’ Duncan asked.
‘I don’t know. You wouldn’t let me bring the dictionary.’
He laughed then. ‘You’re sixpence short of the full shilling, sis,’ he said, and throttled the boat round.
‘Maybe Hannes won’t fight if he gets back. The vines will need him.’
‘Or maybe he will be straight back in a plane.’ Duncan sighed. ‘He’s part of the war machine. It eats all the little people and spits out the bones.’
22
Duncan burnt the dictionary when we got back. Mother looked on but said nothing. I thought I saw some German handwriting on the flyleaf as it curled in the flames, but as I stood up to pull it back out, Mother held it down with the poker. I sat back down. ‘Let it go, Agnes,’ she said.
I opened my mouth to reply, but from the way she said it, I knew it would never be mentioned again. ‘Remember you have a family,’ she said, and picked up her pail of scraps for the hens. From the window, I saw her walk down the path and the hens came running to greet her. Duncan stood up and put on the wireless. The RAF had dropped bombs on Düsseldorf or somewhere, and Mussolini had banned people from listening to ghost voices on the wireless. Was that who we were – ghost voices? Hannes was moving back towards that world. Duncan lit his pipe and followed Mother into the garden.
Cocooned in Mother’s perfect silence over the guest we had never had, I stayed on the farm through the potato harvest, grubbing in the earth for the tatties, which were hard and round in their bed of soil. I pulled them from the roots of the tumbled, green plants, splitting the thin, white veins that held them. I tried to forget the city and Jeff and Hannes. Douglas seemed like a character in a film, someone who had once loomed above me on the screen. I knew the shape of his lips and the sound of his voice; I knew the way his eyes crinkled when he laughed, but he seemed unreal, as if he lived in another world.
Jeff’s letters from the prison grew more and more pitiful, keeping me tied to him. I had sent his ID card to the governor, and Jeff wrote to say that he was disappointed that I had cancelled my visit, but was glad to know I was safe. He was feeling weak with the cold and thought he might be getting arthritis. He said that Douglas’ bid to become Rector of Edinburgh University had been defeated despite the best efforts of the student SNP members to have him elected from behind bars. He was running out of paper as Sylvia had flu and was unable to bring more, so it would be his last letter for a while. In my heart I didn’t want any more letters from him and I knew I couldn’t stay married to him. I didn’t want his children, or to live in his gloomy flat, locked in a war over dust with Mrs MacDougall.
Dad had his lawyer draw up the papers to file for my divorce while Mother turned Father Xavier’s tea salty with her tears. I could picture them praying for me and I expected to hear all about what a bad Catholic I was when she got home, but all she said was she had found out that a marriage in a registry office had never been a real marriage in the eyes of the Church, so there was nothing to worry about. Father Xavier had been a great comfort, she said.
The land turned over to sleep after the harvest and I took to putting on my wellingtons and walking out along the coastal path with the dogs. The sheep were nibbling at the turnips Mother now made into jam with dye and packets of wooden pips from the Ministry of Food. The fields were muddy when I jumped down from the gates between them, and the dogs flew over behind me, bounding across the bare earth to chase the gulls from their kingdom with gleeful barks. I wished the swing of their tails could wipe my slate clean, and I carried the small, hard stone of my betrayal as a pain in my chest, or rolled it between my fingers in a deep pocket. It never left me and I avoided my old friends, saying I was too sad about Jeff to go to tea, or a ceilidh, even on my birthday.
At the end of October, the usual stream of bairns came guising at the back door on Halloween, and sang in their reedy voices with their arms round each other. I pressed pennies and pieces of tablet made from Mother’s sugar ration into the hands of witches, who bristled with brooms to clear the path to hell. Dad drew on his pipe and smiled at their blind turnip lanterns dancing on gales of laughter. I envied them. I was becoming a hollow woman, scooped out, my face a mask. Mother gripped my wrist in the circle between her thumb and forefinger in the morning and said I was getting too thin. ‘We’ll need to fatten you up before winter, or you’ll freeze,’ she said, and I nodded, but there was ice on the inside of my window by mid-November, and nothing could warm me.
I applied to visit Jeff in the first week of December to let him know I wanted to divorce him, but when I arrived at the prison the warder told me there was a smallpox outbreak and I should go home. ‘I am sorry, Mrs McCaffrey,’ he said, ‘it would seem you’ve had a wasted journey.’
I didn’t have the heart to leave the divorce papers with him and so I took them with me. Perhaps when the outbreak was over, I could sort it out. I sat on the Morningside tram with my chin pressed down into my scarf.
The flat was dark and cold. When I went down to the back garden to see if I could find a last brussels sprout or stick of rhubarb, there was little sign of my bonfire, just the metal top of one of the coat hangers lying in the grass, dusted with frost. It sparkled, a question mark lying at my feet, but I had no answers. The vegetables had all died back and I ate the pickles and bread Mother had packed, then tried to take Mrs MacDougall a piece of home-cured ham.
‘I think it would be better if we weren’t seen together,’ she said, and shut the door without taking the food. I knew she would be standing just round the corner of her hall, out of sight of the letter box, listening to see what I did next.
‘He’s gone, Mrs MacDougall. To Ireland,’ I shouted through the flap, but I only heard the scuff of her slippers on the linoleum as she scuttled away, and he
r kitchen door closing.
The next day, I called the switchboard at the prison to ask when I could see Jeff, but the woman said in a very bright voice, ‘Please hold the line while I connect you to the infirmary, Mrs McCaffrey.’
A tired-sounding man cleared his throat as he spoke into the receiver and asked me to sit down. ‘I understand from the warder who reported your visit yesterday, that you didn’t receive our telegram with regard to your husband’s health. Are you alone, Mrs McCaffrey? If so, I would advise you to ask someone to come in to sit with you. I have some difficult news.’
‘There is no one I can ask,’ I said.
‘Well, I regret to inform you that your husband has succumbed to the outbreak and has developed bronchopneumonia, which is a not uncommon complication in smallpox. I regret to say that he is very poorly indeed. I was hopeful he might respond to treatment but, in his weakened condition, I’m afraid you might have to prepare yourself for the worst.’
I never heard what he said next. I dropped the receiver and my knees buckled. I lay on the floor crying for a long time and I thought I might choke, the tears came so fast. My head felt too heavy to lift and I heard myself saying, ‘My poor Og, my poor Og,’ over and over again. Every time I thought of his curly hair on our pillow in the sun all those months ago, I cried harder, and it surprised me because I thought I hated him.
Early the next day, I cycled over to Saughton and a warder led me through the barred gates of the prison and tiled halls to the infirmary, gently, one hand on my elbow, as if I was already a widow. A nurse tied me into a green gown, which smelt of disinfectant, and secured a thick mask over my nose and mouth. When I saw Jeff, I knew it was too late. I was only allowed to look at him from behind a window in the corridor, although they wheeled his bed nearer the glass. He opened his eyes once, but didn’t speak. I didn’t know if he could see me or not. Small craters had burst on his cheeks and neck, and his chest rose and fell as if he was running. He was trapped in a battlefield. Through the afternoon and overnight, I watched his breathing slow and his face slacken, and then he was gone. His body looked soft, as if he was sleeping on his side, with his hands folded one on top of the other as if in prayer. I couldn’t cry, although a howl was growing in my chest, but it seemed wrong to let it out in that moment of stillness, as if it might call him back or disturb him. He looked as if something very big had happened that needed all his attention, and I sat on in a tent of black-out blinds, which shut out the whole world, and the path that had led us here. An orderly entered the sick room, held a mirror in front of Jeff’s lips and opened the window to let his soul go. He didn’t look at me, as if Jeff’s death was shameful and I was part of it. I sat there staring at the floor until a nurse guided me away to a small room, where she gave me a cup of tea. ‘I’ll need to give you an injection,’ she said. ‘Please roll up your sleeve… and… all done. Quarantine yourself at home for twelve days. If you feel at all feverish, you must contact your doctor immediately. I am sorry for your loss, dear, but we are unable to release the body, so you must be brave. He’s in God’s arms now. Our undertaker will deliver the ashes to your house, and I can assure you it will all be carried out with the greatest respect.’
She turned a page of her notebook. ‘Now, can you just confirm your address, please?’
She paused with her pen over the sheet of paper. ‘Take your time. The doctor will sign the death certificate for you and forward it. Do you have any questions?’
I shook my head.
That night, I cried under my quilt, muffling my screams until I thought I would suffocate, and it was there in the dark as I tried to sleep that I first felt the strangeness in my belly. I lay on my back, my hands exploring the shape of my stomach, which had tightened into a small mound. I didn’t know why I hadn’t noticed it before. I thought my weight gain was the new regime at home. Mother had been feeding me up with meat from the farm and sago pudding, and I had only ever had to put my rags out on the line once in a blue moon. I thought it was being wartime thin for so long that had stopped Aunt Ruby’s visit. I wasn’t sure what to do now. I didn’t want to be a mother on my own and I began to cry again as if there was an unlimited supply of tears in my body and I hadn’t shed a single one. In the morning, I took some castor oil and climbed into a very hot bath, but nothing happened. I didn’t know where to find the women I heard helped with these things, and I didn’t want to make God angry, so I prayed that I would have the strength to deal with whatever happened. Perhaps it would never come to life.
23
I don’t remember that first week after Jeff’s death. I think I just sat in the flat, and then Sylvia drove me to Morningside Cemetery on Balcarres Street with Jeff’s ashes in a plain urn on my knee. It was too snowy to take the car up the drive. The graves ran in concentric circles round the hillside, locked away from view behind high, sandstone walls and wrought iron gates. It was a place of memory, of sadness. I read the names of the dead as we walked past the gravestones; the lists of family members memorialised with the date of their death; the day they never knew was coming. I pictured them getting up in the morning never knowing it was to be that day when everything stopped, and all the things they meant to say, or do, or put right, became impossible. I hugged the urn of the man I had betrayed, the man who had betrayed me, and tears ran down my cheeks at the confusion of it all. The ground was so cold that the gravediggers had had to warm the earth with braziers to dig a hole that was deep enough. The coals lay smoking to one side. I buried Jeff’s ashes in his parents’ grave beneath their grey, granite headstone on the seventeenth of December. Their names were picked out in gold, but Jeff’s name was scratched in bare letters, and someone had added mine: ‘Mourned by his loving wife, Agnes’.
‘I thought it was expedient to put yours on now, dear,’ said Sylvia. ‘Saves them chiselling away at the thing when it’s your turn.’ At the bottom of the stone, moss filled the legend ‘Until a’ the shadows flee awa”.
I didn’t have the heart to tell her that they would never add my dates here. The love that had sewn me to Jeff was unpicked, and only the marks left by the needle in the old cloth of our marriage remained. Sylvia held my arm, and Mrs MacDougall stood a short distance away beside a stone angel, which dripped icicle tears beneath a tree. Although Jeff wasn’t Catholic, I said a prayer for him. He couldn’t complain now. My words carried over the graves: ‘Come blessed of my Father, take possession of the Kingdom prepared for you.’
Sylvia sighed and Mr Lamont stood with his chin lowered into his scarf, watching. He only found his voice again at the wake at the Bruntsfield Hotel, reading out telegrams of condolence as if a great body of people were present. I didn’t know many of their names. ‘He loves a platform,’ said Sylvia, and slipped a sandwich to her dogs under the table.
The animals near my feet comforted me and I lifted the edge of the cloth to see them. ‘You should get yourself a dog, Agnes. It would be company for you. You don’t want to knock round that rotten, old flat by yourself. Turn into a Mrs MacDougall hiding in graveyards. You are far too young and gorgeous, as I never stop telling you. Take it from an old blue-stocking who knows.’
I was too tearful to speak. She squeezed my arm.
‘Let’s hope Douglas makes it,’ she said. ‘We could use him in the department now, if the Ancient Greeks in Aberdeen will let him come after this war is over.’
Mr Lamont stopped stirring his tea. ‘I believe he will be released in March, all being well, although the Ministry of Labour are putting some pressure on him to clarify what he’ll do on his release.’
‘They wouldn’t lock him up again?’ said Sylvia.
‘Well, my dear,’ said Mr Lamont, ‘the issues are still the same. Talking of which…’ He turned to me. ‘Would you mind most awfully if I came by with the motor to collect Jeff’s papers for Douglas? He is a terrible magpie when it comes to the written word. Never throws a scrap out. You’d think everything ever penned was gold. He’ll want to take up the reins
from where Jeff left off.’
I felt a sense of relief. I didn’t want to see if there were any more photos of a life I had never shared, tucked into the papers that had destroyed us, silent in their dark niches. ‘You can take his typewriter, too, Mr Lamont. Jeff wanted you to have it, although one of the letters jumps above the line.’
‘You are most generous in your grief, my dear. If the SHRA can ever be of any assistance to you whatsoever, you must telephone me. I’ll advise the Scottish Mutual Aid Committee of your current predicament as an indigent Edinburgh lady.’
‘I’m no Edinburgh lady,’ I said. ‘I am an Ayrshire lass and I will work for my living.’
He gave Sylvia a look.
‘Not on the farm, dear. You can’t bury yourself in the country,’ said Sylvia. ‘I would miss you.’
I squeezed her hand. ‘It’s all I know, but don’t worry, I’m not going all the way down to Ayr. I’ll join the Land Army. There’s a nursery at Laurelhill. That won’t kill me.’ But I didn’t know what choice I would have. Perhaps they would send me South like the other lassies? I’d seen them in a Ministry film, filling shells with dust in a factory. Their eyes were red-rimmed, and they had looked up and smiled at the camera as a plummy voice talked about their heroic contribution to the war effort.
Mr Lamont and his friend emptied Jeff’s study that afternoon. ‘Forgive the haste in your time of grief,’ he said. ‘Are you quite sure you don’t want to see if there is anything of sentimental value?’
‘Jeff always kept this door shut,’ I said. ‘It was his ain room.’ I sighed.
Capital Union, A Page 13
