‘Killed?’
Amos peered again at the letter, muttering the words under his breath. After he finished it the second time he sat with it open on his lap, staring at Billy’s clothes where they hung in the wardrobe. The window rattled in the breeze and the letter lifted slightly. Amos steadied it with a gnarled hand, turned to Seppe.
‘Reckon you do be right, lad. Well.’
He scored open the second letter and the faintest waft of scent came into the room. Before Seppe could check himself, he looked around for Connie, even in this room so full of her.
‘Cripes.’ Amos tilted the letter slightly to one side and gave Seppe a look. What was the problem? Seppe twisted, grasping Joe more firmly, until he could read it.
USAF Station Grafton Underwood
Warwickshire
25th August, 1944
Dear Don,
I’m sending this to the barracks but for all I know you’re out and fighting by now. Got no other way of contacting you so this seemed worth a shot.
Struggling to put a face to the name, are you? If I’ve got your measure, there will have been plenty of girls since me. And time has passed since we last saw each other.
Plenty of time for things to come clear. That’s right, Yankee, you’re a daddy. Father to a son and heir, as it turns out – master Joseph William.
Sorry to spring this on you, Don. It was a hell of a shock for me, too, to be honest. I suppose it was asking too much for those chances we took to come to nothing. But no use crying over spilt milk, eh? Better to make the most of the hand we’re dealt. Don’t worry, I want nothing from you. I’ve got everything sorted out – well, sort of.
I just thought a man deserved to know about his son. Give you something to fight for maybe, when you’re out there. And if you don’t want to know him, well, just pretend this letter never reached you. Nobody will be any the wiser.
Hope you’re well. We had a good time, didn’t we?
Connie
Who was this Yankee, who blasted through women faster than munitions and remembered none of them? This was Joe’s father, here in the letter. Joe’s actual father, and Joe – this warm, funny baby who beamed every time he saw Seppe, who would reach out his arms and bounce to be picked up – had never known his real father. His real father. Seppe swallowed hard but the thought wouldn’t clear.
He couldn’t sit down, not any more; the thought was too much. Seppe moved Joe onto Amos’s lap and stood up.
‘Do you think she has gone to meet this American?’
‘Don’t be daft. She didn’t even post the letter, did she?’
‘But maybe she has gone to find him, to tell him about Joe.’ Perhaps Connie would rather marry this – this Yank – than him. Perhaps she thought that if Joe needed any father at all, he needed his real one. Perhaps he, Seppe, had made this happen, by bringing up the idea of marriage. Self-loathing rushed back and tears threatened at the back of his eyes. It was all too much, too much. He had taken what they had and destroyed it. His heart pounded and he had to sit down again.
Amos folded the letter back into the envelope. ‘Well, maybe she has and maybe she hasn’t. We don’t know where she is. Perhaps Joyce’ll know, when she’s back from the shops. But far as I see it right now, Connie’s done a flit and the bab’s been left here with us. So it’s up to us to look after him. Simple as that.’
‘Done a flit?’ Seppe stared at Amos. He could understand most things Amos said these days, but that couldn’t be the right phrase.
‘Gone, lad.’
Something tipped in Seppe’s brain and he reached out a hand to steady himself against the dizziness. It was like losing Alessa all over again. But this time he’d done everything he could and still he had lost Connie.
‘No. No. She isn’t gone. She can’t be gone.’ His disbelief racketed around the room and Joe whimpered. ‘She isn’t gone. You mustn’t say such things. The baby will be upset.’
Why was Amos looking at him like that, so soft and sympathetic? He didn’t need pity; he needed Amos to stop saying things that weren’t true. He swallowed hard.
‘She’s gone, Seppe. Facts is facts. You can see that, lad. But our Joe’s right as rain. Look at him.’
Seppe couldn’t look; wouldn’t look. Anger was pulsing in after the disbelief, his cheeks growing hot. How could she leave him? They were planning a future together. This was to be his home – their home. His family. Amos was wrong.
‘She will return tonight.’ But nobody took a suitcase on a day trip. He stuffed his fist in his pocket but the point of the knife stabbed him and he pulled his hand out again. She didn’t care for him. Didn’t care about him. But he loved her. Loved Joe. Loved the promise of their future. He had scared her away.
Seppe sat down on the floor before his legs gave way, and pulled Joe into his lap.
‘But how can she have gone? Joe’s still here. She must have not meant to go.’ She wouldn’t leave him behind.
But what did he know – what did any of them know – about what Connie would or wouldn’t do?
‘She’d planned it, all right. Look.’ Amos pulled open a drawer on Connie’s nightstand and Seppe stared.
‘Joe’s clothes. I see that. But what? She’ll collect these when she comes back for him.’
‘Look closer.’
Seppe lifted Joe into the crib and went over to Amos.
‘What?’ The anger rose again. Who cared about clothes when Connie had gone who knows where? Amos was wasting time, distracting him like he was the baby when all he could feel was the white-hot dread searing through him.
‘You know our Connie. Good girl, but not the tidiest. See here, though.’
Amos wasn’t going to quieten down about the clothes until Seppe looked. He went over to the chest of drawers, looked inside again. Now he saw it, though he wished he didn’t. The clothes all looked clean – and they were so neat! Arranged in careful stacks in the drawers, not thrown in higgledy-piggledy. Ordered. She had put everything in order.
He pressed down hard on the whittling knife and it dug into his thigh. The pain was a throbbing relief. Good. Anything was better than this.
‘But how can she leave Joe?’ How can she leave me?
Amos shook his head as he closed up the drawer again.
‘The babby’ll be all right. You can trust me on this. You and me look after him most of the time anyways, don’t us?’
‘She left us, Amos. She left me.’
‘Aye, looks that way all right.’
‘But for how long? What if she decides in one week, one month, one year that she is coming back? What if this American –’ Seppe looked again at the letter – ‘Don, what if Don decides that he will be Daddy and take Joe back to America?’
He hurled out the questions, but his head swarmed with more. Amos put a hand on his arm.
‘Can’t know any of that, can we? You look here. There’s them as wants the sheep pen and them as wants the field. Our Con, she’s a law unto herself. You know that.’
‘She’ll come back for Joe. And when she does, I can ask her where she’s going.’
‘No, lad,’ Amos sighed.
‘I can! She’s my – I – she has to tell me where she’s going. Where she’s taking Joe.’ He was pacing now, the floorboards creaking, dust pushing up. Amos came and stood at the end of the bed.
‘No, lad. That’s not what I meant.’
It glimmered through this time. ‘Joe stays with us?’
‘This is his home.’
The baby had dozed off in the crib, one arm outflung. Seppe stroked the hair that fell across Joe’s forehead, and he snuffled against Seppe’s cupped hand in the manner of a newborn lamb. Connie had left them. He wasn’t enough for her, his dreams too small. Amos was right. She wasn’t coming back. He needed to say it, no matter how little he wanted it.
‘She’s gone.’
Forty-Seven
Stalag VI-G Bonn-Duisdorf
Germany
2nd Febru
ary, 1945
Dear Father,
I’m not sure if you’ll have got official word before this gets to you, but if you haven’t, I’m awful sorry for the dreadful shock and that it’s taken me so long between letters. The good news is that I’m alive. Thought I’d better say that because a fair few of our boys copped it in that last big push, and I dare say their dads (and mams) will be getting letters from them too, only they’ll be from beyond the grave, or beyond life, at least. Don’t know what happens in terms of a grave when you’ve been involved in a blast like we saw, if I’m honest. There was a long time there I knew you wouldn’t be sure if I was alive or dead and the only thing that kept me going was thinking that you wouldn’t have my death letter so there was a chance for a tiny sprig of hope.
Now if I know you, the minute you’re over the shock of me still being on this mortal coil, you’ll be worrying about me being a prisoner. The first thing I need to say is this: it isn’t too terrible, not one bit. Weren’t they building POW camps up on Wynols Hill and down at Naas when I left? I’ll be honest with you, this is no Wynols Hill, but it’s a darn sight better than it could be. Some of the lads are griping about it being primitive, but I don’t know about that. We’ve got a roof over our heads, and if you’ve never had an inside privy you don’t know to miss it. It’s bitter cold out here – didn’t know that Germany got so frosty. Tell you the truth, I hadn’t never really thought about it until a few months ago.
There’s rationing here, or some form of it, but Jerry’s treating us kriegies fairly – ‘kriegies’ is what they call us over here, something to do with the war we’re in. Hard to think of them as the enemy close up, truth be told. Makes me wonder about the Jerries over in the forest, in the Wynols Hill camp. Or was it Italians you said?
I know you’re not one for sentiment, but it meant the world to hear from you. I got your letter right before they captured us and it made all the difference to know you’re not angry with me any more. Joyce wrote from time to time to keep me from fretting too badly, but that’s nothing like hearing from you myself. I can tell you this, Father, though you might think me soppy: I took your letter back to my bunk and held it up to my nose to see if I could smell the forest still in it, hear that robin that used to keep me company outside my bedroom window. Is he still there, Father, chirping away?
Speaking of company, it sounds like you’ve got some with a vengeance now. A baby in the house! Joyce hadn’t said anything about a lodger. And now there are two of them in there! A bit of new life about the house sounds just the ticket. That Connie must be a dab hand at felling if Frank’s bending over backwards to keep her and anyone who can see their way around the trees is worth hanging on to if you ask me.
Remember how you used to pretend it was me that liked to bring them orphaned lambs home? We both know that really you loved them too. Soft as anything, you are.
I hope this finds you well, Father. I don’t know how long they’ll keep me here – seems like this war could go on for years yet – but I’m safe now. Never thought, when I set off, that I’d be glad to be captured by the Hun, but it turns out it’s probably the best thing that could happen right now. And the Forest will be there for me when I get back, that’s for certain sure.
Your affectionate son,
Billy
Forty-Eight
SEPPE CREPT UP BEHIND the hut, the snow whispering his footprints onto frozen soil. He rounded the corner and, as usual, fought the urge to close his eyes. As long as he didn’t know if she was back or not, there was still hope.
Two weeks, she’d been gone. Two weeks, and not a word. The snow had come down hard, her absence loud in the silence of this shrouded landscape. Everything had changed overnight. Even the trees betrayed him now, their branches heaped with snow that disguised their contours and discharged with a muffled ‘whumpf’ if you got too close. Getting too close was never advisable.
Two more sets of footsteps had appeared since this morning. He knew she’d come back.
Seppe’s steps were lighter now as he drew closer, careful not to dislodge snow into the new prints.
No – he was wrong. It was only one set. Up to the door, then back away, criss-crossing his own in a frigid dance. So she’d been here looking for him and then gone elsewhere. But it had been recent; these prints weren’t yet laced with icy borders.
Seppe followed the tracks towards the wall at the end of Amos’s garden. Were these the footsteps of someone in a hurry? The length of their stride alone would tell him what sort of a mood Connie was in. He aligned himself with the indentations in the snow and matched their pace without stretching.
As Seppe’s foot descended into untouched snow, something else became obvious. His footprints, in these boots, were the same length and breadth as those of his visitor. They couldn’t be Connie’s.
He kicked at the snow and his toes connected with yet another rock that had fallen off the wall. Stupid wall! Stupid snow. Stupid footprints. And stupid him, for daring to believe it. This had never been what he thought it was. Connie was his friend, he saw that now … if only he’d had the sense to slow things down. He’d got it wrong, so wrong, that night at the lake, confused by his feelings about his father’s death, Fredo’s volte-face and the intensity of sharing Alessa’s story. Connie was being a true friend to him and he had misinterpreted and messed it all up. When would he learn that people never cared for him the way he cared for them? Since Connie had left, shame cloaked Seppe, weighed down his shoulders, softened his responses to Frank, to Amos. His felling rate had dropped and he’d done no new work on the hut.
Those footprints belonged to Amos. Seppe looked again, saw paw prints interleaving the footsteps. Of course it was Amos. How could he have been so naïf?
Amos must have been watching out for him; he was at the door almost as Seppe arrived.
‘What is it? Was I supposed to be with Joe?’ It was difficult to remember sometimes when Amos needed him to have the baby and when Amos himself was caring for Joe. Last week they had both fed him a bottle. Joyce had suggested they work out a rota, but Seppe had refused. What was the point of a system when Connie would be back soon?
‘Want to take extra fodder up to the ewes. No chance of them grazing, not in this, and they’re in lamb. Need to eat, they do.’
‘You want me to take it up, this fodder?’
Amos pulled his coat off the fireguard and shrugged it on. It steamed still where it hadn’t fully dried out from before.
‘No, you stay here with our Joe. He’s asleep up there now, napkin’s fresh. If you hear him, just go and deal with him. Everything’s in the usual place.’ Amos fizzed with energy that seemed out of place in such bitter, endless times. Seppe understood that Billy being safe was a wonderful thing for Amos, but the knot in his stomach wound itself into resentment. The Foresters all seemed certain that when the war ended, it would end in victory for the Allies. He wanted to tell them tales of the war, of the British men he’d seen up close, noses harshed with desert burn, eyes wide and desperate. This wasn’t a war with a big strategy on any side, not that he’d seen. It was a war of one man fighting one man, man after man after man until the side that was the most depleted was vanquished, could give no more even though he cared no less. This, he wanted to say, this is what war is. It’s petty and it’s dirty and it’s uncertain, even when the enemy is pointing his rifle at you and shrieking at you in a language so distorted by fear that you don’t know if it’s an order or a warning.
Let’s say the Foresters were right, though. This is where the resentment really kicked in, and Seppe despised himself for it. When this war was finally done, Billy would come back here, to all this and a father who loved him. He had nothing of the sort and now it would seem that he wouldn’t even have Connie. There had still been no word for him, no indication that she had any intention of returning soon.
Amos stamped into his boots, oblivious to Seppe’s bitterness, or misunderstanding its roots. He pulled his cap down tight over
his ears and whistled for Bess. ‘Come on, girl. You and me’ve got a job to do.’ He paused, one hand on the door latch. ‘You’ll miss dinner up at Wynols Hill again. There’s a bit of pie keeping warm in the range.’
‘Thank you.’ Joyce kept nagging him to let the camp guards know he was helping here, relaxed as they were about curfews. But he didn’t see the point for just a few weeks. Frank had been telling the camp boss Seppe was needed for heavy felling duties; after all, it had been true once before.
‘Least I could do.’ Amos opened the door, half glanced in Seppe’s direction.
‘And.’
Amos often paused, weighed out his words before continuing. Seppe waited. Amos shuffled his feet. The ball of resentment reconfigured, serpents winding anxiety up into Seppe’s throat.
‘Amos.’ But he couldn’t ask either, couldn’t dare to hear something he couldn’t bear.
Amos looked at Seppe, swallowed, then opened his mouth again. Seppe had seen him take this approach when lambing; one sharp shock then it was all over. He braced himself without meaning to.
‘There’s a letter. Joyce heard from her.’
‘From Connie?’ The serpents writhed.
Amos shuffled again. ‘She’s fine.’
He slipped out of the door, his boots crunching on compacted snow. As he eased the door into place, he breathed the final words into the closing gap between indoors and outdoors. ‘She sent our Joe her love but she’s not coming back, seems like.’
The words hung there, hot in the cold breath of the hallway. Seppe slid down the wall, past the pictures of Billy and May in the wooden frames he’d made for Amos at Christmas.
‘She’s fine.’ That was it? He opened the door, slammed it again for the sheer wilfulness of the movement. The pictures rattled in their frames.
Fine? He wasn’t fine. Fine was not an admissible word here. It wasn’t even the truth. Seppe paced up and down, the emotion that had evaded him when Livorno burned roaring in now, hot and all-consuming. ‘Fine’ was not abandoning your child and telling nobody where you were going. ‘Fine’ was not leaving your betrothed with no word and no clue. ‘Fine’ was not writing to Joyce but not even bothering to write to the person who had offered you everything.
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