Joyce, mind reader that she was, had taken Seppe aside when the letter arrived. ‘Don’t you be fretting with Billy coming back. You’ll never hear our Amos say it, but you’re family too now, you and Joe. And Amos is fierce loyal to his family, you know that.’ Joyce had long since given up trying to talk to Seppe about the letters she got from Connie. At first she’d left them around for him to see, even underlined the bits where Connie asked after him. But as far as Joyce and Amos could tell, Seppe resolutely never even glanced at them.
When Amos returned from his morning round, they’d gathered baskets and left the oaks behind, gone down towards Pillowell to a place Amos knew. It was clear and crisp today, the leaves rustling their scarlets and ochres in anticipation of impending release. Joe had fallen over, laughed and thrown up a handful of leaves, only wanting a carry right towards the end.
Seppe bit into a hazelnut and was back in Italy, sitting at the table whilst his mother made torta di nocciole. They were sweet, the memory and the nut, time ripening them both. Mamma would have been happy, in the end, to see this life he had made. And she was safe from the Major now, and would not have feared the end because in her mind it would have meant reuniting with Alessa. Seppe sighed, smiled.
He reached for another nut, arm extended to full sinew, stretching out the aches of woodcutting. Beneath Seppe’s feet the rung of the ladder wobbled; below, Amos adjusted his stance and the ladder was firm again. Connie would have loved this; he smiled to remember how much she’d enjoyed the apple picking last year. But even without her, these small acts of harvesting brought their own pleasures, made their own memories. He looked down at Joe, who grubbed for a nutshell and hurled it at Amos, giggling. Joe’s wrists were already poking out from his pullover again. Amos joked it was all this sunshine, growing him faster than a sapling. Seppe would talk to Joyce about unravelling a couple of his sweaters to knit something bigger for the child this winter.
Earlier in the summer they’d gone out for a picnic to celebrate Frank’s birthday. Joyce had borrowed a camera from someone she did some sewing for, was insistent that they get a record of the day even though Frank himself said he’d rather not mark the passing of the years, thank you very much. She’d arranged them all together and taken their picture and something in the way she’d been fussing, making sure Joe was in full view, made Seppe sit up straight in realisation at who she was sending the picture on to. Would Connie have recognised this giggling little boy, the baby in him receding almost weekly?
Would she recognise either of them? For Seppe, too, had grown. Those hundreds of napkins changed and washed, the nights of pacing amongst the oaks rocking Joe out of a nightmare he couldn’t yet express: it had pulled him up, made him stronger.
That first winter, he’d lived in the shadow of his desperate need for Connie’s return. He’d glimpsed her a thousand times, lurking behind the trunk of an oak as he raised the axe to it, skipping down the slope towards the cottage in a breeze. After his trip to London, it had got worse, not better, for a while, his mind taunting him with images of her laughing on that joist, content. Without him. But when the leaves unfurled fully in the summer sunshine, he’d unfurled with them.
Now he cast his own shadows. Connie’s absence was there every time he looked at Joe, but it wasn’t a hole any more. Now it was a knot in the wood that marked what had gone before. They had got through that winter, him and Amos and Joe, and this is who they were now.
Seppe pinched a hazelnut where it joined the branch, the soft vole-like fur of its casing a promise against his skin. No need to rush getting down the ladder; the basket would only tip and they’d have to start all over again. Amos took it off him as he stepped down onto the ground.
‘Time to get this one home for some tea.’
‘Yes, it must be.’ Seppe lobbed the empty shell casing at Joe who ran squealing behind the trunk.
Baskets full, they made their way back home. Seppe looked up at the leaves, pellucid against the inky sky. That had been a good afternoon. Who knew what happened next to the nuts? Amos or Joyce would doubtless show him. Or he could rack his brains for the torta recipe, maybe check with Gianni, married now to his English Mary and helping to run the Bell. The others had all gone back to Italy, the camp dissipating and with it the final vestiges of threat, of the homeland. Gianni visited often, cooed at Joe in Italian. ‘Aren’t you teaching Joe? He can have his own private language, this little Italian Forester.’ Gianni was devoted to Mary, settled here now for the rest of his days, but he was desperately homesick, clung to any vestige of home that he could. But Seppe had smiled and shaken his head. His life was here now, he had no need of the language that bound him to the past.
Joe picked up a fallen twig, cupped his hand into the cleft, and pointed it at Seppe.
Where had he learned this? Seppe grinned at Amos and fell to the ground, wounded, possibly fatally.
‘No, no stop! You have me captive!’ He writhed, the ground pulsing with the dregs of summer. ‘Oof!’ Joe landed on top of him, pudgy hands claiming his victory. There was only one thing for it. Seppe leaped up, swinging Joe like an axe. The child shrieked with laughter and Seppe’s heart filled.
Seppe paused when they reached the hut, picked up a fallen branch and shot Joe once for luck. ‘I’ll come to the house in two minutes.’
It was cool inside the hut, despite the wood overlain with brush to keep out draughts. He’d need to start thinking about how to heat it, maybe do some overtime now he could be paid for it and buy one of those tortoise stoves like Frank’s. It had been frigid in here over the winter, ice latticing the windows in the mornings, colder even than the sardine bunks in the Nissen huts despite the four blankets Joyce had insisted he take. It was always cosier, though. His bed, built into the side of the wall, boasted not one but two of Joyce’s blankets, their mismatched knitted squares ensuring Joe could learn every colour just by pointing at one and repeating the word; on the narrow table Seppe had built against the opposite wall, a small box contained more wood, offcuts waiting for his next carving project.
No time for carving now, though. Seppe splashed water on his face from the jug, scrubbed at his hands and left. He paused at the gate into Amos’s garden as he often did. Family. From here, in the half-light, the view into Amos’s kitchen was illuminated like a painting by the gas light within. Joe was running backwards and forwards by the range, playing soldiers with Bess now. Where was Amos? Seppe walked closer and Amos came into the frame, over in the corner by the scullery. He was stilled, staring at something in his hand. Seppe stopped walking to watch.
When he got going again, the garden was longer than usual, the oaks whispering from the edges. Amos met him at the doorway, still holding the object in question. It was a letter.
‘Has something happened to Billy?’
‘It’s not our Billy. Look. You want to have a read of this one, lad.’ Amos thrust the letter at Seppe. Was that fear or curiosity in his voice?
The envelope was fat and its whisper matched that of the oaks above. Seppe turned it over, saw the scrappy handwriting.
Still in the same fearsome rush.
His stomach lurched.
SEPPE STEPPED OUTSIDE. THE trees bent to greet him, draw him forward, the promise of autumn steady and sure. Seppe strode into the gloaming. A breeze gusted the leaves, flung a rainbow of bronze and scarlet from the beeches above. Beneath his boots, twigs cracked like bones.
Fifty-Five
IT WAS ONLY WHEN she changed trains at Gloucester and got on the two-carriage chugger that her stomach had unclenched. They’d curved round the river where it was as broad as the sea, gulls swooping down on the mud flats as the train had leaned into the turn. Connie pressed back from the window until they’d left the bends behind and nosed their way up the hill.
The trees had been thickening around the railway sidings for a good few minutes now, wrapping the train into the Forest. Connie looked at her hand where it gripped the open window. It was cast again in the
amber of autumndiluted leaf-light that she’d stopped noticing until she’d moved up to the city and realised how grey everything was there. She put the other hand up to join it. There! Now she was wearing orangey-brown gloves.
They had slowed right down now, the wheels juddering on the rails. Connie ground her teeth. Was she going to be sick with nerves? That’d be a pretty way to arrive.
Think about something else, Granger. She swallowed hard once, twice, and stuck her head right out of the window, forcing the thought into the breeze. Her hair flapped into her face and she closed her eyes. You didn’t need to see the trees to know this was the forest. She breathed sharply in – there was that furniture polish smell again. God, but she’d missed that. Vi had come in one night, caught Connie sniffing at the tub, and thought she’d gone doolally.
The train jolted to a halt and she almost came a cropper against the side of the window. An old gent behind her reached out and gripped her by the elbow. ‘You all right there, wench?’
There was that Forest of Dean burr, as round and tippy as the tree-covered hills. She beamed and the poor bloke stepped back, doffed his cap and beckoned for her to get off the train before him. His face was a picture. Get a grip. Scaring the locals was the last thing she wanted to do.
But she couldn’t help twisting back and smiling again as she shouldered her bag and stepped onto the station platform. That voice. He sounded like Amos, like Frank. Would Seppe have a hint of that now?
Would Joe?
She plonked down her bag whilst she got her bearings. It was a battered kitbag belonging to some old flame of Vi’s, less of a pain to lug around than her suitcase, especially since it was only half full. She hadn’t told Vi what she was up to, not exactly, just asked for a borrow of the bag to ‘pay a visit to old friends’. Vi’s mind had gone instantly to the gutter like it always did, and this time Connie had been happy to leave it there.
She’d have known this was Cinderford, even without the sign outside the station. It still gave you a shock, seeing all the place names uncovered now that Jerry was no longer a threat. And it wasn’t like it made any difference out here – no stranger would have the first clue how to get through the trees, however many signs went up. She laughed out loud and got a strange look from a woman walking past, dragging a shopping trolley with one hand and a squawking kid in another. Must be the nerves.
Connie strode down the main street and paused at the butcher’s. What should she bring them? She’d saved her coupons specially. God knows they’d been feeding Joe these past months; in that photo that Joyce had sent he was real bonny now. She hugged her arms to her with the excitement of soon getting to pick him up again, see for herself. What if he won’t let me pick him up any more? She hugged herself tighter, squeezing away the thought before it took hold.
But the queue snaked out round the counter and nearly to the door. Someone would see her and get word to Amos – and Seppe – faster than she could say, ‘pound of sausages, please’. She shrugged the kitbag higher and moved on out of the town.
She’d forgotten that the trees made great big arches over the roads. Connie skipped, the kitbag bashing her between the shoulder blades. Good job Vi couldn’t see her now; she’d think she’d fully lost her marbles.
There was a rustle from the side of the road and Connie turned, just caught sight of a white flash of tail bounding away. She’d never been able to keep straight all the different types of deer. Maybe Seppe could teach her – it was the sort of thing he’d have clocked right away.
She was jumping ahead of herself.
Above the treetops a hawk orbited a target only it could see, biding its time. Crows clacked around it, black wings beating. She stopped to watch, her heartbeat matching the crow’s wingbeats, not quite sure who she was rooting for.
The hawk moved in for the kill, its wings back as it plummeted between the treetops, the crows banished.
Connie sharpened her pace.
The road stretched in front of her, long and straight and lined with oaks.
Acknowledgements
Never one to do anything without excessive overthinking and discussion, I’ve been ridiculously lucky to have incredible support from so many people.
Huge thanks to my editor, Eleanor Dryden, for your glorious mix of unflaggable enthusiasm and razor-sharp talent. This book wouldn’t exist in this form without your ninja skills. Enormous thanks too to my agent Juliet Pickering for such talented editorial acumen and bottomless patience expertise and friendship. Thanks to all at Blake Friedmann and at Bonnier Zaffre, particularly Alex Allden, Sarah Bauer, Emily Burns, Tara Loder and the miraculous sales and marketing team.
Dave Franklin has lived with this project for years and to call him ‘supportive’ doesn’t come close. For getting me out of my own way more times than I can count, for brilliant, brutal feedback on several iterations of the manuscript and for never, ever failing to believe that I’d finish it: thank you.
Carys Bray is the friend every writer – every person – needs. I’m so glad that our words on the page led us to meet. Thank you for endless conversations about ways to describe trees, for reading the manuscript in its various stages of development and for your insightful advice on so very much.
Jenn Ashworth’s mentorship and friendship have both been just like Jenn: fierce, kind and extraordinarily intelligent. Thank you doesn’t cover it. My gratitude, too, to the Arvon/Jerwood Foundation for the support which led to this opportunity.
Rachael Beale, Susie Hales, Simon Hepworth, Scott Pack and Grahame Williams all read various iterations of this manuscript and offered their views: thank you.
To my friends: thank you to those of you who know this path all too well and have been such understanding company along the way: Sam Baker, Alison Barrow, Stephanie Butland, Anna Carey, Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Lissa Evans, Shelley Harris, Alison Hennessey, Jason Hewitt, Francesca Main, Sarra Manning, Julie Mayhew, Cliff Shephard and Craig Taylor. And for your unquestioning cheerleading of my peculiar need to stay in and scowl at adjectives: thank you Ann Allen, Carrie Baker, Elisabeth Baker, Ilona Blue, Lisa and Nick Cheek, Sue Crosbie, Sue Franklin, Kate Harper, Steve Hay, Melanie Martin, Karen O’Neill, Jason and Bee Noble, Mel and Marc Pullen, Andy Richards, Jane and Adam Scott, and Jo and Martin Sutton.
Thanks to Janice MacNamee for space and time to write the book. Thanks also to the staff at Gladstone’s Library and to Deborah Dooley and the late Bob Cooper at Retreats for You for literal shelter for parts of the writing of this. My colleagues and students at Oxford Brookes have provided excellent distraction and been overwhelmingly enthusiastic on my behalf, as have the brilliant team at Blackwell’s in Oxford and the Short Stories Aloud gang.
Thank you to my parents, Neil and Lynette Harper, for support throughout and for instilling in me a love of books and the forest that sustain me wherever I am.
And thanks (again) to Dave, and to Jonah and Lucas, for encouraging me despite my endless half-sentences and for making it hard to sit down and write because I’d rather be hanging out with you. You are all my favourites.
Author’s note
Though I’ve used real locations and place names in this fictional account of the Forest of Dean, some liberties have been taken with geography; a transgression I’m hoping any Foresters will forgive. Similarly, some licence has been taken with depictions of the bombing in Coventry.
The following resources have been of huge interest and use to me during the research that underpinned this novel.
The archive room at the Imperial War Museum in London was the source of several first-hand accounts of lumberjills and Italian POWs.
John Belcher and the Dean Heritage Museum in Soudley kindly opened their archives and talked to me both about POW camps in the Forest and about the lumberjills. John was of further help in furnishing me with an account of an Italian POW, Bruno Porciani, who was resident in the camp.
Gratitude is due to Manfred Hahn for generously sending me the translation of his uncle
Willi Bungart’s self-published book, War Captivity, also depicting life in both Camp 61 and other British POW camps. Further information about POWs in the UK came from Sophie Jackson’s book Churchill’s Unexpected Guests.
Nicola Tyler’s account of the World War Two landgirls, They Fought in the Fields, contains an illuminating chapter on the Women’s Timber Corps, as does All Muck, Now Medals by Joan Mant. W.E. Sherwell-Cooper’s Land Girl: A Manual For Volunteers in the Women’s Land Army, was similarly useful. Russell Meiggs’ Home Timber Production 1939-1945 contained several references to the Forest of Dean and was illuminating as an overall picture of the necessity of the lumberjills to this vital war effort.
Several sources provided material for both the location and the time period. The Forest of Dean in Wartime, by Humphrey Phelps, contains many first-hand accounts of life in the Forest during the war years. Joyce Latham’s Whistling in the Dark is a great first-hand account, too. The archives of the Dean Forest Mercury – now the Forester newspaper in Cinderford – were also invaluable in this regard, my thanks to Tina, Andy, and the staff there for their help and hospitality. Though tackling the time immediately after the war, Dennis Potter’s The Changing Forest has shaped my thinking for decades and undoubtedly brought me to this material. Similarly, I can’t remember when I first read How We Lived Then, Norman Longmate’s exhaustive account of daily life in Britain in the Second World War, but it was as engrossing now as it was all those years ago.
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