The Uncommon Life of Alfred Warner in Six Days

by Juliet Conlin

  Harding seemed to read his thoughts. ‘Any news from your sister?’ he asked.

  Alfred shook his head.

  ‘I’m sure she’ll be fine,’ Harding said. ‘It’s still chaos over there, from what I hear. Saw the damage on the newsreel, nae a building left standing, from the looks of it.’ He paused and a smile crept on his face. ‘Mebbe she’s still running around looking for a post office.’ He mimed a girl running, pretending to toss his hair back and flapping his hands. Alfred attempted a feeble smile, and they walked the rest of the way in silence.

  The minister, Reverend John Drummond, was waiting for them outside the vicarage. The front garden was beautifully laid out, with two strips of very green lawn bordered by a sea of lavender. Drummond, a large, portly man with white receding hair and a red nose, appeared out of place in its midst.

  ‘Ah, Mr Harding,’ he called as Alfred and Harding approached. ‘And this is our young gardener?’ He stepped forward and shook Alfred’s hand.

  ‘How do you do?’ Alfred said.

  ‘Mr Harding speaks well of you,’ Drummond continued. ‘Said you might perhaps be our secret weapon.’ He narrowed his eyes briefly, then opened them wide again and laughed as he saw Alfred’s confused expression. ‘Just a joke, laddie, just a joke. But we do take the flower show seriously. Cannae be having them Cumnock folk gloating again.’

  ‘Next village south of here,’ Harding explained to Alfred. ‘They won the competition last time, in ’38.’

  ‘Oh,’ Alfred said, feeling slightly bewildered. He hadn’t a clue what they were talking about.

  ‘Now, let me introduce you to your partner in crime,’ Drummond continued. He smiled mischievously at Alfred and boomed, ‘Isobel! Come out here now, lass, and meet Alfred.’

  They all turned as a petite young woman came out of the house. She wore a wide-brimmed straw hat and a pair of cotton dungarees.

  ‘This is my daughter, Isobel,’ Drummond said to Alfred. ‘Isobel, this is the young man who’ll be helping you with the planting.’

  Isobel gave Alfred a nod. Alfred couldn’t think of what to say, not in this foreign language, anyway.

  ‘He’s a wee bit shy, is Alfred,’ Harding said with a laugh.

  ‘Alfred Werner. How do you do?’ Alfred said, forcing out the words and feeling his face redden as he held his hand out to the girl. He recognised her from Sunday service, but had never seen her up close. She had fair hair – ‘strawberry blond’, his English textbook had taught him – and round hazel eyes that gave her a slight look of astonishment. Alfred thought her absolutely beautiful. He swallowed, acutely conscious of how he must appear in his coarse, ill-fitting uniform, which was marked on one trouser leg with a large white ‘P’. But Isobel just shook his hand primly and gave him a smile that could have been interpreted as either shy or aloof, he wasn’t sure.

  ‘How do you do, Alfie?’ she answered.

  This caused Harding to let out a spurt of laughter. ‘Alfie!’ he said. ‘Now that’s a fine one!’

  Now Isobel turned a deep shade of red. ‘Oh, I’m sorry. Isn’t that your name?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Alfred answered, anxious to cover her embarrassment. ‘Please call me Alfie.’

  She gave him a strained smile and her colour gradually receded. There was a short tight silence. Drummond came to the rescue.

  ‘Well, it’ll nae do standing around and chatting. There’s work to be done!’ He pointed to the side of the vicarage, where Alfred saw a wheelbarrow filled with dozens of plant pots. ‘Those are the primroses,’ he said. ‘You’ll need to plant those before they die of thirst. And then you can perhaps decide on other flowers that might match. Colours, shapes, that sort of thing.’ He winked at Isobel. ‘But I’ll leave it to the experts.’

  Isobel took a couple of steps towards the side of the house. Alfred, unsure of whether he should follow her, remained where he was. Then she turned and smiled, the brim of her hat shading the upper part of her face, emphasising her full pink lips and her very white teeth. ‘Um, do ye want to come round here? Perhaps start by fertilising the roses?’

  Drummond patted Alfred on the back. ‘Well, I’ll just leave you to it, then,’ he said, and turning to Harding, added, ‘Mr Harding, may I offer you something to drink?’

  Harding nodded. ‘Aye, sounds grand.’

  And the two men left Alfred and Isobel standing in the garden and went inside. Isobel led the way around the house to the back, while Alfred picked up the handles of the wheelbarrow and followed.

  ‘The compost,’ she said, pointing to a small wooden frame close to the fence that separated the vicarage garden from the church grounds. ‘And there, a shovel,’ she continued. ‘I’ll make a start over here.’ She knelt down on the grass and began unloading the primroses from the wheelbarrow. Alfred stood and watched her for a moment. Her skin was pale and creamy, and her forearms had already begun to pinken in the sun. She must have noticed him staring, because without looking up, she said, ‘And just in case you’re wondering, he’ll be keeping an eye on you.’

  She turned to the house and waved in the direction of a small window. Sure enough, Drummond was standing there, looking out. He waved back at Isobel, then at Alfred. Alfred gave him a small smile and picked up the shovel.

  They worked side by side for a couple of hours, while the sun gained strength and made the sweat pour off Alfred. Occasionally, he heard one of his voice-women mocking him gently, Alfie, Alfie, but he closed his mind to it as best he could. He was surprised at Isobel’s strength and stamina, given her slight frame, but he knew how strong the war had made Johanna, how hardship could bring out hidden strengths in people. He wondered briefly how the war had been here, in Ayrshire; he couldn’t imagine the place being anything other than perfectly tranquil.

  After a while, Drummond called out of the window that they should stop for a breather, so Isobel fetched some cool lemonade from the house and they sat down in the shade of the porch to drink it. For a long while, they sat wordlessly, surveying their morning’s work.

  Isobel broke the silence. ‘Do you miss home, Alfie?’ she asked suddenly.

  Alfred put his glass down. ‘Yes,’ he answered slowly. ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘I bet you cannae wait to get home to your family.’

  Alfred shrugged. Johanna was all that was really left of his family, and in the absence of any response to his letters, he wasn’t sure if she was still alive. In fact, he wasn’t even sure where home was, anymore. But he didn’t know how to put this into words, so he said, ‘Your father is a nice man.’

  Isobel smiled. ‘He can be. Very protective, as you’ve seen. I shan’t think he will ever let me get married.’

  ‘And your mother?’

  ‘Oh, she died when I was a bairn. That’s why my dad is the way he is, I reckon.’ She twisted her mouth slightly and sighed. ‘Cannae even remember what she looked like. But he says I take after her, so I suppose I see her every time I look in the mirror.’

  Alfred was dying to say something suave and charming along the lines of Then she must have been very beautiful, but he couldn’t trust his tongue not to trip him up and make him look as stupid and embarrassed as he felt. So instead, he let out a sort of consenting grunt, more frustrated than ever at his language handicap. He made a firm promise to himself to use every spare moment he had with his English textbooks.

  Isobel spotted something on the ground between them. ‘Ooh, look,’ she said. ‘A ladybird.’

  They both bent down to have a closer look and their heads almost touched. Isobel sat up quickly, appearing a little flushed, and took a long sip from her glass. ‘Best get back to work,’ she said.

  Presently, Harding and Drummond emerged from the cottage together, smelling deftly of ale.

  ‘Well, looks like they’ve done a fine job here,’ Harding said, taking out a cigarette and lighting it. He quickly succumbed to a coughing fit.

  ‘Indeed,’ Drummond agreed, when Harding had caught his breath back. ‘Now,
Isobel, would you get your friend here a couple of ham sandwiches? He must be hungry.’

  Alfred watched her disappear into the house.

  ‘D’you think you can spare him again, say, on Tuesday?’ Drummond asked Harding.

  ‘Aye, we can sort something out, I’m sure. What d’you say, Alfred? Fancy helping out here a couple of mornings a week till June?’

  Alfred half-shrugged, half-nodded, trying to contain his delight at the thought of seeing Isobel again. ‘Yes, I would,’ he said, as casually as possible.

  Presently, Isobel returned with his sandwich. When she handed it to him, her finger brushed against his hand lightly, causing them both to blush. Alfred glanced over to Drummond, but he hadn’t seemed to notice.

  Over the next two months leading up to the flower show, Alfred spent three glorious mornings a week in the company of Isobel (though chaperoned at all times by Miss Preston, an elderly member of the flower show committee), helping her prepare the ground and plant the flowers according to the designs of the parish committee.

  After a few weeks, Alfred confessed to Isobel that he wanted to improve his English, so she helped him practise unfamiliar words and phrases, laughing a lot when he got things wrong but never making fun of him. He learned that she loved horse-riding and had a crush on Gary Cooper, that her best friend’s name was Janice and that she’d love nothing more than to see Will Fyffe in pantomime at the King’s Theatre in Glasgow. ‘In fact,’ she said, ‘I’d go to anything in Glasgow, just to go there.’

  In return, despite his lack of fluency in English, Alfred told her about growing up on von Markstein’s estate, about his parents’ death, about the orphanage and wartime Berlin. Once, blushing slightly, Isobel told him about a lad she’d been quite fond of, Robert, but who hadn’t returned from the war. She had seemed wistful for a moment, but then smiled and asked if it were true that all German Fräuleins looked like Marlene Dietrich.

  Alfred borrowed a pile of books on gardening and horticulture from Harding, grateful for the first time that he’d had to endure so many hours of Latin at school. He also worked his way steadily through Beginner’s English I and II, and by early June was already halfway through Further English Grammar, and regularly perused a dictionary of English idioms just before going to sleep every night. (The only book of little use was Everyman’s English Pronunciation Dictionary, which he consulted often but couldn’t quite match up what was written there to the language he heard spoken around him.)

  Although he thoroughly enjoyed the work, noticing with some pride his increasing expertise, he was dreading the flower show. Not because he was concerned about winning or losing the Ayrshire in Bloom competition, the first such event to take place since the outbreak of war, but because it would mean the end of his time spent with Isobel. Under any other circumstances, they would have been considered a courting couple – having long since shed their initial shyness. They appraised each other’s habits and preferences as though sizing up a possible future together, flirting gently and seeking out occasions when their hands or arms might touch surreptitiously, if only to feel the other’s skin against their own. But as things stood, neither of them would have dared call it that. It was, of course, strictly prohibited to fraternise with the enemy.

  Then the fourteenth of June arrived in a rush, and with it, the official opening of the flower show. Despite all the hard work, the town of Irvine eventually claimed first prize, much to Drummond’s annoyance and disappointment. But as far as Alfred was concerned, it didn’t matter who won. Without the flower show, he would never have met Isobel.

  But soon enough, his regular work resumed. There was plenty of it: planting trees, cutting hedgerows, clearing the cemetery of weeds and wilted flowers, mowing great expanses of lawns. Now, he only saw Isobel once a week, at Sunday service, but apart from a few rare instances when she managed to hang behind and chat with him briefly at the church door, they saw very little of one another. Alfred longed for her, with his heart and his body, and his dreams were fuelled by strange dreams that left him both exhausted and even fuller of desire for her.

  Then, in September, he was assigned back to working in the fields to assist with the autumn harvest. By the time December arrived, he felt miserable and deflated. Masowski and Schulz received their repatriation orders just in time for Christmas, and suddenly, the prospect of Alfred returning home became real again. He had heard rumours of POWs in the south putting in requests to stay, but these were all skilled workers, men whose professional expertise was considered valuable and necessary to rebuild the parts of the country the Luftwaffe had devastated. He lay on his bed one evening, listening to Mrs McAllister humming Christmas carols downstairs.

  Cheer up, Alfie.

  ‘Don’t call me that,’ he answered sullenly.

  Ooh, a bit touchy, are we?

  Leave him alone. Let him wallow in his self-pity for a bit. It’ll do him good to get it out of his system.

  ‘That’s easy for you to say. So bloody easy.’ He turned onto his side.

  Don’t be like that, Alfred, I was just trying to –

  A knock on the door interrupted her.

  Alfred sat up quickly, worried that he might have spoken aloud. ‘Come in,’ he called.

  The door opened hesitantly. ‘Alfred, dear, I was wondering if you’d like to come and join us.’ It was Mrs McAllister. ‘I’ve made some mince pies. Ever had one?’

  When Alfred didn’t answer straight away, she came in and sat down beside him on the bed. ‘It’s hard, I know, to be away from home at this time of year.’ She put a plump, chemical-reddened hand on his thigh and squeezed gently.

  ‘It’s not that,’ he said miserably.

  Mrs McAllister clucked softly. ‘Ah. I see.’

  Alfred raised his eyebrows. ‘Do you?’

  She smiled, and opened her mouth and, to Alfred’s surprise, began to sing.

  My heart is sair – I dare na tell

  My heart is sair for Somebody

  I could wake a winter night

  For the sake of Somebody.

  O-hon for Somebody! for Somebody!

  could range the world aroun’

  For the sake o’ Somebody.

  She had a sweet, youthful voice, and Alfred would have liked her to keep on singing. But she stopped and said, ‘That’s our very own Mr Burns, you know. Lived right opposite here, many hundreds of years ago. And he knew how to write a love song.’

  ‘Mrs McAllister, I . . . ’ The words remained lodged in his throat.

  ‘It’s the lass, isn’t it? Isobel,’ she said gently. Then she chuckled. ‘D’you nae think we know all about it? Oh, Alfred, we were all young once, and,’ she patted his leg, ‘the heart’s desire does nae care about this uniform. There but for the grace of God, I always say.’

  ‘I love her,’ he said, his voice barely above a whisper.

  ‘I know, of course ye do. But listen now. I’m nae to tell you this, really; Mr Harding wanted to let ye know, but they’ve lifted the ban and Reverend Drummond has kindly invited you to spend Christmas with him and Isobel.’ She clapped his thigh again as she rose to her feet. ‘Which just goes to show, ye cannae always see what’s coming round the corner.’

  Disappointingly though, what was coming around the corner was not a Christmas spent with Isobel and her father, and Alfred’s heart remained indeed ‘sair’. The day before Christmas Eve, Drummond received a telegram informing him that his younger sister Fay, a war widow living in Aberdeen, had fallen and broken her leg, so he packed himself and Isobel off onto the train, and Alfred was left behind to spend Christmas with Mrs McAllister and Klaus Holzdorff. To compound his misery, Alfred received a letter from the Red Cross on New Year’s Eve.

  Dear Mr Werner,

  In response to your enquiry dated 7th of July, 1946, we regret to inform you that the International Tracing Service has been unable to locate the whereabouts of Miss Johanna von Markstein (a.k.a. Johanna Werner). The building at the given address (Barbaros
sastraße no. 39 in Berlin-Schoeneberg, Germany) was destroyed by Allied bombs in March 1945. Should the aforementioned person register on any ITC or Red Cross list, we shall inform you immediately.

  Sincerely . . .

  Alfred didn’t show the letter to either Harding or Mrs McAllister. He kept it with his personal belongings – still hopeful that Johanna had, against all odds, somehow managed to survive – until it was destroyed in a fire two years later.

  Winter came and went; Alfred’s body became strong and muscular – and lean, despite Mrs McAllister’s best efforts to fatten him up. Come spring, and Isobel’s twenty-first birthday, he had still not openly declared his love for her. He felt close to bursting with his feelings for her, but each time an opportunity arose that seemed the perfect moment – a shared moment after Sunday service, a chance meeting in the village square – his nerve faltered. He just wouldn’t know what to do if she didn’t reciprocate his feelings. He finally submitted an official request to the Immigration Office in London for permission to stay, and waited all summer for an answer, but none came. For three weeks during July, Isobel and her father took a holiday in the Highlands, and during this time it rained almost every day. It was as though the weather was venting his feelings, Alfred thought miserably.

  But in early August, the grey skies suddenly cracked open to reveal a hot white sun. Alfred and Harding had been tending the local school’s playing fields all day in time for the start of the new school year. They walked through the village, exchanging stories about school days. The restrictions on the free movement of prisoners of war had long since been lifted – although Alfred was still officially barred from public houses and the local cinema in his POW uniform – but Harding seemed to enjoy accompanying Alfred home each night, and so they had kept up the habit. On Kilmarnock Road, Harding stopped outside a newsagent’s.