Under an Amber Sky

by Rose Alexander

  The hardship, contemplated now in the bright light of a different century, seemed unimaginable. That anyone had survived at all was barely comprehensible. But that baby, nine months old when taken with his mother to another prison on the mainland of what was now Croatia, had grown up to become a doctor in Serbia. It was amazing what human beings could endure. Sophie willed that Dragan, too, had been a survivor.

  Anna, Tomasz, and Irene came clattering up the steps, scaring the rabbits away and shattering the haunted silence. Together, they walked around the island’s rim; it only took about twenty minutes and soon they were back at the landing stage on the landward side, where Sally-Ann was waiting patiently for them.

  The mainland was clearly visible, not much more than a stone’s throw away. Darko had told Sophie that no one was on record as having escaped from Mamula. From the prison camp on nearby Prevlaka, there had been only one attempt and it had led to terrible repercussions for the rest of the prisoners.

  Sophie looked down to see that the others had already boarded the boat and Irene was waving at her to come. She was glad to leave the island behind; its tormented history had left it suffused with an eerie atmosphere that chilled despite the heat.

  Recently, the local and international press had been full of stories of an agreement between the Montenegrin government and a major hotel group to develop Mamula as a holiday resort. Understandably, many people were shocked and horrified at such a prospect, believing the sanctity of Mamula should be preserved as a memorial to all those who had suffered and died there, their argument bolstered by the fact that no one would think of turning Auschwitz into a hotel.

  Watching the island fade into the distance, the glittering path of diamonds now leading not in the direction they were travelling but dancing nimbly all the way to the far horizon, Sophie found she could not think of Mamula’s future, only of its past, and what it had meant to Dragan, and to Mira and their unborn baby.

  ***

  Irene offered to sail them all the way home, to Tomasz’s enormous excitement, and Sophie sent a message to Petar to say that they wouldn’t need him to pick them up. She considered trying to write it in Montenegrin, now that she’d had a couple of her lessons with the elementary school head, but nothing seemed to stick and she was sure anything she managed to come up with would be so inaccurate as to be incomprehensible. It was not for nothing that, in her childhood, the language then known as Serbo-Croat had always been a synonym for ‘impossibly difficult’. She stuck to English.

  They made a quick stop at a tiny island in the bay, called Our Lady of the Rock, that Irene had heard about and wanted to visit. In the church was a tapestry, woven over twenty-five years by a lonely wife from her own slowly greying hair, as she awaited a seafaring husband who never returned. It seemed that the history of the bay was one of women waiting for their menfolk to return; Mira had been one among many. Was it better that she knew Matt would never come home? pondered Sophie. Or would even a tiny seed of hope make life easier?

  ***

  As they approached Prcanj, Sophie directed Irene to the pier in front of the house. It was good to see the village from the sea, the long line of solid stone houses that lined the road interspersed by a few modern villas and apartment blocks. Everything basked in the last glow of the sun, which would soon disappear behind the mountains to sink into the Adriatic, from whence they had just come. Irene dropped them off, then went to moor the Sally-Ann in deeper water. She paddled a little rubber dinghy back to shore and Sophie invited her in for tea.

  ‘Is she staying?’ hissed Anna in Sophie’s ear as the kettle on the stove emitted its ear-piercing whistle.

  ‘I don’t know,’ replied Sophie, pouring boiling water into the teapot. ‘I’ll ask her.’

  ‘Irene,’ she said, and then paused, waiting for Tomasz to stop noisily banging a saucepan on the floor. ‘Are you staying? You’re more than welcome, if you’d like to. We’re short of Dettol – and grandmothers.’

  She passed Irene her tea and waited for her to answer.

  ‘Well, my dear, I’d love to,’ replied Irene, after a small hesitation. She raised her mug in a toast. ‘How delightful!’

  And so their little group gained another member.

  ***

  If Frank was surprised to see an unfamiliar elderly woman seated at the dinner table when he got back that evening, he didn’t show it.

  ‘I suppose that means another flat-pack bed to put together,’ he grumbled lugubriously, as Sophie introduced them.

  ‘I can sleep on my boat until such time as a room can be made ready,’ pronounced Irene, her tone as stiff and straight as her posture.

  ‘Your boat? That one out there is it, then?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s right,’ intervened Sophie, hurriedly. ‘Irene sailed here, all the way from the UK! Isn’t that amazing?’

  ‘You look too old for that,’ remarked Frank, with characteristic tactlessness. ‘How old are you anyways?’

  Sophie gave up on the diplomacy. If Irene were going to be here for some time, she and Frank would have to live alongside each other. Best to let them get on with it.

  Irene drew herself up to her full height, which made her taller than Frank. ‘I’m seventy-nine years young,’ she said.

  ‘Right then,’ replied Frank. ‘Well, it’ll be handy to have an old bird about the place. I’ve been thinking that my winter woollies are all a bit worn. Could do with some more.’

  ‘What exactly are you implying, my good man?’ Irene’s tone was as imperious as her bearing.

  ‘I thought you might like to knit some jumpers for me,’ said Frank. ‘Ladies of your age – well, they like knitting, don’t they?’

  The sound of Anna’s and Sophie’s gasps of horror could probably have been heard in Kotor.

  ‘Maybe a hat and scarf, too?’

  Irene regarded Frank as if he were a particularly irrelevant and insignificant insect.

  ‘Knit? My dear fellow, I do not know how to knit.’ She paused for breath. Her words were a prowling tiger circling the hapless Frank.

  Sophie and Anna looked on, cringing.

  ‘However, there are many things I do know how to do. I know how to captain a ship across the seven seas; I know how to fly and land a plane, including in dense cloud cover. I am a yachtmaster, I have a commercial pilot’s licence, and I also possess a professional qualification in master butchery.’

  Sophie watched and waited with bated breath, aware of Anna beside her doing the same.

  ‘What I cannot do is KNIT.’

  Frank, with some difficulty, attempted to remove his jaw from the floor. ‘Right you are then, love. Keep your hair on.’

  ‘As I still have hair,’ retorted Irene, ‘unlike you, I shall make my best efforts to do just that.’

  Sophie could no longer conceal her sniggering. It was the only time she had ever seen Frank’s casual insouciance, which sometimes verged towards arrogance, slip.

  Anna, similarly flabbergasted, interjected. ‘Can you really do all those things?’

  Frank had wandered off to the far corner of the kitchen where he had installed a small fridge to keep him supplied with cold beer; nothing and no one else was allowed near it.

  Irene grinned mischievously and winked towards his back. ‘All true – except the last one. I made that up.’

  ‘Master butcher.’ Anna doubled over with laughter. ‘Ha, ha, ha. I never heard anything so funny.’

  Frank came back with four bottles of his precious beer and dumped them unceremoniously on the table. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘You got the better of me, well and truly, luv.’

  The bottles fizzed as he opened them, one by one. He passed them around.

  ‘Welcome to the family, Irene.’ The clinking of glass was like the sound of bells.

  ‘Ziveli.’

  Chapter 17

  Having finally made it to Mamula island, and in the most unexpected way, Sophie was keen to read the n
ext letter. Now it was summer, all the restaurants and bars had flung their doors open wide and populated whatever space there was around them with tables and chairs. Darko took her to the other side of the bay, to a tiny place on the waterfront that featured a wooden stage built out over the sea like a mini-Brighton pier. A band was due to play once the sun had gone down and Darko suggested they read the letter and then relax and enjoy the music.

  ‘Dearest Dragan,

  ‘We call the month of August “back from holiday” but there was no holiday for anyone this year. I did not even travel to see Mama and Papa. The roads are rough and the journey hazardous, with many checkpoints along the way. I did not want to take the risk and Mama urged me not to. Now it is September and everything is, indeed, red like wine.

  ‘The small vineyard that Grandma Ilic’s son inherited from his father-in-law produced prodigious amounts of grapes this year – those little, sweet, succulent ones that resemble rubies and are delicious to eat as well making the best wine. She gave us bunches and bunches and your mother tried to make jelly but we don’t know if it will come out well as we did not have much sugar or anything to help it set. Everything is in short supply and expensive and no one has the inclination to travel far to find what is not available locally. The shops in Budva are probably bulging with all things good and wondrous but we do not want to go there, whatever bounty awaits.

  ‘The foreman called round the other day, to find out if there was any news of you. There is not much work around these days – no one has any money. But stonemasons of your skill and expertise are in short supply and there would be jobs for you if you could take them. We could give him no information, nor hope, for we have none ourselves.

  ‘The only journey I have made in recent months was to Gornja Lastva, where your mother and I went to visit the church of Saint Mary. I was never particularly religious, before. But now there is nothing else to have hope in, I feel that I might as well hold my faith in God.

  ‘Just before we went inside, I saw a golden eagle rise from its eyrie on the hillside and soar into the sky. It hung there, gliding on the wind, for at least a minute before it dived, wings closed and held tight to its body. I lost sight of it before it reached its target but when we emerged, the eagles were now two, the nesting pair I imagine, wheeling so high in the sky as to be barely visible.

  ‘Can you imagine being able to fly that high? To almost reach the sun? If I were up there with them I’m sure that I would be able to see you, on Mamula island. I hope they will watch over you, for all our sakes.

  ‘Those eagles will have fledged their young now, whilst we still await the birth of ours. It is the only thing to look forward to. The chill winter coming seems of little matter when my heart is cold as ice. I’m glad, at least, for the end of the oppressive heat of summer. My ankles are even more swollen than ever and my legs ache; I feel like a lumbering elephant.

  ‘I don’t want to worry you, and the doctor says there is plenty of time for things to change, but the baby is in the breech position. Do you even know what that means? The details of pregnancy are generally hidden from men, but you are my husband and the baby’s father and you should know everything that concerns us both. The fact is that the baby would usually be expected to be the right way up – which is head down – by this stage in the pregnancy.

  ‘As I say, the doctor is not worrying yet and says that I should not, either. Your mother is stoic as ever, and positive, but Grandma Ilic – well, let’s just say that she likes to make a catastrophe out of a drama. I am doing my best to avoid her, as I do not need her scaremongering, or “advice” as she likes to call it. Still – she is right about one thing. No stretch marks yet and the immortelle is holding out; we made so much.

  ‘With all my love,

  Mira’

  When Darko reached the end of the letter, Sophie realized it was the first time he had read one all the way through without any interruptions. There was something about Mira’s writing now – its tone of quiet desperation – that made it feel rude and uncouth to break its flow. The words still had their beauty – the description of the eagles, for example – but behind them lay a sharp edge of anxiety and fear, which created a haunting atmosphere of impending doom.

  Mira’s world had shrunk, to the house, the bay, and a few villages around. Everywhere else held danger; in all corners of this beautiful land, at that time, resided fear and uncertainty.

  Darko noticed her uncharacteristic reticence. ‘You don’t say anything, Sophie?’ he said, concern written across the creases on his forehead.

  Sophie shrugged and looked out to sea while she fought back the tears. She really was ridiculously emotional about a man and a woman she’d never met. Darko would think she was a complete wuss, if he didn’t already.

  ‘At least we know his job now – he was a stonemason,’ Darko continued encouragingly. He seemed keen both to find something positive in Mira’s words, even if Sophie couldn’t, and to cheer her up.

  ‘Yes. That’s – interesting.’ Sophie had been so keen to know everything about the couple, but found now that Dragan’s job seemed inconsequential. ‘It’s just what she said about the baby,’ she continued. ‘So many bad things are happening – I can’t bear to think that the pregnancy might go wrong as well.’

  Darko reached across the table and took her hand. His skin was cool and dry, neither smooth nor rough. Masculine skin. It was a long time since Sophie had touched skin like this.

  ‘I’m sure it will all work out all right.’ He slotted his fingers between hers. ‘Try not to worry. Whatever happened – it is the past. We can’t change it, however much we might want to.’

  Sophie was aware that he had said words like this before, and that he was right. She nodded and sniffed, conscious of the tears trying to creep out of the corners of her eyes, but could not totally dispel her feeling of doom. ‘Back in a minute,’ she said, hastily withdrawing her hand and leaping from her chair. ‘Just going to the ladies’.’

  In the bathroom, she splashed cold water on her face, not caring about the consequences for her make-up. She looked at her hand, the one that Darko had held. She wanted human touch, wanted it more badly than she had even begun to understand until that moment. But it was Matt’s touch, only Matt’s, she craved.

  Back at the table, she tried to bring a lighter tone to the evening, asking Darko about the band, the members of which of course he turned out to know, and commenting on how much she was enjoying their music. Off the back of this, Darko asked if she’d like to go with him to a summer music festival in the southern town of Ulcinj, near the Albanian border and, after a moment’s thought, she accepted the invitation. It would be good to do something young and fun; she had been too much at home recently and was starting almost to fear the outside world.

  Her peacetime world had shrunk in a similar way to Mira’s wartime one, but whilst Mira had no control over events or her situation, Sophie did – and should exercise that control before she forgot how. Going to the festival, with such a kind, lovely person as Darko, would be a perfect way to begin her reintroduction to that thing called a social life.

  Her tiny, baby steps back into the world of work and teaching were also going well. Twice a week she wandered a few houses along the bay and into the elementary school where she always received a heartfelt and enthusiastic greeting from the children. She was amazed at their impeccable behaviour, how quickly they grasped what she taught them and how enthusiastic they were about learning English – so different from the way the majority of students in her London school had moaned and groaned about being forced to study Spanish, French, or Mandarin, which most of them seemed to regard as utterly irrelevant to their lives.

  ‘Good afternoon, Mrs Taylor,’ the children here would all chant in unison, in response to her greeting. And then she would spend fifteen minutes teaching them some new function of language, such as how to enquire after someone’s health or how to express doubt about a future even
t, before they split up into small groups and she read aloud with them and worked on their pronunciation.

  Dreamily ambling out of the school gate at the end of her session one sunny noontime, she almost fell over a man who was walking purposefully along the road. She didn’t take much notice of him; there were scores of tourists around at the height of summer, although his well-worn walking boots and the battered rucksack hanging off his shoulder marked him out more as a traveller than a holidaymaker.

  Having muttered an apology for bumping into him, she paused to let him pass, and was about to pull her phone out of her pocket to check the time when he turned his head in her direction as if looking for something. The intense blue of his eyes hit Sophie like a lightning bolt. She had never seen eyes so blue.

  The man continued walking and Sophie stared after him. She had observed in that brief glance that he wasn’t as young as she’d first thought, perhaps late thirties or early forties, and that he bore an air of being an intellectual vagrant rather than a wandering backpacker. She felt that she had met him somewhere, but knew that she’d never seen him in her life before.

  Coming to her senses, she blinked rapidly and ran her hand across her forehead as if to shake off his piercing gaze. She turned to walk home, following in his footsteps, though he had crossed to the other side of the road. He had a casual gait and an air of easy self-confidence. She watched as he passed by the open doors of her house and then, with an inexplicable feeling of regret, she went inside.

  Tomasz and Irene were there, sitting at the table, finger-painting. Huge splotches of brightly coloured poster paint seemed to cover every surface – not just the paper but the table, chairs, floor, and worktops.