Crystal's Song

by Millie Gray

  Dinah leapt out of the bath. “You sanctimonious old witch. You would send me, your only daughter, to a St Jude’s Laundry where the vicious nuns will beat the living daylights oot of me until they think I’m no longer in moral danger!”

  “Who says the Holy Sisters are cruel?”

  “Who says? Just have a look at Sadie Thomson, raped by her father and he’s still abusing his daughters at will. She was sent to Glasgow to give birth to her bairn and she’ll never be the same again.” Dinah shook her head. “Mammy, they say Sadie’s so crazed noo, always looking for the bairn that’s God knows where, that they’re thinking she’ll need to go to Bangour Village Hospital!”

  “Dinah, the choice is yours.”

  “But it’s no. I want to abort this,” Dinah looked down at her stomach, “and you’re only thinking of yourself and your conscience by making me have it.”

  “Yes. And, as I’ve said, the choice is either you thole all the embarrassment – and can I remind you that I’ll have to put up with that too – or you go to the nuns!”

  8

  Even now, in October 1943, Fred Armstrong couldn’t really say the men had settled into the fertile farmland surroundings of Frankvitz, which they’d reached after their gruelling march of some 550 kilometres through Poland in June 1941. They just hadn’t been able to understand why they had been moved. They’d worked very hard in the sugar-beet factory and although their diet was poor and the conditions appalling they had caused no trouble. They were even grateful that the stability meant they occasionally got letters from home and had been given access three times to their looted Red Cross parcels!

  The surprising thing about the farmland was that it was also being worked by Polish male along with Russian male and female prisoners of war. At the end of the day the four different groups would trudge wearily towards their designated huts for the night.

  Normally the chat there would always come around to exchanging ideas on how to escape, though to be realistic there was no way that anyone could escape and survive. So it caused much amusement when Billy announced that he thought they should try to dig a tunnel. His mates thought Billy hadn’t quite grasped that you didn’t have to dig a tunnel to get out of farmland – you just had to walk out when the guards weren’t looking. Fred had gone out of his way to tell all that to Billy, who in turn shook his head and patiently went on to explain that he wouldn’t be digging a tunnel in order to escape – but to get into the Russian women’s sleeping quarters at night!

  Christmas 1943 was just three days away when Fred found himself putting his bony fingers to his face and savagely massaging his sunken cheeks. He was desperate to avert his mind from the problem in front of him. Oh yes, he did try to work miracles for his men, but Charlie, brave and always optimistic Charlie Tracey, just wasn’t going to make it. The trouble for Charlie, and indeed for all of them, was that, having been force-marched from their first camp to this farmland, the long trek, the starvation diet and all the other deprivations had taken their harsh toll. And that was on top of the years spent in captivity. No one, no matter how tall, now weighed more than six-and-a-half stone. This meant they were susceptible to all types of infection and in particular to the dysentery that was rife within the camp.

  Fred had nursed Charlie through his first bout of dysentery, but this second one would, he feared, take him away.

  “Sarge,” asked Charlie, whose voice was so weak that Fred had to lean over to hear, “any letters … from hame? I just ken my ma would have written at least once since my birthday last April.”

  Lifting himself from Charlie’s bed, Fred gave a nod of assent before striding out of the bunk house and calling to one of the guards. “Look,” he said to the big abusive Bulgarian who had taken the job of guarding the prisoners rather than be shot, “that young lad in there, Charlie Tracey, is dying and he was asking if there were any letters for him. Could you check?”

  “You maybe pay me something for my trouble?” replied the guard in broken English.

  “No! But won’t all the stuff you and your mates have taken from our Red Cross parcels no be enough, like? The parcels and their contents are all we have to trade with right now.” Fred now looked straight into the guard’s eyes. He hoped the man could read in his steely stare that he was telling him they wouldn’t always be prisoners and that they both knew how the war was going to end.

  Half an hour had gone by before the guard returned, clutching a bundle of letters. “Here,” he said with a big smirk on his face. “Look how good I am to you! I have even brought two Red Cross parcels for you to divide among you all.”

  Fred smiled his thanks and began to skim through the letters. All had been posted about two months previously and he wondered what had happened to the ones that would have gone to their first Stalag. He shook his head, thinking it was better to have a few letters than none at all. Luckily, there were two for Charlie and Fred held them up for him to see. “Aye,” said the dying man, “that’s Ma’s handwriting. Beautiful, is it no?” He then started to cough and retch before falling backwards and closing his eyes. Fred didn’t realise for a few minutes that he had gone, but then he tore open the envelopes and, taking out the letters, read them to Charlie. If only, he thought, the old myth was true that the spirit didn’t leave the body for half an hour after death and that Charlie was hearing his mother’s words.

  The men were disheartened by the loss of Charlie but death in the camp was an all too common occurrence and they accepted it stoically. The divvying up of the Red Cross parcels helped to blunt their grief, especially as those who smoked could now share a cigarette – their first smoke for a year. Those who had letters from home read out juicy items of news. However, pleased as he was to get as many as six letters, Tam was rather put out that no one had said a word about how his darling Phyllis was faring. He felt shocked by the family’s callousness and scanned the letters again – but no – not even Dinah (whose two letters began, “Dear Tam,” and then were heavily censored since, no doubt, she’d written about how the war was going and ended: “Missing you so much, darling. Your ever-loving wife, Dinah.”) mentioned Phyllis.

  His mother’s letter was all about how hard Dod was finding the conditions in Saughton Prison where you had to buy your own fags and how she was sure Tam would be outraged at such cruelty. Then there was a letter from his son Johnny who, like his mother, had almost all of his letter censored so that Tam couldn’t tell whether he’d mentioned Phyllis. Finally there was a letter from Senga, who could now write beautifully but was only eager that he should know how many eggs the hens had laid – and he didn’t know, because the number, which the Germans must have thought was propaganda that would have given heart to the prisoners, had been blacked out!

  Tam was still pondering about Phyllis when Billy Morrison grabbed his own letters and then rubbed the one from his dearest chaste sweetheart, Violet, against his chest before beginning to read it. Everyone was startled when Billy, instead of offering his usual refrain of, “Oh lads, listen. She loves me! She does! Keeping herself pure for me, so she is. Dreams, she does, of our wedding night!” suddenly leapt from his bed and screamed, “Jessie Bell! Jessie Bell!”

  “Who in the name of heavens is Jessie Bell?” asked Tam, grabbing hold of Billy and trying to calm him.

  “No other,” sobbed Billy, throwing the letter to the floor, “than my Violet!”

  Fred bent down, picked up the letter and began to read it. “The bitch – she sure is a bloody Jezebel!”

  “What’s wrong?” the others chorused.

  “Gone off with another man?” asked Tam.

  “Aye. But the man in question went right off her … when she told him she was in the pudding club!” said Fred.

  “And there’s no way his wife back in Toronto will let him change his mind!” added Andy who had taken the letter from Fred.

  George McIntyre started to laugh before spluttering, “Oh Billy, do tell us. Do! Did she willingly invite him in to deflower her or did
he have to dig a tunnel first?”

  9

  The school room was, as usual, being decorated for the festive season. While Senga was helping Mrs Carruthers put the finishing touches to the tree, she suddenly asked, “Do you think this will be our last Christmas here, Miss?”

  “Well things are going a lot better for us in the war, but I think it might be a while yet before it’s all over.”

  “You know, Miss, I still cannae believe I’m here in this braw hoose. I mean, it’s like a fairytale, living in this castle, so it is.” Mrs Carruthers smiled because she, like the children, was sometimes overawed by the grandeur of the Craigs and its surroundings. “See, when I get back to Hermitage Park School and tell them about this place, nobody’s going to believe me. They’ll think it’s another of my dreams.”

  “Dreams, Senga? What do you dream about?”

  “Well, Miss, I’d love to be like my sister Tess, and get a good job. She’s working in the Store Chemist in Newhaven now. Comes home smelling of nice things. And if a bath cube gets broken in the shop she gets to take it hame.” Senga became wistful. “And when Johnny leaves here in April he’s going to be an apprentice joiner in Henry Robb’s.”

  “Henry Robb’s?”

  “Aye, ye ken, the shipbuilding place in Leith.”

  “That’s fine for your brother and sister but we know that you’re a clever girl and you could be doing much better for yourself than serving in a shop.”

  Senga sighed. “You maybe think I’m clever, Miss, but when I get back to Hermitage Park that Miss Irvine will haul me into her duffers’ class. I know she will.”

  A loud hammering at the front door prevented Mrs Carruthers from answering directly, but turning away from Senga she called out over her shoulder, “You’re no duffer, Senga, so stop thinking like that or you really will end up becoming one. Now I must go. That will be the new boy I was telling you about.”

  Senga remembered Mrs Carruthers telling them that some European refugee children who were bilingual (which Senga thought was the name of the country they came from) were being sent to the Craigs and that everybody must be nice to them and help them settle in.

  A few minutes later Mrs Carruthers returned with a woman dressed in a Red Cross uniform and a young boy about Elsie’s age.

  “Hello,” said Senga enthusiastically, having taken an immediate liking to him.

  The boy smiled and replied, “I’m Robert and I’m a Jew.”

  “Are you?” Senga was quick to respond. “I’m Senga and I’m a Glass!”

  10

  Patsy had spent some time making herself look respectable. Dark coat, new lisle thread stockings, and shoes that not only were sensible but looked sensible; hair tied back and no make-up – not even her precious lipstick. All this was to impress the nuns, whom Father O’Riley had contacted on her behalf. Those nuns, judged to be saints by Patsy, were the ones who would be looking after Dinah while she gave birth – probably within the next two weeks. They’d also arrange for the baby to be immediately baptised and then adopted. They did know, however, that after the birth Patsy would take Dinah home, and accept full responsibility thereafter for Dinah’s moral behaviour!

  With bowed head, Patsy made her way down Restalrig Road towards Dinah’s home in Restalrig Circus, congratulating herself on having saved her daughter’s soul. The baby would obviously go to a couple who wanted a child. God, she knew, worked in mysterious ways and, because it was all His will, everything would end up just fine.

  At the start of the pregnancy, it had been quite an ordeal keeping Dinah’s condition secret, especially when people asked whether Dinah had developed a cyst. Patsy would then insist (in all honesty) that it was just a wee cyst-like problem that would be sorted out quite soon. The hardest part had been during the last ten weeks when Dinah, because of her bulging belly that couldn’t be mistaken for anything other than a pregnancy, had never left the house. But today, April the first, Dinah and Patsy would slink away from the house under cover of darkness and then make their way to Glasgow.

  Patsy had just reached Hay’s grocery store when she was wrong-footed by encountering Mary, Dinah’s hoodwinked mother-in-law, emerging from the shop.

  “Oh, it’s yourself, Patsy. Sure, here’s you all dressed up like you must be going to a funeral.” Patsy, thinking life would be so much easier if she were going to a funeral, just smiled.

  “And how’s Dinah? You’d think they doctors would know by now exactly what’s up with her.”

  “Oh,” replied Patsy with a smile. “She’s going into hospital to …” she nearly said “today” but that would have caused Mary to wonder since hospitals only admitted emergencies at night, so she hurriedly added, “… tomorrow.”

  “Good! Now, Patsy, did I tell you that Dod actually tried to get himself bunged up again?” Patsy nodded. “But, poor soul, even though he was caught raiding the NAAFI they’ve still sent him back to the front line. Thank goodness my Tam’s getting it easier, being a prisoner of war. I told you I had a letter from him?” Patsy nodded. “Great that he’s able to write now – even uses big words I dinnae quite understand masel.”

  It took Patsy another five minutes before she could tear herself away from Mary. Dear, gullible Mary, who just loved to go on about all her worries. Dear Mary, whom Patsy knew that if she ever found out about Dinah’s little … indiscretion … would be upset at first but eventually accept it without rancour.

  On entering Dinah’s living room, Patsy was pleased to see a suitcase waiting to be picked up. However, there was no sign of Dinah, only Etta.

  “Where’s Dinah?” asked Patsy, craning her neck to see if her daughter was in the kitchen.

  “She’s in the bathroom. Been upset all day she has.”

  “That right?”

  “Aye, the very thought of they nuns, even for just two weeks, is enough to give anyone the collie-wobbles.”

  Patsy huffed with annoyance before going into the bathroom. Dinah was resting against the bath and breathing deeply.

  “Now, my lady, if you think you can put on a show and that somehow I won’t make you go to Glasgow – you have another thought coming.”

  As another pain gripped her, Dinah gasped and Patsy gulped, “Here, don’t tell me you’re in blinking labour?”

  Dinah nodded silently before reminding her mother that her labours were always quite short. So short in fact that they were unlikely to get to Edinburgh’s Waverley Station tonight, never mind Glasgow’s Queen Street, before she gave birth.

  “Etta,” Patsy cried, “come and give me a hand. Now, Dinah, you just keep breathing deeply and Etta and I will see to you.”

  As soon as Etta became aware of the problem, she pointed out that they had nothing ready since they hadn’t expected the birth to be in the house.

  “Doesn’t matter,” snapped Patsy, grabbing Dinah round the waist and dragging her towards the bedroom. “Just get the kettle and pots filled up and then put them all on the gas. Any clean towels?”

  Etta nodded towards the airing cupboard above the water tank. Once Patsy had Dinah undressed and in bed, she went back to the cupboard but instead of clean towels all she found were six pairs of nylons and three bars of chocolate. She sighed, asking herself if that was all her daughter’s favours had cost – six pairs of nylons and some chocolate. Then she became aware that Etta had hurriedly left the house and was now returning with a bundle of towels, nappies and baby clothes which she signalled were all for Dinah. Between contractions, Dinah, to Patsy’s consternation, kept asking Etta if she’d collected all the maternity gear because she was expecting (or perhaps hoping for) another German raid.

  Two hours later a healthy ten-pound baby boy was born. Of course, he should have been taken immediately for adoption but the moment Patsy looked at him she knew no one would want to be seen pushing a pram with him in it. But reluctantly she had to admit that, of all Dinah’s six children, he was by far the most beautiful. Oh yes! GI Joe was a perfect specimen of babyhood.


  By now Dinah was sitting up and gesturing to her mother that she wanted to hold her baby. Patsy dutifully handed him over.

  “Oh, Mum,” sobbed Dinah, “we just can’t let him end up in some home where he might be abused and ridiculed.”

  Patsy nodded in agreement. “Yeah. A right April fool he’s made of us all. But as no one will adopt him and you’re right – he’s our own flesh and blood – so, black as he is, we’ll keep him. Wish you’d told us that his dad was a darkie.”

  Dinah wondered if Patsy now regretted that she’d stopped her from aborting Joe but, while she cuddled her son close into herself, she smiled because she hadn’t. She was so utterly besotted with this angelic child that she was willing to take all the punishment that she knew would be coming her way.

  11

  To everyone’s surprise, Elsie and Robert Wise had struck up a special friendship from their very first meeting. This came about when a tearful Robert confided to her that his father and mother were lost somewhere in Germany and that the Nazis were not very good to the Jews.

  “Snap!” Elsie replied. “My Daddy is lost in Germany too and my Granny Glass says that she hopes he’s being treated right but she doubts it.”

  Eleven months on, the pair were now kindred spirits and Elsie was dreading having to ruin things. “Robert,” she said tentatively, while she watched him trying to trace a fox’s footprints in the hoar frost on the grass just beyond the gravel path at the outside door. “Come back a minute,” she continued. “I’ve got a secret to tell you.”

  Robert, a puzzled frown on his face, stopped and slowly walked back towards her. “A real secret?” he asked.

  Elsie nodded. “And it’s nice for me but not nice for us.”

  Robert’s quizzical frown gave way to a concerned scowl. “Are you going to say you don’t want to be a friend of mine any more because I’m a …?”