I stood looking down for several minutes, then shifted my gaze to the sharp angles of a white-fenced compound, standing out stark against the dark hillside away to my left.
I began to walk towards it, dropping down off the summit plateau and then following the contour round to the east. I stumbled through more peat bogs, over mounds of tussac grass and across long scree slopes, scoured and stripped by the wind and rain.
When I reached the cemetery, I saw the slim figure of a woman weeding between the graves, her face hidden by the upturned collar of her coat. The wind masked the sound of my approach and I stood watching her for a few moments, then coughed and rattled the latch of the gate.
Rose jumped in surprise, then turned to face me, smiling in recognition. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘You startled me. It’s very rare that anyone comes here.’
She had been working in the corner of the graveyard where I’d stood the day before, and a small posy of fresh flowers was now lying on the grave. She followed my gaze. ‘They’re past their best, I’m afraid.’ She spoke a little hurriedly, almost apologetically.
‘They’re lovely.’ I smiled. ‘I didn’t think you could grow anything here except tussac grass.’
She searched my expression for a moment, as if looking for hidden slights. ‘We can’t really. I grew these in the porch alongside the house.’ I studied her profile as she turned away from me to gesture towards the settlement near the foot of the valley below us.
We stood in silence for a moment. ‘Does somebody tend all the different graveyards?’
‘Oh, it’s not official or anything, I just like to do it. You could call it paying a debt, I suppose.’
‘Rose? Those war stories that Agnes was so keen for you to tell me…’ My voice trailed away into silence.
She glanced along the neat rows of white crosses and looked out over the empty hillside around us. Then she took a deep breath. ‘That’s your brother’s grave, isn’t it?’
I nodded.
‘I knew it, as soon as I saw you yesterday. You must have wondered what on earth was the matter with me, but it was such a shock, such a strange feeling to see you standing there. It was like seeing a ghost.’
I took out a scrunched-up, yellowing letter that I’d read and reread a thousand times over the years. She took it from me, holding it carefully as the wind rattled the corners of the pages.
When she looked up again there was a tear in the corner of her eye. ‘My father wrote that letter. Your brother saved our lives.’ She looked down, rereading the letter, then folded it with care and put it back in the envelope.
As she turned to hand it back to me, she stumbled on the corner of the grave. I put out an arm to steady her and felt the wiry strength in her slim frame. She blushed but made no effort to pull away. ‘Do you remember him at all?’ I said. ‘You must have been very young.’
‘I was twelve when.’ She paused. ‘When it happened, but I remember him very clearly, even though I only ever saw him for five minutes at most.’
‘Please tell me about it.’
She led me to a wooden bench and we sat facing out over the rows of graves, looking down towards the distant shore. ‘A few days before the Task Force landed at San Carlos, the Argentinians went to all the outlying settlements and rounded up everyone. No explanations, they just herded people into trucks at gunpoint and drove them away. They were all taken down to Goose Green and locked in one of the shearing sheds.’ She paused. ‘I don’t know if they were doing it to stop people helping the British troops or to try and deter air raids on Goose Green, but everyone was terrified, not knowing what was going to happen and fearing that they would be shot.
‘For some reason they hadn’t disabled our radios, though. When George and Agnes saw the trucks coming towards their place they called my father to warn him what was happening. We took all the food and blankets we could carry and ran away.’ She paused. ‘Well, stumbled anyway. I was so frightened I could barely walk. We went up the moor to Hill Head Shanty. It’s an old, long-abandoned settlement in a dip just under that ridge to the west there.’
I peered in the direction she was pointing but could see nothing but the empty skyline.
‘The roof had collapsed at the front, but the ground floor rooms at the back of the house were still reasonably dry. We dragged what was left of the furniture – an old table and a dresser – close to the back of one of the rooms and made a sort of den behind it. My father covered it with all the lengths of broken timber, scrap metal and tin roofing sheets he could move and then pulled what was left of the ceiling down on top of it. If anyone had taken it apart or walked right round to the back of it they’d have found us soon enough, but to a casual glance it just looked like a pile of rubble.
‘We heard some soldiers searching for us that first afternoon. I just lay on the floor, shaking with fright, with my hand stuffed into my mouth to stop myself from crying out. They poked around a bit, but didn’t find us. There was another search the next day and after that they must have given up, because they didn’t come back again. My father crept out that night and looked down on the farm. We couldn’t go back home. Some of the soldiers had billeted themselves in our house; they killed all our hens and some of our sheep.
‘We stayed in that place for five days. We heard a lot of explosions in the distance away towards San Carlos and Goose Green, but then on the fifth night a battle broke out all around us. We lay on the floor of the shanty, under the table, hearing the thunder of the explosions and feeling the walls shake. The noise seemed to go on for hours. I could hear it even when I pressed my fingers into my ears. Eventually the explosions stopped. I lay still, not daring to move, my ears ringing. My father went outside and saw some Argentinian soldiers on the hillside below us. They looked like they were running away. A short while later he heard someone speaking English.
‘He told us, “We’re safe! The British are here,” and led us out of Hill Head. We were walking down the hill towards the British soldiers, waving a white vest above our heads, when the firing broke out again. The Argentinians had a machine gun on the ridge behind us. I don’t know whether they were firing at us or the British, but I could hear bullets smashing into the ground around us, and whining off the stones. The British soldiers were returning fire and we were caught in the open, between the two sides. There was no cover, nowhere to hide at all.’
Her eyes were unfocused, seeing only her memories. ‘I can remember pressing my face down into the ground. I was screaming, but I couldn’t even hear my own screams for the noise of gunfire. The shooting died down a little and there were short bursts rather than an endless barrage. In one of the lulls I heard a voice shout, “Cease firing. Cease firing!”
‘The British stopped shooting and I lifted my head a fraction. I saw a man not more than fifty yards from us. He got to his knees and raised his arms, holding his gun by the barrel. He knelt there in full view of the Argentinians, waving the gun over his head, and after a minute they stopped firing too. Then he stood up, put his gun down on the ground and started to walk towards us. He stood between us and the Argentinians, then told us to stand up and walk slowly towards the British lines.
‘In my nervousness, I stumbled and fell. He picked me up and carried me the rest of the way. He had blond hair and the deepest blue eyes.’ She looked into my face. ‘Just like yours. He carried me past the British soldiers lying on the ground with their guns trained on the Argentinians. He set me down behind a small mound of rocks, an old sheepfold, a hundred yards behind them.’
As she talked, I had such a vivid picture in my mind that I could almost smell the cordite on the damp air and see my brother’s tall, powerful frame, with the dark-haired girl clasped to his chest.
‘My parents and my sister sat down next to me. I peered over the rocks and saw him walk back, pick up his rifle by the barrel and then drop from sight. The firing began again at once and I pressed my face back down in to the earth. I never saw him again. The battle moved on f
urther up the hill, and as you know, he was killed later that night.’
She saw the tears tracking down my cheeks and took my hand. ‘Anyway, that’s why I come up here and look after the graves.’
We sat in silence, then she released my hand with an embarrassed smile. ‘You must have been very young yourself when he died. Do you remember much about him?’
‘I was twelve, like you, and I remember a lot about him. He was ten years older than me and he was a hero of mine even before he became one for real. When he came back on leave he’d often get home about five or six in the morning. He’d let himself in, wake me up and sit on my bed, telling me about all the things he’d done and all the places he’d been – sometimes the desert, sometimes the Arctic Circle, although even Aldershot sounded glamorous to me then.’ I smiled at the memory. ‘As soon as the shops were open he’d take me to town and buy me a new toy, a book or a game. I was so proud walking alongside him in his uniform, seeing all the girls smiling at him. I used to dream of wearing the same uniform myself one day.’ I shrugged. ‘When I grew up, it seemed too much like trying to step into his shoes; I joined the RAF instead.’
‘Is that your strongest memory of him?’
‘No, the last one is. When the Task Force sailed for the Falklands, my parents took me down to Southampton to see him off. We stood on the quayside and I waved a Union Jack and cheered myself hoarse as the ship cast off and began to ease away from the dock. I saw Mike long before he saw me. I watched him raking the crowd with his eyes, trying to spot us. I yelled and waved my hands like crazy but everybody else was shouting and waving too.
‘The ship was picking up speed, and I thought he was going to miss us, but then he caught sight of me. Our eyes locked for a moment. He gave me the saddest smile and raised his hand in farewell. Then the ship was slipping away down the Solent, gathering speed, and I lost him. I hung on to my mother and cried my eyes out.’ I swallowed and cleared my throat. ‘Looking back now, I sometimes wonder if I haven’t imagined it – a look on his face that wasn’t there. I don’t think so, though.’
She gave a gentle smile. ‘I wish I’d known him.’
‘You’d have liked him, everybody did. He could turn his hand to anything. He could play guitar, fix a car, play any sport you could name, climb mountains, scuba dive. He spoke three languages – French, German and Russian – and was clever, handsome and very funny as well. Women were always flocking around him. He was the youngest ever officer in the Parachute Regiment. He had everything going for him… until that day.’
She was silent for a moment, studying my face. ‘It must have been hard for you, growing up in his shadow.’
I looked up, surprised. ‘Not many people think of that.’
‘I had a similar experience myself.’ She paused. ‘At a much lesser level, of course. My elder sister went to school in Montevideo and England, and got a first in English at Cambridge. She’s now a senior producer with BBC Television.’
I waited. ‘And you?’
‘I didn’t do quite so well.’ She gave a soft, distracted smile. ‘I came back to the Falklands from Montevideo, fell in love and got married young, against my parents’ wishes.’ Her face darkened as she spoke. ‘Bernard was a seaman then, he’d fallen out with the FIC and couldn’t get work on shore, but when my father died we took over the tenancy of the farm.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
‘It was five years ago.’
‘And your mother?’
‘She’s still alive but she lives in England now. She came from there originally and wanted to go back.’ She paused. ‘And I think she wanted to be near my sister too. I miss her though.’ There was a catch in her voice. ‘You’ve no idea how lonely it can be here.’
Her tone was so desolate that I felt an urge to take her in my arms. ‘You could go to England too.’
‘No, it’s not possible.’ She was silent for a moment, then forced a brisk smile. ‘There are lots of compensations too, of course. You should see it in spring and summer, when the flowers are in bloom. And when the birds are in their spring moult, the feathers drift over the beaches like snow. They’re inches deep in places and when the wind picks up, it’s like walking through a blizzard.’
‘What about your farm?’
Her smile faded. ‘It’s hard. Perhaps we’re just not cut out to be farmers, but everyone has struggled these past few years. The price of wool has been so poor that sometimes it’s hardly been worth clipping the sheep.’ She squared her shoulders. ‘It’s been the same struggle for everyone, of course. I’m not making us out to be a special case, but we have a small farm by Falklands standards and we’ve no capital to tide us over a bad patch.’
Again she smiled and this time the light danced in her eyes. ‘Anyway, that’s enough self-pity for one day. You must come down to the farm and stay for dinner. Stay the night if you can, I –.’ She checked. ‘We’d love to hear all about you and your family. You can’t imagine the number of times I’ve tried to picture where your brother came from, what his house and his family were like.’
We walked slowly down the hill, following a path as faint as a sheep track. A few hundred yards above the farm, we reached another tiny graveyard. The gravestones were so worn, weathered and lichen encrusted that the inscriptions were almost impossible to read, but again the graves were neatly tended. On one, a glass bell jar enclosed a bouquet of white porcelain lilies.
‘In the UK, that would have been vandalised years ago,’ I said. ‘Is it very old?’
‘Victorian. It’s my great grandmother’s grave.’
‘And your father?’
‘We’re not allowed to bury our dead here any more. Anyone who dies anywhere on the islands is taken to Stanley and buried in the cemetery there.’ She gave a sad smile. ‘Even the dead can’t wait to get to Stanley these days.’
Chapter Five
As we came over the last rise before the farm, I saw Bernard standing in the corner of the paddock. His high, thin voice carried to us on the wind. He was cursing his dog as a handful of scraggy sheep repeatedly escaped while he tried to pin them in a fold. Exasperated, he gave it a kick as it slinked past him, tail between its legs. It limped as it made another attempt to encircle the sheep.
He turned to stare at us as we walked across the paddock towards him. His eyes flickered over me and came to rest on Rose.
‘I met Sean up at the cemetery. He’s the brother of that soldier; the one who saved our lives during the war.’
He gave me another, fractionally longer and friendlier glance.
Rose broke the silence. ‘I’ve asked him to stay for supper.’
‘We’ve not much in.’
She raised her hand in a small, nervous gesture. ‘We’ve enough.’
He shrugged. ‘I’ll see you later then. I’ve work to do.’
I followed her down towards the farmhouse. The original building was almost hidden by an ugly accumulation of extensions and additions, including a Portakabin jammed against one wall.
I hung back as she opened the door. ‘Perhaps I should be getting back.’
‘I’d like you to stay. Please. He’s—’ She paused. ‘He’s not good with strangers; we don’t get much company here. As you’ve seen for yourself the road stops at Mount Pleasant. The tracks are bad enough at the best of times and impossible after dark.’
I glanced at my watch. ‘Then I should be going soon.’
She shook her head. ‘Please. Stay the night if you can. I – We’d both like that. We can take you back in the morning. You can use the telephone if you need to speak to someone.’
I thought for a moment, very aware of the plea in her eyes. ‘All right,’ I said abruptly. ‘That would be great, thank you, but I must check in with base first.’
‘Help yourself.’
I called Mount Pleasant and was put through to the crew room. Shark took the call.
‘Anything happening?’
He laughed. ‘This is the Falklands,
remember. Nothing ever happens here.’
‘No developments on that lost item?’
‘What?’
‘The one the Boss was telling us about this morning.’
‘Oh that. No, none at all. We’re still looking for it.’
‘Okay. I’m staying overnight near Goose Green. If anything crops up, the telephone number’s 102.’
Shark whistled. ‘You’re staying the night? I don’t believe it. Forty-eight hours and you’ve scored already. I’ve been here two months and I haven’t even seen a sheep I like.’
‘Don’t give up hope, there are plenty more out there. Anyway, I’ll be back in the morning. Pass the word back up the line, will you?’
‘All right. Jane’s here, she wants a word with you.’
Her voice sounded both amused and a little nettled. ‘Come on, Sean, tell me you haven’t fallen in love again?’
‘No, that’s just Shark’s little joke.’
‘It is a “she” though.’
‘It’s both,’ I said wearily, ‘a man and wife.’
‘So where are you?’
‘A place called Black Beck House, down towards Goose Green.’
‘Great. I’ll come and get you in the morning. I could do with another trip out. We’ve only been here two days and Mount Pleasant’s charms are already beginning to pall a little – or perhaps it’s the company I’m being forced to keep.’
‘That would be great, if you don’t mind. Can you find it all right?’
‘I’m a navigator, remember. I can find anything.’
‘You couldn’t find the target on that last exercise.’
She laughed. ‘We’re even then, because you couldn’t hit it on the one before.’
‘Okay, see you in the morning. Watch the track, though. It’s about three parts mud to one part stone.’
‘I come from Guneela, don’t forget,’ she said. ‘If you can drive the roads in the Wet there, you can drive anywhere. Besides, I want to make sure there really is a husband out there.’
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