by Anne Doughty
Emily laughed as she set Jane’s scrambled eggs in front of her, dropped two extra slices of bread in the toaster and poured tea for them both.
‘You’re teasing me,’ she said with a smile.
‘No, I’m not,’ Jane replied, as she munched happily. ‘Look!’
She put down her fork and waved her left hand just long enough for Emily to see a small gold signet ring on her engagement finger.
‘Weren’t we lucky? It’s the only thing Johann possesses and he had to ask the Camp Commandant if he could please have it back. I’m sure it’s against the regulations, but they do bend them quite a lot up in Dungannon. Which reminds me, I have a present for you,’ she went on quickly. ‘Bottom of suitcase. Don’t let me forget. Yes, please, I’d love another cup, I’m so thirsty. Aren’t you going to have a piece of toast with me?’
‘No thanks, love. I had a proper breakfast. Do eat that other piece if you can, the birds have plenty of food in this weather.’
‘I’d forgotten how good food can taste,’ Jane said, sitting back in her chair, her teacup to her lips. ‘They do try hard at the hospital, but mass cooking can be grim. Usually when one comes off night duty things are either hot and dried out or cold. That was lovely.’
Emily laughed and refilled the teapot. If the kitchen got any hotter as the June sun rose higher in the morning sky, they’d have to move into the sitting-room or find a shady spot in the garden, but she was reluctant to move just now until she’d found out rather more about what had been happening just recently.
Despite the dark circles and the rather too pale skin, Jane was full of liveliness. Very much Jane’s own particular brand of liveliness, but one that hadn’t been around for quite some time. Not surprising in one way, given how hard she and all her colleagues worked and the very badly damaged people they worked with. Jane seldom mentioned the bodies being patched together, the men who would never walk unaided again, whose job was now to learn to use a stick, a walking frame or a wheelchair.
‘So what about this walk in Armagh? You can’t mean it, can you?’
‘Yes, I can, but you mustn’t mention it to anyone.’
‘Mum’s the word.’
‘The guards are all pretty decent. They know perfectly well that most of the boys in the camp were forced into action and want nothing more than to go home. Except Johann, who wants to stay with me. They all know me pretty well now. They even try to get me the odd extra pass. Well, a couple of weeks back, one of the guards told me that he was taking Johann to see Armagh. He told me the day and the time, and where the bus stops on The Mall.
‘I knew he wasn’t pulling my leg, because some of the other boys told me they’d been billeted at the Gough Barracks last autumn and had been set to work sweeping leaves. So I went to Armagh on the day, got out of the bus on The Mall and sure enough there they all were, weeding the paths and cutting the edges and pruning the side shoots on the trees.’
‘But they must have been in POW gear?’
‘Yes, of course they were. But by good luck it was a cloudy day, threatening rain, so when I appeared, one of the guards just handed Johann a cape and an umbrella and said: ‘Off you go. Show him the sights, Jane, but don’t go outside the wall. Anyone comes too close, put your arms round him an’ they’ll look the other way.’
‘And did they?’
‘I didn’t actually notice,’ she said honestly. ‘We just walked round and round all afternoon and talked and I pointed out the two cathedrals and all the churches and the courthouse and the jail. And when the rain came on, we stood under a tree with the umbrella up as well and Johann asked me to marry him. Then we went and told everyone and they all shook our hands, guards as well. Then he had to march back to the Barracks and I caught the bus back to Belfast.’
‘That’s one to tell to your grandchildren, Jane,’ said Emily, who was blinking vigorously, determined not to cry.
‘Yes, we thought of that and we made a note of the tree. It’s a fairly young one, so we reckoned it would be there for a long time for us to go back and visit.’
‘It is quite the loveliest little bird I have ever seen,’ said Emily, as she turned the small gift in her hand, studying the details of beak and feathers. ‘How kind of him, Jane, when he doesn’t even know me. Has he always made things?’
‘No, never. It’s the South Germans who do the woodcarving and Johann’s home is in the north, just outside Hamlin, the Pied Piper’s town,’ she explained. ‘But he wanted to learn and they were happy to teach him. They make lots of little things to give to the locals and to the guards. Sometimes they get a packet of cigarettes in return, but more often they just give them away. I think they’re lovely too.’
‘Have you had any news of his mother?’ Emily asked, sitting down on the bedroom chair while Jane folded up her nighty and repacked her small case.
‘Nothing yet. The Red Cross are very good at finding people, but things in Germany are very bad …’
She broke off and sat down on the edge of the bed.
‘The worst thing, Ma, is listening to the news and hearing about the raids. So many tons of bombs on Dortmund or Hamburg and how many were drowned when the Mohne and Eder Dams were blown up. Everyone round me being so pleased, because that’s how we’ll win the war, but those poor people didn’t want the war any more than we did,’ she said sadly. ‘Da can’t bear to talk about that night he was in Belfast, but it must have been a hundred times worse in the German cities … Do you think about it, Ma, or is it only me because of Johann?’
‘No love, it’s not just you. I’ve always thought about it. Even more in the last week since your Uncle Sam came over to see us. What he told us reminded me that you probably have cousins in the Wehrmacht and the Luftwaffe and perhaps even the S.S.’
‘Ma, how come?’ Jane demanded, her eyes wide with amazement.
‘Well, if you remember, Granny Rose had a brother called Sam. He’d be your Great-Uncle Sam. He went to America and married a German woman called Eva. They had four sons and two daughters and rather a lot of grandchildren. One of the grandchildren, Lieutenant Sean McGinley turned up at Liskeyborough a few weeks ago asking for Sam Hamilton.
‘He had a letter with him that your Granny Rose had written to his grandfather, Sam McGinley, back before the First World War. Quite how he came to have it, Sam didn’t tell us, but the young man had carefully brought it with him. In that letter, Rose mentions all the family by name and refers to Ballydown and Liskeyborough, which was how Lieutenant McGinley knew where to go. But one of the things she asks your Great Uncle Sam in her letter is whether Patrick is still determined to go to Germany and whether it really is a visit to his mother’s people or whether it is to carry letters and requests for weapons. We know Eva had a large family back in Germany and it looks as if some of the McGinleys were in touch with them, though I really don’t know anything about the gun business. Either ways, we have a German connection through them.’
Jane shook her head and smiled.
‘My goodness, Ma, we don’t know the half of it, as Granny Rose used to say when we were small. There’s always more to know and things aren’t always as clear-cut as one might think.’
‘That’s what makes life difficult at times,’ said Emily thoughtfully. ‘I do try to think round things and see if I can find another way of looking at them, but sometimes that only makes it worse.’
‘What is it you’ve been trying to think round, Ma?’
‘Lizzie,’ she replied honestly.
‘Have you had anything from her since I was last home?’
‘No.’
‘Oh, I am sorry. I’m sure it was me and Johann upset her. I did try to explain,’ Jane said, looking at her sadly. ‘I wrote and told her how things had happened between us, but she didn’t reply. I wrote to Cathy as well,’ she went on quickly. ‘She was fine and wrote back straight away. She understood, but she didn’t know what to make of Lizzie. She said she was sorry she couldn’t think of anything to help. The
only thing she said in the letter that really struck me was that Lizzie says she wants to go to university when the war’s over. That seemed like something quite new. I never thought she’d want to go on studying, she was so glad to leave school.’
‘Maybe going to university is the opposite of getting married. What do you think?’
‘I think something made Lizzie very unhappy and she’s not telling any of us. But she’s got a plan of some sort. There’s something she wants to do, or something she wants to be, and she probably thinks we wouldn’t understand.’
‘But we’d never stop her doing what she wanted to do, you know that, don’t you?’
‘Yes, I do know that,’ she replied reassuringly. ‘You said it when I wanted to be a nurse and I believed you. But Lizzie doesn’t believe things, unless they are all cut and dried.’
‘The last time she came home she’d just got a stripe,’ Emily began, trying to remember as exactly as she could. ‘It was as a result of a course she’d been on and she seemed very pleased about it. She was very tired and when I mentioned her being tired, she said endurance was part of it.’
Emily stopped and looked at Jane, hoping she might see something she herself had missed.
‘Cathy did say she’d got another stripe, but that was recently, so that must be another one, mustn’t it?’
‘Yes, it must be,’ Emily agreed, thinking once again of that last unhappy visit before her posting and wondering if there was anything else she could tell Jane about it.
‘Do you think it’s ambition, Ma? Does she want to get to the top of whatever it is she does that we know she can’t talk about to any of us?’
‘That would fit with wanting to go to university after the war wouldn’t it? She did mention she might be moved to London. I think she said something about the Air Ministry …’
‘Ma, you’re worrying again.’
‘Oh dear, and I was trying to give it up, wasn’t I?’
Jane beamed at her, that warm smile which had never changed since childhood. She wondered if that was the way she encouraged her patients. Jane’s smiles had always been hard to resist.
She smiled herself and suddenly felt lighter. Talking to Jane always helped. There was something about the way she listened that made things smoother and calmer.
‘Have you and Johann decided what you’ll do when he’s free to go home?’ she asked, knowing they had only a little time left before Alex arrived to take her to the station.
‘Yes, we have. If we know where his mother is, we’ll go and see her, but we’ll be married here. Johann thinks he might be able to work as a gardener until he can train for some skilled work. We’d have to save up for that and I’d go on working till he was qualified. So you won’t be a granny for ages.’
‘Thank goodness for that,’ Emily said, laughing. ‘I’m feeling my age enough these days after I’ve been in the garden without someone around to call me Granny!’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
As Emily stepped out of the back door and felt the sun warm on her shoulders, she decided what she was going to do. She made her way to the far end of her vegetable garden, sized up the ripening rows of peas and beans and came to the conclusion it would have to be the Women’s Institute market on Saturday mornings. Probably every Saturday morning the way things were shaping.
Last autumn, when she’d been so surprised at just how welcome her produce had been, she’d thought ahead and ordered more seed and more bundles of young plants for the Spring. Helped by the dry weather in March and long hours of sunshine in April and May, she’d opened up some new drills and everything she’d planted was doing even better than she’d expected. Already, at only the beginning of June, she was producing far more than last year.
The problem was getting it to market.
At the peak of last summer, she’d used the W.I. market to sell what she couldn’t give away, but it meant asking Alex to get up even earlier than usual on a Saturday morning and then being left standing outside the Church Hall surrounded by her sacks and boxes till the caretaker came and let her in. That wouldn’t do if she were going every week. Besides, it wasn’t fair to Alex.
Alex had laughed when she’d raised so much money from the unused strip of land adjoining their garden and she would willingly work for the Red Cross again, but now she knew someone who needed money very badly indeed, a young man who didn’t have a penny to his name, though he did have a girl who loved him, a girl who would work hard to support him.
As she stood fingering the ripening pods of peas, she cast her eye down the long rows and laughed suddenly. The front basket and the back carrier of her bicycle wouldn’t go far to accommodate this lot going down to market in Banbridge.
She was still standing in the sunshine, looking out over the vigorous growth, hoping for sudden inspiration, when she heard a vehicle in the drive. Definitely not Alex. She came hurrying down the path to the yard just in time to see a jeep swing round the house and park opposite the back door.
A jeep arriving to deliver supplies or to collect cakes was no longer an unusual event, but it was unexpected to find Chris Hicks himself driving it. He was in uniform but he’d shed his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. Without his cap and military markings, she had never seen him look less like the commander of a large and active camp full of young engineers.
‘Chris, how lovely. What a surprise! How did you escape?’ she asked, as he jumped down and came towards her.
‘Been asked to vamoose,’ he said lightly. ‘Couldn’t think where I might be welcome, except here.’
‘Oh Chris, you’d be welcome anywhere you went,’ she replied easily, though she’d noticed a heaviness about his face when he wasn’t actually smiling. ‘Could you use a cup of coffee?’ she added in her best Vermont accent.
‘And how, Emily, and how.’
She sat him down at the kitchen table while she moved round making the coffee and cutting cake in a practiced routine, for she regularly entertained the young men who delivered her baking materials and collected up the results of her efforts.
‘Come into the conservatory, Chris, it’s not too hot in there yet and there’s a nice smell of geraniums and lemon balm,’ she said, as she completed the tray, carried it through and set it down between the two comfortable chairs. ‘Now tell me about you having to vamoose.’
‘Oh it’s just a routine inspection,’ he said offhandedly. ‘Top brass give the place the once over. Should have happened a couple of times already since we’ve been here, but staff are short.’
‘And they sent you away?’
‘That’s right,’ he nodded, taking his coffee from her. ‘It’s a kind of tradition in the engineers that anyone can say anything during an inspection. Don’t know when I last got a couple of hours away.’
‘You look tired, Chris,’ she said, passing him the cake.
‘All God’s children are tired,’ he replied, a weariness in his tone she had never heard before.
‘Something’s wrong,’ she said gently, looking him full in the face. ‘Look, if its top secret I can certify this conservatory is bug free and I have security clearance. Tell me what it is and it will be forgotten as soon as you get back in the jeep.’
What he said next took her completely by surprise.
‘It’s my little girl. She’s forgotten me.’
He looked so utterly dejected, she wished she could put her arms round him and comfort him, but she wasn’t sure how he’d feel about that and didn’t want to embarrass him.
‘Oh Chris, what makes you think that?’
‘Carrie says so. She’s tried, I know she has, but little Tilly is four now and she was only just two when I went away.’
‘Can you send her presents?’
‘Shure. Carrie buys them and wraps them and says: Look what your Daddy sent you, and she just doesn’t connect. All she has is photographs. And she notices the funny stamps on the letters.’
‘Has she started school?’
‘Not till t
he Fall. September, I mean,’ he corrected himself, with a ghost of a smile.
Emily paused and looked around her. Her eye caught Johann’s little bird which she’d put under a miniature rosebush on the shelf next to where Chris was sitting. She reckoned she’d see it oftener there than if it were in the sitting-room or the bedroom.
‘Come on, Chris, have some more cake,’ she said, encouragingly. ‘I’ve got the answer, I know I have. I’m just waiting for it to be sent up from wherever its lurking. Don’t you ever have to wait for answers?’
‘Shure. Sometimes you think they’ll never come.’
‘But if you’ve got the right problem, it helps, doesn’t it? So often we just worry, we don’t say This is the problem. Now how do we solve the problem?’
‘So what’s my problem, Emily?’ he said, looking a little more like himself, as he munched his cake.
‘Well, apart from being homesick and missing your wife and family you have a little girl who has nothing to associate with you … except funny stamps …’
She broke off and beamed at him.
‘I think it’s just starting to come up. I have an idea. Now, how about another cup of coffee. These cups are a bit small for coffee American style.’
‘Now, I know she can’t read,’ she went on, as she refilled his cup, ‘but why don’t you start writing her letters. Just short ones, in big letters. Can you draw?’
‘Well, I suppose so …’
‘Stick figures, faces, pussycats?’
He nodded.
‘The important thing is that they are addressed to her. Miss Tilly Hicks. And she’ll have to open them herself,’ she explained. ‘Carrie can read the words, but there must be something Tilly can grasp by herself. Have you ever pressed flowers?’
‘No, Emily, I think I can assure you that is a skill I do not possess,’ he said, with a small glint of laughter in his eye.
‘Well, it’s easy and I’ll show you how,’ she said quickly. ‘But just imagine when she opens the letter from Daddy and some rose petals fall on the floor, or a spray of lemon balm that still smells of lemon, all the way across the Atlantic,’ she went on, waving to the plants on the shelf beside him. ‘I know the post is good, Chris. I have an old school friend lives in Texas and when she writes, it only takes four days, and she says mine are the same …’