by Anne Doughty
The days passed and still the promised letter failed to appear. The waiting was unbearable. Try as she would Emily could think of nothing else but Johnny though she forced herself to keep busy and do all the things she would normally do.
They told no one apart from Chris, not even Jane and Cathy. They agreed there was no point whatever in adding to their burdens until the question was resolved one way or another. Chris himself made some enquiries and when the waiting extended into the second week he rang and said he’d leave Hillman in charge and take an hour to come and see them.
His expression was set in a grim line as he came into the warm kitchen where they were still sitting over their coffee after supper.
‘So you still haven’t heard?’ he asked, as he accepted a cup.
‘Not a word,’ Alex replied.
‘Now this just won’t do,’ he began. ‘I’ve asked around a bit and the word is that informing relatives about a loss is top priority. You should have heard something by now, even if it’s only that they haven’t any more to tell you.’
‘I’ve been thinking. Now I know how we proceed when something is not right, but your way is sure to be different. Have you any official contacts, Alex, like say, someone in Whitehall or the Air Ministry itself?’
There was a pause in which Emily thought painfully of Lizzie. She was most certainly in the Air Ministry, but where they did not know. Nor had they any means of contacting her. How official she was by now they had no means of knowing either.
She looked at Alex and saw his face brighten.
‘There’s Sarah,’ said Alex abruptly.
Chris raised an eyebrow.
‘Sarah’s our cousin, she’s married to a diplomat. He has contacts all over Whitehall,’ he explained.
‘Just what you need,’ Chris exclaimed. ‘The God damned English never tell you anything they can avoid telling you, but if you have an inside man, he’ll know how to get to the right person. As far as I know Squadron Leaders are obliged to reveal their reports if they are requested by someone senior enough. But they don’t tell anybody that.’
He had to leave them then for he had to be available in camp during the hours of darkness. He shook hands with Alex and hugged him. Then he hugged Emily and then kissed her on both cheeks.
‘While there’s life there’s hope,’ he said firmly. ‘Dead is a four letter word, but Missing is different. Here’s something to help you sleep,’ he continued, putting a hand in his greatcoat pocket. ‘I’m not a praying man but I’ll get as near as I can. Keep me posted.’
He parked a bottle of Jack Daniels on the table and hurried back to his jeep.
Three long days later a telegram came from Simon Hadleigh’s office in Whitehall. It had not been censored. It was so lengthy Emily could hardly believe it was actually a telegram.
The pilots of F/O John Hamilton’s squadron had been sent to Tunisia in order to fly out to bases in recently liberated Sicily, the Mosquitos despatched in crates to North Africa and assembled there. The squadron had taken off in excellent weather conditions, but on arrival one of the pilots to the rear of the formation reported he had observed a plane lagging and then rapidly loosing height. He had logged its approximate position. This pilot had written himself to Flying Officer Hamilton’s family, but the censor had impounded the letter, as it contained information valuable to the enemy. Efforts would now be made to trace the letter and to communicate the contents directly to them. A further communication would follow as soon as there was reliable information to report.
Chris was much cheered when he was shown the telegram, but Sarah was not pleased. It was one thing if Johnny or anybody else was shot down. War was war and it was tough. But he’d only been ferrying a plane from one base to another in an area where the Allies had complete air superiority. If he’d simply had engine trouble, why did no one circle back and see what was happening?
Three days later, the letter from Johnny’s friend duly appeared, the Italian stamp almost obliterated, but the enclosed message bore no trace of the censor’s blue pencil.
Dear Mr and Mrs Hamilton,
I promised John that if ever anything went wrong I would write to you. I have tried twice already, but my letters have been returned to me. In the circumstances it is so hard to say anything useful except that I think John may be all right. He is such a good pilot coming down in the drink would have been no problem to him. The problem is what happened then. As you know he swims like a fish and anyway he had a life jacket, but he could have had a bad bash on the head.
I don’t want to raise your hopes or mine, but I think we have some hope, even if he’s been picked up by an enemy ship or a sub.
John is a great pal. I am thinking about him and you and crossing my fingers.
Yours sincerely,
Charlie Preston.
Emily and Alex agreed there was no point in upsetting everyone unless the worst had happened, so although they now wrote to Sam and told Cathy and Jane what they now knew, they did not tell their friends or neighbours. They both tried to get on with life as normally as possible. Emily even managed a Halloween party with witches on broomsticks and candles in turnip heads on a foggy Friday afternoon, though she did weaken and confess how hard it was to her old school friend Dolly, when they found themselves alone together in the cloakroom at Millbrook.
As no one beyond Chris, Dolly and her immediate family knew what had been going on, what happened next morning came as a complete surprise.
The phone rang a few minutes after nine o’clock and Emily hurried to pick it up, thinking perhaps it might be another call from Sarah or her sister Hannah, but the voice was male and sounded almost familiar.
‘Mrs Hamilton, you don’t know me, but I’m Robert Anderson’s older brother,’ it said, the tone warm and comforting. ‘I’m Postmaster here in Banbridge and I know you’ve had a hard time over your Johnny. He was at school with my son. Now, I think I have good news for you. There’s a telegram here for you and your husband. It’s from Johnny himself. Would you like me to read it to you?’
She had to get him to read it three times. Then, when he asked her if she’d like him to have it delivered to Rathdrum, or taken to whichever mill her husband was at that morning, she found her voice had gone, an ache at the back of her throat which completely prevented her from speaking.
But he was in no hurry. He waited till she’d coughed and blown her nose as if he had all the time in the world. Then he made a little joke about the way telegrams so often got garbled in transmission, particularly when they were from abroad.
She swallowed hard, found her voice again and thanked him. She told him she would probably remember this particular telegram to the end of her days.
It said:
Safe and well. Sorry if you have been married. Better fellows. Much love. Johnny.
If Emily and Alex thought they had kept their bad news to themselves, they were left in no doubt at all that their good news had spread like fire through corn stubble. It roared through the mills and from them raced on unchecked to all the surrounding villages. Notes and letters arrived every day, some from people they hardly knew. Even more arrived after a paragraph in The Leader obviously written by someone who had known Johnny at Banbridge Academy.
Overwhelmed by relief and joy, Emily tried to keep a hold of her ordinary domestic routine and failed completely. She would find herself wandering round the kitchen trying to remember what she’d been doing before she’d answered the phone or the ring at the door.
Alex managed better, but most of his wellwishers were at work and could not linger as could many of Emily’s visitors.
Four days later, Johnny’s promised letter arrived. To their amazement, it had come from Norfolk and had not been censored.
Tuesday, 2nd November, 1943
Dear Ma and Da,
I know you must have been worried and I’m so sorry. I’m now ‘somewhere in England’ and will be remaining here, having been promoted and become an instructor. My ne
w boss has suggested that I tell you about my recent holiday and the delays I had in getting back home.
The problem was that our outgoing flight had engine trouble and this involved an unscheduled landing. There were further delays while alternative transport was being arranged. Fortunately the weather remained calm and the water relatively warm. When transport did appear there were some initial communication problems. The tour operators were committed to a scenic route which meant a considerable delay in landing me.
I am now permitted to telephone you, though I will be limited to six minutes. I shall try at seven o’clock, beginning tomorrow evening after you have received this. I shall try each evening till I get you.
I am so glad to be back
With love to you both,
John.
Emily made sure that Alex was home promptly and they waited together for the phone to ring. It was almost a year since they’d heard his voice, the last time being when he’d been allowed to phone home from Greencastle after Ritchie was killed.
‘All’s well that ends well,’ said Emily, shivering, as Alex put the phone down at the end of their shared call.
‘Come on, back in to the fire,’ he said, putting an arm round her shoulders. ‘This hall would freeze you tonight and there is just no paraffin to be had this week.’
‘Do you think he’s all right?’ she asked, as they pulled their chairs up to the comforting flames, ‘He did sound all right, but I thought his letter was rather strange.’
‘Yes, he’s all right,’ Alex said reassuringly. ‘He’s grown up a lot. I think the style of the letter was a clever way to avoid the censor. But I think he was also trying to reassure us he wasn’t unduly upset by what had happened, though he told me he was afloat on the plane for two days. Did he say that to you?’
‘No, but he admitted he banged his head when he landed and came to thinking of the little red bits we’d put on the dessert for Jane’s birthday last year.’
She paused, thinking through what they’d said before the pips went and she’d handed the phone to Alex.
‘Surely landing like that and staying afloat must have been difficult?’
‘Yes, it must have been,’ he agreed. ‘But his friend Charlie told us how good a pilot he was. Maybe it was all those nights he spent in the cockpit of that plane they were building down at Walkers,’ he continued, putting another log on the fire. ‘He knew how that plane was made and put together. The Mosquitos are made of light wood too, probably not all that different. That’s why they can ship them out to North Africa in packing cases and put them together there. He knew if he got her down level, she’d float.’
‘So why do you think he’s been brought back? Was it because of what happened?’
Alex looked across at her pale face and saw she was rubbing her hands together. He paused, applied the poker to the fire and coaxed the log to burn up and produce flames. Probably the only way to warm her would be to make her a hot whiskey.
‘Yes, I think perhaps what’s happened has been hard enough on us but it has had a good side to it,’ he said sitting back in his armchair, the flames lighting up his face. ‘What does getting the plane down and staying afloat for two days say about a pilot? It shows skill and judgement. And nerve. Who better to instruct?’
Emily nodded and held out her hands to the leaping flames.
He was back in England. He was safe and well. Really that was all that mattered. So far, Johnny was one of the lucky ones, but she would never be able to forget the size, shape and colour of that envelope, or the words on the telegram it contained.
The enormous relief over Johnny’s safety came not a moment too soon for Alex. He’d been just on the point of confessing to Emily how difficult the situation was at three of the four mills when he’d had her phone call. Now, nearly a fortnight later, the problem was worse rather than better and he was no nearer to finding a solution.
‘Thanks, Margaret,’ he said, as one of the Millbrook office staff placed a time sheet on his desk.
He knew by the amount of blank paper at the bottom of the long scroll there were more absentees even before he studied the names.
November was always a bad time for illness, but this year it had started earlier and was more severe. James Wilson, their Health and Safety Director, had warned Alex back in early October that fatigue was now so high that people had less and less resistance to infection. Even with nourishing canteen food and the co-operative store where food prices were kept as low as possible, he said he was sure some women were not getting enough to eat.
James was almost certainly right. Alex knew perfectly well that, in a similar situation where the children might go short, Emily would have done just the same and passed over most of her own share. But there was a price to pay. These women were working all day, then trying to keep a home clean and bright with inadequate food and not enough fuel to warm it. It was one thing coping in summer with sunshine and fresh vegetables to help, but now the temperature was dropping fast and the influenza that usually struck in January was already active. As staff absences grew daily machines were having to be shut down to comply with safety regulations.
Alex sat at his desk, his head in his hands, wondering what more he could do. He’d already rung James Wilson and asked if he thought a distribution of food and medicine would help. Money could be made available. He had no anxiety at all about persuading his fellow directors that it was the proper thing to do, whether they looked at it practically, or from a more humanitarian perspective.
But that wasn’t going to solve the problem of silent machines, orders not complete and red notices from Government Departments who were as desperate for his materials as he was to fulfil their orders.
He was still sitting with the work sheet in his hand when Margaret returned with a mug of tea. As she bent down to put the mug close to his hand, he was suddenly aware of the gay yellows and greens of her pretty patterned blouse. He smiled to himself at the memory of the vast floral arrangement that had walked into his room way back in the spring.
The thought cheered him, he drank his tea yet more thoughtfully and then picked up the phone.
‘Margaret, do you think you could find anyone to relieve Daisy Elliott for a few minutes? I need a wee word with her.’
Daisy and the knock on the door were indivisible. She stood in front of him before he’d even looked up from the note he was drafting.
‘Ach, man dear, yer lookin’ worried and you should be on top of the world,’ she said briskly.
Alex beamed at her and waved her to the visitor’s chair.
‘I’m on top of the world in my spare time, Daisy. And so is Emily. But there are one or two problems I have that are a wee bit pressing.’
‘Aye, I’m sure yer worried about all this absence. I was just saying to my Billy last night that we must be well down on production. You got us the machines fixed and now a third of them in my section are standin’ idle. That can’t be good.’
‘What are we goin’ to do, Daisy?’ he asked quietly.
‘I was wonderin’ about that m’self,’ she said promptly. ‘Did you know that Hazelbrae has packed up?’
‘No, I didn’t,’ he replied, somewhat surprised that she should mention a major shirt-making enterprise having to close its doors.
He tried to remember if they’d had any government contracts or whether they’d gone on producing solely for Saville Row. Certainly, he hadn’t read anything about it in either the Belfast Telegraph or The Leader.
‘Ach aye. It’s partly the war and partly old man McFetridge. Sure the man’s in his seventies an’ he’s worked all his life. Why wouldn’t he retire? I think he only kep it up for the sake of the stitchers. There’s a queer lot of them will be hard up this Christmas,’ she said shaking her head.
Alex reminded himself that it never did to assume that Daisy was not to the point, but he still failed to see how the unemployed stitchers could help him.
‘What a pity they weren’t spinners or
weavers, Daisy. We could solve their Christmas present problem quite easily, couldn’t we?’
‘But sure that’s exactly what most of them are. Did ye not know?’ she demanded, her eyes wide with disbelief. ‘When those women got married and had the first wee’un, if there was no granny handy or willin’ they took up stitchin’. Hazelbrae has only a handful of women up there at the factory, packing and despatchin’, all the work is done in the home and collected up. Imagine you not knowin’ that?’ she said, amazement written all over her face.
‘Well I knew shirt-making is a home industry and that Hazelbrae collects all round this area. I even see the odd collection van round Ballievy or Tullyconnaught, but I’d no idea that stitchers were once mill workers.’
‘Ach aye. I’ve a friend Lily McCready over in Tullyconnaught and she gave up when the first chile came. Sure her childer are all up and away now but she goes on stitchin’ and glad of money. She might well be pleased to go back to the mill and she’d certainly be glad of work till this illness is over.’
‘The mill is great company’, she went on without pausing for breath. ‘I couldn’t stan’ sittin’ at home stitchin’, but then if that was all that was goin’ I’d hafta, woulden I?’ she demanded, laughing so loudly, that Margaret, in the office next door, wondered what there could possibly be to laugh at with the way things were.
‘Forby that, there’s women has lost husbands or sons,’ she said dropping her voice. ‘Charlotte Spratt over at Lenaderg lost her Joseph torpedoed off Tobruk. Ach, I could name a whole lot,’ she said, suddenly stopping herself. ‘Some needs money and some needs to get outa the house, but give me an hour or two and they’d be back on the machines. Sure it’s like riding a bicycle, once you’ve done it, ye niver forget.’
‘Could you give me a list of names, Daisy?’
‘Aye surely. Have ye a pen?’
‘I have indeed, Daisy, but I also have a meeting I mustn’t be late for,’ he said briskly. ‘Would you go in to Margaret and give her names and addresses. I’ll need a typed list.’