by Dee Yates
It was as he thought. Within the small haven, the area was crammed with sheep, huddling together for warmth. They were hungry but safe. He cleared a patch of grass for them, digging away the soft snow until his aching limbs could dig no more. Lifting his gaze eastward, he considered going further but he knew it would be reckless. If the weather were no worse tomorrow, then perhaps he would venture out again and check on more of the flock.
Tom began to retrace his footsteps. The wind was rising and flurries of loose snow were being blown across the tracks made by his boots on the outward journey. He was hungry now and looking forward to Ellen’s warming vegetable broth. Not that he was cold… battling through the drifts saw to that… apart from his feet, which he could no longer feel. It would not do to find himself suffering from frostbite, although such an eventuality might lead to a spell in hospital, in the charge of a doctor… or even a caring medical student.
He had not allowed himself to think of Clara since his marriage, although at night he had no control over his dreams, in which she featured disturbingly often. Now though, with no other distraction, he allowed his imagination to roam, seeing her surprise if she should enter the room to find him her next patient. He felt her cool healing hands examining him, her calm voice giving instructions about his treatment, her frequent visits to assess his improvement. And the desolation when she informed him that he was healed and could return home. He had heard nothing from her since her return to Glasgow at the end of the old year. She had promised to write… but he had an uncomfortable feeling that she would not do so.
Without warning, his foot failed to hit solid ground. He felt himself plunging deep into the snow. He must have encountered an unseen drift.
‘You wuzzock,’ he muttered. ‘That’s what you get for not concentrating.’ Expecting to feel solid ground beneath him at last, he was alarmed when none came. Only a lurching down and down through walls of snow, so white that they were almost blue. And then the drift through which he was falling came abruptly to an end and he was hurtling through space, legs and arms flailing as he attempted to grasp onto anything that might break his fall. With a grunt of pain, he hit the ground. He lay winded, distantly aware of the trickle of water. After a minute or two, he slowly raised his head. He was lying on a bank of wet grass. His eyes lighted on the stream that drained the hills around. If his fall had taken him three feet to the left, the channel of jagged rocks that carried the water downwards into the base of the valley would have dashed him to pieces. Painfully he rolled onto his back and gazed up through the white chimney created by his fall, to the small patch of blue sky, partly obscured by Nell’s astonished face.
*
By three o’clock Ellen had attached the soup cauldron to the hook over the fire and removed it several times. She had not worried at first, for Tom knew the hills well, and if anyone could find his way around them, snow or not, it was he. But as the day wore on and he still had not returned, a nagging anxiety blossomed inside her.
‘Why! Is the man no’ back yet?’ Duncan exclaimed, appearing on the doorstep. ‘I telled him it was foolishness to venture out on the high hills in this weather.’
Ellen looked fearfully out of the window. ‘It’ll be getting dark soon. What shall we do, Feyther?’
‘I’ll have to go and look for him, of course.’
‘I wish I could come with you.’
‘Och, no. I’m not having you risking life and limb out there, even if you didn’t have Netta. No, I’ll call at the farmhouse and ask Kenneth to come along with me.’
Ellen resumed her seat by the fireplace, absent-mindedly rocking the baby’s cradle as she sat, glancing frequently at the hands of the clock on the mantelpiece. Dusk was falling now and although the snow lent brightness to the night, it would become more difficult to judge their bearings.
What on earth had possessed Tom to venture onto the high hills in this weather? It was foolhardy. Sometimes she couldn’t understand her husband. He could be so silent, so distant from her. She thought he loved her, but sometimes he didn’t behave as though he did. The nagging doubt returned to her as it had done on so many occasions, that perhaps he loved Clara. Ellen felt herself so simple, so uneducated, so uncultured… Clara’s inferior in every way.
The door flew open without warning, letting in a blast of cold air and filling the kitchen with noisy blustering men. They were there, all three of them – her father, Kenneth Douglas… and Tom.
‘Tom! Are you all right? What’s happened?’ Ellen jumped up in alarm, as Tom limped to a chair, helped by the two older men, and sat down heavily.
‘He was at the bottom of a drift, struggling to get out.’ Kenneth shook his head. ‘It’s a good job we went in search of him. He’d never have managed it on his own.’
‘It was Nell that led us to him,’ added Duncan. ‘If it wasn’t for her barking, we’d never have found him. And we’d never have got him out if you hadn’t thought to take that rope.’ Duncan went over to his daughter and put an arm round her shoulders. ‘He’s all right, lassie. He’s twisted his ankle by the looks of things, but nothing worse than that.’
‘Let me take this wet coat off you… and those boots.’ Ellen knelt to help her husband.
Tom was trying to undo his greatcoat but his cold fingers fumbled with the buttons.
‘I’m away to my house.’ Kenneth Douglas hesitated. ‘No more hot-headed ideas, young Tom. I appreciate you going after the sheep, but I can’t afford to be without a shepherd. I’m relying on you for the lambing in a week or so. Look after him, Ellen. Make sure he doesnae do anything daft.’ And shaking his head and mumbling to himself, he stepped from the room.
Tom hobbled to the living room and eased himself into the fireside chair, his face creasing with pain.
‘What is it? Are you hurt anywhere else?’ Ellen hovered anxiously.
‘Let me get these boots off and I’ll look. Help me undo the laces, will you, lass, while I get the feeling back into my fingers.’
The bruising, when Ellen had eventually helped her husband to struggle out of his sodden clothes, was extensive. He had grazed his right elbow and lower arm and a developing area of blue-black disappeared beneath his undergarments.
‘I’d best find the witch hazel for those bruises.’ Ellen jumped up and ran to the cupboard.
‘I’ll be away to my cottage.’ Duncan sighed dramatically and rose from his seat. Ellen, her head in the kitchen cupboard, missed the sight of his reluctant steps to the door.
‘Aye. I’ll see you tomorrow, Feyther.’ Emerging successful from the gloom with the malodorous ointment, she was surprised to see that he had already disappeared.
‘I thought for a minute he was going to stay and see me stripped.’ Tom couldn’t suppress a grin. ‘Are you going to rub that on my bruises then, lass?’
‘What else is a wife for?’
‘This and a lot else besides.’
‘Now, Tom, behave yourself. Turn round and let me see your back.’ She began to apply the ointment, wrinkling her nose at the pungent aroma. ‘I don’t know what you were thinking of, going right up the hill on a day like this.’ Tom was silent. ‘Well, what were you thinking of, up there in the snow?’
‘I know what I’m thinking of now.’
‘What, with all these bruises? You’ll be too sore for anything but sitting by the fire, and that’s a fact.’
‘They’ll be much worse tomorrow than they are today. So come here, now your father’s gone, and before Netta wakes up. And I promise I’ll take more care in the future.’
*
It was as well that they took advantage of the short interlude occasioned by the late snowfall. Within four days, the first sheep had begun to lamb. That same day Duncan failed to appear for his breakfast.
Tom threw open the door of his cottage and noisily entered the kitchen. Ellen looked up in alarm.
‘He’s got fever. Happen that cold has gone on his chest. Today of all days! We could do without this.’
She grabbed a shawl from the back of a chair and hurried out. Tom followed unsmiling. He knew as soon as he had seen his father-in-law that it would come to this. And while he was sorry for the man, he could see where it would lead. Duncan’s normal reluctance to return home would be intensified a hundred-fold.
‘You’re coming to stay with us, Feyther,’ Ellen said matter-of-factly, as she felt her father’s brow and wrapped the woollen shawl around his shoulders. ‘What’s brought this on, I wonder?’
‘It must be that day in the snow,’ Duncan replied, his feverish eyes lighting up at his daughter’s words, and his pointed reference to Tom’s foolhardiness inducing in the lad a guilty silence. ‘I cannae get out of my bed, lad,’ Duncan moaned, as Tom stood over him. ‘But I cannae leave you to the lambing. They’re about to start.’
‘They have started, Father. Tom’s spotted one on yon hill this morning.’ Ellen looked round the untidy bedroom. ‘He’ll manage… Kenneth will help him. To be sure, you won’t be able to go in this state.’
Together they supported Duncan as he staggered from his home to his daughter and son-in-law’s next door. And alone, Tom trudged away down the hill to alert Kenneth to the unfortunate timing of his father-in-law’s illness.
13
The Uttermost Parts of the Sea
In the control room, claustrophobic with machinery and his fellow submariners, Josef Kessler stared through the periscope at the approaching destroyer. It was difficult to gauge its advance through the spray-lashed window and, in any case, he preferred to be in readiness for the commander’s order to submerge.
‘Stand by battle stations,’ Commander Gunter Reinhart’s voice rasped. ‘Wait for my orders… wait.’
Josef Kessler held his breath. There would be men on the deck of the ship ahead of them, like ants going about their allotted tasks. Men who had left mothers and wives and children behind… like most of the thirty or so crew members at work behind him in the U-boat.
‘Fire!’ The command made him jump, even though he was poised to hear it. He felt the familiar tremor as one of the four forward torpedoes was released from its housing, and followed the stream of bubbles that it left in its wake. There was a long pause, uninterrupted by the sound of the torpedo striking home.
‘Verdammt!’ Gunter Reinhart roared. ‘It has missed its target. Prepare to fire again.’
‘Commander,’ Josef Kessler shouted. ‘There is no time. The destroyer is advancing fast. Look at how close it is.’
Reinhart swung the periscope towards him and gasped.
‘Diving stations!’ he barked. ‘Close bow caps. Dive! Dive!’ The chief wheeled round and flung himself into action in the enclosed space.
Josef grabbed the periscope again and stared, mesmerised. He was conscious of frantic activity behind him and could measure its result in the troubled boiling of the sea up the windows of the vessel. But the thing that dried his mouth and made his blood run cold was the speed with which the grey bow of the destroyer was bearing down on the sluggish submarine. Beneath his breath, he whispered, ‘Schnell! Schnell!’ but if the boat heard his plea, she ignored it. In the second before she was struck, a picture of his parents and his younger sister flashed before him. And then all thoughts of family were wrestled from his body, as the great bulk of the enemy destroyer tore in two the vessel that had been his home for nearly two years.
*
The taste and smell of oil were everywhere. He struggled to open his eyes, but his heavy eyelids refused to cooperate. He took a deep breath and in the next second gagged and, lurching onto his side, vomited copiously.
‘Here, Alf,’ a man’s voice shouted close by. ‘This one’s alive. Just don’t strike a match or we’ll all be up in flames.’ There was a staccato laugh and then the voice continued, closer still, ‘Poor devil. Would have been kinder to let him drown.’
Josef turned his head slowly towards the voice. He didn’t understand the words, though he recognised the language as English.
‘Keep still, Fritz. Let’s clear off some of this mess.’ He felt his cheeks being roughly wiped. ‘Hey, Alf. Get us some water. Let’s try and clean his eyes. And bring him a drink, will you. Poor chap’s swallowed the muck as well, by the look of things.’
Josef struggled to sit up. The effort made him vomit a second time.
‘That’s right.’ A second voice now, presumably Alf’s. ‘Get it off your chest. It won’t do you no good if it stops there.’
He felt the cloth applied to his face again.
‘Open your eyes now,’ the voice said, and then louder. ‘Open your eyes, mate… Augen… Öffnen!’
So surprised was the German to hear this approximation of his own language that he opened his eyes to see who had spoken… and immediately wished he hadn’t. The intense pain caused a profuse watering and he shut them again, though not before noticing that his body, or at least the part of it that he could see, was covered in the blackest oil.
‘Wo bin ich hier?’
‘What’s he saying, Alf? You seem to know the lingo. You want to be careful though. They’ll have you up for a spy, if you don’t watch out!’ Again the cackling laugh.
‘He’s asking where he is.’
‘You’re with the enemy, mate… a POW… that’s Prisoner of War to you. This is what you get for trying to do away with His Majesty’s Navy. And make a note of this – you’ll get treated a lot better with us than if it had been the other way round. So we don’t want any grumbling. Do you hear me?’
Josef frowned. He had no idea what the man was saying. He lay back exhausted.
‘Come on. Let’s leave him to rest for a bit. He must be all in.’
The young German remained immobile. His eyes hurt too much to attempt to prise apart the lids a second time. Sounds came to him from a distance. He was aware of a slight rolling motion. A soft wind played about his face, and under the coarse blanket, with which he had been covered, he stopped shivering and began to grow warm.
With a spasm of shock, the horrifying events of those last few minutes came back to him. The colossal impact of the enemy boat on their submarine. The sound of rushing water and crushing metal that filled his ears. His body twisted and turned in the turbulence like so much flotsam. Lungs bursting with the need to breathe. And then nothing more… until this.
He must try again to make sense of his surroundings. With a huge effort, he slowly forced open his eyes, resisting the urge to close them against the pain. The sky above was blue and cloudless. For a while he lay looking up at it. Perhaps he had died and this was what the resurrection was like. It seemed peaceful enough. But eventually he turned his head… and knew instead that this was some kind of hell.
On the deck of the ship, for that is what formed his bed, were rows of bodies, some black like his own, a few recognisable as his fellow submariners… all of them unmoving. He looked at the body next to his own and recognised with a shock that it was Gunter Reinhart. Death, it seemed, was impartial to rank or length of service. At the end of the row, two of the enemy were bent over another seaman, like him, covered in oil. As he watched, the man’s body contracted as he coughed. Someone else was alive then. Thank god! He would not have to face the coming ordeal alone. He tried to remember what they had been told about capture and treatment at the hands of the enemy… and could not.
He was tired… so tired. He lay back again, seeking oblivion. Above him the sky was still as blue and he tried to lose himself in it, forget the carnage that lay all around. Why could he not have died like his mates? Presumably God had some other plan for him. What was that passage from the Psalms of David that he had heard read so often?
If I tak
e the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;
Even there shall your hand lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.
He closed his eyes and remembered nothing more.
14
The Comfort of Home
Pushing his way slowly through the crowd, Tom nodded to the barman and ordered a pint. The inside of The Shoulder of Mutton was hot and airless, the odour of stale sweat mingling with the sour smell of sheep’s wool. But Tom was oblivious to the powerful stench. He ran his tongue round his dry lips and glanced from one to another of the weathered faces gathered along the counter. They were, without exception, elderly farmworkers, some of them shepherds, others unskilled labourers who had come into the area for lambing time and not yet returned to their homes.
‘Here’s another of them,’ one of the men said, indicating Tom.
Tom looked behind him, thinking that someone else had followed him up to the bar, but there was no one there.
‘Another of what?’ He spoke politely enough but felt his hackles begin to rise.
‘Another one who can’t see where his duty lies, that’s what.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Oh, you ken well enough. You prefer not to see it.’
‘If you mean the fighting… some of us need to make sure the farms keep running, and that there’s food to fill t’ bellies of our women and children.’
‘So you would let their sons and fathers get mown down on the battlefields of France, while you walk the hills in safety.’
Tom saw this was an argument he was not going to win. He pushed his money across the counter, picked up his glass and took a long swallow.