The Star and the Shamrock

by Jean Grainger

  Elizabeth thanked her again, glad that the presence of the Bannon children was bringing her joy. Elizabeth knew Mrs Morris in particular hated the long holidays. She’d once confided that the long summer seemed endless.

  As they gathered their things to go, Erich decided he needed the toilet, so Mrs Morris accompanied him, and Elizabeth called Liesl back. She didn’t want to alarm the girl further, but she needed to figure this out.

  ‘Darling, do you think Talia was ever alone in our house?’

  Something in the child’s face made her realise there was some secret there.

  ‘What? You can tell me,’ Elizabeth said.

  ‘She asked me not to say, but I suppose now it doesn’t matter…’ Liesl looked mortified.

  ‘Go on, sweetheart, it’s fine. Whatever it is, tell me.’

  ‘Well, one day you were going up to the farm after school and we were to go with you – a few weeks ago, remember?’

  Elizabeth nodded.

  ‘Well, I forgot my rubber boots, and the farm is so muddy, so when the bell rang, I ran home to get them, and I went in the back door. I went up to my room, but I heard someone in the spare room, and I opened it…’ The child’s cheeks were flaming.

  ‘Go on, Liesl…’ Elizabeth encouraged her.

  ‘Well, Bud and Talia were there, in…in the bed…and they were not wearing anything…’ She managed to blurt out the last bit.

  Elizabeth had had the conversation with Liesl about boys and girls and babies and all of that, so clearly the child knew exactly what was going on.

  ‘They begged me not to say anything. They said you would be really cross, and they had nowhere else to go…’

  ‘Oh, that’s all right, my love.’ She held Liesl’s hand. ‘I don’t mind, not really.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Liesl asked. ‘I felt awful not telling you, but I promised.’

  ‘Of course I am. We talked about that, and you know when people are in love, they like to be alone together. Bud and Talia love each other, and so…’ She smiled again though it hurt.

  Liesl seemed relieved, and at that moment, Mrs Morris and Erich reappeared.

  They said their goodbyes again, and she was alone with her thoughts once more. So Bud and Talia were using her house, were they? If Talia would do that, use her spare bed without permission, then she was surely capable of letting herself in alone. But Daniel, was he guilty too? That was the crux of it. She feared what she told Gaughran would be the final nail in Daniel’s coffin. Nobody had need of second identity papers unless they were up to no good. His face swam before her as she closed her eyes and lay back on the pillows. A nurse came and gave her some pills, and soon she was drifting off to sleep again.

  The following days were a blur of pills and sleep and waking after nightmares of the children being abducted. She was agitated and had a vague recollection of a doctor saying something about infection. She woke and slept, and felt hot then freezing cold. Some people came and went – she couldn’t be sure who – and it was difficult to tell reality from dreams.

  On one occasion when she woke, Levi and Ruth were by her bed.

  ‘Are the children all right?’ she managed to say, her voice raspy.

  ‘Yes, they’re fine. Everything is fine, Elizabeth,’ Ruth soothed.

  ‘Daniel?’ she asked. She had trouble focusing on the other woman’s face.

  ‘No news yet.’

  Later, it was dark outside, and a doctor came. She struggled to focus on what he was saying. He was tall and had a condescending tone.

  ‘Elizabeth, you’ve been very ill for the last week. I’m afraid you’ve got rather a bad infection. It’s called streptococcal septicaemia. There is a new drug – it is only out of clinical trial, but it has been used to treat your type of infection in America rather successfully. It’s called penicillin, and I would like to try it. How do you feel about that?’

  She tried hard to concentrate on his words, but it sounded like he was very far away or down a well. She needed to get better; Liesl and Erich needed her. She nodded.

  ‘Jolly good. I’m afraid I can’t allow any more visitors, so from now on, you’ll be in isolation, but I’m very hopeful about this drug, and I plan to have you up and about in no time.’

  She hated his patronising tone – he was younger than she was for God’s sake – but if he held the key to getting her life back, then she’d do whatever he said.

  Sometime later, she was again drifting in and out of sleep when she heard the birds singing outside. She opened her eyes, and while every part of her body ached, she felt quite clear mentally. She heaved a sigh of relief. The feeling of being disoriented and in a fog was horrible.

  She managed to pull herself into a semi-reclining position and rang the bell. Moments later, a nurse appeared.

  ‘Ah, Mrs Klein, how are ya? Back in the land of the livin’?’ Her smiling, broad, freckled face was a welcome sight. ‘You’ve lost a few days, but you’re lookin’ much better, so y’are!’

  ‘Thirsty,’ she said, her voice sounding strange to her own ears.

  The nurse poured her some water and held the glass to her lips. Elizabeth drank, spilling some down her chin and chest in her haste to rehydrate.

  The nurse then helped her into a sitting position and propped her up with pillows. She checked the bandages on her head, examining the wound, and took her temperature and pulse.

  ‘Dr Emerson will be with you shortly. He’ll be delighted to see you lookin’ so perky.’

  Elizabeth would have laughed if she could. Perky was the total opposite of how she felt.

  The news that she’d come round and was fine after the miracle drug seemed to create quite a stir in the Royal Victoria. Penicillin was being used fairly routinely in London and the United States, but the novelty had not worn off. The self-satisfied Dr Emerson appeared and explained that she was the first of his patients to make a complete recovery from infection using penicillin. She wondered if he thought she should congratulate him.

  With each passing hour, she felt stronger.

  ‘Can I see my children?’ she asked as yet another doctor was brought in to see the wonderous effects of this new drug. She was tired of being on display.

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ Dr Emerson announced. His strong cologne was nauseating. ‘Thanks to this drug, all that remains is the physical recovery from the fractures and lesions.’

  ‘How long more will I be here?’ she asked.

  He absentmindedly looked up from her chart. ‘Hmm? Oh, I would say a few weeks. We’ll get you mobile again and make sure those cuts are well and truly healing, and you’ll be right as rain.’

  He swept out, his white coat swinging behind him.

  A few weeks. She didn’t even know what day it was or how long she’d been there. She didn’t like to call the nurse just to ask her that – she’d feel silly – so she just waited.

  A while later, the same freckled, red-haired nurse reappeared with a tray. ‘Could you manage a cup of tea and a slice of toast?’

  Elizabeth’s mouth watered at the prospect. ‘That would be lovely.’

  ‘Aye, well, I’d like to tell you there’s butter on the toast, but it’s just a scrape of marg, and the tea is as weak as water. Matron says you’d need to bless it before drinking it, but what can we do? Only carry on, eh?’ She prattled away, straightening bedsheets and opening the window.

  ‘I know it’s brass monkeys out there, but I’ll just air the place up for a few minutes, shall I?’ The cold wind gushed through the window, and Elizabeth shuddered.

  ‘What day is it?’ Elizabeth asked, feeling foolish.

  ‘It’s Friday, all day long.’ The nurse smiled at her own joke. ‘I’ll tell ya what, everyone will be dead happy to see you up and about, so they will. You’re a popular lady, so y’are. There’s a huge card outside that all the children in your class made for you. I’ll tell you somethin’ for nothin’, I didn’t have a teacher I’d make a card for, I can tell you. Dragons, the
whole lot of them. But they must be mad about you altogether, and you’ve had that many visitors, we had to keep them away. Your man Emerson would have a wee stroke if he thought his prize patient was being disturbed. He’d give you the dry bokes, he would, and he thinks he’s God’s gift, y’know. The state of him.’ She whispered conspiratorially in Elizabeth’s ear as she straightened the bedclothes.

  ‘But aye, loads of visitors. In fact, I think one of them is outside now. Will I bring ’em in, a wee bit of company for you?’

  Elizabeth wondered who she meant. She was pure Belfast, rapid talking. ‘I’d like that.’

  ‘Aye, well, we better tidy you up a wee bit first then, you look a fright.’ She laughed. ‘I shouldn’t probably say that, but you’d not thank me after if I let people see you with your hair all wild, would ya? Here now, let me see if I can fix you up…’

  She took off the huge bandage from Elizabeth’s head and replaced it with a smaller one. She removed the dressing from her lip altogether. She found Elizabeth’s hairbrush in the sponge bag that someone had brought in for her, and she brushed her hair and tied it back with a small green ribbon.

  ‘Will we get you into a clean nightie?’ she asked. ‘You’ve that one on for days!’

  Elizabeth was mortified; she must stink of old sweat.

  ‘I’m Angie, by the way. Now, let me get a basin. We’ll give you a wee wash, and there’s some nice cologne in that bag of yours there, and you’ll be like a field of flowers in no time.’

  Angie removed the old nightie and her brassiere and found fresh ones. The nurse washed her, and though the sponge felt cold on her skin, it was refreshing. Someone must have packed a bag for her from home. The new nightgown was a nice pink silk one, a rare extravagence that she’d allowed herself to after the bombing. To her embarrassment, she wasn’t wearing any knickers. She flushed at the thought of how many strangers had seen her naked over the last week.

  She was mortified as she put her arms around Angie’s neck to lift herself enough to pull the nightie down over her hips, but at least she felt like herself again.

  There was a bed jacket in the bag as well, a rose-pink one with ribbon threaded through the collar. Angie located some underwear in the bag and helped her to pull them up over her huge plaster cast. Every movement was excruciating, and once they were finished, Elizabeth lay back on the pillows, relieved.

  ‘Sure it’s no worse than having the babies, is it? They’d have the whole of Belfast looking at you then, as you know from your two…’ Angie went on as she shoved Elizabeth’s old nightdress and underwear into her bag.

  Elizabeth could have enlightened her, but she didn’t want to. Angie thought Liesl and Erich were Elizabeth’s daughter and son, and she was happy to play that role.

  ‘Thanks, Angie, I really appreciate it,’ she said, spraying a little cologne on her wrists.

  ‘No bother. We can’t have you receivin’ guests looking like the wreck of the Hesperus now, can we?’ She patted Elizabeth’s hand. ‘I’ll be back in a bit with the coloured water and toast.’ She gave a guffaw and left.

  Elizabeth relaxed and allowed her body to settle again after all the movement. Her thickly plastered leg ached, but at least it was down on the bed and not up in traction like she’d been last week. She wished she had a mirror, though perhaps she was better off not knowing.

  She wondered who was outside. She hoped it was not Levi or Rabbi Frank. She’d feel so awkward lying in a bed in her nightclothes. Perhaps it was Ruth or someone from the village.

  There was a gentle knock on the door, and she waited for it to open. She couldn’t believe who was there.

  ‘Daniel! What on earth… How…’ She remembered the identity cards for Hans Hoffman – maybe this wasn’t Daniel at all… She didn’t know what to think.

  ‘Hello, Elizabeth. I am so happy you are well again. We were all so worried.’ He looked anxious. ‘May I come in?’

  She nodded, unable to speak. ‘What…’ she began again.

  ‘I was released last Wednesday, fully exonerated. I did not know that English word before.’ He smiled. He looked like his old self, not the pinched, stressed man she’d met in the Crumlin Road prison.

  ‘They found you not guilty…’ A maelstrom of emotions churned about inside her. She didn’t understand.

  ‘May I?’ He gestured at the chair beside the bed.

  She nodded.

  ‘Yes. Not guilty. Thanks to you. Talia is the spy. She’s not a Jew, she’s a perfect Aryan, and she infiltrated the Kindertransport. Her real name is Gretta Werner. But anyway, she stole my drawings of boilers, buildings, all of that. I left them around, and she learned the codes and used them so that if she were caught, I would look guilty. She made accurate plans of the RAF base and then painted light watercolours over them. The police told me it was you who suspected her first, and it was you who gave the art to them. That man in the art gallery was her contact.’ He shrugged. ‘He sent some paintings back to Germany, and they washed off the watercolour somehow, perhaps they gave her special paint or something, I don’t know. But they had perfect drawings of the base, also information on troop movements and things like this. She was watching everything – that’s how they knew where to bomb so precisely.’

  ‘And the documents I found in my attic?’ she asked, praying he had a reasonable explanation.

  ‘Yes, those were hers, in case she needed to get out quickly. She made or had made papers for me too. She took my German identity card – it was thrown careless in the workshop as I think I do not need it any more, so she take it and made papers. She was going to plant them so I would look more guilty, take the light off her. Also, someone, like Talia, a young blonde woman travelling on German papers met this man McGuinness in a pub in Belfast in 1938. Even then, they were watching him.’

  ‘And how do you know all of this?’ Elizabeth asked.

  ‘In court, Detective Gaughran testified, he tells it all to the judge, and he also said that he is sure I had nothing to do with it. Talia, or Gretta, confessed everything to him in the hospital, including that I was totally innocent.’

  ‘So what happens to her now?’ Elizabeth was struggling to take it all in.

  ‘Nothing – she’s dead. Took the potassium cyanide pill the Germans give her in case she was captured. She didn’t need to confess – she could have taken the pill first – but then there would have been a question over me still, so she did a good thing in the end. I think she was just brainwashed. She believed all of Hitler’s lies, like so many more. She was not a completely evil person. She saved me when she didn’t have to, and she tried to save you, I think. And she loved that American boy, I believe that, but in the end, she chose her fate.’

  Elizabeth felt the tears course down her cheeks. She didn’t know why exactly, except that she was sad and relieved and sore.

  Daniel took his handkerchief out of his pocket and gently dabbed her battered face.

  ‘It’s all right. It’s over now… Everything is all right.’ His voice soothed her.

  ‘Oh, Daniel, I’m sorry I doubted you…’

  ‘You didn’t doubt me, not really. I know it looked bad. Anyone else would have felt the same…’

  She whispered, his face close to hers now, ‘I knew in my heart you were innocent.’

  ‘I know you did.’

  He smiled and she smiled back at him. Maybe things were going to be all right after everything.

  ‘So everybody knows you didn’t do anything?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes. Rabbi Frank was called to the trial, though it was a private case. Gaughran knew I would be set free, so he needed someone to come for me, I think. Levi drive him, so they brought me back, and we told everyone on the farm that night. Then Rabbi Frank went to the priest and the vicar and Mr Morris in the school and everyone he could find in Ballycreggan – he even made a point of telling Liesl and Erich.’

  ‘Have you seen them?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, they are still with Mr and Mrs M
orris, but we’ve had a long talk about everything, and they are fine.’ He held her hand. ‘I could go and get them now if you like? I have the car outside.’

  ‘I’d love to see them.’ She sighed and Daniel squeezed her hand gently.

  ‘I must look a fright,’ she said ruefully.

  ‘You look beautiful, like always.’ He paused. ‘I have a confession to make.’

  ‘What?’ She panicked again – what now?

  ‘When they brought that man who hurt you into prison, he was bragging about what he had done, all of that. He don’t know who I am. One day, he was working in the laundry, same as me, and I accidentally dropped the huge hot metal press on his hands. He has a bad burn there. Very painful, I think.’

  Daniel looked down at his own hands. ‘That was the only thing I ever did to hurt another person, I swear to you, Elizabeth. But the governor say yes, he is sure it was accident, and nothing happens to me. I am not a violent man, I’m not made like that, but when I heard that he hurt you, I…I wanted to kill him.’

  She squeezed his hand. ‘Thanks for sticking up for me.’ She grinned and winced immediately. ‘Ow!’

  ‘Don’t smile, not until your beautiful face is healed.’ He gazed at her, as if planning what to say next.

  ‘I’m so happy to see you, Daniel. I was so worried…’ she said, turning her face towards him. He looked the same as he always had. His olive skin was a few shades paler after being indoors for so long, but his brown eyes, his dark hair now streaked with grey, remained the same.

  Instinctively, she reached up and placed her hand on his cheek. His eyes never left hers as he turned his face to kiss her palm.

  ‘I love you,’ he whispered.

  ‘I love you too,’ she replied.

  Chapter 29

  November, 1941