The War Before Mine

by Caroline Ross

  Two hours later, Philip and Tucker’s group filed into what was still called the purser’s office but would now be the headquarters for their particular group of commandos. Jimmy Burns, their CO, was waiting for them. He was only twenty-five, but looked older today, frowning and tapping a little stick against his open palm. Pinned to the wall were a number of aerial photographs of a port and the plan of a dock. Arrows indicated what must be the intended point of entry, along a narrow inlet. Large black circles lined the route.

  ‘What do you think the black things are?’ whispered Tucker.

  ‘Guns, I suppose.’ Philip started to count the circles, but stopped after he reached twenty. Jimmy began to speak, moving his stick along the narrow waterway they would travel to the target. Tucker stared at the plan and sank lower in his seat. He caught Philip’s eye, hauled himself up in his chair and viciously attacked an itch on his head. Like a dog, trying to get rid of a flea.

  ‘Right under Fritz’s nose,’ Jimmy was saying, his voice slightly breathless, ‘and, with luck, out again without him noticing. Blitzkrieg by sea, sort of style. Exactly where it is and precisely when we are going will remain secret until just prior to departure. But I can tell you what we are going to achieve there.’ He pointed his little stick at the entrance to a huge dry dock. ‘First and foremost, we are going to put this out of action.’ Jimmy’s voice was stronger now, excited. He explained how a British destroyer, packed with explosives, would be disguised to look very much like a German vessel of the Mowe class. Three motor gunboats would lead the way up the channel towards the port, followed by the destroyer. Navigation would be tricky, given the draught of the vessel and the sandbanks in the area.

  Not to mention the guns, thought Philip.

  Twelve motor launches were to bring up the rear. The plan was to approach the dock at top speed, the gunboats veering away at the last minute, leaving the destroyer to smash into the huge dock gates at full pelt and blow up five minutes later, giving the men just time to get off. The launches, meanwhile, would land the rest of the commandos at various places around the port in order to do as much damage as possible to the submarine basins and other installations before they were all taken off two hours later. ‘I’ll give you a moment to digest that, shall I?’

  Tucker looked across and grinned. That was more like it. Yes. Proper Boy’s Own adventure stuff. Despite the urge to be cynical, Philip felt excited, too. A murmur started, then louder voices, laughter.

  The room settled. Jimmy resumed. ‘The destruction of the dock gate is not your task, but you need to know that should those assigned this mission fail, we must divert all our energies from our own objectives to the fulfilment of this crucial aim.’ Philip looked at the faces of the men gathered around him. Most of them had only just stopped being comic-loving boys. The expressions on their faces recalled those of the leavers in the last assembly at school – when the headmaster had addressed them and they’d all forgotten how tedious and petty-tyrannical the last six years had been, entranced by the idea of marching in glorious formation out into the world.

  Always, a part of him felt outside of it all, as though he sat to one side in a comfortable armchair, a detached observer. And in the middle of other thoughts, his mind often took him to unexpected places, distant memories.

  He’s in the rectory pantry, looking up at the rows of neatly labelled jam pots on the shelves. Beside him is the green enamel bucket. Taking a breath he puts his hand into the clear cold jelly it’s filled with, hesitates, then pushes his arm down into the slime, right up to the elbow. His fingers grope about near the bottom of the bucket and bring up a speckled egg. He’s to take it to Mrs Edwards in the kitchen, where she’s baking.

  Why was he thinking that? Was this him, suspended like some fragile egg in isinglass? Given the German firepower and the little matchstick launch loaded with fuel in which he would be travelling, it seemed quite likely he’d get boiled or fried…

  Jimmy turned again to the map, using his little cane to point out the features. ‘Our own objectives are to destroy this pump house and to put this submarine basin out of use. For the next two weeks, you must familiarise yourselves absolutely with your targets. You already know them well from our night exercises, but you must learn this plan by heart, so that you could find your way around it blindfold and attach the right charge to the right location without being able to see it.’ With a theatrical flourish, Jimmy whisked off a cloth from a table at the back of the room to reveal a plywood model of the port and its installations. He called everyone to gather round. His finger guided them along the narrow channel.

  ‘We will approach here, disembark here. You, Murray, will take Strang, Anderson and Johnson to the two submarine basins, here. I will lead Tucker and Seymour to this pump house. Commandos under Lieutenant Dixon will cover us. Our objective is not to take on Jerry in a gunfight. We will be too heavily burdened for that. But you will all be issued with a Colt revolver for self-defence… Any questions?’

  ‘How long until we go?’

  ‘I haven’t been told myself, but because there is still training to do, I think we’ll have a week, perhaps two.’

  Strang spoke. ‘It looks very heavily defended.’

  ‘It is.’ Jimmy wasn’t one for flannel. That did a lot to explain why they all liked him so much.

  There were no other questions and they went off to play blind man’s buff. Not Nigeria, then, Philip thought as he followed Tucker up on deck. France, it looked like, but where exactly, he wasn’t sure.

  ‘Any idea of the location?’ he asked Murray that evening. They were on deck; even at dusk, the weather was warm enough to sit out. Murray tore a corner off his cigarette packet, marked his place, and closed the book. ‘Somewhere there’s a lot of Germans,’ he said.

  ‘I was hoping Nigeria,’ Philip said, ‘but we’d never get there in those things, would we?’

  ‘No. Closer to home, I think.’ Murray smiled but his face was troubled and Philip regretted intruding. Murray had seen action in Norway. He had been under fire, so for him the dots on the plan marking the German guns had a blood-and-bone reality that could only be imagined by the rest of them. Wanting to change the subject, Philip enquired, ‘Good book?’

  Murray turned the spine. The House of the Dead.

  ‘Pretty grim stuff, Dostoevsky, isn’t it?’

  ‘Grim? I suppose it is. But the Russians have got a lot to teach us, you know.’

  ‘What exactly?’

  ‘In Russian novels things start off terribly for the characters and they get worse. The characters expect it, and we come to expect it, too. With English novels there’s always the anticipation of something better. There’s too much foolish, baseless hope. Everything will come right. The Russians show us how to live without hope.’

  ‘Is that what we have to do then?’

  Murray took a cigarette and offered the packet to Philip. ‘You saw the gun emplacements.’

  It was unlike Murray to be so openly pessimistic. And something else was different, Philip realised, as he looked towards the dark hump of the shore. A week ago, such an exchange would have sunk him into the deepest gloom himself. Now, he just felt sorry for Murray; his own thoughts turned in another direction. If they had a week or even more, might there be a chance to see Rosie again?

  Gateshead 1938

  Rosie and Da walk across the high fields beyond the colliery, on their way to move a couple of ponies to a new patch of grass. One of the grai needs breaking, Da says, so he may bunk her up on its back for a minute or two. Up here it’s country, with a cruel wind blowing. Rosie stops and looks down. If she were wearing seven-league boots instead of sandals, she thinks, one giant step could take her home. But where exactly is home, among the patchwork of back-to-backs, tumbling down the bank to the Tyne? In the middle of Rosie’s picture slides the great grey river, and on the other side, with its higgledy-piggledy quayside and blackened spires, Newcastle rises.

  ‘Come on!’ Da is marching on
, the collar of his tweed jacket up, hands thrust in his pockets.

  Tiny specks of white hang from the clothes lines in the shared yards. Mam could be pegging out washing now. Doing the stoop, stand, shuffle dance as she calls it.

  First you bends to get the washing

  Then you stretch to fetch the peg

  ‘Oi!’ Da’s voice wobbles on the wind.

  Rosie ducks her head against the blow and runs, nearly cannoning into Da, who has stopped dead. He points, and her eyes follow his finger.

  The rabbit is a big one, much bigger than the stoat. It could easily run away, or dive into its burrow, but it cannot move. The red stoat dances on its back legs, showing a white chest, its long thin body weaving to an inaudible tune. The rabbit raises a paw, turns its head away, but the stoat drops down, arches its back and darts to a new position, uncoiling itself upwards, like a snake from a basket. ‘Look at me! Look at me dancing!’

  Rosie wants to laugh, but then she feels nervous, as though she’s in the cinema and the creepy music has started up.

  ‘What’s it doing?’

  ‘Huntin’.’ Da grins as the stoat mesmerises the rabbit. But he’s in a hurry, can’t watch any longer, and he pulls at Rosie’s arm.

  ‘What’s going to happen?’ She runs beside him, looking back at the red prancing thing.

  ‘Stoat’ll kill it. Jump sudden for its neck.’

  They are over the brow of the hill. The dance of death disappears. Da’s brown creased face looks down at Rosie. ‘What’s the matter wi’ ye?’

  ‘Poor rabbit.’

  ‘Soft chej.’ But he doesn’t sound angry. He’s always nicer when he’s away from houses. Rosie screws up her courage to speak as they walk on through the rough grass. Two brown-and-white blobs appear and grow into skewbald ponies staked out on a bare patch of hillside dotted with their droppings. The ponies watch dully, unnaturally placid, as Da kicks out the pegs. ‘Mother and son,’ he tells Rosie. ‘Bought them a couple of weeks ago. Going in the auction Thursday.’

  ‘Mr Fraser says I could take examinations and stay on at school.’

  Da straightens and fixes her with his cold blue eyes. ‘Here,’ he says, tossing her the end of a rope. Rosie strokes the woolly neck of the colt as she leads him over to a better spot, where the spring growth has come through. Both ponies start to tear at the grass. Da legs Rosie lightly up, and the colt flings his head up. She feels his flanks shiver and she tenses, ready for a leap in some direction, but Da grips the halter and blows soft words into his muzzle, using the language Mam tells other people is Spanish. The woolly ears flick back and forward, uncertain, but hunger and the voice win. The colt drops its head to the grass, cropping quickly, like a sheep.

  Da moves on to the mare. He runs a hand down one foreleg, lifts the hoof and begins to dig out the earth with a stick. Rosie watches her father where he likes best to be, his back to the town and his face to open country. The grey-green landscape stretches forever, beyond patches of village and coal workings until it is empty of everything and seems to call ‘Come, and before long there will be no one: just you and a path into the hills.’

  She sees the white in her father’s black hair as he runs his thumb around the hoof; nips off flaky edges with an old pair of pliers. The mare is completely relaxed; she leans her weight on him and continues to eat. Despite the cold wind, the moment is calm and companionable, and the colt’s prickly coat is warm under Rosie’s bare thighs.

  Da takes hold of the colt’s halter and urges it forward, but after a few steps it resists being parted from its mother, tossing its head and dancing sideways, trying to turn back. Rosie grips with her legs, twines her fingers into the colt’s mane, knowing what’s coming next. ‘Hold on,’ Da says, looking at her for a moment, and then lets go of the halter. The colt wheels round and careers towards its mother at a jolting high-speed trot, skidding to a halt so suddenly Rosie only just manages to avoid flying over its head. The ponies touch noses, then drop their heads to the grass. Rosie slips off the colt’s back and waits for her father.

  Da seems pleased. ‘Quick, isn’t he? Could make a trotter out of him. Reminds me of one I used to race.’

  ‘When you were young?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Couldn’t we keep him, Da?’ And for a moment he seems to consider it, running a hand along the back of the colt, singing one of his songs under his breath.

  ‘Why won’t you teach me the language?’

  He looks at her sharply and the spell is broken, ‘No point, is there? It’s all gone, that life.’

  Da leads both ponies over to a hollow in the ground where the rain drains into a shallow pond. They guzzle water, sucking and snorting.

  ‘Very thirsty,’ Rosie ventures.

  ‘Haven’t been up here for two days,’ Da says angrily, looking down on the sprawl of houses and factories, on lorries the size of beetles moving along the roads. ‘I’ll be finished with horses soon. It’s cars people want now.’ The distant clatter of the shipyards rises towards them. He pats the colt’s rump gently and a little cloud of dust rises. ‘Broken to saddle, I’ll say. Get a better price.’

  Rosie tries again. ‘Can I stay on at school, Da?’

  ‘Don’t waste your breath. You’re going out with your Aunt Betty. I’ve fixed it already. Ye tell your mother that. Putting stupid ideas into your head.’

  On the way back, while Da sets a few snares, Rosie searches for signs of the rabbit. Perhaps, after all, it escaped from the stoat. But a small patch of flattened grass stained with blood tells her otherwise.

  8

  Falmouth, 18 March 1942

  She remembered he’d liked his bacon crispy, two sugars in his tea. Making breakfast for her uncle on the second morning after Philip’s departure, Rosie wished she were busier; she might be able to stop thinking about him.

  ‘Is there anything you’d like me to do, now I’ve got more time?’ Rosie said ten minutes later, holding out Uncle Stan’s newly brushed hat. He turned in the doorway.

  ‘I’ve never got round to sorting out your Aunt Dottie’s clothes.’ He was looking at the banisters rather than her face. ‘Keep what you want and take the rest down to the Red Cross. No need to discuss it with me.’ He buttoned up his coat, though the sun was shining. ‘I’ll be back at the usual time.’ She watched him hunch his way down the path and into the street, where he met the young lad who brought the post. Stan fingered through the letters, taking one and pushing it into his pocket. The boy came towards Rosie, grinning.

  ‘One for you, miss,’ he said. Rosie took the letter and turned it over. A Falmouth postmark. She watched herself close the door and slide a finger along the gummed flap of the envelope. He was a gentleman. It would be like him to write, whatever he thought. He might even send her a pound, to show his regret for troubling her. If there were a pound in the letter she would burn it without reading it. She shook the two thin leaves of paper. No pound. Dearest Rosie.

  He was sorry for having been so dense. She was beautiful and adorable. He longed to see her again, wished he was with her now. Incredible how right it seemed, wasn’t it? At least he hoped she shared this feeling. He was full of questions about her, questions that could have been answered so easily during these weeks and now hung like fruit before Tantalus because she could not write back… In the dim hallway, Philip’s letter opened Rosie like sun on a flower.

  She laughed, ‘Silly bugger! Who’s Tantalus?’ yelled ‘thank you!’ at the ceiling, sank to her knees, mouthed a prayer. Running upstairs to the landing, she pulled back the blackout curtain hanging over the little window, and gazed out. The harbour was still full of ships, the pattern of vessels hardly changed except for where they had shifted positions slightly with the movements of the tide. So he must be out there still, Philip, her Philip, waiting to go. She looked at the letter again. ‘If I have any chance at all before we go, of course I will come and see you, but that does not look likely at the moment.’

  She would not go
out at all. Except to buy food. And then she would run all the way to the shops and all the way back. Please come. Just once. Adorable. Beautiful. Mouthy and ignorant, more like. She would look up Tantalus in Every Family’s Book of Knowledge. She wanted to run into the street and shout, ‘He wants me! He thinks I’m beautiful and adorable!’ Instead, she waltzed herself into the kitchen, tied a red-checked apron about her waist and set about making pastry.

  The flour she stroked through the sieve was silk under her fingers. Between the rubbing tips of her fingers she felt the fat slide, divide and turn everything to crumbs. She added teaspoonfuls of cold water and worked the mixture together with her hands until it formed a soft and pliable whole, the colour of pale flesh.

  Going to the pantry for the meat, Rosie stumbled over the blanket, part of which she’d immersed in a bucket of cold water. The stain was still visible, but when she touched it with one finger, a tiny red cloud detached itself, wavered momentarily in the water, and disappeared.

  It was impossible to settle to chores. She went upstairs to look out of the landing window once more, wandered on up to his bedroom for no reason other than to shut the door and breathe in the smell of him. In the bathroom, she rested a hot cheek on the cold enamel of the bathtub and found a tiny frond of seaweed curled in the plughole. She blew on it, thought for a moment about eating it… then she remembered her uncle’s request.

  Because he never drew back the curtains, Uncle Stan’s bedroom always felt muffled from the outside world, private and mysterious. Rosie opened the door and felt for the light switch. On the dressing table, a large photograph of Aunt Dottie when young, wearing a low-waisted dress and a cloche hat, was surrounded by religious souvenirs – little glass bottles of holy water and highly coloured gold-framed cards of the saints.

  A monstrous mahogany wardrobe and matching tallboy dominated the room. Rosie had never looked inside before, merely polished their exteriors, but in the rustling depths of the wardrobe, smelling of mothballs and old perfume, Rosie discovered her aunt had possessed an unexpected taste for luxury. There were beautiful clothes, some almost new, that could be altered to fit. She picked out an emerald green barathea fitted jacket and black kick-pleated skirt. In the drawers of the tallboy, soft cardigans seemed to puff up with pleasure at seeing the light, seemed to beg Rosie to try them on, and she did, laughing at her ape-like reflection.