Albert, exhausted beyond speech, shook his head.
Within seconds of starting, the string between Philip and the Jew went taut. The Basque’s voice floated back, urging them on across what seemed to be a huge, angled slab of rock. It seemed every few minutes Albert slipped and they’d all have to stop. And then again. By the time they’d crossed the rock, Albert was crawling on hands and knees. He’d lost his stick. They stopped again, the shadow of the mountain above. Bertrand tearfully urged his father on but Philip was now full of rage, rage at his hanging on to the damn briefcase, which could not, surely, go over the top with him. One person’s greed endangering everyone. He felt sure the briefcase was stuffed full of money.
A tiny fizz of cold on his mouth. Then his nose. Snow was falling. They set out again up a pale field of old snow, crystallised on the surface, but often proving insufficiently firm to hold a man. Philip found it hard going. Behind, dark against the grey-white, Albert floundered like a wounded crow, his coat flapping out in the wind.
The flurries of snow came thicker. For a few minutes Philip could see nothing in front, the world a blur. Three tugs on the string and the Basque shouted, ‘Vers la droite! Vers la droite!’ and then Philip was under a rock shelter, the snow shut off and the space filled with his own gasping breaths.
They all huddled together. Even in this state of near-exhaustion, Albert placed the briefcase between his trembling knees, holding tightly to the handle. The Basque said nothing. Periodically, he prodded the opening clear with his stick. Then he unwrapped a little waxed paper package and handed it to Albert, gesturing at him to eat and pass it on. Honey. Philip dug in a finger and sucked at it greedily. The Basque started to beat himself on his thighs and upper arms to keep warm and urging the others to join in. He began to sing.
Sur le pont d’Avignon
L’on y danse, l’on y danse
Sur le pont d’Avignon
L’on y danse tous en rond.
And again. They all sang. And then again. The Basque got up. Keeping his back bent and his head down to avoid hitting the low rock ceiling, he began to dance as they sang. Philip and Bertrand got up too, and finally Albert, and they all capered about the tiny space like a troupe of mad medieval grotesques.
Later, Philip did not know exactly how much later, the Basque pushed his way out of the shelter, his head ducking back quickly to beckon them to follow. Outside, the snow had stopped and day had just dawned. There was no need any more for the string, and Philip quickly detached himself. He could see they were just below a ridgeline.
A short, steep climb brought them to the top and an exhilarating view. Snow-covered peaks, silvered in the first light, stretched away. Philip asked how much further they had to go. The Basque told him three hours, perhaps. Maybe a bit more. They made good progress along the ridgeline, the Basque seeming to know exactly where the snow would lie less deeply. The desire to get out of France grew stronger in Philip. Spain was within reach.
After two hours, the ridge appeared to end in a sheer wall of rock, but by using his stick and boots to clear the snow, the Basque revealed the start of a ledge about two feet wide, curving around the flank of the wall. Below the ledge, nothing. He glanced at Albert’s horrified face and pushed the snow from a vertical crack in the rock. The first handhold. Around the corner, the Basque explained, the path curled into a gulley, steep, but quite safe, and from there it was only ten minutes to the border and the start of the descent on the Spanish side.
Going first, he showed them how to do it, slotting his hands into the first crack and moving his feet sideways, kicking the snow away with his toes to find a good grip. He beckoned Bertrand to go next, and the pair vanished around the curve. Philip followed. He didn’t feel nervous and found the handholds easily, even allowing himself a glance over his shoulder to the long drop below. He’d never been scared of heights.
He’d gone about twelve feet when Albert stepped on to the ledge. He squashed himself into the wall, one eye roving desperately in Philip’s direction, shuffled a few steps, groaned, and sank to his knees. Philip had seen the same thing happen to men in Scotland during training; a paralysing attack of vertigo.
He didn’t want to go back. Men with vertigo were dangerous; they grabbed at you like the drowning, pulled you down with them. But Bertrand and the Basque had disappeared. He retraced his steps, stopping just out of range of Albert to consider the options. But his logic was clouded with anger and dislike. A nudge with his boot and Albert would be gone. It was what happened to greedy men in fairy tales. Philip slotted his right hand firmly into a crack and moved a little nearer.
Albert knelt awkwardly on the narrow ledge, his body skewed sideways, his hands and the side of his face pressed into the rock face. He moaned, spittle bubbling from his mouth. The briefcase rested precariously on his knees. Philip reached out and prodded it with the toe of his boot. It slid a little towards the lip. Another prod. Slowly, it upended, hanging for a moment, balanced on the edge. Then, it fell. At the same moment, Albert’s eyes opened and he lunged, seizing Philip’s leg.
Philip felt his body swinging out, pulled from the face, Albert coming off too, his upper body bent back, only his knees on the ledge as he clung to Philip’s trousers. Far below, the briefcase bounced against a rock and its contents spilled out. Philip saw himself letting go with his right hand, tumbling, turning over and over in the empty air.
Albert’s eyes bulged at Philip; in a second they must fall. The Nazi-gloved hand held on. Using all his strength, Philip forced his leg back to the ledge, bringing Albert back with it; then with his left hand he reached down to grasp the collar of Albert’s coat, shoving his upper body into the rock face.
For a minute, neither man moved or spoke. ‘I’ve got you, you idiot. Hold on to the rock. Move your hand up a little. Your right hand. There. Find the place to hold. Good. Now move your left. Don’t look down. Up a little further. I’ve got you. Don’t look down.’
Slowly, talking all the time, he coaxed Albert to his feet. Step by step, they moved around the ledge to the safety of the gulley.
‘What was in the briefcase?’
They’d stopped to eat the last of Philip’s bread and sausage. The Basque had turned back an hour earlier and they were down below the snowline on the Spanish side.
‘Photographs of my mother and father. Things of the family and of our religion. The menorah – that is candlestick – from my grandfather’s house. I had to do my best to keep them.’ Albert opened his hands in a gesture of acceptance. ‘In the end, it was God’s will to take them away.’ He looked at Philip without reproach. ‘We had no time to prepare. It was a case of go at once or be taken.’
They started off again. The path was well worn, but Albert’s knee was badly gashed, his shoes pulp. Philip gave Bertrand his rucksack to carry and helped Albert. It didn’t seem to matter any more that he was already four hours late for the rendezvous; they were alive, the weather was mercifully mild, and he was looking out at last over a daylight world. A dullish day, but Philip felt colour and light had returned to his life.
From the valley below came church bells; that strange, flat, foreign sound, and Philip remembered what day it was. ‘Happy Christmas,’ he said. ‘Oh. I suppose you don’t say that, do you?’
‘We can say it today,’ said Albert, and Bertrand returned the greeting in a breaking adolescent voice that went from a squeak to a growl, making them laugh. Round the next bend a man huddled under a check blanket rose stiffly to his feet.
‘Rosinante!’ Philip shouted.
The man yawned. ‘Bucephalus is very, very late.’
23
London and the Isle of Wight, April 1943
The undulating green and soft red brick of Hampshire rolled by, interrupted by gashes of white where the railway line carved its way through chalk downs. Sitting on the train to Portsmouth, Rosie felt like an animal emerging from a dark hole into the sunlight. The guard inspected her ticket. ‘Going to the island, then? I
went there once. Ryde, and then we took the train to Ventnor. Very dear, I thought.’
She checked again in her little leather purse. Seventeen shillings and sixpence ha’penny. Surely that would be enough to get her where she wanted to go?
‘Where are you from then, Miss?’ The guard had time for chat. Though safely past the age of military service, he had quite a soldierly air.
‘Newcastle.’
‘Ah.’ But he sounded a little puzzled. ‘You don’t sound Scottish.’
‘Do I not?’
‘Now you do.’ He grinned.
It was not far from the station to the ferry, but bomb damage sent Rosie on a circuitous route along a narrow walkway. The whole town swarmed with sailors. Two approached her, walking abreast, blocking her path.
‘Hello, my darling. Give us a kiss.’
She smiled and neatly sidestepped. The tall and gangly one turned his head slowly to follow her with his eyes: ‘You’re gorgeous, you are,’ he said.
Wearing a dark fitted jacket, a narrow skirt with kick pleats and the beautiful green suede gloves, Rosie did look gorgeous. She’d borrowed a hat from Beryl that was so nearly the same shade of green as to appear to match.
‘That’ll impress them,’ Beryl had said. ‘Look like you just stepped out of Swan and Edgar’s.’
A small ferry was revving its engine just ahead. Should she run?
‘Is it Gosport you want?’ said a voice behind her. The world, which for months had been closed off, disapproving and predominantly female, was suddenly full of friendly men.
‘No. The Isle of Wight.’
‘Thought so.’ He looked her up and down. ‘There’s nothing worth getting dressed up for in Gosport.’ He laughed, and she couldn’t feel annoyed at the remark. ‘You need to go further along. See?’
‘Thank you.’ She walked on a little in front of him, obliged to admit to herself how nice it was, after so long, to feel herself the object of admiration, and he wasn’t bad looking; thick reddish-blonde hair and ‘tash’, smart in the blue-grey of the RAF. An officer.
He followed her towards the narrow wooden gangways of a much bigger vessel, moored further along, but said nothing more. She too was silent, not wishing to encourage him and anyway soon distracted by the concentration required to avoid the gaps in the wood in high heels. How stupid of her to wear them. A sailor put out a hand and helped her on board.
‘Nice cup of tea down below, Miss,’ he said, and she obediently followed the direction of his nod by climbing down the steep steps into the low-ceilinged buffet. The smell of pork fat and cigarettes rose to greet her. She took her tea to the top deck, standing against the rail as the ferry churned itself away from the quay, rotated in a slow arc from the huge grey battleships and rust-streaked minesweepers, and moved towards a gap in the harbour wall. One frigate was moored away from the rest of the ships, and as the ferry passed Rosie saw a huge rent in the hull of the ship, the metal torn around the hole like fronds of silver fabric. There were men moving about on the frigate’s deck and one of them looked down and blew her a kiss.
She waved to him, feeling for a moment how wonderful it was to be alone and free for a day, and as they left the harbour and gathered speed in open water, she filled with childlike excitement. Before her, across the blue-grey Solent lay the dark hump of the island. Behind, the gulls swooped over the frothy wake.
There were only a few others on deck. A pale woman sat on a slatted bench with her arm around a girl of about seven. Their two pairs of eyes watched a younger boy race around excitedly, clutching a bucket and spade. They must be from London, too, Rosie thought, bombed out perhaps, in search of a bit of spring sunshine. The RAF officer joined her beside the rail. ‘Where are you headed? Once we get there I mean?’
She hesitated. ‘A place called Calbourne.’ The reason for her journey intruded into the simple pleasures of a day out. She heard Beryl’s voice again:
‘That’s your solution, innit? You thick or something? They must have plenty to spare. You get yourself over there, girl, and cop your fair share.’
The officer was speaking: ‘I know Calbourne. Way out west. I’m stopping in Ryde, spending a day with my mother. Got a couple of days’ leave.’
They passed a strange squat tower rising out of the ocean.
‘What’s that?’
‘Fort,’ he said. ‘Built to protect us from Napoleon. Shouldn’t think it’d be much use against Hitler.’
‘But there must be people there doing something. Look. They’ve got their washing hanging out.’ They looked at the little coloured shapes dancing on a clothes line strung across the fort.
‘So that’s the Siegfried Line,’ he said, and they laughed. He had a slight gap between his front teeth. Ahead, the dark blur of land slowly resolved itself into a town where church spires rose between whitish Edwardian villas. Hills swelled behind, wooded, green. Rosie forgot the man beside her, thought only she was seeing what Philip had seen so often, arriving on his island at last.
The officer walked beside her to the end of the pier, where on his advice she boarded a green Southern Vectis bus, which grumbled and groaned its way through places called Binstead and Wootton and then down a long hill into Newport, where she had to change. It was in the little Toy Town square during the half-hour wait for the next bus that she started to feel nervous.
‘You’ll kick yourself later if you never try. What have you got to lose?’ Beryl’s words made sense, but it didn’t make it any easier. ‘You look the part. Just have to practise sounding a bit posh, won’t you?’
Rosie imagined a door opening, felt her mouth struggle to produce the unfamiliar vowels: ‘Good afternoon. I am so sorry to trouble you, but I wonder if might talk to you for a moment?’
Occupied with these thoughts, she was hardly conscious of the beauty of the ride, the tunnel of green she passed through, the neat farms, the small fields, like a child’s vision of how the country should be, with every so often a request stop, an old man holding up a stick to indicate he wished to get on. Before she knew it, the conductor was calling to her that Calbourne was over the next hill and she stepped down on to the gravel outside a pub.
She told herself she should have a bite to eat, because she’d been on the go since six and it was now noon. But she couldn’t face the pub. She dipped a hand into the cool water of a huge marble horse trough and dampened her lips with the tips of her fingers. What there was of a village wound away from the pub in two directions, and for a moment she hesitated. The square tower of a church decided her, and taking a deep breath, she set off towards it. A few minutes later, she stood outside what seemed a gigantic house. Well, she had come this far… No hawkers, peddlers or traders, the sign read. She pulled on the bell rope.
The door opened. A woman wearing an apron decorated with faded daisies, her hair under a scarf, blinked at the elegant vision in front of her. ‘Yes?’
Before Rosie could respond, another voice came from the hallway. ‘Thank you, Mrs Edwards. Get back to your work. I will see to this young lady.’
Mrs Edwards vanished and a tall woman with a broad handsome face appeared: Philip’s mother. Rosie took in the tweed skirt, cardigan, brogues, all of a quality of which Aunt Betty would have approved. But the expression was not friendly, even a little mocking. Rosie pursed her lips unnaturally forward. ‘Mrs Seymour? Goood afternoooon. I…’
‘Well. You’re a little early. Come in.’
Too astonished to say anything, Rosie followed the strong wool-stockinged legs across the cavernous hallway and into a room made gloomy by its large dark furniture. How could she possibly know about the visit? In the pocket of Rosie’s jacket was the letter from Philip. She felt for it as the woman motioned her towards a sagging armchair.
Philip’s mother took up a manly stance in front of the fireplace. ‘I merely wanted to tell you about the pay and conditions before we go upstairs. I am prepared to give you one pound a week and would provide breakfast, luncheon and dinner, plu
s one cup of tea at 11 and one at 4. Hours would be 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Every other Saturday off. You would sleep in, of course, and there will be occasional night duty, but I have engaged a local person to do most of it.’
‘I don’t understand.’ Rosie struggled to lift herself out of the chair, the letter in her hand. That might be best after all. To let Philip do the talking. ‘I love you. When I come back will you marry me?’
‘You expected more?’ Mrs Seymour waved the letter away. ‘No, no, no. You come well recommended, but that is what I am prepared to pay. Now. Shall we go upstairs?’
‘I think… There’s a mistake. I’m not a nurse.’
‘I’m well aware you are not. That is one reason why I cannot pay you more. But you have cared for people before and sound like the kind of person I need. Why don’t you come along and meet your patient?’
Patient. A burst of hope hit Rosie. And halfway up the broad staircase she saw him; Philip, just his head, younger, a teenager maybe, lit by a shaft of sunlight escaping from a gap in the curtains. She stopped, stared. It was a good likeness. From above, Mrs Seymour spoke coldly, ‘My son. Missing in action.’
Rosie followed the older woman down a long bare corridor, her footsteps occasionally muffled as she crossed a threadbare mat. A door at the end of the corridor was flung open, white light burst out and she was standing in a small sunlit room. A wooden tea trolley, piled with vaguely recognisable utensils, books and what looked like medicine waited beside the bed. Before the smoking coal fire was a wheelchair, and in it, a white-haired man, a blanket of brightly coloured knitted squares covering his lap. A large window looked out on to the garden.
The War Before Mine Page 20