Shelter

by Sarah Franklin

  ‘If there’s anything else you need, you get word to me, all right? Surrounded by them men up there all day, you are; they may as well be blind, but you can always come and find me if you need me.’

  Joyce turned and Connie held her look. ‘Thanks, Joyce.’ And she meant it. A load lifted.

  Joyce nodded, and was gone.

  Twenty-Two

  SEPPE WAS STANDING IN Frank’s doorway, the smallest hint of a draught cooling on the gap between his collar and his cap on this baking August day. Beside him, Connie shifted, wedged her elbow against the jamb. She was quiet this morning. Maybe it was the heat. It must be worse for her than it was for him, especially since she was still wearing that big coat even though it must be drawing more attention than it was diverting these days.

  ‘Here we are, then,’ said Frank. ‘More demands from London. If they carry on like this we’ll have no forest left. Seem to want them faster and faster, they do, as if they hadn’t taken our best men for the war, and damned near our best trees already, too. Whatever the dickens they’re doing out there, I wish they’d get on with it. This ent forestry work, it’s only timber production, and it’ll kill off our forest for good if they don’t stop playing silly devils, to say nothing of them buggers who keep pinching the cordwood.’

  Frank paused for breath and Seppe glanced at Connie. But she didn’t seem to have even heard him. Frank looked at her too, as if expecting some wisecrack in response, shrugged when none came and pointed a sweaty finger at the quota list.

  ‘Norwegian spruce this week, up near Brierley. There’s a stand of ’em up there should be about ready. It’ll fit this lot’s need for softwoods.’ He shook the paper again, this time as if trying to dislodge its demands, and Seppe nodded, steered the silent Connie back outside. The tang of the undergrowth in full burst was thick these August days and he coughed as they moved back into its clutches.

  It didn’t take long to reach the coppice, and the spruce were just as Frank said. Seppe placed the wedge beside the first trunk, ready for a quick insert when the time came, then hefted his axe.

  ‘I start now.’ No answer, so Connie probably thought he’d got the angle right for once. She’d never lose the habit of correcting his swing, he knew that now. He set the axe in motion, the worn handle gliding through his fingers as he built up a rhythm.

  A shriek rent the air.

  Had he hit Connie?

  Across the clearing, Connie clamped a hand across her mouth. Craven relief ran through him. She was too far away – there was no way he’d have hurt her from here. But he glanced down just in case, gripped the now-leaden axe more tightly.

  Connie had dropped her own axe and was grappling blindly for support. The half-chopped spruce swayed wildly as her fingertips scrabbled at its bark.

  And again Connie keened, bent double.

  Seppe’s blade thudded to the ground.

  ‘Connie – what is it?’ He raced over to her and unclasped her hands from the spruce, folded his fingers over hers. They had matching calluses along the inside ridges of their thumbs, sandpapery bumps.

  Connie’s eyes were full of fear; she didn’t see him.

  Oh.

  Of course.

  Seppe leaned away from Connie reached for the comfort of the whittling knife. His forehead was slick with sweat. Be brave. But his mind was crowded with images of Alessa, her belly curving through her nightdress; Alessa, marching down those stairs with a bravado he’d never be able to match. He had let down his sister, hadn’t helped her when she’d needed him most. He knew, now, there was no way he would let Connie down.

  ‘Connie. I find doctor. All right? You wait here, I go find doctor.’

  ‘No!’ Her breath was tinny, sour.

  She straightened up, still gripping his fingers, which had started to go white beneath her grip.

  ‘No doctor! You promised!’

  What did she mean? They hadn’t ever mentioned the doctor.

  ‘Connie, please, you need doctor. I go quickly, bring him straight back.’

  ‘No!’

  Was it the pain or the prospect of the doctor causing such anguish?

  ‘Do you worry about payment? I will help.’ He’d find a way.

  ‘No! No doctor!’ Her face screwed up.

  This couldn’t happen. He refused to be responsible for the death of two infants. He bit his nails into his palms, counted to ten.

  ‘Then Joyce? I find Joyce.’ Joyce had sent the extra food most days these past weeks, Frank handing it over in a silence that indicated he didn’t know what was behind Joyce’s generosity. Seppe didn’t understand how Frank hadn’t twigged but was relieved and grateful all over again to the compassion and understanding shown by Joyce. It was as if the two of them were joined in a tacit battle to protect Connie – and who knows what would happen now the truth would have to come out with the baby?

  ‘No.’ Connie was panting; she glared, sweat-glossed.

  ‘Connie, listen to me. We need someone who can help.’

  ‘Nobody must know.’ Her eyes filled with tears and he put a shaking arm around her shoulders. ‘Too early. It’s all happening too early.’

  Was it? He had never asked her about dates. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  ‘Not like that. Well, maybe like that too but I can’t be too sure.’

  She convulsed, whether from pain or fear he wasn’t sure. ‘I mean I’m not ready, still haven’t figured out what I’m going to do. I should have sorted it ages ago but it was too big and I just couldn’t, Seppe, I couldn’t. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.’ Connie sank to her knees and he descended with her. She was so young, and her fear was emanating off her.

  ‘The baby will be all right.’ He had nothing to base this on, but women had babies all the time. It didn’t always end like it had for Alessa. It almost never ended like it had for Alessa.

  But there was no time for that now. The stand would fill soon with loppers and measurers and transport for the timber; the very least she needed was somewhere more private. Could he get her home?

  ‘Can you make it to Amos’s house?’ But Connie turned wide, frightened eyes on him.

  ‘I can’t go there. He’ll do his nut.’

  It was up to him, then. Seppe straightened. This forest was the safest place he knew. He looked at the trees, green canopies bobbing, providing shade, solace, and his breathing slowed. The Forest would help. He kept his arm around Connie and took hold of her elbow. They stumbled down the slope into a dell. The trees grew thick and straight here, overlapping rows sheltering Connie from sight and masking any noise. This would have to do.

  Seppe released his grip on Connie’s elbow and she dropped to all fours, rocking backwards and forwards in an attempt to escape the pain, her head hanging low and heavy between her shoulder blades. She arched her back, dipped it, arched again, dipped again, desperate to find a safe spot. Seppe knelt down beside her and she clawed at his hands, drawing blood.

  Connie couldn’t think. All there was was pain, a pain right inside her where she couldn’t get at it. All she could do was try to get away from the pain. She arched back again, fleeing it, but it sank upon her, dug in and wouldn’t let her go.

  It was gone. She panted, drawing in air, gulping it down before the pain came back. She couldn’t do this. She wasn’t ready.

  ‘I can’t do this.’ It came out as a plea.

  ‘You can.’ Seppe’s voice was soft in her ear and his hand was firm and steady on her back. Perhaps it wasn’t too late. Seppe was her friend even though she was a bad person. He’d help her get the baby to the church, find someone who’d give it a good home. Seppe would understand – he’d know she was the wrong mother for this baby.

  Another wave rose and she choked, clawed by pain. She could see Seppe’s lips moving but she couldn’t hear him. Everything was inside now. She grabbed for his hand, dug in.

  Mam. Mam would know what to do, know how to make this pain stop and how to deal with the baby. She needed Mam
more than she’d ever needed anything.

  ‘I can’t do this on my own.’ It barely came out, and Seppe bent closer to hear her.

  ‘You don’t have to. I am here.’ She couldn’t explain what she’d meant. The agony roared back and she pressed down on Seppe’s hand. The sensation took her over and she couldn’t get upright again, leaned against him, panting and wheezing.

  Her whole body seemed united in punishing her for thinking she could pull this off. There was no telling what was front, what was back, what was top, what was lower down. It was all unbearable.

  It swamped her again and she sucked in air. She needed to get down. She rocked on all fours, Seppe kneeling again beside her. This was better, but only just. She fell into it, rocked and rocked and rocked. Everything was shifting, aching, searing and there was nothing she could do to escape it. She was completely overtaken by the pressure, the rhythm. She had no control over this, none at all. She shrieked, terrified.

  ‘Can you get up? This ground is not so comfortable.’ He was right beside her.

  ‘Can’t move.’

  ‘You can, cara. Please. You are strong. I know this.’

  Then a rolling voice that wasn’t Seppe.

  ‘How far along do her be?’

  Amos!

  ‘Since this morning.’ What time was it now? But another wave took over and rendered the thought irrelevant.

  ‘Come onto this, girl, save your knees.’ It was soft, smelled like Amos. She wept.

  Through a momentary lull in the pain she concentrated on Amos talking to Seppe in that way he had that you couldn’t refuse.

  ‘Do you know where Frank’s house is? Mine is next to him. Get there now, boy. Bring a blanket, a pail. A washcloth. The barrow.’

  ‘But it is against regulations. Prisoners aren’t allowed –’

  ‘Does this look like the time to be worriting about regulations? Nobody here cares about them rules. Go on, lad!’

  He was sending Seppe away? She needed Seppe, he was her calm centre. But she had no breath, no space to say this before her body took over again. This endless fire – this couldn’t be right! Connie put her head down and arched her back, yelling as loud as she knew, but the pain pushed after her. Amos followed her down. He didn’t touch her, but he stayed close.

  ‘That’s it, lean into it. Don’t you worry like, it’ll stop soon enough.’

  ‘Not your normal lambing. Sorry.’ She tried to smile, gasped again with the pain and Amos patted her shoulder.

  ‘Don’t you be fretting, now.’

  The ache ate her up again. She shut her eyes and wailed.

  Seppe heard Connie’s moans when he was still a way from the dell, his arms full of sheets, balancing a sloshing bucket of water. She was surely dying; this couldn’t be normal pain. He stumbled, righted himself against the nearest trunk.

  He scrambled down the sheer sides of the dell, desperately trying to hold the water upright. Connie was down on her hands and knees, overalls discarded to one side, sweat-covered and wailing, Amos squatting at her head, talking to her by the looks of things. She was alive. The old dog lay off beside the overalls. Seppe couldn’t look, couldn’t stop looking. This was human life at its most visceral. No battle scene had been more primal.

  ‘Make it stop! Make it stop now! In the name of God, Amos, make it stop!’

  ‘Come on, girl, nice and steady does it. Won’t be long now. That’s it, you keep going there, just like you are.’

  The sun faded slowly away, the last optimistic sparkle on the foliage fading as the shadows crept forward. They overlapped tentatively at the fulcrum of pain, enfolding Connie as she swayed and wept. Perhaps the cooler dusk air would help her, though she seemed beyond all time and place.

  Dusk. Seppe swore softly.

  ‘Amos. My curfew.’

  The old man’s response was feather-light, his murmuring tone never faltering, his eyes not leaving the girl.

  ‘Rightio. Off you go, then.’

  He lingered, moved towards Connie. ‘I can’t leave her.’

  Now Amos looked up. ‘Sounds like you have to if you want to be coming back.’ Amos’s skin creased around the memory of the body it used to fit, but there was steel in him that made you do his bidding.

  And he was right. Seppe had been cutting it too fine already, slipping out for the extra sessions. Did the old man know about those, somehow, the secret somehow murmuring through the density of the trees?

  ‘I can’t leave her. I promised her.’ Alessa flashed through his mind again, shadowy against these trees.

  ‘She’ll be needing all the help she can get these next few weeks, son. You won’t be any good to her stuck in that camp.’

  Amos was right. No more Connie. No more Frank. No more freedom. But nothing mattered in this moment more than Connie.

  Connie groaned again and Amos turned back to her, one hand waving dismissal. ‘Go. I’ll get word to you.’

  Frank was waiting for Seppe at the Forestry Commission hut.

  ‘I don’t know what it is you’ve been up to, and I don’t want to. But I’ll tell you summat for nothing: you don’t leave an axe out in the open like that. Anyone could’ve come along and pinched it, got up to Lord knows what. Stashing it in the coppice is one thing, but to leave him out in plain sight …’

  The axe. He’d forgotten all about the axe, to say nothing of that half-felled spruce.

  ‘Frank, I –’ Connie’s agony ricocheted still in his ears and his words blazed.

  ‘It’s done now. But you leave them tools out like that again and you’ll be back in that camp.’ Frank took his pipe out of his mouth, his forehead creasing.

  ‘Where’s that felling partner of yours?’

  In the nick of time, the camp truck rolled up. As it set off, bumping its way down the track, there was a new rhythm for Seppe to the jouncing of the wheels.

  Connie. Connie. Connie.

  Twenty-Three

  SEPPE SLEPT UNEASILY THAT night, tossing and turning to the sounds of his campmates’ snores and grunts. Alessa’s dying cries dripped from the rosary, mingled with Connie’s moans, turned into the roar of soldiers in the desert, parched and desperate, crescendoed into his father, a beating for each fresh rumour that reached his ears. Seppe tasted blood in his sleep, woke up hollow, shaken, reached for his carving to steady the pulse pounding in his temples. Connie. How was Connie?

  The oatmeal made him gag this morning; he pushed the tin bowl across to Gianni, left the mess hall and set out into the forest.

  Seppe jabbed his way through the throng of local men lined up for their orders, ignoring the complaints and shoves.

  But as he strode into the clearing, Frank was leaning in the doorway of his hut, looking out for him.

  Waiting.

  She’s gone.

  I failed her.

  He had no breath to ask the only thing that mattered. Frank met his gaze with a questioning one of his own. Had Amos really not said anything to Frank?

  ‘Amos dropped this off for you.’ ‘This’ was a thin white envelope, neatly addressed in a careful copperplate.

  Seppe tore it open and reached for the flimsy sheet of notepaper inside. Why wouldn’t it unfold? He wrestled with it, grabbed the edge as it took flight.

  One line.

  Relief unfurled like a leaf in spring.

  ‘Boy!’ He thrust the paper at Frank. ‘Connie – the baby. It’s a boy!’ Connie’s alive.

  ‘Baby?’ Frank retreated as if the paper itself was a squalling newborn.

  ‘Well, I’ll be –’

  He glared at Seppe.

  ‘Tell me it’s not yours, lad. That’d be a right mess we’ve got ourselves into.’

  Seppe watched the cogs turning, the calculations almost visible in the air between them.

  ‘No – no, can’t be yours. Well, that’s a blessing, at least.’

  This seemed to decide it for Frank. A smile spread.

  ‘A baby! I’ll be damned. That girl – n
ever a dull moment, eh?’ Frank limped across to the door of the hut, pulled it shut behind them to mutters of outrage from the waiting men.

  ‘Why isn’t she with her family? Or her husband?’

  Seppe remembered Connie’s phrase. ‘Dead and gone. One or the other.’

  ‘It’s up to us, then. She’s a damn good worker, for all her chopsiness.’

  Up to us. Frank saw an ‘us’ which included himself and also Connie. The acceptance, the simple sense of belonging, sideswiped him. Seppe leaned against the edge of the table, his legs unable to hold him. The table teetered, and the top layer of papers wafted to the ground.

  ‘Watch it, Seppe lad. Bad as blimming Connie you’re getting now.’ But Frank was smiling. ‘A baby! And she did bring it here to the Forest to be born. Least we can do is help out a bit. I’ll talk to my Joyce, see what the best thing would be.’

  Amos poked at the stew on the range. The blessed thing was taking forever to heat up, and the stink from the napkins in the pot beside it was stronger than you’d give a newborn credit for creating. By the time this stew was ready, all he’d be able to taste would be napkins and Borax.

  There was a rap on the panes of the kitchen window and Frank saw himself in. His nose wrinkled and he came forward to peer into the pan. ‘Crikey Moses! What are you brewing up there, old butt?’

  ‘Shh!’ Amos used the stew fork to point at the ceiling. Globs of fat dolloped down into the bubbling napkins. ‘They’re sleeping up there.’

  ‘Those napkins don’t go on the range next to your vittals. Saves them for wash day, you do.’

  As if Amos needed Frank to tell him that. Frank and Joyce who’d never been blessed with kids. Brought his Billy up on his own, hadn’t he? Knew more about napkins than most men round here. He’d wash them when and how he pleased. First Billy had told him he didn’t know how the war worked, now Frank was barging into his kitchen to lay down the law about childrearing. Amos stabbed the fork right into the napkins’ water. Drops of something hot and brown splashed out.

  Frank took a pace back, a look of revulsion on his face. ‘How is she?’

  ‘Aye, all right.’ Amos bent over the stew, close enough to block out the napkin stench, and sniffed hard. The food still smelt of nothing like tea.