Shelter

by Sarah Franklin

  ‘Aye, Seppe does love that boy, doesn’t he? Mind, that’s a good thing. It wouldn’t be every bloke’d be glad to take on someone else’s son.’

  ‘I didn’t ask him, you know, if that’s what you mean. And it’s not what it looks like between us.’ Before she could help it, Connie had finished the sentence. ‘I worry he wants me to become a little wifey, Joyce. How did I get myself into this?’

  ‘Careful now, me darling.’ Joyce lifted Joe’s fist out of the way of the teapot, and he grizzled at her. ‘I can see that.’

  ‘What do you mean? It’s not like I go round spouting on about it.’

  ‘Nor do you need to. I see what I see. Here, you, come to your Auntie Joyce a minute.’ Joyce stood up briskly, hoisting Joe on one hip. He was silent now, grinning at being bobbed up and down. Connie needed to remember that trick. It might work better than the jiggling.

  ‘Look, girl. It’s obvious you’re not happy here. Frank do say you’re all right when you’re out felling, and I can believe that, but it seems to me that this life of mother and baby isn’t your cup of tea. Doesn’t suit everyone, but we didn’t use to get any choice.’

  Connie stared.

  ‘Well, it’s the truth. Me now, I’m happy enough down here; got everything I need and I get proper satisfaction of a well-kept house. But you wouldn’t be the first wench to try something new in wartime and not want to go back to the old ways.’

  ‘You’re talking like having a baby’s a stint in the WRENS. I can’t just pack it in – you know I can’t. Though I think about it sometimes, even though I shouldn’t.’ The tea was comforting, a reminder of the thousands of cups that had gone before, and she clenched it closer to her.

  ‘I can’t leave the baby, not now he’s here. And if I took him away with me, how would I ever work? I only manage that out here because of Seppe, we all know that. I’d hardly be able to tote along a baby to some fancy job in London, would I? It’s not Joe’s fault I messed it up, is it? All I can do is stay here and make the best of a bad job.

  ‘And Seppe – he only makes it worse. He knows how to deal with Joe without even seeming to try.’

  ‘Doesn’t mean you’re no good at it; simply means he is. Some men are like that. Look at Amos.’

  Connie snorted; she couldn’t help it. ‘Amos thinks Joe’s another lost lamb.’

  ‘Aye, that’s as maybe, but don’t forget that he’s done this all before. You should have seen him raising his Billy.’ Joyce turned away for a moment, gazed at the fire flickering in the grate.

  ‘Handled the whole lot, he did, and wouldn’t hear a word from May’s parents, who wanted to take the baby off to live with them.’

  There was comfort in listening to Joyce telling tales of the past, the baby gurgling. And Joyce seemed to understand how confused Connie was about her lost dreams. It was such a relief not to have to put a brave face on it, even for just a few moments.

  ‘I was going to get away, Joyce. Go off to London and be a cigarette girl, something that got me into the pictures, or the dances. Then later I’d find a way to move to America – maybe even marry a GI if they were still around! Go somewhere, see something different. Instead of that I’m stuck in this endless damn wood – no offence. Not exactly what I had in mind.’

  ‘It’s not too late, Connie. You girls today, you get these new chances opening up all the time. Not like it was in my day. Maybe when this war is over –’

  ‘The war’ll never be over!’ Connie scrunched up her eyes to stop the terror overtaking her. ‘It’s been going five years. This war started before I’d even finished school and at this rate I’ll be dead by the time it’s done.’ Or Seppe would want them to get married and have thousands of Italian babies. ‘Seppe’s great, he is, but I want to be Connie again before I’m someone else’s wife. I’m too selfish, I know, but that’s how it is.’ She sighed. Did Joyce understand? It mattered so much that somebody did.

  Joyce sat down again, picked up her knitting from the basket by the chair and deftly added another row. How was she balancing the baby and the knitting without dropping one of them? Joe watched, transfixed by the clicks, and Connie watched with him. Maybe she could get Joyce to teach her, knit something for Seppe to say thank you. A pouch for that knife of his, perhaps. As if that would make up for her behaviour.

  ‘I don’t mean to be bad, honest I don’t. I wish I didn’t feel like this.’

  Joyce was nodding. ‘I know, love. You’re not bad.’ She held out the baby like a prize. Consolation prize, more like.

  Thirty-Nine

  THE RAIN WAS SHEETING down so hard between the oaks that Amos heard Seppe bashing away at the hut before he saw him. The blessed lad was going to break his neck up there in this downpour. Even the ewes had had the sense to get out of it; they were all bunched together in the beeches up near Drybrook when he’d left them today. He’d need to start thinking about winter shelters for them if it carried on like this, but they were hardy enough, just needed persuading to move to the old-growth now the weather had turned.

  ‘Watchoo up to, boy?’

  Seppe replied through a mouthful of nails, the rain drumming at his words.

  ‘Getting the roof on. Frank told us to stop felling because of this rain. This is a good chance for me before the light fades completely today.’

  The lad was getting there all right with this hut of his; quite the handy carpenter, he was. But that centre purlin wasn’t going on right, you could see that even from here, and he’d risk the whole lot toppling. And he was right about the light; the days were drawing faster than ever now with all this rain making it so gloomy.

  ‘Hang on there a minute.’

  Amos fetched the ladder from the shed and climbed up alongside Seppe.

  ‘I’ve tried everything. This one won’t line up properly.’ Seppe bashed his fist on the stubborn cross-beam and it bounced slightly.

  Not like the lad to be worked up like that. Amos went down a step on the ladder and squinted along the length of the roof.

  ‘There’s your problem: look here.’ Halfway along the roofline one of the uprights jutted out, getting in the way of the ash beam. ‘We can sort that out easy enough. You got the plane handy? Give it here a minute.’

  It had been a while since Amos had used a plane, but it wasn’t something you forgot. The boy was hunched up next to him like his Billy used to be and Amos swallowed hard. Must be the rain, getting in his throat.

  Amos lined up the plane with the wood and pushed down.

  ‘There.’ Nothing like a job done well, even in this weather.

  Weather. That was a point.

  ‘Where’s Connie with our Joe, if you’re rained off?’

  Seppe was halfway back up the roof. Amos had to strain for the answer over the blessed rain. ‘They left before me, before Frank came past.’

  ‘Why aren’t they home, then?’

  Seppe closed right in, like he was a pheasant who knew the goshawk had spotted him. ‘I think – sometimes she would wish for a different home. A different life.’

  That was the problem! The boy had forgotten the nails; small wonder the damn thing wasn’t staying put. Amos filled his palm with nails from the jam jar and Seppe lined one up. Amos had wondered, he had, about Connie and Seppe. Odd pair, to his mind, but there was no knowing what went on beneath the surface.

  ‘Well, she’s here, isn’t she? And our Joe, too. Doesn’t matter what you think she thinks. Proof of the pudding and all that.’

  Seppe’s next sentence was a mumble

  ‘I’m not sure how much longer for.’

  ‘She wants to leave here? That’s what she said?’ Seppe nodded and knocked a nail into the dead centre of the wood, steady as you like.

  ‘But what about the baby?’ Amos gripped the roof ledge extra tight.

  ‘Him as well, I suppose.’

  ‘And you think she means it?’ The boy moved the next nail, positioned it just so. As he lifted his hammer, he gave a tiny shrug of his s
houlders.

  The rain drove on down into the earth, the leaves drove off the oaks and the nails drove down into the wood. This little hut might turn into something after all. A home for Seppe, away from that camp he was always so keen to avoid.

  The sky was filling in behind the rain, darkness drawing down on them. The weight of it all pulled Amos down. Billy, out there underneath a different sky. If he was still out there at all. But he couldn’t – wouldn’t – think of a landscape that didn’t hold his Billy.

  Amos swallowed out the thought.

  ‘My son – Billy.’ The words were sharp as splinters but they sounded all feeble against the caw of the jackdaw, calling them home now the night was cloaking in. ‘Chance is he might be a prisoner of war now too, like. It’s a slim chance all right, but it’s all I’ve got. Either that or he’s …’ He couldn’t finish it.

  Seppe paused, nail halfway down. He turned on his ladder and nodded, almost formally, then moved back to the nail. Tap tap tap. The lad was concentrating so hard you could taste it. Amos’s mouth was metal, sour.

  Seppe picked up the next nail, his thumb to the wood again.

  Amos looked at it.

  ‘I thought I’d send him a parcel. In case he do still be alive. Through the Red Cross, like. Turns out you can send all manner of things; food and cards and whatnot. Christmas is coming up and it’s what our May would have done. I don’t know which camp he might be in, but them officials, they’ll know that, won’t ’em?’

  Seppe looked at Amos, didn’t say a word. Amos couldn’t read that expression. It wasn’t mocking, and it wasn’t pity, but it was sad all right.

  After a moment, Seppe nodded.

  ‘Many of my campmates have received these parcels. But … You know which country he was sent to?’

  ‘The last letter I got, he was in that Germany from what I could make out.’ This was what pinched at Amos as he pushed through the hawthorn and the gorse of a morning. If you didn’t know the smell of a place, the angle of the light on the ground, the camber beneath your feet, how could you ever say you understood? Him and his Billy had never been further apart.

  ‘And you – sorry, but I must ask this to understand – you have heard no news. Nothing from the British government?’

  ‘Not a sausage. But that’s a good sign, son, right?’ He scanned Seppe’s face, anxious. Those within war bore it differently, could understand things the likes of him never would.

  Seppe climbed down his ladder, waited at the bottom for Amos. ‘I am very sorry, Amos. I think without news of where he is, even Red Cross will not be able to deliver this parcel.’ His face had lost its rage now, was soft with concern. Amos looked away.

  ‘You’re right.’ Of course the lad was right. He’d been a fool.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  All he’d wanted to do was get a piece of the forest to his Billy. If his Billy – but Amos shut it down and his throat tightened. He nodded, and made his way indoors.

  Forty

  THEY SIMPLY COULDN’T GET a rhythm going today.

  ‘Have you got the wedge?’

  Connie delved into her pocket, handed him two. He’d need the smaller one for these spruce, but he should know that by now. She couldn’t be Seppe’s mother as well as Joe’s; there was already too much to remember. She’d lain the tarpaulin underneath the blanket and brought along an old tin cup Joyce used for the chicken feed so that Joe had something to bang with a stick. That scrape on his cheek was healing all right; he’d soon be good as new. Maybe she wasn’t a natural, but that didn’t make her a bad person. She just needed to concentrate on Joe and she’d work out how this life could be her life forever. But her chat with Joyce lay like a splinter in this determination, opening up the possibility of another way like a wound that, untended, would start to fester.

  Seppe slotted in the wedge and Connie moved the axe to the other side of the copse, well away from Joe, picked up the saw. She still couldn’t look at Seppe. He probably hadn’t meant to treat her like the little wifey, but she couldn’t find it in her to apologise for flying off the handle.

  She wasn’t concentrating and the wood knew it. Connie got up and dislodged the saw where the teeth had got stuck again. Every single time this morning. They hadn’t been this off-kilter since those spring days when everything smelled fresh and they’d sneak out to practise. She pulled off her beret and tugged her hand through her hair, looking at the empty mouth they’d carved into the pine. It shouldn’t be taking so long, not such a narrow trunk; must be going for a mast rather than a pit prop or rebuilding. The angle looked all right, but the line they’d pulled through it so far was zigzagging. If they didn’t figure it out soon, it’d be a hell of a job to sort this out ready to send on.

  Seppe lifted Joe off the blanket and came to stand beside her. The baby gurgled and reached out for her and she cupped his hand in her curled fingers.

  ‘You don’t want to bring him so close to this. What if it goes?’

  ‘It’s not going anywhere, that’s the trouble.’

  ‘Well, it has to.’ What was the matter with her?

  Seppe stared for a moment and she met his gaze.

  ‘All right.’ He walked back over to the blanket, put him down and handed Joe his stick and cup again.

  ‘You start, and I’ll follow.’

  Seppe looked across at this. ‘You don’t want to start?’

  ‘It’s not working today, is it, me leading? And we need to get this tree down. So you set the rhythm and I’ll find my way into it.’

  This time it worked better. She swallowed it all down, let her mind focus only on the rocking of the saw, kept her hands slack to begin with and tilted into the motion Seppe was setting. Then one-two-three – NOW she had it. It wasn’t the best timberwork ever, but it would get the tree down.

  They got three more down, the rhythm coming to them more easily now, but she couldn’t make herself care. Maybe this was how it would always feel? Perhaps her work wouldn’t feel so important now she was trying to focus better on being Joe’s mam? But at the back of her mind she knew that couldn’t be true. When the saw gripped the grain was usually when she came alive. She couldn’t shake off the last argument, couldn’t help but feel that she’d said too much that last time.

  ‘Can we stop again? I should check Joe’s napkin.’

  If Seppe thought anything, he wasn’t saying it. He tipped back his head for a swig of tea from the billycan and then looked at her for a long moment.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Will you come with me?’

  ‘Where? We’re in the middle of getting down this stand, in case you hadn’t noticed.’ And she was in the middle of changing yet another filthy napkin. When did babies start going on the pot? Surely it couldn’t be long now.

  ‘I think you will like this.’

  It wasn’t like Seppe to insist. That in itself was enough to get Connie on her feet, lugging Joe with her. He didn’t seem mardy with her, though God knows she wouldn’t have blamed him.

  ‘I hope it’s not far, then. Frank’ll do his nut if we don’t get this lot down.’ It wasn’t true. Frank never did his nut with them; they were always faster than the other crews. But it suited the cloud she was under right now.

  ‘No, not far. Vieni. You’ll see.’

  They made their way up the hill, further away from Frank’s headquarters but away from the camp, too. It was hard going, carrying Joe in this sludge of leaves and her boots skidded once or twice. Her feet were rubbed raw and soaked through again, had been for weeks now. Seppe held out his arms for Joe, but she shook her head and he seemed to know not to push it. If she couldn’t even manage to carry the bab, she was no kind of mam at all.

  Someone was cooking bacon; the smell of it wafted out of a window and Connie’s mouth watered. Bit late for breakfast, wasn’t it? Typical forester, though, to have their windows open even in this sunken grey cold. She stopped, shunting Joe up a bit on her shoulder, and looked around her.

 
; ‘Where are we? Didn’t know there were any houses up here.’

  Seppe looked down the path at her and half-smiled. ‘There aren’t.’

  ‘What are you talking about? Can’t you smell that?’

  He pointed ahead. ‘You’ll see.’

  She trudged on up to where he stood and looked to where he pointed. The trees were all but bare and on beyond them, in a clearing, was what looked for all the world like a makeshift caff, a tarpaulin slung between branches, sawn-off logs arranged in a circle around a fire, half a dozen Italians and a couple of girls sitting around as if it were a social, not the middle of the working day in a freezing cold forest. Gianni crouched at its centre – where else? – holding a pan over the flames.

  ‘Eh, scalco! You bring us the baby? And la bellissima Connie?’ Gianni made an elaborate bow and the bacon nearly slid off the pan into the fire. An Italian Connie hadn’t seen before yelped and grabbed the pan off him.

  They rolled a log closer to the fire and sat down.

  ‘You are hungry?’ Gianni didn’t wait for an answer. Everyone was always hungry in Gianni’s book; their desert days had never left him. He thrust a fork into the pan, handed the bacon to Connie as if it were a lollipop. It was going to be a right palaver trying to eat this with Joe on her lap.

  ‘Here, let me take the babby.’ Connie hadn’t noticed the other English girl and jumped at the voice. ‘I’m Mary. I’m here with Gianni, make sure he don’t burn down our forest.’ The girl was a local and she was clearly batty about that chopsy mate of Seppe’s, the way she was beaming up at him.

  ‘Ta – that’d help a lot, actually.’ Not having Joe was a proper weight off. She slumped back on the log and took a great big bite of the bacon, swigging it down with a mug of tea someone had handed her.

  ‘What are you all doing here? Is it break time?’ There was a roar of laughter from the other men. Beside her, Seppe stopped chewing to put a hand on her arm.

  ‘Work? This lot don’t believe in helping the enemy. Prefer to help themselves, as you can see.’ But he grinned at his campmates as he said it, and they grinned back.