Emily was up even earlier than usual on Friday morning. After a calm crossing from Liverpool, the ship sometimes docked as early as six o’clock and Alex would ring her as soon as he arrived back at Millbrook. He had offered to drive home for breakfast, but she knew there would be a pile up of work waiting for him and after three days away goodness knows what emergency into the bargain. When he’d phoned briefly from Manchester after lunch on Thursday, she’d told him she’d rather he had breakfast on the boat and arrived home at a respectable hour on Friday evening, so his dinner wouldn’t be spoilt.
There had been rain in the night, but as Emily filled the kettle and began to make her solitary breakfast, she saw the clouds roll back and patches of blue appear. By the time she’d eaten her toast, sunlight was falling on the kitchen floor and the drips hanging from the crossbar of the window were making tiny rainbows before they shimmered and fell.
She was feeling remarkably happy. Quite why she was so happy after a busy week with more than its quota of problems and no Alex to share them with, she didn’t know, but as she moved around the kitchen tidying up and wiping crumbs from the breakfast table, she felt something was different, some anxiety had moved away, though she could put no name to it.
In the past, when Alex had to go to Manchester she’d worried about U-boats or bombing raids, but this time she was less anxious. Fairly, there was much less chance of a raid and everyone knew that the U-boats no longer risked operating in the Irish Sea, but she wondered if there was some change in herself that had made this absence easier to bear than she had expected.
Of course, it was possible that her good spirits were nothing more than the fact it was a lovely morning and Alex was coming home. He’d probably arrived in Belfast by now and would already be out of the city and driving the familiar roads in the freshness of a lovely May morning.
She was sure he’d be pleased that the much talked of change of government had finally come about while he was away. Basil Brooke, who’d been so successful with the farmers and then in reinvigorating war production, a practical man with a gift for getting on with people, was now the new Prime Minister. If he were to address the problems of keeping up the morale of a workforce stretched to the limits, it would certainly improve life for Alex and his fellow directors.
Although Emily had read everything she could lay hands on about the new government and its ministers, she didn’t think anything so public as government policy could have made her feel so sure things were really going to be better. No, it had to be much more personal than that.
She listened to the seven o’clock news as she washed her breakfast things and tidied the china cupboard while she had the time. There was no doubt that, despite the predictable grim news of battles fought and casualties sustained, there was now a rising tide of hope that the worst of the war might be over. The huge bombing attacks on German cities, including Berlin, and the landings in Italy had cost many allied lives, but each days brought news of German armies in retreat, U-boats being sunk and industrial areas devastated. Now everyone was talking about the Second Front, the battle to restore freedom to Europe and to rid Germany of the Nazis.
When the phone rang she dropped her damp dishcloth and ran into the hall.
‘Alex?’
‘Who were you expecting?’
She laughed, knowing from the tone of his voice that all was well.
‘Did you have a good crossing?’
‘Must have done. Don’t remember a thing about it.’
‘And you got what you wanted?’
‘Oh yes, I got what I wanted,’ he said quickly. ‘But there’s something I’d like tonight, if it’s not too much trouble.’
‘What’s that?’ she asked warily, as she picked up the tense edge in his voice.
‘A bowl of champ.’
‘Oh Alex,’ she said laughing again, ‘what did they give you in the restaurant?’ she demanded, remembering his hotel had been famous for its French cuisine before the war.
‘Carre d’angneau, beurre noisettes.’
‘Alex,’ she expostulated. ‘What is that when it’s at home?’
‘Stringy lamb chops with the bones cut out, tied in a circle, in thin gravy. And new potatoes.’
‘And were they?’ she asked dubiously, thinking of the progress of her own crop.
‘Well as they were all circular, exactly the same size and tasted of nothing very much, I rather doubt it.’
‘But apart from being half-starved, you’re all right?’
‘I’m fine. I’m so glad to be home.’
The day seemed long to Emily, though she enjoyed the sunshine and having such an uninterrupted stretch of time to herself. There was always a great deal to do in the garden in May and there were jobs in the house that had been neglected so she could get on with the sowing and planting out. She made a list of the most urgent and tried not to exhaust herself.
‘If they’ve waited this long they can wait a bit longer,’ she said to herself, late in the afternoon, as she looked at what was left on her list, took off her apron and sat down with her book.
By the time she heard the car in the drive, however, she had reached the stage of walking round the house looking for something to do, a restless agitation threatening to take away the sense of ease and pleasure she’d had in the day.
‘Hello, love,’ she said, as he came through the back door clutching a small suitcase, his overcoat draped over his arm.
He dropped them both on the kitchen chair and hugged her.
‘I was planning to bring you a present,’ he began sheepishly, ‘but I didn’t get to the shops after all.’
‘Don’t worry about that, it’s just lovely to have you home.’
‘I have actually brought you a present, but its not the kind you put in a bag. I’ve found my mother.’
‘Alex!’
Emily clapped a hand to her mouth, her eyes wide, a sudden reassuring sense that this was it, this was the source of the happiness and the agitation that had come upon her at intervals through the day.
‘She died many years ago,’ he said steadily, ‘but now I know who she was and something about her and I know what happened, I feel so different. It wasn’t her fault.’
To her absolute amazement, he burst into tears and wept.
As she put her arms round him, she tried to remember the last time she’d seen him cry apart from that night when they had both wept for Ritchie. It was such a rare event, it came to her almost immediately. It was the night they’d had the news that John Hamilton had died. A warm August evening, the evening of the very day on which Alex had gone up to Rathdrum to tell him that little Johnny had arrived at last and mother and baby were doing well.
Later that evening, the sky cleared and the temperature dropped like a stone. Alex insisted there was even a hint of frost in the air as he lit the sitting-room fire. As it crackled and sprang to life, casting reflections on well-polished furniture, she sat, neither knitting or sewing, simply listening as he told his story.
For a man who was normally so sparing with words, she was surprised at how detailed an account he gave her. How carefully he must have observed Mrs Campbell and her daughter and what a clear picture he’d been able to put together of their small corner of the city as it had been some fifty years ago.
‘And Mrs Campbell just asked you in for a cup of tea?’ she asked, when he paused to drink his coffee.
Alex smiled and shook his head.
‘I didn’t spot the accent at first,’ he confessed, ‘but when she told her daughter that I was standin’ there as if all belongin’ to me were dead I realised she was an Ulsterwoman and you know very well that your countrywomen can be very direct along with their being very kind.’
‘Yes, that’s true. If I saw a stranger looking a bit
lost I’d speak,’ she replied, nodding thoughtfully.
‘She said her family were from Portadown, but she met Campbell at a dance in Belfast. He was on the cargo boats so he had a girl on both sides. So she said,’ he added, raising his eyebrows. ‘When they married, he got a job on the railway down at Victoria Station and he walked back and forth to work for over thirty years. But he had a weak heart and died in his sixties.’
It was clear to Emily that Mrs Campbell had taken a liking to Alex and that she’d appreciated the way he listened to her story rather than question her about his own. She waited now as patiently as she could while he told her about Maggie Campbell’s life as a midwife and her daughter Jeannie’s unhappy marriage to a man who drank and abused her before finally going off with another woman.
‘She only realised who I was when I described my sister Jane,’ he began again, after a pause. ‘She was the midwife who delivered her and she lived nearby, but she said at first she didn’t remember me at all. Then she said that when our mother became ill, Jane ran down to her and said that she and Lekky didn’t know what to do. Jane called me Lekky, because she couldn’t say Alex. And once the name Lekky was mentioned she began to remember a whole lot of other things.
‘She’d said she thought my mother was a widow, newly remarried when she came to the street, because she had a wee boy barely walking. My mother was Mary Jane Williams, she’d been a teacher and she taught us both to write before we were old enough to go to school. My step-father, Charley, was a merchant seaman, so he was away for long periods of time which is probably why neither Jane nor I remember him. But, then suddenly, when she was talking about Charley, she said that he’d been Lofty’s best friend.’
‘Lofty? So who was Lofty?’
‘Lofty was my father,’ he said simply. ‘He died in an accident at sea and his best mate Charley came to tell my mother. What Mrs Campbell actually said was, In those days a woman was in a bad way if she was a widow. Charley might well have fallen for her, but even if he hadn’t and was a good man, he might have married her, so she’d get the separation allowance.
‘Apparently,’ Alex went on, ‘the merchant service sends a monthly allowance direct to the wives,’ he added, ‘so she’d have had something to live on. I doubt if there was even such a thing as a widow’s pension in those days.’
By the time Alex had told her how Mary and Charley had searched for their lost children the fire was burning low and the room had grown dark. Emily sat looking thoughtfully into the last embers of the fire while he stood up and turned on the smallest of the table lamps in the large room.
‘So you’ve found your father too,’ she said, now able to see his face again in the pale glow.
‘Well, you could say that,’ he agreed, ‘At least I know I had one, if you see what I mean.’
‘Yes, I do see what you mean,’ she replied. ‘You were no unwanted child from a passing fancy. You had a mother who loved you and a step-father who treated you as his own. You even know a little now about your own father.’
‘That he was tall and a sailor. That’s about the height of it.’
‘Height indeed,’ she said, laughing. ‘But he must have given you your broad shoulders. Your mother didn’t, did she?’
‘I never thought of that,’ he said, his face lighting up with the smile that always delighted her. ‘You’re a very clever girl,’ he said, putting his arms round her.
Emily took one look at her youngest daughter as she stepped into the kitchen, reached out her hand for her overnight bag and pulled a chair from under the kitchen table.
‘Oh Jane dear, you look exhausted. Did you have to walk from the station?’
‘No, I’m fine, Ma. Been on nights and need to sleep a bit, but I got a lift with the bread man. He’d have brought me up the hill, but he’s short of petrol and hills eat it up, so he says,’ she reported, with a big smile, as she collapsed gratefully onto the chair and leant her elbows on the table.
‘What’s happened to his horse?’
‘Cast a shoe and needs to go to the forge tonight, so he had to use the van and the emergency can of petrol,’ she explained, yawning. ‘Any chance of a piece of toast, Ma?’ she went on, as she watched her mother fill the kettle.
‘Yes, of course. Are you just hungry or did you skip breakfast?’ she asked cautiously.
‘Both,’ Jane replied laughing. ‘I got a lift to the Great Northern, but it meant going straight from the ward. Gave me an extra two hours at home though.’
‘You could have scrambled eggs with a small piece of bacon on top,’ Emily offered, with a twinkle in her eye.
‘Oh Ma, and real eggs too I’ll bet.’
‘Of course, nothing but the best in this restaurant,’ Emily replied. ‘Even your father came home from a top hotel and asked for champ.’
‘He sounded so happy when I phoned,’ Jane said, as she watched Emily move around the kitchen preparing to make breakfast for her. ‘And excited,’ she went on, ‘as if something wonderful had happened.’
‘I think it has,’ agreed Emily. ‘He’s different and it’s lovely. I’ve never known him in such good spirits.’
‘What about you, Ma?’
‘Better than I’ve been for a long time,’ she said honestly. ‘I hadn’t realised just how much I worried about everything, especially my family. I still do it, probably always will, but it’s seemed easier since the Manchester trip. I know there’s no point in worrying about things, but do you have anything in your textbooks that tells you how to stop someone worrying?’
‘No. There’s plenty of stuff about the importance of reassurance,’ she said, yawning again, ‘That works quite well in the short term, but tell someone with a brand new leg, just out of the sterile wrapping, that it’s all going to be fine, just fine, and you’re simply being silly. Sometimes it’s far better to make a joke and that reminds them they’re still here and not in bits somewhere … I’m sorry, I can’t stop yawning. I’m not that tired.’
‘Maybe it’s the fresh air. When did you last see any?’
‘Last week. I had a walk on The Mall in Armagh with my fiancé.’
Emily laughed as she set Jane’s scrambled eggs in front of her, dropped two extra slices of bread in the toaster and poured tea for them both.
‘You’re teasing me,’ she said with a smile.
‘No, I’m not,’ Jane replied, as she munched happily. ‘Look!’
She put down her fork and waved her left hand just long enough for Emily to see a small gold signet ring on her engagement finger.
‘Weren’t we lucky? It’s the only thing Johann possesses and he had to ask the Camp Commandant if he could please have it back. I’m sure it’s against the regulations, but they do bend them quite a lot up in Dungannon. Which reminds me, I have a present for you,’ she went on quickly. ‘Bottom of suitcase. Don’t let me forget. Yes, please, I’d love another cup, I’m so thirsty. Aren’t you going to have a piece of toast with me?’
‘No thanks, love. I had a proper breakfast. Do eat that other piece if you can, the birds have plenty of food in this weather.’
‘I’d forgotten how good food can taste,’ Jane said, sitting back in her chair, her teacup to her lips. ‘They do try hard at the hospital, but mass cooking can be grim. Usually when one comes off night duty things are either hot and dried out or cold. That was lovely.’
Emily laughed and refilled the teapot. If the kitchen got any hotter as the June sun rose higher in the morning sky, they’d have to move into the sitting-room or find a shady spot in the garden, but she was reluctant to move just now until she’d found out rather more about what had been happening just recently.
Despite the dark circles and the rather too pale skin, Jane was full of liveliness. Very much Jane’s own particular brand of liveliness, but one that hadn’t been around for quite some time. Not surprising in one way, given how hard she and all her colleagues worked and the very badly damaged people they worked with. Jane seldom mentioned the bodies being patched together, the men who would never walk unaided again, whose job was now to learn to use a stick, a walking frame or a wheelchair.
‘So what about this walk in Armagh? You can’t mean it, can you?’
‘Yes, I can, but you mustn’t mention it to anyone.’
‘Mum’s the word.’
‘The guards are all pretty decent. They know perfectly well that most of the boys in the camp were forced into action and want nothing more than to go home. Except Johann, who wants to stay with me. They all know me pretty well now. They even try to get me the odd extra pass. Well, a couple of weeks back, one of the guards told me that he was taking Johann to see Armagh. He told me the day and the time, and where the bus stops on The Mall.
‘I knew he wasn’t pulling my leg, because some of the other boys told me they’d been billeted at the Gough Barracks last autumn and had been set to work sweeping leaves. So I went to Armagh on the day, got out of the bus on The Mall and sure enough there they all were, weeding the paths and cutting the edges and pruning the side shoots on the trees.’
‘But they must have been in POW gear?’
‘Yes, of course they were. But by good luck it was a cloudy day, threatening rain, so when I appeared, one of the guards just handed Johann a cape and an umbrella and said: ‘Off you go. Show him the sights, Jane, but don’t go outside the wall. Anyone comes too close, put your arms round him an’ they’ll look the other way.’
‘And did they?’
‘I didn’t actually notice,’ she said honestly. ‘We just walked round and round all afternoon and talked and I pointed out the two cathedrals and all the churches and the courthouse and the jail. And when the rain came on, we stood under a tree with the umbrella up as well and Johann asked me to marry him. Then we went and told everyone and they all shook our hands, guards as well. Then he had to march back to the Barracks and I caught the bus back to Belfast.’
‘That’s one to tell to your grandchildren, Jane,’ said Emily, who was blinking vigorously, determined not to cry.
‘Yes, we thought of that and we made a note of the tree. It’s a fairly young one, so we reckoned it would be there for a long time for us to go back and visit.’
‘It is quite the loveliest little bird I have ever seen,’ said Emily, as she turned the small gift in her hand, studying the details of beak and feathers. ‘How kind of him, Jane, when he doesn’t even know me. Has he always made things?’
‘No, never. It’s the South Germans who do the woodcarving and Johann’s home is in the north, just outside Hamlin, the Pied Piper’s town,’ she explained. ‘But he wanted to learn and they were happy to teach him. They make lots of little things to give to the locals and to the guards. Sometimes they get a packet of cigarettes in return, but more often they just give them away. I think they’re lovely too.’
‘Have you had any news of his mother?’ Emily asked, sitting down on the bedroom chair while Jane folded up her nighty and repacked her small case.
‘Nothing yet. The Red Cross are very good at finding people, but things in Germany are very bad …’
She broke off and sat down on the edge of the bed.
‘The worst thing, Ma, is listening to the news and hearing about the raids. So many tons of bombs on Dortmund or Hamburg and how many were drowned when the Mohne and Eder Dams were blown up. Everyone round me being so pleased, because that’s how we’ll win the war, but those poor people didn’t want the war any more than we did,’ she said sadly. ‘Da can’t bear to talk about that night he was in Belfast, but it must have been a hundred times worse in the German cities … Do you think about it, Ma, or is it only me because of Johann?’
‘No love, it’s not just you. I’ve always thought about it. Even more in the last week since your Uncle Sam came over to see us. What he told us reminded me that you probably have cousins in the Wehrmacht and the Luftwaffe and perhaps even the S.S.’
‘Ma, how come?’ Jane demanded, her eyes wide with amazement.
‘Well, if you remember, Granny Rose had a brother called Sam. He’d be your Great-Uncle Sam. He went to America and married a German woman called Eva. They had four sons and two daughters and rather a lot of grandchildren. One of the grandchildren, Lieutenant Sean McGinley turned up at Liskeyborough a few weeks ago asking for Sam Hamilton.
‘He had a letter with him that your Granny Rose had written to his grandfather, Sam McGinley, back before the First World War. Quite how he came to have it, Sam didn’t tell us, but the young man had carefully brought it with him. In that letter, Rose mentions all the family by name and refers to Ballydown and Liskeyborough, which was how Lieutenant McGinley knew where to go. But one of the things she asks your Great Uncle Sam in her letter is whether Patrick is still determined to go to Germany and whether it really is a visit to his mother’s people or whether it is to carry letters and requests for weapons. We know Eva had a large family back in Germany and it looks as if some of the McGinleys were in touch with them, though I really don’t know anything about the gun business. Either ways, we have a German connection through them.’
Jane shook her head and smiled.
‘My goodness, Ma, we don’t know the half of it, as Granny Rose used to say when we were small. There’s always more to know and things aren’t always as clear-cut as one might think.’
‘That’s what makes life difficult at times,’ said Emily thoughtfully. ‘I do try to think round things and see if I can find another way of looking at them, but sometimes that only makes it worse.’
‘What is it you’ve been trying to think round, Ma?’
‘Lizzie,’ she replied honestly.
‘Have you had anything from her since I was last home?’
‘No.’
‘Oh, I am sorry. I’m sure it was me and Johann upset her. I did try to explain,’ Jane said, looking at her sadly. ‘I wrote and told her how things had happened between us, but she didn’t reply. I wrote to Cathy as well,’ she went on quickly. ‘She was fine and wrote back straight away. She understood, but she didn’t know what to make of Lizzie. She said she was sorry she couldn’t think of anything to help. The only thing she said in the letter that really struck me was that Lizzie says she wants to go to university when the war’s over. That seemed like something quite new. I never thought she’d want to go on studying, she was so glad to leave school.’
‘Maybe going to university is the opposite of getting married. What do you think?’
‘I think something made Lizzie very unhappy and she’s not telling any of us. But she’s got a plan of some sort. There’s something she wants to do, or something she wants to be, and she probably thinks we wouldn’t understand.’
‘But we’d never stop her doing what she wanted to do, you know that, don’t you?’
‘Yes, I do know that,’ she replied reassuringly. ‘You said it when I wanted to be a nurse and I believed you. But Lizzie doesn’t believe things, unless they are all cut and dried.’
‘The last time she came home she’d just got a stripe,’ Emily began, trying to remember as exactly as she could. ‘It was as a result of a course she’d been on and she seemed very pleased about it. She was very tired and when I mentioned her being tired, she said endurance was part of it.’
Emily stopped and looked at Jane, hoping she might see something she herself had missed.
‘Cathy did say she’d got another stripe, but that was recently, so that must be another one, mustn’t it?’
‘Yes, it must be,’ Emily agreed, thinking once again of that last unhappy visit before her posting and wondering if there was anything else she could tell Jane about it.
‘Do you think it’s ambition, Ma? Does she want to get to the top of whatever it is she does that we know she can’t talk about to any of us?’
‘That would fit with wanting to go to university after the war wouldn’t it? She did mention she might be moved to London. I think she said something about the Air Ministry …’
‘Ma, you’re worrying again.’
‘Oh dear, and I was trying to give it up, wasn’t I?’
Jane beamed at her, that warm smile which had never changed since childhood. She wondered if that was the way she encouraged her patients. Jane’s smiles had always been hard to resist.
She smiled herself and suddenly felt lighter. Talking to Jane always helped. There was something about the way she listened that made things smoother and calmer.
‘Have you and Johann decided what you’ll do when he’s free to go home?’ she asked, knowing they had only a little time left before Alex arrived to take her to the station.
‘Yes, we have. If we know where his mother is, we’ll go and see her, but we’ll be married here. Johann thinks he might be able to work as a gardener until he can train for some skilled work. We’d have to save up for that and I’d go on working till he was qualified. So you won’t be a granny for ages.’
‘Thank goodness for that,’ Emily said, laughing. ‘I’m feeling my age enough these days after I’ve been in the garden without someone around to call me Granny!’