As soon as Emily had tramped down the sodden garden path and put her small scraps of food on the bird-table, she made her way to Rose’s viewpoint. From that point on the boundary fence the land fell sharply away into one of Cook’s fields and a gap had been left in the planting of trees and shrubs so that the view of the distant mountains should never be masked.

She stood gazing out across the green countryside, the Bann flooded into the adjoining meadows, the Mournes outlined against a sombre sky. They’d had a covering of snow on their tops for days now.

‘The North wind doth blow and we shall have snow,’ she said aloud, rhyming to herself in the sing-song voice they’d all used in the small schoolroom in a remote Galway village. She looked up into the heavy grey sky and smiled. It was a familiar rhyme, but hardly ever true for this part of the country and certainly not today. There was no wind at all, just a heavy pall of cloud, sitting over the countryside, waiting. Waiting for some change of temperature, or pressure, not perceptible to human eye. Nevertheless, she’d be very surprised if a change didn’t come before the end of the day.

Meantime, there was work to do. She turned her back on the mountains, set off briskly for her own kitchen and decided that if she baked first, the heat from the oven would help to keep the room warm enough for her to sit and write some letters at the table. After that, she’d think again.

She took out her cake tins and began the practiced routine. Soon her mind was far away, moving freely from time long past when she had lived as a child in one Coastguard house after another, to the recent Christmas, now receding fast as January dropped one grey day after another, a barrier behind which lay one of the happiest times she had known since the beginning of the war.

After their solitary Christmas the previous year, when they had read together and listened to the radio, venturing out only to go to the Carol Service on Christmas Eve and to call on the Cook’s with presents for the children, this year had been an amazing contrast.

She would never forget the sight of Johnny grinning at her through the glass panel of the kitchen door as he pushed it open and dropped his suitcase on the floor. He’d arrived in uniform, looking smart and distinctly handsome, still sun-tanned, his hair fairer than it had been even in childhood. He looked both alive, in some vivid way she had never seen before, and at the same time, more mature.

For two days before Jane arrived, he’d helped her with her preparations. He’d cut holly from the garden. Dug up the little Christmas tree they’d used for years. Patiently decorated it with all the tiny toys and precious baubles they’d had since childhood, while she’d placed gold and white chrysanthemums in jugs and vases in the sitting-room.

They’d drunk coffee in the warm kitchen and he’d talked about planes and sorties and comrades and the night sky. As the hours passed and they spent yet more time at the table, she thought it almost felt as if he were tape-recording all his experiences, so they could never be forgotten. He was quite right, of course. He knew how she’d always listened to his stories, right from when he could only just speak, and he knew the story of the months that followed his eighteenth birthday and brought him to this present moment was one she would never forget.

He opened for her a whole new world, answering her questions, describing the everyday detail as well as what was totally unfamiliar. All she could bring to the telling were the war films she and Alex had seen in the local cinema, images of crews sitting waiting, playing chess. Scrambling when the siren went, then the formations ripping across the screen.

She offered what she could and went on asking questions, sensing how much he needed to go on talking.

‘Not many manage to play chess, I suspect,’ he said, smiling. ‘I’ve never seen anyone do it. Chaps are far too keyed up. More likely to knock the whole lot flying with the shake in their hands. That stops once you’re up. It’s a really strange feeling as you take off. A kind of sickening fear and then a wonderful sense of freedom. I expect it’s adrenaline, but it’s a wonderful moment as you soar off and see your pals up there beside you. Great solidarity, Ma. Whatever doubts and fears you have on the ground, there’s no fear up there. Just focus. Skill. Cunning,’ he said, choosing each word with care.

‘But we don’t use formation flying like you see in the cinema,’ he continued. ‘They did to begin with, but it had something of the same effect as the Charge of the Light Brigade,’ he added sharply. ‘There were high ups who thought it was a good idea and the first squadrons who broke it up and refused to fly formation ran into bad trouble. There were actually court-marshals.’

‘But why, Johnny? Why was there trouble?’

‘It was new, different, not in the book,’ he replied flatly. ‘But tight formation flying cost lives. It was predictable and made you easy targets for enemy gunners. Besides, you’re so busy keeping formation, you’re likely to get caught out by Messerschmitts coming in on your tail. You have simply got to keep them guessing, even when you’re guessing yourself.’

It was after breakfast on the morning of Christmas Eve that Johnny suddenly spoke of his own ill-fated flight from Tunisia. Emily was preparing a goose from Cook’s, making breadcrumbs for stuffing and preparing sauces she could re-heat next day.

‘I might not have made it, Ma, if it hadn’t been for Ritchie,’ he said suddenly. ‘And for you.’

She paused, startled, aware that for the first time, he was not taking his previous relaxed view of his ditching and the two nights he’d spent afloat. She knew well enough that the light-hearted letter he’d sent following his telegram was a clever way of being able to tell them quite a lot about what had happened and still get past the censor. But nothing he’d said since then had been other than equally light.

‘How so, Johnny?’ she said, not looking at him, though she noted the way he was twisting his almost empty coffee cup between his hands.

‘Walker’s Mill,’ he said abruptly. ‘If he hadn’t got us the job there in the hols I’d not have seen how they shaped those fuselages and cemented them together. I mightn’t even have known they’d float, with a bit of help,’ he added shortly. ‘I had to keep bailing, of course, but it gave me something to do while I was waiting to be picked up,’ he went on, a look on his face that she couldn’t read.

‘The danger was not exposure, though it did get cold at night, nor enemy subs, because they’d all left the Med by then, nor even sharks,’ he said, grinning briefly. ‘I did remember you once told me there aren’t any sharks in the Med.’

To her surprise, he stopped, put his coffee cup down on the table and gathered himself up from the familiar comfortable slouch he’d clearly not forgotten from schooldays. But he remained silent and thoughtful and a long way away.

‘So what was the danger, Johnny?’

‘What?’

‘The danger, Johnny,’ she repeated patiently. ‘What was the danger?’

‘Oh, giving up, of course. You’ve banged your head and it hurts like hell. You’re sitting in a kite with no food and the only water is sea water round your ankles. The kite is about as protective as an eggshell if a ship comes your way or one of our own chaps can’t read the markings and thinks you might be a enemy spy. Not a good situation,’ he finished, with a great intake of breath.

‘So why didn’t you?’ she asked lightly, hoping he wouldn’t notice that she’d shaken far too much salt into the stuffing and was now removing it with a teaspoon.

‘Didn’t I tell you? Thought I had. I came to, seeing those little red bits you put on the pudding for Jane’s birthday and I decided that it was a message from home. So I started thinking about everything I’d ever seen or done. Everywhere I’d ever been. All the things we’d talked about. And every time I bailed out water, I thought of that thimble of yours, for the cream. Do you remember? And I thought, if Ma can do it, I can do it.’

‘Do what?’ she asked, thoroughly confused.

‘Oh Ma, all the things you do. Like saving up the coupons so we could have beef for Jane’s party and growing veg to give to the Hospital and the Red Cross. Picking apart sweaters to knit something new. It is the way all the little things add up. Sitting there, I decided that multiplication is the most important thing anyone ever teaches you, the tiny things added and added to each other. Each minute. Each bakelite mug of sea water. Each walk up the hill to Rathdrum. That’s how I did it, Ma. It’s you that should have had the medal,’ he ended, as he stood up, took his cup to the sink and washed it under the tap.

She saw the first flakes fall as she washed the cake tins. Soft, curved flakes, like feathers from a plucked goose, caught by the wind before you’ve managed to gather them up. She stood watching them float down, thinking how slippery the hill would be for the postman, and how much worse it would be by tonight if the temperature dropped and it froze before Alex got home.

But there was a kind of relief in the falling flakes. The waiting was over, the snow had begun and already with the thinnest skim across the yard, the roof of the workshop, and the hedge beyond, it was brighter. The gloom of the laden sky was offset by the blanketing sheet of whiteness that covered every surface, smoothed out the irregularities and reflected what light remained in the short, winter day.

Jane had been glowing with fresh air and effort when she arrived. She’d seen no one she knew on the road from Banbridge and she’d got as far as Cook’s just as the parcel-post van had set off up the hill to deliver a gift from Cathy and Brian.

‘Good exercise,’ she said, as she dropped her suitcase and hugged her. ‘Where’s Johnny?’

‘Right here,’ he said, having run downstairs, shaving soap still decorating one ear.

Emily had turned away to put the kettle on as they threw their arms round each other. They had always been close and Jane had been distraught when they had to tell her he was missing.

‘Didn’t you wind your elastic up enough?’ Jane said, disentangling herself, and staring at him.

‘I wound it up all right, but it broke,’ he came back at her, looking her up and down as if he’d never laid eyes on her before.

‘When’s the Big Day?’ he asked, taking her coat and pausing by the door into the hall until he had her answer.

‘Not just immediately. I have one or two operational difficulties, as a friend of mine used to say. Come and sit down and I’ll tell you exactly what I need you to do,’ she replied, though Emily could see she was teasing.

‘Well, brother dear, there is this man Hitler,’ Jane began. ‘You haven’t seen him off yet, and until you do my poor Johann is stuck in Dungannon,’ she went on sadly. ‘Now he does have a friend and the locals are kind,’ she admitted, ‘but he is bored. Wouldn’t you be bored shut up in a camp? It will be two years on my birthday, more or less.’

‘I’ll have to see what I can do for you,’ he said adopting the same sober tone his sister had used. ‘Perhaps you’d like me to go ahead with the Second Front single-handed. Anything to oblige,’ he added, as he looked hopefully at the rapidly emptying tray of cookies on the kitchen table.

‘Help yourselves,’ Emily said, pouring more tea for everyone. ‘I refuse to ration out cookies at Christmas. When they’re gone, they’re gone, but we’ll have enjoyed them.’

There was a sudden unexpected moment of stillness, as if she had said something significant and important. She looked from one to the other but for a moment they continued to remain silent.

‘It’s just something I wrote in a letter to Jane back last month,’ Johnny began. ‘I’m as safe as it gets in Norfolk, unless a kite blows up, or I have an encounter with a tree, or the North Sea in winter, all of which I shall endeavour to avoid. But I might buy it next time. I told Jane that if I’m gone, I’m gone, but we’ll have enjoyed so much that we had’

‘Good for you, Johnny,’ Emily said reassuringly. ‘And we’re all going to enjoy this Christmas. Live every day as if it were your last, as they all say,’ she went on, ‘but just don’t go getting indigestion and spoiling it if you can avoid it.’

No one did get indigestion, she reflected, as she cleared the cooling racks from the kitchen table and sat down to write. The only opportunity for excess was the huge pile of roast potatoes from her own plot and the carefully stored carrots and sprouts. The goose would serve eight with care, but it had to last for a meal on Boxing Day as well.

It was fortunate that none of her children had ever liked plum pudding, for she herself had always found it much too heavy. In the past, at Christmas, she’d made trifle or fruit pudding or even golden syrup pudding by special request, though she hadn’t seen Golden Syrup in the shops for a long time now. This time there was only one possible pudding she could offer them.

‘Worth banging your head for, Johnny?’ Jane said.

‘Absolutely,’ he replied.

He picked up his spoon, gathered up a collection of the jewel like fragments of well-set red jelly and allowed them to fall, one by one, back down to the swirl of cream that sat atop the sherry trifle in the best sundae glasses.

‘I’ve waited a long time to do that,’ he said, lifting his spoon in salute to his mother.

‘A good thing is worth waiting for, so they say in these parts,’ said Alex, with a sideways look at both his son and daughter.

Her first letter that afternoon was to her ‘other Jane’, her new-found sister-in-law.

Tuesday 18th January,
1944

My dear Jane,

Christmas is now fast becoming a happy memory. We loved your card and had it in pride of place beside the clock where it marked your place given we couldn’t have you yourself with us.

You were very much in our thoughts. Every time I caught sight of Johnny laughing and teasing his sister, or talking ‘war talk’ with his father, I thought how nearly we might have lost him. And how much nearer you came to loosing your dear Lachlan. It is such a lovely Scots name you’ll have to forgive me if you find the beginning of Hank, scratched out, when I remember that this dear man has different names in different places.

I’m so grateful that he was flown back to America. I know the hospital is a long way away and visits must be tiring, but at least you feel you can get there if he needs you and I’m sure the telephone is a comfort. I’m very impressed with him having a telephone in his room. Here, I fear, telephones often don’t work even if you have one, or you get cut off in mid-sentence without even the warning of the pips. Do the doctors really feel that he would be better off with an amputation and an artificial limb? It is such a big decision.

And how are your other two sons? I have found out that the Ottawa Cameron Highlanders have an association with the Winnipeg Rifles and we have a battalion of them only a few miles away. The Canadian Air Force is based mostly in England, but there are certainly many Canadian troops here in Ulster apart from our friends at the Castlewellan Camp that I’ve told you about. My sister down in Fermanagh says every second person she hears in the street is Canadian or American.

Our friend, Chris Hicks, did manage a visit on Christmas Day. We knew he wanted to meet Jane and Johnny and it was a rare opportunity with their leave coinciding. He asked most kindly about Hank (Lachlan) and said how much he had valued him. He asks me to send you both his regards and to say to you: ‘That’s one fine young man, ma’am.’

Your dear brother Alex is hard at work, but somewhat less pressed than he was before Christmas. He’d had a bad time, which he didn’t tell me about, due to high levels of illness which lowered production. But he solved the problem by adopting the wise strategy of one of his senior spinners. She told him where he could find women to step into the breach now and also provide him with a part-time reserve for the coming year.

I confess I do worry about the long hours he works, but I also have the comfort of knowing he is well and eats properly. How many women have that comfort in these difficult times?

Now, I must see about an evening meal. The snow began a couple of hours ago and is beginning to be quite serious about laying a thick carpet over everything. Not like your snow in Canada which I know you measure in feet. Or even in Boston which I’m told is kindlier. But snow still makes life more difficult and for most people here it brings a sudden desperate longing for the spring.

Do you suffer from that longing as well? There seem to be so many things we share, weaknesses as well as strengths. It is a great joy.

I do hope your John is feeling better after his flu and that the news continues good from both Chester and Andrew. I shall be writing to Lachlan later this week, but will send it care of you as I forgot to ask you for the address of the hospital.

With love from us both to all of you,

Emily.

The snow continued intermittently through Wednesday and Thursday, but when Emily drew back the curtains on Friday morning she found a thin, mizzling rain already pitting the smooth contours that covered hedge and bush. She could hear the drip of water from overflowing gutters. Later, when she tramped through the slush to the bird table she found the air had lost its icy chill.

She could now breathe more freely in both senses of the word, for a winter picnic had been planned at the community hall in Seapatrick and at this rate by late morning the roads would all be clear. Even if the footpaths were wet and muddy, it would make life easier for everyone if they didn’t have to carry bags and boxes over slippery pavements.

The picnic itself went well, the practiced routine never failed to create a lively good feeling, but she felt tired afterwards as she packed up plates and dishes, loaded her shopping bag and basket and gave them to the pale young man who stood to attention when she spoke to him, but had been a great success all afternoon with his impersonations of Superman.

It was so good to be home with no more to do than put a match to the fire and listen for Alex before she lit the gas under their champ. It was Alex’s idea that they have a picnic themselves in the evening if she was busy with a picnic in the afternoon.

He was a little earlier than usual and in good spirits.

‘Here you are, read that,’ he said, taking an envelope from his pocket and dropping a large brown paper bag on the table.

‘Oh, how lovely,’ she said warmly. ‘What did they give you?’

By way of answer, he pushed the brown paper bag across the table.

She opened the bag and looked inside.

‘Alex! Where did they get these?’

‘I thought I’d better not ask, but the whisper was they all had odd bits of shirt in their work boxes and it took them till now to get the pieces they needed. You said the shirt situation was getting serious. Those will help, won’t they?’

‘My goodness,’ she said happily. ‘Saville Row label and all. These will last for years! Oh love, what a lovely surprise.’

‘That and a bowl of champ and Sam’s turf on the fire …’

He broke off in the middle of taking off his dungarees as he heard the phone ring.

‘It’s all right, I’ll take it while you struggle,’ she said, laughing as she went out into the hall.

She switched on the light and seeing how dim it was bent down and picked up the torch that sat on the floor beside the phone table in case the power should fail. The receiver was cold to the touch and there was a moment of complete silence as she put it to her ear.

‘Hallo, Hallo, is that you, Ma?’

‘Lizzie,’ she replied, surprised and pleased, ‘how lovely to hear you. Have you come over on leave?’

‘No, Ma, I’m in London, but I’m in someone else’s office and I may get cut off …

There was a loud noise in the background and a sudden crackle on the line. Emily knew she had missed some words, for Lizzie had gone on speaking unaware of the crackle on the line.

‘What did you say, Lizzie?’

‘I said I’m sorry it’s such bad news.’

‘What bad news?’

‘About Cathy and Brian …’

‘But what’s happened?’ she asked, anxiety stabbing her as she realised suddenly what the noise must have been.

‘It was a direct hit, Ma. There’s nothing left at all. They wouldn’t have known a thing,’ she said, her voice tight with anxiety. ‘I’m afraid I have to go. This line is priority. I’ll send you the notification, but I can’t do anything more. Sorry and all that,’ she added apologetically, as the line went dead.

Emily looked at the heavy black receiver as if there were more words in the earpiece could she only reach them. But she couldn’t. There weren’t any more words to be had. It had needed so few. And now a strange silence flowed all around her. Like the snow, it had come at last, the enormity of loss she had always feared.

She felt Alex’s hand on her arm as he took the receiver and put it down.

‘Who, Emily? Who is it this time?’ he asked, his face featureless in the dim light.

‘Cathy and Brian,’ she said, the words coming out without the slightest difficulty.

‘Dead?’

‘Yes. I think it was an air-raid. There was an explosion, so I couldn’t hear the first time,’ she went on, wanting to share with him the smallest detail.

‘Who rang?’

‘Lizzie.’

‘Lizzie,’ he repeated, with a great sigh. ‘I wonder how she came to be there.’

‘I think they still see each other occasionally, but I don’t ask. It’s between her and Lizzie.’

She stopped and thought again. She couldn’t say that any more.

‘I mean it was between her and Lizzie.’

In the dim light, she couldn’t see if Alex had tears in his eyes, but he looked pale and she felt herself shiver. The hall was stone cold. Once again there was no paraffin and the convector heater had cut out as the supply fell.

‘Alex, we mustn’t stand here. Let’s sit by the fire,’ she said, putting her arm round him and urging him towards the sitting-room door.

The fire had burnt up and the room was full of the faint aroma of turf. Its flickering flames reflected in the well-polished furniture and caught the gold and white blooms of the Christmas chrysanthemums lasting so well in the chilly room.

‘What are we going to do, Emily?’ he said bleakly as they stood warming themselves at the fire.

‘I think we have to give thanks for all they had,’ she said reaching for his hand, ‘Like Johnny said at Christmas to Jane, ‘we’ll have enjoyed so much.’ They did, Alex. They were happy. Happier in this last year than they’d ever been.’

‘And that’s been taken away,’ he said bitterly.

‘Yes, it has. But the loss is ours, not theirs. They had what they had and it was good. And they went together, Alex, as we would if we could choose. They were not parted.’

‘No, they were not parted. That’s some comfort. But not much. And it seems we’ve lost Lizzie as well. There didn’t seem to be much in the way of a kind word for us.’

‘No, there wasn’t,’ she agreed. ‘I think Lizzie’s given up kind words. But we haven’t. We’ll just have to be very kind to each other,’ she said, putting her arms round him and holding him close.