Sisters at War Read online

  Her uncle brought in the leaflet that the Germans were dropping calling for the surrender of the island and the cessation of any type of resistance. ‘We’re to fly white sheets, flags, any old white how’s your fathers, from the windows, and white crosses painted here, there and every bloody where.’

  He sat down suddenly at the kitchen table, quite pale, and growing paler. While her mother watched, Aunt Olive came to him, pulling out a chair and sitting facing him. She took his hands and kissed them. ‘Then that is what we shall do, though the how’s your father can be a pair of your long johns. We can’t do much, but that we can do.’

  Her mother sat down next to Hannah, and held out her hand. ‘Bee will have tried, but there’s no way for her to tell you that they did. You must trust them. They said they would try again, and they will.’

  Hannah stared at these old people, who understood nothing. She was stuck here, while Peter was over there. She said, ‘I told her Dad said she had to look after me. I told her, and now she’s let me down, and I’m stuck here, with the enemy, and with you.’

  Aunt Olive gripped her husband’s hands so tightly he winced. Her voice was level as she said, ‘I never did understand how he could ask that, Hannah. The fall broke his neck, and smashed his skull. How—’

  Hannah glared. ‘Yes, that’s right, the Nazis are on the way, and my sister hasn’t come, and now you’re calling me a liar.’

  She banged from the room, and pounded up the stairs, standing at the window and cursing the Germans, cursing Bryony, and missing Peter with a pain that slashed her. ‘For how long?’ she cried. ‘How long is this going on? I’m seventeen, and what about my life?’

  Her mother knocked on the door, and entered. She stood beside her daughter, slipping her arm through hers. ‘It won’t go on for ever. Britain might capitulate. It could all be over very soon and if it isn’t, Bryony will come. You know she will. She keeps her promises, and remember, your dad was the strongest of men, and he loved us all. He would have held on until he made sure we were all looked after.’

  They watched her uncle paint a white cross on the hay barn across the road running in front of the farmhouse. ‘He’s painting it in whitewash, so it washes off,’ her mother said. ‘He can’t bear it to be permanent. His friend tells him the Bailiff of Jersey, who has been made Civil Governor, will be formally handing over when the Germans land.’

  Hannah didn’t care what he painted it with and who was handing what over to whom. She shrugged free of her mother. ‘I’m going to keep my easels and paintings together. I won’t unpack, so there. I’m exhausted, so I’ll eat and then have a sleep. Wake me if she comes, Mum.’ Seeing her mother’s face, she added, ‘Please. Then I might as well go and meet Sylvia tonight, and we can go to the pub and see what’s happening. You could send Bee on to the pub, if she comes. I’ll leave my stuff packed. I can’t just stop living, though that’s how I feel.’ She ended on a wail, and her misery was there for all to hear. But who was listening?

  Chapter Ten

  2 July 1940

  Scotland

  Adam arrived in Scotland on 2 July. It was a grey day, with a wind chill factor of hell knows what as he finally approached the wharf, lugging his canvas holdall. He sighed, thinking of Dunkirk. Morgan should have been here but instead he was feeding the fish. He hunched his shoulders and set his cap more firmly on his head, hearing the gulls, and the crash and bang of coalers and cranes.

  He’d just heard from a gunner he vaguely knew that his last trawler had gone down soon after the Norwegian debacle, though some had survived. He didn’t know who and where the survivors were, but maybe some would have been posted to his new draft, the armed trawler, High Ground. Either way, the officers would mainly be from the RN Reserve, like him, and the crew from deep-sea trawlers, so it would be like home, sort of. God, he hoped no one thought he’d been swinging the lead.

  He coughed, and again, his chest rattling. The cough took hold, and he pounded his chest, though what good that was supposed to do he had no bloody idea. His eyes were streaming as he struggled for breath, swallowing, willing the coughing to stop. He faced the sea, managed to draw a deep breath, and coughed once more, wiped his face, and headed for the sentry who guarded the entrance to the wharf.

  He asked where the High Ground was lying.

  ‘Inside berth on Number 5 Trot, sir,’ the sentry replied in his pronounced Scottish accent. He adjusted the rifle slung over his shoulder. ‘Bit of a cough you have there, sir?’

  ‘Had, seaman. Had. What you heard were the dying embers.’

  ‘Aye, Rabbie Burns is your middle name then, is it, sir?’

  Adam laughed. ‘Yes, that was a bit poncey wasn’t it? Sorry about that.’

  The sentry saluted again. ‘Ah well, Sassenachs know no better.’

  ‘True,’ He followed the sentry’s hand signal. ‘Straight on, sir, and not an ember in your way.’

  Adam laughed again, returning the sentry’s salute, and strode on to the wharf. It was good to be called sir again, to know that he was back, fit and ready for the fight and that the fleet procedure was as informal as it had always been. Mavericks, they had been called by an upright Royal Naval senior officer. It wasn’t intended as a compliment and would have been something even worse if the commander had known that two of the crew of his last trawler had left to join the special forces, who were a great deal more than mavericks. In fact, pirates would cover it nicely. Others had followed.

  He walked along, stopping at Number 5 Trot. As the gulls wheeled he looked down on High Ground, which was slopping on the ebb tide, knocking against the barnacled wharf. The dinghy deck was spotless, which was not surprising because a seaman was bent over, sweeping some minuscule dust particles over the side, his overalls well used. Adam knew his uniform was shamefully clean and tidy, with a gleaming solitary gold sub-lieutenant’s ring. He flushed. Bee would laugh at him. He sighed – or would she?

  She’d shrugged him off and let him leave the kitchen without a backward glance last night, after he’d slogged to take the Sunflower to sea because it was what she wanted. She’d not even emerged from her room when it was time for him to leave, though he’d banged about to the point where Cissie had crept up the stairs, and peeped round the newel. ‘You in a mood?’

  ‘Not me,’ he’d said, squatting down to her height. ‘I was just reminding myself of the house. I love it, you see. To begin with, my mum and I lived here when she was housekeeper. She was upstairs in the attic, which she preferred, wanting some privacy, but I had the bedroom I have now. Later, she moved to the cottage, and I stayed on. It just seemed right, sort of where I belonged. Eddie’s always been like a father to me.’

  ‘Where’s your real dad?’

  He had looked at Bryony’s door, and given up. Well, he deserved the cold shoulder, he supposed, because he’d shouted, but bloody hell, he had every reason, and bugger it, he’d put himself out for that spoilt brat, Hannah. He’d sighed, wanting to burst in and have it out with her but this was new, different. Bryony didn’t go in for these women’s sulks; she was like a bloke, and gave as good as she got.

  He’d stared at her door, then walked down the stairs, following Cissie who bounced in front of him. He guessed she’d skip once she reached the hall, and she did.

  ‘My dad died in the last war,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t fink I ’ad a dad, but me mum’s gone.’ Her feet were bare, and it seemed her heart was happy, because for the very first time there’d been a dry sheet this morning. His mother was making a medal for her, and he’d given her sixpence for her money box. She didn’t know what a money box was, and hadn’t one anyway, so he’d had to explain. In his room he had found his old pig money box, which he gave her. Thankfully it still had its bung in the bottom.

  He’d run down the stairs and hurried into the kitchen, placing the pig on the table. ‘Here, April will tell you where you can keep this safe. Look after it now, it’s special.’ The words were out before he could stop them
.

  He remembered how Cissie had looked at him, as had his mother. ‘Why?’ Cissie said.

  ‘Well, it was a present.’

  ‘But who gived it to you?’

  ‘Gave it to me,’ he said.

  ‘But who?’

  ‘Well, it was Bee. She knows I like pigs.’

  Cissie had nodded. ‘Yes, she’s the kindest person I know. Well, so is April too.’

  The two of them had waved him off when he started down the gravel drive, his canvas holdall slung over his shoulder. He would catch the bus to the station. Perhaps it would be Dan, who would chat and then he wouldn’t think of Bee. What an idiot she was being. He snatched a glance over his shoulder. She was not at her bedroom window, and neither was the blind up, or the curtains. The windows were closed, too. Had she been too tired to open them? He started to call his mother to check that Bee woke by lunchtime, as she’d need some food, but then the bus hooted, stopping at the bottom of the drive instead of driving to the bus stop.

  He waved to Cissie and his mother again, and ran.

  He felt the same ache now, in his gut, as he stared at High Ground, and then up to the gulls, watching them wheel, and he could have sworn he could feel the air move beneath the thrust of their wings. One banked, turning like Bee in her Tiger Moth. He turned away, blocking the image because it hurt, goddammit. He kicked a piece of coal. Damn her.

  ‘Oi, who did that?’

  He came to himself, and peered down. The leading seaman who had been sweeping had now taken up residence on a hatch and was pulling the heavy wire he was about to splice on to his lap. The piece of coal lay at his feet. Coal dust had spattered on the immaculate dingy deck. ‘Sorry about that . . . Hey, it’s you, Mick. Really glad to see you made it,’ Adam called, recognising his old gunnery leading seaman.

  Mick grimaced. ‘Oh, bloody marvellous, you’re our sub-lieutenant then? Just chucking coal at us to make yourself feel better, eh, laddie? Nothing changes with you bloody Sassenachs.’ His Grimsby accent was heavy, his years of working on trawlers written deep in the lines on his face.

  ‘As one Sassenach to another, you could say that, Mick Weatherby. How’ve you been behaving in my absence?’

  Mick rested his elbows on his thighs, grinning. ‘Badly, obviously, as I’ve been nice and cosy on this old tub and who turns up but a sprog like you. Five of us are here.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Tom, Derek, Andy and Dozey.’ Mick voice was emotionless, and now he began splicing. ‘Skipper’s gone. He was a good ’un, weren’t he? And the Number One. They bought it off Norway. Glad you went into the drink before that and were whisked away. Glad you’re bloody back too, lad. Don’t go swimming again, will yer?’

  Adam began to climb down the quayside ladder and called, ‘Bloody well hope not. I’m sorry about Mike Todd, and Evans, they were good men. Who’s the skipper of the High Ground then?’

  ‘Lieutenant Cobham, RNVR as usual. He’s a good bloke, been around a bit, just caught the end of the last lot, and has his grey head screwed on. He’s learned to get along with us. Well, learned to trust us, I suppose. Or should I say, he lets us be.’

  Adam clambered on board over the fo’c’sle head, thinking that, like most converted trawlers, she looked almost top-heavy with the high bridge built on top of her wheelhouse, and the platform perched on the fo’c’sle head which carried the four-inch gun.

  ‘Is the skipper on board?’ Adam asked.

  ‘That he is. Right good to see you again, sir.’ They grinned at each other.

  ‘Good to be back.’ It was. It was easier than putting up with promises that couldn’t be met, and sulks.

  Mick was pointing to the hooded hatchway on the well deck, in the shadow of the bridge. Adam climbed down the iron ladder from the gun platform.

  ‘Permission to come below?’ he called down the wardroom hatch.

  ‘Permission given.’

  He heaved his holdall in after him, then stepped down into the gloomy light of the trawler wardroom which smelt of cigarettes mixed with generations of stinking fish. The skipper shook his hand. He was grey-haired and would at any moment, Adam feared, be seconded to a corvette or some such, because the Royal Navy were short of experienced officers. ‘Good to meet you, Adam. Tip-top, are you? Well, looking at you I’d say not yet. Still a bit wheezy, if my ears don’t deceive, and a bit pale, but we’ll not throw you to the fish yet.’

  He turned to another sub-lieutenant. ‘Here you go, Geordie Gilchrist. Meet Adam Cottrall, your new boot-shiner who took a swim off Norway. Bit bloody cold, I reckon, gave him pneumonia, double, I believe. Probably how he likes his Scotch too. Then he had another dose after some derring-do off Dunkirk, I hear. With a slip of a girl, I also hear. Don’t think you two have met, though you will know some of the other brigands, Adam. Have a look around, say your hellos and then come and eat.’

  Adam shook hands and dumped his holdall. As Geordie led the way up the ladder, Adam followed. All right, so he was the shoeshiner, the last in the food chain, but it was only what he expected. He just needed to get into the swing of things again and build up some seniority. Out on deck Geordie shouted above the gulls that had clumped together above the boat in a squalling riot: ‘We’ll be on convoy duty, Adam. Or sub hunting, one or t’other and maybe some minesweeping at some stage. You never know. Mark you, we sub-hunt whatever the hell we’re doing but, aye, you know that.’

  They were heading past the depth-charge thrower and up a couple of iron ladders to the top bridge, which contained submarine-detecting gear, binnacle, chart table and bell-mouthed speaking tubes through which to communicate to all parts of the ship.

  Then down through a trapdoor in the deck of the bridge into the wheelhouse. Off this was the small wireless cabin and Adam remembered now that it was like a Turkish bath when blacked out at sea, tucked as it was behind the steam steering engine. On the other side of the wheelhouse a companionway led down to the skipper’s cabin as comfortable as that on his former trawler, the Mistress of the Seas.

  ‘They don’t do themselves badly do they, these trawler skippers?’ Adam grunted.

  ‘Aye, and why the hell not? Tough old life.’

  Adam liked the walnut panelling which was a step up from the Mistress of the Seas’, and thought that one day he’d like a study like this. The study could have a bathroom off it, like this, too. Be good to have bedrooms with their own bathrooms. There was room at the Lodge. He stopped because it made him think of Bee, of Bryony-bloody-Miller and her moods.

  ‘Old Cobham lets us use the bath, and he stands his watch, so it’s four hours on the bridge and eight hours off.’ Gilchrist shrugged. ‘Some don’t, so on the High Ground we can even get some sleep.’

  They scooted through the petty officers’ mess, and the galley with its old iron cooking range and sink. The way to the stokehold lay through the engine room, then down the ladder into the petty officers’ quarters. The coxswain was there, writing a letter. He looked up, and Adam shook his head. It was Mick. ‘Well, well, didn’t think to share this earlier, then?’ Adam looked at Geordie. ‘Promoting the troublemakers, eh?’

  Geordie looked from one to the other. ‘Ah, Norway?’

  Both Mick and Adam nodded. The two subs moved on, checking the Carley floats and the lifeboat. All was well. Down in the mess deck the ratings’ quarters were spacious, and then they moved on to the gun platform and Adam checked over the four-inch. ‘Hope you’re going to be a good girl,’ he said.

  ‘She could be a he,’ objected Geordie.

  ‘Not if I know anything about women,’ Adam almost growled.

  ‘Ah well, no more to be said.’

  ‘Quite.’

  They moved aft to the machine guns, and then to the bridge to check the machine guns there. Adam murmured, ‘Oh, High Ground, if only you had known what you would become, you’d have turned tail and hidden somewhere warm and dry so you could fish for cod at a later date.’

  ‘Let me show you the depth
charges.’ Geordie led him to the charge rails at the stern, and then Adam checked the charge throwers flanking the skipper’s cabin.

  Geordie came to stand by him as Adam looked at the other armed trawlers lying alongside the wharf. They might look the same, but some had luck, some had heart, and some didn’t.

  Adam muttered, ‘So, is she hearty, lucky, happy, or is she not?’ He made it sound like a joke, but it wasn’t, because his other trawler had not been and things had gone wrong from the start. Someone on the trawler alongside was smoking a pipe. He could smell it.

  Geordie smiled, ’Aye, she has heart and luck, man. It’s the same with the coal mines back home. Some are good girls, some are not, with creaking roofs and bad safety.’

  ‘Quite,’ Adam said, but then felt guilty. No, Bee wasn’t bad, she was just being bloody-minded: first she’d taken the Tiger Moth, then . . . Oh, what was the point. Sometimes people just outgrew one another, even if they’d been mates for a lifetime.

  He followed Geordie back towards the wardroom. ‘That’s all right then,’ he said.

  ‘What is?’ Geordie asked.

  ‘That’s she’s lucky.’

  That evening the skipper told Adam and Geordie to go and have a drink or two, because they’d be off with the dawn to rendezvous with a convoy. ‘Make sure you call home. Let them know you love them. I’ll nip out when you get back. Shall we say eleven, no later?’

  Later they followed the seamen down the wharf, shoulders hunched against the harsh wind, and the same wind burned down their cigarettes too fast. They all tumbled into The Bannock Bray, a pub where even in July a great fire roared in the grate. The warmth was welcome. Adam and Geordie took a table, flipping beer mats and waiting their turn at the bar, while the seamen jostled and shouted their orders. Geordie said, ‘I’ve learned to wait until the crush has died, or there’s no seat for love or money.’