Sisters at War Read online

  Bryony nodded, feeling momentary relief, but then nothing. She was too tired. Adam shouted, steadying himself as the waves tossed and turned. ‘Nearly home and dry, Bee.’ He smiled, coughing. He was pale, dirty, and soaking wet. Not quite the thing when you were trying to get 100 per cent fit. She took up the oars and rowed on back as the Sunflower chugged to the trawler. She could hear the engine, even over the noise. Adam was right, the old girl was protesting.

  She hauled back on the oars, digging deep, letting the tide help, and the waves. A helmet floated past, and debris. She heard the Stuka begin its dive but as usual didn’t even flinch. How could you? You’d go mad. She kept rowing. The bomb blasted a river cruiser to the left, and shrapnel, or shards of metal, or something else, who the hell cared what, holed the dinghy, scorching past her legs and out of the other side. ‘Thank you,’ she murmured, and meant it, because her legs were intact, but the dinghy was beginning to disintegrate beneath her. She ought to do something, but she suddenly couldn’t think.

  The wash hit and she was thrown into the water, and it wasn’t for the first time. It was cold, salty, stained with blood, oil and heaven knew whats, though she did know what, that was the trouble. Another wave swamped her and she sank, then fought to rise, her mouth full. She surfaced, choking, spitting and thrashing. She struggled to find her feet, but was too far out. She swam. A damaged oar crashed into her, catching her shoulder. Adam was shouting, or was it Adam? No, he was on the Sunflower. She saw her own blood now, spreading out, and then someone grabbed her by the hair, dragging her towards the shallows. She found her feet at last, and heard the voice. ‘You all right, Miss?’ It was a young sub-lieutenant.

  ‘I needed a bath,’ she said.

  He laughed, patted her shoulder. She screamed. He swung her round. ‘Just a splinter but that’s your dinghy gone.’ While she looked back she felt a great sharp pain, and sagged. He held her up, showing her the shard of wood. ‘Came out like a dose of salts.’ He tossed it aside. ‘Might have a few tiddlers of splinters left, but nothing to vex you. Shall we take a walk, Miss?’ He was pointing behind her. ‘Your chariot awaits.’

  It was the Sunflower, which Adam had brought close in, and now he was embarking the men surging through the surf. One carried a rifle above his head. Bryony and the young sub joined them. Once at the Sunflower the sub hoisted her up, and over the side. She in her turn reached out a hand to help him up. He shook his head. ‘No, I’m in charge of the queue.’

  He turned, then swung back. ‘Tell them at home how far I got, would you . . . just in case. And tell them I love them.’ He gave her a telephone number. She repeated it to a soldier slumped on the deck. ‘Don’t let me forget it,’ she shouted above the cacophony as another Stuka came over. She turned back to the sub-lieutenant but he was ploughing through the surf, back to his role of directing his queue. This time Eric was bringing in his dinghy. He yelled that it was The Saucy Lass’s last run. She shouted to the sub-lieutenant, ‘I promise.’ He waved his hand but didn’t look. He was too busy sending the queue forward. She repeated the number again to the young soldier who sat, half asleep. ‘Please, please remember it, in case I forget.’

  An older man, a corporal, reached the Sunflower, holding his rifle above his head, well free of the water. He clambered up beside Bryony. ‘We’ll need this, because I’ve had enough of the buggers. Let ’em try to set foot on any of our beaches and I’ll shoot ’em dead, and when I’ve no more bullets, I’ll ram it up their arses. Begging your pardon, Miss.’

  He then sank to his knees, and passed out. Bryony hauled him to one side, propping him up against another soldier, making sure his rifle was there, with him. She charged the men either side with keeping it dry, because ‘If he wakes and it isn’t, he won’t use a bullet, he’ll shove it you know where’.

  For a moment she touched the rifle. It was shiny, and seemed to be the only thing in the whole damn world that was. At last the Sunflower had as many as could be carried. Adam held up the last can of water towards the men. ‘I can chuck this and take one more, or we can keep it in case we need it on the way back to Dover. What do you think?’

  They thought they’d each take a drink now, then chuck it. They did. Adam tossed it overboard to take its place with all the other debris drifting on the sea and piling up on the beach. Then they took one more passenger before they chugged slowly away from the oily smoke, refusing to look back at the beach and the queues of men they were leaving. Add to them the rearguard who were still fighting and the young sub-lieutenant who was still standing alongside his queue and it didn’t bear thinking of.

  It wasn’t until 6 June that Bryony and Adam finally reached Exmouth, having dropped their charges at Dover, grabbed an excuse for a nap, and nursed the Sunflower along the coast. They hailed the bus, and asked Dan, the driver, for the stop near Combe Lodge. People shrank from them, firmly placing shopping bags on the seat next to them. Bryony and Adam knew they smelt, because it reached even them, not to mention that their clothes were stiff with dirt, blood and salt.

  One woman complained. Dan said, ‘Dunkirk.’ It was enough. The shopping bags were lifted, the seats patted. They had no money to pay the fare. Dan waived it. ‘You must be bloody joking.’

  They sat, then walked from the bus stop, swaying on the steady ground as their sea legs struggled to adjust. It was so quiet, and the hedgerows were in full leaf, with dog roses blooming. Above them birds flew, and they felt the breeze, and the sun, and heard the bees. It was unreal. Where were the Stukas, the ack-ack, the screams, groans, debris, smoke, gunfi—? Bryony shut off her mind.

  Entering Combe Lodge Drive, Adam stumbled. She caught him, and pulled his arm over her shoulder, taking his weight as he coughed. He was too hot, too clammy. She forced herself on, heedless of her shoulder, feeling the blood seeping. It was nothing. Adam had similar wounds, and a heaving chest, but that was nothing either compared to the men they had left, and those they had brought back, men who would fight again for them, for all of this. She looked around.

  Combe Lodge seemed a long way up the drive. They struggled on, kicking the gravel, Adam coughing and apologising. They reached the front door, opened it and stumbled through into the kitchen. There was April, drinking tea at the kitchen table.

  Bryony said, ‘We’re home.’

  Bryony slept solidly for three days, and woke to blue sky, to a bed that didn’t sway and lurch in time with the waves, to silence, and to the knowledge that she could not remember the sub-lieutenant’s telephone number. Adam was in bed with a recurrence of double pneumonia, so it was Bryony who went with April to Exmouth to see Morgan’s parents. There was nothing the two of them could say really, except that he had saved so many lives, and perhaps that helped. Perhaps, but as they walked away neither could forget the devastation in their eyes, and knew it was a replica of April’s grief when her husband was killed, and Bryony’s when her father died. She said quietly, as they walked along the lane, ‘But Dad was older. These men are so young.’

  For Bryony the following days were quiet and she seemed to be elsewhere. Nothing was real, and the hours were pierced with flashes of sounds, and sights which didn’t upset her, didn’t do anything to her. She sat with Adam and bathed his forehead, but it didn’t matter that he muttered and twisted and turned. April said, as they sat together in the sitting room, ‘It’s all right, Bryony, the doctor says he won’t die. He’s just poorly, and tired. You’re tired too, you know. Your Aunt Olive telephoned again.’

  ‘Right, I will telephone her back.’ She didn’t.

  She stared at the phone. She still couldn’t remember the sub-lieutenant’s number, only his face, and the way he had waved when she had called, ‘I promise.’

  There were no flights arranged to Jersey, to anywhere. Eddie had cancelled them all, he said when he telephoned her from his ferry pool. ‘Commercial flights are no longer allowed. It’s sea power from now on. Besides, you need to rest, darling girl.’

  ‘I am resting, Eddie.’


  She replaced the receiver and passed through the kitchen to the garden. She passed the washing line where the overalls she had worn to Dunkirk were billowing in the breeze. April had said everything was worth saving in these days of rationing, and had boiled them three times to remove all odour and besides, they were worthy of their full span of years, in repayment for the valour with which they had weathered the storm. Bryony took up a hand fork and weeded the herbaceous bed. The lavender was full, the bees busy as they would be at Haven Farm in Jersey. The digitalis created some height in the bed, and the hollyhocks were in bud. The roses bloomed, and she deadheaded a few, stuffing the spent blooms into her overall pockets. She clipped the young box hedging, or some of it.

  April called her in for lunch. It was an egg sandwich and they sat together at the kitchen table. ‘How kind,’ Bryony said. ‘But it’s too much.’ April smiled at her. ‘That’s all right. Your appetite will return once your body and mind have processed and absorbed.’ Bryony could barely hear her as she chewed just the one mouthful she could manage, but could not taste.

  ‘Hannah telephoned this morning, just to tell us that one pair of holidaymakers remain, and that they have British troops still in Jersey to defend them. Aunt Olive came on and said that your mum insists she wants to stay for as long as she can, because it’s where her history is. She and Hannah have moved into Haven Cottage, you know, the one on the edge of South Field. It’s better for everyone, or so she says.’ April paused, her eyes on Bryony. With a start Bryony realised she should say something.

  ‘Yes, Hannah can be a little trying,’ she murmured. ‘But she’s young. She’ll learn.’ She’d heard her mother’s words and it was so much easier to repeat the thoughts of others rather than to form one’s own.

  April smiled, and reached across to grip Bryony’s hand. ‘The doctor came as usual this morning, and says it will be a while before Adam’s out of bed, let alone signed off. You haven’t been in to see him this morning?’

  Bryony stared at the hand that gripped hers, scarcely feeling it. ‘Haven’t I?’ She was drifting again, floating. She rose. ‘I will, later, but I think I must get on with camouflaging our hangar. The Luftwaffe might come, you see, and bomb it, or strafe it, and then the house, and the cottage because they might think it’s an RAF airfield.’

  April insisted, ‘It doesn’t need doing today, Bryony, and besides, Tony Wallis from the village did the roof in your absence.’

  ‘Yes, today, because the walls need painting too, not just the roof. He didn’t do those?’

  April shook her head, sighing.

  Bryony left, walking out into the sun, hearing April calling after her. She found the paint in the shed near the hanger. She lifted it. It dragged on her shoulder and hurt the healing sores on her hands, but it was good to feel something. She left it on the ground on the shady side of the hangar. She returned for the ladder, because Eddie had taught her to start at the top to allow the drips to be smoothed on the way down. But as she hoisted it on to her good shoulder and dragged it along the ground, her burden eased, as someone else took some of the weight.

  It was April who said, ‘There’s no way either of us is going up the ladder without the other at the bottom. We will take it in turns.’ When they arrived at the hangar, Bryony saw that April had changed into the Dunkirk overalls. April smiled. ‘There’s no voodoo about them, so I will break them in for you. Now, you first, madam, up the ladder with you, and no stretching over to reach just that little bit further. Instead, you must scoot on down and we’ll move it along together. Incidentally, you’ve received a letter from the Air Transport Auxiliary. You applied, if you remember, or agreed that Eddie should do it for you.’ Bryony remembered but so what? She started up the ladder with the paint.

  April called, ‘But the ATA is for another day, darling. There’s no hurry.’

  They worked all afternoon, taking turns and were a quarter of the way down one side when they finished for the day, but that was better than nothing. They left the ladder and the paint, but washed out the brushes in the scullery. Only then did Bryony lie down in her room. She slept.

  She woke, and saw the sub-lieutenant’s face, saw Morgan’s parents’ faces, saw the sub-lieutenant’s mouth working, but couldn’t hear him, couldn’t remember. She heard Morgan’s mother saying, ‘At least we know what happened, and where.’ She couldn’t tell the sub-lieutenant’s parents that, and she had promised.

  By the end of the week she and April had finished one side. Both pairs of overalls were stained, and on the Saturday, April boiled them unmercifully. Bryony opened the letter from the ATA. She was invited to a flying test on 21 June. ‘The longest day,’ she said, pushing the letter into a drawer and forgetting it. She had seven days.

  She and April began on the second side, in spite of the baking heat. They were nut brown beneath the paint and Adam, improving daily now, struggled from the Lodge to call, ‘You missed a bit, Bee.’ She waved her hand, but ignored him. April told him to go back to bed and stop trying to be funny. He did.

  The sun on her back soothed her shoulder, but burned the back of her hand. April called up from the base of the ladder, ‘We’re doing a splendid job, Bee, even if we do say it ourselves.’ Bryony peered down. Had she answered? She couldn’t remember. She’d been trying to read the sub-lieutenant’s lips, tracing them in her mind.

  April continued, ‘Eddie telephoned while you slept yesterday evening, wondering if you were attending the flying test. He said that even if you pass, which you will, you might not be called up. There are very few women yet, but you never know what’s going to happen, especially now. I lie awake at night wondering if we’ll be invaded or will Hitler be content with the Continent?’

  Bryony didn’t want to think about what might happen, and neither did she want to think about what had happened. For a moment she heard the blasts, the shouts and screams but then she floated away, seeing the sub-lieutenant’s lips. She made herself grip the ladder, made herself dip the brush into the can which hung from the hook on the ladder. She brushed on the paint. ‘So, Bee, what shall I tell him when he telephones again?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Eddie.’

  ‘Tell him I’ll reply.’

  The paint was running down the brush, on to her wrist. She watched it, and remembered the raindrops on her bedroom window when she was eighteen and her dad had just died. Late that night Hannah came to her room, because their mother couldn’t bear other people’s tears on top of her own. Bryony had held her until she slept, and then she let herself cry, but only for that first night, because Hannah had woken and shaken her, and said, ‘Don’t, you mustn’t cry, never, ever. It frightens me and Daddy said you must be responsible for me. He said I must ask you to promise you will always look after me. Then he died, in my arms. I keep telling you that.’ So today, yesterday and it seemed every other day as far back as she could remember she had not cried, and she had looked after Hannah.

  Three days later she and April had almost finished the end of the hangar too. In the evening, April cleared the kitchen table, heaving Mary Miller’s sewing machine from the bottom of the big dresser, together with two pairs of Eddie’s almost new overalls. Bryony just looked. April said, ‘The paint has ruined the ones we’ve been wearing and Eddie said I could alter these. You’ll need them when things get back to normal and you are quite well. We will keep these for dirty jobs.’

  ‘I am well.’

  April threaded the machine, then turned the handle, settling into a steady pace. There was a comfort to the ticketty-tick. Bryony moved from the table to the armchair set by the kitchen window. She slept until the sound of the doorbell woke her. She checked her watch and April said, ‘Who on earth?’

  Bryony rose, and walked to the front door. She opened it. Gerry the local policeman was standing with a middle-aged man in a cap. He was a stranger. ‘Hello Bryony,’ Constable Heath said.

  ‘Is it Eddie?’ Bryony was floating and drifting again. April
ran to stand with her now, gripping her hand.

  ‘Oh no, nothing like that,’ Gerry Heath said.

  April relaxed her grip. ‘Would you like to come in?’

  The man with Constable Heath was checking his watch. Gerry Heath shook his head. ‘Look, Bryony, and you, April. This is Mr Templer. He is the uncle of a lad who was on the Sunflower.’

  Mr Templer butted in. ‘My nephew says that you asked ’im to remind you of a telephone number, and he didn’t. It’s been weighing heavy on his mind. He’s in hospital, not too well, but will be all right. Bit of a do, weren’t it, as I hear tell, but you all brought the army home. Many more than anyone thought. A good do, it was. He remembered the name of your boat, and his dad, the wife’s brother, wrote to me to see if I could find you. You see, I’m here with me lorry from time to time. I brought a load down today, and thought I’d ask a copper. That’s what our mums say, isn’t it? Ask a copper, they’ll always see you right.’

  Bryony was hardly breathing as she listened; she was seeing the sub-lieutenant, turning away and heading back to his duty, and the wave of his hand. The man said, ‘So I asked at the Police House, and the constable brought me here, or I brought him, should I say.’ He laughed for a moment. ‘So ’ere is the number. He writ it down, d’you see? First thing he did when you set course for Dover. Just forgot to give it to you.’ He handed a tattered, water-stained piece of paper to Bryony.

  She took it, gripping it. The man tipped his cap. ‘Thank you for bringing our lad back. He said it was bloody murder and he doesn’t know how you kept on rowing that little dinghy day and night. They watched you from the beach, and you just kept doing it, you and that young man of yours. The wife sent some goose grease for your hands ’cause ’e said they was bleed . . . .’ His voice failed him. He coughed, handed her a pot wrapped in newspaper, then turned abruptly, coughed again, and said quietly, ‘I have to get back, hate driving on them little slits of light.’