The Restless Sea, page 28
They do it again. And again. Until they have seven large birds, whose warmth leaches out of their bodies as quickly as it returns to the men’s. They are pleased with themselves, carrying the dead birds by their necks down the hill, surprised at how heavy they are.
The men on the beach set to work plucking the creatures and, as the feathers float around them, they stoke up the fire. They gut and roast the birds, turning them on spits. The smell again reminds Jack of Olivia’s secret bay. But the birds aren’t like the fish they caught there: their flesh is tough and salty – and there is barely any of it. Seabirds are not fattened for the table.
Afterwards, they feel like stretching out to sleep, but Jack fears he will not wake if he allows himself to rest. ‘We’ll try for water again,’ he says. The three of them set off with two water tanks from the boat.
They follow the coast. They don’t want to walk inland, where they have heard foxes barking; it is so exposed. Eventually they find a trickle of a stream glistening down over the cliffs. They fill what they can. On the way back they notice rabbit droppings among the bird tracks along the tops of the cliffs. They spot the skull of a reindeer, its antlers broken on one side. The Chief points at a large track imprinted into some soft ground nearby. ‘Polar bear,’ he says. They walk faster.
As they clamber back down to the beach, Grifter says, ‘We can’t move the men again.’ He’s right. Most of them are unable to walk anyway. They sit bedraggled and crumpled on the seashore. More exposure at sea would surely kill them all. They organise the survivors into groups and watches as they would at sea – some to collect wood or water, some to catch seabirds, some to stoke the fire, and someone to remain always on lookout. With the sail from the lifeboat, they build a makeshift shelter and another fire. Jack makes sure that Carl is nearest the warmth. He concocts the comfiest bed he can out of clothes they have managed to dry. With warmth and food and water, his friend is even able to sit up on his own. But he needs medical help urgently. They all stare at the boat, wonder whether to burn it too. No one wants to get back into it, but it is possibly their only means of escape.
CHAPTER 19
Olivia
Olivia’s anxiety about Jack affects her sleeping and her eating, manifesting itself in an overwhelming nausea, particularly in the mornings. To keep her mind occupied, she throws herself into work. She now considers herself a fully-fledged Wren: it is second nature to swab the deck instead of scrub the floor; a bed is a bunk, and her room a cabin. She has learnt the basics of signals and how to de-clinker a boiler, which is no different to cleaning out the stove in the bothy. She has even had to run across the airfield dragging a kite for the pilots to practise their target skills. There is no official time to mourn one missing sailor among the many, and it is hard to mope when you’re meant to be on parade or sorting the laundry for a hundred other women. She feels a small surge of pride when she glances at her friends – women like her who were once good only for marriage, but can now repair an engine or operate a radio or load a torpedo as well as any man.
While she is learning, as Charlie predicted, to live with this new, emptier reality, the nausea does not subside, and now comes a creeping suspicion that she dares not confide in anyone yet – not even Gladys. She hopes that she is wrong. She hopes that she is right. The thought almost brings the tears flowing again, but she is all cried out.
Some of the Wrens fly – taking aerial photographs on training ops or during target practice – or even piloting aircraft themselves, ferrying men and moving planes from airfield to airfield, but Olivia yearns for the sea. ‘You should apply to join a boat crew,’ says Gladys. ‘With your experience, you’ll have no problem at all.’
So that’s exactly what she does, and when her apprenticeship is over, she is transferred to Plymouth. The boat crews take on basic harbour duties: delivering mail, transferring injured men ashore, or carrying messages or men on leave. Olivia is already adept at wending her way across a harbour, manoeuvring between the other ships and boats and buoys and chains and moorings. When the harbour is full, she motors out to sea, where the swell is larger and she has to keep her wits about her. She delivers ordnance Wrens to check the guns, and she helms for the Wren signals officers and the mine-spotters.
The men tease the Wrens as they are loaded into the launch, but the women have their respect by the time they reach the shore. Many of the sailors have not seen a woman for weeks. Olivia is used to dealing with the barracking from her days selling fish at Loch Ewe. But instead of bare feet and legs, now her uniform is trousers and shirt, the rounded hat set at a jaunty angle on her head. In driving rain, she wears an oilskin that glistens with water. Even as her freezing hands grip the towrope, she is glad she is not taking notes in an office or deep in an underground bunker, plotting the shipping traffic. Out here, she can feel the sun and rain and wind on her skin while her boat forges through the ever-changing water. And as she turns her face to the sky, she wonders whether Jack is doing the same, and it is hard not to let the sadness overwhelm her then; it’s as if part of her heart has been torn from her body and the bit that is left is an agonising, raw thing that keeps beating even though she wishes it wouldn’t. She wishes it would just stop. And then she remembers the life that she now knows for sure is growing inside her. The fear for Jack is compounded by the fear for her future. Her family might forgive her for falling in love with the wrong sort of man, but would they ever forgive her for the shame of an illegitimate child? Could she go through this without telling them? And how could she go through it alone? She has heard of girls getting rid of unwanted pregnancies, but how could she even contemplate getting rid of it when it might be the only part of Jack left in the world?
But of course, it isn’t the only part of Jack left in the world, and, as the days pass, and Olivia feels more and more distant from her own family, she finds herself wondering about Jack’s sister. Betsy could be a friend, an ally, her new family. Even if Jack is never going to return, his sister is out there somewhere. They could support each other through these dark days. She must find Betsy and tell the girl what has happened to her brother.
The problem is that there is nowhere that holds official records of when and to where children were evacuated. It is as if the most important thing was to get them to a place of safety first and ask questions later. Children from cities all over the country – Liverpool, Bristol, Exeter, London – have been tucked away into remote corners of Britain, their parents eventually receiving a letter, but no central organisation carrying the details. However, Olivia is determined. She learns that she might have a chance of tracing a child if she knows the name of their school. After that, it’s a matter of contacting the different schools in Bermondsey until finally she traces a class with an Elizabeth Sullivan to a village in Devon called Cheriton.
One free morning, Olivia travels north into Devon from Plymouth. Cheriton is a small village beyond the bleak tors of Dartmoor, where the hills turn green and lush once more, and the soil is rich and red. The roads are narrow and banked by steep hedges overgrown with nettles and vetch and criss-crossed by Jack-in-the-hedge and cleavers that she remembers sticking to her own sisters’ clothes when they were children. Disturbed by the passing vehicle, birds flit in and out of holes between stunted roots and brambles entwined with stitchwort flowers like white stars and threaded through with the pink of red campion. Beneath the Devon hedges, it is easy to get lost, particularly since the road signs have been removed in case of an invasion.
The village is a cluster of thatched cottages gathered at a crossroads and set among rolling fields ripe for harvest. There is a pub and a shop and a church. The school is a long, low thatched building with wooden columns propping it up. It is good to be out in the countryside, with the smell of soil and grass in her nostrils and the sound of sheep bleating and birds singing in her ears. As Olivia walks towards the school, the strange noise of children chattering and laughing emanates from the playground. She is filled with nervous apprehension at the prospect of meeting Jack’s sister for the first time.
But the school has no record of an Elizabeth or Betsy Sullivan having attended.
‘Are you sure? I was told by her old school in London that they came here.’
The headmistress is a kind-looking lady with hair greying at the temples and small glasses perched on the end of her nose. ‘I’m afraid it was rather chaotic,’ she says. ‘The children went with whoever turned up at the church to help. I have got a list of all the evacuees who now attend our school, of course. And her name is definitely not on that list.’
‘Could she have come and not gone to school?’
‘It’s possible. We do have some remote families here. Perhaps one of the farms out beyond Sandiford?’
‘Is there anyone I can talk to about it?’
‘Mrs Batcup might remember. She’s our churchwarden. She helped pair children up.’
‘Would you be able to point me in the right direction?’
‘Of course. Hers is the house next to the pub. Honeysuckle Cottage.’
Mrs Batcup’s cottage is tiny, the thick thatch bearing down on it, pushing it further into the ground. Olivia’s heart sinks when the old lady opens her door: Mrs Batcup is as bent and crooked as her house, as if the weight of the world is on her shoulders. But she is deceptively spry, and her eyes light up when Olivia asks for her help. ‘Of course, my lovely,’ she says. ‘Come in. It’s nice to have company. Ever since my Reggie died. Don’t get me wrong. It’s a wonderful friendly village Cheriton, but nothing beats a cup of tea and a good chinwag with a new face.’ The old lady points to an armchair where a cat is curled up. ‘Just push her off,’ she says.
Olivia lifts the cat on to her lap, enjoying the feel of its soft fur and cosy warmth. It stretches and flexes a paw as it re-settles and starts a low, rumbling purr. ‘I’m looking for a particular evacuee,’ says Olivia. ‘They have no record of her at the school.’
‘Poor little things. Turning up here with hardly a stitch on and us heading into a proper winter. Makes me feel shivery thinking about it.’
‘There was a girl called Betsy – or Elizabeth – Sullivan. I’m trying to track her down …’
The old lady places the cup of tea on the small table next to Olivia, stirring milk into it with her rheumy hands. ‘I’m afraid I haven’t got any biscuits to offer …’
‘Don’t worry … This is lovely … Thank you … I was just hoping you might remember this particular girl?’
Mrs Batcup sits in the chair opposite, her eyes bright and inquisitive. ‘They were all terrible pale and quiet, you know. Not like our own children, rosy and full of life. It made the heart bleed to see them standing there, tears not yet dried on their cheeks. Most of them had never been out of the city before. Imagine that!’
‘Did you ever learn any of their names?’
‘Of course, dear. I had a list. I hoped they would all come to Sunday school.’
‘Do you still have it?’
The old lady shakes her head with incredulity. ‘Of course. It’s in the church.’
‘Can I see it?’
‘There’s no need. I remember the little girl you’re looking for. Betsy Sullivan. She was worst of all. Quiet as a church mouse. Didn’t say a word. We thought there was something wrong with the poor girl. We thought she was a mute.’
‘Do you know where she went? Was it a farm?’
‘Oh no. She wouldn’t have lasted two seconds on a farm. You need to be fit and strong to get through a winter out there. She went to the Roses that live in the pub.’
‘Next door?’
The old lady nods. ‘I had to take her there myself because Mrs Rose never turned up at the church.’ She shakes her head in despair. ‘And them with all that room …’
‘So why is she not at the school?’
‘Oh dear, oh dear.’ The old lady twists her gnarled fingers in her lap. ‘She ran away. Missed her mammy, of course. Poor little mite.’
‘Will the Roses know where?’
‘Don’t ’spect so. They keep themselves to themselves. Outsiders, you know. Only moved here at the start of the war.’
Mrs Rose is reluctant to talk until she realises that Olivia is not an official or a relation of Betsy’s – and then she lets her tongue run away with her as she dries glasses and rearranges them on the shelves behind the bar. ‘She was bloody awful,’ she says. ‘Wild as a sparrow hawk and twice as vicious. Didn’t say a word. Scratched and bit and clawed at us when we tried to clean her up. Ungrateful little wretch. And us taking her in out of the kindness of our hearts.’
‘Why didn’t she go to school?’
‘We thought she wasn’t right in the head. She never said a word all the time she was here. Didn’t see no point in sending her to school.’
‘So what did she do?’
‘Like I said, we tried to clean her up. Can’t have something looking like that working in our pub. It’d put all the customers off. But she wouldn’t let us touch her, so we only let her do cellar work. We do have our own kids to look after, you know.’
‘Would they know a bit more about her? Might she have talked to them when they were in bed?’
Mrs Rose leans on the bar and her lip curls. ‘She didn’t share their room. Who knows what she might have done to them? I wouldn’t have slept a wink wondering if she might have attacked them in the night. No, no. She slept in the cellar too.’ She sees the look on Olivia’s face. ‘She liked it down there. It’s warm, and she was alone. She didn’t want to be with us. I didn’t have time for her histrionics. It’s hard enough running a business in this war, without having to deal with someone else’s filthy little urchin.’ She starts polishing the top of the bar with the tea towel.
‘So did she give any idea of where she was going?’ says Olivia.
‘’Course not. One morning she just wasn’t there.’
‘Did she have any money?’
‘I doubt it. Her family never responded to the letter we wrote to tell them where the child was. The idiot creature couldn’t even do that herself. I don’t believe she could read or write. No doubt her mother was the same, and that’s why she never sent us the money she owed us.’
‘Her mother died.’
Mrs Rose rubs at a particularly stubborn stain. ‘I suppose that’s why they shipped the little hoodlums out to us in the first place.’
Depressed, Olivia returns to her duties in Plymouth. The weather darkens with her mood. The sky is overcast, and a fine drizzle patters on the metal and concrete world that surrounds her. It is fitting. The world is crying. She has known people who have disappeared, who will not be coming back again. But she has never felt a loss like this, exacerbated by the loss of a girl she never even knew. How can an entire family disappear and leave no one to mourn for them? She presses her hands to her stomach. There is no doubt now: she is nine weeks pregnant, and she takes comfort in the fact that a part of Jack is still here, and that it is her secret to hold on to in her most despairing hours.
She has been on duty for fifteen hours, but she can’t bear to go to sleep yet. It is the same every day; anything to avoid a moment of stillness, to prevent the horror gathering in her mind. She is not the only one: there are always parties on ships, on shore, on submarines. Young men making the most of life in the strange world of unlit harbours, while the girls they will leave behind paint over their desolate insides, dancing that little bit more wildly, staying out that little bit longer, living twice: once for themselves and once for those that won’t be coming back. Life is too short. You have to grab what’s left by the throat.
She finds Gladys and another friend, Julia, crammed into their small cabin with a few other girls getting ready to go out. The Wrens are, as always, making the most of what they’ve got: starch for face powder, mixing their lipstick with water to make it last longer, or using beetroot juice to stain their lips instead. Olivia uses shoe polish to make her lashes look thicker.
Before they bluster out into the Plymouth night, Olivia’s CO asks for a word. ‘You’ve shown yourself to be a valuable member of boat crew,’ he says. ‘I’d like you to know that I’m going to recommend you become an officer.’
‘Thank you, sir.’ She smiles: moments of pride can be held on to during the dark times.
‘I know it all seems a bit rushed, but you’ve shown yourself to be more than apt, and we’re in need of good people … Have you got a particular position in mind?’
‘I have. If it isn’t too presumptuous, I’m interested in becoming a boarding officer, sir.’ She has heard about the new directive from Trade Division. The shortage of men means that Wrens will soon be delivering confidential orders direct to masters on merchant ships, among other things; ships like the Aurora.
‘I thought that might be the case,’ he says, flourishing some papers. ‘I’ve already written it down.’ CO Shepherd prides himself on understanding his charges. ‘There’s a course starting in a couple of months. It could be a tough gig. You’ll be stepping into men’s shoes and some of them may not appreciate it.’
‘It’ll be no worse than dealing with you lot.’
He nods and smiles. ‘Good luck.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
Overhead, the bombers drone out across the Channel. Later, she will try not to count them back in again.
The officers’ training course is at Greenwich Naval College. Olivia is pleased to learn that the CO has also recommended Gladys and Julia. They will all be in London together, staying at a flat in Pimlico that Gladys often uses, lent by some friend of a friend; accommodation in the city is scarce. The rooms are spartan, too many people passing through to make a mark. Someone has tried to grow lettuce on the windowsill, but has forgotten to water it and the soil has shrunk away from the sides of the pot, while the leaves have withered.
