Season Of Darkness (44 page)

She looked at him and almost imperceptibly shook her head.

“It was Jimmy, wasn’t it? My son was the one who shot Elsie Bates.”

Alice didn’t answer immediately. She looked dreadfully frail; the events of the summer had added years to her age.

“Please answer me. I can’t live with this doubt for the rest of my life.”

She hesitated. “If I tell you what happened, I will do so only to give you some peace, Tom. I see absolutely no reason for anybody else to know.”

“They won’t, believe me.”

“Very well. This is what Jimmy confided in me that night.” She stroked the dog’s head for comfort. “Jimmy and Elsie had had a liaison in the old Fort. He had hardly known her more than two weeks but he was quite besotted, and for a brief period of time she made him very happy.” She glanced at Tyler, who wasn’t looking at her. He understood that kind of feeling for a woman. “They were together that night, but in the early morning she left before he did. She was driving the Land Army lorry and had intended to go straight to the hostel to pick up the other girls. They’d a bit of a tiff earlier and Jimmy decided to pick some white poppies, intending to give them to her as a peace offering. He was on foot. He came across her broken body lying at the side of the road. Her bicycle was nearby and he assumed she had fallen off. There are big pot holes on that road. It was dark … she was alive and conscious but severely injured. She was paralyzed. However, she was still able to speak. When she saw Jimmy she begged him to, as she put it, finish her off.” Alice paused to get her breath. “She had stolen a German Luger, you see, from one of the girls at the hostel and given it to him that night as a gift, a souvenir. He was carrying it with him.” Again Alice stopped, her hands tightly clasped in her lap. “He repeated her words to me several times. ‘What future is there for me, Jimmy? I know what’s happened to me. I can’t move my arms or my legs. I know what this is. I’ll never be able to dance again even if I do survive. I don’t want that kind of life. I want you to shoot me. Quickly. Like you would a horse with a broken leg or a dog.
Don’t let me stay like this. Please Jimmy, if you ever loved me, do it. Give us a kiss and do it.’

“So he did. Jimmy shot her, then he moved her to the pass-by and laid her out, ‘like a soldier,’ against the hedge. And placed the gun beside her and then put the poppies on her chest.”

“Why didn’t he wait and let nature decide?” Tyler interrupted, his voice harsh with grief. “He could have fetched a doctor.”

“He was convinced he was doing the right thing … I’ll have to tell you about that another time. It is not a decision that everybody would make, but Jimmy had already seen too much suffering, too many mortal injuries. He knew that Elsie was dying. That there was no hope. I can understand him. I have put animals out of their misery on several occasions.”

“With all due respect, Alice, this was a human being.”

“Jimmy came back from Dunkirk a tormented young man. At a later time I can tell you what happened. We will see more such young men before this war is over. You must not judge him too harshly, Tom.” She shivered and pulled her shawl about her shoulders. “I hated that German, Hoeniger. For a few terrible moments, I lost my own humanity and I wanted revenge.” She paused, her face full of sorrow. “For a woman of peace, it is a vile memory.”

“But you actually saved his life,” said Tyler.

“How could I not? After I shot him, after I saw his agony. He was a fellow creature, after all.”

“You’re a better person than I am, Alice. I’d have killed the bastard,” said Tyler.

“And then what, Tom? Then what? His death would restore nothing.”

He had no answer and allowed the silence to fall between them again. He was grateful for what she had told him about
Jimmy. Afraid he was going to cry, he swallowed hard and looked intently at the flowers neatly lining the edges of the lawn.

Finally, he checked his watch. “I’d better get going. Janet doesn’t like me to be out of sight for long.”

Alice held out her hand for him to help her to her feet. “I’ll walk out with you. Skip, you stay there.”

At the gate, she halted. “Tom, forgive me for asking, I don’t mean to pry, but what are you intending to do about … about you and Clare?”

He didn’t question how she knew. “She’s moving back to Switzerland so I don’t expect to see her again until the war is over. Jimmy’s death has changed everything with Vera and me. I can’t leave her and Janet now. Not for a long time. But I’m thinking of signing up. They’ll soon be needing old men like me. I can still do something useful.”

She gave him a wry smile. “What a pity, I had rather hoped you would join the Peace Pledge Union.”

“ ’Fraid not, Alice. Not right now.”

They went through the gate into the quiet street. A few women were out with their baskets over their arm. It was only if you looked closely that you would notice the absence of men and that the women were anxiously on the lookout for something to buy for their dinners.

Tyler planted a kiss on Alice’s cheek. “Thank you. I badly needed to understand what had happened.”

At that moment, the doors of the pub across the street burst open and a group of Land girls spilled out. One of them recognized Tyler and waved at him. It was Molly Cooper. She didn’t come over, but linked her arm with one of her companions and together they walked off. He heard Molly’s laughter.

Tyler saw Clare once more, the day before she was to leave. They met in her flat, and she held him while he wept in her arms. “I will stay in touch as much as I can,” she said, “but it might not be until the war is over that we see each other again. Keep me in your heart, Tom.”

He’d promised to be home before dark, so he left. Hurrying down the stairs so fast, he almost fell headlong.

He hoped he would be happy again, some day.

This is a work of fiction, although I have tried to stay as true as I could to the larger canvas, to the events of the time.

On September 3, 1939, Britain declared war on Germany. For months, the English people were lulled into a false sense of security, referring to the “phony war.” Then on May 10, 1940, Hitler’s army invaded Belgium, France, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. The British Expeditionary Force had to retreat to the beaches of Dunkirk. On May 26, a massive evacuation of troops from the beaches began. Finally, as the German panzers were moving in, the evacuation ended on June 3, having accomplished the impossible by rescuing more than 250,000 Allied troops. The incidents I ascribe to my characters are an amalgam of true incidents at Dunkirk.

For the next three months, England teetered on the edge of the abyss. She stood alone, facing the ever-present threat of a Nazi invasion. As a consequence, the government decided to intern all German nationals and any other people who might be considered a risk to national security. These “enemy aliens” were sent to internment camps throughout the country, although most eventually ended up on the Isle of Man. One such camp was at Prees Heath in rural Shropshire, where during the summer of 1940 about 1,200 men lived in tents pitched on the ancient free land. The majority were Jewish intellectuals from the professional classes who had fled Nazi Germany. Unfortunately, many had not had time to get their British naturalization papers, and as fear washed throughout the country, they were looked upon as German first, Jewish
second. The camps were top-heavy with highly educated men: philosophers, musicians, scientists, psychologists. To escape the boredom of camp life, the internees quickly set up a “university,” and it was possible to take classes all day long from men who in civilian life were masters in their field.

The nation had to rally, and it did. A call for help on the land brought responses from hundreds of young women, many of them city dwellers. The Land Army girls, in many ways the unsung heroines of the home front, helped keep England fed. They helped to save the country from starvation and deserve much more recognition that they received.

The British Intelligence service, now known as MI5, struggled desperately to get vital information concerning the enemy, often only one short step ahead of Germany. MI5 did operate a base for intercepting transmissions at the Old Rectory in Whitchurch.

Dr. Bruno Beck is based on a real person, Dr. Theodore Reik. He was not interned, having managed to escape to the United States, where he became an important pioneer in the psychoanalytic movement. I have used his books
Fragments of a Great Confession
(1949) and
The Compulsion to Confess
(1925) and given his theories to Dr. Beck.

The artist whose work Tom Tyler buys was also a real person named Pamina Liebert-Mahrenholz (1904–2004). She was the great-aunt of my friend Ian Markham, who let me read the letters she wrote when she was interned, initially in Holloway prison. A very successful artist in Germany, she saw most of her work appropriated by the Nazis, and she fled to England where, after the war, she was able to resume her artistic career. She never received compensation for the artwork that was stolen and recovered only some pieces after the war with great difficulty. The Boundary Gallery (
www.boundarygallery.com
) mounted a show of her work after her death.

Throughout that summer of 1940, people went about their lives; some fell in love, some succumbed to despair. The land had to be cultivated, pleasure found wherever it could be; the police, of necessity, went about the business of enforcing the law.

I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my friends in the
UK
. Jessie Bailey, Enid (Molly) Harley, and Pam Rowan cheerfully allowed me to interrupt their lives and drove me hither and yon while we were in Shropshire so I could go to the actual places where the events of this novel take place. Pam found me the most helpful material, and she, Enid, my husband Iden, and I spent a magical afternoon on the Prees Heath – Pam and Enid in search of wild flowers and the rare silver-studded blue butterfly, while Iden took photographs and I communed with the spirits of those men who, as enemy aliens, were forced to spend the summer of 1940 behind barbed wire.

John Harley kindly set up a meeting for me with Joan Phillotts of Ludlow, who shared with me her experiences as a Land Army girl.

I am also grateful to Eric Koch, who told me his story of being interned as a young man in Canada.

The Imperial War Museum in London is one of the most marvellous museums I have ever been in. No sabre rattling; just a meticulous, dispassionate collection of war material and archives. The resources there were invaluable.

The
BBC
gathered together a collection of personal stories from World War Two, which they called
The People’s War
. It was absolutely fascinating to read and immensely helpful.

Cheryl Freedman read an early draft and gave me great feedback.

Finally, this book would not have come to life without the
ideas and suggestions of Helen Heller. Much thanks. And thanks also to
M&S
and Dinah Forbes for supporting this endeavour. As well, I owe a debt of appreciation to my initial editor, Lara Hinchberger, who, together with Jennifer Glossop, showed superhuman patience and helped me slim down the book and write a more effective story.