Chapter 19
Cora was the first to arrive at Temperance’s meeting of the anti-escape committee.
She’d reached a decision during the night and had brought the soldier’s crumpled cap with her in her pocket.
She would be sorry to relinquish it but she would show some decency towards the prisoner, at least. She’d gone there early hoping to ask Superintendent May quietly if he could return the cap to its owner in the camp, it being lost property, like.
‘Hello, Temperance. Is Mr May here?’
‘Not yet. Come in, Cora, come, you’re the first.’ Temperance welcomed her gratefully and straightened the tie under his pullover. ‘Enid’s upstairs, getting changed for the meeting. Enid! Cora’s here! Go into the front room, Cora. It’s more formal, for the superintendent.’
He turned to the door to welcome Jane in as she wiped her feet on the doormat and closed it quickly behind her to mute the singing from the camp.
‘Listen to them! Gloating! It’s a terrible thing to have the Germans in our midst.’
Cora rubbed her thumb on the cap in her pocket. ‘What will they do if they escape from Island Farm?’ she asked. ‘Head for the Channel?’
‘They’ll go on the rampage, that’s what they’ll do,’ Temperance predicted.
‘They’ll steal our cars and our food and cut our throats and break into other camps to let their pals out.
Then they’ll swarm the countryside.’ He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
‘But don’t you worry, girl, we won’t let them get far. We’ll stop them.’
‘I’m not worried. I was just wondering.’
Megan, Idwal, Gladdie and Dio came into the house after congregating on the street. The arrival of the Germans in their own backyard, as they put it, had been an extraordinary event and they were keen to compare notes.
‘Enid!’ Temperance shouted up the stairs. ‘Have we got enough chairs?’
Enid came downstairs elegantly as if she was lit by limelight, and joined the little group of neighbours in the cold front room, kept for best. The portraits of Temperance’s parents looked sternly down at them from oval frames.
They all sat bolt upright on the best furniture, keeping their coats on and their elbows tucked in to make space. Dio and Jane sat on dining chairs, Temperance in the big armchair with his notes on his lap, Gladdie on a stool next to him and Megan sat on the sofa next to Cora.
Idwal was no use to the discussion, being a pacifist, so Temperance put him in a lowly position on the tapestry footstool. ‘I hear you’ve already taken matters into your own hands, Jane,’ Enid said to her, looking amused from the doorway.
‘They needed putting in their place. Mind you, you should have seen the respect the Nazis gave to Mr Hill. He gave them a telling off, and they marched away as good as gold. You could have invited him here tonight.’
Temperance grunted. ‘I did, but he said he was busy.’
‘Pity, that.’
‘Superintendent May is coming, though, if he’s got the time.’
‘If he’s got the time? Of course, he’s safe enough where he lives. When they get out, we’re the ones in the front line, facing desperate men.’
‘Be fair, Jane, he hates them as much as we do. His son’s in the Far East.’
Temperance told them he had mixed feelings about May.
He had taken it for granted that he himself would be the one to chair the meeting as it was his idea, but unfortunately for him, Bill May was a step ahead of him, or as Temperance put it, he’d jumped on the bandwagon.
Of course, May had had the unfair advantage of advance warning of the arrival of the prisoners, and his plans were already underway and ready to be implemented, that’s what he said.
May arrived only two minutes late, just at the moment that Temperance told them he would start without him.
Superintendent May turned up in police uniform with his cap tucked under his arm and a briefcase, so he looked official.
‘Come on in,’ Temperance said heartily, putting a brave face on things, although he gave the impression he wouldn’t really have minded if Bill May hadn’t turned up at all.
Cora had never seen two men look more different.
The policeman had a lean, lined, no-nonsense face, which gave him an unfair advantage.
Temperance’s own boyish face was round-looking, even when he sucked in his cheeks.
In fact, it was the same shape that had won him a bonny baby contest in his early years.
‘Still baby-faced!’ his mother would greet him affectionately in chapel in front of everyone, pinching his cheek.
As if it was his own doing, as if he’d decided to cling onto it to please her.
‘This meeting is to discuss our strategy as a precaution, just in case the prisoners attempt to escape,’ Temperance said as May sat on the sofa between Megan and Cora.
‘Correction. We know they will try to escape,’ May said. It sounded like a reprimand.
‘Oh? How do we know that?’
‘They’ve been ordered to. It’s their solemn duty. Hence the need to be vigilant.’ May was taking the Germans’ escape seriously, and as it turned out, even more seriously than Temperance himself.
May had come clutching his own plans, ready-typed, with no discussion or voting involved, and he had already, he said, coordinated with the control centre.
Temperance was now bitterly regretting having invited May to the meeting at all.
His own plans for a plan were still a bit hazy and open to input and suggestion, whereas May had produced a folder out of his briefcase, with sheets of paper already typed up official-like.
What’s more, he told them, he had already discussed the matter of a possible escape with the camp’s commander.
‘I declare this meeting open,’ Temperance announced belatedly, taking the upper hand. Then everybody spoke at once, not to him but to the superintendent.
‘Are we safe?’
‘Do we need a petition?’
‘Are the Nazis dangerous?’
What a question! ‘Of course they’re dangerous!’ Temperance shouted over everyone in exasperation. ‘That’s the whole point!’ and Bill May raised his hands for hush as if he was addressing a mighty throng.
When they all stopped talking to listen to him speak, his voice was a mere whisper, as reverential as if he was in chapel. ‘Ruthless, too,’ he breathed, so softly you could hear a mouse snore. ‘And they will, I assure you, attempt an escape. It’s in their blood.’
Temperance stared at him, and cupped his hand around his ear.
Cora was not so much taken by his words, which were repetition of what he’d already said, but by his volume.
This technique was a revelation. Temperance had always been keener on outshouting the opposition, but she could see now how quietness worked; everyone had been forced to shut up and listen to May just so that they could hear him speak.
‘That’s exactly what I told Enid,’ Temperance said, vindicated. He tapped his pen against his notepad, feeling Churchillian. He raised his voice. ‘We have to’ – and lowered it again – ‘stop them at all costs.’
‘What’s that? Speak up, man,’ Dio said.
‘Stop them at all costs!’
‘How?’ Cora asked. ‘And why do we have to stop them? Isn’t that what the guards are for?’
‘No. Because there aren’t enough of them,’ May said.
‘The Jerries have started a camp choir already, I notice,’ Dio pointed out bitterly. ‘That’s a war crime in my opinion, throwing our own traditions back at us. The noise they made marching from the station! And they’re not even musical. They’re just loud.’
‘Ah,’ Bill May said softly, tapping the side of his nose. ‘I’ve got some intelligence on the subject.’
‘You would,’ Temperance said under his breath.
‘We have to listen out for them singing “Silent Night”. If they start singing “Silent Night” it signifies that an escape is imminent. We have to listen out for it, every single man of us.’
‘Who told you that?’ Temperance asked enviously.
‘The camp commander, Darling.’
‘Steady on, Bill.’
‘I don’t mean you, Temperance, as you very well know,’ May said irritably. ‘Darling knows all their little tricks.’
‘Why “Silent Night”?’ Dio asked, sceptical.
Cora was just going to ask that herself.
She looked at her father’s black-rimmed eyes and his white hair, and thought he looked like a silent movie star, but she knew he couldn’t help it.
Mind you, when she looked at her own face in the mirror it sometimes took her by surprise.
They could join a circus after the war, both of them.
‘To lull us into a false sense of security,’ Bill May said.
‘But now we know about it, won’t that give them away?’ Cora asked.
‘The thing is, they don’t know we know. It’s something we have to listen out for.
’ May glanced at his watch like the busy man he was, and shuffled the typewritten papers in his hand.
‘To sum up. In the event of a suspected escape or an actual escape, the alarm will sound, Flight Lieutenant Martin at the RAF landing ground will lend us his guard dogs which have been specially trained to track down escapees. A three-mile cordon will be placed around the area and all pedestrians and motorists rigorously checked for their identity papers. As a last resort, in the event of the non-apprehension of the escapees, the army and the coastguards will be informed, but I repeat: this will be a last resort. This is something we in the police force can deal with ourselves. Your job, as residents of Island Street, is to keep alert and listen out for “Silent Night”.’
They were silenced by disappointment.
‘Not much of a job, is it?’ Jane said after a moment, looking sour.
‘Still. Each man has to do his bit. They’re a wily bunch, you know.’
‘Wily?’ Temperance snorted. ‘I’m not sure that’s the word you’re looking for,’ he said disapprovingly.
‘I’m not looking for any word, because I’ve already found it,’ May snapped, putting his papers into his case and getting to his feet.