Chapter 30
Cora couldn’t get near to the barbed wire fence because the guards were patrolling back and forth along the fence with unaccustomed diligence.
She was frustrated, waiting by the trees, waiting for them to leave.
Her hands were aching cold in her gloves and she had a bout of violent shivering while the dew froze on the dead leaves, anchoring them to the mud while the daylight dimmed. The wind sounded as rough as the sea.
Frank was digging the hard ground steadily to the clang of his spade. He was a good worker, it told her a lot about him that he dug with so much energy. From time to time he glanced quickly in her direction, checking if she was still there.
The guard finished his cigarette, flicked it through the fence in a red burst of sparks and moved further around the perimeter.
Frank sent a paper plane soaring and looping towards her.
It was almost dark now and she felt safer, shielded by the night. She dashed to pick it up before anyone caught her and unfolded the message.
The note said:
I THINK OF YOU ALWAYS.
It was practically a love letter, she thought happily.
They stood facing each other on either side of the fence, a vast distance between them, and she smiled with relief at seeing him again and the smile closed the distance up. ‘I think of you always, too,’ she admitted. ‘I thought they’d never go. There are more guards around than usual.’
‘They have found an escape tunnel in one of the huts,’ Frank said, tucking his hands under his armpits for warmth. His breath was clouding through the double rows of wire.
Cora’s heart jumped. ‘Did anyone get away?’
‘No. They hadn’t got very far with the digging.’
‘That’s a relief!’ She added quickly, ‘I mean – not from your point of view, of course. I know much you want to get back.’
His face was in shadow. ‘If I escaped, this would matter to you?’
‘Yes, in a selfish sort of way. Because I would wonder—’ She hesitated. ‘I suppose I would always wonder what had happened to you,’ she said softly. ‘Whether you got home. You could write to me and let me know.’
Frank looked beyond her and didn’t reply. She wanted to tunnel deep into his thoughts. The idea of him escaping frightened her on two fronts (guns, dogs), that he would be shot and she would know what had happened to him, or that he would get away and she would never know.
In the factory, when her thoughts turned to him in the rhythm of constant repetitious movement, in the jollity of the radio, she thought of him as being a distant figure standing motionless behind the wire.
But when she was with him he was always moving, digging in the earth, keeping his energy flowing.
Sometimes she felt it flowing through her too as she tried to keep warm on these winter nights.
He tucked his hands in his pockets. ‘Soon it will be Christmas.’
She felt her throat tighten. ‘Yes. Very soon.’ She saw a shadow approaching. ‘Guard,’ she said softly. ‘I’d better go.’
‘I’ll see you tomorrow, won’t I?’ he asked quickly.
‘Yes.’ She smiled at him.
Although she could barely see his face in the dark, she knew he was smiling and she felt a surge of happiness to know she could make him smile when there was little enough in his world to smile about.
A few days before Christmas, at the anti-escape committee in Temperance’s front room, Cora was thinking of Frank under the watchful eyes of Temperance’s parents who each had a sprig of holly tucked under their frames.
Idwal had noticed the holly, too. ‘We should sing carols for them,’ he said now to Temperance. ‘Put them in a festive mood.’
Temperance looked up cautiously from his notes. ‘For whom?’
‘For the prisoners.’
‘We could sing “Silent Night”,’ Dio said with a laugh. ‘That will fool them.’
Temperance puffed out his cheeks. ‘It’s a bit risky, isn’t it? Be sensible, man. May will come galloping up with dogs and reinforcements and shoot the lot of us.’
Enid was smiling vaguely, studying her hands.
Cora looked around the front room, wondering if anyone noticed the difference in Enid, but they seemed the same as usual, dutiful and bored, wishing the Germans would get a move on so that they could stop talking about what they were going to do to them and get down to actually doing it.
There was no talking behind their hands or sly winks to Enid or any of that nonsense.
Cora was amazed, because you couldn’t keep anything secret here, which was a very good thing because gossip curbed bad behaviour.
Mind you, she corrected herself, if that were true then bad behaviour would be extinct as the dinosaurs, which it wasn’t, and she herself was proof of that.
And having come full circle in her own argument, she felt nervous again. Her gaze drifted to Enid. She was different now, distant. All her lovely gratitude towards Temperance had gone. She had no need of him now.
Just at that moment the singing started up again from the camp.
‘They’re having a high old time in there,’ Jane complained bitterly. ‘They won’t want to go home. They dress up and do shows, you know. They don’t deserve to be treated as human beings.’
Dio said gloomily, ‘The Nazis have got a reputation for that sort of thing.’ He didn’t say how he knew. ‘It doesn’t seem right that they’re getting it easy in there. Plenty of food by all accounts, the Red Cross sees to that. If it wasn’t for us, they’d still be across the Channel, fighting.’
‘And the law is on their side. They’re more worried about protecting them than they are about us,’ Temperance said.
Jane’s eyes brightened. ‘That’s because the authorities know exactly what we’d do to the Germans if we got hold of them.’
Idwal said, ‘Come on now, Jane, it’s the season of peace and goodwill to all men.’
‘Germans excepted,’ Temperance said. ‘It’s one of your pacifist ideas, Idwal, to sing carols to them and we’re not doing it. It’s in very poor taste to suggest it.’
The temperature dropped in the cold front room.
The meeting broke up immediately afterwards and they went home to warm up.