Chapter 34
‘I haven’t seen your gardener friend for a bit,’ Enid said to Cora as they walked home from the late shift. The fields were white and aged with frost, and the cold wind hit them like a slap.
It was true, it had been days since she’d last seen him and she tried not to think about him.
She still had his cap, though. It was her lucky charm.
As they walked along the foot-worn path past the camp, their breath fogging the fields, Cora turned to look towards the vegetable patch out of habit, not expecting to see him there. But he was there, and her heart jumped with happiness.
His head was bowed and his hands sunk deep in his greatcoat pockets. He saw her and raised his hand.
She raised hers to him in return, a small quick gesture. ‘Go on without me, will you,’ she said to Enid.
She walked towards him, stepping through the brambles, and came up to the frosty, glittering fence with its crystal barbs, the brim of her hat a dark halo around her yellow face, frowning at him all the while. Something was wrong.
When she got close enough to see him properly she covered her mouth with her hand in shock. After a moment she said softly, ‘Oh, Frank. What’s happened? Who hurt you?’
He didn’t answer.
She asked him more fiercely, ‘Was it the guards? Because—’
‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘Not them. The SS.’
Cora couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
‘Your own people?’ she asked in astonishment.
‘Your own people did this? You’re supposed to be safe in there, safer than out here, at any rate.
’ Her anger burned through her. She had so many words of helpless fury and frustration to say to him that they piled up in her head like a word mountain.
‘Why don’t you hate me?’ he asked her in wonderment.
‘Because I can’t,’ she said simply.
He squinted his swollen eyes against the brightness of the frost and he tilted his head forward to see her better. ‘What colour eyes do you have?’ he asked her.
‘See for yourself.’ She stepped closer to the fence, took her hat off, shook her hair away from her face and let him look at her.
Their eyes locked. She found herself unable to breathe properly but for a different reason now.
‘Grey,’ he said. ‘Like the sky.’
She smiled, tears in her eyes. ‘Yours, too. Grey, like the sky.’ She pursed her lips to blow him a kiss, but instead she blew him a long white cloud of breath and he did the same back to her so for a moment the condensation joined, mingled, dissipated.
‘Hey, Cora! Get on with it!’ Enid called over. ‘I feel like a gooseberry standing here.’ She came up as far as the brambles and stood with her hands on her hips. ‘Hello! What’s wrong with your face? Been in a boxing match, have you?’
‘No – I—’
‘Only joking. I’m Enid,’ she said.
‘Frank.’
‘Frank.’ She grinned. ‘I’ll be Frank if you’ll be Ernest.’
He looked from her to Cora.
‘It’s a joke,’ Cora said. She was aware of his gaze and as he looked at her she felt suddenly self-conscious about her one curved, humorous eyebrow that suggested life wasn’t to be taken too seriously and the mustard-coloured freckles across the bridge of her nose and her ochre cheekbones.
Enid wasn’t used to being ignored. Getting no reaction from him, she called over accusingly, ‘You bombed Cardiff, you did.’ But at the same time she stood with her hand on her jutting hip, ready for banter. When she had his attention again she tilted her head. ‘Look at you! A fight, was it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who won?’
He didn’t answer.
Just then a guard came round the corner, lighting a cigarette, and then he saw Frank. ‘You! Get away from the fence,’ he ordered harshly. ‘And you girls, clear off. I know your sort! I’ll have you arrested!’
‘See you later,’ Cora said to Frank, putting her hat back on and tucking her hair into it.
‘Hey! Why is your hair green?’ he asked her.
Enid answered for her. ‘Because she fills anti-aircraft shells to bomb you lot,’ she told him gleefully, tossing her head. ‘So put that in your pipe and smoke it!’