Chapter 46
‘And after that, she was okay, Enid?’ Elisavet asked Gladdie, listening to this story on Old Bridge.
‘Not really, no,’ Gladdie said. ‘Enid lost her eyes.’
‘Lost them?’
‘They stitched them shut over empty sockets while she waited for glass eyes, and once she realised that she was blind, she couldn’t bear it.
She couldn’t bear ugliness, not in herself or in others.
She stayed in bed and wouldn’t let us visit.
Life was over and she couldn’t imagine a future for herself.
She didn’t believe that Temperance could love her as she was.
She’d always enjoyed being admired, but she couldn’t stand him pitying her. She hated that.’
‘But then she went to St Dunstan’s,’ Megan said. ‘Finish the story properly, Gladdie.’
‘Yes, she went to St Dunstan’s.’
Elisavet frowned. ‘It is a church?’
‘Not a church, no. It was a place for servicemen blinded during the Great War. They expanded it to include people serving on the Home Front. Enid had the opportunity to go there because she was a munitions worker, see, so she qualified. Temperance talked her into going and she went for his sake, really, so that he could have a break from her and her misery. She changed a lot after the accident.’
‘Dew, saved her life, it did, didn’t it, Cora?’ Gladdie said, remembering.
‘It’s true,’ Cora agreed. ‘It saved her life. It was full of people like her, people who understood what she was going through and who knew it wasn’t the end of things, that the world was still full of joy and hope.
She mixed with people of all ages, too, young and old, it was a real community and it was a cheerful and happy place.
It was a training and rehabilitation centre, and the people who trained them were blind themselves, so there were no excuses, they knew everything that was possible, that you could achieve great things in life.
Enid loved that. She learned shorthand typing when the burns healed and she was good at it, she recovered flexibility in her fingers – well, she’d been nimble fingered to start with from handing the dets.
When she came home from Church Stretton two years later she got a job as a shorthand typist in an office, and she stayed there until she retired. ’
Elisavet leaned back against the bridge wall and stared at the blue sky, watching the clouds slide across it like foam. Her hair blew free in the breeze. ‘It was an interesting place?’
‘Yes. She said that the St Dunstaners switched the light back on in her existence.’
‘And this Les she loved? What happened to him?’
‘He carried on as usual, didn’t he, Cora?’
‘Yes. Good-looking man, he was, fair play. It was the white jacket and the white hat that did it, made him look continental. All the Budgies fancied him.’
‘Not all,’ Megan said.
‘No, not all,’ Cora agreed with a smile.
‘And her marriage?’
‘We saw a different side to Temperance. He was very angry, and because he didn’t know what to do with it he redirected his anger to the Germans in the camp. Wouldn’t let it drop. He had a rifle he used for shooting foxes, spent a lot of time cleaning and oiling it.’
‘But that’s not the point of the story,’ Megan said quickly. ‘The point is, they lived to celebrate their golden wedding anniversary. That’s fifty years! There we are! As we say in all good fairy stories, they lived happily ever after.’
Elisavet looked doubtful but said nothing.
Cora didn’t blame her. Although they’d always thought of it as a story with a happy ending, it had a touch of the Brothers Grimm about it.
That evening when Elisavet came round, Frank’s journal entry seemed to reflect the tone of the day. Happy outcomes, Cora thought, didn’t erase the pain that one felt before reaching them.
In the days before the escape, I was the most tired I’d ever been. We were on limited rations now, putting food aside for the escape, enough to keep us going until we reached safety.
I was always hungry and sleep was a longed-for escape. Sleep, and Cora, with her sharply angled eyebrow, the sweet smile, her grey eyes. The rest of her I guessed at.
It was impossible, of course, to think we had a future together but at lights out I lay with my arm across my chest as if it was her arm.
I wondered what lay ahead for me when the war was over.
I just wanted normal things, a job, a wife, children, and they were nice thoughts, happy thoughts.
I tried to hold onto them but the undercurrent of uneasiness that was preventing me from sleeping also prevented me from being too hopeful.
It was better to expect the worst and have it fulfilled than hope for the best and be disappointed.
The last thing I thought before I fell asleep was that I would like a wife with green hair and a yellow face. It didn’t seem too much to ask.
At six o’clock the following morning I climbed down from my bunk to go to join the queue for the washroom.
Otto was in a deep sleep and hadn’t even stirred.
‘Time to get up, old man,’ I said. I put my hand on his shoulder and gave him a shake.
I felt the unnatural coldness of Otto’s skin through his vest. The colour had gone out of him.
My spirits plunged. I knew what it meant.
For a moment I stood there without moving, feeling the creep of despair and sorrow.
Otto hadn’t been in the best of health. He was a good man, a man of morals and integrity. Without his knowledge and ingenuity, the tunnel would have been a far more uncomfortable and dangerous experience, if it had ever been started at all. Otto had been so close to going home.
His funeral was held a few days later on an overcast day.
Cora fetched her scrapbook to show Elisavet the yellowing newspaper cutting she’d pasted in it. ‘It’s not much of an obituary,’ she said. ‘I remember feeling that at the time.’
Island Farm Camp Death
Mr Ivor Davies reported that the whole camp was allowed to parade in the marketplace for the funeral of Otto Fiegel, an Army construction expert, and that they goose-stepped through the town giving Heil Hitler salutes.
‘Their arrogant behaviour and their contempt of the present guards,’ he said, ‘made us all believe that their treatment was far too lax. But we were told that the reason for the special privileges accorded to them was that they were entitled to special treatment under international convention.’