Pattern of Shadows (32 page)

The branches of the large sycamores opposite the camp dissected the gun-grey sky. A rush of wings disturbed the stillness of impending rain; starlings swirled noisily before
settling again in the trees. Mary gathered her woollen cloak around her, glad of its warmth, and turned to look at the camp one last time. There were few prisoners still in the compound. The windows, oblongs of lights on all four floors, were crowded with the outlines of men.

Mary breathed in the lingering smell of bonfires and let the air out in a lengthy sigh, relief mixed with sadness that she’d completed her four weeks notice. She was leaving a lot of good memories behind as well as the bad. She walked down the steps of the hospital and through the barrier of the main gate on to Shaw Street without glancing back. She’d said her goodbyes.

The short interview with Matron was much as she’d expected; the woman had barely glanced up when Mary thanked her for the reference which had guaranteed her a post at the hospital in Pont y Haven. There had been an awkward silence, only broken when Mary moved to open the office door. Even then Matron hadn’t looked at her. ‘Try to be professional in all you do, Sister Howarth. Don’t let yourself down.’ Mary closed the door on the word, ‘Again.’

Swollen drops of rain suddenly smacked onto the pavement. Mary dragged her hood over her hair and ran. Soon the gutters rushed with streams of water. When she passed Jean’s house rainwater gushed out of the downspout and rattled on to the tin roof of the coal shed. In the alleyway, the wet cobbles were greasy and behind the blank gates on either side there was the usual
nighttime
racket of radios, babies crying and the high-pitched fury of quarrels.

At number twenty-seven, Mary lifted the latch and pushed it open. The curtains were still pulled back at the
kitchen window and Mary saw the flickering of the fire in the gloom of the kitchen. The rain tapped like drumbeats on the tin bath hung on the wall.

Mrs Jagger had her back door open; the whiff of pipe smoke floated over the wall. Even this downpour wouldn’t keep her in, Mary thought.

‘Everything all right, Mary?’ the old woman called out.

‘Everything’s all right, Mrs Jagger.’

‘What a night, eh?’

‘Shocking.’ Something in Mrs Jagger’s voice stopped Mary. ‘Are you all right, Mrs Jagger?’

‘Not really, Mary. With weather like this I don’t get out much. I don’t see anybody from one day to the next. Gets a bit lonely, you know.’

‘I know,’ Mary said, ‘I know.’ She felt an unusual pang of sympathy for the old woman. ‘Goodnight, then.’

‘Night, Mary.’ There was another drift of pipe smoke above the yard wall. The old woman coughed. ‘Mary?’

‘Yes?’

‘Thanks for asking, I enjoy our little chats.’

Her mother was leaning towards the fire, a book on her knee, her grey shawl over her head. She turned round as Mary came in. ‘I’ve put a shovelful of fire in the grate in your room, love,’ she said. ‘It should be warm up there.’

‘Thanks, Mam,’ Mary couldn’t keep the surprise out of her voice. She glanced around. ‘You’ve been cleaning?’

‘Ellen came round.’ Winifred pushed her shawl off her head and tucked the book down the side of her chair. ‘They’ve had some news. Ted will be home by weekend. She didn’t know what to do with herself, she was that excited. She said she’d cleaned every inch of Mrs Booth’s
house and she was still a bundle of nerves so she tackled this place.’

‘Well, it’s great.’ Mary slung her cloak over the rack and hunkered down by the range. ‘I’m so cold, it’s miserable out there.’ She put a hand on her mother’s knee. ‘No Arthur tonight?’

‘No, not today,’ was all Winifred said, but there was a note in her voice Mary hadn’t heard since her father died and the hand that covered Mary’s was firm.

‘Tom upstairs?’

‘He was tired.’

Mary’s studied her mother; her hair was almost white now and the mottled skin on her cheeks was crisscrossed with tiny wrinkles. But, for once, the whites of her eyes were not shot through with red and her gaze on her daughter was steady.

‘Mam?’ Mary traced the raised veins that pushed against the fragile skin on the back of Winifred’s hand. ‘Mam, I’ve been meaning to tell you something.’ Now the time had come, Mary didn’t know what to say. She looked past her mother at the pattern of shadows thrown up by the fire’s flames on the back wall. ‘I’ve got some news,’ she said, at last. ‘Tom and I are going to live in Wales and we want you to come with us.’

Above the dingy canopy of the station buildings the sun was a pale vague glow in a filmy sky, the air so crisp it
hurt to breathe in. Mary paced the platform, stopping every now and then to make sure the plaid blanket covered her mother’s legs. ‘Keep covered up, Mam,’ she said. ‘You’ll catch your death. I told you we’d be too soon.’ Her words were carried on cold wisps of white breath.

Winifred tipped her head back so she could see past the brim of her hat. ‘He’s worse than me,’ she laughed, a nervous tic moving the corner of her eye. She nodded towards Tom standing by the suitcases, self-conscious in his new blue serge suit and navy trilby. ‘We’d have camped here all night if it was anything to do with him.’ She pulled her gloves over the cuff of her coat to cover the expanse of thin wrist. ‘Will it be long?’ She leaned forward and stared down the track which curved and disappeared beyond a clutter of buildings. ‘I’m that nervous, our Mary.’

‘It’s just the waiting,’ Mary said, feeling just as bad. ‘You’ll be OK once we’re on our way.’ She glanced up at the station clock. ‘Another ten minutes and it should be here.’

‘I wish you’d let Ellen and Patrick and Jean come to wave us off.’

‘No need to make a song and dance in public, Mam. Anyway, Ellen and Ted were moving into number
twenty-seven
today, they’ve enough on their plate without coming all the way to Bradlow on the bus and standing around here in the cold at this time in the morning.’

The stationmaster sauntered towards Tom, green and red flags clutched in his hand. Mary hurried towards them. ‘Just saying to your husband, it’s a funny time to be going on your holidays, Missus.’

Mary smiled and, turning slightly away from him,
pulled a face at her brother to warn him not to speak. ‘Well, we’ll be guaranteed a place on the beach, that’s for sure.’ The man laughed and went back into the ticket box.

‘Nosy beggar,’ Mary whispered.

Tom grinned. ‘Makes me feel like I’m on the run again.’

‘Don’t Tom,’ Mary chided but she managed a smile; it was good that he could joke about it.

‘Listen,’ her mother called, standing up and folding the blanket.

The faint chug and scrape of metal grew louder, there was a shriek of whistle and the train appeared round the bend in the track, white steam jetting out from underneath the engine. A broken trail of grey-black smoke belched from the funnel as, with a last blast of hot air from underneath, it squealed to a halt in front of them. The window of the nearest carriage door slid down and a hand reached through to turn the brass handle. A man in a top hat and carrying a briefcase stepped down on to the platform leaving the door to swing open. Tom carried the cases towards it.

‘Don’t panic, we’ve plenty of time.’ Mary took the blanket off her mother. But in seconds the rhythmic hiss and roar increased in volume and their cases were being bundled into a carriage by a porter.

‘C’mon, c’mon, up you get, Missus,’ he bellowed.

Tom held Winifred’s elbow to help her up the step, but she was frozen to the spot. She opened and shut her mouth. ‘It’ll be all right, won’t it, Mary,’ she shouted, her voice cracking. ‘I’ve done the right thing? It’s a long way from home?’

Mary looked beyond the station towards the chimneys
and the large anonymous buildings that dwarfed the terraced rows of houses of Bradlow and then up at the sky where the sun was almost breaking through the gauze of cloud. She thought about the way Tom had described Llamroth, the tiny Welsh village with its narrow lanes winding down the hills towards the coast and Gwyneth’s cottages overlooking the Irish Sea, and she smiled at her mother. ‘You’ve done the right thing, Mam, it’ll be fine.’

They were on their way to a new life, where Peter would always be a special memory.

Peter stood on the platform, steam billowing around his feet as the train slowly moved along the rails and out of sight. He could see the ticket inspector watching. The long threads of rain from the canopy overhead hit the tilted brim of his trilby, ran round to the back of the hat and streamed down on to the shoulders of his grey gabardine. Unsure of which way to go, he hesitated.

‘Over here, mate.’ He could tell the man was getting impatient. ‘That was the last train of the day and I don’t want to be hanging about. I’ve got a home to go to.’ He tapped on his counter and shoved his hand, upturned, through the gap underneath the glass. There were blue ink stains on the pads of his fingers. ‘Ticket, please.’ He stressed the word as though he thought Peter didn’t understand.

Peter nodded but still didn’t move. The man slid off his wooden stool and blew out his cheeks in exasperation. Then, with a small hook on the end of a stick he reached under the glass, grabbed the shutter and pulled it until it closed. Peter watched as he emerged on to the platform, a
few feet away and held out his hand.

‘Come on, sir, that’s the last train tonight and I’m closing the station.’ He grinned. ‘Got to get home for my pie and chips or the missus will throttle me.’

Peter smiled, not quite understanding the last few words, but savouring the broad northern accent that reminded him of Mary. ‘Sorry.’ He handed over the ticket as the man swept his arm in a wide semicircle until his hand pointed towards the exit. Peter nodded and picked up his suitcase. He turned on his heels and walked purposefully out of the station.

Once outside the building, he faltered and stared around him. Another platform, a wooden construction, led away to the left and down to a path, now wetly overgrown.

Further on, the path widened, became ridged concrete and then turned into a road. Peter gazed towards the hills in the distance and then spun round to look the other way. The rows of allotments were tidy but empty in the late afternoon. On the opposite side of the road only two of the watch towers had survived to guard the front of the old cotton mill with its smashed windows and crumbling brickwork. The roof of one was missing and the struts that once held it pointed up towards the darkening sky. It was there that Shuttleworth had been the sentry that February in nineteen forty-five.

The ghosts of thousands of men stood outside the rusting barbed wire of the fence, a white haze of breath rising above them. He imagined he could hear the coughs, the singing of the prisoners and shouts of the guards surrounding them. The sound echoed in the stillness as they shuffled slowly forward. The frisson of fear that made him shiver was only a shadow of the terror he had
felt that morning.

The image vanished as he heard uneven footsteps behind him, the sound of the man’s limping gait jolting memories.

‘Goodnight, then.’

Peter nodded at the ticket inspector. ‘Goodnight,’ then he hastily added, ‘Henshaw Street? I need to know, please, how to go to Henshaw Street?’

The man nodded. ‘I’m going that way myself. I’ll show you.’ He pulled the brim of his cap further down over his eyes and, shoulders hunched against the rain, turned right.

Peter followed.

The young woman had a crying baby resting on her hip and a little girl hiding behind her skirt. ‘Can I help you?’ She looked harassed, brushing a strand of her blond hair away from her face with the back of her hand and jiggling the baby.

Peter looked past her into the house. ‘I am looking for a family who used to live here.’

She pulled the door behind her so he couldn’t see. ‘We’ve been here for five years, before that it was my mother and father’s house,’ she said, suspicion in her voice. ‘What name are you looking for?’

‘Howarth,’ Peter said, ‘I’m trying to find Mary Howarth.’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘Mary Howarth? Why?’

‘I am a friend.’

‘You’re not English, are you?’

‘German.’ Peter waited for the usual reaction. It wasn’t forthcoming. Instead the woman’s eyes widened and she opened her mouth as though to speak.

‘Mam,’ the small girl whined, ‘I’m cold.’

‘Shush, go in then, find your Dad and your uncle.’ The woman turned the child round by the shoulder and gave her a push. There was a draught of air as the little girl went through a door at the far end of the hall.

‘Ellen, who is it?’ a man shouted from somewhere inside the house.

‘In a minute,’ she tossed the words over her shoulder.

‘Ellen, you are Ellen, Mary’s sister?’

‘Yes. Are you Peter,’ she whispered, ‘the doctor at the camp?’ She held the baby close to her.

‘
Ja
. Yes,’ Peter corrected himself, ‘Peter Schormann. I was at the Granville.’

The woman held the front door open with her foot. ‘My God,’ she said, ‘it’s true then?’ She poked her head forward, glancing up and down the street before looking at him again. ‘You can’t …’ She stopped. ‘Look, wait here a minute.’ She backed into the hall and shut the door, but it bounced back off the catch and Peter watched her walk away, the baby staring at him over her shoulder. He put his case on the ground and waited.

‘Who is it?’ The man’s voice was loud.

‘Insurance, Ted.’

‘Thought he came Fridays.’

‘Well, this week it’s Thursday, OK?’

Peter could hear drawers being opened and closed, the clattering of cupboard doors, male voices muttering.

‘Keep your hair on, I’ll make a brew in a minute,
Patrick.’ Ellen reappeared with a small red book in her hand. When she got to the door, she flipped it open and thrust it at Peter. ‘Here,’ she hissed, ‘take it.’ There was a crumpled envelope inside. ‘Now go. If them two find out who you are they’ll go mental.’ She smiled at him. ‘Good luck, give them my love.’ Then she called out, ‘Bye, see you next week,’ and slammed the door.