The Restless Sea

Olivia visits the German when it is safe to do so, sloshing the rancid water he had been drinking out on the cobbles and replacing it with fresh, borrowing a bale of fresh straw to spread out for him, removing the old straw when she is mucking out the pony. She lugs warm water in a bucket, leaving him to peel off his filthy clothes and scrub at his filthy skin. She finds some clothes that must have belonged to Uncle Howard in the dressing-up box at Taigh Mor. Eccentric, but at least they are clean and warm. She takes the man’s uniform and buries it far away, deep in soft peat. Once the grime is washed off and the sickly pallor has faded from his skin, she can see that he has hazel eyes and mousy-coloured hair.

At first they struggle to communicate in broken English, using hand signals and pictures drawn in the ground to clarify meaning, like a child’s game of charades. Slowly, Olivia learns that his name is Hans, and that his plane was shot down at sea. Somehow he managed to drift to shore and climb up into the hills. He has a revolver, but no bullets: he used the last the day he tried to shoot the stag. He missed because of the damage to his eye. He followed her tracks back to the stable and hid, surviving on a mixture of stale pony nuts and the occasional foraged vegetable from the walled garden. He is twenty. The same age as Charlie.

Hans lets her clean the bad eye with salt water, drawing his breath in sharply as she dabs at it. The eyeball was punctured by a piece of Perspex from the cockpit of his plane, and although Hans managed to pull it out, and the eyeball itself seems to have healed, the shard also cut the skin at the corner, and it is this that has become infected. Olivia washes it every day, but the skin remains hot and swollen, and she knows that Hans’s temperature is high. She raids the tack room, finding an old bottle of iodine, the brown glass marked with skull and crossbones. She dabs it on the wound, feels Hans’s body go rigid, sees his eyes water with unshed tears. She remembers how painful iodine is even on grazed knees. She stops, but he indicates that she must carry on. Tears come to her own eyes, because he is so very brave and he does not make a sound. She cleans it this way every morning and evening, until at last the wound stops festering and starts to heal, and now the cough begins to clear up, and finally colour returns to Hans’s pasty cheeks.

The fear of discovery grows less with each day that passes, and as they both relax in each other’s company, that corner of the stable becomes almost like home. They play cards: Pelmanism and rummy. Hans picks up English a lot more quickly than Olivia has managed to pick up Gaelic. He has a gentle, shy smile and calm manner. He is the complete opposite to what she’s heard and read about Germans. She feels guilty for liking him, but then why shouldn’t she? They can’t all be bad, can they? Olivia wonders how many of the Wrens and soldiers who career around the loch have ever met a real German. Is it just the uniform that gives the enemy away? Or is it something deeper?

Hans shows her the crumpled photograph that he keeps in his pocket. She studies it in the crack of light that slopes in through a missing tile in the stable roof. It is a picture of Hans, his mother and younger brother. A shaggy mongrel lies with its head on Hans’s foot. The little brother is wearing lederhosen, a serious expression on his face. Hans is smiling in his Luftwaffe uniform. His mother’s arm is linked through his and she is looking up at him proudly. She is wearing a flowery dress. She looks no different to Olivia today. In fact, Olivia looks more Germanic with her pale eyes and blonde hair. Hans gazes sadly at the photograph before putting it carefully back into his pocket. Olivia thinks how similar they are; both in a place they never intended to be; both isolated from friends and family.

‘What is your home like?’ she asks.

‘My home town is Dresden,’ he says. ‘It is very beautiful. Many old houses. Much history. Very different to here.’

‘It sounds like London,’ she says.

He nods. ‘It also has a big river. The Elbe. We live near it. I like to walk my dog there.’

‘I’m not sure it would be very safe walking a dog in London these days …’

‘So sad,’ he says. ‘I would like to visit London one day.’

‘If there’s anything left …’

He clicks his tongue, shaking his head as if he cannot believe the world. ‘I will help rebuild it,’ he says. ‘I will be an architect when this is over.’

‘Is that what you always wanted to do?’

He nods. ‘My father has – had – an architect business in Dresden.’

‘What is he doing now?’

‘He is a captain in the Kriegsmarine.’

‘No!’ she laughs. ‘Mine is too …’

‘Let’s hope they never meet.’

Spring begins to warm the air, and soft new leaves unfurl on the trees as the days begin to lighten. Up in the hills, the stoats start to lose their creamy winter coats, their faces and backs turning russet brown again. Somewhere a cuckoo is calling. The sound gladdens Olivia’s soul: it means summer is approaching. The wind drowns out the sound of traffic on the road. As she battles to hang the washing out on the blowy line, the sheets snapping and cracking against her, she almost forgets why she is here – and how once she had not wanted to be.

What with preparing the ground for planting vegetables, and being able to fish for salmon and brown trout again, with negotiating with kitchen staff or directly with the men on the ships, she has less time to spend with Hans. She brings him books from the bothy to read when he dares to crawl closer to the stable door. ‘I must thank you for all your kindnesses,’ he says.

‘Anyone would have done it.’

‘I know that this is not true.’

‘Well, you don’t seem too frightening to me.’

‘I am certainly not the ideal of the Reich’s Aryan Herrenvolk.’

‘I’m hardly the ideal daughter, let alone British subject …’

He smiles, but the smile quickly crumbles. ‘It is strange that you are on one side and I am on the other simply because of where we are born.’

‘We call it a quirk of fate …’

‘Like whether you are rescued by an English girl … or lose your life in the sea …’

‘Looks like fate has been good to you …’

‘Perhaps.’ Hans holds a hand over his good eye and squints towards the light.

‘Is it any better?’ says Olivia.

He shakes his head. ‘It is not painful,’ he says. ‘But the sight is blurry. Like flying in fog.’

‘Maybe it will improve with time …’

‘No. I fear it will be like this for ever, and I will never fly again. This is something I cannot bear.’

‘I know someone who would understand that.’

‘You have a friend who flies?’

‘He lives for it …’

‘I hope he never suffers this …’

‘What do you think you’ll do instead?’

‘You mean until the war is over? I will be forced to work at a desk. Or in a prisoner camp …’

They sit there in silence for a moment, both trying to see into an unforeseeable future. Olivia throws the cards at him. ‘Let’s stop being morbid,’ she says. ‘Look on the bright side. It means you won’t have to drop any bombs on me …’

He smiles. ‘Now who is being morbid?’

She laughs. ‘Imagine there was no war, and we met at a party … What would we be talking about? Music or something …’

‘Ah,’ says Hans, his face lighting up with memories. ‘Now music is something we Germans can certainly be superior about. After all, we have given the world Brahms, Mendelssohn, Handel …’

‘Hang on … I think we can claim Handel as one of our own …’

‘How do you figure this?’

‘He’s an honorary Englishman. He loved it so much over here that he ended up staying …’

‘Things were surely less complicated in those days.’

The days lengthen. More hours of daylight mean more chance of discovery. As much as she wants him to stay, she has to persuade Hans to move on. ‘You won’t be able to hide for much longer,’ she says. ‘More people are arriving every day. They’ve commissioned an official naval base at Aultbea now. And you must leave before the winter comes again. Do you have somewhere to go?’

‘There are places,’ says Hans. ‘Places of sympathy.’

Olivia holds her hand up to stop him. She doesn’t want to know in case anyone ever asks and she feels obliged to tell them.

She draws Hans a map of how to cross the hills without nearing a checkpoint. She collects food over the weeks, and he stows it away carefully. ‘You stand a good chance before the weather turns,’ she says. ‘And you might even pass for English, you know. You’re speaking it really well.’

‘I have the best teacher,’ he says. ‘Thank you.’

Olivia smiles, feels the tears prick her eyes.

More buildings have been erected at Aultbea, and a mass of Wrens have joined the soldiers and sailors who now throng the area around Loch Ewe. They sit behind the wheels of cars and trucks, at the helm of small boats delivering supplies and letters to the ships. They run errands. They man the offices. They drive messages to Inverness. They collect personnel. They move munitions. They are cooks, stewards, telephonists, radio operators. Two of the Wrens – Gladys and Maggie – often drive to the cottage to play cards or lie on the lawn outside. They are only a couple of years older than Olivia. She can’t help admiring their uniforms, their strong sense of purpose. She grills them for information about life as a Wren. They laugh and tell her she should join. ‘But I’ve still got almost a year before I can,’ she says.

‘It’ll come around soon enough,’ says Gladys, who is always immaculately turned out. She has kind eyes and a genuine smile. Her best friend Maggie is fiery haired and fiery tempered as well as curvaceous: she looks as if she’s about to burst out of her uniform at any moment, the buttons straining at her chest. The three of them are lying on the lawn, soaking up the warm sunshine.

‘We’ve been talking to your aunt,’ says Maggie.

‘You never told us you had a friend in the Fleet Air Arm,’ says Gladys.

‘What squadron is he in?’

‘Eight-five-eight,’ says Olivia. ‘Fairey Swordfish.’

‘Any idea where he is now?’

Olivia shakes her head.

‘I wonder if he was involved in the Taranto raid. That was all Swordfish. Incredible, those old bi-planes … Who’d have thought it?’

‘Wasn’t Taranto the first all-aircraft attack by our Navy?’

Gladys nods. ‘Not only that, they destroyed half of the Italian Navy’s capital ships and gave us the upper hand in the Med …’

‘I don’t think that was Charlie’s squadron,’ says Olivia. ‘Or if it was, I don’t think he was involved. The Fleet Air Arm have been helping out over London.’

Both Wrens grimace. ‘God knows the RAF needed them.’

They are silent for a moment.

‘I take it he wasn’t flying stringbags over London?’

‘I shouldn’t think so. And I’m sure he’d be offended if he knew you were calling them “stringbags” …’

‘It’s what we all call them. Said with much love …’

‘Unless he’s got no sense of humour …?’

‘Actually, he has a great sense of humour.’

‘Don’t tell me he’s handsome too?’

‘Has he got a girlfriend?’ Maggie primps her hair as if styling it in a mirror.

Gladys squints at Olivia. ‘You’re a dark horse,’ she says. ‘You never told us you were sweet on anyone.’

‘I’m not! He’s more like a brother …’

‘That’s a classic hedging line!’

‘It’s true …’

‘Keeping him all to yourself, eh?’ says Maggie.

‘That’s enough from you,’ says Gladys. ‘You’ve got Rob.’

‘And Danny,’ says Olivia.

‘I don’t believe you should focus all your efforts on one man.’

‘We can see that.’

‘And if you really are going to confine yourself to one – then you’ve got to try the goods before you commit. Otherwise you may be in for a lifetime of disappointment.’

Gladys shakes her head, laughing. ‘You’re incorrigible,’ she says, pushing Maggie in the shoulder so that she falls back on to the grass.

‘Don’t you act all innocent with me,’ says Maggie. ‘I know you’ve enjoyed the odd fumble after lights-out.’

‘I’m not quite in your league, though, am I?’

Olivia goes to fetch a jug of water, taking the opportunity to wind up the gramophone again and avoid the conversation. She suddenly feels foolish next to these liberated girls who know so much about relationships and men. Charlie is the closest thing she’s ever had to a boyfriend, and she couldn’t exactly call him that. He really is more like a brother. She enjoys his company, but she could never imagine …

She wanders slowly back out, sipping her drink, watching the others lean back on their elbows and look out across the loch. The swallows flit up and disappear into the eaves of the house. The gramophone scratches to a stop. Peace descends for seconds, but is broken by the drone of a plane. A Junkers 88 appears, a growing dot in the distance. They are such a common sight now that the girls just lie there, watching it approach. The planes usually circle the loch on reconnaissance and then disappear back to Norway again.

Suddenly Gladys jumps up and grabs hold of Olivia’s arm. ‘Inside! Now!’ she yells as she starts dragging Olivia towards the cottage. ‘Kitchen table!’

But Olivia resists, standing motionless, enthralled as she sees the first tiny charge drop towards earth. This is no reconnaissance plane. Maggie pushes her: ‘Come on,’ she says and Olivia starts to run, but can’t help glancing back to watch the tiny bomb float down, down, and then explode among the ships on the loch. The bang of the anti-aircraft guns starts to fill her ears, tracer fire trailing up through the air. But the plane avoids the bullets and carries on. Boom

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