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He shakes his head. ‘But I do know I’ll be back as soon as I can next get leave.’
She kisses him on the cheek. ‘Be careful, won’t you?’ she says.
‘You’ll write?’
She nods. ‘Of course,’ she says.
‘In that case, I can do anything.’ He stands up straight, smoothing his sleeves down, every part the young officer. The light bounces off the stripes on his sleeves, but the cap throws his face into darkness.
With autumn comes terrible news from down south as the Luftwaffe begin to attack London and beyond, night after night. The RAF struggles to keep them at bay. Returning home is out of the question. Mother tries to keep her tone light on the telephone, but Olivia can hear the buzz of exhaustion beneath. Stoke Hall is so close to the coast, there could easily be a stray bomb – or even an intentional one. There was a furore recently when two parachutists were seen landing in the Fir Wood, but the soldiers who are now camped out in the gardens went to investigate and found the two German airmen dead. The thought of those two dead men – German or not – dangling among the dark and spiky conifers, puts her own inconveniences to shame. She stops moaning about the security checkpoints that have sprung up at all the roads coming into or leaving the area – Gairloch, Achnasheen, Inverness. There is even one at Laide, near Mrs Campbell’s shop, where Olivia is sent to stock up on tea for Aunt Nancy, which the shopkeeper marks neatly in their ration books. And now more ships begin to arrive at the loch – this time a hotchpotch of merchant ships, refuelling before setting off on their long and treacherous journeys across the ocean. Sailors and soldiers begin to outnumber locals significantly.
The news from Charlie is intermittent. It seems he does not have time to write, and each long stretch without a letter is accompanied by a fear that there will be never be another one. But Aunt Nancy tells her not to worry, making a passing reference to Fleet Air Arm pilots helping the RAF over London. ‘Charlie will be fine. He’s extremely accomplished. You just keep writing. Give him something to look forward to,’ she says.
As the nights draw in and winter approaches, the fish supplies dwindle. Olivia thinks it is time to take Charlie’s advice. ‘I’m too old to take you up there, lassie,’ says Mac, pointing at his creaking knees and swollen knuckles. But Olivia soon works him around.
Mac is impressed by Olivia’s marksmanship and her quiet respect. They walk and climb and inch for miles up into the hills that turn from purple to gold and russet through the autumn. Olivia learns how to throw a piece of torn heather into the air to determine which way the wind is blowing. She learns how to track, and how to avoid a herd. She learns their habits, where they like to shelter, where to eat. She learns how to use a spyglass without it catching the light. She learns how the fog distorts sound and distance. She knows when a mist will settle and when it will clear. Together they crawl and creep for hours, above the clouds, across peat bogs and through the heather, and over boulders and up glens, only to turn back if the stag is too fine. Mac teaches her to hunt the frail, as well as poor quality and weaker beasts. Thistle, the old stalking pony, is brought back into service. Olivia slowly gains the pony’s trust, and when she shoots her first stag and Mac grallochs it, she learns the fine art of balancing a stag across the pony’s stalking saddle. Mac hangs the beast in the large, cold game larder. He butchers it himself, swift and deft despite his arthritis.
The Macs have a sailor billeted with them, a steward who has never tried venison before, but is keen to sample anything that hasn’t been salted or dried or stewed within an inch of its life. He chews on the meat thoughtfully, nodding his head and licking his lips. ‘I think this would go down well in our messes,’ he says. ‘Could we buy some? Our men are always clamouring for fresh meat.’
The idea snowballs. Word spreads around the ships, and Olivia is soon inundated with orders, from sailors, soldiers, and Wrens. She is worried about what Aunt Nancy will say, but her aunt is thrilled that she is showing initiative. ‘And Clarkson could do with some decent meat to serve to the officers we have billeted here,’ she says. She even takes the time to show Olivia how to write the orders in a ledger and keep a note of the money coming in and going out. It is the longest amount of time she has spent with Olivia since she arrived. ‘Watch those men,’ she says. ‘Don’t think they won’t try for a bargain just because you’re a girl.’ But Olivia is as canny as anyone, and she turns it to her advantage. She finds the men are keen to talk, and even keener for a smile. Many of them have been away at sea for weeks and miss female company.
Mac is delighted: he gets a cut, and Olivia starts to offer his eggs and milk too. They turn more of the garden over to growing vegetables. Other locals offer what they can: last year’s jam; Ben Munro’s apples; Mrs McLellan’s chutney. Mrs Campbell comes in on the business, always happy to receive more supplies for her store – particularly when the roads are blocked with snow and she is running low. Olivia learns how to drive Aunt Nancy’s ancient Austin and, each week, she transports whatever she hasn’t sold directly to the ships to Mrs Campbell’s shop. By late autumn, they even have a buyer from Edinburgh, who bumps along the single track road from the city once a week to collect venison or lobsters for his restaurant.
It is deep winter, and fresh meat stocks are running low again. The stag-hunting season is over, but there are plenty of hinds to be taken. Olivia is up and out of the house before dawn breaks across the loch. There is no need for a torch: the snow that settled overnight has turned the world luminous. Something crackles away into the undergrowth, startled by the crunch of her feet on the path, in turn setting a bird fluttering and flapping through the branches above. Then silence again. A world muffled by snow. Beyond the trees, the loch: grey and silent as the ships packed with sleeping men. She has grown to love this time in the morning, the only time there is true peace and quiet these days. The roads are empty once again and she can slip into the hills unnoticed.
Her pass and gas mask and ID card are gathering dust on the dressing table in her bedroom. She has no need of them; she knows how to get past the checkpoints and guards, crossing between Gairloch and Poolewe undetected by following the low road along the shoreline like the other locals. And there are no checkpoints up in the hills. No one would be foolish enough to cross them without local knowledge.
The hills are where she is headed now. She cannot see them, but she can sense them looming in the darkness ahead, steady and solid, unmoving and unmoved by the world’s turmoil. By the time she gets to the farm, the sky is beginning to glow aquamarine as dawn breaks. The tack room is empty. A faint orange glow of embers breathes among the ash as she opens the door to retrieve Thistle’s saddle. The pony comes straight to her now, letting her slip on his head collar without a fuss. She adjusts the stalking saddle, holds her hands under the pony’s mane, where he is warmest, and presses her face against his shaggy grey fur, breathing in the horsey smell.
She leads him out over the cobbles. The snow is dirty here, trampled with mud and grit. The pony snorts, clearing his nostrils into the chilly air. His bright dark eyes peer out at her from beneath his ragged forelock. She glances down at herself, pleased at how her camouflage has turned out. She has butchered her aunt’s debutante dress, sewing it into a new outfit that covers her clothes so she is white all over. Underneath she has on her woollen jumper and the flannel trousers and knee-length socks that she always wears to keep herself warm. She has used the arm of an old fur coat to make a cosy scarf for her neck. The rifle sits cold and heavy across her back as they trudge away from the farm.
Now it is morning. The loch is a mirror far below. The snowy peaks, jagged and bright, reflected in its surface. Down nearer the shore, the trees stand out against the white, the prickly and black conifers, and the twiggy and twisted leafless winter trees. The shoreline is a smudge of orange, just beginning to show beneath the melting snow. From here, the loch is so large and shining that it is easy to misread the size of the ships that lie on its surface.
The hills sweep up out of the ground ahead of her, their tops still wreathed in cloud. But the sky is blue, the heavy snow clouds have moved on, and it will be a fine day. She follows the burn, a glimmering crack, the water sparkling like a necklace of diamonds among the softer white of the fresh-fallen snow. By the time she reaches the rowan pool, she has worked up quite a warmth. The rowan tree is hung with frosted particles like sugar icing. The only sound is the beat of tiny wings as some snow buntings fly up, white like rising snowflakes, apart from the flash of black on their wings.
She leaves Thistle by the tree, tied to a boulder. He is also well camouflaged: only the tips of his grey tail and his unruly mane – and his knobbly knees – standing out. His neat little black hooves are hidden, sunk into the snow. She sets to work in the silence, her brow furrowed in concentration. She reads the tracks: the delicate Ys of the birds busily criss-crossing all over the place; the long oval shapes of a hare; the solid shuffle of a grouse; the stealthy holes of a fox. The snow is yellow in places where an animal has peed. There are dark holes where rabbit droppings have steamed through to the ground.
She has to be careful. The snow has drifted deeply in places, hiding crevices and cracks in the ground. She comes across the multiple tracks of deer not much further up. They have sheltered in the lee of the hill, where the boulders make a natural cave. The wind seems to have shifted, possibly because of the lie of the peaks above her. There is less snow on the ground, more for the deer to eat. She creeps forward. Peers beyond the next boulder. She cannot see the herd – but she can see a stag. Either the hinds are around the corner, or they have scarpered and this is a lone male. She crouches, inching forward on hands and knees to get a better look. The stag is about four hundred yards away from her, in a dip across a narrow part of the burn. Still no sign of any hinds. Her rock is slippery. She moves carefully, hoping she won’t cause a vibration that dumps the snow above on top of her.
The stag snuffles at the ground. Suddenly it lifts its head. Its nostrils dilate. Olivia stops and drops flat, her cheek scratching against the hard crust of snow. She slowly lifts her head. The stag is staring at something she cannot see, in the opposite direction. He is magnificent: all muscle and searching eyes and flared nostrils. His ears swivel. His neck is thick and shaggy. There is the black scar down his flank. He flicks his tail. The tips of his nostrils move, in and out, twitching, smelling, searching for whatever it is he thinks he’s heard.
As the stag turns and springs away, a loud crack whips out across the snow and Olivia sees the animal stumble awkwardly as if he has been hit, but then his feet find the ground and he is off like the wind across the hillside and down the pass and deep into the crags and contours of endless wilderness.
Olivia’s heart races with him. For a moment her mind is blank, and then she wonders who else could be up here in the snow and the wind? And who would go for a stag at this time of year? Or a stag like that at any time of year?
She doesn’t dare move. She doesn’t want anyone to spot her. She strains to see anything against the glare. And then she spots something: a figure wading through the snow, dark against the sparkling crust. Olivia presses herself as flat as possible down on the rock. She wants to see who it is, but she can’t. They are still too far away.
The figure draws slowly closer, hampered by snow. As it approaches, Olivia holds her breath: she doesn’t want the vapour to give her away. She can’t see his face, but it is definitely a man. He looks at where the stag was. Glances around. He looks down at the ground again. He paces around, shaking his head and pulling his arms tighter around his body, rubbing at his shoulders. His clothes are flimsy, too thin in this cold. A sudden gust dislodges some snow from above her and the movement makes the man jump. He stares in her direction, his body rigid. Waves of fear course through her body. Surely he will see her. But now he is hurrying away as fast as he can. She lies still until the desperate figure is out of sight, feeling the cold and damp seep into her knees and elbows. By the time she dares to move, she is stiff as new leather. She pulls herself up and then slips and scrambles back down the hill as quietly as she can, not wanting to look back, half-expecting the man to jump out at her. She is relieved to see Thistle still there, his eyes half-closed, unaware of her panic. There is some comfort in his presence, but not much. As they stumble and trip down the hill, she keeps glancing over her shoulder. But there is no sign of anyone else.
It takes almost two hours for her to reach the farm. Her clothes are now damp with sweat, and Thistle is fed up with being pulled, digging his feet into the ground in protest. The fire in the tack room is leaping in the grate, warming the backs of the men who are seated at the table, cupping hot mugs of tea laced with whisky from the bottle that Mac keeps behind the old dresser. As soon as they see Olivia’s face, they slam their mugs down, the sound marking an end to their easy conversation.
‘What is it?’ Mac asks.
‘There’s someone out on the hill.’ Mac frowns, his blue eyes sinking into the leathery face. ‘With a gun,’ she adds. The men scrabble to their feet, chair legs scraping on the flagstones. Someone runs to fetch Ben Munro, who arrives on his bicycle, dressed in his Home Guard uniform and carrying a rifle. Olivia repeats what she has seen. The men discuss in Gaelic. Mac collects two more rifles and a shotgun, talking to his wife quietly in the doorway of the house.
‘Off you go now,’ Ben Munro says to Olivia. ‘Run home. Stay indoors until you hear otherwise.’
‘Don’t you want me to come and show you?’
‘Och no, lassie. It’s no place for a young lady up there.’
‘But …’
‘Go on, now.’
Olivia watches the men tramp up into the hills, small, steady, determined. She feels a sudden stab of anxiety for the pathetic creature she saw out there. She turns for home as the men fold into the hills as if they are a part of them.
Hours later, when the only sound on the hill is the trickling of water back towards the loch, Ben appears at the bothy. ‘We couldn’t find anything,’ he says. ‘It’s been snowing, and a herd has trampled right through there.’
‘I suppose he’s hiding somewhere,’ she says, thinking out loud.
‘No, no. Whoever it was is probably sitting by a nice warm fire somewhere towards Gairloch.’
‘You think it was a local?’
‘We’ve had poachers for centuries. I’m sure we’ll have them for centuries more. Your aunt is nae bothered. And nor should you be. There’s plenty to go around.’
‘But he didn’t …’
‘Look,’ says Ben, ‘whoever it was will be long gone. No one can survive out on those hills in these temperatures. We’ll stay vigilant, but keep off the hill for a wee while. Find yourself something more ladylike to do. Mrs Munro is still looking for more people to help knit scarves for the troops …’
Olivia nods, but she has no intention of doing such a thing. She would rather be captured by Germans than join the knitting circle.
CHAPTER 7 (#ulink_514c1ea9-d9c3-55c4-9b69-82313928252a)
Winter finally turns to spring, and Thistle can be let out into the small paddock behind the farmhouse while Olivia cleans out his stable. She rubs the pony down in the yard, watching the dust dance in the bright, cold sky, running her hand along his flank as he blows in her hair. She slips the head collar from his shaggy head, untangling the thick mane where it catches in the buckle. Thistle shakes his whole body, from his velvety nostrils to his broad rump, a huge shudder of relief. Then he wheels around and races off across the field, head down, bucking with freedom, searching for the patches of grass that lie temptingly in the sunshine.
Back in the stable, clearing the dirty straw, not for the first time Olivia wishes there was a light so she could see better. There are three other stalls, empty and bare, and beyond them a load of old feed bins and farming implements. She doesn’t like to venture back there, where it is dark and dingy and hung with curtains of dusty cobwebs. She is shaking the clean bedding out when she hears a strange noise above the rustle of dry straw, and her heartbeat quickens. She stands still, head on one side, listening in the silence. ‘Is anyone there?’ she says. There is no answer. The hairs on her skin start to prickle. She grabs the pitchfork. There is a swish of movement again. A rat? She peers into the gloom, takes a step closer. She doesn’t dare go right in. The sunlight is on her back. It cannot penetrate further. She squints, leans forward, pointing the pitchfork into the darkness.
There is a faint sound: ‘Pleez …’ It is so quiet that she has to strain to hear, which means she can’t scream as a shape begins to evolve in the shadows, a shape that turns out to be a person holding his hands up above his head. ‘Pleez,’ he says again.
‘Don’t you come any closer,’ she says, jabbing the fork in his direction.
He stops there, half hidden. He is desperately thin. His top is grimy, and his trousers are torn down one side and stained with dirt. His feet are bare. He smells of stale sweat, filth, and fever. She would have thought he was a tramp, if it wasn’t for the unmistakeable insignia stitched on to the right side of his jacket: the eagle of the Third Reich, the Nazi swastika clasped in its claws. She remembers the two dead parachutists swinging in the Fir Wood. She thinks of Charlie’s letters and the poor men who never come back. ‘Pleez, Fraülein,’ he says again. He rests his puny arms on his head, too exhausted to hold them up, surely too exhausted to harm her.
Still, she keeps her distance. She indicates that he can drop his arms. His thin face contorts into a grimace, and she notices that one of his eyes is swollen shut.
‘Who are you?’ she asks.
He says something she doesn’t understand, but then stops as he starts to cough, a rasping, phlegmy sound that rattles in his chest and makes him double over with the effort. ‘Shh,’ she says, holding up her finger and moving a little towards him. ‘Shh.’ He tries to stop, swallowing the coughs behind his hand as he collapses wheezing to the floor.
Olivia doesn’t call for Mrs Mac. She is surprised to find that she isn’t scared. He may be German, but this emaciated creature is no threat, and she remembers well the look on the men’s faces when they set off in pursuit of him. Which reminds her. Gun. He must have one somewhere. She makes the shape of a gun with her hand. ‘Revolver?’ she says. He scrabbles backwards into the dark.
‘No. I’m not going to shoot you,’ she says. ‘Your gun?’
He shivers, uncomprehending, staring up at her from his one good eye.
She runs to fetch a torch from Mrs Mac, telling her she plans to do a full spring clean. When she returns, she shines the light around the back of the stable, picking out the shadows of the old feed bins, buckets, ropes, shovels, all covered in a thick layer of dust, shed from animals and hay over the years. The German is huddled right back into the far corner, a shadow within a shadow. He has made a bed from some old straw, with a pillow – his life jacket – stuffed with more. Apart from the grubby clothes he is wearing, there is a leather jacket and some decent-looking boots, which are lying on their sides.
She can hear the breath bubbling in his lungs. She knows he needs warm clothes, decent food. She is fascinated and repelled. His puffy eye is weeping. He moves towards her and she backs away. He slumps into the corner, dejected, coughing, too weak to move. She immediately feels bad. ‘I’ll try and bring you some clothes,’ she says. He doesn’t look at her. ‘And clean water.’ He still doesn’t look at her, and then the cough starts barking in his chest again. There is a noise out in the yard. The German looks up at her, his eyes wide with fear. Someone is calling her name. Olivia puts her finger to her lips and then backs out into the light, leaving him alone in the darkness once more.
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 …’
