A Parachute in the Lime Tree (15 page)

The railway track began to follow the course of a canal and they passed a sailing barge loaded with crates and boxes. It was only when the barge overtook them that Oskar realised the train had come to a stop. He hoped this had nothing to do with him. Doors creaked open and slammed shut. Feet crunched on gravel. Some of the passengers were now outside the train and he shoved down the window to get a better look. They seemed to be collecting wood from beside the track and carrying it to the front of the train. One group was dismantling a wooden fence. He realised then that the passengers were foraging for fuel to allow the train to limp on to Dublin.

It was close to nightfall when the train pulled in at Broadstone Station. What remained of the light seeped through a dirty sky. Kitty felt a little jab of irritation at Oskar for marching on ahead of her. He was like a dog let off the leash and there was no sign of any bother with his knee. Once they were clear of the station, she noticed a man and
woman heading up the hill together. It was only when they stopped at the kerb that she realised who they were. The fact that the Mackintosh man and the woman with the knitting book seemed to know one another made her very uneasy. She glanced over her shoulder to see if there was anyone else hanging about watching them but there were only a couple of porters dragging on fag ends, and an aul’ fella muttering into his beard.

Oskar, meanwhile, was almost at the river. Even in Desmond’s clothes, he stood out like a sore thumb. The short blond hair didn’t help but it was more the set of his shoulders and the way he didn’t feel the need to keep his head down that was the dead giveaway. At least he’d left off the yellow scarf. When he realised she wasn’t with him, he turned and waved over at her to come on, not that he’d the slightest idea where he was going. For the love of Mike, she thought, has he no idea how to keep a low profile? He was standing at the river wall, gandering all round him as if he’d just found himself on Mars.

‘You’d want to catch a grip,’ she said. ‘The place is crawling with people looking for the likes of you.’ When she told him what she’d seen, he just shrugged. It made her mad that he seemed so relaxed about everything and she was the one up to high doh. ‘And who’s to say there isn’t someone watching us right now? Who’s to say your card isn’t marked already?’

He looked at her as if she was away in the head. What was that medical word Desmond had used the other day?

By the time Oskar and Kitty arrived at Pembroke Road, the night was like a bucket of pitch. Kitty had sent Aunt Effie a letter to warn of her arrival with a friend of the family but she hadn’t said it was a man, much less a German come down out of the sky. Now that they’d actually arrived, she was apprehensive. Effie was unpredictable at the best of times.

The man in the white shift must have been watching out for them. No sooner had they reached the bottom of the steps than he was standing in the open doorway. Kitty wished him a good evening but he said nothing back, just stood to one side to let them pass. He had a face like a radish and watery eyes. In fact, he looked a bit like Sergeant McCreesh in fancy dress. Then, she realised from the shift that this must be the fellow with the Indian name: the one who lived with Effie because he was looking for the Light.

Aunt Effie was upstairs in the Receiving Room, lying on a chaise by the back window. An oil lamp on the table beside her cast a yellowish light around itself but otherwise the room was dark. Kitty left Oskar in the middle of the room with the bags.

‘How are you, Auntie?’

Effie lifted an arm and waved it vaguely. ‘I’m on my last legs, child. Ranjit doesn’t have any truck with that kind of talk, but I know myself when I’ve run out of steam.’ Kitty started to protest but Effie just shook her head and patted the chaise next to her. ‘Sit down here, child.’ She ran her thumbs down along each side of Kitty’s jawline from the tips of her ears to the point of her chin. ‘As I thought, that’ll be a Daly chin by the time you hit thirty,’ she said finally. ‘Oh well, you can’t cheat kismet. How’s your Mother? Still as mad as a March hare?’

‘She’s bearing up, thanks Auntie.’

Effie’s eyes lit on Oskar and she seemed to perk up. ‘Who in the name of Isis is that? You’ve not done a flit with some mountainy man, have you?

‘Can you put him up, Auntie?’

‘Bring him over here so I can get a good look at him.’

Oskar walked slowly towards the chaise. He didn’t quite bow but inclined his head curtly in Effie’s direction.

‘He’s called Oskar,’ Kitty said quickly, for fear he might click his heels.

‘He’s not from the mountains, anyhow. I can tell that by the cut of him.’

‘He’s an archaeologist,’ said Kitty, remembering the Germans the boys had talked about who worked in the museum. ‘He’s fierce interested in dolmens,’ she added, to add a bit of substance.

‘Dolmens? In Dublin?’

‘Oh no, he’ll be off down to Wicklow soon to study the ones they have down there.’ She jumped at a scream from the garden.

‘Relax,’ said Effie, ‘it’s just the peacocks. They’ve barely space to open up out there but sure they brighten the place up a bit. God knows everything’s got so drib and drab these days.’

Kitty wanted to ask how you got hold of peacocks in Dublin, but Effie was concentrating on Oskar. She made a megaphone of her hands and took a deep, wavering breath. ‘You Are Away From Your Home.’ She dropped her hands into her lap with a little smack, breathless and swaying slightly.

Oskar took a few steps towards her and gave the same curt little nod. ‘I am very grateful for your hospitality.’

‘I haven’t offered you any yet.’ Effie’s sharp little eyes narrowed as she examined him from the top of his head to the toes of his Luftwaffe-issue boots. ‘Good Isis, child, is it a German? And I thought there was a war on.’

Effie made another megaphone and turned back to Oskar. ‘I Thought There Was A War On.’ She cocked her head, as though trying to catch an answer somewhere in the ether. Then she turned to Kitty. ‘I suppose this is your Mother’s doing, landing you up on top of me with a German. Well, Mr Germany? What have you to say for yourself?’

‘I am not part of the war. Not anymore.’

‘Oh we’re all part of the war, whether we like it or not. Call it an Emergency, pretend nothing’s happening but we’re all part of the war.’

Oskar looked at her with that direct gaze of his. ‘I do not want to fight for my country any more.’

‘Well couldn’t you fight agin them then? It strikes me a lump of a fellow like you should be doing something useful at a time like this, much as I like the dolmens myself.’

‘I have a project,’ Oskar announced.

‘That sounds very grand altogether. What kind of a project, I wonder? Nothing nefarious, nothing wicked, nothing that might leave us all dead in our beds?’

‘No,’ said Oskar, ‘not like that.’

Effie pushed a bell at her elbow and the man with the red face and the Indian name appeared again, dragging a copper tea urn in on a trolley

‘Drink, Mr Germany. Wet your whistle. You can talk later.’

They had their tea, which Oskar was disappointed to discover wasn’t real tea at all but something that tasted like lettuce. Immediately afterwards, Effie, whom he decided was the strangest-looking woman he’d ever seen, instructed the man with the Indian name to ‘Stick Mr Germany out in the Austin for the night.’

Oskar had no idea what that meant. Ranjit looked like he was beginning to enjoy himself. He no longer bothered to hold the door open but marched on ahead of Oskar towards the
front door. It was only when he was outside that Oskar realised that ‘the Austin’ was in fact a motorcar. It was wedged in under a dead tree on the gravelled forecourt of the house. The left front corner was completely compressed, the windscreen covered in layers of sap and bird droppings and the dusty green detritus of whatever young tree was growing alongside the dead one. He wondered how someone could simply have abandoned what must have been a fine machine until he remembered that there was probably no petrol for it anyway.

Oskar soon felt uneasy inside the motorcar’s metal shell. It reminded him too much of being back inside a Heinkel. Visibility was next to nothing through the windscreen, so he sat crouched to starboard peering through the cloud of blossom that trailed across the driver’s window. He was glad to have retained his gunner’s instincts, even if he had evidently taken leave of his senses by throwing his lot in with such outlandish people. After all, he was there for the taking. Suddenly, his assumption that they would simply help him in whatever it was he wanted to do seemed hopelessly naïve. Little by little, his doubt that they would help him swelled to a certainty that they would turn him in. He thought about sleeping outside the motorcar so that he would have a better chance of escape if someone was indeed on to him, but in the end he decided he was less conspicuous where he was. He resolved to stay alert and to keep the window rolled down so he could hear them approaching across the gravel when the time came.

He awoke to daylight and a hard rain clattering off the windscreen. He ducked below the level of the glass, covering his head with his hands. He was sure this was the capture he had foreseen the night before and cursed his decision not to take his chances somewhere else. He waited for them to surround the car, but he could hear no approaching footsteps. Suddenly, it struck him that perhaps they wouldn’t bother arresting him. Perhaps they would just shoot him there and
then. He gripped his temples to deaden what was to come. Then, from somewhere beyond panic, came a voice. He strained to hear it. ‘Mis-ter Ger-ma-ny.’

He began to uncurl himself, peering out from under the crook of his elbow. There was a long whooping whistle. Then another. He took a look through the side window and saw that it was the man in the white dress, standing there with a fistful of gravel looking very pleased with thimself. He let the gravel slip through his fingers, then jerked his head in the direction of the house and left. Oskar kicked the door in annoyance. When a dignified period had elapsed, he clutched Desmond Hennessy’s coat and made his way to the house. The door had been left open and the man who thought he was an Indian was standing with his back to him with one foot on the lowest stair.

The room on the first floor seemed a very long way from breakfast. There was no smell of food and no indication that any was on its way. The curtains were closed and it was almost as dark as it had been the night before. Oskar sat at the end of the table, and cast one leg over the other in as jaunty a fashion as he could manage after a night spent folded in half. Soon after, Effie arrived, trailing layers of wispy fabrics behind her. She stopped and squinted at him. ‘I can see you’ve had a bad night, but you’ll just have to put up with it. I’ll not have you in the house, Mr Germany, till I know what you’re up to. After that, we’ll see.’

‘I am grateful.’

‘As well you might be.’

Kitty arrived at the door and peered into the half-light, ‘Come on, Auntie, you’re not a vampire. A little bit of light at breakfast wouldn’t hurt.’ She tugged at the heavy curtains but they only seemed to part a matter of inches.

When Ranjit arrived with porridge and dried fruit, he placed everything as far away as possible from Oskar. A shaft of sunlight sliced through the gap Kitty had made in the curtains, forming a slender triangle in the centre of the table, but Ranjit
was quick to pinch the curtains back together again and snuff out the light.

‘So, Mr Germany. You, and your dolmens …’

‘Today I will go to Wicklow.’ He made it sound like a chest rub, and Kitty sniggered.

‘What else would you be doing? And you in the middle of a war. I suppose you know where you’re going?’

‘The place is called Whitecrest.’

‘Never heard of it. Kitty, ever hear tell of a Whitecrest?’

Kitty shook her head without looking up. Aunt Effie peered into a small bowl at her elbow and picked out a raisin.’White
hall
, maybe? There’s a Whitehall over on the Northside. I can’t think of any other Whites mind you. Could it be a boarding house out in Bray, Kitty?’

Kitty shrugged.

‘I need something more exact than this,’ Oskar unfolded the page Kitty had torn out of Father’s atlas. ‘I need a map, not a picture of your country. This will be no good at all.’

Kitty had heard enough. ‘I’ll be in my room,’ she said.

Effie dipped her hand back into the bowl beside her. She extracted a walnut and studied it, revolving it between her thumb and forefinger. She waited for Kitty to shut the door behind her before dropping the nut back into the bowl. ‘You needn’t bother with any more guff about dolmens.’

Oskar nodded, drawing his chair into the table.

‘You’ll have to come up with something better than that if you want this roof over your head. You can’t really expect me to believe this is a social call in the middle of a war?’

Oskar found that he was watching the dark red bow of her lips purse and stretch instead of following what she was saying. He made himself concentrate.

‘Maybe you found war wasn’t to your liking?’

Oskar realised that he didn’t know what to call her. Effie sounded too familiar, Aunt Effie ridiculous. ‘I tried to explain
last night, Miss Effie,’ he said. ‘I am no longer a member of the German forces.’

She seemed to like being called Miss Effie. At any rate, she was mildly amused by something or other. She offered him a little dry bun. He bit into it but it tasted like sawdust.

‘After we put you out in the Austin last night, Kitty told me something about a parachute. But was there not a plane stuffed with fellows trying to hold you down?’

He recalled the scamble there’d been once Willy had realised what he was about to do but he didn’t care to go into all of that, so he shook his head.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘I am looking for someone.’ He’d never actually said it out loud before and now it sounded mad, even to him.

‘Someone?’

‘A girl.’

‘Now we’re getting somewhere. You have the look of the young swain about you, right enough. Has she a name?’