A Parachute in the Lime Tree (22 page)

‘I wouldn’t let the fellow in, so he had to say his piece on the doorstep there. On and on, he went. “Haven’t we hungry mouths of our own to feed?” That kind of blather. “Wouldn’t we be overrun if we took in every hard case?” Blah, blah, blah. Elsa said you’d know what to do. “He’s so practical,” she said. Then, a fortnight on, there was no show from you and one day it all got too much for her. Hilde got a terrible shock to see her. She was sitting at the piano but she wasn’t playing a note. Just rocking. Back and forward. Back and forward. You just couldn’t stop the rocking.’

‘But where is she now?’

‘She’s in good hands.’ For a moment it looked like that was all he was prepared to say, but then he seemed to take pity on
Charlie. ‘She’s being cared for down in Wicklow. They’re the same people who tried to get visas for the parents and placed her with us in the first place. She’ll have fresh air and a bit of peace and quiet. Esther will know how to look after her. She’ll sort out those civil service Johnnies, too.’ The thought seemed to cheer him up a bit, and he chuckled to himself, ‘She’s pull at the top, you see, Esther, and she’s not afraid to use it.’

‘When can I see Elsa, Bethel?’

‘We have to go easy. I’ll send word, and then we’ll just have to wait and see. I don’t want her upset.’

‘You know I’d never do anything to upset her, Bethel. Surely to God, you know that by now.’

‘Esther’s very wary of visitors. When she came to pick Elsa up, she had a strange story. She told me that someone had come out to her, looking for Elsa. I thought it was some other penpusher, some other pain in the backside. But no, she said, not at all. The boy was a German. He wasn’t one of us and yet he claimed to know Elsa. Esther was wary of the fellow, though she didn’t think he could have come from the German Legation, dressed as he was. His clothes were filthy, she said, like he’d been sleeping rough. There was – how did she put it now? – a kind of desperation about him. He wouldn’t give her a straight answer to anything, and she worried then that he might be someone trying to make trouble, though he seemed a gentle enough type. He did have some wild story about jumping out of a plane the night they bombed Belfast. Very strange, she said. A fantasist, I suppose. Who knows? Anyway, we decided to say nothing about it to Elsa. She’d been through enough as it was; no need to worry her any more.’

‘If I saw her, I could bring her back. I know I could bring her back.’

‘You’re a good fellow, Byrne,’ Bethel said, looking at him full-on for the first time that day, ‘and you’ll make a fine doctor. But, and excuse me if I sound like an old man talking
down to a young one, even doctors can’t fix everything. Just like love doesn’t fix everything either.’

‘It can’t do any harm, though, can it, Sir? How can it do any harm?’

Bethel thought a moment. ‘Esther’s place is called Whitecrest.’

Charlie held out his hand, and this time Bethel took it. ‘Good luck to you, Byrne.’

Sean Galligan brought the gig to meet Kitty at the station. They sat in silence, a couple of Mother’s heavy blankets spread across their laps. Kitty tried to strike up a conversation: carrots and leeks, Sean’s brother over in Ballymeade who had the TB. She even resorted to raising the matter of the dampness of the summer weather, but Sean just sat there, barely moving, the whip licking at the horse’s back.

When she got back to the house, Mother was waiting for her in the parlour. It was as though she hadn’t moved a muscle in the weeks since Kitty had left. The only change was the black mantilla she slid down over her face as soon as Kitty appeared. ‘You’re back so?’ she said, her breath puffing out the lace a little.

‘What’s the matter, Mother?’

‘I got caught when the wind was on the turn. I look a fright.’ She patted the mantilla down on each temple. ‘You’ll be grand in the old nursery, won’t you pet? I had to give Bridie your room.’

‘Who’s Bridie?’

‘Brigid Farrell. She’s been helping me out this last while, since you went on your travels. The poor old stick spends that much time traipsing up and down to the house that when her sister died I thought she’d be as well with a bed here.’

Kitty said nothing, because there was nothing for her to say.

As she passed her old room on the landing, Kitty looked through the half-opened door. There were little grey rectangles on the sprigged wallpaper where her ballet prints had been. The mat had been rolled and stood upright in the corner, propped up behind the easy chair. In place of her old eiderdown,
there was a crocheted blanket, and on the dressing table, little circlets of white lace and a statue of the Sacred Heart.

She was left to contemplate her comeuppance; the only daugher, so useless she had to be replaced with paid help. She stood at the window. You couldn’t see the lime trees at this time of year, with all the other growth in the garden. She wasn’t upstairs more than a few minutes when the rain whipped in from the sea. Down it came on the corrugated iron of the hen house, down into father’s St Brendan bath. Not much of a homecoming.

In the old nursery, she lay down where Oskar had slept the night Mother was away. The bed sagged in the middle on account of all the childhoood trampolining she and Desmond had done, limbering up for the double somersaults that never were.

‘From Timbuktu to Katmandu–’

‘Up the Khyber–’

‘And down the Orinoco–’

‘The amazing–’

‘The stupendous–’

‘The Flying Hennessys!’

Downstairs, Brigid was standing on a chair dusting the old jam jars Mother kept on top of the dresser. Kitty greeted her usurper with elaborate friendliness. ‘I hope you’re finding the bed comfy, Brigid,’ she said.

‘The missus told me to stay put. She’ll not hear of me moving.’

‘Don’t worry yourself. I’ll be off back to Dublin in the morning. I’m only looking in, that’s all.’

‘There’ll be no train until Monday, Missy,’

‘Well, Monday it’ll be then.’

Brigid crossed the room to shut the door. ‘Poor Mrs Hennessy,’ she said, confidentially. ‘Went out in an east wind with damp hair. You can’t make light of the damp.’

‘Has she tried anything?’

‘There’s no cause to be visiting the doctor. The doctors don’t understand the likes of the Bell’s palsy.’

‘And you do, I suppose.’

Brigid didn’t miss the insult. ‘I’ll be here when she needs me to close up the eye at bedtime and tape it shut for the night. Even now, don’t I do all her messages in the village, and there’s no talking for her to do if she doesn’t want to. I’m here on the spot, you see. I’ve no gallivanting to do.’

Later, Brigid cooked their own homegrown cabbage with some salty bacon. After dinner, she and Mother sat on either side of the fire, Brigid mending, jabbing nervously at a piece of frayed traycloth, Mother with her feet up reading
The French Huzzar
. Mother seemed to have stopped listening to the wireless. Whether that was a good or a bad thing, Kitty couldn’t decide. Before she left, Brigid gave her some letters that had arrived while she was away. There was one from McWilliams’ Commercial College saying she could have a place in the course that had started the previous month, one from Rita, and one with a foreign postmark, all stamped over with official markings.

The bombsites were on the other side of the city from Miss Effie’s house, way beyond the wide boulevard with the column, but Oskar never got that far. The men who arrested him seemed to come from nowhere. They gave him a bit of a kicking, and some girls who were working at a hairdresser’s on the other side of the street came out to have a look. He held onto the yellow scarf, though it was smeared with blood and oil and mud. Once he made it clear that he’d no intention of trying to escape, they let him alone. By the time they took him to the Curragh, they were almost benign. They treated his cuts and bruises and gave him thin soup to drink.

Oskar comforted himself with the thought that he had managed to find Miss Alexander and tell her his story. Even if she had not believed him then, he was sure that she would come to do so. Lots of people had witnessed his arrest, after all. There had even been a man with a camera there; he recalled the loud pop and flare of the magnesium. He felt sure that if Elsa was in Ireland, she would be told of Oskar Müller and his efforts to find her. She might even see his photograph herself in one of the newspapers that were sold on every corner. He kept telling the men who’d picked him up that he was not part of the war. He told them he’d jumped. Every day he told them, until he was blue in the face. He hoped they would write about him in their newspapers: the man who jumped out of the sky.

Back in Dublin, at the end of a long rainy summer, Kitty wondered if the whole thing had taken more out of her than she realised. She was exhausted and her stomach churned at the sight of food. Aunt Effie tried a combination of infusions but none of them worked. She sent Ranjit out to HCR for an Alpine tonic but Kitty was no better.

‘You’re expecting,’ Aunt Effie said finally. ‘That’s all’s the matter with you.’

By the next month, the sickness was passing, but the thought of the baby made her panic. She feared what it would make of her life. How she would live. Where she would live. She hoped it would go away. She begged it to go away. But the baby stayed put. One day she felt a little bump at the pit of her stomach. That, she supposed, was it. Aunt Effie advised her against going back to Dunkerin. ‘Haven’t you just come from it?’ she said. ‘Go back now and the fingers will be pointing, the tuts will be tutting. Dunkerin’s the last place you should go. Stay here and in time you’ll make your own way. Haven’t you the typing now?’

It was in the middle of one more sleepless night that Kitty decided to go to the Curragh. The day before she left, she made an apple pie in Aunt Effie’s kitchen. She added a bit of potato to stretch the apple and sprinkled some precious sugar on the top. She felt sick the whole way to Newbridge on the bus. To make sure nobody came and crowded her out, she put the string bag containing the apple pie on the seat next to her. The nearer she got to the camp, the more inclined she became not to see him, just to hand the apple pie in at the gate. She couldn’t rely on herself not to burst into tears.

When the bus approached Newbridge, the girls around her fussed about with powder puffs and lipsticks. Someone offered her some mascara but she didn’t bother with any of that. She was first off the bus and walked briskly up to the camp; she tried to get as far ahead of the others as possible so as not to have to enter into conversation.

The soldier at the gate seemed nice enough. He had a list, and when she told him who she was visiting, he ran his finger right the way down the Ms. Menten. Mollenhauer. No Müller. ‘Sorry pet, he must have gave you a
nom de plume
.’

The soldier beside him sniggered, ‘A bun in the oven, more like.’

‘Shut up you and mind your manners.’ Then he looked at her and maybe he guessed the other soldier was right. She
could tell he felt sorry for her and she couldn’t stand it, the look of pity on his face.

‘That German shower, strutting round Newbridge like a pack of turkey cocks, they’d give you the pip. They’re never done with strutting and marching and all that carry on. As for the girls round here, sure they’ve no sense at all. Some of the young ones we get up at the gate, weeping and wailing. Apple pies and barmbracks and God knows what. “Would you pass this on to Hans, Mister, would you? He’s half starved in there.” Half starved, my arse.’ He checked his list one more time, running his finger down the columns. ‘I’m sorry, pet, there’s definitely no Müller in this lot.’

As she walked back down the road, Kitty flung the pie, bag and all, into the ditch. The girls walking in the opposite direction and chattering away like little sparrows fell silent as she passed. Maybe, they were worried the lads weren’t being let out into Newbridge tonight after all, or maybe they were embarrassed for her. One or two of them called after her but she just ignored them. If she hurried, she might just be in time to catch the same bus back into town.

Kitty fingers the little pile of memory cards. She’s not one for the creeping-Jesus kind of stuff they usually say; all she asked the printers to put on them was, ‘Goodnight, Con.’ The picture she chose was taken on the beach at Ownahincha the summer before. Con is smiling straight at the camera. He looks like he has a good twenty years in him yet. She’s been dreading the first anniversary; just hopes she’ll have enough strength in her to put a brave face on it for Clara and the boys. Then the phone rings and she rushes into the hall to answer it.

‘Clara! How are you, pet? Of course I’ll be there. What’ll I get in? Chicken nuggets, the usual muck? Ah, you say that, but I’ve never seen them eat anything decent.’

Kitty rummages around in the kitchen cupboard for a tin of Horlicks. She despises the stuff, but all the same she decides it’s probably what she should have in the circumstances: that and a long, bubbly bath. Time was it would have been a large brandy but after the trouble she had in the month or two after Con’s death, she tries to stay clear of that now. She runs the bath, then fluffs up the bubbles with her hand and lies back, the water reaching right up to her collarbone.

She will never forget the day she first saw Con again after the war. He was demobbed sometime in 1946, when Clara was around four. Effie was still alive then, though Ranjit was long gone. The Truthseekers had tailed off and she’d taken to advertising for new recruits in
The Irish Times
. On first glance, Kitty assumed that’s what Con was when she opened the door to him: someone come to Effie, looking for the Light. He was
very failed that first time. His hair was more grey than sandy and he’d grown a little military moustache that perched awkwardly on his upper lip.