Shelter Read online

  Connie stepped off the train and quietly joined the throng of nattering girls as they trailed off the platform towards the station entrance. This wasn’t like any station she’d seen before, more like a rundown bus shelter, really. There was none of the bustle you’d see at Coventry station of an evening, even with the war on. It gave her the creeps, but she’d keep her opinions to herself for once. She needed to behave, make a good impression; this next billet mattered like none before.

  Her hand was cold against her own cheek and smelled of grit and fumes.

  ‘Girls, girls! Gather round, please.’ The crowd piped down and Connie shivered into the weird silence. No sirens, no machines whirring, no shouting over them. It was so bloody quiet. There was a muddy little road in front of them, stretching into the murky light. All around, closing in on them like enemy troops and swallowing up the day, were trees. So many trees! She thought there would at least be a proper town or two here, but it seemed to be the arse end of nowhere. Her stomach tipped again despite herself.

  A woman with a horsey face and hair the colour of gutter-water stood in front of them beside a small, wiry man with a flat cap. He was leaning heavily on a stick even though he didn’t look that old. And he was missing a finger. Connie stared, pulling her coat around her. It was cold for April in the shadow of the trees.

  ‘I’m Mrs Marsh, your Area Rep for the Women’s Timber Corps. Congratulations on your recruitment – the WTC has proven far more successful than we’d imagined. This …’ she tipped her head towards the man ‘… is Mr Watkins, the timber foreman here in the Forest of Dean and your boss for the next few weeks. Training starts tomorrow. Right now, we need to get you gals to the hostel.’ Horsey-woman clapped her hands and the bloke called Watkins moved forward.

  What was that behind him? One of the other lumberjills, shiny and keen in her stiff new overalls and beret, beat her to it and called out.

  ‘But that’s a horse and cart!’

  The wiry man spoke up. ‘Course it’s a horse and cart. What d’you expect, a chauffeur-driven car?’

  If Connie ended up on that contraption she’d be sick again for sure. She made her way towards the bossy woman who was checking them off on a clipboard as the dozen or so girls clambered into the cart. When Connie didn’t say anything, or move, the woman looked up, brow furrowed in irritation.

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Constance Granger. But you don’t need that for this. I’m not getting on behind that thing, and I’m not going to no hostel.’

  Horse Face’s pen dug into the clipboard so viciously it was a miracle she didn’t break the nib. ‘All Timber Corps trainees live in the hostel until their permanent locations come through at the end of training. Didn’t you read your recruitment materials?’

  Connie almost laughed at that, but this was no laughing matter. She’d heard the ‘permanent billet’ thing before. She’d met Land Girls who’d been stuck in a hostel for months, all crammed in together and freezing their bits off. If they thought she’d put up with that, they had another think coming.

  The wiry man stepped forward. He had a limp to go with that missing finger and a faded blue neckerchief that clashed with the brown check of his flat cap. He might not take kindly to her pointing that out, though.

  ‘Everyone goes to the hostel to begin with. It’s not so bad, you’ll see.’

  She scowled at him and stifled a yawn. She was worn out after all the time in this country air. Everywhere she looked there were trees closing in on her. God knows what they were supposed to do with them, in this timber corps of theirs.

  ‘When do we get out in the woods?’

  The wiry man laughed and jutted his chin at the trees all around them. ‘How much more forest do you want? You’ll be out there soon enough. But only if you’re in that hostel tonight.’

  She squared up to him with the last of her energy. Nobody told her what she did and didn’t do. ‘What if I won’t?’

  Horse Face laughed and Connie fought the urge to pinch her. ‘It’s a proper question. There must be billets somewhere.’

  ‘Not for you trainees. If you don’t want to stay, that’s up to you, but you’re on the next train out of here, and that’s not till tomorrow, so you’ll have a long night alone on this platform. And there’s rain coming.’ As she turned away, she pointed up at the thickening cloud, low against the endless trees.

  Connie didn’t mind a fight, but she knew when she was beaten. And a bed was a bed. She peered at the horse and turned to this Watkins fellow. ‘He’s not going to bite me, is he?’

  ‘What’s he want to do that for? Better things to eat out here than stroppy wenches.’ But the man’s smile was kind, and for the first time since they’d got off the train her shoulders dropped a tiny bit. This might work out after all.

  Two

  HE’D THOUGHT THE THICKENING silence in the truck was every man finally accepting that he’d been captured, that he wasn’t being sent back to battle. But now he understood it was because they were being slowly gassed. Whoever had connected the pipe hadn’t thought about the truck’s canopy. The fumes caught under the tarpaulin and muffled the men as they rocked on the benches, last in their convoy. They’d been breathing in the gases for hours, ever since the interrogation ended. They’d left the holding camp by the ferry port just as the sun stretched upwards. It must be afternoon now; they had been handed something to eat a couple of hours ago but nobody had the stomach for this stodgy English food and the guards had muttered, ‘Suit yourself,’ as they took it back.

  Seppe had been the last one on to the truck, shoved aside by the rest of them as usual. From here at the back of the truck he had a good view of the exhaust pipe. He’d been staring at it for hours, fogged into stupidity, assuming the nausea he felt was merely the same nausea that had accompanied him through the months in Africa, intensifying cruelly every time he’d shouldered his weapon. But overlaying the nausea now, overlaying, too, the anxiety of what might lie ahead, was dishonourable relief that they were truly done with fighting. Nobody was sending him back out there into those sheets of dust, that suffocating cacophony of shouts and weapon fire. It made him a bad patriot, but he’d been a bad patriot for a long time. He was in the war for shameful reasons, pretending devotion to Il Duce, to Italy, like the men he matched step for step.

  The truck veered abruptly right and jolted along a rough path. Was this the end? Seppe pulled his greatcoat tighter, but the chill of dread wreathed him still. The fear his father had beaten into him had only become more piercing during those months of battle, marching endless miles whilst the flies buzzed around his head in bitter haloes. And now he was a prisoner of the Allies and about to be made to pay for the sins he’d been compelled to commit.

  The juddering slowed and Seppe looked out through the gap at the back of the tarpaulin. It was all greens and browns, swaying – or was it the truck swaying? He blinked through the fog in his brain. They were at the heart of an avenue of interlocking oaks; tentative green buds reached for each other. He inched aside the tarpaulin, heavy and cold, and peered out. Trees mazed together, trunks twisted and bent towards invisible hope. English trees. Oaks, but beeches too, and spiky-fingered yew – tasso – filling his nostrils. Yew was supposed to heal.

  ‘Oi, mister! What are you doing in there, then?’

  The English. The enemy. He hadn’t understood what they had said but it couldn’t be good. They wouldn’t know he didn’t believe in the cause he’d been made to fight for; they’d only want to harm him. Seppe jerked and felt his pocket for the whittling knife. Beside him his compatriots shifted dopily on the bench as the unfamiliar language met their ears too.

  ‘Deaf as a post, this one is!’ A stick flew up and Seppe flinched. It missed him by inches and he picked it up, turned it in his hands, wondering. The bark was pliable, rough against his palm.

  He looked at the two boys loping alongside the truck. They were only youngsters, maybe eleven or twelve. The one nearest to the truck pulled a fac
e at him, not quite hatred but certainly antipathy.

  ‘POWs, aren’t you? The baddies! Seen that Mister Hitler out there?’ The boy goose-stepped across to his friend, who grabbed the side of the truck and hopped onto the running board. He was much too close; the only thing Seppe could do was squirm out of his way. The Italian opposite him, a devout follower of Il Duce, muttered in disgust and leaned forward. Seppe tensed. The British surely had no love lost for the Italians, not even now they’d been downgraded to ‘co-belligerents’ since Italy’s capitulation.

  ‘Look at him, all scaredy! No wonder them did get themselves caught.’ The boy swung in, his leering face too close. Seppe turned away, couldn’t show a kid that he was intimidated. His seatmates muttered, ignored it.

  ‘Won’t be able to escape from us, though. Not in our forest. Goes on for miles and miles. No way out for you, prisoner.’ The boy spat, his breath warm and earthy.

  The running-board boy inspected Seppe more closely. ‘Them aren’t no Jerries. Wrong colour uniform. I reckon you’re Eyeties, right, mister? Muss-o-lee-nee? That ent so bad, you know. They ent fighting any more.’ The boy jumped off the back of the truck and saluted, stiff-armed.

  ‘Hey, you two – scarper!’ A guard had appeared. He must be a guard; he was in uniform, though not one Seppe had seen before. The boys laughed up at the man and Seppe’s stomach looped. They’d surely be thrashed for such behaviour.

  ‘Keep your hair on, Ern. Only wanted to see real live POWs, we did. We’re off now for our tea.’

  The guard tutted at their retreating backs and stuck his head into the truck.

  ‘Crikey-oh, man! Don’t half stink in here – what the heck’s been going on?’

  The guard’s nose was wrinkled; was he talking about the fumes? His words were slippery, nothing like the English they’d learned at school. They rumbled through a giant set of iron gates that clanged shut behind them.

  ‘Here we are then, out you get.’ The guard didn’t sound vicious, but that could be a ruse. He wrenched open the tarpaulin and cold air doused them all as they staggered down from the truck. Seppe’s legs wobbled and he grabbed the running board. E adesso? What would happen next? The stories had flown round their first camp in Alexandria: tales of beatings, of prisoners paraded through the street, crowds jeering and spitting. On at least two separate occasions captives had been stoned by angry townsfolk. This war just got worse and worse and Seppe had long known that to trust was to suffer.

  ‘Cripes, look at the state of you.’

  He mustn’t look up, mustn’t anger the guard with insubordination. Better not to react to the hand that gripped his elbow. ‘That’s it, lad. Bringing you over here.’ He went where the guard led him, shocked by the softness of the tone, the steadiness of the grasp.

  The noises were so different here. His truck mates were still muted by gas and defeat; there was no firefight, no outburst of rage. Instead birds cheeped and whistled and leaves hushed each other like prayers. The sun hung high in the sky and a breeze played across his cheeks and soothed the graze there.

  Seppe risked a quick glance around. Whatever else his childhood had delivered, he knew how to take the temperature of a situation, to read people and surroundings for danger. He was right; there was no apparent threat. He frowned. This couldn’t be so.

  The gates they’d entered through bordered a perimeter fence that curved in either direction. The camp stood at the top of the hill, and stretching off into the dusk in either direction were trees, so many trees, silent and dark. He looked more closely, careful to keep his place in the formation they’d been loosely assigned to, shivering as the sun moved behind a cloud. They seemed to be standing on some sort of parade ground. The earth beneath the thinned leather of his boots was scuffed and dry, though moisture was in every breath he took, the skies heavy with protective cloud.

  To one side of the parade ground a clock tilted lopsidedly above a noticeboard and, despite his exhaustion, the nerves and the uncertainty, Seppe had to ball his hands not to break away, to go over there and right it. The parade ground was flanked by long, corrugated iron huts and from time to time one of the doors would clang open and a man would slouch out. They must be other prisoners, arrived before them, but even from this distance they didn’t have the haggard, wary look he’d become used to seeing in the holding camp. Seppe must still be fogged from the gas; he couldn’t parse what he saw, couldn’t correlate these relaxed-seeming figures with the certain knowledge that he was a prisoner of war in Camp 61 according to the paint daubed on the main building. The confusion clattered in his head and he looked towards the trees again to quieten his mind.

  He was behind gates, and beyond the gates were the trees, leaves swaying in welcome. They were a skein, a living barrier between him and the world out there. Let them contain him if, by so doing, they held at bay the chaos of war, of home.

  Seppe sighed, a long exhalation of relief. His war was over. He no longer had to pretend to believe in things he abhorred. Who knew what lay ahead, but for today, at least, he could breathe.

  Three

  CONNIE SLUMPED INTO THE last chair going in the hostel classroom and squinted crossly at the blackboard. Nobody had let on that forestry training would be like school. But they’d been in this mouldery classroom for a full two weeks now, twenty-four of them from around the country learning how to tell one tree from another, how to sweep brush, what went on in the sawmill. The other girls nodded and bent over their books to write things down, but for Connie it was all a sludge of words that didn’t mean anything. Book learning had never been her thing.

  ‘Tardy again, Granger?’ The tutor, a buttoned-up old codger whose hands were the only thing to tell you he’d ever seen an honest day’s work, squinted at Connie. What had happened to that Watkins they’d met on their first day? He’d seemed all right, not like this classroom bloke. A full two weeks of this she’d had now, the same sarky dig each day. She couldn’t get down to class any faster because she had to wait for the other five girls to leave the dorm before she risked getting dressed. Even with those wooden partitions between each bed she couldn’t be sure the others weren’t gawping at her. She missed it, getting ready in a gaggle of girls, but this was nothing like those clocking-off times at the factory.

  To begin with she’d heard a few smart whispers from a couple of the other lumberjills about how she thought herself a cut above, was too standoffish to lower herself to mingling in the bathroom with the likes of them. She’d bitten her lip, even though she was desperate to join in; she’d learned her lesson at the farm. After a couple of days they’d left her to it and now she could get on those overalls in peace. They were carefully friendly the rest of the time; life was too short to hold a grudge.

  But she was hardly going to tell all that to Mr Hoity-Toity. She was struggling enough in the classroom as it was, and she needed this posting more than she’d ever needed anything.

  What gobbledegook was he putting them through today?

  The words scrolled past like a bookie’s ticker tape.

  Softwoods – larch, pine, spruce, fir – fetch 1½d per cubic foot.

  Hardwood – ash, beech, chestnut, elm, oak, sycamore – are 2½d per cubic foot.

  Pit prop lengths: four sizes; 3 foot, 4½ foot, 6 foot, 9 foot.

  Why did they need to make it so complicated? As far as she was concerned there were trees with leaves and trees with needles that were a pain to get out of the rugs after Christmas and made Mam even more shouty than usual. Connie’s insides twisted as she copied it down; she’d figure out what on earth it meant later. She knew it was all part of the war effort. She’d copped on that some of the trees were needed for pit props, since coal production was increasing. Some became telegraph poles, some were for rebuilding, and some would be used as ships’ masts, but she was no closer to remembering which was which, or what the holy Moses she’d actually be doing, than she had been two weeks ago. She needed to get this stuff straight – and sharpish. There was a t
est at the end of it, and if she didn’t pass, she’d be out on her ear. And she couldn’t be moved on again, she simply couldn’t.

  If only she hadn’t cocked things up on the farm. If only she’d been able to stick it out back at the factory in the first place.

  Connie swallowed hard. Get it together. That was just the tip of the ‘if onlys’, but the others were best left well alone or she’d start bawling right here in this crappy little classroom.

  The scraping of chairs snapped her back to the present. Connie grabbed the arm of a dark-haired girl pushing past.

  ‘Where now?’

  The girl – Hetty, that was her name – shook her head and smiled. They pushed out of the classroom into blissful fresh air, the door clanking shut behind them. ‘You didn’t listen to a word in there again, did you? We’re off out into the woods. Time to see whether any of this classroom learning has sunk in, apparently.’

  Connie’s stomach lurched. ‘What if it hasn’t?’

  Hetty shrugged. ‘Other war work, I suppose. Can’t say I’m too fussed one way or another, tell you the truth.’ She tugged at a piece of ivy that coated the grey stone of the hostel walls, crawling up them as if trying to escape.

  The hostel towered over the other buildings, such as there were, as if to show the importance of the forest even in this poky excuse for a village. Back in the day it had been the engine house for some ironworks or other, so they’d been told, but since the last war it had been a training centre for foresters from around the country.

  Connie looked around her at the stone-built post office and the faded curtains in the window of the postmaster’s adjacent house. She knew that what she must be looking at was a village, but she couldn’t make it fit her idea of where people really lived. There were no uniform terraces, no craters, not even really any grime, just a bunch of trees with little yellow flowers hiding underneath them like people queuing for a public shelter.