J. Janes: Betrayal

The next owner and the next had apparently fared no better-did Ireland do that to its immigrants or was it simply the flowering of Mrs. Haney’s velum-bound Celtic mind?

It had to be true. And now? she asked but refused to speculate. She knew that Erich Kramer wanted desperately to escape, but that there must also be some very important reason for him doing so and that every day, every week now only made it worse not just for him but for the Reich. It had been Mrs. Tulford at the White Horse who had arranged everything, the disconnecting of the odometer and its reconnecting later, a goodly supply of petrol too, and the meeting with Brenda Darcy late on Sunday out along the coast road to the west of Kinsale. Three cigarette butts in the ashtray and grim last words, cold, so coldly given. ‘You’re in it now, Mrs. Fraser. Don’t ever think you can get out.’

Hamish had introduced her to Erich some seven, or was it eight-could it really be eight months ago? Hamish loved to play chess. As the castle’s doctor he’d taken to spending an hour or so in the prisoners’ common room, formerly the great hall, or in the library, polishing up on his German and filling himself in on the other side of the war: what was past and what they thought might happen, especially now with the Russian campaign going so well for them. Like herself, he was starved for intellectual companionship which the German officers could supply. A dangerous thing perhaps, but tolerated by Major Trant and encouraged by Colonel Bannerman.

‘Anything to keep them peacefully occupied,’ the colonel had said once and it had stuck with her.

Because she had a smattering of Deutsch from college-long forgotten, most of it-Hamish had encouraged her to help out with the library. She had borrowed books from his own and had been buying them in the flea markets of Armagh and Newry when occasion allowed, but it had been Hamish who had started it all by introducing them. ‘Erich, this is Mary, the light of my life.’

All castles have names and histories but the truth was, there was little to this one. It was situated in a parklike setting of large trees surrounded by lawns and formal gardens overlooking a small, man-made lake, a damming of the Loughie, hence the name Lough Loughie .

Tralane Castle wasn’t really a proper castle-not in the ancient ruins sort of way. It was, however, one of the largest castle-country houses in Ireland and had been built between 1798 and 1812 or thereabouts, so well after the house.

It had its crenellated battlements, its round towers of pale grey granite, a square Keep some eighty feet high, the Union Jack flying proudly above both it and the towers. There were the chimneys, a ground floor and three storeys with tall, windowed rooms-caverns some of them. Its rambling corridors and narrow passageways sometimes led to equally narrow, hidden staircases. There were dungeons, too, and cellars like she’d never seen before.

Milk rooms and tack rooms and stables and lots of places where there could be pallets of straw and the quick rush of forbidden things done in secret while a comrade or comrades kept a lookout and you knew this and yet you did it anyway, lying half-naked on that pallet while betraying both husband and country. A half-hour, forty minutes once and the sheer terror of being discovered, but of course it hadn’t begun in the castle at all, but in that beautiful Georgian house.

And only then, later, in the castle’s infirmary once, and later still, why Erich worked things out and they had used other places in there. Clever … he was always so clever with these. Erich had his people, his men, and they did exactly as he said. Orders always, though she’d not thought of them as that at first, but of course he’d been their captain and still was.

There were barbed-wire enclosures-two rings of these, with guard dogs and torch beams in the night, and searchlights too, if necessary, and a single pass gate with barrier bar and armed sentries.

Hesitating now, Mary approached the opposite shore of the lake. There was a small clearing here, the tall trees of a woods on the other side and a view of the castle across the water. Standing alone as nearly always these days, she got a grip on herself. Three swans, ever white and majestic, yet serene, cruised gracefully by.

One hundred and eighty-two German officers were prisoners of war in that castle. Some, like Erich, had come from U-boats, others from downed aircraft, ships at sea or armies on land. Mostly they were guarded by men of the last war, by Anglo-Irish of Scottish descent, Protestants too, and therefore reliable, or so it must be thought.

And of course there were the regulars from the British Army. Guards with more than one purpose: Captain James Allanby and his commanding officers, Major Trant and Colonel Bannerman. They had the garrison at the castle and did other things like watching border crossings when needed or searching out fugitives in the hills and houses.

There were four British divisions stationed in the North because it was still felt necessary. Jimmy had been right, though. ‘Not bloody likely,’ he’d said. To escape from Tralane Castle wouldn’t be easy. One had, however, the whole of Ireland in which to hide, the temptation of it and the IRA who might, given the right incentives, be willing to help.

Hamish had been right, too. In the North, the IRA were still quite strong and well disciplined. In the South, a series of reversals had left most of their leadership in prison and the rest in a shambles. Brenda Darcy hadn’t said this. One picked that sort of thing up as it seeped out of the ground at your feet or dripped from the skies above.

When 10.00 a.m. came, Mary started out again. There were 915 acres of grounds attached to the castle, all of it in the hands of the British Army on a lend-lease basis, hence a lonelier than usual road whose verges had been mown by work gangs of German officers.

Under guard, of course, with Thompson submachine guns, Lee Enfield rifles and sometimes Webley service revolvers.

All the furnishings had been sold at auction in 1922 to pay the taxes so the castle wasn’t that pleasant a place, if one was looking for that sort of thing.

At the entrance she was told plainly enough, ‘You can’t go in, Miss. Tralane is out of bounds to all civilians.’

The warning signs had said as much. ‘But … but I’m looking after the library? I’ve brought some more books. Look, I know you’re new here, Sergeant, but I’m Mary Fraser, the doctor’s wife.’

She might just as well have been Saint Jude or Joan of Arc for all he cared.

‘I’m sorry, madam, but we have our orders.’

‘Is it because of what happened last night?’ She’d forgotten about the Second Lieutenant Bachmann and should have remembered. Had Hamish tried to warn her?

The sergeant, tough, hard and in his late forties, gave her the once over and, unsmiling, un-anything, simply said, ‘I wouldn’t know about that, Mrs. Fraser. My orders are to turn away all civilians until further notice.’

‘Even the greengrocer’s van and the butcher’s?’

He waited, saying nothing further. She was up against the British Army again, and hadn’t it taken special permission to get her in here in the first place? Hadn’t it only been because this was Ireland and the prisoners were officers and gentlemen to whom honour was their bond, or should have been, Colonel Bannerman wanting to keep them content, or had he? Hadn’t he and Major Trant seen in her presence a means of finding things out, she naively repeating what she’d overheard at times even to Jimmy?

They’d given no hint. None whatsoever. Sickened by the thought, Mary tried to calm her voice. ‘Sergeant, please ask Captain Allanby to let me know when things are back to normal.’