J. Janes: Betrayal

The raindrops were big and singular, and as they hit the steaming dark-blue bonnet of the car, each made a metallic thud that signalled it would burst to pieces. Hunched over the steering wheel, Mary Ellen Fraser tried not to concentrate on them. Their sound was one thing; the sight of them destroying themselves quite another.

Down from her, the gravelled, rut-gouged road narrowed to a single lane before the first of the frontier posts whose tin-roofed hut had the glaze of the forlorn, then it sprang across a small wooden bridge, low and hugging a narrow stream before climbing gently up the long slope to the second of the frontier posts and yet another tin-roofed hut. The North was in the distance: Ulster and a war on over there; the Free Zone here, the Republic, the South and no war here-no continental war, that is. Just neutrality.

Boulders, cleared and heaved from the pastures on either side, hemmed in the road so that no one, not herself or anyone else, could make a break for it. Not on 9 September 1941, not at any time, though the boulders looked as if they’d been here for centuries, and probably had.

The field of fire was therefore clear. The enclosing hills sloped up and away, and it would only take one bullet from a.303 Lee Enfield rifle to do the job. She’d slip, she’d fall, would get up and try to run, and it would happen just like that. Right in the centre of her back, right between the shoulder blades from which her nightdress had slipped, right where Erich Kramer had first put his hands but down a little further, yes down to where his fingers had traced out the soft contours of her seat before lifting her into his arms, she now to lie face down in the turf of an Irish frontier field out in no-man’s-land.

The pungent smell of the turf came to her, the acidity of its tiresome smoke, the frugality of its burning, then of course, the dampness of the house-Georgian it was-and the smell of old books some of which would lie open here, there, everywhere on the arms of the chairs, the sofa or on the carpeted floor where the dog hairs were thickest. The cushions … Dear God in Heaven, why couldn’t Hamish have set his bloody books aside for once and put a stop to what was happening to her?

‘That isn’t fair. No, it really isn’t. It’s myself who’s to blame.’

The smell of hot engine oil came to her, then the mustiness of the fabric which covered the seat and the rancid dog smell of the throw rug in the back. The newspaper, which was still folded beside her, unread, gave off that inky smell which the dampness only reinforced. A copy of the Irish Times . Yesterday’s. Bought in Dublin, of course. Dublin.

A straggle of cars and carts, two butcher’s vans and the lorry of Michaelson’s Fine Olde English Marmalade lay before her, just down the slope, still in the South and waiting in the rain. Van and lorry and things like bonnet she’d got used to very quickly. Oh yes she had.

On the other side, up the long slope from the stream, an almost equal lineup waited to get into the North. There wasn’t a sight of anyone coming through to the South. Not a soul. It was like a migration of motorized cattle and horse-driven carts waiting silently in the rain at a ford, some getting across only to be held up by another barrier and a whole lot of silly damn questions. Always questions.

Why the delay? Why the bloody hell did this have to happen to her? Usually there were only one or two waiting, or none at all. It wasn’t even the main road from Dublin which passed to the northeast of here through Newry. 1It was just the one that headed north to the west of Slieve Gullion and made its way through the bogs and fields and the green-grass hills. Not a restricted road. Not one of those.

They’d have spotted the car of course. Even as they were thumbing through some poor sod’s passport, or going through his motorcar with the look of Jesus about them, they’d have given a glance down the long dip in the road and up the far slope to her poised at the top of this little hill.

Yes, they’d have seen her all right. They’d have recognized the car.

‘Been to Dublin again, have you, Mrs. Fraser?’-she could hear one of them saying. The Garda first, and then the others over there in the North. Which of the latter it would be she couldn’t tell for they often took turns but always seemed to sound the same.

‘Would you be good enough to get out of the car, m’am? Sergeant Dillaney will be wanting a word. We’ll have the keys, please. Oh and sure there’s nothing to worry about but two bottles in the boot for the doctor but no sign whatsoever, now was there, of the silk stockings for yourself?’

Unavailable those were, and not seen since before the war, but none of them would understand why she was here. Not the Garda nor the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the British Army. She wasn’t from either the South or the North, wasn’t of recent Irish descent, not for several generations back, wasn’t even what you’d call British or Anglo-Irish, was simply from limbo. Yes, limbo.

Two tommies, their bayonets slicing the pregnant raindrops, stood to attention on either side of the road at that far post. A captain of the British Army did the checking; the Ulstermen, the Constabulary and the custom’s guards being shunned today, though they’d have done the preliminaries, made one roll down the side windscreen, et cetera.

The captain was thorough. The Army wore slickers of oily brown and greenish brown camouflage to shield them from the rain, but his was thrown back over the shoulders as if he wanted everyone to see the medals. As if he had to have them seen.

A DSO with bar from France, from the defeat at Dunkirk, the others too. The battle ribbons.

Captain James Allanby-‘Jimmy’ for short. Wounded twice and then again. Washed up here so far from the fighting he wanted. A hard, bitter man. Not unhandsome but looks … why looks weren’t everything and she hadn’t been fooled by Jimmy. God no, but she had been deceived by Erich. Yes, she had.

‘I’ve let him make a bloody great fool out of me and now I’m going to have to pay for it.’

Irritably running her gloved hands round the steering wheel, she shivered once and then clamped her knees together, said, ‘Dear God, you stupid man, I have to pee!’

Jimmy Allanby would only have looked at her in the way drill sergeants do, and she’d have to wait, have to simply tough it out. An hour-would it take that long? Never mind trying to make a break for it, never mind getting herself shot out there. Never mind that it would only be recorded as a ‘mistake.’

Jamming the gearshift into first, she released the handbrake and let the four-door Austin roll slowly downhill until, again, she was forced to stop. Now all she could see was the back of the marmalade van. Michaelson’s of Armagh had been making the stuff since 1832. Wars hadn’t stopped them. Through thick and thin, troubles and rebellion, and wasn’t it typical they’d plastered on the logo-WORKING FOR THE BOYS UP FRONT 2-and yet had had the gall to drive into the South so as to get unrationed sugar 3and Sevilles when in season, all in the name of the precious war effort everyone talked so much about these days as if it was holy or something, as if they would just love to be up at that front too, giving old Hitler their best!

‘I’m being unkind. I’m letting my troubles bring out the worst in me.’

The lorry lumbered ahead one space. The rain came down and the back of the lorry shut out everything else, made her world darker than she wanted, Hamish’s voice coming to her, ‘Mary, why must you go again? You were only there a fortnight ago.’ The accent so of Edinburgh unless he deliberately used Glaswegian, he really wanting to say, ‘My girl, I know damn well what you’ve been up to.’