As Lorna watched him go, Mrs. Mack came back out of the kitchen door, tying her apron strings around her waist. “So he’ll not murder us in our beds in the name of the Fatherland, then?”
Lorna faced her, still rattled. “Did you know he speaks English?” she asked.
“Aye, I did notice that.”
“But why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because you never asked.” Mrs. Mack was smiling at Lorna’s confusion. “He seems a nice enough lad, though.”
“But he speaks English,” Lorna said, suddenly serious. “He might be a spy or something.”
“Oh, I don’t think we need fret now, do you?” Mrs. Mack replied, crossing her arms under her bosom. “And what do you think our John is out there doing, knitting sweaters? All these boys are just doing what their countries ask of them. But this lad’s war is over now, and please God it will be over for us all very soon. What harm can he do stuck on this farm with us anyway? I trust him not to kill me in my bed, and I think you should too.”
Mrs. Mack suddenly clapped her hands.
“But we’ve no time for chatter. You’ve a lesson to get to, and I’ve a midden of a kitchen to clean. So get off with you!”
Perhaps Mrs. Mack was right and Lorna was overreacting. Maybe.
And actually, the prisoner had seemed quite nice, and not particularly threatening. Well, at least until she’d called him a Nazi. Yes, he was quite nice really. For a German.
For the next few days, Lorna barely saw the prisoner. The truck dropped him off in the morning, but he had vanished from the yard by the time she left for school. When she got back home, he was away with her father in one of the far fields until he was picked up again in the evening.
And that was fine. Lorna didn’t want to see him anyway.
But even though she still felt queasy at the thought of having an enemy prisoner on the farm, she also found herself watching out for him, taking the longer route home, telling herself she was just enjoying the sunny and crisp winter weather. And she couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed when she didn’t see him.
But really, not seeing him was fine.
It was as if everyone else had forgotten he worked there. Mrs. Mack was no longer around in the afternoons because of her grandchildren, and Nellie had little to talk about except the “cute” new American airman she was “dating”—two of the new American words that Nellie used constantly these days.
And conversations with her father were rare events. He would knock twice on her bedroom door in the morning to make sure she woke up, but was gone before Lorna got downstairs. In the evenings, he came into the house in time to eat his meal in silence as he read that morning’s Scotsman. Then, with a cup of tea or sometimes a small glass of whisky, he sat in his chair by the fire and listened to the evening news bulletin on the BBC.
However, after almost a week of not talking about the German, Lorna realized that she did want to talk about him after all. She wanted to find out why her dad didn’t seem in the slightest bit worried that he was there, and to ask if her dad knew how he had got the scars across his face. But how could she bring up the subject?
One evening after she’d cleared away the dishes, Lorna sat down with her dad to listen to the wireless. She tried to look casual by counting the rows in the woolen scarf she was knitting for the Red Cross collection as she waited for the news bulletin to be over.
For weeks now, the radio news had been full of the Allies’ progress through Europe, chasing back the Germans from France, Belgium, and Holland. That evening’s bulletin reported on more successful bombing raids by the British and American air forces on German cities like Chemnitz, Dresden, and Magdeburg, as well as the destruction of a major bridge over the River Rhine at a town that sounded to Lorna like it was called Weasel.
As the news announcer moved on to more political news from London, Lorna decided she could ask her father now. But, as he so often did, her father had already dozed off in his chair and she didn’t have the heart to wake him. Lorna wrapped the wool around her needles and tucked them away in her knitting bag. Quietly she took the glass from her father’s hand and put it on the table beside him before she tiptoed upstairs.
As she brushed her hair in her bedroom, Lorna tried to put the German out of her mind, but the trouble was, he wouldn’t go.
He’d even appeared in her dreams. The first time, his damaged face had reared up at her and she had run from it, screaming, waking herself as she did. Another night, she hadn’t seen his face at all, but she still knew he was there, watching her. In one dream, she’d clearly seen his face as it would have been, or as it might have been, pale-skinned and clean—and handsome—and then he had been wearing a British sergeant’s uniform like John Jo’s.
And last night, he hadn’t been wearing anything …
Lorna shook her head, pretending to herself that she wanted to rid her mind of that image, and settled her head onto the pillow. Sleep took a while to come.
And it wasn’t as if she were the only person obsessing about the German. Iris seemed even more fascinated by him than Lorna.
Lately, if they walked down to the shops or to the beach after school, Lorna knew it would only be a minute or two before Iris brought him up.
The next day was no exception.
“So what’s your German been doing?” Iris asked, as Lorna knew she would.
Lorna pulled her coat more tightly round her and tucked her chin into the loops of her scarf. They were walking along the edge of the beach, shadowing the winding Peffer Burn, which snaked its way through the mudflats and sandbanks near the village.
“I haven’t seen him,” she said, “and he’s not my German.”
This sent Iris into a lecture about why Lorna should be interested, and what if the prisoner sabotaged the farm, which was what William said was bound to happen. And William also said that …
Lorna wasn’t really listening. Mrs. Mack had often said that Iris could talk the paint off a gatepost, so Lorna knew that as long as she nodded every so often, soon enough the “Threat from the German” lecture would wind down and the “Wonder of William Urquhart” lecture would begin.
Iris suddenly crouched down to retie her shoelace, without once pausing her flow of chatter. Lorna stopped too, and gazed out over Aberlady Bay.
It was a relatively calm day for February, but still freezing cold. The low sun was reflecting off the receding tide, making Lorna shield her eyes with her hand. The dunes of Gullane Point were bathed with golden light, and the exposed sands of Aberlady Bay were striped with ripples and dotted with wading birds, oystercatchers, and curlew, which darted around the huge concrete antitank blocks lining the shore. As an extra barrier to an invasion, an array of tree trunks had been sunk upright into the sand like the rib cage of some rotting dinosaur, but beyond them, Lorna could see fat-bellied seals lounging in what little sunshine was left, oblivious to the chill wind blowing across the water and the looming threat of the war.
“Come on, slow coach,” Lorna moaned, “it’s too bloody cold to hang around.”
“Just give me a minute!”
While she waited, Lorna tugged off her gloves and picked up a pebble from the path, tossing it into the shallow burn with a satisfying splash and a light plink.
“Come on, Iris,” she said, “Dad’ll be wanting his tea.”
Iris stood up, stamped her feet, and stuffed her hands deep in her pockets.
“Well?”