Everyone in the mess hut turns to stare.
‘What is this?’ MacLeod demands again, glaring at Cesare.
‘It is a paper for Major Bates,’ Cesare says. ‘Names of prisoners for Kirkwall jobs.’
‘I can see that – do you think I can’t read? But why do you have it?’
‘I am . . . I begin working in his office. I give him names, translate.’
‘Are you now? Well, I’m not sure I trust someone who’s going between sides.’
Then Sergeant Hunter is there, heavy-shouldered, grim, weary-looking.
‘Give it back, MacLeod.’ He takes the piece of paper and puts it on the table in front of Cesare. ‘And stop throwing your weight around.’
‘But –’
‘Don’t you question me, lad. You’re not even in the army, or you’d be fighting somewhere, not traipsing your flat feet around here. Or is it a weak chest you’ve got?’
MacLeod scowls, but mutters, ‘I’m a conscientious objector.’
‘Oh, are you now?’
Cesare doesn’t know what that means, but Sergeant Hunter’s lip curls in contempt.
As both men turn to go, the Italians wink at Cesare, and even Marco gives him a smile.
Occasionally he sees her – a flare of red from the corner of his vision which makes him turn. Sometimes it is simply the target on another man’s arm or thigh. Sometimes it is his imagination: he looks and finds nothing but brown uniforms, and the hopeless faces of his countrymen, who all look like strangers at such moments.
But sometimes it is her. Standing on the edge of the camp, looking in. Her face pale, her arms wrapped around her body. She must be cold. He shivers in sympathy and imagines how, if he could find a blank piece of paper, he might trace the curve of her cheek, the angle of her jaw, the shape of her mouth. He sketches in the margins, alongside the men’s names, but all his drawings are empty. Lifeless lines scribbled on dead trees. He scratches them out.
He hasn’t found a way to ask Major Bates about repairing the roof – what if he asks and is refused? He is waiting for the perfect moment. When he sees her standing at the edge of the camp – Dorotea, that name that reminds him of the word adorare – he raises his hands to her, shrugs his shoulders, meaning, Not yet, but I’m trying.
He watches her walk away.
And what if, he suddenly panics, what if his shrug means something different to her? What if she thinks he is saying, I don’t know how to solve your problem? Or, worse, I don’t care.
It has been a week since she visited the major, and each day Cesare watches a boatload of prisoners being rowed towards Kirkwall. They return after dark, laughing, exuberant, their voices carrying through the night. He tries to picture Dorotea in her hut, with the hole in the roof. Can she hear their voices, too, in the darkness? Does their laughter reach her, where she waits with her sister, staring up at the stars, shivering?
Early one morning, he makes a decision: he sneaks out of bed in the dark and waits for the major in his office.
Cesare has cleared the floor. Every piece of paper has been tidied and filed.
The list of Italians going across to Kirkwall is complete, along with a new list of jobs.
Major Bates comes into the office quietly, jumping when he sees Cesare waiting. ‘Ah, you’re early. You shouldn’t really be in here without me. But . . . Have you filed all those papers? Good Lord! You must have been here half the night. I suppose I can forgive you, then. How’s the foot doing?’
‘Some pain but is better. Thank you.’
‘Good, good. Bloody cold out there – bet you’re glad not to be in the quarry.’
Cesare returns the major’s smile, although he feels, in truth, very guilty. Some of the other men have begun to make snide remarks about his easy office life, and Marco has again taken to glaring and shoving past him in the mess hut. At night, Cesare is able to sleep only once he is certain that Marco is snoring.
Now, Cesare picks up the piece of paper he’d placed on the major’s desk early this morning. ‘There is a ship from England yesterday and they send more food. And some other things. Too much, I think.’
The major scans the piece of paper. ‘What the devil are they doing sending us so much wood? We can’t use all of this in the quarry. Send it back.’
‘The ship is gone.’
‘I suppose we’ll use it eventually. Bloody waste, though.’
‘I think . . .’ Cesare swallows, inhales. He pictures her face: her disappointed expression as she’d turned from him after he shrugged; the way she’d held her arms tight around her body. Trembling.
Hailstones patter against the window.
‘We can use this wood. For the lady’s roof.’
Major Bates looks up from his paper. Cesare can feel his neck growing hot.
‘It is cold and I do not like thinking . . .’ Cesare nods towards the window, the wind-whipped hail, the ice riming the glass.
‘I agree it’s bitter. But we’ve no men to spare –’
‘I . . . I can go?’
‘You? But I need you here. And your foot –’
‘My foot is not hurt now. And . . . I am doing all this work.’ Cesare gestures at the tidy office, the stacks of files.
The major looks around, sighs, scratches his head.
‘It is so cold,’ Cesare says. ‘Please.’
February 1942Dorothy
Con has kept me awake with her coughing. When she’d first begun to wheeze and pick at her food, I’d wondered if she might be exaggerating to get attention – she’d often done this when we were younger; our mother had scolded her for it, and teased her. The wee bampot wants every eye on her, Mammy and Daddy had said, laughing as Con had scowled at them.
A week ago, when Con’s coughing worsened, I’d thought maybe it was in her head – she hadn’t been right since the sinking of the Royal Elm, since the man who’d died in our boat when we’d held a coat over his
