He tells me he left the shipyard after a year and then did a range of jobs, in the quarry he’d mentioned, as a hod carrier on a building site, a month in a milliner’s shop, and then in the canteen of the biscuit factory where his sister’s husband was foreman.
“He nae wanted me, but did it to stop my sister nagging. He was a bastard to us workers almost as much as he was to her.” He straightens his back for a moment and looks long into my eyes. When he turns back to his work, he begins, between hefts of the pickax, to slowly tell me something else. I’m sweeping next to him, and I concentrate hard on his words, knowing he is trying to tell me something important.
With a shock the meaning springs clear. “I’ve ne’er told anyone this. And mebe I shouldna tell you now, but it’s eating at me, bad as the hunger. I did for him you see. Killed him mysen. I’m nae proud of it, but he beat her once too many times. And beat the bairns too. Even the wee one. Can you credit it? Och, that was a sight to turn your stomach, the wee mite with bruises on her pretty face. Next time he might have murdered her.”
I wonder how he killed him—a knife, a rope, a push beneath a train? Maybe poison? And does this mean he killed Tucker? But Scotty continues. “I ran right for the recruiting sergeant. I thought they’ll nae come looking for me in the army, and so I was right. And he had plenty enemies. I was more a-feared o’ jail than the rope. Ha! And now in jail these last three years. I reckon I’ve done my time here, but the bailie would na see it like that.”
We work for a while, the only sounds the arrhythmic percussion of the quarry. “Mebe I’ll go to Australia when we get out. Mebe they wouldna catch me up there, d’you think? I’d like to see ma sister again and her bairns, but mebe in time she could come to Australia to join me. If I get a good life there. No sense going home to the tenement or the hangman.”
I look around to see if we are near anyone, and then I whisper, “I hope you see her again.” Scotty jumps, as if a dog has spoken.
As we finish for the day and he places himself between me and Kurt to hand back our tools, he says, “I know ye wouldna tell a soul.” And I think one day I would like to tell Bill, feeling sure he would understand, but I nod my promise to Scotty, and he’s satisfied.
Less often, Max takes a turn near me. He tells me about his work in the trade union movement, and things I don’t know, like F. D. Roosevelt having polio as a child, but overcoming that to have three terms as president of the United States. I think one day Max might be a famous politician, perhaps even prime minister. He talks and talks, and when he talks, he shines with a kind of fierce passion, an icy fire. It’s hard to believe that before I came, Max had lain on his bed for days, getting up for roll call and then returning to his bunk, barely eating, willing himself to die.
I wish he’d talk to me about that, but he never does. Perhaps he’d said to his brother, “Take care of Rachel for me,” and his brother had taken care of her in every way. But Max never mentions her; he talks only about strikes and better deals for the workingman and -woman, and ridiculous dreams of free health care and pensions for the old, and money for women with children. Impossible ideas. He offers to lend me his books, and I nod gratefully. Mostly in the evenings he writes in his journal, sometimes copying passages from a volume he’s reading. Once I glimpse something laid out like a poem. I wonder what he can find to write poetry about here.
On other evenings there are speaking contests, or debates, or hands of bridge or darts, or one of Ralph’s “film nights.” Bill and I had to leave Great Expectations in Lamsdorf, unfinished, but now Max has lent me a novel called The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, and though it’s difficult, I read that to myself. My shorthand continues to improve, and I scribble almost as fast as Ralph when the radio is assembled to listen to news from outside our tiny goldfish bowl of a world. They don’t dare set up the radio too often in case it’s discovered.
In mid-November, we hear that General Patton’s troops and tanks have crossed the Moselle River. Our hopes rise for a quick end to the war. Roosevelt has won a fourth term as US president, and Max explains to us the difference between Democrats and Republicans. I think I am a Democrat.
But as November stretches on, everyone becomes glum and frustrated again. The allies don’t seem to be making any advances in Italy because of heavy rain, and there’s less news of the Soviet advance. I worry for my brother and father. I wonder how close the Red Army is to my farm, and if my mother has already had to face the Russians.
The rain affects us too, and the quarry is an even more dangerous place as the marble becomes slippery. Bill is working next to me; we are soaked to the bone, and trembling with cold, when he brings down his pickax, and it glances off the glassy rock and almost embeds itself in his foot.
That evening Herr Rauchbach orders us to stop work until the rain ceases, and we are filled with relief at the prospect of some rest. We peel off our wet clothes and are able to give them to Berta to take to the washerwomen in the village. We’ve spent the last few evenings burning the lice from the seams of our dry clothes, and Berta has given us paraffin to wash our hair with, which is supposed to kill the lice, so I’m hopeful that the itching might lessen for a few days. My body must be covered in weals.
That evening Frank tells us about a time back in 1941 when summer rains stopped the work and they were allowed to swim in an abandoned quarry.
“One of the blokes banged his head playing the fool and almost drowned. All the good swimmers were diving for him, but it was like swimming in milk, and they couldn’t see anything. They were just about to give him up for dead when one of them touched him and was able to dive down and haul him out.” Frank pauses. “They say he’s the man who Rosa was sweet on. And that’s why he got moved.”
Everyone falls silent.
“Do you think it’s possible,” asks Bill, “a prisoner and a local girl?” I keep my eyes on the grain of the wood in the table, and my heart beats fast.
“A prisoner and a local girl,” muses Frank. “There’s another story from here, of a local girl and a French prisoner. It’s said he got her pregnant.”
One of the other of the other men in the room pipes up, “Trust a Frenchman! Can’t keep their cocks in their trousers!”
Bill glances at me at the word “cock,” and I realize it’s not a word he’d use in front of me. “Should’ve used a French letter,” he jokes, and everyone laughs. I have no idea what this means, but don’t have time to puzzle over it because Frank picks up the story.
“It didn’t end well. The guards dragged him out and put him in front of a firing squad. And she was taken away, supposedly to prison, but when the Czech woman tell the story, they look at each other and cross themselves, so I think they must have shot her too.”
There’s a brief silence, and I feel I’m struggling to breathe.
“Well, I don’t see how they’d ever get the opportunity,” says Bill.
The man from upstairs replies, “I don’t know how he could even get it up. I haven’t had a hard-on for months. It’s this starvation.”
“I suppose if the girl was pretty enough,” says Ralph, and I smile to myself at his transparent attempt to be one of the boys.