1949 (33 page)

When Ursula read about it in the Dublin papers she could hardly control her anger. “The rotten bastard!” she exploded. “The IRA put de Valera where he is today! How can he
do
that?”

“It's simply a different sort of war,” Seán Lester told her. But she was not mollified.

 

In March of 1940 the savage Russo-Finnish War finally ended. The peace treaty surrendered a large part of Finland to Russia, but it would prove to be a Pyrrhic victory. Stalin's purges during the thirties had emasculated his officer corps. As a result the Red Army had taken a frightful drubbing from the Finns for most of the war. Russia's military weaknesses were exposed to the world.

And particularly to Adolf Hitler.

With inexorable force Hitler's armies swept across Europe, invading the very countries that Joseph Avenol had hoped to combine into an all-European league. Denmark was overcome. British and French forces had joined the battle for Norway but the outlook was bleak. Belgium and the Netherlands expected to be next.

American journalists returning home from Europe were convinced Hitler would win.

Avenol felt the League of Nations should remove itself to France. “In order to save the Swiss government the embarrassment of being pressured by the Germans,” as he explained in the Assembly. He even took the step of sending League archives to the quiet little spa town of Vichy.

A few days later he ordered Lester to France to bring them back. “The secretary-general received more opposition to the arrangement than he bargained for,” Lester told Ursula. His eyes glinted with gentle malice. “Not everyone wants the League to become a French club.”

Lester selected two male members of staff to accompany him to France. When they returned laden with file boxes, Ursula was seconded to help restore the archives to proper order.

Behind the scenes, the political infighting at the League continued.

 

In Éire a ramshackle old army camp on the Curragh of Kildare was assigned to hold IRA internees who had not been tried for any crime, but were being held as members of an illegal organization.

Curragh Camp was also the main camp for the regular army.

 

Louise wrote to Ursula, “We know there is a war on, but it really does not seem to have much to do with us. I think most Irish people feel the same. We have had enough of war in this country, we do not want to think about another one.”

“God keep you,” Ursula murmured as she read those words. “I hope you never have to.”

 

The Lesters were a devoted couple. In spite of Seán's natural reserve, it was apparent to Ursula that he was very lonely without his wife. One morning she entered his office to find him staring at a photograph of Elsie on his desk. “You miss her very much, don't you?” Ursula said softly.

“Is it so obvious?”

“Down the country we would say it sticks out like horns on a pig.”

Lester burst out laughing.

Ursula was not surprised when Elsie Lester arrived in Geneva at the end of April to visit her husband. The happiness of their reunion was somewhat marred by the general atmosphere. At the headquarters of the International Red Cross there was frantic activity, but elsewhere in Geneva a sort of paralysis had set in. People were waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Lester brought Elsie to the secretariat for a brief visit with old friends, after which they invited Ursula and her son to join them in Lester's private office for a quiet cup of tea. Barry amused himself by investigating the bottom drawers of Lester's desk. Ursula sought news of home.

“There are a lot of rumors about spies going around,” Elsie reported.

“At least some of them are true,” her husband said. “Eire's neutrality, added to her geographical location, makes her particularly attractive. The
Washington Evening Star
has even reported that Galway's being used as a U-boat base,
⁴
though I suspect that's a story leaked by the British to discredit Éire in American eyes. Churchill's furious over our neutrality.

“But I have no doubt there are people spying for Germany along the Irish coasts, both north and south. Now that the lads have returned from Spain, the IRA will want to take up the cudgel against the ancient enemy. How best to do that than by helping Germany? Remember the old axiom: ‘My enemy's enemy is my friend.'”

Ursula said hotly, “Surely you can't think the IRA would…”

“I didn't say they all would. But a few of them, undoubtedly. And they'll believe they're doing the right thing.”

Ursula started to say something else but was distracted by Barry. “Put that stapler back in the drawer,” she said sharply. “It isn't a toy.”

Elsie reached out to rumple the little boy's silky hair. “He doesn't know what a stapler is.”

“He'll learn the hard way if he staples his feet with it.”

“That's how children always learn,” Elsie warned her. “The hard way.”

Aware that he had touched a nerve with Ursula, Lester changed the subject—slightly. “The Americans have spies in Ireland too,” he said to his wife. “They're well-placed and report only to Washington, but they send their intelligence through London.”
⁵

“How can you be so certain?”

“Oh, my sweet, this is the diplomatic service, remember? Everyone knows everything. War or no war, cable service from Dublin to the Continent remains available to German diplomats. Of course it goes through England. In return the Germans are allowing the cable link from Switzerland to England to stay open. We're all busy deciphering messages and spying on one another. Espionage is a growth industry.”

 

Elsie had planned to stay for a month, but at Lester's insistence the date of her return to Ireland was moved forward. Then moved forward again.

 

Meanwhile, the
Irish Times
reported that Aer Lingus was awaiting delivery of its first Douglas DC-3. The plane had been prepared by Fokker in Amsterdam and flown out of the Netherlands under the very noses of the invading German army.
⁶

On Thursday morning, the ninth of May, Lester called Ursula into his office and closed the door. “You realize we're in the middle of both a Swiss crisis and a crisis in the secretariat,” he said. “Six weeks ago I begged the secretary-general to let me make plans for a possible evacuation. Between our two offices we still have several hundred people, many of them women like yourself, with families.

“Avenol pooh-poohed it. He claimed adequate preparations were already made. When I told him no preparations had been made he gave a Gallic shrug and said that we must then share the fate of the Swiss people.”
⁷
Lester looked thoroughly disgusted. “Whatever about that, yesterday afternoon I got return visas for Elsie. She'll go home Sunday, or Monday at the latest.”

“Will you go with her?”

“My place is here. Whatever's coming, the League…” Lester broke off, unable to finish the thought.

He means the League, or something life it, will be very much needed. Brave men and women will have to keep it functioning while this thing runs its course, and try to rebuild when the war ends. However the war ends
.

Ursula's heart leaped at the challenge.

Lester glanced at the photograph on his desk. “I'm going to take tomorrow afternoon off. Before she leaves, Elsie and I are going to have a picnic in the Versoix and I'll try to get in a spot of fishing.”

That night Ursula went to bed fully prepared to stand shoulder to shoulder with Lester and the others at League headquarters who would be making a stand, however futile, for democracy.

She awoke in the dark. Barry was not yet awake; she could hear his soft baby snore as he lay beside her in the bed. The room retained warmth from the night before. The only sounds from the street were trucks making predawn deliveries.

She could go back to sleep for at least another hour.

Instead she sat up in bed and threw back the covers.

The Irish in her did not trust the machineries of logic, in whose name so many terrible deeds were done. Life's truly great decisions should not be made cognitively. When it mattered most, Ursula Halloran relied on an intuitive certainty that occasionally rose within her like a rainbowed bubble, breaking the surface of a dark pool.

 

The bubble rose. And she knew.

 

Ursula was among the first staffers to arrive at the secretariat that morning, but the tension was already palpable. Neville Chamberlain had resigned; later in the day Winston Churchill would be sworn in as the prime minister of Britain. A fresh crisis awaited him.

Before dawn the Germans had invaded Belgium and Holland.

The Dutch queen Wilhelmina delivered a stirring speech, urging her people to take up arms against the enemy. She ordered the Dutch merchant fleet to be placed at the disposal of the British, and made certain that the nation's gold reserves were taken aboard British warships. Then she and her family prepared themselves to depart for London, and exile.

When Seán Lester came in he found Ursula waiting for him with the news. He promptly telephoned Elsie to pack. “If you don't go now,” Ursula heard him warn his wife, “you could be separated from the children for months. I'll have to keep you here because soon it won't be possible to travel.”

When he hung up the phone Ursula said, “Can you get travel visas for Barry and me too?”

While she waited they received news of German attacks on French aerodromes.

 

Reluctantly, Ursula left her beloved books behind. Lester promised they would be stored safely at the League. “You can retrieve them afterwards,” he assured her.

Her one suitcase was stuffed with clothing, Barry's toys, and Saoirse's bridle. The Mauser was concealed among her underthings. If for any reason they were searched along the way, female lingerie might go unprobed. She had to sit on the case to make it close.

The envelope from under the mattress was not in her suitcase, nor in her handbag. Ursula remembered what war was like. Before leaving her room for the last time, she padded her figure with cash pinned to her undergarments.

On Saturday night she and Barry left Geneva with Elsie Lester. Because Europe's skies were no longer safe, they planned to take the train to Boulogne and cross the Channel on a passenger steamer, then fly to Ireland from London.

Ursula tried not to think about the boat journey.

Elsie was courageously cheerful. Dressed in powder blue with a new hat to match, she looked as gay as if she were going on the canceled picnic. But obviously it was not going to be a picnic. The train was packed. Every seat was taken. The passengers were, for the most part, tense and quiet. Many had brought an excessive amount of baggage. The areas around the doors were piled high, making it difficult to enter.

Ursula put her lone suitcase into the overhead above her seat. She did not want it out of her reach.

The night was unseasonably cold and the windows were tightly shut. The air grew stuffy while the train was still in the station. Ursula busied herself getting Barry settled. The adventure had excited him, he was laughing and waving to the other passengers.

Seán and Elsie Lester met one another's eyes through the window of the first-class carriage.

One last time.

 

The rapid German advance caught up with the train as it raced across France.

The lights had been turned down in the first-class carriage and pillows and blankets provided. Ursula and Elsie dozed fitfully. Barry slept with his head in his mother's lap. As usual, his hands were closed into tiny fists and pressed under his chin. He had never sucked his thumb.

An explosion shocked them awake.

The train shuddered but kept going.

Another explosion. Closer. Frightfully loud. A spray of dirt and gravel hit the window and a startled male passenger shouted a curse. The train hurled itself forward, roaring around a curve at dangerous speed. Suitcases piled in the aisles toppled over.

Barry sat up. “Mam?”

Ursula hugged him to her breast. “I think we're being bombed,” she said in a surprisingly calm voice. To her own amazement she
was
calm, as if she had rehearsed for this all her life.

The engineer made a valiant effort but his train could not outrace the German bombers flying overhead. The track a mile or so ahead blew up with a terrible roar. Brakes squealed. Sparks raced past the windows in the night, staring in at the passengers with a terrible red malignance. The train stopped just in time to avoid being derailed.

Fighter planes promptly closed in to rake the stalled train with machine-gun fire.

Some of the passengers dived under their seats. Most swarmed into the aisle. Elsie Lester sat white-faced in shock.

Ursula set Barry on the floor below window level, slipped her feet into her shoes and put on her coat. How fast her brain was working! She seized the window sash with both hands and threw all her weight behind the downward push. The window did not budge.

“Where's your passport?” she shouted over her shoulder to Elsie.

The woman roused herself. “In my handbag.”

“Handbags can go missing. Put your passport and your money down the front of your dress. Hurry!” Ursula tried the window again. Muscles and ligaments strained to tearing point, but the window remained firmly closed.

By now the aisle was blocked with hysterical passengers.

Ursula dragged her suitcase down from the overhead. Throwing it open, she retrieved the Mauser. With the butt of the gun she broke the window glass and knocked shards from the frame.

“Come on, Elsie, we're getting out of here.” She thrust the Mauser into her coat pocket and helped her friend through the window, then handed Barry out to her. As Ursula scrambled after them a spear of glass lanced her thigh. She did not allow herself time to feel the pain.

“Under the carriage, quick!” she ordered.

As soon as her feet touched the ground she threw herself forward and began crawling under the train. Bullets spanged against metal close to her head. With knees and elbows she propelled her body further under the carriage.

Hot. Dark. Gravel cutting into knees and elbows. A strong smell of machine oil. The constant chatter of gunfire. Someone screaming.

“We're over here,” called Elsie.

Ursula wormed her way toward them.

“Mam!” Barry cried out.

“It's all right, little man, just be still.” Trying not to bump her head against the underside of the train, she took Barry from Elsie and did her best to cover his body with hers.
Thank God I'm thin, there's not much clearance here
.

Other people were crawling under the train now. Breathless, choking, crying. “Stop it!” a woman screamed at the guns. “
Stopitstopitstopit!
”

Invisible in the night, German fighter planes circled above the train. Seconds or centuries later there was a loud “
whoommmph!
” from somewhere up ahead. The planes roared off in search of other prey.

Within moments they could smell fire.

Ursula drew Barry from beneath her. “Elsie?”

“Yes.”

“Hold Barry for me and stay right where you are. You should be safe enough for the time being. I'll find out what's happening.” Ursula crawled out from under the train.

As she stood up, deferred pain stabbed her thigh. She took an involuntary half step and staggered sideways. The ground at this point fell steeply away from the tracks; Ursula found herself half-running, half-falling down the slope. When she regained her balance she saw that the engine was blazing fiercely. It was far enough ahead of the first-class carriage to represent no immediate threat, but the fire might spread.

Their attackers had gone, leaving an immobilized train somewhere in France in the middle of a cold night, with hundreds of terrified passengers and an unknown number of casualties.

But we're alive
.

Against that fact, nothing else mattered.

Other people began to scramble out from under the train. They ran first in one direction and then in another, seeking they knew not what, their confusion as great as their terror.

Only Ursula stood still. Consciously organizing her thoughts.
One step at a time. No panic. Good warriors don't panic
. She stooped down and called to Elsie, “You're safest where you are for now. Stay there, I'll be right back.”

“Where are you going?”

“To find someone in authority.”

When Ursula reached the burning engine, what she saw—and smelled—convinced her its crew were past being able to help anyone. Sickened, she turned away.

By the light of the fire she noticed a railway porter sitting on the ground nearby, tightening his shoelaces. His face was blistered from the futile effort he had made to rescue the men in the engine. His uniform was badly scorched and he had lost his cap.

“
Pardonnez-moi, Monsieur
,” Ursula began.

“Eh?” Looking up, he cupped one hand behind his ear.

She raised her voice. “Can you tell me where we are?”

The man scrambled to his feet and replied in French, with frequent pauses to cough. He drew Ursula's attention to a few tiny pinpricks of light in the far distance. When he was satisfied that she understood he touched his forehead where the cap should be. Still coughing, he set off along the tracks.

Ursula hurried back to Elsie and Barry and called to them to come out. “The train's radio is destroyed,” she told Elsie, “but one of the porters is going to follow the tracks to the next call box and summon help. He has no idea how long that will take, though.

“There's what appears to be a road some two miles north of here, and the porter thinks it may be the road from Dijon to Paris. So I'm going to try to flag down an automobile. Or a farm truck, anything.”

“You propose to walk two miles in the dark? In those shoes?”

“Barefoot, if necessary,” Ursula said. “Give Barry to me. I'll carry him.”

Elsie shook her head. “We should wait here until help comes.”

“Or until the German planes come back? No, Elsie. I'm going and you're going with me.”

“I couldn't possibly…”

Ursula clamped a strong hand on the other woman's shoulder and propelled her forward. “You certainly can, and you are. Right now. You helped me when I needed it, I'm not going to leave you here in danger.”

 

In Geneva, Seán Lester waited tensely for word from his wife. She had promised to telephone him as soon as they reached Boulogne. He spent a sleepless night, at last turning on the radio for company.

Radio Luxembourg was broadcasting a program of music entirely by German composers.

 

Ursula had estimated the distance to the road at two miles, but distance was deceptive in the dark. For a long time the moving lights seemed as far away as ever. Gradually the first few lights were joined by others, traveling fast and in only one direction. No one was going the other way.

The women's spring coats were insufficient protection against the wind that howled unimpeded across the fields. Deeply plowed furrows threatened to turn their ankles. They were unable to keep from crushing green and growing things beneath their feet.

After crawling over, and under, a succession of wire fences they eventually came to a huddle of farm buildings. Barns, sheds, outbuildings. No house. When they approached they found everything locked up tight. A solitary dog barked, then ran out to warn them off. He ran away again when Ursula scolded him in French.

Barry clung to his mother and sniffled but did not cry.

“If you're tired I'll carry him a while,” Elsie offered.

“Not yet. I'm all right.”

“You seem to be limping.”

Ursula made herself laugh. “A blister on my heel. You were right about the shoes, maybe I should take them off.”

“You'd take pneumonia, don't you dare!”

They kept walking.

Barry laid his head on his mother's shoulder, facing back the way they had come. Suddenly he gave a little start. “Boom!” he said.

Ursula spun around. A lurid glow lit the sky, a hot orange that pulsed and faded.

 

Early Sunday morning the radio carried news of the invasion of France. Without waiting to shave, Seán Lester hurried to League headquarters. “The trains!” he demanded. “Are they still running? Does anyone know?”

No one could tell him. Overcome by the swiftness of events, the communications network of the League of Nations had ground to a halt.

Lester spent an anguished day and another sleepless night. He was crouching over the radio again when the sun came up on Monday morning.

All the news was bad news. The German advance was unstoppable. Several civilian trains had been strafed; the number of casualties was not yet known. Lester went to the Palais des Nations, talked with overwrought colleagues whose conversations did not register on his mind, and eventually went home again to stare at the walls and wait.

On Monday evening the telephone finally rang.

“Oh Seán,” Elsie said with a shaky laugh. “A great tragedy. My beautiful blue hat is all ruined with machine oil.”
¹

“Thank God! I mean…is that all? Where are you?”

“We're at Dieppe. Boulogne and Calais are both closed. There are no commercial aeroplanes, of course, and no passenger steamers available at the moment, so we're taking the mail boat.”

“I've been listening to the most horrible news. Was your train…”

“It was. Bombed and machine-gunned both. Oh Seán, Ursula was splendid! You should have seen her. She was injured herself but she got us safely away from the train and found a road. Everyone was racing west to get away from the Germans; I didn't think they would stop. But Ursula gave me the baby to hold and stepped right out in front of the cars.”

“You said she was injured?”

“I hadn't realized until I saw her in the headlamps of the cars. Her whole skirt was covered with blood. She certainly did stop traffic, though! A man and his wife took us with them all the way to Paris and delivered us to your friend Seán Murphy, the Irish ambassador. He immediately took Ursula to hospital. The doctors removed a huge piece of glass from her thigh. Half an inch further over would have cut the artery. They wanted to keep her in hospital overnight but she wouldn't have it.

“The ambassador's been wonderful to us. He's arranged everything. Our suitcases were left in the train but we'd put our passports and exit visas inside our clothes, so we have our documentation. In another twenty-four hours we'll be in London.”

Lester felt weak with relief. “And little Barry, is he all right too?”

“Nothing seems to upset him much. He's like his mother in that respect, though when we were collecting our tickets for the boat Ursula began trembling. Reaction, I suppose.”

“She's entitled,” said Lester.

 

The docks of Dieppe were crowded with people desperate to leave the Continent. They crowded onto the mail boat like so many cattle. Ursula studied their faces. Some looked relieved. A few seemed angry. Most appeared to be dazed.

Refugees
, Ursula thought.
Leaving everything behind in order to escape with the most precious possession of all, life. What do you do when the familiar world turns upside down and you have to begin again?

You just get on with it, that's all; and thank God there's something to be getting on with
.

Ursula grimly endured the trip across the Channel. She carried Barry to the rail and let him feel the wind in his face and smell the sea. “Isn't this wonderful?” she said through gritted teeth.

He grinned his jolly toothless grin. “ '
Derful
.”

She refused to infect him with her fear.

They arrived safely, disembarking in a driving rainstorm.

England. At once enemy camp and sanctuary.
How can it be both at the same time?
Ursula wondered.

The diplomatic network was waiting to enfold them. A motorcar with a crisply solicitous driver sped them to London, where they were already booked into a comfortable hotel near Marble Arch. A meal was brought to their room but the two women only picked at their food. Like Barry, they soon fell into an exhausted sleep.

The next morning Elsie made several telephone calls. “We can't get a flight to Ireland until tomorrow,” she told Ursula. “We can go by steamship, but—”

“Let's wait for the plane,” Ursula said quickly.

Elsie smiled. “I agree, we can all use a bit more rest. I do have to go out and pay a few calls later. If it stops raining, would you like to take Barry for a walk in Hyde Park? Or have you friends in London whom you'd like to see?”

Ursula shook her head. “We'll just stay here, if you don't mind.”

After breakfast Barry fell asleep again. Ursula thought about doing the same thing herself, but could not. She was too tightly strung. Her brain was a kaleidoscope of recent images and future imaginings.

Me in England and thankful to be here. Astonishing. I keep being presented with the unexpected, like some giant cosmic test
.

Ursula stood gazing down at the wonder of Barry; the human being she…and he…had created. The unexpected miracle.