I thanked him and took a sip, realizing too late that the secret ingredient was high-test whiskey. It felt like napalm flushing down my esophagus. “It does have a certain kick,” I admitted, my face going red.
He frowned. “Reckon I ought to fetch your father.”
“No, no, I’ll be fine. But if there’s anything else you can tell me about the attack, I’d be grateful.”
Martin settled into a chair opposite me. “About that, I’m curious. You say your grandfather lived here. He never mentioned it?”
“I’m curious about that, too,” I said. “I guess it must’ve been after his time. Did it happen late in the war or early?”
“I’m ashamed to admit I don’t know. But if you’re keen, I can introduce you to someone who does—my Uncle Oggie. He’s eighty-three, lived here his whole life. Still sharp as a tack.” Martin glanced at his watch. “If we catch him before Father Ted comes on the telly, I’m sure he’d be more than happy to tell you anything you like.”
Ten minutes later Martin and I were wedged deep in an overstuffed sofa in Oggie’s living room, which was piled high with books and boxes of worn-out shoes and enough lamps to light up Carlsbad Caverns, all but one of them unplugged. Living on a remote island, I was starting to realize, turned people into pack rats. Oggie sat facing us in a threadbare blazer and pajama bottoms, as if he’d been expecting company—just not pants-worthy company—and rocked endlessly in a plastic-covered easy chair as he talked. He seemed happy just to have an audience, and after he’d gone on at length about the weather and Welsh politics and the sorry state of today’s youth, Martin was finally able to steer him around to the attack and the children from the home.
“Sure, I remember them,” he said. “Odd collection of people. We’d see them in town now and again—the children, sometimes their minder-woman, too—buying milk and medicine and what-have-you. You’d say ‘good morning’ and they’d look the other way. Kept to themselves, they did, off in that big house. Lot of talk about what might’ve been going on over there, though no one knew for sure.”
“What kind of talk?”
“Lot of rot. Like I said, no one knew. All I can say is they weren’t your regular sort of orphan children—not like them Barnardo Home kids they got in other places, who you’ll see come into town for parades and things and always have time for a chat. This lot was different. Some of ’em couldn’t even speak the King’s English. Or any English, for that matter.”
“Because they weren’t really orphans,” I said. “They were refugees from other countries. Poland, Austria, Czechoslovakia …”
“Is that what they were, now?” Oggie said, cocking an eyebrow at me. “Funny, I hadn’t heard that.” He seemed offended, like I’d insulted him by pretending to know more about his island than he did. His chair-rocking got faster, more aggressive. If this was the kind of reception my grandpa and the other kids got on Cairnholm, I thought, no wonder they kept to themselves.
Martin cleared his throat. “So, Uncle, the bombing?”
“Oh, keep your hair on. Yes, yes, the goddamned Jerries. Who could forget them?” He launched into a long-winded description of what life on the island was like under threat of German air raids: the blaring sirens; the panicked scrambles for shelter; the volunteer air-raid warden who ran from house to house at night making sure shades had been drawn and streetlights were put out to rob enemy pilots of easy targets. They prepared as best they could but never really thought they’d get hit, given all the ports and factories on the mainland, all much more important targets than Cairnholm’s little gun emplacement. But one night, the bombs began to fall.
“The noise was dreadful,” Oggie said. “It was like giants stamping across the island, and it seemed to go on for ages. They gave us a hell of a pounding, though no one in town was killed, thank heaven. Can’t say the same for our gunner boys—though they gave as good as they got—nor the poor souls at the orphan home. One bomb was all it took. Gave up their lives for Britain, they did. So wherever they was from, God bless ’em for that.”
“Do you remember when it happened?” I asked. “Early in the war or late?”
“I can tell you the exact day,” he said. “It was the third of September, 1940.”
The air seemed to go out of the room. I flashed to my grandfather’s ashen face, his lips just barely moving, uttering those very words. September third, 1940.
“Are you—you sure about that? That it was that day?”
“I never got to fight,” he said. “Too young by a year. That one night was my whole war. So, yes, I’m sure.”
I felt numb, disconnected. It was too strange. Was someone playing a joke on me, I wondered—a weird, unfunny joke?
“And there weren’t any survivors at all?” Martin asked.
The old man thought for a moment, his gaze drifting up to the ceiling. “Now that you mention it,” he said, “I reckon there were. Just one. A young man, not much older than this boy here.” His rocking stopped as he remembered it. “Walked into town the morning after with not a scratch upon him. Hardly seemed perturbed at all, considering he’d just seen all his mates go to their reward. It was the queerest thing.”
“He was probably in shock,” Martin said.
“I shouldn’t wonder,” replied Oggie. “He spoke only once, to ask my father when the next boat was leaving for the mainland. Said he wanted to take up arms directly and kill the damned monsters who murdered his people.”
Oggie’s story was nearly as far-fetched as the ones Grandpa Portman used to tell, and yet I had no reason to doubt him.
“I knew him,” I said. “He was my grandfather.”
They looked at me, astonished. “Well,” Billy said. “I’ll be blessed.”
I excused myself and stood up. Martin, remarking that I seemed out of sorts, offered to walk me back to the pub, but I declined. I needed to be alone with my thoughts. “Come and see me soon, then,” he said, and I promised I would.
I took the long way back, past the swaying lights of the harbor, the air heavy with brine and with chimney smoke from a hundred hearth fires. I walked to the end of a dock and watched the moon rise over the water, imagining my grandfather standing there on that awful morning after, numb with shock, waiting for a boat that would take him away from all the death he’d endured, to war, and more death. There was no escaping the monsters, not even on this island, no bigger on a map than a grain of sand, protected by mountains of fog and sharp rocks and seething tides. Not anywhere. That was the awful truth my grandfather had tried to protect me from.
In the distance, I heard the generators sputter and spin down, and all the lights along the harbor and in house windows behind me surged for a moment before going dark. I imagined how such a thing might look from an airplane’s height—the whole island suddenly winking out, as if it had never been there at all. A supernova in miniature.
I walked back by moonlight, feeling small. I found my dad in the pub at the same table where he’d been, a half-eaten plate of beef and gravy congealing into grease before him. “Look who’s back,” he said as I sat down. “I saved your dinner for you.”
“I’m not hungry,” I said, and told him what I’d learned about Grandpa Portman.
He seemed more angry than surprised. “I can’t believe he never brought this up,” he said. “Not one time.” I could understand his anger: it was one thing for a grandparent to withhold something like that from a grandchild, quite another for a father to keep it from his son—and for so long.
I tried to steer the conversation in a more positive direction. “It’s amazing, isn’t it? Everything he went through.”