LITMIR.BIZ

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of their origin or species), which were confined to a strong cardboard box and given to me and Rita for safekeeping and delivery to Götland. They’d also got hold of a batch of turtle eggs, which they kept in a box of sand with a strong electric light shining on them 24 hours a day. Luckily, the bulb had failed while we were in Stockholm and the eggs had addled so we didn’t have to lug those along too.

      But here we were now with Gladys and Gertrude, the size of garden tortoises, with beady little eyes, long sharp claws and a knowing look. We were told to look after them carefully until they got to their new home on the desolate shores of the Baltic.

      We came to hate the creatures.

      All day they would snooze comfortably in their cardboard box but as soon as night began to fall they would start to scratch their long claws against its sides.

      Scratch, scratch. Scratch, scratch.

      Our nights were punctuated by the incessant scratching of turtle claws. We tried starving them of lettuce for a day, but hunger only renewed their efforts.

      Apparently there had been some difficulties in procuring a boat passage from Sweden’s mainland to Götland for me and Rita because the tourist season was at its height and visitors were flocking to this Island of Roses, but Carl had used his influence and had secured berths for us on an unspecified type of boat, cheerily named The Swedish Girl.

      The next evening found my sister and I on the quay at Nynäshamn, south of Stockholm, waiting in the creeping twilight to embark for Visby, Götland’s capital. I was holding our suitcases (those dreadful post-war cardboard ones) and Rita was clutching the box containing Gladys and Gertrude. We stood on the dock, just the two of us, beginning to wonder why there were no other passengers waiting to board The Swedish Girl.

      We were not left wondering for long.

      A packed train pulled onto the quay filled with men of every size and description – little men, big men, short men, tall men, fat men and thin men – but all sharing two characteristics: one, they were very young, and two, they were all slightly merry, tipsy or downright drunk. As the train stopped they fell out of every door – and some windows – and, like a rushing tide, poured onto the quay and up the just lowered gangplank.

      We were literally engulfed. Rita dropped the turtle box. She tried to recover it but it was too late. It was being swept inexorably towards the water. We scrambled after our precious charges just in time to see their box tumble into the water and float gently on the surface with Gladys and Gertrude still persistently scratching inside.

      Conscious of her responsibility to Carl and August and the two turtles, Rita turned a white and distraught face to a young man next to her, pointed at the bobbing box and desperately shouted ‘Help!’ Such were her powers of persuasion, and no doubt primed by schnapps, the young man leapt into the water with a loud splash, and secured the box by clutching it firmly to his bosom. The crowd cheered. Some of his more sober mates helped him out of the water, and he restored the box to Rita with a deep bow. Then, standing erect with water streaming down him, he saluted, clicked his heels smartly and fell backwards into the water again.

      When we eventually got on board we found out from the anxious captain (who was one of Carl and August’s best mates, and had been searching for us in the throng) that his ship had been temporarily commandeered as a troopship and that night it was taking a thousand new military conscripts, together with a few officers, to a large army camp in Götland. So we were to sail, the only two females on board, in company with a thousand young men enjoying their last night of freedom.

      Rita and I were thrilled.

      The captain, however, worriedly showed us to our cabin on deck – which was actually the sick berth – telling us we would be safer there because the door had a very strong lock. I admit by then we were beginning to feel just a little anxious ourselves. However, leaving Gladys and Gertrude to their interminable scratching, totally unaware of the ecological disaster they would have caused had they escaped into the Baltic Sea, we locked the door and went to dine with the captain and his officers. Afterwards I clung to the captain’s arm as he led us back to our safe haven on deck amidst strains of shouting and singing from the troops.

      As we were getting undressed I noticed an eye glued to a crack over one of the windows. When I made signs for it to go away it winked at me. I stuck an envelope over the crack with a rude word written on it.

      That wasn’t the end of it, however.

      Knockings on the door and windows started and as the night wore on became louder and more persistent. They even outdid Gladys and Gertrude’s scratching.

      After a disturbed night of noise and uneasy dreams, our maidenhoods unscathed, at six o’clock the captain knocked politely on the door and asked if we would like to see the approach to the island, ‘a very beautiful sight’.

      It’s still one of the loveliest first sights I’ve ever experienced. Here was a magic island floating on a blue sea still shrouded by wisps of the early morning mist that curled gently about it. Grey turreted walls and towers seemed to rise from the waves as they thrust up against the pearly opalescence of the morning. As the sun rose higher it threw a shimmering path of rose-coloured light from boat to shore. Silhouetted shapes of towers and spires gradually became visible against the dawn sky and the sound of bells floated through the soft breeze. To me it seemed that here King Arthur might have held court as his knights wandered with their ladies on the grassy banks shaded by stone walls. It was here that Sleeping Beauty might have lain for a hundred years, deaf to the murmurings of the waves and calls of the gulls. And it was here that fairies danced in the early morning dew and wove their spells and magic.

      As the boat drew nearer the quay and the first breathless hush of wonder was over – even the young soldiers had been temporarily silenced – we could see that Visby was surrounded by thick medieval stone walls and that the spires and towers belonged not to fairy-tale castles but to churches – 93 of them. A former Viking site, Visby became the queen of the Hanseatic League in the Baltic from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries. Today it is a UNESCO world heritage site, the best-preserved fortified commercial city in northern Europe.

      On the quayside we saw a little round woman with a kerchief anxiously scanning the faces of the passengers. This was Hilda, August’s wife, who had come to meet us.

      ‘Did you have a pleasant trip?’ she asked, as Rita and I disembarked, ahead of the conscripts, who stood back and courteously allowed us to go down the gangplank. Sober reality and the thought of a year’s military service had somewhat dimmed the exuberance of the crossing.

      The unwritten laws of hospitality forbade us to say anything but ‘Yes’ as we thrust the turtle box thankfully into Hilda’s arms.

      (Later we learnt that she had slipped the two turtles into the Baltic, where they had given her one last beady-eyed stare before swimming away.)

      We drove to Slite, a village some 20 miles from Visby, where the whole Hammerström family had been born and still lived. The village was small, sleeping peacefully on the banks of the Baltic. Hilda’s house, called Sjustvan on account of the seven streams that had their source in the forest and bubbled into a lake at the back of the house, stood on a small hill surrounded by forest. I stood on the veranda of a large airy room facing the sea and was reminded of the veranda in the south of France where I had stood the previous year. There the colours had been rich and vivid; here they were paler shades of grey, green and blue.

      The Hammerströms were a large family of sisters and brothers, wives, children and a repugnant black pug called Frenchie, who looked like a fat tick and was fed on steak and cream. Rita and I thought wistfully of Peter, our lean but beloved dog at home, who scavenged for bones and hunted rabbits in the wild wood.

      But the centre of the family, and its most important member, was Clara the cow, who produced enough milk, butter and cream for everyone. Understandably, she was very spoilt: in summer she had a fine straw hat which protected her from the sun and every day a necklace of daisy-chains was made for her by one of the children. In winter a hand-knitted blanket kept her warm. Hilda would sing to her as she milked her with her face pressed against Clara’s

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