“We’re gonna have to lean more on Tuck for a while. We haven’t asked him for much so far, but we can compensate him if he keeps his eyes and ears open for any information about Willoughby sending the cops after our warehouse.”
John’s eyes widened. “If they raid the—”
“Yeah. I’m worried about that. It was a direct threat, sending Slim there instead of meeting me somewhere else. I have Walter doubling security.”
“What’s the plan, Jerry?”
He took a breath. “We dig a tunnel under the barn then build a storage room for the booze underground. No one but you and I can know about it.”
John was incredulous. “Just the two of us? It would take forever to dig a room big enough to house everything.”
“It’s not for everything. We’re going to split up the stock. We’ll keep some at the warehouse, store the rest here at the house.”
“But you just said they might raid the warehouse. You still want to leave some there?”
Jerry nodded slowly. “Yeah. I want it visible. If we are raided and half our stock is here, they won’t get everything. Willoughby will think he’s put us out of business if he takes what he can see, but he never will.”
“That’ll make him crazy,” John said with a smile.
But Jerry wasn’t smiling. “In order to do this, we will have to go underground.”
That was something neither of them ever wanted to do again.
John paused, then lifted his chin, resignation in his eyes. “Guess we’d better start digging. You mark the entrance off. I’ll go get the shovels.”
At first, it wasn’t so bad, but as soon as they’d hollowed out enough of a hole that they were able to stand underground, Jerry’s chest constricted. It was silly, he knew, and it lasted only a blink, but he didn’t think he’d ever be able to go under the earth again without this kind of fear. When John lit a match for the lanterns, they both stared at it out of habit. In the tunnels, where breathing clean air meant life or death, they’d learned that if the match only burned red, there wasn’t enough oxygen for a man to survive. Now, the flame bloomed yellow, and they both exhaled.
“All right,” Jerry said, shrugging off the claustrophobia. “Let’s keep going.”
It was a different colour dirt from so many other tunnels he’d dug,but it was dirt just the same. Heavy and thick and endless. In the beginning, all Jerry heard was the crack of the pickaxe, then the scrape and push of their shovels. After three days, they’d moved so far underground that Jerry had to remind himself to unclench his jaw. And while he told himself that men were not dying above him, he couldn’t help listening for explosions, and for German shovels coming from the other side.
John was watching him. “Do you hear them too?”
Jerry nodded, aware his hands were shaking. They hadn’t done that for a while.
“We should sing,” John suggested, then he launched into an old song they’d sung when they were done with their shifts and clear of the tunnels, safe to use their voices again. The men had squeezed the words through their strained throats to ease the fear they all felt.
Oh what a life! Oh what a life!
Living in a trench.
Oh what a life! Oh what a life!
Fighting for the French.
We haven’t got a wife or a nice little wench,
We’re all quite happy in an old French trench.
And for a little while, Jerry let himself forget.
fourteenADELE
— June 1921 —
Adele fidgeted, hugging her shawl tight around her for reassurance as she stared up at Ernie’s house. Really, it was a mansion, with its four storeys, at least a dozen bright and welcoming windows, and an illuminated walkway filled with a stream of guests. A rainbow of merry women in short, shiny skirts and floor-length satin gowns swept along the path accompanied by gentlemen in white shirts and long, dark coats, black fedoras sitting jauntily on top. Everyone smiled and laughed as they walked, and she watched them disappear through the open front door, welcomed by the music playing inside.
When Ernie Willoughby had invited her to the annual party at his house, her first reaction had been to decline. She wasn’t good in crowds. Especially one filled with strangers. She wouldn’t know anyone, she said, trying to wriggle out.
