‘Irish Intrigue’ was released
last week, the culmination of over a year’s work, and more if I count the
earlier drafts of this story.
Charley Hunter returns
unwillingly to Ireland to complete the filming of a TV drama series. She still
hasn’t come to terms with the tragic loss of her husband there two years
previously, and the last thing she expects is an instant attraction to an Irish
veterinary surgeon.
Luke Sullivan’s life is full
as he tries to balance caring for his two young children with his busy rural
veterinary practice. After the break-up of his marriage, he vowed to leave
women well alone, but now finds himself drawn to Charley.
While Charley struggles with
the re-awakening of her emotions, Luke faces a series of unexplained crises at
his clinic, as well as an impending custody battle with his ex-wife.
They grow closer as their
initial interest in each other develops into mutual support and then into love.
But how can an English actress and an Irish vet reconcile their different worlds?
And will their relationship survive when Luke believes Charley has endangered
his children’s lives – and then betrayed him?
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An important character in
the story is a retired actress. I’ve called her
Alice Vernon, but one incident in the book originally involved a real actress.
In 2011, during one of my trips
to Ireland, I visited a small village called Cong in County Mayo. The main
reason was that this was where some of the movie, ‘The Quiet Man’ was filmed in
the 1950s. It starred John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara. The cottage used in the
film is now in ruins, but one of the cottages in the village has been set up to
look like the original cottage, with authentic reproduction of the rooms and
some of the costumes worn by the stars.
After we’d explored the
cottage and studied the photographs and local newspaper accounts of the filming
in and around the village, we were asked to sign the visitors’ book. Out of
habit, I glanced at the previous page of signatures and did a double-take at
the one at the bottom of the page – Maureen
O’Hara - Yonkers, NY.
I must admit my immediate
reaction was. “I didn’t realise she was still alive!” – but when we asked the
girl in the small shop, she said, “Yes, she has a house near Cork, and often
visits here when she’s in Ireland.”
I knew I would use this small
incident in a novel at some point – and so in Chapter 2 of ‘Irish Intrigue’,
Charley visits a small cottage – and see the signature of Alice Vernon in the
guest book. Alice goes on to play an important role in the rest of the story.
Originally I based her on Maureen O’Hara – but somehow as I wrote her, she
became more and more like Maggie Smith!
For those who were interested
in the talk by Eva Schloss I heard last night, here is a brief summary of it.
Eva Schloss is now 85 years old, and her mother married Anne Frank’s father after the Second World War. However,
her talk wasn’t about her famous posthumous step-sister, but about her own
life.
Born in Vienna in 1929 to a
fairly well-to-do family, she had to flee Austria with her parents and brother
after the Anschluss in 1938. They were no longer welcome in Austria. The mother
of her (non-Jewish) best friend screamed at her never to visit their house
again, and her brother was beaten up at school.
They went first to Belgium
and then to Amsterdam. Anne Frank was one of her school friends there. Not a
best friend, she stressed, just one of the friends she played with in the local
park. “If I’d known what would happen in the future, I might have taken more
notice of her,” she said with a wry smile. The main things she could remember
about Anne was that she was a lively, confident chatterbox and also, even at
11, she was already interested in clothes, hairstyles, and boys, whereas Eva
was still a tomboy and quite shy.
Once Germany invaded Holland
in 1940, life gradually became more difficult for the Jews, as different
restrictions were placed on them. They weren’t allowed to use public transport.
“No problem,” she said. “We all had bicycles anyway.” As a child, she was far
more upset that Jews were not allowed to visit the cinema, especially when they
couldn’t go to see ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ which all their non-Jewish
friends were talking about.
Despite the restrictions, she
said, life was tolerable until 1942, when orders were issued that all Jews aged
between 16 and 25 had to report for labour service in Germany. That was when
the Franks went into hiding, and so did Eva’s family.
Unlike the Franks,
however, Eva and her mother were hiding in one apartment with Dutch friends,
and her father and brother with another Dutch woman. When this woman started to
blackmail them for more money, Eva’s father found another place for them all
with a Dutch nurse. They’d only been with her for a short time when the
Gestapo arrived and arrested them. It turned out that this woman was working
for the Germans and had betrayed over 100 Jews to them. After the war, she was
tried but only received a 4 year sentence. Eva’s anger, however, was directed
more toward to the woman who had blackmailed her father, because if that hadn’t
happened, they wouldn’t have ended up hiding with the woman who betrayed them.
The family were arrested in May,
1944, on Eva’s 15th birthday. They were taken first to Westerbork in Holland,
which was a transit camp. Evidently a Jewish man was in charge of compiling
lists of inmates for the ‘transports’ each Tuesday to the concentration camps
further east. Of course, said Eva, he protected his own family and friends, and
so she and her family were only at Westerbork two days before they were moved
on. Over 100,000 Jews were moved to the concentration camps from Westerbork.
When they were in the cattle
truck, heading east to they knew not where, her father broke down in tears and
said, “I have tried to protect you, but I cannot protect you anymore. We will
all have to protect ourselves now.”
During the 3 days in the
cattle truck into which they were crammed, they had to take turns in sitting
down, or standing by the narrow opening in the side of the truck to get some
air. They had one bucket to use as a toilet, and people fainted in the truck.
Some died, too.
Eva told us all this almost as
if she was describing a normal train journey, while I (and the rest of the
audience) listened open-mouthed.
Eventually they arrived at
Auschwitz, and as they disembarked on the platform in the camp, the selections
began. You were told to go to the left or to the right by the camp doctor (Mengele) in
smart uniform, black boots, and white gloves. Those on the left were told they
were being taken to the showers and the group on the right envied them after
all the days they’d spent in the cattle truck. Of course, as we now know, the
showerheads didn’t deliver water.
Eva went on to tell us about
life in Auschwitz. After hours standing naked (which, she said, was excruciatingly
embarrassing for a 15 year old), they gave details of their names, ages, and
where they born to an official, and were tattooed with a number (which is still
visible on her arm). Then they were allowed to pick up an item of clothing from
one pile, and shoes from another (but it was impossible to find any matching
shoes).
They were taken to already
overcrowded barrack blocks – six wooden bunks for 20 or more women. After only
a few days, they were all crawling with head and body lice, and trying to
survive on a cup of thin soup in the morning, and some hard bread in the
evening. Water was available, but you didn’t drink it, because it was
contaminated, and you could end up with typhus or cholera.
By this time, you could have
heard a pin drop in the hall where Eva was speaking. Even after 90 minutes, no
one shuffled in their seats or even coughed. Like everyone else, I was riveted by
her story.
She went on to tell how they
somehow survived the bitter winter of 1944/45, how 60,000 were marched out of
the camp in early January on a Death March, and how the German guards fled at
the approach of the Russians. The gates (underneath the infamous watchtower
through which the trains came in) were opened, but the remaining inmates stayed
in the camp. They had no money, no possessions, and had no idea where they
could go if they left the camp. Finally, on January 27th 1945 the camp was
liberated by the Russians. Next week there will be various commemorations to
mark this 70th anniversary (and Eva is going to Germany to speak to an audience
of people there).
The Russians set up field
kitchens, and made cabbage soup for the remaining inmates of the camp. Eva said, “I can still remember the heavenly smell of that soup.”
Then she laughed. “And I spent the next night crouched over the bucket.
After so many months of starvation, my body couldn’t cope with real food.”
Evidently a lot of people died that night and the next day because they
over-ate.
Even after the liberation,
the nightmare was not over. Eva and her mother eventually reached Odessa, from
where they were taken by ship to Marseilles, and finally arrived back in
Amsterdam. They learned that her father and brother had both died in Auschwitz,
and they met up with Otto Frank again, who also learned that his wife and
daughters had died in Bergen-Belsen.
Otto, Eva said, was amazing.
He visited many Jews who had lost their children, husbands, wives, or other family
members, encouraging them to stay positive.
One day he came to their
apartment with a bag, and said, “Look what I have found. I didn’t know my
daughter at all.”
Of course, it was Anne’s
diary, which Miep, one of their Dutch friends, had found and kept after the
Gestapo arrested the Frank family.
What else can I say except
that it was the most compelling talk I have ever heard? I’ve read plenty about
Anne Frank, have been to the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam, and have also visited
Auschwitz a couple of times, but hearing about it from someone who experienced
all the fear and lived through all the cruelty and horror was, to put it
mildly, mind-blowing.
I was also amazed that this woman,
who had experienced and witnessed so many horrors, had somehow managed to come
through it and, in the end, live a relatively ‘normal’ life in England. Not
only did she have the physical strength to survive the starvation and disease
at Auschwitz, she also had the mental strength to rise above the horrific experiences
of her teenage years and their after-effects.
A truly amazing woman.
If you want to know more,
check her out on Amazon, as she has written three books about her experiences.
