Forbidden Liaison: They lived and loved for the here and now (5 page)

‘Yes, Sir,’ Steiner replied.

‘Next time, use them,’ he said. 

As Heinrich walked into his billet his nostrils filled with the aroma of sauerkraut and sausage, and following the smell through to the kitchen he went to sit at the table.

Busch looked very pleased with himself. ‘There you are, Sir, your lunch,’ he said.

Heinrich looked down at the plate of mashed potato, sausage and cabbage. ‘You’ve excelled yourself today,’ he said as he picked up his fork.

‘Don’t expect this every day, I can’t always get hold of the ingredients.’

‘This is my favourite dish,’ Heinrich commented as he tucked into the food with relish.

‘I know, Sir.’

Heinrich looked up from his plate. ‘How is it everyone knows everything about everyone else?’

‘This is a small island, Sir, more like a village. You’d be surprised what we know about you.’

‘Tell me,’ Heinrich asked amused.

‘You’re partial to apple strudel, and considered a bit of a ladies man.’

Heinrich laughed. ‘When do I get the apple strudel?’

‘I’m working on it,’ Busch replied. ‘But you’ll have to supply the woman yourself.’

Heinrich smiled.

‘Sir, may I have a word with you?’ Busch asked becoming serious for once.

‘Is it of a personal nature?’

‘Well, yes, it is, Sir.’

Heinrich put down his fork wondering why the hell he was beginning to feel like a man who had been saddled with kids that weren’t his own, and why his days were filled with matters of a pastoral nature? ‘What is it?’ he asked grumpily

‘I got a letter from my wife this morning. She’s not getting the money I’m sending. We have five children and frankly I’m worried about them.’

‘You need to see the paymaster,’ Heinrich advised.

‘I have, they’ve fobbed me off with excuses. This has been going on for weeks. She sounded really desperate.’

‘Give me your pay-book,’ Heinrich said as he took out his handkerchief to wipe his lips after he had put the last piece of sausage into his mouth.

The cook took his pay-book from his breast pocket and gave it to Heinrich who flicked through it. ‘Leave it with me, I’ll try and sort it out,’ he said.

‘Thank you, Sir.’

‘It will have to be tomorrow as I’m running behind schedule,’ Heinrich said finishing off his coffee. Then he asked. ‘Tell me, did I see a smile on Mrs Wilfred’s face this morning, or was I imagining it?’

‘You’ve not heard, Sir?’

‘I’m always the last to hear anything around here.’

‘That accident you attended yesterday?’

‘What about it?’

‘The old man who was knocked over: he was in his eighties.’

Heinrich suddenly remembered. ‘Luckily for him then he was only cut and bruised.’

‘It was her father-in-law, Sir.’

‘I would have thought she’d have been spitting nails at me, not smiling,’ Heinrich said, puzzled.

‘Word has got around that you tore a strip of the young driver who wasn’t paying attention. Then you attended the old man’s wound’s yourself until a doctor arrived. It’s not only the islanders who are beginning to find that hard exterior of yours slightly dented, but the troops also.’

‘I will have to watch myself then, won’t I?’

‘I’ll bet you’re glad to be here, though, Sir,’ the cook said as he gave Heinrich a second cup of coffee.

Heinrich just looked at him. This time last year he was being bombarded by Russian heavy artillery as they fought their way to the oilfields of Kharkov. Tomorrow though was his birthday. He had lived to see another wasted year.

Battle weary and lonely, Heinrich stood on the wet sand facing the sea. Occasionally he picked up pebbles to toss into the water. He watched them sink, like his morale after the disastrous dinner party, and taking on board his own men’s personal problems; problems of which he had enough of himself. His feeling of loneliness was intense. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had any real female company. He had spent a couple of nights in Paris – the German soldiers Babylon – a few months ago with his friend Kurt who was off to command a unit on the Eastern Front. They had been drinking, finishing the evening in the company of a French woman. Heinrich said he wasn’t into threesomes, but Kurt tried to persuade him, and the French woman, by telling her it was Heinrich’s birthday, which was a lie, and that Heinrich had been severely wounded and lucky to still be alive. In truth he had been wounded in the upper arm and chest. It had been painful and he was afraid of losing the limb at one point. The Frenchwoman eventually conceded but Heinrich didn’t. A woman’s company meant more to him than that.

After pulling his cap down over his eyes, he turned up the collar on his great-coat. It was cold. But this cold didn’t seep through to his marrow like the sub-zero temperatures of a Russian winter. There, the only way to keep his feet warm was to steal a pair of felt over-boots from a Russian soldier after first slitting his throat. His thirty fifth birthday was spent in a slit-trench on the Russian Front up to his knees in blood and shit. The only comfort and warmth he got was by watching the red light on the radio dial, and the voice of a female singing the song
Lili Marlene
which was constantly broadcast from one of the propaganda stations: Belgrade probably.

‘Underneath the lantern, by the barrack gate,’
she sang.

‘I wish she’d put a sock in it,’ Heinrich remembered someone shouting from down the line.

‘I know what I’d like to put in it,’ some else had shouted.

‘Dirty sod,’ came a third voice from the darkness.

So Heinrich had celebrated his thirty five years with a bottle of looted vodka, passing it around the rest of the men who sat huddled in the trench with him. His thirty sixth year would be spent on a small island making sure there was no subversive behaviour, radios or small-arms.

Although he hadn’t rallied to the Fuhrer’s initial call to fight Bolshevism, when he was forced to succumb, he thought it wouldn’t be to railroad old men, women and children into the Fuhrer’s way of thinking. But now his role in the vast war machine of the Third Reich was that of glorified policeman. He sometimes thought he would have been better off sent back to the Eastern Front where he had often looked forward to death, giving him permanent respite from the pain and misery of life under a Fascist dictator. Only his mother and daughters remembered his birthday, not even his wife. So today brought the realisation that she didn’t actually care. The Third Reich knew he was dispensable. Get himself killed and there would be plenty of others to fill his boots: Oberleutnants were plentiful. But he was not hood-winked any more by the propaganda mill that ground out lie after lie. He knew the truth, but he kept that truth to himself: he had to: for self-preservation. And he thought even his wife had now begun to think he was replaceable, but he didn’t want to know what she got up to when he wasn’t there. His last home leave had been over a year ago. It had lasted four days. Only his children had said how much they missed him. So, he had spent the past few days consoling himself by looking at the photograph of his two daughters: Hilde now six: little Heidi, four.

The peacefulness of his surroundings, of standing alone, listening to the sea instead of gun-fire: hearing the gulls overhead instead of machine gun fire from enemy fighter planes as they strafed the ground around him: glancing down at a picture of his children instead of a man with his limbs blown off. It all made a welcome change. But it was all suddenly interrupted: running from the direction of the rocks was a huge German shepherd dog. As it reached him it snapped at his heels, then barked, spraying saliva over his highly polished boots. As that familiar surge of adrenaline began to pump through his veins, Heinrich unclipped the leather case attached to his belt. But before he could pull out his Walther he heard someone shout.

‘Leave,’ a female voice rang out, and the dog immediately stopped barking, to sit on its haunches.

Heinrich’s eyes went from the dog to the woman who approached the beach from the direction of a well-worn path. The sight of her was totally unexpected.

‘Big brute, isn’t he?’ he said. ‘Is he safe to be left roaming free?’ he asked.

‘He’ll do as I say,’ Izzy said as she took a chain from her pocket, but made no move to leash the dog.

Heinrich was still staring down at the animal.

‘He’ll only attack if I tell him to,’ Izzy said.

Heinrich dropped his hand from his belt. ‘I’ve seen you before; at my billet,’ he said.

‘Have you?’ Izzy replied. But she recognised him straight away. ‘You all look the same to me, it must be the uniform.’

Heinrich began to stare at the young woman standing in front of him. Her chestnut coloured hair hung loose, blowing about her face in the strong wind. It appeared thick enough to lose himself in, and the thought of burying his face into her creamy coloured flesh excited him so much, he had to adjust his stance.

‘One cannot forget the colour of your hair, it is most striking,’ he remarked, trying to make it sound like something anyone would say to her: man or woman.

He had been surrounded by evil for more years than he cared to remember, and this woman, somehow, gave him hope. Perhaps it was the calm behind her bright green eyes? But he would have hated it if she became frightened of him. He didn’t fight old men, women or children, even though they spat and threw rocks at him, and sometimes his kindnesses were misread. Why did people think every German soldier was a rapist, a child molester, a Jew hater, or a psychopath? He wanted what everyone else wanted; a quiet, peaceful life. He didn’t want to kill, he didn’t want to snatch moments with other women because he was away from home. He didn’t want contact with other children because of the need to hold his own children in his arms to feel their sweet breath upon his cheek.

Izzy looked away from his lengthy stare. He was being very personal, intimate even, and realising her looking away might be interpreted as a sign; a signal; a come-on; she soon looked him straight in the eye again.  

‘You’re new here,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ Heinrich smiled for the first time. 

‘Your English is very good.’

Heinrich grinned. ‘As good as your German?’

‘Better,’ Izzy replied.

He liked the honesty of her answer. The rules had been made very clear. The inhabitants were supposed to learn and speak the German language, but for the elder residents it proved difficult because they refused to have anything to do with the troops. Children were a different matter. They were taught the language in school and it was they who had most contact with the soldiers. Heinrich ignored the rules. Besides he liked showing-off his mastery of the English language. As her eyes began to mesmerise him; draw him in, he thought he knew her: had met her before. He tried to convince himself that she was just like any other woman he had met, she just happened to be British. He had to look away because she wasn’t like any other woman; the others hadn’t touched him like she had. She seemed to touch his soul, not just the devil that squatted between his legs. No other woman had ever touched his soul before, or even come close to it. He suddenly felt very vulnerable.

Concentrating now on her clothing, especially the rust coloured jumper, not her face, he noticed it had been darned by the top button hole. He saw how neat and symmetrical the stitching was and he respected her for its precision. As a boy he would sit and watch his mother darning by the fire. She always sewed whilst waiting for the bread to rise. The bowl of dough would sit on the hearth at her feet, slowly rising under a fresh, clean cloth while the sound of the chiming clocks filtered up from the shop below. Even today a chiming clock filled his stomach with a knot of nostalgia, and the only other smell that lingered in his nostrils was not just the smell of fresh baked bread, but the smell of a woman. He now felt homesick.

‘Are you married?’ A bold question for him to ask. But then he saw the gold band on the third finger of her left hand. ‘Yes, I see you are,’ he added.

‘My husband’s away fighting. I’ve not heard from him in three years. In fact you could have met him on some battlefield somewhere,’ Izzy said defiantly.

Heinrich couldn’t work out if her defiance was masking nervousness, or whether she did actually blame him personally for her husband being away. 

‘I doubt it,’ he replied. ‘Unless your husband is Russian.’

‘Touché.’

‘Bitte?’

‘No matter.’

She must be lonely too, Heinrich thought. Unless. Unless she already has a lover. It struck him like one of those hurled rocks. Perhaps she has a German lover.

‘What are you doing down here?’ he asked in a tone that wouldn’t alienate her.

‘There’s nowhere else to go. Walking my dog on a restricted beach is the highlight of my day,’ she replied, sounding bored and fed-up.

‘Do you work?

‘I have to work, you know that,’ she said, a certain bitterness ringing the words.

‘What sort of work do you do?’

‘Land word,’ was all she was prepared to say.

‘Do you like it?’

‘Are you interrogating me?’  

Heinrich smiled again, she was beginning to amuse him. ‘No,’ he replied, ‘just interested.’

‘I love it,’ Izzy then replied.

Heinrich laughed. ‘No you don’t.’

‘Am I that transparent?’

‘Have you children?’ he asked, ignoring her question. And, yes, he thought he could see through to the core of her being.

‘Have you?’ she returned the question.

Heinrich suppressed the urge to reach into his breast pocket and pull out the photograph of his daughters; instead he opened his great-coat to take out his cigarettes.

‘Would you like a cigarette?’ he asked, holding out the packet to her.

Izzy hesitated at first as it would be a sign she was giving in to their power: collaborating with the enemy: associating with a hostile force. But she hadn’t been able to afford cigarettes for months. The only smoke she’d had recently was the one Aunt Margaret had given her.

‘And what would you expect in return?’ she asked.

Heinrich shrugged. ‘Nothing,’ he said as he opened the packet. ‘Only that you don’t spit at me if we happen to meet again.’

Izzy smiled as she took a cigarette from the packet to put it between her lips, her long white fingers holding it in place. Heinrich stepped closer, his hands cupping the flame from his lighter. As he stepped towards her the smell of him invaded Izzy’s nostrils. It was a masculine sort of smell: gun oil and tobacco. It began to excite her, and as she drew in the smoke her eyes momentarily rested on the Iron Cross before it disappeared from view as Heinrich pulled his great-coat together. She already knew, by the runes on his collar, that he was an ordinary soldier: an infantryman. A gust of wind suddenly blew Izzy’s hair against Heinrich’s nose. He was standing that close. A faint fragrance kissed his sense of smell: it was the scent of roses. Heinrich breathed in deeply trying to harness the smell: keep it forever. If he never set eyes on the woman again, her smell would be something to remember her by.

Izzy stepped away. They were still looking at each other. His eyes searching hers. For what? But the thought of the woman being his enemy began to bother him. He could easily overpower her and take what he wanted, but there would be no pleasure in that. It would be like stuffing yourself with cake then feeling sick afterwards. Every woman he had been with had given themselves freely, and part of the pleasure was in the chase. Quickly brushing his wife, Anna, to the back of his mind, he suddenly remembered his seventeenth birthday. Irme Kohl, at the time, was twenty nine years old and lived a few doors down the Frankfurtstrasse, in Offenbach, in a flat above a butcher’s shop. While her husband worked, Irme busied herself with housework. Irme met Heinrich on the afternoon of his seventeenth birthday walking down the busy street as she was coming home from the market. He wore the new jumper his mother had knitted, and Irme complimented him on how handsome he looked in it. 

‘I have a little something for you, too, Heini,’ she had smiled.

Heinrich innocently went up into her parlour where she stood, her wet lips pouting. Then she kissed him. He felt the kiss travel down through to his stomach into his trousers where an erection began to unfurl, but as she took her lips away he shoved his mouth against hers again, liking what was happening to him. She continued smiling and as she led him into the bedroom, a grin began to creep over his face.

‘Are you still a virgin, Heini?’ she asked.

He just nodded. His state of being unsullied, as his mother called it, was not through want of trying. He had fondled and touched a few girls, but that’s as far as he ever got. They wouldn’t even bring him off by masturbating him, but that afternoon he learned more about life and love-making than any book could teach.