Wartime Wife (32 page)

Mary Anne was aware of a terrible shrieking noise that set her teeth on edge and roused her from the deepest slumber she’d ever had in her life.

‘Make it stop,’ she whispered, ‘make it stop.’

She felt a hand stroke her hair and a gentle voice soothed her fears. ‘Ssshh. It will stop soon. It is—’

Whoever was smoothing her hair had been about to tell her the source of the sound, and then thought better of it; either that or she’d fallen back into unconsciousness. She was glad, wanting to return to the wonderful dream she’d been having. Edward had come home; he laughed when she told him a telegram had come saying he was dead. ‘But I’m not,’ he laughed. ‘I’m here and I love you.’

For once her dream, one she’d had many times before, was not interrupted by reality. She was glad about that. She didn’t want reality any more. She’d arrived bleeding profusely and Michael had fetched a neighbour who knew about such things. The blood had reminded him of what had happened one night in Germany. That’s why he couldn’t sleep, but sat here watching her.

He couldn’t tell how long he watched her sleeping. She’d roused at the sound of the air raid siren, but then fallen
back asleep. He hadn’t a clue of how much time had passed. They might both be dead now if there had been an air raid, but there hadn’t. Like many that had sounded since war was declared on 3rd September, nothing had happened, though he knew it would. He knew how ruthless those people could be.

Mrs Randall – he couldn’t think of her as Mary Anne, though he’d heard her called that – reminded him of Bronica. Even asleep she had the same way of holding her fingers close to her mouth as though she were about to suck her thumb, but sensually, her lips slightly parted.

Bronica too had been a heady mix of girlishness and pure seduction. He remembered watching her lying beside him, a light film of sweat covering her skin, made silver by the moonlight streaming through the window.

At first he’d feared sexual relations, but decided to lie, telling her he’d had an accident and certainly wasn’t Jewish but the son of a minister. Sons of Lutheran ministers could be trusted not to be pure-blooded Aryans.

He was about to join the army by then, proud to wear a proper uniform, the years of enviously watching Boy Scouts long behind him, as was his – mostly happy – years in the Hitler Youth.

It was through Bronica that he’d met Hans, a perfect example of what Aryan manhood should look like: blond hair, blue eyes and nearly six feet tall.

He couldn’t recall all the details of why they had all gone out together that night, but the events were ingrained in his memory.

Hans had been one of Ernst Roehm’s Brownshirts, but had been lucky enough to make a sideways move in time. He too had joined the army, but old habits die hard.

‘I know a very good bar along here,’ Hans had shouted,
though they were already legless with laughter, beer and schnapps. ‘Along here,’ he’d shouted.

Bronica had been between them, purposely sashaying her behind, hitting first Hans’s hip, then Michael’s. The action was overtly sexual; Michael wondered, not without good reason, whether she’d slept with Hans, whether in fact she was still sleeping with him.

‘Hey, Hans,’ someone shouted.

A group of uniformed young men was gathered outside the Café Austria, boisterous and full of beer.

‘My old friends,’ Hans shouted back. ‘Old Brownshirt friends,’ he’d said, lowering his voice. ‘But all in the army and suchlike now, of course.’

Their voices were loud; that was the main thing Michael remembered about them, and they strutted around proudly like young lions marking their territory. Some of them looked good in uniform; some of them looked more suited to slinging butchered cattle around in meat markets.

Another beer had been pressed into his fist.

‘I think I’ve had enough,’ he said, shaking his head and desperately trying to make eye contact with Bronica. He wanted to go to bed with her, even if sex was out of the question because he was too drunk. He wanted to feel her body close to him.

‘Do you not welcome our companionship?’ asked a red-faced man with shoulders the size of a garden gate.

Michael had smiled and shook his head. ‘No offence intended, but I think I have drunk a whole barrel of beer to myself. I would not want to disgrace the uniform by being sick all over it.’

The refusal was frowned on. Other red faces joined the one glaring at him.

‘Is he a Jew?’ one of them said in a slurred voice. ‘Is that why he refuses our hospitality?’

‘Might be. Only one way to find out.’

They’d made a grab for his trousers. He heard no protest from Bronica or Hans as he was swept into the air, just raucous shouts, laughter and demands to ‘See what he’s got.’

His humiliation would have been complete once his mutilation was exposed, and even if he did get the chance to explain, they might not believe him, they might see it for what it was – one mutilation piled on another.

‘Look,’ one of them said suddenly. ‘Look.’

Whoever had shouted pointed to two men scurrying along in the shadows on the opposite side of the road.

Those about to yank Michael’s trousers off turned and followed the gaze of their comrade. Relieved, Michael fell to the ground. Like a pack of wild dogs, they were off across the road.

‘Come on,’ said Hans, jerking him to his feet. ‘You don’t want to miss this.’

Probably because he’d drunk too much and his legs were like strips of India rubber, Michael found himself pushed to the front.

The two men flattened themselves against a wall, their eyes wide with terror.

Pig-face – for this was what Michael called the man with the red face – jabbed at the man’s shoulder with the handle of a whip. ‘Sir, you address me as sir.’

The man licked his lips. Michael imagined the dryness of his mouth.

‘Home … sir … We are on our way home.’

Anticipating some bullying, Michael attempted to turn away. This was not the first violence he had witnessed since joining the army, and although he still adored wearing a uniform and having friends of his own age, his exhilaration was slightly tarnished. For the first time in his life he recognised the ring of truth in his stepfather’s words.

There was a choice. He could go along with them or he could intervene and end up lying in a pool of his own blood.

He preferred a third option. He could turn away go back to Bronica’s flat and pretend there was some glory in what was happening.

Hans’s hand landed on his shoulder. He shot him a warning look. ‘Come on, Michael. Prove your loyalty to the Fuerher.’

Between the devil and the deep blue sea … something his mother had once said, though in what context he couldn’t quite remember.

Pig-face and his pals now surrounded the two men, one of who was braver than the other.

‘Look, we are law-abiding citizens going about our business.’

‘At this time of night?’

Pig-face adopted a disbelieving look.

‘What is your business,’ he asked, turning their lapels down, smoothing them with his thumbs, looking for ripped stitches.

Michael knew from this action that Pig-face suspected they were Jews who had torn off their yellow stars.

‘We are just workers,’ blurted the more frightened man. ‘We have just come from a meeting.’

‘A meeting?’

‘Communists,’ someone growled.

There was a sudden surge forwards.

‘Stop!’

Michael could barely believe the strength and volume of his own voice. Neither could he believe his own stupidity.

‘Let them go. They’re just workmen.’

‘Communist workmen,’ someone said.

‘And perhaps Jewish.’

‘Law-abiding workmen,’ said Michael.

‘Lying workmen,’ said Pig-face, ‘and I am certain I feel torn stitching in this fellow’s coat.’

The smile that swept over those observing the scene was full of guile; like a stage magician or a circus clown, he was playing to the crowd.

‘But I will not punish them if they confess. I think that is fair.’

There were groans of dismay, though some went along with him, their smirking lips at odds with the darker truths in their eyes.

The smell of fear had cleared his head. Michael watched warily, ready to flee if the need arose, regardless of whether they pursued him or not. As the alcohol diffused through his system, fear and an instinct to survive replaced courage.

‘Do you confess, my friends?’ asked Pig-face. ‘Come, there is only justice for those who bare their souls and tell the truth.’

The two men exchanged fearful glances. It was still obvious that one was more wary than the other. Unfortunately, it was the most trusting one who broke.

‘Yes. We are communists, and we are Jews, but we only—’

Laughter broke out among those assembled.

As his head cleared, Michael was filled with foreboding. His companions smelled blood and would spill some before the night was done.

‘Then you will exact your own justice on each other.’ Pig-face turned to those with him. ‘Give me another whip.’

Someone obliged. Pig-face unravelled both whips and held them out to the two men. ‘You will flog each other as punishment for lying. The first man down is the one who deserves to be punished and I will finish him off with a bullet in his brain. The one remaining standing can go free.’

Michael’s blood turned to ice and his courage returned. He took a step forwards, his leg brushing Bronica’s thigh, alerting her to his intention.

‘No,’ she said, clinging to his arm, her breath moist against
his ear. ‘No. I want you. You can have me where you like, in a door, up against a wall; wherever you like.

Bronica had saved him, draping herself around his neck, pressing against him so that he’d had to walk backwards, away from the sound of the whips, the catcalls and the smell of fresh blood.

That night he’d cried on her shoulder and told her everything about his family, the circumcision and that he’d made up his mind to get back to England.

She’d said nothing, but lain very still beside him. If he had been sober he might have questioned her silence and the way she’d kept a few inches of space between them. But he’d been glad to be there with her and soon he was snoring, the beer having dulled his senses both as far as the incident and Bronica were concerned.

The night he had told her everything!

That night had changed everything.

Lizzie was finding it hard to concentrate on Christmas, and Daw wasn’t much help.

‘It’s only shopping. Anyone can shop for food,’ moaned Daw, as she teased her dark curls into greater fullness with the tips of her fingers.

‘That was before the war. It’s now about queuing,’ said a grim-faced Lizzie, as she attempted to scribble a weekly menu down on a scrap of paper. ‘I reckon by Thursday we’ll be down to a crust of bread and half a pint of milk. Try making a meal from that, Potato Pete!’ They laughed at her reference to the Ministry of Food character, the symbol of what wondrous meals could be made from next to nothing.

‘I wish Mum was here,’ said Daw, sinking down into a chair, elbows resting on the table.

‘Well, she’s not,’ snapped Lizzie, who had ended up taking on the responsibility of running a household, plus continuing to work for Mrs Selwyn. ‘We have to do the best we can.’

Daw pouted. ‘It’s not fair. Fancy running off and leaving her family in the lurch like that.’

Exasperated with her sister’s complaining, Lizzie threw down her pencil and glared. ‘And what would you have done if Dad was about to beat you black and blue?’

Daw lowered her eyes and shook her head vehemently. ‘I don’t believe any of it. Dad wouldn’t do a thing like that. I know he wouldn’t.’

Lizzie leaned across the table, her eyes blazing. ‘You weren’t there!’

Daw was the only sibling who had not accepted that their parents’ marriage was far from perfect, mostly, Lizzie realised, because to do so upset Daw’s rosy image of the world – her world – the one where she was the centre of attention.

Daw sighed. ‘I so wanted this to be a perfect Christmas, what with John coming home. And Patrick will be with him,’ she added, throwing Lizzie a sly look.

Lizzie was not unaffected by mention of Patrick. His letters had given her a deep insight to the man he really was. ‘Hmm. I agree we need to make the most of it. Who knows when we’ll see them again?’

Her thoughts went to Patrick’s letters and how her mother had loved to read his poetry. Patrick had a way with words and a side to him she hadn’t known existed, but then, she reasoned, a lot of people were showing their true colours since September. Her father, her brother, even Daw and Stanley. Even her mother had changed and she wondered what had caused it. Steadfast in her devotion to her family, Mary Anne had put up with her father for their sakes and would still have done so, but something had happened, perhaps she had suddenly realised that
they
had changed, her children had become adults, no longer dependent on her but pursuing their own lives.

The clock on the mantelpiece interrupted her thoughts, striking seven o’clock. The potatoes, cabbage and turnip she’d dug up from the garden were cooked through. The smell of stuffed breast of lamb filled the kitchen and she’d made thick gravy from scum left to cool and scooped off the surface of the
lamb fat. There was even enough left over to spread on bread with a pinch of salt or to make a cake.

Stanley’s face appeared at the kitchen door. ‘I’m hungry. When’s tea?’ He was surly before his mother had left home; now he was running wild, independent and answering to no one.

One week had passed and nothing had altered, and despite enquiries made by the police and Harry, plus their father out at odd hours searching the streets, there was no trace.

‘Ten minutes,’ said Lizzie in a matter-of-fact manner. ‘Our Daw’s just about to lay the table.’

Daw looked up from reading John’s letter for the umpteenth time, uttered an exasperated sigh, and returned the letter to her handbag.

Henry Randall came in at around seven, his face grey and his lips as straight as a letterbox, his cheeks sucked in and forming deep hollows.