Women at War

by Jan Casey

  Viola laughed so hard that her already stretched stomach felt as if would split open.

  Lillian described going out with Harriet and June, the lift everyone was feeling after the Allied victories in Italy, some interesting things she’d concocted with her rations, how she’d replaced the collar on her pretty dress, the girl in the office who’d replaced Viola but who was not nearly as efficient. ‘And yesterday I saw the saddest sight. A group of mums at the train station holding tiny babies and suitcases. Some saying goodbye to men in uniforms, others hugging their own mums or sisters. So heart-breaking.’

  ‘But where do you think they were they going?’ Viola asked.

  Lillian looked amazed. ‘They were being evacuated.’

  ‘But I thought just the children were sent away and their mums had to stay behind and work or just get on with it.’

  ‘Well, that wouldn’t work for newborns.’ Lillian shook her head. ‘They need their mothers.’

  Viola had never thought about that before. But when she did, it was the perfect solution to her dilemma. ‘Lil,’ she said. ‘Can I kiss you?’

  Lillian shrugged. ‘Of course,’ she said, offering her cheek. ‘But why?’

  ‘I now know how I will be able to keep my baby,’ Viola said, and she could feel newfound energy pulsing into her hands, her feet, her mind and bringing a glow to her face.

  Despite her swelling bump, Viola felt lighter once she knew there was a way for her to keep her baby and regain some control over her future; now all she had to do was hold her nerve. From that time on, she told everyone about her plan. Mum, who would tell Dad; the nuns; the other pregnant women; the midwives and the doctors. She did not waver from her decision. By the time she went into labour, a plan had been established. She would be taken to hospital, with all her belongings, in an ambulance. There she would give birth and lie in for six weeks. When discharged, she would be taken straight to the train station and evacuated to a predetermined place. She hoped it would be somewhere very far away, like Scotland, where the only person she would know was her child and they could start afresh.

  Every time she ran through the arrangement in her mind, which was several times a day, she sighed with relief. Then her stomach would turn again and she would doubt her decision when she pictured her family and Lillian and the hundreds of miles between them and her.

  If she thought she had experienced the deep pit of loneliness every day since Fred left, she was aware that the depths she could plummet to alone in some distant place, were unfathomable to her imagination. No wonder she’d heard about so many girls in her position who allowed their parents to bring up their babies as their own. But Mum and Dad hadn’t put that forward as a solution, so she could see no other way than to move to Scotland or some other such remote place.

  One of the advantages of the plan was that the government would pay for everything as she would be considered, even in her fallen state, to be a ‘domestic soldier’. But more important to Viola was the fact that Dad would not be asked to provide for her. Mum said she would try to persuade Dad to telegraph money to her for a few little extras, wherever she might be, which would be lovely but, on the other hand, it would deem her more beholden to him than she was already.

  *

  When her time came, the labour was long and hard. Through the sweat and the agonising pains and the turmoil, she longed to think that Fred was in the corridor, pacing up and down waiting to greet their baby. She saw his face, looming in and out of her vision, but every time she reached out for him, he disappeared so she clutched and clawed at the ring instead. Doctors and midwives came and went, some encouraging, some scolding. She did her best to get the whole thing over and done with but the baby was taking his time. The cramping, the gore, the feral instincts, the sharp smell of iron was, she told herself, befitting and warranted. Then at last, at the apex of exhaustion, a mewl, a squall, a tiny form covered in slime. A girl, she was told. It’s a girl. ‘Do you have a name for this little lady?’

  She hadn’t made provision for this turn of events. She shook her head, a shower of perspiration bouncing around her. ‘Frederika,’ she managed to whisper. ‘Hello, little Freddie.’

  12

  May 1943

  Frau Wilhelm clung to Annie like a limpet, crying into her neck and leaving a trail of tears and slime on the shoulder of her jacket. But to Annie, her own grief for Walther felt soft and quiet and cushioned either by disbelief or by the baby growing inside her. There had been the telegram followed by the certainty that there had been a mistake, Frau Wilhelm and Herr Doctor’s outrage, the panic about the baby she had to keep to herself, a short church service, black armbands to sew and position on their sleeves. There was no body to cry over, as Walther’s was buried in the cold ground at the Russian Front, but Herr Doctor was making arrangements for a headstone in the local churchyard so they would have a place to lay flowers and ponder their lives without him.

  Then terrible chaos and fear gripped Annie and Fred when Ilse, Gustav and Carl were arrested. And in the midst of all that, Annie told Fred she was pregnant. She sat and watched him tear out his hair – the short shocks, like tufts of grass, coming out in clumps in his fists. He stared at them, then threw them to the floor before searching his scalp to grab another handful. The first question Fred asked her, when he finished with his hair, was if the baby was Walther’s. Humiliation washed over her. How dare he think otherwise. ‘Of course,’ she answered, careful to keep her anger under control as she was aware that she was completely at his mercy. But she couldn’t help adding, ‘Do you think so little of me?’

  ‘I am sorry, Annie.’ Fred slumped into a chair and held his grey face in his hands. ‘But… how could you allow this to happen? You know how precarious our situation is already.’

  Annie refused to hang her head in shame. ‘I did not allow this, as you say, to happen. It just… did. And now I must face the consequences without Walther by my side.’

  ‘Do you know, Annie,’ Fred said, sitting forward and balling his hands into fists over and over again, ‘that Vi and I had one night together? Just the one.’

  Battling against a tightening in her throat, Annie said, ‘Walther and I did not have many more.’

  ‘For all I know,’ said Fred, gulping another schnapps, ‘there is a child. My child. Being kept from me by this bloody war.’

  After a few minutes of heavy silence, Fred moaned. ‘Oh, what to deal with first.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Annie offered, ‘our fellow freedom fighters?’

  ‘I have already told you, Annie,’ Fred shouted, beyond the end of his tether. ‘You are not to go near that trial. I forbid it!’

  None of them did. It might have been cowardice that stopped them, but they believed that if they turned up in the gallery they would be questioned about their possible involvement with the resistance group and they had heard the rumours of the Gestapo using horrific means to get information out of people. And if they were arrested, too? What good would that do anyone?

  But as it turned out, the trial lasted for just one day. One short, never-ending day during which Fred was in Munich, trying to ascertain what was going on and Annie was alone in the house, frozen in fear. Not daring to go to the window and move the curtain to peer outside, or visit Frau Wilhelm, or walk to the market for shopping. When Fred came home and told her what he had heard through prattle, she was incredulous. The judge was a puppet and Ilse had been brave way beyond the limit of the definition of the word.

  ‘I heard she denied her complicity to begin with,’ said Fred. ‘Then made a full confession but refused to implicate any other members.’ He shook his head. ‘I doubt I could have been so brave.’

  ‘Oh, Fred,’ Annie said. ‘Is anything worth this?’

  ‘Ilse, I believe, would say there is. Annie,’ Fred said, reaching out and holding her hands in his. ‘Take a deep breath and steel yourself.’

  She did as she was told. Then he continued, his voice thick and guttural, and told her tha
t the judge, to make a warning of their three friends, condemned them to be executed by guillotine a mere few hours after the guilty verdict. ‘I cannot even fathom it,’ he said. ‘It is all too horrific.’

  Annie put her face in her hands and wept until she felt she could not wring out another tear. Fred poured both of them a drink with shaking hands and said, ‘Someone reported that Ilse’s mother tried to get into the court and when she told a guard that she was the mother of one of the accused the guard quipped, “Then you should have instilled better values in your child”.’

  Annie had never met Ilse’s mother, but when she thought of her trying desperately to see her daughter for what turned out to be the last time, her heart felt as if it would break.

  Wiping her nose, she remembered meeting Ilse for the first time in the university canteen, her welcoming smile and warm greeting. The way she clipped her hair behind her ear; the earnest way she listened to all sides of an argument and how swiftly that serious look turned to laughter. They had enjoyed, yes that was the right word, enjoyed their trip to Berlin. It had been dangerous and heart-stopping and precarious and although they would have given anything to live in a world where taking such risks was not necessary, they did what they had to do together, in high spirits and with high hopes.

  Now, they could never do anything together again. Ilse had been disposed of as cruelly as if she were nothing more than a piece of dog mess on the sole of one of those big, black boots.

  Annie and Fred spent the next week mourning and talking about Walther and their friends. So as not to raise suspicion, Fred continued to go into Munich each day but told Annie’s office she was unwell and would return when she felt better; he passed the same message onto Frau Wilhelm. And it was the truth, she was sick with grief or pregnancy or both and racked with guilt that Ilse had been caught, but she was free; that Walther was in the frozen, unforgiving ground whilst she was feeling spring on her legs and arms; that she might have reeled off her comrades’ names without compunction if she’d been arrested; that no matter how difficult the circumstances, she was expecting a child and Ilse would never get such a chance; that Walther would never be able to see, hear or hold their child close.

  On the Friday evening, much earlier than expected, Annie heard Fred’s key in the front door. Worried, she ran to the hall and found him sitting against the wall, pasty and exhausted. ‘Fred,’ she said, kneeling beside him. ‘What’s wrong?’

  He asked her for a glass of water and after he drank it, Annie helped him to a chair in the living room. ‘Fred, tell me what’s happened,’ Annie insisted.

  It took him a minute or two to compose himself. ‘Ernst, Otto and Helmuth—’ he counted them off on his fingers ‘—along with a handful of others we never met from various places, were arrested yesterday, tried today and have been sentenced to death.’ His voice rose on a sob. ‘They’re in prison awaiting execution.’

  Fred’s report cut Annie to the bone. She could almost feel the edge of the chilly, honed guillotine blade against her neck and wondered how those three honourable men, with their high moral standards, would meet their demise. With dignity, she told herself.

  ‘How can this be?’ she said. ‘Shouldn’t the Nazis be captured, put on trial and executed? That would be the right way around. Nothing in our world is how it should be. I will go into Munich with you on Monday and see those who are left. I know I won’t be able to talk with them, but at least we can be together in quiet camaraderie. I need that, too. Fred, what do you think?’

  But Fred didn’t answer. He stumbled to the back door, threw it open and vomited down the drain below the downpipe.

  Annie sat, her hands restless and fidgeting, asking herself over and over again if they had done any good whatsoever or if the promising lives cut short were too great a price to pay. But what about the people waiting to get on those cattle trains? The academics who disappeared and it was rumoured, were condemned to torture and death? What about them? she wanted to shout to anyone who would listen. Would she be able to do it all again? She hoped she would with Ilse as her heroine and when she had gathered her courage.

  Fred came back in, filled a bucket and Annie heard him swill it around where he’d been sick. He flopped into the chair across from Annie, looking pale and waxy, a sheen of sweat around his moustache. Leaning his head back, he closed his eyes, took a deep breath and said, ‘Annie, you will not be going into Munich for some time. Not for any reason.’

  Annie opened her mouth to protest, but Fred held up his hand.

  ‘There are now more pressing problems that we must sort out.’ He pointed to her stomach, which she rubbed protectively. ‘This will take all our time and attention for a good while.’

  Fred sat forward in his chair and stared at a spot above her head for some time without moving a muscle or saying a word. Then he paced to the window and looked out at the vegetable patch – a few tomatoes, radishes, carrots, beetroot and onions basking in the weak sun. Next he went to the cupboard, brought out the bottle of schnapps again and gestured to her with it. ‘No, thank you,’ she said, touching the place under her ribcage. ‘I am feeling nauseous.’ He downed another measure of the clear liquid, then without warning flung his glass against the wall. Annie’s hand went to her heart and she watched as the shattered pieces scattered on the floor. They reminded her of diamond chips in engagement rings that neither she nor Fred could lay claim to.

  He poured himself another glass and told her to go to bed and rest.

  ‘I will clear the glass first,’ she said, wanting desperately to make amends.

  ‘No,’ he ordered. ‘Leave it.’

  Not wanting to be obstinate, Annie went up to her room but did not sleep; she lay wide awake and listened to the sounds of Fred pacing the floor downstairs.

  *

  Relief swamped Annie when Fred greeted her in his usual warm manner in the morning. Perhaps his long night of marching around the house had led him to some kind of resolution; or maybe the realisation that Viola could well be in the same position as her and would need help, support and advice had touched his heart and altered his thinking. After breakfast he said, ‘Here is what I think should happen. Let us see if you agree. First, we should tell Herr Doctor and Frau Wilhelm about the baby.’

  Annie was dumbfounded by what seemed to be an absurd and impractical proposition. ‘Are you joking?’ she said. ‘How can I possibly tell them that I am expecting their dead son’s child? And that he got me pregnant without us being married? No.’ She shook her head until it ached. ‘I cannot possibly put such a burden upon them.’

  ‘But think about it, Annie.’ Fred drew his face close to hers. ‘Walther was their only child. As far as they are aware, they now have no one. But the fact is, they will soon have a grandchild and once they get over the shock, they will want to care and love and be involved in the child’s upbringing.’

  ‘But, Fred…’ Annie wiped her sweaty palms on her skirt. ‘Are you asking me to give up my baby to them?’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of that as a possibility, but in some ways it might be for the best.’

  ‘No, it would not be the best for me or the child.’ She set her mouth and crossed her arms over her stomach. ‘I will not allow it.’

  ‘No, Annie, in all honesty I did not think you would. But you will need protection now, you and the baby. More protection than I can give you.’

  That statement made Annie shiver with apprehension. ‘This is what we should do,’ he continued. He said that they should put to Walther’s parents that they band together for the sake of Walther’s unborn child. Then, with the help of people Fred knew at the university, they could falsify a marriage certificate dated a few days before Walther was posted. Annie could wear Oma’s wedding ring that she had left her and then the baby would not only be considered legitimate but would be the child of a Nazi war hero. Done and dusted. Protection for all of them.

  ‘But people will ask why we didn’t make the marriage public when it took pl
ace,’ Annie said.

  ‘Simple.’ Fred had thought through all the loopholes. ‘We just say that you and Walther were desperate to marry before he was posted and because it was arranged so quickly only immediate family attended. You had, of course, every intention of organising a bigger celebration upon his return, but that now cannot happen.’

  It sounded almost feasible. Then for some reason, Horst’s pink, turgid face came into her mind and with it, a sense of dread. ‘But what if someone decides to pursue their questioning to the Town Hall and looks for the original marriage certificate there?’

  Fred spread his hands wide and looked defeated. ‘I suppose we can’t cover every eventuality. But ask yourself who would do that and why? Everyone knows you and Walther were sweet on each other. Why else would both of us be wearing mourning clothes? And it is a time of war. People do impetuous things. So,’ he said. ‘I will pay them a visit and discuss all of this with them, steering them in the direction they need to take if they do not get there by themselves. After that, we follow what will, in effect, be their lead.’

  Other than a few far-fetched misgivings, it sounded like the perfect plan – if Herr Doctor and Frau Wilhelm agreed.

  Fred shaved carefully, dressed in a dark suit and adjusted the black band around his upper arm. ‘Wish me luck, Annie,’ he said.

  She did, and silently thought he was going to need it. One hour passed, then two. Two and a half. Like a shotgun, there was a rap at the door that made goose bumps spike her skin. Fred had a key; there was no need for him to knock. Annie sat as still as she could, her hands twitching in her lap, neck stiff on her shoulders. Another loud battering on the door. This time she stood in alarm and looked around for somewhere to hide. ‘Annie,’ a voice called through the doorjamb. ‘Please open the door.’ It was Frau Wilhelm and besides sounding frantic to be let in, Annie could not discern her state of mind. She might be angry, disbelieving and insulted. Maybe she would draw back her elegant hand and slap her hard across the cheek. Or push her to the ground. But if she had run from her house in such an enraged state, Fred would have followed her to stop her from harming his sister.