Kay laughed. Arnaud didn’t. ‘When the British soldiers first came, they made the collaborators kneel in the Grote Markt and clean their boots. I watched them do it.’
There was an awkward pause that was only ended when a waiter in a dirty white apron came over and set down three glasses of beer.
Barbara said brightly, ‘What shall we drink to?’
‘Happier times?’ suggested Kay.
‘Good,’ nodded Arnaud. ‘That we can agree on.’
They clinked their glasses. The man Arnaud had been talking to earlier slid off his stool and approached their table. He said something to Arnaud in Flemish, and then, to them all, in English, ‘May I join you?’
‘This is Jens Thys,’ said Arnaud, ‘an old friend of mine. This is Barbara, and this is Kay.’ The stranger bowed to each of them in turn, and sat. He looked to be the same age as Arnaud, but more smartly dressed, in a suit and tie. ‘Jens is a teacher,’ said Arnaud.
The other man added, ‘We used to be colleagues.’
Kay said, ‘But I thought you did manual work?’
‘That is now. Before, I was a teacher.’
‘And what are you doing in Mechelen?’ asked Jens.
Barbara said, ‘Oh, it’s all very hush-hush – we’re not allowed to say.’
‘Hush-hush?’ He looked bewildered.
‘You know – top secret.’
‘It’s just administration,’ said Kay quickly. ‘Typing, filing, that kind of thing. Very boring.’
‘Women’s work,’ added Barbara sarcastically, to show she had been joking.
‘But you are being modest, surely? I can see from your uniforms that you are officers.’
‘Darling,’ said Barbara, ‘in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, everyone is an officer.’
They all laughed.
After that, the evening became convivial. To Kay’s relief, there were no more questions about what they did. They complimented Jens on his English and he told them about a holiday he had spent in England: ‘In Guildford, do you know it?’ Barbara said her family had a place in a village nearby. Jens insisted on ordering more beer. The shuffleboard came free – sjoelen, they called it in Flemish – and Arnaud suggested they should play. The men’s attempts to explain the rules became the focus of their conversation. Indeed, for half an hour, Kay almost entirely forgot the war. She was conscious of Arnaud standing close to her, of the way his hand covered hers as he showed her how to slide the wooden discs. Jens did the same with Barbara. The beer was strong, the flirtation mild, so that when she looked at her watch and saw that it was nearly seven, she was not only surprised by how much time had passed, but sorry to call a halt.
‘Barbara – we ought to go.’
‘Really? You’re such a prefect.’
‘What’s a prefect?’ asked Jens.
‘Someone who stops other people having fun.’
‘She’s right,’ said Arnaud. ‘It will be the curfew soon.’ Kay looked around. Without her noticing, the bar had already half emptied.
Jens said, ‘I’ll walk you back, Barbara. Where do you live?’ She told him the street. ‘Oh, that’s easy. It’s only ten minutes from here.’
The two men went over to the bar to settle the bill. Kay whispered, ‘Do you think we ought to offer to pay our share?’
‘Of course not. You’ll offend their manly honour. Besides, we haven’t any Belgian money.’
‘And are you sure you’ll be safe going back with him?’
Barbara gave her a pitying look. ‘A teacher? Please! Anyway, he’s rather good-looking, don’t you think?’
‘Oh God!’
‘We should definitely see them again.’
Arnaud limped back from the bar, smiling. He gestured towards the door. ‘Shall we go?’
Jens and Barbara left first, and Kay was just about to follow when someone shouted, ‘Hey, Arnaud!’
She turned at the same time as he did. A man at the bar clicked his heels together and shot out his arm in a Nazi salute.
* * *
—
Arnaud pretended he hadn’t noticed. They walked along the quay and up the steps and said goodbye to the others on the bridge. ‘See you tomorrow,’ said Barbara with a wink. ‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.’ She set off in one direction with Jens; Arnaud and Kay went the other.
They walked in silence for a while. The curfew had emptied the streets. Eventually he said, ‘Your friend is very funny.’
‘Isn’t she? I only met her yesterday. I like her a lot.’ She glanced at him. His jaw was clenched. He was staring straight ahead. His earlier good humour had entirely gone. ‘Is something the matter?’
‘Not at all.’
‘The business at the end, just as we were leaving – the Nazi salute – what was that about?’
‘Nothing. Just a stupid joke.’
‘Then why are you angry?’
‘I’m not.’
Two British soldiers were walking along the pavement towards them, carrying their rifles across their chests. They blocked their path. ‘Your papers, please.’
Kay pulled out her identity card. Arnaud did the same. One of the soldiers shone a torch on their photographs and then on their faces. The other said, ‘You’re breaking the curfew.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Kay. ‘We’re on our way back now.’
‘Not you, ma’am. Him.’
‘I can vouch for him. I’m billeted on his family.’
‘Arms up,’ said the soldier. He gestured with his rifle. Arnaud raised his hands. The soldier patted him down. ‘Turn around.’ Wearily Arnaud turned to face the wall.
Kay said, ‘Is this really necessary?’
‘He knows the rules.’
The soldier finished his search. ‘All right, we’ll let you off this time, seeing as you’re with a British officer. But don’t let us catch you again.’
Their papers were returned. The soldiers resumed their patrol.
Kay said, ‘I’m sorry about that.’
‘Why? The Germans were rougher.’ He tucked his identity card back into his inside pocket. She could sense his resentment and humiliation.
They continued across yet another of the town’s seemingly endless succession of squares. The night was freezing. Already frost was beginning to rime the cobbles, glittering in the glow of the street lamps. Above the pointed roofs a couple of stars had appeared. Suddenly Arnaud stopped, gripped her arm and pointed. A shooting star, travelling very fast, was descending directly in front of them. They watched it for a second or two, and then it vanished.
He said, ‘You know what that was?’ He was still holding her arm. She could feel the rise and fall of his chest.
‘A meteor?’
He shook his head. ‘A German rocket, hitting Antwerp. I have seen them twice before. They have the ingenuity of the devil.’ He looked at her.
She said carefully, ‘That is terrible. Those poor people.’
He seemed to expect her to say something else. When she didn’t, he turned away. ‘Well,’ he muttered, ‘the bastards will lose the war soon enough, rockets or no rockets. We should get on. We’re nearly there.’
It took them another five minutes. When they reached the gate in the garden wall, he pretended to fiddle with the latch for a few seconds, then turned and kissed her. She had guessed it was coming. She had even rehearsed her response in her head while they were walking: a gentle push away, a polite ‘No, I can’t, I’m sorry’, perhaps to be followed by a prim ‘I’m not that sort of girl’. But now it came to it, it turned out she was that sort of girl. The unfamiliar intimacy of having a different man’s mouth on hers felt unexpectedly natural. He tasted sweetly of beer. His skin was smooth, not bristly like Mike’s. Damn Mike, she thought suddenly. She cupped Arnaud’s head gently between her han
ds and kissed him back. For the second time that day she seemed to observe herself from a distance. She started to laugh.
‘What’s funny?’ He broke away from her, half smiling, uncertain.
‘Nothing. Come here.’ She kissed him again. He undid the middle buttons of her coat and put his hands around her waist. She shivered. ‘Can we go inside?’
They walked up the path to the front door. It was locked. He reached up and felt around the lintel and took down a key.
Inside, the hall was in semi-darkness. The usual light shone from the kitchen. She could smell bacon frying. As the day had begun, so it ended. The door to the study was closed.
Arnaud put his finger to his lips. She took his hand and led him upstairs to her room.
15
A LITTLE AFTER NINE THAT evening, Dr Rudi Graf stood stripped to the waist in front of his bathroom mirror in Scheveningen, his fingers held in the tepid rusty trickle beneath the hot tap, listening to the clanking of the hotel’s pipes as the water made its tortuous progress around the building. It wouldn’t get any warmer. His razor blade was six months old and it was hard to whip up much of a lather out of his thin bar of soap. Still he jutted out his chin and scraped away methodically at his day’s growth of beard. One had to maintain standards.
Colonel Huber had announced over dinner that in view of the increased RAF activity, the regiment would, from tomorrow, aim to launch seventy per cent of its rockets at night. His officers had looked at their plates. Launching was a much slower and more frustrating procedure when undertaken by torchlight with numb fingers in the freezing woods, the liquid oxygen coating the pipes with a sheath of frost. For once Graf had turned down Seidel’s offer of a game of chess. He wanted an early night.
He rinsed his razor under the tap and was just drying his face when he heard the sound of fists hammering on doors and voices shouting.
He went out onto the landing and peered over the banister. From below came a thump of boots on the stairs. A couple of helmets appeared. Light glinted on the barrels of a pair of rifles. The tops of the men’s shoulders were clad in SS black.
He stepped quickly into his bedroom and closed the door. The suitcase full of microfilm rolls was still on top of the wardrobe. He looked around. There was nowhere he could hide it, and no time anyway – the door was already being struck by a rifle butt. He grabbed his shirt and called out, ‘Wait!’ but the door was flung open and the SS soldiers stamped in. One put his rifle to his shoulder and covered Graf, who immediately raised his hands, while the other threw open the wardrobe door and stabbed at his clothes with the barrel of his gun. He ducked to search under the bed, prodding at the dust, then went over to the window and drew back the curtains, raised the sash and stuck his head out into the night. He withdrew it and turned to look at Graf. He was young, no more than eighteen.
‘You are alone?’
Graf still had his hands up. ‘As you can see.’
‘And the other men in the building – have you seen them bring in women?’
‘I haven’t seen anyone all evening.’
The SS soldier frowned at him. His gaze swept the room again. Abruptly he turned on his heel and the two men left.
Graf lowered his hands and quickly finished buttoning his shirt. He put on his tie and jacket, grabbed his coat and hat and hurried down the stairs. A couple of NCOs were standing in their vests and underpants on the next landing. On the ground floor the doors hung open and the passage was crowded with outraged rocket troops. He bumped into Schenk, who was in his shirtsleeves, his braces dangling round his knees. ‘Fucking SS!’
‘Did they find anyone?’
‘No. Arseholes!’
Out in the street were maybe twenty SS men – standing in the middle of the road with machine guns, going in and coming out of the hotels. Some had dogs. A searchlight was mounted on the back of a lorry. Its beam moved methodically up and down the buildings. Graf set off round the corner. From the boarding house that served as the other-ranks’ brothel, the women were being led out, shivering in their flimsy dresses, carrying their suitcases. One by one, occasionally prodded by a rifle barrel, they climbed up into the back of a lorry.
‘Oh God,’ muttered Graf. ‘Oh God, oh God…’
He turned around and headed in the direction of the seafront. SS men had sealed off the Hotel Schmitt. He had to show his pass to get through. In the officers’ mess, Huber stood at the windows with Seidel and Klein and a couple of others, looking down into the street.
Graf said, ‘Are they searching here as well?’
‘They’re searching everywhere,’ said Huber. ‘On Kammler’s orders, given to Drexler on the phone. They even searched my room! As if I’d be hiding a spy under my bed!’
‘They’ve gone crazy,’ said Seidel. He was still watching out of the window. ‘Look at Party Comrade Biwack over there, directing operations. Anyone would think he was flushing out reds on the Eastern Front!’
Graf said, ‘They’re taking away all the girls from the brothel. What’s going to happen to them?’
For a moment nobody spoke.
Huber shook his head. ‘It’s a bad business.’
Graf turned to Seidel, ‘Do you have your car outside?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can I borrow it?’
Seidel stared at him. ‘Don’t even think of it!’
‘Please.’ He held out his hand.
The lieutenant’s expression was incredulous. He sighed. Reluctantly he put his hand in his pocket and took out the keys.
* * *
—
The SS had first started seriously sniffing around Peenemünde as soon as it became apparent that the rocket was going to work. Two months after the successful test flight, in December 1942, the Reichsführer-SS, Heinrich Himmler, had made the trek up to the Baltic to watch a launch. Graf had been present. It had been a fiasco – the rocket had crashed after four seconds – but that didn’t deter Himmler. ‘Once the Führer has decided to give your project his support,’ he told General Dornberger, ‘your work ceases to be the concern of the Army Weapons Department, or indeed of the army at all, and becomes the concern of the German people. I am here to protect you against sabotage and treason.’
‘I am extremely interested in your work,’ he added, just as he was getting into his aeroplane to fly back to Berlin. ‘I may be able to help you. I will come again alone and spend the night here, and we can have a private talk with your colleagues. I will telephone you.’
Such, at least, was what Dornberger told von Braun he had said, and such was the gist of the conversation that von Braun relayed to Graf the next day. ‘It was all very polite, according to Dornberger. But I can’t help feeling it sounds like a visit from a gangster, offering protection.’
‘So the SS are going to be involved in production?’
‘There’s no way of stopping them. They’re into everything these days.’
And Graf, to be honest, had not voiced any objections to receiving SS help. He had been as keen as the rest of them to get the test facilities and the missile factories built. Nevertheless, it had been quite a shock to him the following May when a camp of barrack huts had suddenly sprung up in the woods, encircled by an electrified barbed-wire fence; and an even bigger one a few days later to see a column of five hundred prisoners in their heavy striped pyjamas and caps being marched along the road by SS guards with machine guns. Slaves in the middle of the twentieth century? What are we becoming? That had been his instinctive response in the morning. But by the end of the afternoon, God forgive him, such was his obsession with fixing the faults in the rocket’s design, he barely noticed the slaves, just as he barely registered the number of black uniforms that started to spread like spoors across the island in the weeks that followed – manning checkpoints, patrolling perimeters, guarding the building sites – as hundreds more prisone
rs, mostly French and Russians, were shipped in.
In June, Himmler came again – entirely alone, as promised – driving himself in his heavily armoured but modest car. Dornberger gave a dinner for him in the officers’ club to meet some of the senior engineers, and Graf was invited. Did he object now, at last? Did he refuse to go? He did not. He was not even shocked when von Braun put on his SS uniform for the occasion. It was a hot evening, not long after the summer solstice, and the Baltic daylight extended for hours. Himmler sweated profusely – slender, damp, pink in his thick black tunic, like a mollusc in its shell. He talked quietly, listened a lot, and when they moved from the dining room to the hearth room for drinks after dinner, he relaxed back in his armchair, refused all alcohol, pressed his fingertips together and gave them a tour d’horizon of the post-war world after a German victory.
‘The Führer thinks and acts for the benefit of Europe. He regards himself as the last champion of the Western world and its culture…’
On and on he went: the need for Germany to lead western Europe, the threat posed by the Soviet Union if she ever switched from armaments to the production of consumer goods, the fact that Germany could only support sixty per cent of her population on her own soil and hence the need to transfer the remaining forty per cent to the Ukraine. ‘Obviously a fall in the birth rate over there will have to be brought about in some way. We have enough settlers. We shall arrange for the young German peasants to marry Ukrainian girls of good farming stock, and found a healthy new generation adapted to conditions out there. The Führer calculates the population of Germany will be a hundred million in ten years. We must bear in mind the greatness of our mission and simply force people to accept their good fortune. European industry must work for the great cause. The whole wealth of labour we now control must be enlisted in the life-and-death struggle…’
All this was delivered in a tone of calm reasonableness. It was four o’clock in the morning by the time he finished, and still not entirely dark. As they walked back to their apartment block, von Braun took off his tunic and slung it over his shoulder. ‘Was I dreaming, or was that insane?’
V2 Page 20