Sal

by Mick Kitson

  Peppa learned loads of German words from Ingrid while I was out setting snares or trying to shoot Pheasant. I went down to the river and set two night lines with worms on the hooks on them for Eels. I found another warren along from the camp in a clearing where there was a bank and there were rabbit tracks in the snow. I set some snares in the runs there.

  When I got back to the camp Peppa had learned German words for bits of her body and kept pointing at her elbow and going ‘Ellbogen’ or at her ear and going ‘Ohr’ and her eyes were called ‘Augen’. Finger was ‘Finger’ and hand was ‘Hand’ with a T sound on the end. Then she pointed at her arse and went ‘ARSCH’.

  We collected all the wood we could too because the store was running low and Ingrid said pulling wood and snapping it all up made her back hurt and she was old.

  The snow made the days really bright and it clung on the trees and bushes and at night the sky cleared and it froze. Ingrid finished Peppa’s hat and Peppa wore it. It had flaps down over the ears and a peak and the fur was on the inside and she said it was cosy. Ingrid was good at sewing and making things and at night she carved shapes into wood with her knife while we sat by the fire.

  One night after we’d had Eels and rice I said ‘Ingrid how old are you?’

  And she smiled and said ‘I am seventy-five years old.’

  Then she told us about her life and how she got to the woods and was surviving.

  She was born in Berlin in Germany in 1940 which was the second year of the Second World War and her father was in the German army and her mother was from Latvia which is near Russia and they had met when they were both servants in a big house for rich people before the war started. She said they lived in a little flat on the ground floor of a block of flats in a poor part of Berlin which was all full of Nazis and Nazi flags. Her dad was not a Nazi but he had to join the army anyway and when she was one he got killed when a plane full of German soldiers crashed going to Poland.

  Her mum got money off the government then because her dad had been in the army when he died but it wasn’t enough to buy food and pay their rent so her mum used to clean offices and big buildings. Ingrid spoke Latvian at home with her mum and she spoke German when she was out or at nursery school and at home she called her mum ‘Ma¯te’ which is Latvian for mother and the German is ‘Mutti’.

  The British and Americans started bombing Berlin and her and her maw had to sit in underground train stations called the U-Bahn while they were bombing. At nursery school they had to sing songs about Hitler and Germany winning the war but they never knew that the Russians had already beaten the German army and were invading and coming to Berlin. There were big guns in the park near where she lived that fired at the bombers all night long and all doorways and windows in her street had sandbags in them.

  In the U-Bahn one night Ingrid’s mum met an old man who she made friends with and he became her boyfriend and he started coming and sleeping at their flat and he brought them food and sometimes he brought wine and brandy for her mum and he brought Ingrid a doll and ribbons for her hair. His wife was dead and his two sons had been killed fighting the Russians in Russia.

  The bit they lived in was getting bombed and shelled every day and they had no food because all the shops were blown up and there was rubble and collapsed buildings everywhere. Ingrid and her mum stayed in their flat and her mum went out some days and got bread and rice if she could find it. There was no gas to cook or electricity and they made fires out of wood outside their back door in the yard to cook and keep warm. All the Nazis were running and hiding and trying to get away because the Russian soldiers were coming and they would kill them.

  The old man who was Ingrid’s mum’s boyfriend stopped coming and bringing them food and they started to starve and so did lots of other people who lived near them. Ingrid’s mum cried all the time and they just stayed in their flat all day and listened to the guns and bombs getting nearer.

  Then the Russians came in tanks and big long lines of soldiers and they went into every flat and house and raped the German women. Three Russian soldiers burst into their little flat and raped Ingrid’s mum while Ingrid was hiding in a cupboard where her mum made her stay all the time once the Russians came. Ingrid’s mum got depressed after that and she just stayed in bed all day and Ingrid had to go out and find food and water.

  But the bombing and the explosions all stopped and the Russians took over the whole area where they lived and there were soldiers in all the flats and houses and a big tent in the middle of the street where loads of them stayed. Some of the Russian soldiers were nice and gave Ingrid bread and cigarettes for her mum. The whole of Berlin got bombed and all the houses and blocks of flats were blown up and there were piles and piles of rubble and stones everywhere and nothing worked and they had to get their water out of pipes in the street and carry it home in buckets.

  The Russian soldiers told her that Hitler was dead and Russia had won the war and now Berlin was part of Russia and she was going to be Russian not German. Lots of the German men got taken away and sent to Russia to work in factories, even the old ones, and Ingrid and her mum had to go and work in lines of women moving stones and rocks and rubble out of all the bombed buildings and clearing up all the mess after the fighting had stopped. They got fed in kitchens in the street and had to queue to get bread and soup every day.

  Ingrid’s mum got a new boyfriend who was a Russian officer called Ilya, and he was as big as a giant and he had a beard and wore a big coat with a fur collar. He came to their flat and Ingrid had to stay in their kitchen while him and her mum were in bed together. But he was nice and he brought them food like sausages and chocolate and cake. And he brought Ingrid’s mum vodka and sometimes they got drunk and Ingrid went out and played in the streets in all the bombed buildings.

  There were lots of kids who played out then on the streets and in all the buildings that were bombed and being pulled down. They were all like Ingrid and didn’t have dads. It was hot and it was summer and sometimes they found dead people in old buildings and sometimes they could smell them before they found them.There were old German tanks and wrecked cars everywhere.

  One day five of them were playing in a back court of some flats where there were piles of stones and dust. They had chalk and they were playing houses and they’d chalked all the rooms on the floor and Ingrid was the baby and two older girls were the mum and dad and another boy was the wee brother. One girl was running over a pile of rubble and a bomb went off in it. There was a blast and Ingrid got thrown across the court like a wee doll and she couldn’t see for the dust and smoke. Her cheek was bleeding and burning. All the other kids were dead.

  Some Russian soldiers ran in and rescued her and took her to the camp and she got seen by a Russian doctor. He pulled a lump of metal about the size of a peanut out of her cheek and then he stitched it and she screamed.

  Ingrid’s mum got a job working for the Russian soldiers in their camp cooking and cleaning and she started being out all day and leaving Ingrid. And at night she started going out too with Ilya and she was drunk a lot or at work and Ingrid could do what she liked.

  She sometimes stayed out in the streets with older kids who nicked stuff from shops or off the Russians from their camp. Ingrid was wee and she could climb into places through small holes and she looked really sweet and innocent and they used her as a lookout while they burgled and nicked.

  One boy called Klausi who was about twelve liked Ingrid and started looking after her and giving her food. He stopped other kids from bullying her and he took her with them when they all went out burgling and nicking. Sometimes they got sweets from army stores or shops that had opened up, and sometimes they nicked cigarettes out of vans that were delivering stuff to the army camps.

  Klausi didn’t have any parents and he lived in a cellar with his brother who was called Johannes – and they all called him Hansi – and they were leaders of a gang of kids who all stayed out on the streets all the time, nicking and begging and
causing trouble.

  The other women in the block they lived in didn’t like Ingrid’s mum and they used to spit on her and call her a ‘Rabenmutter’ which means ‘raven mother’ in German because they think ravens don’t look after their kids and leave them in danger.

  As it got towards winter Ingrid had to collect wood and make fires in the flat to keep warm because there was no heating or gas and they still had to get water from a pipe in the street. Her mum was there less and less and when she was, she was drunk.

  And then one day she didn’t come back to the flat at all.

  Ingrid waited in the flat for days on her own and her mum didn’t come. She went and found Klausi and the other kids and told them her mum was missing and Klausi said she might have got murdered by the Russians because they raped German women and sometimes killed them. For two days Ingrid walked around Berlin with Klausi and Hansi looking for her mum. They went to all the camps where the Russians were and they asked the soldiers if they had seen her but the Russians couldn’t speak German and most of them chased them away or shouted at them. Then one day she saw Ilya standing by an army truck and talking to some other soldiers and she ran up to him and asked if he knew where her mum was. And he laughed and the other soldiers laughed at her and he gave her a piece of chocolate and rubbed her head and walked off.

  She stayed in the flat and Klausi and Hansi came and lived there too and they all slept in her mum’s bed. There was no school or parents or anyone to tell them what to do and they stole food or begged it and scavenged wood in the bombsites. At night they told each other fairy stories in the big bed and Klausi cuddled Ingrid when they went to sleep.

  One day some old men came to the flat and banged the door in. They were polis and they spoke German and they were finding orphans to take to an orphanage. Klausi and Hansi didn’t want to go with them and Klausi said they were going to take them to Russia to work in mines and the old men grabbed them both and one grabbed Ingrid and they carried them out of the flat. Klausi and Hansi got taken away and put in a big lorry they had outside.

  The man who had Ingrid carried her down the street and then walked and walked with her in his arms until they got to a big grey building next to a church and then he gave her to a priest and she had to sit in a big room with lots of other little kids. The priest and some other German women gave them bread and soup and then the priest said a load of prayers and they all got given a blanket and had to sleep on the floor.

  The next day they all had to have a bath and they all waited in a line in their knickers and then they got put in a tin bath full of grey cold water and a fat woman washed them with soap.Then they dried them all with rough towels and gave them new clothes. The girls had little grey dresses and a grey jumper and a wool coat and black berets to wear. They all got new pants and socks and they were all given a school bag that was made of canvas.

  Then Ingrid had to tell a big ugly old man in a uniform her name and where she lived and her mother and father’s name. She told him her father had died in the war and her mother had got murdered by the Russians and the man put his hand on her cheek and smiled at her.

  They got taken outside then in a long line and all got into a big bus. There were about seventy or eighty kids all wee and all wearing the grey coats and berets.The bus drove them out of Berlin past all the buildings that were blown up and lines of people waiting for food and past hundreds and hundreds of Russian soldiers and tanks and lorries and huge guns. They got into the countryside and Ingrid had never seen the countryside before. All the trees were bare and there were huge bomb craters everywhere and grey snow. The bus kept stopping and Russian soldiers got on and walked up and down and looked at all the children.

  The orphanage was a huge old building that looked like a castle by a lake and there were Russian army men there in tents and burned-out German tanks and cars. They got taken into big dormitories with rows of beds and little tables and they had to go to bed because it was so cold.

  The orphanage was run by old nuns who were angry all the time and shouted at them if they talked. They all had to go to Mass and pray every day in a big hall. There were Russian soldiers there too and they laughed at the nuns and smoked and talked in the Mass.

  After a few weeks they started going to school in the big hall every day. They did reading and writing in German and they learned about Russia and then one day a big man came in and started teaching them Russian as well and they had to learn a new alphabet and new words. The Masses stopped as well and they didn’t have to go to church and the priests stopped coming in to talk to them.

  And that was where Ingrid stayed until she was seventeen.

  She liked it there and she had good friends and she helped look after the smaller kids. She was good at maths and she learned about science and chemistry. She learned Russian and she learned all about the Russian Revolution and there were pictures of Comrade Lenin and Marx and Engels in the main hall and a big painting of Russian soldiers liberating Berlin in the entrance hall. There was a picture of Comrade Stalin in the hall until she was thirteen, and then there was a picture of Comrade Khrushchev. At weekends she went cycling with two girls her age called Irene and Anna and they were in an organisation called the Young Pioneers who were fighting to build socialism in Germany.

  Sometimes she went into Berlin to party meetings and it was all still bombed and there were huge gaps in all the streets where buildings had been. All the old buildings had bullet holes in the stone. In the street where she used to live there was a new library and a university being built right where her flat had been. She didn’t think about her mum or what it was like when she was wee then. She forgot a lot of things because she was young and very pretty and she liked being German and building socialism which meant that all the money was shared and there was no poor people and no rich people and everybody had a nice flat and a job and children went to good schools and got looked after properly.

  Ingrid told us all this while we were sitting by the fire in the snow and we listened but when Peppa started yawning and her eyes started drooping Ingrid said ‘I tell you more tomorrow.’

  I wanted to hear more about her and why she was living in the woods now. She had come all across Europe and she had seen her mum get raped and probably murdered and she was still nice and she still looked after us.

  Chapter Eleven

  Food

  In the morning it was really cold and Peppa and me stayed in bed and snuggled and talked. Ingrid got the fire going and brought us porridge with jam in it in her birch bark bowls.

  She said ‘Soon we must go to the town and get food and carry it back. And I get letters from the Post Office.’ I knew we’d have to go sooner or later but I was worried if we all went we’d get seen and people would ring the police and tell about us. But I wanted to know what the police knew about us and if Maw was still in the rehab too. So we talked about it and decided that if me and Peppa dressed like lads, and if we split up in the town so we weren’t together, and then met up later when we’d done the shopping, we wouldn’t get noticed.

  Ingrid said ‘They all know me in the town. I was the doctor there once. They all think I am mad. People ignore me because I am old and mad. I also have money in a bank and I can get it and we can buy nice food and I would like also to buy a binoculars for you Sal and a proper knife for Peppa.’

  So we both said ‘Aye alright.’ It was two miles to the road and then four miles to the town from where you came out, and there was a bus stop by the garage and Little Chef where you came out on the road. We took the backpack and the rucksack for the food and Ingrid wore a big wide hat made of waxy cotton that looked like a cowboy hat. We pushed all Peppa’s hair up under her rabbit hat and I wore the beanie and I look like a lad anyway. I made Peppa wear her Helly Hansen in case it snowed or rained.

  It only took about an hour to get to the road going down through the woods, crossing the river on stepping stones and then climbing up again over a ridge all covered in woods. We used mostly d
eer paths and tracks and Ingrid knew the way. You came out right on the road, and it was a main one and just up from us was the garage and Little Chef.

  We waited till nothing was coming along the road and then split up and Peppa and Ingrid stood one end of the bus stop and I stood the other. No one else was waiting. We sat apart on the bus too. People might think Peppa was a lad out with her mad granny and I was just a lad going into town. The bus was empty apart from us.

  We all got off at the stop before the centre of town and I waited at the bus stop and Peppa and Ingrid walked in along the riverside and over the bridge that led to the main street. We were meeting back on the bridge in two hours. I waited for a bit then walked in looking for CCTV cameras on the lampposts but there weren’t any. I went straight to the library and the old man who spoke to me before wasn’t there and they ignored me when I paid and got an hour online.

  The headlines were still about the search for us and stuff about the continuing investigation, but they had got less and less. A few days before there were ones that said ‘Body in loch NOT connected to missing girls say police’ about a woman found dead in a loch in Lanarkshire not being me or Peppa. There were some stories about sightings of us. One said we had been seen in London and one had a blurry CCTV picture from Manchester saying we had been seen there so that was good. I searched a lot of different names, including Robert, and there was a story about him having convictions for sexual offences against a child from when he was twenty-three and being on the Sex Offenders’ Register. There was a story about an investigation in the social services over why they never knew anything about us or ever came round. I knew why. Because we never said or told and Maw was lucky nobody shopped her when she was drinking and not looking after us. And I was looking after Peppa and her.

  On the Police Scotland website there was a full report of us missing and a newer picture with descriptions and the CCTV stills from Glasgow, but that was it.