by Lizzie Lane
‘And for you?’
At first he seemed reluctant to answer. Dark lashes brushed his cheeks as he blinked into the brandy glass cupped by both hands. He’d poured them both a measure of brandy. The liquid had hit the back of her throat with a burning tingle, and although she hadn’t liked it at first, it became more pleasant the more sips she’d taken.
He looked at her sidelong, as though assessing whether he should say any more.
‘I liked uniforms.’
She cupped the brandy glass as though the liquid within warmed her hands. Her hair hung loose down her back. ‘What sort of uniforms?’
He shrugged, took in the look of her with just one glance, and answered softly, ‘Any. At first it was the Boy Scouts. I desperately wanted to join them and learn to blow a bugle.’
‘So why didn’t you?’
‘My stepfather did not approve. He was a Lutheran minister. He did not approve of any kind of uniform. Even the Boy Scouts, and he did not like me mixing with the local boys. He thought it best that I stay in the company of him and my mother.’
‘Did you have any friends?’
‘There were some, but they did not understand why I was not allowed to do the things they did. I desperately wanted to, but my stepfather would not allow it and so I hated him.’
‘You must have been lonely.’
‘I was, but as I got older I did what many young men did – I rebelled. Eventually, I left home.’
‘And joined the army?’
There was something in the sharp way he jerked his head round that made her think he was hiding something. The open look disappeared, replaced by a more veiled expression.
‘As I said, I loved uniforms. More brandy?’ he asked, reaching for a cut glass decanter with a silver top.
‘A lovely thing,’ she said, nodding at the decanter. ‘And very good brandy,’ she added, raising the glass and taking another sip even though she thought it very likely that she’d had enough already. She was feeling too relaxed, too comfortable in front of the fire and in this man’s company. Michael was like Edward in that he’d rekindled physical responses she’d thought were dead and buried. The thought sent a thrill through her body, the sort of thrill she hadn’t felt in years.
Her hand travelled to her throat, felt its heat then fell away. What was she doing here? Her hand trembled slightly.
‘Are you all right?’
His hand covered hers. It was the lightest of touches, and yet it felt as though lightning had shot through them both, binding them together.
‘Yes!’ she said breathlessly, raising her eyes to meet his.
They looked at each other. She chose to believe that he was as surprised as her that this had come about, and yet, deep down, she knew the seed had been sown that first day he’d come to complain about her business when she’d threatened to brain him with a spade.
He dropped his hand first, self-consciously dropping his gaze and rubbing his palms together.
Clutching the brandy glass more tightly, she gulped another mouthful and tried to forget that the memory of his touch tingled on her skin. His fingers were sensitive, she thought. Had someone once told her that sensitive hands betrayed a sensitive heart?
Wondering about its source was obliterated by her confusion; a euphoric tingling that raised goosebumps and made her forget that she was married, a mother and older than him.
It’s the brandy, she thought, it’s making me act strangely.
‘I am going to need a lot of courage,’ she said, her hair falling like a curtain around her face.
‘The courage to go or the courage to stay?’
He’d worded the question oddly, but she understood what he was saying. She’d had to be brave to live with Henry and had done so for the sake of the children. She also had to be brave to stay with Michael – if that indeed was what he was asking her – to stay openly, in total disregard of what people might say, including her own family.
She gazed into the amber liquid as though it were a crystal ball that might tell her the future.
She did not notice that her hair was almost the same colour as the brandy – but he did.
She told him her main fear. ‘The neighbours will call me a scarlet woman and that my place is at home with my husband.’
‘It is not for them to say. You must be true to yourself.’
‘I have to think of my children.’
‘And forget yourself as you have done all these years?’
He said it almost accusingly, she thought, and it annoyed her.
‘And is that so wrong?’
He raised his eyebrows in an offhand way, as though it was of no consequence to him, and yet, if she could read his thoughts, she would see that it was.
‘Steering them through their lives? Protecting them by sacrificing yourself?’
‘Is that so bad?’ Her tone was sharp.
‘You have answered both my questions with questions. “Is that so wrong?” “Is that so bad?”’
‘Things could have been so different.’
‘So you said.’
‘I could have sung “One Fine Day” for Edward with all the emotion it requires. He was my Lieutenant Pinkerton who did promise to return. I could never have sung it for Henry.’
Her heart fluttered. He couldn’t have moved closer, and yet she felt the warmth of his body more intently than she had before. She felt his eyes on her.
‘Could you sing it for me?’
Slowly, she came out from behind the curtain of hair and looked into his eyes.
You are so much older than him. What are you thinking of?
The naked truth, tell him the naked truth. ‘Yes,’ she said, badly wanting to raise her hand and trace the lines on his face. ‘I could.’
Gently, like the fleeting touch of a bird’s wing, he wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. She did not protest when he went on to trace the faint lines radiating from the corners of her lips.
His breath was warm upon her neck and, although there were still inches between them, she felt the warmth of his body reaching for her.
Throwing back her head, she closed her eyes.
‘You shouldn’t be doing that.’ Her voice sounded far away. Was it her voice? She thought it might not be, that it could be the old Mary Anne who had existed before the other war and Henry and the resultant children of that liaison.
‘Do you like it?’
She didn’t answer, mostly because she had got out of the habit of liking intimacy, but this was not sex with Henry. This was the kind of intimacy that opens the floodgate to the liberties only taken by those totally immersed in passion.
She started to open her eyes.
‘No,’ he said, touching them shut with his fingertips and then his lips. ‘Keep them closed. If you can’t bear to see yourself living, at least feel your passion, but make believe it is another woman enjoying it, perhaps the other woman you used to be.’
Had he read her thoughts? Or was it possible that two people could be that much in tune with each other?
More tears squeezed out from the corners of her closed eyelids. It’s the brandy, she decided. Or perhaps not. Perhaps a door had been opened. How long had it been since she’d felt like this?
Softly, he traced the line of her jaw, the fullness of her lips, the slight dent in her chin. Even though her eyes were still shut, she could see those fingers – purely by feeling them.
She felt the cool air on her breasts as he unbuttoned her blouse.
‘No!’
He stopped. ‘No?’
‘A feeling … just a feeling …’
She could explain it no further. It was just an exclamation of surprise for what she was feeling. She did not attempt to stop him. Neither did she stop him when his fingers slid beneath her underwear and the coolness of his palm cupped her breast.
They lay full stretch before the fire, relishing the warmth on their bodies, exploring, caressing and kissing, hugging each other and whispering del
ight in each other’s ear.
Not until the act of love had run its course did she open her eyes and see the tears pouring from his, wetting his cheeks and running into his mouth. He was like a child.
‘I have to tell you,’ he said haltingly. ‘You have to listen … to know … it is so terrible …’
‘I know,’ she said softly, not having the slightest idea of what he was about to say, but smoothing his hair back from his brow, just as she did Stanley, just as she would any child.
He told her about Berlin and her blood turned to ice.
Chapter Thirty-One
‘Off to see that delicious redhead again?’ asked Brunner, a recent recruit from a small village outside Potsdam.
Michael smiled. ‘Where else?’
‘Give her one for me.’ Brunner smirked, adding a lewd gesture and leaving Michael in no doubt of his meaning.
‘I will.’ He grinned broadly and ruffled Brunner’s hair. ‘Don’t wait up for me, Mother!’
He left the barracks to the sound of ribald laughter and managed to keep a smirk on his face until he was beyond them and could concentrate on his true intention.
Bronica lived in a one-bedroomed flat above a tobacconist on a road off the Wilhemstrasse. It was at the very top of three flights of stairs, yet he took them easily, driven by a mix of exhilaration and fear at the prospect of what he was about to do.
She answered the door, smoking from a cigarette holder held delicately between painted fingernails and dressed in a satin robe that left him in no doubt that she was naked underneath.
He dragged his gaze away from the prominent nipples thrusting like buttons against the satin.
‘Did you get them?’
She stepped back and let him in, closing the door behind her, and nodded at a brown parcel sitting on the sofa.
She tilted her head to one side and a cloud of red hair fell over one shoulder. ‘I did. Why do you want a load of smelly clothes?’
He sensed her disquiet. It occurred to him that he should not tell her why he had given her money to buy civilian clothes – old civilian clothes – but hell, they’d gone to bed together. Surely that meant he could trust her?
Love is blind, so they say, and he’d purposely blinded himself to her easygoing sexuality. Bronica slept with anyone she fancied and even though she’d whispered that she loved only him, there was no guarantee that she didn’t whisper the same to any man who gave her pleasure.
All the same, he ignored his head and followed his heart – or more likely, his loins.
He began unbuttoning his uniform. ‘I’m leaving.’
She gave a little gasp and her eyebrows arched above the pencil lines she favoured. ‘You’re deserting?’
He nodded as he sorted through the clothes: a shirt, a black jacket and dark-blue trousers, a brown hat and matching shoes. The shoes were scuffed, the trousers shiny at the knees.
‘Call it that if you like.’
‘But why? You were so proud of your uniform.’
He could hear the shock in her voice, but still chose to trust her.
‘The other night – it wasn’t the first time I’ve witnessed such brutality, but never as bad as that. I want no part of it. It sickens me.’
She eyed him through a cloud of smoke, a slight frown wrinkling her brow. ‘But you’re a soldier. Soldiers are brutes by nature.’
Throwing his army shirt to one side, he turned to her, his eyes blazing with intent.
‘A soldier’s duty is to fight for his country. To my mind, that means fighting other soldiers, not this … this … torture of innocent people. Didn’t you see what they did? They intimidated; they instilled such terror that the victims actually had no way out but to do what they ordered. Both men were soaked in blood. One of them died there on the pavement. Tell me, Bronica, what sort of victory is that?’ He shook his head and reached for the second-hand shirt. Ignoring the smell of camphor, he slipped one arm into the sleeve.
There was a moment’s hesitation, a stiffening of expression before she seemed to relent and ooze sympathy.
‘My poor, poor, boy,’ she cooed, stroking his arm and gazing up at him with her cool, green eyes. ‘Are you going to leave me without saying goodbye properly?’
His breath caught in his throat when he looked at her, because in looking he relived every sexual encounter they’d ever had. She was desirable, and he knew what kind of goodbye she referred to.
He was totally lost. ‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’
Shirt hanging by one arm, he drew her body against his. There was no resisting her. The sound of his blood pulsing with excitement rushed into his ears. The shirt was discarded along with his boots and his trousers. But wasn’t he going to discard them anyway and put on the other clothes?
She let the satin robe fall to the floor, exposing her nakedness to his eyes and the grey daylight slipping through the window.
Her breath mingled with his, her lips gently brushing his mouth, her tongue dividing his lips. ‘Say goodbye to me properly, my dear boy.’
They ended up in the familiar iron bedstead with the goose down mattress and feather boas hanging from the bedhead. Never had Bronica been so demanding and never had Michael been so encouraged to perform. Her body was totally open to him, inviting him to fill her, to take her and do whatever he wanted, though he knew that really he was doing what she wanted.
‘More,’ she said after he’d rested. ‘I must have more. You have to leave me something to remember you by. I mean this moment, not a child,’ she added, on seeing the sudden question in his eyes.
‘Thank God. I wouldn’t want to bring a child into this sickening world.’
For the third time he mounted her, astounded that she could inspire a man to such sexual heights, and grateful that she had taught him so much.
After the third time, he sank back into the mattress, totally exhausted.
He didn’t know how long he slept, but he awoke suddenly aware he was alone and vaguely remembering she had said something about going out to buy cigarettes.
‘Bronica?’
There was no response. He thought about washing before she came back. He smelled of sex, and even though she might want it again, he wasn’t sure he could rise to it. If he was dressed perhaps she wouldn’t insist.
He decided to get up. She had sapped so much of his energy that it took a great deal of effort to swing his legs over the side of the bed.
Running his fingers through his hair, he smiled to himself, somewhat proud that he’d done her so well. How many of her lovers could satisfy her three times in three hours? he wondered. Hans had told him that it must be love as far as he was concerned, because Michael was the lowest-ranking lover she had. It was rumoured that the highest ranking was a general, and the rumour had made him jealous. He’d tried asking her about this general, but she’d refused to admit there was one.
‘I take my pleasures where I will,’ she’d said blithely.
He had chosen not to believe that she was so mercenary because it suited him to pretend that she was his alone, that her desire for men in uniform was just a fleeting fancy, that in his case it was the man beneath the uniform she most desired.
The bed was comfortable and Bronica’s body was warm. He thought about staying here a little longer, having her again when she got back from getting the cigarettes … but he was looking at cigarettes. A full packet lying on the table next to the cigarette holder.
The blood that had pulsed through his body with arousal now ran cold. There were cigarettes on the table, and yet she’d told him she was going out to buy more. Why had she gone out, and if not for cigarettes, what for?
Facing up to reality was extremely painful, akin perhaps to having a gangrenous limb removed – if you could call a penis a limb. He’d been thinking below his waist. Now his eyes were open.
‘You fool! You bloody fool!’
Despite being shagged out, he scrambled into the secondhand clothes. It crossed his mind to put his uni
form back on, to pretend it was all a joke, but the purchase of the clothes was evidence enough. He’d still end up in the guardhouse, the butt of some pretty brutal behaviour if the stories he’d heard were true.
He knew for sure now that there really was a general she was having a relationship with, and that she had probably gone to fetch him.
Angry with himself as much as with her, he took the stairs two, sometimes three, at a time. He had to get away. He had to put all this behind him. He had to put distance between him and Berlin.
At first he wasn’t sure where to go. Was it possible to be inconspicuous in a city of military, factory workers, and all manner of government informers?
He thought he heard pursuers at the corner of the street and ran. Giving chase had become a disease, swiftly passed from one ignorant soul to another. People dropped out or joined in the chase as they felt like it. He darted down alleys, pressed himself against walls, sipping coffee in wayside inns and all the time fearing he would be hunted down and now, as a true deserter, shot.
At one point, sure he was being followed, he ran into a chapel on the edge of the city, falling through the door, which shut noiselessly behind him as if pulled by an unseen hand.
There was no altar, no plaster saints, not even a crucifix. His first impression was of a meeting room rather than a church, very much like the one his stepfather preached in. Rows of benches sloped towards the lectern at the front where an altar should be.
Stumbling onto the end of a bench, he fell forwards, elbows on knees, hands covering his face.
The terrible things he’d seen reverberated through his body like a troublesome ague and it was a while before he regained any self-control. When eventually he came out from behind his hands, the quiet, peace and serenity of his surroundings calmed him. Sitting there a while longer, it was as if the world of uniforms, marching bands and cruelty had melted away. The stillness enveloped him and it became as though he could hear his own thoughts; or was it God telling him what he must do to gain forgiveness for his sins, to cover old ground, to make amends for past mistakes.