I cringed. Every statement I made felt like an accusation.
Horst regarded me coldly. ‘If I had want opinion from you, I would have ask you.’ He glared at me and continued to eat. When the plate was empty, he pushed it away. ‘This food is terrible. Don’t Jersey women know how to cook?’
‘I did my best with what we had.’
‘Miserable little island. The farmers cheat us. We know you do it. Only today we had a letter. Someone tell us that Flanders Farm is cheating us with the milk.’
I was silent; it was always best to let him talk if I didn’t want a fist across my face.
He stood up. ‘They have one more cow there than we have known. Not anymore. Cow has gone to slaughter. The woman she is deported. She will be on her way to Konzentrationslager.’ He gave a burp of a laugh. ‘Maybe slaughter for her too.’
‘Surely not. Mrs Flanders is an old woman. Maybe she didn’t know how many cows she had.’
He gave me a look that would shrivel anything within five yards. ‘We are not stupid. She knew of course. Now she pays the price.’
Much as I disliked Mrs Flanders, for I was convinced it was she who had colluded with the Galens about daubing my windows, she was one of us, and I had a sneaking admiration for her too. She had defied the Germans in a way I hadn’t. But then, maybe she hadn’t been forced to have one living under her roof. Resistance was easy if you were at a distance. Close up, it was hard, and even harder if you had a big secret to keep.
I set to cleaning away the plates, and I heard him go up to the bedroom. My tension increased as it always did when I thought of Rachel only a few feet away from him. And if I was terrified, how must she feel? However bad things got, I couldn’t imagine actually informing on her.
Above me, the thud of Horst’s pacing footsteps was followed by the smell of cigar smoke drifting down. Obviously he could still get cigars, and the bedside table always had a bottle of whiskey or brandy on it. This was his usual pattern. He would be up there with his papers and his lists of men.
One day when he was out, Rachel and I took a look at his ledger. We hardly dared to open it, thinking that somehow he would know, but finally we plucked up the courage. In it were long lists of men, each one named and numbered. Over the months, we’d taken to looking at these lists every day. They were obviously the lists of men labouring at the quarry, and they held a strange fascination for us. Every day, more would be crossed out.
Yevgenievich, Drugov
Kautsky, Zubarev
Leonidovich, Konstantin
Frolov, Mikhalitsyn
Stepanovich, Gleb
‘Dead men,’ Rachel said, resting her finger on one of the names.
‘So many,’ I said.
Just seeing that scratched line through their names filled me with anger. They would have family somewhere wondering where they were, and now they were reduced to this one line that erased them from existence. It always made me think of Fred, and I’d have to swallow hard to push him from my mind.
Upstairs I heard the chink of a glass. Horst would be drinking again. The evenings were one long silent scream of waiting. I didn’t dare go anywhere, because wherever I went I was spat at and called ‘Jerrybag’. And I was ashamed of the bruises on my face.
The bakery had closed altogether. There was too little flour for bread to bake now, and even the Germans were looking thinner. Since the Allied invasion of Normandy, Jersey had been cut off by both Britain and Germany. The effect on Horst of being abandoned by his Führer made him angry and resentful, and I was an easy target for his disappointment.
At the same hour every night, Horst called me from the top of the stairs. At first this had been a request. Then it had become his right. Now it was an exercise in punishment.
When I heard him call, I put down my book. So soon? Things must be bad at the camp. Wearily, I braced myself for what was to come. I’d try to please him, and that way the pain and humiliation would be less.
When I got upstairs he was waiting by the window, stubbing out his cigar on the sill. I wanted to tell him to use an ashtray like a civilised human being. He saw my expression, and smiling slightly, he continued to grind the butt into the paint as he watched my face.
‘I don’t like that dress,’ he said. ‘Where is the one I buy for you?’
I began to walk from the room.
‘No. Undress here first.’
Fear and the cold had already made gooseflesh of my arms. Please God, let him not be rough today.
Awkwardly, I took off my cardigan and unbuttoned the dress. Horst himself never undressed. There was power in that uniform, in his black shiny boots, and he knew it. I tried to seem calm, because my fear made him worse.
Once I was shivering in my corselette and pants, I made to leave the room.
‘Wait.’
I backed away, knowing what was coming.
‘You’re a whore, Céline. A dirty little whore.’ He came towards me and hooked a finger under my chin. ‘What would my brother think if he could see you now, in your underwear, begging for it?’
‘Please, Horst…’ I tried to find the man behind the twisted leering expression. The man I’d known in Vienna, the smiling youth who formally shook my hand. But he was gone, and this man was something I had no answer for. His boredom, his rage, his pleasure in hurting, as if it somehow healed the hurt in him, were all impenetrable.
‘You know what happens to whores, don’t you?’ He grabbed my arm and swung back his fist. When it connected with my face I felt nothing, just the force of falling backwards, the crack of my skull against the wall. I tasted the iron of blood in my mouth before a boot landed in my stomach, and a flower of pain spread outwards until I heard my own cry. I slipped to the ground, felt him drag me into the middle of the floor, and then he was upon me.
CHAPTER 34
For months it went on. I had to use a rubber cap in case I should fall with child, and I put it in every single day. It cost me Fred’s Sunday suit on the black market and the anguish that went with it. I’d never be able to look at a man again without revulsion. The war would soon be over, they promised us. Both Rachel and I were getting desperate, not sure how much longer we could go on, living on borrowed time.
It wasn’t until May 1945 that the Germans surrendered in Europe. The news came to me whispered from another woman as I queued to get one of the precious Red Cross parcels that England had finally sent.
I hurried home, a new spring in my step, anxious to share some of the parcel and the good news with Rachel. When I got there, we were able to open a tin of Rowntree’s cocoa and have a cup of it. We toasted the British troops in cocoa, and hugged.
The noise of an engine outside stopped our celebration.
‘It’s Horst’s car,’ I said, peering out of the window. ‘Wolfgang’s just helping him out. Quick!’
Rachel slithered back under the bed, and I piled the boxes and shoes around the door to her hiding place. I bolted back downstairs and managed to swill out the cups just in time.
‘What’s that smell?’ Horst said as he came in.
The cocoa packet was still on the table.
‘Red Cross parcel,’ I said. ‘It’s cocoa. I couldn’t resist. Shall I make you some?’
He took a look at the contents laid out on the table: the canned meat, powdered milk, the tin of Klim.
‘English shit,’ he said. He swept his arm across the table and everything went to the ground.
Of course. I should have realised. The news of the defeat of the Germans would have reached Horst too. He went up to his room and I heard the door slam.
When he came back to eat, he stank of whiskey, and even the meat roll and tinned vegetables couldn’t pacify him.
‘You think you’re so clever, you English, ja? What you look at?’
‘Nothing, Horst.’
He stood suddenly and pulled me back by the hair.
‘Upstairs,’ he said.
I did as he asked. It will soon be over, I
thought. This war will soon end.
‘Lie down.’
I squeezed my eyes shut, let the fight seep out of me. Let him. Then it would be over. He would fall into his usual stupor and sleep. This grunting, groaning animal that stank of cigars was nothing to do with me.
It was taking too long. He was usually spent by now. A blow to my chest, a fist like a hammer.
‘Move, can’t you?’ he shouted, shaking me until my head rattled. ‘Do you think I want to do this with a dead thing? Move.’
I tried to move, but his weight pressed me down, like a butterfly on a pin. I made one intense effort. Life, that was what mattered. To stay alive. For Rachel. With horror, I felt him grow soft inside me.
He slid out of me. Incensed now, he rolled me off the bed. I landed in a sprawl, my face crushed towards the linoleum floor.
I tried to turn my head and caught a glimpse of the barrel of a gun.
Christ. He meant to kill me.
A hand grasped my hair, yanking, until my neck might snap. ‘They say the Führer is lost, and we are still stuck in this place. I’m tired of you,’ he said. ‘I don’t see why I have to see your face another day.’
‘No! Think of Fred. What would he say?’ My voice was thick, desperate.
‘Fred is dead. He was a traitor. He gave up on Germany because of you. Because of women like you and men like him, we are lost. He paid the price, and so will you.’ He cocked the trigger and the sound of it was loud in my ears. The gun pressed against my temple.
A flash of something steel across Horst’s neck. Several things happened at once. He tried to twist, but he buckled towards me, knocking me off balance so I fell with a crash, the breath forced from my lungs. Horst’s head hit the ground next to mine. His mouth made a sound like a groan, but his eyes were blankly open, and a gush of red was everywhere. Blood. The stink of it like iron and heat, and the gun skittering from his open hand.
At the same time, I pushed his weight off me and turned. Rachel swayed there, white-faced, a sharp kitchen knife in her hand.
I sat up woozily.
More blood pooled around Horst’s neck. He writhed a moment more, then was still.
‘You killed him.’ The words stuck to my lips in a whisper.
Rachel quietly put down the knife on the floor. ‘Every night I’ve covered my ears, trying to block out the sound of him. His shouts, his taunts. I swore I’d go mad if he hit you again, and I’d just had enough. I couldn’t take any more. He would’ve shot you.’
‘It’s the finish for us,’ I said.
‘I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it to end this way.’ She knelt beside me and we gripped each other tight. Her ribs trembled under her nightdress.
‘We were so close to making it,’ I said.
CHAPTER 35
In a frenzy, we scrubbed every trace of blood from the floor and wrapped Horst’s neck to stem the flow. In death, he looked calm, just another blond man in uniform.
‘What makes one man so different from another?’ Rachel said. ‘They have the same bones, the same flesh. And yet one can be kind and another cruel. Where does it come from, kindness?’
‘I don’t know. Fred used to worship his older brother,’ I said.
She gave a dismissive snort. I stared at the soles of Horst’s boots, marvelling that I felt nothing for him. This was Fred’s brother lying here, and I could remember how full of life he’d been as a young man. How full of life we’d all been, when we were young. A great sadness washed over me.
‘They’ll be here soon, though, to collect him in the car,’ Rachel said.
‘I know.’ It hadn’t escaped me that we had a dead German actually in the house.
‘What shall we do? It would be no use pretending it was an accident,’ Rachel said. ‘Nobody cuts their own throat, do they?’
‘We could hide him.’ I made an effort to be practical, and cast my eyes around the room.
‘The partition,’ Rachel said. ‘It’s the obvious answer. It’s my fault after all. It’ll give us a few more hours to think of something.’
I shook my head. ‘You can’t have him in there with you. That’s macabre. And anyway, as soon as they realise he’s missing, there’ll be a search, you know that?’
‘So you’d better tell the driver he decided to walk to town and left for St Helier already.’
‘No. If I do that, it puts him here. I’ve a better idea. I’ll act worried and tell them Horst didn’t come home.’
‘But they know he did,’ Rachel said. ‘Wolfgang drove him — you saw him help Horst out of the car.’
‘But it’s Wolfgang. Will he tell?’
‘I don’t know. I just can’t think anymore.’
She looked so tired and forlorn that I went to give her a hug. ‘Brace up. One thing at a time. Let’s get him out of the way.’
He was a heavy man to lift, and we had to drag him. More blood; more mopping up.
Once he was behind the partition, I checked his room, moved a rug over the damp patch on the floorboards and washed up the plates in the kitchen. On tenterhooks, we scoured the house, looking for tell-tale signs he’d been home last night. Of course, we found his coat on the hook and his hat on the settee. I hid them under my mattress. Please, let them not search us, I thought.
When the knock came at the door the next day, I was ready. It was a young man, the one who usually came for him in the mornings.
I acted flustered. ‘I’m sorry, but he isn’t here. I’m so worried. He didn’t come home last night.’
‘Not come home?’ The soldier looked like he didn’t understand.
‘I was expecting him as usual, but he didn’t come. Maybe he spent the night at a hotel? When you see him, will you ask him to telephone me?’
‘Yes. This I will do.’ Then he frowned. ‘Your face, what has happened to it?’
I thought quickly. ‘I was set upon by some people. They punched me and called me “Jerrybag” because Hauptmann Huber lives here.’
‘Hauptmann Huber will be angry. What people? I will find them, they will be punished.’
‘I don’t know their names. I didn’t see their faces, it was dark…’ I was rambling but couldn’t stop. Panic was hot in my throat.
‘Don’t be frightened. We will take care of you, Frau Huber. I will see to it.’
‘Thank you.’
I shut the door and sagged against it with relief.
‘What is going on? Where is Hauptmann Huber?’ Wolfgang asked. It was midday by the time he came, and his face was creased with worry. ‘Is he ill?’
I shook my head.
‘The men are restless; he has not arrived for work. I made an excuse and come to ask you.’
‘Come in,’ I said, ushering him past the shop counter and into the sitting room.
‘Is Rachel all right?’
‘Yes —’ Rachel appeared from upstairs — ‘I’m fine. But we have a problem.’
‘Where’s Huber? They told me he had not been home last night, but I know I brought him here and watched him come through this door.’
‘He’s dead,’ Rachel said flatly.
Wolfgang’s face dropped. ‘No.’ He glanced at me as if I might deny it. ‘What happened to your face?’
Rachel and I looked at each other. ‘We need to bury him somewhere,’ Rachel said. ‘Can you help us?’
Wolfgang sat back on the chair, his face grey. ‘Show me,’ he said. ‘I must know it all.’
Rachel took him upstairs, and I heard the bed castors creak across the floor, and her voice explaining.
When he came down, he was even more grave. ‘If they find out he’s dead, we will all be executed. Every person on Jersey will be at risk. They will kill you one by one until you confess.’
‘Then they mustn’t know he’s dead,’ I said. ‘He must just disappear somehow.’
‘How many days I wish for that to happen,’ Wolfgang said. ‘But not like this. This is too … too difficult.’
‘Then we are
finished.’ Rachel went to Wolfgang and laid a hand on his arm. ‘You are a good man, Wolfgang. We are grateful for your help. And we cannot expect more than you have already given.’
He took her hand and kissed it. They looked at each other a long while, and he ran a finger down the side of her cheek until she took hold of his hand and pressed it to her chest.
‘If I do this, I do it for you,’ Wolfgang said. After a few moments’ thought, he went on, ‘If I could get him to the sea, we could bury him there and hope that nobody finds him.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘He might wash up somewhere.’
‘If he didn’t have his uniform, they wouldn’t know it was him,’ Wolfgang said. ‘Many Todt workers, they are thrown into the sea.’
I was momentarily shocked. But then I realised it was the answer.
‘Don’t go to the door if anyone comes,’ he said. ‘I must go now. I will say I took him to a hotel and have not seen him since.’
The next day, I searched Tilly’s room for a box of old gardening clothes that used to belong to Fred. I had to harden myself to use them. When I held them to my chest they smelt of icing sugar and pastry, of earth and manure, and even now the fact that Fred was dead and that I’d never see him again took my breath. I didn’t dare think what he would make of me using his clothes for this purpose.
Rachel took Horst’s uniform and burned it in the range. We dressed Horst in the ragged clothes and bound his feet with strips of cloth. The sight of him was both repulsive and sad. He was stiff, so it wasn’t an easy task. But finally it was done.
That night, Wolfgang drove up to the back door in the car. ‘They are searching for Huber everywhere. Yesterday was talk of him deserting his post. Today they suspect something. Tomorrow they will search house to house. You’d better be ready.’
Under the cover of dark, Wolfgang dragged Horst into the car. No one would be surprised to see an OT officer manhandling a prisoner’s corpse.
After Wolfgang had gone, we cleared out the range and scraped the buttons and brass from the bottom of the firebox into a paper bag.
The Occupation Page 27