This Shining Land

by Rosalind Laker

  When he was finished with her she drew away bleakly and lay huddled, her clothes still in some disarray, her long pale hair spread out like cobwebs over the hay. Ready to leave, he crouched down and tenderly stroked her face. She jerked away from his touch, shuddering. With a sigh he stepped back, gazing at her and reluctant to part without a last word from her. He spoke coaxingly, trying to get her to look towards him. When he failed to get the least acknowledgement, he accepted that it was useless to wait any longer. Stepping out of the hut, he looked back at her lingeringly. Then abruptly he glanced alertly into the surrounding trees, releasing the safety catch of his rifle again, certain he had heard a rustling. Nothing stirred. Remembering the hare, he shook his head and shouldered his rifle again. He lit a cigarette as he retraced his steps along the narrow track back to the lane.

  She could not stop shivering. Neither could she seem able to think. All that did come through to her was that Edvard was safe. And somehow that meant that Erik would be safe too. Just as in childhood there had been the game of not stepping on the lines of cobbles to keep trolls at bay, so keeping Edvard alive had had a double purpose. Her fingers were in her mouth and she was dribbling. She must have done that after Carl had gone. Was she trying to wipe the taste of his kisses away?

  The sound of someone entering the hut made her sit bolt upright, convulsed with fear that Carl had returned. Instead she saw a youth from one of the neighbouring farms and crowding into the hut behind him were two brothers of the same age whom she knew well. Their faces were wrathful and full of loathing. The first one spoke in a tone of contempt.

  “You dirty Nazi-loving whore!”

  She saw he had a pair of sheep-shearer clippers in his hand. “No!” she whimpered, scrambling to her feet and sinking down into the hay as she tried to edge away. “Please. No.”

  All three of them seized her. She screamed out and a large hand covered her mouth and nose, half smothering her. Her struggling was in vain for they were strong and muscular. Her wide, dilated eyes saw the long strands of her hair falling from her head as the shears did their brutal work, nicking her scalp agonisingly, the warm blood trickling down her face and neck. When her head was completely shaved they let her go.

  She bolted out of the hut, her coat flying and her arms straight out behind her like broken wings, sobbing as she ran. Her instinct was to lose herself in the clean greenness of the forest, only to hear with renewed terror the youths thudding after her. Their pace outstripped hers as she tried to evade them. Spreading out, they herded her like a panic-stricken animal back into the direction of the path. Once on it, they continued to drive her before them back towards the lane and the valley where she would be seen in her branded state from the farmsteads. Her mind seemed to snap and she began to scream, the piercing sound ringing far as the enclosing trees were left behind. Her pursuers fell back, their purpose accomplished.

  Not knowing she ran alone, she kept up her hurtling speed, beyond comprehending anything in the grip of hysteria. She neither saw nor heard those who came running out of Ryen farmhouse to stare in disbelief and then dash to halt her headlong flight. At the impact of Rolf’s arms she reeled and collapsed with a suddenness that almost unbalanced him, Johanna helping to hold her up by grabbing a sleeve. He carried her into the house.

  Gina and Johanna took charge. In the warm kitchen a shawl was wrapped around her where they had seated her on the kitchen bench. Her violent shivering was making her limbs twitch uncontrollably. Comforting elderberry tea was trickled through her chattering teeth. When the cuts on her head were bathed and treated the sting of the iodine made her eyes water. Her silence was as intense as her screaming had been.

  She did not speak until the next day. Then with a coloured scarf bound about her head, the bandages discarded, she came downstairs at midmorning. Johanna had just come in from a walk with her brother and Gina was writing letters. All three of them looked towards her. It was to Gina that she spoke quite calmly.

  “Your husband is safe. Officially his name has gone from the records. There is nothing more to fear and Carl has been posted away.”

  Gina’s face crumpled grotesquely into tears of thankfulness. She put down her pen and pressed fingertips to her tremulous mouth. “I never wanted you to be branded in this terrible way.”

  “I know that. My hair will grow again. In the meantime I want to go home. It shouldn’t be difficult to get a permit to leave my place of work here for elsewhere. The Germans are sympathetic to women who have been treated like me.”

  Johanna moved towards her compassionately. “How will you be received at home?”

  “I’ll take a chance.”

  “When shall you be back?”

  “I won’t be back. I’m sorry to leave, but I have to get away.”

  Gina rose slowly from her chair, her elbows at her sides, her hands clasped tightly together in front of her waist. “What of Erik?”

  Johanna, looking from one to the other of them, sensed the empathy between the younger and the older woman as Karen gave a curiously direct answer that was accepted as if anticipated.

  “I hope he forgets me while he’s away. That’s all I can say.”

  If Gina had needed confirmation of what she suspected she had it then. Sad in her own thoughts for the girl, she went to find Edvard who was out in the woodshed. The previous day he had sawed a good number of logs for the house stoves and he was looking them over, well pleased with the strength that was coming back into his arms and shoulders.

  “Sit down, Edvard,” Gina said to him. “I’ve something to tell you.”

  She sat down beside him on a wooden bench by the woodshed. When he had heard all she had to say he broke down completely, a hand over his eyes, tears trickling through his fingers. She had only seen him in that state once before. It evoked painful memories for her of an early estrangement in their marriage and she could make no move to comfort him.

  “That poor child,” he kept reiterating.

  After a while Gina went back into the house and sent Karen out to him. When she went out onto the kitchen porch later she saw them sitting quietly together, both Karen’s arms about him, his head still bowed, his hands dropped into a loose clasp between his knees.

  Shortly before Johanna returned to town early that evening, she went into the bedroom where Karen was packing. “I’ve a suggestion.” She was confident of Gunnar’s agreement. “I can offer you a job. After what you’ve been through you may feel that the last thing you want is to be with Germans at close quarters and I’ll understand if you refuse. Tom Ryen needs a housekeeper at his weekend place. It’s not all that far from your own village. You’d be on your own in the house most of the time.”

  Karen closed the lid of the suitcase and fastened the clasps. “Is that where you go?”

  “It’s part of my job to be civil to the enemy.”

  “Nobody can say I’m not experienced in that.” Her faint smile was chill.

  “Well? What do you think?”

  Karen went to the door and closed it. Leaning against it, she looked assessingly at Johanna. “I think you have as much good reason as I did for being civil to the Nazis, or else Rolf wouldn’t be on such good terms with you. I know Gina, too. She doesn’t have any proof, but she accepts that you’re leading your life the way you are to a purpose. I’ll take the job. When my hair has grown again I’ll go home and see my family. I didn’t want them to see me like this, but I had to get away from everything that reminded me of Erik.”

  “Then that’s settled. I’ll fix everything with Tom and get travel and work permits into the post for you tomorrow. When you receive them on Tuesday come to the office in Ålesund. I’ll see you get transport out to the house that same day.”

  “Thank you.”

  “No thanks are necessary. I can’t tell you what it will mean to me to have a friend I can trust in the house.”

  Rolf went with Johanna for most of the way into town before cycling back. After what had happened to Karen,
he was afraid she might be similarly attacked and branded. He asked her if she had ever been worried by the possibility.

  “Up until now I haven’t lost any sleep over it. Now I have to admit that I wouldn’t care to walk alone in the forests and in the mountains where I’ve always felt free and safe. That is a great deprivation. It also hurts deeply that friends and neighbours whom we’ve known all our lives no longer speak to me.” She smiled at him, hiding her own pain. “You’re a local hero. I think you should have something better to ride than a bicycle without tires.” He shrugged cheerfully. It was impossible to replace worn-out inner tubes or even to obtain puncture kits, so hoops of wood had replaced tires. “It’s not comfortable riding, I can tell you that. It’s as well I’ll not be needing it much longer.”

  Something in his tone alerted her. “Are you thinking of escaping to England?”

  He nodded seriously. “After Christmas. I feel I owe that much to our parents after all they’ve been through.”

  “I thought you were keen on your appointment to the Ålesund school.”

  “I was, until Karen’s announcement that Father has been removed once and for all from the marked list. That leaves me free to do what I’ve wanted ever since we defeated Quisling over the Teachers’ Nazi Association. Now I can join the Free Norwegian forces. My first choice will be to become a fighter pilot.”

  “Christmas is almost here and I’m spending it with Astrid, who would otherwise be on her own. Does that mean I’ll not see you again before you go?”

  “It looks like it.”

  “I wish you all the luck in the world. Maybe you’ll meet Erik in England.”

  “That’s what I’m hoping.”

  She did not ask him any details of how he would escape or from which place. On their walk that morning she had told him that Steffen had taken the transmitter from the school-house and she had disposed of the radio after being instructed by the Resistance to do nothing that might involve her in minor trouble. He was immensely interested in her job at Tom Ryen’s office and did not have to be told her reason for being there.

  “Don’t do anything rash,” he advised her when they said goodbye.

  “I’ll try to remember that, teacher Ryen,” she joked bravely. “I’ll think of you and Erik having a pint of beer together in an English pub.”

  Along the coast, less than twenty kilometres from where Johanna and her brother were parting, Steffen was aboard a fishing boat of the Shetland Bus route, about to set sail. Ahead lay consultations in London. Behind him lay many arduous and lonely weeks dogged by misfortune. “Operation Freshman,” which had involved intricate planning, had come to nothing. Highly experienced British sappers being flown in by gliders for an attack on the heavy-water plant in Telemark had met with an unprecedented disaster. One glider had crashed into a mountainside and the other mislanded, killing almost everybody. The survivors had been captured and shot by a firing squad. On more than one occasion he himself had been shot at and narrowly escaped capture.

  Ahead lay his first trip to Great Britain since he had been trained for service with the S.O.E. at the Company Linge base in Scotland. He would not be seeing Delia this time as he had before. She had done courageous work in Norway, transmitting vital naval information back to British Intelligence, never staying long in one place and carrying out her work in hazardous and frequently uncomfortable locations. From the start and on their few subsequent meetings during her time in the country, he had had the impression more than once that she had been about to say something of importance and then changed her mind. When she had left on the Shetland Bus, as he was doing now, she had made it clear that it was a final parting.

  “Goodbye, Englishman,” she had said to him. “I don’t know why you made that your code name in the Resistance. Your heart has never been anywhere else but in this rugged land.”

  Into the cabin of the fishing boat came two new arrivals for the voyage across the North Sea. Steffen guessed they were Norwegian commandos returning from a reconnaissance sortie somewhere along the coast. They exchanged conventional greetings as if there were nothing unusual about the circumstances. One of them was carrying a short fir tree axed off above the roots. There were melting snowflakes on it that had come from a whirling flurry blowing in from the sea and these sparkled in the cabin’s light.

  “It’s going to London,” the bearer said in explanation.

  “The King’s tree, is it?” Steffen asked.

  “That’s right. He hasn’t had a Christmas in exile yet without a tree from home.”

  “How many more to go, I wonder?”

  “God knows. All that’s certain is that a Norwegian tree will be crossing the North Sea at Christmastime for as long as there’s need for it.”

  In the first week of the New Year of 1943, a quiet Christmas at Ryen Farm behind him, Rolf was ready for escape, his preparations entirely complete. The escapees going together numbered six. Two of them were fellow teachers of his own age with whom he had been imprisoned, and the others were friends from the district who had been forced, owing to their engineering skills, to work for the Occupation forces. They gathered as if for a party at one of the homes, and at dawn slipped down into a previously selected fishing smack that was in from a night’s fishing with the nets aboard and the catch unloaded. It was going to be a long wait until nightfall when they intended to be the first of the local fleet to set sail before the boat’s owner arrived to take out his vessel. The advantage of taking a boat from this area was that the routine of the fishermen could be relied upon and clearly timed, which was why the number of boats taken in this way from all along the west coast went into the thousands.

  They passed the time of waiting by reading or dozing. One of the teachers was not allowed to sleep since he proved to be a loud snorer, and they had to maintain absolute silence in order not to be heard from the jetty and suspicions aroused. They were quite a distance from the spot where the sentry chose to stand, but he patrolled once an hour and no risks could be taken.

  Towards dusk they packed up their books and papers. Each one continually glanced at his watch as the last hour dragged by, no longer able to concentrate on anything except the moment ahead when Rolf would go into the wheelhouse, a peaked skipper’s cap pulled well down over his eyebrows, and start up the engine.

  “Only another five minutes,” one of them had just remarked when they heard voices approaching the mooring. The atmosphere in the cabin became electric as they all froze, listening intently. It became clear that the German sentry was in quite jovial conversation with a local man.

  “Rather you than me on the seas tonight. It’s a cold job keeping guard here, but I wouldn’t change it for yours at any price.”

  There was a guffaw. “That’s what land folk always say. The sea has never scared me and I tell you I’ve seen waves as high as mountains in my time. This is good fishing weather. I’ll see you get a good-sized cod tomorrow morning if you’re on duty.”

  “I change duties in a couple of hours. My pal will be here. You can give it to him, and a few herrings if you have them.”

  “It’s as good as done. The usual price and the best of the catch.”

  A pair of heavy feet landed on the deck. The escapees groaned under their breath. They had had the ill luck to choose the one occasion when the skipper had broken with routine. Rolf signalled with quietening hands that nobody should move as yet.

  “There’s a slim chance he’s only come to fetch something and will go again,” he murmured. “If the worst happens, you know what to do. None of us is armed and the only way any of us will get out of this mess is to scatter widely.”

  There came the sound of snow being brushed off the deck. The sentry was still there talking with the skipper about the vessel itself. The owner was proud of it as these individualistic men always were of their boats and their means of livelihood.

  “I’ll show you something from the cabin that should interest you,” his voice boomed.

  R
olf gave the final order: “Don’t move until he’s in the cabin and we can get him down. Otherwise the doorway will be blocked.”

  The door banged open and the skipper’s bulk filled the space as he took the two steps down the companionway. Although there was no light in the cabin there was enough glimmer from outside for him to see that he had uninvited passengers and he halted abruptly, still at a vantage point from which he could withdraw. He gave a low whistle of surprise.

  “Keep calm, boys. I’ll come to England with you. Give me time to get rid of the Kraut on the jetty and fetch my wife.” With that he reached for a carved wooden ship on the shelf and went out again, shutting the door behind him.

  The tension did not ease. “Can we trust him?” was the first question.

  “Maybe he’s telling the sentry to get reinforcements.”

  Rolf settled the issue. “We’ll trust him. Any other move means that we’ve lost our chance of getting to England now, and for some of us there’ll never be another.”

  Outside, the voices of the skipper and the sentry faded as they moved away, good-humoured haggling over the price of the hand-carved model taking place. Then there was nothing except the lap and slap of the water against the hull. After half an hour the skipper returned on his own. He opened the door briefly, sticking his head inside.

  “My wife wouldn’t come. She was too nervous to take the risk. I do a trade in hand-carving. You might as well benefit from my most recent transaction. Don’t light up until we’re out at sea.” He tossed in a couple of packets of German cigarettes.

  The familiar tonk-tonk of the engine brought the ship to life. There were a few more minutes of delay with the skipper moving about on deck and then they were moving. Before long they were able to light their cigarettes.