“Pilot,” he repeated. Why am I feeling embarrassed?
“You are not hurt at all?”
“Not as far as I know.”
She was suddenly brisk. “We shall soon see: my husband is a doctor. What were you planning to do?”
“Climb a tree. Hide until those men who drove up have gone. See if your house was empty. Break in, if possible. Hide until morning.”
“Good. I will show you a tree that you can climb easily, and with thick enough foliage to hide you. Come on, we must hurry. They will come looking for me, to ask if I have seen anything suspicious.”
She led him to a tall beech.
“Here it is. You climb as high as you can. I shall return as soon as it is safe.”
“Thank you.” It was heartfelt but sounded absurdly inadequate.
When she had gone, he felt as bereft as though abandoned by an old friend.
*
The house into which Frau Ursula Steinhoff led him, stealthily, was as Harry had expected: it exuded solid German upper-middle-class respectability. The furniture was ponderous, there were rather too many oriental rugs, the armchairs were over-blown, the light fittings ornate; an excess of chandeliers.
What he had not expected was the abundance and excellence of enlarged photographs depicting a huge variety of wild animals and birds.
“My husband and I spent some years in East Africa,” Ursula explained. “He was interested in tropical diseases for a while, and was going through one of those doing-good phases that eccentrics so often experience: especially if they are essentially atheistic by nature and have a guilty feeling that they ought to be Christian. He was doctor to a mission for a while. He and I took the photos.”
Eccentric? Atheistic by nature, a do-gooder? Harry couldn’t wait to meet the doctor.
Ursula had taken him into the house by a side door and up to a room on the first floor.
“This is my husband’s family home. His people have lived here for three generations. His father and grandfather were also doctors. He has ample means and does not need to work. He has his surgery in Aachen. It is quite a drive there and back, but that is where he insists on working. He has many patients from Belgium and Holland, you see, as well as Germans. They are mostly people who have lived in the Belgian Congo or the Dutch East Indies, and Bruno is quite a specialist in tropical diseases.
“We have three servants: an elderly man, a kind of butler, valet and handyman; and his wife, who cooks and cleans. They share the cleaning, actually. They have a mentally-retarded son, whom nobody else would employ. He, of course, is an interesting mental case for Bruno to study. He helps with the heavy work and does the gardening. I sometimes like to cook and I like to garden. The old people are utterly loyal: and very grateful to us for keeping their son here.
“Odd patients of Bruno’s come and go. The servants are used to finding a bedroom occupied by a patient, and being forbidden to enter. One only has to tell them that they risk some dreadful tropical bug, and they won’t go near the room.”
“Is that what I am to be: one of Dr Steinhoff’s patients?”
“That’s it.”
“Won’t the servants wonder how I got here? Shouldn’t I be brought by ambulance, or at least the doctor’s car?”
“In this house?” She laughed. “They are so used to Bruno’s eccentricities — and mine! They think bird-watching is madness — that they will not give a thought to how you arrived here.”
I’m beginning to suspect there’s more than bird-watching among your eccentricities, dear lady, thought Harry.
In the full light, she was bizarrely fetching: her eyes an unusual cornflower blue and their size made the more striking by the length of their lashes and her use of mascara and blue shadow. Her shoulders and arms, in a thin jumper, were shapely; her legs, even in the knitted Tyrolean knee stockings she wore for prowling among the woods and undergrowth, and the heavy, laced shoes, were elegant. She changed into silk stockings and high heels as soon as she had shown him to his room, and when he saw her in them he realised why she also wore the only green nail-enamel he had ever seen. It had a metallic sheen, was strangely disturbing and made him curious to discover if she used it on her toenails.
She brought him pyjamas and underclothes.
“My husband is as tall as you, but bulkier. They will more or less fit. As for the combinations: I fear he shares Bernard Shaw’s obsession for one-piece garments. Practical, but hideous. They would be total passion-killers, if there were any passion left between us. You see, Bruno is twenty years older than I am; and he contracted a disease in the Tropics that had a certain unfortunate consequence.” She blinked her huge eyes at Harry with mischievous disingenuousness. “His testicles have shrivelled to the size of walnuts.”
He felt himself flush.
“You are surprised at my frankness? My friend, remember Germany is a pagan country, under the Nazis. We are open about everything. The State encourages free love. Sexual matters are no longer taboo. My husband is impotent because his balls have dried up. So why not say so?”
I don’t think this is a wise topic to pursue. Better change it quickly. There’s a conversational — and provocative — Beecher’s looming up, and I want to collect myself before I take it; don’t want to jump too soon and peck.
“What you haven’t yet explained is why you are doing all this for me.”
“My dear friend, we are, like all our class who share our way of life, ardent anti-Nazis. My husband has had to attend to dozens ... scores ... of patients who have been brutally beaten up by Storm Troopers, the S.S., the Gestapo ...”
“Why don’t you leave Germany, then?”
“Because we are Germans. Would you leave England in the same circumstances? Or would you stay on, refusing to be driven from your own country by a lunatic charlatan and a gang of bullies; and stay on also to try to get rid of them, for your country’s sake? The French invented the word ‘Chauvinist’, but it is we Germans who exemplify it best. We want our country as it was.”
“I believe you.”
“Bruno was a Medical Officer on the Western Front throughout the last war. He was decorated for gallantry under fire; not only tending the wounded, but also going out to where they lay between the trenches. If he had not been a doctor, he would have been a fighting soldier. He fought the men of your father’s generation: but, in this war, he regards people like you as allies and the Nazis as the enemies of Germany.”
“I hope you’re right,” Harry said drily. “I feel I’m taking a lot for granted in assuming he’ll welcome me when he comes home and finds a bogus patient installed.”
But it was exactly as Ursula had predicted. Dr Bruno Steinhoff was heavily handsome, his face a fissured and somewhat ravaged Roman mask, his physique impressive, his carriage as ramrod straight as any Prussian professional officer’s. He diffused a reassuring aroma of peppermints, which he constantly sucked, and disinfectant soap, with which he must wash his hands every few minutes, Harry thought. He might be eccentric, he also thought, but his turnout wouldn’t shame Air Marshal Crichton or Air Commodore Bentinck.
The doctor’s voice was mellow, deep, a further reassurance.
“Delighted to have you. I knew a Templer in Kenya; any relation?”
“Not as far as I know, Doctor.”
“Ah! Glad to hear it; he was not a worthy chap: adultery may be the accepted indoor pastime of the British in Kenya, but this fellow was like a goat: he’d bang anything, and wasn’t even discreet about it.”
“Definitely not a Berkshire Templer, sir.” Harry, troubled by earlier thoughts, and recollections of his talk with Ursula, tried to sound hearty.
“No need to ‘sir’ me.” The doctor switched to German. “I think I’d better examine you quickly, just to make sure you are all right: not concussed, no sprains or bruises, no small bones broken, that sort of thing.”
“Very well, doctor, I am entirely in your hands.”
“You do speak German well.”
&nbs
p; “Thank you. I spent some time here, as a schoolboy and later, on holiday visits.”
“Ah! You are interested in this country?”
“I was learning German and French at school. I try to do things well, if I do them at all.”
The Doctor’s eyes were a mild brown, but, at this moment, astonishingly sharp as he looked at Harry.
“You must be a good pilot, to have survived, from what I hear. I do not mean only today: from what I have been told, your daytime bomber raids have suffered terrible casualties.”
Harry stiffened. “That is not a matter I feel I can discuss.”
“All right.” The doctor lapsed into English. “Don’t get on your high horse. I’m not trying to pump you.” He remained silent while he concluded his examination; then gave Harry a friendly clap on the shoulder and reverted to German. “You are in fine shape, my boy. You are going to need it. You have an arduous time ahead: I am referring to your journey across Belgium, to return to England.”
Harry assumed that there had been an ambiguity in the doctor’s words and the sly grin that accompanied them, when his bedroom door opened and Ursula came in, in her night dress and a silk wrap.
As she slid into bed with him — he noticed that the varnish on her toenails did match her fingers, and found that green was extraordinarily erotic — he prepared himself for one facet of the arduous time that her husband had predicted.
She said, matter-of-factly, “I love my husband, you know. He was a very virile, sensual man. I would never have dreamed of being unfaithful to him, but for that damned microbe that penetrated his scrotum. But one has to be practical. I am a highly voluptuous woman. And as I am not the sort to make do with a dildo ... here we are!”
She turned to him, wildly stimulating in the soft sheen of a bedside lamp, and clamped her mouth to his.
Later, she said contentedly; “I know you’re in a hurry to get away, Harry: but you must reconcile yourself to a longish stay. I need you; and we must let the hue and cry die down a bit. We also need to make some arrangements for seeing you safely across Belgium. One or two of Bruno’s patients will attend to that. But I’m afraid we can’t help you to cross the sea. Once you reach the coast, it will be up to you.”
“You are both being marvellous, and ...”
She tightened her arms around him and rolled on top of him.
“That’s enough talk for now, my lad: action is the order of the day ... or night.”
She made the usual misuse of the term “order of the day”, but Harry thought that this was hardly the time at which to enlighten her.
*
When Harry dwelt on the fact that he was cuckolding Dr Steinhoff, it appeared to him to be the meanest act of his life; or series of acts, for Ursula was, if not insatiable, equipped with a voracious sexual appetite. She visited his bed on seven successive nights. On most days, she came to be served in the afternoon as well. By the third day he ceased looking on himself as a stud animal serving a female on heat: there had been affection from the first and the disturbed state of his emotions now engendered a kind of love.
He no longer tried to find excuses for putting horns on the kind man who was to be even more instrumental in his returning home than Ursula. He had, at the beginning, told himself that he had been raped. Now he admitted that she had aroused him at first sight and he had been a willing partner: but would, nevertheless, not have made or accepted advances if the husband were not impotent.
Every evening the doctor spent a couple of hours in Harry’s room. He talked about Africa, about the war, about politics, but most of all about his contempt for Hitler and his revulsion from the brutalities the Nazis had inflicted — and still did — on men and women who were brought to him for treatment.
“I feel sick and guilty when I think of what they would do to you and Ursula if they find out about my being here, Bruno; either while I’m here or after I’ve left.”
“Nothing, my dear Harry. We provided for that eventuality years ago. Neither of us is ever without the small capsule which would ensure they never torture us or drag any information out of us, if the worst happens.”
“That makes me feel no better. It makes me feel like a potential murderer, in fact: the murderer of the two people who are doing more for me than anyone has ever done; and on immediate acquaintance.”
“You have no need to have such sentiments. We have been in danger since the moment the Nazis came to power.”
Every day, Dr Steinhoff had something to report about the progress of arrangements for Harry’s escape. And every night Ursula became more frantic at the prospect of losing him.
It was a persistent worry to Harry that he could not let his parents know that he was alive. He thought it unlikely that anyone on the sortie had seen him bale out; and if someone had noticed one of the crew doing so, he could not believe that he would have been able to identify whom.
He thought about Squadron Leader Snaith’s death and was ashamed of wondering whether he had missed promotion to flight commander, and who had been given the job. He was very junior for another promotion, but wartime distorted every pattern of Service life: he might well have been deemed worthy of squadron leader’s rank. Probably, he added to himself, with the empirical pragmatism of which Ursula was so stunning an exponent, because they’d know I’m unlikely to be around to hold the rank for long. It was a well-founded cynicism, for half the officers who had been on the squadron at the outbreak of war had already been killed, wounded, or shot down over France and captured by the enemy.
On the evening that Dr Steinhoff announced that he would be leaving on the following night, Harry was struck by a dichotomy of emotion whose strength astonished him. Simultaneously with a surge of joy, he was pierced by dismay. When Ursula came to him that night, she broke into sobs at the instant of her first climax and clung to him with a ferocity that left the scores of her finger nails on his back. But she uttered not a word about their impending separation.
*
In pitch darkness, under a totally overcast sky through which neither stars nor moon could peep, Harry left the house as stealthily as he had come.
Dr Steinhoff shook him hard by the hand and gave him an avuncular pat on the shoulder. Ursula took both his hands in hers, kissed him on both cheeks; and then, taking advantage of the darkness, inserted the tip of her tongue briefly and erotically in his right ear. He understood her message: it implied a willing resumption of their relationship whenever their paths might cross again.
He mounted the bicycle they had given him and rode off with the anonymous guide who waited a few feet away. They followed a lane, then a secondary road and then another lane for perhaps five miles. The guide held up a warning hand and indicated a turn into a barn several hundred yards away from the farm buildings. The doors were open and Harry could see a large white shape inside. It resolved itself into an ambulance.
The guide climbed aboard, the driver stowed the bicycle on a roof rack. The guide put on a long white coat and dangled a stethoscope around his neck. He asked Harry to take off the civilian jacket the doctor had given him; one that fitted. He felt his right shirtsleeve being rolled up, then the prick of a needle.
It was still dark when he regained consciousness.
The ambulance was stationary. His guide whispered, “We are two kilometres from the Belgian frontier. I shall lead you there and hand you over to a Belgian friend.” He gave Harry the canvas holdall into which he had packed his uniform. The Germans would be likely to shoot him as a spy if caught without it.
A cup of coffee and a benzedrine tablet restored him to full wakefulness. He judged that there were under two hours to first light.
“Were we stopped, on the road?” He asked the guide.
“Twice. You can be confident of the false identity card we gave you: it was unquestioned; and they could not question an unconscious patient. But this last stretch will be more tricky.”
They had covered only half the distance to the frontier when, as the
y made their way around a field, crouching to keep below the hedge, Harry tripped over a roll of baling wire that had been left there for future use. He fell, the fallen dry branches of the tree under which the wire had been placed made loud sounds as they snapped under his weight.
A steel-helmeted figure emerged from the shadows some yards away. A voice called out “Halt! Who is there?”
Harry could see the barrel of an anti-aircraft gun above the hedgerow, a hundred yards away. They had blundered into a sentry. He turned to speak to the guide; but the guide had run.
The sentry repeated the challenge, his voice both angry and nervous. Harry heard the rattle of his rifle as he raised it.
“An honest poacher,” Harry called back.
“Come here and let me have a look at you.”
Harry fumbled for his revolver, which was at the top of the holdall.
“Hurry, damn you, you sneakthief.”
“Coming ... I twisted my ankle when I fell.” Harry lumbered forward, affecting a limp.
When he was within five yards, the sentry told him to stop.
Another few paces, and I could have knocked him down. Harry was trembling with frustration and fear of capture, fear for those who had helped him.
“What are you hiding behind your back?” The sentry peered suspiciously.
“This.”
As he spoke, Harry took two steps forward, his hand still behind him.
“I said, ‘don't move’. Stand ...”
Before the sentry could say “still”, Harry had leaped at him, clubbing the heavy revolver into his face.
The sentry staggered back with a cry of pain and alarm. Harry kicked him hard in the crotch and he fell backwards. Harry fell on him, trying to wrench off his helmet. The German fought fiercely, but he was dazed by the blow and the pain of it. He grappled with Harry, who rolled under him, then right over so that he was on top again and crushing the wind out of the German.
Ursula would enjoy this ... the thought came unbidden.
Harry put the heel of his hand under the peak of the helmet and thrust hard up. The German gurgled as the chinstrap tightened. Harry dragged the helmet off, then struck the German on the temple with the butt of his pistol. He found himself lying suddenly on a limp man who no longer fought.
War Wounds Page 10