My toes found Andrew’s back.
‘Don’t be stupid,’ Colin shouted.
‘No, you’re stupid,’ Andrew shouted back. ‘Killing people is wrong.’
My feet slipped off. I swung round. Fought to find something solid again. Another body, trying to support me. Nellie this time.
Colin screamed, ‘She’s a liar! She’s a Nazi!’
‘Angie, I don’t like this,’ Andrew keened.
Angela was whiter than the snow. ‘Oh God,’ she whispered. ‘Stop it, Colin, just stop it … Stop it!’
Perhaps they would have slipped the noose free. Perhaps they would have let me go. Perhaps I would have escaped.
We’ll never know.
The wooden beam cracked and broke. We were all thrown to the ground. I covered the children as best I could when the roof caved in. Then I think I died.
Sweet Cocoa
I died for a while. It wasn’t so bad. Mrs Varley’s ghost looked on, neither happy nor sad.
Nellie Varley was somewhere underneath my corpse; Andrew too. They were wriggling like puppies. I strained hard to shift the wooden beam off of us. Eventually it moved. Hands reached in. Andrew and Nellie were pulled out. Hands came back, stretched the noose away from my neck. Angela.
‘Come on, Brigitta.’
‘Not. Brigitta.’ I mouthed the words. My throat was too raw for sound.
‘All right, but come on. It’s freezing.’
That it was. Somehow I crawled from under the beam, half paralysed with cold and shock.
Colin, Poppy, the others, they had gone. Just Angela and the littlies remained.
‘T-take them home,’ I rasped. ‘Too cold. Go home.’
‘What about you?’
I shook my head. ‘Go. Shoo.’ I flapped my kid-gloved hand at them like they were chickens. They shooed.
How beautiful the woods were. Night-dark and silent. No people, no horror, no history. Snow and trees.
The lake. Frosted snow on the ice, like glitter. Magic. In my flower dress I could be an ice skater, gliding around, carefree and graceful. I took a step onto the ice. It held. Had we skated once? Mama, Papa and me? Couldn’t remember. There’d been ice. A river. Crossing along the girders of a bombed bridge. Hold my hand, Mama said. Just let go. No, that was wrong. Don’t let go. I walked further onto the ice. Why not? Ursula had done it, decades before. Just let go. Let it all go. Past, present, future. People, places, none of it mattered. The stars shone and the ice crackled …
Crackled, cracked and tipped me in, God in heaven that was cold so cold clamped on my chest freezing brain stabbing glass shards so God devil swear-words cold floundering for solid, floundering on ice, holding, slipping, slipping, Mama where’s your hand where’s your hand where’s …?
A hand.
Strong. Bones, sinews, skin, nails. Holding. Pulling.
‘Don’t let go!’
Two of us in the water, swimming, gasping, pushing through ice, on snow, burning cold snow, out of the water, snow, land, fall, safe. Joe.
Joe, putting a jacket round my shoulders, leading me past stone statues, whispering ivy, the terrace, the gateway, the kitchen door.
Sophie Rover, a warm giant in a blinding bright kitchen. ‘You found her, thank goodness.’
‘Shh,’ said Joe.
‘What’s happened? Her neck …’
‘Shh,’ said Joe. ‘Not now.’
‘Right. Kettle’s on. You’re both soaked. Towels. Out of those wet things.’
‘No no no no no no,’ I said, somewhere deep behind the fire in my throat.
‘Shh,’ said Joe. To Mrs Rover, ‘I’ve got this. Honestly, I’ll take care of her. We’ll deal with the rest tomorrow. Please.’
Tomorrow. That was my mama’s song – ‘It’s a Lovely Day Tomorrow’. Was it tomorrow already? Mrs Rover left. Joe helped me to a chair near the range, clothes plastered to my body, dripping on the clean floor. I watched him move. Getting a silver pan. Pouring white milk and sugar. Whisking in brown cocoa. Two blue-and-white striped mugs on the kitchen table. Sweet hot cocoa for us both.
‘I’m s-sorry, Joe …’
‘Shh. Let’s just get warm.’
I cupped my hands around my mug. He cupped one hand. Through his wet shirt I saw the puckering of his shoulder stump for the first time. We drank.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘That’ll warm your inside.’
My teeth had stopped chattering but my voice was still hoarse. ‘You jumped in the lake for me.’
‘Of course I did. Come on, we have to get out of these wet clothes. There’s no one here, and I don’t care anyway I want you to see this, everything I’ve been hiding. Here I am. This is me.’
He tore the wet shirt up and over his head. I saw all the ridges of scarred flesh on his chest and the empty air where an arm had been. When he turned there were more burns on his back.
‘I had a ton of grafts,’ he said. ‘Skin from my legs.’ He peeled off his wet trousers too and draped them over the towel rack. ‘See, where it’s smooth here. They took it from my thighs for my face and chest. Luckily they left my nipples in the right places.’
I was wondering what the English word for those brown dots was. I didn’t have vocabulary for private parts of the body or for all these new sensations.
Joe wrapped a towel round his shoulders and a tablecloth around his middle.
My turn.
I set my mug down and peeled off the kid gloves, letting them splat to the floor. Never taking my eyes from Joe’s, I tore off the limp sheets of the paper dress. My skin was stained blue in places and water ran down from my hair, over my flat chest. I took my underwear off too and became painfully naked. What was the point of hiding any more? Someone had to know. Someone had to see me as me.
He saw. His face showed a swirl of different emotions. Surprise. Realisation. Something else – something warmer.
He swung the towel from his shoulders and stepped forward. Gently he smoothed it over my hair. Patted my face. Tenderly touched the towel to my neck, each moment acknowledging who I was. He kissed my forehead, my cheeks … looked for permission … then kissed my lips, his mouth warm, his tongue tasting of chocolate, his arm around me, holding me close so his heat passed to me and I was dying again, a different kind of death where everything was light and amazing.
Eventually I had to breathe.
‘You don’t care?’ I asked, meaning me, my body, my secrets.
‘Oh, I care,’ he smiled. ‘I don’t think you realise quite how much I care … about you.’
We couldn’t keep kissing forever. The sun would come up and the spell would break. Until then he was mine and I was his.
Wrapped in towels and tablecloths we crept through the silent house to his room. He made me put on his purple pyjamas because it was bitterly cold now the fires were out. He wore a vest and shorts. I loved looking at him. Loved being in his room, this sanctuary of books and sketches and peace.
We bundled into the single bed, still kissing, still in wonder. I was me – me, myself, accepted! Joe piled blankets over us and held me.
I thought how close I’d come to death, and how life still claimed me. Joe understood. He’d half died himself once.
I had to ask, ‘What … what was it like? The crash? The end?’
He went very still, but he didn’t pull away. ‘You really want to know? Funny – no one else has even asked me that. They all tiptoe around, pretending it never happened.’ He paused, unable to find the words to start.
‘What’s your last memory from before it happened?’ I prompted, thinking of the moment when I’d been in the Trautwein apartment, about to sit at their piano and play the damn thing – who cared about being caught and killed – and that’s when the bomb hit.
Joe took a breath and started speaking.
‘We’d taken a fair bit of flak, nothing major. Then we got caught in a searchlight. We were like fish in a barrel – an easy target. After that … noise, confusion, smoke. Skipper
said to bail. I couldn’t really believe it was all happening. One minute flying high, the next … I was hit on the arm. Shrapnel. Didn’t hardly feel it at first. The fire was worst – so hot, and the smell! Pongo was … gone. I thought, Should I jump, should I stay on the plane? It was whirling down like a banshee, and all the while the stupidest things going through my head, like, Will it hurt?’
‘Did it?’ I couldn’t bear the idea of him in pain.
‘I blacked out before I hit the water. I think I remember drowning. Being tangled in the parachute. I was pulled onto land by some farm girls on their way to work and pummelled till I breathed again. It was hell – hearing nothing but German words, thinking I’d be a prisoner, ashamed I’d been caught, afraid for my pals. The rest …’ He sighed and I sighed with him.
‘Joe, about that woman who came to the party. What she said. I should explain …’ I rasped.
‘Shh. Tomorrow.’
He was more interested in making sure we were as close as we possibly could be. I buried myself in his nearness.
‘I have to tell you – they wanted to hang me. Colin and Angela.’
He swore fluently. ‘Hang you?’
‘As a Nazi. I am not a Nazi. I promise.’
‘Of course you aren’t, idiot. Oh God, wait till I get my hands – my hand – on them.’
‘Tomorrow,’ I said.
‘Tomorrow.’ Then, as an afterthought, Joe asked, ‘What is your name?’
When I told him, he just hummed it quietly back to me.
Hungarian Goulash
It was so easy to sleep in Joe’s arms. I didn’t mean to. I should’ve gone back to my own room, instead of snuggling into his embrace. Did that make me no better than I ought to be? I didn’t care. I felt warm and loved. Enchanted.
The spell was smashed a short sleep later. Morning. A hammering on the door.
Knock knock knock!
‘Who’s there?’ mumbled Joe sleepily. My heart flooded just to hear his voice and to wake so close to him. Then my heart squeezed tight and small. It was happening. The moment I’d feared. The pounding on the door.
They were coming for me.
A voice demanded, ‘Where is she? Is she there? Joseph Summer, open this door at once!’
Joe swore, then muttered, ‘It’s Mother. No – don’t hide. We’ve done nothing wrong.’
She wouldn’t think so when she saw me in her son’s purple pyjamas, and him just in shorts and vest.
‘Just a moment, Ma,’ he called out.
‘I will not wait an instant longer!’
Bang bang bang on the door.
Joe slipped out of bed. An ice age of cold invaded me. As soon as he pulled back the bolt, the door crashed open.
‘She’s here, isn’t she? Mrs Rover said she’d come back with you last night.’
‘Mother, calm down.’
‘Don’t tell me to be calm … You!’ Lady Summer saw me and went rigid with anger. ‘Was it not enough that you lied to us all from the first? Now to find you here, like this, with my son! My son!’
‘It’s not what you think, Mother.’
‘Cover yourself up, Joseph! No need to flaunt your injuries.’
Joe flinched but did as he was told. His shame was easily triggered.
Vera Baggs appeared behind Lady Summer, bundled in a fleecy dressing gown and hair net.
‘Thief!’ she shrieked. ‘Imposter! Hussy!’
Joe retaliated. ‘Mind your own business, you nosy old harpy.’
‘Oh! I am a civilised gentlewoman and deserve your respect, young man. And I’ll have you know, it is my business not to be murdered in my bed by foreigners. See what your kindness and generosity have led to, my lady. You’ve nursed a viper in your bosom!’
Lady Summer’s eyes scraped my skin. ‘You are in very serious trouble, Brigitta, or whoever you are. Not just with me. The police have been called.’
Vera Baggs was jubilant as she pulled objects out of her dressing-gown pocket one by one. First a book.
I gasped. ‘Give me that. It is mine!’
‘I don’t doubt it. How do you explain a German dictionary scribbled with codes? For spying.’
Joe defended me. ‘For learning English, you ignorant witch.’
‘What else did I find in her room? Money, that’s what.’
‘Which she has earned, scrubbing this rotting old pile of bricks!’
Baggs went on, not noticing Lady Summer’s reaction to Joe’s last comment. ‘A knife – for murdering us all in our beds, I expect. Newspaper clippings about Nazi criminals – her heroes, no doubt. And last but not least, a dirty old glove stolen from Gant’s.’
That was the last straw. Like a wolf I sprang at her.
‘Murder! Help!’ she screamed.
I screamed back, ‘Es steht dir nicht zu, das zu berühren!’
She dangled the glove high. ‘You can curse me all you like. I’m a God-fearing woman and I’ll see you punished for your crimes.’
Lady Summer took a deep breath. ‘She said, It is not yours to touch.’
‘Touching her things contaminates me!’ Miss Baggs threw the glove away from her. I dived but Lady Summer scooped it up first.
‘It is mine!’
‘Mother, give it back,’ said Joe.
Lady Summer stared at the glove. ‘Where did you get this?’
A heavy voice sounded from the corridor. It was Mrs Rover. ‘My lady, the police are here.’
Straight away Miss Baggs babbled, ‘Arrest her! She attacked me! She’s a spy and we found her in bed.’
‘We weren’t in bed like that, and even if we were –’ began Joe.
‘Now then,’ said Constable Ribble, setting Miss Baggs to one side. ‘What seems to be the trouble here?’
Joe was first to speak. ‘It’s Bossy Baggs you should be arresting, for being a big sack of unpleasantness. Then round up Colin Oakley, Angela Goose and the others who carried out a hanging last night! That’s attempted murder.’
Miss Baggs muttered something that sounded like, They had the right idea.
I put my hand to my throat, and all that horror overwhelmed me again. It didn’t matter what I said or didn’t say. People had already made up their minds. Might as well get the end over and done with.
‘I will fetch my coat,’ I said.
‘Oh, please allow me the honour,’ answered Miss Baggs with succulent sarcasm. ‘What a pleasure it will be to see you off the premises. You can get out of His Lordship’s pyjamas first – stealing the very clothes off his back! Cheek of it!’
‘You do not have to go,’ Joe told me.
‘Be quiet,’ snapped Lady Summer.
‘I’ll be right behind you …’ He was one-handedly pulling on trousers, struggling with the button fly.
Miss Baggs stared open-mouthed, probably repelled by the sight of his disfigurement in the flesh. I wondered whether I might as well murder her on my way out, since I was heading to prison anyway.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’ Lady Summer asked Joe, in her most chilling voice.
‘To stand by my friend. Where do you think?’
‘She is not who you thought she was. I know you must feel betrayed, as I do.’
He laughed. ‘You know nothing. Nothing.’
As he stood there, skin puckered, arm amputated, half-dressed I saw only his courage and loyalty. Did I deserve him?
‘Stay here, Joe. I will be fine. I don’t want you to come.’
Constable Ribble coughed. ‘Begging your pardon, Your Lordship. No one’s going anywhere fast. I barely got through to the house meself. It’s like the ruddy Antarctic out there, with snowdrifts up to your armpits.’
Miss Baggs collapsed into an armchair. ‘God help us all – we are snowed in with a crazed Nazi killer! For God’s sake don’t leave us now, Constable! You’re the only thing standing between us and Hitler’s spawn!’
They let me go back to my room. Not my room. Brigitta’s room. I put on clothes. Brigitta’s
clothes. I folded Joe’s pyjamas on the bed. He’d worn them while alone at night, reading his books, dreaming his dreams and perhaps even thinking of me. He knew me. My name, who I really was. He had still wrapped his arm around me.
You can never, never show or tell, Mama said. No matter who asks. Do you understand, Liebling? Do you understand?
Even so young, I’d understood: I had to be so ashamed of myself I’d stay hidden. Was it time now to come out of hiding?
Vera Baggs lamented there was no dungeon to lock me in. Joe said no one had any right to hold me. Lady Summer said, ‘Put her in the butler’s pantry. There’s a lock on the door.’
‘This will all come right,’ Mrs Rover said to me over and over as I was escorted downstairs, past the debris of last night’s party, past the fifteen toilet cubicles, through the kitchen and into a small room, empty save for a table and two chairs – just like an interrogation cell. It was the butler’s pantry, where only last night Connie Crackerthorpe had transformed into Connie Snow. Now she was gone, and my own transformation was infinitely less glorious. ‘It will all come right somehow, you’ll see,’ Mrs Rover repeated.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, so ashamed.
‘You’ve nothing to be sorry for!’
‘This is jankers,’ I said with a wobbly laugh, remembering her word for army punishment.
‘Something like that.’
Constable Ribble sat with me first, having told everyone else to go about their business.
‘Now then. You haven’t been formally charged with anything, whatever that Baggs woman squawks about. To be fair, I’m not quite sure what crimes you’ve committed. Seems you’re an imposter, a murderer and a Nazi spy.’
‘Who did I murder?’
‘Nobody, yet, to my knowledge. Anything you want to tell me now? Your real name, for example?’
I shook my head. English interrogations were strange. Ribble didn’t look like he relished torture. Did the English have secret police like the Nazi Gestapo? They had people who spat at foreigners and tried to hang them after all.
I stared out of the window. The sill was loaded with snow. Above that the sky was grey. Was that a robin fluttering past? Thick snowflakes still fell, muffling the outside world. What now? They’d taken my knife, my money, even my precious grey glove. Slowly I shut down all senses and emotions until I was left with music – the horrifying scene from Mozart’s Don Giovanni where death draws close. It seemed appropriate. I played a few jumbled notes against my leg.
Summerland Page 16