by Paul Griner
“Yes. This morning.” Is that why Greta had come? As a pilot fish for Kate?
“And before then?” Kate said. “Before you were digging? It can’t have been five days straight. You never even called.”
“I was arrested.”
“Whatever for?”
“They thought I was a spy.”
She laughed and tilted her head against the door. “I thought you worked for people ‘higher up.’”
“I do. This wasn’t them. This was the police.”
She grew serious when she saw his expression. “They thought you were a spy?”
He shrugged. “It’s not important. I was at a bomb site and they found me suspicious. When I realized that, I ran, and that made them certain.”
“How awful.” Outside, the air-raid sirens started up and he shifted from one foot to the other at the claxon’s shrill call. She was watching him. “But even if I weren’t already leaving, I have other things to do. Look at this.” She pushed the door open and waved at her apartment, which was only partially reassembled.
“My God.” He knew he sounded incredulous; he hadn’t realized he’d been so thorough. “What happened?”
“Robbery, I think, though a peculiar one. A scarf, a jacket, and some shoes. Whoever it was seems to have been more interested in making a mess than anything else. He left big footprints everywhere, which seemed intentional, that blue builder’s chalk. One was on my bed.”
Had he done that? He didn’t remember.
“And he was a cheeky bastard,” Kate said. “Drank my scotch too.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Why? It wasn’t you, was it?”
He shook his head, unable to meet her eye though he knew she meant it rhetorically. “No, just that you have to go through it. I wish you didn’t have to clean up. I wish you’d come with me.”
She looked at him and sighed. “So your post was hit.”
He fished a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket and gave her one. When he tried to light it, his hand shook so much the match went out. “Some friends died.”
“Myra?” she said.
He nodded. “And Winifred.”
She touched his arm. “Now it’s my turn to be sorry. Uselessly, probably.”
“Why uselessly?”
“One can’t be sorry enough to bring back the dead.”
She lit both their cigarettes, let him in, and walked to a window, where she stood looking down on the street, but she was going to go with him; she’d invited him into the apartment, after all. His trembling hand, perhaps, her nurse’s training. But he had to be silent. If he pushed, she might pull back. He watched people on the street lining up for their public baths, women with rolled towels curled around their necks, hatless men.
Something in their movements seemed to decide her. “I have to make a phone call,” she said, and reached for the phone. It was to Sylvie. After a bit of small talk she asked if Sylvie could cover her afternoon shift. “Yes,” she said, “something’s come up.” Sylvie’s voice was indistinctly loud on the other end. Kate laughed and said, “Yes, Claus.”
So she’d told Sylvie about him. That could mean anything, but Bertram had sketched out Sylvie’s history, White Russian parents living in Paris, friends of the Germans since the Germans were Soviet enemies. Kate had mentioned Sylvie’s name in the hospital too, though Claus hadn’t caught it then, drowsy from his concussion. Why were they still friends if Sylvie had so offended her?
Kate hung up and stood with her fingers resting on the heavy black receiver. Finally she said, “All right. I don’t suppose this mess will miss me, and the patients will have others to bring them food.”
Then she was bustling, packing pies and green bottles of wine and blue ones of cider and two entire bananas in a wicker hamper on the table. “I’m going to bring everything edible,” she said. “Otherwise some bugger’s likely to come back and steal it.”
“My, this is ancient,” she said, patting the car. In the hazy sunlight its black paint looked even duller. “Where did you unearth it?”
“The Old Muller,” he said, reflexively, and wished he hadn’t. He used to use the car without a second thought to its origins; that had become impossible after Dieter. Now he’d have to explain. “At the MOI. Someone left it to them in their will. Muller, whoever that was.” A lie, but one he was used to telling, one that didn’t pain him. Muller had been a spy in the last war, caught early on and executed, though the British had continued to send news from him and collect his money until the Germans decided his information was no longer good. The funds had purchased the car, and Claus had borrowed it today without explaining what he needed it for. Bertram’s new girl was rather easy, with none of Madge’s spunk. She wouldn’t last long, Claus thought; Bertram would eat her up.
He nodded at the spare tire mounted on the faded black door. “I’m not very high status, you can see,” he said.
“Higher than me,” she said, sliding in. “And that you have petrol at all means you’re very high indeed.”
They passed over the Vauxhall Bridge and drove behind a windowless bus through Lambeth and Dulwich, which appeared oddly undamaged by bombs. But as they passed the bus and weaved through the double-decker tram traffic in Croydon, they saw that the devastation was total, entire blocks gone, others marked only by jagged foundations, and talking became impossible. Leaving Croydon, the car backfired twice, causing pedestrians to jump, and the farther they went the more the silence began to feel cumbersome, but after they passed through a wood and fields of sheep to reach Purley, where the organ was playing “God Save the King” at the ABC cinema, Kate said, “Let’s hope someone saves him. If this goes on much longer, he’ll need to be.”
The countryside was beginning to roll. Claus turned southeast on the Godstone Road, and Kate shifted her feet, pushing aside a series of maps. “Going someplace special?” she said. “I suppose I should have asked sooner. A girl likes to know.”
They rose up a hill toward a group of barrage balloons, sleek and silver in the summer sun, and Claus stopped beside their thicket of cables whistling in the wind.
“Past this,” he said. “I want to get away from London, from the war, for a bit.”
“I don’t think we’ll be able to do that in a car.”
He laughed, a single bark. “No, I’m afraid not. Certainly not this one. But at least from its most obvious effects, somewhere that I won’t have to see it.”
A mile past Purley, farms spread out over the rolling hills and he began to relax. They reminded him of the Pennsylvania he’d grown up in, at least until Kenley, where the population grew heavy again; these dense towns in the middle of farmland, that was the main difference. She shifted beside him.
“I like your hat,” he said.
She touched its purple felt rim. “Do you really? My first new one since 1939.”
“It looks expensive.”
“It is.” She frowned. “We all got a bonus this week. One of the girls I work with took me to her milliner. My hat cost twice as much, because I’d never been to her before. On the other hand, she said that if I wasn’t killed, she’d reduce the cost of the next one.”
He wished she hadn’t joked about it and fell quiet.
“Don’t be sour, Claus. She’s right.”
“That doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
A marker said they were on the old Roman road, which led to the coast, and Kate clapped her hands. “Are we going to the beach?”
“Sorry, no.” Claus turned off the car as they rose up to the edge of a steep scarf and let it coast down the hill. “Off-limits, I’m afraid, and we haven’t the fuel for that.”
“Listen to you,” she said. “‘Haven’t the fuel.’ You sound so English. Next you’ll be playing cricket.” Normally he liked their banter, but now it felt forced, a cover for something they both knew was amiss, so he didn’t respond.
The road wound down to the valley, where trees sprung up on one side an
d a field of yellow rape bloomed on the other. Ahead was Whyteleafe, and from its dark, squat church came the sound of bells striking the hour.
“How different from France,” she said, letting the wind push through her open fingers outside the window. He sensed she was searching for safe subjects. “All the bells there have been bundled off or buried. The Germans wanted to melt them down, and the French, naturally enough, didn’t want them taken. If they acted quickly, they were able to bury them. If not, kaput.”
“Let’s listen to them, then,” he said, coasting into town and pulling to a stop in the square. He set the parking brake with a savage yank.
Kate got out to stretch her back. The bells had already stopped. “I wouldn’t want to travel too far in old Muller. He’s not too kind to old bones.”
“Not old,” Claus said. From the glove compartment he took the driver’s booklet. “Just not used to sitting in ancient cars.”
Kate watched him fill out the booklet. “You didn’t prepare,” she said.
“I didn’t think you’d come.”
“Very good,” she said, looking pleased. “But here I am. So what are you putting as the object of our trip?”
“Scouting locations for my film.”
“And its necessity?”
“Very high.” He snapped the book closed, put it back, and joined her outside the car, where she leaned against the warm hood. “The film needs to be done within weeks.” He had decided not to tell her that his film had been canceled. She would be sad for him, or at least feign sadness, and that wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted her to talk.
A young girl pedaled past on her bicycle, a dog in the basket, the noise of its barking barely audible over the racket the wooden wheels made on the cobbles, and beyond her two middle-aged men in sea green overalls were remounting Whyteleafe’s road sign, which had been taken down in 1940 when the Germans were expected to invade.
“See?” Kate said. “Another reason to be happy. The war might end after all.”
He leaned toward her and her lips parted slightly, as if expecting a kiss.
“Why did you let me walk you back to your place?” he said. “That night after the dance?”
“What?” she said, and pushed herself upright with her hip. “What a peculiar question.” Her cheeks turned red.
He was glad he’d thrown her, a bit surprised, but he wasn’t going to be sidetracked. “That night just keeps coming back to me,” he said. Now he tried to put her at ease. “It’s meant so much to me. It led to everything. I was thinking about it while in jail, and it just amazed me.”
“You made me laugh again,” she said. “That first meeting. Hyde Park.”
“You didn’t laugh.”
“Not then. It had been so long. After. Some of the things you said, I found myself going over them all day at work. I didn’t show it, but I was hoping to meet you again.”
“I’m glad you did,” he said.
“Me too.”
Her smile was genuine, or so it seemed. It wouldn’t do to show too much doubt. He leaned forward and kissed her, touched her jaw. As he pulled away he saw thick parallel bruises, low, on each side of her neck.
“My God,” he said, spreading her collar with his fingers. “What are those?”
She put her hand to them. “A patient,” she said. “Evacuated from Normandy. He woke as I was checking his temperature and grabbed me by the throat. Another patient had to whack his ribs to fully wake him.”
“How horrible.”
“Worse for him. The poor boy.”
“He looks like he can take care of himself.”
She shook her head, averted her eyes. “No. Couldn’t. Jumped off the hospital roof the next day.”
“I’m sorry,” Claus said, knowing she’d be thinking of Horst. But as he held the door open for her and she got back in the car, he wondered. Was any of what she’d just said true? Or had all that information been planted specifically for him, to make her entire story plausible? Had all of her touching emotional moments been manufactured earlier, to be produced at the proper time, or, worse, was she merely a wonderfully intuitive actress who understood what was necessary in every scene and could unearth it? The giddiness when he supplied a word, the glimpses into a once-perfect life crumbling under the weight of uncontrollable events so neatly parallel to his own. Wouldn’t Bertram be thrilled to know the despairing depths of his doubts.
Claus had turned off the engine again on the down slope, and when they rounded the corner past a stand of oaks they seemed to catch the Home Guard by surprise. One quickly stepped into the middle of the road and raised his right hand, palm out. Over his shoulder an older man was leaning against a tree, smoking a pipe. Briarwood, Claus thought. They looked like father and son, the father in his early fifties and the boy a teen, a younger and less puffy version of the older man, the same prominent Adam’s apple, the same red ears, though the boy’s uniform was too big for him, and his father had on a privately tailored one. The father was also wearing shoes rather than boots and anklets, which had been disallowed years before. He took his time inhaling on his pipe before covering the bowl with his thumb, at last tucking it into his breast pocket and walking slowly toward the driver’s side, where he touched his cap and bade them both good afternoon.
“A routine check.” He leaned on the door frame and smoothed his long white mustache, smelling of real cherry tobacco, which Claus hadn’t come across since before the war. “Sorry to bother you.”
“Keeping up regular patrols, are you?” Claus asked.
“Certainly. Now’s the last time to let our guard down.”
“Has Hitler got a secret plan to invade us while we’re in Normandy?” Kate said.
“That’s fine,” Claus said, not wanting any difficulties. He cranked his window down farther. “I perfectly understand.”
They chatted about the weather and local conditions, seemingly innocuous, but Claus knew the questions were designed to nose out information; he’d had the same training. Everything went fine until he asked Claus his name.
“Murphy.”
“Irish, are you?”
“Yes.”
Kate was too self-possessed to dart her eyes in his direction, but her hands tightened on her hat.
The colonel turned over Claus’s identity card. “What’s the C stand for? Conan? Colin? Colleen?”
His son laughed. “That’s funny!”
Claus waited before responding, to show he wasn’t amused, then said, “Charles.”
“And what’s yours?” the boy asked Kate.
“Zweig,” she said, leaning forward to speak to the father.
“Zweig?” he said.
“Zweig.” She pronounced it this time so that it sounded especially German and he dropped his foot from the running board and stood straighter. “German, is it?”
“Yes. My husband was German.”
“And how about you, miss? Are you German?”
“I was born in Surrey.” The man seemed to relax until Kate went on. “Though I did serve with him in a German field hospital during the last war.”
“I see.” His voice was clipped now. “And what’s brought you our way?”
“An outing,” Claus said, interrupting, still hoping they’d be let go without further trouble. “I work for the Ministry of Information. Official business.”
“Get their book, will you, Brian?” the father said, and went to the back of the car to open the boot. Kate handed out the driver’s booklet and the boy flipped through it while the father came forward with their hamper. “And where did you get all this?” he asked, bringing out the bottles of wine and cider. “Not black-market supplies, are they?”
“If they were,” Kate said, “we wouldn’t be bringing them to the country, would we?”
He pawed around the hamper a bit more, put the bottles back. “That’s a nice hat.”
Kate smiled and touched it. “Thank you.”
“New, is it?”
“
Just this week.”
“They’re quite expensive, aren’t they?”
Kate leaned toward him. “Is there a reason for these questions? A hat-smuggling ring at work hereabouts, perhaps?”
He lowered the hamper to the roadway, the bottles clinking, and asked his son for the booklet. “You’d be surprised how clever these black-marketers can be,” he said, and paged through it. “Bound for Godstone, are you?”
“Yes. I have to find what kind of damage the V-1s are doing, for a movie.”
The young one bent down. “That’d be much worse in London, I should think.”
“No doubt. But I was still asked to check.”
The older man stood and waved the driver’s booklet over the roof of the car. “That’s what it says here,” he said. “We can let them go, I think.”
Claus started to open his door to return their things to the boot, but the colonel stopped him. “No need to get out,” he said. “I’ll put the hamper back.”
His sudden about-face puzzled Claus, but he wasn’t going to ask the reason behind it. Kate said, very loudly, “Come, Claus. Let’s be off.”
The father didn’t seem to hear, but the boy cocked his head. “Claus?”
“Her nickname for me.”
“All right,” he said, and tapped the roof twice.
As they drove off through fields of rape, Kate said, “Nickname?”
“I didn’t want more trouble.”
He braced himself to go on, but she responded before he could. “I know. I’m sorry. I do have a tart tongue. But he wasn’t the type to do anything.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. I ran into many of them in France. If you’ll pardon me saying so, they bring out the bitch in me.”
“Run-ins with the law?”
“Stupid ones, and my own fault, really. Twice I was nearly arrested because I insisted on speaking English.”
“To the police?”
“Hospital administrators. Don’t worry,” she said when he looked at her. “I wasn’t aiming to get shot. French administrators, not German. They had framed letters over their desks saying they’d been fired by Germans for being unsupportive, but with both it was a question of timing. They’d been collaborating all along and then got out just early enough to prove that they were against the Germans.”