by Ken Follett
But there was worse to come.
The tall soldier pointed at Rebecca.
She cringed away from him and tried to hide behind Carla.
A second man, small with fair hair, grabbed Rebecca and pulled her away. Rebecca screamed, and the small man grinned as if he liked the sound.
Carla had a dreadful feeling she knew what was going to happen next.
The short man held Rebecca firmly while the tall man squeezed her breasts roughly, then said something that made them both laugh.
There were cries of protest from the people all around.
The tall man levelled his gun. Carla was terrified he would fire. He would kill and wound dozens of people if he pulled the trigger of a submachine gun in a crowded room.
Everyone else realized the danger, and they went quiet.
The two soldiers backed towards the door, taking Rebecca with them. She yelled and struggled, but she could not break the small soldier’s grip.
When they reached the door, Carla stepped forward and cried: ‘Wait!’
Something in her voice made them stop.
‘She’s too young,’ Carla said. ‘Only thirteen!’ She did not know whether they understood her. She held up two hands, showing ten fingers, then one hand showing three. ‘Thirteen!’
The tall soldier seemed to understand her. He grinned and said in German: ‘Frau ist frau.’ A woman is a woman.
Carla found herself saying: ‘You need a real woman.’ She walked slowly forward. ‘Take me, instead.’ She tried to smile seductively. ‘I’m not a child. I know what to do.’ She came close, close enough to smell the rank odour of a man who had not bathed for months. Trying to conceal her distaste, she lowered her voice and said: ‘I understand what a man wants.’ She touched her own breast suggestively. ‘Forget the child.’
The tall soldier looked again at Rebecca. Her eyes were red with weeping and her nose was running, which helpfully made her look more like a child, less like a woman.
He looked back at Carla.
She said: ‘There’s a bed upstairs. Shall I show you where?’
Again she was not sure he understood the words, but she took him by the hand and he followed her up the steps to the ground floor.
The fair one let go of Rebecca and came after.
Now that she had succeeded, Carla regretted her bravado. She wanted to break away from the Russians and run. But they would probably shoot her down then go back to Rebecca. Carla thought of the devastated child who had lost both parents yesterday. To be raped the next day would surely destroy her spirit for ever. Carla had to save her.
I will not be smashed by this, Carla thought. I can live through it. I will be myself again afterwards.
She led them to the electrocardiogram room. She felt cold, as if her heart were freezing and her thoughts becoming sluggish. Next to the bed was a can of the grease used by the doctors to improve the conductivity of the terminals. She pulled off her underpants, then took a large dob of grease and pushed it into her vagina. That might save her from bleeding.
She had to keep her act up. She turned back to the two soldiers. To her horror, three more followed them into the room. She tried to smile, but she could not.
She lay on her back and parted her legs.
The tall one knelt between her knees. He ripped open her uniform blouse to expose her breasts. She could see that he was manipulating himself, making his penis erect. He lay on top and entered her. She told herself this had no connection with what she and Werner had done together.
She turned her head to the side, but the soldier grasped her chin and turned her face back, making her look at him as he thrust inside her. She closed her eyes. She felt him kissing her, trying to force his tongue into her mouth. His breath smelled like rotting meat. When she clamped her mouth shut, he punched her face. She cried out and opened her bruised lips to him. She tried to think how much worse this would have been for a thirteen-year-old virgin.
The soldier grunted and ejaculated inside her. She tried not to let her disgust show on her face.
He climbed off, and the fair-haired one took his place.
Carla tried to close down her mind, to make her body into something detached, a machine, an object that had nothing to do with her. This one did not want to kiss her, but he sucked her breasts and bit her nipples, and when she cried out in pain he seemed pleased and did it harder.
Time passed, and he ejaculated.
Then another one got on top.
She realized that when this was over she would not be able to bathe or shower, for there was no running water in the city. That thought pushed her over the top. Their fluids would be inside her, their smell would be on her skin, their saliva in her mouth, and she would have no effective way to wash. Somehow that was worse than everything else. Her courage failed her, and she started to cry.
The third soldier satisfied himself, then the fourth lay on her.
20
1945 (II)
Adolf Hitler killed himself on Monday 30 April 1945, in his bunker in Berlin. Exactly a week later in London, at twenty to eight in the evening, the Ministry of Information announced that Germany had surrendered. A holiday was declared for the following day, Tuesday 8 May.
Daisy sat at the window of her apartment in Piccadilly, watching the celebrations. The street was thronged with people, making it almost impassable to cars and buses. The girls would kiss any man in uniform, and thousands of lucky servicemen were taking full advantage. By early afternoon many people were drunk. Through the open window Daisy could hear distant singing, and guessed that the crowd outside Buckingham Palace was singing ‘Land of Hope and Glory’. She shared their happiness, but Lloyd was somewhere in France or Germany, and he was the only soldier she wanted to kiss. She prayed he had not been killed in the last few hours of the war.
Lloyd’s sister, Millie, showed up with her two children. Millie’s husband, Abe Avery, was also with the army somewhere. She and the children had come to the West End to join in the celebrations, and they took a break from the crowds at Daisy’s place. The Leckwith home in Aldgate had long been a place of refuge for Daisy, and she was glad to have a chance to reciprocate. She made tea for Millie – her staff were out there celebrating – and poured orange juice for the children. Lennie was five now and Pammie three.
Since Abe had been conscripted, Millie had been running his leather wholesaling business. His sister, Naomi Avery, was the bookkeeper, but Millie did the selling. ‘It’s going to change, now,’ Millie said. ‘For the past five years the demand has been for tough hides for boots and shoes. Now we’re going to need softer leathers, calf and pigskin, for handbags and briefcases. When the luxury market comes back, there’ll be decent money to be made at last.’
Daisy recalled that her father had the same way of thinking as Millie. Lev, too, was always looking ahead, searching out the opportunities.
Eva Murray appeared next, with her four children in tow. Jamie, aged eight, organized a game of hide-and-seek, and the apartment became like a kindergarten. Eva’s husband, Jimmy, now a colonel, was also somewhere in France or Germany, and Eva was suffering the same agonies of anxiety as Daisy and Millie.
‘We’ll hear from them, any day now,’ Millie said. ‘And then it will really be all over.’
Eva was also desperate for news of her family in Berlin. However, she thought it might be weeks or months before anyone could learn the fates of individual Germans in the postwar chaos. ‘I wonder whether my children will ever know my parents,’ she said sadly.
At five o’clock Daisy made a pitcher of martinis. Millie went into the kitchen and, with characteristic speed and efficiency, produced a plate of sardines on toast to eat with the drinks. Eth and Bernie arrived just as Daisy was making a second round.
Bernie told Daisy that Lennie could read already, and Pammie could sing the National Anthem. Ethel said: ‘Typical grandfather, thinks there have never been bright children before,’ but Daisy could tell that in her heart sh
e was just as proud of them.
Feeling relaxed and happy halfway down her second martini, she looked around at the disparate group gathered in her home. They had paid her the compliment of coming to her door without an invitation, knowing they would be welcomed. They belonged to her, and she to them. They were, she realized, her family.
She felt very blessed.
(ii)
Woody Dewar sat outside Leo Shapiro’s office, looking through a sheaf of photographs. They were the pictures he had taken at Pearl Harbor, in the hour before Joanne died. The film had stayed in his camera for months, but eventually he had developed it and printed the pictures. Looking at them had made him so sad that he had put them in a drawer in his bedroom at the Washington apartment and left them there.
But this was a time for change.
He would never forget Joanne, but he was in love again, at last. He adored Bella and she felt the same. When they parted, at the Oakland train station outside San Francisco, he had told her that he loved her, and she had said: ‘I love you, too.’ He was going to ask her to marry him. He would have done so already but it seemed too soon – less than three months – and he did not want to give her hostile parents a pretext for objecting.
Also, he needed to make a decision about his future.
He did not want to go into politics.
This was going to shock his parents, he knew. They had always assumed he would follow in his father’s footsteps and end up as the third Senator Dewar. He had gone along with this assumption unthinkingly. But in the war, and especially while in hospital, he had asked himself what he really wanted to do, if he survived; and the answer was not politics.
This was a good time to leave. His father had achieved his life’s ambition. The Senate had debated the United Nations. It was at a similar point in history that the old League of Nations had foundered, a painful memory for Gus Dewar. But Senator Vandenberg had spoken passionately in favour, speaking of ‘the dearest dream of mankind’, and the UN Charter had been ratified by eighty-nine votes to two. The job was done. Woody would not be letting his father down by quitting now.
He hoped Gus would see it that way too.
Shapiro opened his office door and beckoned. Woody stood up and went in.
Shapiro was younger than Woody had expected, somewhere in his thirties. He was Washington bureau chief for the National Press Agency. He sat behind his desk and said: ‘What can I do for Senator Dewar’s son?’
‘I’d like to show you some photographs, if I may.’
‘All right.’
Woody spread his pictures on Shapiro’s desk.
‘Is this Pearl Harbor?’ Shapiro said.
‘Yes. December seventh, 1941.’
‘My God.’
Woody was looking at them upside-down, but still they brought tears to his eyes. There was Joanne, looking so beautiful; and Chuck, grinning happily to be with his family and Eddie. Then the planes coming over, the bombs and torpedoes dropping from their bellies, the black-smoke explosions on the ships, and the sailors scrambling over the sides, dropping into the sea, swimming for their lives.
‘This is your father,’ Shapiro said. ‘And your mother. I recognize them.’
‘And my fiancée, who died a few minutes later. My brother, who was killed at Bougainville. And my brother’s best friend.’
‘These are fantastic photographs! How much do you want for them?’
‘I don’t want money,’ Woody said.
Shapiro looked up in surprise.
Woody said: ‘I want a job.’
(iii)
Fifteen days after VE Day, Winston Churchill called a General Election.
The Leckwith family were taken by surprise. Like most people, Ethel and Bernie had thought Churchill would wait until the Japanese surrendered. The Labour leader, Clement Attlee, had suggested an election in October. Churchill wrong-footed them all.
Major Lloyd Williams was released from the army to stand as Labour candidate for Hoxton, in the East End of London. He was full of eager enthusiasm for the future envisioned by his party. Fascism had been vanquished, and now British people could create a society that combined freedom with welfare. Labour had a well-thought-out plan for avoiding the catastrophes of the last twenty years: universal comprehensive unemployment insurance to help families through hard times, economic planning to prevent another Depression, and a United Nations Organization to keep the peace.
‘You don’t stand a chance,’ said his stepfather, Bernie, in the kitchen of the house in Aldgate on Monday 4 June. Bernie’s pessimism was the more convincing for being so uncharacteristic. ‘They’ll vote Tory because Churchill won the war,’ he went on gloomily. ‘It was the same with Lloyd George in 1918.’
Lloyd was about to reply, but Daisy got in first. ‘The war wasn’t won by the free market and capitalist enterprise,’ she said indignantly. ‘It was people working together and sharing the burdens, everybody doing his bit. That’s socialism!’
Lloyd loved her most when she was passionate, but he was more deliberate. ‘We already have measures that the old Tories would have condemned as Bolshevism: government control of railways, mines and shipping, for example, all brought in by Churchill. And Ernie Bevin has been in charge of economic planning all through the war.’
Bernie shook his head knowingly, an old-man gesture that irritated Lloyd. ‘People vote with their hearts, not brains,’ he said. ‘They’ll want to show their gratitude.’
‘Well, no point sitting here arguing with you,’ Lloyd said. ‘I’m going to argue with voters instead.’
He and Daisy took a bus a few stops north to the Black Lion pub in Shoreditch, where they met up with a canvassing team from the Hoxton Constituency Labour Party. In fact canvassing was not about arguing with voters, Lloyd knew. Its main purpose was to identify supporters, so that on election day the party machine could make sure they all went to the polling station. Firm Labour supporters were noted; firm supporters of other parties were crossed off. Only people who had not yet made up their minds were worth more than a few seconds: they were offered the chance to speak to the candidate.
Lloyd got some negative reactions. ‘Major, eh?’ one woman said. ‘My Alf is a corporal. He says the officers nearly lost us the war.’
There were also accusations of nepotism. ‘Aren’t you the son of the MP for Aldgate? What is this, a hereditary monarchy?’
He remembered his mother’s advice. ‘You never win a vote by proving the constituent a fool. Be charming, be modest, and don’t lose your temper. If a voter is hostile and rude, thank him for his time and go away. You’ll leave him thinking maybe he misjudged you.’
Working-class voters were strongly Labour. A lot of people told Lloyd that Attlee and Bevin had done a good job during the war. The waverers were mostly middle-class. When people said that Churchill had won the war, Lloyd quoted Attlee’s gentle put-down: ‘It wasn’t a one-man government, and it wasn’t a one-man war.’
Churchill had described Attlee as a modest man with much to be modest about. Attlee’s wit was less brutal, and for that reason more effective; at least, Lloyd thought so.
A couple of constituents mentioned the sitting MP for Hoxton, a Liberal, and said they would vote for him because he had helped them solve some problem. Members of Parliament were often called upon by constituents who felt they were being treated unjustly by the government, an employer or a neighbour. It was time-consuming work but it won votes.
Overall, Lloyd could not tell which way public opinion was leaning.
Only one constituent mentioned Daisy. The man came to the door with his mouth full of food. Lloyd said: ‘Good evening, Mr Perkinson, I understand you wanted to ask me something.’
‘Your fiancée was a Fascist,’ the man said, chewing.
Lloyd guessed he had been reading the Daily Mail, which had run a spiteful story about Lloyd and Daisy under the headline THE SOCIALIST AND THE VISCOUNTESS.
Lloyd nodded. ‘She was briefly fooled by Fasc
ism, like many others.’
‘How can a socialist marry a Fascist?’
Lloyd looked around, spotted Daisy, and beckoned her. ‘Mr Perkinson here is asking me about my fiancée being an ex-Fascist.’
‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Perkinson.’ Daisy shook the man’s hand. ‘I quite understand your concern. My first husband was a Fascist in the thirties, and I supported him.’
Perkinson nodded. He probably believed a wife should take her views from her husband.
‘How foolish we were,’ Daisy went on. ‘But, when the war came, my first husband joined the RAF and fought against the Nazis as bravely as anyone.’
‘Is that a fact?’
‘Last year he was flying a Typhoon over France, strafing a German troop train, when he was shot down and killed. So I’m a war widow.’
Perkinson swallowed his food. ‘I’m sorry to hear that, of course.’
But Daisy had not finished. ‘For myself, I lived in London throughout the war. I drove an ambulance all through the Blitz.’
‘Very brave of you, I’m sure.’
‘Well, I just hope you think that my late husband and I both paid our dues.’
‘I don’t know about that,’ Perkinson said sulkily.
‘We won’t take up any more of your time,’ said Lloyd. ‘Thank you for explaining your views to me. Good evening.’
As they walked away, Daisy said: ‘I don’t think we won him round.’
‘You never do,’ Lloyd said. ‘But he’s seen both sides of the story now, which might make him a bit less vociferous about it, later this evening, when he talks about us in the pub.’
‘Hmm.’
Lloyd sensed he had failed to reassure Daisy.
Canvassing finished early, for tonight the first of the radio election broadcasts would be aired on the BBC, and all party workers would be listening. Churchill had the privilege of making the first one.
On the bus home, Daisy said: ‘I’m worried. I’m an election liability to you.’
‘No candidate is perfect,’ Lloyd said. ‘It’s how you deal with your weaknesses that matters.’
‘I don’t want to be your weakness. Perhaps I should stay out of the way.’