The Viennese Girl

by Jenny Lecoat

  ‘It was the only one I could get – left behind by a sergeant at our billet a few months back. Luckily he was a small guy.’

  ‘Not small enough! No one is going to take me for a soldier.’ She turned to him, choking back the simmering terror. ‘Kurt, this will never work.’

  He took her face in his hands. ‘It’s our best chance. This administration becomes trapped by its own logic – if it decides something is impossible, it no longer views it as a threat. Hiding in plain sight is the one thing they won’t be looking for.’ He kissed her lightly on the lips. ‘Put the field cap on, that will make all the difference.’

  Hedy took the cap and placed it on her head, tucking her hair up around the sides. ‘Better?’

  ‘Still too much hair showing. Sorry, my love, but it’s going to have to come off.’

  Hedy nodded without speaking. It was no occasion for time-wasting arguments. Within minutes Kurt returned with Dorothea’s kitchen scissors, the only ones in the house, and began to chop. Hedy kept her eyes on his face as he worked, knowing his calm expression to be a lie. He worked his way methodically around her skull, occasionally giving her little smiles of reassurance. She thought back to this morning, when she had spent an hour over the kitchen sink, washing her beloved locks with a sliver of low-grade soap that lathered no more than pumice stone. How long ago that seemed. Even the frantic scrabble around the house a mere two hours ago, trying to eliminate every sign of her presence by stuffing her remaining clothes into Dorothea’s wardrobe and moving the mattress from the attic into the back bedroom, seemed like days away. Life could no longer be measured in days or weeks, but in minutes. It made her hypersensitive to every sight, sound and colour, yet at the same time strangely numb.

  She felt her tawny curls fall to her shoulders and slide to the floor, while Dorothea, still breathless from the sprint to her grandmother’s house with the wireless, scurried around her feet, sweeping up the evidence into an old metal dustpan. Then Kurt wetted his razor from a bowl of cold water, and Hedy stood perfectly still as he scratched away at the nape of her neck and around her ears, until there was nothing left there but raw, prickly skin. Once or twice the razor nicked her and she flinched, but she never made a sound; Kurt pressed on the tiny wounds with his handkerchief until the bleeding stopped. When he was done, he tenderly kissed her forehead, placed the cap back on her head and turned her towards the mirror. Hedy took a sharp intake of breath. He was right: the loss of hair made all the difference. Before her stood a slight, undernourished boy soldier of the German army. The uniform was thick and warm, but she could feel her entire body trembling.

  Kurt, standing behind her, wrapped his arms around her. ‘Good job you’re so pretty to begin with, huh?’

  Hedy forced a smile. ‘We should go.’

  Kurt placed a comforting hand on Dorothea’s shoulder. ‘Leave us a sign by the back door. If it’s open, we’ll know they’ve not yet been, or are still in the house.’

  Dorothea nodded without flinching. ‘Good luck.’

  Stepping out into the yard, Hedy felt a sensory rush. The freshness of the late summer breeze, the luminosity of the approaching dusk and the smells drifting in from the street were overwhelming. Asphalt, horse droppings, distant pine, sea salt, diesel … They walked briskly down to the end of the alley and out onto the street. Immediately her head began to spin. The vastness of the sky, the seemingly endless length of the road – how had she ever coped with this degree of exposure? In the distance, barely visible, was St Aubin’s bay and the immense openness of the Channel. She thought about the depth of it, filled with rocks and creatures and armed ships. How did anyone navigate all this space, handle this amount of vulnerability? Her feet seemed planted where she stood, but Kurt gave her a firm push in the back, propelling her away from the house, and at that moment she gave in to the situation and allowed him to take control. The one thing she vowed was that, whatever happened, she would not let him down.

  They walked down Parade Road. It felt exhilarating but exhausting to walk so far in a straight line, to feel her feet covering distance on a pavement again, especially in unfamiliar German boots. She had never worn trousers before, and the sensation of fabric between her legs was peculiar. She tried to relax into the uniform, to walk with weight and purpose, like a man. But now she was becoming aware of the sensations of noise around her, even though the evening was quiet. A distant engine, someone shouting from a window, birds in the trees, a far-off plane. What permanent damage had been done to her sensory organs, she wondered, by all those months shut away from the world? Would she ever be the same again?

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘We’ll stick to the side roads,’ Kurt replied, ‘where it’s quiet.’

  She yearned to look around her but kept her eyes down and let Kurt make the decisions. One or two locals returning home in time for curfew crossed the road in order not to get too close. Hedy fought her desire to peer at them, to take in the contours of a human face that did not belong to Kurt or Dorothea. Instead, she tried to focus on the effort of putting one foot in front of the other. Within a minute she was panting heavily.

  ‘Kurt? I’m so tired.’ She sensed his tension straight away, a mixture of sympathy and frustration.

  ‘I know. We’re going to walk into the park, then we can sit down for a minute, but only a minute. All right?’

  She glanced up at him from beneath her cap. His focus was firmly on the middle distance, his eyes noting every potential hazard.

  ‘Kurt? You know that I love you?’ A sense of dread was building inside her. If this plan were to fall apart, one thing was certain: it would happen in seconds, and she would never see Kurt again.

  ‘I love you too, sweetheart. Now, no more talking.’

  They reached the Parade Park and found a bench. The sun had set, and the wind sent the first yellowing leaves bundling across the lawns. On the road opposite, German uniforms appeared round corners in twos and threes then disappeared, to be replaced by fresh ones. When Kurt spotted two young privates heading towards the park, he stood, indicating to Hedy that she must follow.

  ‘Sitting down is an invitation to conversation,’ Kurt muttered. ‘We need to keep on the move.’

  ‘What if someone addresses me directly?’

  ‘There’s no reason why they should. Come on.’

  They set off down the Parade and turned into the little network of streets that crisscrossed this section of the town. Here, the front doors of the cottages opened directly onto the narrow pavement, so that they were no more than a couple of metres away from anyone sitting in their front room who chose to look out of the window. Their proximity was disturbing, and Hedy kept her chin pressed to her chest, but at least there was no one on the street itself. When they had completed a couple of circuits, Kurt looked anxiously about him.

  ‘We need to move on. People will become suspicious if they see the same two soldiers walking by over and over again.’

  They marched purposelessly onwards. As darkness fell, they cut through to Val Plaisant, crossed Rouge Bouillon and started up Trinity Hill, where the town petered out and gave way to winding, tree-lined roads.

  Kurt brought them to a halt. ‘There’s nothing up there – going on would look suspicious. We’ll go back along the north side of the town.’

  Hedy’s feet were throbbing. ‘How much longer?’

  ‘They’re likely to send the search party soon after curfew. Couple more hours at least.’

  Hedy sunk her teeth into her bottom lip. Don’t let him down, she told herself over and over.

  They walked on, over St Saviours Hill, then back south towards the Howard Davis Park. The last glimmers of light had vanished now, and as the sky turned black the sound of planes in the sky grew louder and more numerous – night-bombing raids by the Allies, Hedy supposed. She strained to listen for return fire but heard none, just the distant sound of groups of Germans on exercises, practising for a land assault. Her legs seemed to be movi
ng independently, swinging below her like the string legs of a wooden doll. It will be all right, she told herself. Just a little longer.

  As soon as they turned the corner of Colomberie, she saw them. Three NCOs, all in uniform, jostling each other on the pavement. She felt Kurt try to steer her to the other side, but just as he did so, one German’s voice rang out across the quiet street.

  ‘Haben Sie Feuer, Leutnant?’

  They were close enough to sense that the men had been drinking. Hedy saw Kurt’s shoulders stiffen inside his uniform, and absorbed every thought as if by osmosis. If he said no, no matter how cheerily, and walked on, the men were just drunk enough to make something of it. If he said yes and gave them a precious match, it would be impossible to avoid a conversation. She saw a flick of Kurt’s fingers, indicating she should stay where she was, and watched him step forward, feeling in his pocket for his matches.

  ‘These cost me three marks – better light it first time!’ Kurt’s relaxed smile and easy manner astonished her. He could be in any bar, on a night out with friends. She watched him strike the match and the three of them lean towards it with their roll-ups, shielding the flame from the breeze. Wisps of blue smoke rose into the air and they smiled their thanks. Then, as Kurt was about to pull away, it came.

  ‘What you and your pal up to tonight, sir?’

  Kurt’s answer was clear and confident. ‘Just out for a drink.’

  ‘Take us with you, would you, sir? We’ve finished our bottle, and all our usual places are closed.’

  Kurt faked a laugh. ‘Sorry, soldier! Can’t help you there.’

  Hedy kept her eyes downwards and distant, as if distracted by something more significant than the current conversation. But then the tallest of the three, a corporal, turned towards her. ‘How about you, Sergeant? Buy us a beer?’

  Panic bubbled and spat in her stomach. She still had sufficient distance, perhaps five metres, to maintain the illusion in the darkness, but she knew that if she opened her mouth she was done for. They had had no time to prepare for this eventuality – now it was up to her to get them out of it. Her brain was spinning, a fruit machine with no controls. She thought of Roda. The smiles at the border, the confidence, the charm. It was all about creating a story and convincing others of its truth. At that second an idea popped into her head. She leaned to her right, hard enough to unbalance herself, and stumbled a little, praying to any god that might be watching that Kurt would take the hint. For a long, terrible moment she thought he’d missed it. Then she heard his voice. ‘I’m afraid the sergeant’s already had quite enough. Can’t take his drink.’

  Recalling images of her drunken cousin at old family parties, Hedy raised a hand towards the group as if in apology, then let it flop down by her side, allowing herself another sway and sidestep as she did so. The ensuing silence seemed to last eternally, hovering in the night air, and Hedy feared she’d overplayed it.

  Then Kurt must have somehow given them permission to react, because the laughter came thick and fast, peppered with cackling remarks.

  ‘Sarge, you look rough!’

  ‘Going to feel bad tomorrow, Sarge!’

  ‘Got the spins yet?’

  Now the corporal was slapping his compatriots on their shoulders, the others returning with shoulder punches, throwing back their heads in enjoyment of the joke. Kurt marched back over to Hedy and gave her a hard thump on the shoulder. Maintaining character, Hedy stumbled again. This time Kurt grabbed hold of her upper arm as if to support her, and steered her away down the road, calling over his shoulder as he went, ‘Have a good evening, gentlemen.’

  The punchy shouts of the soldiers’ laughter, rising into the night sky, sang in her ears as they moved away. Kurt kept a vice-like grip of her arm, and as the adrenaline drained from her and the realisation of what had just happened began to sink in, Hedy knew that this buttressing was no longer part of the performance, but a physical necessity. They continued, past the shuttered shops and darkened windows of the town. Hedy’s breath was coming in thick, irregular pants, Kurt’s nervous energy fizzing through the layers of his uniform. It was several minutes before he spoke, making sure that no words would carry on the night breeze. When he did, they were the most thrilling words she had ever heard.

  ‘Oh my God, sweetheart. Well done!’

  By the time they reached the corner of West Park Avenue, it was gone midnight. Kurt signalled to her to stay back in the shadows of a shop doorway while he went into the alley to check ahead. A moment later, he returned and beckoned to her, and the two of them scampered up the passage and in through the back of the house.

  Dorothea was standing in the front room, tears of frustration in her eyes. The house was a wreck. Chairs had been overturned, the contents of the attic and its hatch cover lay in a heap at the bottom of the stairs. Broken glass glittered everywhere.

  Kurt put his arm around her. ‘How many of them were there? Did they do much damage?’

  Dorothea nodded. ‘Four soldiers. They pulled everything out the cupboards, upturned the beds. They broke my last teapot – I’ll never be able to replace it.’

  Hedy held Dorothea close. ‘I’m so sorry, you must have been terrified. But we’ll help you put everything back as it was. What matters is they didn’t find anything.’ She felt Dorothea shrink, and pulled back. ‘They didn’t, did they?’

  Dorothea’s fingers fluttered to her face, patting her skin to comfort herself. ‘I’m so sorry … I thought I’d swept everywhere, I thought I’d been so careful … It’s my fault.’ Her words began to sputter as the tears quickened, choking her.

  Hedy’s bowels twisted and she felt an urgent need to use the lavatory. ‘What did they find?’

  ‘A button, underneath the kitchen table. A button from a German uniform tunic.’

  Hedy looked towards Kurt, whose face had lost all its colour.

  ‘It’s not your fault, Dorothea, it’s mine. I knew that button was missing, but I never thought it would be here. Scheisse!’

  Hedy pulled the field cap from her head, stroking her shaven neck. ‘Would they not think it was Anton’s?’

  ‘That’s what I told them, but I don’t think they believed me. He’s been gone for too long.’ She blinked up at him, grasping at straws. ‘It doesn’t prove anything, though?’

  Kurt pushed stray hair from his face. ‘No, but Wildgrube will be onto that in a flash. He’s been searching for months for something connecting me to Hedy.’

  ‘You think they’ll come back? Should we go back out?’

  To her relief Kurt shook his head. ‘Not tonight, but they will be back – tomorrow, or the day after, or next week. And next time we’ll get no warning. What we need is something to put the bastards off the scent for good. But I’m damned if I know how.’

  Hedy reached out and touched his arm. ‘There is one thing that might work.’

  The girl serving behind the bar was young, probably no more than seventeen, but she had the careworn face of a woman fifteen years older. Kurt, swirling the last drops of his brandy round the bottom of a grubby glass, wondered what the circumstances were that had forced her to take this job. Perhaps her father was out of work like so many local men, the family scraping together every penny to pay for black market food. Perhaps her parents were dead and she was trying to support herself and her siblings. Whatever it was, the girl was struggling to hide her contempt for the louche, loud officers who lounged around in here tonight, scraping their chair legs on the parquet floor and letting their cigarettes butts burn holes in the soft furnishings. What was the French expression? Fin de siècle. Kurt watched them as they drank and laughed together at jokes they had repeated a hundred times before. The master race, he thought bitterly as he knocked back the remains of the brandy. What a joke.

  Kurt surveyed the scene. Fischer was perched in a tub chair in the darkest corner, deep in conversation with two high-ranking officers from College House; their voices had dropped even lower once Fischer realised that Kurt
was trying to catch snippets of their conversation. But those guys were not his focus tonight. Kurt’s target was over by the window, drinking with some secret police cronies. Wildgrube had long ago given up any pretence about the true nature of his job, and now seemed to enjoy flaunting it. The presence of the other spies gave Kurt the confidence he needed – it would make his task that much easier.

  Everyone was in this evening. This was the last remaining club for officers and ‘approved’ clientele that still had a regular supply of French brandy, partly because the boss of the secret police, a notorious black marketeer, frequented the place. It was even still possible to get a crust of bread and a little cheese here sometimes, though the portions had more than halved. Kurt watched Wildgrube help himself to another drink, but noticed that he was displaying an unusual degree of decorum and control tonight, sipping instead of gulping, and occasionally throwing Kurt what he clearly considered to be subtle, scrutinising glances. Kurt banged the glass down on the bar loud enough for Wildgrube to hear, edged his way across the room to the area where the spy was standing, and glared at him.

  ‘Well, if it’s not the big man himself.’

  Wildgrube looked Kurt up and down, getting the measure of his mood. ‘Lieutenant …’

  ‘Made any good arrests lately?’

  Wildgrube glanced around, already seething at this disrespect. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  Kurt stepped closer, using the height difference to intimidate the spy. ‘Don’t be coy, Erich. I thought you were proud of your work?’

  Wildgrube delicately stepped backwards a little, trying to gain some distance. ‘I’m sure we are all proud of how we serve the Reich.’