Forbidden Liaison: They lived and loved for the here and now

by Smith, Patricia I.

  ‘I love you,’ he said.

  ‘And I love you,’ Izzy said kissing him back.

  ‘You are very naughty,’ he smiled.

  ‘It pleased you though,’ Izzy replied, still sitting astride him.

  Heinrich sighed as he nodded his head. ‘You know,’ he said still fondling her breasts.

  ‘You know, what?’ Izzy asked.

  Heinrich sighed again. ‘You’ve left me…’ he said shaking his head, ‘very, very satisfied.’

  Heinrich sat at the dining table opposite Odette. Marian had decided to put her promiscuous daughter between the Major and the Oberst, who sat at the head of the table opposite Marian, who was seated at the other end. Collette sat next to Heinrich, who, unlike all the others, hadn’t had a bath before dinner. He’d had to have a strip-wash, boiling the kettle twice to wash away the after-smell of sex. He felt tired as he ate his soup, all he ever wanted to do, after sex, was to sleep for a while, and his groin felt extremely sensitive as if it wanted sex again, but the next time he would take the initiative and he began to smile at the thought of pleasing Izzy.

  ‘Something amusing you, Oberleutnant?’ the Major asked.

  ‘Nothing specific,’ Heinrich replied dabbing at his mouth with a white cotton napkin.

  ‘Well I have some news that might take that smile from your face,’ the Major smirked.

  Heinrich inwardly panicked. ‘And what might that be?’ he asked calmly.

  ‘Your man Steiner.’

  ‘He’s hardly a man, but what about him,’ Heinrich asked, putting down his soup spoon.

  ‘Apparently he’s gotten Odette here, pregnant,’ the Major informed.

  Heinrich sat upright in his chair. He looked at Marian who was still looking down into her soup bowl. He wondered what was going on.

  ‘Are you absolutely sure about that,’ Heinrich asked.

  ‘Are you saying Odette is a liar,’ the Major asked.

  ‘Yes, I am,’ Heinrich replied looking straight at her.

  ‘Just remember whose house you are in, Oberleutnant,’ the Oberst suddenly reminded.

  ‘I am well aware of where I am, Sir, but I would point out that when I checked with Steiner he assured me he has been nowhere near Miss Fitzgerald. I would tend to believe my man above Miss Fitzgerald. It must belong to someone else,’ Heinrich added.

  Odette sat grinning, she was psychotic enough to actually like and want the friction she caused. The Major turned his head towards Odette who looked him straight in the eye. ‘It’s yours Major,’ she said, a huge grin breaking out over her smug face.

  The Major shot up from his chair, throwing his napkin onto the table. Collette glared at him, Marian simply looked at her daughter as if she had given up all hope she might come to her senses and stop sleeping around.

  ‘You told me it was Steiner’s,’ the Major said staring at Odette.

  ‘I lied,’ she said still grinning.

  The Major raised his hand and slapped her so hard across the face she slid off her chair. Heinrich shot up from his seat to go to her aid, helping her up from the floor. The Major lifted his arm again once she was on her feet, but Heinrich caught hold of it before it could strike.

  ‘No, Major,’ Heinrich said. ‘Gentleman do not do that kind of thing. Miss Fitzgerald doesn’t need a beating, she needs a psychiatrist.’

  ‘Marian,’ the Oberst said, now on his feet. ‘If you cannot control your daughter, then you give me no choice but to put her where she can cause no trouble.’

  Marian’s tears were flowing down her cheeks as she sobbed. ‘I’ve tried, Max, and apart from locking her in her room, there’s nothing more I can do.’

  Odette stood cradling her cheek which had turned red, and the nasty red finger welts soon began to turn white. Colette just sat glaring at the Major in total disgust at the fact he had become another victim of Odette’s man-eating ways. How men’s brains could shrink to the size of a walnut when their groin awoke, she thought. How they could quickly forget where faithfulness should lie. Heinrich believed himself above all this, but soon realised he was no better than the other men sitting around the table. He loved Izzy, but he should have left well alone. Falling in love complicated matters and she had shown how much she loved him that afternoon. He suddenly felt sick, unable to eat anything, and the urge to protect her became so strong he made up his mind to end it again, but knew he couldn’t.

  After that little display, no one said much else. Instead of dinner chatter, Marian put on a gramophone record to fill the silence, she found a little classical music always soothed away tension, if not make one forget life’s trials and tribulations for a while.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The following morning Heinrich cornered Steiner as he came out of his room.

  ‘I want a word with you, Steiner, in my room, now,’ he said harshly as he marched him off and shut the door. Steiner stood to attention in the middle of Heinrich’s spacious bedroom wondering what he’d done wrong.

  ‘Have you been seeing the Swan Princess again?’ Heinrich asked.

  ‘No, Sir, not since… ’ he paused.

  Heinrich just looked at the boy, not sure whether he was lying or not.

  ‘Sir, I am telling you the truth,’ Steiner said, seeing Heinrich’s reproving expression.

  ‘She has been telling people you are the father of the child she is having,’ Heinrich informed.

  Steiner’s face took on a look of hurt, mixed with anger. ‘She’s a liar. I have been nowhere near her, I give you my word. I’ve heard she is telling the other men it the Major’s. I am not lying, Sir, I have not been with anyone,’ Steiner replied. ‘Even with a condom.’

  Heinrich now tended to believe him as he recalled hearing him tugging-off most nights and wished he would be a little quieter about it. ‘So you’ve not been with Odette?’

  ‘No, Sir, only that once, and look where it got me,’ he replied.

  ‘At ease, Steiner,’ Heinrich said, then sitting down on the end of his bed and putting his face in his hands, added, ‘I never thought coming here would give me so much grief.’

  ‘Sir, I have something to tell you?’

  Heinrich looked up frowning. ‘Well spit it out.’

  ‘There’s talk going around about you and a certain lady,’ Steiner said.

  ‘You shouldn’t believe all the gossip you hear,’ Heinrich retorted.

  ‘I don’t, Sir, and I tell them not to spread lies, but I have seen you going into her cottage.’

  ‘Have you been spying on me?’ Heinrich asked annoyed.

  ‘No, Sir, I was walking down the lane one day and I saw you letting yourself into her house.’

  ‘Why were you walking down the lane?’ Heinrich asked.

  ‘There’s a girl I meet, she’s seventeen, like me.’

  ‘You’ve just told me you’ve not… since…’

  ‘I, we haven’t, Sir. We are just friends.’

  ‘Well I suggest you un-friend her. She’s too young, and so are you.’

  ‘Oh, it’s alright for you and the other officers. But not me.’ Steiner retorted.

  ‘I’ll put you on a charge for that,’ Heinrich said suddenly standing up. ‘And if you ever repeat what you have just told me, to anyone, I will have you off this island so quick your arse will be on fire. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, Sir,’ Steiner replied withdrawing by taking a step backwards as Heinrich, who was a few inches taller than the boy, was now towering over him; glaring down on him.

  ‘Whatever you think you saw, or believe what is going on, you should think seriously about keeping what you think you know to yourself,’ Heinrich said.

  ‘Yes, Sir,’ Steiner immediately replied.

  ‘And don’t think, for one second, this puts me in your debt, because I can make life very difficult for you, Steiner.’

  ‘You did me a favour, Sir; a big one. I am only repaying that favour.’

  ‘Good,’ Heinrich replied. ‘Now, get out.’
>
  Whatever one did to allay the gossip that travelled around the island, it was never enough. It spread like the diphtheria epidemic that was going about. But unlike the condition which could be eradicated by the giving of injections - if they could be obtained because, like everything else, they were in short supply – the gossip didn’t go away, it seemed to linger: grow stronger, more virulent, more damaging with time. Margaret had heard the odd whispered remark as she waited in the butcher’s queue: she had seen the odd sly look, the odd nudge: the silences as she passed by others. She felt she could neither confront, nor ignore those who had suddenly started to avoid her. She was left in a cleft-stick situation, unable to move, like a captured snake. But it was not her spreading the gossip, so why did she feel it was her having to endure that peg-pinching of her tongue, making her powerless to speak out.

  That morning Izzy went to her aunt’s with a supply of vegetables. She had not ventured into town for a few days, her father had driven the milk churns to the dairy leaving her incarcerated up at the farm, performing chores a male farm-hand would do. She simply went between the farm and her cottage where she knew Heinrich would be, if he could get away, and once that door was shut behind them reality was locked out and their fantasy life took over, behaving like a married couple, eating, sleeping together. Having sex not only in the afternoon, at night, and in the morning too. They thought nothing could pierce the cocoon they wrapped themselves in. They were being naïve, because the ugly world outside the door suddenly crept in to penetrate their phoney marriage and the bliss it presumed.

  As Izzy walked from the lorry one morning, leaving her dog sitting on the passenger seat, she was ignored by passers-by. Behind her she heard someone spit. She ignored it. Once inside the house the atmosphere seemed just as thick. Margaret didn’t smile at her that morning, she frowned.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Izzy asked kissing her aunt on the cheek and giving her a squeeze. ‘Something happened?’

  ‘It’s been a week since we last saw you, but what a lot has happened in that week,’ Margaret replied.

  ‘What has happened?’ Izzy asked.

  ‘First of all, it’s all around the town Odette has sought out the means to abort the bastard she is carrying. She’s fine, just might not be able to have more children, but that might be a blessing for her and any bastard she might want to bring into this world,’ she explained sourly. ‘Then...’

  She paused.

  ‘Then what?’ Izzy asked.

  ‘You Izzy.’

  ‘What about me?’

  Margaret snorted. ‘Don’t lie to me Izzy, or try and fudge around the issue surrounding the relationship you are obviously having with a certain Oberleutnant. It’s all around town. I’ve been privy to the sneers; the nudges; the remarks. I just hope to God your mother hasn’t heard, and if your father finds out… I just don’t know what he’s likely to do.’

  Izzy closed her eyes. Their clandestine relationship had finally be discovered. Their bubble had burst.

  ‘I love him,’ Izzy cried.

  ‘And Alain, what about Alain?’

  Izzy visibly squirmed, but she could not answer her aunt’s question.

  ‘Well?’ Margaret asked.

  ‘If Alain loves me then why hasn’t he contacted me?’

  ‘Perhaps he can’t, Izzy. Perhaps he’s working behind enemy lines, risking his life for us all. Fighting to rid Europe of Nazism.’

  ‘Heinrich is no Nazi, he’s an ordinary soldier,’ Izzy remarked hoping her aunt could see the difference.

  Margaret did recognise the difference, but that didn’t alter the fact their men were fighting each other.

  ‘They are our enemy, Izzy, nothing can change that. German soldiers are fighting our soldiers, they are killing each other because we are on opposing sides. How would all our soldiers feel if they found out our women were friendly with the enemy. You can’t take both sides Izzy, you can’t have a foot in both camps.’

  ‘It’s so unfair.’ Izzy shook her head. ‘We love each other.’

  ‘He’s a married man with two children,’ Margaret reminded.

  ‘He’s estranged,’ Izzy retorted.

  ‘He told you that, did he,’ Margaret remarked, raising her eyebrows. She had heard that before. Like the phrase, ‘my wife doesn’t understand me’ or ‘my wife doesn’t love me, our marriage is just for convenience’. Men could be such liars, she thought.

  ‘No, he didn’t tell me lies like that, he let it slip and I picked up on it, so I asked him,’ Izzy responded.

  ‘But he’ll go back to her when this is all over. Like Alain will come back to you.’

  ‘No he won’t,’ Izzy said looking down. ‘Alain will have nothing to do with me ever again if he finds out I was the mistress of a German officer, and that we became lovers soon after he arrived on the island.’

  Margaret dropped the tea cup and saucer she had just lifted from the shelf, and accidently dropped them into the sink, shattering the crockery into tiny little pieces. ‘Oh, shit, shit, shit,’ she breathed. ‘That belonged to your grandmother,’ she said.

  Izzy had never once heard her aunt curse and took hold of her aunt’s hand.

  ‘What have you done?’ Margaret groaned, shaking her head. But when the shock of Izzy’s revelation diminished a little it only seemed to add more pressure to the strain of living under German rule.

  ‘He loves me,’ Izzy replied.

  ‘Are you sure about that?’

  ‘Yes I am,’ Izzy snapped.

  ‘And are you taking precautions? Because if anything springs from this union it will be you who will be left with the mess.’

  ‘Yes, we always have,’ Izzy replied.

  ‘Nothing is fail-safe, and if you’re not careful it is you who will have to bear the child along with the humiliation. It will you who will have to bring it up, and it will be he who will disappear to forget all about you when all this is over,’ Margaret replied.

  ‘He’s not like that.’

  ‘Really?’ Margaret asked raising her eyebrows. ‘He’s a soldier, and he’s a man isn’t he?’

  ‘What does that mean?’ Izzy asked getting annoyed.

  ‘Don’t come over all innocent with me, Izzy. I know you’ve been lonely, you’re young, you need physical love and affection, we all do, but we women always bear the brunt. Women are whores, men are just… men. Their tom-cat behaviour’s accepted, ours is not.’

  Izzy stood thinking about what her aunt had said. Men could sleep around as much as they liked; women had to have more self-control unless they wanted to be compared to a lady of the night as her mother called prostitutes. And men had brothels they could go to: where could women go? It was unfair. Their roles were disparate and that was a fact that would never change, even though women were beginning to prove they could do certain jobs just as well as men.

  ‘We’re in love and that’s an end to it,’ Izzy said.

  Margaret sighed deeply. ‘I don’t, for one minute, think that’s an end to anything. But if things get nasty, or your father finds out, you know you can come to me.’

  Izzy walked back to her lorry relieved she had an ally in her aunt. She wouldn’t abandon her, she would try and help, but as she approached the lorry she noticed the passenger door was wide open and her dog had gone.

  ‘Benjy,’ she shouted. ‘Here boy,’ then she gave a loud whistle and waited.

  She looked up and down the road, there was no dog of any description to be seen. Oh, bugger, she thought, come home when you’re ready, you stupid mutt. And after cranking the engine she climbed up into the cab and drove off to leave the lorry at the farm where her mother gave her some soda-bread she had made that morning. As Izzy left the farm she hoped she might come across Benjy on the bike-ride home as it was getting dark and he would want feeding. But he was nowhere about. As she hopped off her bike to immediately put it away in the shed around the back, she suddenly glimpsed him lying on the grass just outside the back door.

>   ‘There you are,’ she smiled, and she bent down to stroke him. But as she got closer she saw blood on the ground, surrounding his head like a halo. It stuck to his fur like a dark red collar. Then as she went to stroke between his ears his head moved and she saw the gaping wound stretching across the dog’s neck. Izzy screamed and ran indoors, locking the door behind her, she bolted it top and bottom then went to sit on the sofa. She shook with the shock of seeing her best friend lying inert with his throat slit. Then she wept, she couldn’t stop.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Izzy had cried so much, she fell asleep, only to be awoken sharply when she heard someone at the door. It was Heinrich, he was calling out for her. She got up and went to draw back the bolts at the same time he turned his key in the lock.

  ‘Why did you bolt the door?’ Heinrich asked, stepping inside. Then seeing her eyes red and swollen asked, ‘Are you alright, what’s happened?’

  Izzy sobbed. ‘It’s Benjy, he’s out back, on the grass. He’s dead. I touched him, he felt so cold. Someone’s killed him.’

  Heinrich pulled Izzy close to comfort her and after kissing her on the head, said, ‘Who would do such a thing?’

  Izzy clung to him. ‘Someone who hates me,’ she cried.

  Heinrich tried to console her. ‘No one hates you,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, they do, islanders hate all the women who fraternise with the troops.’ She was still sobbing. ‘Why did they do that to Benjy?’