by Simon Mawer
Under the aegis of the ubiquitous Vera Atkins, Marian and some other women witnesses assembled in the only hotel left standing in the city, near the Hauptbahnhof. Vera had suggested she wear FANY uniform but Marian demurred. She was not here as a FANY, nor as a WAAF, nor even as an agent of the now disbanded organisation that still baulked to name itself openly, the Special Operations Executive. She was here as a woman who had survived: Marian Sutro become Geneviève Marchal, the notable become nondescript. So she wore grey, a grey woollen dress, grey overcoat, grey stockings, grey hat. As grey as ashes. Each day she and the others were driven in Army transport through the frozen embers of the Altstadt to the court which sat in one of the few official buildings still intact, the curiously named Curio-Haus, where, in the main hall that had been transformed into a simulacrum of a courtroom, the accused sat like coconuts in a shy. Black number cards hung round their necks: 1 to 16, nine men and seven women. In the body of the court there were officers in uniform and barristers wearing gowns and wigs. Soldiers stood guard.
‘It’s a bloody miracle this trial is being held at all,’ someone confided to her. He was a young Army officer in the Intelligence Corps, part of the war crimes investigation team. Apparently Ravensbrück camp itself was in the Soviet zone and so the Soviets had the right to hold any trial there might be; but because of the British interest – it was the SOE agents, really, the officer said – there was an agreement that it could take place in the British zone. One of the final acts of Allied cooperation. ‘So you are particularly important to us,’ the officer added, trying to reassure her, trying to still the subversive voice of panic that shouted within her. ‘But don’t worry. Just tell your own story. That will be enough.’
When her turn came she took the stand in front of the firing squad of a hundred sets of eyes. She told the court who she was and who she had been, and she swore to an almighty and omniscient God she did not believe in that she would tell the pure truth, although the truth appeared anything but pure. Then the prosecuting council, bewigged and begowned like a barrister but with the funereal manner of a doctor at a deathbed, began to ask her questions. When had she arrived at Ravensbrück? How had she come to be there? Which hut was she quartered in? What work had she done? Which work detail was she assigned to?
And the panic died. She spoke steadily and clearly. Stenographers recorded the words assiduously, while the accused stared glassily into space as though bored by the proceedings. Outside it snowed.
‘One of the women in the hospital block saved my life,’ she told them. ‘She allowed me to exchange identity with a French woman who had died there. So I became Geneviève Marchal. It was Geneviève Marchal who survived, not Marian Sutro.’
‘And yet you are here now. Marian Sutro is here.’ The advocate glanced down at his notes. ‘Or at least, Marian Walcott. I gather congratulations are due.’ He attempted a smile although it was a poor jocularity, a stunted piece of banter in this place of grim recount. ‘Now tell me, Mrs Walcott, are you able to identify this woman who saved your life by allowing you to change your identity? Is she perhaps in this courtroom?’
One of the women prisoners shouted out, in German, ‘It was me! I did that!’
The presiding judge demanded silence.
Marian looked at the row of coconuts and shook her head. The advocate put his hands together almost as though beseeching his witness. ‘Mrs Walcott, could you perhaps give your answer out loud? For the record. Is the woman who saved your life in this courtroom?’
Stenographers’ hands were poised. The monotony of hate and depravity was like a drug, stunning mind and body, making memories unreal, turning persons recalled into figures in a dream.
‘No,’ she said. ‘The woman is not here. I believe she died of typhus a few months later.’
‘But there is a woman here whom you recognise?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Number five.’
‘The witness has identified defendant number five, Dorothea Binz. Can you tell the court about the behaviour of Dorothea Binz?’
So she told them, a drab story of everyday violence, the pure truth: ‘There was a morning Appell. At dawn. I think perhaps the court has been told about Appell. Every morning at dawn, whatever the weather. We were all lined up and this woman, number five, was inspecting our ranks because there had been some mix up over the count. And she said something to the woman standing next to me. This woman was …’ Marian hesitated ‘… my friend. Véronique, she was called. Véronique Barthelemy. Binz hit her. Something Véronique said. I didn’t hear it. Binz hit Véronique and knocked her to the ground. Véronique wasn’t well. I went to protect her but the guards pushed me aside. Then the woman Binz stamped on Véronique’s head. She stamped on her and killed her. As though she – Véronique, I mean – was just an insect or something. While all the others, me included, had to watch.’
She was shaking afterwards, shaking uncontrollably. Someone took her to a quiet room and gave her some tea to drink. She felt short of breath, as though she had just been held under water. When they drove her back to the hotel she was still shaking, still gasping. It was as if some piece of her internal machinery had broken, a stabiliser of some kind. She wandered into the hotel bar because she didn’t want to go to her room and be on her own, but she didn’t want to be with people either. ‘Are you cold?’ someone asked. ‘It’s bloody brass monkey weather, if you ask me.’ A glass of brandy was pushed into her hand and it seemed to do the trick. Alcohol as therapy. She sat down on a banquette, pushing herself into one corner, cradling her brandy as though it were the elixir of life. There was loud talk in the bar, perhaps an antidote to the quiet talk of the courtroom. Odette was there, the bright star surrounded by a little solar system of admirers. She’d got her George Cross just a few months earlier and people wanted to know about it. One of her admirers was a man with the unlikely name of Tickle who was, so he announced loudly to anyone who would listen, writing a book about her.
After a while a young Army captain came and sat beside Marian on the banquette. With him was a liaison officer from the Red Army, resplendent in tightly buttoned jacket with gold shoulder boards. Perhaps the captain was the one who had offered her brandy in the first place. Perhaps he was the one who had talked to her before she gave witness. He had Intelligence Corps shoulder flashes and a surprising fluency when calling the German waiter over to bring her another glass. ‘Do you want to write my story?’ Marian asked him, half in jest. The shaking had been replaced by a kind of euphoria.
The officer glanced at those near the bar. ‘He does seem to tickle her fancy, doesn’t he?’
The joke appeared outrageously funny. She laughed. It seemed some kind of blasphemy, to laugh. Like giggling in church. But laugh she did, at the man’s silly jest, while he looked faintly embarrassed and his Russian companion entirely impassive.
‘I’m Tony Bright,’ the intelligence officer said when the joke was finally exhausted. ‘Known to my friends as Not-too. And my colleague here is …’
‘Major Absolon,’ the Russian announced. When she offered her hand he raised it to within a millimetre of his lips and breathed softly on it. ‘A heroine for our times,’ he said portentously. ‘I am a great admirer of your war career.’
‘You speak English very well.’
‘Yes,’ he replied and said no more, as though her remark had been a neutral one rather than an implied question, a straightforward observation with which he couldn’t but agree. ‘I must congratulate you on your recent marriage, I believe.’
‘That’s kind of you. Are you married, Major Absolon?’
He made a little helpless gesture. ‘I had a wife. She was a nurse but she was killed in Leningrad during the siege.’
‘How very sad.’
‘There are many sad stories these days, aren’t there? What is one more or less?’
‘And why are you here? A Russian here in Hamburg, I mean.’
‘To see how our allies manage this trial. I was also at Nurember
g, reporting for the Red Army newspaper.’ He shrugged. ‘Not a funny job. Funny is perhaps wrong. Amusing. Certainly not amusing. Here we have agreed that the British should do the trial. Ravensbrück is in the Soviet zone but the authorities agreed that Britain should do the trial.’
‘How very friendly.’
He laughed. ‘Friendly? I’m afraid it is just give and take. Is that what you say? The Soviet Union will want something in return.’
‘I wonder what.’
‘Who knows? Quid pro quo, isn’t that the expression?’
It was the expression, exactly. Shortly afterwards the Russian excused himself and left her alone with Bright. ‘Absolon’s a fine chap,’ he said. ‘Seems a bit stiff but that’s only shyness.’
‘It was sad about his wife.’
‘Yes, it was.’ That might have killed the conversation but Bright seemed determined not to let that happen. He reminded her a bit of Benoît trying to chat her up in a bar in London all that time ago. So often people were at a loss for things to say but he seemed to have no difficulty, just like Benoît. They talked of music, films, a whole lot of nonsense, anything that could make her forget the courtroom and its monotonous record of evidence, or Odette’s tinkling voice with its French accent thrilling the hangers-on.
‘How do you find married life?’ the captain asked.
‘It’s more or less what I expected,’ she said, but she never explained what her expectations had been.
‘I haven’t got that far yet,’ he replied, ‘although I’ve been practising.’
‘What on earth do you mean by that?’ For some reason she wondered whether he was about to make a pass at her. She shocked herself to discover that she rather hoped he would, and that, if he did, she wasn’t sure how she would respond.
He smiled. ‘Engaged. I met her in Belgium. I was billeted on her family …’ His voice trailed away, as though leaving details of the billet to Marian’s imagination. ‘She promised to wait for me. We write most days, and once I hitched a ride and got back to see her. She’s called Anna-Griet. Catholic, but that shouldn’t matter, should it?’
‘Not at all. I’m Catholic. At least I was.’
‘There you are.’ He looked at her thoughtfully, gazing right into her eyes and half smiling just as Benoît used to. Yes, she thought – and found herself blushing. ‘I’m sure you’ll be very happy together,’ she said and to her surprise he laughed.
‘How can you be sure? You can hope, but you can’t be sure. We might make a colossal cock-up of the whole thing. If you’ll forgive the expression.’
She matched his laughter. Cock-up. Really rather shocking. ‘If you are really in love, then you won’t.’
‘I’m not even sure about that – my mother and father were very much in love when they got married, and two years after I was born she ran off with the lodger. Anyway, when I get demobbed I’m off to Belgium to find out.’ He drank more brandy and thought for a moment. ‘Do you ever regret it?’
‘Regret what?’
‘Getting married.’
‘It’s a bit soon for that, isn’t it? Even by your mother’s standards.’
Her reply struck them both as tremendously funny. Their laughter made people look round and they brought it under control, like naughty children. Later, when they were going in to dinner, their talk drifted on to other things, the kind of things people talked about at the moment, the chaos that was Germany, and the grim nature of post-war Britain, the possibilities and fears for the future. The waiter came and took their order, which, as Bright remarked, was a choice between not much and very little.
‘What do you think about the Bomb?’ he asked.
She produced a stock answer – terrible, frightening, something like that. When you’ve seen this city, how it has been destroyed, imagine an atom bomb. And the loss of innocence, she added, not quite knowing what she meant. Something to do with being able to kill at the press of a button. Imagine, she suggested, thinking of Ned, imagine a V2 with an atom bomb warhead.
Bright nodded thoughtfully. ‘You know what I think?’ He glanced round as though people might be eavesdropping on their conversation, but the people nearby were talking of something else, the black market, the problem of displaced persons, the difficulty of this, the impossibility of that. All his insouciance had vanished. Quietly, he said, ‘I think the Yanks’ll use it. Against the Soviets.’
‘The Russians? They’re our allies.’
He leaned towards her. ‘I read the signals. They talk about when the next war breaks out, not if. As though it’s only a matter of time.’
‘Another war? Haven’t we had enough?’
‘It wouldn’t last long. All the Yanks have to do is bring a couple of those Superfortresses over here with a nice fat atom bomb in each belly. Drop one on Moscow and one on Leningrad and Bob’s your uncle.’
Ned had said more or less the same thing. Bright’s expression was hard to read, an amalgam of amusement and despair. ‘It doesn’t bear thinking about,’ she said.
‘These days there are lot of things that don’t bear thinking about. Like what you were telling us in the courtroom. I saw it, you know that? I was with the 11th Armoured Division.’ That meant nothing to her. Numbers, units, the whole world was under arms and everyone had a number. ‘At the liberation of Belsen,’ Bright explained. ‘I was one of the first into the camp, with a medical team. On the 15th April. It was …’ He shook his head. ‘Words don’t do it, do they?’
‘No, they don’t.’
‘I was meant to find one of your lot.’
‘One of my lot?’
‘SOE. Perhaps you knew her. She was called Yvette. I don’t remember her last name. But reports said she was using a cover. Marcelle Grenier. That’s who I was sent in to find. Marcelle Grenier.’
It was like a blow, precisely aimed, just below the sternum, knocking the wind out of her – the impact of a name, a mere breath on the air, become something physical. ‘Yvette?’
‘You knew her?’
She tried to breathe in, struggling against whatever had hit her in the stomach. ‘Yvette Trocard. She was older than me. Married name Coombes.’
‘Coombes, that’s her. Yvette Coombes.’ Tony Bright was watching her with concern. ‘You all right?’
She breathed in deeply, tried to bring her mind back into some kind of balance. ‘I trained with her. Then met up with her in Paris. I had no idea what happened to her, except that she was …’ How to put it? What euphemism to use? ‘… held by the Germans. Did you find her?’
There was a silence around them. The noise of the bar seemed distant and irrelevant. She watched Bright for any sign. He drank some more brandy and replaced his glass with care. ‘You’ve seen the newsreels. They were dying like flies, thousands a day – typhus, dysentery, starvation, everything. Some of them even died when we gave them food, because we gave them food …’
‘And Yvette …?’
‘According to a woman I interviewed, she died a week after we got there. A whole fucking week after. Sorry. My language. I shouldn’t have said that …’
‘It’s all right.’
‘We just didn’t know where to look. There were simply too many of them. We tried, I promise you, but we never even found her body. It was one of those we had to bulldoze into a pit.’ There was a glistening in his eyes. His mouth made a strange shape, almost as though he had lost control of his lips. ‘I don’t understand it,’ he said, shaking his head as if thereby he might shake out any memories. ‘Any of it.’
She reached out and took his hand. ‘Don’t try to,’ she said. ‘I’ve spent ages trying to understand everything and I can’t. So don’t try.’
They talked some more, the conversation jumping unsteadily to other things – his fiancée, Marian’s own husband, the uncertainties of peacetime after the certainties of war. And they laughed a bit, which was dangerous but inevitable, and they drank a bit more and when it seemed that the bar was closing they found themselves climbin
g the stairs to the same floor. Their rooms were mere doors apart.
‘A nightcap?’ he suggested. And that was the excuse. A nightcap. He had a half bottle of whisky in his room and when it became rather more than a nightcap it didn’t matter because Anna-Griet wouldn’t mind because she wouldn’t even know. The same went for Alan, didn’t it? Deception brought its own rewards, its thrill of secret, arcane knowledge whose revelation could bring down plans and destroy lives, but like any such knowledge could be kept hidden and only used in some future moment when it might be necessary.
She left the next day. She hoped that Tony Bright wouldn’t be around when she left the hotel but there he was in the lobby along with his Russian colleague, the man with the biblical name. Absolon. She and Bright shook hands as though they were mere acquaintances, as though they hadn’t spent half the night together, naked in each other’s arms. And she wondered what the Russian thought, or knew. He was impassive as he raised her hand to his lips. But he looked at her directly, with thoughtful, perhaps even sympathetic eyes.
‘Have a good flight,’ Bright told her as she climbed into the car. ‘I’d come to see you off but I’ve got to—’
She put her hand out and touched his wrist. That unexpected contact seemed to shock him. ‘It’s quite all right,’ she said. ‘I’m fine.’ Absurdly she added, ‘If you’re in London, look me up. Kensington 6877. We’re in the directory.’
The car drove her through a bleak arctic landscape to the airfield where an Avro York was ready to fly people back to Abingdon. The noise, the hard unembellished interior of the aeroplane, the smell of engine oil and metal, all reminded her of the Halifax that had flown her to France. Alan was at the airfield to meet her when they landed. Through a friend in air movements he’d found out when and where she was due in. Good old Alan, as reliable as ever. They drove back to London and, compared with northern Germany, England seemed a small, fragile place, and London bright and fresh with bombsites few and far between.