‘And Caithleen?’ she asked, looking up from her cup to see him staring at her as a man does a woman he’s about to seduce. ‘Colonel, that girl will be killed if she stays in Ireland.’
‘An O’Neill,’ he said, as if savouring the last name and not the tea. ‘The girl could be got out, I suppose. Of course, if you …’
Sex—was this what he wanted of herself? It was, thought Mary. Flustered, she said silently, Oh damn, what the hell am I to do?
‘A job in a munitions factory,’ he said, drifting off into thought himself. ‘Manchester, I should think, or Sheffield. After the hair grows in—couldn’t have it otherwise, now could we? She could work as a domestic, though, for a few months. Now there’s a thought. Yes, by heavens she could. I’ve a sister in Nottingham. Gwen would be glad to have this girl of yours. She’d be just the thing.’
‘Colonel, exactly what are you asking of me?’
‘In return?’
No smiles now, no phony airs or pompous colonel stuff, just the business of a squire who knew what he wanted. ‘In return, yes,’ she said, setting her cup and saucer aside and waiting for it now.
Bannerman knew he was surprised that she had even condescended to listen and not bolt from the bloody office. He hadn’t lost the touch then, had played her right into the trap he’d set for her, she now so unsettled, those lovely eyes of hers found it hard to even face him. ‘That’s a nice pin you’re wearing. A cairngorm, is it?’
‘Yes. Hamish bought it for me before … before we were married.’
‘Getting on well, are the two of you?’ he asked. He’d now play the father confessor.
‘Hamish and I have always got on, Colonel. We’re two of a kind.’
That so? he’d ask with lifted eyebrows, but the look she gave in return was steady and only then did she say, ‘Of course.’
‘Of course what, my dear?’ he blandly asked.
Mary reached for her cup and saucer, had to have something to hang on to. ‘Only that we do get on, Colonel. I love my husband very much and wouldn’t want to hurt him in any way.’
Oh my, oh my, she’d given him her answer after all. ‘Then you’ll tell me everything, won’t you?’
Flustered—angry with herself for having let him lead her on and showing it, Mary heard herself saying sharply, ‘There’s nothing to tell. How could there be?’
Captain Allanby had been so certain the woman was up to something behind their backs. Everything that had happened to the O’Neill girl pointed that way, but then Jimmy had it in for Mrs. Mary Ellen Fraser. Burned before the bed, as they say. Love was such a damned silly thing. Sex … now sex was something quite different. Over in an instant after a good ramming.
‘What books did you bring this time?’ he asked, catching her unawares and causing her to momentarily glance at them, revealing an anxiety one could only find troubling.
Again those puffy eyelids with their faded brows were lifted in question. Mary knew she was trapped. ‘A Dumas,’ she said emptily. ‘The Man in the Iron Mask. Tom Sawyer,’ she went on for there could be no stopping now. ‘Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason; Thackeray’s The Virginians, and … and a Dickens. A Tale of Two Cities.’
‘You’ll not mind if I take a quick look through them, will you? It’s just a formality. You do understand?’
She mustn’t hesitate. ‘Please do. You can borrow any of them if you wish. Perhaps Mrs. Bannerman might like one.’
She wasn’t going to let him reach those books alone, though, had quickly set her cup and saucer down and had got up. ‘I’ll just get the scissors, then, shall I?’
Mary knew he had caught her out, that he’d planned it all along. In a way she was glad it was over. The strain of the last few days had been almost more than she could bear. By the time Hamish got back from Belfast, she’d be in prison—safe perhaps from Fay Darcy and the others.
Bannerman had handed the scissors to her and she’d not even realized it.
‘Now, now, my dear, you mustn’t think we’re so bad. Captain Allanby means well, but he has his orders just as I have mine.’
Then cut the bloody string for me! she wanted to scream, but all he said, she turning from him now to hide her tears, was, ‘We need to know everything you can tell us about Erich Kramer and what he’s been up to. That suit?’
One had best take her by the shoulders and play the father figure, felt Bannerman. ‘This chappie, the Second Lieutenant Bachmann, Mary. He was so useful to us. It’s a pity they had to hang him, a great pity. Now run along, there’s a good girl, and do your stuff.’
Their steps rang hollowly in the empty corridors. Again not another soul was about. Where once she and the guard might have passed groups of men smoking and chatting, or simply hanging about, there was only the emptiness of a castle vacated by its baron and cleaned out by the auctioneers.
The library was in an anteroom off the far corner of the great hall, in what might, in Norman days, have been called a bedchamber. The passageway Erich and she had last used ran from this chamber to another and smaller one. From there, another corridor led to a spiral staircase that gave access to both the floors above and those below, but—and this was important—that staircase wasn’t the main one.
Try as she did not to dwell on it, Mary knew that Jimmy Allanby must have deliberately left those corridor doors open.
She and the guard came to the foot of the spiral staircase but went straight on past it. She’d lost the button up there and Jimmy had somehow found it. They had put two and two together and had agreed to turn a blind eye for a while and use her even more than they’d already been doing.
There was nothing else she could conclude. Jimmy would keep that button until needed.
Button, button … As she and the guard hurried away to the main staircase, each step echoed up the word and Mary saw herself in that corridor, saw Erich yanking at her blouse and felt the button pop off and roll away.
It was such a simple thing. Dear God, what was she to do? She was caught between the British Army and the IRA. If she refused the latter, they’d strip her naked and cut off her hair before tarring her and showering on the feathers; if the former, they’d see her arrested for treason.
And Erich? she asked. Erich couldn’t be in love with her. How could she go through with the things they all wanted of her—Fay Darcy and Kevin O’Bannion; the colonel and Major Trant and Jimmy Allanby; and Erich … yes, Erich most of all?
Must she betray her country?
‘Mrs. Fraser, m’am. We’re here.’
‘Wha …? Oh. Oh, thank you, Corporal. About an hour suit?’
She was as white as a sheet. ‘An hour it is then, m’am.’ He touched his cap and left her, didn’t hang around as they usually did.
The great hall was huge—some sixty feet in length, by forty-five in width. Erich and his group had measured it as they’d measured everything else. They’d drawn up plans of the castle, knew things she suspected the British didn’t even know.
Secret plans that were kept hidden in the metal tubes of their bunks—this much she did know, for she’d overheard it once. And yes, those locations had probably been changed again and again.
Galleries at the ends of the upstairs corridors gave out on to the great hall. The hearth was massive and smoke-blackened but its chimney was hidden and didn’t run all the way up to the vaulted ceiling some forty feet or so above because it was, after all, not a Norman castle but something far, far newer than that.
The hall was empty of furnishings, empty too, of the men, each of whom would wear those rescued bits and pieces of their uniforms as badges of their heroism and measures of their rank.
Mary knew she would have had to smile at them had they been here talking, giving her smiles of their own and the appreciative looks of young men who’d been without a woman for some time.
Men who knew—some of the
m in any case—that she and Erich Kramer had been lovers. Had been—yes, that was the way it would have to be.
As she started out to cross the hall, her steps echoed up from the squared parquet of white-and-red Venetian marble, and when she came to its centre, she was forced to stop.
‘Where are the men?’ she asked.
Trant heard her voice as if from the hollowness of a cannon barrel. He had come to stand in the farthest gallery from her. But was he gazing down upon her like the lord of the manor? he wondered. It felt like that, up here in the gods as it were, she looking alone and lost with that bundle of books clutched to her as if about to drown.
Allowing a trace of jocularity, he said, ‘The men will be along in a moment. It’s good of you to have come so promptly.’
‘Why promptly?’ she wanted to shout up at him. ‘Are they still under house arrest?’
‘Still being stubborn, I’m afraid,’ he said, not leaning on the balustrade but placing his hands lightly there as one of the Norman kings might have done, she the Irish serving wench he would use.
Trant wasn’t after her body, though, only her mind and what she could divulge. Did castles always breed suspicion, intrigue and contempt? she wondered.
As he continued to look at her, Mary passed beneath, knowing now that they had agreed among themselves: Trant, the colonel, and Jimmy Allanby. Jimmy.
Setting the bundle of books on the library’s table, she hurried to the corridor to yank on the door’s handle, realizing that Trant had made damned sure it would be locked and off limits.
Had he the button?
They were all around her now, she existing on two levels, the one so friendly and outgoing—she had to keep up the mask of that—the other bleak.
The line-up was long and stretched well out into the great hall. Everyone, it seemed, wanted to take out books. Usually Oberleutant Werner, a first lieutenant, helped at the desk. A pilot in the Luftwaffe, Philip had been shot down over the Channel and had been fished out of the water. One of the lucky ones, he’d always say, but today he wasn’t here, and she kept wondering why.
There’d still been no sign of Erich. The Thackeray still sat on her left, her hand always straying nervously to it. More than once, far more, someone had tried to pick it up. The Dickens was gone, the Mark Twain—all the rest of what she’d brought in.
Franz Bauer stood waiting. A Leutnant zur See just like Second Lieutenant Bachmann had been, Bauer had been one of U-121’s officers, still was for that matter.
‘Captain wants to speak to you,’ he said in his broken English while handing her a book to be stamped out, any book. Mary had never liked him, had always thought him a bit uncouth and not to be trusted.
‘I can’t come. Not today. Tell Erich he must come here and that’s all there is to it. I’ve got something for him. Next? Oh, hello, Helmut. How’s the arm coming along?’
Helmut Wolfganger gave her a grin. An Oberleutnant zur See from Idar-Oberstein, he had the look of a farm boy, though thirty-five, was blond and blue-eyed, but painfully thin.
‘You’re all alone,’ he said. ‘The arm’s fine.’
Mary saw that he was taking out one of the other Thackerays. She hesitated, looked up at him even as he noticed the book on her left and reached for it. ‘Don’t, please. Just leave it. That’s for Erich.’
Wolfganger gave her another of those grins of his before taking his book back and saying, ‘He’s a lucky man, Mrs. Fraser. I hope the doctor doesn’t mind.’
When Erich finally did come into the library, the level of conversation fell to a hush and she knew then that something really was going on among the prisoners and that more than a few of them were now aware that she was a part of it.
‘Mary, what do you want? I was in a meeting. Policies … the way we do things here. It … it couldn’t be helped.’
Policies? Escape perhaps? Erich was wearing his peaked white cap, his Schirmmutze, the dark grey woollen turtleneck pullover too.
‘Liebling, what’s the matter?’ he asked, concern in his deep blue eyes.
‘Nothing. I’ve found a copy of that Thackeray you wanted. Don’t … Please don’t open it here. Just take some others with you.’
Kramer felt the weight of the book and the bulge. ‘I didn’t ask for any Thackeray.’
‘Erich, please just do as I’ve asked. It’s … it’s already been stamped.’ He wouldn’t go over to the shelves to get some others. He just stood there looking down at her.
Kramer slid a forefinger into the book and felt the gun but knew there was more to this, much more. ‘They’ve contacted you,’ he said. He’d let his face break out into a generous grin but would that ease her mind?
‘Yes, they’ve contacted me. I’ve done what I had to.’
There was no smile from her, no sign of the relief there ought to have been, she turning from him now and still all wound up about it, but what else? he wondered. Did the British suspect her of aiding the enemy?
‘We have to talk,’ he said, turning away to say, ‘Franz, the lady needs to visit the toilet. Oblige us.’
‘No! Erich, listen to me. I can’t. Major Trant will only be watching for something like that.’
So it had been Trant after all and now she was noticing that the room had fallen to absolute silence as it should have.
Erich motioned for the men to leave, and they did in trickles so as not to make their leaving too obvious. Even though some were of higher rank, they obeyed as if he was in command of them, but he wasn’t in command of herself, was he? she had to silently ask.
Kramer reached across the table that separated them, she ignoring the outstretched hand, he beckoning with it now.
‘It’s finished between us, Erich. It has to be.’
Grabbing her by the wrist, he pulled her after him, took her in between the rows of shelves and forced her to face him. ‘Who gave you this?’ he demanded.
‘The IRA. Who the hell did you think that “cousin” of yours would contact other than Berlin?’
‘Then you have made contact and Dublin has been in touch with C-and-C U-boats.’
He was relieved—she could see this at a glance but … ‘You don’t love me. You never did.’
Some women were easy, some more difficult, but all needed that little something. He’d close the book, he decided. He’d take two others from the shelf she’d her back to, would sandwich the Thackeray between them. ‘I do but I know you must be finding it hard to believe. I have to get away.’
‘Why?’
She was watching him too closely—was angry and afraid, and struggling with her conscience, even feeling a fool.
When he didn’t answer, she turned to leave, only to feel the touch of him on her hand and ask, ‘Were you responsible for the hanging of that man? Is that why you have to get away?’
‘I had no part in that.’
‘Then who did?’
‘You know I can’t tell you. How could I?’
Had he been one of them? Had he given the command? ‘It’s what they want me to find out. The names of all who were responsible.’
‘It’s impossible.’
‘Is it? If I don’t get the answer, Bannerman and Trant will accuse me of helping you and of betraying my husband and my country, and if they don’t, Jimmy Allanby will.’
They had put it to her then, or at least had got her to believe they had.
Something went out of him then and an apologetic tone crept into his voice.
‘You’re caught between us, aren’t you, mein Schatz? The British, the Reich and the IRA. Can you ever forgive me?’
Mein Schatz … my treasure. He was so close to her now. The cap was set at a rakish angle, and she realized then that he’d have worn it that way at sea. ‘I must go. Look, as far as you and I are concerned, it is finished. It has to be.’
Then
why tremble at the nearness of him, why search for signs that it wasn’t? Kramer set the books aside. He’d have to let her see how it really was for a man like himself. Giving her an understanding nod, he said, ‘It’s not right of us to leave things this way. Take the gun back and tell them it’s all off no matter what C-and-C U-boats and Berlin have sent over the wireless to Dublin. I’m staying here until the British ship me off to Canada. It’ll be easier then. A few months, nothing more.’
Apart from their having won the war, he couldn’t mean it. He really couldn’t.
Kramer turned his back on her. He would leave the books on the shelf she faced, would leave the gun, would let her make a grab for them and say:
‘Erich, wait! Darling, I … I had to know.’
Franz was signalling that they’d best hurry it up, so gut, ja, gut, but had she really fallen for it?
He waited, his back still to her, and when she handed the books to him, he heard her saying, ‘They’ve a meeting place they’ll use. I don’t know where it is, but will try to find out. Somewhere on the north coast, I think. In Donegal, most likely. Somewhere your people can bring a submarine in close enough to take you off.’
‘And you, Mary. You. I’m not leaving you behind. I couldn’t.’
Was he lying or simply trying to make things easier for her? she wondered. He hadn’t asked what the IRA would demand in exchange, would have to leave all that up to others, to C-and-C U-boats and Berlin, and to wireless contact with Dublin, but she would have to let him kiss her. She mustn’t pull away, mustn’t let her doubts show, must give herself to him and give herself time.
Trant was waiting for her in the corridor when she had closed up the library and crossed the great hall. Falling in beside her, they continued on towards the main staircase. ‘You never wear lipstick when you come to see us. I find that curious.’
‘You can find it any way you wish, Major. I simply choose not to during the day. There’s a war on and good lipstick is rather hard to come by. The kind that is available bothers my lips.’
Betrayal Page 10