‘Then perhaps it’s all right if you kiss me,’ she said and her smile was beguiling and very sexy.
He kissed her and she kissed him back. He was conscious of her thigh against his as they sat on the bench and he stroked her hair with his free hand. The kiss was better than he remembered and he wondered if he dared risk dropping his hand to her breast but thought perhaps that was taking things too quickly. When their lips parted he was breathless. He could taste her lipstick. Her perfume was richer than the night.
‘You get full marks for kissing,’ she said, still smiling. ‘You must have been practising.’ Her tongue peeped between her lips and she moved forward fractionally as if to continue but then hesitated. ‘Have you got a girlfriend at university?’
‘What?’
‘You heard.’ Her smile was now coy. ‘A girlfriend.’
‘Yes. I have a girlfriend. Sort of.’
‘A sort of girlfriend. I’d hate to be called a sort of girlfriend. What’s her name?’
‘Hilary.’
He was uncomfortable because he had described Ruth to Hilary as a sort of girlfriend before leaving Durham.
‘Have you had sex with her?’
The question shocked him, particularly because she asked it with such apparent wide-eyed innocence.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘You suffer from selective deafness, Simon. Have you done it with her?’
‘Yes. We’ve … done it.’ He wondered where this was leading. ‘Does it matter?’
‘It probably matters to Hilary. Does it matter to you?’
‘Does having sex matter to me?’
‘Do you take it seriously? Having a relationship that includes sex? Or is it something that everybody does at university?’
‘Of course I take relationships seriously. And yes, lots of people do it at college. The restrictions aren’t the same. Besides, we’re taught to make our own decisions.’
'And to take responsibility for your own actions?’
‘Yes.’
‘What a wonderful place, your university.’ He knew she was teasing but still didn’t know where she was leading. ‘To give you such freedoms.’ She smiled and he knew he would go to sleep tonight thinking about her smile that promised and denied at the same time. ‘Is Hilary going with you to France?’
‘Yes.’ It was a confession. ‘We’re doing the same course.’
‘That’s nice. You’ll be able to study in bed together.’
‘Ruth, stop it.’
‘Stop what?’
‘I don’t know. But stop it. Hilary is a girlfriend but she isn’t the girl I’m going to marry. It’s not that sort of relationship. We respect each other …’ her smile got wider ‘…but we both know we’re not going anywhere.’
‘Except to bed. And to France.’
‘It’s, it’s …’ he was lost for words ‘… it’s a healthy arrangement.’
‘I’ve never heard it called that before.’
Simon felt the moment going.
‘I’m sorry, Ruth. I don’t want to hurt you …’
‘You won’t.’
‘… but I thought we could still be friends.’ He stroked her face and she moved her cheek against his hand and hope sprang eternal. ‘I enjoy kissing you and I thought you enjoyed kissing me. I don’t know what’s in the future. The future’s too far away. But I don’t see any harm in enjoying what we have here and now. We’re both adults. What can be the harm in that?’
‘Nothing at all,’ she said, and her open mouth moved onto his, tongue probing, and he dropped his hand to her breast and shuddered at the touch, but she moved it away and broke the kiss. ‘I’m not Hilary. I’m someone you have to woo. You can get instant sex in France but in Ollerton the pace is slower. Now. Try again.’
The crowd was thinning in the Black Bull and Willie and the Colonel were sipping the last of their whiskies whilst discussing the events of the evening with landlord George Wilson. Willie checked his watch.
‘Time to be off. My chauffeur should be here.’
‘Can’t keep the faithful old retainer waiting, what?’ said the Colonel.
‘Certainly not, old chap. Not the done thing, at all.’
Willie had a husband and wife as gardener and housekeeper. He would drive himself if he called in at the pub for an early evening snifter, but on more extended occasions, Joe the gardener would drop him off at the Bull and pick him up again at an allotted time.
He drained the glass, placed it on the bar and said, ‘Goodnight, gentlemen. I shall no doubt see you tomorrow.’
The Austin shooting brake was outside as expected but Eliza, his sister-in-law, was driving. He climbed in.
‘Good day?’ Eliza asked.
‘Splendid,’ he said. ‘Where’s Joe?’
‘I told him to have an early night. Besides, I fancied the drive.’
‘How’s Sheila?’
‘On the brink of a mood. She’s taken her tablets and I left her with a large gin so she should sleep. It’s just a question of when.’
Willie’s wife suffered periodic depressions. Quite understandable, considering she had always been so active, and 10 years of paralysis had not made the loss any more acceptable. He sympathised and suffered, as did Eliza. It was his penance to suffer, for he could still walk and lead an almost normal life. Their marriage had ceased to have a physical side after the accident. That did not get any easier, either.
The country lanes were deserted and there were no streetlights. The night was beautiful with a lover’s moon hanging in a velvet sky. He wondered if Sally and Bob Harvey had discovered each other, yet, and he envied them.
He glanced at Eliza as she drove. She was very much like his wife but with a stronger face. Even tempered, considerate. She had accepted her husband’s death without histrionics and had got on with what was left. She had taken the role of nursemaid and companion to her sister as if it had been ordained. There had been no question of avoiding a responsibility that was not necessarily hers.
Both Sheila and Eliza had blonde hair, both were tall and leggy and country elegant, the daughters of an old Cheshire family. He had counted himself lucky to have landed one when he married, but the fates had decreed that he now lived with both of them in less than satisfying circumstances.
‘You do too much,’ he said, finding it easier to talk in the darkness.
‘And you have probably drunk too much.’
‘Seriously, Eliza. You’re wasting your life.’
‘This is a sermon I’ve heard many times. Usually when you’ve had a drink.’
‘That’s the only time I have the courage to talk to you.’
‘Careful, Willie.’
‘But there has to be something better than this for you. Why not take a break and go and stay with Albert?’
Albert, her younger brother, had an estate near Chester and entertained and he knew the suggestion sounded as if he were trying to get her to join a marriage brokerage.
‘Find a divorced middle-aged solicitor and live boringly ever after?’ Her voice was a delicate put-down. ‘I think not. Sorry, Willie, I’ve made my decision. Sheila needs me. I shall stay here. It suits me.’
The house was behind high walls although the gates were always open. She parked at the front and got out of the car and walked towards the door that was illuminated by an electric lamp above the portal. Willie watched her and saw her shape outlined in the thin cotton dress. It annoyed him that such a beautiful woman in her forties was wasting her life. The sight also unsettled him.
Once inside, they followed the noise to find Sheila. She sat in the wheelchair facing the open French windows, a glass of gin and tonic in her right hand, the fingers of her left tapping out the beat that came from the radio whose volume had been turned up high. She had tuned into Radio Luxembourg again, the station that broadcast the latest American records from the heart of Europe. The European Fascist Union and the Reich tolerated it as a display of liberalism, although they fro
wned on over-indulgence, and were trying to covertly promote European rock and roll, without much success. Johnny Halliday in France and Cliff Richard in Britain did not fire the imagination in the same way that Elvis Presley did.
Willie turned the volume down.
‘I’m listening to that,’ said Sheila.
‘So is half the county,’ he said, knowing he shouldn’t antagonise her.
She turned the wheelchair towards him.
‘You’re a spoilsport, do you know? You’ve lost your joie de vivre. You’re a fucking damp squib. You’re getting old.’
‘How very true.’
He sat in an armchair and watched Eliza pick up a fallen tonic bottle and check the level of gin. Too little and his wife might rant; enough and she would sleep; too much and it could be dangerous with the medication she took. They all knew the rules and played them accordingly although sometimes Sheila liked to extend the agony.
‘Are you sloshed?’ she demanded.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I am not.’
‘I would be if I had to come home and face this. I’d be fucking sloshed every night. In and out of Ogilvy’s buying a bottle a day at least. I don’t know how you do it, Willie. Put up with me. Why don’t you push me down the stairs one day? Bump, bump, all finished, and we’d all be happier.’
Eliza said, ‘You’re talking nonsense again, Sheila.’ She poured herself a scotch and held up the bottle and looked at Willie. He nodded and she poured a second.
‘I’m talking common sense, you sanctimonious cow. You wander around the place like the fucking Mother Superior. I don’t know why you have legs, you bloody glide. You hover in holiness while William watches you like a lapdog.’ She waved her glass and spilled gin. Eliza handed Willie his drink and their fingers touched but she avoided his eyes. Sheila held out her glass. ‘Here. Give me some more. I’ll need another stiff one before you get any peace tonight.’ She laughed as Eliza poured her another gin. ‘A stiff one is what Willie would love to give you, dear sister. Why don’t you let him? It’s all in the family. Give him a good fucking, for once in his life. Someone should.’
She gulped gin without waiting for the tonic. Perhaps she was using bile instead of tonic.
Willie said, ‘Look, Eliza, if you can manage, I think I’ll go to bed.’
Eliza managed every night and left him feeling grateful and guilty. He drank the whisky in one gulp and hoped it would help him sleep. Sheila turned the wheelchair with her left hand so that she was facing the open French windows and could see the open fields beyond the terrace where she used to ride.
He got up and kissed the top of her head.
‘Goodnight, Sheila,’ he said, but there was no response. Eliza was standing by the sideboard and the drinks. He hesitated because of what had been said but decided that not to kiss his sister-in-law goodnight would amount to cowardice. She didn’t move, didn’t proffer her cheek, nor turn it away. He kissed her with an old world formality that hid his feelings. ‘Goodnight, Eliza.’
‘Goodnight, Willie.’
She said it without pain and with a hint of affection and sympathy. They had heard this tirade before and it hurt because Sheila’s accusations were so close to the truth. He left the room as Elvis Presley sang Don’t Be Cruel. The irony was subtle as a shovel and it made him smile. One of those smiles that didn’t mean anything.
Chapter 4
June 16, Hamburg
Peter Bergfeld sat in his hotel room with a view of the Alster Lake and continued to drink schnapps. The curtains were open and he had switched off the bedside lamp. He had taken off the three piece suit and sat in his underpants, socks and unbuttoned shirt and stared at the night which was smudging into pre-dawn. The drink was a Dutch brand, rough and burning, although his throat was so used to harsh drink he wouldn’t have noticed if he had been swallowing methylated spirits.
He had been with the Beatles a second night and they had signed a contract in Peter Eckhorn’s office at the Top Ten Club. Lennon was raw and his talent was exciting. McCartney was pretty and the two were complementary: black and white, good and bad, raw and smooth. Harrison was shy but had a sharp mind and every band needed a quiet wit. Starkey? He was the gypsy, except there weren’t any gypsies anymore. Perhaps he would start a new trend?
Four young men, lean and hungry. He ran a hand over his bulging stomach. There had been a time when he had been lean and hungry. He was now 42 and his life had made him old, his choices had made him old. When he looked back, had he really had any choices? It didn’t seem like it at the time. It seemed as if he had been marching along a straight road to the future, in a pre-ordained direction, following the eagles of the Fuhrer. The problem was, he had been born in 1920.
The First World War had ended two years before, not because the army had been defeated but because the politicians had surrendered. Germany hadn’t lost the war, his father told him, but it certainly lost the peace, through the punitive demands of the Versailles Treaty and the occupation of the Ruhr. His father had been an official on the railway, his mother a talented musician who played the violin, and they had lived in a suburb of Berlin, a comfortable middle-class life that was destroyed in 1923, the year of inflation.
His parents had grown up amongst an ordered and civilised society that collapsed the year inflation went mad. Workers were paid five times a week because money devalued so quickly during the day. By November, one American dollar was worth 4.2 trillion paper marks. Banks could no longer count notes for withdrawals but weighed them. Savings and homes were lost, professors became beggars, and sex was never so cheap. Morality and good German values were destroyed and every conceivable perversion could be bought.
The only people who could afford proper food were foreigners, factory owners and speculators. His father told him how they could be seen through the windows in smart restaurants; the foreigners and the Jews. Boys were for sale in the dancing cafes in Berlin and men dressed as women and women as men at pervert balls. Rouged boys walked the Kurfurstendamm and whores and shop-girl amateurs occupied the Friedrichstrasse
The old Germany died that year and, for a while, Communism went toe-to-toe with Fascism for the right to carry the dreams of ordinary citizens. Fascism, with its superior organisation, appeal to lost national values, and its charismatic leader, won. His father was an enthusiastic Party member and Bergfeld had joined the Jungvolk as a child. His father became more fanatical when his wife died of pneumonia. She had never recovered from the harshness of poverty and near starvation and he blamed the Jews. Bergfeld was 14 and didn’t know whom to blame; he simply missed his mother, who had given him emotional love as well as a love of music and had taught him to play the violin. A month after her death, he became a member of the Hitler Youth.
All that outdoor pursuit and callisthenics and showers with youths bursting with energy and hormones, as well as the loss of his mother, had an effect on Bergfeld. He fell in love with a boy called Dieter Redlich who was lean and beautiful and had a Berliner’s sense of humour. He was as cocky as Lennon.
He and Dieter were careful to keep their affair secret. Dieter enjoyed the subterfuge and became a master of the double entendre or passing on a hidden meaning with a wink. The affair lasted a year and ended when Bergfeld went to a National Political Education Institution. Dieter didn’t. His racial purity was not in question but his attitude was. Bergfeld was distraught at their parting but had already learned enough discipline not to show it. He put all his energies into doing well at the new school and was groomed to become a soldier. At 18 he went to Bad Tolz SS officer cadet school.
The Reich was strong again and getting stronger. In 1939, he saw action in Poland and the following year he was involved in the sweep across Western Europe. He won an Iron Cross (Second Class) and the Infantry Assault Badge and was promoted to Obersturmfuhrer, full lieutenant.
Bergfeld poured another schnapps and the bottle was empty. He picked up the glass and held it as if inspecting his life. He drank because he cou
ldn’t sleep. The camaraderie of a rock and roll band had revived too many memories. He rested the glass on his considerable stomach, which he stroked with his other hand. Lean and hungry. Once upon a time.
Back then, he had been a true blonde-haired, blue-eyed Aryan warrior in black uniform and polished jackboots. He was wounded in France in 1941 and given courier duties whilst convalescing. He took despatches to Sachsenhausen death camp on his way to the Russian Front. The camp was also the headquarters of the SS Death’s Guard units for whom, he was told, there would be plenty of work in the East once the invasion of the Soviet Union began.
The SS was an elite organisation. Bergfeld’s ancestry had been racially vetted back to 1750. He had been accepted in a midnight ceremony lit by torches at which he had sworn his loyalty to the Fuhrer. Not to Germany but to the Fuhrer. And in order to fulfil the Fuhrer’s destiny, there was no room for sentimentality.
He saw the logic in the euthanasia of mental defectives and the extermination of sub-humans, such as Jews and Slavs, so the concept of Sachsenhausen did not revolt him. The inmates were a blight that had to be removed. It was a job, but not one he would care to do. He preferred being a soldier.
His first night at the camp, he watched justice dispensed. Two guards brought a naked man from one of the huts. The temperature was below freezing and the man shivered. His penis had shrunk to nothing.
‘What has he done?’ Bergfeld asked the officer who was giving him the tour.
The officer shrugged as if an offence was immaterial.
‘He committed an infraction,’ he said, and nodded to the guards who poured buckets of cold water over the man whose body went into paroxysms of cold. A guard shouted at him to stand at attention and he did his best to obey. They walked on, Bergfeld staring into the man’s face as they passed. He was small, features aquiline from hunger, the stubble on his head dark, eyes blank. The biggest thing about him was his nose.
‘How long will he stay there?’
‘One hour.’
Bergfeld slapped his arms to keep warm. He doubted if the man would last an hour. Their feet crunched on ice as they returned to the warmth of the offers’ mess. His conscience fluttered. The man might be sub-human but Bergfeld didn’t believe in cruelty to animals for the sake of it. Of course, this was a punishment so there was a reason. The man had committed an offence, broken a rule, and discipline was paramount in a camp like this. Rules had to be obeyed to maintain good order. The man’s punishment would serve as a warning to others, even if he had committed no offence.
The Heydrich Sanction Page 4