‘It’s not so quiet out here in the country as you would think,’ she was saying to the Farrows. ‘We had an enemy plane come down a few weeks before Christmas, you know. It blew up when it crashed and it was assumed the pilot had been smashed to smithereens.’
She turned to Millie and added, ‘Finding that parachute gave us all a bit of turn, didn’t it, Millicent? They caught him not a million miles away from here. You must have thought twice about living over at Enington all on your own after that.’
‘You live on your own?’ Mrs Farrow said. ‘You look so young.’
‘She is young, Mrs Farrow but,’ – Mrs Wilson dropped her voice – ‘not too young to have lost a husband already.’
‘I’m so sorry, my dear,’ Mrs Farrow said. ‘Where was he fighting?’
Mrs Adamson started to fidget with her napkin ring and, as Mrs Wilson opened her mouth to speak, Hugh scraped the legs of his chair back from the table and clattered to his feet, raising his glass of beer.
‘I’d like to thank the cook for this wonderful meal…’ – the guests hear-heared – ‘and raise a glass to absent friends.’
‘Well,’ said Mrs Wilson, ‘give me a chance to finish my pudding…’
But her protest was drowned out by a scraping of chairs as the guests rose to their feet and mumbled, ‘To absent friends.’
A hush fell on the room, disturbed by an ill-humoured harrumph from Mrs Wilson as she made a great show of pushing a huge spoonful of pudding into her mouth before getting up.
‘To absent friends,’ she said loudly after a theatrical swallow. She raised her glass of sherry towards Millie, a canny glint in her eye. Millie looked away and thought, God bless you Lukas, wherever you are, and wondered if he was thinking about her.
Once the table was cleared, everyone began to exchange presents. She gave Mrs Adamson a pot of crab apple jelly and Hugh a rain choker that she’d cobbled together the day before out of an old piece of towelling.
She felt a flash of irritation when she saw him drop it back onto the brown paper and stare out across the room. Not good enough? Well, it was the best she could manage under the circumstances.
The party broke up when Hugh left to do the milking. Mrs Adamson encouraged the Farrows to go upstairs and rest while she and Millie cleared up.
‘I feel so sorry for those poor people,’ Mrs Adamson said, handing across a plate, dripping with suds. ‘I can’t imagine what they’ve been through. It’s bad enough for your generation but our generation thought we’d fought the war to end all wars. Now the Germans have started the whole thing again. My heart bleeds for Mrs Farrow. Her son is in the North Atlantic apparently. The first war robbed her of her past – she lost all three brothers at Ypres – now this one threatens to destroy her future. Those bloody Krauts; war-mongers to the last man.’
Millie stared down at the plate she was wiping. She wanted to say something, wanted to defend him but knew she mustn’t, knew she couldn’t. What was the Farrows’ son doing in the North Atlantic? Trying to kill Germans, of course. It’s what happened in war.
She was overwhelmed by the injustice of everything. She lost her past when Jack killed himself and now she’d lost her future by falling in love with Lukas. She wanted to smash the plate onto the tiles but instead she polished it with a severe concentration before putting it back into the rack above the range.
Hugh got back from Enington just before supper. ‘I dropped in at the pub on the way back to buy the lads a pint,’ he said. ‘Apparently they’ve stopped bombing London for Christmas, a sort of unofficial ceasefire I suppose.’
‘How strange,’ Mrs Adamson said. ‘Perhaps those poor people have seen the last of these terrible raids.’
‘I wouldn’t count on it.’
Chapter Thirty Five
When the minutes turned to hours, Lukas began to pace around the room to distract himself. There was a small window set high in the wall which filtered a sickly light into the room. He could see twigs near the top of a tree, jerking in the wind and wondered if the room faced over the park. He dragged the chair over to the window, stood on it and peered out. He could see a small spit of garden surrounded by rolls of barbed wire and beyond, a street with ordinary people going about their business.
Several hours later he heard an air raid siren begin in the distance, another followed, this time nearer, then others close by began to wail. He looked towards the locked door, expecting it to open and a guard to appear to take him to safety but no one came. He climbed back onto the chair and looked across to the street. No one seemed to be running for the air raid shelters; they seemed to be carrying on as normal.
He felt quite shocked. The Party leaders had said the raids would paralyse the cities, millions would stay at home in air raid shelters, arresting industry and bringing the country to its knees but they were wrong. Londoners were carrying on with their day as if there was no threat from the air. It was going to take more than daytime air raids to immobilise this city.
One by one the sirens petered out and Lukas was left in the silence of the room.
As the light of the day dimmed, he felt a desperation to talk to someone. He’d imagined he would meet other German prisoners, was longing to find out what they’d been through, get news of how the war was going, but he’d seen no one other than his guards. Apart from his interview with the RAF officer, he’d spoken little more than a few words to another human being since his capture. The more he waited, the more depressed and lonely he felt.
Late that first afternoon the guards took him down through the house and he was strip searched. It was humiliating, horrible, standing naked and cold in a freezing room, the silent guards looking on, the silent doctor parting his pubic hair with a pen, looking for lice before probing and searching his body.
He was given a set of overalls to dress in. All the rest of his personal things went missing, even his watch. He was taken to another room on the second floor, partitioned off with thin walls, nothing in it except an iron bedstead with a hard pillow and single blanket.
At least the partitioning left him with half a window, criss-crossed with lines of gummed tape, and he was glad of it until that night when the next air raid began.
The noise was appalling and, with no hope that he was going to be moved to safety, he crawled underneath the bed and listened to the battery of guns in the park crashing away at his fellow bomber crews overhead.
He thought of Millie all the time. A few weeks ago he lay in her arms and was in heaven; now he lay underneath a bed, feeling the pressure waves of the blasts and he knew he was in hell. Yet, beneath the fear that made him involuntarily clap his hands over his ears when a blast went off, he felt an illogical certainty that their love protected him, that somehow he would get through this.
Then the bombing stopped.
At first he thought the invasion must have begun, but the next morning, when he peered out of the window, he knew he was wrong. An ambulance drove slowly past with a small pine tree strapped to the bonnet.
It was Christmas. What a strange species we are, he thought, to drop thousands of tons of explosives on one another and still have the humanity to stop the carnage simply because it’s Christmas.
That night, as he lay on the bed and gazed at the stars, he felt a shiver run through him and he knew that, at this exact moment, Millie was thinking about him. He wondered where she was celebrating Christmas, what she was eating, who she was with and he closed his eyes and played each detail of their time together, like a repeating spool of film.
When he thought of her imperfections, he felt aroused – the spatter of flat dark moles across her shoulder, the thin white scar along her eyebrow, the callouses on her hands. He remembered the smell of her neck, the huskiness of her voice, the feel of her hair when he gathered it up in his hands, holding her face above him. These glorious memories were nothing compared to the deeper intimacy between them. Locked away in the blizzard, they’d learned each other by heart.
*
* *
The sirens began again three days later. Lukas stayed by the window, looking out across London, glad that the immediate danger would fill his mind and squash out his endless anxieties and fears and boredom. A single beam of light reached way up into the blackness and as he watched, others shot into the air, swishing like great swords across the sky. He heard the throbbing boom of the bombers just before the barrage out in the park began to crash away, the shells whistling into the sky and crackling into a shower of glowing sparks.
It looked different from down here, the parachute mines floating through the beams of light, thousands of glittering shards filling the air as if a giant hand had smashed a glass ball against the sky.
Soon the glow of a false dawn silhouetted the bony trees along the street and the sound of the first bombs dropping reached his ears, the Heinkels coming in over the incendiary fires, targeting whichever part of London was burning the brightest.
The boom of the Heinkels grew louder. As he watched, the searchlight slipped from the base of a cloud and picked out three, four of them. The crump of detonations was deafening.
A growling roar vibrated through him followed by a phenomenally loud bang.
A huge wall of pressure flung him across the room. He landed hard against the partition, his ears ringing, and felt glass spattering his face and hands. The noise seemed to go on and on, the whole building shuddering as if an earthquake was running beneath it and he saw the partition walls bow in the shockwaves.
Then, like a vast tidal wave, the sound rumbled away and he stared at the shattered window, at the shards of glass bouncing on the ribbons of tape.
Still no one came.
He crawled across the floor, pulled the blanket off the bed and wrapped it around his head before shuffling underneath the springs where he lay, listening to the explosions receding across the city.
Thank God she’s not here, he thought, thank God she cannot imagine the horror of this. If she could, she would tear her heart out for loving a man such as he.
Chapter Thirty Six
‘Oberleutnant Schiller,’ the officer said. ‘Do please take a seat.’
Lukas could see by his epaulettes that his interrogator was a captain, just one rank above himself but from a different generation of soldiers. The skin across his forehead was tight and shiny, the bridge of his nose dipped, the eyelashes along the lids missing. This man had served in the last conflict. He wasn’t tall but he had an erect, military bearing and his uniform was immaculate.
‘I tell you my name, rank and number,’ Lukas said. ‘I cannot tell you anything else.’
‘Oh, you can forget about that sort of thing,’ the captain said with a dismissive wave of his hand. ‘All I want is a chat, see how you’re getting on here, make sure you’re being treated properly – that sort of thing. Would you like a cigarette?’
Lukas, who didn’t usually smoke, accepted immediately. The first inhalation made his head spin but despite that, he found it soothing.
He answered the captain’s questions as briefly as possible, but it was hard to keep his answers short. He’d been silent for so long, he was soon rattling on about unimportant details, asking when he might expect to have a change of clothing, a bath even, explaining that the dust and glass from last night’s raid was still in his hair, inside his clothes, gritty between his teeth.
The captain listened with genuine concern and assured Lukas he would look into the matter the moment their little chat was over.
The captain’s approach confused him. He’d been expecting to deflect military questions about the Luftwaffe or the course of the war. He’d planned a dozen ways to prove that he wasn’t a spy but as the captain strolled nonchalantly around the room, all he seemed to want to talk about was politics and, seeing no harm in discussing his own personal views, Lukas began to relax – this wasn’t going to be too bad after all.
He was flattered that the captain was so interested in his opinions, particularly as he gave Lukas the impression that he knew the interview was going a bit off track, but that Lukas’s take on the political situation was fascinating – they could come back to the other stuff later on.
The captain asked about the morale of the German people. Was there solidarity? Did they have complete faith in Hitler and would they work and sacrifice themselves for their country indefinitely?
‘We read so much propaganda,’ he said, ‘it is fascinating for me to hear what a young man like you really thinks.’
‘Many people see Hitler as the saviour of Germany,’ Lukas said, by now enjoying this lengthy conversation, ‘but men devoted to National Socialism are immune to many sorts of crimes. If a man believes in humanity and freedom – democracy even – it is hard to believe in National Socialism.’
‘But surely, after the humiliation of the Treaty of Versailles, Hitler pulled Germany up by the bootstraps. Full employment, an economy back on its feet. And he was voted into power, was he not? Surely that’s democracy?’
Lukas sighed. ‘The Weimar Republic destroys the idea of democracy in the eyes of many German people. At first it makes me question it too. Yes, Hitler restores full employment and no one cares to ask how.’
‘Yes – I suppose so. That’s very interesting. And what was the general feeling among people you knew at the time when Hitler reoccupied the Rhineland and annexed Austria?’
‘These countries feel like ours as perhaps does Ireland or Scotland feel for you.’
The captain laughed and sat back in his chair.
‘Yes, you have a point. I hadn’t really thought of it like that. And, I suppose, Hitler has complete control over the army.’
‘On the surface they bend to the new regime but I speak for myself when I say I am disgusted by the behaviour of the SS in Poland. I think I am not alone.’
‘Yes. We’ve heard rumours that pockets of high officials in the army wish to overthrow Hitler. Can this be true?’
‘I hear these rumours but they are whispers only. I cannot tell if this is because of the acts of inhumanity or the fear that a war against the western Allies cannot be won. Many high-ranking men in the army are Prussian and defeat is unthinkable to them.’
‘Really? That’s very interesting. So explain this to me; if you feel so strongly, why did you become a Luftwaffe officer?’
‘I do not always feel like this, not when I am young. But I want to fly – always. As a boy I make planes, model aeroplanes. I even make a bicycle that is steered like a plane, with a…’ Lukas said, miming the action needed.
‘A joystick. Ingenious. It must have been difficult to balance but a great training machine.’
‘It is. My aunt tries to find out for me when I can fly but we are told that commercial flight has no future. The only way I can fly is if I am a Luftwaffe cadet. But my aunt is not ready for this and she finds out through her friends in Heidelberg about the German Academic Exchange Service and this is how I am at Dublin University.’
‘What did you read?’
‘Irish literature.’
‘Really? How extraordinary. Did you study James Joyce?’
Lukas smiled. The captain was very knowledgeable. ‘It was discussed.’
‘How did you feel about that? Surely you knew, coming from Heidelberg, that his writing was regarded in Germany as being morally corrupt?’
‘Of course.’
‘That his works were burned in the street during the purge?’
‘Then, I am a boy of fifteen. I do not understand why this is happening. I only know that my aunt and her friends are unhappy and afraid.’
‘“Dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen”,’ the captain quoted in faultless German, much to Lukas’s surprise. ‘“Where one burns books, one will soon burn people.” Did your aunt believe that?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Did you?’
Lukas shrugged. ‘I am young. I do not even think about it. In Dublin I study – that is all.’
The captain
watched him for a moment and Lukas thought he saw understanding in the man’s eyes. ‘So did you obtain your degree before war broke out?’
‘Oh no – I am there only for a year. This is normal for the exchange.’
The captain remained thoughtful for a few minutes. In the silence Lukas thought he could hear shouting coming from another part of the building but the captain, who must have been able to hear it too, took no notice.
‘Is it true,’ he said after a while, ‘that all boys leaving school before the war had to join the Hitler Youth?’
Lukas shook his head. ‘As a boy, I am asked two or three times by a member of the Hitlerjugend but I am more suited to the YMCA.’
‘Why was that?’
‘I thought the boys in the Jugend were less…’ Lukas struggled to find the right word in English.
‘Cultured?’ the captain suggested.
‘Perhaps – but it is of no use. Later it is decided there is no room for more than one youth organisation and we are made to take off our green shirts and put on the brown shirts of the Hitler Youth.’
‘But eventually you were admitted into the Luftwaffe?’
‘Yes, I am. I am excited, my aunt is proud.’
‘Did you have reservations at all?’
‘Perhaps, but it is also a relief.’
‘Why? Because you were flying?’
‘Yes, of course – but also in Germany at this time always we are under the stress of propaganda. It is pointed at us every hour. My aunt, she risks prison, she listens to foreign radio and this is forbidden. She knows that her friends do the same – any one of them can tell about the other but they do not, they keep silent – but I know and I worry. The government controls newspapers and the radio but in the Luftwaffe, there is no time to read newspapers, no time to listen to broadcasts. Suddenly I am free. I never have to say an opinion and of course I have reached a dream. I think I have left behind the oppression I have every day. Then I go with a group of other Luftwaffe cadets to the Reichsparteitag.’
A Dangerous Act of Kindness Page 16