‘What better place? They will not look in a house where Hauptmann Huber lives.’
‘It seems like fantasy. I’m still not sure—’
‘You will see. I am good builder, but I need nails and a hammer. Can you get these?’
‘I have them already. In Fred’s toolbox under the stairs. But I still don’t think it will work.’
‘Let him try,’ Rachel said. ‘We have nothing to lose, have we?’ Brave words, but I could see by her face the idea terrified her.
The next day Wolfgang arrived even before it was light. Thank heavens the bakery was a detached shop, because the hammering made a lot of noise. Rachel and I muffled it as best we could with quilts and eiderdowns. And of course, people had got used to strange noises outside, and they knew it was best to stay indoors out of the way until curfew was lifted.
For a medical student Wolfgang wasn’t a bad carpenter. We watched him saw strips of wood and join them together, and fit a false wall about two foot six away from the real wall in what used to be Tilly’s room but would soon be mine.
‘Has Hauptmann Huber ever been in this room?’ Wolfgang asked.
‘Only once,’ I said. ‘He just pushed his nose in, said it was too small, and then came out.’
‘And I was holding my breath behind the door,’ Rachel said.
Wolfgang shook his head and blew out air. ‘You have close shaving,’ he said.
‘Close shave,’ Rachel corrected.
‘Would he notice, do you think, that the room is smaller?’ Wolfgang said, running his hand along the new partition.
‘Not if we could paper it and hang the same picture there,’ Rachel said. ‘The bed can go right up to it just the same.’
‘I haven’t got any wallpaper. At least I have, but not the same.’
‘Fetch it,’ Wolfgang said, ‘and we’ll see.’
It wasn’t the same at all, but we had no other option. I worried that Horst would notice.
‘We’ll need to paste it up with something,’ I said.
‘Haven’t you got anything?’ Rachel asked.
‘No. If there was any wallpaper paste in the house I’d probably eat it.’
Rachel stepped through one of the gaps in the wooden wall. ‘Gosh. I’d better not put on weight. How will I get in and out?’
Wolfgang pointed. ‘A small door, hinged there, under the bed where the join will be hard to see.’
‘It might work,’ I conceded. ‘But I don’t think I’ll ever get any sleep.’
‘I’ll sleep in the day,’ Rachel said. ‘I’ll need to stay awake at night in case I make a noise.’
‘Let’s hope the war is short,’ Wolfgang said.
Two days later the wall was finished. Wolfgang had managed to find a pot of glue the Germans used for postering, and once the paper was up and the picture hung, it looked like any other wall. Of course, it was flimsy and wouldn’t stand up to inspection if someone hammered on it, but we just had to hope no one would dare do that where Horst lived.
Rachel and I took a torch and crawled under the bed and through the flap.
‘It’s tiny, Rache,’ I said. Her face looked gaunt and skeletal in the darkness. ‘You’ll hardly be able to breathe.’
‘I won’t be able to breathe anyway,’ Rachel said, ‘in case Horst hears.’
‘I’ll be sleeping right next to you on the other side of the wall; he’ll just think it’s me.’
‘It is working?’ Wolfgang’s voice came from outside.
We crawled back out. ‘It has to work,’ I said.
‘Thank you,’ Rachel said to Wolfgang. ‘Because of you, I have a chance. May I?’ And she reached up to kiss his cheek.
He flushed brick red, but the smile reached right up to his eyes, though he tried to hide it.
‘Forty,’ I said, nudging her with an elbow.
‘Chance would be a fine thing,’ Rachel said, her voice choked.
Wolfgang looked at me, not understanding, but I didn’t enlighten him.
Chapter 15
April 1943
Horst wasn’t the kind of man who had any domestic skills, and even if he had, he would still have expected to be waited on. He could be charming, but only to get his own way, and in some respects he was like a child, bullying one minute and cajoling the next. His presence filled the house. He took the spot nearest the fire, the biggest portion of food, and spent long hours in the washroom shaving and leaving his mess of soap and bristles. Of course, I was to wash without such niceties as soap.
Now we were no longer baking, he left his wet greatcoat hanging on the hook where Fred’s aprons used to hang, and I couldn’t help noticing dark splodges near the hem, stains that could be blood. I daren’t say a thing to him; he was unpredictable, like a predator. And without my glasses, I supposed I must have looked like a peering, mouse-like creature, trying not to jump at her own shadow.
Rachel, of course, was in the hiding place whenever Horst was in, and her presence made me constantly on edge. Every time he went upstairs alone, I held my breath. But so far, months had gone by and he had paid the room where I slept little attention, except for a rap on the door when he expected me to go to him.
One wet April day, Horst was out, and Rachel was stretching her limbs next to the window.
‘Don’t stand so close,’ I said. ‘Someone might see you.’
‘I have to have a little light,’ she said. ‘Have you any idea how much I long to see the sea? To stretch or run, or see the seasons change. I envy you the rain, and the wind. It’s all right for you, you can cycle into town, go for a blow on the top of the hill.’
‘Huh. I spend most of the time queuing. And when I get to the front of the queue there’s just a miserable piece of pork belly – more fat and gristle than meat.’
‘Still, you’re a part of life. I’m just waiting. Waiting to die, or waiting to live.’
I saw her wistful look, and it churned me up inside. When I had to go out for provisions I cycled up the bluff of the hill, out into the lanes. My body was unused to pedalling so hard, and I soon grew out of breath and had to jump off and push. The hedgerows still bore patches of bluebells, rosy-red campion, and, in the scrub, pink thrift. The rain had stopped, and the sun peeked from the scudding clouds. I gathered up a big bunch of dripping flowers and put them in my bicycle basket. If Rachel couldn’t go out to nature, I would have to bring it to her.
I freewheeled down the hill, into the wind, and for once the tension loosened and I felt a kind of freedom, until I saw the humps of the gun turrets where previously there had been only trees.
When I finally got back after the shopping, I filled a striped blue jug with flowers and put them on the table, then took a smaller matching jug upstairs.
Rachel looked up from the bed, where she was reading.
‘For you,’ I said, holding them out with a mock bow.
‘Oh, aren’t they gorgeous!’ She took hold of the jug and held it on her lap. After quite a few minutes she said, ‘You know, I never really appreciated bluebells before. Can I take them into my lair?’
‘Go ahead. Though you won’t see them in the dark.’
‘I have my torch for when you’re both downstairs. And it will make it more like home.’
I nodded, turning away, bitter that a two-foot-six cupboard should have to be someone’s home.
Horst came home and went straight upstairs to put his rifle in his room. By now I knew he kept it behind the door, but his snub-nosed gun was never off his person. He never let me forget there was an armed man in the house. He’d pat that gun, or stroke it, and then watch my eyes flick to it, and smile.
It was a few months before he insisted I share his bed. At first it was a kiss and a grope, but over time it soon progressed to him wanting more.
When I refused, he said, ‘Come on, life will be much pleasanter for us both.’
The way he said it left me in no doubt that it was a threat. After the first night, he took it as his right. He’d thrash on top of me in
a desperate sort of way as if he was trying to blot everything out of existence, even me. My body protested. It closed up, tightened, shrank away from him. He knew, and he didn’t like it.
‘Talk to me,’ he said, his hands pinning down my shoulders.
‘I don’t know what to talk about,’ I faltered.
‘Tell me you love it.’
‘I can’t, I—’
The first time he hit me, I was so shocked I cried out.
Later, when he’d gone to work, Rachel saw the bruise on my cheek. ‘Bastard. I heard him.’
‘It’s nothing.’
‘You mustn’t let him. You’ll have to try to keep out of his way.’
‘Easier said than done.’
She paused, sat down at the table opposite me, and pushed her hair back out of her eyes. ‘You look exhausted, Céline.’ A silence. ‘You’re so thin, giving me half your rations. And if I wasn’t here, you could just move away. But you have to be here to feed me, to empty my chamber pot into the privy, to keep him distracted enough not to know there’s a Jew right under his roof.’
‘I wouldn’t have it any other way,’ I said. ‘But sometimes I think I can’t bear it anymore, and I wonder … well, I wonder if we’ll ever be able to stop.’
‘Me too. And I fantasise about the British winning the war and putting a bullet through his head.’
Chapter 16
Winter 1944
Horst’s footsteps approached the shop door and my guts shrivelled inside me. After all this time I knew how those Russian men felt to be slaves. The food was ready on the table as he’d demanded, and I knew I should be grateful for the fact he had supplied a rind of bacon, potatoes and turnip, with which I had made a stew. I imagined his face would frown at it the way he usually did.
On his way past he put the newspaper down deliberately in front of me, and of course I read the headlines, as he intended me to do. Two old ladies from St Brelade – Suzanne Malherbe and Lucille Schwab – had been sentenced to death for distributing anti-German propaganda. Their leaflets had apparently been written as if by a German officer and signed ‘The soldier without a name’. Good for them.
Horst threw his cap down on the settee and went to wash. He didn’t even acknowledge me. It struck me that this was like the worst kind of a marriage, except that I hadn’t even volunteered for it. Fred seemed like a distant dream from a golden past.
By the time Horst had washed I was at the kitchen table. The fact that we hardly spoke made every sound in the house loud. I jumped at every fall of soot in the chimney, at every gurgle from the pipes, at every noise of children passing in the street outside. Although I knew Rachel was well aware of how she mustn’t even breathe loudly, the simple fact of her being hidden there behind the partition made every creak heart-stopping. And after so long, I was resigned to it with a kind of numb endurance.
‘I hate this wet weather,’ Horst said. ‘Jersey roads are very bad. A lot of work when cars and trucks are stuck in mud.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘We aren’t used to so much traffic.’
I cringed. Every statement I made felt like an accusation.
Horst regarded me coldly. ‘If I had wanted opinion from you, I would have asked.’ He glared at me and continued to eat. When the plate was empty he pushed it away. ‘This food is terrible. Don’t Jersey women know how to cook?’
‘I did my best with what we had.’
‘Miserable little island. The farmers cheat us. We know you do it. Only today we had a letter. Someone tell us that Flanders Farm is cheating us with the milk.’
I was silent; it was always best to let him talk if I didn’t want a fist across my face.
He stood up. ‘They have one more cow there than we have known. Not anymore. Cow has gone to slaughter. The woman she is deported. She will be on her way to Konzentrationslager.’ He gave a burp of a laugh. ‘Maybe slaughter for her too.’
‘Surely not. Mrs Flanders is an old woman. Maybe she didn’t know how many cows she had.’
He gave me a look that would shrivel anything within five yards. ‘We are not stupid. She knew of course. Now she pays the price.’
Much as I disliked Mrs Flanders, for I was convinced it was she who had colluded with the Galens about daubing my windows, she was one of us, and I had a sneaking admiration for her too. She had defied the Germans in a way I hadn’t. But then, maybe she hadn’t been forced to have one living under her roof. Resistance was easy if you were at a distance. Close up, it was hard, and even harder if you had a big secret to keep.
I set to cleaning away the plates, and I heard him go up to the bedroom. My tension increased as it always did when I thought of Rachel only a few feet away from him. And if I was terrified, how must she feel? However bad things got, I couldn’t imagine actually informing on her.
Above me, the thud of Horst’s pacing footsteps was followed by the smell of cigar smoke drifting down. Obviously he could still get cigars, and the bedside table always had a bottle of whisky or brandy on it. This was his usual pattern. He would be up there with his papers and his lists of men.
One day when he was out, Rachel and I took a look at his ledger. We hardly dared to open it, thinking that somehow he would know, but finally we plucked up the courage. In it were long lists of men, each one named and numbered. Over the months, we’d taken to looking at these lists every day. They were obviously the lists of men labouring at the quarry, and they held a strange fascination for us. Every day, more would be crossed out.
* * *
Yevgenievich, Drugov
Kautsky, Zubarev
Leonidovich, Konstantin
Frolov, Mikhalitsyn
Stepanovich, Gleb
* * *
‘Dead men,’ Rachel said, resting her finger on one of the names.
‘So many,’ I said.
Just seeing that scratched line through their names filled me with heartache. They would have family somewhere wondering where they were, and now they were reduced to this one line that erased them from existence.
Upstairs I heard the chink of a glass. He would be drinking again. The evenings were one long silent scream of waiting. I didn’t dare go anywhere, because wherever I went I was spat at and called ‘Jerrybag’. And I was ashamed of the bruises on my face.
The bakery had closed altogether. There was too little flour for bread to bake now and even the Germans were looking thinner. Since the Allied invasion of Normandy, Jersey had been cut off by both Britain and Germany. The effect on Horst of being abandoned by his Führer made him angry and resentful, and I was an easy target for his disappointment.
At the same hour every night Horst called me from the top of the stairs. At first this had been a request. Then it had become his right. Now it was an exercise in punishment.
When I heard him call, I put down my book. So soon? Things must be bad at the camp. Wearily, I braced myself for what was to come. I’d try to please him, and that way the pain and humiliation would be less.
When I got upstairs he was waiting by the window, stubbing out his cigar on the sill. I wanted to tell him to use an ashtray like a civilised human being. He saw my expression, and smiling slightly, he continued to grind the butt into the paint as he watched my face.
‘I don’t like that dress,’ he said. ‘Where is the one I buy for you?’
I began to walk from the room.
‘No. Undress here first.’
Fear and the cold had already made gooseflesh of my arms. Please God, let him not be rough today.
Awkwardly, I took off my cardigan and unbuttoned the dress. Horst himself never undressed. There was power in that uniform, in his black shiny boots, and he knew it. I tried to seem calm, because my fear made him worse.
Once I was shivering in my corselette and pants, I made to leave the room.
‘Wait.’
I backed away, knowing what was coming.
‘You’re a whore, Céline. A dirty little whore.’ He came towards me and hooked a
finger under my chin. ‘What would my brother think if he could see you now, in your underwear, begging for it?’
‘Please, Horst …’ I tried to find the man behind the twisted leering expression. The man I’d known in Vienna, the smiling youth who formally shook my hand. But he was gone, and this man was something I had no answer for. His boredom, his rage, his pleasure in hurting, as if it somehow healed the hurt in him, were all impenetrable.
‘You know what happens to whores, don’t you?’ He grabbed my arm and swung back his fist. When it connected with my face I felt nothing, just the force of falling backwards, the crack of my skull against the wall. I tasted the iron of blood in my mouth before a boot landed in my stomach, and a flower of pain spread outwards until I heard my own cry. I slipped to the ground, felt him drag me into the middle of the floor, and then he was upon me.
Chapter 17
May 1945
For months it went on. I had to use a rubber cap in case I should fall with child, and I put it in every single day. It cost me Fred’s Sunday suit on the black market. I tried to put Fred from my mind, because I didn’t think I’d ever be able to look at a man again without revulsion. The war would soon be over, they promised us. Both Rachel and I were getting desperate, not sure how much longer we could go on, living on borrowed time. Then in May 1945 we finally heard that the Germans had surrendered in Europe. The news came to me whispered from another woman as I queued to get one of the precious Red Cross parcels that England had finally sent.
I hurried home, a new spring in my step, anxious to share some of the parcel and the good news with Rachel. When I got there, we were able to open a tin of Rowntree’s cocoa and have a cup of it. We toasted the British troops in cocoa, and hugged.
The noise of an engine outside stopped our celebration.
The Darkest Hour Page 64