Resistance (25 page)

Sebald, meanwhile, had visibly softened. The years of patching bits of men’s flesh together under fire had taken their toll, and he’d arrived in the valley as tightly wound as a spring. But over that winter, something loosened inside him. A keen amateur artist before the war, he began making sketches of the views around them and even of the other members in the patrol. It was as he was sketching Albrecht while he read beside the fire on the evening before the beginning of the thaw that Sebald first gave an indication that he might approve of Albrecht’s as yet unspoken plans.

“Did I ever tell you about Hermann?” Sebald said distractedly, not looking up from his sketchbook.

Albrecht paused in his reading. They were the only ones in the room. Gernot was whistling in the kitchen, Otto was on sentry duty, and Alex and Steiner were upstairs. “Hermann?” he said. “No, I don’t think you did.”

“A doctor I knew at the start of the war. Well, I only met him a few times really, taking men back to a château we were using as a holding hospital.” He paused, frowning over a patch of shading. “But I got on with him. Look back down, will you?” Albrecht did what he said, looking back down at the book, an English biography of the poet Walter Savage Landor, the stamp of the Bodleian Library faint inside its cover.

“We used to share a quick smoke while our boys were transferred. I’d give him the lowdown on them, which ones would be going home.” He stopped sketching and looked up from his pad. “I should have known then, I suppose. Every time I said that, ‘Seven tickets home in this lot, Hermann,’ that kind of thing, he’d look, well, terrible. Sick.”

“Should have known what?” Albrecht asked, looking up at Sebald.

Sebald went back to his sketching. “He was being asked to kill them.”

“Who?”

“Those boys with the home-ticket wounds. Hermann had been ordered to kill them. Bad for morale, apparently, seeing young men with no legs on Potsdamer. Hardly the Party’s ideal of blitzkrieg, is it?”

“I don’t understand; how do you know this?”

“It was all in his note,” Sebald said, licking his thumb to smudge the background of his sketch. “He cut his own throat.”

“Hermann?”

“Yes. He was a good soldier, you see. Followed orders. But he was a good doctor too. Injecting young men with lethal doses of morphine, well, he couldn’t do that. So he killed himself instead.”

“Cut his throat, you say?”

“Yes. I never understood that either.”

“Were other doctors ordered to kill wounded men?”

“Oh yes. But not many of them did. And not for long. The order was recalled. If only Hermann had waited. But he didn’t.”

Albrecht tried to catch Sebald’s eye, but he was still sketching. He didn’t know why he was telling him this.

“You think he was wrong?” Albrecht eventually asked.

Sebald glanced up from his pad. “Hermann? No, he was right, of course he was. But there were other ways around that order. You know how it is. There always are.” He went back to his sketch again but carried on speaking. “His duty was to his patients. They were worse off without him. He should have thought of them over himself.”

“But he was thinking of them, wasn’t he?”

Sebald looked directly at Albrecht, but into his eyes, not merely at his face as he had done for his drawing. “No,” he said. “He saved himself. He wasn’t saving them. Just himself.”

The next day the thaw gathered pace. The valley was both shrinking and expanding about them, the river swollen and the lanes flowing with water. It was a clear day, the sun burning warm in a blue sky. Albrecht knew he could wait no longer. That evening, bolstered by what he thought to be Sebald’s implicit approval, he gathered the whole patrol in The Court’s front room and told them.

In the end it was easier than he’d expected. He’d failed to appreciate how over the last three months the men under his command had come to trust him in a way he would never understand. He had also misjudged the effect upon all of them of time away from the war. No gunfire for months. No dugout sleeping, no crouching over your haunches emptying your bowels under mortar fire. And most importantly, no fear. No expectant death. Life had returned to them, the prospect of a continuing life after the war, and it was Albrecht who’d led them to this perspective. It was like a drug, and having
tasted this hope, this expansion of the self through the years ahead, none of them was willing to give it up. None of them, except Steiner, whose voice was the first to break the silence in the room following Albrecht’s announcement. Made more confident by their conversations on the hillside, the young soldier spoke to Albrecht with a surprising directness.

“But wouldn’t that make us absent without leave, sir? That’s a court martial offence.” The other men all turned to look at Steiner, flickers of tension passing across their temples. Albrecht could sense their unspoken willingness to go along with his plans, but Steiner’s question was enough to plant a seed of uncertainty. An anxiety that they were disobeying a higher authority that would, one day, have its vengeance upon them. Albrecht tried to ease these worries, casting his and now what he hoped to be their shared intentions in the most innocent of lights.

“I am not,” he told them as they sat round The Court’s large table, “talking about disobeying orders of any kind. As you all know we have completed our mission here, and completed it well. No doubt at some point because of this, Western Headquarters will come looking for us soon enough. But until then all I am proposing is that we do not draw unnecessary attention to our presence here.”

He paused to cough into his hand, as if to demonstrate the strain and duress through which all of them had already put their bodies.

“We have fought well in this war, all of us.” He looked at Steiner, trying to tell him with his eyes as well as his words that he need not feel any guilt. “But now the war has changed. It is ending. A German victory is certain. Because of this I should tell you I feel my duty too has changed.” He glanced at Sebald but the medic was looking down at the table, arms folded. Had he misjudged their conversation the previous night? Even if he had it was too late now. “My duty is to you now,” Albrecht continued. “Not towards victory. We will still be vigilant, of course, but we will not be reckless. I truly believe it is in Germany’s greater interest that all of you return home to your families, your hopes, unharmed and alive.” He looked at Steiner again and was met by the young soldier’s frowning face,
intent upon his every word. “They say London has fallen, but there are other cities. These people have their backs against the wall. I think we all know it will take longer than they say. I also know that every one of you, if you had to, would still fight, and fight well, if it was asked of you. But as yet, no one has asked you and until they do I see no reason why any of you should risk everything now, when we are so close and you have already given so much.”

He paused, allowing his last words to hang in the air.

“If any man does want to rejoin the regiment,” he concluded, sitting back in his chair, “that is, of course, his right and he would have my blessing. All I would ask is that he do so at no risk to the other members of this patrol.”

Albrecht had no idea how this could be done, but he felt it had to be said. That he had to leave a door apparently open, even if they all knew what he asked was impossible. The offer was unnecessary anyway. At the end of his speech, Steiner had looked towards Gernot. The two of them had become close over the last months. Steiner valued this friendship and admired Gernot’s lighter ease with the world. He looked up to him in many ways, and that was why, when Gernot gave the slightest of indications to Steiner that he agreed with his captain, Albrecht knew it would be all right. Gernot’s deepening interest in Bethan meant any concerns he might have about Albrecht’s intentions were eclipsed by more powerful desires. He would not leave the valley now unless he had to. And if Gernot stayed, so would Steiner.

One by one, with the slightest of nods, each man agreed to what Albrecht had proposed. There was just one condition, voiced by Gernot.

“What about our letters, sir?” Their letters. The letters they had written over the long nights of the winter. Of course they would want them posted, so their families and loved ones might know they were safe, that they had survived the invasion and would be coming home soon.

Albrecht nodded, smiling at Gernot. “Don’t worry about them,” he said. “I’ll send them myself.”

And that was why, two mornings later, when the snow had reduced to uneven patches on the valley’s slopes and ragged strips skirting the fields, Albrecht kick-started the motorbike and rode down the lane towards the railway station at Pandy. It made sense for him to be the one to take the letters. As an officer he was less likely to be stopped or questioned, he was the only fluent English speaker, and because the patrol’s silence was his initiative, it somehow seemed apt that as a concession to this, he be the bearer of their voices to the outside world.

Albrecht was willing to accept the responsibility, but only because he had no intention of delivering the letters. To him, it was madness. What was more important? These men’s families being informed of their safety or that safety being ensured by their silence? He still went through the routine of censoring the letters, omitting any mention of their position or whereabouts, but purely for the sake of the younger soldiers, for whom, he realised, it was vital they believe their words were going home even if they weren’t.

At first he’d intended to ride the motorbike just far enough for its engine to no longer be heard at The Court, until he was out of sight and sound of the patrol. But the sensation of its speed, of movement after so many days of stillness, caught him unawares. It was another bright day, sudden on the senses. His taste and smell, although still blunted, were both improving, and he could just make out the steeliness of the air as it rushed past him. Snowdrops were budding in the banks of the hedgerows and the steep sides of the valley were baring their nerves, the brooks and streams swollen white with the thawing snow and ice. All of it got the better of Albrecht and he rode further than he’d planned, beyond the mouth of the valley and on down the narrow lane towards Llanvoy.

Albrecht had already stopped the bike and was about to dismount when he saw a young man cycling up the lane towards him. A brief wave of panic overtook him. This was the first person outside the patrol and the farm women he’d seen in over three months. There was no one else around, not even a house or farm in sight. A story from his days in Holland at the start of the war came back to
him, about a cyclist in the Dutch resistance whose quickness of drawing and firing his pistol from the saddle was so feared that soldiers took cover and cocked their rifles whenever a lone man on a bicycle approached. But then Albrecht remembered where he was, who he was meant to be. He resisted the urge to twist the throttle and ride away and stayed put, the motorbike’s engine thrumming under him as the young man leant over his handlebars to tackle the gradient of the slope.

“Stop, please.” The order felt strange, unfamiliar on Albrecht’s tongue.

The man was almost level with him and clearly hadn’t been intending to even pause as he passed him. Now he pulled up, panting from the effort of the hill behind.

“Your papers?”

The young man took off a glove and pulled a booklet from the inside pocket of his jacket. He was in his early twenties, if that. A sullen look to him, blond hair, clean-shaven, small and thin.

“Where are you going?” Albrecht asked, inspecting the pages of the booklet.

“Up the Olchon,” the man replied. “Got some letters t’deliver.”

“You are a postman?” Albrecht said, looking at his jacket, the dirt under his nails, his rough corduroy trousers, and worker’s boots.

“No.” He looked at Albrecht for the first time. “Post office has a backlog from the winter. Said I’d help out.”

“Let me see them,” Albrecht said, passing back the booklet and holding out his hand.

The man drew out a thin bundle of letters from another pocket and gave them to Albrecht. Albrecht untied the string and leafed through the envelopes, reading the addresses.
Hywel and Mary Griffiths. William and Margaret Jones. Tom and Sarah Lewis
.

Taking a pen from his own pocket he wrote across the front of each envelope, as clearly as he could.
Deceased. Return to Sender
. He handed them back to the young man, who read what Albrecht had written then looked back up at him, his sullen expression slipping.

“There is no one left in that valley,” Albrecht said simply. “Tell the postmaster he needn’t send any more letters there.”

The man looked at Albrecht, straight in the face, a muscle twitching at his jaw. For a second it seemed as if he might speak, but he didn’t. Slipping the letters back into his jacket, he put on his glove and slowly, still looking at Albrecht, turned his bicycle to freewheel back down the lane. Albrecht watched as the young man’s back shrunk down the hill and around the corner of the lane. His heart was beating hard. It was the right thing to have done. By killing the women he had saved them. By inscribing death across their names he had given them life. This is what he told himself as he dismounted the motorbike, crouched by the side of the lane, and put a match to the corner of his own men’s letters, turning the bundle slowly in the air until he felt the heat of the flames against his hand. He dropped the sheaves of paper, still burning, into the long grass. A light wind rose up the lane. Albrecht stood and watched as it lifted the ashes of his men’s words, printing them across the unthawed patches of snow.

George cycled back down the lanes, his mind spinning as fast as the wheels of his bicycle.
Deceased. Return to Sender
. It was true then. What old Bob Kelly had told him was true. The railway man had been working up the line when he’d seen a body carried through. The dead man wore dull khaki dungarees over a thick woollen jumper. An insurgent, he’d been told by one of the guards, caught the night before laying charges on the line. Although Bob hadn’t seen the man’s face, he’d sworn it was William Jones of the Olchon. This was why George had offered to help out with the backlog post when the thaw set in. Although he’d never knowingly met William Jones, he’d told the postmaster he had to visit him, so he could take the letters for the Olchon, seeing as he was going there anyway. But he hadn’t even had to enter the valley to discover that what Bob had said was true. The German officer had made that clear enough. William’s family, and all the other families in the Olchon it seemed,
had paid the price for his, and probably others’, involvement with the Auxiliary Units.