Somewhere Over England (19 page)

He blew but it was jerked from his mouth. Martin was choking now and Heine fought free of the hands again, ramming his head into Georg’s side, belly, hearing the groan. He brought up his hand, smashing into his face, seeing Martin drop and fall limp to the ground as Georg sagged backwards.

The hands were on him again, but again he struggled free, using his feet, his head, his fists, reaching for Georg again as he in turn reached for Martin, bringing his fist up on to his jaw, feeling the pain shoot up his arm, and then they were on him, punching and kicking and gouging and for a while he fought back until a kick caught his leg and he screamed. But then the others came from the house, shouting, calling.

‘Heine, where are you?’

‘For God’s sake, where are you?’

He could not call, his mouth was full of blood but then the
Nazis were gone, running before they could be seen, hauling Georg away, his feet dragging limply on the ground, turning to tell him that this was not the end. They would come for him again.

Johann found him and called the others, wiping the blood so that he could talk but all Heine did was to point at Martin. Back at the house Heine spat blood into a bowl while Johann bathed his broken nose, his split lip, the torn eyebrow, but he hardly noticed as he sat in a chair watching Martin rock and moan like a wounded dog. At midday a guard arrived and arrested Heine for fighting.

He was accused of assault on Martin Stein and taken to a cell, while his friends objected. He was frisked before the door was locked and bolted. There were brackets on the wall supporting three loose planks of wood which separated when he lay on them so he sat on two blankets on the floor and did not sleep that night. Not because of the pain but the despair.

When he came before the Commanding Officer at eight the next morning evidence was given by Georg’s friend that he had witnessed the unprovoked attack. This was substantiated by three others. Martin could not give evidence. He had been taken under escort to the hospital where he was to be committed to an asylum for the insane. He was completely and utterly deranged, the Adjutant said. His Sea View friends could not give evidence because they were not witnesses to the attack.

Heine was sentenced to four days at Camp Easterley where the punishment block was based. It was a light sentence, the Commanding Officer said, because he was not convinced of the accuracy of the statements but had to accept them. The cell was six feet by three with a small ventilator, no window and a damp cobbled floor. There were eight cells, one of which was the lavatory and the smell permeated the block but Heine did not care. Nor did he care that he had to sit or stand until blankets and a palliasse were brought by another prisoner at ten a.m. All he cared about was that the Nazis had broken Martin’s mind. Each day as the guard paced outside that was all he cared about.

Christoph had been eight for almost two weeks when Heine was released but he could not think of his son because he was too full of anger, too full of hate. Instead he watched the orthodox Jews walking and talking. He watched the non-Nazis
discussing the war. He read his letters from Helen and received a food parcel from her which had been held up at the administration office run by Hauptmann Rusch, a Nazi. The food was rotten and smelt and Heine sat and looked out of the window, thinking of Helen, bombed, frightened, sending food she could not spare to the Camp where provisions were more than adequate. Thinking of Hauptmann Rusch knowingly destroying her gesture.

He thought of her sending money each week. Money which she earned and he could not. His anger was so deep that he could no longer sleep or eat properly. The next day he walked through the country and ran in the sports field but still he could not rest. He thought of his father, so tired and old, so brave, and on 14 December he gave a lecture entitled ‘Democracy versus Totalitarianism’, in which he publicly castigated Nazism and everything it stood for.

That night a stone was thrown through his window wrapped in paper on which had been drawn a skull and cross-bones. Willi swept up the glass and the other men helped while Heine burnt the paper but knew that nothing could erase its message. The death sentence had been passed, one which the Nazis gave to those they considered arch traitors to the Fatherland.

Christoph lay in bed listening to the silence. There were no bombs, no aeroplanes, no ack-ack, no cold damp shelter, just a warm bed, a stone hot-water bottle at his feet, and silence. Each night the quiet lay like a blanket around him in this room with the sloping roof, the dark beams, the fireplace which was boarded up. Each night Laura kissed him, pressing the sheets and blankets tightly round his neck to stop the draughts. Each night he lay straight and still and safe and could not sleep because his mother was not there.

The candle in the saucer flickered, shadows catching the dried flowers which hung from string wound around the nails driven deep and rusting into the overhead beam. Marian had given him a string bag full of vegetables when he left London. She had stood with his mother on the platform crying, but his mother had not wept. Her face had been still, her lips barely moving as she said goodbye, bending to kiss him, to hug him, pulling his arms from her shoulders when he clung, pushing him to the WVS lady who stood at the open door.

Other children were all around, crying. He had not cried but he had clung again because he could not bear to leave her. She had pushed him again and her eyes had grown red and full and her lips had trembled as though she were cold. He had gripped her coat and still she had pushed and said, ‘Darling. I love you. You must be safe.’

Her lips had not moved around the words, they had just gone on trembling and her voice had been thick and he knew it was with love. He moved away then towards the door and the fat lady, climbing up the step, smelling the train, the soot, the steam. Sitting on a seat that itched, sitting too close to a boy whose gas mask dug into his side, watching as the WVS lady lifted his case on to the rack, looking at the children who sat
opposite, wanting to rip off the linen labels which had been pinned on at the collecting post outside the Town Hall. He knew none of the children. They did not know him, did not know that he was German.

As he lay in the soft bed, Christoph pulled the sheet up around his ears. It was cold but warmer than the shelter where his mother would be. The light from the candle caught the flowers again and Christoph felt the string bag once more, full of vegetables and sandwiches, so heavy, cutting into his hand. He had not let go until they had been travelling for two hours because the pain had stopped his tears.

He had shared his sandwiches with the fat girl who only had two of her own. She had travelled on with him and four others by bus to this village and was nice, but she smelt. He didn’t mind though because of her smile, and he would not let the others shout at her because Mary was his friend. She could throw stones that hit the targets and laughed when he pulled faces behind the teacher’s back. She didn’t ask questions about his parents or talk of her own like the others did all the time.

At six the next morning Laura called him, but he was already dressing, pulling on the grey socks with diamonds down the side that his mother sent for his birthday. He lifted the blackout hardboard from the window and saw hoar frost whitening the stunted apple trees in the bottom orchard, stiffening the grass into frozen clumps and knew that today his knees would be frozen again.

The stairs were narrow and dark but the smell of porridge was warm in the kitchen and so was the black-leaded stove which burnt with the logs he had helped Laura to bring in from the woodshed yesterday. She had said that it was good to have a man about the house and he had smiled, liking her grey hair which was wound round her head in a plait, her cheeks so red and full, her laugh which made her chin wobble. His mother would like her, he knew.

He did not stop at the table but walked on through and out of the door, laughing as she flicked at him with the tea cloth. The latch was stiff and Laura called, ‘You can use the pot under the bed.’

But he didn’t turn. He didn’t want to talk about things like that with her. He was not a baby. He was eight now. He closed
the door behind him. She had baked a cake and sung ‘Happy Birthday’ on the first and it had almost not mattered that his mother was not there.

He ran up the garden path, the cold air sharp in his nose and mouth, catching in his throat. He passed the outhouses, hearing first the pig in her sty, then seeing the sawdust outside the woodshed, hearing the hens in their shed. The latch on the door was frost-coated and his fingers stuck to it for a moment and he knew that the seat would be covered with ice again and shuddered. As he sat he could hear the hens calling, forever calling.

‘Wait for a moment,’ he called back. ‘Just wait.’

Laura smiled and pointed to the sink as he returned, and he nodded, washing in cold water which felt warm to his frozen hands.

‘Give ’em a good rub with this,’ she said, passing him a rough towel. He wanted to sidle up and reach out towards the fire but she would not let him because it would give him chilblains. His mother had always told him that too, so Laura must be right.

He sat at the oilcloth-covered table, smoothing it with his hands, wishing it was white, not black, watching Laura as she ladled porridge into a bowl. She passed it to him, the steam rising, curling bits of hair which were too short for her plait.

He poured thick milk from the jug into the hole he had scooped in the middle and then she spooned honey on top with the same smile that she had used when he handed her the vegetables in the string bag. She had kissed him in front of the WVS lady who had brought him last of all to Laura’s cottage. How kind, she had said. How very kind. And it was only later that he had seen the long back garden filled with sprouts and potatoes, swedes and parsnips but he did not feel foolish because Marian had given him the only things she had and Laura had been pleased.

He watched as she moved from the stove, carrying the kettle to the draining board, pouring boiling water on to the bran mash in the chipped enamel bowl, mixing it up with the old dented spoon. Her arms strained beneath her sleeves and her face grew red. She hummed. She always hummed, Chris thought as he took another mouthful of porridge and then stirred his spoon round and round until the honey and milk
were mixed completely. She was a happy widow, not like his grandmother.

‘Are you a grandmother?’ he asked, licking his spoon.

Laura did not turn from her mixture. ‘No. I had no children, but your dear mother works with my niece, young Joan. She is almost the same as a daughter to me and no doubt I shall one day be a great-aunt. When I’m wrinkled like a walnut,’ she laughed now, turning to him, her cheeks shiny from the mixing.

‘You’ll never be like a walnut,’ Chris said, running his finger round the inside of the bowl. ‘You’re like a plum.’ He wanted to lean against her, feel her arms around him because his mother wasn’t here but he was too old for that.

‘Look here, while we’re chatting away, those hens are getting hungry.’ She held out the bowl to him. ‘And don’t you be cleaning your porridge bowl like that. Your mother would have my guts for garters. Now be off with you.’

Chris took the bowl, feeling the heat of the mash through the sides. ‘What about the potato peelings we roasted last night?’

‘I’ll bring those, but you put your coat on first. That’s a bad frost out there.’

They fed the pig next, leaning over the pen door, watching the steam rise from the manure on the other side of the sty, watching the pig snuffle and breathe great belches of warm air. Laura pulled her jacket hood up round her head, tapping his shoulder. ‘We’ll clean Peggy out after lunch. Pigs are clean if you let them be. We’ll get her down to the orchard. She likes a bit of exercise.’

Chris nodded. It was too early to go yet. He was meeting Mary down by the blacksmith. It was Saturday, no school.

‘You meeting Mary, are you?’ Laura said as they moved to the woodshed to fetch wood in for the fire.

‘Yes, by the blacksmith. It’s warm and we like the smell and if I’m not there she just wanders about on her own because her lady doesn’t like her in the house, under her feet.’

He looked at the pig again. Would his mother let him stay with someone like that? He knew she wouldn’t.

He did not see Laura frown as he bent to pick up the spliced logs, loading four into the crook of his arm, not bothering yet to brush off the sawdust and splinters, but breathing in the clean smell of the wood. He followed Laura in, heaping them by the
stove, then walked into the sitting-room, lifted up the willow basket from the inglenook and eased it through the door and back out to the woodshed.

Laura was there already, bending and throwing logs into a bucket.

‘How are you sleeping now, Chris?’ she said, looking at him, rubbing her back with her hands.

‘Better,’ Chris said, leaning down now, throwing the logs into the basket as Laura moved away. Last night he had not lain awake as usual until the dawn came. Last night he remembered nothing after thinking of Mary laughing in the carriage which had no corridor as one boy had peed out of the window. He had not dreamt of the bombs either.

‘You bring that Mary back for lunch. It’s rabbit, and if the frost keeps up, we’ll have ice-cream as well.’

He walked down the lane past Laura’s neighbour Mr Reynolds, who tied his trousers with string at the knee and came after dark every day to empty the night soil from the earth closet and put it on the ash pit beyond the orchard. For the tomatoes in the summer, Laura had said when Chris had thought the neighbour was a spy who came each night because his father was German. When she told him what Mr Reynolds was doing he almost wished he had been a spy instead, and knew that he would eat no tomatoes in the summer.

He was glad it was Saturday but school was quite good. They were taught with the village children, not separately as most of the evacuees were. There were so few so far, Laura had said, and Chris hoped it would stay that way. It was nice and the village boys swapped baked conkers for spent bullets, flattened like mushrooms where they had hit the road. He had picked up pocketfuls in London and so had the other boys. Mary had shrapnel which his mother had not allowed him to bring because it could have sliced his skin. Mary had no mother or father and her sister did not care. He sometimes wished he had no father.