Tamar (20 page)

But all of this counted for nothing compared with their arrival at Sanctuary Farm. Marijke had been standing there to greet them, and it had taken all his self-control not to cry out with joy. She’d been dressed in rough working clothes — trousers tucked into heavy boots, a frayed woollen jacket, a dark scarf up to her chin — which had made the lovely symmetry of her face more striking than ever. The Sten gun slung over her shoulder should have been grotesquely out of place. Instead it made her seem both fragile and unconquerable. He would have died to protect her. He’d stumbled out of the ambulance and she’d smiled at him. How to describe that smile? It was shy, almost, and not just private. Secretive. Then she had been distracted by Tamar’s stupid clowning, and the moment had passed. She had embraced them all in turn, saving Dart until last. She’d touched his face and said, “You need a shave.” When the time had come for him to leave, she’d groaned sympathetically as his attempts to crank-start the damned ambulance failed; then when it did fire, she’d jumped up and down and clapped her hands in a wonderfully childlike display of delight.

Now, trudging and slithering along the road back to the farm, those hoarded moments of intimacy warmed Dart more than any amount of Ruud’s cognac. It was possible to ride the bike for only short distances; in many places the broken road had vanished beneath sheets of muddy ice that creaked and moaned beneath his feet. The air was so cold that when he breathed through his mouth he felt an electrical pain in his teeth. He had shaved, twice, and his face felt peeled. At the burnt-out chapel he propped the bike and ran on the spot until he could feel his feet. His shoes sent ringing echoes into the distance. When he got back on the bike, the metal was so cold to his touch that it seemed to burn.

He was halfway there.

Tamar had been busy. He’d taken a billhook up onto the heath and cut down a small spruce. In the big barn he’d found a rusting oil drum and carried it into the kitchen. He brought in the tree, propped it upright in the oil drum, and packed it around with sand and stones until it stood firm. When that was done, he and Marijke herded the chickens into one of the stalls in the little barn. The birds were reluctant and bad-tempered, huffed up against the cold. They formed a suspicious huddle in the corner of the stall, emitting slow, dry gargles. Marijke pointed out the oldest of the hens. Tamar moved in slowly, gently shunting the other birds out of the way with his feet. When he had the old hen penned in the corner, he stooped quickly and thrust her inside his jacket under his left arm. He soothed her by running his thumb and forefinger down her neck and over her shoulders, and when she had become calm he killed her with a quick twist and pull that separated the vertebrae of her neck just below the skull. He hugged her until the reflex spasms finished. While he plucked and gutted the bird, Marijke went back inside the house and rummaged in the cupboard under the stairs until she found the box of decorations for the Christmas tree.

When Dart, perished to the bones, gave his usual knock at the farmhouse door, no one answered. Knowing he was expected and aching with anticipation, he fumbled at the latch with his numb claws. The door wasn’t locked, and he stumbled forward into the dim and silent hall. There was a movement and an increase in light: he looked up, and she was descending the stairs, holding the tall oil lamp. She stopped when she saw him, four steps from the bottom. She was wearing a green belted dress and a pale cardigan patterned with small dark flowers. It was the first time he had seen her in feminine clothes. Her deep black eyes each reflected a tiny flame. Her hair was loose and a little tousled, as if she had hurried to greet him before she’d finished brushing it. His desire to touch her was so great that before he could stop himself he had held his stiffened hands out towards her. She drew in her breath, a little gasp, and stared at them.

“I . . .” He could not speak the next words. Instead he looked down at his hands and said, “I am so cold.”

She came down to him then. “Dear God, Ernst, you must be frozen. Come into the kitchen.”

She moved past him. She was, amazingly, wearing perfume: a warm flowery animal scent that hung almost visible on the cold air.

He followed her and then stopped, his senses overwhelmed, just inside the kitchen door. He had been greedily inhaling Marijke’s scent, but now this was obliterated by rich aromas of cooking. The warm air in the room was laden with the smells of meat, of baking apples, of bread, and something he didn’t recognize — something spiced and sweet. A delicious spasm of hunger went through him, and he had to swallow saliva hurriedly so as not to dribble like a child. The table was laid with the Maartenses’ best china, each piece rimmed with a narrow band of gold glaze as delicate as lace. At the centre of the table two candles burned in a branched holder wreathed in holly, the berry clusters brighter than droplets of blood. The tree stood at the far end of the room on a chest covered with an old Turkish rug. Its branches were hung with slender twists of glass, like icicles, and frosted red and amber globes that glowed with blurred, reflected flames. To Dart’s eyes, still tearful from the cold, the room seemed filled with threads of light like drifting cobwebs spun from gold.

Marijke stood the lamp on the dresser and lifted her arms in a gesture that was almost apologetic. “Happy Christmas, Ernst.” She said it in a way that suggested she had done all this only for him, and it was inadequate.

“I don’t know what to say,” he said. “You . . . This is all so beautiful. Thank you for inviting me.”

“Oh, don’t be silly. You had to be here. Take your coat off. Come to the stove and warm yourself up.”

They stood side by side. She lifted the lid from the bigger pan. “We’re having a sort of British Christmas dinner. I think the chicken should be roasted, but it was an old bird and would have been too tough. So we’re stewing it with vegetables and some herbs from the garden. Does that sound all right? It looks all right, I think. It’s been cooking for hours.”

She spoke more quickly than he was used to. It occurred to him that she might be as nervous as he was.

“It smells incredible,” he said.

“Good. And in here, look, is this thing that we found in the supply drop.”

She lifted the other lid, releasing a cloud of vapour. Dart peered in and saw something the size of a baby’s head wrapped in white cloth.

“Apparently it’s a traditional English Christmas pudding. Christiaan says you’re supposed to steam it. For ages and ages. It smells nice, though, doesn’t it? I think it’s got some kind of alcohol in it.”

“Ah. Yes. Rum, perhaps. I’ve had it before. The English have something they call custard with it. Yellow.”

All of a sudden the heat and the smell of food and her irresistible nearness and the effort of talking made him so giddy that he thought he might black out, or fall against her and hold her. He went to the table and leaned heavily on it.

She turned and looked at him. “Ernst? Are you all right? You look terribly pale.”

He made a huge effort to repel the darkness swarming into the edges of his vision. “I’m fine. Just the change in temperature, I think.” He turned a chair so that it faced her and sat down.

“Would you like coffee? There was some in the drop.”

“Yes, thank you. Coffee would be good. Christiaan is here?”

“Yes, of course. He is still upstairs.” She glanced over her shoulder at him. “With Oma,” she added quickly. “She’s not well.”

Oma. He had forgotten she existed. Not good. His world was melting, spilling over the limits of his concentration.

“Your grandmother’s sick? What’s wrong with her?”

She kept her back to him, fussing with the coffeepot, moving things on the stove.

“Exhaustion, mainly. She’s been in Loenen, with her cousin’s family. She came back yesterday and had to walk almost all the way. She should have stayed there, I told her. But there was a child born who died and she thought she shouldn’t. She’s caught a chill, but I think she’ll be well enough to have dinner with us.”

Then the door opened and Tamar came in, rubbing his hands together and grinning. Dart stood and Tamar embraced him, slapping Dart’s back.

“Happy Christmas, my friend,” Tamar said. “What do you think of all this?” He gestured at the table, the tree. “Good, isn’t it? Did Marijke tell you we’re having chicken? And English pudding? My God, we’re going to eat like kings! And why not? I think we deserve it, don’t you?”

His presence had tilted the delicate nervous balance in the room. The quiet intimacy of a few moments earlier had been jolted into this hearty maleness. Dart had trouble adjusting.

“Yes,” he said. “I was just saying to Marijke. It’s fantastic in here. How is Oma?”

“What? Oh, well, she’s miserable, of course. There was a child —”

“Yes,” Dart said. “Marijke told me.”

“Did she? Right. Well, Oma’s very upset, naturally. And the journey back was hard on her. She’s got a bit of a cold, but you know Oma — tough as old boots.”

Dart glanced at Marijke. It seemed to him that Tamar was being grossly offhand, but Marijke was taking it well, smiling bravely. She brought two cups of coffee to the table.

“I’ll go up to her,” she said. “The food is almost ready.”

Dart watched her leave the room. The way her body, her legs, moved inside the green dress. He sipped his coffee, and when he raised his eyes, Tamar was looking at him thoughtfully.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Dart said.

Tamar nodded, still watching Dart’s face. “That was a hell of a thing, the other night. To tell you the truth, drops scare me shitless. Especially big ones like that, when there are lots of people involved. You know what I mean? Someone talks, says something in the wrong place, and you end up getting shot to pieces in a damn field in the middle of nowhere. You did very well.”

“Thank you.”

“Did you get everything you needed?”

Dart sipped, looking into his cup. “Yes.”

Tamar nodded again, slowly, then smiled and leaned back in his chair. “I feel so good tonight,” he said. “Know why?”

Dart didn’t. He waited.

“It’s because all this is so . . . normal. Do you understand what I mean? Here, this kitchen, the food, the tree — it’s like life used to be, before. And I didn’t think, couldn’t have imagined . . . You know when we jumped out of that bloody plane? It never crossed my mind that three months later you and I would be celebrating Christmas like this. Yet here we are, doing what normal people used to do in normal times. I went up to the heath and cut that tree down, and Marijke decorated it, and I thought what a mad thing we were doing while people all over the country are starving and dying. We should feel guilty, I suppose. But tonight, right now, I don’t.”

He reached across the table and seized Dart’s wrists, startling him. “We must have a good time tonight, my friend. Because this is the most subversive thing we could be doing. This”— and here he gestured at the room again —“this is the continuation of war by other means. Joy is the true enemy of fascism. So we shall be joyous.”

He has been drinking, Dart thought.

As if he had read Dart’s mind, Tamar jumped up and went to the dresser. He returned with two of Oma’s china tumblers and Ruud van der Spil’s cognac. Dart noticed that the level in the bottle had fallen significantly.

“Here,” Tamar said, pouring large shots. “Have some of this. You still look a bit like a ghost. Cheers.”

Dart drank; the liquor left a hot track through the middle of his body that felt good.

“Something else too,” Tamar said, reaching into a trouser pocket. “Look at this. A Christmas present from Nicholson, I think.”

It was a large buff office envelope, folded in half. The letter
N
was pencilled in one corner. It contained a wad of crossword puzzles clipped from newspapers.

“Thirty!” Tamar said. “Mostly from
The Times,
at a glance.” He grinned happily. “Warmth, good food, something to drink, and a crossword to do after dinner. We are having a little interlude in heaven, my friend.”

The door opened then, and Marijke and her grandmother came in. Dart stood and stooped to be kissed. The old woman was wearing a red shawl over her usual black, but this festive garment could not disguise the fact that she was frailer than before. Dart thought she had aged a good deal since he last saw her. There was a slight yellowness to the whites of her eyes and a ragged edge to her breathing; the climb down the stairs had been hard work for her. She refused to sit in the armchair and took a seat at the table.

Tamar and Marijke busied themselves at the stove, leaving Dart to deal with Oma. She gazed absently at him for several moments, then began one of her mimes. Without Marijke to translate, Dart felt at a loss. He smiled and nodded.

“Yes, Oma,” he guessed, “it is very cold. Bad weather for walking, yes. The room is beautiful, though. The food smells good. Yes, I’m very hungry.”

The chicken stew contained chunks of carrot and potato, and translucent segments of onion; the meat was slightly fibrous but good. They sucked it from the bones and wiped their plates clean with bread that Marijke had made with the British flour. Oma sat back and sighed with pleasure, or perhaps exhaustion, when she had eaten half of what was on her plate.

After a silent and contented interval, Tamar lifted the Christmas pudding from the pan. He made a comedy of unwrapping it from the hot cloth, dancing about and blowing on his fingertips. He finally got it onto a warm plate and brought it to the table; it was dark chocolatey brown and glistened stickily. Oma and Marijke peered at it with deep suspicion.

Marijke said, “If it’s disgusting, we can have baked apples instead.”

“Of course it won’t be disgusting,” Tamar said. “It’ll be delicious. It was probably made from the finest ingredients by the head chef of the Ritz Hotel in London, exclusively for the SOE. Do you think the RAF would send one of their planes through hellfire to deliver a nasty pudding? Now then, pass me the cognac.”

Tamar filled a serving spoon and heated it in the flame of a candle. “Ruud van der Spil would probably shoot me dead if he saw me doing this with his precious booze. Here we go.”