Weaver (20 page)

PRISONER
JUNE-DECEMBER 1941

I

The family were all at breakfast that Monday morning, Fred, Irma, Alfie, Viv, the four of them in the farmhouse kitchen working their way silently through toast and powdered egg, when Ernst walked in with his gift. He placed it on the table, an anonymous cardboard box stamped with swastikas.

‘Good morning, Obergefreiter,’ said Irma. She pushed her way out of her chair, leaning on the wooden table for support. ‘The usual? A bit of toast?’ In her forties, she was heavily pregnant, her eyes shadowed, her face drawn of blood. ‘The tea might be stewed.’

Alfie’s eyes were on the gift. He chewed on rubbery toast, his legs swinging so that his whole body jerked about. He was fourteen but he looked younger, Ernst thought, skinny, always hungry-looking. ‘What’s in the box, Ernst?’

‘Let the poor man get his breakfast, Alfie.’ Irma went to the range.

‘I’ll get the tea,’ said Vivien, getting up brightly. She ran to the sink and rinsed out a tin mug. She was a year older than her brother. She wore a blouse and skirt for school today, with thick dark stockings and clumpy shoes. Her mother was a fair seamstress, but you could see the panels of parachute silk where she had let out the blouse as Viv had grown.

Viv came over to Ernst with the tin mug. The drink was fairly repulsive, made from repeatedly stewed leaves and with lumps floating on the surface from the powdered milk. She leaned close enough to Ernst for a few strands of her strawberry blonde hair to brush against his face.

‘Thank you.’

She said, in German, ‘It’s my pleasure.’

Alfie laughed. ‘You’re a right tart, our Viv, you really are.’

‘Oh, leave her alone,’ Irma said tiredly, and she set a plate with a bit of toast and a heap of runny powdered egg before Ernst. ‘Is that enough, Obergefreiter?’

‘Yes, thank you, Mrs Miller.’ He made a show of cutting off some toast and tucking it into his mouth. He turned to Viv. ‘But, you know, you need not have prepared for school. There will be no school today.’

Fred glared. ‘How so?’

‘A holiday has been declared. It is the King’s birthday!’ Ernst smiled.

Fred folded his arms. ‘Not my bloody king. I’m a subject of King George, not of his Nazi-loving ninny of a brother who should have stayed abdicated.’ He pronounced ‘Nazi’ the way Churchill always had, ‘Nar-zee’. The father of the family was a squat man, his farmer’s arms muscular, but his lower body was weaker, his wounded right leg withered, so that he had a rather unb
alanced look. His greying hair was slicked back with Brylcreem, making his face angular, hawk-like. He wore his work coat, an old suit jacket from which the pockets had long been removed, leaving ghostly outlines of stitches.

Irma sighed. ‘Oh, come on, Fred, have a bit of spirit. Edward’s not so bad. He’s got his job to do like everybody else. Binding the wounds, as they say. Although I hadn’t heard about the holiday, Obergefreiter.’

‘Well, we wouldn’t,’ Alfie said. ‘Dad won’t buy a newspaper. “Hoare and his bloody collaborators’ rag.’

‘Language, Alfie,’ said Irma sharply. ‘Mind you, we argue about that, Herr Obergefreiter. I mean, I can’t see what harm a bit of news does. And I do so miss my stars.’

‘Well, you are hearing about it now,’ Ernst said, keeping up his smile. ‘A day off for the whole of the protectorate, except for essential services.’

‘I’ll go and tell my cows I’m having a day off bloody milking them, shall I?’ Fred said.

Irma looked concerned. ‘I’d been hoping to get into Hastings today to see if there’s any news about Jack and the prisoner release programme.’

‘There will be emergency cover at the town hall,’ Ernst assured her. He worked there himself, one of a number of soldiers with the necessary skills who had been seconded to supplement the civil servants brought across from Germany to run the protectorate. ‘I’m sure that if there is any news you will receive it.’

‘Don’t know how you’ll get down there, mind,’ Fred said. ‘Buses on holiday too, are they, Corporal?’

‘Well, somebody’s got to go,’ Irma said. ‘Viv, maybe you could come with me.’

Viv’s anger flared up again. ‘Why me? What kind of a holiday is that?’

‘I’ll come, Mum,’ Alfie said.

‘You’re a good boy,’ Irma said.

Fred grunted. ‘Good at getting out of his chores around the farm, little bleeder.’

Ernst tapped his forefinger on his cardboard box. ‘You still don’t know what it is, this present I have brought for you.’

‘Let me open it,’ Alfie said.

But Viv was too quick. ‘I
don’t
think so.’ She grabbed the box. She wore her nails long for a farmer’s daughter, and she used one forefinger nail to slice through the thick packing tape. Inside was a brick of Bakelite, with a speaker grill and a heavy tuning dial. Viv pulled it out eagerly, scattering bits of wrapping paper on the table.

‘Cor,’ Alfie said. ‘A wireless! Can we plug it in, Dad?’

‘Actually it runs off batteries,’ Ernst said. ‘They must be recharged, periodically.’

‘“Periodically.’ Viv giggled. ‘You do make me laugh, the way you talk.’

Fred was dismissive. ‘It isn’t as good as my old wireless set that they took away with my fowling piece. That’s the trouble with you Nazis. Whatever you take away you always give something worse back.’

‘Oh, don’t be so sour, Fred.’ Irma inspected the wireless and quickly found the ‘on’ switch. Music wafted from the wireless, a bit tinny.

Viv squealed, ‘Music!’ She got up and started dancing around the room, arms wrapped around her body, making big sweeping steps.

‘I know that,’ Irma said. ‘What was it called, Fred? It was big just before the Germans came.’

Fred said reluctantly, ‘“The World is Waiting for the Sunrise.’

Irma said, ‘Gosh, we haven’t heard music for ever so long, not proper music, apart from Doreen on the piano in the church hall, the soldiers’ choir singing carols at Christmas.’ She began to sing softly:
‘Stille nacht, heilige nacht
...’

Alfie was trying to turn the tuning knob. ‘It won’t turn. It’s stuck.’ He looked at Ernst. ‘Is it broken?’

‘No, no.’ Ernst felt faintly embarrassed. ‘It’s meant to be that way; the tuning is fixed.’

The music ended, and a male voice with the stilted plumminess of the British upper classes intoned, ‘This is the Free Albion Broadcasting Service, coming to you twelve hours per day from the Ministry of Information in Canterbury. And now, at eight thirty a.m. precisely, the news ...’

‘Free bloody Albion,’ Fred said, and he laughed. ‘I bet old Joe could bugger it so it picks up the BBC.’

‘Language,’ Irma said automatically.

‘That would be forbidden,’ Ernst said. ‘Regretfully.’

‘You won’t, you know,’ Viv said to her father. ‘I’ve heard of this, the Promi wireless. One of the girls at school has it at home.’

‘It’s Propaganda from Hoare and his band of collaborators in Canterbury.’

‘Dad, it plays jazz and swing from America!’

Fred said, ‘Never mind jazz. I wonder if
ITMA
is still on?’ He put on a comedy German accent, glancing at Ernst. ‘Funf! Funf! Heil Hitler!’

‘Oh, leave it out, Dad,’ Viv said. ‘You’re always picking on Ernst. You know he won’t report you or anything. Big man, aren’t you?’

‘Well.’ Ernst pushed the wireless towards the family. ‘Here is my gift, for King Edward’s day. And I have another. A joint of lamb. I must pick it up. Perhaps we could cook it for dinner this evening.’

‘Drool,’ said Alfie. ‘Lamb! I can’t even remember what it tastes like.’

Fred snorted. ‘You take away my bloody sheep, and now you give a bit back and expect me to be grateful. Rabbit will do for me.’

‘Oh, that’s enough, Fred,’ Irma said. ‘Look, Obergefreiter, you are very generous. If you can get it to me by four I’ll have it in the oven. So is it a holiday for you too?’

‘I’m planning a drive up to the First Objective.’

Fred grunted. ‘A fan of pillboxes, are you?’

‘My brother, who is a standartenfuhrer in the SS, has some business with the Halifax government. Prisoner repatriations and that sort of thing. I said I would accompany him; I would like to see the country again, where I fought.’

Viv clapped her hands. ‘Oh, let me come with you.’ She looked at her mother. ‘I’m off school, aren’t I? I could practise my German.’

Her father said, ‘I’ve told you, in the stalag in the last lot we only needed four words of bloody German.
Kartoffel. Arbeit. Geld. Verboten.
Spud, work, money, forbidden.’

Viv ignored him. ‘It’s a lovely day. A ride in a car! I haven’t been in a car since before the war. I could take a picnic. Mum—’

‘No,’ said Fred.

‘Mum!’

Irma looked terribly tired. ‘Oh, I can’t be bothered fighting. It’s up to the obergefreiter.’

Ernst felt he had no choice. ‘Of course she can come.’

‘Yes!’ Viv clapped her hands again. ‘I’ve got to work out what to wear ...’ She ran out of the room.

‘Look.’ Irma took her purse from a pocket of a coat which hung on the door. ‘Take some money.’

‘No, it won’t be necessary—’

‘Just in case.’ She pressed a bundle of occupation marks into Ernst’s hand.

Alfie was listening to the news from the wireless. ‘Dad, what’s “Operation Barbarossa?’

Fred didn’t know, and Ernst had to admit that nor did he. They all listened to the wireless, and learned the almost unbelievable news that Hitler’s Germany, in spite of a non-aggression pact, had, the previous day, invaded the Soviet Union.

When the car horns sounded Ernst and Viv hurried out of the farmhouse and down the muddy track to the road. It was a little after ten.

The army convoy was a queue of vehicles, two light armoured trucks topping and tailing a dozen staff cars. You always travelled in convoy. Nine months after Sea Lion, the resistance groups the English called ‘the auxiliaries’, spawned out of the Home Guard stay-behind units, were still capable of doing damage.

Josef was in the lead car, after the armoured vehicle. It was typical of him to drive himself. ‘Brother!’

Ernst approached, with Viv holding his arm. Carrying a little picnic basket, she was wearing her mother’s big sunglasses, her best shoes and a green crepe dress. Ernst knew how hard she and her mother worked to keep the flimsy material from creasing and tearing. The sun was behind Viv, and caught her pale red hair. As they walked the line of the convoy she was greeted by wolf-whistles and a few obscenities, not words Ernst had taught her in their occasional language classes. Though she smiled back, he could feel how tightly she clung to his arm.

Josef got out of his car, took her hand and kissed it. ‘Fraulein, I am delighted.’ Ernst saw her eyes widen. Josef’s SS uniform, black and silver in the bright light of the summer’s day, looked impossibly glamorous. Josef winked at Ernst.

Josef helped her into the back of his car, while Ernst sat up front. With a roar the convoy pulled away, raising dust from the track.

From the farm, two miles north of Battle, the convoy soon joined the main road north towards Tunbridge Wells, and drove steadily through the green heart of Sussex. They made rapid progress across country which had been such a scouring challenge for the advancing armies back in September. Now there were only the farmers busy on their land, and at this rate it would take the convoy only a couple of hours to get to the line before Guildford. But there were signs of the war. They passed fields scarred by bomb craters and heaps of wreckage that might once have been planes, and ruined vehicles hulked by the roadside, still lying where they had been shoved aside in those remote days of September, rusted after a winter’s rain.

Josef glanced at Viv in his rear-view mirror. ‘So,’ he said. ‘Good for you there is no room in the barracks. You struck lucky in your billet, you dog.’

‘It’s not like that,’ Ernst said, colouring. ‘She’s only fifteen.’

Josef shrugged. ‘Listen to me. In some of the coastal towns, in Hastings and Rye, you won’t find a virgin over twelve, no matter how much you pay. It was the same in France. Oh, come on. Look, this wretched country will soon be empty of its young men. Those who weren’t taken prisoner in the war are
to be shipped off for labour. England is a country of old people, children, and women - and us, the only men. It is only natural that she, a blossoming beauty, should look at you.’

‘I told you,’ Ernst said hotly, ‘it’s not like that.’

Josef just laughed. ‘So if you’re not poking the daughter, how about the mother?’

‘She’s pregnant.’

‘Really?’

‘Nine months gone, nearly. She must have caught about the time of the invasion.’

Josef glanced sideways at him. ‘Funny coincidence, that.’

An old English car approached them head-on, driving stubbornly on the left, in defiance of the occupation rule. Of course the German column did not deviate. At the last moment the English car veered away, and Ernst glimpsed a shocked face behind a stern handlebar moustache, before the car ended up ramming itself into a ditch. The German troops cheered mockingly, and made Churchill V-for-Victory signs at the crashed car.

Viv laughed prettily. ‘What a lark!’

Ernst said, ‘These English aren’t like the French, are they? Defiant.’

‘Well, the English haven’t experienced occupation, not for a thousand years. It’s all new to them.’

‘Churchill’s still a hero to them, even though he was forced to resign over the invasion.’ He was thinking of Fred Miller and his ‘Nar-zees’.

‘We all cheered when that old warmonger was pushed out, after barely six months in office after a lifetime of waiting for it, ha! But it wasn’t the shame of the invasion, you know, but pragmatism. There are necessary dealings between England and the protectorate. Churchill adamantly refused to discuss even such matters as prisoners and wounded with us. So he had to step aside for Halifax, an altogether more reasonable gentleman. Churchill’s still stirring up feeling against us, though, especially in America. The sooner some collaborator puts a bullet through his thick skull the better.’