The Survivors

by Kate Furnivall

  ‘Did you speak to him?’ Alicja asked.

  I nodded. ‘Yes.’

  Her solemn face was pale. Though she was mobile again, her back healing well thanks to a supply of ointment from Davide Bouvier and the resilience of her young skin, I could still see the shock lingering in her eyes. Dark smudges like fingerprints on their clear blue surface. I took her warm hand in mine but she gently removed it. She was angry at me. I knew why. I had forbidden any of the children to leave the camp ever again.

  ‘What did he say?’

  I smiled. ‘Don’t worry. Scholz and I agreed to just leave each other alone. Relax, sweetheart. Everything is fine.’

  ‘Then why do you look so bad?’

  ‘Because seeing him again brought back bad memories. But that’s all they are – memories.’ I lifted her hand into mine and held on to it firmly this time. ‘No need for us to think of him ever again.’

  Alzbeta regarded us with a baffled gaze. ‘Who?’

  ‘He’s a friend of Mama’s.’

  ‘He’s no friend of mine.’

  Only when I saw the girls’ eyes widen did I realise how sharp my tone was. I hugged them both close to me, inhaling the smell of their camp-scented hair, and I felt something bulky tucked under Alicja’s jumper. I knew exactly what it was. That wretched doll.

  The one given to her by the woman in the village. It was too babyish for a ten-year-old, dressed in its lacy baby clothes and with its ugly rosebud of a mouth. I confess I took an instinctive dislike to the thing, but when I saw how my daughter cradled it lovingly in her skinny little arms, well, what could I do? I patted its rosy porcelain cheeks and accepted without murmur that it must sleep tucked in beside her each night. Something for her to love. We all need that, don’t we?

  I released my hold on the girls, but Alicja stopped me. She lifted her hand and stroked my cheek, over and over again. Her fingers felt as soft and fragile as butterfly wings. As if she were trying to smooth away something rough and spiky that she could see lying under my skin, something I didn’t know was there.

  She stretched forward and whispered in my ear, ‘I trust you, Mama.’ She looked down at my scarred fingers hiding in a ball on her knee. ‘Do whatever you have to.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Scholz would come for me. I didn’t know where or when, but I knew he would come. He didn’t trust me to keep my mouth shut about his past, any more than I trusted him. I was tempted to seize my daughter’s wrist and run for the hills. But that wasn’t an option, so I did the next best thing, I queued.

  You have to understand that queuing was a way of life in a Displaced Persons’ camp. It was how we functioned. All day we stood in line. Queues for the washrooms and the lavatories; queues at the canteen for meals; queues at the post room for letters. Queues for doctors. Queues for dentists. Queues to fill out forms. Queues to hand in forms. Queues to join queues. Were the queues designed to keep us docile? Sometimes I wondered.

  Outside the Permits office, that’s where I queued. We called it Hell’s Kitchen because we had to walk through hellfire to come out the other end with a permit that allowed us to be absent from the camp for a day, or even a few hours. It was hard to remain patient for nearly two hours while shuffling forward in the late autumn sunshine. To me the camp seemed to possess a grey carapace that not even the sun’s rays could shift. It had the smell of a graveyard, the huts our wooden coffins.

  But I refused to be buried here.

  ‘Request refused.’

  The soldier stamped my form with a black cross. His words slithered in my gut.

  ‘Please,’ I said. ‘I need to try for a job out there. I am a good skilled worker and—’

  ‘I’m sorry. There are no jobs out there. For anyone. I know it’s hard to understand but there aren’t enough jobs here in Germany for Germans, never mind for Poles and Czechs and all the other displaced persons. I’m sorry.’

  The soldier was kind. He had the sort of soft English face that is gentle and unmemorable. How many times had he said I’m sorry today, his face creased with concern?

  ‘I am an engineer,’ I pointed out. ‘I can assist with rebuilding.’

  I knew it was only a few individuals with scarce specialist skills who were finding work outside the camp. A steeplejack was rebuilding a factory chimney locally. An accountant went every Friday to do a glove company’s books. But the soldier’s eyes remained regretful.

  ‘I’m sorry, miss, but the British Army’s Royal Engineers are looking after that job.’

  He pushed the rejected form across the desk to me and I wanted to thrust it back at him and take his large capable hand between mine. I wanted to hold it tight and say, ‘Please. Please sign the form. It means everything. If you don’t my daughter and I will die. Just let me out for one day, that’s all I’m asking. Please.’

  I was willing to beg. To go down on my knees if it would help, but I knew nothing was going to change this decent young man’s mind as he stuck to army rules. Already I could see his gaze flicking to the door behind which the queue was building up like water behind a dam. I was only here now because someone had yelled, ‘Fight!’ and ten of the men ahead of me in the line had abandoned their spots and raced off to the dusty patch behind the Washroom block where disputes were settled with fists. Always a popular spectator sport in the camp.

  I rose from my hard seat because I was wasting time. He did the same, raising his pale eyebrows with encouragement.

  ‘Maybe your transit permit will come through soon,’ he smiled. ‘Then you won’t need a work permit, will you?’

  He was right, of course. If my transit permit came through, I had no doubt I would not need a job. I would be carried out of here in a box.

  ‘How is Alicja?’ Davide asked.

  ‘Improving.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it.’ He examined my face from under thick lashes as if I wouldn’t notice. ‘Bad day?’

  ‘They won’t let me out of here.’

  Davide laughed, a rich rolling sound that eased the tightness in my throat. ‘Have you only just noticed?’ he asked and pulled out a battered old hip flask.

  We both took a swig. God knows what was in it but it set my stomach on fire. We were seated on a bench, idly watching a bunch of children kick a ball around a square of scrubland on which goalposts had been erected. Light was fading fast and the warmth had drained out of the day, leaving the air chill as it fretted our cheeks. But the sky in the west was a sheet of fiery pink that gave us both a healthy glow. Deception came easy in Graufeld Camp.

  ‘The only way out of here,’ I told him, ‘is inside a vehicle.’

  ‘No, Klara.’ He shook his head at me, indulgently. ‘You’re crazy.’

  ‘No, I’m not. It’s true.’

  ‘Anyway, if you did escape, without a travel permit, a work permit, identification card or ration card, you’d die of starvation within a week. To get to England you’ll need money and a passport and . . . what about Alicja?’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’d only be gone a few hours.’

  ‘Forget it, Klara.’ He threw in another laugh to convince us both that I was joking.

  I knocked back a second swig from the flask and leaped to my feet to applaud when Rafal’s lanky legs scored a goal. Davide rose to stand beside me, the warmth of his shoulder seeping into mine.

  ‘I won’t help you, Klara.’

  ‘I’m not asking you to.’

  ‘Stop staring at the repair shed.’

  I allowed myself the smallest of smiles and to distract him I nudged him in the ribs, which I instantly regretted because it set him coughing.

  ‘Do you know what I saw go into the repair shed this afternoon?’ I asked.

  He turned his head and regarded me warily. ‘I dread to ask.’

  ‘An ambulance.’

  DAVIDE BOUVIER

  The soldier, Benny, was small and chirpy. ‘I’m a Cockney from Stepney. That’s in London,’ he claimed with pride.

  Davide ha
d no idea what that meant but it didn’t seem to matter because Benny was too busy laughing and slapping his thigh to notice. It had not been difficult to track down the name of the ambulance driver – Lance Corporal Benjamin Kemp – and to turn up at the vehicle repair workshop with one of Colonel Whitmore’s official-looking files under one arm and a clipboard in his hand.

  ‘What’s the problem here?’ Davide asked.

  Lance Corporal Benny Kemp was surprised to be answerable to a man in civvies. ‘And who might you be, sir, if you don’t mind me asking?’

  ‘I am Monsieur Davide Bouvier, aide to Colonel Whitmore. It’s my job to keep all the different elements of Graufeld Camp, military and civilian, running together smoothly.’

  The lance corporal grinned. ‘Rather you than me, mate.’ He patted the khaki canvas flank of the ambulance affectionately, the way you would an injured horse. ‘This old girl is leaking oil like a sieve. Her differential is buggered, if you’ll excuse my French, and her rear axle shaft seal is all to cock.’

  It was an easy matter for Davide to share a hip flask with this pleasant young soldier while he was waiting. It was his first visit to Graufeld – he was based in Hanover, twenty miles away, and needed to return to his base before nightfall. While oil leaks and shaft seals were being attended to, it was the most natural thing in the world to invite him to a private viewing of a scratchy reel of a Laurel and Hardy film he’d got his hands on, Jitterbugs, that sent the lance corporal into whoops of laughter.

  Davide envied him. Envied him his ease of mind. The clarity of his pleasure in life. Whatever horrors he had seen in the back of that military ambulance of his had not dimmed the sheen of his smile. Why could Davide not do that himself? Let the horrors go.

  When they emerged from the film, still chuckling at Stan Laurel dolled up as a woman, Klara just happened to be passing and just happened to tempt them to join her in trying out the new infusion of samogon.

  They had him then. In the small spotless office at the rear of the laundry where Hanna kept her ledgers and lists, and her latest offerings from the still in her laundry yard. He drank her home-made moonshine and he smoked his Players cigarettes, clogging up Davide’s lungs, and he laughed louder with each different tasting.

  So it came out of the blue when young Benny stretched out his long legs in their khaki serge trousers and said, ‘I didn’t fall off the turnip truck yesterday, you know. What is it you want from me?’

  KLARA

  Oh Benny. Don’t let me down now. I thought we had you. Sitting in the palm of Davide’s hand. I thought his easy French charm and Hanna’s hooch, strong as nitro to blow the roof of your mouth off, had snared you.

  And now this.

  What is it you want from me?

  You. With your cheeky laugh. Homesick for your Stepney and your girl, Betty, her photograph soft and dog-eared in your pocket. How do I get to you? How do I put my hand down your throat and squeeze your English heart?

  ‘You don’t have a daughter, do you, Benny?’ I said.

  His cheeks coloured. ‘No, of course not. I’m not married.’

  ‘Do you have a younger sister?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Ethel.’

  ‘I bet she misses you. But you will be home soon.’

  ‘You bet.’ He was grinning at the thought.

  ‘Benny, I want you to smuggle me out of here in your ambulance. I’d only be gone a few hours.’

  ‘What?’ He jumped to his feet and stubbed out his cigarette in his empty glass. ‘No chance. I would get done if I was bloody caught.’

  ‘You won’t get caught,’ Davide said quietly. ‘I’ll see to that.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Benny, I have a daughter.’

  ‘Oh, well that’s nice for you.’

  ‘Her name is Alicja. She’s ten. Would you like to meet her?’

  What I could see he wanted was to back out of the tiny room and leap into his driving seat, safe in his khaki ambulance with its big red cross on the roof. So I slid my arm through his to prevent a dash for freedom, and marched him through the camp, along Churchill Way to Hut C.

  ‘Alicja!’ I called.

  She appeared in the doorway. She was in her nightdress, so had draped a white sheet around herself, and stood there with the sun streaming down on her, her golden hair a halo around her beautiful face. She looked like an angel. Exquisite and ethereal. My heart tightened so hard in my chest that I had to fight back tears. How on earth had I produced such a child? An angel with the heart of a lioness. They may have torn off her wings, but they’d forgotten her claws. She looked at me with those intense blue eyes and she looked at Benny at my side.

  Then she smiled at him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  I was out of Graufeld.

  Out.

  Such a tiny word for such a huge sensation. The feeling was . . . it is hard to find words for it. Like something cracking wide open inside me and birds flying out. Their wings fluttering to freedom, the sounds vibrating in my ears.

  No wonder Alicja was so angry when I banned her from leaving the camp again.

  I was rattling along inside the ambulance, jolted and shaken as Benny drove like a bat out of hell to Hanover. The Austin K2/Y ambulance was kitted out to hold four stretchers, two each side at varying levels, without much care for comfort, I have to say. I was rolled up in a groundsheet of green canvas and tucked away under one of the bottom stretcher beds. Not visible to a half-hearted search. Davide was calm and organised. He ensured that the search by the two guards on the gate was barely even half-hearted by bringing them a flask of tea from the canteen at the moment my ambulance rolled up for inspection. We were waved through.

  Davide had wanted to come with me to Hanover, and Hanna had tried to stop me. Only Alicja urged me to go.

  ‘Oh, Christ!’ Benny cried out.

  I couldn’t breathe.

  I hadn’t expected this. A police road block. Just as we were approaching Hanover.

  ‘Oh Christ!’ he whispered this time. Panic made his voice sound young. ‘What now?’

  I was perched in the small doorway that led from the stretcher area to the cab of the ambulance. I’d been watching the road unspool ahead of me, as pockmarked by bomb damage as a Swiss cheese. In my head I was planning my next moves. Step by step. A chess game played out on a board slippery with blood.

  ‘Stop here, Benny,’ I said urgently. I squeezed his shoulder. His chest was heaving.

  In the back of the ambulance I had with me a sack of stolen goods that I’d come to sell. We both knew that if the Polizei caught me, the penalty for dealing on the black market was a prison sentence. For a military man I had no idea what the punishment would be, but sure as hell neither of us was going to hang around to find out.

  ‘Slow down when you pass those barns. Be quick!’

  Ahead of us there was quite a queue of military lorries blowing out smoke and at least a dozen cars waiting to get through the police checkpoint. If I was lucky, and if I was quick, and if all eyes were focused impatiently on the police, I might get away with it.

  If. If. If.

  I jumped.

  The road here was still rural. It passed through landscape that was flat and featureless, part of the great plain of northern Germany where even a molehill becomes a mound worth noting. The only thing of interest about the fields around me was their barrenness. They had been stripped. Scraped to bare bones. There was just naked brown earth. Desperate hands had plucked out every scrap of life in the land, even the blades of grass.

  In the camp we’d all heard the rumours. We knew that beyond our barbed wire and perimeter walls, Germans were starving. Starving to death in the streets of Hanover and in the filthy gutters of Berlin. All because of their Führer’s greed.

  I hit the ground running.

  ‘Thank you,’ I yelled to Benny. ‘Have a happy life with your Betty.’

  The headlights of a car ca
me swooping up behind me and I threw myself and my sack into the black cavern of the stone barn that hunched drunkenly at the side of the road. Its walls swallowed me instantly and I lay silent. As if I didn’t exist. The car swept on past and I watched Benny’s ambulance rumble unhindered through the checkpoint, vanishing in the direction of Hanover.

  I was alone. The barn was empty except for the comforting smells of pig and sweet hay that lingered in the stonework. When nightfall came, I would make my next move.

  My heart wept at the sight of the city. If you wanted to see somewhere where a butcher had run amok with his cleaver, Hanover was it. The city had been slaughtered. Skinned and crushed to a pulp. Even when adorned by a lacy veil of moonlight like tonight’s, the city was unrecognisable as a place to live.

  Whole streets were reduced to rubble and rats ran freely over my feet as I picked my way through it in the darkness. I carried a torch but used it sparingly. I wanted to draw no attention to myself or, more importantly to the sack, heavy and cumbersome, on my back. Hanover sprawled out on the banks of the river Leine and I was finding my way into its heart, into the old town, its medieval centre. There in its twisting narrow streets I would find the twisted narrow world I was seeking.

  ‘You got something to sell, meine Dame?’

  The man stepped out of nowhere into my path. I jumped back. Fear snatched at my heart. I hadn’t heard him approach. The silence of his feet worried me more than the gauntness of his face thrust towards mine, or the stink of alcohol on his breath. You don’t creep up on a woman in the dark unless you plan on doing something you’re sure she isn’t going to like.

  ‘No,’ I said curtly, ‘nothing to sell.’

  ‘That sack looks heavy.’

  ‘I’m moving house.’

  ‘At this hour of the night?’ He hissed softly. ‘Here, let me help you.’

  He put out a tentative hand to touch the bulky hessian, but before he could lay a finger on it I slammed my torch on to the sharp bone of his right cheek. The jolt of the impact went right through me and to my astonishment he turned and ran. Blood glistened black as oil on the metal casing of the torch. I tried to feel guilt but all I felt was relief.