Women of Courage

by Tim Vicary

  They lay there for a moment, breathing heavily in short gasps of triumph.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Deborah asked.

  ‘Yes. We did it!’

  ‘First part, anyway.’ Deborah stumbled to her feet. The passage was quite dark, blacker even than the night outside. I should have thought to bring a torch, she thought. But she had been here in daylight, she knew the shape of what should be behind the door. She walked forward, one hand on the black slippery wall. Three paces, slight turn to the right, down two steps — a door. Locked, of course. She banged on it with her fists.

  ‘Tom! Are you in there?’

  Silence. Just their own laboured breath in the dank narrow passage. And, oddly, the confused echo of voices from outside, far away. Oh no, Sarah thought. It was all for nothing.

  Deborah shouted again. A higher pitch to her voice this time, a note of panic.

  ‘Tom! Are you in there? Answer me! It’s Mother!’

  Again silence. Sarah felt her breath sobbing from a new pain in her chest. It’s too desperate, she thought, too futile. Surely someone was shouting outside, too? It sounded like a man’s voice.

  ‘Karl-Otto!’

  Then there was another sound. A tapping from the far side of the door. Not loud — like a mouse far away. Then a voice, small — ‘Mummy!’

  ‘It is him!’ Deborah said. ‘Tom! I’m here, with aunt Sarah! We’ll get you out. Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes,’ the voice said. ‘But I’m cold. Be quick, Mummy, please!’

  ‘Don’t worry, we will!’ Deborah shouted. Then she turned. ‘Though God knows how, if they haven’t left the key.’ She scrabbled back with her hands along the right-hand side wall, fumbling for the place in the darkness. ‘It’s usually here, on a hook somewhere. This is it — oh God, it’s missing! Heaven help us! We’ll have to smash this door in with the stone as well!’

  ‘Just a minute.’ Sarah reached out and gripped Deborah’s shoulder in the darkness. ‘Ssssh! I think there’s someone outside!’

  Simon strode out of the house across the drive and the lawn that led to the wooded hill where the ice-house was. He had the Mannlicher rifle slung over his shoulder and the bayonet at the belt by his side. As he came near the hill he shouted out to the dark, silvery fields on his left.

  ‘Karl-Otto! Hey, Karl-Otto! Come to me here! Karl-Otto!’

  He saw no need for silence or secrecy any more. Whatever Werner said it seemed to Simon a desperate plan to try to force the wounded Charles to go in the car to Craigavon. But nonetheless he was prepared to bring Tom to confront Charles in the house. There could be some pleasure in that. If Charles resists or tries to rescue the boy then I’ll kill him there and then, and perhaps his loathsome little son as well, Simon thought. And then I’ll flee to Germany.

  It was revenge which interested him, not Werner’s plot against Carson. That was just a means to an end.

  He shouted again: ‘Karl-Otto!’

  As he approached the wooded hill he saw a dark figure approaching him in the distance. It was still some two hundred yards away across the grey moonlit fields. A voice came back to him faintly, but clear.

  ‘Ja. What is?’

  ‘Go into the house. Von Weichsaker’s orders. I have to fetch the boy.’

  The man’s English was not good but Simon hoped he understood. He changed direction slightly and began to head across the fields towards the house. Simon carried on up the hill under the trees, towards the ice-house. As he came nearer he remembered the sounds he had heard here before, and glanced ahead nervously. For a moment he thought he saw a shadow move, but surely that was just imagination. He fumbled in his pocket, brought out a small electric torch, and shone it around under the trees. Nothing.

  Then he shone it on the door and stopped, thunderstruck. ‘What . . .?’

  He stood for a moment, irresolute, outside the broken door. It was quite silent. He unshouldered the rifle, cocked it, and pointed it forwards in front of him. Then, holding the torch clumsily alongside the barrel, he bent his head and stepped forward cautiously into the tunnel.

  Almost immediately he stumbled and nearly fell. Swearing, he looked down by the light of the torch and saw a large stone on the ground just inside the door. From inside he could see how the lock of the door itself was smashed and shattered as though by a massive iron bar. Simon’s stomach squirmed.

  Who can possibly have done this? he thought.

  The torchlight wavered, glimmering on dank, moss-covered walls. He took it away from the rifle barrel, shone it ahead of him down the passage.

  ‘Simon Fletcher?’

  He jumped. There, in front of the door, was a figure. A woman, perhaps, though she was so dirty and bedraggled it was hard to tell. In the dim light of the torch he saw a face streaked with mud and bedraggled fair hair, a filthy brown muddy dress, dark eyes staring at him with a wild intensity like a trapped ferret.

  He stood nervously, a yard or so away from her. The rifle wavered in his right hand, pointing at her breast. ‘Who the hell are you?’

  ‘Don’t you know me? I’m Tom’s mother. Have you come to let him out?’

  ‘Yes.’ He shone the torch more carefully and smiled to himself with relief. It was true, it was her. Deborah Cavendish. Surely he could handle her, she had never been any threat to him before. But tonight she looked different — more like a savage gypsy woman in the mud and the rain. And there was a cunning look in her dark fierce eyes as well — like a trapped weasel.

  She straightened up, stepped towards him.

  ‘About time too,’ she said. ‘But now I’m here you can give me the key. I need it to unlock the door and set him free.’

  She held out her hand.

  ‘Oh no.’ Simon stepped back cautiously, still aiming the rifle clumsily in one hand and holding the torch in the other. ‘I have to take the boy down to the house. He’s a prisoner, like his father.’

  Deborah stood still, peering at him over the glare of the torchlight. She knew it was Simon by his voice, but she could only see the outline of his face indistinctly, and the dark gleam of the rifle barrel pointing towards her. She felt a hand clutch her heart.

  ‘What do you mean, a prisoner like his father?’

  ‘What I say. Your husband was caught trying to run away through the woods. We’ve brought him back, and now I’ve come to fetch his son.’

  Deborah’s mind had been racing ever since Simon had come in. When they had gone outside because of the noise they had heard, and seen him coming up the hill, she and Sarah had hatched a plan. Sarah would stay outside, hidden behind a tree. Deborah would stay inside the passage and try to persuade Simon to give her the key. If that failed, at least she could distract him until Sarah came in. Then they would both attack him and grab the rifle from him if they could. Two of them might manage it, if they both went for him at once. But they hadn’t counted on the way the torchlight would dazzle her, so that she could see virtually nothing beyond it. She had no way of knowing whether Sarah had followed him into the passage yet or not.

  They had also had the hope that Charles had succeeded in getting to the village, so that if only they could rescue Tom and keep him hidden for a while, help would come.

  Now they had failed to rescue Tom in time, and no help was coming. They were on their own.

  Deborah said, in a wheedling voice, despising herself: ‘He’s only a little boy, for heaven’s sake! You can’t make war on children.’

  Simon laughed. ‘Can’t I? I can do what I like!’ The laugh was outwardly pleasant, suave and confident, as most of Simon’s phrases and actions always were. Here, in this dark passage with a rifle in his hands, that frightened her more than anything else. There was a coldness, a certain empty quality in it that terrified her even more than she had been afraid before. There is something missing in this young man’s mind, she thought.

  She tried one more time. He is a man, he has a gun. Sarah is crazy to think we can fight him. But if he can’t be persuaded, we
must. ‘Please, Simon. Give me the key.’

  His left hand, holding the torch, moved back to the side of the rifle barrel, which he advanced slowly until it was pointing directly into her mouth. ‘If you don’t get out of the way, woman, your son won’t have a mother at all.’

  She stood very still for a moment, trembling. She was not afraid, but furious because she could do nothing. If she stood still he would kill her and then she would have no way of protecting her son; but if she moved aside she would not be protecting him either. A flood of hysterical tears threatened to rise within her but she suppressed them instantly. Tears were no good now — nor was reasoned argument or cajoling. She felt like a savage — a wild woman of the Stone Age faced by a snake or a bear. Then she heard footsteps shuffle on the leaves behind him and thought: Sarah was right. There is only one way after all.

  To distract his attention she smiled at him in a way that she hoped looked more frightened than cunning, and stepped away from the door, towards his left side.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘But don’t hurt him, please, will you?’

  ‘Oh no,’ he said mockingly. ‘Now, just move back out of the way, and I’ll open the door.’

  As she came past the beam of the torch she saw, for the first time, the long bayonet hanging on his left hip like a short sword, and thought, I can threaten him with that.

  He reached out his hand for her left shoulder. As he did so she screamed: ‘Now!’ and lunged for his side, knocking him off balance. She grabbed the hilt of the bayonet with both hands, trying to pull it out of the sheath. At the same time Sarah swung at the back of his head with the stick she had found, knocking him off balance against the wall by the steps. Simon groaned and fell forward, dragging Deborah forwards with him. Then he lurched clumsily to his feet again. The torch clattered to the floor, sending a bright intense beam against a brick on the side wall, and plunging the rest of the passage into darkness. Sarah screamed and hit Simon again, and Deborah felt the rotten branch shatter against his shoulder just in front of her face, spraying her with damp splinters. Simon stumbled but didn’t fall. Deborah felt him staggering under her grip. She held on to him but he was trying to turn round and stay upright and keep hold of the rifle all at once.

  ‘Get the gun!’ she yelled to Sarah. Sarah grabbed hold of something but there was a clatter as though he or she had dropped the gun, and none of them knew where it was in the panic and the darkness and the lurching, stumbling bodies.

  Deborah felt herself slammed back against the wall but she held on to the hilt of the bayonet grimly. In a moment he will break free, she thought, and then he’ll kill us both and Tom too. If I get this bayonet out and threaten him with it he’ll see sense and calm down.

  But the bayonet wouldn’t come out. She couldn’t understand what on earth was wrong with it. Instead of pulling it out of the sheath she was dragging the whole belt upwards, tilting him further off balance. He punched the side of her head with his left hand but she felt nothing because all her attention was focussed on her fingers around the hilt of the bayonet, pulling and tugging to get it free, and then he grabbed her hair and she screamed but she still didn’t let go.

  Her fingers had worked out the problem. The hilt was fastened to the sheath by a little button clip that went over the guard. Her fingers found the button and wrenched it free, tearing a nail as she did it. Then Simon swung round in a complete circle, his fist swinging out in the darkness with a wild punch that caught Sarah hard in the stomach and doubled her over on the floor.

  Deborah was flung free, back against the wall, but the bayonet came out of the sheath as she fell, free in her hand. I’ve got it now, she thought. But what do I do with it? Sarah was groaning on the floor somewhere near her feet and Simon was somewhere in the gloom a few feet further ahead of her. She saw his body moving in the dim light of the torch; she could hear his short, harsh, desperate breathing, mixed with her own gasps and Sarah’s groans. She stood, half crouched, with her back to the wall like a trapped animal, the bayonet held out in front of her in her right hand like a shield to ward off evil.

  Then she realised the torch was near her left foot. An idea came to her. She dived forwards, snatched it up in her left hand, and shone it towards him.

  He stood with his back to the right-hand wall, fumbling with the rifle in his hands, pointing it towards the dazzling glare of the torch. As she watched, he shouted, high, frightened, breathless. ‘Get back out of the door! Quick, or I’ll shoot you both!’

  But even before he had finished shouting a shadow lunged out of the darkness towards him, knocking him off balance again. Sarah screamed: ‘Now! I’ve got his legs, Debbie! Grab him!’

  But Deborah stared, paralysed, not knowing what to do with the bayonet . . .

  And then the gun went off, a foot in front of her face.

  The noise was enormous, shattering, like a thunderstorm inside her own head, and there was white and yellow fire in front of her face. She stood quite still, rigid, thinking: I’m not hurt at all. He missed me. In a minute he’ll shoot again.

  In the feeble yellow light of the torch she could see he was still standing, struggling to stay upright with one hand against the wall to keep his balance and the rifle raised in the other to club the woman who was on her knees with both arms round his legs, pushing, clinging, straining against him with all her strength to wrench his legs out from under him and knock him over before he could fire again.

  Deborah snapped out of her trance and thought, if he hits Sarah with that he’ll break her skull.

  She ran forward with a sudden scream and, as she did so, Simon finally lost his balance and fell forwards towards her so that her stab with the bayonet went right through his coat and into his stomach and on up under his rib-cage through a lung and his heart until it grated against his backbone and jarred and twisted in her hand.

  He collapsed on top of her, his already dead weight slamming her hard against the ground. She lay there for a moment, stunned, her legs twisted painfully under him. Then Sarah grunted, and with a huge effort heaved him to one side. The torch, from where it had fallen, shone up into Sarah’s face. It was pale, sweaty, savage.

  Sarah leaned forward, grabbed Simon’s head by the hair, and thumped it hard against the floor. Then she knelt beside him gasping, her hands still entwined in his hair, to see if he would move.

  The body gurgled once, twitching, and lay still.

  Deborah dragged herself to her knees, shaking, and picked up the torch. She shone it on Simon’s once-beautiful, perfect head. Thick red blood was pouring out of his mouth and nostrils.

  ‘Oh my God!’ she exclaimed. She felt sick. She grabbed his arm and heaved him up on to one side, and there was the bayonet. The hilt of it was buried in the front of his jacket, low down below his rib-cage. The point came out of his back, just below the shoulder-blades.

  The two women stared, breathing heavily. There was nothing to say. The body twitched once or twice, and more blood came out of its mouth. Otherwise there was silence. Then a small voice came from behind the door at the end of the passage.

  ‘Mummy? Mummy, are you all right?’

  ‘Dear God,’ Deborah said. ‘The keys!’ Mechanically, her hands fumbled in the pockets of Simon’s jacket. Not this side, they had to roll him over again. The front of his jacket was slippery and warm with blood. ‘Here.’ She took out two keys, shone the torch on them, chose one. Then she got up and stumbled to the door at the end of the passage.

  Her hands were shaking so much that she couldn’t get the key into the hole. She dropped the torch, picked it up, and tried again. At the third attempt she made it. The key turned and the door opened. A wave of icy air flooded into the passage.

  A small boy stood in the torchlight at the foot of the steps, shrouded in blankets, shivering. His fair hair was ruffled and untidy, his thin anxious face stared at her with wide dark eyes. ‘Mummy?’

  ‘Yes, Tommy, it’s me.’

  She went down the steps and
wrapped her arms round him. There was frost on the outside of the blankets and the torchlight sparkled on the round icy floor.

  ‘I heard a shot. Mummy, you’re shivering.’

  ‘It’s all right, Tommy. You’re all right now.’

  ‘But wasn’t there shooting? Was there a fight?’

  ‘Don’t talk about it, Tom. Everything’s all right. I’ll take care of you now. Come outside.’

  She pushed him ahead of her up the narrow steps, and shone the torch deliberately at the wall on the left, so that he wouldn’t see the body on the floor.

  ‘Sarah,’ she said. ‘I’ve got him.’

  But to her surprise Sarah wasn’t in the passage. She flashed the torch quickly around it to make quite sure. No one; only Simon, sprawled on the floor. Tom walked ahead of her, a tiny figure huddled in his blankets, towards the moonlight outside the door at the end of the passage. She had one arm reassuringly on his shoulder.

  At the doorway he looked out and paused, frightened. ‘Mother, I don’t like it.’

  ‘It’s all right, Tommy,’ she said. ‘We’re safe now.’ Her body was shaking all over but underneath that was the warmth of gratitude, tears of triumph that would burst out in a flood at any moment. I have saved my son!

  ‘Sarah?’ she said softly. ‘Where are you?’

  She stepped out of the door and saw two men, standing silently under the trees. They were both very large and the moonlight glinted on the barrels of their rifles. They stared at her quietly for a moment.

  Then one said: ‘Is the boy and his mother. You go with us now please. Down to the house.’