Tamar

by Mal Peet

  Tamar considered this. He also thought about Dart making that lonely walk for the first time. “All right. But split up well before the checkpoints.”

  “Of course.” There was a hint of impatience in her voice. “Do you have any messages for Dr. Lubbers?”

  “No. Just tell him that everything is okay here, please.”

  “I’ll do that,” Trixie said. “And I bring him here the day after tomorrow?”

  “Er . . . yes, that’s right.”

  “At what time?”

  Christ, Tamar thought, I can’t remember. Get a grip! “Ernst will confirm that when you see him tomorrow,” he said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me for half an hour or so, I’ve got some things to sort out in the barn.”

  When he’d gone, Trixie Greydanus leaned back in her chair and regarded Marijke ironically. “Well, well, well,” she said. “This Tamar turns out to be none other than the famous Christiaan Boogart. Would that by any chance explain the extra colour in your cheeks this morning, Miss Maartens?”

  Giggling, Marijke cuffed her on the back of the head. Rosa looked up, wide-eyed.

  The wind was easterly with a cold bite to it, and it sent falling leaves on ragged flights like yellow butterflies. At the corner of the house, Tamar caught sight of Marijke’s grandmother working in the kitchen garden. The old woman was swaddled in an oversized dark coat and an apron fashioned from a sack. She was harvesting beetroot, thrusting her spade into the ground, levering, stooping to lift them by their purple-veined leaves, dropping them into a heavy wooden wheelbarrow. When she saw him approaching, she straightened and wiped her hands on the coarse apron, smiling.

  “Good morning, Oma. The garden is looking good.”

  Julia Maartens went into an elaborate mime: a sorrowful gesture at herself, another at the garden and the fields, a stoop as if under a heavy burden, a shrug, a prayerful gesture at the sky. Tamar understood. She was old, the work was too much, the farm was falling into ruin, but what could she do, other than hope that God would be kind to them.

  “I’ll help when I can,” he said. “We’ll be all right.”

  She reached up and touched his cheeks lightly with the fingers of both hands, careful not to soil his face. Her eyes were wet, perhaps because of the chill wind.

  “I have some stuff to sort out, Oma. When I’ve finished, you must tell me what jobs you want me to do.”

  He turned to go, but she began another mime, this time silently mouthing the words as if she knew her gestures were inadequate. She pointed at the house and then at Tamar. She hugged herself. She pressed her palms together and held both hands to the side of her face, closing her eyes. Finally she placed both hands over her heart, nodding and smiling.

  Tamar stared at her. Was she really saying what he thought she was saying? That she was happy Marijke’s lover had returned, happy her granddaughter was sharing his bed? Embarrassed, he turned his face away and watched a squadron of rooks wheel above the orchard. When he turned back, Marijke’s grandmother was nodding again, tears falling onto her cheeks. Not knowing what else to do, he took her face in both hands and kissed her forehead. Then he left her and went to the barn.

  He pulled away the straw that Koop’s men had strewn over the contents of the container and began sorting, thinking of hiding places as he went. Two Sten guns, which he assembled and laid on the floor with their ammunition clips. Four bundles of secondhand clothes with prewar Dutch labels. Two pairs of well-worn leather boots and a pair of black shoes. A metal drum, which he prised open to find sugar, tea, coffee, flour, powdered milk, powdered egg, tinned meat, English cigarettes in Dutch packets, candles, lard, several boxes of matches, and three slabs of something in plain brown paper. He tore the corner from one of them. Chocolate! He broke off a piece and put it in his mouth. It tasted like a lost childhood. A tin case containing medical supplies: dressings, penicillin powder, ampoules of morphine, syringes, disinfectant, iodine, three rolls of bandages wrapped around transceiver crystals. And a bottle labelled ASPIRIN. The white pills inside were, in fact, Benzedrine, little tablets of mental lightning for exhausted wireless operators.

  At the bottom of the pile was a canvas satchel. Inside it Tamar found a set of maps, two German military compasses, a pair of binoculars, and several rolls of Dutch banknotes, used, and not forged. Something else too, right at the bottom. A well-fingered ID booklet embossed with an eagle clutching a swastika in its talons. He flipped it open. It belonged to Gertrud Berendts, an auxiliary nurse. The photograph was one of Marijke, taken perhaps two years ago.

  Tamar leaned back against the side of the stall. London knew everything, he realized. He felt foolish. “The Maartens farm,” Hendriks had said. “You do remember the place?” And they’d known all along. They’d known that this time he wouldn’t leave without her. They’d faked her an ID to make it possible.

  He was still staring at the photograph when he heard the barn door open. He stuffed the booklet into the satchel and scrabbled around in the metal drum for the chocolate.

  “I don’t want to see anything you don’t want me to,” Marijke said, “but Trixie needs to go soon. You should come and say good-bye to her.”

  “I will. But come in here a minute. I want to kiss you.”

  When their lips were together, he forced hers open gently with his own and slid the little chunk of chocolate from his mouth into hers. He watched her eyes fill with amazement then close, watched her taste a pleasure she’d almost forgotten.

  Marijke held Rosa, and Tamar held the bike. Trixie lifted the cushions and the blanket from the trailer and then pressed her fingers against its base. It swivelled up, revealing a hollow compartment. She put in the things that Marijke had given her.

  Tamar said, “You have to hide food too?”

  Trixie looked up. “You’ve been away a while, Christiaan. Food’s getting scarce, and the Germans are nearly as hungry as we are. Some of them would slit your throat for a jar of jam.”

  Marijke and Tamar watched her leave. She had to stand on the pedals to power the heavy machine up to the road.

  “She’s good,” Marijke said. “I’d trust her with my life. I do trust her with my life.”

  “And mine?”

  “Without question. Why do you ask?”

  “Because she lied to me,” Tamar said, watching the receding bike.

  “What? What do you mean, she lied to you?”

  “She said she had legs like a carthorse, and nothing could be further from the truth.”

  Marijke took his chin between her fingers and forced his face towards her own. “If I ever catch you looking at another woman’s legs again, Christiaan Boogart,” she said, “I’ll scratch your eyes out.”

  Dart sat huddled inside his overcoat on a cast-iron bench on the terrace of the Mendlo asylum, watching the lunatics. One of them, a middle-aged man wearing a long cardigan over his uniform of white tunic and trousers, was trying to trap the shadows of clouds as they moved across the leaf-strewn lawn. His method was to stamp his foot down hard on each shadow as it reached him and use his weight to hold it there. He did not seem at all disappointed when the shadow escaped him but turned and waited eagerly for the next, poised like a goalkeeper. Dart admired his attitude.

  Albert Veening lowered himself onto the bench beside Dart and inhaled deeply. “I love these late afternoons at this time of year. There’s a smell in the air that reminds me of tobacco.”

  Dart felt in his coat pocket and found his cigarettes.

  When Albert had lit up, Dart said, “That one, there. The old lady. What’s she doing?”

  “The one with Sister Joanna? Her real name is Elena, but she will only answer to the name Sidona. She thinks she’s a stranded angel. She may well be right.”

  The angel was wearing a man’s cap and coat over her long white dress; her feet were bare. She was having an animated discussion with an invisible person.

  “Who’s she talking to?”

  “Another angel,” Veening said. “Probab
ly the one she calls Michael. She says he has blue wings and hard shiny skin like a beetle. I hope it’s him, anyway. If it’s the one called Trago, we’ll be up half the night. He upsets her.”

  “Tell me what you do for these people.”

  “Bugger all, frankly. We feed and protect them. There are drugs that would help, but we’ve no hope of getting hold of them. Before the war I had a colleague who used to wire patients up and shoot a dose of electricity through their brains. That would see off the demons for a day or two. And the angels, of course. But he joined the Nazi Party and went off to Germany to do ‘research.’ He made the right decision, seeing as how we’re lucky to get electricity one day a week, at best.”

  Dart said, “But it’s a miracle, isn’t it, that the Germans haven’t shut you down? The Nazis don’t have what you would call a kindly attitude towards the mentally ill.”

  Veening watched the plane trees lose a few more leaves before he replied.

  “We used to have a large number of inmates who were mentally handicapped, rather than mentally ill. I’m sure you understand the difference. Many of them were the kind of people who get called village idiots. Perfectly harmless. In 1941 the Germans came and took them away. Rounded them up and piled them into two trucks. Some of them were in mortal terror; others thought they were being taken out for a treat. It was a lovely summer day.”

  He stubbed his cigarette out and pocketed it.

  “I don’t know what happened to them. I think that if I did know, I’d be wearing a white uniform and trying to trap shadows with my feet, like Gerard over there. Now there are just twenty-four patients and seven staff, including me. We rattle around in this huge great place like dried peas in a bucket. But, as you say, it’s a miracle that we are here at all. Perhaps Sidona’s angels are watching over us.”

  He turned to face Dart. “Sorry. I tend to ramble. Now, come with me to the office. I promised to show you the telephone.”

  Dart stood. “Albert,” he said, “I hate to correct you, but it’s not seven staff. It’s eight, including me.”

  Veening bowed his head, a gesture of apology. “Of course, Dr. Lubbers. I get forgetful sometimes. I find it helps.”

  The asylum superintendent’s office had once been rather grand. The leather-topped desk was the size of a bed, but there was nothing on it except a stained cup, a novel, and dust. A large statue stood at the back of the room: a white marble woman, her upper body naked, one arm outstretched in a caring gesture. Veening had hung his coat, hat, scarf, and umbrella on it. The ceiling was covered in fancy plasterwork, and the walls were dark oak panelling. Dart glanced around.

  “Over there,” Veening said.

  In a corner, half hidden among a heap of unwanted furniture and old files, was a huge and ancient contraption mounted on a thick slab of mahogany: a pair of round bells with a little hammer between them, a brass winding handle, a handset on a brass hook. The mouthpiece looked like a black cup and saucer. It was connected to the rest of the machine by what looked like frayed grey rope.

  “You’re joking,” Dart said.

  “I found it in one of the cellars, a week after the Germans took our proper phones away. Dates from about 1900, at a guess. It’s a beauty, don’t you think? The wires run up behind the panelling. As I said, we are connected to only two other phones, one in Apeldoorn and one in Amersfoort, but there’s a relay system. You have to wind it up with that handle thing before you can use it.”

  Dart ran his fingers through his hair. There were things he hadn’t been briefed on, he realized. “London didn’t say anything about this.”

  “I don’t suppose they know. It’s a local thing. Something we put together ourselves. And it’s only for emergencies, mind. It usually only rings when some new kind of hell breaks loose.”

  “Albert, may I ask you something? How long have you been working for the resistance?”

  “Since the day the Germans took my village idiots away,” Albert Veening said.

  Tamar propped himself up on the pillows so that he could see Marijke’s face more clearly in the weak candlelight.

  “Are you tired? Do you want to go to sleep?”

  She shook her head. “I want to talk.”

  “We have lots of time.”

  “Perhaps. Listen. There, did you hear it? The owl again.”

  “Tell me about the Germans coming here,” he said. “When was this?”

  “A couple of weeks into the new year. We were half expecting them. A boy from one of the other farms ran over here to tell us that German soldiers had been at his place. We hoped they would pass us by, like most people do. But they didn’t. They came the next day. Eight of them, in two trucks. We’d had time to hide quite a lot of food. They managed to catch about half the chickens, but the rest ran off into the orchard. Two of the Germans chased them, shooting at them with rifles. Can you imagine? It was almost funny. They were lousy shots.”

  “That’s encouraging,” he said.

  “I suppose it is. But they took the tractor and both the horses. I bribed one soldier with a jar of butter not to take the bike or the tyres. They took most of the hay and half our firewood, the bastards. They took the sheets and blankets from our beds. Lots of stuff. They looted us.”

  “Did they . . .” He hesitated, not sure how to ask the question, or if he wanted to. “Did they hurt you, or anything?”

  She reached up and touched his face. “No. They looked at me, you know? But nothing happened. I was well wrapped up against the weather, anyway; they probably weren’t sure if I was a woman or a man.”

  “So they were stupid as well,” he said, kissing her.

  A little later, she said, “Don’t worry. We’ll survive. We’ve worked hard on the garden. That’s all we can do now. We should have enough food to last until spring, if we’re careful. After that —”

  “After that,” Tamar said, “the Americans or the British or the Canadians will be here. It’ll all be over.”

  “I’d love to believe that.”

  “I’m sure of it. Believe me.”

  In the hidden room at the asylum, the wind moaned softly at the gap in the window, but Dart couldn’t hear it. He was wired to the transceiver, the headphones clamped over his ears. His right hand wrote fast, translating the stuttering Morse into meaningless sequences of letters. His pistol lay on the desk. At one point a moth crash-landed on Dart’s notepad, and his hand brushed it away without pausing in its writing. Now and again he danced his feet against the floor, warming them.

  When London signed off, Dart removed the headphones and massaged the tense muscles in his neck. As he went to disconnect the antenna, he heard something calling on the wind. An owl, perhaps. Or a lunatic. He spread the silks on the desk and began the laborious task of decoding.

  Dart was finishing his meagre breakfast in the asylum’s huge kitchen when Sister Agatha walked in, holding an infant.

  “This is Rosa.” She made it sound important.

  “Ah,” Dart said, getting to his feet. He hadn’t known that a child would be involved in his mission, and he was rather puzzled.

  “My niece. Well, actually she’s my sister’s daughter’s daughter.”

  “I see,” Dart said, untruthfully. The little girl regarded him with gravely suspicious eyes.

  “You’ll be seeing quite a bit of Rosa, I imagine,” Sister Agatha said. “Her mother is Beatrix Greydanus. Trixie.”

  “Oh, right. Our, er . . .”

  “Your courier, yes. Come and meet her. She’s outside, talking to Sidona.”

  “The lady who has conversations with angels?”

  “That’s right. She’s giving Trixie the latest news from heaven. Things aren’t going too well up there, apparently.”

  Trixie and Sidona were sitting in a rather sorry-looking summerhouse at the rear of the building. When the old lady saw Dart approaching, she clamped her hands over her mouth and fled. Agatha handed Rosa to her mother and set off in unhurried pursuit.

  Dart
shook hands with Trixie. “I seem to have upset Sidona,” he said.

  “She’ll be fine. She worries about strangers overhearing her when she’s reporting on angels. She’s quite security conscious in her own way.” She smiled. “Now, if you want to get your things, we’ll walk to town. We’re expected at the Marionette House at ten o’clock.”

  The road into Mendlo was not in good condition. It had been hastily patched up, here and there, with rubble or concrete. In several places the verges had been crushed down into the ditch by the caterpillar tracks of German tanks. At one point, the road had been reduced to half its width by a British bomb; fifty metres off to the right, a second bomb had exploded in a field, and the crater was now a small pond. A single moorhen trailed ripples across it. Dart and Trixie took turns to push the bike and its trailer. Dart’s medical bag with the pistol in it was slung over the handlebars. He was worried about what the jolting might do to the suitcase transceiver concealed below Rosa’s slumbering body.

  Trixie glanced sideways at him. Was he good-looking? Well, yes. Nice hair, a profile like that American movie actor whose name she could never remember. In fact, the two of them, he and Christiaan, looked similar. This one was tense, though. You could see all the muscles in his jaw standing out under the skin.

  “So then, Dr. Lubbers,” she said, “tell me what you know about the Marionette House.”

  Dart thought back to his briefing at Ashgrove. Only six days ago. And a world away.

  “It’s at the corner of two small streets that run down from Old Church to the market square. The building is wedge-shaped, with the narrow end facing the square. It’s got three floors. The ground floor is the shop, with a workshop at the back. The living rooms are on the first floor. There’s a single attic room at the top of the house, which is where I’ll be operating from. It has a shuttered window overlooking the square. The shop entrance is on Church Lane, but I can come and go via the workshop if I need to. The owners are Pieter Grotius and his wife, Barbara.”