by Mal Peet
The sergeant thrust Dart into the officer’s line of vision and said, “Sir! A doctor.”
The German straightened and looked into Dart’s face. The only sound in the square now was the old man’s chanting, and Dart was surprised that no one put a stop to it.
Dart managed to say, “What has happened, Major? How are you injured?”
The German’s eyes seemed unnaturally wide open; perhaps, Dart thought, a symptom of shock. He stared at Dart for a second or two, then gestured with the gun towards the dead body.
“The little Jew rat tried to bite my ear off. He tried to bite my ear off!”
It took Dart a second to understand the words. “May I see, please?”
He took the major’s hand and pulled away the wad of dressing, thinking, This is the first time I have touched a Nazi.
The ear was bleeding freely, as ears do. Where it joined the skull there was a slight rip but most of the blood was coming from the lobe, which was almost split in two. Probably the boy’s canine teeth had been clamped there when the German shot him, and the flesh had torn as he fell to the ground. Dart was surprised to find himself working this out so logically, surprised that his terror allowed him to think at all.
“This will need one or two stitches, Major. I cannot do that here, of course. I would rather leave it to your own doctors. The wound is not really serious.”
He was extremely startled by the officer’s furious reaction to these words. Two small red patches appeared as if by magic just below the pale eyes. The voice came as a harsh whisper, a scream barely under control.
“Not serious? Not serious? What sort of damned stupid Dutch bloody doctor are you? Listen, idiot: a Jew who has lived underground like some kind of filthy little animal has bitten me. His dirty Jewish spit is in my blood. What I care about is disease, Doctor. Disease! Isn’t that obvious?”
Dart had absolutely no idea what to say. He could see the little pink threads that had appeared in the German’s eyes. He forced his mouth to work.
“Yes. Of course. I . . .” He cleared his throat. “I have swabs. And iodine. I do not have much else. Times are hard.”
“Iodine? Will iodine kill the poison in Jew spit? Will it?”
“Yes,” Dart said. “I’m sure it will.” He fumbled with the clasps of his bag. In its false bottom was the Smith and Wesson revolver. Dear God, he thought, I want to kill this man.
He took out a swab and the iodine and painted the Nazi’s ear a brownish purple. It was good to know that it hurt. While he was doing it, the chanting behind him stopped. He heard the dog whine. The major sat on the running board of the car while Dart put a fresh dressing on the wound and bandaged it in place. When it was done, the major carefully examined Dart’s handiwork with his fingers. If there had been a mirror available, Dart thought, the man would have spent some time studying his appearance.
By now, Dart was extremely anxious, but he did not dare look at his watch.
“Herr Major? May I go now?”
The German considered this for a moment. “No,” he said. “Stay here.” He took a slim metal cigarette case from his breast pocket, flicked it open and held it out to Dart. “Smoke?”
Dart took a cigarette and stood smoking it while the SS loaded the Jews into a high canvas-covered truck.
It was a surprisingly subdued business. A man who was making a low continuous moaning had to be pulled away from the dead boy, but there was little of the crying and screaming that Dart had steeled himself for. Even the children were quiet, presumably because they had not yet been separated from their parents. That, Dart knew, would happen later. Perhaps at a railway siding somewhere near Belsen or Dachau. If they lasted that long. He took a last drag on the cigarette and crushed the butt under his heel. The truck reversed and pulled out of the square. Its engine sounded sick. Dart’s last sight of the ghostly faces of its passengers was through a haze of bluish exhaust.
The major returned to his car. He picked up his cap and settled into the front seat beside the driver. The sergeant and another soldier climbed into the back and sat with their weapons aimed at the sky. The major studied Dart for several seconds.
“What is your name, Doctor?”
“Lubbers. Ernst Lubbers.”
“Well, Dr. Lubbers. I am fortunate that you were nearby. You are attached to the hospital, I presume? But I have not seen you before.”
Oh, shit. “Er . . . actually, I’m based at the asylum.”
The driver had moved to start the car, but the major now put out a hand to stop him.
“What? You work at the madhouse? Are you telling me that you are a psychiatrist?”
Dart forced a laugh. “Oh, no, no. Not at all. I look after the general health of the patients. Also of the people here in the town. We are short of doctors. I do everything.”
The man’s eyelashes were incredibly white. Like a pig’s, Dart thought. That was what gave him that permanently surprised expression.
“I shall remember you, Dr. Lubbers.”
“Thank you,” Dart said stupidly.
The German gestured at the square. “One day none of this will be necessary.” He sighed like a burdened man. “One day, people like you and I will live in a clean world. Do you understand what I mean? As a doctor, you will know that surgery is sometimes unavoidable. What happened here today was a medical procedure. Our children will someday thank us for having the courage to cut the infection out.”
Dart said, “I understand you, Major. Really.”
“And my ear will be healthy?”
“I think so.” Dart could not resist leaving a germ of doubt in the man’s mind. “I’m pretty sure we got to the infection in time.”
The white eyelashes flickered. “I hope you are right, Doctor. It would be bad news for both of us if you were wrong.” He turned to the driver. “Let’s go.”
Dart stepped back from the car, but the major hadn’t quite finished with him.
“Dr. Lubbers? The clean world I spoke about — there is a small thing you could do to help create it.” He gestured with a thumb towards the centre of the square. “You could clear that up.”
Unwillingly, Dart turned to look where the major had pointed, to where the dead boy still lay facedown on the cobbles. As the car moved off, the town hall clock began to sound the twelve chimes of midday.
“Honest to God, I still can’t believe it,” Yoyo yelled. “We’re really on our way!”
Then he braked and we came to a dead stop in a traffic jam on the Chiswick flyover. We’d been travelling for all of fifteen minutes. It was still early in the day, but the sun was already fierce and light flashed from metal and glass all around us, from car roofs and windscreens and from the windows of office blocks. We crept at glacier speed for several miles, and by the time the traffic thinned out on the M4 and we picked up speed, I was slippery with sweat.
Yoyo reached up and opened the sunroof. “So tell me,” he said, “how did you do it? How did you make Sonia change her mind?”
It hadn’t taken much. Just three weeks of reasonable argument, unreasonable argument, nagging and whingeing, tearful discussion, begging, throwing tantrums, sulking, being charming, and emotional blackmail.
“Just by being my sweet self,” I said.
He peered at me over his amber owl-eye glasses.
“Hey, watch the road,” I said. “Anyway, I’m more interested in what Mum said to you last night.”
Yoyo had spent the night at our house so we could get an early start. After dinner Mum got me clearing away and washing up while she took Yoyo into the living room for “a little chat.” When he’d come back to the kitchen, he’d crossed his eyes and pulled his mouth down at the corners. His ears were bright pink, as if they’d been freshly slapped.
“So come on, what did she say?”
“She gave me a big talk about safe driving and the condition of the car.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“The car? Nothing, absolutely. I told her
.”
“What else?”
The rosy tint returned to his ears. He grinned, a bit sheepishly. “We had a most serious discussion about your birthday.”
“What do you mean? My birthday isn’t for ages yet.”
“That is the exact point Sonia made several times. That you are not sixteen until September.”
“Oh, right.” I probably blushed, although I’d prefer to think I didn’t.
After a pause Yoyo said, “I told her not to worry, because I am gay.”
“You what? You didn’t, did you? Is that what you told her?”
“Of course.”
“You liar,” I said, giggling. “You never.”
“No, you’re right. I should have said it, but I did not think of it until later.”
“That’s a shame,” I said, then clammed up, thinking he might take it the wrong way. Or even the right way.
“Do you know what else? Your mother already made phone calls to places in Devon and Cornwall.”
“What do you mean? What places?”
“The kind of places we might stay. Not hotels, these bed and breakfasts. She checked out the prices. She said to me, ‘Johannes, the average price per room at this time of the year is about thirty pounds or less. So the money Tamar has got is plenty for two rooms each night.’ She gave me this look she does, know what I mean?”
I knew.
“When we get back, she wants to see the . . .” He lifted his left hand from the wheel and clicked his fingers, searching for the word. “The reckonings.”
“The bills?”
“Exactly. The bills. To make sure we have two rooms every time.”
“That’s cool. She can have the bloody bills,” I said, hating her.
I didn’t know then that we’d blow it the very first night.
I’d been a city girl all my life. Long car journeys were something I knew nothing about. I had Yoyo’s road atlas on my lap, and the straightish blue lines of the motorways didn’t look that long. The map took us a page or two west to Bristol, a page farther south to Exeter, another to Plymouth. I had a very shaky idea of scale. The only map I really knew was the one of the London Underground, so my idea of a really long journey was from my nearest tube, Ravenscourt Park, to somewhere like Walthamstow, at the far side of the universe. The maps Grandad had left me showed hills, moors, forests, rivers that twisted like snakes. Stupidly I thought we’d start to see such exotic things quite early in our journey west — like just after Reading, maybe. I was deeply disappointed. The countryside looked hammered flat and colourless by the heat, and seemed to drift by incredibly slowly. At Bristol we crawled in dense traffic over the Avonmouth Bridge. The river below swilled like grey treacle between huge banks of cracked and crumpled mud. On the far side we ground to a halt again, locked in a mass of vehicles and traffic cones.
The Saab turned into an oven, and we sat there and roasted. When I was something like medium-rare, I fell asleep. I woke up when I felt the car jerk and turn. I opened my eyes and saw what could have been anywhere: a busy roundabout, billboards, an industrial estate, a high grass bank scattered with plastic bags and scraps of paper. It took me a minute to get my voice to work. My mouth felt and tasted as though a hamster had hibernated in it.
“Where are we?”
“Exeter, thank God,” Yoyo said. “Motorway services. If I don’t pee I will explode. And I’m starving, also.”
The car park was packed with coaches, camper vans, cars towing boats, cars towing caravans, cars with racks of mountain bikes on the back, cars with surfboards on their roofs. Inside, the place was heaving and the atmosphere hit us in the face like a wave of used bathwater. We queued a lifetime for food. The Muzak was a greasy orchestral version of “Summer Holiday.”
Yoyo said, “If there is a canteen in hell, it is like this.”
When we slid our trays along to the till, the exhausted-looking boy in the silly paper hat punched buttons and said, “Eleven pounds sixty, please.”
“Incredible,” I muttered, groping in my bag.
When I pulled out the wad of Grandad’s cash, Yoyo murmured, “You know, it’s not a good idea keeping it all in your bag like this. Someone might pinch it. Nineteen hundred and forty-five pounds is a lot of money to lose.”
I stared up at him. “What? What did you say, Yoyo?”
“I just said —”
“Eleven pounds sixty, please,” the boy repeated.
A melting fat man in the queue behind us said, “Come on, love, let’s move it.”
We found a space at the end of a table. Our neighbours were four surf boys, all with straggled bottle-blond hair, half a dozen hippy necklaces apiece, and huge patchy shorts.
Yoyo got busy squirting sachets of mayonnaise onto his chips.
“I’m thick,” I said, “really thick.”
He looked up, licking his fingers. “What?”
“You said ‘nineteen hundred and forty-five pounds.’”
He looked confused. “That’s right, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. But didn’t you wonder why it was such a weird amount? Like, why not one thousand five hundred? Or two thousand?”
Yoyo’s reply was something like “Ugh urgh-urgh” because his mouth was full of double cheeseburger.
“It’s because it’s not the amount that’s important,” I said, “it’s the number. It’s a date. Nineteen forty-five.”
Yoyo swallowed burger-pulp. It took a while to slide down his long thin gullet; it was like watching a cartoon of an ostrich swallowing a brick.
“Of course,” he said. “Nineteen forty-five. I am as thick as you. Thicker!”
The surf boys were watching us now, grinning like bleached monkeys.
“All right, all right, it’s not exactly a competition. But that’s it, don’t you think? The money is another, well, clue, if you like.”
“Yes, I think so. And are you going to tell me what it means, Sherlock Holmes?”
“I dunno. Nineteen forty-five was the year the war ended, obviously. The year Gran and Grandad escaped and came to England, according to what was in the paper. So I s’pose this, this thing we’re doing, this . . .”
“Adventure?” Yoyo suggested.
And I thought what a ridiculous old-fashioned word that was. Typical Yoyo. It was about right, though, no denying it.
“It must be to do with something that happened in that year.”
“Brilliant,” Yoyo said.
The surf boys were all ears now, leaning towards us. I turned and glowered at them. They did a sort of “Ooh, baby” thing and looked away, smirking.
Then I turned my death-glare onto Yoyo. “Don’t take the piss unless you’ve got a better idea, okay?”
He stuck a mayo-coated chip in his mouth to hide what I hoped was embarrassment. “Cool,” he said. “By the way, you look very sexy when you are —”
“Shut up,” I said.
Not long after Exeter the motorway ended and the road split into two. Our bit, the Plymouth bit, climbed up a long hill. At the top the road levelled out and took us through a long patch of trees, and when we came out of it, we could see forever. We both said “Wow” at the same time, because it was like being in a plane. Ahead and below us there were curving webs of fields and hedges between overlapping layers of blue-green hills. Far beyond it all the jagged horizon was like motionless purple smoke. I’d never seen so much landscape in one go before.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Yoyo said.
Well, yes, it was. But what I felt was fear. No, not fear exactly; that’s too strong. Anxiety, perhaps. I’d been so tangled up in working out what Grandad was telling — or asking — me that I’d hardly given a thought to what it would actually be like, this adventure, as Yoyo had called it. And what I felt when we had that brief glimpse of huge distance was . . . unsafe. What made my breathing stumble was the knowledge that in all that vast countryside there wasn’t a soul who knew me. I had to fight back the urge to say, “Right, we’ve seen
it. Let’s go home.”
So I was glad when we hit the outskirts of Plymouth, which looked pretty much like the outskirts of anywhere else.
At the nineteenth set of lights, Yoyo said, “Tamar, can we stop for the night here? I don’t want to drive any more.”
“Okay,” I said, as coolly as I could. As if the words “stop for the night” caused me no problems at all. “I’ve no idea where to go, though.”
Yoyo pulled over and stopped in a lay-by that had BUSES ONLY painted on it. He took the road atlas from me and flicked through to the back pages, where there was a small map of the centre of Plymouth. He studied it for a minute and then craned his neck round.
“Ah,” he said, “there, see? The sign says Hoe and Barbican.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know exactly. Strange words. But look, this Hoe is green on the map and close to the sea. I would like to look at the sea.”
After some ill-tempered encounters with other drivers, we found a sign saying HOE PARKING. We fed the greedy ticket machine, then climbed up steps and a slope to what looked like a park. There were people lying about with half their clothes missing, and dogs panting in the shade of trees. When we got to the top of the rise, we stood there gawping. It was as if we had walked into a child’s drawing, the colours of everything were so bright and simple. The green grass levelled and then fell away between beds of cartoon-coloured flowers towards the sea, which was intensely — impossibly — blue. The child artist had sketched in an island and a couple of ships for extra interest. Slap in the middle of the scene was a lighthouse painted in nice fat red and white stripes like a stick of rock. After a whole day of hot driving, it was so unreal that it was ages before I could turn to look at Yoyo. He was gazing at the sea and grinning his face in half.
“Fantastic.”
“Yeah. So what do we do now?”
He looked at me as if I were an alien or something. “Do?” he said. “Do? We sit and look and thank God we are not in the car still. And because I have been driving all day, you can go and find two cold drinks. Please.”
