Weaver

by Baxter, Stephen

  ‘I am a gefreiter,’ he said uncomfortably. ‘A Wehrmacht rank—’

  ‘Different from the SS. Lower than a corporal? But then you are so much younger than Josef, aren’t you? One must make allowances, I suppose.’

  Josef laughed. ‘Even Julia outranks you. She has already risen to unterscharfuhrer.’

  Julia said, ‘Or as we would say, sergeant. In fact we generally speak English in the Legion ...’

  The barkeeper brought their drinks; he laid them out as quickly as he could and scuttled away, head averted.

  ‘Of course,’ Josef said to Claudine silkily, ‘you don’t have ranks in your profession, as such, do you?’

  That confused Ernst. ‘She is a teacher.’

  ‘Ah, but I meant your new profession, my dear.’ He reached down and casually lifted up Claudine’s skirt.

  Claudine did not flinch, or show any fear.

  Ernst slapped his brother’s hand away. ‘Leave her alone. It’s not like that.’

  ‘Oh, come, Ernst, don’t be naive. All collaborators are whores; it’s just a question of the price. I mean, do you really imagine a girl like this would be seen with a man like you if not for the war?’ He winked. ‘It’s not as if you need to spend your money, you know. The SS will soon have their brothels set up. I could get you a pass. Come to that, as we are of good Aryan stock, it would be doing your country a service to spend your seed between the thighs of some busty blonde maiden.’

  Julia laughed, blowing out smoke. ‘It will be an Aryan paradise when the SS gets things sorted out, will it, Josef?’

  ‘For us it will be, yes, my dear.’ He peered at Claudine’s complexion disapprovingly, and plucked at a lock of her hair. ‘I suppose this one will do for now. I doubt if she will meet the racial criteria. Pity. I wouldn’t mind riding her myself.’ Ernst grew angry, but before he could speak Josef sipped his coffee, then spat it out on the ground. ‘Ach, what is this muck? Made from acorns, is it?’ He called more loudly, ‘Are you trying to poison us, barkeeper?’

  The barkeeper hurried to pour out replacements.

  Julia poked Josef’s elbow. ‘Don’t be so cruel to the poor old man.’

  ‘Well, he deserves it. I mean, look around you. I could have been posted to Paris. Boulogne! This must be the arsehole of all France.’

  Claudine said evenly, ‘And you are the turd that is passing through it, I suppose?’

  Ernst gasped. Even Julia looked shocked.

  Josef stared at her, then laughed out loud. ‘My word, Ernst, this half-breed of yours has a bit of spirit!’

  ‘Yes, she does,’ Ernst said testily.

  ‘So, Ernst, your training is going well? All that seasickness and lumping it up the beaches?’

  ‘The preparations are proceeding,’ Ernst said neutrally.

  ‘Yes, they are, in fact, at levels more elevated from you than the eagle flies,’ Josef said. ‘The Fuhrer has issued a final directive, I am told. The invasion of England even has a name now. Operation Sea Lion! But the details are still being argued over among the military command. I need something to draw on.’ He patted his pockets. ‘Damn.’ He lifted the cups and glasses from the table, and pulled away the lace tablecloth to expose a surface of old wood, dark and so polished it had the look of satin. He took out a pocket knife and with brisk strokes scraped a map into the table’s surface. ‘This will have to do.

  ‘Look here. This bit of coastline is the most suitable to mount an invasion, for it is here that Europe comes closest to England. One can simply hop across the Channel and assail the coasts of Sussex and Kent, and be only a few hours’ drive from London. The Navy want to plan on the basis of a narrow front, for that is more defensible from the sea than a long stretch of the Channel; the Army, though, don’t want to be bottled up on land, and argue for a wider front ...’

  He continued to sketch with his knife, drawing attack lines and defensive perimeters, cutting and splintering the tabletop. Ernst watched the faces of the women; neither of them reacted to this bit of petty vandalism.

  Claudine asked, ‘You are a mere standartenfuhrer. Why would you know all this? Perhaps you are simply trying to impress a woman you have called a whore.’

  ‘You do have spirit, don’t you? I am here advising the Waffen SS. The military arm of the SS, which strictly speaking is a Party organisation. But I work with the Ahnenerbe.’

  ‘Which,’ said Julia, ‘is Himmler’s research and cultural institute.’

  ‘I have worked with Himmler himself. So you see, my dear, your lover’s brother has contacts in high places. Aren’t you impressed?’

  Claudine said, ‘It is already a month since the surrender of France. By waiting so long you have given the English time to prepare.’

  Josef nodded, impressed again. ‘Actually some have said exactly that. General Milch, Goering’s second-in-command, for example. It is a basic principle that one should pursue a defeated enemy. Milch argued we should have mounted an airborne invasion as soon as we reached the ocean, in June.’

  Julia said, ‘I think the Fuhrer continues to hope that my countrymen will come to their senses. After all England’s land army is severely depleted after the bulk of it was lost at Dunkirk.’

  ‘It’s true Hitler has made peace offerings,’ Josef said. ‘With sensible terms: a free hand in Europe in return for the security of the British Empire. All ignored or rebuffed. How unreasonable! Especially when you see how well we treat the conquered French.’ He grabbed the top of Claudine’s thigh and squeezed it.

  ‘You’re a pig, Josef,’ Ernst murmured. The talk of war seemed unrealistic, a fantasy in the bright summer sunlight, amid the gentle sound of voices, the clink of cutlery and glasses. ‘Do you think we will invade, Josef, when it comes to it?’

  ‘Well, what do you think? The invasion fleet is in the harbour just over there. That doesn’t come cheap, you know; every barge that’s brought here can’t be lugging machine parts or coal up and down the Rhine.’

  ‘True. But we need a show of strength to keep the British on the ropes, don’t we? If the barges ever sailed, the Royal Navy would overwhelm the Kriegsmarine - it has a ten-to-one advantage. We would be chopped to matchsticks.’

  ‘But it could be even worse,’ Julia said. ‘After France fell Churchill ordered the Royal Navy to sink the French fleet in its Algerian ports. But his cabinet overruled him; the Navy was ordered back. And so Germany took the French Navy, one of the most powerful and most modern in the world. What a mistake for the British!’

  ‘Yes,’ Josef said. ‘They lacked the confidence to strike - or the foolhardiness.’

  ‘The English are all cowards,’ Julia said lightly.

  That stung Ernst, who had fought the English in the Low Countries. ‘And what is it you want, madam, save for the prostration of your own people?’

  She was unperturbed. ‘On the contrary, it is what I offer him that interests Josef in me, I think.’

  Josef grinned. ‘Don’t think she wants me for my body. I hope that we will soon be engaged in a great enterprise together.’

  ‘What madness are you cooking up now, Josef?’

  Julia dug into her canvas bag and brought out a couple of books. ‘Do you read English, Ernst? I’m afraid I have no German translations, not yet.’

  He fingered the books. One was a battered volume titled If It Had Happened Otherwise, published in 1931, edited by somebody called J.C. Squire. The other was actually a magazine, he saw, with a garish cover; it was called Unknown. It was a year old.

  Julia said, ‘The Squire book is a collection of essays, speculations on how history might have developed differently if certain key events had taken another course. What if Napoleon had won at Waterloo, for instance?’

  Claudine glanced at the book. ‘There is an essay here by Churchill!’

  ‘As for the magazine-’ Julia tapped the contents page with a manicured finger. ‘This is the item of interest.’ It was a contribution from an author called L. Sprague de Camp, and it w
as called ‘Lest Darkness Fall’. ‘De Camp’s serial imagines a man gone back in time to a Rome on the point of falling to the barbarians. What if that collapse could have been averted?’

  Ernst clumsily translated the title into German. ‘What is all this, Josef?’

  His brother clasped his hands behind his head. ‘Do you ever have the feeling that history went wrong, Ernst? I mean, everything we do is entirely shaped by the past. If not for our ignominious defeat in the west in the first war, if not for the spiteful settlement of Versailles, we would not be sitting here now - yes? And take that further. What if you could change history so that, for example, Germany did not lose the first war?’

  ‘History developed as it did through necessity.’

  Julia sighed. ‘Your brother really is rather unimaginative, Josef.’

  ‘Well, I warned you about that.’

  Julia said, ‘There are plenty of ways things could have gone differently. If the British had been persuaded to stay out of what was essentially a continental war, for instance. If that had been so, the Kaiser could have won, in the sense of achieving his central goal of an economic union of the European peoples centred on Germany. Wouldn’t that be a better history than the one we endured? I mean, all those lives lost on the killing fields of France - your own father’s invaliding—’

  ‘Be careful what you wish for,’ said Claudine. ‘If not for the turmoil that followed Germany’s defeat, surely you Nazis couldn’t have risen to power.’

  Josef applauded ironically. ‘Well, I don’t necessarily agree with your conclusion, but you have the right idea, unlike my brother.’

  Ernst shook his head. ‘What is the point of this conversation? Even if you wished to change history, you could not.’

  ‘Ah.’ Josef glanced at Julia. ‘You might think so, mightn’t you? But Julia assures me that it is not so. There is a peculiar technology, developed in America—’

  ‘America! I might have known. You have proof of this, I suppose,’ Ernst snapped at Julia.

  ‘In fact I do,’ Julia said. ‘Proof intelligible to a historian anyhow. But I don’t yet have the means to deliver an operational technology. There is a component I lack ... a human component.’

  ‘Strictly speaking, subhuman,’ Josef said.

  She smiled at him fondly. ‘I am confident that when England is in German hands, that component will shortly be found and brought to me.’

  ‘And then,’ Josef said, ‘the possibilities are unlimited.’

  Ernst said, ‘You always were an ambitious bastard, Josef. You plan to sell this fantasy of a time manipulator to Himmler, do you?’

  ‘Well, you know he would be receptive. The Reichsfuhrer dreams of super-weapons. A plane that could strike at America. The Hammer of Thor! What would he make of the greatest weapon of all? For what enemy could stand before us, if his very past could be cut away?’

  Ernst shook his head. ‘You’re mad. It’s as simple as that.’

  Josef sighed. ‘How disappointing you are, brother, as you have always been. And yet I love you even so. And that is why I want you to share my great adventure, even if you are incapable of understanding it — ’

  A siren wailed mournfully.

  ‘Ah,’ Josef said. ‘It sounds as if the RAF is coming to join the party. What a pity.’ He drained his cognac, stood, and bowed to Claudine. ‘Mademoiselle. Don’t be too rough with my little brother; he does break easily, you know.’ He glanced down at the ruined tabletop, brushed some splinters from it, and, with Julia, walked away.

  Claudine touched Ernst’s hand. ‘You shouldn’t let him upset you. It’s what he wants.’

  ‘He’s had a lifetime’s practice at it.’

  She shrugged, and lit another cigarette. ‘But while he pursues these absurd fantasies of his, you are the one who will earn an Iron Cross in England. It is you who would make your father proud.’

  Perhaps, Ernst thought. If he ever got there.

  A band of soldiers came into the bar. There was a good deal of laughter and banter, despite the sirens. Their uniforms were soaked to the knee by sea water, as if they had been paddling.

  It was as if everybody was playing, Ernst thought, all along the Channel coast. You had to keep up a front that this was a serious operation; he’d never say anything else even to Claudine. But Ernst suspected that nobody really believed the invasion would happen, despite all this build-up. There were other ways to bring down the British, such as bombing them flat, or sinking their supply convoys and starving them out. No, the vast, unlikely barge armada would never be launched. Ernst would never see England, and he would have to earn his Iron Cross some other way.

  He finished his cognac. And when they left, he gave the barman money to cover the damage to the table.

  VI

  20 August

  The siren’s wail woke Mary with a start. For a moment she had no idea where she was. The night was hot, her neck was slick with sweat, and the room was pitch dark.

  She rolled over, and her questing hand knocked painfully into a bit of furniture. But she found the small electric lamp, and fumbled for the cord. The lamp came on, shedding a dim low-voltage glow. This was her hotel room. She was in Colchester, her first night here. The windows had been blacked out by being pasted over with wallpaper - cheaper than blackout curtains. No wonder she was lost. And no wonder the room was so damn hot, with the windows stopped up like that.

  She lay back for a moment, reluctant to wake fully. The siren continued to howl, and now it was answered by others, more remote. They sounded like prehistoric beasts, long-necked and lonely, calling to each other across some dismal swamp.

  A fist battered the door, making her jump. ‘Everybody out and to the shelter!’ She heard running footsteps receding down the corridor. Doors slammed, voices murmured.

  So she got out of bed. She took slacks from her suitcase, which she hadn’t yet unpacked, and pulled them on over her nightdress, and took a jacket down from where it hung on the back of the door. She forced her bare feet into her flat sensible shoes.

  She crammed her research papers inside her briefcase and slammed it closed. Her gas-mask in its canvas bag hung on the back of the small chair before the desk. She looked around for her handbag, lost in the dim lighting of this awful power-starved English summer. She found it under the bed, next to a chamber pot. It held her identity card, ration books and US passport, all her essential papers. Her only valuable was her wedding ring, which she was wearing. What else, what else? It wasn’t her first air raid, the big attacks had been going on across southern England for a week or more, but the others had caught her in Hastings where she had been staying with George Tanner and Hilda during Gary’s convalescence. Now here she was alone in a strange town, and she hadn’t figured out her routine. She didn’t even know where the nearest shelter was.

  At the last minute she reached back to the sink, grabbed her toothbrush and stuck it in her pocket.

  She opened the door. The corridor was even more dimly lit than her room, with light bulbs only sparsely placed amid gaping empty sockets. There was nobody about. She hesitated for a second, trying to remember the way to the stairs. Left, she thought. She hurried that way.

  Still the sirens wailed. She wondered what her friends at home would think if they could see her now, fleeing for her very life down this shadowy corridor, her nightdress sticking out of her slacks. She dragged her fingers through her hair, trying to comb it roughly.

  She came to the stairs, a shadowy well. Holding onto the banister she hurried down to the ground floor, decanting into a tiny, deserted reception area. She ran straight through and out onto the street.

  The night was cloudy, the sky dark. She was in utter darkness; she felt very uncertain. The streetlights were all out, of course. The only scraps of illumination came from the odd open door or imperfectly blacked-out window. She could smell dust and ash in the air. She was only a block or so from the big old Norman castle, but she couldn’t even see that.

&nb
sp; A big ack-ack gun opened up somewhere nearby, making her flinch, and the ground shook, the noise a battering roar. And somewhere to the north a searchlight splashed a circle of light on a lid of low cloud. More gunfire barked, and a stream of sparks rose along neat parabolic arcs. By the searchlight’s glow she saw a family running in the dark, hunched over, parents hanging on to the hands of their children. Scuttling in the shadows they looked like rats.

  Mary set off the way she thought led to the castle, her bag and gas-mask pouch over her shoulder, her briefcase in her hand. She could see practically nothing, and she groped her way along a wall. It was a nightmarish feeling, hurrying into the dark.

  She collided with somebody. There was a stink of tobacco and stale beer. ‘Hello, love. Lost your way?’ A hand fumbled at her waist.

  She slapped the hand away, hard. ‘Fuck you.’ She stepped out into the street.

  ‘Well, I wish you would.’ Clearly drunk, the man laughed, but didn’t try to grab her again.

  When she was well past him, she made her way back to the sidewalk and the wall. She tried to hurry; she sensed she was in more danger from the horny drunk than from the might of the Luftwaffe. Then she tumbled into a doorway, and fell. Her right hand scraped down the wall and her knee slammed into the paving stone. ‘Shit, shit.’

  A dim light floated before her, a masked torch. ‘Are you all right?’

  Mary looked up. She made out a woman’s face. She wore a tin helmet and a dark overcoat with an ARP armband. ‘I’m OK. I just tripped.’ She tried to stand, but the knee was painful, and she winced.

  ’Let me help you.’ The girl got hold of her under her armpit and hauled her to her feet.

  ‘Thank you. I was just trying to get away from an asshole back that way.’

  ‘There are plenty of those about. Hey, you have blood on your hand. That’s a bit of a scrape. Well, you need to get to the shelter. Do you know the way?’