‘You don’t have to explain. You don’t owe me anything.’
She looked up at him, and anger flared in her pretty, blank eyes. ‘Maybe you owe me something, though. Shut up and pour me more wine.’
He obeyed.
‘It happened after you left for the barges.’
‘What did?’
‘I was denounced for my relationship with you. Hard-faced bitch at the school, it was. Probably jealous. Or frigid.’ She laughed. ‘I got my apartment walls daubed with paint, slogans.’
He nodded. ‘Such people use the word “Jerrybags, in England.’
‘Do they? Well, I hated them, hated those who would speak out against others that way. What did they know of my heart? So I rebelled further. I took another lover.’ She looked at his face. ‘I’m sorry. Not a lover. I didn’t love him ... I just did it to get back at those who insulted me, really. A childish rebellion, yes? Still, he was there, and our time together was - acceptable. He gave me gifts, as you did. And after the denunciation I could no longer work at the school.’
‘Oh. So he paid you.’
‘It didn’t mean anything. But then he was posted east, and off he went, bleating about his wife and two boys. I never heard from him again.’
‘But you needed the money.’
‘Another man came. A friend of the first. He said he had heard Hansie talk of me, and, well ... That was how it started. All word of mouth, and all gentlemen, if I may say so. I think they cared for me, each in his way.’
‘And then?’
‘And then the resistance came. Bastards,’ she said with sudden vehemence. ‘What brave men they are, to target a woman alone. Much easier than fighting the Germans.’
‘You were attacked?’
‘They would have cut my face, if I hadn’t got away. Well, the police came to me, and when they found out, you know, they passed me to the military authorities. After that it was all very smooth.’ She looked at him. ‘You’re in the Wehrmacht. You know how it works. The army runs the houses. The girls are given their cards. I was checked for infection, and interviewed.’ She laughed at that. ‘Interviewed! They prefer respectable girls to whore for their soldiers. Well, I passed the test.’
‘And you came to England?’
‘The authorities are importing French whores for the men here. Think of that! The English are so cold they can’t even prostitute themselves properly. Churchill should make a speech about it. And at least the resistance here are leaving the foreign girls alone.’
‘So you came for the Wehrmacht,’ he said. ‘For work. Not for me.’
‘No! Oh, Ernst, no. You are so straight in your thinking. It’s either one thing or the other with you, isn’t it? Nothing in between. Look, I wanted to see you. I still do.’ She leaned forward. ‘Why don’t we get out of this place? We could go to the hostel.
He stood in a kind of panic, shoving back his chair. He tried to calm himself. He took his wallet, drew out some Reichsmarks, and put them on the table, under the wine bottle. ‘Will you be able to get back by yourself?’
She looked confused. ‘Yes - there are taxis - oh, Ernst, don’t go.’
He looked down at her, so beautiful, her bright red lips still shining bright. ‘I’m sorry.’ He turned on his heel and walked away.
XVII
9 November
The prisoners were woken by bugle blasts.
They gathered for the morning appell. The Nazi flag and the flag of Albion snapped high on their poles, lifted by a chill breeze under a bright blue sky. Bundled in their shabby greatcoats, the men stamped their feet and blew on their hands.
The camp commander announced briskly that the regular Sunday work details would be suspended. Muffled cheers. Once again it was some kind of memorial day. But then Danny Adams announced the British troops would hold a parade and a minute’s silence at eleven a.m.
‘Oh, it’s not just any old memorial, old chap,’ said Willis Farjeon, standing beside Gary in the rank. ‘This is Armistice Day, when we all down tools to remember our fathers who fell in the War to End Wars. Nice clean military memorial, the kind the Nazis embrace to their bony little hearts—’
‘Put a sock in it, Farjeon,’ murmured the SBO in his broad scouse. ‘And besides, I suspect you and the other superior-breed types might not be spending the day with us after all.’ He nodded over to where the commander and his senior aides had been joined by a couple of SS officers, who were, in the usual German fashion, consulting lists.
The men whistled at the SS officers, and called out obscenities in a variety of languages, and those nearby nudged Gary and Willis. The stalag standing joke was that all SS men were in fact raging faggots, and that the racial selection processes had actually been about looking for pretty boys. ‘Don’t worry, Wooler, I hear Himmler’s pecker is even smaller than Hitler’s. You won’t feel a thing.’
Willis camped it up in response. Gary just stood there.
But it turned out it wasn’t all the stalag Aryans who were asked for today. The SS party came over to the British group and spoke briefly to the SBO. He turned and beckoned to Gary. ‘Just you, Wooler.’
Gary came out of the line. One of the SS officers stepped forward to meet him.
‘Oh, Christ,’ somebody groaned. ‘It’s the SS bird. It’s not fair.’
From beneath a black peaked cap, a startlingly beautiful face smiled at Gary. ‘So you’re Corporal Wooler. I’ve been hearing about you - and your notorious mother, whom I actually met once. We have high hopes for you, Wooler. You’re a significant figure. The American fighting for the British. The neutral who refuses a safe passage out of the stalag. You’ve made yourself prominent, among the Prominente!’
The accent was pure upper-class English. ‘My God. What are you?’
Her smile broadened. ‘I am SS-Unterscharfuhrer Fiveash. But you can call me Julia. We’ve quite a day ahead of us, Corporal. Come now.’ And she turned and walked away.
Gary glanced at the SBO, who nodded.
Behind him the men, recovering their nerve, got into the catcalling. ‘You lucky dog,’ shouted Willis Farjeon. ‘You lucky dog, Wooler!’
He was led to the gate, where he was briskly searched, first by an SS man and then by stalag guards. The guards, knowing the prisoners’ tricks, were a lot more thorough, but he was spared the indignity of a strip search and a cavity inspection.
A small group of staff cars was waiting outside the stalag gate. Julia Fiveash sat in one of these, behind a Wehrmacht driver. The car door was open, and she patted the seat beside her. Gary joined her, bewildered.
The cars pulled away, and formed up into a small convoy. They were heading east, he saw from the angle of the sun, towards the coast. Gary reflexively considered the possibilities of escape. This was no steel-barred truck; this was an open car, and he could just hop over the side. But he had no doubt that weapons were trained on him.
Fiveash said, ‘We don’t have far to go - a couple of miles.’
‘Where to?’
‘You’ll see.’ Fiveash was watching him. ‘So how do you feel? What are you thinking? Come, Corporal, I hope you won’t cling to that name, rank and serial number routine; I do want us to get to know each other.’
How did he feel? He ran a fingertip along a seam of the leather seat cover. The car was gleaming inside and out, and the woman beside him was crisp and sharp in her jet-black uniform. It was a bright, fresh English fall day, and the car, bowling along, threw up a rooster-tail of leaves that smelled of wood smoke. ‘I haven’t been in any sort of vehicle outside of a steel-walled prison truck for a year. I feel grimy. Hell, I am grimy.’
‘Well, you don’t need to be grimy. Not any more.’
Soon they approached a cluster of buildings, gathered around a crossroads.Gary’s first impression was of whitewashed concrete. It was nothing like the compact little villages of Kent; it looked new, alien, as if it had been dropped from the sky. And it didn’t look like another prison, at least, though there was
a fence of chicken-wire and barbed wire around it.
They stopped at a barrier, where an SS-schutze, a private, checked papers handed over by the drivers.
Gary studied the sign before the barrier. ‘Nova Rutupiae.“ What the hell kind of name is that?’
‘Latin,’ said Fiveash. ‘Or at least some Party scholar’s idea of Latin. Rutupiae, you see, is the old Roman name for Richborough. So it seems appropriate. You know Richborough; you’ve been working there. I’m told that you will be able to see the invasion monument from the podium of Rutupiae’s thingplatz.’
The barrier was raised. They were driven through into the fenced-off inner area, where they climbed out of the car.
‘Of course the fence is such a bore,’ Fiveash said. ‘It will be such a relief when the armistice is signed, and we can tear down all these barriers, even the First Objective itself - don’t you think? Now, come, follow me, we’ve a lot to see.’
She set off briskly. He followed. They were tailed, reasonably discreetly, by a couple of SS men.
XVIII
They walked along a kind of street. The buildings were white-painted with rendered walls, flat roofs, shuttered windows, little scraps of lawn neatly cut. But the houses were odd, built like long halls, stretching back from the street. There was no sense of individuality about them, as if they had been stamped out of a mould in some factory. And none of the houses looked occupied; they all had their shutters closed.
There was nobody about save more SS, and a party of workers, shabby, exhausted, shuffling along under the watchful eye of guards. Gary wondered if they were prisoners on labour detail. None of them looked at him.
‘These are residences, obviously,’ Fiveash said. ‘It’s a pity they weren’t built in a more sympathetic style, but for now labour and materials are understandably short ... The larger building is the manor house, where the controlling SS officer will reside.’
‘What the hell is this place?’
‘A village,’ Fiveash said. ‘Some of the Ahnenerbe thinkers call it a colony“, but that word has regrettable overtones. This one is meant as a model of its type - a show home, a demonstration of the possible. This is a lebensborn village, Gary. Now come and see the public facilities.’
At the heart of the ‘village’ were unopened shops with their functions displayed on hastily painted signs, and a space with sheds and stock-yards, like an agricultural market. There was even a British pub, mocked up in concrete and white paint; it had no name, but the sign outside carried a stern portrait of Hitler. What Fiveash called the sportplatz was a complex of arenas and facilities, including a soccer pitch and a shooting gallery. There was a large open field which Fiveash said would be a cemetery - very important in this community, she said, a place to honour the dead. ‘It’s all very Iron Age,’ she said drily.
The most imposing facility was the thingplatz, an arena like an open-air theatre with a raised podium. Flagpoles soared, and Gary saw searchlight mounts. You could hold a hell of a rally here. All this was brand new, unused; Gary could smell paint. The only colour amid all the white was the vivid green of the lawns.
‘You’re one of the first candidates to see this.’ Fiveash smiled, her teeth dazzling white in the sun. ‘You may not feel this way now, but you’re honoured. Really, you are!’
She led him back through the village to the residential buildings, and opened up one of the houses. Inside the decor was functional - more white paint, with false pillars to mask the concrete, and solid-looking furniture of wood and leather. The house was in two halves, he found, looking around, with a family living area at one end, and an open space at the far end that Fiveash said was meant as a barn.
The living room felt cold, all that concrete sucking out the warmth. A television sat mute in one corner, and there was a fireplace, unlit. Standing in this clean space Gary felt even more shabby, like a scarecrow brought in from the field.
There was a knock. A young soldier walked in with a tray laden with biscuits, fruit and a jug of coffee. He put this on a low table and left.
Fiveash smiled at Gary. ‘Eat. Drink. Go ahead; there are no strings.’
He hesitated for one second. Then he sat, pulled the tray to him, and stuffed a biscuit in his mouth. It was shortbread coated with sugar; the crystals seemed to burst on his tongue. While he chewed on that he poured out a coffee, slopping it a little, and sucked up a great hot mouthful.
‘I’ll take mine white,’ Fiveash said, good humoured. She took off her cap, revealing blonde hair tightly plaited.
He poured her a coffee and found a jug of cream. He continued to cram his mouth. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Shit, this coffee. Makes the tea we get in the stalag taste like dishwater. Probably is dishwater.’
‘What do you think of the design? I mean the village as a whole. Himmler himself had a hand in it, you know. The house is based on a Roman era design called a wohnstallhaus“ - the remains of such houses are found all over Germany. You could say this village is an Ahnenerbe experiment. There is a scheme called the Generalplan Ost which will see a great belt of such communities as this serving as a buffer between the Slavic homelands and the Reich. This is when the Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy is destroyed, and the Slavs pushed back.’ She said this as neutrally as if she were describing some feature of the house.
‘And who would live here? The racially pure like me, right? What the hell would we do all day? Listen to reruns of Hitler’s speeches?’
She laughed. ‘What a card you are. No - you would farm. Party ideology is founded on ideals of purity, you see, Corporal. And one such ideal is the nobility of the farmer. In the east there’ll be no shortage of land, or indeed labour, and the farms could be quite extensive.’
He picked up the tray and sat back with it on his lap, still eating. He had no scruples about being ill-mannered before this nutcase Nazi. ‘Party ideology?’
She smiled. ‘Some of it can be a little baroque. But it’s hard to argue with Hitler’s fundamental thesis. There are three sorts of people in the world, Corporal. Those who create culture, those who preserve it, those who destroy it. There is overwhelming evidence in the historical record that those who create human culture are of the Nordic type.’
‘How about the Greeks? I didn’t know they were Scandinavians.’
‘No, but they were of Nordic extraction. There have been many diasporas.’
‘And these destroyers of yours?’
‘The Jews. All this Hitler has set out clearly in his own writings. Of course even Hitler drew on the work of earlier thinkers. We have libraries here, you should read up. It was an Englishman called William Jones who in the eighteenth century first identified the Aryan race, you know-indeed he coined the term - based on a comparison of languages, Sanskrit, Greek, Latin. Hitler and Himmler both refer to a recent work by another Englishman called Houston Stewart Chamberlain. A son-in-law of Wagner. Called Race and Nation, it—’
‘I’ll take the scholarship as read. Look, you’re English, I still can’t believe you swallow a word of this.’
Her smile was thinner now. ‘But I have seen these ideas work themselves out in my own life.’
‘How?’
‘My father, and his father before him, served the empire in India.’
‘The white man’s burden?’
‘Under the British the Indians advanced more in decades than they had in millennia. But my father’s properties near Bombay were burned out by insurgents; he was forced to return to England. And then his savings, the fruit of the labour of generations, were destroyed through the criminal incompetence of a financier—’
‘A Jew?’
‘Almost certainly, though I could not prove it.’
‘So that’s it. To avenge Daddy, you joined the SS.’
She flared, ‘My father died in poverty. Do you imagine that the lands my family had to abandon in India are better off than they were under us? Do you imagine that my family’s money is being put to good use by those who stole it from us? Y
ou see, I grew up amid living proof of Hitler’s thesis.’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ he said. ‘So what do you want from me?’
‘We’re offering selected prisoners of war the chance to come here, lightly supervised at first—’
‘You want me to be your poster boy in the States.’
‘Well, if you took on the challenge it would create a lot of headlines. I’ve been over there; I know how it works. It could generate some goodwill.’
‘And it might neutralise the news my mother sent back about Peter’s Well. Right?’
She leaned forward, crisp in her black uniform. ‘I won’t try to minimise the harm that has been done to you and your family, Gary. I’m well aware of it. Since I’ve been stationed in Hastings I’ve got to know your father-in-law. Rather well, actually.’
‘George?’ He couldn’t believe it. ‘You’re the SS!’
‘Well, I’m also a human being. And he doesn’t have anybody else. The civilian police are rather shunned, you know, by those who don’t understand. Some call them collaborators, and worse. George needs company - somebody who understands.’
‘“Company.” My God. So this was why you were detailed to recruit me.’
‘We often talk of Hilda—’
‘Don’t you dare speak of her.’
‘Try to keep calm, Gary.’
‘I’ve had enough of this farce. I want to go back to the stalag.’
She stood, setting down her coffee cup. ‘Well, that isn’t going to happen,’ she said with a touch of steel in her voice. ‘Not for now, at any rate.’ She made for the door. ‘Give it twenty-four hours. You’ll have the house to yourself. Enjoy. Eat, shower. Watch the television. Wash your clothes, for heaven’s sake. Walk around the village a bit; somebody will escort you. Twenty-four hours. Then, if you wish, I’ll take you back to the homosexuals and madmen of your precious stalag.’ She walked out, closing the door behind her.
He stood there, alone, confused. He grabbed the last of the biscuits off the plate and stuck them in his coat pocket, a prisoner’s reflex. And he stared at the television, which gazed back at him, a glass eye focused on his uncertainty.
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