The thought of what the Skibbereen would do to him was furring Vic’s mind, but he dredged up enough energy to fight. ‘Thass mine, you silly bugger. Leave off.’
‘That’s ours!’ Tiffany said, and he suddenly seized Vic by the scruff of the neck and began to haul him down the path towards the house. For a few undignified seconds they struggled like wild things, Tiffany straining forward, Vic pulling away, red in the face and aiming kicks and blows. Then Vic gave a great heave and managed to free himself. He pulled the bag away from Tiffany’s hand and made a bolt for it, tearing down the garden and flinging himself at the wall. There was nothing in his mind now except the need to get away from the Skibbereen. But it was a waste of effort. As he pulled himself up the brickwork, clinging to the top of the wall, feet scrabbling, another mocking face grinned above him. Mog! Of all people. Climbing without being urged. Oh for Christ’s sake! How many more has the Skibbereen sent?
‘Naughty, naughty!’ Mog rebuked, and swinging a leg over the wall, he pushed Vic violently back into the garden and Tiffany’s waiting clutch. Within seconds the struggle was over. They had his arms pinioned behind his back and were frogmarching him through the house and out into the street, dragging the carpet bag with them.
The watchers rushed from the back of the terrace to the front, eager not to miss a second, and Bob and Heather and Barbara followed them, Bob cheerfully enjoying Victor’s come-uppance, Heather anxious about what the neighbours would think, Barbara caught between emotions. She was still angry at the lies he’d told and glad to think that he was getting pushed around, but even so, he was still a North-Ender and she didn’t want to see him injured.
By now and to Heather’s chagrin, the entire street seemed to be involved, for the noise of the fight had gathered attention and besides, there were three huge black cars standing in a line by the pavement and nobody had ever seen three cars in the street before. Avid heads peered from the open windows, groups congregated on the pathways, the kids left their games to watch, as Vic was pushed along the pavement towards the Skibbereen’s huge limousine. Even the postwoman was caught up in the drama. She’d been cycling slowly along the road from the opposite direction when the second car arrived, languidly delivering the afternoon post and looking forward to her tea, but now she stopped her bike and leant on the handlebars to enjoy the spectacle, intrigued by the sight of all those cars and by the fear on Victor’s face.
Oh God! he was praying, give me a break. Let me find a way out. But his mind was full of hideous images, of being set on late at night, as he stepped out of a pub, dragged up some dark alley and beaten unconscious, or, worse, driven off here and now to be thrashed in the country where there was no one to help him.
By the time he reached the Skibbereen’s open window, he was frozen with fear. His mouth dry, he tried to ingratiate himself. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I made a mistake. I admit it. I mean it could have happened to anyone.’
‘Not to me,’ the Skibbereen said coldly and he leant forward to glare at his victim. ‘You got two minutes to hand those rings over and get out a’ my sight. If you’re still around after that, God help you!’
It was a reprieve. They were going to let him go. Wet-palmed with fear, he pulled the two other rings from his pocket and put all three on the Skibbereen’s palm. Then he ran, hearing the clunk of his tins as the carpet bag was slung into the Skibbereen’s car, a buzz of voices from all those upstairs windows, a gust of horrible gloating laughter from Mog. Into his car and into gear, doing a three-point turn – very badly because his hands were slippery with sweat – but then away, watching his rear mirror, afraid of being followed.
His heart didn’t steady until he’d been driving for some time. Then relief washed over him, making him feel quite weak. He’d got away, unhurt, scot-free. So OK, he’d got to move on and he was down to his last shilling, so OK they’d skinned him out, so OK Spitfire had given him a bollocking, but he still had contacts, people still needed food, there was still rationing and what’s more he still had another case full of nylons in the boot. They’d do to get off the ground again. I’ll make a fresh start, he promised himself, and then I’ll come back and find Spitfire again. Now that his mind was working more easily he remembered that she’d said something about that soldier being missing. All right then, if he’s missing she could be a free woman by the time I find her again. Oh I’m not beaten. Not by a long chalk.
Back in Childeric Road, it was so quiet that Heather could hear every sound in the street, from the blackbird sweet-singing in the garden to the happy chorus of their neighbours’ voices.
Their next-door-neighbour was leaning across the hedge to question Mrs Connelly. ‘And what was all that about?’
‘Well that’s seen him off and no mistake,’ Bob said, stepping back from the window.
And at that, as if his voice had released her into action, Heather turned to catch her daughter-in-law in her arms, tearful with relief and admiration and affection. I was wrong about her, thank God. Quite, quite wrong. She’s a good loyal wife. A good loving loyal wife. ‘Oh Barbara!’ she said. ‘My dear, dear girl! You were splendid back there!’
‘I meant every word of it,’ Barbara told her, stepping back so that they could look at one another.
‘I know. I know.’
‘I put Steve’s name down for that house,’ Barbara said. ‘Steve’s an’ mine.’ They had to be quite clear about that.
‘I know,’ Heather said again. ‘I don’t know why I ever thought you hadn’t. I shouldn’t have believed him for a second. Lying hound! Oh Barbara! I’ve been so wrong about you. I thought you were too young. I mean, I didn’t think you could love him the way … And you did, all the time. So much!’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m so sorry for all the things I said.’
This time it was Barbara’s turn to hug. ‘I know,’ she said lovingly. ‘It’s all right. Really.’
And at that Heather burst into tears, remembering that dreadful letter and wishing with all her heart that she hadn’t written it. ‘I couldn’t want for a better daughter-in-law,’ she said. ‘And I’m not just saying that. I mean it. I can’t get over the way you saw him off. You were splendid. Wasn’t she splendid, Bob?’
But Bob didn’t answer, although he’d been watching them both with yearning affection. ‘What’s that noise?’ he asked, turning his head towards the landing. There was an odd knocking sound coming from the kitchen, a rhythmic sound like someone using a wooden mallet.
Heather jumped out of Barbara’s arms and gave a shriek. ‘It’s the kettle.’
Which it was, burnt dry and filling the kitchen with tinny grey smoke. ‘Quick! Quick! Get some water in it.’ But the water spat and hissed and ran straight out through the hole in the bottom. ‘Oh for heaven’s sake!’ She was so flustered that Bob and Barbara began to laugh and once they’d started they couldn’t stop.
‘It’s no laughing matter!’ Heather said, laughing too, despite herself. ‘Look at the state of it!’
They were stupid with relief, chortling and chuckling until they were short of breath. They were making such a commotion that they didn’t hear Mrs Connelly coming up the stairs.
‘It’s only me, Mrs Wilkins dear,’ she said, looking askance at the smoke. ‘Only this letter’s come for Barbara an’ I thought you’d want to see it.’
Everything else was forgotten at once, burnt kettles, diamond rings, fighting men, wicked lies and all. ‘It’s Steve!’ Barbara cried, recognising the writing. ‘Oh God! It’s Steve! Give it to me! Give it to me!’
The excitement then, the trembling hands as the letter was opened, the tears as it was passed from hand to hand and read and re-read, its news being too good to be taken in at a single reading. ‘He’s all right. He was took prisoner.’ ‘Oh thank God for that!’ The day was instantly and totally changed, their lives lifted, proportion restored, quarrels forgotten, Victor forgotten, all misery smoothed away. He was alive and they would see him again.
&nbs
p; ‘Oh thank God!’ Heather said. ‘Just let him stay safe and well till it’s all over. It can’t be much longer.’
‘They’ll give him leave, won’t they,’ Barbara hoped, green eyes shining.
Bob and Heather had no doubt about it. ‘Bound to.’
The thought of seeing him again was making Barbara breathless. ‘I wonder what he’s doing now,’ she said.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Steve and Dusty were sun-bathing, lying on their backs in a German orchard just outside Hamburg, tunics tossed aside, boots off, shirtsleeves rolled up as far as they would go, taking their ease as if the war were already over. As well it might be for all they knew, for good news was coming in with every bulletin. The Americans had captured Genoa. The Russians were in the outskirts of Berlin. Mussolini had been shot and hung up by the heels in a public square. There were rumours that Hitler was dead too. But there, in the orchard, it was simply and amazingly peaceful. There was no sound of gunfire even in the distance, no planes roaring across the sky, no snipers, no orders, no alarms, just a slight wind that ruffled the blossom in the apple trees so that pink and white petals dropped in a silken fall to dapple the weary faces and young brown arms below them.
Since they’d rejoined the division at Fallingbostel, Steve and Dusty had been kept so fully occupied that they’d barely had time to talk, let alone sit in the sun and dream. The Germans had fought most bitterly and at every turn, through peat bogs, along the edge of their endless forests, over the long wild moor of Luneburg Heath, but the British advance had been steady. They’d taken Soltau in flames and Hollenstedt in ruins, and by the 29th of April they’d crossed the River Elbe and reached the woods south of Harburg. And there, just when they were within sight of Hamburg and gearing themselves up for a major assault, everything had come to a halt.
There was a rumour that a citizens’ deputation had come out to meet the advancing troops waving a white flag and offering to surrender – and another that Monty himself was in the area. Nobody knew for certain, so for the moment they were just lying under the trees waiting to see what would happen next and hoping that the rumours were true. They’d lost seventy-eight men since the Rhine crossing and if they could occupy Hamburg without taking any more casualties, that would suit them fine.
‘I reckon this is the end,’ Dusty said, happily. ‘If old Monty’s here.’
Steve smiled at him.
‘The minute it’s over, I shall put in for a spot a’ leave,’ Dusty observed, squinting up at the branches over his head. ‘We got enough owing! Back home, mate. Imagine it. Nice little bint. Home-cooking. I can’t wait.’
Steve smiled at him again but he didn’t answer. He’d spent the last half-hour rereading his mail and now he was lying with the letters on his chest, brooding. Barbara had sent him a letter every day since he’d written to her again, and while war dominated his thoughts and he was obeying orders and living an hour at a time, he’d simply been pleased to see her familiar writing and to know that she was safe and well. Now, when he had plenty of time to answer her, he was too confused to do it. The trouble was Belsen had made a nonsense of one of the great certainties of his life, and left him with no way to organise his thoughts and no base from which to work. He wasn’t at all sure how he felt about these letters of hers, nor, painful though it was to admit it, how he felt about her.
It troubled him that she hadn’t said a word about that Victor feller. And she hadn’t mentioned the war much either. True, she’d told him how glad she was that he was alive and well – ‘We been so worried about you, no letters all that time. We knew it must be something dreadful. I never thought it would be one of those concentration camps. That must have been awful’ – but apart from that she spent most of her letters telling him about Sis and the management committee of Bellington South. ‘’Course we know she can’t win. That’s a safe Tory seat. But she says the experience will come in handy and she might get a good seat next time. We think the election will be called pretty soon once the war’s over.’
He had a vague, disturbing feeling that there was something underneath the letters that wasn’t being said, or that he couldn’t understand, especially as his mother had only written one letter to him in all that time and hadn’t said anything about that letter at all, but he no longer had the capacity to think his thoughts through and every time he tried they slid away from him as if he had holes in his brain, or tailed off and were lost in terrible images. Even when he was reading Barbara’s letters, he could see those poor, stinking, broken bodies being shovelled into the pit and the smell of death rose into his memory until he was overwhelmed by it and couldn’t see the words on the page. After a while he gave up trying. He couldn’t read her letters and he couldn’t answer them either. It was easier to write in his notebook, for his own eyes and no one else’s. Sighing, he put her letters away, and picked up his pencil.
I always thought human beings were the same. I know we are different to look at but I thought we were basically the same. I knew we all did stupid things. I knew we could be unkind, jealous, spiteful, greedy, just plain silly, all those things, but I believed we were basically good underneath it all, that when it came down to it, we’d be moral, our basic humanity would win through. I was wrong.
Oh how painful it was even to write the words.
We are not basically good and we are not all the same. Some people are evil. Those guards enjoyed hurting people, they felt justified in what they were doing. Irma Grese became a torturer and was rewarded for it, Hannah was tortured and was punished by death.
The death-pit gaped under the words, pulling him down towards it but he had to go on. If he wrote this down he might make sense of it. And oh, how much he needed to make sense of it.
If some people are evil, maybe there is evil inherent in all of us, maybe the early Christians were right, maybe we are born evil. If that is so, I am evil, and so are Dusty and Aunt Sis and my mother and father and Barbara.
But at that point he had to stop. What if Mum was right and she really was playing around with someone else? Was that evil? Or just foolish? How can I be certain? The question made him sigh with distress. How could he be certain of anything now?
Sergeant Morris was walking towards them through the trees. ‘Come on then, boys, let’s be ’aving you.’
They sat up slowly, pretending to groan. ‘Where to, sarge?’
‘Hamburg in a day or two, my lovely lads. And we won’t have to fire a shot.’
‘Is it true then, sarge? Have they surrendered?’
‘They’re surrendering,’ the sergeant said. ‘Just come through, which you’d’ve heard if you’d had the wireless on instead a’ rolling about on your backs out here. I never saw such a lot a’ dozy tarts!’
‘No peace for the wicked,’ they joked as they scrambled to their feet.
‘Shouldn’t be wicked,’ the sergeant told them, giving the well-worn reply. ‘What you been up to?’
They parried that in the usual way too. ‘Chance’ud be a fine thing!’
The careless words echoed in Steve’s mind all evening, congealing his thoughts. He was still brooding over them when news came through on the camp radio that had the entire regiment cheering.
Adolf Hitler had committed suicide. No rumour this time. There was no doubt about it. The German radio had made the announcement itself – after playing Wagner’s ‘Death of Siegfried’ to forewarn their listeners. They hadn’t admitted that he’d killed himself, naturally, but had claimed that he’d ‘died fighting to the last against the Bolshevik Hordes’. It was the Forces network that had revealed that it was suicide. But what did it matter how he’d gone? He was dead. That was the great thing. And now the Germans would surrender. It didn’t clear Steve’s mind, but it lifted his spirits.
At four o’clock the next afternoon the division set off to occupy Hamburg. It was raining heavily when they started but by the time they reached the river Elbe the sun had come out. It was a new experience to cross a bridge
they hadn’t built themselves and an even better one to be entering a German city without having to fight for it. It was only a matter of minutes before the tanks were rolling through the empty streets towards the main square.
The population had been put under curfew so there was no one about except the local police, who stood lining the pavements as they drove past, sullen and subdued and obviously defeated. ‘Serve the buggers right,’ Dusty said.
They passed the docks where several U-boats stood in their pens, half-built and burnt black. The damage here was spectacular. The enormous cranes and gantries above the docks had been knotted into grotesque shapes by the blast and the heat of the fire-storm had even melted the steel girders, huge though they were, leaving them red and black and drooping.
‘They won’t be building any more of those damned things in a hurry,’ Steve said, looking at the burnt-out U-boats with satisfaction. It was a justified revenge. The submarine builders had had it coming to them for a very long time.
Then they were heading for the city centre where the roads were full of potholes and the destruction was total. In street after street the buildings had been reduced to piles of rubble and, even when they found a terrace of houses, it turned out to be a facade with nothing behind it. Steve was surprised by how quickly the Germans had tidied the place up. The streets had been cleaned and cleared, the tramlines mended although there were no trams running. They’d even restored the telephone wires although there couldn’t be a phone left under all that rubble. He couldn’t understand their passion for neatness and order when they’d produced a place as foul and disorganised as Belsen. Does evil run by opposites? he wondered. Neat bureaucracy and cruel behaviour.
In Adolf Hitler Platz the garrison commander was waiting to meet them outside the Town Hall, which was about the only building still intact. He was fat and wore glasses and an incongruously tidy uniform. Steve disliked him on sight, hating his superfluous flesh and remembering Joseph Kramer and his immaculate attire. He was delighted when their colonel arrived dressed in an American combat jacket, a pair of corduroy trousers and an 11th Hussars’ cap, looking every inch the conqueror and totally himself. And when he ignored the fat German and pulled a packet of army biscuits from his jacket to feed the pigeons, Steve cheered as raucously as all the others.
Avalanche of Daisies Page 41
