The Foreigner

by P. G. Glynn

  Then other twigs snapped and there was a rustle nearby. Clutching his Mauser and praying that the stealthy feet belonged to a newly landed parachutist rather than a Nazi, Otto dared take no chances. He stood up and, grabbing a branch above his head, swung himself into the tree with an astonishing degree of agility. No Humpelmann could have done that! He almost wished Claus Kessler could have seen him do it.

  Breathing heavily he watched and waited, hoping against hope that when Fabienne recovered consciousness she would not do so with a groan.

  “Ernst … was ist los?”

  Otto heard the unmistakable voice and it was he who groaned, if only inwardly. Had his half-wish brought the dreaded Claus to him? Whether yes or no, it was now just a question of time before he tested the effectiveness of his disguise.

  “Gilbert!” Fabienne breathed as she stirred beneath him.

  Thankful that she had used his new name, not his old one, Otto found a button in his pocket and dropped it. She looked up at once as it landed on her cheek and he put a finger to his lips. She was still looking up as a Gestapo agent strode from between two trees, his machine-gun firmly in front of him.

  Otto had the advantage because he had not yet been seen. Aiming his Mauser and knowing that he must kill with his first hit, he fired. The effect was instant. Ernst’s machine-gun fell to the ground and he staggered for no more than a second before toppling on to it.

  Fabienne was on her feet holding her .22 as, seconds later, Claus Kessler reached the clearing. Her reactions, as ever, faster than Otto’s she fired while he was still levelling his pistol. But Claus let rip with his repeating rifle … and she stood no chance against him.

  Otto saw her felled for the second time tonight and sickness gripped his stomach as he realised that this time she would not revive. Why had he been so slow in firing? Why, oh why, was it her and not him who had died?

  He could have remained silent. He could also have fired. Perhaps he did as he did because he wanted to die.

  “You’ll pay for this, Kessler!” he cried.

  Hearing his name, the German was momentarily confused. “Who … ?”

  Otto sprang from the tree on top of his old adversary, who buckled under the unexpected weight and lay sprawled on the ground beside Fabienne’s inert body. While landing so unceremoniously, though, Otto twisted a knee and in agony relaxed his grip, giving Claus a chance to break free and scramble to his feet. Thinking himself dead, Otto said: “I almost had you then.”

  “Humpelmann?” Kessler queried with a disbelieving frown. “It can’t be!”

  Nursing his knee while the Nazi held a pistol uncomfortably close to his head, Otto told him: “Yes, Humpelmann himself … and now that you’ve killed her, you murderer, you’d best kill me as well.”

  “So you’re a traitor on top of everything else! And you’re as lily-livered as I always thought you were … hiding behind a woman’s skirt. No doubt you were up her skirt first.”

  Otto knew then he must avenge Fabienne’s death. Kicking hard at Kessler’s legs, he sent him off-balance. In a trice Otto was on top of him as he hit the ground again. As they grappled he managed to extract the firearm from Kessler’s hand, turning it on him saying: “I regret inflicting a quick death when a slow one would have been best, but I’ve no alternative if I’m to reach my friends. Goodbye, Claus, and good riddance!”

  45

  Hugo had come a long way from Herrlichbach and from Helga. It had been a hard road to travel and he was glad that he would never be seventeen again. He was also glad to be in Wales instead of Bohemia, although he had far preferred living with Omama in Schloss Berger to living with Gran in Beulah.

  He could not have had two more different grandmothers. Whereas Omama had been soft and sweet, Gran was hard and bitter with pointed features and a tongue that often reduced Aunt Lucy to tears. Hugo felt sorry for Aunt Lucy, who had never lived anywhere except Beulah and who was so much under her mother’s thumb. If Gran were his mother he wouldn’t want to live with her and, come to think of it, wouldn’t even want to live in Gilchrist.

  It was a mystery to him how Aunt Alice had found herself a husband and Aunt Lucy had not found one. Had he been Uncle Stan he knew which of the sisters he would have chosen …

  But he was not his uncle and it was not up to him to judge. Every man had to decide for himself whom to marry … and had to hope that the girl he chose would accept his proposal. Hugo hoped never again to suffer the kind of rejection he had suffered from Helga.

  She had been right, though, in saying he didn’t really know her. He might have ‘known’ her all his life but he had seen her through an idealist’s eyes. He had seen her as he wanted her to be, not as she was in reality. Oh, how naïve he had been … and how far away Helga and Ferdi now seemed!

  Living here in Monmouthshire everything seemed far away, even the war. Since that black Sunday when Prime Minister Chamberlain announced over the wireless that Britain was at war and that, having done everything possible to establish peace, the British Government had a clear conscience, the worst thing to have happened locally was a hundred-pound bomb falling on Mrs Williams’s coal-shed in Govilon. The bomb had not gone off but all the same had been a talking point from that day to this within a community that had never heard an air raid siren. Things were very different in Herrlichbach.

  Nazi jackboots now stomped along the corridors of Schloss Berger and the German occupation of Czechoslovakia meant that nobody was free any longer. Under Hitler there was terrible tyranny and too little food to eat … and Lukas’s whole family had gone to Goerlitz. Hugo knew this from Boris, who was fighting in the Czechoslovakian army and had smuggled out a coded message. Censorship had spelled an end to ordinary letters, so it was as well that at school the three friends had studied codes and ciphers, often communicating in this way for the fun of it. But there was no fun now in hearing from Boris, because Hugo was safe and he was not. Safety seemed all wrong when family and friends were suffering horribly and there was no knowing where Papa might be. Hugo awoke each morning feeling guilty … and thanking God for the sea between Britain and Germany!

  He wondered whether it was normal to have such conflicting feelings. He was still not sure what ‘normal’ was, exactly. Perhaps it was impossible to be exact. Perhaps there were varying degrees of normality.

  There were certainly varying degrees of love. And one could love blindly, as he had loved Helga, or with one’s eyes wide open – as his had been since meeting Helena.

  When Hugo first saw Helena he had thought he was seeing Helga. Which showed how alike they were – but only in looks, not in nature. The fact that when he met Helena on the Sugar Loaf she held a newborn lamb in her arms illustrated how different their natures were. Whereas Helga had only ever seemed to think in terms of eating live creatures, Helena’s chief concern was to care for them. Instead of stepping on – or swallowing – a spider or a worm or a caterpillar, she would pick it up gently and rescue it if it needed rescuing. Not that Hugo had known this when he saw her coming toward him that spring morning. But his heart had lifted, as if her arrival in his life were somehow important.

  Funny to think back to that meeting and recall that feeling! He also recalled hearing that her name was Helena Gwyn and wondering whether the infamous Nell was anywhere in her ancestry. Funnier still to think that he had once told Helga she was the only girl he could ever love …

  Which just went to show that one never knew about the future. The beauty of tomorrow was its unknown quantity. Tomorrow might bring absolutely anything. It had brought him someone so special that mixed with his guilt upon awakening each morning was a sense of wonder that God loved him enough to have made Helena just for him.

  The miracle was that she felt as he did. His love was not a one-sided thing, but a reciprocal feeling. Why, Helena had even said how extraordinary it was that Hugo had come all the way from Czechoslovakia to find her on ‘her’ mountain! She had spoken with awe and he had felt so overwhelmingly tend
er toward her that it was amazing he had not proposed there and then. He was in no position, though, to support a wife yet.

  He had at least passed his Higher School Certificate with Distinction, studying and then sitting his exams at the grammar school in Abergavenny where his grandfather had once taught. Fancy having been born here in Gilchrist and having had a Welsh grandfather who was a teacher, as well as a great-grandfather – William Jenkins – who was a Congregational minister and one of the most prominent preachers in the Principality. And fancy Mama having been born and brought up in Beulah, which was so very different from Schloss Berger. After always thinking of himself as Bohemian and belonging in Herrlichbach, Hugo was coming to see that in many respects he belonged equally here, his roots being as firmly planted in British soil as in Czechoslovakian. And now that he had a British qualification it might even be that after the war he would be in no hurry to leave these shores. He would certainly not be leaving unless Helena left with him …

  Helena’s father was a sheep farmer, which was providential considering Hugo’s own interest in sheep. Hugo had jumped at the chance of helping out on the farm, which effectively exempted him from having to fight Papa. He could now see why Mama didn’t want him to be conscripted into any army that would mean him and Papa having to fight this war on opposite sides. Bad enough for a wife to have her husband and son fighting on the same side, never mind one against the other. Helena said that if she were a wife she wouldn’t want any of her men to fight.

  Hugo saw Mama differently through Helena’s eyes. But even Helena had been shocked to the core when he told her of the stand Mama had taken on Papa’s decision to hold on to life at any price. He hoped it hadn’t been disloyal to tell her. It couldn’t be, could it, when Helena was the other half of him? She had added, after expressing her shock, that Marie Howard could not be blamed for refusing to pay blood money, if this was her way, but that in her shoes Helena would have paid.

  He had been gladdened by her views … and intrigued to hear her refer to Mama as Marie Howard …

  It was still more intriguing that she and her whole family thought of Mama as an actress. Helena’s Auntie Madge had apparently seen OLIVER TWIST at the Tavistock Theatre back in 1919, while in service in Chelsea, and had never stopped going on about the experience. Madge Gwyn was not, by her own admission, a “Dickens sort of person” but had gone to the Tavistock because a girl from Gilchrist was playing Nancy opposite the great Charles Brodie. She had gone and even after so long had not forgotten Mama’s performance. Nor could she forget the regret she had felt after learning that Mama had stopped performing. She said she wept buckets, back then. In fact she still maintained it was a crying shame that Marie Howard had left the stage.

  For Hugo it had come as a revelation that Mama had been someone famous before she married Papa and went to live in Czechoslovakia. Listening to Helena and the Gwyns, he felt rather proud of her. But as for whether he wanted to see her perform in Clydach Welfare Hall …

  “I doubt she’d agree,” he told Helena as they strolled down Gilchrist mountain after sitting near its summit and indulging in some loving. It was cold for April and kisses and cuddles were very warming.

  “The Welfare Hall is certainly a bit of a comedown after a London theatre, but it might influence her that the concert is in aid of the war effort … and that if Marie Howard were to appear tickets would sell like wildfire.”

  “She isn’t Marie Howard any more.”

  “She is, as well as being Marie Berger. Please, Hugo, let’s ask her. Auntie Madge would wet her knickers, she’d be that excited if your mother were to do it.”

  The sudden image of Madge Gwyn wetting her knickers was almost too much for Hugo. Trying to blank his mind he responded: “I suppose there’s no harm in asking Mama.”

  “Today might be a good time,” Helena said with sparkling eyes. “We could ask her over tea, couldn’t we?”

  “There’s no hurry.”

  “There is, if she’s to have time to prepare for the concert and decide what to recite.”

  “Asking her in front of Gran, at the tea-table before chapel, might be a big mistake. You know what a stickler Gran is for getting tea over on Sundays … and she might disapprove of Mama going back on a stage.”

  “Which would probably be a good thing.”

  “Would it?”

  “Yes, in that it’d surely make your mother all the more determined to perform.”

  Hugo could not dispute the truth of this. He smiled fondly, saying: “You win!”

  +++++

  Marie tolerated rather than liked Helena. At least she was an improvement on Helga. But Hugo, if he but knew it, could do so much better. The problem was that for some reason Hugo’s self-esteem was low. He seemed to have no idea how handsome he was, nor how his handsomeness and background could bring him virtually any girl on earth. Marie only hoped that he would practise on her, without thinking of marrying Tom-the-Farmer’s daughter.

  He was spending far too much time with her and it wasn’t helping matters that wily old Tom Gwyn had roped him in as a glorified shepherd. No doubt Tom saw him as an ideal prospective son-in-law and planned on roping Hugo in for rather more than his sheep. Marie must have a serious chat with Hugo before the Gwyns succeeded in absorbing him into their family.

  He should not need such a chat but was a boy whose sensitivity blinded him at times to essential facts. And the fact, as Marie saw it, was that Hugo was in a class above Helena. She was very sweet and no doubt, being Welsh, hot-blooded as well as potty over him. Little more than half his height, she was forever gazing up at him doe-eyed and hanging on to his every utterance as if he were the wisest man alive. No man was immune to such tactics and Hugo war far too inexperienced even to hope for immunity. He needed wider experience … and Helena needed to see that a girl who had hardly been beyond Abergavenny could not expect a match with a man as cosmopolitan as Hugo Berger. She would be right out of her depth in Czechoslovakia, or indeed anywhere other than on a Welsh farm. Yes, she was destined to stay in Wales whereas, when Hitler was finally dispatched, Hugo’s destiny lay in his castle in Bohemia.

  Marie must remind him of his heritage at the first opportunity. Meanwhile what was it that Helena and he were broaching so tentatively? They seemed to have been leading up to something ever since Mam poured the first cups of tea and now Hugo was saying that Helena had a little query.

  “Let’s hear it, then,” Janet Jenkins said briskly. “All your beating about the bush is making me uneasy.”

  “There’s to be a concert in Clydach next month,” Helena told them, colouring, “and we were wondering … that is, my Auntie Madge mentioned how incredible it would be if … if … Marie Howard would consider performing. You see … ”

  Janet butted in, with pursed lips: “This has Madge Gwyn’s stamp all over it! She must be the only person left in the world who remembers the existence of a Marie Howard. As for Marie herself ever considering … ”

  “Mam, I can speak for myself,” Marie protested, feeling a curious mixture of emotions. Hearing her stage-name after so long was strange and it was stranger still to think of performing again. Not that she was thinking of it. “You might wish to forget that Marie Howard ever existed but I’ve no such wish. She did … and, if fitting, could possibly be resurrected. Tell me, Helena, why your aunt suggested this and where in Clydach the concert is to be held.”

  Helena glanced sideways at Hugo for approval before letting her answers out in a rush: “She saw you as Charles Brodie’s leading lady in OLIVER TWIST and says the memory of it is as fresh today as back then. She also says that there was never, ever a better actress and what a tragedy it was that you stopped acting. Of course we all know that the Welfare Hall is a far cry from a proper theatre … but if you were to overlook that and appear we’d likely sell more tickets than we’ve had printed … and, after all, the concert couldn’t be in a better cause!”

  Feeling almost dizzy from hearing Charles’s name
spoken so unexpectedly, Marie questioned: “I take it that it’s in aid of the war?”

  “There’s soppy I am, forgetting to tell you that! But I so want to see you perform that my words are coming out in the wrong order. If you were to agree to appear, I think it would be one of the best things ever to happen here.”

  “So do I,” agreed Lucy, nodding vigorously between sips of tea. “I’d give anything to see my sister up there in front of an audience. I used to dream of seeing you at the Tavistock Theatre, Marie, but never got beyond dreaming. Seeing you at the Welfare Hall would be real … and it’s the tonic we all need, what with the war dragging on and on.”

  “Speak for yourself, Lucy, if you must,” said her mother, “but don’t presume to think you’re speaking for the rest of us. I for one … ”

  “ … needn’t come,” Marie interrupted, sick and tired of Mam’s tight lips and permanently disapproving demeanour. “That is, if you think I’ll show you up. Then again, if you’re at all curious to see your daughter perform you’ll be most welcome.”

  “Does this mean,” asked Helena disbelievingly, “that you’ll do it?”

  “Against my better judgment,” Marie said with an absent expression, “it does.”

  +++++

  Marie Howard had been buried so deeply, and for so long, that resurrecting her was painful and far from easy. In the ensuing weeks Marie wondered frequently why she had agreed and whether she had been wise to do so. It would have been much simpler just to leave Marie Howard hidden within Marie Berger.

  It would also have been safer. There were dangers in delving into the past, as well as in standing on a platform and risking being stripped of old illusions. She had never sought safety nor baulked at danger before, but the years were taking their toll: the years and this seemingly endless war. It had been mad, coming back to stay with Mam within the claustrophobic confines of Beulah, but where else could she have headed from Czechoslovakia?