Escape

by Barbie Probert-Wright

  She wrote in her diary that night:

  Thank God sometimes there is a nice hour between all the horrible things that are happening around us. It gives me the optimism and stamina to go on. I hope one day I will find someone I can belong to all my life, because I don’t think there could be anything nicer than belonging to someone.

  We parted from the soldiers the next day. They went off in a different direction to try to find their unit. Eva never knew if Hans made it through the next few terrible days. I hope he did. He helped my sister so much by flirting with her and reminding her that in the middle of all the horror she was still a pretty young girl. It gave her a desperately needed respite and probably did the same for him. They were just two young people sharing a little romance in the most awful of circumstances. They helped each other get through another night. In wartime, that’s all you can hope for. You cannot ask for more.

  8

  The Witch

  We had now been on the road for just over a week. Although we had decided to travel by night, Eva felt we had not made enough headway so the following day, after a really good, late sleep for me, we set off walking in the afternoon towards the village of Orlamünde. We seemed to make slow progress, only travelling a few miles, but several times we had to throw ourselves to the ground because of the sound of grenades and gunfire.

  Then, as we walked along, Eva suddenly grabbed my arm and said, ‘Listen!’

  I strained to hear the sound of more fighting, distant guns, but instead, in the stillness, I heard the call of a cuckoo, a two-note announcement of spring and better times.

  ‘There,’ said Eva, grinning at me. ‘That will bring us luck. You see, Puppe? Things are definitely getting better.’

  We went on, our hearts a little lighter at this good omen.

  At Orlamünde we went to the village hall to register and were given an address of a house where we could stay for the night. It was a short way out of the village and we walked there, trundling our little cart behind us, tired and dirty, and looking forward to some food and a night’s rest.

  As we approached the house, I saw that it looked like something out of a children’s story book. I was very happy to see the white-painted single-storey cottage, with its dainty picket fence and fruit trees in blossom in the garden. It was pretty and neat, with snowy white lace curtains, and it seemed to come from a different time before the war, when things were normal and life was peaceful.

  As we walked up the road towards it, a woman came out of the front door and waited for us at the gate. She was middle-aged, with her grey hair scraped back into a tight bun, tall, thin and well dressed in a tweed skirt and jacket. To me she looked like a schoolteacher and I felt disappointed; in my imagination the owner of that perfect little house would be small and round and smiley. This woman looked hard and austere. There was a small dog with her, yapping in an agitated way.

  Eva and I shared a great love of all animals and we loved dogs in particular, but we were both instinctively very nervous of this one. If it is possible for a dog to have a nasty look on its face, this one did.

  The woman came out of the gate to meet us. She gave us both a hug, and stroked my hair and kissed the top of my head. We are a family who are always very demonstratively affectionate with each other, but we were not used to being hugged by strangers. This was sixty years ago, and the kissing and hugging culture we have today did not exist then; we were all rather more formal. So I froze in her clutches, unsure what to do when being embraced by someone I had never met before, or even spoken to.

  When she released me she said, ‘At last. I’ve been expecting you.’ Eva shot me a look. How could she have been expecting us? Perhaps the telephone still worked locally, or maybe she simply meant she had been expecting someone to be billeted with her, not specifically the two of us. I thought she not only looked like a schoolteacher, but talked like one too. She spoke very well, enunciating each word very carefully, as if she were addressing wayward and slightly dim children.

  She took us into the house and my fears were allayed by the fragrant smell of something cooking. We were desperately hungry, not having had anything to eat all that day apart from my biscuits. Our provisions ran out quickly and we were always hungry from our long hours of walking.

  Our hostess talked away to us, and all the time she was speaking the dog, which was a mongrel with long hair and about the size of a Jack Russell, was jumping up at our legs and yapping. I bent over to stroke it but it snapped at me and the woman told me to leave it alone. If only it had been willing to leave me alone!

  We were taken into a dining room where the table was beautifully set. The woman turned to me and said peremptorily, ‘You must wash your hands before you eat.’

  I was upset by the way she spoke to me. I had been brought up to wash my hands before eating and although it had not always been possible when we were on the road, whenever I had the opportunity I would wash them, even if it was a matter of rinsing them in a stream. Eva and I both washed our hands and sat down to eat.

  The woman poured water for us from a crystal carafe. There was rye bread and butter on the table.

  Where was the food? I wondered, still able to smell something delicious and hot somewhere. My poor stomach was desperate for it and I could hardly think about anything else.

  But first our hostess wanted to talk to us. Once we had sat down, she cross-examined us about where we were going and where we had come from. Eva politely explained our situation. ‘We’re heading towards Halle,’ she said.

  ‘We’re going to our mother,’ I piped up.

  ‘Humph!’ the woman snorted. ‘That’s ridiculous.’ She turned to Eva. ‘Don’t you think you are being very irresponsible, taking this young child on a terrible journey like this? You could both end up dead. How would your mother feel about that?’

  She harangued us for a few minutes, before at last going out to the kitchen to bring in our food. To my delight, she gave us large platefuls of chicken stew, which we fell upon voraciously. As we ate, she kept up the barrage, hectoring Eva on how reckless she was being. At last she said to Eva, ‘You really are not being sensible about this. The best thing you could do would be to leave your little sister here with me. I have plenty of room and I will take good care of her. I have good supplies of food. Then you can go on to find your mother, and when this dreadful war is over you can come back and collect your sister.’

  Eva stopped eating and put down her fork. ‘That is not possible, I’m afraid, madam,’ she said very politely. ‘I’m afraid our mother would be very upset indeed if we were to split up or separate. Bärbel and I must stay together. But thank you for your kind offer and for this lovely food.’

  As she spoke, her face became very pale. Then she excused herself and went to the bathroom, where she was violently sick.

  The woman was unrelenting when Eva returned. ‘See, you are not very well. How can you look after a child? You are simply not behaving like an adult about this. Your main responsibility is to Barbel and you would be doing the best thing possible for her by leaving her here. If I were looking after a child, I would look after her properly, not the way you are looking after Bärbel.’

  Eva was looking wretched, so I spoke up: ‘I don’t want to stay here. I want to stay with Eva and go to find our Mutti.’

  The woman looked at me, her face softer than it was when she spoke to Eva. ‘Child, what do you know about it? It’s a dangerous world out there. And besides, if you stay here in the warm, with good food, you will be fit and healthy when you rejoin your mother.’

  I shook my head miserably.

  Eva said firmly, ‘We’re staying together and that’s final.’

  All the time the little dog was circling the table, yapping every so often and licking my legs. I tried to push him away, but he always came back. His mistress occasionally fed him titbits off her plate, but he seemed to be more interested in harassing Eva and me. The rest of the meal passed in an uncomfortable silence. She gave us
cheese, which normally we would have eaten with relish, but Eva was still feeling very sick and I had begun to feel that I was not well, either.

  After we had finished eating Eva said, ‘If you don’t think we are very rude, we would like to go to bed now. We have another long day ahead of us tomorrow.’

  Hardly deigning to speak to us, the woman signalled that we should follow her. She paused at a cupboard in the hallway and took out a large white chamber pot, then led us along the corridor to our bedroom. It was a cheerful, well-furnished little room with two single beds. It should have been the most welcome sight we could imagine, offering us the chance of the best night’s sleep we had had for some time. But the little dog got into the room before we did and jumped on the beds without his mistress making any effort to check him. I think he was jealous of our intrusion into his world.

  At the doorway the woman handed us the chamber pot. Eva took it without question, but neither of us could understand why we needed it in a house that had a bathroom.

  As we were going into the room, towing our little cart behind us, the woman put her arm across the doorway to stop us.

  ‘You can’t take that into the bedroom,’ she told us. ‘You have to leave it in the hallway.’

  We had to obey her, so reluctantly we took everything out of it, including my rucksack and Charlotte, and went into the bedroom. The woman called the dog and he trotted out of the room after her.

  It was when she shut the door that we panicked. We heard a key turning in the lock from the other side and the sound of her footsteps going away down the corridor. Eva sprang across to the door and rattled the handle, but it didn’t budge. We were locked in. It was a shock. Why on earth would she want to lock us up?

  ‘Perhaps she thinks we will steal her precious things,’ I said.

  ‘You’re the precious thing and she’s the one who wants to steal you,’ said Eva. As she spoke, she clasped the chamber pot and was violently sick into it.

  ‘Good job she gave us this,’ she said as cheerfully as she could. She was pale and I was worried about her. Although I felt sick myself, I think it was caused by the worry. Eva, we decided in a whispered conversation, had food poisoning – and we were pretty sure ‘the Witch’, as we dubbed her, had deliberately administered the poison. We felt certain she was trying to get rid of Eva, perhaps by killing her or making her so ill that we could not carry on with our journey, so that she could keep me.

  The Witch had told us nothing about herself and we hadn’t seen a single photograph in any of the rooms we’d been in.

  ‘Perhaps she has lost a child and wants you as a replacement,’ suggested Eva.

  ‘Or she might be lonely,’ I added. ‘Maybe she wants to keep us for company.’

  But there was always the possibility that she was simply evil. I had heard the story of Hansel and Gretel, and seen the pictures of the witch in the story books, and all this woman needed was a walking stick, a slightly bent back and a black cat instead of that horrible little dog, and she was the perfect Hexe or witch. And she had locked us in, just as Hansel and Gretel were locked up.

  We lay down on top of the beds, not taking off our clothes, Eva with the chamber pot next to her so that she could be sick when she needed. I felt more terrified than I had done up to this point in our whole journey: this middle-aged harridan was more frightening to me than any enemy bombardment. I would have lived through another ten dogfights like the one at Crawinkel rather than face her again. I was literally shaking. I was desperately worried that she really had poisoned Eva and that she would not recover.

  All the time we lay there the dog was scratching and whimpering at our door. Occasionally we would hear our hostess shout a command at him, telling him to be quiet, but he took no notice. Her voice just seemed to agitate him and make him scrabble more furiously.

  After half an hour or so Eva had stopped vomiting and was feeling a little bit better. Despite being very tired, I had not slept at all because I was so worried about my sister. But I should never have doubted Eva’s strength and her determination to keep me safe. When she felt slightly recovered, she got off the bed and tiptoed to the window. She tried to open it and miraculously it slid noiselessly ajar. ‘We’re not staying here,’ she whispered to me. ‘She’s going to steal you from me. I couldn’t bear that.’

  We hugged each other tight, grateful for the noise that the dog was making to cover our whispers, as we had no idea whether we were close to the Witch’s bedroom.

  As quietly as possible, Eva moved a chair across to the window, climbed up and leaned out, gently lowering our rucksacks on to the ground outside. Thank goodness the little house had no upstairs. She gestured to me to come across. Taking Charlotte from me, she dropped her out of the window and helped me scrabble from the chair on to the window ledge. Eva jumped out first: it wasn’t far. Then she lifted her arms and I fell into them and was gently lowered to the ground.

  It was a great relief to be out of our prison. Eva picked up the rucksacks and I scooped up Charlotte and, holding hands, we began to walk as quietly as possible round the side of the house, looking for the gate in the fence. We had only taken a few steps when, to our horror, we heard the little dog start to bark furiously. Eva grabbed my arm and we both began to run. We could tell from the noise the dog was making that he was no longer inside the house but in the garden. We wondered many times afterwards how he got out. Did the Witch hear us and deliberately set him on us? Did she leave a door open for him all night anyway? Did he have a dog flap that allowed him to get in and out?

  However he did it, he came charging round the side of the house towards us. We reached the gate in the picket fence and quickly let ourselves out. Eva paused to close it behind us, hoping it would keep the dog at bay.

  We carried on running, leaving the lane to cut across a field. Glancing back, I was dismayed to see that the dog had only been temporarily halted by the gate. Either he had scrambled across it or someone had let him out, but he was in full pursuit again. I had not known that my legs could run so fast. All I could see in my mind’s eye was the face of the Witch. If the dog was chasing us, could she be far behind? What would she do when she caught us?

  We crossed fields and ditches, splashing in a dirty pool of water that soaked my feet. As we pushed through brambles, one flicked back and caught me in my eye, and I was temporarily blinded and in great pain. But I kept on going. Finally, and to our eternal relief, the dog must have become tired or bored, because the sound of his barking receded and we sensed that he had given up the chase. We were not sure he wasn’t still behind us; in the dark, we had only been able to hear him. But we took a chance and slowed down our pace a bit.

  ‘Has he gone?’ I asked fearfully. ‘Are we safe?’

  ‘I think he’s gone,’ replied Eva, panting from her run.

  ‘And the Witch?’

  ‘It’s all right. She isn’t following us. I think we’ve escaped.’

  After five minutes we were certain that the nasty animal was no longer pursuing us and we hugged each other with relief. We walked on a bit further, stumbling in the dark over roots and logs.

  ‘We have to find somewhere to sleep. You’re too tired to go any further, Puppe,’ Eva said. She was tired too, especially after her debilitating sickness, but she was feeling much better. ‘Nothing that a good run across a few fields couldn’t cure,’ she said, as ever trying to make light of our problems.

  We had thought we would have a cosy night after a good supper, setting us up for our journey tomorrow. But now we were out in the cold darkness, exhausted and without food. Poor Eva didn’t even have the good of the meal she had eaten, having thrown it up. We had lost our little cart as well, as we’d had to leave it behind in the hallway of the Witch’s house. Things looked bleak, but we pressed on.

  After walking a while across more fields, we spotted a farm with some outbuildings. Very quietly, we headed towards a barn, not wanting to disturb any more guard dogs. Eva gingerly pushed open the do
or to reveal a dry interior with a pile of hay in one corner. Gratefully, we crawled on to it and fell asleep.

  9

  The Mine

  I slept for only a little while before I was woken by a persistent scuffling noise that seemed to be all around us. In the darkness I became aware that Eva was also awake and I could feel the tension in her body.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she whispered. ‘Go back to sleep.’

  I could hear the sound of shuffling feet and an occasional low-pitched groaning. There was also a pitter-patter rattling noise that never seemed to stop for more than a second. ‘What is it?’ I whispered.

  ‘There are animals in the barn. I think there are a couple of cows and maybe a goat. Don’t worry, Puppe. They are farm animals, perfectly friendly.’

  ‘But what is the scratching noise?’

  ‘That’s just the sound of them snoring. They don’t snore like humans you know.’

  It definitely did not sound like the snoring of the two soldiers the other night. But if Eva said it was animals snoring I believed her. I was reassured and was soon back in a deep sleep. Eva must have fallen asleep as well, because the next thing that either of us knew was waking to the sound of a sharp cry.

  We opened our eyes to find a woman standing over us with a look of great surprise on her face. We had intended to wake early and be on our way before anyone knew we had been there but, of course, farming folk are up at dawn themselves. The woman, who was small and round and probably in her late fifties or sixties, had come to milk the two cows and the goat.