by Murray Pura
“Ah, you know my weakness, my dear. Even without the kisses I’d do it. You only needed to make the request as you have done.”
“That’s the spirit of chivalry. Now don’t you wish the noble deed was finished and you were marching back through those oaken doors to collect your bounty from your lady?”
“I do. I very much do.”
He winked and began to sing softly.
See, the conqu’ring hero comes!
Sound the trumpets, beat the drums.
Sports prepare, the laurel bring,
Songs of triumph to him sing.
See, the conqu’ring hero comes!
Sound the trumpets, beat the drums.
Harrison stayed a fortnight at Kipp and Caroline’s townhouse in Camden Lock, surprising himself and his wife. At first, while Eva and Charles were glad to see him, the talk was general and mostly about how he drove them through France and how he fought off the three men on the boat, including Lord Tanner. Charles stuck to his favorite topic of Germany annexing England until a week of meals and walks with Harrison had gone by. One afternoon, after listening to his father’s broadcast on the superiority of the German air force, he found Harrison where he was trimming a hedge for Caroline.
“You say Mr. Danforth—Kipp—is testing aircraft?” he asked as Harrison snapped away with his garden shears.
“That’s right.”
“Where exactly?”
“Suffolk. Out east.”
Charles watched Harrison work with the shears a few moments. “I suppose it’s a restricted area.”
“It is indeed.”
“Are the planes any good? They can’t be better than our Messerschmitt.”
“It would depend a great deal on the pilot, wouldn’t it?”
“I’ve flown with some of the best.”
“Some, but not all.”
Charles was silent again as Harrison worked his way along the hedge. “Is there another pair of shears, do you know?” Charles suddenly asked.
“The tool shed is just at the back of the house. You can take a look.”
“Can I go down to see my—can I go out to Suffolk and watch Mr. Danforth fly?”
“Mr. Danforth?”
“Well, Kipp. You know, Kipp.”
“Lord Kipp.” Harrison paused with the shears open. “When were you thinking?”
“Could we…well, Friday?”
“Friday? Don’t you have a date to meet up with some of the British Union of Fascists?”
Charles put his hands in the pockets of his shorts and glanced at a robin perched on the eaves trough of the townhouse. “I’d rather go to the airfield.”
Harrison set down his shears. “What’s all this about then?”
“What do you mean?”
“You were keen on marching with the Blackshirts a week ago and changing England from the inside out.”
“I still want to do that. It’s just that…well, talking with you, seeing my Mum, listening to Eva’s stories…”
“What sort of stories?”
“About the camp. The tortures and the killings. She cries a lot, you know. When no one’s around. When she thinks I’m not listening.”
Harrison took the fedora off his head, smoothed down the hawk feather in the hatband, and turned it over in his hand, examining it. “You’ve always put across you’re a hard-boiled Nazi. So does Eva.”
“We’re both committed to Germany. We’re both committed to the Reich.”
“So why the long faces?”
“Some things…some things are not as they should be.”
“What things?”
Charles sat down on the paving stones and drew his legs up to his chest. He rested his arms on the tops of his bare knees. “Hitler and the Nazis have been very good for Germany,” he said. “They certainly put a new soul in my body. Britain is just so soft and undedicated compared to the new Germany—it has no purpose, whereas the Third Reich has great purpose.”
Harrison pulled off his gardening gloves and sat down next to Charles. It began to sprinkle, and raindrops beaded on their hands and boots.
“It is very exciting…all the energy, the ambition, the march into the future,” Charles went on. “Eva feels the same way I do. But there are some who come into the movement and do things that are not good for Germany.”
“It may be those things were in the movement right from the start and perhaps you just didn’t notice…or care to notice.”
“Oh, but I think I would have noticed. The question of the Jews, yes, that was always before us. But I did not expect such a large number of executions. Certainly not of children.”
“You could write your father about it.”
“What good would that do? He can’t say anything about it on a broadcast, can he? And for all I know he wouldn’t want to. Yes, deal with the Jews, we must deal with the Jews, but slaughter? That is not a way of German or Nazi honor.”
“Maybe not German, Charles, but I’m not sure about Nazi.”
The young man’s face was grim. “You think we are all monsters.”
“Who runs the concentration camps?”
Charles stared straight ahead and did not answer. “I just want to put something else in Eva’s head, something else in her dreams. Can she come to that airfield where Mr. Danforth tests the aircraft?”
“I don’t even know if you can. I’ll have to talk to your mum and make a few calls. Are you sure you want to go down there?”
“I’m sure.”
“Lord Tanner won’t take too kindly to that once he finds out, will he?”
Charles didn’t respond. Slowly he peeled up the side of his shirt that faced Harrison. There were three long jagged scars.
Harrison sucked in his breath between clenched teeth. “Those aren’t very old.”
“I don’t wish to discuss it. I don’t wish you to talk about it with anyone. My father felt it would make me stronger. There were other ways and means he employed. Some obvious, some not so obvious.” He pulled the shirt back down. “I never thought about it until Eva spoke to me about the concentration camp. Until the weeks I’ve had here.”
“I don’t understand what you mean by that.”
“You are strong. And you are tough. But you would never do that to make me just as strong or tough.”
“No, I wouldn’t,” Harrison replied. “Neither would Lord Kipp.”
“Eva has worse wounds. Let her come with us to the airfield.”
“I have no idea what they’ll say. I can’t promise anything.” The rain grew heavier, but neither of them moved. “What makes you think a trip like that would help Eva?”
“I don’t know. But she can’t just be a spectator. She has to go up.”
“Go up? I doubt very much they’ll let either of you do that even if you are granted permission to visit.”
Rain poured over Charles’s face. “She’s very strong. But a flight would make her stronger. It would get her through. Otherwise I don’t know if she’ll make it.”
“What would flying do?”
“The freedom…of the eagle, of the falcon. She was imprisoned for a long time. The concentration camp added another ten years in just four weeks. She needs the flying.”
“And you need it too.”
“Ja, I need it. But she needs it more than I do. So if only one can go up with Mr. Danforth…with Kipp, it should be her.”
“How do you know she’s not afraid to fly?”
“I don’t know. But she is a good German. She has to overcome any fears and do what she must. If I sense it, she must sense it too. She has to fly. Everything that binds her to earth has to fall away.”
Harrison wiped the rainwater from his eyes. “I’d never have taken you for a philosopher. You’re like your Uncle Hartmann.”
“Hartmann’s a traitor. I’m not him and I’m not a philosopher. Unless perhaps you wish to compare me to a good Nazi philosopher like Nietzsche.”
“Can’t say as I know the chap.�
��
“Nietzsche knew the importance of strength. And throwing off shackles.”
“Right.” Harrison blinked up at the rainclouds. “We’d best put the shears away and get indoors. I’ll ring up some of those RAF folk you and this Nietzsche fellow are anxious I talk to.”
“I’ll sit out here a while.”
“In the rain?”
“Yes, in the rain.”
“Suit yourself.” Harrison got to his feet. “Take your time.”
Charles hugged his knees to his chest and closed his eyes.
Two hours later Harrison was handing the phone to Charles.
“Go ahead,” Harrison said to Charles’s white face and dark eyes. “He wants to speak with you.”
“Who does?”
“Lord Kipp. I rang him about the trip to the airfield.”
“Hello,” said Charles.
“Good afternoon, Charles. How are you?”
“I’m all right.”
“Harrison tells me you’d like to come out to Suffolk.”
“Yes, sir.”
“That you might even like to go up like you did with Udet and von Zeltner during the Olympics?”
“Is it possible?”
“I’ll speak with my commanding officer. It’s unlikely he’ll let you go up, but I might catch him in an ebullient mood. He has one of those now and then.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Cheerful. He might relent and let us both squeeze into the cockpit. Might. As a favor to me—and if he thinks you’re a potential RAF recruit from the Danforth family.”
“It’s more important that Eva fly with you.”
“Eva? I can’t imagine being given the nod to take her up.”
“She has to go in the plane.”
“Why?”
“She has been trapped.”
“I’m not sure I’ll be able to get permission, Charles.”
“Please try, sir.”
“I’ll do what I can if you think a flight in an airplane will make that much of a difference to her.”
Later that evening, Caroline found Harrison in the library, where he was sipping a coffee and flipping through the pages of a newspaper.
“I’ve been with Eva,” she said, taking a seat. “She even let me pray with her a bit.”
Harrison put down the paper. “I’m glad to hear it.”
“I rang up Kipp at his flat by the base. His commanding officer isn’t keen on the idea of Charles or Eva coming down.”
“No, I didn’t think he would be.”
“It’s all rather silly, isn’t it? A plane ride. For that matter we could find a flight instructor to take her and Charles up for a couple of pounds. One of the chaps from the airline Kipp and Ben sold off might do it for free.”
“So they might. But apparently that’s not the point.”
“Why does it have to be Kipp?”
“I don’t know. Eva doesn’t even know him, and Charles hasn’t had much use for him for the past couple of years, has he?”
Caroline looked at his cup. “Shall I fetch the pot?”
“Not at all. That’s enough for me for the night.”
“I wish you’d speak with her.”
“Me?”
Caroline lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “You were her liberator.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“That she’ll live.”
“Is that what’s bothering her? I thought she missed the fatherland. I thought they both did.”
“But you’ve spoken with Charles. You know it’s more than that.”
“The whole thing puzzles me, Lady Caroline. I really don’t know what to make of their mix of Nazism and German pride and pain and desperation.”
“I don’t either. Still, she asked for you.”
“Right. Nothing much in the paper in any case. A lot of nonsense about the Germans demanding a piece of Czechoslovakia for their empire.”
He went down the hall with the cup of warm coffee in his hand and knocked at Eva’s door. She responded in German. He entered her room.
“Hullo,” he greeted her.
She was in a pale blue dress and sitting on the edge of her bed. Her arms and legs were still thin and her face sunken. Her eyes were like black holes.
“My father locked me away so I wouldn’t tell anyone about the Jews he was hiding.”
Harrison sat in a chair facing her.
“I hate the Jews. I hate him.”
Harrison said nothing.
“You brought me out of all that. You unlocked my prisons.”
“Not just me.”
“I know. Mr. Danforth as well. He organized the entire affair.”
“So did your father.”
“No, he didn’t.”
“How do you think we got the SS uniforms? Why do you think the camp commandant released you so easily? Who made it possible for Charles to be with us? Your father arranged all of that.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’ll never see him again.” She clenched her hands together. “I’m frightened to death of flying. Did Charles tell you that?”
“No.”
“But I believe it would be another key in another lock. Opening it. Do you see that?”
“The likelihood of your going up with Lord Kipp is slim, Miss von Isenburg.”
“Please don’t call me that.”
“I don’t think it can be done.”
“They shot some of the children in the back of the head. Others were so young they wouldn’t waste the bullet. So they crushed their little skulls with rifle stocks or the heels of their boots.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I never heard such shrieking and pleading in my life. The mothers. It didn’t matter. The SS shot them too.”
“You don’t have to go back.”
“I want to go back. But not while my father’s alive. Not while there are SS. A Germany five or ten years from now.”
“What sort of Germany will that be, do you think?”
“If the SS is gone, something stronger will have removed them. But not without a fight. So perhaps Germany will be like me. Broken to pieces yet still wanting a second life.”
“I wish you would eat more.”
Eva stared at him with her dark eyes. “All in good time.”
Harrison lifted his cup. “I can get you some coffee.”
“Will we keep talking?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll try some then.”
Three days later
Ashton Park
“Come along, Eva. The plane’s ready for you.”
“I like the ash trees. There are so many of them.” Eva looked at Holly. “Would you mind if I stayed here a few days?”
Holly smiled. “Stay as long as you like. It’s a great empty old estate with so many of the family off in London. I’d love to have you.”
Eva’s eyes remained dark and empty. “I’d like to live in a forest.”
“We can furnish you with a tent. But come along. Kipp only has loan of the plane for a few hours.”
The two women began to walk out of the trees toward the airstrip by the Ashton Park manor.
“I still don’t understand why the commanding officer wouldn’t let us into the air base in Suffolk.”
“I suppose things are more tense all around and he didn’t want Germans or Nazis on the grounds. It’s nothing about you, Eva. It’s about Europe and its politics.”
“I don’t like to hear about it but you should tell me just the same.”
“Herr Hitler wants the Sudetenland—regions of Czechoslovakia that have a large number of Germans residing in them. He feels Sudetenland should be part of the German nation. There’s a lot of fuss and bother and Britain’s heavily involved.”
Kipp was standing with Harrison and Charles by a biplane. A huge green meadow stretched all around them.
“There you are.” Kipp extended a hand toward the front cockpit. “You’re in the front. I�
�ll be flying the aircraft from right behind you in the rear cockpit.”
“It looks like something from the war.” Eva held back.
“Well, we use it to train young pilots. It’s called a Tiger Moth. Steady as a rock.” He grinned. “RAF gave me the loan. To make up for barring us from their base.”
“Go on, Eva,” Charles urged.
“I’d rather you went first,” she responded.
“We’ve been through all that.”
“Here.” Harrison linked his arm through hers, and she let him walk her to the plane. “You said you wanted to open more doors.”
Kipp handed her a leather jacket, a flying helmet, and a white silk scarf. “There were many great German fliers in nineteen eighteen. That’s only twenty years ago. It will be just like you’re one of them.”
Harrison helped her on with the jacket and helmet and goggles. “There you are.” He wound the scarf about her neck. “Now fly. Fly like a falcon.”
In a matter of minutes the Tiger Moth lifted from the ground and was hurtling over the grass. Eva stared to her left and her right. Three swallows burst over the top wing and swung down through the air. The sky had turned from gray to blue with long trails of white clouds the plane swept through. They went higher and higher. Ashton Park seemed like a dollhouse, and the people watching the Tiger Moth were as toy figures. Then the plane wheeled right, and there was no longer any earth, only vast stretches of the blue and the white touched by lances of light as bright as fire.
Eva bit her knuckles. “Oh, mein Gott, was haben Sie gemacht?—Oh, my God, what have You made?”
As Kipp banked the Tiger Moth into the sun and a flock of blackbirds broke apart in response to the roar of the engine, gold filled Eva’s eyes, and she could feel tears begin. She couldn’t stop them. Her whole body heaved and her shoulders shook. She pulled off the goggles and put a hand to her face, struggling to control herself and fighting for the breaths she took, her chest cut with the pain and the beauty of everything she was feeling.
Kipp tapped her back from behind.
She turned her head and glanced back, the tears moving quickly down her face.
Kipp didn’t appear to notice. “Take—the—stick!” He spoke the words loudly and slowly, forming each word with his lips. “Take—the—stick!”
She shook her head. “I can’t.”
He nodded his head in slow, strong movements. “Take as much time as you need. I need you to fly the plane.”
