“Alan?”
There is no answer. All he can hear are the wing tunes of voracious mosquitoes.
Brandt reaches around for a light switch and finds a cord at shoulder height. When he pulls it, a single bulb throws up the shadow of a crucifix and a print of the Sacred Heart Entwined with Thorns on the end wall. On the bare floor, a slight figure in khaki shorts and a grubby brown shirt is curled up like a cashew nut.
“Alan. It is me, Otto. I got your letter.” He cautiously approaches the boy who cringes away from him. “Won’t you shake hands with your old friend Jerry?”
Alan Gilbert tries to stand upright and nearly falls, but Brandt rushes forwards, takes his weight and helps him to shuffle out of the room into the corridor. Alan shields his eyes to keep out the light, then he straightens up as Brandt holds his arm to support him.
As soon as they reach the foyer Brother Kostka gets up as if to delay them, but one look from the German is enough to curtail any challenge. “We’re going outside,” says Brandt. He takes Alan to the Buick and props the trembling boy up in the front passenger seat. Alan’s skin looks grey, and beads of sweat are glistening through the dirt on his forehead.
“Hold on, Alan,” says Brandt as he starts the engine. He drives around to the back of the chapel and parks in the shade.
The car has an ice box and Brandt takes out a bottle of water and an apple. The boy drinks so quickly that Brandt has to stop him. “Easy, Alan. Take it easy.”
Alan hands the bottle back. “Thank you. Thank you for coming, Jerry – I mean Otto.” His shoulders shake and he begins to sob. Brandt gives him back the water. “You must tell me what’s been going on here. I need to know it all. Remember, Alan, we are friends so leave nothing out.”
Brandt listens with rising fury as Alan falteringly begins to tell him about the outrages inflicted on him and also on some of the other smaller boys. It is clear from the misplaced shame on Alan’s face that, in spite of Brandt’s entreaty that nothing should be left out, the child is leaving out a great deal. Brandt’s finger nails dig into the palms of his hands and he clenches his jaws so tightly that he fears he will break a tooth.
Finally, Alan stops altogether. He wipes his eyes with his hand, takes another swig from the water bottle and stares out of the car window at the red bricks of St Edmund’s Chapel, baking in the sun. There is a long silence, but when Brandt tries to pat the boy’s shoulder, he backs away in alarm.
“I’m sorry,” says Brandt quickly putting both his hands well in sight on the steering wheel.
“Now I’ve told you, I’ll be in even worse trouble,” says Alan. His body trembles uncontrollably.
Brandt’s cheeks feel hot, but his response is measured. “No, you won’t. Never again. I repeat never again. It’s over, Alan. Now I don’t want to make a mistake, so please tell me again the name of the man who did this to you?”
“Father Walsh.”
“Are there any other priests here?”
“No, the rest are all brothers.”
“Wind your window up, but leave an inch at the top for fresh air.” Brandt does the same on the driver’s side. He takes the key out of the ignition and tells Alan to keep himself locked in the car.
“You don’t move. You’ve got water to drink and air to breathe.” He smiles at the boy. “You’ll do fine until I get back – probably in about fifteen minutes. Don’t open this car for anyone, even the bloody pope. Just stay put, be strong.” Brandt then opens the glove compartment and takes out something wrapped in a chamois leather.
“What’s in that?”
“Tools,” says Brandt. He checks that all the car doors are locked, then strides around the corner back to the main entrance.
“What have you done with Gilbert?” demands Brother Kostka. He looks more confident now that the Mass is over and the foyer is filling up with other brothers, and boys in khaki shorts and faded green shirts. The unwashed feet in sweaty sandshoes without socks add to the prevailing stench of boiling cabbage. It exacerbates Brandt’s anger, but he keeps it in check and his voice is icily calm.
“I wish to see Father Walsh immediately. Is that him over there?” A priest in a white cassock has just emerged from the chapel and is hurrying up the wide staircase.
“Yes, but sir…”
Brandt ignores Brother Kostka and leaps up the stairs after the priest, reaching the landing in time to see Father Walsh disappear into a room at the end of the corridor and close the door.
In seconds, Brandt reaches the room himself. He enters, bolts the door behind him and unwraps the Lüger pistol.
The priest’s cheeks whiten. “Who… who are you? I think you must leave or…” His voice is weak. He picks up the telephone.
“Put that down.” Brandt clips each word separately and points the Lüger directly at the priest’s chest. “You will answer me and do what I tell you; otherwise, my God, I will kill you right now. You don’t deserve to exist.”
“What do you want?”
“Get me your file on Alan Gilbert.
“It’s in the cabinet. I would need to—”
“Open the cabinet and just give me the file.”
The priest unlocks the cabinet, fumbles inside it and extracts a folder, which he slides across the desk to Brandt.
“Here it is.”
“Is this all?”
“Yes.”
“This is supposed to be an orphanage. Get me an adoption certificate and the form you need to send to the government.”
“But you can’t—”
“Now.” Brandt lowers the pistol to point it at the man’s belly and the shaking priest lifts one finger to indicate the bottom drawer of his desk. Brandt nods and the priest retrieves a slim cardboard box containing uncompleted adoption certificates and a sheaf of blue forms. Walsh takes out one of each and is about to hand them over when Brandt shakes his head. “Sign them first.” The priest’s hands are shaking as he unscrews his fountain pen and scrawls his signatures. “Now, pass them to me.” Brandt scans them both, then with his left hand slips them into the breast pocket of his jacket.
The priest stares at him. “You have a Lüger pistol. Who are you? A Nazi fugitive of some sort? A war criminal?” His eyes bulge with fierce derangement. “I’m right, aren’t I? You are a war criminal.”
Brandt’s voice is ice cold. He doesn’t attempt to deny the allegation. “Then you must know that a war criminal has no scruples about killing. As far as you’re concerned, Father Walsh, you’re finished. I know what you have done to these boys, so tell me why I should not kill you right now?”
Terror returns to Walsh’s face for he must know that if Brandt is indeed a Nazi fugitive, he has given him the strongest possible motive for shooting him. He rises from his desk, backs away and cowers by the wall. “Don’t forget, I’m a priest. I’m used to keeping things to myself. I won’t say a word about my suspicions about you. I can see you’re in Australia to make a new life. Please go now. Just take the Gilbert boy with you and go. Please don’t—”
“So you wish me to leave you free to ravish and destroy more children’s lives? Never. Now get down on your knees, Father, and pray. Pray.” The priest staggers over to the image of the Virgin, drops to his knees and closes his eyes. His lips move in a scarcely audible whisper.
Brandt interrupts him. “In two minutes I shall fire a single bullet into the back of your head. You will feel nothing. Do not turn around.”
There is a flatulent rumble in the priest’s trousers and a putrid smell.
Brandt grimaces and slips out of the room like a phantom, leaving Father Walsh in his filth with his eyes still shut, mumbling away, shaking and waiting for the end.
When Brandt returns to the car, he finds Alan peering through the high windscreen, and looking terrified and vulnerable. “You were a long time, Otto,” he says as Brandt climbs into
the driver’s seat and clicks the door shut. Alan slides away closer to the passenger door.
“We haven’t got much time, Alan. Do you want to come with me?”
Despite Alan’s visible apprehension, his reply is as emphatic as a slammed door. “Yes, Otto.”
“Do you need to collect anything?”
“No.”
“No photos? Nothing special from England? What about that suitcase you had on the ship?”
“They emptied our cases in Sydney. They said they were needed for other boys coming over.”
“What about your locker?”
“We don’t have lockers. I put my things in a pillow case, but they were stolen.”
Brandt’s voice softens. “Alan, do you own anything at all?”
“Just my clothes.”
Brandt looks at Alan’s hand-me-down khaki shirt and shorts. “I’ll get you some new clothes. Do you want to say goodbye to anyone?”
Alan shakes his head as some bigger boys emerge from around the corner and are staring at the car. Blood leaves his face. “Please can we go now, Otto?”
15
They journey east, cutting across the highways and keeping to minor roads. Because Walsh’s violations are now exposed, the priest is in no position to report him to the police, but he won’t take any chances.
“We’re going to the Snowy Mountains, Alan, which is a very long way. Every time we stop for a break we’ll get the map out. I only wish you could help me with the driving.”
Alan is expressionless. The boy is so puny that his forwards horizon is only the vast bonnet of the Buick. Almost three years have passed since Brandt last saw him on the Syrenia and surely, by now, Alan ought to be taller and showing signs of more muscle. The bespectacled child straining his neck to peer out of the windscreen is angular, just skin and bone. His cheeks are sunken, which make his eyes appear larger than they should be. But the sight of him brings back images of bodies Brandt had witnessed by the roadside after the death marches in January 1945. He feels a lump in his throat and fights back tears as he tries to focus his thoughts on the way ahead.
From time to time, he glances up at the rear-view mirror. There is no vehicle in sight, but his confidence that the priest will not report him is beginning to wane. For the first time since the end of the war, his fear of apprehension is not just for himself. If Brandt is arrested, Alan will be returned to the mission and the abuse of Walsh. Even if Brandt tries to report the priest to the authorities, who will take the word of an ex-Nazi?
A township sweeps up so quickly that Brandt almost drives straight through it. As it is, he missed its name on the sign post. He pulls up at the only general store in the street and buys Alan swimming trunks, shorts, a light shirt, underwear and a pair of sandals. He also purchases a cake of soap, a flannel, two towels and a hard cushion, so that Alan is raised high enough to see over the bonnet.
Brandt lays the new clothes on the back seat. “They won’t fit you properly,” he says, “but we’ll find something better when we get to a proper big town where we’ll stay the night.” He unfolds the map. “I see there’s a river not far from here and we’ll have a swim. Remember how I taught you to swim? You need a bit of a scrub; after that, you can change into these and then we’ll get a bite to eat in the next town.” He checks the road map again, then starts the engine.
The river turns out to be only a couple of feet deep, a gentle flow wimpling over the stones; its banks are low walls of stark-white gypsum.
Alan takes the bar of soap and the flannel, but it is clear that he will only enter the water fully dressed and it is only when the current pulls at his shirt, that he decides to pull it off and throw it onto the bank. Brandt keeps his eye on the boy while trying to float himself on his back. He watches as Alan now treats the river like an oversized bath, soaping himself all over, then viciously scouring his body with the coarse flannel. At length he sprawls down in the flowing coolness to rinse himself completely. When both he and Brandt emerge from the water, the sun dries their skin so quickly they hardly need their towels. Brandt dresses quickly by the rocks. He has placed Alan’s new clothing on the grassy bank and the boy snatches them up and skulks behind some bushes to change. The boy’s rancid mission outfit is dumped in a roadside bin and they continue their journey.
At Walgett, Brandt takes Alan into the Drovers’ Rest Café. Displayed along its mirrored walls are labelled prints of London’s Tower Bridge and Windsor Castle, and scenes of Merseyside, Cumbria and the Highlands of Scotland. A portrait of the late king is set in a gilded frame.
“What do you boys want to eat?” asks the middle-aged waitress. Her peroxide hair is tied back with a green ribbon. Radiating like tiny deltas from the corners of her mouth are permanent smile lines.
“For me it is steak, chips and salad,” says Brandt.
“And what about you, love?” she asks Alan.
“The same, please,” murmurs Alan, his eyes flitting in turn to every object in the café.
“How do you want your steak?” the waitress asks Brandt.
“Medium rare, thank you.”
“And you, love?” Alan looks vacant. The woman smiles, “Would you like it well cooked, medium or just a bit underdone?”
“Medium, thank you,” murmurs Alan. The waitress scrawls the order on a yellow pad and leaves them. For the first time, Brandt and the boy see each other face to face across a table. Alan looks at Brandt’s powerful shoulders, biceps and wrists. By contrast, he can see his own skinny body reflected many times in the mirrors and the chrome surrounds of the café. Finally, he speaks up. “I want to protect myself. How do I grow up to be as strong as you?”
Brandt tries not to stare at the skeletal figure in front of him as, again, it reminds him of the death marches. Briefly, he shuts his eyes. When the SS tried to hurry the children along, their chalky bones would sometimes snap under a single blow from a rifle butt, and then the guards would shoot them and toss their flimsy bodies into the undergrowth like broken dolls.
Seconds later, Brandt opens his eyes and wipes them with the back of his sleeve. “I picked up a bit of grit from the river,” he says. “Now, Alan, do you really want to be strong?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it’s not just muscle, you know. It’s bones.”
“But how do you make bones grow big?”
“How old are you?”
“Eleven, nearly twelve.”
“Subtract eleven from thirty.”
“Nineteen,” says Alan immediately.
“That means you have nineteen years to build up your bones. It will be too late after you reach thirty, but you’re lucky, you’ve still got plenty of time. I will show you what to do when we get home. The training is not hard, but you will have to do it every day.”
Brandt gazes out through the window and tries not to look anxious. There are a few cars in the street, but, despite its dusty exterior, the navy-blue Buick – with its chrome bumper-guard grill, its six round ventiports along the bonnet and its white-walled tyres – is likely to draw attention and he regrets having parked it in plain view outside the café. He should have left it under one of the jacaranda trees in a side road.
Alan has been following Brandt’s preoccupation with the street and, despite the warmth of the day, he starts shivering. Brandt follows Alan’s gaze and sees a man in clerical garb talking to an elderly woman on the other side of the road.
Brandt tries to divert the boy’s attention and notices that Alan has been struggling to cut his steak.
“Steaks can be difficult,” says Brandt. “I think I should help you out.” He takes Alan’s plate and slices the meat into small cubes. “There you are.”
“Thanks. I’m sorry my hands are wobbly.”
Alan is obviously starving, but with every mouthful he glances at Brandt as if expecting some admonition. At times his han
ds are shaking so much he has to put down his knife and fork.
“The chips are good,” says Brandt.
“I beg your pardon. What did you say?” Alan sounds as if he’s just woken from a bad dream.
“The chips. Do you like them?”
“The chips – yes, they’re very good.”
“As good as in England?”
“I can’t remember.” He looks wistfully at the picture of Tower Bridge. “The older boys say that England’s chips are the best in the world.”
As soon as they get back in the car, Brandt checks the map. The shortest route would be to go south through Dubbo, but he thinks it safer to keep driving east towards Tamworth.
The silences are endless and, to Brandt, not unwelcome; he suspects that Alan feels the same. The boy stares at the passing scenery like a convict released after a long sentence. The country is losing its flatness, and the emergent hills are gilded with sunlight and bursting with the golden blooms of wattle. Other trees are less flamboyant, their pale blossoms flecked with pink and orange.
Here the farms are smaller, but they are more numerous. Mailboxes in bright colours appear along the roadside. Each settlement they pass has a weatherboard church built in the Carpenter Gothic style and, right next to it, a school with a neat picket fence painted stark white.
“What do you think of the country around here?” asks Brandt.
“I didn’t know that Australia was like this. At Wait-a-Minute it’s all flat and dry, and brown; everything is brown. I thought the whole of Australia was flat and brown. All the boys did, but here it’s so green – not as green as England, I suppose, but pretty green.”
“Do you still remember what it was like in England?”
“I remember when we left Southampton. I looked down through the railings and watched the ropes slip into the water. Some of the boys cheered.”
“Did you?”
“No. I wish I could’ve got off the ship and run away to find my mother.”
“I’ll try and help you to find her, if it is possible.”
Orphaned Leaves Page 15
