This Shining Land

by Rosalind Laker

  He moved as if to walk away from her. As he had hoped, she called him back. “I’ll go down the road with you.”

  The pleasure that suffused his face dismayed her. She did not want him to put so much importance on what was still against her own true wishes. He was looking at her as he had done in the days gone by when they had met by chance or she had arrived late when he had been waiting for her. A flicker of the old fondness she had once felt for him stirred within her and she was afraid he would perceive it. They had both been mature for their years and although it had been a relatively innocent boy-girl relationship, tender and caring and vulnerable, what they had felt for each other had gone deeper for both of them than might have been expected from their ages.

  As they went down the valley lane together, their talk, which he kept flowing, turned inevitably to people and incidents and events they both recalled. It was impossible for her not to smile with him now and again. He felt nothing of the traumatic yearnings he had had for her in adolescence. For him it was an entirely new beginning, its only links with the past being in the foundation of having known her before, which in itself was invaluable, for her whole warm-hearted, gentle character held no surprises to hinder his pursuit of her.

  He waited for her at the roadside when she went into the house of the district nurse. She was indoors for about ten minutes and when she emerged again her face was radiant. She ran back to him down the snow-banked path.

  “Pernicious anemia can be treated. It may not be too late. The district nurse is getting ready now to go and see the doctor. If he agrees, she’ll be able to give Edvard injections and he’s to have a diet of liver, which is easy enough on a farm. She was outraged to hear the old doctor hadn’t taken any blood tests. Just think! He could be cured!”

  He said nothing, his face set, looking hard at her. Suddenly the boy she had known had vanished, the enemy soldier taking his place. “That’s good news,” he said without expression.

  The excitement drained from her face. “You would have your hostage then, wouldn’t you?” she exclaimed bitterly, facing him in the middle of the snowy lane.

  He had succeeded in frightening her more than he had intended. It gave him no satisfaction and he would have liked to tell her to forget all about it, but there was too much at stake as far as he was concerned. If she had nothing to fear from him, then she could shut the farmhouse door on him again and that would be the end of any friendship.

  “Not necessarily,” he replied as if weighing his words. “Come on. Let’s walk back.” At his side she was anxious and silent, glancing at him continually while he looked ahead, keeping her in suspense. “Nothing is going to happen overnight. Edvard Ryen may be too far gone for any kind of recovery. I’m prepared to wait and see. As I said to you before, I’m your friend and if the people of Ryen Farm matter to you, then naturally my attitude is the same towards them. I repeat: You know me, Karen. I think you should try to trust me. You always did.”

  She did not quite know how to take what he had said. He had made no promise not to carry out his duty if Edvard should recover, and yet his attempt at reassurance had been clear enough and it was only fair to remember he would be forced to obey orders from higher ranks. She thought she had the key to it all. He wanted a renewal of their friendship without reservations. Perhaps he even hoped for more. She almost pitied him.

  “I might trust you, but I can’t trust your uniform.”

  “We’re one and the same.”

  If she needed confirmation that she should not relax her guard, it came at that moment, although he had intended the reverse. At the farm he said goodbye to her, sat on his motorbike to pull the goggles down over his eyes and with a roar of the machine he sped away. She had no idea when she would see him again, but suspected he would return when he judged the time to be right.

  Although the district nurse was permitted to carry out the new treatment on Edvard, the old doctor let it be known that he would not call willingly on the patient again. He was thoroughly offended, both as a patriot and a doctor, that a German diagnosis had superseded his. Johanna was not quite sure what the district nurse had said to him, and she half suspected it had been put forward as a German order to prevent procrastination. By the middle of February, there were the first faint signs of improvement in Edvard’s condition.

  Johanna, returning from shopping for rations in the hamlet, called in at the schoolhouse on the way home as she had done ever since her return to the farm. Since Edvard had taken a turn for the better, Rolf did not come daily to visit any more, and for quite a while a hired man on the farm had replaced him, for Rolf had too much to do at the school during and after educational hours. He held secret meetings with other teachers who had their own network of communication within the Resistance.

  Recently their situation had taken a grave turn. Quisling had had a law passed making membership to his new Teachers’ Nazi Association compulsory for all in the teaching profession. At the same time every pupil was compelled to join his new youth movement for full indoctrination in Nazi ideology. The teachers, backed by the Church and parents, had rejected both ultimatums. Nobody knew what would happen next. It was an impasse.

  In the hallway the familiar aroma of chalk and ink and blackboard met Johanna. The schoolroom took up the left side of the building and Rolf’s living quarters were to the right of the entrance hall with a staircase leading to the bedrooms above. Up there a radio was hidden, more securely concealed than the one the local barber had hidden in the seat of his barber’s chair: a German soldier, coming in unexpectedly at closing time for a haircut, had been astounded when beneath his seat a voice announced, “This is London!”

  As Johanna opened the door into the schoolroom, all twenty-two of the pupils stood up with a scraping of chair legs, the big ribbon bows bobbing on the heads of the little girls. She greeted them.

  Rolf, who was writing on the blackboard, signalled for the children to sit down again and gave her a nod. “Wait awhile,” he invited. “Class will soon be over.”

  It was an arithmetic lesson that was in progress. Johanna walked down between the rows of desks to glance at the work being done. She knew every one of the children for they were all from the valley farms or the hamlet. By the time she reached the last row of desks, school had finished for the day. She stood, her arms folded, at the back of the room and listened with the children to the announcement Rolf made before letting them depart.

  “Today is the last day of school for a month. As you know, four weeks’ vacation has been given to ease the fuel shortage. Do the home tasks I have set you. If any of you have problems, you know where to find me. That’s all, children. Dismissed.”

  He kept good discipline and they filed out. At once in the hall there was a burst of chatter and scurrying to put on their coats and get home. Still with her arms folded, Johanna strolled to the desk and leaned her hip against the edge of it. Rolf was wiping the blackboard clean with a chalk duster.

  “What’s all this about a fuel shortage?” she inquired dryly, nodding her head towards the stove, which reached from floor to ceiling and gave an even warmth to the room. He looked over his shoulder at her.

  “Most of the country schools have all the wood they need. It’s a problem in the cities where other forms of heating are used, I believe.” He replaced the duster on a hook and brushed off his hands. “But that’s not the reason for closing the schools. Far from it! Quisling is in a dilemma. Twelve thousand out of the fourteen thousand teachers in this country have flatly refused to join his new Teachers’ Nazi Association.” He grinned widely. “He can’t dismiss all of us, and this month is to give him time to think over what to do next. Inside information has told us that not only is Terboven angry with his handling of the situation, but Hitler himself is fed up with him.”

  She laughed, running a hand backwards through her silky hair, her face tilted. “That’s the best news since Father took a turn for the better.”

  “Has Karen seen any more of
that German?”

  “No, thank goodness, although she’s as nervous as a cat every time she hears a motorbike. She’s about the best thing that ever happened to our family. What Mother and I would have done without her, I don’t know. All along Father tried his best to be encouraged by her faith that he would get better, and now for her he will do the simple exercises that the district nurse devised, in spite of the discomfort it causes him.” She swung herself away from the desk. “I must be getting home. We’ll be seeing more of you at the farm now that you’ll have some time on your hands.”

  “You will,” he said, walking to the door with her. “There are plenty of overdue chores I’ll be able to deal with before school reopens.”

  Johanna gave him a wave as she left. She was never again to see him with his class in the schoolhouse. Before the four-week vacation was up, a neighbour came rushing into the farmhouse as she was coming down the stairs. “Your brother is being arrested! They’re rounding up hundreds of the teachers!”

  Without stopping for a coat Johanna ran as she was, in her blouse and skirt and house shoes, out through the front door and down the lane. When she came in sight of the schoolhouse a canvas-topped army truck was being fastened at the rear. Rolf must have been watching the lane for he suddenly pushed himself forward into the canvas opening.

  “Take care of everything, Johanna!” he shouted to her. Then he was knocked backwards by the butt of a rifle swung by one of the guards inside with the prisoners.

  “I will!” Her cry was lost in the starting up of the truck and the accompanying roar of the motorbikes of two outriders. At least he knew that she had heard him and would carry out the underlying message in his shout of appeal.

  Other people had gathered silently and seemed too stunned by what had occurred to disperse even when the truck was no longer in sight. Against the snowy background aglitter with the midday sun, they looked like so many dark-clothed chessmen. Dejected chessmen, Johanna thought to herself, for every one of them knew and liked Rolf, who had taken up his appointment at the special request of these local folk. Their sympathy reached out to her and she nodded to each one in turn, seeing that several of the women were wiping their eyes, before she went up the steps into the schoolhouse. One of the men followed her.

  “Shall I help you lock up, Johanna?”

  She thanked him. They checked windows, rattled the hot ashes from the stoves to let the fires out, and made sure everything was secure. In the study she righted a chair that had been overturned during Rolf’s arrest and picked up a pen from the floor to restore it to the inkstand. When everything was done she turned the key in the main door after herself and her helper. As he was on the community council, he took charge of the key. Walking home in her brother’s ski-jacket, which she had taken from a peg in the schoolhouse hallway, Johanna closed her hand over another key in the pocket. It was the one she had removed from the back door when she was certain of being unobserved.

  That night she returned to the schoolhouse to carry out what Rolf had wanted of her. There had been no recent falls of snow to give away her footsteps, and once inside the building the black-out blinds, which she had pulled down earlier in the day in the closing-up process, hid the landing light as she switched it on. There she set down the carrier she had brought with her to take away the radio. It was too important an item to be left there unused, and Rolf had told her once where it was concealed. She went to a framed print in the dimmest part of the landing where the eaves sloped and removed it from its nail. Had she not known, she might still have missed the panel that had been skilfully cut into the wooden wall beneath. Carefully she prised it out. There was the radio. After lifting it down onto the floor, she was about to replace the concealing board when she thought it would be wise to check that nothing else of importance was there. The wood at the back moved slightly under the accidental pressure of her fingers. She pressed again and managed to push it to one side. Deeper under the eaves was an old attaché case, which she eased forward and into the light. It held a transmitter. This was something she had known nothing about. No wonder Rolf had shouted to her from the truck with such urgency.

  She admired his ingenuity. He had chosen to hide it there in the hope that in the event of an enemy search only the radio would have been seized, appearing to be all that was there. Suddenly she froze, convinced she had heard a sound somewhere in the building. Yet she had fastened the door after her and it was surely her imagination that was playing tricks. Who would come here anyway? With the honesty of the country-bred, nobody would break in to pilfer, and the Germans would have searched at the time of Rolf’s arrest if they had suspected him of having a transmitter in the house. Dismissing her fears, she returned her attention to the cavity. Surely there should be some aerial wire? Her fingers found it, metres and metres of it neatly coiled together. She marvelled at the risks her brother must have taken. Probably he had had to move the transmitter continually from place to place, setting it up in a cabin or under a rock shelter on the slopes, for the Germans had detectors sweeping whole areas in tracking down subversive transmitting.

  Downstairs a board creaked in the region of the kitchen. Now she was convinced someone was in the house. It could only be a German soldier who had returned on his own to loot whatever was available. Instantly she snapped off the light. There was no time to refit the wooden panel she had removed. Swiftly she picked up the radio and pushed it back into the cavity, knocking the corner in her haste. Then she found the picture in the darkness and rehung it over the aperture, her fingers fumbling to get the cord hooked onto the nail. In the hallway the door from the kitchen opened with a whine of hinges.

  She held her breath, her fear intense. Somewhere on the floor beside her was the wooden wall panel that she had set down and which must be concealed. On her knees, she felt for it and encountered its smoothed edge. Catching it up, she clutched it to her. The intruder had switched on a flashlight. Its rays danced up the stairs and threw shadows from the banisters on the sloping ceiling above her head. Like a snake she went flat and when the rays moved back to the hallway she crawled through the half-opened bedroom door and pushed it closed behind her. Leaping to her feet, she half fell against the bed in the blackness. Lifting up the mattress, she thrust the wooden panel underneath it. She was just in time.

  The door was kicked open with a crash. In the light that blazed into her eyes she caught the gleam and ominous click of a revolver being pointed at her by the figure that whammed into the room. Her scream was an automatic reaction and she hurled herself across the bed onto the floor to take cover.

  “Good God!” exclaimed Steffen’s voice harshly. “It’s you! I thought it was a bloody Kraut!”

  He found the light switch and snapped it on. A cream-shaded lamp flooded the room with a soft glow. There were several pieces of simple furniture and a blue-painted bed which had a high downy quilt in a checked cotton cover. At first he could not see her. She had slithered down between the wall and the bed.

  “Jo?” He slid the revolver back into the holster strapped to his body and returned the flashlight to the pocket of his padded jacket. Word of Rolf’s arrest had made the speedy retrieving of the transmitter essential, for the Resistance was reeling under a new spate of discovered hideouts, arms and equipment caches, arrests, interrogations and torture. His nerves were shaken by the unexpected encounter with Johanna. Believing a trap had been set, he had been primed to kill, his finger tight on the trigger.

  She heard him come across the floor and still she stayed where she was, sitting with her forehead sunk into the side of the bed, the fingers of both hands dug deep enough into the quilt for her nails to pierce the cover. Rage had come with a trembling, muscle-quivering relief, an inexplicable tempest of fury that consumed her and made her shake as if with ague, although it was beyond her comprehension. All that was stormy and hot-headed within her had erupted volcanically. The bed moved at a slight angle away from her as he pulled the foot aside, the wooden legs scraping the f
loor. Her head dropped between her arms while she continued to grip the quilt as though clinging to a life raft. He came into the triangular space between the bed and the wall to bend down beside her.

  “For God’s sake, look at me,” he urged, his voice sounding tight and strained.

  She knew he had come within seconds of killing her. It added to her wrath that her teeth had begun to chatter from shock, taking away the last shred of control over herself. She wanted to yell at him not to touch her, to leave as quickly as he had come, to let her emerge from this personal trauma on her own. He spoke her name again, shifting nearer and she could smell the outdoor chill of his clothes, his skin, his hair. All her senses were keened to the bludgeoning desire descending and sweeping across them with the full force of a leaping, thundering avalanche. She could almost hear the roaring in her ears. Without stirring, she felt him reaching for her as if the very air sparked and flashed with the force released between them.

  As his hand clasped her arm she shuddered violently, her head jerking upwards, her eyes enormous in her white face, her hair swinging wildly like frayed silk, her lips drawn back over her teeth. His face was as pale as hers, his jaw clenched. Even as he wrenched her to him she hurled herself forward and in the impact they fell across the bed. Their actions were frantic and frenzied, for both were in thick outer garments and as bundled in their love-making as polar bears. Then in the midst of all the snatching and pulling he was suddenly warm and strong and powerful within her, an oasis of their bodies meeting amid the hampering of their twisted clothing. Her sharp cry was both anticipative and abandoned before his mouth seemed to cover half her face, shutting her into a silence broken only by the screeching of the bed beneath their battling. It was only seconds before they came together in a great explosion of passion that blazed through her loins and left her gasping, dazed and drenched in sweat. He collapsed across her, spent and breathless. She shut her eyes as if to block out what had happened, exhilarated and appalled and anguished.