This Shining Land

by Rosalind Laker

  “I’ll get you a couple,” he said at once.

  Her request saved his life and hers. As he turned back into the mansion she followed to wait in the hallway, and in the same instant an enormous explosion split the air as an ammunition dump went sky-high. The blast swept across the courtyard, killing the sentries and lifting the parked cars like toys to hurl them into an untidy mass of wreckage. Windows disintegrated as Johanna and Tom were thrown down across the hall floor that heaved under them while overhead the wooden balusters of the gallery gave way, falling in a chain reaction like hurled ninepins. A mirror smashed down from the wall, its glittering shards missing Johanna’s face by a hair’s breadth as she lay sprawled on the stairs where she had landed. There were shouts and running feet and screams from the women left floundering in the shattered remains of the party. The air smelt of dust and cordite, acrid in the throat and nostrils.

  “Johanna! Are you all right?” Tom’s voice was no more than a croak.

  Dazedly she lifted her head. “I think so.” Awkwardly she sat up and then saw that he, leaning over her, had blood running down the side of his face. “You’re hurt!”

  “I think one of the balusters grazed me. It’s nothing to worry about. Here. Let me give you a hand. We’ll go and see if there’s anything we can do to help.” He pulled her to her feet. Together they stepped over the debris and went back into the officers’ mess. The place was wrecked and there were several casualties. One of the women was hysterical but unharmed; Johanna silenced her with a hard slap and then went to assist Tom. She had some knowledge of first aid and he was thoroughly experienced. Individually they stemmed serious blood flows until stretcher bearers took charge and the medical officer appeared. He had been asleep in bed and arrived with a white coat thrown over his pyjamas, his hair on end. Tom found an unbroken bottle of cognac and gave it to Johanna to swig.

  “That’s Napoleon brandy,” she gulped breathlessly, handing it back to him.

  “Trust me to find the best.” Grinning, he began handing it around to the minor casualties who were on their feet again, suffering more from shock than from their cuts and grazes.

  When there was nothing more they could do, he steered her by the elbow back through the rubble into the open air. A black cloud of smoke had risen high into the air and blotted out the stars almost as far as the eye could see. Soldiers were running purposefully in various directions and yet gave the impression of still greater confusion. Whistles were being blown and orders shouted. Tom took one look at the mangled wreckage of his car.

  “It’s a long walk home. We had better get started.”

  It did not suit Tom’s bulk to walk, especially as the road had a steep gradient before dipping down again. Johanna had lost a shoe in the explosion and walked barefoot on the grass verge. There were soldiers everywhere, put on an alert by the act of sabotage, and identity cards were demanded at the checkpoints. Tom’s Nazi party membership card and their bedraggled appearance as survivors of the blast let them through without too much questioning. He saw her to the foot of the winding road leading up to Astrid’s house. Just as she was about to leave, he dived a hand into his pocket and drew out an orange.

  “The supper table was a shambles. I managed to find this one without any glass in it when I got hold of the brandy.”

  “Oh, Tom.” She took it from him, wondering how he could be such a mixture of what she liked and what she abhorred. “Thanks for remembering.”

  Slowly she followed the winding road, holding up the orange to inhale its aromatic perfume as though it were a pomander. At the house she let herself in. The landing light was on and Astrid’s shadow headed her arrival on the stairs in a silk dressing-gown.

  “You have to go straight to the cellar, Johanna,” she whispered. Then she gasped when she saw the girl’s bedraggled appearance in a patch of light, the torn evening dress, the lack of shoes and the upturned face streaked with dirt. “Were you near the explosion I heard?”

  Johanna nodded wearily. Reaction was setting in and suddenly she felt exhausted. “I have an orange for the neighbour’s boy,” she said, putting it aside, “and I’m afraid your lovely dress is ruined.”

  “Nothing matters as long as you’re unharmed. Go to the cellar now and tell me what happened in the morning. You look ready to drop.”

  “Who’s in the cellar. Do you know?”

  “It was Gunnar who asked for you. I don’t know if anyone else is with him.”

  Suppressing a sigh, she made her way through the stairway door and tapped the signal on the panel. Until it slid back for her from the inside, she had never realised that animosity and suspicion had its own animal smell. It seemed to engulf her as she was seized roughly on either side and borne forward into the beam of a flashlight shining into her face, her feet not touching the ground. As she shouted a protest she was thrust unceremoniously into a chair. Gunnar’s voice burst wrathfully from the darkness behind the circle of light.

  “Where the hell have you been? You’ve kept us waiting.”

  She answered him in the same fierce tone, blinking against the glare. “Dancing with the Wehrmacht on behalf of the Resistance, almost getting killed by an explosion ignited by my own side in the conflict, and walking barefoot all the way home. Is that reason enough for being late? Especially when I didn’t know you’d be here. Who else is with you?” She tried to shade her eyes and found it impossible to detect anything beyond the white eye of the flashlight.

  “What double game are you playing? You were planted in Ryen’s office to seek out information, not to fraternise. It was your being sighted in his car this evening and again going into the garrison headquarters that sparked off this long overdue investigation.”

  Foreboding suddenly gripped her. “Investigation?”

  “We want the truth out of you and we’re going to get it!”

  It did not seem possible to her that this could be happening. Too late she remembered her instructions never to make a move on her own initiative outside her allotted realm unless her life or those of her fellow Resistance fighters were in danger. Her role was a sedentary one, no less valuable in its own way, but to emerge from it without notifying anybody had been sheer thoughtlessness on her part. The Resistance was in a hypersensitive state, having suffered too much from informers and double agents, and its position had never been more precarious. The seriousness of her situation was acute.

  “I’ll tell you how it happened.” She attempted to shade her eyes from the light with her forearm only to have it jerked down to her side and her face pulled upwards again by a tug on her hair. “Maybe I shouldn’t have gone to the enemy headquarters this evening without getting it okayed. It was thrust on me. It appears that I’ve refused dates with the Germans too often. Tom hinted that doubts were starting as to whether I was the right person for his office.”

  She could hear the faint echo of her own voice bouncing back in the same quiet, constrained tones from the stone walls. Although she could not see anybody or anything in the beam directed into her eyes, she sensed that several men were present, some seated at the table on either side of Gunnar and more lounging in the blackness. She guessed they had been involved in the night’s great coup and were taking shelter from the hunt that was on for them after this latest act of sabotage. There would be those among them prepared to silence her permanently if she failed to convince her interrogator that she was innocent of their suspicions.

  When her explanations came to an end, Gunnar’s questions came at her in a barrage. “Is it not true that when you were taken in for questioning in Oslo you were released almost at once? Is that when your sympathies for the enemy were first enlisted? Freedom in exchange for collaboration? Is it not strange that German intervention should have prevented the arrest of your father? Who put you up to the story you’ve just given us?”

  Her horror of the situation grew with every passing minute and yet she kept her head, thinking carefully before she gave back her answers, determined not to be u
nnerved or inadvertently tricked into words that could be misinterpreted. As her ordeal continued she became more and more exhausted, keeping her head up with physical difficulty, only a very real fear keeping a yearning for sleep at bay. She was allowed no respite. A sip of water would have helped her dry throat, which had been affected by the dust from the blast, but since it was not offered she would not ask for it. Still the questions came.

  “No! Tom did not speak to me of collaboration when we met on the fjord steamship. I can’t remember what we talked about.”

  “Don’t make that excuse. He invited you to his office, didn’t he?”

  “No! If he had, I might well have agreed to go because I didn’t know then that he was working for the Nazis.”

  “I accuse you of working it out with Ryen how much useless information should be filtered through to us.”

  She had had the fingers of both hands pressed to her temples to support her head and aid her thoughts. Now she raised her face again and lowered her hands to her lap. Her voice, rasping from its dryness, came with renewed force from her throat, her eyes hard and glittering with triumph in the harsh light. “I’ve just recalled an item of that so-called useless information that I handed on to you, Gunnar. I didn’t realise its significance at the time, but I do now. If it hadn’t been for me none of you here tonight would have known that the Germans planned to shift the bulk of that ammunition north to Narvik in two days’ time. Some of the German-conscripted labour force was to be involved in the loading.”

  She felt the atmosphere change. There was movement as people stirred; the interrogation was at an end. Gunnar’s voice spoke to her on an entirely different note.

  “Some of us knew that and some of us didn’t. It makes a fitting end to this investigation. You acquitted yourself well. Stay where you are in that chair for the moment. People you don’t know will be leaving now.” He had averted the flashlight beam from her and if she had had the strength to look up she might have seen their shadowy shapes leaving the cellar. Instead she slumped forward where she sat, completely exhausted, her head down. Gunnar came round the table and touched her on the shoulder. She did not move.

  “There’s a new ruling from the Resistance. If you are arrested, try to hold back the names of those known to you for twenty-four hours. More can’t be expected of anyone under the kind of torture the Gestapo has introduced. It would give everybody else the chance to go into hiding.”

  “I’ll remember,” she promised.

  “How are you feeling? Everyone could see when you arrived that you’d already been through one ordeal. It made your resilience under my questioning all the more commendable. You’ve dispelled the doubts of those who had speculated whether you could stand up to Gestapo interrogation.”

  “I’m relieved to hear it. I wouldn’t want you to put me through that again.” She did not seem able to move as yet. “Did you know the Waffen S.S. is in the district?”

  “We know. They’re part of new reinforcements in transit. The Third Reich is anticipating an Allied invasion in northern Norway.”

  “Do you think it’s likely?”

  “It’s what we’re all hoping for. The explosion tonight served a double purpose. It hid the amount of arms we were able to get out for ourselves and destroyed the rest. Now sleep well when you get to bed. You’ve earned a good rest.”

  She heard him speak to someone before leaving in the wake of the others, taking the flashlight with him. A match scratched and the lamp on the table was lit, its glow reaching beyond its globe to where she sat. She thought that at least two hours must have gone by since she was pushed into the chair. Wearily she straightened her back and drew her heels together in preparation for rising to her feet. Only then did she raise her head and see Steffen standing on the opposite side of the table, his eyes on her solicitously, the planes of his face highlighted by the lamp. With a sharp intake of breath she clenched her fists and sprang hotly to her feet, her expression contorted.

  “You! Here! And you didn’t speak up once for me!” She seized the edge of the table and tilted it hard against him, forgetting the lamp, which smashed to the floor and went out, plunging the cellar into inky blackness. She swung blindly in the direction of the panel, trying to locate the steps up to it. Before she could discover them a match flared long enough for Steffen to sight her. She saw the flight and rushed to reach it. As the blackness returned he grabbed her and she struggled violently against him.

  “I did speak for you,” he gasped, tightening his hold, “before you came. Gunnar had no doubts about you, but he had to go through with it. How do you think I felt when I heard you had been in the headquarters when the explosion took place? You could have been killed. Stop fighting me!”

  He found her mouth and her response was avid and wild until she found the strength to break loose from him. “Light a match,” she demanded furiously, her face turned resolutely away from him in the blackness. “I will go from here.”

  With reluctance he felt in his pocket for a box of matches and struck one. The lamp was almost at his feet and he thought the wick looked undamaged in spite of the smashed glass. The watery light of the flickering flame illumined the main section of the cellar as he carried the lamp to the table, which he set back on its legs again. She stayed propped against the wall, slumped forward with her hands resting on her knees like a sprinter at the end of a race, drawing in breath. Tiredness had caught up with her. Wearily she raised herself up again, letting her head rest once more against the wall and closing her eyes in exhaustion. With effort she swung herself towards the steps and began to mount them slowly. She did not know he had come to the side of the flight until he grabbed her by the hips to swivel her around and press his face against her flat stomach, crushing her to him by the buttocks.

  “When are you going to realise that you mean more to me than life?” His voice was hoarse and muffled, his fervent breath warm through the thin fabric that covered her. “Let me share your bed tonight. Don’t turn away from me now.”

  She looked down at him almost in bewilderment, still dazed by all that had happened in the past hours, and unaccountably she experienced a wrenching pang of loneliness as if given a glimpse of how life would be without him. Her hands hovered like pale birds in the curious light for a few moments about his head before she buried her fingers in his thick hair and pressed him to her with a cry that was close to pain.

  He reached up his arms, raising his face to look into hers, and took her by the waist to slide her down into his embrace.

  Chapter 10

  When Johanna reached her place of work at her usual time, her identity card and her special pass for admission to a military building were checked and double-checked. There were even army dog-handlers by the doorway with the savage brutes used in hunting down escapees and often to guard property. They were kept in cages in a side courtyard when not on duty, showing their fangs and leaping ferociously at the bars whenever anybody came near. Giving a pair of them a wide berth, even though they were on chains, she entered the hallway and, going up the stairs as usual, she found plenty of activity going on with men of all ranks coming and going. The previous night’s act of sabotage appeared to have stirred them up like a stick in a hornets’ nest. She realised she would have to be extra cautious for a while, for at times she had risked taking out actual copies of papers she had thought might be of interest to the Resistance.

  Sitting down at her desk, she glanced at the mail and then put it aside. Tom was late and she was glad of the delay, appreciating a few quiet minutes to herself in which to think over everything that had happened since she had left her desk yesterday morning. It took a little while before she began work.

  She paused in her typing when Tom arrived. He had the buoyant tread common to many overweight men, which somehow added to his air of geniality. There was a wad of dressing secured to his head by a bandage about which he appeared to be somewhat self-conscious. “The gash was a bit worse than I realised. I had to have some st
itches put in it this morning at the hospital before coming here. You look fine. Fresh as paint. Not at all as if you had been through a bomb blast experience last night.”

  “I have your mail ready,” she said, gathering it up.

  It was over a month before Tom received a replacement car. He could have had his choice of several offered to him, but he rejected each one, determined to hang on until he gained one up to the standard of the vehicle he had lost.

  Eventually he was satisfied and the following weekend he drove Johanna out to see his house. She had been there once in childhood and had told him she remembered it as a grand residence. He would always have welcomed her branch of the family if Gina had not shown open disapproval of him and his wife and their way of life, putting a barrier between an interchange of visits, which was why the relationship had dwindled down to his calling at the farm occasionally to see Edvard and the children. Even in his widowerhood Gina had not relented. It meant much to him that Johanna had become part of his life.

  He glanced at her as they drove along. She was often pensive and lost in thought. When she had heard of the reprisals by firing squads, and of deportations to foreign concentration camps for the arms explosion she had blanched to the lips. He shared her feelings, even though he considered it politic not to voice them. In his opinion such tactics strengthened active opposition or antagonised those prepared to meet the Germans half-way. In many ways the Germans were their own worst enemy.

  “When do you expect Rolf home?” he asked her. The imprisoned teachers in the Arctic were finally being released. There was no point in keeping them there any longer when the Teachers’ Nazi Association and its accompanying Youth Movement had fizzled out. They were badly needed in their schools. Many graduate teachers had escaped to England, adding to the shortage.