A Band of Steel

by Rosie Goodwin

  ‘Dovid’s room is along here, but I ought to warn you that we are keeping him heavily sedated for now.’

  Ezra nodded silently, and they began to follow her along yet another corridor. They passed one open door where some poor soul was thrashing about on his bed, his hands held out in front of him as if he was fighting off some imaginary foe. The sight was sickening and Adina averted her eyes.

  At last the nurse paused in front of another door before telling them, ‘Dovid is in here. Would you like me to come in with you?’

  ‘No, thank you. We would prefer to go in alone,’ Ezra told her solemnly.

  ‘Of course – in your own time then, and should you need me, just call. I shall be at my desk down there.’

  They all looked at each other and the same thought was in each of their minds. What were they going to find on the other side of the door? Would it be their beloved son and brother, or some stranger they could not recognise?

  Ezra took a deep breath and opened the door cautiously and then they all sidled into the room. It was large and airy, with a huge sash-cord window draped with soft green velvet curtains, giving far-reaching views over open countryside. A neatly made bed was positioned against one wall, next to which stood a highly polished mahogany bedside table. On the other wall was a matching wardrobe and chest of drawers.

  But it was the wing chair standing in the bay window to which their eyes were drawn. Someone was sitting in it. Ezra was the first to stride across the bedroom, closely followed by the women, and when his eyes first rested on his son he sucked in his breath painfully.

  It was Dovid who sat there – and yet it wasn’t. His son had been vibrant and full of life, whereas the person he was looking at now had had all the life drained out of him. His lovely thick dark hair, which Freyde had always sworn had a life of its own, was now clipped close to his scalp. He was skeletally thin and his once twinkling dark eyes were now dull and lifeless. His mouth was hanging slackly open and saliva dribbled from the corner of it to pool on the shirt that looked to be at least three sizes too big for him.

  ‘Dovid . . . we here are here, son,’ Ezra choked, but his words brought forth no response.

  It was Freyde’s turn to try to reach him now as she gently took his hand in hers. ‘Have faith, child,’ she breathed gently. ‘You will soon be back at home with us where you belong.’

  Adina hung back, trying to recognise this stranger sitting in front of her. She wanted to speak to him but the words stuck in her throat.

  Ezra now crouched to Dovid’s level, his eyes brimming with tears as he searched for some sign of recognition from him – but there was nothing.

  ‘The doctor did warn us we would have to be patient,’ he said, looking at his wife’s stricken face. He then fetched some chairs from against the wall and they all sat down as close to Dovid as they could get, content for now just to be in his company. Some fifteen minutes later, the door opened and a nurse appeared pushing a trolley.

  ‘Hello,’ she greeted them brightly. ‘I was told you were here. It’s time for Dovid’s medication now.’

  For the first time since entering the room, Dovid reacted. He turned to look at the nurse and then as he saw her lift a syringe from a dish on the trolley, his arms began to flail wildly.

  ‘No! Get away from me, do you hear!’

  ‘Now, Dovid, don’t let’s start that again,’ she said patiently as if she were speaking to an errant child. ‘You know I’m not going to hurt you and this will make you feel better.’

  His head began to thrash against the back of the chair and tears poured down his cheeks as cold sweat stood out on his forehead.

  She advanced on him, and the closer she got, the more agitated he became. It took her no more than a second to roll his sleeve up, but just as she was about to administer the injection his arm came out and sent the syringe skidding across the floor.

  ‘Oh, Dovid. Now I shall have to go and fetch another one,’ she scolded, and with a nod at his family she quietly left the room. A few moments later she returned with another syringe and two men in white coats.

  They each calmly took one of Dovid’s arms as the nurse slid the needle into his vein and all the time he was shouting obscenities and baring his teeth at them as his parents and sister looked helplessly on.

  ‘He’ll be all right in a few minutes when that starts to work,’ the nurse assured them as she rolled his sleeve back down, and she and the two men then left the room.

  Sure enough, Dovid was soon calm again and the same blank expression settled over his face. They sat for another half an hour but when they still got no response from him, Ezra said, ‘I think we should leave him in peace now. We shall come again very soon and next time, God willing, he might know us.’

  Freyde was sobbing into her handkerchief as she sniffed her agreement. The women then kissed Dovid’s hollow cheek before stealing quietly from the room, praying that Ezra might be proved to be right.

  Chapter Thirteen

  As the summer of 1944 approached, Adina continued to see Karl for a few moments each day. They were completely at ease in each other’s company now, and sometimes of an evening when the prisoners had returned to the camp, Adina would take a stroll around the church to see what progress was being made. The fine stained-glass windows had been shattered in the bombing, but the plain glass ones that the men had replaced them with looked elegant and in keeping with the lines of the building. It had been agreed before the job was started that the building should be rebuilt as closely to how it had been originally as was possible, and Adina thought they were doing an excellent job of it. Already she could see the massive steel girders in place that would eventually hold up the new roof. The men had painstakingly sorted through the rubble, reclaiming and cleaning every piece of the original stone they could before re-using it. Now their efforts were becoming apparent and the people of Coton were delighted. So much so, in fact, that even more of the men working on the church were now being invited into the townsfolk’s homes for Sunday dinner.

  Ezra and Freyde now visited Dovid at least once a month, but as yet there were no signs of improvement although Dr Sawyer urged them not to give up hope.

  ‘At least your lad is alive,’ Mrs Haynes said enviously one day as she sat sharing a morning cup of tea with Freyde. The woman instantly felt guilt sharp as a knife. Her kindly neighbour was quite right; where there was life there was hope, and Freyde forced herself to believe that some day soon Dovid would turn the corner and start to recover.

  By now, Ariel was also giving her parents cause for concern; the girl seemed to grow more wilful with every month that passed. She now flatly refused to join them for family prayers and had taken to sneaking out with her friends whenever she could. One night in early June she had come downstairs with her face heavily made-up. Her eyebrows were pencilled and her lips scarlet, and Ezra had almost hit the roof. She looked at least eighteen and she knew it.

  ‘You are not walking out of this house looking like that,’ he had raged. ‘You look like a common street girl!’

  ‘Oh Papa, why do you always have to be so old-fashioned,’ she said in exasperation. ‘All the girls my age dress like this and they are allowed to go to dances and have friends, so why aren’t I?’

  ‘Because you are a child,’ he had raged as Freyde looked fearfully on. ‘Now get back up those stairs and wash that muck off your face right now!’

  Ariel had stamped away in a rage and ever since then things had been very strained between them.

  ‘She is growing up,’ Freyde placated him. ‘You should make allowances for that and try to be more lenient with her. Compromise a little.’

  Ezra had snorted in disgust. ‘Whilst she lives under my roof she will obey my rules,’ he thundered. ‘I will not have her bringing shame upon our family.’ And that had been the end of the argument. Freyde knew her husband better than to try and change his mind.

  The dispute had put the fear of God into Adina. What would happen if her f
ather were to discover that she was having anything to do with a German? But she could not stop it now, even if she had wished to. She lived for the few short moments they stole together, and his smile could light up her day. She knew now that she was falling in love with Karl, and there was not a single thing she could do about it.

  On 6 June 1944, just before dawn, 24,000 British, American, Canadian and Free French airborne troops landed in Normandy for what was to become known as the D-Day Invasion. They seized bridges and disrupted German communications, and as their progress was reported on the radio, the English people rejoiced. Darkness gave way to a dull grey morning as 1,000 RAF planes dropped 5,000 tons of bombs on German batteries, causing absolute chaos. Meantime, a vast armada of more than 5,000 ships, including merchantmen, men of war, landing crafts and barges were rolling and heaving offshore in heavy seas waiting to go ashore. The operation was named Overlord and saw the long-awaited Allied assault against Nazi Germany. The attack had not come a day too soon, and for the first time, the people of England began to hope that at last, the end of the war might be in sight.

  Hitler’s scientists, however, hit back with their latest weapons, and by the middle of July, V1 rocket attacks on London were causing yet another wave of destruction. Mothers and children were once more being evacuated. But even so, nothing could stop people feeling optimistic that the end was on its way. The Allies had now established a firm foothold in Normandy, and Germany was under assault from Italy, Russia and France. The whispers that certain German people were not happy were rife as they questioned why their Führer was placing the Reich in crisis – but those brave enough to speak out were instantly shipped off to concentration camps or executed. Now it was more than obvious that not everyone in Germany was pro-Nazi and pro-SS, including certain German generals. Hitler had cowed his nation, and their disquiet filtered through to England via British Intelligence.

  Many trainlines across England were still being targeted by enemy bombers, and sometimes Freyde and Ezra were unable to get to see Dovi because of damage to the tracks.

  One morning as they set off, Ezra warned Adina, ‘Expect us when you see us. Who knows how long it might take us to get there and back. Will you and Ariel be all right?’

  ‘Of course we shall.’ The young woman pecked her father on the cheek. ‘I shall make sure that everything is fine until you return. Please give my love to Dovi and tell him that I am thinking of him.’

  Once her parents had departed she finished getting ready for her teaching session at the school. Ariel had already left and she followed shortly afterwards.

  As usual at lunchtime she met Karl, and it was as they were standing at the church gate that an idea occurred to her. Ariel was going to a friend’s for lunch so she would have the house to herself.

  ‘Why don’t you come back with me for a break?’ she invited, and when he frowned she explained, ‘I shall have the house to myself. My parents have gone to visit Dovi and Ariel is going to her friend’s for lunch.’

  ‘But your parents would be most unhappy if they were to find out I had been there.’

  ‘Who is going to tell them?’ she said coyly. Adina was not normally sly but she was tired of only having a few minutes to talk to him. And who would they be hurting? She was only going to make him a sandwich and a cup of tea, after all.

  He stood there uncertainly for a moment but then told her, ‘I will just go and inform the men that I am taking a short break, and then I would be delighted to take you up on your offer – if you are sure it will not be an imposition.’

  Adina stood there whilst he strode away, suddenly wondering if she had done the right thing. But then he was back and it was too late to retract her invitation.

  Thankfully the entry and Mrs Haynes’s back yard were deserted as Adina led Karl to the back door, and once they had slipped into the kitchen unobserved she let out a sigh of relief before hurrying across to the sink to fill the kettle. She made them both cheese and chutney sandwiches, which they washed down with two cups of tea, and all the way through the meal they chatted easily as if they had known each other for years.

  Once she had cleared the pots into the sink they sat together on the sofa and it was then that Karl became serious. ‘Adina,’ he said, ‘there is something I have been meaning to talk to you about.’

  ‘Oh yes, and what is that then?’ They were inches apart and now as she looked deep into his eyes she found that she could not look away.

  ‘The thing is I . . .’ Suddenly he leaned down mid-sentence and pressed his lips to hers and a thousand fireworks seemed to explode behind her closed eyes. When they finally broke apart they stared at each other as she sighed, ‘Oh Karl, I have wanted you to do that for such a long time.’

  Without another word he kissed her again and suddenly all the things that stood between them just melted away. They were simply a man and a woman in love and it didn’t matter if she was a Jew and he was a German – to them, at least.

  The next time they broke apart he hotched along the sofa away from her, looking guilty.

  ‘I am sorry. I should not have done that,’ he whispered.

  ‘Why not? You didn’t force yourself on me and I wanted you to,’ Adina said bluntly. He shook his head. ‘It is wrong. We should stop this now before it goes any further.’

  ‘But I can’t stop it, Karl,’ she told him. ‘I love you. I think I have loved you since the very first second I set eyes on you, and I can’t help how I feel. It just happened.’

  ‘Ach, mein Liebling,’ he groaned, slipping into their native tongue. ‘I love you too. I have tried not to, but I cannot stop thinking about you. What are we to do? There can be no future together for us.’

  ‘Then we will just take what we can for now and worry about the future another day,’ she told him softly.

  He took her in his arms again, and as their lips joined they gave themselves up to the pure pleasure of being together.

  ‘I should be going. The men will be wondering where I have got to,’ Karl said breathlessly. He kissed her tenderly one last time. ‘No regrets?’ he murmured.

  She shook her head, her eyes sparkling.

  ‘Until tomorrow then?’

  She nodded, and once he had left, she went to open up the shop, leaning against the door and wondering where this might lead.

  Her parents arrived home late that night just as Adina was preparing to go to bed. Ariel had gone up some time ago, but now she hurriedly placed the kettle on the stove to boil as she asked them, ‘How was he?’

  Her mother looked unnaturally pale but then Adina supposed that was to be expected after the exhausting day she had had.

  ‘I think he is a little better,’ Freyde told her. ‘At least he is speaking now, although the doctor informed us he still has a long way to go. He gets the shakes and suffers from terrible nightmares. He is still quite violent too, if they don’t keep him on his medication.’

  ‘But we have always known that he wasn’t going to recover overnight,’ Adina pointed out as she spooned tea leaves into the tea pot.

  Her mother nodded. ‘Even so, it is painful to see him as he is when I remember back to how he used to be. Back in Cologne, Dovi was the life and soul of every party. He could have had his pick of any girl he wanted, and now he cannot even feed himself.’

  Adina’s heart went out to her as she saw the look of despair in her mother’s weary eyes.

  ‘We must stay strong for him. He will come out of this,’ Ezra stated with conviction, and Adina could only hope that he was right.

  Much later, as she lay in bed staring at the cracks on the ceiling, her mother’s sobs came to her through the wall and Adina sighed as she thought back to the time she had spent with Karl. Her parents already had so much to contend with. How would they feel if they found out about her blossoming relationship with him? To have anything to do with a man other than one of her own faith before marriage was unthinkable for a Jewish girl, and should it ever become known, no decent Jewish boy w
ould ever look at her twice. But then she didn’t want a Jewish boy. She wanted Karl, so what was she to do?

  As she lay there she found no answers to her question.

  Chapter Fourteen

  For the next week Adina and Karl had no chance of any time alone together apart from the few moments at midday when they would stand and gaze at each other with starry eyes at the gates to the church.

  Adina thought about him every waking minute and longed to be in his arms again, but she knew they would have to choose their moments carefully.

  After the evening meal one night when she had helped her mother to wash and dry up, she told her, ‘I think I might go for a walk round to Beryl’s. I haven’t seen her for a week or so.’

  ‘All right, bubbeleh.’ Her mother sat down at the side of the empty grate and took up her knitting. ‘But don’t be too late in, will you?’

  As Adina let herself into the back yard, she sighed. Ariel had already slipped off somewhere, so no doubt there would be another blazing row later on when she got back in. She had just left school and started work in Woolworth’s in the town, a fact her father was none too pleased about.

  ‘It is not right for young women to go out to paid work,’ he complained to his wife, but she shook her head.

  ‘Times are changing, Ezra, whether we like it or not. And Adina is paid for the work she does at the school. Where is the difference?’

  ‘But that is to teach children of our own culture the English language,’ he argued stubbornly. ‘That is acceptable.’

  Freyde decided not to disagree with him. There had been enough arguments in the house lately.

  Now, as Adina set off down the entry, Molly Thompson’s voice wafted towards her and she grinned. She and Mrs Haynes were a familiar sight, standing over the latter’s gate with their heads bent together as they put the world to rights.

  She was just about to open the gate when a name made her hand stop in mid-air.

  ‘Yep, it was her all right,’ she heard Mrs Thompson say. ‘Young Ariel from the shop here wi’ her tongue stuck just about as far down young Brian Rowley’s throat as it ’ud go. Her dad would have had a dickey fit if he’d have caught her. But then I doubt it were the first time. I’ve heard on the grapevine that she’s a right hot-arse little bugger.’