They worked on the bike all afternoon and on into the evening. Erika was envious of the time Karl was spending with Max, but Martha, as keen-eyed as ever, broke the silence as the two of them ate dinner alone, with:
‘At least he seems to be cheering up a bit, eh, love?’
Max found her in bed early, after he and Karl had washed all the grease off themselves in the hot showers at the school.
She heard his satisfied exhalations as he took off his shoes. Exhalations that were meant to be noticed, commented on. But she decided to sulk and pretend to be asleep, her face to the wall. She felt the bed change shape as this new man got in. Felt his shower-hot arm, clearly pyjama-less, curl around her waist and snake up around her breast. This was the first time he had touched her like this since he had returned from the camp. She should be over the moon. The Siberian winter was gone! Summer was in full bloom. How typical, she thought, that he behaves like this when I’m grumpy – and it’s him that’s made me this way!
His lips and hands tried to stimulate her, move her. She refused to budge. But there was no way a real man would allow that to be the end of it. There was no way he was going to roll over and go to sleep now, not with all these unsatisfied urges rumbling and snarling inside him.
His grip on her arm, as he yanked her onto her back, was uncomfortable to say the least, his ever-increasing weight on her was awkward, his manner was rough, but she told herself to enjoy it, enjoy the return of her husband.
If only, she thought between stabs of euphoria, if only it felt like Max inside me.
‘My name’s Milla. It’s short for Camilla. But I don’t really like Camilla, so it’s lucky that everyone calls me Milla really, isn’t it.’
Netta had tried her hardest not to talk to any of the other kids. If she did they might think she was happy to be here, and she wasn’t. She had to show them all she was not the same as them. Had to show Frau Auttenberg that she was not going to be part of this rubbish. But this Danish girl Milla just would not leave her alone. She had the bunk above Netta’s. There were millions of bunks in this dorm, all lined up on each side of the room like jars of sweets were in the witch’s shop, but the bunks were crammed with all the worst flavours of children instead of liquorice twists, aniseed balls, pear drops, lemon sherbets, and every other sugary treat in the whole wide world. And Netta was on the bottom bunk. At least if she was on the top, the whole bunk would not wobble like an earthquake every time Milla came down the ladder, and, if Netta was on the top, Milla wouldn’t be able to come past and stick her head in Netta’s face every time she got up and say, ‘Morning, Netta. How are you feeling today?’
At breakfast they all had to sit at an enormous round table so big and old it reminded Netta of tales of knights and wizards and kings. It would have been great to sit there and imagine herself in medieval times had the table been anywhere else but here in this prison.
And there was all that amazing beach outside with rocks and crabs and crashing waves. Castles to be made and races to be run. But they were only allowed to go out for a walk once a day at the most, and then only under the beady eye of Frau Auttenberg or one of the other dragons.
‘There you go, Netta.’ A large glass of what appeared to be milk was placed in front of her. ‘Drink it all up. It will make you big and strong,’ Frau Auttenberg grinned. ‘And you want to be big and strong, don’t you?’
Why did everyone keep telling Netta that she should be big and strong? What was so great about being big and strong? Well, strong perhaps, but big? Frau Auttenberg was as big as could be, and if that’s what people meant by big and strong, then she would happily stay small and weak, thank you very much!
Netta hauled the heavy glass with both hands nearer to her. As it jerked across the uneven wooden table she feared the milk might slosh about, perhaps even spill a little, for which she would no doubt be told off. But the surface of the drink stayed remarkably steady, which told Netta it was far thicker than milk. She sniffed at it.
‘Drink up, Netta! You won’t be getting down from the table until it’s all gone, I’m afraid.’
She took a quick sip, like a bird that fears there might be predators nearby. It was vile! Sour. A whole glass of milk that had gone off.
‘It’s double cream,’ Milla said, who of course was sitting next to Netta.
Netta looked at Milla and then at all the other kids at the table. None of them had a great white glass of sour milk in front of them. Why was she being picked on like this?
‘A whole pint of double cream!’ Milla was saying and licking her lips.
‘You can have it if you want.’ Netta finally spoke to Milla. She had to. This was an emergency.
‘Can I?’ Milla’s eyes lit up, not just at the offer of such a great gift, but also at the breakthrough in her relationship with the new girl.
Netta began to shove the white obelisk over to the Danish girl, but Milla stopped her with a hiss. ‘Not yet. If Auttenberg sees us we’ll be in for it.’
Other kids were finishing their breakfasts and being allowed to leave the table. This was keeping Frau Auttenberg’s bulbous eyes rolling around in plenty of other directions, enough for Milla to put her back between the matron and Netta, grab the glass and drink the curdled contents so quickly Netta thought she couldn’t possibly have a throat like normal children, but just a wide drainpipe that connected her mouth to her stomach.
The clunk Milla made when she put the glass back on the table in front of Netta caught the attention of Frau Auttenberg. Netta saw the woman sauntering over. She also saw Milla, still with her back to Auttenberg, with a thick white moustache, which was as awesome as the matron’s own brown one.
Auttenberg was almost upon them now, peering over Milla’s head to examine the pint glass she had left with Netta. Netta widened her eyes as if she were about to be run over by a car and pointed them as far as possible at Milla’s, then at her cream moustache, which would easily give the game away.
Milla cocked her head, examining her bunk-mate’s cartoon expression. She knew Netta was trying to tell her something, but she just wasn’t sure what it was and why she kept staring at her mouth.
‘Well, well.’ Auttenberg’s wheezy boom behind Milla’s head jolted her enough to make the penny drop.
Her mouth! She tore at her lips with one hand just as Auttenberg came into view and she wiped the creamy mess on her dress as the woman picked up the glass and held it to the light as if she was capable of recognising the fingerprints she might find there.
‘Well done, Netta. You see, it’s not so bad, is it? If you keep this up, you’ll be fit and healthy in no time.’ And she rolled herself out to the kitchen to show off her success to the cook.
‘Thank you,’ Milla breathed and flopped back in her chair.
‘Thank you,’ Netta whispered and smiled at her new friend.
The bicycle was exceedingly light and so much easier to push up the hill. Erika should have been pleased about this. And indeed her skeleton and her muscles were. But every so often her lungs would suck at the air hungrily and her heart would swell painfully in her chest as a wraith of her daughter scudded across her mind. Without her little assistant, Erika had to collect the engorged leeches from the floor around Frau Beltz’s thrombotic feet herself. But that wasn’t the worst part of not having Netta around. The worst part, ironically, was that her little girl may come back bigger and stronger. Too big to fit in the basket on the front of her bike, too strong to need to sit in the basket on the front of her bike. And although she wished for her daughter’s health with all of that swollen heart of hers, she knew the empty basket was a symbol of the way her daughter would one day be so much bigger and stronger, simply by virtue of her age and the natural acquiring of independence, that she wouldn’t need her mama anymore. That she would one day leave the nest of her own free will.
‘So sorry to hear about your housekeeper,’ Frau Beltz was saying, sucking on a biscuit she had dipped in her coffee in not a dissimilar way
to the worms feeding on her legs. ‘Terrible business. Just terrible.’
‘Oh yes. It is,’ Erika said, eyeing up the leeches, willing them to finish their lunch so she could get out of here and away from this inexorable conversation.
Frau Beltz probed further. ‘You heard about the carpenter from the village, no doubt?’
The mention of Rodrick – because it had to be Rodrick: no other carpenter in the vicinity was surely that gossip-worthy – made Erika flush and she gulped on her hot coffee as if the china cup could mask her face, or at least to give her an excuse for a briefly redder complexion.
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Well!’ Frau Beltz had to put down her cup at the shocking news that her doctor was completely unaware of this turn of events – she would need all her demonstrative faculties for this one. ‘This carpenter, Herr Gerlich… Well, you must have known he was seeing your housekeeper, mustn’t you?’ The way she poked her nose in Erika’s direction reminded the doctor of that obnoxious Officer Hummel sniffing around her home.
‘Oh!’ Erika performed the necessary awakening. ‘That carpenter. Yes I was aware of… something like that.’
‘Well, turns out the police think he did it. They’ve had him in for questioning, the whole nine yards. But it’s not surprising, is it. I’ve seen him about. Big old bloke. Bit dim looking. Apparently she’d finished with him and he wasn’t happy about that. Raised his hand to her no doubt, clearly the type. That’s probably why she broke it off. But he wasn’t having any of that so he beat her up and… Well, of course you know what happened to the poor dear. And she was only a little thing, wasn’t she? Wouldn’t say boo to a goose, that one. Why would anybody want to lay a hand on her, eh?’
A leech hit the floor and Erika dived for it, making a great fuss about putting it back in the glass jar, so that by the time she returned to the armchair opposite her patient’s, the subject may have been forgotten.
But it wasn’t.
‘Unless she was one of them Jew girls posing as a German. You hear a lot of that going on nowadays, don’t you? One that managed to slip through the net. Because it’s so hard to tell with some of them, isn’t it? Come to think of it now, she could have been one of them, don’t you think, doctor?’
Erika puffed out her lips and raised her eyebrows in order to demonstrate that her patient’s guess was as good as hers.
Another leech dropped.
Erika hurried to pick it up. The sooner she could be out of here the better. They might have swerved from the subject of Karin’s death, but now they were onto an equally distasteful subject that brought back memories of a time as a child when she was devoted to the Hitler Youth Movement; when she met Max at university and discovered the love of her life was a devoted Catholic which went against all the anti-religious and eugenic principles she had absorbed from the Movement; when that rationale resulted in some bad choices on her part, to put it mildly, the consequences of which haunted her to this day.
Frau Beltz was crashing on regardless, like a malevolent version of Edgar. ‘Well, if she was she couldn’t have been surprised if it caught up with her eventually. My Bert was in the Reich Labour Service and he saw how they all lined up to be executed. It was as if they knew they deserved it.’
Another leech dropped to the floor.
‘He was going past on a motorcycle once and saw this great long procession of them. He stopped when he saw this pretty little one, much like your housekeeper, in a red chemise, he said – well, he was a one for the pretty girls was my Bert. I didn’t mind. He always came home to me at the end of the day – anyway, where was I… oh, yes, so he stops and he asks this girl where all these people are going. A great long line of them it was, over a kilometre long, shuffling slowly towards the wood. And she says, “We’re going to be shot.” Well, at first he thought she was joking just coming out with it like that so matter of fact, but he followed the line up the road on his bike and sure enough at the edge of the wood they were all being stripped of their clothes – so as not to waste them, ’cause they could all be washed and mended and reused for our suffering population, see? – and then they were made to lie down in three bloody great pits. Three metres by twenty-four metres, Bert swears they were that big. And they had to lie down like sardines in a tin, he said, with their heads in the centre. Above were six men with tommy guns who put them out of their misery. What a job, eh? But those gunmen got double rations and extra pay as it was such a strain on their nerves. Well, it would be, wouldn’t it?’
Another leech dropped. And another. Erika was on her knees, her head near the floor.
‘Bert saw that girl in the red chemise again. Only, by the time she got to the pit, she didn’t even have the red chemise anymore. They were all naked by the time they had to climb in on top of the dead ones. But first, Bert said, they sprinkled ashes and chloride of lime or something over the dead ones. I don’t know, was it chloride or—’
‘Chloride of lime, yes,’ Erika said rather too loudly at the floor, as inert leeches rained down on her, ‘it stops the decomposing bodies from smelling.’
‘Well, I said to Bert that I thought that was all a bit much. I mean, you can do whatever you like to them, but not burn them, gas them, or shoot them like that. It’s not their fault. They should just be imprisoned and then, after the war, ship them off somewhere. Sail them wherever you wish, I don’t care where, it’s just that there isn’t room for them in Germany anymore, is there?’
Erika felt like she did when her friend and fellow doctor Kurt had waved one of the flyers under her nose, which the British army were sticking all over the city. At the top of the flyer were the English words REMEMBER THIS! Beneath were five photos. Appalling pictures of emaciated naked bodies piled in long rows being prodded by the barrels of German soldiers. Women picking the clothes off corpses in barbed wire cages. Men in striped pyjamas huddled in the snow in a gateway with a sign forged from iron, in German, above their heads, which read WORK SETS YOU FREE. Death and abuse on a scale even she as a doctor had never seen. And at the bottom of the page, the English words DON’T FRATERNISE!
She had told Kurt, and herself, it was all just Allied propaganda, although something inside her, which moved like one of these leeches in the jar, said otherwise. And now here was Frau Beltz and her Bert making the truth as incontrovertible as that wrought iron sign above the prisoners’ shaved heads.
‘Do you mind if I use your bathroom before I leave?’ Erika said, her smile barely concealing her tightened jaw.
‘No, of course not,’ Beltz said. ‘There isn’t anything wrong I hope, is there, dear?’ she added, although it would be a very dull day for the lady if there really was nothing wrong with the doctor – where would the drama be in that?
Without answering, Erika hurried to the bathroom and, as quietly as she could, vomited into the toilet. Perhaps her patient’s horror stories from the war had tipped the gastric scales, but Erika knew it would have happened with or without Beltz’s babble. Just as it had been happening every day for the past few days. Her period hadn’t come this month and, although she would go through the motions – have her urine sent off to the lab to be injected into a female frog, which, if it produced eggs in the following twenty four hours would indicate a positive result – she already knew she was pregnant.
She was pregnant!
Her heart swelled and her lungs sucked at the air again, but this time it wasn’t for the loss of Netta; it was elation that someone was coming to fill the hole in her life, which her growing daughter would inevitably leave. And more than that, another child would surely repair the tear in her relationship with Max, which four years apart had ripped into it. And, although it shamed her to even think it, she knew Max would be so much closer to this new child because he would watch it grow from its very first day on Earth; he would never be a stranger to it as he was to Netta.
‘I thought it was the summer holidays! I do less work at school!’ Netta grumbled to Milla as they stripped t
he sheets from the bunks and dumped them in a pile by the door. Other kids were mopping the floors in the showers and some were dusting the chairs around the knights’ table in the dining room. Frau Auttenberg and the man with the red face, who Netta heard was called Herr Kahler, wandered in and out of each room the kids were working in, saying things like, ‘If you want to have your dinner tonight you best get a move on,’ and, ‘Have you got any gumption, lad? Where did you leave your gumption?’
‘What’s gumption?’ Netta asked her new friend.
‘I don’t know. Something our parents were supposed to pack for us, I think. But it looks like they all forgot.’
‘Why did your parents send you here?’ Netta spoke in whispers because she saw the way Frau Auttenberg flicked the ears of the boys she caught chatting at the other end of the dorm, who were stripping bunks too.
‘My mama sent me here because I don’t have a papa. Well, I did, because you can’t make a little girl unless you have a papa and a mama, but he went away. He had to for work, Mama said. He must do a very important job because I heard Mama telling the neighbour that he went away with a secretary.’
Netta was impressed and a little jealous. Her mama was a doctor and she didn’t even have a secretary. But they did have a housekeeper. Or they used to. But they didn’t now, so it would be no use her bragging to Milla about that.
The Watcher Page 6
