‘But you and Mama are doctors too. Why couldn’t you help Emmy? Why couldn’t you get her heart beating again?’
‘We… oh, Netta, we are doctors and we should have been able to help her, you’re right,’ he said, his voice cracking and swooping from high to low, ‘but we couldn’t. No one could.’
Netta looked down at her toes which were still dripping with water, and with every drop that fell to the ground and soaked in leaving a dark stain on the concrete, the meaning of what her papa was saying did the same to her. He was sobbing uncontrollably now and, just as she would cry when she was younger not because her knee hurt when she fell, but because she saw her mother’s face warped in horror and heard her gasp as she hit the ground, she knew it was time to cry herself now. She knew Emmy was dead. And that meant she would never ever see her little sister again, just when she was getting used to having her around. And she knew that if Emmy could die, then Netta could die just as easily. And that everyone would die sooner or later, including her papa and her mama, her Opa and Oma and what would she do then?
She felt her papa’s hand rubbing her back. ‘It’s OK, it’s OK.’
‘No it’s not because…’ She could barely speak, her body was convulsing now with the thought of losing everyone.
‘Sometimes it is God’s will. And although it seems unfair, God has decided that Emmy must go and be with Him now.’
‘But I thought God was good. Why would he do a thing like that to us if he is good? He might take Oma and Opa and Mama and you too and then I’ll be—’
‘Well, Emmy’s in heaven now and yes we will all die one day, but you know the great thing is we will all see each other again in heaven then. And heaven is such a wonderful place and we can stay there forever and ever, darling.’
Netta thought about this for a moment. She wondered if there would be a beach and sea in heaven. She hoped so. And then the thought of Emmy being all alone on a beach like this for years and years until Oma or Opa or Papa or Mama got there sent her into fits of grief again and she knew that what her papa was saying could not be true. It wasn’t OK and her papa was actually very angry at her for making them all come here to the island.
‘It’s my fault!’ she cried.
‘Of course it’s not your fault,’ he said, taking his hand from her back and leaning on his knees so he could look straight into her face. ‘How is it your fault?’
‘Because,’ she whined, looking into his eyes which were more bloodshot than ever now, ‘if I hadn’t complained so much about coming back to Sylt then you would never have decided to bring everyone along. And if the whole family hadn’t come, then Emmy would still be safely at home right now instead of getting sick by whatever it was that made her sick here, wouldn’t she?’
She looked at her feet again. There was no sea water left to drip onto the concrete. The drips now came from the end of her nose.
Her papa studied her and what she had just said for a moment, then he straightened up slowly and put a trembling hand out to rub her back again. But the hand lingered there in the space between them for a while before returning to his lap to wring the other as he silently wept and chewed on his lip till it bled.
Netta leaned on the red car, her palms flat on the window squashing her nose and lips against the cool glass. She was looking in at the strange sight of the car with no passenger seat in front.
‘Why are you taking the seat out?’ she’d asked her papa as he lay on the driveway of the B&B with his tool kit, his head under the seat making straining noises.
‘We need to make some room,’ he had said, then Netta thought she heard him swear, but she might have got that wrong because it was difficult to hear him with his face under the seat like that and, besides, Papa never swore.
‘But why do we need to make some room?’
‘Because…’ There was the sound of metal scraping against metal and she was almost positive he swore that time. ‘We just do, all right?’ he snapped so Netta knew it was time to be quiet.
Then they had driven to a house on the other side of the island, the side without the long sandy beach – Papa driving and Netta and her mama in the back seats, the only seats left. This was where Netta was leaning against the window whilst her parents talked to a man stood in the narrow doorway, dressed in grey striped trousers and a black waistcoat. In the reflection from the glass Netta could see the sign above the door. She turned around so she could read the three names on it with what Netta guessed were their jobs underneath: Builder, Joiner and Undertaker. She knew what a builder and a joiner were, but she wasn’t so sure about the third job. The house was ramshackle, with small dirty windows and lots of tiles missing from the roof above the sign. Netta thought that, just like Frau Auttenberg and her breathless fat body, this place was not a good advert for at least two of the services it was supposed to deliver. Perhaps this whole island was cursed, she thought; after all, this was supposed to be where you came to have a holiday and feel great and look what had happened to her sister!
‘I have to reiterate,’ the man was saying to her parents, ‘that it is illegal to transport a body in your own vehicle.’
‘I appreciate that,’ her papa replied, ‘but we have no choice all the way out here.’
‘We just want to get her home as quickly as possible,’ her mama sighed.
The man shrugged and went inside. Her parents followed and Netta went back to pressing her nose and lips up against the glass. She was wondering what her lips looked like from the other side, whether they looked like the mouths of the leeches she used to collect from around the feet of Frau Beltz, when she heard he father say sharply:
‘Move out of the way, Netta!’ He and the man in the stripy trousers were bringing a white box out to the car. Her mama opened the car door for them and they lowered it gently into the space where the passenger seat used to be.
‘What’s that?’ Netta asked.
Ignoring her, her Papa went around to the boot while her mama said softly, laying a hand on Netta’s hair, ‘It’s your sister’s coffin, darling.’
Papa pulled the picnic blanket from the boot, the one they had used on the beach all last week, and covered the coffin with it.
‘If she goes to sleep on top the guards at the checkpoint are not likely to bother her or worry about what’s underneath, don’t you think?’ Netta’s father said to the man in the black waistcoat, who, although he looked kind and smiled reassuringly, did a lot of shrugging.
‘OK, Netta,’ her mother said, ushering her towards the car, ‘Your special job on this journey is to lie down on the blanket there and just go to sleep.’
‘But I’m not very sleepy, Ma—’
‘You just try and go to sleep and stay like that until we wake you up, OK?’ Her mama’s voice was shaky and her eyes watery, just like her father’s were the other day when he picked her up from the home, so she did as she was told, as it was much easier than knowing what to do or say when an adult was crying.
Despite the thick blanket, it was quite uncomfortable lying on top of the hard coffin and she soon found it was best to lie on her front with her arms wrapped around it to stop her from slipping off as the car bumped her and the coffin around on the uneven roads. With her face pressed against it and her body wrapped around it, she felt something inside the coffin knocking against the lid with every bump in the road.
‘It’s your sister’s coffin, darling,’ her mama had told her, but only as the rattling and knocking continued did Netta start to realise that it wasn’t just her sister’s coffin, but that her sister was actually inside it. As the thought dawned of that little dead body being bumped around just an inch or two below her face, Netta wanted to cry out. Her face was soon soaked and itchy with tears, but she couldn’t let go of the coffin to wipe it for fear of falling off. Her weak little lungs pumped her chest up and down against the lid as she sobbed silently mile after mile, but she knew she could not complain. She knew she would be in even more trouble if she did. It was
her fault – she told herself to remember that – her fault that Emmy had died and this was her punishment. And she would take her punishment like a good girl so that her parents, especially her papa, didn’t hate her anymore after this. When they got home and this awful journey was over, everything would go back to normal. Better than normal. Her papa would love her and look after her all the time, just like he did when he took care of her broken nose last winter.
With her face to the window she heard her mama in the back seat chanting the rosary over and over. She felt the car shudder as it drove onto the ferry and then for half an hour or so the bumping and the knocking thankfully stopped as they floated on the water, heading for the mainland and the checkpoint where the policemen and the foreign soldiers waited.
The port served a number of German islands as well as Scandinavia so the traffic there was always high and inevitably there were queues at the checkpoint. Erika looked over Max’s shoulder and through the windscreen she counted about ten cars ahead of them. Some of them were waved through immediately, hardly seeming to stop, others had German policemen leaning in their windows and armed British soldiers prowling around them. Now only five cars away Erika and Max watched as a soldier signalled to a policeman who in turn instructed the driver to get out of his car and open the boot. The driver, a small man whose face glistened with sweat in the heat of the day, obeyed, but dropped his keys as he fiddled with the lock. He bent down to pick them up and Erika drew a sharp breath as the soldier behind him raised his gun. The man retrieved his keys and unlocked the boot. The two policemen rifled through the contents with little regard for its original neatness. Satisfied, the policeman sauntered away and the soldier lowered his gun, leaving the sweating man to make a brief attempt to restore order to his belongings before deciding that it was best just to get going and worry about his packing many miles further down the road.
Erika looked over at Netta sleeping on the blanket, her face to the door. She winced at the sight of the gruesome bed her daughter lay on, then noticed Netta’s breathing which seemed to be fast and shallow. She put a hand gently on her forehead. Her temperature was fine. She felt the car edge forward and her attention was back on the road and the checkpoint now only two cars away.
She examined the policemen as well as she could from that distance. Looking for signs of a pleasant, forgiving demeanour. But their uniforms, identical to Officer Hummel’s, had her imagining all sorts of probing questions and a terrible scene in front of all these people.
‘Perhaps we should turn around,’ she mumbled to Max. ‘Let’s turn around. Get back on the ferry, go back to Sylt, make an arrangement with the undertaker there, like he suggested.’
‘We can’t turn around. We’re stuck in this queue now,’ Max said irritably. ‘Besides, even if we could, just imagine the attention that would draw upon us. No, Erika, we’re going through with this now.’ He looked over his shoulder at her. ‘Try not to look so frightened. Look happy… well, not too happy. Innocent, but not too innocent. Look them in the eyes, but don’t stare them out.’
The car edged forward again and Erika looked at the back of her husband’s head with a nauseous wonder. How did he know how to act in this situation? Why was he talking like a seasoned criminal? And then the missing years between them reared their ugly head again. She could only imagine the kind of mistreatment and fear that had led him to learn things like this.
The car before them was waved through without so much as a glance inside from the guards. How the hell did they decide who was deserving of delay and who was worthy of waving through, Erika sneered to herself.
A policeman indicated to Max to stop. Erika felt her lightly tanned skin turn white again. He leaned in the open window.
‘Where are you coming from, sir?’
‘From Sylt. We’ve just been on holiday.’
‘Very nice,’ he said looking with some curiosity at the girl asleep on the blanket and the woman huddled in the back.
‘I think all that playing on the beach has worn this one out,’ Max said, nodding at his daughter and grinning rather excessively at the policeman.
Erika, who had been trying to look happy but not too happy, innocent but not too innocent, flicking her gaze back and forth from the prying policeman to the nails on one of her hands sunk painfully into the palm of the other, now let her eyes drift over to the subject of her husband’s conversation and was met by the amused face of a British soldier pressed up against the window just above Netta’s head.
Erika could barely conceal the way her body flinched, but she kept her eyes fixed on his without trying not to stare him out as Max had warned.
‘How long did you spend in Sylt?’ the policeman asked Max.
‘Oh, just a week,’ he answered. ‘We’re both doctors, you see, and we have to get back to work.’
‘Both of you doctors?’
‘Mmm.’
‘Well, well!’ the policeman said with more than a hint of sarcasm. ‘And where are you both doctors?’
‘In Dortmund. We are general practitioners. We have our own surgery there.’
Erika was still focused on the soldier whose face was just inches from the coffin. His face looked familiar. And he looked at her as if they were old friends.
‘Impressive,’ the policeman continued, ‘Papers please?’
As Max produced some identification, Erika realised that this was the same soldier who had offered her a cigarette on the quayside last week as they waited for the ferry to Sylt. The same soldier who had tried to flirt with her with his hopeless German vocabulary. He indicated to her to wind down the window near Netta’s head. She gave a brief smile of acquiescence as she reached for the handle, her heart palpitating, as if trying to break out of her chest so it could restrain her hand. But then the window was down and the soldier was leaning in, saying:
‘Guten Tag. Again.’ He winked at Erika. Held out a packet of cigarettes to her. She shook her head politely, so he let his hands droop in mock disappointment and began eyeing Netta and her sleeping arrangements instead. Erika watched his hand, the one without the cigarettes in, come to life again and reach for the picnic blanket. And suddenly her hand was upon his hand, firmly, then seductively smoothing his fingers with hers as she moved her hand away to alight on the cigarette packet. His now wide eyes followed her slender fingers as they slowly pulled out a cigarette and placed it enticingly between pouting lips. Then she gave him a sheepish grin and he scrambled around in his breast pocket, proudly pulling out a brass Zippo lighter. He lit her cigarette. She took a short draw on it. Longer would have been more alluring, she knew that, but it was all she could do not to choke on the repulsive smoke entering her lungs. It was all she could do not to cry right then as she thought of her baby, lying under the nose of the soldier, dead, she believed, from her own infant battle with the smoke of Mengede.
She saw the soldier’s attention shift to the policeman at Max’s window. She saw him nod discreetly at the officer and lean back from the car, still gripping the window frame. He looked as if he wanted to say something to Erika before this enigmatic lady drove out of his life forever, but he didn’t have the vocabulary, in English or German.
She became aware of the DKW engine revving and the soldier and the checkpoint and the harbour town sliding out of view as Max accelerated away into the safety of the German countryside. She found herself coughing violently, then, before she threw the cigarette out of the window in disgust, she took one last drag on it, as the first one hit her brain with surprisingly analgesic results.
Netta sat at the piano. She wanted to play something to blot out the gurgling sounds of her Oma’s grief, but as soon as she played the first chord her father came and slammed down the lid, almost chopping off her fingers in the process. The horrible journey home was over but the sadness hadn’t ended. Her papa was still angry, and everyone else still upset. Even Jenny was crying and Netta noticed her papa rubbing Jenny’s back just as he had done to Netta on the bench at the be
ach that morning.
They had put the white coffin on the table in the living room and opened the lid so Netta could finally see Emmy instead of just imagining this ghoulish version of her little sister underneath her for all those hours it took to get home. In fact, Emmy looked like an angel. In a white dress, her little hands folded across her chest, in that white coffin, she looked as if she were sleeping. She looked well, not dead. Netta thought she might wake up at any moment. Netta prayed she would wake up soon and stop all this pain and anger that filled the house like smoke. So when everyone had gone to bed and she could hear her father snoring and the soft huffs of her mother’s restless sleep, she crept out of her bed and opened the bedroom door. She didn’t open it wide, because she knew it made a squeak when it was halfway open. She only needed a tiny gap to squeeze through and then she was on the little landing facing Jenny’s door. She thought of her father rubbing Jenny’s back and pulled a face as if there were a bad smell coming from Jenny’s room. She leaned forward to make sure Jenny’s door got the full brunt of her sneer, but in doing so she forgot about the floorboard just in front of it which let out a spooky meow as she trod on it.
She froze. Listened for signs of stirring from both rooms. Then deciding it was safe to continue she slipped down the stairs with renewed concentration, carefully avoiding the parts she knew creaked.
The next obstacle on her quest was crossing the great expanse of landing outside Tante Bertel’s door. The door was always left ajar so her great aunt could be heard if she called out for assistance, but that meant Bertel could always hear when somebody was walking past too. However, since it was the middle of the night and the long low grunting sound coming from her room told Netta she was fast asleep, she tip-toed quickly across the landing, past Tante Bertel’s open door and past the firmly shut door of her grandparents, down the second staircase and into the living room.
The Watcher Page 15
