by Lily Baxter
‘You’re not going to finish him off, are you?’ Meg stared down at the unconscious Grulich. She could have killed him herself a few minutes ago, but now she was desperately afraid of the consequences if he were to die. Buster raised himself and licked her hand. She stroked his head and her hatred for Grulich hardened into a ball inside her stomach. She looked up and met Gerald’s eyes. ‘Do what you have to.’
He nodded. His face was deathly pale but his jaw was set in the stubborn line that put Meg in mind of the real David. ‘Pip, fetch Sapphire,’ Gerald said firmly. ‘And Meg, you’d better lock Buster in the house while I clean up this mess.’
Between them, Gerald and Pip hitched Sapphire between the shafts, and it took all three of them to manhandle Grulich onto the wagon. He began to come round and before anyone could stop him Pip punched him on the jaw, knocking him senseless once again. Meg was certain that he would have continued battering his victim if Gerald had not stopped him. For once she was in complete sympathy with Pip.
‘Leave him,’ Gerald said urgently. ‘Captain Grulich is going to meet with an accident but it’s got to look real enough to convince the Germans. Don’t leave any marks on him.’
Meg tossed armfuls of hay over Grulich’s insensible body. ‘You’d better get a move on before he comes round.’
Gerald leapt up onto the driver’s seat. ‘Get back to work, you two. I’ll see to this my way.’ He flicked the reins. ‘Giddy-up, Sapphire, old girl.’
Having cleaned Buster’s wound, Meg locked him in her bedroom and hurried out of the house. She went about her tasks outside barely noticing the cold wind, spiked with sharp pellets of rain, that slapped her face. It was almost impossible to keep her mind off Grulich, and the unthinkable repercussions if his superiors discovered the truth about his death. She had no doubt that by now he would be well on his way to meet his maker, but she felt no remorse for his inevitable demise. She was party to a murder, but she did not feel the slightest twinge of conscience. This was war, and war was hateful.
Gerald did not return until just before curfew, and by then there was no way she could get him on his own. She did her best to hide her feelings, struggling to appear outwardly calm while inwardly she was seething with anxiety. She froze with fear every time she saw a German officer, waiting for the accusations to begin, but so far no one seemed to have noticed that Grulich was missing. She had expected that if anyone gave the game away, it would be Pip, but astonishingly he seemed to have forgotten all about Grulich and was more interested in tuning his crystal set in order to listen to the BBC news.
Charles had stayed in bed all day with one of his more virulent attacks of bronchitis, cared for devotedly by Marie. After supper that evening, Maud, Bertrand and Jane were huddled around the radio receiver listening to the reports of the bombing of Coventry and the continued devastation of the East End of London. There had even been a direct hit on Buckingham Palace. It seemed to Meg that the world had gone mad. She tried to concentrate on the sock that she had been darning and pricked her finger. Her eyes filled with tears of pain and exhaustion as she sucked her finger. Across the room she met Gerald’s eyes. He grinned and winked at her and she had to be content with that.
‘What can have happened?’ Maud said, spooning barley porridge into her mouth next morning at breakfast.
‘Perhaps the Allies have landed.’ Bertrand licked his spoon. ‘Any porridge left?’
‘We’d all like more, Daddy,’ Jane said, handing the remains of her porridge to Pip. ‘He’s a growing boy,’ she said defensively, looking round at their disapproving faces.
Maud sipped her coffee and pulled a face. ‘Is this roasted acorn or barley, Marie? Whatever it is it’s disgusting.’
‘Something is going on,’ Marie said, ignoring this last remark. ‘They’ve been riding their motorbikes up and down the drive since before dawn. I hardly had any sleep.’
‘Perhaps it’s an army exercise.’ Meg pushed her plate away and rose from the table. ‘Whatever they’re doing is not our business. Come on, Gerald, we’d better get to work.’
When they were far enough from the house she clutched his arm. ‘What did you do with Grulich? I lay awake all night worrying about it.’
‘We made it look like an accident. The patrols will find him soon enough and there’s nothing to lead them back to us.’
‘You mean he really is dead?’
‘Dead as a doornail!’
‘But how? And who are “we”? What have you got yourself into?’
He quickened his pace and she had to run in order to keep up with him. They crossed the muddy waste that had once been the pleasure gardens and skirted the lake to the open fields beyond the woods. The sun gleamed feebly in the watercolour sky and there was silence except for the mewing of a few seagulls wheeling hopefully overhead. Gerald searched under a bare hawthorn hedge for a rusty garden fork and began to dig the hard ground.
‘For God’s sake, Gerald. Tell me!’
‘A few of us have got together to cause the Germans a bit of grief. Anyway, we soaked Grulich’s clothes in some alcohol, which was a damn waste, and we made it look as if one of their staff cars had knocked him down while he was staggering back to the house after a drinking binge. As far as they know he’d gone absent without leave since he didn’t report for duty after his dental appointment.’
Frowning thoughtfully, Meg watched him dig. ‘Do you think Major Jaeger will buy that?’
‘We’ll soon find out.’ He uttered a triumphant cry as he dug up a small stash of carrots and turnips. ‘Marvellous. Let’s get these back to Mother. It’s meat ration day so we’ll have a decent meal tonight.’
‘You’ve just killed a man and all you can talk about is food?’
‘I didn’t kill him, although I would have done if I had to. Pip’s knock on the head must have fractured his skull. He was dead by the time I got him to the north field. I just left him there under the hay until it was dark. My friends came along later and helped with the rest.’
‘What friends? And if you tell me it’s safer for me not to know I’ll hit you with the fork and bury you with the potatoes.’
‘So you do care what happens to me?’
‘I care what happens to all of us, you idiot. If you get caught doing heroic things with the saboteurs we’ll all suffer for it.’
‘We won’t get caught, I promise you, Meg. And you can’t bully me into telling you any details so you’d better give up.’ He hitched the sack over his shoulder and trudged back across the field towards the house.
In the middle of the afternoon a motorcycle messenger arrived with the news that Captain Grulich’s body had been found in a quiet lane between St Martin’s Church and the road to the Jerbourg peninsula. It was Corporal Klein, having negotiated a truce with Marie in exchange for English lessons, who passed on the news. The story that buzzed around the soldiers’ quarters and filtered back through the kitchen was that Grulich had been drinking, and in the blackout had stumbled into the path of a vehicle that had not bothered to stop. There did not seem to be much sympathy amongst his compatriots, or any visible signs of grief at his passing. Meg knew that she ought to feel some degree of sorrow for the untimely death of another human being, but she could not. She was glad that Grulich’s hateful personality no longer haunted her life, and relieved beyond belief that no one had suspected foul play.
Two days later, after the meagre breakfast rations had been eaten and cleared away, Jane was in the morning room trying to coax the fire into life, but the damp twigs merely smouldered and belched smoke into the room. Marie and Gerald had taken the plates back to the kitchen and Charles, as usual nowadays, had stayed in bed. Meg folded the tablecloth while Bertrand fussed about setting the chairs straight and getting in everyone’s way.
Maud perched on the window seat, staring idly at the rain-soaked garden. ‘There’s a staff car coming up the drive.’
‘Can’t you do something more useful than gawk out of the window, Maud old g
irl?’ Bertrand glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be dusting the staircase or something?’
‘Not with Grulich out of the way,’ Maud said smugly. ‘I don’t think Major Jaeger notices dust, and anyway he’s more of a gentleman than Grulich. He knows better than to make a lady of my background and advanced years do menial work.’
‘I wouldn’t bet on it, Auntie.’ Meg looked round to make sure she had put everything back in its place. ‘Anyway, I’ve finished here and I’m going out to check on the livestock.’
‘There’s a man getting out of the car,’ Maud said, craning her neck. ‘I expect it’s Grulich’s replacement. My eyesight isn’t what it used to be. You have a look, Meg.’
‘I don’t want to. They’re all as bad as each other.’
‘He looks quite young.’
‘Don’t let him see you, Mummy,’ Jane said, working the bellows energetically.
‘He’s coming up the steps to the front door. Let’s hope he’s more pleasant than that last chap. I couldn’t abide him.’
‘I’m off then,’ Meg said to no one in particular as she slipped out into the hallway. An ice-cold blast of wind whistled through the open door. She was tempted to glance over her shoulder to find out who had come to torment them further, but she resisted the temptation. She had taken a few short steps when the drawing room doors were flung open and she heard Major Jaeger’s clear voice. ‘Captain Weiss, come this way, please.’
She could not move. Her whole body seemed to be paralysed. Even before she turned her head, she knew who it was who had come to replace Grulich. For a split second their eyes met. There was no flicker of recognition in his cool blue gaze and his features were as immobile as those of a stone statue. He knew that I would be here, she thought in a moment of near panic. What do I say? What shall I do? She had dreamed of meeting him again, but not like this. Never like this.
Abruptly, she turned on her heel and forced herself to walk at her normal pace towards the kitchen. Marie looked up from scrubbing the table. ‘What’s the matter, Meg? You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.’
‘I’m going to see to the horses.’ Taking her coat from its peg in the scullery, Meg shrugged it on. A gust of sleet-laden cold air greeted her as she opened the door leading into the stable yard. She stepped outside into a hail of icy pellets that slapped her cheeks and stung her eyes, but she was oblivious to physical discomfort. Shock was giving way to anger and bitter disappointment. The coldly handsome German officer might look like the dashing undergraduate who had made such an indelible impression upon her, but there the resemblance ended.
The sleet was turning into snow and the sky and ground had merged into a uniform gunmetal grey. Feathery white flakes spun in concentric circles, some of them floating upwards, giving Meg the odd impression that the whole world had turned upside down. An eerie silence enveloped her as she trudged through the fields, intent on bringing the horses into the shelter from the storm. She could just make out three shapes huddled together in the lee of a snowcovered hedge. She called their names and Conker was first to reach her. He whinnied with pleasure, rubbing his nose against her shoulder. The Germans had taken all the horses that she had rescued after the mass evacuation, but Conker had been overlooked because he was too highly strung to be of much use to them. Sapphire was needed to work on the farm and Caspar was too old to be of value to anyone. Meg led them to the relative shelter of the Dutch barn and gave them an extra ration of hay. She stayed with the horses longer than she would normally have done, making small jobs for herself and fussing around the animals, grateful for their undemanding company. She cracked the thin layer of ice on the trough and was filling the bucket with water when a sudden thought struck her. She dropped it with a stifled cry.
‘Oh, my God,’ she said out loud, startling the horses so that they stamped and whinnied, rolling their eyes. ‘I’ve got to find Gerald before he runs into Rayner.’
She ran through the snowstorm that had now transformed the ugliness of the ruined gardens into a fairy-tale landscape. She burst into the kitchen kicking snow off her boots all over Marie’s newly scrubbed floor. ‘Where’s Gerald?’
Marie looked up in surprised as she was about to empty a bucket of filthy water into the sink. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Never mind that now. I’ve got to find Gerald. It’s urgent.’
‘He went that way just a minute ago.’ Marie nodded her head towards the doorway. Without stopping to take off her outer garments, Meg ran through the kitchen and along the passage that led to the entrance hall. She could hear voices as she turned the corner and she skidded to a halt in front of Major Jaeger and Rayner. Gerald was standing stiffly to attention outside the morning room.
‘Is the house on fire, Miss Colivet?’ Major Jaeger asked with barely a trace of humour.
‘No, I – no.’
‘You are just in time to meet Captain Weiss, the replacement for Captain Grulich. He will take over the captain’s duties and you will report to him. Captain Weiss, may I introduce Miss Colivet and her brother, David.’
Meg held her breath waiting for him to say something, but Rayner inclined his head towards Gerald and to herself with a convincing lack of interest before following Major Jaeger into the drawing room. Breathing a sigh of relief, she leaned against the wall for support as her knees threatened to give way beneath her.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ Gerald demanded anxiously. ‘You look terrible.’
‘My God, that was a close one.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Come into the morning room. We can’t talk out here.’ She waited until he closed the door. ‘Grulich’s replacement,’ she said urgently. ‘I know him. He’s an old friend of David’s.’
‘Bloody hell.’ Gerald sank down on the nearest chair. ‘What do we do now?’
‘Nothing at all. If Rayner had been going to give the game away he’d have done it when he met you. I’ve got to get him alone and explain things.’
‘I must make an effort to get to the mainland, Meg. I’m endangering all your lives by staying here.’
‘You’d never make it, and if you were caught then we would be in even worse trouble. No, leave it to me. Let me do it my way.’
The snowfall had been unusually heavy but by evening the thaw had set in and the glistening white covering that purified the landscape was corrupting into black slush.
Meg fretted all day as she waited for a chance to speak to Rayner alone. After the family had gone to bed she lingered in the comparative warmth of the morning parlour, standing by the door which she had left ajar. It had taken hours for the miserable fire of damp twigs and green logs to take the chill off the room, but now it was time to go upstairs to the icy bedrooms the room was tantalisingly cosy. She could hear the sounds of merriment as Hauptmann Dressler and his officers finished their brandy and cigars. The faint hint of fragrant Havana seeped into the hall and there was the occasional burst of laughter as if someone had just told a joke. Meg stiffened as the door opened and some of the more junior officers strolled out, chatting, laughing and looking relaxed as they made their way up the staircase towards their quarters on the second floor. She was afraid that Rayner might leave at the same time as Major Jaeger, but after a few minutes he emerged and to her intense relief he was alone. He stood in the hallway, looking about him. Opening the door wider, she beckoned.
Casually, he strolled across the hall to join her, closing the door behind him. ‘Hello, Meg.’
‘Is that all you can say? You’re here as part of the occupying force and all you can say is hello, Meg?’
He eyed her warily, his smile fading. ‘I was posted here. For me there was no choice.’
‘You must have realised that this was my family’s home.’
‘Yes, of course, although I didn’t expect to find you here. I thought you would have been sent to your aunt’s house in Oxford.’
The logic of this was undeniable, but still
she was not satisfied. ‘You could have refused to be billeted here.’
‘I obey orders, Meg. But you’re right; I could have asked to be sent elsewhere.’
‘Then why didn’t you?’ Her voice broke on a sob and she turned away, unable to meet his earnest gaze. ‘Stop looking at me like that.’
‘There is nothing I can tell you that would make this easier for either of us. Perhaps I thought I could make a terrible situation a bit better by being here. I knew that your father was an important man on the island, and I hoped I might make things a little easier for him.’ He reached out to take her hand in his. ‘I am sorry we had to meet like this, Meg. Truly sorry.’
In the face of such heartfelt sincerity she felt herself weakening, but she snatched her hand away. ‘Whichever way you look at it, you’ve come here as the enemy. Don’t expect me to treat you as anything else.’
‘If I was your enemy I would have informed Major Jaeger that the man who claims to be David is an impostor.’ He moved to the fireplace, and leaning his arm against the mantelpiece he kicked at the dying embers of the fire so that they burst into a feeble show of sparks and small flames.
Meg allowed herself to relax just a little. ‘I’m grateful for that.’
‘Who is this person who makes you risk so much?’
‘He is Gerald LeFevre. His father and mother have worked for my family for years. He was supposed to return to his regiment but his father had a heart attack and died. Then it was too late for him to escape from the island.’
‘He should have given himself up. He would have been treated as a prisoner of war. Don’t you realise what danger he’s put you all in by staying here?’
She shrugged her shoulders. ‘What’s done is done. I’m begging you, as David’s friend, to say nothing.’
‘He would be furious if he knew that you were risking your life in this way.’
‘David would think as I do.’
‘I know that he would want his family to be safe.’
She met his gaze with a defiant toss of her head. He looked strange and alien in the severe German uniform, so unlike her golden memories of their first meeting that it hurt her to look at him. ‘You call this safe? Prisoners in our own home, subjected daily to humiliation and harsh treatment.’
