Weaver

by Stephen Baxter

  ‘He doesn’t mean anything,’ Irma said to Ernst, her eyes hollow. ‘You know how he is.’

  Ernst did not react to Fred’s words. He was in authority over these people, even to the matter of life and death, within the military law. And yet he did not feel any such authority.

  Viv came bustling in, followed by Alfie. ‘Here I am!’ She had changed into a more sober black dress, run up from blackout curtain. She wore a yellow star on her breast. She looked at them, crowded around the table. ‘Have I missed anything?’

  Alfie said, ‘Can’t we just bloody eat?’

  ‘Language,’ Irma murmured automatically.

  Fred limped to a seat and sat down. ‘God save the bloody King.’ He reached for a corkscrew from a drawer, and began to open the wine.

  Ernst said, ‘I will finish the carving.’ He stood and took Fred’s place at the head of the table. Hot fat splashed his bare skin, and the smell of the meat rose up, a cosy, family smell. But his own family were very far away, he was reminded.

  Alfie sneered at Viv. ‘I bet you didn’t wear that yellow star in front of the SS officer.’

  ‘Well, that would have been very bad taste, wouldn’t it? But besides, I know they say you can arrest a Jew for not wearing a star, but what are you supposed to do about a Gentile who is wearing one?’

  ‘This is a foolish gesture,’ Ernst said uneasily.

  ‘There’s a girl at school, Jane Mathie, who went up to London on a week’s pass to see her grandmother who was dying, and she said they’re all wearing them up there. Quite the fashion. It’s funny how things turn out, isn’t it, Ernst? Who would ever have thought I would end up wearing yellow? It just isn’t my colour.’

  ‘Oh, Viv,’ said Irma tiredly.

  Fred got the cork out of the wine bottle and took a slug, straight from the neck.

  ‘Do you think I’m being provocative, Obergefreiter?’ Viv came closer to Ernst. He flinched away, trying to keep smiling, but now she took a bit of hair at the nape of his neck and pulled it gently.

  ‘Enough!’ Fred lashed out from where he was sitting. His big fist caught Viv in the belly, and she went flying back.

  Irma screamed, ‘Fred!’ She ran to her daughter, and Alfie pushed his chair back and hurried over. Viv was trying to sit up, gasping. She was a crumple of blackout cloth, her legs splayed.

  Ernst, stunned, found himself still holding the carving knife in one hand, a serving fork in another. He turned to Fred. ‘What have you done?’

  ‘I won’t have my daughter turn into a Jerrybag. I won’t, do you hear?’ He made to stand up.

  ‘Sit still,’ Ernst commanded him.

  Fred subsided. He took another mouthful of the wine. ‘Like being back in the stalag,’ he said.

  ‘Ow!’ Irma, kneeling beside her daughter, doubled over, her hands around her belly. ‘Oh, God!’

  Alfie scrambled backwards. ‘There’s water on the floor. Urgh.’

  Ernst put down the knife and hurried over. ‘Let me see, Alfie, it’s all right. Irma?’ He held her shoulders, and tried to look into her face. ‘The baby?’

  She nodded jerkily. ‘I think so.’

  ‘Yuk!’ Alfie said.

  ‘The water is normal,’ said Ernst, thinking fast. ‘There is no telephone here. This is what I will do. I will go to your neighbour, Joe, who has a phone—’

  ‘No. Not you.’ Irma grabbed his arm in a claw-like hand; she held him hard enough to hurt. ‘Stay here.’

  Bewildered, he said, ‘Very well. Then Fred must phone.’ He turned to Fred, who sat staring at the wine. ‘Fred, call an ambulance. Tell them about your wife. And see if he, Joe, can offer any help before they come.’

  He turned back to Irma, not looking to see if Fred complied. But then he heard the chair scrape back, Fred’s heavy, uneven step as he made for the door.

  Viv was weeping openly now, seeming much younger than her fifteen years, but she didn’t appear to be hurt save for a winding. Alfie put an arm around her.

  Ernst asked Irma, ‘What is it, Frau Miller? What are you afraid of?’

  Irma was convulsed by another contraction, and gasped. But she leaned closer to Ernst so the children could not hear. ‘My husband, Obergefreiter. I’m afraid of what he might do.’

  ‘About the baby?’

  ‘We’ve hardly talked about it. I don’t know what he’ll do - I’m frightened.’

  Ernst thought he was beginning to understand. ‘The baby is not his.’

  ‘I wasn’t unfaithful to him, Obergefreiter.’

  ‘Your relationships are your business.’

  ‘But that’s the point. It wasn’t a relationship at all. Not like that. It was during the invasion.’

  And then he saw it. ‘Oh. This was not, um, not your consent.’

  She bowed her head, shamed. ‘I’ve told nobody. Not even Fred. But he knows, deep down. I thought if I fought them off, the soldiers, they would take Viv - we had been hiding, you see—’

  ‘What unit were they? Did you learn that, do you remember? Wehrmacht or SS? If you can tell me precisely when this was, I could probably identify them. The Wehrmacht is strict on these matters, Frau Miller.’

  ‘Not the Germans. It was before the Germans even got here, before I’d seen a single wretched German. They were British. British soldiers, retreating. They came to the house and just took what they wanted. Food, drink... Fred knows, inside, I’m sure of it. But I don’t know what he’ll do about it, Obergefreiter, truly I don’t. I’m frightened, ever so.’ Her grip closed around his arm again. ‘Stay. Please stay!’

  V

  In Hastings, because of the various royal birthday events, it was gone nine by the time George got home.

  There was a pearl-white glow coming from the living room, and a murmur of German voices, the dull thump of martial music. He kicked off his boots, left his helmet on the occasional table by the door, hung up his jacket, and walked into the living room. Julia Fiveash sat on the sofa, her feet up on a pile of George’s books. She wore her black uniform jacket, unbuttoned, but her long legs were bare, looking as if they were carved from marble in the television’s cold light. She had a glass of whisky in one hand and a fag in the other, with a heaped ashtray on the arm of the sofa.

  ‘You started early,’ he said.

  She shrugged. ‘Long day.’ Her blonde hair was loose, and tumbled around her shoulders when she turned to look at him.

  He peered at the television. He saw pictures of German soldiers on the move, and crude maps with bold black arrows thrusting across them.

  ‘Not Walt Disney, I take it.’

  She pointed. ‘There’s Moscow. You can read, can’t you? It’s a newsreel on our glorious advances in the east.’

  George found the television fascinating, whatever the subject matter; he’d only glimpsed sets in shops in London before the war. It was probably one of the Germans’ more successful propaganda moves, he thought, to set up a television service in Albion. It made up for the lousy cinema, where all you ever got now was a handful of films from before the war which were deemed ‘safe’ by the propaganda ministry, shown over and over, or else subtitled German movies, all sturdy farmers and marching youths. Of course the American cartoons on the television helped. George had heard that Hitler liked Donald Duck.

  ‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘where have you been?’

  ‘Work,’ he said bluntly. ‘We didn’t get the day off. I’ve got to go out again in an hour for the curfew.’

  ‘Oh, must you?’ She pouted, and uncrossed her legs, parting them slightly. ‘It’s already been such a long day.’

  He turned away. ‘Well, mine’s not over yet.’ He glanced around the room. ‘Have you eaten?’

  She waved a hand. ‘There was a reception at the castle. For the holiday, you know. Quite spectacular, actually. Fireworks. Did you see them? Well, I ate there. Just nibbles. You know me, I eat like a rabbit.’

  ‘Whereas I could eat a bloody rabbit.’

  ‘Oh, don’t
be such a grump.’ She turned back to the television.

  He went to the kitchen. He knew there was a tin of Spam in here, unless Julia had swiped it. Since he had lost Hilda he had learned how to rustle up a decent fritter. He rattled around, looking for a frying pan and a bit of vegetable oil, hoping the gas pressure would be up tonight. He was tired, and vaguely annoyed that Julia hadn’t prepared anything for him. He clung to his petty irritation. Better to feel like that than to think about what he’d been doing today.

  Even on the King’s birthday the occupation was churning through its deliberate processes. It was already six months since the orders had gone out to exclude the town’s Jews from certain areas of work, such as teaching and policing. Now the process of ‘translocation’ had begun. At the moment it was simply a question of summoning males of working age to the police stations. Most of them turned up. The Germans always worked through civilian authorities, so it was coppers like George who were interviewing these bewildered-looking young men, some of whom didn’t consider themselves Jewish at all. The first transports had already crossed the Channel, taking the men to a holding camp in Drancy, before they were to be sent further east to the Reich’s great labour projects out there. It was all bloody, an endless slog of bureaucracy and bewilderment and cruelty.

  And George knew what was coming next. According to Harry Burdon it was already happening on the continent, in France and Belgium and Holland. Soon the forcible round-ups would begin. And then it wouldn’t be just working-age men who would be shipped out, but old folk, women and even children, and you could hardly tell yourself that they were bound for labour camps, could you, George? He still thought it was best to do his duty. But if the occupation lasted long enough for this sort of thing to be happening on his watch - well, perhaps he would have choices to make.

  As he got the Spam slices into the frying pan with a bit of batter, Julia came into the kitchen. She leaned against the door frame, smoking; she’d taken off her jacket now and wore only her shirt, her legs bare.

  ‘You look filthy,’ he said to her.

  ‘I bathed this morning.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘I’ll take it as a compliment, then. It was quite a do, you know.’

  ‘What was?’

  ‘The King’s birthday reception. They were all there. Heydrich was the big star in town.’ Reinhard Heydrich was head of the SD, the Sicherheitsdienst, the Party’s own security service. He was also the Reichsprotector of the occupied territory. ‘And Josef Trojan turned up, brandishing a letter of commendation from Himmler ...’ She listed more names.

  He half listened, not very interested. The Germans were always politicking. All the great Nazi barons had their representatives here in the protectorate - Himmler, for instance, with this Trojan. ‘Do you realise,’ he said, interrupting her, ‘that every name you’ve mentioned is a German? They all carry on their plotting and sucking-up and back-stabbing among each other as if the rest of us don’t exist.’

  Julia laughed. ‘I imagine it was the same in India under the Raj. Oh, I met one interesting chap. English, I mean. Claimed to be a second cousin of the King.’

  ‘Which king?’

  ‘Well, as Edward and George are brothers, that’s rather a silly question, isn’t it? In fact this chap is another Edward, viscount something-or-other. Now he’s come down from London, and he claimed that there’s a theory going around up there that all this is divine retribution.’

  ‘For what?’

  She blew smoke out through pursed lips; her lipstick was a little smudged. ‘For deposing Edward, of course. That bully Stanley Baldwin - even Churchill thought it was the wrong thing to do. And now England’s reaping the whirlwind.’

  ‘What a load of cobblers. This isn’t the Middle Ages.’

  ‘Well, it’s a point of view. Heydrich rather took to the viscount, I think. He said he admires our aristocracy.’

  ‘A pack of traitors, if you ask me.’

  Julia sighed. She crossed to him and wrapped her arms around his waist. He could feel her breath on his neck, the shirt rustling against his back, the smooth firmness of her body only a couple of layers of cloth away from his own. ‘Ah, dear George, you are always so browned off, aren’t you? You despise most of the English more than you despise the Nazis, I think.’

  ‘Mind my fritters.’

  ‘Oh, to perdition with your beastly fritters.’ She pulled at him, turning him around. Her face was close to his, her eyes and mouth wide, and her hair was a golden cloud in the dim light.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ he whispered. ‘I really am batting above my average with you.’

  ‘You say the most ridiculous things.’ Her lips closed on his and her tongue flickered, alive; he tasted cigarette smoke and wine and a hint of spice, the relic of her reception with the Nazis. She grabbed his balls, her moves confident, decisive. ‘And do you despise me?’ she asked breathily.

  ‘You ask me that every day.’

  ‘You despise what I do. The people I work with. Everything I believe in.’ And, it went unsaid, he despised those of her colleagues who had executed his daughter in cold blood. ‘And yet here we are. Funny, isn’t it?’

  ‘There’s nothing funny about this bloody war.’

  ‘Kick me out, then.’ She massaged his crotch, while her other hand pressed into the small of his back. ‘Go on. Just push me away.’

  ‘You and your bloody games. You’re cracked.’

  ‘And you say that every day too. Tell me to leave.’

  He took her wrists, and gently disengaged her hands from his body. ‘I’ll tell you to pack it in for now. Believe it or not I’m hungrier than I’m randy, and those Spam fritters are calling.’

  She laughed. She spun away, bunching up her hair behind her head with her hands. ‘You do sound your age sometimes. All right, I’ll leave you alone. Just make sure you wake me up when you come in from the curfew.’

  VI

  21 September

  They were in a muddy field, once the football pitch attached to a boys’ prep school, now fenced off with barbed wire and sentry towers and guns. In the grey light the men stood in their rows like tree stumps, shabby in their battered coats and wooden clogs, with their shaven heads. The Wehrmacht guards walked before them, their rifles in their arms. This was the dawn appell.

  The stalag commander walked out and stood before the men. Because this anonymous Sunday was Sea Lion Day, he announced, the first anniversary of the invasion, the prisoners would get a boost to their rations, a bit of pork sausage from their cousins in Bavaria, and the work kommandos would be allowed an additional hour off in the middle of the day. There were the usual ironic cheers from the ranks.

  Willis Farjeon, standing tall in his blue RAF greatcoat, murmured, ‘Good old Boche with all their memorial days. As long as we get a bit of extra kip they can make a memorial out of anything they like.’

  ‘I bet you’d like to make a memorial out of my arse, you bum bandit,’ called one of the men.

  Willis turned and grinned. ‘And you’d like a lick of my pork sausage, wouldn’t you, pongo?’

  ‘Bit early in the morning for that, Betty Grable,’ murmured Danny Adams, the SBO, actually an NCO in this other-ranks camp, a blunt scouser of a sergeant-major.