BERKLEY
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Copyright © 2020 by Avington Books Ltd
Readers Guide by Maggie Brookes copyright © 2020 by Avington Books Ltd
First published in 2020 by Century, an imprint of Cornerstone.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Brookes, Maggie, author.
Title: The prisoner’s wife / Maggie Brookes.
Description: First edition. | New York : Berkley, 2020.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019043288 (print) | LCCN 2019043289 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593197752 (paperback) | ISBN 9780593197769 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: World War, 1939-1945--Prisoners and prisons,
Czech--Fiction. | GSAFD: Historical fiction.
Classification: LCC PR6102.U874 P75 2020 (print) | LCC PR6102.U874 (ebook) | DDC 823/.92--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019043288
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019043289
First US Edition: May 2020
Cover art: image of couple by Collaboration JS / Arcangel Images; image of fences and guard towers by Paul Bucknall / Arcangel Images
Cover design by Emily Osborne
Map and interior illustrations © Darren Bennett
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author’s use of names of historical figures, places or events is not intended to change the entirely fictional character of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Izzy’s Journey
Historical NotePrologue
Part OneChapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Part TwoChapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Part ThreeChapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Part FourChapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
Readers Guide
About the Author
In memory of Alfred Arthur Brookes and all the other prisoners of war who endured so much in the hope it would never happen again.
And for Katie, Amy and Tim. All love.
It happened, therefore it can happen again: this is the core of what we have to say.
—PRIMO LEVI
Historical Note
This incredible story was related by Lance Corporal Sidney Reed, who was a prisoner of the Nazis during the Second World War at Lamsdorf, Stalag VIII B / 344, in Poland and the labor camp E166 at the Saubsdorf quarry, Czechoslovakia. During the war, Poland and Czechoslovakia were under the control of Hitler’s Third Reich.
By 1944, when this story begins, the Nazis had established huge prisoner of war camps at the eastern reaches of Czechoslovakia and Poland in order to keep the captured Allies as far as possible from home. It is estimated that they had taken almost two hundred thousand British prisoners. The officers were held in POW camps, but the 1929 Geneva Convention allowed the lower ranks to be deployed into labor camps known as Arbeitskommandos. Lamsdorf POW camp alone could hold thirteen thousand prisoners, but twelve thousand additional men were also sent into labor camps to build roads and to work in mines, in factories and on the land.
This story starts in the Czech region of Silesia, which was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until 1918. Many of the people who lived there were German speaking and welcomed the Nazi annexation of their lands. However, in March 1939 Hitler rode into Prague, declaring the rest of Czechoslovakia a “protectorate” of the Third Reich, and the entire country began life under the Nazis. By 1944, the Czech resistance was growing strong.
The names of many places have changed since 1944. This novel uses a mix of current and wartime names. For more information about this, see the author’s note at the end of the text.
Prologue
Everything was quiet and still, apart from the light crunch of our boots as we crept down the deserted street. The sliver of moon disappeared behind a cloud, and we slowed our pace, barely able to make out the way ahead.
That was when we heard the dogs. Only one bark at first, carrying in the quiet of the night. We clutched each other’s hands and stood still for a moment.
Then another bark. And another. Not muffled by the walls of a building, but out in the night, like us, out in the streets.
Instinctively we moved away from the sound, and the buildings glowered at us, closing in. My heart was drumming, and my breath came fast. We walked more quickly. The dogs were barking, closer, the sound echoing off the buildings—perhaps two dogs, perhaps three. We turned to see whether they were in sight, but the darkness was too absolute. We were acutely aware of the noise of our boots on the cobbled road.
And then there were shouts behind us, the voices of men excited to have something to do in the boredom of the night watch, egging on the dogs, eager for the hunt. Whichever way we turned, the dogs and the men grew closer, and our boots clanged more loudly.
It became a town of sounds: our breath, the pounding of our blood in our ears, the clatter of our boots on the road, the dogs barking, men running and calling, closer, closer. Perhaps we could have stopped, knocked on a door and begged for help, but we didn’t. We just kept going, faster and faster, running, Bill dragging me with him. I was breathless to keep up, my kit bag banging awkwardly against my legs.
At last there was an opening in the terrace, an archway leading into a narrow arcade lined with dark shops. Toward the end of the alley was an even darker place that looked like another turning, but it was only a wide doorway, up two steps, set back and hidden until we drew level with it.
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br /> Now the dogs were almost on us, and Bill pulled me up into the doorway, threw his arms around me, squeezed me very hard and whispered, “I’m so sorry,” into my hair. Then he pushed me away from him so we wouldn’t be found touching. I shut my eyes and waited for the dogs’ teeth, hoped it would be over quickly.
Everything seemed to happen at once: the dogs, the men, a searchlight in my face. I raised my arm to cover my eyes and heard the panting breath of the men, the loudness of their voices. My teeth were chattering, and I had to clamp my mouth shut. The voices behind the light became one disembodied shout in German from the senior officer. “Hands up! Against the wall!”
We stumbled down the two steps. Bill went to one side of the doorway, and I to the other. I raised my arms and leaned my face against the wall to stop myself from falling, feeling the roughness of the brick against my cheek.
Behind the wall I sensed the people who lived there scurrying like mice, listening with excitement and maybe—who knows?—with pity. I bit my lips, determined not to sob, not to let it end this way.
PART ONE
VRAŽNÉ, OCCUPIED CZECHOSLOVAKIA
June to October 1944
One
War had ripped across Europe for five years—a great tornado, scattering families, tearing millions of people from their loved ones forever. But sometimes, just sometimes, it threw them together. Like with me and Bill. A Czech farm girl and a London boy who would never have met, hurled into each other’s path. And we reached out, caught hold and gripped each other tight.
We had the Oily Captain to thank for bringing us together. I always thought of him as the Oily Captain because there was something too eager to please in his manner that made me despise him. Although he was a Nazi officer, he was nothing like the bands of SS who descended without warning to search the farm and interrogate us about my father and my older brother, Jan.
We knew at once that he was different, because the first day he turned up at the farm, he even knocked at the back door before he pushed it open. He stood silhouetted in the doorframe, stocky and well-fed on “requisitioned” farm produce.
My mother was by the sink, cutting potatoes. She dropped a potato in the water and turned, keeping the knife in her right hand.
In one glance he took in the kitchen—the knife, my mother in her apron, me with my books spread out on the table and Marek playing on the floor.
“Do you speak German?” he asked her politely, although most people in our region spoke nothing else.
“Of course,” my mother replied in her impeccable High German accent, brushing a wisp of hair from her eyes with the back of her left hand. I nodded too, imperceptibly.
His face brightened. “May I come in?”
My mother made a small flick of her fingers, which meant “Can I stop you?” and he took a step forward.
She rested her knife hand on the edge of the sink and frowned at the mud he’d walked onto her clean floor. My little brother, Marek, stood up. He was only eight, but took his position as man of the house very seriously.
The captain removed his hat. Beneath it his hair was short and peppered with gray. He had the open face of a countryman used to looking at the sky. His lips were thin and maybe mean, but the wrinkles around his eyes spoke of someone who liked to laugh. He seemed older with his hat off.
“I’ve been looking over your farm. . . .” My mother’s face darkened, and he waved his innocence. “I want to offer you some help to bring in the crops.”
Only so you can confiscate them, I thought, and knew my mother was thinking the same. They requisitioned every turnip, every bushel of oats, every ham we produced.
“I’ve got a working party of prisoners of war from the sawmill at Mankendorf. They’re improving the road for the timber lorries, but I could spare a man or two to help you at the busiest times. My orders are to improve forestry and agriculture in the region. It’s a big farm for the two of you.”
“Three,” said my brother, and my mother put a warning hand on his shoulder.
The captain nodded seriously. “Three.”
He was right, of course. Even if we worked from sunup to sundown, there was no way that my mother and I could do the work of my father, my brother Jan and the two hired men we’d lost.
“What’s your name?” the captain asked my brother in a friendly way.
He hesitated and then said, “Marek,” the name he had from his Czech grandfather. Outside the house and at school, he normally used his other name, Heinrich, from our mother’s father. My mother and I glanced at each other but didn’t speak.
“It’s a very nice farm,” the captain continued. “I grew up on a farm, and I know how much work it can be.”
I was thinking that I preferred the real Nazis, who didn’t bother to make conversation but searched in every room and turned over the contents of every cupboard without asking, as if it were their right. You could hate them with white-hot venom. We kept our eyes fixed on the floor when they were in the house, knowing our faces would betray our loathing.
But with the Oily Captain, even the first time, when I stared at him, he was the first to look away.
“What’s most urgent?” he asked.
“First the hay must be cut, before we have a thunderstorm,” my mother said, and he nodded. It was odd to hear her speaking German in the house. We’d spoken only Czech here for five years, ever since the Nazis had marched into Prague.
“Tomorrow morning, then,” he said, and replaced his hat and raised his arm in a salute, which looked more like he was trying to keep the sun out of his eyes. “Heil Hitler.”
We muttered unintelligibly, and he turned and left. Marek sat down again.
The captain’s footsteps clicked away from the house. He held one leg stiff, and I could hear it in the irregular clack of his boots. I supposed that was why he wasn’t away slaughtering Russians or hunting down partisans like my father and Jan. Perhaps he had a false leg.
When he was out of earshot, my mother exhaled and reverted to Czech. “Well,” she said, “I can’t say it won’t help. As long as he isn’t around poking his nose in all the time.”
* * *
At five thirty the next morning, my mother and I were still having breakfast when there came a loud thumping on the wagon doors that opened from the road into the courtyard of our farm.
My mother drank the last of her coffee and pulled a light shawl around her shoulders.
She held herself very erect, and her jaw was set firm, as if she expected to have to prove to them that she was the farmer and not just the farmer’s wife. She’d pulled her curly hair back under a black head scarf, which made her look severe and almost frightening. We slipped on our clogs as the Oily Captain knocked at the back door and politely asked if we were ready for them. He looked so pleased with himself that I could have smacked him.
“I’m afraid I have to leave a guard as well, because of your husband and your older son.” He shrugged apologetically.
My mother didn’t speak, but closed the door in his face, crossed the kitchen and swished out into the courtyard to lift the great beam behind the wagon doors. Outside was a small truck with about twenty men on it. Five prisoners and an elderly guard were climbing down. My mother held one of the huge doors open enough for them to pass through single file, and scrutinized each man as he passed. Behind them came the Oily Captain, who fussily and quite unnecessarily helped her to lower the beam back into place.
The five prisoners of war marched into our courtyard, and the guard gave a loud, stamping order to halt. I yawned as I leaned against the kitchen doorway, looking on. Marek peeped out past me.
The men lined up, and that was the first time I saw Bill. He stood out from the others because of his blond hair, slate blue eyes and baby face, almost too pretty for a man. I thought he might be Polish; I didn’t know that Englishmen could have that kind of coloring
. All the prisoners, including him, were gaping at my mother, who stood in front of them beside the Oily Captain. For a moment I saw her as they did: her womanly shape, her dark eyes and head held high. Despite her worn work skirts, she looked somehow regal, a queen disguised as a peasant.
“They’ll do,” she said, and clacked across the yard in her clogs to fetch tools from the stable. The prisoners were looking around them, taking everything in: the house, stables, barn and hay barn, which formed a tight, enclosed square around our courtyard. Perhaps they were looking for ways they might escape. Their gazes locked on me as I approached. When I stared back at them, their eyes dropped to the ground or skittered onto something neutral in the yard—the water pump, the old tin bath, our bright red roof tiles. They knew the guard was watching them closely. But Bill continued to regard me in a clear, appraising way, and I raised my chin and looked back. It wasn’t love at first sight, or even lust, but there was a something, a metallic frisson in the air, a kind of challenge thrown out and returned. Maybe a kind of recognition.
The Oily Captain made small talk with my mother as she handed out the scythes, rakes and pitchforks, but the guard kept his rifle trained on the young men, who had just been issued tools they could use as weapons. He cleared his throat and spoke to the prisoners in English. “Don’t any of you boys try anything stupid. Don’t forget I was in the trenches, and I have many scores to settle.”
They nodded, and I filed away the information that the old guard spoke excellent English.
My mother opened the hay barn door and led the way through it and out into the fields. I brought up the rear. For a few steps, the Oily Captain was lolloping beside her in his stiff-legged way, trying to finish the conversation as she strode off. I couldn’t help smiling, and again I caught Bill’s eye and saw both amusement and approval of my mother. His face seemed to light up when he smiled. The Oily Captain must have realized he was being made a fool of, because he suddenly stopped, clicked his heels and wished her a very good day. She turned and politely thanked him for providing her with help on the farm. He looked very pleased with himself as he marched away to his car.
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