After I went to bed that night, they had a terrible row, but Dad won the argument, and I never went back to school. Until he went away a year ago, I had lessons from him and my mother. I missed my friends and even missed my lessons, but I wasn’t going to say sorry. It was my act of resistance, the only way I could go into battle.
Then my father had left, taking Jan, but refusing to give me the chance to go with them to fight the Third Reich properly. I was angry with my dad and furiously jealous of Jan. I missed them, feared for them and deeply resented their leaving me stuck on the farm. Five years of nothing but work, work, work under the constant scrutiny of my mother. A sulky look wasn’t hard to manage for the guard.
He shifted the rifle from one hand to the other and relaxed, obviously making a decision.
“I will help you with your English. I was a very good schoolteacher, and I hope you will be a very good pupil. I will set you a lot of homework.”
“I will. I promise I will.” I was trying not to grin too widely. “Shall I bring my books to you at the dinner break tomorrow? Would that be all right?”
He agreed, looking at his watch. “Tomorrow, then. Bring me your books, and we’ll see what can be done. And now those lazy dogs need to go back to work. Look at them all taking their ease as if this was a holiday.”
I looked at the five skinny men lying under the trees, trying to recover their strength for the afternoon’s work, and fury whipped up in me. But I kept my head turned away, clenched my fists and counted to ten.
“Lazy dogs,” I agreed. “This won’t get the turnips hoed.”
The guard called, “Raus, raus,” and the prisoners struggled to their feet, picking up their hoes.
“Thank you so much,” I said. “I will be your best student. But what should I call you?”
He hesitated for a second and then said, “My name is Weber. You should call me Herr Weber.”
A bee buzzed around him, and I wondered whether to tell him about the jam on his mustache, but thought it would be just retribution if the bee stung him—perhaps on the end of his gray nose.
“Thank you, Herr Weber. Until tomorrow.”
* * *
The next day I sat down with Herr Weber during the dinner break, and he set me dull grammatical exercises. The prisoners watched me with surprise, but I felt that somehow Bill would know this was a way of getting closer to him. I was more careful with my homework than I’d ever been before, and after only three lessons, Herr Weber told me I was a good student and would be of excellent service to the Reich.
“You are a quick learner,” he said. “You could become an interpreter one day.”
I paused as if a new worry had crossed my mind. “Would I need to improve my spoken English as well as my grammar?”
He glanced at me with a flicker of suspicion, but my innocent smile reassured him. “You certainly would.”
“But how can I do that?” I said in a puzzled tone.
He laughed. “That’s easy!”
“Is it?”
“Of course. We have all these teachers in the working detail. So many prisoners. Do you know we have taken millions of prisoners of war? They just hold up their hands and allow themselves to be captured.”
“That’s marvelous,” I said, and very quietly, “Heil Hitler.”
Herr Weber continued. “Instead of lazing about at dinnertime, they can teach you English!”
I clapped my hands in astonishment. “That’s a wonderful idea. I would never have thought of that. How can it be arranged?”
* * *
The next day at dinnertime, Herr Weber led me to where the men were sprawled beneath the trees.
He kicked one of the other men with his toe cap, to wake him up, but I sat down firmly next to Bill, and Herr Weber just shrugged and left me to it.
“I have English class,” I announced.
“You’re a bleedin’ miracle worker,” whispered Bill.
I opened my primer and pointed at the third chapter, “Meeting and Greeting.”
Bill jumped to his feet. “How do you do?” he said, and held out his hand. I stood and gave him mine, and he shook it firmly but not too hard.
“How do you do?” I replied.
The men lying about around us turned to watch the show, but I didn’t care.
“Do you come here often?” he asked, separating each of the words and saying them a little loudly.
“I live.”
“I live here,” he corrected me, and I was pleased. He was really going to help me learn, not just muck about.
“I live here, on farm,” I said.
“I live here, on this farm.”
We sat down again and worked our way through the chapter. I scribbled notes all the time.
After this, I was able to join Bill every day, quite openly. We sat where we could be seen, but there were always ways to brush each other’s hands. My English improved fast, but the desire to be alone with him grew desperate. When you are starving, a little food only makes you hungrier.
Sometimes our conversation was guided by a chapter in the book, but more often we just talked.
“Today I’d like to take you out,” he announced one day.
“Where we go?” I asked.
“Where would we go?” he corrected me, and I wrote it down.
“First I’d come and pick you up. I think that’s better than meeting under a clock or something. I’d bring you a little bunch of violets for your buttonhole.”
I didn’t know what this word meant. In his London accent it sounded like “bu’n’ole.” I repeated it: “Bu-u-nole?”
He laughed. “Blimey, I’m going to have to talk proper. Buttonhole,” he said, sounding the ts and the h. He pointed at his tunic. “Button. Buttonhole.”
I nodded and wrote it down.
“Then we’d catch a bus up west, and go for tea at Lyons’ Corner House, and the Nippy’d bring us great plates of sandwiches and scones.”
“Scones?”
“A kind of bready cake with butter and jam and cream.”
“It sound very good.”
“Sounds very good, with an s,” he said kindly, and I scribbled the correction as he continued. “Then we’d go to the pictures. Just stroll up to Leicester Square, looking at all the people. Would you like that?”
“Pichers?”
“Movies, film, cinema.”
“Ah, yes, I like pichers.” I didn’t tell him what a rare treat it was for me to see a film. We had a cinema in Neutitschein, but it wasn’t easy to get away from the farm. Sometimes the local girls and I would go together on our bikes.
“What kind of film would you like?” he asked.
“Film of love,” I suggested, with a shy, sideways glance, and he laughed. “With music,” I add decidedly.
“OK. We’ll go to a romantic musical. Top Hat. Music and dancing.” He began to sing softly, “‘Heaven, I’m in heaven, and my heart beats so that I can barely speak . . .’”
It was the first time I’d heard him sing, and his voice was a pleasant tenor. I wanted to know the song and be able to sing along with him.
“‘. . . when we’re out together dancing cheek to cheek.’”
I sighed, a deep sigh of longing for a world where this could be true.
“So then, after the pictures, I’ll take you dancing. Do you like dancing?”
“I love dance. But not get much . . .” I didn’t know the word, so I waved my hand around me at the farm.
“Not much chance. No, I can see that. A bit short of dance halls!”
The guard cut in, calling the men back to work. “Raus, raus.”
Bill ran his hand up through his hair. He stood up and reached down to pull me to my feet.
“Well, that was nice, Izzy. Now I’ll walk you home, and”—he lowered his v
oice so the others couldn’t hear—“we might kiss at your door.”
“I like that.”
“Me too.”
He let go of my hand, and I bent to gather my books.
* * *
Later that week, Mother decided it was time for the cherries to be picked. I never knew how she hit on the exact day when they’d be ripe. She said one day I would know it too, but I had no intention of staying on the farm that long.
We used long poles to carefully lift the nets from the three cherry trees, and then it was a race, us against the birds. My mother set two men to each tree and moved between them, watching that the fruit didn’t get bruised. Bill and Harry were picking one tree—“larking about,” as Bill would say—dangling pairs of cherries from their ears, laughing and singing a song called “Cherry Ripe” in high falsetto voices.
When the baskets were full, my mother came and inspected the tree to make sure no cherries had been missed. Wasps were already busy at the fruit. Mother brushed a wisp of hair from her eyes.
“You’d better take these baskets and the nets up to the house,” she said, then stopped and studied Bill. “Oh, it’s you.”
She hesitated and looked around, but the other prisoners were high in the trees, and she didn’t dare leave them unsupervised.
“Oh, I suppose it’ll be all right.” She scowled at me. “No dillydallying, and no funny business, or you’ll be locked up for a fortnight. Do you understand me?”
“I promise, Mother,” I said in my most saintly voice. “We won’t be long.”
She looked very deliberately at her watch. “You’d better not be.”
I lifted one brimming basket and Bill the other. He said, “Blimey, you’re as strong as I am.”
I strode away as fast as my heavy load would allow, and Bill hurried to keep pace. When I glanced back, Mother was helping Harry to sling the nets across his shoulders, keeping them clear of the ground.
Bill said, “I see there’s a lot more to you than a pretty face.”
He thought I had a pretty face! “We go gentle must,” I said, hunting for the words.
He guessed, “We must be cautious? Is that it? Not let them see too much?”
“Yes, yes. Cautious. My mother sees.”
“Mothers see everything,” he agreed.
Inside the house, we laid the baskets on the kitchen table. Bill quickly took my hand, and it was as if an electric jolt passed up my arm. He raised my fingers to his lips, and we heard Harry whistling the “Cherry Ripe” tune as he approached. My insides flickered with fire.
Harry coughed a warning as he pushed through the door, festooned with nets. Bill dropped my hand, and we laughed like children as we disentangled Harry and carefully laid the nets on the flagstones for mending.
Bill was saying, “I had no idea there was so much to do on a farm. City boy, see. London,” and looking all around him like a bird, this way and that, taking in everything: the sink, the table, the larder, the pans. “Oh, Lord, it’s so good to be in a house again.” He stroked the table. “So normal. I’ll be able to picture you here.”
Harry winked at Bill. “I’m just going outside to keep cavey.”
“Keep watch,” Bill explained as I closed the door on Harry’s retreating back.
I glanced quickly through the window into the farmyard and drew Bill to the dark wall between the door and window. He took my face between his hands and gazed at me, as if committing each element of my face to memory.
“Your eyes are so green,” he said, “like a cat’s.”
He bent and kissed me, and it was different than with any of the boys I’d kissed before, like currents up and down my spine. I pressed myself tight against him, kissing so deeply, it made my knees tremble. The farm and my mother were completely forgotten until a whistle came from outside, and he pulled away.
“I mustn’t get sent back to Lamsdorf,” he said. “Not now.”
I laid a finger on his lips and led him to the door. “You not go Lamsdorf,” I said firmly. “I stay you here.”
“By God, I think you will.” He shook his head with admiration.
As I opened the door and light flooded into the kitchen, he looked beyond the stairs into our dining room. “A piano!” he said. “You’ve got a piano!”
“Can play?”
“It’s my best thing—after kissing you! Can you play?”
I almost had to push him out of the door, he was so reluctant to leave the piano.
“I learn long time but play bad.”
“And I ain’t never had a lesson,” he said. “But I play good. Funny old world.”
We turned toward the fields, and Harry followed at a considerate distance. Bill glanced back at the house, as if knowing the location of the precious object would somehow enable him to play it.
“We could play duets.” He ran his hands up and down imaginary scales in the air.
I asked, “What music you like?”
“Jazz tunes, ragtime, dance music, anything that goes down well in a pub.” He paused. “I play by ear.”
“What ‘by ear’?”
“Without music. I don’t know how to read music. I can play the tunes if I hear them. Almost any tune off the radio.”
I had never met anyone who could do this.
“This gift from God,” I said in wonder, and a beaming smile lit up his face.
Five
In the wired-off compound outside the Mankendorf sawmill, Bill and Harry were playing shuttlecock over a rope. Bill was using a table tennis paddle and Harry had an old tennis racket, but that wasn’t why Bill was losing so badly. Every few seconds he glanced up at the road from Vražné, the road Izzy would cycle along if her mother allowed her to come. The jittery anticipation in his stomach overrode his ever-present hunger. The shuttlecock landed at his feet.
“Thirty-six to seven,” called Harry. “You ain’t even trying.”
Outside the wire, the tarty girls from the village were holding court with a group of prisoners inside the fence. At dinnertime today, Bill had told Izzy that other girls came down to the camp and asked if she could come too. She doubted her mother would allow it, but he couldn’t help hoping.
Bill flipped a shot over the washing line, just as bright movement caught his eye on the road from Vražné. The dress of a girl on a bicycle. It was. It was her. His stomach tightened, and he missed Harry’s return shot. Harry shaded his eyes and looked in the direction of Bill’s gaze. “Oh, now I get it,” he said. “Off you hop, then, chummy.”
Bill thrust the table tennis paddle at him and moved to an empty section of the wire fence, watching as Izzy dismounted and scanned the faces inside the compound. The tarty girls spoke to her, but she barely replied. Herr Weber sat smoking with the owner of the sawmill, halfheartedly watching the men, and he started up when he saw Izzy approach, but she waved her schoolbooks at him to show her serious intent.
Then she spotted Bill at the wire and smiled with obvious relief. Something jumped inside him as he grinned back.
Feeling nervous, as if this were his first date, Bill smoothed his hair down with one hand, then ran his fingers back up through it with the other. He watched as Izzy laid her bike down on the ground and walked toward him, clutching her books. He drank in the supple movement of her slim body, her skirt swinging, until she stood, perhaps a meter away, on the other side of the wire.
“Hello,” he said awkwardly. “I’m so glad you came.”
“My mother say is good,” she replied, hardly meeting his eyes.
“Did she really?”
Izzy pulled a wry face. “Not good, for sure, but OK.”
They both laughed, and the tension broke.
“I see you’ve brought your books,” he said, grasping for something to say. “That’s a pretty dress.”
But she was looking at the sawm
ill and the wire.
“Is bad here?” she asked anxiously.
“No, it’s not bad. Not compared with Lamsdorf and the other stalags. We get extra rations here because we’re doing what’s classified as heavy work.” He followed the direction of her gaze to the factory, and pointed at the second floor.
“We sleep upstairs there, above the factory floor. Two big rooms with thirty men in each. On bunk beds. Harry sleeps below me. We’re locked in at night, of course. But we get a bath every Saturday and”—he swept his arm around at all the surroundings, at the countryside, which was so new to him and which he’d fallen in love with—“all this. Beautiful trees. Fantastic sunrises over the hills, and look over there. They let us grow tomatoes, lettuce and spring onions, and sometimes we’re allowed to swim in the river.” He paused. “And now you’re here.”
“Now I am here.” She smiled.
Bill put his hand up to the wire, and she checked to see if Herr Weber was watching before stepping forward and touching her hand to his. Her hand was warm, and heat seemed to pass into Bill’s from it. After a moment she stepped back again. He wanted so much to have something to give her, some flowers or chocolate. But he had nothing.
“I want to know everything about you,” he said.
She smiled. “Not much say. I am Czech farm girl.”
He shook his head. “You are beautiful and clever. You are learning English so fast.”
“I have good teacher.”
He grinned again. “I have a good teacher.”
“A good teacher,” she echoed. “A very good teacher.”
“So let’s sit down and tell me, tell me about you. Tell me everything.”
“You tell when I say thing wrong. I have bring dictionary.” She corrected herself. “I have bring a dictionary.”
Bill sat cross-legged in the dust on his side of the wire, and she sat down on the grass on the other side. He had so much he wanted to ask. He wanted to know everything about her and her family and this mysterious country he’d washed up in. “Tell me why most people speak German if this is Czechoslovakia,” he said at last.
The Prisoner's Wife Page 4
