The Prisoner's Wife

by Maggie Brookes

  I bundle some of the tins back into the parcel, and Bill takes them out again to pack neatly. “Let’s hide some,” he says, “just in case,” and so we remove some and secrete them around our bunks. I hide the chocolate on the bunk above my head.

  When we’re done, Ralph says, “Come on, then. I promised to take you for delousing and haircuts. And then I’m afraid you’ve got the honey wagon this afternoon.”

  I dread leaving the relative safety of the hut for the untold dangers of the delousing station and the mysterious honey wagon, but I have no choice other than to follow.

  * * *

  The three of us weave between the huts to the delousing station. Other prisoners lounge around outside the huts, talking. I wonder what there can be to talk about when they have been together so much, for years maybe, like Bill and Harry were. Guards are patrolling the boundary fence. The one with the bushy eyebrows looks at me as we pass.

  As they walk, Ralph and Bill are having the sort of normal conversation that any two strangers might share, as if my life were not hanging in the balance. I want to draw Bill’s attention back to me, but instead I concentrate on walking like a boy, with my hands in my pockets.

  “Where d’you come from?” asks Ralph.

  Bill replies, “London—Stoke Newington.”

  “I think that’s quite close to Max. He’s from America originally, Brooklyn, but lived somewhere called Hoxton since he was fourteen.”

  Bill is delighted. “Hoxton’s just down the road. We’re practically neighbors! What about you? Somewhere up north?”

  “Manchester. Ever been there?”

  “No. Is it nice?”

  “Rains a lot. But home, you know.”

  They are both silent for a moment at the thought of home, and I picture my mother milking the cow, feeding the chickens, having to cope somehow without my help. I send my apologies to her spinning into the sky.

  Before the dreaded delousing, we stop at another hut. The guard with eczema is patrolling outside, scratching at his inner elbow. He looks at my hair and smirks. One corner of the hut has been set aside as a barbershop, and men lean against the wall, waiting their turn. The barber’s another prisoner, who cuts everyone’s hair the same, almost shaved at the back and on the sides and short on top. I don’t want my hair to be cut like this, but I have no choice, no choice, no choice about anything ever again.

  In the waiting line, there’s animated discussion about a cricket game due to take place later this week. I concentrate hard, but it’s very confusing and involves a lot of words that sound made-up: wicket, googly, yorker. Opinions are sharply divided about which men should be playing and which team is likely to win. They also talk about the two “tests” this summer, the “Stashes”—stalag ashes. I think of school tests, and the life I would have had if I’d gone to university, if Hitler hadn’t come.

  As they talk, the men move forward in an orderly queue until their turn comes to sit in the barber’s chair. Some of them don’t really need a haircut, but sit in the chair and pass something to the barber, and he writes a note in a book with the stub of a pencil or ducks down under the chair and passes an item back, hidden in his hand. I try not to stare. Ralph and Bill don’t say anything.

  Bill goes first, and I’m sorry to see his lovely, fair hair cut tight to his head. It’s so short, I can see his pink scalp through the blond hairs.

  “There, that’ll last you a bit and stop the bugs biting,” says the barber.

  I want to run out of the hut, but it’s my turn now, and I force myself to take my place in the chair. I can see myself in the broken mirror the barber has propped up. My hair’s grown in the eleven days we were on the run. It looks pretty. The barber places a dirty scrap of towel around my shoulders and picks up his scissors.

  He lifts up one of my curls, and calls out to the waiting queue, “Shirley Temple, eat your heart out!”

  All the eyes swivel to look at me. Surely they’ll see I’m a girl?

  “Been on the good ship Lollipop awhile,” jokes Bill. I fix a grin to my face. How can Bill laugh when he remembers the day he cut my hair, so gently and deferentially, and how he said he loved me with my short curls?

  “. . . And ends up here in Candyland!”

  The barber scissors close to the back of my head. “Don’t you want to give us a song, Shirl?”

  Ralph says quietly, “He doesn’t talk. Shell shock.”

  The men in the hut study me with increased interest, and I stare straight ahead at myself in the mirror. Myself but not myself at all. Sick to my stomach.

  “Poor blighter,” says the barber, slicing all the hair touching my left ear. “Do we know where?”

  “Not sure,” says Bill. “Tobruk, maybe. That’s where I was picked up. He can understand. Just doesn’t speak.”

  One of the men in the hut scrutinizes our faces for a second, to see if he recognizes us, but then glances away.

  The discussion of cricket resumes as the hair over my other ear is chopped and then the barber attacks the curls that were starting to fall attractively over my forehead. I am shorn, and the effect appalls me. As if that weren’t enough, he takes out a razor and begins to shave the back of my neck and above my ears. I grip the sides of the chair and struggle to keep the horror off my face. I am so ugly! How will Bill love me now?

  “There you go, son,” says the barber kindly. “No Brylcreem, I’m afraid, so I cut it shorter on top, Yankee style.”

  He flicks loose hair from my neck with a shaving brush and whips off the towel. I feel cold and naked and utterly miserable.

  Standing up, I run my hand over my spiky, prickly hair. Shorter than my brother ever had it. Horrible! Horrible! Turning to Bill, I can hardly meet his eyes. He seems a little surprised at how it has transformed me, but I don’t see my own horror reflected in his eyes.

  Ralph says, “That’s better,” and they nod.

  Bill clears his throat. “Much better.”

  * * *

  Out in the air again, I take long, slow breaths, concentrating on not crying, and follow Bill and Ralph with my head bent. I feel the eczema guard observing me, but I can’t meet his stare. After a moment, Bill drops back, glances around and whispers, “You’re still the most beautiful girl in the world. Still my sweet’eart.”

  I don’t believe him, but his kindness brings me even closer to tears, and I daren’t make eye contact. “I look like a skinned pig.”

  He laughs ruefully, but I don’t smile. I’m trapped in a cloud of misery, which almost makes me forget my terror of the delousing station until we arrive there.

  There’s only one guard on duty. He takes off his cap to scratch his bald, shiny head, and he barely glances at us. Perhaps my horrible new hair is making me more invisible. Perhaps that. He inspects our ID tags and writes a number in his book, raising his eyes expectantly to Ralph.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see Ralph give him a fistful of cigarettes, and the guard opens the door to let us inside.

  “I know you haven’t got lice, and the new haircuts will help,” says Ralph, “but maybe it wouldn’t hurt to do your underarms. Lice carry typhus, and they love underarms and groins.”

  Bill adds, “And they itch like the devil.”

  Ralph points to a pail of white powder with a paintbrush sticking out of it, then goes back outside to the guard, leaving me and Bill alone. Through the door, I hear Ralph strike up a conversation in German.

  Bill quickly kisses me, and we grip each other tight for a long moment. I think I can feel his heart beating. This might be the last time.

  He runs his hand over my shorn head.

  “You’re still beautiful,” he whispers again. “I’ll always love you.”

  A huge lump in my throat prevents me from replying.

  He strips off his battle dress jacket and shirt and lifts his arm for me to pain
t the wispy blond hairs underneath, and then turns to do the other side. His white body is covered in goose pimples.

  “We should do the seams of our clothes too,” he says, removing his trousers and pulling them inside out. “The places the buggers love to hide. And down round your you-know-what. I’ll do mine.”

  He turns his back to me and rubs a handful of the powder down the front of his underwear, while I apply the powder to the seams of his battle dress and trousers. When we’ve finished with his clothes, he waves to my buttons.

  “I’ll watch the door if you can do yourself?”

  I remove my battle dress and unbutton my shirt, exposing Jan’s long-sleeved vest, which covers my corset. Cautiously I sniff the brush, then apply a little powder to each underarm area and quickly rebutton my shirt. Like Bill, I dab a little powder down my shorts into my private hair.

  Quickly I paint the powder along the internal seams of my battle dress and trousers, yank the clothes back on and touch Bill’s hand. He’s kept his eyes on the door the whole time, legs parted, ready to go to war for me.

  He turns toward me. “You are my love forever.”

  And tears now fill my eyes.

  “Hush now. Don’t do that.” He wipes away tears on the sleeve of his shirt.

  I hold his gaze and nod, but dare not speak.

  When he sees I’ve regained control of myself, he opens the door.

  “That stuff reeks,” he says to Ralph. “The fumes have really got to Cousins!”

  I make a pantomime of rubbing my eyes.

  The three of us walk slowly away, and I think, We’ve done it. We’ve got through the delousing.

  I’m just starting a thank-you prayer when there’s a shout from behind us, from the bald Nazi guard. I look quickly at Bill in case it’s the last chance I get to memorize his lovely face, and then I force myself to turn. The guard is holding up a piece of paper that Ralph has dropped. Relief floods through me again, and Ralph gives him another couple of cigarettes.

  On the way back to the hut, we call again at the latrines, and I glance in the mirror where the men shave. My eyes seem huge now, cheekbones angular, chin square. I would call it head shaving, not haircutting. I hate it, hate it, hate it, want to hide my ugliness from Bill.

  In the hut, I empty my kit bag on my bed and rummage for the woolly hat my mother knitted. I refused to wear it when she gave it to me, saying it was too boyish and horrid, but now I pull it on, and stuff everything else back in my rucksack. I make up my mind to wear it always. I will not die looking ugly. A small voice in the back of my head whispers, I thought you were going to be Cousins? He wouldn’t make all this fuss about a stupid haircut. But I am not Cousins, not yet, at least. I yank the knitted hat down to my eyebrows and over my ears.

  “Feeling the cold?” asks Bill sympathetically.

  Men are such idiots, I think.

  At midday, someone comes around with a dustbin of thin soup called skilly and one small potato each, and afterward Ralph’s told the honey wagon has arrived for our latrine duty. Ralph flicks the hair off his forehead and looks anxiously at me. “You might want a scarf to tie round your nose and mouth.”

  I recognize the purpose of the honey wagon as it pulls up close alongside the latrine block. I’ve seen the cesspit at home emptied, and I know what to expect, though I’ve never been so close.

  The wagon’s like an oil tank mounted on a cart, pulled by an old nag of a horse. I pat the nose of the horse and miss my mare back on the farm with a sharp stab of physical pain. There’s a Russian prisoner in charge of the wagon, and I understand that this is our punishment—to do the work of the lowest. A hatch opens into the cesspit below, and as the Russian lifts it, the stench and fumes make me retch.

  “Fuckin’ ’ell!” exclaims Bill, turning his head.

  The Russian drops a rubber elephant’s trunk dripping with filth into the hatch, and I quickly wrap the scarf around my nose and mouth, though it doesn’t help much.

  He demonstrates how to clamp the elephant’s trunk and then flips a lever. We hear waste being sucked through the hose into the tank. It’s disgusting. The trunk judders and flips, and I fear the clamps might fly off at any moment and cover us in excrement.

  When the sucking noise changes, the Russian turns off the motor and pulls the stinking hose from the hole, then hands it to us to replace on the cart. I think we’re finished now, but he indicates that we must go with him to the next latrine.

  He leads the horse, and I walk on the other side of it, resting my hand now and then on its warm coat, wishing the familiar horsey smell weren’t overcome by the stink of human waste. At the next latrine we’re in charge of the process while the Russian stands back. I try not to touch the shit on the hose, but it’s impossible, and I can feel its wet softness on my fingers. I hold my hands away from my clothes. When it’s done, the Russian leads the horse to the entrance of the camp, where the wagon will be removed.

  A guard I haven’t seen before approaches, and my heart bangs in my chest. He holds his nose as he tells us in broken English that we must meet the Russian here tomorrow at eight thirty sharp.

  “OK,” says Bill. “Get it over with early. Which way back to seventeen?”

  The guard points the way back to our block of huts, and as we walk, I breathe into the scarf around my nose but can still smell the excrement on myself. Perhaps I can smell my fear too. I feel the guard’s eyes on my back and try to swagger like Cousins, not move like a girl. At our washroom we clean our hands and then remove our jackets, roll up our sleeves and thoroughly scrub our arms with carbolic soap. To touch the shit of other people! It feels as if I’ll never be clean again.

  * * *

  I’d like to stay in the relative safety of hut seventeen, but Ralph insists on taking us for a walk around the perimeter fence.

  “You need the exercise,” says Ralph firmly, “or your muscles’ll waste.” I feel in some way this is addressed to Max, not to me, and sure enough, Max pulls on his boots to come too.

  Everywhere my eye lands is danger—a guard, a gun, barbed wire, prisoners who might hand me in for a piece of bread. I stride out, hands in pockets balled into fists. I won’t go without a fight. Cousins wouldn’t. I am Cousins. Max and Ralph walk just ahead of us, sometimes talking, sometimes not, in the way that old friends do. I notice Ralph’s slight limp and think Max must be slowing his pace to fit Ralph’s.

  Looking around me, I begin to understand the scale of this place, where we can walk and walk and still be just in the British compound.

  In the evening, the men divide into small groups within the hut. Ralph’s at the table teaching German to one group. I listen for a while, longing to correct some of his grammar. Max is still on his bunk scribbling furiously in a notebook. Bill and I look at a copy of the camp magazine called the Clarion.

  That night I dream of home and wake up with my face wet with tears, remembering the note I left my mother. I see my penciled writing, neat and defiant. I picture her roughened hands and broken nails, with my careless letter clutched to her chest, or more likely screwed into a furious ball and thrown across the room, with Marek trying to quieten her anger. I weep silently into my kit bag pillow, until I’ve cried myself out. Then I promise myself this must be the last time. Gee-gee Cousins would never cry. The sliver of light around the shutter turns from gray to white, and another day begins.

  * * *

  When we are finished with the stinking honey wagon and are back in the hut, preparing for another long, empty day, Ralph asks, “Would you like to visit the arts-and-crafts show this afternoon? It’s our hut’s turn.”

  “An arts-and-crafts show?” says Bill in apparent amazement.

  Ralph laughs. “You have to queue to get in. Some pretty astonishing things. There’s some clever blokes here. Shall we go?”

  The hours tick by, minute by interminable minute, until it�
��s time for us to see the show, and then I pull my hat down over my ears to indicate my readiness, and anticipation mingles with my ever-present anxiety in a cocktail of jangled nerves and heightened perception.

  Ralph and Max lead the way to a hut they call the school, and a long queue snakes up to the door. A guard with a bulbous red nose and small, beady bird eyes patrols the line. I think he will be the one to unmask me.

  As we wait, Bill and Max talk about places they both know in London. Haggerston, Shoreditch, Hackney. They lived only a few miles from each other. It seems strange to me that they should live so close and not know each other.

  “What did you do in civvy street?” asks Max.

  “Clerk at Paddington,” Bill says. “Great Western. You?”

  “Oh, this and that. The socialist bookshop one day, a printer’s the next. Help out here and there with the Transport and General Workers’ Union.” I determine with a thrill that Max is a socialist like my father.

  Bill turns to Ralph. “And you?”

  “Oh, I was at university.” He sounds apologetic, as if it’s some kind of disease.

  Bill is a bit hesitant. “What’s your subject, like, if that’s how you say it?”

  “I went to do medicine, but couldn’t stand the sight of blood, so after a year I switched to classics. Not much use to anyone.” Ralph smiles wryly.

  I’ve never seen Bill so lost for words, and I understand that neither of these men mixes in the kind of social world he’s used to.

  “How come . . . ?” Bill falters.

  “How come I’m not an officer?” suggests Ralph. “Easy really. I couldn’t see myself leading a charge out of the trenches and all that. Being in charge of hut seventeen is more than enough.”

  While we shuffle forward in the queue, I keep my head down to hide my face. Some of the other prisoners crouch on their haunches while they wait—some smoke, some talk incessantly and some are as silent as me. I wonder if they’re afraid too.