The Prisoner's Wife

by Maggie Brookes

  Bill takes the hint and yells back instantly, “That umpire wants his eyes tested,” and others join in, arguing volubly about cricket.

  The guard watches suspiciously and then retreats.

  “Quick thinking, Max and Bill.” Ralph nods. “Now, you two, shake.”

  The two men who were fighting shake hands reluctantly and go to their separate bunks, each complaining quietly to his own group of friends.

  Bill turns to Izzy. “Sorry. Fights break out all the time in camps. Everyone’s nerves are shot.”

  Izzy nods miserably, and he knows she feels it too. The boredom and tension, and so many people all around them, buffeting and jostling all the time, even make them irritable with each other. He looks away from her, and Tucker catches his eye, eating their food in his bunk, raising his tin mug to Bill and Izzy. Bill thinks again of Scotty’s knife.

  It’s no surprise to Bill that talk in the hut is mostly about food. It’s been the same ever since he was picked up. Before he was captured, he might have expected a group of men to talk about girls or sport, but instead it’s a constant litany of fish and chips, steak-and-kidney pies and roasted potatoes. In the absence of sex, food has become an obsession, similar to the early days of falling in love. All the prisoners are in love now with the memory of food, and hunger’s there all the time, under the surface of everyone’s minds. As soon as they finish one of their meager meals, they begin to plan the next, to worry about the parcels not arriving on time, to wonder what will be in them. Bill’s thoughts of food are magnified by the conviction that he should be providing for Izzy, keeping her fed.

  One man obsessively writes menus of ever-more-exotic meals he will eat after the war. These are pinned up on the foot of his bunk for everyone to see, like sharing posters of film stars or dirty postcards.

  When the parcels don’t arrive on Tuesday, Bill and Izzy are down to their last two tins—one of marmalade and one of Spam. Tucker stops by their bunk and points at the Spam. Izzy shakes her head furiously, but Bill holds her arm. “We’ve got to,” he whispers. She’s only considering her own stomach, when I’ve got her life to worry about, he thinks.

  The smirk on Tucker’s face as he takes the Spam is as bad as their hunger. They spread marmalade thinly on dry bread. Its bitter taste seems fitting.

  The following morning Ralph comes into the hut with the worry lines etched deeply between his brows, and he holds up a hand for silence. “Sorry, everyone. No parcels again today. Hopefully Friday. Try to make it last.”

  Bill looks at Izzy with consternation. They have nothing for the next three days but the bread ration, some marmalade and the lunchtime skilly. He doesn’t blame the Nazis for their hunger; he blames Tucker. He tries to tell himself it’s only three days; he can go without much food for three days to protect Izzy.

  * * *

  As Bill and Izzy are leaving the washroom the next morning, with Bill carrying the newly scrubbed empty apple tub in his arms, Tucker suddenly appears from round the corner of the hut, falling into step with them.

  “Morning, all,” he says cheerfully. The tall guard is a few meters away, watchful as ever. Bill knows that’s why Tucker has chosen this place to talk to them. His grip on the apple tub tightens with anger.

  “Bit of a bugger about the parcels,” continues Tucker. Bill doesn’t reply, but speeds up to get away from him as quickly as possible. Tucker lollops alongside, just out of Izzy’s sight line.

  “So I was thinking,” says Tucker, “you’d better give me your bread ration, till the parcels come.”

  Bill stops dead and drops the apple tub.

  “You fucking bastard,” he says, squaring up to Tucker.

  Tucker retreats a step, smiling and batting his cow eyelashes. Izzy grabs Bill’s arm and pulls him back.

  Tucker laughs. “Or I could just tell the goon now.”

  He turns toward the approaching guard, who calls, “What’s going on here?” hardly able to keep the eagerness out of his voice.

  “Nothing,” replies Bill, and the tall guard stoops over them, a little breathless, staring close into each face.

  Tucker turns to him and clears his throat. “Just that—”

  Bill interrupts. “You can have it.”

  “Just that Cousins here is a . . .”

  “I said, you can have it.”

  “. . . Chelsea supporter. I can’t stand Chelsea supporters.”

  He smiles at the guard and turns to walk away, sure Bill won’t try anything here.

  The guard peers closely at Bill and then at Izzy. Blood rushes into Bill’s face as he bends to pick up the apple tub, heavy even when empty. He’d like to hurl it at Tucker, but he doesn’t.

  “It’ll be all right,” he says to Izzy as they walk away. He hopes he sounds convincing. “We’ll give him half, not all the bread. We’ll go a bit short today and tomorrow, but there’ll be another parcel on Friday, and if we get one with fags, we can give him those instead.”

  It’s odd how he can tell that she’s seething with him for not refusing. She doesn’t need to speak—there’s something about the way she holds herself away from him and doesn’t look him in the eye. But what can he do?

  That night they split their remaining bread ration and leave half at the end of Bill’s bed for Tucker. They fall asleep with their stomachs empty.

  Fifteen

  I wake each morning hollowed out by hunger, with terror couched heavily in my chest. I lie for a moment, letting the panic wash over me, and then force it down, control my breathing, until my heart rate slows to something like normal, and I can raise my head to face the day. Bill can see my fear, but he smiles. “Chin up.” And his eyes are so full of love that I forgive him for letting Tucker blackmail us. I know he’s trying his best to protect me. We have to prepare ourselves to confront whatever may come, side by side. I try to leave the frightened Izzy in her bunk and take Cousins out into the compound.

  A very particular worry has begun to haunt me. My last period began a week before our marriage, and we were on the run for ten days. I am regular as a clock at twenty-eight days. I suppose there’s a small chance I could be pregnant, but Bill was so careful. At best I have a few days before a red stain spreading over my trousers gives me away. Then Tucker’s threats will be like hot air.

  To my surprise this doesn’t send me into a depression. It’s quite the opposite. Life has never felt so precious. I watch Bill covetously as if trying to feed on every movement of his head, his lovely hands. I see the leaves on the birch trees beyond the wire beginning to turn yellow, or a jagged streak of gold above a black cloud, or my head jerks up at the waterfall notes of a blackbird’s song. Everything is brighter and sharper than I’ve ever seen it, as if I’m saying a long good-bye to life.

  Common sense tells me that I have only a few days left to live, but another part of my brain holds on to a thin hope that maybe I can get through this, and perhaps there will be a life for me and Bill after the war. I make up my mind I must live “as if,” or I might as well hand myself over right now. So all the long, long day and evening, I concentrate hard on listening to the conversations around me, trying to improve my English. In the endless hours in the hut, I eavesdrop as the men play cards or talk about everyday things: lice, socks, parcels, food.

  Often the speech I hear about me is too fast to follow and I can’t say, “Stop, please. What means this ‘bollocks’?” I have no way of knowing which words are acceptable in company and which only among soldiers. How would it sound if I went to take tea with English ladies and spoke like a prisoner in a barrack room?

  Bill continues to read Great Expectations with me. It’s a very long book, and I’ll never discover how it turns out, because I have so few days left. But I let him rattle on about his own great expectations of our life in England after the war.

  “We’ll get a little house, in the same road as my mum and d
ad and Flora so they can help you get settled. Of course, we might have to live in the pub to start with, but there’s plenty of room and an indoor toilet. How funny it’ll be to have you in my bed in my old bedroom!”

  Tucker passes the end of the bunk as Bill’s talking. Behind Bill’s head, he licks his lips in a slow, revolting way, and my stomach rumbles with hunger.

  On Thursday I devour my lunchtime skilly and potato like our farm dogs when we feed them. Gone in seconds. My stomach grinds and clenches, and there’s nothing to distract me from thoughts of food. I thought I’d known before what it felt like to be hungry or weighed down by boredom, but I had no idea. So much I didn’t know.

  Now that Ralph has encouraged Bill to leave me with him and Max, Bill’s always asking if he can “pop off for a jiffy” to play the piano or have a game of football or watch the cricket. I’m pleased that he can escape the horrible hut, but if I’m honest with myself, I also resent him being busy and occupied and taking his mind off hunger.

  I wonder if this is how it will be if we ever reach England. Will he go out to work, to football, to play his music, and will I be at home, cleaning and cooking, no more free than my mother? Perhaps if I get to England, I should continue to pretend to be Cousins in the day—and be allowed to do all the things boys can do.

  While Bill is out, Ralph is true to his word and starts to teach me Pitman shorthand. When he presents me with a small notebook of squared paper and a short pencil, I feel as if I’ve been given gifts of huge value, and I keep them carefully. I’m desperate to have something to occupy my mind, and I find I like the discipline of the learning and repetition, but also the cleverness of a system that can be used in any language.

  During our lesson, Max heaves himself from his bed and announces he’s going to the camp library.

  “D’you want me to come with you?” asks Ralph eagerly, laying down his pencil, but Max shakes his head and leaves without even replying. I think he’s rather rude. Ralph covers a look of disappointment and turns back to me and Pitman, though his mind clearly isn’t on our lesson anymore.

  Looking about him, at the relative emptiness of the hut, Ralph starts to whisper to me about Max in anxious, staccato phrases. “You know you’ve saved him, don’t you?”

  I don’t know what he’s talking about.

  “Max. Your coming has saved his life. That’s why I can never do enough for you.”

  I wait and listen, and Ralph continues, as though my silence is a magnet, drawing the words out of him. “Before you came, about six days before, he had a letter. The letter every man here dreads getting. Fears more than the Nazis, really. A letter from his fiancée, Rachel—selfish bitch—telling him she’d got married. And not just that, but she’d married his brother. Can you imagine that? Max’s own brother, stealing his fiancée while he’s a prisoner of war. It’s the lowest of the low. And he just took to his bed. I’ve seen it before—young men, young, fit men, just turn their faces to the wall and wait for death. I thought I’d lost him.”

  Ralph struggles to control his emotion, deepening the furrow between his brows. He looks up at me.

  “You don’t know—you can’t imagine how different he was before. He’s one of those people you love and hate together because they do everything well. Not just that he knows so much, but he’s funny, really funny, and always calm and positive, rallying everyone when they want to give up. So many people owe their lives to him. And sporty too—not like me. Before the war they wanted him to try out for a professional footballer, but he told them he wanted to be a writer.” He shakes his head in amazement. “He writes such incredible stuff. Poems, stories, anything. I thought he was sort of invincible, like a god, the one who’d always be there and know what to do. And then, when the letter came, he just kind of collapsed in on himself. Wouldn’t read or write or eat or leave his bed.” He pauses, remembering.

  “And then you came, and d’you see, it gave him something to live for. He’s even gone back to the library, and he’s writing again. So I owe you everything, because if anything . . .”

  I nod and fleetingly touch the back of his hand. I know. And I’m pleased he’s told me, because now Max’s erratic behavior seems completely explicable. What would I do if Bill had married someone else? I wouldn’t want to live either. I decide I’ll try to think of little things I can do for Max.

  When Max returns from the library, I pass him a note. It says, What are you reading?

  He looks surprised, and the jiggling in his leg stops for a moment, and he turns and shows me the two books. “Tolstoy,” he says, “though I’m surprised they let us read the Russians, if they think they’re subhuman. And H. G. Wells’ History of the World.”

  He hands me the history book, which is surprisingly short. I turn it over and over. It seems I could learn everything from a university in this one book. I almost want to steal it from him. I write, Can I read after? and the constant jiggling in his leg slows.

  “Are you interested in politics and history?”

  I am now. I nod and he smiles. It may be the first time I’ve seen him smile, and it makes him look less skull-like. His teeth are very white and even.

  “OK. I’ll read a chapter and then tell you about it. And when I’ve finished the book, you can have it. Deal?”

  I think what Cousins might do and hold out my hand to shake his. So my political education, and my mission to save Max, begins.

  * * *

  Every day that it’s not in use, Bill goes to play the piano, and sometimes I trail along behind him. On Friday, it’s raining, and many men are drawn in by the music. The tall guard follows and stays, out of the rain. Then Bill starts to play tunes they know, and everyone joins in song after song through all the long, wet afternoon.

  Bill plays the nightingale song, and the one about dancing cheek to cheek, and I know these are for me. The tall guard is watching me not joining in, and I try to mouth the words I can remember, swiveling in my chair so he can’t see my face. His eyes bore into the back of my head.

  By evening the parcels have arrived, and we have an American one with cigarettes. Bill corners Tucker and does a hasty deal. This week it’s to be the fags, not the food. But I don’t trust Tucker to keep to any deal.

  One of the ways our hut tries to forget its hunger and boredom for an hour in the evening is for Ralph to have a “film night” in which he tells us the story of a movie—every detail, like he’s seeing and hearing it in his head. One of these is called The Lady Vanishes, and I think, That’s me.

  Another way to pass the time is to hold debates. One is on the question of socialism after the war. The two sides are drawn up, with eloquent speakers for each. Max is the main speaker for socialism, and he’s ardent for a new order.

  “Remember the Battle of Cable Street,” he says to all the men who’ve drawn up to listen. “How we defeated Mosley’s Blackshirts. If the war hadn’t come, we could have had a Nazi Party in England. But the people of the East End rose up and prevented them marching.”

  I glance at Bill as Max speaks, wondering if he was part of this glorious battle against the fascists, but he’s looking down at his shoes, and I can’t read the expression on his face.

  Max is in full flood. “When this is over, there’ll be no more lords and ladies while the workingmen starve. Public schools must be abolished, and everyone will have equal education. No more governments full of Eton men. No more doctors for the rich while the poor die of preventable diseases. The Great War changed nothing for the workingman. This war must change life for everyone, or what’s it been for?”

  Bill looks up now and nods his agreement. There’s thunderous applause when Max finishes. The man speaking against socialism has a difficult task, and his speech is answered by boos and catcalls as he tries to describe the worst excesses of Russian communism. The men are not in a mood to hear this.

  “The Russians are our allies,”
someone shouts, “dying in droves,” and begins to stamp his feet. Others join in the rhythmic stamping, and Ralph, who’s chairing the debate, has to hold up his hand for silence. When the hut quiets again the man speaking against socialism finishes lamely, “Of course, we all want a better world, with the wealth shared out more fairly, but we have to guard against communist totalitarianism as much as fascism.”

  He sits down to a thin smattering of polite clapping. Everyone agrees that Max has won the debate, and the hut breaks up into excited discussion of the different life they will enjoy after the war.

  Max comes and sits with us. “Education’s the key,” he says. “I never went back to school after we left Brooklyn when I was fourteen.”

  “I left school at fourteen too,” says Bill. “Passed for grammar school, but my parents couldn’t afford the uniform.”

  Ralph chimes in, “I only went to grammar school because I got a scholarship.”

  I think he’s eager to show he is “one of them” despite his better education. He continues. “Manchester University is full of the most witless types who came from public schools, drinking themselves legless and hardly bothering to attend lectures when lads like you two would really make use of the opportunity.”

  “That’s what I want,” confides Max. “I wanna see if I can get a place at Ruskin College, study politics, so I really know what I’m talking about.”

  Bill looks at him with wonder, obviously encountering ideas he’s never heard before or even considered as possibilities.

  The three of them continue until lights out, charged with excitement about the different world they will inhabit after the war. I wonder if it will be the same for girls. I wonder if I’ll live to find out.

  * * *

  A few days later, two weeks after our arrival at Lamsdorf, I’m standing on the touchline, watching Bill play football, with Ralph alongside me. Tucker is across the pitch. His eyes fall on me, and he keeps looking as he picks his nose and eats the contents. Cousins stares through him, beyond him. The men nearest to us wander away, and Ralph speaks in a low voice, well hidden under the shouts of the crowd.