“It didn’t end well. The guards dragged him out and put him in front of a firing squad. And she was taken away, supposedly to prison, but when the Czech women tell the story, they look at each other and cross themselves, so I think they must have shot her too.”
There’s a brief silence, and I feel I’m struggling to breathe.
“Well, I don’t see how they’d ever get the opportunity,” says Bill.
The man from upstairs replies, “I don’t know how he could even get it up. I haven’t had a hard-on for months. It’s this starvation.”
“I suppose if the girl was pretty enough,” says Ralph, and I smile to myself at his transparent attempt to be one of the boys.
We all have our secrets, I think.
Nineteen
The rainy days and longer evenings mean we are spending so much time in one another’s company that everyone is starting to get on my nerves—and maybe I’m getting on theirs.
Scotty has started to carve a chess set, and the sound of the whittling knife makes me clench my jaw in irritation. I’m always relieved when he goes off to one of the other bedrooms for his endless card games.
Frank’s habit of repeating what people have said begins to get under my skin, and even Bill annoys me sometimes. He takes down my blankets in the morning and folds them for me, which I could do myself but don’t think is necessary, and when I stand up from sitting on the edge of his bed, he pulls the blanket straight again like an old woman.
Max’s jiggling his legs and Ralph’s fiddling with his glasses both drive me mad.
We haven’t had any parcels for weeks, but Scotty spends time in the kitchen, devising concoctions that can be made from the ingredients brought in by Berta the cook. She has noticed that the others don’t like sour soup, but I do, so she sometimes brings a little sour milk for me to add to my mess tin. Then she stares questioningly at me, but Cousins simply nods his thanks.
Bill astonishes us all by announcing that he wants to do some knitting. Berta brings needles and scraps of wool, and Bill settles down to begin to knit a scarf. He and Flora learned together when they were children and had a fierce rivalry to see who could make something fastest or who could learn to do a new stitch.
“I even learned to knit socks, on four needles, just to get ahead of her. Turning the heel was tricky, but I was better at it than Flora. She got in such a mess and flew into such a rage!” He laughs at the memory, but I’m sick with jealousy at this girl who has been so close to him for so long.
I wonder briefly if many Englishmen can knit, but the surprise and interest of our friends assure me it isn’t common. Scotty says that fishermen can knit, and that makes it manlier. Not that Bill cares. His needles flash furiously all evening, click, click, clicking as they talk. And the clickety-clack of the needles irritates me too.
On Sunday afternoons, if it isn’t raining, we are all allowed to go into the village to play football, and that’s a welcome relief from the close quarters we live in. The pitch is stiff with frost in the mornings. Kurt watches us keenly, but Herr Rauchbach says he will take responsibility if any of us abscond. Nobody tries to escape, whether because of Kurt’s gun or because everyone knows there is Nazi-occupied territory for four hundred miles in every direction, as well as hazardous mountains all around us, or because the war must surely end soon. For Frank I think it’s because of Rosa. There’s a rumor that he sneaks out to meet her at night, and I think of the time Bill did the same to meet me.
Ralph sometimes stands on the touchline, because his foot is too painful to run about. I find it too cold to stand still, even though I’m now wearing my brother’s winter underwear. So I whisper to Bill that I’ll play football too, and I’m quick on the pitch and helpful to the team. Jan would be proud of me.
Max is a surprisingly good footballer for a bookish man, and scores a lot of goals, but Bill sometimes scores too and then immediately looks to me for approbation. I slap him hard on the back. I don’t know how we have the energy to run about after the grueling work of the week, but somehow it seems to refresh rather than exhaust us, and the others are full of talk of who ran where and kicked the ball to who, for hours afterward.
It’s so cold now that Herr Rauchbach has brought us an extra blanket each and given us wood for the stove in our bedroom, which we light each evening when we come home from the quarry. It doesn’t exactly make the room warm, but it does take the chill off it during the evening. Some men have taken to dressing in the kitchen, which is the warmest place. One night Herr Rauchbach comes in as we are running back from the washroom in our pajamas and bare feet.
“The trousers and boots must be cold to put on in the morning?” he asks Ralph.
“Freezing. They can stand up by themselves.”
The next night Kurt orders the men to carry two big baskets into the hallway, and we put our boots in one and trousers in the other. Then they are hauled into the office overnight. It’s a slight improvement.
Herr Rauchbach has also ordered that a tin bath be pulled into the kitchen on Sundays, and each bedroom has one Sunday when they can use it, though the water is tepid and chilly after the second or third man has been in. I’m filled with joy at the idea of cleaning my whole body, properly, and my friends unanimously agree I should go first.
Bill and I boil water in the big pans on the range and pour it into the bath, while other men are still sitting round in the kitchen. It takes an awful lot of water to cover even the base of the bath, and Bill says, “We could boil more, but the water in the bath is going cold while we wait for it.”
“Yes, the water will go cold,” says Frank, sticking his finger in the water. “We only had about this much for the first man last week,” he says. “You can keep the pans on the boil while the first and second man bathe, and then the third can have it hotter and deeper. Even if it is a bit grimy!”
“OK, we’ll do that. Cousins is first.” Bill clears his throat. “A bit of privacy for a chap?” he requests.
Everyone looks astonished and then begins to laugh and catcall.
“What’s the matter, Cousins? Think we haven’t seen a cock before?”
“Wanting a quiet wank?” One of the upstairs men makes a hand signal I’ve never seen before.
“I wouldn’t like to get in his water!”
“When I was his age, I wanked three times a day.”
“And had wet dreams every night!”
I look at the floor and don’t know how to arrange my face. Part of my brain logs the new words, and though I’m not sure what it all means, I understand this is a kind of man’s world I ought to seem familiar with, so I raise my eyes slyly, look from one to another, then shrug and wink. There’s loud laughter, and as they gather up their possessions and leave the kitchen, I hear animated discussion of the last time any of them managed to “get it up” and how they blame the starvation rations. Even my short acquaintance with these peckers tells me their owners have absolutely no control over when they are up or not. I can’t help wondering about Jan and my father. Do they use words like those in Czech? Do they too do those things to themselves?
When the others have all departed, Scotty leaves by the washroom door, and I know he’ll stand out in the cold guarding it until we give him the all clear signal.
Bill stations himself outside the other door, in the hallway, and I quickly remove my outer clothes. It’s too dangerous to strip completely, so I get into the bath still wearing my brother’s woolen underwear and the bust-flattening corset, which I’ve loosened. As I sit down, I dip my head down under the water and rub it with the bar of red soap. The water is already gray and scummy. It’s hard to get the soap out of my hair, and I feel sorry for the men who’ll come after me.
I wash myself under the long-sleeved vest, and up under the corset. It’s a shock to feel how much my breasts have shrunk as I’ve lost weight. I’m almost glad Bill never gets to see
them now. Some of my lice bites are swollen and hard. I wash myself inside the long johns, and even though this isn’t a proper bath, it’s a joy to feel water on my skin, and to picture the wretched lice drowning. I rub my underarms and my groin fiercely with the soap. The soap stings where I’ve scratched myself. But I mustn’t take long; it’s Bill’s turn next. This is the most dangerous moment. Standing up with water streaming from my baggy underwear into the water, I quickly pull off the vest and corset and drop them in the water, rubbing my top half dry, goose pimples covering my body, nipples tight and hard, even in the relative warmth of the kitchen, taking only moments to pull clean underwear over my damp torso. Then I drop the long johns into the water and do the same with my bottom half. I haven’t dried myself thoroughly enough, and that makes it awkward to pull on the fresh underwear, but I feel wonderfully clean. I hope I’ll never take the joy of washing for granted again. I yank on my battle dress, loose enough to hide the lack of breast binding. I wring out my underwear as best I can and throw it into the big butler sink.
I knock on the door to the hallway, and Bill comes in and closes the door behind him. He kisses me on my nose. “You smell of carbolic!”
I risk a whisper. “Even my lice are clean!”
And he laughs. “Let’s get poor Scotty in from the cold.” As Scotty comes through, Bill continues. “You rinse out your underwear, then, and I’ll hop in your water.” He looks at the gray water with soap scum and quarry dust and bits floating in it. “Not too dirty,” he lies cheerfully, and I smile.
He adds another kettle full of water to the bath, and I carry my sodden long johns to the washroom while Bill takes his turn. I can hear him singing through the closed door. Scotty comes with me, and when I’ve rinsed everything as well as I can under the freezing water, he wrings it out for me. Then he rolls the corset and shoves it up his sleeve. “We’ll leave everything but this in the kitchen for the washerwoman to take away tomorrow,” he says.
Bill is already dressing as we pass back through the kitchen, and he helps Scotty pour more hot water into the dirty bath for his turn.
* * *
Ralph has exchanged cigarettes for extra logs, and we put one on to keep the stove in our bedroom lit overnight to dry my breast binding. Before dawn I creep down from my bunk to get it and wrap it back around myself. Moving across the room with my body unbound is such a strange sensation. I wish I didn’t have to flatten myself like this, and hope it won’t cause permanent damage, but at the same time, it feels familiar now, and safe, perhaps in the way that a baby stops crying when it’s tightly swaddled. I pull on my woolly hat so my hair won’t be full of dust again in an hour.
The itching has lessened overnight, and I hope that after a few more baths and paraffin treatments, the lice might be gone forever. I tell Bill my hair needs to be shorter, and one day Berta has scissors in the kitchen, and we all take turns for a cut.
* * *
Although I’m grateful for the days when my friends work alongside me, I’m always aware of where Bill is in the quarry, and most pleased to work alongside him. He talks about the news we’ve heard, and though I like it when he talks about serious things to me, or treats me like his mate Cousins, I like it even better when the others are far enough out of earshot for him to talk about our future. It doesn’t seem to occur to Bill that his parents might hate this dark-haired stranger with the funny accent. His mother might not let me into her kitchen, I think. But in the evenings, I can sit in the pub and listen to Bill play the piano and sing, and I’ll learn all the songs and join in, and people will say I have a pretty voice and it’s no wonder he married me.
Bill says when we’ve been home a little while, we might go to live in one of the railway cottages, and now he knows about growing food, he could have an allotment nearby. His eyes shine. “I’ll grow all our vegetables. I’ll never let you and our children go hungry.”
Again I start to watch the moon and count the days, dreading the onset of my monthlies. On November 17, I wake with the familiar cramps beginning, low in my stomach. Blushing, I walk over to Ralph and place my hand on my tummy in our signal. He understands immediately and smiles reassurance. “Don’t worry. We’ll watch out for you.”
In the washroom I rinse my rags in the sink that’s farthest from the door; the others block sight of me with their bodies. If Kurt comes near, they devise a diversion to draw him away. The five days of my monthlies crawl slowly past.
My need to speak and to be heard grows, and sometimes I could wail at full lung power. Then Cousins steps in and calms me, whispering as he might to a shying horse, “Be still. Easy now. Easy now. It’ll be all right,” until the rage ebbs out of me.
I certainly don’t need the excitement of Kurt’s unwanted attentions. One night, after the basket of trousers and boots has been locked in the office, he returns and stands in the doorway of our bedroom, pretending to inspect the room, but really watching me as I climb up to my bunk. I lie down, breathing fast, turning my face to the wall, and Ralph asks him in German what he wants.
Kurt shrugs and says in Czech, “You know exactly what I want. Are you jealous, or do you just want to keep him for yourself? Have you all fucked him? Does he service you all? Then why not me?”
His words rush through my head like a hurricane, and I’m trembling with the effort of not shouting back. This is even more horrifying if he believes I’m a boy. And though I had worked out that Ralph was not quite like the other men, how does Kurt know?
I squeeze my hands into tight fists, struggling to contain my fury.
“Well, don’t worry,” sneers Kurt. “I’ll get that tight little arse too. You just wait.”
He slams our door behind him, and we hear the outer door banged shut and the bolts thrown into place.
Immediately Bill is standing on his bunk, leaning over me. I have my eyes squeezed tightly shut, my heart pounding with anger.
“What did he say?” asks Bill, touching my arm. “Iz, are you OK? What did he say? Whisper it. Or do you want to write it down?”
But how could I write such filth? I open my eyes and shake my head, and Bill turns to the others. “Don’t know,” he says, “but we all know it wasn’t nice.”
Ralph looks pale. “We must never let Cousins out of our sight.”
Later that night I’m woken by the sound of Kurt singing an old Czech drinking song on the lane leading to the house. As he approaches, he becomes quiet, but I can hear him stumbling, cursing as he falls over something. I sit up and see in the dim moonlight through the curtains that Scotty on the top bunk by the window is also awake. Bill moves on our lower bunk, and I know he’s listening too.
We hear Kurt crashing through the office.
“He’s coming this way,” says Bill.
Scotty swings down from his bunk. “Aye, and he’s ganna get a wee surprise. Cousins, you get yersel’ over here.”
I quickly climb down, and Bill gives my hand a squeeze as we hear the bolts pulled back on the door to the office. I run silently across the room, climb into Scotty’s bunk and lie on my side to peep between the slats.
Scotty is up in my bunk before Kurt opens the door to our room and stands silhouetted in the doorway. Bill gives a convincing snore, and Kurt moves forward, trying to creep but weaving unsteadily.
He sneaks round to the foot of the bunks and stands up on the edge of the lower bed, bringing his head level with where I should be sleeping above. As he reaches forward under the blanket, I hear a dull crack and see him thrown backward and bang his head on the wall behind. He crumples to the floor, making a low mewling sound. None of us moves. Slowly, he picks himself up, holding one hand to his face, staggers back to the door and pulls it closed behind him. We all lie still until we hear the key and the bolts again, and then his footsteps stumbling away from the building.
Then Scotty sits up, and Bill and I do too. Max and Ralph both seem to have slept thr
ough everything.
“Whatever did you do?” asks Bill.
“I was having a wee nightmare of a ghosty or a ghouly comin’ to get me. I must have kicked out in my sleep,” says Scotty.
Bill laughs out loud. “Good man. I don’t think he’ll be back soon.”
Scotty climbs down from my bunk and begins to pad back across the floor. “No, mebe not, but let’s set him a wee mantrap just in case.”
He leans one of the chairbacks under the doorknob and moves the jam jars for night weeing into the path of the door.
“That should do it,” he says, and we cross on the way back to our own beds. I put out my hand to say thank you, and we shake hands in an oddly formal way. And then Bill is there beside me, and though he never makes a display of affection in front of the other men, he puts his arm around me and leads me to his bunk. He sits beside me, holding me very tightly, mistaking my pent-up fury for fear.
“I’ll never let him hurt you,” he whispers. “We’ll never let anyone hurt you. None of us. You do believe me, don’t you?”
I nod and lay my head on his shoulder and concentrate on the memory of Kurt falling backward from Scotty’s kick. I try to let that wash my mind of his dirty, repulsive words, but I know now he’s not only a predator I have to fear, but also my enemy, who will want revenge.
Twenty
The days shorten rapidly through December, and it’s bitterly cold in the quarry, as if the bowl of it traps the frozen air and refuses to let it go. I’m used to Czech winters, but most of the prisoners aren’t. Bill begins to rub his left wrist and tells me it aches where he broke it falling off the shed roof as a boy. Ralph’s feet become daily more painful. He doesn’t complain about them, but we can see by the way he limps and occasionally winces when he thinks nobody’s watching.
The Prisoner's Wife Page 22
