“Well,” says Bill, picking his words carefully and watching Izzy’s expression, “they wouldn’t have had followers if they hadn’t said things which people agreed with.” Bill holds up his hand to stop Max cutting across him. “It was all wrong, what he said. I know that now, but it seemed so convincing at the time.”
Max’s voice is beginning to rise. “And when did you discover that? At Tobruk? When your pals got their legs blown off? When you got your first beating from a Nazi guard? Or not till the wind turned at Lamsdorf, and we could smell the smoke from the death camps? Eh? When?”
Max is on his feet, and bristling for a fight, but Bill stays sitting down, tense and ready to duck a blow, but not wanting to enrage Max any more. The effort to keep his voice calm makes it squeaky. “I said I was wrong, didn’t I?”
Ralph comes nearer, ready to intervene. “Come on, Max—he said he was wrong!”
But Max is yelling and pacing. “Yes, it’s all right to say it now. Now millions of people have had to die. It’s all right if it doesn’t affect you, isn’t it? He’s sitting pretty, isn’t he, with his fucking knitting and his fucking bint . . . ?”
He flicks his hand toward Izzy, and she draws back in shock as if the word has hit her in the face. Bill leaps to his feet, and his knitting clatters to the floor. He stands between her and Max, with his fists up.
Ralph steps between them and grabs Max by the arms. “Stop it. Stop it now. Go outside and cool off.”
Max strains at his grasp. “I’ll take him outside and show the fascist bastard not to mess with the little Jew boy.”
Ralph starts to push him back toward the bedroom door, which opens as others are brought by the shouting.
“Get him out of here,” yells Ralph over Max’s furious, “Come outside. Come on, you fucking coward.”
As the other men drag Max out of the room, Bill can still hear him in the kitchen, swearing and kicking the furniture. Bill hopes he isn’t telling everyone that he’s a fascist or, worse still, telling them about Izzy.
Ralph reads Bill’s thoughts. “I’ll go and make sure he doesn’t say anything about Cousins.”
And then Bill is left alone with Izzy, and disgust is clear on her face.
She spits out the whispered words, “Is true? Are you Nazi?”
Bill is anguished. “No, no! Listen, you have to understand. We were hungry. There was a depression. There wasn’t enough work. Everyone was blaming the Jews. Well, some of my mates, perhaps, but not me. I’ve never told you this: My life was saved when I was delivered by a Jewish woman from the upstairs flat. I was born with the cord around my neck, and I was blue, but this woman knew what to do, and she literally breathed life into me. So I ain’t never been prejudiced. How could I be?” He pauses, trying to find the right words to make Izzy understand, not to hate him. He blunders on. “But when everyone keeps saying something, you think it might be true. . . . It was Jewish bankers and moneylenders they went on about. And foreigners coming over and taking our jobs, when so many English families was going hungry. I was fifteen, that’s all. And Mosley was a speaker like you’ve never heard. He could draw pictures in the air with his words, and you felt yourself pulled to him like a magnet. He made it all seem so clear, and he had answers. He was, like, I don’t know, some sort of prophet.”
Bill takes a stride toward Izzy with his hands out, but she steps back, searching his face as if asking what kind of man she has married. Bill’s hands fall to his sides.
“Do you really think that of me?” he says, sick with desperation. “Do you really believe I’m no better than these Nazi scum?”
How can Izzy think so little of him?
She whispers, “I not know you,” and he can’t bear the cold distance opening up between them.
“I was fifteen,” he repeats. “Out with my mates for a laugh and a few beers. We didn’t know that a few clever words could lead to all this.” He sweeps with his arm, and his gesture includes the Russian soldiers, the death camps, his friends mutilated and killed in battle, four long years of imprisonment and starvation. “All this,” he repeats. “All this.”
His eyes search her face again, and not finding the love he expects to see, he sits down heavily.
“I not know you,” she repeats bleakly. He wishes she were angry with him, anything but this chill of no love.
“Didn’t you ever do anything stupid when you were fifteen?” he asks bitterly, then drops his head in his hands. If he has lost Izzy, he has lost everything. He might as well be dead.
There’s no sound or movement in the room for what feels to Bill like hours, and then Izzy is on her knees in front of him, lifting his head from his hands, kissing and kissing his face, whispering, “Sorry, sorry, sorry.”
“Shh!” He lifts a hand to her cropped hair. “Shh! It’s all right. As long as you still love me, it’s all right.”
In answer she kisses him on the lips, fiercely, as if her life depends on it.
When they pull apart, and he lifts her from her knees to sit next to him on the bed, and is saying, “Because if you don’t love me, it’s all for nothing, and I might as well . . .” there’s a light rap on the door, and it opens.
Ralph puts his head round the door. “Am I intruding?”
“No, come in. Shut the door,” says Bill, dreading the thought that Ralph now finds him abhorrent too. He wipes his face with the back of his arm, and Izzy slides a little away from him on the bed.
“It’s all right,” says Bill. “I mean, we’re all right. I’ve explained. I was just a kid. I was all wrong, a stupid idiot.” Bill searches Ralph’s expression and finds nothing but compassion in his eyes.
Bill’s anxiety lifts as Ralph says, “I know. I understand. Lots of people were taken in. Just as they were in Germany, in Spain, Italy, everywhere.”
Bill says sadly, “But Max’ll never see it like that.”
Ralph sighs. “No, he probably won’t. Not yet, anyway. He wants to move to another room. He’s just said it’s a political disagreement. Frank’s offered to swap. You need to give him time, that’s all. It’s being cooped up like this.”
Max comes in and starts to clear his books from the little window ledge. He hesitates and hands The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists to Izzy.
Bill stands up and holds out his hand. “Look, Max. I’m sorry,” he says awkwardly. “Please don’t go.”
But Max doesn’t reply and doesn’t take the proffered hand. He won’t even look at Bill but turns to Izzy. “I’ll still do everything I can to keep you safe, but I just can’t be in here for now.”
Izzy nods in sorrow as Scotty bursts in to see Max removing his belongings from his bunk. “Och, come on, man!” he says. “We all have our rows. It’s to be expected shut up in a place like this. Cabin fever. But . . .”
Max is near the door now. “No, this is best. It’s not as if I won’t see you all again tonight and tomorrow and all the rest of our shit lives in this dump. Let me through.”
Scotty stands aside and Max leaves.
“I’m so sorry,” says Bill to Izzy and Scotty. And he is. Sorry to be the reason for losing one of the men who’ve taken such care of his beloved Izzy. Sorry for things he did in his youth, which he can’t go back and change. Sorry that Izzy is obviously so upset to lose Max. He feels a hundred years old.
“Och, there’s something been eatin’ him for months,” says Scotty.
Ralph returns to the room with Frank, who’s agreed to swap beds with Max.
“Evening, all,” says Frank. “I gather there’s been a rumpus. I was ready for a change. Can’t stand Blake’s snoring. Hope none of you snore. Where am I?”
Ralph points out Max’s bunk, and they all look at one another. Bill decides that one more man must be let in on the secret.
“There’s something we need to tell you,” he says quietly, shutting the door.
Frank’s reaction is more oddly mixed than that in the original bunkhouse in Lamsdorf.
“God all fucking mighty! That is. Sorry. Can he speak English?”
Izzy nods, slightly amused, and Frank stares hard at her. “Of course. Of course she’s a . . .” Bill holds up a warning hand, nodding toward the door, and Frank swallows the word as he continues. “Of course she . . . he understands. Sorry about the language.” He seems excited and buoyed up, pacing up and down and looking closely into Izzy’s face, as if she were a waxwork at an exhibition. “God almighty. It’s true. So he’s not mute?”
Izzy grins widely, and he holds out his hand to her, and pumps hers up and down, saying, “I never thought a wom . . . Sorry. I don’t know how you keep so quiet, if you don’t mind me saying,” then leaves off and begins to shake Bill’s hand. It looks as if he wants to kiss them both. “You did it,” he exalts. “You bloody did it.”
“Nobody must know,” cautions Ralph.
“Nobody. No, of course not.” He makes the sign of a cross on his chest. “Cross my heart and hope to bloody die. Well, well, you only bloody did it. Right under their noses! One in the eye for the Nazis. I won’t breathe a word. I swear. I bloody swear!”
He laughs aloud, and Bill knows he’s thinking of Rosa and of all the things that might be possible if he’s just patient.
“Nobody. Not even Rosa,” says Bill.
Frank looks around the room and sees everyone knows about his feelings for Rosa. “Not even Rosa,” he repeats solemnly. “But if it can happen for you . . .”
They all nod, and it’s like the men at Lamsdorf said: What’s happened for Bill and Izzy gives hope to others. Hope spreading like a virus.
* * *
The wind changes. It’s coming from the east, and it tastes of ice and snow. In the house, Izzy starts to seem withdrawn, as though she’s turned in on her own worrying thoughts. Bill asks her if it’s Kurt, or if she’s ill, or if she’s homesick, and she simply shakes her head. So he’s relieved when they’re in the bedroom with Ralph, and he asks Izzy, “Shouldn’t you have had your period by now?”
Bill’s ashamed that he has no idea when this is due. Perhaps married men are supposed to know stuff like this. Izzy nods miserably, and she looks really scared. For one moment Bill wonders if she’s pregnant, despite the fact that they haven’t had sex since they were arrested.
“It’s just because you’ve lost so much weight,” Ralph reassures her. “You must be below six and a half stone now. Don’t worry. You’ll be able to have babies in the future. It’s not a permanent thing.”
When tears of gratitude well up in Izzy’s eyes, Bill knows Ralph has guessed correctly.
“Thank God,” she mutters inaudibly.
Bill doesn’t know if she’s thanking God because she doesn’t have to cope with the bleeding again or because one day she will be a woman again. Both, he suspects.
* * *
At night now they can hear the Soviet guns, like a constant drumroll. Herr Rauchbach tells everyone, through Ralph, that they’re only twenty-five kilometers away, and he’s had notice that the prisoners will be moved back to Lamsdorf as soon as a truck can come for them.
“You’ve been good workers,” he says, “and I wish I could have done more for you.”
Kurt scowls, his eyebrows meeting in a line above the broken nose that Scotty kicked when he sneaked into their room.
Bill talks to Ralph about how much Herr Rauchbach must fear the Russians, who would shoot him for a collaborator, and wonders how he’ll hide Rosa from them. He remembers Izzy’s mother making plans to disguise her as a boy, and his own eagerness to get her out of the path of the Red Army. There’s a rumor circulating in the house that Herr Rauchbach has bought Rosa a ticket to Prague, but she’s refusing to go because of a prisoner. Bill hopes it’s Frank, but fears it must be the man who was here before.
The prisoners begin to make preparations for their journey, though some of the men are whispering about trying to escape instead.
Bill asks Izzy, “Should we try to escape, d’you think? Tell Berta who you are and see if she can get us away?” He’s used now to answering himself. “But then you might fall into the hands of the Soviets. Better maybe to try to reach the Americans. That’d be safer for you. Shall we go back to Lamsdorf and see what’s planned? Maybe the guards’ll hand us to the Yanks. They won’t want to come up against the Russians either. Not after the way the Nazis have treated the Russian prisoners.”
Izzy nods, though Bill’s not sure what she’s agreeing with. He continues thinking aloud. “If Berta could help us escape, we might make it to the partisans, but it would be so dangerous, and either of us could get shot as escapees. Or we might meet the Russians first. No, our best chance of getting out of this alive and together is to remain prisoners, even if it means going back to Lamsdorf.”
* * *
Everyone is trading with the local women for anything useful. Bill and Izzy make a list.
“Your boots are still good,” he says to her, inspecting them closely, “but mine are in rags. What d’you think? Hobnailed if possible.”
She writes down thick socks and wool underneaths and paraffin wax or other wax, even candles. Bill is puzzled by the last item, but doesn’t question it.
His new boots and additional underwear cost Bill his watch, plus all their pooled cigarettes and all but half a bar of soap, but he knows they’ll be worth it. The watch didn’t keep good time anyway. They now have three sets of long johns and three long-sleeved vests each, and now they’re so skinny, all of that will fit inside their army uniforms.
Izzy and Bill are the last prisoners in the kitchen one dinnertime when Berta beckons Izzy over to the stove and pulls the tin of wax from her apron pocket. She hands Izzy the tin, but holds on to it herself, quietly saying something to her in Czech. Bill freezes. She knows. He’s sure Berta knows. Izzy looks from him to Berta and almost speaks, but then clamps her lips together and hurries back to their room. Bill is close behind her.
“She knows, doesn’t she?” he whispers urgently. “And she’s offered to get you away?” But Izzy keeps walking.
Bill’s head spins with confusion. Has Izzy been holding out on him, and is she planning to escape with Berta? Would she be safer without him? Would she be happier? And how would he find the strength to carry on if he woke one morning and she was gone?
In their room, Izzy lays Bill’s, Scotty’s and Ralph’s coats on the floor and rubs the wax into the shoulders, backs and torsos. Frank looks bemused until Scotty explains it will make them waterproof. Bill watches her with a mixture of pride and quiet misery at the prospect of losing her.
“Fishermen do it,” says Scotty.
Frank hurries to fetch Izzy his coat and asks if she’ll do that for him as well. There isn’t much wax, but she does. Bill still has the waxed hood and cape her mother made.
Ralph says, “I wish Max . . .” and Izzy nods. He goes and returns with Max’s coat, although this means she can’t do anyone’s coat thoroughly. When the tin’s empty, Izzy gives each of the men a candle and shows them how to rub it on their hats and the outsides of their gloves and boots.
Then they carry everything into the kitchen and lay the coats over the range until the wax begins to melt and they can rub it deeper into the fabric. Some of the upstairs men complain they’re hogging all the heat, so Bill takes the last of their supply of firewood and lights the stove in their room. They all work now on their own coats, Bill helping Izzy, rubbing the warmed wax deep into the fabric. Later they pack their kit bags so they’ll be ready to leave at a moment’s notice. Bill can hear the guns. They sound so close.
* * *
Despite his kind words, Herr Rauchbach is keen to get one more order fulfilled before his workers are taken away, and the prisoners are still in the quarry from dawn to dusk. Max usually tries to work in a different
part of the quarry than Bill now, but Kurt orders him to join Izzy, Ralph, Scotty and Bill at a new section until the light is almost gone, while he goes off to gather up tools and to search the other prisoners on the way back to the house.
“I don’t think Kurt’s coming back,” says Ralph. “We should just stop.”
“I can’t see what the hell I’m doing,” complains Bill. “This is too dangerous.”
Max shoulders his pickax. “I’m going back. It’s stupid.”
The five of them trudge up the lane from the quarry, aching, cold, too hungry to think, when suddenly, by the tool hut, Kurt blocks their way with a gun trained on them. His fingers trace his flattened nose, eyes glittering revenge. He cocks his gun. They all freeze, and there’s no sound but their breathing. Kurt advances slowly toward Izzy and levels the gun at her chest. Bill is anchored to his spot. He wants to rugby-tackle Kurt to the ground, but he knows he wouldn’t be able to move quickly enough to stop him from firing the gun and killing Izzy. He holds himself tight and forces himself to wait for an opportunity.
Kurt says something to Izzy in Czech—indicating a pile of marble slabs. The others look from him to Izzy, and her face is a mask of terror. Bill can’t bear it. Not knowing she’s already understood every Czech word, Kurt repeats what he’s said to Ralph in German. Even in the half-light, Bill can see Ralph’s face blanch, but he still doesn’t know what’s being said. Ralph doesn’t translate.
Kurt turns to Izzy with the gun still aimed at her breastbone and says, in English, “Coat. Off. Trousers down.” He points to the pile of slabs and demonstrates bending over; then he grins widely and does a grotesque mime of what he plans to do to her.
Her eyes blank with horror and despair, Izzy begins to fumble at her coat buttons with shaking gloved fingers. She can’t look at Bill or the others.
The Prisoner's Wife Page 25
