The Prisoner's Wife

by Maggie Brookes

  Out in the countryside again, up in a snowy field close to the shadow of the trees, a dark shape catches Bill’s eye. Something standing with its ears pricked up, ready to run or fight. He points it out to Izzy and Max.

  “I think it’s a hare,” Max says.

  “I ain’t never seen one,” says Bill, and Izzy looks astonished.

  The hare seems important to Bill in some way he can’t fathom, like a message to him in a language he doesn’t know. If only he could understand it, then this whole sorry mess would make some sense.

  Max is doing some calculations. “I think it’s the first of March,” he says. “A mad March hare! Fancy that.”

  * * *

  One afternoon the grayness of the interminable days suddenly lifts, and the sun breaks through. They can feel some warmth on their backs and begin to find it more difficult to pull the sledge. It slowly dawns on Bill that the temperature has risen a few degrees, enough so the snow on the road is melting under his tramping feet. First the snow gets thinner, then patchy, until it’s completely gone and their sledge is bumping over pitted road or cobbles or grass. Within an hour he and Max have decided this is impossible. They have to take turns pulling every five minutes or so, and it’s too hard to let Izzy do it. All along the roadside other makeshift sleds have been left behind.

  “If we could keep going till tonight, we could at least burn the wood for some warmth,” puffs Bill. They keep on, switching and switching about for another mile or two, until there’s a short rest period; then he agrees with Max that they have no choice but to abandon the sledge. He’s proud of its construction and sorry to leave it behind. They unload their kit bags and blankets.

  “We must keep the blowers,” says Bill.

  “There’s no room in my bag,” says Max, and Bill thinks, That’s odd.

  Izzy takes one blower, and Bill takes the other. Bill wraps his two blankets crosswise around him and ties them with string. Izzy wears hers like two cloaks over her kit bag. Izzy and Bill don’t have any food to weigh them down, and apart from a couple of turnips covered in earth, their kit bags only contain their mess tins and cups; blowers; pajamas; small, dirty towels; Izzy’s stained rags; Bill’s photographs; and Izzy’s last square of chocolate. He keeps his remaining harmonica in his battle dress pocket. He thought they were wearing all their clothes, and yet Max’s bag looks heavy when he swings it up onto his back. Bill has a rush of suspicion that Max has got some tins of food he’s keeping for himself. He’ll have to keep an eye on him, he thinks.

  The next section of road has been bombed, and they pick their way through rubble.

  “We couldn’t have pulled the sledge across this,” says Bill, at last convinced that he’s done the right thing in leaving it.

  They cross a river, still frozen, pass mills, warehouses and redbrick factories. There’s a huge tavern right by the roadside, and it seems to taunt them. Bill thinks that inside there must be beer and food, while outside other human beings are starving. He salivates at the thought of beer.

  He’s so exhausted that he can hardly form thoughts, hardly recognize sensations, so he fails to recognize the feeling of being warm, as if it’s for the first time in his life. The blankets are unbearably heavy.

  Someone behind them begins to sing “The Sun Has Got His Hat On,” and Bill joins in. The singing seems to lift everyone, quicken their shambling pace, as if the sun has given them a message of change, that this can’t go on forever. Bill begins another song, “Oh, I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside,” and everyone sings it tauntingly into the faces of the posterns.

  They pass along Frietal’s high street with its kino still showing a new film each week, as if the lives of the prisoners and refugees were more shadowy and unimportant than the flickering images on the screen. They cross a railway line and look up to the mountain behind the town, with thick snow still on its slopes. The sun sets in a ball of orange fire, and the sky is clear.

  “It’ll be cold tonight,” says Bill as if it wasn’t cold every night. But he’s right. Without the cloud cover, the temperature plummets again. Bill and Max insist that Izzy lie between them, where she might be a little warmer, and they throw their blankets over the three of them.

  * * *

  The next day the winding road runs alongside the railway through a valley where trees climb the steep slopes on both sides. Every half hour or so, a train passes and curious passengers look out at them, at mile after mile of trudging scarecrows, while they hurry to their business appointments or new postings or to visit families. A church is perched on top of a rock, and Bill wonders if anyone attends it. Harder to get to than the kingdom of heaven, he thinks, if that exists.

  In the afternoon of the next day, when their billet for the night is in sight, Max begins to stumble like a man who’s drunk. Bill wonders if he’s eaten something that went bad or if he’s getting sick. They support him on both sides, knowing that if he drops out of the line, he might just be shot or they’d have to leave him to freeze to death. Bill swings Max’s kit bag onto his own back, ignoring his protests, and bursts out, “Good God, man, what’ve you got in here? No wonder you can’t walk. This must weigh twenty pounds.”

  Max, almost incoherent, is supported between them. “It’s my books. I couldn’t leave my books.”

  They carry him between them into the riding school where they are to spend the night. In the yard where they wait to be directed to their sleeping quarters, Max crumples down onto the concrete, and Bill drops his kit bag beside him, letting it fall from waist height. There’s no clank of tins.

  They are directed to the stables, painted and carved and decorated like a palace, and retreat into a horse stall where fresh straw has been piled for them and the owner has left pails of clean water. There they all collapse on the straw, resting to get their strength back. Bill struggles to a sitting position first, and pulls open Max’s kit bag. Max watches but doesn’t stop him.

  “It is bloody books!” Bill pulls out one volume after another—the whole library Max has carried with him from Lamsdorf to the quarry and back. Nothing but books, notebooks and the hat with earflaps that Bill knitted him.

  Bill lines up the books in front of him, and Max watches without saying anything. What a fucking idiot, thinks Bill. There’s no food at all in his bag. Not even a carrot.

  “What happened to your ration from the barn cellar?” asks Bill.

  “I had to leave it. I couldn’t fit any more.”

  “No, I can see that!” Bill is running his hand back and forth through his hair, making it stand on end. Izzy lays her hand on his arm, but he shakes it off.

  Max cowers in front of him. Bill hardly ever loses his temper, but now he rages like Izzy. “What did you want to do, kill yourself for a few books?”

  He opens one and tears out the first few pages. Max shudders and his hands flutter forward, as Bill shoves the crumpled pages under his nose. “Go on, then—eat them! Eat the pigging books, you bloody swot.”

  Max doesn’t retaliate but seems to shrivel into himself.

  “What have you got to say, eh? Eh?”

  Izzy pulls at Bill’s sleeve again, and this time he notices her.

  “What’ve I got to do, look after both of you? Is that my job? Is that what I signed up for?”

  Izzy clamps her hand over her mouth with the effort of not retaliating, and jumps to her feet to kick furiously at the post separating the stalls.

  “Hey, give it a rest in there,” comes a shout from the next stall.

  “I don’t want you two to fall out over me,” says Max. “It’d be better if I just took myself off. . . .”

  Izzy stands over him with her arms folded, to make sure Bill understands she doesn’t want Max to leave, and the rage goes out of Bill, as rapidly as it flared. He never stays angry for long.

  “OK,” he says. “Sorry, sorry. It’s just . . .”


  Bill can see Izzy is still fuming with him for shouting at Max. She looks like she did when she bit him, like the old, fiery Izzy, and a flood of irrational love rushes through him. He tries to think of something to soothe her.

  “Maybe,” he suggests. “Maybe we could light a fire with the books, just outside the stable, and boil up the vegetables we’ve got left and make a nice soup?”

  He can’t understand why Izzy smacks him hard on the arm. Max protests, “You don’t understand. I haven’t carried them all this way to burn them.”

  Bill is petulant, already tasting the stew he’d be able to make, thinking they are both equal fools. “Well, why did you, then?”

  Max pulls at the collar of his greatcoat. “For all the ideas of goodness that have disappeared. I thought as long as I had the books, there’s a chance those ideas might stay alive in the world. But it’s too late. It’s all gone.”

  Bill knows he’s thinking of the stick-limbed people in the striped pajamas, as well as their own men left to die by the side of the road. Izzy has her hand over her mouth again, and Bill thinks that all the words she’s been damming up might come gushing out of her.

  He shakes his head and then looks around him. Below the window behind the stall is a shelf with tackle and brushes. He clears the shelf, dusting it with the cuff of his coat sleeve, picks up the books and carefully, one at a time, places them spine out on the shelf.

  “Here you are,” he says. “Someone will find them here. Some stable boy.” He looks at Izzy. “Or girl. And they’ll understand.”

  Max’s voice is hoarse and indistinct. “But it’s too late, d’you see? It’s all too late. There’s no point to anything. If we live, and all those others die, what’s the point?”

  Izzy goes to him and wraps her arms around him, but his body is stiff and unresponsive. Bill watches, embarrassed, and then goes out into the yard. Max and Izzy seem to understand each other better than he understands either of them, he thinks with a stab of jealousy.

  But when he comes back, Max and Izzy are sitting apart, heads down with fatigue. All the fire in her has been doused by exhaustion, and the sight of it twists Bill’s heart.

  “There’s some soup,” he says. “Bring your mess tins.”

  The riding school owner has provided buckets of steaming pea soup and an inch of sausage each. It tastes better than anything Bill’s eaten for weeks even though it’s not like proper bangers. He smacks his lips over the soup, and says, “Sorry,” to Max.

  “No, I’m sorry,” Max replies. “It’s just . . .”

  “You don’t have to explain.”

  Bill unpacks the vegetables from his and Izzy’s kit bags and divides them into three on the straw.

  Max says, “No, I can’t. Those are yours.”

  “Oh, we need you to help us carry them.” Bill grins. “They were getting too heavy.”

  There’s a commotion outside, and Bill sees the riding school owner bringing buckets of hot water for the prisoners to wash and shave with. One of the posterns is arguing with him, and sneering at the filthy prisoners. The owner says something in German and then repeats it slowly in English. “My son is a prisoner of the British,” he says. “I hope they would let him shave and wash. Would you be less than them?” The postern reluctantly stands aside.

  They take their mess tins to get a share of the warm water and use thin gray rags to wipe the water over their faces and necks. Max and Bill both shave, and Izzy pretends to do the same. Some men are trying to wash under their clothes. One has opened his shirt and is scraping lice from his chest hair into a matchbox. He laughs and nods at the postern who didn’t want them to have the water. “I’m catching these little beauties to throw at that one tomorrow, a little present from me. I got some right down the back of one of their necks today!”

  Bill laughs aloud and thinks he’ll try to catch some of his own.

  Twenty-seven

  The following afternoon, it begins to rain steadily, soaking our blankets and making them heavier and heavier, until I stagger sometimes under the weight. Max opens his kit bag and pulls on the hat Bill knitted, the one with earflaps. I know Bill notices, though neither of them mentions it. We carry our mess tins in front of us to catch rainwater to drink.

  “At least we won’t die of thirst,” mutters Bill.

  Now the whole column is shuffling and limping rather than walking, heads down, looking at nothing but our own feet, left, right, one in front of the other.

  I try not to look ahead, not to focus on any landmark in the distance, a brick chimney or farmhouse. Once you’ve seen something like that, your eye strays back to it, and you walk for hours, or maybe days, but it never seems to get any closer. I’ve learned that it’s better to let your eyes rest on the small things by the road: a rabbit hole, a dripping drainpipe, a sparrow’s skeleton with its head missing. Those things can be passed and left behind. Small progress.

  We see one of the posterns kick over a stool on which an old lady has set up a bucket of steaming acorn coffee. He tells her she’s a disgrace to her nation, and she answers back, “But I won’t have to answer to God for my actions.”

  In another village, a woman holds herself and rocks, constantly calling out, “Kinder, kinder, warum kämpfen wir?” “Children, children, why are we fighting?” I can’t find an answer. I know my brother doesn’t hate her son.

  The boots have rotted on some men’s feet, and they are walking with sacks wrapped around them. Even so, from time to time, a defiant shout comes down the line, “Are we downhearted?” and Bill and Max lift their heads to roar, “No!” with the others.

  “My boots are letting in water,” says Max, and I pay attention to the strange sensation around the toes of my left foot. My boots are wearing through too, and the felt is soaking up water from the puddles. Much of the road is awash, and some puddles are deep enough to let water through the lace holes.

  A Russian fighter plane appears from nowhere, flying so low that it seems to skim the tops of the hedges. We all dive to the ground, noses down in the mud.

  When we get up, the fronts of our clothes are sodden too. For the first time I think, I can’t do this. I’m just going to have to stop. But I know Bill wouldn’t let me just sit down and die; he would insist on staying with me, and then he would be shot too. So I keep on, one foot in front of the other, bent double like an old woman under the weight of my wet coat and blankets.

  And then, just when I think I can’t go a step farther, the posterns point out our next resting place. Tall chimneys rise from a brick building, and fear shudders up the column of men. “Chimneys,” they whisper to one another. “Death camp.” Max’s and Bill’s eyes mirror the panic I’m feeling.

  But then word comes down the line that it’s nothing more sinister than a brick factory, and we breathe again.

  As soon as we enter it, a wonderful warmth dries our wet faces, and our clothes begin to steam. It’s warm everywhere from the kilns; even the brick floors are warm. And it’s big enough for all of us to have space. Someone has scattered dry straw on the floor, and as we find a corner to bed down in, I wish blessings on them and their family.

  We pull off our coats, and through my exhaustion, I note that the waxing on Bill’s and Max’s coats has still worked—their shoulders and backs aren’t soaking like the front of their clothes. Our coats and blankets can be dried simply by hanging them from nails on the wall. Most men immediately strip to their underwear, which is gray and ragged, and their wet clothes festoon the factory.

  A cry goes up. “Warm water! There’s warm water to wash in.”

  Bill goes to investigate and comes back full of excitement. “There are sinks. We could wash ourselves. Maybe even our underwear.”

  Max says, “I’ll look after our stuff. You go to see.”

  Men are forming an orderly queue, as if in barracks or at a holiday campsite. There they might ha
ve a towel over one arm; here they are holding their filthy underclothes. Many are stripped to the waist, and some are dressed in a second set of long underclothes, or pajama bottoms, or shorts. A few are naked and look like skeletons with skin loosely hanging from them. In the steamy room ahead, there’s laughter. I can’t see how I would hide my sex here, and I’m bitterly disappointed at the thought of not being able to wash.

  We return to Max.

  “We could wash the clothes first,” Bill suggests to him. “And you and I could wash ourselves while Cousins stays with the bags. Then tonight, when everyone’s asleep, I could take him back to wash. What do you think?”

  I nod and nod. I’m willing to risk almost anything to be clean.

  Sitting behind Bill and Max, I wriggle out of my trousers and three sets of long underwear and pull on Jan’s grubby pajama bottoms, and tie the cord tighter than has ever been necessary before. I keep on my battle dress top but contrive to remove the long-sleeved vests beneath it, leaving just my chest corset, which is crawling with lice. I’d like to get rid of it completely. In the secret part of my kit bag, I still have the small vest belonging to Marek. Clean and smelling of home. I think that would now be enough to hide my shrunken breasts.

  I make a sign to Bill by laying my hand on my chest, and indicating the lacing down the side. He understands immediately and reaches up the side of my battle dress to unlace me. I reach in through the neck and use my tag to saw through the straps; then I can pull out the whole contraption. Sure enough, when I pull the corset out, it’s alive with lice. I quickly roll it and stuff it under my dirty washing. The inside of the battle dress top is scratchy against my bare nipples.

  We queue to wash our clothes. There’s no soap, but we rub the fabric hard in the warm water. I dip my head under a tap and hope some of the lice will drown. Around me are men washing their bodies, trying to rid themselves of infestations. Their private parts flap against their scrawny thighs.