I Can't Begin to Tell You (28 page)

‘It could be nasty,’ she said.

The pharmacist listened to Tanne carefully. ‘Could be
nasty, Frøken
Eberstern?’ It was a marked emphasis. He paused. ‘It’s important you bathe the wound in boiled water, disinfect it and apply a sterile dressing.’ Tanne piled the packages into her basket and he added, ‘And
Frøken
Eberstern, if your friend is running a temperature, she must take aspirin every four hours.’

Startled, she looked up from her basket but the pharmacist was busy pouring out cough syrup for the next customer.

Mor, I do know these people
.

Finding Dr Hansen was not easy. Tanne was forced to cycle several miles around the town, chasing his progress from patient to patient. She caught up with him on the outskirts of Køge.

He was getting into his car.

‘Dr Hansen!’

He turned. Dapper as always with his bow tie, he was clearly exhausted with his work load yet, on seeing Tanne, he gave a little bow. Their friendship had been forged over chicken pox and split knees, not to mention the episode when, furious at a reprimand from her mother, she had climbed up the haystack and fallen out of it. ‘
Frøken
Tanne?’

‘Dr Hansen, could you come and look at someone?’

‘What’s the matter with them?’

She glanced over her shoulder. ‘It’s urgent.’

He didn’t reply at once but leaned up against the car.

‘Dr Hansen?’

‘It
had better be urgent,’ he said.

‘It is. I’ll cycle ahead.’

At the north entrance to the Rosenlund estate, she motioned for him to stop and wind down the window. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to walk from here. I’ll put your case in my bicycle basket.’

Dr Hansen fingered his bow tie. ‘What is this?’

Suddenly, she was uneasy.

You don’t know people in war
.

‘I thought you understood.’

‘No,’ he said flatly. ‘I don’t.’

‘
Please
.’

‘What makes you think I’m willing to participate in whatever this is? What makes you presume? I thought you must have a friend in trouble, drunk or something, who was anxious their parents weren’t involved.’

She made an effort to open the car door. ‘Dr Hansen, someone is in trouble.’

He prevented her. ‘I’m a doctor and I can’t take risks.’

‘You’re a doctor.’

‘
Frøken
Tanne, you are very naive.’

‘Not too naive to know when to help.’

Finally, white with rage, he got out of the car. ‘You’ve put me in an impossible position. I’ll ask no questions, and you will not talk to me except to tell me what is essential. And I don’t want to know where I’m going. Understood?’ He wrenched off the bow tie and fashioned a blindfold.

‘If that’s what you wish.’ Tanne grabbed his doctor’s bag, took him by the arm and led him through the trees.

The room in Ove’s cottage was frowsy with the smell of infection but Felix was awake, if feverish. She helped him to take off his shirt and held his hand.

Dr Hansen worked in silence, examining and probing, and did not look at Felix in the face. Finally, he asked Tanne to pass him the scissors from his bag. ‘This will hurt.’

As
he cut the flesh away from around the bullet’s entry and exit wounds, Felix’s fingers crunched down on Tanne’s.

She made herself watch.

Once he cried out.

‘Look at me,’ she commanded him, smiling, smiling. ‘Keep looking at me.’

Dr Hansen addressed the floor. ‘The wound’s infected but I think the bone’s intact. I’ll stitch you up.’

He poured surgical spirit over his handiwork, stood up and turned his back. ‘You’re lucky. Your arm functions will be fine. But you’ll need to rest it for a month. You’re likely to have a temperature for a day or two, then you should be fine.
Frøken
Tanne, scrub your hands in disinfectant and dress the wounds every twenty-four hours until the scars begin to turn pink. Then allow the air to get to them as much as possible.’

He packed his bag fast and furiously. ‘Take me back to the car. I don’t wish to hear from you again.’

‘Dr Hansen?’ This man was as removed from the pleasant, kind doctor from her childhood as it was possible to be. ‘Dr Hansen?’

At the doorway, he stopped and put on the blindfold. ‘You have been very stupid,
Frøken
Tanne.’

‘Shush, he’ll hear.’ She pulled the doctor outside.

He hissed into her ear: ‘There’s only one doctor in this area and that’s me. What happens if I go?’

Was he right? Was he wrong?

Her stomach lurched but the iron was creeping into her soul. ‘I’m taking you back now,’ she said and he would not mistake her contempt. ‘There’s no need for us to speak to each other again.’

On her return, Felix fixed his eyes on her. ‘Get out of here.’

‘Don’t talk.’

She fetched a bottle of lemonade that she had bought in Køge and made him drink it down with two aspirins. ‘You’re to take two every four hours. It’s not much, but something.’

He
managed to smile through lips cracked with thirst. ‘Do you know what I would love?’

She bent over him. ‘Tell me.’

‘A banana.’

Was he delirious? ‘I’m going to leave you now to fetch food and drink.’ She tucked the blanket back over him. ‘You must stay quiet.’

As she promised him, she returned in the early evening, creeping into the cottage. Felix was asleep and the blanket had slipped to reveal the smooth, brown flesh of his uninjured shoulder.

She wanted badly to touch that smooth, brown flesh but she contented herself with kneeling down beside him and tucking the blanket around him. He was burning up. His eyes flicked open.

‘It’s only me.’

‘Miss Only-Me,’ he muttered. ‘But you shouldn’t be here.’

She had brought bread, cheese, a small pot of honey and some early strawberries. She shook out two aspirin and propped him up so he could swallow them. ‘You need food. Sorry I took so long,’ she added. ‘My parents are giving dinner to a German general and his wife. I have to be careful. I should be up there entertaining him.’

‘Oh, good,’ he murmured. ‘You can crack a joke, then.’

Carefully, she eased him up against the wall and fed him little hunks of bread and cheese, followed by the strawberries which she dipped in the honey. ‘The honey should give you strength.’

‘Thank you.’ He tried to sit up but failed.

A little later he asked, ‘Are you leaving me?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m staying.’

This was her vigil. For Denmark. For her call to arms.

For Felix.

During the night, his fever worsened. Tanne forced him to swallow more aspirin but he vomited them up almost immediately. At intervals, she bathed his face and wrists while he
twitched and groaned. Once, he demanded her name. ‘But not your real name.’

When she went outside to the water butt to refill the jug, an almost full moon dominated a star-filled sky and there was a beautiful velvety feel to the air. On a second trip, she gave herself a bad fright imagining that she heard footsteps moving through the undergrowth. Jug in her hand, she remained rooted to the spot.
Do not faint
. With a struggle she brought herself under control.

Back inside, she saw that Felix had woken up.

‘Don’t look,’ she said as she took off her trousers and rolled them up to make a pillow for him.

She lay down beside him.

‘Talk to me, Miss Only-Me, but nothing personal.’

How’s that possible?
she wanted to say.
Every single thing is linked. Me, you, my mother, the war … my father, Rosenlund
.

‘The other day a pig was due to be killed,’ she began. ‘The butcher called in was sworn to silence. He was so skilled the pig barely squealed. Everyone was concerned that someone would hear and tell the authorities. As you know, all pigs are supposed to go to the Germans.’

‘I feel sorry for the pig.’

‘But he died painlessly and he was useful. He was turned into hams, sausages and salami, and his blood was used for black pudding. Bits of him were salted and made into brawn. And soap. You’ve no idea how exciting that was. You boil the skin in the copper for several hours, and eventually it turns into liquid soap perfect for washing floors.’

Beside her Felix was shaking. Concerned, she propped herself up on an elbow. ‘Are you feeling worse?’

He turned a drained face to hers. To her astonishment, he was laughing. ‘What stuff to entertain a wounded man! Most women would have gone on about fluffy rabbits and Erik the Viking.’

After that, he seemed more comfortable and fell asleep
again. His chin was stubbled and his lips fever dry – even so he appeared younger than when he was awake.

Tanne lay with her head turned towards him. She knew for a certainty that this was a precious night, a moment which she would wish to be stamped on her memory, and she refused to waste it in sleep. Her previous terrors had dissipated. She was young, and becoming increasingly bold, and the unknown and amazing adventure of life beckoned.

Carefully, so as not to disturb Felix, she fitted her body along the length of his, to prevent him from rolling onto his injured arm. Occasionally, she put out a hand to restrain him, permitting herself to let it rest on his torso … shoulder … hip.

Before she fell out of love with Aage, she had spent a night with him so she was not innocent. This wasn’t the same. The interlude with Aage had been fun, very physical and transient. This … this guarding of Felix possessed an intimacy, almost a spiritual significance, and his weakness moved her profoundly.

She shifted position. A familiar pain lodged in her lower abdomen and dug in. Tanne grimaced. With immaculate timing, her period had arrived.

The pain growled. Illness. Doctors.

Dr Hansen?

Had she been stupid?

Despite her intentions, Tanne fell asleep. When she awoke, at dawn, she was stiff and exhausted. The floor smelled of pine and, for a second, she imagined it was the Christmas log burning at Rosenlund.

Then she realized she was the only one occupying the rug and she jerked upright. ‘Are you all right?’

Incredibly, Felix had heaved himself over to the window and was keeping watch. ‘I thought it best to let you sleep.’

He eased round and leaned against the wall.

Brushing back her hair, she reached for her trousers, and shielding her underwear as best she could she wriggled into them.

‘Thank
you for getting me through the night.’

She fastened her waistband. ‘I wanted to make you as comfortable as I could.’

Scrambling up, she walked over to him and laid a hand on his forehead. He was still feverish. ‘You must lie down again. You need to rest.’

He let her help him down to the floor and pull the blankets over him, then he swallowed the aspirins she gave him with a mug of water.

Tanne picked up her basket. ‘I’m glad the doctor saw to you.’

‘So am I. Thank you.’

‘But I’m worried. I’m not sure he’s on our side.’

Felix got it at once. ‘So he might talk?’

‘He might. I don’t know. He wasn’t pleased. Look, you might as well know. I had to bully him.’

If she expected anger she had got Felix wrong. ‘It happens,’ he said. ‘More than you think.’

‘I was so sure Dr Hansen was a friend. But now I’m not. I’m sorry.’ The confession was pathetic, and she hated the sound of herself making it.

Felix moved restlessly and, crouching over, Tanne tried to still him. ‘Is the pain bad?’

‘Yes … yes …’ He clutched at her hand. ‘But that’s not the point. We have to get out.’ He closed his eyes. He was gathering his forces. ‘We’ve got to get out.
Now
. Do you understand?’

‘Shush …’ She stroked his cheek. ‘Shush.’

He gazed up at her with fever-bright eyes. ‘You don’t understand. We can’t stay here any longer.’

‘
We?
’

Felix tested the injured arm, stretching it out and clenching his fingers. ‘If you’re right, you’re compromised.’ He winced. ‘We’ll have to get out and lie low.’

Tanne thought of the stories she had heard from her friends. Flight. Hiding. Capture. She shivered. The finger of war was now pointing at her.

Leaving Tanne in the stable yard, Kay had got herself up to the bedroom to change.

Punctual to the minute, the Gottfrieds arrived at Rosenlund and Kay gave them tea on the terrace. It was warm, the new foliage on the trees looked radiant and the birds were nesting. Afterwards, Kay took them on the promised tour of the house and the gardens.

The general studied the portrait of Sophia-Maria and turned to Bror. ‘The Führer would appreciate the brotherhood between us.’

Down at the lakeside, Ingrid pointed over the bright sun patterns on the water to the island. ‘It’s like something out of a fairy tale,’ she said.

As the party strolled back to the house, a car crunched over the gravel in the drive.

‘Are you expecting more visitors?’ asked the general.

‘My cousin Anton,’ replied Bror. ‘He heard you were coming to dinner and we were delighted to ask him to join us. He’s probably bringing over flowers … his are quite famous. He likes to supervise their arrangement.’

Bror sounded the genial host but, in fact, he had been livid. At the last minute, Kay told him that Anton had invited himself to the dinner, explaining that Anton was friendly with the general, too. In fact, she had rung Anton and given him the tip-off.

‘You want him here, Kay? Is that it?’

It wasn’t Anton who waited for them by the front steps but Sergeant Wulf, Constable Juncker and an unknown SS officer.

Had they found him?

Tanne?
How could she protect her?

What if they searched the house?

More than anything, she wanted to hold Bror’s hand and to feel safe once more.

Instead she masked her tumult with a serene smile. Stick to Felix’s rules.

Be brief. Be boring. Speak pleasantly and say nothing
.

If Constable Juncker was a youth on a self-declared sacred mission to heal Denmark, the shinily booted SS officer looked a far more serious proposition. He and General Gottfried exchanged the barest of unenthusiastic greetings. Kay took notice. She had been right: the Nazis fought each other.

Sergeant Wulf did his best with the introductions. ‘May I introduce
Hauptsturmführer
Buch. He’s joined us from København.’

Hauptsturmführer
Buch inclined his head.

Whey-faced, a little shifty, Sergeant Wulf looked a wreck, and his uniform needed a press. It was noticeable that, having lost so much weight, his leather belt had been hitched in by several notches.

‘
Hr
Eberstern,
Fru
Eberstern,’ he began. ‘Can you tell us where your daughter is?’

‘Our daughter? Has something happened?’ Kay needed to be astonished – and was.

‘She’s not here,’ Bror replied. ‘Although it’s none of your business.’

Constable Juncker cut across Sergeant Wulf. ‘Who with?’

Kay noted the
Hauptsturmführer
covertly observing the general.

Grab a few seconds to think
. Kay patted her hair. ‘She’s with her cousins. But, really, our daughter is an adult and doesn’t account to us for her movements.’

The general’s gaze settled on Kay’s face.

She willed herself not flush. She willed her heart to behave itself so she could remain cool and think quickly on her feet.
This was what fear felt like. Primal fear. The dry mouth. A skipping heartbeat.

‘Your reasons for this visit?’ Bror was asking.

Hauptsturmführer
Buch was polite. ‘There has been a report that someone answering her description has been aiding a terrorist.’

‘How outrageous,’ Kay went to stand beside Bror.

Bror said, more or less pleasantly: ‘I must ask you to leave.’

Ingrid turned to her husband. ‘Franz, should we go in and change for dinner?’

‘General, Ingrid, I apologize for this intrusion,’ said Kay.

‘Just a minute.’ The general drew
Hauptsturmführer
Buch aside and the two men conferred. The evening sun slanted onto the braid and brass of the uniforms. In the trees, the birds were beginning to roost. The scene possessed a dreamy, shimmery, peaceful quality which Kay had seen a thousand times.

Bror shoved his hands into his pockets.

She thought of the evening ahead – and of the huge effort it was going to take to behave normally.

But do it she would.

Hauptsturmführer
Buch broke away from the general and said, ‘
Hr
Eberstern, you will forgive us for disturbing you. The General has persuaded us that we must have made a mistake.’

The general’s eyes rested thoughtfully on Kay.

Dressed in the lace dinner gown and the family pearls, Kay took a long look in the mirror to assess the results. Good enough to please a German general? Good enough to deceive Bror?

Reflected in the mirror, the bed caught her eye. It gave her painful pause. These days she was its only occupant. A half-occupied bed was, as she had discovered, full of ghosts.

Bror knocked, entered and went straight to the point. ‘What’s going on?’

Kay
sprayed her neck with scent. ‘A stupid mistake. It happens all the time, I imagine.’

‘Is there something you’re not telling me?’

She lifted her shoulders in a tiny shrug. ‘Of course not.’ She twisted round to look at him and fiddled with the hairbrush, which had not been touched by Bror for weeks. ‘I wish we didn’t have to entertain.’

‘You mean entertain Germans.’

She allowed herself to say, ‘No, I mean I wish we had the evening to ourselves.’

Bror’s face softened momentarily. Did he remember that, in the old days, they often went out together into the evening sunlight? Very often he would make her laugh. She would take his arm.

She curled an escaped tendril of hair round her finger, tucked it into her chignon and searched for her evening handkerchief in the drawer. Mundane actions steadied her.

‘So, where is Tanne?’

Where?

‘I forgot to tell you. Mai Federspiel rang up. They’re having a
fester-cousine
party and wanted Tanne. I told her to go. Tanne didn’t want to have dinner with a stuffy general.’ Kay stood upright and brushed down her dress.

‘Why is Anton here?’

She didn’t reply.

‘He’s here for you, isn’t he?’

Still, she said nothing.

‘Christ, Kay …’

Under her long gown, one of her knees trembled with the enormity of what she was doing. She folded up the evening handkerchief and tucked it into her sleeve. ‘If you want to believe that, do.’

‘Kay, I’m not prepared to go on like this.’

She would have done almost anything to avoid causing the
pain in that blue, storm-filled gaze. She focused on his shoulder. ‘Not now, Bror. I have the guests to see to. Your guests.’

He turned on his heel. ‘You’re right. I want to say that I’m aware that the Gottfrieds being here is the last thing you want to cope with, but I’m grateful.’

Bror was never less than generous.

‘It’s my job,’ she replied. ‘And it’s Birgit’s and that of the others who do the cleaning and iron the bed linen.’

He banged the door shut behind him.

She waited before following him. Fists scrunched. Pressing her nails hard into the fleshy part of her thumb. Summoning anger to conquer fear.

As dapper as ever, Anton arrived. Kissing Ingrid’s and Kay’s hands, he presented them each with a bouquet of peonies and roses. During drinks on the terrace, he drew the general aside and they talked intently.

When the party moved into the dining room, Kay managed to manoeuvre Anton aside. ‘We might have a problem.’ She outlined the situation and Anton’s eyes narrowed.

They sat down at the table. With Birgit occupied in the kitchen, Else had been drafted in to serve. Nerves and inexperience made her clumsy and the pea soup that she was offering to the general slopped over the tureen. Kay took pity, rescued Else and offered it to the general herself. He wasn’t at all put out.

‘That was kind,
Fru
Eberstern.’ He spooned up the soup. ‘But I suspect you are a kind person.’ He smiled most charmingly. ‘Were you the sort of child who nursed wounded animals?’

‘General, you’re very sweet.’

Anton, Bror and Ingrid being deep in a hunting conversation, the general was free to turn his full attention onto Kay. As she had noted, he was an elegant eater with good manners and he apologized for the earlier visit of the police. ‘I hope my colleagues didn’t appear too heavy-handed.’

‘They
were doing their job,’ said Kay. ‘You can’t blame them for that.’

‘I was right. You are a kind person.’

It was almost amusing. The general – ‘Why don’t you call me Franz?’ – shamelessly picked her brains about Britain. Did most people have a wireless set in their homes? Was it true that the iron railings in the cities had been smelted down to make weapons? Kay replied that he was probably better informed than she was.

The general picked up his wine glass. ‘Perhaps.’

He talked a little of Germany and, reluctantly, of his childhood, saying: ‘My upbringing was not what you might expect.’

‘Have you seen any more of this country since we last met, General … er, Franz?’

She disliked using his Christian name.

‘I’ve been to Randers and Aarhus. As you will know, we have a headquarters in Aarhus.’

‘Oh, surely the headquarters is in København?’

‘We have bases in a lot of places. As I mentioned before, we’re not loved and it’s necessary to have a full complement of staff in many places.’

Why was he giving her this information?

But he was and Kay listened carefully. ‘Aarhus University is a good place for our archives … and that’s no secret, by the way.’ He smiled at Kay. ‘No doubt terrorists will target it but I should say at once that, given the high calibre of our men, any resistance in the area is pretty much doomed.’

Else had better luck serving the beef medallions and the general helped himself to several pieces. Kay picked at hers while he talked in glowing terms about his unit. ‘I have a pedigree team with hard soldiering and specialist training behind them. Unlike the cynical and sceptical reservists, they’re committed.’ He went on to say that reservists were a big problem for the crack units such as his.

So,
she thought, the general was relying on reserves, which suggested there was a shortage of troops.

‘It’s not straightforward,’ he continued. ‘We’re trying to pin down enemy agents who we know are operating on Zealand and elsewhere.’

Bror had been listening and cut in: ‘We’re too busy trying to keep the farms going for that sort of thing here.’

Ingrid looked uncomfortable and she laid down her knife and fork.

Kay pressed the general. ‘How can you track the terrorists?’

He clearly enjoyed the technical aspects of the work. ‘An agent gets hold of a wireless transmitting set. He, or she, is given a call sign, say, ABC, and a frequency on which to transmit. They are instructed to transmit four or five times a week but it takes them over five minutes to do that, which means we can get a fix on where they are holed up …’

What were the general’s motives for coming to Rosenlund? Curiosity? He knew she was British and almost certainly held conflicting loyalties. It was possible he held intelligence on the Ebersterns. However, a simple explanation was also possible. Simple explanations should never be overlooked. Was it that, for some reason – perhaps the upbringing he had been reluctant to talk about – the general and his wife felt they were outsiders and warmed to Bror and herself, also the outsider?

At his end of the table, Anton kept a weather eye on them both.

‘And if you capture an enemy terrorist?’

‘As I believe I mentioned before when we spoke about this at the theatre,’ he said, ‘in Signals and Intelligence we never waste good material.’ A finger tapped gently on the table. ‘Most people have a price. It’s a question of finding out what. How we do it is up for debate. But we had – we have – a captured terrorist who … er, has decided to cooperate, which means we can talk to each other as adult to adult. I have a different
approach from my colleagues in the SS, who are more draconian.’ He shot Kay a look – cunning, rueful, slightly apologetic. ‘That’s not to say we’re soft.’

Kay touched her lips with her napkin.

A captured terrorist who decided to cooperate
. Kay combed over her meagre stockpile of information. Who could it be? Besides Vinegar were there other wireless transmitters operating in Zealand? She didn’t know for sure. But she did know that Felix had been trying to find out where he was.

‘Kay … ?’ The general wanted to know if she needed her water glass filled.

‘Thank you … no.’

She imagined one of those brutal concrete buildings in which the Gestapo operated, the rooms filled with those who did not cooperate – and those who did but who almost certainly ended up the same.

Under the table, she clenched her napkin between fingers that felt numb.

‘Human beings are predictable, wouldn’t you say? Whatever their philosophy or religion,’ continued the general, ‘they have an inbuilt desire to please. It’s a question of finding the trigger. If you can convince an enemy agent that it would be better for the world, for their family, for them, if they cooperate, you can usually get results.’

‘A sophisticated approach, General.’

She caught Anton’s eye.

‘We often know where an agent is operating but we don’t bring them in because we like to watch them. If you’re too quick, the network scatters, which is no use.’

Kay couldn’t bear it any longer. ‘Heavens,’ she said, lightly. ‘I’ll have to be careful when I’m on the phone. Just in case your men are listening in.’

‘I apologize. I have been talking shop.’ He was all charm. ‘Did you know I have been in touch with your son?’

‘Nils! How did that happen?’

Anton intervened. ‘I was in a position to help,’ he said. ‘I took Franz to see him.’

Anton
. How dare he? How could he? Kay shot him a furious look. In reply, he raised an eyebrow.
Trust me
.

She pulled herself together. ‘I hope Nils behaved himself.’

‘Politeness itself. He agreed to help us.’