I Can't Begin to Tell You (3 page)

‘It’s very simple, Kay.’

With an excitement that was almost erotic, Kay allowed her hand to remain in his. ‘If I am caught?’

‘Ah.’
He retrieved his hand. ‘Then I would deny everything and swear my undying support of the Reich. Which means I’m unreliable and you are on your own. Understood?’

The girl standing on the platform where the Køge train was waiting was roughly the same age as Tanne – far, far too young to be putting herself in danger.

Kay’s excitement drained and a faint nausea replaced it.

Someone should tell her. Someone should take her in hand and explain what it would mean to be found out. Where was her mother?

A basket was parked by the girl’s feet and she was wearing inadequate-looking boots which Kay feared would let in the cold and wet.

Still some distance away, Kay stopped and pressed a hand to a cheek flushed from the wine at lunch. A couple of German soldiers in their green-grey –
feldgrau
– uniforms swaggered past her. Knowing they were being watched, they talked loudly, made jokes and showed off. Halfway down the platform, they stopped to light up cigarettes.

The girl with the basket stiffened visibly.

No
, Kay willed her.
Act normally
.

Grasping her handbag strap, Kay walked up the platform. The girl registered Kay’s presence. Then she turned her head away.

The movement exposed a delicate neck and its pale vulnerability triggered a violent reaction in Kay. It was like the moment when she had first held Tanne in her arms and had been overwhelmed by powerful and, as she had discovered, ineradicable impulses to protect her child.

The girl could be Tanne.

And if she had been Tanne?

The image of Rosenlund took shape, with every breath growing brighter and clearer – its high windows, the terraces, the lake, the fields and woods. She heard the sound of the
harvest being brought in, the squeal of the pigs herded up for slaughter, the clunk of the threshing machine. In a terrible old pair of linen trousers, Bror was climbing into the boat with a picnic basket, followed by the children. It was a sunny summer day, and the sun bounced off the water as they rowed over to Princess Sophia-Maria’s island in the middle of the lake. She heard their shouts and the yell as one or other of them jumped into the always-freezing water.

Kay wasn’t going to endanger them.

Denmark could hold its own. It would survive.

For God’s sake.

Turning around abruptly, Kay made her way back down the platform, pushing against the tide of passengers heading for the train.

Common sense had triumphed – a powerful and protective shield which she had raised for the right reasons.

‘So there you are,’ said Bror. ‘I wondered where you’d gone.’

Jacket in hand, Kay swivelled round. Bror was advancing down the tiled passage to the place where the family’s outdoor clothing hung on labelled pegs – in Denmark it was important to keep track of warm clothing.

‘Goodness, you startled me,’ she said.

He observed the jacket in her hand and the brogues on her feet. ‘Isn’t it an odd time to be going out?’

She glanced at the pegs with the neatly stowed jackets and coats. There was Tanne’s Norwegian hat, Nils’s green Norfolk jacket bought on a trip back to England, Bror’s hunter’s jacket.

It was astonishing how, once the mind was made up, the lies slid as easily off the tongue as her breakfast
ymer
. ‘The dogs seem restless and I need a bit of fresh air.’

‘Do they?’ Bror was surprised. ‘They were out for hours with me this morning.’ He pointed to the door at the end of the passage where the fanlight displayed the intensifying dusk. ‘It’s too dark and cold, Kay. Leave it for this evening. I’ll take them out tomorrow.’

This was the Bror whom she knew so well – whose sweetness and gallantry she knew so well too.

‘I don’t think you understand. I want a little time to myself.’

He stuck his hands in his pockets, bent his fair head and seemed to be absorbed by the sight of his shoes. ‘You can’t remain angry with me, Kay. We have to be clever, both of us. Sooner or later you must accept the changes.’ She was silent. Bror persisted. ‘You’re still very angry.’

Yes,
she was.

She wanted to tell him that, since their conversation by the lake when Bror had told her the truth, something had changed between them. And something had changed in her, Kay, too. In doing what he had done, Bror had displaced the subtle balance of love and loyalty which had existed between them for so long.

She pulled on her jacket and buttoned it up, tight and hard. ‘Yes. Very. Go back to your newspaper, Bror.’

In response, Bror reached behind her for his jacket. Hooking it off the peg, he said, ‘I’m not letting you go out on your own. I’ll come with you.’

The day after the København lunch, Kay rang Anton from the hall in Rosenlund. A fuzzy image of herself was reflected in the polished hall table while she talked – and it was as if she was watching a stranger. ‘I’ve been thinking things over. A lot of things. Particularly what you told me about Bror.’ She gathered her resolve. ‘I need more chapter and verse.’

‘Talk to him yourself.’ Anton’s voice sounded hollow down the line.

‘Anton …’

Anton considered. ‘I’ve got an appointment in Køge,’ he said. ‘Can you meet me there?’

It was done.

‘Kay …’ Before she put down the receiver, Anton sounded a warning. ‘Remember what we agreed?’ He was reminding her to say nothing. ‘And, Kay, never talk on the phone.’

They met ‘by chance’ in Køge’s main square.

It happened to be market day. Stalls lined the square and seethed with shoppers. Butchers were doing a good business as was the milk stall. Under a striped awning, the baker had laid out a display of Bror’s favourite gingerbread which caught Kay’s attention.

In uniform, Anton always presented a dapper sight. Out of it,
he blossomed into elegance. Today, since he was on home territory, he had slung a cashmere coat over his suit and a red silk scarf round his neck. Beside this magnificence Kay, in her second-best grey flannel costume with a grey felt hat which dipped over one eye, felt less modish than previously. He kissed her in a more or less cousinly fashion and as he led her to a bench he remarked that the hat wasn’t a patch on the Parisian one.

He watched her fiddle with her gloves and waited patiently for her to begin.

‘Those pamphlets? What was in them?’

He frowned. ‘Don’t waste my time, Kay.’

‘I wouldn’t do that,’ she said.

‘All right. It was a list of commandments. Don’t work for Germany; or if you do, work badly. Join the fight for freedom. We’re trying to get the message out to the outlying rural areas.’

After the positive feelings that resulted from not accepting the pamphlets, it had come as a shock to Kay to discover how one small non-action – as small as not stretching out a hand to pick up a basket – could so profoundly unsettle her equilibrium. For it had.

She laced her gloved fingers together. ‘Anton, you do understand … ?’

But he wasn’t interested in her protestations. ‘The author was a brave man. He hid the copies in a room full of deadly bacteria in the Serum Institute and risked his life.’

‘And the girl? What’s happened to her?’

Anton shrugged. ‘Not my business. Nor is it yours.’

What was done was done. Kay looked up and over to the canvas awnings flapping in the wind. ‘Tell me more about this declaration or whatever it is.’

She knew perfectly well that she had fed Anton an opportunity to indulge in a little malice. He took it. ‘How peculiar. You’re always at pains to tell me that you two are as thick as thieves. Don’t you and Bror … er, discuss?’

‘That’s the point. I can’t ask him. He’s still away until next
week, seeing the cousins in Jutland. Anyway, even you can appreciate it is difficult for us … for me.’

‘
Are
you serious, Kay?’

She bit her lip and looked away. The twenty-four hours which had elapsed since her lunch with Anton had seen a crack opening in her loyalties to Bror. ‘Yes,’ she said.

He shifted closer to her on the bench. ‘To repeat what I said at our … our delightful lunch … After the initial relief that Denmark’s occupation would be relatively peaceful, unlike that in France or Poland, many Danes are increasingly questioning the situation. We don’t want violence but no one can fail to notice that the British and Americans are both fighting. “Why aren’t we in the fight?” these Danes will ask. And “What can we do?” ’

A man in a trilby hat stopped to light a cigarette. He glanced at Kay and Anton. Anton fell silent and waited until he was out of earshot.

Touching her arm, he said, ‘In your case, you might think: But I’m British and therefore I’m in the fight, but I’m not sure how. Because of the peculiar Danish situation, it isn’t clear-cut.’

A woman in stout boots and carrying two milk churns clanked past.

‘The British have made it clear to our contacts that they are too tight-arsed to fund an underground army here but they would, nevertheless, like us to provide intelligence and do lots of lovely sabotage. Railways, bridges, factories … you can imagine. Naturally, there’s a problem. Intelligence and sabotage aren’t always compatible because sabotage triggers reprisals and muddies the waters for the intelligence-gatherers.’

She stared at the houses on the opposite side of the square, the autumn sun illuminating the rich reds and burnt siennas of the painted facades. ‘Surely it won’t make any difference as it’s likely there will always be reprisals?’

Anton raised an eyebrow. ‘Kay, you’ve missed your vocation. Listen … German troops are constantly in transit to and from Norway. The Nazis also need to maintain garrisons here in case
the Allies invade through this route.’ He allowed the last point to sink in. ‘Granted, it’s unlikely, but the Allies will invade one day, you know. The Germans also need to patrol the shipping routes bringing in the Norwegian minerals which they badly need. Bauxite for aluminium, for example. All of which makes them vulnerable.’

Her eyes narrowed.

She could imagine lines of German troops waiting for trains. Temperatures plummeting. Snow in piles. Breath steaming. Cigarette butts raining down. Grey-green uniforms. The men talking – Suisse Deutsch. Southern dialects. Prussian vowels. A babble. But maybe for those men … those boys … the Danish skies where the stars and planets burnt in the velvety black would be a reminder of home … ?

‘You’ve gone quiet, Kay.’

She stirred. ‘The people you’re talking about … they are brave.’

‘Yes.’ For once Anton sounded completely sincere.

‘Like the girl on the platform.’

‘Stop thinking about her.’

She realized then that she envied these unknown people – for their commitment and their immunity to fear which, on some level, they had to have.

‘Kay, I want you to think about something. I don’t want you to make up your mind, just to think about it. In a few days’ time there will be someone who will need a safe house in the area and a place to hide his wireless transmitter. Do you know what that is?’

‘To send messages?’

‘Good girl. I just want to point out that there are plenty of potential hiding places at Rosenlund.’

Yes. Yes, there were. Hundreds.

How many rooms were there? She could never remember. How many outhouses?

It was possible to spend more than a day combing through
the estate and still not be entirely sure that all of it had been covered. On first arriving at Rosenlund she had existed in a state of constant astonishment and it had taken her a couple of years to adjust to it.

Places to hide a clandestine wireless transmitter?

Kay turned to Anton. ‘You love Rosenlund, don’t you?’

Anton held out his cigarette case to Kay. She shook her head. He extracted one and lit up. ‘Of course I love it. Wouldn’t anyone?’

There were the outhouses – lots of them. There were the woods. And the workers’ cottages, some of which were already empty because the men had left to work for the Reich.

She combed through the possibilities.

There was the house. Recently repainted in its customary soft ochre, its main rooms faced south towards the lake but others were tucked up under the eaves, or built along corridors infrequently used.

There was the garden. There was the avenue of limes which cast its lure to the walker:
Come down through me to the water’s edge
.

There was the lake with Princess Sophia-Maria’s island rising out of the winter’s green-grey ice or the bright, hard clarity of the summer’s blue spectrum. There was the island’s summer house – a little decayed, smelling of winter mould and spring rain, rotting a little and home to spiders and their victims but, viewed from the shore, as pretty as a Fragonard fantasy.

If she brought in the bandits from the shadows … what then?

She glanced sideways at Anton. He was peacefully smoking his cigarette, one leg hooked over the other. Over the years, she had got him wrong. Maybe, maybe, she had got the other things wrong, too.

‘I’ll come with you,’ Bror repeated. He was already buttoning up his jacket. ‘It’s too dark for you to be out on your own.’

The
heat rose to her face and she turned her head away. ‘Like I said, go and read your newspaper.’

But he gave her no choice and, in the end, she whistled up Sif and Thor, who hauled themselves reluctantly from their baskets.

‘They don’t look restless to me,’ he remarked.

They left the house by the back door and walked around the kitchen garden. Kay urged that they should make for the lake. ‘The moonlight on the water will make it easier to see where we’re going,’ she said.

Bror made no comment.

They were used to walking side by side: talking, sometimes linked together and usually with the dogs. Kay couldn’t count the times she had only to turn her head and Bror would be there … on the cold days when their eyes and noses streamed, in the flat yellow summer sunshine, or on the midsummer nights when the sky was almost too crowded with stars.

They left the gardens behind and struck out along the rough path which was the alternative to the lime walk down to the lake. Sure-footed as ever, Bror set the pace. In the dark, he loomed large and solid.

For the first time ever, she wanted him gone.

Bror sensed her mood. ‘You don’t have to speak to me …’ She could tell from his tone that there was a hint of a smile.

When they reached the lake’s edge, Kay turned east towards the tongue-shaped wood and Sif and Thor, having woken from their torpor, foraged enthusiastically up ahead. Kay walked rapidly, managing to leave Bror in her wake, and as she neared the edge of the wood she whistled and the dogs came bounding up.

Bending down, she whispered in Thor’s tensed, silky ear, ‘Rabbits, go.’

The effect was immediate. Thor leaped crabwise, turned and raced along the shore, barking ferociously, with Sif in hot pursuit. The noise was exactly as Kay wished: fit to raise devils.

Bror
caught up. ‘You’re exciting them for no reason.’

No reason?

She imagined the agent who might be mounting vigil among the trees – a man trained into living a secret life, carrying with him a clandestine wireless transmitter. If he was there, and she hoped he wasn’t, he was probably cold and hungry and exhausted.

There was nothing she could do about it.

Would his training kick in at the sound of the dogs? Would he conclude:
I am being warned and I’d better get out?

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘What’s the time, Bror?’

He squinted down at his large square watch. ‘Sixish.’

Sounding more conciliatory, she said, ‘Perhaps we should go back.’

He caught her by the shoulders and pulled her to him.

Then he let her go.

It was then Kay understood: Bror was desperate to convince her that what he was doing was right. He needed her on his side.

She fell into step beside him. Day Two was over.