I Can't Begin to Tell You (41 page)

Yet sniff the air, as Kay did, and it was obvious something had changed. A mysterious trigger had been pulled.

Reports filtered in from their underground contacts all over the country.

Overnight, many of the Jews disappeared. They had been secreted in barns, outhouses, attics, cellars and churches, and a huge effort had been mounted to smuggle out to Sweden as many as possible.

She and Felix worked frantically. Planning. Coordinating. Alerting.

On 4 October, Felix instructed Kay to get herself down to Dragør, eight miles south of København.

By six o’clock that evening she was ensconced in a café on the harbour front. The tide was on the turn, and it was changeover time for the fishing shifts. The port bustled with craft pushing in and out through the wind and rain.

She scanned the quay for one in particular. Eventually, a small shabby boat eased alongside and moored.

Kay
left the café, picked her way over rain-slippery cobbles to a house with a blue door and knocked.

‘Dr Muus?’

Almost immediately the doctor emerged into the street carrying a black bag. She beckoned and he followed her to a house several streets back from the harbour where they were greeted by ‘Bent’, middle-aged and short-sighted, and one of the most successful and reliable of their men.

‘They’re traumatized,’ said Bent, leading Kay and the doctor upstairs into a bedroom. ‘You’ll need to handle them carefully. Her name is Miriam.’

A young woman, still almost a girl, a small boy and a baby were huddled on the bed. The woman’s hair was hidden under a scarf, accentuating a complexion as pale as whey. The children were dirty and the toddler was tear-stained.

Kay recollected her own pampered babies. The funny little sounds they made when feeding, hands batting her breast, the soft wool around their tended bodies, their yeasty smell.

She hunkered down beside the girl. ‘Try not to worry, Miriam.’

‘I-I’ll be all right.’ She was having difficulty speaking. ‘I’m getting over the shock, that’s all. Everything … we had to leave everything.’

‘Your husband?’

‘We didn’t have enough money to pay for the fare for all of us. He’s trying to borrow more so he can come, too. He promised we would meet in Sweden.’

‘Have you eaten?’

‘Bent has been so kind and given us bread and cheese.’

‘We going to get you on board and this is what’s going to happen.’ Kay outlined the plan. ‘I’m sorry, but we must do it now.’

Miriam clasped her baby tighter to her. ‘You’re sure it’s safe?’

The doctor unlocked his bag. ‘As safe as I can make it.’

He
drew out a hypodermic needle and prepared it.

‘That needle looks so big.’ She swallowed back her tears. ‘It will hurt them.’

‘Yes, it will,’ said the doctor. ‘But you must be brave.’

‘Hurry,’ said Kay.

As she rolled up her son’s sleeve, revealing his little arm, so white and fragile, Miriam whispered, ‘We’re playing a funny game, Erik. Look into my eyes and tell me what you see.’

The doctor acted swiftly, sticking in the needle and depressing the plunger. The child screamed once, short and sharp, then his eyes rolled back into his head and he fell forward onto his mother’s knees.

The baby girl took a little longer and screamed harder, but eventually she was silent, too.

Miriam held them both and sobbed.

The doctor picked up his bag. ‘The drug will wear off after several hours. They might be sick when they wake up.’ His hand hovered over the heads of the unconscious children. ‘Good luck.’

Kay carried the boy down the stairs. Miriam followed, cradling the baby. As they slipped and slid over the cobbles towards the harbour, salty rain lashed their faces.

When they reached the harbour, Kay was alarmed by the frenetic activity on the quays. A queue of taxis by the moored boats was disgorging passengers, all bowed down with bags and suitcases. Figures ran here and there.

She grabbed one of the sailors unloading his catch. ‘What’s happened?’

He didn’t look up from his task. ‘Word got around that the Jews could get boats out of here.’ He moved away.

Someone shouted, ‘Save my family.’

Shut up
, she prayed. You never knew who would pick up the phone to the German commandant.

She turned to Miriam. ‘See the light on that boat? We are going to make for it as fast as you can manage.’

Her
arms wrapped round her daughter, Miriam ran. So did Kay, terrified one or other of them would fall over with their burdens as gusts of wind threatened to topple them.

Kay was running, running, feet fighting for anchorage, struggling to keep upright, the boy a dead weight in her arms. She felt the muscles in her back and arms take the strain. Pressed up against the child’s body, she felt the beat of her own heart.

At the boat, she hustled them up the gangplank. Miriam was sobbing with fear, with sorrow, with relief. She turned to look at Kay and her mouth moved but Kay couldn’t hear what she said. On board, other hands reached out and took charge of them. Kay relinquished her burden and the trio vanished into the bowels of the boat.

She turned and fled back into the shadow of a house. Here she waited until the putter of the engine and the visibly widening gap of black water between the fishing boat and the harbour reassured her they were on their way.

When she returned to Bent, he served her heated-up soup and slices of bread, then sat quietly while she ate and drank. Afterwards he ushered her to the room which had been occupied by Miriam and her children. Opening the window, he showed her an escape route over the roofs.

A rope had been slung up as a handrail between two chimneys – but it looked precarious.

‘Which way should I go?’

‘It’s possible to get over the roofs of the two houses to our right, there is a walkway for the repair men, but be especially careful over the second. I’m not sure what their politics are. A fire escape leads down into a garden.’

Bent wished her good night. Kay stretched out on the bed, fully dressed, nerves thrumming. Rain beat against the window and the wind rattled the frame, and she prayed the fishing boat was well under way.

She awoke with a start.

Bent
was pounding on the door. ‘Cars everywhere. Probably German. Stay on the roof. Don’t try to escape.’

She ran to the window which overlooked the harbour. A fleet of cars was driving at full speed towards the waterfront, followed by a bus. To the north of the harbour, there was gunfire.

Whirling round, she flung open the escape window to rid the room of any telltale warmth from her occupation, smoothed over the coverlet and grabbed her shoes.

Then she was up and over the sill.

Her bare feet made contact with the tiles outside with an unpleasant smack. Reaching up, she closed the window as quietly as possible. Within seconds, she was shaking with the cold. Not good for balance. She made the calculation. Take thirty seconds or so to put on the shoes which would aid her flight? Or go?

Think
.

Who or what were the Germans after? Someone might have given them a tip-off about her. More likely, they were putting a stop to the escape of the Jews in the harbour.

Stay put, therefore
.

Inching across the roofs, clinging to the rope for dear life, she reached the shelter of a chimney and, with the utmost care, lowered herself behind it.

Shouts.

Screams.

Vehicles stopping with a screech of brakes.

The dogs. Always the dogs.

The shouts in German and Danish.

Craning round the chimney, she caught the tail end of a searchlight moving in a huge arc. A whistle blew. There was more shouting. Feet raced over the cobbles in the street, apparently coming closer.

She clung to that rope. How was she going to get out of this one? The rain stung her face and seeped through her clothes. What she would have given for Felix’s training: the toughening,
no-mercy-shown, stripping-down-to-the-essence preparation that he had described. At the very least, she would have been better at negotiating rooftops.

If you’re caught you must hold out for forty-eight hours. That will give us enough time to disperse
.

Forty-eight hours to discover one’s limits and to experience real fear. Except for childbirth, she had no real acquaintanceship with pain. But she was becoming intimate with fear. Fear was a companion and, if not exactly a friend, a counsellor which taught her wisdom, although sometimes it also drew her down to a debilitating place.

More shots.

Shooting.

Ducks rising over the salt marshes, winging over the lake.

Bror.

Her children.

Up here, on this roof, she must not think about them. Those thoughts only made her vulnerable.

Her hold on the slippery roof was increasingly in doubt and Kay felt herself slipping. She wound the rope round her arms. Steady.

Better, much better, to think … of the Germans surrendering in North Africa, of the Allies landing in Sicily, of Mussolini being deposed. Inch by inch,
inch by gory inch
, the war was changing. Over there, in the heat and the mud and the blood … And here in Denmark, too, where the grey spumy sea lashed the shores.

Still, by the time the hubbub had died away she was almost at the end of her physical tether. Bent appeared at the window. ‘Come.’ He helped her back in, supporting her because her legs wouldn’t obey. He had brought up a hot milk drink and an extra blanket. She had never been so glad of anything,
anything
, in her life before.

Kay shook as Bent spooned the hot milk up to her lips. ‘Some bastard
stikker
gave the commandant a tip-off. A
busload of soldiers arrived just as the Jews were boarding the ships. Dozens of them have been arrested.’

Thin and chalky as it was, the milk was blessedly reviving. ‘We should be out there, helping.’

‘Too dangerous and you should rest for a while.’ He offered her a cloth to wipe her mouth. ‘Drink up, Freya. You might need it.’

‘You’re a good man, Bent.’

He blinked short-sightedly. ‘It’s my duty.’

Impulsively, she reached over and kissed him. He smelled of onions and fish.

A little after midnight, when Kay was trying to sleep, an explosion tore through Dragør. She leaped to the window. Out in the Sound, a ship was on fire, flames tearing into the sky.

Ambulances raced towards the quays.

Within minutes, she and Bent were running down to the port. Already a crowd had gathered. Someone shouted that a Danish ship had hit a German mine.

She and Bent fought their way through the onlookers to the edge of the harbour. On the quayside, a doctor was organizing medical help for the wounded sailors being rowed ashore. Some were screaming. Others lay charred and silent on the stretchers. The doctor worked on stabilizing the worst injured before they were loaded into the back of the ambulances.

‘Take him.’ The doctor gave the signal for a badly burned sailor to be put into the ambulance. ‘Come.’ As cool as a cucumber, the doctor beckoned to a couple clutching bundles who had shrunk back out of the spotlights. They hesitated and he repeated: ‘Come.’ So saying, he packed them into the ambulance along with the stretchers.

The whole thing happened very fast.

Kay whispered, ‘Bent, he’s loading up the Jews with the injured.’

More ambulances raced to a halt and formed a queue. One by one, the stretchered sailors were dealt with by the doctor,
and men, women and children were plucked from the shocked, huddled mass and shovelled in alongside them.

No one said anything.

No one in that shifting, disturbed crowd.

But they knew.

Good Danes.

How admirable the doctor was. In the end, Kay thought, most … the majority … of people were good and acted justly. Kay’s throat tightened. It was important to know that truth. It was important to see it. Here was a man who seized a chance to defy evil. A man who acted.

Shouts. Sirens. German cars were racing along the road. Reeking of fuel, smoke from the blazing ship drifted inland, folding over the watchers. To Kay, it seemed to summon up all that was dreadful about the conflict – a hell, both real and metaphorical.

The rowers on the lifeboats strained to reach the port. The craft banged against the jetties. Yet more injured were landed.

‘Who’s the doctor?’ she asked Bent.

‘Dr Dich. He’s one of us.’

One of us.

Kay gathered her wits.
What would the trained agent do?
What anyone would do in this case, was the answer.

Working their way around the crowd, she and Bent pushed to the front those who they reckoned were on the run. Bent peeled off to collect any who might be wandering the side streets or sheltering in the local cafés.

‘Don’t be afraid. Look straight at the doctor,’ Kay instructed those she helped. ‘Get close to the ambulances.’

Some were dazed. Some wept hopelessly. Others were defiant.

A fourth and fifth ambulance manoeuvred into the increasingly crowded area. More Jews were pushed inside them. The doctor fastened the doors. ‘The hospital,’ he ordered the drivers. ‘Next.’

Sirens
blazing, lights flashing, they raced off. Kay watched. Eventually, all the injured sailors had been dealt with and the crowd had begun to thin out. Now it was imperative to scoop up any Jews who hadn’t made it.

Bent clutched at Kay’s arm. ‘It’s a good night’s work for us Danes,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t you say?’

Us Danes
.