I Can't Begin to Tell You (42 page)

Twenty-four hours later Kay returned to København from Dragør with two teenage boys in tow. Separated in the melee from their parents, they had been wandering around the harbour, clutching satchels full of their school books, when Kay found them. They were almost speechless with shock.

‘Pretend I’m your mother,’ she instructed, snatching up the youngest one’s hand.

It lay in hers, icy with its owner’s desolation.

Where to hide them in the city while she arranged a safe passage out of the country? She took a decision to make for the Mueller house, only to catch sight of SS cars in the street. Aborting, she hurried them away down a street which ran parallel. It was sullenly empty, with only a few bicycles chained to the lamp posts.

What next? Where to go, whom to trust? The answer arrived – and it drove the breath from her chest. Nils.
Nils
… ?

A black car nosed down the street. Hustling the boys ahead of her, she rounded the corner and cut down a side street.

Could she trust her son?

A little later Kay led the boys across the university courtyard and up the stairwell leading to Nils’s room. Instructing the boys to stay quiet outside, she entered without knocking.

The usual sight greeted her. The light from the desk lamp revealed piles of dusty books, the sparse furniture, and paper stacked into wire baskets. Nils was at the desk, transcribing formulae onto a piece of squared paper.

Her son.

The characteristics she knew so well were all on display …
clothes in need of a press, shaggy hair, threadbare tie. Familiar things which she so loved, and so hated, in him.

None of that mattered, of course, only that he was there. He looked well and busy and she loved him beyond words.

‘What the –?’ He looked up but it took a good few seconds before he recognized her. ‘Good God!’

She held a finger up to her lips. ‘Say nothing. I’m Lise, an infant school teacher you met on holiday.’

Shock slowed him. But he got to his feet and made his way over to her. ‘Where’ve you been? We’ve been out of our minds with worry.’

Tears came into her eyes. She dug her hands hard into her pockets. ‘Don’t make me cry.’

‘Nor me.’ He brushed the palm of a hand across his eyes – touching Kay to the quick. It was as loving a gesture as Nils would ever make. She longed,
longed
, to kiss him but knew he probably wouldn’t tolerate it.

Did he look well? Yes, he did. Why hadn’t he had a haircut? On balance, though, longer hair suited him. Precious, precious pieces of information on which to catch up, and to mull over, later.

‘
Mor
,
why
are you here?’

‘I need to hide some people and I thought of you. Please don’t ask questions, Nils. Will you let me?’

He stuffed a hand into a pocket. ‘I always ask questions,
Mor
. I’m not doing anything unless you explain to me.’ He added, ‘Sensibly.’

He meant without emotion.

‘Who are they?’

‘Jews,’ she answered.

Nils started.

‘Will you do this? Not for me but for them.’

He gave a drawn-out whistle.

‘Nils, you can’t let this happen. You can’t have listened to the
rubbish that’s being said about Jews? They’re herding them up like animals.’

Nils smoothed his hand across the network of symbols and figures on the papers in front of him.

She hissed, ‘There’s very little time. There are two boys out in the corridor who don’t know what’s happening to them. They’re terrified and they have no idea where their parents are. Or what’s going to happen to them.’

He reached for his pencil and turned it round and round between his fingers.

Her beloved son was not a monster … no, never that … but, as she knew so well, he looked at things from a different angle to most people.

‘I can’t leave them in the corridor.’ If she had to beg, beg she would. ‘
Please
.’

Nils put down the pencil.

‘You have the chance to be part of something … big. Worthwhile. More importantly, Nils, something right.’

He frowned.

‘Nils?’ One last attempt. ‘It
is
the right thing to do. The moral thing.’ She searched for the words to which he might respond. ‘I wouldn’t ask you … I wouldn’t put you in this position except I don’t know where else to go.’

He looked up. ‘All right.’

Love for Nils broke in a wave over her head. ‘Pretend they’re pupils and you’re giving them extra tuition but the session ran over and they found themselves trapped by the curfew. Keep them here. It’ll only be for one night while their passage is arranged.’

She ushered the boys into Nils’s room. ‘You’re being given tuition in applied mathematics,’ she briefed them. ‘Tomorrow morning I’ll take you to Gilleleje where I’ll get you a boat to take you to Sweden. Until then, you have to be quiet. Very quiet. And very patient.’

The
boys’ dark eyes registered their bewilderment.

‘No need to look like that,’ said Nils. ‘I’m not going to eat you.’ He pointed to the bedroom. ‘In you go.’

Nils’s no-nonsense approach appeared to cheer them. The older one flashed a reluctant grin. ‘Where will you be?’

‘Right here, working. So you’ll have to shut up.’

He closed the door on the boys and retreated with Kay to his study, where she thrust a paper into his hands. ‘Read it and then get rid of it.’

He glanced at the headline: ‘The Danish Freedom Council sharply condemns the pogroms the Germans have set in motion against the Jews in our country’. Nils slotted it into the paper pile in a wire basket. ‘What happens if you don’t turn up for them tomorrow?’

‘Get them to Rosenlund and Arne.’

‘Arne!’

‘Yes, Arne. He knows what to do.’

Nils’s expression was a master study of shock. In a different time, in a different situation, she might have laughed. ‘Nils, darling.’

He retreated behind his desk. ‘
Mor
, I’m only doing this once. Have you got that? The thing is …’ He scratched his head. ‘The Germans visit me. Regularly.’

The skin on her arms goosefleshed. With alarm. With dislike.

‘Don’t look like that,
Mor
. They come here to discuss mathematical problems. What do you expect me to do? If I tell them to get lost I’ll be put on a list, or thrown into the Vestre. Anyway, it’s the mathematical problems we’re interested in.’

Memories of Nils as a tiny boy. He and his German cousins were romping around a hay meadow near Munich. It was a scene full of sunlight, fragrance, happiness.

What
did
she expect him to do?

‘I saw you with General Gottfried.’

‘Did you now?’

‘I was in a taxi on my way to see you but I left when I saw who you were entertaining.’

‘He wants to pick my brains. I allow him to up to a point. But only up to a point.’ He shrugged. ‘Self-preservation,
Mor
.’

‘I knew you couldn’t really support what the Germans are doing.’

He turned away. ‘It’s tedious when people take sides. I don’t approve of people who don’t think for themselves, that’s all.’

‘But supporting them?’

‘I don’t support them. I tolerate them.’

The difficulties of understanding her son’s thought patterns were never going to lessen. ‘How’s your father?’

‘Completely at sea. He can’t believe what you’ve done.’

Unable to stop herself, she reached over and caressed his cheek. ‘I’m sorry, Nils, but I’m not sorry. Can you understand?’

‘That you’ve placed us all in danger? That you’ve gone?’

The harshness was mitigated by Nils slipping his arm round her shoulders. With that unexpected, and rare, sign of affection he was telling her that, perhaps, there was some point of convergence, some level of complicity.

After a moment he said: ‘Do you think you were spotted coming here?’

‘Possibly. I was desperate. But you take quite a few students, don’t you? I thought I could take the risk.’

It was a bad night, holed up in the boiler room of a hostel near the river.

She went over and over what she should do. What could go wrong? Everything. What was her plan? Get the boys to the station. The risk? Being caught on the train. She must coach them on behaviour. Find more money.

In the discomfort of the boiler room she felt her will to keep going under attack and her resolution splinter.

Up early, Kay adjusted her clothes, tied a different headscarf under her chin and went out into the street.

Everything
was grey. Sky, streets, people … her forebodings. She walked quickly, but not too quickly. One day, the grey would lift and they would all be normal again.

Watch
.
Check
.

Shortly after eight-thirty, she let herself into Nils’s rooms. A sweep of the room revealed he was not at his desk and the door to the bedroom was shut.

But someone was standing at the window which overlooked the courtyard. Hands in pockets. Worsted suit. Fair hair swept back. A man whom she knew through and through.

She tried to back out into the corridor.

Too late.

He turned. ‘What –?’ There was a second’s shocked silence. ‘Kay!’

Bror grabbed her and kicked the door shut. ‘What are you doing here? Are you mad? But you’re safe, you’re safe.’ He pulled off her scarf. ‘Oh my God! What have you done to yourself?’ He cradled her face between his hands. ‘Your beautiful, beautiful hair.’

She clung to Bror’s suit lapels – as if she could tap into his strength. She had dreaded this meeting. She had longed for it. During those frequently claustrophobic hours hidden up in a lair somewhere she had been riddled with hate for Bror, and shame for his rotten politics.

To see him in the flesh was different. ‘Hello.’

‘Is that all you have to say?’

The material under her fingers was so familiar, the best quality, totally reliable. She grasped it tighter. ‘Are you going to give me away?’

‘What do you think?’

They looked at each other.

Dane and Briton. The husband and the wife. The landowner and the terrorist.

Bror put his arms round her. ‘There’s a price on your dyed,
obstinate, stupid head.’ She looked up to see unfathomable sadness reflected in the blue eyes. ‘I’m so glad to see you, Kay.’

‘And I you.’

His chin rested on the top of her head. ‘Each day I wake up and my first thought is of you. But today it was different. Perhaps it was the unfamiliar hotel room? Or perhaps it was because I’m seeing the bank manager?’

‘Is that a joke?’

‘I haven’t made a joke for – oh, months. Yet something pushed me to see Nils … and I find you. Do you think I knew without knowing?’

She smiled. ‘That’s a nice idea.’

Rain began to lash against the windowpanes.

‘Where is he?’

Bror released her. ‘Sleeping. At least, so I presume.’ He paused. ‘Do you know what you’ve done?’

‘I do.’

‘Did you hate me that much, Kay?’

‘It’s not a question of hate, or love.’ She gave a small smile. ‘But, yes, at times I did hate you.’

‘I see.’ Bror’s right hand had a half-healed cut on a knuckle. How many times had she dealt with his bashed-up fingers? ‘Come back, Kay.’

‘You know I can’t.’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘It’s hopeless but I thought I’d say it. Despite everything, I dream that you’ve come back. I imagine I can hear you whistling to the … the dogs and we walk down to the lake together.’

There was no time for this.

Kay took in a deep breath of Bror’s Berlin cologne. ‘Bror, I can’t explain but, if I promise to meet you, will you leave now?’

Too late. A tousled, blinking, but fully clothed Nils appeared at the bedroom door. ‘
Far?
Here again? Why?’

‘To see how you were. Is that so odd?’

Kay
made to close the bedroom door, but not fast enough. It swung back to reveal the boys sleeping face to toe on the floor.

Bror looked from Kay to Nils. ‘What’s going on?’

‘None of your business,’ she said.

Bror reached inside his jacket for his cigarette case and lit up. ‘Have you any idea how dangerous this is? The authorities are searching everywhere for the Jews.’ He gestured to the untidy human heap on the floor. ‘I presume … ?’

‘Shush.’ The boys stirred and Kay closed the door to the bedroom. ‘They’ve enough to put up with. Don’t make them more frightened than they already are. Please.’

Nils sat down at the desk and pulled the papers sitting on its top towards him. ‘Don’t start, you two.’

‘Do you think I’m a monster, Kay?’

He was sad, desperately so. She knew the signs.

‘No, I don’t. But do you know what’s going on? Bror,
do
you know?’

‘Of course.’ He sounded more like his old self. ‘Anton rang. God knows why. I didn’t ask him to. His excuse was that he wanted to know how things were at Rosenlund. He couldn’t wait to tell me about the round-ups and arrests. But at the hotel last night the talk was that most of the Jews have got away.’

‘Yes,’ said Kay. ‘People did the right thing.’

‘They did.’ Bror wandered over to Nils’s desk and flicked ash into the ashtray. ‘Which makes one proud.’ He looked up from the ashtray, meeting Kay’s gaze. ‘Don’t you think?’

‘Thank God …’ Kay felt almost happy with relief. ‘Thank God you feel like that. I didn’t know … I dreaded that …’

Bror looked as though he had received a punch in the guts. ‘You dreaded that I would agree with people being rounded up?’

‘No, no … of course not.’

‘Christ,’ he said.

This was the moment and she took a gamble. ‘Bror, I’m going to ask you to do something. Have you got the car? Take
me to Gilleleje. Please. We can’t have these boys’ blood on our hands.’

‘
Mor
,’ Nils rattled the papers. ‘What are you doing?’

Bror said, ‘I’m not a murderer, Kay, either. Of course we can’t have their blood on our hands.’

She stood before Bror – and she knew that she had become a travesty of the woman he had married. ‘Help me, then.’

Bror picked up his hat and turned it round between his fingers. Outside, in the quad, a clock struck the hour.