Last Man to Die (15 page)

Her brow furrowed. ‘The most difficult question of all. That’s just what Uncle Billy’s been bellyaching about. And I can’t say I’ve got much of an answer.’ Self-consciously she twisted the bracelet on her wrist. ‘They say that one of you killed an old woman – but I don’t believe half of what they print in their newspapers,’ she said, hurrying on. ‘You looked so pathetic in the pub, starving and wet, and that always appeals to an Irish girl’s heart. Then I
had to make up my mind – you or those bloody bobbies. Not much of a choice, really. You could be Attila the Hun for all I care, you’d still be preferable to those black-hearted bastards. Anyway, you’ve lovely eyes. They sort of glow. Like my brother’s.’

‘Patrick?’

‘How do you know?’ she shot back, suspicion creeping into her voice.

‘The pub. You were talking about him in the pub. And Donegal. And home.’

‘We thought you were asleep. So you were eavesdropping?’

‘No. Just identifying with someone who wanted so much to be home.’

There was an uneasy silence. The conversation had become very personal, and here she was sitting on a bed swapping intimacies with a stranger.

‘How long will it be before we can get to Ireland?’ he asked.

‘Depends. Our group’s been in hibernation since the war began; for some while your lot was doing a much better job of getting at the British than we could ever hope to do. So it may take us a few days to get hold of the right people. With luck less than a week.’

‘How?’

‘I can’t tell you.’

‘Secret?’

‘Not really. It just depends who we can find at a moment’s notice after five years. We’ll have to blow away a few cobwebs.’

‘I don’t get it. Five years … you must have been still in school.’

A flush of embarrassment came to her cheeks.

‘How many men have you smuggled out?’ he
demanded, but her only answer was downcast eyes. ‘Don’t tell me I’m your first?’ He couldn’t disguise his incredulity.

‘My family’s been part of the struggle all my life,’ she said fiercely, fighting against her own awkwardness. ‘I was there when they arrested my brother and locked him away. I sat holding my father’s hand on the night before they killed him. Three Orangemen who found him in an alleyway, called him the father of a Republican pig and shot him where he stood. Not even executed him. They blew his kneecaps away first, then put two into his guts so that he would die, but not too quickly. They made sure he’d suffer first. And made sure my mother would suffer, every day and every night for the rest of her life. Mr Hencke, I know as much about this business as I need to!’

There were no tears but she was shaking all over. Hencke reached out and held her hand to stop it trembling. ‘I’ve already seen what you can do, Sinead No-Name. Believe me, I’ve got no reason to complain. I know. I was there, remember?’ His words thawed through her blushes. Anyway, where else did he have to go? ‘Do your best, that’s all I ask.’

Her best, two nights later, proved to be a dilapidated truck carrying sacks of vegetables and empty fish crates to Liverpool. The sacks gave reasonable cover behind which to hide from prying eyes, the sour smell of fish offering added discouragement to anyone venturing too far into the entrails of the load. But for Sinead and Hencke, hiding in a small compartment crafted out of crates and sacks deep inside the lorry, it meant a night of bone-bruising discomfort. Their hiding place was claustrophobic and dark, and every jolt of the old axles seemed to
transmit itself directly through the hard wooden floorboards in spite of the small mattress thrown on the floor. They lay on the mattress, trying to brace themselves against the incessant jarring as they drove through the outskirts of London on to the main Liverpool road. The noise and discomfort made conversation difficult and the enforced intimacy left them both feeling awkward, so they settled back as best they could, bathed in the glow of a flashlight which gave their faces a ghoulish, melodramatic cast.

They were making steady progress north on the A5 through the suburbs of Birmingham when they hit the potholes. They were driving along a stretch of road which had received attention from a Focke Wolf’s bombload in the early part of the war. The surface damage had long since been repaired, but underneath, the Victorian sewers had leaked and grumbled and groaned and, finally, had collapsed. The lorry’s front wheel sank into a deep hole, the steering wheel spun from the driver’s hands and the vehicle was sent skidding across the road before coming to rest, front wing buckled, against a brick wall. From their hiding place they heard one burst of profanity from the driver before other voices crowded round. This was not the first vehicle to come to grief that night on this stretch of road, and with the wartime spirit of camaraderie abounding there were plenty of voices to offer consolation and many hands to help. The tyre had punctured; it would have to be replaced and the crumpled front wing bent out. ‘Should only take us twenty minutes,’ they heard one cheerful voice saying.

They were still feeling their bruises when someone climbed into the back, flashing a torch around
in search of the spare wheel. ‘I’ll do it!’ the driver exclaimed, an edge of panic in his words, but already it was too late. While Hencke froze, the girl wriggled as close to him as possible, trying to burrow into his overcoat and make their profile as anonymous as one of the sacks of vegetables. Moments later the beam of a powerful torch began to probe around them, licking like a lizard’s tongue into the corners, bouncing off sacks and trying to peek through the gaps between the fish crates. She squeezed ever more tightly into his body as the light swam around and above them, her body taut, holding her breath, feeling her heart beating like a tattoo against his chest. Then the light disappeared. The tyre had been located; their hiding place had worked.

The repairs, as the helpful stranger had predicted, did not take long. Soon the lorry was ready to proceed, but there were new agonies as they heard the muffled sound of not one but three men climbing back into the cab. God, surely the driver wasn’t offering lifts! It was not until much later they discovered that two soldiers on leave had asked to be taken on to Liverpool and the driver, anxious not to create suspicion by refusing, had been forced to agree.

It was as the lorry was drawing away that they became aware of a more subtle predicament. The load had shifted. Only a little, but as they relaxed their grip on each other and tried to regain their original positions on the mattress they discovered there was no room left. They were stuck, face to face, unable to move because of the load and unable to talk or call for help because of the presence of strangers just feet away. Even the flashlight was too great a risk, so they continued on in darkness, every
muscle tensed, their only means of communication being through the touch of their bodies. They were so close she could feel every part of him – the bristles on his chin and neck, the muscles on his sinewy shoulders, the heaving of his chest as he breathed, even the sharpness of his buttons and the bulge of the child’s toy stuffed inside his shirt. Their enforced intimacy had caused his legs to entwine involuntarily with hers, his breath wafted through her hair and down the back of her neck. Every move of their bodies, every bounce of the truck, brought them into fresh contact, and she knew there was no part of her own body which he couldn’t feel or sense. They were close enough to smell each other. She might have expected him to be frozen with embarrassment; she wouldn’t have been astonished had he become aroused and immensely masculine, but all she could sense was self-control. His body was there, beside her and upon her with a muscular thigh stuck between her own, but it was as if he were merely an observer, treating her body with the curiosity characteristic of a surgeon, or a sommelier examining a wine with a sense of professional detachment without any intention of drinking. She tried to wriggle to get herself more comfortable, to let him know she didn’t mind. Several of the boys she knew would have given anything – and had frequently promised to do so – for the chance of being in contact with her like this. But Hencke, as she already knew, was different from other men. He offered no response. He seemed to have built a protective shell around himself and he wasn’t going to break it open for any young girl in the back of a lorry.

They lay like this for another hour, he silent, she lost in the tingling of her senses, before the lorry
stopped again to disgorge its unwanted guests. A few minutes later they reached their destination in a quiet siding where the driver was able to remove the press of sacks and crates to release them. As Sinead clambered down she was trembling. From stiffness. From the excitement which the warmth and pressure of his body had aroused within her, and the feelings of guilt which that had caused. From curiosity about this strange man. And, even more, from curiosity about herself.

‘Say, Beetle! Where’s the place we liberated, the one with all those salt mines stuffed full of booty?’

Lieutenant General Bedell Smith entered Eisenhower’s room with as much haste as the dignity of his rank would allow. ‘D’you mean the place near Merkers? The Third Reich seems to have been using it as a bank vault. Not only crates of gold and silver plate but there’s also a collection of art looted from all over Europe. Half the Louvre seems to be there in wooden packing cases; we’re already getting telegrams by the hour from de Gaulle claiming most of it. Then there’s at least two huge halls full of nothing but bank notes. Don’t know yet whether they’re duds or the real McCoy …’

‘Yeah, but wasn’t there a mountain of wine crates – claret, brandy, that sort of thing?’

Bedell Smith checked his list. ‘Right. Historic vintages mostly, intended for Goering, so the locals are saying. We also found a whole batch of papers which we thought might be vital to the war effort. Just got the translations in. You want to hear? – “The delicate smell of the fruit is just slightly obscured by the nutty transformation of the oak tannins … the length and elegance of these delicious cognacs compare
so favourably with the pretty Parisian girls …” Turns out the friggin’ things were some vintner’s tasting notes.’

‘OK, OK. Get a crate of the brandy. Send it to Mr Churchill with my compliments and some sort of message about it being from one Napoleon to another. You know the kind of thing. To get back on track with him.’

‘Good idea. There’s lots of it. One crate enough?’

‘I want to show there are no hard feelings, Beetle. Not suggest I’m in love with him. For Chrissake the idea’s to keep him quiet, not to give him any encouragement. Anyway, the old bastard drinks too much as it is. Wouldn’t want him getting carried away and coming up with any more of his bright ideas. Would we?’

The lieutenant general winked mischievously, offered a smart salute and hurried on his way.

Liverpool tasted different. Instead of London’s choking fog there was the sharp tang of salt air, with many fewer military vehicles roaring down the streets throwing diesel fumes at him. People on the streets hurried along, keeping their heads low, bending into the breeze that blew off the Irish Sea, the distant echo of a railway station ringing in their ears. A cinema was turning out its patrons after the last show, nearly catching Hencke and the girl in the rush. ‘Trampled to death by Noël Coward. My father would never forgive me!’ Sinead had joked before she remembered that she probably shouldn’t joke about her father, her mother would not approve.

It was a long walk before they entered a cul-de-sac, at the head of which stood a tall, imposing house of four floors, in darkness except for a porch lamp making circles of light in the stiff breeze. They stopped under a tree, like any courting couple in no hurry to find their way home, while Sinead made a careful inspection of the house and its surrounds. She was uneasy, something was not right and they moved on, back to the streets, taking a cup of tea at a late-night canteen near the docks, never lingering too long in one place, anxious to avoid enquiring eyes, shivering as the damp sea air turned colder with the night, tripping over dustbins and piles of rubbish in dark alleyways which served as homes to
bad-tempered cats. Hencke was wrung out from the ceaseless walking but it was not until the first hint of dawn that they were back in the cul-de-sac facing the tall house. This time, after a brief inspection, Sinead seemed to have found what she was looking for and hurried him towards the door. Someone opened it without her knocking.

The someone turned out to be a tall and exceedingly handsome woman in her late forties, perhaps past her prime but with much femininity still and great, possibly excessive care taken about her appearance. She closed the door quickly behind them while Hencke blinked in the blaze of light which lit the interior. As he looked around he could not hide his astonishment. There were other, younger women standing to the sides of the large hallway. He blinked again to make certain but there was no mistake. He hadn’t been told, and in a thousand lifetimes would never have guessed.

‘Well, I’ll be …’

‘Later, dearie. Anything’s possible if you behave yourself, but for the moment let’s get you safely tucked up out of the way,’ the woman responded.

‘A brothel …?’

‘Where else would a good Catholic girl take a man like you,’ Sinead chuckled mischievously. ‘But there’s no time for gawking. Come on with you.’

The house was quiet but not asleep, as if pausing to catch its breath before the night shift clocked off. Sinead led him past a broad, gilded staircase which swept to the upper floors, past chaise-longues tastefully covered with brightly patterned upholstery and adorned with women in even more brightly patterned costumes which decorated without denying
what lay underneath. None of them looked up or appeared to take any notice, burying themselves in magazines or relaxing with cigarettes which protruded from extravagant holders. Everything glittered without being truly gaudy, was orderly, in its carefully chosen place, and there was little room for doubt that the madame ruled with an iron fist inside her elbow-length satin gloves.

He was hustled through a down-to-earth kitchen where a pot of coffee bubbled away on the stove and one counter stood crammed with bottles of varied colours and kicks, then up bare wooden stairs which in earlier times servants had used to clamber from the scullery to their attic rooms without disturbing the family, until eventually he was led through a brightly lit corridor and into a room where the door was locked securely behind them.

Sinead waved her hand to pre-empt the inevitable flood of questions. ‘Before you start, you’ve got to believe me. This is the safest place in Liverpool for you.’

‘A brothel?’

‘This is a high-class establishment, the best there is. And the finest safe house on the road back to Ireland. The British would never raid it; they’d be terrified of how many chief inspectors and judges they’d unearth.’

A look of amusement crinkled the edges of his eyes and for the first time since they had met she thought he was smiling, although it was difficult to tell. The scar on his upper lip twitched occasionally, yet she could never be sure.

‘And a wonderful place, no doubt, for picking up all kinds of useful information across the pillows,’ he suggested.

‘But you catch on fast, Peter Hencke. And, my God, you seem to recover fast, too!’

Hencke had walked over to a small table laden with two plates, food and drink, and was already ripping and chewing his way through a cold pork chop. In a stride she was beside him, snatching hungrily at her own meal. The food was like nothing either of them had eaten for months. Pork chop, cheese, chicken, butter, even fresh fruit, nothing which could be found off-ration, a feast which could only have been obtained at considerable expense under the counters and behind the curtains of the black market. They tore at it.

‘They seem to like you here,’ he spluttered through a slice of chocolate cake.

‘The woman at the door, she’s my father’s second cousin,’ she replied with a mouth equally full. ‘I told you. This is a family affair.’

They were smiling at each other across the mouthfuls of food. They couldn’t easily sit down – there was only the large brass bed – so they stood and stuffed until, overcome by the delight of rare indulgence, they had entered a race to see which of them could finish first. She won, by a short biscuit.

‘You bastard. You let me win,’ she accused him gaily.

‘Nothing so gallant,’ he shook his head. ‘Do you realize I’ve just eaten the equivalent of a month’s rations in the prison camp? I think I may be sick.’ As if to give weight to his words, he stretched out unsteadily and sank on to the bed. For the first time since their departure from London she looked at him closely. He was exhausted. The lean face had grown gaunt, the cheeks hollowed, the scar about his mouth carved more deeply into his skin. His eyes
had sunk into dark pockets, yet they still held that glow of defiance which so intrigued her. Once again she wondered what drove him onwards while so many others had given in.

‘Here. For medicinal purposes.’ She uncorked a bottle of scotch and handed him a large slug in a tall tumbler, but even as she reached across to him she saw he was already asleep. ‘The first friendly bed you’ve slept in for a long time, Peter Hencke. Enjoy it.’ She sat on the end of the mattress, looking at him.

When he awoke it was dark still – no, that couldn’t be, it had been dawn when they arrived. Had he slept the entire day? The only door in the room apart from the entrance had been left open, leading to an extravagantly decorated bathroom full of mirrors and tiles and polished brass, with a pile of fresh cotton towels at the foot of an ornate cast-iron bath. The water was hot, and soon he was soaking up to his neck, having laced the water with scented salts he found in a glass jar. He tried to remember the last time he’d had a bath. He couldn’t. Then he felt a cool draught across his chest and arms as the outer door opened and someone entered the bedroom.

‘By the sounds of all that splashing I suppose it’s a silly question to ask if you’re dressed yet? Do you know that war-time regulations allow us only a couple of bucketfuls of water in the bath? You’d best be careful. Be pathetic if someone turned you in for a criminal waste of water.’

‘At the moment they would certainly find me unable to put up a great deal of resistance.’

‘Then you’d better make yourself presentable. There’s a robe hanging from the back of the door.
Throw me your clothes; I’ll get them cleaned.’

In a minute he was out, towelling his hair until it was again dark and sleek, trying to make himself look respectable in a cotton robe which was pink and too short and which exposed the smooth, hairless skin of his chest. She tried hard not to stare.

‘Good morning. Or is it?’ he enquired.

‘It’s eight p.m. You’ve been asleep fourteen hours.’

‘Tell me, how much longer will I be here? I hate to complain, I suppose it’s every man’s dream to be locked inside a brothel, but after the prison camp I can do without being locked up anywhere.’

‘Can’t tell, maybe not long. But Aunt Mary …’ She twiddled her fingers nervously, not wishing to look at him. ‘She said she’d like to help. Not personally, of course, but …’ The young girl inside her was babbling a little. ‘She said she’d be happy – you know – to send along one of the girls. On the house, so to speak.’

At last it was blurted out and he began to laugh. ‘That’s … very nice of your Aunt Mary but …’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t think so.’

She blushed. ‘A man of principle, Peter Hencke?’

‘No, Sinead. Don’t make me what I’m not.’

He could sense her relief and thought he understood. He was hers. This was a great adventure for her and he, or at least his safety, was her prize. The stories that would be told by her friends and family for a long time to come would be her stories, no one else’s. She didn’t want some tarted-up part-time hooker spoiling it with tales about him she couldn’t possibly hope to match. He smiled at her secret, happy to play along.

‘Don’t you know that Nazis are supposed to drink babies’ blood and screw nothing but young virgins?’

‘What! And go to bed only with teddy bears?’ she chuckled. ‘What sort of Nazi are you, Peter Hencke, sat here wearing a fluffy pink dressing-gown and nothing else beyond a smile?’

They both began to laugh, from relief, from the bond of growing friendship and shared secrets, from the fact that neither had found much to laugh about for so long, until they both collapsed on the bed, sobbing with the effort.

They were still laughing when they heard the commotion downstairs. The banging of doors. The raised voices. Feminine screams of surprise mixed with male shouts of authority.

‘Holy Mother, it can’t be! A raid?’ she gasped.

‘I thought you said the British …’

‘They never have …’

The door was flung open. One of the girls stood panting, her ample chest heaving beneath a flimsy covering of lace. ‘American MPs! Looking for one of their sodding sergeants,’ she shouted before disappearing to warn others.

Hencke’s eyes searched desperately around the room, for a way out, a means of escape. He didn’t need to say anything.

She shook her head, her face pale. ‘There’s nowhere to run, Peter.’

‘Then I am lost.’

She bit into her lower lip. ‘I won’t have it. No!’ In one action she kicked off her shoes and scrabbled at her sweater, tugging at it until she popped out. ‘We’ve maybe one chance.’ The zip was undone, the skirt already falling to the floor, with the petticoat following. ‘You’re not American. You’re a civilian having some fun in a brothel.’ Stockings, suspenders. ‘If they believe that, maybe they’ll
leave us alone.’ She tore at the straps of her bra with a ferocity which caused something to give. Then it was her knickers and she was standing there naked, glowing. ‘So pull your bloody finger out and get into bed!’

She had rushed across and was leaning over him, pulling at the robe, when the door burst open once again. The form of a young military policeman filled the doorway, all metal helmet, armband, white webbing, razor-sharp creases and polished boots. He had a night-stick in his hands and a nervous tic around his left eye, which was trained on Sinead and had to be torn away before finally settling on Hencke. The soldier took one step into the room.

‘So, what’s going on here?’ His voice was youthful, light on the authority of age and experience and lacking totally in any sense of occasion.

Before he could move further than a pace Sinead was in front of him, blocking his path, hands on the curve of her naked hips, her full breasts wobbling with indignation as she faced up to him.

‘What’s the matter with you stupid Yanks? Never seen a woman getting laid before? If you’re here for lessons you’ll have to wait your turn like all the rest. In the meantime just bugger off and let a girl get on with a night’s work!’

The tic around the MP’s eye seemed to double in intensity and he made no attempt to move further into the room, which he could only have done by touching Sinead. He seemed embarrassed to be confronted by a woman, stark naked and a good twelve inches shorter than himself. It hadn’t ever happened to him before. Not a completely naked woman, not under any circumstances. Never.

‘Christ, Peterson,’ a voice called from down the
corridor. ‘What the devil are you up to? Is he goddamned there or not?’

The soldier looked up nervously from his inspection of her bright red nipples and glanced again towards Hencke, studying him for a fraction of a second before looking back down at Sinead and her nakedness.

‘Er … no, Sarge! Not in here.’

‘Are you certain, asshole?’

The MP was looking distinctly uneasy and beginning to sweat. Sinead, confusing him by switching her tactics, had hold of his night-stick and was stroking it tantalizingly between her breasts.

‘Come back later, soldier, when I’m through with this one. Let’s have some fun,’ she whispered.

He shot another nervous glance in Hencke’s direction, comparing his profile to the description of the errant soldier they were seeking. There was real anguish in his eyes. He was mortified while he looked at Sinead, yet he couldn’t bear to take his eyes off her. ‘No, definitely not here, Sergeant,’ he croaked.