Postcards From No Man's Land (30 page)

Often too, and more and more often as the days went by, we heard fighter planes—Spitfires and Hurricanes, Jacob said—roaring low overhead. If they spotted a German vehicle, or indeed anything that might belong to the enemy, they strafed it with gunfire. We saw this happen to vehicles on the main road three or four times, wrecking the vehicle and spilling its occupants, dead or wounded, onto the road. Each time we went out and waved and cheered as if the carnage were points scored in a game. And each time we left the wreckage and its dead or wounded occupants where they were. ‘Let them rot in their own filth,’ Mr Wesseling
said, and spat, before he returned to work. If the Germans had not come along and cleared things away before nightfall, the Resistance would be there in the dark, picking over the remains for anything useful.

It was the strangest of strange times. During the day, the endless hard work of the house and farm, the worries about the war, the effort to keep my relationship with Mr and Mrs Wesseling happy. In the evening and at night in the hiding place with Jacob, the passion and tenderness of our love-making, the fun of our private talk and jokes, the consolation, the fantasy of our future together, the refreshment of the things we read and recited to each other from Sam’s book (the only one we had in English).

Mostly while Jacob read to me or while we talked I would sew. Sewing! How much of it we did, we women, in those days. Darning the men’s socks, making underwear and our dresses, turning sheets sides to middle to prolong their life, making and remaking cushions and curtains, tablecloths and chair covers, repairing tears in the men’s work clothes, making new collars for their shirts from the shirt tails. On and on, an endless task. No one does this now. It was a chore, but in those long evenings with no such diversions as television or videos or CD music or computer games or even radio during the war, sewing was a restful, relaxing activity. While the hands and eyes were busy with gentle skill and a routine task the mind and tongue could wander freely. And, we were always told, the devil finds work for idle hands (another familiar saying). Not to be busy with such necessary work was regarded as all but a sin, and sewing was the least tedious task for the quiet hours. Besides, it encouraged the
gezelligheid
.

Gezellig
. I do not know how to put this in English. It is such a particularly Dutch quality, something deep in our culture and our national consciousness. My dictionary offers words like ‘cosy, companionable, sociable,
togetherness’. But
gezellig
means very much more to us than these suggest. Less nowadays, perhaps, than in my youth. Then it was almost sacred. Anyone who disturbed the
gezellig
had committed a social crime. For sure, these times with Jacob possessed for me a special kind of
gezellig
.

When he was not reading to me, we talked of books we loved. Jacob told me of English writers and books I had never heard of but which, after the war, I found and read for myself. And I told him of our Dutch writers I admired most. We sang to each other the popular songs we knew. He told me of his life in England, of his job as an electrician, of his liking for cricket, a game I had never seen and which he tried to explain without any success; it still baffles me. I told him how I thought of becoming a teacher, like my mother. And about my friends, and stories of my growing up. And so the hours went by. Though best of all I loved the hours in bed together.

Away from him, outside the hiding place, it was hard to avoid the realities. The endless grind of house- and farm-work, the stress of dealing with begging visitors, the brutality of the war, and the nagging fear that we might be raided, Jacob found and all of us arrested. The exhaustion of it! The clash of emotions warring inside me. The worries and feelings of guilt that I pushed down in to the deepest recesses of my being, hiding them from myself.

The only way I got through, the only way I survived, was by living moment to moment, second by second of the day and the night. There was only now. This instant. Allowing nothing else. No memories. No thoughts of tomorrow. Away from Jacob, I locked myself inside myself, threw myself into the work to be done so that the time away from him would pass as quickly as possible and whatever happened would affect me as little as possible. Then, back with him in the hiding place, I unlocked myself, opened to him, concentrated only on him, poured myself into him. There is
no other way I know how to put it than to say: He was the whole world to me.

The strangest time, the most intense I have ever known. How could my time with Jacob ever be surpassed? Ever equalled? And life being what it is, how could it last?

Of course, it did not.

The end came on the first bright sunny day for two or three weeks. One of those nostalgic days in winter that are a memory of summer gone and a foretaste of summer to come. It reminded me of the Sunday morning in September when I saw parachutes filling the sky as I cycled home from the farm. How long ago it seemed, how different a person I was now from the girl who raced home calling out to herself, ‘Free, free!’

It was such a lovely day, calm and mild, that in the morning I hung out some bed sheets to dry in the garden. It would be so nice to smell fresh air in them when we went to bed, instead of the heavy hay-smell of the barn where we usually dried them in winter time. Just before sunset, I went to take them in. Mrs Wesseling was playing the harmonium in the room which looked out onto the garden. She had opened the window, as we had opened all the windows of the house that day to air the rooms. She was still at the stage of teaching herself again, after the intervening years when she had not played, by using the lessons she had learned as a child. I cannot forget the little piece she was practising that afternoon, a simple waltz by Becucci. The music spilled around me as I took in the sheets and folded them. I had been with Jacob after the mid-day meal. He was urgent that day, full of desire, and I was still hot from the pleasure of it. He had worked so hard at getting himself fit, his wound was healing well, he was walking almost normally again, and he was becoming very strong. I remember feeling weak with happiness and impatient for night to come so that we could be together again.

Occupied with myself, I did not hear him come up behind me. Only knew he was there when he put his arms round my waist and hugged me to him. I let out a little scream of surprise and dropped the sheet I was folding.

‘What are you doing!’ I said. ‘You shouldn’t be out here like this. It’s dangerous.’ He was kissing the back of my neck and chuckling. ‘What if Mrs Wesseling should see?’

But it was no use. I did not even try to break away.

‘She won’t see,’ he said in to my ear, ‘she’s too busy looking at the music.’

He turned me to him, his arms round my waist, his hands on my bottom, pressing me to him, my arms round his neck, my hands holding his head. I felt him growing against me.

‘You are insatiable!’ I said, laughing. A word he had taught me, joking at me.

‘Let’s do it now,’ he said, ‘in the open air, right here in the garden on your clean sheets. Wouldn’t that be just dandy?’

‘Wonderful,’ I said. ‘One day.’

He said nothing for a little while. His eyes gazed at me, those dark eyes that were the first of him I ever saw and fell in love with at once. He was not laughing or joking any more.

Then he said, ‘Let’s dance.’

And we did. In small steps to the slow time of Mrs Wesseling’s rusty fingers. Hardly moving, in fact, our feet were so clogged in the winter earth. But the rhythm of our bodies loving each other.

We circled on the spot like this. Slowly. So slowly! I remember the sun twice blinding his head in its halo. We had not turned full circle again when Jacob suddenly stopped and took a step back. An awful rigid robot step. This I felt. What I saw was his eyes. I had not taken mine from his since he had turned me to face him. Now, in the
instant of his sudden stop, the life left them. He had gone from them. I heard myself say, ‘Jacob?’ But he gave no answer. And then he collapsed. Fell to the ground as if struck by a blow.

I have always consoled myself with the thought that at least his death was quick, and that if he suffered at all it was for the briefest moment. I cannot wish better for anyone.

Of myself, I can only say that part of me died that day too. My cries brought Mrs Wesseling running from the house and Mr Wesseling soon after. They tried to revive Jacob, but only because of the human instinct to keep life going at any cost and to prove to each other that we did everything we could before giving up. It was obvious at once to each of us that he was dead.

When that was done we covered Jacob with a sheet, and carried him in to the house. Inside, we laid him on the kitchen table. To struggle up to a bedroom with him was unthinkable. We stood round the table staring at his shrouded body.

‘What can have happened?’ said Mrs Wesseling.

‘It must have been a heart attack,’ said Mr Wesseling. ‘What do we do now?’

I could say nothing. But suddenly began to tremble as if my body was shaking itself to pieces. Mrs Wesseling took me to a chair and sat me down by the fire, then brought a shawl and draped it round me.

‘Hot coffee,’ she said to Mr Wesseling, ‘with plenty of honey. For the three of us.’

When it came I could not hold the cup. Mrs Wesseling had to feed the coffee to me with a spoon.

‘We should fetch the doctor,’ Mr Wesseling said.

‘Why?’ said Mrs Wesseling. ‘What can he do?’

‘A priest then. To bury him.’

‘We don’t know his religion,’ Mrs Wesseling said. ‘And
who dare we trust?’

‘Then what are we to do?’

‘Bury him. What else can we do?’

‘Where?’

‘I don’t know. A corner of the garden.’

I heard all this, but as meaningless noise, like people talking in a foreign language. Nor was I thinking anything. My mind had shut off. I was conscious only of Jacob’s shrouded body from which I could not take my eyes.

The Wesselings fell silent. Mrs Wesseling fed me the coffee spoonful by spoonful. I remember the tick of the
staande klok
, so loud it seemed to fill the room.

After a while, when the shakes had subsided, Mrs Wesseling said to me, ‘You can’t sit here like this. It isn’t good. Come to your room. We’ll see to everything.’

It was as if she had injected some fortifying drug, for instantly all of me seemed to come into focus, so to speak.

‘No, no,’ I said, straightening in the chair. ‘No. We’ve been together through everything. I’ve looked after him since they brought him in to our cellar. I must look after him now.’

‘But, Geertrui,’ Mr Wesseling said, ‘Jacob is dead.’ He said this as if he thought it would be news to me.

I remember smiling at him and saying with a calmness that pleased me, ‘Yes. I know. And I know we must bury him. And I know we must do it ourselves. I’ll prepare him. Would you be kind enough to dig a grave? We should do it as soon as we can, don’t you agree?’

When I think of it now, I’m surprised that the Wesselings accepted what this nineteen-year-old suggested without any discussion. During the next few hours Mr Wesseling made a coffin. It was no more than an oblong box, constructed of planks of wood nailed together, which he lined with tarpaulin.

While he was busy Mrs Wesseling helped me prepare
Jacob’s body. We undressed and washed him. Then dressed him again in underwear, a white shirt, black trousers and a pair of black socks, everything as new as Mrs Wesseling could find. When we had done this we tidied the room, draped the table on which he lay with red velvet, and placed six white candles in tall freshly polished brass holders, three on each side of Jacob’s body. We extinguished the other lights and stopped the
staande klok
precisely at midnight.

After that I collected Jacob’s few personal belongings, along with his soldier’s identity disk, and put them in a flour tin, which we hid in the bottom of Mrs Wesseling’s linen cupboard, hoping it would survive any visits from raiding Germans so that I could send Jacob’s possessions to his family after the war. Which is what I did. For myself, I kept only the paratroopers’ insignia from his battle dress and a keepsake which I will tell about later.

When nothing more could be done, I persuaded the Wesselings to go to bed. For the rest of the night I kept vigil at Jacob’s side. In that time I read aloud our favourite poems from Sam’s book. And wept.

As soon as there was enough light to work by, Mr Wesseling went straight out in to the vegetable garden, where he began to dig a grave in the furthest corner. It took him three hours to dig deep enough to be safe. All the time Mrs Wesseling kept watch for anyone approaching the house.

When the grave was ready, Mr Wesseling brought the coffin on a handcart to the door. He and I carried it in to the room and placed it on the floor by the table. Mrs Wesseling and her husband lifted my love, my lover in to the coffin. I put one of Mr Wesseling’s air-tight tobacco tins by his side. In it was a piece of card on which I had written Jacob’s name, his date of death, and a brief summary of the circumstances. A precaution, in case something should happen to the three of us before we were liberated and one day someone found the grave.

Mr Wesseling had made sure that enough of the tarpaulin was left to cover Jacob’s body.

Then came the most wrenching moment. Mr Wesseling closed the coffin and nailed the lid down.

That done, we stood in silence, the others feeling, I’m sure, as I did, that there was something more we should do, something we should say. How could this bleak moment be the end? After surviving the battle and his wounds and the journey to the farm and the raids by the Germans, after working so hard to get him well again, after our loving time together, how could it end as it did? How could life be so unfair?

‘We must get on,’ Mr Wesseling said quietly. ‘There’s no time.’

We carried the coffin to the handcart, Mr Wesseling at the head, his wife and I at the foot. And then a short procession from the house to the corner of the garden, Mr Wesseling pushing the bier. I did not care whether we were raided now or not. Let them come. Let them take me. Let them do what they liked. Let them kill me. What did I care about life now that Jacob was gone. Dead. I made myself say the word to myself. Dead. As we walked to the grave I wanted to be dead with him.