Tamar (45 page)

The past is a dark house, and we have only torches with dying batteries. It’s probably best not to spend too much time in there in case the rotten floor gives way beneath our feet, like it did for Dad. Like it nearly did for me.

Yoyo said to me recently, “Love and pain, that’s what families are, and they fit together like this” — he slotted the tips of our fingers together — “like cogs.” Then he smiled and put a hand on my swollen belly. “And what makes these cogs turn is hope, of course.”

“Or ignorance,” I said.

He thought about it. “Yes, or ignorance. But hope is more reliable.”

The sun has left our street now, but the late day is still warm. Through the open window I can hear, faintly, the guides’ commentaries from the tourist boats gliding along the Prinsengracht. They’ll have left the Anne Frank House behind them, and now the passengers will be aiming their cameras at the giant gaudy crown perched on the spire of the Westerkerk. Soon Yoyo will be home, and because it’s my birthday we’ll go out for something to eat. We’ll probably end up at the usual place. It’s just ten minutes away, and I can’t walk much farther than that now that the Lump has got so heavy. That’s what he calls it. It’s what he’ll say as soon as he’s come in and kissed me: “How is the Lump today?”

We’ve still not decided what to call it if it’s a boy. If it’s a girl — and for some reason I’m sure it is — she’ll be Marijke. That’s something we agreed on from the start.

In part,
Tamar
is a historical novel, a mix of fact and fiction. Real events gave me the bones of the story, but I’ve taken liberties with them. For example, it is true that SS Lieutenant General Hanns Albin Rauter was ambushed on a country road on the night of 6th March 1945, but not by a group of men led by Koop de Vries; they exist only in the pages of this book. Likewise, you’ll not find Mendlo or Sanctuary Farm on any real map.

I gathered the facts and assembled the skeleton of the story from a number of sources. Four books were especially helpful:
The Hunger Winter: Occupied Holland, 1944–45
by Henri A. van der Zee;
The SOE in the Low Countries
by M. R. D. Foot;
Secret Warfare
by Pierre Lorain; and
Between Silk and Cyanide: A Codemaker’s War, 1941–1945
by Leo Marks. I based the account of Rauter’s shooting and its terrible aftermath on an article by Karel Margry in volume 56 of
After the Battle
.

I am extremely grateful to the kind (and bilingual) staff of the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation in Amsterdam; they even allowed me to work there when it was supposed to be closed.

I have an enormous and now unrepayable debt to Paul Peters, whose account of his experiences as an SOE wireless operator in occupied Holland urged me to write this novel. Not long before he died, I sat with him and his wife, Marijke, in their garden in Laren, Holland, and we discussed such merry topics as handguns, hunger, amphetamine dependence, suitcase transceivers, code silks, and suicide pills, Marijke, shared her still-vivid memories of being a teenage “hunger tripper.” At one point I asked Paul what it had felt like, being “underground,” living in dread of raids and Nazi detector cars. It was a stupid question, I suppose, but he considered it carefully (like a squirrel looking for the best way into a nut) and eventually said, “Boring.” It was the most interesting use of the word I’d ever heard, and it gave me my way into the story.

My editor at Walker Books is Averil Whitehouse. For her creativity, diligence, and patience, no expression of thanks could be adequate. After working with me, it’s a miracle that she’s not trapping clouds with her feet or chatting to invisible angels.

Finally, an apology, if you happen to be Dutch. I’ve used the terms
Holland
and
the Netherlands
as though they mean the same thing. That’s wrong, but it’s what we British do, and I couldn’t find a convenient place in the story to explain the difference.

Mal Peet
is the author of several books for young adults, including
Keeper,
an American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults. About
Tamar,
he says, “I belong to a generation whose fathers were soldiers, sailors, or airmen during the Second World War. Some of these men were willing to talk about their experiences; some were not. My own father wasn’t. (Or perhaps I didn’t want to listen.) A friend of mine had a father whose wartime experiences were actually secret. He worked underground for the British secret services in Nazi-occupied Holland. He still had his silks, the sheets of code used for his radio transmissions. These scraps of fabric were my starting point for
Tamar
. It’s a story about secrets, lies, false identities, and coded messages. It’s also, I hope, a plea for forgiveness.” Mal Peet lives in Devon, England.