Wartime Wife (37 page)

He left the barracks to the sound of ribald laughter and managed to keep a smirk on his face until he was beyond them and could concentrate on his true intention.

Bronica lived in a one-bedroomed flat above a tobacconist on a road off the Wilhemstrasse. It was at the very top of three flights of stairs, yet he took them easily, driven by a mix of exhilaration and fear at the prospect of what he was about to do.

She answered the door, smoking from a cigarette holder held delicately between painted fingernails and dressed in a satin robe that left him in no doubt that she was naked underneath.

He dragged his gaze away from the prominent nipples thrusting like buttons against the satin.

‘Did you get them?’

She stepped back and let him in, closing the door behind her, and nodded at a brown parcel sitting on the sofa.

She tilted her head to one side and a cloud of red hair fell over one shoulder. ‘I did. Why do you want a load of smelly clothes?’

He sensed her disquiet. It occurred to him that he should not tell her why he had given her money to buy civilian clothes – old civilian clothes – but hell, they’d gone to bed together. Surely that meant he could trust her?

Love is blind, so they say, and he’d purposely blinded himself to her easygoing sexuality. Bronica slept with anyone she fancied and even though she’d whispered that she loved only him, there was no guarantee that she didn’t whisper the same to any man who gave her pleasure.

All the same, he ignored his head and followed his heart – or more likely, his loins.

He began unbuttoning his uniform. ‘I’m leaving.’

She gave a little gasp and her eyebrows arched above the pencil lines she favoured. ‘You’re deserting?’

He nodded as he sorted through the clothes: a shirt, a black jacket and dark-blue trousers, a brown hat and matching shoes. The shoes were scuffed, the trousers shiny at the knees.

‘Call it that if you like.’

‘But why? You were so proud of your uniform.’

He could hear the shock in her voice, but still chose to trust her.

‘The other night – it wasn’t the first time I’ve witnessed such brutality, but never as bad as that. I want no part of it. It sickens me.’

She eyed him through a cloud of smoke, a slight frown wrinkling her brow. ‘But you’re a soldier. Soldiers are brutes by nature.’

Throwing his army shirt to one side, he turned to her, his eyes blazing with intent.

‘A soldier’s duty is to fight for his country. To my mind,
that means fighting other soldiers, not this … this … torture of innocent people. Didn’t you see what they did? They intimidated; they instilled such terror that the victims actually had no way out but to do what they ordered. Both men were soaked in blood. One of them died there on the pavement. Tell me, Bronica, what sort of victory is that?’ He shook his head and reached for the second-hand shirt. Ignoring the smell of camphor, he slipped one arm into the sleeve.

There was a moment’s hesitation, a stiffening of expression before she seemed to relent and ooze sympathy.

‘My poor, poor, boy,’ she cooed, stroking his arm and gazing up at him with her cool, green eyes. ‘Are you going to leave me without saying goodbye properly?’

His breath caught in his throat when he looked at her, because in looking he relived every sexual encounter they’d ever had. She was desirable, and he knew what kind of goodbye she referred to.

He was totally lost. ‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’

Shirt hanging by one arm, he drew her body against his. There was no resisting her. The sound of his blood pulsing with excitement rushed into his ears. The shirt was discarded along with his boots and his trousers. But wasn’t he going to discard them anyway and put on the other clothes?

She let the satin robe fall to the floor, exposing her nakedness to his eyes and the grey daylight slipping through the window.

Her breath mingled with his, her lips gently brushing his mouth, her tongue dividing his lips. ‘Say goodbye to me
properly
, my dear boy.’

They ended up in the familiar iron bedstead with the goose down mattress and feather boas hanging from the bedhead. Never had Bronica been so demanding and never had Michael been so encouraged to perform. Her body was totally open to
him, inviting him to fill her, to take her and do whatever he wanted, though he knew that really he was doing what
she
wanted.

‘More,’ she said after he’d rested. ‘I must have more. You have to leave me something to remember you by. I mean this moment, not a child,’ she added, on seeing the sudden question in his eyes.

‘Thank God. I wouldn’t want to bring a child into this sickening world.’

For the third time he mounted her, astounded that she could inspire a man to such sexual heights, and grateful that she had taught him so much.

After the third time, he sank back into the mattress, totally exhausted.

He didn’t know how long he slept, but he awoke suddenly aware he was alone and vaguely remembering she had said something about going out to buy cigarettes.

‘Bronica?’

There was no response. He thought about washing before she came back. He smelled of sex, and even though she might want it again, he wasn’t sure he could rise to it. If he was dressed perhaps she wouldn’t insist.

He decided to get up. She had sapped so much of his energy that it took a great deal of effort to swing his legs over the side of the bed.

Running his fingers through his hair, he smiled to himself, somewhat proud that he’d done her so well. How many of her lovers could satisfy her three times in three hours? he wondered. Hans had told him that it must be love as far as he was concerned, because Michael was the lowest-ranking lover she had. It was rumoured that the highest ranking was a general, and the rumour had made him jealous. He’d tried asking her about this general, but she’d refused to admit there was one.

‘I take my pleasures where I will,’ she’d said blithely.

He had chosen not to believe that she was so mercenary because it suited him to pretend that she was his alone, that her desire for men in uniform was just a fleeting fancy, that in his case it was the man beneath the uniform she most desired.

The bed was comfortable and Bronica’s body was warm. He thought about staying here a little longer, having her again when she got back from getting the cigarettes … but he was looking at cigarettes. A full packet lying on the table next to the cigarette holder.

The blood that had pulsed through his body with arousal now ran cold. There were cigarettes on the table, and yet she’d told him she was going out to buy more. Why had she gone out, and if not for cigarettes, what for?

Facing up to reality was extremely painful, akin perhaps to having a gangrenous limb removed – if you could call a penis a limb. He’d been thinking below his waist. Now his eyes were open.

‘You fool! You bloody fool!’

Despite being shagged out, he scrambled into the secondhand clothes. It crossed his mind to put his uniform back on, to pretend it was all a joke, but the purchase of the clothes was evidence enough. He’d still end up in the guardhouse, the butt of some pretty brutal behaviour if the stories he’d heard were true.

He knew for sure now that there really was a general she was having a relationship with, and that she had probably gone to fetch him.

Angry with himself as much as with her, he took the stairs two, sometimes three, at a time. He had to get away. He had to put all this behind him. He had to put distance between him and Berlin.

At first he wasn’t sure where to go. Was it possible to be inconspicuous in a city of military, factory workers, and all manner of government informers?

He thought he heard pursuers at the corner of the street and ran. Giving chase had become a disease, swiftly passed from one ignorant soul to another. People dropped out or joined in the chase as they felt like it. He darted down alleys, pressed himself against walls, sipping coffee in wayside inns and all the time fearing he would be hunted down and now, as a true deserter, shot.

At one point, sure he was being followed, he ran into a chapel on the edge of the city, falling through the door, which shut noiselessly behind him as if pulled by an unseen hand.

There was no altar, no plaster saints, not even a crucifix. His first impression was of a meeting room rather than a church, very much like the one his stepfather preached in. Rows of benches sloped towards the lectern at the front where an altar should be.

Stumbling onto the end of a bench, he fell forwards, elbows on knees, hands covering his face.

The terrible things he’d seen reverberated through his body like a troublesome ague and it was a while before he regained any self-control. When eventually he came out from behind his hands, the quiet, peace and serenity of his surroundings calmed him. Sitting there a while longer, it was as if the world of uniforms, marching bands and cruelty had melted away. The stillness enveloped him and it became as though he could hear his own thoughts; or was it God telling him what he must do to gain forgiveness for his sins, to cover old ground, to make amends for past mistakes.

Days later he was staring across a field of straw stubble. Smoke rose in a feathery plume from the tall brick chimney of his childhood home. He’d never regarded the house so warmly
as he did now. The child he had been was like a stranger to him, and the stepfather who had sought to control his love of all things military was no longer despised.

The smell of baking bread greeted him as he pushed open the kitchen door.

His mother was kneading dough, pushing and pulling it in all directions. She looked up, stared then smiled.

‘I wasn’t expecting you to be on leave just yet. Is it a special occasion?’

He nodded. ‘Yes. I have left the army and I am not going back.’

She looked him up and down, frowning at the state of his clothes but not commenting.

After they’d talked more that evening, discussing what he should do with far more understanding and kindness than he deserved, his mother brought a letter out from the pewter box she kept for household letters as opposed to those received with regard to the church.

‘It’s from your Uncle Joseph’s solicitors in England. It seems he has died and left his shop and some money to you.’

Michael had been staggered. ‘But I hardly knew him.’

His mother shrugged. ‘He and my sister Rosa had no children. He took to you when he visited. I expect you remember him visiting.’

Michael suppressed a shudder at the painful reminder, the vindictiveness of the Jungsturm Lieutenant, the taunts of the other boys, his creeping down to the cellar and passing out in pain.

Uncle Joseph had come to his bedroom once the doctor had been and he’d regained consciousness.

His dark eyes had crinkled up quizzically as though he were counting all the hairs on Michael’s head. At last he asked, ‘Why did you do this?’

Michael had stared at him, feeling funny because his penis was wrapped in a great wad of cotton wool and bandages and it throbbed like a stick beating on a drum.

Uncle Joseph had jerked his chin. ‘I see. Or at least I think I see. You do not want to be me. You aren’t me. You never can be me. You are yourself. No matter your roots, your politics or your religion, always be yourself.’ He’d held up one finger as a schoolteacher stressing an important point. ‘Better still … Unto yourself be true.’

Michael remembered the two men who’d been forced to whip each other until one of them fell dead. They might have been Jewish, they might have been communists, but it didn’t matter. Being different should not be a crime. Their sheer helplessness had touched his conscience.

‘He was Jewish,’ he said suddenly.

His mother poured tea, her deep brown eyes glancing up at him and smiling as she answered. ‘Yes. Your Auntie Rosa married him in a civil ceremony. Although she’d been willing to convert, Joseph would have none of it. He didn’t think you could change what was in a person’s heart just by going through a ceremony. He firmly believed that everyone should follow their own conscience – which I think is what you have done,’ she said, finally placing the pot down on the table, her gaze steady and that same smile on her face.

On thinking back to his childhood, he realised that warm smile had always been there, it was just that he hadn’t noticed. And he understood what she meant. Regardless of uniform, the thumping of drums and the blowing of bugles, it could not change the man underneath who would always be guided by his conscience.

‘It will take time, but we must make plans for you to leave,’ said his stepfather.

Michael had never considered him a brave man, but he did
now. ‘You could get into serious trouble just for harbouring a deserter.’

‘I will assist any man who stands up for the rights of humanity!’

The table shook and both Michael and his mother jumped as his stepfather’s fist hit the table, just as it sometimes hit the pulpit during a particularly passionate sermon.

‘You have a British passport, it’s just a case of getting you out of the country.’

Just?

It seemed an immense task, but the Lutheran minister knew more dissidents than Michael had ever thought possible, including a banker who had transferred to a Swiss bank once he’d realised that as a Jew he would be dismissed from his present job.

‘Just a few days and you will be leaving us. Is there anything else needing clarification before you go?’

There was one other question that he would have liked to ask, but old habits and the respect of a boy for his elders is never quite overcome. It was respect for his mother’s sensibilities that made him refrain from asking why he’d been circumcised. Somehow it no longer mattered.

‘No,’ he’d said. ‘I think everything is clear.’

In the opinion of Thomas Routledge, Harry Randall was a good-looking gent, smartly dressed, and not at all the sort of bloke likely to punch your teeth down your throat. But Thomas Routledge was not a very good judge of character.

‘’Course I did think of telling yer father I’d seen ’er, cos as you might know, we did do service together in the war, but then Bonehead, who I sees on account of ’im taking me bets in the Red Cow, said that you was paying for information. Well, that was it. I stepped forward, didn’t I. Never was afraid to volunteer information …’