‘But the temperature is so cold out there. We could die.’
‘I don’t care.’ The woman jabbed the prongs of the fork towards Elsa’s chest. ‘Out! Or I’ll fetch my brothers!’
The farmer shook his head. ‘You’d better leave.’
‘But Klara is just a child. She could die out there.’
He shrugged. ‘I’m sorry. Erna’s brothers . . .’
Elsa angrily gathered her coat and food. Walker picked up her bag and she snatched it from him. ‘I don’t need your help.’ As the farmer’s wife began to order them out again, she snapped at her, ‘Calm down! We’re going! I wouldn’t stay here if you begged me!’
Elsa grabbed Klara’s hand and went to the threshold. The angry blizzard spewed frozen sleet into her face. She hesitated and looked back at Heinrich in the hope he would do something — anything. He turned away. Walker gathered his things and roughly brushed past her as he left. Elsa watched him stride across the yard and into the blizzard.
Heinrich jerked his head towards him. ‘You should follow him.’
‘I don’t want to travel with him.’
The farmer ignored his wife’s cursing and stepped closer, speaking quietly so that Erna couldn’t hear him. ‘What if you come across Russians, or the British and Americans? His company might save you.’
‘Like his letter?’
‘Exactly.’
‘He’s more at risk of capture than I am of coming across the British Army.’
‘We are losing the war. Every German is vulnerable. Especially German women and children. That is—’ he looked at Klara — ‘if she is German.’
Elsa pulled down Klara’s woollen hat. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘You are blonde and fair. Your child looks too dark to be related to you.’ He jerked his head to the door. ‘He has dark hair.’ She stared incredulously at Heinrich. His face was lined with years of experience. As his wife grumbled, she wondered if she should consider what he was suggesting. She had already been robbed of her money in the most farcical way. What if her next encounter was more dangerous? Perhaps travelling with a man would give her protection and the illusion of a family.
The farmer nodded in the direction of the yard. ‘Look. He is waiting for you. He knows how important your company is to him. He can’t speak German. He needs you as his friend. He canhide in plain sight if he is part of a family. He knows what is best for him. You should accept what is best for you.’
She followed his gaze to see Walker standing in the snowy blizzard, his collar turned up, his dark hair already white from fat flecks of snow.
She nodded stiffly, reluctantly.
Heinrich slipped his own hat from his head and gave it to her. ‘Give him this. Make peace with him.’
She thanked him, turning it over in her hands. ‘I don’t know what my family will say about this.’
Walker had started to move again. Gunfire rattled somewhere far away, muffled by the blizzard. The front was coming nearer every day.
‘I think your family would want you to do whatever it takes to reach Bremen safely,’ said the farmer.
She thought of her mother and knew he was right. She checked Klara’s coat was buttoned and braced herself. ‘Are you sure we can’t stay?’
He looked at Klara. ‘I’m sure.’
Elsa silently followed the soldier into the driving snow. Whether it was his domineering wife, or that he was already in possession of the note of recommendation he needed, the farmer no longer had the drive to help them. Surviving the next few hours until the storm died down was her priority now, and the man in the distance might just help her achieve it.
* * *
They did not exchange any words for the first two days. It was as if an invisible barrier had come down between them, formed by the resentment of collaboration. She refused to walk in his footsteps or by his side, as if by doing so she was in her own small way opposing their truce. She also did not walk ahead, in case he attacked her from behind. Instead, she walked a stepbehind him and slightly to his right, which allowed her to keep an eye on him and try to decipher what he might be thinking. Occasionally her glance met one of his, and the invisible barrier between them grew thicker.
When they came upon a farm or isolated house, she was the one who begged for food. If the inhabitants gave her some, that was good; if they did not, her distraction allowed Walker to steal what he could. They shared their booty in silence, neither congratulating nor evaluating what they had done. They stole to survive, but Elsa instinctively knew that he disliked having to do it as much as she did.
Their silent trek along the back roads, across fields and through densely wooded forests sometimes brought them up against larger convoys of refugees clogging up the roads. Overladen wagons, pulled by ponies coated in mud, left tracks of churned brown snow in their wake. People’s choice of emergency stores often astonished her. A wagon that should have been loaded with warm clothing and food instead carried an accordion and neatly stacked tables and chairs. Another was laden with a threadbare seat and a large mattress tied down with criss-crossed rope — what use was either, she wanted to ask her walking companion, without a roof to protect them?
