Chapter Eighteen
Sam ate the last of the potato skins he’d scavenged just as the moon hit the highest point in the sky. He had watched the pigs chase the peels around the rusty trough during the day, several spilling over the sides as if trying to escape the hungry snouts. They landed silently in the mud, ending their horrible ordeal with a filthy, immovable end. They deserved better. They deserved to fulfil their role in life with more dignity. Sam knew his hunger sometimes warped his mind with obsessive fancies. He’d experienced it before in the prison camp — now it was happening again. Only hunger made a man think of muddy, discarded potato peelings as tempting delicacies. His mouth had watered and his stomach had growled as he’d watched the pigs’ frantic noisy feeding and plotted how to get his hands on them without being seen.
As soon as dawn began to break, he’d returned to the sleeping farmstead, crawled into the pen, and used the moonlight to collect and pocket the peels. He was careful, almost delicate, selecting each one as if they were rare truffles. Thirty minutes later, after washing them in a stream, he and Klara had eaten them all, one by one, slowly, with their eyes closed, in order to savour the feeling, if not the taste, of having food in their mouths again.
He stood up. ‘I’m going to check on Elsa.’ He saw concern on Klara’s face and knelt down in front of her. ‘You stay here.’ He touched his chest, mimed with his fingers a walking figure. ‘Sam see Elsa.’ He mimed his fingers walking back to Klara. ‘Sam will come back to Klara.’
She nodded.
He wrapped his coat around him and was about to leave when he suddenly hugged her. Leaving her was getting harderand harder. She trusted him so completely. Eventually she eased herself away from his embrace.
‘Sam see Elsa,’ she repeated seriously.
He nodded solemnly and left, heading towards his usual observation point in the village. He had visited the spot several times over the past few nights, eager for some sign that Elsa was still alive. Night-time was the only time he could visit unseen, but it also provided little clues. Sometimes, the light of a lamp illuminated a closed curtain, but with no knowledge of which bedroom Elsa had been taken to, it gave little reassurance of her welfare. Tonight, he instantly noticed the changes outside the house: a bucket had been moved since his last visit, boots taken in from the doorstep, the firewood pile depleted. Were these signs giving him news of Elsa? Was the bucket used for water to wash her fevered body? Were the missing boots because someone had gone to fetch a doctor? Had they lit a fire in spring because she was well enough to get out of bed and sit beside it to recover? He rarely saw the woman while the man’s stance and behaviour, as he walked to and fro from his shed, told Sam nothing. The old man appeared to be in his own grumpy world, oblivious to his surroundings.
Sam felt as helpless as he had when he’d held her in his arms as she mumbled in her delirium. At least then he had forged a plan to find help. Now he was in the dark and the not knowing was unbearable. Had he done the wrong thing by taking her there and revealing himself as British? He dared not think what some people would do to those they judged as having consorted with the enemy.
The hair on his arms lifted as he sensed someone standing behind him. Oddly, their presence didn’t send him into a panic. He turned and found himself looking down the dark barrel of a gun. Sam closed his eyes and waited for the explosion to go off and hoped, if Elsa heard it, she would never find out thebullet had been for him. He had not been able to stop himself returning to this spot — capture was a fait accompli. The game of chance was up and this was how it would end. His only regret was breaking his promise to Klara. He had told her he would return and she had believed him. Regret mixed with melancholy, he realized, were unhelpful companions in a situation where he should be fighting for his liberty. Yet it felt strangely comforting to know this was how his escape would end.
The sharp metal of the rifle nudged him painfully in the chest. His killer wanted him to look at his face as he died. So be it. He opened his eyes and found himself staring into the watery blue eyes of the old man whose home he had been watching. He had thought the man lived in his own grumpy world, yet it seemed he was more alert than he had appeared and had just been biding his time to catch Sam in the act. The man nudged him irritably again, so he lifted his hands in surrender. His surrender only made the old man more agitated. Confused, he lowered them again and hesitantly walked in the direction that the old man’s swinging barrel of his gun seemed to indicate.
They walked away from the village and into an open field, an odd place for an elderly man to take a prisoner. He may have lost weight in recent years, but he was still taller and had the agility of youth when compared to the bent, stiff limbs of an arthritic man in his seventies. No one would react to his feeble cries for help if Sam decided to fight back. His actions piqued Sam’s curiosity and although the loaded gun was still pointing at him, he no longer felt like his life only had seconds left before it was snuffed out.
‘Englisch?’
Sam nodded. ‘English. Elsa?’
‘Elsa geht es gut.’
Sam was relieved Elsa was still alive and improving. He exhaled loudly and felt the tension in his shoulders drain away.He had done the right thing by taking her there. The man tilted his head to one side as he studied him.
‘Bist du hungrig?’ The impatient man lowered his barrel and mimed eating.
Sam frowned. Was the old man about to offer him food? Sam was taken aback by his hospitality. Escape suddenly seemed unimportant. Sam hadn’t eaten anything substantial enough for a man of his height in years. The last few weeks had been particularly gruelling. The last few days he had ensured Klara had enough before he had any. His poor nutrition was affecting every fibre of his body. The question — that might lead to the offer of food — was too much for Sam to ignore. He tentatively nodded.
The man slipped a rucksack from his back and threw it towards him. It skidded across the ground at speed but stopped at his feet. He stared at the bag with its bulging contents. Was it really food or some cruel joke? Suspiciously, he glanced up. The man indicated he should open it. He slowly knelt before it and undid the straps.
A sweet yeasty aroma mixed with a hint of salt and smoke escaped from the bag and invaded his nostrils, wrapping him in a comforting familiar hug of a long-lost friend. He peered in and saw cheese, ham and cake nestled in its dark interior. He could have wept.
‘Folge mir.’
The man had lowered his gun. Another opportunity to escape, yet the man was now indicating that he should follow him to the horse, harnessed to the wagon, waiting patiently by the hedge. Sam picked up the bag and did as he was told, walking a few steps in the wake of the older man. The rifle, which hung loosely from the well-worn strap, bounced against his back. It looked well used, but its trigger wobbled loosely within its guard and its owner handled it with a careless confidencethat placed doubts in Sam’s mind whether it worked at all. Either that or its owner was foolish with firearms, which made him dangerous and unpredictable. The horse was old with an alarming swayback but it greeted its owner with a familiar nicker that immediately reassured Sam. As the man stroked the horse and gently whispered a greeting in its ear, an ember of respect ignited in Sam and he allowed himself to believe that this man could be trusted.
The old man indicated that Sam should climb into the wagon and sit beside him. He glanced at the horse. It was too old to take him too far from where he’d hidden Klara, so he did as he was told. The irony that he had just accepted a lift from someone he did not know, just as Elsa had accepted a lift from Gerhard, was not lost on him. The driver turned the small wagon in a half circle, and the horse set off at a fast trot down the narrow road and into the countryside. They had driven no more than two miles when he halted adjacent to a crowded wood. Sam looked around. There were no buildings or villages nearby, only flat fields stretching for ever like a patchwork bedspread pulled tight.
The man pointed his gnarled finger into Sam’s chest and at the trees in the distance. He turned in his seat and reached behind him. With a sharp, well-practised tug, he drew back a dirty canvas to reveal an axe and a small revolver.
Perhaps the old man was wilier than he had thought. Kill an Englishman in the middle of nowhere and chop up his body to feed to the pigs. It would prevent questions being asked about why an English soldier chose to bring a German collaborator to his home. His reassurance about Elsa improving now seemed like a ruse to make him drop his guard.
The man’s expression was unreadable. His rifle was in his hand and Sam’s bag of food hanging from his shoulder as if he had never given it to him at all.
Chapter Nineteen
Elsa suspected that Gertrude and Walter were far kinder than they cared to admit. Stern, harsh and rarely smiling, they limited their conversations to short, abrupt sentences as if words and feelings were rationed like food. They gave little away about themselves, instantly suspicious if she asked any questions about their situation. Elsa was left to concoct a story around them, concluding that they had probably married young and only because it was the expected thing to do. Their marriage was like the workings of a clock: each cog fitted neatly together but if one was missing, the whole thing would grind to a halt. The passing of the butter or milk jug at the breakfast table, performed in companionable silence, reminded Elsa of the steps of a dance choreographed by predictable, well-observed habits.
Elsa learned that Gertrude and Walter had lost five-year-old twins to diphtheria in 1925. To Elsa’s mind, the tragedy still lingered in the house by way of Walter’s long silences and Gertrude’s sharpness, for to carry on living after such a bereavement would take all one’s strength and leave no room for gaiety. The house cried out for the innocence of a child’s laughter, and the silence of none was deafening.
By the fourth day Elsa’s strength had returned fully — along with her desire to leave.
