The Best of Our Spies (42 page)

She imagined that he had entered the room, as pleased to see her as always: the broad smile showing his white teeth and hardly creasing his smooth face, the blue eyes sparkling and the fair hair flopping down over his forehead. She’d shift over slightly to allow him to sit at the end of the bed and he would perch there, taking care not to disturb her and taking her foot in his hands and gently massaging it.

Previously, she had always had to think of Owen in strictly practical terms. How to inveigle him, how to be sure of where he was at any given time, how to convince him of who she was and that she cared, how to find out what he was doing and trying to remember where she had told him she was going to be.

His presence in the room was very real now.

‘I’ve never thought about you like this before, Owen,’ she found herself saying. She had started to sob gently now and the kicking in her stomach was growing stronger.

‘Everything I had to do, I was forced to. Do you understand?’

And he would have nodded. In an innocent way, as if he didn’t fully understand, but couldn’t see what all the fuss was about.

‘I couldn’t tell you how I really felt about you because I could not even allow myself to contemplate such thoughts. But you were always so happy, so grateful for everything, so keen to show how much you cared about me. And I couldn’t give anything back to you. At first, because I didn’t really want to. You were just my work. But then I couldn’t because the one thing I could not do was give in to my emotions.’

Her crying was so strong now that she turned her face to the pillow. She thought of the first time she was waiting for him to come back from work when she realised that she was looking forward to his arrival. That had shocked her and worried her. That evening they had made love three times before either of them properly spoke to the other and she had lain in bed afterwards wanting to tell him that she loved him. That was when she knew she had to get a grip on herself. Carry on that way and she would make mistakes. She convinced herself that she was deluded.

‘I’m not sure now, Owen. Maybe I wasn’t deluded.’

The crying had subsided and her stomach was still. She hauled herself up into a sitting position against the bedstead. At this point, Owen would finish massaging her feet and slide his hands up her legs.

‘I must have cared about you. And what will become of us now?’

She had no idea. She was beginning to feel the chill of the night now and crawled under the dusty bedspread which smelled of tobacco and human bodies. She was still fully clothed.

She was utterly confused. She was shocked at her expression of feelings about Owen. At that moment, she would have given anything for the opportunity to return to him, with all the consequences that entailed.

ooo000ooo

The hospital in Lille had enough nurses the matron told her. Hang around, she told her, when the fighting starts we’ll need more though. She was desperate, she said, following the matron down the corridor. She had spent most of her money on a week’s rent and some food. She had been to the cobblers that morning to get her shoes repaired. Before the war, she could have bought a decent pair for the amount she’d just paid for these to be repaired. She would do anything. The matron paused and looked her up and down.

‘How many months are you?’

‘Five or six.’

‘Fit and healthy?’

She nodded.

‘Husband?’

‘At war,’ she answered without hesitating.

‘Aren’t they all,’ said the matron, who was staring at her left hand. She realised she was not wearing a wedding ring and that was going to be a problem. She felt the need to explain and held out her left hand.

‘A German soldier took my ring from me at a checkpoint.’

The matron wiped her hand on her apron, her eyes showing that she was not entirely convinced by that explanation.

‘You can start on Friday night. We always need more help then. I’ll give you a trial for a few days to see if you’re really up to it. I’ll put you on the wards. You clean and help the nurses out. When we get busier there may be more for you to do, if you are still able to.’

For three weeks, the best that could be said of the work was that it allowed her to eat and paid the rent. For that privilege she was able to grab the few hours’ sleep that the daylight and the noise would allow her in that rank smelling room, where the landlady seemed to resent her coming in or going out.

Whenever she could, she would take refuge in one of the small cafés behind the Grand Place. She avoided those in the Grand Place itself; they were more expensive even if the coffee tasted very slightly more like coffee. The main problem though was the number of Germans in them. Previously, their presence would not have bothered her. She would have been wary not to draw attention to herself, but would have done her best to ignore them.

But the atmosphere was very different now. Maybe it was Lille, but she doubted it. The news from Normandy that people discussed in corners and behind their hands was not good for the Germans. The Allies would be moving through France soon. She sensed that the German troops knew it and their presence had an added air of menace to it.

In a café one morning she watched as a young SS officer deliberately barged into two local women who were negotiating their way towards a table, causing them to spill their drinks and plates over a group of young Wehrmacht soldiers.

‘You animals!’ the SS officer shouted. He was in his early twenties and his face was flushed and sweating as if he had been drinking. With the back of his hand he lashed out at the women, connecting with the one nearest to him, causing her to stumble and then crumple to the ground. One of the Wehrmacht soldiers put his arm out, to stop her falling further.

The SS officer was incandescent.

‘You,’ he said to the women, both of whom were white with shock, ‘will pay for this damage. Give me your purses.’ They handed them over and he emptied the contents of both straight into his jacket pocket. ‘Now go away. And you...’ he was pointing to the soldier who had helped the woman up ‘… come with me. Now!’

On the Thursday evening of her third week in Lille she had given up on sleep early. The house was hot and the top floor unbearable. The landlady was shouting at her husband and a band seemed to be rehearsing nearby. The aroma of dinner rose up through her window, which was by far the most disconcerting sensation of all.

She was not due at the hospital until nine and by the time she reached the small café on the corner it was only just seven thirty. She had more than an hour to kill, but she found solace in these small cafés, where she could always find a seat alone and an obliging
patron
who would allow her to move the food around on her plate for an hour and sometimes refill her drink with a wink and a smile. And then she would talk to Owen. His imagined presence would comfort her. She had decided on the first night in Lille that Owen would forgive her. He would be angry, perhaps even furious, but in time he would understand. So on those evenings in the cafés of Lille she would revisit their relationship; the little things he had said, the questions he had asked but she had not answered, the nuances that would have made another man uncertain or jealous and the episodes of affection.

Alone with these thoughts, on this night she was startled by the
patron
, a large man with an enormous moustache who had decided that the price of an occasional free drink was that he could confide in her.

‘Not long now,’ he would say. ‘They’ll be running with their tails between their legs before the autumn, mark my words,’ he would mutter at German soldiers on the other side of the glass.

‘Another drink?’

Shocked, she glanced at her watch. Ten to nine. The hospital was a fifteen minute walk away. She paid and left in a hurry, running across the cobbled streets, straight across the Grand Place and towards the hospital. She was no more than five minutes’ walk away when she passed an abandoned industrial building. There was not a soul in sight.

‘Hey. Pretty girl. Come here.’

She looked round. In the doorway of the building was a young soldier wearing the black uniform of the SS. She looked around, maybe he meant someone else, maybe there would be other people around.

‘Yes, you. Come here.’

If she took her shoes off and ran fast, she might make it to the main road before him. But the ground was scattered with debris and she remembered her condition. Any thoughts of escape ended with the distinctive metallic click of a catch of a gun being drawn.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Home.’

‘And where have you been?’

‘At work. I’m a waitress at a café in the Grand Place.’

She realised she was panicking. Maybe she should have told him the truth about where she worked. She was so used to avoiding the truth that to lie was now her natural response.

‘And where is home?’

She panicked. She did not know Lille well enough to know what to say. She pointed in the opposite direction that she had come from.

‘Change of plan. Follow me.’ He was pointing his long barrelled Luger revolver straight at her and then using it as a finger to wave her towards him and into the building.

He waited until she was inside the building before opening a door off a dark corridor and pushing her into a dim room. It must have been an office at one time. The only windows looked out onto what would have been a factory floor. A desk had been pushed against the wall, with a half full bottle of brandy on it and an empty one next to it. A torn leather office chair was in the centre of the room, circled by a collection of empty beer bottles. A calendar had stopped at January 1943 and there were the remains of a dead pigeon in the fireplace. In one corner was a large pile of sacks with two or three torn blankets on top.

‘Over there.’ He was pointing to the sacks with his revolver. ‘Get over there and get undressed.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Really?’ he asked sarcastically. ‘And why is that?’

She opened her jacket to show him her swollen stomach.

‘Oh don’t worry. That really doesn’t bother me. If anything, it adds to the pleasure. It would be my first time with a woman in your condition!’ He was leering at her, slightly unsteady on his feet.

‘Look...’ She was breathing heavily and could feel herself panicking. She was not thinking rationally. Should she tell him that she was on his side really, that he was making a terrible mistake?
I have the name and telephone number of someone important in Paris who would vouch for me.
But she knew it was hopeless. He would not believe her and, anyway, she was no longer sure whose side she was on now. And if he did believe and act on what she said, she would be in even worse trouble than she was now.

Having been in the unusual position of having been trained by both the Germans and the British, she felt she was prepared for this. Not prepared for being raped in an abandoned building or for the extreme fear that she felt now, but prepared for a confrontation of this nature. Treat it like an interrogation, she thought. She tried to remember her training.

You are an attractive young woman. There may be occasions when men may try to take advantage of you. If so, appear to go along with them. Do not encourage them, but do not antagonise them either. Do anything to take the edge off a situation. If a man tries to rape you then he will not be thinking about his own security during the act. This will be when he is at his weakest. That is when you must act.

So she calmly removed her jacket, taking care to fold it and remove a handkerchief from the pocket which she used to dab her face and she sat down on the coarse sacks. Her tactic seemed to be working. The young SS man smiled and removed his own jacket, placing it with his cap and revolver on the chair. He took off his boots, undid his belt and lowering his trousers, crawled on top of her. He was breathing deeply now, his hand inside her skirt and beginning to hurt her. She could smell the alcohol on his breath as he became rougher.
If he carries on like this I am going to miscarry.
With his other hand he had been holding her down, but now he paused while he removed his trousers altogether and started to pull down his pants. Her head was pushed back against the rough skirting board, its dull green paint peeling, revealing damp wood underneath.

‘Don’t be so rough,’ she whispered, ‘there’s no need’.

And with that she pulled him closer to her, feeling the skin of his back hot and clammy through his shirt. She kept one hand, with the handkerchief inside it, on his back, stroking him with it. With the other hand she started to caress him. He reacted straight away, breathed in sharply and started to moan, his body relaxing and tensing at the same time.

With her fingers expertly working at him, she carefully moved the handkerchief to her other hand. Now was her chance.

At first he didn’t realise what was happening and for a very brief moment carried on moaning as before. She pushed the nail file in far as it would go and then twisted it. As his moan turned into a childlike high-pitched wail she rolled him over and crawled away from him as fast as she could. He was already doubled up into a foetal position, his face white and his body shaking. She had seconds to act before the immediate shock wore off.

She gathered up her shoes and jacket. He was starting to react now. Blood was pouring through the hand that was clutching his groin and he was trying to get up. She grabbed the revolver from the chair and thought about using it, but feared that the noise would attract attention.
As long as he doesn’t have it
.

She fled the room, taking time to jam a plank of wood against the outside of the door. It would buy her a few seconds. The Luger disappeared through a hole in the floorboards. Before she left the building she put on her shoes and jacket and straightened her skirt. There was some blood on the hand that had plunged the nail file into him, but not enough to attract attention.

She was almost twenty minutes late at the hospital, but the ward sister believed her story about being given a hard time at a checkpoint. Much later that night she was sitting alone in the canteen, as she always did. Two nurses moved to the table behind her, discussing their shift in casualty.