The Postcard (27 page)

Celine smiled. ‘Don’t worry. Keep your hands clean and watch your food; turn your back and it will be stolen. Stick with us, Lotte. It can’t be long until the Russians come.
The guards are afraid of them and yet they treat the Russian women worst of all, especially after the defeat at Stalingrad. News comes through the gates even in this godforsaken place. You hear
terrible things in the work sorties.’

Nothing they told her could prepare her mind for the sights she was forced to witness each day or the pain she must bear on the work parties. Bodies hung from scaffolds after public executions.
Long lines of frozen girls and children lined up for
Appel
before dawn, line upon frozen line not daring to move as the guards counted them and picked some at random to beat them down to
the ground and set the dogs on to finish them off.

‘You must stand still, not look, not draw attention to your fear and disgust, try to look defeated not angry and hold onto your dignity. Don’t give them the satisfaction of making
you less than you are,’ said Celine. ‘Together we will survive. Look over the wire to the trees, to the birds flying. One day we’ll be free like them.’

Callie clung onto her sanity as her body adjusted to the cold and the thin clothes, the screams and the pathos. The smell of the latrines overwhelmed her. It was only a matter of time before she
fell sick. She fought off the night creepers who tried to steal her bowl and hidden crusts. She kept to the shadows when the female dominatrix was on the prowl. The four of them squeezed onto the
top bunk for warmth and protection. The December snows of 1944 covered the camp, disguising its horrors and ugliness. To stand on that frozen square for hours made inmates faint with chill, but you
mustn’t move or waver. To her relief Callie joined the French women’s works gang sent to a place outside the walls, where the food and living quarters were a little better. They were
made to dig vegetables out of the frozen ground. Then they were sent to another camp further afield to hack stones and shift hard core to make new roads. Callie’s fingers and feet were numb
with chill. She had so little protection from the cold with the overalls they were given, but she still kept boots on her feet and tied them to her body each night.

‘We have to escape.’ Madeleine was always full of plans, searching out gates and ways to bribe the other workers.

‘Not in this weather,’ Celine argued, coughing harder each time they went out. She was finding it hard to keep up with them. They tried to cover for her, making sure the guard
didn’t see. It took twelve of them to pull the heavy roller across the hard core, pulling until the sweat poured and their arms were numb, but they mustn’t stop. One woman fainted and
lay on the frozen rubble, unable to get up. The guard stood over her and whipped her with his baton until she curled up to protect herself.

‘Get on with your work!’ he ordered the others, as he dragged the woman to the side and shot her.

‘Do nothing,’ muttered Celine, seeing Callie’s face. ‘His time is coming.’

‘How can you be sure?’ Callie whispered.

‘I know, in my heart, it will be only a matter of time and we will be saved. Do not dwell on these things or they will destroy you.’

They returned to the camp, aching, angry and starving. The body of the woman lay where she fell, frozen into the ground. Soon Callie saw so much death, she hardly glanced, though her heart was
stricken by such cruelty. In this terrible place there was no mercy, no allowances. Every one of them was nothing more than a disposable workhorse, the choice only to work or die. There were plenty
more where they came from, but the rage inside Callie burned into her bones. I will survive and tell how it was, she vowed. The others said nothing. All that mattered was fuel and food and
surviving until the morning
Appel.

‘There is only one certain way out of here,’ sighed Marie, the youngest of Callie’s friends, ‘and that is through the fiery furnace of the crematorium. They think we have
no souls here, that we are the walking dead, but we will get out of here another way.’

‘Let’s not think on these things,’ said Celine. ‘I have a game we can play. Lie on the bunk and each one tell us your favourite menu. Pretend we’re in a brasserie
and you can order what you like.’

‘It’ll only make me hungry,’ groaned Madeleine. ‘But I would like
pot au feu,
with thick dark sauce, a green salad with vinaigrette, some Vignotte cheese and
Maman’s special dessert,
tarte aux pommes.
’

‘How would you set your table, what colour of cloth and what flowers in the vase?’ Celine encouraged her to spin out her story.

They took it in turns to describe the dishes and Callie found she could picture them in her head and taste the garlic and herbs. She chose Mima’s shepherd’s pie with a buttery crust,
followed by strawberries and Capaldi’s best ice cream. Her mouth watered from just the picture of it in her mind. For a few minutes they had lifted themselves out of this living hell to
another place. She thanked God that she’d found such good friends. They had saved her sanity and her life for a few days more.

Another time, they decided it would be everyone’s birthday and each must prepare to give the others surprise gifts, easier said than done. On the sortie in the sub camp, there were banks
of spring flowers pushing their way through the grass, enough for Callie to make a daisy chain of tiny flower heads, which she threaded together into a necklace for Celine. Celine was growing
thinner and more breathless every day, and by the end of the twelve-hour shift she struggled to get up and they had to hold her on the way home, but she wore the necklace with such pleasure.

A week later came the medical inspection they all dreaded. They were lined up before the guards and warders and told to lift their skirts high above their waists so that their hipbones
protruded. They were made to run in front of the SS guards and camp doctor, who was looking for swollen feet and knees. Callie was so busy proving her fitness she didn’t notice Celine
struggling at first until she was pulled out. ‘Run!’ the guard shouted at her. Celine did her best but she couldn’t keep up. She was too weak and her knees were swollen. She fell
on the floor, coughing with exhaustion. ‘To the recovery bay,’ said the doctor. The guards threw her onto a waiting cart. Once it was full of broken women, it left for the Youth Camp.
The others stood stunned at her sudden departure, not able even to say goodbye. Then they were dismissed. No one spoke. What was there to say? Each knew they’d never see their friend again.
Just one more cruel humiliation to bear.

‘We have to get away now. Celine would want us to survive,’ whispered Marie. That night they said prayers and wept.

Callie had no feelings left to pray. She felt so numb, she couldn’t even summon up any rage to fuel her resolve. For the first time in months, she wanted to curl up and die. She
couldn’t bear to think what was happening to her friend, alone and in pain. There were no priests in sight to give her comfort. Her heart cried,Why? While her friends prayed, she curled up on
the bunk, all hope gone.

‘You mustn’t give up or you’re dead,’ Marie tried to encourage her. ‘Celine will soon be free but she will never see her children again. Who is waiting for you to
come home? You must hold on to your hope, Lotte! Fight them all the way, hold on to your will to live.’

Those were darkest hours, when she felt her mind was slipping away. She could no longer recognize herself as Caroline nor could she see Desmond in her mind’s eye. Lotte Blanken was who she
was now; this bony starved body covered in sores, a creature who’d seen too many horrors. Maddy recognized how she was sinking into self-pity.

‘Remember, one day at a time, we work on and stay angry,’ she said, shaking Callie back to life with plots to escape. ‘Stick together and we might live. Alone you are dead. We
mustn’t get sent back to Ravensbrück. This place is better than that death camp. Slacken off and you will be sent for punishment there. Don’t give the sadists the satisfaction of
beating you to death.’

A few days later, they were sent forward to yet another camp at Markkleeberg, working on roads in atrocious spring weather with only overalls and shawls that Maddy had sewn for them from
Celine’s blanket. Hauling the dreaded roller drained every ounce of their strength. They were all beginning to weaken, but news trickled through that the Allies were at last fighting their
way east through Germany and this buoyed up their frozen limbs.

Then, a month later, without warning, they were pulled out into the yard one night and told to gather their belongings for a march west. It was late and snow still lay hard on the ground. They
put on their overalls and shawls to add a little warmth and hoped their broken boots, patched and leaking, would protect their feet. Maddy had also sewn them over-socks from scraps of clothing no
longer needed, squirrelled away and worked at in secret whenever she could. They’d brought Celine’s hidden stores, only a pathetic little bundle, but Marie hugged them into her chest as
if they were bringing Celine herself with them.

They marched all night, mile after frozen mile in a silent column. The guards beamed their torches along the lines at regular intervals but never counted them.

‘This is our chance,’ whispered Maddy, seeing the road curving through a dark forest of tall trees. ‘Peel off one by one and hide.’

There was no time to think as Callie watched Maddy dart behind a tree. No one noticed and none of the prisoners dared look in her direction. Then Marie bent down to fiddle with her boot and
vanished, and Callie knew it was now or never as she scarpered into the darkness. Fear put wings on her feet. No shots rang out, no dogs barked, just the silence of the snow and the crackle of
twigs. She waited hardly daring to breathe until the column marched away. How many others had taken this chance of freedom?

There was a strange eeriness in the forest, a great void of light, and the piercing chill froze her breath. Encircled, defenceless, frightened that she was now alone in an unknown wilderness of
snow, Callie crept deeper into the forest. If she stood still she might never move from the spot but be left frozen in death as she had seen so many poor victims in the camp. Keep moving, keep
living, she urged her will.

Now, at last, there was hope. As dawn broke she pushed further into the forest, hoping against hope that she would find her friends. With no food or shelter she hadn’t a clue where they
were heading. They must be found, and soon.

‘Over here, over here . . .’ a welcome voice whispered. They were hiding behind tree trunks, waiting for her. She hugged them with a delirium of gratitude.

‘We did it! We’re free!’ Marie was dancing in the snow. ‘But what do we do next, Maddy?’

Now it was Callie’s turn to take the lead. ‘We’ll find food and shelter and make a fire.’

Maddy looked at her with surprise. ‘And just how do we do that without being caught?’

‘I’ll show you,’ Callie heard herself say. There were still bits she could bring to mind about those survival trials in Arisaig. She had the scars to prove it. ‘We need
dry sticks and tinder; something for trapping.’ Suddenly she felt alert, alive. They were in terrible danger with no papers or money, but for the moment she knew how to keep them all safe
just as they had saved her in the camp. Now she would repay their trust by fixing a fire, catching something to roast and finding water. Only then could they make plans.

Phoebe waited daily for news of Caroline, writing letters to the Ministry requesting information. Nothing was forthcoming, so she contacted her local MP. He was busy preparing
for the coming General Election but he promised to look into matters. For Phoebe, sleep was more and more elusive and she was stung with headaches. Desmond was being a handful, wanting to play out
with local boys in the village, who were friends with him one minute and enemies the next. His school work was suffering and Jessie warned that he was getting into the wrong company. Sometimes
Jessie took Desmond to the family farm just to get him out of Phoebe’s hair.

Bob Kane was in a service in the Far East and Jessie was anxious for him. The war might be over here, but rations were getting tighter than ever. How she looked forward to being reunited with
him, in a new life, in a bright and warm place.

It was time for Phoebe to find new accommodation down south and pick up her career, what was left of it. She decided to start looking for a preparatory school somewhere close to London so she
could have Desmond in the holidays. The burden of the child’s education and welfare weighed on her mind. I’m too old to be his parent, she sighed. What else could she do until Caroline
came home? It wasn’t fair to have to make important decisions without her.

One afternoon in July, an army staff car rolled up the drive and a woman emerged in WAAF uniform. She introduced herself as Mrs Cameron, who liaised between various official departments
including the FANY. Phoebe was tired and harassed, hoping she’d learn something about Caroline, but also hoping the woman wouldn’t stay long. Desmond had been naughty again in school
and Jessie had removed him out of her way.

Phoebe took the woman into the drawing room and Mima produced afternoon tea on a tray with fresh soda scones and rhubarb jam. Let no one say that standards had slipped at Dalradnor.

‘What a fine house this is,’ said Mrs Cameron, looking round at the landscape oil paintings on the walls and the view down to the loch from the windows. ‘Miss Faye, I’m
sure you must be anxious to know how we are progressing with Mrs Lloyd-Jones’s whereabouts. I’m sorry you’ve had to wait so long but we are still making enquiries. Since the war
ended the continent is full of soldiers, refugees and prisoners trying to get home.’

‘Where is my daughter?’ Phoebe no longer wanted any pretence about their relationship, any misunderstanding about her concern.

‘That’s the problem. We can’t be sure what happened to her.’

‘What do you mean? She was in the services. There must be records. Yes, I did guess she’d gone abroad.’ Phoebe looked at the lady, who smiled as she sipped her tea.