Tamar (6 page)

He became aware of voices from the yard below. When he swung his legs out of the bed, he was ashamed to notice that the spaces between his toes were still rimmed with dried mud. He went naked to the window and peered through a narrow gap in the curtains. Marijke was talking to a woman with copper-coloured hair who was holding a bicycle by the handlebars. The bike had a little trailer attached to the back of it, in which a small child was sleeping.

Tamar found his sweater and put it on. The scruffy leather jacket was hanging from a peg on the back of the bedroom door. His other clothes had disappeared, and for a moment he was at a loss. Then he saw that faded but clean cotton trousers and a pair of woollen socks had been left on the chair beside the bed. He put them on, went to the bedroom door, then remembered the gun. He took it from under the pillow, put it in his right-hand trouser pocket, and moved quietly towards the stairs. Marijke was waiting for him in the hallway outside the kitchen door, looking up at him. When he reached her, she put her arms around him, and he held her head against his shoulder, stroking her hair.

After a while she pulled away from him and said, “Your courier is here. Come and say hello.”

In the kitchen, the visitor was trying to interest her child in what looked like porridge. When Tamar came in, she put the spoon down and stood up, hoisting the child onto her hip. She smiled and held her hand out. “I’m Trixie Greydanus.”

“Christiaan Boogart.”

Trixie raised her eyebrows and glanced at Marijke, who bit her lip to hide a smile and turned away. “And this is Rosa,” Trixie said.

The child studied Tamar through chestnut-brown eyes, and then buried her face in her mother’s shoulder.

“She’s beautiful,” Tamar said, meaning it.

“She’s still sleepy. She always drops off in the trailer. It’s the bumping that does it.”

Trixie Greydanus had a wide suntanned face scattered with darker freckles; with shorter hair she would have looked like a boy who had spent a long happy summer at the seaside.

“Trixie was at the asylum this morning,” Marijke said.

The asylum, Tamar thought. Dart. Christ, I haven’t so much as thought about him since he left last night. What the hell is wrong with me? He said, “Did you meet our friend? He got there safely?”

“I didn’t see him, but he’s fine, apparently. He was asleep. I spoke to my aunt. She’s the head nurse there.”

“Did she say anything else?”

“She said that he was a good-looking boy with lovely hands.” Trixie grinned. “Aunt Agatha didn’t become a nun until she was forty. She still takes an interest.” Trixie turned to Marijke. “She also pointed out that she now has another mouth to feed, and that Dr. Lubbers doesn’t have a ration card yet.”

“I’ve put a parcel together,” Marijke said. “A loaf, eggs, dried sausage, a jar of Oma’s raspberry jam, some other stuff. But make sure you keep some for you and Rosa.”

“Bless you,” Trixie said. She turned to Tamar. “I hope you realize how lucky you are to be sent here, Christiaan. You’ll get home comforts that other men would kill for.”

Her smile was innocent, but was that a wicked twinkle in her eye? Tamar wondered. And was he blushing? To cover his confusion he said, “Tell me about your routine, how you get about.”

Trixie became businesslike. “Right. I visit my aunt at the asylum two or three times a week. Then I either go back to my place in the town or come here, visiting my ‘cousin,’ Marijke. I can do it more often, if you need me to.”

Tamar thought about this. “That’s quite a trek on a bicycle. How long does it take you?”

“About an hour each way, usually. Less, if I haven’t got Rosa with me. I’m used to it. It’s why I’ve got legs like a carthorse.”

“And how will you carry stuff, when we need you to? Other than messages, I mean.”

“Rosa’s trailer has a false bottom. It’ll take a radio, one of the smaller models. Or a Sten, if it’s in three pieces.”

Tamar nodded. “What about the Germans? Do you get stopped very often?”

“On the country lanes, hardly ever. There aren’t many motor patrols away from the main roads. There are checkpoints on the way in and out of town, of course, but I’m a familiar face. They don’t even look at my papers most of the time. Some of them try to feel me up, but they don’t usually go too far, maybe because I have Rosa with me. One or two of them are quite soppy about her.”

And you are a very cool customer, Miss Greydanus, Tamar thought. “So,” he said, “tomorrow morning. You’ll call at the asylum at about nine o’clock, pick up the other transceiver, take it to the Grotiuses’ house in Mendlo, and stand watch while Dart — Ernst Lubbers — sets everything up and makes his test transmission. Is that right?”

“Yes. I thought I might walk to town with him.”

“Is that safe? We don’t want the two of you seen together.”

“Sure, but the chances of us meeting anyone on that road are next to nothing. Besides, what could be more natural than me escorting the new doctor to town to make his calls? I’d be going that way anyway.”

Tamar considered this. He also thought about Dart making that lonely walk for the first time. “All right. But split up well before the checkpoints.”

“Of course.” There was a hint of impatience in her voice. “Do you have any messages for Dr. Lubbers?”

“No. Just tell him that everything is okay here, please.”

“I’ll do that,” Trixie said. “And I bring him here the day after tomorrow?”

“Er . . . yes, that’s right.”

“At what time?”

Christ, Tamar thought, I can’t remember. Get a grip! “Ernst will confirm that when you see him tomorrow,” he said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me for half an hour or so, I’ve got some things to sort out in the barn.”

When he’d gone, Trixie Greydanus leaned back in her chair and regarded Marijke ironically. “Well, well, well,” she said. “This Tamar turns out to be none other than the famous Christiaan Boogart. Would that by any chance explain the extra colour in your cheeks this morning, Miss Maartens?”

Giggling, Marijke cuffed her on the back of the head. Rosa looked up, wide-eyed.

The wind was easterly with a cold bite to it, and it sent falling leaves on ragged flights like yellow butterflies. At the corner of the house, Tamar caught sight of Marijke’s grandmother working in the kitchen garden. The old woman was swaddled in an oversized dark coat and an apron fashioned from a sack. She was harvesting beetroot, thrusting her spade into the ground, levering, stooping to lift them by their purple-veined leaves, dropping them into a heavy wooden wheelbarrow. When she saw him approaching, she straightened and wiped her hands on the coarse apron, smiling.

“Good morning, Oma. The garden is looking good.”

Julia Maartens went into an elaborate mime: a sorrowful gesture at herself, another at the garden and the fields, a stoop as if under a heavy burden, a shrug, a prayerful gesture at the sky. Tamar understood. She was old, the work was too much, the farm was falling into ruin, but what could she do, other than hope that God would be kind to them.

“I’ll help when I can,” he said. “We’ll be all right.”

She reached up and touched his cheeks lightly with the fingers of both hands, careful not to soil his face. Her eyes were wet, perhaps because of the chill wind.

“I have some stuff to sort out, Oma. When I’ve finished, you must tell me what jobs you want me to do.”

He turned to go, but she began another mime, this time silently mouthing the words as if she knew her gestures were inadequate. She pointed at the house and then at Tamar. She hugged herself. She pressed her palms together and held both hands to the side of her face, closing her eyes. Finally she placed both hands over her heart, nodding and smiling.

Tamar stared at her. Was she really saying what he thought she was saying? That she was happy Marijke’s lover had returned, happy her granddaughter was sharing his bed? Embarrassed, he turned his face away and watched a squadron of rooks wheel above the orchard. When he turned back, Marijke’s grandmother was nodding again, tears falling onto her cheeks. Not knowing what else to do, he took her face in both hands and kissed her forehead. Then he left her and went to the barn.

He pulled away the straw that Koop’s men had strewn over the contents of the container and began sorting, thinking of hiding places as he went. Two Sten guns, which he assembled and laid on the floor with their ammunition clips. Four bundles of secondhand clothes with prewar Dutch labels. Two pairs of well-worn leather boots and a pair of black shoes. A metal drum, which he prised open to find sugar, tea, coffee, flour, powdered milk, powdered egg, tinned meat, English cigarettes in Dutch packets, candles, lard, several boxes of matches, and three slabs of something in plain brown paper. He tore the corner from one of them. Chocolate! He broke off a piece and put it in his mouth. It tasted like a lost childhood. A tin case containing medical supplies: dressings, penicillin powder, ampoules of morphine, syringes, disinfectant, iodine, three rolls of bandages wrapped around transceiver crystals. And a bottle labelled
ASPIRIN
. The white pills inside were, in fact, Benzedrine, little tablets of mental lightning for exhausted wireless operators.

At the bottom of the pile was a canvas satchel. Inside it Tamar found a set of maps, two German military compasses, a pair of binoculars, and several rolls of Dutch banknotes, used, and not forged. Something else too, right at the bottom. A well-fingered ID booklet embossed with an eagle clutching a swastika in its talons. He flipped it open. It belonged to Gertrud Berendts, an auxiliary nurse. The photograph was one of Marijke, taken perhaps two years ago.

Tamar leaned back against the side of the stall. London knew everything, he realized. He felt foolish. “The Maartens farm,” Hendriks had said. “You do remember the place?” And they’d known all along. They’d known that this time he wouldn’t leave without her. They’d faked her an ID to make it possible.

He was still staring at the photograph when he heard the barn door open. He stuffed the booklet into the satchel and scrabbled around in the metal drum for the chocolate.

“I don’t want to see anything you don’t want me to,” Marijke said, “but Trixie needs to go soon. You should come and say good-bye to her.”

“I will. But come in here a minute. I want to kiss you.”

When their lips were together, he forced hers open gently with his own and slid the little chunk of chocolate from his mouth into hers. He watched her eyes fill with amazement then close, watched her taste a pleasure she’d almost forgotten.

Marijke held Rosa, and Tamar held the bike. Trixie lifted the cushions and the blanket from the trailer and then pressed her fingers against its base. It swivelled up, revealing a hollow compartment. She put in the things that Marijke had given her.

Tamar said, “You have to hide food too?”

Trixie looked up. “You’ve been away a while, Christiaan. Food’s getting scarce, and the Germans are nearly as hungry as we are. Some of them would slit your throat for a jar of jam.”

Marijke and Tamar watched her leave. She had to stand on the pedals to power the heavy machine up to the road.

“She’s good,” Marijke said. “I’d trust her with my life. I
do
trust her with my life.”

“And mine?”

“Without question. Why do you ask?”

“Because she lied to me,” Tamar said, watching the receding bike.

“What? What do you mean, she lied to you?”

“She said she had legs like a carthorse, and nothing could be further from the truth.”

Marijke took his chin between her fingers and forced his face towards her own. “If I ever catch you looking at another woman’s legs again, Christiaan Boogart,” she said, “I’ll scratch your eyes out.”

Dart sat huddled inside his overcoat on a cast-iron bench on the terrace of the Mendlo asylum, watching the lunatics. One of them, a middle-aged man wearing a long cardigan over his uniform of white tunic and trousers, was trying to trap the shadows of clouds as they moved across the leaf-strewn lawn. His method was to stamp his foot down hard on each shadow as it reached him and use his weight to hold it there. He did not seem at all disappointed when the shadow escaped him but turned and waited eagerly for the next, poised like a goalkeeper. Dart admired his attitude.

Albert Veening lowered himself onto the bench beside Dart and inhaled deeply. “I love these late afternoons at this time of year. There’s a smell in the air that reminds me of tobacco.”

Dart felt in his coat pocket and found his cigarettes.

When Albert had lit up, Dart said, “That one, there. The old lady. What’s she doing?”

“The one with Sister Joanna? Her real name is Elena, but she will only answer to the name Sidona. She thinks she’s a stranded angel. She may well be right.”

The angel was wearing a man’s cap and coat over her long white dress; her feet were bare. She was having an animated discussion with an invisible person.

“Who’s she talking to?”

“Another angel,” Veening said. “Probably the one she calls Michael. She says he has blue wings and hard shiny skin like a beetle. I hope it’s him, anyway. If it’s the one called Trago, we’ll be up half the night. He upsets her.”

“Tell me what you do for these people.”

“Bugger all, frankly. We feed and protect them. There are drugs that would help, but we’ve no hope of getting hold of them. Before the war I had a colleague who used to wire patients up and shoot a dose of electricity through their brains. That would see off the demons for a day or two. And the angels, of course. But he joined the Nazi Party and went off to Germany to do ‘research.’ He made the right decision, seeing as how we’re lucky to get electricity one day a week, at best.”

Dart said, “But it’s a miracle, isn’t it, that the Germans haven’t shut you down? The Nazis don’t have what you would call a kindly attitude towards the mentally ill.”

Veening watched the plane trees lose a few more leaves before he replied.

“We used to have a large number of inmates who were mentally handicapped, rather than mentally ill. I’m sure you understand the difference. Many of them were the kind of people who get called village idiots. Perfectly harmless. In 1941 the Germans came and took them away. Rounded them up and piled them into two trucks. Some of them were in mortal terror; others thought they were being taken out for a treat. It was a lovely summer day.”