A Kiss for the Enemy (14 page)

People like his father, of course, saw it all in a different light. They were appalled by the Nazis, by the bullying and swagger, by the way the Government seemed ready to ride roughshod over law, by the little jacks-in-office. Certainly some very unpleasant stories were current of what went on, of how opponents were treated and so forth. And there was the Jewish business. But as against all that – blemishes which time would doubtless cure or set in perspective – there was the fact that by diplomacy which was as shrewd as it was bold Hitler had put Germany on the path of self-respect once again. And now the Army was helping him to finish the job.

Werner's mind switched to Marcia, living now with the Rudbergs. He thought of her smile, her hair, her touch, her pale skin and dancing eyes. Onward to victory, and the quicker the better! And then, with luck, a long peace!

Werner walked from a small knoll, an excellent viewpoint, where he had been inspecting the morning, over to the two command vehicles, with tents attached, which served as the Corps Operations Centre.

‘Arzfeld!'

It was his Section Chief.

Werner saluted. He was attached to the General Staff, and although not yet a formal member of it the attachment created that possibility. Werner was ambitious. He envisaged with pleasure the broad, red General Staff stripes which might one day adorn his breeches, the collar patches, the sense of membership of a great, historic fraternity.

‘We want to move this group forward soon. Find the best place. Things are going fast. 17th Corps are pretty close on our left –' Werner nodded, his eyes on the Corps map. Roads were rudimentary in many places, and maps were inadequate. There had already been some confusion.

‘Forward divisions are reporting no serious resistance anywhere this side of the river. A few snipers, nothing organized –'

The operational situation was perfectly clear.

‘It looks as if they're trying to get away north, for the most part. All the better. The idea is to stop them withdrawing behind the Vistula as far as we can. We'll be making a broader sweep –'

The Chief of the operations branch had drawn a thick, ambitious line on Werner's map. To find a good place somewhere along it to which the Corps' tactical headquarters should move was Werner's task.

Soon he was being driven in a small staff car down a bumpy road toward the village he had seen from the hill top. Beyond, the road ran to Tarnow and the valley of the Vistula.

Werner noted with approval that his driver was Braun. He knew Gunther Braun rather well. A fellow Lower Saxon in a Corps drawn mainly from elsewhere, Braun liked, Werner knew, the chance of driving him. They raced through the little
village into open country of wide, poor fields beyond. There were a few woods, in full leaf, well spaced, symmetrical. Road and farm tracks alike were crowded with military vehicles, interspersed with farm carts. Here and there was a blackened, burnt-out chassis. The weather was fine, fields and tracks were hard. There was little difficulty in driving past obstructions. Braun negotiated his way with erratic skill.

‘They say we've won already,
Herr Hauptmann
! And the war only two days old.'

‘Wars take longer to win than that, Braun, even in Poland.'

‘Will others come in against us,
Herr Hauptmann?
France? England?'

‘No. Now shut up and think about your driving. Take the small farm track to the right over there – up towards that wood. There's nothing else on it.'

They drew away from the main axis, from the flow of military traffic.

‘Up to the crest and stop. In to the right here – stop! Good! I want to look –' He brought his binoculars up.

At that moment, some twenty yards inside the wood, one of the few skilled Polish snipers overrun by the tide of war settled his rifle firmly into the shoulder and brought the tip of the foresight on to the target. Two soldiers in a single German car. Nobody would miss them or find them for a little. Nothing else seemed to be coming up this track. Five minutes would see him safe back through the woods, able thereafter to melt into the mass of his countrymen, to evade this wave of field-grey scum. ‘God avenge Poland,' he thought, ‘and I'll send two on the way to meet Him.' He squeezed the trigger. Werner was standing and the bullet entered his stomach. Braun threw the driver's door open and the sniper's second round hit him in the head as he tried to throw himself from the car – a very pretty shot although, as the Pole acknowledged to himself complacently, a lucky one.

It was five hours later that same morning. At half past eleven the Marvells sat in the inner hall at Bargate. The voice of Neville Chamberlain was melancholy and dignified.

‘It is the evil things,' he concluded, ‘that we shall be fighting
against – brute force, bad faith, injustice, oppression and persecution – and against them I am certain that the right will prevail.'

‘I feel sorry for him,' John Marvell spoke heavily. ‘I haven't admired him these last two years or more, but I'm sorry for him. He's utterly wretched. And I doubt if he's the man for the hour.'

‘We've got the King later.'

‘I feel so useless,' said John, ‘I'm under fifty, but they took me off the reserve – my leg –'

‘Don't be absurd, dear. And there'll be plenty for everyone to do. Could we have prevented this do you think?'

‘Perhaps. Early on, when too many people were vindictive and narrow-minded, capable only of seeing others' faults. That was the time for generosity and we were ungenerous. Then again later, when too many people – sometimes the same people – were frightened and self-deluding. But I'm afraid this man wants war. Not just the spoils of war. War. He wants to conquer.'

‘Well,' said Hilda, ‘all we can do is our best. Try to stay human and decent and generous and do our best. It won't be easy.' Her heart, like that of her husband, was near bursting with pain at the thought of her children, each differently menaced.

In admirable, broadcast words King George echoed her sentiment later in the day. The solemn, hesitant voice was heard in every British home.

‘We can only do the right as we see the right, and reverently commit our cause to God.'

Frido did not anticipate meeting many Generals, however long the war lasted, and he devoutly hoped it wouldn't last long. It had been, therefore, surprising and not a little alarming to hear his own name barked on a particular afternoon in March, 1940. A company from Frido's battalion had been detailed to provide security and ceremonial support for a distinguished conference in Western Germany. Generals, their red and gold collar patches as thick as falling rose petals in autumn, were congregated. Frido, duties appropriately performed, as he thought, was hovering diligently in the background. He had already, after a very short military career, learned that some people liked to be always in the way when Generals were around, heels clicking, salutes radiating homage, admiration. Frido's instincts were the exact reverse. To be inconspicuous was his dearest ambition.

He thus responded with sinking heart to the sharp call from his Captain. The great ones seemed to be dispersing in their cars. Guards were drawn up, drivers were standing at the salute by opened car doors. What now?

‘
Leutnant von Arzfeld
!'

Frido moved rapidly. His Captain, steel-helmeted, boots gleaming, expression serious and devout, was standing beside what appeared to be a very senior general indeed. One of many.

Frido, heart beating, snapped to attention and saluted.

‘
Leutnant von Arzfeld, Herr Generaloberst.
'

From his first moments in uniform Frido had felt, uneasily, that he was almost certainly unsuited to an officer's rank. It might have been more honourable, he several times reflected, to have remained, anonymous, in the ranks. He had so many doubts. He saw too many sides of a question. Could a man
lead others, who was himself so much a prey to uncertainties, unease? Then there was the oath.

‘I swear by God this holy oath, that I will render to Adolf Hitler, Führer of the German Reich and People, Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, unconditional obedience …'

and so forth. Everybody had to swear it, of course. It had been imposed immediately Hitler had assumed, together with the Chancellorship, the office of President when old Hindenburg died in 1934. But an officer must be sincere, responsible, single-minded, completely alive to what he was doing and saying: a believer. Frido, as in so many ways, was troubled.

It was Werner who had persuaded him. It always was. Werner had told him not to be absurd, had asked whether he thought he was the only German officer who was sceptical of some aspects of the National Socialist régime. ‘You should hear my General when he thinks he's alone with his friends,' said Werner with a chuckle. Werner's position had always seemed privileged to some extent. As the respected Kaspar von Arzfeld's son, and a particularly promising young officer, he possessed and relished a status beyond that justified by age and rank.

‘It's in the ranks you'll find the true believers, my boy!' Werner had said, putting an arm round his brother's shoulder. ‘Now you work hard and distinguish yourself at Officer School, you earn your officer's tunic, you won't regret it. And you'll be among friends. That's what really counts if there's to be a war. Anybody will tell you that.'

To his father, a man of old-fashioned values, the matter was simple. If Germany was to find itself at war it was unthinkable that a von Arzfeld should not take his place in the officer Corps. Affairs of state were not for Frido. Military duty and military example must henceforth be his vocation.

Kaspar von Arzfeld, Colonel of the Reserve (retired), fifty-five years of age and lamed for life twenty years before, had managed somehow to insinuate himself into the local military district organization in charge of certain aspects of transportation and railway planning. ‘One must do something,' he said, half-apologetically. His duty enabled him to live at home,
to continue tending his beloved woods. But Frido knew, melancholy but comprehending, that his father liked, above all, the feel of his old uniform again.

So here was Frido, lieutenant in a Rifle Regiment of 7th Panzer Division, stationed in Western Germany, thoughtful, conscientious, concerned. There had been a whole week's leave at Arzfeld at Christmas. He had felt closer to his father than ever before, bound to him by their shared wretchedness at Werner's death. Werner, Frido thought with reason and without rancour, had always been the favoured, the first born, the satisfying son. From childhood, Werner had charmed all ages and both sexes, had exuded quiet strength, half-sceptical confidence, had never seemed to have a care in the world. ‘I should have gone,' thought Frido. ‘Father and Arzfeld needed Werner. It's different with me.' He thought it without morbidity for he had loved his brother dearly.

If such feelings existed in Kaspar von Arzfeld he never showed them. He looked for a long time into Frido's face and held his hand tight.

‘Well,' he said. ‘He went the way many of our family have gone. We shall not forget him.'

‘Never, father.'

But there had been another shadow lying between them that Christmas, something referred to delicately in letters between father and son but difficult to get on terms with, resolve attitudes towards.

‘Frido, you have seen the notice of betrothal sent out on behalf of Werner immediately before he fell – betrothal to Fraülein Marvell?'

‘Yes indeed, Father.'

‘You know that I was told nothing beforehand! Werner asked our cousins, the Rudbergs, to arrange this notification – it went only to our close family – in such a hurry that he wrote to inform me only after he had actually set matters in hand. And he asked these cousins of ours in Vienna to do it, instead of his own family, here at Arzfeld. He said there might be delays in the post – he was, of course, already in the field. The form of the thing, in consequence, was most peculiar, very irregular.'

‘I expect he had some strong reason, Father.'

‘Of course he did. He wrote it to me. He was determined to leave this English girl as his properly acknowledged fiancée. He did not wish to go to the war without arranging that. But it is still extraordinary. Heaven knows what her family think. Or what they know.'

‘We haven't much opportunity to find out, Father.'

Von Arzfeld made an impatient gesture. ‘So much hurry! Such neglect of how things are done!'

Frido said, embarrassedly, ‘I suppose, father –'

‘Naturally I thought of that. I asked myself if she may be going to have a child. I wrote at length and in confidence to Countess Rudberg. It was not easy. I do not know her well. She is, as you know, your mother's relation. But I wrote, and I was as direct as it was possible with decency to be. She replied it is certain this girl is not going to have a child.'

‘But perhaps, Father, Werner couldn't know that for certain.' Frido's emotions were particularly confused.

‘I see little difference,' said his father. ‘If he had wished to ensure a child was born legitimate he should either have married or abstained. Or – taken other measures. If he merely wished to demonstrate to the world an intention to marry this girl–'

He sighed and shrugged his shoulders. Then he said –

‘Whatever there has been between them, Frido, your brother died loving this girl, and wishing to make her his wife. That is the reality. And that indicates to us how we must behave.'

Frido was silent. His father looked at him hard.

‘It makes it absolutely necessary that whatever our feelings, our reservations, we must treat Marcia Marvell as one of our family. We must regard her interests as our interests, her honour as ours. I have written to invite her to Arzfeld.'