A Kiss for the Enemy (45 page)

One hour and fifteen minutes later, with some warmth inside him but with a leg he knew could support him little longer, with a sickening headache and a wretched heart, Anthony decided he must move from the café. He had stopped at the first one he had seen. Now he paid and walked into the town's small square. To have lingered longer would have aroused closer scrutiny. He could not kill time by walking. It was raining again and to settle on a bench in the square would be, and would appear, absurd. Robert needed every hour, every minute: but there was nowhere to go. It would be so damnably easy to link the two of them. Descriptions of two escaping officers would have been circulated.

‘We've got one!'

‘What about the other?' Then they would try every station up and down the line, catch the old man at Villingen.

‘The two Dutchmen caught the Kassel train.'

‘Two Dutchmen, you damned old fool! They were English!' It was all vivid to Anthony's fevered imagination. It couldn't be long now.

He thought about the forthcoming moment of surrender. A policeman? Perfect German, courteous propriety.

‘Excuse me,
Herr Polizeioffizier
, I am a British officer, escaped from Oflag XXXIII.' Was that it? When in doubt ask a Bobby? The hot rapier stabbed his thigh again. His head throbbed.

The door of a fine old church stood open. In their endless conversations about escape in Oflag XXXIII the prisoners had discussed refuges, if one had to brave a town or village. A church was good, they said, wisely, drawing on the experiences of others, recaptured, ruminating. You weren't often bothered in a church. In a church it would be rare that a policeman
would fix an escaper with
a
hard stare, would shoot out like a bullet that grim request – ‘Papers?' In a church one could, with luck, sit, be dry, think about the next move. A church could be a sanctuary. Perhaps a few also admitted, if only to themselves, that sometimes a church had brought, unexpected and probably uncomprehended, not only rest but a certain, obscure comfort.

Anthony walked into the church, every pace bringing agony now. He sank into a pew near, but not too near, the door. The moment of truth was approaching fast. The pain in his thigh was devilish. It was an angry, hot pain, and he felt a sick certainty that infection was at work. He knew that he had a high fever. He was unsure whether he would even be able to summon strength to leave the church. He looked at his watch. Half past nine. Robert must be approaching Kassel soon now. He might even be there. He couldn't remember distances and he gave up trying.

He looked at his surroundings apathetically. It was, he supposed, a Lutheran church. There was no sign of a reserved sacrament, no sanctuary lamp, no lingering whiff of incense. The stalls in the chancel and the reredos were elaborately carved. There was a surprising amount of marble and gilding in the nave. The place was lit by high, plain windows but the day was grey and the interior dark. It seemed a mediaeval building with something of a baroque interior.

Anthony was conscious that he had the church to himself. So far, so good. He sighed. The end was bound to come soon. Then he would blurt out his identity, confess to some person in authority that he was an escaped prisoner, and the torture would be over. There was a movement in the back of the church and he turned his head. He felt extraordinarily sick.

It was the pastor. A small, neat man with a little goatee beard, wearing a shabby dark suit had emerged from some side door and was now moving up the aisle to where Anthony sat slumped. The pastor took a seat beside him and for a little said nothing. Anthony sat very still. It was nine forty-five.

‘You are a stranger here? I have not seen you in our church before.'

‘I'm travelling. I came on the train from Hanover.' No point in saying he didn't even know where he was, and didn't care.
Anthony was ready to add, ‘A Dutch engineer,
Herr Pfarrer
, on his way to a new job in a factory in the Ruhr,' but he held it in. It might be that the moment of confession was anyway imminent, so why complicate it by a futile lie? And anyway why not waste, for Robert, a few more minutes by making this pastor, or anybody else, work for their information, take time to formulate their suspicions?

The pastor did not comment. He did not seem disposed to ask questions. Instead he said gently,

‘The carvings in Kranenberg church are famous.'

The name reached Anthony as from a great distance. He listened to himself saying,

‘I have heard of them. Did not the same carver work in an old schloss near here?'

‘Yes. In Schloss Langenbach. You obviously know the area.'

Anthony heard his own voice as if it were another's. He had a sense of having no control over the words uttered.

‘Once, as a tourist before the war. Is the Schloss still occupied by the Langenbach family?'

The pastor did not seem to find this enquiry peculiar. He answered in soft but resonant tones.

‘Frau Langenbach, the old lady, is confined to the house, we never see her now. Her husband left this world in 1942. The son was killed, flying, in Spain. There is a little boy – a grandson. And a widow.'

‘They live at the Schloss?'

‘Naturally only in a small part of it,' said the pastor reprovingly. ‘The young Frau Langenbach has a high sense of duty. She underwent some medical training – there was first a convalescent home at Langenbach, but that was moved to the Harz mountains, to more suitable accommodation. Now the village school is there.'

Anthony said nothing. The pastor went on, still with a hint of admonition in his voice –

‘There is no question of visitors seeing the Schloss these days.'

Anthony nodded. He felt so feeble that he could make no sensible response.

‘You do not seem well,' said the pastor softly. ‘Are you sick in any way, my friend? You are not German, I think.'

Anthony spoke haltingly. ‘I was slightly injured. An air raid, yesterday. Only a minor cut, it's been dressed. It gave me a bit of a shock, I feel weak. I'll be all right. I've got to continue my journey. I'm a Dutchman, an engineer. I'm moving from Silesia to a new job. In the Ruhr. Dortmund.'

‘Sit here as long as you wish, my friend.'

The pastor moved towards the east end of the church where a woman with a broom, bucket and dusters had appeared and seemed to be busy.

Anthony closed his eyes

Anna Langenbach generally visited Herr Proser, the Pastor of Kranenberg, on Fridays. Proser was an excellent man. She had always appreciated his quiet, sceptical discretion. Sometimes he would say, ‘These are difficult times, Frau Anna,' words in themselves innocuous, banal. He would hold her hand for a moment as they exchanged greetings, his eyes kind as they looked into hers, his mouth drawn with sympathetic feeling above his absurd little goatee beard. They understood each other. He would say,

‘Is all well at the school?'

‘I think so.'

‘The enthusiastic Fraülein Wendel is well, I hope? A woman of strong convictions!'

They would smile at each other. Anna had never known him other than practical, sensible and self-effacing in any human dilemma. She attended divine service at Kranenberg on alternate Sundays, and on intermediate Fridays would generally try to call at the Pastor's house, to exchange a few words, to leave a package of garden produce in the right season. They would talk briefly, comprehendingly. The contact was comforting. So it was on Friday, 24th November.

‘Is Frau Klarsen all right, cleaning the church as she should, Herr Proser? I know she's lost her husband in Russia, poor woman, doesn't know if he's alive or dead. Is she managing to do her work, in spite of it? You know her sister works at Langenbach – a great talker.'

‘They are both great talkers, Frau Anna! Frau Klarsen is working as hard as ever. A conscientious woman, despite her
tongue. She's in the church now. I was talking to her ten minutes ago.'

‘I'd better have a word.' Proser nodded.

‘She will appreciate that. It's hard to find helpful things to say – and one has had to try to do it so often in these years. You have the gift, Frau Anna. You can quieten the heart's pain with a word. Your presence would help anyone.'

Anna was touched. ‘I wish that were true.'

Proser stood up. ‘The church is open. You may also find a young Dutchman sitting there – he's resting! The poor fellow was slightly wounded in an air raid yesterday, and arrived here by train feeling rather the worse for wear. He says he's all right. He's an engineer – on the way to the Ruhr. I told him I didn't mind how long he sits – he's been over an hour already, if he's still there! I told Frau Klarsen to let him be.'

‘A Dutchman?'

‘Yes, he's travelling to a new job. And, do you know, he went to Schloss Langenbach once – as a tourist. Before the war. At least I think he visited the Schloss, from the way he seemed to know something about it.'

‘We used to have many tourists asking to see the house, on Sundays in the summer.' Anna sighed. Those days seemed far away, the coincidence uninteresting.

Anna found Frau Klarsen polishing brass work on the staircase up to the pulpit. She was working with ferocious energy. Anna spoke understanding, consolatory words.

‘Ah, well, Frau Anna, there are plenty like me. As long as it's doing some good, that's the important thing.' Frau Klarsen cried a little, quietly and then took up her cloth again with an angry growl of contempt for her own weakness. Anna patted her shoulder, shook her hand strongly and moved down the dark aisle of the church toward the west door. There was Herr Proser's Dutchman, very still. She could not see his face in the shadows. She paused as she passed him sitting several places in from the aisle. Was the pastor right that his wound was superficial, nothing to prevent a long journey? She hoped so, poor fellow. She glanced in his direction. He turned his head and spoke. A whisper.

‘Anna.'

It was Anna's turn to feel the faintness of astonishment and terror. He whispered again, without moving –

‘Anna!'

Anna, hardly knowing what she was doing, turned and sat in a pew behind him and a few feet away. She looked at the altar.

‘God. Beloved and all-comprehending God,' she said soundlessly. ‘Be with me now. Be with me now.'

It had been in the spring of 1944 that Frido, on leave at arzfeld, had last seen Marcia. Marcia and Lise had been about to start their grim adventure, to move east, to a hospital in Silesia.

Frido had put his arm round Marcia on a walk during his last afternoon. He started, nervously, to talk as Marcia had never heard him talk before.

‘Marcia – all the time, in Berlin, I can see you if I close my eyes. I watch your face, a little flushed, eyes so bright, that little bit of hair running down your forehead, teasing your right eye –' He was pretending to laugh, but his voice shook.

‘Darling Frido. Perhaps you'll be able to visit us.'

How unlike Werner he is, Marcia thought, while feeling enormous affection for him. Frido talked little these days, and never before about his own thoughts or emotions.

In April, the girls moved east.

Berlin

10th December, 1944.

‘Dearest Marcia,

In January, in the New Year, I will have a few days leave. I wish, instead of going to Arzfeld, to pay a short visit to Silesia, to visit you and Lise. I can get a permit to travel. I know the area where you work, I have even been to the village where your hospital is! And I think of January all the time, because one hope I take with me to bed every night, and when I wake in the mornings I shake this pet hope and wake it up and keep it with me all day – bicycling to work, at my office in the Bendlerstrasse, in the evenings. It is the hope that one day, before too long, I will see you again.

This is my favourite small hope – to see you again not with the eyes of imagination, but alive, warm, real. But this hope
has a big sister, a grander hope which I also take with me wherever I go, and keep by me day and night.

This grander, more important hope is that one day, Marcia, I may be allowed to love you, and succeed in making you love me. Ever since I first saw you at your own home, at Bargate, do you remember? Ever since I saw you then, so young, so mischievous, so lovely, I have wanted you for myself. Of course, when Werner loved you, became your fiancé, it was impossible for me to think like that. I loved my brother. After he was killed I dared to think like that again, in spite of Rudberg, whom perhaps you thought you loved, in spite of others maybe – I dared to think like that again. I have to tell you this, Marcia, before I see you in January. I have to write it down. I have thought about it and I can do no other.

One day this nightmare we are living through will pass and it will be morning. I may not see that day – there are reasons why I say that. I have lost recently some dear friends. It is a difficult, dangerous time. But the morning
will come
, and just in case I am here when it comes I am not going to turn my big hope away. I shall find a way of getting word to you when I know for certain about my leave. Tell Lise everything. It gives me joy that you two are together. And do not be angry with me for what I write.

Now, Marcia, I am going to entrust a secret to you. It is not my secret, but I am allowed to tell you if I think it right. There is a piece of knowledge which should not be lost. If something were to happen to Anna Langenbach and to me as well, it would be lost unless somebody else knows. You are the right person to know.

You are very fond of Anna, rightly so. She is also fond of you. But what you do not know is that her son, little Franzi, is not the son of her late husband, Kurt Langenbach. He is the son of your own brother, Anthony Marvell.

They were lovers, he and Anna, when she was in England before the war. Franzi is his son, born after Kurt Langenbach was killed. Franzi may inherit the property of his so-called grandfather, but he is not a Langenbach. He is your nephew.