Devastation Road (28 page)

‘She
is
a victim,’ said Martha.

‘And you believe that?’

‘She was raped!’

‘That’s not under debate,’ argued Hamilton. ‘It’s whether we let a German stay or not, regardless of what’s happened to her.’

‘We had Germans imprisoned in the camp,’ Haynes pointed out. ‘Victims of persecution.’

‘Yes, people who had already been incarcerated here. And now we open the gates to everyone?’

‘We can’t shut people in or out,’ said Martha.

‘We’ll have half the nearby villagers turning up,’ said Hamilton, ‘wanting to be fed. And all because, in their eyes, we’ve pillaged their gardens, emptied their
cupboards and stolen half of their clothes to care for Germany’s so-called victims, to compensate for the crimes carried out here that they’re now all claiming they know nothing
about!’

‘They don’t come in though,’ said Haynes, ‘and there’s a very good reason for that. If they do they know what will happen. You only have to see what happened to the
German nurses they sent. Their uniforms practically torn from their backs. They turned on them like bloody animals. I’ve never seen anything like it.

‘When we first liberated the camp,’ he told Owen, leaning in, ‘there were Russian and Polish prisoners hurling SS guards out of top-floor windows. One man was strung up and
skinned. I mean,
skinned
. They want revenge, and I tell you, sometimes I want to do it myself, just for the sheer bloody awfulness of the things I’ve had to deal with
here.’

They had already needed to move her. Guppy the sapper had told Owen that they’d put her in a private room.

Can’t have her lot with the Poles
, he’d said.
They’ll have her for sausages
.

‘I mean, what does she want anyway?’ said Haynes. ‘She’s one in sixty thousand here so even the fact that we’re wasting time talking about her is winding me up. I
don’t give a flying fig whether she comes or goes.’

‘Well, you should do,’ said Hamilton. ‘We’ll be setting up a precedent.’

‘I don’t think she knows what she wants,’ said Owen. It was the first time he’d dared to speak. They’d been debating it for half an hour and didn’t seem to be
getting anywhere. ‘I don’t think she’s capable of thinking straight at the moment.’

‘Well, she’s not alone there,’ grumbled Haynes. ‘I can’t think straight here either. It’s bloody impossible.’

‘And we need to consider the kid,’ said Martha.

‘Well, that’s easy,’ said Hamilton. ‘They’ll just take it off her.’

‘Why the hell would they do that?’

‘We must have lists of orphanages,’ Hamilton said. ‘She’s not fit, is she? She’s not a fit mother.’

And so the conversation went. Owen felt that he had nothing to offer. He didn’t know the systems or the procedures, or the paperwork that needed to be dealt with. The only thing that
seemed to be evident was that no one particularly wanted the issue to take up much time. As Haynes had pointed out, she was only one in sixty thousand.

The Czechs were being prepared for the trucks arriving the following day. They would be driven to Celle where trains would be waiting for them to return them home. Each
deportee had to be registered, carefully printed SHAEF cards filled in, one copy of each sent to the destination reception centre, the others held in Germany. Janek was processed along with the
rest. This time tomorrow he would be on his way home, but still nothing had been unearthed of Petr.

Outside Janek’s block there were now Czech flags hanging from several of the windows, one or two daubed with the familiar marks. Owen passed the old man on the step outside, politely
greeting him, and then ran up the four flights of stairs. He didn’t expect Janek to be there but he had the watch anyway. Perhaps he could slip it into the boy’s bag for him to find
later. It would make Janek smile.

As he ran up, voices echoed – boys of Janek’s age and younger dispersing down the stairs, alive with their strange chatter. Their sense of excitement was hardly surprising, he
thought, as he let them clatter past. They would soon be going home.

Janek was sitting cross-legged on his bed, struggling to fix a brooch, trying to bend the clasp back into position with his fingernails and then his teeth. Two other boys whom Owen recognized as
the ones who had been kicking a can about amid their parade out of the camp that morning sat around on the floor among a litter of items: kitchen utensils, boxes of chocolates, empty rucksacks,
photograph frames, various Nazi memorabilia, and what looked like a musical box. One had a pile of clothes on his lap. He lifted one up and shook it out – a ripped Nazi jacket. He poked his
finger through a bullet hole and wiggled it like a worm, and the three of them laughed. It was only then that they saw Owen.

‘May I come in?’ he said.

The one with a pile of trinkets around his feet hurriedly gathered them up, shoving them into a bag. Janek and the other boy stared.

He walked nervously into the room, three sets of eyes following him.

In among the clutter, something that resembled a campaign headquarters had been set up. On the wall above Janek’s bed he had stuck all the newspaper articles that Owen had found in his bag
– pictures of Petr caught in the crush of a demonstration or a riot or a protest, sometimes with his fist in the air, but always he was there in the thick of it. Beside the clippings, the
scraps of map that had once been Owen’s had also been stuck up and pieced together. The name Sagan circled and clinging to the edge, and other names circled now too – dotted across the
whole of Germany and elsewhere – that he couldn’t quite make out.

‘Looks like someone’s been busy,’ he said. He wondered what they were playing at.

As his eyes took in the rest of the room with a growing sense of unease, he noticed maps scattered across a desk, piles of sticks thick as wrists, more flags – some draped over the back of
a chair, others hung from a line pinned across the room, drying where Janek’s bird had been newly painted. There were empty bottles and scraps of cloth too and, to his horror, even a rifle
kicked under a bed, gun cartridges scattered carelessly across the floor.

He motioned at the bed – ‘May I?’ – and then sat down at the foot of it anyway. Janek carried on what he was doing, his elbow sticking out at an awkward angle as he
struggled to fix the clasp.

‘Do you want me to have a look?’ Owen said, offering his hand.

‘No!’ Janek held the piece of jewellery closer to him. He didn’t want Owen touching it.

The two boys sitting on the floor watched him with suspicion. They were about the same age, Owen thought, but thinner even than Janek, and yet somehow they had survived and now they too were fit
enough for sending home.

He took the watch from his pocket and dropped it on the bed.

‘I mended it for you,’ he said. ‘I thought you might like it.’ They had brought it all the way back from a pool in Czechoslovakia, after all. Everything would be mended,
they had said, starting with a watch.

Janek held his arm up so that the sleeve fell back to reveal another newer and cleaner watch already on his wrist. He carried on working.

‘Look, will you just take it?’ Owen said. He’d damn well mended it for him. He tried to force it into Janek’s hand. ‘I want you to have it.’ Grudgingly Janek
took it and held it to his ear and then pushed it into his pocket, tossing the brooch on the floor.

‘You said you will help. Look for Petr,’ he said. ‘
M
ů
j bratr
.’ He sounded resentful. ‘You promise. Now you send me home.’

‘I’m not sending you home,’ Owen said. ‘No one is going to force you, but you should go.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘You are
lhá
ř
.’

‘I’m not lying. Listen,’ said Owen. ‘Your brother is going to find you. He will come home to you in his own time. You don’t have to be the hero and find him
yourself.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I look for Petr. I save you. Two lives. And now you don’t care.’

‘I do.’

‘Now you with English.’

‘That’s not true,’ Owen said.

‘
Co jsem všechno pro vás ud
ě
lál!
I do for you.’ He was getting upset now. ‘You English are all
stejní
. Same.’ He held
two fingers up together. ‘Mm? You leave me like you leave our country. You sell us. To Hitler. It is not your country to sell. You betray us. Hm? You owe us.’ He jabbed his chest.
‘Me.’

‘I know,’ said Owen, ‘and I’m sorry.’

‘You know
Angli
č
ani
. People. You promise help. You don’t remember.’

‘I didn’t promise anything,’ he said. ‘Anyway, help who?’

‘Petr,’ said Janek. ‘He will lead. We find Petr. You and me bring him back. Then,
revoluce!
’

‘What revolution?’ said Owen.

‘
Sokol zase bude létat
,’ he said, flying his hands as if they were a bird.

He meant his symbol – the
sokol
– Owen thought.

Then Janek pulled out a black strip of material from his bag and threw it into Owen’s chest – the familiar-looking armband, Petr’s symbol threaded on it, just like he’d
seen another man wearing in the photographs now above the bed. He tried to force it into Owen’s hand. He wanted Owen to wear it.

‘No, I’m not getting involved.’

‘
Pom
ů
ž
ete nám!
’ Janek shouted.

‘It has nothing to do with me.’

Janek scrambled off the bed. ‘Yes! Yes!’ he cried. He took one of the books from the desk, found a blank page and ripped it out, then held it out for Owen. ‘You write, hm? You
write.
Napište anglické vlád
ě
. English government. They give help. You tell them. Help to us. Help to Petr. Help
revoluci
. Yes? You betray us. Now you
help us. Yes?’

He kept on talking but Owen had heard it before. They would clear all the Germans out, all the Hungarians, all the Russians. Just Czech, Janek had told him. Nobody else. It was their
country.

‘And you help. Yes?’

Owen laughed. ‘Write to the British government and do what? Ask them to help you? But I don’t know anyone. Who am I supposed to write to? No, I’m sorry, but no.’

‘
Musíte!
’

‘Why?’

‘You owe me. Two lives!’

‘Yes. I know. You saved me. You saved my life two times. I know!’

‘No, two lives you owe me. Not
your
two lives.
My
two lives. For me. Mine.’ He pulled out his wallet and snatched out a photograph, then shoved it in Owen’s
hand. It was the portrait of the boy’s parents.

‘Two lives!’ Janek shouted.

He walked out of the block, through the camp, out of the gates and some distance along the road through the field, the woods closing in around it until eventually he slumped on
the verge and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. He felt quite sure that he would splinter and break.

He kept seeing the same images: the dark sky and trees lurching over him as the boy dragged him up the short bank from the river and into the field, the sound of his efforts as he heaved and
struggled towards a house, and then could drag Owen no more. Cold wet hands undoing the buttons at the top of Owen’s shirt, and then taking hold of his wrist. There was nothing else, no other
clue, before he lost consciousness. Just the vague sound of two shots, and then a third; and in the darkness the boy had run.

In the mess his eyes followed Martha to the bar, watching as she poured them both a Scotch and then reached up to replace the decanter, her whole frame rising a little as her
feet exalted her on to her toes and held her there for a moment. Nothing had been said about the night before. All day she had kept her eyes anywhere but on him, while he had scrutinized her for
clues that she was about to turn and say something. Now it hung between them, this rumbling aftermath.

Taking her seat across the table, she set his glass down and lifted her own to her mouth, slopping the Scotch around the ice cubes before she drank it in a mouthful and sighed as if she’d
needed it.

‘Isn’t it a little early for this?’ he said, staring at his glass. It was still afternoon.

‘You know Hamilton is doing everything he can to dig out some information about you,’ she said, ignoring the comment. ‘He’s sent a communication over to your Bomber
Command that we have you safe and sound. They’re going to get you on a plane home. If not tomorrow, then the day after. You’ll be back in London by Tuesday, with a bit of
luck.’

‘That would be nice,’ said Owen. He had prayed someone would tell him these words so many times over the last few days but now, hearing them for real, the relief did not come.

‘What will you do?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. Strange that he hadn’t thought that far. ‘Find out what I was doing before all this nonsense and try to put my life back together, I
suppose.’

‘Do you know what your Bomber Command also told Hamilton?’ she said.

‘No.’

She held his eye and then leant forward a little across the table as if she were about to whisper him a secret. ‘I don’t think Anneliese Dreher is the only person we know who’s
been spinning little lies. Do you?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You told me you were a pilot.’

‘But I am.’

‘You’re not though,’ she said with a vaguely triumphant smile. ‘You’re a goddamn liar. You’re not an RAF pilot at all. Your brother was. You’re just a
flight engineer.’

Outside he sat against a pile of boxes that had been stacked beside the main entrance of the admin block and held his head in his hands. Why had he ever allowed himself to
think he was a pilot? The truth was that there was no hero in him, no matter how deep he dug. There had been days when he had believed it – days when he saved an infant from the road or
stopped an innocent farmer being clubbed to death – but now all of that belief had fallen away. With every new thing he had learnt, every new memory bolted on, he felt thinner, not fuller, as
if the real Owen was only a splinter of the man that he rather hoped he had become.