I Can't Begin to Tell You (43 page)

Every second of delay was dangerous.

‘
Please
, Bror.’

Bror held out his hand to Kay. With a sense that she had come home, she took it.

The boys were woken, briefed and hustled out into the corridor. At the door, Kay hesitated. Then she turned and ran back to Nils. ‘I’m going to kiss you goodbye.’ Cradling his head between her hands – in the way she had so often done when he was small – she did so. He smelled of sleep and beer and benign neglect. ‘Please, please take care of yourself.’

‘
Mor
…’ To her surprise and delight, Nils kissed her back.

She swallowed.

Then she was gone.

Arm in arm, Kay and Bror crossed the quadrangle, the boys tagging behind them as if they were an ordinary Danish family. Ten minutes or so later they were packed into the car. Kay was in the front and the boys were in the back with a rug tucked around them.

They headed north out of København.

Kay sank back in the seat – and it was to sink back into a past she almost couldn’t remember. A past in which the rich veneer of a walnut dashboard and the smell of leather seats – so luxurious and pleasing – were taken for granted.

Bror kept his eyes on the road. ‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Just get us there. Please.’

They were leaving the outskirts of København behind. The
road was more or less clear. A few cars and vans chugged along and some wet cyclists battled the wind. Driving past the last ribbon of housing, it was clear that some of the houses were unoccupied. People were disappearing so fast … families were disappearing. The Jews had gone.

She thought about Køge. The place where she had spent most of her life was a mishmash if ever there was one. Nazi lovers and supporters lived there and shopped in the market place. As did realists and waverers and the frightened. There were the Birgits who lived in a state of high anxiety and didn’t know which way to think, and there were the Jacobs and the Arnes who did know what they thought and acted on it. As ever, it came as a shock to Kay to know that she was part of that group.

What could be said in the final analysis? Resistance was always a matter of principle and politics? Or was it that some human beings were intrinsically bloody-minded? Or did resistance achieve that almost impossible synthesis by marrying both at the same time?

Who knew? Who knew?

Rain lashed down and the windscreen wipers gave off a customary screech. She laughed. ‘You’ve never got them fixed.’

‘There were other things to think about.’

Bror went first. ‘Tanne … ?’

She had to tell the truth. ‘She got to Sweden,’ she said.

A nerve twitched at Bror’s temple. ‘But she’s safe, you think?’

There was a long pause. ‘If she’s in Sweden … but I can’t know for sure if she’s safe, Bror.’

‘At least that’s honest.’

She flinched.

At this section of the road the surface grew unreliable and Bror dropped his speed. He spoke with a rare intensity. ‘I can’t let you go again, Kay. For one thing, I can’t stand the not knowing and …’

‘And?’

‘I can’t bear to hate you.’

‘We
don’t have to hate each other,’ she replied. ‘Not now.’

He glanced at her. ‘The old life has gone and we can’t have it back. That’s the one sure thing in all this. You can accuse me of wickedness, or short-sightedness, and some of it would be true.’

The exhilaration at seeing Bror was draining away to be replaced by a numbing exhaustion.

‘But will you believe me when I say I didn’t know the extent of the Nazis’ brutality … None of us understood at the beginning of the war what was going to happen. Even you. In Denmark there
was
an argument for the practical. For being a pragmatist.’

‘No one thinks of arguments in the aftermath,’ she said sadly. ‘You are either the winner or the loser.’

‘But you must understand why I chose the side I did.’

‘Do you regret it?’

His gloved hands tightened on the wheel. ‘I can’t regret what is part of me. I’m not English or American. I’m Danish and some of my roots are in Germany.’

It hurt her to reply: ‘But aren’t these decisions moral ones?’

He nodded. ‘That was my mistake.’

She checked on the boys. They were dozing. One of them whimpered in his sleep. ‘Bror, let’s not talk about it. Let’s just drive.’ She crouched forward on the seat, willing him to push on faster.

For a fleeting moment his hand lay on her thigh and the car picked up speed. After a while, he said, ‘I’ve moved back into our bedroom. It has your things, your scent. I like that. I like to look out to the lake as you always did.’

Kay’s first thought was that Bror was more likely to hear the plane if they made a drop. Her second was:
I can’t bear it
. Followed by:
I have to bear it
.

‘Kay … I know you understand what you have done.’ There was a hint of bitterness. ‘But I want you to know that
I
understand why you did it.’

The
generous Bror. ‘It was gradual thing,’ she found herself confessing. ‘A growing conviction. I got sucked into it so I can’t claim a road to Damascus conversion. It was a little resistance here, then there … and suddenly …’

‘Look at me, darling.’ Reluctantly, she obeyed and when she encountered the blue eyes she knew that what had anchored them together was still there.

Suddenly Bror checked himself. ‘Kay … roadblock.’

It was a hundred metres or so up ahead. Bror cut the car’s speed and drew up in front of it. Kay ran an expert eye over the soldiers standing miserably in the rain. ‘Danish,’ she hissed. ‘Not German.’

‘I’ll do the talking, Kay. Do you trust me?’

Did she?

‘Trust me, Kay.’

It was an order.

She gave a quick nod. He smiled for a second. ‘Good.’

She turned round to the boys in the back. ‘Not a word. Do you understand?’

The youngest looked half dead with misery. The older one had bitten his lower lip almost raw.

Bror tipped his hat down further over his face and wound down the window. Wind and rain blasted into the car as he conducted a polite, respectful conversation. Yes, he was taking his family north to visit relations. They had all been ill with some strange germ. His friend, General Gottfried, had advised him that the family needed a bit of a holiday and some good Danish dairy food.

The Danish soldier, wet and miserable, stamped his feet. Rain glistened on his youthful face, boredom registering in the downturn of his mouth. His companion, older and tougher, took a bit more persuasion.

‘General Gottfried is going to join us,’ said Bror. ‘We plan to walk a little before the bad weather sets in.’

They were nodded through.

Bror
started up the engine and they were away.

Kay stared at the windscreen and her eyes filled.

‘Don’t cry, darling Kay.’

‘I’m sorry, Bror. Very sorry. But I would do exactly the same if it happened all over again.’

‘So would I,’ he said. ‘Given what I am.’

‘Bror,’ she whispered. ‘I …’

‘Shush, Kay. None of our differences matter now. I love you. That hasn’t changed and I want you alive. Do you understand?’

The car gathered speed. A familiar landscape unrolled. Ahead lay a grey sea and a passage to Sweden. Safety?

The poor boys. She turned round. Hands clasped, they had fallen back into a twitchy sleep. God willing their parents were still alive. They must be mad with anxiety. How she ached to give their children back to them. If she couldn’t do that, at the very least she had to try to save their lives.

A short while later they drove into Gilleleje.

They kept the boys in the car while they entered into negotiations. The sum of money which Sven demanded for the fare over the Øresund was more than Kay possessed and it was Bror who paid up. Sven pocketed it. ‘You think I’m overcharging,’ he said. ‘But consider the risks I’m taking.’

They left the boys hidden in his harbour boathouse, Sven having promised that he would ferry them over at the turn of the tide. Huddled on a bench, the boys barely managed a goodbye.

They returned to the car. Bror started up the engine and drove along the sea road out of Gilleleje for a kilometre or so. ‘We came here one summer with the children. Remember?’

‘I do.’

‘What do you remember?’

She laughed. ‘The wind. Trying to get a barbecue going on the beach. A lot of beer.’

A small, sandy bay came into sight and he braked. ‘Do you think it might have been here?’

‘I’m
not sure.’

‘I am.’ He stopped the engine, got out of the car and walked around to the passenger door. ‘Come.’

‘I can’t. You must get me to the train at Helsinger.’

‘Come, Kay.’

It flashed across her mind that he might be planning to kill her – and she shuddered inwardly. This was to become too habituated to a life of distrust.

‘Why?’

‘Gilleleje is a tiny place. We will have been noticed. The car will have been noticed. Don’t you think we should make a show of being lovers?’

Again she laughed and looked up into his face. ‘The ironies …’ she murmured.

The wind caught them in a hard grip and they slithered down the sandy slope of the dune onto the beach. Bror put his arm round Kay and placed his mouth against her ear. ‘Make for the beach hut over there.’

It looked familiar and she had a dim recollection of walking past it with the children. But, from the state of it, no one had bothered with it for years. A bleached, salty and cracking hulk, its wooden clapboards were rotting and the lock on the door was broken.

Inside, it smelled of tar, fish and brine. Abandoned coils of fishing twine and rope, stiff with age and mould, were strewn across the floor. Draughts knifed between the cracks.

Kay pulled off her headscarf.

‘Kay.’

She turned round to face Bror. ‘Yes.’

He leaned against the flimsily fastened door and reached for a cigarette. ‘I want to know …’

‘What?’

‘About what you’ve been doing?’

Trust no one
.

He made no move to touch her.

‘You
owe it to me, don’t you think?’

Tell no one
.

She told him about running through the woods, of her limited wardrobe. Of carrying her possessions on her back and of eating one meal a day. Of how one becomes an itinerant in spirit with such a regime. Almost addicted to it? She described clinging precariously to a roof. She told him of the sad little Jewish family she helped to put on the boat to safety. But she didn’t tell him about Felix or Arne, or the meetings and the plans and the wireless set. She didn’t tell him, either, about London and the activities of the strange outfit for whom she was working. Nor of the struggle of the resistance to convince London that they mattered.

Telling Bror. Not telling him.

‘You were too busy to miss me.’

‘Oh, I missed you.’ She tapped her chest. ‘In there, deep down. Always.’

They could have been in their bed at Rosenlund, their bodies fitting together under the duck down. Talking.

Bror opened the door and threw the cigarette stub outside. Then he was beside her. ‘Is this the truth?’

‘Yes. Yes.’

‘We have really got to the truth … between you and me?’

‘Yes.’

He placed his hands on her shoulders in such a way that they cradled the curve of them. She drew in a breath. ‘Bror?’

His hand sought under the much-worn, nondescript blouse and found her breast. ‘Do you know how much I have missed you?’

Oh my God, she thought. Here she was … dirty, dyed, thin … and here he was, pulling up her clothes … and, now, pushing her to the ground … like an impatient teenager.

‘Do you remember that time at Rosenlund? In the lace dress?’

‘I don’t want to think of the past.’

‘I
know,’ she said. ‘But I can’t help it.’

He didn’t answer but pushed her legs apart. ‘And Anton is part of you?’

It so often led back to Anton.

No more lies.

‘I missed him, too.’ Kay wanted to be truthful. ‘But the old Anton. He was never anything, Bror. He was part of a life in which we didn’t take things too seriously.’

Bror hesitated. ‘So you used him to put me off the scent?’

‘I did.’

‘Christ, Kay,’ said Bror. ‘Do you know what you did to me? Do you know what it’s like to lie awake imagining … Do you know what jealousy does? What it is? It’s cruel. It’s bitter. It’s murderous.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Bror bore down on her with his full weight. Deliberately crushing and exerting what power he possessed. ‘Are you really sorry … ?’

She spread her arms out wide, her half-opened blouse revealing her breasts. ‘I am here.’ Stirring deep in her body was an excitement, a sharp – almost too sharp to bear – desire and the longing for resolution.

Tar, brine, old wood … the smells would be forever associated with this moment.

After that, they were mostly silent. Her rucked-up clothing made a dent in her back as Bror took out on her both his anger and his love – and she permitted him to do so.

A little later he asked: ‘So he’s no longer in your head?’

‘He never has been.’

There was a long pause. ‘You hurt me, Kay.’ Then he bent over and kissed her hard on the mouth.

Afterwards, he lay spent on top of her, his face pressed into her shoulder. She turned her head and the grain of the wood walls seemed monstrously enlarged. If permitted, jealousy became stronger than love and the urge to forgive.

‘Forget
Anton, Bror. Forget him.’

‘Tell me you love me …’

Bror had never asked that of Kay before. ‘I do.’ She breathed in a shuddery breath. ‘I do.’

Their marriage? After all these years, this is where they were. Almost broken by war, battered, with vast areas of darkness, irrevocably altered … but still living, still breathing.

In the silence, they heard the beat of rain on the roof.

It was time to go.

Kay wriggled out from under Bror and tried to tidy herself up. ‘I know I look awful. I’m sorry.’

Bror touched her mouth with a finger. ‘You look terrible. You look wonderful.’