I Can't Begin to Tell You (47 page)

Tanne’s heart thudded. Easy now.

It was still very dark. Small animals were moving around in the undergrowth.
Snap
. There was a crackle in the undergrowth to their right. A rustle to their left.

Wait in silence. Listen. Silence can tell you more than noise
.

Her mother’s shoulders slumped. ‘You’re not to touch the wireless set,’ she whispered. ‘
Understood?
’

‘Shush.’

‘If you won’t think of me, think of
Far
.’ Kay pulled Tanne to her. ‘It’s an order.’

Back to the nursery. Her mother’s soft lap. The murmured endearments.

‘How long since you’ve been home?’ Tanne asked her.

‘I left not long after you.’

‘Any news of
Far
?’

‘He’s well. And safe.’

‘Has he any idea of where you and I are?’

‘It wouldn’t be hard for him to work it out.’ Her mother’s mouth was close to her ear. ‘Whatever happens I want you to remember that I love your father.’

Tanne was conscious of tiredness. Big, all-encompassing fatigue creeping right down to the soles of her feet. The cold nipped at her exposed skin.

‘But is that enough?’ How stupid was that? She, too, loved her father. But she, too, was sitting in a dark wood waiting to go on the run.

‘If it wasn’t for the war, it would have been enough. But war changes people.’ Kay detached herself, took Tanne’s hand. She pulled at the little finger. ‘We’re different now from what we were. For you, this war will affect only a small part of your life. It doesn’t seem like that at the moment …’ Tanne could tell
from her voice that she was smiling. ‘But it’s true. You will get over what’s happened.’

What to say? What to think? ‘
Mor
, I swear I saw
Far
earlier. I think he came down to the lake to see what was going on.’

‘The plane woke him, then. I thought it might. He told me he had moved back into our bedroom.’ Her voice grew urgent. ‘He mustn’t find us, darling. Do you understand?’

They agreed to take turns to get some sleep and Tanne insisted on keeping first watch. Her mother must have been tired, too, for she dozed.

Her mother had forbidden her to touch the wireless set.

That heavy, bulky case which was impossible to explain away if challenged. Tanne supposed a brilliant actor might pretend it was a gramophone or … or a dictating machine, and get away with it. She wasn’t an actor, but perhaps terror would make her so. If caught with it, there would be no question what would happen. Operationally, too, it acted like a flaring beacon, pulsing Morse and attracting every direction-finding unit in the universe, trapping its pianist in its crystals, aerials and headphones.

The cold filtered through the wood. Cold always smelled, Tanne found.

After an hour, she and her mother swapped. Tanne settled herself against the tree. Her body relaxed, her legs grew heavy.

She was woken by Kay pressing a finger over her mouth. With the other hand, she pointed in the direction of the road. ‘Car stopped. Someone’s coming.’

Cradling the pistols, they stood upright. There was a merest crack. A shuffle. A rustle of leaves.

Fieldcraft: muddle the enemy and, if necessary, surprise him from behind
.

Tanne gestured to her mother:
Go right
.

She went left, moving stealthily, cautiously.

The footstep?

It
was that of the experienced hunter. Easy. Assured
.

Dawn was breaking, but it was still fiendishly difficult to make out shapes with any clarity.

Tanne froze. Three metres or so in front of her hiding place, a figure padded past. Male. Tall. She could just make out that he wore a long hunter’s jacket, with a hat pulled down over his face. A rifle was slung over his shoulder, probably one used for game. On reaching the place where they had holed up, he dropped down and placed the flat of his hand on the earth.

Listening.

He was familiar, achingly so. At the same time he was alien and unknown.

Tanne wanted both to run towards him and to flee. Neither was possible.

The man straightened up and walked back towards the road.

Wait until you are sure
.

Kay materialized like a ghost from her hiding place. ‘A
stikker
?’

‘Poacher, I think. ’

‘That would be it.’

The two women stared at each other. Kay placed her hands on Tanne’s shoulders. ‘Let’s both believe that.’

This was complicity as strong as the umbilical cord. Neither of them was going to acknowledge that it had been her father. Neither would ask what the other thought he had been doing.
Please, please let it be a simple explanation … that he was up early to shoot duck as he has done so often before
.

Kay looked shattered. Tanne seized her hands. ‘You’re ill. You’re shaking. This is too much for you. Please will you get yourself to Sweden? And let
Far
know.’

Her mother wasn’t having any of that. ‘I’m shaking because I’m tired, cold and hungry. So are you. I’ll be up and running once I’ve eaten.’

Tanne said, ‘We have to go.’

‘Let me look at you, Tanne. Please.’

Hearing
her name was odd.

Kay placed a hand under Tanne’s chin. Familiar. Loving. ‘You’re filthy. We’ll have to go into the washrooms and clean up. We’ll be mother and daughter if anyone talks to us.’

‘No,’ said Tanne. ‘Our papers are different.’

‘Of course.’ Kay shrugged. ‘I was forgetting.’

First light was dawning and they prepared for the off. Unwrapping the crystals which were embedded in sponge, Kay buried all traces of the packaging under a clump of bushes. Tanne checked them over for damage. They looked fine.

They lay in her palm. So mundane and squat – the gateway to the ether which pulsed to a secret poetry and to the cries and whispers of those trapped behind the lines of the Reich.

Tanne slipped them into the pouch she wore round her waist under her trousers. The bulge was masked by her jacket.

‘Tanne …’ said her mother. ‘Tanne, darling. I want you to take this.’ And she pressed her beret down onto Tanne’s head. ‘It will get cold, very cold. You’ll need it.’

Snatching it off, Tanne asked, ‘What about you?’

Kay took the beret back again. ‘It’s for you.’ She pulled it down over her daughter’s ears, tucking her hair under the rim. ‘There.’ She leaned over and kissed her cheek. A butterfly touch. ‘There.’

Her mother tucking her up in the bed with a red and white quilt. Her mother stroking her face. Her mother bathing a cut on her knee
…

‘
Mor
?’

Again, Kay’s mouth brushed Tanne’s cheek. ‘Go well, my beloved daughter.’

They hiked into the town together but when they reached the Sankt Nicolai Kirke, they parted.

Tanne allowed herself to watch her mother progress down the street. Dyed. Thin. Shabby. Kay did not look back once.

She set herself to walk purposefully.

Always look as though you know what you are doing
.

Slipping inside a café she made for the washroom. Here she
sluiced her face and hands, combed out her hair and put on the glasses.

So what had
Far
been doing? She frowned at the face in the mirror. It hurt, it really hurt, to be questioning his motives, but she must acknowledge – she had to – that he supported the enemy. Would he … would he tip off the Danish police?

Of course she still loved him, but painfully, protectively, and with a new consciousness.

What secret decisions had been taken that meant she ended up here rather than in Jutland? And why? Coincidence? Fate? Bungling? Possibly all three. The more Tanne reflected on it, the more curious she found it. God knew how, but her life had been fused together with those of the war-makers, and interconnections made for political and strategic purposes.

Pinning up her hair, she extracted the crystals from her bag and tucked them into the scarf which she tied, turban fashion, round her head.

There was still time to order milk and a roll. She paid for them up front and ate them at a table facing the door. Afterwards, via the backstreets, she made her way to the station and bought a return ticket to Holte, the station after København. She would, however, alight in København.

Felix was already at the far end of the platform. He was sitting on a bench reading a paper, the case beside him. To see him … just to see him … Tanne was truly astonished by the strength of emotion that hit her like a hammer.

Four minutes until the train.

The passengers waiting on the platform projected a grey uniformity. The war, and worry, Tanne supposed. What, where,
who
were they in this war? These were questions that people must be asking themselves over and over. When peace came, how were they all going to live with one another again?

Escape route? Tanne noted a gap in the railings which ran alongside the platform and she checked it out. The aperture was large enough to squeeze through and gave access to the
area where cars and carts parked. A couple of delivery vans near to the entrance could possibly provide temporary cover if necessary.

Two minutes to go.

One minute.

A convoy of trucks roared into the station forecourt, followed by a staff car.

Tanne swung round.

Soldiers in
feldgrau
uniform surged onto the platform, followed by two German officers, plus a man in Danish uniform.

She glanced at Felix. Routine?

No.

Felix’s mouth had settled into a grim line.

The soldiers fanned out and corralled the passengers waiting on the platform. A couple more blocked the exit. Tanne checked her escape route.
Lort!
A woman with a child clutching her skirt was peering through the gap, obstructing Tanne’s getaway.

Lort! Lort!

Four soldiers advanced down the platform, followed by the officers. Tanne’s training clicked in.

Learn to recognize the uniforms as well as you know your times tables
.

The first wore the closed-collar uniform of the Waffen-SS, the second that of a high-ranking Abwehr officer. A general.

The general turned and beckoned to the Danish army officer who was lurking in the rear. Tanne stared. She knew who that was. Of course she did. It was Anton Eberstern.

On time, the train came into the station. The instincts in Tanne still untamed by her training screamed:
Flee!
With a supreme effort, she made herself walk up the platform towards Felix, timing it so she drew level with him as the train halted and its doors opened.

Check the getaway route.

At the gap in the railings, a man had joined the woman with the child. Hunter’s jacket, hat pulled down and a rifle in a case
slung over his shoulder. It was the man she and her mother had spotted in the wood.

Far
.

It made sense. Alerted by the drop, he would have tracked the pair of them as they walked into Køge. The accomplished hunter,
Far
was perfectly capable of it.

She knew then. She knew that, in his way, he had been watching over them.

He bent down, said something to the woman and pushed her gently away from the railings. That simple gesture told Tanne he would never betray them. No, her kind, loving father would be telling the woman to go, to be safe, to save her child from possible trouble.

Far
.

Tanne patted her scarf to check the crystals were still in place.

Felix rose to his feet and joined the passengers surging towards the train doors. Head down, she edged in his direction.

Hand at the ready.
Give it to me
. Felix looked straight past her but a foot nudged the case over to her. Tanne reached down … but before she could pick it up, the case was snatched away and a piece of paper pressed into her hand.

What?
What?

Tanne watched in horror.

At a steady, purposeful pace, her mother walked towards the carriage nearest to the engine. She was carrying the case as easily as if it weighed very little.

There was nothing Tanne could say or do.

Felix snarled into her ear: ‘Get out.’

She hesitated – an absolute violation of the training. But leave her mother? ‘Help her,’ she whispered.

‘I’m ordering you. Get out. Lie low until I make contact.’

‘Halt!’ The order was shouted by the German sergeant.

Her mother continued to walk down the platform – and
with every step she was growing smaller, thinner, more insubstantial …

‘
Halt!
’

Reckless, reckless
Mor
.

Please, please, Tanne prayed.

‘Halt or we shoot …’ The order was bellowed out but, at that precise moment, the train sounded its whistle and the first words of it were lost.

Only the word ‘shoot’ was audible.

One of the soldiers, a young keen one, took aim. Tanne watched his arm swing up in a rapid response, his finger adjusting on the trigger, the slight tensing of the muscles under his sleeve.

She heard the crack of the shot. Heads turned. She watched, unable to move, as her mother staggered. Blood flowered on the back of her blue jacket, spreading unevenly.

Kay stopped. She swayed, staggered, took another step forward before dropping to one knee.

The sergeant ran across and slapped her on the wounded shoulder. ‘Get up.’

Tanne leaped forward. ‘No.’

Felix hauled her back savagely.

‘Let me go.’

His fingers dug into her arm – agonizingly, cruelly. ‘No, you don’t.’

‘You can’t leave her.’

‘Yes, I can. So will you.’

A sound between a moan and a scream came from her mother as the sergeant pulled her to her feet.

The crystals were burning under Tanne’s scarf. The crystals sent in for the new wireless sets that would help to win the war.

She glanced at the folded paper Kay had pushed into her hand. Written on it in her mother’s writing was: ‘Give to
Far
.’

She couldn’t leave her. Felix must understand.

The
passengers had formed a tight, frightened knot. The Waffen-SS officer walked towards Kay. His fellow officer stopped to brief one of the soldiers guarding the entrance to the platform.