Women of Courage (66 page)

She stood very still for a moment, trembling. She was not afraid, but furious because she could do nothing. If she stood still he would kill her and then she would have no way of protecting her son; but if she moved aside she would not be protecting him either. A flood of hysterical tears threatened to rise within her but she suppressed them instantly. Tears were no good now — nor was reasoned argument or cajoling. She felt like a savage — a wild woman of the Stone Age faced by a snake or a bear. Then she heard footsteps shuffle on the leaves behind him and thought: Sarah was right. There is only one way after all.

To distract his attention she smiled at him in a way that she hoped looked more frightened than cunning, and stepped away from the door, towards his left side.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘But don’t hurt him, please, will you?’

‘Oh no,’ he said mockingly. ‘Now, just move back out of the way, and I’ll open the door.’

As she came past the beam of the torch she saw, for the first time, the long bayonet hanging on his left hip like a short sword, and thought, I can threaten him with that.

He reached out his hand for her left shoulder. As he did so she screamed:
‘Now!’
and lunged for his side, knocking him off balance. She grabbed the hilt of the bayonet with both hands, trying to pull it out of the sheath. At the same time Sarah swung at the back of his head with the stick she had found, knocking him off balance against the wall by the steps. Simon groaned and fell forward, dragging Deborah forwards with him. Then he lurched clumsily to his feet again. The torch clattered to the floor, sending a bright intense beam against a brick on the side wall, and plunging the rest of the passage into darkness. Sarah screamed and hit Simon again, and Deborah felt the rotten branch shatter against his shoulder just in front of her face, spraying her with damp splinters. Simon stumbled but didn’t fall. Deborah felt him staggering under her grip. She held on to him but he was trying to turn round and stay upright and keep hold of the rifle all at once.

‘Get the gun!’ she yelled to Sarah. Sarah grabbed hold of something but there was a clatter as though he or she had dropped the gun, and none of them knew where it was in the panic and the darkness and the lurching, stumbling bodies.

Deborah felt herself slammed back against the wall but she held on to the hilt of the bayonet grimly. In a moment he will break free, she thought, and then he’ll kill us both and Tom too. If I get this bayonet out and threaten him with it he’ll see sense and calm down.

But the bayonet wouldn’t come out. She couldn’t understand what on earth was wrong with it. Instead of pulling it out of the sheath she was dragging the whole belt upwards, tilting him further off balance. He punched the side of her head with his left hand but she felt nothing because all her attention was focussed on her fingers around the hilt of the bayonet, pulling and tugging to get it free, and then he grabbed her hair and she screamed but she still didn’t let go.

Her fingers had worked out the problem. The hilt was fastened to the sheath by a little button clip that went over the guard. Her fingers found the button and wrenched it free, tearing a nail as she did it. Then Simon swung round in a complete circle, his fist swinging out in the darkness with a wild punch that caught Sarah hard in the stomach and doubled her over on the floor.

Deborah was flung free, back against the wall, but the bayonet came out of the sheath as she fell, free in her hand. I’ve got it now, she thought. But what do I do with it? Sarah was groaning on the floor somewhere near her feet and Simon was somewhere in the gloom a few feet further ahead of her. She saw his body moving in the dim light of the torch; she could hear his short, harsh, desperate breathing, mixed with her own gasps and Sarah’s groans. She stood, half crouched, with her back to the wall like a trapped animal, the bayonet held out in front of her in her right hand like a shield to ward off evil.

Then she realised the torch was near her left foot. An idea came to her. She dived forwards, snatched it up in her left hand, and shone it towards him.

He stood with his back to the right-hand wall, fumbling with the rifle in his hands, pointing it towards the dazzling glare of the torch. As she watched, he shouted, high, frightened, breathless. ‘Get back out of the door! Quick, or I’ll shoot you both!’

But even before he had finished shouting a shadow lunged out of the darkness towards him, knocking him off balance again. Sarah screamed: ‘
Now!
I’ve got his legs, Debbie! Grab him!’

But Deborah stared, paralysed, not knowing what to do with the bayonet . . .

And then the gun went off, a foot in front of her face.

The noise was enormous, shattering, like a thunderstorm inside her own head, and there was white and yellow fire in front of her face. She stood quite still, rigid, thinking: I’m not hurt at all. He missed me. In a minute he’ll shoot again.

In the feeble yellow light of the torch she could see he was still standing, struggling to stay upright with one hand against the wall to keep his balance and the rifle raised in the other to club the woman who was on her knees with both arms round his legs, pushing, clinging, straining against him with all her strength to wrench his legs out from under him and knock him over before he could fire again.

Deborah snapped out of her trance and thought, if he hits Sarah with that he’ll break her skull.

She ran forward with a sudden scream and, as she did so, Simon finally lost his balance and fell forwards towards her so that her stab with the bayonet went right through his coat and into his stomach and on up under his rib-cage through a lung and his heart until it grated against his backbone and jarred and twisted in her hand.

He collapsed on top of her, his already dead weight slamming her hard against the ground. She lay there for a moment, stunned, her legs twisted painfully under him. Then Sarah grunted, and with a huge effort heaved him to one side. The torch, from where it had fallen, shone up into Sarah’s face. It was pale, sweaty, savage.

Sarah leaned forward, grabbed Simon’s head by the hair, and thumped it hard against the floor. Then she knelt beside him gasping, her hands still entwined in his hair, to see if he would move.

The body gurgled once, twitching, and lay still.

Deborah dragged herself to her knees, shaking, and picked up the torch. She shone it on Simon’s once-beautiful, perfect head. Thick red blood was pouring out of his mouth and nostrils.

‘Oh my God!’ she exclaimed. She felt sick. She grabbed his arm and heaved him up on to one side, and there was the bayonet. The hilt of it was buried in the front of his jacket, low down below his rib-cage. The point came out of his back, just below the shoulder-blades.

The two women stared, breathing heavily. There was nothing to say. The body twitched once or twice, and more blood came out of its mouth. Otherwise there was silence. Then a small voice came from behind the door at the end of the passage.

‘Mummy? Mummy, are you all right?’

‘Dear God,’ Deborah said. ‘The keys!’ Mechanically, her hands fumbled in the pockets of Simon’s jacket. Not this side, they had to roll him over again. The front of his jacket was slippery and warm with blood. ‘Here.’ She took out two keys, shone the torch on them, chose one. Then she got up and stumbled to the door at the end of the passage.

Her hands were shaking so much that she couldn’t get the key into the hole. She dropped the torch, picked it up, and tried again. At the third attempt she made it. The key turned and the door opened. A wave of icy air flooded into the passage.

A small boy stood in the torchlight at the foot of the steps, shrouded in blankets, shivering. His fair hair was ruffled and untidy, his thin anxious face stared at her with wide dark eyes. ‘Mummy?’

‘Yes, Tommy, it’s me.’

She went down the steps and wrapped her arms round him. There was frost on the outside of the blankets and the torchlight sparkled on the round icy floor.

‘I heard a shot. Mummy, you’re shivering.’

‘It’s all right, Tommy. You’re all right now.’

‘But wasn’t there shooting? Was there a fight?’

‘Don’t talk about it, Tom. Everything’s all right. I’ll take care of you now. Come outside.’

She pushed him ahead of her up the narrow steps, and shone the torch deliberately at the wall on the left, so that he wouldn’t see the body on the floor.

‘Sarah,’ she said. ‘I’ve got him.’

But to her surprise Sarah wasn’t in the passage. She flashed the torch quickly around it to make quite sure. No one; only Simon, sprawled on the floor. Tom walked ahead of her, a tiny figure huddled in his blankets, towards the moonlight outside the door at the end of the passage. She had one arm reassuringly on his shoulder.

At the doorway he looked out and paused, frightened. ‘Mother, I don’t like it.’

‘It’s all right, Tommy,’ she said. ‘We’re safe now.’ Her body was shaking all over but underneath that was the warmth of gratitude, tears of triumph that would burst out in a flood at any moment.
I have saved my son!

‘Sarah?’ she said softly. ‘Where are you?’

She stepped out of the door and saw two men, standing silently under the trees. They were both very large and the moonlight glinted on the barrels of their rifles. They stared at her quietly for a moment.

Then one said: ‘Is the boy and his mother. You go with us now please. Down to the house.’

31

S
ARAH STOOD beside a beech tree halfway up the slope, appalled. She could not understand how it had happened, or why they could not see her, or what she should do.

She saw Deborah start to protest, but immediately one of the two men seized her by the shoulder and propelled her in front of him down the hill. The other man slung Tom over his shoulder and followed after. They were both big, broad-shouldered men, at least a foot taller than her and even taller than Deborah. Both were armed with rifles and Sarah didn’t have even a stone or a branch. If I rush at them, she thought, perhaps that man’ll drop Tom and he’ll run away. But he can’t, not in all those blankets, and anyway where would he go? It’s more likely they’ll shoot him and then what? At least I’m still free, I should be able to help in some way, but what? I’m too weak, my stomach hurts and there’s something wrong with my eye and I can hardly stand . . .

She was still dithering by the time the men came out of the wood and on to the grass thirty yards away, and then they were going across the grass towards the house and it was far, far too late.

A minute ago we thought we had saved Tom. How did this happen?

When they had killed Simon and Deborah had got up to unlock the door, Sarah had staggered outside because her stomach hurt where Simon had punched her and she couldn’t stand the sight of all that blood and she wanted to be sick. She had stumbled a few yards up the hill and vomited on the ground, and then, when she had stopped retching, she had heard some voices further down the hill. So she had climbed up further to a point where she could look down upon the house, and when she had turned, she had seen the men already outside the ice-house. How they had got there without seeing her she didn’t know, but they had, and she had been so paralysed with shock and indecision that she hadn’t moved out of the shadows where she was until they had taken Tom and Deborah and marched them away.

She remembered there was a rifle in the ice-house, Simon’s rifle. I could take it and try to shoot them, she thought. But she might hit Deborah or Tom instead. Anyway, she didn’t know how to use a rifle, she had never learnt.

That’s one thing I really do need a man for, she thought grimly. But who? Charles, he’s a soldier
. Oh God they’ve captured him too!
She remembered what Simon had said to Deborah as she stood just outside the passage only a few minutes ago.
‘Your husband was caught trying to run away through the woods’
— something like that. So no one knew these people were here. Even though Simon was dead, no one could stop them.

An idea came to her.

Charles was trying to get to the village to fetch his men from the UVF, she thought. Deborah said his sergeant lives there and so do a lot of the men. Probably they have their rifles with them.
I could go and warn them instead!

How?

I can’t go past the house, they might see me. But there’s a lane, isn’t there, at the back of these woods. I remember I went for walks there with Jonathan on our honeymoon long ago. Where is it?

She began to climb up the hill, but almost immediately she stumbled and fell on her hands and knees. She felt exhausted. her breath came in short harsh gasps and her chest and stomach hurt and there was bile in her throat and tears flowed down her cheeks. She clenched her hands in the leafmould and thought: why am I like this?

I have just helped to kill a man — is that it?

That’s not it. Even when I was being force-fed I wasn’t as weak as this. It’s because we failed. All that effort wasted. Tom and Deborah and Charles are in the hands of these devils and I’ve turned my back on them. I’m running away.

That’s not true. You have to believe in what you’re doing, then you find strength. You’re not running away, you’re running to fetch help. Convince yourself, believe it. Make your legs move. They have to move. It doesn’t matter how weak they are. They’re the only hope now.

She dragged herself to the top of the slope on her hands and knees, and then stood up. Her legs were shaking uncontrollably and her chest and stomach hurt as though they were being rasped with a file every time she breathed. It had begun to rain again and she was wet and shivering with cold. But the track she was looking for was only ten yards ahead. She could see the moonlight glistening on a wet gatepost.

Grimly, she stumbled towards it. When she had got onto the track the ground began to slope downhill. Digging deep into her resources, she began to run along the dark muddy road, her legs in the long damp skirts wobbling like rubber beneath her . . .

To Werner, it seemed that the war had already begun. Each time there was a shot outside in the darkness matters got worse. First Charles was dragged in wounded and bleeding; now Karl-Otto and Adolf came in with the boy and the news that his bedraggled, bloodstained, hysterical mother had murdered young Simon. The ferocious look in her wild dark eyes suggested that she would do the same to the rest of them if she got the chance.