Читать книгу Wait for Me - Caroline Leech, Caroline Leech - Страница 13

Lambing season was officially upon them. The next day, when Lorna got home from school, she headed over to the lambing shed in search of her father, but instead found the German prisoner. He was sitting on the straw with his back against the wall, watching as a ewe nudged her newborn lamb to its feet. From where Lorna stood by the door, she would never have known there was any damage to his face at all, and in that light and at that angle, she was reminded of her dream where she’d seen his face as it might have been. Handsome.

Remembering how upset he’d been the last time they’d talked, and suddenly embarrassed that he might catch her staring, Lorna backed out of the shed before he could even realize she was there.

Over the next few days, more than a dozen lambs were born with no danger to either lamb or ewe. But there were a couple that needed help with the birth, and both those ewes had pushed their lambs away, which meant they’d need to be fed by hand.

Mrs. Mack told Lorna that Paul had barely left the lambing shed each day. She was determined not to appear over-interested in him, but Lorna went to the lambing shed to offer help anyway. But Paul refused, saying he was fine. His manner was curt and efficient. Though Lorna knew she had said the wrong thing to him, she didn’t feel she needed to give an actual apology. It wasn’t like his feelings should matter to her or anything.

It was a relief just to know that the flock was well cared for during the daytime. The nights, however, were taking their toll on Lorna’s father. Lorna hadn’t seen him look so tired since he had been juggling days working on the farm with regular night patrols with the East Lothian Home Guard. Thankfully, those duties had ended before Christmas when the Home Guard had been stood down, but still, Lorna hated seeing her dad looking so weary.

One evening after tea, he announced that he’d written to the camp commander at Gosford, and Paul had been given permission to stay overnight at the farm, at least during the lambing season. Hearing this news, Nellie widened her eyes at Lorna in the mirror as she applied another layer of bright red lipstick in preparation for her evening off down in the village.

“So now shall we start locking our bedroom doors then, duckie?” she asked. “But then again, perhaps not!”

She gave Lorna a sly wink and danced out of the door before Lorna could respond.

Not that she knew how to respond. Would it make any difference at all to her if Paul was on the farm overnight? No, of course not, no difference at all. None.

The following morning, Lorna helped her father bring the old canvas camp bed down from the attic. They put it, with a pile of sheets and blankets, into the hayloft above the barn, where Paul would be sleeping until lambing was over.

It then fell to Lorna to take Paul’s evening meals to him. That first night she found him sweeping the floor of one of the pens in the lambing shed with the big hard-bristled yard broom. He greeted Lorna politely, and she felt another pang of … not guilt exactly, but … well, she knew she ought to clear the air.

Lorna set the dishes down on the barrel by the door and watched Paul work. After a few seconds, he looked up.

“About what I said”—Lorna’s throat caught on the words and she had to cough to clear it—“when you first arrived …”

Paul didn’t reply, and she could read nothing in his face.

“I didn’t mean to … at least, I didn’t think …” Lorna couldn’t find the right path at all. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“But you don’t want me here, me or the other Germans.”

“Well, no, I mean, yes, oh …”

Paul stood up straight and sighed.

“Fräulein Anderson, do you think that we like being here?”

It hadn’t occurred to Lorna that these men might be as angry about being in Scotland as the people they met there. He must have seen the confusion on her face, and he softened. “But thank you for”—Paul seemed to be searching for the right English—“your words.”

He went back to his sweeping.

Not sure what else to say or do, Lorna returned to the house. The conversation hadn’t solved anything, but she was glad she’d said something.

Later, when she went back out to pick up his dishes, she found Paul sitting on the straw in one of the pens with his back against the wall, feeding a lamb with a bottle. Another lamb was curled up asleep beside him.

As Lorna pulled the door closed quickly behind her so no light escaped, he looked up at her, and this time he smiled.

“Forgive me, I cannot stand up,” he said, lifting the lamb slightly as if to show he had his hands full. “But thank you for dinner. It was very delicious.”

“Tea,” Lorna corrected. “We have dinner at midday, in Scotland anyway, so we call this your tea.”

“I will try to remember that, thank you.”

As she cleared the plate, bowl, and empty milk bottle into her basket, Lorna became aware that Paul was still watching her.

“Sometimes,” he said, “you make me think of Lilli.”

Against her better judgment, Lorna asked, “Lilli?”

“My sister,” he replied. “She will become sixteen in May, and she is not shy to say what she thinks. Like you, Fräulein.”

Lorna wasn’t sure how to react. It unnerved her to be compared to someone he loved. But she was also intrigued that he too had left a little sister at home, as her brothers had.

So would it hurt just to ask one question?

“Is Lilli your only sister?” she asked.

Now his expression did change, she could see that even in spite of the burns. But did he look pleased that she had responded? Or relieved? She wasn’t sure.

“Yes, we are two,” he replied, “with our father and mother. Or we were. Before. Now it is only Lilli and Mother and me.”

“So your father …?”

Paul looked down at his hands and picked at a dirty hangnail on his thumb, and Lorna wished she’d kept her mouth shut. He took a deep breath.

“My father was ein Uhrmacher, a clockmaker, before the war. In Dresden.” He suddenly looked up at Lorna. “You know of Dresden, Fräulein Anderson?”

Lorna shook her head no, but then, perhaps she had heard something about Dresden quite recently. But where? At school? No, she didn’t think so. Perhaps a news report on the BBC?

“Dresden is very beautiful, very old,” Paul continued. “The River Elbe goes through the city, and there are many churches and art galleries. And parks, many parks. But you know, life in Germany has been difficult for some time, even before the war began. We had little to eat, and what food my mother could find was expensive to buy. And there was much to fear. But before that, I can remember a time when life was better. When my life was good.”

He was smiling now. Lorna could see it in his eyes, as well as on his mouth. How could she ever have thought it was a sneer?

“When we were little children, our parents took us on a Sunday afternoon to the Zwinger museum sometimes. And after, if we were good, they took Lilli and me to a coffeehouse for chocolate cake. Lilli loves chocolate cake, but I know she has not had chocolate cake for a long time.”

Lorna rested her hip against the pen gate. His tone was wistful. It must have been a long time since he’d last talked to anyone about his home and his family, she realized.

“In the summer, we all went to ein Biergarten, a beer garden, to hear the music, and our parents drank big glasses of beer, with lots of … Schaum.”

Paul looked at Lorna questioningly and waved his fingers over the top of an imaginary beer glass held in his other hand.

“I am sorry, I do not know the word in English. The white on the top of the beer?” He mimed again. “Schaum?”

“Oh, um.” Lorna was caught off guard. “Do you mean froth? Or foam?”

“Froth?” Paul repeated. “Beer with much froth, yes.”

Lorna smiled back at him before she could stop herself.

“Of course, we were too young for beer with froth,” he continued, “so we ate Bratwurst instead.”

“Bratvoo …?” Lorna’s attempt to repeat the word made Paul laugh. It was the first time she had heard it, a deep rumble in his throat, and it was unnervingly infectious.

“Bratwurst,” Paul repeated. “German sausage. They are very delicious. I think you would like them as we did, Fräulein Anderson. But that was before the war, before my father went away.”

He was quiet now, the laughter gone.

“Your father went away?” Lorna prompted.

“Yes. In 1939, he was called to the Wehrmacht, to the army. He left us on Christmas Eve. In April, he was already dead.”

“Oh!” Lorna gasped. What could she say to that?

For a while, the silence was broken only by the soft suckling of the lamb in Paul’s arms.

“After, life was hard for my mother, so when I became sixteen, I left school to work. A friend of my father said I would learn to be a clockmaker too.”

“You were an apprentice?” offered Lorna.

“Apprentice?” Paul tried the word. “Is that a young man who learns when he works?”

Lorna nodded, and she could almost see Paul filing that new word into his mental dictionary as he had done earlier with froth.

“It was difficult work, very … small.” Paul squeezed his fingers together as if to demonstrate. “But I liked it. For two years I learned about clocks and about watches, how to carve faces, grind cogs, cut jewels, and how to mend other makers’ pieces. Sometimes I felt my father sitting at the table beside me, holding my hand as I worked.

“But then it was January of 1944, my eighteenth birthday, and I was taken away from my work and away from Dresden, and I too entered the army of the Third Reich.”

As Paul lapsed into a thoughtful silence, stroking the lamb’s neck with his thumb, Lorna realized that she wanted to hear more. She opened her mouth, only to close it again. And it felt strange, standing over him, so she sat down on a small wooden stool just inside the pen.

Paul looked up as she sat, and it seemed to bring him back from another place and time.

“You must miss your father,” Lorna said simply. “I can’t imagine what I would do if my dad …”

Paul was very still and Lorna regretted saying anything. But now that she had, she needed to keep going.

“And you must worry about your mother and sister too. I know I do. I mean I worry. About my brothers.”

“Yes,” he said quietly, “I miss my father and yes, I worry.”

There was silence again, and Lorna determined that she would not break it this time with another silly …

“And your mother?” He was studying her now. “Do you miss her?”

Lorna’s throat contracted. She hadn’t expected this. “My mother died a long time ago.”

“I know,” he replied. What had Mrs. Mack told him? “But still you can miss her?”

Lorna shrugged. She didn’t have any memories of her own, only those borrowed from the stories her brothers told about their mother. How much could she think about missing her mother when her brothers were so far away and in such danger?

“I miss my brothers more,” she replied.

Spoken on a breath held tight, her words were barely audible, even to herself.

Paul waited, but when she said no more, he prompted her again.

“And will you tell me of them? Have they been at the war for a long time?”

Could she tell him? Should she tell him? Wouldn’t this be “careless talk”? But suddenly her desire, her need, to talk about them became overwhelming and she wanted desperately to talk about John Jo and Sandy, and how much she missed them. And who else was there who would listen?

“John Jo’s the oldest of us, and has been away the longest,” Lorna said, and the release of her breath came as a relief. “He could hardly wait to be part of it. He volunteered for service on the morning he turned eighteen, in ’forty-one. Of course, he’d tried to sign up the summer before, lying about his age, but by chance, the sergeant at the recruitment office had been at school with Dad. Can you believe it? So he knew John Jo wasn’t old enough to join up. John Jo was so furious, we didn’t dare go near him for days after.”

Lorna found herself smiling at the memory, and Paul smiled too.

“John Jo was a ruffian.” She noticed Paul frowning at the word. “I mean, he was wild, always wrestling someone or something—a school friend, a dog, or Sandy. But he was fun—he is fun. When I was much littler, he would build forts in the woods for us to play in, or we’d run down to paddle in the sea.”

She pointed in that direction, and Paul nodded.

“John Jo loves this farm so much. He’s only ever wanted to be a farmer, like Dad, though he seems to be doing all right as a soldier. He writes sometimes, but he doesn’t say very much, except to complain about the food and the weather.”

“I think every soldier writes to home about those things. The food and the weather.”

Lorna noticed then that when Paul smiled, and the raw skin was pulled even tighter across the cheekbone, it lost its pink color, becoming almost as white as the skin on his other cheek. It made the darker pink of his full, undamaged lips even more noticeable.

Lorna suddenly realized she was staring, at his burns and at his lips, instead of listening to what Paul had been saying.

“Sorry?” she stammered.

“I ask you about your other brother? Is it Sandy?”

“That’s right. Alexander really. Mrs. Mack says he would have been called Alex, but he was Sandy soon as they saw that his hair was red like our mum’s. He got Mum’s blue eyes and freckles too.”

“Freckles?” Paul asked.

“Oh, em, the brown dots, across your nose and face.” Lorna prodded her face in explanation. “You know, freckles.”

Paul nodded in understanding.

“Freckles,” he repeated.

“Yes, Mum had freckles and blue eyes. And red hair. I don’t really remember her because I was only three when she died, from the influenza. We have photographs of her, but you can’t see that her hair was red.”

Strangely, Lorna found it easy to talk about her mother, like this, in the abstraction of someone else’s memory.

“But no red hair or freckles for you?” Paul asked.

“No, not for me, or for John Jo either. We are both true Andersons, like my dad—dark eyes, dark hair and dark souls, that’s what my grandpa used to say.”

“Dark souls?” Paul said, shaking his head doubtfully. “I do not think—”

“It’s true,” Lorna said, “Sandy’s quite the opposite of John Jo and me. He’s incredibly clever, and also kind and sweet. We’re just selfish and bad-tempered. You just wait till you meet my brothers, then you’ll see I’m right.”

Something in Paul’s expression made Lorna think about the words she’d just uttered. Wait until you meet them … Why would Paul ever meet them? John Jo and Sandy might not be back until the war was over, by which time the prisoners would be gone from Gosford. And then it struck her, how would either of her brothers feel if they found her cozily chatting with an enemy soldier like this? She knew exactly how they’d feel, and she knew what they’d do about it too.

Lorna suddenly felt panicked, as if there were army boots outside the door, and jumped to her feet. What had she been thinking, trusting this stranger, this enemy, with her precious memories?

“Sorry, I need to get back to the house,” she said, grabbing Paul’s dishes and dashing for the door.

Just as she pulled the door closed behind her, she heard Paul sigh and she hesitated. It was such a sad sound, from a boy far from home. They’d only been talking, but she’d been rude to him yet again. He didn’t deserve that, but how could she make it right now?

“Good night,” she said, trying to make her voice sound more friendly.

Just before she clicked the door into place, he replied.

“Gute Nacht, Fräulein. Schlafen Sie gut!”