Doctor Who_ Just War - Lance Parkin [26]
Respect? Such little words. This young woman had drawn on some internal source of strength and carried herself with nobility. Although she would never win a medal, she was at least as heroic as the millions of conscripted men her age.
But Anne’s experience was a common one. Like her, most of the women in the world were at home now, desperately hoping that the doorbell wouldn’t ring. When the doorbell rang it was someone from the police or the army to give you a telegram. There was no need to read it, someone else on the street had had one the previous week, and their curtains had been drawn ever since. It is with great regret that I have to inform you...
The doorbell rang. Without giving Anne a reply, Benny jumped to her feet, her heart surging with relief.
‘I’ll go. It’ll be the Doctor.’
Benny went to the door and opened it. A German officer stood on the doorstep with Franz. Benny tried not to show her disappointment. It was the younger man who spoke first.
He had been crying.
‘Celia, Gerhard is dead. He was killed.’ He always spoke in primary-school German, straightforward sentences, not a hint that his was the language of Goethe and Schiller.
‘You speak German?’ The officer, a Hauptsturmführer she had never seen before, spoke now. He was a slight man in his forties, with greying hair. His chest was lined with various campaign medals that Benny wasn’t in the mood to catalogue.
‘Yes.’
‘Good.’ And that was the end of the conversation. The two men came into the house and wiped their feet on the mat. Ma Doras had come into the hall. She regarded the officer warily.
‘Is everything all right, Celia?’
‘Bad news, Ma. Gerhard was killed.’
There was genuine sorrow in Ma’s reaction. ‘At the beach?’
‘Yes,’ Franz and Benny replied together. An awkward pause before Franz continued. ‘We are here for his possessions. They will be returned to his family. Would you help us pack them, Celia?’
Benny nodded dumbly and led them upstairs to the first floor. She opened the door to Gerhard and Kurt’s bedroom.
The room was small, just a couple of beds, a wardrobe and a chest of drawers. The bed had not been made, a fact clearly noted by the German officer. Benny opened up each of the drawers in turn. Gerhard had left nothing remarkable: underwear, a fountain pen and writing paper, a tatty postcard of the Eiffel Tower, an unopened packet of cigarettes, a book of regulations, a magazine featuring photographs of healthy Aryan women in various states of undress. Benny laid each of these out on the bed and the officer meticulously listed them in a notebook.
‘Not much, is it?’ he commented.
‘He was young. Seventeen or eighteen.’
‘Sixteen. Seventeen in July. Not much for a life.’ He had removed a paper bag from his overcoat pocket and now dropped everything but the magazine and cigarettes into it.
He handed the last two items to Franz and carefully closed up the bag with some sort of official seal.
‘Thank you, Miss Doras. Private, I shall be waiting in the car.’ He marched from the room.
‘Yes, sir.’ Franz handed the magazine and cigarettes to Benny. ‘Could you take these to my room?’
‘Of course. Then I’d better get to work.’
Franz hesitated for a second, then whispered, ‘I would not.’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, you and he were... friendly.’ There was no doubt what he meant by the word. At least he had the decency to blush.
‘We were not.’
‘You went out last night. He told me.’
She fixed him with a stare. ‘We went for a walk, nothing more. And I am going to work.’
Chris Cwej was in love.
The radiator was a vast silver slab, the bonnet an equally solid expanse of green-grey. Huge wings arched over the narrow tyres, then stretched back to the very rear of the car.
The car’s roof was bulky yet elegantly rounded. The windscreen and other glass was thick, lined with brass. The headlamps and other fittings were carefully polished. Chris came from an age when automated factories churned out thousands of functional transport units. Each model was designed according