‘As we grew into manhood it became obvious that his heart belonged to the farm. The dark rich earth, the growing, the satisfaction of producing the best wine in the region became his passion. He fell in love with the smell of the grapes as they ripened on the vine, the new greening branches in the spring, the pruning and the harvest. Once he set his heart in this direction there was never a morning that he wasn’t up checking the fields at dawn. The farm was all he cared about and my father was ecstatic to share his knowledge and love with his younger son. But as he started spending more and more time with my father, the ground started to shift between us and we stopped being together all the time, and I was lost without him. I tried to find my footing, my place in my family, but there was no purpose for me any more. I felt isolated and as if I no longer fitted. So I went to find camaraderie somewhere else, somewhere where the ground would be strong, where things wouldn’t change, where I would have friends for life – so I joined the army. I wanted to make my country and my family proud. And at first it was good, and when he first rose to power, Hitler seemed great for our country. We had been pummelled by the First World War and our spirit as a nation was broken, the treaty that was placed on us so hard to rise above. As we barrelled into another war I was all for it at first, we wanted back our honour, our respect, ourselves. My family were concerned. They didn’t see how killing more people would help. But I was conceited and arrogant…’ Marcus started to break down, his voice trailing off to a whisper.
‘What happened to your brother? To your family?’ Vivi asked gently.
He turned his face from her, the tears starting to well in his eyes, and instinctively she grabbed his hand. Even if he was a German, the enemy, she recognised pain when she saw it. It reflected her own that she carried in her body like shrapnel.
He pushed through his anguish. ‘My brother was put in charge of the vineyard and when I would come home on leave, things felt more balanced in our lives. We had found our places in the world and we could return to the relationship we had known in our youth. Then along came Essie.’ He smiled as he remembered her. ‘Beautiful, warm, wonderful Essie. One of the kindest people I have ever known, with eyes that could see right into your soul, and a love that gathered everyone. She brought our family into her glow and though I had thought we were close before she came, she made us a family. Of course my brother fell in love with her, and they married as our army were advancing into Russia. When Amélie was born almost nine months to the day of their wedding, everything seemed once again to be working out for him. And I went on blindly following the Führer. I wasn’t really tracking what was happening at home. We were busy, you know, taking over countries and stripping people of their homelands.’ Marcus spat out the last of his words with real disgust.
Vivi’s question came out in a whisper, ‘What happened to Essie and Amélie?’
Tears streamed down his face unabashed. ‘Amélie grew into a lovely child, with blonde hair and blue eyes like her father, but there was something Essie had not told us: she was Jewish.’
His last statement hung in the air, poignant and heavy, and Vivi started to tear up – she knew the end to this story. So many Jews were going missing, presumed dead. Hitler had been hunting them down since the beginning of the war.
‘The Gestapo found out about her and they never even gave her a chance to defend herself. Essie and Amélie were shot and killed trying to escape the farm, and my brother too, trying to protect them. They were all slaughtered.’
Vivi sat down on the end of the bed, all of her anger and fight leaving her body. She pulled Marcus into her arms and let him sob there. Once he was recovered, he looked up at her, his eyes red and pleading as he pulled her damp cheek next to his so he could whisper in her ear.
‘This is why I have to do this, Vivi. I can’t let them down. I have to do it for my family. For an innocent child and the brother I will never see again.’
‘But how did you end up over here?’
‘After this happened I wanted revenge, and the best kind I could think of was not to defect but to turn on them. To my dying day I will be fighting against this regime to get Hitler out. I made contact through a mutual friend with someone who also was unhappy with the way our leaders were conducting themselves and I was put in touch with SOE. I have been working with them for six months now. I was here to brief them and deliver some highly sensitive information and was flying back when the plane I was on experienced engine trouble and we had to land in the sea. I remember nothing else until I opened my eyes and saw your beautiful face.’
Vivi nodded her head slowly as he finished his story. ‘I will go to London. Not because I totally trust you, yet, but because I need to know for myself what is going on here.’ She suddenly felt great relief. If he was who he maintained he was, then all the things she had said about the Resistance were of no consequence. He already would have known about these things.
‘I shouldn’t have told you the things about the Resistance,’ she whispered regretfully.
‘Vivi, we’re all human, desiring connection, even in the craziness of this world we find ourselves in. I do not hold that against you. It is lonely, our life. It is normal to take any kind of kindness, whenever we can.’
She listened to his words and recognised the look of resolve on his face. She didn’t know why she did it. It was impulsive. But she came forward and kissed him gently on the lips as he looked up at her with hope.
‘If you are who you say you are, then thank you for being brave. I know how hard that can be.’
He smiled. ‘I’m counting on you, Vivi, and I am trusting you. I know you are the right person. And one last thing… All I said about my feelings for you was true, none of that was a lie.’
She smiled, though still felt wary. Everything about this was so hard.
Making her way out of his room, she nodded to the guard who was waiting there and went back to make her arrangements. She would leave on the 7 a.m. train. That way she could be back in Cornwall by the late evening. She was nervous, but she felt a sense of excitement. At last, maybe she could be of service to her country again.
26
The next day, Vivi left for the train early in the morning. She informed her family and the sister on duty at the hospital that she had a sick friend in a distant town who she needed to visit and would be gone for the day. Before she left, she pinned on her family’s brooch, hoping it would bring her luck. Leaving the hospital, no one seemed to be suspicious of her intentions, and she slipped away unnoticed.
All the way to London, she thought about the discussion she’d had with Vonstein the night before, trying to anticipate every angle he could be employing. If he were working in the underground for the Reich, then surely he would use all of his tactics to get himself out of the hospital, because once he was in prison, it would be a lot harder to escape.
Vivi couldn’t be sure he wasn’t deceiving her, and yet, once again, there was that gut instinct that he was telling her the truth. Besides, she reassured herself, if SOE trusted him, then why shouldn’t she? Vivi determined that the thing that would sway her one way or the other was when she got to talk to his commander. Surely he would put her mind at rest.