Tucker smirks. “That’d be a pity of course. Her so pretty an’ all. I don’t mean her any harm. Just need a bit more nosh. And some fags. Got some debts to pay. You could leave me a tin of grub and some fags at the end of your bunk, just under your blanket. I’ll come for them after lights out.”
Bill is looking at the ground. “We haven’t got any fags. We got a Canadian parcel.”
Tucker thinks. “Well, make it two tins, then.”
Fury rises in me, almost blinding me.
Bill growls, “You bastard!” He has his fists clenched by his sides, but Tucker hasn’t finished.
“And of course, if you tell Ralph Maddox or your other new mates, I’ll be straight to the goons with your little bit of news.”
Fourteen
Bill and Izzy’s first days at Lamsdorf begin to unfold in a mixture of terror, boredom and hunger. The search, the roll call and the latrine are the worst, and Bill’s heart thumps in his chest every time Izzy is close to a Nazi, though he’s full of admiration at the way she stares coldly at the guards. Almost every day the men from hut seventeen who know her secret are forced to stage some kind of diversion to draw the guards’ eyes from her to them. During one routine search, the lazy-eyed guard, banging his hands down her body, rests them for a second longer than necessary on her waist, but Bill, ever vigilant, pushes Max so that he trips forward in line into her, knocking the guard aside, and the moment passes. Bill is exhausted from feeling that he has to be alert to danger every second, that he can never take his eyes off her.
Each night they leave a small amount of food at the end of Bill’s bed for Tucker, and it’s always gone by morning. Bill and Izzy’s rations are now cut beyond endurance, and their stomachs twist and turn with hunger. Tucker seems to take pleasure in reminding them how easy it would be for him to betray them, standing close to the tall guard in the washroom and indicating him with a flick of his head or hanging about near the guard with eczema at the wire, opening his mouth as if to speak and then deciding against it. Bill loathes him more than he’s ever hated anyone in his life. Every day he thinks he’ll tackle him direct, but can’t decide how to do that in a way that won’t send him whining to the guards. Every day he makes up his mind to tell Ralph, because he’d know what to do, but then he wonders, How could Ralph stop Tucker going to the guards? There would always be an opportunity for him to spill their secret. Bill finds himself trying to dream up of ways he could kill Tucker without being discovered and then is appalled at himself. Killing in battle is one thing, but he doesn’t know whether he could plunge a knife into a body. The thoughts buzz round and round his head, wasps trapped in a jar.
Each morning opens into a long, yawning day filled with the sweating closeness of men pressing in on every side, and he can only imagine how oppressive Izzy, who is used to open spaces and solitude, must find this. Even those who are protecting Izzy spend too much time scouring her with their eyes, then quickly looking away when Bill catches them. He can imagine how she must suffer from the unbearableness of never being alone or quiet, not for one single moment, not even in bed or on the toilet. How she must long for the fields and the sky. He knows he does, and he didn’t grow up with nature all around him.
The days seem interminable, as if time runs on a different kind of clock in the camp. When they were here before, Bill and Harry would fill the hours by reading or finding a football match to take part in or a cricket match to watch, or Bill would go to play the piano in the hut they used for a church. Now he and Izzy do their latrine duty and take a daily walk round the perimeter with Ralph and sometimes with Max or Scotty. And after that, the long, long hours till bedtime. He takes Izzy to the camp library and chooses Great Expectations, which he begins to read to her, very quietly, tucked in his bunk, running his finger under the words so she can see them, and Izzy writes down all the words that are new to her. But you can only read for so many hours a day, and Bill misses the constant chats about anything and everything he had with Harry. He marvels at Izzy’s determination not to speak, but he longs for conversation to pass the time.
He wonders how Max can stand spending most of each day on his bunk, reading or scribbling rapidly in his notebook with tiny writing, or just lying with one leg always restlessly jiggling, staring at the slats above his head. Bill can’t understand why Max doesn’t go out and join a club or play a sport or teach something in the camp school. Anyone choosing to stay trapped in the hut all day is a mystery to him. He thinks about the marriage service—for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health. It didn’t mention being stuck in a stifling hut all day.
He’s ridiculously grateful when Ralph falls in beside him and Izzy on the way back from roll call and says, “I saw you had a harmonica. Do you play anything else?”
“Just piano,” says Bill. “Not well or anything.”
“What composers do you like?” asks Ralph.
“Oh, I never had lessons. Me mum and dad run a pub, and we always had a piano in the bar. I started messing about on it when I was a tiddler, and just sort of picked it up. Mum always said I should have lessons, learn to read music and all that. But Dad couldn’t see the point. He said I could play well enough for the pub, and it wasn’t as if I was going to be a concert pianist.”
“Pity,” said Ralph. “You might have been.”
Izzy is nodding beside him, but Bill pulls a wry face. “Too late now. But it’s handy for a singsong. I had a sax at home too, but need to be taught properly.”
“Maybe the bandleader could teach you. He’s a good sort. I can ask if you like?”
“Not planning to be here that long.”
Ralph smiles. “Fair play.” And he opens the door to the hut.
Bill’s heart sinks as they step back into the hut, and he says, “When I was here before, I used to go and play the piano in the church, when it wasn’t being used.”
“Well, go again,” Ralph urges him. “Go now! Me and Max will stay with Cousins. You need to get out.”
Izzy is nodding vigorously, and Bill is overwhelmed. He feels like running out of the door this very second. He shakes Ralph by the hand and wonders what he can do to repay him. “Do you think the men would like me to play my harmonica one evening, for a bit of a singsong?” He’s done that many times before in the camps where he and Harry were imprisoned.
“We’ll ask them,” says Ralph. “I should think they’d welcome it. Singing raises the spirits.”
So that night Bill plays, for almost an hour, and most of the men join in, singing familiar songs. Max doesn’t sing, but lies on his bunk with his eyes closed, and Izzy hunkers back on her bed, watching Bill.
As he drifts to sleep, Bill thinks how unfathomable it is that a species that can invent music and feel love can also kill and maim and starve and blackmail one another.
• • •
With every day that passes, Bill thinks how right he was to put his faith in Ralph. He knows now that Ralph is one of the Nazis’ “men of confidence,” in charge of their hut, relied on by the guards to keep control and able to speak German well enough to convey orders. But he also knows that he’s trusted by the men in the hut to treat everyone fairly and represent their needs to the commandant. That makes him a rare character. He’s all right for a Northerner, thinks Bill. The North is all one undifferentiated place to Bill, who’s never been farther north than the top end of the Piccadilly line.