The Escape
Praise for Clare Harvey:
‘Will delight all those who love a good wartime story’ Dilly Court
‘Brilliant. I was swept away by this unforgettably powerful tale of love and courage in the face of war. This beautifully written, pacy and impressively researched story binds together a group of flawed individuals in an intricate and fascinating drama, full of heart-stopping moments. Clare Harvey writes with a directness and an honesty that pins you to the page’ Kate Furnivall
‘The sense of period, the descriptive prose and the superb writing make The English Agent a real page-turner. Clare is certainly a gifted storyteller’ Ellie Dean
For Chris, forever
Double exposure (noun): the repeated exposure of a photographic plate to light, often producing ghost images.
Chapter 1
January 1945, Nazi Germany
Detta
At the sound, her fingers stilled. She had been about to type the letter ‘s’. The type hammer stopped halfway to the paper. Her ring finger quivered above the key. She looked up. The windowpane shivered as the droning swarm passed overhead: wave after wave of bombers in battle formation, like migrating birds in autumn, heading west. Heading west?
Detta’s eyes flicked away from the window. Frau Schmidt was partway across the room, carrying a cup of coffee. Irmgard was licking an envelope, pink tongue protruding from her thin lips. Both were frozen mid-action, heads tilted as they looked out of the window at the ranks of bombers. Detta followed their fixed gazes out of the window, to where the planes still flew. From here it was impossible to see what markings the aircraft had. She didn’t need to. They were flying in from the east, heading west. There would be red stars on their bodywork. Starlings. What was a flock of starlings called? A murmuration – a murderous murmuration, she thought distractedly, watching the bombers pass overhead.
And then they were gone. The skies were back to the usual white-grey, and the sound was just a distant vibration. Detta turned to look at Frau Schmidt; the older woman merely squinted through her spectacles, and continued walking towards the boss’s office with the coffee mug. But the coffee had spilled in her shaking grasp: brown tears on the pale grey lino as she shuffled away. Irmgard finished licking the manila envelope and let it fall like a trembling autumn leaf onto the stack in front of her.
Outside, where the planes had passed, were the silent, snow-laden skies. Inside, feet pattered along the endless Reichsbahn corridors, typewriters chattered, filing cabinet drawers swooshed open and clunked closed. As if nothing had happened at all. But there was a taste in the air, thin and salty: fear.
Frau Schmidt was already walking back towards her desk. Irmgard scratched her head and picked up another envelope to lick. The spilled coffee lay unnoticed on the floor. Detta wondered if she should get a cloth and wipe it up before someone slipped. But her hands were still stuck above the keyboard and it felt impossible to move. Carry on, that’s what she should do. Ignore what had just happened and carry on. Perhaps they could all conspire in the pretence that they hadn’t just seen and heard the Russian bombers, heading west, right into the heart of the Reich.
Detta felt a pull in her chest and her throat constricted. Breathe, she told herself. Just breathe. The hand on the big clock by the door jerked forward. What would Mother be doing now, she wondered? Preparing lunch? If there were guests then it would be lentil soup with smoked sausage and rye bread. But there hadn’t been any guests at the inn since before Christmas, and what was the likelihood they’d have any today, this nondescript January day? No, there would be no guests at the inn. No guests, but visitors? She thought of the image of a Russian T-34 tank she’d seen on a newsreel last year, beetling across the steppes. Not that kind of visitor, not yet, surely?
‘After I’ve finished these I’m going for lunch.’ Irmgard’s reedy voice broke in on Detta’s reverie. ‘Want to join me?’ Her eyes had a glassy look. She had never invited Detta to join her for lunch before.
‘How kind of you to ask.’ Detta let out a breath as she spoke. She flexed her fingers over the keyboard, pushed the carriage release, lifted the lever, and turned the platen knob. She pulled out the sheet of paper and placed it in a yellow file marked ‘Herr Meier’, hoping that Irmgard wouldn’t notice that there was just a line and a half of text, an unfinished sentence, on the pale cream page. The letter ‘s’ still hovered indecisively above the Simplex’s keyboard. ‘I just need to pop this down to Herr Meier and I’ll be with you.’
‘Can’t you put it in the internal post?’ Irmgard said, between desultory licks.
Detta pushed the ‘s’ back into its position in the ranks of metal type hammers, and picked up the yellow file. ‘Sorry. It’s urgent.’ She managed a smile. ‘I won’t be long.’
Irmgard’s desk faced away from the door, and Frau Schmidt was peering at something in the purchase ledger. Neither noticed Detta plucking her handbag and coat from the stand on her way out.
She paused in the corridor. Breathe, she reminded herself. If anyone asks, you are dropping off the file for Herr Meier, that’s all. She didn’t dare put her coat on yet – too obvious. To her left, the corridor stretched away towards the main stairs. Herr Meier’s office was on the floor below, overlooking the atrium, where the receptionist sat with the signing in and out sheets. Detta checked her watch. It wasn’t yet midday: too early to sign out, even for an early lunch break. If she went down the main stairwell she’d be stuck. To her right were the stationery cupboard, the meeting room and the kitchenette. And at the end of the corridor a fire door.
Detta turned right. She forced her shaking legs to walk, even though everything was telling her to run. Don’t make it obvious. Slow down. Her feet tapped along: one-two-three. Slow, slow, almost there. She could see the smooth handle of the fire door; imagine the rush of cold air as she opened it. A couple more steps would be all it took.
A door suddenly opened to her right. ‘Fräulein?’ She turned with studied casualness. To look bored, that was it. Look bored even if it feels as if your heart is about to explode. It was Herr Hauptmann: balding, myopic blue eyes and a smell of mothballs about him.
‘Yes, Herr Hauptmann?’
‘The meeting’s running on – could you ask Frau Schmidt to sort out having a tray of sandwiches sent up from the canteen?’
Detta nodded. ‘Yes, Herr Hauptmann.’
‘Good, good. See to it, then.’ The door slammed shut. She could hear muffled voices from inside. Should she go back, tell Frau Schmidt about the sandwiches? But then Irmgard would see her, and she’d be forced to stay, have lunch. There’d be no escape. The tug in her chest came again. She touched the silver locket at her throat, thinking of Mother, and of home.
Three careful steps and she was at the fire door. With delicate slowness she pushed down the bar and opened it just wide enough to slide out. The first breath was like needles as the icy air assaulted her. She pushed the door to. For a moment she glanced down at the zigzag mesh of steps, tethering the brickwork like a piece of bad hemming. She knew better than to touch the railings in this weather, but there was no time to fumble in coat pockets for gloves. No time at all. She began to trot down the icy metal steps, trying not to think about what would happen if she fell. Down, down, down. Her chest was heaving by the time she reached ground level.
A path led from the back of the Reichsbahn building to the road. Across the road was the wide façade of the station. She could hear a train whistle, see the distant puff of smoke. Wasn’t there a Breslau train just before midday? She dropped Herr Meier’s yellow file on the frosted ground, and broke into a run.
Tom
He thought he’d imagined it at first, but no, there it was, definite low buzz, coming from beyond the trees. Hope twisted deep in his guts.
He hadn’t felt hope since.
Now Tom blew on his fingers and stamped his feet, waiting, to be certain. The woods were pitch-dark and still. Snow pooled in the spaces between the tree trunks. He’d come out of the hut for his usual pre-lunch constitutional: three times round the perimeter and a pause to check what birds there were. Ever since he arrived at this Stalag Luft he’d been training his visual memory so that he could paint them in flight – nothing much about at this time of year except the odd starling. Perhaps if he ever got out of here, got back to real life, he could follow his dream, and go to art college. Until now it had seemed a fantasy.
Until just now.
The sound was getting louder, but still he couldn’t see anything. He looked up at the watchtower on his right. The sentry up there had heard it, too. He seemed to sniff the air, bristling like a dog. Tom reached out with his right hand. He touched a barbed-wire spike on the perimeter fence, sharp as a thorn – a physical sensation to remind himself that he couldn’t be dreaming.
Now would be a good time to escape, Tom thought, with the soldier intent on the noise in the sky. At the next watchtower the sentry also had his head tilted back, listening. Carpe deum and all that – seize the moment and make a dash for freedom, whilst all the goons had their heads in the clouds. Should he? But what would be the point? If those aircraft really were what he thought, then it could only be a matter of weeks before they were liberated. He imagined Red Army T-34s rolling westwards across snowy planes. Weeks? Days, even.
The noise was louder, now, a rhythmic drone. And there they were, rising from the treeline, not directly overhead, but passing across his line of vision and to the right: south of the prison camp, on a westerly course. There was a buzzing hum as the angry silhouettes spilled across the wan skies. Tom thought of witches on broomsticks. Hexen, that was the German word for witches, wasn’t it? Some poor German city was going to be hexed all right, once those Pe-2s reached their target.
Tom saw the sentry’s helmet slip back to show a slice of grey hair, and even from this distance could see the man’s mouth gape open at the spectacle. The sound of muffled cheers came from inside the huts, increasing in volume until they eventually drowned out the noise of the passing bombers.
The Russian planes disappeared, outpacing the shrunken winter sun. Where had they taken off from, and what was their range? What was the target – Oppeln, Breslau, or somewhere further west? All those cities that had been out of range of the Brits and the Yanks were within striking distance for the Russians now.
‘Uncle Joe’s coming!’ Tom called out to the sentry, adding ‘Onkel Joe kommt sofort!’ just to make it abundantly clear. The soldier span round and cocked his weapon. Tom grinned, lifted his hands in sarcastic surrender and began to saunter back to the hut. He knew the man wouldn’t shoot – only last week Tom had given him a bar of chocolate from a Red Cross parcel for his granddaughter’s birthday, and the man had given him half a tube of lapis blue paint in return. They had an understanding, of sorts. ‘For you the war is over,’ Tom muttered, as he walked back across the frosted dirt. He glanced back at the patch of sky where the bombers had passed, thinking of the old soldier and his precious granddaughter.
‘For you the war is over.’
Detta
She’d made it in time. There was the Breslau train, steam-wreathed and chuntering. The guard was just walking along and slamming all the doors, but there was one still open near the rear of the train. She ran across the platform towards it. It should be pretty empty inside, she thought, not like the 5.30 – usually she had to stand all the way home. In an hour she’d be with Mother, and this overwhelming panic would be gone.
Detta reached the open door at the same time as a fur-coated woman with a large pram, coming from the opposite direction. She stepped aside to let the woman on first. The woman didn’t even bother nodding her thanks, so intent was she on getting the enormous baby carriage on board. It appeared to be stuffed full of shopping bags, but a small white-mittened hand waved out from under the hood – there was a child under there, somewhere under those bundles. The woman jerked and shoved the pram through the open door. Detta was about to offer help when the guard came running, breathless and beetrootfaced. He put a hand out towards the woman. What in God’s name was she doing, he wanted to know. She couldn’t take that thing on the train. There was no room. There was no time. The woman, scrawny profile like a scythe, ignored him, and continued to push the pram up the carriage steps.
It was only then that Detta noticed how full the train was. Had all these other people felt the same intuitive tug of panic she had, when she saw the Russian bombers flying overhead? Had everyone else had the same idea, downed tools and fled, without waiting for proper procedure, authorisation, or permission? It certainly looked that way. People were packed like bottled plums, all stood up, no room to even squat down on the corridor floor. And they weren’t the usual lolling-headed commuters or gossiping housewives, either. She glimpsed a Wehrmacht soldier with a bandaged head, an old man with no teeth, whole families, bunched up and glum.
From inside the pram the child started howling. The guard was trying to tug the pram away from the doorway, but the woman continued to heave it upwards, at a forty-five-degree angle, even though it was obvious there was no room. The passengers started shouting abuse at her, but the woman carried on in silent determination. Detta saw the white-mittened hand wave, and the edge of a white fur bonnet from under the pram hood. Not a baby, but a young child – old enough to sit up, at least. The guard continued to yell at the woman. The woman ignored him. The train hissed steam. The pram tilted upwards, but hands from inside the carriage tried to push it back. The passengers swore. The guard tugged at the pram handle. The woman pushed in the opposite direction. A disembodied hand from inside the train began to pull the door to. The child screamed louder.
It happened quite suddenly, like a popping cork on a bottle of Sekt: the pram overbalanced, the child sprawled out onto the platform, right next to the white-painted edge, and the train door began to swing closed, pulled by hands from inside. As the pram toppled, Detta stepped aside, and managed at the same time to get a foot on the train step. The pram contents slewed across the platform, and the woman crouched over her fallen child. The guard was shouting ‘Gott Verdammt!’ but Detta had a foot inside the train. The door thudded painfully against her shoulder; she was halfway inside.
Oh get in, then, but close it after you. Leave that silly cow and her brat. We need to go – a hoarse voice behind her, a hand tugging her sleeve.
Detta could see the woman clutching the squalling child close, safe from the platform’s edge. As she did so, the guard kicked the fallen pram away, and blew his whistle: a shrill cry. A hiss of steam and the train shunted forwards a notch. Detta was being pulled inside, but the door hadn’t yet slammed shut.
Quick, girl, the train’s leaving. Get in.
She caught a glimpse of the woman’s sharp face as she hugged her screaming child, features forged in desperation. Already the platform had begun a slow slide backwards as the train began to move. Detta pushed the door open with her free hand, and held it out for the woman.
What the hell are you playing at? Shut that bloody door!
But the woman grabbed her outstre
tched hand, and Detta managed to pull both mother and child onto the train. They fell backwards into the angry mound of passengers. The guard was still shouting ‘Gott Verdammt!’ as he slammed the door behind them. His puce face was left behind the smutty glass as the train began to ratchet away. Behind him on the platform lay the spilled contents of the pram. Detta glimpsed a silver candelabra and a black leather boot – gone as the train sped up and they left the station behind. She put a hand out to steady herself as the disgruntled voices continued.
We shouldn’t even have stopped in Oppeln. There’s no room for anyone else to get on. What a shower of shite.
Someone tutted. The child’s cries reduced to sobs. Detta turned. A little girl – a graze on her forehead where she’d tumbled from the pram. The woman rocked her and comforted her as best she could in the crush. ‘Thank you,’ she said to Detta.
‘Nicht zu danken,’ Detta replied: nothing to thank me for. I only did what any decent person would have done, she thought. And yet nobody else had helped, not even the guard, whose job it should have been to assist passengers. What has happened to us all? Has this war robbed us of our decency?
She was crushed as close as a lover to all these selfish people, could smell the damp fur and wool of their winter clothes, the hint of body odour and bad breath and the stale smoky air. There was an indecency in the intimacy of it. ‘Where are you going?’ she said to the sharp-faced woman as the child’s sobs subsided. ‘Visiting relatives?’ The woman gave a mirthless laugh, and looked away.
From across the corridor other voices chipped in, and Detta listened:
I’m headed for Berlin; my sister’s there.
You’ll be lucky if she’s still there, with all the raids.
Well, where else can I go?
You’d be better off in the countryside – more food, fewer bombs.
But I don’t know anyone in the countryside. Besides, I’d rather be with my sister. It’s important to be with family in times like these.