The Dynamite Room (32 page)

What had he done?

He held out his hand and offered them to her.

“You need to take these,” he said.

“Are they all dead?”

He nodded. “They have families. They need to be told. You give them to someone in authority. Do you understand? Tell them that I killed them.”

Gruber had been the easiest because he would have killed them if Heiden hadn't shot him. Bürckel—just because by that point what did it matter? Gruber had been right: Bürckel was a liability; he would have made mistakes. In the heat of war it boiled down to such trivialities. When all sense was gone and there was no reasoning with oneself or even reason to reason, what did another bullet matter, what was another death? He had thought that in Norway almost every single day: if someone had shot him, he wouldn't have felt it; he felt quite sure that he was dead already.

He had broken into the work shed that first night, his flashlight sweeping hurriedly around the tools, looking for something with the smallest blade, something clean and precise. Hiding in the wood, within sight of Greyfriars, he had removed his jacket and his shirt and had heated the small hooked point of the carving knife in the flames of matches, dropping the used ones into his pockets. Stuffing his mouth with his handkerchief, he had driven the blade into his shoulder twice at right angles, so that the wound would heal puckered, like a bullet hole.

It was unlikely that an S-boat had been sent back to look for them. With the radar at Bawdsey Point still working they would assume the mission a failure, the six men lost. Over the following days they would scan the British reports for news about spies being caught or a possible beach landing, and hearing nothing they would be pleased, relieved. Hitler would lose no sleep over it and no one would play bells for them, yet there were bells ringing.

He opened his eyes. “They don't usually ring,” said the girl. She was standing on tiptoes at the window. “Not even on Sundays anymore. It's because of the war. It must be a mistake.”

“They're coming for me,” he said.

“Who are?”

“Men,” he said. “Your rescuers.”

“From the roadblock?”

“No, not them. They're dead,” he said.

She came down off her toes and looked at him. “You came on your own,” she said. “You and these men.” She opened her hand to the collection of tags. “There was never going to be an invasion, was there?”

“No…I don't know.”

“Why did you lie? All the things you said and did…”

“I couldn't let you run away and tell anyone that I was here,” he said. “I needed to keep you in the house. I needed you to need me and be scared enough not to try to run.”

They had received intelligence that the British were clearing out a defense zone. A ten-mile stretch of the coast would be empty but for the army. They would evacuate the area, use some of it for testing, and with the area deserted it would provide Heiden with the time to prepare for his journey inland unhindered. He just needed to ensure that he got rid of the rest of the men on the mission. The house, Greyfriars, would be abandoned, as they all were, and here he would transform himself into George Pendell, a man who lived in the defense area and who they would need to let through. From there he would change himself again and again, until in the turmoil of war all trace of who he had once been was gone. He would escape the memories of Eva and Germany. He would rub his old self out and start anew.

But then there was the girl…standing here now in her torn dress, her grazed legs and muddied skin. She had grown so much in these last five days. He hadn't planned for her to be here, he said. “No one was supposed to be here.”

“But I was,” she said. “Why didn't you kill me?”

“I don't know,” he said. “I should have.”

“Then why didn't you? Aren't you brave enough?”

She stood over him now. She didn't seem at all scared.

“Did you do this?”

She held out her hand. Held between her finger and thumb was a matchstick man.

“Did you?”

He said nothing.

“You've seen him, haven't you,” she said. “That's why you're here. That's why you think you can take his place. That's how you knew my name, isn't it? You've seen him. Where? Is he all right?”

“He was in Norway,” he said.

“Norway? But how? Where is he now?”

“He's not coming back, Lydia. I'm sorry.”

“How do you know? How do you know that?”

“He was one of the men in the store with me, hiding from the storm that I told you about. We took them hostage. A necessary part of war, I'm afraid. We were stuck with them for five days. He told me a little about you and your brother, about your mother, and the house. Greyfriars. He made it sound so beautiful, so…peaceful. War opens up so many new chances, opportunities to change yourself, be something different, better. We have to take them when they come. It's the only way to survive sometimes.”

“But what happened to him?”

“The two men he was with died. I shot two others, my compatriots—two of the tags I gave you—but I couldn't shoot him. We were too similar, so similar, your father and I—and not just in how we look. We understood each other. I couldn't kill him, Lydia,” he said. “So I sent him out into the snow. I'm sorry.”

“Why? You let him go. Why are you sorry?”

He shook his head. “A man can't survive alone in that kind of cold. We were miles above the Arctic Circle. I sent him out to die, because I couldn't bring myself to shoot him. I'm a traitor, Lydia; a coward. I wasn't being compassionate to him. I was being weak.”

She stared at him and then shook her head.

“No.” She would not believe him, and yet tears welled in her eyes and ran down her cheeks.

“I am telling you the truth,” he said. “Your father is gone.”

“But you let him go?”

“He would not have survived a day out there in the cold on his own.”

“But you spoke to him. You spoke to him?”

“Yes.”

She stood there looking at him, her frame so small, so delicate. He suddenly wanted it not to be true, to somehow erase it all: Norway, France, the whole damn war, to take it all back to a moment with Eva, a moment in the park, her kiss on his lips, to hold it there forever, but he couldn't. Everything was decimated. Everything that he had been was in ruins.

“Yes,” he said again. “I spoke to him. All he wanted was to go home, to you, to his family. And…perhaps that is why I let him go. I don't know. War is the most ridiculous thing.” He laughed. “I don't even know what we were doing there, in Norway. We were there so you English couldn't be.” Then he laughed again. “How ridiculous.”

Outside, the bells were still ringing.

He had always wanted to see more of England. He had thought, foolishly perhaps, that he could take the girl and make her his: love her as if she were theirs, his and Eva's. They would drive along the country lanes in the Crossley Torquay Saloon with its sliding roof which they would stop to put down in the summer when the weather was warm. Up and down the Cotswold Hills they'd go. A dog called Baxter or thereabouts bouncing around in the back and barking at the cows. She would sit by him, the girl, and not be afraid. She would laugh at his jokes, the map in her lap, her fingers following the road; and they would stop in villages for tea, or a light lunch if they could find somewhere that served.
Tapioca pudding. Cauliflower cheese.
No one would think twice about him. How nice, a father and daughter out together on a summer's day.

“I could have been a good father,” he said.

“But you're not my father. You never will be,” she told him. “Whatever happens.”

“I know that,” he said. “I know.”

He could feel hot tears welling in his eyes and before he knew how to stop it, he was sobbing. “I'm sorry,” he said. “But I can't go back. I can't be part of that Germany. It is not
my
Germany anymore.” He tried to swallow his sobs. “I had a love there…” he said. “I had a love…Wherever you go, you're always there waiting for yourself to arrive. You think you can let it all go but you can't. It clings. No matter what you do, how far you go, how many strips of skin you tear from yourself.” He pounded at his head with his fist. “It's in there. In your head. Inside. And you can't get rid of it. Do you understand?” he said.

He looked at the girl. He could hear the bells tolling their urgency; men coming with dogs.

“I am at the end,” he said. “I have to go.”

“Go?” she said. “But go where?”

“I shall be caught now. They'll come through the trees, across the fields, along the roads. They'll find me and catch me…They'll hunt me like one of your foxes.”

“So what do we do?” she said.

“What do we do?” he said. “Lydia, it's over. This…Don't you see?”

“But what about me? What shall
I
do?”

She turned her head and stepped away. She felt the tears running hot down her face.

“Come on,” he said. “You're braver than that.”

“I'm not!” she sobbed.

“You are. You need to find your mother, Lydia. Do you hear me?”

“Yes.” She nodded. “I know.”

She watched him take a deep breath. He was in pain. The blood from his hand had soaked through the dressing and she saw how badly she had put it on. It was already unraveling.

“You're bleeding again.”

“It doesn't matter.”

His shirt was drenched through with blood. There were stains down his trousers and pale, drying lines of it down his arms and over his face.

He was right. There would be men at Greyfriars soon, coming through the trees, just like she had known they would, although now it was him they were hunting. Was it his wail that she had heard that first night, before he came—the wail of a wounded beast, his cry in the night? Like a man turned into a bear. Like Bearskin, she thought.

His smile widened and she saw the pain in his eyes. A sharp intake of air as the twinge passed through him.

He said something but it was lost in the sound of vehicles pulling in through the gate, car doors opening and feet on the gravel. He closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them again, she saw for the first time that he was afraid.

He took the pistol from its holster around his waist. His hand was shaking, tremors quaking through his arm.

“I'm sorry about your father. I won't ask you to forgive me because you can't and you shouldn't. I shouldn't have left him. There is so much that I wish I could change.”

She turned her back on him.

The men outside broke into the house. She heard the front door being rammed open. There was shouting; boots running across floorboards; doors being thrown open and barged through. Voices.
Lydia! Lydia!

“I can't let them catch me,” he said. “You know that, don't you?”

But what could they do to stop it? Even if they barricaded themselves in, they would have to come down from the attic at some point.

“When they see me with you they will kill me, they will think the worst,” he said. “Men with faulty guns that don't fire properly. It won't be clean. It will be slow and painful. I'm a coward, Lydia. I couldn't bear it. And I don't want you to see that.”

Already there were dogs barking. Men pounding up the stairs. Heavy boots and shouting, and someone yelling down the landing,
Lydia! Are you here?

She didn't know whether to call out, to shout,
I'm here! I'm here!

She looked at him. He wasn't moving. He still had the gun in his hand. She wanted to take it from him.

Lydia! Lydia Pendell!

She could hear them downstairs, going in and out of the bedrooms.

“You are a very brave and admirable young lady,” he said. “Thank you for your company, for giving me some hope—no matter how short lived.” There were tears streaming down his face now and she tried to get down on the floor with him, to wrap her arms around him, and bury her head in his chest, but he wouldn't let her.

“No. Get back,” he said. “Stay back.”

There was thumping at the attic hatch, men shouting, someone calling,
Lydia! Are you in there? Open the hatch!

She tried to call out to them but something was stopping her.

“I'm sorry,” he said under his breath.

“Why? What are you doing?”

“Will you open the hatch now and let them in?”

“No,” she said. “I don't want to.”

“Please, Lydia,” he said. “Open the hatch.”

She shook her head. She couldn't do it. She wouldn't.

He lifted the gun and pointed it at her just as he had that first night.

“Turn around, Lydia, and open the hatch.”

She didn't move. She shook her head again.

“I can't.”

“Please. Please, Lydia. That's an order, God damn it. Just do it.” He released the safety lock.

She nodded. Then she turned her back on him, knowing in that moment that the shot would fire. And it did—the sudden concussion of a blast and a thrumming in her ears as if the world had been sucked from around her. She turned and shouted. He slumped slowly onto his side. A rush of sound flooded back, a deluge of voices—
Lydia! Lydia!
—banging and yelling from beneath the hatch. His body found an awkward resting place among her mother's fur coats, his eyes bright and wide and blue in the sunlight, empty but still fixed on her. His name was there on her lips but she couldn't say it; and then the room tipped her from it and she slipped into darkness.

The day is
beautiful: fresh and sunny. After the rain everything looks invigorated, somehow brought back to life. She sits in Alfie's room looking down onto the garden. Butterflies flutter about the buddleia. The air is filled with the scent of damp grass and the smell of sun-dried corn washes in from across the fields.

She imagines her father walking out into the snow-bound forests of Norway, stepping through the snow and not once looking back. He would disappear into the trees and snow would fall from the branches, covering his tracks. She never thinks of him dying out there, just slowly, peacefully fading away until there is nothing left of him but mist. Perhaps that way, one day, he would be found. They would stand on the railway platform and, just as she had envisaged him vanishing into the fog of Norway, so, on his return, would he reappear out of the smoke and steam of a train engine as if from nothing more than a conjuror's trick.

In truth though her father would never return to her. But Alfie often did. She felt him with her sometimes, as if he was holding her safe in his smile. She'd found a tiny white feather that morning blowing down the hallway.

She hears a car pulling up outside and her mother going out to meet it.

“Come on, then!” her mother shouts. “The car's here! Let's go!”

Someone from the army was driving them to Wickham Market, where a friend of Bea's was putting them up.

She takes a matchbox from her pocket and slowly pushes it open. Inside lies the matchstick man with his charred and blackened head. She rests him against the window; a memento that she has been there, or a sign if her father comes back while they are gone, even in his spirit—that he should wait for them. She puts the dog tags Heiden had given her into the box, counting them in one by one. She'll have to hand them to someone official, but not yet.

In time, of course, there would be school again, games, squabbling, laughter. They'd get new chickens, grow new vegetables, perhaps get another rabbit from Heathcote Farm, just like Jeremiah. They would open up Shingle Street and she would walk along it, remembering the line of shells leading down to the shore and the house filled with pebbles, Alfie standing on the slope watching out for boats on the horizon or maybe the back of a submarine surfacing like a whale. Her mother would tell her to pull her socks up, or do up the buckles on her sandals. There would be a normality of sorts, order restored; the days would come and go. She would think about the man called Heiden less and less until he became nothing but a story that was told, if not by her then someone else: the day the German came.

Across the lawn, she spots something she's never seen in the garden before: a white parakeet. It sits on the branch of a tree preening itself, and only when the car engine starts and her mother calls—
Lydia, we're waiting
—does it open its wings and lift up into the sky.

She gets up off the bed and, taking a final glance around the room—at the wooden soldier, the cricket bat and ball, the butterflies trapped in their frame—she leaves and quietly closes Alfie's door behind her. Her hand guides her down the banisters as she makes her way down the stairs, the matchbox held safe in her other hand. The house is dark but peaceful; a cool breeze passing through it, its breath blowing around her ankles. Through the door she sees Button looking back through the car window for her and her mother standing by the open door. She stops for a moment in the doorway to watch the bird passing overhead, and the afternoon is warm and bright as Lydia steps out into the sun.