Len Deighton 3-Book War Collection Volume 1: Bomber, XPD, Goodbye Mickey Mouse

‘I thought I saw him going into the front entrance of the hospital,’ said Voss. ‘I wondered whether he was sick or just visiting.’

‘You were mistaken,’ said the Burgomaster, but his voice lacked conviction. Young Niels had not been his usual self today, and there was the strange business of the hidden dossier. Perhaps he was sick, perhaps he was in hospital. From the window of Voss’ office he could see the grey-brick St Antonius Hospital and beyond it the flat roof of the Annex building. For a moment he was tempted to use the phone and ask the reception if they had admitted Niels, but he decided that if Niels was in hospital the Rathaus would have phoned him here at the tailors to report it.

The Burgomaster was wrong on both items. At that moment Andi Niels, personal secretary to the Burgomaster of Altgarten, was occupying a bed in Room 28 on the top floor of the silent Annex building.

Originally the Annex had been intended as an overflow for St Antonius solely to cater for Altgarten’s increased population, but under the new hospital zoning arrangements it was used to receive air-raid casualties from badly bombed cities in the Ruhr. From here they were dispersed as soon as possible and the beds made ready for the next contingent of casualties. It was a stroke of genius to build the Training Centre for Samariter nursing assistants between the hospital and the amputee camp. The poor little girls worked until they dropped. Especially on those awful days when convoys of the new bus-like ambulances were jammed along Joachimstrasse so that air-raid victims from the Ruhr were lying in corridors for want of bed-space. Samariter with only a couple of weeks’ training found themselves working in the operating rooms or casualty wards. On the days when there were no RAF raids the Samariter worked almost as hard in the Amputee Centre across the road. At any time of day or night the nurses’ accommodation wing of the Training Centre was dark with a silence marred only by the snores and nightmares of the exhausted girls.

There were many young girls in Altgarten: Red Cross nurses, Frei sisters, Brown sisters and Samariter. The tearooms and hairdressers vibrated with their chatter and the inhabitants of Altgarten were never at loss for a story about their shameless activities. Once a month there were dances at the Training Centre. TENO officers, SS men from the Wald Hotel training camp and certain local residents received neatly penned invitations and displayed them like honours. All three of the town’s hairdressers could be certain of one ticket; so could the haberdasher and an old man named Drews who regularly obtained bolts of silk and linen from some secret source over the border. For obvious reasons the senior staff at Kessel’s brewery were asked and the Burgomaster’s office received a ticket as a matter of courtesy. Andi Niels used that ticket.

Tonight there was to be a dance at the Training Centre. The girls had decorated the assembly hall with coloured papers and cardboard representations of Mount Fuji. On the tickets it had hopefully said ‘fancy dress with a theme of old Japan’ but only the most enthusiastic girls had sewn together a costume.

‘The old fool invited me to his birthday dinner,’ said Andi Niels. ‘What the devil can I do?’

‘Couldn’t you get away early?’ said the nurse. She was a short plump sexy girl who giggled readily at any situation. She giggled now.

‘There’ll be toasts to his father, the regiment, officers who fell in the first war. Then we’ll listen to speeches and sing old war songs. You’ve no idea what it’s like.’

‘There’ll be food at the dance. The girls have been saving their rations for three weeks.’

‘No matter,’ said Niels sadly. ‘We’ll go to Düsseldorf this weekend and stay in a fine hotel.’

‘And share a room?’ said the nurse. She giggled. ‘They will ask for our papers.’

‘I can fix that.’

‘Have you inherited some money?’

‘As a matter of fact, I have,’ said Niels. He turned over in bed and reached down to her. ‘You’ve left your stockings on,’ he accused.

‘Just in case.’

‘The door’s locked, and no one will come up to the top floor during the day.’

‘I’ll take them off,’ said the girl. ‘But I must be back on duty by five.’ She climbed out of bed again.

‘By five I must be in my office,’ said Niels. ‘I’ve left lots of work there.’ He watched her take off her stockings and suspender belt. She knew he was watching her and she moved in a deliberately provocative way, knowing that his impatience would put an edge on his appetite.

Niels breathed heavily. ‘My God,’ he thought, ‘I’m going to miss all this next week.’

After August Bach had driven away, Anna-Luisa busied herself in the house and garden. She scrubbed the kitchen floor, boiled down oddments of soap and cleaned out the chicken house. At four o’clock she met Hansl at the Volkschule and walked him past the fire station. Both of the Magirus fire engines were outside and he watched intently as the equipment and paintwork was shined to a high gloss. The firemen were accustomed to the Volkschule boys and Johannes Ilfa, the Gruppenführer on the number one engine, recognized Hansl and lifted him up to see the driver’s seat. For months he had seen Anna-Luisa meeting the child from school. One of his friends had teased him about concealing a secret passion for the girl. He would be teased even more if seen speaking to her.

‘My name is Johannes Ilfa,’ said the fireman, offering Anna-Luisa a cigarette.

‘My name is Johannes too,’ said Hansl.

Anna-Luisa waved the cigarette aside. ‘We call him Hansl,’ she explained.

‘We? …’ said the fireman. ‘He is your son? I thought you were the nurse.’

Anna-Luisa enjoyed his obvious discomfort. ‘You mustn’t jump to conclusions.’

‘Do you never smoke?’ he asked, the packet still open in his hand.

‘Not in the street. Have one yourself.’

‘It’s forbidden.’ He brushed his fine moustache with the back of his hand.

‘Lift me up again,’ called Hansl, and Johannes Ilfa did so. The little boy fingered the shiny steering-wheel and then looked at his hero in wonder.

‘We mustn’t be a nuisance.’ said Anna-Luisa.

‘You couldn’t be a nuisance.’ He looked at her for a long time trying to find something to say. Something that would make her delay and make her smile at him again.

‘We must go.’ She smiled at the fireman.

‘Make Mutti bring you again, Hansl,’ called the fireman.

‘Yes,’ said Hansl, and he gripped Anna-Luisa’s fingers in his warm hand as though he was part of a conspiracy.

‘Say goodbye to Herr Ilfa and thank you,’ she told the child.

They both waved when they reached the corner. At Mauerstrasse they turned right. This was the main road that joined Kleve to Krefeld and followed the ancient walls that marked the edge of Altgarten. On the other side of Mauerstrasse a wide stream moved sluggishly southwards. Hansl liked to throw pieces of paper into the green water and run to each of the wooden bridges to see them move underneath.

Much of the wall still remained and Frau Birr’s tea-room was built into the massive stones. From the second floor there was a view as far as the high ground upon which stood the Burgomaster’s glasshouses near the waterworks. In the other direction there was a view of the Wald Hotel, now taken over by the SS and garlanded with tall barbed-wire fences and endlessly patrolled by guard dogs.

Smart Hausfrauen of Altgarten gathered in Frau Birr’s tea-room each afternoon accompanied by their daughters in neat dark dresses and well-kept shoes. That’s why TENO officers, Army doctors and administration officials from the Amputee Centre liked to have tea here. Sometimes cavalry officers and veterinary surgeons, complete with spurs and riding-crops, came all the way from their depot near Kempen and set the ladies’ hearts aflutter.

Hansl and Anna-Luisa shared a slice of Apfelstrudel. The coffee wasn’t too bad and Frau Birr could usually find a small glass of milk for the boy. The people in the big cities didn’t live as well as this, thought Anna-Luisa. Life seemed unbelievably sweet. Soon she would be Frau Bach, and the ladies in the tea-shop with their fruit-filled hats would have to nod in a way different from the condescending smiles they gave to the RAD girl.

Frau Hinkelburg, the architect’s wife, was just as condescending as any of them but at least she was affable. This day she sat with Anna-Luisa and Hansl and told them all her news.

There were always stories about the Russian prisoners of war in the disused factory beyond the brewery. The citizens of Altgarten were fascinated and a little afraid of these strange Bolshevik men from the far side of the world where so many young Germans were being sent.

‘They put two fierce guard dogs to keep the Russians inside the fence at night. Even the dog-handlers were wearing thick protective gloves. By the next morning the dogs had been cooked and eaten. Only the bones remained, they say. And those they carved into crucifixes.’

Frau Hinkelburg paused long enough to cut a piece of cake and hurry it into her mouth. Anna-Luisa felt that she was expected to add something, but she kept her own wonderful news to herself to be gloated over and devoured slowly. Even before she’d swallowed her cake Frau Hinkelburg smiled at Anna-Luisa and began again.

‘Frau Kersten is going to put apple trees in the field behind the cemetery and she’s bought the land she leased from Richter. The money she must make from the potatoes.’ Frau Hinkelburg opened her fine new patent-leather handbag so that Anna-Luisa could clearly see its Paris label. From it she took a small lace handkerchief and brushed a cake-crumb from the corner of her mouth. ‘I heard that Frau Kersten has a leather box full of money hidden in her bedroom. She can’t bank it, they say, for fear of the tax department.’

‘Her farmhouse is being replastered.’

‘By the French prisoners of war,’ added Frau Hinkelburg. ‘Have you noticed the tall one with the tiny moustache?’

‘The one giving orders?’

‘He’s giving more than that, my girl, if the stories about him and Frau Kersten are true.’

‘But Frau Kersten is nearly fifty.’