My Name is Eva(61)
‘Not much of a gent then,’ Sally said. ‘But you got back all right?’
‘I hitched a lift before it got dark. We’re lucky there’s always so much transport going backwards and forwards here. It’s better than a bus service.’
Sally laughed. ‘As long as they don’t all come along at once, like the London buses.’ She bent down to rummage in her bedside locker. ‘I’ve got some plum liqueur here. Fancy a nip?’
She poured shots into the beaker cups the girls were still using in place of glasses. ‘Down the hatch,’ she said, tipping it down in one gulp.
Eva sipped her drink, feeling it warm her throat, burning away her grief and filling her with a determination not to let this unfortunate occurrence, as she told herself to think of it, prevent her from continuing to fulfil her duties. She knew she could insist she had acted in self-defence, she knew there would be sympathy for her injured dignity and honour, but she also knew it would be complicated. There would be awkward questions about fraternisation and her lack of judgement, then an inquiry, possibly even a court martial. No, better never to say anything.
Instead, she just said, ‘So how did you come by this delicious beverage this time, you resourceful little Scottish minx?’
Sally smiled and said, ‘This bottle was a present from a very grateful father. I managed to lay my hands on some callipers for his little boy. And now he’ll be able to start walking again.’
‘What’s wrong with him? Not polio, I hope?’
‘No, thank God. But it’s a pretty shocking tale all the same. The boy and his sister were hidden by a friend of the family in the tiniest little cupboard in a farmhouse. For three whole years they barely left their hiding place. And by the time the children were reunited with their parents, the poor wee laddie couldn’t walk. Imagine that. They saved his life, but nearly crippled him in the process. Hopefully in time his legs will straighten out as they grow stronger, but there was no way the little mite could walk unaided.’
‘So many terrible stories,’ Eva murmured, closing her eyes. ‘And we can only help a fraction of them.’
‘I wish we could do more,’ said Sally. ‘It sickened me to hear about the lenient sentences that were handed out to some of those murderers in Nuremberg last year. Just a few years for murdering thousands of innocent people. If I had my way they’d all hang for what they did; every single one of those murdering bastards. Prison’s too good for them.’
‘Why is it,’ Eva said in a quiet voice, ‘that all humanity and kindness virtually disappeared? Or perhaps the capacity for cruelty is always present in mankind, just hidden beneath a facade of civilisation.’
‘I know. It’s bad enough to hear them claiming they were just following orders, but to hear about the sheer mindless brutality as well – oh, it makes my blood boil, it really does.’
‘So many dead, so many ruined lives.’
Sally stood up and began waving her arms in the air and pacing the tiny room they shared. ‘And so many getting away with it! There were thousands of these monsters and only a tiny proportion is ever going to pay for their hideous crimes. The rest will try to sneak back to their old lives, trying to pretend they had nothing whatsoever to do with the camps and the slave labour.’ She screamed in frustration, then said, ‘We need another drink.’
Eva gave a small laugh as she held her beaker in her cupped hands, smelling the sweet scent of plums. ‘You remind me of the girls in Aldershot, where I was stationed when I was training.’ She took a deep breath and then said, ‘One night, news went round that a German prisoner had absconded from Puckridge Camp – that was a POW camp not far from us. All the girls in my dorm started talking about what we’d do if we came across him. We didn’t have access to guns, of course, so we started laughing about how we could use the broomstick that we’d adapted as a rounders bat and whether that could do any serious damage. And then one of the girls – Betty, I think her name was – she was from an army family, said, “Girls, if we find him, we’ll kill him with our bare hands.” And, do you know, every single one of us there absolutely agreed with her. We were all suddenly filled with the most intense furious energy, convinced we were actually capable of committing murder if we found that escaped prisoner.’ Eva laughed and shook her head. ‘Poor man, he was lucky we didn’t get him. I’m sure he was recaptured.’
‘But I can understand that feeling,’ Sally said. ‘I heard similar sentiments many times during the war. We absolutely hated the Germans. But if it had really come to it, could we have actually done it, with our bare hands, I mean?’
Eva was quiet, then she said, ‘It was the heat of the moment. We were all excited. But do you know, I think we could have done it if he’d turned up then and there.’
Sally sipped her drink, savouring the sweetness. ‘I suppose we all could if we had to. And there are rumours of gangs of survivors out there still, plotting revenge. And who could blame them?’
Eva stayed quiet, watching the small window, through which she could see the snow falling thick and fast with fat snowflakes that would drift that night, blanketing the mountain slopes, the trees and what lay safely hidden beneath their branches. Perhaps tonight there would be the sound of gunshot again. And she knew that all that was buried in the forests around the camp and elsewhere would not be revealed until the spring.