A Dangerous Act of Kindness Read online

  ‘I am in Dublin before the war.’

  ‘Dublin?’

  ‘I grow up in Heidelberg. There is an exchange with Dublin University and my aunt wishes I have a better education.’

  He didn’t tell her his aunt also wanted to put a stop to a different kind of education he’d been having. A shameless and experienced maid ten years his senior had seduced him in the dusty heat of the laundry room, making love to him on piles of dirty linen, sweat pouring from her ample body. His utter abandonment of German discipline drummed into him by the Hitler Youth added to the thrill. Ursula’s lust and voracity freed him from any adolescent embarrassment or apology.

  When he returned to Germany a year later to find she’d married a man twenty years his senior, he was heartbroken for all of a month. He sometimes wondered if she thought about him but mostly he hoped she was happy.

  ‘You speak English very well.’

  He shrugged, picking the final piece of meat from his fork and giving it to the dog.

  ‘I do not speak it for a long time.’

  ‘Have you eaten enough?’ she said.

  ‘I have.’

  He glanced across at the loaf of bread. He could have eaten the whole thing but he knew Germany had devastated the merchant ships, that Britain was running out of food. Shortages were probably biting everyone now, even out here in the countryside.

  ‘I must go.’

  She pressed her lips together and nodded but said, ‘Come and drink your poteen first,’ and she picked up the glasses she’d filled, taking them to the room on the other side of the fire.

  He watched her, amazed by her kindness. The dog nudged his hand with a wet nose. He collected the lamp and followed her.

  By its light, he saw a sofa drawn up at an angle to a deep armchair, the seat dipped and worn, the back piled with faded cushions. She sat down on the sofa and he took the chair. It was soft and comfortable. The dog flopped down on the rag rug at her feet before rolling onto its side, its legs extended out towards the fire.

  ‘Is it quite cured?’ she said, handing him the glass of poteen, sitting forward on the edge of the sofa as if she might jump up at any moment.

  He put the glass on the floor and massaged his shoulder, frowning a little, pushing his lip forward to indicate that it was soso, then he retrieved his glass and raised it towards her, saying,

  ‘I do not know your name. I cannot drink to you.’

  She smiled, looked into her glass.

  ‘My name is Millie, Millie Sanger.’

  ‘And my name is Lukas Schiller.’

  He waited for her to look him in the eye so that he could say, ‘Prost,’ but she didn’t. She bent her head and took a sip, swallowing hard, trying to stifle a cough with the back of her hand and when she did look up, her face was a picture of surprise. She gave a little shiver and smiled.

  ‘Good – yes?’ he said.

  ‘Strong.’

  He knocked the spirit back in one, felt the fiery liquid course down his throat. His body gave a comforting shudder as the heat of the alcohol passed his diaphragm, bathing his insides with warmth. He laid his head back, aware that she too had relaxed, pushing herself deeper into the sofa, watching the fire.

  He followed her gaze. The flames had ignited the soot particles on the blackened bricks, tiny specs of light flickering as they flared up, the patches scintillating and moving around. Without lifting his head from the back of the chair he said, ‘The armies. They fight.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You see, on the bricks, the bright little soldiers fight a battle.’

  She stared into the fireplace and frowned.

  ‘My aunt,’ he said, ‘tells me this story when I am a child. See, the lower army wins now. The upper one is fewer; their men die now. Some escape, up there; they move away on the left.’

  She watched the magical stars of burning soot spreading and regrouping, merging and reforming and he watched her until she smiled.

  She could see it too.

  ‘Where is your husband?’ he said.

  ‘He died.’

  ‘He is killed?’

  ‘No,’ she said.

  The dog gave a huge sigh from the rug, the window rattled in its frame and a tongue of smoke crept out of the chimney, into the room. Lukas watched it catch in the updraught, lift and melt away.

  ‘He hanged himself,’ she said.

  He stared at the fire, horror creeping over him like a mist.

  He was coming home from school, trotting along beside Tante Marta, one hand safe in her warm palm, the other carrying the picture he’d drawn for his father. The paper fluttered as he ran across the tiles to his father’s study. Tante Marta’s bags clattered to the floor. She cried out as she grabbed his head and pressed his face to her skirts to stop him from looking.

  The dog lifted its head, struggled to its feet and went to his mistress. With a jolt, Lukas realised she was crumpled forward on the sofa, shaking with silent tears. This brave, strong girl, who showed such courage when she found him, who struggled through the blizzard with him, was breaking her heart.

  He pushed himself out of the chair, crossed the room in a single stride and sat beside her. She didn’t look up, she turned away from him and gave a great sniff, lifting her chin.

  He thought she was going to stand, move away but instead she slid her hand towards him and he placed his on top, his heart thundering in his ears. Her fingers were warm and moist from her tears. She turned, looked up at him, her eyes deep green in the half light. Her body momentarily drifted towards him and he circled her shoulders with his good arm.

  A bolt of energy shot through her. She sprang to her feet and said, ‘What are you doing?’ Gyp moved between them. ‘Go now. I’ve done everything I can for you. You must leave,’ and she fled from the room.

  Chapter Eleven

  Millie slid the block into the latch of her bedroom door and rested her head against the pine. She heard Gyp’s claws clicking on the floorboards, the creak of the springs as the dog jumped up onto the bed, circled a few times and settled.

  God, what had she done? She’d run upstairs and left an enemy soldier in her house. Suppose he followed her and she heard his footsteps coming up the stairs. She felt around in the dark, grabbed hold of a balloon-backed chair and dragged it over to the door, jamming it under the handle for extra security.

  How could she be so foolish? She knew that when Germany invaded Poland, the Wehrmacht raped and executed thousands of women. She’d known this man for a few hours; she had no way of telling if he would commit such an atrocity. Why, oh why, had she left the gun in the stables?

  Then another thought struck her. If the blizzard stopped, someone – anyone – could come to the farm.

  She eased her feet out of her shoes, crept across the room in her socks and carefully drew back the curtains. She could feel the cold air pouring from the glass, cooling her cheeks. The moon was high, flooding the room with reflected light. It was no longer snowing.

  Her eyes darted around, desperately trying to make out a familiar landmark as she stared across the countryside.

  The landscape had changed utterly. The garden was rounded with snow, the sundial in the centre almost invisible. The fluttering in her chest lessened; when the sundial disappeared, the roads up to the Downs were impassable to everything, unless you were on foot. She let out a sigh, turned and stared at the dim green glow of the radium dial on her side table. In barely four hours she had to be awake for milking.

  Too afraid to undress, she climbed into bed. She didn’t dare sleep. She needed to listen out.

  She wondered if he’d left already.

  Impatiently she plumped up her pillows and lay on her back, staring at the ceiling. What on earth was she going to do in the morning? Nothing, she reassured herself. He’d be gone, taking her shame with him but to her astonishment, the thought was tinged with regret.

  No, she mustn’t dwell on that, she must be up on time. Tomorrow of all mornings, she
had to be out in the milking shed early. Brigsie was the sturdy sort of soul who might struggle up here, whatever the weather.

  What about Hugh? He’d know the milk lorry wouldn’t make it up the escarpment and surely he’d have too much extra work to do over at Steadham tomorrow. But he was a stubborn so-and-so. What if he decided to try and walk across? The thought of explaining her actions to him, imagining his look of disbelief and disappointment in her, made her insides fidget with shame.

  But that’s foolish, she thought. There is no explaining to do. No one will ever know what happened here tonight, only me and…

  As thoughts of Hugh’s disapproval receded, they were replaced by a more dreadful idea. Supposing someone struggled over from Sheppington, one of those busybodies who looked down their noses at her because she was a Shawstoke girl, an outsider who’d wormed her way into the Sanger’s lives? She’d heard them prattling on about Fifth Columnists and saboteurs infiltrating the country, enjoying the drama and the certainty that Britain was days away from being invaded. Were they right?

  Someone like Mrs Wilson, the doctor’s wife, would love to report her. She’d enjoy seeing Millie arrested, thrilled if she lost the farm.

  The farm. She came so close to losing it when Jack died. Her despair after those terrible days in the summer was compounded by the fear she would lose Enington. Ever since she was old enough to ride a bicycle, she’d spent all her summers up on the Downs. Her love for Jack was so wound up with her deep need to live and breathe under the wide skies up here, she would shrivel away and die if she lost the farm.

  Bloody hell! She may not even have to worry about that. She’d probably committed a treasonable offence, and treason carried only one sentence – the death penalty.

  ‘For goodness’ sake,’ she said under her breath, flinging herself onto her side and kicking out her legs. She heard Gyp sigh in the darkness, irritated by her restlessness.

  As the moon moved slowly through the sky, she faced an even more troubling thought. She remembered the sensation of his fingers on her hand. A tremor passed through her. This man, this Lukas had inflamed her curiosity. Her terror that he would grasp her was mixed and muddled with a feeling of desire so shameful she knew she must tear her mind away from it.

  And then she remembered how, years before they married, Jack’s kisses had excited her. As teenagers, they longed for somewhere they could be alone. Perhaps it was that three-year wait that destroyed their wedding night. Jack was crippled by bellyache, said it was nerves. She lay there, braced and ready beneath him and he cried out, not with ecstasy, but with pain, threw himself off her and turned away.

  She remembered thinking, is that it? Can that really be it? and as the months of their marriage passed, she thought, surely we should be doing it all the time, learning how to enjoy each other?

  She’d expected more discovery, more wonder, more passion. He was a good man and she loved him – she was sure she loved him – but each time they slept together, it left her hungry with longing and a terrible sense of guilt. What had she done wrong? He seemed ashamed, apologetic, embarrassed. She tried to talk about it but that only made things worse. He said she was his goddess, he couldn’t think of her like that. Like what? she wanted to say after he’d pulled her on like a Wellington boot, shuddered and gone to sleep.

  God. What was she doing, thinking like this? The poor man tried his best. She hated herself for harbouring such thoughts now that he was gone.

  She turned onto her stomach, pulled the pillows under her chest and rested her head back down. As she breathed in, a tendril of scent drifted into her nostrils, down into her very core and she felt a bump of recognition. She could smell him on her. He’d held her and the intoxicating musk still clung to her clothes. She breathed out into the cotton, letting the moisture in her breath reactivate the heady smell but it was fading.

  She shut her eyes, remembered peeling his jacket away, catching that gasp of scent. It should have repulsed her, he was unwashed, but it thrilled and alarmed her. She could almost recall it but it was melting away, leaving a slippery sense of warmth, like bergamot flowers in the sunshine, as beguiling as the pepper-clove smell of honeysuckle just before dawn.

  But those smells were too sweet. Here there was something dangerous underneath, something that clutched her. It was as if she’d swallowed a hook that had worked its way down through her body and she could feel the twitch of the thread deep inside her.

  She lay on her back again, winded. If the smell of him ignited such feelings, what would it be like to lie with such a man? Her imagination created a three-dimensional image of the two floors of the darkened house and she moved through it like a spirit, unfettered by walls and doors. She let her spirit-self rise above the house and look down on the inhabitants.

  She pictured Lukas still downstairs, reclining in the armchair directly beneath her. She closed her eyes, and imagined that when he breathed in, she breathed in, when he exhaled, she exhaled.

  Within minutes she’d fallen into a deep sleep.

  Chapter Twelve

  Millie dreamed it was daylight and men – angry men – were coming across the fields but she wasn’t in her house, she was hiding in the barn. Jack was leading the men and in his hand he carried a pitchfork. She kept trying to shut the doors but every time she pushed they sprang further open and the men started to bang on the corrugated iron with the handles of their scythes.

  She woke with a start but the banging went on.

  The room was filled with blinding light. How late was it? Gyp was whining and sniffing at the draught coming in under the door. The banging of her dream became a distant knocking and she fell out of bed in a state of panic, pulling on her shoes.

  She hurried downstairs, the sound of her footfall abnormally muffled, the acoustics of the house altered by the snow. She could hear Brigsie outside the door calling her. She stumbled through the sitting room, dark behind the blackout curtains, and on through the gloom of the kitchen, scanning as she went to make sure there was no evidence of last night’s visitor.

  ‘Coming,’ she called but she hesitated, worried that the jacket would still be there. It had gone. She looked around the room with a frantic nervousness.

  ‘Millie! Come on – I’m freezing,’ Brigsie called again. Gyp rushed back and forth from the door trying to get her to hurry.

  Millie flung the door open and raised her hand to her eyes to shield them from the brightness. A cold eddy of wind rushed in, nipping at her ankles. Brigsie was standing outside and two great drifts of snow towered on either side of her. Gyp sashayed between their feet and rushed into the yard, lifting a leg on the first snowdrift, sniffing the bright orange stain and bounding off again.

  ‘There you are,’ Brigsie said, ‘I was beginning to worry. Why did you lock the door?’

  Millie stared at her because she couldn’t think of what to say. She felt goose bumps speckling her skin, the shock of the frosty air against her bed-warmed body, an unpleasant acidity in her stomach from last night’s poteen. Brigsie stared back, a half smile on her face.

  ‘Why didn’t you wake me?’

  ‘I tried earlier but I got here a bit late myself. It was one hell of a struggle getting here this morning. The road’s impassable. I had to walk; nothing but the tips of the fence posts sticking up out of the drifts to mark where the track was, can you believe? Come on, let me in.’

  ‘What about the cows?’

  ‘All done.’

  Brigsie pushed in past her. Before shutting the door, Millie looked out across the yard, anxious that the snow may have stopped before Lukas’s departure, leaving his tracks visible but the yard was stained with fresh muck and churned by the cows’ hooves. Gyp began questing around close to the house. Millie stood, motionless with indecision in case the dog picked up a scent and betrayed her.

  She heard the rasp of the blackout curtains opening and Brigsie called out,

  ‘Get that door shut. You’re letting all the heat out.’


  The tone was terse but when Millie came into the kitchen her friend looked at her with a jaunty interest, not a trace of irritation that she’d been working hard for the last few hours with no help.

  ‘You look exhausted. Didn’t all that extra time in bed help?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sleep late – I don’t know what’s happening to me.’

  Brigsie raised an eyebrow, and there it was again, that half smile.

  ‘Lots of odd things are happening at the moment. I blame the war.’

  ‘I didn’t even hear my alarm clock.’

  ‘Crikey! You can hear that old thing going off from Shawstoke.’

  Millie attempted a smile. ‘How can I make it up to you?’

  ‘Well, I was coming to that. It stopped snowing about two this morning but by the look of it there’s a whole heap more on the way. I was wondering if you could manage the afternoon milking on your own because I want to get back down to Shawstoke. It’s just that I’m on a promise from one of those frisky Canadians helping out at the depot.’

  ‘Of course. Has Hugh been over?’

  ‘No.’ Millie felt a wave of relief. ‘I’ve put the churns outside the dairy door,’ Brigsie went on, ‘I don’t think he’ll be able to come by today with this dump – but the milk’ll be fine. No chance of it spoiling on a day like today. Besides, the lorry won’t be able to get up here for days. They’ll just have a bumper lot to collect when the roads clear. If the snow locks us down for too many days, it’ll be cheese and butter all round for Sheppington.’

  ‘Always the good news,’ Millie said, trying to sound casual. In reality she felt edgy and distracted, afraid that her manner would alert Brigsie to her crime.

  Brigsie plonked herself into a chair, pulling off her hat and banging at the snow on her trousers.

  ‘We had some dramas down in Shawstoke last night, and no mistake.’