Fifteen Words by Monika Jephcott Thomas

Author:Monika Jephcott Thomas [Monika Jephcott Thomas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781911110965
Publisher: Clink Street Publishing
Published: 2016-09-24T04:00:00+00:00

Erika twisted the lace curtain around her finger. There were two army officers heading towards the door. She panicked briefly. Before she realised they were American officers. Before she realised they weren’t German ones coming to inform her of her brave husband’s death perhaps, as he served his country on the Eastern Front. Nevertheless she twisted the curtain tighter, just as she had twisted the train of her wedding dress around her finger fearfully as Karl had staggered towards them outside the cathedral, his suit smeared with blood, his grazed hands clutching a dead goose.

‘Papa, what on earth has happened?’ Max ran to meet him, checking him over as Karl used to do to Max when he was a little boy returned home crying after some misadventure playing on the farm.

‘I called up a friend who lives nearby. Franz, remember?’ he appealed to his wife who had already deduced quicker than her doctor son, merely by his demeanour, that it was not Karl’s blood on his suit, or even the goose’s for that matter. ‘He took me out on his motorcycle. We scoured the countryside for a farmer that would give us a good price on a goose. I bought it for your wedding breakfast. No son of mine is going to have a wedding breakfast without some quality meat on the table,’ his voice quivered as he tried in vain to echo the braggadocio in Gunther’s declaration last night concerning the hotel room.

‘So what about this blood?’ Max asked having now come more scientifically to the same conclusion as his mother.

‘I’m not sure where we had driven to. Closer to enemy lines than I could have imagined I suppose. Or perhaps it was one of our own soldiers thinking we were the enemy.’

Erika’s father sniffed loudly at the absurd notion of one of his comrades making such a mistake.

‘What? What happened?’

‘There was gunfire. I was riding pillion holding on to the goose and Franz was driving. He got hit. Lost control of the bike. We both came off. But he died from the gunshot wounds.’

‘Where’s Franz now? Are you sure he’s dead?’ Max demanded and Erika could see him instinctively gearing up to go and try to save Franz’s life wherever he was. She felt the same medic’s urge tightening the muscles in her white shoed feet, but the urge to have nothing spoil her wedding day was even greater and her eyes bore into the back of Max’s head willing him to turn around and see her on the steps of the cathedral; the cathedral that she could barely stomach sitting in not so many months ago; the house of the faith she had sedulously studied and, with archaeological dedication, unearthed the relevance of to her own life, in order that she could share that life completely with him. And cathedral or no cathedral, Catholic wedding or not, she couldn’t help but be relieved, as ashamed as she was to be, when Karl answered:

‘He’s dead all right. Some people rushed over from the nearby farm.

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