The Postcard by Fleming Leah

Author:Fleming, Leah [Fleming, Leah]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780857204035
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
Published: 2014-04-23T23:00:00+00:00

24

St-Gilles Prison stood like a fortress on the outskirts of Brussels, a grey forbidding place. Few sounds from outside penetrated its thick walls: the occasional muffled hum of night bombers and the horns of prison traffic through the gates. Callie felt the gloom of incarceration closing round her, the endless monotony of routine with day following dragging day as she watched the summer shaft of strong light beam through the high window on the cell wall gradually turning into the thin glimmer of winter as the days shortened.

She marked off the days of the week with scratches on the stone floor. Nine months she’d been left to rot, and after those first intense bursts of questioning when she’d stuck rigidly to her story and given nothing more away, they’d shut her up in solitary confinement. There had been a brief interlude of company when they had introduced a pretty prisoner with a sympathetic ear, imprisoned for black marketeering – or so she said. All smiles and sympathy, she was trying to ferret out information – a set-up if ever there was one – and when Callie refused to discuss anything with her the prisoner disappeared as quickly as she had arrived. A change of company had its comforts – another voice, another story – but now she was left to moulder over her coming fate.

Every sound became familiar: the changing of the guard, the morning slop-out, the spy hole in the door opening as a torch beamed in on her face as the shadows fell. The food was basic: hard bread, thin soup, slops, and never enough to drink to slake her constant thirst. She felt her body weakening.

If only she had a photograph of someone she cared for to stare at, instead of bare walls. She invented stories about the old couple standing under an apple tree in her cover photo.

Surely, if the Gestapo were going to dispose of her, they would have done so already. Were they playing a cat-and-mouse game? She had no useful information to give them now. She tried tapping messages in Morse code on the heating pipe that ran around the wall, but so far had had no response. There were whispers that the Allies were on the march and it wouldn’t be long to Liberation, but she didn’t believe them. Hope was dangerous. She must prepare for the worst. In the exercise yard she gleaned what she could about other political prisoners as they paced feet behind each other, watched by guards if they drew too close. All she heard was that many men had been sent to the Tir National to be shot. She thought of Edith Cavell, a heroine every schoolgirl knew. Her last days were spent in this very prison and Callie took courage from the story of her bravery in her final moments.

Getting from one day to the next without falling into that ever gaping pit of despair was what mattered most. It was hard to live with fear and hunger gnawing in her gut.

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