The Nazi's Daughter by Tim Murgatroyd

Author:Tim Murgatroyd
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Second World War fiction
Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
Published: 2017-03-09T00:00:00+00:00

*

They had agreed to meet outside the town where a canal headed west. Even as she appeared in the distance, waving her gloved hand in a timid half-wave, he realised their moment of intimacy had already been lost. For her as well as him. Nor did he blame her. And although it was safer he wasn’t glad.

Both said little. Half way home, skates clumping and hissing across the ice, she turned to him, brown eyes wide.

‘I saw a terrible thing today,’ she said. ‘I had gone for a coffee at the hotel. It’s a few doors down from the Gestapo offices, you know.’

If there was one address anyone connected to the local Resistance knew, it was that one. It starred in many a murky dream.

‘I’ve heard of it,’ he said.

‘As I left the hotel a car pulled up outside and two German Gestapo men hauled out an old man and what looked like his grandson. The boy was terrified, I could tell that. And the old man was trying to hide his fear for the boy’s sake. Then the boy panicked. Wouldn’t move an inch. Just clung to his grandpapa.’

Pieter slowed his pace a little. Late afternoon was washing darkness across the charged, faintly luminescent drabness of the sky. The slender girl beside him hugged herself as she skated.

‘Schnell! Schnell! they said. But the boy was too frightened to move. He just kept saying to his grandpapa, “Tell them I’m sorry, Opie! That I won’t say it again!”. One of the Gestapo men started shouting. And the boy clung even tighter to his grandpapa. Then the German, oh, it was horrible, punched the boy in the head. Just like that! It made a noise like, like I can’t describe. A horrible noise. He was just a skinny boy of twelve or thirteen. And he just crumpled like an overcoat dropped onto the pavement. And the Gestapo man leaned over and grabbed his ankle and – I couldn’t believe my eyes – he dragged the boy up the steps so his head went bang bang and threw him inside.’

Pieter drew closer to her as they skated. ‘Sounds like the boy said something about the Germans. Or our beloved Führer.’ He added cruelly, ‘Or even Herr Hitler’s home grown buddies in the NSB.’

Tears filled her eyes. ‘Poor people,’ she murmured. ‘Poor people. I just stood there and said nothing.’

She sniffed, wiping her eyes with a thick woollen sleeve.

‘There’s something I want to tell you,’ she said, earnestly. ‘Though I’m afraid to.’

‘Go on.’

‘Some nights I can see a tiny flash of light coming from your attic.’

He stared at her in horror. Their legs kept propelling them forward across the dull slate of the ice.

‘Have you told anyone?’ he whispered.

‘No.’

‘Are you sure? No one at all?’

‘No.’

A dark flash of imagination glimpsed how some of his Resistance comrades would silence her. How easy it would be to hide her body beneath the ice.

‘Why are you telling me this?’ There was hoarse anguish in his voice. And truly he would have preferred not to know.

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