Chapter 23
Cora was huddled against the cold, exposed, with a fitful northerly wind gusting as the mood took it.
It was evening. The camp was low-lit, and two rows of coiled barbed wire separated their two worlds of heaven and hell, although which was which Cora wasn’t sure.
‘That’s him,’ she said to Megan. She knew him straightaway. ‘The one that’s digging.’
The man with the innocent face was turning the earth over with quick, deliberate movements. The back of his bent neck looked smooth, vulnerable. He was wearing a grey jacket and badly fitting trousers held up with twine.
Megan stared at him, silent for a moment. Then she said: ‘How do you know it’s him?’
‘I recognise him,’ Cora said. She watched his jaw muscles tighten, sweat shining his brow despite the chill of the day. ‘Hey,’ she called out.
He turned and she pulled his cap out of her pocket.
He didn’t respond at first in the dark but she held it up to show him.
‘I’ve got your cap,’ she shouted, waving it at him.
He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, his eyes narrowed, and then he saw what she was holding. His face lit up and he grinned.
He stopped digging and walked towards the fence.
He quickly looked around to check for guards and then he took a paper aeroplane out of his pocket.
He smoothed it, straightened the tail and held it like a dart.
With a few practice moves of his forearm he got the feel of it, and launched it over the barbed wire towards her.
Cora watched it swoop, lift, dive, and the wind caught it and sailed it over the barbed wire. She ran to catch it, laughing, bumping into Megan and breathless with excitement. ‘Sorry!’
‘What does it say?’
She unfolded it and held the message towards the light from the camp to read it.
HELLO MY NAME IS FRANK.
‘Hello, Frank!’ she called to him. ‘I’m Cora.’
‘Cora,’ he repeated.
‘I’ve come to give you your cap back.’
‘He probably doesn’t speak English,’ Megan said. The cold wind was taking her breath away.
Frank pointed at the top of the fence, and Cora knew they were thinking the same thing.
‘I’m going to throw it to him,’ Cora said, holding on to her hat.
‘We can’t, see. The wind’s going to take it and it’ll get stuck on the barbed wire,’ Megan said sensibly, ‘and that will be that. We’ll have made it worse, not better.
Come on, let’s go. You know, Cora, he said goodbye to that cap when your mother swiped it off his head.
You’re just teasing him with it. Look at his face! Bless him. You’ve given him hope, now.’
The speakers that were hooked up around the camp suddenly crackled and squealed into life, startling them.
The German didn’t move. He stood there listening as the news blared out about Allied advances.
Cora glanced at Megan, feeling the shame wash over her. ‘Fancy listening to that every day, us rubbing it in.’
Megan agreed. She said ruefully, ‘Listen to us! Whose side are we on?’
‘The civilised side, I hope.’ Was there such a thing during war?
She turned her back to him and kicked up the dead leaves.
‘I should have thought this through. I didn’t think about the wind.
If I throw it to him now, at best it’s going to come straight back to us.
Let’s try some other time when we’re better prepared.
’ She turned around again. ‘We’ll come back,’ she called out.
He didn’t move.
‘He doesn’t understand you,’ Megan said. ‘Let’s go. We’re going to get a bad reputation, you know. We’ll go to court and be fined for fraternising. And it would kill your mother to know you’re hanging around the camp. Or,’ she added wryly, ‘she will kill you.’
She was right. ‘It’s my mother that deprived him of it in the first place. I’m just returning what’s his,’ Cora said, justifying herself. ‘There’s nothing wrong about that.’ She called to him, ‘Do you speak English?’
He nodded. ‘A little, yes.’
‘I’ve come to apologise. Believe it or not, we’re not all bad, you know.’
They looked at each other through the barbed wire, the impossible barrier between them.
As she turned to go he said quickly and apologetically, as if he wanted to keep her talking a bit longer, ‘I hear that London is being destroyed by our rockets.’
She turned back to look at him, wishing he hadn’t said it. Because that was the impossible barrier, the unarguable fact they were on different sides. ‘Yes, I’ve heard it too.’
A moment later he almost faded from sight as a cloud covered the moon. ‘I’m not sure it’s exactly true though. I’m going now.’
‘Goodbye, Cora.’
‘See you, Frank.’
In the huts the singing started up again.