The Fragile Hour Read online

  The Fragile Hour

  Rosalind Laker

  Copyright © Rosalind Laker 2014

  The right of Rosalind Laker to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  First published in the United Kingdom in 1996 by Severn House Publishers Ltd.

  This edition published in 2014 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  To Inge and our family, here and in Norway.

  My grateful thanks always to Joe Hotchkiss, who first suggested that I should write about the Norwegian Resistance.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Extract from Homefront by Jill Barry

  Chapter One

  Anna parked her car at the roadside, but made no move to get out. Instead she clenched her hands on the wheel, making her knuckles show white. The car radio was playing the latest hit by the Beatles, but she was not listening as she steeled herself for the ordeal that lay ahead. Through the windscreen her haunted gaze barely took in the vista of the great Norwegian mountains all around her.

  It had been a private decision to come here. Nobody else knew of it. She had flown in from Heathrow at mid-morning, caught a connecting flight that had brought her within range, and hired a car to drive the rest of the way. All because a short paragraph in one of yesterday’s London evening newspapers had caught her eye and hurled the past back at her in a way she could never have foreseen.

  A policeman came across from the grass verge opposite to bend his head down at the open window. “You can’t park here, frue. Drive farther along.”

  She stirred herself and gave a nod. “Could you tell me what’s happening at the lake? Has the wartime fighter plane been brought to the surface yet?”

  “No, there’s been a last minute delay and it will be early evening before it comes up. It’s ten days now since the off-shore company installed a crane on the bank and brought their working-boat up-river, but the aircraft is lodged precariously on a rock ledge deep down. One false move and it could go plummeting into the depths and that would be it.”

  He thought she shivered, but that was impossible on such a hot August day. Stepping back, he waved her on and Anna drove past the long line of vehicles parked at the roadside to the first available space. It was not surprising that so many people had come here today, for the new road through to the coast had made this once isolated area easily accessible. By now the music had given way to a newsreader, who announced that Nixon had won the Republican nomination for President and, in the next breath, that mini-skirts had become so short that in London the dry-cleaners were charging by the inch. Anna switched it off and parked for the second time.

  Everywhere else in the world life was going on, however important or trivial, but she had come to face up to the past, whatever the consequences might be. Yet she had never expected to visit this lake, even though what had happened there was an integral part of her relationship with a man who had torn her life apart. It was like coming to the opening of Pandora’s box.

  How easy it was already to picture how it must have been for the pilot of the fighter plane, a Mosquito, on the March night when he had to make a crash-landing here on the snow-covered plateau. That had been during the savage days of the German Occupation of this peaceful land. With his aircraft badly damaged by anti-aircraft fire and losing height rapidly, he had still hoped to save the special cargo that he carried aboard. If he had not been familiar with the area, there would have been no chance, but he watched out for the dark gleam of the frozen lake that the wind had made patchy with snow.

  Anna shut her eyes tightly, seeming to hear the spluttering engines as the aircraft descended swiftly out of the night sky. There came the vibrating thud of the crash-landing followed by the screech of metal as it careened wildly before finally coming to a standstill with its nose deep in a snowdrift. It was then that there came a noise like thunder as the ice, thick though it was, suddenly cracked and split into great glittering fangs that soared upwards as if to devour this unexpected prey. Briefly the Mosquito remained propped at a desperate angle, one wing high, a curious quiver passing through its fuselage as if it hovered like its namesake, until it began to sink slowly down into the churning water. The pilot, badly bruised and shaken, watched from the snowdrift where he had managed to crawl to safety. He uttered a long and despairing groan as his fighter plane disappeared from sight.

  With an effort Anna forced her mind back to the present. She wouldn’t go to the lake yet. It was better to be on her own while the final salvage preparations took place instead of being in the midst of all the other spectators. Deciding to leave her jacket on the back seat, she tucked a strand of her silky light brown hair back behind one ear and put on large-framed sunglasses before gathering up her handbag and binoculars from the passenger seat. Slinging the straps of both over her left shoulder, she slid out of the car and locked it behind her.

  Setting off up the slope, she walked through grass hazy with harebells and thick with clover, lady’s slipper and stretches of wild pansies. Slim and lithe, dressed in a cool green cotton blouse and white trousers fashionably flared, her subtly expressive face, presently showing strain, had the kind of well-formed bones that would carry her beauty through all the decades ahead. Her mouth was wide and generous and, at other times, quick to laugh. She had inherited her fine complexion and azure eyes from her Oslo-born mother, but in being practical and level-headed with a mind of her own, she knew herself to be exactly like her English Naval Officer father, David Marlow.

  It was rarely that he had spoken about the tragic period in his life and hers when her Norwegian mother had died. Yet he brought up the subject when she spent a half-term from boarding school with him when his ship was in port. She was twelve and they were seated at a window table in one of Fuller’s teashops.

  “I’ve often wondered, Anna, how you really felt after we lost your mother and I told you of all the arrangements I’d made for your care in my absences at sea. After all, you were only seven.”

  She had looked up from eating a cream cake with its fresh strawberry on top. “I didn’t like the boarding school bit at first, although it’s all right now. But it was wonderful being able to spend every vacation with Aunt Rosa in Norway. My earliest memories are of Mother taking me there when you were away at sea, and I’ve always been bilingual.”

  When she was older and her aunt had confided in her, Anna often wondered if her father had known that his sister-in-law had had a passionate affair with a German count in her younger days. That was when Rosa’s staid and tiresomely dull husband was still alive.

  On the slope Anna paused to pick a harebell as she had done so often throughout her childhood. She smiled, remembering how her aunt was always on the quayside to meet her and how they had waved exuberantly to each other. Aunt Rosa’s welcoming embraces were warm and bosomy and full of love. They had needed each other, the maternally-minded widow denied children of her own and the lonely child.

  To this day a ce
rtain French scent could bring back memories of childhood and teenage days, for Rosa had always used it. Although sated by travel through the years of marriage to a diplomat, Rosa Johansen had still made seasonal trips to Paris for most of her clothes. She had splendid hats too, and Anna remembered the hilarious sessions they’d had together when she had been allowed to try them on.

  Those vacations had followed a regular pattern that had made everything so secure and reassuring. In spring there would be skiing from a cabin on Nordmarka, not far from Oslo, and Christmas was at Rosa’s elegant apartment within sight of the Royal Palace with parties and a tree aglow with real candles. But the summers were best of all. Then she would disembark at Bergen and take a steamer up the coast to the lovely little Town of Roses as Molde was still called. There she and Rosa stayed at the old family home with its view of the fjord. It was a time of picnics and sailing and trips into the mountains, most of it with local children who had become her friends.

  The grassy slope had become steeper now as the forest began to take over. Anna entered its secretive, dark green shadows, the foliage of the sky-high firs so thick that only spears of sunlight could penetrate. She inhaled again the familiar fragrance of fern and bark and dry cones. In another such forest she had once been engaged in a gun-battle, and in yet another she’d had to run for her life.

  She came to a standstill, pressing her fingertips to her temples. Too much was coming back to her, unwelcome visions of wartime events that she’d tried to keep from her mind. Then she reminded herself sternly that remembering was the reason why she had come today. The delay in raising the fighter plane was a bonus in which she could gather her thoughts together and prepare for the dreaded moment when she would see it.

  There was a sunny clearing ahead where timber had been felled. Anna hurried to it, wanting to feel the sun’s warmth fully on her again. There she found a comfortable place to sit. Wild flowers were growing here too and wild cranberries, not yet red, showed in the nearby undergrowth. Within reach was a patch of ripe blueberries and she reached out to pluck a sprig of them. One by one she popped the blueberries into her mouth, using the old trick of pressing out the sweetness with her tongue to avoid staining her teeth.

  It was a trick she had practised in her teens when she had not wanted Nils Olsen to see her with blue stains around her mouth. Before that in childhood she had never cared. Everything changed when she realised at fourteen that her long attachment to him had become something much more. But he was older by four years with a wide choice of girls of his own age. It had taken him until she was just seventeen and he was taking part in ski-jumping contests at Oslo’s Holmenkollen for him to see her in a new light. When the spring vacation was over they had to wait yearningly for summer when they could be together again.

  It became a summer she could never forget. But then 1939 had stamped itself on the memories of untold millions of people in many different ways. Loving and being loved for the first time paled into insignificance beside all else that happened. She had returned home again to boarding school in Derbyshire on that first tumultuous day of September when Hitler’s forces had stormed into Poland. Two days later Britain and her allies were at war with Nazi Germany.

  Correspondence had still come through from Rosa and Nils. She was able to let them know when her father’s ship was torpedoed and lost with all hands. Their replies comforted her in her grief, but those were the last letters she received. The next day Norway was brutally invaded by German forces and the contact with the two people she loved most was broken.

  The day after final school exams Anna presented herself at the local recruiting office of the Women’s Royal Naval Service, determined to become a Wren, the nickname given to those who served in it.

  “I’m here to volunteer,” she announced.

  “Have you any connection with the Royal Navy?” the recruiting officer questioned briskly.

  “My father was a Captain until he was lost at sea. I can’t replace him in the service, but I want to close the gap a little bit.”

  She was trained as a radio operator. After a year she gained a commission. In the fitting-room of a naval outfitters she regarded her reflection in her new uniform of Third Officer, a single blue stripe on the sleeves. The old tailor, who looked as if he had been making uniforms for officers since Nelson’s day, had done his work well.

  She slipped on the greatcoat, fastened the blue buttons and grinned with a sense of achievement as she straightened the naval tricorn hat. Then she picked up her gloves and slung the strap of her gas mask over her shoulder. Her new posting was to the south of England, not far from where her father had moored his sailing boat before the war.

  “Portsmouth, here I come!” she said under her breath. Then she went out into the busy street and returned the salute of two ratings for the first time before running for a bus that was about to draw away. Wolf whistles followed her from a truckload of Canadian soldiers passing by.

  Some months after her arrival and with the booming of anti-aircraft guns, Anna knelt in the choking dust amid the rubble of a bombed cinema, holding to her a fellow officer. It had been their last evening together before he rejoined his ship. Marriage between them had never been considered, but she had become very fond of him and he of her. The tears coursed down her begrimed face as he died in her arms.

  She had to keep her grieving to herself, although she knew that many sympathised with her. Life was too difficult generally to allow private troubles to intrude on others. Outwardly everything went on as before until the day she was told the Commanding Officer wanted to see her.

  “What happened?” one of her fellow officers asked when she returned to the mess.

  “I’ve been posted!” Anna exclaimed in bewilderment. “But I don’t know where! I’m to take all my kit with me and report in London tomorrow afternoon.”

  “It must mean promotion. Lucky you!”

  Next morning Anna caught the train to Waterloo Station. There she took a bus to an address in Baker Street. She noticed that grass and some hardy wild flowers were growing in the gaps left by the Blitz. It was a comforting sight, seeming to show that normality could follow any nightmare.

  Chapter Two

  At an office window above Baker Street underground station a stern-faced man in his forties stood looking out, his rank that of major in the Free Royal Norwegian Army. He could see on the far side of the bomb-damaged street a young Wren waiting for a gap in the passing traffic before she could cross. Although he had never met her, he recognised her as Anna Marlow from a photograph in his files.

  “She’s here,” he said to a fellow Norwegian, also in army uniform, tall and broad-shouldered, who came to join him at the window.

  “If looks were all that counted she’d be OK,” Karl Kringstad replied drily. He had read the file on her in this office less than half an hour before; it had given her age, birthplace, parentage and much else about her. “Let’s hope she measures up to her Commanding Officer’s report.”

  It had stated that Anna Marlow was intelligent, alert and conscientious in her duties. She had also kept a cool head in several emergencies during air-raids and once, at great risk herself from falling masonry, she had rescued and attempted to keep alive a fellow officer who had been trapped under rubble in a bombed cinema.

  “I admit that what we would expect of her is specialised work,” the Major agreed. “But it was your hunch that put me on her track.”

  “It was only based on what I heard said about her on one occasion.”

  “But Captain Gunnarsen had known her and her aunt in Norway and, as you said yourself, he’s a good judge of character. Anyway, we shall soon know. She’s starting to cross the street.”

  “I’d better go.” Karl turned away.

  The Major frowned, moving from the window with him. “Why not stay and make some judgement of her for yourself?”

  Karl hesitated, his gaze darkening. “I’m not sure whether I’m ready yet to voice an opinion about any poss
ible replacement for Ingrid.”

  The Major was apologetic. “I was thoughtless. It’s too soon yet. I simply thought that, if the Marlow girl has the right qualities, you’ll be seeing more of her for a while than anyone else.”

  He saw the tightness increase about the younger man’s mouth, but there came a sharp nod of acceptance.

  “You’re right. I’ll sit in on this interview for a little while as an observer.”

  “Good. But don’t hesitate to ask the young woman questions if there’s something you want to hear direct from her.”

  When Anna was shown into the office, she was surprised not to see at least one or two naval officers or even a board of them. Instead she was facing a Norwegian major, ribbons on his chest, who was seated at a desk in a rather bare office brightened only by the scarlet, blue and white of Norway’s flag. Another man with striking Nordic good looks, whose age she judged to be about twenty-eight, stood by one of the two spare chairs. The only naval link was in the large photograph hanging on the wall behind the desk of King Haakon in his Admiral’s uniform.

  “I’m Major Andersen,” the officer said at once in Norwegian, “and this is Captain Karl Kringstad. You’re not here on any naval matter, but to give me the chance to talk informally with you. Please sit down.”

  “Thank you,” Anna said, also in Norwegian since that seemed to be the language chosen for this meeting. She took one of the seats in front of the desk, vaguely aware that Karl Kringstad had seated himself in the other. She was still bemused by this unexpected turn of events. Then, without warning, she was gripped by an icy fear of what she might be about to hear. “Am I here to receive bad news about my aunt in Oslo?” she demanded quickly, her hands clenched together in her lap.

  Major Andersen was quick to reassure her. “No! That’s not the reason! Not at all!” He rose from his chair to come round and perch his weight on the edge of the desk, facing her. “I regret causing you any unnecessary anxiety. We are all concerned about those whom we know in Norway. My own wife and children are there.” Then, before she could say anything, he continued, “I believe you have been in the WRNS since the very day King Haakon and Crown Prince Olav and the Government left Norway in exile for England.”