The Fragile Hour Read online

  “You make me feel a total amateur,” she said simply, almost at a loss for words that he should have used his initiative at such a time of danger.

  He shook his head. “You’re far from that. It was an horrific moment for me when you stepped out from behind that stacked timber.”

  “It was the only chance we had. We were lucky that when the Germans gained the upper hand, they wanted us for interrogation.”

  “That makes it all the more important to get you safely away. I’m afraid you’ve no choice but to come with me again.”

  “No, I must return to Alesund. There’s no need for anyone to connect me with anything that happened here as long as I return as arranged. After all, I was working at the Alesund hotel when the sabotage attempt took place.”

  “But that wouldn’t have helped you today, because the Germans would still have arrested you in any case for being connected with Nils.”

  They went on talking, he shifting the conversation away from all that had happened. Soon they were on lighter topics, telling each other amusing incidents in their lives and generally filling in gaps about themselves. She learnt that he could play a saxophone and he that she once climbed the Romsdal Horn with Nils, who was an experienced climber, and a team of his friends.

  “Not right to the top, of course,” she said. “Only Nils and a couple of others did that.”

  “It was still an achievement.”

  After a while, in a serious moment, he told her about losing his wife. Anna was deeply touched, for she knew him to be a very private man, not given to revealing his innermost feelings. In silence she reached out her hand and linked her fingers with his across the table in compassion and understanding. All they had been through together that day had brought them both closer than she could ever have imagined possible. She had not known that facing death with another person could create a union of spirit that was unique and she was awed by this discovery.

  Chapter Ten

  Karl and Anna prepared their supper together. They used only a third of the food they had found, not knowing if the weather might keep them isolated in the cabin for another day. They made it a leisurely meal by sitting on over their coffee. It gave them both the chance to unwind after their traumatic experience in the forest. The strain of it still showed in her face, although she was unaware of it. For that reason he kept the conversation on an easy level.

  After everything was washed up and put away, Anna felt sleepy in the warmth of the room. “I’d better get to bed,” she said, smothering a yawn.

  “You go ahead,” Karl said, sitting with his long legs stretched out in front of him. “There’s a box of tools by the door and I’ll mend the lock I broke before I take the other bunk. Good night, Anna. Sleep well.”

  “That will be easy. ‘Night, Karl.”

  She took a candle on a saucer and a jug of hot water into the little bedroom where she bathed herself down. Alone and no longer distracted by talk or small domestic tasks, all that had happened earlier came tumbling back darkly into her mind. She had found a man’s clean shirt in one of the drawers and put it on, but she did not get into her bunk. Instead she sat on the edge of it, her elbows on her knees, her head resting in her hands and tried to get her thoughts into perspective.

  Unaware that she was shivering uncontrollably, she saw again the enemies she had wounded and killed. She tried to hang on to the fact that otherwise it would have been Karl’s life and hers, but searing her memory was the spurting blood, the shock of faces in the seconds before death, the helplessly upflung arms and the dropped rifles skeetering away across the red-stained snow. Abruptly she clapped her hands over her ears, seeming to hear again the yells and screams and groans that were running through her head. Inevitably it led to a sudden image of Nils being tortured by the Gestapo. A moan escaped her.

  Karl, who had just finished mending the lock, dropped the tools he had been using into their box, and went quickly into the bedroom. He saw immediately that she was suffering from delayed shock and he sat down to pull the unrolled sleeping-bag around her like a blanket, holding her close.

  “Listen to me, Anna,” he said drawing her hands down into her lap. “It was a bad experience, but it’s over. You did what had to be done. It wasn’t just our lives that were at stake, but those of others whose names the Gestapo would have tried to torture out of us.”

  “That’s what will happen to Nils!” Anna buried her face against his shoulder, the violent shivering of her body passing into his.

  “He’ll not talk, but it may not come to that. He’s built up strong German contacts and he’s bluffed his way out of a tight situation once before. I’d put my money on Nils getting through somehow.”

  Anna took hope from his words, but the nightmare was still with her. “Hold me tight,” she implored, needing the comfort of his close presence a while longer.

  He pressed her still closer to him, stroking her hair, his lips a breath away from her brow. Her physical nearness was devastating to him. He had wanted her from first seeing her in that London office, not recognising at first that all he felt was so much more. Every sighting of her since then, every meeting and every word they had ever exchanged had made him fall still more deeply in love with her. Today, when she had stepped deliberately into the range of German bullets, he had been struck to the bone by the force and depth of all she meant to him.

  “Maybe you should try to sleep now,” he suggested, trying to keep the thickness of desire from his voice.

  “Not yet! I couldn’t! Please stay a little while longer!” As if she feared he might still decide otherwise, she threw an arm about his neck, half-lying across his chest, her breasts pressed against him. He found the bouquet of her skin irresistible and her hair had flicked softly across his chin.

  “Anna,” he breathed, kissing her brow. Then, unable to restrain himself any longer, he raised her higher and crushed her to him as he buried her mouth in his.

  To Anna it was like a warm wave sweeping over her. She had the impression of floundering mentally as if the day’s events would not let her go, but then his passionate mouth drove all else away. Nothing existed any longer except his arms about her and the wild hunger for each other that they were sharing in a kiss that was setting her free.

  For a few moments only they drew apart breathlessly to look into each other’s eyes in the pale candlelight, as if scarcely able to believe what was happening to them. Then he swept her to him again, becoming her whole world.

  “I love you, my elskede!” he exclaimed almost harshly when drawing breath again, angry with himself even as he rejoiced in loving this woman, pliant and eager in his arms. None of this was what he had planned, not to love again in the midst of war or to love so totally in the knowledge that he had found in her the other half of himself.

  “I love you too,” she whispered joyously, feeling as if all her life had been directed towards this moment in this place.

  He unbuttoned her shirt and, drawing the garment from her, found her totally beautiful. She caught her breath as his palms passed deliciously over her breasts until, his face full of love, he buried his fingers in her hair and bore her backwards in a kiss on to the bunk. She watched as he left her briefly to discard his own clothes and then return to her, his muscled body pale and gleaming in the candleglow.

  Anna arched her back as his wonderful mouth moved over her breasts in passionate exploration, his stroking and caressing hands changing the chilled shivering of her limbs into a trembling of the flesh in highly awakened desire. She cupped his head lovingly in her hands as he continued his own glorious discoveries of her entire body, every touch of his tongue and fingertips overwhelming her in sensual delights. Finally the moment came when she welcomed him with her entire being as he plunged into her, vibrant with energy, to transport her with him to such a peak of ecstasy that she threshed beneath him at its force, he holding her lovingly captive in his embrace.

  In the blissful aftermath he stroked her tumbled hair away from
her face and kissed her softly. They murmured tender words to each other until they made love once more. Afterwards they drifted into sleep, her head on his shoulder. Outside the falling snow dwindled away, the clouds shifted and the moon came out.

  When Anna woke the room was in darkness, the candle having burnt out, and she was alone. Sitting up, she brushed back her hair with one hand and parted the gingham curtains over the window. Although it was shuttered from outside, a penetrating glimmer of light told her it was day. Yet she did not move. Resting her arms across her updrawn knees she thought over all that had happened between Karl and her in the night, her mind crystal clear.

  It was no surprise to her that nothing had changed her feelings for Nils. She loved him gently and steadfastly as she had always done, cherishing the thought of him. Whatever happened, that would never leave her and was not to be belittled in any way for springing from her youth and inexperience in summers long gone by. Subconsciously she must have known it had relegated itself already to the past when she had said to him that nothing could be decided until this war was over.

  In contrast, what she felt for Karl was wholly adult. Yesterday had been a revelation to her in their relationship. She understood now what had compelled her to kiss him as she had done when they parted in Bergen. Already in her heart she had been finding her way to him. Last night had been one of discovery in many ways. She hugged her arms in joyous recollection, marvelling that happiness could come at such a time and in a totally unexpected way. Whether her life should end soon through some trick of war or if she should live for many years to come, she would hold to Karl’s adoring words that had made tears of joy trickle from her eyes.

  Yet this morning the harsh reality of Nils’s predicament was lying heavily upon her. She had to know soon where he was and if it lay in her power to help him in any way, no matter at what risk to herself. It would be the same at any time in the future. Nothing in life was without its complications, especially when a new love did not mean a severance with the old.

  Holding back the curtain again, she held her wrist close to the glimmer of daylight and saw that it was almost eight o’clock. She sprang out of bed and went to look into the main room. Karl was not there, but a candle gave light and the table was laid. The coffee-pot and saucepans of hot water stood on the stove, Best of all, was the sight of her rucksack propped with Karl’s against the bench, pools of melted snow bearing witness to his salvaging of them. She ran across to hers in her bare feet and took from it her toothbrush and a change of underwear she had packed. Then she gathered her polo-necked jersey and ski-pants from the pegs where they had dried overnight. She saw that those Karl had borrowed were on the neighbouring pegs, soaked by snow from his salvaging expedition. He had probably slithered most of the way down to where their possessions were lying.

  When dressed and ready, Anna went to look outside. As she stepped onto the cleared threshold, a brilliant, sun-sparkling scene instantly dazzled her and she flung up an arm to shade her eyes. The sky was as vivid a blue as a butterfly’s wing without a single cloud to be seen. Karl, wearing his own ski clothes, was waxing a ski, the other three stuck upright in the snow beside him. He greeted her with a loving grin.

  “Hi! I was just coming to wake you. We must get going as soon as we’ve had breakfast.”

  “You’ve rescued all our belongings! You must have been up at the crack of dawn.”

  “That’s when I set out. In spite of our haste yesterday, we’d left the skis jutting far enough over the waterfall for me to find them. Then I burrowed for our rucksacks.”

  “Recovered treasure! Isn’t it a wonderful day? Just the kind of Easter weather that I remember.”

  “It should set in for some time now. Have you sunglasses for your trip?”

  “Yes, in my rucksack.”

  “Good.” He glanced down in the direction of the valley, which was out of her range of vision from where she stood in the doorway. “I’ve been keeping watch, but so far there’s no military activity in the valley.”

  “Why is that? Do you suppose they think we lost ourselves last night and are now only mounds in the snow?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe. But it’s most likely yesterday cost them too many casualties when they had already caught the two men they wanted and you were only small fry. Whoever ordered the pursuit must be regretting it. He’ll have questions to answer from his superiors.”

  “But they must be wondering about you.”

  “I could have been your husband helping you to get away.”

  “With a revolver?”

  “As Eirik Haug said yesterday, many hid their guns and that includes those of us in the army who fought the invaders. The Germans found that out to their cost some time ago.” He stuck the waxed ski back with the others. “That’s done.”

  Anna waited for him in the doorway. When he reached her, they kissed happily with their arms around each other.

  “Do you know what I’d hoped?” she whispered.

  “I think I was hoping for the same thing. Another day of heavy snow?”

  She laughed softly. “Yes, although a week would have been preferable.”

  “A whole year wouldn’t have been long enough.”

  Inevitably their loving looks and words led to their making love once more. By then the minutes were running out fast for them. The food in their rucksacks had frozen during the night and they breakfasted hastily on the same menu as the night before. Afterwards she washed up the few items they had used while he raked out the stove, having already restocked the wood supply in the box beneath it. His last task was to replace the chimney-lid.

  When they were ready to leave, everything made as tidy as possible, Anna left some food coupons under the coffee jar as well as some for clothing as both she and Karl had taken a pair of the knitted gloves to wear. Karl added some money to cover the cost and also that of two pairs of the spare ski-sticks the owner had kept there as he had only found one of their own.

  Anna was sad to leave this simple sanctuary where she had found love and she took a last look around her before blowing out the candle.

  “Come on, darling,” Karl said, waiting to lock the door, for he had found the key earlier that morning.

  She went out into the sun and snapped on her skis. As they left the cabin behind them, she gained a full view of the valley stretching away as far as the church by the blue water of Tresfjord and then on across the great fjord to Molde many miles away. Everything was clear and sharp in the pure morning air.

  “Let’s come back here one day,” she said, lost in the beauty of the scene.

  “We’ll do that.”

  They both knew that chance might never come their way, but it comforted her to hope for it.

  They skied together side by side and kept up a good speed, for there was a crisp crust to the new snow. They were completely alone among the glittering mountains, the endless slopes lying unmarked before them. It would have seemed like any day of carefree cross-country skiing, except that the imminence of their parting was hanging over them. Finally they came to the place where they had to go their separate ways.

  “This is it!” he said, as they came to a halt. “Are you sure of shelter tonight?”

  “Yes. I showed you the map I was given by Rolf before I left Alesund. All the saeters are marked and I have my compass.”

  “I’ll try to send you a letter if I get an opportunity,” he promised.

  “I’d be content with a verbal message from someone just to know you’re safe.”

  “I’ll remember that.” He enfolded her into his embrace with a groan of love and for a few moments they stood with their cheeks pressed together, he almost crushing the breath from her. “Always remember that I love you, Anna.”

  He had spoken with such tenderness that she could hardly answer him, but a lover’s parting in war was no time for reticence. If words of love were left unspoken, the chance to say them might never come again.

  “You’re taking my heart wit
h you,” she whispered.

  Then they kissed so long and deeply and lovingly in farewell that afterwards she felt mildly surprised that the snow had not melted under their feet and spring flowers blossomed around them.

  He saw she was smiling and was glad. “What is it?” he asked. When she told him, he smiled too. “Didn’t you see it happen? You must have had your eyes closed.”

  “I always do when you kiss me.” She was as thankful as he that they could part with a smile to help the anguish that was in them. “Farvel, dear Karl.”

  He watched her ski away. She paused once to exchange a wave with him. Then he turned in the opposite direction.

  Anna kept to the higher slopes from which she could sight the enemy far in the distance should that arise, but it was unlikely. She had no difficulty in getting into the cabins, the key to her aunt’s country home coming into unexpected use.

  It took nearly three days before she came down the mountains at Sjoholt. It was where the bus had been refuelled on the way to Tresfjord. There were a few soldiers about, but none took any notice of her. She was still some way from Alesund and it would be curfew-time before she reached it unless she could get transport. A garage hand gave her the telephone number of a taxi-driver. He was already booked for the same trip, but would take her if she was willing to share with another woman passenger.

  She agreed immediately. Her fellow passenger proved to be an elderly woman, well pleased to halve the fare, who chatted about her five beloved grandchildren all the way. Anna was content to listen, for it was so normal and domestic after what she had been through. The flow of talk did not stop even at the bridge check point where their papers were examined. The guard, young and amiable, gave Anna a sympathetic wink as he returned them.

  Chapter Eleven