The Fragile Hour Read online

  “That’s most welcome,” he said appreciatively.

  They drank the coffee sitting side by side in comfortable chairs. Klaus talked of his home in Berlin where he grew up, his parents and his sisters, all three of whom were married, his admiration for Hitler and his hopes for the future, which included marriage and children. In between he attempted to bring her out about her family and early life.

  Although Anna appeared relaxed, she was keenly alert, convinced he was trying to spot any flaw in whatever she said. Fortunately she had been so steeped in her fictional background during her training that nothing he asked caused her any worry. It was after midnight when they left the room together and he saw her to the foot of the stairs. There he rested his hand on the newel post and made no attempt to touch her as they said good night.

  “You know Anna,” he said, “I never thought I’d need a second chance in my life, but you’ve given it to me when I needed it most.”

  He watched her go up the stairs, absorbing the sight of her unconsciously sensuous grace.

  In the morning, after Klaus had departed and the rest of the officers had gone on duty, Greta came in search of Anna, who was sorting the hotel chits for reimbursement from the army office.

  “There you are, Anna!” Greta exclaimed. “Bring those chits to the office if they’re ready. There’s something I want to discuss with you.”

  “I’ve just finished them,” Anna said when she put the chits down on the office desk. “That’s everything up to date.”

  Greta nodded and waited until Anna was seated before she spoke. “This may seem an odd question, but did you have a snack in the kitchen before you went to bed last night?”

  “No. Major Schultz wanted coffee and I made just enough for two cups for him and one for myself. Did I use too much coffee?”

  “The amount you took was missed, because Edith has started marking the level of it, but that’s not important. What about the three previous nights?”

  Anna frowned very seriously. “I have never taken any food other than what I’ve been given.”

  “I was sure of it and I hated having to ask you,” Greta said on a sigh, sitting back in her chair, “but I’ve had to question all the staff, including the part-timers. Edith has got it into her head that food is being pilfered. Do you think Major Schultz might have helped himself?”

  “No, because after I went upstairs, he followed almost immediately and I heard his door shut after him. What is missing?”

  “According to Edith, bread and cheese each time, two slices of beef left from the dining-room, some cold cooked potatoes, and also the dried apple rings in a jar have dwindled. It’s so little in all, but not in times like these.”

  “When has this food been disappearing?”

  “Edith isn’t sure what time it happens. She doesn’t always notice something is missing until she goes to use it. Her fear is that larger amounts might be taken next time and I share her anxiety, because, if the officers thought they weren’t getting their full rations, I could be forced out of here and a German catering staff moved in to take over.” Greta shook her head gravely. “I’m well aware that I’m hanging on here by the skin of my teeth and any kind of trouble on the domestic side would finish me.”

  “Yet you take the risks that you do. Having me here, for example.”

  “That’s little enough, in my opinion. I wouldn’t be able to survive this Nazi presence under my roof if I didn’t exorcise it by helping the Resistance in the only way open to me. Margot feels the same.”

  That night, Anna sat on the bed in Margot’s room as they discussed the mystery.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Anna said. “Do you suppose that someone on the staff is pregnant and can’t resist taking a bite to eat when nobody is around?”

  Margot, brushing her hair before the mirror, paused to look across at her. “Well, it’s not you and it’s definitely not me. Who does that leave?”

  They counted up. There were five possible and two unlikely.

  “That doesn’t help much, does it?” Anna concluded, rising to her feet. “We can’t solve anything tonight. It’s my morning as trainee assistant to Edith again tomorrow and so I hope nothing has been pilfered in the meantime.”

  “Good luck!” Margot said with a laugh. “She was like a lioness deprived of her young today.”

  Fortunately, when Anna went into the kitchen to take up her work, Edith was in an amiable mood.

  “Nothing more has gone,” she announced cheerfully. “Whoever had a few moments of weakness has now overcome them. We all know what it means to be hungry.”

  It was typical of her charitable nature that the matter was closed as far as she was concerned. But by early evening she was in a fury again. The rifling of a bag of oats had escaped her notice earlier, but it had come to light when she noticed a few oats scattered on one of her spotless shelves. Margot, who was in the kitchen at the time, put the pregnancy theory to her. The woman’s reaction was to look hurt.

  “I hope anyone pregnant on the staff would feel able to ask me for a little extra. I’d have found something. It’s the thieving I can’t abide. Anyway,” she added firmly, “women in that state don’t usually knock back brandy. I had a bottle in the cupboard I’ve always saved for a medical emergency, such as an air raid, and that’s been swigged too. I have it well hidden now.”

  When Margot repeated the conversation to Anna, she added, “If anyone had a taste for brandy, you’d think Edith’s bottle would have been sampled long ago.”

  Anna agreed. “You said once I was like Sherlock Holmes, but this is a problem someone else will have to solve.”

  More pilfering was reported the next day at noon. Margot was on her way to tell Anna, who was taking a turn at mending the linen, when a visitor called in at the hotel.

  “There’s somebody waiting to see you, Anna,” she said. “I showed him into the peisestue.”

  “Who is it?” Anna asked, puzzled that anyone should come to see her.

  “It’s Nils Olsen, the collaborator who won the ski-jumping contest a few weeks ago. How do you know him?”

  Anna was alarmed. Something very important must have come up for Nils to seek her out here. Neither Margot nor her mother knew anything about him, for she had always kept to her false background as she had been instructed. “I had one dance with him at that party I went to with Klaus.” She stuck her needle back into a pin-cushion. “I never expected him to turn up here.”

  “You are having trouble,” Margot commented with amusement, having seen how bewildered Anna was by this unexpected call. “German officers fancying you like mad and now, worst of all, a Quisling too.”

  “You shouldn’t jump to conclusions!” Anna gave back sharply before she could stop herself.

  “Oh, sorry,” Margot said quickly. “Is he really a patriot?”

  “I’ve no idea,” Anna bluffed, trying to cover her slip of the tongue. It had sprung from a deep-rooted loyalty always to defend Nils against criticism, but it was a sharp lesson on how easy it was to be caught off guard. “Your telling me I had a visitor made me nervous.”

  “It was my fault. I should have said he’s tall and dishy without a whiff of the Gestapo about him.” Margot tilted her head with a smile. “Anyway, if he is a patriot, enjoy the visit.”

  Anna closed the door of the peisestue behind her as soon as she entered. Nils was standing by the window and his pleasure at seeing her suffused his face as he crossed the room.

  “What are you doing here?” she demanded anxiously.

  “Seeing you.” He swept her into his arms and kissed her hard, but her eyes remained open and she stepped back as soon as he released her.

  “Do you mean this is purely a social call?” she demanded incredulously.

  He laughed at her concern, catching her hands in his and pulling her towards him. “Don’t look so worried! It’s all above board with the Germans. Aren’t we lucky?”

  “No!” She was angry. “You were mad to d
o this! You could be jeopardising your role and mine.”

  “If either of us should be arrested, do you mean? Forget it! You and I are coming through this war together with a whole new future waiting for us.”

  “But the war isn’t won yet. I’ve enough on my hands with Klaus Schultz breathing down my neck. He won’t be pleased if he hears that you were here.”

  “It’s all right. I told Hauptman Bauer and another officer staying here that I had a spare programme of the 1936 Olympics that I thought would interest you.” His eyes danced. “I added that you wanted to see the name of an old friend in it who had taken part. Fortunately they didn’t ask to see it, because even my own was lost when my home was burnt down in the Molde air raid.”

  “And what if either of those two men ask me to show it to them?”

  He looked surprised that she was making an issue of it. “Tell them that you felt you couldn’t accept it. What’s the matter? It’s not like you to get upset and I can see you are.”

  She put her hand to her forehead as if to thrust away her anger. “I didn’t mean to fly off the handle. I’m glad to see you. I always am, but life is so complicated at the moment.”

  “Can you tell me about it?” he asked sympathetically. She looked into his eyes. “I want to tell you, Nils. You won’t like what I’m going to say.”

  “As long as you don’t say you’re walking out on me, I can cope with anything else.” The joking tone he had adopted faded away as he saw the anguish on her face. “What’s happened?”

  “Let’s sit down,” she said.

  He sat opposite her, leaning forward with his arms across his knees. “So tell me,” he said uncompromisingly, his gaze fixed on her.

  He listened without a word as she told him how she had first met Karl in London, and that subsequent meetings had drawn them together without their realising it, until the time they knew themselves to be in love with each other. “If it hadn’t been for Karl getting me away in the mountains as he did,” she concluded, “I’d be in a concentration camp or, at worst, dead.”

  “I should never have let you go off alone in that valley!” Nils clenched his hands in self-reproach.

  “You had no choice.”

  “But to think you might have been killed in that forest! You’re grateful to Karl for getting you through it and that’s understandable, but what you feel for him is no more than that.”

  “But it is.”

  “No, I don’t believe that,” he declared stubbornly.

  With despair, she saw that he was unable to come to terms with what he had been told. “Please listen to me, Nils,” she implored. “I love Karl. He’s everything to me.”

  Her words finally seemed to sink in and he looked down, shaking his head. “You don’t know what you’re saying,” he said very quietly.

  “I tried to make you see that nothing was the same when we talked in the church.”

  Still he did not look up. “But you told me there was nobody else.”

  “I didn’t know it myself then.” Anna reached out and put a hand on his arm. “Please look at me, Nils.”

  He raised his haggard face and her hand fell away at the starkness of passion blended with sadness in his expression. “Nobody can do this to us, Anna.”

  “That’s what I used to think, but I was wrong.”

  “You’re forgetting something. I know you better than anyone else. No matter how confused you are now, you’ll come back to me. Our lives are intertwined and always will be.”

  “In one way, but not another.”

  His jaw set. “I’ll wait for you to get over this.”

  “No!” she protested vehemently. “That would be useless. If I should lose Karl through this war, I’d go on alone.”

  He had risen to his feet, ready to leave, and he shook his head again. “You’re mistaken, my love. You’ll need me more than ever.”

  Anna made no attempt to follow him out of the room. She was close to tears. There had been so many times in the past when she had run to Nils, firstly as a child full of hero-worship and then as a girl in love. Now she had done what he had never done to her. She had turned away from him.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Although Anna tried to sleep that night, thoughts of Nils were heavy on her mind. When finally she dozed, it was only to be disturbed by a creaking board and instantly she was wide awake again. Another board creaked as somebody moved about and she guessed that Margot was having one of her sleepless nights too.

  Throwing back the downy dyne, Anna put her feet into slippers and reached for her dressing-gown. She went to Margot’s room and tapped lightly on the door before opening it. To her surprise, her friend lay fast asleep.

  Puzzled, Anna shut the door again and was about to return to her own room when she heard creaking boards somewhere on the stairs below. Only Emil slept on the premises and his room was on the ground floor beyond the kitchen, where his room had a view over the water. If it was the food thief going down the stairs, it had to be one of the officers.

  Her first thought was to investigate on her own, but it would be wiser to be accompanied by a witness. She returned to Margot’s room and woke her up.

  “Is it an air raid?” Margot asked sleepily. When Anna had explained, she was alert at once and soon they were both going down the stairs as quietly as possible. Outside each door that they passed a pair of jack-boots stood awaiting Emil’s collection and polishing in the early morning. Every time a board creaked underfoot, they froze before continuing on again. Apart from themselves and the unknown person they were stalking, the whole hotel appeared to be fast asleep.

  The emergency light in the blacked-out lobby gave just enough glow to show that the doors to the dining-room and peisestue stood open and all was silent within. Anna led the way to the kitchen where a sliver of light, streaking out from under the door, showed that whoever was in there did not expect to be discovered. They listened against the door and heard the bread drawer open.

  “Now!” Anna whispered.

  They flung open the door and entered, only to halt in total astonishment. A strangled gasp had met them, followed by the clatter of a bread knife falling on to the floor and the thump of the loaf that followed it. Both had been dropped by a terrified boy of about ten years old, brown-haired and dishevelled, a stranger to them both. He stood as if rooted to the floor.

  “Who are you?” Margot demanded as Anna swiftly closed the door in case he made a sudden bolt to escape. “How did you get in here? Have you been breaking into the hotel every night?”

  “Don’t give me away!” he begged, his face white. “I’ll be killed if the Germans get me!”

  “I might do that before I finish with you,” Margot threatened angrily. “You’re a thief! Aren’t you fed enough at home?”

  “I haven’t a home. Not any more. The Germans took it.”

  “They’ve taken over mine too. What’s new about that?” Without giving the boy a chance to reply, she wagged an angry finger at him. “You’ve been swigging brandy too, you little thief! You’re a bit young for that, aren’t you?”

  The boy made an unconsciously comical grimace. “I didn’t like it!” he protested vehemently. “It’s worse than medicine. But my uncle always slept after he had brandy, and I wanted to sleep in the daytime to be awake at night.”

  “So you could break in and steal!” Margot was outraged.

  Anna, who had picked up the knife and loaf, setting both aside, could see that the boy was almost paralytic with terror, with none of the defiance and bravado that might have been expected of a young thief caught in the act. She had drawn her own conclusion as to the reason and frowned slightly at Margot. “I think we should start all over again.” Drawing a chair out from the table, she sat down facing the boy. “I’m Anna and this is Margot. So what’s your name?”

  Her calm attitude had some effect.

  “Magnus Jacobsen.”

  “Are you Jewish?” She pulled out another chair for him.

&
nbsp; He nodded. “The Nazis took my father and mother away as well as my older brothers and my grandparents too.”

  Margot, immediately overwhelmed by pity and bitterly regretting her sharp words, sat down too and rested her arms on the table. “Where was your home, Magnus?” she asked gently.

  He was wary of answering her, uncertain whether she would explode into rage again, but Anna reassured him. “There’s no need to be afraid now that we know your circumstances. Please tell us where you lived.”

  “Trondheim.”

  “It’s quite a long way from here. How did you get this far?”

  It came out that after a bout of diphtheria he had been sent to convalesce on a mountain farm, his parents visiting him at weekends. When he was packed and ready to go home again, word came that they and his family had been taken away in the mass arrest of seven hundred-odd Norwegian Jews throughout the country. Magnus had remained in the care of the farmer and his wife until it became too dangerous for him when the Germans moved into the locality to build a lookout fortification. He had been taken down the mountainside, hidden in a load of hay. Since then, he had been sheltered by different people in various places until it had become necessary for him to be moved on again.

  “So where have you been staying in Alesund?” Anna prompted.

  “With Herr and Fru Halstad, the printer and his wife. There was a delay in getting me to them, or else I would have gone to England on the Shetland Bus. But with the light nights there are no more sailings until the autumn and they were going to keep me until then. But the Germans came for them too.”

  “You were in the house at the time?” Margot exclaimed. “How did you get away?”

  “As soon as the Germans started hammering on the front door and smashing in the windows, Fru Halstad kissed the baby and pushed her into my arms, telling me to run to the neighbour. I gave Inga to the lady, who’d never seen me before, and she rushed indoors and left me on the doorstep. So I just kept on running.”