The Fragile Hour Read online

  Other part-time workers were arriving. Edith delivered dramatically the news of the fatal accident in the night to every one of them. Anna did not stay for the exclamations and comments, but went to the office. It was deserted, but Margot called to her from the sitting-room.

  “Mother and I are in here.”

  As soon as Anna saw Greta, she could tell that Margot had related everything. The woman had just lit another cigarette and there were three stubs already in the ashtray by which she sat. For the first time she looked her age and more, her skin so devoid of colour that her rouge stood out sharply across her cheekbones, her lips unusually vivid. Yet, in spite of the additional shock her daughter had given her about the uninvited presence of a young refugee on the top floor, she remained her usual sensible and practical self.

  “Have you seen the boy today, Anna?” she inquired crisply.

  “No, I told Magnus he wasn’t to move from the storeroom. I’m going to take him some porridge as soon as I can.”

  “It will mean confiding in Edith. She’s to be trusted, but such a secret is an unfair burden on her.”

  “I will try to ease that.”

  “From now on Magnus must be properly fed. He will have to bath and his clothes be washed. It will mean doing that at night.”

  “I’ll see to it.”

  “How has the poor child passed the time?”

  “He told me he has watched the fishing boats from the window, and on one of his nocturnal forays he found a spare chess set and has been playing against himself. Apparently his grandfather taught him. Magnus is a very intelligent child.”

  “You realise he can’t stay on here indefinitely? Not only is it far too dangerous, but it’s wrong for him to remain cooped up. But, whatever happens, I want nothing done in haste that could add to the peril he’s already in. He’s come through far too much already for any child of his age.”

  “I agree,” Anna said. “You’re taking this very well, considering that so much has happened in such a short while.”

  Greta gave a wry smile. “Don’t think I’m not scared as hell at what might come out of it all, but I’ve matched my wits with the enemy before and you and Margot are the best people I could have with me.” Abruptly she stubbed out her half-finished cigarette. “I must stop smoking these German handouts! I feel ashamed of myself for accepting them. I’ll not light up another!”

  Breakfast was over by the time Anna had a chance to speak to Edith on her own. “I know you’re a patriot as I am,” she began. “For that reason I’m going to trust you with some information that you must never repeat.”

  Edith put a maternal arm about Anna’s shoulders and sat her down at the table. Pulling out a chair for herself, she leaned forward sympathetically. “When is your baby due?”

  Anna looked at her in astonishment. “Have you been thinking that? Oh no, that’s not the case at all. It’s a matter of life and death.”

  Edith could tell by the gravity of Anna’s expression that she was speaking the truth. “I know I like to gossip, but I can keep my mouth shut when it’s important.” She clamped her lips together to emphasise her vow. “How can I help?”

  “There’s a young Jewish boy who has to be fed. Don’t ask me where he is or anything about him.”

  Edith took what she had heard to heart. “What do you need?”

  When Anna had gone up the little-used back stairs with the porridge, Edith put on her coat and went home. It was only a ten-minute walk. When she returned, there were some of her sons’ childhood books in her pockets, together with crayons and a half-used sketchpad. She also carried a package of underwear and a couple of shirts that her boys had grown out of, but which she hoped would prove useful. Anna received the clothes gratefully and Magnus was overjoyed with the rest.

  Klaus’s body left the hotel at midday, the coffin covered by a swastika flag. The medical officer had concluded that it was an accidental death with no suspicious circumstances. The bruise on the back of the neck had troubled him, but he had come to the conclusion that the edge of a tread had caught it in the fall. One of the officers thought he had heard a noise of some kind in the night, but although he had not looked at his watch he knew it had been in the small hours, which tied up with the time of death. The matter was all but closed.

  Later in the day Anna met Rolf at a friend’s house. When he had heard everything, he gave a low whistle at the seriousness of the situation.

  “We must get the boy to safety as quickly as we can. Not only from the hotel, which is far too dangerous, but from Alesund as well. There are too many German spot-checks and house searches in this port for him to stay until the Shetland Bus starts up again. Have you any ideas, Anna?”

  “I haven’t stopped thinking about it. Suppose I travelled with him? Magnus could be a child entrusted to my care and too sick to be questioned. I could take him to wherever you say. You’d be able to get a doctor’s certificate and a travel pass.”

  “That wouldn’t present any problem. All the doctors in this town are patriots with us. Is Magnus a sturdy child?”

  “Yes, he is. Until he came to the Halstads’ home he was at places where he could climb in the mountains and have limited freedom. What were you thinking of?”

  “It’s going to be difficult, but we could get him through the forests into Sweden. It’s a far more dangerous escape route at this time of the year than on skis during the winter, but I know somebody who’ll be going soon and he would take the boy. Of course, you know him. It’s Karl.”

  Anna felt a little glow within her at hearing Karl’s name so unexpectedly. “Where would Magnus and I meet up with him?”

  “It means going all the way to Oslo. You’d be in danger every minute, but if you get the boy there I think I can say that his life will be saved.”

  “I’ll get him there.”

  “We’ll have to think of some way to get the boy out of the hotel in the first place. There’ll have to be some diversion to make sure he’s not noticed as we get him away. What reason can you yourself give for leaving your present employment?”

  “That’s no problem. From the start the Germans were told I was only there temporarily for part of my training. Fru Sande knows a safe hotel in Oslo where I can go.”

  “Then I’ll start making arrangements. I’ll let you know when the plan has been fully worked out. Don’t contact me in the meantime unless there’s an emergency.”

  The days of waiting that followed seemed endless. Greta wrote to her friend in Oslo, knowing he would read between the lines and understand why she wanted Anna to go to his establishment. As she had expected, a reply came quickly in which he wrote he would be glad to have extra help as getting reliable staff was a problem.

  “By ‘reliable’,” Greta said after reading the letter aloud to Anna, “he means a fellow Resistance member. You’ll be in good company.” She gave one of her broad smiles. “If ever you want a position of trust in a hotel when this war is finally over, come back here. You’ll be welcome. We’re going to miss you.”

  Margot said much the same when Anna was playing Chinese Chequers with Magnus in her room. “I’ll have to write and tell you all the news.”

  “You do that! And I’ll let you know what it’s like in Oslo these days.”

  “Have you any friends living there?”

  Anna’s thoughts flew to Aunt Rosa. “Nobody whom I wouldn’t endanger by a visit.”

  “That’s a pity. At least here you’ve come to know quite a few people.”

  Magnus, studying the game, interrupted with a triumphant shout. “I’ve won!”

  Anna clapped a hand over his mouth. “Do you want to be heard all over the hotel, silly boy!”

  “Sorry,” he apologised automatically, his mind still on his triumph. “Let’s play Ludo now. You too, Margot. I want to beat you both.”

  “I expect you will,” Margot said wearily, drawing a chair up to the little table. She had never liked board games, not even as a child, which was why
the sets she had turned out were in remarkably good condition. But if this was a way of letting Magnus get rid of some of his surplus energy, she had to join in. On his improved diet and reduced boredom, he was full of life and fun. He made them both laugh many times, for he was a likeable, friendly child. Fortunately the night of Schultz’s death, which she could not think of without a shudder, seemed wiped from his mind. Perhaps his terror at the time had kept it from registering.

  When they had put him to bed, Margot spoke of it to Anna, who shook her head.

  “I don’t think it’s that. So many traumatic things have happened to him that I believe he’s developed the ability to close shutters on what he doesn’t want to remember. Haven’t you noticed? Whenever he speaks of his parents it’s always as if they’re still in his old home with all the rest of the family around them. One day when he’s older he’ll come to terms with it all, but as yet he doesn’t know how.”

  It was Nils who ended the waiting for the go-ahead to the escape plan. He came to the hotel as he had done before. This time he was talking to two of the officers in the lobby when Anna saw him. He looked across at her and smiled.

  “Excuse me, gentlemen,” he said, “but I can see Fröken Larsen is here. I want to have a word with her.”

  They continued on their way out and he went with her into the room where they had talked previously.

  “I hadn’t expected to see you again,” she admitted warily as they sat down.

  “Whyever not?” he queried. “Our friendship is still intact, isn’t it? Even though other things might have changed?”

  “Yes!” she exclaimed on a rush of relief that took her by surprise, making her realise how much she had been inwardly brooding over the rift between them. “I wouldn’t want it to be any other way.”

  He grinned. “That’s it then. Friends.”

  “Always were and always will be,” she said, smiling.

  His gaze lingered fondly on her for a matter of seconds before he gave the reason for his visit. “I’m here to help you get the boy away.”

  With a slight sense of shock she thought how fate had contrived to bring them together once again as had happened so often in the past. Nils had been woven like a thread through almost her entire life. “How is it to be done?” she questioned.

  In a businesslike manner he told her the escape plan for Magnus. She was intrigued by the ingenuity and careful thought that Rolf and others had given to the timing and every other tiny detail. Nothing had been overlooked.

  “Just follow everything as Rolf has directed,” Nils concluded, “and all should go well. I’ll soon be off to Sweden myself and would have taken the boy with me if it had been possible. But I have to travel officially on the Germans’ behalf in an attempt to gain food imports from the Swedish government.” He chuckled quietly. “There’s not a chance of it, of course. The Swedes willingly send powered soup and milk for our schoolchildren, but they’ll not supply the troops.”

  “So why are you making a journey you know to be pointless?”

  Nils grinned widely. “It suits me to go along with it. I’ve a little trip of my own to make at the same time.”

  She took a calculated guess. “Is it to London by that route to which the Swedes turn a blind eye?”

  He was surprised. “How did you know about that? Even in the Resistance it’s not generally known.”

  “Karl told me when I was in Bergen. There was an air raid warning and when nothing happened he thought one of those planes might have been slightly off course.”

  “Well, I wasn’t at the controls that time, because I’ve never met anti-aircraft fire or a German plane yet, but then I’ve only made a couple of flights to London.”

  “But you only flew small civilian planes before the war.”

  “It was arranged in London by the SOE that I should have a short, intensive flying course with the RAF as I had a licence already. It was in case of any emergency. Karl has taken the same course. He takes over the controls whenever he flies to England.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “Perhaps we shall meet in Oslo next time, Anna. I’ve an office there for my food supply business. Was there anything you wanted to ask me about the escape plan for Magnus?”

  He left soon afterwards, having answered a couple of questions she had put to him about it all. But before going he had hugged her to him and kissed her on the brow before releasing her with a cheerful farewell. Yet there had been enough possessive tenderness in that brief contact, even if he had not intended to show it, that had told her he still considered her to be his own.

  If he hadn’t, she thought more wisely than before, it would have been entirely out of character. She knew him of old and should have remembered that he was the type of man who would go on fighting for what he believed in even when the cause was lost. Only time would settle everything.

  When Anna explained the plan to Magnus, his reaction was that of any healthy child. “Why does it mean going to hospital? I’m not ill!”

  “Of course you’re not, but ultimately it’s the best way to get you out of Alesund. Now I’ve been over the first stage of it all again, and you must remember it. You’ve got crayons and drawing paper in the storeroom. Make yourself a Norwegian flag and I’ll find a stick for it. Then you’ll be ready for the great day tomorrow.”

  “It won’t be like it used to be,” he said wistfully. “On one Seventeenth of May I walked in the procession of children past the King at the Palace. There were hundreds of us. And races and entertainment afterwards. I won a prize.”

  Anna could see it all in her mind’s eye. Until the invasion and the banning of the country’s Constitutional Day by the Germans, Oslo had been a sea of flags and children and youthful brass bands, a pattern repeated all over the country, even in the smallest hamlet.

  Yet every year of the Occupation, either privately or with a little burst of open defiance against the Germans, a few children all over the country had celebrated with a procession of their own, remembering the fun and excitement of the day in the past. If they were seen, the Germans always dispersed them, but never with any violence and often with good humour if the soldiers had children of their own. Tomorrow in a boldly orchestrated step Magnus was to take part.

  In the morning when all the Germans had gone from the hotel, Greta and Margot were on the alert to make sure none of the staff ventured anywhere near the staff hall where Anna waited tensely with Magnus. He was pleased with his flag, which had been fastened with drawing-pins to the stick, and waved it now and again. Edith was keeping to the kitchen for her own sake as Anna had requested and Emil was on an errand.

  At the stroke of eleven o’clock Anna opened the door. She could see the children pouring out of a house at the end of the street. As they set off, waving their flags, the young boy in the lead blowing a toy trumpet, several other children darted out of their homes or from walking past to run and join in. Passers-by were stopping to clap the little procession, several little girls at the end no more than four or five years old, too young at the last pre-war celebration to remember it.

  As the head of the procession drew level, Anna held Magnus back for a matter of seconds and then gave him a little push. “Now!”

  He darted forward and blended in with the rest of the children. Anna watched him go. He was wild with excitement to be out of doors and with some boys of his own age. Nils would have seen him come out of the staff doorway and know which of them he had to take by the hand and lead away at the right moment.

  Anna watched anxiously. For once there did not seem to be any Germans about and she did not want to lose sight of Magnus before he was in Nils’s safe care. Parents were following their children, giving their support and ready to protect their offspring if the need arose. Anna was filled with admiration for them. This was one small act of resistance that would never be recorded, but it was no less courageous for that.

  She hurried to catch them up, for already Magnus had disappeared from view as t
he head of the procession turned into the next street. The children were being applauded every step of the way, the discordant trumpet meeting approving laughter.

  Suddenly a large open army car screeched to a halt, two high-ranking officers seated in the back. One of them, a generalleutnant, sprang to his feet. “Stop those children!” he roared.

  The children, not understanding German, were paying no attention, continuing happily on their way. A leutnant, sitting beside the driver, had sprung out and he ran across the street to throw out his arms in front of the children.

  “Halt!” he yelled in Norwegian. “Throw down your flags!”

  The trumpet wailed into silence as the procession came to a stumbling halt. Parents rushed forward to get their children, but the officer bellowed again. “Stay where you are!”

  Some of the younger ones had burst into tears, frightened by being shouted at, and rushed to their mothers. The older children remained at a standstill. Having been taught to respect their national flag, none of them wanted to throw it to the ground. Although Magnus had been warned that the procession was likely to be checked and there was no need for fear, his expression was one of sheer terror and he was keeping the same paralysed grip on his flag as he had on the kitchen bread-knife. Anna bit deep into her lip in her anxiety that he might shriek out in spite of all her assurance.

  People watched in contemptuous silence as the officer went along the line of children, snatching the flags and ribboned favours from them. The trumpet-player and two others in scarlet caps had those snatched off as well. Magnus’s flag had to be jerked twice to release it and then with a force that must have left splinters in his hand, but to Anna’s intense relief the officer paid him no attention and Magnus remained silent.

  By now soldiers had come running up, rifles ready in their hands, having been attracted by the sight of people gathered together. The officer handed his spoils to one of them. “Destroy these!”