“This is a bad thing to do…” and here the Captain hesitated. “Things are happening here which need the utmost attention and discretion.” So he marched in and sat down to lunch. Bohde sidled into his chair, Ernst next to him. Not a word was spoken. Halfway through his soup the Major noticed the picture of Albert Speer staring at him through the open door. “Who put that up?” he demanded, and when Bohde told him that it was a gift from Major Ernst he threw down his napkin and said, “Well, I’m damned if I’m going to have his boss spying on me while I’m having dinner,” and got up to close the door, when he saw the other two. He stepped into the hall.
“Where are the Russell Flints?” he cries.
“The Flints?” Bohde tries to look innocent.
“The pictures!”
Zepernick waves his hands in the air. “He is screaming now.”
“I had them taken down,” Ernst tells him calmly. “They are not suitable.”
“Not suitable! Not suitable! Not suitable for that—“ and with that he marches back into the hall, takes each one off the wall and smashes them one by one against the wall. The Air Marshal, Albert Speer and lastly…” The Captain shook his head, hardly daring to give voice to the blasphemy. Veronica didn’t see the problem.
“Bit over the top, I grant you, but they’re only pictures.”
The Captain touched her cheek, saying, “You must understand, Veronica, that this picture is more valuable, more sacred than everything in this house. It would be the same if one day Mrs Hallivand came to church and found the vicar with a boy on the altar. Ernst was on the phone immediately. It is very bad for the Major, considering the circumstances.”
“What circumstances?”
The Captain ignored her question. He straightened up and poured himself another glass.
“So Ernst will move in soon, Bohde hanging on to his coat-tails. I will find a smaller place, of my own perhaps. However, before I go…” He looked at her closely. “I thought tonight you might like to accompany me to the Casino.”
“The Casino.” She felt her heart race.
“Yes, and afterwards, if things have quietened down, perhaps you would like to come back to the Villa. For a late supper and a nightcap.”
She could not believe it. He was asking her back to the Villa. She did not know what to do, whether to fling her arms around his neck or to appear calm and indifferent. She wanted to do both. She wanted to be calm and indifferent but she wanted to kiss him too! The Villa! Unable to resist, she leant across and kissed him, opening up the sweet tang of wine that ran loose in his mouth, pushing herself on top of him, struggling out of her blouse and brassiere, his lips travelling greedily down, sucking in great swollen mouthfuls of her as the boy intruded suddenly on her thoughts, irritating her, he has no right, this boy, to interfere with her in this way, why should she think of him when she had the Captain lapping hungrily at her breast. She had tried to persuade him to have a wash the other day, had lit the gas to her father’s fury and boiled kettle after kettle, dragging the tin bath close to the fire, rigging up the little curtain that she sheltered behind when Da was around, but when she had showed him he had recoiled, not from the prospect of soap and warm water but for the danger it could bring him. “The guards,” he said, pointing a finger to nis head, indicating thought, and then of course she understood. A clean boy would be noticed, a clean boy would be singled out and strung over the rafter he had told her about, where others have been beaten, the blood running down onto the floor until sometimes…he dropped his head. Did he mean pass out or die? It was unimaginable. It annoyed her sometimes the way he exaggerated his stories in order to gain sympathy, yet only the day she’d seen a foreign being kicked all in a heap by one of the Todt officials before being slung in the back of a lorry and left there all day. Horrible, simply horrible, but there were bound to be one or two sadists like that in every army, and there’s no knowing of course what the foreign might have done, and pushing over the loaf for the boy to cut it himself she began to question the wisdom of even feeding him, for there was colour coming back to his cheeks there was no doubt of it. Wouldn’t they notice that and wonder why? Beat the truth out of him. When he had gone she had stripped off herself and sat in the tepid water, scraping the sliver of soap under her arms, thinking how it would feel to wash the dirt from him, feeling the transformation as his rough patchy skin grew soft and glowing, the stink of his imprisonment replaced by the scent of perfumed soap, his clothes, shirt, trousers, jacket discarded and in their stead Victor Hugo’s silken dressing gown the Captain liked to wear.
She pulled Zepernick’s head away.
“You’ve picked a fine night to ask me, I must say,” she murmured, banishing the boy back to his hut. Oh, the Villa!
“Why, what is wrong?”
She digs him in the ribs.
“Tomorrow, Zep! The first day of the show. You haven’t forgotten, have you? You promised.”
“Ah, yes. I forgot.” He approached the subject cautiously. “Molly will be there, remember.” Veronica stiffened.
“No, no. You are not to worry. I have spoken to her. She will be with Major Ernst that evening.”
“Ernst?”
“Yes. It is all arranged. She belongs to Ernst now. He has made it plain. If I wish to continue here…”
“What does Molly think?”
“It does not matter what Molly thinks. If she hadn’t been so…visible.” He pulled her close. “And you, you must not do this, not show your beauty to everyone all the time. Otherwise I might lose you too.” He stroked her hair. “It is you now for me. Does that please you? And perhaps, if Molly is very upset, I could meet her secretly, like I see you now.”
“Thanks very much!”
“It was a joke, Veronica! Don’t be jealous. It is not good to be jealous in such circumstances.”
He sat up and started to take off his shirt.
“The Casino will be fun tonight. I have told them I am going to try and drink the boot again. No one has tried twice and succeeded. But I will. Now come and give me a good fuck, there’s a good girl—”
“The boot?”
“It’s a drinking tradition. It looks easy but it is not. It also makes you quite drunk. The last fellow, Schade, feil down and cracked his head open.” He caught her look of concern. “He was a fooi, anyway. He was the one who was involved in the black market, with Herr Poidevin and his daughter.”
“Poor Elspeth, yes.”
“You know her?”
“Everyone knows Elspeth.”
“She was lucky, her and her father. If I had my way they’d be up in Fort George. They know more than they say. Not only about the smuggling. This matter over Isobel and her father. It does not fit right. Any other time and I would not mind. But with certain other events and the Major acting so strangely, it worries me. I fear they might all be connected. The cement in her mouth. Her dress. The jacket and hat missing. She wore them that afternoon and yet they have vanished. What happened to them? Is someone wearing them now?”