But they ignored Rosalind’s words of warning. They were too busy laughing, too busy with each other. They had stopped swimming now to tread water, and Monique was busy trying to push Georg’s head below the surface. Rosalind watched the scene develop into a frenzy of splashing.
She stepped back onto the grass, unzipped her skirt, and folded it neatly in place near the embankment. Underneath her clothes Rosalind wore a new swimming costume that she had received for her birthday. At fifteen her body was still sticklike, and Rosalind wished for a more womanly shape to emerge. She watched the others ignore her while she unbuttoned her blouse to rest it with the skirt, then stepped carefully down the mud again to enter the cool water five inches at a time.
She swam evenly toward them. Georg grabbed her as she arrived, and he attempted to push her deeper into the water.
“Don’t!” said Rosalind, though she loved it all the same. Loved the way that Georg was so strong and so dependable. And Rosalind loved and hated that everyone loved him. She wanted to possess him even back then. She wanted him all to herself.
Monique ducked under the water and came up next to Georg very close, separating him from Rosalind.
“I love you,” she whispered. Rosalind thought that she had just heard things, but later when she was thinking about it, helping her grandmother in the kitchen, chopping the vegetables, she knew she was right. And she was trying to picture Georg’s face, trying to remember what his reaction was.
“Wondrous” was the word. As if his wishes had just come true.
Present-day 1945
Rosalind stops washing her plate at the sink to listen. She waits for half a minute, hands resting in hot water that has come from the kettle, her eyes fixed to the blackness outside the window. The sounds of the barn doors banging are barely audible against the rain that pounds the pails, loudly now, and smacks the barren earth outside.
She returns to washing, her ears trained on every sound outside. There was a short and eerie period of silence when the bombs and air assaults stopped and the steady flow of tanks and trucks with armed soldiers eased. Noises in those final weeks of war had meant danger, destruction, and death. Now they are intermittent and mostly from vehicles sent to repair cities, the occasional aircraft and military patrol, the calls of wildlife, and the chugging of motorboats. And these sounds mean everything to Rosalind. They give her clues to the changes that are happening in the world outside her tiny sphere, and they remind her that there are still things to fear.
She finishes drying the dishes and sees there is rainwater leaking into the kitchen from the corner of the house. Water seeps between the cracks of the badly patched brickwork that her grandmother reconstructed herself when the house was damaged by air fire.
She checks the time from the cuckoo clock on the wall that stopped chiming sometime during the war years, now with just one tiny clicking sound as the doors swing back to release the bird that hovers expectantly in the air for several seconds, then retreats.
From a cupboard she retrieves bed linen and mats and begins to mop up the water that continues to trickle. If the rain doesn’t stop, the kitchen will become a pond, since it sinks lower there on one side of the house. It would not be the first time it has flooded. When she arrived last year, the floor was stained with water, and the stench that met her was putrid. Though the festering damp was not the only cause, as she would later learn.
Rosalind had scrubbed and cleaned and used clay from the riverbank to plug up the holes, but in heavy rain, water always found a way through.
She opens the front door to view the barn doors that swing freely to batter the walls outside, and rain falls sideways at her through the space. Rosalind climbs into a woolen coat and pulls the hood firmly over her head. She steps into rubber boots that are near the door, collects the lantern from the wall, closes the door behind her, and briskly sets out in the direction of the barn. Once she slips on fresh mud but manages to catch herself before rushing inside the shelter of the barn.
Puddles of water lead to the center of the structure. Rosalind holds the lamp above her. The light reveals an eerie emptiness, except for a barrow, a workbench that is absent of tools, and the earthy smell of decomposing hay, once used to feed the geese in winter. Something catches her eye, and she walks closer to examine the floor, avoiding the narrow vertical streams of water that enter through the many bullet holes in the ceiling. Nutshells lie in a small pile near the middle of the space.
In recent weeks, she has become more aware of changes in the environment, of the effects of weather, of the habits of birds: changes that do not inspire suspicion. But the nutshells give her reason to be suspicious this time. Someone has been here. She walks back to the doors and views the dark wooded area beside the river with some dread, fearing what it might hold this night and wondering who has left the shells.
Yellow light that creeps outward from the house’s front window exposes a small piece of the track. Rosalind imagines Monique there, appearing out of the darkness, in her pink floral dress, her hair flying wildly around her head, coming home from the town. It was a sight that she had come to depend on once, for company, or news at least.
It is madness, she thinks, or loneliness, these imaginings of Monique. Or perhaps they are wishes. She bolts the doors and makes a swift return to the house, her head bent forward to brace for rain. When she is halfway there, something else catches her eye: a flash of light at a window from the house next to hers. She freezes, rain falling on her face as she waits for something more, something that doesn’t come, before continuing back home.
Once inside the house, Rosalind’s heart beats fast. She shakes the coat briefly and hangs it back on the hook. Someone is there, someone who perhaps knows about her past. She tries to picture what she saw: the light from a torch. Did she imagine it? She has become more paranoid in recent times. She has heard voices that aren’t there, seen things that vanish before her eyes. She has spent too much time alone in her head. Spent too much time alone with Georg.
She must be rational, she tells herself. It is likely to be beggars, nothing more sinister, though they can be dangerous, too. She can’t take any chances. She removes the nutshells from the coat pocket and tips them into the sink. Erich has told her to be vigilant, to be mindful of strangers.
Georg thumps the floor from above, demanding her attention, perhaps alerted to the commotion downstairs, perhaps hungry, perhaps needing more drugs. Most likely the latter.
She reaches again for her coat on the wall.
The thumping continues.
She pulls on her coat again and looks up the stairs toward the source of the noise, her hand on the door handle. Georg will have to wait.
CHAPTER 6
STEFANO
A sharp clap startles him from sleep, and Stefano rises on his elbows to see a beam of light charge through the window. A battery of rain sounds across the river, heading toward the house. Stefano crouches, scans the blackened corners, and listens for ghosts, his fingers instinctively reaching for the plaited wire bracelet on his good wrist. When he is certain there are no intruders, he steps toward the window where the air blows wet against his face. The child is still sleeping, too exhausted and travel weary to stir, and yet Stefano is amazed that the sound has not woken him. He leans near to check that the child is still breathing, relieved at the even rise and fall of the boy’s small chest.