Wait for Me. Caroline Leech
look.
The yard was murky as Lorna pulled the door shut behind her. The blackout curtains ensured no light escaped into the yard, and the early sun had not yet broken through the clouds that had rolled in overnight. As she put her gloves on, Lorna heard the cows stamping and Nellie cursing in the milking parlor.
The truck’s tailgate slammed, and around the back of the truck came the German boy, an excited flurry of sheepdogs around his knees. He bent over and rubbed the dogs’ necks.
Traitors! They didn’t greet her like that anymore.
Even in this light, it was clear he was young for a soldier, barely older than some of the lads at school, so maybe eighteen? Nineteen at most. The knitted hat he wore over his shaved head was pulled lower on the left side, and his uniform was hidden now under some brown coveralls. Familiar brown coveralls, with an elbow patch and a torn pocket.
Lorna recognized them suddenly as Sandy’s. Had the prisoner stolen them? No, that was silly, he wouldn’t be wearing them around the farm if he had. Which meant that her dad, or perhaps Mrs. Mack, must have given them to him. What right did they have to give away her brother’s belongings when he was gone? And to a German, no less.
As he walked toward the barn, he rubbed his hands together, his fingers fine-boned, almost delicate. Not the hands of a farmer, and certainly not hands that were used to the frigid air of Scotland in February. Lorna noticed he had no gloves, so at least Dad or Mrs. Mack hadn’t given him a pair from the boys’ bedrooms. The enemy didn’t deserve to be warm, no matter what Mrs. Mack said, and no matter what injuries he’d suffered.
He stuffed his hands deep into his pockets and hunched his shoulders up to his ears. He looked … was forlorn the right word?
In spite of herself, Lorna suddenly felt almost sorry for him.
As the truck reversed, she stepped out of the shadows, her school shoes clicking on the cobblestones. The German saw her, and for a second or two, neither of them moved.
A frown creased the skin on the right side of his forehead, and as before, Lorna found herself mesmerized by the dreadful damage to his face.
Then embarrassment overcame fascination, and Lorna looked down at her shoes, still muddy from the day before. When she looked up, the frown had smoothed out, but the tug at the right side of his mouth was there again. That same sneer. Except, today, it did look more like he was trying to smile. Tentative, perhaps, but still, it lightened his face, filling out the gaunt flesh of his right cheek, though the left remained tight and static. He gave her a nod, and instinctively, Lorna nodded back, feeling suddenly shy.
Why should she feel shy, though? It was her farm, after all, and he was the stranger. She needed to be assertive.
“Good morning,” she said, raising her voice as her father had done. “I. Am. LORNA. ANDERSON.”
She drew out the sounds of her name, making every letter clear. She pointed her finger to her chest.
“Hello,” the boy said, touching his own coveralled chest with one long finger. “I. Am. PAUL. VOGEL.”
He pronounced his words as clearly as she had, almost mimicking her. His English words were clipped and short.
“Hello,” Lorna replied.
He bowed his little bow again.
“Em …” Realizing she wasn’t sure what to say next, she hoped the poor light might cover the flush that was creeping up her neck.
The German stayed silent. Clearly he was waiting for her to speak. There was no sign of the smile now. But none of the frown either.
“Em …,” she repeated, glancing up at the lightening sky.
When she looked back at him again, his gaze was intent upon her and the smile was back, drawing Lorna’s attention away from the burns. Its curve led her from his mouth up to his eyes, which sparkled.
Lorna suddenly felt furiously guilty about noticing that. Surely noticing an enemy’s sparkle was tantamount to treason. She was betraying John Jo and Sandy and Gregor and all the others by even noticing such a sparkle, wasn’t she?
And anyway, what right did this prisoner have to be smiling and sparkling at her?
At that moment, “Yoo-hoo!” rang across the yard. Mrs. Mack appeared through the gates to the lane, carrying as always her big carpetbag and waving her umbrella at them before heading toward the house.
Lorna straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin.
“I have to go to school now,” she said slowly, pointing imperiously in the direction of the village and then at her school tie. “To school.”
The prisoner nodded.
“Ja,” he said, “zur Schule.”
She nodded. “Yes, to shool, I mean, school.”
He smiled again, or at least, that’s what it looked like. “I hope that you have a very good day, Fräulein Anderson, and that your teachers are not too … strict?”
He spoke slowly and deliberately, seeming to taste each word, and his voice lifted at the end as if to question whether he had used the right word.
Lorna stared at him.
“You speak English!”
“Yes, a little.”
“But why didn’t you say so?”
“Because you did not ask. And I do not speak it well. But I will become better perhaps. Yes?”
“Yes, of course … em … I mean, no.” Lorna swallowed and tried again. “I mean your English is very good, and I’m sure it will get better, while you’re here, talking, with my dad. Though he speaks Scottish English, really, not English English.”
Lorna knew she was babbling, so she stopped talking before she said anything else embarrassing. But then there was silence, and Lorna hated silences.
“So did you learn English at school?”
“No. My uncle is a farm … a farmer … in Germany. The wife of my uncle is—or was—an English lady, and I take my holidays on the farm with him when I was a schoolboy. So I give help to my uncle with the sheep and my aunt gives me, gave me, lessons to speak English.”
Although he looked frustrated at having to correct his grammar, Lorna had no problem understanding him. Then something else struck her.
“So yesterday, when the sergeant who brought you here said you … called you …” She couldn’t bring herself to repeat it. “That is, you understood him?”
The German shrugged.
“I have heard more … worse, I think,” he said.
From somewhere came a sharp whistle. The dogs’ ears pricked and they pelted toward the sound, vanishing around the corner of the barn.
“I think that your father calls to me also,” said Paul. “Auf Wiedersehen, Fräulein Anderson. Good-bye.”
He raised his hand in a wave, and without thinking, Lorna repeated the gesture.
Stop! He shouldn’t be this friendly. She couldn’t be this friendly. He was a German, after all.
“Wait!” she said. “I think you should know that people aren’t happy that Germans are working on our farms.”
Paul said nothing.
“I mean”—Lorna felt shaky under his intent gaze, but refused to be put off—“how could anyone here be happy about having a camp full of Nazis on our doorstep?”
Paul stiffened.
“Fräulein Anderson”—his voice was sharply polite—“I am German, yes, but I am not a Nazi. There is a difference, and one day I hope you understand that.”
His