Home > The German Girl : A heart-wrenching and unforgettable World War 2 historical novel(2)

The German Girl : A heart-wrenching and unforgettable World War 2 historical novel(2)
Author: Lily Graham

The names he’d called her had stung more than the bruise. They still did. She’d spent the previous evening trying to convince herself that she should just give up her dream of moving back to the small hamlet she’d grown up in, in wild northern Sweden. Stjärna, in the Västernorrland region, had a population of just fifty. She’d sat up wondering if she were being a fool, if she shouldn’t just return to the little grey apartment she’d called home in Malmö for the past ten years. Where life had been safe, and she’d had a good job as an accounts clerk. It had been a comfortable life, but also dull.

Out here, life happened more slowly, because it had to – there was no convenient supermarket nearby, everything required time and preparation, but somehow life seemed richer for it too.

Returning to that safe life wouldn’t help either of them. Whether he liked it to not, he needed her. For the most part he was still lucid, but the cracks were starting to show – and if he didn’t let her in he might be taken somewhere to be looked after full-time. She was his last chance and unlike the other helpers he’d scared off over the months, she had more to lose by giving in. She needed to make this work. She’d dreamt of moving back to this barely touched part of the world since she was a child. This was her chance. He didn’t need to be happy she was here and checking up on him, and they didn’t need to get on. All she had to do was ensure that he was alive, fed and hadn’t burnt his cabin down in the night. Despite Marta’s opinion on the matter, she was capable of that, even if he called her every vile name he could think of in the process.

She set her jaw and pulled the mittens off her icy hands. Her woollen hat would have to stay; it was far too cold to take it off.

‘I’m going to make breakfast for us and then—’ She couldn’t help herself; she flicked her eyes around the room, wishing, not for the first time, that the old man hadn’t chosen to live so simply, with no running water or electricity, and said, ‘I’m going to get more snow to melt for your bath.’

His next words were choice.

Ingrid’s ears turned red; she wasn’t used to being spoken to like this – everything in her itched to give him as good as he gave. Instead, she shot him a pointed look, crossed her arms and scolded, ‘You let the fire die out.’

Here, in the frozen winters of northern Sweden, where temperatures could reach minus forty, a mistake like that could cost you your life.

Her words caused him to deflate like an old balloon. Shrinking, as he folded in on himself. He rubbed his eyes, then sighed. ‘I was trying to make the wood stretch a bit. I was going to go to the shed for more first thing this morning, but I must have fallen asleep,’ he said, looking at the empty wood pile with a frown.

Ingrid didn’t point out that morning wouldn’t have helped – it wasn’t as if there was more light then, not at this time of year. She itched to tell him that this was exactly the reason she’d come by the day before – to help with things like that. So that the old man didn’t have to trudge to the shed in the middle of the night, and return laden down with a pallet of wood on a sled. She pursed her lips, keeping in the lecture she would have loved to have given him, while Jürgen examined the floor.

Narfi chose his moment wisely. Sensing the brief impasse, he made his way slowly towards the old man, whose eyes brightened slightly, as he petted him with a heavy hand.

The dog bore it with dignity, though his eyes warned Ingrid that some form of recompense might be required in the not-too-distant future.

Ingrid wasn’t sure if it was a trick of the light or not, but the old man’s anger seemed to have withered. So, she offered a truce. ‘Coffee?’

‘One sugar,’ he agreed. ‘Tack.’

She nodded and was about to head towards the dresser, when he stood up, with a creak of old bones and joints, and shook his head. ‘Nej, Inge, I’ll make it. Yours is probably not even fit for the dog. The swill they pass for coffee in the city,’ he mumbled, slipping his feet into a pair of old worn slippers as he shuffled towards the gas cooker, ‘it’s an absolute joke.’

Ingrid hid a smile, thinking that it was good that he remembered that she used to live in Malmö. After their coffee and breakfast, she’d take the sled and stock up on the wood from his barn outside. She knew he didn’t like to admit it but the activity was getting harder for him now, which was likely why he put it off. That and the worrying fact that he forgot.

Like an old gramophone that needed to be wound before it would play, Jürgen slowly turned more into the man she used to know. It helped that today he seemed to remember who she was.

As if reading her thoughts, he asked, ‘Why are you wearing Marta’s hat?’

‘This?’ she said, touching the lime green hat with earflaps. ‘Oh, well, she gave me a few things – some “more practical” stuff now that I’m living here. You know how she is.’

He grunted, and there was a wealth of meaning behind that grunt. Then he shrugged and added, ‘Well, she’s not wrong.’ He looked at it again, his lip curling in distaste. ‘You know a person can be too practical.’ Which for a man who owned exactly three shirts was saying something. She shrugged. Who was going to mind out here – the reindeer? Even they were too busy trying to keep warm.

Jürgen unhooked a pair of brown ceramic mugs from the dresser, pausing to fill the kettle from the canister that sat on the counter. It was filled with the water Ingrid had melted from the snow the day before.

So that’s why he’d confused Marta and her, she thought – the hat. Though she knew it wasn’t just that, was it? Whatever he said. She’d been here for enough time for him to register who she was… but still, it made sense now in some ways.

‘Here you go – some proper coffee,’ he said, handing her a mug of thick black liquid.

The ‘proper’ coffee was a cheap supermarket blend. So strong Ingrid wouldn’t have been surprised if it melted the spoon.

‘Tack,’ she said, blowing on it, before taking a sip. It wasn’t half bad, to be fair.

‘Maybe later I can give your hair a trim?’ she suggested, her eye falling on his long grey hair.

His blue eyes danced. ‘Not unless you want to be put over my knee. I always thought you needed more hidings when you were little, Inge, or you’d grow up with ideas.’

She hid a smile. ‘I seem to remember you telling Far that only thugs hit little girls.’

‘Pah,’ he said, taking a loud slurp of his coffee, and smacking his lips in pleasure. ‘I’ve always believed in a firm hand. I would have told your father to triple your hidings,’ he promised, with a wink, raising the flat of his hand, ninja-like. ‘It must have been your other grandfather who said such silly things.’

Her lips twitched in amusement. They both knew she’d only ever had the one – and he was more than enough. ‘It must have been.’

 

As the wood-burner billowed smoke into the snowy forest, and the grey sky turned a cloudy blue as the morning passed, the tough outer shell he’d assembled slipped away, and she saw a glimpse of the person she’d most adored as a child – like that first precious peek of sun after a long grey winter. He helped her clean the kitchen, sweep the floor and hang up the coats, and they enjoyed a simple breakfast of rye bread, gherkins and cottage cheese in companionable silence.

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