“I couldn’t believe how quiet it was as I cycled up that road, as if the guns were holding their breath, I even heard a bird singing — in the middle of a battle, a bird — incredible.” She paused at the memory, re-creating the sound in her mind. “Then I saw my first Germans, camouflaged, scuttling into the ditches and aiming. I stopped and got off — didn’t know what to do, then I thought … wave something white. I had to use my knickers in the end, I didn’t have anything else white. ‘Achtung! Achtung — Stoppe,’ they shouted. But I just kept going until a machine gunner took out my front wheel. I couldn’t leave the bike — the baby and my radio were in the basket, so I got up and pushed it with one hand, waving my knickers in the air with the other — what must they have thought of me — a desperate prostituee with a wobbly front wheel I guess. I kept shouting ‘Let me through’ in French. ‘My baby needs his father.’”
Bliss was breathless with anticipation, “What happened?”
“There were six of them, only boys really — young hoodlums. Today they’d be spraying graffiti on bridges or dealing grass in the Hauptstrasse Burger Bar, but somebody had got them up as soldiers and given them real guns with live ammo, so they felt pretty big. One of them spoke French, badly. ‘What do you have in there?’ he asked, pointing his gun at the basket. ‘My baby,’ I said. ‘I live over there and I want to go home, my husband is waiting for his dinner and my baby needs feeding.’ I don’t think he understood, and one of the others kept screaming, ‘Shoot her — just shoot her.’ Then one of them said something crude. My German wasn’t very good but I knew what he was suggesting ‘Look,’ he said, ‘She’s got her knickers off already.’”
The main course arrived, served on wooden platters, and Bliss started to eat, silently, dying to tell her to continue, but, sensing the fragility of her condition, left her to choose the moment. Daphne had yet to start her turkey and was pushing pieces of it around her plate, then she slammed her knife and fork onto the table making him jump. “I don’t know why I feel I have to explain …” she began, her fists clenched in fierce anger.
“You don’t,” he said soothingly, and reached out to comfort her. But they both knew that she did have to explain — that she would explain — that she needed to explain.
“I wish they had raped me — all of them,” she began again, her voice subdued, and with the words came tears. She wiped them with her napkin then carried on crying and talking at the same time. “It wouldn’t have mattered — not really. I would have got over it in time.”
“They didn’t rape you?” he asked kindly as she paused to wipe her eyes again.
“No,” she sniffled. “They took the baby. One of them picked it out of the basket. I thought they’d see the radio — I couldn’t let them see the radio, so I started screaming, ‘Donnez-moi mon bebe — Give me back my baby — Give me back my baby.’”
“‘Do you want your baby?’ he said, holding it high in the air, taunting me.”
“‘Give me my baby,’ I cried.” And her eyes found the distant spot again as she fought back the tears.
“He threw the baby — not at me — at one of the others, but a shell exploded and he turned just at the wrong moment. He wasn’t looking.” She paused to wipe her eyes and blow her nose, then looked right into Bliss’s eyes. “They just walked away — ‘It doesn’t matter — we’ll all be dead tomorrow,’ one of them said.” She hesitated for a moment to compose herself, then, more calmly, continued. “I was surrounded by death yet that baby meant everything to me — I’d promised his mother you see.” The tears came again and she started to get up. “You’ll have to excuse me, Dave,” she snivelled. “I’m just a silly old woman. I’ll be back in a minute — fix up my face.”
He rose with her. “Will you be alright?”
She patted him back down. “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”
Bliss was on the verge of seeking her out when she returned, dry-eyed, though her face was flushed.
“I didn’t come back to England after the war,” she explained. I couldn’t face my mother and her snotty friends. ‘And what did you do in the war, little Ophelia?’ they would have asked, their little pinkies poking the air as they sipped Earl Grey and pretended to be posh. What would I have said? You nearly choked to death when I told you — imagine what they would have said, ‘Oh how dreadful,’ she put on a plummy accent, ‘How could you, Ophelia?’ Then they would have asked for another cucumber sandwich.”
Bliss found himself laughing — nervous relief, he assumed. Relieved she’d got over the worst — that she was able to make light of it, however dreadful it had been. But the worst was to come.
“It’s not funny. You were shocked because you assumed I’d been a nurse. It’s so stereotypical — men maim and women mend. But that wasn’t me. That wasn’t cheeky-faced Ophelia Lovelace from Westchester Church of England School, and Mrs. Fanshawe’s ballet class for the daughter’s of gentle folk. This was Daphne Lovelace — murderer. I killed people, Dave — hundreds of people. I picked up the dead baby, wrapped it in the shawl, put it back in the basket, then went into that town and found a whole garrison of Germans frantically packing to withdraw. And I got on my little radio and told them to bomb the fuck out of the place — don’t screw up your nose like that, I was saying fuck before you were born — I wanted shells raining down on the Germans, pulping them into the ground, pulverising the life out of them. I wanted to kill every last one of them. And do you know — it felt good. It felt so good after what they did to my baby. It felt so good I didn’t care anymore. If my radio hadn’t worked, I would have stood in the middle of the town waving my knickers at the bombers, screaming, ‘Down here — the fucking Krauts are down here — bomb the bastards to pieces.’”
“Is everything alright, Sir?” interrupted the waiter noticing they weren’t eating.
Bliss testily shooed him away. “Fine, fine.”
Daphne sat, eyes glazed into the distance, flicking back and forth as if she were watching the battle going on behind them. As if every flash and blast were being replayed in her brain. “And the bombs came,” she carried on, with powerful emotion. “The shells came, and I was in the middle of it. It was like God had turned the volume up to 11. The noise was so loud I could see it — each new bomb or shell sending shockwaves of sound smashing into the columns of smoke, tearing them apart. Everything was shaking — buildings; trees; the ground. One earthquake after another and I was right in the middle of it. I was the bull’s-eye and I didn’t care.”
Her eyes drifted to a close as the battle raged in her mind, then they popped open as if she had remembered something really important. “It was in colour — that was the strangest thing really. Not black and white like the documentaries and movies. More colour than I’d ever seen. Not ordinary colours — colours so vivid I wanted to shout, ‘Cor look at that!’ Brilliant white and yellow flashes that hurt my eyes, glowing reds and oranges like mini sunsets, spring-green fields and freshly leafed trees. And the sky — the clearest, brightest, warmest blue. It was as if God didn’t know there was a war going on. I remember thinking, over and over, why doesn’t God stop this — he doesn’t care, he couldn’t even make the day miserable. It wouldn’t have been so bad if it had been drizzly and cold. Nobody wants to die on a lovely summer’s day. I was so mad with God for doing that I never really made it up with him. I suppose I shall find out soon enough whether or not he ever forgave me.”
“Forgave you for killing Germans?” he asked, unsure.
“Do you think they wanted to die, Dave? Do you think they couldn’t see the sky or hear the birds?”
“Your dinner’s getting cold,” he said, not having an answer and they ate in reflective silence for a while.
“Have you ever been back?” he asked when the air had settled.