Although my heart was pounding, I tried to look nonchalant as I strolled towards the docks where a group of prisoners was unloading crates of ammunition from a ship called the Hallingdal. The men looked tired, grey-faced and thin; they’d been incarcerated at the camp since April, after being arrested for refusing to sign up to Vidkun Quisling’s new teacher’s union and teach a Nazi-approved curriculum, and there were more being held at another, larger camp at Elvenes, nine kilometres away. The Germans were using the prisoners for forced labour around the town.
I could see the German guards watching them; none of them were looking at me. But why would they be? I was just one of the local women, returning home after doing her chores. I’m no threat to anybody, my body language and neutral expression said. Or at least, I hoped so.
Finally, I reached my destination: a rubbish bin at the side of the road, near to where the men at the back of the line were loading the crates onto lorries. Without breaking my stride, I extracted the bundle from my basket and dropped it into the bin, retrieving the small roll of paper already waiting for me there and sliding it up the sleeve of my jumper in one fluid, well-practised motion. As I walked on, I caught the eye of one of the prisoners briefly, a middle-aged man wearing wire-framed glasses; he gave me a tiny nod.
‘Zurück an die Arbeit!’ one of the guards barked at him, noticing. Back to work! He marched over and cracked the man across the shoulder blades with the butt of his rifle. I heard the man cry out, but I didn’t look back; I didn’t dare. I continued walking along the road, my heart rate climbing another notch. I felt scared, yet strangely exhilarated. I knew if Anders found out what I was doing he’d be angry – apoplectic – but it gave me a thrill to think that I was playing a small part in helping to defy these dreadful Germans.
I had to go home now and put everything away. Then I needed to go back up to the telegraph station and pass the roll of paper – more messages, this time from the prisoners to their families – on to Mette. After that, I’d visit the patients on the list Doctor Johannessen had given me yesterday.
As I walked, I turned my thoughts to the last of the vegetables growing in the little garden behind our house, wondering what might be ready. If I couldn’t make a proper meal this evening, Anders would be angry; he worked long hours at Sydvaranger and always came home hungry and tired, his temper on even more of a hair trigger than usual.
Then the air raid sirens began to wail and all thoughts of Anders and the evening meal fled from my mind. Raids were a common enough occurrence in Kirkenes – this close to the Russian border, we’d grown to expect regular attacks by the Soviets. But I didn’t have time to run back home; my only option was to head for the underground air raid shelter nearby, and pray Ingunn would keep Eirik safe.
With a lump in my throat, I made for the shelter, hearing the familiar drone of Russian planes approaching the town. Another wave of panic went through me, squeezing my insides. Please, please let Eirik be all right, I thought automatically. He’s all I have. If anything happens to him, I don’t know if I will be able to carry on.
The shelter quickly grew crowded as the townspeople continued to pour in down the steps. It had been built right beneath Kirkenes, a low-ceilinged, cave-like hollow carved out of the rock and lit sporadically by flickering lanterns. I knew everyone was thinking the same thing: What will happen this time? Will our houses still be standing when the planes leave? I managed to secure a spot near the shelter entrance where it felt marginally less claustrophobic, and leaned against the wall, my basket jammed between my feet. I remembered the messages pushed up my sleeve, and taking advantage of the gloom, bent down to conceal them in the bottom of my basket.
‘Mamma!’
I straightened up again and saw Ingunn coming towards me, Eirik and Marianne clinging to her skirt. Relief flooded through me.
‘It was such a nice day that we decided to take a walk through the town,’ Ingunn told me in slow, lilting Norwegian as Eirik flung himself at me – her ancestors were Sámi, but she had lived in Finnmark all her life, moving to Kirkenes after she married. I picked Eirik up and he buried his face in my shoulder. ‘Luckily we were near the shelter when the sirens went off.’ Ingunn had her own basket, her meagre food rations for the week neatly packed inside, which she put down on the floor. Then she put an arm around Marianne, drawing her close. Marianne had come to live with her last year after her father, Ingunn’s son Stian, was killed and his wife Sofia arrested. I wasn’t sure exactly what had happened to them or why – Ingunn never talked about it – but she loved her granddaughter fiercely and rarely let her out of her sight.
With my free hand, I clasped one of hers. ‘Thank you. I was so worried.’ Then I turned my face, making soothing noises in Eirik’s ear. ‘Shh, shh. It’s all right.’
Ingunn smiled, her face, framed with its cloud of white hair, wrinkling like a winter apple. ‘It’s no trouble. You know I don’t mind looking after him – he’s such a good child, and it’s so lovely for Marianne to have someone her own age to play with.’
I slid my gaze away from hers, suddenly feeling ashamed. Had she heard Anders shouting at me this morning? I’d tried to hide from Ingunn how bad things were with my marriage at first, like I did with everyone else, but one day, after Anders had spent a long, exhausting night insulting and berating me, I’d broken down in front of her, weeping as I lamented about how useless I was. She had listened, her usually smiling face sombre, before gathering me into her arms and rocking me like a child as she murmured comforting words. Since then, she had been like a mother to me – more of a mother than my own ever had. There was nothing I could do to make Anders love me or treat me with kindness, but knowing I had an ally in Ingunn made the pain of my marriage that little bit easier to bear.
From over our heads came the now-familiar crump as the first bomb fell close by, the impact showering dust from the shelter’s stone walls. Everyone went silent for a moment before starting to talk again, all at once, speculating where the bombs were falling this time. Perhaps you will get lucky and one will hit the administration buildings at the Company, said a treasonous little voice in my head. I silenced it immediately, reminding myself that without Anders and the wage he earned, Eirik and I would have no home at all. Like everyone else here, I had to cross my fingers and hope that when we finally emerged from the shelter, the damage wouldn’t be too bad.
Another explosion came. As more dust sifted from the walls and roof, I heard someone mutter, ‘That was a close one.’ Then a high-pitched wail tore through the air inside the shelter – the keening, animal sound of someone in terrible pain.
Marianne frowned up at Ingunn. ‘What’s that, Grandmother?’
‘Mamma?’ Eirik said at the same time, his eyes wide with alarm. I held him close to me, stroking his hair again as I looked around, trying to find the source of the sound. The wail came again and I noticed a commotion nearby, people gathering around someone who appeared to have fallen to the floor.
‘Is Doctor Johannessen here?’ someone called, their voice raw and desperate. ‘It’s Anna Larsen – her baby is coming!’
A ripple of alarm ran through the shelter.
‘He is out of town!’ someone else called back. ‘I saw him leave this morning for old Åse Hagen’s farm and he hasn’t come back yet.’
My heart began to pound.
Ingunn looked at me. ‘Hedda…’ she said quietly.
‘I can’t,’ I said, holding Eirik tight against me. ‘I’ve never delivered a baby. I don’t know what to do! What if I harm her?’
I could hear Anders’ voice in my head, the words he spat at me if I was so much as a minute late getting home to cook his dinner, or if I forgot myself and yawned in front of him because I’d had a busy day: Call yourself a nurse – all you’re good for is handing out headache tablets and diagnosing sore throats! I should never have let Doctor Johannessen talk me into letting you help him!
‘But you can reassure her. You may not have worked as a nurse for long when you were in Oslo, but you did get your qualification, and you are so good at what you do here for us in Kirkenes.’
As Anna cried out again, I continued to stare at Ingunn, frozen to the spot by panic. Inside my head, Anders was shouting at me now: Don’t do it! The poor woman and her child will be lucky to survive!
‘Go. I will look after Eirik,’ Ingunn said.
Wordlessly, I pushed Eirik gently towards her and made my way to where Anna was lying on the floor, someone’s coat already rolled up under her head. She was nine months pregnant, her belly enormous. When the people around her saw me, their strained expressions changed to relief. ‘Hedda,’ someone said. ‘Thank God.’
I knelt down beside Anna, trying to ignore Anders’ snarling inside my head and keep my face composed as I noted, with some alarm, the wetness spreading on the ground around her. ‘Her waters have broken?’ I asked Kari Jensen, who was crouching beside me.
Kari nodded. ‘Five minutes ago.’
Anna rolled her eyes towards me, her face white and sheened with sweat. She was only twenty; this was her first child.
Panicking wouldn’t help Anna, or me; I knew that. And I could tell from the way she kept grimacing and crying out that her contractions were getting closer and closer together. This baby was going to be born soon, whether I liked it or not. ‘Is there any way I can get some hot water?’ I asked Kari. She and several others had now formed a protective circle around Anna to protect her from prying eyes.
She frowned, then nodded and said, ‘I will see what I can do,’ before turning and pushing her way through the huddled bodies towards the shelter entrance.
‘And please find out if Doctor Johannessen has come back from the Hagens’!’ I called after her, hoping my anxiety didn’t show in my voice.
I made Anna as comfortable as I could. ‘It’ll be OK,’ I told her, taking her hand. Liar, Anders snarled in my ear as Anna groaned and rolled her eyes wordlessly at me. She was only a year older than I had been when I had Eirik. Again, I tried to remember what we had learned in nursing school about childbirth, and cursed Magnus Tonning: for making me fall in love with him; for pretending I didn’t exist when I told him I was pregnant; for being the reason I had to leave home before Eirik was born because my father wanted nothing more to do with me. And I cursed him a thousandfold for my marriage to Anders that, at the time, had felt like the only option available to me; Anders had preyed on me when I was at my lowest, and made me feel as if he was the only way to escape the shame of what I’d done.
The only part of that time I didn’t – couldn’t – regret was Eirik. Anna didn’t know how lucky she was that her child would grow up loved and wanted by both its parents. Her husband, Ivar, worked at the Company too and was a fireman in his spare time.
I took a deep breath. Concentrate, Hedda. ‘All right,’ I told Anna. ‘Do you feel as if you need to push yet?’
She nodded, and my heartbeat sped up again, my mind racing too. ‘I’ll have to take a look at you,’ I told her. ‘I need to make sure—’
Then the all-clear sounded. As it faded away, someone cried, ‘Doctor Johannessen is here!’
Thank God, I murmured silently to myself, and inside my head, Anders barked a bitter laugh. Thank God indeed.
Moments later, the doctor was there, a gruff-looking man with a bushy white moustache, clutching his bag in one hand. I stood, stepping back from Anna to give him room. ‘Thank you, Hedda,’ he said as he knelt beside the girl. ‘I’m sorry it took me so long to get here – my car broke down and I was walking back to town when the sirens began. I had to hide in a basement.’
I nodded, mute with relief. Doctor Johannessen was one of the very few inhabitants of Kirkenes who’d owned a car before the war, and when the Germans came he’d insisted on keeping it. He turned to Anna again and began, briskly, to talk to her. By now, people were beginning to leave the shelter. As I made my way back over to where Ingunn was waiting for me with Eirik, I passed one of the women who had been with Anna; she was carrying a bucket full of hot water, towels and a blanket.
‘She’s in safe hands,’ I told Ingunn as Eirik flung himself at me again, wrapping his arms around my legs.
‘She was in safe hands with you,’ Ingunn said, as Marianne gazed at me, wide-eyed. ‘You should give yourself more credit, Hedda.’
I didn’t know what to say to that. I shrugged.
When the four of us emerged from the shelter, the sunshine seemed very bright. I had to squint and blink until my eyes adjusted.
‘Ingunn, will you take Eirik back with you?’ I said. ‘I still need to call in on Mette at the telegraph station. I won’t be long.’
Ingunn nodded. ‘Of course.’ She didn’t ask me what I was doing; she didn’t need to. I had told her what I was doing some months before, and she too had promised to keep Eirik safe for me if I was ever arrested.
‘Let us all walk back together,’ Ingunn said brightly to Eirik. ‘Your mamma will be home before you know it!’
It seemed that this time, Kirkenes had got off lightly. As I made my way through the town I saw that all the buildings not already damaged by bombs were still standing. People were already going about their business again, the raid nothing more than a brief interruption to their day. I wondered when we’d all become so used to what was happening – to the raids, and the troops infesting our town. If I thought about it all for long enough, it seemed crazy to me. But what choice did we have other than to accept it?
At the telegraph station, a small blue-painted building on the hill that overlooked the town, Mette was waiting for me. She was ten years older than me, a small woman full of nervous energy with a wicked sense of humour, and, a dear friend of mine. She wore a paperclip on the lapel of her smart jacket with pride.
‘How did it go?’ Mette asked as we went inside.
I took the roll of messages from my sleeve and handed them to her. Mette grinned. ‘Excellent,’ she said, tucking them into an inside pocket. ‘Do you have a minute?’ When I nodded, she said, ‘I’ll make us some tea.’
As I followed her into the station’s main room, my foot caught a small brown leather suitcase lying on the floor near the wall.
‘Be careful!’ Mette said.
‘Are you going on your holidays?’ I asked, puzzled.
Mette shook her head and grinned again. ‘It’s a radio. Rolf Rasmussen is on his way to pick it up – he should be here any minute.’
‘A radio?’ I frowned. The Germans had confiscated all our radio sets to stop us listening to BBC broadcasts from Britain; if you were caught with one, you would be arrested. ‘Is it for the teachers?’
She shook her head. ‘There are some men at a farm nearby. It’s for them, so that they can get their messages out.’
I knew straight away that she was referring to men working for Milorg – Militær Organisasjon, Norway’s main resistance movement. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I hope I haven’t damaged it.’
Shaking her head, Mette crouched and took a key from her pocket, unlocking the latches on the case. ‘It’ll be fine. Take a look.’
I peered over her shoulder and gazed at it, fascinated. It looked nothing like the wireless set Anders and I had had in the house before the Germans took everyone’s radios away, although I could see something that looked like a speaker grill, and various dials and buttons. There was also a box with the word SPARES printed on it in English. ‘That’s a radio? How does it work?’
‘It’s a transmitter and receiver set made in Britain,’ Mette said. ‘Everything has been miniaturised. See this here, on the red and black wire?’ She pointed. ‘It’s a morse code key. These are headphones so that the operator can listen in. And these pieces here are the crystal wireless equipment. They’ll mainly use it at night – the signal is stronger then and can travel further; something to do with the atmosphere.’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t understand any of it, but how marvellous,’ I said, trying to imagine people hundreds of miles away listening to the messages transmitted by the people using this radio. Here in isolated Kirkenes, it was easy to feel as if we’d been brutally cut off from the rest of the world by our invaders, but seeing that little set reminded me that we had friends and allies out there who were just as determined to beat the Nazis as we were.
Smiling, Mette snapped the case closed. ‘It will certainly come in useful for Rolf and his men. Now, I’ll go and make the tea and you can tell me what happened in the shelter. I hear Anna Larsen nearly had her baby while the bombs were still falling!’
Amused too, I sank into a chair. I wasn’t surprised Mette knew about Anna already. She was the town’s eyes and ears; nothing got past her.
We’d just begun sipping our tea when there was a pounding at the door, loud enough to make us both jump.
‘Is that Rolf?’ I said.
‘It must be,’ Mette said, but she was frowning. As the pounding came again, she stood, grabbed the suitcase containing the radio and hid it behind some equipment. Then, smoothing down her skirt, she went to answer the door.
She returned a moment later, pinch-lipped and pale. Before I could ask what was wrong, two German officers came in behind her. For a moment, I thought they were there because of the radio in the case. Then I realised one of them was the guard that had been down at the docks – the one who’d hit the teacher with his gun.
‘Is that her?’ the other officer said, looking directly at me. My heart gave a painful jolt.
He spoke German, but I understood perfectly. I’d always picked up languages quickly – like many in Norway, I spoke English as a second language, and since the occupation, Mette and I had made it a priority to learn basic German, too. It had been her idea; ‘I want to know what these bastards are saying,’ she’d told me the day she suggested it, her normally delicate features set in a fierce scowl.
‘Ja,’ the guard said, also in German. ‘I caught one of the men taking messages from the rubbish bin after she’d walked past. There was no one else around, and I saw him nod at her. It must have been her who put them there.’
My heart gave another jolt. I glanced at Mette. Her expression was perfectly composed, but a muscle at the corner of her eye was twitching.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I said in German, my pronunciation halting but clear; for a moment the two men looked surprised to hear me speaking their native tongue, but they quickly recovered themselves.
‘Arrest her,’ the first officer said.
As the guard from the docks stepped forwards, my mind was racing. Arrest would mean being sent to a prison camp. What would happen to Eirik? Both Mette and Ingunn had said they’d keep him safe if anything happened to me, but Mette had her own family to think about and Ingunn was an old woman. If the Germans came for Eirik too there would be nothing she could do. They would take him away and I might never see him again.
I shot Mette a desperate look. She returned it, but I knew there was nothing she could do either. Rolf was on his way – he would be here any minute.
One of the officers took my arm and pushed me towards the door. As they marched me to the car waiting outside, I was overtaken by a creeping sense of unreality.
Then the officer slammed the door in my face, and climbed into the front of the car with his colleague. The engine coughed into life, and I realised this was very real indeed.
As we drove away from the telegraph station, I twisted my head and saw Mette in the doorway, her face white and shocked. Moments later we passed a man trudging along the road towards her, a cap pulled down low over his eyes; a man who could only be Rolf. I looked away from him and stared straight ahead, my hands clenched into fists in my lap, my thoughts racing. Perhaps I’d be all right. Perhaps the Germans would just interview me, tell me off and let me go.
But I knew that was unlikely. A sudden memory detonated in the middle of my whirling thoughts like a bomb, something I had tried to wipe from my mind. Two months ago, a woman had been caught hiding a Soviet prisoner who’d escaped from one of the camps in her cellar. The Germans had dragged them both out onto the street and shot them along with the woman’s teenage daughter. I hadn’t witnessed it myself, thank God, but Mette had told me all about it, her eyes bright with angry tears.
Nausea zigzagged through me; I slumped against the seat. Anders always told me I was useless, and he was right. If I had any sense at all, I’d never have agreed to take those messages to the docks. What had I been thinking? Both Ingunn and Mette had reassured me they would make sure Eirik was all right, but what if the Germans decided to send him away too?
My gaze fell on the door handle. Sitting up a little straighter, I glanced at the officers in the front of the car. They were talking and laughing at some joke one of them had just made, behaving as if they were driving somewhere for a holiday rather than transporting a prisoner. They seemed to have forgotten I was there.
My hand snaked out and gripped the handle. The door would be locked. Of course it would. I would not be that lucky.
But it was not; the handle gave easily.
The car was bumping fast along the uneven road, and when I pushed the door open and leaped out, I hit the ground hard enough to knock all the air from my lungs. There was no time to recover; gasping, I scrambled to my feet and ran. I thought I heard shouts but I didn’t look behind me to see if the car had stopped or if the German officers were following. I went as fast as my legs could carry me, ducking between houses and through back gardens like a deer fleeing a pack of wolves, until I reached the Haugen.
I hammered on Ingunn’s door. She answered immediately, looking startled as I pushed past her into the house. Gasping for breath, my lungs burning, I explained as rapidly as I could what had happened. ‘God, what will I do?’ I said, putting my hands up to clutch the sides of my head. ‘They are going to arrest me… they will send me away, they will take Eirik—’
‘Shh. Shh.’ Ingunn held her finger to her lips, giving me a warning glare. I realised Eirik and Marianne were staring at me, their eyes huge. Ingunn removed her shawl from around her shoulders – she always wore it, no matter the weather or time of year – then pulled me into the kitchen, picking up her basket that still contained her shopping: bread, some fish, and some cheese. As she pushed it into my hands, her shawl folded on top, I realised I’d left my own basket behind at the telegraph station.
I stared at her, uncomprehending.
‘You must go west,’ she continued, pushing me and Eirik towards the back door. ‘I have a nephew in Munkelva – I will tell you the address – you must try to get there as soon as you can.’
‘But how can he help me?’ I said faintly, still not quite knowing what she meant. I felt sick with panic.
‘He is part of Milorg, the same group Stian was involved with,’ Ingunn said. ‘He has been helping people escape the Germans. Gud villig, if they can get you to Narvik then you may be able to escape over the border into Sweden.’
Sweden. Lately, Anders had been talking about us leaving Norway if things got too bad; of trying to get to Sweden where he had a relative. So far, it had all been talk – when it came down to it, he was unwilling to leave his job and his friends.
Understanding dawned on me, finally, about what had happened to Stian and his wife. ‘Ingunn, are you part of the resistance too?’ I said.
Ingunn shook her head. ‘Me? Not really – I am too old to be of any use to them. But I help where I can.’ She pressed her lips together, then added, ‘It’s a long, long journey, and dangerous. Many do not make it. But if you stay here…’ She glanced meaningfully at Eirik as she trailed off.
I gazed at Ingunn, at her kindly, wrinkled face, overwhelmed by her kindness. She told me her nephew’s address in Munkelva, then waved her hands at me. ‘Go now. Right now. They will come and search the houses for you – they could be here at any moment. Leave town by the back way, keep off the roads and do not stop until you get to Munkelva, even if it means walking all night. I’ll get a message to my nephew, and in the meantime I will lead the Germans on a merry dance so that you have time to get away.’ She turned to Eirik, who was still watching us both in wide-eyed silence, and added, ‘Can you be very brave for your mamma, lille vennen? Can you walk and walk, even if you feel tired and long to stop?’
Eirik nodded.
‘Ingunn—’ I began, my voice cracking.
Emotions flickered across Ingunn’s face. ‘Hedda, you must leave now. There is no more time to waste.’ But she stepped forwards and enveloped me in a hug.
‘I know. Thank you,’ I said, pressing my face against her shoulder for a moment. Then I gave Marianne a quick hug too. ‘Will you both be all right?’
Ingunn pushed me away again. ‘We’ll be fine. Go.’
I glanced back at them once as we crept out of the back door. Ingunn was watching us with a grim expression, her shoulders set; Marianne simply looked bewildered. Wondering what she’d say to the Germans, I made myself look away again, and instead tried to calculate the best route to slip out of Kirkenes unseen and get all the way to Munkelva, almost forty kilometres away. Just the thought of the long journey ahead of us made fear balloon inside me again, and my legs felt weak. Surely it was impossible? We’d never make it. I could hear Anders inside my head, laughing at me for even thinking such a thing.
But we had to try.