The Woman at 1,000 Degrees

49 The Leather Jacket 1941

I was still a bit shaken after the fight and didn’t have the energy to follow the group, so I lingered by the ruins of the bonfire. White vapours were still rising from the sooty wood. Close to the fire, I stood on something that was more than sand. I bent over and dug out the aviator’s jacket. It was made of leather with a thick lining and was heavy because it was saturated in seawater. Nevertheless, I took it with me as I moved away from the beach and followed the locals as they threaded along the lyme grass–crowned dunes towards the village.

I couldn’t find Maike or her mother, but on one of the village’s illuminated corners the twins came dashing from Maike’s street and told me the boys were in one piece. I heaved a sigh of relief, but the sisters’ eyes were focused on the jacket in my arms and they were desperate to know whether there was something inside it. The internal pocket contained a salty, wet ID card with a photo of the English prince. ‘Oh, he’s so handsome,’ they gasped like adolescents through the ages. In a side pocket we found a bar of chocolate wrapped in damp paper. I gave them a piece and had one myself. It tasted bitter, like strong baking chocolate. ‘But where did Anna go?’ I asked, extinguishing the chirpy expressions on the twins’ faces.

In the same moment we heard a rumble in the sky and looked into the air. Four English bombers flew over the village, from east to west, and then vanished beyond the sea. We felt a tinge of shame as we stood there with the jacket in our hands and the sweet flavour of the enemy in our mouths. I shoved the ID card back into the inside pocket but the chocolate into mine, and asked the sisters to hold on to the jacket. I didn’t fancy taking it home to Frau Baum. They took it and told me the English soldier was now at Fräulein Osinga’s place, where he would be spending the night. They started gasping again, talking about how beautiful he was, but then bit their lips, casting a westward glance towards the sky as the rumble of the planes faded slowly.