The Adoption by Anne Berry Read Free Book Online Page B

was stuck fast, and they were getting closer now. I crouched down and started frantically to undo my laces. And glancing up, I saw they had stopped as well, about twenty feet from me, that they had both raised their rifles and were taking aim. ‘Bethan,’ one of them called out in a German accent sighting me, ‘keep still. How can we kill you if you keep wriggling?’ Their voices were regimental barks, their hands were all covered in blood and their faces were scarred terrible. I woke with a fright when their guns went off. Listening to the hammering of my heart, I realised to my astonishment that I was still alive.
    My heart was still hammering when they arrived for real, striding down the lane towards us. And my throat was so parched that I couldn’t swallow or speak or anything. I think Dad hadn’t slept very well either. The whites of his eyes were all bloodshot, and under them were purple pouches. He pulled his hat down and his expression soured. He told me I was to work on the vegetable patch and see to the pigs today, that I was to tell him immediately if I spotted them up to anything. He said that I was to be his spy. He had his hunting gun with him. And as they got closer, he hissed that he would shoot them both dead if they put a foot out of line. They wore dark clothes, jackets, caps, navy, brown, khaki. Blended in with the surroundings. They stopped about two yards away, took the caps off and spoke. I thought it’d be nonsense, the words all German and bitten up. But it was English I heard. A bit stilted, but English all the same. And their voices were soft as a breath of wind tickling the leaves in a tree. Very polite, apologetic almost.
    ‘Good morning. My name is Jonas Faust, and this is Thorston Engel.’ I’d dropped my gaze, both shy and scared. But I forced myself to look back up, to grit my teeth and face the enemy. Stunned, I saw the taller of the two reach inside his jacket. I was sure that he was going to pull a revolver out, but it was papers he held towards my dad. ‘We are from the POW camp at Llanmartin.’ He hesitated and cleared his throat. ‘I think you have been expecting us. Is it Mr Haverd?’
    My dad grunted sullenly, snatched the papers and studied them for several minutes. I took the opportunity to hastily appraise the monsters who had come to labour on Bedwyr Farm, the monsters who might have thrown the grenade, pulled the trigger, or plunged the knife that ended our Brice’s life. The spokesman, Jonas, I estimated to be in his early thirties, broad across the chest but with a slim waist, his hair shaved close to his skull and fair. His eyes were greyish green but he kept them lowered, not once meeting mine. His friend was even leaner, and younger, his features gentler, kinder, his hair white blond with a touch of red in it. And his eyes … his eyes were blue, the blue of morning glory, and they
did
meet mine and held them for a long moment . Then Dad was shouting orders and the Germans were following him.
    For the first few months, Dad didn’t like me ever to be alone with Faust and Engel. He refused to call them by their first names. And when I asked him how I should address them, he said that I shouldn’t as I’d have no cause to talk with them. His suspicious eyes tracked their every move, waiting for them to flatten us with the tractor, or jump us from behind and string us up with rope from the barn rafters, or smash our brains out with a shovel. He mumbled we should keep alert in case they tried to rob us, as if we had anything worth stealing. It was as though they were invisible to Mam though. She didn’t use any name for them, first or second. She sent me out with a bit of bread and cheese or bacon rinds for them at lunch, and a mug of tea. But that was it. When she gave me the food she just jerked her chin in the direction of the fields. If it was raining they ate in the shelter of the barn. I knew she couldn’t bring herself to wash up their plates or their