Matthews I [Wartime Holland 01] The Boy in the Attic Read online

  THE BOY IN THE ATTIC

  ABSOLUTELY GRIPPING AND HEART-WRENCHING HISTORICAL FICTION

  IMOGEN MATTHEWS

  BOOKS BY IMOGEN MATTHEWS

  The Girl Across the Wire Fence

  WARTIME HOLLAND SERIES

  The Hidden Village

  Hidden in the Shadows

  The Boy in the Attic

  Audio

  The Girl Across the Wire Fence (Available in the UK and the US)

  WARTIME HOLLAND SERIES

  The Hidden Village (Available in the UK and the US)

  Hidden in the Shadows (Available in the UK and the US)

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  The Hidden Village

  Chapter 2

  Hear More from Imogen

  Books by Imogen Matthews

  A Letter from Imogen

  The Girl Across the Wire Fence

  Hidden in the Shadows

  Acknowledgements

  *

  This book is dedicated to Alba and Ludo.

  ONE

  ILSE

  January 1945

  Snow had fallen thickly overnight, the third time in as many days. The iron-hard ground lay frozen under a pillowy white blanket, disturbed only by the occasional sudden gust of wind that sent sparkling snowflakes swirling up into the frigid morning air.

  Ilse watched from the kitchen window, momentarily entranced by the fairy-tale scene. But as pretty as it looked, it was a nuisance for anyone who needed to be out and about, even those who still had the stamina to walk more than a few paces along the unswept streets. After yesterday’s snowfall, she had put off venturing outside, but after today’s she couldn’t delay any longer. If she didn’t get out soon on her trusty battered bike with her old childhood wooden sledge strapped to the back, she and her parents would starve. It was as simple as that.

  Ilse shivered and hurried over to the rack by the door and lifted her woollen navy coat from its peg. It was the last purchase she and her mother had made at the Bijenkorf department store just months before the war started. She remembered that crisp autumn day so clearly and with such fondness. She and her mother had taken the train to the Rotterdam Centraal station and walked arm in arm along tree-lined Coolsingel Street towards the imposing emporium, excitedly discussing which departments they would visit first and what they intended to buy. They’d treated themselves to rich fragrant coffee and apple cake topped with whipped cream at the smart restaurant on the second floor, before travelling up in the lift to the coat department on the third floor. Ilse had tried on coat after coat that the attentive shop assistant had picked out from the immaculate displays, until she settled on one in navy-blue wool that flicked out at the knee and was tied at the waist with a matching belt. It was perfect. But Ilse had been worried it was too expensive, until her mother, delighted at her choice, had told her it would be a good investment. Little did they know how essential this coat would become, serving Ilse well during the long cold winters. Now after five years, it was showing its age, despite Ilse’s efforts to patch up the elbows and disguise the frayed collar and cuffs. She shrugged it on over the fitted dress she’d made from a pair of dull pink curtains she’d found in the attic and which she’d dyed to a soft dove grey. She had also put on extra layers against the cold, a woollen vest and one of her mother’s old cardigans. And from the pockets of her coat, she pulled out her dark-brown suede gloves, which her mother no longer had a use for, and the fur hat that had once belonged to her grandmother.

  At the sound of shuffling footsteps approaching from the corridor, Ilse pinned a smile to her face and turned to greet her mother. She wasn’t going to let her see how worried she was feeling. Every time she caught sight of her mother it pained her to see her so small and thin, and she couldn’t help but think how old she now looked. Her dignified mother, who used to take such care over her appearance, going to the hair salon once a week to have her beautiful chestnut hair washed and styled just so, stood before her daughter, her hair now hanging grey and limp around her drawn face. Recently, Ilse had been shocked to see how her mother's skin had taken on a worrying yellow tinge and her eyes, once a sparkling blue, had lost their lustre. Ilse pursed her lips in determination. She couldn’t bear to see her mother succumbing to the effects of so little food and vowed she must do better.

  Ilse crossed the kitchen and kissed her mother on both cheeks. For a brief moment, the older woman’s face brightened and her chapped lips spread into a smile.

  ‘I was thinking how well navy suits you. It was a good choice, wasn’t it?’ She gazed fondly at her daughter.

  Ilse laughed. ‘An excellent one, especially given the weather. Now, I must be off, as I’ve found a place not many people know where I can get hold of firewood. I’ve also heard that there are carrots and sugar beets at a farm on the road to Leiden. I’d better set off before anyone hears about it.’

  ‘Leiden? That’ll take you all day, won’t it? And in this weather.’ Her mother’s voice drifted off as she gazed out of the window with a frown. It had begun to snow again.

  ‘I’ll warm up once I get going, so you don’t need to worry. Just think, we’ll have wood for the stove and can bring Pa downstairs.’ Ilse looked anxiously at her mother, desperate for a reason to cheer her up. But if she didn’t go out right now, all there was left to eat was less than half a loaf of stale bread made from dried peas and a handful of potatoes left over from Ilse’s last trip out.

  Her mother sighed as she crossed the cold tiled floor in her tattered slippers and reached up to one of the pegs for a dark-red damask stole that hung there. ‘Ilse, take this, will you?’ She held out the heavy garment in both hands.

  Ilse remembered the look of delight on her mother’s face when Pa had presented her with the stole one Christmas Eve. Ilse had been just twelve and enchanted by the gift, which her father had found in a souk in Algiers when he and his wife had both performed at the opera house during their last season on tour. From that moment on, her mother had always worn it over her evening dresses whenever the two of them had gone out to soirées and dinner parties. How could Ilse take something that had been so precious to her as if it were some discarded old thing?

  ‘I can’t, Mama. It’s yours,’ she began, her voice faltering
. She could feel tears pricking at the back of her eyes.

  ‘Take it, please. I have no use for it now.’ Her mother folded it over twice and wrapped it gently round her daughter’s neck, tying it securely. ‘Now, please… be careful.’

  TWO

  ‘Hello, Ilse. You’re not going out in this, are you?’ said a man’s voice behind her. It was Mr Bakker, her next-door neighbour.

  ‘Try and stop me,’ said Ilse, irritated at the interruption, as she was having trouble fastening the sledge to the back of her bike. In the short time she’d been outside, her fingers had become so cold and stiff that she was now unable to secure the rope.

  ‘Here, let me help.’ Mr Bakker came over for a closer look.

  Ilse stood up from crouching, feeling a little embarrassed at her brusqueness toward her kindly neighbour. Her family had always relied on Mr Bakker, who often helped out with various jobs around the house. His skills as a carpenter had been particularly useful in constructing a large space beneath the floorboards of the sitting room for the valuable jewellery and silverware a young Jewish couple had left in their safekeeping hours before their arrest and deportation to Auschwitz. Those last words spoken by Rachel Cohen to her mother still played on Ilse’s mind: It’s just a precaution and we’ll be back for our belongings in a few days. But more than a year had passed and still there was no word. Every time Ilse thought of this kind gentle couple and their certain belief that they would return, she was gripped by the most terrible sense of foreboding.

  The hiding place under the floorboards was also where Pa had insisted on keeping their wireless set in defiance of a Nazi directive to hand them in, when he had realised how determined the Germans were to remove every last vestige of freedom from the Dutch. He was well aware that anyone found hiding a wireless faced a large fine, or even death, but told his family it was a risk worth taking: the wireless set was their only connection with the outside world. And as the weather worsened, each evening just before nine Mr Bakker and his wife crept through the concealed door he’d constructed in their adjoining fence and in through the back door, where they joined Ilse and her parents to listen to the crackly voice broadcasting from London on the BBC for any news of the Allied advance into occupied Holland. This tiny glimmer of hope was virtually all that sustained them through those dark cold winter months.

  ‘That would be very kind,’ Ilse said, grateful for Mr Bakker’s offer of assistance. She brushed snowflakes from the shoulders of her coat and briskly rubbed her hands together to get some feeling back into them.

  He chatted while he worked, asking after Willem from across the road, who was now working for the Germans and hadn’t been home in over eighteen months. ‘It’s a terrible thing to see so many promising young men like Willem forced to do the jobs the moffen won’t do because their own men are over here fighting us. How is Willem coping?’

  Ilse hesitated, for she didn’t much like talking about Willem’s circumstances with anyone, but made an exception for Mr Bakker, whom she knew she could trust. ‘I think he’s treated reasonably well, though the conditions sound gruelling, especially now it’s so cold. At least he’s no longer clearing rubble after bombings. In the autumn, he was moved to a factory operating machinery making parts for rifles.’ She thought of Willem toiling from early morning till late afternoon, returning exhausted to camp only to have to carry out more chores. He wrote her of his relentless days, but he never complained and always signed off cheerfully with words of hope that it would soon all be over and he could return home. He'd often alluded to the two of them being together, but Ilse tried not to think about that. As much as she liked him as a friend, her feelings for him stopped short of considering herself to be his girlfriend. But she knew that to say as much would be a crushing blow to him, especially on top of all he was going through.

  ‘That should do it,’ Mr Bakker said, satisfied with his handiwork, and stood up. ‘And how are your parents?’ He turned his kind eyes towards Ilse. ‘I suppose it’s too cold for them to get out.’ He glanced up at the leaden grey sky. The snow was falling less thickly now.

  Ilse followed his gaze. ‘They haven’t been out in weeks and it’s not just the cold. There’s so little to eat and the only food I can get hold of has little nutritional value. How are you and Mrs Bakker keeping?’ she said quickly, realising that they must be suffering too.

  He gave a small shrug. ‘There’s only the two of us. We do what we can to conserve our energy. The cellar’s almost bare, but we still have a little rice and some dried beans.’

  ‘I hope the weather will put people off going out into the fields. I’ll see if I can bring back some root vegetables for you and Mrs Bakker.’ She spoke brightly as she searched for some small way in which to repay his kindness. This was all she could think of.

  ‘You mustn’t bother about us. We can manage. Now, please don’t waste your time standing around chatting to me.’ He gestured for her to leave. ‘Look after yourself.’

  Ilse mounted her bike and turned to smile at him, before pedalling the bike and sledge onto the snow-covered street. She proceeded slowly and concentrated hard on avoiding the icy patches where the snow had been flattened by people’s footsteps. Once she reached the main road leading toward the low-lying land reclaimed from the sea, it was easier going and she was able to relax. It had left off snowing, the clouds had parted and the sun shone down on the vast glistening snowscape that vanished into the distance on either side of the road. She passed a handful of people, wrapped up from head to foot against the cold, pushing empty carts and prams and all heading in the same direction in their relentless search for anything that could pass for food or fuel.

  ‘Goedemorgen,’ Ilse called out cheerfully each time she passed someone.

  ‘Goedemorgen,’ each person replied, as if it were completely normal to be out so early on such a bitterly cold winter’s morning.

  Ilse knew exactly where she was going and it wasn’t along the road these people were walking. She used to cycle this same route to Leiden, full of optimism for the course in medicine she had started and looking forward to spending time with Connie and her other university friends. It had all been so promising, till one day she turned up to find the place in uproar. A leading professor had just delivered an inflammatory lecture against the dismissal of Jewish colleagues, and the professor of medicine, whose lecture she had come to attend, instead held forth on the unsustainability of the theory of racial doctrine. These two men’s courageous actions enraged the Nazis, who promptly closed the university, leading to thousands of students joining the resistance. Although Ilse deplored the actions of the Nazis, she chose not to become embroiled in the activities of her fellow students – as an only child, her parents depended on her and she simply couldn’t take the risk.

  When she reached the place she was aiming for, she dismounted and pushed her bike and sledge over the snowy ground to a clump of willow stumps lining a narrow water channel, now completely frozen over. Her hands had warmed up and she was able to unfasten the sledge. Parking her bike in a dip, where it couldn’t be seen from the track, she swapped her shoes for skates from her saddlebag and gingerly clambered down the side of the ditch, dragging the sledge onto the ice. She stopped a moment to tie the rope onto her belt, giving little thought as to how she would manage once the sledge was weighed down with firewood. Then with a tentative prod of the ice with the tip of her skate, Ilse decided it was safe to set off. She glanced along the length of the frozen water channel that disappeared in front of her in a long straight line and began slowly, getting used to the weight of the sledge at her back. She took long swishing strides – left, right, left, right – as the sledge whirred softly behind her. All around her it was perfectly white and perfectly still. She had never encountered such deep, magical silence.

  After a while, she picked up speed and leant forward with her hands behind her back, just like the long-distance skaters who took part in the famous Elfstedentocht race that took place only when the
canals and waterways linking eleven rural towns and villages froze over. She’d been lucky enough to see the race once, when her father had taken her to watch the event in Sneek in Friesland in sub-zero temperatures. She remembered the roar of the crowd as groups of skaters came soaring past at a terrific speed, and jumping up and down in her father’s arms when their favourite competitor, the son of a friend of her father’s, had appeared on the horizon leading the pack. Now as she sped over the ice, she imagined taking part in the race, being part of a team, travelling at speed and revelling in the thrilling, magical atmosphere.

  After skating for more than an hour, she reached a bend in the channel. She was glad to stop as she felt stiff, but it was only after gliding to a halt that she noticed that the copse of trees, where she’d previously stopped, was no longer there. Someone must have beaten me to it, she thought with a grimace. She untied the rope from her belt and slung it round a freshly sawn tree stump. Shielding her eyes, she looked about her for any signs of life, but she was completely alone. There were a few small sticks littering the ground, which she gathered up and tied to the wooden slats of her sledge with a length of string from her pocket. It was so little fuel; it would barely bring any warmth into the kitchen. An image of Pa came to her, huddled beneath three blankets, too cold and weak to venture downstairs, and it almost made her cry.

  ‘Right. Keep going,’ she told herself firmly with a big sniff. It was still early and if she concentrated, instead of enjoying herself on the ice, she would find enough wood to fill the stove. With a renewed determination, she set off more slowly, keeping an eye out for anything suitable for burning, but it was as if something or someone had made a complete sweep of the area and removed every last tree or bush. Every now and then she stopped to collect up twigs, but she knew that the pitiful bundle of dry wood in her hands would flare and burn in an instant.

  Disheartened, she decided she must waste no more time but go looking for food. The way back, into the bitterly cold wind, was much harder going and her earlier exhilaration soon evaporated. The sun disappeared behind a bank of clouds and the frozen landscape had turned featureless and forbidding. Tired and hungry, she arrived back where she had started, wishing that Mr Bakker were here to help her with the sledge, before she remembered her promise to bring him back a few root vegetables. But the thought of searching longer and harder made her even more exhausted; she needed a rest, however brief. She sat down on a willow stump and fumbled in her pocket for the small package she’d brought containing a crust of stale bread smeared with a tiny amount of margarine. Her stomach still rumbled after she’d swallowed it down, but that was too bad. She tried to picture the carrots, onions and maybe even the potatoes she would find, and how her mother would make her favourite dish, hutspot, for dinner, just like old times.