Out of the shadows, p.1
Out of the Shadows, page 1
About the Book
Times move on for the Adams family in south London, and as business prospers, there are new worries to deal with. A young woman arrives who is intent on ruining Sammy Adams’ winter fashion show, and Sammy must deal with her unwelcome attention. Boots has to find a solution when one of his female employees tells him about a sinister visitor, but he doesn’t realize that his family are being observed.
Out of the shadows come dark and mysterious figures from the past who intrude on Boots, Polly and the twins, and his adopted daughter Rosie. Meanwhile Rosie has her hands full as her daughter Emily continues to rebel against everything around her.
How will the Adams family cope, as trouble seems to lurk around every corner?
Contents
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Dedication
Family Tree
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
About the Author
Also by Mary Jane Staples
Copyright
OUT OF THE
SHADOWS
Mary Jane Staples
To Katherine, a bright sprite who will, I hope, be a writer herself one day.
Chapter One
A MAN WHO had been known to his SS comrades as ‘The Wolf’ was released from a prison in Bavaria in May 1958. In 1948 he had been tried and convicted as a war criminal for his part in the inhuman elimination of untold numbers of Jewish men, women and children in the Auschwitz concentration camp of infamous memory. For the appalling nature of his crimes, he had been sentenced to a prison term of twenty years. His release came after he had served ten.
As a sergeant in the wartime SS, Ernst Thurber earned his nickname by reason of his mouthful of large white teeth that seemed to gleam with animal-like pleasure whenever he was torturing or brutalizing an inmate. However, in April 1944, following a bout of severe influenza, he began to have nightmares, as if the horrors of his own deeds were catching up with him. Before he could disgrace himself, and the SS itself, by having a breakdown merely on account of eliminating Jews, his commanding officer sent him on home leave.
His arrival coincided with that of his younger brother, Hans, a German army corporal on leave from the fighting in Italy. Although they were very different in character, they had a mutual empathy that made each the other’s greatest friend, the more so after their parents were killed in an early bombing raid on Berlin. It was to Hans that ‘The Wolf’, temporarily ravaged by nightmares, disclosed what he had officially sworn not to, all the grisly details of the events taking place in Auschwitz. His brother, a disciplined soldier rather than a fanatical Nazi, was appalled, so much so that the nightmares were transferred from the guilty to the innocent.
The guilty, refreshed, returned to Auschwitz to carry on as before. The innocent, suffering, returned to his unit in Italy, was captured by the British following the German defeat at Cassino and, still traumatized by what he now knew about Auschwitz, unburdened himself to a British staff officer, one Colonel Robert Adams. He was taken to London for interrogation. There, he hanged himself.
The release of ex-SS Sergeant Ernst Thurber from prison in 1958 did not attract any great attention, although it was noted among other reports in the Polish press by a minor official who worked for a government department in Warsaw. But the Polish press was noted for reporting on German war criminals who had acquired their murderous reputations in occupied Poland. That being of no consequence to ‘The Wolf’, still a Nazi at heart and contemptuous of Poles, he used his freedom to set about tracing the only person he cared about, his brother Hans, from whom he had not heard since their reunion on that fateful day in 1944.
His first request for help was made to the regular Army Records Office. He was advised after some while that because the wartime records of many regiments were still in a state of flux, no details of his brother were presently available. He thought this a piece of bureaucratic unhelpfulness, so he contacted an ex-SS war veterans’ association, an underground organization. In a Germany committed to rebuilding itself after the war under a democratic government, ex-SS officers and men could still wield some power and influence, provided they remained invisible. More time elapsed, and then ‘The Wolf’ was told to get in touch with one of the senior officials at the Army Records Office. He was given the name of this official. He made contact and asked again if anything was known of his brother, whose unit had been the 114th Bavarian Regiment.
The answer took time to reach him, but it did come, and to the effect that Corporal Hans Thurber of the 114th Bavarian Regiment had been taken prisoner by the British in May 1944. The details of the capture were given.
When was it, he asked, that his brother was released from the prisoner-of-war camp and returned to Germany?
The answer was that Corporal Hans Thurber had never returned, since he died as a prisoner of war in England.
Died?
Yes, according to details supplied by the Red Cross, he had committed suicide.
That seriously disturbed the Wolf, and since no other information was forthcoming, he made further contact with old comrades of the SS. They ferreted around on his behalf, and eventually provided him with an answer. His brother had hanged himself while under British interrogation in London. Ex-SS Sergeant Ernst Thurber no more believed that than any other kind of fairy story. He smelled a cover-up by the British. He knew about methods of interrogation. He had used them himself on more than one concentration-camp inmate, bringing death to the victims.
Quite sure that British methods were no different, he was easily able to believe his beloved brother’s death had come about through torture, not suicide. The belief incensed him, although he did not examine his conscience about his own record as an interrogator. The temporary nightmares he had once suffered were long gone, and, like many of his kind, he still believed that his actions had been undertaken for the good of Hitler and Germany. He decided, after being given further details by old comrades of the SS, that he had a score to settle on behalf of Hans.
In August, a woman said goodbye and thank you to her surgeon and emerged from a London clinic into the brightness of a sunny day. She made her exit a little tentatively, her eyes blinking in the light. As escorts, her husband was on her left, her daughter on her right. There was also a nurse in attendance, and a waiting car at the kerbside.
‘Now how do we feel?’ asked the nurse with a smile.
‘Personally,’ said Mrs Felicity Adams, treading more firmly, ‘I feel reborn. How about everyone else?’
‘Everyone else, Puss, feels great, and all on your account,’ said her husband, Tim Adams.
‘Super-duper,’ said her daughter, thirteen-year-old Jennifer, thrilled to bits. After what the surgeon called a quite simple operation, her mother’s eyesight, lost when she was caught in a bomb blast during the blitz on London, was now fully restored.
Optimism about the outcome had been high. It was a fact that during the last two years and more, there had been signs of a natural healing process taking place. Felicity had experienced many moments of blurred vision and, at times, even flashes of clear sight. Clarity had become more frequent and for longer periods, and finally her consultant, Sir Charles Morgan, said it was time to complete the process. Now, on this August day, with the operation well behind her, she was alive with the bliss of knowing unblighted vision was hers again. No more darkness, no more clouds, no more hazy pictures, just the natural clarity that one took for granted until an accident or a devil’s happening brought down the shutters.
The nurse said a smiling goodbye to her. Felicity thanked her with all the effusion of a grateful patient.
‘Mrs Adams, we’re all delighted for you. Good luck now.’
Sunshine enhanced the apricot hue of Felicity’s pencil-skirted Tricel dress, and flooded her face with light as Tim and Jennifer brought her to the waiting car. The driver was standing beside it, smiling.
‘Happy days, Felicity,’ he said.
‘Happy days, Boots,’ said Felicity. Her father-in-law, Robert Adams, known as Boots, was among her very favourite people.
‘Ready to go home?’ asked Boots, opening the door to the back of the car. ‘Or do you have a delayed urge to see the sights?’
‘I’ve seen them,’ said Felicity, slipping into the back seat. ‘In my girlish days. Right now, dear man, I’d prefer the sights of home.’
‘Home it is, Pa,’ said Tim to his father.
‘Home is where the birds are singing,’ said Boots, sliding into the driving seat.
‘Golly, yes, they’ll be si
And when the car moved off, slipping into the London traffic to head for Waterloo Bridge and the south-east, everybody was talking at once, and with unchecked animation. That included Boots, as he drove the happy family home.
Tim thought no-one deserved the successful outcome more than his wife. She had borne the unbearable, sudden blindness at the age of twenty, the age when life, especially in wartime, was at its most active and precious. She had known years of groping in the dark, and she had lived through times when, out of sheer frustration, she had resorted to some of the ear-pinging words she had picked up from the husky, bruising commandos of Troon. But never once could Tim remember her breaking down. No wonder everyone was so delighted for her today.
Felicity really was radiant. She was going home, to a home and garden that would be clearly visible to her every day for the rest of her life, as would her husband and daughter and all the other people who meant so much to her.
She found Tim’s hand. She squeezed it. The pressure was returned amid the sound of cheerful voices.
Jennifer summed up the situation.
‘Think of it, Mummy, when Elvis Presley comes on the telly news, you’ll be able to see just how great he is. Before, you’ve only been able to see him in – well, sort of in bits and pieces.’
In September, a visitor from Germany arrived in Harwich from the Hook of Holland. His passport and visitor’s visa showed him to be Rolf Seidler, West Berlin businessman. Both passport and visa were excellent forgeries, and passed inspection without question. He had been advised not to use his own name, for although he had served his time and no UK authorities were looking for him, it would be as well not to risk discovery by some inquisitive journalist, the kind who would make a meal of his erstwhile notoriety.
From Harwich, the German made his way to London.
The date was 12 September.
Chapter Two
SEPTEMBER 12 WAS a momentous day for Sir Winston Churchill, Britain’s renowned wartime leader. It was the day he and Clementine, his wife, celebrated their golden wedding anniversary. The old boy, now out of the political arena, was happily retired, spending much time with his paintbrush and easel in the South of France. People wondered if he and Clementine had celebrated with champagne. Wags said they didn’t know what Clementine had treated herself to, but ten to one old Winnie had enjoyed an extra cigar and a double Scotch.
Later that month, there was another eventful day. Not for Winston and Clementine, but for Polly Adams. It was the day of her sixty-second birthday, celebrated by the Adams family, if not by herself. To reach the age of sixty had been bad enough, but sixty-two, well, ye gods, she told herself, being as old as that was absolutely ghastly. One could almost hear the deep tolling of the bell heralding the arrival of one’s coffin.
She said so to Boots and their children, Gemma and James, at breakfast in the dining room on the morning after the day before. Once upon a time they had breakfasted in the kitchen, but that had become the domain of their daily maid, Flossie Cuthbert of Peckham, as soon as she arrived at eight o’clock. That had been the case from the first day of her employment. And since she was a treasure, the family willingly ceded the kitchen to her.
Boots received Polly’s comment halfway through his enjoyment of toast and marmalade. Gemma and James received it when they were girding themselves for their dash to school. Gemma, in fact, was gulping down her last mouthful of tea prior to jumping up, and James was already on his feet.
However, husband and children all managed a sympathetic response.
‘It’s a curse, I know,’ said Boots, ‘but nothing that a shopping trip to Bond Street won’t cure.’
‘Yes, and anyway, Mother dear,’ said Gemma, ‘I bet you can still ride a bicycle better than Auntie Vi’s mum.’
‘Sweet child,’ said Polly, ‘Auntie Vi’s mum is almost eighty.’
‘Well, you’re not,’ said James. ‘In fact, from where I’m standing you don’t look a day over – well –’ He went for the jackpot. ‘Well, say, thirty-odd.’
‘Thank you, darling,’ said Polly, ‘even if thirty-odd is very odd and won’t stand up to an examination. James – Gemma – do you realize your mama will soon be on a par with those old bits and pieces you find mouldering away in a shed?’
‘Sounds pretty grim,’ said James, ‘but can’t talk about it now, must dash.’
‘Me too,’ said Gemma, and away she and her twin brother went. Schools and colleges had recently reopened after the summer recess, and Gemma and James were both veterans of school life. Their own birthday would occur in December, when they’d be seventeen, but neither would regard the event as worrying. When one’s mother saw the curse of old age creeping up every time she looked over her shoulder, though, you just had to feel for her.
Actually, Polly had acquired the equanimity of a woman who felt life had been exceptionally good to her, since there was nothing she wanted that she did not have. Even so, equanimity sometimes took a bit of a hiding, particularly on the occasions when she and Boots attended parents’ gatherings at the twins’ respective schools. Horrors, she saw herself then as almost decrepit compared with the mothers of her children’s contemporaries, some of whom were no older than their late thirties. That kind of thing made a sixty-second birthday a definitely unwelcome event. However.
‘Boots, old dearie,’ she said, as the front door closed with a rattle behind Gemma and James, ‘I’m not complaining, of course.’
‘Merely commenting?’ said Boots, whose own sixty-second had happened in July.
‘On what Old Father Time gets up to?’ said Polly. ‘Yes, the blighter never stops hanging around, even though he knows he’s unwanted. I think women of the Wild West would call him pesky. Or ornery. Some Americanisms are very apt, don’t you think?’
‘Well, I certainly think “Howdy, Sheriff” is more picturesque verbally than “Hello, Copper”,’ said Boots. ‘As for Old Father Time, he treats you as one of his favourite chicks.’
‘Chicks?’ said Polly. ‘Chicks?’
‘Yes,’ said Boots, ‘every year he makes sure you still look far younger than an old hen.’
Polly laughed.
‘That’s my lover,’ she said. ‘I say, old thing, exactly how old is Felicity?’
‘Thirty-six?’ said Boots.
‘No, she’s thirty-seven,’ said Polly, thereby showing she was only testing the man in her life. ‘I mention it because I thought she outdid all the young ones last night. What do they call all that body movement and elbow-jerking?’
‘Jiving?’ said Boots. ‘And in Felicity’s case, an outpouring of all the energy she had to bottle up all these years?’
‘Not half, old dear, and with knobs on,’ said Polly. ‘I really am so happy for her. And isn’t it wonderful news about Linda?’
‘Yes, Lizzy is so pleased about her engagement. Alec is a fine young man. A lucky day when the Gibsons moved in next door to us,’ said Boots.
Polly smiled in agreement. She saw Linda as a charming and modest girl, Alec Gibson as a happy-go-lucky young man. They’d met fourteen months ago. Everyone at the party last night had received the announcement with enthusiasm. Mere acquaintances, however, would have wondered why a feller and his fancy took as long as a year and two months to make up their minds to get spliced. That amount of time was how long the dodos took to mate. These days guys and dolls made up their minds after only a couple of dates. Everyone knew life was moving faster day by day, and only a dozy lump wanted to get left behind. The Adams family, however, felt it appropriate that a girl should wear an engagement ring for quite a bit longer than a week.
As far as Boots was concerned, he went along with some things that were new and challenging without giving up on everything that was old and tried. He considered the time Linda and Alec had taken to arrive at an engagement meant they had come to know each other very well as prospective bride and groom. Nothing wrong with that.
‘A pretty sound way of going about getting married,’ he murmured, and drank the last of his second cup of breakfast tea.
