“Nosy one, isn’t she? What are we going to do about that, Fred?”
Audrey blanched.
“I don’t—”
Another voice, Ludwig’s. “We can’t talk about any kind of plan or news with her poking her head in every ten minutes.”
“I know how to keep her busy,” Vogt offered.
“Enough, Vogt,” Müller snapped.
“We could gather at my place instead,” Claus said. “It would be safer without any other ears around.”
Audrey’s breath caught on a hook of fear. Did they suspect her of spying?
“Do your wife and children not have ears, Claus?” Aldous asked.
“Just dismiss her,” Ludwig said.
A creak, as someone shifted in a chair. “I don’t think she’s of any concern,” Müller said. “But I can tell her not to wait on us, if you prefer. She can go upstairs when you’re here.”
“Well, where’s the fun in that?” Vogt asked. “Besides, I’ve got an idea that will please us all. Fräulein!” he shouted. “Audrey, get back in here.”
“Vogt—”
“Audrey!”
Audrey paused a moment, then pushed the door open, adopting a mask of innocence. “Yes, Herr Vogt?”
“You’ve been to finishing school, haven’t you? Learned your pianoforte like all good girls do?”
She paused, nodded.
“Play for us,” he ordered, gesturing at the piano with his thumb. Müller’s mouth was tight. Ludwig rolled his eyes up to the ceiling and took another drink. “Something cheery,” Vogt added.
“Yes, sir,” Audrey said, swallowing the resentment. How dare he warp her talent and joy into some sort of hackneyed diversion, as though she were a circus animal. She wanted to say as much, but dutifully took her place at the bench.
Since the arrival of Vogt and Müller, she’d rarely had a chance to play. The housekeeping and cooking kept her busy, leaving little time for rehearsal, but she was also simply distracted by the stress of their predicament, the uncertainty of their future. But every so often, when the men were away, she would take a reprieve from her chores and sit down to play. She did it for Ilse as much as for herself, to provide some mere delight to her friend, who could still just hear the music upstairs.
It was in those moments that she missed her lessons the most. She’d telephoned Herr Fogel in the first week after Müller and Vogt moved in, fed him a story of familial strife until she could sort out whether it was possible to continue with her program. He’d been disappointed, but hadn’t pressed. She had been so close. The recital was only two weeks away, but Audrey wouldn’t be there. The imminency of that achievement had been thrust into the background of her life by all that had transpired over the past few weeks. She had no emotional energy to spare for the loss of her studies, which paled in comparison to all that Ilse had lost and continued to lose every day she sat trapped inside her own attic with cobwebs and piercing grief for company. Perhaps one day, when the world had turned the right way up again, Audrey could complete the program.
At the piano now, she spared a glance sideways at the dining room. All the men had their heads together, speaking in low tones, except for Vogt, who had risen from the table and wandered over. Audrey clenched her jaw and considered her choice of music. With a rush of brazen defiance, she began to play Mendelssohn’s Piano Sonata Number 2, the piece she’d wanted for her recital but couldn’t use because Mendelssohn was a Jew. Vogt was too vulgar to recognize such a cultured piece, she thought, satisfied at her own trickery.
Leaning against the side of the piano, Vogt set his drink down on the gleaming wood, and Audrey watched as the condensation dripped off the glass. He really was such a brute. She could only imagine what Ruth would have said.
With a pinch in her throat, Audrey cut the piece short and stood up. The other men ceased their conversation and looked over at her and Vogt.
“You didn’t tell us you could play like that,” Vogt said, his voice slick with chagrin.
“You didn’t ask.”
“Mendelssohn,” he said.
She felt her cheeks warm, but said nothing. She’d underestimated him.
“Go.” He flicked his head in the direction of the stairs.
She didn’t need to be told twice.
“And Fräulein,” he called after her. “Next time, you will play Wagner. And you will play to the end.”
Ten minutes later, Audrey locked Ilse’s bedroom door, then tapped gently on the wall beside the attic access, the all-clear message for Ilse. The hatch opened with a soft creak and the rope ladder fell, the ends swishing on the floorboards as Ilse climbed down.
“Oh, God, I have to go,” she whispered.
Audrey opened the door a crack to check that the hall was still deserted, then slipped out to give Ilse some privacy to relieve herself in the basin Audrey kept in the room. Audrey had been bringing water to her bedroom in a large ceramic jug every night. Müller had noticed it once, and she’d told him she found it so terribly dry in the house now that the weather was getting colder, but really it was so Ilse could attempt to bathe herself.
Crouching beside the door in the dark hallway, Audrey wondered, as she did almost every hour of the day, how it had come to this. A few minutes later, she snuck back into the room. Ilse was sitting on the edge of her bed, staring at the floor with a vacant expression.
Quickly, Audrey disposed of the fetid contents of the basin in the toilet, then returned to the bedroom, locking the door behind her.
Ilse hadn’t moved. Audrey hated to see her so diminished. Ilse never complained, but she was coiling into herself. Her dignity had been stripped away. She was alive, yes, but what sort of existence was this? They were fugitives in hiding; the moments they had together were few, confined to whispered exchanges in the middle of the night.
“Come here.” Audrey opened her arms for Ilse, who fitted herself into them, resting her weight against Audrey’s chest as her body shook with suppressed sobs. She exhaled in staccato pieces, broken and detached. Audrey stroked her soft hair. “I don’t know how much longer you can go on like this, Ilse. It’s only been a month, and it’s seemed an eternity.”
It never felt like long enough when she held Ilse, who always moved away first, as she did now.
“I’m fine. I’m just having a weak moment. I can manage this. I can,” she emphasized, in response to Audrey’s look.
