Page 5 of Winter's End
“No need, Missen, we will deliver it to your home by five this afternoon.”
“Thank you.”
Mila ran a hand over the smooth bodice with its deep vee-neckline, then slipped out of the dress and handed it to the dressmaker.
Mother will love it, she thought, slipping back into her navy wool – and father will not care how much he paid for it – not so long as she remained a lovely centerpiece for his visiting Nazi dinner guests.
She stepped into her shoes, grabbed up her handbag, and stepped out into the street, a bell tinkling overhead as she peered up and down the cobblestoned street. She headed north past the white-spired church and veered east through the empty playground, moving with purpose to avoid the roving eye of some German soldier just off duty. Bad enough she would have to put on the lavender dress and flirt with SS officers at her father’s dinner table this evening. She had no wish to engage with one of them now.
At the far end of the street sat the old, red brick Dans Hal, once the heart of the city’s social agenda. She did not come here often. Her work for the Resistance was accomplished by other means. But she stepped inside now, closing the door behind her, and surveyed the spacious front room.
Half a dozen children milled about, playing hide and seek among the chairs. At the far end of the room, she saw the girl she was looking for – Evi Strobel, bent over a table with her mother, Lotte, cutting something out of a roll of white paper.
The Dans Hal, and the low-keydansparties held there each Saturday evening, she knew, was one of the underground’s more ingenious ploys. So long as they kept up the pretense, changed the décor from time to time, and turned out to dance in reasonable numbers, it was an invention the Germans largely passed over as a harmless Dutch custom that kept the local population in check.
How shocked – and how furious they would be to know that right in this hall, under their ugly noses, in a small room blocked off behind the strings of lights and the cut-out paper stars, were the radios and typewriters and mimeograph machines at the heart of the local Resistance.
In another corner, several people Mila did not know, were stringing garlands of small, white Christmas tree lights, although the Yuletide holiday was more than a month away.
“Mila!” a voice called. “Over here.”
Glancing back at the Strobels, she stepped toward the voice, recognized her father’s wine and whiskey vendor.
“It’s good to see you, Mila,” Finn Stoepker said. “This is my wife, Hanna. Hanna, this is Mila Brouwer”
The woman was spreading a cloth across a table. She looked up and waved. “It’s good to meet you, Mila. Thank you.”
Mila was not sure what the thank-you was for. She hoped it was for her father’s patronage, which was liberal, because anything else she did in support of the Resistance was not common knowledge. At least she hoped it was not.
She smiled. “You are most welcome….It looks as though you are preparing for another party.”
“On Saturday evening,” Hanna nodded. “Perhaps you will join us.”
“I will do my best,” Mila nodded, although she knew, even if Hanna did not, that her presence at her father’s table would be far more valuable in the end.
Daan Mulder, the owner of the petkliniekand second in command of the local Resistance, hailed her as she turned.
“We rarely see you here, Mila,” he said. He put a hand over his heart. “But your presence is deeply felt. Thank you.”
At least she knew what Daan’s thank you was for. She returned the gesture. “No need, Daan. I only wish communications were more consistent.”
“We are lucky to have what we’ve cobbled together,” he said. “At least we are certain that what we do have is secure – and we are working to improve things all the time.”
She held his gaze. “My father is hosting dinner guests tonight.”
“Ah,” Daan’s smile was genuine. “Let us hope the evening is productive.”
Mila nodded, moving toward the far table where the Strobels bent over their craft. Jars of paint and glue littered the table. Mila had seen Evi here on one of her rare visits – had observed the girl’s confident gestures, the graceful way she held herself, in spite of her youth.
Hallo, Lotte,” she said.
The girl’s mother looked up. “Mila, hallo!”
“I understand your cousin Johann is visiting friends in Belgium,” Mila fingered a painted paper cut-out.What a world, she thought,when even here in the Dans Hal, information was mostly conveyed in a sort of code, lest it find its way to hostile ears.
“But it appears,” she went on, “that his young friend was unable to join him.”
Lotte met her gaze, and Mila knew she understood.An escapee Lotte had recently harbored in the hold of her barge was safe past the Belgium border. But his daughter, a frail university student, had not survived the harrowing last leg of the journey.
