Chapter 27: Victoria Returns

A few days later Lady Johnson was surprised to see her friend Mrs. Vicky Carmichael at lunch one day in the Senior Officers' mess. After lunch Colonel Esser said that Vicky might like to pass the afternoon with Jane, in his room. Both women assumed he wanted a threesome, or at the very least a lesbian exhibition, but it transpired that it was a simple act of kindness allowing them to catch up with gossip. Jane was very proud that he trusted her to that extent.

Victoria was fairly reticent about where she had been, and with whom during the weeks since they were collected. Evidently she had spent most of the time with the officer she had met at the formal Mess Dinner the first night after their abduction. That had not been a particularly happy relationship, partly because of Vicky's reluctance to be a semi-permanent mistress to a member of the German occupying forces, and partly because she was occasionally offered to visiting members of the High Command.

"I felt like a whore, being sent to whichever bed my owner though helped his career the most," she said, "but now I am back here, and he said that from here I would be sent home."

Jane privately doubted that, but did not voice that opinion. When Jane had finished telling her friend about selected good parts of her time with the Colonel, the very satisfying sex, the meals in the Savoy, and even the encounter with Sir Henry, Victoria became very serious.

"Sit down a moment Jane. There is something you should know."

Jane felt a premonition of what was to come.

"Didn't anyone tell you that Henry had petitioned for divorce?" her friend asked.

"No. No, nobody said anything," Jane answered, looking thoughtful, "What grounds did he cite?"

"Your disappearance. It seems the Germans have introduced a new law that allows instant divorce on demand. More, it doesn't require the other party to know about the proceedings. Apparently it was sold to the Bundestag and Parliament as a way of tidying up marriages where one party had completely disappeared, as quite a few serving soldiers and some civilians did in the war. People blown to pieces on the battlefield or in the bombing, for example," Victoria answered, "I really don't understand? Didn't your Colonel tell you?"

"No. But perhaps he didn't know."

"Sorry, Jane, but he did know. He was a witness at the court hearing."

"How do you know?" a mystified Jane asked.

"They called me as a witness as well," whispered Vicky.

"What did they ask you?"

"When I had last seen you at home. I told them it was the day we were picked up and I had no idea where you had gone after that. I had to; I was given this script to learn before the hearing and they said it would be disastrous for me if I said anything about the Camp."

"And what did Joachim say?" Jane inquired.

Victoria looked very doubtful and then blurted out, "He told them that you had volunteered for the Lebensborn programme, to bear an Aryan child for the greater glory of the Third Reich."

"But surely your account of the arrests and the first dinner here made it clear that I wasn't a willing participant?"

Vicky could only whisper, "They made me say I was a prisoner in the lorry, but that you went willingly in the staff car."

"Made you..." Jane broke off as she realised that there were many threats which could have made her friend lie, not least against her children.