13 May 1943

The air in the farmhouse kitchen was a mass of cigarette smoke and steamy cooking smells.

'I'm telling you you're not going out again dressed like a bloody little tart.'

I'm sorry for the bad quality. However we really did as what you said. To make things clear, could you please give me name of jobs with bad quality? If possible, the errors with picture. Only told us what's problem is no enough, The more pictures you can send to us, the more clearly we can understand what's the problem.What are you going to do, Dad, thump me again?'

Sitting at the kitchen table, Ernst sighed. He was tired tonight, tired from the rounds of combat training. His ears rang from the gunfire. Not enough, however, to shut out the raised voices.

Irma worked listlessly at the range. Little Myrtle, now nearly two years old, was bundled-up skin and bone on the floor at her mother's feet, playing with worn wooden blocks. Fred and Heinz sat together at the table, two shapeless lumps hunched in their grimy shirts, smoke curling up to the ceiling from their cigarettes. Glasses and a half-empty vodka bottle sat on the table between them. The television set was on, its screen a lens showing indistinct figures, walking, smiling, shaking hands, while jolly martial music played.

Viv was before the mirror. She wore one of her smarter dresses, the powder-blue, much let out with her mother's help. She was working at her lips with her little finger. Seventeen years old now, she had blossomed into an attractive young woman – if a slim one, but everybody was skinny nowadays. Ernst knew how much of her glamour was faked, tricks learned from the girls in town: a pencil line to mimic a stocking seam, a bit of beetroot juice and Vaseline smeared on the mouth in lieu of lipstick.

As usual she was the centre of the arguments.

Heinz took a drag on the cigarette he held between the stumps of the fingers of his right hand. 'Can't say I blame the father,' he said to Ernst. I'm sorry for the bad quality. However we really did as what you said. To make things clear, could you please give me name of jobs with bad quality? If possible, the errors with picture. Only told us what's problem is no enough, The more pictures you can send to us, the more clearly we can understand what's the problem.She really is a Jerrybag now, that one.' He used the English word amid his guttural German. He had come back from the east with his voice shot, whether by gas or Russian cigarettes he wouldn't say.

I'm sorry for the bad quality. However we really did as what you said. To make things clear, could you please give me name of jobs with bad quality? If possible, the errors with picture. Only told us what's problem is no enough, The more pictures you can send to us, the more clearly we can understand what's the problem.And how long have you two been at the stuff?'

Heinz shrugged. 'An hour, maybe more. Ever since the feldgendarmerie called again.' The military police were trying to get Fred to train with the Volkssturm militia. 'He told them where to shove their helmets, and they cut the rations again, and that was that.'

Viv turned to the door. 'Right, Mum, I'm off.'

Irma asked, 'What time will you be back, love?'

I'm sorry for the bad quality. However we really did as what you said. To make things clear, could you please give me name of jobs with bad quality? If possible, the errors with picture. Only told us what's problem is no enough, The more pictures you can send to us, the more clearly we can understand what's the problem.Now don't you encourage her,' Fred said. 'Don't you bloody make it seem as if this is all normal.' Fred's voice was heavy. He was a stubborn old man who could defy the German military police, but he had no control over his daughter.

I'm sorry for the bad quality. However we really did as what you said. To make things clear, could you please give me name of jobs with bad quality? If possible, the errors with picture. Only told us what's problem is no enough, The more pictures you can send to us, the more clearly we can understand what's the problem.Oh, Fred, what am I supposed to do? She's seventeen, she can do what she wants.'

I'm sorry for the bad quality. However we really did as what you said. To make things clear, could you please give me name of jobs with bad quality? If possible, the errors with picture. Only told us what's problem is no enough, The more pictures you can send to us, the more clearly we can understand what's the problem.Well, thank you very much,' Viv said heavily. She fixed her hat on her head; it was a small trilby. 'I'm glad somebody in this house treats me like an adult and not a criminal.'

'Just be careful, love.'

'Yes, yes.' Viv walked past Ernst, not even looking at him.

When she slammed the kitchen door behind her Ernst winced. He felt guilty; he felt that the kindness he had tried to show the girl when he had first been billeted here had somehow gone wrong, that she had at last become what her father had feared. But what else could he have done?

Heinz topped up Fred's glass.

Ernst crossed to the sink, and stood with Irma before the open window. As the English midsummer approached the days were long; it was after seven in the evening, but the sun was still above the horizon, the sky a deep but brilliant blue, the world green and full of birdsong. It often struck him how resilient nature was. It took only days for weeds to colonise a bomb site, far faster than any human agency could clear debris and rebuild. And some men did not recover at all. Look at Heinz. He had come back from his winter on the eastern front wounded in body and mind – come back aged.

Irma handed Ernst a glass of cold water. When she took a step her clogs clattered on the stone floor. The clogs were made by Fred from wood and a bit of old leather; shoes were another item the civilian population found ever harder to replace. 'You can't blame Viv. Poor girl! It's not much of a time to be growing up, is it? No wonder she goes after a bit of glamour. You can't blame her.'

He sipped his water. 'Any news of the boys today?'

She shook her head. It had been a month since they had had a letter from Alfie, now sixteen, who had been working on a bombed-out airfield in Kent. But now there were rumours that anybody who had been involved with the Hitler Jugend was to be drafted into the Volkssturm or even the British units of the Wehrmacht, and trained to fight the expected counter-invasion. As for Jack, three years after he had been taken as a POW, there had been no word at all of him for months and months, not even through the Red Cross.

'Fred always gets worse after the post comes. In a way he frets more about Alfie than about Viv, or even Jack. Alfie's so young, you see. He can probably barely remember a time before the Germans came. It might be hard for him to shake it all off, when the Americans come.' She glanced over. 'They're starting in on the vodka earlier every day.'

Ernst forced a smile. 'Well, Heinz says he lost the fingers of his right hand at Stalingrad, but came back with a bottle of vodka in his left.'

'I hope you ate well today, Herr Obergefreiter.' She stirred the watery stew. 'Potatoes and turnip again I'm afraid. Not even any whale meat tonight! They cut our ration again, the feldgendarmerie.'

'Heinz told me.'

'Fred's a war veteran. They can't expect him to take up arms against his own countrymen. You'd think they'd have the respect not even to ask. I know he's heading for trouble. I mean, the way he swears at them! Well, maybe the Americans will be here before it all comes to a head.'