When Daffodils are New Again

Paul Kelly

Description

This fantastic new eBook from well-known author Paul Kelly will make an excellent addition to any fiction-lover's digital shelf. Featuring strong characters and plots which draws you into Kelly's worlds, reviewers have been recommending his titles for years. This latest addition to his catalogue of successes is sure to be another winner.

Informations

• Publié par: Andrews UK
• Date de parution: 13 mars 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781781661550
• Langue: English

Extrait

Title Page

WHEN DAFFODILS ARE NEW AGAIN

Second sequel to ‘A Billy or a Dan or an Old Tin Can



By
Paul Kelly




Publisher Information

When Daffodils Are New Again
Published in 2011 by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

The characters and situations in this book are entirely imaginary and bear no relation to any real person or actual happening.

Copyright © Paul Kelly

The right of Paul Kelly to be identified as author of this book has been asserted in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyrights Designs and Patents Act 1988.




Synopsis

EUGENIE VON ZULLERMAN has come to England from Germany to stay with her daughter, MARIANNA and her new son-in-law, WILLIE BLAIR. It is the close of the year 1945 and the war is over in Europe. She suffers from a nervous disorder due to her incarceration in the Dachau concentration camp, in Austria because she was a Jew. . . Marianna is pregnant and expects her first baby in a few months’ time.
Eugenie receives a parcel one morning which contains a violin and an old worn and faded diary, the property of KIRKIN SARTO, a young Gypsy boy who had also been imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp at the same time as Eugenie. As Eugenie is herself, an accomplished violinist, she and Kirkin; a gifted musician and who also plays the violin, are selected for the camp ‘Orchestra’ where music is played for all occasions, even as the inmates are dying The sweet music helped to drown the moans and groans of the unfortunate prisoners in their last moments of life.
Kirkin disappears after the camp is liberated by the allied forces in 1945 and rumour has it that he has been roasted alive in the infamous gas ovens.
Willie Blair is the chauffeur to LORD BARTLETT OF MANORLEES and the latter befriends Eugenie, helping her to endure the horrific memories of her imprisonment. She tries to get a job as an interpreter when this post is advertised by the War Office, but the authorities there feel that she is better qualified for another task they have in mind. Eugenie is sent back to Germany, to Leipzig as a witness at the trial of the ex-Commandant of Dachau, HERR FRANZ ZIELONKA who ruled the camp as a tyrant and a persecutor of the inmates there who were mostly Jews. She meets again, some of her fellow prisoners when sad and joyful memories are renewed as the trial progresses satisfactorily, with Commandant Zielonka being accused of the most heinous crimes and with such unanimous conviction, when suddenly a telephone call is received from Scotland Yard, in London, requesting that the trial be halted due to new evidence that has come to light. A man has fallen to his death from the third floor balcony of a luxury flat in London’s Belgravia. He had swallowed a cyanide tablet and the identification of this man throws serious doubt about the prisoner being held at Leipzig. It transpires that a British Intelligence Officer has been on the trail of the cyanide victim for some time.
Eugenie is preparing to return to London, to a life of peace and quiet serenity with her new son-in-law and her lovely daughter, who by this time has given birth to a son, when she hears a familiar voice as she walks upstairs to her hotel bedroom, after the trial has been dismissed. It is the British Intelligence Officer who speaks. He has just arrived from England. Eugenie falters in her steps, clasping her hand to her head as she falls. She recognises the voice as that of Kirkin Sarto. He has been tortured in the concentration camp and his body was so badly scorched, having been pushed against the red-hot ovens in a struggle to get free, that he now walks with a limp. He is paralysed down the left side of his body. He and Eugenie are reunited.
“I sent you the violin Eugenie . . . so that you could continue to play where I could not and the diary . . . so that the world would not forget the life we endured at Dachau.”

***

This is a story of the loves and friendships that went on amongst the inmates of the concentration camp at Dachau and no doubt in the other concentration camps, where the Nazi Regime took command. Whilst not forgetting the horrors that went on there and the ignominious humiliations the prisoners had to endure, there were close friendships and even love, in those dreadful times.
This is a story told in a faded old diary of the privations and the lack of even the basic human necessities; let alone comforts, that the prisoners had to endure, but there were close friendships and even LOVE in those times of horror and fear . . . and as in all diaries, it contained passages of humour and of innocent, unsurpassed joy that could only have originated in the stench and depth of depravity that was so common in such hell holes as these.
For man can crush the body and grind the bones . . . but only God can touch the heart with love . .



Chapter One

Eugenie Von Zullerman sat rigidly on the hard, wooden bench in the convent garden, staring out at the beauty that lay before her eyes. She had never seen so many different trees in such a confined area, for a very long time ... but then she reflected ... it was only six years ... only six long, long years, that seemed now to be a lifetime and which even now, at that very moment, frightened her to think of them. The trees shimmered in the cold winter air, naked and vulnerable as the weak morning sun played lazily over the birch and taunted the variegated conifers, vying as they did over the more common evergreens that surrounded them in profusion. The snowdrops screamed for Eugenie to take notice of them ... to observe them in all their splendour as they pushed their way jauntily from the hard, white earth in an effort to be noticed first, before the crocus.
“Six years,” she muttered and her eyes adopted a fear that was so familiar to her in that awful time. She shuddered and shook her head lightly in an effort to dispel the memory before closing her eyes momentarily, opening them again quickly, to ensure the reality of her vision and the wind blew gently around her head, making her hair dance in the air with a pleasant and refreshing gesture. She was aware that few would understand the deep joy she was able to take from such simple and mundane pleasures, but she was ... serenely content. She smiled sadly and a tear glistened in the cold sunlight as she dried her eyes with her handkerchief. The air surrounding her was a menagerie of birds, madly twittering and whistling in their own supreme frenzied opera in the clear azure blue sky; their eternal stage and the cold earth, a morgue for the remains of the rose blooms, dead-headed by the Sister gardener as they lay with bruised and faded blush in the neatly trimmed flower beds that had once displayed such an array of indescribable beauty and fragrance.
Eugenie was aware that she had an exaggerated view of nature since her incarceration, but the grass never seemed greener than it had done to her in that precious and valued moment. A moment she had never expected ever to see again. Scenes such as were with her now and which she had taken so much for granted in the past, seeing them almost without sight, delighted her in her confusion and swept her away in the delirium that had finally made a reality of living. She shouldn’t dwell on the past ... She would not dwell on what had been ... and besides, she now had a new future to enjoy; a future of wondrous anticipation where she would see again the daughter that she had thought to be dead; her only daughter and a new son-in-law as well. She shrugged her shoulders again and smiled anew in her own sweet, silent complacency. She wanted so desperately to forget the past and to live a new life ... a life where she could partake and give of her love and where she could find some use for the few talents that she had left, but there was always a dark cloud looming, which the evil dart of bitter memories would pierce and the tears would have to fall. How could she forget … and yet, she knew she must, if she was to retain her sanity. She took a ball of Angora wool; a nice lilac coloured fluffy ball, from the knitting bag at her feet and her needles began to click. A little robin, disturbed in its nest under the seat where she was sitting, took off in blustered flight and Eugenie’s head shook slightly in unison to the jerky movements of her deft fingers.
“It would be wonderful to have a grandchild one day,” she told herself, speaking into the air with an expectancy of being heard, for this was the way she was accustomed to talking, as were the millions who had been incarcerated with her. She sighed and put down her needles for a moment. “Will I ever be free from it ... however much I try,” she moaned. “I must ... I must … otherwise they will have won and I am a defeated victim of their savagery and to their inhuman brutality that swept a nation away in a single burst of mad, screaming adulation ... Heil Hitler! … Heil Hitler!” Eugenie shivered at her thoughts and returned to her needles, looking around her with fear in her eyes as she glanced at the clear sky above her. Her eyes narrowed in the sunlight and she shook her head violently. “No ...no ... Never, never, never,” she called out and her voice echoed in the wind. She clenched her teeth as she considered her statement. “If I am defeated now, then they will have killed me with the friends who died arou