Cast No Shadow by Peter Sharp (books recommended by bts .txt) 📗

“I can’t begin to tell you of the despair that descended on the Thorstaadt household. Not only were we children inconsolable, but Grandma Thorstaadt and particularly Gunnar were broken hearted. Eventually of course, despite our misery and despondency, things returned to some form of normality.

“I would still wait at the quay, but now only for Uncle Gunnar and we would meet after his voyages more often with tears than with joy.

“Grandma now was very frail, and I was in effect the housekeeper. She guided me but was able to do little herself. Between Hans and me, and with a little hindrance from Inga, we were able to do most of the tasks required. The following year Grandma died, and I was left in complete charge of the household when Gunnar was at sea. I was thirteen years old.

“No one bothered much about the fact that Gunnar’s house was being looked after by Hans and myself, with Inga becoming more useful as time went on. We were happy in our way and wanted for nothing. We knew Gunnar loved us all dearly. Then, just after my sixteenth birthday, we were visited by a number of the good and noble of the village including the vicar. Gunnar fell into a deep gloom and for the only time I can remember, missed a fishing trip, sending his number two out as skipper.

“I pleaded with him to tell me what was troubling him and eventually he broke down and cried like a baby. Between huge sobs he told me that the three of us children would have to be housed somewhere else. When I asked why he explained that it was now deemed ‘unseemly’ for a single man to live in the same house as a sixteen-year-old girl.

“I kept this from Hans and Inga and that night cried myself to sleep. I couldn’t bear the thought of my little family being broken up. What if they separated us? What would be the effect on Hans who adored Gunnar and couldn’t wait to leave school and join him in his boat? And what about poor Gunnar? How would this affect him? It would break his heart to be separated from his little family. These thoughts crashed around in my mind as I tossed and turned in bed until I eventually fell into a restless sleep.

“The following morning as Gunnar was just rising, I walked determinedly into his room and informed him that there was only one solution. We would have to be married.

“To say that he was thunderstruck was an understatement. He protested of course, but I waved away his protests and explained that it was the only way we could be sure of keeping the family together.

“And so it was, a few months before my seventeenth birthday, I became Mrs Thorstaadt.”

Sybilla stopped for a moment and drew Kelly closer to her. She wept quietly now, and her body was shaking. Kelly reciprocated her gesture by putting his arm around her shoulders and holding her tight.

“You must go on, you must finish this story,” he said. She nodded but did not speak for a moment as she tried to bring her emotions under control.

After a little while Sybilla was able to continue.

“It wasn’t anything like I had expected. I was an attractive girl, nearly seventeen and I had urges. I had been looking at the boys at school in a different way since I was fifteen and they had certainly been looking at me! But nothing ever came of these mild flirtations.

“Now I was a married woman, I expected things to happen. The night I was married I went to bed with Gunnar. I went to bed a virgin and I arose the next morning still a virgin.

“Poor Gunnar is impotent. I don’t just mean he can’t father children. I mean he is completely impotent. He simply can’t do it.

“He tried hard, but he was unable to carry out his role and I was so ready and so willing to become a real wife. We spent a miserable night in each other’s arms, crying. After several nights without fulfilment, we both agreed that it was not going to happen. How miserable I was, but I did my best to hide it from the other children.

“We slept in the same bed for several years, but as the children grew and left, first Hans and then Inga, who was married two years ago, we dropped the pretence. We moved to the little cottage by the slip, where you stayed, and Gunnar took one bedroom and I took the other.

“Gunnar’s failure of course had no effect on the teenage urges I felt. I still wanted to be a ‘real’ woman. I finally lost my virginity when I was nineteen. I had dreamt of the moment, inspired I suppose by Hollywood films. There would be billowing sheets, a soft downy mattress and it would be with the love of my life. Instead, it was late one evening, standing upright in the bridge house of an arctic drifter looking over my shoulder to make sure no one was coming along the quayside.

“My ‘dream lover’ was one of Gunnar’s crewmen, a married man with three children. I could argue that he used me, but that would not be strictly true. In reality, I used him. But that’s not to say it didn’t ‘happen’. It did happen for me, but afterwards I felt cheap and sordid. We made love only twice more before I became totally disenchanted with the affair. Apart from which, I was scared to death that I would get pregnant. I could hardly tell Gunnar it was his child, could I?

“After that I was completely celibate until last year when I made the decision to use Jürgen Meyer to wean as much information out of him as I could. The easiest way to do that was to get him into bed.

“I would be lying to you if I told