Hero on a Bicycle by Shirley Hughes

anxiously. Mamma’s not a good liar.
    “You must have so much to do,” she said to the lieutenant. “But can’t we offer you something to eat or drink?”
    “A glass of water only, please, if you would be so kind.”
    As Maria hurried away to fetch it, Constanza maneuvered Helmut gently outside. It was shimmeringly hot. The sky was a fathomless Italian blue, and the shadows of the cypress trees that sheltered the house from the road laid cool, dark fingers on the gravel. It was hard to believe that not far away young men around Helmut’s age were hell-bent on killing one another. The German officer and Constanza stood beside his motorcycle, and he took off his helmet. Without it, he looked years younger.
    “We will be in action soon,” he said. “I hoped I would see you today because I wanted to say . . . I wanted to tell you . . .”
    Maria appeared with his glass of water, and he stopped speaking to gulp it down. When she had gone indoors, he began again.
    “There’s so much to say, if it were possible. But so little time. You are half English, of course. And your father . . .”
    “My father is away from home, as you know. We none of us know his whereabouts at the moment.”
    “My father is in a difficult position, too,” said Helmut quietly. “We are a military family. He is a colonel, a professional soldier. He served in the last war and now, more recently, with General Rommel in North Africa, but he has never been in agreement with the Nazi high command and what they are doing to our country. It has put him, and his career, into considerable danger. I want you to know this. I can tell you because I trust you, and your family. I cannot bear that we should be enemies, because I . . . you are . . .” And then, without realizing it, he lapsed into German, speaking so softly and urgently that Constanza, who understood the language only slightly, could hardly follow what he said. Though she thought she caught the words “so dear to me.”
    Eventually he fell silent and took her hand. He was looking at her so intently that she hardly knew how to reply. Then, abruptly, he straightened himself, handed her back the empty glass, and put on his helmet. Without another word, he kicked the engine of his motorcycle into life and drove off down the drive.
    Constanza stood there for a moment, looking after him. She really liked Helmut. He was the kind of young man, she reflected, that her father would have gotten along well with had they met in some other, happier world: one in which they were not fighting on bitterly opposed sides. She realized what a compliment he had paid her by telling her about his own father and background. He was such a serious man, made more serious still by the enormous weight of responsibility that had been put upon him as a German officer at war. He was not many years older than she was — twenty or twenty-one, perhaps — and it touched her that he had not been able to express his feelings for her except in his own beloved language. It was difficult for her to think of him as The Enemy, someone against whom she and her family were about to pit all their courage and ingenuity. Slowly, she turned around and wandered thoughtfully back into the house.

T hat evening neither Paolo nor Constanza made any fuss about taking themselves off to their rooms very early. But not, of course, to sleep. The tension in the house meant that was out of the question. As darkness fell, Maria, too, retired to her own quarters off the kitchen, leaving Rosemary alone to pace nervously from room to room. She turned off all the downstairs lights, keeping only one burning in the hall, then opened the windows of the living room, which looked out onto the terrace.
    It was a still, hot night, full of stars. Somewhere out on the main road she could hear heavy vehicles — German tanks and military trucks, probably — rumbling toward the city. Then all was silent. She lit a cigarette, smoked half of it in a vain attempt