The Hornet's Sting Read Online Free PDF Page A

wife said they would denounce me to the Germans and reveal my plans if I didn’t marry their daughter, because I had taken away her innocence.
     
    ‘Her virginity?’ I asked.
    ‘Oh Christ, yes!’ responded Tommy enthusiastically. ‘Anyway, Else’s father told me this: “I don’t like you. I think you’ve led my daughter astray and I don’t want you in my family. But you’ve compromised her and now you’re going to make a respectable woman out of her. If you don’t ... well, the consequences for you don’t bear thinking about.” So I married his daughter,’ concluded Tommy simply.
    There were some advantages to this arrangement, though. At least the marriage would briefly take Tommy’s mind off the humiliation of having been a member of an armed service that had refused to fight. It also gave him some cover because the Germans would be less likely to suspect a newly married man of planning to escape to England.
    Jensen probably thought he had won the battle of wills with his son-in-law through basic blackmail. Sneum knew differently: ‘The wedding didn’t make any difference. I had made up my mind to go to England and I didn’t think I would ever be back, so it was all the same to me. Otherwise, I would never have married Else, because we were getting tired of each other. It was her family who put enormous, stupid pressure on us both.’
    Even as Else had made her way down those Radhus steps on April 17, her new husband had been distracted—although, unusually for him, not by another beautiful woman. He noticed uniformed Germans in the Radhuspladsen, moving confidently among the wedding guests, as though this were their own capital. The cheers for the bride were almost drownut by Nazi propaganda as Danes sat silently on benches and listened dutifully. Tommy hated what he saw. The Radhus, with its 350-foot tower, was an impressive venue, but there had been more romantic weddings in Copenhagen’s history.
    Five months later, with his wife now pregnant, Tommy felt that everything was moving too quickly. Though the couple had enjoyed some good times, he knew he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life with Else. He loved all women, not just one, and most seemed to love him in return, even though he was too short to be considered classically good-looking. And he had sought the company of women long before his father acknowledged his adolescence by trying to teach him the facts of life. ‘I’ll never forget his opening line,’ remembered Tommy, smiling affectionately at the memory. ‘He began: “I suppose you have heard some dirty stories.” And I had, so it wasn’t too bad a start. He went on to tell me that I should always please the woman before I pleased myself, and I think that was a good lesson to learn.’
    Tommy enjoyed his first major affair as a fifteen-year-old on Fanoe, when a married woman twice his age taught him everything else he needed to know about the opposite sex. ‘That created quite a scandal,’ he recalled. ‘My father found out by reading a note she had left for me at our family home, and he wanted to give me a good thrashing. For the first time I resisted, and told him not to raise his hand to me again.’
    The amorous Tommy already considered himself to be a man. As the years went by, he was flattered to be told on more than one occasion that he reminded girls of the tough and charismatic film star Humphrey Bogart. Tommy’s military uniform did him no harm either in his pursuit of the opposite sex. Indeed, he remembered: ‘Else and I met in a tailor’s, and she was originally fascinated by my naval cadet’s uniform. She was very complimentary and I suppose I was a bit flattered by the attention.’ But what had attracted him to Else? ‘She had a lot of nice girlfriends,’ he said mischievously. And when asked to describe his wife’s personality, Tommy replied rather uncharitably: ‘She didn’t have one.’ That wasn’t true, of course, but Tommy could never