The Aftermath Page 11

  Then a big bald man, his hair and stubble interchangeable, reached into his pocket and pulled out a bunch of all-day suckers, the coloured boiled sweets on a stick that had arrived with the British. He held them out like a bunch of stunted tulips. ‘Not so good for the dentures, hey, Steytler? But good for your rat’s breath and staving off the hunger pangs. You can make one of these last an hour if you try.’ He put it in his mouth and made a show of enjoying it.

  ‘So, share them out then,’ said the general’s wife, speaking with the authority of a woman used to getting her way.

  ‘For a price,’ the bragging Prussian replied.

  Magda shook her head. ‘Have you no shame?’

  ‘I have a family to feed. These vouchers aren’t enough. I haven’t even got the money for the lighting. Every time I put money in the meter it’s money I could be spending on food.’

  ‘Better to be in the dark than hungry,’ said the former radio announcer.

  ‘You won’t go hungry if you’re prepared to steal a little here and there. Even the Bishop of Cologne is saying it is fine to steal coal if you have to stay alive. It’s the eleventh commandment.’

  ‘They are forcing us to behave like criminals,’ the dentist said.

  ‘They already think we’re criminals.’

  ‘I am no criminal. And my conscience is clear,’ the dentist continued.

  ‘Well. We’re all in it together,’ said the Prussian. ‘They can’t incarcerate us all.’

  ‘Keep your mea-culpaing to yourself,’ the dentist came back. ‘I am guilty of nothing more than doing my duty. Teeth and cavities are the same – it doesn’t matter whose mouth it is. I have a Hippocratic oath to uphold.’

  Everyone laughed at this.

  Frieda wanted to put the silly man straight and was about to speak when Albert put his hand on her arm again, the way he had when she had hummed the Mädel song in front of the smoking, joking Tommies. He shot her a conspiratorial look. They’re not worth it, it seemed to say. And she had the sweet thrill of feeling a little alliance forming between them.

  ‘That mark … on your arm. Is it a birthmark?’

  ‘Not here,’ he said, flashing her a look of prohibition.

  Without warning, he stood up and banged the side of the truck twice with the flat of his hand to request a stop. The driver obliged and Albert and Frieda jumped out, alighting at the village of Blankenese, a few miles on from the Villa Lubert, just where the Elbchaussee cut back inland from the great river. The sun was just going down towards the town of Stade across the water, giving the land a fiery glow.

  ‘Don’t walk with me,’ Albert said to her, pulling up the lapels of his jacket to hide his face. ‘Stay at least twenty paces behind me.’

  ‘How far is it?’

  Albert set off without answering; he moved at such a pace that Frieda began to think he was trying to lose her; she kept having to break into a run to keep him in view.

  The former fishing village of Blankenese was unique in these flat parts for having a steep hill, around which old cottages and some new villas huddled, in the medieval manner. Frieda used to come here with her mother before the war to watch the ships passing up and down the Elbe from a boathouse tavern that played the national anthems of every international cargo ship that sailed into Hamburg. Today, the river was boatless except for a hulking British Navy cruiser; pregnant grey-black snowclouds loomed, ready to dress the village in fairy-tale clothes.

  Albert climbed the hill with Frieda just behind him; she wondered which house was his. Eventually, he turned off the road and entered through the garden gate of a Strohdachhaus. Albert walked up the path to the front door of the thatched cottage, looking left and right before cutting off to the side entrance and peering in through the frosted lattice windows. As she walked up the flagstone pathway, Frieda thought of Hänsel and Gretel lost in the woods, stumbling across the house made of candy. Muddling her fairy tales, she cast Albert as the prince who had woken her from a long sleep and rescued her from a father who, happily, turned out not to be her father at all.

  ‘How long have you lived here?’ she asked as she followed him inside.

  ‘Not long,’ he replied.

  The cottage was full of rugs, cushions and throws. Albert moved a heavy kilim on to an armchair and sat down to undo his boots. ‘It belongs to a military doctor. Major Scheibli. He’s stuck in a displaced persons camp, waiting for his certificate of clearance.’

  Frieda saw a photograph of the doctor seated in the side-car of a motorbike somewhere in the desert, dust-grimed goggles over his eyes, red cross on his helmet. At his throat he wore the Iron Cross.

  ‘You know a war hero?’ Frieda said, picking up the photograph to look at it.

  ‘I don’t know him. I’m just borrowing his property for a short time. If the British can, why can’t we?’

  ‘Maybe they will put him in prison. If he is a hero.’

  ‘Once the British find out he fought with Rommel, they will release him. Anyway, I have to keep moving. Already too many people have seen me come and go. I have already found another house. Nearer you. On the Elbchaussee.’

  ‘Then we will be neighbours,’ Frieda said.

  Albert nodded. ‘So … what did your family do to be so rich?’

  ‘My father is an architect … my mother’s family had connections with the shipyards.’

  Albert’s eyes lit up. ‘Blohm and Voss?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Don’t they mind you wandering around?’

  ‘My mother is dead. And … I don’t care what my father thinks.’

  ‘He won’t be looking for you?’

  ‘He works at the Zeiss plant during the day. I can come and go as I please.’

  Albert eased off his first boot then his second. He stood and went through to the kitchen area and started looking for fuel to put in the stove. The hod was empty and there was no wood in the basket. He looked around the room, and his eyes settled on a hand-carved, three-legged stool in the corner. He went to it and broke it to bits with three hard strikes on the stone floor.

  ‘I have been waiting to burn this.’

  He pushed the splinters into the stove and lit the fire. He then filled a large saucepan with water and placed it on top to boil.

  ‘So how come you are still living in your house? I thought the Tommies had taken all the best ones.’

  Frieda picked at her nails then began to explain, with increasing animation and animosity, how they had come to share their house with the English family; of the colonel’s odd decision to let them stay, when he could have – should have – thrown them out; of the colonel’s wife, who talked to herself and had a shaking hand; and their boy who played with her doll’s house and carried a cloth soldier everywhere. As she described this situation, Frieda could see Albert’s body tense and his interest sharpen.

  ‘What does the Tommy colonel do?’

  ‘He is the Governor of Pinneberg. I don’t know what he does. He is hardly ever there,’ Frieda replied. ‘It is shameful. He drives the same kind of car the Führer was driven in.’ She added this to impress him, but Albert looked thoughtful, exercised by this piece of information

  ‘He’s the governor?’ he asked again, moving around the room now.

  She nodded, still unable to tell if he was pleased or appalled.

  ‘This is good. This is very good.’

  Frieda felt a warm inner glow. The humiliation of the requisition suddenly sounded purposeful. Albert made her feel that she had much to offer him. He turned back to the pan and tested the water with his finger. Then he stripped down to his undershorts. The
re was nothing extraneous about his movements or his physique. In Frieda’s eyes, he was perfect. Even his 88 scar.

  ‘You haven’t told me what that is yet,’ she said.

  He touched it and looked at her.

  ‘It’s a mark given to the resistance movement. Those who have not yet accepted defeat. Here.’

  He held out his arm to let her touch it. She traced the first eight then the second with her finger, feeling the embossed ridges of the scar tissue. ‘How did you get it?’

  Albert went over to a dresser and produced a packet of cigarettes from the drawer.

  ‘With these.’

  He lit one and, after taking a deep drag, he offered it to Frieda. She took the cigarette, placing it gauchely mid-mouth, and inhaled. She immediately spluttered and coughed and Albert laughed an unexpectedly broken, high-pitched laugh – the laugh of a boy rather than a man.

  ‘Too much! Take it slowly. Like this.’

  He took the cigarette back and showed her how. ‘Just a little,’ he said, sucking in a quick drag and handing it back. She took it from him and held it for a moment, looking at it. Instead of taking another pull on it, she held it up like a magician about to perform a trick. Sure that she had his attention, she then turned the cigarette around so that its burning end was pointing towards the palm of her other hand, which she held open, facing the cigarette. She then began to move the cigarette towards her hand as if to stub it out on her palm.

  Albert intercepted her attempt and took the cigarette back.

  ‘That’s a waste of a good cigarette.’

  Frieda felt tears welling. One moment, she was his proper German lady; the next, a stupid little girl.

  Albert held up the backs of his hands towards her.

  ‘Do you see these?’

  Frieda looked, unsure of his next move.

  ‘What do you see?’ He moved towards her so that she could see the skin, his fingers and his fingernails. She kept her silence, fearful of giving a callow answer. If she was going to please him, she’d best stay quiet. Behind closed doors, out of view, Albert changed from a watchful, careful young man into something more forceful. Something of what was pent up and held back in him began to leak out.

  ‘You see the nails?’ His fingernails, like hers, were still black with the day’s digging. With his thumb he scraped some dust from under his middle fingernail and held it up for her to see: little specks of ash and dust congealed. ‘The dust of our city. The ashes of our people. Look. Here.’ And he held out some specks. ‘The remains of a young German maid. Do you see it?’ And he scraped the ‘remains of the young German maid’ on to the palm of his hand then lifted his palm to his mouth and licked the dust from it, mingling it with his saliva and then swallowing. He picked out some more dust and held out his palm for Frieda to lick. ‘The ashes of innocent German children who will never know what we know and see what we see.’ Frieda took his hand and licked the ‘ashes of innocent German children’, taking them into herself. Albert reached out and took Frieda by the wrists. He pulled her hands towards him and opened them out. He ran a finger from her palm across the soft white skin of her inside arm up to the crick of her elbow and back down.

  ‘You can’t help Germany if you hurt yourself,’ he said. ‘Living where you live, you can be very useful – to the cause. We need things we can sell on the black market: cigarettes, medicines, jewellery, clothes. Anything of value that we can sell. Can you help?’

  She nodded. ‘Who is “we”?’

  ‘The resistance. You’ll meet them soon enough.’

  ‘Are there many of you?

  He suddenly lifted her chin and kissed her, pushing his tongue into her mouth so that she could taste the acrid debris of their day’s work. She had been kissed and touched before – at the fuggy log cabin at summer camp, where Mädel and Hitler Youth were encouraged to share quarters, to explore and seek ‘wholesome delight in existence’ – but this was different. The youth who’d pushed his fingers into her then was a boy, and several of his friends had insisted on watching while she lay there feeling nothing. Compared to him, Albert was a man.

  ‘You must find out some things for me about the colonel. If he is the governor, he will know things.’

  She nodded again.

  After that kiss, she would even go to the Russian zone if he asked her to.

  He pulled her closer towards him.

  ‘But you must tell no one about me. Do you understand?’ His grip was quite painful, and his expression frightened her.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t exist. Tell me!’

  ‘You don’t … exist.’

  Then he relaxed his grip and smiled. ‘Good.’ He went to the coat hanging over the back of the chair and took from a pocket what looked like a tube of lozenges. He took one and washed it down with a glass of water. He paced around the room then settled on the edge of the armchair, his legs jiggling with nervous energy. He seemed to have lost all his composure.

  ‘Why are you taking medicine?’

  ‘It helps me stay awake.’

  Albert suddenly looked scared and scarred. At first, Frieda didn’t want to believe it: it didn’t suit her idea of him, it made him seem less of a man; but it also made her feel something else. And she reached out to touch his face and soothe his brow the way her mother used to do to her when she couldn’t sleep for the drone of bombers and for fear of dying in a terrible conflagration in her sleep. ‘What happens if I am in the middle of a dream when I die?’ she would ask. And her mother always said, ‘They won’t hurt you.’ And she found herself repeating the same as she caressed his face.

  ‘They won’t hurt you.’

  Albert flinched at first, unsure how to receive her gesture, like a creature that had never been touched this way. He let her do it once, then again, then he pulled away, muttering something about washing off the dust. Whatever was disturbing him, it couldn’t be tamed by touch.

  As the Morgans sat in front of the fireplace in the hall playing cribbage, Herr Lubert appeared on the stairs; a few steps behind him, a sheepish and reluctant Frieda.

  ‘Please excuse this interruption,’ Lubert said. His face was stern.

  Lewis stood up. ‘Herr Lubert. We were just talking … we were just saying – weren’t we, darling? – that you should join us one evening for a game and perhaps watch a cine film. Is everything all right?’

  Lubert nodded and waited for Frieda. She stood one pace behind him, just out of his peripheral vision, forcing him to turn to her.

  ‘We have come … Frieda has come … to apologize.’

  Rachael fixed her eyes on the girl: she had her eyes to the floor, one arm straight down by her side, the other crooked across it, her fingers scratching the skin nervously.

  ‘What for?’ Lewis asked.

  ‘This.’ Lubert held out Cuthbert’s head.

  ‘You’ve found it!’ Edmund said.

  ‘Frieda?’ Lubert took a half-step back and gave her the floor.

  After a long, excruciating silence, which Rachael wanted to fill by saying that, whatever it was, she was sure it didn’t matter, Frieda spoke.

  ‘Es tut mir leid.’ Frieda’s words were barely audible.

  ‘In English!’ Lubert snapped at her, his manner still awkward and forced.

  ‘I am sorry,’ Frieda said.

  The sound of Frieda speaking English – and speaking it well – was a surprise to Rachael.

  ‘Thank you for saying it, Frieda,’ Rachael said.

  ‘And to Edmund,’ Lubert pressed on.

  ‘I am sorry,’ Frieda said, looking at Edmund.

  ‘It’s all right,�
�� he said. ‘It doesn’t really matter.’

  ‘With respect, it does matter, Edmund,’ Herr Lubert said. He held out Cuthbert’s head. ‘This is your property.’

  ‘Er gehört mir!’ Frieda shouted, and she turned and left the scene, bounding up the stairs three at a time.

  Lubert yelled after her – ‘Komm sofort zurück! Frieda!’ – and for a moment it looked as if he might give chase.

  ‘Herr Lubert,’ Rachael intervened. ‘Please. She … has done enough. Her apology has been accepted.’

  ‘Ah!’ Lubert threw out his arms in a gesture of despair. ‘My daughter is … full of rage and anger. I … apologize …’

  ‘Herr Lubert. I … we … all appreciate and accept Frieda’s apology,’ Lewis offered. ‘It must be harder for her than anyone.’

  ‘All this trouble …’ Lubert said. ‘Perhaps we should go … and live with my sister-in-law – in Kiel.’

  ‘That is not necessary,’ Rachael said firmly. ‘Why don’t you give me that?’ She put out her palm and Lubert gave her the severed head. ‘I can easily mend it.’

  Lubert bowed to Rachael. ‘Thank you.’ He clicked his heels to the colonel, not really meaning to. ‘Colonel.’ He then turned to Edmund. ‘I am sorry for this. I promise nothing like this will happen again.’

  6

  ‘Do you like my hair? Be honest.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You don’t think I look like a poodle?’

  ‘No, it suits you.’

  ‘Mmm. What does that mean, Rachael Morgan? That sounds like a back-handed compliment. You think I’m a pampered, spoilt cow? No matter. My hairdresser – Renate – said it was the latest look. “Ze Katharine Hepburn.” She has terrible teeth, and she sings popular American songs in a ridiculous accent, but she’s a complete virtuoso with the pins and curlers. You should give her a go.’

  ‘Do you think?’

  Susan Burnham paused and gave Rachael an exaggerated look of exasperation.

  ‘Well, of course I do. Look at you: you’re an ill-tended garden. You’re not making the best of yourself. And you need to remember that we have competition. German women outnumber the men two to one in this city. We need to protect our hubbies from themselves. Keep their eyes – right!’