The Aftermath Read online

  Edmund’s father said that Koenig was the former headmaster of a school in Kiel and a man of excellent all-round ability – a real polymath – so Edmund was surprised at his tutor’s tatty apparel and reduced physical condition. He looked too old and diminished to be a headmaster; there was little in his appearance that suggested authority or erudition. But after a few hours in his company Edmund began to appreciate his father’s commendation. Herr Koenig turned out to be as adept at mathematics as he was knowledgeable in history and English literature. And he was as careful as a creature of the forest, too. Just as there was no fat on his body, there was nothing superfluous in his speech; everything he said seemed filtrated, purged of impurities, before being uttered. This, and the hint of a more respectable past, gave him a modest dignity.

  ‘Let us look at the atlas.’

  Looking at the atlas marked the end of the session and allowed Koenig to give Edmund a synthesized history and geography lesson in German. Edmund fetched his old Cassell atlas and opened it to the map of the world. Koenig asked Edmund to name the colour of the countries he pointed to, placing his finger on Canada first.

  ‘Rosa.’

  The United States of America.

  ‘Grün.’

  Brazil.

  ‘Er … gelb?’

  ‘Good.’

  On India.

  ‘Rosa.’

  On Ceylon.

  ‘Rosa.’

  Australia.

  ‘Rosa.’

  ‘Warum sind sie rosa?’ Koenig asked.

  ‘They are all part of the British Empire?’

  ‘Good. You are quick to learn.’

  ‘My father says that the British Empire will shrink now, because of the war. He says that we don’t have any money left and that America and the Soviet Union are now the most powerful.’

  ‘There will be many changes to this atlas. It will not be as pink as this.’

  Edmund wondered what Herr Koenig really thought about the British and their Empire. Was he being polite by pointing to its extensive reach and rule? It might have been chance, but Koenig’s finger had ignored a brown Japan, a yellow Italy and, most conspicuously, a blue Germany, which, even with its borders cut back and set to the terms of Versailles, sat there centre stage, a potent hub at the heart of Europe. It was surprising that only a handful of the world’s countries – Tanganyika, Togo, Namibia – were tinted with the same blue.

  ‘Was Hitler jealous of our Empire?’

  The effect of this question on Koenig was instant: he stiffened, straightening his back, and clicked the tensing cartilage in his neck, his mind performing a lightning calculation.

  ‘I am not permitted to talk about these things,’ he said.

  Edmund half understood.

  ‘It’s all right. My mother isn’t here.’

  Koenig stayed silent, not happy at all.

  ‘Is it because you are waiting to be cleaned?’ Edmund asked.

  ‘You mean “cleared”,’ Koenig corrected. ‘Germans do not like to talk about those days.’

  ‘But you were a headmaster. You will be all right, yes? You will be given your white certificate?’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘You will have a Persilschein?’

  ‘You know this word?’

  ‘I learned it from my friend.’

  ‘German friend?’

  Edmund nodded. ‘He says all Germans want is to have a Persilschein.’

  Koenig rubbed his hands again, as though trying to wring something from them.

  ‘Yes. To be like laundry. Without any stains.’

  ‘Some people are buying them on the black market. A certificate costs four hundred cigarettes.’

  ‘You are very well informed about these matters, Edmund.’

  ‘Maybe I could get one for you?’

  Herr Koenig put up his hands. ‘Nein. I must go through the right … channels, like everyone else.’

  Of course. Koenig was a headmaster, and headmasters had to play by the rules.

  ‘Then you will be a headmaster again?’

  For the first time, Herr Koenig became wistful. He looked at the atlas, and at the big, grün nation across the blue water. ‘My brother has invited me to America. He emigrated there after the Great War. He invented a machine for milking cows more quickly than any other machine and now he drives a Buick and lives in a house with a lake. In Wisconsin. Wisconsin is nearly as big as Germany. He tells me everything is bigger in America. The cows. The meals. The cars. His Buick has bullhorns on the bonnet.’

  Edmund was ready to make the journey himself. ‘Then you will go?’

  Herr Koenig stared at the atlas. He touched Wisconsin.

  ‘It’s too late for me now.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I will be sixty in a few years.’

  To Edmund, all grown-ups beyond the age of forty bled indistinguishably into one category. He could not appreciate the subtle difference between the expectations and ambitions of a still-fit 41-year-old and those of a 59-year-old on the cusp of decline, the shifts in vitality and energy levels, the surfacing of ailments that restrict and shape a person’s course in life. Koenig had the opportunity to go to America. Why would age be a barrier to such a thing?

  ‘But you will be the same age if you stay in Germany.’

  Koenig smiled, keeping his mouth closed but making tiny laughing whistles through his nostrils.

  ‘Is it because it is too expensive?’

  ‘All these questions. This is like a little Fragebogen. No. My brother would pay for my passage.’

  ‘So … then, you could go?’ Edmund was enjoying the vicarious thrill of imagining his tutor America-bound and the idea of playing some part in propelling Koenig across the Atlantic to a new life. But Koenig seemed to have reached the end of comfortable explanation. He changed position in his chair, sitting up and asserting a little more authority.

  ‘It is … complicated.’ Koenig closed the atlas and, with it, the possibility of further exploration.

  Edmund knew his questions would have to stop there. Once a grown-up used this word, there was no going on.

  The carriage clock chimed midday and masked the awkward moment.

  ‘It is time,’ Herr Koenig said, with relief. ‘Tomorrow we will look at population and resources. We can work on your big numbers.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. I would like that.’

  Herr Koenig usually left by the side entrance, but the snow had formed a drift there and Richard had not yet got round to digging a clearing. In the absence of any grown-ups, Edmund saw Herr Koenig to the front door, where his tutor spent some time tying his hat to his head with his scarf with the same rodent-like fastidiousness he’d shown with the cake. A gust of cold air rushed in through the open door, scattering powdery snow crystals across the hallway. Koenig instructed Edmund to close the door quickly after him so as to keep the precious heat in; but some instinct made Edmund keep it ajar. The wind was such that he’d have had to slam it at Koenig’s back to close it, and he didn’t want to do this. Instead, he held it open and, leaning into it to counterbalance the force of the wind, he saw his tutor off. Koenig trod quickly, like a man on ice, trying not to stop lest he slip up: a diminishing grey-black blemish in a snow-white Persilschein world.

  Edmund ran upstairs to his parents’ room to look for cigarettes. While frisking through his father’s jackets, he found his silver cigarette case. It was empty – his father had not yet transferred his supply from carton to case – but Edmund was immediately distracted by the two photographs held behind the elastic. The first was of his mother, sitting on a beach in Pembrokeshire
, where he and Michael had tried to hold back the sea with a sand-dam; the second, tucked just behind it, was a dog-eared snapshot of Michael in their garden at Amersham. It was a jolt to see his dead brother as alive as this, wearing his cable-knit cricket jumper, making a funny little smirk as though sharing a joke with the picture-taker, who, in this case, must have been their mother. Edmund had a vivid flash of the wake, his mother wiping snot from her cheek in the Narberth garden, his father too concerned about everyone else to tend to his own emotions and already on his way back to war, and himself trying to prevent the tears that welled in his eyes from rolling down his cheeks because he didn’t want his cousins to see. Edmund now felt the same emptying-filling sensation inside him, like water being drawn from his belly up through his chest to behind his nose and pushing at his eyes. But it wasn’t for Michael. It was for himself. There was no photo of him in his father’s cigarette case. Why didn’t he have one? Maybe there was one in his wallet. Perhaps his father didn’t need a picture of him, because he was alive. Or did Edmund need to die a dramatic death to get his picture in that intimate gallery? Edmund imagined himself dying in a medley of heroic and beautiful ways – in a fire, in a war, in a snowstorm – as his mother hammered the staccato notes of ‘The Earl King’ in the background; then his father looking through a shoebox, selecting a snap to remember poor Edmund by then cutting it down to fit inside the silver cigarette case.

  Edmund clicked the case shut and put it back in the pocket of the jacket, breathing in his father’s meat-and-moss smell. He loved his father in a simple way; he loved his mother, too, but his feelings for her were like a maze compared to the straight pathway to his affection for his father. It was somehow easier to love a person who wasn’t there.

  The way the case slid into the lined pocket – the weight of it – was perfect, and he repeated the action several times. Then, resuming his search for tobacco, he rummaged through his father’s washbag. It smelt of coal-tar soap and eucalyptus. Inside, there was a tortoiseshell comb, a damp flannel and the Distinguished Service Order medal. Edmund lifted the gold-edged, white-enamelled cross from the bag and examined it. What was it doing in here? It was surely a kind of sacrilege to toss a medal into such an undistinguished receptacle. It should have been in a velvet-lined box or, better still, permanently pinned to the breast of his father’s overcoat, the way the Russian soldiers wore theirs – even as they went into battle. The date the medal was awarded – May 1945 – was engraved on the back, and a blob of soap had stuck to and stained the red-and-blue ribbon. Edmund flicked the soap away and held the medal up to his own breast. He was just about to commend himself for his own heroic action when a piercing shout from downstairs had him running for cover.

  Mrs Burnham moved through the house like a hot, swarming wind, causing swirls and ripples in the atmosphere, changing its temperature. Rachael, regretting that she’d let such a powerful force loose, followed in her wake, praying that Herr Lubert had not returned home early.

  ‘We’ll start here,’ she began, requisitioning the place for her own fantasies. ‘We’ll shake off the snow and warm ourselves by the fire. We’ll have a few pink gins. Or maybe hot hock. The Thompsons will be late. They are congenitally late; it’s a posh thing. I suggest you give them an earlier start time. We’ll chit-chat about nothing much and this and that. Of course, everyone will be making polite noises about the house while desperately trying to hide their envy. Then we will promenade on through to …’ she said this instinctively knowing where to go next, and letting herself through the double doors ‘… to the – Good Lord. It’s a whole billiard room! Look at these pictures. I take it they’re not yours. What on earth is it?’ She looked at the picture as though it were about to bite her. ‘Modern art. I don’t understand it. Mind you, Keith has an eye for it. So. Then. On through … over here …’ through the doors to the dining room, which were already open ‘… And into the … That’s more like it. Although I think I’ve rather undercooked the guest list. We can get at least – sixteen? – around this table? Perhaps you should have the air marshal and his wife? They have a taste for the grand. So. Dinner will be served. Five courses? Please, no sauerkraut. It tastes of poverty and pubs. Anyway. We’ll all get into the inevitable discussion about the state of things back home. Someone will mention the Russians. Blah blah. Someone will mention the lack of fuel. Blah blah. Around about pudding time – I will bring a dessert – we’ll all be feeling the effects of the gin, or whatever we’re drinking. Keith will be looking a little puce with it. He will have an argument with someone and it’ll be time for the men … No! Perhaps we will subvert things and let them stay here while we withdraw –’ She pushed the arched door open and stepped into the loveliest room in the house, so lovely she couldn’t bring herself to compliment it: ‘Mmm. Yes. This will do. A piano. Excellent. We’ll all be roaring enough to sing some Gilbert and S. We’ll let Diana warble away and we’ll all pretend she has a stunning voice. You, I suspect, sing? And play? Good. Perhaps a game of charades –’ She paused to look out of the main window towards the gates. ‘Is that the daughter?’

  Frieda was walking purposefully up the drive. In the snow and with her braided hair she looked like a child from a Grimms’ tale, vulnerable to witch and wolf.

  ‘She’s home early today.’

  ‘She needs to do something about those pigtails. You should set Renate on her.’

  As Rachael watched Frieda, she had a pang of remorse for not seeing the need before. She promised herself to offer Frieda a session with the hairdresser when she next came.

  Mrs Burnham screwed her eyes for a final snapshot and then turned back to the room to finish her tour. ‘Anyway, I suppose we can have our nightcaps here – or, no … Ah. Back through …’ Back through the second door leading to the fireplace in the entrance hall and completing the circuit with a flourish: ‘Ta da! Back where we started. Now this is the place to have our tipples. We’ll watch the last embers of the fire burn down and then … carriages at three. Have I missed anything?’

  ‘You’ve set the bar quite high, Susan.’

  ‘That was the dress rehearsal. The real thing will be much better.’

  ‘I’m not sure I can deliver something quite so … efficient.’

  ‘Nonsense. You’re a clever girl. And you have staff.’

  Rachael nodded, grateful that they were absent from this whirlwind visit.

  ‘Although you said you were having problems?’

  ‘I’m finding it hard to delegate.’

  ‘You have to be firm. Show them you’re used to servants. They’ll pick up on it if you’re not, and then they’ll resent you.’

  ‘I think they already do.’

  The door to the kitchens was open, and they could hear the sounds of scuttling below. Rachael closed it. ‘Especially the cook, ’ she added.

  ‘Much better to show them who is boss. Better for everyone.’

  Susan Burnham continued to consume and catalogue the room with her eyes.

  ‘And the family? How is it all working? Where on earth do they eat?’

  ‘They have a kitchen on the top floor. There’s a dumb waiter.’

  ‘Is there any mingling?’

  ‘Not really. Ed’s broken down a few walls.’

  ‘I’d keep them firmly up if I were you.’

  Rachael had already decided not to mention the incident with Cuthbert; Susan Burnham would somehow magnify it into an actual murder; within a week, the whole district would know.

  ‘Ah, look.’ Mrs Burnham was drawn to the space above the fireplace. ‘I see they’ve taken him down.’

  Rachael looked at the spot Mrs Burnham was looking
at: a portrait-shaped rectangle of unfaded wallpaper, the imprint of an absent picture.

  ‘Taken who down?’

  ‘The Führer. That’s where they would have hung him. German houses are full of those dark spaces on the wall. It’s just that most of them are clever enough to cover them up. Don’t look so shocked. They all had them. Keith calls it “the stain that cannot be removed”.’

  Rachael looked at the stain and imagined it well enough. Why had she not noticed it before?

  ‘I think even Keith would overlook a few traces of grey to live in a place like this.’

  ‘I don’t think Herr Lubert had anything to do with the Nazi Party. From what I can gather.’

  ‘Well, of course. They all claim that.’ She looked at the house and put out her hands, resting her case. ‘You think all this comes without compromise? A rich, powerful German family would have to have had something to do with the regime.’

  Rachael had the feeling that these judgements were not Mrs Burnham’s; that she had already discussed the matter with her husband.

  ‘I’m sure they stayed out of it.’

  ‘Oh, come, Rachael. It might be the Christian thing to think the best of people, but we mustn’t be naive about these matters.’

  Rachael had not suspected Herr Lubert in this way. After all, to have agreed with Mrs Burnham would have made her look stupid, Lewis a reckless fool and their place in the villa untenable.

  ‘They can’t all be guilty, Susan,’ she said, quoting her husband now. ‘I really don’t think he was involved.’

  ‘My dear, they were all involved. It’s just a matter of determining how much.’

  7

  ‘Good Tommy. Good, Christian Tommy. I like English way of life. I like King and Qveen of Vindsor. I like demockery. I learn about Dominion New Zealand. I want live in Dominion. You help me go, Tommy?’