The Aftermath Read online

  ‘Or …’ He opened his mouth and pretended to make an extraction, using the tongs as dental pliers.

  ‘Or …’ He used the tongs to peg his nose and mimicked a flatulent.

  ‘Or …’ He bent down and pretended to pick something off the ground.

  ‘Or …’ He reached into his pocket and produced a cigarette. He gripped one end with the tongs, brought it to his mouth and puffed like a dandy. ‘The ladies will go crazy for them.’

  The ferals seemed unimpressed; a boy with a spear led the chorus of criticism:

  ‘People don’t want sugar tongs. People want potatoes.’

  ‘This was a waste of ciggies, Ozi.’

  ‘You are getting us some bad deals.’

  The boy put up his hands. ‘Keep your hats on. I have got something very special. Thanks to the Tommy boy. Something very special.’ He reached under his zebra skin and produced a cigar-shaped tube. Frieda recognized it as the medicine that Albert took: Pervitin, the drug that young soldiers had been given to keep them ‘up’ in the last, bitter days of the war.

  ‘One of these makes you strong. It keeps you warm. And you are never hungry. Berti’s got the box. But I got a tube for each of us.’ The boy stopped and looked towards the door. ‘Eh up. Look who it is.’

  ‘Those aren’t for kids,’ Frieda said, keeping one hand on the door in case she needed to run.

  The feral with the spear raised it to his shoulder, its thin shaft wobbling. ‘Who are you, missy?’

  The kid in the pith helmet jumped down from the billiard table. ‘It’s all right – she’s Berti’s girl.’

  His friend lowered the spear.

  ‘How do you know who I am?’ Frieda asked the kid.

  ‘I saw you.’

  ‘Saw me where?’

  ‘I saw you …’ The kid pushed his right forefinger through the ring of his curled left forefinger and thumb. In, out; in, out. His friends sniggered.

  She ought to strike him for his impertinence. How had he seen them? Was it at the house in Blankenese? Or here?

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘He’s upstairs with his friend.’

  ‘What friend?’

  The boy held up a tube of Pervitin.

  Albert was in the master bedroom, but he wasn’t in bed; he was dancing to a record playing on a portable phonograph; it was one of those rude American tunes that Heike listened to on Radio Hamburg: all jungle drums and squawking brass instruments and disorder. To see Albert dancing to it unnerved her. He was stripped to the waist and moving in a loose-limbed way like a puppet being handled by a drunken puppeteer, placing his feet in random fashion as though crushing ants on the carpet. He was so lost in the dance that he didn’t notice her entering. She felt embarrassed watching him; this skipping, hopping, bobbing young man was not the sleek, cool, controlled Albert she knew: he seemed temporarily possessed.

  ‘Albert? What are you doing?’

  He turned but didn’t seem startled. He continued to dance to the music. ‘My proper German lady …’ He stepped towards her with an exaggerated prowling motion, creeping, creeping up on her to the beats of the music, putting out a hand for her to join him. His skin shone and his eyes were slightly too wide and bulging to be trusted.

  She tugged the stolen file from her skirts and held it out to him.

  ‘I have something important.’

  ‘Benny Goodman,’ he said, still dancing. ‘Benny Goodman. Dance!’ He held out his hand to her. Insisting. It was radiant and clammy. The 88 scar on his bicep was twitching. She wanted to please him, but she couldn’t dance.

  ‘I can’t,’ she said.

  ‘You can … my proper German lady.’

  He placed the hand on her hip and led her with his other. Frieda pressed the file against her chest and moved her feet from side to side in a perfunctory manner, but she couldn’t let herself go. This modulated music was too anarchic, too hard to grasp. And she needed Albert to be … well … not this! With every jig and jerk of his body, he seemed stranger to her.

  ‘I can’t!’

  Albert backed away, still dancing, towards the phonograph. He lifted the needle from the record.

  ‘So. So. So. The girl will not dance. A soldier should know when to enjoy himself. Come on then, my keen friend. Show me what you have.’

  She handed him the file. He had stopped the music, but he continued to dance to the tune in his head. Albert took the file then stroked it. ‘“Restricted” …’ he read. ‘This is good.’ He flipped the elastic back and opened the file. He took his time reading the text, his lips moving as he translated it. After a few seconds, he began to nod appreciatively.

  ‘Where did you get this?’

  ‘From the colonel.’

  Albert read on, making satisfied humming noises.

  ‘It is good?’ she asked.

  He put the file down and looked at her, voraciously now. He placed his hot hands on her biceps. She could make out the pulse at his neck, hard and fast, and feel his erection pressing against her. Remembering the power she’d had over him before, she started to undo his belt. He made the humming sound again and pushed himself against her. He lifted her skirt and she pulled her undergarments down. She leant back against the end of the bed frame. He made noises of pleasure as he pushed into her, and this made her feel proud and powerful again. She began to reciprocate the noises to please him, then she found herself making them involuntarily, for herself as well as for him. He took much longer to reach the end this time, and this allowed her time to feel new pleasures. When he was done he stayed against her, slumped and floppy. And then he stepped away, doing up his trousers. She felt as though she could hear and see everything in the room, and everything outside the house.

  ‘Will you mark me?’

  He laughed, popping another Pervitin.

  ‘Fine.’

  He took a cigarette from the packet on the bedside table. He lit it, took a drag, and then came towards her.

  ‘It will hurt.’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘Where do you want it?’

  ‘Here.’ She held out her lily-white forearm and circled the soft part of the skin.

  ‘You can take one of the tablets – you won’t feel it.’

  She shook her head. ‘I want to feel it.’

  He gripped her wrist hard and jammed the cigarette into her arm, holding it there until it was extinguished. She tried not to cry out, making a moan through gritted teeth. He re-lit the cigarette and made another ‘O’ above the burn to complete the 8. She looked at the new scar, already red and raw. The smell of burning skin was extraordinary. She imagined her mother briefly, on fire, her whole body being branded, then she nodded for Albert to continue. He tried to re-light the cigarette but he’d been pressing so hard it had concertinaed and wouldn’t take. He lit another and made the next ‘O’, the stings of the first 8 countering the laying of the second. And for the last ‘O’ she found herself emitting a noise of pleasure not unlike the noises she had been making minutes before. When it was done she took Albert’s face in her hands in a manner she imagined adult – for that is what she now surely was – and looked into his eyes. The drugs were making them twitch and flicker, and she wanted them focused on her. She cupped his face again and made blinkers of her hands.

  ‘Why do you take these drugs?’

  ‘I have to be alert. There are many things to think about. They help me with my missions.’

  ‘You don’t tell me about your missions. Or your plans.’

  ‘All in good time …’

  ‘You keep saying that. Don’t you trust me?’

  ‘Of cours
e. But … it is better that you don’t know. You have been … useful.’

  She wanted to be more than this.

  ‘You talk about being a soldier. But … I don’t see you fighting. I see you dancing. And taking these drugs. You aren’t doing anything.’

  Albert stiffened, his head pulling away from her.

  ‘Don’t worry, my German lady. I know what I’m doing.’ He smiled at her patronizingly.

  ‘Do you? You talk about an army. But where are they? All I see is those Trümmerkinder.’

  Albert looked at her, trying to focus.

  ‘My proper German lady … you are like a wave of Tommy bombers. Like the wham wham wham of ack-ack. Don’t worry. I know what I have to do. I have seen it already. I have seen it all.’ He tapped his head to show where he had seen it. ‘And it will be big.’

  Mickey Mouse stood at the crossroads with only an umbrella for cover. In need of shelter, he went and knocked on the door of the house, only for the porch to collapse and reveal another door that was open. The wind was blowing the house left and right and almost off its foundations. As Mickey entered the house, the door slammed shut behind him, padlocking itself. Bats filled the room and a terrified Mickey jumped into a pot before running from the room, crying, ‘Mummy!’

  Everyone in the house, except for Greta, who had declined Rachael’s invitation, was gathered around the Ace Pathescope watching the final film of the evening: Mickey Mouse’s Haunted House. The projector had been Rachael’s tenth-wedding-anniversary gift to Lewis (tin and aluminium), but she might as well have given it to Edmund, for it was he who got the most pleasure and use out of it. And he was in his element now: projectionist, sweet seller, diplomat, interpreter, passing round the all-day suckers and the bas-relief ginger and cinnamon Spekulatius biscuits, anticipating every conceivable funny point in the film (‘This bit is good; you will like this bit’), laughing then checking to make sure the others were laughing, too. Under the mesmerizing glow of these silly little films, the household had reached a happy unity: Heike was tentative, before collapsing into giggles; Richard was distracted by the mechanics of it all but then started to cackle at Popeye flexing his muscles; Frieda’s adamantine face broke into surprising crinkles at Buster Keaton’s death-defying stunts, and her laugh, when it finally came, was a fledgling version of her father’s.

  Lubert guffawed with abandon, a sophisticate enjoying simple pleasures. Rachael wondered if he was genuinely lost in the films or putting on an exaggerated act of appreciation for the benefit of the others. Was he feeling – as she was – that this was all a prelude to something more interesting? As the picture broke up into dots and scratches, their eyes met, and she fancied she could detect the same anticipation in him.

  ‘The end!’ Herr Lubert said with a flourish, clapping vigorously.

  Edmund flipped the main light back on and everyone blinked in the sudden brightness.

  ‘Thank you, Edmund. This is a future for you. You will make movies one day, I think. Frau Morgan, what do you think?’

  Edmund, who had only ever thought of being a soldier like his father, looked to his mother to see if she would agree to such an outlandish career choice.

  ‘I think he will,’ Rachael said, and Edmund swelled with the double endorsement.

  Richard thanked Edmund for the show. ‘Popeye sailor man,’ he said, and he flexed his biceps, chuckling to himself. Heike was speechless with it all, touching her breast to indicate her gratitude while making little curtsies. Rachael was sure she heard her say ‘Delicious’ to Edmund.

  Frieda, whose hair was back in its binding – albeit a single plait now – remained silent.

  ‘Say thank you to Edmund and Frau Morgan, Frieda.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. She looked at Rachael and tried a smile. ‘I would like to go bed now,’ she said, in English.

  ‘Of course, Frieda,’ Rachael said. ‘Frohe Weihnachten.’

  ‘Can we watch Mickey one more time, Mother? Please?’ Edmund was already re-spooling the negative.

  ‘I think that’s enough for now, Ed. The quicker you get to bed, the quicker you’ll be able to open your presents.’

  ‘Aren’t we going to open them now? The way they do in Germany?’

  ‘I thought we were doing things the English way,’ Lubert said, winking at him.

  Edmund wrestled briefly with the idea of postponing such gratification for future reward, but he accepted it from Lubert. ‘All right then,’ he said. He then kissed his mother. ‘Good night, Mother.’

  ‘Good night, darling.’

  Heike had started to clear the plates away.

  ‘You can leave them, Heike,’ Rachael said. ‘Really. I will do this.’

  Heike hesitated, looking to Lubert for guidance.

  ‘Take the night off, Heike,’ Lubert said, effortlessly assuming his old role of master of the house.

  ‘Good night then,’ she said, bowing and blushing and backing away.

  Rachael and Lubert waited for everyone to disappear upstairs to their rooms. Lubert pretended to inspect the lens of the Ace while Rachael stacked the plates. At last, the creaking of floorboards ceased and the crackling of the fire became the only sound in the house.

  ‘Well. That was most enjoyable,’ Rachael said. ‘It was really lovely to see everyone laughing like that.’

  ‘This is the miracle of Mickey Mouse,’ Lubert said. ‘Perhaps he can bring world peace to us all.’

  ‘Would you like a nightcap?’

  Lubert wasn’t sure what this meant.

  ‘It’s what we call a last drink before bed,’ she explained. ‘To help you sleep.’

  ‘A drink is never just a drink with the British.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Bitte.’

  Rachael poured two military-strength whiskies, adding a dash of water to each. She handed one to Herr Lubert and pulled up a footstool to sit in front of the fire, inviting him to do the same. They watched the flames in silence, side by side, inches apart. A fire was a theatre in its own right and this one was loud and lively, full of intriguing plots and sub-plots. Rachael fixed her eyes on the top coal, which was just turning orange.

  ‘I like the way that you make more of Christmas Eve here,’ she said. ‘I’ve always preferred Advent to Christmas.’

  ‘Are you a religious woman?’

  Rachael shook her head slowly rather than definitively.

  ‘I’ve always enjoyed the trappings.’

  ‘But the thing itself? When it is all stripped away?’

  ‘I think my faith – such as it was – was blown out of me.’

  ‘Perhaps we should not talk about such things.’

  ‘No. We should,’ Rachael said, feeling the need to express a deeper conviction. ‘We rarely talk about the things that matter. We sort of crab our way around them. I think it’s the spirit of the age. A hangover from the Victorians. Or too many wars. I don’t know. If the future can be anything, I would like it to be one where people feel able to talk about what matters.’

  The clock in the study chimed midnight.

  ‘Happy Christmas,’ she said.

  ‘Prost,’ Lubert said, raising his glass to chink hers.

  ‘Prost.’

  ‘To a new era of talking about what matters,’ Lubert suggested.

  But the thing that mattered was still unsaid.

  ‘What about you?’ she asked, not quite ready for it to be named. ‘Do you believe?’

  Lubert held the glass to the light of the fire, making the whisky flame and flare.

  ‘In a god who becomes an infant? This is hard.’ He tilted the liquid in his glass; the
crystal refracting the gold. ‘It’s easier to believe in a strong man than a weak God.’

  The conversation was still a dance, with neither quite taking the lead. Rachael could see that the cut over Lubert’s brow had healed quickly.

  ‘The colonel said he was going to Heligoland,’ Lubert said. ‘The Holy Island. This is where the saints used to go.’

  ‘He will feel at home there then.’ It was out before she could edit herself. She looked down at the flames again. The single coal she had fixed her eyes on had set the adjacent coals glowing.

  ‘When the colonel told me that he was going away, I was … pleased,’ Lubert said.

  Rachael roiled the whisky and water in the tumbler. She could feel the subtle and devious manoeuvrings of her heart. ‘So was I.’

  Lines. Boundaries. Borders. She had already crossed a few, but these three words felt like the largest leap yet.

  Lubert took her hand, his much warmer than hers, and kissed it tenderly. Rachael squeezed and pulled his hand, leading his mouth to hers, angling her head to kiss him. He responded immediately and kissed her deeply. Rachael was astonished again by the quick and easy intimacy. When they broke apart, Lubert tried to say something, but she stopped his words with another kiss. If they discussed what was happening, if she was forced to think about it, she might stop. When they broke off a second time she made to kiss him again, but this time he resisted, pulling back his head like a bird, leaving her kissing air.

  ‘… I will go to my room,’ he said. ‘Wait until my light is on – you will see it through the main window. I will leave the door open.’

  The instruction was so precise, he must have thought it through. He stood up, letting go of her hand but keeping his eyes on her, raising a finger to his lips then holding it aloft to indicate where he was going and how brief a pause this would be.

  Rachael counted to sixty, like a girl playing hide and seek, closing her eyes and listening to the creaking floorboards. She waited for the voices – of reason, sense, conscience – to tell her not to go to him. But no such voice surfaced; all she could hear was the thrum of her desire. It would take something exceptional to stop her now – cosmic intervention, an earthquake, something as singular as a great cat walking across the lawn.