The Aftermath Page 9

  Frieda was the obvious antagonist on this stage, and her actions, rather than repelling him, only added to her allure. The image of that initial encounter on the stairs – the glimpse of something he didn’t understand but wanted to see more of – drew him to the foot of the Luberts’ staircase in the hope that he might. The gift of her full chamber pot seemed like a warning, but also an invitation. It should have disgusted him, alerted him to a danger (he wondered if he should report her behaviour to his parents), but he knew it was leading him somewhere interesting, like a rickety bridge across a ravine to an exotic, dense jungle full of secret smells and sounds. Even her piss, filling the Delft bowl, had smelt mysterious; it had made an intriguing sound as he poured it down the toilet.

  ‘Is there a particular book you are looking for?’

  Herr Lubert had entered the room on his way to the drawing room, still dressed in his blue overalls. If Frieda was Edmund’s adversary, then the twinkling Herr Lubert was his surprising ally. He did not seem to possess any of the German characteristics outlined so authoritatively in the guide. He was not haughty or proud, just confident and friendly; he was not serious or saturnine, he had a lightness; and his expression – sparkly eyes, flaring nostrils and upturned mouth – was always on the cusp of laughter. In fact, in the past few weeks, Edmund had found he liked this German; he seemed genuinely interested, wanting to know all about Wales (‘What is this country like?’), life during the war (‘Was your father away for long?’), even asking if his mother was settling in (‘I hope she is able to feel at home here’). And he knew things. The last time he had met him in the hall, Herr Lubert had pointed out that the red-coated tin soldiers he was playing with on the staircase were models of the troops sent by the Anglo-Germanic King George III to fight the rebel Americans.

  ‘I was just looking,’ Edmund said. ‘Are they all in German?’

  ‘Most. But some are in English. The children’s books especially. You are welcome to read any of the books here. And, if you look hard enough, you’ll find a secret chamber.’ Herr Lubert adopted a conspiratorial air, checked over his shoulders for maid or mother then ran a finger along the second tier of shelving, stopping at a book halfway along. He pulled it out and showed Edmund the cover. It depicted a charcoal sketch of four figures on a rickety wagon escaping some unseen trouble and was called Vom Winde verweht.

  ‘Gone with the Wind,’ he said. ‘This was my wife’s favourite book.’ He paused and became sad and reflective for a moment. It reminded Edmund of his mother drifting away, but Herr Lubert quickly recovered himself and continued.

  ‘We saw this movie in the first years of the war. She did not like it as much as the book. We had an argument about this. But I loved it very much. Clark Gable. “I don’t give a damn!”’

  Edmund didn’t know the line, but he liked the fact that Lubert could do an American accent and say ‘damn’ with so much pleasure and style.

  ‘You have seen this movie?’

  ‘My mother has seen it,’ Edmund said. ‘She saw it with my aunt.’

  ‘It is a very exciting movie. Your mother reminds me of the actress Vivien Leigh a little. Anyway. Look at the gap there.’ He pointed to the space left on the shelf, reached into it and pulled out a colourful box of Cuban cigars. He then pushed it back in and replaced the book.

  ‘Don’t tell anyone. Not even my wife knew about this space. Men have to have their secrets.’

  Later, Edmund was helping his mother check the crockery, which had finally arrived, a month late, and lay spread across the dining-room table like the model of a futuristic city. He’d just finished counting off the sage-green dinner service, impressing and unsettling his mother by getting all the way to twelve in confident and correct German. She was halfway through counting out the cutlery, relieved that it had come and that she wouldn’t have to take up Herr Lubert’s offer of using his admittedly fine solid-silver service in the interim.

  ‘Mother. What does Vivien Leigh look like?’

  ‘Vivien Leigh?’

  ‘Is she pretty?’

  ‘Why do you ask that?’

  ‘Because Herr Lubert said that you look like her.’

  Edmund shared this in the hope that it would soften his mother towards the former master of the house, but for some reason it made her blush and prickle. Perhaps Vivien Leigh was ugly.

  ‘When were you – or rather – why were you talking to Herr Lubert?’

  ‘He was just … showing me some things.’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘Some … toys and some books.’

  ‘You mustn’t encourage him, Edmund. It only makes things awkward if you are too familiar.’

  ‘But he seems very nice … He –’

  ‘Just because someone seems nice, it doesn’t mean that they are,’ Rachael said. ‘You must be careful not to talk too much to him, or his daughter. It will create resentment.’

  Edmund nodded. He certainly wasn’t going to mention his visceral parleys with Frieda. If his mother was unsettled by the affability of Herr Lubert, she would surely explode at the antics of his underwear-flashing, pisspot-proffering daughter.

  ‘Can I go and play in the garden?’

  ‘All right. But don’t wander too far. And put your jumper on. It’s cold outside.’

  On his way out Edmund ran into Heike, who had been trying to flit unnoticed between floors on phantom feet. ‘Guten Morgen, kleine Mädchen,’ he said as she bustled by, trying out a combination of just-learned words. He liked these German words: they were honest, precise and, when strung together, they had a percussive music.

  Heike curtsied before resuming her passage upstairs, greatly amused by something.

  Edmund entered the conservatory and went out through the French windows. He ran across the lawn to the lush, evergreen rhododendron that formed the natural boundary of the grounds. The plant was three times his height and large enough to contain a world within itself, a mature tangle of criss-crossing pathways. Its late flowers were just past their fullness and passing into their annual death, but still showy enough to conjure a credible jungle, and Edmund pushed into its undergrowth like a Pizarro or a Cortés, beating back the branches with imaginary cutlass, losing himself in this fantasy, until he came to a wire-mesh fence – the man-made boundary of the property.

  A rough meadow stretched out before him with the river to one side, a reminder both of their seclusion from and proximity to the war’s brutal consequences. The field was scarred with stubble and bare patches of earth. Some stables and chicken coops had been converted into shanty homes at its far end. By these shacks he could see figures – they looked like children – standing around a small bonfire. And in the middle of the meadow stood a scrawny, motionless donkey with a distended belly.

  Edmund jumped the fence and walked across the field to get a better look at the animal. Even as he got close, it remained dead still, untwitching, tail limp. Its neck was blotched with sores and it barely seemed to have the strength to support its head; its overpronounced bones looked as if they were going to burst through its tired hide. ‘Poor donkey,’ Edmund said, and his eyes watered at the creature’s hopeless state and matching expression. He was surprised at his tears. He had not shed them even for his own brother, and here he was weeping for the least of beasts, and a German one at that – although he wasn’t sure if animals had a nationality. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a sugar lump that he’d taken from the kitchen when Greta was somewhere upstairs. He held it under the donkey’s mouth, but not even sugar could raise a response.

  ‘Mein Mittagessen!’

  Edmund turned towards the sound of the shout and was confronte
d by the mad spectre of a boy wearing a Russian Cossack hat and a dressing gown marching towards him and speaking German in a croaky, rasping voice. Other children followed a few yards behind him.

  ‘Finger weg!’ the boy shouted. He had an aggressive tone but Edmund didn’t feel threatened; there was something comic and affected about his manner: it was all a bit of an act for his gang. ‘Das ist mein Mittagessen!’ he repeated, and Edmund pulled his hand back from beneath the donkey’s mouth. The other children came and stood at the shoulder of their mad-hatted leader, who was now circling Edmund, sniffing the air around him. The children were dressed in an array of clothing that looked as though it had been hastily grabbed from the dressing room of a vaudeville troupe. Edmund felt suddenly conspicuous in his perfectly normal clothes – brown Oxfords, woollen knee-socks, grey shorts, Viyella shirt and V-neck jumper – and the gang started to circle and stroke him. One of them, a boy wearing an inflated life-jacket, even bent down and touched Edmund’s shining toecap then poked him in the ribs, like the advance party of an ancient civilization sent to make contact with a future being to test that it was real.

  ‘Englisch?’ the leader asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Edmund replied, and they all stopped at the sound of his one-word reply.

  ‘Yes!’ the mad-hatted leader repeated, trying to emulate Edmund’s clean enunciation.

  ‘Yes!’ the feral children repeated.

  ‘Fuck my arse, Captain!’ the boy suddenly said.

  Edmund was astonished at the boy’s brazen use of words he knew to be prohibited. He wanted to laugh, but checked himself.

  ‘Damn bloody hell fuck-bastard and kunts! You are fucking dumb bloody Hun scum fuck!’ The boy continued to lob English expletives as if they were grenades. He then pointed at Edmund to respond to – correct, even – his pronunciation. ‘You. Tommy …You do “bloody hell!” You.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Edmund said, delighting in saying it and in the response it garnered. A chorus of ‘bloody hell’s came back from the gang, and there was a concentrated attempt by their leader to get it exactly right:

  ‘Blood-ee … hell! Blood-ee hell. More “blood-ee hell”, bitte!’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Edmund said. ‘Bloody hell and … piss … and … shit and bugger!’

  ‘Piss und shit! Piss und shit! Und bugger!’

  Edmund nodded, approving the pronunciation. The cultural exchange seemed to be going well, and everyone relaxed. The leader beamed, but the boy in the life-jacket wanted more than swear words and continued to circle Edmund, stroking the Shetland-wool jumper with a covetous leer and muttering words Edmund couldn’t hear. The leader snapped at Lifebuoy:

  ‘Didi! Lass ihn in Ruhe!’ He pointed at him then waved him away. But Lifebuoy either couldn’t stop or didn’t hear because he started to tug at Edmund’s jumper, and, although Edmund tried to bat his hand off, the boy kept his scrawny, desperate grip, stretching the jumper out of shape as Edmund tried to pull himself away. Then, not quite sure of his move, Edmund grabbed the boy’s shoulders and the back of the inflated life-jacket and lifted him off the ground with an ease that both shocked and inspired him. For a few seconds, he held the boy aloft, turning him in the air, before dropping him and pushing him away in one movement. The moment Lifebuoy landed, he launched himself back at Edmund, making a low, gurgling sound and, curling his fingers into talons, he started to paw at Edmund’s face with his cracked, dirty nails. The other children formed an amphitheatre around them and were cheering, shouting and even growling. Lifebuoy grabbed Edmund around his neck and tried to pull his head into a lock, but he had no power, only a quickly dissipating nervous energy, and Edmund easily got on top of him and pinned him to the ground, his knee pressing down on his chest. Lifebuoy twisted and wriggled and spat, but he couldn’t get to Edmund. Around them, the jeering escalated into a frenzy with cries of ‘Bring ihn um!’ And Edmund saw that these children weren’t cheering their own, they were cheering him, demanding with their cries and stabbing gestures that he finish him off. Lifebuoy stopped wriggling. Spent or resigned, he lay there ready to accept whatever Edmund dished out. ‘Bring ihn um!’ the children called, and Edmund knew what this word meant without needing it translated. The leader stepped forward and gave Edmund a stick with which to deal the final blow. Edmund took it out of politeness, but he wasn’t going to use it. Instead, he lifted his knee from the stricken boy and stood back as he crawled away to jeers from his supposed friends.

  The leader looked at Edmund with amused admiration as he brushed the dust off his shorts. ‘Good Tommy,’ he said. ‘Fucking good Tommy. Ich heisse Ozi,’ he said.

  Edmund put out a hand: ‘Edmund.’

  Ozi looked at Edmund’s hand, but he didn’t take it; he simply stared at it and then started to have a conversation with someone else.

  ‘Mutti. Er ist in Ordnung. Er ist ein guter Tommy. Er wird mir helfen.’

  He seemed then to wait for a response, some sanction from a guiding spirit, cocking his ear for it then, having apparently received it, he nodded. He spoke to Edmund: ‘Good Tommy, get ciggies.’ And dragged on an imaginary cigarette and pointed at his own chest. ‘Ciggies,’ he said again, and rubbed his stomach in anticipation, pointing at the stables where the bonfire burnt and more figures milled. ‘You bring. Das ist mein Haus.’ And then, looking across the field towards the hedged boundary of the Villa Lubert, he asked: ‘Ist das dein Haus?’

  Edmund, who didn’t have the nuance to explain the intricacies of its ownership, nodded and answered in his own Deutschglish:

  ‘Das ist my house.’

  Lewis was only half listening when Rachael put the issue of Lubert playing the piano to him during dinner.

  ‘Do you think we should let him play? I’m just not sure. I worry that it will complicate things.’

  ‘Why would it do that?’ Lewis asked.

  ‘I don’t know. It might send the wrong signal. I don’t wish to be mean about it. But if we allow one thing, we end up allowing everything. Perhaps it’s healthier for all of us to keep to our separate quarters. Everything in its right place. I don’t know.’

  I don’t know. It was suffix and prefix to her every other thought. This indecision was becoming her signature. But Lewis wasn’t helping. Was he even listening? She could see he was preoccupied. Preoccupied with the occupied. His mind was divided into two zones, the larger, and by far more interesting, being his zone of work, with its needy subdivisions. He was fine as long as the other zone – the domestic zone inhabited by her and Edmund, the Luberts, the staff – was able to take care of itself with minimal input from him. She ought to ask him about his day, she knew it was more important than this; but just for now she wanted him to engage with her realm, however small.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘It’s up to you, dear. I don’t see what harm it can do,’ he said.

  Rachael looked at him. Was he just being his usual accommodating self? Detecting a fob-off, she continued: ‘When do you think would be a good time? Mornings, before he goes to work? Or afternoons? The evening is probably not appropriate.’

  Lewis put down his knife and fork, to show he was thinking.

  ‘Let him play for half an hour, at a time that suits you.’

  Rachael knew what he was doing. He was playing a game of tennis with someone who needed coaching rather than trouncing. He could have blasted a return past her, but he wanted her to stay in the game so he kept hitting nice, clean returns of serve into the right part of the court, leaving her space to hit back. It was his way of not playing the game at all.

  Rachael wondered why it was so difficult. She had left Lubert with the impression that she was happy for hi
m to play. She was happy for him to play, wasn’t she? And she knew perfectly well that Lewis wouldn’t mind. She could have agreed to it there and then, at the piano, without even bothering her husband, so why this constipated rigmarole of bothering him? Why expect him to solve trivial disputes over pianos and plants when he was dealing with people who needed food and clothing? She knew it was unreasonable, but she couldn’t help herself.

  ‘Very well. I’ll inform Herr Lubert that he can play … every afternoon then. At four. For half an hour. An hour.’ Just saying it felt like a momentous achievement.

  ‘Good,’ Lewis said, with some relief. ‘That’s fixed then.’

  The three of them ate on in silence for a while. Lewis finished first, putting his knife and fork together at six o’clock then dabbing his mouth with a damask napkin. He patted the armrest of his chair.

  ‘It’s good to see you’ve been stamping your personality on the place. These chairs are better than those leather thingies.’ He made the kitchen wicker squeak and crack, showing his appreciation. In truth, she’d done very little to change anything, but she let it go.

  ‘How are you finding the staff?’ he continued, in that too obviously compensatory way.

  ‘They still look at me as though they don’t understand a word I’m saying.’

  ‘Why don’t you sit in with Ed’s tutor? Pick up a few basics?’

  ‘Oh, I think they understand me perfectly well. They’re just choosing not to. At times, I feel they’re all laughing at me.’

  Lewis didn’t comment. He turned to Edmund, who was pushing peas around his plate.

  ‘And how are things with Herr Koenig? Sehr gut?’

  Rachael poured herself a glass of water to quench her annoyance then started to stack the plates, before remembering that this was now someone else’s job.

  Edmund, who had finished his meal, was enacting battles of his own: the peas were landing on gravy, forming a beachhead there before pushing on to the mash inland.