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Copyright © 2020 Geoff Pridmore
The right of Geoff Pridmore to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
This work is entirely fictitious and bears no resemblance to any persons living or dead.
ISBN 978 1913551 407
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Gnossienne
n. a moment of awareness that someone you’ve known for years still has a private and mysterious inner life, and somewhere in the hallways of their personality is a door locked from the inside, a stairway leading to a wing of the house that you’ve never fully explored – an unfinished attic that will remain maddeningly unknowable to you, because ultimately neither of you has a map, or a master key, or any way of knowing exactly where you stand.
The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Hanne’s Story, 1963
Chapter 2
Hugo’s Story
Chapter 3
Homecoming
Chapter 4
The Reunion
Chapter 5
Heike’s Story
Chapter 6
Lookout
Prologue
I am a spy.
Correction: I was a spy.
Well, not so much a “James Bond” spy,
I was a surveillance officer.
It was a job I did.
It had its limitations.
No “friends” with which to share.
A spy – sorry! – surveillance officer doesn’t get to choose his friends or the story.
No choice.
Only this time, I have a choice.
My subject(s)? One family occupying two very different worlds.
What follows is the transcript of a former surveillance officer; it begins quite a while ago…
Chapter 1
Hanne’s Story, 1963
17th June 1963
School Report: Hanne Constance Mauer
Summary of academic year
September 1962 – June 1963
Hanne has had the most amazing year! As she nears the end of her primary school years here at St Caradoc’s she is busy preparing herself for a place at Helston Grammar School. However, there is still a way to go yet.
Patience is a virtue, as we on the staff often remind her. In all, she has excelled in her work, especially in this last term. Her strongest subjects are: Geography, English and History, whilst dragging her feet somewhat in Arithmetic, but to her credit she is an able all-rounder. Outdoors, she lacks co-ordination and I suspect this may be an eyesight problem?
There are still tensions in the playground as I’m sure you’re well aware, but I have no doubt these will ease as the years pass. Overall, she is a friendly and bright child who exudes confidence. Her imagination knows no bounds and never ceases to amaze those who like a good story. I was sorry to note recently that her “Andalusian Gypsy” phase has passed, as I always found her stories so colourful and amusing. Eleven Plus notwithstanding, providing she continues to put the work in, Helston Grammar will have a chair and desk awaiting her for 1965.
Departure
Hugo Mauer pulled tight on the cord with one hand, looped it and tied a knot that nine-year-old Hanne Mauer didn’t recognise but admired tremendously for its obvious steadfastness. That knot wasn’t going anywhere and would keep their luggage safe for the long journey ahead.
Oma must have taught dad how to tie a good knot. Oma must have taught him everything he knew. Dad could do anything. Hanne believed he was “dexterous”, having learnt the word “dexterity” only six weeks before and through her own unprompted inquiry.
Sitting patiently, she admired her father through the distance of his reflection in the van’s wing mirror. Once he was in the driving seat, having satisfied himself that all was secure and complete, they could be underway.
‘You have the list I made?’ From the back of the van, Hugo’s inquiry sounded more like a command than a question.
‘I have it in my top pocket.’
“Uncle” Wally seemed a tad frustrated with the question, as if it had been asked a hundred times in the past week. She heard the sound of his hammer dropping onto the concrete as if he might be making some sort of gesture or protest, but she knew in her heart of hearts that that would be most unlike him. He’d never lost his temper – never ever.
In the wing mirror, if she angled her head down enough, she could see his top half; see him pull a note out of his top pocket – very briefly – then immediately push it back down again.
‘Here,’ said Wally.
‘Let me see it again.’
Typical dad! Can’t let things rest. She almost protests but thinks better of it. The tiny, rectangular mirror makes everything look far away. Wally pulls out the list again, with thumb and forefinger, unfolds it, checks to make sure that it really is the only piece of paper that’s ever occupied the outer top pocket of his tattered old tweed jacket in at least twenty years, before handing it to his old friend to study one last time.
‘Come on, Dad! We’ll be late for the ferry!’ Hanne was losing patience.
‘Hush now!’
‘Hanne! Dad’s got to make sure…’ Rene, patient as always, finishes her sentence with a gesture to the lips. Like all good mothers she leads by example: mum can sit quietly; baby Marco is sitting quietly and he’s only two; therefore, Hanne must sit quietly. Hanne, however, is quite unaware of such etiquette.
‘Make sure what?’
‘That everything’s going to be all right while we’re away.’
‘Uncle Wally will look after everything. He’s very good at looking after things.’
‘Yes, he’s very good.’
‘And it’s not like we’ve got real animals on our farm – not like a proper farm.’ Rene has to agree, Hanne is quite right; it’s not a farm in the traditional sense of comprising animals in stone-wall barns, hens pecking, fat geese waddling about their business, pigs and goats awaiting their needs, a sturdy old cob ready to ride scratching his hind quarters against the gate. What had been a romantic vision of growing flowers for a living had become an industry in its own right; this new property was nothing more than industrial premises in all its concrete block ugliness, and nothing was ever going to make it pretty. Maybe Germany will be pretty. It has to be!
By the time she checks the mirror again, Wally has picked up his hammer and turned away to carry on banging silly nails into silly fences. Isn’t the world full enough of silly nails and fences and walls? Does it need any more dividing lines and divisions?
Hugo
drops his long frame into the driver’s seat, slamming the driver’s door because that’s what it needs, but in doing so rocks the van on its springs like a boat rocking on water.
‘Dad’s too big for this little van.’
‘What are you bellyaching about now, young lady?’
‘I’m not bellyaching, but it’s warm in here and Marco will be sick if we don’t go soon and he’ll probably be sick all over me!’
‘I do not think the ferryboat captain will want you on board if you are going to complain.’
Rene also thinks her husband is far too tall for such a little van; his long legs and big feet overwhelm the driving space and floor pedals so that he looks like a large child squeezing into a toddler’s pedal car.
Behind, Hanne shifts awkwardly in her makeshift forward-facing seat because she can’t see enough over his broad shoulders. She wants to see the road ahead, and to do this she will have to sit either very upright or tilt to the side. Tall for her age: 5’ 4” at nine years, eight months, eight days, dad tells her that good height is a family norm – good height coming in this instance from both parents. Everyone remarks on her height, which is normally a wonderful compliment, but in this instance she has nowhere to put her lanky legs other than outstretched in front of her because this is the van variant of the Morris Minor – a working vehicle never meant to have seats in the back or overly tall children.
Two weeks ago, in an effort to introduce herself, she had written to Oma using special airmail paper, telling her – in best primary English – that dad had to have a van because he is a flower grower and men like him need vans for their produce, which has to be taken to the railway station or a lorry depot, depending on cost and “availability” – another word she’d only recently learned, and one of her favourites. Come this morning’s post and time of departure, Oma had still not replied; but had she done so she might have asked: Can’t he have a proper car for holidays?
Hugo’s shovel-like hands cover the wheel like a giant’s hands. Never mind Hanne’s comfort; dad doesn’t look at all comfortable and he’s in the driver’s seat!
In preparation for her own driving lessons that she will book in 1970 she takes note of all starting procedures: he opens the choke, turns the key, pulls the starter, engages first gear, releases the handbrake and away! Pulls out of the yard just like any old day of the week, but this time everyone is on board. How is the old dump going to manage without them?
She glances back out of the tiny rear windows to wave to Wally, but he is already busy again wiring a fence that dad needs in order to partition something that needs partitioning if it is to function properly and make money. There seems to her to be an utter lack of sentimentality. Nobody says goodbye, nobody waves farewell and there are no animals. What’s more, she won’t miss the house one jot. It is the creepiest, coldest farmhouse in the world and if she weren’t to see it again, so what!
She makes a mental note of the milometer: 33030. Her estimate is that it will read 34030 by the time they reach Oma’s in Bavaria, and this will be her private obsession for the journey. Nobody else need know as she is testing herself on her keen ability with figures, which is much better than Mrs Williams thinks it is.
Sitting beside her, wrapped up in his own little world of wonder, two-year-old Marco is so young he doesn’t even know what “three” is – he hasn’t even reached the age of three, so she can’t share anything with him. At least he’s quiet, and that’s a mercy for all concerned.
Through town the needle on the speedometer mesmerises her as it flickers between 20 and 30 mph then quickly down to zero as dad stops to let someone cross at a zebra crossing; it’s Saturday morning and the townsfolk are busy shopping. Hannah carefully observes each and every single one of them. There just might be someone they know, and she desperately wants to wave to them with a view to letting them know – if they don’t already – that the Mauers are off on their holidays – abroad, not Torquay – and it’s well deserved.
Out of town, once the A30 straightens out a bit, their average speed should increase to around 40 to 50 mph, and perhaps even over that when crossing Bodmin Moor and Dartmoor (Hanne’s estimate). She’s planned the route on the map and memorised it. Mrs Williams didn’t give her any great marks for memory, probably because Mrs Williams’ own memory is suspect.
In France and Germany – apparently – people drive extremely fast, and there will be no saying just how fast dad can take the Minor once he puts his foot down. In Cornwall, and in England too, the police are always hot on speeding motorists and won’t allow for any recklessness – especially as dad is a German. They’d really throw the book at him given half the chance and he’d be a prisoner of the British authorities yet again.
Hanne would tell anyone that the Cornish were good with dad because the war hadn’t affected them as much as those poor folk living in the cities in the southeast. In this far western peninsula, people hadn’t been bombed in the way that mum’s family had been bombed in London, and that’s why so many of the German prisoners had been taken to Cornwall because the Cornish were not seething for revenge in the way that Londoners were. Cornwall was as it had always been.
That’s not to say that the children of the Cornish were so good with Hanne, because they weren’t. Well, not all were so rotten, but those who were made the most impact.
‘Small village, small school, small minds!’ Rene would say by way of some comfort, but even this wasn’t enough. To the bullies, Hanne was the daughter of a Nazi, meaning that she was a Nazi. Nazis were not to be tolerated. Stones were thrown, along with mud, or snow, lumps of ice, punches, too. Mostly, it was the words that cut deepest of all, as words always do.
Ironically, similar methods to those used by real Nazis.
One hour, 48 miles later…
‘There’s Jamaica Inn!’ exclaimed Rene in a bid to excite her bored daughter.
‘Jamaica Inn?’
‘Daphne du Maurier was a famous writer who lived in Cornwall, and she wrote a story about that inn.’
‘When?’
‘Ooh, years ago! Long before you were born.’
‘Perhaps I could read it when we get to Oma’s?’
‘Oma cannot read English, and if so we must not think she would be reading about Cornish public houses.’ Hugo was beginning to relax a little in the driving seat, his mission to reach Dover in good time for the ferry. Idle banter regarding pubs and novels was never likely to interest him.
‘Why can’t Oma read English?’
Hanne waited all of two seconds for a reply at the very time the van was struggling with a steep gradient, its engine screaming for a more suitable gear. Rene was expecting dad to reply.
‘Can’t Oma speak English, then?!’ shouted Hanne.
‘Oma speaks only German!’ Rene shouted back.
‘How are we going to know what she’s saying, then?’
Rene, seeing her anxious husband preoccupied with leaning forward over the wheel trying to coax the van up the hill, had her own misgivings about possible communication with a mother-in-law she’d never met.
‘People can say more with a gesture than they ever can with words. It won’t matter if we can’t say a lot. Dad will do a lot of the talking, and he can tell us what Oma is saying, can’t you, Dad?’
Hugo, in the middle of changing down a gear, could not be interrupted, his powerful fist grappling with the skinny gear lever. Rene’s task was to navigate and keep the children amused.
‘But I sent her a letter two weeks ago telling her all about us because I thought she wouldn’t know and she’d want to know!’
Unable to stop the blush, Rene turned her profile away from Hanne’s accusing glare as if she’d spotted something scenic. Children – especially girls – could spot embarrassment at a hundred yards. The shame of it: the letter was actually secreted upstairs in a wardrobe too high for even lanky Hanne t
o reach when exploring. Damn expensive airmail! It was one thing to fib to a child, but she wouldn’t destroy the letter either; it remained secreted in a box all her life.
‘I’m sure you’ll pick up a few words of German when you’re playing with your cousins.’
‘Who are my cousins?’
‘Heike and Heidemarie. Heike is slightly younger than you – she’s your father’s sister’s girl. And Heidemarie is probably a little older than you, though not by much, and she’s your father’s brother’s daughter. They’ve also got brothers and sisters, but the three of you are very close in age, so I’m sure you’ll all be good playmates for one another.’
Rene noticed Hanne glance anxiously at her baby brother, who seemed happy and content thus far into the journey.
‘Don’t you worry about Marco. He’s not going to hold you back. We’ll take care of Marco, won’t we, boy, eh?’
Marco responded to his mother’s touch with a beaming smile and chuckle – probably the only member of his family to be sitting comfortably in the claustrophobic van and with no anticipation of just what lay ahead.
‘Marco might as well start by speaking German as he doesn’t speak any English yet!’
‘I’m sure Oma will teach him a few words, as she will you! You’ll both be bilingual by the time we come home again.’
‘What does “bilingual” mean?’
‘It means someone who asks too many questions!’ Hugo’s irritation with his chatterbox daughter was likely to get worse as the journey progressed and this worried Rene. Ever since the arrival of Hanne, and most latterly Marco, their father had worked harder and harder. He saw little of either child and barely knew them. She didn’t doubt that he loved them, but for some reason he was having difficulty relating to them. Marco was easy enough as he wasn’t saying anything other than a few garbled words and was happiest amusing himself, but Hanne had a unique ability to get under her father’s skin. She was in every way her father’s daughter; nothing of Rene’s family was to be seen in her and it was as if Rene had played no part in her daughter’s genetic make-up.
The Reunion Page 1