The Reunion

by Geoff Pridmore

‘My friends rescued me – yes. They helped me out the freezing water, but they did not know artificial saving – no.’

  There followed a silence as they watched the river flow beneath them; a silence filled with many conflicting thoughts. Hanne’s thoughts were of a heroic dad defying death and nature to re-emerge from the dark depths a triumphant survivor. He must have been a very strong boy.

  For Hugo, another vivid memory.

  The shock of the water. The ice like a glass ceiling above his head as he kicks, but he has weights on the end of his feet – skates. If the current pulls him downstream away from the broken ice he’s doomed. There is a chance if he unties the skates. He pulls at a lace but it knots immediately. This is no time for struggling with stupid knots. He pulls at the heel of the boot, but it’s too tight. He tries the other lace and that undoes, but the lace is so long and he’s very quickly running out of time. Panic will finish him so he has to keep his nerve. Above him he can see shadows, and some part of him gains hope from that.

  Just as he feels he can’t hold his breath any longer, he sees a stick coming down through the water. He grabs it like a hungry fish taking bait. Someone is pulling him up – someone very strong. Then nothing. He concentrates hard, but memory is a funny thing. Anton tells him later that a man passing that very spot pulled him out and lifted him onto the bridge. The man slapped him and got him to cough up water. They don’t know who the stranger was or where he’d come from, but without him Hugo would most definitely have perished.

  There and then the silence ended.

  ‘Was Oma happy that you didn’t die in the water?’

  ‘No, she beat me. But I was never such a fool again.’

  ‘Is this why we’ve come to Germany in the summer?’

  ‘Yes, so do not complain about the heat.’

  ‘Perhaps for the reunion we should come in the spring or autumn?’

  ‘Then how would I grow my flowers in Cornwall?’

  ‘You could tell Wally what to do. He’s good at planting flowers.’

  Hanne was quite right. Wally was good with flowers just as he was good with people.

  *

  Wally Johns – a little aside

  He could so easily have ignored Hugo all those years ago – treated him in an offhand manner as some did. And if he had been unfriendly, then Hugo wouldn’t have stayed in Cornwall. He would have bided his time until release then made his way somewhere else; only not here to Oberwinkel.

  He might have tried his hand in America or Canada, but that’s not to say it would have worked out as well. People there might not have welcomed him at all, and the chances of buying just a small patch of land, as he was able to do in Cornwall, might have been very slim indeed. Land over there sold in hundreds and thousands of acres. Most importantly, there would have been no Rene. No Wally, no Rene.

  *

  Monday 15th April 1946, 8.21 am

  Cornwall

  It’s the little things, like waiting for news, that made captivity so difficult. What news of home? Had the Americans destroyed Oberwinkel? Had the Russians taken it? Would there be anything to go home to?

  They knew he was waiting for news and it was infuriating, until one morning the call from the back of the truck was more hopeful. ‘Hugo! Hugo! Post for you!’

  Throwing the hoe into the hedge, Hugo ran after the lorry like a champion sprinter chasing a baton in the relay. Leaning out over the tailboard of the army truck, Karl waved the long awaited envelope as the POW contingent cheered Hugo on. Such was his speed on uneven ground that he tripped and stumbled but quickly regained his balance to the sound of an almighty roar from the back of the truck as his fellow inmates urged him to catch up. Within moments he’d gained the ground needed to grab the letter from Karl’s outstretched hand.

  Exhausted from the sprint he cursed Karl for not having just tossed it onto the ground. ‘You need the exercise; you’re getting fat!’ was Karl’s witty retort. ‘And besides, we had money on whether you could catch the truck!’

  Having chewed his fingernails to the quick, Hugo had no way of getting his thick fingers under the tape of the broken seal. All correspondence to prisoners of war was opened, checked and usually resealed with sticky tape or gum. This one had been opened and it was sealed even tighter than it had been when it was first posted from Oberwinkel.

  He had to be careful as he didn’t want to tear the letter inside, but it had to be opened now because who knew what it might contain by way of news? It might say that the family were starving or they’d been taken by the Ruskies. Maybe the Allies had flattened the village by way of reprisal. Maybe all of these things.

  (“Ruskies” – a term picked up from Cornish co-workers who in turn picked it up from US soldiers stationed briefly in Falmouth prior to D-Day.)

  He prised off a length of blackthorn from the hedge and used that to open the envelope, then skimmed the text looking for disaster.

  This was not Mama writing; this was Hilda, his sister. Good for Hilda. It actually didn’t contain much by way of information – just a page – but it was communication at least. The family were fine – everyone was okay and the Russians had stopped short. Oberwinkel was now in the American sector.

  Hugo stuffed the letter into his top pocket and returned along the track to locate the hoe he’d so quickly discarded. Wally – also working in the field – had watched the whole episode and was now grinning broadly as Hugo returned.

  That evening, Hugo sat at the long oak kitchen table reading his letter over and over as if there were something in it that he’d missed; that really it can’t have been such good news and perhaps it contained a hidden code that he needed to decipher.

  By the time Wally came in Hugo had just read the letter for the fifteenth time. ‘Good news from Germany, Hugo?’ But Hugo didn’t respond so Wally tried his basic German.

  ‘Gud noyse?’

  ‘Maybe…?’ For want of using his own language Hugo gesticulated with a shrug of the shoulders.

  ‘Well… you can always stay here, you know.’ He sat down next to Hugo, looking him straight in the eye whilst pushing his forefinger onto the tabletop to affirm what he’d just said in case there was any misunderstanding. ‘Stay here…’ He paused for a moment, desperately trying to find the words; then, with one final affirmative tap of the tabletop: ‘Schtayensie here! Yah, dat’s what you can do.’

  If Hugo understood then he didn’t show it, so Wally persevered. ‘That girl – das fräulein sie met – Rene – the Land Army girl? You like her, Hugo – she’s almost as tall as you. She’d like you to stay. You’re good here on the farm, and if the Ruskies have taken over your home you’re better off here with us.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Hugo in reply to a sentence he barely understood.

  Wally picked up a glass cruet, tapped its base on the table and mimicked moving a pawn. ‘What say we play chess tonight?’

  ‘Good!’ replied Hugo – putting to use the only other word in his new and expanding vocabulary.

  *

  Freitag 28th Juni 1963, 1.46 pm

  Oberwinkel

  Descending the steep meadow Hanne was now back in full chat mode talking about anything and everything that came to mind. Hugo simply had to be there.

  Above the chatter he looked for a roof and chimney to reveal itself as it had always revealed itself on this particular descent down the meadow. It was the roof of Herr Professor Rupert Swan’s house – or rather, the white-painted gable end of the house that had always stood out so vividly on sunny days such as this.

  Had it not been for the professor teaching him chess as a boy then perhaps Hugo’s life in Cornwall might not have been so productive. Chess had opened so many doors – introduced him to the great and the good of his new adopted community.

  Professor Swan had once been a newcomer to Oberwinkel so he’d known something about the problems o
f being an outsider – a foreigner – coming into a small, narrow-minded, rural community. A Flemish-born academic, Swan had studied chemistry in Frankfurt at the turn of the century and in 1910 married a Bavarian woman who worked on the campus and spoke highly of the tiny Bavarian village of Oberwinkel. Her actual connection with the village was never fully recorded by local gossip, especially as she never came to live in the village having died of tuberculosis in 1919 aged forty.

  Intrigued by his late wife’s adoration of the place, Professor Swan retired to the village as if in tribute to her wish to reside there. Oberwinkel had never had an academic in residence before and the avuncular old man was made most welcome. Some thought he would attract other notable academics and assorted famous people and that could only be a good thing for the village as such people would undoubtedly bring money and prestige. Some warned, however, that an influx of odd city types – such as Frau Gruber – would bring about the end of Oberwinkel as they – the villagers – had known it. ‘What can an academic bring to us? Can he repair a stone wall? Plough a field? Sow a crop? Milk a cow? Shoe a horse? Deliver a newborn calf?’

  Others argued that it might bring about – in time – township status.

  Others simply mistook him for being English.

  Hugo skilfully broke into Hanne’s latest monologue to tell her how, at age twelve, he was for a while the youngest member of Professor Swan’s Chess Club and how the old professor had made it be known to the headmaster that boys would be most welcome in his newly formed chess club that met every Thursday evening in the school classroom throughout the dark, winter months.

  The boys who joined – Hugo and a few close friends – took it into their heads that the professor had been a chess grand master and that he’d played and beaten Europe’s finest players. To them, he was a professor of chess and a grand master.

  The club was an ideal training ground for the boys, who were encouraged to play the professor and other adults – though few locals were actually able to play. As word of the club spread across the district, chess players began to arrive on Thursday evenings from distant neighbouring parishes: two schoolteachers, a Jesuit priest, a librarian, a town clerk, a grocer and a woodcutter.

  Matches at the club would have continued quite happily had the school’s headmaster – Herr Manfred Fischl – not been replaced by an unqualified National Socialist called Haas.

  Haas had no time for chess or any social clubs that diverted people from their work and the National Socialist cause. In his view, foreign-born academics like the professor had no place in German society and the boys would benefit more – he insisted – from physical training. He would oversee that – personally.

  And so Professor Swan – having invested so much of his time and money in the chess club – collected all the boards, clocks and pieces and retreated to his house with a view to keeping a low profile until such time as Germany came through this “fearful time of National Socialism” as he called it and returned to its senses.

  The last time Hugo had seen Professor Swan must have been 1942 just prior to his call-up. The professor had been tending his garden and even then had looked quite old and frail hunched over a spade; but his was a hunch he could no longer straighten. The chances of seeing him still in his garden were slim indeed. Shame, thought Hugo, as the professor had always been a kind and friendly man who was well known for calling out to people whenever he saw them pass.

  ‘Are you keeping up your game, Hugo?’

  ‘Of course, professor! I remember everything you taught me.’

  That was twenty-one years ago. The old man could still be around. Maybe Hugo would see someone to ask.

  *

  Thursday 31st July 1947, 7.16 pm

  Cornwall

  It wasn’t until his time as a POW was nearing its conclusion that Hugo played chess again. Albert Rowe the beekeeper asked him one evening whether he played. ‘A little,’ replied Hugo, which was his stock response to virtually any question. The response was enough to get an invite to tea one evening and play chess.

  The significance of the visit was not lost on Hugo. Although still officially a prisoner of war, he’d been invited into somebody’s home as an honoured guest. How wonderful was this?!

  POWs had been invited as groups to meet local communities, with displays of singing or to play a team game, but to actually be invited as an individual into a family home was something else altogether.

  Albert Rowe was not only a keen chess player, he was secretary of the Penzance Chess Club – a coveted position he’d held since 1931. Hugo would be an ideal opponent – new blood, new moves probably. What a challenge! It would almost be like having an international match.

  Hugo was most impressed when on bending to enter the stoopingly low-ceilinged, paraffin-lit sitting room, there awaiting his arrival was a posh little rosewood chess table set with ornately carved ivory pieces. Professor Swan also had an ornate chess table and countless other wooden chessboards dotted throughout the house in case a game should break out at any time in any room.

  “Aunty” Rowe – as Albert’s wife was known to all and sundry – was very welcoming and suggested the men get their first game underway whilst she prepared tea. As conversation was going to be very limited, this was an excellent suggestion. The game got off to a spirited start with both players throwing caution to the wind as they tested each other’s mettle with aggressive moves, before quickly, and diplomatically, the game was conceded by Hugo.

  The second game was more cautious and interrupted only by Aunty bringing in a trolley of tea, coffee and saffron cake baked to such an excellent standard despite rationing. This caused Hugo to bring out his phrase book in order to compliment her most highly that it was the best cake he’d ever tasted – and he meant it.

  The third game was the best game of all as the two men brought to the table all their experience. Professor Swan had taught Hugo well and the advantage was Hugo’s in this game, but he did not intend to spoil the welcome his courteous hosts had afforded him and so offered a draw. It was a tactful and entirely diplomatic move that was to pay remarkable dividends.

  *

  Freitag 28th Juni 1963, 2.13 pm

  Oberwinkel

  ‘Hanne? Do you play chess, nah?’

  ‘A little.’

  ‘Then properly I will teach you. I was taught by the best teacher, nah.’

  Hanne quickened her pace to catch up; she liked the idea of her father teaching her to play chess – properly.

  *

  Tuesday 19th August 1947, 6.48 pm

  Penzance, Cornwall

  Just what sort of reception a lanky young POW would get in the Penzance Chess Club – a hallowed place for sure – Hugo dare not think. A callow youth who just happened to be a former enemy, and a monosyllabic one with limited language ability, was surely not likely to be made welcome by the intelligentsia of West Cornwall that met every Tuesday evening at 7 pm in a reception room at the town hall and had done so for more years than anyone could remember.

  Albert Rowe’s invitation to Hugo that evening to come along to the club was a rare honour, particularly for a former enemy combatant. There was much to learn and the first lesson was that the “intelligentsia” were nothing more than a cross-section of townsfolk ranging from a commanding officer in the local yeomanry to a bank manager, a hotel concierge, various teachers, a stationmaster, a council road sweeper and a trawler man – all of whom showed delight in meeting their new opponent and teammate for upcoming matches.

  To the club members, Hugo was an exotic find; an actual continental European from across the water who must have surely been weaned from the cradle on Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Strauss, Mahler and, most importantly, chess; he was bound, by the very dint of his heritage, to be a match winner.

  He might not have been so welcome in Plymouth or Exeter, Bath, Bristol, London, Coventry or Manchester, but Penzance
had never been bombed and that in itself eased Hugo’s passage into the chess club and beyond.

  It wasn’t long before he was being invited to play matches at home and away, with some of those matches even taking him out of the county to Exeter. Whether it was sheer luck, natural ability or Professor Swan’s excellent teaching, Hugo couldn’t be sure, but despite terrible pre-match nerves he was managing to defeat all comers. Even the most gifted of university academics were capitulating in little more than thirty minutes of play. Hugo had never considered for a moment that the eminent Professor Swan was anything less than a grand master and that he had learned at the master’s feet.

  Over time, he actually looked forward to Tuesday evening sessions in Penzance as an established player working his way steadily up the board ranking while still officially a POW whose limitations included the proviso that he should not travel further than one mile from the farm to which he was assigned.

  He was also frequently invited to the homes of club members for Sunday tea, where he mixed with the great and the good: commissioned army officers, merchant navy captains, harbour masters, hotel directors, local nobility and gentry – all of whom were opening their doors to a former Luftwaffe soldier who’d never flown because the Third Reich had run out of money, but played a damn good game of chess!

  Wally, too, was something of a chess player, though too shy for the mighty Penzance club. Winter evenings would find him and Hugo busy making chess pieces – Wally turning the pieces on his father’s crude lathe whilst Hugo carved the intricate features of each piece.

  His acceptance by the community was causing him to consider staying beyond his forthcoming release. Summer was swiftly drawing to a close and it wouldn’t be long before the authorities opened the gates for those POWs who, like Hugo, were not considered a threat and were able to demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt that they had had no association with the SS and any ongoing murder investigations. At least 20,000 of their number could apply to remain in the UK if they wished.