by Michael Dean
‘Dung.’
‘Ja! Same in German. Horse dung. And they throw that to my mother and my father. And me. And for a boy with twelve, you know, your father is ein Held … a hero. So my parents are covered in this … shit. And some teenagers who throw it are girls, not only boys. And one … it was girl … This girl … she stops my father on the Kehler Rheinbrücke … and she stops my father … and she takes shit in the hand and she rubs it in his face, you understand. In the mouth, in the nose of my father. And this man, my father, he has no house, he has nothing for his family. He brings his family nothing and he cannot … verteidigen … he cannot defend them. And he starts …’
‘Dr Brenner, for heaven’s sake! You don’t have to …’
‘No. Entschuldigung. I want finish. And he stops on this bridge … And he starts to cry on this bridge … My father … And all laugh at him. Even the other refugees they laugh at him. Only my mother and me don’t laugh. Horseshit on the face … everywhere. From a girl. My father crying. Only mother and me don’t laugh … I never tell this before … not this part.’
Himmelfahrt moved awkwardly to touch Dr Brenner, then something inside him stopped him.
10
Just before half past seven, Himmelfahrt remembered that stupid document thingy. He needed to get it stamped. Annoying! Why couldn’t the clerk have done it? These stupid petty officials! He went into Frau Stikuta’s office. It was brightly lit but empty.
Shutting the office door, he fished out the Employment Certificate that Frau Quednau had completed in the name of Marcus Himmelfahrt. He took the school stamp from the desk and stamped it. Frau Stikuta came back from listening outside the door of John de Launay’s lesson just as he replaced the stamp.
‘Oh … er … the lesson to Mr Brenner was good,’ said Himmelfahrt, in German, as she came in. ‘I want tell you.’
Frau Stikuta smiled. ‘Good. I am pleased,’ she said, sitting down at her desk.
As he left the office, Himmelfahrt shut the door behind him, though Frau Stikuta usually left it open so she could monitor the life of the school. He walked back along the corridor. One of the classroom doors opened and Lieselotte Quednau came out. Himmelfahrt hardly recognised the weary clerk from the Aliens Office. She was heavily made up and smartly dressed in a black, trenchcoat-style mac open over a green wool dress.
‘I have something for you,’ said Himmelfahrt, handing over the newly stamped Employment Certificate.
‘Thank you,’ said Frau Quednau, rapidly putting the document in her black handbag just as Frau Stikuta opened the office door and resumed her watch on the corridor. ‘I will keep your Work Permit on file.’
‘Righty-ho!’
At that moment John de Launay followed his pupil out of the classroom.
‘John, is this a new colleague of yours?’ sang out Lieselotte Quednau in her faultless English. ‘You really must introduce me.’
‘Surely,’ said John. ‘Frau Quednau, this is our new English teacher, Mark Hill.’
‘Mark Hill!’ said Frau Quednau, shaking hands lingeringly with Himmelfahrt. ‘How very interesting. That’s H-I-L-L, I suppose? Would you be one of the Malvern Hills? Or the Quantock Hills, perhaps?’
‘Er … no.’
John de Launay laughed. He thought most highly of Frau Quednau. ‘Frau’ was a courtesy title, naturally; he knew she wasn’t married. Soon after their conversation lessons began, she had invited him out for coffee and cakes, an invitation that soon led to regular meetings.
Over slices of delicious Nusstorte and Malakovtorte and a pot each of coffee, their two hours of animated conversation, in German, was about politics. Frau Quednau had listened delightedly to de Launay’s paeans of praise for the Bavarian extreme right-wing leader, Franz Josef Strauss. She adopted the persona of a supporter of the FDP, the tiny liberal party, and its new Freiburger Thesen for liberal social policies.
She didn’t believe a word she was saying, but enjoyed every second of it. Still in character, so to speak, as a bleeding-heart liberal, Lieselotte Quednau told de Launay the Stikutas had no right to make the teachers work on public holidays, as they did. She also found out that the language school was paying their staff well below the statutory minimum wage and some of the deductions they were making, even from that, were also illegal.
De Launay was grateful for the information but shrugged in the face of the employer’s far greater power. He would have been amazed to discover that his informant; his well-groomed, erudite companion; was a lowly clerk in the Aliens Office whose flat was even tinier and shabbier than his. And he certainly would not have recognised the desperate, drunken, foul-mouthed harpy shouting abuse at her television set that she became again that evening.
As well as the meetings for coffee and cakes at smart cafés, Frau Quednau and de Launay occasionally went riding at the weekend; Lieselotte Quednau overcoming de Launay’s genuine protests at her paying. Protests which would have been even more forceful had he realised most of her clerk’s salary was being spent on him.
It was willingly spent. The clerk counted the hours until the next meeting with the only human being she had any personal contact with. That was Lieselotte Quednau’s secret shame; after eleven years in Ludwigsburg she had no friends, nor even any acquaintances. She did not know another living soul.
John de Launay was deceived by Frau Quednau’s performance of fitting him into an imaginary crowded social life. She even occasionally cancelled their appointments for other invented commitments. These cancellations cost Lieselotte Quednau dear; she had wept drunken tears over them more than once. But her iron discipline never faltered. Her English teacher, her only human contact, must never know that she was a lonely, sad, grey mouse.
‘Your lessons with John seem to be going well,’ Himmelfahrt observed to Frau Quednau, in English, amazed at how good the lowly clerk’s English was and letting his amazement show. ‘How long have you been …?’
‘About a year,’ said Lieselotte Quednau, roguishly. ‘John’s a superb teacher.’
De Launay was staring at his pupil incredulously, as Frau Quednau’s hazel eyes swept Mark’s face. Her hand was resting lightly on the young man’s forearm. The formidable Frau Quednau was positively simpering.
This Mark Hill had an amazing effect on women, thought de Launay. He gets a date while registering as an alien and now even Frau Quednau was trembling at the knees after a chance encounter in the corridor.
‘Hey, you two young men,’ Lieselotte Quednau said gaily, still in English, taking both of them by the arm and managing adroitly to squeeze Himmelfahrt-Hill’s upper arm briefly against her breast, ‘I must love you and leave you, so to speak. Tetty-bye.’
*
By the time Himmelfahrt and John bade the melting Frau Quednau goodnight and walked to Café Kunzi, it was hall-past eight, but the Finnish girls weren’t there yet. They settled into a booth. John ordered them a beer each.
Himmelfahrt brooded. It had not occurred to him that the Finnish girls might not turn up, but now he was worried. They were late. Oh God, they weren’t going to stand him up, were they? He would look such a fool in front of John. It was that cow Fredrika. Lati liked him. Lati fancied him. Just when he was giving way to despair, a voice came out of nowhere, in English.
‘Are you Mark Hill? We are the two Finnish practical students.’
Himmelfahrt felt a second’s elation, but only for a second. They were Finnish alright. They were blonde and very nice-looking. But both of them were male. And they were laughing their heads off.
Himmelfahrt wanted to run out of the café in shame, especially as John was spluttering with laughter too.
‘Come on, let’s get them a beer,’ John murmured, twinkling sympathetically.
‘I should think so!’ said one of the Finns, as they both sat down with John and Himmelfahrt. ‘That’s what we’ve come for. Please don’t be angry, Mark. Fredrika says she is very sorry. Lati is poorly. She has very bad periods you know. And Fredrika has to stay wit
h her. Maybe we can all meet again, some time.’
Himmelfahrt blabbered what felt like his hundredth expression of sympathy for Lati’s difficult periods, again being aired with Scandinavian frankness, and accepted another beer.
11
By the light of an anglepoise lamp on her desk, Frau Stikuta was writing out next week’s timetables alone in Sprachschule Stikuta. She moved the ink pad for the school stamp back to its correct position.
The phone rang. It was her husband, Gustav, phoning from their other school in Ulm. As soon as Gustav’s throaty voice, with its slow and slightly faulty German, came down the line she sat up in her seat like a schoolgirl, which was how he made her feel.
‘How is the new teacher?’ growled Gustav down the telephone, with no preliminary pleasantries. He hated speaking on the phone. It made his Latvian accent much more prominent and it made him sound even older than his 71 years.
Hildegard Stikuta thought quickly. If she told Gustav about Herr Biedermeier’s complaints — all about the socks, the towel, the fire — her husband would take the next train from Ulm tomorrow morning. He would growl and yell at poor little Mr Hill and probably shake him about, too. Gustav had taken the last English teacher by the collar, marched him down the corridor and thrown him down the stairs because he had referred to Frau Stikuta as ‘she’ instead of ‘Frau Stikuta’.
She did not think the sensitive and rather effeminate Mr Hill could stand up to Gustav. Let’s face it most people couldn’t. A terrified Mr Hill would leave at the end of the month, like so many of the new teachers did. They would have to re-advertise, get someone else from England, start all over again. She couldn’t face it.
‘He is satisfactory,’ she said down the phone. ‘A good teacher. His afternoon class were pleased with him. You know, Gustav, we said we could allow the lessons to be somewhat more relaxed and Herr Hill achieves that.’
‘You mean he’s another English clown,’ growled Gustav.
‘The pupils like it, Gustav. You remember when we tried to stop contact between the pupils and the teachers after lessons? It was not a success, was it? They want the teachers as … friends and Herr Hill is good at that.’
She shut her eyes for a second, regretting she had said all that. It had been a long battle to get Gustav to allow contact between teachers and pupils. They used to sack teachers for it. But she had won the battle. And she should not have given him a chance to go back on it.
‘So the class was satisfied?’ growled the old man.
She opened her eyes. She had got away with it. ‘Yes, Gustav,’ said his younger wife, patiently. ‘And something else,’ added Hildegard, still sitting ramrod straight in her chair. ‘Dr Brenner was pleased, too. That was good because originally Dr Brenner wanted to stay with Frau Plutznick, but after the lesson he said that Mr Hill is a good teacher too.’
‘Good,’ growled Gustav. ‘So everything is alright.’
Gustav rang off. He smiled, not particularly pleasantly, at the thought of what he intended to do next. A new teacher had arrived only yesterday. He had sent for her to discuss the timetable. She was a timid little thing and he was pretty sure he could get his hand well up her skirt and leave it there for quite a while, as they talked.
There was a knock on the door, there in Sprachschule Stikuta in Ulm. Gustav licked his lips. ‘Come in,’ he called.
12
Lieselotte Quednau was in a state near ecstasy as she walked through the night to Ludwigsburg station. Everything was going so well … Kai-Uwe Prengel was at this moment waiting for her in her room. She had let him wait for over an hour, giving him a ridiculously early time for the appointment, but he would still be there. She was certain of that. And when she got back to her room she was going to take the so-called Kai-Uwe Prengel to bed. She was going to take him to bed, not the other way round. It had been eleven verdammt years since she’d had a man. She had had to use a device all this time for satisfaction. The shame of it. But all that was over now.
And she had succeeded with Himmelfahrt-Hill. She had taken an incredible risk with the Employment Certificate — her biggest gamble since leaving the east. But she had got what she wanted out of it, given Himmelfahrt-Hill some rope and proved he was up to something. Why else would he have agreed to stamp the Employment Certificate? And why would anybody use a false name to apply for a job?
As she thought that, Frau Quednau pictured stone buildings housing organisations and ministries, bureaucracies and systems, clerks and policemen which she assumed existed in England (a country she had never visited) just as they did in East Germany — all making the false name utterly inconceivable. (Germany, east and west, was still calling Mohammed Ali by his original name, Cassius Clay, almost a decade after he had changed it, in wilful refusal to accept that anything as fundamental to organisation as a name could ever be changed.)
No, Himmelfahrt-Hill had a guilty secret. And Liselotte Quednau intended to find out what it was. She started to assemble in her mind all the detail she would give the Firm about Marcus Himmelfahrt, who was using the cover name of Mark Hill. He may be some sort of innocent, a sort of English Simplicissimus. That wouldn’t stop British Intelligence — especially British Intelligence — using him in any number of ways. But it was equally possible that his pose as an immature idiot was an act. She would tell the Firm they could be dealing with a second Scarlet Pimpernel.
*
Lieselotte Quednau stopped at the Ladies at Ludwigsburg Station to freshen up her make-up. There was plenty of time before the last train back to Asperg at half past nine. She took her bag and pulled out the stamped Employment Certificate in the name of Marcus Himmelfahrt. She read through his details again. She would copy the document, then put the original in the Himmelfahrt file at the Aliens Office tomorrow, her last day at work there. The copy could stay at her flat for now.
Then she would set the investigation in motion. She couldn’t check him out herself, though. Himmelfahrt-Hill knew her and she had this new job to master, starting next week. Who was going to do it then? Not that Kai-Uwe Prengel dolt, that’s for sure. He was strictly for bed duties.
She thought back to the call from Normannenstrasse late last night. It was not unexpected, not since Prengel had sat down next to her in the Café Lassas, but it filled her with quiet joy nonetheless. They wanted her back, the SSD, the KONSUM, the Firm, they wanted her back … They had not told her what her new rank was. She had been a Lieutenant-Colonel when she left the east, riding high. And now she had another chance.
At the end of the call, hurriedly, just before this Herr Damerau rang off, he had said something about foisting some new girl on her, fresh from headquarters in Berlin. He sounded defensive, embarrassed about it. She was probably his mistress. Her, Prengel and this new girl, three of them in a place this size, it was crazy. But, anyway, she would have to be kept busy, this new girl. The first job Lieselotte Quednau would give her would be the investigation of Marcus Himmelfahrt, until the East German Secret Service knew all there was to know about him.
13
Naomi Prince’s father was killed when she was thirteen and after that she and her mother were suddenly poor. Harry Prince had been a bookie, until he was knocked down by a hit and run driver outside Catterick racetrack.
After he died, a lot of men visited the house and spent ages talking to her mother. The men wore camel-hair coats which they didn’t take off and homburg hats which they did. Naomi hated it because her mother was scared of them and it showed. They were giving her mother money, Naomi knew that, but she still wished they would go away. When they left, her mother always made very sweet tea and pikelets with plenty of butter.
The money her mother got from these men couldn’t have been enough, because soon they left the big house in Hall Green and moved into a two up, two down in Sparkhill. They didn’t have a phone any more but for some reason they kept the telly. Naomi couldn’t see the point of it, especially snooker in black and white. But she and her mother watched in t
he evening, snuggled up together on the sofa under a rug to save heating, eating an Aero each. Her mother took in sewing and didn’t charge enough. There was always enough to eat but sometimes the meals were a bit strange, like cold corned beef and warm mashed potato.
But the worst thing about the move was the new school. The headmistress wanted to prove that a girls’ grammar school could be as good as a boys’ grammar school. There was a lot of regimentation and a lot of pressure to do science subjects. The school uniform was a hideous shade of bottle green that made Naomi look sallow. The school song was ridiculous. Naomi made up her mind to leave as soon as possible and get a job to help her mother out with money.
Meanwhile, she had kept all her friends from her old school and easily made new ones at the new school, so life wasn’t that bad. She got four books a week out of Sparkhill Public Library and read her way through Dickens, Hardy, Jane Austen, the Brontes and George Eliot as well as most of Shakespeare and the entire Contemporary Fiction section.
The headmistress did not want Naomi to leave school after her GCEs. She had done well, she had passed all eight of them. The headmistress wanted her to go to university. She patronised Mrs Prince about money when she summoned her to school to discuss it. But Naomi was determined to leave. It was 1960 and easy to get a job.
She worked at Birmingham Technical College as a lab assistant, setting up experiments and looking after the equipment. She wore a white coat all day. None of the boys studying science took any notice of her: they didn’t talk to her, just looked straight through her. She put that down to being squarely built and ordinary looking. She had mousy brown hair. She wasn’t beautiful or anything like that. And then there was that white coat.
When she went to dances with her girlfriends she was usually the last one asked to dance, but she always said yes because she felt sorry for these poor nervous youths. But even back then she knew what her type was. She liked the Romeos, the Flash Harrys. The ones that showed off, were the centre of attention, and told jokes.