She carried the basin from her bedroom to the kitchen. Even the sight of its foul contents couldn’t induce Martha to vomit.
Right from the beginning, she had the stomach for it.
Her mother couldn’t wait in the end. For her father to get home. She went to her bedroom and rang him, in his hotel bedroom. The phone rang and rang but she kept redialling, the tip of her finger red from her efforts. When she eventually got to speak to him – she rang his colleague who gave her the name of the bar around the corner from the hotel where he thought Peter might be, which turned out to be the exact place he was – Martha, listening in on the phone in the kitchen, heard him say that girls would be girls and teenagers would be teenagers and Mo would be Mo.
Tara’s hand tugged at the bed cover, pulled it back over her head. The movement startled Martha, brought the mean confines of the hospital room back into focus.
‘Are you awake?’ she said.
‘No,’ came the muffled voice from the bed.
‘What are you going to do? Hide in here for the rest of your life?’
‘I don’t want to talk.’
‘In general? Or to me in particular?’
Tara made no response.
Martha rubbed her eyes, winced at the pain the action produced, tried to think of something she could do that might help. She poked her finger against Tara’s arm even though it had yielded no results earlier. Still, it was all she could think of.
‘Stop it,’ Tara finally said, reefing the covers away from her face and turning towards Martha.
‘There’s no need to be so snippy.’
‘This is serious, Martha. I’ve got PTSD, you know.’
‘You’ll be right as rain in no time. Your mother’s chanting a novena as we speak.’
‘Jesus, your face,’ said Tara, lifting her head off the pillow, which Martha took as a good sign.
‘I know. This is when I miss having a Facebook page. I’d say I’d get a fair amount of likes with a mush like this.’
‘This is not one of those times when you can make me laugh and everything will be fine.’ The head was down again, the eyes shut tight.
‘I don’t see why not.’
‘You should go.’
‘You haven’t told me the plan yet.’
‘There is no plan.’
‘There’s always a plan. Mathilde, for example. Where are we on that particular enterprise?’
Tara shook her head, her eyes still closed. ‘It’s too late for all that. You don’t come out when you’re thirty-five. I’m too old for this shit.’
The uncharacteristic deluge of negativity momentarily stunned Martha. It was like dissonant chords, vying with each other.
‘You should at least ring Mathilde. You were supposed to meet her last night in London, weren’t you? She’ll be worried.’
‘No!’ Tara sat up this time, reached for an oxygen mask hanging on a rail beside the bed, breathed deeply into it.
‘Jesus, sorry, Tara, just ... you know ... relax and ... it’ll be OK.’ Martha stood up. She had gone too far. She always went too far.
The door opened and Mrs Bolton stepped inside, smelling of incense and peppermints. ‘Oh, good, you’re awake. That’ll be the novena to St Christopher. He’s very reliable.’
Tara’s eyes swivelled to her mother’s face. She pulled the mask away from her mouth. ‘You have to tell Martha to go, Mum,’ she said, louder than necessary, given the size of the room. ‘She’s ... not helping. She’s insisting that I’m fine and I’m not fine, I’m not fine, I’m not fine, I’m—’
‘Sssshhhh,’ her mother said, hurrying towards Tara, pulling her into her mountainous bosom. ‘It’s alright, love. I won’t let anyone upset you.’ She glanced at Martha and gestured towards the door with her head.
‘I was just trying to help,’ Martha said.
‘I think you should go,’ Mrs Bolton whispered and while there was a trace of an apology in her tone there was also authority.
Martha should go.
She stepped towards the door, grateful for the rubber soles of her Doc Martens that made no sound against the awful porridge-coloured linoleum.
Tara was whimpering now. ‘I just need to sleep. I’m so tired, Mum, I’ve never been so tired ...’
Martha stepped into the corridor, closed the door behind her. She stood there, not moving yet. Fear gripped her. It was like the fear the morning after a night’s drinking. When you can’t quite remember what you’ve done but you know it’s not something good.
Eight
‘Do you know if he will regain consciousness?’ A man’s voice. Tobias guessed around forty. A garda, Tobias thought. Not a Dubliner, with that accent. Somewhere northern. Tobias had not travelled around the island much, despite the decades-long span of his residency in the country. He wasn’t as proficient as he should have been at identifying the various accents. Something suggested Donegal. The man on RTÉ who read the news every night at 6.01 p.m. was from Donegal, Tobias remembered. He’d read that somewhere. Where was it? Oh yes, the Irish Times. When? Last year. Summertime? No, it was just after he’d moved into the nursing home and that was nearly a year ago so it must have been spring. Early spring. March, perhaps. Yes. March.
And so on and so forth went the thoughts around Tobias’s head. He concentrated on them, allowed them to lead him along, as if by the hand, to the next one and the next and in this way it was possible to keep thoughts of other matters at bay.
He was cursed with one of the finest memories of anyone his age and many younger. It had always been thus. Under ordinary circumstances, this was not problematic. He was adept at corralling his thoughts. His memories.
But here, in a hospital, which is where he supposed he must still be, lying in a bed, in a coma, according to the doctors, his memory seemed to have gained the upper hand. It was leaking everywhere. All of a sudden. Surprising him with the vividness of its colour, its attention to detail. His response to these memories that ran like film reel through his mind, someplace behind his eyes, surprised him. The strength of it. It seemed almost ... overwhelming. There was little he could do in the face of such persistence. Still, he did what he could. Like concentrating on the voices.
Now Mr Ryan – a consultant, although just what his area of expertise was Tobias had yet to discover – spoke to the man who might be from Donegal. The tall man with the quiet voice. Tobias knew he was tall because ... well, he didn’t know why he knew he was tall. Perhaps he was short and rotund? But Tobias would wager – were he a betting man, which he was most certainly not – that he was tall. There was an air of authority about his tone. Tobias thought he might be a police officer.
Mr Ryan was using medical jargon to camouflage the fact that he did not know the answer to the man’s simple question.
‘ ... and that, Detective Larkin, taken in conjunction with the blunt force of the trauma to the ...’
A detective then. Close enough.
‘It’s important that I speak with him when he comes to,’ said the tall man with the quiet voice who might have hailed from Donegal.
Mr Ryan again, his tone detached as he spoke about Tobias as if Tobias wasn’t even there.
And perhaps he wasn’t. Not really.
‘ ... and its position at the frontal lobe of the—’
‘So you can’t tell when he might regain consciousness?’
‘It’s not as simple as that,’ said Mr Ryan.
‘Is that your way of saying you don’t know?’ If Tobias had been a different kind of person, he might have warmed to the detective with the quiet voice from somewhere to the north of the island.
Tobias didn’t hear Mr Ryan’s reply, if indeed the consultant deigned to respond to the detective’s blunt question. Instead, he felt a tug, like a hand slipped inside his, pulling him, and he had no choice but to allow himself to be dragged along. He knew there was no point in resisting it. The tug of memory was too strong. When he looked back, he saw himself lying on a hospital bed,
his eyes closed in a way that seemed final. He looked frail and inconsequential, the outline of his body making little impression on the stiff white sheet covering him. The voices became distant until they were echoes of voices. Memories of voices. And then they were gone and he was a boy again, in Dresden, and the war was raging around Europe but it hadn’t come to Dresden.
Not yet.
‘You’re the man of the house now, young man,’ the officer said to Tobias. The one who came to their front door with the envelope.
Tobias’s mother began to cry as soon as she saw the soldier. She batted the envelope away, as if she thought that the news mightn’t be true if she didn’t open it. If she didn’t read the words.
She handed Tobias the baby – Greta was four months old then – and leaned against the door like she might fall if she didn’t.
Greta cried too and Tobias rocked her in his arms and blew warm breath onto the soft folds of skin at the back of her neck, as he had seen his mother do, to make her giggle. His brothers – Bruno, who was seven, and Lars, nine – were fishing for salmon at the Blue Wonder bridge on the banks of the Elbe with their friends. They would cry later, when Tobias put them to bed, and he would tell them to stop or he wouldn’t read them a story but it wouldn’t make any difference.
Tobias thought he might cry too. Later. When everyone had gone to bed and he was alone in the kitchen. But he didn’t. Perhaps it was because of what the soldier had said. Perhaps it was because he was the man of the house now. After all, he was nearly fourteen.
On clear nights, you could hear the bombs fall to the north, towards Berlin. Tobias’s mother said they wouldn’t attack Dresden but when he asked why, she didn’t say.
The Youth Movement kept him and his brothers busy. Distracted them from hunger and cold. Even after he’d eaten, Tobias felt hungry. The hunger was a part of him now, as solid as a limb. He queued for bread, for potatoes, for vegetables. Sometimes there was meat, thin fillets of grey flesh of dubious origin. Most days, Tobias’s mother managed to make broth which Tobias spooned into four bowls. Cut the bread if he had managed to find any. Bruno always finished his meal first. Glanced around the table with his bright blue eyes that enticed people to give him more than his fair share. Tobias stirred the thin soup in his bowl, lifted a sliver of meat with his spoon, slipped it into Bruno’s bowl when his mother’s head was bent towards the baby, suckling at her breast. He put his finger on his lips. Ssshhh. His mother said everyone had to get their share. Bruno winked at him and stuffed the meat into his mouth, swallowing it without appearing to chew. Lars noticed but said nothing. At nine, he understood how seven-year-olds might need more than their fair share.
Greta often cried after her feed as if she, too, were still hungry. His mother wrapped the baby in a shawl and held her close to her thin body, rocking her until Greta fell asleep. She put her in the cot, still wrapped in the shawl. Tucked an old coat over her. His father’s old coat. Sometimes she told Tobias and his brothers one of her stories. They all loved her stories. Especially when she drew the pictures that went with them. Tobias knew he was too old for stories. They went to bed early most nights. It was too cold not to.
Tobias wondered when the war would end.
In the mornings, the net curtains stuck to the windows. Tobias lit a fire if there was wood, his breath collecting in clouds before his face. When he looked in on Greta, asleep in her cot, her hands were always in tiny fists on either side of her head, cold as ice cubes. Tobias held each one up and blew on them before he tucked them inside the rough wool of his father’s coat. They ate hunks of bread for breakfast, mugs of hot water. School started at eight o’clock. Bruno always held Tobias’s hand, Lars dragging his feet behind them. ‘I don’t want to go to school.’ His teacher – Fraulein Horowitz – had left the year before. ‘She didn’t even say goodbye to us,’ Lars had said that day after school, when she never appeared. He’d struggled not to cry. His mother told him to be quiet. Told him never to mention Fraulein Horowitz again, if he knew what was good for him.
‘I’ll ask Herr Smidt if you can come on patrol with us tonight,’ Tobias sometimes promised Lars. ‘So long as you go to school and stop complaining.’
That usually worked. Lars longed to be as old as Tobias so he, too, could learn to shoot with the Hitler Youth, could sit in the fire trucks with the sirens blaring and climb ladders and put out fires with the massive hoses that the boys were shown how to use.
Lars would grin at his brother then, whack him on the arm with a playful fist. Tobias would grip the peak of Lars’s cap, pulling it down over his eyes, turning Lars around and around and pushing him towards his classroom. Lars staggered and laughed and Tobias waited until he was inside his classroom before he headed towards his own school where they would begin the day as they always did, with the salute and the chant that felt more like a prayer, albeit one that was never answered. Except you couldn’t say that. Not out loud. You couldn’t say anything. He recited it, same as everyone else. In a loud, certain voice with his head high, as if he were proud. As if the Russians weren’t coming.
His mother cried at night when she thought they were asleep. The cry was muffled and Tobias – lying in his bed – heard her and knew she was pressing her face into his father’s pillow so none of her children would hear her.
He held his hands against his ears when he heard her. That’s what he had been doing when the sirens sounded that night.
Lying in bed, holding his hands against his ears, trying not to hear his mother crying.
It was ten o’clock. Tobias had heard the sirens many times before, a mournful wail that ripped through the night air and made his ears ring like a bell. He pulled himself from sleep, from the warmth of his bed and dressed quickly in the cold darkness of the bedroom he shared with Lars and Bruno. He woke them, helped Bruno with the stiff buttons of the coat that stretched across his skinny chest, the two sides barely reaching now. Already he could hear Greta’s frightened cries and his mother’s voice, soft and low, soothing her as she pulled her clothes on.
Tobias dragged a box from underneath his bed, lifted his father’s gun out of it, wedged it into the waistband of his trousers. He always took the gun on nights like these. He’d never used it but the solid weight of it against his hip granted him some comfort. He picked up the suitcase they kept at the front door of their terraced house for the nights they spent in the cellar of the apartment block five doors down. It contained crackers and water, a few stubs of candles, some clothes and books, a pack of cards, a nappy for Greta. He took Bruno’s hand and opened the door.
‘Do you think it’s a false alarm?’ Bruno asked the same question on each of these nights.
‘Yes, of course,’ Tobias said, as he always did.
Lars and Bruno followed their big brother out the door onto the narrow road where already a strong current of people flowed, moving in the same direction. ‘Stay close by me,’ said Tobias to Lars, as he took Bruno’s hand and checked his mother was behind them, the baby clutched in her arms, now too tired to cry.
Already the place – a stale-smelling rectangle with cement walls and floor – was full. Tobias fought his way through the crowd who, ten minutes before, had been fast asleep in their beds, dreaming perhaps about peace. Or a cake made with real eggs. Or coal burning in a fireplace.
They were awake now. The air was thick with too many people in too tight a space. It was difficult to catch your breath. Two ancient, stooped men used every ounce of their energy to shut the door of the cellar, their arms taut and their hands flat against the door with their efforts. Greta cried when the door banged shut, stopping briefly to suckle at her mother’s breast. Tobias took off his coat and slipped it over his mother’s shoulders to afford her some privacy. She caught his eye and he nodded and looked away, not wanting to draw attention to his mother’s state of undress, wanting to protect her modesty. He felt that’s what his father would have done.
The lights flickered before they went out. Tobias k
new he was too old to be afraid of the dark but the darkness in the cellar pushed against his face and seemed to pull the air away with it. He concentrated on Bruno’s breath, which he could feel against the skin of his hands, wrapped around his brother’s small body.
They waited. In the dark, time made no sense. Nothing did. Not even the war which seemed to Tobias like time itself: relentless, constantly moving to some place in the distance that nobody could see.
They heard the bomb before they felt its impact. A thin screeching sound. Briefly, Tobias thought about the fireworks his father had bought once, years ago. He had set them off in the park at the bottom of their street on New Year’s Eve. Tobias had watched them soar, cutting the sky in two with their dazzling light. An orchestra of sound exploded in the cellar, discordant and frantic, some of it muffled as mothers pulled children against the fabric of ancient coats and worn-out dresses.
The impact of the bomb – which fell somewhere to the east of where they sheltered – shook the walls of the cellar, made a sound that seemed too big for the space they occupied and Tobias imagined the foundations of the block shifting beneath them and each apartment overhead, the rooms filled with ordinary things, teetering on the edge of the building. When the noise subsided, Tobias opened his eyes, separated himself from his brothers, rubbing dust from their faces, the shoulders of their coats. ‘You alright, Lars? Bruno?’ Lars nodded furiously without looking at his older brother. Tobias had told Lars to be brave and that’s what he was trying to be. Bruno was too young yet to know how to be brave. Or how to pretend to be, at any rate.
‘I want to go home now, Tobias. Can we go home now? I’m scared, Tobias, I want to—’
‘We’ll go home in a little while, OK?’ Bruno looked at Tobias with his enormous blue eyes in his small white face and nodded. ‘Where are you going?’ he said then, as Tobias stood up.
‘I have to—’
‘You don’t have to do anything except stay here with your family,’ his mother hissed. She put her hand on his arm. ‘You can’t leave, Tobias. It’s too dangerous.’
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