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Young Adolf
A Novel
Beryl Bainbridge
FOR LUVELY DON MACKINLAY
1
There had been a nasty incident, half-way between France and England, when young Adolf, turning in a moment of weakness to take a last look at the hills of Boulogne, had come face to face with a man wearing a beard and thick spectacles. For several seconds the two strangers had stood on the wind-swept deck and stared at one another. I shall control myself, thought Adolf. I will not run. Accordingly he had strolled in a leisurely fashion away from the stranger until, arriving at a convenient flight of stairs, he had bolted below deck and locked himself in the gentlemen’s lavatory.
There for some time he had studied his passport and his papers, made out in the name of Edwin, his dead brother, and wondered miserably if it was likely that the Austrian military authorities would detail an official to shadow him across Europe. It was odd that they had known he would be on this particular steamer. Was it possible that his half-sister Angela had reported him to the police? She had been in a morbid frame of mind when he visited her in Linz; her conversation had centred mainly on the last painful moments of her husband, the tax inspector, and the present state of his grave: some sort of animal was disturbing the top soil. Her fingernails, Adolf noticed, had constantly raked the smooth surface of the tablecloth. She had smiled once in four hours – when reading aloud part of the seven-page letter recently arrived from England. Misunderstanding that smile, he had been foolish enough to laugh openly at the mention of safety razors. It was then that Angela had rounded on him, implying that he too lacked business ability and was in no position to criticise anybody. He had left abruptly, but not before pocketing the money she had placed ready for him on the dresser. It was true that on several previous occasions he had been forced to accept small sums from her, but in a sense he was merely borrowing money that had belonged to him in the first place. Perhaps it was not his sister but the lamplighter, Josef Greiner, who had betrayed him – that so-called friend who only two days ago had cut his hair for nothing. Had there not been something sinister in the way Greiner – a man often to be found rolling in the gutter – had fastidiously spread newspaper on the linoleum floor of the Männerheim lounge?
At last, maddened by doubt and repeated blows on the panelling of the door, Adolf had flung back the catch and run savagely up the companionway to confront his pursuer. He would not hide like a fox in a hole. He had run with such swiftness that the wind had caught his cap and lifted it from his head. But though he had circled the deck for an hour or more he had been unable to find the bearded man. Nor, when he had retraced his steps and gone below in search of it, could he find his blown-away cap. Man and hat had disappeared in mid-channel.
Now young Adolf was sitting in the corner of a railway compartment, engrossed in a book. He had been reading for six hours, sometimes the same page, over and over. He read because by this time he was faint from lack of food, and because it seemed to him in his famished state that whenever he carelessly allowed himself to glance upwards from the page the numerous occupants of the carriage were eating. Their faces turned instantly to his; they made those small gestures – a slight lifting of the shoulders, a clearing of the throat – preparatory to offering him something. Even when he was careful only to look out of the window, he imagined he saw mouths reflected in the glass, steadily munching, imitating those other bedraggled beasts that cropped the grass beside the railway line. So he kept his head down as the train travelled slowly northwards beneath rain-filled skies and read and re-read the story of Old Shatterhand, chief of the white settlers of Texas and Arizona pledged to annihilate the fiendish Ogellalah Indians.
Through a landscape shimmering with heat Old Shatterhand rode like the devil himself into the encampment. Sunlight glinting off the barrel of his gun, he routed the cowardly redksins and took prisoner the warrior Nantaquond. Even now, Nantaquond lay staked out in the dust, naked as a babe; above him straddled Shatterhand holding aloft a leather pouch, from which dripped a thin trickle of wild honey that laced in golden strands the bloodstained limbs of the captive warrior – there, where his limp manhood lolled, mauve against his thigh. In the heavens of the Wild West, specks of dirt on the blue cloth of the sky, flies gathered in a quivering arrow and hummed downwards to the fallen Nantaquond. ‘I am great,’ hollered Old Shatterhand. ‘I am glorious.’
Only at these triumphant and concluding words did Adolf put down his book. Immediately he was aware of the rumblings of his stomach. He dug his fists into his empty belly and affecting an interest in the view pressed his cheek to the window pane and squinted along the track. The train, buffeted by wind, was swaying over the steel lattice of a bridge, high above the silted estuary of a river. In the distance some kind of tower, complete with battlements, rose into the sky. From the outer wall a balcony hung, supported by winged angels carved in stone, on which a uniformed official stood as though behind a waterfall, holding a flag. Torrents of rain, spilling from the ramparts above, fell on to the red gravel of the track and sprayed the carriages ahead. Afterwards Adolf was inclined to think of his whole journey as one long approach to this dark fortress on the horizon; in reality he had no sooner caught sight of the building than it was upon him. The man in uniform, standing there like an heroic character in some opera, served no visible purpose. He had neither machinery to work, nor signal to operate; the flag he so uselessly held clung like a rag to the lapels of his braided jacket. The carriage rocked as it drew level with the tower – Adolf peered directly up at the balcony. He saw an angel, whose stone cheeks dripped with rain, and the face of the man, looking down. For an instant their eyes met. The man’s mouth, set in a wild beard pulled by the wind, began to open. Then a long plume of smoke, spurting from the squat funnel of the engine ahead, floated backwards and whirled about the tower. The train passed by.
It was almost three o’clock in the afternoon. The passengers started to prepare themselves for arrival; they shook the crumbs from their clothes and kept an anxious eye on the weather. It was too soon to lift down the luggage from the rack. Adolf remained hunched in his seat, one hand shielding his face. He had the absurd idea that overhead the bearded man crouched waiting on the roof of the train, and yet he couldn’t help but yawn repeatedly. It was as though he was a schoolboy again, making the journey from his home in Leonding, through just such a landscape of pale fields edged with mud, to the Realschule in Linz. Ahead of him stretched a day of unutterable boredom. In the gloomy building on the Steinstrasse he would attempt to memorise certain principles of mathematics or paragraphs of French and, failing, slump feebly over his books, listening to the squeak of chalk on the blackboard, until his eyelids closed and he felt he existed in some void between life and death, mindless, like an animal hibernating in the dark. It would be better if he never reached his destination. Spaced out across the hills stood the crumbling watch-towers, monuments to a time when Austria feared invasion by the armies of Napoleon. The rain flattened the grass that grew among the ruins and blew inwards over the flooded meadows to beat against the windows of the train. He had only to lift his head to see how the entire world wept.
While he was sleeping, the train plunged into the hills surrounding the city and entered a massive tunnel blasted from yellow sandstone. His fellow passengers hauled down their baggage and dragging open the compartment door stumbled into the corridor. Someone trod on Adolf’s foot. He woke to darkness and confusion. The carriage was swaying so violently that he was forced to cling with both hands to th
e edge of his seat. Outside the window, a wall of rock, lit at intervals by flickering jets of gas, towered above him. Just when he thought he must be dashed to the floor, the train rumbled out of the tunnel and slid beneath a vaulted roof of iron and glass into Lime Street Station.
Hatless, his only luggage a book on Shatterhand of the Wild West, young Adolf had arrived in Liverpool.
2
Crossing Upper Parliament Street in a downpour of rain, Alois swung up his stick and hailed a taxi-cab.
‘We shouldn’t have,’ said Bridget, thankfully climbing into the vehicle.
‘It’s a sensible extravagance,’ her husband explained. ‘Your boots are letting in the water.’ His own footwear was in splendid condition, as was his overcoat and homburg hat – but then a man embarking on a new business venture couldn’t go about looking like a derelict. In the fist of his pigskin glove he held a bunch of purple violets.
‘In the long run,’ said Bridget, ‘it might be more sensible if I had a new pair of boots.’ But she wasn’t criticising him in any serious way. Whatever his faults, meanness wasn’t one of them. After three years of marriage he sat with his arm around her waist, and it pleased her, though she knew there was nothing exclusive in this show of affection: he regularly embraced Mr Meyer and Dr Kephalus; sometimes he stroked the shoulder of Mary O’Leary, and she was no sight to break the bank: he liked touching people – it was due to him being a foreigner.
Bridget had first met him in the saddling enclosure at the Dublin horse show. Introducing himself as Alois Hitler from Austria, he had bowed over her hand; his little finger, encircled by a ruby ring, had grazed her wrist. She had fallen in love instantly, as though struck down by influenza. He wore a cream-coloured waistcoat with a heavy silver chain slung from pocket to pocket; hooked over his arm he carried an ivory walking stick tipped with a handle of gold. She had stood transfixed, the horses tossing their heads and side-stepping, her own head on a level with his chest. Stabbed in his tie was a glittering pin embellished with a single pearl. He was dazzling in the sunlight.
Now, as he leant across her to gaze out of the window, Alois’s moustaches brushed her cheek. She knew it was probably a woman who was attracting his attention, but she didn’t fret. There was no harm in his looking. Not today. It wasn’t the moment for him to leap out of the cab and out of her life. Last night, after hearing she had spent three hours preparing food for the arrival of their guest, he had gone so far as to call her the best wife in the world. She would have preferred to cook some sort of Austrian dish, but Mr Meyer had been against it. ‘My dear child,’ he had protested, ‘would you care to go all that way over land and sea to be served a plate of cabbage and boiled beef … with the prunes and custard to follow?’ As he was offering her the use of the kitchen range in the basement, Bridget felt obliged to accept his culinary advice. She did however manage to avoid descending to the basement at the time Mr Meyer suggested. She said she must visit the wash-house during the morning; it would be more convenient to wait until after tea when the baby had been put to bed. Fortunately Mr Meyer left the house every morning at six o’clock to play his violin in the supper rooms of the Adelphi Hotel.
‘I wish I hadn’t done mutton,’ said Bridget.
Her husband wasn’t listening; the cab had swung to the kerb and already he was opening the door and urging her to step out. He was so eager to reach the station that, taking Bridget by the elbow, he propelled her at a fast trot up the cobbled ramp to the entrance.
‘We’ve plenty of time,’ she protested, hampered by the saturated hem of her skirt – though, as it happened, the train had drawn in and the first passengers were hurrying down the platform.
‘Are you sure it’s right?’ asked Bridget, hanging on to his arm, frightened they were in the wrong place.
Alois stood with the nosegay of flowers held ceremoniously in front of him; above the crushed petals his blue eyes stared anxiously ahead. He had lived in Dublin and Paris and London and had been equally at home in either capital, but at that moment, waiting impatiently in his best clothes beside the ticket gate, searching the approaching faces for that one face in particular, he allowed himself to feel he was a stranger in a strange land. Tears came to his eyes. Consumed with sentiment, he shouldered his way through the crowd and strode on to the platform.
Bridget, unable to follow, ran to the barrier and watched him. For several seconds she lost sight of his broad back, and then the crowd thinned. A woman dressed in furs, supervising the unloading of her luggage, turned to look at Alois as he passed; she took a step after him and hesitated. Bridget waved frantically. She called ‘Alois … Alois’, pushing her arm through the bars of the gate and pointing at the woman who was now walking away. Alois spun round; evidently he hadn’t understood, because he was staring at a young man who, half-hidden by an iron column, was peering up at the roof of the train.
Then Bridget witnessed a distressing scene. The young man, suddenly becoming aware of Alois, dodged totally behind the pillar as though for protection – at which Alois sprang forward and seizing him by the collar dragged him into view. An animated conversation began. The young man appeared first to be explaining and then apologising for something; he laid a placating hand on the sleeve of Alois’s coat. Alois punched him on the shoulder so forcefully that the young man lost his balance and fell to one knee. The bouquet of flowers tumbled to the platform.
Bridget was alarmed. Only a month ago Alois had spent two nights in the Bridewell for assaulting a drunken seaman in Stanhope Street. The sailor, raucously singing on the pavement below, had disturbed the baby, who woke screaming. It was three o’clock in the morning. Throwing up the sitting-room window, Alois had leaned over the balcony and promised violence if the noise didn’t cease. The man sang on. Unwinding the handle from the gramophone and whirling it about his head, Alois had leapt downstairs in his shirt and given chase.
Then as now, Alois seemed immensely threatening. The young man retreated. Alois, apparently losing all control, took a running kick at him. The toe-cap of his boot lifted the welcoming violets into the air; still bunched together by a twist of thread, the flowers sailed over the young man’s shoulder and flopped brokenly to the ground. Alois, thwarted, raised his arm menacingly. At that precise moment a passing trolley, laden with baggage, caught the young man a glancing blow on the ankle, and losing his balance for the second time he sprawled helplessly on his back among the suitcases, legs feebly waving as he was borne away down the platform.
Appalled, Bridget shrank against the barrier, watching her husband. She thought she might faint. Brandishing his stick aloft, Alois was now swaying on his feet, convulsed with laughter. People turned to look at him. The young man struggled upright as the trolley neared the end of the platform; jumping clear, he stumbled to the gate and clung to it with both hands. Bridget, separated from him by the iron bars, saw the curve of his high cheek-bone and the bulge of one blue, unhappy eye. She couldn’t think why he didn’t run for his life. And then Alois, smiling, was standing beside him, thumping him on the back.
‘It’s my artist brother,’ he shouted to Bridget. ‘It’s bloody Adolf.’
‘Pleased to meet you,’ said Bridget.
‘He took the money,’ explained Alois. ‘Then he took the excursion.’
‘I see,’ said Bridget, frowning.
‘It takes two to make the bargain,’ reminded Alois.
The young man gave up his ticket and passed through the barrier. He was taller than Alois but of a slighter build. He had close-cropped brown hair and a sickly, exhausted face. It appeared that he was worried about a book he had lost, a scholarly work. It was imperative that he find it.
‘He was always a great reader,’ cried Alois, suddenly proud. Adolf had pressed the book to his breast during the North Sea passage, had held it in his hands throughout the long train journey. Now it was gone; he stared suspiciously over his shoulder at some point above the roof of the locomotive. As it seemed to have been his one item
of luggage, Bridget understood his concern.
‘We will search up and down,’ said Alois kindly. He gave Bridget money for her tram fare home and assured her that the two of them would expect their supper on the table at six-thirty.
‘Try not to get heated,’ whispered Bridget, fearful that he might do further damage to his relation. She realised finally that Angela wouldn’t arrive, that bloody Adolf had come in her place. She was bitterly disappointed. During the day Alois was out touting for business and most nights he worked at the hotel; she was sometimes lonely with only the baby and Mary O’Leary for company. She thought of the best sheets wasted on the brass bed, her mother’s bolster case with the initials embroidered at the corner. She’d imagined murmured conversations in the night, womanly talk, small confidences exchanged. Alois had been prepared to give up the bed to his sister; he’d sleep instead on the couch in the sitting room. Obviously it wasn’t any longer a suitable arrangement.
Alois took no further notice of Bridget. He was telling his half-brother about safety razors and the fortune that was in it for both of them. A gust of cold wind blew through the station.
Settling her tam o’ shanter more firmly on her head, Bridget walked away.
Adolf remained standing by the barrier with his hands sunk in his pockets. His suit was so old and shabby that in places the cloth had faded from blue to lilac. He was staring at each passing face as though expecting someone to recognise him.
3
Once down the slope and into the wintry street, Bridget stood undecided. It was twenty past four by the illuminated clock on the facade of The Seaman’s Hotel. Already the lamps were lit on the plateau; in pools of rain the stone lions crouched, waiting to pounce. Mr Meyer would still be in his ground-floor room, strutting back and forth in front of the double windows, knotting his bow-tie beneath his celluloid collar and keeping an eye on the steps. She knew she couldn’t go to a tea room because she hadn’t the money, and if she stayed out of doors in her leaking boots she would catch pneumonia. Then what would become of darling Pat?
Young Adolf Page 1