The Linden Tree

by Hester Rowan

  The arrogance was intolerable. If my voice wavered this time, it was with anger. ‘Always providing,’ I pointed out, ‘that she is prepared to kiss you.’

  He raised an infuriatingly sceptical eyebrow. ‘She was, out on the lake this afternoon.’

  ‘Then she has changed her mind.’

  I thought for a moment that he would let me go. Then suddenly, his arms were tight about me and his mouth was hard against mine. I tried to disengage my lips, despising myself for the instinct that made me long to respond, telling myself that it was simply a chemical reaction and that I didn’t want to pursue the experiment, and hating myself because I knew perfectly well that I did.

  And then, as suddenly as he had begun, he stopped kissing me. He still held my arm, which was just as well because I was so shaken that I felt dizzy, but he drew away. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said unsteadily. ‘That was selfish of me – you have a headache.’

  I managed a shaky laugh. ‘That hasn’t done it much good.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. ‘I’ve been thinking about doing that ever since I saw you on the stage, and wanting to do it from the moment we met on the cliff-top. You were really magnificent then, Alison, when you thought that I was a hunted man who needed help and protection. I can’t tell you how much I admired your courage and coolness and compassion. I have a very great regard for you, you know.’

  Perhaps it was even true. But if so, he’d got my character all wrong; I wasn’t in the least the kind of cool courageous person he needed for this job. It hadn’t been courage that had put me back on his pony when I fell off, it had been a bid for his brother Simon’s praise. It wasn’t cool-headedness and compassion that had impelled me to try to help Nicolas on the cliff, but physical attraction. And if I now had to deny the attraction he had for me – as I must, because I knew that he was only using me and that after this episode I should probably never see him again – then there was nothing to sustain me at all.

  He kissed me gently on the cheek, walked me back to the car, drove to the hotel and said a pleasant, friendly, good night.

  The next morning at ten o’clock he was waiting, in his nondescript suit and plain German shirt and commonplace German car, to drive me on the first part of my illegal journey into East Berlin.

  Chapter Nine

  The morning was grey and cool, more like November than May. Even the flowers in the gardens we passed looked subdued, matching my mood. I felt cold, despite my light sweater.

  ‘Sleep well?’ Nicolas enquired as we drove through the suburbs.

  ‘Yes, thank you.’

  He grinned at me from the corners of his eyes. ‘Liar,’ he observed pleasantly.

  Well of course I was lying. I’d had a wretched night, tossing over and over as I went through his instructions in my mind and thought of further queries, further potential problems. And when I finally fell asleep I had dreamed vividly, waking in panic as I tried to run from some nameless dread towards Nicolas, a remote protector whose proffered hand I could never quite manage to reach …

  I held myself stiffly, in an attempt to conceal my shivers. ‘I will get a chance to talk to Elisabeth, won’t I?’ I asked, anxious to resolve one of the problems that had loomed hideously large in the night.

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ he said. ‘Her absence from the East will be strictly timed and we can’t risk any delay while you chat. Besides, she won’t want to – her preoccupation is with her grandmother, remember.’

  ‘Oh, but I must talk to her,’ I cried. I drew a shaky breath and started again, trying to keep my voice from sounding as panicky as I felt.

  ‘Look, Nicolas, I don’t see how I’ll ever get away with pretending to be someone else – you can’t do that kind of thing in real life. It doesn’t matter how much alike Elisabeth and I may look, there will be a hundred obvious differences. Walk, gestures, voice, mannerisms … and if I can’t even get an opportunity to talk to her there’s no point in going through with it, because I’d be spotted immediately!’

  ‘Of course you won’t!’ he said sternly. ‘The only people you’ve got to deceive are the driver of the car, the East German guards at the checkpoint and the porter at the block of flats. As long as you’re with Braun, they’ll take your identity for granted. But I’ve arranged things at Elisabeth’s grandmother’s house so that you can watch her and listen to her as she goes in, and that should help. After all, you’re a good actress.’ He gave a friendly grin. ‘What’s the saying – “It’ll be all right on the night”?’

  All very well, for Nicolas; he’d be staying comfortably among the fleshpots of West Berlin while I was the one who risked arrest and imprisonment in the East. I glared at his profile, trying to tell myself that he was not in the least attractive, that I’d been a fool ever to think that he was, that he was really as dull and ordinary as his clothes and his choice of car suggested.

  He went on talking, oblivious of my disapproval. ‘I’m afraid I shan’t be here when you come back tomorrow, but someone from the Department will be waiting for you. He’ll take you back to Gatow and put you on the next flight out to England. Where do you want to go from Gatwick? Back to Norfolk?’

  Tomorrow seemed unimaginably far ahead. ‘Er – yes, I expect so. Yes of course, I’ll have to be there when Aunt Madge gets back.’

  ‘Right, I’ll arrange for someone to meet you at Gatwick and drive you there. By tomorrow night you’ll be safely back at your aunt’s house.’

  I nodded glumly. It was the thought of what I had to do in the intervening period that made me sick with worry.

  ‘I’m due for some leave, as a matter of fact,’ he went on. ‘I intend to go back home at the end of the week and do some sailing – it’d be a good opportunity for you to start learning, if you’d like to?’

  ‘I don’t suppose I’ll be staying in Norfolk beyond the week-end,’ I said. ‘Not after Aunt Madge gets back. Even if her car and the drive gates have been repaired, there’s bound to be a bit of an atmosphere.’

  He chuckled. ‘All right then, come and stay at the farm. I know my mother would be happy to have you – and then I can show you over the empty house. I’d very much like you to see it.’

  I murmured politely, declining to commit myself. It wasn’t as though Nicolas really wanted to show me the house or entertain me at the farm or teach me to sail. He was merely doing his job, and trying to take my mind off the next twenty-four hours.

  He had turned left off the busy main road that led towards the Brandenburg Gate, and was now driving through residential streets. The stucco façades of the older buildings were gashed and pock-marked. Despite the evident prosperity of West Berlin, the houses that had survived the bombs and shells of war still bore their scars.

  Nicolas stopped beside a tall, solid nineteenth-century terraced house in a quiet street.

  ‘Is this where Elisabeth’s grandmother lives?’

  ‘No – she’s in the parallel street. It’s just possible that her house may be watched, so we’re taking a short cut through her cellar. Look, you see the man standing at the door over there?’

  He was middle-aged, balding, shirt-sleeved, standing at the top of a short flight of steps and puffing a cigar while he glanced at a newspaper, and he gave us no sign of recognition or interest.

  Nicolas checked his watch. ‘That’s George,’ he said. ‘He works for the Department and for the past two weeks he’s been the tenant of the ground-floor apartment. He’s the one who’ll meet you as soon as you come back from East Berlin tomorrow. Ah, that’s it, all clear.’

  George had looked casually up and down the street, ground out his cigar butt, folded his newspaper and gone indoors. Nicolas waited for a minute, and then we followed and he rang the lowest bell.

  George answered it immediately, and the men exchanged a laconic ‘Guten Morgen’ as we stepped into the hallway. The introduction was brief: George gave me a nod and a smile, but I was too tense to return either. He opened an inner door, closed it behind us, and
led us down some stairs and along a basement passage. At the far end, another door led to a windowless cellar that smelled of damp and of musty woodwork. When he flicked a switch a naked electric light bulb revealed an antiquated boiler, a heap of coal and a large gap newly knocked in the brickwork of the opposite wall.

  ‘No problems?’ Nicolas asked.

  ‘None at all,’ George confirmed. ‘Should be a very smooth little operation.’ He smiled at me, looking slightly bashful: ‘Hope the shoes and things fitted?’

  There had been a parcel waiting at the hotel for Nicolas when we arrived the previous afternoon. He had given it to me unopened when we said good night, telling me that the shoes and underclothes it contained were identical with Elisabeth’s and that I must wear them today.

  Poor Elisabeth! Or perhaps it wasn’t her taste that was the problem, perhaps it was simply that attractive clothes weren’t available in East Germany. Poor Elisabeth, either way! I’d looked in horror at the brand-new, hopelessly old-fashioned, grimly uncompromising underwear and at the boat-shaped casual shoes in an unattractive shade of light beige, and decided that there was such a thing as carrying authenticity too far. The shoes I’d have to wear, since they would be an essential part of her appearance, but what I wore underneath when I was on stage was strictly my own affair.

  I smiled at George; no doubt he’d gone to a lot of trouble to get the clothes. ‘Yes, thank you,’ I said sweetly. The shoes were a little sloppy, but that was the least of my worries.

  He looked pleased. ‘Fine. Good luck, then – and I’ll be here waiting for you tomorrow.’

  Nicolas ducked through the gap and held out his hand for me to follow him into the cellar of the house in the next street.

  The light was already on; we were expected. The cellar was almost identical with the first, except that it was tidier and better stocked with fuel. Nicolas opened the door and we were immediately in another basement passage, at the end of which a woman was hovering to greet us.

  She was tall, greying, somewhere in her mid-fifties, her shoulders a little stooped and her hands and voice tremulous with mingled fear, excitement and strain. ‘Herr Allen?’ she said, peering uncertainly. And then as Nicolas moved forward into the light she hurried to shake his hand. ‘Yes, of course, Herr Allen, I remember you well. And this is –?’

  Nicolas drew me forward. ‘This is the young lady,’ he said simply. To me he said: ‘Frau Henschel is one of Elisabeth’s aunts.’

  As she saw me clearly for the first time Frau Henschel gave a nervous gasp, her hands flying up to her mouth, her eyes wide and apprehensive. And then she seized both my hands in hers and refused to let me go as she poured out her thoughts and emotions: how much I reminded her of her dead sister, Elisabeth’s mother, how kind I was to help them, how brave I was to agree to take Elisabeth’s place so that she could stay with them as long as possible. Her gratitude was embarrassing, but at the same time heart-warming. Whatever the deeper implications of the deception Nicolas had involved me in, I began for the first time to feel that I really was doing something genuinely useful for Elisabeth and her family.

  With a prompt from Nicolas, who kept an eye on his watch, I managed to disengage myself. Frau Henschel led us up the basement stair and into the main hall. This was still a one-family house and the hall was spotlessly clean, its black and white tiles newly washed and polished. There was an appetizing smell of freshly-ground coffee, a welcome, I guessed, for Elisabeth. Frau Henschel was smartly dressed, but the agreeable aura of the perfumed toilet water she used could not quite mask the lingering smell of sick-room antiseptic.

  ‘How is Elisabeth’s grandmother?’ I asked.

  Frau Henschel shook her head sadly, glancing up the stairway, and I saw how tired and strained her eyes were. ‘Only a matter of time,’ she admitted wearily. ‘A week perhaps.’ But then she brightened.

  ‘But Mother has been asking for Elisabeth. She will be so pleased to see her. She could not understand why the girl’s visit had to be so brief, she forgets the Wall. And we dared not tell her Herr Allen’s plan, because we did not really believe that you would be prepared to come.’ She seized my hand again. ‘We are so very grateful to you, my dear. It will mean so much to my mother.’

  Nicolas, standing just beside me, put his arm lightly round my shoulders. I assured Frau Henschel that I was only too glad to help, and I hoped that it sounded sincere. I had begun to shiver again with nervous tension, and only the look of pride on Nicolas’s face as he watched me, and the reassuring touch of his hand, kept me from bolting back down the basement stairs.

  ‘Have you noticed anyone watching the house, Frau Henschel?’ he asked.

  She twisted her hands together. ‘I think not, Herr Allen. But there has been so much work, so much worry with my mother … and now the excitement of Elisabeth’s visit …’

  He nodded understandingly. ‘Never mind. But you will remember, won’t you, that Elisabeth must change her clothes immediately, even before she sees her grandmother? This young lady must be ready to leave at exactly twenty minutes past the hour.’

  Frau Henschel cut in eagerly. ‘Yes, I remember your instructions. Everything is arranged.’ She whirled nervously towards the front door, her hands fluttering to her lips again. ‘I think I hear a car!’ She strained to hear, then ran to the rear of the hall where there was a curtained-off lobby hung about with winter coats and scarves. ‘This will be the best place for you to wait, Herr Allen.’

  Nicolas drew me behind the curtain. ‘I wanted you to be able to see as much as possible of Elisabeth,’ he explained quietly, ‘without either disturbing the family reunion or running the risk of being seen from the street when the door opens.’

  Frau Henschel dithered, smoothing her hair and then her dress. Then flung the door wide and, with a cry of joy, ran out and down the steps to greet her niece.

  I waited tensely for my first sight of Elisabeth. In the space of a few minutes I would have to observe enough to enable me to give a convincing impersonation of her as I walked out of the door and into the official East German car. And if I made a hash of this part, it wouldn’t be just a matter of going back to work as a waitress, it would be a matter of capture and punishment …

  There was very little room in the lobby. Nicolas stood immediately behind me so that we could both look through the gap in the curtains. I could hear his steady breathing and feel the beat of his heart as his chest pressed against my shoulder. We said nothing, but the silence was alive and tingling.

  And then there was a commotion. The door of an upper room opened and two other women came hurrying down the stairs, just as Frau Henschel came in through the front door with her arm triumphantly round a girl who had a light raincoat hanging loosely from her shoulders. There were glad cries and kisses and embraces, and I began to panic, jumping on my toes to try to catch a clear glimpse of Elisabeth.

  ‘It’s all right,’ whispered Nicolas, his hands steadying me. ‘Don’t worry, they all know what’s at stake.’ And in a moment the other women retreated upstairs, and Frau Henschel firmly closed the front door.

  My first reaction when I saw Elisabeth standing alone in the middle of the hall, was one of horrified disbelief. Nicolas must be out of his mind! He couldn’t possibly expect me to impersonate this girl, we weren’t in the least alike!

  Elisabeth wore a pair of large dark-rimmed glasses. She was several inches taller than me and pounds heavier. The only similarity between us seemed to be that she was also wearing a pair of light beige boat-shaped shoes, and they were a good two sizes larger than mine.

  I turned my head towards Nicolas, though I still kept my eyes on Elisabeth. ‘We’re completely different,’ I hissed. ‘I’ll never get away with this!’

  His hands tightened on my shoulders as he whispered against my hair, ‘Yes you will. Just keep cool and watch her. Elisabeth doesn’t wear glasses either, but Kurt provided her with a pair with plain lenses. As long as you’re wearing them, no casual observer will
notice the differences in your features. The raincoat slung over your shoulders will help conceal the fact that you’re slimmer. And she’s slightly round-shouldered, so she doesn’t look that much taller than you. Now stop flapping, and concentrate.’

  The man was a better observer than I was, I thought wryly; but then, no doubt the Department of Overseas Trade trained him for it. I was still tense, still frightened, but I forced myself to concentrate.

  Elisabeth walked with quick, precise steps; she carried her handbag slung on a strap over her left forearm; she had a nervous habit of pushing up the bridge of her glasses with the second finger of her right hand, and then smoothing back her hair behind her right ear. Her face was devoid of make-up apart from lipstick, and she wore her hair combed straight back and caught in a knot at the nape of her neck. Her voice was light, but I almost smiled with relief as I heard the familiar Thuringian undertone. That at least was something I would have no problem with.

  Elisabeth paused for a moment at the foot of the stairs, talking to her aunt, and then they moved up out of sight. At the same time, the man who had come in with her and had been standing quietly near the door now came forward. Nicolas pushed back the curtain and went out to meet him.

  ‘Allen.’

  ‘Braun.’

  They introduced themselves and shook hands, looking at each other with interest. They were much of a height, though Braun was broader. He was perhaps ten years older than Nicolas, though his prematurely grey hair made his unlined face seem correspondingly younger so that it was difficult to assess his true age. His deep-set brown eyes had a wary, weary look, but he seemed genuinely glad to meet Nicolas.