So Much Life Left Over

by Louis de Bernières

  Willy, Fritzl and Gretchen have all joined Hitler’s National Socialist Party. I have taken up lodgings with a Jewish family, who are terribly nice and have two very pretty daughters of a dangerous age. Willy and Fritzl (and Gretchen) are very sharp about Jews, because they say they lost the last war on account of them. They keep talking about the ‘stab in the back’, and that they lost because of the Jewish subversives on the home front. I don’t understand their logic. I seem to remember that it was us who defeated them, and we didn’t have any Jews in our squadron, as far as I can remember. I don’t feel I can say much, without causing a brouhaha, and anyway my German isn’t good enough yet, and their French is painful, and their English comical. They’ve talked themselves into the idea that absolutely everything is someone else’s fault, and that someone else is always a Jew. If you slip on some dog muck, you can be sure it was a Jewish dog! A great many people act as though they are suffering from some kind of drunkenness. You know, glassy eyes and fixed smiles. I suppose they are still punch-drunk because of the war, and then the ghastly financial crash, and of course, if you feel humiliated, it’s always nice to think you’re the wronged hero, isn’t it?

  Anyway, the man of the house (and the father of the pretty daughters of a dangerous age) is a Herr Wolff. He is a philosophy professor, and he is very gloomy. He is a logical positivist, apparently. I have no idea what that means yet, but he seems to worship Science rather than God, and frets constantly about what a fact is. I said to him, ‘If you find a proper theory of what a fact is, how will you know whether that theory is in fact itself a fact?’ and he said, ‘Ah, my boy, this is the greatest puzzle of all.’ Frau Wolff is a small lady with dark eyebrows and a worried look. She is terribly bustly, and a real tittlemouse. She says, ‘Ach, Herr Pitt, alles! Alles!’ I think that means that she is dismayed by everything.

  They have a nice comfortable house in a suburb, but recently some young men have started throwing stones at their windows, and even doing nasty things in their garden, and putting things through their letter box. Your daddy went out and punched one on the nose on his third night here, and since then they haven’t been back, but a policeman came round to tell him off, and then he puffed out his cheeks and said that Germany was going to the dogs again, and the policeman’s advice was to get out and go home, and he wished he could come with me. He advised Herr Wolff to wear his medals from the last war. He won the Iron Cross at Verdun. There is a nice slang word for the criminal police, which is ‘Kripo’.

  Now, chérie, my little champignonne, let me tell you what is happening. During the holidays Mrs Pendennis next door will be our poste restante. I have told her about our problem with Mama not letting you have my letters and presents, and she is very sympathetic, so all you have to do is pop next door, see the old lady, and read the letters. Do always remember to give her my best regards. You mustn’t ever lie to Mama, but on the other hand you don’t have to tell her everything either, so I think it would be a good idea not to mention our arrangement. Mrs Pendennis doesn’t speak much to Mama any more, so our secret is safe with her, and she doesn’t mind if you leave the toys and things with her. Poor Mrs Pendennis lost all her sons in the Great War, so for her it is both terribly nice and terribly sad to have children in the house. She doesn’t have any grandchildren, so do try to be like a little granddaughter to her so that it helps to fill the gap, and take Bertie round too.

  During term time, of course, you will get my letters as normal. I hope you’re enjoying Effingham House, by the way, and I am so proud of you getting into the hockey 3rd 11, even though you are only eleven yourself! The weather is bracing on the Sussex coast, is it not? And do you like Latin? I didn’t, but now I wish I’d paid more attention. Uncle Archie was awfully good at Latin and Greek. He should have been a classical scholar, really. Please do make a special effort in French, won’t you?

  Your dear headmistress is also very understanding about our difficult situation, and she has agreed that I can come and take you out on weekends which are not officially exeats. I shall probably come home by train and boat, and my plan is to come back for two weeks every three months. That way I can have fun with you, keep an eye on your Uncle Archie and Gran’mère Pitt, and even go and see my little godchildren at Auntie Christabel’s…and go flying with Auntie Gaskell too! The three aeroplanes are fast becoming antiques, and will probably have to be rebuilt yet again. When that happens I shall come home for a couple of months so that I can have fun joining in and making sure that everything goes smoothly. I shall have to find a friendly shed for a spare motorcycle somewhere near the harbour, or I could buy a small car, as long as it’s very fast and has wings that come out of the side.

  Dortmund is a nice city despite all the smoke and smells from the iron foundries and steelworks. Luckily we have lots of waterways and woodlands, and there is a very nice lake at Hörde, just south of here, and there is Westfalenpark and Rombergpark. We’ve got no less than six castles, and there’s an opera house too, so soon I am going to go and see my first opera. I am hoping to see some very loud and fat ladies dressed as ancient warrioresses, with bosoomers so capacious that they have to be carried before them in a wheelbarrow, and when they sing loudly enough, the windows will shatter for miles around.

  There is a nice church near me called the Reinoldikirche, which has a very pointy spire like a needle poked at the sky, and there’s another nice church called the Marienkirche.

  A great many people here have Polish names, but they all swear they are true Germans. In the evenings I am eating big mounds of something called Himmel und Erde, which means ‘heaven and earth’ but it is really a sort of black pudding with apples and mashed potato. There’s a nice kind of goulash called Pfefferpotthast, and if you want a snack you have a potato pancake with apple sauce. After every meal here you feel as if you have just eaten a medium-sized family saloon. A Morris Tourer, perhaps.

  Mr Wragge is here with me. He didn’t want to stay with Granny because she does things like throwing his garden fork over the wall, and threatening to get His Majesty to put him in the Tower, and once she shot him in the backside with her air rifle, and then told him not to wear grey trousers because when he was bending over she thought he was a pigeon. It was very stingy and left a big bruise, but luckily the pellet didn’t penetrate. Mr Wragge wasn’t being paid very much, and he is an excellent mechanic, so I persuaded him to come.

  He is a great asset to us, and loves nothing more than stripping a machine down and cleaning every little piece. This place is dedicated to coal, steel and beer, but Mr Wragge is mainly interested in the beer, and is quite often ‘clever side up’ in the evenings. He has taken lodgings in an attic, which he seems to like very much, because he has a good view over the rooftops, and the sparrows come to his window for crumbs. He says there is one sparrow that likes to sit on his finger, but he holds it out of the window until it relieves itself, to make sure that it doesn’t do so when invited into the room. He has a landlady who, he says, is ‘most obliging’ and I shall tell you what that means when you are a little bit older.

  And when you’re older, we shall be able to do as we please. But I don’t want you to get older. I love you as you are. I miss you so much, and we have already lost so much time. Let’s have special fun when I come to get you from school in a fortnight! Let’s eat too much ice cream at funfairs! Let’s go to the beach and cook sausages on a Primus in howling gales!

  I hug you so tight that all the little bones in your spine go ‘crack crack crack’ and all the bones in your ribs too. And I tickle your feet. And I brush your hair a little bit too hard, so that the brush gets caught, and you make a face, and then I push you too high on the swings, and then I put you on my lap and get stuck halfway down the slide because my derrière’s too wide.

  With all my love from your best and one and only…

  Daddy

  PS Yes! What wonderful news about Auntie Ottilie!
/>   Effingham House

  Bexhill-on-Sea

  Sussex

  12 July 1931

  Darlingest Daddy,

  I am just back at school and I have bad news which is that naughty Bertie told Mummy about the letter you wrote to him care of Mrs Pendennis, and now she says that we can’t go next door any more, so what I did was wait at the window until I saw Mrs Pendennis in her garden, and then I ran out and opened the blue door in the wall, and I talked to her without going next door at all. Aren’t I the clever one?

  She came in and she went to talk to Mummy, and they were talking very loud to each other in the drawing room, but I didn’t listen because I was frightened. Now Mummy says that she is not a friend of Mrs Pendennis any more, even though Mrs Pendennis used to be like an extra mother, and Mummy used to be engaged to her son.

  I waited ’til Mummy went out, and then I went to talk to Mrs Pendennis at the blue door, and she was very huffy about Mummy, and said she would leave your letters and presents in a tin box just inside the door on her side, and I was to be very careful not to go and look unless I was sure that Mummy was out. She told me that she would post any letters I wrote in the holidays, and not to mind about the stamps, and I could leave them in the box, and she sends her special regards.

  My best friend from last term has stopped being my best friend, and says she wants to be best friends with Helen Anstruther instead, so my new best friend is Violet Construction. It’s such a funny name, but she says it’s her real name and she’s got to put up with it. She likes sports and reading Girls’ Budgets, the same as I do, and when we are older we are going to be film stars. We are going to try for parts in the school play so we can practise. I want to learn tap dancing, but so far I have only learned waltzing, with me pretending to be the man. Violet has brown eyes and black hair and is very pretty, much prettier than me, but I don’t mind.

  The dorm is very cold at night, and in winter we have frost on the insides of the windows in the morning, and we have to wash with a jug of water and bowl, and it’s my turn at the moment to get up early and fetch the jug of hot water and put some in each bowl, and sometimes the hot tap doesn’t work, and we have to wash with cold. Brrrrr! Mrs Clodson says it will make us tough and hardy, and I suppose I might need to be tough and hardy if I am to be a film star, because I might have to be in the jungle, or learn to fall off galloping horses, or do sad scenes in the rain, because in films rain stands for tears.

  We have boring old chapel twice a day, but I like the singing. I am thinking of asking to learn the piano, because the best girls sometimes accompany the hymns, and singing and playing are very good things for an actress to learn, for the stage anyway. Dearest Daddy, would you pay for my lessons? Mummy has a piano, and I can practise in the holidays, can’t I? I can already play ‘Frère Jacques’ even though nobody taught it to me. I want to learn all those sad songs about Way Down Upon the Swanee River, and Poor Old Joe, and I am quite fond of ‘Widecombe Fair’ because of all the names.

  I am trying extra hard in French, just to please you and so we can talk in secret, and of course I have French Bear that Gran’mère gave me when I was little. He is very worn-out, and in the holidays Mummy sewed a white patch on his arm where the stuffing was coming out, and she painted a red cross on it so that he looks as though he does first aid, and she bought me a pretend nurse’s uniform for Christmas so we can be first-aiders together. Granny gave me a junior air pistol because she wants me to start helping her to shoot pigeons, but I don’t really want to, and I feel sorry for the pigeons, so I am saving it for Bertie, because I expect he’ll like it a lot when he’s older. I don’t know if you have ever noticed, but pigeon blood is very scarlet.

  We play lacrosse on Wednesday afternoons, but we call it lax, and I get injured quite a lot. I had six bruises after the last game. It’s the dangerousest thing for girls to do.

  I can do a handstand without leaning against the wall, and I can walk on my hands from the dorm to the thunderbox on the corridor, but I only do it when I have culottes on, because otherwise everyone can see your knickers and it’s not very ladylike.

  I can say ‘amo amas amat amamus amatis amant’ and ‘bella bella bella bellorum bellis bellis’ very quickly, and I know nominative vocative accusative genitive and dative and ablative, and I know adverbs of manner. I hope you are proud of me. Oh, and I have found out that Timbuktu is a real place, and learned a poem by Robert Burns that goes ‘Scots wha hae with Wallace bled’. I am half Scottish as you probably know.

  Dearest Daddy, I think you should stop bothering to write to Bertie. He just tells Mummy, and she gives him chocolate drops for being a good boy, and then she puts your letter on the fire, so there’s no point really. You should spend the extra time writing longer letters to me.

  Thank you for Emil and the Detectives. I read it straight away and I like that it’s not at all fairylandy, and the bad people are properly bad, and Emil got his money back in the end because of the pinholes, and then there was the reward too. If you meet Mr Erich Kästner in Germany, please tell him I would like another book about Emil, but please can it be about twins, because I do wish I had a twin instead of Bertie, who is a bit annoying. He follows me around ALL the time and tells Mummy every time I even do something innocent. Someone older would be bossy, and someone younger is just a nuisance, and that is why I would like a twin.

  I am sorry that being in Germany is a trial, and I am glad to hear that Mr Wragge has a nice landlady, now that I know what a landlady is. I had to ask Mrs Clodson.

  Now I have used up my letter-writing time and it’s Sunday lunch. I hope it’s Dead Man’s Leg and custard for pudding, and not stewed plums again. For main course we always get meat in gravy with wet vegetables, and you can tell that the meat was cooked in the reign of Willy the Conk. At supper we sometimes get just two tinned tomatoes on a piece of toast.

  Your half-starved loving daughter,

  Esther

  PS I expect you heard Ottilie’s new baby is going to be called Mary, but everyone’s calling it Molly already. Ottilie loves it in India. She says she’s coming back for three months every year, but I’m not sure that she will, because India is rather far.

  36

  Oily Wragge (1)

  Germany turned out to be a bleedin’ nightmare, eventually, though I liked it well enough at first. The idea came up because one day I was raking the gravel round the front, when the Captain turned up on his Brough, and he had a row with his missus on the front doorstep because she said the children had gone away for the weekend, and he knew they hadn’t. He was demanding the address of where they had gone, and she was stumped for an answer, so he just pushed past her and came out with a kid in each hand, but he ended up just leaving with Esther, because the little boy was tied to his mother’s apron strings, and I happen to know she’d told him that motorcycles were too dangerous for little boys to go on, so he was kicking and screaming and holding on to his mum. She took him in and slammed the door, and Esther got into the sidecar good as gold and smiling all over her little face, and the Captain said to me, ‘I’m sorry you had to witness that, Mr Wragge.’

  I liked it that he called me Mister. Most fellows in his position would’ve called me ‘Wragge’ and have done with it, but he knew I’d been a warrant officer in the Norfolks, and I was entitled to be Mister if anyone was. I’d had a conversation with him, and he said, ‘I’m going to call you Mr Wragge, if you don’t mind, because somehow I can’t bring myself to call you “Oily”,’ and I said, ‘And if you don’t mind, as you’re an officer and a gentleman, I’ll call you Sir.’ So we shook hands on it, and that’s how it stayed to the day I last clapped eyes on him.

  After Mr McCosh died of happiness on the golf course and after Lady Mary left, there was no one except Cookie in the house, and Miss Rosie and the tiddlers, and it was always Mr McCosh that kept his old lady on the straight and narrow, bu
t after he died there was no one to keep her anywhere near normal. She did what she bloody well liked, and after that day when I was bending over and she shot me in the arse with her air rifle, and told me I shouldn’t be wearing trousers that made me look like a pigeon, I decided I was going the moment something came up.

  He wasn’t a Captain by the way, he was a Flight Lieutenant, but he didn’t like the RFC becoming the RAF, so he stuck to Captain, because that’s what he was when he was a soldier and the RFC was still a corps of the army.

  Anyway, he told me that he was going to Germany to set up a motorcycles business, and said, ‘You’re an excellent mechanic, Mr Wragge, why don’t you come too?’ so I jumped at the chance, didn’t I? I’d heard from an old mucker that German women were a damn fine thing. ‘Thing’ isn’t the word he used though; it was another word beginning with F. It turned out to be true.

  The Captain had a spare Brough, and we drove them all the way to Hunland, loaded up with spares in case we broke down, but we never did. I swear those Broughs were the best thing on two wheels ever.

  Captain Pitt got lodgings with a professor, and I was proper envious because he had two daughters, a bit young though. I got a room in a house with a landlady who rented most of the rooms to single men like me, and what you might call semi-professional girls. This landlady used to have a rich husband, and that’s why she had this enormous house, but he was killed in the Spring Offensive in 1918, and now she was forced to let out all the rooms, and we had to share the kitchen and bathroom, which were a terrible mess, and we were always squabbling about who stole someone else’s soap or bread, or whatever.

  I wouldn’t say she was a madam, this landlady, and these girls didn’t have pimps as far as I could see. They were doing what they did because they had jobs that hardly paid them anything, and Germany was a right mess in those days. The money was worth less than pebbles, and you had to spend it the moment you had it before the value fell again, and you were better off stealing a chicken and buying things with the eggs. There were three girls I got on with, and I’d say that one was a full-time no-nonsense prossie, and she wore red shoes so the punters’d know she could do discipline, and there was a sort of part-timer who did it mostly for fun and got paid in presents and suchlike, and the third was a right goer who just did it for a laugh and had as many boyfriends as she liked. I got fond of those girls, and we’d sit in the kitchen swigging beer and smoking ourselves silly, but I didn’t ever hop between the sheets with them because I was concerned about getting the clap again. I got it in Belgaum, back in India, before the war, and it was a palaver getting rid of it. For all I know those German girls were clean, but I wasn’t risking it again. It was like pissing broken glass, and they put a contraption down my pisshole that opened up like a bleeding umbrella, and then they pulled it out. It was a scouring. Makes my eyes water just thinking about it.