‘You mean, considering I spent several years doing my level best to annihilate the very same people? Yes, I do. It’s extraordinary to be in the exact opposite situation – trying to help them to survive. The Berliners call it die luftbrüche – the air bridge – you know. A bridge to the rest of the world. I suppose that’s the way they see it.’
‘Their only link.’
He nodded. ‘And their only hope. The chaps who are doing the real work – the air crews actually ferrying in the stuff – seem to get a big kick out of it all. I rather envy them. Quite a challenge and some very tricky flying and they’re doing a damn good job.’
‘Do you miss flying?’
‘Frequently.’
The veal was pretty good too – a welcome change after months of tinned meat – and the wine he’d ordered passable.
‘You’ll be going back?’ she asked.
‘As far as I know.’
‘Do you mind?’
‘No. I’d like to see the job finished. The Russians giving up.’ In fact, the thought of not being sent back – perfectly possible given the vagaries of RAF orders – dismayed him.
She toyed with her wine glass. ‘How long do you think it’s going to go on?’
‘No idea,’ he said truthfully. ‘Nobody knows. It depends on all sorts of things. Not least, on the Russians and no-one ever knows how they’re going to behave or what they’re going to think up next.’
‘I hope it doesn’t go on too long, Michael.’ He knew that what she really meant was that she hoped he wouldn’t be away for long, though she would never say so. Again, he asked himself how he felt about her. He liked her. He liked her very much. She was what people called a thoroughly good sort, the right kind of girl. He could understand why his mother was so keen. Even Tubby would probably approve, as far as he approved of any woman. If he asked her to marry him, he was fairly certain she’d say yes without the slightest hesitation. They’d probably be perfectly happy together. She understood service life and she’d make an ideal service wife. He’d certainly do everything within his power to be an ideal husband. He could ask her this evening and break the news to his parents at the weekend to make it an even bigger celebration. It would give them immense pleasure.
And yet, he knew that he wouldn’t.
Although there had never been any definite, spoken understanding between them, he felt that in all decency he owed Celia some kind of explanation. But he could scarcely say, actually, I’m besotted with a German girl I met in Berlin. I hardly know her and she’s far from keen on me, but I simply can’t get her out of my mind. The whole thing’s ridiculous, of course. But there it is. He said instead, ‘By the way, Mother’s invited you to lunch on Sunday – if you’d like to come over. She’s asking your parents, too.’
‘Is she killing the fatted calf?’
He smiled. ‘She’s browbeating the butcher. Would you like to come?’
‘I’d love to.’
‘Drinks before. She’s getting some people in after church. You know the form.’
‘I’ll look forward to it.’
He drove her back to her flat and arranged to pick her up on Friday evening outside the War Office and give her a lift down to Surrey. He didn’t kiss her at the door and she waved him a carefully casual good night as she went inside.
He spent the next day sorting through things in the flat, getting his uniform cleaned, his hair cut, his shoes mended, taking his old watch to be repaired, paying bills and answering the letters that had piled up on the mat. He also paid a visit to a model shop in Holborn that had miraculously kept going all through the war. After that, he looked up several old friends, went to drinks and to dinner and to the theatre. He was asked endless questions about Berlin and found that few people had any real idea or understanding of what it was like. For all the post-war austerity of life in London, there was no longer a dark shadow of oppression hanging over the city and its people; the battle for freedom had been won. In Berlin, the battle was still being fought; the outcome still undecided.
He was waiting outside the War Office in the Riley on the Friday evening when Celia came out. It was getting dark but she caught sight of the car at once and waved. He got out and watched her walking towards him – tall and smartly dressed in a costume and hat and carrying a small suitcase.
‘Hallo, Michael.’
‘Hallo.’ He returned her smile easily. ‘Let me take that for you.’
He put the case in the boot and held the door for her as she got into the passenger seat. They drove along the Embankment, down the King’s Road, over Putney Bridge and out on the A3. Another of Celia’s virtues was that she never chattered aimlessly and, apart from the occasional remark, she sat beside him in silence. There was a quiet dignity about her that made him feel all the more guilty at the way he was treating her.
He turned off the A3 towards Epsom and Reigate. There was very little traffic and he picked up some speed, glancing at his watch. ‘We should be there soon after six.’
She said, ‘That’s a very impressive-looking watch.’
‘It’s German. My service one packed up when I was out there and I got this one on the black market.’
‘You don’t mind wearing a German watch?’
‘Actually, it rather amuses me. It’s a Flieger-chronograph. A pilot’s watch. The kid who flogged it to me swore it had belonged to a Luftwaffe pilot. Probably not true, but it’s an intriguing thought. And it keeps very good time.’
‘Is there a big black market in Berlin?’
‘Huge. Unstoppable, really. Everybody seems to dabble, one way or another. The kid I got the watch from comes from a decent family but he’s turned into a sort of Artful Dodger, living off the streets, trading in anything he can get hold of.’
‘How did you come across him?’
‘I happened to run into some chap I was at school with who knew the family. Dragged me along to meet them, much against my will. Both parents dead and only a senile grandfather. The children live in what little survived of their apartment. It’s pretty grim, I can tell you.’
‘Poor things.’
‘Yes. Hard not to feel pity for them. Even when you know damn well the Germans deserved everything they got.’
‘Some of them must have been against the Nazis. Tried to stand up to them.’
He was not my beloved Führer. I hated him. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Some of them were. But look how many must have gone along with it all – with considerable enthusiasm. Hitler was a god. The Saviour of the Fatherland. The bringer of new glory and liebensraum in other people’s countries, the chap who conveniently got rid of the scapegoat Jews. When they went around greeting each other with Heil Hitler! and Sieg Heil! they jolly well meant it.’
‘But the children were innocent. How old is your Artful Dodger?’
‘Hard to tell. Sixteen or seventeen. There’s a younger brother of about eight or nine who’s a semi-invalid and an older sister.’
‘Is she much older?’
‘I’m not sure. About nineteen or twenty, I think.’ He realized that he didn’t actually know how old any of them were. ‘I’m not exactly sure.’
‘Does she dabble in the black market too?’
‘No. She works as a trummerfrau. She clears away the rubble from streets and bomb sites and cleans up bricks. There are gangs of women everywhere doing that. Very few able-bodied men around, you see.’
‘What a dreadful job.’
‘She doesn’t seem to mind too much. The idea is that Berlin will be built again from the bricks they reclaim. It must make it seem something pretty worthwhile, at least.’ Useful was the word she had used. He could see her, in his mind’s eye, sitting at the wobbly dining table. ‘It won’t last for ever. So long as the western Allies can hang on in Berlin, the city has a reasonable chance of economic recovery. There’ll be decent jobs eventually. She’s well educated so she should be all right. The kid brother’s the real worry. He’s pretty ill. I doubt he’s going to make
it through the winter. I’m trying to arrange for him and the grandfather to be flown out, along with the other children and old people we’re evacuating from our sector.’
‘That’s good of you, Michael.’
He shook his head. ‘I’m not sure it’s even going to be possible. They live in the wrong sector: the Russian one.’
Celia’s parents’ large Georgian house was on the other side of the village. He delivered her to the door and politely refused her mother’s enthusiastic invitation to go in for a drink. She was as keen on an engagement, he suspected, as his own mother.
As he turned in through the gateway to his own home and saw the lights shining in welcome from the windows, he was conscious, again, of how fortunate he was. He had been born in the house, born with a silver spoon in his mouth some might say, and lived a privileged life of comfort and stability with devoted parents. He hoped that he had never taken it all for granted.
His mother had opened the front door before he got out of the car, his father close behind her. The dogs came to greet him – Muffy the ancient Labrador arthritically, Brandy the new liver and white springer spaniel puppy bouncing around as though she had springs on her feet.
A log fire had been lit in the drawing-room fireplace, the silk-shaded lamps switched on, the long chintz curtains drawn against the dark. His father opened a bottle of champagne. The return of the son: the only son and now the only child. He glanced at the silver-framed studio portrait of Elizabeth, Harry and Benjy in their prominent place on the sofa table. His sister sat with Harry beside her and Benjy on her lap and they were all smiling straight at him. He turned away. Even now, nearly eight years on, he found it painful to look at them.
The fishmonger had come up trumps with some sole fillets for dinner and there were fresh potatoes and vegetables from the garden and an apple charlotte afterwards. His father had opened a bottle of Pouilly-Fuissé. He ate and drank appreciatively, knowing the trouble that had been taken for him. It wasn’t long before his mother brought up the subject of Celia.
‘How was she, darling?’
‘She seems very well.’
‘Did you have dinner?’
‘Yes. At a French restaurant. It was pretty good.’
‘That must have been very nice. She’s been promoted recently – did she tell you?’
‘No, she didn’t mention it.’
‘I’m sure she’s frightfully clever at her job – whatever it is. Just the sort of girl they like to have. She’s coming on Sunday, isn’t she?’
‘Yes, she said she’d love to.’
‘Her parents are coming too, so it will be rather a lovely get-together.’
She was watching him covertly for any hopeful sign; any hint he might drop that an engagement was in the offing. He wished very much that he had been able to give her that pleasure. Instead, he changed the subject.
After dinner, when his mother had gone to bed, he sat by the fire with his father, smoking and drinking a brandy saved for special occasions. They talked of Berlin – military talk that his father craved since his retirement: tactics, strategy, means. His father expounded his theory.
‘The big mistake we and the Americans made was letting the Russians take the city. We were lagging behind them, of course. The German counter-offensive in the Ardennes in December had held us up and they gave us a real mauling there, but then the Americans found that bridge intact at Remagen and were over the Rhine by mid-March. The Germans had started surrendering in their thousands and by the end of the month we were only two hundred miles from Berlin. We should have pushed straight on. Top speed.’
‘Was it as simple as that?’
‘Yes, it damn well was. Montgomery wanted to go on and take the city but Eisenhower vetoed it. For some reason he didn’t consider it strategically vital and he listened to Stalin. Excellent chap, Eisenhower, in many ways, but Stalin had him tied up in knots. So the Russians went in full steam ahead and the damage was done.’
His father saw the airlift as a military operation that would stand or fall by its efficiency. ‘And there’s no room for any compromise or shilly-shallying with the Russians, Michael. Pointless trying to placate them; they’re slippery as hell. If they ever get control of western Berlin, the city’s completely finished.’
He said, ‘So far as I can see, the Russians want a separate Communist East German state with Berlin as the capital.’
‘Damn right they do. Do you think the western Allies can hold out over the winter?’
‘I believe so. If the weather gives us half a chance. The will to is certainly there.’
‘How about the Berliners? The ordinary civilians? Are they going to cave in if the going gets really rough?’
‘I don’t think so. A few of them don’t believe we’ve a hope of getting through the winter and are ready to give up. You know the sort of defeatist attitude: better a live dog than a dead lion . . . that kind of thing. But I think most of them will hold fast. They’ve had plenty of blandishments served up by the Russians to try and persuade them to give up the fight but, so far, they’ve resisted.’
His father grunted. ‘Well, you have to hand it to them for guts, that’s true. I’d never deny that. Fine soldiers. Bloody brave. Never cared much for them as a race, though – arrogant bastards. Can’t trust them any more than the Russians, in my view. Of course, I can see the sense in propping them up against the Commies, but I must say it sticks in my craw a bit the way the Allies are falling over themselves to nursemaid them. The Yanks are handing out shoals and shoals of dollars to the very chaps who got us into the bloody mess in the first place. All this country got left with for its considerable pains was the Lease-Lend bill and a mountain of debts. It’ll be years before we’re back on our feet.’
He went on at some length, delivering judgements and putting the world to rights. Harrison wondered if he would eventually, in his turn, become like his father – entrenched in his views. Set, like concrete, in his ways. Whether he wasn’t, in fact, pretty much like him already? Another brandy and the subject of Celia came up again. His father didn’t waste time beating about the bush.
‘Your mother’s keen for you to settle down, of course. Perfectly natural. She seems to think you and Celia might make a go of it.’
‘I’m afraid I may have to disappoint her.’
‘Rather a pity. She’s a first-class girl. You’d be a fool to pass her up, in my opinion, but, of course, it’s entirely your call. You can’t marry someone just to please us.’ His father sighed. ‘The trouble is your mother’s never really got over losing Elizabeth and the boys, you know.’
‘I realize that. None of us has.’
‘Quite. Only, unfortunately, she’s pinned all her hopes on you and she’s very fond of Celia. Well, we both are. Very fond. The only thing I would say, Michael, is for God’s sake be careful to pick the right one. If you want to get on in your career, don’t go and marry some woman who’s going to be a disadvantage to you. Know what I mean?’
He knew exactly what his father meant. Changing the subject, he said, ‘I ran into a chap in Berlin who was at school with me. Someone called Nico Kocharian.’
‘Odd name.’
‘His father was Armenian. He speaks about eight languages and says he worked for British Army Intelligence Corps during the war. Would you be able to check up on that for me? Find out if he really did.’
‘Something fishy about him?’
‘I’m not sure. He’s started up some kind of publishing business in the Soviet sector, doing school textbooks. It seems genuine enough, on the face of it, but he’s an odd bird and I’m rather curious. I mentioned him to our Intelligence lot, of course, but they didn’t seem too worried.’
‘They’re a law unto themselves, in my experience. You won’t get anything out of them, either way. Play their cards close to the chest. But I can at least find out if he was with the Intelligence Corps. I’ll get on to one of my contacts. Still keep in touch as much as I can. A finger on the old
pulse. I’ll let you know what I turn up.’
Before he went to bed Harrison stopped by the bedroom that had belonged to Elizabeth. It was much the same as when she had occupied it: the same furnishings and furniture, her books in the bookcase, the same pictures on the walls. He stood for a moment, remembering. She had been eight years his senior and he’d worshipped her devotedly when he was a child, trotting around after her like a small dog. As he had grown up, the devotion had stayed because she was one of the best people he knew. And when she had married and Harry and Benjy had been born, he had become a devoted uncle, revelling in the role. On leave from the RAF one day in January 1941 he had gone to visit them at their house by Wimbledon Common. He’d taken a present – a box of tin trains and track that he’d managed to find in a toyshop. He could see the boys running full tilt to greet him – and how excited they’d been about the trains. He’d got down on his hands and knees with them on the sitting-room floor. They’d built a long tunnel from books and a platform from wooden bricks and co-opted lead soldiers as passengers. The game had gone on until their bedtime. He remembered how reluctant they’d been to stop; how they’d called good night to him through the banisters as they had trailed upstairs; how they’d smiled and waved as they had reached the landing, before they turned away. He’d left later that evening to get back on duty. By midnight the London air raid had taken place. The house had received a direct hit from a high explosive and all three of them were dead: Elizabeth, Harry and Benjy. Tom, Elizabeth’s husband, had been away serving in the Navy. A few months later he’d been lost at sea when his ship had been torpedoed by a U-boat and gone down in the Atlantic.
He shut the door on the room and the painful memories and went on to his own room. In bed he lay awake, thinking about Lili. His father would certainly place her in the category of women who would be a disadvantage to his RAF career. Not just a foreigner, which would be bad enough, but a German. A former enemy. A girl who worked as a labourer on the streets, who had a brother who was a black-marketeer and who lived in a rat hole in Berlin. His mother would be dismayed and appalled; his father trenchant in his disapproval. But whatever they might think made no difference to him. It was, as his father had so correctly pointed out, his call.
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