The Road Between Us

by Nigel Farndale

  ‘How old am I?’

  ‘Forty-seven.’

  A beat.

  ‘Forty-seven?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Another beat.

  ‘I’m forty-seven?’

  ‘Yeah, you’re forty-seven, Northy. Same age as me.’

  ‘How old was I when I was taken?’

  ‘Thirty-six.’

  Niall feels for his friend’s hand. ‘It’s going to take time.’

  ‘Why won’t you talk about Frejya?’

  ‘Northy … There’s no easy way to say this …’

  Fear suddenly registers on Edward’s face. His hands try to cover his ears but the muscles in his arms are too atrophied. He shakes his head. Closes his eyes. Mouths the word ‘no’.

  Niall’s eyes are wet now. He puts a hand on his friend’s shoulder. ‘I’m sorry. She died.’

  ‘Can I speak to her?’

  ‘Listen to me. You’ve got to listen.’ There is a crack in Niall’s voice now. ‘Frejya is dead.’

  IV

  Berlin. Early autumn, 1939

  ANSELM HAS NEVER SEEN THE PEOPLE’S COURT BEFORE, BUT HE has heard of it. Everyone in Germany has heard of it. The Volksgerichtshof. A place of fear. A place without memories. Today its nineteenth-century façade is draped with three red, white and black swastika banners. They are thirty feet long and make the building look as if it is bleeding.

  He is brought in via a side entrance off Potsdamer Platz and taken down stone stairs to a holding cell. There is no window. No bed. No chair. Noticing that it smells of urine, Anselm realizes that there is no lavatory either. His belt and shoelaces are taken from him. The policeman from the Ordnungspolizei with kind eyes and a brass gorget around his neck looks him up and down thoughtfully, then takes his tie as well.

  Once the iron door has clanged shut and heavy keys have been turned in the lock, Anselm leans his shoulder against the wall, closes his eyes and tries, for reassurance, to summon Charles’s smiling face. He wonders what has happened to him. Is he in prison, too? When he opens his eyes again he notices some words scratched at eye height. They are messages from the damned.

  ‘My name is Josef Mann. I have a wife and two children in Hamburg. Please let them know where I am.’

  And in another hand: ‘Please God, why?’

  But the one at which he stares the most is the simplest: ‘Help me.’ This one chills Anselm’s blood. Help me. A man can be forgotten in this place, he thinks. Help me. All traces of his life can be erased. Help me. He can be reduced to a single pitiful plea.

  While under Hausarrest in Berlin, Anselm had written to Charles in London. He had also written to his parents in Aachen, giving them his temporary address, but he had not told them about his deportation from England, or the reason for it. As the weeks went by, he had allowed himself to think that he had fallen through the Reich’s bureaucratic net. Then, as August drew to a close, a Blockleiter arrived to apply crosses of tape to his windows to prevent shattering. In the gaps between them, Anselm had been able to watch trenches being dug near the bandstand in the Tiergarten. The Berliners who walked with urgent steps over the cobbles below had started carrying gas masks. But he could still hear a barrel organ being played somewhere nearby and, occasionally, the heavy flapping of wings as a swan took flight. One day, on the cusp of autumn, war was declared through the loudspeakers. Soon afterwards an air-raid siren was tested. Then they came for him.

  Now, as he hears the rattle of the heavy keys again, he looks towards the cell door. The lock turns with a solid clunk as before and the door yawns open with a squeak of unoiled hinges. While the man with the kind eyes remains outside the cell, another policeman stoops to enter, even though he is not especially tall, certainly not as tall as Anselm.

  ‘Arms out,’ he barks.

  Anselm raises his arms, bent at the elbows. The policeman’s touch is icy, his skin forged from the same steel as the handcuffs. Once outside the cell, Anselm stands between the two guards. He is half a foot taller than both of them and, with the prisoner wearing a white shirt buttoned to the throat as if he is a priest, the three of them look like a scene from a stained glass window, an unholy triptych. As Anselm follows the first policeman up a spiralling metal staircase, he has to grip the waistband of his trousers to stop them falling down.

  The iron-barred gate at the top of the stairs opens into a narrow white corridor that smells of fresh paint. At the end of this another prisoner, about Anselm’s age, is sitting head down, leaning forward, on a bench. His handcuffed wrists are resting on his knees. He has his own escorts. Anselm is about to walk towards them when he feels a restraining hand on his shoulder.

  The prisoner is breathing quickly and, as Anselm tunes in to the sounds coming from the other side of the black wooden door he is facing, he appreciates why. Shouting can be heard. He cannot make out the exact words, but it is clear that someone is being cursed in there. Anselm feels a chill in his stomach. His scrotum tightens.

  After a minute, the ranting stops. A minute after this, the black door opens, the policemen stand and the prisoner is escorted inside. The door closes and Anselm is nudged forward to sit on the bench. It is still warm. His police escort remains standing either side of him, as the others had done, and, after two minutes of silence, the ranting starts again. This time Anselm tries to block the words out. He searches for a song to sing in his head instead, but all he can think of is the Horst-Wessel-Lied. His bowels are turning to water.

  After ten minutes the shouting stops. As if operating by clockwork, the black door opens a minute later. Anselm’s guards stand up and steer him through the door. He has a dozen yards to walk to where there are two chairs. His shoes echo hollowly on the waxed parquet floor, then comes a silence that is so deep it terrifies him.

  The policemen sit in the chairs and Anselm remains standing between them. He looks up. Above him is a high, vaulted ceiling. To his right there is a table around which sit five clerks of the court wearing black gowns and white wing collars. Some of them are writing, others consulting notes. Behind him there is a public gallery of some sort, but it is empty. The side of the room he entered from has a raised seating area, presumably where the jury sits. This too is empty. Ahead there is a witness stand. Again, empty. No jury. No witnesses. The courtroom smells of disinfectant.

  Only now does he look at that which he has been avoiding since entering the court. The wall behind the bench is dominated by three blood-red swastikas. The two at each side reach from the ceiling to the floor. The one in the middle is slightly lower, fitting into the frame of a double doorway with an ornate frieze on top. Above this is a Nazi eagle. Gilt, or possibly gold. Its wingspan must be ten feet. In front of the central flag is a marble plinth on which is displayed a bronze bust of the Führer. And directly in front of this is a carved black chair that looks like a throne. Chair, bust and flag are all in perfect alignment with the prisoner.

  A door opens to the right. A clerk of the court shouts: ‘All rise.’ Three Reich-judges enter.

  The first and the third are wearing black gowns and white collars, like the clerks to Anselm’s right, but these men are also wearing what look like floppy velvet mortar boards on their heads. The judge in the middle is wearing a sumptuous red robe. On his head is what looks like a fez. On his gown there is a brooch, the eagle insignia again. Before they sit down, they give the Nazi salute and, for a brief moment, Anselm thinks they are saluting him – then he looks over his shoulder and sees a giant portrait of Hitler high on the wall behind him.

  All three judges remove their hats as they sit down. The one in the middle is bald apart from some hair at the sides of his head. This he smooths down with fussy dabs of his hand. With his feathery eyebrows and hooded eyes he looks like an eagle.

  He twirls the deep sleeves of his robe like a wizard about to cast a spell, then he studies the papers in front of him. Finally he looks up and, according to his widened eyes, he seems surprised to see that the defendant is a fine specime
n of Aryan manhood. Then his lean features stiffen. His eyes turn cold and dark.

  The prisoner is asked to identify himself and, after he is sworn in, a clerk with a hog-bristle moustache grinds back his chair, stands and reads from a piece of paper: ‘Under Paragraph 175 of the criminal code, as defined by the Reich Central Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion, you are hereby charged with being a degenerate. How do you plead?’

  Anselm is confused. What does this word ‘degenerate’ mean? He is guilty of being a homosexual. Indeed he feels that if he were to plead not guilty to that he would be betraying himself, and Charles. But in truth he is not sure of what he is being accused. He does not know how to answer the question. A lock of sand-coloured hair has fallen over his eye. He flicks it away with a backwards tilt of his head.

  The judge in the red robe signals impatiently to the clerk: ‘Enter a plea of guilty.’

  The judge looks down at the piece of paper in his hand. ‘What were you doing in London?’ he asks.

  ‘I was a student,’ Anselm says. ‘At the Slade.’

  ‘And you committed your vile acts with an enemy of the Reich?’

  ‘We weren’t at war then.’

  ‘Silence!’ The judge’s voice cracks the air like a whip, before returning to ominous normality. ‘In times of war,’ he continues, ‘baseness cannot find any leniency and must be met with the full force of the law. Your degenerate acts threaten the disciplined masculinity of the German people. You are an antisocial parasite and an enemy of the state …’

  As the judge’s voice begins to rise in pitch again, Anselm looks down at his own handcuffed hands holding up his trousers and recalls how he and Charles dressed in silence that night in London. The hotel manageress sat on the bed fanning her stupid fat face in shock, denying them their last moments of privacy. As a precaution, or so one of the military policemen had said, the two prisoners were handcuffed together. Perhaps out of misplaced respect for Charles’s uniform, the other MP draped a mac over the iron bracelet that bound their wrists together. Anselm didn’t mind. It meant they could entwine their fingers as they descended the stairs. With these handcuffs I thee wed.

  The judge is shouting now, but Anselm can register only random words … ‘Deutschland … traitor … repulsive … sodomical … corruption … Schweinehund.’ Each word is accompanied by a thump of the table.

  There were two additional policemen waiting for them in the lobby that night in London and, when he saw them, Anselm fought a pointless impulse to run for it, to keep Charles’s hand in his and disappear into the night. They could lose themselves in the crowds of Piccadilly. What sweet anonymity that would have been. He had often dreamed of them doing that since. Running down narrow streets, over lush meadows, to the bare, rugged safety of the mountains.

  Instead they were taken outside into the street. There, to the curiosity of a newspaper vendor who had piled sandbags up against his stall, the handcuffs were unlocked and Charles was led to a waiting Black Maria, without even being permitted a backward glance over his shoulder. Moments later, Anselm was led away to a nearby police station. Neither had had a chance to say goodbye.

  The Judge-President is banging the table furiously now. ‘Why?’ he is demanding, his voice hoarse from shouting. ‘WHY?’

  ‘Love,’ Anselm answers. ‘Because of love.’

  ‘Silence!’ the judge screams. He seems like a rabid dog, flecks of spittle appearing at the corners of his mouth.

  Anselm feels his eyes welling, but wills himself not to cry. He also feels an insane urge to reach for the hand of the kind-eyed policeman and hold it.

  ‘I hereby sentence you to five years’ hard labour,’ the judge says, with a bang of his gavel. ‘Take him away.’

  Anselm is led to a door at the back of the court. His trial has lasted seven minutes, three fewer than the previous case.

  V

  London. Present day. Five weeks after Edward’s release

  UPON RETURNING TO THE HOSPITAL, HANNAH FINDS HER FATHER on the floor and rushes to help him up. ‘Did you fall out?’ she asks. ‘Why haven’t the nurses been in?’

  ‘I was more comfortable here,’ Edward says, getting to his feet. ‘Still not used to this mattress.’

  Supporting him as he goes to sit on the bed, she asks: ‘Would you rather I slept on the bed and you slept on the pull-down?’ For the past few weeks she has been sleeping in the small pull-down bed next to her father’s. Her routine has been to rise early and slip away before he wakes up. Sometimes she heads back to the house to wash and change, sometimes she finds a café for breakfast and to catch up with her friends online. But the truth is, she would rather not be sleeping by his side at all. She is scared by her inability to read his needs. Perhaps, she tells herself, things will improve once he talks about his time in captivity. Niall says that he still hasn’t said a word on the subject, not to him, not to anyone.

  She pours him a glass of milk. It seems to be his favourite drink.

  ‘Thank you,’ Edward says as he takes a sip. ‘You really don’t need to sleep here, you know. I’m much better.’

  ‘I want to,’ she says.

  ‘Well, I appreciate the company.’ Edward looks as if he is going to say something more but checks himself.

  ‘What?’ Hannah prompts.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘What?’ Hannah insists. She is smiling a smile she hopes will look reassuring rather than nervous. Is he going to start telling her terrible things about what happened in Afghanistan? Oh God. She doesn’t feel ready. If he was tortured, or chained to a radiator, or was sharing a windowless cell with dozens of others, she would rather not know. She wishes Niall was here.

  ‘I thought you were Frejya just now.’

  He seems to find it hard to say the word ‘Mummy’. She understands. She is finding it hard to call him Daddy. The word doesn’t seem to fit her mouth. It is the wrong shape. The wrong weight. Dad might be better. ‘I know,’ she says. And I also know I am going to have to tell you about what happened to her, she thinks. If I can summon the courage. If I can do it without crying.

  Edward reaches for her hand. He does this in the night sometimes, in the silence when she thinks she can hear him screaming inside.

  This morning he looks different. His hair has been cropped close to his skull again. Malnutrition oedema, meanwhile, has bloated his face and the skin around his shaved jaw is the colour of bone. Though he is no longer being fed through a tube, he looks twice his age. An old man. A concentration camp victim.

  ‘How is your band going?’ he asks. ‘What’s the name of it again?’

  He has remembered, she thinks. This is progress. She has told him two or three times now about how she is the bass player and backing vocalist in a pub band that plays covers. ‘The Sextuplets, though there are only five of us at the moment. We’ve played a few gigs. All girls. You should come and hear us.’ She wonders if he will also remember about her one-year art foundation course, the one she has had to drop out of in order to look after him.

  ‘And how is school?’

  ‘I’m not at school any more. Remember? I started a foundation course. I’m hoping to get a place at the Slade.’

  ‘Where your grandfather went … When can I see him?’

  ‘I’ll take you to see him as soon as you’re out of hospital.’

  ‘Can’t he come here?’

  ‘He’s aged a lot since you last saw him.’ She doesn’t elaborate. One thing at a time. The two are not so different, she reflects. Father and son. Tomorrow Edward will ask again about his father, and her life, and forget that they have had this conversation. The difference is Edward’s memory is improving. With each day he is becoming less confused.

  ‘I’ve asked about him before, haven’t I?’

  Hannah nods.

  ‘You must think I’m mad.’

  Hannah plumps up his pillow, so that she doesn’t have to look him in the eyes. ‘No, I don’t. You’re fine. You’re going t
hrough a period of readjustment, that’s all.’

  She begins tidying away her things and wants to open the curtain but sees her own Post-it note, the one she has stuck above the switch for the benefit of the nurses: ‘Please keep closed.’ Also in her handwriting is a note stuck above the light switch: ‘Please keep dimmed.’ Her father’s eyes are too sensitive to stand bright light, but, equally, he cannot bear being in the dark. A low-wattage nightlight is the compromise.

  She turns and studies him. He is staring at the ceiling now, lost in contemplation. How far this seems from the fairytale reunion she had imagined. While he may now be taking in certain things about her life, he doesn’t know her, and doesn’t seem to want to know her. She keeps telling herself that this is going to be a long haul, that gradually he will become less insular and less frightening, that he will become the friendly man into whose arms she pictured herself skipping. But there are times when she doesn’t believe that will ever happen now. She looks out of the window and sees a couple of photographers waiting in the ambulance bay. She recognizes one of them. Why won’t they leave her alone? In this moment she realizes that what she wants more than anything is to have her old life back, to go back to a time before … She feels guilty for even thinking of it. Tears are rising to the surface again, beading her lashes.

  ‘Everything OK?’ her father asks.

  Hannah checks the time on her mobile as a way of averting her eyes. ‘Actually I’ve got a band practice to get to. Will you be all right till I get back?’

  Downstairs she gathers her long pale hair into the baseball cap she uses as a disguise to get past the photographers. She then heads outside and walks quickly towards the tube. Before she reaches it she slows down and changes direction. There is no band practice to go to. She will sit on a park bench for an hour or two instead.

  A week later, Hannah arrives at the hospital wearing her black-framed glasses rather than her contacts. It seems to help remind her father who she is, or rather who she isn’t.