The German Boy

by Tricia Wastvedt

  • • •

  Later, he found her reading in the sitting room with her feet up on the sofa. Her wet hair hung over her book in dark thick ropes and when she looked up, pushing her spectacles up her nose, she asked without any preamble as if they had already been discussing it, ‘Was that your rifle in the war?’

  ‘No. It is for hunting. It is not loaded of course,’ he said, sitting down on a corner of the sofa. She pulled up her knees, keeping her feet between them. The buttons of her blouse gaped and he could just make out the shadowy little cleft inside. It was still strange to see well-fed flesh.

  Through the lenses of her spectacles, her eyes were huge and liquid as if she couldn’t see him clearly. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Actually, we’re told never to point a gun at anyone even if it’s empty. Daddy – George – used to take Toby hunting sometimes. Toby’s gone back to America.’

  Stefan had no idea who Toby was. A friend? Another cousin? Christina stretched out her legs again and there was hardly space for him. He got up. He could imagine that in a room full of people she would be the fixed point around which everyone arranged themselves.

  ‘What music do you like?’ she said. She blinked like a bulky fledgling in the light. He would have said Schumann if she’d given him the chance. She closed her book with her finger in the page. ‘Do you like “Choo Choo Ch’Boogie”? It’s Alice’s favourite. She liked “Prisoner of Love” for ages. Actually, “I’m Always Chasing Rainbows”, by Perry Como, is mine.’

  He had no idea what she was talking about. It was as if she wasn’t speaking English. ‘The rifle was not loaded,’ he said again. ‘It is old.’

  ‘Alice hates people shooting things,’ Christina said. ‘She thinks it’s not a fair fight. My mother says killing isn’t good for girls – she means killing isn’t what girls should do.’ She took off her spectacles and tucked her hair behind her ears. ‘Actually, I should like you to teach me to shoot.’ Her smile was obstinate and guileless at the same time. ‘When you come home from school, would you?’

  She had made it easy for him and the problem was almost solved. He waited long enough for her smile to falter, then he said, ‘Yes. I will like that too. We must keep the rifle a secret. Only between us.’ She looked into his face, trying to get the measure of him. He added softly, ‘Perhaps you will find a place, Christina. Somewhere no one hears us.’

  Her cheeks pinked and she looked down at her book. He knew she wouldn’t tell anyone he had the rifle.

  • • •

  On their last night in the hotel, Mrs McCrae said they could use the gramophone. She announced it with the pudding, placing a little packet of needles by the custard jug.

  ‘I dare say you’ll be familiar, Mr Mander, with the rigmarole of winding and cleaning off the dust etcetera,’ she said to George. ‘You will kindly see to it the young people keep their arms controlled if they choose to dance.’

  ‘I’ll make sure they do,’ said George. ‘This is very thoughtful of you, Mrs McCrae. Say thank you, girls.’

  Christina hoped, but didn’t expect, Mrs McCrae’s records to be something she liked, Frankie Laine for instance, or Johnny Mercer. The records turned out to be old – so old Elisabeth clapped her hands and said she remembered them.

  Stefan wasn’t as terrible at dancing as Christina thought he might be, although he looked like a scarecrow flapping in the wind and spent the whole time paying attention to Maud. He let her stand on his feet to do the steps and they jigged around to ‘Nine Little Miles from Ten-Ten-Tennessee’ and ‘Sweepin’ the Clouds Away’.

  Christina danced with George. George danced with Elisabeth. Some other guests came in – the elderly Misses Fortey who sat on hard chairs and tapped their feet. Mr Demarne said he preferred brass, something more regimental, and only stayed ten minutes.

  At nine o’clock, Mrs McCrae brought in a tray of cocoa and put the cover on the fire to keep it in. ‘A very goodnight to you all,’ she said, and took the gramophone records away with her.

  ‘Well, I think it’s time to say goodbye to Stefan,’ Elisabeth said. He was leaving early the next morning and travelling to the school where he would board. Christina had wondered what he would tell the other boys and what they’d make of him because somehow he looked too old to be sitting in a classroom. He could probably pretend to be anyone or anything he wanted and get away with it.

  ‘Say goodnight to Stefan, Maud.’

  ‘Nope,’ said Maud clinging like a monkey to him until Elisabeth prised her off and took her upstairs to bed.

  ‘Goodbye, Christina,’ Stefan said. He was across the room, his sleeves rolled up and his just-growing hair spiked with the exertion of hefting Maud to the music. He had his hands in his pockets and Christina wondered what she was supposed to do. They wouldn’t see each other until he came home for Easter, and if he had been her brother she would have kissed him on the cheek – or perhaps she wouldn’t. Would a sister say cheerio, punch his arm, hug him? What? Or should she be offhand, like Lucy Honeychurch was to Freddie in Howards End?

  She held out her hand. He kissed it and didn’t seem embarrassed.

  • • •

  The darkness turned grey and hills appeared against the apricot dawn. Christina wrapped the travel blanket more tightly round herself and sat on the window seat in the sitting room, waiting for Elisabeth to come downstairs with Maud. George was seeing to the luggage. Stefan had already gone.

  She watched the mist curling off the lake. A deer stood by the water with its head hanging. ‘Look, look,’ said Maud, running in. ‘I’d love to have a deer better than a pony.’

  ‘Shush. People are still asleep,’ said Christina. ‘It’s waiting to die. That’s what they do, just stand still when they know they can’t run any more.’

  ‘You don’t know that.’

  ‘I do,’ said Christina. ‘It will die today. It knows.’

  ‘It’s waking up, that’s what it’s doing!’ shouted Maud. ‘It’s just sleepy. You don’t know anything.’

  ‘Quiet, girls, no, please, it’s too early,’ said Elisabeth, coming in. ‘Where’s George? Maudie, stay here, we’re going any minute and I’ll be cross if I have to go looking for you.’ She put her coat and gloves on a chair and went out again. Christina heard her talking quietly just outside the door. ‘Have you settled the bill, George? Is the luggage in the car? We should leave something for the kitchen girls, they’ve been so good.’

  ‘It’s all done.’

  ‘Heavens, is that the time? We’ll miss the train if we don’t get a move on.’ There was the click of Elisabeth’s handbag closing. ‘I hope Stefan will be all right travelling alone.’

  ‘He’s been through worse than sitting on a train.’ There was silence and Christina thought they’d gone out to the car, then she heard George’s voice again: ‘We should have told them. This isn’t right.’

  ‘I know. I know.’

  Christina listened, but they didn’t say any more.

  • • •

  At first, Christina thought it was the neighbour, Mrs Saunders, waving from the shadow of the porch as they turned into the drive, but it was Alice who stepped out into the sunlight. When they had said goodbye two weeks ago, Alice was in socks with grazes on her knees. Now her hair was waved and her legs were smooth in stockings.

  The dogs barked and leaped about amongst the suitcases stacked up on the gravel. ‘Down! Quiet!’ said Elisabeth, but she was smiling. ‘Oh, I’ve missed you, darling.’ She kissed Alice. ‘But look at you! You’re so grown-up.’

  ‘Rachel took me shopping,’ said Alice, smoothing her skirt with her hands. ‘And I had my hair done. What do you think, Christina?’

  ‘It’s nice,’ Christina said.

  ‘Hello, Rachel darling,’ said Elisabeth, leaning over an imaginary fence to kiss Mrs Saunders’s cheek.

  Rachel Saunders said, ‘I took her to the beauty room in Selfridges. Long hair is out of fashion these days and she’s not a kiddie any more.’

 
; ‘Her hair was lovely,’ said Elisabeth.

  Christina felt it: a tug between her mother and Rachel Saunders for ownership of Alice. She picked up Elisabeth’s handbag which the dogs were treading on.

  Alice put her arm through Christina’s. ‘I’ve got a present for you,’ she whispered. She smelled of apple blossom and Christina knew the Yorkshire souvenirs that had been beautiful would seem ugly next to Alice.

  They struggled with Christina’s case up to their bedroom and sat on the rug with the suitcase open between them. Christina gave Alice a wooden box with a scene of York Minster painted on the lid. ‘I got you these too,’ she said and looped a string of glass beads round Alice’s pale neck. The colours were like Yorkshire, mauve and blue and green. ‘And this as well. A swat. They have mosquitoes like the jungle.’ Christina pushed up Alice’s sleeve and slapped the fly swat on her arm.

  Alice yelped and snatched it from Christina’s hand, and they were rolling on the carpet in spite of Alice’s dress and stockings.

  ‘Watch out, my beads!’

  ‘Get off, you lump!’

  ‘My hair!’

  ‘Stefan can nearly Jitterbug,’ said Christina.

  ‘What?’ Alice sat up, pushing Christina off. ‘But he’s German.’

  ‘He’s nice,’ Christina said.

  ‘Heil Hitler,’ said Alice. ‘Ziss littel Jitterbug iss not goot. Bang.’

  It was almost dark, Christina put on the electric fire and they lay on their beds in the rosy dusk. Alice said, ‘You can’t marry him, you know, it’s a mortal sin unless you ask a bishop. You’ll have mad babies.’

  ‘He’s coming home at Easter,’ said Christina, ‘when his school term is over.’

  ‘Perhaps he’ll fall in love with me as well.’ Alice sat up. ‘Open your presents.’

  Christina unwrapped a book about the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret Rose visiting the piccaninnies of Trinidad, and a bottle of shampoo crème with real beer which Rachel Saunders had recommended for coarse hair like Christina’s.

  ‘And this is the best,’ Alice said. She held out a little parcel of tissue paper. ‘It was in my jewellery box. You’ll have forgotten all about it, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  Christina pulled away the paper. It was a silver heart-shaped locket.

  ‘You found it, remember?’ Alice said.

  Christina did remember, but the truth was she hadn’t found the locket, it had been given to her by a soldier she met once in the lane. ‘I had it mended for you,’ Alice went on. ‘They took out the dents and polished it up. Rachel says girls should wear pearls for day and diamanté for evening. She says gold is for married women and silver is a vulgar tramp. I think it’s nice even though it’s silver. It’s a shame the initial isn’t right.’

  The locket was heavier than Christina remembered, and fatter, like a heart-shaped egg. The light from the electric bar made scarlet sparks inside the silver.

  When the soldier had put it in her hand six years ago, it was cold, but now it felt warm as if it was alive. The locket was engraved with a curling letter E.

  1927

  4

  The front door whined on its hinges and footsteps on the bare boards in the hallway would thud through the house, so Lydia went down the area steps and let herself into the kitchen. Her son would be sleeping and she didn’t want to disturb him.

  In the mornings the flooding in Albert’s lungs receded. He was limp and ragged like some washed-up thing, but Vera would get him up and sit him in a chair where he’d doze off again, his chest rattling like a tin of nails. Before she left for work, she pegged back the brown paper at the window so the sunlight warmed his feet – the only part of him he could bear it to touch. He would not wake again until gone twelve.

  Lydia put her shopping on the kitchen table. She had been carrying too many bags to hold a brolly and her coat was heavy with the wet. She hung it in the scullery to drip. Her hat had flopped and she coaxed it back into shape and put it on the plate warmer.

  The house was silent. Rachel was at school, and young Michael – heaven only knew where Michael was – drawing portraits on the street or doing odd jobs for anyone who’d pay him. He was like Albert used to be, not much to say but practical and thoughtful, quick at learning things. Albert used to understand the workings of all the modern gadgets, even engines. He could fix most things. That was finished for Albert now.

  On a rainy afternoon in France in ’17, Albert had tumbled into a crater for shelter to find a little breath of mustard gas sheltering there too. He couldn’t climb out or shout for help – the noise of hell went on above his head. His face and hands were seared like meat against a griddle, down inside his uniform, his stomach, his lungs.

  He woke to the sound of people talking in the dark, then the pain began – pliers in his guts, and scalding as if they’d boiled him. He couldn’t see or move, and at first he didn’t realize that the other noise that blossomed was his own voice yelling.

  A nurse who sounded terrified said the blindness and the burns were secondary; the shrapnel and the fractures had been the real challenge for the surgeon. A shell had exploded almost on top of him, she said; it should have finished him. ‘I don’t mean should,’ she flustered, ‘what I mean is you was lucky, Mr Ross.’

  Michael was ten when Albert was brought home from the hospital. Vera forbade little Rachel to see her dad at first, but Michael wanted to. He had insisted.

  ‘Your Nanna Lydia will take you in,’ Vera had said at Albert’s bedroom door. ‘Don’t let me down. You’re the man of the house now, Mikey.’

  Lydia thought this was a daft thing to say to a little boy and unusual for her daughter-in-law, who normally had such sense, but Vera had gone a little crazy for a while, swinging like a pendulum between elation and horror that her husband was alive. The army doctor had assured her that Albert would heal sufficiently to lead a useful life and all he needed was time and a loyal patient wife. Mustard gas was nasty but a man could live with disfigurement and blindness – plenty did. As for the other damage, well, the courage of the man was paramount. It was important he was kept busy and not allowed to dwell.

  How does one occupy a man who can’t see or move and whose hearing is impaired, Lydia wondered.

  ‘Your husband won’t be quite the man he was, Mrs Ross,’ the doctor had told Vera delicately. ‘But with your family complete, this will not affect you.’

  ‘Affect me?’ Vera said. ‘Affect me?’ Lydia shushed her gently, but Vera in her anguish didn’t take the hint. Lydia saw the doctor scrabble in his mind for words that would be plain enough to terminate the consultation.

  ‘Marriage’ – he pressed his palms together to illustrate the union – ‘has blessed you with a son and daughter. Your family is complete, Mrs Ross. Therefore your, ah, expectations of your husband are different from those of a younger wife.’

  ‘And what expectations would those be?’ Vera said. ‘I don’t expect him to dig the spuds sitting in a wheelchair.’

  The doctor winced. ‘I simply mean that you and Mr Ross will be, as it were, loyal friends.’ If Mrs Ross understood him now he couldn’t tell but thankfully she asked nothing more.

  Albert had the little room just off the stairs where the babies used to have their cots. Month by month a new skin covered him, but it fitted badly and did not follow the contours of the face and body underneath.

  Albert seemed to rally for a while. In the first year, he learned to dress himself and to stand up almost straight on the good days when his skin was supple enough to stretch behind the knees. He could distinguish shapes floating in the gloom. Sometimes there were showers of lights he took for Passchendaele still raging in his head. The doctor said it was blood pumping across the damaged retinas.

  ‘We’ll have you sitting at the table in a month or two,’ Vera would say. ‘You have to make the effort, Albert. You have to fight.’

  Lydia could see her son was already fighting on too many fronts. It was Vera’s own yearnings that mad
e her as blind as Albert.

  The breakfast things were piled in the scullery sink and Lydia tutted at the mess, though not with genuine annoyance. She sat down heavily on a chair to get her breath.

  She had walked the mile from her own place on the Old Kent Road, stopping at the grocer’s and the butcher’s to get shopping for Vera who hadn’t much time now she was working for a milliner in New Cross. Lydia had called in at the fishmonger’s, although it wasn’t Friday, to get a pail of ice for Albert.

  ‘How is your boy, Mrs Ross?’ asked almost everyone she passed. ‘Feeling better, is he? How is Albert these days?’ Her boy was dying and ‘these days’ had turned into years.

  She had passed a man – it was hard to tell if he was young or old – leaning on a crutch and playing the harmonica. He wore a filthy pin-striped suit that might have been respectable once. He’d lost an arm at the elbow, and a leg. His flapping trouser leg was knotted and his empty sleeve was tied with string. She dropped a farthing in his hat, but couldn’t bring herself to acknowledge him. She hurried on, scolding herself for treating him so shabbily.

  There was another beggar further up the street, whistling, with a rag laid out to catch the coins. She crossed the road to avoid him.

  She should feel pity but she resented these men who could stand upright, even on the skew. They had hands to hold harmonicas, and lips and breath to whistle with. She was ashamed that she resented all the men, even her own dear husband Lemuel, who had made the leap from life to death with speed and decisiveness, when Albert was stranded halfway between.

  The thoughts passed quickly. Lydia was not a woman to rake over what should or should not have been.

  She tidied up and prepared the vegetables for dinner. She did the ironing and mended Rachel’s gym dress.

  In her day, Lydia reflected as the needle clicked against the thimble, girls didn’t have tuition in doing bends. All the help they gave at home was sufficient exercise. Rachel was a clever miss and had got a scholarship to a private school in Catford and perhaps it was assumed these girls would not be scrubbing floors or fetching coal and laundering to keep themselves from getting fat.