by Lawton, John
Nell went home to Klaus, as she did every night.
§60
On a light evening in the middle of August she came home to find the house silent again. A common occurrence. It seemed to her that Klaus had vanished into silence. Into silence and vegetables. As the days had lengthened he spent more and more time in the garden—planting out his cabbages, earthing up his potatoes. His evenings were spent behind his pipe and the gentle smoke screen he blew. If the radio or the gramophone went on it was because Nell put them on. Things that had interested him before, few though they were, seemed to have dropped away, petals, leaves and all, leaving the husk of the man. The British, who had rounded up and pressed into service—fetching, carrying, cleaning . . . burying—hundreds of the younger able-bodied, had left old Klaus alone.
It had been April, almost the end of April, when she had tuned in to the BBC and they had learnt of the death of Hitler. An occasion that might have been cause for rejoicing in a house such as theirs received only a muttered, “Well, that’s that then” and a rhetorical “How many millions have died for him?” The news of Admiral Dönitz’s unconditional surrender, Stunde Null, a matter of days later, drew forth a sigh of utter world-weariness and an equally rhetorical, “Was it all for nothing?”
The house was silent, the doors open front and back to let the breeze pass through.
She called out his name, and when there was no answer walked through the dining room towards the back door.
On the dining table an envelope was propped against a bottle of Cognac and an empty glass.
To my niece,
Christina Hélène von Raeder Burkhardt
It was closed and sealed with red wax, and the imprint of his signet ring, an interwoven KvR. The ring itself he had dropped into the empty glass.
The message was simple.
We all knew. Forgive me. KvR.
She knew he was dead. It was a simple matter to find the body.
Out in the garden he had dug one more trench and lain down in it. She had no idea how he had killed himself, but knew he had. A rational strand in her mind told her that he had spared her the task of cutting him down from a roof beam or mopping up the blood from a shot to the head. He had left her but one task, to bury him. He had left his garden spade in a mound of earth and he had pinned his two iron crosses onto the left breast of his jacket. He lay ramrod straight, his eyes closed and his arms folded like a Teutonic knight carved on a tombstone.
She was still looking at Klaus when she became aware of someone looking at her.
Nowak was standing on the other side of the grave. She had not seen him in days, perhaps weeks. She heard he had volunteered as a porter and stayed on after many of the able-bodied had chosen to leave. He had put on weight, his hair had grown back. She could see now that he was a young man, probably well under forty, whereas before he had been both aged and ageless. He was clean, if dusty, and he was carrying a fawn knapsack much like her own.
“I came to find you. The door was open. I wasn’t sure if you still lived here. I came to find you. I came to say goodbye. I am leaving.”
She said nothing. He picked up the spade and said, “It’s the least I can do. A thank-you for all the tobacco he gave me.”
She watched as Nowak buried her uncle, thinking that the old man had outlived his time and that perhaps it was a rare gift to know when to die, and thinking that three months ago Nowak had scarcely had the strength to lift a pipe let alone a spade.
At last she said, “Leaving? Where will you go?”
“The Dutch have already gone back to Holland and the Belgians to Belgium. The Jews are lobbying to go to Palestine. The Czechs are on their way to Czechoslovakia. Few of the Poles want to go to Poland. You couldn’t pay me to go back to Poland. So . . . I think perhaps I shall go to England. This displaced person is displacing himself once more.”
“How?”
“I’ll walk if I have to.”
“And papers. Do you have papers?”
Nowak smoothed out the mound that covered Klaus and stuck the spade back into the earth. From his inside pocket he took a folded card and handed it to her. It was dog-eared and grubby now, but it was the same card she had given him as they sat in the dust together at the gates of Belsen. The inky sketch she had done of him now dated as he had gained both flesh and hair.
“That won’t get you very far.”
“On the contrary my dear, it will get me into heaven. And you, what now for you?”
“I am a Berliner,” she said. “I belong in Berlin. I should be in Berlin. I have . . . perhaps had . . . family in Berlin. A mother and a father.”
“And when did you last hear from them?”
“In January.”
Two portentously vacant words, and they both knew the possibilities inherent.
“And how will you get there?”
She looked at Nowak, remembered how she had arrived with her little fawn knapsack with the red leather straps, and all that mattered to her stuffed inside.
“Oh, I’ll walk if I have to.”
§61
Dekker was sceptical.
“It’s over two hundred kilometres.”
“I should say closer to three hundred.”
“And the green border . . .”
“The what?”
“The line between us and the Russians. It’s hardly fifty kilometres from here. We drew back, gave them a chunk of Mecklenburg and some of Hanover. All agreed beforehand apparently. Wherever we stopped, wherever the Nazis surrendered we’d revert to the line agreed at some conference or other.”
“And do they patrol this line?”
“It would be very unlike them not to.”
She had placed her RAMC battledress on the desk between them.
Dekker removed the “I” (interpreter) armband and handed the jacket back to her.
“Keep it. I doubt it would fit anyone else, and, who knows, it might ward off a few bullets.”
She was pleased. A gift. Something to make her think of Dekker in the days to come when she would know nothing of him. It did not suit the summer weather, but that was by the by.
“I am sorry,” she said.
“About what?”
“That I was not of more help. I think perhaps I blundered in . . . the medical records . . . just little scraps of card.”
“Au contraire. My nurses think you broke the ice. Do you have any idea how many people traced their families as a result of the conversations you had, the notes you took—those little scraps of card?”
She hadn’t, so he told her.
“One hundred and fifty-eight.”
“Out of . . . ?”
“Forty thousand, give or take a few.”
“That’s . . . that’s pathetic.”
“No, Nell. It’s marvellous. One hundred and fifty-eight people too frightened to talk to anyone else. One hundred and fifty-eight people who thought they were alone in the world now know they’re not.”
She wondered. Was she alone in the world? Was she a “Displaced Person”? Had her parents lived or died in Berlin?
It was as if he had read her mind.
“Do you really have to go to Berlin?”
“Yes. I’m a Berliner. It’s still home. What’s left of it.”
Dekker walked with her as far as the gate, and she had taken but half a dozen steps eastward when he called after her, “How old are you really?”
She turned, looked at Dekker for the last time.
“Eighteen.”
“And that’s a lie isn’t it?”
Nell said, “The only one I’ve ever told you.”
But it was a lie she stuck to ever after.
§62
She packed what she could but left most things.
Food would be a problem. She had money to buy food, but would there be food to buy?
It was summer, almost anything would rot before she could eat it, so she filled her knapsack with hardtack . . . with apples and nuts, w
ith potatoes and carrots from the garden—with sweaty cheese and black bread from the larder.
Leaving, she thought what she might do with the key, and then she knew. She left it in the lock, for anyone to turn. It wasn’t her house, it had never been hers. Let anyone who wanted have it.
It was warm, too warm for the RAMC battledress Dekker had given her, but she was determined to wear it—a badge of honour. She wore it open and loose, its belt tag dangling over her billowing green skirt, the sleeves rolled up to her elbows—and the strange insignia at the shoulder . . . a serpent coiled around a staff, peeping out between the straps of her woollen-sheathed British Army water flask. She had meant to ask Dekker what the insignia meant but had never remembered.
Celle was full of people. It seemed as though the whole of Germany was pouring into one town.
Celle was full of soldiers.
A sergeant wearing the armband and fiercely raked cap of a military policeman stopped her in the street. Gave her the once over, his eyes ranging down from the grips in her hair to the brittle leather walking boots on her feet.
“Now, where do you think you’re off to dressed up like a dog’s dinner?”
It was not a phrase that translated readily but she got his drift.
“Berlin,” she said, and the man grinned.
“You’ll be lucky.”
“I am a Berliner. Berlin is my home.”
“Papers,” he said as abruptly as any German cop.
Hers were out of date. A wartime identity card and a ration book she had not used in weeks, not since the army had fed her.
But Dekker had taken the precaution of writing a letter for her in both English and German. It requested her safe passage. Wherever.
The sergeant read it, said, “I know Captain Dekker. I’m sure he means well . . . but you need a pass to cross zones.”
“I have no pass.”
“Well . . . you won’t need it till you meet a Russian. If you was my girl I’d be telling you to turn back right now . . . most o’ your lot are coming in the opposite direction. Look around you. We got Pomeranians, we got Sudetens, we got Silesians. We got half of East Prussia. Nobody wants to be in Berlin. Anyone who can outrun the Russkis is doing it. So many been through here these last few weeks, I reckon Berlin must be just about empty by now.”
“I am a Berliner.”
“So you say. Well . . . I’m not gonna be the one to stop you. But if I were you I’d travel very carefully. The countryside between here and the green border is full of DPs—Displaced Persons. Refugees, foreign workers, POWs . . . the lot. None of ’em partial to Germans. And then there’s renegades, werewolves and what have you. And if there’s one thing I know about a British battledress, it’s that it don’t stop no bullets.”
§63
Cambridge: November 1946
Mrs. Wissit slapped a bowl of Irish stew in front of him and said, “The colonel phoned for you. But you was out. I told him.”
Wilderness looked at the unappetising mess—chunks of fatty mutton in transparent gruel—not waving but drowning.
“Important, was it?”
“’Course. He don’t pick up the blower for nothin’ now does he?”
“And?”
“And I wrote it down, din I?”
She fumbled in the pocket of her pinny, turfed out a handkerchief, a couple of hairgrips, a pair of scissors, and a note she had folded over so many times it was hardly bigger than a postage stamp.
“It says . . . Pack yer kit, clear out and report to me at . . . ’ang on can’t read me own wotsit . . . somethin’ somethin’ Commission in Knightsbridge tamorra mornin’ 8 a.m. sharp.”
“Is that all?”
“Said thanks to me, and told me he’d be sending some other bloke to take your place.”
“So, I’m off and you’re all paid up?”
“Yeah, been grand ain’t it.”
§64
He spent the night back in Sidney Street. The only sign of Merle was the snaking tendril of her scent. He heard her come in around two in the morning and thought better of a mid-nighttime encounter. When he got up at six a note on the kitchen table read simply, “Wotcher, Johnnie.”
At the Control Commission for Germany HQ in Knightsbridge the staff sergeant on desk duty handed him another note, and Wilderness wondered if it might be the start of an album like stamps or autographs or fag cards.
Report RAF Wyton. 10 a.m. tomorrow morning. Travel light. Mind your manners. Try saluting once on a while. ABJ.
“He’s not actually here, then?”
“Who?”
“Colonel Burne-Jones.”
“Don’t be daft, son. I can’t answer questions like that. We’re meant to be a secret service. How secret would we be if I answered everything some Tom, Dick, or Harry asks me?”
“Are the whereabouts of RAF Wyton a secret?”
“Nah. It’s just outside Cambridge, everybody knows that.”
“I’ve just come from bloody Cambridge!”
“So you’ll have no difficulty finding it then.”
§65
The pattern repeated itself. Wilderness went to bed, Merle came in hours later. The only difference was that she left no note for him to read as he set off for King’s Cross at seven in the morning. He left one for her.
Looks like I been posted. See when I see you. J x
But he didn’t. He never saw Merle again.
§66
Crossing Wyton field, kit bag perched on his left shoulder, it occurred to him that he was about to come face-to-face with a wartime legend. His first look at an Avro Lancaster heavy bomber.
There was no sign of Burne-Jones.
He dropped his kit by the crew hatch and circled the aircraft, awed by its size. It had seen better days. In the eighteen months or so since it last dropped a bomb this Lancaster had been stripped of its machine guns and had not seen a lick of paint. The gun turrets looked like the glassy eyes of some giant dead fish—the gunmetal grey of aluminium showed in streaks beneath the peeling black paint.
As Wilderness came full circle a man dropped feetfirst out of the hatch to the grass. A tatty-haired bloke wearing the Saturn rings of a squadron leader on his sleeve.
Wilderness saluted.
“Knock it off, old man. This is my last op. Tomorrow when this crate touches down back here I’ll be in Civvy Street. And not a day too soon. Be fucked if I spent my last day returning salutes to erks like a bloody jack-in-the-box.”
He stuck out his hand for Wilderness to take.
“Miller,” he said. “Dusty Miller. You must be the kid Alec was telling me about.”
“Yeah, that’s me. Joe Holderness. Is the colonel . . .”
Wilderness hesitated. Was one “on board” or “inside” a plane? Was a plane more like a ship or a lorry?
Instead he pointed . . . “Up there?”
“No. Alec flew on ahead. He gave me these for you.”
He handed Wilderness a small buff envelope and a square of pale blue serge with a propeller motif on it.
Wilderness must have looked more puzzled than he felt.
Miller said, “It’s your promotion old man. You’re a leading aircraftman now. An extra five bob a week in your pay packet. Don’t forget to sew it on.”
He grabbed hold of the fuselage above his head and in a neat, practised movement swung himself back into the plane.
Wilderness opened the letter.
Meet me in the main bar. Victory Club. 7:30 tonight. ABJ.
Victory Club? What Victory Club?
The Lancaster’s engines turned over, catching Wilderness in a blast of cold air that whipped his cheese-cutter cap away into oblivion.
A head popped out of the hatch.
“Skipper says get on board or get left behind.”
Wilderness tossed up his kit bag and grabbed two willing hands just as the plane began to move.
“Upsadaisy!”
He fell into the plane, heard the hatch slam shu
t behind him and found himself sitting next to a flight sergeant.
“Are you a rabbi?” he said.
Not the greeting Wilderness had expected, but the man probably had his reasons.
“No? Is it essential?”
“Nope, but last week we flew out three rabbis and a Catholic priest and I had to mind me p’s and q’s all the bleedin’ way.”
“Where are we going?”
“You mean you don’t bloody know? Hamburg! You’re on the milk run, mate.”
Wilderness had some grasp of RAF slang. “Prang,” “crate,” and so forth. Doubtless if he had stayed in basic training he’d be fluent. “Milk run” meant easy, didn’t it?
“Piece of cake?” he ventured.
The flight sergeant grinned.
“Oh that too, but I meant we’re flying out condensed milk. You’re sitting on five thousand cans of the stuff.”
Wilderness looked down at the box he had perched himself upon, at the crude stencilling: “Milk. Con. Units 200. WD.”
“And then you got yer flour. Two thousand pounds of grey British flour.”
“Flour? But we’ve got bread rationing!”
“That’s ’cos we ship bleedin’ flour to bleedin’ Germany innit. Then there’s yer canned cheese. Don’t matter whether it says cheddar or double Gloucester on the outside it all comes out lookin’ like yeller rubber. And fags and matches and fag lighters and footballs and razor blades . . . two crates o’ Bibles . . . two complete Shakespeares . . . and then there’s blankets . . . and ex-army greatcoats and half a dozen sheepskin flying jackets. Speakin’ o’ which, best help yerself. No one’ll miss it. Certainly not the RAF. It’ll be bollock freezin’ once we get airborne. We’ll fly within sight of land, no goin’ up to thirty thousand feet, but cold all the same. And when we get there, Hamburg’s on the same latitude as Liverpool. But if you ask me it’s more like Aberfuckindeen. Cold as a witch’s tit.”
The crew was as stripped as the plane. No guns, ergo no gunners. No navigator, just a pilot and a wireless operator.
Wilderness sat in the former navigator’s seat as the Lancaster took off. An interesting surge, he thought. Not as traumatic as his imagination might have led him to believe, but a definite sensation in the lungs and stomach.
As the plane levelled off the flight sergeant said, “Front turret’s empty. Lie down. Get some kip if yer like. It’ll be more than two hours to Hamburg and nothin’ to see till we cross the Dutch coast. Even then Holland’s like my mum’s Yorkshire puddin’, flat as a pancake.”