She clasped her house keys, then put one key in the door, turned it round and did the same with a second key. She was due to meet Rosa who’d never seen her in such attire, though she’d seen Margot’s appearance spiral downwards a little recently and had barely concealed her surprise the first time Margot had entered the museum in trousers and flat shoes. Hans hadn’t seemed to notice that anything was different about his wife. Maybe when he looked back and thought about it, but she couldn’t be sure he’d do either.
She turned ninety degrees and stared for a few moments at the ceramic pot filled with geraniums under which they kept the spare keys. They were still thriving, thanks to a summer that refused to give up. She touched her lips. They were dry without gloss. A bird sang, prompting her to turn in the direction she wanted to go.
17
Dear Helen,
I’m writing to apologise from the bottom of my heart for what Elsa did to you last night and I hold myself to blame for thinking I could invite a guest into our situation.
In normal circumstances I would obviously say, without hesitation, that her behaviour was inexcusable, but I hope, shocked and distraught though you must be, you will find you can forgive her for truly it’s the illness and not Elsa that did this terrible thing to you.
If you had known Elsa, you’d have seen one of the gentlest women you’d ever be likely to come across, who would’ve welcomed you into our home with great generosity and warmth. It is me you must blame for gambling with your life, risking something happening that has occurred many times before, but I’ve only ever seen her lose her temper with me and I genuinely, though now I can see stupidly, never thought she would raise her voice to anyone else, let alone strike them. But of course, it’s the old Elsa I speak of.
My only defence, pathetic and entirely inadequate though it is, is how much I’ve enjoyed our meetings, the extent of which is now difficult to put on paper.
You’re obviously a very kind and loving woman who’s spent time with a couple of old people while on holiday in one of the most exciting cities in Europe. And I can’t tell you what a complete and utter delight it is for me to have the opportunity to speak English with an English person. That excitement within me will never die.
There was an Englishman, a soldier. What can I say? That man, Freddy, he saved our lives in many ways. I got to know him at the end of the war, when I was thirteen; he was part of the allied forces in Berlin. And, clichéd though it may sound, he did become my ally, my friend. It was Freddy who started to teach me English and it’s to him I owe my enthusiasm and love of the language, and to him I owe my living.
You must be wondering why on earth I’ve enclosed an old English chocolate bar wrapper in this letter. I’d like, if I may, to tell you about other Englishmen. Pilots. Ones to whom we owe our lives.
I expect you’ve heard of the Berlin Airlift. It was three years after the war and in Berlin we were facing yet another crisis. The Soviets were trying to block access to Western Berlin. Gas and electricity had been cut off to Western sectors and what was particularly worrying was the shortage of milk. There was a very real fear babies’ lives would be lost. As you probably know, what followed was the airlift. For nearly a year our food and fuel supplies were dropped at two airports by English and American pilots.
I remember one particular day I stood with a large group of people watching one plane flying past us very low. It seemed to be the only thing we could see that was intact. All around us were remnants of buildings bombed during the war and our group stood on a pile of rubble, looking up at this noisy object; it was similar to the buzzing we’d heard only a few years before and might’ve instilled fear, had it not been for the knowledge that on the plane was our food. You can’t imagine. An angel in our midst.
I stood behind a little girl and boy, brother and sister, I think, dressed smartly in their school uniforms. The little girl, her hair tied up in ribbons, was clutching a briefcase, which almost seemed the same size as its owner. They started jumping up and down. “Roisenbombers! Roisenbombers!” They could hardly contain their excitement. Their mother, beside them, tried to tell them to calm down but with no success. I knew the word. Friends told me about the airmen who were dropping sweets and chocolate, usually wrapped in handkerchiefs, for the children. They were nicknamed “roisenbombers”, raisin bombers. The bombs this time, you see, were to save us. It was, I suppose, the first time we’d felt cared for in a long while.
I looked up. It was a beautiful day, much like the weather we’ve been having recently. We knew the plane was English because we were near Gatow, where the English planes landed. The young boy and girl were still shouting, jumping higher and higher the nearer the plane got, as if they were trying to reach the very hands of the chocolate magicians. Sure enough, they weren’t to be disappointed. As it flew overhead, small packages fell out of the plane and all us children (though I’d have hated to call myself a child by then and, if I remember right, I had some anxiety about whether I too should run and whether this would make me look silly) ran to where the packages were landing. I managed to find one. I still have the handkerchief and, as you can see, I’ve kept the wrapper. You probably know the make.
The airmen became our heroes. They were mobbed when they walked down the streets and were presented with flowers. The last recipients of such a gesture had been the hierarchy of the Nazi party, but, as with the sweet packets, the flowers were now symbols of something so much more hopeful.
I just wanted you to know this story. I do hope you don’t mind and thank you for reading it.
May I once again say how sorry I am that you had to suffer like you did and I’m so sorry I didn’t have the foresight to prevent it happening. Elsa, as I say, was such a kind woman and, though it’s hard, I have to let her stay in her house, though others have tried to persuade me to put her somewhere else. But how could I live with myself?
Please, please enjoy the rest of your stay in the flat and if there’s anything I can help you with, please don’t hesitate to let me know.
With very best wishes,
Peter
Helen looked across the room and saw the letter from Peter, which was sitting on the table by the sofa next to a half-finished cup of coffee and a plate with orange peel on it. She returned to her book and read page twenty-four for what must have been as many times, but still she had no idea what was on that page. She looked out of the window and acknowledged to herself that this holiday had been a mistake, that attempting to know more about a person after their death was perhaps wrong when it was someone so close. Stephen had revealed all that he’d wanted to reveal and that was his right. This search she’d embarked on was, in sympathetic terms, a grieving process, an unwillingness to accept what she’d have to, that he wasn’t lingering somewhere around the next corner, waiting for her in a cosy part of Berlin, and in less generous terms, it was the action of someone who’s merely grovelling around for information that isn’t hers to know. In short, she was nothing more than a nosey parker and, for her punishment, she had a slap in the face from a woman she barely knew and had very little inclination to know any further.
She felt alone, floating in a vacuum with no support and wanted to ring someone in England, but there were various reasons why she hadn’t, from not wanting to worry her children to feeling uncomfortable about bothering her friends. There was also the problem of wise silences down the phone from those who’d advised her not to go to Berlin. Let the past be the past. Get away from it all. Go somewhere that has nothing to do with anyone’s past. The truth was as well that she didn’t have much experience of being upset with friends. She didn’t like the thought of it because it would always be there in their minds, no matter how many good times were had afterwards. It made her slightly cringe. She’d always been taught such outpourings were self-indulgent. It was a view she’d learnt to embrace and live by. Even when Stephen died, she’d managed to kee
p things to herself and was proud of not having given in when the children were around.
She went across to the sofa and put her feet up. Peter’s letter stared at her and she picked it up and read the last couple of paragraphs again. “Please, please enjoy the rest of your stay in the flat and if there’s anything I can help you with, please don’t hesitate to let me know.” She threw the letter back on the table and picked up her address book, angry that she’d put herself in such a vulnerable position and even angrier that she now seemed to need someone to talk to. This was so unlike her and she began to feel a bit frightened.
Then she saw the name of a woman she couldn’t really call a friend, an old neighbour, and for some reason, maybe precisely because she wasn’t a close friend, she thought, on and off but for quite a while, this could be the very person to ring. An hour or so later she started pressing the numbers on her mobile.
“Is that Audrey? You may not remember me.”
Audrey did. Helen said she was sorry to bother her. It was so silly really. She was in Berlin. Yes, she was on her own. Did she know Stephen had died? Thank you. Yes, anyway, she was here because this was where Stephen had studied and she’d seen some friends of theirs, well his, really, and there was her landlord and… she missed Stephen so much, no one could possibly understand.
18
Audrey put the phone down, shocked by different things. Shocked that it was her old neighbour Helen who was sobbing on the other end because it wasn’t the sort of thing she did; shocked by her own ability to deal with the situation with a not inconsiderable amount of calm, which had, in turn, eventually helped stop Helen crying; shocked by some of the things she’d said – that Helen would be surprised by the number of people who did understand her pain; it just wouldn’t feel like it at the moment; take her, for instance, but at this point Helen said she knew really it was just that she felt so lonely, to which she’d agreed it must be very difficult; and then she’d listened for a while about this incident with her landlord’s wife. It all sounded a bit involved and she couldn’t quite make head or tail of it, but dementia seemed to be in the mix somewhere amidst the sobbing, so she said it wasn’t personal because Mrs Brown down the road could be very unpredictable. She had the same thing. Then Audrey was very shocked at herself because in the middle of all this she’d offered to go and see Helen. To be fair, Helen kept saying no, she shouldn’t, that it was very kind of her, but she shouldn’t go to such trouble, no, she really shouldn’t, and to her surprise Audrey had kept insisting, saying she could do with a break and that Kenneth was only going to be spending the next couple of weeks mending something in the garage, she couldn’t remember what exactly, at which point she’d managed to get a little laugh from her old neighbour, who then said it would be lovely to see her.
This had been enough to convince Audrey. It had been a long while since anyone had told her it would be lovely to see her. Now, in the quiet of their living room she was processing what had just happened and after a few minutes, she laughed and punched the air just like all those sportspeople do on the telly.
She went straight upstairs to look in her wardrobe and sort out stuff she should take. As she was going through things to take or not take, putting them in different piles, Kenneth came through the front door, back from his daily walk to get the evening paper and shouted, “I’m back,” upstairs and some comment she didn’t quite hear; it was probably about the weather.
She heard his footsteps on the stairs; they were always laboured and were usually accompanied by heavy breathing and sighs. She thought he overdid it a bit, some kind of need for attention.
“I’ve got the paper,” he said, throwing it on the bed. “Seems like they are going to build that new supermarket after all. Just what we need. Another supermarket.” He sat on the bed and got his breath back. “What the heck are you doing?” He paused for a few seconds. “You’re not leaving me, are you?”
She smiled because she was touched that he seemed so worried.
“Only for a few days,” she replied and explained the conversation she’d had with Helen.
He helped her book a flight and a hotel, being quite handy on the computer these days, but he was perplexed. He wasn’t really sure why his wife was rushing off to Berlin to see Helen; they’d never seemed that close when they were neighbours, but what did he know? Maybe Audrey just needed a break or, more to the point, a break from him. He could be a miserable old sod sometimes and he wasn’t all that good at showing her his appreciation.
So, roughly thirty-six hours later, when they’d had the chat about the contents of the freezer and what he’d find easy to cook, a lot more than she thought and not all of it was in the freezer, there were one or two things he thought he might try, and when she’d packed the final things and he’d driven her to the airport, negotiating various road closures on the way, he found himself waving at her plane, in the vain hope she may have seen him.
Audrey had done this only once before and that was to Wigan when her sister was very ill. Kenneth had offered to drive her there, but she was so upset she said she’d prefer to go on her own. Years down the line, she often thought he’d been hurt by her decision, but it was something they hadn’t discussed because they both knew she was the only one who could start a conversation about Jean.
She looked down at the airport below and shuddered slightly as her hasty decision to travel began to sink in, but even so, she still managed to congratulate that part of her that hadn’t wavered and as the houses and roads disappeared and clouds replaced them, she welcomed a different reality: the possibility of her first cup of tea in the sky without the company of anyone she knew.
19
Peter felt about as far away from the day when he went to the World Cup match with Karl in the summer as he could possibly imagine. That day, he’d felt excitement he’d completely forgotten. What was this? A glee in his body that almost made him want to jump. It had meant he’d found a way of being around Elsa in the weeks leading up to it that had been more affable, almost not minding their situation, comparing himself more positively with others. Things could be a lot worse.
He’d looked forward to the World Cup for months. It was good to have it in his united country, an excuse to talk to Karl a bit more often about their shared passion. How they’d always exchanged views, taunt one another, he chiding his old pupil for supporting Leverkusen – what did he do that for? What about a Berlin team? “What Berlin team?” would be Karl’s retort. “Yours? They’ll never reach the Bundesliga.” And so it would rattle on, like an old lorry trying to get to a destination it never would, and Elsa would say, “For God’s sake, give the poor boy a rest,” and they’d both laugh because they knew this was their rest, this was exactly what they wanted to do. “Don’t worry, Elsa, I love talking to Peter about football, especially as I’m always with the winning team,” and Peter would make a gesture for him to stop, partly in fun, but also because he knew the so-and-so was right.
They’d managed, or rather Karl had managed, to get tickets for Germany v Ecuador at the Olympiastadion; he was waving them in his hand when Peter opened the door. Peter couldn’t quite believe it. Karl had said he would get tickets, but he knew how difficult these things could be. He wasn’t sure how many times he’d thanked Karl that afternoon, but it was probably about as many times as Elsa had insisted on another piece of cake because she couldn’t remember having the last slice.
“They’re on me,” Karl had insisted, no matter how many times he’d argued the point. “I really want to do this, you’ve done so much for me,” and Peter had known to stop then.
“Thank you, it’s wonderful,” and Peter had thought it was just one of those moments that are too good to be true, like the day he’d bought his first record, after weeks of saving up, and put it on the record player. It was Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 14.
“Don’t worry about Elsa. We’ll sort it out,” and
that was exactly what both he and his wife, Ingrid, did. Unusually, everything worked out perfectly that day; Ingrid arranged for the children to spend the day with her mother, “They always love spending the day with their granny, she spoils them rotten and never seems to tell them off”, and she looked after Elsa, who had no memory of her, so they had a couple of practice runs with both of them going over to Karl and Ingrid’s. The lead up to the day, despite his excitement, had torn his nerves in shreds because so often he’d tried to leave her with someone like Alke and Elsa had kicked up such a fuss he’d had to abandon his plans or he’d had to rush back from somewhere because she was crying her eyes out and was calling his name incessantly or had filled up her pad and stunk to high heaven.
He didn’t know what it was about that day; maybe an occasion so vast disallowed private consideration, but he always thought this would be the one day that would be uninterrupted and they’d be able to watch the entire match. It was easier to lose oneself in crowds, he thought, the contrast to normal life so marked that everyday worries dissipated, spreading themselves so thinly it was as if they barely existed. Since Elsa had been diagnosed, he couldn’t remember a time when he’d been able to relax into a situation in which she wasn’t by his side and very few when she was, but there was something about Ingrid’s assurances, her ability to think of as many possible situations as she could that might occur and prepare for them that left him full of confidence that this would be a great day out.
They walked most of the way to the stadium. It was so enjoyable walking at a good pace with Karl, watching buildings pass him so much more quickly than they could with Elsa, whose concern about where they were prevented any attempt at speed.
The Writing on the Wall and Other Stories Page 11