The Fragments

by Toni Jordan

‘No one’s thought of this before?’ she asks him. She keeps her voice low on account of the neighbours, and Terese and Pretty in the front room. ‘Inga and the Bund? Are you sure?’

  He’s focusing on extracting her bike from the back seat of his car.

  ‘I reviewed everything before my lecture,’ he says. ‘There was nothing about the Bund when I was studying Inga and there’s nothing now.’

  ‘How can that be?’

  The wheel catches in the doorhandle; he wriggles it back and forth to free it. He must be very tired but there’s a patience to his actions that belies the hour. ‘By the time Inga scholarship took off in the fifties, America was focused on the evil commies. And no one’s questioned Charles being the typesetter until now. Until you did. And no one’s spoken to Marty Fischer before. Good research is like that—creative, not formulaic. A spark of inspiration that combines two things no one’s ever considered before.’

  The bike, extracted, sits on the footpath between them.

  ‘Thanks for the lift,’ she says.

  ‘Good night.’

  She feels a little drunk; heady from surprise and possibility and knowing something no one else does. With both hands on the bike she rolls forward onto her toes, reaches up and across and kisses him on the cheek. Her smooth face lingers against his. She feels iron-filing prickles and a rough heat. She feels his cheek pressing back against hers.

  When she rocks back to her feet, the look on his face. She laughs.

  ‘Sorry.’ She’s giggling now.

  His eyes are wide and blinking. ‘God, don’t be sorry. I just. I don’t. Wasn’t expecting that. Surprised. Extremely good surprise, wonderful surprise. You’re absolutely.’ He bites his top lip. ‘This has been quite a night.’

  His hands find hers on the frame of the bike. They’re smoother than she’d imagined, and stronger. He intertwines his fingers with hers.

  ‘Well, goodnight,’ she says.

  She leans up to kiss him again, and this time he’s ready. He bends his head lower. They breathe together, in the same space. It’s a tentative kiss. Slow, gentle. She moves her fingers to rest on his chest. It’s been a long time since Caddie’s been kissed. The sport of making herself shiny before going out to trigger a random seduction—she’s never had the knack. She’s forgotten the joy of it. The sweet, tentative soft-against-soft, the smoky, molten taste of a stranger. She’s breathing heavier. She doesn’t want it to end, yet she ends it.

  ‘It’s late.’ She looks up at her window. ‘I better go.’

  He nods. ‘Sure,’ he says. ‘OK. Good.’

  ‘Good night.’

  ‘OK, great. Thanks.’ He frowns. ‘No, not thanks. Thanks isn’t exactly what I meant. But. OK, yes. Thanks.’ He bites his bottom lip. ‘Wow, I sound really.’

  ‘Really what?’

  ‘Really, I don’t know. I can’t English anymore, apparently.’

  She feels warm towards him, the street, the world. She can feel dimples appearing in her cheeks. ‘Thanks to you too, then.’

  She heads under the house to lock up her bike, then up the back stairs. Jamie waits on the footpath until he sees her light go out.

  The question is motive. Why would the German-American Bund want Inga Karlson dead? And there’s still the question of Rachel. Rachel becomes part of Caddie’s imaginings. She lurks in the corner of Caddie’s eye at the bookstore. In the city, every old woman catches her attention. What did Rachel look like when she was Caddie’s age? What was her temperament? Her manner? Every day both of the imagined Rachels, young and old, change in personality and in appearance. Sometimes young Rachel is a petite thing with mousey hair and alert brown eyes. Sometimes she is taller, paler; arms like sun-bleached bones and eyes like water. She is chatty and composed and angry and ambitious.

  Are they the same Rachel: the woman outside the gallery and the woman who sent the flowers? It’s not an exotic name. Caddie tries to remember every detail about the woman she met, as if she’s in front of a police sketch artist, but she’d be the worst witness ever. Height? Weight? No idea. She remembers the tone of her voice. She seemed the kind of person who writes her sevens with a stroke across the middle, but that’s no use at all. Late sixties to mid-seventies. Her voice—there was a slight accent, if Caddie remembers correctly. If she imagines correctly, wishes correctly. Not enough to betray her as an American but what does that prove? An actor can sound native-born in a matter of hours. What could be achieved in decades if someone made a determined effort not to sound foreign? Rachel, somewhere in her twenties at the time of Samuel Fischer’s funeral: yes, it could have been her.

  But this is all conjecture. What does Caddie know for sure? She knows that Samuel Fischer was a Nazi and that Rachel Lehrer had money. The flowers that Marty Fischer described were not cheap. This Rachel did not know the Fischer family well, even though Marty’s mother knew her, or knew of her—no one reacts with such fury to a gift from a stranger. The young observant Marty had never heard of her before the day of the funeral. Nor was Rachel herself there sitting in a pew with her head draped in black lace; and this fact wasn’t remarked upon.

  But how could a woman from New York end up living in Brisbane? Important visitors here are so rare that those who’ve graced the town with their presence pass into legend: people still talk about General MacArthur; the young Queen in 1954; Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier being presented with a pineapple on arrival at Archerfield Airport in 1948. Except for Terese and Terese’s brothers and her mother, Caddie can count the people she knows who’ve been overseas, much less come from there, on one hand.

  It’s useless. It seems to Caddie she is marking off a checklist like a birdwatcher: her call is like so, the colour of her beak is like so, this type of place is her natural habitat. This is the pattern on the underside of her wing, on the shell of her eggs, on the down of her breast. As if by all these things she can be identified. But people are not birds. They are not consistent from one day to the next or in the company of one person as opposed to another. They shape-shift, they justify, they wriggle, they turn and turn again. If Caddie has already met Rachel, their encounter ran for—what?—two minutes? Three? Not enough to tell her anything.

  It could be a mere coincidence that both women, the giver of the flowers and the woman outside the art gallery, are named Rachel. Or maybe Marty was right: the New York Rachel was having an affair with Samuel and had nothing to do with his work. Or she was a girlhood friend of Marty’s mother who betrayed her over—over anything. A stolen cake recipe. Or perhaps Marty’s mother was one of those women quick to anger. Perhaps she simply hated lilies or chrysanthemums, or her husband was dead and Rachel Lehrer’s was alive and the thought of that made her want to smash everything in sight. And that’s if the whole thing wasn’t invented by a traumatised boy with an imagination raised on Detective Picture Stories.

  But. But what if Rachel had also read the manuscript, somehow? If she suspected that whoever killed Samuel Fischer would also come for her? That could explain why a young woman would leave the greatest metropolis on earth to move to the other side of the world—she was on the run.

  And Jamie. What is she supposed to think about him? As much as she wants to find Rachel, she also wants to be somewhere alone with Jamie, on an island or in a forest with no books, no problems to solve. No Rachel, no Samuel, no Inga. Caddie feels a pulse inside her when she thinks of him but she knows what she’d say if this was happening to someone else: it’s their common purpose that’s giving an illusion of closeness.

  *

  Monday morning, he calls her at the shop. She’s with a customer. By lunchtime, her imagination is away. She thinks of his skin against hers, of her backed against a wall with her arms around his neck, of him holding her, suspended with her feet off the floor. The prickles on his cheek, how far they extend down his throat and whether he has hair on his chest or a line descending on his stomach. The shock on his face when she kissed him, his bumbling for words. Just thinking of it, she
can’t keep her mind on her work. She imagines sitting astride him, the look on his face. Making him gasp.

  When she answers the phone in the mid-afternoon, she’s miles away.

  ‘Caddie? It’s Jamie.’

  It’s her turn to be surprised. ‘Hi. I just. Wasn’t.’ She looks towards the bookshop—there are no customers and Christine isn’t hovering. Caddie doesn’t know if that’s a good thing or not. ‘Hello.’

  ‘Hello to you too.’

  There’s a pause, but not for long. ‘So. I found some books we had in storage, about fascism in the 1930s. And I also spoke with a friend of a friend who put me in touch with someone with a special interest in FDR. The US, in the late thirties. Politics. All that.’

  The pro-Nazi German-American Bund, Jamie tells her, wanted America to stay out of the coming world war. ‘They were big in the isolationist movement. It was pretty obvious a war was coming. They knew Roosevelt would want to join in.’ He told her about the Bund’s clandestine relationship with the America First Committee, a pressure group formed in 1940 to ensure America stayed out of the war in Europe, that had 800,000 members at its peak.

  ‘The Bund was massive. Just a few weeks after the fire, they held a rally in Madison Square Garden and almost twenty thousand people showed up. Roosevelt was a Bolshevik and a Jewish puppet, that kind of rubbish. They even had their own stormtroopers. And all kinds of plots—blowing up military installations, stealing weapons and explosives, the whole bit.’

  ‘Impressive. You’ve been busy.’

  ‘Aah, yep. I could not get to sleep for some reason. I went in to the office at six a.m.’

  ‘Too much coffee?’

  ‘No. No, no. Could not stop thinking. Anyway. You. Thinking about you.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes. And if I think about you now, and if I try to talk about this over the phone it’ll take me hours to regain the ability to speak in full sentences and I’m pretty sure full sentences will come in handy some time today so back to the point of my call. Short answer: taking out one warehouse and two civilians was definitely something the Bund could manage.’

  ‘But why? Why kill Inga, and destroy the book?’

  ‘She was famously pro-Europe and anti-fascist. Maybe The Days, the Minutes had something in it that would influence people to support a more interventionist policy? I don’t know. But you haven’t even begun to look properly. It might take some time, but you’ll find a motive, I’ve got no doubt.’

  She doesn’t speak.

  ‘Caddie? Are you there?’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Of course you. This is all yours. You can have the letter from Marty Fischer. It’ll be easier with a university behind you. You’ll need to go over, meet with him, interview everyone who remembers Samuel. There’ll be records. In the FBI files, maybe?’

  ‘I can’t do any of that. I’m not a researcher. I have a job.’

  ‘Caddie.’ His voice is deeper now. Serious. ‘This is important. This is the most substantial lead on the Karlson murder I’ve seen in decades. Someone will hire you, or fund you, or give you a scholarship to do this. There’s a thesis here, if you want an academic career. Or a book if you don’t. This is the kind of idea that can change your life.’

  ‘I need to think.’

  ‘Sure,’ he says, but his tone says, What the hell is there to think about? ‘Listen, I have an auction tomorrow night and I lost some time on this Nazi business. I’ll give you a call in a few days, OK?’

  She agrees but after he hangs up, she rings Philip. She’s not sure why. Because her head is swirling, because he’s the only person she knows in a position of power at a university. She rings him even at the risk of making things worse. She pictures the phone on his desk, she pictures him reaching for it, holding it in his clever hand. She wonders if this is an elaborate excuse to hear his voice. Philip’s voice, saying her name. She thinks: do I know myself so little? Is this entire course of action me betraying myself? She has no idea what she’ll say when he answers.

  The phone in his office rings out. She exhales. That was close. She relaxes, and in that instant the call is transferred to the departmental switchboard. A woman answers—English Department, University of Queensland—and here again is her chance. Sorry, wrong number. That’s all she has to say.

  Instead, she tells the operator she’s looking for Philip. There’s a delay while the woman looks up some kind of sheet.

  ‘He’s on leave,’ the operator tells her. ‘Family emergency. Mr Binks is covering his classes. Are you a student, love? Do you want me to put you through?’

  Caddie feels sick to her stomach. Really? she thinks. Philip? Dropping everything for someone else?

  ‘How terrible. I’m an old friend of the family. I hope it’s not his mother, in Geneva. She’s all alone over there. He’s the youngest son.’

  ‘Don’t know who it is,’ the woman says, ‘but it’s overseas all right, so it must of been important. Not Geneva, I don’t think, so his mum’s in the clear. I believe one of the girls said he’s in New York. I can take a message?’

  ‘No. No message.’

  A sudden trip to New York—what are the odds? She hangs up without saying goodbye.

  16

  New York City, 1938

  By the end of the week her shifts are shorter and the Irish girls are, if not exactly speaking to her, at least nodding in her direction. Tommy, one of the busboys, has been fresh but he’s sixteen, three years younger than Rachel: it’s a calculated feint in front of witnesses designed more to further his reputation than to reel her in. She’s not fazed. When she and her father were in public together, even when her mother was there, Walter’s head would swivel like a barn owl’s. Tommy doesn’t know her experience on that particular battleground. On his best day, he couldn’t trouble the likes of her.

  On Friday afternoon in this late September, the restaurant has a holiday air. The afternoon carries, if not exactly warmth, then at least a memory of it. The days of bare arms and cotton dresses and ice cream in the park are over now, and the city is bracing itself for months of cold. Mrs O’Loughlin is in the kitchen umpiring a dispute between two of the cooks. The waitresses and hostesses and busboys fall into line with one sharp stare but it’s the cooks who defeat Mrs O’Loughlin. They fight over spatulas that look indistinguishable to everyone else and point out sugar grains in each other’s butter cream frosting. You’ll have no complaints from me when it’s all automatic, Mrs O’Loughlin says to the waitresses, cracking her knuckles like a sailor. I’ve seen that pancake machine on Broadway. Mark my words, the days are numbered for those blessed cooks and that’s a fact.

  At around two, there’s a lull in the crowd. The door opens and Rachel can’t tear her gaze from—what?—a door? There’s something eerie about it, how she can’t look away, how she knows who’ll be on the other side of the glass and chrome before she ought to.

  It’s the blonde girl with the plait and the same man’s coat. Her steps are light: an interloper, a predator. She again glances around as she enters, as though someone might throw her out.

  One look and Rachel realises how often she’s thought of her since Monday. Walking to work through the brightening streets, she saw a man in a fitted jacket made from a similar material to the girl’s coat; not wearing it as well, Rachel thought. Last night, Carol asked Rachel to plait her hair on the side because she’d seen it that way on a subway poster. Every woman who ordered a hot chocolate, every man who bought bon bons. Rachel’s been half-expecting her to walk through the door all week.

  The hostess smiles, no recognition, and gestures to the coat rack near the door. The girl shakes her head and pulls the coat tighter around, tying it with a long strap that’s grubby from trailing on the ground. The hostess sits her in Maureen’s section.

  Rachel forces her legs to move. She brings an extra napkin for a trio of women celebrating a birthday, ferries clean cutlery to a lady who’s dropped hers on the floor, but all the while she watc
hes. The girl orders her hot chocolate and Rachel watches her drink it, then stand. Pick up the check. Walk toward the cashier then detour via the candy counter.

  By this time Mrs O’Loughlin is back from the kitchen and standing next to the hostess, nodding at customers as they pass. Only Rachel can tell where her attention is focused by the direction her right foot is pointing.

  The girl picks up a jar of jam and inspects it—for what, Rachel couldn’t guess. Puts it down.

  Mrs O’Loughlin nods at Tommy and another busboy called Kurt. They deposit their trays under the refill station and, as if by coincidence, meander over and stand on either side of the door.

  Rachel turns on her heel, order book and pen in hand, and walks toward the candy counter. They are close to the same height, she and the girl, and a similar build. As she passes her, Rachel shifts her shoulder and jolts the girl, hard. There seems little flesh on her; Rachel feels the taut skin near her collarbone even through her sleeve. Rachel’s order book flutters to the floor.

  ‘I beg your pardon, miss,’ says Rachel. She waits for just a heartbeat; she tries to stare into the girl’s eyes. Close up, the girl’s skin is dewy. Her eyelids flicker as though she’s waking up. Rachel drops to her knees to collect the order book.

  The girl drops to her knees also, and reaches for the book.

  ‘They’re onto you,’ whispers Rachel, soft and close.

  She stands, slips the book in the pocket of her apron, thanks the girl for her trouble and apologises again. She heads behind the soda fountain and makes herself look busy, straightening the line of syrups and wiping under their sticky nozzles. Her pulse is thumping but there is no reaction, none at all, from the girl. Her face remains clear and bright.

  Perhaps she’s deaf, Rachel thinks. Perhaps she’s simple and shouldn’t be let out without her attendant.

  The girl is untroubled. She continues on her inspection. Picks up a box, examines it, puts it back.

  The next one, she drops in her pocket.