Fifteen Words
Page 29
Netta stayed strategically on her mother’s lap all evening, between Erika and Max. The two adults sat by the Tiffany window in the attic room for hours, glancing bashfully at each other, occasionally talking quietly, occasionally reaching out and touching the other’s arm with wonder, as if it was their own arm miraculously grown back after an amputation – but only when they noticed Netta’s tired eyes closing again. Yet Netta’s eyelids would frequently pop open and each time she would realise the unsettling dream she was having about the strange man in her house was actually true.
‘Someone’s ready for bed,’ her mother whispered into Netta’s hair.
‘Mmm,’ Netta agreed with an involuntary cat-like stretch of her entire body, then addressed the man for only the second time in her life, this time in sleepy tones, but they were equally hard for Max to hear:
‘You have to go now,’ she yawned. ‘It’s getting late. My mama and I live here. But you can sleep out in the shed,’ she said with all the genuine generosity her drowsy spirit afforded her.
The words stung his soul more than any abuse had his body during his time in Siberia, but Max clung to that absurd little olive branch, the offer of accommodation in the outhouse, and it emboldened him to respond:
‘Oh, that’s very kind of you, Netta,’ he spoke in pantomimic style, ‘but I really really would rather move in here with you and your mummy.’ Before Netta could protest or rouse herself further from her slumber he fished two brown paper bags from his rucksack and went on, ‘So I’ve got a deal for you. How about this? Can I move in for two bags of sweets?’
Erika clucked gently. It was a conditioned response to any talk about sweets with Netta at this time of night. But it was only a half-hearted cluck. She knew, in this case, the possible magic Max was working far outweighed any detrimental effects on her daughter’s molars.
Netta’s drooping lids were drooping no more. ‘What kind of sweets?’ she ventured, looking down her nose at the treasure in her father’s hand. The sweets weren’t in a small brown paper cone, like the boiled raspberry-shaped fruit drops she bought from the witch at the corner shop whenever she’d saved up enough money. Opa gave her a penny every time she went to the shop for him to buy his cigarettes and when she had saved ten pennies she could afford one little cone full of those delectable sweets. The witch, who stood behind the counter with her crooked nose, warty skin and long grey hair, could not even frighten Netta into speeding up her purchase. Netta would have to marvel first at the neat rows of big glass jars, shelf upon shelf of liquorice twists, aniseed balls, pear drops, lemon sherbets, every flavour, every colour imaginable, even though she and the witch knew very well that in the end she would always chose the raspberry ones. And when the sweets were finally eaten Netta would put the paper cone on the head of one of her dolls and a twig from the garden between its legs and pretend it was the witch flying home from the shop on a broomstick.
Max unravelled the top of one of the bags. Netta thought she must still be dreaming. The bag contained enough sweets to fill three paper cones. And the bag was full of raspberry fruit drops. She smothered a grin by rubbing her itchy nose with the palm of her hand and snuggled back into her mama’s chest.
‘Do we have a deal?’ Max said softly.
‘Er… OK,’ she sighed. ‘It’s a deal.’ And she closed her eyes knowing, deal or no deal, there was no way her mother would let her have so much as one of those sugary treats this late at night. But tomorrow, she told herself, she would remind the adults of this bargain, because adults had a naughty way of changing the rules day by day.
Max smiled triumphantly at Erika. Erika returned one of relief whilst trying not to stare at her husband’s brown teeth. When she’d overcome her shyness around him and finally kissed him on the mouth, after Karl and Martha had left the room, his halitosis was overpowering. She told herself not to be repelled by it or any other aspect of his somewhat decaying physical appearance. It could all be repaired with a little time and care. And a lot of home cooking. The important thing was that he was home and he was Max.
But this wasn’t home.
Max had never lived in this house before. Everything about it was unfamiliar to him, even the furniture inside since the Yanks had ‘confiscated’ everything his parents had furnished their previous house with. Familiarity to him was the mildew-dappled roof of the barracks on waking; the direction and speed of the mischievous wind at rollcall which was the most reliable calendar in the dark months; the warm embrace of a Heizkissen on his lumbar; the soppy flop of the chilly waves around the stilts which held the hospital above the sea. His hospital. Where he was in charge, where he was trusted, not feared, not pitied, not different. Where, despite the impossibility of helping many given his appalling resources, he had helped some. Where he practised medicine as was his dream since he was sixteen. As Erika had done, it seemed, very successfully downstairs for some time now. As he was not allowed to, he’d been informed by a demob officer, until he had gained a year’s civilian experience in a local hospital.
Civilian experience?
As if civilian experience was going to present any problems to him as a doctor! What did they think he was going to do to his patients in Mengede? Start hacking away at them with pliers from the tool shed? Start trying to clamp severed blood vessels with bits of the garden fence? He’d have all the wonderful equipment that modern medicine could afford at his fingertips coupled with all the resourcefulness he’d had to cultivate as a POW on the edge of the world. As if civilian experience was going to present any problems to him as a doctor!
Yet civilian experience as a man, as a husband, as a father, as a son. He could already see that was going to be an entirely different matter. That was so much more difficult to envisage, despite its relatively pretty frame, like the view through a stained glass window of a church.
So he found himself wondering instead about his previous home. What was happening in Gegesha now? Was his carefully maintained barrel of pine needle infusion just sitting there becoming stagnant? Were the cranberries slowly rotting with grubby hands no longer delving in and shoving fistfuls of them between healing lips? Had the snow begun edging its way inside, squatting in the barracks, the hole and the office with no one there to shovel it away? And what about all those illicit treasures stashed under the beds in his hospital? The beds where his grateful patients used to lay, dependent on him, like children; children who greeted him whenever he arrived at their bedside, despite their woes; who had no mother to flee to whining, ‘She’s my mama! She’s not yours!’
He swallowed the sneer that threatened his face as Erika returned with a towering plate of steaming food, the sight of which made him want to vomit.
He shivered.
Shivered in a way he had never done in all the time he had spent north of the Arctic Circle.
They had encouraged him to have a bath, found him a change of clothes, but afterwards he had slipped his jacket with the horse blanket lining back on and went back to the window in the attic, looking out through the red and blue glass.
‘It’s not cold in the house tonight, darling, why don’t you take that old thing off?’ Erika laughed, stood behind him and went to slip it from his shoulders.
‘Leave it,’ he snapped feebly.
She snatched her hands away, convinced his next utterance would contain the name Rodrick or Professor Hass, but nothing came and she told herself not to be so silly; told herself he just needed some space. Of course he needed some space. All this excitement in one day, it was more than he was used to in the prison camp, she assumed. Not that he’d said much about it yet. But when the time was right she was going to get him to tell her everything. Yes, yes, when the time was right, but not until then. Not now.
She backed off and left the room, turning at the door to see him silhouetted in the streetlight streaming in through the window. He was looking out through the stained glass, despite its translucence, his eyes focused beyond, across the rooftops, towards the North, i
n the manner of one who is longing.
Acknowledgements
Warren Fitzgerald for his indispensable help in writing the novel and without whose support and constant pragmatic advice the novel would not exist.
Demi Quinn for putting me in contact with all the people that mattered in the process of writing and producing the novel.
Gareth Howard leading the production team effectively
Kate Appleton and Josh Hamel my publisists in the UK and USA
My husband for his love, support and patience when the writing of the novel distracted me from my other work.
The love of my children and grandchildren which inspired me to keep going when things got tough
Copyright
Published by Clink Street Publishing 2016
Copyright © 2016
First edition.
The author asserts the moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior consent of the author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that with which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Although the novel is inspired by family history the book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, business, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events and locales is totally coincidential.
ISBN: 978-1-911110-95-8 paperback
978-1-911110-96-5 ebook