Interpreters

by Sue Eckstein

  I glance at my mother, who is sitting at the far end of the table watching my father with the small child. I wish – just one little wish – that she would turn and look at me and smile, and say brightly, ‘Off you go and have a good time, darling,’ but I know that she doesn’t want me to go, and I feel that familiar sensation of being slowly torn in two. Love, pity and a biting rage begin to seep through me as I resign myself to staying in the kitchen to protect my mother from whatever it is that’s troubling her.

  ‘Good idea, darling!’ says Jane, smiling. ‘Off you all go – and take some cake with you if you like.’

  I don’t let myself look in the direction of my mother again.

  ‘What are your names?’ the older child asks as we walk through the low-ceilinged passage into the sunny sitting room, munching on fruit cake.

  ‘Julia. And he’s Max.’

  ‘I’m Jolyon and this is Ivo. The little one’s Octavia.’

  ‘Is that a boy or a girl?’ asks Max.

  ‘A girl. It means the eighth but she’s just the third. I don’t think Mummy’s going to have any more now. But you never know. Jamie is quite keen, I think.’

  ‘Who’s Jamie?’

  ‘Octavia’s daddy.’

  ‘I thought she was your sister.’

  ‘She is. But our daddy’s called Matthew. He comes here all the time with his other children. They’re younger than me and Ivo. They’re called Sebastian and Flora. That means flower. What does your name mean?’

  ‘I don’t know. Nothing, I think.’

  ‘How old are you?’ asks Jolyon.

  ‘Twelve,’ says Max.

  ‘Nearly ten,’ I say.

  ‘I’m eight and three-quarters and Ivo’s seven next Tuesday. She’s in love with Oscar,’ says Jolyon matter-of-factly as he throws himself into the huge worn sofa.

  ‘Who is?’ I ask, confused as much by the unexpected use of my father’s name as by the thought of anyone being in love with him.

  ‘Octavia is. She loves him. Jane says Octavia probably knows that Oscar saved her life. Even though she’s so little.’

  ‘She would have died at least three times if it hadn’t been for Oscar,’ says Ivo authoritatively as he (I’m pretty sure by now that he is a he) flicks through a pile of LPs. ‘Jane said, once he drove out to the hospital twice in the same night to save her. Did you know that?’

  ‘No,’ I say.

  Max, Jolyon and Ivo sit on the floor and play a game involving a pile of pointed sticks with different-coloured stripes on them. I lie on the sofa listening to the record that Ivo has put on. The music is like nothing I have ever heard before. It fills me with a sense of longing for something I cannot recognise, but which seems almost within my grasp.

  I look around the room. The walls are covered with huge black and white photographs. There is one of Jane – completely naked – by a waterfall, holding a small bare child by the hand. The child is clutching his penis – both of them are grinning at the camera. There is a picture of Jane and a man with a large scar over his right eye and down his cheek in bed, their hair tousled, their smiles drowsy, the sheets rumpled. There are photographs of Jane and her children with people who look vaguely familiar. One of them is wearing a pair of little round metal-framed glasses. I think he might be John Lennon. I’m pretty sure another of them is Peter Sellers on the set of a Pink Panther film. He is holding a little boy – I think it’s Jolyon – by the hand and rolling his eyes heavenwards. Jolyon is leaning against his leg, laughing. There is a photograph of Jane bending over a hospital cot in which a tiny baby lies on its back, its face and body covered in plastic tubes, valves and sticky tape. A hand is resting on its swollen belly. I recognise my father’s fingers. Pinned to the sitting room door are sheets of stamps and pages torn from a spiral notebook on which messages are scrawled in generously swirling purple ink: Jolyon and Ivo to Matt and Molly on 25th; Octavia to physio 30th; plane tickets – Cannes; pony to farrier Monday.

  And it feels as though I have entered a different world. A world where absolutely anything could happen. A world where people stand naked under waterfalls; where they talk and laugh and love each other, and each other’s children; where people sing of couples making love up in their bedrooms and bridges over troubled water; where chattering children lie on the floor and play, their filthy bare feet waving in the air; where strangers are welcomed with hugs and kisses and cake; where a little brown and white dog with three legs can run like the wind. And now that I have gone through the door, into this other world, I don’t ever want to go back.

  Caroline Statham didn’t believe me when I told her about Jane Bentall.

  ‘You can’t have met her! I don’t believe you.’

  ‘I have. I promise.’

  ‘Liar!’

  ‘I have! We went to her farm. At half-term. She invited us.’

  ‘Where is it, then?’

  ‘I don’t know. Somewhere in the country.’

  ‘Why would she invite you to her farm? And why would a film star live on a farm anyway?’

  ‘I don’t know. But she does. We stayed for tea.’

  ‘Mum! Julia says she’s met Jane Bentall.’

  ‘Really?’ said Mrs Statham spooning spaghetti hoops on to thin slices of white toast cut into triangles, the crusts neatly removed. ‘I saw her at the Odeon just the other day. On the screen, I mean, of course. Not actually in the cinema. She used to be married to that good-looking actor who was in all those action films with a twist, wasn’t she? Whatsisname. Matthew Someone-or-other. Quite a pair they were, by all accounts. There used to be lots in the papers about them – the parties they had, and everything. All jolly racy. And she was in that French film without her top on.’

  ‘Mum!’

  ‘Well, it was quite something. Everyone went to see it. There was rather a hoo-hah about it at the time. People said it was art, but I don’t know. Your father went to see it twice, Caroline, and he’s not even all that keen on the cinema! Are two pieces of toast enough for you, Julia?’

  ‘Yes, thanks.’

  ‘So how come you know Jane Bentall?’

  ‘My dad operated on one of her children.’

  ‘He’s a clever man, your father. But then, so many of them are. Worcester sauce, girls?’

  So it can’t have been true – what I said to Max. That we spent our childhood not knowing that there were other ways of being. That my eyes were first opened the summer of the Fourniers. They were opened long before that – on the day we went to Jane Bentall’s farm.

  VII

  What do you think we did? Pull the heads off chickens? Ferret out Jewish families from Berlin’s attics and cellars and parade them through the streets with placards round their necks? Spend our days manufacturing little yellow stars? What do you think we did? We marched, we sang, we camped, we kept fit, we searched through burning rubble for survivors after bombing raids, we kept our uniforms smart, we had fun. What do you want me to say? That we all knew? What did we know? We knew nothing. Okay, yes, we knew there was some kind of prison in Oranienburg. It was for political prisoners, we were told. Did I wonder why those Jews were leaving – the ones my mother helped – and where they were going? I don’t think I did. Is that such a crime? Is that such a terrible thing? What do you think goes on in that big house across the road with the very small brass plaque on the door? Come on – you sit here every day gazing out of the window – you must know. You go in and out of this house every day. You must know what’s happening over there. It’s just across the road. But you don’t, do you? Have you ever even read what’s on the plaque?

  It’s a dental practice, I think.

  You think. But you don’t know. And if it says it’s a dentist, is it really a dentist? And where’s that tramp who used to sit on that bench in the square? You know, the one who mumbled and dribbled and generally made the place look untidy? You can’t say you never noticed him. Where’s he gone? To another bench, you assume, but have you asked anyone? Have you e
ver wondered whether he’s all right – if he perhaps needs medical attention, or a decent meal? Where do the gypsies go when the police move them on from the common? You don’t know, do you? You drive past the common every day but it’s not your problem, is it? Someone else is in charge of all that. And there are rules about how people have to be treated so they must be all right, all those missing gypsies and tramps, mustn’t they? The council has procedures. No one beats up or kills people like that – it’s not allowed, is it? They’re all bound to be fine. They’re just not here.

  Why are you so angry?

  It’s all right for children to be told about Father Christmas, isn’t it? And the tooth fairy. By people they trust? People they look up to? Well, isn’t it?

  Yes. I suppose it is.

  And then, when the child grows up, it’s all right too for the child to say, ‘Well, I believed in Father Christmas and the tooth fairy absolutely and thought they were marvellous, but then when I got a bit older I realised it wasn’t true and I moved on.’

  Yes.

  And no one thinks any worse of them for having once been persuaded to believe in a lie. They’re not damned for life, and never allowed to be forgiven, for having once believed the lie. I was chosen to present flowers to Hitler on one occasion. There! I knew you’d be impressed.

  Go on.

  You know, there is not a single photograph of me as a child. If any were ever taken – and I don’t even know if any were – they were all destroyed during the war. Then, a couple of years ago there was an article in the Observer. Celebrating the life and work of some photographer or other. And there I was. There we were. The Führer bending down to receive the garland, and me – blonde-haired, blue-eyed, straight-backed – beaming up at him.

  That must have been a shock.

  I went to Rommel’s state funeral and there weren’t many young people invited. It was a great honour. I remember everything about it. It was an incredibly big, sad occasion – a hero’s funeral. And there he was, lying in state with this magnificent eulogy about how he’d died a hero from wounds sustained in action in Africa, and there was a huge wreath from Hitler and everything. And then in 1945 all those secrets and lies were exposed and I found out that Rommel hadn’t been killed in action and that the state funeral had been a total charade. He had turned against Hitler and one of Hitler’s cronies had given him a pistol and said if you shoot yourself and go quietly we won’t shoot your wife and son. And so Rommel shot himself and got a state funeral. Lies. All lies. And I believed them all.

  Chapter Eight

  I open my eyes, and for a second or two I see the green and cream spines of the children’s encyclopaedias that I used to open at random and read in bed while waiting for my mother to come home from her woodwork evening class. Martin Luther King; Bedlingham Terrier; Volcano; Pluto; Karl Marx; Dubrovnik. For much of my school career, my general knowledge was legendary. If my school had ever entered a team for Top of the Form, with me at the helm, we’d have walked it.

  I don’t know any more why it seemed so important to wait up to see my mother when she got home. Perhaps I hoped that the contentment she had discovered through transforming pieces of wood into tables, magazine racks and bookshelves would last the journey home; that when she came up to kiss me goodnight, a vestige of that happiness would somehow permeate into me.

  When I could no longer keep my eyes from closing, I’d get out of bed and arrange the encyclopaedias into complex geometrical patterns across the floor, then attempt to traverse the room without touching the carpet. As soon as I heard my mother’s car drawing up in the drive, I’d quickly gather up the books, put them back in alphabetical order and get into bed to wait for her. But I hardly ever managed to stay awake long enough to kiss her or breathe in the smell of teak oil and wood-shavings. I’d fall asleep the moment I heard the front door open.

  I look at my watch. I still have a bit of time left. I swing my feet over the edge of the bed and stand up. It feels as though it should be dark outside, but the sun is still shining. I smooth the outline of my body from Catherine’s bedspread, put her things back where I found them, and walk out into the corridor. Judging from the Thomas the Tank Engine stickers on the door, the room next to Catherine’s must now be Ben’s. Our neighbours in the Close would probably have called this the guest room, but in our house, where no guests stayed long enough to require a bed, it was very definitely the spare room. My grandmother stayed in it when she came to see us every few months, but I never felt that she really counted as a guest.

  My father would telephone his mother every Sunday evening and sometimes, while hovering outside his study, clutching whatever piece of homework I needed him to do for me, I’d listen to the stories he’d tell her. They were stories of a family that sounded quite a bit like ours – the children (who were doing extremely well with their piano and violin lessons, their swimming, schoolwork and drama productions) were even called Max and Julia. But, in the family that my father spoke of, there was very definitely no mother who sometimes disappeared into the night, deaf to the howling and pleading of her frightened children; no father who had cigarette burns in all his grey cardigans and whisky stains on all his ties, whose hand sometimes shook so violently that the golden liquid sloshed on to the carpet; no son who finished his violin practice and then crept into his cupboard to sleep; no daughter who hurled her maths books across her father’s study in rage and frustration.

  I remember my grandmother’s departures more than her arrivals. My father would drive her to London to catch the train back to Oxford and Max and I would drift quietly through the house, hoping that our mother would have stopped crying before he returned. We couldn’t understand why our grandmother upset her so much and so often. We knew that she could say hurtful things: ‘Julia – take off those glasses before I take your photo. You look so ugly,’ was one comment that I remember particularly clearly. We learned to ignore most of her wounding observations, something my mother never did.

  I loved my lone visits to my grandmother’s house where, liberated from the responsibility of protecting my mother from her mother-in-law’s critical gaze and razor-sharp tongue, I was free to enjoy the thick goose-down quilts, the breakfasts of soft boiled eggs and tinned sardines mashed up in a tea cup, the smell of fresh coffee, the kilner jars of exotic vegetables in her larder, the sumptuous Turkish carpets, the treasures from her travels throughout the world that adorned the sitting room. And her stories.

  In former times… she would start, her English fluent and precise, her accent thick as goose-fat. If I sat quietly enough, sipping my cocoa and nodding occasionally, she would continue for several hours. These were stories she had told many, many times, and she would repeat them practically word for word, as though reciting a kind of twentieth-century epic poem.

  Your great–grandfather, he had the first car in the city. He was by then already a very famous man. The first thing I remember him saying to me – it was 1898 – ‘Clara, when you grow up you will be a doctor.’ And so that is what I did. And when he founded the medical school, I was the first person to be enrolled. Nineteen hundred fourteen. We were mostly girls, for the men they were all in the war.

  Sometimes we would look through her photograph albums together.

  Let me see, she would say, lifting up the crisp semi-opaque paper that protected the pictures. Ah, yes, that is your father on a school trip, sitting outside a museum. See that? All the public buildings had flags with swastikas on them at that time. He was then about nine years old. That must have been about a year before we left Germany. And here is your father sitting on the boxes. November nineteen hundred thirty-six. And then the packers came. We had been told that the import of wine into Turkey was prohibited. When I returned from town that day, I was surprised that not all the linen had fitted into the large laundry box. When I questioned the packers about this, I got the reply – if you ask stupid questions, you will get stupid answers. Imagine how happy we were in Ankara when we found in the lo
wer part of the box not laundry but wine, and moreover the best of the wine. How we drank to the health of those packers.

  And you know when we arrived in Turkey, your father’s teacher, Herr Schmidt, sent letters from all his class friends explaining what they were learning in case we couldn’t find a good school in Ankara. He was a very upright man, this Herr Schmidt. A good man among so many bad. Later we heard he had been killed directly at the start of the war.

  And this, this is our house in Ankara. You see how primitive that country was then. Shortly after we arrived, our cook, Eva, wrote to us and told us she had decided to come to Turkey to join us. Here she is, standing in our kitchen. Look how terribly fat she is! Just like a fat pig. And then we discovered that your father had written to her saying we were all being looked after badly and not eating well, so she must come. For cooking was not something I did in former times. I had far too many more important things to do than cook. So Eva came and your father would spend hours with her in the kitchen, learning how to cook vegetables we had never seen before, like aubergines and courgettes. He was very happy at that time, your father. He loved to cook. And he loved Eva. And Eva, she adored him too. But she did not like the Turks. To her they were all dirty and uneducated and she didn’t care that we had so many very important Turks visiting us who were so very obviously not dirty or uneducated. And Eva, she was allowed to go for coffee at the German embassy on Sunday afternoons where the ambassador’s daughter gave coffee parties for all the employees of German families. But then, one day, Eva was told that she could no longer go to those coffee parties if she continued to work for us and was told that people might make difficulties for her if she wanted to return to Germany. Therefore we decided to send her back. She did not want to go, but we insisted. She travelled back to Germany on a freighter ship and this was the greatest experience of her life. After her came Miss Krug, supposedly from the German-speaking part of Switzerland, who turned out to be a Nazi spy and who reported every German who came to our house – and at that time we still had many German friends who were not Nazis – to the Blockwart who had been appointed by the Nazis for our part of the city to keep an eye on the German expatriates. We dismissed her immediately when we found out. Then we had a Turkish servant, Cemil, who had already been trained very well by the Zuckmeyers. He became a perfect cook. For large parties, which we very often gave, he would cook and dish up and serve, and he never broke a single piece of my Meissen china. Unfortunately, after we left, he died, like all his family, of tuberculosis. The Fellners, who had inherited him from us, were very disappointed to lose such a cook. Here, and this is our country house in Bavaria. And that is our peasant, Hans, who worked in the garden.