Echoes of a Life

by Robin Byron

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yet you haven’t mentioned much about this?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, the subject of your interrogation?’

  ‘Well, they asked a lot of questions about different individuals – most of whom I had never heard of.’

  ‘But some that you had.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In particular?’

  ‘Mr Libman, I am trying to be as helpful as I can, but it’s almost sixty years since these events took place. What exactly are you trying to discover?’

  ‘I beg your pardon. I will come to that now. Transcripts exist of your conversations with Anderson at a hotel.’

  ‘They still exist? In the archives? Really? Just transcripts – or other material… like tapes or photographs?’

  ‘I didn’t find any photographs.’

  ‘And so, the transcripts…?’

  ‘One name appears more often than any other. The name David. You were asked a lot of questions about this. Do you remember that name?’ Marianne looked away towards the window; she shut her eyes. A long silence followed. Did she remember?

  ‘So let us come back to “David”,’ he is saying. It’s the second interrogator speaking – the small, squat one she named Blackberry. ‘Every time you meet Anderson at your little love nest, he asks you about David’ – now his face is close up to hers. ‘It is insulting to our intelligence,’ he is saying, ‘insulting our intelligence – and yours – to pretend you can’t remember. I’ll ask you again, who is David?’ She can hear Blackberry’s voice, his thick Russian vowels, but not her replies. ‘Let me help you,’ he says. ‘You made a slip once. Called him “Davydovitch” – which as you know was his patronymic. That was why you chose the code name David, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it?’ How does she answer? Perhaps she tells him; she can’t remember. But somehow the name is established because he is going on about him – about Aleshkovsky, the distinguished scientist wanting to emigrate to Israel. ‘You knew that,’ Blackberry is saying. ‘You knew that the Americans were planning to assist their Zionist friends – to smuggle Aleshkovsky to Israel. You knew all about it, didn’t you?’

  Marianne looked back from the window and found Dorrie halfway across the room. ‘Are you alright? We should stop this if it’s upsetting for you.’

  ‘It’s OK, I’m fine.’

  Dorrie looked angrily at Libman but resumed her seat.

  ‘So, do you remember anything now?’ said Libman, staring intently at Marianne with his bulging eyes.

  ‘Yes, you are right. There was a lot of talk about David.’

  ‘And do you remember now who David was?’

  ‘I think his real name was Aleshkovsky.’

  ‘Yes, it was. Leon Davydovitch Aleshkovsky. And you should remember, shouldn’t you? After all, he is referred to in your confession.’

  ‘My confession?’

  ‘This document,’ said Libman, placing several pages of typescript in front of Marianne.

  ‘God, you’ve got hold of that load of nonsense,’ she said, without picking up the paper.

  ‘You may have thought of it as a load of nonsense, but it featured prominently at his trial. Would you like to read what you said?’ Marianne didn’t move, so Libman stepped forward to retrieve the document. Turning over several pages he began to read, ‘“I confirm that the person referred to as David during my conversations with the spy Anderson was the Soviet scientist Leon Aleshkovsky. The CIA and Mossad were conspiring, with Aleshkovsky’s cooperation, to bring him to Israel.”’

  Libman looked up from the document. ‘You put your name to those two sentences.’

  By now Dorrie was halfway across the room. ‘You must stop this at once. You are upsetting Mrs Davenport. All this is ancient history. You of all people should know that the KGB could make up anything they liked. All those old Soviet show trials relied on fabricated evidence. I expect they wrote in those sentences after it was signed anyway.’

  Libman ignored Dorrie’s intervention. ‘Would you like to have another look at the statement? This is a photocopy, of course, but it has your signature on each page. Is it a fabrication or a copy of the document you signed?’

  Dorrie was now beside the desk. ‘Really, I must protest…’

  Marianne held up her hand to Dorrie. She smiled at her and for a few seconds no one spoke. Then she turned back to Libman. ‘Yes. I signed it.’

  ‘You alleged that Aleshkovsky was cooperating with the Americans and the Israelis – how could you know that?’

  ‘I assumed…’

  ‘Assumed? That was enough? You didn’t know for sure?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But you still signed.’

  Marianne shrugged.

  ‘A few weeks in – what was it? – something like a cheap hotel was enough for you to condemn a man you had never met. Did you ever try to find out what had happened to this man you had so casually accused? I suppose it didn’t matter to you. You were just thinking of yourself. Shall I tell you what happened? He was tried for treason. Your statement was a big part of the evidence against him. Did you think…’

  ‘Out. Out now!’ Dorrie had Libman by the arm and was tugging him up. ‘We are not going to listen to you anymore. Anna. Anna!’ In less time than it took Marianne to rise to her feet, Anna had arrived to seize Libman’s other arm.

  ‘Ladies, please. Please let go of me. I am leaving now.’ Turning back to Marianne he said, ‘I understand. It was just a trivial matter to you. But it wasn’t trivial to him. He got ten years. Ten years’ hard labour. Still, he only served seven.’

  By now Dorrie and Anna had let go of Libman and stood back while he put his papers back in his briefcase. Marianne was also standing.

  ‘Only seven years because he died in the labour camp. So it wasn’t trivial for him. And it wasn’t trivial for his five-year-old daughter who never saw him again. Rosa Aleshkovsky. Now Rosa Libman. My mother.’

  18

  Jake was looking forward to a weekend out of London – and the early July weather looked promising; it was his mother’s birthday on the Sunday and his own birthday the following day, so usually his parents would make it a family event and on this occasion they had invited not only his Grandmother Claire and Great-Aunt Marianne, but Callum and Helen as well.

  There had been times in his teenage years when he had resented the arrival of the two oldie sisters – Granny Claire and Auntie Manne – and he and his sister Fran had shared many private jokes at their expense. ‘Two of Pharaoh’s cows have escaped,’ she had once whispered to him. ‘A fat one and a skinny one.’ But now he was pleased that the house would be full – anything was better than the claustrophobic intimacy of their family threesome when Fran’s empty chair still cast its chilly shadow over every meal.

  It was nearly midnight before he arrived at his parents’ house. Everyone seemed to have gone to bed except his father who was having a whisky in front of the television. Jake warmed some left-over lasagne in the microwave, poured himself a glass of red wine and sat down to chat to his father. Half an hour later he went to his room while his father locked the house.

  It happened on the way to the bathroom. From the end of the dark corridor – Jake knew the house too well to need to turn on the landing light – the door of Fran’s room opened, and the profile of a teenage girl emerged and stood looking at him, immobile within the deep shadows cast by the light from his bedroom. A small involuntary gurgle sounded in his throat as he stepped backwards and reached for the light switch. As the bulb slowly illuminated the landing he saw his cousin Leah standing in her pink pants and white tee-shirt watching him from the doorway of Fran’s room.

  ‘Jesus…’

  ‘Sorry, did I give you a shock…?’

  ‘It’s just… no one told me you were here.’

  ‘Oh – sorry
. I was just going to the bathroom.’

  ‘Of course – it’s that door… and… well… talk in the morning,’ and in so saying, Jake stepped back into his room, closed the door and threw himself onto the bed. Fuck, he thought, why the fuck didn’t anyone tell me she was staying? Had he thought for a second…? No, of course not, it was just that… coming out of Fran’s room in the dark. The room was not a shrine – far from it, others had slept there – but in his mind it would always be her room. Indeed, they all referred to it as Fran’s room, though the only reminder of Fran left in it was an over-large portrait of her done shortly before her death as part of an A-level art project by a fellow pupil. Her face occupied almost a whole wall; it was a confident pose – as it had every right to be for a girl who had achieved much in her short life – but to Jake there now seemed an unmistakable sadness in her eyes – as if she had some premonition that her life would soon be cut short. It was a long time before he fell asleep.

  Partly it was the smell, a hint of dampness, an indefinable whiff of decay mixed with the scent of the New Dawn roses flowering under his window; then there was the bed, the soft springiness under the starched white sheets; most of all, though, it was the sound, the distant groaning of the shore as the sea pounded the shingle beach half a mile across the fields from the front of the house. Without opening his eyes, Jake sensed the familiarity of his old bedroom and he let the memories flood back.

  She is standing over him, shaking him awake. No words are spoken but he slips out of bed, puts on his trainers, pulls a hoody over his pyjama top and follows her down the back stairs, out of the side door and into the yard. He can hear nothing above his furiously beating heart as they creep across the concrete paving, over a small wall and suddenly they are running, running silently over the damp grass towards the gate in the privet hedge. The night is cloudy and alarmingly dark. He knows she will have brought a torch but she won’t shine it till they are further from the house. Misjudging the line to the gate, Jake puts a foot into the corner of a flower bed and falls heavily onto the grass. In a second he is up again and following her through the gate. Closing it behind them they duck down behind the hedge and recover their breath. She smiles at him and in the darkness he can just see the silver line of the braces across her front teeth.

  They are both thirteen and it’s the last summer holidays before they are due to start their separate schools. Fran is the leader and Jake her follower and within a few seconds she is off again, running lightly along the fence line, through the first field, over the stile and heading across the second field towards the cliffs.

  Reaching the top of the cliffs, Fran waits for him to catch up; they will need to stick close together with only the small torch to guide them down the steep descent to the beach. Trying not to fall and muddy his pyjamas, Jake slithers after Fran; they called it a path, but it was more of a natural gully in the stone and clay of the cliff face that he and Fran had always used to avoid the half-mile walk to the wooden steps.

  Now they are at the bottom and without hesitation Fran is stripping off her clothes. Cautiously he removes his hoody but already he can see the outline of her naked body, silhouetted against the dark sea. He takes off his pyjamas and follows her. It is not the first time that Jake has crept across the wet stones towards the heaving black water, but familiarity has not increased his confidence. A small glow in the sky where a crescent moon struggles to shine through low clouds is the only source of light. Everywhere the roar of the sea fills the night air as the waves break and pull back on the steep shingle bank. Behind him, a pinprick of light from the small pocket torch marks the spot where they have left their clothes; ahead, only a soupy darkness. Naked and shivering, Jake feels the cold water wash over his ankles.

  ‘Come on, Jake.’ Fran’s voice already sounds quite distant against the noise of the sea. Jake moves a little forward then stops, feeling an icy wave wash up his thighs. For a few seconds he remains immobile, alone in the darkness and noise; then, as the moon emerges briefly and projects a sliver of pale light onto the water he plunges forward. As he swims away from the shore he is conscious of nothing but a gripping cold; slowly, though, his body adjusts to the temperature of the water, merges with it, fluid and weightless; a disembodied presence surrendered to the infinite sea.

  ‘Over here,’ he hears her call.

  ‘Where? I can’t see you…’

  ‘I am swimming further out. Are you coming?’ How does he respond? Seemingly he says nothing.

  On days following their night-time expeditions, when he had ambled down to the sea to swim with his family – as they did most afternoons in that warm spell in late July – it would seem strange to Jake that the same beach and the same sea, so serene and familiar in the afternoon sunshine, could appear so daunting on his nocturnal visits with Fran. It had started a few weeks earlier. Lying on the springy grass at the top of the cliff, warming themselves in the afternoon sun, Fran had raised the idea with Jake. Reluctant at first to agree, he had eventually given in and that night they had crept down, across the fields and onto the beach and experienced for the first time the delicious thrill of night swimming.

  Now he is beginning to feel the cold. He can see no sign of Fran, but looking towards the shore he senses that a current has taken him down the beach and he can no longer see the light from their torch. Suddenly, he is feeling frightened. The darkness around him seems physically oppressive and he is swimming as fast as he can back to the shore. Once back within his depth he half swims and half wades towards where he believes the light to be. Hauling himself up the shingle bank and shivering violently he sees the pinprick of light and stumbles towards it, wincing with pain as the stones bruise his feet. Drying himself as best he can with the small towel that Fran has brought with them, he peers back towards the sea. The moon has now retreated behind heavy clouds and he can see almost nothing. He waits in the darkness for Fran to emerge.

  Perhaps he should have kept closer to her but she is always so quick, always three steps ahead of him. Why is she never afraid, he wonders; is this quality true courage, or simply the absence of fear? Whatever it is, he knows that he doesn’t possess it and this makes him love her all the more. Without her, the colours are dimmer, more monochrome. Her absence hurts him like the ache of a phantom limb. Is it permissible, he thinks, to feel like this about your sister?

  He wonders if she is further down the beach. He waves the torch around and calls her name. He hears nothing. Holding the towel around him with one hand and the torch in the other he moves back to where the sea is breaking on the shingle bank, and waves the torch in the direction of the sea. The beam shines only a few yards and is quickly swallowed up by the night.

  ‘Fran? Fran?’ His voice sounds feeble against the noise of the sea. For a few moments he stands indecisively on the shore, peering into the darkness, and then takes a few steps down the bank and into the breaking waves. His mistake is immediately apparent. Losing his footing as the undertow pulls the shingles down the bank he stumbles and drops the torch. Immediately the light has gone. Putting his hand into the sea he feels for the torch but there is nothing but the stones moving back and forth with the dragging swell.

  ‘Fran?’ he shouts at the sea. ‘Fran? Where are you? I’ve dropped the torch. Can you hear me, Fran? I’m over here.’

  The clamour of the sea drowns his words. All he can hear is the noise of the waves. He calls again and again, but there is nothing except the wind and the waves mocking his reedy voice. A memory comes back to him. It’s a holiday in Cornwall three years earlier; they are watching two children play on that treacherous flat rock that they know to avoid on an incoming tide. It’s the day a ten-year-old Fran dived into the rough Cornish sea to try to save the girl who had been swept off the rock. It isn’t Fran that he remembers, though, it is the body of the other girl when they finally pull her out.

  Shaking now from the cold, he stumbles back up the beach and with dif
ficulty puts on his pyjamas and hoody. He walks to the shore and again calls out for her, but the noise of the sea seems to have a physical density that his voice cannot penetrate. He sits on the stones to put on his trainers and a terrible nausea moves up to his throat. Should he run back to the house for help? But how long would it take him, and surely if Fran is in trouble any help would come too late? Should he go back into the sea? But what can he do in the dark? And anyway, Fran is a far better swimmer than he is. For a small seductive moment, he thinks that he might just return to the house and go back to sleep as if nothing had happened. Perhaps he would wake up and find that this had all been a bad dream. Perhaps he could pretend that he knew nothing of Fran’s disappearance. Perhaps no one need ever know that he had been here.

  How long does he sit on the beach that night in an agony of indecision? Probably no more than a few minutes elapse before he becomes aware of the spectre-like figure of his twin sister, a child who is now almost a woman, her body glistening palely in the emergent moonlight only a few yards in front of him. Entirely unconcerned at his relief, she shakes her hair over him like an overfriendly Labrador, castigates him mildly for losing the torch, rubs herself down, dresses quickly and together they make their way back to the house and the warmth and security of their respective beds.

  Now fully awake, and anxious to shake off these memories, Jake dragged himself out of bed and into the shower. It always seemed like this when he was at home; Fran was everywhere around him and the pain of her loss was undiminished. The night swim on their familiar patch of coast may have ended happily enough – not so that day in the French countryside a few years later.

  They hadn’t known that Leah would be coming, Jake’s mother explained over breakfast. She had just come back from a post-A-level jaunt to Ibiza and was at a loose end. Helen had called as they were leaving London to ask if they could bring her with them. In an echo of his Easter visit to Marianne two years earlier, it now appeared to be Jake’s responsibility to entertain his cousin over the weekend. He did not relish the task. He remembered the breathless sixteen-year-old he had escorted around Cambridge that Easter. He remembered her as full of naïve school-girl enthusiasms mixed with a certain irritating precocity. He remembered her crude attempts to flirt and her tendency to sulk when he did not respond. He did not expect to enjoy her company.