by Alan Judd
‘The point is, people like your friend understand all too well how easily the Cold War can get hot. They’re serious about making it hot wherever and whenever they think they can get away with it. That’s why they’re so serious about penetrating bodies such as the National Union of Mineworkers. They look at the power cuts and three-day week and all the rest of it and the lesson they draw is that democracies are fragile and weak. Did you know that almost from day one of those mining strikes there was a significant increase in MIG fighter incursions into British airspace? Testing RAF reaction times. And that almost from day one of the Northern Irish troubles they’ve had signals monitoring ships just outside territorial waters, logging our forces’ personnel and procedures? So, for them, filling secret dumps with stuff that could be used to knock out Nato radar or worse is not just playing war-games for the sake of it, or norm-filling. They’re doing it because they hope to use those dumps. Knowing that, your friend is understandably a little shocked at your casual, self-referential approach to it all.’
He held up his hand as if to forestall a protest that Charles was not, in fact, about to make. He disagreed with nothing of the argument, but was surprised to hear it being applied to him.
‘That said,’ Hookey continued, ‘I understand your reactions, I don’t think you’re likely to drown in self-pity and self-concern and I’m sure you won’t neglect the broader picture when confronted with it. And I also think that your very obvious lack of pressure on Lover Boy might paradoxically prove your strongest card in recruiting him, whether you intended it or not.’
‘You want me to recruit him, then, when I’ve left?’
‘Dear boy, how could I possibly say so? We are forbidden contact.’
They parted in St James’s Street, Hookey for Head Office and Charles to view the flat. He was late, so took a taxi.
The driver frowned. ‘Tregunter Road?’
‘Bottom edge of the Boltons.’ He hadn’t looked it up in the A–Z and paid little attention as they headed along the Brompton and Fulham roads. He could feel the envelope in his pocket but didn’t want to read it until he was alone. How Hookey came to possess something his father had written was a mystery which reading would presumably resolve.
Tregunter Road was a street of tall, mostly stucco-fronted nineteenth-century houses. He mounted the steps to one and was peering at the faded writing for the correct bell when the door was opened by a bustling woman of late middle age in an old Barbour, festooned with bags and riding tack, carrying car keys in her teeth and wearing a black, lace-fringed eye-patch that looked like a miniature bra. ‘You’re not Mr Thorough-good?’ she asked, challengingly.
‘Yes, I’m very sorry to be so late, I’m –’
‘Can’t stop, awful rush. Keys in my pocket. This one.’ She turned side-on to him, moving one bag enough to expose a pocket.
‘Let me help you with the bags.’
‘No time. Just fish them out. Delighted to have you as a neighbour. Come for a drink when I’m back. I’m the flat below you. You’ll have to dig deeper than that. Hurry up.’ She hurried down the steps and crammed her tack and baggage into the red E-Type Jaguar parked outside.
Inside the large hall was a letter table and mirror. The stairs narrowed as they wound upwards, ending in a small landing off which were two doors, one to the woman’s flat and the other to Charles’s destination. Beyond that was an even smaller landing and a set of even narrower stairs with wobbly banisters. They led up into a final landing, giving onto a sitting room, a tiny kitchen, a passage, two bedrooms and a bathroom which faced the road. The flat had been an attic, the ceilings sloping with the roof-line. French windows in the sitting room led onto a small balcony overlooking a large rectangle of private gardens, secluded from the roads on all sides by similarly tall houses. The balcony was level with the tops of the plane trees. Charles opened a window and stepped out, startling a pigeon from a branch.
He walked again into each room. The flat was lightly furnished and lined floor to ceiling with empty bookshelves. He would buy it, he thought, whatever happened. He was in the mood for decisions, gestures, change. It made him feel better. Since first going to Oxford and throughout his time in the army he had lived from a single trunk. There was that, his bicycle – little-used of late – and whatever clothes he could find hanging for. His books were in his bedroom at his mother’s. It would be an easy move; all except the bike would fit in the Rover. He would need plates, he supposed, tea-spoons, chairs, boring things like that, but they could come later.
It was not a cold day and he returned to the balcony, sitting out in one of two dilapidated wicker chairs. Resignation involved a month’s notice, so in one sense he was still employed by the office. That would mean he could complete the mortgage application with details of salary, references and so on without telling the lie direct. And then – well, then the rest of life, whatever that entailed. Until now phases of life had followed on one from another in a seemingly natural progression – school, university, the army, the office – like holes on a golf course. But now, for the first time, there were no more marker flags, no clear direction. The sense of progression that had been so much part of the natural order was suddenly not there. What was left was uncertainty, and not feeling part of anything, perhaps normality for the mass of mankind. The prospect was neither appealing nor stimulating.
Postponing further thought, he took Hookey’s envelope from his pocket and began to read.
8
There were several photocopied A4 sheets of lined paper, covered in his father’s precise, sloping handwriting. Staple holes and condition suggested they had been kept in an envelope or file. There had almost certainly been a covering sheet, or sheets, now removed. ‘Berlin 1945’ was written at the top in pencil, in another hand.
‘I sensed, really, that it was a set-up,’ it began, with no preliminary,
even as I was letting it happen. No young woman in Berlin had food, money, her own flat, decent clothes and shoes, make-up and nylon stockings unless she had somebody influential looking after her. Her eyes, too, were different. Most eyes here were hungry and fearful. Hers were watchful, but in an assessing way, vulnerable but determined. It was as if she was saying, ‘Here I am. You may not want me but this is it, this is what I have to do. So.’
That was in the summer, of course, after the German surrender. For me it came after nearly a year of living in woods and fields, of fighting every hedgerow, ditch, canal or river. True, I had had seven blissful days back in Gloucestershire with Jean, who I never wanted to leave again. But then it was back to the mud and mines of the Reichswald and bitter continuous fighting. Our division used more ammunition in that month in the Reichswald than any division in any month of the campaign. Nor was that all. We took the hard route from Normandy up through the Low Countries and into northern Germany. Not the easy path of flowers and girls and liberation through France, Paris and all the rest of it. Ours was the grim way, the Wehrmacht way. Every field, every copse, every ditch, every ruin had to be fought for. In those last months of war I never slept beneath any roof, saw any whole building nor any smile on the face of any civilian. They were sullen, resentful, beaten, scowling. ‘No Frat’ – No Fraternisation – was the order, but there wasn’t much temptation. They hated us. Most of the uniformed Germans we saw were either POWs or teenage corpses. The latter, I’m afraid, were of no more consequence to us then than lumps of wood to be heaved out of our way.
After the surrender I was plucked from the division and flown here to Berlin to help liaise in reconstruction with the other occupying powers. It meant a bed at last, with blankets (no sheets) and, once we got it going again, running water and electricity. All around were burned and blackened houses, streets full of rubble, gaping bomb-holes, opened-up sewers, stray dogs, rats and rampant weed. The people were like rats at first, too, furtive and frightened, emboldened only by hunger. They were terrified of being left with the Russians.
Rightly. To the Russians, reconst
ruction meant looting. It was systematic, it was their policy. Rape and casual shootings were mere incidentals, harmless diversions permitted to the soldiers of the proletariat as a reward for relieving the sufferings of the fatherland. I had to work mainly with the Russians, through interpreters, trying to restore services where our zone bordered theirs. It was pretty thankless, futile and frustrating, but I suppose it’s how they got on to me.
The interpreter I worked most with was Ivan Ivanovitch Rostok, a Red Army lieutenant from the Crimea, or so he said. He was better than the others, not only in his English but in his attitude. His instinct was to be helpful rather than indifferent or obstructive. He could not overcome the suspicion, rigidity and lethargy of the system within which he lived but he was more companionable than burdensome. I suppose he had to be, in order to report on me.
Not that there could have been much for him to say. He knew that I had married on my last leave before D-Day but I cannot think of anything which would have led him to report that I wanted to be unfaithful. Though I suppose we were all affected by the anything-goes, grab-what-you-can climate that came with peace. And after living in ditches and shell-holes for months on end you can’t help being affected by whatever is clean, soft and feminine. We never discussed sex or women, that I recall, and we never socialised together when the bars and so on got going again. Perhaps there was something about the way I looked at women, or perhaps they just thought it was worth a try anyway. It must have been the same for him, too, I guess.
I met her – or, rather, she met me – one evening at the Café Berlin that had reopened in our sector. I ate out whenever I could, mainly just to get away from the army for an hour or two but also to practise my German. There wasn’t much choice of food but the city was beginning to pick itself up quickly. Human life is remarkably resilient. She simply came to my table and said, in careful English – I was in British Army uniform, of course – ‘Excuse me, may I share your table, please?’ She wore a flowery summer skirt and a spotless white blouse. With her handbag slung over her shoulder, she could have stepped straight out of pre-war Berlin. She looked like no one else I had seen there.
I stood for her and as she sat she said, ‘I promise I shall not cause you disturbance. It is simply that if I sit at a table alone other soldiers of your army think I am wishing to meet them. I shall eat and read my book but you have no need to speak to me.’
It came so pat, sounded so rehearsed. Then she smiled and said, ‘We shall look like a married couple.’
Of course we talked. I was pleased, flattered, refreshed by her presence. She told me her name – Ulriche – and said she had been training to be a doctor until quite late in the war, when training was suspended. Her father was a well-known doctor, very influential, who would build up a good practice again when things got back to normal. Meanwhile he and her mother had escaped to Bavaria when the Russians came. They were still there. She had a boyfriend in the U-boat service but it was many months since she had heard from him. No one knew what had happened to his boat. She was lucky she could live in her parents’ flat nearby. It was untouched, so far.
You know how it is when you think you have things under control. In fact, you do have them under control – you actually do – and therein lies the danger. Being aware of what is going on, you are confident of your power to stop it at any time. So you let it continue. You enjoy steering it. Then one day you realise it has acquired a momentum which means that, although you can still guide or steer it, stopping has become difficult. It has by then entered your past ineradicably. It has become part of you, part of your present. Now, even if you stop it dead, it will never leave you. So nothing lost by going on, you think. That’s how you get caught.
I was a pushover, I guess. When we went back to her flat afterwards I still had no intention of doing anything. Because I knew I could say no, I was confident I could continue to enjoy the idea of it, the ever-present possibility, without the guilt of acquiescence. And I liked talking to her. I wanted her to go on talking. It was a long time since I’d talked to a woman.
It’s curious that I can’t now – I really can’t – recall exactly how it happened. I have vivid memories of parts of it but no recollection of the sequence. It started on the sofa but how I came to be on it with her, and how – or who – moved from a position of no contact to contact, I simply cannot say. If we lived in times that believed in witchcraft, I’d have claimed I was bewitched. That might still be true but not wholly fair.
I spent most of that first night in her apartment. It was a high-ceilinged, turn-of-the-century place, with heavy faded curtains and solid dark furniture. My work meant I could come and go fairly freely, you see, but I had to be back for reveille. In fact, we spent a lot of time talking. Perhaps, during all those months of hard lying, the real deprivation was more of intimate companionship than sex, which was simply the obvious thing. I can’t remember all we said, but we talked a lot and it all seemed so vital at the time.
I don’t think I ever thought she was a prostitute by profession, but I had assumed that she would want money, despite her clothes and apartment. Every German needed money. She didn’t mention it and neither did I, until I was buttoning up my battledress. I handled it badly, saying something like, ‘Can I give you some money?’
She was still in bed and just stared at me. ‘If you like.’
I tried to appear light-hearted about it. ‘If you like, surely. Don’t you need it?’
‘Everyone needs money.’
‘How much?’
‘Whatever you like.’
I felt awful. If I put my wallet away it would look as if I was meanly trying to get away without paying. Yet if I paid it demeaned us both. ‘I hate this,’ I said.
‘It is better if you pay.’
‘Better?’
‘For you, Stephen.’
It was the first time she had spoken my name. Tears stood in her eyes. I went to her. Afterwards she said, ‘Leave something. Just anything. It will be easier for you.’
It was some time before I understood what she meant. In the meantime, I went back to her, and back, and back, as you know. Becoming obsessed is like being adrift in the sea. When you’re in it up to your head you have no knowledge of how far or how fast you’re being taken. Your horizon is too limited. You lack the perspective that the sight of land could give you. If you could see land you could measure your drift and appreciate what was happening. For a while, early on, I really did lose sight of land, but I had Jean’s letters to remind me and, of course, my guilt. It wasn’t that I ceased to love Jean. It would have been simpler if I had. It was more that this seemed something set aside from normal time, as if a whistle had been blown and this didn’t count. Geography alters the moral compass as well as the magnetic, but really I always knew where true north lay.
Also, something about Ulriche was different. The intensity and release of that first night was echoed but never repeated. She remained keen but I sensed an underlying resolution, as if something took determination to go through with it. Not because she didn’t want to see me. I shall never believe she didn’t want that. Our times together and our talk could not have been faked. The whole affair was one long passionate dialogue. But she was having to steel herself to something else at the same time. Our only argument was about money. I’d said again that I hated paying her, hated her feeling she had to sell herself, yet at the same time if she needed financial help I was only too happy to give it. It was turning our love-making into a transaction that I didn’t like.
‘You must pay me,’ she said, ‘you must.’ When I demurred she turned on me with tears in her eyes. ‘Stephen, it is for you I say this. You must. It will help you to hate me.’
‘Hate you? Why should I want to hate you?’
She turned away. I could more easily hate myself than her, especially when I thought of Jean. When we parted that time I left her money on the table, as usual. It was an ornate occasional table in the sitting room beneath an oval nineteenth-
century mirror. For a moment the mirror showed me, the money on the polished table, my hand on the money, and Ulriche, in her red dressing-gown by the fireplace, watching. I don’t know whether she knew that was the last time we were to meet. I don’t think she did, but she may have sensed it.
The next time I went to her flat the door was opened by a balding, thickset man in a heavy blue suit. Two other men were suddenly behind me. They must have been hiding up the next flight of stairs. ‘Major Thoroughgood,’ said the man, in heavily accented English. ‘We are expecting you. Very welcome. Please to come in.’
Without anyone actually laying a hand on me, I was shuffled through the door. Sitting in one of the armchairs was another man in an identical blue suit, but he was younger, with dark curly hair. He was smoking a cigarette and seemed very relaxed. He introduced himself as Igor Smoletsky. ‘I apologise for this rude shock, Major Thoroughgood,’ he said, in good English. ‘Ulriche has been transferred to other duties. We thought we should discuss with you how to handle this delicate situation. Please be seated.’