by Sue Gee
And now they stood on the Continental platform, and now the train was coming.
It drew to a halt, doors opened, travellers returned. Harriet watched couples reunited, families gathering up children and suitcases and going along to the barrier; she watched Karel, scanning the carriages as they walked down through the crowds to the front, looking for a seat: already, it seemed, a long way away from her.
They found a corner in a smoking compartment, facing the front, with a table. Karel stowed his rucksack in the rack overhead, Harriet clenched her hands in the pockets of her denim jacket and willed herself not to cry. He turned and looked at her; she burst into tears.
‘No, no,’ he said, his face full of concern. ‘Please.’
People pushed past them; she sank into the seat opposite his. He leaned across the table and stroked her hair without speaking. She covered her face, and tried to stop.
‘Excuse me? Are these seats taken?’
She stopped. A healthy American couple in their fifties beamed down on them.
‘Please. No one.’ Karel was indicating that the adjoining seats were free; healthy American suitcases were swung up on to the rack.
‘You have a cold?’ the woman enquired kindly of Harriet, as she wiped her eyes.
For the first time in her life, but not the last, Harriet was rude to a total stranger.
‘I’m crying,’ she said coldly. ‘Can’t you tell the difference?’
‘Gee, I–’
‘Come on,’ she said to Karel, all at once filled with anger: at America, at Russia, at the world. She got to her feet. ‘We can’t say goodbye here.’ She pushed blindly past the woman, past everyone, and out on to the platform again, not turning to see if he had followed.
He had followed. For a moment her anger included him, too, for leaving; then he put his arms round her and drew her close.
‘Fierce,’ he said, and she could tell that he was smiling. ‘I did not know you are so fierce.’
‘Nor me,’ she said, kissing his denim jacket, bought with savings from the restaurant after sending money home.
Further along the platform a whistle blew. They clung to each other, doors slammed. The whistle blew again; they, kissed for the last time.
‘Bon voyage,’ said Harriet, and then, with wavering recall from last night’s session with the dictionary, she struggled to say it in Czech.
‘Dobra. Very good.’
Then Karel got back on the train again, and stood at the open window of the door. Beneath his dark hair his face was pale; he felt for a cigarette.
‘Good luck,’ said Harriet, bravely. ‘Good luck, good luck.’
He nodded, lighting up, flicking away the match.
The last door slammed, the train began to move.
‘Write to me,’ she said quickly, walking alongside. ‘Write and tell me everything.’ She could see the Americans, smiling at her through the grimy window. Fools. Kind fools. They overtook her, the train was gathering speed.
‘Write!’ she said again, breaking into a run.
‘Yes, yes.’ He was leaning out of the window, cigarette held in graceful fingers.
People were waving all along the platform; there were other heads at other windows.
‘Goodbye!’ called Harriet, waving too. ‘Goodbye, goodbye!’
‘Sbohem!’ he called back to her. ‘Sbohem, Harriet!’
The carriages creaked and the train went faster. Then it was gone.
Rain fell steadily on to the pavements of Thackeray Gardens, on to the bare trees and iron railings bordering the pleasant square of lawn and shrubs and hard-pruned roses in the middle. It splashed on to Harriet’s windowsill and against the curtained window, and she hardly heard it, curled up once again in the striped armchair with her letter, her small blue dictionary.
Dear Harriet, Vesele vanoće! Happy Christmas! I send you best wishes for the new year and I hope you are well …
He had written to wish her a happy Christmas, and the letter had only just arrived. He had written in November, ten weeks after saying goodbye.
Ten weeks before Jan Palach’s suicide.
Harriet looked across at the poster above her bureau. The blown-up black-and-white face of a young man looked out at her; beneath were his name, and the date of his death. On 16 January, 1969, he, a young student, had stepped out into Wenceslas Square, in the heart of Prague, and poured petrol all over his clothes. He had lit a match.
He had died five days later, on 21 January, in agony, in protest.
But not in vain, thought Harriet, looking at his photograph. Surely not in vain.
The poster came from Athena, in Oxford Street: it would not be on sale in Prague, though Palach’s name would be on everyone’s lips. Where had Karel been, when the match was lit? Had he gone running to Wenceslas Square?
London seems a very long way from me now. Since my return life has been –
Something was crossed out here, and she could not understand what followed. It had taken her fifteen minutes to get this far, and the phrase book was not much help, not really. It was full of requests for the bill, the doctor, the chambermaid. What had life been for Karel? What was he trying to tell her?
I am living with my parents once more; it is – something crossed out – good to be with them again, but – here the small fat censor of Harriet’s imagination had been at work, with a vile black pen. She felt despairing. All these months and months of waiting, of giving up hope, and there was barely a line on the thin single page which she could understand. Why hadn’t he written in English? Wasn’t it safe?
I hope to study law again one day, but at present I am working as a porter. It is – again, the black pen. Harriet was dose to tears. It was hardly worth having, this stiff, formal letter, with its careful crossings-out by Karel and the vicious deletions made by the censor. Then she thought of all the letterless mornings and afternoons she had endured, all the nights when she had gone to sleep with her arms round her pillow, hoping to dream of Karel, and she lifted the page to her lips. Of course it was worth having!
She looked at it again, scanning the Biroed words for a phrase, a particular phrase, which had never been used by either of them, in either language. Miluji vás. I love you.
It wasn’t there. The letter ended as if to anyone:
I hope you will have time to write to me one day. I think of you. Karel.
Well, almost anyone. He thought of her. In the midst of such difficult days, he thought.
Harriet got up. She folded the letter and slipped it back in its cheap, grubby envelope and put it into her bureau pigeonhole. She looked at the pile of essays on the open flap, at Milton and Molière and The Origins of World War II, all heaped up on the floor.
She thought of her expensive school, with its view of Kensington Gardens, its library, its gleaming laboratory and airy polished hall, where a list of head girls was painted in gold on a wooden board on the wall. At the end of this summer, when she had left, her own name would be added: Harriet Pickering, 1968–69.
She went to the window and drew back the curtains; she stood looking out at the rain, falling through the neon halos of street lamps, drenching the well-laid lawn in the square, dripping off the trees, just in bud, and off the iron railings. Hundreds of miles away, behind the Iron Curtain, Karel was thinking of her. He was working for a pittance, unable to write, or study, unable to plan his life.
Perhaps he had stopped thinking of her by now: it was months since he wrote that letter. Perhaps he had given up hope of hearing from her, perhaps he thought she’d forgotten.
Forgotten!
I shall write to you, Karel, thought Harriet, leaning against the window pane. I shall write, and send parcels, and keep on writing. She closed her eyes and saw him in the shabby Earls Court bedsit, his thin suntanned face alight with affection and hope. She felt his arms go round her, drawing her close. She saw the ugly monstrous tanks, parting the weeping crowds on the streets of his city, the blank bemused faces of the young
Russian soldiers, looking about them.
One day, we shall be together again, she thought. One day I shall see you again, Karel.
Chapter Three
They stood outside the buffet near the Continental platform, having an argument: Harriet Pickering, tall, dark, furious, and her daughter Marsha Pickering, ten next birthday, tall for her age, dark hair cut in a bob, adamant.
Marsha was wearing blue-striped shorts, bright pink sweatshirt and trainers, every item new, chosen by her last Saturday and bought by Harriet for the journey. Beside them were two suitcases; each, in addition, carried a shoulder bag. Between them was the cause of the argument, just produced from Marsha’s bag: small, white, pink-eyed and sleek, at present washing himself vigorously in her hands after his confinement. He was supposed to be in his nice airy cage, staying round the corner with Marsha’s friend Ruby, who had been given a quantity of mouse food, mouse bedding and mouse instructions.
It was half-past ten on a cloudy morning in August, 1993, and their train went in twenty-five minutes. Harriet’s parents, who had come to see them off, knew better than to intervene. Her father looked at the headlines, her mother looked at her watch.
Marsha said: ‘If he doesn’t come, I’m not coming.’
‘You have no choice.’
‘I’ll scream at the barrier,’ said Marsha. ‘I’ll scream and say you’re abducting me. I’ll ring up Childline. And the RSPCA.’
‘Look,’ said Harriet, and drew a breath.
‘Look,’ said Marsha fondly. ‘Isn’t he sweet?’
Victor, for it was he, was bent over his right haunch, parting the fur with small, exquisite pink fingers and examining it with interest. Small mouse droppings fell through Marsha’s fingers.
‘What,’ demanded Harriet, ‘do you suppose we are going to do with him? How can we possibly take a mouse all that way?’
‘How,’ demanded Marsha, ‘can we possibly leave him now? What are you going to do, abandon him on the station? Let him starve?’
Victor finished with the right haunch and returned to his face, running his hands all over at top speed, cleaning his handsome whiskers.
‘He could live with the pigeons,’ said Harriet weakly. ‘He could have quite a nice life.’
For a moment there was a lull, as mother and daughter, each endowed with vivid imagination, pictured Victor, with small brown suitcase, setting up house with a benevolent pigeon family, living comfortably on crusts and burger buns, an interesting change from his usual well-monitored fare of rodent mix and grated vegetables; meeting, perhaps, another mouse. Marsha, with a rush of feeling, saw mouse babies, all in a nest; Harriet, whose vision of the bliss of motherhood had been tempered by the experience of living with Marsha, saw Victoria Station overrun with grey and white vermin. She saw poison being laid, and Victor eating it.
‘When,’ she demanded, ‘did you go and get him from Ruby?’
‘This morning. While you were paying the milkman, and I had one last skateboard round the block, remember?’
Harriet remembered. She said, with real conviction: ‘Marsha, if I can’t trust you, we’re done for.’
‘I know,’ Marsha was stroking Victor’s long sleek back as he ran up her arm. ‘But I couldn’t leave him. I’m sorry.’
They had spent the best part of ten minutes engaged in all this, and Harriet was dying for a coffee. They could get one on the train, but probably not for a while, and anyway it was nice to take one on with you, so you could avoid the first rush down the corridor, and settle down and relax.
With a nine-year old. And a mouse. All the way to Prague.
Harriet drew breath. ‘I’m sorry, too,’ she said. ‘He’s not coming.’ She turned to her parents. ‘Help?’
They came to the rescue.
‘Darling.’ Marsha’s grandmother addressed her coaxingly.
Marsha looked mulish. ‘What?’
‘Please may we have him? Just until you come home? He’d be such good company when we’ll be missing you both.’
‘I’ll miss him,’ said Marsha. ‘Anyway, you’ve got Thomas. He’ll eat him, I know it.’
‘I know,’ said her grandfather. ‘I’ve the very idea.’
‘What?’
‘He can come to the office. He can sit on my desk and entertain me while I do my sums. He can help.’
‘He needs cleaning out –’
‘I’ll clean him out. I’ll enjoy it. Much better than doing sums.’
‘With what?’ asked Harriet. ‘You need sawdust, bedding, he has to have a dish, food, water bottle – honestly Marsha, this really is too bad. Poor Grandpa.’
‘I’ve got all those things,’ said Marsha calmly. ‘They’re all in my suitcase.’
Harriet looked at her. ‘Then you’d better get them out again, sharpish. And what on earth are we going to put him in now?’
Everyone thought, as Marsha bent to unzip her bursting bag.
‘A burger box?’ suggested her grandmother.
Harriet looked at her gratefully.
‘Brilliant,’ said Marsha, removing mouse equipment from amongst pyjamas and sweatshirts. ‘Can we get them to punch airholes in it?’
‘We’d better get a move on,’ said Harriet’s father.
Some minutes later they emerged from the buffet with a carton of orange juice, coffee in a polystyrene beaker and Victor in a polystyrene burger box, scrabbling. People were moving steadily through the barrier. They made for it, hotfoot.
‘Thank you,’ said Harriet, hugging her parents. ‘Whatever would I do without you?’
‘Have a wonderful time.’ Her father patted her shoulder. ‘Give our love to Hugh and Susanna.’
‘I wanted them to see Victor,’ said Marsha.
‘Never mind, darling.’ Her grandmother gently took the box.
‘Thank you so much for letting us borrow him. It’ll do Grandpa the world of good.’
Marsha looked at the box. Beside them, the queue for the train moved faster.
‘Come on,’ said Harriet quickly. ‘Come on, or we’re done for.’
They all made their way down the platform. Reserved seats were waiting in Carriage D.
‘Promise me something,’ said Harriet, as they settled themselves, and looked out to where her parents were waiting, holding the box with encouraging expressions.
‘What?’
‘Don’t ever lie to me again.’
‘I didn’t lie.’
‘Deceive, then. You know what I mean.’
‘OK.’
‘And for the rest of the journey you do as you’re told, OK?’
Marsha hesitated.
‘Please?’ said Harriet. She felt for her passport. Their passport: hers, with Marsha’s photograph inside it, so no one could ever take her away. It had always, almost since the beginning, been just the two of them.
‘Don’t keep on about it,’ said Marsha. ‘I’ll try.’
They both knew it was touch and go.
Their seats were opposite each other by the window of a No Smoking compartment; their luggage was stowed away above them. Harriet carefully removed the lid of the polystyrene beaker and let the smell of British Rail coffee waft with a little wreath of steam towards her. She sat back, waiting for it to cool, watching the compartment fill with travellers. Vast nylon rucksacks on aluminium frames were heaved about in the corridor, children ripped open packets of crisps and asked when they would get there; childless couples opened their books. Beside them, two clean Dutch students were settling into their seats. Since the end of term at the comprehensive school where she tried to teach, and at the primary school where Marsha was supposed to learn, Harriet had been ironing, packing, organising the departure of one lodger and the arrival of another, cancelling papers and milk. She had risen this morning at half-past six. Now she let the surrounding activity wash over her. Opposite, Marsha was pulling a sorry face. She’d be all right once they got moving.
Last-minute passengers were panting up to the doors. Har
riet, drinking her coffee, barely took them in. She forgot about Marsha, forgot about the mouse. She saw an afternoon in autumn, twenty-five years ago, two figures on the same platform, both in denim jackets; she saw them cling to each other and kiss; she saw, as the last door now slammed to, Karel, at the window in the corridor, leaning out with, his cigarette, and she running alongside as the train began to move, waving and waving.
‘We write! We write!’
And they had written: the polished bureau which had stood once in the bedroom of her parents’house in Kensington stood now in the sitting room of her own house in Shepherd’s Bush, and had in its second drawer a wooden box of letters. Each was written on thin cheap paper, each one worn from being unfolded and folded again, read and re-read.
Thank you for writing, I was pleased to hear from you …
I am sorry not to have written, but things have been …
I am afraid that – something crossed out – All is well, but
unfortunately – something crossed out –
I am afraid that it has been a long time since I wrote to
you …
I am afraid that it is difficult for me to write to you at present
…
I am afraid …
I am afraid …
Then they had stopped. The last worn letter in the box was dated March 1971. Harriet had read it with her dictionary-phrase book, sitting at the plain, light wood desk of her university study bedroom. Her life had changed: A-levels long distant, first-year history exams behind her, new people all around her. One, in particular, she liked the look of, as she had liked the look of Karel. Reading his letter, trying, yet again, to guess what lay behind the formal phrases, he seemed far from her in a way which she knew in her heart was due not only to absence, or distance, but her own preoccupations. He was fading. She had thought that would never happen, but she knew, if she were honest, that it was so.
And what, she thought then, folding the letter, and putting it back in its envelope, was the point of anything if one could not be honest?
There was a knock at the door.
‘Harriet? We’re off – you ready?’