“Have a wonderful time in Paris.” He brushes his knuckles across my jaw, under my chin. It makes me shiver.
And then he’s kissing me and I’m kissing him back. The sound of the station recedes. Our lips and tongues are all that exist; the warmth of his skin pressed against mine, his hands moving around my cheeks to hold me steady.
“I love you with all my heart and soul,” he says softly.
“You forgot the accent.” My throat constricts.
“No.” He shakes his head. “I’m not Trevor anymore. That’s me. I love you, Eliza.”
I swallow. Heat scalds my cheeks. Things shouldn’t start with a lie. This has gone too far already. The next time I see him will be a new year. A new start. I’ll tell him then.
“I love you too,” I say.
KLAUDIA
1987, London
SHANE COMES OUT OF a tunnel with three of his mates. It’s not five o’clock yet, but it’s winter dark. A train rattles across the bridge overhead. The steely screech of wheels on tracks is hard and unrelenting and urgent. I shiver, knowing not to run.
Shane steps forward, a beam of streetlight catching the gleam of his teeth. I recognize the three shuffling in the shadows behind him, all of them weak and mean, all of them bullies. They glance about furtively, and I sense their pent-up excitement. I back away, keeping my eyes on them. It’s one thing to be trapped in a school playground, and another to be caught alone in an empty street.
“Remember those names I taught you?” Shane is by my side, pinching my arm tightly. “Hope you learned them like I told you.”
He pulls a canister out of his pocket and presses it into my hand.
There’s a smell in the tunnel that hits the back of my throat. Damp, soot, urine and old chicken bones rotting in paper takeaway cartons. Something scrabbles in the shadows.
“Just a rat, princess.” He smiles as I flinch. “Now. Get writing.”
My mind has gone blank. “Start with an easy one,” he says pleasantly. “Try ‘Hitler.’”
I direct the can at the dank wall, my finger on the aerosol nozzle. I’m shaking. “I don’t want to,” I whisper. My arm falls away, my finger still jammed down, so that a spray of red showers the bricks like a blood splatter, smattering Shane’s shoes.
“Bitch.” He’s feeling inside my blazer, and he grabs my breast, squeezes hard, crushing me. “Your life won’t be worth living if you don’t do as you’re told.”
I gasp. My body recoils, and I struggle away, raising the can, moving my wrist, spelling out the letters. The paint hisses into the air, and the sour stink of chemicals fills my nostrils.
Three of them stand at the entrance; Shane is right behind me, his breath coming hard and fast. “Now write, Hitler’s coming to get you scum,” he directs. My body feels numb, emptied out, wooden as a puppet’s. I do what he asks.
Another train rattles over our heads. A car passes in the street behind, its headlights moving across us, the wash of its glare flattening Shane’s features. The light skims the green slime of the tunnel with silver, and then slides away. I am alone. Nothing can help me. Puppet Girl. My strings twitch and my hand moves, spewing big shaky words onto brickwork.
“Your dad would be proud.” Shane takes the canister from my bloodless fingers and pulls me close, pressing his mouth over mine. I try to push him away, balling my fists against his chest. I smell the pus in his skin, taste beer on his tongue. His hand fumbles under my school skirt, fingers burning the thin skin of my thighs as he grabs between my legs and jabs hard.
“That’s the end of the first lesson,” he says. “Next one’s coming soon.”
I collapse onto cold concrete, shaking, alone, hearing footsteps and shouts of laughter echoing back to me. The arch of bricks presses down. My skin feels scalded where he touched me. I wipe at my face with both hands, pulling it, tearing at my skin with my nails, as if I could erase my features, take away the person I am.
* * *
I can’t be seen with books about Nazis under my arm at school. So I take a bus to the nearest public library. I sidle past the desk, being careful not to make eye contact with the librarian busy stamping books with brisk authority. In the history section, I’m relieved to find that I’m alone. I browse up and down book stacks, running jittery fingers over titles. I don’t even want to be seen to be taking an interest in the Holocaust, as if interest itself could tarnish me. I pull out three books and huddle over them in a quiet corner.
The first that I open is like the one I found in my desk. I force myself to read about ghettos and death marches. I flick past photographs of hollow-eyed inmates; benign-looking men sitting at desks in SS uniforms; brutal fences and stark buildings. The horror gives me a pain in my stomach. I feel exhausted by it: the unrelenting pile-up of statistics, cruelty upon cruelty. I close the book, my mouth dry, and glance around me. A mother is reading to her child at the next table. They sit with their heads close, and she runs a finger over the page as she talks, so quietly that I can’t make out the words. The child is slumped against her shoulder sleepily, thumb in his mouth.
I pick up a book called Stalingrad, and flick through to the index, running my finger down the “M”s. Nothing. I feel relieved and a little silly. I try another, scanning the close-packed index without discovering a familiar name. I’m not going to find my father in history books. The librarian walks past balancing a pile of hardbacks in her arms. She stops and glances down.
“School work?”
I nod, not looking up.
“If you’re researching World War Two, this one is very good.” She stoops and picks a book off the shelf and puts it on the table.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
She’s gone on her soft-soled shoes.
I slide the Diary of a German Soldier on the Eastern Front towards me. It is heavy, thick with paper crammed with close text, broken up by black and white photographs. I look at the pictures first, turning pages slowly. There are old-fashioned-looking armored trucks; another shows a group of grinning soldiers holding rifles, cigarettes in their mouths. They don’t look much older than me. The pages turn between my fingers. I find a photograph of a team of bedraggled horses straining through the mud up to their knees, pulling a big artillery gun. Even inside the blurry outlines, I can see the animals’ eyes are widened with terror. Another photo is of a destroyed Russian tank with sacks of flour strewn around it. I read a bit of the caption: “Note the enemy dead in the immediate vicinity of the armored vehicle.” Not sacks of flour. I lick my finger, spinning forwards quickly to the index. I find the “M”s and glance at the list. And there it is. “Meyer, Gefreiter, page 150.”
I shut the book. It must be a coincidence. It can’t be him. Meyer is a common name. But I have to look. My heart bumps against my ribs as I turn the pages. There’s a picture of three German soldiers pointing guns at unarmed people in ordinary clothes. One of them, I see with a shock, is a woman. She’s thin, young. Her blank expression is pinned before the barrel of a gun. I understand that I’m seeing her in the instant before she dies. Something else about the image jags, catches in my mind. The soldier nearest the camera is in profile. And despite the grainy black and white, I know that nose; that jut of chin. My hands begin to shake. My heart is crawling through my throat. I scan down, blinking, searching the caption. “Execution of Jewish partisans. Gefreiter Ohler, Gefreiter Krenz, Gefreiter Meyer. 1943, Russia.”
My father stands before me, legs planted firmly in the barren white that must be snow. He stares over his gun into the face of the woman. His lips are set, jaw clenched in an expression he wears a lot: that cold anger of his I’m so familiar with. Gefreiter Meyer.
The mother’s reading voice carries on behind me, a soft blur. I hear her child asking something and her answering hush, hush; the quiet click of shoes moving across the floor; rub and flicker of pages turning in the mild, bookish air. But in my head there is the crack of a gun; the crumple and thud of a woman falling into white, a single sig
h as breath leaves her body.
I shove the book across the table and put my head between my knees. The floor lurches. My insides twist. Is this what he got his medals for? I can’t get the photograph out of my head. I think the girl will always be there now. Fixed inside my skull.
1993
September
Mum keeps patting powder onto her cheeks, but more shiny tracks appear as she dabs at her eyes with a screwed-up hankie. I squeeze her hand. “It’s only three years, Mum. It’ll go so fast.”
She shakes her head. “It’s your time to get out into the world. You won’t be coming home. It’s all right, love. I understand. But remember your bedroom will always be here for you.” She pats my arm. “I’ll be here. In case you need me.”
I swallow. Saliva catching in my throat. She won’t let me speak. She puts a finger on my lips. “Run upstairs and say goodbye to your dad.”
I go slowly through the sitting room, trailing up the stairs, looking around me as if this really is the last time I’ll see it: the framed words from Scripture; surfaces cluttered with wooden statues; the umbrella stand and the clock in the hall.
Their bedroom door is ajar. I see him through the slender opening. He’s standing in front of the mirror doing up his tie. He finishes, adjusting the knot. He looks at himself, blue eyes and expressionless mouth. I take a breath, preparing to enter, not knowing if he will hug me this time, or just shake my hand as he usually does. But before I can take a step, or push at the door, he raises his right arm. He lifts it in a line, saluting his reflection with slow gravity, his arm rigid, standing straight and tall. Like the soldiers in films; the boys at school.
I put my hand over my mouth, beginning to back away, soundless over the carpet, but his voice reaches me.
“Come in, Klaudia.”
I edge into the room, my cheeks burning. We both know what I saw.
He doesn’t blink. “Well, you’re off. Remember where you come from; don’t let university life go to your head.” His face is a mask. “Work hard. Find the nearest chapel. Jesus will help you to stay on the right path.”
I’m feeling sick. I can’t look at him. I don’t understand. He’s in God’s army now. The executioner in the snow, gun raised to his shoulder, that’s in the past. My thoughts tremble around the image of him in the mirror, his action revealing something I can’t let myself grasp. It slides away, nothing but a reflection, a shadow moving over glass.
My feet are on the stairs, stumbling away. Mum waits below to walk me to the train station, neat in her coat with her handbag slung over the crook of her elbow. She smiles. “All right, love? This is a big day. I’m so proud of you.”
The front door swings open, letting in daylight, the sound of traffic.
PART TWO
THE TRAP
ELIZA—KLAUDIA
1995, London
IT TAKES ME AGES to negotiate the train and Tube, lugging my over-stuffed and battered suitcase. I slump onto a seat on the heated, crowded bus, the final leg of my journey, and gaze out of the window at familiar gray London streets. There are baubles hanging in shop windows, and decorations glow from lampposts: angels blowing trumpets and fat men on sledges picked out in lights. Pavements are thick with people wrapped up against the cold, their arms full of presents.
At home the fake tree will be blinking in the corner, the yellowed cards hanging over the mantelpiece, smells of mincemeat and goose fat coming from the kitchen.
Paris was colder than London. The first flakes of snow had been falling as Meg waved me goodbye at Charles de Gaulle. I’d been worried that the flight might have been canceled. But I’m arriving exactly when I said I would. I’ve got presents in my case: a bottle of perfume with a heart-shaped glass stopper: Mitsouko by Guerlain; I recognized the bottle in Galeries Lafayette, and thought it was about time Mum had a replacement. I can’t wait to see her face when she opens it. But first I’ll drop my bag on the floor and pull her to me for a hug. And I’ll remember how she only comes up to my shoulder, and how she smells of talc, and the mints she carries in her handbag to suck when she thinks she should resist another biscuit.
As the bus turns off the main road, past the Methodist Chapel, a sense of dread trickles inside me. Each street triggers another memory: the teenage humiliation of being seen going to chapel with my parents, dragging my feet in sensible polished shoes, as I hunch past the group of kids on that same corner: Amber and Lesley sneering with shiny mouths, teetering in heels, their laughter following me. There were no parties for me; no make-up; no boyfriends. My father’s hands tightened on my shoulders when I sat below him stuttering over the Bible text he’d set me to learn. I don’t want to see him. It’s only the thought of Mum, wiping her hands on her apron, coming forwards to pat my cheek that makes me impatient to get there. None of this is fair on her. I miss her. I can almost feel her fingers, dusty with flour, against my skin.
Our house is a dirty white, pebble-dashed semi. It sits in the middle of the row. There is a mean strip of front garden where rubbish collects—crisp packets, empty Coke cans—and a low concrete wall where, to my father’s fury, teenagers sometimes perch. A stubby tongue of crazy paving leads to the half-glazed front door.
I ring the bell. I don’t know why. I have my key. My father opens the door and I understand at once that something is wrong even though his expression barely changes when he looks at me.
“Klaudia.”
“Where’s Mum?”
The words are sawdust in my mouth. A boomerang of blood ricochets against my ribs. The open doorway sways and my father reaches out a hand. He’s speaking but my brain is rejecting the words. No. I think I say it aloud. “No.”
I’m sitting in the living room on the velveteen sofa. My head droops between my knees. The carpet spins under my feet. I look up and realize that he’s in his best dark suit and the room is empty and bleak. There are no shiny baubles, no ribbons of tinsel wound around a plastic tree. It’s freezing. I shiver and hug myself. The wooden saints gathered in a group on the sideboard regard me with blind eyes, hands raised in blessing. My father slumps opposite me, looking older and grayer. He seems to have shrunk. His shirt is loose around his neck and his jacket sleeves hang below his wrists.
He clears his throat. “She was knocked down by a car. Near the house, crossing our street. She died in the hospital later that day. Her injuries … were … they couldn’t save her.”
His voice is weary. It doesn’t make any sense to me. I am unable to imagine my mother dashing in front of a car. I remember her telling me over and over to wait on the curb, look right and left, and right again.
“What happened…?” I stare towards the kitchen, thinking she will appear in the doorway. She doesn’t come. She will never come again. No. That’s impossible. “The driver … have they been prosecuted?”
Dad shakes his head. “It wasn’t his fault. He wasn’t drunk or speeding. She … she just walked in front of him.”
“When?” I whisper, hanging my head.
“A week ago,” he says. “I tried to reach you at university. But I had no number for you. I waited by the phone, but you didn’t call.” He puts his hand over his eyes. “I sent a note to the address you left and that got no response either.”
I can’t look at him. Shame creeps through me, rolls like a suffocating fog through my limbs, filling my mouth, pressing behind my eyes. I can hardly breathe. I try to recall the last time I saw her. But I can’t snatch any comfort from a memory. I see her face when I left, remember the way she’d touched my dyed hair. Patient. Resigned. “Your beautiful gold.” She’d hugged me close. “Look after yourself, cariad. Come back to me soon.”
But I didn’t come back to her. I’d let her down. I’d lied and I’d abandoned her.
“The funeral at the chapel was…” His voice thickens and he stops. “People loved your mother. Everyone came.”
“Are her ashes buried there?”
He stands up and looks out through the open door into t
he kitchen and the garden beyond. “No. There’s a plaque. But she’s buried here.”
I glance up, startled. “Here?”
“In the garden. Under the apple tree,” he says. “I put her ashes in the Chinese urn.”
The urn is no longer on the mantelpiece. My heart beats faster. “Is that … OK? Is it allowed?”
“It’s what she would have wanted. She loved that tree.” He rubs his nose. “It’s what I want. To have her close to me.”
I think of my father decanting the granules and grains from whatever container the crematorium would have given him into the porcelain mouth. Did he use a spoon, or his hands? Had there been spillages?
I cross the frosty garden towards the apple tree. It leans slightly to one side; roots protrude through the grass like rheumatoid knuckles, ancient fingers tapping their way into the light. There is a darker patch of naked earth between the roots, recently turned. I lean against the cold trunk and stare down. I can’t take it in. My mother: nothing but handfuls of ashes in an urn below my feet. A thrush sits on a higher branch and looks at me reproachfully. The bird table is empty.
I go back into the house and fetch some water in a small bowl. There is only the moldy heel of a loaf in the bread bin; crumbling it inside my fingers, I walk back to the bird table and leave my offerings. Wings flutter above me, a flash of yellow beak. A curtain twitches at an upstairs window next door. Mrs. Perkins watching from behind a fall of lace.
I curl my nostrils in the cold, dim house. The kitchen smells of rubbish. The bin needs emptying. My father is sitting in the living room. His hands rest on his knees and he stares into space as if he’s in chapel and the preacher is in mid-flow.
I move around him, putting on lights. Reaching into the under-stairs cupboard, I locate the heating dial and turn, switching the setting to “high.” I open the fridge, look through cupboards. There is no food. I will make a shopping list. I move slowly, as if I’m fighting my way through molasses. But it’s helping to take action. Being practical is the only thing I can do. There’s no time for crying. If I start, I won’t be able to stop.
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