The Summer of the Bear

by Bella Pollen

  She wandered past the refrigerated section, whose hi-tech fringe of plastic hinted at sophistication, but there was only a pack of oily bacon and a single Scotch egg nestling cosily behind it. The purchase of meat necessitated a drive to the slaughterhouse where the stench of blood attracted a circling cloud of greater black-backed gulls and hoodies. The fruit and vegetable rack offered a choice between two furred and battered apples and a pitifully starved onion – charitable foster parent of abandoned food though Alba was, a line had to be drawn somewhere.

  At the till, Peggy was gossiping with Morag. Alba moved along the aisle until the women’s voices became no more irritating than the drone of flies. There were logistical problems to theft and she needed to think. Crisp packets were too crackly to store up her jumper. Tubs of ice cream gave her skin-freeze. She settled for two cans of tuna and a doorstop wedge of cheddar cheese. She would make tuna melts, a hot sandwich they served in the American Club in Bonn – one of her favourite places, where all the children of Ford cars and Procter & Gamble hung out and played baseball and ate exotic things like peanut butter and stacked sandwiches with tiny flags tooth-picked into the top. Alba pocketed the cans then headed for the front counter.

  ‘Can you put this on Mum’s account, please, Peggy?’ She plonked down a loaf of Mother’s Pride bread.

  ‘Is Mammy not with you again today?’

  ‘Evidently not,’ Alba said rudely. Peggy was a committed gossip and theft required a fast getaway. The last time Alba had come in, the old bag had delayed her with a ten-minute soliloquy about the ill deeds of the beast and the irresponsibility of the man who owned it. So now Peggy owed her, as did the wrestler and his rotten dead bear . . .

  ‘Strange that I’ve no’ seen her these good few weeks.’ Peggy noted down the Mother’s Pride in her ledger.

  ‘Well, she doesn’t go out much . . .’ Alba shrugged. ‘You can imagine . . .’

  ‘Ach, it’s no surprise she’s taken it hard, poor soul, what with your grandfather only last year and all. Aye, Sir Walter! People still tell of that submarine of his and as for your father, well, a man of the highest order, Mr Fleming was. Always a kind word for everyone, yes indeed.’

  At the mention of her father Alba had intended to issue a warning growl but to her surprise she felt an unwelcome stinging behind her eyes. He’d become a forbidden subject at home. The submarine had been one of his favourite anecdotes and suddenly she felt his arm around her and the grate of his chin against her cheek.

  ‘It was close to the end of the Second World War.’ Nicky had first told her the story when she was seven or eight. ‘Your grandfather was on leave, wounded in the head and knee. He set off for the islands with his friend, a Royal Marine Lieutenant who had a piece of shrapnel embedded in his shoulder. So this fine pair with their slings, bandages and walking sticks found themselves making the crossing on the Caledonian MacBrayne ferry known as the Plover and manned only by a skeleton crew.’ Alba imagined her grandfather in his uniform limping across the empty deck and scanning the churning waters for basking sharks or a school of dolphins. ‘The ferry got no more than halfway across the Minch,’ Nicky continued, ‘when a German submarine surfaced and began barking commands at it. “Achtung!” they cried, or perhaps, “Heave to or we shoot!” or whatever it is that German submarine commanders say in these situations. Anyway, whatever they said, the very minute the Germans started threatening them, the Captain and his four crew buggered off in the Plover’s only lifeboat, leaving their passengers stranded on the ferry. So Grandpa, still with the bandage round his head, grabbed the small gun mounted in the bows and, steadied by the lieutenant, promptly fired at the submarine. The sub fired back but the shell glanced off the side. Grandpa fired again, this time scoring a hit because the sub submerged and disappeared and the two men managed to bring the ferry into Loch Baghasdail without further incident. The following morning, the Captain and crew also made it to Loch Baghasdail in their little rowing boat. By then, of course, the whole island had been told the story and every time the Captain tried to bring the boat ashore the islanders shoved it off again with their spades and sticks, shouting, “Away with you, bloody cowards!” And eventually the Captain and his crew were forced to row themselves all the way back to Oban.’

  ‘Did Grandpa get a medal?’ Alba asked.

  ‘Heavens, no,’ her father chuckled. ‘Your grandfather and the lieutenant went straight to bed and, phlegmatic Englishmen that they were, simply woke up the next morning and went shooting. In fact, your grandfather never even bothered to note the incident in his diary. The only account for that day was a record of how many duck they’d shot.’

  After the submarine incident, Sir Walter was forever a hero in the eyes of the islanders. When he’d died, despite his memorial service being held in London, the township had taken it upon themselves to honour him in one of their own Gaelic services.

  It had all been so different with her father. Every time Alba thought about it, she felt sick. Her father worked for the government. He might not have sunk a submarine but he’d served his country. Christ, hadn’t he died serving his country? ‘A dreadful accident’, ‘just one of those things’, what difference did it make? He’d been in the embassy, on the Queen’s business. Her father exemplified patriotic conduct and honour in everything he had ever done. Yet, while her grandfather’s service had been held at the Guards Chapel in Westminster, her father’s had been in a small church in Bad Godesberg. She didn’t know the diplomatic equivalent of a military funeral but surely there ought to have been some kind of official ceremony? Volleys fired, or soldiers carrying reversed arms? Instead the service had felt almost furtive. She had been expecting friends and colleagues to stand and speak about character and achievements, but there had been nothing except for that creepy, awkward gathering at the Ambassador’s resi- dence. How dare the government treat her father so badly and how dare her mother have allowed them?

  Unseeingly, Alba printed her name in the shop’s ledger. It made no sense. There was something else. Her mother was keeping information from her just as Georgie was. She stared broodily at her gumboots. A ladybird was sculling along the slippery wooden floorboards towards the counter. Alba followed its progress for a couple of seconds then stamped on it.

  Oh yes, even the ladybird owed her.

  41

  The second time Georgie saw him was through a window. Most days after lunch she retired to the upstairs bathroom and locked the door. The window faced north-east and through it she could usually run her eyes along a flat three-mile strip of the island without seeing another soul. One afternoon, however, she spotted a toothpick of a figure, sitting on the wall by the corner of Euan’s croft. He looked as if he was waiting. He looked like she felt. As if he’d been waiting forever. She watched him with vague curiosity then went on scanning the roads until she spotted what she was looking for: the red dot of the Post Office van. She held her breath as it approached the turn, then experienced a pinch of disappointment as it carried straight on. Any day now Angus’s Post Office van would bring her an envelope and that envelope promised her A level results, and those results were her yellow brick road to a life – one that did not necessarily play itself out on the island.

  Soon she would be eighteen. Surely a watershed moment for pep talks about prospects and opportunities? Instead, growing up and moving on felt like just another dirty secret she was hiding and the kernel of resentment inside her grew bigger. What did her mother imagine? That she would stay forever on the island and work in the knitwear factory, listening to Donald John boo-booing away until she was as old and bowed as everyone else? Oh, God help her . . . She heard the noise of an engine. The mobile shop was idling outside the gate and she watched Jamie exchanging money for comics with a dark-skinned man in a boiler suit. How a Paki had ended up in the Outer Hebrides was one of the island’s great mysteries. Alba’s theory was that he had set sail from Karachi to London only to be blown off course by a storm. It was even possible, she cla
imed, that he’d mistaken Lochbealach for London – after all, who knew the size of village he’d come from? Either way, within a month of his arrival, the mobile shop, peddling everything from long-life milk to library books, was a regular sight outside islanders’ crofts. Georgie slid to the floor. If Jamie and Alba had their Dandy and Beano, no one would bother about her. She pulled out The Story of O from behind the pipe in the cabinet. Its broken spine flopped open randomly and she began reading. If her A level results promised her a future, then surely that future must also include losing her virginity. She had a blurred and indistinct longing for the dark corners of dance halls and the smell of a boy’s skin. She unzipped her jeans and wiggled them down to her ankles, then, licking her finger, brought it between her legs and mechanically circled it in small button-polishing movements. She found a watery thread of sensation and chased it for a while but it gained no traction. She dragged up her jeans and looked at her face in the mirror. More than half a year had passed since her father’s death but she looked no older. It was as if she had frozen in time. She felt like a dropped watch that had stopped ticking and she needed someone to pick her up, align their beating heart with hers and kick-start her into living again. It was lonely keeping secrets. It was lonely being the oldest. On her sixteenth birthday, her father had released her from the daily bind of his news round. At the time she had considered it her best present ever. Now, though, through the prism of nostalgia, those awkward moments were the ones she yearned for most. She would have given anything to put her arm around her father’s neck as he turned the pages of The Times.

  Come on, my George, what is it that’s caught your attention today?

  Creeping into her mother’s bedroom, she opened the chest of drawers and dragged out an old Viyella shirt. It smelt of mothballs. Quickly she stuffed it back and tried a jumper instead. The wool smelt of oil and linseed. She yanked open drawer after drawer, pulling out bits of clothing until at last, there it was, on a handkerchief – a lingering trace of her father’s scent. His very own piece of Stasi muslin . . .

  ‘You have to understand that East Germany is a country run on suspicion,’ her father had told her on the drive to Berlin. ‘The East Germans are incorrigible trainspotters when it comes to surveillance and there’s nothing they’re more talented at than fascist bureaucracy. East Germany deals in information. It’s their currency. It’s what makes their little hearts beat faster. Surveillance is this country’s biggest industry. It keeps thousands in work.’ He picked up the map from the divide and squinted at it. ‘They say that in another decade, the Stasi will have generated more surveillance documents since 1949 than documents of any other kind printed in Germany since the Middle Ages. Think about that for a minute because it’s a staggering statistic. Spare a thought for all those trees cut down, think of the crates of pens, the oceans of ink and miles of typewriter ribbon. Imagine all those people sitting at their desks poring over endless transcripts filled with the daily minutiae of other people’s lives. Monday, 3.04 p.m. Georgiana Fleming walked into her bedroom (noted: untidy) picked up a black-handled hairbrush (noted: dirty) and brushed her hair using fourteen long even strokes. Monday, 3.07 p.m. Georgiana put down her hairbrush and picked her nose.’

  ‘I do not pick my nose.’

  ‘Try denying that under interrogation,’ he teased.

  ‘So, who was worse, the Gestapo or the Stasi?’

  ‘Hard to say. East Germany slithered straight out of Nazism into Communism. Twelve years of Gestapo terror has been replaced by three decades of oppression and subversion. The Gestapo were more immediately sadistic, but it wouldn’t be a whole lot of fun to be interrogated by the Stasi either.’ He’d adjusted his rear-view mirror. ‘They aren’t just happy collecting documents on people, you know. They collect their smells too.’

  ‘That’s disgusting,’ Georgie said doubtfully. ‘And probably not true. You can’t collect people’s smells.’

  ‘Indeed you can. If the Stasi suspect you of some infraction, let’s say you’ve been seen associating with the wrong people or reading seditious literature – who knows what might send the buggers into a rage – they’ll pull you in for questioning. They put you into a room where they make you sit on a seat with a muslin cloth underneath. Then they interrogate you, sometimes for hours on end until you’ve sweated out half your body weight in fear alone. After that, in the event they decide to let you go – and there is absolutely no guarantee that they will – your sweat-saturated muslin is whisked away and stored in a glass jar.’

  ‘What do they do with it?’ Georgie had been as revolted as she’d been fascinated.

  ‘Well, every jar is labelled with the name of the poor brute they’ve scared half to death, and should that person ever abscond in the future, the Stasi simply whip the appropriate cloth from their storage facility and have them followed by the dogs.’

  As always with her father’s stories, Georgie had suspected an element of exaggeration for her amusement. Nonetheless, she added the Specimen Museum of Smells to the picture book of oddities he had already logged in her mind: the Dressed Fleas in Tring, the two-headed calf in the Museum of Lausanne. Life was supposed to make more sense as you grew up; instead the world became an odder and more unrecognizable place with every passing day.

  ‘You deal in information,’ she’d told him, ‘so what’s the difference?’

  He had reached for her hand and squeezed it. ‘The difference is that I’m one of the good guys.’

  One of the good guys, he’d said.

  It had all been so different on the journey home. Half an hour after they’d passed through the border, her father had stopped the Peugeot, stumbled from the driver’s seat and thrown up violently by the side of the road. Georgie decided he couldn’t have been feeling well for some time. He’d been ill at ease the whole day and she’d noticed his hand trembling as he twisted the key in the ignition.

  ‘Are you all right, Dad?’

  ‘I’m so sorry, George,’ he’d said tersely. ‘I’m so terribly sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ she protested timidly. ‘You’re the one who’s sick. It must have been all that horrid food.’

  He lowered his head to the steering wheel and banged it once, hard against the leather.

  Georgie sat very still. Lord knows, the minute the lights of West Germany had appeared she too had felt like throwing herself to the ground and kissing the soil. She had expected the uneasy atmosphere to fade with every mile, but instead she could feel the raised hairs on the back of her neck. Try as she might, she couldn’t shake the feeling that they were still being watched. She wanted to ask her father what was wrong. She wanted to ask him about the church. About whether the Stasi had followed them inside and recorded what they’d seen. She wanted to ask him why at the checkpoint the Grenzer, disregarding her father’s diplomatic card, had waved the Peugeot into an inspection pit and initiated a search, only to abandon it abruptly after receiving a phone call – but more than these she wanted to ask her father about the look on his face as he’d been ordered out of the car and directed towards the small interrogation booth. He’d told her a couple of times that the harassment of visitors and searching of cars was standard procedure and this had made his expression all the more shocking to her. Because there had been fear twisting his face. Raw, unconstrained fear.

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘The food.’ He took her hand and held it to his cheek. ‘Forgive me, my little George, forgive me,’ and his voice had dropped unrecognizably low. ‘I should never have brought you.’

  She was not stupid. She was not a child. MI6 had reports to write and boxes to tick. What boxes could there possibly be? Accident. Suicide. Murder.

  She buried her face in her father’s handkerchief. There was another explanation. There had to be. For the trip to Berlin, for the meeting in the church and the whispered handover that accompanied it.

  ‘My father is not a traitor,’ she whispered. ‘My father is not a traitor.’ For a second her spirit
s lifted, then she remembered. Her father was dead. She would never know. She would live the rest of her life not knowing. She rushed back into the bathroom, swept the hair off her face and, just in time, knelt down over the loo.

  42

  ‘Good day to you, Letitia, and how are you keeping?’

  Letty smiled blankly at the stranger on her doorstep. ‘Well, thank you,’ she replied, trawling her brain for a clue to the woman’s identity. The ready use of her first name threw her, hinting, as it did, at more than a passing acquaintance.

  ‘Why, it must be several years since we last had the pleasure.’

  ‘Indeed.’ Letty’s diplomatic training snapped in. ‘Come in, do, please.’

  Her visitor was middle-aged and wearing face powder a fraction too bright for her complexion. The powder suggested non-islander. Letty herself had not worn make-up since the day she’d arrived and the idea of Peggy or Morag coyly applying blusher whilst totting up receipts at the shop seemed almost ludicrous. Then there was the expensive scarf she was draping over the back of the chair while her smart trousers, with their echo of easy-press, were decidedly more the patina of lowland style than island.

  ‘Oh, but I’m glad to get out of that croft for a while,’ the women confided. ‘They’re pretty enough from the outside, I’ll give you that, but inside, well . . . to be honest, I don’t know how they stand it. The ventilation is completely inadequate. It will be some time before I can wash the smell of peat out of my hair.’