The Summer of the Bear

by Bella Pollen

  ‘Jumped?’ Aliz stared at her. ‘Why?’

  ‘No one knows,’ Georgie said. Secrets were lies you carried deep inside and they got heavier with each passing day. Aliz was still staring. Grains of sand glittered on the curve of his cheekbone.

  ‘Except me,’ she whispered. ‘I know.’

  67

  What had made her mother cry? A note from the bank? A letter from the embassy? All morning Alba brooded. Could Georgie have confessed her sneaky rendezvous with the Paki’s son? Well, serve her mother right for opting so comprehensively out of her children’s lives. Mechanically, she went about stacking the kitchen chairs on top of the table. She couldn’t forget the way her mother had cried, the silent wailing, the desperate Gollum’s hold she’d kept on that letter, reading, sobbing, reading, sobbing, a masochistic feeding of her pain. What the Deuteronomy was it all about? Wasn’t there supposed to be a moratorium on emotion in their family? Weren’t they supposed to have cornered the market in stiff upper lip? Either way she would make it her business to find out. She fetched the broom from the outside room and slammed the door behind her, the violence making her feel better. Today all contractual obligations to her sister ended. No more family cooking, no more Jamie charity. From now on she would prepare her own meals and eat them in the peaceful solitude of her room. Hell, she would eat dust off the floor if it suited her.

  She gave the cork tiles a cursory once-over. The section of flooring under the table was covered, most impractically, with a thick seagrass matting into which was embedded a mincemeat of squashed flies, the pin-like limbs of daddy long-legs along with a pick’n’mix of dropped food from the table, all of which were impossible to extract from within the mat’s scratchy furrows. Alba amalgamated her dirt into a single pyramid then, lifting the corner of the mat, swept it underneath. She felt no guilt. Sweeping stuff under the carpet was a family hobby they were all becoming increasingly skilled at.

  Her mother hurried through the kitchen, car keys and bag in hand. She hesitated when she saw her daughter and before Alba could turn away, stepped quickly forwards and cupped her cheek.

  ‘My darling. You’ve been such a help to me these past few weeks. Thank you.’

  Alba wavered. The touch of her mother’s hand was unexpectedly calming; then she remembered. Anger was her refuge. It was all she had left.

  68

  ‘Alick, why don’t you come any more when we put the flag out for you?’

  ‘Well, I’ve a good many things to do just now,’ Alick said.

  Jamie looked doubtful. It was early afternoon, but Alick had only just got up. His wire-brush hair was sticking up and his eyes were red-rimmed.

  ‘Is it because you’re scared of Flora Macdonald’s ghost?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘Because Mum said that Flora Macdonald went to Australia with Neilly McLellan and it’s just the wind that makes that howling noise.’

  ‘If Flora and that rascal got to Australia,’ Alick said bitterly, ‘then they’re a lucky pair of devils and that’s a fact.’ He scrabbled some loose tobacco off the table and looked around for his papers.

  Jamie watched him unhappily. The electric blower was on full and he could hardly breathe for the cloying heat. Usually he liked the military tidiness of Alick’s caravan. The caravan served as both house and workshop and Jamie thought that were a giant to pick it up and shake it, the fallout of handy household and mechanical items would shower the island with a hail of lethal metal. Today, though, the caravan wasn’t orderly at all. The cushion Jamie was sitting on was haemorrhaging foam and a dirty plate sat on the linoleum-covered table with a fork insolently embedded into a mess of congealed eggs. Plus, the caravan smelt of something sour and mildewy. Attics and dead things, Jamie thought vaguely, attics and dead things. He wrinkled his nose and scratched impatiently at a midge bite while Alick struggled with the buttons of his boiler suit. It was already clouding over and a storm was brewing. There would be no use looking for stags in bad weather.

  ‘Were you scared of ghosts when you were my age?’

  ‘The will-o’-the-wisp,’ Alick said grimly. ‘That’s what I was scared of. I only saw it once, but it was made up of a whole lot of lights right enough and so bright it seemed to move with the wind.’

  ‘But what was it?’

  ‘No one’s exactly sure, but something phosphorous in the bog anyways. It must have been gases right enough, but still and all, we were terrified it would get us.’

  Jamie looked out of the window. A small party of greylags had just landed in the flooded field. ‘Alick, if you died and came back as an animal, what do you think you’d come back as?’

  ‘Captain Alick is indestructible.’ Alick flashed him a grin. ‘So I’ll not be dying anytime soon.’

  ‘But do you think people can come back as animals?’

  ‘Of course. Why there’s a sheep out on the machair, I swear is the very spitting image of Donald John’s dead aunty.’ Alick pushed open the door of the caravan and jumped down. ‘Let’s be off.’

  ‘Can I drive?’

  ‘Aye, if you don’t put us in the ditch.’ Alick climbed up into the tractor seat and pulled Jamie up after him. Jamie sat on his lap, put the tractor in gear and turned the stiff key. There were few pleasures in life as great as operating heavy machinery but, to his frustration, they’d gone barely a hundred yards before they were waved down by Peggy, a grim look on her face and a white plastic bag hanging from her wrist. Jamie’s heart sank.

  ‘If you’re headin’ to Hourghebost, Alick, will you give me a ride?’

  ‘We’re away to the Committee Road, Peggy.’

  ‘To the Committee Road! At a time like this?’

  Alick looked at her blankly.

  ‘You’ve no’ heard then?’ Peggy was a determined competitor in the gossip race and nothing made her happier than being first over the line with the news.

  ‘What is there to hear?’

  ‘Why, word is all over the island,’ she hedged. ‘I’d be surprised if it’s not on the wireless too.’

  The real skill of the game was to delay the actual information for as long as possible while systematically building up interest. Peggy had plenty more teasers up her sleeve, but she hadn’t allowed for the severity of Alick’s hangover.

  ‘Out with it, woman,’ he commanded.

  ‘Well, if you must know,’ she said ungraciously, ‘they’ve spotted the bear.’

  ‘The bear?’ Jamie spluttered. ‘My bear?’

  ‘Aye, the wrestler’s bear,’ Peggy said, only partially mollified by Jamie’s reaction.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Jamie sprang out of his seat.

  ‘Quite sure, and what an excitement, with everyone thinking he was drowned all this time.’

  ‘I knew it.’ Jamie punched the air with his fist. ‘I knew he was still alive.’

  ‘Alive and well indeed,’ Peggy said placidly. Normal protocol at this juncture demanded a laborious Q and A, but Jamie, feverish with excitement, began bombarding her with questions. Where had they found him? Who had found him? Was he okay? Was he hurt?

  Peggy relented. ‘Old Archie down at Hourghebost was getting ready to go out with the sheep when he saw a wee furry ear sticking up behind the rock. Indeed, he reasoned at once it must be the bear and he had that nice Sergeant Anderson down in a jiffy bringing the wrestler with him. Why, the man was that keen to get here, they say he flew up in an army helicopter, all the way from Perthshire with half the press on his heels.’

  ‘So they’ve caught him.’

  ‘Why, no, that’s it.’ Peggy, still working her way towards the actual essence of the news, shook her head in feigned disbelief. ‘It’s the strangest thing. Archie says the wrestler put down a bucket of fish not fifty yards in front of him and the bear didn’a move an inch towards him!’

  ‘Why not?’ Jamie said.

  ‘So he’s still on the loose?’ Alick squinted thoughtfully in the direction of Hourghebost.

  ‘Aye
, took himself off at a run,’ Peggy said triumphantly, ‘and with the reward still on his head.’

  Alick stabbed at the tractor’s starting button and stuck out a hand for Jamie.

  ‘Come on,’ he said grimly. ‘We’ll get after him.’

  ‘Well, you’d best be careful,’ Peggy said, unwilling to relinquish her audience without an encore, ‘for it’s the greatest likelihood he’s gone mad.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ Jamie couldn’t stand to think of the bear in pain.

  ‘Because if after six weeks that poor beast’s not looking for his fish and he’s not looking for his wrestler, then who on earth can he be looking for?’

  Jamie almost heard the click in his head. He paused, his foot on the metal step of the tractor. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked slowly.

  ‘Well, no doubt it was the commotion that scared him, but I heard Archie tell that the bear took off in such a hurry, why, anyone would think he had some kind of unfinished business to take care of.’

  Now Jamie’s brain was flashing like a circuit board. The bear .. . of course, the bear! Hadn’t the bear been with him every step of the journey? From the Zirkusplatz in Bonn to the coach passing him on the Inverary road? If the Peugeot hadn’t rolled into the river, wouldn’t they have even crossed the Minch on the same ferry? Oh, he was stupid and stupider. It had been his father who’d made him love bears. The Gummibär sweets, the grizzly in the museum. The Zirkusbär balancing on his unicycle. His father who had told him that bears were princely animals. Bears are highly intelligent, he’d said, and this

  one has been well educated. English, French, German and Russian, and weren’t these his father’s languages? Hadn’t the bear shared his father’s hobbies of fishing and painting? Jamie felt his heart slam painfully against his ribs. If his father were to come back as an animal, then what else would he choose? Oh, Alba was right. He was a retard! He was nugatory. He felt like smacking himself in the face. Of course the bear wouldn’t allow himself to be caught. Of course he would not be lured from his purpose by some smelly bucket of fish. His father had come back exactly as he’d promised. He had unfinished business, something to tell his family, and all this time, all these weeks he’d been waiting patiently for Jamie to find him, for Jamie to hear him. For Jamie to understand.

  69

  Bonn

  After questioning Georgie for an hour, it had been Porter’s turn to take notes. He moved quietly to the end of the table, his suit straining over his stocky shoulders, while Norrell repositioned himself casually next to Georgie, the very personification of friendly informality. I am no more threatening, his swinging leg seemed to imply, than an elder brother or school friend helping with your biology homework.

  ‘So, why don’t you tell us what he looked like?’ Norrell asked her. ‘This man your father saw. This Torsten fellow. Where exactly did you meet him and what was discussed?’

  Georgie had fixed her gaze on the man’s jacket. It was virtually without creases. A pen was hooked by the lid onto his lapel.

  The door to the room opened. The Ambassadress entered carrying a mug of hot chocolate, which she set on the table. ‘How are we doing?’ she enquired. When there was no immediate reply, she stiffened her back. Protocol was not as clear as it might be on the interrogation of minors of deceased diplomats. She bore no particular fondness for either the secret ferrets of the government or Nicky Fleming’s eldest daughter, with whom she’d had little contact over the years, but Fleming had died on her watch and she would see to it that there was fair play. ‘Mr Porter?’

  ‘Very well, very well,’ Porter responded with weary heartiness.

  ‘Georgiana?’ Again Gillian waited for an answer but Georgie was staring over her shoulder. Framed in the shadow of the doorway stood the familiarly shambolic form of Tom Gordunson and she felt the tightness of fear loosen a notch. Tom would make it all right. Tom was family.

  Or was he? As he stepped forward, she caught his brief nod to Porter and Norrell, before all three men turned once again to her. ‘Are you all right, Georgie?’ Tom asked. ‘Would you like me to stay?’

  Georgie’s fraught brain whirled. Trust no one, her father had told her. Can’t you see? They’re all watching you.

  ‘Perhaps a woman . . .’ the Ambassadress was saying quietly. She took Georgie’s limp hand in her own and patted it. She had two grown-up sons, both serving overseas. It was a long time since she’d held a child’s hand out of love rather than duty, but empathy was an emotion she had practised assiduously.

  Georgie withdrew her hand and pushed away the hot chocolate. She was no longer a child whose cooperation could be bought. The Ambassadress absorbed the hostile atmosphere and recalibrated her tactics accordingly. ‘Georgiana, these men are here to help. They understand how difficult this is for you and they wholly appreciate your desire to be loyal to your father, but you must realize that anything you tell them now might help to put the record straight.’

  ‘The record?’ Georgie looked from the Ambassadress to the three men. It was a colossal gaffe and all of them recognized it. Georgie knew then she had been right to lie. That she would continue to lie.

  ‘Just a turn of phrase, my dear.’ The Ambassadress took barely a second to recover. ‘I’m afraid that in the business we’re in, even tragedy is subject to records and red tape. I’m so sorry’ She turned the handle of the mug towards Georgie and eased it gently in her direction. ‘You’ll tell them everything they want to know, won’t you?’

  Georgie nodded. The day she’d left East Berlin, she’d put it out of her mind, the echo of her feet on the stone flags in the church, the low whispers and the strained face of the man her father had met inside.

  ‘Be careful, Georgie.’

  She looked up. Tom was standing right over her. His suit was absurdly rumpled but then his eyes met hers. She felt weak with certainty. He knows, she thought. He knows.

  ‘It’s hot,’ Tom warned. ‘Take small sips.’

  Georgie picked up the mug and gulped down as much liquid as she could. She winced as the scalding milk blistered her tongue and took the skin off the back of her throat. The pain was good. It made her less vulnerable.

  ‘Don’t keep her too much longer,’ the Ambassadress instructed Norrell, and for the smallest second it seemed to Georgie that the woman’s composure had slipped. ‘After all,’ she added with infinite compassion, ‘she’s only a child.’

  After Tom and the Ambassadress had left, Georgie told the men everything. How they’d walked into the hotel restaurant. How her father asked for a table and the waiter denied having one, and then, in response to her father gesturing towards all the empty tables, had said coolly, ‘Your eyes deceive you,’ and stared hard at the wallet in Nicky’s hands. She told them that of the eight items listed on the menu, seven had been unavailable and that when her order of sausage and potatoes arrived, she noticed that the meat, too, gave off a lingering smell of lignite. The sausage had been as white and sickly as an albino’s thumb. She told Porter and Norrell how none of the streetlamps worked and how dark and sinister and vast the Alexan-derplatz had seemed. She told them that Torsten had been wearing a knitted tie and orange shoes that didn’t look as though they were made of leather.

  She took her time to answer every question. She overwhelmed Norrell and Porter with information, drowned them in detail, but as she watched them painstakingly transcribe every word, she could see the impatience in their eyes and she encouraged herself with the thought of them later, terse, chain-smoking, the insides of their mouths furred from too much coffee, scouring page after page of extraneous truths in the hopes of identifying the single one important lie.

  ‘And what did they talk about, your father and this man?’ Norrell, still deceptively relaxed, made a show of checking his own notes. ‘Who did they talk about? Can you remember if they mentioned anyone in particular?’

  ‘I was a bit bored, really’ Georgie matched her tone to his. ‘I read my book most of the time. The Mayor of
Caster-bridge, we were studying it at the BHS last term and there was a test coming up.’

  It was true, Georgie had read her book. Still, echoes of the conversation kept returning to her. Schyndell. Torsten and her father’s frustration with regard to the factory clean-up. The apparently unanswered questions of who was at fault, who was to be blamed, whose head would roll? The determination of every tier of East German government from the Politburo down to blame management and for management to kick someone further down the ladder. She clearly remembered her father saying quietly and furiously, ‘It’s nothing more than a witchhunt,’ with Torsten’s reply coming in an equally low voice: ‘Yes. Apparently this is the last we’ll be seeing of our friend Bertolt Brecht – I’m afraid he’s going to be scrubbing institutional toilets for the rest of his life.’

  ‘Why would Bertolt Brecht be scrubbing toilets?’ she’d asked later. ‘I thought Bertolt Brecht was a playwright.’

  Her father had been distracted. The Peugeot wouldn’t start and they’d been waiting over an hour outside the hotel for the garage to pick it up.

  ‘He is a playwright,’ he answered after a second or two, ‘but all the players in our little industrial accident have pet names. It makes the meetings a little more lively for us.’ He had been play-acting at jolly, she’d thought retrospectively; even at the time, he’d looked tense and worried.

  ‘Ah! Here they come at last.’ He blew on his hands and stamped his feet against the cold as a breakdown truck swung round the corner.

  ‘So, what happened in the church?’ Porter asked.

  Accident, Murder or Suicide. In the matter of her father, the government had boxes to tick and files to close.