by John Tagholm
He continued the theme over lunch, imagining the life of the girl called Flotsam and she watched him closely as he wove fact and fiction, building a world for the young girl out of the scraps of evidence at their disposal. He was a natural communicator and by the time they took the DLR to the tip of the Isle of Dogs, Flotsam’s short life became once again full of possibilities and it would not have surprised her to see the young girl standing on this very foreshore where she may, once upon a time, have played.
By now she was familiar with the river at low tide, a sleeping beast in disguise, reduced and deceptively docile, shrunk back by the previous night’s full moon to reveal more of the shore than they had seen before. The marker remained but she watched Harry work beyond this, exploring the extra few metres of river bed offered by the exceptional tide.
‘It’s a needle in a haystack, but we won’t have a tide like this for ages, so we’d best make the most of it.’ Harry was immediately engrossed and Beatrice found that the little she had been shown, the traces at the British Museum and the importance that he gave them, made the ground she was walking on almost sacred and everything beneath her feet became a possible clue. Looking down on the few metres of mud and stone the river conceded, she hardly knew where to begin. Next to her she watched Harry pick up and discard shapes that caught his eye, his gloved hands working quickly and she could sense his optimism that somehow a thousand years of tides might have sifted further clues to the life of Flotsam and left them just here for him to find. Her own hopes were set ridiculously high and she wanted to see a strand of silver at the end of which would be a clear, round of rock crystal. Time slipped by and the river inched towards them and they barely spoke, two figures stooped and focused on the ground beneath them.
‘I’ve never been to Marseille,’ he said, out of the blue.
She stood up, arched her back to release the pain of having been crouching for so long and saw that Harry was still bent over the river and had his back to her.
‘What are you suggesting?’
‘If you’d consider a research partner on your trip there. Bit like you being here with me today.’
‘A professional relationship, you mean.’
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I thought you might like the company.’ He stood up and took a pace towards her, leant forward and kissed her on the lips. It was momentary and he resumed his crouch almost immediately.
‘Professional?’
‘Indeed. A close working relationship.’
‘OK, then.’
They continued searching, the tide slowly pushing them up the slope of the shore. They found nothing new and afterwards sat drinking tea on the river wall, waiting for the water to cover the ground in front of them whilst kicking their boots against the old bricks.
‘Are you disappointed?’ she said.
‘Far from it. Did you know, the Golden Hind was kept in a special dock just over there, after it had finished going around the world?’ He pointed along the river in the direction of an ugly block of council houses that had probably been built between the wars. ‘It was allowed to fall to pieces. Incredible, isn’t it? We might even have walked over bits of it today.’
Beatrice couldn’t quite imagine what it would be like going to Marseille with Harry Wesley, but then again, once he’d suggested it, she couldn’t now imagine going without him.
‘I’ll book, then,’ she said.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
The same moon hangs in the sky over the bridge, round and complete, lighting the river and the town but taking all the colour from the panorama in front of her. Down below, the fishermen are already at work and the birds, who think it is day, are crying to each other. She had woken during the night and called out, the face in the window as clear as the moon is now, the staring eyes more terrible, fixed and still following her even to this step above the water where she often sits. Her mother had come to her side during the night and she had clung to her warmth and listened to her words. There was nothing to be frightened of, she was reassured, you were surprised, that’s all. Her mother says she should visit the woman so that she might understand her better. She lies in her mother’s arms until they slept. When she woke it was still dark and her mother was not there, just the shape of her body on the bed. She knows the moon and the woman in the window are omens.
When the sun rises and the mists lift from the river, she walks up through the town towards the old wall to seek her mother’s childhood friend, knowing that she is in need of help. A harsh winter cold deadens the air and groups cluster around a fire on the path, smoke drifting feebly in the damp air. She sees the woman in the fields beyond the wall, a haunted and diminished figure and when they meet she can see the suspicion on her face. She holds out her hand and at first the woman is surprised and looks at it unable to decide what to do. And then, tentatively, she places her hand on top, her cold dirty fingers uncertain whether to hold or merely touch. And then the hand begins to shake and she sees the woman is weeping, her tears clearing a line down her grimy cheeks to reveal the true colour of her face. She starts to talk, slowly and painfully at first, then more quickly, the words contained in her for too long and now bursting forth in a rush. She places her other hand on top of the woman’s and listens to the story of the short life of her son, born one long, hot summer but who lived to see only another five. She describes him, his pale face and fine hair and makes him so real he might have been standing there beside them. She can feel the woman’s pain as she tells of his brief life and then his sudden death, struck by a horse during the panic caused by another attack. She found him, she says simply, apparantly untouched, perfect except for just a trickle of blood from his nose. He was a person, she pleads and he’d been taken and she weeps again in front of her and the noise of her sobs carry across the field and up towards the fading moon. Her shoulders are hunched and her head bowed. He is buried close to the river and she visits the grave every day and now she leads her to the place to stand above his grave, the river just visible through the trees. She looks at the old woman and feels that unfairness hangs between them, one child taken, another spared and understands insitinctively that her broken heart has produced a mix of sorrow and hate. The eyes that had woken her now look at her again and the coldness has returned. By the time they leave the grave the river has risen so high the water is seeping into the soil, bleeding into what lies beneath.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
That Beatrice sat alone in the train pulling out of St Pancras, looking down at the old parish church as instructed, and that she was heading for Paris en route for Freiburg in Germany and not Marseille in France, was the result of a conversation that took place with Harry Wesley over supper after their trip to the river. He suggested they choose a place that neither had been to before and although he didn’t explain why, he didn’t have to and she agreed without question. So they found themselves sitting in a faux French interior under a covered shopping mall near London Bridge that, once upon a time in a more dignified era, had been a dock for tea clippers returning from their mammoth trips to south India. This, anyway, was the picture that Harry painted of their surroundings as they ate entrecôte frites and drank a carafe of red wine.
He was extremely courteous, as if the quickly stolen kiss on the foreshore was seen as a step too far and should not be misinterpreted. They were professional companions again and their mutual understanding of this made the evening all the more intimate. He worried away at the background for her proposed film, making her recount the various meetings and discoveries of recent weeks. He was properly involved and Beatrice watched him thinking about her replies, weighing the information he received.
‘There are gaps,’ he declared, clarifying her thoughts as the evening stretched out. ‘Here is a five year old boy at the outbreak of war, almost certainly the result of a relationship with a German diplomat who is sent home a year before the invasion of France. It’s doubtful that Troumeg can have had a proper memory of his father. But then the boy has
to survive the war, a Jew when Jews were being rounded up and deported. When he’s nine and Paris is liberated, it looks as though his mother is accused of collaboration. What happens to her then? Many were sent to jail. If so, what about the boy? What does he do?’
‘Too many questions, Harry, although I may be able to answer one. I’m fairly certain that she may have been sent to Fresnes jail, just outside Paris.’
‘Did she hide him during the war? Did she receive special protection, favoured status in some way?’
‘More questions, Dr Wesley.’
‘Yes, well, you’ve got to go to Marseille and talk to Joseph with only half the story. Do you think that’s right? Don’t you need a little more before you can begin to barter with him, swap what you know for his side of the story.’
‘If he’s prepared to do that.’
‘And I’ve been thinking, I don’t think it’s right that I come with you. I think I’d get in the way.’
She knew this was correct the moment he said it and she put her hand on the top of his as her form of agreement, again no explanation necessary.
‘I’ve been thinking that I might want to go to Germany first, to see if I can track down Traugott’s family. I’ve seen his letters. I wonder if hers survived?’
They parted on the north side of London Bridge. They didn’t kiss, she noted, pleased because the progress of their negotiations was still not clear and the heads of agreement had still to be finalised. It only struck her later, walking by the towering NatWest building, that she had forgotten to ask him a key question relating to those terms and conditions. Did he currently have a partner, married or otherwise? He didn’t give the impression that he had, but then neither did the majority of men when trying to pick her up. She weighed the mobile in her hand, deciding whether to call him but somewhere by Liverpool Street station decided against it, slipping it back into her pocket as she crossed into Spitalfields.
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The Traugotts were a well established Freiburg family, extensive and well connected, involved in local politics and business, deeply embedded in the community and keen to welcome Beatrice and her research. The patriach of the family, to whom she was routed after several phone calls, was Sebastian’s brother’s son, now in his sixties and retired. She arranged to meet him the following day, which was why she was now pulling out of St Pancras and watching the old church slip out of view. She could have flown, but she preferred the train and would change in Paris for the connection to Freiburg.
Harry Wesley seemed to move in the quarter of an hour ahead of her, she thought, dipping under the Thames yet again, if not guessing what she was thinking, but making connections just before she did. Instinctively he appreciated her caution in not wanting to repeat the mistakes of previous relationships and he’d pulled back, leaving her space and in this freedom there was a new comfort and what she’d experienced the night before in the restaurant, a closeness without the inevitability of sex.
By the time she’d changed in Paris a new series of thoughts had begun to compete for her attention, if not more important, then more immediate. The ripples of history might now be quite faint as far as Flotsam was concerned, but they were larger with Sebastian Traugott and it occurred to Beatrice that the existence of Joseph as his son might not be known to the family and that she would need to exercise enlightened caution when she arrived in Freiburg. On the phone she had explained that she was a film maker who wanted to know more about Sebastian and his time at the German embassy in Paris, but no more.
The neatness of Freiburg surprised her, even the geographical location, partly encased by the Black Forest, its boundaries precisely trimmed and not spilling ugly suburbs into the countryside. The home of Lothar Traugott was equally ordered, surrounded by an open garden, the lawns running into the pavement, the path winding towards an impressive house on different levels sitting comfortably in its grounds.
‘Welcome, Frau Palmenter,’ Lothar Traugott announced in perfect English, a beaming man wearing a pale yellow sweater over a white shirt, beige cords and brogues. He led the way into the house and Beatrice had already decided on an approach which would leave Joseph Troumeg’s name unspoken until she judged it necessary, or safe, or both. What awaited her made this task easy, at least to begin with.
‘There,’ Lothar said, pointing to a large chart pinned on the wall of his extensive study. ‘The family tree. I update it for every familientag, when as many of us as is possible gather here to celebrate.’ He walked over and pointed to his own descent through the family tree, the drip of names through the ages. ‘We go back until the mid-fifteenth century,’ looking at her for approval. ‘Not many can say that.’
Her eye had already been tracking along to discover Sebastian’s name and she found it on an extension above Lothar’s but before she could register it properly, he had moved across her line of vision and was offering her a glass of wine. ‘Tell me about your uncle Sebastian,’ she said and sat back with her Reisling and waited.
‘What is it that you wish to know?’
Although smiling and raising his glass to her in a toast, she could hear the caution in his voice and detected a steeliness behind his soft-coloured exterior.
‘I’m interested in his time in Paris, the four years up until he left. Difficult days on so many levels. He was clearly an important man at the embassy.’
‘He was indeed. As you say, they were turbulent times that are constantly being scrutinised. What is the particular angle your film is taking?’
‘I can understand your caution,’ she said, having been through this hoop many times whilst preparing her films. Part of her wanted to come straight to the point, but her earlier apprehension prevailed and her reply, if not the complete truth, was close enough to be going on with. ‘I have reason to believe that Sebastian may have had a relationship with a French woman during his days there. I thought this might have been unusual.’
‘And what is unusual about a young man having a relationship with a woman?’
‘It wasn’t any old relationship.’
‘Enough to build a film around?’
‘If the relationship had any substance,’ Beatrice replied, ignoring the scepticism of Lothar’s response, ‘it might be a useful focus for looking at what was happening in Paris in the thirties.’
‘Such as?’
A pale wintry look had settled on Lothar Traugott’s face and his drink remained untouched. There was more than one responsibility that now confronted Beatrice. She could not raise Joseph’s name, for if his existence as Sebastian’s son was unknown, then it would impact on both Lothar’s family and on Joseph himself.
‘Anti-Semitism,’ for example. ‘In both the French and the Germans.’
He put his glass down on a sideboard beneath the family tree. ‘Young lady,’ he said with a backward nod of the head, ‘this is my family and I feel naturally protective of it. In amongst all these people there are the good as well as the bad, as I imagine in all families, and I feel disinclined to open old wounds and to make life more difficult than it need be.’
Beatrice stood up and walked over to the family tree, where she put down her glass alongside Lothar’s. She was now able to see that the branch of the tree that contained Sebastian’s name had no issue leading from it and so she chose her next words carefully. ‘I have some proof that Sebastian’s relationship in Paris was with a young Jewish woman.’ Again, there was no noticeable reaction from the man. ‘And, given the nature of the times, this represented quite a risk for both of them, wouldn’t you say?’ She picked up her wine and returned to her seat.
Lothar had his back to her when he spoke, looking out on to the neat, well ordered garden of his home. ‘What purpose would it serve, to reheat this well trammelled piece of history?’
‘Considerable.’ She waited until he turned around. ‘What if the relationship between this member of your family and this Jewish woman was a loving one? This is not well trammelled territory, su
rely? Doesn’t this offer a different perspective?’
‘You have proof of this?’
‘I have some proof of this. I have seen Sebastian’s letters to this woman. Her name was Odile. Odile Levy, who became Odile Leval.’
‘And what became of this Odile?’
‘She survived the war, but not without penalty. She was accused of collaboration and, I think, spent some time in prison. She lived, though, until her nineties.’ Beatrice was about to describe how the letters had been saved, but held back and waited for Lothar’s response.
‘You know what happened to Sebastian?’
‘I understand he was killed in the Ardennes.’ Beatrice was not sure if Lothar Traugott was now persuaded to be on her side, or remained entrenched in the defence of his family’s name.
‘He’s in a cemetery up there, in Belgium. Recogne, it’s called. Our war cemeteries aren’t quite as dignified as yours. Perhaps that’s our penalty, who knows. He’s buried with two others. It might be that he knew them, maybe he didn’t. Companions, let’s say, one way or the other. It’s not so long ago, is it?’
She shook her head.
‘I was born two years after the war ended and my childhood is one of being told not to remember, only to look ahead. We did not want to address what had taken place but to put it behind us. This was forbidden history. My father, Sebastian’s brother, was severe about this. He did not even visit his son’s grave until the mid-sixties. Could not bring himself to do it. So sad, but then so understandable, don’t you agree?’