Touching the Wire

by Rebecca Bryn

Adam moved to her defence. ‘That’s enough, Robin.’

  ‘Enough? You think she’s so perfect?’

  She grabbed Robin’s arm. ‘Robin, please.’

  ‘What precisely did I bully you into doing, Charlotte? Come on, why don’t you tell everyone?’

  She swallowed: if Adam had to learn about her sleeping with Robin she didn’t want it to be like this. Gran was staring at her, her expression shocked. She’d disappointed her, and Mum. ‘Just go, Robin, or I swear I’ll tell your father what you’re really like.’ She lowered her voice. ‘I could have you charged with assault. You’ll be hearing from my solicitors.’

  Adam took a half step forward.

  ‘Leave it, Adam. Robin’s going.’

  Robin spat the words. ‘Nice to meet you, Adam. You’re welcome to the lying, cheating cow. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

  Adam drew himself up. ‘You won’t bully her again. Now, why don’t you do as Charlotte asks, and go?’

  ‘I still haven’t finished with you, Charlotte.’ Robin swung round and slammed his fist into Adam’s jaw, hurling him back onto the settee.

  She jabbed her hands into Robin’s chest, pushing him away. Adam put himself between them. ‘If you want a fight, Robin, why don’t we take it outside?’

  ‘Adam, no… are you hurt?’

  He rubbed his jaw. ‘I’m okay.’

  She turned on Robin. ‘Get out. I never want to see you again.’

  ‘Don’t think you’ll walk away from this unscathed.’ He spun on his heel. The front door crashed shut behind him leaving only the threat to linger.

  ‘Gran, Mum… I’m sorry.’

  Mum stepped to her aid. ‘Robin never appreciated you, love.’

  Gran looked flustered. ‘I don’t understand what’s happened between you two, but I’m sorry I interfered, Charlotte. I should know better at my age.’

  ‘It’s not your fault, Gran. Robin hit me, too. It’s why I left him.’ She squeezed Adam’s hand. ‘You sure you’re okay?’

  He waggled his jaw from side to side and winced. ‘No real harm done. Now, what about this lunch? I’m starving.’

  She smiled in gratitude at the change of subject. ‘Can I do anything to help, Mum?’ She looked back to see Adam and Gran huddled over the diary.

  Mum opened the fridge door. ‘Adultery, Charlotte?’

  ‘Don’t judge me, Mum, please. I’m not proud of myself.’

  Mum turned and hugged her. ‘I just want you to be happy, love. If Robin was a mistake… Well, anyway… Adam seems like a good man.’

  She hugged Mum back, unable to speak.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The double doors of Barton Leys opened onto a heat wave of disinfectant and something less savoury. Charlotte approached a uniformed nurse: her name badge read Sister Thompson. ‘We’ve come to visit Mr Carr.’

  Sister Thompson smiled. ‘I’ll show you the way. You’re not related to Albert?’

  ‘He was a friend of my grandfather.’

  ‘Ah, that’s nice. He’s almost a hundred. He’s been here longer than most of the staff. He doesn’t get visitors so he’ll be pleased to see you, but I should warn you he doesn’t always know who he is.’

  A wizened little man with a shock of white hair, his bony arms protruding from a short-sleeved shirt, dozed in a chair.

  Sister shook his arm. ‘Albert… Albert, you have visitors.’

  He opened his eyes and fixed them with a hawk-like stare. ‘Who are you?’ His voice was thin and reedy.

  ‘I’m Charlotte Cummings.’ She spoke clearly, in case he was deaf. ‘I’m Walt Blundell’s granddaughter.’

  The hawk eyes shot wide open. He recovered slowly and shrank into his chair. ‘Cummings? Who is this?’

  ‘This is Adam… a friend.’

  ‘How come your name’s Cummings? You should be Masters, shouldn’t you? What was his name? Vince, wasn’t it?’

  Robin had dragged her mind back to being a Cummings. ‘You knew my father?’

  He produced a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped a watering eye. He patted the chair beside him. His hand shook. ‘Yes… I knew your father, and your mother, though I haven’t seen her for many, many years. Is she well?’

  ‘Yes, she’s very well, thank you.’ She perched on the edge of the chair, uncomfortably aware of the damp patch. ‘She and Gran have just moved to a bungalow. Gran couldn’t manage the stairs anymore.’

  ‘Jane… she’s still alive?’

  ‘Yes. She’s almost ninety and as fit as a fiddle.’

  He rubbed a palm slowly across his chest. ‘Ninety… yes, I suppose she must be.’

  ‘How did you know Gran and Grandpa?’

  A bony hand reached out and held hers. ‘You don’t remember me, do you, Charlotte?’ He paused, his eyes seeming to focus on something long ago and far away. He shook his head. ‘I remember you when you were so little a puff of wind would have blown you away like a dandelion clock.’

  ‘You do? I’m sorry. I was only eleven when Grandpa died. I don’t remember his friends, except Ted.’

  ‘I moved away… but Kettering was always home… Ted, now. Is he still alive?’

  ‘He died about eight years ago. Ted would have drowned but for Grandpa.’

  ‘Yes, I remember.’

  Adam’s quiet voice interrupted the far-away stare. ‘We’re here about some papers we’ve found.’

  ‘Papers? What papers?’

  ‘Some carvings Walt made led us to a safety-deposit box in Newcastle.’

  The old man blanched and pressed a hand against his chest. ‘No…’

  ‘I’ve read the papers, Albert.’ Adam’s voice was even. ‘I know what they are.’

  He’d told her he still wasn’t sure of the facts. What wasn’t he telling her? ‘We know who Hans Wolfgang Schmitt is, Albert. I swore an oath to expose the truth Grandpa wanted known. I think he meant the truth about Schmitt.’

  The ancient voice cracked, tremulous. ‘Jane, Jennie…’

  Adam sat on the chair next to her and leaned closer. ‘I understand the possible media attention, Albert.’

  ‘Adam?’ She glanced at him but he ignored her.

  ‘We need to know how you came by the papers and how Walt was involved. I have to be certain they’re authentic. We can hand them over to the authorities anonymously if need be.’

  The creased face relaxed slightly. ‘You must promise to protect Walt’s family.’

  ‘We promise.’ She smiled. ‘After all, we are Walt’s family.’

  ‘Ah, yes, of course you are. You had a sister…’

  ‘Lucy. She has five children now. Twins run in the family it seems.’

  ‘Twins…’ His voice faltered. ‘Little Lucy. And you? How many do you have?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘You’re still young.’

  She looked at her hands. ‘Where did you get the documents, Albert?’

  ‘Walt and I were in a German concentration camp, in Poland.’ His blue eyes misted over with pain and his voice creaked. ‘If you’ve read the documents you know which one. We survived, which is more than most did… starvation, disease.’

  ‘It must have been a terrible experience.’

  He raised an eyebrow as if questioning their understanding of the word terrible. ‘They said, when the Soviet forces liberated the survivors, some prisoners died of joy. Their hearts couldn’t stand it. To survive so much…’

  Adam nodded. ‘You weren’t there at liberation?’

  He appeared not to hear. ‘There were men and women so thin if they’d taken their coats off they wouldn’t have cast a shadow. And the children…’ He shook his head, his lips making a taut line of denial.

  She put a hand on his arm, puzzled. ‘But you weren’t there when the Soviets came?’

  ‘All but the sick were evacuated before liberation. Walt and I met up on the road, a few days later.’

  ‘You survived the March of Death?’

  ‘Walt escap
ed from it. I’d run from Buna-Monowitz when they evacuated.’

  Adam raised both eyebrows. ‘You risked being shot.’

  ‘Many were. It was a chaotic time. Walt carried that old tin box all the way.’

  ‘The box containing the documents?’ Adam pressed.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where did he get them?’

  ‘Walt did a bit of liberating of his own. Got hold of a bundle of papers that had been stacked ready for destruction. Just sitting there for the taking, he said. If they’d known what he’d taken… ’

  Adam nodded again. She sat silent,, waiting for the old man to get his breath back. He didn’t need her asking questions, as well as Adam.

  Albert’s hand made a horizontal arc as if describing a vast distance. His voice quavered. ‘It took us months to reach the coast.’

  Adam’s face was sombre. ‘I’ve read it took some prisoners a year to get home.’

  ‘And thousands didn’t make it at all.’ Albert sighed. ‘We made… detours… took ship at Gdansk. Jumped ashore at Copenhagen. Got work on a cargo ship bound for Newcastle. Hitler had pounded the city with bombs… the shipyards, everything… a real mess.’

  She fetched him a glass of water from the small bar in the corner and waited patiently for him to resume his tale.

  ‘Thank you.’ He sipped the water shakily, and cleared his throat. ‘We managed to find beds in a seamen’s mission.’ He paused, appearing lost in thought.

  ‘Go on,’ Adam said after a silence.

  ‘Walt told me what was in the box. He was sick, so I took it to the bank for safekeeping. It wasn’t safe to produce the documents at that time. We could have incriminated a lot of Nazis but they had powerful friends in England and a network set up to help them.’ He glanced around as if German spies lurked behind every chair. ‘They survive still, in this country, living ordinary lives.’

  She couldn’t help putting voice to a question. ‘Why is it good men like Grandpa die and the evil survive?’

  Carr’s face relaxed into sorrowful folds. ‘While there are people who allow themselves to be victims there will be those who persecute them. A simplistic view but…’ He avoided her stare and took another sip of water. His voice cracked. ‘Yes, good men died. We were yellow-bellied cowards, scared to death. Irene, my wife, lived in Kettering, so we headed here. Walt even changed his name to throw the Nazis off our scent. I could hardly change mine and come home. Walt met Jane and, for the safety of our families, the papers stayed hidden… until now.’

  ‘Grandpa changed his name?’

  ‘It wasn’t hard to get a copy of a birth certificate in those days, or a ration book on the black market. Someone who’d been born around the same time and died young.’

  ‘What was Grandpa’s name, before…’

  His mouth formed an angry slit that spat words. ‘Prisoners were numbers… not names. Mine is tattooed on my soul: two, zero, two, five, zero, zero.’ His jaw worked before he broke the moment of silence. ‘I only knew him as Chuck, then. What are you going to do with the papers?’

  ‘I swore an oath.’

  The old man closed his eyes and she got up, ready to leave: she’d tired him. His eyes shot open. ‘Candles… It’s a thingamabob… when the letters stand for something.’

  ‘An acronym?’ Adam suggested.

  ‘Yes, an acronym. It was the children who suffered the worst atrocities… the survivors should have the gold. They’ll do what’s right.’

  Adam nodded, his brow creased. She still didn’t understand but now wasn’t the time for long explanations.

  ‘Will you come and see me again?’ The old man’s eyes shone. ‘Bring little Lucy?’

  ‘I hope so, Albert. It’s good to find someone who knew Grandpa.’ On impulse she bent and kissed his cheek. He tasted of salt. She wiped away a tear of her own.

  ‘Remember, bring Lucy.’

  As they drove away she realised she hadn’t asked Albert about Miriam. She would come again with Lucy, and show him the diary and photographs. She glanced at Adam, who was deep in his own thoughts. ‘Tell me, how does all this tie in with what we know about Hans Wolfgang Schmitt?’

  ‘Schmitt has been hunted by the Israelis and the U.S. Department of Justice for seventy years. If these documents had been presented at the Nuremberg trials they’d have looked harder for Schmitt and Mengele.’

  ‘Mengele, the Angel of Death… Wasn’t his trial re-opened some years ago?’

  ‘Several investigations are still ongoing. Hans Muench was declared unfit to stand trial quite recently. Alzheimer’s.’

  ‘Convenient.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘Who was this Muench?’

  ‘An accomplice of Mengele… totally unrepentant. He boasted he could conduct medical experiments on internees that one could usually only conduct on rabbits.’

  ‘How can people do such things?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘Albert said there are war criminals living in Britain. How have they got away undetected?’

  ‘Our government abandoned the attempt to bring them to justice. Most have died of old age or are too sick to be tried now, anyway.’

  ‘Is that any excuse? Grandpa had nightmares for years.’ She’d pulled the bedclothes over her head to shut out the whimpers and muffled screams.

  ‘Nazi-hunting is still a popular sport.’

  ‘Sport!’

  ‘Sorry, poor choice of words. There are those who will never stop looking.’ He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. ‘There’s something bothering me about Albert’s story, but I’m damned if I know what.’

  ‘Sister did say he was confused. He’s probably embroidered the truth over the years.’

  ‘Could be.’

  ‘What did Albert mean about candles? Why should we give away the gold?’

  ‘Candles stands for Children of Auschwitz Nazi Deadly Lab Experiment Survivors.’ He sighed deeply. ‘I found the site on the internet while researching what was in the box. A group of survivors founded a holocaust museum in Terre Haute, Indiana. The records, the documents Albert and Walt brought into Britain, are records of experiments performed on the children they called Mengele’s children.’

  A tremble began deep inside her: was this the wolf Grandpa had by the ears? ‘Mengele was a geneticist. He used twins for experiments… something to do with creating a master race. Schmitt was one of his assistants.’

  Adam nodded. ‘It was thought the evidence was destroyed. As far as I can discover, no contemporaneous records have ever been found, until now. There were people who would have killed to keep these secret. And Robin’s right, there are people who would pay a fortune for it now.’

  ‘And these are the documents we have? You’re absolutely sure?

  ‘Yes. They give the names of the Nazi doctors who conducted the experiments. As you say, Doctor Hans Wolfgang Schmitt was one of Mengele’s assistants.’

  ‘Mengele was at Auschwitz.’

  ‘He was in charge of the medical facility.’

  ‘And sent hundreds of thousands to the gas chambers. So, Grandpa was at Auschwitz…’

  Adam nodded. ‘The gold…’ He stared straight ahead as if mesmerised by the white line. ‘When the adults deemed useless mouths had been gassed, and before they were cremated, their rings and precious jewellery were removed.’

  ‘I’ve read that.’

  ‘And their gold fillings, with chisels if necessary. Those nuggets are the gold fillings of gassed Jews.’

  ‘Dear God.’ She forced down bile; she should have guessed. She didn’t want the gold anymore. She wanted no part of it.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Charlotte stared out of the window of Sunnybank. Sunday: her five days to last her a lifetime were over, and Adam had left for his London broom-cupboard to prepare for starting his new job at Duxford. Life alone was a reality she could no longer avoid. She bent back to her work, scanning the fragile pages of the diary into her laptop:
the original was too precious to entrust to a stranger, even one Adam trusted, and a translation could be done just as easily from a copy. She scanned the last page. Brief entries in a foreign hand degenerated into a painful scrawl. What was Miriam so desperate to tell her? She attached the files to an e-mail to Adam.

  Her fingers sped over the keys. I’ll always love you but… She buried her face in her hands. She couldn’t do it, not this way; he deserved better. She hit delete and send without saying more than Love you.

  She made another coffee and sat on the sofa with the diary. Part of her wanted to reconnect with Grandpa: part of her, like Gran, didn’t want to know. She owed it to Grandpa to read it, to finally understand.

  An infirmary in an extermination camp. It sums up the contrary nature of the Nazi mind. Yet, I count myself fortunate to work here. Every morning the band marches the work groups out. Every night the same tunes march them back injured, beaten, exhausted. Their limbs move as if pushed by a weak spring in a clockwork toy. Only pain and hunger fills their minds. Yet there is dignity and courage in their endurance, in their refusal to consent.

  The vow she had made before Rabbi Cohen: Who keeps silence consents. Nothing would make her stay silent. Why had Grandpa? For the same reason she hadn’t told Adam the truth? Fear? Shame?

  Every day they send the same pitiful supplies: ten aspirin tablets, ten charcoal tablets, ten of urotropine, sometimes a little sulfa or caffeine. We never have enough cotton to make a decent dressing. The patients rub their margarine ration onto their skin to ease the torment. How can we treat so many with gangrene, scabies, pneumonia, dysentery, weeping abscesses? How can we treat someone with a limb torn off by a guard dog?

  Grandpa helped in the infirmary: not a patient? She pictured him in a white coat, dealing with emergencies, comforting patients with his calm voice. Why, after the war, hadn’t he used his medical knowledge for more than grazed knees?

  Last night another of the top bunks collapsed. A woman on the bunk beneath was crushed to death by the four women above her, and others have terrible injuries.

  No wonder Grandpa had been angry, so insistent on taking down their bunk beds when she and Lucy were little.