Peacetime

by Robert Edric

  ‘We have our own transport,’ one of them told Mercer when he told them about the lorries.

  ‘We will leave early,’ Mathias said. ‘They told us there was a day’s work in breaking up this section of the runway in readiness for the bulldozers, but we finished it in only a few hours.’

  Several of the men drank from their water-bottles, and Mercer saw by the nature of their expressions as they did this that it was not water they were drinking. It was also clear to him that it did not concern them to do this in front of him.

  ‘Today is Roland’s birthday,’ Mathias said, indicating a man who looked fifty, at least twenty years older than any of the others.

  Mercer remembered Mathias’s remark about the solitary footballer from several days earlier.

  Roland rose and saluted, stood unsteadily for a moment and then sat back down.

  ‘Congratulations,’ Mercer said.

  Mathias handed him his own flask and he drank from it.

  ‘Fifty-two,’ Roland said, as though this new age were a sudden and unexpected weight on his shoulders. He said something else, but in German, which Mercer did not understand.

  ‘He says that if he’d known he was not to be sent home immediately the war ended, then he would have kept his big mouth shut, or only opened it to tell his captors what they wanted to hear,’ Mathias said. He paused. ‘Party member,’ he added in a lower voice.

  Mercer looked again at the man. The arms of two of his companions now lay draped around his shoulders.

  ‘He has a wife, seven children and four grandchildren,’ another of the men said to Mercer. ‘And he has heard from none of them in almost a year. They lived in the East, Prenzlau.’

  ‘I see,’ Mercer said.

  Mathias then announced something to them in German, at which they cheered. ‘I told them to stay where they are for a couple of hours, and then we’ll leave.’

  All around them, at regular intervals across the ruptured runway, holes had been drilled and the surface loosened in readiness for the bulldozers. In places, the surface lay buckled and torn and the slabs had been stacked in mounds with the dark earth of the old fields encrusted on their undersides. It was hard work, even for men using power tools.

  Mathias spoke again to the others and then indicated to Mercer that they should walk.

  ‘I told them I’ll be back in two hours.’

  ‘Are you their foreman, then, their supervisor?’

  ‘Unofficially.’

  ‘Meaning you know best how all these dodges work and they are only too happy to comply.’

  ‘They work well,’ Mathias said. ‘And some of them, like Roland, cannot sleep at night for worrying about what is happening to their families. I do not bear that particular burden, but I can easily imagine what they must be going through.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Mercer said.

  They walked towards the airfield perimeter. Mathias led the way to another roofless shelter, into which they descended to sit in the shade. The frames of several beds lay at one end of the cool space, and the litter of recent occupation covered the floor.

  ‘Another of your hiding places?’ Mercer said.

  ‘One of many.’

  Mercer cleared the paper and empty tins from two chairs and they sat facing each other.

  ‘Is Roland having problems?’ he asked.

  ‘None that are not of his own making. As I say, he was a party member, and proud of it. He was captured long before me, when the war was still being won, and did not have the sense to keep his mouth shut.’

  ‘And so now he’s being punished for it by being kept here so long.’

  ‘That’s how he sees it. He worries for his family.’

  ‘Has he not yet renounced everything?’

  ‘Too late for all that.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Have you heard anything yet about your release?’ It seemed the wrong word.

  ‘I thought for a moment you meant had I renounced everything.’

  ‘Did you ever share Roland’s convictions?’

  Mathias shook his head. ‘But it makes me no less complicit in what happened, in what was done in my name.’ He was talking about Jacob.

  ‘You could tell me you had no real choice but to accept what happened,’ Mercer said. ‘You could tell me you kept your eyes averted and that it was all the work of others.’ It was what he wanted to hear Mathias say.

  ‘Life is never so simple. I might just as easily ask you what you did about it, what your armies or air forces did to help them. Where do you draw the line between the perpetrator and the onlooker? If you ask me did I know it was happening, then my truthful answer would have to be yes. I knew nothing of the details, of course, or of the true extent of what was being done, but I cannot deny that I knew something was being done, and that it was being done in my name.’ He paused. ‘They showed us those films as part of our reeducation. There was no doubt then what had been happening. There was prejudice and tormenting a long time before the war started.’

  ‘“Tormenting”?’ It seemed a strange word to use.

  ‘What else would you call it?’ Mathias said.

  ‘And where good men did nothing, so evil triumphed?’ Mercer said, regretting the words immediately.

  ‘More glibness; more words masquerading as explanation; more simplicity where the complexity of the situation and of the lives involved will never be understood. You know nothing, nothing at all.’ Mathias stopped speaking and looked up. He signalled his apology for what he had said. He raised his hand, and both men saw that it was shaking.

  ‘I don’t mean you – not you, personally,’ Mathias said.

  ‘Yes, you do,’ Mercer said. ‘I can’t deny any of it.’ He, too, had seen the newsreels. He, too, had watched them in a cinema in an audience wanting only to cheer the news that the war was finally over. The man beside him had vomited into his lap and over his legs.

  ‘My father employed men in his nursery. Three of them were Jewish. They had been with him a long time. They worked alongside him as he and his brother built up the place. They were good workers, experts at what they did. It was they who one day approached my father and told him what was happening to them. They told him what restrictions were being placed on them, each month a few more. Soon, they said, it might even be impossible for them to continue working for him. He listened to all this, and he sympathized, but I imagine even he, in those early days, believed that the three men were overreacting. My mother knew their wives, their children, most of them grown, though still living at home. My father did his best to reassure them, but they told him his reassurance would not be enough, and that if he did not himself comply with whatever new regulations or decrees were being issued, or if he tried to defy the police on any of these matters, then he too might be punished alongside them.’

  ‘How did he respond to that?’

  ‘Who knows? I imagine he agreed with them, but that he still believed the situation was not so black as they painted it. You have to remember, the war was still four or five years away, and there was then no real prospect of it. He was working hard, the nursery and his roses were acquiring a reputation. He and his brother looked set to prosper.’

  ‘So he had to weigh all this against what he might stand to lose.’

  ‘I imagine so. And then one morning the men came to him and said it was forbidden for them to work for him any longer. They showed him the documents they had been sent. Their work must be given to an unemployed German man. A man who knew nothing of the work, who, in all likelihood, did not want to work. Never imagine for one moment that my father was not aware of his debt to those three men.’

  ‘Did he contest the order?’

  ‘That was his first instinct. But they were frightened men, those three. They knew how dangerous and futile this noble gesture might prove to be. They knew who, ultimately, might be made to pay the price of his bravery, his intransigence. They told him he must comply, otherwise he woul
d be punished and the business would suffer anyway.’ He laughed then, and rubbed a hand over his face.

  ‘What?’ Mercer asked him.

  ‘His largest order at that time was for several thousand of his finest blooms to decorate the stage and aisles of a grand midnight rally.’

  ‘And he complied?’

  ‘Of course he complied. High-ranking party officials visited him personally. They, too, were specialists, men who took a pride in their work. They flattered him: his roses were the best they had ever seen; how many thousands could he produce over the coming months? How long would the blooms last? He was even asked about the creation and the naming of new flowers. He was a man in his element. And when he raised the question of his labour force with these new friends of his they told him not to worry, that there were ways around and through every problem.’

  ‘And were there?’

  ‘Sometimes. A week after the rally, he was visited by the local police chief, who had been sent to compliment him on his displays and who wished to negotiate a regular order with him.’

  ‘And the Jewish workers?’

  ‘My father contrived a scheme whereby the men would continue to work for him without pay. Officially, you see, they could no longer remain on his payroll. Having established with the chief of police that this was a feasible plan, my father then secretly arranged with the three men to pay them in kind. My mother was put in charge of the operation. She bought food and household goods and whatever else they needed and requested, and she ensured it was delivered to their homes without any direct connection being made between them and my father. The new workers, as my father had anticipated, did little and knew even less about what was expected of them. In addition to which, they treated the three Jews badly. My father, of course, was then expected to pay for their silence. He was always careful to agree with them, and never to let his true feelings show when he was in their presence.’

  ‘So he was paying out twice the wages for the same work?’

  ‘Some weeks, much more. One by one, however, the three men were driven from their homes – either because they were no longer able to pay the rent or some new edict or other was issued – and they were forced to move in with relatives. They were then denied medicines and hospital treatment, and so that, too, my father attempted to provide for them when it was needed. And then, of course, the war came, and everything changed. One day, one of the men simply did not turn up for work. My father asked the others what had happened to him, but they were reluctant to tell him what they knew. They told him not to ask. I think he believed they had lost their faith, their trust in him. It angered him, their reluctance to tell him. And then, a few weeks later, the remaining two men were gone. My mother made enquiries, but learned very little. Even the chief of police would say nothing. Months later, all he would admit to when pushed, doubtless drunk at my father’s expense, was that the three workers and their families had been relocated and that they were now working elsewhere, though doubtless not for a rose-grower.’

  ‘And you heard nothing more of them?’

  ‘Nothing. A few months before I left home on active service, the police chief was dismissed from his post and another man installed. My father was sent for immediately and told by this new man that not only was there no place for roses in the new world being created, but that evidence had come to light of my father’s efforts on behalf of the three men. My father had fought alongside his brother in the Great War. He took his medals and written commendations with him to show this new police chief and the man swept them from his desk and laughed in my father’s face. Supplies and equipment, until then regularly delivered to the nursery, failed to appear. Other trusted members of his workforce were called away. What was rose-growing compared to the turn of the tide in Africa, in the East? More useless workers were forced upon him. My mother became ill. The agricultural chemists made their final, derisory offer. I was away during most of this. Every four or five months I returned home for a few days. It was barely conceivable to me what had happened to him, how the nursery was being run down. I tried to persuade the two of them to leave. My mother’s sister lived near Stuttgart. I wanted them to go to her. I saw how the war would go. My aunt was willing. Even my mother, I believe, saw that the time had come for them to leave. But she would not go without her husband.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘A raid. They were killed and the nursery destroyed. Plane after plane, bomb after bomb, night after night.’ He stiffened his palm and passed it back and forth in front of him. ‘Who knows, perhaps they even came from here; perhaps this was where they came back to and landed.’

  ‘And you never again returned home after they were killed?’

  ‘I was a prisoner by then. And as understanding as you English like to believe you are, I doubt, under the circumstances, that I would have been granted compassionate leave.’

  They sat without speaking for several minutes.

  Eventually, Mercer said, ‘Does Jacob know all this?’

  Mathias shook his head. ‘And nor shall I tell him.’

  ‘It might—’

  ‘It might what? Might compare to what he has to tell? I doubt that very much. And besides, perhaps he might imagine I was in some way seeking his forgiveness for what he has suffered in my name. It’s the last thing I want.’

  ‘Forgiveness?’

  ‘Forgiveness, understanding, redemption, call it what you will. Absolution, even. I want nothing from him, and he wants nothing from me. And as far as I can see – him, too, I imagine – that is the only way forward. The world can watch its Nurembergs and its Tokyos, but this is where the real work of moving on and making good is done.’ He slapped his palm against his chest and then against the wall beside him. Then he looked at his hand and brushed the dust from it. ‘You bring out the melodramatic in me,’ he said. It was his way of saying he appreciated this opportunity to talk openly, and Mercer understood this.

  ‘The drink and the sun are probably more to blame,’ Mercer said.

  ‘If you say so.’ Mathias climbed onto his chair, rested his arms on the surface of the wall and looked out over the expanse of land ahead of him.

  ‘You can see why they wanted to cover it with airfields,’ Mercer said.

  ‘Were you ever bombed?’ Mathias asked him.

  ‘Once, in Forlì, south of Bologna.’

  ‘They came day after day in France,’ Mathias said. ‘The same planes, the same times. Some of us were even convinced that their bombs fell in exactly the same places. There was little to oppose them. I knew then that, whatever else happened, however long it might take, the war was lost.’

  ‘Did you think you might be killed?’

  ‘Never. What man does?’

  Me, I did, thought Mercer, but said nothing.

  Later, the two men left the shelter and walked back to where the others awaited them.

  The appearance of Mathias signalled to them all that they might now return to their barracks. By then, Roland was drunk and asleep, and it took several of them to rouse him. He woke slowly, reluctantly, uncertain, at first, of where he was or what he was doing there, and then it all returned to him and he swore at the men who had woken him.

  18

  Jacob sat beside the glowing forge. Bail stood nearby, working the bellows. A powder of ash and sparks blew up from the mounded coke. Jacob showed Mercer the kiln he had constructed at one side of the forge. He held in his hands a small amber-coloured bowl, broken at its rim, and with a crack which threatened to break it in half.

  Mercer had come on the day of the firing by arrangement with Jacob, uncertain what arcane or private ritual he might have been invading. He was intrigued by what Jacob was still able to achieve there amid such unlikely surroundings and with such crude and makeshift equipment.

  Bail had come out to investigate the barking of his dogs, and had called Mercer into the forge, where Jacob awaited him. Bail himself was engaged in the repair of a piece of machinery Mercer did not rec
ognize. It was beyond him to suggest to either of them that the forge had been fired up under this pretence, and that Bail’s sole purpose in doing so was to allow Jacob to continue with his glass-making. Neither man spoke to him for several minutes after his arrival, their attention focused instead on the changing colour of the coals.

  Despite the heat of the day and the room itself, Jacob again stood in his tightly fastened jacket and with cloths wrapped around both hands. Bail, however, was naked from the waist up. His injured hand remained gloved and rigid, though this did not appear to hinder him in his work. His chest and stomach were slick with sweat. Ash from the forge stuck to him and darkened.

  ‘Are you about to make something?’ Mercer indicated the kiln.

  ‘This.’ Jacob held out the broken bowl and Mercer took it from him. ‘Hopefully, this time with success.’

  ‘What happened?’ Even chipped and cracked, the bowl was a beautiful thing.

  Jacob shrugged. ‘That’s the nature of glass. Perfect one second, shattered the next. Perhaps it cooled too quickly. Unlike our Vulcan here, who can douse his lumps of molten metal in drums of water, glass needs to be treated more sensitively. I occasionally wish it were otherwise, but …’

  Beside them, Bail took up an iron rod and settled it into the coals, raking them over it as he continued to work the bellows.

  Jacob took back the damaged bowl. ‘I made this one last week. It was perfect for a day, and then, within minutes, the piece at the rim broke off and the crack appeared.’ He showed Mercer the crucible of broken glass he intended melting. ‘When the kiln is up to temperature, I shall set the glass in it to melt, and when it is sufficiently liquid, I shall attempt once more to shape it.’

  ‘Do you use a mould of some sort?’

  ‘Some might. I prefer to blow it and then to shape it in my hands. It was the first thing my father taught me to do. He told me it would teach me respect for the glass.’

  ‘Because it would burn you?’

  ‘Because it burned me, yes. It was a simple enough lesson to learn.’ He indicated the leather pads on the bench beside him.