by David Nobbs
Walter insisted on driving her to Liverpool. He could always get petrol. Big houses were requisitioned, but not Walter’s. People had to accept evacuees. Not Walter. He had ways and means.
The boys were staying with Walter that night. They were happy enough. Maurice was very close to his father, and Nigel and Timothy had no father but Walter. Nigel was bursting with patriotism. He couldn’t wait to become eighteen and dreaded that the war would end before he was. Timothy was terrified of being eighteen, and dreaded that the war wouldn’t end before he was. Maurice knew that the war would end before he was eighteen, but he was still very anxious to grow up. He just hadn’t much talent for childhood.
Until she saw the great ship sliding slowly, agonisingly slowly, towards the dockside, Kate had assumed that her nervousness would cease when she knew that Heinz was safe. But it didn’t cease. It grew worse. She began to shake. A cold wind was blowing up the Mersey. Occasional spots of rain were being released, a few at a time, by a miserly, gun-metal sky. Walter took off his topcoat and put it round Kate’s shoulders. She tried to smile.
Walter touched her arm and said, ‘I’ll wait in the car.’ He had grown less and less tactile of late, more and more impersonal, almost distant. Kate no longer knew what he was thinking, which was a bit of a problem. She no longer knew what she was thinking either, which was a greater problem.
The ship eased her massive way in. The decks were crowded. People were waving all over the ship and all over the dockside. People were crying. Kate thought she saw Heinz, and waved at him frantically.
Seamen shouted. Ropes snaked across from the ship to the dockside. Kate shivered and shivered, and realised that the man she’d been waving to wasn’t Heinz.
At last they began to stream down the gangways, laden with kitbags and luggage. And then she saw him, tripping down the gangway with those little steps of his. He looked so lean, so brown, so vulnerable, so dishevelled; she had never seen him untidy before, but his hair was long and straggly, and the sun had bleached it a very pale blond. His moustache and beard were flecked with grey, but there wasn’t a single grey hair on his head. Around his eyes there were hard lines that had come from screwing his face up against the sun. He was a creature of the sun, a gnarled tree from the Australian outback. He carried only a small canvas bag. He saw her, and his face lit up, he waved excitedly, he seemed so simple and direct. There was pure joy in his face, the purest that Kate had ever seen. She knew, in that moment, that he loved her more than ever, and that she didn’t love him at all.
Terrible to her were the hugs and kisses and his tears of joy. It wasn’t hard for her to conjure up some tears as well, but hers were not tears of joy. They were tears of sorrow at the dying of her love and of pity for this dear, dear man. She smiled broadly, determinedly, incessantly, but she felt that her smile was frozen and utterly without warmth. However, he didn’t seem to notice.
She insisted on carrying his bag, a pointless gesture, since it was so light.
‘Walter’s brought the car,’ she said.
‘Good old Walter.’
‘Yes.’
‘Have you seen much of him?’
‘Yes. He’s been wonderful.’
‘Good.’
Was he sincere? Was he naive? Thank goodness she’d been blameless.
Terrible for her was the drive down to the Midlands in Walter’s 4½ litre Daimler Straight 8. Heinz sat with her in the back, and held her hand, and kept shaking his head and saying, ‘It’s so green’, ‘It’s so crowded,’ ‘It’s so grey,’ ‘It’s so cold.’
Terrible for her were the little strokes that Heinz gave her hand as they sped smoothly past Chester and Shrewsbury and Kidderminster and Redditch on that seemingly endless, all too short journey. She gave him little answering strokes. She had decided that she would never leave him, that she could never leave him, could never say, ‘Heinz, I don’t love you any more.’ There was too much of her mother and father in her for that to be possible. She would never be able to look her mother and father in the face again if she did. That might not be the purest motive, but had she not already decided to judge people by their actions, not their motives? She need not be harder on herself than on anybody else.
She had sometimes thought that she would like to be an actress. She had the looks for it, and it had been suggested to her more than once. Daniel had urged her. Stanley had urged her. Many men who fancied her and had no hope of her had urged her. Well, she had become an actress now. She had landed her first leading role. She would play the loving wife of Heinz Wasserhof.
Her decision gave her a modicum of peace, but it didn’t make the day a great deal easier. She had to make some attempt at conversation, so she asked him about his experiences.
‘Later,’ he said.
He asked her about Elizabeth, about the boys, about her ambulance driving, about her family, about the bombing of Swansea. She was pleased to talk.
‘The signposts are back,’ said Heinz suddenly.
‘The fear of invasion is over,’ said Walter, and his voice sounded strained to Kate, as she felt hers must, ‘but that’s very different from thinking we’ll win the war.’
The sun came out as they approached East Munton. It shone on the fourteenth-century church, the village hall with its tin roof, the scattered old houses, the new bungalows. It shone on the tidiness of Dollery Road, on the mellow sobriety of the Gables, on the freshly mown lawn, even on a robin redbreast with an overdeveloped sense of cliché. The sun made it even more difficult for Kate. It made happiness compulsory.
‘It’s still there,’ breathed Heinz with a sigh. ‘It’s all still there. I knew it was, of course, but it’s still a surprise.’
The car crunched gently to a halt in the drive. There was a deep silence, and Kate sensed that none of them wanted to get out of the car.
‘Where’s Lizzy-Wizzy?’ asked Heinz in a hoarse croak, and Kate realised how nervous he was about seeing his daughter, who was five now.
‘With the Penfolds. They’re our new neighbours.’
‘I’ll fetch her,’ said Walter.
They got out of the car at last. Kate fumbled with the lock, and Heinz looked at her gravely.
‘As you remembered?’ she said, to say something.
‘Smaller,’ said Heinz. ‘Everything in England is small. Oh, but lovely. Lovely.’
‘I’ll make a cup of tea.’
Heinz shook his head and laughed.
‘What?’ asked Kate.
‘You’re being so British, I didn’t remember you as so British.’
‘Sorry.’
‘No. It wasn’t a criticism. It was an observation.’
Walter came back with Elizabeth before Kate could make the tea. They went out on to the porch, and Heinz opened his arms as if expecting her to run into his arms.
‘My, she’s grown,’ he whispered. ‘My, she’s pretty.’
Yes, she was pretty, in a very traditional, rosy English way, thought Kate, and yes, of course she’s grown. Her heart wept for Heinz in his disappointment as Elizabeth stood and stared at him stolidly.
‘Hello, Lizzy-Wizzy,’ said Heinz. ‘Do you know who I am?’
‘My name’s called Elizabeth,’ said Elizabeth. ‘That’s what my name’s called.’
She put her finger in her mouth, and clutched Walter’s hand. Oh innocent little girl, thought Kate, how devastatingly you mirror my heart.
Walter smiled apologetically.
‘It’s been a long time, Heinz,’ he said.
In the end, bed could be delayed no longer. They’d explored the garden, Kate had cooked a meal, they’d eaten it, and they’d talked, talked about the same things as in the car – the boys, Elizabeth, the war, Walter, Swansea, ambulance driving – and they’d broached some new subjects – the garden, the village, Daniel, Olga, Daphne. He’d laughed when she’d told him about sharing a bed with Daphne.
He’d talked too about Australia, the camp, his journey home, his youth in Germany. He
hadn’t talked about his journey to Australia on the SS Dunera. This he had shunned.
Kate had talked again, then, about her father and mother, about Bernard and Oliver and Enid and Annie and Dilys, about Myfanwy, about Tregarryn and her youth, leaving out only the subject of Gwyn.
And now it was time for bed. The thought of bed had hung over Kate since the moment when Walter had said, ‘I’ll have Elizabeth for the night, if you like, so that you can be on your own tonight,’ and Heinz had said, ‘I think you may as well. That’s very kind,’ and Kate had said, ‘We need to give her time and space to get used to you again, Heinz,’ and Kate had met Walter’s eyes and she had had no idea what he was thinking.
Kate thought that perhaps when they got into bed she would feel sexy and everything would pass off satisfactorily. She was, after all, a very sexy lady, and she hadn’t had intercourse for over two years. But she knew, in her heart, that it didn’t work like that for her, and that an acting performance of considerable power was going to be needed.
All her linen had begun to develop that greyish tinge that white clothes get when they’ve been washed too often. She changed into the least grey of them, with her back to Heinz. Unlike Walter, he had never shown much interest in her backside. She slipped quickly into bed, and waited for him. He put on his rust-coloured pyjamas, which he hadn’t seen for more than two years.
‘Pyjamas!’ he exclaimed. ‘What luxury!’
He slid into bed beside her and began to lift the nightshirt off her. She fumbled with his pyjama cord, all thumbs again. Eventually, despite her clumsiness and his shyness, they were naked.
‘Linen!’ he enthused. ‘Now that is a luxury.’
She tried one last time.
‘Was it really awful on that boat?’ she asked.
‘Some of it was so awful that I feel ashamed to share it with you.’
‘I’d like you to share it with me. I think you’ll feel better after you’ve shared it with me. I know I will. It’ll be a barrier between us till you have.’
She hoped that, if he had felt a barrier between them, this might convince him of the reason for it.
He switched off the light, and began to talk. There, in the darkness, in the privacy of their bedroom, in the comfy warmth of the marital bed, he felt able to talk about it.
‘The ship was pretty terrible in itself,’ he said. ‘There were nearly three thousand people on board, and it should never have had more than two thousand, and even that would have been crowded. There were no bunks. We slept on the decks, hard, unyielding, throbbing to the movement of the ship, agonising. All our stuff was stolen from us, and never given back. I was lucky there. I didn’t have anything in the first place.’
As he talked, Kate stroked his body gently, taking great care to avoid his private parts. The only thrust she wanted was the thrust of his narrative.
He talked of the stench of vomit in the foul holds of the ship, of the inadequacy of the lavatories, of the awful black depths of the stinking ship. Vomit and human sewage and sweat. People with foul breath. Smells, smells, smells.
She asked him what sort of people they had been.
‘I suppose the words “a motley crew” have rarely been so accurate, except that we weren’t the crew, we were the passengers. There were several hundred people who had originally been being taken to Canada on the Arandora Star and had sunk and been rescued. They had an added reason to be afraid. There were captured German seamen who just wanted to get back to the war, captured Nazi fanatics, bewildered Italian waiters, Poles whose misfortune it was to come to Britain before Poland was Poland and so were arrested as aliens when if they’d arrived in some cases only a week later they’d have joined the RAF as Free Poles. There were even two Scots whose parents had been living in Berlin when the war began so they were classified as Germans.’
‘Hadn’t they told anybody they were Scottish?’
‘Yes, but they came from Glasgow, and nobody understood a word they said. Farce and tragedy clutched hands, Kate, above those stinking bilges. Then of course there were people like me, Germans who had seen what was coming, who had fled and were desperate to help defeat Germany. But the largest group consisted of the Jews, and what a band they were, what talents there were on that ship. Physicists, chemists, atomic scientists, mechanics, inventors, novelists, poets, cubists, surrealists, composers, flautists, oboists, harpists, doctors, dentists, psychiatrists, psychologists, philosophers, all cheek to jowl and despised by British oafs. Two months it took us to get to Fremantle. The stench of that floating cesspit will never leave my nostrils.’
Kate tightened her hand on his. Describe it in more detail, her hand implored, and maybe pity will achieve what love can’t.
But he began to talk about the brighter side.
‘We survived,’ he said, ‘and this is what also will never leave me. The wonderful nature of the human spirit in adversity. If man ever learns to have the same spirit when not in adversity, what a world we could have, Kate.’ He gripped her fiercely for a moment. ‘What a world we could have!’ She felt his body relax. ‘People formed small orchestras, Hebrew choirs, concert parties, craft clubs, bridge clubs. They gave lectures. We had lectures on literature and music and mathematics and science and on all the places we were passing, for all the world as if we were a cruise ship and people would go ashore and take excursions.’
‘And what did you do?’
‘Me? Very little, Kate.’
‘Heinz!’
‘What?’
‘ “Very little”! I know you.’
‘Oh good. I was beginning to fear you didn’t know me very well any more.’
‘Heinz! I’m . . . I’m feeling shy. It’s natural, surely?’
‘Yes. Yes. Yes, of course.’
‘So what did you do? Come on.’
‘Well, I tried to be quite useful. I tried to use my background as a maker of toys. I made musical instruments out of lavatory paper.’
Wind instruments, I suppose, she thought, but did not say. It was a very silly joke, a childish joke, but she would have made it to Walter and to Arturo. She couldn’t make it to Heinz.
‘Were the instruments good? I’m sure they were.’
‘They were very good. Good music was played on them, Kate. I fear, though, that it turned out to be a pyrrhic victory.’
‘A pyrrhic victory?’
‘We ended up with lots of musical instruments and no lavatory paper. I asked one of our guards for lavatory paper and he said . . . no, it’s crude.’
‘Heinz! We’re living through a war and I’m nearly forty-three and I don’t need protecting. I think you should get the whole thing out of your system now you’ve started.’
‘He said, “You shouldn’t have used so much making musical instruments. Wipe your arse on a fucking flute, you Kraut bastard.”’
She could feel the tension that was still in him, as much as ever, perhaps more. She curved her body into his and said, very gently, ‘Weren’t the crew kind, then?’
Heinz paused a while before replying. They lay in silence, in each other’s arms, immobile in the warm bed. A tawny owl whooped.
‘What a European sound,’ said Heinz. ‘No, Kate, this is what I find so difficult to talk about.’
‘Try.’
‘They were not kind at all.’ He went silent again, thinking thoughts he would rather not have had. Kate ran her fingers over his smooth, hairless chest, very gently, very patiently. ‘We were threatened and beaten and humiliated in every way possible.’
‘But didn’t they realise they weren’t dealing with a nest of spies? I mean, with so many being Jews I’d have thought it was obvious.’
‘It didn’t seem obvious. In two months our guards didn’t seem to realise what it took the Australians about an hour to work out. Most of our guards, to excuse them a little, were very stupid, of course. Low types. The dregs. They don’t say to crack troops, “We have a dangerous mission for you, you will guard a lot of German expatriates, It
alian waiters and Jewish musicians.”’
‘Was nobody kind?’
‘One or two. A couple of the chefs when no one was looking. A good-hearted sailor from Tynemouth. One nice Scottish person. A junior officer who whispered that he was sorry for what they were doing, but they were under orders.’
‘Under orders?’
‘Oh yes. It came from the top, you see. That’s the awful thing, Kate. When it comes from the top, there’s no stopping people.’
‘I suppose being German you got the brunt of it?’ She stroked his arm.
‘Oh, Kate, I think that’s the most awful thing of it all. It wasn’t as bad for people like me. We were treated better than the Jews. Irony of ironies.’
‘Yes.’
‘The way those talented Jews brought the worst out of those English oafs, Kate . . . without doing anything to provoke. I found it curiously humiliating and shaming to witness. And then again, you see, it was exactly like what I had seen happening in Germany before I left. A mirror of the rise of Nazism. Anti-Semitism, thuggery, decent people doing things under orders, other decent people looking the other way. It takes a giant man not to look the other way, Kate, and I’m afraid I found . . . I found I was not a giant.’
She put her arms round him and hugged him. That much was easy.
‘So this country is as bad!’ she said.
‘Oh, Kate! No! This was one ship, the other is a nation. It was all sorted out, in the end. I am home. Others are home. Others are coming home. People were court-martialled. No, Kate, Britain isn’t what I hoped it would be, but it isn’t Nazi Germany, my shamed land. But I was not as brave as I would have liked to have been. Not as good a man as I had hoped.’
