Out of the Shelter

by David Lodge

  – What boat?

  – Didn’t I tell you that? They’re hiring one of those pleasure boats on the Neckar – going for a moonlight cruise. Neckin’

  on the Neckar, Mel said. That’s pretty smart for Mel, doncha think?

  She left him with a wave and a lewd wink.

  In changing his mind about the party, Timothy had prepared himself to receive some teasing and questioning from Kate and Don about his motives. When they met again, however, the only topic of conversation was the disappearance of Vince and Greg. Kate was both excited and upset. She limped up and down the apartment, smoking cigarette after cigarette, making and answering telephone calls. Don, reclining calmly on the divan, asked her if she had known they were going to Berlin.

  – No, but they’re always dashing off somewhere, on business or pleasure.

  – Which d’you think this trip was for?

  – Pleasure, I suppose, it was a weekend. But I can’t see them doing anything so foolish as to wander into the Soviet Zone by mistake.

  – Maybe it wasn’t by mistake.

  – What d’you mean?

  – Maybe they went over on purpose.

  – What purpose?

  – I don’t know, but it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if those two turned out to be in the C.I.A. Maybe the Russians picked them up for spying.

  – Spying! Kate repeated scornfully.

  – Of course, you know them better than I do –

  – I certainly do, said Kate, lighting up another cigarette. I never heard such a daft idea.

  – But are you quite sure they could have no secrets from you?

  – No, but you could say that about anybody. Timothy, for instance.

  Don grinned at him.

  – You got a secret life, Timothy?

  – Not that I know of.

  – What d’you think about it all? Kate asked him.

  – I think they’ll turn up soon, wondering what all the fuss is about. I think they’ve been held up somewhere, and sent a telegram which didn’t arrive, or something.

  Kate laughed.

  – Down to earth, as usual! And I bet you’re right. For all we know, they may be back already. I didn’t even bother to try their number today.

  She took up the telephone and put through a call to the boys’ flat.

  – Is that you, Vince? she said eagerly.

  Timothy and Don sat up and exchanged glances. But it wasn’t Vince who had answered the phone. It was a Staff Sergeant in the Military Police who was logging all incoming calls. Kate had to give him her name and identity number.

  – Well, well, said Don.

  – The Army must be really worried about what’s happened to them, said Kate.

  Timothy and Don went to Frankfurt early in the morning of the following day. Apart from glimpses of Mannheim in the dawn of his arrival, Timothy had seen no war-damaged German city. The only ruins in Heidelberg were the picturesque traces of old, historic wars, and Baden-Baden and Garmisch had lacked even those. Frankfurt was a brutal return to reality. It was like London, but London as it might have looked if England had lost the war. Street after street – simply missing. The road was there, and the pavements, and people walked on the pavements and cars passed on the roads, but on each side there was – nothing. Flat, rectangular spaces, packed mud with bricks sticking out of the soil and coarse grass sprouting unevenly. Here and there the blackened shell of a church or other public building, or the stark, raw outline of some brand-new block, marooned amid the vacant lots. Everywhere building was in progress: drills stuttered, bulldozers roared, the dust of demolished buildings hung in the air. Men, stripped to the waist and browned by the sun, worked feverishly. But the extent of the devastation seemed to mock their efforts. Timothy recalled Don’s remarks, on the morning they had first met, about the Americans setting up their Headquarters in Heidelberg so that they wouldn’t be reminded of what they’d done to German cities, and the idea no longer seemed so queer.

  Some of the old buildings in the centre of the town had apparently survived the raids by a kind of miracle, huddled together now amid the wide open spaces. According to Don, however, they had all been destroyed in the war, and rebuilt afterwards. Timothy could hardly believe it, the restoration was so perfect, though at close quarters you could see that the paint was too bright, the stone unweathered, the angles just a little too regular. The house that had belonged to some apparently famous poet whose name sounded like Gertie was more successful. It had been largely destroyed by the bombing, but in anticipation most of the furniture had been removed to safety and, with typical German thoroughness, the exact specifications of all the rooms had been recorded so that they had been restored with complete fidelity to the originals, even down to the warped floorboards and the crooked window frames.

  – The Römer – that’s the old quarter – and the Goethehaus were the first buildings to be rebuilt in Frankfurt after the war, said Don, as they stood in the poet’s bedroom. Isn’t that fantastic? When you remember that half the population was still living in cellars and bombed-out buildings.

  – It’s rather impressive, in a way, said Timothy. To have that sort of feeling for history, and architecture.

  – I think it goes deeper than that, said Don. Or shallower. Instead of seeing the bombing as a nemesis, or an atrocity, the Germans just tried to forget about it. Putting the bricks and mortar back just as they were, was a way of making the war, the whole Nazi thing, unhappen. Like running a movie backwards, you know?

  – What d’you mean, atrocity?

  – I mean the saturation bombing of civilian centres.

  Timothy was about to point out that the Germans had started it with the Blitz, but he was distracted by the sound of music coming from a room beneath them. He held up his hand.

  – I say! That’s God Save the King!

  – They must be playing it in your honour, said Don with a grin.

  They followed the sound till they found a room on the first floor where an elderly museum official was standing before a harpsichord playing the familiar tune for an earnest group of tourists. He lowered the lid of the instrument and began speaking in German. Timothy and Don tiptoed away.

  – It’s an old tune that crops up in a lot of European countries, said Don. I don’t think anyone knows who first composed it.

  – It was queer hearing it in this place, said Timothy. I connect it with home.

  Standing self-consciously in the aisle of the local cinema, turning sheepishly to face the Union Jack fluttering on the screen, furtively buttoning up your coat. Listening to the radio on Cup Final day, the strains of the military band floating across a hushed Wembley. Or sitting at the table in the dining-room on Christmas Day as the yellow December light faded outside the window, miming requests for mince-pies and a second helping of pudding, while the thin faltering voice of the King enunciated vague syllables of hope and goodwill: at this season . . . people of every nation . . . Empire and Commonwealth . . . hope and pray . . . united effort . . . peace. And, as the strains of the National Anthem died away, mother saying, I thought he was better this year. Poor man, it must be a strain.

  They came out of the Goethehaus, into the roar of traffic and drills, and began to walk through the barren, vacant streets in search of a café. Timothy reverted to the subject of the bombing, which troubled him like Catholic persecution of Protestants in the Reformation. Don needed no prompting, for he had researched the subject for what he referred to as a Peace organization in America. He described the strategy of area bombing and the technique of creating firestorms in cities by dropping incendiaries on top of a carpet of high explosives. He reeled off disconcerting statistics, such as that 13,000 people were killed in the London Blitz, but 130,000 in one raid on Dresden in 1945. Or that 500,000 Germans had been killed in the raids at a cost of 160,000 Allied aircrew.

  – A hundred and sixty thousand? Timothy repeated incredulously.

  – Unbelievable, isn’t it? And German civilian m
orale wasn’t weakened by the bombing. It got stronger, if anything. Even their industrial war production went on rising right up to August 1944.

  It was hard enough to face the possibility that the bombing of Germany had been excessive; that it had also been wasteful and ineffective was almost too bitter for contemplation. On the train back to Heidelberg Timothy watched his own pale reflection sharpen in the window as the German sky darkened over the German landscape, and thought of Uncle Jack and all the airmen like him who had gone to their deaths in that sky. He groped towards some imaginative reconstruction of the experience: the drop of the burning, disintegrating plane into the dark, the sickening, toppling spin of the great wings, life moving towards zero with the altimeter. But he had only the imagery of old newsreels and war films to work with, that could never express the terror and the pain of such a death. And how would it be to discover, in the total knowledge that came after death, that your terror and pain had been entirely futile? He imagined waves of reproach rolling in from the after-life and breaking upon an indifferent world. History is the verdict of the lucky on the unlucky . . . It was true. But what could you do about it, except go about in fear and trembling, hoping your luck would hold? Penance, Don said, with an ironical smile. We can do penance, Timothy. You should know all about that. He knew about saying three Hail Marys and an Our Father after Confession, and giving up sweets for Lent, but he didn’t think that was what Don had in mind.

  They had arranged to meet Kate at Fichte Haus that evening, but she was waiting for them at the station when their train drew in. She looked pale and anxious.

  – The most awful thing has happened, she said. Rudolf has had a crash in Vince’s car.

  – I knew it, Don said grimly.

  – You knew?

  – I knew it was crazy letting him drive an automobile like that, with only one arm. Vernon must have been out of his mind.

  – Is Rudolf all right? Timothy asked.

  – He’s unconscious – severe concussion. He’s in the Military Hospital. Apparently he’s lucky to be alive. It seems the M.P.s chased him on the autobahn, and instead of stopping when they gonged him he tried to get away. The car left the road and hit a tree. He was thrown out.

  They began walking back to Fichte Haus through a thin drizzle.

  – Why were they chasing him? Why didn’t he stop? Timothy wondered aloud.

  Kate shrugged.

  – I suppose he was speeding. Or perhaps he shouldn’t have been driving the car. Perhaps Vince didn’t lend it to him.

  – Maybe he’s only allowed to drive a car with special controls, Don suggested. Or he doesn’t have a licence at all.

  – That sounds more like it, said Timothy. Rudolf wouldn’t just . . . steal Vince’s car.

  – Well, I don’t know what to think, said Kate. The whole thing has started some fantastic rumours, I can tell you.

  – Like what? Don asked.

  – Such as that Vince and Greg were spying for the Russians and that Rudolf was their contact and that’s why the M.P.s were chasing him.

  Don threw back his head and roared with laughter.

  – It’s this Burgess and Maclean business, he said. People are getting spies before the eyes.

  – Well, you can talk, Don –

  – I said they could be in the C.I.A., that’s quite a different matter. You’re not taking this rumour seriously, are you?

  Kate frowned.

  – I don’t know what to think. It’s all a mystery. I agree that it’s not like Rudolf to take Vince’s car without permission, but I wasn’t aware they were on car-lending terms.

  – Er, I think I know how Rudolf and Vince sort of got together, Timothy said hesitatingly.

  – You, Timothy?

  Kate came to a halt on the pavement and stared at him. When he had finished his explanation about Rudolf’s father, she said, with a little nervous laugh:

  – Well, you do plunge in where angels fear to tread, don’t you? But it still doesn’t explain why Vernon should do Rudolf another favour, by lending him his car.

  – I have a theory, said Don. But I’d better keep it to myself.

  Kate glanced at him, seemed about to speak, then changed her mind.

  The next day, Thursday, there was hard news about the boys at last, news which made all the rumours and speculations of the previous days evaporate as quickly as the puddles in the streets of Heidelberg, as the sun shone down from a clear blue sky again. Vince and Greg were safe in West Berlin and were on their way back to Heidelberg. They had taken a walk in the woods on the outskirts of the city on the previous Sunday, strayed over the frontier into East Germany, and been arrested. They had been locked up for three days under interrogation, then, without explanation, taken back in a closed truck to the place where they had been found, and allowed to recross the frontier. Vince had rung Kate from Berlin and told her that they would be returning to Heidelberg on Saturday, and to spread the word that the fireworks party was still on.

  – He seems to be taking it all very lightly, Don observed. Does he know the rumours that have been flying around?

  – He said they were going to have a de-briefing in Frankfurt on their way home, and there might be an enquiry later. He treated it all as a bit of joke, but I think he was more shaken up than he was prepared to admit. Like you said, Don, the Russians suspected them of spying.

  – Does Vernon know about Rudolf’s crash?

  – Yes, apparently he asked Rudolf to take the car in to be serviced, but Vince hadn’t meant him to drive it around afterwards.

  – How is Rudolf? Timothy asked.

  – He’s regained consciousness, which is a relief, but he’s not allowed visitors yet. Another relief is to know that Vince and Greg are all right. What a tale they’ll have to tell.

  – Yes, said Don, dryly, I’d like to hear it.

  – Well, why don’t you come to their party? You’re invited.

  Don fingered his cleft chin, considering.

  – Well, I’ll see. I don’t particularly want to join a demonstration of loyalty.

  – What d’you mean?

  – That’s why they’re going ahead with the party, isn’t it? To show they’ve got nothing to hide? All their friends there to express solidarity.

  – You read too much into things, Don, said Kate crossly. Of course all their friends will be there, it’s a kind of welcome home party. And a farewell party for Timothy, she added, smiling at him. Two parties in two days – you’re really ending your holiday with a bang!

  The gaily decorated pleasure-boat, giving out strains of recorded music from its mooring just above the Old Bridge, was attracting a good deal of attention. Spectators, most of them German, hung dangerously over the parapet of the bridge and lined the road beside the river, getting in the way of the huge docile automobiles that deposited the young guests, like gift-wrapped packages, on the quay. The girls sunned themselves in the publicity, shaking out the skirts of their party frocks as they emerged from the padded depths of Buicks and Chevrolets, waving goodbye to their parents and climbing the gangplank with little screams of fear as the boat rocked slightly in the wash of passing barges. On one such barge Timothy saw a young boy, brown and barefoot, run the length of his deck to stay level with the amazing spectacle as long as possible, and then lean over the stern with mouth gaping until he was drawn out of sight into the setting sun.

  Timothy arrived on foot. He was glad of the moral support of Kate and Don as he ran the gauntlet of spectators, gripping self-consciously a large box of chocolates, tied up in an enormous bow of lilac silk, which Kate had procured for him from the P.X.

  – My, Timothy, you’re making the social scene with a vengeance tonight, she teased him. They’ve even got a photographer here.

  – It’s unbelievable, Don murmured. Some poor slob must have spent a fortune on this circus.

  – Well, he can afford it, said Kate. Cherry’s father is a Major.

  – I bet the boat was his wife’s
idea, though. Is that her in the black sequins?

  – Yes, and Cherry is beside her.

  – The kid looks terrified.

  – She doesn’t, she looks perfectly sweet.

  On the deck, at the head of the gangplank, a woman with blue-tinted hair and wearing a glittering black cocktail dress stood receiving and shaking hands with the arriving guests. The brilliance of her smile was visible even from where they stood on the riverbank. Beside her a limp, mousy-haired girl in a wide-skirted white dress stood nervously fingering a small bouquet. There was a table beside them which bore a growing pile of brightly-wrapped presents. The gangplank began to fill up.

  – Is the Major planning to run for President? Don enquired. It’s beginning to look like a line at the White House.

  – Oh stop carping, Don, you’ll make Timothy wish he hadn’t come, said Kate.

  Timothy was already wishing exactly that. He hadn’t bargained for anything so formal or so public; and whatever enticing prospects had been opened up by Mel’s quip of Neckin’ on the Neckar seemed firmly closed off by the emphatic presence of Mrs. Eastman, not to mention Major Eastman, who now appeared in rather dashing nautical attire – dark blue slacks, white cable-stitch sweater and peaked cap – carrying a large crate of Coca-Cola aboard, a curved yellow pipe clenched between his teeth.

  – Would you like me to introduce you to the Eastmans, Timothy? Kate asked.

  – Yes, please.

  He followed her up the gangplank, shook hands with his hostesses and handed over his bulky package with relief.

  – My, what a darling ribbon! Mrs. Eastman enthused. It matches your sash, honey, see?

  – Thank you very much, Cherry murmured listlessly. Her hand was limp and moist.

  – It’s so kind of you to invite Timothy, I’m sure he’ll have a great time, said Kate.

  – It’s a real pleasure, Mrs. Eastman beamed. We’ve been hearing so much about you, Timothy.

  He grinned feebly.

  – We should be back by ten-thirty, Mrs. Eastman said to Kate. I think that will be long enough for me, if not for the kids. She laughed, showing her white teeth.