Somewhere Over England

by Margaret Graham

  She heard his uneven footsteps on the road and turned, watching as he walked back to the car, his limp rather less noticeable than it had been last year. She smiled because he was smiling, the tension gone from his face, his body. The hot June sun was burning in through the windscreen of the car but it did not matter for soon they would be moving again. And soon she would meet the woman who had sent letters greeting her into the family and bone china handled fruit knives as a wedding present which her mother had sniffed at and polished up on her apron. Heine would meet his father again, and last night beneath the light sheet she had said that he should be gentle, for, after all, it was only politics which divided the two men, not years of struggle. She had not understood his silence but he had promised, and said bless you for being nineteen.

  Heine eased himself behind the steering wheel and drove her past verges full of poppies, cornflowers, brown-eyed Susan and Queen Anne’s lace and entered villages down avenues bordered by orchards flushed with cherries, apples and pears. They swept through streets of black and white houses with window-boxes of petunias or geraniums. They stopped and ate sausage and bread in the car watching girls with coiled blonde hair throwing corn to geese, before easing themselves from their seats and walking to the village ponds, throwing their crusts to swans and brown ducks.

  They stayed overnight in a room with a balcony and the next day they drove alongside fields of tall rye which swayed in the breeze and darkened as the clouds swirled briefly between earth and sun. Over to the east of the road hay was being pitched into wagons drawn first by horses on the lower slopes then oxen as the fields became steeper. Helen wished that she could take photographs as Heine was doing and he promised that on their return he would show her. He pushed strawberries into her mouth and kissed her and she could taste the strawberries on his lips too.

  Soon they drove through sugar beet fields where women and children hoed between the rows and Heine said that they would be at his parents’ home soon and fell silent. But Helen would not let him sink again and made him tell her of the beet women. He told of how they had come after the war from the East; from Poland and Silesia to work on German farms during the beet harvest, for here they did not starve – not quite. He told of how they had married farmworkers and settled in condemned farmhouses where they were secure as long as they stayed bound to the farmer. He stopped the car and pointed to a plot of land on which a woman and two children worked.

  ‘I used to watch them before I went to Munich, wondering how they could bear it. In the spring they single out the small plants. In the summer they hoe the weeds as they are doing now and in the autumn they pull out the beet.’

  Helen peered forward, trying to see past him but there was no room so she opened the door and stood looking. She preferred the fresh air, it made her feel less nauseous but she would not tell him about that, not yet. The wind was brisker now, across the flatter lands. Heine turned off the engine and he too came and stood and looked.

  ‘I took many photographs, especially of the children. They start work at the age of six and here our winters come early and are not like English ones. I would see them tossing the beets into the carts in the snow and ice and hear their coughs. I exhibited the photographs in Munich but what can be done? It is, and was, work in a time of no work. It is food in a time of no food.’ He looked over to a clump of cottages in the distance. ‘I took photographs inside too, of the one large stew pot in the centre of the table, the spoons which were dug in all at once by thin armed, thin faced people.’

  He turned again to the beet fields. ‘I felt so fortunate that I was not a beet picker, that I had the time and energy to think; something which is denied to these people. But now I wonder.’

  Helen grasped his arm. ‘Come along, my love, the sun is out, this is our honeymoon. Or would you perhaps like us to move back here; pull beet, hoe, plant?’ She shook him and smiled, willing him to laugh and he did, and he kissed her and said against her mouth that no, no one in his family would ever have to hoe or pull beet and that while she was with him she kept the shadows from him.

  The village where his family lived was to the west of Hanover and his mother met them at the door, holding Heine to her, her blonde-white hair folded into a pleat, her face buried in his shoulder.

  ‘Mutti,’ he said. ‘Oh Mutti.’

  Helen knew then just how much Heine loved his mother because he cried.

  She turned and looked over the village, at the church, the barns, the tall poplars, the houses, the window-boxes and wondered what a mother’s soft arms were like. She looked to either side of Heine’s tall house and saw the lime trees, those same trees that Heine had talked about throughout the winter and as spring approached.

  She looked up at the long eaves which he said dripped heavy thawed snow in the spring and knew that when they entered the house they would go into the sitting-room and sit on red brocade settees with carved wooden arms, and that there would be a portrait of his grandfather above the sideboard. She knew too that the room would be dark because of blinds drawn halfway down the window to protect the red carpet from the sun. And it was just as she imagined it would be when they followed his mother into the room from the hall except for the muslin curtains which she had forgotten would be hung in the summer.

  That night they slept in the room which had always been Heine’s. The bed was large and there was a shelf full of lead soldiers.

  ‘Painted by me,’ Heine said, ‘when I was nine.’

  ‘So clever, my love,’ she murmured against his neck. The moonlight was bright in the room and she could see the stove clearly but not the colours of the tiles. The brass knobs of its doors gleamed as she listened to him telling her of the Zuckertüte he had carried to school on his first day and she imagined the rolled cone of cardboard filled with sweets and laughed when he said it had not lasted much more than an hour. ‘Pig;’ she said and laughed again when he told her how he and his cousin Adam had hunted for acorns to feed the pig which was growing larger and larger down in the orchard at the edge of the village.

  He did not talk of his father who was away until tomorrow night but of the forest he wanted to take her to and then he kissed her, then again more strongly, and she felt passion rise in her until it matched his because she no longer heard her mother’s words. You are disgusting.

  The moon was behind cloud while Heine slept and she lay full and relaxed, with the feel of him still on her skin. She stretched, and knew that Heine had been right to marry according to old German country customs. She had laughed when he had insisted that a rising moon promises good fortune while a moon on the wane drains it from you. How Wednesday and Friday were reserved for widows, and she had said that Saturday had been in her mind anyway.

  So they had married when the moon was rising and she knew without doubt now that good fortune was to be theirs; her pregnancy had been confirmed before they left England. But it was news which was hers alone for she had waited to tell Heine until they arrived. He would hear in his beloved forest tomorrow.

  At breakfast his mother smiled at Helen and spoke in slow but clear English.

  Ilse, who helped in the house, brought a jug of coffee, smiling and greeting Heine.

  He smiled at her. ‘How is Hans?’

  ‘Very well, Herr Weber,’ Ilse replied, placing the coffee jug before Frau Weber. ‘He keeps the garden as nicely as ever, I think. Still a few weeds but not too many.’

  They all laughed.

  ‘You slept with comfort?’ his mother asked as Ilse left the room. She poured coffee into large cups and held her hand to Heine’s face as he stopped to kiss her.

  Helen answered. ‘Oh yes, thank you. The bed was fine and we didn’t wake until we heard the cart go down the lane. It is very quiet here.’

  There was cream for the coffee and Helen poured it from the white jug, watching it sink then swirl as she stirred. The coffee was hot and strong and the steam dampened her face as she drank.

  Frau Weber turned to Heine. ‘My de
ar, your father rang late last night. He will not be back now until tomorrow. He is sorry, so sorry, but he has a meeting.’ She paused and Helen watched her place her hand over her son’s as he stretched back in his chair which was at her right hand, opposite Helen. Her full sleeves were gathered at the wrist and a Zircon brooch was fastened at her throat. ‘Just a meeting, you understand, but one he cannot miss, the election is too close, you see.’ She paused as Heine nodded but did not speak and then she smiled at Helen.

  ‘And now you still take your beautiful young wife to show her our forests, our woods?’

  Heine looked at his mother. ‘No, Mutti, not now. We will go tomorrow. Today perhaps we shall go by train to Hanover. As you say, the day for casting votes is close and maybe my English wife should see how we in Germany conduct our elections, while we still have them?’

  ‘Heine.’ Helen’s voice was loud, for she could see the darkening of his mother’s eyes, the tension in her full face. He was so like his mother; the same lips, the same blue eyes, blond hair, proud face. The same lines around the eyes and mouth.

  ‘Heine,’ her voice was softer now. ‘Yes, I should love to go to Hanover, to drink coffee topped with cream as you promised a year ago, do you remember?’ She remembered the parapet, the sticks racing on the current and from his softening face she knew that he did too. Perhaps her news should not wait until the forest, it was needed today to lift the darkness which was easing into his face.

  The train journey took little time and as they rattled and jolted he pointed to the forest in the far distance through a window which was dust spattered. She could not see the trees, just a darkening of the horizon but there was such longing in his face.

  ‘Why don’t we go there today?’ Helen urged. ‘You want to go so much.’

  ‘No, I will need the forest on the day that I meet my father again. It gives me strength, I think.’

  Helen grasped his arm. ‘I’ll be with you, my darling.’

  ‘I know, and for that I thank God. You are my lightness, a breeze that sweeps the dark shadows away.’ Suddenly he laughed, a loud long laugh and the old man who sat in the carriage with them lifted his head from the paper but could not follow their conversation for it was in English.

  ‘I think perhaps I get, how you say, carried away. Dark shadow is altogether too poetical, my love. Let us just say that I look forward to seeing my young wife drinking her first glass of coffee at the Konditorei.’

  Helen laughed now, poking his arm. ‘Just because you want to see me with a white moustache, you bully.’

  Hanover was busy, but not as busy as London and there were no trolley buses, just trams and cars which, it seemed to Helen, barely missed one another or the pedestrians, especially this nervous English girl. They crossed the Ernst-August-Platz and then the Georgstrasse and Helen pulled at Heine to make him hurry because of the noise and speed of the traffic. She could not adjust to looking for cars coming towards them on the right-hand side of the road.

  There was no free table at the glass-domed Kröpcke but Heine spoke to the Manager who smiled and shook his hand, because, Heine told her, Herr Busch knew that in the past he had brought many beautiful young women here and had greatly increased the profits of the Kröpcke. They all laughed and the Manager’s eyes darted about the room until he saw a movement to their left. He signalled to a waiter, and bowed, and they were ushered to a table whose occupants were leaving.

  It was so light beneath the glass dome – for that is all that the building was, just one large glass dome – and Helen thought that her father would have loved it for his vegetables. As she smoothed the napkin on her lap she noticed the women at the surrounding tables; so groomed, so immaculate, smoking cigarettes in ivory and jade holders through pursed red lips. Their perfume thickened the air. Helen felt young and gauche until she saw Heine watching her and heard his words.

  ‘You will always be more beautiful than a hundred of these women put together.’

  How did he know what she was thinking, how did he always know? But she was glad that he did. The waiter brought coffee heaped high with whipped cream and topped with shavings of chocolate and Helen laughed, using her spoon to scoop some into her mouth.

  ‘But no, Frau Weber, with the mouth. It must be with the mouth.’ Heine’s smile was broad.

  ‘You are a cruel man, Herr Weber,’ she replied but she did lift the glass by its silver-plated handle and drink, feeling first the cool cream and then the hot coffee. She knew that she had a white moustache because Heine laughed and leaned across, wiping it with his napkin as he told her of his first such coffee, when he was young and in a sailor suit. Young and clean to begin with, young and dirty when he was finished. His parents had laughed too and this time his face did not tense as he spoke of them. They ate cakes which squeezed cream but left some because they were too large.

  Later they walked past shops which were smart and rich and in the Post Office she dampened a stamp with a small sponge before writing a card to her mother: ‘Having a wonderful time, Love Heine and Helen.’

  She did not put, ‘Wish you were here’. They walked on towards the Markthalle, a large building with yet another glass roof where it was also light and so full of noise that it seemed to ring around inside her head.

  Heine bought her an orange from a stall which had citrus fruits piled high in precise displays. Vegetables were scrubbed and placed in neat rows unlike any she had seen in England. Sausages were hung above the delicatessen counter and Heine told her of the smoking room in the attic of his mother’s home and the sausages which she made herself.

  ‘She will take you up there tomorrow to cut some sausage for the picnic before we go to the forest.’

  There were lobsters, and shiny black smoked eels which made Helen turn away. There were Kieler Sprotten packed as tightly as she and Heine were in the flowing and ebbing crowd.

  ‘My favourite,’ Heine said. ‘Smoked spratts to you, my non-German-speaking wife.’

  Helen stopped and pulled him round. ‘But you won’t let me learn your language,’ she protested.

  ‘I know.’ His face was tense again and she wished she had not spoken. ‘I do not wish you to become German in any way.’

  They walked again, out of the market to a café with a small orchestra playing where Heine ordered Fleischsalat, which Helen discovered was meat salad. She was tired now but he was smiling again. It was early afternoon and soon she would tell him of his child; but not here, it should be when they were alone. Heine drank beer with his meal; too much, she thought, as she asked for more coffee. People sat at other tables talking, laughing; the men with napkins tucked into their collars and beer foam around their mouths. Fans whirred lazily above the room, lifting the hair gently on an old man’s head. He patted it with a blue-veined age-spotted hand.

  As she stirred her coffee discordant sounds stabbed at her thoughts, intruding into the background music, and through the window Helen saw a van with posters on its sides. She heard a metallic voice, distorted by speakers, shouting harshly, but could not understand the words. It moved slowly down the street before pulling in further along into a small square. And now she looked up, shaken, as Heine, his lips drawn tight, suddenly shoved his chair back, scraping it across the tiles. He threw money on the table and pulled her up.

  ‘Let’s go and hear too, shall we? Perhaps you should listen to some German.’ It was not a question but a statement and his voice was harsh and rapid, as discordant as the metallic voice had been. He stared at her but did not see her.

  Helen held back, reaching for her handbag on the table. People were looking and now the fan disturbed her own hair.

  ‘Whatever’s wrong, Heine?’ she asked, but quietly because they had already created too much fuss.

  ‘For God’s sake, just come on.’ He grasped her hand, knocking the table as he brushed past the waiter, and now she followed because silence had fallen in the café.

  He did not let go of her as he rushed along the street towards
the crowd that was gathering around the parked van. He did not let go even when they were standing amongst the crowd which stood still and listened as the man with short hair spoke. But her hand hurt because he was holding it so tightly and he did not hear when she asked him to be gentle. She could smell the beer as he breathed hard.

  ‘What is the matter, Heine, for heaven’s sake?’

  He looked at her then but his eyes were not seeing her.

  ‘Nazis are the matter.’ His voice was low and cold.

  ‘Heine, you promised. Your mother. Our honeymoon. You must not cause trouble.’ Helen clutched at his sleeve but only with one hand for he still held on to the other.

  No, I must not cause trouble, Heine thought. No, none of us must cause trouble, or we get hurt. Yes, we get very badly hurt. He could hear Helen, he could feel her hand and he must not let go, no. He must never let go because she was sanity in this world which was around him again and which was reaching out, engulfing him, suffocating him.

  He started to return through the crowd, turning from the man who spoke of a Germany that had been betrayed in 1918 from within. Who spoke of the armistice which meant that the war was not at an end for Germany. Heine pulled Helen along too but there were more people now. He pushed, twisted and turned, always moving towards the thinning edge that he knew was there. He could still hear the voice, even though he did not want to.

  ‘Germany will regain its lost territories. Herr Hitler will end unemployment, end despair. End the contamination of the Aryan race by the Juden traitors. You voted for us in 1930, you gave us a National Socialist landslide in the Reichstag elections. Vote for us again so that we can restore law and order. Restore economic stability. Cleanse our nation.’

  But they were through now, there was room to breathe, there was light, and Heine moved quickly, still holding Helen’s hand until he could no longer hear the man who told people what they wanted to hear. Yes, that was the danger; jobs, stability, pride – but at what cost? Dear God, surely they would not gain more power? Surely to God, that could not happen?