Somewhere Over England

by Margaret Graham

‘You must understand the principles, you must have knowledge,’ he told her as she protested.

  And so she explained how black and white films contain light-sensitive crystals which darken after exposure, and how development is required to make the image visible.

  ‘The longer the exposure the greater darkening of the crystals,’ she added. ‘Development is required to make the image permanent and visible.’

  ‘Good girl.’ Heine moved into the darkroom showing her the wet and dry areas, the enlarger, the processing equipment, the dryer, pausing at the print finishing area. There was still some work left to do on the photographs he had taken last night at the introduction of the trial floodlighting of some London buildings. He told her how he had concentrated on the traffic chaos because it was important to see a situation from an unusual angle.

  ‘You can help me,’ he said, setting the working surface at thirty degrees. ‘I want to get them delivered to the magazine office at lunchtime, then we can spend the afternoon in the park with the camera.’

  ‘Remember Mother is coming to stay for the weekend. She will be arriving tonight.’ Helen settled herself on to the stool, peering at the photograph of black cars and angry drivers. She reached for the trimmer from beneath the bench, confident, sure, eager to begin work, work that she could share with him. She eased her back which ached more each day as her child grew within her.

  ‘My love, how could I forget that your mother comes?’ Heine shook his head but his smile was visible in the dim red light of the room. ‘Every time I go into the spare room I am reminded of her.’

  Helen laughed and had to put the photograph to one side. ‘I know, she has certainly staked her claim, but how could I say anything?’

  She pictured the dressing table with her mother’s brushes, her photographs, her pots for hairnets and pins. She had stayed on their return from Germany after Helen had written to ask her, saying she was to become a grandmother and they would like to see her. It had seemed impossible to do anything else. Her mother had turned the spare room into a replica of her own bedroom, saying as she did so that it was as well to be comfortable since she would be spending so much time here, especially now there was a grandchild on the way. She had been brisk but not unkind and Helen had remembered Frau Weber’s soft arms and wondered if there would be a future after all for mother and daughter.

  Christoph was born on 1 December and Heine looked down at his son and marvelled at the perfect fingernails, the perfect feet and the softness of his skin, the lightness of his hair, while Helen looked at her husband and saw love in his eyes for his son and wondered if her father’s eyes had been the same.

  When Christoph was nearly two months old, on 30 January, Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, and while Helen held the baby, stroking skin she could hardly feel, kissing hair which was gossamer fine, she reminded Heine that all was not bad in the world. Hadn’t the British Prime Minister ordered a review of the Government’s policies on unemployment after the marches and riots? Hadn’t Roosevelt won the United States elections with a landslide and promised a New Deal? Hadn’t two of his photographs been taken by an American magazine? And after all, in Germany it might all pass.

  ‘And look,’ she said, ‘Christoph is smiling, I’m sure he’s smiling. Here, hold him and see for yourself.’ She pushed the baby towards Heine who took him and looked but did not seem to see, and Helen touched the fine crocheted shawl, feeling its pattern, its warmth. ‘I’m sure he’s smiling,’ she said again, touching her husband’s hand, feeling him at last lift hers and put it to his lips, but despair still remained in his eyes and Helen knew that she was still outside his pain.

  When Christoph was nearly four months old the Enabling Act was passed in Germany allowing Hitler, rather than the President, to rule by decree.

  ‘It sets him above the law, you see,’ Heine said, his voice flat, his eyes dark, and Helen wondered what Herr Weber must be feeling but Heine would not write to him; he would only pace the flat, leaving work unfinished so that Helen felt she must work until midnight in the darkroom to complete his assignments for him after she had put Christoph to bed.

  When Christoph was nearly six months old books were burned in the streets of Germany, unions were harassed and in London the blossom bloomed and Helen printed and developed films and delivered them because Heine did not have time. He was too busy writing letters to Munich and meeting friends in dark pubs.

  When Christoph was seven months old he reached forward and pulled Helen towards him and laughed but Heine did not notice because opposition parties had been ousted from the Reichstag in June and a month later Hitler announced plans to sterilise imperfect Germans. Helen took a Leica and carried out two of Heine’s assignments and the results were as good. And so, increasingly, she took over his workload too and did not mind because she had told herself that she would join the battle if that would help this man she loved so much.

  In August her mother came to stay and Helen had to take her out to photograph damage caused by the gales which had hit England, and that night, when the wind blew again and the thunder roared and her mother was asleep, she crooned to Christoph and told him of the raven who was warning them to stay in in case they saw the gods go by. She looked up and smiled at Heine when he came home wet and cold.

  ‘Did you see the gods going about their holy business, my darling?’ she whispered, lifting her face for his kiss. Knowing that for her he was the god.

  He laughed. ‘Only one of your English coppers getting very wet as he paced his beat.’

  Helen made him tea and he sat by the gas fire which plopped and spluttered, cupping the drink in his hand.

  ‘Your mother is asleep?’

  ‘My mother would sleep through a deluge of ravens,’ she said softly. ‘Christoph has not woken since nine and I have finished trimming the hotel photograph. Did you have a good meeting?’ Helen sat down on the worn carpet in front of the fire. The heat was comforting. She clutched her knees, seeing the dust lying on the mantelpiece, on the hearth.

  ‘Yes, we are trying to find firms that will sponsor those that are going to have to leave Germany if it goes on and on. So far in America and to some extent here we have been fortunate. But there is a great deal to do and unemployment is a problem in both countries. I think the time we have and the dissidents have and the Jews have, is short.’

  He put his mug down on the table and leaned back, his hands clasped behind his head.

  ‘Oh God, it’s the studio portrait tomorrow, Helen. I know I said I would do it but I can’t. I have to be at the Embassy by ten. Darling, can you?’

  Helen nodded, laying her head on her knees. Yes, she would do it, as she did so many others. She would have to tell her mother that Heine was out on another assignment again. It seemed easier to lie than to try and make her understand that some things were more important than making a profit. And they were, in this case they were, because people were being saved and Heine’s eyes were no longer dark, his steps were no longer heavy. At last, he had told her in the spring, he felt as though he was doing something again, actually helping people threatened by Hitler’s regime.

  In September one of his Munich friends arrived at their flat with no money and few clothes but many bruises and cuts because storm troopers armed with revolvers and piping were roaming the German streets looking for Jews and Communists and liberals. He told them of a concentration camp which had been opened for these ‘dissidents’.

  ‘It is at Dachau,’ he said.

  Helen made up the bed for Isaac in the spare room and listened to his story and cried. That evening they ate a stew which she had padded out with vegetables and she told them that Christoph had said ‘dada’ and that Heine really did need to make sure he arrived at the art gallery promptly at ten tomorrow because they were leaving up the paintings until he arrived. They particularly wanted him because he had produced such fine work for the catalogue last year. She said nothing when he explained that he had other more important things to do;
just nodded and smiled at Isaac and handed him more rice. She had overcooked it and it clung to the spoon in a lump; so white against the old stained table spoon.

  That night in bed she told Heine that he must do tomorrow’s assignment because she could not, she was already booked to cover the meeting at Whitechapel. Her voice was calm but high as she told him that they would have to earn more money if the bills were to be paid and there was Isaac to feed now. He became angry and told her that she was being trivial; there was a vast problem, or was she too much of a child to see? His voice was tight but low, because they were not alone in their flat, were they?

  Headlights flashed across the ceiling and walls from the passing traffic and Helen watched as the brass picture frame over by the door glinted, caught by the lights of one car and then another.

  Her voice remained calm as she answered but the effort made her hands clench. She breathed slowly.

  ‘Is it childish to deal in reality?’ she said. ‘If we are to help your friends we need to work to pay for it or our child will suffer. You prefer reality. You told me.’ She pointed to the glinting frame which held the photograph he had taken of London Bridge. ‘You have used no soft focus there, Heine. There is no place for it in our lives at this moment. We need to eat, and in order to do that we need to work. We both need to work. You have responsibility to your family as well as your friends.’

  That night she did not sleep but lay on her side, tense with anger and disappointment, aware that he was not asleep either; but she could not touch him, she could not bridge the distance between them because suddenly she was tired. So tired and the sun of their German honeymoon seemed too far away.

  That morning they dressed without speaking and neither looked at the other’s nakedness. Her tiredness hung heavily on her. In the kitchen she poured his tea, watching the tea leaves fill the strainer. Still they did not speak. She fed soldiers to Christoph, then watched as Heine went to the studio and returned with his cameras.

  He stood in the doorway, leaning against the doorpost, his eyes watching Christoph as he dropped his toast on the floor and smeared butter all over his face. His shrieks and banging were the only noise between them.

  Helen leaned back against the sink. It was cool across her back. She looked at the brown lino which was worn in the far corner, the strands of hemp showing through.

  Heine spoke. ‘You are right, my little wife. I’m sorry.’ He blew her a kiss and she watched him as he left and thought, I am not a little wife, I am an adult.

  In December 1934 Christoph was two. In 1935 conscription came into being in Germany, Hitler took possession of the Saar, and Helen’s house became even more full of frightened, thin young men. Her mother no longer came to stay because it was not proper amongst so many foreigners and there never seemed to be the time to try and make her understand how necessary it was. How it would not last for ever because Hitler would fall. Surely he would fall?

  But her mother should have known it was necessary, Heine told Helen. There wasn’t time to make him understand that the distance between mother and daughter was still too wide to discuss such things.

  There were camp beds in the sitting-room and the spare room and others were folded up ready for use if necessary in the studio. Heine was eager and young, his limp hardly noticeable. He talked until the early hours with the refugees until they left to go to jobs and countries Heine and his friends had organised. But always new ones came, occasionally bringing wives, sisters, children, and the sunshine of their honeymoon seemed never to have existed.

  The refugees were ‘placed’ but sometimes it was difficult as the flood of those escaping the swastikas and black boots increased and so some stayed on. Each night when she returned from carrying out commissions and Christoph was in bed, they talked over wine and sometimes remembered to speak in English until Helen left to work again or sleep, but she never slept soundly now and her dreams were bleak.

  Full of the horrors she had listened to, steeped in loneliness, one night she dreamed of a lichen-covered bridge and hands which held her safe and she woke up crying.

  At night Heine crept in beside her and sometimes he would hold her but he was tired, so tired, and so was she. Christoph was passed from one to another and did not know that his father was different to all these uncles.

  At the beginning of May in 1935 they had only four staying and on Silver Jubilee Day she helped the neighbours set out trestle tables in the street while red, white and blue bunting hung across the road, and she asked Heine who was sitting at his desk to carry down some cakes and to come and join her and watch his son enjoy himself.

  ‘I am so busy, my darling. I have letters to write.’

  He had said that too often and Helen felt the anger come. It crept from every pore of her skin and she knew now that it had been there for months and months but it had not formed into words in her head until now. But why this moment? She did not know, except that she was English and this was an English celebration and she asked nothing of him but that he should join her, as she had for so long joined him. She turned to the window, where they were on a level with the bunting. She watched Mr Frazer who lived above the tobacco shop hauling on a line festooned with flags which stretched from his flat window to Mrs Briggs who lived opposite. Heine had never met them, he did not even know their names.

  All she asked was a little of his time for the world which she and their son lived in and he would not give her even that. There were so many other people in their lives, so much that needed doing; but there should be time for happiness as there once was. She smoothed the curtain between her fingers, rubbing up and down, up and down. Then she turned, looking at Hans, Georg, Hermann, Ernst who had been with them for two months.

  ‘You will all come to see how we in England celebrate, and you, Heine, you will come too.’ And her voice was firm. She walked to the desk and covered the notepaper that he had pulled towards him. ‘You will come because you are part of England now. You will come because your English-German son needs you there.’ The paper was cold and dead, the room was quiet.

  Heine looked at her, his eyes puzzled, surprised.

  ‘You will come because you are my husband and I need you there.’ Her voice was calm but the anger sounded in her own ears and she wondered when the child inside her had gone and this woman had taken her place.

  Helen turned then, walked past Hans standing awkwardly by the door, his face turned from her in embarrassment. She stooped and picked Christoph from his playpen, sitting him on her hip. She did not look back but walked from the door to the studio where she picked up her Leica, for she never went anywhere without it now.

  ‘You will come,’ she said as she walked down the stairs feeling so much older than twenty-two. The stairs needed painting. The pushchair had marked the walls and too many hands had felt their way up. Perhaps she would ask Hans and the others to help, and Heine too. But, of course, he would be too busy. As she reached the street the daylight hurt her eyes. The flags were thrashing on their poles in a burst of wind and she turned and looked up at the windows of their flat. Would he come?

  He came with the cakes and the jelly and the hats she had cut from coloured paper, and Hans, Georg, Hermann and Ernst came too and they danced throughout the afternoon and evening and Heine bought wine for the street because Helen had worked on five studio portraits in two weeks and for once all the bills had been paid on time.

  Helen laughed with Marian, the girl who was married to the greengrocer and gave Helen yesterday’s vegetables without charge for the rabbit they both knew she did not have. She had a daughter of four and Helen had photographed her in return. Heine drank with her husband Rob and learned of this for the first time. He kissed his wife though she did not know why, and then sat Christoph on his shoulders and danced him up the street and back again along with the surging crowd. For the first time he met and spoke to their neighbours in the street.

  That night he helped Helen to bath Christoph and he said he had not realis
ed he had grown so much and bent over the cot to watch him fall asleep. He had not looked at him for so long; he had not looked at his wife for so long. He must remember that they existed. He must remember that he loved them; that he was responsible for them.

  Helen stood in the doorway, glad that at least this room was safe. Its ornaments of trains and dogs and bricks in place on the mantelpiece. This was family territory, to be kept secure for her son. There would be no sleeping bags here, no camp beds.

  That night Heine made love to her, slowly, gently, and she wept and told him how much she loved him and he said that she would always be loved by him.

  ‘Will I?’ she asked against his shoulder. ‘Will Christoph?’ She dreamed of the dark cupboard that night.

  Helen’s photographs of the Silver Jubilee celebrations were bought by an American magazine and she celebrated with champagne. She and Heine had one glass only for there were three others with them, but what did it matter? Isaac’s cousin Joseph laughed with them and Wilhelm and Günther too and it was good to see their eyes full of fun, their pain, which tore at Helen daily, gone for just a moment. But then Heine left to meet a contact. Helen watched him leave without surprise for what else had she come to expect? She pushed the bottle with one more glass in it towards the bruised, thin boys who were as young as she was and went to bed alone, for that also she had come to expect.

  In 1936 during a January that was dank and cold George V was laid to rest and Helen and her mother lined the route. Christoph was warm in his knitted suit and coat and he wore a black arm band like the rest of the crowd. The mood was sombre. Helen was thoughtful as her mother pointed out King Edward VIII walking behind the gun carriage pulled by sailors because she had read in the letters which came from America of the liaison between Edward and Mrs Simpson. She brushed the hair from her eyes. So even the succession seemed as uncertain as the rest of the world, which darkened as Hitler and Mussolini growled and raged. Peace was never more fragile, Heine had said, and Helen feared that he was right and what would happen then to a German who lived in England?