by Rosie Thomas
‘I am sorry,’ was all he could say, as if Alice’s death were his to apologize for. Grace stood stiffly in his embrace, and her eyes were wide and dry.
‘We must tell Eleanor. We must tell her mother,’ Nathaniel whispered.
It was two days before they were notified that Alice’s body had been released. When the message did come, they were taken in a car sent from the Embassy to an anonymous building in the Wedding district of North Berlin. There were two young policemen at the door. They had heavy, uneasy faces and they stared straight ahead of them as the small group filed past.
Alice’s body lay in a plain coffin resting on trestles in a room that looked as if it might once have been a classroom. There were nibbled dents in the dirty walls where maps or posters had been pinned, and the floor was pocked with the marks of desk- and chairlegs. The coffin had been left open, and the lid lay on the floor next to it.
Julius went slowly forward with his arm around his father’s shoulders. Grace and Rafael and the doctor that Rafael had brought to examine the body waited beside the door.
In her coffin Alice did not look very much different from the girl who had left London to go to stay with Clio in Paris. Her face was sharpened and there were hollows under her prominent cheekbones that were like thumbprints in softened wax. But her expression was utterly blank, and as calm as if her eyelids might suddenly spring open and stare unfocused, just for an instant, before life and recollection flooded back into them. Sometimes, Julius remembered, the living face had had that same eerily vacant stare. He would not have remarked on it, in trying to describe Alice to someone who had never known her, but the memory of it struck him now as he looked down into her coffin.
Her hair was loose. It sprang in a wiry mass to cover her forehead and her ears and waved in thick curls around her cheeks.
Nathaniel leant forward and touched one of her hands. He made a single sound, like a sob that never emerged from his throat. And then he turned and stumbled away. Beside the door Grace put her hand on his arm. Julius remembered her red nails, and the way that the dark-tipped fur of her shako hat seemed to melt into her dark hair.
Julius nodded to the doctor and Rafael. The doctor was a Jew, a middle-aged man with a pale, prematurely lined face. He tiptoed forward and put the tips of his fingers to Alice’s chin. He gently turned her head, first to one side and then the other. The hair fell away from the left temple to reveal the bullet hole. There were dark burn-marks in the skin around the black puncture. Julius made himself stand motionless, looking down at where the bullet had entered his sister’s brain.
Rafael muttered some words of German and went back to the doorway, to Nathaniel and Grace.
The doctor’s fingers moved over Alice’s skull. He frowned, as if he were listening to some barely audible instructions. Then he sighed, and his hands dropped to his sides.
Julius lingered for a moment longer. He could think of no blessing or even the gist of a prayer to whisper to Alice. He stooped down instead and picked up the coffin lid. He covered her with it and left her to the darkness.
Outside, when they were away from the young policemen, the doctor told them, ‘I cannot tell. I can only say that there is a single bullet wound, undoubtedly the cause of death. There are no obvious signs of violence; I think that she may not have been well fed in the days or weeks before her death, but she was not starving.’ He spread his hands, palms up, showing them his poverty. ‘I don’t know if she was trying to run away or standing still when she died. I am not a forensic specialist.’
They did not know and they would never know, Julius was afraid of that.
Rafael said, ‘I understand.’
The doctor added, ‘You are more fortunate than many. You have her to take back home; you know something, even if it is not enough.’ And he glanced at them, a sidelong speculative glance that could be quickly deflected, in the way that people in Berlin looked at each other now. ‘You must have friends somewhere.’
Grace stared straight ahead, her dry eyes dark and steady under the cloud of fur. None of the others moved or spoke.
‘Is there anything else I may help you with?’ the doctor asked. His manner was dignified and professional now; they had a sudden sense of the respected family physician that he must have been before he was denied the right to practise.
‘Thank you,’ Rafael murmured. He paid over some marks and the doctor took them, gratefully, but without looking directly at any of them. He melted away, and the Embassy car slid forward to take them back to Wilmersdorf.
Julius and Rafael made the necessary arrangements. The formalities were completed with surprising speed. All four of them would accompany the coffin back to London; they would travel overnight by train to Paris, and in Paris Clio and Romy would meet them before they moved on again to London and Oxford. Eleanor was waiting in the Woodstock Road. Tabby and Blanche were with her, doing what they could to support her in her grief before Nathaniel came.
It was a good thing that Eleanor needed her husband so much, Julius thought. The need to reach her was the only thing that Nathaniel was able to focus on. He seemed to have shrunk, becoming frail where he had once been as strong as a tree.
Julius was leaving Berlin for good. He packed up his belongings, with Grace’s help. He had never taken much interest in material possessions, and so it was not a task that took them very long. Grace remembered the bust of Mozart that had stood on the table in his bare Oxford bedroom when he was a boy. She wrapped it now in a darned jersey and laid it in one of the two suitcases. The apartment was soon stripped bare. Nathaniel’s bag had been packed and carried around from the pension. Nathaniel himself sat in a chair in the corner. He stared ahead of him, but he seemed to see nothing. Rafael went out, saying that he was going to buy some food for the journey. With all the preparations made, Julius and Grace sat down, close together but not touching, waiting in silence for it to be time to leave.
They were disturbed by the ringing of the downstairs bell. It was the messenger from the Embassy again, and this time he brought a package addressed to Nathaniel.
Inside it there was a letter from the Ambassador, a worn leather-bound notebook and two sealed envelopes, both of them addressed to Grace. Nathaniel read the letter, and then read it again. He opened the notebook, and slowly turned the thin pages. Then, with a gesture of incomprehension, he held out the book and one of the two envelopes.
‘These were returned to the Embassy. He says they are Alice’s personal effects.’ His voice cracked but he went on. ‘Not very much, is it? But I suppose we should continue to consider ourselves lucky. It is something of her, at least.’ Then he held out the second envelope. Grace recognized the Nazi insignia at once. ‘This is for you, also.’
Grace opened the thick, cream-coloured envelope first.
It was a personal letter from Hitler.
She puzzled over the high-flown German phrases, understanding only the gist of them.
The Führer deeply regretted the circumstances surrounding the tragic death of Lady Grace’s young relative. It was a most disturbing and unfortunate accident, and the Führer wished to assure her that he sincerely mourned the loss of such a life. His sympathy was all for the young lady’s bereaved parents, and of course for Lady Grace herself. If there was anything he might be allowed to do, to assist them in any way, then she must not hesitate to indicate it. He remained, and so on.
Grace folded the thick paper and pushed it away from her. Then she took up the leather notebook. The pages were very thin and ruled with faint blue lines. They were covered with drawings, all done with the same soft and very blunt pencil.
Alice had no talent as an artist. But in the camp she had made laborious efforts to draw some of the places she had known, from memory, as if even such inaccurate representations would bring them closer, would somehow bring home nearer to Sachsenhausen. Slowly Grace turned the pages. She recognized the south front of Stretton, although Alice had put in too many windows, and surely this domed b
uilding was the Radcliffe Camera? There was an attempt at the garden in the Woodstock Road, and the house itself, with the turret under the witch’s hat of purple slate.
Every page had been used. Clearly there would be no more paper, once this was all used up. There were tiny drawings around the edges of the larger ones, faces and figures, not all of them recognizable. Jake and Nathaniel himself were distinguishable by their beards. And these, the faces of two women in profile, looking away in opposite directions, these must be Clio and herself. The pose was the same as The Janus Face.
Grace closed the little book and then clumsily handed it over to Julius. She didn’t want to have to watch his face as he studied the tiny, incompetent drawings. She stood up instead and walked away to the window. There, with her back to them, she looked at the second envelope.
This one was thin, of the cheapest quality. It was creased and stained, as if it had been written some time ago and then kept hidden.
Alice had addressed the letter very formally, to Lady Grace Brock. She had written out the Vincent Street address, and added London, S.W. There was no stamp, of course. Grace wondered if Alice had planned somehow to send it, or if the writing of it had been just a dream, connecting her back to the old, solid world, like the drawings in her notebook.
She slit open the flimsy envelope. Alice had written in the same blunt pencil, on a sheet of paper torn from the notebook.
Her voice shouted off the page, so clearly audible that Grace had to close her eyes for a second. She had not cried since the news of Alice’s death, not even after they had left the coffin in the deserted classroom, but she almost wept now. Alice had written,
I can imagine what everyone must say, Pappy and Ma and all the others except for you. But I know you know differently, Grace darling, you will understand that I did do wrong and seemed to pull a gun on the Führer, although it was really only a stupid accident. I saw his dear face, through all the confusion, and he seemed only surprised, not angry or afraid. And then when I looked again he was gone and the guards were so red and violent out of fear for him and they marched me away. It is all a sad mistake, but it has not changed the way I feel about anything. There must be rules, and proper punishments, mustn’t there? I can bear it quite well, except that there are so many Jews. And I know that soon the mistake will be sorted out, because I am not guilty of anything. I wanted to tell you this, Grace, because you believe in what is Right, as I do. We must never, never give up. I think about you, and Vincent Street, and all the other times, and about coming home soon. I am quite brave, really, you know. Until I see you again, love from your Alice.
Heil Hitler. God Save the King.
Alice would not have known about the Abdication, Grace remembered. She had always admired Edward. As a little girl, she had kept a scrapbook of his foreign tours.
The thin sheet of paper rustled in her fingers. Grace was stricken by the pathos of the letter. It was so much like Alice herself, such a halting mixture of naïvety and defiance and devotion.
Julius and Nathaniel were both watching her. Grace knew that she could not cry here and now. There was the long journey ahead of them, and Julius and Nathaniel needed her strength.
‘What does she say?’ Nathaniel asked. ‘It’s odd that she should write to you.’ Not to her father, or her mother. The words were unspoken, but she heard them.
Awkwardly Grace held out the sheet of paper. It was not odd at all; she wished that it was, so that she might be absolved from the responsibility.
Nathaniel read the letter and then gave it to Julius. Neither of them spoke, but Grace suddenly sensed in Nathaniel the silent and destructive vibration of blame. If Alice had not fallen under her cousin’s spell. If she had not adopted Grace’s political alignments with such misplaced fervour.
If the world had been a different place, Grace thought bitterly.
But she did not flinch. She put the other letter into Nathaniel’s hand. He read it much more quickly than she had done, and then with a hiss of anger he crumpled it sharply into a ball and flung it away.
Julius stood up. Every movement in the still room seemed exaggerated. He paced slowly around the confined space and stopped at the window.
‘Where is Rafael?’ he said.
Grace realized instantly that he had been away for a long while. Much longer than it should take to walk to the little Jewish-run grocer’s shop and back again.
It was almost time for them to leave for the station.
She ran to the window and looked down into the street. It had grown dark, and there were few passers-by. As she craned from side to side her breath made a foggy cloud on the cold glass and she rubbed it away with the tips of her fingers. Somewhere in the chambers of her mind a memory stirred.
There was no sign of Rafael.
‘He should be back,’ she said wildly. ‘He should have been back long ago.’
Julius took two steps to the window. The darkness beyond the glass loomed threateningly, and he felt fear tightening like a red-hot wire around his neck.
‘Where is he?’ he repeated. It seemed terrible now that they had not realized he was so late. He could hear Grace’s breathing beside him, and the hollow thumping of his own heart.
‘I’m afraid,’ Grace whispered. ‘Julius, I’m afraid for him.’
He took her hand. They knew too much about the Nazi patrols who roamed the streets. There were policemen and stormtroopers and gangs of youths who set upon whoever crossed their path in the wrong direction.
Nathaniel’s face was grey. He looked past Grace and Julius to the black square of the window. ‘We must wait,’ he said, but his voice was heavy as if he knew already what had happened.
They waited in silence.
The seconds ticked by. The three of them were frozen, aching with the intensity of their waiting. Every sound was magnified, so that they looked at each other with the ballooning of hope and then with its deflation. The scrape of Rafael’s key in the lock never came.
Julius looked at his watch. His arm felt heavy, as if his clothes were waterlogged.
‘You must go,’ he told Nathaniel and Grace. The Embassy was arranging for the coffin to be collected from Wedding and placed in the guard’s compartment of the Paris train. They had to be on that train with Alice. ‘You must take her home. I will wait here for Rafael.’
‘No.’
Nathaniel shouted at him. There were wet fronds in the grey beard around his lips and purplish veins stood out on his temples.
‘We will all go. Do you understand me?’
Grace was shivering. The darkness outside was full of threats.
In his gentle way Julius said, ‘I can’t go and leave Rafael here, not without knowing what has happened to him.’
But they all did know what must have happened. Rafael was a Jew, and a subversive. His efforts on Alice’s behalf must have made him too conspicuous in the wrong places. The rest of them were British, and an embarrassment that the Reich would be glad to be rid of. But Rafael could not be allowed to slip away with them to safety, not a second time.
The shock of his absence reverberated in the room. They were all standing now, helpless and afraid. Nathaniel wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He tried to speak calmly in order to persuade Julius. There was no time for any subtlety. He must be made to leave now, immediately.
Brutally Nathaniel said, ‘What do you imagine you can do for him? What have we been able to do for Alice by staying here in Berlin? You are only risking yourself.’
‘No more than in the last year, or two years.’
‘No,’ Nathaniel shouted again.
He looked to Grace for her support. He could blame her indirectly for Alice’s death but he would also take what she could give now. He had no shred of pride left.
Grace tried to take Julius’s hand. He withdrew it and held it close against his chest.
‘I think your father is right,’ she said softly. There was no one they could turn to for help for Rafael. She did
n’t think that she could even find the Café Josef if she went looking for it. And if she did stumble across it, what could she say, and to whom?
A last image of the great brown city swept by marching men and their blood-red banners came to her. There was power and evil in unquantifiable measure. It was absurd to think they could do anything here, except escape from it whilst escape was still possible.
‘Come now,’ she begged him.
He hesitated, the conflict plainly visible in his haggard face.
‘Now,’ Nathaniel repeated. They could hear the quick minutes ticking away.
With a sudden violent lunge Julius reached and hauled two of their waiting suitcases into his arms. With his head bent, looking nowhere, he shouldered out of the apartment and down the stairs. Grace and Nathaniel followed him with their share of the luggage. The door slammed shut behind them. They stood huddled together, scanning the street, in the hope that Rafael might somehow appear at this very last moment. Then, with a rattle of ancient bodywork, a taxi materialized at the corner.
The Bahnhof Zoo was a hissing cavern of noise and steam under its great arched roof. There was a stink of smoke and grease. The Paris train stood at the platform, and the last passengers were climbing into their compartments. A young man, unmistakably from the British Embassy in his dark overcoat and bowler hat, was waiting beside the closed van at the end of the train. He was anxiously staring along the length of the platform.
As soon as he saw Nathaniel he dashed forward, and then remembered why he was there and slowed to a respectful pace again. ‘I was afraid something had detained you.’
None of them could speak.
‘The coffin has been put aboard. The papers are all in order.’
Nathaniel took them, and folded them inside his old raincoat.
‘The train is about to leave, sir.’
A porter opened a door for them, and they climbed into the high carriage next to the goods van. Their luggage was bundled in somehow beside them. The door slammed and from somewhere along the platform a whistle blew. The young man reached up and shook Nathaniel’s hand through the open window. Then he stood back as the train began to move and his arm twitched as if he suppressed a military salute. The last thing they saw of him, through a billow of steam, was the expression of clear relief on his face. He had done his duty and seen his three British subjects, including the Member of Parliament, safely on to the Paris train. There had been no members of the Press to see them go, and no other difficulties had arisen. The absence of the fourth person, the German Jew, was no concern of his.
