Midwinter Break

by Bernard Maclaverty

  ‘You’ll get your real present tomorrow.’ He kissed her.

  ‘You wrapped this just now,’ she said, laughing. There was a small black domed box beneath the loose paper. She opened it.

  ‘Earrings,’ he said. She kissed him.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘You said you didn’t like the idea of an eternity ring so I thought you might like those. Eternity earrings.’ She lifted one from the pledget of cotton wool and looked at it closely. ‘You were so pleased about getting your ears pierced . . .’ She took off the earrings she had worn to Mass and began fitting the new ones.

  And now here they were in the middle of the trip, in Amsterdam, in a hotel room, him with an empty glass on the table in front of him. What was her phrase? ‘I would fain be prone.’ He hoisted himself to his feet. The half-bottle had not been finished but a fair dent had been made in it. He opened the main duty-free bottle, still standing in its poly bag, and poured what remained of the half-bottle into it. The empty went into his left trouser pocket. He should decant both half-bottles while he was at it. His jacket hung lopsided on its hanger until he removed the other half-bottle. He performed the task in the bathroom with the door closed.

  A constitutional would have to be taken. Indoors. The second empty he slipped into his right trouser pocket. He checked her position in the bed – not an inch had she moved. With great care he sought out the extra plastic key card so that he could get back in again if the door accidentally closed. Nor would the room be plunged into darkness in his absence, frightening the life out of Stella. So he was proud of himself for using the extra plastic key. A very adult thing to do. He left the door open a fraction to avoid clicks and clunks which would wake her on his re-entry. It was only when he was halfway along the corridor that he realised he was in his stocking feet and his shirt tail was out. He made it to the lifts without bumping into the wall too much. The waste bin had a silver lid and a round hole in its side. He dropped one half-bottle into it. It made a loud metallic bang.

  ‘Sorry.’

  He thought of an Act of Contrition. A firm purpose of amendment. Never again. So he bent the knee – the old much-lamented mauvais genou – genuflected so’s he could insert his arm into the bin – and slid the second empty down the inside until it reached the bottom – quietly. When he straightened up he staggered forward a little, then turned and retraced his steps – at least that is what he thought he was doing. At a T-junction of corridors there were signs pointing to the room numbers. What was theirs? He consulted his plastic key. There was no number on it. The number was on the white bit of paper around the plastic and he had left it in the room. He was sure his room was on the left-hand side. But the corridor was endlessly the same and each magnolia cream door was the same, except for the number. Most of them were silent now that it was late – just the occasional sound of a television and, in between, the padding sounds of his stocking feet over the carpet as he wavered along. The corridor was a relatively recent arrival on the architectural scene. Round about the end of the nineteenth century. Before that, people used to go from room to room. How embarrassing would that be nowadays? He began to select landmarks – the ice-making machine in an alcove. Trays, outside some doors, with half-finished meals, glasses, bottles, white crumpled napkins. One with a half-eaten wedge of pizza covered in grey-green artichokes. He was sure this was the second time he had passed it. Because he remembered thinking he was peckish enough to finish it off. Nobody would know. But the adult in him made him refrain. A firm purpose of amendment. That was just a fancy Catholic way of saying ‘I’ll never do it again’. Him on his teenage-boy knees in the dark. The priest breathing on the other side of the mesh. Some kind of eye test, Father? Nobody ever said he’d go blind. And the funny thing was – at that time – he was resolved never to do it again. And he momentarily joined the angels, felt good about himself. Was uplifted. It could be like that with the drink. If he got help. Or if he really applied himself. Eating apples. Or was that just for giving up the cigarettes? The idea of sin had disappeared. The nearest equivalent was hurting other people. Stella was other people. To resolve to give up the drink when you were pissed was completely the wrong time. There was no door fractionally open to him. He turned and proceeded to retrace his steps, back past the ice-maker, past the pizza with artichokes. He began to laugh – this was one way to leave your wife. In the middle of the night, in a hotel in Amsterdam. They would find him at breakfast still padding around, his socks worn through, his feet bloodied with carpet friction. But maybe they wouldn’t find him. Maybe he’d never be seen again. He would die and mummify and disintegrate in a corner behind the ice-maker. End up as dust motes. Sucked into a Hoover operated by one of those lovely girls, in a lilac housecoat, from Thailand or Puerto Rico. Sounded vaguely like a perversion. At the T-junction he tried to orientate himself. Try the other way. Plan B. He set off to the right. Warm – he was getting warmer. He recognised a print on the wall, of a ruined Greek temple. Hot. Funny how he never forgot a building. In this rampage along corridors he felt like something from Greek mythology. Theseus or the King of Crete. Maybe it was Daedalus, the architect and builder of mazes and labyrinths. He’d fit the bill. If he’d built it, he’d surely know the way. When he came to it, totally by accident, the magnolia door of number 396 was slightly open. Very, very hot. A sliver of faint light at the door jamb. He pushed on the door and it opened. Their familiar case and his own coat on the chair. In the bed the familiar head on the pillow. Odysseus, home at last. After ten eventful years. Now to lay my weary bones. Maybe a nightcap. To celebrate the fact that he had stowed the empties. He poured himself a drink.

  It seemed that no sooner was he in bed and asleep than he was awake again. Cramp. In the dark he flings aside the bedclothes and swings himself out of bed. His mouth tightens in a noiseless scream. His right foot and lower right leg wants to warp but can’t. It feels like a just-caught mackerel arching this way and that. And he’s trying to pacify it. Watch your step, this is not life-threatening but it feels like it. I’ll walk on you, ya bastard. I’ll flex you. Stride up and down trying not to wake the dog-tired wife. It’s not extra time at Wembley with his team mates trying to bend the foot while he lies on his back and gets on with the screaming. There’s no glamour here. No, this is a pitch-black hotel bedroom in Amsterdam, at three or four o’clock in the morning. Even an ouch would be frowned upon – out of the question. How do you pronounce ouch anyway? Nobody ever said ouch in their lives. Aaaaaaah fuck – but never ouch. Ouch is for comics and storyboards. Make it to the toilet and all will be well. Relief is only steps away. Both bladder and leg. The route now familiar in the darkness takes him to the bathroom. Pull the light cord. But the foot will not flatten – it remains like a hockey stick. With all his might he tries to break the arch of it by flattening it against the floor. The pain is a steel hawser. He presses down on his knee – the old genou. Hops on his good foot once or twice. The back of the affected leg is as hard and white as ivory. He punches it, clenches his teeth, whinnies as silently as he can, presses his foot to the floor in hope. His toes are bending up and splaying out. Fucking hell. Bend, ya bastard. Flexitime. Flat to the floor. Ninety degrees. Eventually he masters it. The pressure of a single step. The good foot propelling him. A second flat step and he is by the toilet bowl. One foot on either side like a hole-in-the-ground pissoir. Relief comes. Thanks be to God and his holy mother. When the pain is finally gone he is terrified it will return. Little wisps of it come back as he climbs into bed. Greatest fear comes when he assumes the leg position which started the attack in the first place. Careful. Turn on the other side. In case heat would be a factor in keeping the cramp at bay he wrests the hot-water bottle from between Stella’s thighs.

  When they went in to breakfast Stella, who knew their room number off by heart, gave it to the woman behind a desk and they were both shown to a freshly laid table by a waiter.

  ‘Do you want me to show you the ropes?’ said Gerry.

  �
�No – not really. Why?’

  ‘You haven’t eaten here before. By this time yesterday you’d skedaddled.’

  ‘At my age I think I can manage the concept of the buffet breakfast.’ She went to the cereals table. ‘And skedaddling is not in my nature.’

  Gerry followed her.

  ‘Roughage,’ he kept saying. There was a choice of full fat or skimmed milk and he felt a surge of self-congratulation to have worked out which was which from the printed labels. Volle melk – halfvolle melk. Something called magere melk made him uneasy, so he avoided it. Was it ‘mother’s milk’? Couldn’t possibly be. But they were, after all, in Amsterdam.

  They returned to the table, each with a bowl of cereal, Gerry’s full to overflowing, Stella’s covering the bottom of her dish. When she faced him across the table she looked concerned.

  ‘How do you feel?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘You really did give yourself a whack.’

  She reached out and was about to touch the bruise on his chin but he recoiled. He wondered how much his fall in the shower could be blamed on the drinks he’d had beforehand. They certainly wouldn’t have helped. And why had he been thinking about Frank Sinatra? Sinatra might have had a drink in the bath if he’d wanted to feel sybaritic. But a drink in the shower? Stella looked at him as he spooned and spooned the last scrapings of his cereal.

  ‘I got terrible cramp last night,’ he said. ‘You were sound asleep.’

  ‘I’m sorry to have missed it.’ Both of them smiled. ‘Did you go out?’

  ‘Not that I know of.’ Gerry tried to give answers that would cover all eventualities. He had a vague recall of corridors. Of silver bins.

  ‘I woke and you were nowhere to be seen.’

  The waiter cleared their dishes and brought tea.

  ‘I’m trying to remember what was said last night,’ said Gerry.

  ‘In drink?’

  ‘No – at dinner.’ Stella poured their tea.

  ‘I’d like you to spell it out for me,’ said Gerry. ‘Again.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The future – as you see it.’

  She shook her head, as if to say this is neither the time nor the place, and rested her elbows on the table.

  ‘Today we go to the Anne Frank House.’

  ‘Jesus. School parties,’ said Gerry. ‘Remember I told you about the wasp on the bus to Buchenwald?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The worst thing was the schools. Children running all over the place with their jotters and clipboards – ticking boxes, getting the answers right. They were quiet enough – their teachers had them well warned. Like in a library. As if the whole thing was a normal exercise. Roomfuls of human hair. Piles of shoes to the ceiling. A crateful of rings. Can you imagine how long it would take to fill a crate that size with golden wedding rings?’

  Stella proposed that they walk from the hotel across three canals. Gerry agreed without looking at the map. It was a better morning. The sun shone weakly, not enough to take the chill out of the air, but enough to lift their spirits a little. It was low in the sky and cast long shadows.

  ‘It would be nice to get one good day,’ said Stella.

  It was noisy. Lorries and cars pounded along the canal banks. Bicycles warned with their bells as they approached and if they lacked a bell the cyclist shouted, which Stella thought quite scary and not at all friendly.

  When they reached the Anne Frank House Gerry stepped back and looked at the renovated entrance. It had a whole new modern frontage and gave no sense of being a hiding place. Even at this time of year there was a queue. School parties who had booked ahead went past them into the doorway.

  When they finally got into the foyer there were some enlarged black and white photographs. Anne in her school playground before the war. Anne in the street with friends, smiling. Anne at a desk, writing.

  ‘How did they know this tragedy was going to happen?’ said Gerry.

  ‘Are there any photographs of you as a child?’ said Stella. Gerry nodded. ‘Well, there’s your answer.’

  ‘But not at a desk, writing.’

  ‘They must have been reasonably well off. When we were that age,’ said Stella, ‘it was only people with money who had cameras.’

  It was good to be in out of the cold. The school parties had gone elsewhere in the building. There was a strange quietness – a church-like reverence. People purchased their tickets in whispers. Stella got out her purse and did the transaction when it was their turn. She refused to pay extra for the black audio guides.

  They went into the cloakroom and considered hanging up their coats but decided against it. The visit would not take long. There was an old man putting a small skullcap on his head. He had sallow skin and dark intense eyes. His shaving had been careless and there were wisps of grey at the sides of his mouth. He was affixing the cap to his head with a kirby grip without the aid of a mirror. Probably the same way he shaved. Gerry whispered, ‘He looks like a cellist.’

  Stella whispered back, ‘A kippa – good for crosswords. For the synagogue or prayer.’

  They were ushered to a door and when they went through it they found themselves in the actual house away from the new frontage. But it was hard to orientate themselves. There was a bookcase with ring binders and files which opened into a secret doorway. Once through it they were faced with a steep stairway. They climbed with care, Stella going first, and arrived in a room. Some of the windows were covered with semi-transparent patterned glassine. From another clear window was a view of the canal.

  Again Gerry was aware of the silence, the sound of creaking as they pressured the floors. They did not speak between themselves. Except perhaps to indicate something with a nod or react by moving an eyebrow. Sometimes a nudge, if they were close enough. The weight of the sorrow grew with each room they passed through. If there was anything that lightened the mood then it also had the effect of making the end of the story darker. The toilet with the inside of its bowl ornately patterned in Dutch blue. In one bedroom, pin-ups of the time – Deanna Durbin and Ray Milland – names Gerry had heard from his own parents’ mouths. He stopped in front of an innocuous-looking wallpaper of ochre and white petals. Stella came to see what had attracted him. He did not need to point out the pencil lines which registered the height of the Frank children as they grew. She saw them immediately and bit her lip. It was because she had performed the exact same exercise with their own child that the horizontal marks were so familiar. ‘The shoes, the shoes have got to come off. That’s cheating. Now heels together, as close to the wall as you can get.’ ‘Does the thickness of socks count, Mum?’ ‘Naw, don’t be daft, be still.’ The calling out for a book – any hardback book – to square off the top of the child’s head, to rule the line. The comparison with the previous mark. See how much you’ve sprouted in three months? The verb used was always ‘sprouted’. She wondered what the Dutch equivalent was – the word for sprouted that would have been used to Anne and her sister, Margot.

  They moved from room to room, looking at the quotations – black lettering on white walls – reading the translations, absorbing the photographs. They became separated at one point. Gerry was always lagging behind, taking longer over each exhibit.

  Stella, in a new room by herself, read: ‘April 5th 1944, I can shake off everything if I write. My sorrows disappear. My courage is reborn.’ She turned next to a photograph before the war of a line of girls – Anne’s tenth birthday – with their arms around each other’s shoulders, eyes narrowed in the bright sun. Oh, the dresses. The buttons and shoulder straps, the hemlines, the white ankle socks, shoes and sandals. And the hair. Although these girls were ten years before her time Stella recognised everything. Fads and fashions in those days didn’t change much. And she was brought back to her own growing up in her own village in the north of Ireland. In her house they didn’t have a lot of clothes. Style was what you wore. More likely, what someone else wore. Cast-offs and hand-me-downs. Her brothers
had the best of it because of a generous Protestant family who lived nearby – all boys. For the girls there were very few shop skirts. They had to make do with ‘remoulds’ – tweeds and summer dresses handed down by aunties, made and fitted by Mrs Johnston. Stella standing there, on the small wooden stool, Mrs Johnston on her knees going around pinning the height of a hem, putting tucks in the waist, her mouth bristling with pins. ‘Aww, I mind when I had a waist that size.’ When she had pins in her mouth Mrs Johnston’s words were distorted. She said them sideways. ‘The day I was married I had an eighteen-inch waist. Can you believe it?’ And she’d make a hoop with her fingers and thumbs the size she imagined herself to have been. ‘But you’re the spit of your mammy’s side of the house. You’re exactly what she was when I first met her twenty years ago. Such a beautiful girl. Being chased by half the men in the country.’ There were pins everywhere and while one sister was being fitted the others played with the horseshoe magnet. Stella loved the way the pins and paperclips clung to it, hanging down like some sort of a plant. Mrs Johnston kept the magnet to look for missing pins so’s nobody’d suffer, she said, running about in their bare feet.

  Then parcels came from Canada. Stella remembered a dirndl skirt – such a lot of material that flared out when she spun around. And belts made with tiny coloured beads in Native American patterns – zigzags, totems, triangles – of such bright colours that nobody would dare wear them outside the house. And underskirts – acres of tulle to better display the material and shape of the dress. Unheard-of sweets, like Lifesavers. Unfathomable flavours like sarsaparilla.

  Gerry caught up with her and she showed him Anne’s birthday photo, told him about Mrs Johnston and the dressmaking and her magnet.

  ‘You never told me that before.’

  In the last room they stood at a glass exhibit cabinet for a long time, staring down. The handwriting of a different language was a mystery – but to see its carefully formed letters looping on the yellowing pages was enough. The feeling was similar to the handwritten American entry they’d found in the book in church.