Rachael refused to take the photograph back. ‘Stefan. It’s her …’
Lubert looked again, still shaking his head, trying to will the truth away. Finally, he touched the outline of Claudia’s face. He still hadn’t looked at the bare facts, facts she’d taken in at one glance, contained in the notes.
‘Stefan. Read it. Read the notes. She is at the Franciscan Hospice in Buxtehude. She’s only just started speaking again. She has lost her memory but is making steady progress, Stefan … steady progress.’ He was still too stunned to read, so she continued: ‘“Gives her name as Lubert.” Your name, Stefan. She remembers your name. The patient says that she used to live by a river. It’s her. Your wife. She’s alive.’
He looked at her.
‘But … we were at the beginning of something.’ He was already using the past tense.
‘You woke me up, Stefan. You woke me up to what I had forgotten. But …’ She paused, not wanting to intensify his suffering but needing to speak the truth. She cupped her hands around his, which were still holding the photograph. ‘It was loss that brought us together. And you have refound what you lost.’ And, with that, Lubert began to weep and Rachael held his hand as he bent over and crumpled in on himself.
13
Lewis woke with his face against the frame of the passenger window, his drool wetting the glass. Barker was driving the Mercedes, glancing over at him with amused concern.
‘You all right, sir?’
‘Bad dream,’ he explained, wiping his mouth and sitting upright. ‘Did I say something?’
‘You shouted out a few times.’
‘Not giving away any state secrets, I hope.’
‘You called out your wife’s name.’
After being picked up by Barker from headquarters, Lewis had been rocked to sleep by the oceanic motion of the car. In his reverie, the Villa Lubert was before him, set in a season he’d not yet seen it in: lawn lush green and everything in flower – the beds full of daffodils. But there was something too vivid in the scene, something uncanny about the way the daffodils dominated the picture.
‘How long have I been out?’
‘Ten minutes.’
Lewis rubbed his face and slapped his cheeks. ‘It felt like hours.’
During the war, a nap like that would have revived him and allowed him to get through several nights without sleep, but he felt utterly exhausted now. In Heligoland he’d started experiencing an enervation he’d not felt before. At first, he attributed it to the insidious damp of the air and the ennui induced in him by his pointless task, overseeing preparations for the biggest non-nuclear explosion in history. But it had got worse since leaving the island. He could only describe it as an ache in the marrow, such as Rachael had complained of in the wake of Michael’s death.
‘Everything in order?’
‘Pretty much as it was before, sir.’
‘Pretty bloody terrible then.’
‘Bloody awful, sir.’ Barker grinned.
Lewis could have used Barker’s company in Heligoland. Once Ursula had left for London, and Kutov, Ziegel and Bolon had seen what they needed to see, the days had dragged.
‘CCG are easing up on fraternization. The Fragebogen’s being reviewed now that the Intelligence boys are having to turn their attentions east. The big news is the aid package the Americans are suggesting. Can’t even remember the number it’s so big. The Russians don’t like it. It looks like we’re heading for two Germanys. So, you still haven’t told me what the general wanted.’
Lewis was still taking in the implications of what the general wanted.
‘To offer me a job.’
‘You see. You get more strokes for destroying things than repairing them. Berlin?’
‘Berlin.’
Barker looked slightly forlorn. ‘Bloody hell. The next front line. Did you accept?’
‘On two conditions. That they don’t ask me to share a house with a Russian, a Frenchman and an American.’
‘No danger. It’s all flats there.’ Barker was joking, but he couldn’t hide his disappointment at the prospect of Lewis moving on. ‘What was the other condition?’
‘That you come with me.’
Barker glanced at Lewis. ‘Bloody hell.’
‘You don’t have to give me an answer now. Maybe in five minutes.’
‘Bloody hell.’
On the back seat, Lewis noticed a substantial pile of ‘pending’ paperwork which Barker had brought for him to review.
‘More files for me to mislay?’
‘Sorry. There’s one report on the illegal export of valuables which you need to see fairly urgently. Some familiar names. It’s … an ugly read. Anyway. Something to look at in the bath.’
A bath was precisely what Lewis wanted. In a few minutes they would be at the house: the Mercedes was already passing the patrician houses on Klopstockstrasse. He patted some colour into his cheeks again and checked his hair in the mirror. By his own reckoning, he looked terrible. His hair was longer than regulations allowed and he’d failed to shave for several days. Even the smallest loss of sleep gave him saucer eyes. He’d never really cared for his looks – he thought his nose a little long, his face too thin – and he was always surprised when Rachael complimented him. Although he’d never needed the affirmation from her, looking at the fatigued face in the mirror he found himself wanting it.
The car turned on to the Elbchaussee and, on the left, Lewis could see the river through the breaks in the trees. The Elbe had been frozen for one hundred days – a record they were saying would never be matched – but some flowing water was just visible; the ice was beginning to thaw.
‘You must have been sorry to see Frau Paulus go.’
‘Whitehall asked if I knew of an interpreter who’d be willing to work in London. I recommended her.’
‘Shame. Don’t think the Berlin girls will cut it.’
Lewis could see crocuses and snowdrops at the base of a copse.
‘They have daffodils in Germany?’
‘Haven’t seen any.’
‘Stop if you do.’
A crack appeared in the windscreen and spread like a web across it. Lewis presumed that some grit or a stone had struck the glass; only when the car started to veer across the road did he notice Barker slumped, his head snapped back, a clean, crimson-black hole just above his brow. Lewis took the wheel and lifted Barker’s leg off the accelerator then wrenched the handbrake on; the car juddered as it stalled, scraping a plane tree and coming to a halt half in, half out of the road.
Blood and tissue were spattered on the back seat and window directly behind Barker. Even before he felt for a pulse at his neck, Lewis knew that he was dead. He lowered himself in his seat and reached in the glove compartment for his pistol. He checked the chamber and saw the blood on his hands, bright crimson and warm. The windscreen had been shot to white, so he looked across the road through the side window. Behind him, the Elbchaussee curved out of view; ahead it ran straight, trees either side, before veering right, away from the river. The shot must have come from one of the great houses on the riverbank. He saw a figure, some hundred yards away, sprint across the road and head towards the river.
Lewis got out of the car, took off his coat, throwing it back in, and set off in pursuit. He ran hard, adrenalin veiling his fatigue and lack of fitness, until he reached the soft dog-leg that led away from the road. He followed the natural line of the land down towards the river, where the figure was still heading. The figure reached the river’s edge and started walking out across the frozen Elbe until one of his legs crashed through the ice and he pulled back to the bank and moved alon
g the river’s edge, looking for a more solid section. Finding it, he set off across the river again, looking back and, perhaps for the first time, seeing Lewis coming after him. The figure picked up his pace and started to slip-slide on the ice. From the slim body and supple movements, Lewis could see that it was a young man. Not much more than a boy: seventeen, perhaps, but no more.
Lewis had slowed to a fast walk now. He had a stabbing stitch in his shoulder and could feel his heart hammering at his throat. By the time he reached the bank the young man was roughly a hundred yards across the river. Lewis bent over, resting his hands on his knees, gasping for breath. He had already checked the pistol’s chamber, but he checked it again. Still six bullets. Still six chances to kill the one who had killed Barker.
The young man had stopped walking across the river and was looking tentatively at the surface ahead, testing it with his boot. The ice gave way again, and he leapt back. Then came the sound of more ice breaking in the middle of the river, like the creaking of an old door. Lewis watched as the young man searched for another way across. Another section of ice cracked ahead of him. There was no way forward.
Lewis could feel sweat chilling on his skin. He felt disembodied, and sat on the trunk of a felled tree. The young man wasn’t going anywhere and had no weapon that Lewis could see. He waited to see what he would do. He was walking around on the ice, full of skittish energy. Then he started calling out in German.
‘Guten Morgen, Morgan!’ he shouted, laughing at his own joke and repeating it several times until Lewis got the implication of what he was saying. How did he know his name?
‘Here I am!’
The young man put out his arms, offering a wider target. He’d stopped at the limit of pistol range. From here, Lewis might just be able to hit him but, if he really wanted to make sure, he could step on to a solid jetty of ice that stretched out into the river and shoot him from there. But he stayed where he was, his breathing returning to normal. He had the sensation of being a spectator at a winter sporting event.
‘Come on, Colonel!’
Lewis didn’t want to shoot him. But he wanted him to die.
‘That bullet was for you, Colonel. But it doesn’t matter. A friend of yours is an enemy of mine.’
Another creaking sound came, this time from the ice on which the young man was standing.
‘The ice is breaking. It is time for you to leave Germany! This is my land! And this is my river! And this is my sky!’
The young man paced up and down the ice platform, gabbling away. It was quite a performance. He was full of maniacal laughs and gestures, his voice breaking back to boyhood in his excitement. But the more he gabbled, the more Lewis’s silence seemed to annoy and frustrate him. Lewis thought he could hear fear cracking the boy’s voice and he continued to say nothing and let the fear take hold. It felt good.
‘Come and arrest me.’
Sounds like sonar pulses came from different parts of the river. The water below and the sun above were conspiring to break the ice apart. Lewis closed his eyes, just for a moment. The sun left imprints on his retina. He blinked them out. The young man was silhouetted for a few seconds then he suddenly started hot-stepping on the ice as the platform beneath him fragmented into a dozen pedestals, then leapt on to the largest he could see, a section of ice about the size of a door, and landed with his arms out either side to balance himself. It could not take his weight and tilted him into the ice-water, his hands grabbing at air before he plunged in. He cried out with the shock of the cold water and tried to grab at the pedestal but could not get any purchase on it. He floundered for a few seconds then swam to get to the edge of the next small iceberg. He made an attempt to pull himself up on to the little block but it kept tilting him back in. He tried again and then again to get on. After the third time, he gave up and just floated there in the black water.
‘Hey! Help!’ No bragging now, just fear. ‘Use a branch. Tree!’ And this last word – ‘tree’ – in English.
Even from here, Lewis heard the shivering in the words. He watched, feeling a vague sadness at his own lack of concern for the young man.
‘Please … Colonel!’
In under a minute his tone had changed from defiant contempt, through to panic and pleading.
‘Tree!’ he shouted in English again.
The young man had now drifted to within twenty-five yards of the jetty. If Lewis wanted to save him, he needed to take the branch now. But he was paralysed by an ancient justification; a justification he’d worked hard all his life to refute. Eye for an eye. A boy for a boy. This was how the world still really worked.
With little breath, the young man’s words came in bursts of one.
‘Frieda! You. Know. Frieda!’
The name registered slowly.
‘Frieda … Proper … German … Lady …’
Lewis watched and counted the seconds. It would be over soon. The young man had trod water for longer than seemed possible in such cold, and he now started moving very slowly with the current, away into the middle of the great river. Lewis heard powerless gasps. The young man made one last whimpering cry – the word sounded like ‘Mutti’ – then he sank.
Lewis stood watching the surface of the water. He watched the river and listened to the noisy forming of striations, the great melting movement as it reclaimed itself from its icy occupation. He watched, thinking that there were things to do but that he was done with doing. He could feel something inside himself breaking up. He continued to watch the horizon, feeling his own disintegration. He was like the shot-cracked glass in the car windscreen. If he could just get back to the house before someone touched it, he might avoid shattering completely.
The pain in Lewis’s shoulder intensified. It was the stitch he always got after running hard, exacerbated by age and too many cigarettes. He rubbed it and rotated his arm to loosen it, but the stabbing continued. Nearly there, he said to himself. Nearly there.
He’d kept it together so far. Even when examining Barker’s spiritless body and the broken capillaries in his eyes; while giving his statement to the Military Police whom he’d found at the scene upon his return. He somehow stopped himself from connecting that slumped husk with the Barker of whom he felt so fond. But now, as he arrived at the gates of the Villa Lubert, he was no longer sure what it was exactly that he was trying to keep together.
He’d left the house two months ago, pure white and picture perfect, but the snap transition from winter to spring had created ugly bald patches of grass in the snow, a mulch of browns and greys and blacks in among the white. He entered through the side door, glad that no one was there to greet him. He took off his coat and rubbed his face in a confusion about what to do next: he wanted to sit down, he wanted a cup of tea, he wanted a smoke, he wanted a drink, he wanted to see Edmund and Rachael – but not quite yet. He fixed himself a whisky and knocked it back in one, to let the sting of alcohol bring him round a little. He poured another then went upstairs.
Edmund was in his bedroom standing in front of a dressing table, admiring himself in the mirror. He was wearing a cricket sweater like Michael’s, except for the turquoise stripe of the ‘V’ at the neck. Even in two months, his only son had grown. Lewis wanted to embrace him.
‘Ed.’
‘Father.’
Edmund beamed but seemed embarrassed at being caught looking at himself.
‘That’s a nice jumper.’
‘It’s from Auntie Kate. She knitted it herself.’
Lewis realized that he was using the door for support. Just climbing the stairs had made his legs ache. He had never fainted but wondered if the airy feeling in his arms was a precursor to doing s
o.
‘Is Mummy not here?’
‘I think she’s coming back from Kiel today.’
‘She went to see the Buckmans?’
‘Yes.’
‘Have things been all right?’
‘Yes. Everything’s been fine.’
His son was looking at him with some alarm. ‘Are you all right, Father? Have you cut yourself?’
‘I had … an accident … It’s fine.’ Lewis looked at the blood on his hands. It looked worse than he had thought. He had to sit down soon. Now.
‘So you’ve been holding the fort for me?’ he asked, sitting in the armchair.
‘Yes.’
‘And the Luberts are well?’
‘Yes. But Herr Lubert is not here … I think he went away. Somewhere. Something to do with his clearance. I’m not sure.’
‘So … you’re here all by yourself?’
Edmund nodded.
‘I’m … sorry that I was away for so long. I missed Christmas again.’
‘It’s all right. Did you blow many things up?’
‘A few factories. Submarine pens. The big one is yet to happen. They’re putting all the ammunition Germany had after the war in one place and then blowing it up. They will feel it as far away as London. Maybe even Aunt Kate will feel it, in Berkshire.’
Lewis pulled his cigarette case from his coat pocket. It was his first of the day, and the first drag made his head spin.
‘Did Mummy give you that case?’
‘Yes.’
Lewis handed it to Edmund. Edmund opened it and looked at the photograph of Michael. Michael was wearing his cricket sweater.
‘Why don’t you have a picture of me?’ Edmund asked, quite plainly.
Lewis wasn’t sure he even knew why, but he could feel himself about to lie to make it better.
‘Is it because Michael died?’ Edmund asked, rescuing him. ‘And you needed to remember him?’
The Aftermath Page 28
