The Aftermath

by Rhidian Brook

‘Yes … That’s it. I didn’t need a photo of you, Ed. I have you instead.’

  Edmund seemed to accept this.

  Lewis began to see that the clothes on the floor had not been thrown there but formed an intentional topography. He followed the boulevard of socks between the doll’s house and the island jumper and saw the Lagonda car on the road between.

  ‘So what’s happening here?’ he asked.

  Edmund seemed coy. ‘It was just a stupid game,’ he said.

  ‘It looks fun,’ he said.

  ‘The car is meant to be your Mercedes. But Dinky don’t make an actual one yet so it’s just a Lagonda. And that’s Heligoland.’ Edmund pointed to the mound of jumpers and shirts, a solitary tin soldier standing at its peak.

  ‘That’s me over there?’

  Edmund nodded.

  Lewis looked back at the doll’s house. He could see the two doll children in the bedroom and the male and female adult dolls leaning against the piano on the ground floor.

  ‘So this is Mummy and Herr Lubert – playing the piano?’

  ‘I didn’t put the dolls like this. That was Frieda … she swapped them around,’ Edmund said, blushing and looking annoyed with himself for even pointing it out.

  Lewis looked at the miniature Rachael and Lubert, and nodded.

  ‘It looks like a happy home,’ he said. ‘It looks as if everyone’s getting along. Which is the main thing.’

  It was dark when Rachael arrived at the house. Three lights were visible – in the drawing room, in Frieda’s bedroom on the top floor, and in her own. It looked to Rachael as if the house were narrowing its eyes at her. The dusk made a grimacing smile of the slats on the balcony. Lewis’s Mercedes was not in the drive, but the thought of seeing him again stirred up butterflies.

  Heike met her in the hall, the maid bowing and taking her valise. She was even more jittery than usual, glancing nervously in the direction of the drawing room. It sounded to Rachael as if someone was playing the single-noted, staccato opening of ‘The Earl King’.

  ‘Is everything all right, Heike?’

  ‘The colonel …’ she said. And again she looked towards the drawing room.

  Rachael gave her coat to the maid.

  ‘Is Edmund all right?’

  ‘Yes. He is in bed.’

  Rachael went to the drawing room and found Lewis at the keyboard, bent over, one arm propping his forehead. He didn’t look up when she entered, he just carried on hammering and trying unsuccessfully to play the arpeggio that followed it.

  ‘Lewis?’

  He didn’t look up but kept on insistently with the note.

  ‘Lew? Why are you playing that?’

  Lewis stopped playing but kept his forehead resting on his arm. He was pale, and Rachael noticed there was blood on the arms of his jacket.

  ‘This first bit is easy,’ he said. ‘But then this next bit … I don’t know how you do it.’

  Rachael’s first thought was that somehow he already knew – everything. She went towards him: ‘Lew …?’ She eased herself on to the double stool next to him. The score of ‘Warum?’ was on the stand. Lewis’s nose was running. She wanted to lift his head, to see what was in his eyes, but he kept his face angled to the ivories, his snot dropping on to the keys.

  ‘What’s happened? Something’s happened …’

  Lewis wiped his nose on his sleeve and Rachael saw the dried blood on the back of his hand. She took his hand in hers; it was ice cold. ‘Your hands. You have blood –’

  ‘Not my blood –’

  ‘Whose blood? Lew? You’re frightening me.’

  ‘Barker’s … He insisted on driving … I shouldn’t have let him … The bullet was meant for me.’

  ‘What bullet?’

  ‘The young man I let die.’

  ‘Let who die? Which young man?’

  ‘The young man who shot Barker. The young man … who said he knew Frieda …’

  Rachael couldn’t keep up with these leaps.

  ‘I didn’t see the danger. But it was there. Right under my eyes. Right in my very house.’

  Rachael turned his face to hers, forcing him to look at her. This raw, broken Lewis was unsettling and mesmerizing to her.

  ‘I chased him … I could have saved him. But I let him die … I wanted him to die … Not just for Barker … but for Michael … for everything.’

  Lewis held out his hands, Barker’s blood a red-brown constellation across their backs. ‘I’ve chosen the wrong path, Rach. I’ve nailed my colours to the wrong mast. Burnham was right … If you trust everyone, someone will pay.’

  Rachael took his face in her hands. ‘Don’t say this –’

  ‘But you know it’s true. Tell me … Rach. Tell me. Have I been too trusting?’

  He looked into her eyes.

  ‘Yes …’ Rachael ran her fingers up the side of his face, brushing back his hair. ‘But … I need you to … trust again … I need you to, Lew …’ She kissed him on his forehead, holding her lips and nose to his skin, breathing him in.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s me that should be sorry. And I am. I am sorry.’

  ‘We’re a sorry pair,’ he said.

  Rachael pulled his head to her breast. ‘Rest.’

  Lewis lay his head there and she held him, rocking him slowly. She had rarely seen Lewis cry. He’d once said that she did the crying for the both of them. As she rocked him, he emitted a quiet but continuous moan; it was not a sound she thought he had in him but it was one she recognized: the sound of someone mourning their son.

  Lewis could not rise from his bed, but nor could he sleep. Shock and exhaustion had paralysed him; now, self-loathing and a sort of pleasurable despair kept him awake. He could sympathize with the wisdom that said the idle and the diligent meet death alike, so why bother? He would achieve just as much by lying here as by rushing about. Indeed, given his recent efforts, it was reasonable to think that it would be better for the world if he never got up again. Putting things and people together required a degree of stamina and patience he no longer had and a system of belief he no longer trusted. It was so much easier to knock down than build up: a city raised over millennia could be razed in a day; the life of a man ended in a second’s crack. In years to come, Edmund and his children would know the names of planes and tanks and battles and invasions and recall with facility the atrocities of the age, the names of those who committed them. But would any of them be able to name a single repairer of the breach or fixer of broken walls?

  Lewis lay there, indulging this solipsism. It felt almost satisfying. Perhaps he’d missed his vocation. He should have been a poet or a philosopher, or perhaps a nihilist.

  He could smell coal-tar soap. He held up his hand and saw that Rachael had cleaned the blood from his fingers. She had also taken off his boots and loosened his shirt buttons. At some point, she must have opened the curtains. Particles of dust danced in the light that streamed through them. He must have slept, because he could remember none of these things happening. He could recall Rachael holding him at the piano, caressing his face, studying him like a treasure refound. What had made him suddenly so appealing and precious? Was it that he had nearly been killed? She said she had made a terrible mistake. Told him that Herr Lubert’s wife had been found. And then, without using code or even the cushion of an endearment, she told him she loved him, a phrase she did not use lightly; indeed, had not used since … he could not recall.

  The door opened and Edmund entered the room carrying a tray of breakfast – a boiled egg in a silver eggcup, a slice of bread cut into soldiers, and a cup of tea on a saucer. He moved andante
across the room, focusing all his efforts on not spilling a drop. Lewis sat up and pulled his legs up from the bottom of the bed to allow Edmund to lay the tray on the flat. The small of his back ached and his hamstrings were tight from the chase.

  ‘Mother said to wake you at noon. To remind you that you have to go to headquarters.’

  ‘It’s noon? Crikey.’

  Edmund watched, waiting. ‘Aren’t you going to eat your egg? I made it. Greta showed me how.’

  Lewis took a knife to the thin end of the egg, remembered, then flipped it around to leave the fat end up.

  ‘Mummy is a Big Ender, too. We are all Big Enders.’

  Lewis cracked the top off and dipped the head of the bread soldier in the yolk that was just-runny.

  ‘Perfect. Exactly how I like it.’

  ‘Herr Lubert is a Little Ender. And Frieda, too. I wonder if Mrs Lubert is a Little Ender.’

  ‘We’ll find out soon enough.’

  Lewis used his soldiers to soak up the yolk then picked up his spoon to get to the white.

  ‘Father? If you think something bad, is it the same as if you actually do it?’

  This felt like one of those answers he had to get right. ‘It depends. You need to give me an example.’

  ‘Well, when you were nearly killed yesterday I thought … I was glad … that Captain Barker died instead of you. Even though that is sad.’

  Lewis set the tray to one side and beckoned Edmund closer. His son came forward and Lewis took his son’s oval, downy face in his hands and kissed him, missing his forehead and landing on the bridge of his nose as Edmund ducked a little from embarrassment.

  ‘Is this bad?’

  ‘It’s not bad, Ed. It’s just bad that … you were put in a position to have to think such a thing.’

  ‘Do you have bad thoughts?’

  ‘Yes. I have bad thoughts. I have already had several today.’

  ‘How bad?’

  ‘Well, I thought that I might not get up. Because it wouldn’t make any difference if I did. I didn’t want to help people any more. I started to think that it didn’t get me – or anyone else – anywhere. I didn’t want to help Germany. Or the British. Or Herr Lubert. Or Frieda. Or Mummy. Or you. Or myself. I wanted to give up. There. Do you think that is bad?’

  Edmund looked unsure. ‘That isn’t what you will do, is it?’

  ‘Maybe for a few minutes.’

  ‘It wouldn’t suit you.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you know that Frieda has been arrested?’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘Do you know what they will do to her?’

  ‘What do you think they should do?’

  Edmund thought. ‘If they knew her mother was alive … they might let her go.’

  Intelligence could use a boy like this, Lewis thought. It would save them months and mountains of paperwork. He wanted to kiss Edmund again, hug him the way he used to when he was an infant. But two kisses in one day seemed a little too much.

  ‘Have you decided what you are going to do?’ Edmund asked him.

  ‘I think so. But you’ll have to give me your hand first.’

  Lewis put out his hand. Edmund took it in his two and pulled his father to his feet.

  14

  She was seated in an armchair, sewing a sampler. She had a new shock of white in her hair; her face was fuller, but better for it. She looked calm – calmer than Lubert remembered her ever being – and she appeared as compos mentis as the sister had described: her expression alert and thoughtful, her eyes quick-blinking, and that faint but familiar smile.

  The sister in charge had accepted his request that he ‘see her before she sees me’, and she stood with him now as he observed Claudia through the hatch in the anteroom.

  ‘She sews all day,’ the sister said. ‘She’s been quite prolific. We have many samplers to frame and hang here in the wards. When she isn’t sewing, she is writing: remembering.’

  ‘She had such a keen mind,’ Lubert said, to himself more than to the sister. ‘She has her faculties?’

  ‘She knows her mind – even if some parts of it are still in a process of being recovered. She’s a highly intelligent woman. Witty. Creative. Quick.’

  How they used to spar, Lubert thought. How he usually lost!

  ‘She remembers some things?’

  ‘She gets fragments of recollections – some in real detail – but then she loses them again. But a picture is building. Bit by bit. And when she gets one bit, it can lead to the finding of another. For the last few months, there’s been real progress. We have encouraged her to write things down. Look. She is doing it now: remembering.’

  Claudia set the sampler on her lap and picked up a notebook and pencil from the pedestal table by her chair.

  ‘This has been happening more and more. She’s writing something every day. Drawing pictures, too.’

  Claudia wrote fast, without pausing.

  What was she writing? Lubert wondered. What was she remembering? Was he a part of it? Would she remember him? The best of him? Or the worst? Would he live up to what she remembered?

  ‘Does she recall what happened to her? The night of the firestorm?’

  ‘She has not talked of it. Or yet written about it. But I believe she’s not ready to remember it. So far, she remembers things that are good – anything that involves relationships. Family. Friends. Home. This is common with cases like this. The mind remembers what the soul can bear. It’s all in God’s time.’

  He envied her: to begin again and build only on good soil. There was a kind of purity in this. She looked content. Perhaps he should leave her in this state. With her clean slate. With this Stunde Null of the soul. Why sully things with his messy complications?

  ‘I’m not the same person. I have not … I have not been true to her memory.’

  The sister studied Lubert’s face. He wanted to look away from her benevolence, he felt so unworthy of it, but her kindliness drew further confession. ‘I thought she was gone. I tried to start again. With someone else. Someone whom I thought I loved.’

  She took Lubert’s hands, quite unperturbed by this admission.

  ‘You still love your wife, Herr Lubert. Start with this.’ She squeezed his hands, conducting her certainties. ‘Come. Let me show you something. Come.’

  She led him to a table where three finished samplers had been laid. One was abstract, all zigzags and flower motifs; the second a schoolroom cross-stitch alphabet; the third was figurative. ‘When we can, we will frame them,’ she said, then picked out the figurative sampler and laid the fabric across the span of Lubert’s hands.

  ‘It was the first she made.’

  The sampler depicted a house with colonnades, a long, tree-lined drive, a garden leading to a river with a sailboat. In front of the house stood three figures: a man in traditional German dress holding an architect’s rule, a woman in hat and old-fashioned skirts, and a girl with plaited hair between them.

  ‘She said it is a copy of a picture she has made before. She wasn’t sure if it was her house or her family. All she could tell us was that the ship was a symbol of hope. But you recognize it …’

  Lubert had never really paid much attention to the original – and he’d lost the right to comment after mercilessly ridiculing Claudia for her ‘folksy hobby’ – but he did recognize it. It was an exact replica of the sampler that now hung in Frieda’s new bedroom.

  ‘This house is yours?’

  Lubert nodded.

  ‘And this man is you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the girl? This is your daughter?’

  �
�Frieda.’

  ‘And your wife.’

  He nodded.

  ‘Is anything missing?’

  He shook his head. ‘No. It’s … all there.’

  ‘Take a seat, Colonel.’

  Lewis took the one and only chair on the other side of the desk from Donnell and Burnham. It was still warm from its previous occupant. The two men were both standing and looked in need of stretching their legs and fresh air after a long day’s questioning. In this interrogation tag team, it was clearly Donnell’s role to supply the preamble and perform the niceties; Burnham’s to watch and wait.

  ‘We’re sorry about Barker,’ Donnell said. ‘We’re obviously doing all we can to find his killer. We’ve got some leads. We’ve arrested a number of insurgents, including Frieda Lubert.’

  ‘You’ve interviewed her?’

  ‘We’ve made a start,’ Donnell responded. ‘Although we had to abandon the session. She complained of stomach cramps. The MO is with her now.’

  They must have done a number on her, Lewis thought. Burnham had his instruments of torture spread across the table: the photographs of Nazi atrocities – camps, lynchings, experiments. Lewis could see one of the pictures: a girl, naked and terrified, Frieda’s age, staring off at an unseen assailant whose invisibility made the photograph even more chilling.

  ‘We found her in one of the requisitioned houses on the Elbchaussee. The insurgents were obviously using it as some kind of operational base.’

  ‘Did you find her guilty?’ Lewis asked.

  ‘Guilty?’ Donnell asked.

  ‘Of all this.’ Lewis nodded to the grotesque collage.

  Burnham took this as his cue.

  ‘You think it crude, Colonel, but it is still a very simple and effective litmus: there are those who can’t look; those who look and then look away; those who look and linger. Some look and weep. Some look and enjoy it. Some even look and laugh. And there are many shades of reaction in between. You, I noted, looked then quickly looked away, a reaction that suggests an understandable weariness with the subject but perhaps an unwillingness to confront the evil presented – or a tendency to pretend that it isn’t there.’