She reached for her glass and drained it and then dropped it on the floor, making no effort to set it straight, not caring what happened to it, and it lay on its side, its open mouth gaping up at her.
‘After he got to Warsaw — which he did because after the Treblinka overspill camps, he was sent to the Auschwitz ones — they had God knows how many children there. Surprising, really, how many survived, of the kids. You’d think they’d die fastest, wouldn’t you, in camps and times like those they knew? But they lived. Tough they were, like Barbara. Anyway he got there. Took weeks, months, maybe. No Basia there, so they tell him to try in Hungary and he gets himself to Budapest. Still a crazy man. No camps with children at all near Budapest, it turns out. Just old people. So he goes north again to Vienna and the same thing happened. There are children there, but not his Basia. So, Strasbourg, and then south again to Basle, and then Evian, God knows why Evian — no camps there — and then eventually Cuneo — ’
‘Italy,’ Abner said and she nodded, seeming not to notice that he had disobeyed her.
‘Italy. It’s been a year and a half he’s been looking. It’s the end of ’forty-seven by now. He’s late for the batmitzvah bit. He knows it, but he thinks, well, girls can still be batmitzvahed till they’re sixteen. I’ve still got time. But he’d made up his mind that if she wasn’t in this camp near Cuneo he’d give in. Well, he’d have to. There was nothing else he could do, nowhere else to try. Not after the places he’d been to. So many of them. He had a few bob in his pocket by this time. He’d had to work to earn some money in Basle and he’d actually stolen some there — from the baker he’d worked for.’ She laughed then. ‘The perfect David, stealing! Barbara used to get embarrassed about that, would you believe it? She’d slide over that part of the story every time, but she always said it all the same. It was as though she had to, because that was how David had told her, but she was ashamed of what he’d done. Anyway, in Cuneo — well, about thirty kilometres away — there was this camp full of kids. And David found the Commandant’s office, sort of wooden hut it was, full of buzzing flies and stinking with garlic and rotten food and old shoes, enough to make you want to retch, David said, and so many people it was like a hell hole. And the Commandant’s a fat screaming Italian who cries a lot when he gets angry and he does that a good deal because he just can’t do all the work he has to do. David asks him, have you got Basia Novak here? and the Commandant waves his hands around and says no he hasn’t. And David — oh, you should have heard Basia tell this bit. Quite a performance it was! — David sits down on the only bench there is, under an open window, and starts to weep. It’s the end of the road, his last child is dead, must be, even though he’d been told in Treblinka by one of the women that she’d been all right, had got away. It’s the way it is. Basia’s dead. And he weeps. A girl outside the window, sitting on the ground with a rag doll, looks over the window sill and says brightly and in perfect Polish, “Are you looking for Basia Novak? I heard you say — well, she’s in my hut.” And she takes David, who is now crying like a tap, to this long street of tin huts and into one of them and there’s Basia, sitting on a bunk with a piece of paper she’s drawing on and she looks up and says, “Oh, hello, Daddy.” So now you have it. That’s the way Basia told it to me, when she was Barbara. Now you know.’
She leaned back into the corner of the sofa, rucking her legs up even more tightly as though she could become small enough to disappear into the scuffed velvet and stared at the fire, where the logs were now glowing in a heap of crimson ash.
There was a long silence and then he leaned over and set more logs from the pile in the fender into the grate. He had to do something useful, and that was the only thing he could think of. He dusted off his hands carefully, and then said with equal care, ‘Indeed a story and three quarters. It’s more like twice that much What happened then?’
‘Heavens, for a film man, you don’t add up!’ she said and flicked a glance at him and then back at the fire which was already greedily licking the new wood. ‘I give you the perfect happy ending, and you want to know what happened then?’
‘Happy endings aren’t true,’ he said. ‘I need real endings, if there ever are any. So what did happen next?’
She shrugged. ‘They got themselves into a quota for the UK, came to London. David got a job in a mental home and Barbara went to school. Did very well — ’
‘Was she batmitzvah?’
‘Hmm? Oh. No. She wouldn’t learn Hebrew. Refused to learn even the little bit the Reform synagogues in England wanted. So she never was. But she learned good English and got herself into University only a year older than the rest of her set. Which seeing she’d had no education at all till she got to London, not to call education, wasn’t bad going.’
‘Not bad,’ Abner said, trying not to sound as though he was being ironic. ‘And then what?’
‘Got a degree. A first class degree in English. Joseph Conrad, sucks. It’s Barbara Novak who’s the one, they said. Going to be a great novelist in the English language. Ha!’ And she tried to laugh. It didn’t come out that way, though; just a flat, ‘Ha!’
‘Did she write?’
‘Of course not! She met my father and married him, didn’t she? Just after David died. I was born a year or so later and then — ’ She shrugged. ‘That was it. Never wrote a damned word.’
He stirred in his seat. He’d been almost afraid to move till now. ‘A pity.’
‘Wasn’t it just.’
‘And after that?’
‘I told you. She married my father and — ’
‘No,’ he said gently. ‘What happened to Barbara? Where is she now?’
Again a silence, and she said roughly, ‘She’s dead.’
He caught his breath. ‘I’m sorry.’
She ignored that, and he tried again. ‘She couldn’t have been very old when she died — born in 1933 you said? She’d only be — ’ he calculated fast — ‘fifty-seven or so now.’
‘She was thirty-nine when she died,’ Miriam said in a faint voice. ‘Thirty-nine.’
He was silent for a long time and said awkwardly, ‘I’m sorry. It was like that for so many. Their health had been ruined in the camps and — ’
She looked at him contemptuously. ‘Sorry again? Who the hell are you to be sorry? You know nothing about it.’
‘I was trying just to — well, there it is. It must have been hard for your father after she died — ’
‘Geoffrey?’ She made a little grimace, turning the corner of her lips downwards and lifting her brows in a casual sort of couldn’t-care-less fashion. ‘I don’t suppose so. He never said. He just went back to where he’d been. It didn’t seem to matter to him that much. After all, they’d only been together ten years or so.’
‘It’s a sizeable period in a young man’s life,’ he said, chilled by the note in her voice.
‘Not for him, it wasn’t. He was sixty-six when she died. Ten years to him — what was that?’
‘Sixty-six?’ He sat bolt upright at that. ‘He was sixty-six?’ Then how old were you when it happened? When your mother died?’
‘Ten,’ she said.
‘And ever since then there was just you and your father? Is that why you never had a job, no friends of your own? Because you were looking after him, an old man?’
‘Who else could there be? He had no other relations alive. He’d been the youngest of a family from Scotland. And both his older brothers had died before I was born. I know of no other relation. And of course there were none from my mother’s family, were there? Or haven’t you been listening to what I’ve told you. So here I am, a poor ickle orphan. Boo hoo, isn’t it sad?’
‘It could be,’ he said, ‘if you didn’t work so hard to make sure everyone you meet is turned off you — ’
‘How do you know how I am with everyone I meet?’ she cried fiercely. ‘How the hell do you know anything at all about me? You made me tell you all this crap and now you — ’
It
was extraordinary. One moment she was talking to him, even shouting at him, her eyes snapping with fury, and the next she had dissolved into helplessness and was sitting with both arms held tightly round her thin body and weeping great ugly tears, her face twisted into a mask of misery. And all he could do was sit and stare at her in amazement.
Twelve
But not for long. It seemed to be an eternity before he moved, but it was a matter of moments. He slid along the sofa and took her shoulders in both hands and pulled her hard, so that she could not resist him and had to sit with her head pressed against his chest. She was still holding herself tightly, her arms making a barrier between them, but she was so thin that he knew he would have no difficulty encompassing her, and now he did just that, relinquishing her shoulders so that he could put both arms round her and hold on tight. And she sat there with her head pushed hard against him and wept bitterly.
It stopped almost as fast as it had started. Miriam took a deep shuddering breath and raised her head, and then pulled back. At once he let go, and she lifted her hands and wiped her face with the open palms in a childlike gesture that was infinitely touching and made him want to reach out for her again, but he controlled the desire and sat with his own hands clenched in his lap, watching her.
‘Oh, Christ,’ she said huskily. ‘Oh, Christ. Why do I do it?’ There was no apology in her voice, nor even regret; just a sort of puzzlement. ‘Why the hell do I do it?’
‘You’re entitled to cry,’ he said.
‘I’m not entitled to keep on digging it out,’ she said and leaned back in the corner of the sofa again. ‘That’s what I can’t understand. Why I keep on doing it. It always makes me feel so foul.’
‘You want to blame me? I asked you to tell me.’
‘No,’ she said drearily. ‘It’s nothing to do with you. I mean, yes, you asked me, but what difference does that make? It’s just saying what’s in my head all the time, anyway. I can’t get rid of it. It keeps on and on, marching through my mind like a - oh, I don’t know. I just can’t get rid of it all.’
‘Was it like this before? When your father -’
‘Of course it was. But at least when Geoffrey was here I had something to do. Looking after an old man - and he was a stubborn one - it gave me an occupation of sorts. He had to be fed and kept clean. At least that made me tired. Hard work.’ She stared at the fire. ‘Eighty-three. I won’t live that long. It’s dreadful to live that long.’
‘Was he very difficult?’
She shrugged. ‘How can I know? I never looked after anyone but him. Maybe he was no worse than anyone else of his age. Better even. He knew who he was and where he was and he went on working till the day before he died. But he was so far away, so very far away.’
‘My mother’s like that,’ he said abruptly.
‘Old?’
‘Not particularly. Sixty-eight, as far as I can work it out. She never even told me when her birthday was when I was a child.’ He grinned a little crookedly. ‘I sort of had the idea that only children had birthdays. But I didn’t mean because of her age. She was always the way you said your father was. A million miles away from me. I could never get near her.’
‘She’s still alive?’
‘Oh, yes. She’s still alive. It was my father who died.’
‘Was he that way too? Remote?’
He tried to remember, tried to see Hyman in his mind’s eye and then sheered away from the effort. Whenever he thought of Hyman now it was the same; a blankness where the face should be. ‘I’m not sure. I mean, he was like Frieda in some ways, secretive and quiet but not so far away. No, I think he’d have talked to me sooner and more, if she’d let him.’
‘She cared about you,’ Miriam said flatly. ‘That’s why she didn’t tell you what happened to her. That’s why she kept away. If Barbara had been the same I wouldn’t have this bloody business now, would I?’
‘Cared about me? Like hell she did,’ he said harshly and to his amazement felt a sudden tightening in his throat. It had been a long time since he had shed tears, but he remembered the sensation vividly and was amazed it should happen now. This girl Miriam is an extraordinary influence, he thought. She wept and now I want to weep.
‘Think about it,’ she said and leaned forwards, and again threw a log on the fire, which leapt excitedly to greet it. ‘Just think about it and you’ll see what I mean. You’ll never get a hotel to take you now, will you? What are you going to do?’
‘I beg your pardon?’ He was startled and looked at his watch and then up at her. ‘Christ! It’s gone two.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘You’d better sleep here. The fire’ll last a while yet and there’s a blanket around somewhere. I’ll see what I can find.’ She got to her feet and stood staring down at him. ‘Unless you want to do something different.’
‘I — no,’ he said and shook his head as much to clear it as emphasise the word. ‘I’d be grateful. You’re right. No hotel’d take me at this time of night and — ’
‘I’ll fetch the blanket,’ she said and went, leaving him sitting listening to her footsteps on the stairs and then above his head as the old house echoed around him. He felt deeply tired and a little sick; the food at the restaurant had been good, but there was a metallic taste in his mouth now that soured its memory and he yearned for his toothbrush; and then she appeared at the door with a heavy blanket over her arm and a small package in her hand.
‘I found this,’ she said and gave it to him; a new toothbrush, still in its wrapping, with a tube of toothpaste set alongside it. ‘You’ll need it. I’m going to bed. Goodnight.’ And she put the blanket down on the sofa, nodded at him and went, and again he stood and listened to her footsteps and marvelled. Really the most extraordinarily abrupt girl he’d ever come across.
Abner wandered then, looking for a lavatory — which he found tucked away in a sort of outhouse beside the back door at the end of the corridor that led to the kitchen — and somewhere to wash, settling eventually for the kitchen sink for want of anywhere else. The hot tap yielded only lukewarm water, but there was a piece of soap there and a roll of paper towels, so he managed well enough; then he went back to the living room to pile the fire even higher with logs and to strip down to his underpants, before wrapping himself in the blanket and making himself as comfortable as he could on the old sofa. Around him the house creaked a little, and now he could hear the wind outside, humming irritably to itself in the trees; he lay there, very wide awake, wanting to sleep and feeling he never would, because he had been so stirred by the whole evening and, he had to admit, by Miriam herself, as a woman. For a while he was very aware of this sexual hunger as he lay there under the rough blanket and considered the possibility of going upstairs to find her and try to make love to her - and then actually laughed aloud. It was a ludicrous notion; and slowly the need subsided and he could be comfortable again.
At last Abner slept. And dreamed, waking from time to time with a start as the fire hissed in the grate and then settled with a little rattle, only to sink into the same dream. Frieda was trying to find him, just as though he were the girl Barbara whom Miriam had told him about. He seemed to himself to be running away from her as hard as he could, dodging behind walls to escape her, climbing up a great tree at one point while she stood beneath it and wrung her hands and wept with loud sobs; and he woke again and thought drowsily, that’ll show you, that’ll make you know what it’s like. He drifted off again, and this time Frieda was sitting in a corner of a room, alone, and rocking herself with her arms held around her in a tight grip; and though it was Frieda she had Miriam’s face, and he went towards her because she was Miriam and held his arms out, and she came and let him hug her and pet her and he looked down at her and it was Frieda’s face this time, and he pulled away; but she held on - and again he woke with a start, and the thought was there as sharp as a piece of broken glass. She did love me, she did. She just didn’t know how to. That was why. She did, but she didn’t know how. And t
hen he slept once more, but at last the dreams, if they came, buried themselves somewhere out of reach, and when he woke next it was almost light, and he was cold, for the fire was no more than a heap of grey ash.
He got up and stretched stiffly and then, very aware of his bladder, went padding along the dark corridor outside towards the lavatory, not bothering to dress first, and stood there shivering, his feet curling on the ice cold tiles of the floor, yawning. He came out into the corridor to find her standing just inside the kitchen door and switching on the light. She was wearing the black trousers again but this time she had set over it a vast yellow sweater, and she looked warm and alert, even inviting, and he gaped at her, feeling his face redden.
‘Hell,’ he said. ‘I didn’t think you’d be around yet.’
She flicked a glance at his bareness, and he had to control an instinctive urge to set his hands over his genitals, even though he still had his pants on. To do so would be so ridiculous, like some sort of male version of the Boticelli ‘Venus’, and he began to edge his way back towards the living room to escape her, holding his arms awkwardly at his side.
‘I’ll get dressed,’ he mumbled, and she nodded and said casually, as though there were bare men in her house every day of her life, ‘I’ll put the kettle on. I dare say you’ll want to shave.’
‘No razor,’ he muttered as he reached the safety of the living room door and dived in, and she called, ‘I’ve brought one of Geoffrey’s down. Can you manage a cut-throat?’
‘I’ll try,’ he called back as he began to climb into his clothes as fast as he could, though why he needed to rush he could never have explained. It was obvious she wouldn’t come to him. ‘Or I could go around with designer stubble. It wouldn’t be the first time.’
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