by Francis King
‘I wish I had a car.’ Michael turned to Thomas. ‘Did you have a coat with you?’
‘Nein.’ That he should answer in German struck Christine as odd.
‘But it’s bitterly cold outside. Here, take this scarf. He strode across the room and jerked a scarf off a peg on the door. He picked up some gloves from the table beside it. ‘And these gloves.’
‘No, no, please! It’s not necessary.’
‘Of course it’s necessary.’
With a mixture of exasperation and tenderness, like a mother with a child, Michael wound the scarf round Thomas’s neck and drew it into a knot. Then he held out one of the gloves. ‘Give me your hand. You don’t want frostbite.’ After a moment of hesitation, Thomas held out his left hand. Michael began to ease the glove on to it, screwing up his eyes as though over a difficult task. ‘Ah, you have small hands – like mine. I tried to lend these gloves to Klaus the other day, but they wouldn’t fit.’ He turned to Klaus and translated into German. Klaus nodded vigorously, grinned and held out a huge fist, stretching the fingers to their whole extent. All of them laughed, with the exception of Horst, who turned his head aside with another pursing of the lips.
‘Take this too. Wait a minute.’ Michael pulled out the top drawer of a tallboy and scrabbled inside it. Eventually he produced a crumpled brown paper bag. He thrust into it what was left of the chocolate cake.
Thomas raised his right arm in its plaster, as though in an attempt to ward off a blow, as Michael held out the bag to him. ‘No. No, Michael! I don’t want it.’
‘I insist.’
‘No! Please!’
Through all this Horst stood stiffly, his arms held to his sides and an expression of mingled disdain and irritation on his face.
Michael began to coax the paper bag into one of the pockets of Thomas’s tunic. ‘ It’s greaseproof. Don’t worry. It won’t leave a mess.’
‘I wish … I wish you wouldn’t be so kind to me. It’s too much, Michael. If I could repay you – if there was anything, anything at all.’
‘Repay me? For so little? Don’t be so silly. I like having you here. I like seeing you. All of you,’ he amended. ‘Come whenever you wish. Even when I’m out, you can use my room, you know. It’s quiet and warm in here.’
The extraordinary recklessness of the offer worried Christine. Thomas frowned, head lowered, making no response. Then he looked up, left hand extended. ‘Thank you, Michael. You’re a good friend.’ He turned to Christine. ‘So – goodbye, Miss … Miss …’
Unlike Ludwig, he had failed to remember her name. Momentarily piqued, she did not remind him. ‘Goodbye.’ Then, repenting of her abruptness, she wanted to add: ‘Good luck. I hope we’ll meet again. Tell me if there’s anything I can do for you.’ She was too late. He had turned away from her.
Clicking his heels, Horst bowed, without a word, first to Michael and after that to Christine. Then the two were gone, the ring of their iron-heeled boots fading gradually on the stone staircase spiralling down into the quad.
Ludwig, having resumed his seat, leaned forward. ‘Shall I continue now?’ Horst’s arrival had interrupted him in an interminable story about how he had got the better of the camp commandant in an argument about the distribution of prisoners’ letters.
He was still talking when, several minutes later, there was a knock at the door and Michael’s scout, an elderly man in pinstripe trousers and a white jacket, with a large waxed moustache and a snake of grey hair trained across a shiny area of scalp, made his entry, silver tray in hand.
Seeing the Germans, he recoiled. ‘Oh! Sorry, sir.’ He raised the tray in one hand and banged it, like a tambourine, with the other. ‘Shall I come back later, sir, when the gentlemen have gone?’
‘No, that’s all right, Warwick. I don’t want to delay you. You may take the things now.’
‘Very good, sir.’
Warwick began to pile the tea things on to the tray; and since, in some mysterious way, he had made them all feel as though they were children caught out in some misdemeanour by an adult, none of them, not even Ludwig, said anything. There was no doubt of his disapproval; but it was conveyed by signs so subtle – a slight bunching of the lips, an over-deliberation of movement, a refusal to look directly at any of them – that it seeped out of him like an invisible odour.
When he had finally left the room with a precisely inflected ‘Thank you, sir’, Michael voiced the uncomfortable thought of all of them: ‘He doesn’t like our little party.’
‘He certainly doesn’t,’ Christine concurred.
‘I suppose one can hardly blame him. He spent three years in the trenches in the Great War and his son was killed in this one. Did I tell you, Christine, that he’s standing for Labour councillor?’ Michael laughed. ‘What’s the world coming to? A scout standing in a local election!’
Eventually Klaus and Ludwig got to their feet. ‘Would you like to change now?’ Michael asked Klaus in German. Then, turning to Christine, he explained: ‘I’ve promised to lend him some of my clothes for this evening – if he can get into them. He wants to go to a wrestling match.’
‘Oh, is that allowed?’
‘Good lord, no. But they constantly break the rules. And usually they get away with it. The camp is so understaffed and the guards chiefly concern themselves with getting themselves demobbed as quickly as possible.’
Michael, hand to Klaus’s shoulder, shepherded him into the bedroom.
‘Klaus will be caught.’ Christine was shocked by Ludwig’s gleeful tone. ‘He can speak only a few words of English – hello, please, thank you, such things. He’s not clever. And – have you noticed? – he always walks like a German soldier. Like this.’ He jumped up and marched across the room, swinging his long arms vigorously and puffing out his chest. He burst into laughter. ‘Also he looks German. He’ll be caught.’
‘And if he’s caught – what happens?’
‘Fourteen days in the calaboose.’ He grinned at her. He enjoyed having to explain such things.
‘Solitary confinement?’
‘Maybe. Every prisoner will tell you it’s worth taking such a risk from time to time. But in Klaus’s case it’s not a risk – it’s certain.’
‘Then why is he doing it?’
‘Excitement. Life’s so boring, boring, boring for a prisoner. If for one moment on can escape out of this’ – with a downward sweep of the hand he indicated his uniform – ‘and pretend that one’s a civilian again, then a week in the calaboose seems nothing. We have so much time, too much time. What is a week?’
Eventually Michael and Klaus returned.
‘Witness the transformation! Klaus the German prisoner becomes Klaus the man about town!’ Michael patted the German’s back. Klaus, blushing with pleasure, lowered his eyes as the other two scrutinised him, Ludwig with amusement, Christine with a feeling of dread for what might happen. His eyelashes caught the light of the lamp beside him and made a fringe of shadow on his prominent cheekbones. He and Michael were of about the same height, but so different in build that the pale grey suit, tailored in Rome before the war, made him look like a huge, carelessly wrapped parcel. Since it had not been possible to fasten the collar of the shirt, a strip of throat could be glimpsed behind the knot of the tie, as the two ends of the collar perpetually edged away from each other. With a repeated gesture he attempted to pull first one sleeve of the jacket and then the other down over his wrists.
Ludwig frowned, drew in his lips and said something in German. Klaus shook his head vigorously: ‘ Nein! Nein!’ ‘ Ludwig says he’ll be caught,’ Michael translated for Christine. Again Klaus shook his head. Then he inserted a finger into the collar in an attempt to ease it. ‘Hey, don’t do that! It’ll come totally adrift if you do that.’ Michael raised his hands and tweaked the edges together again.
When the two prisoners had left, Christine followed Michael over to the long window overlooking the Broad. They both gazed out, waiting for Klaus and Ludwig to pass throug
h the gate. The pair must have decided to separate, since Ludwig emerged first, with Klaus following a few seconds later. Christine and Michael both laughed at the sight of Klaus striding out in the ill-fitting clothes. Then they each felt apprehensive.
‘Do you think he’ll be caught?’
‘Fortunately these days Oxford is full of foreigners – many of them in clothes that don’t fit them properly.’
‘But it’s very risky?’
‘Well, yes – particularly for someone as slow-witted as he is. He might well get a spell in what they call the calaboose.’
‘I meant risky for you as well as him’
‘For me?’
‘Couldn’t you get into trouble for lending him the clothes?’
He laughed. ‘Yes, I suppose I could.’
‘Serious trouble?’
‘Perhaps. If I did, I suppose you’d take the view that I’d only got what I deserved.’
‘Oh, don’t be so stupid! Why on earth would I think that?’
‘Well, one would hardly expect a former SOE girl like you to approve of any kind of fraternisation with the beastly Germans.’
Christine considered that for a few seconds. Then she said: ‘As you know, I don’t often change my mind. Didn’t you once tell me, with that charming frankness of yours, that I was the most obstinate person you had ever met? But, well, this afternoon …’
‘Yes?’
‘I’ve seen so many German prisoners since I got back here. One can’t escape them, they seem to be everywhere.
Don’t they? Slouching about the streets. Herded together like cattle in the back of lorries. Even staring at a stuffed ape or fossilised fish in the Pitt-Rivers. I’ve never felt anything as active as hate for them – hate requires a lot of emotional effort and I’m too lazy for that – but I have felt that, well, they’ve now got what was coming to them. So, when people – people like you – start to agitate to give them more freedom, to allow them to marry, to send them home quickly, I’ve found all that rather sickening.’ She broke off. ‘Am I being too frank?’
‘I like it when you’re frank.’
‘Oh, Michael, Michael! You have such a way of making me feel ashamed of myself.’
‘You were saying?’
‘Well, when I came into this room and saw those three wretches, I was cross, really cross. In fact, I was furious. Oh, of course, I didn’t show it –’
‘But I knew, Christine, I knew.’
‘Of course you knew. You always know. And I believe you did it all on purpose. You wanted me to be furious. You thought it would be good for me. Didn’t you?’
He turned away from the window with a shrug and a smile.
‘I’m such a sentimentalist. That’s my trouble. These people have done such things to us, to all of us, to the whole world, that we should never forget. Never! Never! But set up any personal contact between me and one of those Huns – yes, I like to use that ugly word because it expresses ugly things – and my sentimentality gets the better of me. Just as long as I can think of them as Huns and not as Klaus, Ludwig, Horst and Thomas, I can treat them as they ought to be treated. But having once crossed that line … You’ve been rather unfair to me! You know me so well. And now I feel ashamed – yes, ashamed of my weakness. When I saw that trio, I ought to have made my excuses and stalked out at once. Instead of which – I sat down and tried to be charming to them.’
‘And you were charming to them. I don’t think you have any reason to be ashamed of that.’
‘No, because to be charming is so important to you. But charm is useless against concentration camps, submarines, machine guns, bombs, Vis and V2S – utterly, utterly useless. Ben had charm and what bloody use …?’ She leaned forward in the chair, hand clasped, knees together and head bowed.
Michael jumped up, knelt beside her chair and put an arm around her shoulder. ‘Oh, Christine!’
She straightened, looked up at him and eventually managed a brief smile. Physically reserved herself, she always shrank from his demonstrativeness. ‘ I keep thinking I’m over it. But somehow …’
‘You will get over it. Eventually. You’ll see. After all, it’s only – what? – less than three years. I’m afraid that meeting those poor chaps … It was stupid of me to spring them on you. I didn’t think.’
‘Oh, don’t blame yourself. I’m glad I met them. Truly. Ever since the war ended, I’ve just concentrated on my classics and put everything else out of my mind. But that can’t go on forever.’
‘How about a drink?’
She shook her head.
‘Why not? Good for you’
Again she shook her head. ‘ Tell me about those three.’
‘Well – what do you want to know? Let’s see … I met Thomas first – in the Ashmolean. After they said that we could invite them back to our homes, I often wanted to do something, but I felt, well, embarrassed and that I hadn’t much to offer. I thought they’d find it – me – rather a bore. And anyway I was busy’. He paused, gazing into the fire. ‘ That afternoon it was snowing – rather as it’s snowing now – and the temperature was several degrees below freezing. I’d just returned from town, pleased as punch that I’d got a new Cotman at Sotheby’s at a bargain price – that one over there. So I ambled over to the Ashmolean to show it to Ian Robertson. We talked for a while – he didn’t think as much of the Cotman as I had hoped – and he gave me some cigars, beautiful, fat Romeo and Julietas, that he’d been sent in a food parcel by some American chum at the Metropolitan. He doesn’t smoke cigars, only Balkan Sobranies. Typically effete, as I often tell him. Well, I was smoking one of his cigars as I emerged from his office, and there was Thomas standing before a picture I’ve always loved. You may know it, a Richard Wilson, a harp-shaped sheet of water, restful and consoling. Then he moved on. Should I speak to him? His face looked so morose as he passed me that I almost didn’t. But then – thank God – courage came to me. Did he like that picture he’d been looking at, I asked him in German? He started at my voice, he probably thought I was going to tick him off for something or other. But when he saw I wanted to be friendly – well, his pleasure was pathetic.’
‘How brave you are in starting conversations with total strangers! As you know, I just can’t do it.’
‘Sometimes the bravery merely results in being landed with a bore. But with Thomas it brought me luck.’
‘I can believe that. For all his remoteness, he struck me as a decent sort of chap.’
‘When he came to see me a few days later – at first he was nervous, I had had a job to persuade him – he asked if he could bring a friend. That was Klaus – who, as you must have noticed, is the sweetest of simpletons. Then Ludwig somehow turned up. I don’t think that Thomas asked if he could bring him. In fact I’ve never been sure how he did come. One day, suddenly, he was just there!’ He laughed. ‘Ludwig’s like that. Always in on a good thing.’
‘Tell me about Thomas. He was a schoolmaster, was he?’
‘Yes, at first – teaching English at their equivalent of a grammar school. But – as Ludwig intimated with his usual tact – his accent is so poor that it’s hard to believe that. Then he became a music student after he had saved enough money. In Düsseldorf, I think. He doesn’t talk much about himself. Klaus worked on the family farm – really only a smallholding, I imagine – in East Prussia. He, too, is what I call a ‘‘good” German.’
Christine laughed. ‘How can you call anyone a good – or for the matter of that a bad – German? You can’t possibly know the truth about their pasts.’
‘Well, some fifth sense seems to tell me … But – perhaps you’re right.’
‘Funny that Thomas and Klaus should be friends.’
‘Oh, it’s a classless society up at the camp. Anyway they were wounded together. When you’ve lain wounded for seventeen hours in a ditch with someone else, it must make some kind of bond. It’s an interesting story, how it all happened, which you can choose to believe or not to believe accor
ding to your trust in the two of them.’
‘Try me with it.’
‘Their lorry broke down and, while they were struggling to repair it, they saw a British tank coming for them down the road. By then everything was pretty hopeless for the Jerries, we had broken through right, left and centre, and in any case their little party had long since run out of ammunition. So – there was nothing for it but to put up their hands and come out into the open. Which they did. The tank passed, and of those twelve men only Klaus, Thomas and one other remained alive …’
‘Oh, rubbish! I don’t believe that for one moment.’
‘That sort of thing often happens in a war. The mistake is to think that the only culprits are Jerries and Japs.’
‘And then they lay out by the roadside until they were picked up?’ She had vehemently rejected the story only a moment before. Suddenly she believed it.
‘Seventeen hours. The third man had a stomach wound. He was quiet at first but ended screaming his head off and finally dying. Klaus was wounded in the chest – one lung perforated. If he weren’t as strong as an ox, he wouldn’t be living now. He tells one gleefully of how much blood he vomited. Until then, he says, he never knew how much blood a human body contained.’
‘What awful things have happened these last years!’
‘Poor Klaus! I often wonder what will become of him. They say he’ll never be able to do heavy manual work again, but what else is there for him? He’s one of a family of seven brothers, you know. Two of them are prisoners here in England, two have been killed, one is a prisoner in Russia, and one is still a schoolboy at home.’ He paused. ‘Those are the people for whom war is really hell.’
‘And life is still hell – and, most likely, will go on being hell. Poor Klaus! I took to him, I took to him at once – although we couldn’t talk.’
‘I’m glad I’ve met that crowd – yes, even Ludwig. I don’t regret it. Not in the least. But at the same time I sometimes – just sometimes – find myself wishing I hadn’t spoken to Thomas on that bleak evening seven or eight weeks ago.’
