Interpreters (13 page)
‘It was my idea, not his.’
‘Why would you want to live with a secret like that hanging over you?’
‘If it’s really only me who knows who the father is, then nothing bad can come of it. No one need ever be hurt.’
‘How did you work that one out?’
‘Look, it makes sense to me, and that’s what matters, isn’t it?’
‘What about this one?’ Max asked, pointing at my stomach.
‘What about it?’
‘What’ll you tell the baby?’
‘I don’t know. I’ll work something out.’
‘Clara will be pleased that the family name will live on. I’m assuming you won’t be giving the baby its father’s surname?’
‘No. And not mine, either.’
‘What are you going to do? Just make up a name?’
‘I am, actually.’
‘Well, that’s different.’
‘It’ll be fine.’
‘Leave Cameroon, Julia. Come back and live here with me. In my lovely Munster House.’
‘I can’t. I’ve got a career and a life to get on with.’
‘What if the baby-with-the-made-up-surname gets some terrible tropical disease?’
‘Millions of babies grow up perfectly healthily in Africa.’
‘And millions don’t. Live here with me. I’d look after you both.’
‘I know you would. And it’s good to know that.’
Max rested his head on my stomach.
‘Does it move at all?’
‘Lots. Especially in the evening. And if I’m listening to music. Sod’s law it’ll be musically talented. You can be bloody sure I’ll never let it anywhere near a violin!’
‘Hello, baby,’ Max whispered to the little bump. ‘You’re going to need all the help you can get with my crazy sister for a mother. But I’ll be here for you.’
I took a handful of Max’s blond curls and pulled. Very hard.
Go on.
I told you. We just ran and walked. From the 22nd of April until the 31st of May.
Do you want to tell me any more?
I really can’t.
You really can’t remember?
Can’t remember? I can’t forget.
So tell me. The things you can’t forget.
And then what? Is that supposed to make me feel better?
It might. Have you told anyone else?
Told them what?
What you did? What you saw? All those things that you can’t forget?
You keep asking me that. Who should I tell? The postman? The man who reads the electricity meter? Who do I ever see? Who could I possibly tell?
You’ve never spoken about this to anyone?
Never.
You must have told someone.
No one.
You have never told anyone any of the things you have told me over the past few months?
I tell the ghosts. In my head. Over and over and over. They go round and round, year after year – the stories in my head. Over and over and over. Sometimes they change a bit. But not much.
Try and tell me. Think of me as one of those ghosts.
We travelled by night, sleeping by day in forests, ditches or burned-out farms. It was unusually warm, the spring of 1945, but the nights were still cold and we’d wake up with numb fingers and blue lips. Every time we stopped to sleep, I’d get out my little red leather notebook and record the date and the name of the nearest town or village if I knew it. I don’t know why. It seemed important at the time. Often we came across young German soldiers wanting to know whether the war had ended yet, where the Russians or Americans were, and whether we had any food. On April the 25th we met up with a small group of factory workers and travelled with them for a few days. They were an optimistic crowd, convinced that it wouldn’t be long until the war would be over and there would be an end to all the running. On the third night of travelling together, we’d walked about half a kilometre along a little dirt track when I realised I’d left my notebook in the hollow tree trunk I’d been resting in during the day. I told my mother to go on with the factory crowd and I’d catch them up. I remember it was a full moon and it didn’t take me long to retrace my steps to the tree and there was my notebook where I’d left it. So I stuffed it deep into the pocket of my black trousers with my angel and my identity card. And then I heard this voice –
‘Hey!
Germanski!’
And I turned round and there was this Russian soldier. I can still see his face so clearly. Those dark slanting eyes. He grinned at me. His teeth were chipped and
tobacco-stained
. He took my arm and I jerked it free. He wasn’t smiling any more. He grabbed my wrist and I bit him in the hand, as hard as I could. God, was he angry! I saw him pick up his gun with both hands, and he smashed the butt into my face.
And then?
And that’s the end of that particular story.
Is it?
It is. So after – after some time – I carried on walking through the forest, hoping I’d find my mother and the factory workers again, but I didn’t. Everywhere I walked, there were scenes of such terrible destruction. Whole villages lying empty; goats and cows with bullet holes through their heads, crawling with maggots and bluebottles; a woman lying dead outside her burning house, her dress around her head. All those bruises and the blood – blood everywhere. Have you ever smelt congealing blood? And then one day the Russians found a group of us searching for food in an abandoned farm and they took us away. They marched us to the edge of a lake where they arranged us into a line along a wooden landing stage. There were eight or nine of us. Men and women and one small boy who was clinging to his mother’s leg and crying. The girl next to me was about my age. We’d become quite good friends over the past few days of scavenging together. And they aimed a machine gun at us. And they pointed to the first man and said, ‘
Germanski
?’ And he said, ‘
Ruski
.’ And they laughed. And shot him. And then they pointed at the mother with her child and said, ‘
Germanski
?’ And she just shook her head and clutched her child, too terrified to
say anything. And they shot them both. And then they said the same to me and I said, ‘
Hollandski
,’ and shut my eyes. And they said,
‘Hollandski!
Komm!’
And, as they drove me towards their camp in a nearby farmhouse, I could hear the crackle of the machine gun and the splashes as, one by one, the bodies fell into the lake. (LONG SILENCE) I still remember that girl’s name. The one who stood next to me. Christiana. I can still see her standing there next to me. Even now, when I shut my eyes.
Go on. If you can.
They took me to a Russian officer who spoke some Dutch. And it’s amazing how, with a gun at your head, you can suddenly become fluent in a language you’ve barely spoken a word of for thirteen years. The officer was keen to show off his Dutch. He opened a drawer full of watches. ‘Look! You want one? Just choose. Look at mine.’ And as his jacket rode up, like this, I could see five or six watches on each arm. It was chaos outside – soldiers were chasing pigs round the yard. There was all this squealing and shouting. Then there were gunshots and then silence. And then the officer asked me if I could cook. I’d have to do it outside as the stove in the kitchen was broken. And so a young soldier butchered the warm pigs and I cooked the pork on a fire in a field behind the farmhouse while the officers sat inside drinking vodka. And very carefully with a knife I made a hole in the pocket of my SS man’s trousers, and very carefully I slid my identity card down the inside of my trousers to my shoe and into the fire. It curled and went black and then was gone.
And then?
And then he let me go, the Russian with the watches. There was nothing left for me to cook and they were moving on.
He was sorry I didn’t want to take a watch. He shook his head very sadly as I turned to go. They weren’t all as decent as he was.
Somewhere in a forest near a hollow tree are quite a few of my teeth.
Your teeth?
Maybe somewhere in Mongolia there’s an old man with a faint bite mark on his hand and a vague memory of a very thin, half-naked girl running into the forest with her black woollen trousers in her hand. Maybe he can remember blood dripping from the butt of his rifle. I’d like to think he remembers.
And what happened next?
On the 31st of May, I walked into a Red Cross camp. ‘You know the war ended on May the 8th,’ a Red Cross nurse told me as she took off all my clothes – my SS man’s trousers, my pullover and jacket – and burned them. Then she cut off all my hair to get rid of the lice and washed me in disinfectant. And she put some antiseptic on my infected, bleeding gums. I stood there in a towel holding the only things in the world that I owned – a little wooden angel and a red leather notebook. The nurse gave me some underwear and a cotton dress. I remember it had blue and pink flowers on it. She asked me where I’d come from, and when I said Berlin, and that I’d been walking for six weeks, trying to get to Holland, she told me she’d deloused another Dutch woman a few days ago who’d said the same thing and who was probably still somewhere in the camp. She said I’d need to talk to the Americans. I wouldn’t be able to get into Holland without
identity papers or a passport. But all I could think of was finding my mother.
And did you? Find your mother?
I didn’t recognise her at first. I walked past a bald woman with fresh scars on her face and neck sitting a little way apart from the others. If she hadn’t called out my name, I would never have seen my mother again. We got hold of enough papers to get us out of the camp – I can’t remember how exactly. Then we managed to get a lift in the back of an army truck to the border, and so we ended up back in Holland, where we’d come from all those years ago. We walked to my grandparents’ house, and rang the bell, and they came to the door together and told us to go round the back if we wanted some food. It was only when my mother spoke that they realised who we were. And how pleased they must have been to see me, my grandmother and her neighbours! The German with the missing teeth and shaven head in a borrowed dress.
But your grandfather must have been happy to see you?
He was. Whenever my grandmother was out of the way, he’d come and find me and take my hand and squeeze it or stroke my head.
And you stayed there?
Where else could we go? We had nothing. I was under house arrest for a while. Then I had to report to the police station every day. If I kept out of the way of my grandmother, life wasn’t too bad.
The door to Angie and Geoff’s bedroom is open. I go in and look out over the green. I shut my eyes and walk out into the Close to school. Out of the front door, round to the right. At number three were the Fletchers. Tomas, a boy of about my age, Mrs Fletcher who was big, blonde and Swedish, and Mr Fletcher whom we rarely saw. Tomas used to do a lot of naughty things, often involving damage to other children’s property or bodies. He’d probably have a label of some kind now. And medication, too, no doubt. ‘Wait till your father gets home, Tomas!’ his mother would screech out of the front door in Swedish. Or at least that’s what Tomas told us she was shouting as he sat with us on the green, ignoring her, eating flying saucers and sherbet fountains. Max and I wondered if Tomas’s father minded being given the job of beating his son on his return from work. What if he’d rather sit down with a drink and the newspaper than get his belt out? And, if they were going to beat him, why didn’t Mrs Fletcher do it herself? She was a lot bigger than Mr Fletcher.
At number two was a family with three children. The middle child had his leg in a calliper, I remember, but I can’t recall their names or anything much else about them. I don’t think they played out the front very often. I remember the boy at number one – Brian Nunn – who went to Max’s school and was given the task of escorting us for part of the journey when I first started school. This he did with some considerable reluctance, striding off ahead of us and occasionally pausing
to check that we were still dawdling behind him, then striding off again before we could catch up and embarrass him further. When we first moved to the Close, Brian was a smartly turned-out twelve-year-old, with a neat side parting, whose shiny black shoes were always tidily lined up in his parents’ glass porch. Max and I watched with interest as, over the years, Brian transformed into a Hell’s Angel, albeit a fairly benign one, and the shoes were replaced by huge leather boots with silver buckles. We thought it was rather nice for Brian’s parents that Hell’s Angels still remembered to take their shoes off inside. We quite missed Brian when he left home. At eighteen, he was no longer embarrassed by us and used to talk us through the finer points of his Harley Davidson as he polished it on Saturday mornings – though I’m sure the rest of the residents of Tenterden Close, if not his parents, were relieved when he finally packed his panniers and roared off for the open road.
Coming home, I’d walk the other way round the Close. At number eight was the Heaney family, Mr and Mrs Heaney and four girls, each a year apart, who all went to the local convent school. Over the years, all four had a crush on Max, who tolerated their notes and gifts and invitations to come out and play with his usual good grace. At number seven were Mr and Mrs Tate, a childless couple in their fifties, who sometimes, in the summer, let us use their very small swimming pool. Mr Tate was a bit of a handyman and had built a bar out of shiny knotted pine in the corner of their sitting room. Drambuie, Martini, sherry, crème de menthe, curaçao, advocaat. I loved the colours as much as the exotic names. Sometimes we’d perch on the leather-look and chrome bar stools and Mr Tate would produce multicoloured drinks from the mixers he kept in the fridge, finishing them off with a parasol or a glacé cherry or a pale green olive on a stick. ‘Bottoms up!’ he’d say with a wink as he handed them over to us and downed his own rather less virgin cocktail. I thought
the Tates were the most glamorous people in the world. Mr Tate had twinkly eyes and a neat little moustache. He always wore a navy blazer and cream slacks and often sported a silk cravat. Mrs Tate clacked about the house in high-heeled sandals and caftans, long fake eyelashes and shiny fake nails. They seemed to have a lot more fun than the rest of the grown-ups I came across. They were the first people in the Close to own a colour television; eventually they had to pretend to be out to stop the hordes of children ringing their bell, begging to be allowed to watch
Crackerjack
in colour.
The Feelys lived at number six. Peter and his sister Rosalind, who were our best friends in the Close. Our friendship survived my accidental assault on Peter with a rounders bat and his impressive black eye which his mother, rather inexplicably, smeared with butter. And Rosalind’s patient, but ultimately unsuccessful, wooing of Max. Our next-door neighbours were the Croziers. The boys, Michael and John, were boarders somewhere in Kent so we didn’t see much of them. Sometimes, during the holidays, Peter, Rosalind, Max and I would call on them to come out and play. Mrs Crozier would open the door a few inches and call into the house, ‘It’s the little Jews from next door.’ I wasn’t sure that that was very polite and even less sure that the Feelys really
were
Jewish.
I look around the room. It is as messy as the rest of the house. Angie’s bedside table is piled high with clothing catalogues and women’s magazines. I pick up the chunky catalogue at the top of the stack and flick through it, despising the perfect long-haired mummies with their banal aphorisms, their fitted floral skirts, their cardigans sporting ‘fun buttons’, their brightly coloured ballet pumps and co-ordinating, laughing, tousle-haired children. Despising the smug daddies with their moleskin trousers and jaunty shirts, their shiny white smiles, their manly grins and chiselled jaws. I want to take a thick black pen and cancel them all out. I want to add
wrinkles and worry lines, and spots and tears. A weak chin or two.
I realise that I’ve not had anything to eat all day.
On the floor beside the bed is a pile of newspapers. And there it is. That colour supplement. Unread. About four from the top.
There is a note of caution, almost anxiety, in Susanna’s voice when she rings. So different from her usual upbeat, confident tone.
‘Have you read it yet, Mum?’
‘Well, just the introd –’ I begin.
‘It’s just that when you didn’t call…’ she interrupts.
‘I’ve been meaning to –’
‘Some things came out a bit… not as I meant them to, really. They sound sort of critical. It’s mostly just the way he edited the interview. You know what journalists are like. He wouldn’t let me see it before they published it – that’s the policy apparently. Even though he’s a friend of George’s. And I had to work really hard on Max to get him to agree to be interviewed. He wasn’t at all keen at the beginning.’
I recognise the need for absolution in Susanna’s voice, know that for the first time in her twenty-six years she desperately wants me to push her fair hair from her face, to see what is written on her forehead and make everything all right. It is a new feeling for her and not one with which she feels at all comfortable. I should feel pity for her, but I realise with a rush of shame that what I feel is something akin to triumph – that finally my daughter would know what it had always been like for me. What it could have been like for her if I had arranged our lives differently.
‘It’s great. Really interesting.’
‘Are you sure?’ The relief in Susanna’s voice is tangible. ‘There’s been lots more interest in the business too, this past couple of days. So that’s good, isn’t it?’
‘Look, Susanna. I’ve got to go and give a lecture now. I’m really sorry. We’ll talk about this properly another time. Give my love to George.’
‘OK, Mum. I’ll see you soon. And thanks.’
‘For what?’
‘For being so good about the article. I knew you would be. It’s just… I really don’t want you to feel –’
‘Off you go and have fun.’
‘OK. Say hi to Dan from me when he gets back from India.’
I put down the phone and go not to give a lecture but back to bed, leaving the magazine unread on the floor. Would my mother count this as a white lie, or one of those bigger, more lethal ones? I wonder, as I pull the duvet over my head. I think back to that hot summer when I finally gave in and brought Susanna to England to live with Max and the rest of his ‘family’. I stayed with them for a few days, trying to work out who in the big old house was related to whom, how it all worked and how anything got done. I agreed with Max that I’d leave Susanna with him for a fortnight and then come back to see how things were working out. I was desperate for it to be cold and rainy, for her to change her mind about living in England, but the sun continued to shine in a cloudless sky and there was no phone call from Susanna begging me to come and collect her. I returned a couple of days earlier than arranged and, as I walked up the garden path, I heard music coming from the back of the house. I walked round into the garden and there were Max and Susanna playing violin and flute duets. Susanna saw me first, smiling at me with her eyes. I stood and waited until they had finished, then went and put my arms round her. She buried her head in my neck and hugged me very tightly. ‘I’ve missed you, Mum,’ she said. But somehow I knew then that she wouldn’t be going back with me.
‘How come you never told me Max could play the violin?’ Susanna asked me over dinner.
‘He hasn’t played since he was about seventeen. I thought you sold your violin, Max?’
‘I did. I borrowed this one from the music department so I could play with Susanna. She’s really good.’
‘So’s he, Mum.
Really
good. I always wondered how come I could possibly be musical with you as a mother.’
‘And now it all makes sense,’ I said.
‘Absolutely.’