The Road Between Us (51 page)

She looks up again. The clouds are black and low, heavy with rain. A gannet appears from under the ledge on which she is lying. It swoops up close to her face, riding the thermals, wings outspread, brilliant white. It continues soaring high above her before disappearing, spiralling upwards into the clouds, a sliver of rolling light between two immensities of shade.

There is a shower now, carried on a raw easterly wind. It leaves her hair wet and clinging to her cheeks, but she does not notice. Sensing the hulking cliff face below her, and knowing its scale, she closes her eyes. The patter on her cagoule seems too loud and intrusive, its rhythm too dangerous. She pulls it off over her head without unzipping it, and when her fleece comes with it she takes that off, too. She feels calmer now and, as her mind clears, she realizes what the connection is between her father and Friedrich Walser. It is as if she has had to stop thinking about it in order to find it and, now that it has come to her, it seems obvious.

As abruptly as it started, the rain stops and the clouds scud away to reveal the first salmon-pink bruises of a new day. She clicks the torch off. The rock that juts out before her is solid, shaped by millions of years of slow collision. She walks firm-footed to its edge, takes the urn containing her mother’s ashes out of the rucksack, unscrews its lid and angles it towards a humpback of land rising out of the sea.

As she begins to empty it with jolts of her wrists, she finds herself smiling. A wisp of ash is spiralling up on the breeze, impatient to escape.

VII

Norway

EDWARD’S VISIT TO FREJYA’S PARENTS IN OSLO HAD PROVED
cathartic. They talked politely about Hannah at first: how she stayed in touch with them via Skype and email. Then, as the vodka shots were refilled, their feelings about their shared loss came out of the penumbral world and stood shivering in the daylight. All three started crying, tears that alternated with embarrassed laughter.

Edward had been touched by their insistence that he accept the keys, and the deeds, to their log cabin near the fjords. It had been promised to Frejya, they said, and she would have wanted it to go to him. They had also insisted that he accept as a gift their old Land Rover Discovery. As it was equipped with snow tyres, he could not deny that it was useful.

On his drive across country, as he followed the rows of spectral pine like sombre guides in the white landscape, everything had reminded him of his time there with Frejya. From the clapboard houses painted oxblood red, to the stave churches black with pitch. And the memories had left him feeling oddly elated.

When he arrived at the cabin he found it had been stocked with the things he would need to see out the winter: fishing rods, wood-and-leather snowshoes and a hunting rifle. Frejya’s parents had arranged for both the larder and the wine rack to be filled. One
thing he decided he wouldn’t need until the spring was a razor.

That was two weeks ago and already his beard is looking full. He strokes it now as he gazes out of the window. It is getting dark. He puts on an old matching fur coat and hat he has found in the bedroom and walks around the side of the cabin, the snow squeaking as it compacts under his boots. Here he finds the axe in its old place and, beside it, a pile of unchopped logs. As he gets to work it begins to snow again, huge discs of white fluttering to the ground, softening the world. With his breath pluming, he carries an armful of logs back indoors and stamps the snow off his boots before tipping them in the basket by the fire.

Seeing that the snow has stopped falling now, he stands in the open doorway to watch the pale green curtains of light wafting hypnotically in the night sky.

Ten minutes later, as he closes the door and takes off the coat, he senses the woods closing in around him, feels the companionship of the glacier-topped mountains and the dark lakes.

He has a prickly awareness of Frejya, as if she is filling the room with her presence – not composed of matter, molecules and shape, but part of every element.

For the past few nights it has been she, rather than Hannah, who has haunted his dreams. She will be standing at the end of the bed, her hair tumbling down over her shoulders, and she will be saying something, but he cannot hear her words. They won’t carry the short distance. When he talks to her he tries to sound as if he is not surprised that she is here with him, alive and normal. Anything out of the ordinary might frighten her away.

He places his five notebooks on the table, and separates the two he has already filled with his memories. He opens the first one, the one Niall had returned to him, and sees the photograph and the letter he slipped behind its cover for safekeeping. The photograph is of himself with Frejya and Hannah, the one he had with him all the time he was in Afghanistan, but which he had no light to see. It had been taken on a timer at Doyden Point and, as he contemplates it, he thinks he can hear once more the crickets of
summer. Frejya looked beautiful that day in a backless dress, laughing as she kept her hair from her eyes. There were fleecy white clouds behind them. Dandelion and thistledown were blowing on the breeze. He had five days’ holiday stubble and sunglasses pushed up on his forehead. Hannah was standing between them, as if they were her wings. She was nine years old, the age he remembered her as being in all his years of captivity, and she had dimples in the corners of her mouth as she smiled.

He props the photograph up on the desk and then picks up the letter, unfolds it and flattens it out in front of him. It is written in a Gothic script and addressed to his father, sent from Berlin in the summer of 1939 by his friend Anselm. Its once-black ink has now faded to a rust colour, and, as Edward studies it, he has a revelation about how joined together the world is – something about the way ink on the page is like blood in the veins, a living thing that is never the same from one year to the next. While blood comes out red and turns black as it ages, ink comes out black and fades to reddy brown.

The letter helps him understand what it means to be linked by blood, to his father, to his daughter, how it ties a man to a genetic fate greater than his own. What Walser had told him as he gave him a lift back to his house that day had been a revelation, too. It meant a distance he had always felt between himself and his father had finally closed.

He feels he can complete his book now, the missing passages having made themselves known to him. But it will not be a memoir written in the first person, past tense. It will be a novel, written in the third person, present tense. The form will suit his story better, its truth will be more believable, its immoralities easier to forgive. It will have two time frames, one for his father, one for him.

He pours himself a glass of milk, sits down at his desk and, as he unscrews the lid of his fountain pen, realizes that it is the final chapter he must write first. Once that is complete he will be able to navigate his way back through the narrative to the start, to that small hotel room overlooking Piccadilly.

VIII

Aachen, Germany. Summer 1966

FRIEDRICH IS READING A COMIC IN HIS BEDROOM WHEN HIS
father calls up the stairs.

‘Can you come down, son? Your godfather is here.’

The boy doesn’t appear immediately, but waits until he has finished his page: a protest. He is sulking; his plans to go and meet his friends in the park to play football have been ruined. To rub his protest in, he is still wearing his football strip, the white and black of the German World Cup team. They may have just lost to England, but Friedrich remains loyal to them. There will be other World Cups. Also, he isn’t sure what a godfather is. Some kind of priest? His parents have never taken him to church and, as far as he knows, he wasn’t even baptized, so why this godfather now, when he is eleven?

‘You remember Charles?’ his father says in English as he appears on the stairs. ‘He’s all the way over from England come to see us.’

‘
Guten Tag
, Friedrich,’ the Englishman says, holding out a hand with a missing thumb.

Though Friedrich remembers him well enough, as someone who always seemed to be in the background when he was growing up, dropping in for tea, waiting in the car, passing by, he only touches the ends of his fingers, and then tentatively.

The Englishman’s belly pushes out the silk scarf he wears wrapped around like a cravat. His long sideburns and collar-length hair are silvery. He seems ancient. And the skin on one side of his face looks strange and smooth. And it is a different colour. But his smile is friendly.

‘S
prechen Sie Deutsch?
’ Friedrich asks suspiciously.

‘
Ja
,’ the Englishman says, holding his hand out and waggling it from side to side to suggest his German is shaky.

‘That’s OK,’ Friedrich says. ‘I am English learning in school. My middle name is Charles, like your name. Friedrich Charles Walser.’

The Englishman looks at the boy’s father and says: ‘Is that right, Anselm?’

‘Yes. Friedrich Charles Walser.’

The Englishman turns back to the boy and says: ‘I hear you’re mad about football.’

Friedrich feels shy. His new mother appears, wearing a half-veil around her head, in the Muslim tradition. Friedrich thinks of her as his mother, but he knows she is not. His real mother died last year. She was French.

‘This is my wife Shaiba,’ his father says to the Englishman. ‘It means woman with patience. She is from Turkey. This is Charles. He is from England. He saved my life during the war.’

‘How?’ Friedrich says with widening eyes, suddenly interested in the Englishman. He has vague recollections of his father having told this story before.

‘I will tell you properly one day, when you are older.’

‘Were you a soldier?’

‘When you are older.’

‘I didn’t really save him,’ the Englishman says. ‘I merely found him.’ He raises his stump. ‘And in the process I lost this. What a
Dummkopf
, eh? Twenty-two years it’s been gone and still it aches.’

Friedrich blinks. ‘How did you lose it?’

‘I was being careless.’

‘My father has a wound from the war also,’ Friedrich says.

The Englishman turns towards the boy’s father, his eyebrows
raised. The father touches the mark on his cheek left by a whip and shrugs. It looks like a duelling scar.

The Englishman shrugs back. ‘Now, young Friedrich,’ he says. ‘I’ve brought some presents for you.’ He points to three wrapped shapes by the door, one long, one square, one flat. ‘Open the long one first.’

Friedrich tears off the paper and stares at a piece of wood, shaped like a paddle. ‘What is it?’ he asks.

‘That’s a cricket bat,’ the Englishman says, laughing. ‘I know you don’t play cricket here but I thought you might be interested to see one.’

His father nudges him. ‘What do you say, Friedrich?’

‘
Danke
,’ the boy says, trying to hide the disappointment in his voice. ‘Thank you.’ He opens the flat present next.

‘And that’s the new LP by the Beatles,’ the Englishman says. ‘It’s called
Revolver
. Do you like the Beatles?’

‘They’re OK.’ Friedrich studies the cover, a strange swirling ink drawing of John, Paul, George and Ringo. ‘
Danke
.’ He now takes the box shape, tears off the wrapping paper and, as he holds it up, his eyes widen again and he smiles broadly. It is a red-leather, hand-stitched football.

‘A replica of the Slazenger 25 Challenge they used in the World Cup,’ the Englishman says, ruffling the boy’s hair. ‘For what it’s worth, I don’t think Geoff Hurst should have been allowed that goal.’

Friedrich rips open the box, sniffs the new leathery smell and then bounces the ball noisily on the floor. ‘I don’t really mind that we lost to you,’ Friedrich says. ‘I was born in London.’

‘I know you were,’ the Englishman says with a grin. ‘I have a son, too. His name is Edward and he was born in Germany! So you are a German born in England and Edward is an Englishman born in Germany, how about that?’

Friedrich has a clear memory of his mother holding a crying baby before she died. He was sure it had been hers because she had had a big belly for a long time, and then she hadn’t. No one ever
talked about it, then the baby disappeared and his new mother arrived.

‘He is much younger than you,’ the Englishman continues. ‘Not even two yet. He is having a sleep in his pram. I will introduce you to him when he wakes up. I’m hoping he will be a footballer one day, like you.’

There is excitement in Friedrich’s voice now. ‘By the time of the 1974 World Cup, I am eighteen. I am play for Germany by then.’

‘Then we’d better get some practice in. Should we go and try it out? I see you have a net in your garden. I’ll be Gordon Banks.’

‘And I’ll be Wolfgang Weber.’

The boy’s father watches from the front door as they play penalties, with the Englishman in goal. After a few minutes his new mother joins him. She is holding a crying child.

‘I’m afraid your son has woken up, Mr Charles,’ she shouts.

Half running, half walking, the Englishman returns to the house.

‘He’ll be hungry. Is there somewhere I can heat his milk? I know he’s a little old for it, but he still likes to have milk.’

‘Me do,’ Friedrich’s new mother says as she hands the child to the Englishman, who then shifts his weight from side to side. The rocking motion soothes the crying and a small dimpled hand reaches to touch the scar tissue running down the Englishman’s cheek.

When his new mother returns with the bottle, the Englishman hands the child to Friedrich’s father, takes the bottle and tests the temperature of the milk on his wrist. He smiles as he then also hands over the bottle. His new mother goes back indoors and returns with a camera. She calls Friedrich over and ushers the two men together for a picture with their sons. Friedrich picks up his ball and stands next to the Englishman, who puts his arm around him.

Afterwards, Friedrich continues playing with the new red ball while his father and his godfather go inside. After five minutes he follows them in and puts on his new LP. While it is playing he goes to look for the adults in the studio. The two men look old to
Friedrich’s eyes, with their paunches and their grey hair. They are discussing art and do not notice him standing by the door listening. The Englishman is talking about an exhibition he is working on. He mentions something called ‘abstract expressionism’. In New York it is giving way to ‘pop art’. Friedrich prefers the sound of pop art. His father shows the Englishman his framed painting of the German soldier on a black horse, propping it up on an easel and pointing out the signature and date.