The Rotters' Club (16 page)

‘Anyway, she returned to Denmark at last. This was in the nineteen-fifties. She settled in Copenhagen and married this man, his name is Carl, a businessman, a nice man, not Jewish, as it happens. He was very kind to her, very patient with all her difficulties. They had two sons, Jorgen and Stefan, whom you have met. But…’ (and now she too closed her eyes for a moment) ‘… there were problems. Continual problems. She was often in hospital. Her behaviour was erratic, her moods were very strange, very changeable. She showed a violent temper, when as a child she had been always gentle and good-natured. It was very hard for the two boys. They had much to endure.

‘Julius and I bought this house in 1968, one year after he retired. It had always been a dream of ours to live in Skagen, where we had had so many holidays. Inger and Carl and the boys came to stay with us, just twice, two summers, and they were happy times. Not bad times at all. And then one evening, in the autumn of 1970, Carl telephoned me to say that Inger had died. She had taken the ferry to Malmö, alone, that afternoon, and she had climbed on to the railing, and jumped. She had taken her own life. Just as I had known, in my heart, that she always would.’

Having finished her story, Marie rose to her feet and walked to the window. She pulled on the cord of the Venetian blind, and raised the blind to the very top. Instinctively we all turned towards the window, and we looked out at the beach, and when I think of that afternoon now my clearest memory is of the light we saw there, that painters’ sky, greyblue like Marie’s eyes and like her grandsons’ eyes, the colour of a pain that won’t go away.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, smiling graciously at all of us, but especially at Rolf, ‘I did not intend to burden you with quite so much detail. I know it is very hard to understand these things, when you are only children. But as I said to you, my hope is that you and Jorgen and Stefan might become friends, and have pleasant times together while you are here. I think I have explained enough to make you see that it is not really because you are German that they have sometimes been unkind. Of course, they know the whole history of their mother and Emil and Bernhard – she told it to them many times – but they are not so stupid as that. The truth is simply that they miss their mother very much, and the fact that she is no longer with them makes them angry and sad. I’m sorry if they have turned some of that anger on to you. I think I can promise that it will not happen again.’

And then we left, after shaking Julius by his tremulous hand, and after each of us had received a kiss on the cheek from Marie, who then stood in her back porch and waved fondly goodbye to us even though we were only walking ten yards to the house next door.

*

There is little to say about the next few days.

The second week of our holiday proceeded smoothly, in a flurry of contented activity. Rolf and Paul spent more and more time together, not just swimming and playing energetic games but even holding long, low, earnest conversations on topics which to the rest of us remained thoroughly mysterious. Paul, showing that quick, interdisciplinary aptitude which has always filled me with envy, even seemed to be picking up a smattering of German. The twins and I kept our distance from each other, recognizing that there could be no kinship of spirit between us: they spent most of every day sitting at a card table playing whist and gin rummy, while I read my way steadily through the novels of Henry Fielding in preparation for my first A-level classes in a month’s time. Jorgen and Stefan were frequent visitors, and marathon games of rounders and beach cricket brought many of those long cold summer evenings to an enjoyable close. I missed our caravan in Wales, and the company of my grandparents, whatever Paul might have said. But I could not deny that this had been a charmed, magical holiday.

Things only began to go wrong again on the last day but one; and this time it was Lisa and the twins who were responsible.

Ever since her mishap with the family car in the centre of Skagen, Lisa had been reluctant to take it anywhere. Finally, however, perhaps stung into action by the gentle but persistent teasing of her husband, she plucked up courage and drove to Grenen with her daughters. Our description of the oceans’ meeting place had pricked her curiosity, it seemed; but once again, catastrophe ensued. Ignoring the prominently displayed warning notices, she had taken the car right out on to the beach, where it promptly collapsed into the yielding sand and could not by any means be extricated. The local rescue service had to be summoned; tractors, policemen and even the fire brigade were involved; and the whole incident provided a most entertaining spectacle for the procession of tourists who had come to visit this beauty spot and now had something even more memorable to record in their photo albums and their postcards home.

The same day, Rolf and Paul had taken a long cycle ride to the eagle sanctuary at Tuen, so that when he returned in the early evening, Rolf had not yet heard the story of his mother’s latest ignominy. His first intimation came from the mocking laughter of Jorgen as they walked back through the garden. I was sitting by the window, reading
Joseph Andrews,
and Gunther was on the sofa behind me. We could both hear every word of the conversation.

‘What’s so funny?’ Rolf was asking.

‘Did you not hear? Your mother has really done it this time. I thought it was pretty dumb when she blocked the road with that oversized German car of yours in the middle of the town, and managed to cause a traffic jam all the way back to Frederikshavn. But today was even better.’ He could hardly speak for laughter, so hilarious did he consider the incident. ‘This time she got it stuck on the Skaw, up at Grenen, when every stupid tourist who comes here knows that you don’t take your car on to the sands.’ Through his forced, throaty chuckling he added: ‘Tell me, how does it feel to have a mother who can’t even get into a car without bringing the whole of the traffic in Jutland to a standstill?’

And now something inside Rolf must have snapped. He had shown that he could put up with almost any amount of abuse when it was directed at him personally, but perhaps it was simply too much to have his mother made the butt of a joke. Whatever the reason, he rounded on Jorgen and said an appalling thing.

‘Well, at least my mother isn’t a filthy Jew, like yours was.’

For once Jorgen and Stefan were lost for words, and before they had had a chance to recover their power of speech, Rolf had run into the house. He ran through the kitchen and down the corridor and was halfway up the stairs when Gunther, who had sprung to his feet as soon as he heard the insult, grabbed hold of his ankle through the banister and said something commanding and peremptory to him in German. Then Gunther followed him up the stairs and they disappeared into one of the bedrooms. I could hear them talking in quiet voices. Rolf was crying a little. It was a long time before they came out.

This was a fortnight of apologies. Last week, it had been the Danes’ turn. This time it was Rolf who, under strict instructions from his father, went out to talk to them as they sat morosely in the dunes at the back of the house, and told them that he was sorry for the thoughtless thing he had said. I watched from my usual vantage point as Jorgen and Stefan stood up and shook his hand. They were being remarkably conciliatory about it. ‘It’s all right,’ Jorgen was saying. ‘It was just something you said in the heat of the moment. Don’t give it another thought. It’s quite all right.’ But something in his manner made me sure that it was far from being all right.

*

And now I have told you everything that I know. Or almost everything. As I warned you at the beginning, there would come a point in this story when I would simply have to shrug my shoulders and admit that I wasn’t around to see what happened next. The moment when I walked offstage, or drifted into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. Well, that moment has come.

Actually I was not making a cup of tea when the climax occurred: I was reading Henry Fielding. For the whole of that last day I stayed in my chair by the window, finishing
Joseph Andrews
and then making serious inroads into
Tom Jones.
Early in the afternoon, Jorgen, Stefan, Rolf and Paul had gone cycling: I didn’t know where. At about four o’clock, just as Tom was rescuing Mrs Waters from the dastardly Ensign Northerton, the Danes came back together and went straight into their house. Half an hour later, as I was deeply immersed in the story of The Man of the Hill, that curious, lengthy digression which seems to have nothing to do with the main narrative but is in fact its cornerstone, Rolf and Paul returned. I could hear that there was some sort of commotion, but I didn’t go to investigate. Gunther came into the sitting room, I remember, and fetched a bottle of brandy from the drinks cabinet. I realized afterwards that this must have been for Rolf, who was subsequently taken up to bed. When he joined us for our final dinner that evening, he seemed subdued but otherwise normal. Nobody talked about what had happened during the afternoon.

What little I learned, I learned that night, as I lay awake in my camp bed next to Paul. The lights in the house had only been off for about five minutes when I heard footsteps coming softly down the staircase. Then Rolf appeared in the doorway. He went over to Paul’s bed and knelt down beside it. I heard him whisper a few words in German – Paul’s name being one of them – and heard my brother answer in the same language. And then Rolf said, quite distinctly, in English:

‘You saved my life today. I will always remember that.’ He kissed my brother tenderly on the forehead. ‘I will be for ever in your debt.’

When Rolf had padded out of the room, I said to Paul:

‘What on earth was all
that
about?’

He did not answer for a long time. I began to assume (since it would have been in character) that he was not going to answer at all. But at last he replied, yawningly:

‘Just as he said: I saved his life today.’

Exasperated by his continuing silences, I asked, ‘Well, do you mind telling me how?’

‘The Danish boys tried to drown him,’ said Paul, in a quite calm and unemphatic way. ‘They hate him because of what he said to them yesterday and they tried to kill him this afternoon.’

‘Paul…’ I sat up in bed. ‘What
are
you talking about?’

‘I don’t mean they held him under the water or anything like that,’ he explained. ‘But we all went up to the Skaw, up to where the seas come together, and they teased him again, saying that he was too weak to go swimming there. He didn’t know how dangerous it was. I tried to warn him but he thought I was exaggerating. So he went in. I could see he’d only gone about ten yards before he was in trouble. Stefan tried to hold me down but I was stronger than him so I threw him off and went in after Rolf. I got there just as the current was taking him away and he knew that he wasn’t going to make it, so I grabbed him around the neck and managed to bring him back. Jorgen and Stefan ran away. So technically speaking, yes –’ (he gave another yawn) ‘– I did save his life. Now look: we have to pack up early tomorrow. D’you mind if we get some sleep?’

And that was all he would say to me on the subject.

I think about this story, sometimes. It’s one of the things I try to make sense of. I thought of it as we drove away from Skagen to return our hire car to the airport at Ålborg the next morning. I thought of it today as I walked home from the bus stop to my parents’ house. But slowly, irresistibly, I can feel it beginning to dissolve into the hazy falsehood of memory. That is why I have written it down, although in doing so I know that all I have achieved is to falsify it differently, more artfully. Does narrative serve any purpose? I wonder about that. I wonder if all experience can really be distilled to a few extraordinary moments, perhaps six or seven of them vouchsafed to us in a lifetime, and any attempt to trace a connection between them is futile. And I wonder if there are some moments in life not only ‘worth purchasing with worlds’, but so replete with emotion that they become stretched, timeless, like the moment when Inger and Emil sat on that bench in the rose garden and smiled at the camera, or when Inger’s mother raised the Venetian blind to the very top of her high sitting-room window, or when Malcolm opened up his jeweller’s box and asked my sister to marry him. If he ever did.

*

…
my clearest memory is of the light we saw there, that painters’ sky, greyblue like Marie’s eyes and like her grandsons’ eyes, the colour of a pain that won’t go away
…

(Unpublished story, found among Benjamin Trotter’s papers by his niece, Sophie, in 2002. A very much shorter version won the 1976 Marshall Prize for creative writing at King William’s School. Judges: Mr Nuttall, Mr Serkis, the Chief Master)

2

At the end of the art history lesson, Mr Plumb took Philip to one side.

‘All set for Saturday?’ he said, laying a hand as if unconsciously on his arm. Saturday was the day for a proposed excursion to London, where Mr Plumb’s O– and A-level classes were to visit the George Stubbs exhibition currently showing at the Tate Gallery.

‘Sure,’ said Philip.

‘Good. It will I’m sure be the most revelatory experience for you. Epiphanic, if I may be so bold.’

‘Yeah,’ said Philip. ‘I’m looking forward to it.’ He could not quite see where this was leading, and was anxious to be getting on to his next lesson.

‘Your mother,’ said Mr Plumb, suddenly, and with a kind of nervous tenderness to his voice. ‘She’s well, I hope?’

‘Yes, yes. Very well.’

‘Good. That’s very good. In which case, I wonder…’ He appeared to hesitate for a moment, fished for something in his briefcase, hesitated again before pulling it out, and finally presented Philip with a plain white envelope, on which his mother’s name was inscribed in Mr Plumb’s baroque, spidery handwriting. ‘I wonder if you might object – or might
not
object, I should say – to passing on this small – em – communiqué. A notelet, nothing more, entirely innocent in manner and import.’