A Small Person Far Away (14 page)

“And now?” said Max. “What will happen now?”

“Now?” The little-boy look had disappeared and Konrad looked suddenly what he was – a rather plain, elderly Jew who had seen a lot of trouble. “Now we pick up the pieces and put them together again.” He raised the little glass and put it to his lips. “To the family reunion,” he said.

Afterwards Anna remembered the rest of the evening like a kind of party. She felt happily confused as though she were drunk, not so much with schnapps as with the knowledge that everything was going to be all right. Mama would get over her unhappiness. Konrad would see to it, as he had always seen to everything. And between them they had all – and especially Anna – saved Mama from dying stupidly, unnecessarily, and in a state of despair for which it would be difficult to forgive oneself.

Max and Konrad, too, seemed in a much more relaxed state. They swapped legal anecdotes without any of the awkwardness that normally came between them, and once, when Anna returned from the Ladies (a very functional place almost entirely filled by one large woman adjusting a hard felt hat over her iron grey hair) she found them roaring with laughter together like old friends.

The mood only began to fade while Konrad drove them home. Perhaps it was the cold, and the sight of the half-built streets with their patrolling soldiers. Or, more likely, thought Anna, it was the realisation that it was nearly midnight and too late for her to ring Richard. Whatever it was, she found herself unexpectedly homesick and depressed, and she was horrified when, at the door of the hotel, Konrad suddenly said, “I’m so glad you’ll be able to stay on for a while in Berlin. It will make all the difference.”

She was too taken aback to say anything in reply, and it was only after he had gone that she turned angrily to Max. “Did you tell Konrad that I was going to stay on?” she asked.

They were in the little breakfast room which also served as reception area, and a sleepy adolescent girl, no doubt a relation of the owner, was preparing to hand them their keys.

“I don’t know – I may have done,” said Max. “Anyway, I thought you said you were going to.”

“I only said I might.” She felt suddenly panicked. “I never said definitely. I said I wanted first to talk to Richard.”

“Well, there’s nothing to stop you explaining that to Konrad. I don’t see why you should be in such a state about it.” Max, too, was clearly suffering from reaction, and they stood glaring at each other by the desk.

“Rooms 5 and 6,” said the girl, pushing the keys and a piece of paper across to them. “And a telephone message for the lady.”

It was from Richard, of course. He had rung up and missed her. The paper contained only his name, grotesquely misspelt. He had not even been able to leave a message, because no one in the hotel spoke English.

“Oh damn, oh damn, oh damn!” she shouted.

“For God’s sake,” said Max. “He’s bound to ring again tomorrow night.”

“Tomorrow night I’m going to a bloody party,” she shouted. “Konrad arranged that. Everybody here seems to decide exactly what I should be doing at any given time. Perhaps just once in a while I might be consulted. Perhaps next time you make long-term arrangements for me, you might just ask me first.”

Max looked confounded. “What party?” he said.

“Oh, what does it matter what party? Some awful British Council thing.”

“Look.” He spoke very calmly. “You’ve got this whole thing out of proportion. If you like, I’ll explain it to Konrad myself. There simply isn’t any problem.”

But of course it was not true. It would be much more difficult to tell Konrad that she was not staying, now he believed that she was.

Alone in bed, she thought of London and of Richard, and found to her horror that she could not clearly visualize his face. Her insides contracted. The familiar nausea swept over her, and for a long time she lay under the great quilt in the darkness and listened to the trains rumble along distant tracks. At last she could stand it no longer: she got up, dug in her suitcase for a clean handkerchief, climbed back into bed and spread it on her stomach.

Max could not have slept well either, and they were both bad-tempered at breakfast. They had to wait for their coffee, for the little breakfast room was filled with six or seven guests who must have arrived on the previous day, and even with the help of the adolescent girl, the proprietress was too disorganized to serve them properly.

“When do you expect to leave then?” Anna asked Max coldly.

He made an impatient gesture. “I don’t know. But I’ve got to get back to Greece soon. For God’s sake,” he said, “nobody there speaks a word of English, Wendy doesn’t speak a word of Greek, and she’s got a ten-month-old baby.”

She said nothing for a moment. Then resentment rose up irresistibly inside her and she said, “It’s just that I don’t see why it should always be me who has to cope.”

“It isn’t always you.” He was trying to attract the proprietress’s attention, without success. “You know perfectly well that even during the war when I was flying, and later when I was working my guts out in Cambridge, I always came home. I came whenever there was a crisis, and I came whenever I could, apart from that, just to lend moral support.”

“You came,” she said. “But you didn’t stay.”

“Well, of course I didn’t stay. I was supposed to be flying a bloody aeroplane. I was supposed to be getting a First in law and make a career and be a prop to the family.”

“Oh, I know, I know.” She felt suddenly tired of the argument. “It’s just – you can’t imagine what it was like being there all the time. The hopelessness of doing anything for Papa, and Mama’s depressions. Even then, you know, she was always talking about suicide.”

“But she didn’t actually do anything, did she?” said Max. “I mean, this is a bit different.”

She had a sudden vision of Mama in her blue hat, her face wet with tears, saying, “I couldn’t go on. I just couldn’t go on.” In a street somewhere – Putney, she supposed. Why did she keep remembering it? And was it something that had really happened or something she had imagined?

“Anyway,” said Max, “if you really want to go back to London, you’ll just have to go. Though I wouldn’t have thought a few days would have mattered either way.”

“Oh, let’s wait and see,” she said wearily. “Let’s see how Mama is this morning.”

Max had finally managed to catch the proprietress’s eye, and she hurried resentfully over to their table.

“All right, all right,” she said. “You’re not at war here, you know.”

While he ordered the coffee and rolls, Anna made a mental note of the expression – a bit of Berlin dialect which even Heimpi had never used. A German at the next table tittered at the sound of it. Then he smiled at Anna and pointed to his newspaper. “Rule Britannia, eh?” he said. She looked at the front page and read the headline:
Englischer Angriff in Suez.

“For God’s sake, Max,” she said. “Look at that. We’re at war.”

“What?”

“
Bitte, bitte
,” said the German and handed the paper over to them.

It was true. British paratroopers were supporting the Israelis in Egypt. There was not much beyond the headline – clearly few details were known as yet – but a longer article speculated on the effect this new development might have on the Hungarian situation. A headline almost as big as the one about Suez said, “Russians offer to withdraw troops from Hungary, Romania and Poland”.

“What does it mean?” said Anna, trying to control the panic rising inside her.

Max had his alert lawyer’s look, as though in the few moments since reading about it he had already weighed up the situation.

“One thing is certain,” he said. “I’ve got to get Wendy home.”

“What about me? What about here in Berlin?”

“I don’t think it’ll make any difference here. At least not at the moment. But you’d better ring Richard tonight. He may have a better idea of what’s going on.”

“The Russians—?”

Max pointed to the paper. “They seem quite conciliatory at the moment. I think they’ve got their hands full. Look, you hang on for the coffee, I’ll just try and ring BEA. God knows how long it’ll take to get me to Athens.”

She sat at the grubby little table by herself and nervously drank some of the coffee when it came.

“
Bitte
?” said the German, pointing to the paper, and she gave it back to him.

Then Max returned, all energy and bustle. “They said to call in before lunch,” he said. “There may be a connecting flight tomorrow. If I can get on that, and if I can contact my ship owner, perhaps he’ll arrange transport for me at the other end.”

“Max,” she said, “couldn’t I try and ring Richard now?”

He sat down. “No good, I’m afraid,” he said. “I just checked. There’s a three hour delay on all calls to London.”

“I see.”

“Look, there’s no question of your staying here in case of any danger. At the smallest hint of anything you get on a plane home. Konrad will see to that, anyway. But I honestly think it’s probably as safe here at the moment as it’s ever been.”

She nodded without conviction.

“Anyway, talk to Richard tonight. And talk to Konrad. If we hurry, we may catch him at the hospital.”

However, Konrad had left a message that he had an urgent meeting and would visit Mama in his lunch break. They found her looking physically much like herself but in a desperate state of tension. The nurse was just removing her breakfast tray (anyway, she’d eaten it all, Anna noted with relief) and Mama did not even wait for the door to close behind her before she asked, “Well? What did he say?”

“What did who say?” Max knew perfectly well, of course, but was just trying to slow her down.

“Konrad. What did he say to you last night? What did he say about me?” Her blue eyes stared, her hands drummed nervously on the edge of the sheet. The whole room was filled with her tension.

Max managed to sound easy as he answered. “Mama, he said exactly what I expected, and what he’d already told you. The affair is finished. He wants you back. He wants to forget everything that’s happened and to start again where you both left off.”

“Oh.” She relaxed a little. “But then why didn’t he come this morning?”

“He told you. He had a meeting. Perhaps something to do with this Suez business.”

“Suez? Oh, that.” The nurse must have told her, thought Anna. “But that wouldn’t have anything to do with Konrad.”

Max’s irritation was beginning to show. “It may have nothing to do with Konrad, but it’s got something to do with me. I have to get back to Greece as soon as possible and bring Wendy and the baby home. Probably tomorrow. So just for today, can we stop worrying about his every thought and gesture, and talk properly?”

“Wendy and the baby? But why do you have to bring them home? Why can’t they just catch a plane on their own?”

They’re going to have a row, thought Anna.

“For heaven’s sake, Mama, they’re on a remote island. Wendy doesn’t speak a word of Greek. She couldn’t possibly manage.”

“Couldn’t she?” Mama’s anger was mixed with a certain triumph. “Well, I could. When you and Anna were small, I got you both out of Germany without any help from anyone. And before that, for two weeks after Papa had already fled, I kept it a secret and I got you to keep it a secret too – you were only twelve and nine at the time. I packed up our house and all our belongings, and then I got you both out, twenty-four hours before the Nazis came for our passports.”

“I know, Mama, you were terribly good. But Wendy is different.”

“How different? I’d have liked to be different too. I’d have loved to be different, so that everybody would look after me. Instead, I had to look after everybody else.”

“Mama—” But it was no good.

“I cooked and cleaned when we lived in Paris. And then, when Papa could no longer earn anything, I got a job and supported us all. I got you into your English public school—”

“Not quite by yourself, Mama. I must have had something to do with it too.”

“You know what I mean. And then, when we could no longer pay the fees, I went to see the headmaster—”

“And he gave me a scholarship. I know, Mama. But it wasn’t easy for the rest of us either. It wasn’t much fun for Papa, and even Anna and I had our problems.”

Mama’s hands clenched on the sheet. “But you were young,” she cried. “It didn’t matter. You had all your lives to come. Whereas I… All those years I spent in dreary boarding houses worrying about money, I was getting older. It should have been the best time of my life, and instead I spent it scraping pennies together and worrying myself sick over Papa and Anna and you. And now at last when I’d found someone who looked after me, with whom I could do all the things I’d missed, he had to go and – he had to go and have an affair with a stupid, feeble little German typist.” Her voice broke and she wept again.

Anna wondered whether to say anything, but decided not to. Nobody would have listened to her anyway.

“It wasn’t like that, Mama. It’s never as simple as that.” Max looked as though he had been wanting to say this for years. “You always oversimplify.”

“But I did do those things. I did keep everything going. When we first came to England and still had some money, it was I who decided that we should send you to a public school, and I was right – you’d never have done so well if we hadn’t.”