Full Circle (7 page)

“I am not, actually. There is a patient who is a great admirer of Conan Doyle. He has insomnia, so I read to him to keep him company.” With that Alice left before Lily could ask any more questions.

That Sunday Alice finally had a day off and Lily suggested taking a walk in the park and then going somewhere really grand for tea. Alice agreed and they set off. Autumn had painted the trees in the park in glorious shades of red and orange and the sky was a robin’s egg blue dotted with little puffy white clouds. There was a promise of winter in the chilly air and Lily drew her coat tighter around her.

“It feels like I haven’t seen you in weeks, Ally,” said Lily wistfully.

“I know. I don’t much like this new schedule.”

“Is Nigel working nights as well now?” enquired Lily.

“No, he is not. As a matter of fact I think he was the one who had my shift changed. He’s thrown me over, Lil.”

“What? Are you sure?”

“Of course, I am sure. I have seen him alone only once this past month. He avoids me at the hospital and I saw him talking to Helen, the operating room nurse, several times. They looked like guilty children every time they’d see me coming down the corridor. He won’t see me on the weekends either. He tells me that his wife and children are staying in the country and he is visiting them every weekend. I know that’s not true.”

“You don’t know that for sure.”

“Yes, I do,” said Alice whipping away a tear. “I sat in the square across from their house several times last week and I saw his wife coming and going with the children.”

“You what?! What if they saw you?”

“I wore a hat and dark glasses and pretended to be reading the Times. I cut a whole in the paper so that I could watch them unobserved.”

Lily burst out laughing at this confession. Alice chuckled through the tears. It was good to hear her laugh.

“Alice, I think I’ll take that Sherlock Holmes back now, thank you. It’s obviously gone to your head,” she said with mock severity. “Anyhow, good riddance to bad rubbish, if you ask me. I never did like Nigel, too much of a player.”

“Well, the “rubbish” has left something behind. I think I am going to have a baby, Lil. And then there is Jacob…”

“Oh, my God, Alice! Are you sure? And who is Jacob?” asked Lily is astonishment.

“Jacob is the Sherlock fan, Dr. Watson. I would have thought you’d figure that one out. I’ve been spending a lot of time with him, since he is one of the few people actually awake during my shift.”

“There weren’t enough clues, Holmes. Do you fancy him?” asked Lily.

“I really do. He is gentle and caring, not at all like Nigel, who only cares about his own selfish needs. We spend hours talking. He is getting discharged, but he won’t be returning to active service. Jacob sustained a head injury when a shell exploded in the trench he was in and lost vision in one eye as a result. They will find him a nice desk job somewhere. He’s asked me to marry him and I haven’t got much time to decide.”

“Naturally,” said Lily disapprovingly. “Sounds like you’ve got it all figured out.”

Lily was a bit taken aback by her friend’s willingness to deceive a person who loved her. On the other hand she could understand her desperation all too well. It was either a quickie marriage or a back-street abortion somewhere. The ideal option would be to marry the father, but that was not possible. Alice was only being practical and thinking about the welfare of her unborn child.

“Oh, don’t get your knickers in a twist, Lil. What would you do in my place?” retorted Alice. “Actually, there are a few obstacles. I would have to pretend to have a premature baby so he doesn’t suspect and there are my parents. Can you imagine the reaction of my Russian Orthodox parents to a Jewish refugee? They see all Jews as Christ-killers. They will not be pleased; especially when they find out I am pregnant.” Alice looked genuinely miserable. She wasn’t particularly close with her parents, but still they were the only family she had. A rift with them would be heartbreaking.

“Let’s go get that tea and talk over your options. “How about “The Willow Tree”? I’ve always loved that place,” suggested Lily with more optimism than she felt.

Two weeks later, a radiant Alice married Jacob Kaplan in a civil ceremony at the same Registry Office that Lily and Nick married at two months before. The wedding was brief and a little lonely since the only people on hand were the bride and groom, Lily and a friend of Jacob’s to stand up for them as witnesses. They did splurge on a lunch at Coleridge’s to celebrate the marriage. Jacob was as lovely as Alice said. He had the look of an intellectual with soulful brown eyes and a sweet smile. His gaunt face lit up every time he looked at his bride and Lily fervently hoped that he would never find out about the terrible deception her friend was playing on him. He didn’t like talking about his past, but Alice had filled her in.

Jacob was a Jew from Berlin. His elderly parents owned a popular restaurant on Kurfurstendamm Strasse since the early years of their marriage. It was their pride and joy and over the years they had amassed a loyal clientele. They served everything from matzo ball soup to apple strudel with all their food being prepared by Jacob’s grandmother and then later on his mother and sister. When the Nuremberg laws were passed in 1935 they were forbidden to serve non-Jewish patrons and were stripped of their rights as German citizens. Practically overnight the Kaplans were expelled from Germany’s social and political life. Jacob was fired from his job at the University and passed the time by helping his parents at the restaurant. He kept the accounts and occasionally filled in for his mother who was getting too old to wait on tables. The family talked of leaving Berlin, but Jacob’s father believed that the country would come to its senses and see that Jews were not the enemy. Everything would turn out all right in the end. They just had to uphold the laws and remain the true Germans they believed themselves to be.

It all changed on November 9, 1938 when a massive pogrom was carried out throughout Germany and parts of Austria. The attacks were named Kristallnacht after the amount of broken glass that littered the streets after the windows of Jewish businesses and synagogues were smashed to pieces. The restaurant was no exception. The windows were broken with sledgehammers and the inside was ransacked until not a single piece of furniture was left standing. Even the pots in the kitchen had been hammered until they became useless blobs of aluminum and copper. The family hid in their apartment above the restaurant terrified that they would be dragged outside and beaten or killed. They survived the night, but their future was forever altered. Once the sounds of destruction finally faded away, Jacob Kaplan, the elder called a family meeting. Staying in Berlin was no longer an option.

The family would go to Potsdam to Jacob’s aunt while Jacob would contact his school friend with party credentials and leave the country as soon as it could be arranged. Jacob protested, but his parents were adamant. They wanted him to take his sister, Hannah with him, but she refused to leave without her fiancé, Karl. They would follow as soon as they were able. Jacob left the country shortly before the New Year with the help of his good friend and joined the army as soon as he was able. The rest of his family stubbornly remained in Potsdam. Their letters became less frequent and stopped altogether a few months ago.

The Kaplans would be leaving the following day for Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire. Alice told Lily in secret that Jacob would be working on deciphering German codes produced by the Enigma encrypting machine the Germans were using to communicate between headquarters and their U boats in the Atlantic. With Jacob’s education in linguistics and fluent knowledge of German he was a good fit for the code breaking department toiling day and night to break the ingenious cyphers. Jacob would be issued a cottage outside the park for his private use where the Kaplans would make their home.

Alice’s trunk and Jacob’s meager belongings were already in the hall by the time Lily rose the next day to leave for work. Alice hugged her as they said their farewells and Lily watched from the sitting room window as the driver loaded their luggage in the boot of his taxi and Alice disappeared inside followed by Jacob. She waved at Lily as the cab pulled away from the curb and merged into the Monday morning traffic. Alice promised to write, but she wasn’t much of a correspondent.

After a miserable day at work Lily took a bus home and let herself into the empty flat. The silence was deafening. She walked from room to room, going into Alice’s room last. It looked sad and forlorn stripped of all her possessions. There was a faded spot on the flowered wallpaper above the headboard where her icon of the Virgin Mary watched over her as she slept. It had been a gift from her mother, who bought it off another Russian émigré in need of funds. What would she do with it now? Alice’s parents had not been pleased by the marriage, but they made the decision to accept it. Alice was their only daughter and losing her was worse than gaining a Jew for a son-in-law. They would visit the couple once they settled into their new home. Alice neglected to mention her pregnancy to her parents. She felt that one shock at a time was enough. Lily decided not to bring up the fact that Alice herself was born only six months after her parents’ hasty marriage.

Lily firmly closed the door to Alice’s bedroom and went to the kitchen. She put on the kettle and waited for it to boil. “Why is everyone leaving me?” she thought petulantly. Lily’s way of dealing with self-pity had always been to take action. She abruptly got up, turned off the cooker, grabbed her coat and purse and ran out the door. She went to the nearest beauty salon and asked for a haircut. An hour later a more cheerful Lily emerged from the salon. She had cut her hair into a shoulder length bob that was the current fashion. She liked the feel of her shorter hair curling around her neck and she looked at her reflection in the storefront window to adjust her hat to a more rakish angle. With that out of the way she took herself off to the cinema.

As she sat in the darkened theater surrounded by kissing couples she felt her spirits sink again. She missed Nick desperately and left the cinema before the picture was even over. She went to her bedroom as soon as she got home and took Nick’s last letter out of the Christmas tin she kept on her dresser. According to him, he was well, missing her like mad and victory was just around the corner. She felt marginally better by the time she went to bed in her lonely flat. She turned off the lights, hugged Nick’s pillow and tried to inhale his scent. It was long gone, but she thought there was a slight whiff of his aftershave mixed with cigarette smoke still lingering in the linen.

As the weeks wore on Lily tried to keep as busy as possible. She had become closer with some of the girls at her office and spent time with them outside of work. They occasionally went to the cinema or to the pub for a drink. It was better than going back home to her empty flat. She missed Alice dreadfully, but she had to move on to keep herself from brooding. Lily had gotten a letter from Alice after the New Year. The cottage assigned to them was charming with a lovely view of an old Norman church. Alice loved the peace and quiet of the country and went for daily walks down the country lane that led up to their home. Occasionally she stopped into the church for a solitary prayer while Jacob was at work. Jacob didn’t come home from the Park until all hours of the night and wouldn’t comment on his work, but Alice believed that with round the clock efforts of the team success was imminent. The baby was starting to move, but she kept it to herself since she wasn’t supposed to be this far along.

Lily finished reading the letter and went to put the kettle on. It was time to do the blackout and Lily looked out the window for a few moments before closing the heavy, black drapes. The wind was howling outside and it had begun to snow, fat snowflakes twirling in the rising wind and settling on every available surface. She turned on the wireless tuning it to a concert being broadcast from the Albert Hall. Lily poured herself a mug of tea and settled back in her favorite chair to listen. She finished her tea and leaned back in the chair closing her eyes. The poignant notes of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata washed over her making her feel peaceful and drowsy. She was just beginning to doze off when she heard someone knocking on the door. Lily reluctantly rose from her comfy chair and made her way downstairs. She couldn’t turn on the light in the hallway since it would be seen from outside, so she opened the door a crack to see who was there. There was a dusting of snow on the man’s coat and his cap was pulled low over his yes, but Lily knew him immediately. With a joyful cry she flung herself into Nick’s arms.

“Hello, darling. Thought I’d surprise you. That’s why I didn’t say I would be coming,” said Nick grinning from ear to ear like a little boy.

“It’s the best surprise I could have hoped for. I am so happy to see you,” said Lily as she pulled him into the house and closed the door against the snow blowing into her face. “How long can you stay?”

“Only four days, but we’ll make them count.”

“Are you hungry? Do you want a cup of tea? Should I draw a bath for you?” Lily prattled on joyfully.

“Yes, yes and yes. I think I’ll start with the bath. I haven’t had a proper bath in three months, at least. Would you care to join me?” he asked playfully.

“I believe I will, Mr. McGuire,” answered Lily seductively and started walking up the stairs purposely swaying her hips from side to side.

Long after they had their bath and their tea and got thoroughly reacquainted, they were lying in bed listening to the sound of the wind outside. Lily felt like a bubble full of joy had burst inside her. She snuggled up to her husband.