The Other Side of Love (59 page)

“I promise you rt’H be soon.”

379

V

After Lear hung up on the British Captain Kingsmith, he scratched his head. The Limey had promised to bring her in before lunch-time. Then what? Would there be a heap of awkward forms for him to fill in? And what was the protocol? Was he, personally, meant to deliver her to Ober Tappenburg? What if she gave him the slip? He put in a call to Berlin.

Wyatt said very little as Lear ebulliently blurted out that Aubrey would be bringing Kathe to USFET headquarters before lunch.

“Much as I’d love to take the kudos,”

Lear said,

“it seems to me you should be the one to put a cap on this foul-up and take her back.”

“If there’s a plane, I’ll be there.”

Hanging up, Wyatt leaned back in his swivel chair and stared out of the window at the American flag whipping in front of the handsome two-storey building across the courtyard: he was in his office in the Legal Division’s section of the former Luft Gau complex. After he had wasted nearly a week chasing his tail through the horror that was central Berlin, Colonel Behr had irascibly ordered him back to his desk.

Wyatt swung a little in the chair. His angular face looked morose, but in actuality he was experiencing a great surge of relief. No more visualizing Kathe being raped by Russians or making love to some guy with SS lightning zig-zags tattooed under his arm. He could stop waking with his heart pounding and his fists clenched as if around her throat. He could put the whole miserable business behind him. Not that he didn’t have good grounds for bitterness. She had exploited his momentary weakness by taking off. Furthermore, by now he knew that Porteous had been laid up with a head cold rather than with fatal pneumonia. Aubrey his best friend, his brother-in-law had engineered the

“compassionate visit”

to England. It was entirely probable that Aubrey had found her immediately and had been with her ever since. Why not? Before the war, in that other, innocent life, in a wooden mansion whose ruins lay not far from here, Aubrey had confessed how much he loved Kathe.

And Kathe?

The two

“times he had seen Kathe since the Occupation, he’d had a weird glimmer that she was bound to Aubrey. Not in the same romantic sense that Aubrey was tied to her. Nevertheless, in some enigmatic way, she was bound to Aubrey.

Wyatt walked slowly to the window. Ignoring the unpleasantly hot steam from the radiator, he. drummed his knuckles on the window-ledge. How could such a tie have developed? Hadn’t six years of warfare kept them forcibly apart?

380

I

He shrugged and went down the hall to Colonel Behr’s office. He explained that his cousin had been found, requesting leave to return her to Ober Tappenburg. At Tempelhof a Flying Fortress by some miracle was taking off immediately for Frankfurt. Wyatt bounced in the canvas seat, his mind chasing after the conundrum of Aubrey and Kathe’s attachment.

VI

It was almost two before Aubrey reached the USFET headquarters building. With an unpleasant tingle, he saw a familiar tall figure pacing in the slush between the smart-looking paratrooper guards.

Staff-cars and jeeps were angled in towards the barbed wire. Aubrey parked as close as possible to the footpath that led up to the main entry.

“Wyatt’s here, darling,”

he said, lightly kissing Kathe’s forehead before he leaned across her to open the car door.

As she got out, he noted an alien docility in her posture, as if her unique spine of courage and will had crumbled. His vibrant graceful Kathe had become another of the vast and vanquished army of displaced persons.

He jogged towards Wyatt.

“Lear called,”

Wyatt said.

“Told me you’d be here before lunch. I was figuring you’d given me the shaft. Again.”

Tm truly sorry about the hoax, but at the time getting her a holiday in England was the only thing on my mind.”

He paused.

“Wyatt, she’s had a bad shock.”

“If this is leading up to what I think it is, the answer’s no. No more time. You’ve used up more than your allotment of time.”

“Kathe wants to go back to Ober Tappwiburg. But … well, things have gone badly for her.”

“She didn’t find the Nazi she was looking for?”

Wyatt felt a burst of shame at his mean tone.

“OK, OK, I won’t give her a bad time about ditching me.”

“Would you put in a good word for her?”

“A good word? Look, Aubrey, she was being held in a detentioncamp, and that’s strike one. She was allowed out and she took off. Strike two. She’s been tooting around the countryside for well over a week. That’s strike three. Now, what sort of good word would you suggest?”

Aubrey ignored the hostile mocking tone - Wyatt had every reason to be incensed.

“There’s a WAG she’s friendly with.”

“The corporal with the thick legs.”

Wyatt shrugged.

“Sure, I’ll ask her to keep an eye out.”

Kathe stood absolutely straight near the Mercedes. Uniformed

men were eyeing the pale charming blonde, but she looked too

nglish and too aristocratically remote for any of them to flout

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the non-fraternization laws and try a pass. To Aubrey, Kathe’s gathering-together of pride was yet more touching than her earlier posture of defeat. He held her loosely, kissing her forehead.

“It won’t be for long,”

he promised against her ear as he helped her into Wyatt’s covered jeep.

382

I

As Wyatt drove the heavy overcast cleared, swatches of blue sky showed and the temperature dropped. In Aschaffenburg, the slanting cobbled market-place was empty and the inhabitants, bundled in rag-tag clothing, hurried along the narrow winding streets. The jeep was passing the town’s Renaissance castle when the sun came out: lit by late-afternoon brilliance, the massive red sandstone walls and four great towers glistened ruby rem as though they had risen wet from the Main river which sluiced relow.

Wyatt broke the wall of silence that had separated them since Frankfurt.

“Pretty damn impressive, isn’t it?”

Kathe, not responding, stared ahead with her chin lifted haughtily. Wyatt’s hands tightened on the steering-wheel. Screw you, lady, he thought. He drove more swiftly, swerving up the mountain curves of the Odenwald. Along the side of the road, the patches of snow resembled broken marble stepping-stones.

Finally he could no longer take the silence.

“A freak early snow,”

he said with a trace of awkwardness.

Again she didn’t speak.

He glanced at her. The head was as arrogantly held, but in the

“ong shadows the delicate profile appeared ashen. She’s had a bad

tim y VlUbrey had said-Wyatt’s annoyance and anger faded.

“Rough

me. he asked quietly. This time, when she didn’t respond, he

tapped her shoulder.

She jumped.

“Did you say something?”

383

‘A remark about the weather, a safe if boring subject.”

“It’s a lovely morning.”

The soft melodious voice that once had filled him with joy was projected, as if she were an actress reciting to him across a proscenium.

“Afternoon,”

he corrected, and saw that she was shivering.

“It’s cold. There’s a rug in the back seat.”

“I’m perfect,”

she said.

“Rathe, look, it’s no big deal if I just turn around and let you out at Aschaffenburg.”

The words didn’t surprise him. In the face of the compassion he felt for her, why shouldn’t his impulsiveness manifest itself?

“I don’t mind going back,”

she said, adding formally:

“But it’s most kind of you.”

“Chances are you’d never be caught,”

he persisted.

“We sure as hell aren’t able to keep up with the swarms of refugees and DPs. What sort of papers do you have?”

“None. I left Aubrey my travel pass and British passport. He got them for me.”

They had reached the No Trespassing signs of the Ober Tappenburg turnoff. Kathe’s remark about Aubrey and the fake papers had crystallized in Wyatt’s thoughts. He turned, stopping the car on the narrow lane through the woods.

“I know you’re not in the mood for conversation,”

he said,

“but you just turned down my offer of escape, so all you’ve got ahead of you is time.”

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

“You owe me a week.”

He smiled to show he was joking.

“A couple of minutes is all I ask.”

“Please don’t talk like that.”

“Like how?”

“As though I’m a Meissen figurine about to break.”

“OK,”

he said crisply. Tm putting forward a hypothetical case.

“Minta always said Aubrey was with the SOE or one of the dashing Intelligence branches. I used to tease her that she couldn’t bear to have a brother stationed anywhere so drab as a gunnery school. But a while back old Aubrey got into a bit of a brawl in a Kurfurstendamm dive. Taking off his glasses, he calmly decked this big gorilla of a pilot who outweighed him by thirty pounds and could have been a Golden Gloves contender. Then I began to notice other things. Take his German. Before the war it was your typical Anglo-Deutsch, but now he sounds like a native Berliner. He knows his way around look at how he dug up your phoney papers. The thing is, was Araminta on target?”

Kathe continued staring at a fir tree. Snow covered the lower branches to the protection of the branch above, and in the dusk the inner green appeared black.

384

‘Well?”

Wyatt asked.

“Was she right?”

“Aubrey told me’, Kathe said,

“that he was stationed in Scotland.”

“You two’re very cosy.”

“We’re going to be married.”

Wyatt felt his facial muscles loosen.

“And here I figured you’d taken up with some SS-Gruppenfuhrer. So big congratulations are in order?”

He could not control a note of adolescent snideness.

“You’re right,”

she said softly.

“Aubrey deserves better.”

“That hadn’t entered my mind. You took me by surprise is all. Look, I’m happy for you both.”

“Thank you.”

“So back to my hypothesis. Did your fiance contact a group of Germans willing to risk their lives against the Gestapo? Did he have an underground cadre?”

“Wyatt, I’m not in the mood for sparring.”

“Then, tell me the truth. Was he dropped into the Third Reich? Did he have agents there? Did you help him? Were you part of his underground?”

She turned to him, her eyes glittering as if she had a high fever.

“If I’d made up a cock-and-bull story like that when you visited the camp this summer,”

she asked,

“would you have tried to get me out?”

He recalled her nakedly joyous smile, his own melee of conflicting emotions.

“I was pretty bitter. But you know me, Kathe. First the explosion, then the debris settles down.”

He shrugged.

“As soon as I got back to Berlin I’d have been on the horn to Aubrey. Not that it would have been any major deal. Nature would have taken its course, and he’d have dreamed up an excuse to get you out a few weeks earlier, that’s all.”

&

She bent her head and pressed her fingerpads to her brow-line.

“Kathe,”

he said gently.

“Tell me, am I smoking on some crazy pipe?”

She looked up. Her eyes no longer glittered, but seemed dead and sunken.

“Aubrey was in Scotland,”

she said.

“I was filing documents for the OKW.”

He was pretty sure she wasn’t levelling; but, then, again, the wavering note in her voice might be shame for the OKW job. What did it matter that she had been on the other side? Her home was gone, her family had vanished. She was left with nothing, not even her freedom. And now, according to Aubrey, she had borne yet further diminishment.

“Take me back,”

she said.

“Take me back.”

He realized she was shaking all over.

“It’s all right, Kathe, no more badgering.”

As he spoke, he reached out to drape his arm solacingly around her shoulders. She shrank back against the side

the jeep. And with her gesture she reactivated memories of that

385

prewar rejection, when he’d thought he’d surely die of the pain. He raised his arms as if stretching, then started the jeep.

“You won’t be inside long.”

His voice was kind yet impersonal, the tone he’d use with one of his witnesses after a cross-examination.

“Aubrey knows the top strings to pull.”

It was unseasonally fine weather, and Aubrey breathed the fresh Kentish air deeply as the tall butler led him under Chartwell’s autumnal oaks and beeches and around a pond where black swans glided. After knocking on the open door of a high bright studio, the servant departed. Waiting at the threshold, Aubrey took in details: the odours of turpentine, paint and cigars, the strew of brushes and jars, the shelves lined with hundreds of brightly coloured oil paintings - landscapes, scenes of cathedrals and ruins - that were the work of a gifted amateur.

Winston Churchill sat on a low stool in front of his easel, his spine hunched in a half-circle, a shawl over his shoulders. Aubrey, finding it impossible to believe that this enfeebled ancient could be the vigorous Prime Minister who had led the country until a few months earlier, couldn’t stem a poetic thought: Churchill, like the legendary Arthur, had appeared to rally Britons in their hour of greatest need and then, having served his purpose, had vanished once more into the fabled mists, leaving behind this frail old husk.