The Year It All Ended (28 page)

Paul hung his head. ‘I could only get access to one part of the trust. My father controls the rest and he won’t release it unless I come home.’

‘But if you told him about Hannah and Louis, then surely he would help.’

The streetlights made Paul look pale and wan. ‘I’ve found work in a nightclub, but everything is expensive when you’ve only got German marks and not foreign cash. I should have left Hannah and the boy in Heidelberg. But they were living in poverty there too. I thought I could offer them a better life here.’

‘Are you in love with her?’ asked Tiney.

Paul looked startled. ‘No. But she’s my sister-in-law in everything except name and Louis is my nephew. Wilhelm should have married her. He should have told our parents.’

‘Then why haven’t you told them?’

‘They’d never believe me,’ said Paul. ‘They’d think I’m just trying to get my hands on the trust.’

‘They’d believe you if they could see Louis. He looks so much like Will. No one could see him and not realise that he’s Will’s son.’

Paul didn’t reply but kept walking swiftly along the avenue. Kurfürstendamm at night was a different landscape. Cafes and bars cast golden light onto the pavement. Girls with painted faces and short skirts stood along the roadside.

Tiney pointed to the entrance of Hotel Elvira. ‘That’s where I’m staying,’ she said.

Paul groaned. ‘You can’t be serious! What made you choose that flophouse?’

‘A friend of Ida’s in Paris stayed there before the war,’ said Tiney, feeling embarrassed.

‘Berlin was a different city before the war. We’ll get your suitcase and I’ll take you back to Hannah’s. I have to get to work soon and we both need to be off the streets before midnight. There’s still a curfew in place because of the putsch and the general strike.’

When Tiney asked for her suitcase at the pension’s reception, she found the lock on it had been broken and the contents rifled through. Paul cursed the porter but Tiney didn’t want to make a fuss. She was glad she’d carried all her cash and papers in her handbag.

Back out in the street, a group of women called out angrily to Tiney and Paul.

‘What did they say?’ asked Tiney, confused by their heavy accents.

‘They think I’m your pimp and we’re encroaching on their territory,’ said Paul.

‘They’re women of the night?’ asked Tiney, her voice squeaky with surprise. ‘They think I’m one too? Me?’

‘There are tens of thousands trying to sell themselves. How else can they feed their children?’

As they came to the next corner, a tall man stepped out of the darkness and Paul attempted to cross the road to avoid him. But the tall man quickened his pace and began to follow them. Tiney heard Paul mutter a curse under his breath.

‘Walk faster and don’t look back,’ said Paul. But they could hear the man’s footsteps drawing nearer. Tiney glanced over her shoulder and saw the man gesturing them to slow down.

‘Don’t look back!’ said Paul.

Finally, in exasperation, Paul turned to face the man and spoke to him roughly in German. Tiney kept her head down.

‘I’m sorry to disturb you,’ said the man in English. ‘I thought . . .’

As his voice trailed off, Tiney looked up in disbelief.

‘Martin?’ she said. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Tiney! It is you!’ said Martin, his face awash with relief.

Tiney quickly introduced Paul to Martin, stumbling as she tried to explain their complicated connection, until Martin intervened.

‘Your cousin wrote and told me she was coming to Berlin,’ he said to Paul. Then he turned to Tiney. ‘As soon as I got your letter, I set out from Geneva. They told me you’d checked in at Hotel Elvira so I waited for you to come back. I didn’t mean to startle you.’

Paul tapped his foot and glanced at his wristwatch, and Tiney realise this was not the right place, not the right time, to explain. Tiney arranged to meet Martin the next day and set off again with Paul.

Suddenly Paul laughed. ‘You know, little cousin,’ he said, ‘I have always underestimated you. Our whole family has underestimated you. We should have known that surprising things can come in quite small packages.’

Tiney was dreaming. A butterfly had landed on her face and its soft wings were kissing her cheek. She opened her eyes to see
early-morning light filtering through the window of Hannah’s apartment. Little Louis, who had slept between her and Hannah, was sitting up in bed and staring at her. His small hand stroked her cheek.

‘
Guten Morgen, meine süße winzige kleine Tante
,’ he said.

Tiney smiled. No one had ever called her their darling, tiny little aunt before. She sat up and gazed at him, this elfin boy she almost felt she’d dreamt into being.

‘
Guten Morgen, mein hübscher Neffe
,’ she said, touching his small chin gently. Louis grinned and flung his arms around her neck.

She lifted him out of bed and tiptoed across the room with the boy in her arms. Paul had returned at dawn and was asleep on the divan. Louis and Tiney sat at the small table by the window, talking in whispers so as not to wake the others. Tiney told him about Australia, about his cousins in Adelaide and his grandparents in the Barossa Valley. Louis told her of his friends from the lane, of the games they played and his favourite things to eat. Before Paul and Hannah woke, Tiney and Louis crept out of the apartment and wandered into the Berlin morning to buy
Frühstück
for their family:
Schrippen
with golden crusts as well as dark, seedy rolls, a lump of salty butter, some jam, a hunk of cheese and a pot of fresh
Kräuterquark
. Louis laughed and peered into the brown-paper bag.

‘Danke, kleine Tante,’
he said.

Holding hands, they climbed the narrow stairs of the tenement.

Staircase to the moon

Early next evening, Martin arrived to collect Tiney from the tenement. The whole lane stopped to stare at the man on the British motorcycle, in his brown leather jacket and black cap.

Tiney tried not to cling to Martin as the Royal Enfield sped out into the wide Berlin avenue, but when the motorcycle dipped deeply as he turned a corner, she couldn’t help but wrap her arms around him and hold fast.

They drove down the wide boulevards and then into small and winding streets to arrive at the club where Paul worked as a pianist. Lamps flickered to life, illuminating the streets and casting deep shadows. Women stood on the roadside in pools of golden light.

Inside, the club was smoky and smelt of stale beer. As it was still early in the evening and there was only a sprinkling of patrons, Tiney was embarrassed she’d suggested it. They sat in a booth at the back, leaning their heads together so as to be able to hear each other speak over the voices of scantily clad singers. The club served little food but Tiney wasn’t hungry. She hardly touched the platter of bread, sausage and pickles that Martin had ordered. She simply wanted to drink in the sound of
Martin’s voice and to tell him everything.

‘My cousin says he doesn’t want to leave Berlin,’ said Tiney. ‘He says he loves the city, that it makes him feel alive; but they’re living in terrible circumstances.’

Martin leaned closer, trying to hear her over the band. Then he put his mouth close to her ear. ‘Let’s not talk about your cousin any longer,’ he said. ‘Or the war or the past or anything that makes you unhappy. I’d like to take you dancing.’

The dance hall had a small garden, delicate with spring flowers, at the entrance.

‘It’s not what it seems,’ said Martin. They climbed a flight of stairs and passed through a labyrinth of hallways. The smell of smoke and beer, sweat, powder and perfume drifted down to encompass them. As they waited in the queue outside the cloakroom, Martin took Tiney’s coat, and her bare shoulders tingled in the cool spring air. She touched her bobbed hair and knew she looked as stylish as any of the other dancers.

Martin took her hand and led her into a grand room with long, gilt-edged mirrors on the walls. The glass was speckled and their image seemed foggy as they whirled across the marble floor. Gaslight flickered in the mirrors, cigarette smoke swirled above their heads and the band played all the new songs from America, a trumpeter blasting out a wailing solo above the other instruments. As they danced, it was as if Tiney was watching someone from another era, a time before the war or perhaps far into the future, when every unhappiness had been forgotten. She looked up smiling into Martin’s face and saw an answering look of pleasure in his eyes.

After more than an hour of dancing, Martin led her from the dance floor. ‘There’s one other place I want to show you tonight,’
he said. ‘We’ll visit it in the daylight tomorrow, but it’s just as beautiful at night.’

The motorcycle thrummed beneath them as they rode through the Berlin streets. Tiney heard gunfire from the city rooftops but she shut her eyes and breathed deeply of the night air. She wouldn’t be afraid, not now, not after all the miles she had travelled to reach this moment. Curfew was fast approaching and Martin revved the motorcycle as they turned into the darkness of the Tiergarten, the vast parkland in the centre of Berlin. The trees were black, the forest thick and dark with dappled patches of moonlight shining through the canopy of spring leaves. Martin stopped the bike beside a fountain, not far from a lake of shimmering water.

‘This is the loveliest place in Berlin by moonlight,’ he said. ‘War can ruin many things but it can’t spoil moonlight on water. Even when the fighting was at its worst in the Somme, moonlight on water made me remember that the world was bigger than a battlefield.’

Tiney slipped from the motorcycle and Martin took her hand and led her to the water’s edge where a shimmering staircase of moonlight stretched across the lake.

‘It’s beautiful,’ said Tiney.

They stood side by side in the stillness. Then Martin turned to her. He put one finger beneath her chin and tilted her face up to the stars before he bent down to kiss her lips. It was the softest, most fleeting kiss, but for a moment Tiney felt suspended in air, floating above the surface of the earth, as if she were a swan about to take flight across the moonlit lake.

Then Martin stepped away and she felt the space between them.

‘Martina Flynn,’ he said.

‘Martin Woolf,’ she answered, and they both laughed.

As they rode back through Berlin, past the Brandenburg Gate, speeding through the darkening streets, Tiney’s skirt rippled out behind her in the breeze. She pressed her cheek firmly against Martin’s back and knew, as certain as moonlight on water, as sure as the touch of a butterfly wing on her cheek, that everything was just beginning.

18 November 1923