A Place Of Strangers (9 page)

Chapter Fourteen

Two paramedics arrived with the ambulance and led Francis
through Garth Hall’s red and black tiled hallway.

‘Come on, Mr Wrenn. You be a good boy for us.’

Francis looked bewildered. Eyes which once danced with
brilliance were now lifeless and dull. It was as if the sun had set on his
soul. Again, McCall could not square this man with the picture in his head.

‘Are we going to the embassy?’

McCall had no words to reply. Drops of overnight dew fell on
Francis from the wisteria above the porch and ran down his cheeks. McCall
watched him shuffle out across the slab-stone threshold... one father passing
the ghost of another.

His captors manoeuvred him into the ambulance. They wrapped
an orange blanket around his shoulders and fastened a safety belt across his
middle. Bea climbed in and sat beside him. They held hands then the ambulance
doors closed like curtains at a crematorium and they were gone.

McCall followed on an hour later. The hospital had been a
Victorian asylum, planted with flowers and cedars to soften its hard brick
face. But the windows remained barred. McCall walked down a long narrow
corridor painted cream and green. Ludford Ward was overheated and smelled of
urine and institutional food. The thin arms of the nearly dead waved at him
from seas of white sheets, drowning.

‘Come to your Daddy.’

‘When can I go home?’

‘Are you the doctor?’

McCall tried to look straight ahead, not wanting to see into
their eyes. Francis sat on a plastic-covered chair in the ward’s communal area,
wearing a hospital gown of faded blue cotton. Bea stood next to him. McCall had
to force himself tread those final steps... to stand in plain sight, complicit
in having Francis put the wrong side of Bedlam’s iron gratings. Somewhere, deep
within his disordered mind, Francis might remember what he had lost – and who
had stolen it from him.

‘Where am I?’

‘You’ve not been very well, dear. The doctors are going to
make you better again.’

‘Has the ambassador arrived yet?’

Bea and McCall looked at each other. The pace of Francis’s
decline had thrown them both.

McCall had much to ask him about his natural father now he
had watched the wedding film. Edward McCall had not really seemed entirely real
till then – just a small figure lost in the landscape of the past, defined only
by those who had been there. But seven seconds of mute footage changed
everything... that half smile then the short walk into Garth Hall where his
son, yet to be born, would live and be brought up. Here at last was something
tangible, some shared ground between them on which he might find and build his
own memories.

This was not to deny the affection he felt for Bea and
Francis, simply to affirm his debt to those who had put him on the earth. What
was harder to confront was the guilt of failing to do so long before.

*

Bea loved riding in the Morgan. She would want the hood down
and the wind in her face, to feel young again and remember those happy-sad
wartime days, spinning down country lanes with all those laughing boys who flew
into the night but were no more.

McCall drove her from the hospital to the mountain
wilderness of Long Mynd where kestrels hovered in the cloudless silence to
swoop for a kill amid the purple heather.

‘I hated seeing you get in the ambulance with him... those
doors closing.’

‘Old age is like that, Mac – doors closing, one by one.’

McCall parked and they got out to look west towards the
poet’s blue remembered hills. He wondered if Bea might cry but was not
surprised when she didn’t. Like Francis, Bea had warrior ancestors, too. The
drive back to Garth took them by a carved fertility figure on a Norman church.
It was believed to ensure better harvests and fill the wombs of barren women so
they might be prized like others.

McCall deliberately mentioned the wedding footage again.

‘Why did you never show it to me before?’

‘I’m sure we did, years ago.’

‘No. I’d have remembered.’

‘You’d only have been little.’

‘My father was in it, wasn’t he?’

‘That’s why we’d have shown it to you.’

‘Well, I’ve no memory of it.’

‘How did it make you feel, seeing him in life?’

‘I used to think that what you never had, you never missed.’

‘And now?’

‘I’ve changed my mind. Is there any film of my mother?’

‘No, nothing. We never had any contact with her, I’m
afraid.’

*

It could have been the debilitating consequence of illness
or the unravelling of all he held dear but McCall felt physically and
spiritually empty, needing to hold tight to someone or something that would not
give way. They arrived back at Garth and he wanted only space and air. He left
Bea ringing Mr Fewtrell, the Wrenn family solicitor in Ludlow. Francis’s
complicated affairs would require much sorting out. McCall went instead to
Garth Woods to pay a last homage.

He sat on the wooden bench Francis had built by Pigs’ Brook.
He closed his eyes as Francis would do and let the sound of water and wind
carry his elemental, wordless prayer to whatever force directed men’s lives.
Francis had died in all but the final diagnosis and had left them in a limbo of
grief. What was there to do but hope it would end soon – and that there might
be forgiveness for even admitting such a thought into his head.

The pot-bellied stove in the dacha was cold. McCall brushed
out the ashes then filed away all the old RAF pictures and reports Francis had
left lying about. He stowed the Eumig in its case and put the reels of film
back in their yellow boxes on the shelf.

When all this was done, he took a last look round. Never
again would he stand here with Francis, never sit in the battered armchairs
talking about battles and war or listening to all those coded stories of his
unreported skirmishes with the Soviets.

McCall wept then, wept for all that had gone and all he had
never known.

Chapter Fifteen

Some of the attic letters lay unread on Bea’s bureau. Their
echoes of Empire, who had done well at polo or badly at bridge, were of little
interest now... not with Francis so tortured. One of Bea’s uncles suffered the
same way. He physically survived the Great War but in his head, remained
trapped in that continent of mud and corpses from which no man ever truly
escaped.

Mac had told her of Francis’s remorse for bombing German
cities. He must have forgotten their honeymoon in London. She never would...
those Nazi bombers laying waste to all the tenements along the Thames. So many
thousands of people were to die in fires which made the sun grow pale. Her mind
had archived the alien drone of Hitler’s air force. It could still wake her at
night... that and the nightmarish vision of his doll-like troops, marching in
perfect unison through Prague without a soul between them. Memory stores
fragments of experience like these, keeps them safe for when they will be
needed.

The war years of Bea’s marriage were book-ended by
atrocities.

She remembered a newsreel... a steel-bladed bulldozer
pushing a hill of human remains towards a mass grave in a liberated
concentration camp. Naked, emaciated bodies slicked with watery excrement,
people without names or dignity or gender, flopping into a pit – offal from a
butcher’s block. Others, not yet dead, lay in their own diseased waste on
shelves in verminous, unlit barracks and stared into the unblinking camera,
living skulls hanging like lanterns in hell.

History had never recorded sights like this before.

When the cinema’s house lights came up, Bea did not move –
could not move. Arie had not exaggerated. This had been Hitler’s plan for every
Jew in every shtetl, town and city where they could be whipped into trains of
cattle wagons for transportation to these abattoirs at the edge of the
universe.

For Bea, the cultured German people were responsible for all
this. The inheritors of Beethoven and Bach, Nietzsche and Goethe, transmuted
into a nation of baying executioners.

Their jurists legalised murder, engineers and architects
perfected the machinery of mass killing, doctors selected who should undergo
barbarous experiments.

And all the common people joined in to man the guns and
gates against those marked down for extermination. Bea was overwhelmed by a
powerless rage at what she had seen. For her, this nation had anointed itself
with the essence of wickedness, distilled it from the human tar pouring from
their crematoria chimneys. Francis should feel no guilt.

Her hatred festered within her like grief at the loss of a
child.

The ward sister rang Bea to say Francis had spent a restful
night. Bea never trusted hospitals. Her father had barely lasted five minutes
in one – not that she grieved much for him. He never forgave her for siding
with her mother, still less for Prague and the Jew boy. How fitting that when
Daddy departed this life, so Arie returned to it.

She never expected to meet her lover again. It was less
painful to believe Arie killed in the war. Bea drew comfort from her mental
image of the son they should have had. She even gave him a name – Liad. It
meant ‘eternal’ in Hebrew.

It was possible for Bea to hear the sound of his
laughter, to feel his little arms around her neck, his tears against her face.
Sometimes, walking in sunshine, Bea fancied she saw his shadow at her side,
holding onto her skirt.

Liad was real and would never leave her... but then, neither
would the guilt.

…the parcel in her pocket weighs heavy in her hand
though it’s only small, no bigger than a kitten and just as soft, wrapped in
sheets of tissue paper…

Where was the absolution for that?

*

St Clement Dane is packed with bottle-nosed dignitaries and
politicians for the Air Marshal’s memorial service, all wanting their names in
The Times. Francis departs early for a meeting in Victoria he cannot miss. The
choir finishes
Lead Us Heavenly Father.
The padre blesses the
congregation. Bea walks to the marble-floored vestibule. She dutifully
glad-hands the uniformed buffers who loathed the man whose praises they had
just sang. Then she has had enough. Outside, a September wind gusts off the
Thames and lifts the black veil of her hat. She could cross over to Essex
Street where Daddy’s solicitor waits with forms to sign. Or she could go the
other way, between the buses and cabs crawling along Fleet Street where there
are coffee shops and time to think. A world can turn on such an inconsequential
moment. She goes left and edges through the traffic towards the plane trees
outside the High Court.

The pavement is a swim of jostling office workers,
barristers, reporters and clerks. Rival newspaper vendors shout their
invocations like believers at a shrine. Bea looks back along the Aldwych. And
in the press of people approaching, her gaze is drawn to a life that is hers
and a face which is back from the dead. Arie is walking towards her. Arie, her
persecuted Christ, greyer now, leaner. To see him is to doubt the evidence of
her own eyes. How can this be explained, this second coming? Are the orbits of
their worlds always destined to pass so dangerously close?

Bea feels an almost electrically charged tremor of
excitement. But she is nervous, too, afraid almost. She tries breathing deeply.
Arie gets closer. He walks not two yards from the tree which conceals her. He
limps slightly, appears more tormented than she remembered, brutalised even.
But who wouldn’t after what has happened?

She buttons her long angora coat for warmth and follows
him... as she knows she always will. The ring on her finger looks gold but is
turning to pinchbeck with every moment.

Arie folds up the collar on his brown jacket. It makes him
look like a black marketer with something to hide. A flat-bed truck loaded with
huge rolls of newsprint reverses between them and into a delivery bay. She
loses sight of him for a second and panics. But he is only across the street.
She steps into the road. A taxi swerves. A car horn sounds. She makes it to the
other side and sees Arie approach a blue-chinned man in a trilby on the corner
of Bouverie Street. Bea holds back.

Arie pauses by the man and says something discreetly. As he
turns to leave, an envelope or small package passes between them. Bea only sees
this because she is looking. No one else would notice as their coat sleeves
brush together. The man disappears into the crowd. Arie carries on towards
Ludgate Hill.

In the distance is St Paul’s where all the brick-heaped bomb
sites have been colonised by rose bay willow herb and buddleias. They soften
the devastation and make it appear natural, like ancient ruins. Bea starts to
run. She shouts Arie’s name.

He seems not to hear. They are by a bar called Mooney’s
Irish House when Bea catches up with him. She tugs his coat and he spins round,
his face somewhere between anger and guilt.

‘Arie? Arie, it’s me.’

‘Beatrice?’

‘I couldn’t believe it when I saw you.’

Arie gives no smile of pleasure at their re-union. He
quickly checks up and down Fleet Street. Then he takes her arm and guides her
firmly into the pub. The air is layered with yellowish tobacco smoke, the bar
lined with men in demob suits drinking pints. Arie finds an empty corner stall.
Bea sits and waits, still trying to take in this coincidence of time and place.
He returns with two glasses of bitter.

‘This is all they sell.’

‘Water would’ve done... it’s just so wonderful to see you,
Arie.’

‘What are you doing around here?’

‘Oh, you know, some family matters to sort out.’

All the while, Arie fixes his gaze on the door as if he is
expecting someone he does not want to meet. There was always an air of
uncertainty about him, a hint of static.

‘So what brings you to London, Arie?’

‘This and that. A bit of journalism.’

‘That’s interesting. Who are you writing for?’

‘It’s only a small periodical. You wouldn’t have heard of
it.’

‘But how long have you been back in England?’

‘Not long... a couple of months, I suppose.’

Arie’s eyes never settle. He examines each face coming into
the bar as if to calculate risk and threat.

‘I never thought we’d see each other again, Arie. Of all the
things to happen – ’

‘Did you think I was dead?’

‘Yes, sometimes. That last day... it was so awful.’

‘I’m sorry it was like that... but I killed a few Nazis for
you.’

His voice could not have been calmer or more measured.

‘So you and Casserley’s men must’ve been in Europe?

‘Yes... with the resistance.’

‘I saw those dreadful newsreels, Arie... those camps.’

‘Belsen?’

‘Yes... I haven’t the words to say how I felt.’

‘Neither had I.’

‘You mean you saw it, too?’

‘Not the newsreel...’

‘God, Arie... no.’

Bea wants to hug him but can only lay her fingers gently on
his hand instead.

‘It was just one of the camps, Beatrice. There were others.’

His eyes are black and stone hard.

‘What of your family? What happened to them?’

‘The Vilna ghetto was liquidated.’

‘So...’

‘...so no one is left.’

‘Arie, how can you bear it? I’m so dreadfully sorry.’

‘Yes, but I am not alone in this. Millions have died.
Millions.’

She takes a sip of beer and sees him looking at her left
hand.

‘Are you a mother yet, Beatrice?’

Bea shakes her head and looks away. She fights the urge to
tell him about Liad, the child who must always be denied, the son whose blood
ran between her fingers seven years before. How could her tears be measured in
the grief that drowned his world?

‘Tell me about this lucky man, your husband.’

‘He’s called Francis. He was a bomber pilot.’

‘So, a lucky man and a brave one, too.’

‘He’s had to go to a meeting or he’d be with me.’

‘Is he still in the RAF?’

‘No, not any more. He’s something in the Foreign Office.’

‘Is he, now? Which department, do you know?’

‘No, he never talks shop. He’s very British like that.’

‘Well, he should mind his step.’

‘In what way, Arie?’

‘Because your Foreign Office is run by Arab lackeys.’

‘That sounds very heartfelt.’

‘If it is, it’s because some of us have every reason to
think this way.’

She notes Arie’s accent has become almost officer-English,
clipped and dismissive. He keeps looking at his watch. He is anxious to be
going. Bea isn’t.

‘What are you really doing in London, Arie?’

‘I’ve told you. I’m just here to do a bit of writing.’

‘I’m no longer a child. Tell me the truth.’

Arie half smiles and finishes his drink.

‘I’ll tell you something, Beatrice... something that might
interest your husband.’

‘What sort of thing?’

‘The British mandate to rule in Palestine will not last much
longer and when your army of police and spies go, there will be conflict, maybe
another war.’

‘Must that be so, Arie... after all we’ve just been
through?’

‘It is precisely because of what we’ve just been through
that it will be so.’

‘The newspapers say the Jews aren’t being allowed back.’

‘They’re not. The Arabs don’t want us and the British won’t
upset their Arab friends on our account.’

‘So what’s happening to the Jews who can’t get to
Palestine?’

‘You might not credit this but some of them are still in the
death camps. There’s nowhere else for them to go.’

‘That’s appalling – ’

‘Then you should tell that to your Foreign Secretary.’

‘Mr Bevin?’

‘Yes, that bloody Jew-hater, Bevin... and you should tell
your husband that we Jews will have our independence. We won’t go quietly to
the slaughter... never again.’

Arie stands up, ready to leave.

‘Arie, I want to see you again. I really do...’

‘It is better you don’t.’

‘Why? You mean the world to me, you must know that.’

‘No, it wouldn’t be wise.’

‘But I want to help you.’

‘You did already, remember?’

‘Yes, but I mean now – with whatever it is you’re doing in
London.’

‘But what would your important husband say?’

‘Francis? He doesn’t need to know.’

Bea hears her words fractionally later than the mental
impulse to utter them. She is aware of what might follow. So is Arie.

Bea looks at him, trying to see the poet behind the warrior,
the Messiah who had clung to the bars of the embassy yard in Prague. It is
still there like an imprint on a shroud.

Then, as if against all judgement, Arie takes a card from
his inside pocket. Their fingers touch as he passes it.

Arie Minsky, Freelance Journalist & Consultant
: Telephone MUSeum 2843.

‘I have an apartment in Gower Street. Now, we really must
leave – separately.’

‘But why like this?’

‘Beatrice, please... this is serious. You must do exactly as
I say.’

Bea goes first. They do not kiss. Arie does not smile or
turn around and is gone into the crowd leaving her alone on the pavement.

A surge of energy runs through Bea’s body. There is danger
and risk to her existence again. God had plaited Arie into her life once more.
She would not give him up so easily this time. There was Liad, too. The ghost
of their child. He needed his father.

Francis would understand. Just as Arie had understood about
her marrying Francis.