Capital Union, A (20 page)

I lay awake that night in my cottage, knowing that Hannes was sleeping just up the road. Our child made us a family and yet I realised I hardly knew the man who wanted to spend the rest of his life with me. His enthusiasm had swept me off my feet. I got up for breakfast early and walked over to the greenhouses to check that the frost hadn’t shattered any of the glass overnight. Hannes was standing in the first one, only just visible through the panes, like a spectre. He turned and trailed his hands over the bare earth, walking the length of the green house and
closing
the door behind him. He strode up to the farmhouse and, knocking on the door, opened it and disappeared into the light. Perhaps he hadn’t been able to sleep, either.

After filling us up with porridge, Mrs Ogilvie waved us off to the castle. ‘Keep a calm sough,’ she whispered to me as she adjusted the scarf at my neck and stashed three pieces of shortbread, wrapped in greaseproof paper, in my pocket. ‘He’s lovely,’ she said, and I saw her best glasses standing by the sink, and a bottle of single malt with a wheen less whisky in it than it had had the night before. ‘He has Jim’s seal of approval, too,’ she added.

‘Is the Hannes man coming with us, Mum?’ asked Dougie, and his breath cloaked his wee, red lips. I nodded. He ran off down the path to the main road, and we walked past the King’s
Park, then the library and up to the castle. As we came out onto the esplanade, Hannes drew in his breath in admiration. The Carse lay far below us, stretching out to the west, and a toy bridge crossed the river to Causewayside, where the Wallace Monument rose up on its ridge. Hannes lifted Dougie into his arms and, pointing at the tower above its canopy of skeleton trees, asked him what it was. Dougie could have closed it in his wee fist like a stick of rock, and sooked it to a point. ‘What’s that again, Mum?’ he asked.

Hannes raised an eyebrow and smiled.

‘The Wallace Monument,’ I said. ‘Wallace stood there and…”

‘Defeated the English,’ said Hannes, ‘which is more than we did.’

‘You fought the Scots, as well,’ I said. I didn’t know why it suddenly felt like it mattered.

‘I forgot,’ he answered. ‘You seem different.’

‘Let’s not talk about it,’ I replied. ‘Anyway, Jim says if the English had crossed the abbey ford at Cambuskenneth over there, and galloped along the far bank, they could have overwhelmed Wallace’s army with sheer force of numbers on open land, and taken the ridge. But either they didn’t know about the crossing, or they thought Stirling Bridge would be quicker.’

‘One wrong turn,’ said Hannes, ‘and the battle is lost before it has begun. It was lucky for you that Hitler didn’t cross the Channel before he turned east for Russia. Maybe I would be wearing the trousers, then.’

‘Not up here,’ I said.

He looked puzzled.

‘We wear kilts.’

He laughed, but it was a poor joke. Without warning, a picture of Douglas in his kilt in the King’s Park slipped into my memory, like a piece of paper pulled from a dusty book – a fragment of a different time, old and worn. ‘Let’s go and see if we can get in. All this ancient history is making me gloomy.’

There was an old man walking his dog just outside the gate. ‘Aye, just go in,’ he said, as I pointed to it. ‘No one is bothered.’

‘Don’t we have to pay?’ asked Hannes.

‘You can pay me, if you want,’ he said. ‘This dog costs enough to keep.’ And he turned away, laughing. ‘Eats more than the wife. Just ask that soldier over there. He’ll show you round. Say old Tam sent you.’

‘Agnes, it’s still a barracks,’ whispered Hannes, taking my arm, but the soldier was walking towards us. Hannes
straightened
his back.

‘We’re not at war now,’ I whispered to him.

‘Who’s not at war?’ said the soldier. ‘Some of the boys are over in Palestine, although I’d wager they are lounging in the sand while we freeze our… while we freeze up here in our eyrie.’ He looked at Hannes. ‘Where are you folks from?’

‘I’m from Laurelhill,’ said Dougie, taking the soldier’s hand.

‘Come with me, then, and I’ll show you where you can go and which bits to avoid. Don’t want you blowing yourselves to kingdom come on the ammo,’ he said. ‘Unfortunately, you can only see King James’ palace from the outside, but feel free to wander round the garden and the battlements.’

He put Dougie in the front seat of a military car that was painted green. He blew the horn and Hannes jumped. ‘Don’t scare your pa now, young man,’ said the soldier, and he looked at Hannes sympathetically. ‘Saw service, did you? I only just made it back from Dunkirk. Took me a bit to get over it, I can tell you, but Goldie over there just strolled out of Stalag 9 in Thuringia in his overalls. Romped in, as grand as you please, after a picnic in Belgium.’ He paused.

Hannes looked him straight in the eye. ‘I am Austrian,’ he said. ‘I was a pilot.’

The soldier swallowed. Dougie was wobbling the gear stick from side to side and making engine noises. ‘Just a minute, son,’ said the soldier, reaching back with a hand to shoosh him. The two men stared at each other. ‘Well, we’re all Jock Tamson’s bairns – noo, anyway,’ said the soldier. ‘At least that
bastard Hitler is dead.’ His gaze switched to me. ‘Sorry, Miss.’

‘Thank you,’ said Hannes, and tried to smile. The soldier reached out his hand and touched Hannes’ sleeve. ‘Come up here one night and we’ll talk it over. Wouldn’t mind hearing about it from the other side.’ There were tears in both men’s eyes. The soldier coughed and turned away adjusting his Glengarry. ‘Enjoy the view,’ he said. ‘No rush.’

Hannes walked across the garden and climbed up a narrow flight of stairs cut into the old stone wall to the battlement. I picked Dougie out of the truck and ran after him, sliding on the frozen grass. Hannes was looking out across the King’s Knot to the park. The old formal garden lay neglected below the cliff. ‘A courtier once jumped off here on home-made wings for a bet,’ I said.

‘Did he win?’ asked Hannes.

‘No,’ I said.

‘You shouldn’t have brought me here,’ he said. ‘There is a whole Highland regiment.’

‘I thought you’d like the view. There isn’t much else to do round here, especially in winter.’

‘It’s easier to talk about old battles,’ he said. ‘We should have gone to the monument.’ He took my hand and kissed it. ‘Where shall we live,
Schatzi
? Do you have the courage to try Neustift?’

The thought hadn’t occurred to me. Me and Dougie were happy here.

‘What would I do in Austria?’

‘We could run the farm. You should see the vines. I have a bottle of Riesling in my bag for you. My family have been making wine for years. You’d like it.’

‘Can you really see me pressing grapes with my cold blue feet?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We could call it a new vintage.’

‘And if you stayed here?’

‘There is a difference between winning and losing, Agnes. It’s how it makes you feel inside.’

‘Professor Schramml is happy here.’

‘Yes, but he never fought.’ Hannes looked down at the courtyard. A truck roared out of the gate. ‘There was an order to National Socialism. No one was hungry under Hitler, but I was never a Nazi at heart. That was something different. That had its own power, but I am tarred with its brush. I wasn’t brave enough to stand against it. It was easier to say yes. The ones who went to prison didn’t come back. So here I am, defeated fighting for something that I stopped believing in, and I feel like a fool. They call me a Jerry here. I am not even German.’

‘Blame the Anschluss?’

He looked up. ‘Well, we voted for it – but where did you get a word like that?’

‘Let’s just say I heard it a long time ago, in another world.’

He took my hands and blew on them. ‘
Ich friere.
It’s
freezing
up here. This wind could blow away all a man’s past
misdeeds
and leave him stripped to the bone.’

‘Bare naked?’

He pulled me close. ‘Bare naked. Ready to begin again.’

The next day, there was no sign of Hannes as I helped Mrs O to wash the breakfast dishes. I kept picturing the Vienna Hannes had described to Jim over tea; the conquerors living the high life in a city filled with flags: Russian, French, American and British. He said the Austrians had painted out the swastikas with red and white paint to make new flags for themselves. They didn’t have any new cloth, and everyone scrambled on the black market for food. I dried the last cup so slowly that Mrs Ogilvie whipped the tea towel out of my hand and said in her sternest voice, ‘Since when were you a shy and retiring violet, Agnes? You can’t hide in here forever. Go and find him.’

I hung my pinny on the back of the kitchen door and walked out into the frozen yard in my wellies, which were warm from drying by the range. It was quiet, and my breath froze in the frosty morning air. I heard laughter from the barn. Hannes was there sawing some old wood into lengths, and Dougie was lining them up by the sawhorse. Hannes’ sleeves were rolled up and he smiled when he saw me.

‘We’re mending the sledge, Mum,’ yelled Dougie,
running
round in a circle. ‘Eine Rodel, a sledge,’ he shouted. Jim appeared with a roll of old roofing lead for the runners and said he hoped Hannes was going to do a professional job.

‘Pass me the nails, please, Agnes,’ Hannes said, adding the last piece of wood to the pile at his feet. I handed him the tin. ‘Thank you,’ he said.

He still sounded a bit like a textbook, but he looked happy to be doing something practical. There was a thin, white line on his temple from the crash all those years ago. I ran my
finger
along it and he caught my hand and kissed it. ‘A memory of you,’ he said.

‘Well, if love is a thin, white line,’ Jim said, laughing at him, ‘you have definitely crossed it.’

I blushed.

‘I think I am probably superfluous to requirements,’ Jim added, wandering off towards the greenhouses to read his seed catalogues.

‘I don’t understand what he says,’ said Hannes.

‘It’s all hot air,’ I said. ‘Pay no attention.’

He shrugged. ‘It is so good to see you again. To be here with you – and Dougie.’

I squeezed his hand, not sure what to say to this loving stranger, not sure what to say about his suggestion of yesterday.

‘Mum.’ Dougie pulled at my jacket and passed me a piece of wood. I held the skeleton sides of the sledge up while Hannes nailed on the cross pieces. He pressed the soft lead onto the runners and secured it.

After a bowl of soup and some stewed ox cheek to warm up, we set off for the King’s Park. Dougie rode on Hannes’ shoulders, singing ‘Doctor Carrot’ and ‘Potato Pete’, and I pulled the sledge. When we got there, it had begun to snow, and most people were heading home. Hannes set the sledge at the top of the nearest slope and put Dougie in front of him. He shouted, ‘
Eins, zwei, drei
. One, two, three,’ and pushed off with his feet. They disappeared into the swirling snowflakes, as if they had been swallowed. I could hear them laughing behind the white wall, and I realised that I wanted to be with them. I was tired of being alone. I ran down the slope to join them, and Hannes caught me and spun me round like a child,
as if we were rewinding our lives, setting the clock to a new time. Then he set me down on my feet, and kissed me on my forehead in that cold, blank world where the castle sailed on a cloud above us.

‘No kissing,’ shouted Dougie. ‘Sledging.’ And he pulled the sledge back up the hill, the snow brushing the top of his wee wellies. ‘All do it,’ he said as he turned the sledge. We all squeezed on. Hannes’ strong arms slid round my waist and we pushed off, but there was so little room for the three of us that he fell backwards into the snow, with a laugh. It was merry like Duncan’s. I saw him running to catch up, and throwing himself at full speed onto his belly, he slid past us and beat us to the bottom. I liked this new man, this playmate, and we snowballed and sledged until we could no longer feel our toes. He carried Dougie home, with his arm around me in the dark.

‘How was it?’ said Mrs O as we tramped into the kitchen. ‘You must be frozen.’

‘It was good,’ said Hannes.

And I realised it was good. It was the kind of day that stood up brighter in my mind than all the others before it, and shielded me from the sad days that had gone before. This man was building walls against my past, a place to shelter and to grow, a place where there was a father for my child. But I was afraid, too. Neither of us mentioned that, on the way home, a boy had shot at us from a hedge with a toy gun, blowing machine gun noises through lips sticky with sweets. Dougie had formed his wee hand into a pistol and shot back from his father’s arms. It would be a long time before people forgot, before the names on war memorials became unknown grandfathers, and ceased to be much-loved fathers,
brothers
and sons, whose touch was remembered. And towering over us was the Wallace Monument, its shadow testament to the Scots’ long memory for martyrs. It was all so confusing. Dougie stood here. Whatever love was, it had triumphed in him, created a new generation, overridden history in an instant and taken a place in a new order. It was independent of us all,
crossing battle lines on the glance of an eye, the answering twitch of a lip. Love was the traitor who always won,
creating
her own foot soldiers from stolen moments and filling the silence between the guns.