The Complete Symphonies of Adolf Hitler (2 page)

It is early afternoon, and I have not eaten, so I go and have something at The Engineer in Gloucester Avenue. From there you can walk across the road, down some steps and on to the towpath beside the Regent’s Canal. I call it ‘the dull canal’ after that line in Eliot’s
The Waste Land
, but it suits my mood, as does the sky which is grey and threatening rain once more. I walk for miles along the canal. Sometimes I find myself humming that wretched march and walking in step to it, but when I do I stop and try to shove the thing out of my mind.

Towards evening, after miles of wandering along the towpath, I am about to pass under yet another cast iron footbridge when I can just see that something strange and black is wriggling under it, dangling over the water. Whatever it is, it is on the other side of the bridge to me, so I go under it, turn round and look back.

What I have seen from the other side of the bridge are two feet encased in black boots. Their struggle belongs to a man with a hairless head and a long black overcoat who is hanging on to the balustrade of the bridge. No sound comes from him, but it is clear that he needs help, or he will fall into the oily waters below. It looks too as if he is attached to the bridge by a rope and that the rope may be round his neck.

There are steps up from the tow path which give access to the bridge, so I climb them. I look around, but there is no-one about to help me. I reach the point where the man is hanging from the bridge. One bone-white hand is gripping the balustrade. I take hold of his arm and the hand relinquishes the balustrade to grip my arm in turn. It is a strong grip and almost pulls me over the bridge. I look down and see the top of the man’s grey, hairless head. Then the head tilts upward so that now I can see the face. A pair of remorseless eyes lock on to mine, their hold as fierce as the grip of his hand on my arm. He has a noose around his neck, but the rope has slipped so that the end of it now trails in the water. I try to pull him up, the effort nearly wrenching my arm out of its socket. His mouth opens and he grins, revealing a set of irregular teeth, green and yellow, like the lichen covered menhirs of a primitive stone circle. His breath, smelling of rotted vegetation, comes in irregular, rasping gulps and exhalations, but he says nothing.

A wordless wrestle with the man’s dead weight continues for several minutes until at last he is hauled over the side of the bridge and we sit there panting together for the same length of time that it took me to rescue him. At my suggestion we find a café and sit down over two cups of sweet, watery tea. We talk.

Or rather he talks and I listen. He does not answer my questions, but he has much to say about himself, though in many ways it is curiously vague. He says he is an artist, a musician of sorts, I think, but also a painter, and his enormous gifts have been unrecognised. An idiot world has failed to acknowledge his genius. He seems to blame and hate everyone for this, and I find myself compelled to take on some of the responsibility for his misery. He talks much about the soul of an artist and how a work of art may embody it. It is all very high-flown and pretentious; a little old-fashioned too, I think. I begin to be tired and horribly bored.

Then he starts to talk about how something has been taken from him and that he will be lost until it is returned. He says that every artist is like Faust. Faust sold his soul to the Devil for wisdom, for money, for a woman; but the artist, he sells his soul to his own Art for the sake of fame and glory, and if that fame and glory is not granted to him then his soul has been given away for nothing. As far as I can understand his drift, I think this is rubbish, but I do not say so. By this time I am so bored and exhausted that I am close to falling asleep where I sit. I am just about to do so when he grips my arm and begins to talk urgently about wanting something back, something apparently that I have.

Then I notice—how could I have failed to notice before?—that I know this man; his eyes are familiar, those bloated, poached egg eyes, the grey, hairless face, the heavy, damp overcoat. I wrench my arm away. I tell him to go to hell. I run out of the café. Some time later I find a taxi and go home. I want to sleep. I must now sleep.

But sleep is denied me, because the police are waiting for me when I get home. They want to question me further. It is about the death of my wife. Apparently someone was seen yesterday afternoon tampering with her car, and they want to check again, purely routine you understand, on my movements that day. I tell them once more about the London Library and Magnum Music. Well, they haven’t fully checked with the London Library, but there is a slight problem with Magnum Music. You see, the official opening of Magnum Music was today, and yesterday it was not open to the public, so I could not have been in Magnum Music at the time that I said I was. I ask if I am being charged with anything, but the police say no, they are just pursuing their inquiries. They suggest that I keep in touch with them, keep them informed of my movements.

I cannot stay here. They cannot keep me. Events have been too much for me, so I must move. I cannot sleep here tonight in case the man in the heavy overcoat returns and rings the bell, and drives me mad with his rubbish about Art and the Soul.

As soon as I know the police are out of the way I set off. I put a few things in a plastic bag, not much, but for some reason I have to take the boxed set of symphonies with me. I carry it like a talisman, and because I have paid for it dearly I will not let it go. I am not quite sure where I am going, but I need to see other people, some sort of life, so I head south towards the heart of London. I have been walking for little over half an hour when it begins to rain.

The wet pavements reflect the pinchbeck gold of the street lamps. There is a sick feeling at the back of my neck. I must sleep. I must find somewhere dry where I can hide for a while because I cannot return to my house. Now I am near King’s Cross. The rain falls on. I find a hotel, one of those wretched hotels that are to be found near King’s Cross, frequented by pushers and prostitutes, whose foyers look like entrances to the Underworld. Two letters from the orange neon sign over the door do not light up, so that in the dark it reads H EL. Nevertheless I go in. The only room available is at the front, overlooking a main road. The grinding sound of traffic penetrates through the window, the yellow street lights shine through the thin curtains. The candlewick bedspread is lemon yellow. The walls are the colour of nicotine stains. I switch on an electric heater. I undress and attempt to dry myself.

On the dressing table I lay my one significant possession, the boxed set of THE COMPLETE SYMPHONIES OF ADOLF HITLER.

And now, just now, the telephone in my room is ringing. I pick up the phone: it is Reception. There is a gentleman downstairs who wishes to come up and speak to me: something about wanting his music back.

I can’t let him up because I know what he will do. In that heavy old overcoat of his, he will sit down in my room, and fill it with the smell of damp streets. He will fix me with those gloomy poached egg eyes, and, in that voice like scratched fog, he will talk and talk and talk. He will ply me with self-pity, with his shallow, pretentious views on Art and Music.

He will bore me to death.

LAPLAND NIGHTS

As almost everyone knows the acronym OPEN stands for Old People’s Exchange Network; and, as everyone—or almost everyone—agrees, it is a brilliant idea. Jane Capel certainly thought so when she first paid a visit to the OPEN offices in Panton Street one July afternoon.

The increasing longevity of the population means that many elderly people are living in the care of their offspring who are themselves approaching old age. When money is scarce and the old people in question require much looking after, this can put a great strain on their carers. Help from Social Services is also stretched. Carers have to find a cheap way of obtaining respite from their onerous and often dispiriting duties.

The idea of OPEN is a simple one, and operates on the same principle as that of exchange students. An old person would come to stay with a carer and their old person for two or three weeks and then that carer would send their old person to stay with their guest’s carer for the same amount of time. In that way each carer would be granted a time of respite. OPEN, being a registered charity, and receiving some funding from the Government and the Lottery, only charged a nominal registration fee for its work as an agency. Jane Capel saw an article about it in her
Daily Telegraph
and decided to try out the enterprise.

Jane was sixty-three and lived on a street of semi-detached houses in an outer London suburb called Westwood. She was a widow, her husband, an art teacher and would-be painter, having died of drink and disappointment some years back. Her eighty-nine year old mother had been living with her for three years. She had been independent until visited by dementia and Parkinson’s disease which rendered her frightened and lonely. A Home was out of the question: Jane could not afford it; her mother, with every fibre of her fading faculties, would not contemplate it.

Jane had a younger brother, Tony, but he was unwilling—or, as he liked to put it, ‘unable’—to shoulder much of the responsibility. Tony, an investment banker, was married with two children, and the idea of Mother living with them was unfortunately out of the question. As he explained to Jane over the phone, his wife Fiona had ‘never got on with Mother’. (‘Did anyone?’ thought Jane, but she said nothing.) Even when Jane suggested that they take on Mother for a couple of weeks while she went on holiday, this proved too difficult. Melissa, the daughter, was just coming up to her GCSEs, and their son Charles was about to take his Common Entrance Exam for Eton. As Tony explained: ‘the children have to come first.’ Was there an implication that Jane, whose marriage had been childless, did not fully understand the priorities of family life? The possibility of Eton was also a reason why Tony could not offer Jane any financial assistance at that moment, but he was always very generous with his advice.

Tony said: ‘What you ought to do’—a favourite phrase of his—‘is get on to Social Services and tell them . . .’ At that point Jane stopped listening. It was no use telling Tony, who knew just about everything anyway, that she had spent the last three years ‘getting on’ to Social Services with very meagre results: a wheelchair, a Zimmer frame, and a bossy woman who helped bathe her mother once a week.

This might have been the point at which she gave way to self-pity, but Jane hated self-pity in herself as much as in others. She had experienced its ugly consequences with her husband Jack, so she would not give in. She looked around for other ways of alleviating her condition and found OPEN.

**

The offices of OPEN in Panton Street were discreetly grand, as befitted its well-connected founder, Martha Wentworth-Farrow. Apparently Mrs Wentworth-Farrow liked to interview all her clients herself, so Jane was feeling nervous as she waited in the outer office. She cursed herself for not having brought anything to read and tried to find interest in her surroundings. On the wall of the outer office, above the receptionist’s desk, was a framed and illuminated text elaborately inscribed on vellum. It read:

An Old Age serene and bright

And lovely as a Lapland night

Jane recognised the quotation from Wordsworth and wondered whether the poet had ever had to cope with elderly parents, or indeed whether he had visited Lapland. She doubted it. One day though, she thought, ‘when it is all over’ (her pleasant euphemism for the death of her mother), she would spend time reading Wordsworth. She might even visit Lapland.

‘Mrs Wentworth-Farrow will see you now,’ said the receptionist.

The room Jane entered was panelled except for an end wall which was lined with books. It had the look of an old-fashioned solicitor’s office and was evidently calculated to impress. Behind a fine old mahogany desk sat the founder of OPEN who graciously invited Jane to sit opposite her.

Mrs Wentworth-Farrow, a tall, smartly dressed woman with well-ordered features, exuded the slightly condescending sympathy of a privileged do-gooder. Jane tried not to waste time hating her because, she reasoned, it was after all better to do good with your privilege, however condescendingly, than to do bad. She was certainly a clever and forceful woman because, by the end of the interview, Jane had told Mrs Wentworth-Farrow far more than she had expected to about her marriage, her exasperating younger brother, relations with her mother. For some moments after their conversation had finished Mrs Wentworth-Farrow wrote in a ledger; then she laid down her pen, looked up and smiled at Jane as she leaned back in her chair.

‘Well, Mrs Capel—may I call you Jane?’ Jane nodded. ‘Oh, and you must call me Martha, of course. You are just the sort of person we want to help.’ It was an ambiguous sentence, but Jane smiled hopefully. ‘Your mother does sound quite a handful, so we’re going to find it rather difficult to get hold of someone to “team you up with”, as we say.’ Jane had had a feeling that teams would come into the conversation at some point. Martha had the look of a former hockey captain and head girl. ‘I wonder . . .’ Martha tapped her teeth with her fountain pen, then typed something into her computer, after which she frowned at the screen for a few seconds and turned to Jane. ‘Would you be prepared to take on a couple?’

‘Well . . .’

‘There’s a Mrs von Hohenheim. Lives down in Wiltshire. Widow like you; interesting woman. She has two parents, in their early nineties, believe it or not, but still quite hale, I understand. A Major and Mrs Strellbrigg. I realise that it’s something of a challenge, but—’

‘No. No,’ said Jane who wanted to cut Martha off before she said something to the effect that beggars could not be choosers.

So it was agreed. Letters were exchanged and within a month, Jane was driving her mother down to Wiltshire to stay with Mrs von Hohenheim and the Strellbriggs for three weeks.

**

They lived in a large bungalow at a place called Lockington Magna on the outskirts of Savernake Forest. Mrs von Hohenheim was a big bony woman who wore a tartan skirt and bright red lipstick. Jane was slightly disconcerted by her because she could not quite shake off the impression that she was a man dressed up as a woman, but Mrs von Hohenheim was effusively welcoming. Jane watched closely to see how her mother reacted because, though her mental faculties were impaired, her capacity for registering complaint was as sound as ever. Her mother seemed fascinated by her new hostess, but not afraid. Mrs von Hohenheim was voluble without being in any way informative about herself or her situation. She had a slight accent—German or Netherlandish at a guess—and a hooting falsetto voice. She ushered them into the sitting room to meet her parents.

Major and Mrs Strellbrigg sat either side of the fireplace in identical chairs. They looked frail but their expressions were alert. The Major was a big man with a blunt, military cast of countenance and a short moustache which stuck out under his nose like a hog’s bristle. His wife, Daphne, was a slender, delicate creature with thick, creamy white hair in a page boy cut. She wore a black velvet ribbon around her temples.

Though old couples are reputed to grow like each other this was not the case with the Strellbriggs, except for one curious feature: they both had a small black mole above the left eyebrow. They greeted Jane politely, he with bluff, soldierly courtesy, she with simpering charm. They also spoke to her mother in a friendly way to which she responded with a few broken sentences and a smile. She had accepted them.

Jane left soon afterwards not so much because she was confident that all would go well, as because she was beginning to feel that Mrs von Hohenheim wanted her to go. And, after all, her mother had come with all the necessary instructions, medication, equipment. There really was nothing more Jane could do to ensure the success of the venture.

All the same, as she drove back from Wiltshire to begin her three week break, Jane felt anxious. Something about the menage she had just left made her uneasy. Mrs von Hohenheim for example must have been the daughter of the Strellbriggs: were she a daughter-in-law, she would be Mrs Strellbrigg. Yet she had a foreign accent while her parents were so very English. Then there was her mannish appearance, her big clumsy hands, her strange voice. It was not exactly sinister, but it was odd.

When she got home Jane telephoned Martha Wentworth-Farrow at OPEN to express her misgivings. Martha was soothing. ‘You mustn’t worry,’ she said. ‘It’s like your child’s first term at boarding school. You have to cut the cord. Now go and enjoy yourself. You deserve it.’

Jane did enjoy herself. She went with a friend to the Lake District. Perhaps the best time of all was when it rained and Jane spent a whole day in their rented cottage reading a novel. She had not indulged herself in this way since adolescence.

**

During the three weeks of her break she did not ring up to find out how her mother was doing. This was one of the rules that Mrs Wentworth-Farrow had laid down, that carers were to be contacted in dire emergencies, but otherwise they should take a complete holiday from their concerns. Jane had obeyed, but she became nervous again when she drove down to Wiltshire to collect her mother whom nevertheless she found in excellent order. The Strellbriggs, seeming rather less frail than they had appeared to be when Jane had first met them, were very pleasant but Mrs von Hohenheim, without any overt rudeness, made it clear that Jane should not delay, but take her mother and go. The visit of the Strellbriggs to Jane Capel’s house was to take place in a week’s time.

On the way back Jane tried to interrogate her mother about her stay, and received the barest monosyllables in reply. Had she had a nice time? ‘Yes.’ What was the food like? (This was an abiding concern with her mother.) ‘Not bad.’ Had they gone anywhere? Seen anything? Done anything special? ‘Oh . . .’ This was a new development for her mother who hitherto had always been talkative, if incoherent; but Jane was not too concerned. Her mother seemed quite placid and Jane, with an occasional pang of guilt, had stopped wanting anything from her other than placidity.

**

As the day approached for the Strellbriggs’ arrival Jane began to feel nervous again, though without much rational cause. The instructions she received through the post from Mrs von Hohenheim were of the barest kind. The Strellbriggs, much to Jane’s surprise, took no medication beyond a few vitamin supplements with which they travelled. Their dietary requirements were simplicity itself. The Major liked his daily paper and his whisky before the evening meal: that was it. They were capable of getting up, dressing themselves and putting themselves to bed at night. Jane, a natural worrier, found herself concerned about the apparent absence of difficulties. Was there something which she had not been told?

The Strellbriggs arrived promptly at the time appointed, driven by their daughter. Once their bags were in their room, Jane received the distinct impression that Mrs von Hohenheim did not want to stay. She did not even look in to greet Jane’s mother who was in the sitting room.

Over the next few days Jane got to know something about the Strellbriggs, for they were fond of reminiscence. He had been a Major in the King’s African Rifles, which he always referred to as ‘the old K.A.R.’, and they had spent much of his working life in Kenya which they pronounced ‘Keenya’ in the old-fashioned way. Their views on race startled Jane. While the Major was forthright, his wife, whose name was Daphne, was simperingly apologetic, but no less virulent.

‘I’m afraid Arthur and I are very against black people.’ she said at dinner on their first day. ‘We always have been. We saw what they did in the Mau Mau, you see.’

‘The thing about blacks,’ said the Major, ‘is that they’re not a fully developed species. They’re like little children. You have to treat them accordingly. Horses for courses, that sort of thing. Give them a bit of stick now and then and they’ll tow the line. My Sergeant in the old K.A.R. was a chap called Pigby. Terrific bloke. Know what he used to do to them?’

Jane did not want to know, but the Major was going to tell her, whether she liked it or not.

‘Whipped the soles of their feet with a bamboo whangee! And you know, they were grateful to him. Taught them discipline, you see. That’s what they ought to do here, you know, to keep them in line.’