The Other Me (33 page)

I went to America as soon as I could. But even there, the everyday turned to dust. I was blunted and impoverished, unable to exist in a civilian world. I threw myself into work, into giving shape to my ambition: the force and effort of it kept me safe from madness. Nothing else touched me. Sex was just a brief forgetting.

It was different with you, Gwyn. I don’t know why. You were never mine. I cried in your arms, and you let me. Stroking my hair, you hummed softly, kissing each severed finger joint, one by one. Being with you, it was like being washed clean by the rain.

KLAUDIA

1996, London

It feels surreal, having breakfast together – the three of us – me between the two brothers: Ernst, tall and big-boned, all straight nose and jutting chin, like my father, except for his scarred face. He should be frightening to look at. His blind eye droops slightly at the rim, showing the inner pink; and the distorting ribbing of scarring pulls at the rest of his features, stretches his mouth into a lop-sided smile. But instead of feeling revulsion, there is something compelling about him. His eyes are kind. I keep looking at him – it’s as if I have to keep checking that he’s really here, my uncle, here in the flesh. If only Mum was still alive. I’m sure this would make her happy too. I stop myself from saying so aloud; I don’t want to do anything that might make my father worse. He is sulking; it’s pathetic. He’s like an overgrown child. I give him disapproving glances, trying to catch his attention.

It’s Ernst who is making all the effort. He is trying to draw my father out, reminding him of things in their past, and in the process revealing things to me about my father’s childhood. Ernst talks about the cows they milked each morning before breakfast and the kitchen garden they had to hoe and weed after school.

I’m intrigued, interrupting him to ask questions. He leans across the table to remind my father of the names of the horses that lived in the stables below their bedroom. Lotte and Berta.

‘We knew how to plough with a team of horses,’ Ernst tells me. ‘That’s a skill you don’t find anymore.’

‘Because there’s no need for it,’ my father says.

‘The German army relied on their horses,’ Ernst carries on. ‘Not many people knew that. They thought it was all Panzer tanks and Messerschmitts; but in reality the Wehrmacht was horse-powered. And that made it slower and more expensive to run than the Russian army. It was one of our failings.’

‘Nobody is interested, Ernst,’ my father tells him. ‘It’s just history now.’

‘Klaudia is.’ Ernst winks at me with his good eye. ‘Aren’t you?’

I smile, standing to clear away the butter, wiping a splodge of marmalade from the table. ‘I am.’

Ernst’s fingers have a constant tremor; he keeps them clamped tightly around the handle of his cup. But still the tea slops over the rim. He puts his drink down with careful concentration and looks at his brother. ‘I’d like to see where Gwyn is buried, Otto,’ he asks in a low voice. ‘If I may?’

My father pushes himself back from the table and stands for a moment, his mouth working, chewing his lips. ‘Gwyn was cremated,’ he says in a tight, reluctant voice. ‘Her ashes are buried in the garden.’

Ernst waits. My father turns his head away, shoulders raised.

I am furious with him. Ernst has every right to ask to see where Mum is buried. My father, who has always had the ability to be unnecessarily rude, is outdoing himself.

‘I’ll show you.’ I touch Ernst’s sleeve.

We stand under the apple tree. It’s stopped raining. The ground is mushy and dank. A layer of dead leaves has collected around the roots. There is nothing to mark the spot. Perhaps we should put a plaque on the tree. Ernst bows his head for a moment.

‘I only met your mother a couple of times,’ he said. ‘But she was a beautiful person. I was… I was very fond of her.’

I clear my throat. ‘Thank you.’

A thrush skims our heads and lands on a branch, looking at me with its head on one side. I have already put breadcrumbs on the table. It’s waiting for us to leave.

I begin to move away towards the house. I glance behind. Ernst isn’t following. He’s still gazing down at the roots of the apple tree. Then he raises his head and looks around as if he’d forgotten where he is. He makes his way towards me, using his stick. He looks frail. His wincing mouth tells me that he’s in pain. But I don’t know if I should help him or not. He seems to want his independence.

‘Have you always lived in New York?’ I rub my hands together while I wait. There’s a chill in the air.

‘Yes,’ he says, pausing. ‘Since I moved there in the late 1950s. I loved it from the moment I arrived.’ He limps on. I turn away, not wanting to watch his halting progress, fearing he’ll think me impatient. ‘I couldn’t get over the skyscrapers.’ His voice takes on a note of wonder. ‘Such symbols of hope. Of determination. It’s a city of immigrants of course, and it allowed me to find my place. Anything is possible there. You aren’t judged on your past, on where you come from.’

It occurs to me that I have no idea what we can do to fill the time. He seems so weak. But he has a plan; he’d like to go to the nearest park, he says, wheezing as he reaches me in the open kitchen door. He can manage a walk if I don’t mind going slowly.

‘Shut the door,’ my father’s voice calls from the sitting room. ‘There’s a draught in here.’

I shut the door with a bang. I can imagine his expression.

On the bus I tell Ernst about my audition. ‘It’s after Christmas, in January.’ I brace myself as the bus lurches around a corner. ‘I’m preparing two pieces. I have plenty of time. But I’m nervous.’

‘Of course you’re nervous.’ He clasps his stick. ‘That’s good. It would be strange if you weren’t. I can remember you dancing when you were little. Six or seven, you would have been. And it was obvious to me then that you were born to it.’

I’m touched that he remembers. I ask him what I’d been dancing to and he says he thinks it was something with swing – Armstrong or Calloway – and we talk about jazz music and the club in Manhattan where he’s heard Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan sing.

‘Your mother liked jazz too,’ he says.

‘Really?’ I can’t hide my surprise. ‘All my father ever plays is opera.’

‘She liked the records I brought with me when I came to stay.’ He’s clutching his stick. And I know it’s to control the tremble in his hands. It makes me want to take his fingers between my own. ‘Maybe she was just being polite,’ he adds.

‘Oh no,’ I reassure him. ‘Mum wasn’t like that. She was kind. But she was honest. She always said what she meant…’

My words trail away, as I remember how she slipped around my questions when I was a child, how she batted away the truth to protect my father, his wounded honour. She put him before me. But I don’t think she understood how important it was for me to know what my father had done in the war. I never told her what I had to put up with at school.

In the park, I measure my pace to Ernst’s painful hobble, anxiously hovering at his elbow. He likes to walk with me next to his seeing eye. I dive back into the memory of his visit, long ago. I can still remember so many details. It’s the one thing that links us. It’s a good place to start.

‘That doll you bought for me,’ I tell him. ‘I’d never had anything so exciting before.’

‘She was nearly as big as you,’ he smiles. ‘I was worried at the time. I didn’t know anything about children. I thought you might be too old for dolls.’

‘Well, you got it right. I was very happy.’

‘It was a pleasure, buying you all gifts. I got your father a watch, and perfume for your mother.’

‘I’m sure they were as pleased as me. We didn’t really spend much on presents. Often they were home-made.’

‘I admired your parents. They didn’t need expensive gifts to be happy.’

‘No. But I’m sure Mum was secretly thrilled to have some luxury. I can only remember her smelling of talc.’

‘I got her a bottle of something that smelt like heaven. It was floral without being sweet. It came in a heavy glass bottle with a gold top.’

The image of the empty bottle lying in Mum’s drawer among her bras and girdles jumps into my head: the perfume I brought back from Paris.

‘Mitsouko.’ I say the word without thinking.

He puts his hand to his ear. ‘What was that?’

I hear my father’s voice.
You smell like a harlot.
Facts clash in my head; taken together they suggest an idea that makes me suddenly queasy. I want to push it away. But I can’t. It’s like a weed, putting down roots.

I shake my head. ‘Nothing.’

We’ve come to a slight rise. Ernst is wheezing. He stops and lets me take his arm.

‘Perhaps we should go back now?’ He looks apologetic.

There’s a sheen on his forehead. The wind pulls at his grey hair, tugging it back from his scalp; brown blotches mottle his skin. He turns to me. The half-mask of his face looms close, the distorted webbing across his cheek and the blind, pale eye blinking.

My mouth is dry. ‘Did you get any medals?’ I work to keep my voice level. ‘When you were in the army?’

‘I suppose I did.’ He curls his lips as if it’s unpleasant to think of it. ‘Three,’ he admits, ‘if I remember correctly.’

Of course they belonged to him, the brother who went into the army. And the photograph flashes up in front of my eyes. The one I can’t forget: the dark girl snatching her last breath.

ERNST

It had taken a couple of years of gentle suggestions in my annual Christmas card to prompt the invitation for my second visit. When it eventually arrived, I’d been jubilant. But as soon as I stepped into their home, I could see that Gwyn was nervous. Otto made it clear that he didn’t want me there. He didn’t leave me alone with Gwyn for a second. Not that I’d come with any expectations of going to bed with her. I still desired her. She was older, of course. She’d put on some weight. But the extra softness added to her lush curves, an illustration of her generous nature, her kindness. I wanted her more than ever; being near her made my throat tight, my breathing fast. But she’d made it clear that it would never happen again.

It was enough, I told myself, to love her from a distance. Loving her without touching her was a kind of punishment, and I felt I deserved that pain, because I shouldn’t have loved her in the first place. But I’d been looking forward to spending time with her – going for walks in the park, helping her wash up, doing odd jobs, talking. Instead, Otto presided over every activity: a looming shadow.

Christmas Day. I stayed behind while they went to chapel. It was the first time I’d been alone in the house. I put on some Ella Fitzgerald, turned it up loud. I picked up one of Gwyn’s cardigans and pressed it to my nose, inhaling the scent of her, finding the secrets of her body trapped in flecks of wool. Their new house was a plain, mid-terraced little boxy place. I slapped my hand against woodwork, checked window-frames for gaps. It was solidly built, but there was no refinement to its design. It had pebbledash all over the front, which had become grimy with age and pollution. Inside, all was as neat and tidy as I remembered from before. Klaudia’s toys were kept in boxes and put away every night. The place gave me claustrophobia. Everywhere I looked there were embroidered words from scripture or a biblical figure carved in wood staring out with a demented gaze. Otto had always needed to believe in something, to belong. It seemed ironic that he’d exchanged the Third Reich for God.

I’d been nervous about seeing Klaudia. I didn’t know what to expect. I wondered if I’d know straight away if she were mine or not. But the shy girl that came into the room behind her mother’s skirts, with flaxen plaits, thin limbs and clear blue eyes stirred nothing in me, except the disconcerting thought that she looked Aryan.

Anyone who didn’t know me would assume she looked the spit of Otto. He and I were physically alike, so she looked like both of us. She was a great kid. After she got over her shyness, she followed me everywhere, asking me questions, listening intently to my answers. She was more like her mother in that respect. I’d felt a cowardly relief in deciding that she couldn’t be mine. I’d convinced myself by then that Gwyn would have said something. That I would have had a feeling about it, our shared blood tugging out the truth.

After lunch there was an exchanging of presents. Gwyn opened mine with anxious fingers; she unwrapped the perfume from a nest of tissue paper and held the heavy bottle in her lap for a moment, examining the details of it, before she unscrewed the top and dipped her head to sniff. She unfolded the silk scarf and rubbed the fabric between her fingers. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she said in a muted voice. ‘Thank you.’

I felt ashamed, seeing the strain on her face. I’d been an idiot. A selfish idiot. I should have stayed away. It was me that had forced the visit. I’d encroached where I wasn’t wanted, trespassed on a home and family that were not mine. I saw how difficult it was for her, and I felt like walking out, catching a taxi to a hotel or the airport. It didn’t matter where. I just needed to leave them in peace. But Klaudia was already unwrapping my present; she’d ripped the Santa Claus paper apart, and she pulled out the doll with a gasp of excitement. With one bound, she flung herself into my lap, folded her arms around my neck and kissed me.

I won’t forget the sweetness of that kiss, the feel of her hot arms around me. It was like a thud to the heart. A blow of love. After a second, I returned her embrace, hugging her close, breathing her in.

She wriggled away almost immediately, dropping onto the floor with the doll, tipping it to make the spiky lashes open and close, and I felt an ache inside, a yearning to have her back in my arms. I was deserted. Undone. I breathed in sharply, and at that moment caught Gwyn staring at me. Her face was blanched; her mouth trembled. And I knew.

After tea on Boxing Day, Otto went out to the shed to fetch something. Klaudia was sitting at the table in the living room with a giant puzzle of castles and knights spread out before her. I’d promised to go and help her after I’d finished drying up the dishes. Gwyn had her hands in the washing-up bowl. We’d both watched Otto disappear into the dark garden, hardly daring to believe that he’d left the house, his torch shining before him in dancing circles.