The Other Side of Love (42 page)

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VIII

Aubrey darling,

I should have written earlier, but I’m not reliable about correspondence, am I?

First of all, we missed you horribly at the wedding.

Second of all, whatever possessed you to tell Wyatt to look after me?

It was inspired!

In the recent past I would have bet a million pounds that I’d never smile again, and yet here I am, beaming. He can be very sweet, my spouse. And, at the right times, not so sweet.

Yet the oddest part is that I still feel absolutely attached to Peter. How can I adore my husband, yet at the same time wish with all my heart I were married to Peter? In love with two men, one living, the other dead. (Oh God, my fingers clenched as I wrote that.)

When I discussed this with Wyatt, he cupped my face in his hands and told me I am quite simply caught up in a syndrome of the war. Another aside. I can talk about everything with Wyatt. Anything, that is, except about Katy. When I mention her he gets a nasty smile and calls her

“the enemy’.

We have told the parents about impending grandparenthood. Since I’m absolutely huge, it seems hard to imagine they were surprised. Daddy got very red in the face, and Mummy oozed her customary tears.

“Oh, my poor little girl,”

she wept.

On the American front, Aunt Rossie - ever practical

- has promised New York maternity clothes and a layette, while Uncle Humphrey has already sent this sweet idiotic family tree to prove that there has never been a two-headed Kingsmith.

Aubrey, I adore you for sticking your nose in.

IX

Wyatt, attached to a regiment taking part in training exercises for the invasion of some unspecified beachhead, was stationed at a camp near Brighton. On the windy afternoon of 12 February 1943 he received a telegram.

Araminta delivered of a son, 61b lloz, at 8.35 am. Son healthy. Mother doing well.

He wangled an immediate leave.

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Arriving at Quarles before tea-time, he found Araminta leaning into a nest of pillows, her face exhausted but proud.

“Well done, Momma,”

he said, kissing the top of her sweat-odoured hair.

She flung her arms around him, pulling him to her swollen breasts, smearing lipstick on his forehead.

“Just like a man, turning up after all the hard work’s done.”

“Hey he said, kissing her mouth.

She smelt of tiredness and toothpaste.

“Hey.”

“Was it very rough?”

“Devastatingly. But do take a look at Geoff.”

They had agreed if the baby were a boy to name him Geoffrey, spelled the English way.

“See what you think.”

As Wyatt moved to the cradle in the bay window L his legs began to shake. Though he had assured himself often enough that Araminta’s child would be as his own firstborn, something within him cried out that the baby in the lace-festooned cradle was not his. The few steps across the bedroom were the most difficult he had ever taken.

He closed his eyes and drew a breath before he looked. The sleeping infant lay on its stomach. All he could see was a curve of cheek, neck creases and a fuzz of hair that appeared pink.

“Red hair,”

Wyatt said.

“Exactly. Darling, bring him over here.”

Araminta said.

Tick him up?”

“They’re very sturdy.”

Araminta’s laugh was forced.

“Babies.”

Gripped by paralysis, Wyatt understood that this moment was a test for the three of them him, his wife, this new morsel of humanity. For a moment his hands again felt flaye Outside, the evacuee girls were skipping with a rope. Onesie, twos” …

He lifted the infant, and the head hobbled backward. Wyatt braced the warm neck with three fingers, peering down. The skin of the baby’s neck was loose, like a puppy’s. The fine pinkish brows were drawn fiercely inwards, the lips pressed together. The Mainwarings”

middle son, like their eldest, had been killed in Burma. If, on that last despairing leave, Peter had not considered it a rotten trick to get married, this infant would one day have been a peer of the realm, taking his place in the House of Lords.

The baby opened his eyes, gazing up unfocusing, then yawned. I here was something so disgruntled yet so trusting about the yawn that Wyatt chuckled. Screw their title, he thought, nuzzling the sweet milky-smelling folds under the baby’s chin.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, Geoff old buddy,”

he said.

“Welcome to the world, such as it is.”

Bring him over.”

Araminta patted the edge of the bed.

Wyatt sat on the counterpane, one arm around Araminta, the other cradling the baby. With a joy that was the more all-encompassing for

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being unanticipated, he thought: We’re a family. They were a trinity, one of the links in the chain of humankind that reached back into the dimness before recorded time and stretched forward into the unseeable mists of the future.

“He looks the littlest like Daddy, doesn’t he?”

“Don’t worry about a thing, son,”

Wyatt said huskily.

“We’ll find you a top-notch plastic surgeon.”

268

1942

The V2, as the second type of Vergeltungswaffe rocket came to be called, rose sixty miles into the stratosphere, diving like a predatory bird at five times the speed of sound. Unlike their predecessors, the far slower Vis, the rocket bombs could be neither seen nor heard andAhus could not be intercepted. jr

SIR AUBREY KINGSMITH, A History of the Second World War

I

i

When Kathe and Clothilda had decided to brave wartime travel for their traditional Christmas at GarmischPartenkirchen, Kathe had not anticipated anything more than a week of skiing. It had never entered her head she would be at a party of this sort.

Even by peacetime standards, the Dietrich Eberhardts”

Yule festivities sparkled with extravagance. Thick pine logs blazed in stone fireplaces, hundreds of candles glowe ln the ten-foot tree, an army of liquor-bottles flanked the gargantuan cut-glass bowl of mulled wine. The diningroom table, pushed into the main hall and extended with leaves, was continually replenished with platters of sliced ham, pork and veal, Bismarck herring, potato salad, pickles and lingonberries. The silver tureen was kept filled with ivory-coloured Weisswurst - Munich’s famed souffle-light sausage while pretzel breads, the traditional Weisswurst accompaniment, were heaped in baskets.

A round-faced foreign servant with a large pink T”

for Pole sewn on her loose smock pursed her lips in nervous concentration as she bore out a haunch of venison; because it wasn’t rationed, venison had become extremely difficult to obtain. A trio of grey-haired accordionists were striking up the haunting chords of

“Lili Marlene’.

Kathe was the guest of Hannalore Eberhardt, the daughter of the house. Hannalore, with her buck teeth and very clear blue eyes, was a top-notch skier: the two had formed a tenuous friendship on the difficult runs. This was the first time, though, that Kathe had

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met the senior Eberhardts. Frau Eberhardt, from whom Hannalore had inherited her unfortunate bite, hovered near the kitchen. Herr Eberhardt, who had bought this imposing chalet a few months after the conquest of Poland, wore a gold party badge on his outsize green Bavarian jacket. He was extremely stout, and the bumps on his bald pate made it appear as if his skull was also padded with fat. Waddling about, he pressed food and drink on his guests. Most of the men wore uniforms expensively tailored of SS black and adorned with the skull-and-crossbones insignia of the SS-Totenkopf, the Death’s Head Formations that administered the concentrationcamps. Kathe, on her own initiative, had risked photographing horrified reports from Wehrmacht officers about the bestial conditions in the camps and the SS-Totenkopf s massacres of entire Jewish populations. She wanted nothing more than to escape this jovial Nazi gathering. But on her arrival Hannalore had linked arms and since then had been taking her around with introductions that started:

“May I present my dear friend, Fraulein Kingsmith, who won an Olympic Gold Medal for the Reich?”

Several couples had moved to the diningroom, which, denuded of its table, formed an impromptu dance-floor, and now they twirled beneath the carved beams.

… wir bei der Laterne stehn, wie einst, Lili Marleen.

“Kathe?”

called a familiar Bavarian voice.

“Kathe Kingsmith, can that be you?”

Whirling around, she saw a stocky SS officer shrugging out of his ankle-length black leather coat.

It was Otto Groener.

Kathe hadn’t seen Groener since Villa Haug. She had responded to his dozens of letters only once. When he had planned an elaborate tryst during his upcoming leave, she’d shot off a blatantly concocted excuse.

Yet here he was, stamping towards her, his coarsely handsome features alight with pleasure.

“Kathe! Imagine finding you here!”

Ignoring Hannalore and the others, he said:

“Come, let me fill your wine-cup.”

She was too dizzy with loathing to argue.

” … saw you from the back,”

Groener was saying,

“and thought to myself: What a knockout shape that blonde has! And then it hit me. Not that seeing you in GarmischPartenkirchen should be any surprise. Sigi often talked about your place up here. By the by, how is old Sigi? Haven’t heard from him in ages. Still in Russia?”

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‘Sigi’s with his uncle at … uh …

“

She wasn’t meant to know they were safe in Zossen, the secret OKW nerve-centre near Berlin.

“They’re not in Russia.”

“That’s good news. Anywhere’s better than the Eastern Front. Those Russians! Animals, all of them! Well, here’s to Sigi.”

Groener lifted his glass in a toast, downing the Polish vodka in one gulp.

“Vodka and ham, that’s all the Polacks are good for. How wisely the Fiihrer analysed them. Filthy and lazy, liars every single one. Believe you me, the world will thank us for cleaning up that particular situation.”

“So you’re still stationed in Poland?”

Despite her repugnance, Kathe found herself gleaning information.

“No.”

He cut off her questions by stuffing herring in his mouth. Swallowing, he launched into a monologue of his achievements. The German Cross Order had been pinned on his tunic by the Fiihrer’s own hand. The Goerings often invited him to weekends at Karinhall, their country estate.

“And the best news of all is that little Otto has a brother. Adolf. What a fine fat baby. Only six months old and already he can sit up by himself.”

Groener leaned forward.

“No need to look so mournful, Kathe.”

“What?”

“Forget your worries,”

he said softly.

“You’re brooding about our boy, aren’t you?”

Never in all those letters had Groener referred to her son. Her legs went weak, and she leaned against the wall.

“He’s in the pink,”

Groener said.

“How do you know?”

“We gave a child to the Fiihrer.”

m

“You found him! Where is he?”

“

“No more questions.”

The accordions swirled into a waltz.

“Let’s dance.”

Groener knew where her little boy was, and wouldn’t tell her. Oh, how she loathed him.

“As a matter of fact,”

she said,

“when you got here I was about to leave. A ferocious headache.”

“Why didn’t you say so? I’ll drive you home.”

“I don’t live far,”

she lied.

“A walk’ll do me good.”

“This cold air is hell on sinuses,”

he said.

The rear of his Horch had been equipped with one of the torpedoshaped engines that burned charcoal. Kathe inhaled the smoky rurnes and held a finger to her brow to ward off conversation. Flotillas of clouds blackened the Milky Way, but the unshadowed moon shone on St Martin’s, the old church where the two Nazis had

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jumped Wyatt after he tore down the anti-Semitic signs.

“As a matter of fact, I did see him,”

Groener said.

Startled from her recollections, she blurted:

“Who?”

“Our kid, of course. It was pure chance. A year ago this spring I had some business with a civilian, and he invited me for drinks. He kept bragging about his boy. After a few rounds, he whispered that the child was living proof of selective breeding. He came from Villa Haug.”

“A lot of babies’, she said,

“were born at Villa Haug.”

“My thoughts exactly. So I dropped a few questions. The boy’s birthday was April the tenth. When he invited me to his place, I jumped at the chance. Rathe, I’d thought my little Otto was bright! This boy puts him to shame. The cleverest little tyke. He was only two then, but he could throw a ball right at me, and he raced around on his tricycle. And talk? He talked a blue streak. Even told jokes with a funny little smile.”

The raspy voice had softened with pride.

“What a tough little guy he is - reminds me of myself when I was a kid. Fair hair like us, but otherwise there’s no physical resemblance.”

So he still looks like Wyatt, she thought and realized how fatuous she was being.

“Where is he?”