The Other Side of Love (55 page)

The Mercedes had squealed to a halt and was erratically backing up. Anticipating the call that haunted her nightmares,

“Komm Frau, she was too wearily desolate to care.

“Kathe, is it really you?”

I’m hallucinating, she thought. The twilit gloom prevented her from seeing into the car, but wasn’t it flatly impossible that the British voice could belong to Aubrey?

“Oh God, what a marvellous people, the Russians!”

Kathe had just returned to the bedroom with her hair turbaned in a towel, her throat rosy from the bath, and swathed in a bright green dressinggown that belonged to the lieutenant’s housekeeper-mistress.

“I’d forgotten the sheer heaven of hot water; that’s the first real soak I’ve had in years since the house was bombed. No, since before the war. During the war we weren’t allowed more than two inches of tepid water. Maybe I’ll go downstairs and kiss darling Lieutenant Novikov.”

“He and Brigid are otherwise occupied until dinner.”

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‘Then, I’ll kiss you.”

Humming a waltz from Der Rosenkavalier, she whirled around the room, planting a kiss in the air above his forehead. Candles flickered as she continued to sing and swoop. When the turban came loose, she bent to comb the long wet strands. After a minute, she asked soberly:

“You’re positive Grandpa’s all right?”

“Kathe, I’ve told you ten times. He only had a cold. I came up with pneumonia to get you a holiday from Ober Tappenburg. Who dreamed you’d make a dash for it?”

“You’re too honourable for such suspicions.”

She paused.

“What are the chances that Brigid would loan me something to wear?”

“She hung the things inside the wardrobe. Novikov’s orders.”

“He’s a king. No, a tsar.”

There was the sound of water running in the bathroom, then loud singing:

“Volga, Volga, you’re my mother

“Didn’t you say he was otherwise occupied? Damn. I was just going back in there to dress.”

Til close my eyes and look the other way.”

Going to the window, he took off his glasses, blowing to clean the lenses. When he turned, Kathe had her back to him and was wearing the flannel petticoat. Between its straps he saw an intricate pattern of shiny white tissue.

He couldn’t control his sharp horrified gasp.

“Oh Jesus Christ … Darling, what happened to you?”

“My back, you mean?”

She yanked on the woollen blouse, hastily buttoning it.

“Those lovely scars saved my life.”

“How? Kathe, did the Gestapo or theJVbwehr discover you were working for us?”

jf

“No,”

she sighed.

“I was hauled in for being Sigi’s sister.”

;s r

“He and his uncle were in the July plot.”

“But I got hold of your American Military Government report. You didn’t say a word about it when you were being de-Nazified. A brother in on the July plot would do wonders in your favour.”

“Favour?”

She stared bleakly down at her gap-toothed comb.

“Sigi was tortured to death in the Gestapo basement.”

“Those bastards!”

“Just before he died he somehow managed to sneak out a letter on toilet paper. The next day, they came for me. They killed Mother.

1 don’t know when, but they left her body, and the rats …

“

Kathe shuddered.

“I buried her on the day of the ceasefire.”

“Where were you until then?”

he asked gently.

In a purposefully matter-of-fact tone, she sketched in the SS evacuation-centre, her escape, her meetings with the gimlet-eyed zS-Untersturmfuhrer, her sentence to vanish into Nacht undNebel. The

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prison-train. The beating that saved her life. The sound of machinegunning.

“Aubrey, please, no more questions.”

She pulled the comb savagely through her wet tangled hair.

“I can’t talk about it.”

At supper Novikov made numerous toasts. Russian-style courtesy obligated Aubrey to reciprocate. After the two men had drained the brandy-bottle, the host noisily bussed Aubrey’s cheeks, roaring:

“Comrade, take your sweetheart back to bed.”

Upstairs, Aubrey closed the door. It had been a long day, he was having one of his spells of lightheadedness and, besides, he was quite squiffed. The Jesus above the bed seemed to be writhing on His crucifix. Stretching out below Him, Aubrey closed his eyes.

He felt Kathe unknotting his tie.

“Tell me about the child,”

he said.

She stopped tugging on the tie and went to the window.

“Kathe?”

he prompted.

“He’s mine,”

she said.

“Born in a Lebensborn home.”

“You telling me you had an affair with?”

“An SS officer,”

she said.

“Yes.”

“Rot.”

The liquor had vanquished Aubrey’s reserve.

“You’re telling me utter rot.”

“He was an old schoolfriend of Sigi’s. Otto Groener.”

“Kathe, I’ve spent endless hours thinking about this. The child was born while you were on that so-called translating job, some time in spring of 1940. He’s Wyatt’s, isn’t he?”

There was an outburst of

“Volga, Volga,”

accompanied by feminine giggles, then the door across the corridor slammed shut. Kathe, at the window with her back to Aubrey, hadn’t stirred. So still was she that her silhouette might have been carved from the same oak as the crucifix.

“Why in God’s name didn’t you tell him?”

Aubrey asked.

After a long pause, she said in a dead voice:

“By the time I realized, he was already involved with other girls.”

“He’d have taken you to the States. Married you.”

“He’s never trusted me.”

“What are you saying? That he wouldn’t have accepted the child as his? Kathe, you don’t realize this, but you’re the most wonderful woman there is. I’ve loved you for ever.”

God, how drunk am I, blabbing this?

“Nothing could make me stop adoring you or believing in you.”

“Oh, Aubrey, there’s so much about Wyatt you don’t know.”

“I know one thing. He was insane about you.”

“When he showed up at Ober Tappenburg, I was happy. Beyond happy. For a few moments the whole rotten war was wiped out. But then I saw his face. Aubrey, the other side of love is hate.”

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‘He’s bitter. About

“Minta. About the camps.”

“I’m never going to tell him.”

“About the boy? That’s not reasonable.”

“He’d believe I was lying. Lying about my baby. And I couldn’t bear that.”

She took a ragged breath.

“Aubrey, I’m not like I was. It’s as if I’ve been crowded to the edge of a steep cliff. One little push and I’ll fall. Fall for ever.”

“Maybe some day he’ll accept”

“I’ll never tell him.”

Her voice rose.

“Never!”

“Hush, it’s all right. We’ll find your little boy.”

“You’ll help me?”

“Need you ask?”

“You will?”

“I’m not leaving your side until you’re together with him.”

“Thank you,”

she said, and came to sit on the edge of the bed.

“You won’t tell Wyatt?”

“Not if you don’t want me to.”

“Promise?”

She touched his sleeve.

“Kathe, I want you, darling, want you with me for the rest of my life. Now, why on God’s destroyed earth would I give Wyatt any sort of information that might bring him back to you?”

“Say it.”

“I promise, darling.”

He pressed his own cheek to her wet cheek, inhaling the scent of her tears and fresh-washed silky hair. She had said she wasn’t the same, but he didn’t need to be told. For her the six years of warfare had been years of danger, of painful attrition and excruciating loneliness, of loss. He thought of her desperate single-handed crusade to rťain her child, her pride, her courage, the code of honour that had prevented her from saving herself by telling the Americans about CI4. As he put his arms around the fragile body an unendurable tenderness spread through him.

He brushed his mouth lightly on hers.

Her lips parted softly, and she allowed the kiss to continue. Emboldened by brandy, his heart galloping, he drew her down on to the deep indent of the bed. He pressed both palms between her shoulders, where the woollen blouse covered the scars, running his hands tenderly down the delicate curves of her back. How often had he dreamed of holding her like this, of physically manifesting his love?

As he cupped her buttocks, she tensed, pulling away. Though the sagging mattress made it difficult, she was no longer touching him anywhere.

Kathe?”

he whispered with such transparent supplication that additional words were unnecessary.

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‘Dearest Aubrey,”

she responded with the saddest smile.

“My very dearest cousin.”

He turned so she couldn’t see the tears that had sprung to his eyes.

“Sorry,”

he muttered.

“Too much brandy.”

He slept on the floor a second night.

IV

They were wakened before five. Novikov, walloping on the door, bawled that he had just received orders from a party bigwig to send a staff-car to Frankfurt.

As the ungainly Russian-made limousine bounced through the dark countryside, Kathe leaned in her corner and fell back asleep. Aubrey, his expression abstracted, stared out the window as the first faint silver spread and redness tinted the clouds. The sun had risen when Kathe awoke. They opened the food-basket Novikov’s girlfriend had supplied, taking out thickly buttered bread, salted sprats and a Thermos of jam-sweetened tea.

“I’ve been planning this out,”

he said softly with a significant glance at the driver’s back. Even taking into consideration the unlikely possibility that the goodnatured hard-drinking Novikov had arranged for a driver who was an NKVD agent fluent in English, the racketing engine would have precluded eavesdropping. Nevertheless CI4 had engraved caution in Aubrey’s brain cells.

“I’m in the American Zone surveying what’s salvageable of German ordnance. You’re Miss Catherine Osmond, one of our civilian staff, my secretary.”

“I won’t ask how you’ll get the required papers.”

She smiled at him over the Thermos cup. The harsh earlymorning light showed the earth-coloured shadows beneath his glasses and the way that his uniform collar stood away from his neck as if he had lost a lot of weight quickly.

“Aubrey, you’re the one who had pneumonia, aren’t you?”

He shrugged deprecatingly.

“A few hypodermics of penicillin and hey presto! Fit as a fiddle.”

“You look positively dreadful. You ought to be taking it easy, not having me inveigle you into going AWOL to tramp around Germany.”

With another meaningful glance at the block-like back of their driver’s head, he whispered:

“My orders are to tramp around looking for my people under whatever cover I can invent. And, as for inveiglers, you’re the one who needs to watch out. Kathe, I wasn’t all that drunk last night. I meant what I said.”

Flushing, she was filled with self-recriminations for letting that embrace continue but, oh, it had been so very long since anyone had held her with love.

“That’s why dragging you into this is rotten.”

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‘Wild horses wouldn’t keep me away. Now, tell me why you’re so positive the boy’s in Frankfurt?”

“Not actually in Frankfurt. The parents had a large country house, Groener said.”

“Groener? Oh, Sigi’s charming friend. You never mentioned you’d kept up with him.”

She gave a shudder.

“The Christmas of 1943 I ran into him again, a party up at GarmischPartenkirchen. Remember? I told you I knew someone involved in the Vergeltungswaffe. Groener was in charge of the slave labour.”

Aubrey looked out of the window. A shawled woman guided a plough. How had Kathe come to choose this blood-handed SS officer as standin father?

“Right ho,”

he said.

“Let’s assume he’s still in the vicinity. How’ll we find him?”

“Everybody has a ration-card.”

“I already discarded that,”

Aubrey murmured gently.

“You said you didn’t know his surname.”

Til sieve through the records for Erichs born on 10 April 1940!”

“Kathe, even if the Americans let us do that - and it’s a large if searching through all their files is impossible.”

“What do you think did all during the war?”

Aubrey stared out at the bleak Brandenburg farmland. Her shrill voice warned him to argue no more. He didn’t consider enquiring into her plans if in this maelstrom - the greatest mass migration in human history, as Downes had put it - by some miracle they found a five-and-a-half-year-old adopted boy named Erich. From personal experience, he knew that in order not to crack during a mission the single-minded focus must be an accomwshment, and not on what lay beyond.

He, however, had already determined that they must kidnap the boy and spirit him out of Germany. As for Kathe, either she could disappear with her child into the Latin American countries that asked no questions of Germans on the run, or she could send her son to England while she waited to be sorted out by the Military Government. A woman befriended by Hitler and cleared to see the top military secrets of the Third Reich would draw a long prison-term.