This Was A Man (53 page)

Emma would be among the last to read the manuscript, when it was in proof form. Everyone else would have to wait until publication day before they could get their hands on a copy.

Harry had planned to spend a relaxing weekend once the book was finished. On Saturday afternoon, he and Giles would drive over to the Memorial Ground and watch Bristol play their old rivals
Bath. In the evening, he would take Emma to the Bristol Old Vic to see Patricia Routledge in
Come for the Ride
, followed by dinner at Harvey’s.

On Sunday, he and Emma had been invited by Giles and Karin to lunch at Barrington Hall. They would later attend evensong, when he would spend most of the sermon wondering which page his three
readers were on. As for an unbroken night’s sleep, that would not be back on the agenda until all three had called and given their opinion.

When the phone rang, Harry’s first thought was that it was too early for any of them to have finished the book. He picked it up to hear Giles’s familiar voice on the other end of the
line.

‘Sorry to mess you about, Harry, but I won’t be able to join you for rugby on Saturday, and we’ll also have to postpone lunch on Sunday.’ Harry didn’t need to ask
why, because an explanation followed immediately. ‘Walter Scheel called earlier. The East Germans have opened the floodgates at last, and their citizens are pouring across the border.
I’m calling from Heathrow. Karin and I are about to board a flight to Berlin. We’re hoping to get there before they start knocking the wall down, because she and I plan to be part of
the demolition crew.’

‘That’s the most wonderful news,’ said Harry. ‘Karin must be delighted. Tell her I’m envious, because when people ask where were you on the day the wall came down,
you’ll be able to tell them. And if you can, bring me back a piece.’

‘I’m going to have to take an extra suitcase,’ said Giles. ‘So many people have made the same request.’

‘Just remember, you’ll be witnessing history, so before you go to bed each night, be sure to write down everything you’ve experienced that day. Otherwise you’ll have
forgotten the details by the time you wake up.’

‘I’m not sure we’ll be going to bed,’ said Giles.

‘May I ask why you’re carrying a hammer in your bag, sir?’ asked a vigilant security officer at Heathrow.

‘I’m hoping to break down a wall,’ Giles replied.

‘I wish I could join you,’ said the officer, before zipping up the overnight bag.

When Giles and Karin climbed aboard the Lufthansa plane half an hour later, it was as if they had gatecrashed a party rather than joined a group of passengers who would normally be fastening
their seatbelts prior to receiving safety instructions from a zealous air hostess. Once the flight had taken off, champagne corks were popping, and passengers chatted to their neighbours as if they
were old friends.

Karin held on to Giles’s hand throughout the entire flight, and she must have said, ‘I just can’t believe it’ a dozen times, still fearful that by the time they landed in
Berlin, the party would be over and everything would have returned to normal.

After two hours that seemed like an eternity the plane finally touched down, and the moment it had taxied to a halt, the passengers leapt out of their seats. The usual orderly queue that the
Germans are so famed for disintegrated, to be replaced by an undisciplined charge as the passengers rushed down the steps, across the tarmac and into the airport. Tonight, no one would be standing
still.

Once they had cleared customs, Giles and Karin headed out of the terminal in search of a taxi, only to discover a heaving mass of people with the same thought in mind. However, to Giles’s
surprise, the line moved quickly, as three, four, or even five passengers piled into each cab, all of them heading in the same direction. When they finally reached the front of the queue, Giles and
Karin joined a German family who didn’t need to tell the driver where they wanted to go.

‘Englishman, why you come to Berlin?’ asked the young man squeezed up against Giles.

‘I’m married to an East German,’ he explained, placing an arm around Karin’s shoulder.

‘How did your wife escape?’

‘It’s a long story.’ Karin came to Giles’s rescue, and it took her three slow miles of unrelenting traffic, speaking in her native tongue, before she came to the end of
her tale, which was greeted with enthusiastic applause. The young man gave Giles a new look of respect, although he hadn’t understood a word his wife had said.

With a mile to go, the taxi driver gave up and stopped in the middle of a road that had been turned into a dance floor. Giles was the first out of the car and took out his wallet to pay the
driver, who said simply, ‘Not tonight,’ before swinging round and heading back to the airport; another man who would tell his grandchildren about the role he’d played the night
the wall came down.

Hand in hand, Giles and Karin weaved their way through the exuberant crowd towards the Brandenburg Gate, which neither of them had seen since the afternoon Karin had escaped from East Berlin
almost two decades ago.

As they drew closer to the great monument, built by King Frederick William II of Prussia, ironically as a symbol of peace, they could see ranks of armed soldiers lined up on the far side. Giles
thought about Harry’s suggestion that he should write down everything he witnessed, for fear of forgetting the moment, and wondered what his brother-in-law would have considered the
appropriate word to describe the expressions on the soldiers’ faces. Not anger, not fear, not sadness; they were simply bemused. Like everyone dancing around them, their lives had been
changed in a moment.

Karin stared at the soldiers from a distance, still wondering if it was all too good to be true. Would one of them recognize her, and try to drag her back across the border even now?

Although a united people were celebrating all around her, she remained unconvinced that life wouldn’t return to normal when the sun rose. As if Giles could read her thoughts, he took her
in his arms and said, ‘It’s all over, my darling. You can turn the page. The nightmare has finally come to an end.’

An East German officer appeared from nowhere and barked out an order. The soldiers shouldered their weapons and marched off, which caused an even louder roar of approval. While everyone around
them danced, drank and sang ecstatically, Giles and Karin made their way slowly through the crowd towards the graffiti-covered wall, on top of which hundreds of revellers were dancing, as if it
were the grave of a hated foe.

Karin stopped and touched Giles’s arm when she spotted an old man hugging a young woman. It was clear that, like so many people on that unforgettable night, they were finally being
reunited after twenty-eight years apart. Laughter, joy and celebration were mingled with tears, as the old man clung on to the granddaughter he had thought he would never meet.

‘I want to stand on top of the wall,’ declared Karin.

Giles looked up at the twelve-foot-high monument commemorating failure, on which hundreds of young people were having a party. He decided it wasn’t the moment to remind his wife that he
was nearly seventy. This was a night for shedding years.

‘Great idea,’ he said.

When they reached the foot of the wall, Giles suddenly knew what Edmund Hillary must have felt when faced with the final ascent of Everest, but two young Sherpas, who had just descended, cupped
their hands and made the first rung of a ladder, so he could take their place on the summit. He couldn’t quite make it, but two other young revellers reached down and yanked him up to join
them.

Karin joined him a moment later and they stood, side by side, staring across the border. She was still unwilling to believe she wouldn’t wake up and find it was all a dream. Some East
Germans were attempting to climb up from the other side, and Karin stretched down to offer a young girl a hand. Giles took a photograph of the two women, who’d never met before, hugging each
other as if they were old friends. A photograph that would end up on their mantelpiece in Smith Square to commemorate the day East and West returned to sanity.

From their lofty position, Giles and Karin watched a flood of people flowing downstream to freedom, while the guards, who only the night before would have shot anyone attempting to cross the
border, just stood and stared, unable to comprehend what was happening all around them.

Karin was finally beginning to believe that the genie had escaped from the communist bottle, but it took her another hour to summon up the courage to say to Giles, ‘I want to show you
where I lived.’

Giles found the descent from the wall almost as difficult as clambering up it had been, but with the help of several outstretched hands, he somehow managed it, though he needed to catch his
breath once his feet had touched the ground.

Karin took his hand and they battled against a one-way stampede of human traffic as she led him slowly towards the border post. Thousands of men, women and children, carrying bags, suitcases,
even pushing prams laden with their life’s possessions, were heading in one direction, leaving their old lives behind, clearly unwilling to consider returning in case they should find
themselves trapped once again.

After they’d passed under the red and white barrier and left the West, Giles and Karin joined a trickle of citizens who were heading in the same direction as themselves. Karin hesitated,
but only for a moment, when they passed the second barrier and found themselves on East German soil.

There were no border guards, no snarling Alsatians, no thin-lipped officials to check that their visas were in order. Just an eerie, unoccupied wilderness.

There were also no taxi queues, as there were no taxis. They passed a little group of East Germans kneeling in silent prayer, in memory of those who’d sacrificed their lives to make today
possible.

The two of them continued to weave their way through the crowds that were melting away with each step they took. It was well over an hour before Karin finally stopped and pointed towards a group
of identical grey tenement buildings that stood in a grim line, reminding her of a past life she’d almost forgotten.

‘This is where you lived?’

She looked up and said, ‘The nineteenth floor, second window on the left is where I spent the first twenty-four years of my life.’

Giles counted until he reached a tiny curtainless window on the nineteenth floor, second from the left, and couldn’t help recalling where he’d spent the first twenty-four years of
his life: Barrington Hall, a townhouse in London, the castle in Scotland in which he spent a few weeks every summer, and then of course there was always the villa in Tuscany should he need a
break.

‘Do you want to go up and see who’s living there now?’ he asked.

‘No,’ said Karin firmly. ‘I want to go home.’

Without another word, she turned her back on the towering blocks of grey concrete and joined those of her countrymen who were heading towards the West, to experience a freedom that she had never
taken for granted.

She didn’t once look back as they walked towards the border, although a moment of anxiety returned as they approached the crossing point, but it quickly evaporated when she saw some of the
guards, jackets unbuttoned, collars loosened, dancing with their newly made friends, no longer from East or West, now simply Germans.

Once they had passed under the barrier and were back in the West, they found young and old alike attempting, with sledgehammers, crowbars, chisels and even a nail file, to dismantle the
800-mile-long monstrosity piece by piece. The physical symbol of what Winston Churchill had described as the Iron Curtain.

Giles unzipped his bag, took out the hammer and handed it to Karin.

‘You first, my darling.’

1990–1992

‘I
T
’
S THAT TIME OF
the year,’ said Emma as she raised a glass of mulled wine.

‘When we all throw our toys out of the pram,’ said Giles, ‘and refuse to join in with any of your games?’

‘It’s that time of the year,’ repeated Emma, ignoring her brother, ‘when we raise a glass in memory of Joshua Barrington, founder of the Barrington Shipping
Line.’

‘Who made a profit of thirty pounds, four shillings and tuppence in his first year, but promised his board he would make more in the future,’ Sebastian reminded everyone.

‘Thirty-three pounds, four shillings and tuppence, actually,’ said Emma. ‘And he did make more, a lot more.’

‘He must have turned in his grave,’ said Sebastian, ‘when we sold the company to Cunard for a cool forty-eight million.’

‘Mock you may,’ said Emma, ‘but we should be grateful to Joshua for all he did for this family.’

‘I agree,’ said Harry, who stood, raised his glass and said, ‘To Joshua.’

‘To Joshua,’ declared the rest of the family.

‘And now to business,’ said Emma, putting down her glass.

‘It’s New Year’s Eve,’ protested Giles, ‘and you seem to forget you’re in my house, so I think we’ll have a year off.’