The Escape Page 10

  It was after that row that Gran came for me, explaining – in that non-specific grown-up way that didn’t clarify anything – that Dad was ‘unwell’ and Mum was ‘busy’, and I’d be staying at hers for a while. ‘A while’ meant every weekend, school holidays, and sometimes, when things were at their worst, during term time too.

  The fairground is buried in the middle of the forest, like a dream. Coloured lights are strung between trees. Despite the weather, and what’s going on at the Wall, there are a handful of customers staggering windblown and giggling between rides. Music crackles through the tannoy and the air smells of fried food. I take photographs: three shiny cars proceeding in collision-free circles on the dodgems; girls and boys clutching steering wheels of miniature fire engines and jeeps, eyes saucer-wide as they travel slow circles beneath the clanking carousel.

  After Dad was sectioned, it was Gran who used to take me to Ottery St Mary fair. But I was older then, and bundled into the back of her car with my schoolfriends, Karen and Julie. Gran didn’t come on the ghost train, she waited in the car park with a flask of coffee and Radio Three, whilst us three teenagers screamed and careered around. She didn’t mind waiting, she said, it was nice to see me having fun with my friends. I suppose she must have seen how much I missed Dad, and did what she could to compensate.

  Suddenly ravenous, I go to the open-air cafe for a bratwurst served up on a grey cardboard plate. I also have a lemonade – in East Germany even the lemonade is different, it’s not fizzy and clear, but lime-coloured and still, and actually tastes of lemons. A black leather punk with a Billy Idol sneer shouts something at a scruffy man with a bottle of vodka poking out of the pocket of his green parka. They begin to exchange insults, and neither notice as I take the picture of their brawl.

  As I snap their snarling mouths and scowling brows, I recall that row with my mother, the last time I saw her:

  Don’t preach to me, Miranda. He’s not welcome here, ever again. You have no idea what it was like living with that man. He is ill. He was a total nightmare to be with.

  At least he cared.

  What’s that supposed to mean?

  At least he tried to make it to my school plays and prize-givings. Yes, he was late, stumbling over chairs, a bit of an embarrassment, but at least he made the effort.

  One of us had to take some responsibility and bring some money in. I’m sorry I wasn’t always there, but my job was – is – demanding, and someone has to pay the bills.

  You worked late because you wanted to. You went to all those ‘important’ conferences because it was a way of avoiding your junkie nutcase husband and your disappointment of a daughter.

  How can you say that? How can you even think that?

  Because it’s true, Mum.

  And so it went. Dad’s been incarcerated for more than ten years now in a mental institution. But he never did anything wrong, not really. He was only ever a danger to himself. Now he’s on the right medication he should be allowed home, not locked up like a criminal. That’s what I tried to tell Mum last summer. We haven’t spoken since. I can’t say I miss her in my life. I was always closer to Gran anyway. She practically brought me up.

  I drain the last of my lemonade and head to the roller coaster. In the bull-nosed red car I clutch the cold steel of the safety bar, made shiny by thousands of expectant hands. I’m ratcheted up the ice-cream cone mountain, until I’m high above the treetops. In the distance, glimpsed through city blocks, the tip of the Telecoms Tower pierces the sunset. I grab a quick shot of the bloodshot Berlin skyline, the swooping roller coaster struts and the silhouetted profiles of my fellow riders.

  Here we are, this cargo of paying pleasurers, boys feigning cool, girls giggling, sons smiling expectantly at fathers. We’re poised on the brink, the point of no return.

  It would have been just after that row with Mum that I met Quill for the first time. He was covering a gallery preview for a piece in the colour supplement, but his photographer hadn’t turned up. I happened to be there with my Leica, and he co-opted me. It was serendipity, he said. It was fate. Within a week I’d pretty much moved into his riverside apartment. I’d never been out with someone so much older, wealthier, so much more experienced. With Quill it was all flashing lights and thrill-seeking, a multi-coloured surge of panic-love.

  Here we go: the sheer terror of descent. We scream, white-knuckle fists hanging on for dear life, the blur of colour through the tunnel, the two-second fall that fills your eyes with tears, reason abandoned in the whoosh, the crash that never comes.

  Except sometimes it does.

  The ride stammers still, and I touch the spot above my eyebrow as I wait for my car to be unlocked by the greasy-haired attendant. Sometimes in the roller coaster of a relationship the crash does come. And what do you do then?

  It’s time to get off the ride.

  Chapter 13

  January 1945, Nazi Germany

  Detta

  Her footfalls made barely a sound on the thickly carpeted stairwell. Detta felt like a thief, stealing soundlessly upstairs. But the front door was unlocked, and a medical orderly had waved her past the rows of groaning men on stretchers that cluttered the hallway.

  It was true, then, the field hospital had been moved here, which could only mean that the one in Oppeln was already in danger of being overrun – were the Russians as close as that? The air held the pungent-sweet mix of iodine and surgical spirits.

  Until now the music room had been reserved for the Moll family’s exclusive use, even as the Brigadier’s team swelled, and the Schloss was filled with grey uniforms, green telephones and cartons of manila files. But now the baby grand piano was shunted in the corner by the coat stand, boxes of medical supplies toppling on the varnished wooden lid. The music room was a hospital ward, and Frau Moll was banished to her bedroom like a naughty child. But which was her room? The medical orderly hadn’t known.

  A blonde-haired woman on horseback stared down from her gilt-framed oil painting at the top of the stairwell, looking bored of the blood-stained bandages and the scurrying medics in the hallway down below.

  Detta paused, unsure, gloved hand on the marble balustrade. There was a gallery leading off ahead of her: a line of closed doors to the left, and windows looking out onto the wooded parkland on the right. At the far end was a large window with a window seat. A couple were sitting there, silhouetted against the light like a cameo brooch in reverse. Perhaps she could ask them which one of the doors was Frau Moll’s room.

  The couple’s foreheads touched. The pale winter light shining between their chins and chests made a heart shape. Sweet, Detta thought, that army nurses and doctors could snatch moments of love, even in such circumstances as these. At the thought of the couple’s intimacy an image of the airman’s face flashed into her mind’s eye. When he looked at her she had that feeling, like walking in from a blizzard to the heart of a kitchen: too much, too soon – a dizzying rush. His eyes asked questions that she didn’t know how to answer. She blinked. Focus on why you’re here, Detta.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she called out, pulling her hand from the bannister and beginning to walk along the gallery. The couple pulled apart as she spoke. ‘I’m looking for Frau Moll.’

  ‘Detta?’ The woman started, jumping away from the man. It was only as she drew close that Detta finally recognized her.

  ‘Frau Moll?’

  ‘I wasn’t expecting you so early.’

  ‘No, but I couldn’t sleep last night, so I’ve been up for hours already.’

  ‘Well, who can sleep, with this –’ an artillery boom came on cue ‘– racket going on day and night. And as you can see we’ve had some disruptions here, too.’ From the doorway behind them came the muffled sound of Tchaikovsky on the gramophone and some high-pitched giggles.

  Detta looked at the man. He was young – younger than Frau Moll, but not by much, she realized. She had always thought of Frau Moll as a bit of a matron (she had three children, after all), but the colo
nel’s wife had married young, her high-ranking husband a full twenty-five years her senior. Thinking about it, she might not even be thirty. ‘This is Johann – Corporal Johann Mann.’ The corporal must have been in his mid-twenties, with deep brown eyes behind thick lashes.

  ‘Good to meet you.’ As they shook hands Frau Moll explained that Johann was the Brigadier’s driver, and had been tasked with helping the family move some of their things upstairs when the rest of the house was converted for hospital use.

  ‘And also sometimes there are things to discuss regarding household management and the brigadier sends Corporal Mann because he’s so busy himself with strategic matters,’ Frau Moll’s words came tumbling out.

  ‘Of course.’ Detta nodded. Johann excused himself and said goodbye to them both. Detta noticed that his accent was similar to her own mother’s, that tinge of Alsace-Lorraine in his voice. She saw how Frau Moll watched him walk off down the corridor, only pulling her eyes away when he was out of sight downstairs.

  ‘Won’t you come in?’ Frau Moll said then, opening the door behind her. Inside, the three Moll girls were dressed in tutus the same colour as the drifting snowscape outside. Swan Lake played on the gramophone. The air was warm from the fire in the hearth, and smelled of wood smoke and lavender. It was exactly as you’d expect the master bedroom of a Schloss to be: four-poster bed, Chinese silk counterpane, dressing table with a triptych of mirrors and rows of crystal scent and make-up bottles. A string of pink pearls hung from one of the mirrors and pattered against the glass with every booming vibration. Detta noticed her old doll in the wicker pram in the corner by the cheval mirror. ‘Girls, look who’s here!’ And Detta was caught up in hugs and kisses and demands to watch their ballet. Tchaikovsky’s violins sawed on in the background, jumping occasionally when there was a distant thud of artillery or a nearby thump of an overenthusiastic pas de chat.

  ‘This is my music,’ Detta told them after the display, explaining how her mother had been hoping to train as a ballerina in Paris, until the last war had ruined her dreams. ‘This was my mother’s favourite ballet, and that’s how I got my name.’

  ‘Detta?’ The eldest girl, Lisl, looked at her as if she were stupid. ‘There’s no Detta in Swan Lake, silly.’

  ‘Not Detta. Odette – my real name is Odette.’

  ‘Oh. And are you going to tell us some French stories again today, Fräulein Odette?’ The three girls held hands, gazing up expectantly at her, looking like an oversized daisy chain: blonde curls surrounded by white tutus like petals. ‘Not today, I’m afraid. I just came to ask your mother for something.’ Detta turned her head to include Frau Moll, stood with one hand on the windowsill, looking out over the white landscape. Her lips were pressed together, as if she’d just blotted her lipstick – or she was withholding a secret. As Detta watched, Frau Moll turned away from the light. ‘Remember yesterday when you said if there was anything you could do?’ Detta said. Frau Moll nodded. ‘Well, there is. I need some medicines.’

  ‘Are you ill, Fräulein Detta?’ Helga, the middle child, bit her plump lip.

  ‘No, they’re not for me, don’t worry.’

  ‘Your mother?’ Frau Moll said. But Detta didn’t answer. She wasn’t going to lie.

  ‘I need charcoal tablets, camphor ointment, sulphur powder, methylated spirits, and bandages,’ Detta said. ‘It’s quite urgent.’

  Frau Moll opened her mouth as if she were about to say something, but then closed it again. She rubbed her hands together as if they were cold, even though it was quite warm in the room, with a fire blazing in the hearth. ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ she said, and left, closing the door behind her. Tchaikovsky came to a scratchy halt, and the guns boomed away beyond the treeline.

  Whilst she waited for Frau Moll to return, Detta chatted a little with the girls in French. They’d remembered the story from the day before, and they said their mother had been testing them. ‘She’s making us call her Maman instead of Mutti,’ Gisela said, blinking her blue eyes.

  ‘Corporal Johann speaks French, too,’ Helga said. ‘But he doesn’t tell us fairy stories, like you do.’

  ‘He’s been teaching French to Mutti – to Maman,’ Lisl corrected herself.

  ‘Has he? That’s nice,’ Detta said, thinking of Frau Moll and the corporal sitting in the window seat together, and of the corporal’s Alsace accent. Frau Moll’s husband was captured by the British three years ago, and he’d been away at war a year already before that. The youngest child, Gisela, was only a babe in arms when he left. Why was Frau Moll so keen to learn French, at a time like this? Was she betraying her husband?

  Detta suddenly recalled the words of the man on the train from Oppeln: could betrayal mean escape?

  She was roused from her thoughts by the door opening. Frau Moll was back. She brought the basket that Detta had left behind with the eggs yesterday. It was full of medicines. ‘I put in aspirin, too,’ Frau Moll said. ‘But you can’t leave with it like this, wait . . .’ She opened the wardrobe and pulled out an orange silk embroidered shawl and put it over the top of the packages, before handing the basket to Detta. ‘There.’

  Detta thanked her and promised the Moll girls she’d come back as soon as she had time. Frau Moll said she’d see her out, ‘just in case’, gesturing to the stolen first aid supplies hidden under the shawl. The two women walked back downstairs together. Another ambulance arrived as they reached the front door, and they had to stand to one side in the vestibule. Detta tried not to look, but there was the dirty-sweet scent of blood and burnt flesh as the stretchers were rushed past.

  ‘Thank you again,’ Detta said.

  Frau Moll cleared her throat. ‘The SS were here, first thing. There were reports of escaped terrorfliegers in the village.’

  ‘Yes, I heard that, too. I was in church when they searched it,’ Detta said. Don’t make me lie, she thought. Please don’t make me lie. She, too, cleared her throat. ‘The girls tell me you’ve been taking French lessons from Corporal Mann,’ she said, pulling her scarf over her head and shifting the basket to her left arm.

  ‘Fräulein Detta,’ Frau Moll said, and she reached out then, touched Detta on the cheek as she’d done the day before, but this time she kept her fingertips there a moment longer, and scanned Detta’s face. Detta looked back into the anxious grey eyes and said nothing. Frau Moll sighed. ‘In times such as these, only God can judge us,’ she said, at last, and let her hand drop to her side.

  There had been a lull in the cacophony of guns, but it started up again then. Detta and Frau Moll mouthed their goodbyes through the thunder.

  Detta began to make her way down the steps, thinking of the airman, and feeling again that discomforting tug inside her as she imagined him waiting for her in the manse.

  Tom

  ‘Close but no cigar, Fritz,’ Tom muttered to himself as he pulled the skin on his cheek taut. The razor blade was steady in his hands. He felt – how did he feel? Not safe, not that. Safe was a flabby word, comforting as a steamed pudding. He was unlikely to feel safe until he was in a Lyons Corner House on a drizzly June afternoon. What he felt now was more like it had been when the crew had managed to offload, dodge the flak and were on a smooth home run: alive – more alive than he’d felt in years, he thought, scraping off the stubble and the grime with the edge of the blade. Alive and a bit cocksure. His half-sudded reflection smiled back at him in the glass: careful now, sunshine.

  He thought back to how it had happened: staggering back in the biting darkness, eastwards along the road they’d come. By the time they’d reached the village there were flickers of dawn on the horizon. You didn’t have to be a vicar’s son to have faith in a church, but it helped. They’d been almost at the door when that truck careered up the main road, and they’d had to duck for cover behind a gravestone and a mound of fresh earth, so newly dug that there wasn’t even any snow topping it. Lucky the priest had seen them as they hadn’t made it as far as the church. If they’d hidden there, the SS wo
uld have discovered them for certain, the girl said.

  The girl: Detta. Tom squinted at his reflection and shaved off another line of stubble. There was that swimming feeling when he looked at her, like dèjà vu. Did she feel it too, he wondered? Tom’s body ached for rest, but his mind was racing as if he’d swallowed one of those wakey-wakey pills they used to take before sorties.

  A huge thud, then, as one of the big guns went off in the distance. Tom’s hand slipped and he nicked his cheek. He dropped the razor in the sink, and grabbed for something to blot the blood.

  That was when he heard the knock at the door – the SS, back to resume their search? He sprinted across the room to his hiding place.

  Chapter 14

  November 1989, East Berlin

  Miranda

  Grunau. The name is inscribed in angular 1930s black capitals on white metal oblongs nailed to the station walls. I need to get to 109 Street, where a woman called Frau Karger lives. Gran says she’ll be happy to put me up until my passport’s ready. The S-bahn guard wears a navy blue peaked cap with a blood-red band. She points me in the direction of the tram stop across the road. The street is wide, clean and almost empty of cars. Overhead lines twitch with electricity as a tram the colour of vanilla ice cream clatters to a halt.

  There is no conductor on board, just a red-lipsticked driver, chewing gum, and I can’t see a ticket machine anywhere. The men – it is all men – in front of me slide their tickets into a grey metal puncher and beat a hole with the flat of their hand. There is an assumption of honesty here. Feeling like a criminal I slink into a seat at the front, but nobody seems to notice or care that I have dodged my fare. The tram runs parallel to the road and then veers off sideways through a forest of bare silver birch, pale and limb-like as we pass.

  I get off at the first stop and walk along the tree-lined road. Down one side I glimpse an expanse of water, pewter in the late afternoon light. Youngsters in grey tracksuits jog down the centre of the street, pausing periodically to do push-ups or star jumps. A man with a moustache stands by one of the boathouses, giving blasts on his whistle and gesticulating. I stop one of the joggers to ask directions. Running on the spot, she points out the way. I thank her and cross the road.