The Escape Read online

  I blink gritty eyelids and glance up at the looming Oderturm as I continue my forced march, feeling the hot rush of carbon monoxide on my legs as I cross the junction. Office blocks have given way to shops on this side of the street. In one window tall stacks of canned vegetables look like 1920s’ Manhatten skyscrapers. A butcher, sleeves rolled up, sweeps the day’s detritus onto the kerb: beige wood shavings with spots of reddish-brown dried blood. I hear him breathing heavily, pausing to lean on his broom handle to watch me pass. Other shops have brown frontages, already shuttered up for the night. The street looks like a sepia photograph. I’m reminded suddenly of why I’m here: the postcard, the necklace, my mission for my grandmother. I can still do all of that tomorrow, after I’ve slept. I’m too exhausted to make plans right now.

  A sudden wind, a storm’s messenger, whips litter from the street. Panicked pigeons whirl upwards, a page of newsprint clings briefly to my legs then flutters away. Cigarette butts and sweet wrappings are mini whirlwinds in the gutter. The sky darkens, and icy water slews down, soaking me in an instant. I am half blinded as the torrent beats against my face. My clothes glue to my body, and I start to shiver, slowing my walk to a stagger. Cars with dipped headlights patrol past like sharks circling a sinking craft.

  At last I sense an open space to my right, beyond a line of railings. This must be Brunnenplatz. I wipe droplets from my eyes and look across an acre of concrete. Across the square, a red-brick church’s war-ravaged facade is like the face of a badly burnt veteran. In front, a line of fountains spew a wave of redundant water onto the shiny cement. And there, beside the pointless water feature, is a huge modern block. Emblazoned in stark black lettering above the entrance: Hotel Stadt Frankfurt.

  I have just begun to walk towards it when I hear a voice calling my name, a voice I recognize.

  Chapter 29

  January 1945, Liberated Germany

  Detta

  The sunset was a glimpse of heaven: crimson spilled into azure, the snowy fields rose and amethyst. But the foreground was hell: the shattered, spiky outlines of broken buildings – doors gaping, windows blasted. The ground underfoot was a burgundy sludge, half-frozen mud and blood mingling on the verge. Bodies had been shunted away to make way for the continual stream of vehicles and horse wagons spilling military supplies. Better to look up at the aching beauty of the skies.

  The truck idled, puffing out black fumes. Detta waited with Tom and Gordon as the Frenchmen got on. They’d tried to usher her ahead, as one of the few women in the group. How odd it seemed, the veneer of manners, of civility, when all around was this inhumanity: the tangle of brown-grey carcasses that still littered the storm drains, mud, blood and torn uniforms mangled into a frozen mess. It was impossible to tell which uniform it was, whose side each discarded corpse belonged to, and yet, amongst all this, they clung to their manners, like a life raft from a sunken ship. She’d declined their offer, preferring to stay with Tom.

  ‘I don’t see why we’re still waiting,’ Gordon said. ‘If we hang about too long we’ll get left here, and then we’ll really be scuppered.’ He inched towards the tailgate.

  ‘You do what you want, pal, but I’m not leaving without something official. The major promised us a document to ensure safe passage.’

  ‘But I don’t see what difference—’

  ‘We’ve got no idea what lies ahead. There’s a thousand miles between us and the Black Sea. We can’t risk leaving without it.’

  Detta felt Tom’s arm tighten round her shoulder as he spoke. It was for her benefit, this waiting for the document that the Russian major had promised, she knew. Tom and Gordon had their RAF uniforms to keep them safe: Russian allies. But she was just a girl, speaking French with a German accent. She needed something official to secure her safe passage.

  The last Frenchman was clambering up the tailgate and into the back of the truck. The street, still thronged with military traffic – the tanks had all passed through, but now it was supply vehicles stuffed with ammunition, and horse-drawn carts piled high with food and blankets, bulging out from the seams of ripped tarpaulin. The truck jerked forward, the driver impatient to make a start before nightfall. Gordon began to haul himself in, muttering that they should get going, not take any chances.

  Detta could still hear the booming guns, but now they came from the opposite direction, not from Oppeln, but from Breslau. In just one day, everything had been reversed.

  The truck driver leant out of the cab window and shouted something in Russian. The engine revved. Frenchmen began to pull up the tailgate drawbridge-like behind Gordon, but he tried to stop them. An angry struggle had just begun when the tall Russian major appeared, his uniform incongruously immaculate, his boots polished to a high shine that reflected the dying daylight. As he approached, Tom’s arm gripped her tighter still.

  ‘Ah, what have we here?’ the Russian spoke in German.

  ‘Je suis française,’ Detta answered in French. ‘Je m’appelle Odette Bruncelle.’

  ‘Enchante, mademoiselle,’ he said, giving a brief bow and a flashing smile before pulling a piece of paper from his breast pocket. He opened it up to show Tom. It had Russian writing and was covered with the stamps of Soviet officialdom. Tom reached out with his free hand to take it. The officer let go of the document, but kept his feline eyes fixed on Detta, and continued to smile his porcelain smile.

  ‘Spasibo,’ Tom said.

  ‘You are welcome,’ the Russian replied in English.

  ‘For God’s sake, get in,’ Gordon’s voice interrupted, shoving the tailgate back down and holding out a hand. But just as their fingers connected, Detta pulled away.

  She ran the few paces back along the road to the old beech tree in front of the manse. The whole world throbbed and she laid out a hand to steady herself. The bark was rough through her gloved fingertips, the trunk still warm from where it had been fire-blasted the night before. She looked through the empty, blackened branches, up the street, eyes searching between the rolling wheels, the tramping feet.

  There: the glimpse of dark green cloth against the churned-up grey sludge, and the black one beside it: the hump of two bodies in the ditch beside the junction. They were still where she’d seen them earlier, half-crushed by tank tracks. She hadn’t gone right up close: she couldn’t trust herself not to break down, howl out her grief in her mother tongue, give herself away.

  Father Richter and Mother, both lost, just like the Frenchmen said.

  Detta clung to the tree, telling herself that her mother was much more than that discarded mass of flesh and cloth, left to rot in the wayside ditch. She told herself that Mother’s soul would be somewhere else, no longer contained within her broken body. Perhaps she’d be with Papa, at peace. And Lossen, the village she’d known all her life, the village from the picture postcard, no longer inhabited these shattered, burnt ruins. Even were she to stay, there was nothing left for her here: no mother, no home, nothing. That’s what she told herself, but she still felt like a coward and a traitor, for what she was about to do. With shaking hands she reached up and undid the chain at her neck: it had an inscription in German, identified her as German. She had to let it go.

  Inside the hole in the trunk was a mixture of old charcoal and leaf mold, warm as proving dough from the fire that had ripped through the tree the night before. She dug her fingertips down, deeper, deeper, leaving the necklace there, hidden.

  ‘Detta!’ She heard Tom calling her. She let go of the tree trunk and stumbled back to the shouting voices and the waiting truck.

  She scrambled up, Tom behind her, and the tailgate clunked shut. The truck revved, jerked forward, and they were gone, barrelling along, swerving and veering to avoid the endless line of Red Army traffic coming the other way. The Oppeln road cut a line between the quartered evening sky: virgin-blue on one side, blood-red on the other, the sun a burning sphere, sinking down beyond the devastated landscape. Behind them she could still just make out the Deutches Haus – ripped open,
roof stoved in. ‘Auf Wiedersehen,’ she whispered into the icy wind – see you again. But even as she voiced it, she knew it to be a lie.

  Home had gone, along with the girl she used to be, and there would be no going back.

  Tom

  Was it euphoria he felt or self-loathing? Feelings ping-ponged in his chest as they drove ever further away from Nazi Germany. Distant guns volleyed like arguing deities. It was almost dark when they turned off the main road. The rutted wagon track ran alongside a wood: spiky outlines of pine trees jabbed into a dark sky prickled with stars. He hadn’t heard her cry, not once, but as the truck turned, her hair brushed against his cheek, icicle-stiff with frozen tears.

  The truck jolted on, and Gordon reached out and pointed out bustling figures, two with the probing antennae of machine-guns, soon swallowed up by the forest. Within moments there was the rat-a-tat of gunfire from the trees: Russian soldiers saving themselves the trouble of accommodating German POWs, as the push into Hitler’s Reich continued.

  The freezing air sliced through them, and he rubbed at Detta’s back through the thick fur of her coat, to try to keep her warm, but still she shivered so much that her whole body spasmed. She hadn’t spoken anything since she reappeared at the barracks this morning, except the repeated sentences: ‘Je suis française. Je m’appelle Odette Bruncelle.’ It was the Frenchmen who’d told him about her mother. When he’d spoken to her about it, she’d blinked and looked away.

  It’s my fault, he thought. They could all have got away together safely in the ambulance if she hadn’t come to see me.

  The truck came to a skidding stop on the riverbank. They all stumbled forward with the momentum, but they were packed so tightly into the truck bed that nobody fell. Tom knew that at any moment they’d have to get out. They’d have to slither and stagger across the icy expanse of river, and he’d have to help Detta and Gordon. Could he do that with both of them? He prepared himself mentally for the cold and the effort.

  As they regained their balance Tom saw that the driver had got out of the cab and ambled over to where the stubbled white snow met the tarnished vista of the frozen Oder. He took something from his pocket, the size of an apple, fumbled with it briefly, then hurled it out onto the ice. There was a pause, then the burst of light and sound as the grenade exploded. The driver turned, shouting something in Russian, and gesticulating. He got back in the cab, the engine growled and the truck slid down towards the river. Surely they’d stop at the edge? No, the wheels kept turning. The ice was thick but thick enough to hold the weight of a truck-load of people?

  Tom held Detta close as they eased onto the ice. The driver was careful in his recklessness, the wheels took them slower than walking pace, gently spreading the burden of the weight. Some of the Frenchmen were praying, softly, under their breaths.

  They must have been halfway across, right out in the centre of the flow when it came, as much a reverberation as a noise: a chilling crack that started beneath them and spread fast and wide across the ice. ‘Fuck,’ said Gordon. Tom held his breath. The truck snailed forwards. The frozen river creaked and shifted like ship’s timbers, but it held. At last they scraped their way up the far bank. Tom exhaled.

  Voices broke out. Relieved laughter rippled through. The driver shouted something in Russian from the cab window as they sped up and careered across the snowy ground. A Frenchman nudged him, said something he didn’t understand. Tom looked at Gordon, who shrugged. The Frenchman repeated the sentence, slowly and loudly for his benefit, but it still made no sense. He felt Detta move her shoulders, releasing his grasp – he hadn’t realized quite how tightly he’d held her on the river crossing. ‘The driver says he’s going to take us all the way to Oppeln tonight, to the refugee processing centre,’ she said, in English.

  ‘Oppeln?’

  ‘Yes, it’s a big town near here. I work there . . .’ He heard the catch in her voice as she self-corrected. ‘I mean, I used to,’ she said. ‘I used to know someone who worked there. But I don’t know her anymore.’

  Chapter 30

  November 1989, Frankfurt an der Oder, East Germany

  Miranda

  ‘My sleepless beauty!’ I hear the distant voice shout. I look round, but at first I can’t see anyone, just the high buildings on three sides. ‘Miranda, it’s me!’ I see him, then, sprinting round the corner: long strides, black hair blown back off his face, looking like a hero should look: strong, fit, determined and handsome. I put out a hand and touch the metal rail that runs between the square and the pavement, wet-slick and freezing. Quill is almost upon me: mouth parted, panting, white teeth. ‘The Stasi bastards said they were letting you out of the main entrance, not the back door. I’ve had to run to catch you.’ He is here. I am in his arms. He is warm and strong as a fairy-tale prince. ‘It’s okay. It’s over now.’ His voice in my ear, his lips on my cheek. ‘Dieter told me about their interrogation methods. You must be all-in, my poor baby. I’ve booked us a hotel room. You can sleep as long as you want.’

  ‘Dieter?’

  ‘You didn’t realize he was one of them? Old Dieter’s been a Stasi informant for years. News about you got passed along the lines – some old biddy in Grunau said she’d seen you with a neighbour. We would have found you earlier if there hadn’t been all the other palaver going on with the Wall. I wish I’d got to you sooner. I’m so sorry.’ He brushes my hair away from the bruise on my temple. ‘I’m sorry about everything. But I’m here to take care of you now.’

  He is my buttress. Without him I don’t think I can stand. I sink into him, feel the rub of his stubble against my face. The raindrops are suddenly warm: rain? No, tears – Quill’s tears coursing from his eyes and running down my own cheek. ‘I’m sorry,’ he mutters. ‘I’m so sorry. I love you so much. It will never happen again, I promise.’ His words stream with his tears as he holds me fast. ‘I love you,’ he repeats, lifting me like a child into his arms. My head is against his jacket, and I close my eyes and let him carry me away.

  What was it that Stasi officer said just before he released me? The guilty ones merely cry and repeat their stock phrases.

  In the hotel lobby I struggle from his arms. He kisses the top of my head as I break free. ‘I need to phone home,’ I say, pointing at the telephone on the reception desk.

  ‘Of course. You’ll need to let your mum know you’re okay. Charge it to room 179. I’ll see you in the restaurant, yeah?’ He blows a kiss in my direction as he turns away. If he’d ever listened to me when I talked about my family, my life, he’d know that the last person I’m going to call is my mother.

  The receptionist is sullen-beautiful: puce lipstick and harsh blusher like a slap around the cheeks. She looks me up and own. I must look a fright: dirty hair, clothes plastered wetly, and the glazed stare of the sleep-deprived. She must wonder what I’m doing with the handsome foreigner from room 179. I would wonder it myself, if I had the ability to think straight.

  I tell her I need to make an international call. She shrugs assent, lifts the cream telephone receiver, jabs a shiny red nail on one of the buttons, and pushes it across the fake marble Formica towards me. I dial the number and wait while it rings on and on, willing Gran to pick up. When a man’s voice answers I think I must have misdialed.

  But just before I hang up: ‘Is that Miranda?’ the voice says.

  ‘Yes – who’s this?’

  ‘It’s Keith. I’m a friend of your mum’s.’

  ‘What are you doing at Gran’s flat?’

  ‘Sorry, Helen asked me to pick up some of her mother’s things to take to the hospital.’

  ‘The what?’

  There is hissing on the line and I have to press the receiver hard against my ear to hear him properly.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Miranda.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  In the pause before he replies I see a swarm of uniformed figures push in through the glass hotel doors. The uniforms are different colours: grey, green, brown, and an indeterminate shade so
mewhere between all three. They have peaked caps with gold braid and shiny epaulettes. I see the receptionist simper and tuck a strand of yellow hair behind her ear as they approach the desk. I shift to the side to make space for them. They smell of damp wool and stale smoke.

  ‘I know she wanted to tell you herself, but she said, if you called, to tell you there’s no need to rush back. Your mum knows how important this trip of yours is to you, and she didn’t want you to cut it short for no good reason.’

  ‘For no good reason?’

  ‘Yes, um,’ he clears his throat and continues. ‘I’m so sorry about your grandmother, Miranda. Your mum did say you two are very close.’

  It is even harder to hear with a muddled conversation in German and Russian going on between the receptionist and the military men beside me.

  ‘What?’

  There is a click and the hissing on the line suddenly clears. ‘Your grandmother’s had a stroke. She’s in hospital. I’m so sorry that you have to hear it like this.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ I say. The effort of controlling my emotion makes my voice sound forced, robotic. ‘Thank you for passing on the news, Keith.’ I listen to this unknown man’s breathing at the other end of the line for a second, then he repeats how very sorry he is, and how I should try not to worry, and I hang up.

  Gran has always been there for me. When things went wrong with Dad, with Mum, with Quill, she’s always there to help. Or was. Now she is ill, she’s the one who needs me, and I can’t get home to see her.

  Quill waves and gets up as I thread my clumsy way through the restaurant to our table. He holds out my chair and tucks me in. Even though it is far warmer in here than outside, I’m still shivering. He takes off his leather jacket and drapes it round my shoulders. ‘Don’t worry, baby. I’m here to look after you, now,’ he says, sitting down opposite and fixing me with his green eyes.