The Escape Read online

  She walked over to the pram and ran her hand along the wickerwork. Nineteen was far too old to still have a doll in your bedroom. Or a book of fairy tales, she thought, looking at the line of books on the mantlepiece, with the Perrault collection at the far end. She thought of the Moll girls. A gift might distract them. They could read one of the fairy stories in French and then learn the main words: sleep; forest; prince; kiss; wake; love; marriage. She took the book from the shelf and put it into the pram with the doll, then put the basketwork hamper of clothes on top. Another thudding bang came, then, and she jumped, knocking the pram. The doll tipped out onto the rag rug. Detta shivered, remembering the upturned baby carriage on the station platform. Was that only a week ago? Where was that little girl now, she wondered, as she gathered up the things and lugged them downstairs.

  ‘Detta, where are you off to?’ Mother’s voice drifted from the kitchen.

  ‘I’m going up to the Schloss. Frau Moll wants me to teach some French to the girls, and I’m taking them my doll to play with.’

  Her mother appeared from the kitchen doorway, in her grey woollen dress, with layers of burgundy and navy cardigans over the top – the thinner she got, the more she felt the cold, it seemed. ‘Can you drop this off with Father Richter on the way?’ She held out an old shoe box, tied with string. It was surprisingly heavy. ‘The silver,’ Mother said, without being asked. ‘Your christening things, the candlesticks, the teaspoons and cake forks from our wedding set, the bonbonnière, and the rose bowl. We can’t take them with us, but I’m not having some Ruski getting his hands on it. Tell Father Richter I’ve dipped them all in wax, in preparation, so he can just bury the box as it is.’

  ‘Bury it?’

  ‘There’s an empty grave. He’s burying all the church plate tonight. There’s space for our odds and ends, too, he says, keep them safe until this is all over.’ Detta touched the locket at her neckline. ‘No, you’re best off keeping that. Keep your watch on, too. I’m wearing all the jewellery your father gave me – we may well need to hock it. Reich marks won’t be worth the paper they’re printed on, if it’s anything like last time.’

  Detta nodded, and put the heavy box in the doll’s pram with the other things. Her mother, unusually demonstrative, gave her a swift hug, bones poking through the layers of woollen padding. She smelled of cinder ash and chopped onions, coffee and Chanel – the odd mix of hard grind and glamour that defined her. She spoke into Detta’s hair as they embraced: ‘I know you promised Frau Moll, but don’t be gone too long, will you?’

  Detta stooped to wheel the doll’s pram into the hallway, took her blue scarf and fur coat from the stand in the entrance hall and pushed the pram over the front step. The snow was falling more heavily now, and she pulled the scarf cowllike over her brow, and lifted the doll’s pram into her arms, struggling to keep the contents from spilling out onto the icy road. For once there was no traffic, no one about at all, and she crossed over without having to pause for military vehicles or refugees.

  Father Richter must have seen her approach, because as she passed the old beech tree with the hole in the trunk, the manse door began to open. He invited her in, his grey-streaked beard catching snowflakes as he poked a head out from inside. Detta passed on her mother’s thanks for him burying the silver. He asked if she’d like a cup of herb tea, but she said she needed to go to the Schloss, explaining about Frau Moll and the promise of French lessons for the girls. ‘Russian would be more useful than French,’ Father Richter said, as he took the heavy box from her. But his head was turned away, and his voice so low that he seemed to be speaking to himself more than to her, so Detta didn’t reply.

  They said their goodbyes and she heard the soft thud of the heavy oak door behind her and turned back into the snow. She decided to take the shortcut to the Moll Schloss, thinking that it would be quicker than the estate road, even though it would be heavy going with the fresh snow, which was coming down harder, now.

  The snow was calf deep with a thin frozen crust on top, but powdery soft underneath, so she had to lift her feet with each crunching step. She clutched the pram, which slithered in her gloved grasp but at least it wasn’t so heavy now she’d offloaded the silver.

  The manse and the church offered a little shelter from the blizzard, but further up the path blinding flurries of snow swirled into her eyes. The boom of the artillery fire sounded even louder in the open air, and her mind flicked back to the packed suitcase on her bed. How much longer had they got?

  The snow was turning to hail, blasting into her face and stinging like needles on her cheeks. She pushed her chin down and laboured on. She’d made a commitment to Frau Moll, and she was going to keep it.

  On the curve of the track, past the French barracks, where it narrowed into a path, she was suddenly confronted with a straggling column of men being led by a Wehrmacht soldier with a rifle slung over his shoulder. From a distance they looked like a more orderly version of the refugees that had been traipsing along the main road this past week. But as they passed she could see that they were all men, prisoners of some kind, trousers the same charcoal blue as the underbelly of snow clouds.

  Detta stood still, even though the biting wind blasted into her face, watching as the men passed. They looked thin and ashen, with several days of stubble on their faces. Most wore scarves of some sort draped over their caps, and blankets draped round their shoulders, so it was impossible to tell which uniforms they wore, or what nationality they were. They shuffled past in silence. As the last few men in the line drew level, she noticed one of them was supporting another man, who slumped like a sandbag from his right shoulder. The supporting man would have been tall, if he hadn’t been burdened down by the weight of his comrade. He wore a long grey coat. As he passed, he raised his head and looked straight into Detta’s eyes. She gazed back, not blinking, looking at his stubbled face with the chinks of blue eyes under frosted brows. Then he turned away and limped forward.

  The column passed; Detta began to walk along the Schloss path once more, but she turned to look back through the hail at the trudging men. As she did, she noticed that the man in the long grey coat had also paused, and turned back to look at her. From this distance his eyes were like tiny blue sparks seen through the snow-veil between them.

  There was an uncomfortable sensation inside her, like numb-cold fingers thrust in front of an open fire. She turned away from his gaze and forced her legs to move, back along the path, towards the Schloss, and by the time Frau Moll answered her knock, the strange feeling had passed.

  Tom

  The roadside trees seemed to topple towards him as Tom staggered beneath Gordon’s weight. ‘Schnell!’ The disembodied voice of a guard from somewhere through the snow told him to hurry up. But he couldn’t move any faster, didn’t want to hurry, even had he been able. If he could, he would have turned round, back towards that village they’d just passed through, back to the impossible girl with her dark-eyed stare.

  The guard prodded him in the ribs with the barrel of his rifle, causing him to lurch forward. His boots slid and caught on the rutted ice of the farm track.

  If he hadn’t paused to look at her, he wouldn’t have fallen so far behind the rest of the column. The guns boomed again. A half-starved black cat sped out from a ditch.

  The young woman had seemed oddly familiar. It was like bumping into one of his sister’s now grown-up schoolfriends at a crowded Tube station – familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. But that young woman couldn’t possibly be anyone he knew. She was German. She was beautiful.

  The column jerked away into the blank distance ahead of them. Men dropped out occasionally to relieve themselves in the ditch. The roadside snow was spattered brown-red with their diarrhoea. It was inevitable that he’d succumb eventually, too, and then who’d look after Gordon?

  He thought again of that woman. She had been wearing a dark brown fur coat with a sky-blue scarf pulled up over her head. Her cheeks were chill-flushed pink and her eyes
melting-dark. He hadn’t been able to see the colour of her hair, as it was covered by the scarf. But he thought he knew what it would be like to have her bend over him, and have a long dark mane cascade over, like the whispering bough of a willow. She had been carrying something, large and ungainly, and he’d had a stupid, chivalrous urge to let Gordon go, run over and say, ‘Here, let me help you with that,’ and carry her load through the snow to wherever it was she was headed.

  He frowned. Forget her. You’re never going to see her again. In a few days the Red Army would overrun the village. He knew what would happen to her then, if she hadn’t had the good sense to flee. Something caught in his throat at the thought of what the Russians would do to her. She was only a German, but nobody deserved that. He shook his head. He’d never see her again. He needed to focus on keeping himself and Gordon alive. ‘Alright, pal?’ He turned to his friend, who nodded, lacking the energy to speak. Were they really to be force marched all the way to Fallingbostel?

  There were some tumble-down farm buildings up ahead and the men were ordered inside one of them. The stench kettled as they were herded inside: shit and piss and silage combined. At least it was warmer than outside. Some lit cigarettes, and the smoke drifted up in the fetid air.

  Tom managed to get Gordon the edge of an old hay bale to sit on. Gordon’s cheeks were hollowed, the skin beneath his stubble waxy-pale. The floor was filthy, so most men squatted on their heels. Small rectangles of black bread were handed out amongst them.

  The guards made a fire in the barn next door and put a pot full of snow on to heat up. They brought through cups of tepid water made salty with the addition of an overdiluted stock cube. Word went round that they’d picked up a bag of potatoes from the village. There was talk of them being boiled, or roasted in the fire’s embers. ‘Is this us for today, d’you think?’ Gordon’s eyes were hopeful orbs in the gloomy fug.

  A man squatting on the floor beside Tom must have overheard the comment. ‘Why don’t you find out?’ he said. ‘You speak a bit of German, don’t you?’ Tom nodded. ‘Go on then, see if you can’t find out what the goons have planned, old boy.’ The man had a ginger moustache, and one of those saw-edged public schoolboy voices that assumed compliance, and Tom found he was pushing himself to his feet before he’d thought to question it. He nudged his way through the crouched forms and out into the farmyard. The wind had got up, whipping up stray bits of straw and grit. Tom squinted his eyes and walked the few paces to the next barn, where the guards were preparing food. He stood by the doorway, was about to knock, when he felt someone shove past him. The commandant barged through the barn doorway, not seeming to notice that Tom was there.

  ‘I’m going to walk on to the next village and find a working telephone.’ The commandant chopped his words like an axe on logs. ‘Follow on when the men have eaten. I should have clear orders by then.’

  Tom looked through a gap in the rotten wood to see the guards huddled round the fire, the commandant facing them with his hands on his hips. ‘But, sir, aren’t you hungry, don’t you want to wait and get something to eat?’ Tom recognized the voice of the paint-tube guard, the one who’d let slip to him about Fallingbostel. The commandant made an impatient gesture, and strode back out of the barn, almost banging the door in Tom’s face as he went. Tom watched as he strode on up the road, westwards, to where the skies were clearer, the sun a hint of silver behind the retreating clouds.

  Tom went back to the barn and over to the man with the ginger moustache. ‘The goons don’t seem to have a clue. The commandant has just flounced off up the road in search of a telephone. I think they were just told to get over the Oder, and now they don’t know what to do next.’

  Tom thought about the commandant striding off into the whiteness. It was he who’d been doing the head counts. It was on his orders that the barn rafters had been strafed on their second night, and he who’d decreed five men should be shot for every attempted escapee. But he’d be hundreds of yards away already, and he wasn’t coming back to collect them when they moved out.

  Tom turned to Gordon to say something more.

  But Gordon had disappeared.

  Chapter 6

  November 1989, West Berlin

  Miranda

  ‘Are you awake, baby?’ I hear his voice in my ear, feel his breath on my cheek. I open my eyes. My tongue seems to be stuck to the roof of my mouth. It makes a clicking sound as I pull it down. He kisses the top of my head, and stacks the pillows up behind my shoulders. He’s already shaved and dressed, I notice. ‘Stay where you are. I’m bringing you breakfast in bed.’ He disappears into the little kitchen.

  As I become fully awake I remember last night: the Wall, the photos, my decision. I need to pack up my rucksack. I mustn’t forget my passport, hidden with Quill’s at the bottom of the fruit bowl (the improbable hiding place that Petra said would be the last place any thief would think of looking). I can either hitch to Holland and get the ferry or splurge the last of my overdraft on a flight. I’ll decide once I’m on my way.

  There is a clattering, the faint scent of something burning, and he comes back with a tray and places it on top of the quilt: a slice of buttered toast, and a glass of orange juice. When he’s being like this, when there’s just the two of us together, I almost think we can work it out. But playing the solicitous lover is not enough to keep me in Berlin with him any longer.

  ‘I meant what I said last night,’ I begin.

  ‘Shut up and let me look after you,’ he says, patting my leg beneath the quilt. I take a gulp of the juice: delicious, freshly squeezed. I glance at the fruit bowl on the window sill. There are no oranges left – he’s squeezed them all for me. The fruit bowl is empty.

  Completely empty.

  ‘So, what have you done with our passports?’ I try to sound casual.

  ‘You can’t leave me, Miranda.’

  ‘Where’s my passport?’ His face is sullen, blank, like a boy caught with his hand in the pick ’n’ mix. ‘It was in the fruit bowl. What have you done with it?’

  ‘Burnt it, didn’t I? If you must know. Happy now?’

  I’m not sure if I’ve heard him correctly. ‘You did what?’

  ‘I burnt it, alright? You can’t go, Miranda. I need you here, with me.’ He leans in to stroke my hair away from my forehead, reminding me of the first night we kissed, of how special I am, how important it is that I stay with him. He tells me to eat up the toast, the breakfast he made because he loves me and wants to look after me.

  He has that look in his eyes. The strand of black hair that falls over his eyebrow twitches like a cat’s tail. I know better than to argue, so I swallow the toast, dry as cardboard in my constricted throat, as he watches me finish every last crumb. Afterwards he tells me I should shower and get dressed. Dieter and Petra are planning a party and they need to turn our bed back into a sofa and clear the room. I do as I’m told.

  When I come out of the shower, Petra has already put our bed away and cleared the living room floor. She says Quill has gone out with Dieter to get beers and sort a sound system. In the kitchen there is the acrid scent of something burnt, ashes in the plughole. I look in the bin, but there’s nothing there. He actually did it then, destroyed my passport, so desperate to keep me close. Below the soft wool of my jumper the scabbed cigarette burns itch. I should have left Berlin sooner. I never should have come.

  On the pretext of tidying up I stuff my few belongings into my rucksack. I tell Petra I’m just off to get a few more shots of the Wall for the newspaper, and leave the basement flat.

  The yellow phone booth is at the end of the street, on the corner. I walk past a neon-lit massage parlour, a Lebanese takeaway called Falafel Station and the orange Imbiss kiosk: lunchtime customers are propped against the counter, eating sausage and chips. A stray Alsatian dog begs, hoping for leftovers. Pigeons flap, and the traffic roars past the junction.

  I telephone the British Consulate in West Berlin to see if they can help. No, says the u
nhelpful woman at the other end of the line. There’s nothing they can do for me today, unless I can get to the Embassy in Bonn before 5 p.m. But as Bonn is 600 kilometres away, and it is already midday, I know it’s impossible. I will have to wait until after the weekend. Frustrated, I hang up.

  I slip down to the underground station. On the U-bahn I sway along with my fellow passengers, staring at the blank tunnel walls. Without my passport, I’m stuck. Perhaps if I wait until Quill is in a better mood he’ll see sense, agree to drive me the 1000-mile round trip to the West German capital. After all, without ID I can’t even get into East Berlin at the moment, and Quill’s editor might need to send us there for a story. I decide to do what I said, take some more photographs, and give myself a chance to make a plan. I get off the U-bahn at Kochstrasse station.

  From the station exit I see the crush of TV crews and journalists at Checkpoint Charlie. But I’m looking for a different angle. I turn right. Further along, at the end of Jakobstrasse, five small boys are playing football, using a section of the Wall as a goal. A burned-out red 2CV is abandoned on a piece of waste ground, by a gigantic billboard of full-colour cowboys against a backdrop of cattle and mountains. ‘Go West!’ is splurged in red type – West is a brand of cigarettes, but it feels like an advert for the emerging diaspora from the GDR. I lift the Leica, but change my mind, reaching instead for the Rolleiflex in my rucksack, an old 1939 camera (state-of-the-art in its day). My grandmother gave it to me when I started my photography degree course; it used to belong to my grandfather, which I suppose makes it a family heirloom, of sorts.