The Escape Page 7

  He is so certain I’ll follow that he doesn’t even turn back to check.

  I steady myself with my fingertips against the phone booth, head reeling, mouth dry, feeling the thud-rush of my racing heart. I close my eyes for a moment and catch my breath. There is a knock on the glass. I start, thinking it might be Quill, returned, to apologize, to hold me, tell me sweet lies about how much he loves me and how everything will be okay. But the grubby pane holds the face of an old Turkish man with caved-in cheeks and two-day old stubble, gesturing at me to hurry up. I push open the booth door, pass the old man, and pick my way over the shattered remains of the wine bottle. I walk away, in the opposite direction of the apartment.

  A fine drizzle starts to fall, enfolding me in a chill mist, as I traipse along the pavements. The whole of West Berlin is partying today. Every building I pass seems to have music blaring. The undercurrent of a bass beat changes with each block, syncopating with the throbbing pain in my forehead.

  Eventually I reach Jakobstrasse, past the burnt-out car and the billboard, cowboy colours now turning monochrome in the lowering light. I follow the strip of waste ground, winding between the homes and the barricades. It begins to sleet. Icy rivulets run down inside my jumper. I reach up to wipe drips from my forehead and my fingers graze the swelling bruise on my temple.

  Then I see it up ahead: the crack in the Wall that was just a smile earlier on has turned into a jagged ‘Oh’ of dismay. The young men have all gone. I am the only person here. No border guard or patrol dog in sight. I put out a hand. The Wall is still smooth where the graffiti paint sticks, but rough around the edges of the hole. The metal reinforcements show like ridged spines in the smashed space. One is bashed sideways, giving just enough room to let a person through.

  The leaden clouds have made twilight of the daytime, but through the Wall security lights veil the sleet – a waterfall shimmer, light at the end of the tunnel.

  I take off my backpack and feed it through the space between the metal reinforcements, dropping it onto the sand on the other side. Then I lift one leg across. I push, struggle, the metal struts pinch, the broken concrete snags my clothes, but I shunt and pull free.

  As I make it through to the other side, I pause, just as I’d watched the Ossis do as they passed through the barrier last night. I hesitate, and take a breath, looking across at the chunky outlines of East Berlin, a grey huddle beyond the searchlights and raked sand of the death strip.

  Then I step forward, into the East, escaping.

  Chapter 9

  January 1945, Nazi Germany

  Detta

  Odd that it should have been the growl of a truck that woke her, not the roiling thunder of the front line, which had continued throughout the night. The booming thuds and jarring vibrations had had a strangely calming effect on Detta’s strung-out nerves, and she slept a full, uninterrupted seven hours, for a change. It was the sound of the engine that made her shoot up, eyes wide in the dark, run across the cold floorboards to unshutter the window and scrabble at the frosted pane to see.

  The vehicle careered up the main road, coming from the Oppeln direction. Everything was monochrome in the moonlight, and it was hard to make out what colour it was. Detta strained her eyes as the truck zoomed close. What was that marking, dark grey on the side of the cab? She sucked in a breath. Was it a star? The truck passed beneath the guesthouse. No, it was a cross – in daylight it would have been red – on the cab door and on the flapping canvas covering the truck bed. The truck skidded on the ice as it turned past the barracks and veered up the estate track.

  Not the Red Army, then. Just an ambulance. They must have started using the Schloss as a field hospital, now the front was getting closer.

  She was about to close the shutters, feeling the cold now her panic had abated, but just as she began to push the slats to, she noticed a movement in the churchyard, between the manse and the church. There was the dark shadow of a figure moving amongst the gravestones. Her breath clouded the windowpane and she had to wipe it continually as she watched. Who or what was it? Or they? For a moment she thought she saw two shadowy forms staggering between the tombs in the darkness.

  She blinked, reminding herself of Father Richter’s promise to bury the family silver in an empty grave. That would be it. It must have been his cassock billowing out that made her mistake him for two lurching figures. The space on the window was clouded over again with her condensing breath. She closed the shutters and went back to bed.

  She’d been up so long that the bed had cooled, sheets shroud-cold as she crept back under the covers, hoping to snatch a little more sleep before daylight. You stupid girl, she told herself, worrying about churchyard ghouls, like a little child. There’s more to fear from the living than the dead, she thought, listening to the symphony of guns outside, and waiting for her body to warm up.

  But neither heat nor sleep enveloped her, and eventually she decided to get up, pulling on her woollen dress and thick stockings. She tried a hopeful flick of the light switch in the hallway, but of course there was nothing, so she lit the candle in the saucer on the Ottoman chest and made her way downstairs. The third stair down creaked, as it always did, and just before she reached the bottom she heard the faint, strangled cry of the Muller’s old rooster, across the way.

  Detta pushed open the kitchen door. Mother was already up, curlers in her greying hair, a green serge overcoat belted over her dressing gown and nightclothes. She knelt in front of the kitchen range, poking kindling onto yesterday’s embers. ‘It was just a field ambulance,’ she said, without turning.

  ‘I know. I saw.’ Detta put her own candle down next to the other two on the table and they glittered like Orion’s belt. She didn’t mention the figures amongst the gravestones. After all, it had to be just Father Richter, surely? But she could have sworn there were two. No, her eyes must have been playing tricks. And in any case, it was dark out there, and her windowpane was smeared with condensation. ‘Coffee?’ She reached for the tin of ground acorn and chicory in the cupboard by the sink.

  Her mother half turned from the hearth, sharp features limned rose gold by the embers’ light. ‘Use the real stuff.’

  ‘Brown-gold?’

  ‘I’ve had enough of that other muck. In any case, we may as well use it up,’ she added, poking another stick on the fire.

  Detta took the coffee grinder and the precious cannister of beans from the back of the cupboard. Coffee beans were so scarce. They’d only had real coffee on special occasions since the start of the war. Would today turn out to be a special day, Detta wondered, turning the brass handle to grind the beans.

  A louder crump-thud than usual came from outside, making the floorboards shiver. The three flames leapt in their saucers. Detta finished grinding the coffee, filled their old Italian coffee pot from the tap, tamped the ground beans into the funnel-shaped filter and screwed the lid on. In the silence that followed the guns, the rooster crowed again. Mother stood up, closing the range door, as Detta reached over to put the coffee pot on the hob. Some years ago Detta had outgrown her mother, who seemed to be shrinking daily as the war toiled on. ‘They’re not getting their hands on our silver or our coffee, or anything else if I can help it,’ Mother said, rolling her head to either side, and reminding Detta of a strongman she’d seen at the fair as a child, the way he’d eased his shoulders when limbering up to lift the huge weights. Mother went to open the shutters and Detta blew out the candles. The bitter-rich scent of brewing coffee wafted across from the range.

  The guesthouse kitchen was south-facing: the warmest place to be in winter, harvesting scraps of sunshine through the double windows all day long. The inside of the glass was frost encrusted, although the splashes of winter sun and the warmth from the fire would mean that the ice would eventually clear from these windows, unlike those in the rest of the building. It was impossible to see through the crystalline blur into the kitchen garden: the rosemary bush, bay tree, hen house and pig sty. All you could s
ee were two rectangles of charcoal blue haze, as the night sky slowly lifted. It was almost the same colour as that prisoner’s coat had been on the path yesterday. Detta frowned. Why dwell on that? He was either kilometres away, or dead, by now. She turned away from the window, rubbing her arms to warm them, waiting for the coffee to come to the boil. Mother began to lay out the things for breakfast: plates from the dresser, black bread from the crock, honey from the cupboard. There were still a few sticky crystals clinging to the insides of the jar.

  Detta recalled how once, as a girl, one boring Sunday afternoon, she’d stolen down to the cellar with the pfennig she’d ‘forgotten’ to put in the church collection box. Feeling guilty about the sinful penny, she’d crept down the dark back stairs and into that hidden world of wagon-wheel cheeses, sausage wreaths, barrels of brandy, and a culinary library of preserving bottles and cans. She’d found the lid loose on one of the honey jars. First she’d dipped in a finger, licked the sweetness. Then she’d taken the coin from her pocket, and dropped it into the jar. She stayed for ages watching as it sunk with excruciating slowness in viscous amber limbo. She still didn’t know why she’d done it. There would have been easier ways to hide her guilt: popping it in the till, or in her mother’s coat pocket – even her six-year-old self would have known that.

  She felt like that pfennig now: the tortuous torpor of the fall – so slow, so inevitable.

  ‘I packed my case,’ Detta said, watching her mother bustling about, but Mother didn’t answer. The staff had already been paid off. Many in the village – the ones who had relatives further west – had already left. But still, only a few days ago the town clerk had been round to check that every household still had their obligatory swastika flag and photograph of the Fuhrer on display. There was still the possibility that ‘traitors to the Reich’ could be bundled into the back of a black van and taken away, never to return. ‘Couldn’t we go to Aunty Hedwig’s?’ Detta said.

  ‘There’s no food in Hanover and they’ve been bombed to buggery. Going there would be suicide. It will be a miracle if Hedwig makes it through.’ Mother put her hands to her face as she spoke, and then pulled them away as she finished the sentence, with a sharp inhalation of breath.

  ‘But what about . . . what about when the front moves west?’ Detta said.

  ‘The Reds will move through like locusts, and for a while it will be terrible. But later on this will still be a main road, you know, and tired Russian travellers will also need a bed to sleep in, food and drink. We’ll have to change the name, of course. How does Russiche Haus sound?’

  ‘But Mother, you heard what the Prussian refugees said about what the Red Army have been doing.’

  ‘People say lots of things. Your father worked himself to death – literally – building this place up from scratch. When we arrived, there was nothing. You won’t remember that, of course. This place gave you your education, young lady. We could never have afforded to send you to Ursulinen Kloster if your father was still a waiter and I was a shop girl, and without your languages you would never have got that good job at the Reichsbahn, don’t forget.’

  ‘But I got the French from you, Mother, and that’s what got me the Reichsbahn job.’

  ‘Pff.’ Her mother made a swiping gesture with her hands, as if her French ancestry were of no consequence whatsoever.

  ‘But if – when . . .’ Detta still couldn’t say it out loud: When we are overrun by the Red Army, what will we do then? Her face must have betrayed her thoughts, because her mother continued.

  ‘Don’t be naive, Detta. Remember your mother is from Alsace. I know a thing or two about swapping sides when the time comes. We’ll have to lay low for a while, naturally, but then, you know, people are people and business is business, and it will all settle down, you’ll see.’

  Her mother had been through a war before, and thought she knew how to survive it. But it’s different this time, Detta thought, remembering the look on those refugees’ faces when they’d recounted what the Russians had done. She shook her head, but didn’t have the energy to argue. ‘I’ll go and collect the eggs, shall I?’ she said instead, but then the pot hissed to the boil, and her mother said to warm herself with a drink first, and poured the steaming coffee into china cups. Detta lit two cigarettes. They both sat down at the table, took a sip of coffee, and then a drag of the cigarette, savouring the mix of roasted flavours, not speaking. The breakfast things lay untouched between them.

  Detta had almost finished her coffee when the phone went. Mother sighed. ‘It’s a miracle the lines are still working,’ she said, beginning to push herself up from her seat.

  ‘I’ll get it,’ Detta said, draining the last precious sip of coffee and taking her half-smoked cigarette with her as she slipped out into the dark corridor.

  The nagging phone crouched toad-like, next to the hotel register and the black-framed photo of Herr Hitler shaking hands with the old chancellor. Detta reached for the receiver with her left hand, keeping her cigarette in her right. Behind the reception desk was the large gilt-edged mirror. Detta caught a brief glimpse of herself in the dull glass: unbrushed hair and owlish eyes. God, what a fright. But better to look as plain as possible with what’s coming, she thought grimly, picking up the receiver.

  ‘Deutches Haus Inn, how can I help?’

  ‘Oh, good, it’s you. I didn’t want to trouble your mother.’

  ‘Father Richter? What is it?’

  ‘Can you come over to the manse?’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘As soon as you can.’

  ‘What is it, Father?’

  ‘It’s . . . I need your help with something. It’s quite urgent. Can you come?’

  ‘Of course,’ Detta said, frowning at her reflection and flicking ash into the marble ashtray on the counter. ‘I’ll come as soon as I can.’

  ‘And Detta . . .’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Don’t mention it to your mother, not just yet, will you?’

  ‘She’ll want to know why I’m going out, Father. I’ll need to tell her that I’m coming over to yours.’

  ‘Yes of course. But don’t tell her why.’

  ‘But I don’t know why.’

  ‘No, of course not. Good. Well then, I’ll see you shortly?’

  ‘Yes. I just need to brush my hair, and I’ll be with you.’ She hung up.

  That moment, then, when the telephone made a chiming thump into its cradle, and the Muller’s silly rooster made his third reedy crow of the morning, that was the moment it all changed. It was as if someone had picked up that big jar of sickly honey from the cellar shelf, with the coin still sliding through the goo, lifted it high and dropped it – smash – onto the flagstone floor.

  Chapter 10

  November, 1989, East Berlin

  Miranda

  ‘Emergency travel documents take two working days to process,’ she says, looking at me as if I am stupid. She has large, gold-rimmed glasses that make her eyes look like a fish’s. She has a slight squint, too, so when she speaks it’s as if there are two of me, and she’s addressing us both.

  I am at the British Embassy. Quill was right, he did knock some sense into me. I remembered that there are two British Embassies in Germany: one in the West German capital of Bonn, and also one in the East German capital in East Berlin, within walking distance of the Wall.

  ‘And where did you last see your passport?’ the administrator says, jotting a note on a pad. Behind her, above the counter, are two metal-rimmed clocks, like an echo of her glasses, showing London and East Berlin time. The hands jerk forward as I look. My head aches, and I have started to feel nauseous.

  ‘In a fruit bowl, in a friend’s apartment,’ I say, knowing how ridiculous I sound.

  ‘It’s not possible it’s just been mislaid? Moved by your friend, perhaps?’

  ‘No, it’s definitely gone.’ I recall Quill’s sullen face and the burnt remains in the kitchen sink.

  ‘Right, well, that’s logged for
you, Miss Wade, and here’s your confirmation.’ She hands me a slip of typed paper, which she has dated and signed. ‘So I’ll see you again on Wednesday afternoon.’

  ‘Wednesday?’

  ‘Two working days, Miss Wade. Today is Friday, and as it’s already . . .’ she makes a show of turning to look at the clocks on the wall, ‘past three, it’s too late to begin to process your application today. Two working days means Monday and Tuesday, so if you come back on Wednesday it should be ready for you. But I’d wait until after lunch. We might be quite busy with other things, what with everything that’s been happening recently.’ She waves a hand at the crowded lobby.

  ‘I see,’ I reply. ‘Wednesday afternoon then. Thank you.’

  She gives an unsmiling nod of acknowledgement and I turn away. I can’t get back home until next week. I am stuck in East Germany for five whole days, alone.

  I walk across the marble floor towards the exit, sidestepping men in suits, thinking of what I heard Quill discussing on the phone, remembering the look on his face, and the impact of his head slamming against mine. I can’t go back, can I?

  There is a public telephone near the Embassy doorway. I pause, wedge myself beside the window and I let my throbbing temple rest against the cool glass. I pick up the receiver, and dial, asking the operator to reverse the charges.

  November 1989, Exeter

  Odette

  ‘You were right about him, Gran.’ Her voice is small and tinny down the long-distance line.

  ‘Miranda?’

  ‘He turned out to be . . . to be not very trustworthy, just like you said.’ Her voice wobbles, and my heart gives. My granddaughter, my only grandchild. What has happened to upset her like this? I want to go to her, hold her, comfort her, just as I did when she was a toddler with a scraped knee, or a teen who’d flunked a school test.

  My cigarette lies smouldering in the cut-glass ashtray, abandoned when I picked up the phone. Next to it is my coffee mug, imprinted with my lipstick from the first couple of sips. ‘Why don’t you take a break from college and come to visit me this weekend?’ I say. ‘I’ll pay your train fare and I’ll take you to tea at Tinley’s – how does that sound?’