The Other Side of Love (53 page)

He was swallowing a second aspirin, dry, when he heard women’s footsteps.

Kathe halted at the doorway, tilting her head as if in disbelief.

“Aubrey,”

she whispered.

He saw only her tearful smile, nothing else. Crossing the room m two swift strides, he put both arms around her. He could feel how thin she was, he could feel the beating of her heart. He was swept by a tumult of emotions: righteous anger that she was imprisoned, relief that she was alive, irrepressible joy to be holding

343

‘Sorry, sir, but you and the prisoner aren’t allowed to touch.”

Rathe pulled him closer.

“Aubrey, I heard about

“Minta, and I

wanted so to write, but they’re strict about letters here. I’m sorry

… sorry.”

“And I’m sorry about Aunt Clothilde and Sigi,”

he said.

“Sir.”

Worried that prolonging the embrace might harm Kathe, he

pushed her gently away.

“Sir, will you take the far chair? The prisoner will face you.”

After they were seated, she said in German:

“How I missed you!

Aubrey, all during the war, I kept hoping that you would”

She

stopped as he shook his head slightly. She bit her lip for a moment,

then caught on.

“I kept hoping to see you. And now the war’s over

and here you are.”

“You look like a good breeze could blow you away. I don’t like

how thin you are.”

“That’s not flattering,”

she said with a smile. Then her face grew

haggard.

“Aubrey, I must get out of here. Is there any way you can

arrange it?”

“It was difficult enough for me to get a pass.”

“But you must know somebody who knows somebody.”

“I have no influence in the American Zone. Kathe, I wish I did,

but I don’t.”

“Just for a few days? There’s a little boy I need to find.”

Aubrey had been schooled to maintain his facial expressions yet

for a brief instant he goggled.

“A child?”

“He’s five.”

Her voice shook.

“Aubrey, I must find him.”

Hers, hers, hers, he thought. Kathe has a child. A son.

“Wyatt’s the

one to help you,”

he blurted.

“I couldn’t beg him.”

Misery contorted her face.

“Aubrey, he hates

me.”

“It’s not you.”

Regaining his poise, Aubrey lied soothingly.

“He’s

bitter. Araminta. The atrocities.”

She nodded, her mouth working as she made an effort to control

tears.

“What’s the child’s name?”

“Erich. He was adopted by a couple who live near Frankfurt.”

“Let me see if there’s any way I can track the adoption”

“You can’t! It’s impossible. Only I can find him! I don’t know

his surname, but I saw the couple. saw them! Please, please, it’ll

only take me a little while. I haven’t said anything about…

“

She

stopped.

“It’s so rotten being here. It has the quality of movies one

sees nowadays.”

Quality of movies one sees nowadays was code for CI4

spying activities.

“Yes, I understand.”

344

‘The weather’s been calm.”

This meant secret. She was looking at him with tear-filled eyes, and he understood that she was trying to tell him her work would remain secret.

“It generally is at this time of year.”

Then she burst out:

“But, Aubrey, does everything have to be taken from me, even hope?”

She bent her head, and her sobs shook her thin body. He started around the table.

The guard stepped forward.

“Sorry, sir, but your time’s up.”

His ten minutes were not up, but arguing for three extra minutes would not get Kathe released. A WAG whom he had not seen earlier came into the room to put a comforting hand on the thin quaking shoulders.

At the door, Kathe turned her tear-streaked face.

“Just a couple of days, that’s all,”

she said in English.

Til move heaven and earth.”

345

A baby?

His Kathe?

Frowning at the windscreen, Aubrey didn’t see the dark dripping Odenwald forest but instead clearly visualized Kathe’s early letters to the Swedish agent - the letters topped with dates between the autumn of 1939 and the spring of 1940, that freezing first winter of the war. While she had been away from Berlin acting as a translator her mail had been brief, and she had seldom mentioned anyone but female friends. He let out a sigh. She might well have been in a home for unwed mothers. Questions about the father crowded into his mind with an oppressive -jealousy, yet swerving down a steep turn he accepted one irrevocable truth. Nothing could alter his trust in Kathe’s essential goodness, nothing could alter his trust or his love.

II

“She must have lost over a stone. I’ve never seen her look so ill,”

Aubrey said to Major Downes.

“And she’s trapped in that draughty barracks.”

“Couldn’t be colder than here,”

responded the major with a rare smile. It was two evenings after Aubrey’s visit to Ober Tappenburg. Having telegraphed his Mayday emergency code, he had been recalled to London. Austerity continued to rule Britannia: the two men’s breath streamed in the icy air of the Morpeth Terrace flat,

346

they both had on coats and mufflers.

“Why are they holding her?”

“Further interrogation.”

“That sounds suspiciously like a ploy to force us to act.”

“Ploy, sir? The Americans are completely bollocksed up in their de-Nazification programme. Millions of Germans in the camps it’ll take years to question them all, much less sort out the criminals.”

Aubrey sneezed vehemently.

“Bless you,”

the Major said.

“Caught a bit of a cold.”

“Take care of yourself. A lot of strange germs going around over there. Our Public Health people predict the German civilian death-toll this winter will be higher than during the war and that includes the air-raid casualties.”

“Precisely my point. Kathe’s in a weakened state.”

“We can’t simply tell them to release her.”

“Why not? She risked everything for us. Her family are dead, she’s at the end of her tether. The least we owe her is her freedom.”

“Aubrey, be reasonable.”

“What’s so unreasonable about trusting the Americans? All we’d need do is drop a hint to their intelligence that she worked for us.”

“You know as well as I do that the OSS leaks like a sieve.”

“You’re turning down my request, sir?”

“What choice do I have, Aubrey?”

Aubrey’s jaw set in what Araminta had called the Kingsmith clench.

“Then, I’ll have to go to the Americans myself to General Clay, even Eisenhower.”

Major Downes stood, his good arm and neatly pinned stump pulled tightly to his sides.

“You’re walAig the road to a court martial.”

W

Aubrey started to respond, then his mouth opened, his face grew red and he went into a violent paroxysm of sneezing.

The major fished out a fresh handkerchief. When the sneezing fit ended, he said:

“Aubrey, you’re leading with your heart, not your head. Think for a minute. What would our move be if Washington came to us with a request to release a German agent we hadn’t known existed? We’d make every effort to find out if she were part of an ultra-secret network. We’d keep her tucked away. No trial, mind you. Never a trial. On the surface she’d just be one more interned German. But we’d have our top people interrogating her. Don’t you see? If we go to the Americans, she’ll be stuck in Ober Tappenburg for years.”

Aubrey’s reddened eyes were fixed on the window. Finally he said:

“What if I came to you with an acceptable excuse to get her

“We’d give it every consideration.”

347

Aubrey had arranged to stay with Porteous. He went to Victoria Station to get a taxi, but the queue was long and he decided to walk the three or so miles. A cold autumn night, the chill wind cut through his uniform coat. He was shivering so savagely by the time he reached the Bayswater Road house that he had difficulty inserting his key. Hoping a drink would thaw him, he went to the drawingroom tantalus for a Scotch. His teeth clattered against the Waterford tumbler. Before he finished, he was sneezing again.

“Aubrey?”

Porteous’s thin old voice drifted down the staircase.

“Is that you, lad?”

“Be right up, Grandfather,”

he called.

Maybe it was Aubrey’s condition and his mood of melancholy pessimism, but Porteous a paisley shawl around his shoulders, silvery head resting on the pillows, thick-lensed glasses neatly folded on the bedside table - appeared far frailer than when he had last seen him on VE-Day.

“Come over here near the bed,”

Porteous said.

“Well, did you find her? Did you find my little Kate?”

“I found Kathe, yes.”

“You sound a bit queer. Isn’t she all right?”

“She’s well.”

“Thank God, thank God.”

Tears glimmered in the sightless old eyes.

“Mark you, in my heart I knew she was. But where is she? Why hasn’t she written? How are Clothilde and Sigi?”

Aubrey was saved from relaying the plethora of bad news by another sneezing fit.

“Run along, lad, hop into bed,”

Porteous said.

“It’s enough knowing all’s well with my Kate. The rest will keep until morning.”

IV

Aubrey drifted between truncated nightmares. Once he was being executed as a spy - or was it Kathe with a black bandage around her eyes in front of the firing squad? Another time he was being shot at by the enemy - the uniforms kept changing from the black of the SS to the khaki of British or American uniforms. A huge faceless infant aimed a rifle at him. When he awoke, dawn was brightening the sky beyond the curtains. As he lifted up to see the time, pains stabbed his head and chest. He fell back into the pillow.

“It’s not me who’s ill,”

he mumbled.

“It’s the chap in the next bed.”

Neither of the maids was back in service, so Mrs Plum, the housekeeper, lumbered up with the earlymorning cups of tea. Taking one

348

horrified glance at Aubrey’s bluish lips and livid sweating skin, she hurried downstairs as fast as her rheumatism permitted to telephone Porteous’s doctor.

Having come through six drops into Nazi territory unscathed, Aubrey had been felled by a German bug.

The diagnosis was bacterial pneumonia. Before the new wonder drug, penicillin, the odds would have been against surviving this severe a case. Even so, moving the patient was a risk, so the doctor ordered an oxygen-tent and sent around a nurse. After three days of shots, Aubrey’s temperature was down and he was coherent.

By now the nurse had two patients on her stubby capable hands. Porteous had a bad cold. Listening to his grandfather’s surprisingly robust sneezes, Aubrey lay very still, his eyes thoughtful. After the nurse went below stairs for a chat and a cup of tea with Mrs Plum, he disobeyed the medical injunction to remain in bed. Edging slowly down the stairs, he tottered to the telephone chair, his breath coming in a peculiar chesty rumble as he dialled the major’s number.

“Aubrey?”

Major Downes said.

“Is that you? Your doctor told me you wouldn’t be out of bed until the end of the week.”

“Sir, I thought of a way to get her out - at least, for a holiday.”

V

“Wyatt. Aubrey here.”

“We have a rotten connection.”

Wyatt had to shout, and the echo reverberated in his ear.

“You sound like hell.”

“I’ve had pneumonia … Grandfather’s caught it.”

“Jesus. At his age? That’s a rough go.”

“The doctor’s not giving out much hojk-.”

Til arrange for a leave.”

W

“Wyatt, he wants to see Kathe.”

The humming on the longdistance wires sounded like a swarm of bees.

“Our people have talked to your people. It’s been agreed that if she has a suitable escort she’ll be permitted a compassionate parole.”

“Grandfather …

“

Incomprehensible words.

Aubrey ignored the faraway rumbling.

“She always was his favourite. He’s longing to see her one last time. You’re in charge of bringing her over and taking her back.”

349

7

The Army Air Corps maintained an abbreviated and slovenly transport schedule around the American Sector.

At the temporary buildings of much-bombed Tempelhof Airport, the Red Cross served doughnuts and coffee; but Wyatt, awaiting the plane from Frankfurt, decided he needed something stronger. In the bleak Quonset hut that served as a bar, he ordered a double Scotch on the rocks, his expression brooding, his thoughts on the time Kathe had picked him up here, so proud of her ability to drive that old Austrian heap. In those days her face had been as mysteriously pure as Botticelli’s Venus. God, how crazy he had been about her! It hadn’t mattered that swastikas were stamped all over her slim graceful body; he’d been out of his mind crazy for her. The night in GarmischPartenkirchen after he’d first made love to her he’d felt exalted, as if he had participated in some holy rite.