A Place Of Strangers (12 page)

Chapter Twenty

‘You’re getting quite friendly with Arie, aren’t you,
Francis?’

‘He’s a very intriguing chap and that’s a fact.’

‘How do you mean?’

They are in Garth Woods, clearing brambles and saplings so
Francis can build a shack like those the Russians call dachas and live in
during weekends in the country. He straightens up and holds the sickle loosely
by his side.

‘Well, for a start... to find a man as cultured and urbane
as Arie Minsky working hand in glove with a gang of murdering terrorists is
intriguing, don’t you think?’

Bea stops what she is doing, exactly as she is meant to. She
had already guessed Arie was up to something dubious, dangerous even. But it
does not lessen the shock of being told what it is. Francis says he has proof
Arie is in the Zionist underground. They have just blown up British military
headquarters in the King David Hotel in Jerusalem and left ninety people dead
and many more injured.

Bea does not want to hear this. She wants to believe Arie is
a journalist in London. He cannot have misled her or told her a lie. But
Francis says for Arie, London is simply a second front in the same war.

‘Arie knows the importance of being able to shoot, Bea.’

‘Meaning what, exactly?’

‘That intellectuals like him have to be willing and able to
fight for the Jewish cause which is their own homeland.’

She demands to know how he can be sure of any of this.

‘Arie confessed it to me himself.’

The bonfire of slashed undergrowth crackles and smoke
billows high into the pale yellow crowns of the autumn beeches around them. Far
in the distance, a bluish bloom of mist clings to a fringe of trees.

It unsettles Bea to think Arie is sharing confidences with
Francis. Even worse, Francis says Arie was smuggling European Jews to Palestine
from Prague before she met him – exactly as Peter Casserley suspected. She
covers her ignorance by blaming all the blood letting in Palestine on Britain’s
refusal to admit more Jewish settlers from the very death camps the Allies
fought to liberate.

‘That maybe so, Bea, but if we let thousands of Jews from
Russia settle in Palestine then the Soviets would infiltrate their spies
amongst them and Palestine could quickly become a puppet state run from Moscow.’

‘If Bevin believes that then he’s more of a fool than I
thought.’

‘Possibly, but there’s always a bigger picture to think
about in diplomacy.’

‘Not nearly as big as six million people being murdered.’

Bea walks away so he cannot see the anger in her face. She
tips another wheelbarrow full of brambles onto the fire. Smoke swirls into her
face so she retreats to Pigs’ Brook and sits on the bank with a handkerchief to
her eyes. Francis puts his arm around her and says he is sorry. He remembers
how she wept for days after seeing the newsreels from the concentration camps.

‘It’s always interesting, isn’t it?’

‘What is?’

‘Someone’s motivation... what makes a person take the line
they do.’

‘What are you getting at, Francis?’

‘Finding the motive... find that and you’ve found the man.’

‘You’ve got to get inside his head, first.’

Francis considers her as he always does, dog-like in his
devotion to all that she is and all that she means to him. They walk back to
where Francis’s dacha will be built. Bea thinks of what he has just said – and
what he has not. Arie’s position is easily understood. But hers? She is not a
Jew so why is she this upset about their plight? Francis would never ask,
though. Yet what if he suspects? There is nothing in the flat anymore. There
are no clues. She had taken all the rubbish out and thrown it away so who is to
know what was ever there?

Only Bea herself.

Francis leaves to meet Arie at Ludlow Station. Bea listens
to the Alvis bubbling down the lane till only silence and uncertainty remain.
She tosses more brash on the fire and sees it blaze and die like obsession
itself. How odd that such a friendship should develop between lover and
cuckold.

She thought she knew their hearts so well... these boys,
lying in her arms all petit mort, hers for ever more. Yet she bears no sin, has
no need of priests. Her way from Prague winds on and she alone is ordained to
find it.

But in her bones, she cannot be sure who is spying on whom.

*

Bea watches them digging the trenches for the brick pillars
to support the dacha. Alf Bishop is the only one who really knows what to do.
Francis has rolled up his sleeves and Arie’s taken off his shirt. He is really
brown, not a spare ounce of fat on him. Francis looks a little pink and sweaty,
very English.

Bea saw them as they arrived home, talking intently. Arie
did not even stop to say hello. They went straight to Francis’s study and she
heard him make a trunk call. That can only have been to London.

It was not until lunchtime that Arie spoke to her. She
sensed how on edge he was. He said he had been to Palestine but not when or
why.

‘Francis says the situation’s pretty grim out there.’

‘Yes, full of soldiers and secret agents to keep Mr Bevin’s
police state going.’

‘It sounds awful, Arie. I’m so concerned but what can I do
here?’

‘Nothing. It is as it is – and there’s worse to come.’

He and Francis then shouldered their spades down to Garth
Woods. Alf Bishop was just back from the pub, full of goodwill and advice. He
pegged out the site to get the levels and footings right. Work stopped just
after four when Bea carried down a tray of tea and scones Alf’s wife had made.

Then Mrs Bishop herself comes running towards them. Someone
from Francis’s office is on the telephone. He glances at Arie and goes quickly
to the house. Alf lights another Park Drive and disappears to relieve himself
behind the trees. Bea takes Arie aside quickly and demands to know what is
going on.

‘Nothing, nothing’s going on.’

‘Stop treating me like an idiot. The pair of you are up to
something.’

‘Beatrice, please. Prague’s over.’

‘But I want to help. It’s me – remember?’

Francis returns before she can press Arie further. The
slightest of nods are exchanged between the two men. Bea asks Francis what his
office wanted. He says it was something and nothing. Pen pushing never stops –
even on a Saturday. Bea turns her back. They are hiding something from her and
they had no right to.

*

Everyone drinks too much at supper. They eat fish – trout
tickled near Ludford Weir by Alf Bishop. Arie’s mood darkens. Bea sometimes
wondered if he might be jealous, seeing her and Francis as husband and wife.
She had only ever viewed their little triangle from the apex – having two men
love her to make up for the father who didn’t. But on this night, it is
closeness of her lovers which seems to threatens her.

They all move to the chairs around the fire which Francis
stacks with logs. There is small talk but no conversation which matters,
nothing to include her in their unspoken business. Yet she is damned if she is
going to bed early to leave them alone with their secrets. She refills her
glass with yet more Pinot Noir from the old judge’s cellar.

‘Come on, Arie – sing for your supper. Tell us what you’re
really getting up to these days. Your life’s always been so full of excitement.
Share it with us.’

Arie does not reply immediately. He holds her gaze in a way
almost alarms her. She sees again the man she had helped down from his crucifix
in Prague, that woodcut etch of a face and its seer’s eyes which saw the
suffering to come.

‘As you ask, Beatrice... I have been searching for
something.’

‘And what might that be?’

‘It is the courage within myself to ask questions and then
to listen to the answers.’

Orange flames spread between the hearth of logs that pop and
spit above its broken bricks. Arie looks into the fire as he speaks... into the
fire wherein he sees the faces of those who have turned to flecks of ash.

‘I have been forcing myself to consciously find out what
happened to my family.’

It is too late for Bea to call back her words, to regret
their selfish conceit. She must wait for Arie to break the silence.

‘They called it the small terror in the early days... just a
few Jews beaten to death or a synagogue burnt down, nothing that the old hadn’t
heard about in the pogroms of the past... nothing new. How could they know the
future... how could anyone? But slowly, by degrees and by new laws, we were
made outcasts, confined in traps like rats until the Nazis were ready to deal
with us.’

Arie pauses, takes a breath, sips his wine. Neither Bea nor
Francis can take their eyes off him. A great hurt is being confronted.

‘No one truly understood the catastrophe we faced but the
movement I joined never accepted that our enemies should think that if we Jews
were beaten or killed, we wouldn’t be offended, just because we were used to
it. Even before the war, we began to organise escape routes, getting Jews out
of Europe on little ships to Palestine. But the net was always getting tighter
and I was ordered to travel to London by any means I could... and that meant
leaving my wife and children in Vilna.’

No one moves, no one speaks. The embers in the hearth glow
red.

‘What chance did they have... sixty thousand people crammed
in a ghetto of a few streets. No food, disease everywhere... despair, also. The
Nazis were so cunning. They promised work for the people in a town called Kovno
and all these Jews, thousands of them, piled into the train. But it didn’t go
to Kovno. It turned off to a place called Ponar where the people went for picnics
in happier times. When the train stopped, the Jews knew something was wrong and
began to break out but the Nazis opened fire, shot them to pieces. Those who
weren’t dead already were marched to some huge pits and shot. Word spread
through the ghetto that Kovno was an illusion, a trick to get the Jews to go
quietly to their slaughter so now they knew their fate and that afternoon, the
clouds settled low over the ghetto and those inside felt so trapped and close
to death... so ashamed of their helplessness.’

Arie closes his eyes. His shoulders heave, his chin goes
onto his chest. He seems on the point of breaking down and Bea wants to comfort
him but Francis shakes his head.

‘The pits filled with more bodies and even the earth began
to spring with blood. The riflemen weren’t Germans but Estonians and Ukrainians
and our fellow Lithuanians, neighbours of ours once and now they complained
that their shoulders ached from all the shooting they had to do. And so the
Vilna ghetto was emptied but the Nazis needed to hide the evidence of their
crimes so a group of Jews was chained together to excavate the pits and burn
the corpses on pyres of logs...’

Arie’s head is in his hands. His tapering fingers twist the
coils of his greying hair.

‘...these prisoners were no longer human beings... how could
they be? They in turn were killed... all but one who escaped and he is one I
have now met. Out of all that horror, one image remains above all others for
him... a woman who’d been with child when she faced her executioners. When the
prisoners lay her on the logs, her womb splits open and the baby inside is seen
to be on fire.’

Arie’s last words come from the emptiness of his heart.

‘This man knew who she had been in life... she was Ruzhka,
my little sister.’

*

Francis drives Arie back to London next morning. His visit
should have lasted longer but it was clear over breakfast that no one drew any
comfort from the presence of the others. It was a time for reflection, for
measuring one’s life and purpose against what had been revealed the night
before.

Bea walks to the village shop and buys a Sunday Express. The
bells of St Mary and All Angels peal through Garth Woods, over a gentle
landscape that has not seen invaders for a thousand years.

A late Stop Press paragraph catches her eye.

Five men of Middle Eastern appearance arrested in
London yesterday for entering Britain illegally will be deported on Monday
morning.

Chapter Twenty One

Nothing Evie could say persuaded McCall to come out of his
angry self and not cut short their week away.

‘Bea’s an old lady, Mac. You can’t confront her like some
baddie you’re exposing on television.’

‘They’ve kept the truth from me. I haven’t the faintest idea
why but they’ve lied.’

‘Maybe they’d very good reasons. You owe her the benefit of
the doubt. Her husband is dying, McCall – the guy who helped to raise you. He’s
dying.’

‘I still need Bea to give me some answers.’

‘Look, you’re too close to all this. Why don’t you let me
talk to her?’

‘Because this is my life, Evie –
my
story.’

 
They drove
back to Garth that same morning. McCall did not say another word on the entire
journey.

*

Bea was not feeling well, not from any definable ache or
pain, more the shiver of a ageing tree as the gales of winter set in. Her three
score years and ten were over so the future was unknowable and short. She
released the catch to the bureau’s hidden compartment and removed a specific
envelope from those inside – but with great care, so her fingers did not
actually touch the armband next to it. It was as if the spores of some
contagious disease were sewn into its emblem of evil and the silvered cloth
threads of the word
Schutzmann
. Bea would have burnt it years ago but
for the terrible fascination it held for her.

The envelope contained four black and white photographs. Bea
made for the wooden seat by Pigs’ Brook which always caught the late afternoon
sun. She held the pictures like a hand of cards, remembering what she had been
dealt, how she had gambled.

In the first image, Arie stood alone on Westminster Bridge
with Big Ben behind him. His hair was neatly cut for once, his businessman’s
suit double-breasted bird’s eye with wide lapels. The second showed Bea in a
short-sleeved striped dress with her hair piled high in the pin-up girl style
of the late 1940s. How glamorous she looked then, how remote from the old body
she now inhabited.

She put the pictures side by side on the seat. Even apart
like this, she and Arie could only be lovers. They’d had lunch with Francis
that day. He got a bit tight because he had told the Foreign Office he would
not accept a Moscow posting if it meant leaving Bea behind. What it was to be
so adored...

*

Francis does not just love Bea, he worships her. He displays
her on the London diplomatic circuit like some rare creature he has captured
but cannot entirely tame. That is her attraction. The lustful eyes of others
follow her every move, watch her toy and flirt with whichever foreign official
Francis has chosen for grooming and await their own turn. Bea causes men to be
indiscreet. Her husband basks in the envy of those who would bed the woman who
sleeps at his side each night. She is his and always will be. Francis indulges
her, delights in her and would deny her nothing... and forgive her anything.
Francis cannot conceive of life without Bea. She is aware of this. So is Arie.

‘Do you think he suspects us?’

‘I couldn’t swear he doesn’t.’

Francis has gone back to his office after their long lunch.
She and Arie are in his apartment, naked on the rough blankets of his
iron-framed bed. The room is airless and hot.

‘I don’t understand your Francis. Why does he not move
against us?’

‘Because he loves me. By doing nothing, he is showing just
how much he loves me.’

‘You mean he forgives you all this... our liaison?’

‘Yes.’

‘Most men would come after me with a gun.’

‘But Francis knows he would then lose us both, wouldn’t he?’

Some nights, she would not arrive back till after midnight.
Her excuses wore thinner each time. But affairs induce blind recklessness. She
would never deliberately humiliate Francis but could not function without Arie
– not when he was in London.

Bea attends Francis’s tedious diplomatic parties, smiling
coquettishly before slipping away into the night. Sometimes, before she edges
ever closer to the door, she would catch him looking across a room at her...
maybe pretending he did not know he was sharing her just as he had pretended he
wasn’t terrified on all those bombing raids he somehow survived.

To articulate fear is to make it real, to make it happen so
Francis keeps quiet. Besides, nothing is forever. Everyone knows that.

She draws Arie back inside her again and cries out as the
moment comes and they fall from the heights together... down, down onto the bed
below where they cling one to the other until the light is gone.

*

It is just before ten, two days later. Bea is at Victoria
Station exactly as Arie had instructed – but without saying why. The concourse
heaves with people pushing and waving farewell in shafts of dusty sunshine. It
is like Prague again but without danger. She sees a man coming towards her who
looks like Arie but cannot be. This man is carrying a suitcase so it seems as
if he is going away. But it is Arie. He takes her to a cafeteria and buys her a
coffee she does not want.

‘What’s happening, Arie? Where are you going?’

Arie does not reply. She remembers a different morning – the
one when Peter Casserley took him from her and she never saw him for years. He
lights another of his French cigarettes then answers, straight and blunt.

‘I’m going to Jerusalem.’

‘Jerusalem? No, Arie... please... not that. Don’t leave me
again. I can’t bear it.’

‘I’m sorry but I have to. I’m more use there, now.’

‘But you’ve got all your writing work here – your
journalism.’

‘Yes but I have other work I must do, too.’

‘What other work?’

‘I’ve been told that if I set up as a freelance out there,
the BBC will use me.’

‘But if you’ve known this, why didn’t you tell me before?
Why must you always be so damned secretive with me?’

‘And spoil everything?’

‘So it’s not spoilt now – me waving you off once more till
God knows when? Christ, Arie, don’t you understand how you’re twisting me
inside out like this?’

Bea is angry and tearful, the child denied once more. She
deliberately knocks her coffee into his lap then hurries onto the platform so
her crying is lost in the noise of engines and station announcers and the feet
of those who are running late. Arie holds her and she knows there is not enough
time to change his plan.

She thinks of telling him about Liad, their son. But that
would take a degree of courage she has yet to find.

‘Beatrice, come on. Be strong like you’ve always been.’

‘You’ve done this on purpose – tricked me here.’

‘It’s best this way. It has to be done – and quickly.’

‘For you, maybe.’

‘And for Francis. Think of him, Beatrice.’

‘That’s a bit steep – ’

‘No, there’s a bond between us all. And I am coming back,
Beatrice. I really am.’

‘When? When are you coming back?’

‘I don’t know yet but there will be something I’ll need your
help to do.’

‘What sort of thing?’

‘It’s safer you don’t know for now.’

‘You’re lying, Arie. I know you are. You just want me to go
quietly.’

‘No, there isn’t time to explain but just think of Prague.
It’ll be like that again.’

‘I love you Arie.’

‘I know – and I love you both.’

Before she can say another word, he takes a packet from his
overcoat pocket and gives it to her. Inside are the photographs they had taken
on Westminster Bridge. He’d had them specially developed.

‘In photographs, it is possible to be happy forever.’

‘Please don’t go, Arie.’

‘I have no choice.’

Then Arie smiles with those infinitely sad eyes and is gone
into the crowd and the rolling waves of steam from the train which pulls him
out of Bea’s world once more.

*

Alone in the empty flat one evening a week later, Bea
answers the telephone. A woman asks for Mr Wrenn in a voice which is hesitant
and unsure. For an irrationally jealous moment, Bea suspects Francis is having
an affair of his own.

 
‘I need to speak to
him, you see. It’s very important.’

‘Have you tried his office?’

‘I don’t know the number.’

‘But how do you know our home number?’

‘Mr Wrenn gave it to me.’

‘Well he’s not here. Is there anything I can help you with?’

‘No, only Mr Wrenn can help me.’

‘Who shall I say called, then?’

‘Elizabeth.’

‘Elizabeth who?

But the caller’s money runs out and the line goes dead.
After supper, Bea remembers to give Francis the message. There is a slight
distance between them since Arie left. But Bea’s period has come again and
these perpetually barren days create their own friction. Francis puts down his
official papers when he hears Elizabeth’s name. Bea wants to know who she is.

‘She’s Edward McCall’s wife.’

‘Didn’t he serve with you?’

‘Yes, rear gunner. He was at our wedding. Morose sort of
chap.’

Bea remembers – troubled and darkly introverted but joined
to Francis and the rest till death by the terrors they had seen and experienced
over Germany.

‘But why’s his wife ringing you?’

‘Edward’s still in a bad way, apparently.’

‘So she’s rung you before?’

‘Yes, but you know I keep in contact with all the old crew.’

‘What’s wrong with him?’

‘He’s been drinking all the housekeeping, apparently.’

‘Selfish pig. But that’s no concern of yours, is it?’

‘It is, rather. I’ll have to drive down and see if he can’t
be made to mend his ways.’

*

The clouds shifted across Garth Woods, shutting out the sun.
Bea felt chilled and thought about getting home. In her hands were the
remaining two photographs Arie gave her all those years before. If the first
pair brought back memories of joy, these revived only hatred and the desolation
of incalculable grief.

Six million dead.

Say it quickly. It could be the entire population of
London... all murdered.

Children, women, men, old, young, sick, fit, clever, stupid,
deaf, blind, gassed, shot, hung, beaten, tortured, burned. All Jews.

How could the human mind conceive such a crime? Who could be
an instrument in this meticulous slaughter and ever sleep again?

Bea held a picture of some who had found this no trouble at
all.

Nine men pose in grey army tunics, fastened to the neck with
seven silver buttons. Most are about forty, some a little younger. They carry
side arms in polished leather holsters and have just arrived in a town square
wearing black riding boots polished till they gleam. Each has a stout suitcase
with heavy brass locks. Their rifles are reared up on the paving stones like
the poles of a wigwam. The unit’s tenth man takes the photograph to send home
to his wife and children for the album about Papa’s war.

There is little of note about any of them. One has prominent
ears, another rather thick lips. Two more have aped their Fuhrer and grown
absurd toothbrush moustaches. They are tradesmen or innkeepers or men passing
by on a tram, never to be remembered again.

They are also killers, these fathers and husbands and
brothers.

This is an
Einsatzgruppe
– a squad of travelling
executioners from the SS whose function was to murder Jews wherever they could
be cornered by local collaborators in every country the Nazis over ran.

They are the monsters within us all.

Never forget.

That is what Arie told Bea. Nor would she. His fourth
picture made sure of that. A line of women and children stare from beyond death
itself. They plead with the viewer to pause a while, to think what they and
their issue might one day have become. Here were some of the six million as
they wait to be murdered – the real faces of the abstract arithmetic.

Bea would always try to imagine their names and stories, how
their voices sounded and how warm their smiles would have been. The women might
just have come from market in headscarves and pretty floral dresses. The
children are in bonnets and boots and white socks. Those too tired or too young
are carried. One mother’s fingers are spread in support behind her baby’s tiny
head.

And just beyond where they all wait are the cattle trucks
that had brought them to this spot.

There are no Nazis visible, no guns or whips or savage dogs.
Yet they are there, out of frame, waiting... but not wanting to appear in a
family photo album.

Bea’s gaze went – as it always did – to the face of a girl
of about twelve. She reminded her of the prescient child she had cared for in
Prague – thin straight legs, clumpy black shoes and gripping a small woven
straw basket in her right hand.

And in that eye-blink of time as the shutter opened and
closed, so her other hand goes to her gaping mouth to cover that human reaction
of shock and fear. She has suddenly realised what is about to happen on the
ramp of the Auschwitz railhead that day.

This picture always had the power to tear at Bea’s heart.
She felt such an affinity with these women and their children. Was not the
father of her child a Jew? Hadn’t she been as forlorn as these pitiable mothers
when her baby’s blood ran through her hands?

Her son should have been a grown man by now – a scholar, a
poet, a musician and so much more. She could not bear to think about it. The
Nazis did not just kill the living. They stole the future.

Bea looked at the girl again. History is always black and
white. It makes such dread events seem so long ago, less to do with us now. And
that is a blessing for our God would never allow such cruelty to happen under a
clear blue sky... would He? But Bea knew from Arie’s picture that the sun did
shine on Auschwitz that day.