Our Endless Numbered Days: A Novel (32 page)

“Ute Bischoff,” he said. “Enchanté.”

She bowed her head.

As the men were leaving, I said, “Reuben carved his name in the cabin—under the shelves, beside the stove.”

They looked at me but didn’t reply.

When the door had closed behind them, Ute sat on the chair beside the bed, seeming to take strength from the detective who had just left it.

“Omi died while you were gone,” she said, and her face crumpled and folded in on itself like a glove puppet squeezed by an invisible fist.

I looked for the tissues on the bedside table but they had been removed, along with the peculiar animal. I reached for the blue balaclava under my pillow and held it out to her. She took it, burying her face into it and inhaling. I thought she might be checking if it still held Omi’s perfume, but I could have told her that it smelled of blood, dirt, and honey.

28

London, November 1985

In my bedroom I picked up the purple skirt from the floor where it lay crumpled and forgotten. I took off my dress, and the bra I had cut in half, stuffing it back into my underwear drawer but not bothering to get out another. I put the skirt on. I couldn’t do the zip up to the top, and when I sat down it gaped open. What would Becky be wearing? I tried to imagine her grown, but she stubbornly remained a smiling eight-year-old in flared jeans and a yellow T-shirt. In my memory her face seemed pink and white, lips stretching wide over teeth and gums. I could remember a turned-up nose, a line of hair which stopped short of her eyebrows, so fair they were almost invisible; but none of these features would
be still for long enough to form a face. I took off the skirt and put the dress I had been wearing back on.

Downstairs, in the sitting room, Ute stood with her back to the windows, talking about me.

“. . . a very difficult time,” she said before she trailed off, and all heads turned at once.

A man, tall and good-looking, stood up.

“Oh, Peggy, you didn’t get changed,” said Ute.

“The skirt doesn’t fit me. Nothing fits me any more,” I said, looking at the girl on the sofa. Her hair was unexpectedly brown and curly; I wondered if she’d had a permanent wave. Her legs, in tan tights, were pressed together, knees pointing the other way to her body, which she held upright on the edge of the seat. She smiled at me, her mouth splitting her face in two, revealing the pink of top and bottom gums, and then her lips closed as if she were trying to restrain her escaping teeth. Smoothing her skirt over her bottom, Becky half rose but thought better of it and sat back down.

“It’s nice to see you again, Peggy,” said the man.

He seemed about to step forward and shake my hand. I pulled at the hair over my ear and stayed near the door.

“Peggy, this is Michael,” said Ute. “Do you remember Michael? One of your father’s . . .” I knew that Ute was
about to say “friends,” but she trailed off with a weak “group.”

“A survivalist?” I said, and shook my head. I couldn’t place him; I tried to imagine him in black and white, with a beard, but I was sure he wasn’t in the photograph I had found that morning.

“A Retreater,” he said, and gave an embarrassed laugh. “But that was a long time ago.”

“Please, sit down, Michael,” Ute said. “Oskar, perhaps you would put the kettle on and make us tea.”

He was standing by the bureau, but she didn’t look at him when she spoke. He walked stiffly from the room. Michael sat on a chair in front of the windows and Ute sat opposite Becky. I remained standing, ready to bolt.

“Your mother is looking very happy,” said Michael. “She was telling us she’s started playing the piano again.”

Ute dipped her head.

“I was just asking her if you or Oskar played.”

“Not really,” I said. We were all quiet, listening to the rumble of the kettle coming from the kitchen. I decided it was safe to sit at the other end of the sofa from Becky. I wanted to stare at her, soak up the image of her face and replace the outdated one I had stored inside for nine years.

At last Michael spoke. “It must have been very odd to come back and find you have a brother you knew nothing about.”

“Everything’s odd about being home,” I said. “I thought you were all dead.”

“Oh,” said Becky. “We all thought
you
were dead.”

And we were silent again, while Becky’s mouth flashed white and pink with embarrassment.

“We visited the cemetery,” I said to fill the gap.

“You’re going to have a funeral?” Michael said to Ute. The words seemed to come out much faster and louder than he expected.

Ute looked at me, as surprised as Michael.

He hesitated, started and stopped twice before he said, “There’s something I’ve been wanting to say. I’m ashamed I once counted James as one of my friends. That we all did. As far as I was concerned, all that survivalist stuff was only talk, bravado, boys playing games . . .”

Michael trailed off as Oskar came in with the tray laden with the best teapot, the bone china cups and saucers from Germany with the ivy pattern, and the Apfelkuchen that Ute had set out earlier. He slammed the tray down, so the china tinkled and tea slopped out of the pot, and then he sat on the floor with his back to the bureau. Michael reached forward and grabbed at a
camera that was on the corner of the coffee table, wiping off a few drops of spilled tea onto his trousers. The camera reminded me of the man in the grounds of the hospital.

“Speaking for myself, I don’t know if I could go to James’s funeral,” Michael continued.

Perhaps I should have stopped him and told him that I hadn’t meant we would be having a funeral, but I didn’t.

“The others of course might feel differently, not that I’m in touch with many of them.” He looked down at the camera and twisted the lens so that it moved in and out.

“Oliver Hannington,” said Ute. The words came out of the blue; they weren’t even a question.

Michael looked up sharply.

“I mean, do you still know Oliver?” she said more lightly.

“I haven’t heard from him for years,” Michael said. “I’m pretty sure he went back to the States after James disappeared. He didn’t join in the search for Peggy and James in France; I have a vague recollection of him tying one of those yellow ribbons on the trees in the front garden. He’s probably hiding in a bunker with a stash of guns, although I always thought Oliver was only in it for the attention.” Michael lifted the camera up to his
face, focusing on the piano at the other end of the room. “Playing games with us all,” he said, and in a smooth, practised motion he turned his body and the camera toward me and clicked.

I flinched as if he had slapped me.

“Sorry,” said Michael, dropping the camera back into his lap. I understood then why he wasn’t in the photograph of the survivalists.

“Tea,” said Ute. “Becky, would you like some tea?” She leaned forward and poured out five cups.

“Any news from the police on that wild man? Have they caught him yet?” said Michael.

Watching him take a sip of milky tea made my stomach flip.

“They are meant to be telephoning today,” said Ute.

“He wasn’t a wild man,” I said at the same time.

“Let’s hope they have good news, so we can all sleep a little sounder,” said Michael.

“Is he here then, in Highgate?” said Becky, sitting up straighter.

“No, no, of course not,” said Ute.

“He wasn’t a wild man,” I repeated. “He was my lover.”

All movement in the room stopped: Becky with a lump of cake in her cheek, Michael with his teacup halfway to his mouth, and Ute. Ute was looking straight at me
and I saw her eyebrows lower, her open mouth close, and her eyes move down over my chest and come to rest on my stomach. Something changed in her face—understanding, realization—as I knew something was changing in mine.

It seemed that everyone was still for minutes, but eventually Becky said, “You should have some cake, Peggy. It’s lovely.”

“Peggy has got a bit of an upset stomach today,” said Ute.

Becky looked at me while she took another bite of Apfelkuchen. “I sold another story, the one about the King of the Mussels, so there’ll be buns for tea,” she said with her mouth full, and we both laughed. There were crumbs of cake in her teeth, but I didn’t mind; instead I felt a burst of hopefulness, as if perhaps sometime in the future we might be friends again.

When Michael and Becky had left, the three of us sat down in a row on the sofa with Ute in the middle.

“When your brother was born,” Ute said, “I was on my own. I telephoned the hospital and called for a taxi. I was very frightened. I did not know what to do—the baby was coming at any moment.”

“Mum,” complained Oskar, and rolled his eyes.

“I open the bedroom window and call to an old man walking down the street. He takes a long time to
look around him and find who is shouting. ‘Ich habe ein Baby!’ I yell, and only when another contraction has passed do I realize I have been calling to him in German. Finally he understands, but he takes a long time to get into the house because all the doors are locked for reason of security, and he has to break a window. So much glass smashed in this house.” Ute leaned back on the sofa, remembering. “By the time the man came to the bedroom, my little Oskar had arrived already. Do you know why I name him that?”

“It was the old man’s name,” Oskar said, as if he had heard this story a million times before. He had taken my father’s leaving note out of his pocket—the pieces taped back together—and was holding it in his hands.

“No, that is not correct,” said Ute. “There have been too many lies. It was Oliver Hannington’s middle name.”

My brother and I stared at her, confused.

“I was angry with James for leaving, for taking Peggy, for not coming back, for me having the baby all by myself. So I call the baby Oskar.”

“After Oliver Hannington?” I said, trying to make things clearer in my head.

“Yes, Oliver Oscar Hannington,” she said. And then to my brother, “He was your father’s friend . . .” She paused, choosing her words with precision. “. . . and
mine. When I became pregnant, I did not know if the father was Oliver or James. I told your father that, on the telephone from Germany. This is why he left.”

I remembered how I had often thought Oliver Hannington was a dangerous influence on my father, but now it seemed I had been worrying about the wrong parent.

“I should have kept quiet,” Ute continued. “Of course, as soon as you were born I could tell James was your father. But by then it was too late—he was gone. And Peggy with him.”

Oskar stared down at the note.

“It is all my fault,” Ute said, and was about to say more, but the telephone rang. She and I looked at each other, then she hefted herself off the sofa and left the room. I heard her pick up the phone in the hall.

“Hello?”

“What? What is it?” said Oskar, looking at my face.

“Shh,” I said, standing up and walking to the doorway. “It must be the police.”

Ute wasn’t talking. When I peeped into the hall, she’d sat down on the telephone seat, the same one that had been there when I was a child. She looked at me and her face drained of colour while she listened to the voice on the other end.

“Have they found Reuben?” I said to her. But she put her hand up to silence me, still listening.

“No, I think you must be not correct,” she said into the receiver. “This is not possible.”

“Have they found him?” I hissed at her again, but she turned her back on me.

“What about the name carved into the cabin?” she said down the phone.

“Why are the police calling?” said Oskar, tugging on my sleeve.

I yanked myself loose. “They went back to die Hütte, to the cabin, to look for Reuben. They said they would phone today.”

“Yes, that is correct, but she is receiving treatment for the past two months,” Ute was saying. “Yes, OK. Tomorrow.” She replaced the receiver with care and stood up.

“Have they found him?” asked Oskar. Ute came back into the sitting room, went to the piano, and held on to it. Without turning around she said, “I would like you to go to your bedroom, Oskar. I need to talk to Peggy alone.”

“Why?” he complained. “What did they say?”

“Please, now, Oskar.”

Her voice frightened me, and it must have scared my brother too because with a pout he left. I heard his feet
on the stairs, although I suspected he may have been marching on the bottom step and was still listening outside the door. I needed to see Ute’s face, but she didn’t seem about to turn around, so I went to the piano and sat on the stool in front of the closed key lid.

“He’s dead, isn’t he?” I said, already worried for the creature inside me.

“No, Peggy, he is not dead.” She turned to look at me and I held her gaze. “They said he never existed.”

Her eyes slid away from mine and I opened the key lid and saw again the row of polished teeth.

“They only found your fingerprints . . .” She paused. “. . . on the axe.”

With quiet deliberation I laid my fingers out across the keys in the position for the start of La
Campanella
.