Snowleg (19 page)

On their first morning together they went to a Turkish restaurant in Charlottenburg. She asked him to explain the menu, and after he had done so said with a stern expression: “Everyone sends their love.”

“How are they?”

“Mum wants to know if you got her last care package?”

“Of course I did.” A CD of Beethoven's
Missa Solemnis
with another of her letters: “Ros gave it to me for Christmas, but I've already got it. I'm sure you'll love it. Do write from time to time. I don't mind your being gone five months, but you've been gone six years. Is there any prospect of my becoming a grandmother? Because as far as we can tell Rosalind is not going to help us out. Perhaps you have some friends she can come and meet . . .”

“You might drop her a line,” said Ros. “She might not take it from me that you're still alive.”

“And Dad?”

“Dad's not so good, you know. Mum's driving him mad with her music. Although he sends her bonkers in other ways.”

“Oh?”

“He's had this friend staying from Morocco.”

“Not Silkleigh?”

She laughed. Her father's sad little laugh. “He comes and goes, promising to repair Daddy's finances with his schemes, but so far not a sausage.”

“I thought he was writing a book.”

“Oh, that's firmly on the back burner until, so he says, he gets the right title. He went clean off the last one! No, his great ambition at the moment is to open a restaurant in Abyla – that's in Morocco. I have a suspicion he wants yours truly to advise him, but so far he's only invited me snorkelling. I have to say, he's a pretty good riot. You should see him trying to get Mum to do a duet. He took me aside after the last row they had and whispered: ‘Your mother wasn't born, darling, she was
quarried
.'”

But Peter didn't want to hear about Silkleigh. “What about you, Ros?”

“Oh, I'm doing fine.”

“No boyfriend?”

“No boyfriend,” and asked quickly: “How long are you planning to stay in Germany?”

“I've no idea.”

“Surely you want to come home?” She didn't conceal her irritation that as far as she was concerned her brother had gone chasing after Germany, or rather his misconceived idea of it, in the same embarrassing manner as once he had pursued her girlfriends. “Mummy hasn't said anything, but now Grandpa's died I'm sure she's hoping, well, you know, that you'll come to your senses.”

“Which means?”

“Be a doctor in England, for God's sake.”

“No, I can't, not yet. I'm stuck. I can't go on living this life indefinitely, but I am going to qualify first.”

“Peter, do you know what you're doing to our parents by not being there, not visiting? Grandpa was so proud of you and you didn't even come for his funeral.”

“I'm sorry, Ros. I didn't have the money. But I have promised to visit when I finish my exams.”

She wasn't to be parried. “You don't have to apologise to me. All I want to understand is, why are you here and why are you so unhappy? There has to be a reason. You're my brother. What are you running away from? Was it something at school I don't know about? I saw Tristram the other day and he said that after your birthday you were never the same again.” She gave him a merry look. “By the way, Tristram's fallen head over heels for Camilla.”

“Ros, I'm not running away from England.”

“So if you're not running away, what else is keeping you? It's perfectly ghastly here. Humourless and ghastly. As for the food . . .”

“I'm not here for the food.”

“Listen. Something clearly isn't working in your life. Is being here making any difference?” Then: “Don't tell me you're still looking for your father?”

“If you like.” He hadn't talked to anyone about it, and with that extra level of loneliness which her being there had emphasised, he revealed to his sister the story of his frustrated visit to Dorna two years before. “I managed to get to see the village where Mummy met him. But it wasn't enough. I couldn't find his name. Incidentally, you can say to your mother that if there's anything she can do to find a name or date . . .” But even as he asked, he knew that his mother had told him everything she was going to tell him, and was even more stung into regret.

He went on: “You can't imagine how fantastically difficult it is. In England, you just go to the local council and ask. Not over there. Even if I did come across him or his relatives, there was no way I would have recognised them. I couldn't go wandering around saying, ‘Excuse me, do I remind you of anyone?' Anyway, the village was completely demolished in my memory by the journey back. I can still hear the deer being killed. It was terrible, Ros.”

But she knew him too well. She wasn't satisfied that his unhappiness could be laid all at the feet of his German father. “There's something else, isn't there?”

“Maybe you're right.”

Beaming like a midwife, Rosalind said: “Is it a woman?”

He went quiet.

“Peter, I know that expression. I almost wish we were in Hamburg because I'd like to see who you're sleeping with. What happened to Anita? Still seeing her?”

“No, we had a slight falling out. In fact, I'm completely off girls, partly because I'm working so hard and partly because, since you ask, I did lose my heart.”

“Where was this?”

In Leipzig.”

“Come on, we're all grown up.”

“We spent the night together. We only had one night, but I haven't been able to get over it. I did this appalling thing. I panicked in a way . . . a way I can hardly bring myself to describe.”

“Tell me.”

He needed a fresh packet of West Lights to do so.

Afterwards she said, “Have you heard from her?”

“Not a word. I've written letter after letter. But she's a young woman,” he said brokenly. “She probably does it with all sorts of people, all sorts of stage managers.”

“Steady on. She must have been pretty taken with you to barge into the hotel like that.”

“I dare say it was a mixture of love and fear, but the truth is it can't possibly be explained by love.”

“And why the fuck not, my liege?”

“Because if you boil it down all we had was two cigarettes and a glass of vodka. She saw me as a ticket out of the country.”

“Peter,” her cheeks bulging with bread, “you understand absolutely nothing about attraction. Can I know her name?”

“Snowleg.”

“Snowleg! Doesn't even sound German.”

“No, it's not a name. It's her grandmother's pet name for her.”

Rosalind could not believe that he had fallen for a young woman without a name. “That's frankly a little bit dim. Even by my big brother's standards.”

Next morning he took her to the Wall. She stood at Checkpoint Charlie and stared in horror across the border. “My God, Peter, how can they do this to each other? The same people!”

“I know,” and went on looking at the Wall. Picturing a blackened rope. Caught between worry and hope and his utter relief that the Wall was there.

Over a beer, he found himself returning to the subject of Snowleg. “Why did I say I didn't know her, Ros? Why?” Abject, he had no answer.

His sister put her cigarette out in the empty bottle. “You're acting as though there was a reason. And perhaps there isn't an explanation. People do inexplicable things.” And tried to suppress the irritation that was entering her voice. “Look, we all mess up. It's human. It's hard work being anyone. You've got to let go of this fantasy that you've made a terrific impact on this person's life. Maybe for you it was a moment of extreme significance and you've been stuck in it. But maybe for her it was just one millimoment in a myriad stream of moments. Maybe if she were sitting where I'm sitting she'd say to you: ‘Yes, I was betrayed and the course of my life shifted, but it was much more altered by things that happened later.' Maybe she'd tell you that she's forgiven you long ago. That you didn't do to her anything that her country hasn't done to her all along and without apology. Think of the Wall, for God's sake. I still can't get it out of my head.”

Not that the Wall could eliminate Snowleg. He had tried to stamp out the memory of her like a plant between the pages of a heavy book he had returned to the shelf, but she lay in him dormant and unexploded. Ever since he had got back from Leipzig, he felt stuck in a perpetual dusk at the hour of his denial, snow falling and a cold dread in his heart. He wanted nothing more than to love someone. It never happened. He couldn't admit to his sister that he had completely lost the appetite for loving anyone.

Once or twice in the months following Rosalind's visit Snowleg stole into his mind when he wasn't paying attention. On one occasion he saw her on the platform at Blankenese, her trim waist in a cherry dress and her breasts up-tilted. But the woman he startled was Italian. Another time she sat in bright clothes on a bench overlooking the Alster, face absorbed in a gardening magazine. She only looked back in a painting. The Easter before his final exams, he visited the Kunsthistorische Museum in Vienna and was taken aback to see Snowleg in a portrait of a young woman by Bellini. Looking back and feeling sorry for him.

Sometimes he felt a moment of calm as if someone a long way off was thinking kindly of him. Sometimes he felt a moment of terror as if the opposite were true. But these moments came less and less until, by the time he entered the examination room at the end of six years of medical school, he had managed to persuade himself that he had, as his mother would have wanted, put the past behind him.

One week after he completed his Staatsexamen, Peter flew back to England to honour the promise he had made to his parents. By the time he boarded the train at Waterloo, he had made a decision to draw a line under Snowleg. He was not going to spend the rest of his life whimpering “If only”. He was not going to die aged ninety-five like his grandfather without having engaged himself. His sexual antennae were telling him to take a break, get on with it. Expecting shortly to qualify as a doctor, he determined henceforth to avoid thinking about Snowleg, about East Germany. Whatever had happened there had had the effect of depoliticising him. His action had tainted that place and he wanted nothing more than to turn his back on it. Not wanting to be reminded of what he had done, he would try to forget it like a sin.

PART III

England, Hamburg, Berlin1986–96

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“P
ETER
!”

His mother sat on the piano stool, caught by surprise. Meringues of uncombed white hair and a blue tracksuit dusted to the knees with pollen. And an animal that sprang across the carpet, barking. His dog.

“Honey!” She leaped up and grabbed Honey by the collar and he remembered his grandfather's words.
With dogs, dear boy, you get what you put in
.

“Mum.”

They kissed. His mother all face-cream and blushes. “I heard the door slam and I thought, That's Peter.”

“And it was.”

“Why didn't you telephone? We were expecting you tomorrow.” But she wanted to look at him more than she wanted to know the answer. “How long can you stay?”

“A week,” giving Honey a cursory scratch under the chin. “If that's all right?”

“Stupid boy.” And she meant it.

He found Rodney seated on a scroll-back chair among his photographic chemicals and open bottles of black ink.

“Peter!” and threw down the card he was sketching.
Captain and Mrs Rickards request the pleasure of your company at the marriage of their daughter Camilla to the Hon. Tristram Leadley.

“Dad,” wondering why he felt nothing and thinking they'll name their children Annabelle, Horace and Lavinia. “How are you?”

“Well, well.” But the lump on his neck had grown and his skin had taken on the brownish tint of his developing fluid.

“I hope you're seeing someone about that?”

“Don't worry.” Rodney had always treated his infirmity with jovial tolerance. “I'm in good hands.”

“Where's Ros?”

“She's living in Grandpa's flat. Until she finds her legs.”

Seven years Peter had been in Germany and for a split second he took Rodney's words literally. “Her legs? Something's happened to her?”

Rodney smiled. “She's using the flat for her catering business. Your mother didn't think you'd mind.”

“Mind? Why should I mind?”

“Well, it's yours as much as it is hers.”

Twenty minutes later a red Mini braked in a bow-wave of white gravel, his sister waving through the open window.

“Why didn't you tell us, you horror? I'd have cooked something special,” running to embrace him. Still frizzy-haired, still puffy-faced. Still wanting to play Scrabble after dinner.

That night, with a professional air, Rosalind drew out seven tiles from the bag, originally a felt pouch for Rodney's watercolours.

“You start.” But it was her only concession. After a particularly long interval, she warned: “We'll have to set a time limit.”

Peter studied the board. There was an open G. He rearranged his letters. Then stared, chest thumping. Using his blank, he could spell
SNOWLEG
.

“One minute more,” warned Rosalind.

“What about this?” And lined up three tiles on the board.

“
SLOG
.” Rosalind enunciated the word with the seasoned Scrabble-player's look of avarice. “What a waste of an S.” Then: “Daddy says you're forgetting your English. Is it true?”