The Pathfinder (23 page)

The boy managed pretty well, working away slowly and carefully with the sandpaper. He stopped and held the wood up. ‘It is all right?'

‘It's fine. Very good.'

He looked pleased and some colour came into his cheeks. ‘I like to do this. It is good fun.'

He couldn't have had much fun in his short life, Harrison thought. In fact, probably none at all.

Lili looked up from her darning. ‘I am sorry that I cannot offer you coffee but we have finished all our wood so I cannot make it.'

The old stove, he realized, must be the sole source of any heat of any kind. No wonder the room was like an icebox. ‘Can you get more?'

‘Dirk will go tomorrow to find some.'

He remembered the Tiergarten tree stumps, hacked down to the ground. ‘Where?'

‘He will go on the bike out into the country. He has made a cart that he can pull behind and he will fill that. We manage.'

We manage.
But for how much longer? The boy kept on coughing, the old man, too, in his sleep. How much longer could they last, living in this sort of cold? And it was only November. The weather was bound to get worse. Much worse.

He stayed for more than an hour, helping to build the Tiger Moth. Eventually, Lili stopped her darning. ‘I think it is time for Rudi to go to bed now.'

Her brother protested but in vain. At the door he turned. ‘You will come back, sir?'

‘It's a promise.'

The boy smiled and waved. For a second, Harrison saw two other small boys turning to smile and wave good night.

Lili said, ‘It is warmer for him to be in bed. Also, he should not keep you here any longer. It is very cold for you too.'

‘It doesn't matter to me,' he said truthfully. ‘I've hardly noticed it.'

The grandfather stirred and coughed and muttered peevishly in his armchair. Lili rose to her feet. ‘I must get him to bed, as well.'

He picked up his cap and gloves. ‘I'll come back as soon as I can.'

She went to the door with him. ‘Thank you for bringing the model, Squadron Leader. Rudi is very happy with it.'

He wished he'd brought something for her too – something English from England – but he hadn't been sure whether she would have been pleased, or even accepted anything from him. ‘It was nothing,' he said. ‘I'm really sorry I couldn't get here sooner. Things have been so hectic.'

‘Dirk says it is also very hectic at Tempelhof. The Americans are bringing in a lot of coal in their planes.'

‘We're bringing quite a bit in, too, actually,' he told her. ‘Not as much as the Americans, of course. We haven't as many planes, but we're doing our best.'

‘Do you fly yourself?'

He shook his head ruefully. ‘I'm stuck on the ground these days, flying a desk.'

She looked puzzled. ‘What does that mean?'

‘Paperwork. Planning. Generally keeping the show on the road.'

‘Do you believe that the Russians will give up in the end?'

‘If we can keep going. And I can't see why we shouldn't. Of course, it rather depends on the weather this winter. And on the Berliners. Whether they can stick it out, you know.'

She understood him. ‘They will. You can be sure of that. They see and hear the planes all day and all night and so they know that the
luftbrücke
is working.'

He fingered his cap. ‘Well, I'll do everything I can for Rudi and your grandfather.'

‘Thank you.' She smiled. ‘I see you are still wearing your Hanhart watch. Do you like it so much?'

‘It keeps jolly good time. I tried to get my other one repaired in England but I had to leave it with the watchmakers. It needs a new part.'

‘It will take long?'

‘Everything takes long nowadays in England.'

‘I thought it would all be so much better there because you won the war.'

‘Far from it. Things are still rationed and there are lots of shortages.'

‘But it is not as bad as Berlin?'

‘No,' he said slowly. ‘It's not as bad as that.'

She heard Dirk coming in – much later than he should have been if he had come back straight from his shift. He always moved like a cat, scarcely making a sound, but she had been lying awake on the couch and heard the soft click of the front door. She got up, wrapping a blanket round her, and switched on the electric light. He stopped halfway across the room, blinking at her, like a hunted animal caught at night.

‘I thought you would be asleep, Lili.'

‘And I thought you would be home long before this. You must have finished work hours ago.'

‘Don't nag. I stopped to have a beer, that's all. There's a new bar opened up near the airfield. All the Americans go there.'

‘To trade on the black market?'

‘No, for girls. Swarms of German girls, hoping to catch a Yank. Some guy plays the piano and they've got a singer. It's a real hot spot. The beer's not bad either.'

He looked at her with his most innocent expression – the one he wore when he was most guilty. And he could turn it on so easily. As usual, he was wearing his filthy old raincoat that made him look like a gangster. She wondered what its deep pockets contained this time. There was a tin box that he kept hidden under a floorboard in his room containing a small hoard of jewellery: the ruby ring, a diamond brooch, gold earrings and bracelets, a string of pearls, more rings. She had found it by accident when she had noticed that the board was loose.

He had spotted the model of the English plane on the table. ‘So . . . I see that the squadron leader came back after all. That's good. I always thought he would. Did he say anything about Grandfather and Rudi?'

‘He doesn't think the RAF will be able to take them until December.'

‘That's not so long. Only two weeks away.'

His unconcern angered her. ‘Rudi has been coughing all day, and now Grandfather, too. And this evening I couldn't even heat the soup for their supper because the wood was finished. We
have
to find some more tomorrow, Dirk.'

‘Calm down, Lili. Don't worry, we will. I'll take the cart out first thing and fill it up. I know a very good place to look.' He put his hand in his raincoat pocket. ‘By the way, I found some more coffee.'

The weather worsened steadily. The conditions at Gatow, coupled with the decreasing number of daylight hours, were already bad enough to threaten the airlift. Fog was the worst hazard: impenetrable, cold and clammy fogs that blanketed the airfield for days on end. The rain poured down in torrents, flooding the tarmac and causing all kinds of electrical faults to aircraft standing outside. And the snow was yet to come. A treat in store, as Tubby put it. The Sunderlands continued to fly in and out of Lake Havel with their precious cargoes of salt but it seemed only a matter of time before ice formed on the lake and put a stop to them. Out on the windswept wastes of the airfield, the RAF and the German civilian labourers worked on doggedly in sodden clothing and miserable circumstances, guiding the aircraft in and out, unloading and reloading them, repairing them, refuelling them. And their crews went on flying, backwards and forwards. The Ground Control Approach directors sat for hours crouched over their radar screens in their cramped caravans without heating. Nobody complained. Nobody faltered. Nobody came even close to giving up.

Nico Kocharian phoned Harrison. ‘Hallo there, Michael, old chap. How are you?'

‘Fine, thanks.'

‘I've managed to wangle some tickets for the opera this Friday. The Berlin Opera Company are doing
Tannhauser.
I wondered if you'd like to come along – as my guest, of course.'

‘I'm afraid I won't be able to.'

‘The tickets are like gold dust and it'll be a marvellous performance. Bit chilly in the house, of course, but people take rugs and blankets. Hot-water bottles, too, if they've got them.'

‘Sorry, I can't get away. I'm sure you'll be able to find somebody else.'

‘Quite sure you won't be able to?'

‘Quite sure.'

‘That's a pity.' There was a pause. ‘Things going all right at Gatow?'

‘Pretty well.'

‘I hear you're all doing a terrific job.'

‘The best we can.'

‘Perhaps we could meet up for a drink sometime?'

A flight lieutenant was hovering with some papers, waiting to see him. ‘I'm sorry but you'll have to excuse me. I'm right in the middle of things.' He said goodbye and put the phone down. He had spoken more curtly than he'd intended but there were more important things to worry about than Kocharian's feelings. He dismissed him immediately from his mind as he attended to the flight lieutenant.

His mother's chatty letters came from home and another world. There'd been a rather boring lecture on the Himalayas with coloured lantern slides at the village hall, a severe overnight frost had almost certainly killed off the Mrs Popple fuchsia, Mrs Lewis's daughter was expecting at last, and they'd played bridge with Celia's parents.

We haven't seen Celia since you were home, but her mother says she'll be down one weekend soon. Apparently she's been working very hard since her promotion. I'm sure the War Office appreciate what a wonderful asset she is.
He smiled when he read this. His mother was losing hope but she had by no means abandoned it. Celia herself had written once: a friendly letter containing only the most general news and no hints or digs of any kind. His father, who communicated infrequently, had also written.

He put the letter away, unconvinced.

When she had any soup to spare, Lili would take some to Dr Meier. The old man seemed to exist on practically nothing. But though she could see that he was growing physically even frailer, his mind remained clear. She had taken to sitting with him for a while in that dreadful cellar and talking. They talked about all kinds of things. He spoke of his long-dead wife, Frieda, and of his only son, Peter, who had died in the trenches of the First World War. All his photographs of them had been lost in the bombing. This had made him very sad, he told her. ‘I have to rely on my memory alone to give me a picture of what they looked like, and my memory is not as good as it used to be. Music was always my consolation but now I can only hear it in my head.'

She found herself confiding in him about the Russian soldiers – telling him far more than she had ever been able to tell Dirk or any other living soul. He had listened to her in silence as she had struggled to find the words to describe how they had seized hold of her and dragged her into the ruins; how they'd slapped her and punched her and torn her clothes from her and held her down in the dirt so each could take a turn while the rest had watched and laughed. Seven, eight, nine of them – perhaps more. How afterwards they'd jeered at her and spat on her and urinated on her face and kicked her with their heavy boots before at last they went away.

When she had finished, he said quietly, ‘You will never forget, Fräulein, so there's no point in trying. It's better to tell yourself that it belongs to the past, together with all the other terrible things that have happened to you. Think of it sometimes, if you must, but don't dwell on it. Look only forwards. Not backwards.'

‘But I can never feel clean. It's a stain on me for ever. One that can never be taken away.' She touched the scar on her forehead. ‘And this reminds me each time I look in a mirror. This mark is from them.'

‘What happens to your body is not so important. It's your mind and spirit that count. The person you are, the way you live, the things you hold dear and true and keep faith with.
That's
what matters.'

Later she told him about the Americans. She was to be pitied for the Russians but the Americans had been of her own making, her own choice. She expected Dr Meier's shocked censure. Instead, he merely remarked, ‘You did it for your young brother, Fräulein, and it Can't have been easy for you. There are many women in Berlin who have had to do the same.'

They talked about Squadron Leader Harrison and his promise of help.

‘He is doing this for you?'

‘Not for me. For Rudi and Grandfather.'

‘But it's really for
you
, I think. He is in love with you. Don't you realize that?'

‘He hardly knows me.'

‘He wouldn't need to. Only to see you. And once would do. The first moment I saw my wife I fell in love with her.'

She shook her head. ‘You're wrong. He's never said anything. Not a word.'

‘The English are reticent about these things, I believe. He wouldn't speak unless he thought you felt something for him, in return. Do you?'

‘I hated him at first for what he was and what he had done. But it's hard to go on hating him when he is so kind to us.'

‘It would be easy, perhaps, to love him instead?'

She answered the doorbell and found him standing there in the rain, soaking wet. He stepped into the hallway, taking off his cap.

‘I came to tell you to get things ready for Rudi and your grandfather to leave the day after tomorrow.'