The Spy Game (9 page)

I
found Königsberg, I found out, it's in Russia. It's got another name now, that's why we couldn't find it before. It was
all ruined in the war. The Russians captured it and everyone left, every single German. I found it in the encyclopedia in
the library at school. They moved all the borders around after the war and bits of some countries became others. Königsberg
became a bit of Russia. So there's only Russians living there now, and they speak Russian and all the streets have new names
in Russian. They write Russian with another script so you couldn't read them even if you tried. I'm going to learn Russian
when I'm older. Maybe in my next school. I'm good at languages, like Dad, particularly difficult ones. I came top in Latin
last term. If I learn Russian it might come in useful.'

Peter home, his trunk standing on its side, a brown trunk with wooden ribs about it, big enough for a child to hide inside.
Peter back with ideas pent up in him, all the thinking of the term. I didn't go into his room much those days even when he
was home. It had become a private place, for him alone; or partly it may have been only that he had been away so long at school
that the room had stopped feeling lived in, just sporadically used. His trunk or his weekend case was always in the corner,
as if it was a hotel and he was ready to go, and there were dirty socks on the floor. There was a photo of our mother in a
leather frame on his chest of drawers. It was a studio shot of her looking like a film star, posing with her head a little
to one side, smiling, white teeth and light in her eyes and a sheen on her hair. The image of our mother but not as we knew
her. I had another shot from the same series but was not certain if either was like her at all. The picture with the best
likeness was the one Peter kept on the table beside his bed and took away to school with him. It showed our parents together
just after they were married, somewhere in Berlin. They were wearing overcoats and hats because it was December, and there
was snow on the ground. Our mother had her head up, cocked a little back, caught in a laugh that was so typical of her that
you could almost hear it. In one gloved hand she held a white bouquet that was the only thing that showed it was a wedding,
and her other hand rested on her new husband's arm. Our father also looked like himself in the picture, smiling only with
the corners of his lips, standing just behind her and tall and solemn like a guard.

Peter had out on the table the model he was going to make, that Dad had bought him for the start of the holiday. It was a
tank this time, a Sherman. Peter said that the best tank in the war was actually a Russian one and the Sherman was American
and not nearly so good. He had laid out all of the pieces meticulously on the newspaper that covered the table, with the glue
and the pots of model paint beside them, and the transfers that he would put on when it was all done, a number and a white
star, held together with a clip so that he would not lose them.

'Was that the same kind of tank that Mummy drew for you?'

'No. I wanted a Panzer. I asked her for a German tank.'

The drawing of the tank had been a great event. Our mother never did pictures. Our father drew, but she didn't. Yet for some
reason Peter had insisted that she was the person who drew the tank for him. He cannot have been more than seven as it was
long before he went away to school. He made her promise to do the picture one night before he would go to sleep. And she must
have sat up for hours, because in the morning she had put it out beside his bed: a lovely clean pencil drawing of a tank with
all its details perfect, lightly shaded, all lightly done with a touch that was quite different from our father's more haphazard
style of drawing so that we knew that it was really hers.

'Have you got that picture still?'

He had it in a drawer with two pieces of paper folded about it so that it wouldn't come to harm. On top were the letters he
had from her, I could tell by the writing, and the long scrolls of his school photographs. It was an honour to be allowed
to see into the drawer. I had not been so close to Peter for ages.

'It's super,' I said.

'Do you think, Anna, really do you think -' It was because we were suddenly so close that Peter began to confide, but in such
a rush that he got caught up in his words and stumbled over them. 'You don't think, do you, that - you know, about the Krogers
and all that, whatever it is, well '

'What?'

When he got all tight like that the tears always came up to his eyes. He did not like people to see him cry.

'It was just something I thought. I just thought it.'

'What, Peter?'

And suddenly he grinned, as if it was a joke. As if it wasn't serious.

'Maybe she's there. Maybe she's in Russia. Maybe they called her back.'

And I laughed too, suddenly, when he said it.

'Look at the history, the dates. Königsberg captured by the Russians, April 1945. She turned up in Berlin early in 1947, in
the British zone, and met Dad. What happened in between?'

'I don't know. I suppose they just never told us.'

'She was in Russia, that's what. The Russians took and trained her, don't you see? She turned up in the British zone, not
the Soviet one. How do you think she got there?'

Peter had read about it all, worked it out. The Russians were clever. Even at the end of the war against Hitler they were
planning for the next one. They were training agents and placing them all through the Allies' countries. They were using the
time to get everything in place. It was all worked out down to the details. They put in a complete system of cells, even then.
Some would be active from the start, with informants and spies on the ground. Others might be 'sleeping', all in place with
covers established but waiting to be activated by a message from Moscow. There were sleepers all over the place. Like the
Krogers when they first came to England. They just went around like that was who they really were, and set up their business,
and everybody believed it. But there were others who came and set up their cover, and went on being sleepers for years and
years, and nobody ever woke them up. Maybe the call just never came, or the contact was caught, or died, or knew they were
being watched, and then the sleeper was out on their own. Then they might just stay as they were, being somebody else, or
they might go, quietly, cancel their identity and disappear.

'How do you know that?'

'It's obvious they would, isn't it?' He had it all so sure, so pat in his brain he did not like to be stopped.

The Krogers, before they were the Krogers, when they were still in America and still the Cohens, had been part of the Rosenberg
spy ring. Known associates, according to the FBI. And suddenly in 1950, when the FBI were closing in on the ring, they had
disappeared. Their money went from their bank accounts and their savings were cashed but they left behind most of their things,
jewellery, clothes.

'Maybe they were in too much of a hurry?'

'Maybe they didn't want them. You wouldn't want your old clothes if you were running away to be somebody else, would you?
Not if you were in disguise and didn't want to be traced.'

I
t was dark outside. Susan was round at the house one day after tea and Peter had the idea of going out.

I 'Let's go up the hill.'

'You can't,' Susan said. 'It'll be too dark to see.'

'It's not that dark yet. And anyway, the moon's coming up. It's nearly a full moon, I saw yesterday.'

'Your father's coming home. He'll wonder where you are.'

'He'll just think we're at your house, like your mother'll think you're here.'

'I don't want to.'

'Look, Anna's coming.'

We put on coats, balaclavas, gloves, all dark things as Peter said that we should not be seen. Susan borrowed Peter's school
duffel as her own coat was too light. We took a torch with us, the only one we had. Peter said that as Susan was scared of
the dark she could carry it. We went out and across the road, down the track by the farm.

The air seemed ready to freeze. There was a first star bright in the sky but no moon yet.

'It's dark,' said Susan. 'It's going to be too dark.'

'It's fine. Just follow Anna and hold the torch straight.'

The cows were in the barn, lowing, snuffling. The warm smell of the cows bedded on straw spilled through the slits in the
stone walls. But once we got over the gate into the field everything was cold and silent.

'Where do we go now?'

'Up. We're climbing the hill, aren't we?'

The hill loomed round and black. The sky behind it was still some few shades lighter, and the ruts in the track where the
ground was bare showed pale and clear in the torchlight.

'I think I want to go home. Will you come home with me, Anna?'

'You can't now,' Peter told her. 'There's only one torch.' He stopped and waited for her to get to him. 'Anyhow, you're not
holding it properly. The light's wobbling all over the place so we can't see the holes in the track. Give it to me and I'll
take it instead.'

'No, I'll keep it. I'll hold it straight.'

Then Susan was quiet for a bit and the torch was steady, and the three of us walked close together, but silently so that the
others seemed hardly there. I felt my footsteps soft on the ground. The night stretched all around and nothing seemed to begin
or end. My exhaled breath made vapour in the cold air and I imagined that all of myself could be vapour, dissolving out into
the night. The village was behind, below. I saw the houses like closed boxes, squares of light escaping them.

'What's that?' said Susan.

'It's only an owl.'

'I'm scared of owls.'

'You're scared of everything.'

I tried to cut them out of my hearing. I would like to have been alone, all by myself in the night.

'Please, can we go home now?'

There was another gate, a stone wall. Beyond the gate you walked straight up the grass to get to the top of the hill. The
track turned away and followed the wall, going round to the other end of the village where Mrs Cahn's house was.

'Come on, Peter, let's go this way,' I said, aware of them both again, remembering to be kind. (A last breath of the night
held inside, like the breath before a dive.) 'Let's not go up the hill. Susan doesn't want to.'

'We said we'd go up the hill. That's what you said you'd do.'

'But if we go this way it's just as long a walk. Only it's down by the village and we can see the lights so we can't be lost.
And we can go along the backs of the houses and see in, see what everyone's doing.'

So it was my idea. That bit of it started with me, not Peter. I hadn't meant this walk to have anything to do with the spy
game.

It was easy walking now, the track skirting the hill and falling slowly back to the level of the village. The houses, the
few street lamps on the road, the church tower standing against the sky. A scattering of stars beginning to show. Susan was
happier now, even beginning to find the adventure in it, in the walk, the dark and the cold.

Most of the windows had their curtains drawn already but in the vicarage we saw the outline of a woman before the window just
pulling them across.

'Do you think she could see us, Peter, if she looked up here?'

The curtains joined. The Vicar's wife was gone.

In some houses there wasn't a light in the room that gave on to the hill, but lights in corridors and other rooms behind,
filtering through so that the windows had a grey glimmer like that of the television screen before the picture came on. We
saw pieces of people passing inside but none that we could recognise, not until we came before Mrs Cahn's.

'Look,' said Peter. 'It's your piano woman.'

She was wearing a wine-coloured dress and a dark apron, the rich colour moving across the rectangle of the cottage window,
going to the cooker and putting some-thing in a pan.

'She's got someone with her,' said Peter. 'See, there are two places at the table, and wine glasses. I bet it's a man.'

As he spoke the man came in. He was tall so that we could not see his head properly, looking down at such a steep angle through
the window. He was thin, dark-haired when he came into view. Peter was sure that he was foreign and I thought that he was
right though I could not have said why. The man went up behind Sarah Cahn where she stirred what was in the pan on the cooker
and put his hand under her apron and pulled her back towards him.

'Cooo,' said Peter.

I felt myself blushing in the dark.

He put his hand right across her and bent his head to kiss the side of her neck and then her mouth, so that all we could see
was the wine-coloured dress and the darkness of his hair.

'We shouldn't watch. It's private.' For once Susan was right and we should have let her lead us. 'Let's go.'

'Not yet,' said Peter. 'I want to see his face properly first, so I know him.' And he went down the slope towards the window,
running quickly, sidelong so that he did not fall.

He did not understand that the view was better where we stood, because of the angle of the slope. The man put his hand up
the skirt of her dress and felt there, and her body fell back away from his towards the table that was laid. Then he knelt
down before her and put his head between her stockinged legs and dropped the skirt down over it.

Susan and I moved together, turning at the same moment, walking on down the track, saying nothing.

Peter got to us at the gate.

'He went,' he said. 'Where did he go?'

Only then did we begin to snigger.

'What is it? What did you see?'

And the giggles burst and we ran home. It hurt to laugh and run at the same time.

T
he Laceys' dining room was big and still like a lake: a smooth mahogany table reflecting the light, tall windows at the end
of the room, lawn and bare trees beyond and a cool sky.

'Mrs Cahn has a lover.'

Words like that rippled out to the walls. You could see that it thrilled Susan to say them.

It was a formal room that they used for dinner parties and then I imagine it would have come alive. I only ever ate there
a few times, Sunday lunches, sitting stilted with a linen napkin on my lap that slipped to the floor, listening to adult talk
and watching the candles burning down. This was one of the rare occasions that the room was used for anything else. Daphne
Lacey had moved the candlesticks and the silver to the sideboard, and spread the table with envelopes and sheets of stamps
and letters for the Women's Institute. The table was handy for projects like that: mailings and Christmas cards, and curtain
making, fabric then spread across instead of papers, green baize laid beneath the electric Singer so that it did not scratch.
We girls had been dragged in to help and sat side by side with piles of letters and envelopes before us, Daphne Lacey at the
head with an index box writing out the addresses.

'Susan my dear, what are you saying?'

'There was a man there, at Mrs Cahn's.'

'Well, I should think the poor woman could do with someone.'

She wrote with a fountain pen in royal-blue ink, the writing large and curly. It was the sort of writing I thought was never
true, the expansive female script of invitations -'Do come!' - and Christmas cards that were addressed to 'All the family'
where the writer couldn't remember the children's names.

'We saw. We thought he was foreign.'

'There's no need to gossip about it.'

'You always do.'

Daphne Lacey put down the envelope she had in her hand and looked sharply at her daughter. Susan looked back, oddly bold.
I saw them, mother and daughter eye to eye, Susan's flash of insolence reflected in her mother's flash of anger. I saw that
Susan would end up looking like Daphne, would probably end up being like her. And then I thought: Since I had no mother no
one could know how I would be. It was a free thought, like floating. I took up the top letter from my pile and put it into
an envelope. The envelopes had a side opening. Mrs Lacey had been precise and told us that the correct way was to keep the
opening to the right, the side she referred to as the window side. We sat with the windows to the right, long windows with
deep sills, and on the sills two grinning china lions that looked more like the dogs they trained in the circus. Outside the
window the light was silvery. The morning's fine rain had stopped falling and the sun had come through. Birds out in the winter
sun on the Laceys' neat lawn, moving suddenly from one spot to another as if they were on springs.

Her voice ran on even when you didn't listen: high and clear and careless, forgetting that we were children.

'She hasn't had an easy time of it, Sarah Cahn. Why, they'd only been here a year when her husband died. I thought she'd go,
back where she'd come from, poor woman, there wasn't anything to keep her here. They only came, you know, because he had a
job at the school. But then I suppose there wasn't anywhere else for her to go. Not since the war.'

'She came to England before the war,' I said.

'Did she, dear?'

'She told me. She left all her family behind and came on a train.'

'Well, if she said so, then I suppose she did. Her husband came later anyway. He was in a concentration camp.'

'Was that like your camp?'

The question just came out. I knew as I spoke that it was a subject that I should not mention. Sitting there at that table
drove conversation in a way that I could not control.

Daphne Lacey's pen held poised for an instant like a dart.

'It was a Nazi camp. It was German.' There was precision in her voice.

'German, not Japanese.'

As if the difference were no more than language.

Or climate: the Japanese camp humid in the jungle, men's shirts streaked with sweat, cicada noise and the calls of strange
birds; the German camp cold, to my mind, always cold.

Daphne Lacey was writing again. More writing curling across the envelopes.

'It quite ruined his health, of course. He was lucky to survive but his health was ruined. He never looked a well man, not
when he came here. I only met him once or twice but I used to see him about in the village. They had a dog, I don't know what
happened to it, but they had a dog, a nice little dog, a spaniel I think it was. He used to walk it. You used to see him out
walking. Not up the hill, I shouldn't think he could have managed that, but through the village. He had TB, I heard. Lots
of them had TB poor things when they came out but then I suppose they had to count themselves lucky they got out at all.'

Why did they not explain things, those adults? They did not explain, they did not define, but clipped their speech wherever
anything mattered; and we were left to fall through the gaps between their words. There was some-thing about the Japanese,
the hush of something appalling which our people had suffered, British men and women held in some slant-eyed oriental silence.
Then there was the vast horror that concerned the Jews, deeper and more distant. (And there was what Peter had said about
the soap. I had never forgotten about the soap. For a time, I had not felt easy washing any more.)

I have two days in Berlin and then I shall take the train to Poland. If there is time, I might go to see one of the death
camps. All the tourists go there nowadays. Auschwitz is too far, but my guidebook tells me I might go to the smaller camp
of Stutthof, which is close to where I will be.

Yet I do not think that I could bear it. Not now, not alone. Another time perhaps, if I ever come back. These are chill grey
days, these days of German spring. Spring here comes later than at home though I understand the summer will be finer. Cold
days reel slowly by and I let them pass. I see the sights. I walk the streets. I sit in cafis, anonymous. Thoughts become
intense. It is because there is no one to break them. I observe, and I think my English thoughts. Those about me speak German
and I see them from a distance as if they are no more than figures moving on a screen, subtitles lost, I the viewer, uncomprehending.
I order another coffee. The present is less meaningful than the past.

'Stop daydreaming, dear. Come along, Susan's nearly finished hers.' Susan's pile of leaflets done, mine only half folded.
Daphne Lacey's red fingernails on the pen, writing fast. The stamps still to do. There was always something still to do if
you were Daphne Lacey. The mailing, the stamps, a drinks party, meals-on-wheels, some other thing. As if being busy kept Daphne
Lacey whole. As if all the pieces of her held together only so long as she was in motion. That if she stopped she might disconnect,
fall apart, just cease to be.