Freya Read online

  People stood watching her as she continued along the streets; they were perhaps wondering what she had come for. She felt set apart from them, physically, a healthful alien among hollow-eyed spectres – an emissary from the land of the living. Black skeletons of trees peered down on her. What was she doing here? In the distance she spotted a church with a twisted spire, its stained glass mostly holed, and she started towards it. Mounds of rubble blocked the way. Her shoes weren’t quite up to the task, and she kept slipping on the jagged tumble of pulverised brick and masonry. She soon became aware of a terrible stench rising from the ground, a mixture of disinfectant and something else just below it. She took out her handkerchief and wrapped it around her mouth and nose, like a cattle-rustler in a Western. But the putrid reek had already permeated her nostrils. She gagged a couple of times, and kept clambering, testing for footholds among the chaotic ranges of debris. Perseverance carried her back to level ground, and thence to the bombed-out church.

  She walked around the side to its doorless porch, and stepped through onto a carpet of cinders, brick dust and brittle leaves. A solemn stillness held amid the dereliction. The wide nave had been denuded of pews – more firewood? – while the altar and chancel had likewise lost most of their ornamentation. The vaulted roof showed patches of daylight here and there, and a pigeon circled in a frantic flurry on sensing the intruder below. The plaster walls were streaked black where rainwater had seeped in. The tiled floor crunched with every step she took. Turning up an aisle she saw, part hidden beneath fallen brick, a devotional portrait of a saint. Its frame was intact, but the cloudy glass had been cracked to smithereens. She picked it up and shook out the glinting shards; it wasn’t even a painting, just a print, but the face of the saint, or whatever he was, reminded her of the picture of Francis de Sales Nancy kept on her mantelpiece. The imploring upward gaze transfixed her: it was a look that asked, humbly, not to be ignored.

  The place was dank and rotting. At the end of the aisle a door led into a side chapel; on entering she reared back in surprise, for slumped on a stone bench (one that couldn’t be broken up) was a man in a long greatcoat, dozing. Around him were strewn a few tokens of homeliness – a horse blanket, a tiny oil stove, a battered cushion. Raising himself slightly, he smiled a sort of greeting towards her. He dipped into his coat pocket to locate a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles, and put them on. He stared at her for a moment, and said something in German; Freya shrugged in apology.

  ‘Amerikanische?’

  She lowered the handkerchief muffling her mouth. ‘English.’

  ‘Ah!’ he said, with a rueful laugh. ‘This being a house of God I will not say “Welcome to my home”, for you would think me presumptuous – or mad! But it is my – what do you say? – dwelling place, at present. Please …’

  He beckoned her forward. He was perhaps in his forties, somewhere around her father’s age. His refinement of speech was at odds with his dishevelled appearance: his hair and beard were matted, and the sheen of his coat, she could see on drawing closer, was almost iridescent with layers of grime. Intelligent curiosity danced in his eyes. He introduced himself as Rainer, and asked her about the uniform she wore. She told him, explaining that she had come to Nuremberg with her father, on official business at the Palace of Justice.

  ‘The trial, of course … The final reckoning for Hitler’s henchmen! And do you think in these circumstances that “justice” will be served?’

  ‘I should hope so,’ said Freya. ‘It would be a shocking waste of time if not.’

  Rainer absorbed her reply with an abstracted nod, as though the question didn’t really concern him, and returned his gaze to her. He wanted to know about London; he had once had a week there with his wife. ‘Goodbye Piccadilly, Farewell Leicester Square! I remember we sang it.’ He whistled a few bars, and laughed to himself. Then, softly, ‘By chance do you have a cigarette?’

  Freya produced her pack of Chesterfields, and shook out two, one for him and one for her. When she lit a match he briefly cupped his hands around hers to catch the flame. He sank back and voluptuously inhaled a lungful of tobacco. Up close she could see his face was quite handsome beneath the unkempt beard; his eyes were a disconcerting greyish blue. After some moments of companionable smoking she asked him how he had come to speak such immaculate English. He had been a teacher before the war, he explained, at a school not far from this church. His wife had been a teacher also; she had been killed in their home during an air raid. After being conscripted into the vast war machine he had been sent to fight at the Eastern front, where he experienced ‘many horrible things’.

  ‘Most of my comrades did not return to Germany. But luck was with me. I was spared!’

  Freya looked at his forlorn surroundings. His wife was dead; his home blown to atoms; his city in ruins. His own survival notwithstanding Rainer didn’t appear to have enjoyed a great deal of luck. And yet this refusal to lament his fate moved her. If only she could find words of consolation.

  ‘Would you like to teach again?’ she asked suddenly. ‘Surely the country needs people like you?’

  Rainer made a soundless rocking motion: ironic laughter, she guessed. ‘People like you! You mean derelict and forgotten? I am sorry for the generation coming after us. Look at what they inherit – a country dragged into the abyss, a race of people we tried to destroy, a legacy of shame that will not be absolved in, I don’t know – a thousand years. Tell me, what might I presume to teach children after all that has happened?’

  She looked at him, facing down his despair. ‘That it mustn’t happen again?’

  He gazed off into the distance. ‘Yes. Perhaps that.’

  ‘You don’t sound very convinced.’

  ‘Ha. Those men in the dock today – our masters – will be found guilty and hanged. Of course! But they are a mere speck in the colossal crime of a nation. They gave the German people a licence to pursue their wildest instincts, their grossest appetites. And the people took it. They hunted down their enemies like wolves and tore them to pieces. Do you believe that by ridding the earth of these men the Fatherland will be created anew, washed clean of its sins? Execute twenty men, fifty – five hundred! – it will not cure a country.’

  There was a ferocious gleam in his eyes that Freya shrank from. His voice, level and precise to begin, had descended to a growl. His mouth quivered from the vehemence. She said, after a pause, ‘Maybe there are more people like yourself than you know. If good men do nothing –’

  ‘– evil will reign. Ach. The verdict on us is already passed, it’s written. Schuldig.’

  On pronouncing the word, whatever it meant, he leaned his head back against the wall. He suddenly looked exhausted, and ill. She thought about the empty shops, and wondered if he had eaten anything recently. Opening the bag slung on her shoulder she took out a bar of chocolate she had bought that morning in the schloss. ‘Will you have this –?’

  Rainer observed it with indifference. She placed it on the stone bench, like an offering at an altar. Then she remembered Caplan telling her that the only currency of any use here was cigarettes. She felt for the packet of Chesterfields, just over half full, and put them down next to the chocolate. He was still looking away, still not speaking.

  ‘Well … goodbye, then,’ she said, and, on an impulse, held out her hand. She didn’t really want to touch him, he looked so dirty, but she felt that this odd encounter needed something final, a gesture of amity between strangers – or was it between victor and vanquished? Having seen him ignore the chocolate and cigarettes she was prepared for him to ignore this, too. Instead, he rose to his feet and reached for her hand, enclosing it with his own, which was gritty and calloused. He shook it with solemn deliberation, holding her gaze. Then, to her surprise, he tightened his grip and pulled her hand quite roughly to his cheek, to his mouth. She tried to pull away, but he held tight, her hand clamped to his lips. He had closed his eyes, inhaling the scent of her flesh. She tensed herself, ready to fight him. He looked
frail and enervated, but she also sensed in his grip an animal desperation – a last crazed will to overpower and possess.

  His breath was hot against her hand, his eyes still closed, in a world of his own. He wasn’t letting go of her. The intense expression on his face reminded her of the time she had been at Mass with Nancy and watched people at prayer, hands clasped to their mouth; a look of silent petition. She counted to ten, and said, ‘Rainer.’

  After a moment he opened his eyes, like a man woken from sleep. She had spoken his name in a way that asked him to release her. Slowly, he relaxed his grip, and she pulled away. He nodded, as if at something mysteriously understood. Freya took a step backwards, raising her hand in silent farewell. His eyes seemed to droop a moment, and he said, very quietly, ‘Auf Wiedersehen.’

  Outside the ruined church, she tied the handkerchief, highwayman-style, across her face, and started back over the mounds of stinking rubble.

  At the schloss that evening Freya found Stephen in the bar. The news from him was not good – he had been in court all day and seen nothing of Jessica Vaux. He had asked a couple of journalist friends about her, but they didn’t know where she had got to either. By now Freya was becoming resigned. Five days gone and she had not managed even a sighting of the woman. She would have to return to Oxford this weekend in time for the start of her exams on Monday. The writer’s legendary elusiveness had defeated her.

  As the bar began to fill up she left Stephen in the company of his colleagues. The evening was still light, and a walk in the grounds of the schloss might drive off the dismal mood that had settled on her since her venture into the old town. Here was bucolic calm, a world away from the mangled ashen disorder of this morning. Long shadows projected from the trees that lined the estate’s multiple pathways, and the decorous sloping parkland called her onwards. She had been strolling for a quarter of an hour or so when she came across a greenhouse, as large as any she had visited at Kew. Its domed roof glinted under the setting sun. On trying the door she found it unlocked, and stepped inside. A riot of foliage confronted her, and a flagged path which curved in opposite directions. She took the left-hand fork, presuming that it would lead her in a circuit back to the entrance. A bitter dusty odour of vegetation and garden mulch pervaded the air. A parked wheelbarrow and watering can indicated recent efforts of maintenance.

  Turning another corner she found herself in a long nursery garden of potted plants. At the far end another visitor, a lady, was keenly examining rows of vivid white-petalled flowers; she was so absorbed in her inspection that Freya was nearly alongside her before she noticed she wasn’t alone. In the seconds it took her to recognise the woman Freya experienced a shock of disbelief.

  The woman, surprised by her presence, locked eyes with her. She was fiftyish, silver-haired, straight-backed, with eyes that glared a gelid blue – ‘the glare of the Gorgon’, as someone had once described it.

  Freya heard herself say, ‘Oh – you’re Jessica Vaux, aren’t you?’

  ‘Who are you?’ she replied sharply. Her voice, rasped by cigarettes, was patrician, metallic and unfriendly. Freya introduced herself, adding that she was here visiting her father while he was on assignment. When she mentioned Stephen’s name Jessica gave a quick nod of recognition.

  ‘The painter. Somebody told me he was here.’ She took in Freya’s uniform at a glance. ‘So you’re in the Wrens.’

  ‘I was. I’ve since gone up to Oxford.’

  Jessica nodded, then turned back to the plants she had been studying. ‘Look at these wonderful things – lilies, climbing roses, and here, these beautiful cyclamens. What I’d like to know is – in a city where they can barely feed themselves how can anyone manage to grow such flowers?’ She pronounced this last word flarze. ‘Native resilience, I suppose,’ she murmured, answering her own question.

  Freya kept a respectful silence until the lady seemed content with her study. Then she said, ‘I thought I might see you at the Palace of Justice – I know you’re reporting for the Tribune.’

  ‘I’ve been indisposed all week – a wretched cold. You’ve been at the trial?’

  ‘No. To be honest, I’ve only come to see you.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ she said, frowning with suspicion.

  Freya guessed that the lady was not susceptible to flattery or exaggerated deference; but there were still forms to be observed, and a due must be paid to experience. Jessica Vaux listened with sceptical amusement. She did not appear impressed by Freya’s quixotic journey, nor by absenting herself from college.

  ‘Doesn’t say much for the supervision provided at Oggsford nowadays.’

  ‘Well, I wasn’t quite truthful with them about my reasons.’

  Jessica scrutinised her for a moment, then gave a little pout of regret. ‘I can’t help you, I’m afraid. I stopped giving interviews about ten yairze ago when some idiot journalist printed the most outrageous lies about me. I sued his newspaper and won, but the satisfaction was diminished by dint of the money I lost in defending myself and the time I wasted in court doing so. I would sooner submit to the bastinado than go through that again.’

  ‘I’ve no inclination to publish lies about you. I just want to nudge the public’s memory, given the war and how long you’ve been out of the country.’

  ‘I don’t believe the public has forgotten me,’ she said haughtily.

  ‘I’m sure they haven’t. Perhaps I should say, I’d like to reintroduce you, like – I don’t know – royalty returning from exile.’

  ‘Oh, you’re very kind, my dear,’ she said, smiling at this blandishment, ‘and I appreciate your coming all this way. But I really can’t oblige you. My interests, you see, have always been outward-looking – countries, wars, people, places. I’ve never wanted to be part of the story I was telling. Some of my colleagues can’t understand it, but I’m quite content with just my byline – that, and the cheque.’

  Freya cast around for a more persuasive argument, but she could tell from her tone of casual command that Jessica Vaux wasn’t going to yield: she didn’t want to, and she didn’t have to. She was a woman who knew her own mind, which was something enviable in itself. They walked the remainder of the circular path, pausing here and there when Jessica, a keen plantswoman, wished to inspect some bit of flora. She talked about Paris, where she’d lived with her son prior to the war, and about her peripatetic life thereafter; she had lived on the coast of Cornwall, with brief stops in Brighton and the Isle of Wight, before settling in Lisbon, her home for the last few years (‘I prefer places on the edge of things’). Her son, now grown, had gone to live in London, where she herself was now minded to return.

  ‘I was there for a few weeks last year. It looked awf’ly knocked about.’

  ‘It still does,’ said Freya. ‘Though look what we did to this place …’ Her mind’s eye had lingered on her excursion to the old town this morning, the charred landscape, the skeletal trees, the hollow-cheeked denizens. The terrible despair in Rainer’s voice. She suddenly turned to Jessica. ‘I wonder – do you know the word schuldig?’

  ‘Of course. It means “guilty”. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Oh, I was just wandering about the old town today and met a man – a soldier, more or less destitute. He said that Germany could not atone for its shame in a thousand years. His English was excellent, but then he used that one word at the end, and I didn’t know what he meant.’

  Jessica was staring at her in astonishment. ‘Do you mean to say you went into the old town on your own?’

  ‘I didn’t have anyone else to go with.’

  ‘My dear … that was most foolhardy of you. Or perhaps brave. The place is swarming with black marketeers and scavengers. The Americans won’t go in without protection. This soldier you met, he might easily have –’

  ‘Yes, there was one moment I thought I might be in trouble …’ She described Rainer’s grabbing her hand and pressing it to his mouth. In recollection the gesture had only pathos in it, but Jess
ica looked askance.

  ‘I imagine he’d have liked to chew it off! You do know they’re starving, don’t you?’

  They had just emerged from the greenhouse into the cool of the evening. The shadows had lengthened since they had encountered one another inside. They began heading back towards the schloss. The clipped hauteur of the lady’s earlier manner had dissolved, and the harsh edge had come off her voice. They talked about Oxford, and journalism. Freya didn’t flatter herself that Jessica’s interest in her was unique; but what did strike her as wonderful was that the so-called grande dame behaved as if they were two fellow writers. It didn’t matter to her that Freya was a nobody. In refusing to condescend she paid her the best compliment of all.

  ‘So you met Jimmy Erskine,’ Jessica said with a grin. ‘How is the old boy?’

  ‘Pretty well, I think. He spoke very admiringly of you. Is it true you keep a gun under your pillow?’

  ‘It has been known,’ she said drily.

  They had reached the forecourt of the schloss. Freya would have liked to talk on, but Jessica had already informed her she was due to have dinner that evening with ‘high-ups’ from the British delegation a few miles away – she had been staying there, in fact, rather than mucking in with the other journalists.

  ‘I suppose you think I’m being rather grand,’ she said.

  Freya shook her head. ‘No, not really. You need to work, and you like your own company. It’s probably what I’d do, to be honest.’

  Some of the old beadiness had returned to Jessica’s appraising look. ‘Freya Wyley. You’re a quick study, aren’t you?’

  ‘Am I?’ said Freya with a half-laugh.

  ‘Look, I’m away for the weekend, but I’ll be back Sunday evening. If you’re still here I’ll meet you for dinner and, well – maybe you can get a piece out of it. What d’you think?’

  Freya, dizzied with shock, took a moment to steady herself, and her voice. ‘I’ll still be here.’