“I am not suggesting a capitulation. We would consolidate agreed borders and focus our energies on establishing and maintaining order within our dominions while rebuilding a civilised civilian society. It did once exist, you know. Europe was renowned for it.”
Blaskowitz’s face betrayed no smile. Years of the harshest responsibility had made his eyelids and jowls sag. He came from a military family of consequence. His grandfather, a field marshal who had commanded Army Group Centre in the post-Hitler period, had eventually been appointed C-in-C of the Wehrmacht. He had suppressed pro-Nazi elements within the armed forces and facilitated the integration of French and British units. Later he had been instrumental in the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The generaloberst, a maternal descendant, had reverted to his grandfather’s family name while still a young man.
Uncomfortable at the feeling that he was eavesdropping on matters too elevated for his rank, Owain walked around the base of the monument. He had once visited its equivalent in Hampton Court. As Europa had been sculpted to embody Marianne here, at home it was the personification of Britannia. Both monuments stood on eminences, surveying the stately contours of past glories. Both had an air of daunting grandeur best appreciated from afar.
Sir Gruffydd was calling him.
“Help me up, my boy.”
Owain raised the old man to his feet.
“I have confided in you, field marshal,” Blaskowitz was saying, “because I believe you are a man who understands that human welfare must sometimes take precedence over short-term military advantage. Our enemies are not demons. There must be those among them who have arrived at a similar view. Sooner or later, someone has to take the initiative.”
Owain’s uncle was silent for a moment. Before he could reply there came from the direction of the lake the sound of a gunshot.
TWENTY
A narrow white-painted bedroom. I was pacing around a single bed, listening to a cassette recording of Sara and Bethany singing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”.
The recording had been made a year or two before—I couldn’t exactly remember when. Lyneth had left me, taking the girls, some time ago. Last summer, perhaps. I still couldn’t imagine why, though I was convinced it had nothing to do with Tanya. I’d been living alone—where? In our house, I was positive, though no details of it would come. Lyneth had taken the girls away, gone first to Swansea to stay with her mother. And thence to Australia. Old South Wales to New South Wales. A trial separation that had turned into an extended, possibly permanent one.
Was this true? I didn’t honestly know.
I was in the spare bedroom of Tanya and Geoff’s house. They’d brought me here when I was released from hospital. Days ago. I’d had an extended period of mental abstraction. In fact, my episodes of lucidity were the exception rather than the norm.
The machine fell silent. I recognised the black carryall sitting on top of the pine wardrobe. Opening the wardrobe doors I saw that Tanya had stacked it with clothing that she must have fetched from my house. Everything neatly arranged on hangers. Enough for several days or more.
Frantically I went through the pockets of coats and trousers and jeans; rummaged in the drawer units where she d placed my underwear, even investigated the zippered compartments of the carryall. I found only crumpled tissues and spare buttons in plastic sachets. No keys or driving licence or credit cards or photographs, not so much as an old shopping list. There was only the cassette, which Tanya must have brought from the house as a memento of the girls. Had I asked for it?
“O?”
Tanya, calling up the stairs.
“Yes?”
“You OK up there?”
I replaced the carryall on top of the wardrobe. The room was a mess. “I’ll be down in a moment.”
I tidied everything as well as I could and went out. Four other rooms gave off the landing: the bathroom, Tanya’s study, herf coats anGeoff’s bedroom and another room next to it that was locked.
I descended the carpeted stairs. I was wearing black slip-ons, a grey sweater and the navy corduroys that Lyneth had bought one birthday several years ago. I’d never liked the trousers because they were too baggy. Had Tanya dressed me? No, I was perfectly capable of doing so myself. But I didn’t usually wear shoes around the house.
Tanya was in the kitchen, flipping through a recipe book. She looked very
domestic, a Bart Simpson pinafore draped around her, her hair loosely tied up.
“Have you seen my wallet and keys?”
“They’re safe,” she told me. “You’re not allowed them until you’re better. Doctor’s orders.”
She said this with a degree of jauntiness, but there was a sliver of steel there too. Were they worried I might get the urge to go driving or embark on a spending spree?
Snapshot memories began returning. Walking up the cinder driveway to her 1930s semi-detached, Geoff beaming at me from the porch, the door wide open. Sitting in the bath with the water up to my neck and making a sober assessment of how easy it would be for me to drown. Accompanying Tanya to a big supermarket, all gleaming lights and stacked produce, the incessant bleep bleeping of the checkout machines as we waited in the queue, our trolley stacked with kitchen rolls, salad vegetables, a string bag of oranges. A dream of Lyneth, eighteen years old again, pulling on my arm as she marched me through a department store filled with debris and broken mannequins. She was shouting to me that she had to find a red chiffon scarf while I kept looking around for a toilet. A sales assistant was standing at one of the counters. At first I thought she was a mannequin too because plaster dust had coated her. She smiled at us and told me she was my mother. I’d wet the bed. Tanya had had to clean me up in the bathroom.
“Hell’s bells,” I said aloud.
Tanya looked up. “What?”
“How long have I been out of hospital?”
“Three days.”
“I feel as if I’ve only just got here.”
She didn’t look bothered. “You’ve been out of it. ‘Flu or something. Spent most of the time with your head in a newspaper or dozing.”
‘Flu? I didn’t believe it. They were drugging me, keeping me docile. I had a vague recollection of spending hours reading any paper I could lay my hands on. Looking for some indication of a disturbance in Regent Street just before Christmas. There was none. I had read everything else too: business, sports, holidays—I was completely indiscriminate. It was all I could manage.
I went out to the conservatory at the back of the house, feeling a similar sense of frustration to Owain. I had to break free. Everything was becoming more intense, in Owain’s life as much as my own. I realised that a part of me didn’t want to lose my connection with him, at least not yet. There had to be a reason why we had become linked.
I’d been sitting in an armchair in front of a window overlooking the garden. A brick patio gave out onto a lawn with neglected flowerbeds. Everything had a weary winter look, not least the green garden chairs that were stacked in one corner and held little pools of blackened leaves.
A coffee-table book sat on the armchair—a pictorial history of the twentieth century. I must have been browsing through it. The text was pretty elementary, the photographs stock.
The doorbell chimed. I heard someone talking in the distance. In French. I almost swooned but recovered myself, held that other world at bay.
Tanya entered with two other people, a man and a woman. She found them chairs, seated them opposite me.
The man was familiar, though I struggled to recall his name. He was the same age as me, wheat-haired, energetic in his movements, already talking enthusiastically. His companion was an equally blonde woman, her eyes a startling green. Contact lenses, I realised, telling myself not to stare.