John Smith suggested we go to a nightclub together to see what effect we had on the girls. I had no objections, because this move would get me away from the hunting lodge and back out into the real world where I would feel safer away from shot gun wielding, deal making, crazy bastards. Of course I was out on the town with the craziest one of all. It was only our first encounter but I already knew that. He was, however, amazingly good fun to be with. He was a very good actor but I do not think he was acting with me. I may be wrong but I actually felt he was becoming my friend. I'm quite sure it's foolish thought.
We were living it up in a nightclub when a very attractive girl came over to me. She was probably too young to be in there legally, and not the type of girl I tend to go for when left to my own devices. However, this girl seemed to think I was wonderful and flattery can get you anywhere. I was becoming interested so I asked the blandest of nightclub questions. It had to be shouted. “What's your name?”
“Vicky, my name is Vicky.” I already knew who she was when my stupid past manifestation met her, and I could do nothing because I was the spectator. She was following me on behalf of Dave Hartley Sparrow, her brutal, much older boyfriend who didn't mind what she did to help him out. He had lots of young girlfriends, and I suppose she thought he was exclusive to her. There was to be no sex that night. We danced it away. Things changed when we returned to her house in the early hours of next morning. It was the moment I met Samantha.
She came to the door as we walked up the drive to the impressive new house, and stepped out in a housecoat to castigate her daughter for being very late or very early back. Then our eyes met. It was like instant electric, a magic conjuring up a different future. I couldn't break away from the magnetism her eyes held me with.
I was looking into her eyes as they transformed by getting larger and larger until they were massive reptilian eyes made of glass. This was one of the most confusing moments of my entire life. One moment I'm looking into the eyes of someone who was invading my soul, the next I'm looking at giant glass eyes. I'd gone into a trance inside a dream I suppose. Now it was a shock to be back in the room, or, to be more precise, back in the bag.
I wasn't in that bag. The eyes in front of me were transforming into beautiful brown eyes. These belong to Jennifer who was now wearing her hideous hat, a brutally enormous tweed cowboy hat festooned in its leather band with pheasant feathers, a sort of Miss Marple meets John Wayne look. Then, of course, my body started to burn with the acid from the grim soup bubble. My whole body was on fire though it wasn't too awful, and now I understood why we were on this dark wet mountain. The rain was coming down with an almost biblical force, washing away the burning sensation, finally leaving me cleansed of pain. Jennifer's hat was more painful than the bubble!
“Let's press on now. There's a lovely bed and breakfast on the other side of this hill. We can take breakfast together there!” Jennifer said this with her lovely smile beaming out from under the preposterous tweed hat.
Breakfast seemed like a wonderful idea. Whether we would manage to sleep much before our breakfast was a matter for debate.
Welcome to the radio club! This club has nothing to do with amateur radio electronics. The nature of this club is based on waiting and support. Members can sit for twenty-six minutes one day, five the next, and sometimes an hour. You become expert at watching doors. Every time one opens and a nurse appears you expect your name to be called. So rarely is it called that when they finally shout your name it comes as a shock.
Everybody has a cycle of treatment and mine was five days a week for eight weeks. You're not allowed to join the club unless you've got tattoos. These come free with the assessment and are permanent markings to align you perfectly for the Chernobyl effect, a reminder that lasts a lifetime. At first you're the new boy starting out with a batch of five other people, half a dozen at the time, week in week out. I couldn't believe I'd got cancer, and the others couldn't believe they had it either. Some had lived in denial for so long letting the disease run its cellular mutation that the therapy might be more psychological than meaningful.
It's a siege mentality where you all become a group of smelly friends in adversity. Everyone in that waiting room smelled like sickly burnt peaches. I thought it was a combination of heavy perfume and fear, until the day my car's air conditioning packed in, and I discovered it wasn't just them, it was me! We were all being systematically cooked alive. Some of your group have shorter cooking schedules than you, others more. In the final two weeks everybody goes into countdown mode, then its kisses and cuddles, and congratulations all round. Some people have burnt faces, others blistered skin, I suffered from chronic mind numbing tiredness.
You are sealed in the room alone behind a fourteen inch thick lead door. Just you and the machine set on automatic, forty-four seconds in four bursts of eleven seconds. It feels like nothing but it is this great illusion. It's cooking you alive. If some poor unfortunate child is in for therapy it takes an age because they need anaesthetising. This morning we were all in for a long wait, a little blonde girl was brought in, no hair, five-years-old with her favourite teddy bear. Snowballs deserted her during the treatment. She never knew because her mother insisted Snowballs had stood guard, watching her as she slept. The nurses watch on flickering blue grey monitors. Perhaps they're not in colour because the blue grey makes it somehow old, less immediate, less the real now.
After a few weeks we all know each other stories, so everybody had a book of some description, real paper or electronic. On this day I'd forgotten my glasses so I closed my eyes and started to think of the darker days in which I thought I'd sleep forever wanting to stay in the alternative universe. I wanted to be with Jennifer, and was desperate to discover all my dark forgotten past. Curiously the more I knew of my bleak past the less guilt I suffered on returning from the other universe.
I was thinking of the tortured lives that made my troubles seem like walking in a sunny valley. During the extra long wait that morning I didn't go back to the concentration camp but to Willesden in North London. I was at a branch of a well-known bank with a new deputy manager, a man with the ambition to push hard in the hope of gaining good position and a comfortable life.
Mr Wilson was now deputy branch manager. It wasn't a large branch, not the one located in the centre of the high street. He was only three streets and two promotions away from the level where he could be running the main branch. This particular morning Mr Wilson was behind the counter, not a usual position for a man of his standing. He was teaching some new recruits the finer points of careful paper handling, making sure all the receipts were correct, every bit of paper was organised and nothing in all the mass of paperwork was misplaced. Everything had to be accounted for and not a single item lost. Abraham Wilson knew all about record keeping and the harsh penalties you could pay for being tardy.
Abraham was mentoring two new recruits who had done everything in theory and now were working the counter for the first time. They were seated in adjacent windows, and Abraham floated between them making sure everything was in order. He dealt with the odd unusual request, all the time subconsciously surveying people coming and going, watching the world he loved, the world of commerce and numbers. Then he saw a blond man, thickly-set, of the right age. He told himself to calm down, just another on blond apparition.
It had been years and there he was, this former Nazi officer standing before him. Heinrich Haussler, but it wasn't. It was just a man who looked remotely like Heinrich, and on closer inspection nothing alike. Abraham Wilson returned to his new recruits, the cold raising of the hackles on his spine slowly subsiding, perspiration driven by adrenaline breaking out on his forehead. He could feel the dampness in his armpits under his jacket. He had to stop imagining every blond thick-set man was Heinrich. Every week he was haunted at least ten times phantom sightings.
He looked up again to survey his kingdom. The old manager would be retiring soon and he'd had a whisper that the branch would be his. A London branch at that! There was another blond man in the bank two counters along changing some traveller's cheques, and in front of him another blond man. This time he wasn't going to be fazed. He'd had his one shock for the day, and decided only seconds before he was going to stop looking. He couldn't go through this reaction every time he saw blond-haired men.
“Can I cash zis cheque please?” the man asked.
It was his accent, watered down by time living in England. A wash of adrenaline rushed through Abraham's body. The young assistant serving this blond man was pushed harshly to one side, he was over forceful and she let out an audible groan. .
“I'm the deputy manager. What do you want, sir?” Abraham asked, fighting to keep his voice level under control.
“I have zis check I would like to cash. I am a customer at the other branch. Unfortunately it is full today and I cannot wait,” the man replied.
Abraham decided to confront this man, and pushed the girl back in front of the cashier's window. Pointing at the customer he instructed, “You deal with this one. I've got something to do.” He left the bemused girl at the counter. She was flustered and inexperienced in processing traveller's cheques.
Miss Smurthwaite was the girl's name. She took a deep breath and started dealing with the very distinguished-looking customer, all the while wondering what was wrong with the usually quiet Mr Wilson. The young bank clerk was only in the preamble when something extraordinary happened.
A chair, a large heavy chair that was testimony to the bank's wealth and power struck the blond customer a shuddering blow to the right shoulder. As the blond man started to collapse another large man in a suit plunged on top of him. Miss Smurthwaite stood up and was appalled to see Mr Wilson the deputy manager grabbing frantically for the customers throat. The young assistant pressed the panic button. That's all she could think of after seeing the look in Abraham Wilson's eyes. He was deranged.
The moment he spoke Abraham knew this was Heinrich Haussler. There was no mistaking the Bavarian accent, and of course he looked exactly like Heinrich because he was. For a moment Abraham thought about following him home. Then he thought how stupid this would be, he could find the address in the records. In a matter of seconds he'd run through every scenario, his mind a whirlwind of wild emotions. Rage guided his actions. He'd vowed to kill him, to choke the miserable life from him, or to beat him to death even if it meant his own demise. His wife and child at home were forgotten in his bloodlust to kill the beast.
The man was so strong. He'd gone down hard after the blow from the chair and was already fighting back. Abraham's s left hand was an open claw as he lunged towards Heinrich's throat. There would be no mercy today. He would crush his windpipe. The strength in the deputy manager was of a well-fed man with no fear. No guards were going to rush in to save Heinrich now. He would perish like a dog on the parquet floor of the bank. He was taking no chances. Holding the German down with his knees was a bit of luck. He'd fallen across the German's chest landing heavily on his biceps with both knees pinning Heinrich to the floor.
Abraham tightened his grip from the left hand crushing the throat. The final weapon was his right fist that he plunged hard time and time again into the left side of this evil monster's head. Already he had blood on his knuckles, bloody vengeance. Only seconds would pass before he would be arrested. It was enough to send Heinrich to hell. His head was swimming in a sea of boiling rage. If his wife had been there in front of him with their child she couldn't have persuaded him to stop.
Their eyes were locked on each other, the German struggling to gain some ground, Abraham staring into those eyes waiting for them to slip to the dullness of death. It was the deputy bank manager's vision that started to blur. Something was wrong and he couldn't in his driven rage understand what was happening. His vision was greying and blurred. He was losing sight of the German. Was he having a stroke because of the physical effort of killing this man with his bare hands?
The third blow with the heavy wooden chair dislodged Mr Wilson sending him to the floor unconscious. Miss Smurthwaite's policeman father had versed his tiny daughter in the art of self-defence and now apparently the art of self-confidence. She'd stepped up when all the others in the bank had stood by watching the attempted murder of an innocent Swiss businessman. Seeing no weapon other than the small wastepaper bin, an umbrella and the big chair, she picked the object that would give her inertia to replace strength, and three blows were enough to dislodge the attacker.
Abraham awoke in hospital with a policeman at the end of the bed. The Swiss man had gone off to a private clinic, and fortunately his injuries were only superficial, he was released home that evening.
On waking Abraham Wilson recalled the horrible face of Heinrich Haussler lying below him on the parquet floor. He shuddered with a terrible realisation. The man had looked like Heinrich, but he knew in his heart that it wasn't. He knew he'd made the most massive mistake of his entire life!
The man he'd been so desperate to kill had an incapacitated arm from the Russian front, and a huge Y-shaped scar on his cheek, testimony to the power of Russian artillery. Another inch and the shrapnel would have taken his eye or killed him.
He couldn't believe he'd attacked a man who looked quite like his nemesis. He doubted he would have a job to return to. All his ambitions would be crushed forever. The bank wouldn't want him back in the branch and everyone in Willesden knew about the incident. He knew the Swiss man would bring the force of law against the bank looking for compensation.
Abraham Wilson experienced two of the luckiest moments in his life. The first was Claus Steiner from Switzerland wasn't going to press charges or sue for compensation. The bank had agreed, however, to allow him a top rate of interest on all his accounts for the next year, and he wasn't poor. The area manager supposed Claus Steiner didn't want the police involved because of the amount of money he had banked in what was an austerity ridden UK.
The second bit of luck was the area manager's son had been shot down and held prisoner for five years. Since then he'd been dark and taciturn, prone to fantasy, driven sometimes to wild rages. The area manager was sympathetic and knew Abraham Wilson had endured terrible suffering and lived through years of deprivation. He understood Abraham was scarred for life. For this one reason alone he was going to give Abraham Wilson one chance, one very last chance. He would be demoted to head of counters, after which he would be moved to a bank well out of the way, and fortuitously a new branch was opening in a small northern industrial town.
The area manager arranged a few meetings with his son's psychiatrist. These meetings were difficult and Abraham attempted to respond, but kept many things inside. The psychiatrist seemed satisfied he would never attack anybody again. He never did.
Three weeks later the refugee family were on the move once more, a damaged father, his secretive wife, and their happy young child Louise. They arrived on a dull grey day in a small Northern industrial town, a town where nothing terrible ever happens.
The strain of these events profoundly affected Rachel. The family had to get someone in to help out. A local woman was recommended. She was very good with children. Everybody said so. Somebody had to look after the child because Rachel, worn out with stress was incapable of doing anything. She had to go away for a few days to rest. Her much older sister had been studying languages in London at the outbreak of war, and never returned to Poland to be captured. Rachel Wilson was now so thankful her older sister Mila was there to comfort her trauma. The incident with the German hadn't changed her view of Abraham. It had changed everything!
She'd been looking after Louise the day it happened, washing nappies or something when the phone had started ringing. The call changed her life forever. Abraham had attacked a man at the bank.
Two days later when her beloved Abraham returned home he'd been very reluctant to talk. This ridiculous incident had ruined them and he wanted to it block from his mind. Everything he'd set out to do had been destroyed in that one moment. He didn't know at the time the Swiss man wouldn't sue for compensation and he didn't know the area manager understood his trauma. Even so close to the end of the war people liked to forget about suffering and get on with enjoying life. He'd been fortunate but didn't know it yet.
Rachel pressed him long into the night before he finally told her about his obsession with this officer. He had never spoken of this in the years they'd been together. He admitted his obsession required every blond man he saw to be inspected.
“How could I have been so stupid? All the millions of people in the world, he's not going to turn up in my bank!” He cried as he said these words. Rachel pressed him for more information.