Read A Place Of Strangers Online
Authors: Geoffrey Seed
Bea could not sleep that night, either. To close her eyes
was to see only a kaleidoscope of faces – of Arie, of the Francis she had
loved, of Helen and her proxy three doors down the landing who might yet be
Mac’s salvation, and of her long-dead mother and despicable father. But most of
all at this time of Christmas, it was a child who kept her awake – the girl she
was tutoring in Prague when Hitler’s troops stole in with winter and all was
lost.
That face, colder than marble, lived forever behind Bea’s
eyes for in the innocence of her nine years, she knew what was to happen when
few about her understood. Bea still grieved at the wickedness of it all and
damned herself for not doing more. In the bureau was a letter she had written
to her father on March 18 1939.
I suppose the London papers will have reported the
Germans occupying Bohemia and Moravia and now their troops are everywhere here
in Prague. Those I’ve been unfortunate enough to meet have been civil enough
once they established I was British. Mr Malindine at the embassy has been
marvellous and you must not worry on my account. He is arranging my
documentation and I will soon be home. I am told that Herr Hitler has installed
himself up at the castle, horrid little man. There is a lot of confusion in the
city and people are trying to leave for the countryside as no one feels very
secure. The family I am with are Jewish and they and their little girl are
trying to get to safety in Poland.
On Bea’s last day, she had knelt, kissed the child and wept
at having to be parted for there was love between them. The girl took both
Bea’s hands and said she should go in life and peace for nothing else could be
done. Bea ran down the steps and looked back at the house though she had
promised herself she wouldn’t. And there at the window, set behind a small pane
of glass was that austere little face, old beyond its years and framed forever
in Bea’s time of fear.
In the dark before dawn, Bea hears the music of Holst. Mars,
Mercury, Saturn... the bringers of war and messages and old age.
*
She is in Celetna Street with Arie once more, hurrying
through the Old Town Square where Hitler’s pennants ripple in the whip-crack
wind. Arie’s hands are trembling. He reads and re-reads the documents in
disbelief. They commute his sentence of death.
‘Why have you done this for me?’
Bea smiles. She touches his hunted face with the backs of
her fingers and knows Christ lives for she has saved him from Golgotha.
‘Because I can.’
Her Jew will survive. Those others frozen outside the
embassy railings, those lost souls trying to get exit visas like his, she
cannot help. No one can. They will be moved, maybe not next week or next month
but whenever the factories of destruction are ready.
‘We must leave before curfew.’
Bea surprises herself with the authority in her voice. The
occupiers patrol the muted town in bricks of six with rifles and dogs. Arie
knows Bea is right. Only spies stalk this place. He must take his chance for
the talons of the Nazi eagle are at the throats of all. Bea and Arie hurry away
like lovers eloping. Men in dark, drab suits queue for their ration packs of
Memfis outside the Municipal House. The cobbles and paving are icy underfoot,
the air bitter sharp with the tang of their exotic oval cigarettes. There will
be other queues later... for food, soap, coal, work, registration and the last
queue of all – for the final journey of the untermenschen, north to
Theresienstadt or later, the bathhouses of Auschwitz-Birkenau. But that is for
the future, after Eichmann arrives.
Bea and Arie board the tram to Wilsonovo Station. They pay
and stare down at the slatted wooden floor. Nothing is said between them and
the other straphangers. Silence is safer. They get off at the road junction
where the road signs point to Wien and Brno and Kutna Hora. And everywhere
around them, the beetle-black Tatra cars of the SS hunt the deserted streets.
Bea and Arie walk quickly, hugging walls papered with
announcements of the Fuhrer’s total power. It is getting late. The Art Nouveau
beauty of Wilsonovo is lost on them. A policeman with a silver-buttoned tunic
and holstered gun, checks their passports. He stares into their alien faces. A
British passport. A French passport. Gestapo-stamped passes and British visas.
Everything is in order – so why is he not letting them go? The fireboxes of the
simmering locomotives glow crimson. They bellow and gasp, wanting to be off.
Families and friends mill along the platform through breakers of rising steam,
weeping and touching and passing oranges through open carriage windows to the
lucky ones escaping to Warsaw. Lucky?
God help them.
Bea and Arie watch the policeman pick up the black telephone
in his sentry box. Their knuckles grip pale around the handles of their
suitcases. He talks quietly into the mouthpiece. His slit-trench eyes never
leave theirs.
*
Lying on the bed where her mother in law conceived and
delivered Francis, Bea was confronted yet again by the near molecular
intricacies of those random decisions and events that shape any one life. To
turn left or right, to take a bus or walk, accept an invitation or turn it down
– each option is capable of creating a wholly different future. And within that
altered life, other decisions will be taken so it, too, is endlessly reshaped
till death intervenes. An entry in her diary for that March read:
Caught the
Prague-Nürnberg train and travelled via Cologne, Aachen and Dunkirk for the
ferry home.
But by then, she had already made a choice and her life
would change forever.
*
Bea and Arie look from one to the other. The policeman’s
superior arrives and examines their papers. The station is in chaos behind him,
awash with humanity. He has no time to waste on this. Everything seems to be in
order. He rebukes the officer and waves them onto the platform to be engulfed
by clouds of engine smoke.
They find a carriage and sit close together. The train
shrieks and lurches forward, slowly grinding out of the suburbs. Their hands
touch. Bea twines her fingers in his. They are on their way. They look straight
ahead. The engine picks up speed. The heads of other passengers fall on their
chests, lulled to sleep by the clattering monotony of the wheels on the rails.
At Nürnberg, people come, people go then the train leaves
the half-timbered town behind. Bea wipes condensation from the window with the
sleeve of her coat. Out in the black night, factories blaze in full production
for the war everyone is afraid must come. Great sheets of light and flame are
thrown across the shadowed landscape. It is like staring into hell. Bea shivers
and Arie puts an arm around her and she is glad. She looks into his sallow
face, into the mournful eyes of her Jesus. How little she knows of him yet how
unimportant that seems. It won’t always be like this. When they get to England,
they will become very close. Bea has never been more certain of anything in her
life.
Christmas lunch saw Francis in spirited form, if eccentric
dress. He matched a dinner jacket to cavalry twill trousers and tennis pumps
then harangued Evie about British unions marching to the beat of Moscow’s drum.
‘Arthur Scargill’s dupes, that’s what they all are. Don’t
they see the threat?’
‘Mrs Thatcher says she does.’
‘And well she might. I hope you’re doing your bit to help
her?’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Come, come, missy. If people like you aren’t spying on all
these communist infiltrators and terrorists, I want my money back.’
Again, Bea could barely hide her discomfort. She cut
distractedly at the Parson’s Venison and served it with potatoes and parsnips
from Garth’s own kitchen garden. After lunch, they moved to the easy chairs
round the inglenook and she was glad when Francis dozed off.
McCall attended to the fire. Bea thought him rather dark-eyed
and pale. He could be sickening for something. She always worried about Mac. He
had too much nervous energy ever to put on any weight. She had a photograph of
him covering some African war or tragedy and looking like a famine victim
himself.
Bea allowed herself a sideways glance at Evie. Her mind went
back to a different conflict and the day of her own wedding, walking through
Garth Woods to the church in that endless autumn sunshine with all those
laughing boys who went away, never to return. How unreal those far off times
seemed now, that conjunction of gaiety and death they came to accept as normal.
Evie caught Bea looking at her.
‘Mac’s been telling me how his father and Mr Wrenn fought in
the war together.’
‘Yes, but Francis doesn’t like talking about all that any
more.’
‘No, it must have been a terrifying ordeal for them all.’
‘It was... more than anyone will ever know.’
Francis sat up suddenly and fixed Evie with an almost angry
stare.
‘Aren’t you the one who ran off with someone?’
‘Sorry, Mr Wrenn. What did you say?’
‘Now you’ve come back.’
‘I don’t – ’
‘– look, everyone... Helen’s come to her senses.’
*
McCall took Evie for a walk in Garth Woods during the hour
before sunset. He apologised again for Francis’s erratic behaviour.
‘He’s hardly the same person from one hour to the next.’
‘Spooks get like that.’
‘No, I’m serious. He’s never behaved like this before. I’m
going to have to talk to Bea about him.’
They leaned over the wooden bridge across Pigs’ Brook. Water
rushed under a thin skim of ice. A full moon emerged from behind the tower of
St Mary and All Angels. Night was closing in.
‘So Helen was a big love?’
‘In a way.’
‘The girl in your memory box – ’
‘– you saw her, then?’
‘Couldn’t miss her, could I?’
‘No, not really.’
‘Was Francis right... did she ran off with someone?’
‘With a friend of mine, yes.’
‘That’s hard.’
‘I’d no idea. Not a clue – and there’s me supposed to be a
savvy hack.’
‘I don’t think anyone ever sees the signs... not till it’s
too late, anyway.’
‘We were going up the hill there, getting married in the
church.’
‘So Bea and Francis approved of Helen?’
‘Adored her, yes.’
‘They must have taken what happened badly.’
‘They did, very badly. They’d built up on her, you see... it
broke their hearts.’
‘Didn’t do much for yours either, did it?’
They headed home through the shivering trees, treading the
paths McCall roamed as a boy and might have walked with a bride.
Evie was not sure if hearing his back story made matters
better or worse. The past was often best left to lie where it had fallen, not
disinterred to offend the senses again.
‘I think this is another line you’ve got to draw, McCall.’
‘I try, believe me.’
‘But you’ve not succeeded, have you?’
‘No... I haven’t.’
‘What’s the reason for that?’
‘They had a child, you see... Helen and my friend.’
‘Ah, I understand. When did this happen?’
‘About seven months after we split up.’
‘So you think it might have been yours?’
‘I don’t know and that’s the bugger of it. I don’t see how I
ever will.’
*
Supper that night was a poor affair. Francis’s mood changed
yet again but not for the better. Bea got him to bed so she could talk to
McCall. Evie stayed reading by the drawing room fire. Bea set a block of
mousetrap cheese on the kitchen table with half a pack of water biscuits.
McCall uncorked a bottle of Tanner’s Claret.
‘Come on Bea, what’s wrong with Francis? Why’s he like
this?’
She started talking, slowly at first, as if to herself.
‘I’ve known something wasn’t right for a while now but I’ve
just worked round it, put it down to him getting older, being under occupied
but I’ve been covering up for him so no one ever knows the potty things he does
but it can be so maddening, getting something so fixed in his head I can’t
shift it no matter how hard I try and then he just laughs and says it’s a so-and-so,
old girl and I give him a kiss and we start again but blow me if he doesn’t go
and do something like putting the kettle down the loo because he thinks that’s
the cooker.
‘I tell you Mac, it’s awful. Sometimes, he gives me these
murderous looks like he did to Evie when he woke up this afternoon, evil
almost.
‘There’ve been times when he’s waved his walking stick at me
as if he’s going to hit me with it and he calls me all sorts of names, really
wicked. Next minute, it’s as if nothing’s happened and he’s the same old
Francis again. I just don’t know what’s going on anymore but I shall have to do
something.
‘Maybe Doctor
Preshous could come and we’ll see what he thinks because it’s all so dreadful,
Mac... so bloody, bloody – ’
The tears began then, smudging her careful make-up into a
sad, creased mask. McCall shushed her gently. She heaved and sobbed and pulled
so hard on the little golden crucifix at her neck, the chain broke.
McCall let all this happen till at last she grew quiet and a
sort of calm gathered around her. Bea poured the last of the claret.
‘Never forget, Mac – life can be a shit. An absolute S, H,
one T.’
Bea knew time distorts and memory deceives, leaving only
perception to endure as truth, for that is all there is. She hovered over the
past like her own ghost, unable to exit the drama she herself had authored.
*
A storm rages as their train steams into the railhead at
Dunkirk from Aachen. Bea peers through the blue beads of rain on the carriage
window. The ferry they want pitches in the swell of the English Channel by a
line of shallow draught barges. Arie takes her hand and they run through the
downpour, clutching their suitcases. Bea’s coat is torn open in the gale and
she tries not to catch her heels in the slippy steel tracks which lace across
the quay. They buy tickets and board the boat. Freedom is but one more ordeal
away, somewhere beyond the spuming waves.
Other passengers shelter in stairwells and cabins or draw
courage in bars reeking of spilt beer and tobacco smoke. The salt-spray air is
filled with the cries of children and those being sick. Arie and Bea go up on
deck and find space beneath a swaying lifeboat. They hold to each other and
defy nature as they had defied the Nazis. And before long, the sea quietens and
through the drifting grey mist, Bea points to a whitened strip of land dividing
sea from sky.
‘I told you I’d get you to England.’
They disembark and Bea makes a two shilling trunk call to
Daddy at the Air Ministry. She waits to be connected by the operator then
presses Button A and hears his fault-finding voice.
‘What the hell do you think you’ve been playing at?’
‘I’ve not been playing at anything, Daddy, just trying to
get home.’
‘You’re just like your mother was, never listening to a word
I say.’
‘I’m getting a train to London in the morning.’
‘You’ll need to buck up your ideas, young lady. There’s a
war coming.’
‘You don’t need to tell me. I’ve just escaped from the
enemy.’
Outside the telephone box, Arie realises all is not well. He
watches her from beneath his wild black hair, falling in rings over the collar
of his mourner’s coat. They find rooms in a small hotel in a side street,
exhausted and needing to sleep.
Next day, both are pre-occupied with the new realities of
their different worlds. They sit opposite each other on the carriage’s moquette
seats, heading north. Bea looks out at gently wooded hills and red-tiled
villages. History will soon be written here, in trails of vapour and smoke from
planes in mortal combat high above the Weald. For now, every turn of the train
wheels brings her closer to Daddy’s recriminations.
How can she ever tell him about Arie?
You’ll never guess
what, but I’ve bagged a refugee.
Or her feelings for him?
I’m really
rather fond of him.
Daddy won’t salute any of that nonsense. What seemed
decent and honourable – and thrilling – in the medieval maze of Prague’s
occupied streets, will be scorned as yet another example of the self centred,
wilful ways she had certainly not inherited from him. She could already hear
the derision in his voice.
You do realise he’s a Jew boy, don’t you?
Put a knife in Daddy’s hand and he would always twist it.
Mummy discovered that.
*
Arie holds her with his messianic, poet’s gaze.
‘I owe my life to you.’
‘You mustn’t exaggerate.’
‘I do not exaggerate, Beatrice.’
‘Lots of people were getting out of Prague somehow.’
‘But to what, Beatrice... only to that crucible of suffering
to come.’
Arie believes the Nazis have begun the ultimate pogrom. This
burden is carried in the depths of his seer’s eyes. The Nazis hold Jews to be a
plague bacillus, the disease in the blood of pure Aryans which is responsible
for all their ills. Arie thinks it will only get worse. Not everyone accepts
this. Mr Malindine at the British Embassy didn’t.
‘Prague has some thirty thousand homeless Jews at present
but they’re not truly political refugees, just people who’ve panicked and come
here.’
Arie’s disbelief isn’t checked by Bea’s hand on his arm.
‘Then you haven’t heard of Dachau?’
‘It’s a holding camp, isn’t it?’
‘A holding camp?
It’s where Jews are being murdered
for being Jews.’
‘I grant you things are difficult but it doesn’t do to
overstate matters.’
‘How can the legalised destruction of people be overstated?’
‘Forgive me but that isn’t quite happening.’
‘Then why are Jews being hung, shot and burned out of their
homes every day?’
‘These are indeed trying times but let me assure you,
everyone’s doing their best.’
Bea took the diplomat to one side.
‘Please, Mr Malindine... can’t you help just a little bit?
Please?’
‘I’m sorry but I have my instructions.’
‘But matters of national security are involved here.’
‘I don’t know about that but I do know even people with
papers are being turned back when they land in England.’
‘This man won’t be. He’s different, you see.’
‘But, Miss Bowen – ’
‘Mr Malindine... you do remember who my father is, don’t
you?’
He did. Now, she is nearly home – and with Arie. But the
closer the train gets to London, the more remote he becomes. She fears her part
in his plan – whatever that might be – is almost over. A worm of doubt crawls
through her mind. Did she misread that frisson between them in the Embassy
yard? Bea simply could not bear to think that. Arie attracted her like no other
man she had ever met – so foreign. Dangerous, almost. She could not believe he
would walk away from her now... not after all she had done for him.
He leans back with his head against the carriage window,
eyes closed. She looks at him, worn down by concerns she cannot even imagine.
But what does she truly know of this man?
He told her he was born in Paris in 1902. His family name is
Minsky and he lived with his parents till they moved back to Vilna. The Minskys
owned a timber business there. They are clever, educated people, wealthy and
influential. Arie speaks four languages and could have been a rabbi but is not
religious. He studied philosophy and writes poetry and was visiting friends in
Prague when the Nazis marched in. That was just before Bea saw him queuing in
the street outside the British Embassy. He has never mentioned his profession
so she has no idea what he does for a living.
On that morning in April 1939, clattering by the dirty back
sculleries of south London, this is all she knows about the man opposite. It is
not very much.
But if Arie Minsky is good at anything, it is keeping
himself to himself.
*
They take a taxi to Bea’s flat just off Great Titchfield
Street. The city bustles and jostles as it ever did. But there is tension and
uncertainty on the faces of those around them. Bea buys an Evening News from an
old soldier whose legs were blown off at Passchendaele. The paper reports the
Prime Minister saying conscription into the army is being introduced now
Germany is threatening Poland. Arie reads this and retreats deeper into
himself.
There is no food in the flat. Bea takes him to a Lyons’
Corner House near a toy shop selling tin helmets for children to play games of
war. They sit in colonnaded gentility. A black-frocked Nippy attends their
table. She wears a white cotton coronet in her neatly bobbed hair and has two
rows of tiny pearl buttons trimming the front of her dress. They order mushroom
soup, poached eggs and toast.
‘For one so young to have such an elegant apartment suggests
you are not without social standing, Beatrice.’
‘No, not really. It was my mother’s but she died two years
ago.’
‘I am sorry for that. But why do you not live with your
father?’
‘Well, he and my mother separated when I was a child and I
chose to live with her.’
‘Did that make some difficulties between you and him?’
‘It has never been easy. I took my mother’s side, you see.’
‘What does he do, this father of yours?’
‘He’s an Air Marshal.’
They finish eating and Arie asks her something faintly
unsettling.
‘Will you show me how to use the telephone kiosk outside?’
‘Of course. You never said you knew anyone in England.’
‘They may have moved away but I need to find out.’
‘You could call them from my flat. I have a telephone.’
‘That is kind but the public telephone will be just as
good.’
So Bea explains and waits on the pavement close by. Arie
takes out a small diary from his pocket. His back is turned but he is obviously
talking. The call takes only half a minute then they return to Bea’s flat.
Nothing more is said about the person he rang. Bea makes up a bed for him on
the sofa. She sees inside his case.
He has two white shirts, some socks and several folders with
papers inside. She cannot read what is written because it is in a foreign
language. As Arie sleeps that night, so Bea makes a telephone call herself.
*
Fog settles across Hyde Park and Westminster. Buses and
taxis appear and disappear in a great conjuring trick of theatrical mist. Hazy
figures scurry by then vanish. Bea and Arie walk quickly through the damp murk
towards Caxton Street. They find a café and Bea buys him coffee.
‘I’ll be an hour, maybe less. Wait here. Whatever you do,
don’t leave this place.’
She moves along the rank of cabs by St Ermine’s Hotel and
steps inside its marbled lobby. The place has been turned over to anonymous men
in army uniforms, busy about their business which is preparing for war. Bea
tells the receptionist she has an appointment with Major Peter Casserley. She
waits by a tall palm plant in a brass jardinière. Bea has met him several times
before. Daddy would like them to do this more often.
Peter approaches down the hotel’s sweeping staircase. He has
a trademark red carnation in the lapel of a well-tailored suit of grey worsted.
‘Beatrice – how lovely. Let’s go up to my office.’
Bea is wearing a wine-coloured afternoon gown with
embroidered reveres which her mother bought for her just before she died. It
came from Good Housekeeping and cost seventeen shillings and sixpence but she
had long since left Daddy so could spend as she liked.
‘So you’ve only just got back?’
‘Yes, I’m still quite tired.’
‘And you actually saw the Nazis march into Prague?’
‘It was utterly awful, Peter. Those Germans are unspeakably
wicked.’
‘Is that what you want to talk to me about?’
‘Partly, but I rang for another reason.’
Casserley’s office is at the end of a long carpeted corridor
on the third floor. It is quite small and poorly lit. He has a desk with a
sit-up-and-beg typewriter, a black telephone and a map of Europe on a plain
white wall. He bids Bea take the spare chair.
He smiles into her face and gives her his full attention. He
is a strikingly good-looking man, the right side of forty with receding dark
hair. Bea accepts his offer of a cigarette. He lights hers and puts his own in
a holder. It would be a mistake to think Casserley effete. He is setting up a
secret army of saboteurs to fight the Nazis behind their own lines when the
time comes. Bea knows this because Daddy told her.
‘I’ve met this man in Prague who could be useful to you.’
‘Go on.’
‘He’s got a French passport, speaks French like a native –
and other languages, too.’
‘Not too much use to me in Prague, Beatrice.’
‘No, that’s it, you see. He came back with me.’
‘Did he, by God.’
‘Yes, he’s here in London.’
Casserley fills his fountain pen from a small bottle of blue-black
ink and writes the date at the top of a lined pad. He waits for Bea to
continue.
‘He’s convinced that Herr Hitler plans to wipe out all the
Jews.’
‘Is he a Jew?’
‘Yes, from Vilna but he was visiting friends in Prague when
the Nazis invaded so he couldn’t get out in time’.
Casserley stops writing. He looks at Beatrice as if
wondering how far to trust her.
‘There’s been a lot of clandestine activity in Prague of
late.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The Jews are smuggling their brethren out of Europe through
Prague then to Palestine. God’s chosen people are nothing if not resourceful.’
‘All I know is he says he’ll do anything to help the British
against the Nazis.’
‘How do you think I could best use him?’
‘For intelligence. He’s got connections, Peter – all across
Europe.’
‘Not a communist, is he?’
‘What if he is?’
‘It’s just as well to know these things, that’s all. Maybe I
should take a look at him.’
He stops writing and stands to look out of the window into
the sunless quad behind the hotel.
‘Does your father know about this chap?’
‘No, nothing.’
‘Or that you brought him back with you?’
‘Certainly not.’
‘Where’s he actually staying in London?’
‘He knows someone who’s got a place here.’
Casserley sits down again. He removes the cigarette end from
his holder and inserts a fresh one then leans back, legs outstretched and
crossed, black brogues gleaming from spit and polish.
‘I can’t tell you how glad I am that you’re home, Beatrice.
I’ve really missed you. Why don’t we go out for supper tonight?’
*
Bea opened the ivory-coloured musical box on her dressing
table. Arie bought it for her in a shop near Dover railway station. Its little
pink ballerina turned as she was ordained to do forever and the room filled
with the tinny notes of Goodnight, go to sleep. Bea watched till the porcelain
figure could dance no more for in its tawdry innocence was the story of her
life and the memory of a lover’s first kiss, all summoned back by the tune of a
clockwork toy.