The One I Was (21 page)

I turned back to Benny. He seemed older this morning, sicker. I didn’t want to leave his side and sat quietly with him. He passed through a dreamless sleep into a more agitated state.

Benny said, quite clearly: ‘Tell them it was a mistake.’ His face, even in sleep, was full of concern for this friend of his.

‘What was?’ I whispered to him, not expecting that he would respond to the question. But his eyes flicked open for a moment.

‘I couldn’t make them understand.’ He sighed and closed his eyes, seeming to jerk back into his uneasy sleep. ‘Rudi was just trying to help.’

I placed the laptop next to him on the bedside table in case he needed it when he woke up.

24

Benny was dreaming, he knew that. Real life was back with that nurse, Rosamond Hunter, who couldn’t be who he sometimes felt she might be, because Harriet Dorner had been dead for thirty years.

‘Harriet had appendicitis and it killed her,’ he told the boy who sometimes stood beside his bed. Benny supposed the boy, dressed in the short trousers of their childhood, was a manifestation of the dream, not real at all. It didn’t matter; his silent company was comforting.

‘But Harriet dying was years later. Let’s go right back to the beginning.’ Back to that small town in Germany where he and the boy had grown up. ‘Things weren’t too bad when we were very young, were they?’ Benny remembered Christmases, days out in the garden in summer when the sun never seemed to go in and his parents had laughed and played with him.

Before things had become complicated.

‘It was the broken vase that started it,’ he told his companion. ‘Grown-ups get so angry and that leads on to all kinds of other problems.’

His friend nodded.

*

Benny watched Rudi come across the snowy lawn at the back of his house holding the shards of what looked like a smashed vase. Rudi was trembling as he approached the shrub behind which Benny waited.

‘Did you break that?’ Benny asked.

Rudi nodded. ‘I kicked the ball at the wall beside the window.’

And obviously missed. ‘Whoops.’

Rudi’s father would be furious. Benny could just about remember when accidentally breaking something and getting into trouble was the worst thing that could happen. In the last few months it had become acceptable to smash other people’s possessions on purpose. The angry uniformed youths were particularly keen on breaking windows.

But poor Rudi, all the same. It wasn’t his fault his father was the way he was. Or that he wasn’t Jewish and couldn’t understand the bigger fears life might bring you.

‘What should I do?’ Rudi whispered.

‘Shove the pieces in a box and throw them away? Perhaps they’ll think a burglar pinched it.’

There weren’t as many burglaries these days, though. Not unless you were a Jewish household, Benny’s mother said. In which case, the state itself robbed you.

‘Good idea.’

While Rudi ran inside to find a box, Benny reassessed his position. Exposed on the white lawn like a beetle on a sheet. He moved behind a tree while he waited.

Rudi returned, his face losing its tension. ‘I found a shoe box. Vati won’t be back for a few days anyway.’

‘Don’t worry about it until then.’

You just had to worry about the immediate things: what you could eat, whether your boots would keep the snow out, whether your mother could find a doctor prepared to see her.

But for the moment, all that mattered was kicking the ball around in the garden with Rudi, pretending for a brief time that everything was normal again. Benny took a last look around to make sure nobody was watching them from the neighbouring houses, but Rudi’s house wasn’t overlooked. Reassured, he rolled his brown leather ball across the snow. His mother had bought the ball for him last birthday. How she’d managed it, he didn’t know. She’d even somehow had his name embossed on it in small gold letters.

Benny drop-kicked the ball and managed to strike the narrow trunk of the cherry tree. Rudi tried the same shot. Failed.

A window on the second floor squeaked open. Benny froze. If you stood quite still people sometimes missed you. He’d learned to keep each muscle motionless, except for his eyes; they darted from side to side, looking for places to hide.

‘Just Olga,’ Rudi said. ‘She doesn’t mind what I do out here and she probably isn’t wearing her glasses anyway.’

The elderly housekeeper shook a duster out of the window and banged it shut again. Benny hoped his friend had shoved that shoe box well under his bed. If the housekeeper found the broken vase she might feel obliged to tell Rudi’s father. People in this town liked telling on other people.

He scooped up his ball and looked at it, reminding himself what he’d promised he’d do. ‘Here,’ he tossed it to Rudi. ‘You’d better keep this.’

‘Don’t you want it?’

How could Benny
not
want his beautiful ball? Rudi meant well, but even he didn’t understand how things were. Benny managed a shrug.

‘You’re moving, aren’t you?’ Rudi asked.

‘We’re moving in with my aunt tomorrow.’ No point hanging on to a large house with a frontage of smashed glass they couldn’t replace, even if the house had once been a perfect example of modernist architecture, according to Benny’s mother.

Benny felt suddenly exhausted. Only now did Rudi seem to notice.

‘You look strange, Benny.’ He squinted at him. ‘You’ve got grey shadows under your eyes and your lips are blue.’

‘My throat’s a bit sore.’ Now he thought of it, it felt more than a bit sore. He coughed and the coughing seemed to go on a long time. He felt hot, too. Probably just from running around.

‘What’s your aunt’s place like?’ Rudi asked, when the coughing subsided.

‘Two rooms for three of us. But my mother’s going into hospital. Best place for her, my aunt says.’ Benny pulled at a loose piece of stitching on his sleeve. ‘At least there aren’t many windows at the new apartment. So if they get smashed again it won’t cost much to fix them.’

All that modern glass his father had taken such pride in, shattered.

‘There’s more.’ Benny spoke in a whisper, his eyes still darting round the garden in case of listeners-in. ‘They’re sending me away.’ This was the big news, the news he hadn’t been able to comprehend himself until he said these words.

‘Away?’

‘To England.’ Benny slumped down onto the garden bench. How could he be so tired after so little exertion?

‘On holiday? With the enemy?’

‘They’re not the enemy yet.’

‘But they will be soon, Vati says.’

Rudi’s father knew a lot about things because of his job at the railways. Herr Lange had to approve the closure of whole lines to allow troops to move on exercises. He knew about engine sizes and track-sizing issues when engines moved from one country to another. He took calls in his study in the evenings, voice raised as he told the caller that the solution to a problem was impossible. Rudi sometimes told Benny bits and pieces he’d overheard, even though they both knew it was reckless and silly to share information like this. They could put you in a camp for less. That’s what they’d done to Benny’s father, who wasn’t even a practising Jew. None of their family were.

Benny concentrated on the loose thread on his sleeve. ‘England will be safer for Jewish kids, my aunt says.’

Rudi seemed to be focusing on the gold lettering on the football, but Benny knew it was just that he couldn’t think of a reply.

‘Do you have any food?’ Benny hadn’t known he was about to ask this question. Rudi looked startled. ‘Just there wasn’t much breakfast. My mother’s found it hard to find a shop that’ll …’

That would serve them.

‘So if you had some bread or a bit of cheese or something,’ he went on, keeping his voice casual.

Rudi ate well, Benny knew. Despite the meat shortages he still had veal and pork a couple of times a week. With a nod Rudi crept back into the house. Benny hoped Olga was still busy upstairs. But even if she caught Rudi in her kitchen she wouldn’t guess he was feeding the Jewish boy who’d once been his friend.

Sometimes Benny wondered how Rudi reacted during racial theory lessons. Rudi probably turned his eyes down towards his wooden desk so that nobody could see his
expression. Or perhaps he just laughed with the others when the teacher showed them pictures.

The boys always played in Rudi’s garden while Herr Lange was at work. The park was too dangerous. If it was snowing Rudi and Benny sat in the garden shed on empty upturned terracotta pots in a space they’d cleared between garden tools and the lawnmower.

The shed was too cold now it was winter. Benny thought, daringly, of asking Rudi to smuggle him into the house while he ate. If he could sit by the stove for just ten minutes the heat would ease its way into his cold limbs.

Too dangerous. The housekeeper might see him. They needed to stay in the cover of the trees and shrubs.

Rudi returned.

‘Here,’ he pushed a plate towards him. Two cutlets, a chunk of bread and an apple. Benny stuffed the bread into his mouth.

‘I’ll save the rest for later.’

‘Bring the plate back tomorrow and I’ll find you something else.’ Rudi was watching him. ‘Are you going to London? There’re some good football clubs there.’

‘Think I’ll be staying in the country somewhere.’ Benny rubbed his mouth with a grubby sleeve.

‘Will you be gone for long?’ Rudi asked.

Benny shrugged.

‘And your mother?’

‘Not fit to travel. Even if they let her out of hospital in time. The English won’t take her unless she takes a job as a servant or something. She’s never worked.’ Another fear enveloped Benny. ‘I’m not even sure I’ll be able to go.’ He coughed again. ‘I have to pass a medical and get a health form signed.’

‘Olga told me about this disease that starts in your throat and tries to strangle you.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Sometimes they cut your throat to release your airways.’ Perhaps Rudi could tell from Benny’s face that this was not reassuring. He stopped talking.

‘I’m sure I’ll be better by tomorrow.’ Perhaps he was already feeling a bit better. Must be the food. But another cough broke in his chest. He slumped back on the bench.

‘You’ll have to do better than that.’ Rudi looked concerned. Probably worried that someone would hear the coughing.

‘I’ll be fine.’ If only his throat didn’t hurt so much. ‘I’ll bring the plate back in the morning.’ He thought of something. ‘Be careful yourself, Rudi.’

*

They’d resumed their friendship cautiously after a chance meeting in the street. Rudi had mentioned the back lane that bordered his family’s garden. ‘Come over at about ten. Kick your ball over the wall. When I see it, I’ll let you in through the gate. Nobody’ll notice.’ Rudi lived just outside the town centre, where the houses were less crowded together, with more trees and shrubs to hide behind. Benny’s own house was equally spaciously located, but with open lawns around it. So Rudi’s garden it had to be.

They’d been diffident with one another to start with, feeling all the differences, seeing them too. Benny knew the clothes his mother had bought for him from the smartest department stores in Berlin were now shabby, outgrown. But ten minutes of kicking the ball around had ended any awkwardness.

‘You know it’s big trouble for you if they catch me here?’ Benny had said when they finished their first game.

Rudi’d given a casual shrug. ‘My father’s always at work and our housekeeper’s short-sighted. Nobody can see us if we stay in the garden.’

And from then on, Benny had appeared in Rudi’s garden once or twice a week. Except for that time in November when he’d stayed at home for a fortnight. After that his mother had grown sick. And she’d started talking about England for Benny.

Rudi had almost reached the back door, Benny’s ball under his arm, when he stopped and came back.

‘I could go to the doctor’s for you tomorrow.’

‘What?’

‘You’ve been healthy until now, haven’t you? Haven’t needed to see the doctor?’

‘I’ve been fine.’ And he had, until this morning. ‘But we don’t really have a doctor any more. He’s left.’

‘And we’ve both got brown hair and eyes. You’re not like …’ Rudi stopped, blushing.

‘Not like one of those cartoon Jews with a long nose and black greasy hair,’ Benny finished for him.

‘I don’t see our doctor, either,’ Rudi went on. ‘He left as well.’

Benny watched him. ‘So?’

‘So who’d know if I went to this medical for you tomorrow?’

‘There’s a form. With my photo on it.’ Benny thought about it. ‘But you’re right, we don’t look that different.’ They stared at one another. Rudi’s face was fuller and he wasn’t as tall as Benny. His hair was straighter and finer. But looking at a small black-and-white photograph, who would really notice these differences? And, as he’d said, Rudi’s chest and throat were clear. Nobody would look at a boy like Rudi Lange and not imagine him fit to go to England.

‘They’ll just stick one of those cold metal stethy-things on my chest and a wooden stick down my throat,’ Rudi went on. ‘Make me cough so my balls drop down. Then they’ll sign the paper and you’ll go to England. My thank-you for giving me the football.’

How could anyone be so dim? But Rudi meant well. ‘If they look at your bits you’d never get away with it,’ Benny said.

Rudi flushed. ‘I don’t understand … Oh.’ He turned pink. ‘Can’t I just say I didn’t get … done?’

Benny shook his head. ‘We’re all done as babies.’

‘Perhaps I was really ill? The doctor told my mother to wait until I was older.’

Benny thought about it. ‘But then the Nazis came to power and she decided not to.’ He hoped he sounded more confident in this story than he really felt. ‘Or she didn’t know she was Jewish. Only found out when you were older.’ People liked sniffing around birth records, didn’t they? Uncovering things about people’s families.

Voices came from the house. Rudi stiffened. ‘My father’s back early. Quick, what time’s the appointment and where is it?’

Benny dug out a pencil stub from his pocket. He had no paper, but Rudi found a handkerchief that could be written on.