Authors: Peter Dickinson
‘I’m sure he will wish to see you,’ said Steff.
‘He says you’re the most beautiful woman he ever met,’ said Letta.
‘It is true,’ she said. ‘They all said so. Now you must go and prepare to welcome our hero, and I must wait here. This is what it means to be in one’s second childhood – one must learn again to do what one is told. Goodbye.’
‘How did she know Grandad?’ asked Letta as they climbed the stairs. ‘I thought he was just a schoolmaster then, and she must have been famous.’
‘It’s a small country,’ said Steff. ‘Everybody knew everybody, among the intellectuals, at least. And then in the war – she’d been a German film star, remember, so a lot of the German officers had had a crush on her, and she played along and let them think they could trust her, but all the while she was sending information out to the Resistance. The trouble was, when it was over some of the Varinians wanted to shoot her as a collaborator, but Grandad got her out of that . . . all highly
romantic
and probably untrue, but that’s what Poppa told me.’
‘Of course it’s true,’ said Letta. ‘It’s got to be. It fits.’
‘Only in stories, Sis. In here, apparently.’
They had come to a wide landing with a new red carpet running a few paces to left and right. Beyond that stretched a tattered old brown one. Opposite the top of the stairs were some big double doors, through which came an odour of fresh paint. Letta followed Steff through and found Mollie and Donna in a grand, uncomfortable great room with more of the little gilt chairs, and some shiny tables, and huge gilt-framed mirrors with black blotches on them, and enough flowers for a funeral. Three tall windows looked out onto the Square, with a balcony outside. In front of the middle one was a podium with microphones. The man who’d led them up, some kind of hotel manager, started fussing around opening doors and showing them the rest of the suite. There was a bedroom with a vast pink bed and a lacy pink canopy covered with artificial roses; a little den with a desk and two easy chairs, where a workman was installing a telephone; a terrific bathroom with a bath about eight feet long and four feet deep and several vast brass taps controlling a shower-device which looked like something from a Jules Verne film; some immense cupboards; and yet another bedroom, this time with twin beds but also frothing with lace and roses, pale violet.
Letta had an urge to pretend she was six again and rush round trying out all the beds and turning on the tape and gadgets, but at that point Van came in, tousled and panting, and said, ‘I think he’s almost here. I heard them cheering.’
Nigel began to open one of the windows but Steff said, ‘Hold it, Nidge. That comes later. We don’t want to spoil the great moment.’
Letta craned, but the balcony was in the way so she took off her shoes and pulled one of the idiotic chairs over and climbed onto it so that she could see over the rail. The whole Square was crammed with people. Despite the closed windows she could hear that the cheers were louder and more intense, and over in the far right-hand corner the crowd was churning around. She could see the helmets of outriders trying to force a path through the mass. After them came the roof of a black official car. It stuck still, then moved on, and behind it appeared the cab of a truck, painted black and purple and white, with flags flopping listlessly on either side. Slowly it edged forward. It carried what seemed to be a festival float, swathed in the Varinian colours. The cheering crashed out like falling waters and the crowd became a forest of waving flags. On the float was a platform with a rail round it, and standing there, holding the rail with one hand and waving cheerfully with the other, stood Grandad.
He had to be dead tired, tired with the journey, tired with the sheer emotion of homecoming, but he held himself straight and turned to left and right and waved, and whenever the truck was forced to a halt he bent down to shake a few of the thousands of hands that reached up to greet him. He was wearing a black beret over his bald head, an open-necked shirt and grey slacks. The extraordinary thing, Letta thought, was that he looked exactly like himself, no different from the Grandad who had crumpets with her at tea-time,
as
if this, too, was something he did every day of his life.
At last the truck moved out of her line of vision. As it did so, she noticed that the colour of the crowd had changed from darker to paler beneath the layer of flags, as all those heads turned to watch it and she was now seeing faces, not hair. The cheering never stopped, but after several minutes its level dipped for a while and rose again. In the quiet spot she could just hear a band playing. That must be the national anthem, as Grandad climbed down from the float and up the steps and turned beneath the porch and stood there waving, while the cheers rose even louder than before, and at last died away as he turned and disappeared into the hotel.
There was a bustle below, but while it was still going on the door opened and Momma rushed in, laughing and crying at the same time, not acting like herself at all, but throwing her arms round everyone and hugging them with easy joy.
‘Isn’t this wonderful!’ she cried. ‘Oh, Letta, darling, how are you? I’m so happy you’re here! We’ve all come home, and you’ve never even seen it!’
‘Is Grandad all right? He’s not too tired?’
‘He’s fine, fine!’
And she rushed away to hug Van and Nigel and the others. After a bit they fell silent and just stood there, too keyed-up for chat or laughter, but listening to the murmurs below and the unending ocean-mutter of the crowd outside.
Time passed. Without warning the doors opened again and Grandad came through, with Poppa behind him.
‘Well, here I am at last,’ he said, smiling and
erect
. But when the doors closed they all saw his shoulders droop as he let the wave of exhaustion wash through him. Steff had a chair ready and helped him into it. Letta knelt and unlaced his shoes. He leaned back with closed eyes.
‘I would give all Varina for a cup of tea,’ he murmured.
‘Bet you Mollie’s got a Thermos,’ said Poppa.
She had, too. The tension broke and they laughed and talked about their journeys while Grandad sipped at his cup and nodded and smiled, though he still looked almost as old as he really was. But then he began to peer round the room and a curious amusement came into his face.
‘You know,’ he said to no-one in particular, ‘I have spent sleepless nights trying to devise some method of getting a bomb under this floor. This was the German Commandant’s office.’
He handed his cup to Letta, sat up and looked at his wrist-watch.
‘I have a few minutes still,’ he said. ‘Time for a wash, at least. Letta, my darling, in my bag there are clean socks.’
‘I’ll find them. What happens next?’
‘At noon I have to go out onto the balcony and make a little speech. I won’t offer to take you with me . . .’
‘I’d much rather be down there.’
‘Me too,’ said Van. ‘Is that OK, Momma? Mollie? If I take Sis and Nigel down and keep an eye on them? You can find Grandad’s socks, uh?’
‘You may have trouble getting back in . . .’ Steff began.
‘No problem. I’ll find a way. Come on, kids.’
He rushed ahead of them down the stairs, paused, surveyed the group in the entrance hall
and
plunged through. By the time Letta and Nigel caught up with him he was explaining his needs to the manager, who kept glancing aside, as if he was hoping for an escape-route to open up. Van was relentless. They were Restaur Vax’s grandchildren, so he must find a way of getting them out into the Square and then back in. Rescue! Some kind of minion passed with a cardboard box full of dead flowers. The manager grabbed it from him and gave instructions. The minion, happy to be relieved of his box, led them off into the maze of corridors, down into cellars, and along a stone passage which seemed to take them almost to the end of that side of the Square. Here he unlocked a creaking door and took them deeper down still, switching on lights as he went. This corridor led into a wider space. Along one side were several iron doors with small barred grilles. Their guide walked to one of them, bowed his head, crossed himself and muttered. He crossed himself again as he turned away.
He pointed upwards.
‘That was the Communist police headquarters,’ he said. ‘Here my mother’s cousin died. First they tortured her. I am sorry. You are children. I should not tell you this. But those years are gone. Now it is time to honour the living.’
He led the way up another stair, unlocked a door and led them into a bleak entrance hall with a reception desk and an ancient telephone exchange. A fence of heavy iron bars ran across the hall from floor to ceiling, just inside the door, with a kind of cage like a giant humane mouse-trap to keep visitors waiting till they had shown their passes or whatever and then let them through one at a time. As their guide showed them through a sort of
turnstile
in this barrier Letta, still shocked and chilly after what he’d said in the cellar, asked him, ‘Where did the Communists come from?’
He stared at her, puzzled.
‘I mean, were they Romanians? Russians? Serbs?’
‘They came from here,’ he said. ‘I know which cell was Illa’s because another cousin told us. He was one of them. He would have liked to help her but he was afraid. We were all afraid. All of us.’
He was a small, plump, worried man, about forty, she guessed. He hadn’t liked telling her what he did, but she could see he felt he had to. She was going to apologize when he smiled and shook his head.
‘Those years are gone,’ he said again. ‘This is a happier day.’
He let the others through the trap and unbolted the door, holding his foot against the bottom so that the people crowding on the top step of the flight that led up to the doorway didn’t tumble through, but had time to stand clear. They looked over their shoulders, surprised, but didn’t stir or make room, so all Letta could see was the solid wall of their backs.
‘Wait,’ said their guide. ‘You come, mister.’
He and Van went back through the trap and returned with four chairs, for Letta, Nigel and themselves. They climbed up with the chill, grim room behind them and the sunlit Square in front, and waited.
They were now at the side of the Square, with the cathedral on their right and the hotel façade stretching away on their left. The cathedral clock stood at two minutes to noon. Many of the crowd
had
their backs to the hotel in order to watch the minute hand edge round. As it crept towards the mark they began to make shushing noises. The murmur of voices dwindled and died. Silence filled the Square, not mere absence of sound, but positive silence, a great pool of stillness which the Varinians had willed into being and which now lay brimming between the buildings in the sunlight. A baby cried. A far dove called and was answered. The first quarter donged out, followed by a shuffling of feet on stone as the crowd turned to watch the balcony. The central windows were now open. The second quarter donged, but no-one heard the third, or the fourth, or the solid boom of the noon bell, because Grandad was standing on the balcony and the cheering drowned them all. Sheets of flags waved above the close-packed heads, the noise went on and on, unstoppable. Letta half-fell, but their guide caught her and set her back on her chair. She realized that she had been jumping up and down, and her throat was hoarse with yelling. The cathedral clock said almost ten-past twelve, but it seemed to her that Grandad had come out barely a minute ago. She was dazed, drunk, drugged with the shared, immense emotion. A crowd like this could do anything, anything . . .
It
was
shared too. It wasn’t just a lot of different people’s excitement all totalled up. It was one thing, like the silence had been, something they made between them all. And with it they shared a purpose and a will. Grandad had been making quiet-down gestures with his hands for some time, and they’d paid no attention, but now they had had enough and all together, in a very few seconds, they fell silent. Here and there a hoarse cry of
greeting
rose, but he waited a moment or two more, raised his head and began.
‘My friends, my countrymen . . .’
Another burst of cheering crashed out, and another after the next few words. They never let him get through a whole sentence, but that didn’t matter. In fact it barely mattered what he said. He was there, officially, to open a festival of Varinian culture, and Letta thought he must have talked mainly about that, but to be honest, she wouldn’t afterwards have been able to tell you what it was about, if anything. All she could have said was that it was wonderful, and that it was in simple Field except for the last three words, and those nobody heard at all because of the crash of cheering that greeted the first Formal syllable. But everyone in the Square knew what he was saying.
‘
Unaloxatu! Unaloxotu! Unaloxistu!
’
This was the motto embroidered on the battle-standard of the first Restaur Vax. You could see it in the cathedral again, after fifty years, because somebody had managed to hide it away when the Germans came, and kept it hidden all the time the Communists were in power. It was the real thing, Steff said. He’d told Nigel the words meant ‘One nation we were. One nation we are. One nation we will be’, and they did, but the English wasn’t the same, because the
una
bit meant ‘whole’ as well as ‘one’, and the ‘lox’ bit meant ‘country’ as well as ‘nation’, and in Formal it took only one whole word to say each part (which you couldn’t do even in Field) so that you felt you were making it true by the very way you said it.
At length their guide decided it was time to go back, so he managed to get the door closed and bolted and let them in through the trap, then led
them
back the way they had come. Letta’s family didn’t go to church, but she remembered a bedtime prayer which Biddie’s mum had said with them when she was staying there last year, and whispered it now as they passed the place with the cells in it. When they got back into Grandad’s room he was still out on the balcony, and the cheering was roaring on, as loud as ever.