The Pathfinder (19 page)

‘Yes, of course.'

‘We'll have a lovely celebration. I'll get some people in for drinks after church and wheedle something special out of the butcher for Sunday lunch. I've been saving up ration points, hoping you'd get some leave soon.'

‘Don't go to any trouble.' It was a waste of breath saying that; he knew she'd go to all kinds of trouble for him. The butcher and the grocer would be charmed into delving under the counter, the greengrocer coaxed for the freshest vegetables, the garden combed for late autumn flowers, Mrs Lewis instructed to give his old room a thorough going-over. And he knew what was coming next.

‘Shall I see if Celia will be home as well? We could ask her over to lunch, if you'd like that.'

‘Yes, by all means.'

A little pause. ‘Will you be seeing her in London before, do you think?'

‘I've only just arrived. I haven't spoken to her yet.'

‘Well, when you do, darling, perhaps
you'd
ask her if she'd like to come on Sunday? Tell her we'd love to see her.'

‘I'll do that.'

‘I'll invite her parents, too. Keep it in the family.'

The conversation turned to other things: his father who had had a letter published in
The Times
about the lasting benefits of military discipline on young men, the new puppy who chewed anything and everything, the old Humber car that kept refusing to start. He listened to his mother chattering on gaily. During the war, when he had been doing a tour of ops, with death constantly at his shoulder, he had found it all a curious comfort. So long as the daily's corns were playing up, the cat had had kittens and frost had got at the camellias, everything was pretty much OK.

When he had said goodbye to her, promising faithfully to be down on Friday evening, he poured himself a sherry and lit a cigarette. He stood for a while, looking out of the sitting-room window down on to the Fulham Road below. More than three years had passed since the end of the war but it was still grim, grey austerity England. Chronic shortages, rationing – some of it even worse than during the war – utility goods, half-empty shelves and queues outside the shops. A little way along the road he could see a line of housewives with baskets hooked over their arms waiting patiently in front of a greengrocer's. Not such a very different picture from the queues in Berlin, except that this queue was much shorter and the women looked a lot more cheerful and somewhat better dressed. He could see them gossiping away to each other.

He was lucky and he knew it. He'd had a fairly tough war but so had thousands of men. And a lot of them had had no homes to return to and not much prospect of a decent job in Civvy Street. In addition to his service pay, he had a small private income set up out of family capital by his father when he was twenty-one. He had a car, kept in a garage round the corner – bought off a less fortunate fellow officer who could no longer afford to run it – and pretty good prospects in the RAF. He was expected to do well. All he had to do was keep running on the required rails.
You're sticking your neck out for some little fräulein? You've gone crackers, Michael
.

He finished the cigarette and phoned Celia at the flat she shared with another girl in Hans Place. When she answered, he could tell that she was very pleased to hear from him, though she kept it casual.

‘Dinner? That sounds a nice idea, Michael.'

‘I'll pick you up at seven, if that's all right.'

‘I'll be ready.'

He went round to the garage where the Riley was housed. After a few tries and a bit of judicious nursing, the engine fired and he drove it over to Knightsbridge. Celia opened the door. She was wearing a rather elegant woollen frock and a double string of pearls round her neck that he knew had been a coming-of-age present from her parents. Her father was something very successful in the City, her mother a doer of good works, like his own. If the war hadn't intervened, he assumed that she would have done the London Season and dabbled in some kind of pleasant and undemanding job before getting married. Instead, she had gone into the WRNS as soon as she had been old enough and served throughout the duration until she was demobbed. Her job at the War Office was anything but undemanding, so far as he could gather. He also gathered that she was rather good at it.

He took her to a French restaurant that usually managed to serve a fairly decent dinner in spite of the five-shilling limit. They ordered onion soup and veal with a mushroom sauce, and while they waited they drank gin and tonics and smoked cigarettes. She was curious about Berlin. What was it like?

‘It's in ruins,' he told her. ‘Almost completely destroyed. The people live in cellars and wherever there's still a roof of some kind over their heads.'

‘And now they have to endure this blockade. One feels very sorry for them.'

‘They're not particularly sorry for themselves, as a matter of fact. They're rather like Londoners in that respect. They get on with things. If they didn't, this airlift wouldn't stand a chance. It depends on them, as much as on us. They could easily give up and settle for life under the Russians.'

She grimaced. ‘Not much of an option. Not from what I've heard.'

‘I certainly wouldn't choose it.'

‘I can't imagine what it must be like to have your city carved up into pieces and run by different countries. Imagine if it had happened to London.'

‘Unimaginable. And unthinkable.'

The waiter came with the onion soup, which was very good.

‘What do the poor Berliners get to eat?' she asked.

‘They seem to survive mainly on soup. But not soup like this. Cabbage soup or soup made with anything they can get hold of. The stuff we bring in by plane is nearly all dried, of course, because of the weight. Powdered eggs, milk, coffee, potatoes, cereals. We fly in flour so they can bake their own bread. We tried carrying biscuits once but they arrived as crumbs.'

‘Do they get any meat?'

‘In tins.'

‘Cheese?'

He shook his head. ‘None. But then they haven't had any since the war so they don't miss it.'

She said, ‘You must find it all a bit of an irony, Michael?'

‘You mean, considering I spent several years doing my level best to annihilate the very same people? Yes, I do. It's extraordinary to be in the exact opposite situation – trying to help them to survive. The Berliners call it
die luftbrüche
– the air bridge – you know. A bridge to the rest of the world. I suppose that's the way they see it.'

‘Their only link.'

He nodded. ‘And their only hope. The chaps who are doing the real work – the air crews actually ferrying in the stuff – seem to get a big kick out of it all. I rather envy them. Quite a challenge and some very tricky flying and they're doing a damn good job.'

‘Do you miss flying?'

‘Frequently.'

The veal was pretty good too – a welcome change after months of tinned meat – and the wine he'd ordered passable.

‘You'll be going back?' she asked.

‘As far as I know.'

‘Do you mind?'

‘No. I'd like to see the job finished. The Russians giving up.' In fact, the thought of not being sent back – perfectly possible given the vagaries of RAF orders – dismayed him.

She toyed with her wine glass. ‘How long do you think it's going to go on?'

‘No idea,' he said truthfully. ‘Nobody knows. It depends on all sorts of things. Not least, on the Russians and no-one ever knows how they're going to behave or what they're going to think up next.'

‘I hope it doesn't go on too long, Michael.' He knew that what she really meant was that she hoped he wouldn't be away for long, though she would never say so. Again, he asked himself how he felt about her. He liked her. He liked her very much. She was what people called a thoroughly good sort, the right kind of girl. He could understand why his mother was so keen. Even Tubby would probably approve, as far as he approved of any woman. If he asked her to marry him, he was fairly certain she'd say yes without the slightest hesitation. They'd probably be perfectly happy together. She understood service life and she'd make an ideal service wife. He'd certainly do everything within his power to be an ideal husband. He could ask her this evening and break the news to his parents at the weekend to make it an even bigger celebration. It would give them immense pleasure.

And yet, he knew that he wouldn't.

Although there had never been any definite, spoken understanding between them, he felt that in all decency he owed Celia some kind of explanation. But he could scarcely say, actually, I'm besotted with a German girl I met in Berlin. I hardly know her and she's far from keen on me, but I simply can't get her out of my mind. The whole thing's ridiculous, of course. But there it is. He said instead, ‘By the way, Mother's invited you to lunch on Sunday – if you'd like to come over. She's asking your parents, too.'

‘Is she killing the fatted calf?'

He smiled. ‘She's browbeating the butcher. Would you like to come?'

‘I'd love to.'

‘Drinks before. She's getting some people in after church. You know the form.'

‘I'll look forward to it.'

He drove her back to her flat and arranged to pick her up on Friday evening outside the War Office and give her a lift down to Surrey. He didn't kiss her at the door and she waved him a carefully casual good night as she went inside.

He spent the next day sorting through things in the flat, getting his uniform cleaned, his hair cut, his shoes mended, taking his old watch to be repaired, paying bills and answering the letters that had piled up on the mat. He also paid a visit to a model shop in Holborn that had miraculously kept going all through the war. After that, he looked up several old friends, went to drinks and to dinner and to the theatre. He was asked endless questions about Berlin and found that few people had any real idea or understanding of what it was like. For all the post-war austerity of life in London, there was no longer a dark shadow of oppression hanging over the city and its people; the battle for freedom had been won. In Berlin, the battle was still being fought; the outcome still undecided.

He was waiting outside the War Office in the Riley on the Friday evening when Celia came out. It was getting dark but she caught sight of the car at once and waved. He got out and watched her walking towards him – tall and smartly dressed in a costume and hat and carrying a small suitcase.

‘Hallo, Michael.'

‘Hallo.' He returned her smile easily. ‘Let me take that for you.'

He put the case in the boot and held the door for her as she got into the passenger seat. They drove along the Embankment, down the King's Road, over Putney Bridge and out on the A3. Another of Celia's virtues was that she never chattered aimlessly and, apart from the occasional remark, she sat beside him in silence. There was a quiet dignity about her that made him feel all the more guilty at the way he was treating her.

He turned off the A3 towards Epsom and Reigate. There was very little traffic and he picked up some speed, glancing at his watch. ‘We should be there soon after six.'

She said, ‘That's a very impressive-looking watch.'

‘It's German. My service one packed up when I was out there and I got this one on the black market.'

‘You don't mind wearing a German watch?'

‘Actually, it rather amuses me. It's a
Flieger-chronograph.
A pilot's watch. The kid who flogged it to me swore it had belonged to a Luftwaffe pilot. Probably not true, but it's an intriguing thought. And it keeps very good time.'

‘Is there a big black market in Berlin?'

‘Huge. Unstoppable, really. Everybody seems to dabble, one way or another. The kid I got the watch from comes from a decent family but he's turned into a sort of Artful Dodger, living off the streets, trading in anything he can get hold of.'

‘How did you come across him?'

‘I happened to run into some chap I was at school with who knew the family. Dragged me along to meet them, much against my will. Both parents dead and only a senile grandfather. The children live in what little survived of their apartment. It's pretty grim, I can tell you.'

‘Poor things.'

‘Yes. Hard not to feel pity for them. Even when you know damn well the Germans deserved everything they got.'

‘Some of them must have been against the Nazis. Tried to stand up to them.'

He was not my beloved Führer. I hated him.
‘Yes,' he said. ‘Some of them were. But look how many must have gone along with it all – with considerable enthusiasm. Hitler was a god. The Saviour of the Fatherland. The bringer of new glory and
liebensraum
in other people's countries, the chap who conveniently got rid of the scapegoat Jews. When they went around greeting each other with
Heil Hitler!
and
Sieg Heil!
they jolly well meant it.'

‘But the children were innocent. How old is your Artful Dodger?'

‘Hard to tell. Sixteen or seventeen. There's a younger brother of about eight or nine who's a semi-invalid and an older sister.'

‘Is she much older?'

‘I'm not sure. About nineteen or twenty, I think.' He realized that he didn't actually know how old any of them were. ‘I'm not exactly sure.'

‘Does she dabble in the black market too?'

‘No. She works as a
trummerfrau.
She clears away the rubble from streets and bomb sites and cleans up bricks. There are gangs of women everywhere doing that. Very few able-bodied men around, you see.'