Death in Berlin

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With nightfall the uneasy wind that had sighed all day through the grass and the gorse bushes at the cliff edge died away, and a cold fog crawled in from the sea, obliterating the darkening coastline and muting the drag of waves on shingle to a rhythmic murmur barely louder than the unrelenting and monotonous mutter of gunfire to the west.

The hours crept by in silence until at last the moon rose, tingeing the fog with silver and bringing with it a night breeze that blew gently off the land and eddied but did not disperse the fog.

Something that appeared to be a bent whin bush moved and stood upright, and a low voice spoke in the patois of that lonely stretch of coast: a man’s voice, barely above a whisper. ‘It is good. Now we go - but without noise. I go first, and each one will put the hand on him who is ahead. It is better to carry the children.

Now!’ There was a rustle that might have been the wind

among the bushes and the harsh sea-grass as the little band of refugees, formless and without substance in the uncertain moonlight, rose from the shelter of the whins and began to creep forward along a narrow goat track that descended the low, sandy cliff.

But despite their desperate caution it proved impossible for them to move without noise, for the dry, sandy soil broke under their feet, sending little showers of earth and pebbles rolling and clattering down to the beach. A child whimpered softly, and there was a sudden harsh tearing sound as a woman’s skirt caught and ripped on a length of rusty sheep wire. And when at last they gained the shore their stumbling progress across the rattling banks

of shingle was a torture to stretched nerves. But at least they had now reached the sea …

Behind them the wolf packs of hate and destruction howled across Europe, while on either hand the smoke from the pyres of Rotterdam and Dunkirk blackened the sweet May skies; but ahead of them, beyond the narrow sea and the shifting fogbanks, lay the coast of England.

At the water’s edge the shadowy bulk of a fishing boat loomed out of the surrounding fog, and despite the darkness it could be seen that the man who stood knee-deep in the creaming water, holding the prow to the shore, was tense and listening. His head was raised and he was not looking towards the stumbling line of refugees, but to the right, where the curve of the bay ran out in a huddle of weed-covered rocks.

He spoke in a harsh whisper and without turning his head: ‘I am afraid. Be swift!’ Then over his shoulder to a dim figure in the boat: ‘Be ready with the sail, Pierre.’

A child began to cry in small gulping sobs: the sobbing of one who would normally have screamed its woe aloud, but who had been reduced by an adult experience of fear to the status of a terrified animal.

‘Hush thou.” The whisper was savage with fear as the small figure was lifted over the gunwale. There followed three more children, the last of whom appeared to be clutching a large doll. The man who had been carrying her climbed in after her and turned to pull a shivering woman into the boat.

‘Quick!’ muttered the man in the water. ‘Oh be quick!’

And then, with shocking suddenness, the darkness was ripped apart by a streak of flame, and the fogbanks and the low sandy cliffs that curved about the lonely bay echoed to the crash and whine of bullets, hoarse shouting voices and the clatter of running boots upon rock and shingle.

Without words the man who steadied the prow of the boat, and he who had led the refugees down the goat track, put their shoulders to the laden boat and thrust her off into deep water. The

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sail, invisible against the night and the drifting fog, rose and took the breeze and, slowly at first, the boat began to move away from the shelving beach. The two fishermen hauled themselves aboard and the remaining refugees, panic lending them strength, flung themselves screaming into the water, clawing at the receding prow, and were dragged on board.

A lone figure ran wildly across the shingle. It was the woman whose clothing had caught on the rusty tangle of sheep wire. She had paused in the darkness to free herself, appalled by the noise of the ripping material and the fear that she might dislodge stones and clods of earth if she dragged at the cloth, and so had arrived late upon the beach. /

She rushed into the water, her feet stumbling among the treacherous pebbles as the waves snatched them from under her. But the boat had gone. The fog had closed behind it, and there was nothing to show that it had ever been there. She tried to scream: to shriek to them to come back for her, to save her and not leave her alone on that dark beach. But her throat was dry and her breath came in hoarse gasps.

The vicious chatter of a machine-gun added itself to the noise of running feet, and tracer bullets ripped brilliant orange streaks through the fog around her. Turning from the sea that had betrayed her, she ran back like a hunted animal towards the dark whin bushes, the low sandy cliffs and the hostile land …

1

Miranda Brand knelt on the floor of a bedroom in the Families’ Hostel at Bad Oeynhausen in the British zone of Germany, searching her suitcase for a cake of soap, and regretting that she had ever accepted her cousin Robert Melville’s invitation to spend a month with him and his family in Berlin.

There was something about this gaunt building, about the dimly familiar, guttural voices and the wet, grey miles that had streamed past the train windows all that afternoon, that had acted unpleasantly upon her nerves. Yet it could not be Germany, and the fact that she was back there once more for the first time since childhood, that was responsible for this curious feeling of apprehension and unease that possessed her, because she had been aware of it before she had even set foot in the country.

It had begun … When had it begun? Was it on the boat to the Hook of Holland? … Or even earlier, on the boat-train to Harwich? She could not be sure. She only knew that for some inexplicable reason she felt tense and uneasy, and … And afraid!

Yes, that was it: afraid. ‘Well then what are you afraid of?’ Miranda demanded of herself. ‘Nothing! But you can’t be afraid of nothing!’

I’m getting as bad as Aunt Hetty, thought Miranda ruefully, and was smiling at the recollection of that neurotic and highly strung spinster when the door burst open and Stella Melville rushed in and slammed it noisily behind her, causing Miranda to start violently and drop the lid of the suitcase on the fingers of one hand.

“Ow! What on earth is the matter, Stel’? I wish you wouldn’t

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make me jump like that. It puts years on my life.’ Miranda blew on her injured fingers and regarded her cousin’s wife with affectionate indignation.

Mrs Melville drew a quivering breath and her hands clenched into fists: ‘I hate the Army! / hate it! Oh, why did Robert have to be a soldier? Why couldn’t he have been a farmer, or a pig-breeder, or a stockbroker or - or - oh, anything but a soldier?’

Stella flung herself face down upon the bed and burst into tears.

‘Good heavens!’ said Miranda blankly.

She stood up hurriedly and perching on the edge of the bed threw a comforting arm about Stella’s shoulders: ‘What’s up, darling? - that tiresome Leslie woman been sharpening her claws on you again? Forget it! I expect all those seasick pills have upset her liver. Come on, sweetie, brace up!’

‘Oh go away!’ sobbed Stella furiously, attempting to burrow further into the unyielding hostel pillow: ‘You don’t understand. No one understands!’

‘Well tell me about it then,’ said Miranda reasonably. ‘Come on, Stel’, it can’t be as bad as that. Tell your Aunt ‘Randa!’

Stella gave a watery chuckle and sat up, pushing away a wet strand of blond hair with the back of her hand. ‘Aunt ‘Randa! I

like that, when I’m old enough to be your mother.’

‘Give yourself a chance, darling. I shall be twenty-one next month.’ Miranda hunted through her coat pockets, and producing a passably clean handkerchief handed it over.

‘Twenty-one, ‘ said Stella desolately. ‘Dear God! and I shall be forty!’ She blew her nose and sat looking at Miranda; her pretty pink and white face blotched with tears, and the ruin of her carefully applied make-up suddenly revealing the truth of that last statement.

Miranda looked momentarily taken aback. ‘Will you? Well I

suppose if you’d been married at eighteen I could just Look,

how did we come to be discussing our ages anyway? What has your age got to do with hating the Army?’

‘Perhaps more than you think,’ said Stella bitterly. She saw that

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‘M-;

Miranda was looking bewildered, and laughed a little shakily. ‘Oh, it isn’t that! It’s - well Robert has just met a man he knows, and

- and oh ‘Randa isn’t it awful? He told Robert that the regiment is going to be sent to Malaya next year!’ Stella’s blue eyes brimmed over with tears that coursed slowly down her wet cheeks and dripped off her chin, making ugly dark spots on her smart grey dress.

‘Malaya? But good heavens, Stella, why on earth should that upset you? If I were in your shoes I’d be thrilled to bits! Sunshine, palm trees, temple bells - not to mention masses of servants in lovely eastern clothes to do all the dirty work for you. Just think of it! No more washing up dishes or fuel economy: heaven! What are you worrying about? You don’t have to worry about Robert, because he told me once that Malaya was a “Company commander’s war” - whatever that means. And anyway the papers all seem to think that this Templer man has got the bandits buttoned.’

‘You don’t understand,’ repeated Stella impatiently. ‘I know you think it would be lovely to go there, but I’m not you. People like you think of the East as exotic and exciting, but to me it’s only uncivilized and frightening. Perhaps that’s because I’m not an exotic or exciting person. I don’t like strange places. I love my own bit of England and I don’t want to live anywhere else.’

‘But you can have it both ways,’ urged Miranda. ‘You can live in England and in between you can go off and see romantic foreign places.’

‘It isn’t like that,’ said Stella drearily. ‘When I married Johnnie—you never knew Johnnie, did you—I thought what fun it would be. Being married, I mean. I thought we’d live at Mallow, or somewhere near it in Sussex or Kent, and that everything would be lovely. I actually thought that I should “live happily ever after” just like they do in fairy stories!’

She gave a short laugh, startling in its bitterness, and getting up from the bed walked over to the window and stood with her forehead pressed against a pane, looking down at the narrow,

darkening street and speaking in an undertone, almost as if she had forgotten Miranda’s presence and was talking to herself.

‘It didn’t work out that way. Perhaps it never does. We had to go to India. He … I hated it! The dirt, the dust, the flies, the dark, secret faces. The horrible heat and that awful club life. And I was ill; always ill.’ She shivered so violently that her teeth chattered.

‘It was heaven to come home again. To see green fields and cool

grey skies. Oh, the awfulness of that brassy sunlight! But then

the war came and he had to go back there without me. And I never saw him again. When he—when the telegram came I thought I should never be happy again. But you can’t go on being unhappy for ever. That’s the merciful thing about it. And after the war I met Robert.’

Her voice rose again suddenly, and she turned to face Miranda, her pretty mouth working and her slim fingers clenching and unclenching against the suave lines of the grey travelling dress.

‘But it was only the same thing all over again. They sent him to Egypt, and they wouldn’t let me go with him. They said I hadn’t enough “points”. Points! As if love and marriage were things on a ration card! Later the families were all sent away anyway, but that didn’t make it any better for me. And when he did get back, the regiment was in Germany so we get sent to Berlin! This, believe it or not, is a “Home posting”. Home! And now to be told that it will be Malaya next. I can’t bear it!’