Restitution (13 page)

‘So you do this?’ He touched one of the bears with his foot.

She nodded, humiliated.

‘It looks just like a real classroom,’ Gregor stooped and straightened a slumped toy rabbit in the front row. ‘You did a good job.’

She blinked. It might just be imagination, but Gregor seemed kinder this year. Quieter and more sympathetic to others.

‘Let’s go and find your father. Perhaps he’ll let you have the new saddle.’ Gregor’d always had a fascination with Papi, but this year it seemed almost to have
become an obsession. Perhaps it was because his own father was away being reeducated in that camp near Munich. Gregor and his mother were here to recover from the shock, Mami had said. A camp
didn’t sound too shocking to Alix. She’d imagined wood fires and tents, but Papi said it wasn’t that kind of camp and changed the subject.

They wandered into the garden. Mami and Eva were two cool figures in white linen dresses, examining the rosebeds and chatting in low voices. Mami pulled secateurs from a trug and considered a
fat red rose. She seemed to change her mind at the last moment, moving away from the bush towards one of the yellow rose trees and cutting one of its blooms instead. Alix studied her and decided
her mother’s frock was too short, only just covering her elegant knees. And nobody could ever say Eva would fit into one of those frothy Winterhalter portraits; those intense dark eyes of
hers were too unsettling.

And there was Papi, ambling across the terrace with his cigarette. He hadn’t seen Gregor and Alix and stopped at the top of the steps beside one of the wooden boxes filled with dwarf
lilies, watching the two women cutting flowers, a strange expression on his face, one which Alix couldn’t remember seeing before. Alix heard footsteps behind them. Lena. She stopped too and
watched Mami and Eva at work, turning to stare at Papi, some emotion puckering her calm pink face like a pulled thread on a piece of linen. Cream souring in the heat? A shortage of napkins? Lena
walked on, still wearing the same expression. Papi finished his cigarette and turned the opposite way, probably making for the stables and the new horse he wanted to try over some hurdles.

How funny, Alix thought. All of them watching one another and not saying a word. Something about the scene confused her. As she and Gregor moved away she turned to take one more look at the
women. Eva was looking at Papi’s retreating back and there was an expression on her face that made Alix think of a little girl looking into a toyshop window.

Suddenly she wanted to run away from all of them and spend the morning alone in the forest, even if it was her birthday.

Alix was lying on her bed reading
Emil and the Detectives
when the guests arrived, the new saddle sitting on the end of her bed. It had been too hot to ride this
afternoon but she couldn’t bear to part from the saddle; it smelled so delicious. Mami had agreed that Alix and Gregor could come down to the kitchen in their finery and sample the left-over
chocolate mousse and fruit tarts. Until then, they were to rest and recover from the heat of the day.

Her bedroom door was open and she heard Mami’s light feet on the stairs. ‘Eva?’ There was a strained note in her voice. Alix heard her knock on Eva’s door. ‘I need
to tell you something.’

The door opened and closed and Alix could hear no more. She put down her book and tiptoed to the landing. ‘Just a bit of a surprise, that’s all,’ Papi was telling someone she
couldn’t see.

‘I’m still just Marie’s old friend from home,’ another male voice said.

Along the passage Eva’s bedroom door handle rattled. Alix fled back to her room.

‘I could just have a migraine,’ Eva said as she came out. ‘You haven’t actually
told
him I’m here, have you?’

‘No. But if he finds out you’re in the house and he hasn’t seen you, it would look very suspicious, Peter says.’ Mami’s voice.

‘And this is
Anton,
after all.’ Downstairs the bell rang and a servant walked across the marble floor to open it. ‘Listen, there are the other guests arriving. Thank
goodness, the more the merrier, this evening.’

The women walked past Alix’s door to the stairs, their footsteps uneven and hesitant. Alix thought she heard an intake of breath, as though someone was bracing themselves for a dive into a
cold pool.

Lena came upstairs at half-past nine and took them downstairs. Alix paused outside the dining-room door. ‘Shouldn’t we go in and say
Gute Nacht
?’

Lena glanced at Gregor and then away. ‘Not tonight.’

‘Oh.’ Papi was usually so keen for her to greet guests. Admittedly it was now very late. All that money wasted on the new frock. Perhaps Mami would send Lena back to Berlin to
exchange it for something more wearable.

In the kitchen they piled high their bowls, running their tongues over their spoons so not a molecule escaped. Lena brought in tray after tray of dirty glasses and crockery, then stood at the
kitchen door watching all the guests troop into the salon for coffee.

Magda the cook came to stand beside her. ‘Frau Fischer wears that dress of hers like a second skin.’

‘A dress like that is dangerous,’ said Lena.

‘What do you mean, Lena?’ asked Alix, from the table. ‘How can a dress be dangerous?’

‘Don’t talk with your mouth full, child,’ she replied. ‘Five minutes and it’s up to bed with you both.’

‘Tsk, look at that outfit.’ Magda was watching another guest. ‘What is that, some kind of Bavarian costume? Is she trying to make a point?’

Lena shook her head. ‘It looks like
Tracht,
you’re right. See that hair plaited round her head like a big snake?’

‘She’s the perfect wife for someone like him, though.’

‘Someone like who?’ Alix asked.

‘Never mind, birthday girl.’

‘She’s certainly not as elegant as the baroness,’ Magda said. ‘Or as striking as Frau Fischer with her big dark eyes.’

Lena made a small sound with her tongue but said nothing.

Alix waited until both women were distracted with washing-up. ‘I want to see that lady they were talking about, the one in the costume. There was a bit of a commotion when she arrived with
her husband.’

‘Commotion?’

‘Your mother and my mother were whispering together.’

Gregor ate a last raspberry and looked pensive.

‘Finished now?’ Lena turned back towards them.

‘It’s my birthday,’ Alix said. ‘I should be allowed to stay up later.’

‘You already have. Up you go.’

‘Gute Nacht,
Lena,’ said Gregor.

‘Schlaf gut.’
Lena kissed her and ruffled Gregor’s hair. ‘Don’t forget your teeth. And I’ll be out to check you’re not sitting up on the stairs
when you should be in bed.’

As they walked out of the door Alix grabbed Gregor’s sleeve and drew him down the passageway connecting the kitchen with the back of the house.

‘We can wait in the cellar until Magda and Lena are finished in the kitchen. Lena’ll check the stairs for us in a minute, but if she doesn’t see us there she’ll think
we’ve gone to bed. Then we can go and sit up there and listen.’

Gregor sighed. ‘Do we have to? I’m tired.’

‘I want to and it’s my birthday.’

‘Have you got a torch?’

‘No need. There’s electric light down there now.’ She descended the steps and flicked the switch beside the door, before opening the cellar. Gregor followed her. The light
revealed an old sofa, part of its stuffing discharging itself from an arm. ‘Let’s sit down.’

But Gregor walked over to an old trestle table, laden with clocks missing their innards. ‘Your father’s as crazy as ever about his clocks.’

‘Mami says he’s a man obsessed.’ She heard something above them, ran to the door and switched off the light, hearing Gregor’s gasp as the room darkened.
‘Don’t worry,’ she hissed as she came back inside. ‘It’s just for a minute. Then we’ll creep upstairs.’

‘It’s a lot of unnecessary effort for a bit of eavesdropping.’

‘Not very adventurous, are you Gregor?’

‘I just don’t see why your adventures have to be so uncomfortable.’ He was probably thinking of what had happened when she’d made him camp out in the forest with her a
few nights ago and the tent had collapsed in the rain.

‘Lucky for you they wouldn’t have you in the Hitler Youth.’ She bit her tongue.

‘Shut up, Alix. What the hell do you know about it?’

She blinked and peered at him.

‘You’ve no concept, have you, of what it’s been like since . . .’

‘I’m sorry.’ Her cheeks burned with shame. ‘I didn’t mean it. You haven’t said much about Berlin, Gregor.’ But then she hadn’t asked him, had she?
Everything felt different this summer. Even Gregor. Especially Gregor. Perhaps it was her. It had once been so easy – he and his family came to Alexanderhof each summer and Alix and Gregor
slotted back into the long days of playing out of doors and keeping one another company. He’d changed. Or perhaps she had.

She heard him flop onto the old sofa. ‘There’s not much to say about Berlin because nothing much happens these days. It’s boring. We don’t go out. I used to play football
with some boys from school, but their parents won’t let them now because of Papi being so dangerous.’

Alix tried to imagine Matthias with his rumpled jackets and big grin as dangerous.

‘At least they don’t know . . .’ He glanced at Alix and then down at his shoes.

‘Know what?’

‘What I think of them.’

She didn’t think that was what he
had
meant but decided not to press the point. ‘So what do you do with yourself?’

‘Play the piano. The teacher won’t come any more but he left me some pieces to play. Sometimes I take my tennis racket to the courts and practise my serves very early in the morning,
before anyone’s around. But it’s boring when there’s nobody to return them.’

‘It must be.’

‘Sometimes I see Dieter.’ Gregor sounded brighter.

‘Dieter?’

‘Dieter Braun. Remember that garage on the corner? The one my mother finds so ugly? His father runs it.’ He gave a fleeting grin. Alix had visited the Fischers several times in
Berlin and knew the garage. It was supposed to be an eyesore but she liked looking at the cars in the showroom. Once she’d even crept round the back to peer at the mechanics changing tyres in
the yard. It had smelled of rubber and leather and oil, an almost exotic mixture. ‘Shouldn’t think Dieter’s the kind you’d have come across, Alix.’

‘No,’ she said with regret.

‘He hates them too: Hitler, all of them. Once Dieter let down a party official’s tyres. He got his
Arsch
whipped then. Sorry, Alix. But that’s the way Dieter
talks.’

‘He sounds fun.’

‘He is. And so are his parents. His father had to beat him because of the tyres. But he didn’t really mean it. He gave Dieter money for chocolate afterwards.’

‘Does he have brothers and sisters?’ Alix felt deep jealousy of anyone with siblings. One of the reasons she liked Gregor was that he wasn’t so blessed.

‘Two of each. Werner’s the eldest, then there’s Dieter, Erik, Sabine and Ute. His mother got one of those breeding medals. Dieter says it’s a shame Adolf didn’t buy
them a bigger apartment too. Dieter’s parents don’t mind that Mama’s . . . That we’re not socially acceptable these days.’

‘Because of your father?’

He hesitated a second before giving a half-nod. ‘The woman in the apartment opposite used to invite my mother in for coffee. Not any more.’ Gregor yawned. ‘I’m tired.
Can’t we just go to bed?’

‘All right.’ Hearing about Gregor’s life in the city had made her feel foolish. How brave he was, putting up with this treatment day after day. How spoiled he must think her.
And how immature, planning silly tricks, hiding from adults. Perhaps Mami was right when she said the time had come for Alexandra von Matke to go away to school in Switzerland for a year and see
more of the world.

She led Gregor back up the cellar steps. They’d nearly reached the hallway when the salon door clicked open. Alix waved Gregor down to his knees on the steps. Voices reached them. Mami was
talking about Lake Garda,
pensione
and good restaurants. Papi explained to someone that the clock on the fireplace was English and lost three minutes a day. The door swung wider open and
light fell on Alix. She heard Gregor slip softly back down the cellar steps. Mami gasped. At least she hadn’t spotted Gregor.

‘Alexandra?’ Mami came out frowning. ‘Surely Lena sent you to bed hours ago?’ Unlike her to be so angry, especially with someone who was celebrating a birthday. Perhaps
it was the sultry weather. Or—

‘A young absconder?’ A tall man appeared beside Mami and Alix gasped. The man was strongly built, but slim. He looked like the kind who’d be happier on an athletics field or
climbing mountains. ‘I see it’s the birthday girl herself.’

‘What were you doing in the cellar?’ Mami asked.

Alix thought of saying she’d seen the light on and had gone down to turn it off, but the man’s eyes seemed to see inside her mind. He smiled at her and she felt her face heat.

‘Looking at the sofa.’ It was true; not a lie. The one unforgivable transgression in this house was lying. ‘Sometimes there are baby mice in it.’

‘What about Gregor?’ Mami sounded sharp. ‘I hope he’s gone to bed?’

‘He’s very tired.’ Not exactly a lie but not exactly an honest answer either.

‘Good.’ Mami slipped an arm through the man’s. ‘Come and smell these night-scented stocks.’ Something caught her attention. She stopped and frowned. ‘You left
the cellar door open, Alix.’ She dropped his arm. ‘Excuse me, Anton.’ She tripped down the stone steps in those dainty little evening shoes of hers. Alix felt her muscles stiffen.
The man in uniform watched her.

‘Everything all right,
Fräulein
?’

‘Fine.’ She managed a tight smile. ‘Thank you.’

Mami would see Gregor. The half-truth would be discovered. But Gregor had obviously managed to hide from Mami’s view. She bolted the cellar door and came back up. ‘There.’ She
smiled at the man. ‘Let’s go out onto the terrace. Off to bed with you, Alix.’ She didn’t sound cross now but her companion was scrutinizing Alix, his eyes expressionless.
He wore a NSDAP membership pin on his lapel.