The Restoration of Otto Laird (14 page)

He pointed to an elongated smudge on the horizon, far off to the north-west. Chloe had no idea what she was meant to be looking at, but nodded to him politely.

‘And yet, oddly enough, my favourite structure here in London is a relatively tiny one. It's not really a “building” at all. It wasn't even designed to be used by people.'

‘Whatever is it?' she asked him.

‘The penguin pool at London Zoo. Built in the 1930s. Do you know it?'

She thought a second.

‘I've seen the new penguin beach – I went there earlier this year. But I don't remember an old pool.'

‘It's no longer in use – hasn't been for some years.'

‘They haven't knocked it down, surely?'

‘They couldn't, even if they wanted to. It's Grade 1 listed, you see. A mere slip of a structure, but important in its way. As far as I'm aware it's now a water feature. It was designed by Berthold Lubetkin's Tecton practice, and is widely regarded as a masterpiece of modern architecture. It has a wonderful pair of concrete ramps, interlocking and spiralling down into the water. A most graceful composition.'

‘You've whetted my appetite. I must go back and search it out some day.'

‘I don't think you'd regret it; although, as with so many twentieth-century constructions, it did attract its fair share of controversy over the years.'

‘Why was that?'

‘Some people claimed it didn't work – as a practical structure, I mean. They said it was fine as a work of art, as an eye-catching piece of sculpture, but apparently the penguins didn't much care for it.'

Chloe smiled.

‘No wonder it was closed,' she said.

‘Yes … well … it's quite understandable. I'm sure they'll be much happier with their beach.'

‘When did you last go there?'

‘Many years ago, now. My first wife and I took our son, Daniel, when he was just a young boy.'

Otto paused a moment in reflection.

‘I'm afraid it wasn't a terribly successful outing.'

*   *   *

On a balmy spring Sunday in 1972, they had taken him to the zoo to see the lions. At five years old, Daniel liked all sorts of animals, but lions were his particular favourite. He had spoken to his parents about little else for weeks.

Within minutes of arriving at the ticket desk, he was running ahead of them on the pathway, eager to reach the scene he could already picture in his head. He anticipated with excitement the deep growling sound in the lions' throats, the way they prowled the perimeter fence of their compound. But as he neared the bend in the pathway that would take him to this magical place, he heard the sound of his mother's voice, calling him back.

‘Daniel. Just a moment. Daddy wants to look at the penguins.'

It was some time since Otto had seen the penguin pool, and the sight of the ramps down which they were waddling had stopped him dead in his tracks. He was staring in fascination at the scene, unable to tear himself away.

A reluctant Daniel turned and ran back towards them.

‘He won't be long, I promise,' Cynthia whispered with a smile. ‘He's having one of his architectural moments.'

Daniel, however, was not amused.

‘What about the lions?' he asked.

‘In a minute, darling.'

‘But we came to see the lions.'

Otto, who was gazing intently at the watery light on the underside of a ramp, failed to notice Daniel or his mounting frustration, even when his son began pulling at his sleeve and pleading with him to move on.

‘Daddy, let's go. I want to see the lions. I want to see the lions in their garden.'

At this point, Otto did something he later regretted. He pulled away his sleeve – not angrily, but absently, without even glancing down at Daniel. It was as if he were a thorn on which the sleeve of Otto's shirt had become caught. Straightaway, Daniel's tears began to well.

Cynthia, who had been watching closely, sensed the effect that Otto's unthinking gesture might have. She tried to preempt any reaction by distracting Daniel.

‘Don't you want to see the penguins, darling? Look, there's a really fat one, coming down the ramp. See him go now into the water. Splosh!'

But it was already too late. Daniel's snivels mounted to a wail. Before Otto had noticed that anything was amiss, Daniel had turned on his heel and was fleeing at speed along the path.

‘Daniel, wait…' Cynthia called out, setting off in rapid pursuit.

But she couldn't avert the accident she saw approaching.

Daniel was struck hard on the shoulder by the bicycle that flashed across his path and sent spinning backwards onto the gravel, where he lay on his back, sprawling and stunned.

By the time Cynthia and Otto reached him, he had regained a sitting position and was crying loudly. His elbows were grazed and there was a nasty cut on his knee where it had been hit by a pedal. The young man who had struck him was trying to untangle himself from the aluminium frame. The bicycle lay upended on the grass, its front wheel revolving slowly.

Having established that no one was badly hurt, and with apologies issued all round, Cynthia took Daniel to the first-aid post while Otto went to seek out his son's favourite ice cream at a nearby kiosk. Returning with a giant cone, he apologised and suggested that they go and see the lions. Daniel, a wad of dressing round his knee, looked up at Otto and firmly shook his head. There was nothing they could do to persuade him to change his mind. The eagerly awaited afternoon at the zoo was soon abandoned.

Driving back home to Hampstead, Cynthia cuddled the still-fragile Daniel as he lay on the back seat of the car, his head resting limply on her lap. Otto, silently gripping at the steering wheel, cursed his own stupidity and self-absorption. He had ruined Daniel's day, and there was nothing he could do to remedy the situation. Why was it that he seemed to get these things so wrong so often?

*   *   *

‘Daniel's an architect too, isn't he?' asked Chloe.

Otto recovered from his reverie.

‘Yes, he is. A talented one. He's won himself a number of awards.'

‘You must be very proud of him.'

‘I am, of course, although our relationship, these days, is rather broken.'

‘Really?'

‘There was more or less a complete rupture between us, several years ago. We've not spoken directly since.'

‘I'm sorry to hear that,' she said.

He glanced away again at the view.

‘It was some silly argument about a railway station he was designing. He was over in Geneva on business and asked me to take a look at the plans over lunch. I made some critical comments that upset him. I should have let it drop, of course, had the wherewithal to sense how annoyed he was becoming. But I didn't. I kept going, nagging away at him, and finally something seemed to snap.'

He thought again of Daniel, gathering up the plans in his arms, his features contorted with unexpressed hurt. Then the stride to the door; its slamming shut behind him.

Otto looked again at Chloe.

‘There was more to it than that, of course. It was a catalyst for the emergence of other, pre-existing tensions. The problems between us lay much further back in time.'

He halted, momentarily, surprised by his own candidness.

‘If you'd like to talk about it…' Chloe said to him cautiously.

‘It's a complicated matter. I won't bore you with the details. But I must do something about getting back in touch one day. Families are so important, you see.'

Chloe wanted to know more about this troubled relationship with Daniel; about the long and eventful life that Otto had led. Yet the sight of his ancient face, the unfathomable depths of his eyes, brought home to her just how great was the gulf that separated his generation from her own. Dare she tread the eggshell bridge that seemed to divide them? No, it was impossible. The chasm in human experience could not be breached. And so she talked to him about other things instead.

‘How are you finding the filming? Is everything okay? I hope you haven't found it a waste of time.'

‘No, no … not at all,' said Otto, worried about his evident lack of enthusiasm. ‘It's been most interesting, seeing the old place again.'

But was the building really worth saving? That was what he wanted to ask her. He no longer knew the answer to this question himself.

Fifteen

Stretched out in near-darkness on his sofa sometime later, Otto felt too tired to get up and switch on any lights.

‘Exhausted,' he muttered, in little more than a whisper.

Once more he wished he had given a better account of himself that day. Chloe's questions had been rapid and his answers superficial. He hadn't found the space to gather his thoughts. But then she and her colleagues seemed to operate in a different frame of time to him.
Everybody
did, nowadays. They all moved on fast forward; he in slow motion. No wonder he'd been left a little dazed. It was all so different to his life back home in Switzerland. There he would sit for days on end at the window of his study, watching the colours change in the autumn forest.

He was glad they would soon be meeting some of the residents – apparently it was next on the itinerary. He was feeling a little apprehensive, however. Supposing somebody swore at him?

‘How would
you
feel about using this lift each day?' Chloe had asked him earlier.

With an extended yawn, Otto emptied out his mind, allowing his concerns to drift off into the shadows. Tomorrow would no doubt take care of itself.

Little by little, the dark night enclosed him, but he felt no urge to turn on any lights. The distant glow from the city below cast a halo onto the ceiling. He lay staring at it for quite some time, the harsh glare softening to a flickering of candles.

The cellar in which he found himself was long and narrow. It had a red-brick ceiling and walls, which sometimes dripped with damp, and a stone floor that at night seemed half alive with the rumours of mice. He knew this cellar, in intimate detail, and recalled its layout now. There were two exits: a door into the apartment of the elderly couple who sheltered them, and a hatch leading up into the courtyard directly above. Of these two exits, they had been told that they should never use the first. The second, however, they could use as often as was practicable.

The light of the candles offered some respite from the darkness, although the children later had problems with their eyesight, and their mother eventually lost hers altogether. Otto's symptoms were less severe than his sisters', although he always needed glasses for his drawing.

The family moved into the cellar in August 1942, just as the deportations began, having fled to Antwerp from Vienna four years earlier. But it was not far enough to escape the forces of persecution, which seemed, to Otto's father, to be personally pursuing his family across Europe. The previous two years had seen increased levels of violence and intimidation against Antwerp's Jewish community. When word spread that the round-ups were starting, the family had almost no time in which to search out a hiding place. Fortunately, they were offered one by friends.

The cellar was always uncomfortable and its low ceiling claustrophobic. It was high enough to allow the four children and their mother to stand up straight, even to stretch upwards a little to exercise. But Otto's father, who was tall, had to permanently stoop in order to move around. Conditions were at their most bearable during spring and autumn. In summer the cellar could become extremely stuffy, and in winter bitterly cold.

There were mattresses for each of them. Otto, who at nine years old was the youngest of the children, had the smallest space in a corner of the cellar. His three sisters slept in a line running along its narrow length to the wider space at the end where their parents slept. A small table and three chairs also stood in that corner.

Their new living arrangements seemed strange at first, but the children quickly adapted and in time their parents did, too. Their father, in particular, suffered from terrible bouts of claustrophobia during the early weeks, but he hid this from the others fairly well.

Before fleeing Vienna, and for a spell in Antwerp, Otto's father had practised as a civil engineer. He was a stern man, taciturn, but given to moments of great tenderness towards his family. These would break like unexpected shafts of light through his rather oppressive persona. He had greying hair and a substantial moustache in the old-fashioned style. Otto's mother, who was dark and petite, with thick and shining locks, had been a ballet dancer until suffering an injury some years before, after which she had become somewhat melancholy.

During the daytime, the children would be given improvised school lessons by their parents in the larger space with table and chairs that doubled as their sleeping area. They called it, half jokingly, ‘the living room'. Classes were held in a variety of subjects, including mathematics, geography, physics, biology and rudimentary English. They used writing materials and books that were left for them, whenever possible, outside the connecting door to the apartment of Mr and Mrs Wouters.

These sessions were conducted as formally as possible, but at a volume that was often little more than a whisper. This generated a strange atmosphere, which left Otto with the feeling that the knowledge he was gaining was somehow forbidden. Perhaps in part for that reason, he developed a great appetite for learning, especially in mathematics and the sciences. He would gladly have spent more time reading than was allowed by his parents, who were concerned about its possible effects upon his eyesight.

Twice a day, buckets containing fresh water for the washing of people and clothing were left outside the door for them to collect, along with modest supplies of food. Normally this consisted of black bread and a hard yellow cheese of indeterminate type. Sometimes they were also left items of clothing.