The Restoration of Otto Laird (16 page)

It came in March 1943, two months after his father's departure. Otto, wrapped in his mother's thick coat, was reading on his mattress one morning while his sisters sat and played with a pack of cards. Suddenly, they heard their mother's voice, talking to someone at the door to the Wouterses' apartment, something that had never happened before. She had gone to collect a bucket of water, having received a signal of three quick knocks, followed by the sound of the key turning in the lock. This was normal procedure, so much so that the children barely even noticed. When they heard a man's voice, however, talking to their mother in the hallway outside, the atmosphere in the cellar quickly changed. Otto's eyes met those of his sisters, and all of them carried the same expression. The fear, so well hidden for much of the time, was instantly there.

Raising himself from the mattress, Otto felt the muscles tighten in his legs. His sisters did the same, all of them braced for flight, remembering the instructions that had been drilled into them by their father. Otto repeated them calmly to himself, just as he had been taught:

‘If they come for us through the apartment next door, make quickly for the hatch. Once outside, run to the eastern wall of the courtyard, that's the one where the light falls when we play. There are some loose bricks in the lower right-hand corner. Push them all in and help each other climb through the gap. This corner of the wall gives onto a small road. If Mr and Mrs Wouters are able to help you, they will. One of them will be standing there to show you where to go. They might even be able to come with you part of the way. If no one is there, try to remember the following combination of streets: turn to your right, then run along until you reach the old synagogue, left, then to the plane trees, then right again. This will take you to the big street with the trams. From there you must try to get north to the port, where someone may be able to help you. Be careful who you speak to, however. No one in uniform; no officials. Try to talk to one of the ordinary workers.'

While silently reciting these instructions, Otto and his sisters made their way over to the hatch, waiting for a raised voice or the sound of a struggle that would be their signal to flee. The door creaked on its hinges and closed: footsteps approached down the stairs. When their mother re-entered the room, they saw that she was alone. She looked calm, despite the redness of her eyes, and gently told Otto to go back to his reading while she took his sisters upstairs and into the apartment next door.

The news was broken to Otto in stages, in a bid to lessen its impact. At first, he was told that his father had been taken ill and that he was being looked after in the hospital. Later, he was told that there were complications with his illness, and that Otto must prepare himself for bad news. Later still, he was told that his father was dead.

In the weeks that followed, his mother grieved terribly, but what made it all the more difficult to watch was the effort with which she tried, without success, to hide it. Every night she sat weeping on her mattress, while Otto's sisters gathered sobbing in a desolate group around her. It was like one of the Renaissance paintings he had seen in his father's books. The sadness etched onto their candlelit faces was biblical.

Otto, at first, did not feel such grief, but a slight numbness and a sense that this story wasn't quite to be believed, like his father's tale about the mission to hunt out new books. Each night he lay and stared at the hatch, trying to convince himself that his father would never again come through it. But the idea, when he thought of it, seemed absurd.

Finally, some weeks later, he was sitting on his mattress when he thought once more of their trip to see the tulip fields near Lisse. He wanted to talk again with his father about the long strips of colour they had seen. He also wanted to tell him about a new plant he had discovered, in a book that had been left outside the door for him by Mr Wouters. This plant had a red mouth with fangs, and it liked to eat insects for its supper.

From the mattress, Otto's sobbing brought his mother and sisters running quickly to his side.

‘I can never talk to him again,' he said, while they did their best to console him. ‘I can never show him the pictures in the book.'

Otto's mother held her son in arms that suddenly grew stronger. During the eighteen months or so in which the family remained in the cellar, the children never again saw or heard her shed a tear.

Otto did not learn the full truth about his father's death until some time after the war had ended. Once again, he heard the story in stages. Shortly after the end of hostilities, when they were living in the Wouterses' apartment, Otto was told by a boy at school that his father had been involved in a plot to detonate a bridge. His experience as a civil engineer meant that he played a vital role in planning the mission. Unfortunately, in the days before it was scheduled to have taken place, a member of the public, walking his dog, noticed suspicious activity inside a warehouse. Immediately he had alerted the authorities. Within half an hour, the warehouse had been raided, the explosives discovered and the men responsible arrested. Two days later, Otto's father and his three cohorts were hanged in a public square in the city. As it was winter, the authorities left the bodies outside on display for several days – the crimes of which they had been accused written out on notices hung around their necks.

Some years later, Otto learned from a family friend that the plotters had been tortured before their execution. The rumour was that they had not given away a single detail to their captors, who did not even know the names of the men they hanged.

After the war, the family remained living in Antwerp, where a formal education in any traditional sense was difficult to obtain. Both books and teachers were in short supply, and schooldays often curtailed. To add to Otto's problems, he developed a debilitating bronchial condition on his return to the outside world, although it did clear up in time.

Despite these setbacks, Otto's teachers were astonished at his rate of academic progress, outstripping the achievements not only of his classmates, but of children several years older than himself. His gifts in a variety of subjects were exceptional. Otto's teachers were not only dumbstruck by the depth and range of his knowledge, but wondered about the sources from which it had come. The headmaster, calling Otto into his office one day, told him he was a true autodidact. He was even more impressed that the boy appeared to know what this meant.

Six years after the end of the war, Otto left Antwerp to take up his architectural scholarship in London. Two of his sisters remained in Belgium – marrying and living long enough to see their grandchildren do the same. His third sister returned to Vienna, where she died some fifteen years later after a short illness. She had never married. Otto's mother, worn out beyond her years by her wartime experience, lived alone in Antwerp for a while, before moving in with one of her daughters and her family as her health steadily worsened. Blind for the last two years of her life, she suffered a stroke one morning while admiring the scent of the spring blooms in the local park. A few days later, she passed away in hospital. She was fifty-three years old.

Sixteen

‘Right,' said Chloe, as they approached the door of an apartment on the fifteenth floor. ‘The first people we're meeting are Roz and Joe. Middle-aged – late forties. Been living in Marlowe House for several years.'

‘And are they friendly?' Otto asked, with a hint of apprehension that surprised her.

‘Yes, very friendly … Don't worry yourself about anything. It's all been arranged. They know who you are and what to expect. The cameras are set up in there and we're ready to go.'

She rang the doorbell and lowered her voice.

‘Joe has a terrific face – quite old-fashioned, in its way. Tough but full of character; like an extra in an old
film noir.
Roz, too, has such powerful features, though her look is a little more contemporary. I only wish we could film them in black and white.'

Otto said nothing, a little taken aback. Was this how Chloe spoke about all of her subjects?

‘I'll lead the questioning, if it's okay with you,' she added. ‘Just jump in whenever you feel the need to contribute something.'

‘Of course,' said Otto, who preferred to take a back seat for the time being.

Memories of the interview on the burned-out mattress remained fresh in his mind.

The latch was sliding back.

Roz answered the door, and Otto fought hard not to express any shock. She had bright-red dreadlocks, released in long streams; a gym-hardened physique; a taste for body art and piercings. Yet her voice was soft and her manner gentle. Her blue eyes smiled as she greeted them. Joe, beside her, had a wiry physique that seemed to bristle with a nervous energy. The lines of his pale face, beneath the cropped grey hair, were deep. This was a man who had clearly been through a lot in life.

Otto learned, during the introductions, that Roz worked as a nurse at a local hospital. Joe, a former musician and mechanic, was currently unemployed.

They settled down; Joe and Roz on the sofa, the others sitting opposite them on armchairs.

‘Let's get down to business,' said Chloe. ‘What exactly do you both think of Marlowe House?'

Otto flinched at the abruptness of her question. He had hoped that she would be a little more subtle. Yet neither Roz nor Joe showed any obvious signs of hostility, either towards the building, or the man who had designed it. Roz gazed thoughtfully into the distance, while Joe shrugged his bony shoulders inside his T-shirt.

‘I was born and raised in Sheffield,' said Roz, ‘in a flat on the Park Hill Estate. So you could say I have concrete in my blood. It's always been there, in one form or another, so the look of Marlowe House doesn't bother me. It's a bit frayed around the edges, these days, but then aren't we all?'

It was hardly a glowing endorsement, but Otto heard her words with some relief.

‘How long have you lived here?' Chloe asked her.

‘Almost ten years now. I moved down when I got the job at the local hospital.'

‘And how have you found it … as a place to live, I mean? Would you say that you've been happy here?'

Roz smiled.

‘Happy isn't quite the word I'd use. It's a part of me, I suppose. If you were to ask me if I regret having lived here, then the answer is definitely no. It's as good a place as any to experience life. Better, I'd argue, than most. You get life with its gloves off here. I like that – it's to my taste. Although the block does feel a little like it's dying these days.'

Otto felt the need to say something on this last point.

‘To some extent I feel responsible for the environment in which you have to live. It was a time of great optimism, you see – the post-war period – for architects and town planners alike. We were trying to build the world anew, to ensure a better life for the generations that followed. For people of all backgrounds and classes. Yet within a few decades everything seemed to evaporate.'

Roz felt sorry for Otto, whose face was pale with concern. He must feel protective towards this place. She felt the same way about her patients.

‘You did what you thought was best,' she said, in her finest bedside manner. ‘You weren't to know it would turn out like this.'

‘And how about you, Joe?' Chloe turned to ask. ‘What do you think about Marlowe House?'

Beneath the tough exterior, there was a touch of vulnerability in Joe's grey eyes, making him an oddly ambivalent presence.

‘I'm not much good at talking in front of the cameras.'

‘Try,' said Chloe, with a smile. ‘It would be nice to know your thoughts.'

Joe rubbed his hands together, awkwardly.

‘I don't have the same connection to Marlowe House as Roz. Just four years here, for me. I'm originally from Harlow, one of the post-war New Towns. Like Roz, I grew up in a world of concrete. It's hard, to be honest, for me to judge this place as a building, 'cos I connect it with Roz and the good feelings she brings. I wake up, most mornings, after she's left for work … I look up at the ceiling, and even that, a plain white ceiling, brings me a sense of security.'

Chloe sat forward in her chair. It was an unexpectedly candid response. Joe wasn't so bad in front of the cameras after all.

‘It ain't always been that way,' he added. ‘I have a bad history with ceilings. They ain't always been that kind to me. Ceilings of bedsits … ceilings of squats. Some of them hold bad memories.'

The camera zoomed in closer. Joe's head in the viewfinder grew enormous. The creases and folds of his pale and pockmarked face looked like footage from a lunar landing module.

‘I had a few problems, you see, in the years before I met up with Roz. She helped straighten me out.'

Chloe nodded, willing him to continue, but Joe suddenly faltered.

‘I shouldn't really talk about this…'

Otto sensed it was time to interject. The intrusion was making him uncomfortable.

‘Would you miss anything about Marlowe House?' he asked Roz. ‘If it were to be demolished?'

A look of gratitude crossed her face.

‘Apart from my friends?'

‘Yes.'

‘I don't know … let me see. Several things, I suppose. The staircase, for a start. I've always liked that staircase. The way it spirals upwards as you stand at the bottom. It needs some renovation work, and it looks a lot less nice from six storeys up, when you still have another nine to climb. But even when the lifts aren't broken, I still make the effort to walk up the first few floors, now and then.'

‘Anything else?'

‘There's a view of it, sometimes, when I'm walking back across the bridge after my shift. As I look up, I can see Marlowe House, diagonally, in profile, jutting out in the distance on the other side of the river. The sunlight catches the windows near the top and there's a flash, a flare, just briefly. It looks like a great flint being struck. And it feels, to me, almost like a welcome, as though it's sending out something personal to me. And the feeling I get then is about other things. About Joe, who'll be waiting here, and a beer together on the balcony, and the sun slowly setting on our faces. I can feel my footsteps quicken as I walk across the bridge.'