For the first time in months, she couldn’t block out the honest answer.
Six
Karen
Aldershot and Berlin, March 1978
The breakfast almost stopped her.
Instead of the regulation orange juice and cereal, Andrew had set out coffee and a ketchup-slathered bacon sandwich. Her Tupperware lunch box sat waiting by her plate, as it did every morning, but this time there was a five-pound note, not an apple, sitting on the lid.
Karen put down her bag and took a step into the kitchen.
He’s making an effort; you could meet him halfway.
She was tired, more tired than she wanted to admit to her father. The weeks of endless arguments had taken their toll. And she was nervous about her trip – not that she intended to admit that either. She was also hungry and the bacon smelled like heaven.
Andrew was out in the garden, Karen could see him fussing over the birdbath.
Would a goodbye be so difficult? A couple of words and a smile?
She hesitated, her hand hovering over the sandwich. A few months ago, she would have said it was perfectly possible. A few months ago, she could have left the house with a nod, knowing her father had no more interest in delaying her than she had in staying. But now? After almost two years of perfectly crafted non-conversations, Karen had announced that she was joining her German class’s annual school trip and unleashed a torrent of protest she couldn’t stop.
‘Why do you want to go to Germany?’
He wouldn’t stop asking, wouldn’t leave her alone until she responded.
‘Because I’m taking the German exam for extra university points, and the trip will be a chance to practise speaking German outside a classroom.’
The clipped answer was that all she would give him, no matter how hard he pushed. It should have been enough, especially since he showed no sign that he was prepared to acknowledge what he must know was the truth. Because I’m looking for answers. And it was hardly as if he had the right to keep asking. Since that morning eighteen months ago, when she’d found the passport and he’d messed up her life, Karen had been quite clear with him how things were going to be in the future.
‘I don’t want to talk to you. I won’t listen if you talk to me.’
She had stormed out as soon as she’d said it and refused to stay in any room her father was in almost ever since.
It had worked: they were, after all, well-practised at living together apart. All the years of avoiding each other, of not talking to each other, of refusing to find a common language, had set round the house like concrete. Karen had thrown herself into studying, her escape route, and it had paid off. As she approached her final exams, straight As were beckoning and a university place, as her headmistress beamed, wherever she chose. Which would be Manchester, two hundred miles away, not nearby Reading, where so many of her classmates were heading. And she wouldn’t be studying English either, followed by a ‘nice teaching job’, as she had once heard Andrew describe his hopes for her. Karen had dreams of her own, dreams that had nothing to do with his narrow view of the world. She was going to be an architect, a great one, and design houses built for sound and light and laughter.
It had been almost bearable, their unconnected existence, and then she had mentioned the school trip and he had come back to life. He was so intent on dissuading her, he followed her into rooms and ignored closed doors. And talked, as always, at her.
‘Germany maybe – I can see a logic in that. But why Berlin? It’s hardly the most sensible choice. The city is completely isolated now inside the East. You’ll have to go through goodness knows how many checkpoints and the political situation there really isn’t stable. What was Miss Dennison thinking?’
Karen tried ignoring him, but that didn’t work, so she reverted to snapping.
‘She thinks that we need to understand the country properly and that’s impossible without going to Berlin and seeing how the Wall has divided it. Why do you care? Are you really worried some border guard will make trouble because we come from the West, or are you scared I’ll start digging up my heritage? That the neighbours will remember I’m not properly English and freak?’
That had shut him up but, for once, she hadn’t turned immediately away and she had seen his reaction. He looked so forlorn it threw her.
‘You could tell me about my mother’s family before I go. If you wanted.’
He had opened his mouth, closed it again. The pause stretched out further than Karen could bear.
‘Forget it. I thought you wanted to talk, but you just want to lecture. Why does it still matter who comes from where? We’ve been at peace with Germany for nearly forty years – why can’t you remember that? Why can’t you accept that the war’s long over?’
What was it he’d said?
‘You’re wrong. You’re so wrong. Some things never end. The war’s not over and you’re caught in its crosshairs just as tightly as me.’
It didn’t make any sense. And it had scared her. She wouldn’t admit that. She had gone back to storming out of rooms every time he brought the trip up. But it had scared her, and the pain in his face when he said it had scared her even more.
He was coming down the garden path – another few steps and he would see her. It wouldn’t be a simple goodbye; it would be another fight she didn’t have the strength for. As she hesitated, Andrew caught sight of her, raised his hand and started to say something Karen had no interest in hearing. She grabbed the money and the sandwich and ran for the door.
She willed away the Channel crossing. Every stopping point as they wound their way from Calais through Antwerp and Cologne dragged. All Karen wanted was to get to Berlin. She tried her best to be enthusiastic about the journey, if only not to draw attention. She oohed and aahed with the rest of the girls when they were decanted from the coach in picturesque town centres where church spires carved out the skyline and medieval peasants could have wandered unchallenged. She clicked her camera as directed in cobbled squares whose pungent market stalls left Miss Dennison and Miss Grainger – or Denny and Grunger as the girls had long ago christened them – misty-eyed. She swallowed up the facts the teachers stuffed them with, ready to regurgitate them in the endless quizzes they set rather than let the girls loose in the evenings. Anything to make the days pass.
‘Barely forty years since those dreadful bombing raids and what a wonderful job they’ve done. Everything has been so beautifully restored you can barely see the joins.’
Denny’s favourite line as she huddled her pupils round each day’s architectural offering, her voice dropping on bombing and lifting on joins as if her praise could compensate for the damage.
Karen – ‘our little architect in waiting’ – dutifully admired the stepped gables, the window-studded facades and the delicate arches. They were beautiful, no one could deny that, but she longed for something that was a little less storybook. For a past she could connect to. Then they arrived at the Helmstadt border crossing point between Germany’s East and its West, and all her ideas about the country had to be hastily reassembled.
‘No nonsense, girls. No getting off the coach. If the East German soldiers decide to come on board and check your passports individually, be quick when they ask you. They can hold us up for hours here if they have a mind.’