The big man coughed, a clearing of his throat behind his fist, and we all looked at him. His large face was flushed. He held out his hand to Ute across the bed. Ute’s face took on a practised smile. I had forgotten it, but as soon as her lips closed and curled I knew it was the one she saved for her audience and photographers, the one on her albums in London. She released me, placed her hand into his, and he bent down to kiss it.
“Ute Bischoff,” he said. “Enchanté.”
She bowed her head.
As the men were leaving, I said, “Reuben carved his name in the cabin—under the shelves, beside the stove.”
They looked at me but didn’t reply.
When the door had closed behind them, Ute sat on the chair beside the bed, seeming to take strength from the detective who had just left it.
“Omi died while you were gone,” she said, and her face crumpled and folded in on itself like a glove puppet squeezed by an invisible fist.
I looked for the tissues on the bedside table but they had been removed, along with the peculiar animal. I reached for the blue balaclava under my pillow and held it out to her. She took it, burying her face into it and inhaling. I thought she might be checking if it still held Omi’s perfume, but I could have told her that it smelled of blood, dirt, and honey.
28
London, November 1985
In my bedroom I picked up the purple skirt from the floor where it lay crumpled and forgotten. I took off my dress, and the bra I had cut in half, stuffing it back into my underwear drawer but not bothering to get out another. I put the skirt on. I couldn’t do the zip up to the top, and when I sat down it gaped open. What would Becky be wearing? I tried to imagine her grown, but she stubbornly remained a smiling eight-year-old in flared jeans and a yellow T-shirt. In my memory her face seemed pink and white, lips stretching wide over teeth and gums. I could remember a turned-up nose, a line of hair which stopped short of her eyebrows, so fair they were almost invisible; but none of these features would be still for long enough to form a face. I took off the skirt and put the dress I had been wearing back on.
Downstairs, in the sitting room, Ute stood with her back to the windows, talking about me.
“. . . a very difficult time,” she said before she trailed off, and all heads turned at once.
A man, tall and good-looking, stood up.
“Oh, Peggy, you didn’t get changed,” said Ute.
“The skirt doesn’t fit me. Nothing fits me any more,” I said, looking at the girl on the sofa. Her hair was unexpectedly brown and curly; I wondered if she’d had a permanent wave. Her legs, in tan tights, were pressed together, knees pointing the other way to her body, which she held upright on the edge of the seat. She smiled at me, her mouth splitting her face in two, revealing the pink of top and bottom gums, and then her lips closed as if she were trying to restrain her escaping teeth. Smoothing her skirt over her bottom, Becky half rose but thought better of it and sat back down.
“It’s nice to see you again, Peggy,” said the man.
He seemed about to step forward and shake my hand. I pulled at the hair over my ear and stayed near the door.
“Peggy, this is Michael,” said Ute. “Do you remember Michael? One of your father’s . . .” I knew that Ute was about to say “friends,” but she trailed off with a weak “group.”
“A survivalist?” I said, and shook my head. I couldn’t place him; I tried to imagine him in black and white, with a beard, but I was sure he wasn’t in the photograph I had found that morning.
“A Retreater,” he said, and gave an embarrassed laugh. “But that was a long time ago.”
“Please, sit down, Michael,” Ute said. “Oskar, perhaps you would put the kettle on and make us tea.”
He was standing by the bureau, but she didn’t look at him when she spoke. He walked stiffly from the room. Michael sat on a chair in front of the windows and Ute sat opposite Becky. I remained standing, ready to bolt.
“Your mother is looking very happy,” said Michael. “She was telling us she’s started playing the piano again.”
Ute dipped her head.
“I was just asking her if you or Oskar played.”
“Not really,” I said. We were all quiet, listening to the rumble of the kettle coming from the kitchen. I decided it was safe to sit at the other end of the sofa from Becky. I wanted to stare at her, soak up the image of her face and replace the outdated one I had stored inside for nine years.
At last Michael spoke. “It must have been very odd to come back and find you have a brother you knew nothing about.”
“Everything’s odd about being home,” I said. “I thought you were all dead.”
“Oh,” said Becky. “We all thought you were dead.”
And we were silent again, while Becky’s mouth flashed white and pink with embarrassment.
“We visited the cemetery,” I said to fill the gap.
“You’re going to have a funeral?” Michael said to Ute. The words seemed to come out much faster and louder than he expected.
Ute looked at me, as surprised as Michael.
He hesitated, started and stopped twice before he said, “There’s something I’ve been wanting to say. I’m ashamed I once counted James as one of my friends. That we all did. As far as I was concerned, all that survivalist stuff was only talk, bravado, boys playing games . . .”
Michael trailed off as Oskar came in with the tray laden with the best teapot, the bone china cups and saucers from Germany with the ivy pattern, and the Apfelkuchen that Ute had set out earlier. He slammed the tray down, so the china tinkled and tea slopped out of the pot, and then he sat on the floor with his back to the bureau. Michael reached forward and grabbed at a camera that was on the corner of the coffee table, wiping off a few drops of spilled tea onto his trousers. The camera reminded me of the man in the grounds of the hospital.
“Speaking for myself, I don’t know if I could go to James’s funeral,” Michael continued.
Perhaps I should have stopped him and told him that I hadn’t meant we would be having a funeral, but I didn’t.
“The others of course might feel differently, not that I’m in touch with many of them.” He looked down at the camera and twisted the lens so that it moved in and out.
“Oliver Hannington,” said Ute. The words came out of the blue; they weren’t even a question.
Michael looked up sharply.
“I mean, do you still know Oliver?” she said more lightly.
“I haven’t heard from him for years,” Michael said. “I’m pretty sure he went back to the States after James disappeared. He didn’t join in the search for Peggy and James in France; I have a vague recollection of him tying one of those yellow ribbons on the trees in the front garden. He’s probably hiding in a bunker with a stash of guns, although I always thought Oliver was only in it for the attention.” Michael lifted the camera up to his face, focusing on the piano at the other end of the room. “Playing games with us all,” he said, and in a smooth, practised motion he turned his body and the camera toward me and clicked.
I flinched as if he had slapped me.
“Sorry,” said Michael, dropping the camera back into his lap. I understood then why he wasn’t in the photograph of the survivalists.