Intervals usually lasted five minutes, but this one had stretched to fifteen before the players re-emerged. The fog had thinned during the break, but now thickened with a vengeance, leaving Russell and his son with only the faintest view of Dynamo’s equaliser. They could see that the Arsenal players were livid, but had no idea why. Tempers frayed further, and a fist-fight erupted in the Dynamo penalty area. The referee seemed to send off an Arsenal player, but the man in question just ambled off into a dense patch of fog.
The fog thickened further, until only a quarter of the pitch was visible. Why the game had not been abandoned was anyone’s guess, but there was something highly satisfying about the whole business. It felt almost magical. Glancing sideways, Russell saw a look of utter enchantment on Paul’s face, the same one he’d seen at the boy’s first Hertha game, all those years ago.
Dynamo went ahead with another invisible goal, and Arsenal finally wilted. Much of the crowd was already heading for the exits by this time, but Russell and Paul hung on until the final whistle blew, and the last of the players had been swallowed by the mist.
‘That was incredible,’ Paul said, as they emerged onto the High Road. The buses and trolleybuses were all stuck in the stationary traffic, so they joined the stream heading south, stopping halfway down for a bag of soggy chips.
A train steamed out across the road bridge as they neared the station, and their platform was almost empty when they reached it. Russell expected Paul to pull out his book, but he didn’t. ‘Do you want to go back home?’ he asked his son. ‘Eventually, I mean.’
Paul stared out into the fog for several moments. ‘I don’t know,’ he said at last. ‘I like it here,’ he added almost reluctantly after another long pause, ‘but perhaps that’s only because it’s easier to hide from the past here. I don’t know. What would I do in Berlin? There’s no work there. No paid work anyway. Here I can fill up my day, and earn some money.’ He looked at his father.
‘I’m happy here,’ he said, sounding almost surprised that he was.
‘I don’t know how long I’ll be gone,’ Russell told him.
Paul smiled. ‘You don’t have to worry about me, Dad. Really. I only had one nightmare this last week — did you notice?’
‘Yes,’ Russell said. Effi had pointed it out.
‘It’s like a poison,’ Paul said. ‘It has to work its way out of your system — that’s the way I see it. And you have to let it. But not by pretending that everything’s fine. Do you remember telling me once how important it was to keep your mind and your emotions turned on?’
‘I remember.’ He’d been trying to explain what he’d learnt fighting in the First War.
‘Well I’ve tried to do that, and I think it works. It’s like an antidote.’
Russell winced inside as he thought of the pain his son had been through, was still going through. ‘You don’t think talking helps?’
‘I do talk to people,’ Paul said. ‘Just not the family.’
‘Who then?’ Russell asked, feeling hurt and knowing he shouldn’t be.
‘Solly’s a great listener. And Marisa is too. It would be hard talking to you, Dad. Or to Effi.’
‘I suppose it would,’ Russell conceded reluctantly. He had never been able to talk to his own parents about the trenches.
A train was audible in the distance, and two fuzzy lights soon swam into view. ‘And the talking does help,’ Paul said.
‘Good,’ Russell told him. Crammed inside the suburban carriage compartment for the journey home, he felt a huge sense of relief. He might be going back into hell, but his son was going to be all right.
On Thursday afternoon Russell collected their tickets from Embassy reception, and had a long talk with Solly Bernstein about the sort of freelance articles which the latter would be able to sell, always assuming that Russell could find some way of getting them back to London. According to Solly, no one was interested in the hardships of ordinary Germans, and not many more in the fate of Europe’s surviving Jews. Though there might be some mileage in the growing number of those intent on breaching the British wall around Palestine.
Arriving home around six, Russell walked into a wonderful aroma — Zarah had used all their newly surplus rations for a farewell family dinner. But the cheerful mood seemed forced, and he and Effi were relieved to escape for a few minutes’ packing. There was, in truth, not much to take — they had left Germany with next to nothing, and had bought little in London. ‘I’m sure actresses are supposed to have more clothes than this,’ was Effi’s conclusion as she closed her battered suitcase.
In the morning she walked Rosa to school for the last time. When they said their goodbyes the girl seemed determined not to cry, but Effi’s tears broke down her resistance. Walking back to the flat alone, Effi couldn’t remember when she’d last felt so wretched.
An hour or so later, she and Russell climbed into a taxi and waved goodbye to Zarah. Sitting in the back, they watched London slide by, all the drab buildings and overgrown bombsites, faces still etched by the hardship of war. Berlin, they knew, would be a hundred times worse.
Their boat train left on time, rattling out across the dark grey Thames, and over the long brick viaducts beyond. They might be going home, but they were not returning to anything familiar, and as the misty English countryside slipped past, Russell was assailed by the feeling that, for all their careful calculation, they were simply walking off a cliff, in the hope that some unknown net would catch them.
David Downing
Lehrter Station
Death of a swan
T hat afternoon the Channel was cold and grey, a bitter northerly wind driving everyone off the decks and into the overcrowded seating areas. The passengers were overwhelmingly male, some in uniform, rather more bound for Germany in the civilian dress of an increasingly post-military occupation. Listening to the young soldiers’ banter, Russell was reminded of similar voyages in the years of the First War, and experienced what was, for him, a rare awareness of being English. He hadn’t felt at home in London, and despite all the apprehension and uncertainty surrounding their German future, he still found it hard to regret their departure.
Beside him on the crowded bench, Effi also had mixed feelings. Though still not convinced that she’d been right to leave Rosa behind, she couldn’t escape a sense of satisfaction at the prospect of returning home, even if Berlin was largely in ruins. And, almost despite herself, she felt excited at the prospect of working again. A life spent acting was something she’d taken for granted until 1941, and she had missed it much more than she expected.
Night had fallen by the time they reached Ostend, and their American-supplied papers saw them almost whisked through the entry procedures. Someone at the US Embassy in London had decided that a fictional marriage was the simplest option, and Effi was now travelling as Mrs Russell, with her own American passport. She had initially objected — ‘I’m a German,’ she had told Russell indignantly. ‘Of course you are,’ he had told her with a smile, relieved that she’d been given the potential protection. ‘Someone else’s piece of paper is not going to change that, is it? Think of it as a part, and the passport as a prop.’
Now, seeing the problems that other returning Germans were having, she had to admit the practicality of the arrangement. But she still meant to get a new German passport at the earliest opportunity. The old one had been left in the Carmerstrasse flat when they both fled Berlin in December 1941, and had presumably been scooped up by the Gestapo. If the stories in the British papers could be believed, it had probably been put to use by some fleeing Nazi’s wife or mistress.