The book included a picture of the herb. It has pretty little yellow flowers, and I thought of Ophelia pinning it to her brother’s chest before she drowns herself. She calls it herb-of-grace then: a blessing herb. A drowning herb too, really.
I spent a long time in the library, just sitting, thinking, until it closed at five and I had to go back to the boarding house I’m in now. It’s warm and dry enough. The landlady takes all our coupons and sells some of them, I think, but I don’t blame her: I suppose she’s just trying to make ends meet like the rest of us. Everyone is trying. Frank Tibbot stopped by once to see how I was. He’s a kind man. He’s still in the police but says he has to look over his shoulder all the time.
Fellowman’s office is right beside the one Guy Burgess now occupies as Deputy First Secretary and I can’t help wondering how long it will be before they move up again, and how many of Fellowman’s whispers will end up as our laws. I asked him what they intended to do with Charles but he didn’t say. It doesn’t matter now.
Who was the father after all? Was Lorelei even pregnant? All the secrets she’s taken with her now lie as dust on the ground. And, in a way, I think it means she won out in the end.
I walked to Checkpoint Charlie from our house – what remains of it, anyway. Before leaving, I stood in the back garden and looked up at the charred brickwork. No birds live there now and at first it seemed to me that the garden was bare, but then, here and there, I noticed little slivers of paper and fabric – pinches of our everyday life that had floated out on the hot air. They had been soaked by rain and bleached by the sun; but still, under rocks and in crevices in the wall, they lingered as some sort of witness. I’m glad there’s a witness.
So what do you think, Nick? Because now, in the end, I can admit that all of this is addressed to you. I’m speaking to you day in and day out, and I’m trying to tell you why I did what I did, because I don’t think that drug was ever in my blood, and I don’t know if you were truly guilty of anything except trying to make it through in the way that we have to now. And I miss you and I’m sorry. Just so, so sorry. It’s not all going to work out for the best.
I watched our house burn. I would never have thought it possible that bricks and wood could take so long to burn to the ground. But there it was, for hours alight in the smog.
Oh, Nick, you once laughed at how badly I wrote for an English teacher. And you were right: I could write a thousand pages, but it wouldn’t say anything more. It couldn’t. And it still wouldn’t be a grain of sand in comparison to what I want to say. So all I can tell you is that every minute of every hour I stare out the window and dream of going back and starting again. And that’s all there is. All of it.
Except for Hazel. Yes, Hazel. Officially, she’s over there until the end of her education and then she has to return, but that’s hardly likely, is it? It’s part of a new era of rapprochement with the DUK. ‘Mutual acceptance of our different ways of life and an end to the destructive mistrust that has so long blighted our futures,’ Blunt said on the radio yesterday. His tone was different in that address – more open to question. We’re all reading so much into the speech, endlessly discussing it in hushed voices. Hazel even thinks it won’t be long before I can visit her for a while. Perhaps. Things will need to change a great deal for that to happen. But things do change. And we have a glimmer of it now so let’s just hold on to that.
There was a man at the Wall selling photographs of it to be used as postcards, just like the time you and I went there together. He was shuffling through the school groups and young couples to offer strings of the grainy images for a few pence. I was almost tempted to buy one when it was my turn to be approached, but in the end I said no and gave it back. He nodded politely and went off to try elsewhere. He struck lucky with a platoon of Pioneers, though, who handed him their money and took the cards to save or post home to their parents. One boasted loudly that he would be sending it to his girlfriend, until the others’ jeers made him blush and bite his tongue.
I realized, as I waited, that it would be Hazel’s birthday soon. I tried to guess what she would receive from the family looking after her – clothes maybe, or records. I’ll send her more books, some that I loved at her age. So long as I choose them carefully, they should get through.
Eventually my watch told me it was six o’clock, the time she had specified in her letter, and I gazed at the mesh-covered breach in the concrete, knowing that she was on the other side, looking back. She had said that she would wave even though I wouldn’t be able to see her. It was hardly further than the other side of the road but that gap seemed so far away, set behind the guard post and steel barriers chained together and bolted to the ground.
‘Are you all right, miss?’ It was the man trying to sell postcards.
‘Yes. Just thinking about someone,’ I replied.
He looked back at the Wall. ‘Someone dear to you.’
‘Yes.’
He stroked his jaw. ‘I’m sure they’re thinking about you too.’
‘I think so.’
The sun had sunk lower towards the horizon, and I looked to where Hazel was standing. She was waving to me, I knew, sure that I was here on the other side. After all that had happened, she trusted me to be here. I watched for a while, seeing her in my mind’s eye, waving to me in the light, as the postcard seller walked away.
Chronology
• 23 August. Germany and the Soviet Union agree the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, which keeps the Soviets out of the War.
• 3 September. Britain and France declare war on Germany.
• 6 June. D-Day fails; most troops are killed or captured.
• 29 August. Germany executes Operation Kestrel, the invasion of Britain.
• 30 August. The Royal Family escape to safety in Northern Ireland.
• 16 October. Britain capitulates. Winston Churchill is persuaded to join the Royal Family, now fleeing to Canada, so that he can direct the resistance to the Nazi occupation.
• 11 March. The Soviet Union sweeps through Poland and into Berlin. With twelve million men under arms, the Soviets cut through the badly overextended German forces.
• 18 November. Soviet forces land in Britain, moving slowly through the country to mop up German troops and sympathizers.
• 29 December. United States troops, along with the remnants of Britain’s armed forces led by Churchill, land in Liverpool and quickly occupy the north of England, Wales and Scotland.
• 18 January. The Royal Family leave Canada for Scotland.
• 8 June. An agreement is reached to divide the nation in two. There is a separate division of London. The Soviets declare the birth of the Republic of Great Britain, to be ruled by a committee chaired by Anthony Blunt.
• 1 August. A fence is built to surround the DUK sector of London, soon to become a wall.
Historical Notes
For a detailed but readable history of the division of Berlin, Frederick Taylor’s The Berlin Wall takes you through the power-plays at a good pace. Or, for a description of the tragedies and absurdities of life on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain, 1989: The Berlin Wall – My Part in Its Downfall, by British journalist Peter Millar, is an entertaining narrative of his time as the East Germany correspondent for the Sunday Times.
For insights into the workings of the secret police and, in the new world, how to address the past, Stasiland by Anna Funder is an affecting work. It details not only how the Stasi murdered peaceful citizens, but also how they regulated the smaller aspects of life, down to strictly controlling licences for typewriters and children’s printing sets.