Next morning they shopped for those items that could accompany them as part of the diplomatic bag – deodorants, soap, all the things you couldn’t find on the other side. Stockings, silk underwear, an Hermès scarf. To Lenka it seemed both a subject of amusement – ‘That is the trouble with everyone in the West: they are obsessed with things’ – and a source of bitterness – ‘Why is there so much, and yet we have so little? Didn’t Germany lose the war? and yet here they are, like victors.’
After lunch Sam left her at the hotel and took their haul to the consulate to pack it away in the boot of the Humber, sealed in those canvas bags inscribed with HBM DIPLOMATIC SERVICE. There was the feeling of end of holiday, of bathos, of anticlimax. With Derrick driving, he went back to collect Lenka. Derrick got out to put their luggage in the boot while Sam held the door open for Lenka to get in. There was that manoeuvre of long legs, a glimpse of thigh that reminded him of saying goodbye to Steffie. That moment seemed ages ago, part of another world that he had inhabited. In just a handful of days this woman had strolled into his life with her particular mixture of innocence and recklessness and taken it over. He could hear the tut-tutting from senior diplomats, smell the scorched odour of disapproval among the office staff, see outrage and betrayal in Steffie’s face. He wondered whether he cared and decided that he didn’t because – this was the disturbing thing – beside Lenka they all paled into insignificance.
Once settled back in the car, Derrick’s eyes glanced in the mirror at the two passengers in the back. ‘You owe me one, Sam,’ he said.
‘Two. And a packet of crisps.’
22
It takes them two days. Two days, five arguments, one night in the tent somewhere in the environs of Regensburg. From Regensburg they follow the haphazard path of lifts through forested hills and open farmland. The size of the country dwarfs the two of them, reduces them to figures in a landscape, ants crossing the vastness of the place. By the afternoon of the second day a swathe of forest lies across their path as they plod through the empty heat. Occasionally a car goes by but no one stops. An American army jeep passes them travelling in the opposite direction, followed by a German military vehicle. A helicopter chutters in the sky away to the south. And there is something else in the air – a sense of threat, of fear, of moment, the kind of feeling you might have approaching the edge of a precipice. Iron Curtain. The phrase dominates their progress. On their map it is marked in a forbidding red, a serpentine line without obvious rhyme or reason, marked Staatsgrenze. Staatsgrenze is, they discover after thumbing through a phrasebook purchased in Regensburg, State Border.
What goes on beyond that line is as unknown as the blank spaces on a medieval map. Here be dragons. Ellie looks accusingly at the empty landscape ahead, the hills and woods, a winding valley with its occasional and indifferent farmhouses.
‘I suppose we just walk,’ James says.
‘What’s the choice?’
The choice, he almost adds, is to give up this fucking idiot idea and continue south as they originally intended, to Italy and the sunshine. But Ellie holds the ultimate card, the one that trumps every argument, the one she deployed with such devastating skill in the damp camp in Regensburg when they argued about it – you go to Italy if that’s what you want, but I’m going to Prague. By myself if necessary.
The fact is, he doesn’t want to lose her. Fando is held in thrall by Lis.
So they walk on towards the border with the stolid plod of soldiers tramping, while indifferent cars go past, a few in their direction, more the other way, westwards, away from whatever it is that lies ahead. A sign says Waidhaus, 3 Kilometer and warns Staatsgrenze. They walk again, and again no one stops. Waidhaus is a collection of dull, stolid houses around a central square with a blue and white striped maypole. Outside the town a sign commands
But ironically it is the American army which comes to the rescue, a jeep that draws up alongside them. The driver leans on the steering wheel and regards them with amused curiosity. He’s chewing gum. His face has an open all-American smile, a farm boy used to vast fields and a huge sky. Perhaps at home here in Bavaria. He wears khaki fatigues with sergeant’s stripes and a shoulder flash showing a fleur-de-lys with the motto Toujours Pret.
‘Where y’all goin’ then?’ he asks.
‘Why d’you want to know?’ Ellie says. ‘Are you going to arrest us or something?’
He laughs. ‘Thought you might need a ride somewhere, ma’am. I passed you a while back and you sure haven’t moved on a whole lot. ’Course, I can always leave you at the roadside if that’s what you want.’
She bridles. Is that the word? It conjures up horses and struggling riders and reins. The sound of whinnying in the air. Police horses in Grosvenor Square. She shouted Pigs! at the police and chanted Ho! Ho! Ho Chi Minh! and tried, rather ineffectually, to get through the main doors of the American embassy – behind which, so the rumour went, armed marines stood ready to open fire on any intruders. ‘Why aren’t you in Vietnam?’ she demands, her tone laden with sarcasm.
‘Because I was lucky.’
‘So what are you doing here?’
‘With the Second Armored Cavalry, supporting our German friends and allies. Look lady, I can’t stay here all day talking with you. If you don’t want a ride then I’ll have to move on—’
‘We’re going to Prague,’ James says.
Amusement steps down the alphabet, as so often, to bemusement. ‘Is that right? Well, I’m sorry to say I can’t take you quite that far, but I’ll take you to the border if you like. No one else is gonna give you a ride around here.’
Ellie looks enquiringly at James. As far as he is concerned there is no question to answer. They climb into the vehicle.
‘We’re not meant to carry civilians,’ the sergeant explains as he shoves the jeep into gear, ‘but if I found you in the border zone I could log you as an AVI. That’s Avoidance of Incident.’ There’s a radio in the back of the jeep. As he drives he reaches over for the handset and talks to someone in that peculiar, truncated language the military use: Echo Foxtrot found two Civs near the border and is escorting them to the checkpoint. A disembodied voice squawks back at him through the earphone. ‘Affirmative, Echo Foxtrot,’ it says.
The driver is called Chester. Chester B. Falk, Sergeant First Class. From Tennessee. ‘Along with Davy Crockett,’ he says. ‘You folks been to Tennessee? No? That’s no surprise. No one ever has but everyone has heard of it, because of Davy Crockett. Ain’t that a thing? What about you folks? Where you from? England, I’m guessing.’
‘I’m from Sheffield,’ James says.
‘Hey, we have a Sheffield in Alabama.’
Ellie is in the back of the jeep, with the rucksacks. She didn’t deign to sit with the soldier in the front. ‘I daresay the English one was named after it,’ she calls out.