Interpreters Page 2

  I wonder why we went to Sunday School. I once found our baptism certificates while rummaging through a drawer in my father’s study, but I don’t remember either of my parents ever expressing an opinion about religion. I suppose we must have wanted to go, even though, for about a year, I used to cry until I was allowed to go into Max’s class, where I’d sit very close to him, cross-legged, my fingers creeping towards his leg until I felt his warm, comforting skin. He never minded, but I got the impression that Mr T was rather hurt by my refusal to remain in his class of happy under-sevens.

  Despite my accumulation of all the gospels for good attendance, God lost His appeal when Miss Everett gave us some sweet william seeds and a yoghurt pot ready-filled with potting compost.

  ‘That’s right, children, press the seeds right into the earth and then cover the top of the pot with the see-through plastic and put an elastic band round it. Max – help your sister, can you? There’s compost going absolutely everywhere. There! That’s lovely. Good boy, Max. Now all you have to do, children, is watch and see how God will make the seeds grow from the earth. For it is fed and watered by God’s almighty hand, isn’t it, children?’

  By the next day, there was no sign whatsoever of God’s greatness so I threw the pot away and embraced atheism, to which, apart from a brief flurry of religious fervour in my early teens, I have held ever since. I don’t know if my brother believed in God then. I don’t think he did, even though his patience resulted in an irritatingly impressive crop of deep red and purple flowers. And I don’t know if he does now – though now he seems to be quite comfortable with all the tree-hugging and saint-veneration that goes on at his Steiner school in deepest Dorset.

  I sit in the car and watch a parking attendant as he walks slowly up and down the road, checking out his reflection in the shop windows, adjusting his cap and tie, looking at his watch. I glance at the clock on the dashboard. My appointment isn’t until four-thirty. I woke up before dawn this morning with Susanna’s words dancing round and round in my head and a wisp of a dream of her and Max playing strange, dissonant sounds in front of a huge orchestra of faceless musicians. I got out of bed and went and sat in the garden watching the sky lighten, then got dressed, packed my bag and set off. And now I’ve mistimed my day so badly that I have several hours to kill and nowhere to go.

  ‘Look, it’s no big deal,’ Max said on the phone the day the piece came out.

  ‘Not for you, perhaps,’ I said. ‘It is for me. A massive great deal.’

  ‘It hardly says anything about you.’

  ‘Well, maybe that’s the point.’

  ‘What’s the point?’

  ‘That it hardly says anything about me.’

  ‘But it’s not about you. It’s about Susanna and me.’

  ‘Well, that makes it so much better.’

  ‘Come on, Julia. It’s called Relatively Speaking. It’s not called Mothers and Daughters Speak to the Nation about their Relationship with Each Other. The journalist was looking for unusual families – stories about people choosing different ways of living.’

  ‘Susanna could’ve chosen me. I chose a different way of living, didn’t I? All those years we lived in Africa. Just her and me?’

  ‘But she didn’t. Maybe because she didn’t feel she had to. Because you brought her up to be her own person, who makes her own decisions without worrying about what anyone else thinks of them. She didn’t need to agonise about upsetting you, because she knows how strong you are. That’s a good thing, isn’t it? You can’t have it both ways. Though that’s never stopped you from trying.’

  ‘But what do you think it looks like? That Susanna’s most significant influence is her uncle. Not her mother.’

  ‘That’s not true, and, even if it was, what’s so bad about that?’

  ‘You’d know if you’d had children.’

  ‘I have had children,’ said Max quietly. ‘Lots of them.’

  If I were to get out of the car and walk past the row of shops where the parking attendant is still lingering, I’d pass the church where the gap-toothed vicar used to smile down at the Brownies and Cubs on church parade and hand out daffodils for us to take home on Mothering Sunday. I’d get to the privet hedges where Max and I used to pick food for our stick insects as we dawdled home for Sunday lunch. Amazingly, there’s still a farm here, its entrance at the far end of the shopping parade. We came here on a Sunday School outing once and were made to sing hymns in the fields. The farm labourers stood leaning on their rakes and pitchforks, smiling in a slightly embarrassed way as we sang ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’, Mr-T-in-charge-of-under-sevens’ joyful contralto carrying in the autumn breeze. I feel my ears reddening just thinking about it. I should put some money in the parking meter. I should walk through those fields again now. Walk fast for a couple of hours until I feel better. But I don’t get out of the car. I fumble in the glove compartment for one of the compilation cassettes that Susanna made me, years ago. Happy Birthday, Mum, it says on the label in her teenage handwriting. I love you. Hope you love this. There is a little heart above the i. I push the cassette into the player, then pull away from the church and set off towards our old house.

  I

  (LONG SILENCE)

  So?

  So what?

  Shall we begin?

  Begin where?

  Anywhere you like.

  Is that all you’re going to say?

  For now.

  And is that supposed to be helpful?

  I hope so.

  I don’t know where to begin.

  You’ll know. Just take your time.

  You would say that. Time is money. Isn’t that the expression?

  Just take your time.

  (SILENCE)

  I don’t know where to begin. You’ll have to give me some kind of clue. Some idea. Or is that against the rules?

  There aren’t those sorts of rules.

  That’s what you say.

  Well, what about beginning with a memory? Your earliest memory, perhaps.

  What are you expecting? Me floating about in the womb? The swish of warm amniotic fluid? The reassuring sound of my mother’s heartbeat? The feeling of utter calm before the storm of birth? Isn’t that the kind of thing you people are interested in? Or some kind of strange recurring dream in which I kill my mother and sleep with my father?

  I don’t think we need be that ambitious.

  Do you think this is funny?

  Not at all. Do you?

  Do I look as though I think it’s funny?

  No. You look rather sad. Are you sad?

  No more than usual.

  So. Let’s start again, shall we?

  If you like.

  No, if you like. You can lie down if you’d prefer to.

  No, thank you. Sitting is fine.

  Right, then.

  I’ve told you. I don’t know where to begin – what you want to hear.

  I want to hear what you want to tell me.

  I don’t want to tell you anything.

  I don’t think that’s really the case. Is it?

  (LONG SILENCE)

  What is your earliest memory?

  I don’t know.

  There’s no hurry.

  Look, this is all a mistake. I’ve made a stupid mistake. Let’s just stop now. Turn that thing off. Go on. Press the off switch.

  Are you sure you want me to?

  I don’t know. No. Just leave it.

  All right.

  (LONG SILENCE)

  Leaving Holland. That was probably it. My first real memory. Will that do?

  Go on.

  It was 1932. May 1932. If you’re interested in those kinds of details. Are you?

  Go on.

  I was five years old and it felt like a great adventure, going on a long train journey with my mother. Is that the kind of thing?

  Go on. You’re doing really well.

  I’d really rather you didn’t patronise me.

  I’m no
t. I’m sorry if I gave you that impression.

  Have you any idea how hard this is for me?

  I think I have some understanding. I hope I do.

  This isn’t something I’m used to.

  Not all that many people are.

  I don’t mean paying to see someone. I mean talking. About myself. About my life. I’m finding it incredibly difficult. Talking. It isn’t something I do.

  I know. It’ll be hard. Just start and see what happens. See where your memories take you. Tell me about that journey. With your mother.

  It’s really not that interesting.

  It doesn’t have to be.

  So you’re bored already?

  That’s not what I said. Tell me about that journey.

  I don’t think I’d been outside Amsterdam before. Yes, maybe once, to the seaside. And once or twice to my grandparents – my mother’s parents – on the border.

  Yes…

  Yes what?

  Nothing. I’m listening. Go on.

  I remember I’d fallen asleep on the train with my head in my mother’s lap and when I woke up there was a deep mark on my cheek – here – where the clip of her suspender had dug into me.

  (SILENCE)

  Are you sure that this is the kind of thing you want to hear?

  It’s not what I want to hear. It’s what you want to tell me.

  I don’t want to tell you anything.

  But you came to see me. I’m right in thinking that no one forced you to come? There was no coercion?

  No one even knows I’m here. No one will ever know I’ve been here. But it doesn’t mean I want to tell you anything.

  In your own time.

  I can’t remember where I was.

  Waking up on the train. With your mother.

  Well, then, when we arrived in Berlin – the train was early – my mother told me to wait by the bags and went off to look for a porter. So I sat down on the biggest suitcase. I remember wondering why we’d brought so much luggage when we’d be going back to Amsterdam in the morning. I could still feel the mark on my cheek – like a little cave. I remember thinking it was like a little bear-cave. But you don’t need to read anything particularly Freudian into that.

  I wasn’t going to.

  And a man in a uniform with a whistle round his neck came up and asked me something but I couldn’t understand what he was saying. It wasn’t Dutch, though, I was sure. So I shrugged my shoulders and smiled and he went away.

  (LONG SILENCE)

  And then what happened?

  I just sat there on the suitcase and after a little while I noticed a tall man waiting under the station clock. He looked terribly smart. He was wearing one of those hats – a trilby, you call them, don’t you? – and a long, dark brown coat. I remember it very clearly. That lovely cashmere coat. He had his arm around a young woman’s shoulders.

  Mmm.

  What?

  Go on.

  She had white-blonde curls – just like the ones I’d always wanted. My hair was dead straight whatever my mother did to it. I watched him and he looked up at the clock and said something to the woman. I can see it now, how he tipped her face up towards his – his hand under her chin like this – and kissed her on the lips and off she walked and I thought – how can anyone walk so elegantly in such high heels? And then he looked at me, this man in the hat and the beautiful coat – I don’t think he’d seen me until that moment – and then he looked up again at the station clock. And suddenly there was my mother coming towards us with a porter pushing a trolley, and the man in the trilby looked at her and then nodded in my direction and said – I remember it so clearly – ‘So! Hier ist der kleine Käse-Kopf.’ Do you speak German?

  I don’t, I’m afraid.

  That’s what he said: ‘Hier ist der kleine Käse-Kopf.’ And he said it with a sort of smile so that for months – for months – I thought he had said something very nice about me.

  What had he said?

  It means ‘little cheese head’. What? What’s the matter?

  Nothing. You laughed.

  Did I? I can’t think why.

  Carry on.

  My mother said, ‘Shake hands with your father.’ And I thought – what father? I don’t have a father.

  Did you think he was dead?

  I don’t think I’d ever given it a moment’s thought. I was perfectly happy with my mother. I really don’t think I ever wondered if I even had a father.

  You never wondered if you had a father?

  No. Is that so very terrible?

  Not at all. Carry on.

  It seems that, one day, he just wrote and sent for us. And so we went.

  And why do you think he sent for you?

  I haven’t got a clue. I asked my mother – much later, of course – but she didn’t seem to know any more than me. Or at least she didn’t want to discuss it.

  Where had they met?

  Is that important?

  I just wondered.

  In Amsterdam. So my mother told me. When he was working there for some German engineering company and she was teaching in a school nearby.

  And they married?

  They did.

  And then what happened?

  He went back to Germany shortly before I was born and had nothing more to do with us.

  Why was that?

  I’ve no idea.

  Did your mother never discuss it? Later on?

  I don’t think so.

  Did he support you?

  He might have sent my mother money, but I don’t know if he did. I never found out why he changed his mind and sent for us. Maybe he was fed up with living on his own. A wife was probably cheaper than a housekeeper. Maybe he didn’t want a Dutch child – a Dutch wife was bad enough – so he wanted me to grow up German. I don’t know. And so there I was in Berlin – a cheese head.

  And how did you feel? About suddenly coming to Berlin?

  Feel? I don’t know. But I was sure everything would be all right in the end. I was sure that my mother would take me home again very soon once we’d spent a day or two with this man she called my father.

  Chapter Two

  Eynsford Park Estate is a tribute to the architectural glory of the 1960s, whose designers favoured the style of building most small children will produce if prevailed upon to draw a house. All that is missing are the sun’s rays and the little black ‘m’s flying joyfully in the sky. When we moved here from a hospital flat in Bloomsbury the cement was still drying; the white paint on the timber cladding still gleamed; the newly seeded grass was only just beginning to clothe the bald verges. Our house, in Tenterden Close, was one of eight built round a circular green. For my mother it was like living in a Sartre play – only one way in and no way out. For us – for Max and me – it was heaven.

  The first thing I notice as I drive into the cul-de-sac are the trees. On the green are three mature silver birches. For a moment I wonder how and when they got there. Then I realise that they are the saplings that used to serve us so well as rounders posts, as home in our games of ‘It’, as poles to grab on to and swing round and round until, too dizzy to stand up, we would collapse, shrieking with laughter, on to the grass. The trees are only a couple of years younger than I am. They have aged rather better.

  I pull up outside number four, eject the cassette and switch off the engine. I sit in the car and look at the back door which, as with all the identical houses round the green, is at the side of the house. And I see the six-year-old me going up to it. In her school uniform – grey skirt, white shirt, maroon cardigan, grey and maroon striped tie, grey felt hat. She tries to open the door but it is locked. It is never locked. She knocks. After a while the door is opened by the woman who cleans for us once a week.

  It’s odd – I haven’t thought about that woman for decades. Mrs Prior. That was her name. I remember asking her why she never went to the toilet. I couldn’t understand why my question – couched in genuine admiration for her mighty bladder �
� should have caused so much offence. I don’t think she liked us much. In my memory, she and Brown Owl have merged into one – grey curls, fat calves and a general air of disapproval.

  The six-year-old me goes into the house and shuts the door. Mrs Prior looks at me. ‘Your mother’s not here,’ she says. She sounds irritated and anxious all at once.

  ‘Where is she, then?’

  ‘She’s gone away for a rest.’

  ‘When’s she coming back?’

  ‘I don’t know – you’ll have to ask your father when he gets home from work.’

  ‘Will she be back tomorrow?’

  ‘I very much doubt it.’

  ‘When, then?’

  ‘I’ve told you, I don’t know. I was just rung up and asked to come along to be here when you and Max got home from school. I don’t know who it was I spoke to, I’m sure. It wasn’t your mother. And it’s not as though I haven’t got anything else I should be doing today. It’s my afternoon for the Nunns at number one. I don’t suppose they’re best pleased. I’ll be off as soon as your father’s home. So wash your hands and sit down and have a biscuit and a glass of squash. And then get on with your spellings or numbers or something quiet. Max’ll be home from his swimming lesson shortly.’

  Mrs Prior was talking rubbish, I was sure of that. I knew my mother hadn’t gone away for a rest. Why should she need a rest? She wasn’t tired at all. She was always racing around. I knew exactly what had happened.

  My mother had told me and Max that lying was a terrible, unforgivable thing. I couldn’t remember who had lied to whom or what about, but it must have been something quite major. There were things called white lies, she had told us, which were all right sometimes, but lying – proper lying – was always wrong. Lying destroyed people’s lives, she had said, looking as if she was about to cry. It destroyed whole countries. We couldn’t quite see how lying could do that much damage but we hadn’t said anything. It was best not to when she was in that kind of a mood. But some time in the weeks leading up to her disappearance she had lied to my grandmother. I had listened to the phone call, sitting halfway up the stairs in my dark blue brushed-nylon nightie, and I knew, as I heard her tell her mother-in-law that Max and I would not be able to go and stay with her in Oxford after all as we were both ill and weren’t up to travelling by train, and then elaborate wildly on the story, that something terrible was happening. We weren’t ill at all. It was a complete lie. And not even a white one. If anyone wasn’t feeling well, it was her, not us. We had tried not to stare at her when she had come home from the dentist some weeks earlier, her face bloated and mottled, her mouth a mess of pulpy red and nothingness where once her teeth had been. She’d had to keep wiping away the blood-flecked spit that trickled from her swollen mouth. She still couldn’t speak very well, her ‘s’s were funny. But now she had smart new plastic teeth and, though for some reason she wouldn’t speak to our father, wouldn’t eat with us and seemed generally angry about everything, she wasn’t really any more ill than we were. And we were fine.