Through My Eyes. Again
Copyright© 2019 by Iskander
Chapter 8
Late April – mid November 1963
I rang Col in the morning and told him I would be a bit late as I had an errand to run. After I packed the necessary books into my duffel bag, I walked into Beltinge and deposited the cheque into my Post Office savings account. The teller gave me a surreptitious smile when they saw it was from the Premium Bonds and advised me it would take about a week for the cheque to clear before I could access the money. I had no desire to spend it any time soon. I was also pondering who I could – or should – tell about my win. I wanted to tell Col, but it also seemed like boasting, so I decided to leave it.
Yesterday’s showers and rain had cleared; the day promised to be fine, with fair weather cumulus clouds dotting the sky; it was a pleasant walk to Col’s house. I needed to talk to him about what I had learned about my family from my mother. I pondered this as I walked, and I realised this would be me trusting Col as he and Mutti Frida had trusted me with their story. But that brought its own problems.
Mutti Frida and my mother were sharing recipes. What else were they sharing? Would it be fair to my mother to share what was a family secret with Mutti Frida?
I’d better wait until I had spoken with my mother.
Col greeted me with a smile at the door and we spent a pleasant day together, in part in our cedar tree. Once or twice Col had to call me back to the present as my mind slipped away to think about my family. But as drifting off in thought was not uncommon behaviour for me, he didn’t seem to pick up the undercurrents tugging at my attention were unusual, at least for me.
I told Col I needed to be home early, arriving home before my mother. I went up to my room to read. About half an hour later I heard my mother’s car.
“Oh, hello Will,” she said, smiling. “I didn’t expect you to be here.”
“I need to talk about what you told me yesterday.”
My mother’s happiness faded. “Okay.”
We sat at the kitchen table, a worried expression on her face.
I was unsure how this would go. “I want to talk with Col about what you told me, but I will have to include Mutti Frida too, as she is so involved.”
“And?”
“Well, I know you and Mutti Frida exchange recipes, but I suspect there’s more to your relationship. What I want to talk about is personal and I don’t want to embarrass you.”
My mother nodded but stayed silent. “Will, thank you for talking to me first. Once again, you are showing maturity beyond your age.” She offered me a brief smile. “I suppose this all comes down to how far you trust Col and Frau Schmidt. This sort of family secret could make my professional involvement here ... difficult if it got out. Can you be certain Col won’t talk about this?”
“If I tell him not to, I know I can trust him.”
“What about Frau Schmidt – will she talk about it to her friends?”
“No.”
My mother’s gaze was piercing. “You seem sure about this.”
I tried to imbue my voice with certainty. “I am.”
My mother sat quietly for a while. “Why?”
I couldn’t tell her they had trusted me with important secrets and Col had stayed silent about my suicide attempts. But the best way to answer a difficult question was to ask one back.
“How many people do you think Mutti Frida has trusted with her experiences in Ravensbrück Concentration camp?”
My mother gave a sharp intake of breath.
“You don’t remember her showing her forearm with her camp number on it to my father at Col’s house?”
“No.” She shook her head, frowning. “I was concentrating on getting your father home before something terrible happened to either of you. The incident with the knife scared me.”
“Well, she showed my father the concentration camp tattoo and told him he could not scare her as she’d had the SS at her for years in Ravensbrück.”
“I remember your father did seem a bit shocked by something Frau Schmidt said, but I didn’t know what.”
“After you both left, Mutti Frida came back into the kitchen with her sleeve still pushed up. I asked her what the tattoo meant. She told us what had happened to her, how her father was taken away and shot, her mother dying of starvation in the camp.”
“Dear God, the poor woman.”
“Mutti Frida thinks you at least know she was in a concentration camp.”
My mother nodded. “I see.”
“She is trusting you to stay silent – even though she hasn’t asked you to keep it secret.”
My mother folded her hands on the table, pondering this. “There’s more to this story, isn’t there?”
I returned my mother’s gaze. “It’s not my story to tell.”
“No, of course. I’m sorry.”
Another first – knocking on my bedroom door before coming in and now apologising. My relationship with my mother was going in a new, uncertain direction.
“Can I talk to Col and Mutti Frida about what you told me?”
Across the table from me, my mother’s reaction was physical. She was shifting in her chair and glancing round the room. She was uncomfortable with the idea of someone outside the family knowing about this.
“You have nothing to be ashamed off, Mummy.”
“No, you’re wrong.”
“But nothing happened between you and your friend.”
Had she lied to me? Was I not my father’s son?
“Nothing did happen – that’s not what I’m ashamed of.” Tears glistened in her eyes. “But I did nothing about your father’s violence. I should have stopped it when it started ... before it started.” She toppled forward onto her arms, sobbing.
This was not the somewhat distant, intensely intellectual person I knew. I reached across and stroked her hand. After a minute or so, she sat up, pulling a hanky from her sleeve to dab her tears and blow her nose.
“Thank you, Will.”
“You’ve stopped it now.”
“But I failed to protect you. That’s what mothers are for and I couldn’t do it.”
She was wrapping herself in guilt. “Please don’t.” I stroked her hand. “It’s over. You stopped it.”
“Oh, Will.”
Our gazes locked.
“Thank you, Will.”
I gave her hand a squeeze. Then my mother gathered herself together. “You need to share this with Col?”
I nodded.
“And Frau Schmidt?”
“Yes. If I tell Col, I will have to tell Mutti Frida.”
A long pause, and then she said, “You don’t need my permission, Will. This is about you and your life. But thank you again for talking with me first. Once you’ve spoken to them, please could you tell Frau Schmidt I’d like to talk to her as well?”
I blinked at her, trying to understand why she wanted this.
“It’s nothing bad – well nothing bad about you. But I feel I need to speak to her about this, as an adult.”
“Okay.” I realised I sounded a bit grudging. “If you want to.”
“She’s important to you, isn’t she?”
“Yes, she is.” Was she worried about my closeness to Mutti Frida? “But I know you’re my mother.”
We heard my sister at the back door and my mother shot upstairs – to wash her face and reapply her minimal makeup, I suspected.
My sister speared me with a vicious glance when she saw me sitting at the kitchen table, went into the hall and hung up her coat and then came back into the kitchen. “I don’t know what happened yesterday, mother wouldn’t tell me. But I know you’re at the centre of it – again – and now father is staying in London during the week.” Her voice rose until she was practically shouting in my face. “Are you trying to destroy this family?”
I didn’t need this. “This family seems to be doing its best to destroy itself – and you are not helping by yelling at me.” My voice and temper were rising.
“Enough.” My mother intervened.
My sister had been leaning over me, threateningly. She stood back up and launched at our mother. “What’s going on? Why is father staying in London during the week?”
My mother closed her eyes for a moment. “You know your father has been ... mistreating Will for some years and it has now stopped. As part of reaching that decision, your father decided perhaps a little space would let things settle down.”
Hilary wanted the full story, and I knew it would then be spread far and wide amongst her catty friends. The silence lengthened as my mother and sister stared at one another, then my sister turned away.
“Thank you, Hilary.” My mother gave her a nod of acknowledgement.
My mother started clattering about in the kitchen, getting supper ready. “Please, Will, set the table.”
My sister was silent during supper, sulking I suspected. My mother and I talked about our day. She was interested in the books we were reading, particularly when I mentioned the Müller poetry.
“They are dark and difficult stories, Will. How did you come across them?”
“The Schubert song cycle was on the radio at Col’s house. Mutti Frida was listening to them, but the singing obscured the words. Then I found them in a book at the library and we’ve been reading them.”
“The library has books in German?”
“Some – including Swiss Family Robinson – in the old Gothic script which we had to learn to read. They had books in French and Polish, too.”
“Oh, perhaps they were left over from wartime when there were lots of refugees about.”
I shrugged. “I understand what you mean about the poems being dark – but then Shakespeare is dark in places too, isn’t he?”
“True.”
My sister flounced off after the meal. I stopped my mother from calling her back and we cleaned up together, allowing the emotions to dissipate in shared trivialities.
Later, I lay in bed thinking about these two evenings with my mother. I had wanted to spend some time with her – but I had not imagined it would be so intense. She was starting to see me as nearly an adult and recent events had brought us closer together. Tomorrow I would talk with Col and Mutti Frida – and then Mutti Frida and my mother would get together. I was vaguely concerned about this but had no idea why.
Yesterday’s sunshine had departed when I walked round to Col’s house in light rain. I was wearing gumboots so we could go for a walk later and had indoor shoes in my bag. Col opened the door when I knocked and I left the gumboots and my coat in the porch.
“Lili’s mum is going to drop her round after lunch. We’ve run out of German books to read and we can’t read The Hobbit until Lili gets here. What shall we do?”
“There is something I need to talk to you about before Lili gets here.”
Col smiled. “I thought something was going through your mind yesterday, you seemed a bit distant.”
He had noticed I was distracted. I went into the lounge room and sat down in our usual place on the couch. Col waited for a moment before coming to sit down beside me.
“What’s on your mind?” he asked in English, with a funny German accent.
“Dr Freud.” I smiled and then sighed.
Col’s smile faded.
“I know what the problem is between my father and me.”
Col half turned towards me.
“He doesn’t think I am his son.”
“Oh, Willi.” His hands grasped mine in shock.
“I’ve always thought I must have done something terribly bad when I was six, but all I can remember is the beating my father gave me.”
Col frowned at this.
“After another row with my father, which my mother sorted out, I asked her what I had done to make him hate me so.” Col’s hand crept into mine. “This is a family secret, Col. I’m trusting you not to tell anyone, as you have trusted me with yours.”
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