Chapter 6

The house seemed familiar to Andrew from his one visit all those years ago, yet at the same time it was nothing like he remembered, or more accurately as he thought he remembered. He knew that he had built it up too much in his mind to fully take it in. Jim and Freya moved away and let him wander about, soaking it all up. The memory he took away was of cleaning products. The house had been not just cleaned, it smelled like it had been sanitised. And it was ready to live in other than one obvious omission, the master bedroom was missing the bed. But he knew that before he arrived. It was the one thing Andrew wanted to be identical to the flat in Edinburgh. But other than the missing bed, he could have moved in that afternoon, subject to getting sheets, towels and some groceries. It was too easy. They sat on the back patio drinking tap water; none of them had thought to bring something to celebrate with.

“This place is amazing. With bedding and towels and a trip to the supermarket you could live here.”

Andrew nodded. Great minds and all that.

“Why is there no bed in the master bedroom?”

This was Jim.

“My bed in Edinburgh is extra-long because of my height and I like the comfort. I am going to order the same model for here.”

That was not the only reason but Jim didn’t need to know the rest. Freya tried to phrase her question nonchalantly but she was fooling no one.

“Are you going to stay here over the summer, if you get the chance to come back?”

“I don’t know. Obviously getting the bed delivered and assembled is part of it.”

Andrew stopped and sighed.

“Leslie pretty much decorated this place. Not in terms of grabbing a paintbrush but she picked all the colours, paint, curtains, stuff like that. For my flat in Edinburgh, Suzanne helped me furnish it, not just the big pieces but kitchen utensils, stuff for the bathroom, the whole place. I don’t care about stuff like that and would enjoy the help but I worry about the message I am sending if I ask her to help me. And whenever I return to Edinburgh there is never anything in the fridge, nothing in the cupboards. My usual longwinded way of saying I don’t know. There was no indication of coming back from the either the interviews and meetings, or from the briefing papers, so that might be moot. The first chance to stay here will be in the new year. I am not going to worry about it. I will send Leslie a note and ask her to find the receipt for the bed, she has a key to the flat. I will deal with that and then see where I am.”

Freya smiled.

“That makes sense and it is always good to have you stay, even if it is just for the day.”

Jim and Freya let Andrew think as they walked back to the flat. It was all the mindless practicalities that were going to determine when he finally moved in and lived there. Between Leslie, Mhairi or Grace, and Iain Barrett, Andrew knew he could get the bed ordered and it delivered, all it would cost him was some money. But he had no interest in shopping for bedding and towels and the thought of someone helping him made sense. But Andrew’s unease over him and Suzanne made him reluctant to embed her deeper in his life, however much he wanted to, was tempted to. Leslie had her own life and Andrew didn’t want to revert back to the hopeless schoolboy, regardless of how hopeless he was acting. And nobody else knew about the place. Which left Ara.

He was going to call her when he returned to the flat, but had not considered calling her before visiting the house and asking her to join them. Andrew was back to having secrets and compartments within his life. The only person who knew everything was Suzanne, and just thinking about her had him feeling ill. He and Suzanne were as close, if not closer, as at the end of the summer two years earlier. Their feelings for each other had deepened and strengthened and they were back to living as a couple when they were both in Edinburgh. But all the time there was the fundamental missing piece hanging over their heads.

Whenever Andrew thought about Ara there was a compare and contrast with Suzanne. He and Suzanne had known each other for seven years and their current relationship was a result of years of edging closer despite them both having proclaiming at different times they had a sell-by date. They had clawed and struggled to get to the point they were at, nothing had been easy. And she was the woman Andrew had spent the most time with and was the most important person in his life. He and Ara on the other hand, it all seemed too easy. Andrew stopped that train of thought. It hadn’t been easy, from their very first meeting it had not been easy. The attraction was easy, again not the right word. As teenagers they had crushed on each other, fucked twice and let, mostly his, teenage bullshit get in the way. Plus they had gone out when they were both preposterously young. For the last year they had been trying to build an adult structure on teenage foundations. Slowly and steadily, starting to share their backgrounds and their dreams. It had been mostly successful as well. Sex had not got in the way, in the way that sex had papered over the issues with him and Suzanne. Andrew was attracted to Ara, he always had been. Her looks, her background, her brains, he was drawn to her. But he did not let her in a fraction of the way that he had or did with Suzanne. Other than some of his sexual partners, Suzanne knew Andrew’s whole life. Ara did not even know about the house. And it had nothing to do about trust, when he stopped and thought about it consciously, he trusted her. What worried Andrew was he couldn’t understand why he was back to keeping secrets.

When he got back to the flat it just got worse. He phoned Ara but she was out at the library. He left a message with her flatmate and figured he would not see her before he left. Then Suzanne called, she had an address she would be at all summer, and although the place did have a phone, it could only receive calls, not dial out. She was at a payphone so called her back and gave her the 10 minute version of his two week camp. He promised to write to her although once he had hung up all sorts of doubts crept in. Mrs. Moray time. They went through to the kitchen.

“I am back to being unsure what I can and cannot tell people. Other than that I am a summer student with the Civil Service working at the Ministry of Defence nobody knows anything about my job. But getting a letter postmarked from West Berlin is going to naturally raise questions. Is the fact I will be in West Berlin a secret? What do I do?”

Freya smiled briefly but it was a flicker.

“Your usual cover story of helping with the computerisation would work but the inability to return for all 10 weeks would raise questions about that explanation. Send the letters to me inside another envelope. Tell the people that you are writing to that you are moving around a lot and that I will get them forwarded to you. I will post the letters from here and there will be no issues with postmarks.”

It was well after dinner before Ara returned Andrew’s call, she had studied late and then gone out for a late meal with some people from the library. She was pleased to talk to him but annoyed at missing the chance to see him for even a few hours. When he fell asleep his dreams were tormented by visions of both Ara and Suzanne. He was up and away early the next morning heading to Heathrow for the morning flight to West Berlin.

Once Andrew knew that he was being posted to West Berlin he had spent a couple of hours at the end of term in the library reading about, and trying to understand the situation there. West Berlin was a very odd place. At the end of the Second World War Germany was split up into four zones of occupation by the four main allies, the Soviet Union, France, the USA and Britain. Because Berlin was the capital it was decided that it would also be split up into four zones, even although Berlin was 100 miles into the Soviet Zone of occupation. Fast forward five years and the Soviet Zone of occupation became East Germany, the German Democratic Republic, and the three western allies’ zones had become West Germany, the Federal Republic of Germany. Easy so far. West Germany joined NATO in 1955 and East Germany became part of the Warsaw Pact at the same time. These were the two adversaries in the Cold War.

That left Berlin.

One of the key things Andrew noted was that Berlin was separate from the rest of Germany. It had been dealt with separately during discussions of how to treat and rule Germany after the war ended. There were two agreements, Germany and Berlin. Thus when the four zones coalesced into East and West Germany, Berlin was not included. Throughout the Cold War Berlin was an occupied city. This meant that all laws in West Berlin had to be approved by the three western military governors. No approval, no law. West Berlin was not even an official part of West Germany. It was not a German state and it did not elect representatives to either the lower or upper house of the West German parliament. But just to make a confusing thing even more confusing West Germany treated all Germans in both West and East Germany including both parts of Berlin, as German citizens. Thus the odd circumstance where a West Berlin politician became Chancellor of Germany.

So West Berlin was part of West Germany and used West German laws wherever possible, it used West German immigration laws when people arrived for example. But it was also not part of West Germany because to change the status of Berlin, either East or West, all four occupying powers had to agree. And since about 10 minutes after the treaties were signed the Soviets had agreed to bugger all. That was why Rudolph Hess was still in Spandau Prison, 20 years after the last of the other prisoners had been released.

Andrew had felt it was like a living history lesson but there are a couple of other things he noted from all his reading. West Berlin was a garrison town, there were three separate allied armies there, between 15,000 and 20,000 British, French and American servicemen and women. So the place was very militaristic, there was no way to avoid it. Often there would be tanks driving round the city. But at the same time because it was in this legal limbo it was also one of, if not the, European centres of counter-culture. So it was this strange amalgam of left and right, foreign and German all completely surrounded by the Berlin Wall. And the wall was built not to contain West Berlin but to stop East Germans from fleeing to the west. Just before the wall was raised the number of people escaping was running at 1,000 a week. It was just one more thing to raise the oppression factor in the city.

However well prepared and well-read Andrew thought he was, it took spending time in the city to really understand it. Reading about that stuff was one thing but living it was an entirely different experience. He arrived at Tegel airport in the northern part of the city. It was the commercial airport; the other two airports were military only and Andrew was flying as a civilian. He had been told to report to the London Block of the Stadium Barracks, headquarters of the British Sector of West Berlin. As a location it was one of the better ones in the British Army. The barracks were in the grounds of the Olympic Stadium in Berlin, it dominated the skyline off to the south. It was there that Jesse Owens showed up Hitler and his notions of Aryan superiority. On Saturday he had been at Castlemartin, a windswept tank range on the south coast of Wales, full of German conscripts. On Monday he was standing in the grounds of the Berlin Olympic Stadium on Monday, at the British Army barracks. Hmmm didn’t even begin to cover it.

Arriving at the barracks was the high point of the day. From then on it was Kafka meets the Civil Service with Andrew as the frustrated soul being pushed back and forth. The key issue was the British Services Security Organisation, where he was supposed to be assigned to, was not based at the barracks complex. Until someone from there came to collect him he was to wait. It sounded far-fetched but at the time Andrew was a combination of pissed off and worried. Pissed off at the fucking games being played at his expense but also worried about the next 10 weeks, and most immediately the upcoming night. It was a shitshow. Freya’s instruction to call Larkin now made sense. The headquarters staff were decent in a ‘we don’t really know what to do’ sort of way. As the afternoon dragged to a close Andrew was allocated a room in Edinburgh House, a building used for troops and staff transitioning and transiting in and out of West Berlin. It was where people were sent while paperwork was processed, in effect an Army hotel or hostel.

All Andrew’s worries and concerns had come boomeranging back during the day and it was worse that night. Even if the BSSO sorted their shit out and he was allowed to work here, Andrew could tell that it was going to be ‘make the tea’ level of excitement. If they were forced to take him then they would make his life miserable. And only nine weeks and four days to go. The next day was just as bad. Andrew hung around the headquarters like a bad smell and nothing changed. Sorry, that was not totally true. He had brought his notebooks and sat and worked away at his 4^th year project. At one point in the middle of the afternoon Andrew had the stupid thought of just checking in with headquarters every morning and then spending the rest of the day at a library. He was sure he could find somewhere to study. It was a flight of fancy but based on the last two days he did wonder how long it would take someone to notice. At 4.45 Andrew approached the main desk again and asked that he be allowed to call London, Brigadier Larkin at the main Ministry of Defence building. There was a degree of consultation but it was allowed and before he knew it the phone was ringing.

“Larkin.”

“Andrew McLeod, one of the summer students. I was assigned to West Berlin. Mrs. Moray instructed me to give you a call.”

“What is your situation?”

“I am still at Army headquarters. The organisation I was assigned to has not yet indicated when they will collect me. I have been told to stay here and that I will not be admitted to their office if I turn up independently.”

Andrew heard the sigh down the phone.

“I see. Do you know if they are doing this locally or is Rheindahlen involved?”

“The phrase I have been told repeatedly is that they are awaiting instructions.”

“Okay, thank you for this update. Same time tomorrow.”

Click.

Andrew walked the short distance down to Edinburgh House figuring that the following day would change something. They either gave in and accepted him, however ungraciously, or he would be back to London. Guess which one he wanted. The next morning Andrew went for a run and sweated a lot of his frustration out of him. He ran for more than an hour and when he returned to his room he could feel the ache in his legs. Wednesday morning passed the same as the previous day but he didn’t care. The thought of getting out of there buoyed his spirits and he had found a quiet space to sit and study. As long as the Soviets didn’t invade that week he would be fine.

About Andrew’s clairvoyance...

Well at least the Soviets didn’t invade. After lunch he heard a noise and looked up to see a Captain and Sergeant looking at him. Just at that in-between distance where you are unsure whether to engage them in conversation. They stepped forward and removed his doubt.