Through My Eyes. Again
Copyright© 2019 by Iskander
Chapter 8
Late April - October 1963
The following morning, I warned Col 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 smiled when she saw it was a Premium Bond winning and told me it would take about a week for the cheque to clear. That didn’t bother me, as I had no desire to spend it anytime soon. I was also pondering who I could – or should – tell about my good fortune. I wanted to tell Col, but it also seemed a bit like boasting, so I decided to leave it for now.
Yesterday’s showers and rain had cleared; the day promised to be fine, with fair weather cumulus clouds dotting the sky; I enjoyed the walk to Col’s house. We needed to talk about what I had learned about my family from my mother. 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 and so what else were they sharing?
Would it be fair to my mother to share what was a family secret with Mutti Frida?
I decided I had to bide my time in talking this over with Col 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. Twice Col called me back to the present as my mind slipped away to think about my family. As drifting off in thought was not uncommon behaviour from me, he didn’t seem to pick up that the undercurrents tugging at my attention were anything out of the ordinary.
I told Col I needed to be home early and arrived home before my mother, so I read in my room. About half an hour later, my mother arrived.
“Oh, hello Will,” she said, smiling. “Is everything all right? I didn’t expect you to be here.”
“Yes, everything’s fine, but I need to talk about what you told me last night.”
My mother’s mood faded. “Okay.” A quizzical expression appeared on her face.
I was unsure how this would go. “I want to talk about this with Col, but I know that if I do that, 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 than that. 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 and I’m proud of you for thinking about this so carefully.” She offered me a brief smile. “I suppose this all comes down to how much you trust Col and Frau Schmidt. This is the sort of family secret that could make my professional involvement in this community difficult if it got out. Can you be sure that Col won’t talk about this – even inadvertently – at school or with his other friends?”
“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 very sure of yourself about this.”
I tried to imbue my voice with certainty. “I am.”
My mother sat in silence for a while. “Can I ask why you are so sure they will keep our secrets?”
I wasn’t sure how to answer this. They had trusted me with far more important secrets and Col had stayed silent about my suicide attempts, but I couldn’t share that. I saw that my mother was trying to divine my thoughts from my face. I remembered reading that the best way to answer a question you weren’t sure about was to ask a question back.
“How many people do you think Mutti Frida has trusted with her experiences in Ravensbrück?”
My mother gave a sharp intake of breath. “I didn’t know that.”
“You don’t remember her showing her forearm with the SS number on it to my father that night at Col’s house?”
“No.” She frowned. “I was concentrating on getting your father home before something terrible happened to either or both of you. That incident with the knife scared me.”
“Well, she showed my father the concentration camp tattoo and told him there was no way he could scare her. She’d had the SS at her for years in Ravensbrück and other camps before that.”
“I remember your father seemed a bit shocked by something Frau Schmidt said, but I didn’t know what.”
“Well, after you both left, Mutti Frida came back into the kitchen with her sleeve still pushed up and I saw the tattoo. I asked her what it meant; she told us about what had happened to her. The Nazis took her father away and shot him. Her mother died of starvation in the camp and, well, lots more.” I stopped myself before talking about the red triangle on her overalls saving her when the Russians found her; that would have exposed far too much of their secret.
“Dear God, the poor woman.”
“I think Mutti Frida thinks that you at least know that she was in a concentration camp.”
My mother nodded, deep in thought.
“Well, I am also sure that she does not expect you to talk about it with anyone else. She is trusting you with that, 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 that story you are not telling me, isn’t there?”
I returned my mother’s gaze. Once again, I couldn’t answer, so I asked a question. “It’s not my story to tell, is it?”
My mother nodded. “No, of course, it’s not. I’m sorry.”
Another first – knocking on my bedroom door before coming in and now apologising. My relationship with my mother was changing and I wasn’t sure where it was going.
“Can I talk to Col and Mutti Frida about what you told me?”
Across the table from me, my mother reacted. She shifted in her chair and glanced round the room, uncomfortable with the idea of someone outside the family knowing about this.
“You have nothing to be ashamed of, Mummy.”
“Ah, but you’re wrong there.”
“But nothing happened between you and your friend. You told me that.”
Had she lied to me? Was I not my father’s son?
“Nothing happened – that’s not what I’m ashamed of.” Tears glistened in her eyes. “I’m ashamed ... that for so long I did nothing about your father’s violence towards you. I should have stopped it when it started. Before it started.” She toppled forward onto her arms, sobbing. This was a different mother to the somewhat distant, intense intellectual person I had known until now.
I reached across and stroked her hair. After a minute, she sat up, pulling a hanky from her sleeve to dab her tears and blow her nose. She reached over and took my hand.
“Thank you, Will.”
“You’ve stopped it now, Mummy, that’s all that matters.”
“That’s kind of you to say that, but I failed to protect you. That’s what mothers are for and I couldn’t even do that.”
She was winding herself in guilt. I stroked her hand. “Please don’t, Mummy.” I gave her hand a squeeze. “It’s over. You stopped it.”
“Oh, Will.”
Our gazes locked.
“Thank you, Will.”
I gave her hand another squeeze. We stayed like that for several long seconds, 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. But thank you again for talking with me first. Once you’ve spoken to them, please could you also tell Frau Schmidt that I’d like to talk to her as well? But only after you’ve told them. Okay?”
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 knew I sounded grudging. “If that’s what you want me to do.”
“She’s important to you, isn’t she?”
“Yes, she is.” Was she worried Mutti Frida would replace her? “But I know you’re my mother.”
She was about to speak, but my sister clattered the back door handle. My mother fled upstairs to wash her face and reapply her minimal makeup, I suspected.
My sister speared me with a vicious glance, hung up her coat and then stamped back into the kitchen. “What happened yesterday? Mother wouldn’t tell me. But I know you’re at the centre of it – again. Are you trying to destroy this family?” Her voice rose until she was shouting in my face.
I leaned back in my chair. I didn’t need this.
“This family seems to do its best to destroy itself – and you are not helping by yelling at me.” My voice and temper were rising.
“Will. Hilary. That’s enough.”
My sister had been towering over me. She stood back. “What’s going on? Why is father staying away during the week?”
My mother closed her eyes for a moment. “This is between Will, your father and I, so, no, I will not explain that. 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 that perhaps a little space would let things settle down.”
My sister wanted the full story, and I was sure she would then spread it far and wide amongst her catty friends. There was a lengthy silence as my mother and sister stared at one another before my sister turned away.
“Thank you, Hilary.”
My mother started clattering about in the kitchen, getting supper ready. “Please, Will, set the table.”
My sister was silent during supper, sulking. My mother and I talked about our day. She was intrigued by the books we were reading, especially when I mentioned the Muller poetry.
“They are dark and difficult stories, Will. How did you come across them?”
“The Schubert song cycle played on the radio at Col’s house. Mutti Frida was listening to them, but I couldn’t get the words because the singing got in the way. Then I found them in a book at the library and we’ve been reading them.”
“The library has books in German?”
“Only a couple – the Müller poems and Der schweizerische Robinson – Swiss Family Robinson in the old Gothic script which we had to learn to read. They had a few 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 pretty 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. This allowed the emotions of the last couple of evenings 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 that it would be so intense. One good outcome was she was seeing me as something other than a child. The events of the last two evenings had brought us closer together. Tomorrow I would talk with Col and Mutti Frida – and then our mothers would get together. I was uneasy about this, but had nothing I could put my finger on.
Yesterday’s sunshine had departed when I walked round to Col’s house in a drizzle. I was wearing gumboots so we could go for a walk later and had indoor shoes in my bag. 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, so...”
“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 distant.”
I sat down in our usual place on the couch. Col stood there for a moment before coming to sit down beside me.
“What’s on your mind?” he asked in English, with a funny German accent.
“All right, 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.
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