As I roused myself from sleep, I remembered I was seeing Eve today for the first of our jaunts. The notion raised mixed emotions: she was easy on the eye but hard on the brain; the sort of feisty girl that attracts men like moths to a candle, often with the same tragic ending. A woman who can provoke thoughts of murder or suicide. Sometimes both. As I lay there gathering my wits I ran a quick mental check to make sure she wasn’t part of an interesting dream. Nope.
I’d phoned her office twice since our first meeting – once more than I needed to – to confirm arrangements. She was real enough, unless she’d hired a secretary from the spirit world.
I was beginning to believe I was cured. I’d stopped imagining women now. No more ghosts to haunt my waking hours. Doc Thompson had given me the all clear provided I attended a monthly clinic with one of his pals in Harley Street. It saved a long train ride to Wiltshire, but it cost two guineas a go. An arrangement which seemed all wrong: it was paid for by the Army Department, but I still felt like the Doc and his ilk should be paying me for providing grist to their psychiatric mill. I was seeing Professor Haggarty at nine this morning and Eve this afternoon. I would have cancelled the mad Prof, but he was an enthusiastic Irishman who had trouble hearing the word no.
I’m in a rut with my morning rituals. I sat on the edge of the bed and lit a fag and waited for the kick to get me going. It came in a brief buzz of nausea, followed by the first cough, then the head cleared. I picked up my latest Penguin from the floor by my bed and placed it carefully on the end of a growing shelf of orange and green covers. In our house we’d never owned books; we just borrowed from the big Victorian library. But now, at a tanner a go, I can’t get enough of the smart wee paperbacks.
I tossed my pyjamas on the bed and wandered to the sink to light the gas flame under the immerser. While the water was warming I switched on the wireless and watched the light gather behind the dial and the sound of the Home Service break through. I like to listen to the seven o’clock news before switching to music.
I cleared the draining dishes and pot from my supper last night: mash, greens and two of the tiniest lamb chops I’d ever seen. Even the sheep were on rations.
I propped my little mirror against the draining board, put a new blade in the razor, and turned on the tap of the immerser. Then I rinsed my face with warm water, worked up some lather in my shave bowl and scraped my cheeks till they glowed. I lit the gas ring, filled the kettle and put it on. By the time I’d scrubbed myself with the flannel and dried the pool on the floor, the first cuppa was imminent.
Warmth seeped in through the skylight window from the late spring sun. Birds were belting out mating calls. May is a great time to be in London, even a London tattered from five years of pounding by Hermann. It was also a nice switch from this time last year. In ’45 I was hauled out of a Dakota at RAF Brize Norton on a stretcher and whisked off to have my head fixed. A year ago they were taking bone splinters out of my brain and screwing in a piece of aluminium. They joked about it coming from a cannibalised Spitfire, said I’d have my own built-in war memorial. As long as it wasn’t from a Messerschmitt.
I went back to the mirror and massaged a dab of Brylcreem into my hair, kneading the ridge under the skin. I combed the red tangle to careful order so that the scar was hidden, apart from the end that ran down into my left eyebrow. Maybe I should try a kiss-curl.
The newscaster was talking about the meeting of the new United Nations, and what a great step it was towards world peace. I hoped so. We said the same in 1918.
Then he switched to reports about the latest overcrowded boat sailing towards Palestine, with a thousand ragged Jews wailing their way to their promised land.
I couldn’t see why we were standing in their way, after what they’d been through. More stuff about new ration schemes; never enough of anything. Was this what we’d fought for? And was this why we voted old Winston out?
I switched over to the Light Programme, and as I dressed, I joined in the chorus with the Andrews Sisters: “He's the boogie woogie bugle boy of company B…” and crooned with Frankie, “I’ll never smile again, till I smile with you…”
Then the toast was burning and I was cursing and scraping it into the sink. I coated both slices in thick marge and blackcurrant jam but the taste of carbon still came through. Tea helped, and the second fag of the day had me whistling again. The milk was getting a bit whiffy but good enough for the stray moggy that had adopted me. I filled a saucer and left it on the landing. She must have been waiting; she pounced like I’d tossed her a fresh salmon. I left her lapping and guzzling, and plunged down the steps two at a time. For now I was late.
But it was my lucky morning; the big double-decker was grinding away from my stop as I belted across the road and leaped on the platform. A smooth change at Piccadilly Circus, a number 12 up Marylebone High Street and I was walking through Prof Haggarty’s door just as the clock on his receptionist’s mantelpiece struck the hour.
“How’s that for timing?” I called to Miss V Allardice sitting stiffly behind her newly polished desk with its wooden wedge displaying her initial and surname.
She pursed her lips, and kept typing, pretending not to have noticed me. Levity was frowned on within these serious walls. I suppose she was needed as a counterpoint to Haggarty.
She hit the return, the carriage slid across with an efficient ping and she deigned to look up. She unzipped her lips. “Good morning, sir. It’s Mister McRae, isn’t it? The Professor will call you when he is ready. Please take a seat.”
She expected to be obeyed. She was just the sort you’d need on Judgement Day to keep order. No coffin lids opened until we say so, thank you very much. Everyone lined up in strict order of sinning, worse ones to the rear. I’d barely parked my bum on the hard seat when Haggarty’s voice boomed down the hall.
“Is that McRae? Show him in, Viv!”
Miss Vivienne Allardice flushed at the treacherous revelation of her first name but she kept a steady grip on her sangfroid and her keyboard.
“Professor Haggarty will see you now, Mr McRae. Straight through that door…”
“Thanks, Viv.”
She glared, and the glare turned to horror as I dropped my coat and hat on the chair. She leapt out to hang them up and reinstate order before I got through the door. Haggarty was standing in the corridor like a pub landlord welcoming his first customer after some remodelling by the Luftwaffe.
“How have you been, man? Come in, come in. Take a pew. Isn’t this a glorious day? Better than you and I are used to in our wet native lands, eh?” His great paw dragged me in to his lair. After one session with the Prof, I knew I didn’t have to respond to any of his early questions. I sat down in the big armchair set aside for his victims.
“So, how’ve you been?” he asked again, this time requiring a reply. He settled his great bulk in a double of my chair and flung my file on the table between us. It was a thick file. I’d given them plenty to write about.
“I’ve been fine, Professor. I get the odd bad head but it passes.”
“Are you still using Scotch to clear it?”
“It works.”
“Aye, so it does. For you. As long as it doesn’t get to be a habit. How much do you drink?”
“A glass or two a day.”
“Liar. But never mind, eh? I enjoy a tipple myself. What about smoking?”
I shrugged. Everybody smoked. “A packet a day, sometimes more.”
“That, you should stop. Or at least use the ones with filters. But you’re not here to chat about your lungs.” He began to sift through his thick pile and pulled out a piece of black film. “The hospital sent me the x-ray we had taken the last time. Shall we take a look?”
He was on his feet and holding a foot-square panel of dark film up to the light streaming through the window. I walked over and stared at the outline of my skull. I didn’t know what I was looking for. Something that told me what sort of man I was. Something less like poor Yorick. How could that be me? This is how I’ll look ten years after they bury me, after the worms have had their fill. Is that all there is to us?
Haggarty’s big finger traced the outline of the white wedge that sat across much of the skull like a smudge on the plate. “They made a good job, so they did.
Nice. Neat. No sign of movement.” Then he turned to me and looked down at me from his great height. “But it doesn’t tell me what’s going on under there.” He stabbed the film, then prodded my skull in the same place.
“Nothing you should worry about, Prof, I’m sure.”
“That’s for me to find out. Let’s have a chat. Are you keeping the journal?”
I pulled out a little notepad from my inside jacket pocket and waved it at him.
“Good man.”
We took our seats again and got down to it. He made me talk through the last month and the number of headaches. According to my records they seemed to be getting fewer.
“And what about the dreams?”
“They’re not like before. I mean I don’t have one of my fits and wake up and find cryptic notes.” I pointed at the pad. Thank god. It had been like living with someone else in my body, sometimes being taken over and waking from a fugue to find this parasite had left me a message. Usually a nasty one. From the time in the camp.
“I still get nightmares, but somehow I know that’s what they are. Which makes it bearable. Does that make sense, Prof?”
“Perfectly. These nightmares – are they about Dachau?” He said it the way everybody does since they showed the pictures; as though voicing those two guttural syllables would reopen its gates and let evil loose. Or maybe that’s just how I hear it. It still makes me flinch.
“It’s not that clear. Let me check.” I opened my pad and ran through some of the jottings. “There’s one that keeps popping up. It’s hard to describe. I’m in a big space without colour or definition. Alone. And I’m being crowded by big boulders. They keep closing in on me. It’s not violent or scary, just oppressive somehow. An air of gloom and foreboding. Pretty obvious, I guess.”
“Really? And what might these boulders be?”
Haggarty had that look in his eye, the one that says I’m interested in what you’re saying but not necessarily because you’re talking sense.
“I’m trying to get on with my life. But things keep getting in my road.
Obstacles…” I trailed away.
He was nodding. “Sure, sure that could be right. But it might also be that you’re trying to hide something from yourself. And you won’t let it go.”
“Hide? What would I hide from myself?”
“Feelings? Recognition of yourself? You went through a rough time. For a while there you lost yourself. A year of your life erased, and you couldn’t connect the time before with the time after.”
I nodded. “I could remember who I was, but not recognise who I’d become?”
“Possibly.”
“You blokes never come off the fence,” I laughed. “But if you’re right, what do I do about it?”
“Nothing. You’re sane – as sane as me.” He ignored my raised eyebrow. “You’ve got a job – a strange one, mind – but you can fend for yourself. The fact you’ve got holes in your memory isn’t unusual. How many of us can recall every bit of our time for the last week, far less a year? From what you’ve told me, you’ve got plenty enough recollection. And a lot of stuff that’s better forgotten.”
“So I just put up with the dreams?”
“Sure, we all dream.” He said nothing for a moment, then leaned forward over the table. “Tell me a thing. What language did they speak… in the camp?”
“I hadn’t thought about it. All languages. There were Poles, Roma, French, Germans of course… lots of German Jews.”
“What language did you speak?”
“I suppose English and French. I took French at school and two years of it at Glasgow Uni.”
He looked down at my file and casually asked, “Sprechen sie Deutsch?”
“Ja, ein bisschen. Ich habe… Meine Gott!” I put my hand up to my mouth.
“Coming back, is it? Don’t be so surprised. Even though you had a hard time of it, you would have picked up the language around you. Like a kid does. I expect you have a good basic grasp.”
I wasn’t listening to him. I was lying in my cramped bunk whispering to the other men around me. We were discussing the news filtering through about the progress of the allies. The guards were getting edgy. The word was they were within fifty miles. It seemed impossible. Seemed wrong to hope. I tugged at the filthy bandage around my head to ease the pressure. I was asking them what they thought the guards would do. Would they kill us all to get rid of the evidence?
Should we try to break out?
I strained to hear my words and for a moment, my head filled with new sounds and structures. We were talking in German. It might not have been High German, given the polyglot culture of the camp, but it was recognisable.
“I had no idea, Prof. All I’ve been doing is trying to recall incidents. The language side of it never occurred to me. You don’t get far trying to order a pint in German in Camberwell Green. Some of those old boys still have their Home Guard rifles under their beds.”
“I don’t suppose I’d recommend it as a new educational approach. But another language is always handy. I suggest you try to find a way to consolidate it.
Make sure you don’t lose it. It was hard enough earned.”
At the end of our session he walked me to the door. “You’re doing fine, Danny.
Just fine. See you in a few weeks.”
I collected my hat and coat from the cool Miss Allardice.
“Danke viel mal, fraulein. Guten tag, auf wiedersehen, Viv.”
It was unkind, but worth it to see her perfectly smooth jaw drop and her eyes take on a look of panic as though Goering himself had just touched her up. I threw my coat over my shoulder, jammed my hat on and walked to the bus stop, whistling again, this time Lili Marlene; the German version of course. I checked my watch. Eleven-thirty. I was meeting Eve Copeland at one o’clock in pub near her newspaper office in Fleet Street. I’d get the bus down to Trafalgar Square and walk along the Strand.