Two Brothers

‘It’s fine,’ Silke said briskly, ‘absolutely fine. A really good plan. Pauly’s plans always are.’

Within a very few minutes they arrived at the grand gates of the Napola school with the huge wrought-iron eagle and swastika mounted upon them.

‘Oh God, I’m pretty nervous actually,’ Dagmar admitted. ‘I mean going in amongst all those Nazi boys.’

‘You’ll be fine,’ Silke assured her. ‘I’m absolutely sure of that.’

‘How can you be, Silks?’ Dagmar asked.

‘Dagmar, they may be Nazis. But they’re boys.’

Silke was right, of course. One glimpse of Dagmar at the school gates in her elegant, sophisticated, alluring grown-up clothes and she was the talk of the school. Jungmann Stengel, it seemed, had pulled off another coup, trading up from a nice-looking girl to a complete stunner. Certainly no one thought of asking such a beautiful creature for proof of her ancestry. Rather the excited boys would have queued up to lay down their lives for her.

Silke only accompanied Dagmar for one further Sunday before dropping out of the visits herself.

Her duty was done. Dagmar didn’t need her any more. Otto’s new companion was recognized and accepted by the school and had even been paid a toe-curlingly creepy compliment by the principal. Silke knew that no one would miss her and she couldn’t wait to bow out. She didn’t mind the other boys gawping at Dagmar but to see Otto doing it, panting and scampering about her like an eager puppy desperate to please, was hard for her to take.

Dagmar simply took over from Silke. More so in fact. Because whilst people merely thought that Silke had been Otto’s girlfriend, Dagmar immediately became it. And when she and Otto sat together beneath the oak tree looking over the soccer pitch they exchanged the kisses that Silke had longed would be hers.

Paulus’s plan worked perfectly. With Otto beside her Dagmar was now able to enjoy the kind of fun that was denied to other Jewish adolescents. Otto was sixteen and could apply for evenings out and also Saturday afternoons. During these times he took Dagmar to parks and to the zoo. They sat together in cafes and occasionally even went to bars, most proprietors being pretty lax about youthful drinking, particularly with such an attractive young couple.

Otto had no money himself but he had his military-style uniform and he had grown quite tall and very strong. Dagmar did have money and she was happy to spend it on those precious times when she was able to be a normal young person once again.

And of course Otto took Dagmar swimming, which was her greatest joy of all. Soon Dagmar forgot even to feel nervous as they bought their tickets to the baths. No attendant ever once asked the beautiful girl with the Napola boyfriend for identification. She worried sometimes of course that she would be recognized, but she had been withdrawn from public life for so long that most people’s memories of the heiress to Fischer’s department store fortune were of a girl of twelve or thirteen.

Frieda now got her news of Otto from Paulus who in turn heard it from Dagmar. Silke still visited the Stengels on a Sunday evening to hear the news also. Smiling hard at every tale of the fun that Otto and Dagmar were having together. Just as Paulus tried hard to deliver the second-hand stories with the same joy and enthusiasm with which Dagmar had told them to him.

‘They’re both really having fun,’ Paulus would say.

‘Which is great,’ Silke added.

And Frieda would look from one of them to the other and smile a sad little smile to herself.

On the Embankment London, 1956

THERE WAS A decent moon and it cast a long streak of white across the cobalt black ripples of the Thames. A glittering, twinkling silver pathway stretching almost all the way from the Mother of Parliaments to the Royal Festival Hall.

‘Peter Pan could’a danced along dat path,’ Billie observed, ‘on his way from Neverland to Kensington Gardens.’

‘I don’t think even Peter Pan could have survived a dunk in the Thames,’ Stone replied.

They were standing together on Westminster Bridge. Neither of them had wanted to go home after their hurried exit from the pub, but Billie didn’t want to drink any more so instead they had taken the taxi across Trafalgar Square and down Whitehall, and now found themselves standing in the moon shadow of Big Ben, staring down into the broad dark river as it hurried beneath them.

‘I always like to t’ink of the Romans when I see the moon on the Thames,’ Billie said.

‘The Romans?’ Stone enquired, somewhat surprised.

‘It’s jus’ dis town’s been here so long,’ she explained. ‘Amazin’ to t’ink that people been lookin’ at that same beautiful light on that same dirty ol’ river for two thousand years.’

Together they made their way down from the bridge and on to the Victoria Embankment. Strolling past the various down-and-outs in search of an unoccupied bench.

‘When I was a little girl in Trinidad,’ Billie went on, ‘me mudder used ta talk about how one day we be goin’ to Englan’ and then we’d have plenty money and anyt’ing we wanted to eat. An’ then we’d take a pleasure trip on de Thames an’ go see where ol’ Henry de Eight be beddin’ all his wives, one after another after another. An’ then we’d go see where he killed a couple o’ dem too. Cut off they heads in da Tower. An’ we’d all be merry in merry ol’ England. We did it too, you know. Me and me mudder. First Sunday we had money to spare for a day out, dat’s what we did.’

‘I wonder what old Henry would have made of that bloody awful Royal Festival Hall,’ Stone said, glancing across the water at the controversial new building on the opposite bank.

‘I like it,’ Billie said. ‘I t’ink it’s very cool. Very satisfyin’ spatially.’

‘Too bloody Soviet if you ask me. Too much concrete.’

‘Let me tell you, Paul. When you was born in a house wit’ a mud floor, you don’ mind a bit o’ concrete. It be clean, it’s cheap an’ it don’ blow down in a storm. That’s a lot o’ positive when you puttin’ up a building.’

‘Well, you’re the design student,’ Stone conceded.

‘You can’t study good taste, baby,’ Billie replied. ‘Nor common sense neither. I jus’ be born wit’ more than my fair share o’ both, tha’s all.’

They found an empty bench and staked their claim, Billie inspecting the seat carefully by the light of her Dunhill lighter before she would entrust her beautiful woollen coat to it. There was a cabbies’ refreshment stall a little further along and Stone went and got them some tea and a bar of Cadbury’s chocolate.

‘You know those Romans who were staring at our moon from their wooden bridge got a nasty surprise,’ Stone said when he returned with the two steaming china mugs. ‘Boudicca and the Iceni turned up and they reckon as many as seventy thousand people died in the fighting and pillaging. Just about around where we’re sitting now.’

‘Well, d’ere’s a gruesome t’ought for a romantic night!’ Billie laughed. ‘You always find a way, don’t you?’

‘But the good part of it is, that was the biggest slaughter that ever happened in the British Isles. No power- mad swine has topped it since in almost two millennia. That’s actually an amazing statistic. How many other countries can say that the bloodiest catastrophe that ever occurred on its soil happened nineteen centuries ago? I’ll tell you now. None. Lucky old Britain eh?’

Billie smiled and sipped her tea.

‘Did you put three in?’

‘Of course.’

‘Don’t t’ink you stirred it then.’

‘Ah.’

Billie took a pencil from her purse and stirred her tea.

‘You really love dis country, don’t you, baby?’ she said.