over-exuberant West End revellers, and continuing their conversation in German seemed ill-advised. Effi spent the five-minute bus journey trying to sort out her reaction to the film. The dominant emotion, she decided, was anger, but she wasn’t at all sure why.
After alighting on Highgate Road she said as much to Russell.
‘The portrayal of women,’ he guessed. ‘Though the men were just as appalling. The only sympathetic character was the younger sister, and they killed her off.’
‘There was also the friend, but she was too smart to attract a good man.’
‘True.’
The fog seemed thicker than ever, but perhaps it was the added smoke from the nearby engine sheds.
‘But you’re right,’ Effi went on, as they turned into Lady Somerset Road, ‘it was the way the women were written. When the Nazis were portraying them as submissive idiots, it was so wonderful to see someone like Katherine Hepburn show how happy and sexy independent women could be. And now the Nazis are gone, and Hollywood gives us Mildred, who can only have a successful career if she fails as a mother and husband. Goebbels would have loved it.’
‘A bit harsh,’ Russell murmured.
‘Not at all,’ she rounded on him. ‘You just…’
Two figures suddenly emerged in front of them, silhouettes in the mist. ‘Stick ’em up,’ one of the two said, in a tone that seemed borrowed from an American gangster movie.
‘What?’ was Russell’s first reaction. The voice sounded young, and both potential robbers seemed unusually short. But it did look like a real gun pointing at them. A Luger, if Russell was not mistaken.
‘Stick ’em up,’ the voice repeated petulantly. The faces were becoming clearer now — and they belonged to boys, not men. Fourteen perhaps, maybe even younger. The one on the left was wearing trousers too long for his legs. A relation who hadn’t come home.
‘What do you want?’ Russell asked, with what felt like remarkable good humour, given the situation. Only that morning he’d read about two thirteen-year-olds holding up a woman in Highgate. Far too many boys had lost their fathers.
‘Your money of course,’ the second boy said, almost apologetically.
‘We only have a couple of shillings.’
‘You Germans are all liars,’ the first boy said angrily.
‘I’m English,’ Russell patiently explained, as he reached inside his coat pocket for the coins in question. He doubted the gun was even loaded, but it didn’t seem worth the risk to find out.
Effi had other ideas. ‘This is ridiculous,’ she muttered in German, as she stepped forward and twisted the gun out of the surprised youth’s hand. ‘Now go home,’ she told them in English.
They glanced at each other, and bolted off into the fog.
Effi just stood there, amazed at what she’d done. She was, she realised, shaking like a leaf. What mad instinct had made her do such a thing?
‘Christ almighty,’ Russell exclaimed, reaching out for her. ‘For a moment there…’
‘I didn’t think,’ she said stupidly. She started to laugh, but there was no humour in the sound, and Russell cradled her head against his shoulder. They stood there for a while, until Effi disentangled herself and offered him the gun.
He put it in his coat pocket. ‘I’ll hand it in at the police station tomorrow morning.’
They walked the short distance home, and let themselves in to the ground floor flat that Russell had rented. It had two large rooms, a small kitchen and an outside toilet. Russell, Effi and Rosa shared the back room, Paul, Lothar and Zarah the curtain-divided room at the front. Other families of four and five lived above and below them.
Paul was reading a book on architecture in the kitchen, his English dictionary propped up beside him. ‘They’re all asleep,’ he told them quietly.
Effi went to check on Rosa, the young Jewish orphan who had been her ward since April. Though perhaps not an orphan, as Effi reminded herself. The father Otto had disappeared around 1941, and not been seen or heard of since. He was probably dead, but there was no way of knowing for sure. Effi thought the uncertainty worried Rosa — it certainly worried her.
Sitting down on the side of the bed, she could smell the Vick’s Vapo-Rub that Zarah had put on the girl’s chest. Effi pulled the blanket up around her neck, and told herself that Rosa was coping better than most with the post-war world. She was doing well at the school that Solly had found for them. Although there were many other refugee pupils, the instruction was wholly in English, and Rosa’s command of that language was already better than Effi’s own. And Solly seemed more excited by her Berlin drawings than by any of John’s ideas. The girl would end up supporting them both.
In the kitchen, Russell was telling his son about the attempted hold-up. Paul’s smile vanished when he realised his father wasn’t having him on. ‘Was the gun loaded?’ he asked.
‘I haven’t looked,’ Russell admitted, and pulled it from his pocket. ‘It was,’ he discovered. ‘I’ll put it out of harm’s way,’ he added, reaching up to place it on the highest shelf. ‘Anything interesting happen at work?’
‘Not really,’ Paul said, getting up. ‘It’s time I went to bed,’ he explained. ‘Another early start.’
‘Of course,’ Russell said automatically. His son didn’t want to talk to him, which was neither unusual nor intended personally: Paul didn’t want to talk to anybody. But he seemed to be functioning like a normal human being — only that lunchtime Solly had confided how pleased he was with the boy — and Russell knew from experience what havoc war could wreak on minds of any age. ‘Sleep well,’ he said.
‘I hope so,’ Paul said. ‘For everyone’s sake,’ he added wryly — his nightmares sometimes woke the whole house. ‘Oh, I forgot,’ he added, stopping in the doorway. ‘There was a letter for you. It’s on your bed.’
‘I’ve got it,’ Effi said, squeezing past him. She gave Paul a goodnight hug before handing the envelope over to Russell.
He tore it open, and extracted the contents — a short handwritten note and a grandstand ticket for the following Tuesday’s match between Chelsea and the Moscow Dynamo tourists. ‘Your attendance is expected,’ the note informed him. It was signed by Yevgeny Shchepkin, his erstwhile guardian angel in Stalin’s NKVD.
‘So the bill has finally arrived,’ Effi said, reading it over his shoulder.
Lying beside her half an hour later, Russell felt strangely pleased that it had. In May he had bought his family’s safety from the Soviets with atomic secrets and vague promises of future service, and he had always known that one day they would demand payment on the Faustian bargain. For months he had dreaded that day, but now that it was here, he felt almost relieved.
It wasn’t just an end to the suspense. The war in Europe had been over for six months, and the Nazis, who had dominated their lives for a dozen years, were passing into history, but all their lives — his and Effi’s in particular — had still seemed stuck in some sort of post-war limbo, the door to their future still locked by their particular past. And Shchepkin’s invitation might — might — be the key that would open it.
Monday morning was unusually crisp and clear, columns of smoke rising from a hundred chimneys into a clear blue sky as Russell walked down Kentish Town Road. There were long lines outside the two bakeries he passed, but most of the queuing women seemed happy to chat while they waited.
It had been a strange weekend. On Saturday morning he had taken the gun to the local police station, and been asked to peruse an alarmingly extensive array of juvenile mug shots. He hadn’t recognised his and Effi’s would-be robbers, who had presumably just set out on their new career of crime.
That afternoon the whole family had gone for a walk on the nearby Heath, but their collective mood had matched the grey weather. Paul and Lothar kicked around the latter’s new football — one of Zarah’s acquisitions from their street’s resident spiv — but only the youngster looked like he was enjoying the experience. Effi still seemed subdued by the previous evening’s excitement, and Rosa, as usual, responded to her new mother’s mood. Only Zarah seemed determined to be cheerful, and after what she’d been through with the Russians — repeatedly raped by a Red Army foursome for three days and nights — Russell could only admire her for that.
Sunday the rain had come down, and they’d tiptoed around each other in the crowded flat, waiting for the weekend to end.
At least today was fine, and the long walk into town could be enjoyed for more than the saving of the bus fare. It took him half an hour to reach the Corner House opposite Tottenham Court Road tube station, where he had
