Gerald Seymour - The Waiting Time

‘Will you settle up?’

‘Why?’

‘I’m going.’

‘Going where?’

‘I’m going to sort the car.’

‘What’s the matter with the car?’

The police had brought them back, taken them on through Rostock to Warnemunde. They had sat in the back seat and not spoken to the two gloomy-faced, silent men. She had held his hand, he had allowed her to and she had snuggled close to him in the darkness. They had been dropped without comment beside their car, but they had felt the hostility. The police had driven away and Tracy had given their tail-lights a finger. The hire car was now in the hotel forecourt, next to the tourist coach from Bremen, and his grip bag and her rucksack were on the back seat.

‘What needs doing to the car?’

‘Will you settle up, please? I’ll be about half an hour.’

‘What the hell, Josh? What needs doing with the car?’

He peeled banknotes from his wallet, counted them, dropped them in front of her.

‘I’ll come back for you.’

The confusion had passed, replaced by annoyance. ‘I want to dance.’

‘Then dance.’

‘Dance with you.’

‘You’ll have to dance on your own,’ Josh said.

He walked towards the restaurant’s push doors. He heard the scrape of her chair behind him. He felt old, he was so tired. He turned at the door and looked back. His banknotes were abandoned on the table beside the bucket with the upturned bottle. She stood, the urchin waif, in the centre of the dance floor, alone. Quiet conversations, from the tables, murmured around her. Her head bobbed with the rhythm of the band’s music. She used her hands, gestured, for the tempo of the music to be stepped. She danced. He saw the grace and the gentle movement of her.

Josh went out of the hotel.

It was a crisp, chilled night. There was a small moon and many stars. He went past the tourist coach and the hire car, towards the taxi rank down Lange Strasse. He walked slowly and without spirit. He felt a bleak sadness. He had no hatred. If he had hated it would have been easier. He walked to the head of the taxi queue and dropped down onto the back seat of the lead taxi.

‘Could you take me, please, to the middle of the Sudstadt? Thank you.’

The driver turned, nodded, started the taxi. Josh remembered him, had seen him on the breakwater. He rode in a yellow Mercedes taxi with a white flash down the length of it, and he remembered the vehicle coming bumping on the track from the farm at Starkow. There had been light on his face from the street lamp when the driver had turned. Ahead were the dull-lit tower blocks of the Sudstadt, The driver spoke, a faraway voice, and his head never twisted from the road ahead. ‘Did you win?’

Josh said, ‘I don’t know if anybody won.’

‘Did you take Doktor Krause?’

‘He is arrested, he is accused of murder.’

‘You found evidence?’

‘We took the statement of Willi Muller. He was the boy who sailed the trawler out onto the Salzhaff. He was an eye-witness to murder.’

‘Then you won?’

Josh said, ‘I have to believe there’s something worth winning. I don’t know if I’ve won, will win.’

‘You came from England. You turned over the ground and exposed what was buried. The past was buried, a long time ago was covered. Why was it important to turn over the ground?’

Josh said, heavy, ‘It was a matter of principle. I have to believe it is always worth winning on a matter of principle.’

‘I don’t understand you.’

‘I don’t ask you to.’

The taxi stopped. The tower blocks climbed gaunt above them. Josh paid the driver. He walked away from the taxi and into the shadows of the buildings. He stood among the lines of cars parked under the height of the buildings.

The point was lost.

Her daughter looked up, into the stand, at the empty seat.

Eva Krause wore the old clothes that could not be taken from her. She wore no jewellery, because they could take the necklaces and bracelets and rings from her.

She felt the finger on her back. She turned. Two policemen were standing in the row of seats behind her. The one who had touched her back beckoned for her to follow. She lifted up her old coat and her old bag. Their faces were unforgiving. She edged along the row, away from the empty seats. She knew that her husband had been taken from her.

She climbed the aisle steps to where the policemen waited for her. She turned to look a last time at the floodlit court below. The opponent waited to serve. Christina was staring up at the empty seats. Her gaze raked the stand. Her eyes found her mother at the top of the aisle steps, and the policemen. Quite deliberately, she put her foot on the face of the racquet, ripped away the strings and walked towards the chair and her bag.

Eva Krause followed the policemen. She did not know of anything more that could be taken from her.

He heard her voice, singing.

He stood outside the restaurant’s curtained glass door. The band played and she sang. He heard the soft beauty of her voice.

He pushed open the door and went inside. All of them, from the coach party and the couples and the lone businessmen, were rising to their feet and pushing back their chairs, standing, applauding. It was her moment. She seemed so small and so young, and she curtsied low to her audience. A man, out of the coach party from Bremen, snatched a red carnation bloom from the vase on his table and hurried to her. The clapping boomed around Josh. She kissed the man’s cheek. She shook the hands of each of the members of the band, she had captivated them, she waved to the stamping, cheering audience. She skipped towards Josh, between the tables, the child with happiness found. He held the door for her. A last time, she waved. It closed behind her. The applause rippled, muffled, through the door. She reached for his hand but he walked ahead of her.

He walked into the night, into the cold.

She hung back. She would have gone to the coach, to where the hire car was parked. He called her. He went on and into the deep darkness at the extremity of the forecourt. She ran to him.

‘What the hell’s this?’

She would have seen the shadow outline of the Trabant, two-door, small and angled, the little car from the past.

Josh said, ‘Always wanted to drive one – won’t have the chance again.’

Astonished. ‘You nicked it?’

‘Borrowed it – let’s keep some politeness. I went down to the Sudstndt, thought I’d find one there.’

‘You actually stole it – you, Josh, honest and upright Josh! Bloody hell!’

‘Took a loan of it.’

She giggled. ‘It’ll shake your bum off.’

Josh said, ‘It’s what you drove back to Berlin that night, after you drove back Hans Becker’s parents’ Trabant, after… It seemed right. It seemed right for the end.’

He didn’t think she heard him. Her giggle tinkled close to him. She took his hand, kissed his fingers. The applause would still be in her ears. She put the stem of the carnation bloom in her mouth and dragged open the passenger door. His grip bag and her rucksack were behind her. He reached forward, fiddled the wiring and the engine coughed to life. The smell of the fuel engulfed them.

She patted his arm. Her head was back. The laughter shrieked. ‘Josh, for God’s sake, good old Josh, car thief, joyrider! Josh, where did you learn to wire up a car? Christ, where did you learn how to get into a bloody locked car?’

‘Has to be an upside from working with toe-rags, have to learn something from them…’

‘I don’t believe it.’

‘I work with kids who have honours degrees in borrowing cars, something has to rub off. Just sit back, enjoy the ride.’

It was the pride of the past. The seat was harder than any he had known, the engine noisier. The body of the Trabant shook. He looked at his watch, four minutes before midnight. He drove away from the hotel. It was easiest to go on August-Bebel Strasse. The great building was dark. From August-Bebel Strasse it was a straight run to the Rostock Sud intersection for the autobahn. He had filled the tank. It would be a good drive to Berlin, he told her, smooth, and she grinned and tossed her carnation bloom behind her.