Sam Bourne - The Final Reckoning

‘Do you remember when you last saw him?’

‘My mother won't like me talking to a girl like you, you know. She's warned me not to talk to girls like you. From across the river.’

Tom could feel Rebecca tensing. She reached out and placed a hand on Steiner's sleeve, a gesture which exposed how withered his arms had become. With a shudder, Tom thought of the skin that was concealed inside that too-large sleeve and, on it, the number etched in purple.

‘Can you tell me anything Gershon said to you recently? Did he come and visit you here?’

‘Now, did you get married in the end? Or wouldn't he have you?’

‘Who?’

‘What did you say?’

At that moment, Brenda pushed her way through the double doors, back first, holding a tray of tea. She must have caught Rebecca's expression, because she gave a small nod of recognition, as if to say: this is what I meant. Dementia.

‘It's teatime, Sidney.’

‘What time is it?’

‘Teatime.’

‘What's that?’ He was pointing at the tray.

‘That's a cup.’

‘I know that's a cup. What's that?’

‘Guess.’

The old man scrunched up his eyes, a child's caricature of concentration. Eventually, he opened them again and said three words which made Tom's eyes prick. ‘I can't remember.’

‘That's milk, Sidney. That's a jug of milk.’

Rebecca got to her feet and spoke quietly, almost inaudibly, to Brenda. ‘I'm sorry to have taken your time, Mrs Jacobs. But I don't think this is going to work. We made a mistake, I'm sorry.’

‘What is it you need him to remember?’

Rebecca looked over at Tom, with a question in her eyes: how much can we say?

‘We need him to remember something from long ago,’ said Tom, pulling an answer out of the air. ‘Maybe fifty or sixty years ago.’

Brenda smiled. ‘You should have said. Now come with me.’

They passed through a door set with patterned glass, the way front doors used to look. Next to it was a brass plate: The Y Dove Reminiscence Room. The space had been divided into two areas. The first was wood-floored and done up like a hallway with a hat-stand and a sideboard cluttered with objects: a portable, wind-up gramophone; a Philips wireless; a Frister & Rossman sewing machine and a heavy, black mechanical cash register, the buttons marking amounts in shillings and old pence. Opposite was a small kitchen area, including a big square sink, a washboard and a stack of battered enamel saucepans.

Sitting on the counter was a biscuit tin decorated with the face of George VI, Queen Elizabeth and the two princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret. Above it, a shelf laden with products not seen for decades: Flor Brite Mop Furniture Polish, Lipton's No.1 Quality Tea and Victory Lozenges.

The main part of the room boasted a floral carpet the like of which Tom had not seen since childhood visits to his grandparents in Wakefield. There was a fireplace, its surround made up of beige ceramic tiles, and on a sidetable a heavy, black Bakelite telephone. On the wall was a framed poster showing a strapping woman striding across a meadow with a pitchfork in her hand: ‘Come and help with the Victory Harvest’. A strapline at the foot of the poster read, ‘You are needed in the fields’. Beneath it, Sid Steiner sat in a big armchair.

This was the place residents with dementia came for sessions aimed at giving their ravaged memories a workout. Because, while short-term memory was the first casualty, the experiences of long ago tended to be forgotten last, with recollections of childhood clinging on until the very end. People who could not find the word for ‘cup’ or ‘jug’, who could not recognize their own children, could come in here and, at last, remember.

Rebecca cleared her throat. ‘So Sid, when did you come to this country?’

Brenda shook her head. ‘Try to avoid factual questions, dates, that kind of thing,’ she whispered. ‘It can be stressful for them. Use the objects in the room, try to get him talking.’

Tom looked around and grabbed a packet of Park Drive cigarettes. He passed it to Rebecca who put it in Steiner's hands.

‘Do you smoke, Sid?’

‘We all do.’

‘Do you like smoking?’

‘It's warm.’

‘Did you ever smoke these, Sid?’

He looked down, turned the packet over a couple of times, then shook his head. ‘It's not easy to get cigarettes. Besides, when you get them, you don't smoke them. You use them. Don't you know that? Didn't they teach you anything in Warsaw?’

Rebecca leaned forward; it was the most coherent sentence they had yet heard from Sid Steiner. ‘What do you buy with them?’

‘Anything. To get in, to get out, to get past a guard. Cigarettes or jewels, it makes no difference.’

Neither Tom nor Rebecca knew where or when in his memory Sid had landed. Was it whichever ghetto he had been locked up in, or perhaps a camp; or was it the occupation zone of 1945, scene of DIN's first hunting season?

‘What about this?’ Hung up on a wall, among a display of documents and photographs, was the jacket from a British army uniform. Rebecca passed it to him.

‘Not bad.’ He assessed the three stripes on the upper arm. ‘Sergeant. That could be useful. What we need are MPs. If you can get me one of those, we can use it.’

Tom squeezed Rebecca's wrist in excitement: MPs were military police. This fitted precisely with the testimony Henry Goldman had given them, that MPs uniforms were the ones DIN prized most.

‘Use it for what, Sid?’

‘I'm not going to tell you that. If you're meant to know, you know already. If you don't know then you're not meant to know.’ Tom smiled: it was a smart answer.

‘Did you work with Gershon in DIN?’

‘You some kind of spy? I don't answer questions like that.’

‘I'm with Gershon.’

‘He's too young for a girl like you. He's only a boy.’

It must be 1945. Sid Steiner must have transported himself back to Allied-occupied Germany, probably the British zone. Maybe the uniform had done it. Tom looked around for another prop, something that might trigger a useful memory. In a glass case was a shoe-brush and, next to it, a Ministry of War Book of Air-Raid Precautions. That was no good; too British. He scanned the walls and shelves, desperate for anything that might light a spark.

Then Sid spoke unprompted. ‘I know how to use that.’ He was pointing at one of the display cabinets. Rebecca stood up, trying to follow the line of the old man's crooked finger.

‘This?’ She held up a tin of National Dried Milk issued by the Ministry of Food.

‘No! Not that, that!’ He aimed his finger leftward, until it rested on a rolling pin. Tom sighed: and just when we were getting somewhere.

Rebecca returned to her seat, her posture now deflated. They were heading back into la-la land.

‘What did you use it for, Sid?’ It was Brenda. She had pulled the rolling pin from its case and was handing it over.

‘Well, I had to train as a baker, didn't I? If the plan was going to work.’

Rebecca leaned forward once more. ‘What plan, Sid?’

‘Ask Gershon, he'll tell you. He trained too. We both did. Kneading the dough, glazing the cakes. I was very good at doughnuts. Bread was hard, though.’

‘And this was so that you could implement the plan?’

‘Of course.’

‘What's the name of the plan?’

‘Plan B.’

‘B for Bakery?’

‘No. Wrong again.’

‘Did Plan B work?’

‘It made the papers you know. New York flipping Times. Nuremberg, April 1946. But we could have done more.’

‘What was the plan?’ ‘Everyone needs bread, no?’ ‘You were making bread. Who for?’ ‘You may be pretty, but Gershon's picked himself a bit of a dunce if you don't mind my saying so. Who do you think it was for?’