The Beaufort Sisters. Jon Cleary

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СКАЧАТЬ It may tell you, one way or the other, whether his intentions are honourable or not.’

      But she didn’t tell Tim, at least not for a couple of months. They met each weekend in villages and towns between Frankfurt and Hamburg, finding accommodation in inns and small hotels that had not been requisitioned by the Military Government. By the time she found she was pregnant he had told her he loved her and she believed him. Or wanted to.

      They were in a village on the border of the American and British zones. From the inn they could see the white empty fields stretching away under the grey sky; the dark green river appeared unmoving as it curved below the village. Beyond the river a small copse looked like stacked firewood, black and leafless; two blackbirds sat motionless on a fence, like ebony ornaments. It seemed to Nina that all the seasons had stopped forever in an eternal winter. Despite the fire in the grate in their bedroom she felt cold, colder and more miserable than she had ever felt in her life before.

      ‘I didn’t expect you to be pleased. But I hoped you’d – understand. At least that.’

      He stood beside her at the window, but not touching her. From the side of the inn came shouts and laughter as some children fought their own war with snowballs.

      ‘I do understand – if that’s the word you want. I’m not an utter bastard, darling. And I’d be pleased, too – in other circumstances.’

      ‘What other circumstances?’

      ‘Why didn’t you tell me your family is rich? Really rich?’

      ‘Who told you?’ she demanded.

      ‘Simmer down. Wasn’t I supposed to know? Rudi Schnatz told me – evidently he made his contacts in the American zone after all. I suppose my English insularity is to blame – if I were really educated I should have known that you are right up there with Barbara Hutton and that other American heiress – Dorothy Duke? Doris Duke. But I’m not educated. I obviously took the wrong subjects at Cambridge.’

      ‘Oh, for God’s sake stop it! None of that’s important – ’

      ‘You thought it was or you would have told me. Were you afraid I’d fall in love with your money instead of you? You didn’t trust me, that’s the important point.’

      She knew he was right. But she was too worried and upset to make concessions; unaccustomed to crises, she reacted selfishly. ‘What are we going to do then? I’m not going to have an abortion.’

      ‘Well, that leaves only one alternative, doesn’t it?’ He sounded disappointed that she had vetoed an abortion; or perhaps her angry and frightened ear only made him sound that way. ‘We’ll have to get married.’

      ‘Have to? Good God!’

      The children had given up their snowball fight and gone elsewhere. The inn was suddenly quiet, listening. She bit her knuckles, stifling any further outburst. Ladies never made a show of themselves: her mother stood invisible in the corner of the room, telling her how to behave. But her mother would never have got herself into this situation and there was no knowing how she would have reacted if she had. All the decorum Nina had been taught in Kansas City meant nothing in a cold room in an inn in faraway Germany.

      ‘I think we’d better spend the rest of the weekend talking this over. I’m sorry I got you into this, darling. Really.’ He moved to take her in his arms, but she pulled away.

      ‘No, I want time to think. Don’t touch me – please. I can’t stay the weekend – Colonel Shasta wants me back in Frankfurt tonight. They are expecting trouble from the GI’s – there’s a lot of talk about demonstrations. They want to go home. Colonel Shasta wants us all off the streets, just in case.’

      ‘Do you want to go home, too?’

      Suddenly she did want to go home. She felt miserable, frightened and selfish; the poor of the world would have to wait. Unconsciously she put a hand on her belly, as if the baby were already apparent. ‘I’ll have to. I don’t think UNRRA would want this sort of bundle for Europe.’

      ‘Stop that sort of talk! Cheapening yourself isn’t going to help.’

      She did up her camel hair coat, pulled on her gloves. ‘We can’t talk to each other in this mood.’

      ‘I’d better see you back to Frankfurt.’

      ‘I’ll be all right. I’m not the helpless little mother just yet. I’ll call you during the week, when I’ve thought some more. No, don’t kiss me – ’ She was close to tears: to have him kiss her would be like turning a key in a dam.

      ‘I’ll marry you,’ he said quickly. ‘Despite your family.’

      He had made a mistake in adding the last sentence. She shook her head, realizing how much she belonged to those back home. She hadn’t escaped by coming to Germany: she needed now, possibly always would, the security in which she had been brought up.

      ‘I’m part of our family and they’re part of me. That’s something we’d have to understand right from the beginning. They won’t be against you – why should you be against them?’

      He sighed. ‘I wasn’t drawing battle lines. But if we marry, I’m marrying you, not them. I’d say the same whether they were rich or poor. I’ll ring tonight to see if you got back all right.’

      Driving back to Frankfurt in the jeep Colonel Shasta had lent her, Nina was only half-aware of the traffic. She did not see the US Army truck that stayed behind her all the way from the village north of Kassel right through to the outskirts of Frankfurt. As she came into the city she had to slow; traffic had thickened and after a few blocks came to a halt. She leaned out of the jeep and up ahead caught glimpses of soldiers spread out in a thick human barricade across the road. She could hear chanting, loud and angry: she had never thought the word Home could have any threat to it. At once she felt frightened and looked about for a way to get out of the traffic jam. She was not normally nervous and she wondered if approaching motherhood made one so; then she ridiculed the thought, laughing at herself. The row with Tim had just upset her, all she really wanted was to get back to her billet and burst into tears.

      ‘We’ll get you out of this, Miss Beaufort.’ The GI, earflaps of his cap pulled down, thick woollen scarf wrapped round the lower half of his face so that his voice was muffled, had come up quietly beside the jeep. ‘It looks pretty ugly up ahead. Just back up and follow us.’

      She wondered who the soldier was, that he knew her name. Probably someone she had met on one of her visits to a military office; it was impossible to recognize him behind the scarf and earflaps. She put the jeep into reverse and followed the army truck as it backed up and swung into a side street. The sound of the chanting demonstrators was drowned now by truck horns being punched to the rhythm of the chant. Then a shot rang out and the blaring horns and chanting suddenly stopped. A moment later there were angry shouts and the sound of breaking glass. In a moment of imagination she wondered if she was hearing echoes of the Thirties: had the streets of Frankfurt clamoured like this when the SS had been rounding up the Jews? Street lights came on in the gloomy afternoon and the scene all at once became theatrical, a little unreal, a grey newsreel from the past. But the angry, yelling soldiers streaming down through the stalled traffic were real enough, frighteningly so.

      She looked back and saw the GI gesticulating to her from the back of the army truck, which СКАЧАТЬ