Peculiar Ground. Lucy Hughes-Hallett

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СКАЧАТЬ in Berlin as commander of all Soviet forces in Germany period

      In May comma 1945 comma Konev led the Red Army in the Battle of Berlin period

      It has been reported that his Cossack troops butchered an entire defeated German division comma using their sabres to cut off arms raised in surrender period

      Konev’s appointment signals a hardening of the Soviet line on German affairs period

      At a factory in East Berlin yesterday comma East German Chancellor Ulbricht was heckled by a worker calling for free elections period

      Ulbricht responded by saying free elections had brought the Nazis to power period

      Quote Whoever supports free elections supports Hitler’s generals exclamation mark close quote

      New paragraph

      West Berlin continues to be inundated with refugees from the East period

      The twenty-nine camps set up to receive them are all now full period Twenty-one aeroplanes comma chartered for the purpose comma took off from Berlin today loaded with refugees en route to cities in the West period

      An official said today quote if it goes on like this comma East Berlin will be a ghost town close quote period

      The copy-taker said to his neighbour on the desk, ‘I was in Berlin in ’49 – national service – what a dog’s dinner!’ and passed the typed-up report with its four carbons to the runner, who carried it to the night editor on the foreign desk, who took it to the editor, who said, ‘Has Nick seen this?’

      ‘I’ll be reading it to him.’

      ‘This Konev. What do we know?’

      ‘A very big potato. Just setting him out on the board is aggressive.’

      The editor was known to love chess. It irritated him the way his subordinates played up to him by using board-game terminology.

      ‘So the Soviets are huffing and puffing.’

      ‘Mmm. Shall I call Nick back in?’

      ‘Where the hell is he?’

      ‘Some fancy-pants weekend in the country.’

      ‘Leave him there for now. As long as you’ve got the number.’

      That evening, a few miles east of Berlin, domestic staff at the House of the Birches, which had once been Hermann Goering’s hunting lodge, were preparing to entertain. East German premier Walter Ulbricht had invited most of his senior officials and their wives to visit him there at four o’clock the following afternoon. It was hot. A lovely weekend for a garden party.

      *

      When Christopher sloped off, Nicholas put in an appearance in the drawing room, drank coffee and bustled about flirting so no one could say he wasn’t doing his bit socially. Then he slipped away too and set up camp in what passed in that house for a cosy study. Linen-fold panelling, a ceiling dripping plaster stalactites. The room had been deprived of one of its walls around the time of the Glorious Revolution, and now formed an L with the pilastered drawing room where Christopher and Lil hung the paintings of which they were properly proud.

      He accepted a whisky and soda when Underhill appeared like a well-disciplined genie, drew the curtain across the joint of the L, and settled down in a tapestried chair beneath an upside-down pendent obelisk to try to make sense of the reports that had come in that day. Ted had rung about the Konev story. He’d heard Reuters’ man in Berlin had a hunch that the East Germans were going to do something very soon, but what it was he couldn’t guess. Not exactly what you’d call hard news.

      Nicholas began to scribble out a think-piece on the limits of totalitarianism. Khrushchev being as much at the mercy of his party as Kennedy was at the mercy of the American electorate, both of them having to act tough for their respective constituencies, both of them probably clever enough to know it was a charade, the perils into which that play-acting might drag all Europe, de da de da de da de da.

      Voices. Antony was showing young Flossie the pictures. The obstreperous Benjie had tagged along.

      Flossie – ‘Gosh! Is it a Cimabue?’

      ‘Yes it is.’

      Privately, as Nicholas knew, Antony had his doubts, but he was a loyal friend and a discreet dealer. So yes it unequivocally was.

      ‘Looks lonely. Is that a bit of his friend on the right?’ Benjie getting in on the conversation.

      ‘Yes, it appears to be a fragment from the right wing of an altarpiece. See how it is hinged here. There would have been another two or three angels, a heavenly chamber group.’

      ‘The hands are so . . .’

      The hands, indeed, were ineffable.

      ‘Girly? Or perhaps he is a girl. Or a fag. Look how he’s leaning into the other’s shoulder.’

      Was Benjie an ass, thought Nicholas, or was he just pretending to be one? Nicholas had met Helen when she came into the office with her copy – she reviewed for the arts pages occasionally. And they’d talked, and one day they’d had lunch together, and another day they’d walked along the river east from Fleet Street past the Tower and he’d shown her one of his favourite places in London, Wapping Pierhead, where the tall Georgian houses run down to the river’s edge and even the pavements still seem to reek of the cloves and nutmegs that made their first owners rich, and he thought she was beautiful in a steely-cool Celtic kind of way. Her eyes were as pale as gooseberries. There followed some very, very private afternoons in his flat. This was the first opportunity he’d had to observe her husband.

      He stepped out from behind his arras. He wasn’t going to get any more work done with them prattling on the other side.

      Antony was saying, ‘Either or neither. Angels, being insubstantial, are spared the indignities of sex.’

      Benjie poured himself whisky and drifted about the room. He was looking at Flossie as much as at the paintings. Polite girl that she was, she kept making little nods and mmms. There’s nothing harder to sustain than an appearance of interest, even when it’s genuine. She was beginning to look a bit strained when Benjie called her over to see Christopher’s chess-set. Booty of the Raj. Ivory and ebony, laid out on a great scagliola table.

      ‘Do you play? I’ll give you a game.’

      A murmur that was like a verbal blush. Was this rude to Antony? How to reconcile the demands of all these different grown-ups? She had put on a dramatic dress for dinner, low cut, and made of bands of stiff papery silk in clashing bright colours, but for all that, and despite her lacquered hair, she was still a child. ‘All right. You’ll easily beat me.’

      ‘So I hope.’

      Simple words, but uttered as though they had a salacious double meaning. If Benjie wasn’t an ass, he was certainly a bit of a lecher.

      The others left them to it, and went out onto the terrace where Lil and Helen were sitting. Nicholas and Lil dropped into the banter СКАЧАТЬ