A Small Person Far Away. Judith Kerr

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      His arms were round her. “I’m here.”

      “I know.”

      In the glow from the street lamp outside the window, she could just see his face, tired and concerned.

      “It’s such an awful dream,” she said. “Why do you suppose I have it? It’s like being caught in some awful shift of time and not being able to get back.”

      “Maybe some trick of the brain. You know – one lobe remembering and the other not picking it up till a fraction of a second later. Like déjà vu, only the other way round.”

      It did not comfort her.

      “Suppose one got stuck.”

      “You couldn’t get stuck.”

      “But if I did. If I really couldn’t remember you. Or if I got stuck even earlier, before I’d learned to speak English. We wouldn’t even be able to talk to each other.”

      “Yes, well,” he said, “in that case we’d have other problems as well. You’d be about eleven years old.”

      At this she laughed and the dream, already fading, receded into harmlessness. She could feel herself aching from lack of sleep and remembered clearly, for the first time, about the previous day.

      “Oh God,” she said. “Mama.”

      His arms tightened about her. “I suppose all this worry has stirred up things you’d almost forgotten. About losing people – people and places – when you were small.”

      “Poor Mama. She was awfully good then, you know.”

      “I know.”

      “I wish to God I’d written to her.” Through the gap between the curtains the sky looked black. “What time is it?”

      “Only six o’clock.” She could see him peering at her anxiously in the darkness. “I’m sure it would have made no difference whether you’d written or not. There must have been quite other reasons. She must have been worried about something, or terribly upset.”

      “D’you think so?” She wanted to believe him.

      “And then, maybe, she thought of your father – how he had died – and she thought, why shouldn’t she do the same?”

      No, it wasn’t right.

      “Papa was different,” she said. “He was old, and he’d had two strokes. Whereas Mama… Oh God,” she said, “I suppose some people have parents who die naturally.” She stared into the darkness. “The trouble is, you see, I don’t suppose Max has written either, or if he did, the letter may not have got there from Greece.”

      “It still wouldn’t be a reason to commit suicide.”

      Outside in the street there was a clinking of bottles followed by a clip-clop of the milkman’s horse as it walked on to the next house. A car started up in the distance.

      “We were all so close, you see, all those years,” she said. “We couldn’t help it, moving from country to country with everything against us. Mama used to say, if it weren’t for Max and me, it wouldn’t be worth going on – and she did get us through, she kept the family together.”

      “I know.”

      “I wish I’d written to her,” she said.

      Richard came with her on the bus to the airport. They said goodbye in the echoing lounge which smelled of paint and she left him, calmly, as she had planned.

      But then, quite suddenly, as she pulled out her passport ready for inspection, despair swept over her. To her horror, she found tears pouring down her face, soaking her cheeks, her neck and even the collar of her blouse. She could not move but only stood there blindly, waiting for him to catch up with her.

      “What is it?” he cried, but she didn’t know either.

      “I’m all right,” she said. “I really am.” She was horrified at having frightened him so. “It’s not having slept,” she said. “And I’m getting the curse. You know I always weep when I’m getting the curse.”

      Her voice came out quite loud, and a man in a bowler hat turned and looked at her in surprise.

      “I could still come with you,” said Richard. “I could get a flight later today or tomorrow.”

      “No, no, of course not. I’m really all right.” She kissed him. Then she took her passport and ran. “I’ll write to you,” she shouted back to him.

      She knew it was stupid, but she felt that she was leaving him for ever.

      Once on the plane, she felt better.

      She had only flown twice before and still found it exciting to look down on a world of toy-sized fields and houses and tiny, crawling cars. It was a relief to be out of it all and to know that Berlin was still some hours away. She looked out of the window and thought only of what she could see. Then halfway across the North Sea, clouds appeared, and soon there was only a blanket of grey below and bright, empty sky above. She leaned back in her seat and thought about Mama.

      It was curious, she thought. Whichever way one imagined Mama, it was always in movement: the blue eyes frowning, the lips talking, Mama clenching her hands with impatience, tugging her dress into place, dabbing violently at her tiny snub nose with a powder puff. She did not trust anything connected with herself to function properly unless she kept tabs on it, and even then she always felt it could be improved.

      Anna remembered how, during one of her visits from Germany, Mama had once brought Konrad round to her digs for lunch. Anna had cooked the only dish she knew, which was a large quantity of rice mixed with whatever happened to be on hand. On this occasion the ingredients had included some chopped-up sausages, and Konrad had said, politely, how nice they were. At once Mama had said, “I’ll find you some more,” and to Anna’s irritation she had snatched up the bowl and rootled through it, to toss a succession of small sausage pieces on to his plate.

      How could anybody so obsessed with the minutiae of every day suddenly want to stop living? Not that Mama hadn’t often talked about it. But that was in the last years in Putney when she and Papa had been so utterly wretched, and even then it had not seemed like anything to be taken seriously. Her cries of “I wish I was dead!” and “Why should I go on?” had been so frequent that both Anna and Papa had soon learned to ignore them.

      And the moment things improved, the moment the endless worry about money was lifted from her, her enthusiasm for life had returned – both Anna and Papa had been surprised how quickly. She had written long excited letters home from Germany. She had gone everywhere and looked at everything. She had translated so well for the Americans in the Control Commission that she had soon been promoted – from Frankfurt to Munich, from Munich to Nuremberg. She had wangled lifts home on American troop planes to arrive with presents for everyone – American whisky for Papa, nylon stockings for Anna, real silk ties for Max. And she had been thrilled when at last the British Control Commission had decided that Papa, too, should make an official trip to Germany.

      Hamburg, thought Anna. Did the flight to Berlin pass over it? She peered down СКАЧАТЬ