nostalgia. There was rather more to it. It was a matter of proof.
Gerald’s a rather fussy man and, like you, wanted everything to be
conclusive. And DNA testing’s a marvel. You left us plenty of sam-
ples in the house while you lived here and it was simply a matter of sending them off to a lab together with the hair from the locket and waiting for the results. I rather think you’ve caught up with me now, more or less.’
4
‘It was a long time ago, Betty,’ he says wearily. ‘What should I call you? Betty or Lili?’
‘Elisabeth is my given name. I prefer it spelled and pronounced
the German way. One of my idiosyncrasies.’
‘But . . .’
‘They’re just diminutives of the same name. Tut- tut. Keep up.
Still, here we are. Yes, it’s been a long time. I’m not quite sure what that’s meant to signify. The distance of time doesn’t seem to me to erase the facts.’
‘Why I’m in the skin of Roy Courtnay is complicated.’
‘Actually, to be precise, you’re not in the skin of Roy Courtnay,’
she interrupts. ‘Rather the reverse.’
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‘I stand corrected. So exact. Originally it was a series of misun-
derstandings. Roy died a horrible death and I was badly injured. I
was unconscious and the Russians were in a rush to get us back to
the British sector. They confused the two of us and it snowballed
from there. It got out of control.’
She looks at him sceptically.
‘I took advantage, I’ll freely admit. But I had little choice. I was only a translator. I had no guarantee of employment. I’d have had
no military pension.’
‘Your English must have been good, even back then. It was quite
a chance you were taking.’
‘I’d spent four years in England, three of them at school. I’m
good at languages. You know me. I’ll chance my arm at anything. It
was a calculated risk.’
‘You didn’t even think of Roy’s family.’
‘Well, no. You forget, Lili, those were tough times . . .’
‘I don’t forget, Hans.’
‘No. Of course not. You know all too well. You know what it is to
have to survive. That’s all I was doing. Surviving. And nothing was going to bring Captain Courtnay back. Lili, I’m so glad you came
through. I always hoped you would.’
She regards him steadily. ‘I really would prefer you to call me
Elisabeth. Or should I call you Hansi?’
He looks down at his clasped hands. ‘It was an insane time. The
world went mad for a few years. But your family’s incarceration had little to do with me. The Gestapo pressured me. They put words
into my mouth.’
‘That’s not quite what the record indicates. The East Germans
had pretty comprehensive records.’
‘They tricked me, Elisabeth. You have to believe that.’
‘Do I really?’ she asks. ‘And what do I have to believe about what
you did to me?’
‘When?’
‘When you assaulted me.’
‘Assaulted you?’
‘Shall I be more specific? In my bedroom the night of the
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Christmas party. When your father was talking with mine. When
you probed me with your brutish fingers. When you showed me
how inhumane human beings can be. Perhaps I should have been
grateful for the insight into inhumanity. It came in handy.’
‘I don’t recall any of it. You’re imagining –’
‘What? That it happened? That it was you?’
She speaks evenly and he listens without comment. He raises his
eyelids for a flash of a contemptuous look towards her, but he can-
not sustain her gaze.
‘It’s funny. The most vivid memory is of you sniffing your fingers
afterwards. You seemed so casually disappointed by the whole
He draws a breath. ‘What is it you want, then?’
‘You wish to cut to the chase. There’s always a deal to be cut. So
let’s get to the nub of it and work out the details.’
‘Well then?’ He raises the courage to look at her. ‘What do you
want?’
‘It’s a very good question. But let me ask you: did you ever
imagine the consequences of what you did?’
‘Not fully. I suppose I understood your parents would be in some
kind of trouble.’
‘Hmm. Why did you do it, then? Had I so disappointed you by
not responding to you in the way you desired?’
‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘Your sisters were unpleasant to me. I was upset. My father was such a fool. I was angry with him. My parents
were idiots. I saw them being imprisoned and dragging me down
with them. This was a way of solving that problem, temporarily at
least.’
‘And solving the problem of the happy, prosperous Schröders too.’
‘I don’t know.’ He shrugs his shoulders, the sullen fourteen- year-old again.
‘What made you make those allegations? Just petty spite?’
‘Our fathers were talking about sabotaging the war effort.’
‘And our so- called Jewish heritage?’
‘I thought it was more or less what the Gestapo man wanted to
hear. It was a means of getting where I needed to be.’
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‘It was a lie. We weren’t a Jewish family.’
He looks at her and says, ‘I didn’t know whether or not there was
Jewish blood in your family. I suppose I shouldn’t have done it. It was just . . . necessary. He insisted I say it.’
‘That’s not the point. Whether or not we were Jewish. I’d be
happy to be thought of as Jewish, even though I’m not. I’m proud
to be associated with that suffering. I feel proud of this.’ Since moving to Britain she has been careful to wear long- sleeved clothes, and especially so since living in the same house as him, but now she
pulls up her sleeve and thrusts her forearm towards him, showing
the number with the triangle. He is expressionless. ‘The point is
that your saying anything at all was wrong. It made no difference
whether or not we were Jews. Whatever excuses you may prepare
about your immaturity, you were responsible for what you said.’
He looks at her as if he cannot comprehend what she has said. ‘It
wouldn’t have made any difference if I’d said nothing.’
‘But you didn’t say nothing.’
‘Your father and my father were conspiring against the state. I
told no lies about that.’
‘They were conspiring against evil. You chose to conspire
with it.’
‘I was fourteen years old, for God’s sake. How was I to calculate
all these things?’
Just for a few moments neither of them speaks. It seems that
Elisabeth is spent. But she finds her voice again.
‘I’m curious. You don’t feel guilt?’
‘About what?’
‘Any of it. Me, my family. Your parents. Roy Courtnay. Bob
Mannion.’
‘Guilt. That’s a very difficult emotion. No.’
‘No. You don’t, do you?’
‘It was . . .’
‘Expedient?’
‘That’s rather harsh. It was what I had to do. I had no options. Or I thought I didn’t. I had to do it to survive. You know all about that.’
‘And afterwards?’
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‘Afterwards. Then it was in the past. It couldn’t be undone. I
hadn’t made any of it happen. I had just . . . I had just . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘Taken the opportunities that presented themselves. That’s not
so terrible, is it?’
‘And now?’
‘I’m an old man. What’s done is done. I can’t put things right.
What point would there have been in torturing myself with guilt?’
‘I didn’t realize that to feel guilt was an elective decision.’
‘What is it you want from me? Money? I don’t understand.’
She is calmer now, calibrating her voice to a lower pitch and speaking with deliberation. ‘I know. You fail to understand a great deal.
You fail to understand that I may not want anything at all from you.
That there may be no bargain to be struck. There may be no price to pay. I’ve had a change of plan too. Let me tell you something.’
He looks at her but does not speak.
‘When my husband died, I was lost. I’ve no way of judging
whether I was more desolate than any other widow who’s just lost
her husband, but in my mind I went straight back to the end of the
war. You might imagine that liberation was a happy moment, but it
gave me a sense of my fragility and impermanence. An empty vista
of fear. When Alasdair died I had the same fear. I had to discover
meaning. I wasn’t about to find it in religion – I think we can both agree on that. So it had to be something else. Finally I thought I’d found it. The search for the truth, and a reckoning of sorts.’
‘Which is why we’re here,’ he says quietly.
‘Yes. Quite comical in a way,’ she says, ‘two ancient turkeys, their necks creased and wobbling, jabbering away about things that are
all but forgotten. The lessons at least. Scratching for meaning. It rather underlines our irrelevance, wouldn’t you say?’
His eyes flare. ‘I suppose so.’
‘Where were we? Yes, what do I want? It rather evolved, I should
say, as we began to make headway. First of all I simply wanted to
know, then we discovered more or less the truth of that. We knew
it had been you, Hans, and no one else. The challenge then was to
follow your trail. You’re an elusive man.’
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He musters a wry smile and says, ‘Story of my life.’
‘Indeed,’ she says sardonically. ‘It wasn’t so difficult. I won’t take you through it all. But I think we managed to cover most of your
escapades and scrapes. Do you have any mock modesty to dis-
play now?’
He shakes his head.
‘I thought not. Our little search obtained a life of its own as it
gathered momentum. Gerald in particular was like a dog with a
bone. He can be a vindictive man. Most surprising for such a mild
person. Not one to cross. And finally there you were, clear as day.
Roy Courtnay. Vincent was most helpful filling in the details we’d
missed.’
‘Vincent?’ he says in surprise.
‘Yes. Our private detective chappy tracked him down quite easily
once we’d met him. We wondered whether it was worth trying to
have a quiet word with him. Certainly, once we’d established his
antecedents. Did you know his grandfather was a Jewish émigré
from Poland just before the Second World War? Probably not. Ste-
phen did an excellent job of chatting him up and he was more than
happy to oblige. It’s been a bit of a redemption for him. He filled in several of the gaps.’
Hans slumps but looks defiantly at her.
‘We’d found you and we were stuck as mere historians. So we
employed our private detective, a nice young man from Chingford.
He managed to root out all kinds of stuff. Quite remarkable. You
hardly left your flat, but you were heavily involved in internet dating. You can see the direction in which we’re heading. There was a
big, how shall we put it, throughput. Our chap diligently located
many of the prospective partners you’d met and later discarded, and interviewed them. Did you know you once got through five in a single month? I’m actually quite surprised there’s such a large supply line of lonely old women.’
Roy grimaces as Elisabeth continues cheerily.
‘You’ll be familiar with the picture that emerged. Most ladies you
rejected after the first meeting. The ones you met for a second time were of interest. You wanted to advance the relationship very
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rapidly and were fascinated by their financial positions. Nicely
dressed up as due diligence before you committed yourself. Each
time it seemed that either the lady didn’t meet your criteria or she somehow felt uneasy about you. That was the basis of the plan we
formulated. I was keen to come into direct contact with you again,
but at that point lacked that total certainty, despite all the evidence, that you were Hans Taub. So the solution was quite simple.’
‘Meet me through internet dating.’
‘Exactly. Quite neat, don’t you agree? We mapped out a basic
plan. I rented this little cottage on a long- term lease and moved in, ready to see how it went. And I think hook, line and sinker is the
right expression, don’t you? Gerald later came up with the idea of
playing what I think is known as the three- card trick. I would allow you seemingly to fleece me when all the time that was what was
happening to you. We had all the equipment. Stephen is a whizz on
the IT, though we did leave some things to chance. The beauty of it was that I didn’t actually need your money, so we could just abandon the idea if it all became too difficult. But we were rather good, weren’t we?’
He does not respond to her eager look.
‘Gerald played my son, Michael, in the little piece of theatre that we thought necessary for credibility. His wife was his real wife, his daughter was one of the earlier researchers who returned for a
guest appearance and Stephen of course was Stephen. Who’s clearly
not my grandson at all. Didn’t we all do splendidly? Stephen in particular? We all breathed a sigh of relief when you turned down the
invitation for us to spend Christmas with them. I knew you would.
And of course I didn’t get the tests done.’
‘Tests?’
‘I’m rather all over the place, aren’t I?’ she says gaily. ‘The DNA tests. I didn’t go to the house, though it was lovely to picture myself doing so. It was a nice story, wasn’t it? You’d have been proud of it.
I didn’t get the locket. I doubt it’s still there. Even if it were, could we have tested the hair? Would that have proved anything? Gerald’s
very keen on all this technology. Thought it the only way to find
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to be so literal and that we’d find a way somehow. And we have,
haven’t we?’
‘And your point?’
‘Point?’
‘Where are
we going with this? Apart from demonstrating how
stupid I am? Am I to understand that you’ve taken all my money?’
‘Ah yes. The money. That really is the important thing for you,
isn’t it? Or is it the sense of victory versus defeat? It doesn’t really matter. To take your money was the plan. It satisfied Gerald’s rather atavistic revenge instincts. Stephen seemed rather keen on the
notion too, particularly once he’d met you. But really it was my
decision. I thought that this might be the way to put you behind me.
And we all rather enjoyed the journey.’
He stares at her.
‘Don’t look so scared. Change of plan, remember? It’d been nag-
ging for some time, but it was only on the way home yesterday that
I really thought better of it. I decided it wasn’t right. I didn’t want to be like you. The note too. Not good form. I rather owed it to you to say what I had to say directly to you.’
‘Owed it to yourself, you mean.’
‘How so?’
‘So you could get the satisfaction of seeing me squirm.’
‘Hans, you do judge everyone as if they think the same way as
you. I was dreading this conversation in fact. Besides, you don’t
exactly strike me as the squirming type. I simply thought it was
fairer to see you once more.’
He looks at her and laughs caustically. To her, he is that bitter,
contemptuous fourteen- year- old boy again, standing over her.
Momentarily, she teeters and swoons, then regains her balance.
‘So far as your money goes, you may have it back. I’ve prepared a
cheque.’
She reaches into her handbag and produces a piece of paper,
which she proffers to him. With trembling hand, he reaches out and
snatches it from her. He makes to tear the cheque.
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pique. You always were so impetuous and moody. I won’t trouble
myself to write out another cheque if you change your mind.’
His arms are still outstretched, holding the cheque between his
fingers. He gives himself time to think as his arms shake with
infirmity. Finally he lowers them and places the cheque neatly in his wallet, glaring steadily at her all the while. Those eyes, she thinks.
But everything passes, in time.