Sufferance, page 20
I stared at him, and he boldly met my gaze. Did he really not know that the authorities were offering a large bounty for information about her whereabouts? Was this an elaborate way of hinting he would claim the reward by leading the police to this apartment unless I gave him money?
I made it clear to him that I still didn’t understand why he had come to me.
He said he had gone to the school and enquired about friends of the girl who matched the description he had been given. Eventually he had learned the name of the family whose daughter had befriended the girl.
That sounded highly implausible because I could not imagine why anyone there would have revealed anything about a pupil to a man unable to justify his curiosity—and especially in relation to a child who had been withdrawn because of the new regulations.
If that was a lie, then how had he found me?
A thought came to me. Did he and his wife occupy an apartment above the coach-house? In that case, if he had been there on the night I explored the back of the house, had he been awakened by the noise I had made and followed me all the way home? I had believed that someone was dogging my footsteps. If so, I could see why he might not want to be truthful about how he had traced me. And that meant he was lying about having only recently got back from the former capital. And if it was he who followed me, why had he taken so long to come here? And had he followed me to my office? And assuming that was correct, why had he been hanging about outside my office asking about me?
Various possibilities occurred to me: Was the chauffeur in fact the husband of the servant who had stolen things from the house and disappeared? Instead of leaving the city, had she hidden somewhere in the locality? Their main aim would be to get into the safe, which someone had certainly attempted to do. Even if that were not correct—and the girl would be able to tell me if they were married—were they working together? Had she cheated him as well as her employers? But in that case, would she have told him anything at all about me?
He started talking about how hard things were in the present state of affairs for a man who was out of work and had a wife to support. I realised he was asking for money. If he was indeed blackmailing me, I was caught in the same paradox that had arisen with the concierge: if I gave him anything, it would confirm that I was frightened of him.
I told him I was very concerned to learn of his plight and that I myself was very hard-pressed financially or I would help him out with a small loan. I promised to keep my ears open for news of a post that might suit him, and I urged him to stay in touch. This seemed to me to be a good way to keep open the possibility in his mind that I might give him cash and deter him from reporting what he knew to the authorities. And it signalled that I had nothing to be afraid of. Yet if he knew of the reward, surely nothing would stop him going to the authorities?
I could see how disappointed he was that I was not offering him money. When I stood up, he remained seated.
He started talking about the girl and saying that she must be somewhere. Then he said: You know her family belong to that community? How could he think I did not know? I just nodded. He said: They’re looking for anyone like that and sending them into the Old City. There’s all sorts of stories going around about what’s happening there. What I think is that some family she is friendly with might be hiding her because they don’t want to let her be sent there.
I said: I suppose that’s possible.
He said: What worries me is that they might be caught. It only needs a tip-off to the right people and they’ll send the Special Police round. I’ve heard of several cases. They search the apartment and if they find someone hiding who should be in the Old City, they arrest the whole family. Everyone, sir, including the kiddies. They take them away and nobody knows what happens to them.
Was he threatening me? If he was, then his acting talents were impressive. His voice cracked with emotion as he spoke.
I agreed that it was very sad, and eventually he realised I was not going to change my mind and got up and left.
When he had gone, I called my wife into the study and recounted what had just happened.
She was horrified that someone had learned of our link to the girl’s father. As for the news that the family had gone to a ‘reception-centre’, she found that reassuring and said: So they might come back before long?
I said: I don’t think we should be encouraged by that. I don’t know what ‘reception-centre’ means. I think it might be a form of detention.
She asked: What shall we tell the girl?
I said: Simply the bare facts as we know them.
She went to fetch her and then left us alone. I told the girl that her father’s former chauffeur had just come to see me. She didn’t seem to find that surprising. I asked her what she could tell me about him?
First she demanded to hear if the man had told me anything about her relatives.
I answered: He told me that your family were invited to a reception-centre some months ago.
She cried out and clapped her hands: Oh what wonderful news. I was wondering where they had gone since I know they don’t have friends near the old capital.
She skipped around the room for a few moments. Then a thought struck her and she said: But why haven’t they sent a message? Why haven’t they come back?
I shrugged. The border between the two zones is still hard to cross.
She asked: What’s a reception-centre?
I told her I didn’t know. She was indignant that I had not pressed him on the subject.
At last she answered my question about the chauffeur and told me that he and his wife—who was not the servant who had made off with the valuables—were nasty sly people, and her father had recently been on the point of dismissing both of them. They did, as I had guessed, live above the coach-house at the end of the garden.
Thinking about the interview afterwards, it occurred to me that it was the chauffeur who had telephoned the girl’s house from the former capital after her parents and younger brother had been taken away. Had he said to the servant that this was their opportunity—he, his wife, and she—to steal things from the house? Did the servant then cheat him by purloining valuables before he returned? Did the chauffeur know about the safe? If so, did he return earlier than he was now pretending and try to open it? Had he subsequently succeeded? Would he have the nerve to do that and then stay on in the coach-house? Or would he dare to come to me? Why would he bother if he had taken what was in the safe? What had been in the safe? Was it still there?
* * *
That afternoon I once again walked to the Old City, but this time I found I was not allowed anywhere near it. I circled it and found that the area of exclusion now embraced the cattle-market just outside the Old City, where trains running towards the conquered territories in the East stopped to offload or pick up livestock for slaughter.
* * *
When I got back I found my wife and the girl shouting at each other. The girl was now proclaiming her intention of going to the reception-centre the chauffeur had mentioned and rejoining her family.
When I entered the room, she turned to me and said: Daddy owes you so much money. Let me go and ask him for it.
I said: You can’t get across the frontier without the right papers. They’ll arrest you. You wouldn’t even get out of the city.
She said: You don’t want me to go, do you? You’re just scared I’ll put the police onto you. But think how much money Daddy will give you when I tell him about you. Before I could stop her, she picked up the pocket-book with the schedule in which I had been entering expenses incurred by her and studied it.
I tried to snatch it from her, but she sprang away and turned the pages. Then she looked up at me accusingly and said: You’ve stopped keeping a record. You stopped weeks ago. Why did you do that?
I said: No reason. I just realised that in these uncertain times your father might not have much money by now.
She glared at me: Why do you say that? That’s not true. I’m going to go to them. Daddy’s rich. He can look after me.
I said: You’re safe here. If you go out there you’ll be picked up.
She said: I’m going and you can’t stop me.
With those words she flounced out of the room. I hurried to the front-door and locked it and put the key in my pocket. How ironic that only a few weeks ago I was desperately trying to make her leave and now I was determined to stop her.
From now on the door had to be kept locked, and my wife and I had the only keys. This meant that one of us had always to be there to let our daughters in and out. And we could only leave the apartment together if we locked it behind us with the girl inside, which we were unwilling to do.
* * *
That evening, when all was quiet, I discussed with my wife the implications of some of the things the chauffeur had said. She agreed with me that it was hard to tell how much he knew and whether he was trying to extort money by making a veiled threat. The remarks he had made about ‘tip-offs’ and ‘visits from the Special Police’ were particularly alarming, we both felt. I pointed out that if he did report his suspicions, there might be a search of the apartment at any moment. The girl could not stay where she was. It was too dangerous for her and for all of us. And yet we could not think where she could go.
And then one of us thought of the attic.
* * *
Because ours was the top-floor apartment, we had a trap-door into the roof-space above the building. That made the attic a reasonably secure hiding-place as long as the searchers had not been told of its existence, and fortunately the trap-door was in the tiny dark utility-room and therefore not easily noticeable. However, as my wife pointed out, if a really thorough search of the apartment were made, the attic would surely be examined. And it seemed virtually certain that anyone searching the apartment would have been told about the attic by the concierge or a neighbour.
The next day I made the trap-door even harder to spot by rendering it flush with the ceiling and painting it and the whole ceiling black.
The girl would have to be up there all the time because if the police came to the house, there would not be time to get her up a ladder, shut the trap-door, and move the ladder to another room. The longer we took to answer the door, the more suspicious they would become, and the greater the likelihood they would investigate the trap-door.
That would not protect us, of course, if it were the concierge or her son who reported us since they would have told the police about the roof-space. However, if the police searched the apartment after being tipped off by the chauffeur, there was at least a chance they would not know about it.
Late as it was, we began to make preparations immediately.
There was no floor up there but merely joists. We dared not think of buying boards since carrying them past the concierge would arouse suspicion. For the present we would have to use a makeshift. I brought the step-ladder to stand under the trap-door and opened it and measured the gap. I had to move carefully to avoid making a noise that would bother our neighbours below. Then I unscrewed the door from a small wardrobe in our bedroom and, with my wife’s help, just managed to get it through the trap-door and lay it across the joists. That would have to serve for now as both a bed and a daytime seat. My wife hung a curtain where the wardrobe’s door was missing, so its absence would not be noticeable.
It was now about two in the morning. My wife went to rouse the girl, and a few minutes later I heard a scream of fear and anger. The girl was distraught at being told what she had to do.
She had a horror of spiders and rats and of the darkness. She guessed that the attic space was dirty, cobwebby, and dark. My wife explained that she would have to lie doubled up on the wardrobe door with only folded-over blankets as a mattress. Now my younger daughter was crying as well at the prospect. The girls’ mutual resentments were forgotten. The noise wakened my elder daughter, who came out in her nightgown and was equally appalled at our decision. I kept having to shush all of them. If we made too much noise it would be talked about in the building. My wife and I were now paying the penalty for having shielded the three girls from the knowledge of just how dangerous our situation was.
In a whisper we told them how things stood. The chauffeur might well have gone straight to the police, and in that case they might arrive before dawn. I promised that the girl would only have to stay up there for two or three days. If the search had not been carried out by then, we could assume the man had not reported us.
The truth was that my wife and I had agreed it was not safe for the girl to be in the apartment now. She would have to stay up there day and night from now on.
The girl at last consented. I went up the step-ladder carrying a torch and then balanced myself on the joists as the girl, still in tears, awkwardly climbed up after me. I handed her the torch and told her to use it as little as possible. It was bitterly cold up there. I hated what we were having to do. I climbed down, shut the door, and put the ladder in the kitchen.
My wife and I hardly slept that night, listening to the girl’s sobs from above us and dreading the sound of cars drawing up outside or heavy steps on the stair. We felt that the girl was crying at least partly as a bid for our sympathy. We would have to make her keep quiet for fear that the neighbours in the adjacent apartment on the top floor might hear her. At the point where I was about to go and move the ladder back and open the trap-door and tell her that, she stopped weeping. She must have cried herself to sleep.
There was no raid that morning. I left for work having moved the ladder into position and opened the trap-door. The ladder was too heavy for my wife to move quickly on her own. I told her the girl must stay up there the whole time apart from calls of nature. Each time she returned, she must close the trap-door after her. If my wife heard anything that sounded like a search-party approaching, before opening the front-door, she must drag the step-ladder into the corridor if she was unable to take it any further.
* * *
When I got back that evening my wife had nothing ominous to report. However, the girl was in a very distressed state. She had spent almost the entire day in the dark, alone, unable to read one of her beloved magazines, and barred even from listening to the wireless.
We dared not let her have a light or a wireless because the cables would have to trail back into the apartment, and a wireless might be heard in the neighbouring building or by someone coming to our door. And at night a light might be seen through loose slates—especially since the blackout was being enforced by wardens.
That evening I organised what I called ‘emergency drill’ in which we practised what to do if we guessed there was about to be a visit from the authorities. Each of us had different tasks, depending on who was in the apartment at the time: my wife alone, my wife and younger daughter, my wife and myself, and so on. It was important that each knew his or her specific task in each set of circumstances: who would ensure the trap-door was closed, who would move the ladder, and who would open the front-door once the signal was given.
Later my wife and I talked about what I should say and do if the chauffeur came back. We decided that if he revealed he had any piece of evidence which would be solid enough to justify his going to the authorities, I should give him money—ostensibly to tide him over while he looked for work. But what we would do after that, heaven alone knew.
We decided that I would keep in the apartment a large sum of money in cash—a month’s salary—to bribe him or in case of any other emergency.
Over the next few days I set about raising that money, and I found I could do so only by borrowing at an extortionate rate of interest. I had no choice but to accept those terms.
* * *
At the office the next day I heard people talking in hushed voices about rumours they had heard concerning what was happening in the Old City. It was being said that large numbers of people were being marched to the cattle-market and put on trains for ‘relocation’. Nobody seemed to know what that meant.
All day and most of the night, we had to hear the girl weeping and snivelling, and although it was hardly her fault, it was getting on our nerves. Once my wife snapped and screamed through the trap-door: Why can’t you just go away! Stop existing! Why did you ever come into our lives?
That wasn’t the only noise we heard at night. Now we were often wakened in the early hours by previously unheard trains that went very slowly towards the East and stopped for long periods while the engines continued to rumble and let off steam.
* * *
That night I waited up until my elder daughter came in. She was very obviously the worse for drink. I asked her to sit down and tell me what she had heard from her new friends in the auxiliary police about what was going on.
She started telling me how they joked about what they were doing in the Old City, but as she spoke, it was clear to me that she was horrified by it. I asked her to explain ‘relocation’, and she told me. I understood at last how naïve I had been. I thought back to my concern that the girl’s beautiful house should be safeguarded for its owners, that her family’s store should be properly run, and to my absurd schedule of accounts for an eventual reckoning with her father. And I realised that the reason why the authorities could not interrogate the girl’s father about his assets was because he and his wife and younger son had been ‘relocated’ very soon after the capital had fallen to the Enemy.
I told my daughter not to breathe the slightest hint of what she had told me to my wife or the two girls.
On the rare occasions when I spoke to the girl after this, I found myself resenting her for her conviction that she would soon be restored to her relatives and for the fact that she needed to be lied to.
