SandDune’s Retirement Reads - Part 4

’I cart our block of ice back up to the house, stopping only to make way for a jingling train of donkeys and to talk to various cats sprawling in familiar patches of sunlight on the twisting steps. My favourite black cat has hidden her kittens among clumps of rosemary in the rubbled terrace of the crumbling house below ours. I push the brambles aside and talk to her as they suckle and her semi-precious eyes shine.’

‘It was about the time of the great migrations, when all the nations began to splinter like the burning bough and the wars of water and grain came upon the lands, that the kakuy woke. First they rose from the skeletons of the ocean reefs, glistening bone and acid breath. Then they climbed from the shattered mines, and their eyes were embers of coal and their feet broke the towns beneath their feet. Then they came from the sky itself, upon thunder and lightening they blazed, tearing down the monuments of man, and bidding the Earth swallow whole the sacrileges of the Burning Age.’

‘Please note I didn’t come in on the military mail. As Colonel-in-Chief of the Engineers, I’m entitled; but, as a milkface (not supposed to call us that, everybody does, doesn’t bother me, I like milk) it’s accepted that I don’t, because of the distress I might cause to Imperials finding themselves banged up in a coach with me for sixteen hours a day. Not that they’d say anything, of course. The Robur pride themselves on their good manners, and, besides, calling a milkface a milkface is Conduct Prejudicial and can get you court-martialled. For the record, nobody’s ever faced charges on that score, which proves (doesn’t it) that Imperials aren’t biased or bigoted in any way. On the other hand, several dozen auxiliary officers have been tried and cashiered for calling an Imperial a blueskin, so you can see just how wicked and deserving of contempt my lot truly are.‘

‘Twice a week, on Tuesdays and Fridays between eight-thirty and nine, Jean was mistress of the house, free to do as she liked. She could listen to the wireless without her mother’s commentary, eat standing up in the kitchen, read in perfect silence or run naked through the rooms if she chose.

Of all the various liberties available, her favourite was to unfasten her girdle and lie at full stretch on the couch with an ashtray on her stomach and smoke two cigarettes back to back. There was no reason why she couldn’t do this in her mother’s presence — lying down in the day might prompt an enquiry about her health, no more — but it wasn’t nearly so enjoyable in company.’

I had been told about the lake house, or “Glienicke”, all my life. It had been an obsession for my grandmother, Elsie, who spoke about it with wonder, evoking a time when life had been easy, fun and simple. It had been, she said, her soul place.

My family, the Alexander’s, had flourished in the liberal years of 1920s Berlin. Affluent cosmopolitan Jews, theirs had been the values of Germany: they worked hard and enjoyed themselves, attending the latest exhibitions, plays, concerts, and taking walks in the surrounding countryside. As soon as they could afford it, they had built themselves a little wooden lake house, a symbol of their success.

The woman no longer knew her name, nor who had wanted her dead, nor why. But she did remember her death. She had been alive when the water slammed the breath from her body. She remembered the fall from the dock, though she had been more pushed than fallen and more thrown than pushed. She remembered the cold dark water, the way her panicked gasps for air had echoed off the bricks.
She hadn’t known how to swim. Despite the lake and the canal and the river, most Amaleisei didn’t.
I felt the memory of her clothes dragging her down, heavy velvet getting heavier very quickly. She tried to scream for help, but got a mouthful of foul-tasting water, and before she even had time to realize she was going to die, there was a sudden crushing agony deep into her head and then nothing.
She had not drowned after all.

‘And then it hit him. His daughter was undoubtedly going to be angry once she discovered that he’d been lying to her about Dotty, Dennis and Harvey. So what if in their place he presented his old friends? Gus and the Red Lion crowd. Surely she wouldn’t be so angry once he’d explained that he’d gone to the effort of reconnecting with them just to please her?’