She was on a different balcony now, her lookout post at the beginning and end of each day. Since Oscar turned up out of nowhere, everything that had previously been firmly in place had come loose. Her life with Roy had returned in all its intensity. “Forgetting is the enemy of happiness,” she had read on a calendar somewhere, words of wisdom she had dismissed at the time, thinking you could just as well turn it around and say “Happiness is the ability to forget”, and that had been her solution. But it hadn’t worked. Because this deferred grief, or rather the melting of the frozenness, the exquisite act of remembrance, had been going on for days now. She no longer opposed it. Kate de Winther, that was who she was, the old name she was so comfortable with, the best of names, better even than her maiden name.
What would Roy have done if he knew about Barbarossa, she asked herself over and over, until she could think of nothing else. Then she knew. Alright, she would go to Oscar’s bosses, or to the Foreign Ministry, if need be to the Dutch queen herself, she would spread the news, whatever Oscar said. Somebody had to. Why oh why had she left it so late – they couldn’t go on ignoring it, Oscar, that was simply not on. Those poor innocent souls along the borders, they would all die. It was June 19. There was still time.
Kate caught sight of Matteous on the pavement of Barkston Gardens, coming towards her with the uncertain gait of a fugitive. She felt a pang of misgiving. It was the gait of someone who might retreat at any moment, double back, go home, in any case vanish from there.
“Mattteous!” She waved. Matteous looked up, and even at that distance she was struck by the whites of his eyes. The black jacket of his uniform suited him.
“I’ll be right down to let you in.”
When he entered without his satchel, she knew something was wrong. She had known from the moment she saw him. He had come to say that he was leaving.
During the few seconds that he stood in her room, not knowing how to begin and what to do with his hands, it became clear to her how dearly she loved him, with a kind of love unlike what she felt for anybody else. Not the possessive kind, nothing to do with jealousy or resentment or self-pity. Matteous had dismantled all her defences, she felt laid bare like an archaeologist’s find. It was beyond comprehension.
She wanted to tell him about Operation Barbarossa, had to discuss it with him before it was too late, ask him if he thought she was right to go to the Ministry, even if her husband said it would put Emma in danger. Which was just an idea he had got in his head, because who on earth would suspect Emma? You do think I’m right, don’t you Matteous?
But she forgot to ask him, she forgot it all. She heard only one thing.
“I cannot live in this city, Miss Kate. I have tried for your sake, but it’s no good.”
Her eyes caught on a button hanging by a thread from his jacket, a tarnished brass button, of the kind she had seen in her mother’s button box.
No tears, please. Very briefly, she gripped the back of a chair. She had to pull herself together, suggest making tea, or coffee. Coffee, of course. Africans like their coffee black, with heaps of sugar, he had said to her one day. Come and sit with me, Matteous, at the table where we always sit, face to face, paper and ink at hand, a copybook, two pens. Museum exhibits from the past.
“Won’t you sit down?”
He complied with an air of signing his death warrant. Sat ramrod-straight, mute and motionless.
Gulls circled above the small park, their shrieks echoing in the room.
In Rome the doors to their balcony had been open practically all the time. Roy often sat there to write or read, quite undisturbed by the bustle of the Corso or the cries of Italian street folk.
“Tomorrow I’ll be off to Milan for that Forum conference. Afterwards, why don’t we go to Capri? It’s ages since we’ve been there, and Marina Piccola will be wonderfully quiet at this time of year. I could do with a break from all the brushing and scrubbing. And how about having a few babies?”
Said laughingly. Castles in the air. Kate had lifted the hem of her skirt and perched herself on his knee, asking in a mock-earnest tone: “Doesn’t having babies give you varicose veins?”
Matteous and Roy, the dream of return, the return of the dream.
She asked Matteous when he would leave and how he would travel. He did not know. All he knew was that he would jump in front of a bus if he stayed. This time she made no attempt to persuade him otherwise, unlike in the past. She could hear his sad determination, and his concern for her.
He asked how they could stay in touch, and repeated what he had said about owing his life to her. Would she like to come to Africa one day? Torn between opposing nostalgias, already. He would not go back to being a soldier, nor would he go down the mines again. He would find a rubber plantation, perhaps. Work in the forest, far away from barracks and mine shafts. Become a rubber tapper.
