And I do read a great deal of non-fiction, which has always seemed to me a better use of words than the made-up conversations of people who have never existed. Academic papers aside, I read the more advanced popular-science and economics books and, like many men of my generation, I enjoy military history, my ‘Fascism-on-the-march books’, as Connie calls them. I’m not sure why we should be drawn to this material. Perhaps it’s because we like to imagine ourselves in the cataclysmic situations that our fathers and grandfathers faced, to imagine how we’d behave when tested, whether we would show our true colours and what they would be. Follow or lead, resist or collaborate? I expressed this theory to Connie once and she laughed and said that I was a textbook collaborator. ‘Delighted to meet you, Herr Gruppenführer!’ she had said, rubbing her hands together obsequiously. ‘If there’s anything you need …’ and then she laughed some more. Connie knew me better than anyone alive, but I did feel strongly that she had misjudged me in this respect. It might not be immediately apparent, but I was Resistance through and through. I just hadn’t had a chance to prove it yet.
As the train rolled on to Brussels I reached for my own book, a dense but engaging history of World War II. The date was March ’44, and plans were well under way for Operation Overlord. ‘Good God,’ I said, and placed the book back down.
‘What is it now?’ said Connie, somewhat impatient.
‘I just realised, a little in that direction is the Ardennes.’
‘What’s special about the Ardennes?’ said Albie.
‘The Ardennes,’ I said, ‘is where your great-grandfather died. Here …’
I flicked towards the centre of the book and a map of the Ardennes Offensive. ‘We’re about here. The battle was over there.’ I indicated the red and blue arrows on the map, so unrepresentative of the flesh and blood to which they corresponded. ‘This was “the Bulge”, a last-ditch German counterattack against the US forces, a terrible battle, one of the worst, in the forest in the dead of winter. A sort of awful final convulsion. Germans and Americans mostly, but a thousand or so British got tangled up too, your great-grandfather among them. Bloody destruction, as bad as D-Day, just half an hour that way.’ I pointed east. Albie peered out of the window as if looking for some evidence, pillars of smoke or Stukas screaming out of the sun, but saw only farmland, ripe and placid and serene. He shrugged, as if I was making this all up.
‘I have his campaign medals in my desk drawer. You used to ask to see them, Albie, when you were little. D’you remember? He’s buried out there too, a little place called Hotton. My dad only went to the cemetery once, when he was a little boy. After he retired I offered to take him again — do you remember, Connie? — but he didn’t want to get his passport renewed. I remember thinking how sad that was, only seeing your father’s grave once. He said he didn’t want to get sentimental about it.’
I had become unusually voluble and a little emotional, too. I’d never been particularly nostalgic about family history and had little knowledge of all but the lowest branches of the family tree, but wasn’t this interesting? Our family heritage, our small role in history. Terence Petersen had fought in El Alamein, in Normandy too. As our only child, Albie would inherit his campaign medals. Shouldn’t he at least acknowledge their significance and the sacrifice of his forebears? Yet Albie seemed primarily interested in checking the signal on his mobile phone. My own father, had I behaved like this, would have knocked it out of my hand.
‘Perhaps I should have gone there anyway,’ I continued. ‘Perhaps we should all have gone. Got off at Brussels and hired a car. Why didn’t I think of this before?’
‘We’ll go some other time,’ said Connie, who had closed her book now and was watching me with some concern. ‘Would anyone like some coffee?’
But I had heard the distant rumble of an argument and now wanted the storm to break. ‘Would you be interested in that, Egg? Would you want to come along?’ I knew that he would not, but I wanted to hear him say it.
He shrugged. ‘Maybe.’
‘You don’t seem very interested.’
He ruffled his hair with both hands. ‘It’s history. I never knew anyone involved.’
‘Nor did I, but still …’
‘Waterloo is over there, the Somme is back in that direction; we probably had Petersens there, Moores too.’
‘It was
‘But you said yourself, you never even knew him. I don’t even remember granddad. I’m sorry, but I can’t make an emotional connection to stuff that happened all that time ago.’
‘Okay, this is a very gloomy conversation,’ said Connie, unnaturally bright. ‘Who wants coffee?’
