Miss Eileen Warburton, a spinster of this parish, was a woman Harry suspected lived alone in a basement flat and, like Mole, didn’t emerge until spring. During those winter months, she would spend her time toiling away on her authors’ hapless scripts, correcting their mistakes, some of which were so inconsequential no one else would ever have noticed them. While others, howlers, as she liked to describe them, had they gone uncorrected, would have caused a thousand irate letters to end up on the author’s desk, pointing out his stupidity. Miss Warburton never allowed Harry to forget that Geneva was not the capital of Switzerland, and that the Titanic had sunk on April 15th, not 14th.
In a moment of flippant bravado, Harry had once reminded her that in Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, the heroine’s eyes changed from black to brown to blue and back to black again in less than a hundred pages.
“I never comment on books I haven’t edited,” she said, without any suggestion of irony.
Emma would be among the last to read the manuscript, when it was in proof form. Everyone else would have to wait until publication day before they could get their hands on a copy.
Harry had planned to spend a relaxing weekend once the book was finished. On Saturday afternoon, he and Giles would drive over to the Memorial Ground and watch Bristol play their old rivals Bath. In the evening, he would take Emma to the Bristol Old Vic to see Patricia Routledge in Come for the Ride, followed by dinner at Harvey’s.
On Sunday, he and Emma had been invited by Giles and Karin to lunch at Barrington Hall. They would later attend evensong, when he would spend most of the sermon wondering which page his three readers were on. As for an unbroken night’s sleep, that would not be back on the agenda until all three had called and given their opinion.
When the phone rang, Harry’s first thought was that it was too early for any of them to have finished the book. He picked it up to hear Giles’s familiar voice on the other end of the line.
“Sorry to mess you about, Harry, but I won’t be able to join you for rugby on Saturday, and we’ll also have to postpone lunch on Sunday.” Harry didn’t need to ask why, because an explanation followed immediately. “Walter Scheel called earlier. The East Germans have opened the floodgates at last, and their citizens are pouring across the border. I’m calling from Heathrow. Karin and I are about to board a flight to Berlin. We’re hoping to get there before they start knocking the wall down, because she and I plan to be part of the demolition crew.”
“That’s the most wonderful news,” said Harry. “Karin must be delighted. Tell her I’m envious, because when people ask where were you on the day the wall came down, you’ll be able to tell them. And if you can, bring me back a piece.”
“I’m going to have to take an extra suitcase,” said Giles. “So many people have made the same request.”
“Just remember, you’ll be witnessing history, so before you go to bed each night, be sure to write down everything you’ve experienced that day. Otherwise you’ll have forgotten the details by the time you wake up.”
“I’m not sure we’ll be going to bed,” said Giles.
* * *
“May I ask why you’re carrying a hammer in your bag, sir?” asked a vigilant security officer at Heathrow.
“I’m hoping to break down a wall,” Giles replied.
“I wish I could join you,” said the officer, before zipping up the overnight bag.
When Giles and Karin climbed aboard the Lufthansa plane half an hour later, it was as if they had gate-crashed a party rather than joined a group of passengers who would normally be fastening their seatbelts prior to receiving safety instructions from a zealous air hostess. Once the flight had taken off, champagne corks were popping, and passengers chatted to their neighbours as if they were old friends.
Karin held on to Giles’s hand throughout the entire flight, and she must have said, “I just can’t believe it” a dozen times, still fearful that by the time they landed in Berlin, the party would be over and everything would have returned to normal.
After two hours that seemed like an eternity the plane finally touched down, and the moment it had taxied to a halt, the passengers leapt out of their seats. The usual orderly queue that the Germans are so famed for disintegrated, to be replaced by an undisciplined charge as the passengers rushed down the steps, across the tarmac, and into the airport. Tonight, no one would be standing still.
Once they had cleared customs, Giles and Karin headed out of the terminal in search of a taxi, only to discover a heaving mass of people with the same thought in mind. However, to Giles’s surprise, the line moved quickly, as three, four, or even five passengers piled into each cab, all of them heading in the same direction. When they finally reached the front of the queue, Giles and Karin joined a German family who didn’t need to tell the driver where they wanted to go.
“Englishman, why you come to Berlin?” asked the young man squeezed up against Giles.
“I’m married to an East German,” he explained, placing an arm around Karin’s shoulder.
“How did your wife escape?”
“It’s a long story.” Karin came to Giles’s rescue, and it took her three slow miles of unrelenting traffic, speaking in her native tongue, before she came to the end of her tale, which was greeted with enthusiastic applause. The young man gave Giles a new look of respect, although he hadn’t understood a word his wife had said.
With a mile to go, the taxi driver gave up and stopped in the middle of a road that had been turned into a dance floor. Giles was the first out of the car and took out his wallet to pay the driver, who said simply, “Not tonight,” before swinging around and heading back to the airport; another man who would tell his grandchildren about the role he’d played the night the wall came down.
Hand in hand, Giles and Karin weaved their way through the exuberant crowd toward the Brandenburg Gate, which neither of them had seen since the afternoon Karin had escaped from East Berlin almost two decades ago.
As they drew closer to the great monument, built by King Frederick William II of Prussia, ironically as a symbol of peace, they could see ranks of armed soldiers lined up on the far side. Giles thought about Harry’s suggestion that he should write down everything he witnessed, for fear of forgetting the moment, and wondered what his brother-in-law would have considered the appropriate word to describe the expressions on the soldiers’ faces. Not anger, not fear, not sadness; they were simply bemused. Like everyone dancing around them, their lives had been changed in a moment.
Karin stared at the soldiers from a distance, still wondering if it was all too good to be true. Would one of them recognize her, and try to drag her back across the border even now?
Although a united people were celebrating all around her, she remained unconvinced that life wouldn’t return to normal when the sun rose. As if Giles could read her thoughts, he took her in his arms and said, “It’s all over, my darling. You can turn the page. The nightmare has finally come to an end.”
An East German officer appeared from nowhere and barked out an order. The soldiers shouldered their weapons and marched off, which caused an even louder roar of approval. While everyone around them danced, drank, and sang ecstatically, Giles and Karin made their way slowly through the crowd toward the graffiti-covered wall, on top of which hundreds of revelers were dancing, as if it were the grave of a hated foe.
Karin stopped and touched Giles’s arm when she spotted an old man hugging a young woman. It was clear that, like so many people on that unforgettable night, they were finally being reunited after twenty-eight years apart. Laughter, joy, and celebration were mingled with tears, as the old man clung onto the granddaughter he had thought he would never meet.
“I want to stand on top of the wall,” declared Karin.
Giles looked up at the twelve-foot-high monument commemorating failure, on which hundreds of young people were having a party. He decided it wasn’t the moment to remind his wife that he was nearly seventy. This was a night for shedding y
ears.
“Great idea,” he said.
When they reached the foot of the wall, Giles suddenly knew what Edmund Hillary must have felt when faced with the final ascent of Everest, but two young Sherpas, who had just descended, cupped their hands and made the first rung of a ladder, so he could take their place on the summit. He couldn’t quite make it, but two other young revelers reached down and yanked him up to join them.
Karin joined him a moment later and they stood, side by side, staring across the border. She was still unwilling to believe she wouldn’t wake up and find it was all a dream. Some East Germans were attempting to climb up from the other side, and Karin stretched down to offer a young girl a hand. Giles took a photograph of the two women, who’d never met before, hugging each other as if they were old friends. A photograph that would end up on their mantelpiece in Smith Square to commemorate the day East and West returned to sanity.
From their lofty position, Giles and Karin watched a flood of people flowing downstream to freedom, while the guards, who only the night before would have shot anyone attempting to cross the border, just stood and stared, unable to comprehend what was happening all around them.
Karin was finally beginning to believe that the genie had escaped from the communist bottle, but it took her another hour to summon up the courage to say to Giles, “I want to show you where I lived.”
Giles found the descent from the wall almost as difficult as clambering up it had been, but with the help of several outstretched hands, he somehow managed it, though he needed to catch his breath once his feet had touched the ground.
Karin took his hand and they battled against a one-way stampede of human traffic as she led him slowly toward the border post. Thousands of men, women, and children, carrying bags, suitcases, even pushing prams laden with their life’s possessions, were heading in one direction, leaving their old lives behind, clearly unwilling to consider returning in case they should find themselves trapped once again.
After they’d passed under the red and white barrier and left the West, Giles and Karin joined a trickle of citizens who were heading in the same direction as themselves. Karin hesitated, but only for a moment, when they passed the second barrier and found themselves on East German soil.
There were no border guards, no snarling Alsatians, no thin-lipped officials to check that their visas were in order. Just an eerie, unoccupied wilderness.
There were also no taxi queues, as there were no taxis. They passed a little group of East Germans kneeling in silent prayer, in memory of those who’d sacrificed their lives to make today possible.
The two of them continued to weave their way through the crowds that were melting away with each step they took. It was well over an hour before Karin finally stopped and pointed toward a group of identical gray tenement buildings that stood in a grim line, reminding her of a past life she’d almost forgotten.
“This is where you lived?”
She looked up and said, “The nineteenth floor, second window on the left is where I spent the first twenty-four years of my life.”
Giles counted until he reached a tiny curtainless window on the nineteenth floor, second from the left, and couldn’t help recalling where he’d spent the first twenty-four years of his life: Barrington Hall, a townhouse in London, the castle in Scotland in which he spent a few weeks every summer, and then of course there was always the villa in Tuscany should he need a break.
“Do you want to go up and see who’s living there now?” he asked.
“No,” said Karin firmly. “I want to go home.”
Without another word, she turned her back on the towering blocks of gray concrete and joined those of her countrymen who were heading toward the West, to experience a freedom that she had never taken for granted.
She didn’t once look back as they walked toward the border, although a moment of anxiety returned as they approached the crossing point, but it quickly evaporated when she saw some of the guards, jackets unbuttoned, collars loosened, dancing with their newly made friends, no longer from East or West, now simply Germans.
Once they had passed under the barrier and were back in the West, they found young and old alike attempting, with sledgehammers, crowbars, chisels, and even a nail file, to dismantle the eight-hundred-mile-long monstrosity piece by piece. The physical symbol of what Winston Churchill had described as the Iron Curtain.
Giles unzipped his bag, took out the hammer, and handed it to Karin.
“You first, my darling.”
EMMA CLIFTON
1990–1992
49
“IT’S THAT TIME of the year,” said Emma as she raised a glass of mulled wine.
“When we all throw our toys out of the pram,” said Giles, “and refuse to join in with any of your games?”
“It’s that time of the year,” repeated Emma, ignoring her brother, “when we raise a glass in memory of Joshua Barrington, founder of the Barrington Shipping Line.”
“Who made a profit of thirty pounds, four shillings, and tuppence in his first year, but promised his board he would make more in the future,” Sebastian reminded everyone.
“Thirty-three pounds, four shillings, and tuppence, actually,” said Emma. “And he did make more, a lot more.”
“He must have turned in his grave,” said Sebastian, “when we sold the company to Cunard for a cool forty-eight million.”
“Mock you may,” said Emma, “but we should be grateful to Joshua for all he did for this family.”
“I agree,” said Harry, who stood, raised his glass and said, “To Joshua.”
“To Joshua,” declared the rest of the family.
“And now to business,” said Emma, putting down her glass.
“It’s New Year’s Eve,” protested Giles, “and you seem to forget you’re in my house, so I think we’ll have a year off.”
“Certainly not,” said Emma. “Only Lucy will be spared this year.”
“But be warned, young lady,” said Harry, smiling at his great-granddaughter, who was fast asleep in her mother’s arms, “your reprieve is only temporary.”
“That is correct,” said Emma, as if Harry hadn’t been joking. “The time has come for everyone to tell us their New Year’s resolutions.”
“And the brave ones,” said Harry, “will remind us of last year’s.”
“Which I’ve recorded in this little red book,” said Emma, “just in case anyone’s forgotten.”
“Of course you have, Chairman Mao,” said Giles, refilling his glass.
“Who’d like to go first?” said Emma, once again ignoring her brother.
“I’m looking for another job,” said Samantha.
“Still in the art world?” asked Harry.
“Yes. The Wallace Collection is advertising for a deputy director, and I’ve applied for the position.”
“Bravo,” said Grace. “The Courtauld’s loss will be the Wallace’s gain.”
“It’s just the next step on the ladder,” said Sebastian. “My bet is that by this time next year, Samantha’s New Year’s resolution is to be chairman of the Tate.”
“So what about you, Seb? What will you have achieved by this time next year?”
“I intend to go on annoying my aunt Grace by making her more and more money.”
“Which I can then distribute to more and more worthy causes,” said Grace.
“Don’t worry, Victor’s already seeing to that, as Karin will confirm.”
“I read Mr. Kaufman’s report,” said Grace, “and it does great credit both to you and to the bank, Sebastian.”
“Praise indeed,” said Emma, making a note before looking across at her sister. “As you’re one of the few among us who has a tick by her name every year, Grace, what have you got planned for the next twelve months?”
“Seven of my young charges are hoping to be offered a place at university this year, and I am determined that all seven of them will achieve it.”
“What are their chances
?” asked Harry.
“I’m confident that the four girls will all make it, but I’m not so sure about the boys.”
Everyone laughed except Grace.
“My turn, my turn!” demanded Jake.
“Now, if I remember correctly,” said Emma, “last year you wanted to leave school. Do you still want to?”
“No,” said Jake firmly. “I want Mom to get that job.”
“Why?” asked Samantha.
“Because then I won’t be late for school every morning.”
“From out of the mouths of babes and sucklings,” said Harry, unable to hide a smile.
Samantha reddened, while the rest of the family burst out laughing. “Then I’d better have two resolutions this year,” she managed eventually. “One for me, and one for Jake.”
“As Giles seems unwilling to join in this year,” said Emma, “how about you, Karin? Will you be running another marathon?”
“Never again. But I have joined the committee of the Marsden charitable trust, and I’m hoping the family will finance a mission. That doesn’t include Sebastian, by the way.”
“Does that mean I’m off the hook this year?”
“No,” said Karin. “I’ve convinced Victor that the bank should finance its own mission, the Farthings Kaufman Mission.”
“What’s that going to cost me?”
“It will cost the bank twenty-five thousand pounds,” said Karin, “but then I’m expecting you to finance your own mission.”
Sebastian was about to protest when Grace said, “And Giles and I would also like to finance a mission, the Barrington Mission.” Giles smiled at his sister and bowed.
“As will Emma and I,” said Harry, which caused the rest of the family to start applauding.
“I dread to think what your resolution will be next year,” said Sebastian.
“I haven’t finished with this year yet,” said Karin.