The purser took Rose’s landing card. She trailed across the quay, dragging her suitcase, her school satchel and a stout leather hatbox that contained a charred severed head, wrapped in muslin and encased in sand.
An initial exchange of wires on the Friday morning had revealed a time problem. Professor Forsch was committed to a series of lectures in America and would be sailing the following Friday. Accordingly, if the thing was to be done at all, he would need the mystery skull by Tuesday at the latest.
The other difficulty was the simple problem of conveying a charred human head through customs.
Aubrey, who enjoyed any challenge that allowed him to show off his ability to pull strings and influence people, had 262sprung into action. Between Friday evening and the Sunday evening, when Rose was put on a train, he had obtained letters of authority from J. R. Clynes, the Home Secretary, Arthur Henderson, the Foreign Secretary, Konstantin von Neurath, the German ambassador, and Sir Bernard Spilsbury, the Home Office pathologist. He would have liked one from the King, too, but the poor chap was indisposed and not to be disturbed.
The biggest challenge was getting hold of the head itself. Spilsbury was weekending in Suffolk, and though he agreed to send a wire to one of his underlings at Bart’s with permission to remove the head from the corpse, the underling had been unwilling to act without a properly signed order. Accordingly, on Saturday afternoon, a motorcyclist had been despatched to Saxmundham with a document for Sir Bernard to sign.
Frank Chettle, editor of the Daily Graphic was at first doubtful that Rose was the right person to send when he had experienced reporters to hand who knew Germany and how to deal with recalcitrant officialdom. Edgar had spent most of Saturday on the telephone, arguing that only Rose had the ‘influential contacts’ required to oil the wheels to persuade the powers that be at the University of Heidelberg to co-operate. Even the most experienced of their reporters would find himself bogged down in a mire of incomprehensible academic bureaucracy.
Once persuaded, Chettle had put the Graphic’s various departments to work. In a matter of hours, they had 263provided Rose with a passport, sorted out her travel itinerary and presented her with cash, a portfolio of tickets, timetables and hotel reservations together with a little book of useful German phrases.
Rose had been on boats before, but only rowing and sailing on lakes and rivers, never anything seagoing. The thought of seasickness had not occurred to her until she saw the ship itself, docked at Dover, the size of a terrace of houses, ever so slightly bouncing up and down in the almost calm waters.
When the ship encountered the slow swell of the English Channel, instinct made her want to stay on deck, where the air was fresh and the freezing wind slightly more than bracing, but a Sea Scout had once told her that, to avoid seasickness, you should go to the lowest accessible part of the ship for there the movement will be the least. So that’s what she did, making her way to a bar half-filled with people trying to get drunk.
She found a seat out of the way behind a thing that looked navigationally important and reproached herself for not bringing a book about boats. It would have been instructive to pass the time looking up what all the bits were called. She knew some words – like ‘companionway’, ‘bulwark’ and ‘stanchion’ – but was shamefully ignorant about their meaning. She thought of asking a passing steward, but they were all rushing about with tin basins and towels for the people who were being sick. 264
Determined not to think about sick or anything related, she huddled in her corner, undisturbed, clutching her suitcase and the hatbox with the head in it.
She actually didn’t feel one bit sick, now she thought about it, but she was very hungry. Mrs Westing, her landlady had provided her with a bag of captain’s dry biscuits, but they were deep in the suitcase. To find them she would have to unstrap and unlock the case. This would mean letting go of her hold on the hatbox. A sudden lurch of the ship could easily have sent it scurrying away. A trip to the ship’s lost property to reclaim a severed head could not be countenanced.
When the hunger itself started to make her feel sick, she picked up the suitcase and hatbox and stumbled over to the bar where, with one foot on the hatbox to make sure it didn’t escape, she bought and ate a roll with a slice of sausage in it and some chocolate. They made her feel more hungry.
Her itinerary told her that she had an hour and three-quarters between getting off the boat and catching her train, during which time she would have to deal with customs and passports, find the station, then find the right train.
Wanting to be first off, she was standing at the rail long before the ship reached land and chose a spot near the stern where she could see there was a sort of fence for the gangplank. The cold was intense. Then she noticed, as the ship approached the harbour, that the more experienced passengers were gathering midships.
Her mistake cost her almost half an hour. She was the last passenger down the gangway. 265
‘The customs shed is that way, Miss,’ the purser said. ‘Can you manage that,’ he indicated the suitcase and hatbox, ‘or should I call a porter?’
‘I can manage, thank you,’ said Rose.
Ten minutes went by while an American family in front of her, mum, dad and daughter, a girl of about Rose’s age, explained, shouting so that the officer, who spoke fluent English, would be able to understand, that they were on their way to Amsterdam. The mother wanted to see The Night Watch and the Rijksmuseum. The daughter wanted to know where she could buy clogs.
Eventually the officer was able to get rid of them, waved Rose forward and asked what she had in her luggage. She told him. It’s always best to tell the truth. He motioned a colleague forward. After a short conversation in Flemish, the colleague opened a flap in the counter and herded Rose into an inner office.
She took from her satchel her letters from the Home Secretary, the Foreign Secretary, the German ambassador and Sir Bernard Spilsbury, and showed them. The officer, despite the very official crests and expensive paper, was not impressed.
Carefully he examined the hatbox. For a moment his hand toyed with the buckles, but a second thought dissuaded him from opening it. What if it contained a bomb? What, come to that, if it actually did contain a head?
‘I will have to look at the list,’ he said, and began slowly to turn the pages of a much-thumbed document he took from a 266desk drawer. Rose got the idea that it itemised what was and was not allowed to be brought into the country. It made no mention of charred heads.
The officer shook his head, knocked on the door of a back office and summoned his superior, a much fatter man with mustard on his uniform.
He seemed to know the correct procedure, found a form in a filing cabinet and began to fill it out, demanding to know Rose’s address, and date and place of birth, details of the hotel where she was to stay in Heidelberg, Vernon’s name and address, Aubrey’s name and address, the name and address of the Daily Graphic and the limited information she had about Professor Forsch.
When the form was filled, he read it through with an air of hopelessness. Nothing in it could help him reach a decision.
He made a telephone call. When that proved inconclusive, he made another, then another. It was clear that each call was to somebody of increasing importance. From the expression on the official’s face and the tone of his voice, Rose guessed that the final call was possibly to the King of Belgium, or maybe the Pope.
Finally, reluctantly, he stamped several documents, made chalk marks on the suitcase, hatbox and satchel and allowed Rose to pass.
She ran to the station. She knew that Cologne in German was Köln, but she had no idea what it might be in Flemish. None of the signboards were much help but saying ‘Cologne’ 267and ‘Köln’ repeatedly to a porter eventually led to his pointing at a train. Whether it was the right one or not no longer mattered, whistles were being blown. She jumped on, clutching hatbox, suitcase and satchel just as it pulled out of the station.
If you get on the wrong train in England, chances are the next station would be no more than twenty or thirty miles. Here, the next stop might be Moscow, or Istanbul or Shanghai. What would become of her if she was found by Chinese officials to be in possession of a severed head?
She was grateful to find an empty compartment, hoisted the suitcase and hatbox on to the luggage rack and sat down. Her ticket was for first class. The compartment was second class, but she didn’t imagine anybody would object, and the idea of struggling with her luggage up the length of the train in search of a slightly more comfortable seat did not appeal.
There was a hubbub in the corridor. The compartment door crashed open and seven men, German by the sound of them, came in, laughing and jostling and pushing each other. They slung their haversacks onto the luggage racks nearly dislodging Rose’s precious hatbox.
It was only then that they seemed to notice that the carriage was already occupied. A dark-haired chap addressed her. ‘Es tut mir leid, Madam, ich habe Sie dort nicht gesehen.’
‘Ich spreche kein Deutsch,’ Rose said. It was one of the sentences she had mastered from the Daily Graphic phrasebook. 268
One of the other men, a little younger, perhaps younger than Rose, bowed slightly and said, in barely accented English, ‘My friend was apologising for he failed to notice you sitting there when first he entered the compartment.’
The younger man made some announcement to the others in German. They were chastened. They took off their hats. Some of them took off their coats, too. Huge and muscular, they jostled like a herd of Aberdeen Angus corralled into a telephone box, breathing heavily through their mouths.
‘Please forgive our uncouth behaviour, miss,’ the younger man said. ‘We have had a most extraordinary sojourn in your country.’
The others nodded enthusiastically. Rose managed a weak smile.
‘May we introduce ourselves? I am Erich, and this is Johann, Karl, Gunter Eins, Gunter Zwei, Fritz and that’s Gerd.’
‘I am very pleased to meet you all. My name is Rose Critchlow. Are you all travelling to Cologne?’
Erich laughed. ‘Why, yes, miss,’ He puffed himself up, ‘We are the wasserball team of the Cologne swimming club,’ and added, because Rose looked confused. ‘Water polo.’
‘I’m terribly sorry not to have recognised you, but I don’t really follow water polo. Won’t you sit down?’
Obediently the men found seats. The compartment was big enough for eight ordinary people, or maybe six German water polo players. They huddled and nudged, trying 269conscientiously not to crowd or touch Rose.
‘Have you been competing in England?’ she asked.
‘Yes, miss, we have. In London. Do you know it?’ Erich said.
‘That’s where I come from.’
‘Are you visiting Cologne? The cathedral is, of course, very beautiful, but please also be sure to pay a visit to admire the natural beauties of the Stadtwald Forest. The walks are quite lovely in the snow. Do you skate, miss? Because we would be honoured if …’
‘No, I am here on business,’ Rose said, and added, because she liked the sound of it, ‘Home Office business.’
Erich didn’t look entirely convinced, ‘Are you a spy?’
‘No, I’m an articled clerk for a solicitor. I’m going to Heidelberg.’
‘Heidelberg?’
Gunter Zwei echoed, ‘Heidelberg?’
Erich and Gunter had a conversation in German.
‘Gunter says that he has an aunt in Heidelberg who sometimes takes in boarders. He is sure that she would make you very welcome should you wish to stay with her.’
Rose told him she was staying in a hotel that had been booked for her. ‘My work takes me to the university there.’
Erich nodded, impressed.
There was a long pause during which Erich smiled at her relentlessly.
‘Your English is very good,’ Rose said.
‘My grandmother, my father’s mother, is English.’ 270
Rose wanted to say, ‘That must have made things difficult in the War,’ but, worried it might be deemed impolite, instead asked, ‘Did you win your match in England?’
‘Not so much win.’
‘It was a draw?’
‘You know in Heidelberg,’ Erich said, changing the subject, ‘the students are very good scholars but not such good swimmers. Do you swim, miss? If you do not and if you wish to visit Cologne, I would be delighted to offer my services as your swimming teacher.’
Rose thought now would be an appropriate time to mention Vernon.
‘My friend, Vernon, an Englishman, will be waiting for me in Heidelberg.’
‘Ah,’ Erich said. And nodded again.
Not long after that, he fell asleep.
She had almost called Vernon her ‘boyfriend’. She wanted to. She wanted to say it aloud. Silly, of course. Vernon was her friend.
She read. On the train in England, she’d started reading a book recommended by Mrs Westing; The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, by Dorothy L. Sayers. It passed the time, although she found the hero, Lord Peter Wimsey, most irritating even though he shared many traits with Aubrey Duncan, and she quite liked Mr Duncan.
There was a bottle of lemonade – if it hadn’t broken – in the suitcase along with the captain’s biscuits, but, even though she was still very hungry, the idea of opening 271her suitcase and exposing her blouses and underwear to a German water polo team made her blush, so she pressed on with Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, until her gurgling stomach caught Gerd’s attention and he looked up. He had not known many ladies and was surprised that they made such noises.
Since, on balance, the embarrassment of gurgling was worse than that of having your underwear examined, she stood and reached up to the luggage rack. Immediately Erich and Fritz leapt up to help her and Erich said, ‘Allow me.’ He pulled down the suitcase, dislodging the hatbox, which teetered. The embarrassment of a severed head falling on to the floor would, of course, easily trump both gurgling and underwear, so she leapt to control it, but Fritz was ahead of her, and, with the precision of a champion wasserball player, batted it back to position.
Trying as hard as possible to conceal its contents, Rose opened the suitcase and found the captain’s biscuits and the mercifully intact lemonade. Fritz lifted the case back to the luggage rack.
They all looked at her, pityingly, as she took tiny joyless bites out of one of the biscuits. Erich opened his knapsack.
‘Perhaps I could offer you something a little more toothsome,’ he said. ‘Our English hosts insisted on providing us with food for the journey. We ate our fill on the boat, but there is a great deal left over. English food.’
He opened a snap tin and showed it was half-full of pork pie and cheese sandwiches. The others opened their 272knapsacks too. Gunter Zwei had four bars of Dairy Milk chocolate. Gerd had sausage rolls.
‘Please,’ Erich said.
Rose took a sausage roll, just to be polite. Then a quarter of a pork pie, three cheese sandwiches and half a bar of Dairy Milk. She should, Rose thought, have been ashamed for making such a pig of herself but the wasserball players, far from minding her greed, seemed as fascinated by the sight of an Englishwoman eating English food as they would be by, say, a python consuming an entire goat.
Every second bite, she said, ‘Thank you,’ and ‘You’re very kind,’ and they nodded and urged her to take more.
When she opened her lemonade, they opened bottles of beer and proposed toasts in German to which she responded with ‘Cheerio’ and ‘Good health’.
Rose went back to Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club. The wasserball players held subdued conversations in German or dozed.
At Bruges, newsboys sold papers and magazines – English, French, Dutch, German – to passengers who leant out of the windows.
It grew light outside. They passed allotments and houses like Rose had never seen in England, different shapes, some clad with brightly coloured tiles. After Liège there were flames from factory chimneys and the train paused for a moment on a bridge over a road where she could see men standing outside a cafe, laughing.
At the German border, officials got on the train. They 273inspected passports but seemed uninterested in luggage. So that was all right.
At Cologne, the wasserball team helped her down with her bags, then, on the platform, shook her hand one by one and repeated their offers of accommodation and swimming lessons.
They left her alone.
The Heidelberg train didn’t leave for forty-five minutes so she made for the steam of the station cafe. Through the window, she could see men and women eating and drinking. Twelve years ago, some of them would have been in the trenches, shooting and being shot by British soldiers. They would have had husbands, fathers, brothers killed, perhaps by people she knew. She wondered whether Germans had Armistice Day, and the two minutes’ silence. And how would they treat an English woman?
She imagined them standing around and taunting her, possibly opening her luggage.
‘What’s in the hatbox?’ they would say. And she would reply, ‘The severed head of an Englishman.’
Perhaps that would make it all right.
She entered. Nobody gave her a second glance.
The smell was different. Coffee and a tobacco smell much sharper than you get in England – more like pipe tobacco even though she couldn’t see anybody smoking a pipe. The harbour had smelt of the sea and oil the same as an English harbour. The train had the usual train smells of coal and musty upholstery. This was her first proper smell of abroad. 274
Again, keeping the hatbox tight between her feet, she ordered two ham sandwiches, a piece of something halfway between bread and cake that the label said was Butterkuchen and some coffee. She took German money from her satchel to pay. The sandwiches came with pickles.
Warm and fed she sat back in her chair and looked around. A German station cafe wasn’t the Hindu Kush or Kanchenjunga, but it was still an adventure. And she was doing all right, wasn’t she? She had been on a train, spoken with a wasserball team, ordered food and paid with foreign money without coming a cropper. She hadn’t let the side down – whoever the side was, these days. For years it had been the Girl Guides. Now, she supposed, it was Mr Duncan, and perhaps Mr Skelton and Mr Hobbes. To get grandiose about it, she might even say it was the British legal system, or Britain. Oh, and for the time being, the Daily Graphic.
She shared her compartment in the train to Heidelberg with a sad man with a huge moustache who looked a bit like Chester Conklin, and an elderly couple who did not seem to like each other very much. Nobody spoke. She read some more.
Outside snow began to fall. A schoolfriend had had a picture on her pencil case with the title, ‘Germany in the snow’. It showed pine trees, mountains and a house that looked like a Swiss chalet. There was nothing like that to be seen from the train window, but she knew the mountains were much further south.
Vernon was waiting for her on the platform at Heidelberg. 275
They shook, rather formally, with their left hands – the Boy Scouts’ handshake.
‘Can I carry madam’s severed head for her?’ he asked with a smile.
Rose had forgotten about his smile.
The hotel, on Sofienstrasse was on the Daily Graphic’s list of reporters’ favourites primarily because it was next door to a lively bar that stocked, in addition to the usual German beers and spirits, a good selection of Scotch and Irish whiskey and bottled Bass.
Outside the station, Vernon had headed for the tram stop. Then Rose took out the paper wallet filled with German money that she’d been carrying in her school satchel.
‘Where did you get that?’ Vernon asked.
‘The Daily Graphic is paying for everything. We can take a taxi.’
‘I’ve never done that here,’ Vernon said. ‘In fact, I don’t remember taking a taxi anywhere.’
‘I got one once or twice in Birmingham,’ Rose said. ‘On business for my dad. You’ll have to tell the driver where to go, though, because I don’t think my German accent is right.’
A taxi was waiting at the rank. Vernon spoke to the driver and they got in.
Rose checked in to the hotel and a porter took the suitcase up to her room. She carried the hatbox and satchel herself.
‘Are you hungry?’ Vernon asked, when she came back down to the lobby. 276
‘Starving.’
‘I think you could probably leave that in your room.’
‘D’you think it’ll be safe?’
‘I would have thought so.’
Rose took the hatbox back to her room.
‘There’s a place where a lot of the students go, not far,’ Vernon said when she came back. ‘We could go there, and you could sample some of the local delicacies,’ he laughed. ‘Except they don’t really have delicacies in Germany. Not for dinner, anyway. Some of the puddings and cakes are good but dinner is mostly pork in one form or another in bulk.’
‘Sounds perfect.’
The snow had turned to sleet and was coming down more heavily.
‘Come on,’ he said. They ran up the street and down another street on to a cobbled lane with fairy-tale buildings on either side. Vernon pushed open an arched door and they stepped into a party. They battled down the stairs, past young men braced against the bannisters, into the large hall, with archways on either side that gave glimpses of other small alcoves and rooms. The smell of beer, tobacco and – another smell, maybe sweat, maybe sausages – was overpowering. Most of the people were young, but others looked as old as the furniture, with bodies as bulky and stout as beer casks, their buttocks spread over the oak benches. There were women there too, scarlet-faced from the heat.
‘Welcome to Heidelberg,’ Vernon said. 277
‘What?’
He shouted, ‘Welcome to Heidelberg.’
She saw hands reach out to shovel fork-loads of frankfurters, krenwurst, sauerkraut and spuds into open mouths. It was washed down with tankards of beer, bigger than pint glasses in an English pub. Big lumps of bread soaked up the juices. Waitresses threaded their way round the tables with more beer, more sausage, more bread. There seemed to be a lot of spillage.
Vernon led Rose by the hand to a long table at the back of the hall. Their neighbours looked like farmhands. They smoked long-stemmed pipes that they didn’t bother to lay down when they drank, just moving them to the corners of their mouths. When they saw Rose and Vernon, they smiled a welcome and moved their bulk further down the bench to accommodate them.
A group of young men lurched past. One of them shouted something and they all laughed.
‘A lot of these people are students,’ Vernon said.
‘A lot of these people are drunk,’ Rose said. ‘Are those Brownshirts?’ She pointed at a group of men in khaki uniforms at a table across the way.
Vernon nodded.
Rose had read about the Brownshirts in the Daily Herald. They were fascists, like Mussolini’s Blackshirts, followers of a man called Hitler and his Nazi party. Recently the Nazis had done very well in the Heidelberg local elections and become the strongest group in the town council. 278
Her father had been a long-time member of the Labour party. As a solicitor he had specialised in cases involving industrial injuries, strikes, lockouts and unfair dismissals. The Nazi party, the National Socialists, even though they had that word ‘socialist’ in their name, had nothing at all to do with the socialism her father had believed in. They mostly seemed to be anti things – anti-Semitic, anti-communist, anti-anybody who opposed what they called ‘the war spirit’. The only thing they seemed keen on was brawling. There had been riots here and there. Shops owned by Jewish people had been ransacked and looted.
Rose, a Girl Guide through and through, considered herself, like Kim in the Rudyard Kipling novel, a ‘little friend of all the world’. She subscribed to what the Girl Guides handbook described as ‘The Knights’ Code’. ‘Defend the poor and help them that cannot defend themselves. Do nothing to hurt or offend anyone else.’ ‘Help others by thinking the best of them, speaking only well of them and doing well by them.’
This, she supposed, made it impossible for her to be a Nazi.
‘Where do they get their uniforms?’ she asked.
‘What?’ Vernon said.
‘Where do they get their uniforms? Is there a Nazi shop somewhere? Like the Scout Shop in Birmingham. Or do they have to send off for it?’
‘I don’t know,’ Vernon said. ‘I’ve never seen a Nazi shop.’
‘Do they have to pay for it themselves? It looks good quality. I can’t imagine it’d be cheap.’ 279
‘Perhaps they get a discount,’ Vernon said. ‘A lot of the big firms support the Nazis.’
‘Why?’
‘Because they’re against the communists and what the big firms are most worried about are the communists.’
A waitress came to take their order. The menu was on a board over the other side of the room and Rose wouldn’t have understood it anyway, so she asked Vernon to order for her.
‘Do you want beer or schnapps?’
Rose frowned and looked at what other people were drinking.
‘They don’t do tea,’ Vernon said. ‘And I think even a glass of water would give rise to sidelong glances.’
‘Beer, then.’
Vernon spoke German to the waitress. She asked a couple of subsidiary questions, which Vernon understood and to which he gave what seemed like satisfactory answers.
‘Your German is very good,’ Rose said when the waitress had gone.
‘Just about good enough to order a meal, but not for much else. I’ve had to learn a lot of technical stuff for the university, but I’m still a novice with some of the basic grammar and, oh, the endless pronouns! I like the way they run words together, though, – like der Windschutzscheibenwischer and der Handschuh.’
‘What’s a handschuh?’
‘It’s a glove – a hand shoe. Good, isn’t it?’ 280
‘And the other one?’
‘Literally, as far as I can make out, “wind protection slices wiper”.’
‘What?’
‘Windscreen wipers on a car.’
The Brownshirts laughed raucously.
Somebody from a group at another table, clearly students, but dressed as workers in flat caps and open-neck shirts, shouted something at them, and the Brownshirts shouted something back.
‘Are they communists?’ Rose said, pointing at the ragged-looking students.
‘How did you know?’
‘They look the same as the communists in Birmingham,’ she said. ‘Sometimes they used to come round to the house. They either wore red ties or no ties at all and they’d always rather stand than sit in bourgeois-looking chairs.’
‘What’s a bourgeois-looking chair?’
‘Anything comfortable.’
Vernon laughed. ‘Is there anything special you’d like to do while you’re here? You’re stuck until Professor Forsch finishes with your head. We might as well make the most of it.’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps see the castle and go on a boat on the Rhine. Or is that too dull for you? Have you done all those sorts of things already?’
‘No, not at all. Professor Mayenburg keeps me hard at it. And I’ve been working with Lessing as well on frog muscles. I know what you’re thinking, “What’s that got to 281do with entomology? Complete red herring!” – but there are crossovers to do with lactic acid fermentation and its relationship with oxygen availability.’
Rose let Vernon talk. Even if she could have heard what he was saying she probably wouldn’t have been able to understand it, but that didn’t matter. His enthusiasm was calming.
The waitress put a tin plate piled high with pork and dumplings in front of her and followed it with an oversized glass of beer.
‘I’m never going to be able to eat all this.’
‘I thought you said you were starving.’
‘I know. But I have my limits.’
‘You see. The beer helps wash it down. What have you been up to, anyway?’
Rose told him about some of the cases she’d worked on with Aubrey Duncan, about Edgar’s new flat in Belsize Park and about Joan, the woman who had taken over Edgar’s old room at Mrs Westing’s. She seemed very nice and worked in the hosiery department at Gamages.
‘Does that mean you get a discount on stockings?’
Rose coloured, unsure whether it was right for them to be talking about ladies’ stockings.
‘What are these things called?’ she asked.
‘Oh, those are knödel. Dumplings. Don’t you like them?’
Without warning, a short stout man lurched from behind Rose and pushed his face towards hers.
‘Deutschland und England gegen die französischen Tyrannen! Wir haben zähne Ausdauer! Together, yes?’ 282
He lurched off again.
Vernon was on his feet and shouted ‘Du Grossmaul!’ at his back. Rose pulled on his arm to get him back into his seat
‘What was that all about? Was he angry about the war? Is it because we’re English?’
‘No, he seems to think Germany and England should gang up against the French.’
‘Why?’
‘No idea. Aren’t you going to finish that?’
Rose pushed her plate towards him, but before Vernon could dig in, he stood and said, ‘Oops. Time for us to get out of here quickly.’
Rose, alarmed, looked around. The Brownshirts seemed to be placid and so were the communists. ‘Is there going to be trouble?’
‘No, but there’s a chap over there who’s just produced a piano accordion and I think he intends to play it.’
Vernon took her back to her hotel. In the lobby they shook left hands. He went off to his digs. Rose went up to her room. She was in bed by half past ten, but overtiredness and noise from the bar next door kept her awake until after one in the morning.
She remembered, when she was much smaller, reading a story in a magazine about Alma Dent, Girl Reporter. Alma was only supposed to be some sort of secretary on the newspaper, but her insatiable curiosity, courage and 283persistence led to her unmasking a gang of criminals or some such. The details were hazy.
Here she was, Rose Critchlow, in a hotel in Germany paid for by the Daily Graphic, having carried a charred human head o’er land and sea. She had sat in a bierkeller with real Nazis and communists. What stories she would have to tell her grandchildren.
She imagined the grandchildren, then looked to one side and saw who their granddad was.