The final night at Salt Cottage. Rain-whipped. Sky pressing into the land, pummelling it; wet hammering the windows like a giant flinging pebbles; as if heaven itself was stopping anyone listening in. Your kitchen had the glow of a special occasion. Candles were lit. You were wearing your favourite perfume, the gardenia one, and Motl nursed a mug of his beloved whisky, the Ardbeg you love breathing in.
He had informed you earlier he had a plan. Fevery, excited, flushed. ‘It will work.’ You had to trust him. Why? Because those three children filled every inch of his heart as hugely as your own. He couldn’t tell you exactly what the idea was. He said he was protecting them, and you. ‘There are ways of extracting information, any information they want, you know that. It’s too risky, Mum. For all of us.’ And did you have a counter-plan? No, you did not.
Motl’s fingers now drummed the kitchen table and when the whole family was settled he leaned close. You sucked in your lower lip: something in him had firmed and you loved him like this. He was one of those people whose mind is concentrated, magnificently, under pressure, who grow in stature once they’ve moved beyond the initial shock. He announced calmly that you would all be going away. Held up splayed hands to the questions. He said everyone had to remember two things and two only: that no situation had ever been improved by thinking it couldn’t be changed, and you all had to keep on hoping even when hope seemed lost.
‘What’s happening?’ ‘Where are we going?’ ‘Can we have chocolate?’ ‘What’s going on?’
Motl shook his head at the shrill of voices. He smiled. He said there was just one thing each child had to remember, to get them through, and they all had to listen carefully. He turned to his youngest. ‘You, my little book muncher of the family, have to write everything down. Be our memoriser. Tell our story, tell the truth.’
Mouse nodded, thrilled with the weight of his task.
The professor turned to his daughter. ‘You, madam, my big, beautiful girl, have to look after your brothers. Be the mummy of the group.’
Even now you can hear Soli’s deep, wavery breathing as she contemplated the enormity of that.
Then his older son. ‘And you, my sunny soldier boy, have to believe. Keep up the hope and keep smiling, for all of us. Be buoyant. That’s all. Set an example for your brother and sister.’ Motl has told you that he thinks Tidge is one of those people who can plug themselves into light and be an enormous light to others. ‘Belief will be your shelter, all right?’
‘Eh?’ His boy yelped in bewilderment but Motl didn’t have time to explain any further; he asked everyone to hold hands and with an enormous impish glee declared he had a secret, the most secret of secrets, and as he spoke the hairs stood shrill to attention on the back of your neck.
‘One day we’ll come back to Salt Cottage. I promise. I have a plan.’
But he wouldn’t say what. And you remember clearly the shine in his face as he spoke because it reminded you of nothing so much as some lone, crazy, heart-bursting salmon, fighting its way up river, never stopping until it’s home. Then Motl tented his fingers under his chin and declared that this new regime would eventually collapse because it was a denial of every single human value that was good and civilised and right. Because it shrivelled people’s hearts to just two emotions: fear, and a desperate, ugly sense of self-preservation. Because it stopped friends and neighbours trusting each other. Because it killed history by rewriting the books. And lastly, obscenely, because it stole joy. Anyone’s right.
‘And all this is being done in the name of freedom,’ you spat, in a voice they’d never heard.
The whole family looked across. Because you had become old, it had begun from that night. But Motl was all-calming. He murmured ‘Mum’ in his warning voice. He said people can choose to live as victims or courageous fighters and we all had to think very carefully about how we proceeded from this point. And that there are some people who are broken by unfairness, and there are some people who are not.
‘And we will not be. We will not.’
Old is my body, heavy and frail, it moves not with my fleeter thoughts. But strong my purpose, strong my heart.