This Was a Man (The Clifton Chronicles 7)

Once the three manuscripts had been dispatched by courier, the agonizing wait began. Harry’s three readers had all been warned that Heads You Win was a departure from his usual fare, which only made him more anxious.

He had considered allowing Giles, who had a lot more time on his hands lately, and Sebastian, his most ardent fan, to also be among the first to read his latest manuscript, but decided not to break with his usual routine. He would allow them to read the final draft over Christmas, after his line editor had suggested any changes.

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?