Somewhere Over England Read Online Free

pushed shadows away. Should he go back in? But no, it was for the mother and daughter to decide, as he and his mother had decided.
    Yes, you must leave Germany, she had said, her face pinched and anxious, her voice low as they sat before the tiled stove. You must leave for the sake of harmony in this house. Your father is a good man. You are also good, but impulsive. He will not change and you will make his position awkward. We love you, Heine, but you must leave.
    Heine walked across the lawn, across the path to the forsythia. He threw his cigarette in an arc on to the damp earth to one side and bent to the shrub. There was no scent.
    He had left Germany.
    He turned and stood, his hands deep in his pockets, his jacket rucked beneath his arms. The dog was still barking in one of the gardens further down the Avenue. He looked up at the sky, it was still blue though the sun was going down slowly. And then he remembered how his own dog had barked like that when his parents had taken him as a child on holiday to one of the North Sea islands. It had barked and barked as his parents waded into the sea in red swimming costumes which reached to their knees. His mother had clasped his father’s short sleeve as she tried to keep her balance against the waves but she had brought him down aswell. He and his cousin Adam laughed until they ached, and his father and mother had laughed too.
    Heine took another cigarette from the packet, tapping it on his nail before lighting it. This time there was no shred of tobacco to become caught between his lips. Again and again he heard that laughter and he knew that his father was a kind man, a precise man, but a man who could not see that the order he craved would only be achieved at great cost. That such order would only be achieved through black boots and brown shirts kicking and pulling and punching until the most common German words would be ‘
Vorsicht
’ and ‘
Leise sprechen
’.
    ‘Careful and speak softly,’ he repeated aloud in English, turning again to the house. Still there was no sign of Helen, but she was here with him, because it was through her that his love for his family had come back to him, for a moment at least.
    If they married – but then Heine corrected himself – when they married, for he could not bear to think that they would not, he would take her to Germany because she had made him promise that he would. He touched his leg. He would take her to Hanover, his home town. He would take her to the forest near his home. They would walk beneath the elm, the ash, the beech and the linden and his leg would be less painful there, walking on the softness of mulched, shaded, ground. He would take her to one of the rest houses which were scattered through the forest. They would eat food cooked by the woodsman’s wife. Maybe they would see elk, or deer. Yes, he would take his ‘
Frauchen
’, his little wife, to the beauties of his land while they were still untainted.
    He drew on the remains of his cigarette, the heat of the enflamed tip warmed his fingers. He would take her to the Kröpcke as he had promised today by the stream and they would sit within that glass-domed café and he would order her coffee topped with whipped cream and shavings of chocolate and watch while she ate enormous cream cakes. He would relax in her pleasure and her youth.
    And yes, Helen, he said silently as he ground out his cigarette on the path, yes, I will take you to the land of my birth but I will not take you to Munich where my friends live; where something else is being born which will go far beyond law and order and decency, unless we protest again and again. And I am not there to do my share, because my mother made adecision for me. Or did she, my love? Was I just scared of being hurt again?
    The sun was fading now and still Helen had not come for him and so he moved to the low wall which edged the patio. Yes, his father was a kind man and would welcome the wife of his son even though she