‘It’s bad enough you always having to go about covering the doings of those nasty criminals and people,’ she was saying, ‘without going and getting mixed up with those Nazi people. I don’t know what your dear father would have thought, I really don’t …’
A thought struck him.
‘Mother.’
‘Yes, dear?’
‘During the war … those things that the SS did to people … in the camps. Did you ever suspect … did you ever think that it was going on?’
She busied herself furiously tidying up the table. After a few seconds she spoke.
‘Horrible things. Terrible things. The British made us look at the films after the war. I don’t want to hear any more about it.’
She bustled out. Peter rose and followed her into the kitchen.
‘You remember in 1950 when I was sixteen and I went to Paris with a school party?’
She paused, filling the sink for the washing up.
‘Yes, I remember.’
‘And we were taken to see a church called the Sacre Cœur. And there was a service just finishing, a memorial service for a man called Jean Moulin. Some people came out, and they heard me speaking German to another boy. One of the group turned and spat at me. I remember the spittle running down my jacket. I remember I came home later and told you about it. Do you remember what you said?’
Mrs Miller was furiously scouring the dinner plates.
‘You said the French were like that. Dirty habits, you said.’
‘Well, they have. I never did like them.’
‘Look, Mother, do you know what we did to Jean Moulin before he died? Not you, not Father, not me. But us, the Germans, or rather the Gestapo, which for millions of foreigners seems to be the same thing.’
‘I’m sure I don’t want to hear. Now that’s enough of that.’
‘Well, I can’t tell you, because I don’t know. Doubtless it’s recorded somewhere. But the point is, I was spat on not because I was in the Gestapo, but because I’m a German.’
‘And you should be proud of it.’
‘Oh, I am, believe me, I am. But that doesn’t mean I’ve got to be proud of the Nazis, and the SS and the Gestapo.’
‘Well, nobody is, but it won’t get better for keeping talking about it.’
She was flustered, as always when he argued with her, drying her hands on the dish towel before bustling back into the sitting room. He trailed after her.
‘Look, Mother, try to understand. Until I read that diary I never even asked precisely what it was we were all supposed to have done. Now at least I’m beginning to understand. That’s why I want to find this man, this monster, if he’s still about. It’s right that he should be brought to trial.’
She sat on the settee, close to tears.
‘Please, Peterkin, leave them alone. Just don’t keep probing into the past. It won’t do any good. It’s over now, over and done with. It’s best forgotten.’
Peter Miller was facing the mantelpiece, dominated by the clock and the photograph of his dead father. He was wearing his captain’s uniform of the Army, staring out of the frame with the kind, rather sad smile that Miller remembered of him. It was taken before he returned to the front after his last leave.
Peter remembered his father with startling clarity, looking at his photograph nineteen years later as his mother asked him to drop the Roschmann inquiry. He could remember before the war, when he was five years old, and his father had taken him to Hagen-beck’s Zoo and pointed out all the animals to him, one by one, patiently reading the details off the little tin plaques in front of each cage to reply to the endless flow of questions from the boy.
He could remember how he came home after enlisting in 1940, and how his mother had cried and how he had thought how stupid women are to cry over such a wonderful thing as having a father in uniform. He recalled the day in 1944 when he was eleven years old, and an army officer had come to the door to tell his mother that her war-hero husband had been killed on the Eastern Front.
‘Besides, nobody wants these awful exposures any more. Nor these terrible trials that we keep having, with everything dragged out into the open again. N
obody’s going to thank you for it, even if you do find him. They’ll just point to you in the street; I mean, they don’t want any more trials. Not now, it’s too late. Just drop it, Peter, please, for my sake.’