on the spines was faded, but Jake thought he could see at least one that was written in Cyrillic script. The shelves were dusty.
‘So…’ Lange’s eyebrows came together as he studied Jake. ‘How can I help you?’
Jake had been over this once already on the phone, but he was used to the forgetfulness of old age. ‘I’m writing an article about people who came to this country during the war,’ he began.
Lange waved this aside impatiently. ‘Yes, yes, you already tell me this. People who came to this country during the war–there are many such. So, Mr Denbigh, I ask you again: How can I help you?’
Jake suppressed an appreciative grin and reminded himself that old though Lange was, he had been a ruthless and successful businessman in his day. ‘I wanted the experiences of someone who’d built up a successful operation like yours from scratch, in a strange country. I wanted to talk to you about what it was like starting again.’
Lange cleaned his glasses as he thought about this. A book that had been lying on the arm of his chair fell to the floor with a thud. ‘Well, maybe I can help you,’ he said eventually. ‘But it was a long time ago. I have little to tell.’
Or little that he chose to tell. Jake raised a sceptical eyebrow. ‘That’s not what I’ve heard,’ he said. He leaned forward and picked the book up from the floor.
Lange gave him a sharp look. ‘Maybe you had better ask your questions,’ he said. ‘We will see.’
Jake looked at the book in his hands. It had fallen open and he glanced at the page. Baba Yaga. He read on: Once upon a time, deep in the dark forest where the bears roamed and the wolves hunted, there lived an evil witch…Okay, that was appropriate. He closed it and looked at the cover. Russian Fairy Tales.
But he needed to move on. He wanted to get Lange talking while he had him on his own. He hadn’t been convinced by the daughter’s claim that Lange had been traumatized by his early war experiences and was unable to talk about them, and now that he had met the old man, he was even less prepared to accept it. Lange’s reputation spoke for itself and it didn’t look as though age had taken much of his edge. A man like that didn’t deal with trauma by hiding from it.
Jake started off with some personal background. Lange had lived in Manchester for almost sixty years. His marriage had ended in divorce and his ex-wife had died over forty years before. Lange steered away from the personal and talked about his work. He’d devoted himself to making a success of his business, making contacts in Europe when the market was there, travelling further afield as the markets changed. Like many men of his generation, he didn’t seem to have had much time for family life. ‘You’ve got just the one child?’ Jake said.
Lange paused. ‘I have a daughter,’ he said distantly. Then he smiled for the first time. ‘And the granddaughter. Faith.’
He was starting to relax his guard. Jake circled closer. ‘Your life must have changed completely when you arrived here. You went into industry–why did you choose that? I’m interested in how people adapt to these circumstances.’ He kept his voice casual.
‘Industry, yes.’ Lange’s glance at Jake was sharp. ‘The war had led to some new processes. There were opportunities for anyone who cared to take them.’
‘It’s interesting that you managed to spot them when so many people didn’t. Was it your training? In your home country?’
‘I was a peasant, Mr Denbigh, and then over here, I was a soldier. That is training enough for anyone.’ He was sitting stiffly in his chair, and his voice had become distant. Jake decided not to push it any further for now.
‘Tell me what it was like when you first arrived in Manchester,’ he said. ‘It must have been very different from the way it is now. I never saw industrial Lancashire. It was all gone before I came here.’
Lange sat in silence as if assessing Jake’s request, looking for the hook. ‘I have the pictures’ he said. ‘First people I work with, first places.’ He didn’t move from his chair.
‘I’d like to see those,’ Jake said. Pictures were always useful for triggering reminiscences. They might give him an opening to push Lange further back, to catch him at a moment when he might start talking about his past.
Lange nodded briefly, then got up and left the room. Jake heard him talking to someone and checked his watch. It was after eleven. Had the guardian relative arrived? He heard Lange’s voice: ‘…is not necessary, Doreen. I tell you this before.’ His tone was peremptory. Then the door opened again and Lange returned carrying a box. He came back to his seat. ‘Is so long…’ he muttered, half to himself as he opened it.
Judging by the dust on the lid, it hadn’t been touched in ages. Jake moved his chair across. It contained a few paper wallets, orange-brown with dark stripes, marked ‘Kodak’. Jake looked at Lange for permission, then began going through them. Lange evinced no interest. The pictures were disappointing. Black-and-white photos of factories and production lines with the occasional picture of Lange surrounded by different groups of overalled men. Jake began discreetly checking to see if anything more interesting had been slipped in at any time. He could remember his own grandfather’s habit of putting loose photographs in with more recent sets.
And his intuition paid off. Tucked away among some negatives that had been undisturbed for so long they had stuck together, were two small prints, grainy monochrome, faded and damaged. He took them out and looked at them. The first one showed a group of people–a family? It looked like a typical peasant family to Jake–standing in front of a small house. It was hard to make out the details. The woman’s hair was pulled back from her face and she wore a long dress and apron. She held a young child–about four, maybe–in her arms. Standing next to her, there was a boy who looked as if he might be ten or eleven. Lange? Jake glanced across at the old man. It was hard to tell.
The second one was slightly larger and cut with a deckle edge. He checked the back quickly. It looked as though something had been written on it, but whatever it was, it had faded beyond legibility. It showed a young man in uniform standing in front of a building–the boy from the first photograph? If it was, he was older now, in his late teens or early twenties. This picture was unmistakably of Lange.
He held the first picture out. ‘Your family?’ he said.
After a brief hesitation, Lange took the photograph. His fingers brushed the woman’s face, and then the child’s, tentatively, as if the picture was a reflection in water that would disappear at his touch. He stared at it in silence for a full minute, then reached for the box and started going through the envelopes himself, impatiently gesturing Jake to silence.
Jake waited. Lange’s reaction to the picture was odd and had aroused his curiosity. He kept his observation discreet, letting his eyes wander over to the French windows and the garden beyond. The rain had stopped, and the day had the brightness of early spring. Unlike the front, the back garden was carefully tended, a strange contrast to the shabby, neglected house. Someone had been working on the rose bed by the window. A spade was propped against the wall, and a fork was dug into the earth. The plants had been pruned, and the remaining leaves shone with health.
‘When we are children,’ Lange said suddenly, ‘we live in a forest. My papa go there because Mama is ill. He has to clear land, build his house. He makes the orchard–cherry trees and plum trees. I am born there.’
‘When was that?’ Jake knew the answer, but he wanted to hear what Lange would say.
‘Many
