The Forest of Souls. Carla Banks
like his privacy. Jake rang the doorbell and stepped back, looking up at the house. Add a few thorns, a turret or two, and Prince Charming could hack his way through into the enchanted castle where the sleeping princess…
The door opened suddenly, and a woman stood there. She was short and thick-set, and her face was unwelcoming. The princess was out, but apparently the wicked witch was at home. Was this Lange’s granddaughter? It couldn’t be. This woman must be in her late forties at least. The daughter? Unlikely. He smiled and held out his hand. ‘Jake Denbigh. Mr Lange is expecting me.’
‘He didn’t say anything to me about it.’ The woman shrugged. ‘You’d better come in.’
Definitely not the daughter. Not the guardian relative at all. He followed the woman–who hadn’t introduced herself–across the dim vestibule where the stairway ran up to a half-landing. The house was cold, and he shoved his hands deeper into his pockets. A man was coming down the stairs, moving with a slight shuffle.
‘Mr Lange?’ It had to be Marek Lange. He was a tall man, well built, but with the stoop of age. He was wearing a cardigan and heavy trousers. He had bedroom slippers on his feet. Jake held out his hand. ‘I’m Jake Denbigh. It’s good of you to see me.’
The old man settled his glasses on his nose and subjected Jake to a close scrutiny. His eyes were a faded blue and his hair was white, but still thick. His face was severe, but whatever he saw must have satisfied him because he held out his hand in response to Jake’s. ‘You are early.’
‘I thought the traffic would be worse than it was,’ Jake said.
Lange nodded once, accepting Jake’s explanation. ‘You would like coffee?’ he asked. He took Jake’s coat–which Jake was reluctant to relinquish in the chill–and held it out to the woman, who must be some kind of help, Jake decided. There was no sign of the guardian relative.
He declined the offer of coffee. He didn’t trust what might emerge from any kitchen run by the grim-faced woman. Lange opened a door and led the way through. Jake followed him. The room in which he found himself overlooked the back of the house. It smelled of dust and age, but it was large and well proportioned, with French windows looking out over the garden.
The garden was overshadowed by trees, except for a small lawn and a flowerbed close to the window. Lange gestured towards two heavy armchairs that stood on either side of the fireplace, and Jake sat down, running his eyes over the bookcase that filled the alcove beside the chimney-breast. The books were without jackets, and the writing 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