Exposure by Evelyn Anthony Page B

holidays. I got to know the country and to like it.’
    â€˜I didn’t know you were married.’
    He brushed it aside. ‘I’m not; we got divorced fifteen years ago.’
    â€˜Do you have children?’ Julia asked him. They were drinking coffee after a snack lunch in one of the cheerful cafés in the main street.
    â€˜Two. Son and daughter. I don’t see much of them. I don’t see them at all,’ he remarked, and there was a bitter note in his voice.
    â€˜I’m sorry,’ she said awkwardly. ‘It must be hard for you.’
    â€˜They took their mother’s part. That was it. I didn’t try to argue the case. They were old enough to make up their own minds.’
    It must have been a bad divorce; she didn’t like to pry any further. To her surprise he started to talk. He drank his coffee and leaned back in his seat and said, ‘I met Helga when she came to stay with my parents as an exchange student. My kid brother went over to her family to learn German and she came to us to learn English. She was very pretty. Blonde, blue eyes, real Herrenvolk type. Nice girl, too. I fell like the proverbial ton of bloody bricks and married her. I was a reporter on the Birmingham Advertiser . We lived in a rented flat and she went out to work as a mother’s help. We hadn’t any money, but we were pretty happy. Shame it all went wrong.’
    Julia leaned a little towards him. It still hurt, she could see that. No wonder he said his German was good.
    â€˜What went wrong?’
    â€˜I moved to the Herald ,’ he said flatly. ‘We’d been in Birmingham for twelve years. We owned a nice little house in the suburbs by then, she had a lot of friends, local bridge club, golf twice a week – solid middle-class lifestyle. The kids were at school and doing well. I was News Editor of the Birmingham Post by then, and it was a good job. But I wanted more challenge, J. I didn’t want to stand still. And a job on the Herald was the big opportunity. So I took it and moved them all down to London. Long and short of it was, Helga hated it, the kids hated it, and I escaped into my work. We rowed, I stayed out more and more – it’s not difficult in our job, you know that – and in the end she left me. Moved back to Birmingham, got a job, met another man and remarried. End of story. Want some more coffee, or shouldn’t we try and make a start?’
    He’d said all there was and he wanted to close the topic. Julia said, ‘Yes, but thanks for telling me about it. Where do we start, Ben?’
    â€˜No harm in retracing my steps. We start with the Bauhaus. The Town Hall and the records office. They weren’t very helpful last time, but now we’re all one happy European family, it may be easier.’
    â€˜May I ask the reason for your request?’ The clerk at the enquiries was a woman in her middle thirties; she wore the disdainful and suspicious look common to civil servants the world over. What, it conveyed, did these foreigners want, asking to see the old records of the late nineteen forties …?
    Ben answered. ‘We’re trying to trace a missing relative.’
    â€˜You’ve left it rather late, haven’t you? A German national?’
    â€˜No—’ Julia interrupted. They were speaking in English. ‘My uncle. He had no nationality; he was in the DP camp.’
    The woman raised her thin eyebrows. ‘Then we would have no records of anyone like that. I don’t know who would; it’s so long ago. I’m sorry.’
    She had turned away in dismissal when Ben said, ‘But you would have records from the British Control Commission. I saw them here some years ago. And I found some documentation. My friend’s uncle was discharged into the surety of an English woman working among the refugees. This was sanctioned and approved by the military authorities and he was allowed to live here with