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  With his kit-bag back on his shoulder, Bruno picked up the heaviest case and ushered the others out of the apartment – which he proceeded to lock up.  

For an unreal moment, they stood, silent and motionless, in the dark hallway. The twins were sleeping. The other children looked bewildered, frightened. The parents’ expressions conveyed the same thought: they were leaving their home…and might possibly never return.  

Anna told me it was the first time she had seen a sad look on her father’s face.   

They set off into the freezing night. There were only a few people on the streets of the immediate neighbourhood, but within twenty minutes they had reached the edge of the station-bound multitude. The rear edge – with the station still a considerable distance away. It was obvious there were far too many evacuees for whatever trains would be available and the Hartmanns were effectively at the back of the desperate queue. The situation appeared hopeless. But not to Bruno, who, as I mentioned, had a special relationship with ‘hope’. He quickly made three things count decisively in terms of their progress through the crowds – his size, his fierce determination and his uniform.  

He used them all to burrow and bore a way through. He ignored the complaints, curses and insults as he pushed remorselessly past anyone that stood between his family and safety. A couple of confrontations came close to violence, until the would-be assailants had second thoughts about striking a soldier – especially one as large – and, in those moments, as ferocious – as Bruno. 

 Moving in a diamond phalanx – Bruno at the head, the two older children on the flanks, the little ones sheltered in the middle and Katya at the rear – they eventually heaved their way onto the station concourse. It had taken two hours and was now just after midnight. The streets had been distressing enough, but inside the station the frenzy was even more appalling.

  Bruno’s height allowed him a clearer view of the prevailing pandemonium. Three long trains stood at platforms 2, 5 and 8. Everyone was straining, jostling and pushing to get access to one of these platforms. The ticket-gates at platforms 5 and 8 – at which stood the train on which Bruno had arrived - were guarded by uniformed members of the local militia. For the moment, nobody was being allowed onto these platforms, a fact which did not deter people from cramming around the two gates. A trickle of people was being intermittently allowed onto platform 2 and its train.   

Bruno’s instinct prompted his decision. At the gate to platform 2, documents were being examined by four SS officers, who were accompanied by twenty armed soldiers. Bruno sensed what was happening. Katya told him that Gauleiter Hanke’s broadcast of the disastrously delayed evacuation had been that morning. The SS would have had their own arrangements in place before the official announcement. These four officers were now vetting those who were well enough connected, or, of course, SS and Gestapo personnel – and then allowing them onto the train. The one train that Bruno now knew would definitely be leaving that night.   

Bruno checked on the family, as he had done all through their harrowing haul through the crowds. Franz and Siggi were visibly suffering and the twins were crying, but the two older girls and Katya were still bearing up.

  “One last push”, he shouted.  

With that, he began moving them towards platform 2 with renewed vigour.  

Ten minutes later, the Hartmanns had forced their way to the gate. The SS officer treated Bruno to a sardonic, suspicious glare. Bruno was neither intimidated nor unnerved. It was a look he had seen too often on the faces of Schulz and his cronies. He took out his military ID – then emphasized out loud what the officer was reading.  

“There – you see….I am a member of SS Oberführer Schulz’s staff in Bergen. I am home on medical leave – look, here’s my pass…” – here Bruno showed his doctored document. “ But the Oberführer needs me back in Norway, as soon as possible. He sent word….but told me to attend to the safety of my family first…which I trust you are not going to delay”.  

The officer – tall, muscular, dark-haired – finished inspecting the papers, then gazed enigmatically at Bruno.  

“There are serious developments in Bergen – I have to get back. Military transport has been arranged – but I must get my family on that train first”. 

 There was still no response from the officer – other than the languid silence that affirmed his authority and control.  “That’s Oberführer Schulz of the Waffen SS, by the way”, Bruno resumed, emphatically, stabbing the document.  

The train at platform 2 left Breslau Station three hours later – horrendously over-crowded. It was the last train to leave Breslau.  The trains at platforms 5 and 8 never moved.  But when that last train finally departed, at 03.16 in the morning, all the Hartmann family were on board.  Except Bruno.     .

  Jamie Knight had found his own memorial service somewhat depressing. He blamed the venue. Okay – the cathedral might have been a slightly grandiose expectation – though as the city’s most famous Catholic artist, he was not sure it was an unreasonable one. But – really? – St Francis of Assisi’s? – old Franny’s Fridge – where he had been dragged from the orphanage every Sunday, saints day and holy day for the first 15 years of his life? In the dark satanic shadow of Garston gasworks? Was that really somewhere to invite the culturally clotted cream of Britain – the great and the grand, the glittering and the glib, the self- opinionated, self-styled and self-important – to commemorate the life of someone so…… So......what? This was after all his life they were memorialising – a life which had come to disappoint others as much as it had himself.

 It hadn't just been the un-venerable venue. The turn-out was even more demeaning. There were no friends there, of course - he had none. Ditto family. And he been so long off the fame radar, that all the inveterate hangers-on, limpets and parasites had long since evaporated. And yet - a mere 22 people? The majority - he wondered if such a small number merited the word - were journalists, who had to be there. Others seemed to have wandered in off the street out of idle curiosity. The representatives of London’s art world could have arrived in the same taxi. The memorial service for someone who had won the Turner Prize at twenty-three should have filled a stadium. Instead, there were only just enough for the two teams. 

The underwhelming numbers of the congregation had been annoyingly compounded by the service itself. They had not used any of the songs he had stipulated, such as Going Underground or Sympathy for the Devill (He had considered Light My Fire - but rejected the idea on the basis that he had already been technically - not to say, spectacularly - cremated.) None of his jokes had been included - not even the barb about his bequest of a fire-proof suitcase to Damien Hirst so he could take all his money with him when his time came. The whole show had been hijacked by an over-evangelical priest. He blamed Cassie. He had left her precise instructions about how he wanted to put the fun into his own funeral. No doubt she had been bullied by Father Zealot into all the traditionally turgid religious guff. All in all, deadly dull. More homily than homage. 

Mind you, he thought, as he boarded the 86 bus back into town, for once all that drivel about the afterlife had not been an exaggeration. Clearly. Jamie Knight had, in recent years, forged many a masterpiece. But his own masterpiece had been forging his own death. 

He hoped.    .

  Tony was a stocky, grey-haired Mexican in his late fifties. His striking blue eyes carried only two expressions – smiling, or about to smile. Unfortunately his English was so poor it merited food coupons. I say unfortunately because Tony spent most of his six working days listening to people complain in English, as he went about his work for Maintenance at the somewhat run-down apartments of the Liberty Suites.  

Tony himself never complained. To complain was to question – or worse, insult – God. And God was everything to Tony. And God knew what He was doing. So Tony just got on with things and always got by. God saw to that.  

Like many Mexicans in Arizona, Tony was sort of there – and not there. By the accepted common indicators – health-care, housing, wages – his quality of life was better in West Phoenix than it had been in Hermosillo. But it was the uncommon things he missed – the unique – and uniquely comforting – sights, sounds and smells, the old friends and extended family back in what he still thought of as home. And while his own quality of life may have technically improved in the States, it still did not come close, in material terms, to that of the average Arizonian. For people like Tony, the American Dream was for gazing and sniffing – not touching and tasting.  

Not that Tony minded. His dream lay in God’s hands – and nobody’s hands were more trustworthy.  

I first met Tony when he came to fix my fridge. Much as he began by trying to assume professional, polite and purposeful, that twinkling smile kept peeping through. After a general look, prod and rummage, he gave his diagnosis.  

“Chu fan…” – he made a circular motion with his hand – “…’E no feel like work today. Maybe is too ‘ot….” The twinkle. “Maybe is Mexican fan…”  

Tony was one of those all-purpose, one-size-fits-all handymen who knew a bit about everything – electrics, plumbing, carpentry – but never enough to actually fix the thing you needed fixing. I watched him fridge-fiddle for about twenty minutes. I like watching experts at work – on the basis I might learn something new. The only thing I was likely to learn from Tony was more words in Spanish.  After five minutes, I knew Tony was not going to be able to fix the fridge. It took another quarter of an hour before Tony reached the same conclusion. 

 “Muerto…” he said, finally. “Freedge cemetary….”  

He made a call. In Spanish. I caught hardly a word. I speak Spanish quite well. I understand Mexican Spanish reasonably well. But Tony Spanish had me comprehensively licked.  It was 110° outside. My fridge and its freezer were full of food and drink that was being pushed to its limits of non-chilled survival. In Arizona, in July, a fridge is just below oxygen on the list of vital human necessities.  I decided to stay calm. After all, the man on the case worked for God.  

Over the next hour I watched – and assisted – as Tony disappeared, then returned with a replacement fridge that looked more ancient than its posthumous predecessor, which he proceeded to install. There was a disarming aspect to the way he worked. He never got anything right first time. But he got there in the end. In his own, Stan Laurel fashion. And did so without grumbling, cursing or muttering – or even looking in the least discomfited.  Finally, he switched on the old new fridge. It growled into life, like a 747 in labour.  

“Perfecto”, he beamed. “What is English for perfecto?”  For one moment I thought he was joking. No – he was serious. There was not a cynical, sarcastic or ironic bone in Tony’s body.  “Perfect”, I mumbled, somewhat troubled by the machine’s rumbling. “That noise – is it okay?”  “Thee fan….’e settle up….more quiet soon….”  

He was right. Eventually. It seems the Mexican equivalent of maňana is the day after maňana. Two days and sleep-deprived nights later the fridge did stop groaning – and my tiny apartment stopped impersonating the main runway at Heathrow Airport.  

I saw Tony many times over the next few weeks, both around the estate and at my flat – as the TV joined the fridge in appliance Valhalla, the tiny roaches in the bathroom started working out and getting bigger and the leg fell off a dining-chair when I played some music it didn’t like. I rarely saw any other members of Maintenance – who clearly belonged to the if they can’t see you they can’t pester you school. Not so Tony. He never hid from work. How could you – when God was the real boss?  

Every time we met, I offered him a warm handshake – and, if it was at the apartment, a cold soda from my now silently running fridge. We talked a lot. I acquired a much better grasp of his Spanish. Stan Laurel or no, he became my default, go-to guy when the endless problems arose.  The day of my departure, back to Europe, I looked for Tony to bid him farewell. For once, he was nowhere to be seen. I went to the office. No – Tony was not at work today. His son – his only child – had been killed in an automobile accident the night before. To this day, I have no idea why - but the news hit me like a sledge-hammer in the gut. I left the office – numb – and stood gazing blankly at the traffic on 83rd. I simply couldn’t leave like this.  I went back to the office and asked if they could give me a phone number for Tony.  Not possible, said the girl. Company policy.  I sighed in frustration – just as the man himself entered from a side door.  The glint had left his eyes.  

“Tony….I am so sorry….”  He took my outstretched hand, limply and nodded sadly. The manager came out from the back office. 

“Tony….Man, what you doing here?”  

“I work…” he said, softly. “Better I work….”  A tear had formed in a crystal-blue eye. I looked from Tony to the two people behind the counter. None of us knew what to say or do.  “Bueno”, said Tony, with a heavy shrug. “God is good. God know what ‘E do – no? Enrique – ‘e now with God. Mi hijo….’e now ‘appy….Tambien….I mus’ be ‘appy…..”  

I have no idea just how much Tony was able to believe his own words in those moments.  But if the Boss was there and listening, I fervently hope He did know what He was doing.  

For Tony’s sake.  

Not His.    .