by Penny Thorpe
Mr Midgley turned to Albert and said, ‘Now, we have some papers for you to sign; the lease on the house at Skircoat Green, your new permanent contract of employment at Mackintosh’s, your statement of intent. Then we have the written references secured for you by Sir Harold, the affidavit from your employers, and some sundry papers to support your application.’
‘And I take all of these to the British Embassy in Berlin?’
‘Ah, yes, but not quite yet Mr Baum. We need to have the lease countersigned by the landlord and we need to prepare a statement from the bank confirming the deposit of your family effects,’ here he gestured delicately to the sparkling treasures on his desk, ‘and include the all-important valuation. The Home Office must know that you have the wherewithal to provide for your children, even beyond the means of your salary.’
‘And then I can apply for a permit to return here on an indefinite basis with my children and my sister? It is imperative that the permission is granted for all my family. I cannot leave them behind again.’
‘We should have all the papers you need by Tuesday, but I must impress upon you that there are no guarantees. In our experience the Home Office have been making matters unnecessarily complicated for Jews who want to enter Great Britain – especially so for those who have Polish Citizenship to fall back on. I realise that in your case you may never have set foot in Poland, but the Home Office is quite clear; if you have any Polish ancestor you are expected to seek refuge there. Really, Mr Baum, if I may speak frankly, you might consider sending your children and your sister to Poland if all else fails in Britian.’
‘I will give it some thought. Thank you, Mr Midgley.’
Mr Midgley sighed. ‘I make no promises, mind you. We will have you an excellent application, but even the best applications have been refused. I’d say your chances are 50-50.’
Albert Baum looked brave and hopeful. ‘As high as that?’
Chapter Twenty
Mary knew that she needed to get that lock fixed, but it wasn’t an easy thing to arrange when your manager was in Düsseldorf. She’d snapped the key in the lock months earlier, but every time the factory locksmiths came out to look at it they did everything except replace the lock itself. Mary wasn’t worried, no one really bothered her in the Confectioners’ Kitchen, it was her safe haven.
Friday had come around slowly, and the worry for the absent Albert had settled to a background hum in Mary’s thoughts. That afternoon she was lost in her work and it was easy work to become lost in. Mary made confectionery by hand in the Mackintosh’s experimental kitchens, and it was the privilege of her life that she had been chosen for it. Albert Baum had been brought to England as her instructor, and the Mackintosh’s factory had high hopes that they would be able to bring him back permanently once they’d settled a work permit for him.
It was a fairly routine day in the kitchens for Mary. She had been asked to make a batch of seven hundred Caramel Cups to a new recipe the factory was developing and wanted to try out on their expert chocolate tasters. She had to gently melt heavy slabs of rich brown chocolate in her bain-marie, then temper it on the marble-topped table they kept for the purpose. Then she flicked the liquid chocolate up onto a tin mould, using nothing but her pallet knife and her innate skill, coating the cup-shaped wells with a glossy cocoa liquor. While her rows of chocolate cups cooled, she set about the leisurely task of mixing caramel – not too hastily lest the heat scorch the ingredients and spoil the delicate flavours – and then pouring it carefully into her piping bag while she savoured the aroma of butter, vanilla, and sweetness. It was all just as Albert Baum had taught her in that very kitchen when she was his apprentice, and she wished he could see her now.
The process was just complex enough to be interesting to Mary, but just repetitive enough to be soothing. Mary worked alone contentedly; the kitchens were her domain. She took her time melting the chocolate for the cup moulds, tempering it on her marble-topped table, spreading it onto the decorative indentations and knocking it out. She was so mesmerised by the chocolate that when she finally realised she was being watched she had no idea how long she had been absorbed. But sure enough, there in the doorway with her arms crossed, was the over-made-up face of Dolly Dunkley.
‘What do you want, Dolly?’ Mary’s patience for the girl had been severely limited since she last worked with her in those very kitchens. Dolly’s habit of wandering the factory corridors, looking for someone to snitch on instead of getting on with her work, was driving Mary and her friends to distraction. Mrs Starbeck must either be utterly blind, or have had some ulterior motive for keeping her on if she was willing to put up with Dolly’s dithering.
‘I’ve come to see—’ Dolly’s nasal whine was interrupted by a second visitor, who she greeted with a sneering, ‘Oh, we’re back, are we?’
Albert Baum maintained his composure and replied, ‘Miss Dunkley; it’s always a pleasure to see you looking so well.’ His eyes met Mary’s across the room and he could see that she was so surprised to see him there that she couldn’t speak. They both wanted to run to one another, but they couldn’t move while this unspeakable girl stood between them.
‘I am well, as it happens, because I’ve been promoted to the offices.’ Dolly jutted out her chin in a strange, smug, wiggly little gesture which implied she felt she had been promoted in the teeth of Albert Baum’s express opposition, but the truth be known he had always been ambivalent towards her.
‘Dolly is working for Mrs Starbeck now,’ Mary explained wearily.
‘Yes, and she’ll be very interested to hear that you’ve returned. We thought you’d gone for good.’ Dolly Dunkley had an uncontrollable fetish for reporting wrongdoers and she hovered in the kitchen now as though waiting to spot a misdemeanour and then pounce on it in righteous indignation, but nothing untoward was happening.
‘By all means,’ Albert said with weary patience, ‘give Mrs Starbeck my very best regards, and inform her that I am only in the country for a few weeks to arrange some paperwork. I have a dispensation to allow me to visit long enough to make some legal arrangements and then I will be gone.’
Mary’s voice caught in her throat. ‘A few weeks?’
‘Until Easter,’ he told her. ‘I will be here until Easter at the latest.’
‘Well you’ll notice that things have changed a lot round here since you left.’ Dolly appeared to be in a boastful mood and inclined to leave in a blaze of glory. ‘We’re getting more and more like Germany every day,’ she said with pride, ‘and it won’t be long now before Oswald Mosley is in power in Britain and then you’ll really see how a country ought to be run.’ Lifting her nose even higher into the air, Dolly marched off in the direction of the door, walked abruptly into the door frame because she wasn’t properly looking where she was going, and scowled at Mary and Albert as though they had caused her injury. ‘I’ll be keeping an eye on you,’ she said, although it wasn’t much of a threat given that she couldn’t even watch where she was going.
When she was finally gone Mary swallowed back a sob and said, ‘You’re here.’
‘I’m here. I promised I would come back.’ And Albert took two long strides towards Mary and took her hand in both of his and kissed it, just as he had done in that very room on the day he left her.
‘We can’t stay here.’ Mary looked to the door. ‘She’ll come back, you know. She’ll find a way to make it worse for us. Please, let’s meet tomorrow afternoon, away from the factory …’
Chapter Twenty-One
‘I promise you that this is the one place that Dolly Dunkley would never see us.’ Mary clutched their stubby brown bus tickets for dear life as they alighted at Hopwood Lane, strands of her soft, coal-black hair flying loose as she jumped down from the footplate and half ran towards a pair of wrought-iron gates which stood open beside the road ahead of them. ‘I doubt she even knows where it is.’
‘This is a dangerous place?’ Albert Baum did not appear to mind if it was. His cares were visi
bly lifting from his brow now that he was alone with Mary and he followed her as she marched with determined steps through the gates.
Mary smiled at him, her cheeks flushed pink with the excitement of getting away. ‘It’s not dangerous. I come here nearly every day after work. It’s the only place I can read your letters in peace.’ They passed a grand, gothic stone gatehouse and pressed on along a drive flanked with thick old yew trees. Mary looked over her shoulder to make certain that they were far enough into the tree-lined avenue not to be seen from the road and then, with a shiver of nervous excitement, she reached out her hand to Albert. He took it, interlacing their fingers and locking them together. Such a simple thing, which so many couples took for granted, but it made Mary’s heart ache to finally be walking hand in hand after all this time apart.
Albert smiled at Mary, and Mary smiled back at him. She couldn’t help it, her face ached because she grinned so much; she had never felt so happy before and she thought her heart would burst. There was her Albert in the flesh at last and she could gaze at him, his rich brown hair catching the afternoon light like polished mahogany, his cocoa-coloured eyes twinkling as he smiled down at her. At last, at last, at last.
They walked along in perfect step and Albert lifted the back of Mary’s hand to his lips and kissed it. He sighed happily, and then something made him glance ahead of him to watch where he was going and he suddenly stopped short, looked up at the building they were approaching and cried, ‘Gott im Himmel!’
They had broken through the thick wall of trees which had blocked their view from the drive and now he could see that an immaculately kept lawn stretched for two acres ahead of them, divided by a neat gravel path which wound round a fountain and led to a palace.
‘But this is French; this is like the chateaux of Louis XIII, we cannot be in Halifax.’ Albert’s eyes were wide with astonishment and Mary couldn’t help feeling a little proud of her town for owning something that could make a well-travelled foreigner stop in his tracks.
‘We’re in Halifax, I promise you. One of the big carpet mill owners wanted to live in a French palace, so he built one. I’ve never been to France so I don’t know if it looks the part or not.’
‘It is very French!’ Albert was looking over his shoulder and around in concern as Mary strolled contentedly through the grounds. ‘But are we permitted to be here? Will the owners not …?’
‘Oh, no, it’s all quite all right, the owners are long since dead. This is the public library, now. Why did you think I came here? It’s where I read the newspapers to see the news in Germany. They even have a wireless in the music room.’
‘You are reading about my country?’
‘Of course. I’m afraid for you every day. I read about all the things which are happening to your people and I check for your name in case something has happened to you.’
Albert tucked a lock of hair over Mary’s ear which had come loose from her tight bun and asked earnestly, ‘Does reading the newspaper each day make you feel less worried about me?’
‘No, it makes me feel worse. But I do it anyway. I’ve got the worry habit.’ Mary looked over at the lights glowing in the windows of the grand old palace and tugged Albert’s hand to draw him onward. ‘How long do you think it will take you to settle your affairs in Germany before you can come back to Halifax? You are coming back, aren’t you? That’s what the papers are for?’
‘Yes, yes, that’s what the papers are for. Sir Harold Mackintosh has requested his family solicitor to draw up all the applications for the permit this time. We must present them with many different documents and it is complex work; when I sent the documents previously, the Home Office say that they are not correct, but this solicitor is an excellent legal man and they will not argue with him, I think. We will have the application dealt with very quickly now.’ Albert Baum stopped to look more carefully at the outside of the library building. ‘Do you know of what this building reminds me? It is like the Remplin Palace; I knew it felt familiar to me. It is a grand palace near the town where my grandmother lived. Now they have a library. It is full of great works of German art; they have letters written by Goethe and paintings by Winterhalter. I will take you there one day and show you the observatory; you would like it I think. Would you like to come to Germany one day?’
Mary did not have the opportunity to answer because at that moment she turned her ankle on a Victorian drain cover and the heel snapped off her shoe with an audible crack which threw her forward into Albert’s arms and nearly toppled them both onto the manicured lawn.
‘Mein Gott, are you hurt? Did you injure your foot?’ Albert caught Mary up in his arms and she was able to feel that although he was lean he was strong.
She recovered herself and managed to stammer out, ‘No, no, I’m quite unharmed, I’ve only broken my shoe.’ Mary had nothing but trouble from shoes, and she thought it typical that it would be a shoe that would spoil everything. She hobbled towards the door of the library where there was an empty bench to sit on. With help from Albert, who gave her one hand to lean on, and put the other around her waist to support her, she was able to reach it and lower herself gently down. ‘I’m sorry to give you so much bother.’
Albert came and sat beside her once he had made certain that she was comfortable and not in any distress, looking confused by her choice of words. ‘Bother?’
‘Yes, you know, trouble, problems?’
He smiled to himself as though he knew a secret. ‘You are not the source of my problems, Maria.’
‘Sometimes I feel like I might be.’ Mary leant closer to Albert and tried to ignore the harassed-looking mill workers who trudged past them toward the library door. ‘I bother you with an awful lot in my letters; all I do is send you a list of things I’m worried about. I worry that the letters I send you aren’t as lovely as the letters you send to me.’
Albert held her closer and looked around him for somewhere they could go where they would not be overheard, but Mary could not walk far. He spoke hurriedly, in a low voice, ‘But you must know how I feel about you, Maria?’ He had wanted to conduct their interview in the same kitchen where they had met and had spent so many happy hours in one another’s company before they were separated; but in the end he sensed that this was the only place he could secure them anything close to privacy. ‘Your letters to me are a light in a very great darkness because they come from you. I do not care if you list laundry soap labels and tell me that the weather is bad, I only want words you have written because all the words you have written to me will never be enough. It is you; it is your brave soul, your compassionate heart, your quick temper, your inquiring mind – all of it has captured me. And you are so beautiful, Maria; you think that you are plainer than those other factory girls, but you are like a swan among ducklings.’ Albert looked deep into her eyes and said earnestly, ‘I know that I bring a great deal of trouble with me, but I also bring love. I want to look after you and to protect you from all the world. There will be much uncertainty in our lives, but my love is not an uncertainty. I can barely dare to ask it, but tell me, Maria, even with all that holds us apart, if we’re given the chance,’ he paused, summoning up a new kind of courage now that they were together in person and he couldn’t hide behind the written word, he finally asked, ‘could you love me?’
Mary, pale with nerves, tried to catch her breath, ‘But what if you get to know me and change your mind about me?’
‘I already know you, and I won’t.’
‘But where would we go? What would we do?’
‘We will go to many places and do many things; that is the nature of being alive. We cannot predict all of them now, but we can choose who we want to share them with.’
Mary, feeling the seriousness of his question took a deep breath and asked, ‘What if you can’t work in England?’
‘Then I’ll take you somewhere else. I do not pretend that our lives together will be easy, or free from distress, but I love you Maria. I want to spend time with
you for the rest of my days. If I’m willing to wait for you, could you be willing to wait for me?’
Mary opened her mouth to speak just as the exodus started. Suddenly readers were pouring out of the library hurriedly, looking around them and making their way to the gates. There was an air of excited panic about the people who were bustling past the young couple on their bench and both Mary and Albert knew at once that something was very wrong.
Albert stepped forward and stopped one of the more frantic-looking men. ‘Excuse me, sir. Can you tell me what is the matter?’
The man only partially took Albert in, so intent was he on getting away to the nearest bus stop. ‘It’s been on the wireless. Didn’t you hear the wireless inside?’ He waved his arm toward the library which was even now disgorging more of its visitors. ‘I have to get home. I have to see a newspaper.’ He hurried away, anxiety writ large across his features.
Albert tried a lady who was not walking quite so quickly, and she looked up at him with a kind of sad disgust. ‘You German?’ she asked, hearing his accent.
‘Why, yes I am.’
‘Well,’ she ground her teeth, ‘your lot have taken Austria. It’s all Germany now. The Austrians didn’t even put up a fight when your army rolled in. Hitler’s on his way to make victory speeches. You’ve broken the Treaty of Versailles, you know that, don’t you? How soon will we need those gas masks, that’s what I want to know?’