Ghost Variations

by Jessica Duchen

  ‘My accent should be more English by now.’ Ebba smiled. ‘But of course, it is not the accent that matters in one’s friends.’

  ‘Of course not. It’s the spirit, the soul!’

  Ebba glanced up at a tall woman who had sailed across to stand beside them; she wore a misty blue gown, her gold-grey hair wound into a smooth chignon, her smile as toothy as any Jelly could remember encountering. ‘My dear, I don’t believe you and Lady Chiltington have had a chance to talk yet. Julia, do sit with us. We were just discussing what matters most in one’s friends and suggesting it is vitality of spirit.’

  ‘Ahh, it’s all about breeding,’ Lady Chiltington enthused, settling herself into the chair next to Jelly’s with back straight and hands clasped. ‘You must realise how important that is. Now, you and your wonderful sister are descended from a Hungarian count, are you not? This is clear to me, in the grace and graciousness about you.’

  Surprised, Jelly waited for her to continue.

  ‘Please have a look in my bureau, dear.’ Ebba pointed to an inlaid wooden desk and cabinet in the corner. ‘You will find an interesting pamphlet, something I think Julia would like to show everyone.’

  There Jelly discovered, in the centre drawer, a printed booklet. Journal of the British Eugenics Society.

  ‘I’ve spoken for them several times.’ The baroness patted sweat from her own forehead with a handkerchief. ‘Julia, though, is the real expert… ’

  ‘Do you know about eugenics, Miss d’Arányi?’ said Lady Chiltington. ‘The ideas are perfectly feasible, you see, and so important. Ebba’s campaign is that Sweden should become more active in promoting this area of research. Sweden has the most wonderful man, a Dr Herman Lundborg. He is a race biologist and he has devoted most of his career to the subject. He became head of a Swedish institute for the study of this field and I am eager that Ebba should encourage her country to build further on his work. They are excellently placed for it.’

  ‘But… why race biology? I mean, we’re all the same, we’re all human beings… ’ Jelly interrupted – and as she spoke she sensed the chatter quieten as the eyes of four strange women, plus the baroness, her daughter Margareta and Adila all turned towards her.

  ‘Oh, Miss d’Arányi, you are a true innocent.’ With one hand, adorned with glitter-laden rings, Lady Chiltington took the pamphlet from Jelly, who seemed to have lost her strength. ‘Yes, naturally, we are all people. This is the whole point. You see, future generations can all be better people than we are, provided that breeding is controlled.’

  ‘Like pedigree dogs, then?’

  ‘Quite possibly.’ Lady Chiltington did not flinch. ‘Scientists agree, today, that all manner of things are determined by heredity. It’s vital to the human race’s welfare that we learn more about it. For instance, some diseases are inherited, yet need not be. There are qualities of the human soul, too, which are inherited, yet need not be. Imagine, first, a world free of terrible illnesses. I, for example, have survived an operation for – a certain condition.’ A look from Ebba told Jelly that Lady Chiltington meant unmentionable cancer. ‘How can we be certain that this disease does not pass through the bloodline? How can we be certain that my condition is not to be inherited? How can I be sure that my daughter will not suffer, at my age, as I have? And my grandchildren too?’

  ‘But are you saying that you would be willing not to have had your daughter for the sake of ridding humanity of this – whatever this condition is caused by?’

  ‘It would be painful to decide, of course, but if I had had that knowledge, if I had had that opportunity, I might well have made that choice. I would not wish to breed children for suffering. Who would?’

  Jelly noticed Margareta, a stunning Scandinavian beauty, cast an anxious look at her own partially incapacitated mother. How strange, and sad, that Ebba seemed to give her support to this bizarre notion when in the past she had been so down to earth – indeed, a great feminist campaigner in the days of the suffragettes. ‘Awful things can happen to anybody,’ Jelly said. ‘Any of us could catch pneumonia, or fall and break something… ’

  ‘Imagine, Miss d’Arányi,’ said Lady Chiltington, her front teeth protuberant, ‘that perhaps, generations from now, with the appropriate practices, we can breed a human race with bones strong enough not to break when someone falls. Do you see? We must focus on what is best for humanity as a whole, don’t you think?’

  Jelly thought of the Durham shipyard families, the ragged York children; bound up simply with surviving, nobody there would give such ideas a moment’s thought. As for what was best for humanity as a whole, no similar magnanimity was being offered to help them.

  ‘In a way,’ Adila cut in, ‘we are the product of an early form of such thinking.’

  ‘Ja-ha –?’ said Ebba.

  ‘Our grandfather married our grandmother partly because she was Jewish,’ Adila announced, loud and clear. ‘He thought the best way to stop discrimination against the Jews was for them to integrate, convert and marry non-Jews. So, here we are!’

  Jelly cast around for her shawl. Her instinct was to take herself far away from this conversation – preferably home. She doubted that that story was true, for one thing; for another, she privately doubted the origin of their own ‘title’, wonderful though it sounded, and as all their relations now were dead or distant, it was impossible to check. Moreover she was far from confident that shouting about Jewish relatives in this company was wise. During her tour, attending dinners and receptions galore between journeys, she had been hearing remarks about how ridiculous it was to consider intervening with Germany ‘just to defend a bunch of Jews’, and once a reference to a distinguished scientist as a ‘Jewboy’. Einstein, discoverer of the Theory of Relativity, no less. Why should anyone care what his race was, what he looked like, where he came from? It was his mind that counted and if people couldn’t appreciate that, it said more about them than it did about him.

  On the other hand, she didn’t want to assign the topic too much importance. If she walked out now, she’d never hear the end of it from Adila. Were she to bide her time, the matter might be quietly buried. She distracted herself by going to close Ebba’s bureau.

  ‘How fascinating, dear,’ Ebba was saying to Adila; her smile had turned somewhat fixed. ‘So what exactly is your, er, background?’

  ‘Our father was half Hungarian aristocracy and half Jewish, and our mother was Polish with Italian and Danish roots. And she spoke beautiful French.’

  Jelly knew that her sister – as ever, tougher than she was – responded to fight-or-flight situations by blazing into battle with a full arsenal of verbal grenades, while Jelly simply fell silent, let her talk, or fled. ‘And by the way,’ Adila declared in her most vibrant baritone, ‘our Jewish grandmother was the sister of the great violinist Joseph Joachim, who was a friend of Brahms and Schumann and was my own marvellous teacher. He taught me everything I know! Zo… ’

  Jelly, fiddling with the bureau lock, felt the key slip out of her hand; it clunked onto the floor and caused a distraction, which she hadn’t intended while Adila was fighting the good fight. Why wouldn’t her fingers obey her?

  The baron had hired a dance band for the evening, and from the drawing room the cheerful rhythm of a foxtrot on saxophone, piano and bass breezed out to the parlour. Dancing would solve everything. Dancing always did. Saved again by music, Jelly led the way.

  The other women quickly dispersed to find their partners, or new partners. She, for the moment, lingered on the landing. Watching the dancing, she had the odd sensation of looking back at a world that might at any moment slip through her fingers like the bureau key. In front of her passed her sister and the baron, perfectly in step, Adila’s arm relaxed across Erik’s; they seemed able to maintain a conversation and dance in serenity at the same time. As the quickstep ended, the baron and his psychic sensitive embraced at what seemed to Jelly inordinate length.

  ‘Jelly!’ Erik called out to her, one arm still aro
und Adila. ‘Please may I have the pleasure of the tango?’ Jelly’s tango was legendary. Adila let him go, laughing, and crossed the room to join Alec, who was waiting a safe distance away, in conversation with Lord Chiltington.

  Erik’s touch on her back was firm, yet his hands slightly too warm, his demeanour a little too intent, his laugh never as ready as those of her favourite easy-going, high-spirited dancing partners, Sep and Tom. Jelly concentrated on the music. The band’s pianist was playing with his eyes half closed: an old tune that pulled Jelly back into her memories – the rue de Seine, the apartment, Tom’s bright gaze and laughter all around, all night long; and back then, if her feet hurt, she was happy because it meant she was loving her life. Now her joints seemed to have been stabbed with needles and each step took concentration, so as not to betray the problem. Nothing had felt quite right since her bout of exhaustion after the cathedral tour. If this went on, she would have to see a doctor, which she dreaded lest it should turn out that the pain would not disappear of its own accord.

  ‘Jelly, don’t worry so,’ Erik said, holding her. ‘Everything will be all right, sooner or later.’

  She still could not relax. Why did he and Adila take off for those Sunday drives? Adila loved Alec – anyone could see that – didn’t she worry about upsetting him? Adila was so open, so transparent, that Jelly was certain she couldn’t have hidden it if she were really having an affair. Perhaps this was all her own anxiety, when in fact it was none of her business. Even so, Erik had found the Schumann concerto, her Schumann concerto – was she to be indebted to him for ever?

  ‘Thank you, Jelly.’

  ‘Thank you, Erik.’

  The pianist slowly opened his eyes, as if sliding back from an astral voyage to the seedier districts of Buenos Aires. He sported a bushy moustache and round spectacles; he wouldn’t have been out of place as a maths professor or, perhaps, a cartographer. She wondered of what, or who, he had been dreaming. For a minute she felt that part of her matched his spirit, time-travelling in parallel. As the band began ‘Sophisticated Lady’, his gaze met hers for an instant. She couldn’t tell whether he recognised her; musicians often did, if less frequently now than ten years ago.

  When they took a break from dancing, the baron himself brought in beer for the band, and Jelly went up to the pianist to tell him how much she was enjoying his playing. He answered with a strong German accent. His English wasn’t good, but good enough, and she drew him easily into conversation.

  He was Jewish, from Charlottenburg, west of the Berlin city centre, he said. There, the harassment started with a beautiful rocking horse, a present from his mother to his three children. The Nazi thugs raided their flat and took it away, along with anything they could find of value, sentimental as much as financial. His wife had a fur coat, which he had given her after saving for months for it; they took that too. His children were picked on in school, first moved to the back of the class, then shunted to a different classroom, then expelled because a tiny quota had been brought in for Jewish pupils, which the school exceeded. And it went on, step by malicious step; low-level sadism, then more, then worse, whittling away at their life and livelihood chip by chip.

  ‘Where are they now – your wife and children?’

  ‘At home still. I came first to look for somewhere to live, and some work. God willing, they join me.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘As soon as I can give them a life. I am living in one room in a hostel and it’s no good for children. I am here three months.’

  ‘And are they… all right?’

  ‘My wife writes to me saying yes, they are fine. But you know, post can be intercepted and censored, so I do not know if she tells me the truth. You heard they have been burning books by Jewish authors?’

  Jelly felt herself chilling from fingertips to ribcage. ‘Surely not?’ she pleaded.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said the pianist – as if it were his fault. ‘But it’s true. In general, few people want to hear the truth. And really, nobody outside is interested. They think it is nothing to do with them, it’s just a problem for the Jews of Germany… ’

  ‘How will you get them out?’

  ‘I don’t know. I must find a job, perhaps playing in a hotel or restaurant, then send some money. I trust in God we will find a way.’

  The musician’s eyes had a depth that reminded Jelly of Myra, her closest Jewish friend. She asked his name.

  He gave a slight, stiff bow. ‘Bernhard Rabinovich, Miss d’Arányi.’

  ‘Ah, you’ve unmasked me.’

  ‘Madame, I have played all the piano works of Ravel and many of Bartók, and I would know you anywhere.’

  ‘Jelly! Do come and join us.’ Margareta was beside her in a bedazzlement of blonde curls and peach silk. ‘I still haven’t seen you properly and I need you to tell me everything.’ Margareta adored Jelly, as young people often did – she was one of them in all but actual years – and Jelly saw Bernhard’s eyes linger on the girl’s slender figure, her regular, wide-set features and golden Scandinavian skin: an ideal ‘Aryan’ blonde, as Ebba must have been at her age. His expression was infinitely sad. Jelly wondered if or when he might see his family again.

  She excused herself and wandered away with Margareta, asking her about her small children. A portion of her mind stayed with the refugee musician.

  It wasn’t long before Erik appeared beside them with a gentle cough. ‘Papa!’ Margareta gave him a kiss; Erik, returning it, lit up with pride and love. Jelly tried to deflect a brief stab of longing that her own severe-natured father might ever have taken such pride in her.

  ‘Jelly, I have to tell you something. It was too noisy earlier.’ He drew her by the elbow into the hallway. ‘Listen, we have been talking again to Schumann.’

  This man had held the missing manuscript in his hands, yet he couldn’t sing her one melody from it. Jelly waited.

  ‘He begs us to tell you not to forget. So we absolutely must write to Eugenie Schumann. If anyone can have it released to us, it is the composer’s own daughter. She lives in Interlaken in Switzerland and I have her address. But, Jelly, the letter must come from you. You are the musician, you are the one she will respect. I know it’s been a difficult and hectic summer for you, but now we know where the manuscript is, it’s time to try… ’

  ‘She must be very elderly now. Isn’t there someone who can be a go-between? Does she have children? Or a husband?’

  ‘Neither.’ The baron smiled into his moustache. ‘She is a lady who prefers to stay with her own kind.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  Erik whispered in Jelly’s ear: ‘Eugenie Schumann is a daughter of Lesbos.’

  Jelly tried not to shriek aloud in delight. This was, after all, the daughter of Robert Schumann himself and the eminent Clara; a woman who had been dandled, as a toddler, on the knee of the youthful Brahms. She loved to hear about individuals who went their own way, regardless of convention or censure, people like Ethel Smyth, the composer who was once jailed for throwing a rock through the window of a patronising cabinet minister, and who had written her a concerto for violin and French horn just five years ago.

  ‘In that case,’ she declared, ‘I shall write to her tomorrow.’

  *

  Schumann’s daughter! Jelly wished she could summon the important-sounding tone of a diplomat like Erik or a wise academic like Tovey. After she had used up ten sheets of paper scrawling words that she suspected were illegible, she asked Alec for help. The letter was finished within an hour.

  What disturbed her was that Erik seemed to be annexing the concerto, making it his project rather than hers, when the spirits – if spirits they were – had asked specifically for her attention. That a London-based musician with a Jewish heritage should be selected to recover this concerto from Nazi Berlin seemed irrational at best, on the spirits’ part, and ridiculous at worst. Still, the idea that Erik could not even read the notes on the page infuriated her, revolving in her head like a gra
mophone record trapped under an insistent needle.

  ‘Sai, he wants to help you,’ Adila insisted. ‘People do want to help, you know. They are not all such bad souls as you seem to think.’

  ‘I don’t think he’s a bad soul. I just wonder… what he stands to gain.’

  ‘Proof,’ said Adila. ‘About the spirits. It validates everything we’ve been working for.’

  That, Jelly reflected, was exactly what worried her. No matter how convinced Adila might be, few outsiders could believe in such a thing unless they saw it for themselves – and even then it would be hard to accept. Were Adila and Erik not setting themselves up for a serious dose of disappointment? Her concerto – or Schumann’s – was only a small concern for the baron within a much larger quest.

  There was one concerto-hunting avenue that she could pursue alone: her cousin Elisabeth Joachim in Oxford. But by the time Jelly finally telephoned her to ask if she might visit, she had received a reply from Switzerland, its contents far indeed from what she had hoped.

  *

  Elisabeth, Onkel Jo’s daughter, had settled in Oxford with her husband, Harold Joachim, who was also her cousin. He, a philosopher, had spent most of his career at the university, where he had now been Wykeham Professor of Logic at Merton College for some 14 years. To visit them was not only easy, but a joy: it gave Jelly the perfect excuse to wander again through Balliol, imagining Tovey strolling by with Sep and Tom. She loved to picture how life might have been if she’d studied at Oxford herself, immersed in writing, discussing and arguing, playing her violin only for fun. If she’d had the right education to attend St Hilda’s College for ladies, perhaps she could have read Greats, the Greek literature and philosophy she loved… though of course her handwriting was so awful that they would probably never have let her in. And in those days, when she was young enough to be a student, they would not have given her a degree, whatever her handwriting was like, since she was a girl. What nonsense: the same work, the same achievement, yet no recognition or reward if you happened to be female. Oxford had only agreed to confer degrees on its women students in 1920, when it seemed the natural step following the introduction of voting rights for women over 30 who met a property qualification. Cambridge took great pride in not following suit.