Theirs Was The Kingdom

by R. F Delderfield

  From the day of arrival George was fascinated by Frau Ledermann, a widow in her mid-thirties, on excessively familiar terms not merely with her boarders but also every caller at the house, including the wall-eyed postman, Gustav, and the local policeman. Kurt was a giant of a man who seemed to spend half his working day in her kitchen and never varied his unwinking gaze at her whilst spooning his way through one of her succulent fruit pies. So much laughter, feasting, and bucolic flirtation was conducted in Rosa Ledermann's house that it was almost impossible to believe the landlady had been widowed a little over a year ago, when her husband, whose tinted oval portrait in the parlour still wore its mourning bow, had been decapitated by a broken fan-belt at the factory. George formed a private belief that Rosa, whose animal vitality arched over the house like one of the fountain jets in the old square outside, would not remain inconsolable for long, but was, in fact, already engaged in the task of choosing a successor to the father of the three pretty children who helped her about the house.

  She seemed to take an immediate fancy to her pink-cheeked, broad-shouldered English “student,” one of so many students at large in the city, but this neither surprised nor dismayed George. He was beginning to admit to himself that he had a flair with the ladies, particularly mature ladies who clearly enjoyed mothering him, and was soon enlisted in the stalwart band of Rosa's admirers, telling himself that when at length he married he would look out for a girl of Rosa's build and complexion. It was clear that a high colour and generous curves went with good cooking and a tolerance of male weaknesses, of the kind exposed by the discovery of her sixteen-year-old son closeted with one of the maids in the linen cupboard, or the appearance on her doorstep, at two in the morning, of three of her Württemberg boarders, so hilariously drunk that the entire household had to be roused to convey them up four flights of stairs to their rooms.

  Tryst had never been a particularly circumspect household. In contrast to most English parents of the sixties and seventies, Adam and Henrietta demanded no more of their children than good manners, and Phoebe Fraser's efforts to raise them in the image of good Scots Calvinists had been regarded as a family joke by everyone from Adam downwards. The general atmosphere prevailing at Rosa Ledermann's boardinghouse, however, was of the kind that was likely to startle an English youth less urbane than George Swann. All that summer he let himself be carried along on a tide of bawdy laughter, noisy good fellowship, and Munich spring beer, daily enlarging his vocabulary by virtue of Rosa's broad jests, any number of undemanding flirtations, and the repertoire of Bavarian folk songs that were the invariable accompaniment of an evening spent at one or other of the city's beer gardens. He never drank to excess, however, and never suffered from a hangover in the morning, for the beer was lighter than the English brews he had sampled in the West Country or in the North. It sharpened rather than dulled the senses so that, of a fine summer evening, he could survey the old city through a colourful and convivial haze, sometimes in the company of a group of strapping factory apprentices, sometimes accompanied by fellow boarders, and occasionally in the congenial company of Rosa and one of her kitchen-haunting admirers.

  His life in Munich, however, was not completely confined to pleasure. The modern techniques of the engineers and distributors of the sewing-machine factory surprised and interested him, so that at last he was able to write home giving an impression that he was profiting by his study of Continental business practices. Armed with letters of introduction, he paid courtesy visits to a number of neighbouring factories and workshops, including the local brass foundry and a big transportation concern situated on the banks of the Iser, a mile or so below the Wittelsbach bridge.

  It was during these explorations that he began to discern underlying reasons for Germany's rapid emergence as the likeliest challenger to Britain in industrial fields. Outwardly ponderous in their approach to a commercial possibility, lacking the sustained competitive thrust of the British or the Frenchman's rather slapdash efforts to convert a pastoral into an industrial society, the Germans were none the less making noticeable headway in almost every sphere of industry. Their splendid railway network, for instance, seemed to George more prolific and predictable than that of Britain, hitherto regarded as pace-setter in railways, and there was none of the grinding poverty commonplace in London and the big provincial cities at home. Here in Bavaria he saw no evidence of the hunger of the German for an overseas empire on the British style, but there was, he noted, a profound and general interest in urban mechanisation on every level, even among the traditional craftsmen for which the city was famous. Electricity was beginning to be adopted as the principal means of power, and electrically operated trams were already replacing horse-drawn public vehicles.

  An interesting factor of this modernisation was the surprising ability of the Bavarian to adapt to industrialisation without the smut and clamorous squalor that had converted ancient English boroughs into industrial slums almost overnight. Mentally he compared Munich, a city still abundantly rich in mediaeval culture, with Manchester, much to the latter's disadvantage. For here, somehow or other, the Municher was taking what he needed of the new without entirely discarding the old, and certainly without tearing up the roots of his pastoral and cultural heritage and covering the raw wounds with grime and rubble. The survey absorbed him so deeply that he would spend hours reducing his observations to notes—a practice, he thought, that his father would have applauded, for Adam was reckoned the most compulsive jotter-down of memoranda in London. George, however, was not endowed with his father's obsession for work and was always ready to exchange notebook for stein mug and join one of Rosa's evening expeditions to the Hofbräuhaus. Thus it came about that he was a delighted participant in the Oktoberfest, the liveliest feature in the Municher's carnival calendar.

  The noise and gaiety of the occasion was responsible for his consuming rather more beer than usual so that on his way up the last short flight of stairs to his room he stumbled and fell head over heels to the first landing, where his fall was broken by the muscular Rosa who happened to be there, unmarked by the evening's hilarity, directing the dispersal of her reeling lodgers to their various quarters.

  “Gott oh Gott!” cried Rosa, “das ist ja fatal!”

  But it was not fatal. George came off with a few bruises and a jarred shoulder and Rosa insisted on conveying him to his room under the steeply sloping roof and applying arnica to the injured shoulder, repairs that necessitated George stripping to the buff and lying flat while the majestic landlady ministered to him.

  He had never seen her from this angle, and although bemused by beer fumes and still dazed by his fall, he was struck by the splendid symmetry of her curves and the radiant good nature expressed in her broad, beaming face, as though all the distilled jollity in the world had taken residence in this one statuesque woman, whose mission it was to dispense good cheer to exiles. The clamour of the Oktoberfest rose unabated from the street and while he was recovering his breath, and reflecting how pleasant it was to be handled so masterfully but gently by such a splendidly proportioned woman almost (although not quite) old enough to be his mother, Rosa strode across the room and moderated the uproar by closing the wooden shutters, returning to stand looking down at him, her expression softened by affectionate amusement at his plight. His intense appreciation of her as a person, as a synthesis of ripe femininity, demanded something more than he could express in his limited German. Responding to some deeply rooted instinct of male appreciation, he extended his sound arm and reached under her skirt, caressing the muscular edifice of her nearest buttock and expecting, perhaps, a saucy rebuke; but no more, for familiarities of this sort were commonplace in Rosa's kitchen, particularly after an uproarious homecoming from the beer garden. She made no move, however, but remained quite still, smiling down at him as she said, with the utmost mildness, “So! You are what we Munichers call a Popokneifer, Herr Swann?”

  The remark, uttered with childlike innocence, none the less had the effec
t of belittling him in his own eyes so that he said, converting the caress into an assertive pinch, “Damn it, Rosa, I’m no kind of man yet, though I wouldn’t admit it to anyone but you.”

  He was quite unprepared for the change of expression the admission produced on her broad, good-natured face.

  She said, standing back a pace, “So! You are how old, Herr Swann?”

  “Nineteen. Almost, that is,” and hoisted himself into a sitting position. The fall, the beer fumes, or Rosa's overpowering presence were beginning to have a curious effect on him. He felt stimulated and excited but, at the same time, curiously young and inadequate, and a sustained stomach rumble produced by all the beer he had shipped at the Hofbräuhaus added to his sense of confusion. He noticed then that she was still gazing at him and with a curious intentness, as though she found it hard to believe in his admitted innocence.

  “Nineteen,” she echoed, giving tongue to what could only, he assumed, be incredulity. “Ach, but it is shameful!” and then, hurriedly, “No, no, Herr Swann, that is not the word! I do not know the word but I know the reason, yes? It is the way rich young men are trained in England. You were sent to an Internat as a child, away from the women, to live like the Mönche!”

  He could smile at this, and at her emphatic nods as though expressing her profound disapproval of such a debilitating and unnatural educational system.

  “It is much the same with the Junkers’ sons,” she went on, sadly, “they are taught nothing but war games, but even they are permitted to sich amüsieren with the servants. Perhaps it is good you should come to München. If it were not for your hurts…” and she sighed gustily, turning aside to lift the coverlet she had folded back when she applied the arnica.

  He heard himself saying, with a kind of desperate urgency, “I’m not hurt, Rosa! Just a shaking…” And then, swinging his feet round and planting them on the floor, “Everyone is asleep, Rosa, and drunk into the bargain…” But a brief spasm of vertigo assailed him so that he could not finish what he had hoped to say but sat hunched on the side of the bed, watching the customary expression of affability return to her broad, florid features. Then she replaced the coverlet in its folded position and stood so close to him that she was touching his knees. With both hands she reached forward and patted his flushed cheeks and then, with steady pressure, inclined his head to her bosom. “As you wish, Herr Swann,” she murmured, “I will make a man of you. Please to lie back and unfasten your belt.”

  It astounded him that she could go about it in such a brisk and unemotional fashion, that she could issue that singular command in the voice he had heard her use when compiling a shopping list, or giving some trivial instruction to one or other of the women about the house. In other circumstances, with his head clear of the beer fumes, he might well have reacted in quite a different way. He might have panicked and begun to protest or, being George, with humour never far from the surface, he might have laughed and passed it off as one of her broad jests. But the sheer magnanimity of her offer and the matter-of-fact way in which it was put, had the effect of hypnotising him so that he hesitated no more than a moment before obeying her. With his return to a recumbent position, the fumes clouded his brain again, but richly and pleasantly, as though he was hovering on the edge of sleep.

  She saw to it, however, that he did not drop off. With a single, expertly judged jerk as if stripping a bed, she divested him of his trousers, with another his underpants, and then she was regarding his naked body with sober interest and saying, speculatively, “Ach, wie schon stramm, Herr Swann. You are man enough for any woman. Please to lie still.”

  With an adroit heave and a twirl or two that George saw as a brief exercise in Swedish drill, she undressed herself, folded her clothes methodically, laid them aside, and drew herself slowly erect as if for inspection, flexing her arms and pivoting slowly, as though upon a revolving pedestal.

  He had a vision then, not of a naked woman getting on for twice his age, but of a perfectly formed and immensely impressive Teutonic goddess who had materialised for his specific gratification. His senses, groping wildly for some link between mortality and the elect—between Rosa, his statuesque Munich landlady, and Rosa, the essence of every adolescent fantasy he had ever had concerning women—telescoped in a memory that plunged him momentarily back into his childhood and a coloured illustration in a nursery edition of a book called Myths and Legends of the North. He recalled it in the greatest detail, a picture of a huge, flaxen-haired Brunhild, poised to hurl her spear in the celebrated contest with King Gunther. And here was Brunhild herself, stripped of her winged helmet and quilted armour, confirming what he had always suspected concerning Brunhild and Rosa alike—that their splendid strength and symmetry was all but subdued by draperies that blurred the majestic rotundity of their breasts and the sublimity of their powerful thighs that swept past dimpled knees to shapely calves and surprisingly neat ankles. Strength and vitality were there in abundance, revealed in every line of her body, but the impact remained essentially soft and feminine, perhaps because everything about her was so perfectly proportioned.

  He cried, involuntarily, “Why, Rosa, you’re beautiful! You’re perfect…!” but she seemed unimpressed by his veneration, seemed, in a way, to be looking past him, for her expression was thoughtful and it came to him that her mind was already engaged with the mechanics of his initiation.

  She said, contemplatively, “There is a little difficulty. On account of your shoulder,” and then, “Ja! It would be best if you were to stand, Herr Swann. So…” and she took his sound arm in a firm grip, levering him upright, and then, with a movement that seemed to him as deft and sinuous as a wrestler's, took his place on the edge of the bed and enfolded him as though he was a warm and welcome garment.

  His share in the encounter was purely passive, an instrument or appliance of some kind that she was using to demonstrate a trick that she had decided he must learn without fuss and without delay. It was accomplished in the same subdued key, without a flicker of urgency on his part or hers, so that any sensual delight he might have derived from her swift and effortless absorption of him was submerged in the great tide of deference she inspired inasmuch as he did not see himself as possessing her, as a woman is possessed by a man, but making obeisance, as a pilgrim before a shrine. And yet her own impassivity, distinct from his, was an integral part of her bestowal, for while a goddess might unbend to a mortal, she could not be expected to be moved by one, physically or otherwise. In the moment immediately preceding the climax, he saw himself as having been advancing towards this specific point in time throughout the whole of his life, not to spend himself in the complacent body of a German woman but to attain a status and dignity hitherto denied him. It was this that he acknowledged as her intention. It was for this purpose and no other that she had made herself available and sprawled on the edge of his bed, enveloping him, body and soul, with her great, muscular limbs while drenching him in her vitality, that she might promote him, in the instant, from child to man.

  Perhaps less than a minute elapsed before she elected to break the spell, stepping out of her Olympian role to reappear, miraculously, as humdrum Rosa Ledermann, a genial hausfrau, who had taken it upon herself, from motives hidden in the timeless history of personal relationships, to drag him over a threshold of the human family. She said, with shattering finality, “Gelt! It is very simple, Herr Swann. There is no mystery here, as the poets tell you. You are a man now and will begin to think as one.”

  He said, hoarsely, “For God's sake, Rosa… after this… how can you address me as ‘Herr Swann’ in that way? George! I’m George…!” and he cautiously withdrew from her, standing mute, confused, and utterly undecided on how one was supposed to conclude such an apocalyptic experience.

  To his enormous relief she smiled, her broad, beaming features composing themselves into their homely, familiar cast as she heaved herself up, took his face between her hands again, and kissed him lightly but tenderly on the lips, saying, “Ge
org. A very English name. It suits you, I think. You will sleep now and lie upon this side. There will be bruises in the morning. A little stiffness also perhaps. But for you it was a rewarding tumble downstairs, gelt?”

  Her forthrightness, her terrible directness, was the most awesome aspect of her. But perhaps this was true of all women—the young, old, plain, handsome, prim, and sensual—down the corridors of time as far as Eden. For here she was no longer in the least concerned with his attainment of maturity. That had been briskly accomplished. What occupied her mind now was that painful jar he had given his shoulder on the newel post of her staircase. Swiftly but methodically she drew on her skirt and blouse, making a neat roll of the rest of her clothes and tucking them under her arm. He watched her every move, not knowing what to say in the way of thanks or even acknowledgement, but she did not seem to expect a comment. When she had buttoned her blouse and smoothed her skirt she said, as though addressing herself, “George,” nodded rather absently, and moved towards the door.

  He called, “Rosa—don’t go! Stay with me all night, Rosa,” but she replied with mild reproof, “Ach, that would be foolish. With that hurt how could we expect to have rest in that little bed? Besides, there is work to be done. For me if not for you. Gute Nacht, Herr Georg.”

  The door closed on her. The single candle threw long shadows on the raftered ceiling. The subdued roar of the Oktoberfest seemed to reach him from another city. His shoulder ached, but not unbearably, and he lifted a hand to the swelling, massaging it slowly and thoughtfully. His brain was sharp and clear for the first time since he had come rolling home from the festival, climbed the stairs, and stumbled and fallen from what now seemed to him the summit of a mountain, so distant was the experience in relation to all that had happened since. Carefully he retraced his steps, move by move, from the moment when he had sportively fondled her behind, to the moment when she had gone her careless way. Something eluded him and he searched hard for it, lowering himself carefully on to the rumpled bed and holding himself rigid with the effort of concentration. Then he understood what was missing. It was guilt. That was the strangest thing of all. He felt no wisp of guilt or regret. If it had been there at all it was lost in a long groundswell of uncomplicated affection for Rosa Ledermann.