by Esther Freud
Dedication
For Xandra and Alexandra
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Esther Freud
Copyright
About the Publisher
Chapter 1
The Belgard girls did not admire their mother. They disapproved of her card-playing and the cigars she smoked when her husband was away from home. But their brother Emanuel they all adored. The following week he was to be twenty-one and the family were united for once in planning a party to span an entire weekend. The guests had been invited, the caterers informed and flowers were to be collected from the gardens and conservatories and arranged in monumental bouquets throughout the house. The party was to be held at Gaglow, and not at their Berlin apartment which, although large, was not large enough to hold the guests they expected to attend.
It was the summer of 1914 and it was also Eva’s birthday. No one seemed to remember in the flurry of activity that, on the same day as her brother would be twenty-one, Eva was to be eleven. She held her head up high and defied them to remember. Marianna Belgard had arranged for new dresses to be made for each of her three daughters. Bina was to have a pale peach satin, ruched and tucked along the front, Martha a blue with a sash bow at the back, and Eva, really still a child, would wear white. Bina, at fifteen, considered herself excessively ladylike, with or without the new dress. She intended behaving at the party with incomparably perfect manners, and enjoyed the prospect of showing up her mother. ‘She’s so vulgar,’ she protested, when after dinner Marianna continued to sit at table with the men, drinking beer and beating them at cards. Bina, Martha and Eva, their old nanny comfortably asleep, would often slip out of bed to spy on her through the thick drapes that led into the dining room. ‘It’s no way to behave,’ Bina hissed, and the others nodded in vigorous agreement, adding solemnly, ‘Poor Papa, poor, poor Papa.’
Eva sat in a large armchair, looking out through the french windows to where the grass was being clipped and mown, and thought with longing of the moment when Emanuel would come home. She thought how she would climb into his lap and tease him while he read. She would pull at the little hairs that grew singly on his chin and whisper the names of girls Mama had planned for him to marry. Eva shivered as she thought of the people her mother had invited to the party. Smart brash women with loud voices and thick necks. Emanuel would have nothing to do with them, she knew that, and, besides, he had made a promise to her. It was a promise secured on their shared birthday, the year that she’d turned seven, and she’d insisted that he swear to it, pricking his finger with a pin and blotting it against her thumb.
Emanuel’s arrival was overshadowed by the talk of war that came with him from Hamburg. ‘It’s only rumour,’ he consoled his mother. ‘The consensus at my university is that there will not be a war,’ and he repeated his theory to various groups of guests clustered around the piano in the drawing room or strolling on the upper lawn.
Emanuel also arrived with a birthday present for Eva. ‘Did you think you were forgotten?’ he teased, and she thanked him nonchalantly, gulping back relief. It was an inlaid Turkish box that shone in shades of rose and amber wood. Set in the centre was a pattern of mother-of-pearl uncurling like a flower. ‘It has a key,’ he told her, and when she twisted it, the box opened to reveal a lining of green felt and her name carved at the back between the hinges.
Eva had embroidered her brother five white handkerchiefs with his initials and a scattering of pink-eyed flowers in one corner. ‘He’ll never use them,’ Bina teased, and Martha laughed that he would most likely hide them at the bottom of a drawer. Eva glared in triumph when Emanuel shook one out and tucked it into the top pocket of his waistcoat, the flowers bursting out against the cloth. He kept it there throughout the afternoon, transferring it to his evening suit when, with the guests, he retired to change for supper.
Of the three girls it was only Bina who was allowed to stay up for the night-time celebrations. Places had been laid for a hundred people at a long gallery of tables that spiralled round the dining room. Bina came up to the nursery where both Nanny and the governess, Fräulein Schulze, burst into praise over her dress and the way in which her hair had been arranged. Eva stared furiously into her green baize box and cursed that she was years too young. ‘It’s even worse luck for me,’ Martha said, and it cheered Eva up a little to see that she was right.
Their mother came up to wish them both goodnight. ‘You have been more than perfect today.’ She smiled, glittering in the doorway of their double room, while Martha and Eva sat at twin dressing tables and stared sulkily back at her through the glass. ‘Sleep well.’ She blew them each a kiss and left them to rejoin the party.
‘Did you see the earrings she had on?’ Martha gasped, and Eva agreed that they were hideous. Great red rubies that dragged down the lobes of her ears. ‘And such skinny arms.’ She winced, continuing to give her hair the one hundred obligatory strokes insisted upon by Nanny.
‘Well, at least we have Bina to report back.’ Eva brushed vigorously. ‘Not to mention,’ she lowered her voice, ‘our own dear Schu.’
‘Now, now, children.’ It was Nanny standing behind them with their nightdresses, freshly pressed and aired. ‘I’m sure Fräulein Schulze will be too busy enjoying herself to have time for such nonsense.’
‘Oh, Omi, Omi Lise,’ they both protested. They caught each other’s eye and grinned. This was exactly what their governess had time for and what, above anything, she enjoyed. It was her wicked bedtime stories that had won them over at the very start, and the way she poked fun at strangers, livening up the walks they took even on the most dreary days, and filling her charges, each one, with a small, warm well of spite.
Eva lay in bed, listening to the distant strains of the music and running over in her mind the various eligible girls invited by her mother. Who would Emanuel be dancing with, she wondered, and she smiled at the off-hand way in which he had accepted their attentions.
‘Martha?’ she whispered. ‘Martha, are you asleep?’
Martha answered drowsily that she was.
Eva let her lie in silence, and then, unable to contain her question, she hissed across the room, ‘Martha, tell me something. Do you imagine, one day, that you’ll get married?’
Martha turned grumpily under her quilt. ‘What? Of course I will.’ And she turned again, and burrowed her head down under the covers.
If Bina had been there, tucked into bed in the adjoining room, she would not have allowed her sisters to go to sleep but would have organized a spying party to outwit Nanny and slip down to the next landing where it might have been possible to see the people milling about in the tiled hall as they passed through from supper to dancing. They could have peered through the twist of the stairs, doubling back on themselves if anyone were to start ascending. ‘Martha?’ Eva called, feeling that they were possibly giving in too easily to their imposed curfew, but Martha lay rigid, insisting she had drifted off to sleep.
Eva forced herself out of bed. She felt honour bound to attempt at least one glimpse of the proceedings. She knotted her long hair on the nape of
her neck and, with slow fingers, inched the door until it was wide enough to slip through. Once safely out in the corridor she ran along the wooden floorboards, hanging for a second over the stairwell to check for adult hands circling the banisters and skipping down the first flight of stairs, keeping to the curve of the outside wall. At the next landing, she peered quickly over into the hall. A surge of talk and tinkling musicians floated up at her, and seeing nothing but the edges of dresses and the black elbows of men she craned further, holding on to the slippery wood and stretching her head and shoulders out into the scented air. At that moment a red-faced woman began to climb the stairs, looking short of breath in her tightened waistband. Eva flung herself back on to the landing and ran along a corridor, hiding in the deep doorway to a guest bedroom.
When it was safe to venture out again, she scaled the crook of the stairs, clasping the wooden railings with her knees and arching her back, imitating Bina on a dozen past occasions. She had to restrain herself from calling out and waving, and wondered that until now she had put up with so many second-hand reports. Eva hung there, waiting for someone to come into her view, and then she was rewarded by the sight of the two Samson girls exchanging flushed confidences at the foot of the stairs.
The Samson sisters were famous for their beauty, and their attendance at the party had been much discussed. Eva gazed down on their identical chestnut heads as they swayed towards each other in shared laughter. Her knees were starting to tremble with the effort of clinging, head down like a bat, when the girls, flushed and golden as French apples, were joined by her brother. Emanuel stood between them, his back against the carved post of the stairs, and lowering his voice, so that both sisters leant towards him, he began to tell them something. A story. A secret. Eva, her fingers whitening on the wood, strained impossibly for his whispery voice to rise above the music. And then as she watched, guessing at nothing, they all laughed, their three open mouths tilting upwards in the same split second to make crescents in their faces. They were still laughing, more softly and in interrupted chuckles, when Emanuel, a hand hovering around each sloping shoulder, led them away.
Eva, cold and furious, untangled her knees and slid down to the floor. She swung round, half expecting to see Nanny scowling in her stiff white nightdress, waiting crossly to escort her back to bed, but Nanny was sitting by the nursery fire, eating a plate of marzipan roses that had been sent up to her by Fräulein Schulze. Not caring now who saw her, Eva stamped up the last flight of stairs. She trailed along the low, polished corridor, and on reaching her own room, flung herself into bed. ‘Martha?’ she called, but Martha refused to be woken, and with the absent Schu-Schu’s vengeful name on her lips, she cried herself to sleep.
Marianna Belgard had wanted all three of her daughters to be included in the night-time celebrations. She mentioned this to her husband in the hope of enlisting his support, but he made it clear that she would come in for too much criticism, and not least from their eldest girl. Wolf Belgard smiled when he said this, softening on Bina’s name, and he caught his wife around the waist and kissed her. Marianna pulled angrily away. It was easy for him to make light of these hostilities. He was well loved by his children, and he either could or would not see how from an early age his daughters had turned their backs, poking fun and scheming up between themselves to undermine her. Marianna had tried several times to explain this to him, forcing back her tears as she spoke, but he refused to believe her, only laughed and teased and attempted to draw her back into the state of cheerfulness he relied on for himself. It was only Emanuel who understood, Emanuel who took her hand and pressed it when the girls refused to let themselves be kissed goodnight, when they ran away from her in the park, or called out for their governess in small plaintive voices when they were sick.
Marianna insisted that a place be set for Fräulein Schulze at Emanuel’s birthday dinner. She still held out the hope of winning her round, and even offered up one of her own last season’s dresses. But when Gabrielle Schulze entered the dining room, the dull red of the dress transformed by rosebuds stitched in satin and nestling voluptuously against the whiteness of her skin, Marianna found herself regretting it. The woman seemed to hold her head too high and Marianna noticed how, with cleverly exacting fingers, she had managed to disguise the necessary insertion of an extra panel across and under the wide sweep of her bust.
The party continued the following day with a lunch of cold meats, pickled vegetables and fruit, to be eaten in the garden. Eva woke early, her eyes swollen with tears trapped under her lids during the night. It made her skin look thick and out of focus. No one noticed. Bina was too busy telling anyone who’d listen about the dancing, and how admired she’d been by certain young men. Martha hung on every one of Bina’s words. ‘If you were so interested, why didn’t you come and see for yourself?’ Eva wanted to say, but she stopped herself, instead folding a piece of bitter bread around some cheese and chewing at the ends of it.
By mid-morning Marianna Belgard stood, in ivory taffeta, surveying her three daughters. Bina’s bright face, she noticed, held a new ferocity, while Martha as ever was vague and shy. Eva had dark childish rings under her eyes. ‘Are you quite well?’ She put a hand under Eva’s chin, and raised the girl’s face to her own.
Eva scowled. Typical, she thought. Discovered by my enemy. And then, realizing how far she’d allowed herself to go in spite, she blushed up at her mother. The silly girl’s in love. Marianna smiled, remembering herself as a child, and her heart lurched to think that they could not be friends.
It was only the overnight guests who had been invited to the picnic lunch. Tables had been set up, draped in white, on the flagstones behind the house that caught the early-morning sun. By lunchtime the stones had warmed and the sun had settled high above the house so that chairs could be arranged in or out of the shade. Eva knelt down and placed the back of one hand on a warm flag. Without intending it, and against all orders, she had come to love this house. She walked round to the front and looked down the straight drive to where the red roofs and the church spire of the village nestled in the valley. Apple orchards spread away to each side and the fields at the back were dotted with creamy, brown-faced cows. A carriage was hurtling, its black hood up, along the drive towards her. Four horses, harnessed in leather, trotted against the hill. Eva walked forward to see who it could be. She could make out Gruber, their own coachman, sitting high up on his box, holding the reins, and as the carriage swung into the drive it began to slow. A door flew open and Emanuel jumped down. ‘Manu,’ Eva called, picking up her skirt to race towards him, but from nowhere her mother had appeared, beaming and chastizing, and striding, with her arms outstretched, towards him.
Eva snorted and, just as they saw and waved to her, she took off to run round the side of the house and down to the stables where Gruber would be returning the horses to their stalls.
Eva watched her brother as he sat between the Samson girls, helping them to wine and sweet slices of frangipane, and sharing in the continuing joke of the night before.
‘Which one do you think?’ Bina nudged her.
‘Which one what?’ Eva scowled.
‘Is he most likely to propose to?’
Eva put her elbows on the table and stared at the perfect smiling ovals of their faces, lit up and turned towards Emanuel. Angelika and Julika. Julika and Angelika. ‘Neither,’ she said, and she felt a chill like a water spider run over her hand.
‘You’re useless.’ Bina pinched her, snorting and moving to where Martha sat at the other end of the table. Eva watched her lips as she muttered, ‘Utterly useless, what a waste,’ into Martha’s ear.
Eva leant forward to catch what her brother was saying. ‘Oh, yes,’ Angelika interrupted him, ‘of course Paris is the only place there is.’
‘For a honeymoon,’ Julika added, and both sisters blushed a golden shade of pink.
‘What rubbish people talk.’ Eva swore under her breath. She stood up and ran into the house, stopping onl
y to peer into the high hall mirror to inspect her scowl and the sticky lashes of her eyes.
The drawing room was filled with flowers and scattered with chairs and sofas, arranged in groups for the comfort of last night’s guests. Eva stepped over the plum-coloured rugs, holding her nose against the cloying scent of lilies until she reached the grand piano. She let her hands fall heavily on the keys. They clashed and chimed, and her heart raced with the uneven notes. Omi Lise appeared in the door, her mouth puckered disapprovingly and a silk-fringed shawl draped over her arm. Eva caught her eye and ran.
She skipped past the high windows, catching at the curtains and not looking back until she reached a small door covered by a tapestry. She felt behind it and found the handle. The door opened and she slipped through into a long, vaulted passageway. This corridor was cold and lined with flowering pots of marguerites. Her feet echoed on the stone floor as she walked, more slowly now, straining her eyes into damp, half-empty rooms in which, not so many years before, the previous owner, Hans Dieter, had housed his collection of ivory-handled whips and guns. The sun fell onto white stone in harsh triangular patterns, and Eva trod as softly as she could to keep the echo to a minimum.
Through a last narrow door the corridor widened out into a circular hall. This was Eva’s favourite room. It had a slanting pattern of black and white tiles over its octagonal floor and the curve of the walls made her want to spin. Through a side entrance off this hall Marianna Belgard had her own private study. It was where she talked things over with the gardeners and discussed the hiring of men and the upkeep of the stables, regretting regularly that her husband, against her good advice, had thought it safest to sell off all the land. There was a large, leather-topped desk in the centre of the room, on which lay a book of paper, ragged at the edges like raw silk, and so heavy it was hardly worth the effort it took to close it. Stone-edged windows looked out onto the flower garden, and each deep window-seat had a rug arranged on it, especially plumped and folded for Marianna’s dogs. Marianna had a fleet of whippets, fawn and blue, who trotted daintily after her along the corridors, slipping occasionally and clipping the polish on the parquet floors. They stood, their eyes, like oil, popping out with sorrow when she stepped into her carriage, and when she returned to the house, even after an absence of a day, they greeted her with swirls and yelps and frantic, scampering circus twirls of joy.