Summer at Gaglow

by Esther Freud

  Eva heard a noise. She stopped, still on tiptoe, her eyes on the circular ceiling, and looked across the hall into her mother’s study. Marianna was standing, leaning with one hand on her desk and deep in conversation with the sturdy red-faced woman with whom Eva had nearly collided the night before as she hovered on the stairs. ‘Frau Samson,’ Eva muttered to herself, and she raised an eyebrow. You see, she thought, our mother has no qualms about marrying off poor Manu, even when she has the plain, hard evidence of how those girls are likely to turn out! And she hunched her shoulders in exasperation.

  Eva kept an eye on her mother’s profile, smiling and nodding to stout Frau Samson sitting in the window-seat, until they readied themselves to leave the room. Eva pressed herself into the curve of the wall and held her breath as her mother passed by, a whippet in tow, and walked with her companion back along the corridor, still talking lightly about troublesome cooks, suppressing a smile for the splintery patch of dog hair that had attached itself to the older woman’s behind.

  Eva escaped through the back door. She ran directly ahead, up the stretch of lawn to where the ice-house stood at the end of its own short drive. This tiny house was the one part of the estate Hans Dieter had taken the trouble to maintain, and the lawn that led to it was smooth and dense with years of careful tending. It had a roof like a dove-cote with rounded sloping tiles, and the pillars that supported it were freshly painted in a creamy white. Eva stepped into the cool shade of its interior and was startled by the sight of her governess standing with her eyes half closed against the door that led down to the cellar.

  ‘Schu-Schu,’ she said, laying a hand softly on her arm. Fräulein Schulze blinked and looked at her, and without a word picked up a long tin bucket. She felt with her hands for the hidden catch and swung the door open onto the freezing store of ice.

  Eva lay down on the bench that curved into the wall and shouted down to where Fräulein Schulze rummaged underground. ‘This isn’t your job, collecting ice. Do you have gloves?’

  Fräulein Schulze’s laugh echoed up at her through the half-closed door. ‘It’s not a job. I wanted ice myself.’ And she reappeared with a collection of shards lining the bottom of her bucket. Eva reached in and chose a flaking tentacle which she dripped over her forehead, her nose and into her mouth. ‘I’ve asked Cook to prepare some redcurrant ice for you. I haven’t forgotten it’s your birthday too.’ And before Eva had a chance to pull her down on to the bench and hug her, she strode off across the lawn and disappeared into the house.

  Eva wandered back towards the terrace. She could see that the lunch party had reorganized itself into small groups clustering thickly round the table ends, while long sections of starched white linen, heavy with unfinished food, lay abandoned in between. The light legs of chairs knocked together, and girls’ heads bent against the strengthening sun.

  Eva saw her brother talking to a man in uniform. They were strolling away from the rest of the party, setting out across the lawn, the toes of their shoes kicking as if they were not entirely in agreement. Several of Emanuel’s friends had arrived for the party in their National Service uniforms. Thick wool jackets the colour of dung with long, scalloped pockets across their chests. The soft hats on their heads were puckered at the front with buttons and, in some cases, a badge.

  Eva took a handful of black chocolates from a bowl and followed the two men, trailing a little way behind, her eyes on the ground as if searching the lawn for stray spring flowers. Emanuel was talking in low, alarmed tones about the murder in Sarajevo of Franz Ferdinand. He put his arm on the thick cloth of his friend’s jacket and wondered aloud if it would be an enforced conscription, were war to break out. ‘But no one would need to be forced.’ The other man shook him off, and Eva thought she saw her brother shiver in a long ripple down his back.

  ‘Of course, of course,’ he agreed quickly, ‘I myself will sign up like a shot,’ and they laughed, swapping stories of military adventures, tales of bravery and daring until Eva, distracted by a clump of golden celandines growing at the edge of the fountain, let them trail out of hearing.

  Chapter 2

  Sometimes while my father painted I stared up at the huge beast of my body, my gargantuan breasts, my widened thighs, and tried to find the charcoal outline of my former self. I hadn’t known about the baby when I’d come for my first sitting, arriving smooth and pale and full of hope for how I was likely to turn out. I arranged myself in elegant profile, one arm limp across my stomach, my eyes fixed, half shut, on the corner of the room.

  ‘When exactly are you due?’ My father squinted as my painted body grew, masking the damask roses of the sofa, and at thirty weeks the canvas was sent away to be enlarged. Nine months had seemed such a never-ending stretch of time, and at first I’d put in extra hours, imagining the picture might be finished before I even started to show, but now with only six weeks left we had entered into a race. I moved my hand and laid it high under my ribs where the hard butt of the baby’s head was pressing. ‘Turn round,’ I whispered, and I tried to catch the underwater fingers as they fluttered back and forth below the skin.

  ‘Something rather extraordinary has happened.’ My father had his back to me, scanning the canvas where the paint was piling up on my left breast.

  ‘What extraordinary?’ I asked, the high dome of my stomach tightening as I twisted round. He moved his eyes from one breast to the other and then peered back at his work.

  ‘Well, some rather dubious-sounding man has written to say that the descendants of Marianna Belgard, my maternal grandmother, are entitled to some property, now that the Wall’s come down. There are some warehouses, apparently, and a theatre in East Berlin.’

  ‘A theatre?’ I struggled to sit up. ‘Do you know what it’s called? Where it is exactly?’ And for a moment I imagined inheriting the Berliner Ensemble, pirouetting on the stage where Brecht had stood, employing myself, an out-of-work actress, single mother, and giving jobs to all my friends.

  The baby hiccuped just below my navel.

  My father didn’t answer. I could see that he was waiting for me to settle down. I rubbed my hip and dropped back into position.

  ‘There is a catch, of course.’ He was widening (unnecessarily, I thought) a deep blue vein that ran in from my shoulder.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes, this man, Herr Gottfried something or other, insists he’ll only tell us where the property is if we promise to give him sixty per cent of its value. It’s a racket apparently, springing up all over East Germany.’ And he stabbed his paintbrush hard against his leg. ‘My feeling is,’ he said at last, ‘the whole thing’s to be avoided.’ I frowned in disappointment, already in my dreams having sold on the warehouse at enormous profit and, with my share, moved out of my tiny top-floor flat in Camden Town.

  My father made a plate of salad for me, shaking olive oil on to mâche and cutting two thick slices of ham. ‘Mustard?’ he offered, but the baby was still hiccuping.

  ‘You know what I would be interested in hearing about?’ He reached over and whipped delicate leaves off my plate. ‘Gaglow.’

  ‘Gaglow?’ I was eating too fast, hoarding the plate childishly against me, wishing he’d leave my food alone.

  ‘It was my grandmother’s estate. Very grand, somewhere in the country. Or it had been very grand.’ A leaf curled over his lip. ‘I used to go there in the holidays, although my mother never stayed for long. And the awful aunt Bina refused to go at all.’

  ‘Why? I mean, why awful, and why refuse to go?’ I mopped up the oil with bread.

  ‘Oh, you know, they disapproved of their mother. Thought she was vulgar.’ He spiked some of my ham. ‘Actually, I did ask once why they disliked her, and all they could come up with was that she drank beer. Beer, instead of wine. Although I do remember as a boy it was my mother’s companion they disliked. A great big woman with huge feet like a man.’

  And just as I was searching round for something more to eat, he clapped his hands and ordered us
both back to work.

  My father didn’t usually talk about his family. He’d escaped from them early on, feuding and bristling to keep them out. But almost by chance he’d made a family of his own. Me and my two sisters. We had a mother each and separate lives, but looked unusually alike, with his high shoulders, and the same pale eyes. He never introduced us to his parents. I’d met a woman once who knew his mother, ‘your grandmother,’ she’d called her, and the blood caught up inside my chest. They’d talked over a garden hedge, somewhere in the country, by the sea, and I imagined them, hanging out their washing, pinning sheets, and not knowing how much I’d like to have been there.

  I closed my eyes, breathing air into my hip. Why was it that even the most comfortable position became unbearable within the space of half an hour? Once I’d been under the misconception that the more difficult the pose the better the painting was likely to turn out, and I’d stiffened and twisted into strange contortions, priding myself on an ability to stall a blink. But now I lay stretched sideways, with a pillow below my ear, as close to sleep as I could get. I sighed, hoping for a response, and then to take my mind off numbness I asked what had happened to Marianna Belgard. ‘At the end I mean.’

  My father didn’t answer, and I held my breath to hear the worst. ‘She came to live with us in London.’ He was darkening the shadow of my jaw. ‘And, now I think of it, it must have been very difficult for her.’ He stopped and screwed up his eyes, gripping the sheaf of paintbrushes in one hand. ‘You see, she didn’t leave Germany until it was too late. She arrived with nothing, wasn’t allowed to bring anything out, and so she lived in the small back room of my parents’ house.’ He had found the thing that worried him and was rubbing at it furiously with turps. ‘She had to rely on my parents for everything, after once having been so grand, but I don’t remember her complaining.’

  ‘I suppose she was lucky to get out at all, so late?’

  ‘Yes, she was lucky.’ And we worked on, thinking of the endless others, until both my feet went to sleep and I had to beg him for a break.

  Chapter 3

  The day after Emanuel’s party, Bina, Martha and Eva travelled back with the Samsons to spend a day and a night with them at what they called the Castle. It wasn’t a castle but only a large square house with balconies below the first-floor windows and a row of small turrets above the eaves. There was no room in the brand new Samson motorcar for either their governess or Omi Lise to accompany them and, after much discussion, the decision was made that they should go alone. ‘Gruber will drive over to fetch them tomorrow afternoon,’ Marianna decided, and she waved after the receding vehicle, calling out how they must have a lovely time, unaware that her voice was drowned completely by the engine.

  Marianna sighed deeply as she walked towards the house. Empty, she loved Gaglow more than at any other time. Today, with its rooms so recently vacated, the spaciousness that filled it was still warm. Each window hummed with talk and music, and the garden had a fleeting look as if a crowd of people had simply moved inside. As soon as the car was out of sight, her whippets, cowering in the porch, ran out to greet her. They spun round, stretching their front legs, growling and looking up at her with lovesick eyes. Marianna let them lead her through the garden. The eldest two, one blue, one fawn, had been brought over from England, a present to her from Wolf, and she’d never had the heart to part them from their litter. They trotted in a troupe, their tails jaunty as they swayed from side to side, and Marianna bent down to throw a stick for the pure pleasure of watching them fly. She followed them until they reached the parade Hans Dieter had so carefully preserved. The grass here was as short and warm as the blue coat of her favourite dog, cropped so close you could feel the earth humming underneath. She knelt to lay one hand against it, and saw the whippets standing, their noses raised, their ears arched in the direction of the ice-house.

  Marianna straightened silently. She bit her lip and, without warning, loudly clapped her hands, laughing as all five animals sprang away, leaping and twisting, released by magic from a spell. They swarmed around her, smiling like a shoal of eels, and using both her hands she attempted to stroke them all at the same time, feeling their backs wriggling delightedly away. And then once again they froze, their noses twitching and their ears poised. Marianna listened with them. And then she heard a laugh. A woman’s laugh, low and confidential. She shook herself and looked around. No one was there. ‘Come on,’ she called. ‘Home,’ and walked away down the gradual slope to the back door of the house. The dogs, their tails curving down in disappointment, trotted dutifully behind.

  Marianna had an early supper with her husband and Emanuel. She smiled happily across at them, and asked how they thought the girls would be getting on that evening at the Castle. ‘They’ll be having a wonderful time,’ Wolf laughed, ‘and we shall be hearing about it for the rest of the summer. “Julika and Angelika, Angelika and Julika,”’ he mimicked, and Marianna glanced over at Emanuel, catching his eye as he was about to raise a spoon of chilled soup to his mouth. He blushed, and a green stain smudged against his teeth.

  ‘They’re lovely girls, both of them.’ Marianna turned a little sharply on her husband, and Wolf, missing her tone, agreed with a wink that lovely they most certainly were.

  Eva sat on a low cane chair and listened to the conversation of the older girls. She had attempted to add to it, joining in with stories of her own, but found her interruptions frowned at and frozen out by Bina. When she persevered, looking to the Samson sisters for support, she simply met their patient, gentle stare, and with embarrassment she realized that the urgent, brilliant tales she was attempting were ones they’d probably heard before.

  Frau Samson sat a little way away, her head bent over fine embroidery. She had placed herself carefully just far enough away to give the impression of not being able to overhear while still catching quite easily at each new strand of conversation. Eva felt inclined to join her. Today she liked the look of her large lumpy shoulders and the folds of her neck as she bent over her work. There was no sign in her of her daughters’ delicacy and she wondered what had happened to the husband, and if he were the one from whom they’d inherited the tiny wrists and the heart-shaped apricot chins.

  Angelika’s voice lowered and she began to tell the others about a proposal of marriage she’d received while on holiday in St Moritz. He was a small, bald man of almost thirty who had failed to understand her when she said she couldn’t marry him as she was still at school. ‘I am quite prepared to wait,’ he replied, and when she’d avoided him for the rest of that day, he proved that he was not in fact prepared to wait at all. In the middle of the night he’d begun hammering on the hotel door of an uncle who was travelling with them, and had demanded to know what was going on. The uncle was so annoyed at being woken that he told him quite plainly that nothing was going on or ever would be, and when they went down to breakfast the next morning Angelika found, to her relief, that he had changed hotels.

  Bina and Martha laughed so hard that streaks of red appeared on their necks, and Eva had to close her eyes to force away the image of the little angry man hammering and hammering, in love. Julika burst in with a much more glamorous proposition from a mountain climber. He swore that to win her love would be more marvellous than ascending the world’s highest peak. Marriage to her, he insisted, could be the great adventure of his life. Eva found herself biting her lip for the end of this story, and it was with an uncomfortable sense of loss that she listened to Julika confide how it had been the sight of his frizzy red hair squirrelling out from under his hat that had decided her against him.

  ‘A narrow escape.’ Bina sighed, and Martha added tremblingly that she didn’t know what she’d have done in a similar situation.

  Eva closed her eyes and let the sun wash over her. She was waiting, as the others were, to hear what Bina might come up with. She was only a year younger than the Samsons and it was necessary that she offer up something against their dazzling display. The silence
lasted fractionally too long and Martha began a dry, unconvincing cough. Eva opened her eyes, and saw her sister struggling. ‘Binschen,’ she smiled, ‘it’s not like you to be so shy,’ and kicked her just above the ankle. Bina only glared at her, and to save the family name Eva added, ‘So what about that doctor in Heligoland who had flowers specially brought over from the mainland?’ The others turned to her, their faces brightening. ‘Bina likes to keep him to herself,’ she whispered, happy to have found a part to play at last. Bina looked modestly at her hands. ‘Yes,’ Eva took a breath, ‘from one day to the next this young man would note down the colour of her dresses, and then order bouquets of flowers especially to match them. We don’t know whether or not he ever got the opportunity of proposing.’ Bina sat up a little straighter and the eyes of the others rested on her now mysterious face. ‘But she certainly never gave him much encouragement.’ And Eva added, rather too solemnly, ‘Poor man.

  ‘The day we left,’ she continued quickly, ‘the young doctor stood miserably on the pier and watched our boat pull out. He didn’t wave or shout, and then suddenly from behind his back he produced a bunch of red and purple flowers, anemones, and waved them at us. I suppose he chose anemones because they were the most colourful flowers he could find and would be bound to match something Bina was wearing. Well, as we pulled away he began to throw them, petal by petal into the sea. Everyone on the ferry clapped and cheered and Bina . . .’ she looked at her sister for inspiration ‘. . . Bina, who was dressed from head to toe in white, turned bright red, her ears went purple, and her black eyes glared, so that her whole face suddenly looked exactly –’ Eva caught herself and stopped in time from running in the wrong direction. ‘But the most terrible part of it was, Bina wouldn’t even wave to the poor man. She took one look at him and ran inside to hide until he was completely out of sight.’