by Esther Freud
‘So when did he get married?’ I asked, when the last pink toe had disappeared from view. ‘I mean Emanuel.’
‘I think he met some fallen woman roaming round the streets. All I know is that his sisters, well, my mother certainly, never forgave him for the betrayal.’
‘Was there someone else he was supposed to marry, then?’
‘I don’t know. ‘
‘So surely it should be his children, or grandchildren, Emanuel’s, who inherit Gaglow?’
‘That was the whole point. They didn’t have any.’
‘Why not?’
‘It was her only weapon. The prostitute’s. You see, because they all despised her and disapproved of her she vowed never to have any children. I think it was to punish his mother for not giving them a proper wedding.’
‘How very strange.’
‘Yes,’ he had to admit. ‘It does sound unlikely.’ And he wondered where he could have overheard the story.
‘If she’d really wanted children, nothing would have put her off,’ and I laid a hand on Sonny’s golden head, thinking of all the babies in my hospital. There had been an overflow of boys, fourteen in one weekend, and not a single girl. All the midwives were laughing and exclaiming over it, as each new boy was bundled in, and Pam had hoped, for their sakes, that some of them would turn out to be gay. ‘I hope it doesn’t mean there’s going to be a war in eighteen years,’ I’d wondered, and everyone had looked at me alarmed.
Chapter 15
Eva lay on the sofa, wrapped in rugs, writing a letter to Emanuel. She couldn’t think where to start. Everything that came to her was not to be put down and after half an hour she was still sitting with a blank page and a streak of ink along her thumb. It didn’t seem very cheerful to bring up the impending marriage of Angelika Samson to an officer, or their hopeless attempts at finding Fräulein Schulze. Instead she decided to describe the Gaglow gardens, the frostbitten vegetables, dug up too late, and the frozen orchard. She detailed the development of each of the five dogs, and told him how Marianna had brought them back with her to Berlin where she encouraged them to lie under the table, warming her feet and ankles over supper. It was lucky they were such skinny little beasts or their neighbours might be tempted to stew them up for soup, but as it was, she was sure there were few dogs, English or not, that looked less appetizing. She used her bicycle now instead of getting the overcrowded tram to school but was not sure how she’d manage once the roads iced up. She did not mention how their father went in less and less often to the office and how once she had opened the door to his study and found him sitting, hunched in his overcoat, staring into space. Poor Papa, she thought, poor, poor Papa. And something half remembered made her smile.
‘What are you writing, you comedian?’ Bina nudged her, and Eva tried to slip the letter through her arm.
‘It’s private.’ She proceeded to illustrate the border with small pictures of their future house, joined by smoking chimneys and an inky chain of flowers.
Equal amounts of money had been lifted from the girls’ three boxes, and until now only Emanuel’s, heavier through time than the others, had remained intact. Marianna slid it to the front and opened it. Inside lay a mass of overlapping coins, glimmering up at her like smiles. Some she recognized. The gold her mother had presented on the Sunday of his birth and then the ten-mark piece given by Wolf’s father a month before he died. She dipped her hands against the metal, letting her fingers choose a medium-sized coin, searching for one whose source was not so sacred. Marianna picked out the most recent addition, presented by relatives on Emanuel’s last official birthday, over two years before. She held it in her palm and thought of all the extra food and clothes that it might bring him if she wired the money into the unknown. But then, at the last moment, she slipped the coin back in and, without allowing time for any thought, she opened another box, nearest to her elbow, and scooped up two gold pieces. She glanced at them as she banged shut the safe and saw, to her relief, that they were not of any real sentimental value but had been a present from Aunt Cornelia the week Bina passed her exams.
As the days grew colder the girls began to congregate for comfort on their governess’s old bed. This narrow room was the easiest to warm and if they shut the door into the nursery they could heat it with their breath. Martha had found a basket of old wool, stuffed years before by Fräulein Milner into a top cupboard. She had chosen four short needles and begun a rather lumpy sock. Eva glanced over as it grew, white and lopsided, with dropped stitches and laced with ropy ladders where she had not seen to pick them up. ‘Into the wood goes the huntsman’ and she thought of Millie and her thin lips mouthing the lines over like a prayer.
‘Not on a level with a Samson sock.’ Eva was unable to resist mentioning that it looked a little draughty.
‘Well, just you try,’ Martha sulked. ‘I’m taking important time out from my studies to do this. Making an effort for the war.’ In the same instant, both Bina and Eva lunged for the basket where several other sets of needles were buried. The wool was mainly white but a few strands of green and red had become entangled in the skeins and Eva scooped them out and wound them into balls over her hand. Martha had to cast on for each of them but soon they were sitting in a row, their feet wrapped in eiderdowns and chanting out the Rabbit Song to the clicking of their needles.
On her way through to her own bedroom Marianna stopped to listen at the door. The sound of their three voices striking out on a new row made her feel so lonely that she hurried back to find her husband. She had left him slouched over the table, his grey head on his hand, but now, just when she felt able to offer up some words of comfort, she found that he had gone.
On Christmas morning Eva woke early. Her stomach ached with hunger and she crept out of bed, intending to pull on her coat and boots and slip out for a walk to pass the time till breakfast. She padded down the corridor in the socks in which she’d slept and pulled open the door to the airing cupboard. Out of habit she still kept her outside clothes in here, although now instead of finding them warmed through and dry, they were as cold and damp as when she’d slung them in the day before. The airing cupboard was a tiny room, which housed the boiler. It had no window but a slatted bench for sitting down to tug off boots, exchanging them for the slippers that were stored in racks below.
Eva reached up for her coat. She pulled it on, shivering from the clammy lining and then, as she turned, feeling for her hat, she stumbled against a shoe. A black and polished shoe that did not slide away as she’d expected. Eva froze. She could sense someone, hunched, not wishing to be seen, and with a gulp of courage she looked up into her father’s face. He didn’t turn away or move, but continued to sit, his knees pulled in, his hands hanging in his lap. He looked large and broken, broken just above the hip. Without changing his expression, he dropped his eyes again to a worn place on the floor.
Eva backed out and closed the door. She stood rigid in the hall, unable to stop herself from worrying how she’d find the courage to go back in and get her boots. Eventually she wrapped her shoes around with scarves and stepped out into the street.
The morning was still dark and her feet sank into a soft new fall of snow. People passed her in the gloom like ghosts, only their bones and shadows taking shape, and a bicycle, the spokes of which picked up the moonlight, whistled by. If only the airing cupboard had been warm, she could make more sense of it, and as she walked further and further away from home she wondered if she should go back, place her mittened hand in his, kiss the bent mass of his head and urge him to come out.
It was light when Eva arrived home, breathing cold air and with a red circle on each cheek. The family were up and drinking the remains of real coffee that, by some miracle, Marianna had managed to gather up for Christmas Eve to eat with poppy seed and almond cake. Wolf sat at the head of the long table, a hand cradling his cup. He looked up as she came in, and nothing in his face betrayed him.
‘Eva,’ her mother frowned, ‘don’t come in
here with your damp clothes.’ With a falling heart Eva trudged back to the airing cupboard and inched open the door. She unwound her shoes and placed them neatly in a box, avoiding the corner where her boots still sat and running her fingers along a row of gloves and scarves that dangled unevenly from pegs.
For almost a week Wolf did not leave the house, and Eva, having little else to do, kept a low eye on him. She sat and watched him read his paper, nodding into nervous sleep behind it, and saw that rather than becoming large he had actually, in recent months, begun to shrink. When he finally went out, Eva found that, without intending it, she was following him. She watched him pull on his heavy coat and a moment after ran to slip her own feet into boots, dragging on her hat and scarf and darting out into the street where she had to slow her pace so as not to overtake him. He headed at first in the direction of his office, nodding and smiling at his neighbours, but instead of going in he passed right by and walked towards the Tiergarten.
Eva followed in a lonely circumnavigation of its paths, noticing as she walked behind that her father kept his arms stiffly by his sides and never raised a hand to wipe away the snow that blew into his face. She imagined it banking up against his eyebrows and the rough hair of his upper lip; when he turned suddenly and she caught sight of him, she could only see a white shape between his collar and his hat. At first Eva made an effort to keep her distance and to hide herself as much as possible from view, but she soon realized that his mood was one of much too much absorption to notice her and she began to walk quite openly behind.
Once, he stopped and, without stooping to wipe the wood, sat down on a long, snow-covered bench, crossing his arms over his chest, and stared blindly forward. Eva could not follow him in this. It already made her shiver to think of the slowly melting snow seeping into his clothes and the chill that must be travelling up his spine. She lowered her head and walked miserably past. She left the Tiergarten, with the intention of going back in half an hour to check on him, but as she walked out onto the street she passed a woman whose figure made her start. She did not catch her eye but from a heavily cloaked shoulder and the smooth, freckled side of her face she had been startled into thinking she had seen Fräulein Schulze. Eva stopped and wiped the wet snow from her nose. All the warmth, collected in the lining of her clothes, had drained away, and without looking back, she began to run, skidding and slipping through the streets.
When Eva arrived home she found the apartment deserted. Everyone was always busy now, except for her, and for company she lured the dogs with tiny drops of bread, and helped them clamber on to Schu-Schu’s old bed. She wrapped them up in folds of eiderdown, tucking in their velvet paws and making towelling cowls for the moleskin of their ears. Once they were all settled, she decided against picking up her half-finished sock, and instead started with fresh needles and her own design to make up an extra thick wool helmet, a balaclava in double stocking-stitch, with only the smallest slits for mouth and eyes. She started on the neck in mossy green and decided that if the thing became too menacing she could embroider a thick smile around the mouth and place two small rosebuds on each ear.
Marianna continued to send Emanuel small sums of money. She took gold randomly from any box and had it wired through to the bureau for the welfare of prisoners of war. She never heard whether he received the funds and sometimes in a desperate hope of shaking news from him, she sent twice the amount.
Marianna had an overwhelming desire to return to Gaglow. She knew it would be impossibly cold and closed up now in February, but she thought at least she would be able to make a wood fire in the grate and let the starving whippets out to search for food. She looked at Wolf, undressing in slow motion, and decided against asking him. Her children, she supposed, would refuse to go there with her, Bina on principle and Martha, caught up in her own world, would be incapable of taking such a decision.
Marianna put her elbows on the dressing table and smiled as she remembered Eva, tiptoeing about the house, darting into rooms, ducking out from behind doors and always with her mouth pursed and her eyebrows raised as if convinced she must be going about unnoticed. Surely Eva would not mind being taken out of school. She often complained about the pointlessness of going now that so many classes were massed together in a single room. Sometimes, it seemed, there were so many different groups that everyone was attempting to learn something quite separate and the teachers spent their time conferring on quite how they should proceed. When the first freezing weather hit them, Eva had been asked to take some fuel with her to school each day, and Marianna watched her walk out into the street with a lump of coal like a potato wrapped up in her hand. But recently the caretaker had refused to allow her any more, and she set off now, like most girls of her age, with only books and a morning snack of dried white apple rings stuffed into her satchel.
Without mentioning her plans to anyone Marianna began slowly to prepare. She would have to take the train and find someone to drive her to the house. Gruber, although nearing fifty, had gone off to the war. He’d been put into the same regiment as his poor nephew, dead over a year, and it made Marianna wonder when they would come looking for her husband. She intended to live at Gaglow as much as possible in secret. She would not contact the village girls who usually opened up the house, dusting and beating and clattering through the kitchen. She would manage as far as possible to take care of herself, and conjured up a happy vision of the summers spent with her own mother, living alone for two whole weeks while her father took his holiday by the sea.
Eva’s eyes narrowed when Marianna told her, and she twisted round quickly to see if they were being overheard. ‘We’ll go off, just the two of us.’ Marianna lowered her voice and Eva, finding they were alone, gave her a smile of such complicity it opened up her heart.
Eva was left with how to break the news. ‘Do you know Mama is planning to desert us?’ she said one evening as they lay curled together in their usual place, their hands too cold for knitting. Martha shook her head and gasped incredulously, although she’d heard a murmur of the news from Dolfi.
‘She hates us all, I always knew it.’ Bina laughed.
Martha added, ‘Poor Papa,’ simply out of habit.
Eva took on a thoughtful air with her head a little to one side. ‘What can she possibly be planning?’ She closed her eyes in an attempt to fathom out the mystery. Bina tapped her nails against each other as if she almost knew.
‘Maybe . . .’ Eva started. She could feel the others looking at her. ‘Maybe I could find a way of going with her.’ There was a pause and then, to shake off any lingering suspicions, she added, ‘Mama could hardly refuse, and if she does, well, then, we’ll know it’s something really serious.’
Eva had never seen Gaglow at this time of year. It was a crystal palace with intricate designs of frost chiselled across each window, which gave the rooms inside a magic feel as if they were encased in gingerbread, each square frame latticed with angelica and laced between with water-sugar panes. She cupped her hands over her mouth and blew, watching as the moisture cleared a space on the glass. Outside, the lawns were rolled in snow and the heaped banks of the garden looked quite plain against the intricate designs of frost.
The five dogs circled round, still nervous from the journey. Their mouths hung open and large gasps of steam rose curling from their tongues. Marianna led them through the house, past the draped piano and the covered rugs, and let them out into the corridor where the marguerites had shrivelled from neglect. Their claws rattled as they ran, growling in excitement, lifting up their ears as they caught a glimpse of Eva spinning, with her arms outstretched, back and forth across the tiled hall. She kept her face tilted to the octagonal ceiling only remembering from time to time, as she passed the open door into her mother’s study, to dart her eyes inside.
Marianna laughed, and patted the cool coats of the dogs. ‘Come on,’ she called, and raced with them to the back door where they streaked out into the snow to hunt for rabbits.
Marianna b
uilt a fire in her study with branches of damp pine. It took an impossibly long time to catch and in her effort to encourage it she tore page after page of carefully stored dates and figures from the notebook on her desk and crushed them into kindling. The fire smoked and sighed and then the flames licked into the dry centre of the wood and, sizzling with shooting sparks, roared up the chimney in a burst of colour.
‘Eva!’ she called in her excitement. ‘Quick!’ And she ran up the back stairs shouting urgently for her daughter to come down.
Eva dropped the treasure box she’d brought with her from Berlin into the string cradle underneath her bed, and, with icy fingers, pulled the covers down on either side. Her mother’s voice was high and full of hurry, and Eva almost tripped over her own feet as she clattered down the stairs. ‘What is it?’ She burst into the study.
Marianna pointed to the hearth. The flames were tulip-shaped, leaping up around the sticks of pine, and as they watched the fire cracked and sprinkled into stars. ‘Isn’t it beautiful?’ she gasped, and Eva saw that she had two streaks of soot across her face and that she was smiling like a child. ‘Come and get warm,’ Marianna urged, and Eva dropped to her knees and held up her hands to the heat.
‘It’s warmer in here already,’ Marianna said, and she pushed two chairs as close in to the grate as they would go. Eva sank into one and uncurled her frozen toes. She stretched her legs and, resting her heels on the ridged back of a dog, fell almost immediately asleep.
Eva and Marianna spent most of each day foraging for food. There was still a quantity of old supplies stored in the kitchen cupboards, and they set out together through the icy maze of the ground floor to select a jar of pickled beetroot and to wonder and discuss how it might transform itself into a meal. Eva had never seen her mother look so well. Her eyes glowed with the purpose of each day, and the pallor of her face was livened by their forays and the daily shovelling outside for food. They found a hoe leaning up against an out-house and while Marianna dug into the ground Eva turned it over, chopping it and occasionally rolling out a frozen turnip or the blighted mess of a potato. Sometimes they would lurch excitedly upon a piece of stone or the root of some forgotten tree and then, unable to control themselves, they would lean, convulsed by laughter, and howl over the wooden handles of their spades.