by Diana Finley
‘It’s for you, Mamma. Some foreign guy. Sounded German.’
‘What’s his name?’ says Anna.
‘Maxim something. Couldn’t make out what he said his surname is.’
‘Well, what else did he say?’
‘He just said he wanted to speak to you.’ Eve shrugs and gives an exasperated sigh. Anna raises both hands to her mouth for a moment.
‘What if it’s …? Oh, I hope everything’s all right with Della.’
Eve looks suddenly fearful. Anna turns anxious eyes towards Sam. He flings his paper to one side and scrambles to his feet. ‘I’ll go.’
Sam’s deep voice carries clearly from the hall. He conducts what appears to be a long and predominantly one-sided conversation, his contributions being mainly brief responses.
‘Ah yes? I see. Maybe so. When was that?’
Anna is uneasy. Eve sits on the arm of the sofa and rests her head on her mother’s shoulder. At last Sam returns to the sitting room and looks at their questioning faces. He sits down next to Anna and picks up her hand, cradling it in his own, as if it were a fragile bird that might attempt to fly away at any moment.
‘Sam? What? Who was it?’
‘Don’t worry – nothing to do with Della. She’s fine.’
‘Well? Who was it then?’
‘His name is Maxim Henkelmann. He’s the son of Fritz Henkelmann.’
‘Fritz Henk …? Oh God. Oh God, what did he want?’
Sam looks cautiously from Anna to Eve and back again. Anna realises he is unsure whether to speak of her first marriage in front of Eve. She frowns and nods her head impatiently, as if to say ‘it’s OK, you can talk in front of her’.
‘All right. Well, it’s quite a long story. It seems Fritz Henkelmann died not long ago. His son, Maxim—’
‘Who was Fritz Henkelmann, Mamma?’ interrupts Eve. Anna looks at her. She takes a deep breath.
‘He was a friend of my first husband, Jakob, when they were growing up in Vienna. They were very close as boys. But Fritz was a Roman Catholic and Jakob was a Jew, like me. When the Nazis grew in power, Fritz became interested in their policies and beliefs. After a while he became an ardent Nazi himself. You know how the Nazis despised Jews. Fritz told Jakob they could no longer be friends. But he did do two good things for Jakob, and for me. First, he warned Jakob that he was in danger and had to leave Vienna, and he also got us some papers to enable us to leave the country. Then, years later just before the war, when Jakob returned to Austria from Palestine, it was Fritz who told me he had died in Auschwitz. Otherwise I might not have known for years.’ She strokes Eve’s arm gently.
‘So really that’s three good things he did,’ says Eve.
‘Yes, I suppose it is. What were you going to say, Sam?’
‘Yes, the phone call. I was saying, Fritz died, of cancer I think. Maxim told me that after the war, Fritz had deeply regretted ever becoming involved with the Nazis, that he had been beguiled by their propaganda; it became a young man’s obsession. Eventually he realised he didn’t really believe in any of their policies, and—’
‘Oh that’s very easy! It’s what they all say!’
‘Yes, maybe. But I suppose he did try to help you and Jakob, even if only in a limited way. Anyway, I’m telling you what Maxim, the son, said to me.’
‘Go on then.’
‘Apparently Fritz had spent years trying to trace you after the war, but was unsuccessful. It seems he did discover your address in Haifa and turned up there, but Yael didn’t trust him and wouldn’t give him any information about you. It didn’t occur to him that you might have married an Englishman, at least not until recently. When he began researching that avenue, of course eventually he found you, or rather us. That is, he learned your new name, and where you were living. But by then it was too late – he was dying.’
‘Well, I hope I’m not expected to feel sympathy for him.’
‘Maxim said his father desperately wanted to meet you and atone for his actions. Of course, that’s impossible now, but he said he would very much like to talk to you, on his father’s behalf.’
‘Absolutely not! I don’t want to meet him.’
‘Of course, it’s your decision, darling. But maybe it would be cathartic in a way. Maxim actually sounded rather nice. Gentle and … very upset.’
‘I think it’s so sad, Mamma,’ says Eve. ‘After all, you can’t blame the son for what his father did. Not all Germans and Austrians were bad, were they? Look at Della, and Maggi.’
Anna gets up and paces from one side of the room to the other. She sighs deeply.
‘No, we can’t blame them all. Not all were Nazis. Certainly after the war, hardly anyone admitted to being a Nazi, but in reality it was a tiny minority who had actively stood against them.’
‘Probably they were scared,’ says Eve.
‘Yes,’ says Anna, regarding her daughter with a new respect, ‘I think you’re right. They were.’
* * *
‘I’ll be with you all the time, unless you want me to go out,’ says Sam. ‘Eve will bring in a tray of coffee, but I’ve told her to leave us after that.’
‘Yes, thank you, Sam. I want you to stay with me. Don’t go out of the room, will you? Not at all. There’s nothing you can’t hear.’ Anna twists a handkerchief in her hands. She pushes it up her sleeve and picks absently at her fingers. ‘I hope we did the right thing, letting him come here. I feel a bit sick.’
‘It will be all right, believe me. Do you want to get some air for a short time?’
‘I want a cigarette. I’ll go and smoke it in the garden. Have I got time?’
‘Yes, of course. He’s not due for a few more minutes.’
Eve joins Anna on the bench on the terrace.
‘You’re brave to see him, Mamma. Don’t feel worried.’
‘I know, darling. There’s nothing to worry about really.’
The front doorbell rings. Anna crushes the remains of her cigarette underfoot and goes inside.
‘Herr Henkelmann.’ Anna gestures towards a chair. ‘Please sit down.’ She is conscious of standing stiffly, not extending her hand, not offering to shake his. She is aware too of the formality and brusqueness in her voice, her unsmiling face.
‘Please, Mrs Lawrence, call me Maxim,’ he says diffidently, almost fearfully.
She does not reply. He is young, twenty-one or twenty-two perhaps. He resembles his father. Fritz’s face looms suddenly in her memory. The last time she saw him, he would have been about Maxim’s age. White skin with ruddy cheeks, like those of a little boy who has rushed into the house, breathless and hot after playing outside. Apple cheeks, Kaethe would have called them. Large eyes of a blue so pale as to be almost white, like water reflecting light. Pale hair too, the blond of Scandinavian flaxen. Fritz’s face and Maxim’s merge into one; one that gazes anxiously at her. Everything about him communicates innocence. Looks can be deceiving though. What about his father?
‘Here you are, Maxim,’ says Sam, touching him lightly on the arm and putting a cup of coffee on the table beside him. ‘Milk? Sugar?’
‘Just a little milk, thank you, Mr Lawrence.’
‘Brigadier,’ Anna says.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘My husband. Brigadier.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry. Brigadier Lawrence …’
‘Not at all. I’m retired now. Plain old Mr will do very well. Or Sam for that matter.’
Anna sits opposite Maxim, their chairs at a slight angle. Sam sits a little further back in his favourite armchair.
‘I am grateful that you were willing to see me, Mrs Lawrence. I do understand it is not easy for you. My father—’
‘Your father betrayed his friendship with my first husband.’
Maxim wrings his hands and licks his lips. ‘He knew that. He would agree with you. But … in the years that followed, he suffered terrible remorse for what he did.’
‘He suffered? People uprooted from their homes and countries, fleeing halfway
across the world with nothing but a bundle of clothes, they suffered. The “lucky” ones who managed to send their children to safety far away, in a foreign country, knowing they would probably never see them again, they suffered. Those sent to concentration camps, old people, men, women and children, even tiny babies, they suffered. Fritz was a part of that suffering. Can you even imagine what those people endured? Seeing their loved ones starving, sick, wrenched from their arms and slaughtered – and being unable to protect them.’
‘I cannot pretend to imagine what they must have gone through … What the Nazis did was an abomination.’
‘Your father knew what went on in the extermination camps. Not only did he not try to prevent it, he believed in it.’
‘Forgive me, Mrs Lawrence, but I must contradict you there. My father has talked a lot to me of that time. He told me that when the true brutality of those places was revealed to him, he was horrified. At first, yes, he had supported the expulsion of the Jews from Austria, the so-called purification of the Aryan race, but he had never believed the Jews would be exterminated. Once he learned what was really going on, he did his best to make conditions more tolerable, and to advocate for the Jews. He tried desperately to get Jakob released. He even tried to get him reclassified as a Catholic – against Jakob’s will – pretending he was a distant relative. When he failed to save him, he was completely distraught, a broken man. His reputation in the Nazi Party was in ruins, of course. He was expelled from the party and conscripted to fight. He was wounded at Stalingrad and taken prisoner. It was 1949 before my mother and I saw him again. I had last seen him at the age of about four. I barely remembered him. His health never fully recovered.’
‘He died this year?’
‘Last September.’
‘I suppose he would have been about fifty-two?’
‘Yes.’ Maxim takes a handkerchief from his pocket and wipes his eyes.
Sam stands up and walks towards them. He rests his hand on Maxim’s shoulder for a moment. Then he sits on the arm of Anna’s chair and puts his arm around her.
‘I’m sorry for the loss of your father,’ she says, regarding Maxim. ‘If Fritz had found me, what would he have wanted? I don’t feel it is for me to forgive what he did as a young man.’
‘I don’t think he expected forgiveness from you, although he spent the rest of his life trying to atone for what he did. After the war, he became part of a movement to educate German children and young people about what happened, to make sure it never happened again. He spent every spare moment visiting schools to talk to the pupils, and he was completely honest about his own role.’
Maxim looks plaintively at Anna, and then at Sam. ‘What he really wanted was to reassure himself that you had survived the tragedy reasonably intact. He wanted to know if you had found some happiness.’
Anna twists her head to look up at Sam.
‘Well, it’s a pity that he didn’t live long enough for you to tell him that yes, I have found happiness. I have survived “reasonably intact.”’
* * *
Anna decides to talk to Ben and Eve alone. Sam agrees that this is best. Knowing how teenage volatility expresses itself, she’s concerned that neither of them should walk out of the discussion before she’s finished saying what she wants to say. She arranges to take them both, as a surprise, for supper to a little French bistro that has opened nearby. This fits in with her idea of telling them now – now that she considers they are adult enough to understand. She has requested a quiet table at the restaurant, and is relieved when they are shown to a secluded alcove in the far corner of the room.
Ben is curious about his mother’s motives.
‘Are we celebrating something?’
‘In a way. You could say that we’re celebrating the two of you becoming mature young people. So mature in fact, that I feel able to talk to you about something, something that previously I didn’t think you would understand.’
‘What?’
‘I’d like us to have our meal, and then we’ll talk about it afterwards. You might even like a little taste of wine tonight.’
‘Sounds like bribery to me.’
Eve is excited by the novelty of eating in a restaurant, and being offered free choice from the unfamiliar menu.
‘Escargots. Aren’t they snails? I’m certainly not having those!’
‘There’re plenty of other things to choose from.’
Anna herself can scarcely eat at all. She nibbles a little bread and picks at her plate of food, while her stomach churns. She drinks rather more wine than she is used to. When the plates are eventually cleared away, she begins. Ben and Eve watch her expectantly.
‘A while ago I talked to you about the time before I met Daddy.’
‘You mean about Jakob in Palestine? About how he was killed by the Nazis?’ asks Eve.
‘Yes … and even before that time, when I lived in Vienna …’
‘We know how there wasn’t much to eat when you were little, and how the British soldiers fed the Austrian children – and how you weren’t in the least bit grateful!’ Eve chuckles.
‘Yes, that was when I was a small child. I’m talking about later, when I was a young girl, a young woman. There are things I need to tell you about that time.’
‘Is this to do with that Maxim Henkelmann coming to see you?’ asks Ben. ‘Did he upset you?’
‘His visit was quite upsetting. It brought back many sad memories, but that wasn’t his fault. And it’s not really to do with Maxim, or his father, except indirectly. I need to tell you, and it’s not very easy, so I want you just to listen.’ Anna looks at the two expectant faces and takes a deep breath.
* * *
‘But why? Why did you have an affair with Otto, when you were engaged to Jakob? How could you do that?’ Ben’s outraged question echoes Jakob’s words from decades before.
‘It’s hard to explain so you can understand. I made a terrible mistake. It was very wrong of me. First of all, I was fond of Jakob, but I didn’t love him enough, not as much as he loved me. That too was wrong of me. I don’t want to make excuses, but I hope you’ll understand some of the reasons why things happened as they did. I should have been more honest with Jakob, but I liked the idea of being engaged and of getting married. I hoped – I thought – my love for him would grow. I think I really believed that. Then, Otto came into my life unexpectedly. He was extremely charming and handsome. You’ve heard the expression “he swept me off my feet”? Well, he really did sweep me off my feet. I was terribly attracted to him. In fact, for a time I was convinced I was in love with him. I suppose I persuaded myself that he loved me too, although it was ridiculous. I was immature and naive.’
‘So you were pregnant,’ says Eve. ‘What happened then?’
‘I told Jakob I was expecting a baby. I had to, of course. It was so difficult. It was awful. He was terribly upset and angry at first, and very disappointed in me.’
‘Not surprising,’ says Ben.
‘He told me he still wanted to marry me, but that he would not keep or bring up another man’s child. He asked me to agree to give the baby up for adoption.’
‘Did you do it?’
‘At the time I felt I had no choice. Even now, having an illegitimate child is a terrible disgrace – but in those days a young woman’s reputation would have been completely destroyed. The idea of having to tell my parents I was pregnant – of all our friends and acquaintances knowing – was quite inconceivable. I would have been ruined.’ Anna pauses, her heart pounding, suddenly thrust back into the turmoil of that terrible dilemma so long ago.
‘I was young, remember, and in the early stage of the pregnancy I hadn’t yet developed love for the baby inside me; it just didn’t feel real to me. I didn’t yet feel … connected to it. I was still in shock. I had no idea how I would feel about it later.’
‘So what happened?’ Eve repeats.
‘We went to live in Switzerland, Jakob and I, for the whole period of the pregn
ancy. We kept it secret from the whole family … except Esther. She was my only support. As time went on and my stomach grew bigger, I started to feel closer to the baby. I hadn’t expected to develop such strong feelings for the child, such intense love. I began to dread having to give it up, but there was nothing I could do. When the time came for the baby to be born, I went into a small Swiss clinic. The adoption had already been arranged. After the baby was born, he was immediately removed and taken to the adoptive parents. He has lived with them ever since.’
‘He?’ queried Ben.
‘The baby was a boy.’
‘Did you know the people who adopted him?’
Anna pauses a moment, her mind frozen in panic. ‘I … I knew they were good and loving people, who would always care for him.’
‘How could you do it?’ screams Eve, starting to sob. ‘How could you give away your own baby?’
‘It was a very difficult time – it was agony for me. But I had no alternative.’
‘If there had been other difficult times, would you have given away me, or Eve?’ asks Ben, his voice gruff with bitterness.
‘Of course not!’ Anna says, reaching out to hold his hand on the table. He pulls his away and thrusts both his hands between his knees.
‘Didn’t you miss him?’ he asks. ‘Did you ever think about him?’
‘I missed him more than I can say. I have thought about him every day.’
‘Does Daddy know?’ asks Eve. ‘Does he know you had a baby before you married him?’
‘Yes, he does know.’
‘Wasn’t he angry?’
‘Your father is a wonderful, understanding man. He knows we can all make mistakes in our relationships sometimes. So no, he wasn’t angry.’
‘So why didn’t you tell us? Why didn’t you tell the truth? Didn’t you trust us?’ Eve’s face is contorted with anger.
‘It’s not that I didn’t trust you. I wanted to wait until you could understand better. I didn’t even tell Daddy until I was so unwell at Ellwangen. I think I was too ashamed.’
‘You’re always telling us how important it is to be honest.’
‘I still believe that – even though in this situation I haven’t been totally honest with you.’