A Vintage Affair

by Isabel Wolff

  My heart was thudding. ‘How can you be sure?’

  Miles looked at me as though I’d slapped him.

  ‘Because at heart she’s a good, decent girl. She would never do anything … wrong. I’ve told you that, Phoebe.’

  ‘Yes, you have – in fact you often say it, Miles. I’m not quite sure why.’

  Miles’ face had reddened. ‘Because it’s true – and come on’ – he ran his hand through his hair – ‘you’ve seen what Roxy has. She doesn’t need anything that belongs to anyone else.’

  I heaved a frustrated sigh. ‘Miles,’ I said quietly, ‘would you please check her room? I can’t.’

  ‘Of course you can’t! And I won’t.’

  Tears of frustration sprang to my eyes. ‘I just want to have my ring back. And I think Roxy came in here last night and picked it up because there’s no other explanation. Miles, please would you look?’

  ‘No.’ I saw the vein at his temple jump. ‘And I don’t think it’s right that you ask.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s right that you refuse! Especially as you know that Roxy went to bed an hour before we did, so she had plenty of time to come in here – and you told me that she does come in here…’

  ‘Yes, to get bottles of shampoo – not to steal my girlfriend’s jewellery.’

  ‘Miles, someone took my ring out of that saucer.’

  He stared at me. ‘You have no evidence that it was Roxanne. You’ve probably just lost it – so you’re blaming her.’

  ‘I haven’t lost it.’ I could feel my eyes fill. ‘I know what I did with it. I’m just trying to understand …’

  ‘And I’m just trying to protect my child from your lies!’

  I felt my jaw go slack. ‘I am not lying,’ I said quietly. ‘My ring was there and by this morning it had gone. You didn’t take it – and there was only one other person in this house.’

  ‘I am not going to have this!’ Miles spat. ‘I’m not going to have my daughter being accused.’ He was so angry that the veins on his neck stood out like wires. ‘I wasn’t having it before, and I’m not having it now! That’s what you’re doing, Phoebe – just like Clara and her ghastly parents.’ He ran a finger under his collar. ‘They accused her too, with as little justification.’

  ‘Miles … that gold bracelet was found in Roxy’s drawer.’

  His eyes blazed. ‘And there was a perfectly valid explanation as to why.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes! Really.’

  ‘Miles,’ I forced myself to remain calm. ‘We can resolve this while Roxy’s out. I accept that she’s a very young person, and that she may have been tempted to pick it up and then forgotten to put it back. But will you please look in her room.’ He walked out of the bathroom. Good, he was going to do it. My heart sank as he thundered downstairs. ‘I’m so upset,’ I said impotently as I trailed after him into the kitchen.

  ‘So am I – and you know what?’ He opened the door of the wine store. ‘Perhaps your ring isn’t even lost.’ Miles took a bottle off one of the wooden racks.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He rummaged in a drawer then found a corkscrew. ‘Perhaps you’ve really got it and you’re making this up.’

  ‘But … why would I?’

  ‘To get back at Roxy, for being a bit tricky with you sometimes?’

  I stared at Miles, outraged. ‘I’d have to be insane. And I don’t want to get back at her – I want to get on with her. Miles, I believe the ring’s in her room, so all you have to do is find it, then we say nothing more about it.’

  Miles lips were pursed. ‘It isn’t in Roxy’s room, Phoebe, because she doesn’t take things. My daughter does not steal things. She’s not a thief – I told them that, and I’m telling you! Roxy is not a thief – she is not, not, NOT –’ Suddenly Miles threw down the bottle and it exploded against the limestone floor. I stared at the scattered green shards, at the spreading crimson puddle, and at the pretty blackbird label slashed in half.

  Miles was leaning against the counter, his hand to his face. ‘Please go now,’ he croaked. ‘Please would you go, Phoebe – I just can’t …’

  Feeling strangely calm I picked my way around the broken glass, found my coat and scarf then walked out of the house.

  I sat in the car for a moment, trying to soothe my shattered nerves before daring to drive. Then, my hands still trembling, I started the ignition. I noticed a little splash of red wine on my cuff.

  It’s always there with Roxy …

  There was no other explanation.

  Roxy has this sense of … not having.

  Miles had given her so much; letting it all drop into her lap, yes, as though everything was hers for the taking.

  What do you mean by that?

  So she felt entitled – entitled to take a friend’s bracelet, to be bought dresses costing thousands of pounds, to sit and relax while others toiled, to pocket a valuable ring that she’d found. Why would she hesitate to take something when she’d been denied nothing? But the way Miles had reacted … Nothing could have prepared me for it. Now I understood.

  Elle est son tendon d’Achille.

  Miles was simply unable to accept that Roxy could do anything wrong.

  As I unlocked my front door the waves of delayed shock began to break over me. I sat at the kitchen table and let the sobs come, drawing in my breath in teary gasps. As I pressed a tissue to my eyes, I became aware that people were arriving next door. The couple who lived there seemed to be having some sort of party. Then I remembered that they were from Boston. It must be a Thanksgiving dinner.

  I realised that the phone was ringing. I let it go on ringing because I knew it was Miles. He was phoning to say that he was sorry – that he’d behaved horribly and that he’d just looked in Roxy’s room and yes, he had found the ring and would I please forgive him? The phone was still ringing. I wished it would stop – but on it went. I must have left the answerphone off.

  I went into the hall and picked up the handset without speaking.

  ‘Hello?’ said an elderly female voice.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Is that Phoebe Swift?’ For a moment I thought it was Mrs Bell. Then I realised that there’d been a North American intonation to the French accent. ‘May I speak with Phoebe Swift?’ I heard.

  ‘Yes – this is Phoebe. Sorry – who’s this?’

  ‘My name is Miriam Lipietzka …’

  I sank on to the hall chair. ‘Miss Lipietzka?’ I leaned my head against the wall.

  ‘Luke Kramer told me …’ I could hear now that she sounded wheezy, her chest rattling a little as she spoke. ‘Luke Kramer told me – that you wanted to talk to me.’

  ‘Yes,’ I murmured. ‘I do – I’d love to talk to you. I’d assumed by now that it wasn’t going to happen. I knew you’d been unwell.’

  ‘Oh yes, but I am better now, more or less; and I’m therefore ready, to …’ She paused, then I heard her sigh. ‘Luke explained the nature of your call. I have to say that this is a time of my life that I rarely speak about. But when I heard those names again, so familiar to me, I knew that I must respond. So I told Luke that I would call you when I felt ready. And I do now feel ready …’

  ‘Miss Lipietzka –’

  ‘Please – Miriam.’

  ‘Miriam, I’ll ring you back – it’s long distance.’

  ‘As I live on a musician’s pension, that would be kind.’

  I grabbed the pad and took down the number. Then I quickly jotted down a few things that I wanted to ask Miriam, to make sure that I didn’t forget. I collected myself for a moment, then dialled her number.

  ‘So … you know Thérèse Laurent?’ Miriam began.

  ‘I do. She lives near me. She’s become a good friend. She moved to London after the war.’

  ‘Ah. Well, I never met her, but I always felt that I knew her because I read about her in the letters that Monique wrote to me from Avignon. She said that she had made friends with a girl called Thér�
�se and that they had fun together. I remember feeling a little jealous, actually.’

  ‘Thérèse told me that she’d been a little jealous of you because Monique talked about you so much.’

  ‘Well, Monique and I had been very close. We met in 1936 when she arrived at our little school in the Rue des Hospitalieres in Le Marais – the Jewish quarter. She had come from Mannheim and spoke barely a word of French so I translated everything for her.’

  ‘And you were from the Ukraine?’

  ‘Yes. From Kiev, but my family moved to Paris to escape Communism when I was four. I remember Monique’s parents, Lena and Emil, very well. I can see them now, as though it were yesterday,’ she added wonderingly. ‘I remember when the twins were born – Monique’s mother was ill for a long time afterwards and I recall that Monique, who was then only eight, had to do all the cooking. Her mother used to tell her what to do from her bed.’ Miriam paused. ‘She could have had no idea then what a gift she was actually imparting to her daughter.’ I wondered what Miriam meant by that remark, but didn’t feel I could interrupt her. She was going to tell this difficult story in her own way and I would have to quell my impatience.

  ‘Monique’s family, like mine, lived on the Rue des Rosiers, so we saw a lot of each other: I was heartbroken when they left for Provence. I remember crying bitterly and I told my parents that we should go there too, but they seemed less anxious about the situation than Monique’s parents were. My father still had his job – he was a civil servant in the Ministry of Education. By and large, we had a good life. Then things began to change.’ I heard Miriam cough then she paused to drink some water. ‘In late 1941 my father was dismissed – they were reducing the number of Jewish people working in government. Then a curfew was imposed. Then on June 7th, 1942 we were told that an edict had been passed requiring all Jews in the Occupied Zone to wear the yellow star. My mother sewed it to the left side of my jacket, as instructed, and I remember that we were stared at in the streets and I hated this. Then on July 15th, 1942 I was standing with my father, looking out of the window when he suddenly said “they’re here,” and the police came in and took us away …’

  Now Miriam described being taken to Drancy, where she spent a month before being put on a transport with her parents and her sister, Lilianne. I asked her if she was frightened.

  ‘Not really,’ she replied. ‘We’d been told we were going to a work camp, and we didn’t feel suspicious because we travelled there in a passenger train – not the cattle trucks that they used later. We arrived in Auschwitz after two days. I remember hearing a band playing a lively march by Lehar as we stepped down into this barren land, and we comforted each other, saying how could it be such a bad place if there was music playing? Yet at the same time there was all this electrified barbed wire. An SS officer was in charge. He was sitting on a chair with one foot on a stool, his rifle across his lap; and as people walked past him he indicated with his thumb which way they were to go – whether to the left or to the right. We could not have known that in the movement of that man’s thumb lay our destiny. Lilianne was only ten, and a woman told my mother to tie a scarf round her head to make her look older. My mother was puzzled by this advice but did it anyway – and that saved Lilianne’s life. Then we were made to put our valuables in large boxes. I had to put in my violin – I didn’t understand why; I remember my mother crying as she put in her wedding ring and her gold locket with the photos of her parents. Then we were separated from my father, who was taken to the men’s barracks while we went to the women’s barracks.’ While Miriam had another drink of water I glanced at my notes, hastily scribbled, but legible. I would transcribe them later.

  Miriam paused for a moment. ‘The next day we were put to work, digging ditches. I dug ditches for three months, at night crawling into my bunk – we were packed in, three across, on these pitifully thin straw mattresses: I used to console myself by “practising” my violin fingering on a phantom fingerboard; then one day I happened to overhear two female guards talking, and one of them mentioned Mozart’s first violin concerto, saying how much she loved it. Before I could stop myself, I’d said, “I play that.” The woman gave me this piercing look, and I thought she was going to beat me – or worse – for having addressed her without permission. My heart was in my mouth. But then to my amazement her face broke into a delighted smile and she asked me if I could really play it. I said I’d learned it the previous year and had played it in public. So I was sent to see Alma Rosé.’

  ‘So that’s when you joined the Women’s Orchestra?’

  ‘They called it the Women’s Orchestra, but we were just girls – mostly teenagers. Alma Rosé found me a violin that had come out of this vast warehouse where all the valuables of everyone who had arrived at the camp were stored before being sent to Germany. The warehouse was known as “Canada” because it was so full of riches.’

  ‘And what of Monique?’ I now said.

  ‘Well, this is how I met Monique – because the orchestra played at the gate when the work gangs went out in the morning and when they returned in the evening; and we played when the transports arrived, so that, hearing Chopin and Schumann, these exhausted, bewildered people would not realise that they had in fact arrived at the mouth of Hell. And one day in early August 1943, I was playing at the gate when the train arrived and in the crowd of new arrivals I saw Monique.’

  ‘How did you feel?’

  ‘Elated – then terrified that she wouldn’t pass selection, but, thank God, she was sent to the right – to the side of the living. Then, a few days later I saw her again. Like everyone else her head had been shaved, and she was very thin. She wasn’t wearing the blue-and-white striped garments that most inmates wore. She was wearing a long gold evening dress, which must have come out of “Canada”, with a pair of men’s shoes that were far too big for her. Perhaps there wasn’t a prisoner’s uniform available for her, or perhaps it was done for “fun”. But there she was in this beautiful satin gown, dragging stones for road construction. And the orchestra was walking past, on our way back to our block, and Monique suddenly looked up and saw me.’

  ‘Were you able to speak to her?’

  ‘No, but I managed to get a message to her and we met by her block three days later. By then she had been given the blue-and-white striped dress that the female prisoners wore with a headscarf and wooden clogs. The musicians got more food than the other inmates so I gave her a piece of bread which she hid under her arm. We talked briefly. She asked me if I had seen her parents and brothers – but I hadn’t; she asked me about my family: I told her that my father had died of typhus three months after arriving and that my mother and Lilianne had been transferred to Ravensbruck to work in a munitions factory. I would not see them again until after the war. So it was an immense comfort to know that Monique was there – but at the same time I was very afraid for her, because her life was far harder than mine. The work she did was so arduous, and the food she had was so meagre and so awful. And everyone knew what happened to prisoners who got too weak to work.’ I heard Miriam’s voice catch. Then she drew in a breath. ‘And so … I started to save things for Monique. Sometimes a carrot; sometimes a little honey. I remember once bringing her a small potato, and when she saw it she was so happy she cried. Whenever there were new arrivals, Monique would go down to the gate, if she could, because she knew that I would be playing there and it comforted her to be near to her friend.’

  I heard Miriam swallow. ‘Then … I remember in February 1944, I saw Monique standing there – we had just stopped playing – and one of the senior female guards, this … creature. We called her “the beast”.’ Miriam paused. ‘She … went up to Monique and grabbed her by the arm, and demanded to know what she was doing there, “slacking”, and she said that she was to come along with her – now! Monique started to cry and over the top of my music I saw her looking towards me, as though I might help,’ Miriam’s voice caught again. ‘But I had to start playing. And as Monique was drag
ged away we were playing Strauss’ “Tritsch-Tratsch” polka – such a lively, charming piece – and I have never played it or been able to listen to it since…’

  As Miriam continued to talk, I gazed out of the window. Then I glanced at my hand. What was the loss of a ring compared to what I was hearing? Now Miriam’s voice was faltering again and I heard a suppressed sob; then she continued her story to its conclusion, and now we were saying goodbye. And as I put down the phone the sound of my neighbours drifted through the wall as they laughed and talked and gave thanks.

  ‘Have you heard from Miles since this happened?’ Mrs Bell asked me the following Sunday afternoon. I had just finished telling her about what had happened in Camberwell.

  ‘I haven’t,’ I replied, ‘and I don’t expect to, unless it’s to say that he’s found my ring.’

  ‘The poor man,’ Mrs Bell murmured. She smoothed the pale green mohair wrap which she always had over her lap now. ‘It obviously brought back to him what had happened at his daughter’s school.’ She looked at me. ‘Do you see any hope of reconciliation?’

  I shook my head. ‘He was almost insane with anger. Perhaps if you’ve been with someone a long time you can withstand the odd cataclysmic row, but I’d only known Miles three months and it shocked me. Plus his whole attitude towards what’s happened is … wrong.’

  ‘Perhaps Roxy took the ring purely to cause conflict between you and Miles.’

  ‘I thought about that and decided that she would see that as a “bonus”. I think she took it because she takes things.’

  ‘But you must have it back …’

  I turned up my hands. ‘What can I do? I have no proof that Roxy took it, and even if I did, it would still be … horrible. I couldn’t face it.’

  ‘But Miles can’t just leave it like that,’ said Mrs Bell. ‘He should search for the ring.’