A Vintage Affair

by Isabel Wolff

  I glanced at Annie. ‘Actually I have help today, so I can – I’ll come up now.’ As I picked up my bag I felt a shiver of apprehension. ‘I’ll be a while, Annie.’ She nodded. Then I left the shop and walked up to The Paragon, my heart thudding with anticipation.

  When I got there Sue opened the door.

  ‘How is Mrs Bell?’ I asked her as I went in.

  ‘Bewildered,’ Sue replied. ‘And very emotional. It started about an hour ago.’

  I went to go into the sitting room, but Sue pointed to the bedroom.

  Mrs Bell was lying in bed, her head on the pillow. I hadn’t seen her in bed before and although I knew how ill she was, it shocked me to see how thin she was beneath the blankets.

  ‘Phoebe … at last.’ Mrs Bell smiled with relief. In her hand was a sheet of paper – a letter. I stared at it, my pulse racing. ‘I need you to read this for me. Sue offered to do so, but it must be no one but you.’

  I pulled up a chair. ‘Can’t you read it then, Mrs Bell? Is it your eyes?’

  ‘No, no – I can read it, and I have already done so perhaps twenty times since it arrived a short time ago. But now you must read it, Phoebe. Please …’ Mrs Bell handed me the cream-coloured sheet which was closely typed on both sides. It was from an address in Pasadena, California.

  Dear Thérèse, I read. I hope you will excuse this letter from a stranger – although I am not quite a stranger. My name is Lena Sands and I am the daughter of your friend Monique Richelieu …

  I glanced at Mrs Bell – her pale blue eyes were shining with tears – then I returned my gaze to the letter.

  I know that you and my mother were friends, in Avignon, all those years ago. I know that you knew that she’d been transported, and I know that you searched for her after the war and discovered that she had been in Auschwitz. I also know that you thought she must have died – a fair assumption. The purpose of this letter is to tell you that, as my existence attests, my mother survived.

  ‘You were right,’ I heard Mrs Bell murmur. ‘You were right, Phoebe …’

  Thérèse, I would like you at last to know what happened to my mother. The reason why I am able to write to you like this is because your friend Phoebe Swift contacted my mother’s lifelong friend, Miriam Lipietzka, and Miriam called me earlier today.

  ‘But how could you have contacted Miriam?’ Mrs Bell asked me. ‘How could that be possible? I don’t understand.’ I told Mrs Bell about the concert programme that I’d found in the ostrich-skin bag. She stared at me, her mouth agape. ‘Phoebe,’ she whispered after a few moments, ‘not long ago I told you that I didn’t believe in God. I think, now, that I do.’

  I turned back to the letter.

  My mother rarely talked about her time in Avignon – the associations were too painful: but whenever she did have reason to mention it, Thérèse, your name would come up. She spoke of you only with affection. She remembered that you had helped her when she had to hide. She said that you were a good friend to her.

  I looked at Mrs Bell. She was shaking her head as she looked towards the window, clearly going over the letter in her own mind. I saw a tear slide down her cheek.

  My mother died in 1987, aged fifty-eight. I once told her that I felt she’d been short-changed. She said that, on the contrary, she’d had the most wonderful windfall of forty-three years.

  Now I read about the incident that Miriam had recounted to me over the phone, when Monique was dragged away by the female guard.

  This woman – she was known as ‘the beast’ – put my mother on the list for the next ‘selection’. But on the appointed day, while my mother was on the back of the truck with the others, waiting to be taken – and I can barely write these words – to the crematorium, she was recognised by the young SS guard who had registered her admission. At that time, hearing that she spoke native German, he had asked her where she came from and she answered, ‘Mannheim’. He had smiled and said that he was from Mannheim too, and on those occasions afterwards when he saw my mother he would take a moment to chat to her about the city. When he saw her sitting on the truck that morning he told the driver that there had been a mistake and ordered my mother to get down. She always said to me that that day – March 1st, 1944 – was her second birthday.

  Lena’s letter now described how this SS guard had had Monique moved to work in the camp kitchen, scrubbing floors; this meant that she was working indoors and, more importantly, was able to eat potato peelings, a little meat even. She began to gain just enough weight to survive. After a few weeks of this, the letter went on, Monique had become a kitchen ‘assistant’, doing some cooking, although she said it was difficult as the only ingredients were potatoes, cabbage, margarine and farina – sometimes a little salami – and ‘coffee’ made of ground-up acorns. She did this work for three months.

  My mother was then assigned, with two other girls, to cook for some of the female wardens, in their barracks. Because my mother had had to learn to cook after her twin brothers were born, she did a very good job and the wardens enjoyed her potato pancakes and her sauerkraut and strudel. This success ensured my mother’s survival. She used to say that what her mother had taught her had saved her life.

  Now I understood Miriam’s remark about the true gift that Monique’s mother had imparted to her daughter. I turned the letter over.

  In the winter of 1944, with the Russians closing in from the east, Auschwitz was evacuated. Those inmates who could still stand were forced to march through the snow to other camps further inside Germany; these were death marches, and any prisoner who collapsed or stopped to rest was shot. Having walked for ten days, 20,000 prisoners made it to Bergen-Belsen – amongst them my mother. She said that here was hell on earth too, with virtually no food, and with thousands of the inmates suffering from typhus. The Women’s Orchestra had also been sent there and so my mother was able to see Miriam. But in April, Bergen-Belsen was liberated. Miriam was reunited with her mother and sister, and not long afterwards they emigrated to Canada where they had family. My mother stayed in a Displaced Persons camp for eight months, waiting for news of her parents and her brothers; she was distraught to be told that they had not survived. But through the Red Cross her father’s brother made contact with her and offered her a home with his family in California. So my mother came here, to Pasadena in March 1946.

  ‘You did know,’ Mrs Bell murmured again. She looked at me. Tears had gathered in her eyes. ‘You did know, Phoebe. That strange conviction that you had … it was right. It was right,’ she repeated wonderingly.

  I turned back to the letter.

  Although my mother had a ‘normal’ existence afterwards, in that she worked, married and had a child, she never ‘recovered’ from what she’d been through. For years afterwards, apparently, she walked with her eyes cast down. She hated it when someone said ‘after you’ to her, because in the camp an inmate always had to walk in front of the escorting guard. She would become distressed if she saw striped fabric and would not tolerate any in the house. And she was obsessed with food, forever making cakes which she would give away.

  Mom started high school, but had difficulty applying herself to her studies. One day her teacher told her that she wasn’t concentrating. My mother retorted that she knew all about ‘concentration’, and angrily pulled up her sleeve to show the number tattooed on her left forearm. Not long after that she left school, and, although she was clever, she gave up the idea of going to college. She said that all she wanted to do was to feed people. So she got a job with a state-run program for the homeless, and through this she met my father Stan, a baker, who donated bread to the charity’s two shelters here in Pasadena. She and Stan gradually fell in love, marrying in 1952 and working together in his bakery: he made the bread, and my mother made cakes, coming to specialise in cupcakes. Their bakery grew into a large concern and in the 1970s it became the Pasadena Cupcake Company, and I’ve been its CEO for the past few years.

  ‘But I don’t understand, Phoebe,
’ I heard Mrs Bell say. ‘I don’t understand how you could know this and not have told me? How could you sit with me, Phoebe, a few days ago, and talk to me and not tell me what you knew?’ I glanced at the letter again. Then I read the last paragraph aloud.

  When Miriam phoned me today she said that she had already told Phoebe everything. Thérèse, Phoebe felt that you should hear what had happened not from her, but from me, as I am the nearest thing to Monique herself. So she arranged with me that I would write to you, and tell you my mother’s story. I am very glad to have had the opportunity to do so.

  Yours in friendship,

  Lena Sands

  I looked at Mrs Bell. ‘I’m sorry you had to wait. But it wasn’t my story to tell – and I knew that Lena would write immediately.’

  Mrs Bell heaved a sigh, then her eyes filled with tears again. ‘I’m so happy,’ she murmured. ‘And so sad.’

  ‘Why?’ I whispered. ‘Because Monique was alive, but you didn’t hear from her?’ Mrs Bell nodded, then another tear slid down her cheek. ‘But Lena says that Monique didn’t like talking about Avignon – it’s understandable, given what happened there; she probably wanted to draw a veil over that part of her life. Plus she may not have known if you had survived the war – or where you were.’ Mrs Bell nodded. ‘And then you’d moved to London, and she was in America. Today, with modern communications, you’d have found each other again. But in a way you have found each other now.’

  Mrs Bell reached for my hand. ‘You have done so much for me, Phoebe – more, possibly, than anyone – but I am going to ask you to do one thing more … Perhaps you have guessed what it is.’

  I nodded then I re-read Lena’s PS:

  Thérèse, I will be in London in late February. I do hope I may have the chance to see you then as I know that that would have made my mother very happy.

  I gave Mrs Bell back the letter, then I went to the wardrobe and took out the blue coat in its protective cover. I turned to her.

  ‘Of course I will,’ I said.

  FIFTEEN

  Christmas had almost arrived. The shop was very busy so I had Katie coming in to help me on Saturdays, and Mum was back at work, feeling happy, and looking forward to seeing Louis again with Dad on Christmas Eve. She decided that she ought to have some sort of party for her birthday on January 10th and joked that she was going to have it on a bus.

  I began to plan the fashion show, which was to be held at Blackheath Halls – luckily there’d been a cancellation for the Great Hall on February 1st.

  I saw Mrs Bell twice more. The first time she knew I was there, though she was very sleepy with the drugs. The second time, on December 21st, she seemed unaware of my presence. By then she was being given morphine twenty-four hours a day. So I just sat and held her hand and told her how glad I was that I’d known her and that I wouldn’t forget her, and that I even felt a bit stronger now when I thought about Emma. At that, I felt a slight pressure from Mrs Bell’s fingers. Then I kissed her goodbye. As I walked home in the gathering dusk I looked at the cloud-streaked sky and realised that it was the shortest day and that the light would soon be returning.

  As I arrived home my phone rang. It was Sue. ‘Phoebe – I’m sorry, but I’m calling to say that Mrs Bell died at ten to four – a few minutes after you’d left.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘She was very peaceful, as you saw.’ I felt my eyes fill. ‘She obviously felt very close to you,’ I heard Sue add as I sat on the hall chair. ‘I assume you must have known her for a long time.’

  ‘No.’ I reached into my pocket for a tissue. ‘Less than four months. But it feels like a lifetime.’

  I waited a few minutes then I phoned Annie, who sounded surprised to be hearing from me on a Sunday evening. ‘Are you all right, Phoebe?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m fine.’ I swallowed. ‘But, do you have a few minutes, Annie? Because there’s a story I want to tell you …’

  The next couple of days were busy, then on Christmas Eve the shop went quiet. I watched people walking past the windows laden with bags and I looked across the Heath towards The Paragon and thought about Mrs Bell and about how glad I was that I’d met her. I felt that in helping her I’d perhaps healed some small part of myself.

  At five o’clock I was upstairs in the stockroom, sorting things for the sale, putting gloves, hats and belts in boxes – when I heard the door bell ring, then footsteps. I went downstairs, expecting to see a customer in search of a last-minute Christmas present; instead, there was Miles, looking suave in a beige winter coat with a brown velvet collar.

  ‘Hello, Phoebe,’ he said quietly.

  I stared at him, my heart banging in my ribcage, then I came down the rest of the stairs. ‘I was … about to close.’

  ‘Well … I just … wanted to talk to you.’ I noticed again the huskiness in Miles’ voice that had always tugged at my heartstrings. ‘It won’t take long.’

  I turned the sign to ‘Closed’, then went behind the counter, pretending that I needed to do something there.

  ‘Have you been well?’ I asked him, for want of anything else to say.

  ‘I’ve been … fine,’ he replied soberly. ‘Quite busy, but …’ He put his hand into his coat pocket. ‘I just wanted to bring you this.’ He stepped forward and put a small green box down on the counter. I opened it then shut my eyes with relief. Inside was the emerald ring that had been my grandmother’s, then my mother’s and then mine, and which might one day, it now occurred to me, be my daughter’s, if I was lucky enough to have one. I closed my fingers around it for a moment then slipped it on my right hand. I looked at Miles. ‘I’m very happy to have this back.’

  ‘Of course. You must be.’ A red stain had crept up his neck. ‘I brought it as soon as I could.’

  ‘So you’ve only just found it?’

  He nodded. ‘Last night.’

  ‘So … where?’

  I saw a muscle at the corner of Miles’ mouth flex. ‘In Roxy’s bedside table.’ He shook his head. ‘She’d left the drawer open, and I caught a glimpse of it.’

  I exhaled slowly. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I was livid with her, of course – not just for taking it, but for the lies she told. I said that we were going to get counselling for her about this, because – and this is hard for me to admit – she needs it.’ He gave a resigned shrug. ‘I suppose I’ve known that for some time but didn’t want to face up to it. But Roxy seems to have this sense of, of not having … of …’

  ‘Deprivation?’

  ‘Yes. That’s it.’ He pursed his lips. ‘Deprivation.’ I resisted the urge to tell Miles that perhaps he should have counselling too. ‘Anyway, I’m sorry, Phoebe.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry in every way, actually, because you meant a lot to me.’

  ‘Well … thank you for bringing the ring back. It can’t have been easy.’

  ‘No. I … Anyway …’ He heaved a sigh. ‘There it is. But I hope you have a happy Christmas.’ He gave me a bleak smile.

  ‘Thanks, Miles – I hope you do too.’ Now, with nothing left to say to each other, I unlocked the door and Miles left, and I watched him walk down the street until he was quite out of sight. Then I turned the sign to ‘Closed’ and went back upstairs.

  Despite my relief over the ring, the encounter with Miles had left me upset and disturbed. I was moving some dresses from one rail to another and one of the hangers got caught on its neighbour and I was unable to release it; I was tugging at it, trying to unhook it, but I couldn’t so I ended up just pulling the garment, a Dior blouse, off the hanger – but so roughly that I ripped the silk. I sank on to the floor and burst into tears. I stayed there for a few minutes, then, as I heard All Saints Church strike six o’clock, I pushed myself to my feet. As I went wearily downstairs my mobile phone rang. It was Dan, which raised my spirits again because the sound of his voice always does. He wanted to know if I’d be interested in going round later for a ‘private screening’ of a ‘particularly seductive’
classic.

  ‘Not Emmanuelle 3?’ I said, suddenly smiling.

  ‘No, but close. It’s Godzilla vs King Kong. I managed to get a 16mm copy on eBay last week. But I do have Emmanuelle 3, if you’re interested for another time.’

  ‘Hm – I might be actually.’

  ‘Come round any time from seven – I’ll cook a risotto.’ I found myself longing to sit with Dan, big and solid and comforting and cheerful, watching a schlocky old classic in his wonderful shed.

  Feeling happier now, I got the Sale! banners out of their box, ready to plaster over the windows on Boxing Day to announce the first day of the sale on the 27th. Annie was going to be away until early January as she wanted to take advantage of this quiet time of year to write, so I’d got Katie to stand in for her, and then from mid January onwards Katie was going to work for me every Saturday. I got my coat and bag and locked up.

  As I walked home, the sharp wind stinging my cheeks, I allowed myself to look forward, if only cautiously, to the New Year. There’d be the sale, then my mother’s big birthday, then the fashion show – that was going to take a lot of organising. Later there’d be Emma’s anniversary to get through, but I was trying not to think of that now.

  I turned up Bennett Street, unlocked my front door and went inside. I picked the mail off the mat – a few late Christmas cards including one from Daphne; then I went into the kitchen and poured myself a glass of wine. From outside I could hear singing, then the bell rang. I opened the door.

  Silent night, Holy night …

  There were four children, with an adult, collecting for Crisis.

  All is calm. All is bright …

  I put some money in the tin, listened to the end of the carol, then closed the door and went upstairs to get ready to meet Dan. At seven I heard the bell again. I ran down and picked up my purse from the hall table, assuming it to be more carol singers as I wasn’t expecting anyone.