The Flight of the Maidens

by Jane Gardam

  Oh God, if only we were on the phone. Two or three words would put it right.

  She lay thinking about her home, the womb of the house, enclosed and warm. She thought of Rupert and the miseries of love. She didn’t think of Eustace at all. She waited gravely for sleep. I will after all go home, she thought.

  But in the morning the sun shone so cheerfully that the summer seemed to have returned, and she began to think of arrangements for her weekend with Rupert at his castle.

  25

  On the day in late September that Una brought back to the library the books Miss Kipling had recommended, Miss Kipling looked at Una from her stately height and asked her to accompany her for a moment into the reference room and as they passed in together Miss Kipling hung a notice on the door saying ENGAGED.

  ‘I want you to give me half an hour of your time, Una. I want to leave you with this letter I have received from Lieselotte.’

  ‘You’ve had a letter? Everyone’s had a letter except me.’

  ‘This letter is written at random. It has nothing to do with me. You know her well.’

  ‘I don’t,’ said Una. ‘Nobody did. Now she can’t stop writing letters except to the ones she spent any time with.’

  ‘Please may I leave you to read it.’

  Dear Miss Kipling [read Una, and with increasing shock],

  I am writing as you see from California, where I have had an offer of adoption by my great aunt, the sister of my father’s father, and I have accepted her proposal. I have now been resident in her house eleven days.

  At first I was able only to sit here on this affluent shore beside the Pacific Ocean in my small back bedroom where servants run the house and my aunt plays Bridge with three friends every day in the large main room that fronts the sea. I am spending my time using up the supply of writing-paper in the room and some I brought from the ship. My aunt had me travel here First Class. I am trying to write to everybody who has been so kind. I haven’t yet written to friends, but draw near to this now, in writing to you.

  To thank you first for your help over the years in getting me German books through the library, which can’t have been all that easy during the war in a place like Shields East. These did not only comfort my thirsty soul with the language of my birth but were the most considerable help to me in getting me in to Cambridge to do Modern Languages.

  I shan’t forget our first meeting over the library counter and your immediate understanding. I shan’t forget your later encouragement and insistence that it must be Cambridge I try for—you did the same for Una, I know—and nowhere else. Certainly the teachers at the High School would never have thought of it. Sometimes I believe they thought that after the war I’d be going back to Hamburg. Your time at Cambridge you showed me to have been the cream of life. You have been a huge influence on my fractured spirit.

  But now I have to tell you something maddening and despicable and this is my decision to come to the United States. In a fit of madness in my new home in London with marvellous people which was arranged for me, I’m not sure yet why, by the Jewish authorities for my vacations when I started at College, I made the discovery that I had not been informed of the death of all my family in Hamburg. My father had worked very hard to get me out. He and my mother a year later it seems went to the gas chambers in Auschwitz, in one of the batches of 2,000. I had always really known this when their letters of the first few months ceased, but of course one hopes. The knowledge, the confirmation, persuaded me to madness and I (thanklessly to my new friends and old) got myself to the last remaining member of my family in the world. My aunt being very rich and the Polish refugee I had met on the streets of London having great panache and resourcefulness, and, I have to admit, myself having made arrangements for a visa earlier this year after seeing films at the Palace about both Belsen and the Wild West and Deanna Durbin’s happy life in America—I did it all as in a dream.

  Now I must write down what has happened to me today, one hour ago, before it fades from me and I don’t believe it, and it is a great comfort to me to see you as you read this in the public library, seriously smoothing out the pages on a beautifully cloudy, rainy day with a sharp and wonderfully cold east wind off the sea, direct from the North Pole. I see you frowning with surprise seated at your desk, the public about to arrive. You will say that you are not the one to tell, but Hetty is away somewhere in a Lakeland place and my friend Una is I believe in love. But soon . . .

  This I have to tell you.

  Today I was allowed out for a walk. I am treated as something between a nurse and a servant and also as a royal creature who must learn to be a little more American and perfect her appearance before going about California. But today I was told I might go down through Belvedere, our village, and leave orders for groceries. I did not come straight home, but walked and dawdled in the sunlight, several miles beside the sea, and then up into what I suppose they call ‘the countryside’ which is scrub upland that has pushed itself in among the despoiled forests. There are deep, deep forests here and they range along for miles and miles.

  I began to walk downhill through them towards the sea on a winding path I saw through a gap, narrow and muddy. I came to a wooden house that stirred something from my early childhood, though I can’t tell what or when or where. Then I went down and down further, and came out on a little beach that it seems is private though nothing had said so, and there in a big hammock lay a big old man asleep with a book on his chest. He rose from the hammock and quoted Shakespeare at me.

  We walked back together to the timber house up above the forest and he asked me precise and forcible questions and I found myself compelled to answer him exactly, eye to eye. Almost from the start—did I tell you he is German?—we spoke in German. Like you, he is a graduate of Cambridge University. It was long ago, he said, but ‘I still have a little influence there’.

  ‘You think I must return?’

  ‘I most certainly think so. Have you renounced your place?’

  ‘I haven’t yet written.’

  He said, ‘That is most interesting.’

  Then he said, ‘The Law of Coincidence,’ to which I replied, ‘There is no Law of Coincidence,’ and he said, ‘There are many theories about the roots of coincidence’ and was I to read Philosophy? I said no, Modern Languages, and he said, ‘Consider reading Philosophy. I suspect your languages are already excellent. Tell me about your aunt.’ And so I described to him my aunt’s life here and its possible inheritance by me. And also the possible inheritance of her estate, as the last relative, if she can change me to her ways, I suppose. He said, ‘What money have you now?’ and I said, ‘None. I gave her back the change from my expenses on the journey.’

  ‘This is not life, but the abeyance of life,’ he said and shut his eyes and shuddered.

  Then he said, ‘Would you let me see your papers? Your passport and entry documents? If I can arrange a passage home, could you be ready quickly?’ and I said, ‘Yes’.

  He said, ‘I don’t suppose you have any papers with you now?’ and I said I had and I took them out of the travel wallet that Carl the Pole had given me saying never let them out of your sight. I laid them down on the table where we sat among his grandchildren’s paints and puzzles. It is a grand and glorious muddle, this playhouse: piano, a guitar with trailing bright ribbons, gramophone, books, books, books, and half-eaten bits on paper plates and Coca-Cola, and thick comfortable dust. It did not look like Hamburg but I felt I somehow knew it. As he read my papers simultaneously he was reading my thoughts. He is a very large, loose, quiet man about sixty-five years old. He said, ‘I am from South Germany where we are not so neat.’

  He gathered my papers and passport together and put them in a rough bundle in his jacket pocket. I could see other bits of paper there already. His jacket was old. I should say very old. It looked like a Scottish tweed.

  ‘Come here to this place every day
,’ he said, ‘It is never locked. There is plenty to read. There is an electric fire for when it gets cold, but please take care, for it is rather faulty. Everything here is yours, for you to find your identity again.’

  ‘You have my identity in your pocket.’

  ‘Not for long, I hope,’ he said. ‘Trust me.’

  So we climbed up the path together through the trees and were standing beside his car at the roadside of the upland heath. I saw that the car was small but very wonderful, and also strewn about with things like newspapers, a tweed hat, chocolate, old good shoes.

  Then he said, ‘All I have to insist upon is that you will make yourself quite ready to go at one moment’s notice,’ and I promised. Then he said, ‘Please be certain of what you are saying. I am German. German born, bred and a lover of my country, and I am not a Jew. I shan’t be offended if you don’t want to shake my hand.’

  I shook hands with him, and he said, ‘You are remarkable.’

  I said, ‘I’m shaking hands because you are yourself, not because you represent Germany,’ and then I walked away down the hill road back to my aunt’s house. I heard his car swoop off in the other direction.

  There was nobody in when I arrived back. I realised that I had given up the papers, passport, visa, everything Carl had told me not to let out of my sight, to a man even whose name I did not know.

  This is the state of things at present.

  Very sincerely,

  Lise.

  Post Scriptum

  Last night I asked my aunt as I put her to bed (arranging her wig on a wig-stand like an eighteenth-century baroness, for she has begun to trust me—at first she denied the wig, which isn’t surprising because underneath the head is a pale skull)—I asked her if she knew someone with a house in the woods and she said, ‘It is the banker, Henkel, one of the most influential men on the western seaboard, but nobody ever sees him here. He keeps the place for his family. He is very kind to his children.’ I thought, God be thanked that he has taken me as his child.

  Miss Kipling was standing over her as Una finished the letter and they looked at each other until Una gave a huge sigh.

  ‘She’s made it all up,’ she said. ‘She’s gone off her rocker at last. It’s a dream. Crickey Bill. It is like a film.’

  ‘It is very surprising. The whole thing—writing to me about it . . . ’

  ‘You represent Cambridge to her. I think you must be a sort of safety valve. She knows you’d be so pleased if it were all true. I mean—Freud. Dreams. She’s dreaming. Oh, poor Lieselotte.’

  ‘Yes. I think it’s fancy,’ said Miss Kipling, and sat down sadly, and took the letter and folded it away in its envelope. ‘I don’t think we’ll hear of her again.’

  26

  They were late, of course. Hetty remembered how twice before they, first Rupert and then Patsie, had not turned up.

  ‘That castle’s a few miles off,’ Mrs. Satterley had said: ‘you’d best be ready early,’ and so she had been up at seven. After breakfast she packed her books in the haversack with the notes she’d made, her mackintosh tied to the top with her one pair of heavy shoes dangling by the laces. In the zip-bag she packed her clothes for the weekend visit, wishing she owned one thing, one single thing, she liked. Her best thing was Joyce Dobson’s cardigan. She would be coming back to Betty Bank for Monday night, home on Tuesday. The Satterleys had already arranged for her to be taken to the train in the farm cart. ‘We’ll have no more with taxis.’

  She wondered whether to take the sheets and pillowcases off the bed. It was their day to be changed, but she’d only be here for one more night.

  Mrs. Satterley came sweeping in with the new linen. ‘Friday’s sheets day. We’ll not have you in a dirty bed the night before you leave. We’ll have those curtains down to wash today as well and scour the bed-china and wash and poss the rug off the floor. Leave your book-bag. Oh, and bring down the Goss.’

  ‘Goss?’

  ‘The ornaments.’

  Hetty picked up the Present from Maryport’s lid before she took it downstairs with the rose-pink candlesticks. The shreds of Eustace’s last letter had been removed.

  ‘What time did they say?’ Mrs. Satterley asked Hetty in the kitchen, about eleven o’clock.

  ‘They just said “early”.’

  ‘That’ll be Rupert, then, gone off in a world of his own. Patsie’s more reliable, but not much. Is Mabel going?’

  ‘Yes. I think I’ve been asked to amuse Mabel.’

  ‘More than likely. Well, make the best of it. It’s historic, or so I’m told, though there’ll never be one of his to inherit it. It may well go to Mabel; she’s closer than Patsie. She’s legitimate. Rupert will never be able to be a father.’

  ‘But he looks quite well?’

  Mrs. Satterley said nothing.

  At midday there was still no message and Hetty had to sit down to Betty Bank dinner, humiliated and not hungry. There was disapproval in the air. She could have been on the train home by now. Home to Shields East. Her mother on the station platform, overflowing this time with happy tears.

  ‘Your curtains down and your floor swilled and the mat’s on the line. I don’t know where you’re going to sleep tonight, Hetty, if they don’t decide to come for you. We’ve a party coming.’

  ‘A party? I thought you’d shut up for the winter. We’ve been so nice and empty.’

  ‘There’s usually those comes for a final bit of tramping before the right cold sets in. Well, there’s ower the cow-house, a single room, if you’re stuck here after all. It’s habitable.’

  ‘I think something’s coming.’

  Through the window Mabel was opening the yard gate.

  ‘Hetty!’ A bellow.

  ‘How that child shouts when she does open her mouth. What sort of a boarding school does she go to? She’s like a farm servant.’

  ‘Goodbye, Mrs. Satterley. Oh, and thank you so much. So much for the lunch. And for everything else. And I’ll be back for my last night. I’m sorry you don’t like me going off now.’

  ‘We’ve grown fond of you,’ said Mr. Satterley.

  ‘And they’re none of your world,’ said his wife.

  ‘I don’t know what my world is yet.’ She wondered whether to embrace Mrs. Satterley, but had to field a ferocious glare as she approached. ‘Goodbye, then. I’ll tell you all about it on Monday morning.’

  ‘It’s to be hoped you’ll be ready to. Look you, Hetty, he’ll be no good to you.’

  Hetty put down her zip-bag to wave to them from the gate, but Mrs. Satterley wasn’t looking out and Mr. Satterley had gone dipping sheep.

  Patsie, it seemed, was driving Rupert’s car today, and Mabel and Hetty were to be in the back. Rupert sat in front because of his long legs.

  ‘His wonderful legs,’ said Patsie. ‘Make sure we all know about them. You and Marlene Dietrich.’

  Rupert laughed. He hadn’t greeted Hetty, had made no gesture of getting out to open the car door. He stared ahead; but his awareness of her, her awareness of him, was thick in the air.

  ‘Comfy in the back?’ asked Patsie.

  ‘Yes, thanks.’

  Mabel said nothing. They were far from comfortable. Underfoot it was cluttered with tennis rackets and a massive, prickly tennis net made a roll that brought their knees nearly to their chests.

  ‘The dickie’s full up,’ said Patsie, ‘with Rupert’s stuff, of course. Rifle and other killing gear. He’s the angel of death.’

  ‘I thought the castle was on the sea?’

  ‘Hetty, dear, Rupert shoots anywhere. He’d shoot fish from an open boat. It’s not on the sea, it’s near the sea.’

  Hetty saw Rupert watching her in the mirror and was surprised to find that though his eyes were bright they weren’t as splendid as she’d remembered. Seeing her watching, he said, ‘I’m glad
you could come, Hetty.’

  His voice was beautiful, though.

  They swung out of the Lake District, westward, leaving the mountains in heaps behind them and the countryside ahead opening out green and mild. Yellowhammers flitted in the hedges that ran round the fields of winter wheat. The plain became warm, almost balmy, and fuchsia bushes and late phloxes shone in gardens. Farmhouses quite suddenly were built of dark pink sandstone with white painted sills and scarlet front doors. After the whitewashed stone of the Lakes they looked foreign. Huge Dutch barns with red struts were packed so full of hay that it stuck out down the open sides, like stuffing from a mattress. Straw stacks with pepper-pot tops stood on springy beds of hedge branches. All the farmers were out roofing the stacks with silver cornstalks, embroidering and stroking them into place with handmade straw ropes. Their bodies were splayed across the stack-tops, ladders propped below. ‘They look like black butterflies pinned out,’ said Hetty. Nobody spoke.

  ‘I hope you didn’t bring a lot of clothes,’ said Patsie. ‘There’s absolutely nothing to do at the castle except play tennis and there’s nobody to see us but Nanny.’

  ‘And Nanny doesn’t exactly follow fashion,’ said Rupert, and he and Patsie laughed.

  Mabel said, ‘Shut up about Nanny.’

  ‘We keep Nanny in a cupboard,’ said Rupert, ‘and feed her bread and water. Let her out on a lead. So Mabel says.’

  ‘You could pay her a bit more.’

  ‘Mabel, how do you know what I pay her?’

  ‘She tells me.’

  ‘I don’t know what I pay her. She should ask me. It won’t be for much longer, anyway. Granny will be taking over.’

  Patsie took a corner far too fast and nearly ran into the back of a farm cart. ‘God,’ she said, ‘why can’t they get tractors? They’ve all got more money than we have. They behave like it’s old Tin-Sin round here.’