‘Time isn’t circular,’ she said to Dr Kellet. ‘It’s like a … palimpsest.’
‘Oh dear,’ he said. ‘That sounds very vexing.’
‘And memories are sometimes in the future.’
‘You are an old soul,’ he said. ‘It can’t be easy. But your life is still ahead of you. It must be lived.’ He was not her doctor, he had retired, he said, he was ‘merely a visitor’.
The sanatorium made her feel as if she had a mild case of consumption. She sat on the sunny terrace during the day and read countless books and orderlies ferried food and drink to her. She wandered through the gardens, had polite conversation with doctors and psychiatrists, talked to her fellow patients (on her floor, at any rate. The truly mad were in the attic, like Mrs Rochester). There were even fresh flowers in her room and a bowl of apples. It must be costing a fortune for her to stay here, she thought.
‘This must be very expensive,’ she said to Hugh when he visited, which he did often.
‘Izzie is paying,’ he said. ‘She insisted.’
Dr Kellet lit his meerschaum thoughtfully. They were sitting on the terrace. Ursula thought she would be quite happy to spend the rest of her life here. It was so gloriously unchallenging.
‘And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge …’ Dr Kellet said.
‘… and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing,’ Ursula provided.
‘Caritas, of course, is love. But you will know that.’
‘I’m not without charity,’ Ursula said. ‘Why are we quoting Corinthians? I thought you were a Buddhist.’
‘Oh, I am nothing,’ Dr Kellet said. ‘And everything too, of course,’ he added – rather elliptically, in Ursula’s opinion.
‘The question is,’ he said, ‘do you have enough?’
‘Enough what?’ The conversation had quite got away from her now but Dr Kellet was busy with the demands of the meerschaum and didn’t answer. Tea interrupted them.
‘They do excellent chocolate cake here,’ Dr Kellet said.
‘All better, little bear?’ Hugh said as he helped her gently into the car. He had brought the Bentley to pick her up.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Absolutely.’
‘Good. Let’s get home. The house isn’t the same without you.’
She had wasted so much precious time but she had a plan now, she thought, as she lay awake in the dark, in her own bed at Fox Corner. The plan would involve snow, no doubt. The silver hare, the dancing green leaves. And so on. German, not the Classics, and afterwards a course in shorthand and typing and perhaps the study of Esperanto on the side, just in case utopia should come to pass. The membership of a local shooting club and an application for an office job somewhere, working for a while, salting money away – nothing untoward. She didn’t want to draw attention to herself, she would heed her father’s advice, although he hadn’t given it to her yet, she would keep her head below the parapet and her light under a bushel. And then, when she was ready, she would have enough to live on while she embedded herself deep in the heart of the beast, from whence she would pluck out the black tumour that was growing there, larger every day.
And then one day she would be walking down Amalienstrasse and pause outside Photo Hoffmann and gaze at the Kodaks and Leicas and Voigtländers in the windows and she would open the shop door and hear the little bell clanging to announce her arrival to the girl working behind the counter who will probably say Guten Tag, gnädiges Fräulein, or perhaps she will say Grüss Gott because this is 1930 when people can still address you with Grüss Gott and Tschüss instead of endless Heil Hitlers and absurd martial salutes.
And Ursula will hold out her old box Brownie and say, ‘I don’t seem to be able to spool the film on,’ and perky seventeen-year-old Eva Braun will say, ‘Let me have a look for you.’
Her heart swelled with the high holiness of it all. Imminence was all around. She was both warrior and shining spear. She was a sword glinting in the depths of night, a lance of light piercing the darkness. There would be no mistakes this time.
When everyone was asleep and the house was quiet, Ursula got out of bed and climbed on the chair at the open window of the little attic bedroom.
It’s time, she thought. A clock struck somewhere in sympathy. She thought of Teddy and Miss Woolf, of Roland and little Angela, of Nancy and Sylvie. She thought of Dr Kellet and Pindar. Become such as you are, having learned what that is. She knew what that was now. She was Ursula Beresford Todd and she was a witness.
She opened her arms to the black bat and they flew to each other, embracing in the air like long-lost souls. This is love, Ursula thought. And the practice of it makes it perfect.
Be Ye Men of Valour
December 1930
URSULA KNEW ALL about Eva. She knew how much she liked fashion and make-up and gossip. She knew that she could skate and ski and loved to dance. And so Ursula lingered over the expensive frocks in Oberpollinger with her before visiting a café for coffee and cake, or an ice-cream in the Englischer Garten where they would sit and watch the children on the carousel. She went to the skating rink with Eva and her sister Gretl. She was invited to dinner at the Brauns’ table. ‘Your English friend is very nice,’ Frau Braun told Eva.
She told them that she was improving her German before she settled down to teach at home. Eva sighed with boredom at the idea.
Eva loved to be photographed and Ursula took many, many photographs of her on her box Brownie and then they spent their evenings sticking them in albums and admiring the different poses that Eva had struck. ‘You should be in films,’ Ursula told Eva and she was ridiculously flattered. Ursula had mugged up on celebrities, Hollywood and British as well as German, on the latest songs and dances. She was an older woman, interested in a fledgling. She took Eva under her wing and Eva was bowled over by her new sophisticated friend.
Ursula knew, too, of Eva’s infatuation for her ‘older man’ whom she made sheep’s eyes at, whom she trailed around after, sitting in restaurants and cafés, forgotten in a corner while he conducted endless conversations about politics. Eva started to take her along to these gatherings – Ursula was her best friend, after all. All Eva wanted was to be close to Hitler. And that was all Ursula wanted too.
And Ursula knew about Berg and bunker. And really she was doing this frivolous girl a great favour by inserting herself in her life.
And so, just as they had got used to Eva hanging around so they became accustomed to seeing her little English friend as well. Ursula was pleasant, she was a girl, she was nobody. She became so familiar that no one was surprised when she would turn up on her own and simper with admiration at the would-be great man. He took adoration casually. To have so little self-doubt, she thought, what a thing that must be.
But, ye gods, it was boring. So much hot air rising above the tables in Café Heck or the Osteria Bavaria, like smoke from the ovens. It was difficult to believe from this perspective that Hitler was going to lay waste to the world in a few years’ time.
It was colder than usual for this time of year. Last night a light dusting of snow, like the icing sugar on Mrs Glover’s mince pies, had sifted over Munich. There was a big Christmas tree on the Marienplatz and the lovely smell of pine needles and roasting chestnuts everywhere. The festive finery made Munich seem more fairy-tale-like than England could ever hope to be.
The frosty air was invigorating and she walked towards the café with a wonderful purpose in her step, looking forward to a cup of Schokolade, hot and thick with cream.
Inside, the café was smoky and rather disagreeable after the sparklingly cold outdoors. The women were in furs and Ursula rather wished that she could have brought Sylvie’s mink with her. Her mother never wore it and it was left permanently mothballed in her wardrobe these days.
He was at a table at the far end of the room, surrounded by the usual disciples. They were an ugly lot, she thought, and l
aughed to herself.
‘Ah. Unsere Englische Freundin,’ he said when he caught sight of her. ‘Guten Tag, gnädiges Fräulein.’ With the slightest flick of a finger he ousted a callow-looking acolyte from the chair opposite and she sat down. He seemed irritable.
Es schneit, she said. ‘It’s snowing.’ He glanced out of the window as if he hadn’t noticed the weather. He was eating Palatschinken. They looked good but when the waiter came bustling over she ordered Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte to eat with her hot chocolate. It was delicious.
‘Entschuldigung,’ she murmured, reaching down into her bag and delving for a handkerchief. Lace corners, monogrammed with Ursula’s initials, ‘UBT’, Ursula Beresford Todd, a birthday present from Pammy. She dabbed politely at the crumbs on her lips and then bent down again to put the handkerchief back in her bag and retrieve the weighty object nesting there. Her father’s old service revolver from the Great War, a Webley Mark V. She made fast her heroine heart. ‘Wacht auf,’ Ursula said quietly. The words attracted the Führer’s attention and she said, ‘Es nahet gen dem Tag.’
A move rehearsed a hundred times. One shot. Swiftness was all, yet there was a moment, a bubble suspended in time after she had drawn the gun and levelled it at his heart when everything seemed to stop.
‘Führer,’ she said, breaking the spell. ‘Für Sie.’
Around the table guns were jerked from holsters and pointed at her. One breath. One shot.
Ursula pulled the trigger.
Darkness fell.
Snow
11 February 1910
RAP, RAP, RAP. The knocking on Bridget’s bedroom door wove itself into a dream that she was having. In the dream she was at home in County Kilkenny and the pounding on the door was the ghost of her poor dead father, trying to get back to his family. Rap, rap, rap! She woke with tears in her eyes. Rap, rap, rap. There really was someone at the door.
‘Bridget, Bridget?’ Mrs Todd’s urgent whisper on the other side of the door. Bridget crossed herself, no news in the dark of the night was ever good. Had Mr Todd had an accident in Paris? Or Maurice or Pamela taken ill? She scrambled out of bed and into the freezing cold of the little attic room. She smelt snow in the air. Opening the bedroom door she found Sylvie bent almost double, as ripe as a seed-pod about to burst. ‘The baby’s coming early,’ she said. ‘Can you help me?’
‘Me?’ Bridget squeaked. Bridget was only fourteen but she knew a lot about babies, not much of it good. She had watched her own mother die in childbirth but she had never told this to Mrs Todd. Now clearly wasn’t the time to mention it. She helped Sylvie back down the stairs to her own room.
‘There’s no point in trying to get a message to Dr Fellowes,’ Sylvie said. ‘He’ll never get through this snow.’
‘Mary, Mother of God,’ Bridget yelped as Sylvie dropped on all fours, like an animal, and grunted.
‘The baby’s coming now, I’m afraid,’ Sylvie said. ‘It’s time.’
Bridget persuaded her back into bed and their long, lonely night’s labour commenced.
‘Oh, ma’am,’ Bridget cried suddenly, ‘she’s all blue, so she is.’
‘A girl?’
‘The cord’s wrapped around her neck. Oh, Jesus Christ and all the saints, she’s been strangled, the poor wee thing, strangled by the cord.’
‘We must do something, Bridget. What can we do?’
‘Oh, Mrs Todd, ma’am, she’s gone. Dead before she had a chance to live.’
‘No, that cannot be,’ Sylvie said. She heaved herself into a sitting position on the battlefield of bloodied sheets, red and white, the baby still attached by its lifeline. While Bridget made mournful noises, Sylvie jerked open the drawer of her bedside table and rummaged furiously through its contents.
‘Oh, Mrs Todd,’ Bridget wailed, ‘lie down, there’s nothing to be done. I wish Mr Todd was here, so I do.’
‘Shush,’ Sylvie said and held aloft her trophy – a pair of surgical scissors that gleamed in the lamplight. ‘One must be prepared,’ she muttered. ‘Hold the baby close to the lamp so I can see. Quickly, Bridget. There’s no time to waste.’
Snip, snip.
Practice makes perfect.
The Broad Sunlit Uplands
May 1945
THEY WERE AT a table in the corner of a pub on Glasshouse Street. They’d been dropped in Piccadilly by the American army sergeant who’d given them a lift when he saw them hitch-hiking at the side of the road outside Dover. They had crushed themselves on to an American troop transport ship at Le Havre instead of waiting two days for a flight. It was possible that, technically, they were AWOL, but neither of them gave a damn.
This was their third pub since Piccadilly and they were both agreed that the two of them were very drunk but had the capacity to get a good deal drunker yet. It was a Saturday night and the place was packed. Being in uniform they hadn’t paid for a single drink all night. The relief, if not the euphoria, of victory was still in the air.
‘Well,’ Vic said, raising his glass, ‘here’s to being back.’
‘Cheers,’ Teddy said. ‘Here’s to the future.’
He had been shot down in November ’43 and taken to Stalag Luft VI in the east. It hadn’t been bad, in that it could have been worse, he could have been Russian – the Russians were treated like animals. But then at the beginning of February they were roused from their bunks with a familiar ‘Raus! Raus!’ in the middle of the night and made to set out on the march west, away from the advancing Russians. Another day or two and they would have been liberated, it seemed an especially cruel twist of fate. There followed weeks of marching on starvation rations, in the freezing cold, minus twenty degrees most of the time.
Vic was a rather cocky little flight sergeant, the navigator of a Lancaster shot down over the Ruhr. War made strange bedfellows. They had kept each other going on the march. It was a comradeship that had almost certainly saved their lives, that and the very occasional Red Cross package.
Teddy had been shot down near Berlin, only managing to escape from the cockpit at the last minute. He’d been trying to keep the plane level to give his crew a fighting chance to bail out. A captain didn’t leave his ship until everyone on board had left. The same unspoken rule applied to a bomber.
The Halifax had been on fire from end to end and he had accepted that it was over for him. He had begun to feel lighter somehow, his heart swelling, and he suddenly knew that he would be all right, that death when it came would look after him. But death didn’t come because his Aussie wireless operator crawled to the cockpit and clipped Teddy’s parachute on his back and said, ‘Get out, you stupid bastard.’ He never saw him again, never saw any of his crew, didn’t know if they were alive or dead. He jumped at the last minute, his parachute had barely opened when he hit the ground and he was lucky to fracture only an ankle and a wrist. He was taken to a hospital and the local Gestapo came and arrested him on the ward with the immortal words, ‘For you the war is over,’ which was the greeting that nearly every airman had heard when he was taken prisoner.
He had dutifully filled in his Capture card and waited for a letter from home, but nothing came. He was left wondering for two years if the Red Cross had him on their list of prisoners, if anyone at home knew he was alive.
They were on the road somewhere outside Hamburg when the war ended. Vic had taken great pleasure in saying to the guards, ‘Ach so, mein Freund, für sie der Krieg ist zu ende.’
‘So, Ted, did you get through to your girl?’ Vic asked when Teddy came back from sweet-talking the landlady behind the bar into letting him use the pub phone.
‘I did,’ he laughed. ‘I’d been given up for dead, apparently. I don’t think she believed it was me.’
Half an hour and another couple of drinks later, Vic said, ‘Aye up, Ted. By the smile on her face I would say that woman who just came through the door might belong to you.’
‘Nancy,’ Teddy said quietly to himself.
‘I love you,’ Nancy mouthed
silently to him across the din.
‘Oh, and she brought a little friend along for me, how thoughtful,’ Vic said and Teddy laughed and said, ‘Watch it, that’s my sister you’re talking about.’
Nancy was clutching her hand so hard that it hurt but the pain meant nothing. He was there, he was actually there, sitting at a table in a London pub, drinking a pint of English beer, as large as life. Nancy made a funny choking sound and Ursula stopped herself from crying out. They were like the two Marys, dumb in the face of the Resurrection.
Then Teddy spotted them and a grin split his face. He jumped up, almost knocking over the glasses on the table. Nancy pushed her way through the crowd and threw her arms around him but Ursula stayed where she was, worried suddenly that if she moved it would all disappear, the whole happy scene break into pieces before her eyes. But then she thought, no, this was real, this was true, and she laughed with uncomplicated joy as Teddy let go of Nancy long enough to stand to attention and give Ursula a smart salute.
He shouted something to her across the pub but his words were lost in the hubbub. She thought it was ‘Thank you,’ but she might have been wrong.
Snow
11 February 1910
MRS HADDOCK SIPPED a glass of hot rum, in what she hoped was a ladylike way. It was her third and she was beginning to glow from the inside out. She had been on her way to help deliver a baby when the snow had forced her to take refuge in the snug of the Blue Lion outside Chalfont St Peter. It was not a place she would have ever considered entering, except out of necessity, but there was a roaring fire in the snug and the company was proving surprisingly convivial. Horse brasses and copper jugs gleamed and twinkled. The public bar, where the drink seemed to flow particularly freely, was an altogether rowdier place. A sing-song was currently in progress there and Mrs Haddock was surprised to find her toe tapping in accompaniment.
Life After Life Page 43