Our household was assembled. Imagine, your Irene having her own servants. I have a cook and a maid, and hardly a word can I understand – they’re country girls. I could see at once they’re nice girls, all smiles and as excited as I was, curtseying like billy-o. Gretchen, the cook, proudly showed me the kitchen and the beautiful new range as though they belonged to her, which I suppose they do. We’ll muddle through – or rather, I’ll muddle and they’ll manage. They insisted we eat some belegtes Brot they’d made, though we’d dined on the train.
Gretchen is twenty-six, and Lisa sixteen. Lisa has never met anyone English before and has learnt some words, to make me feel at home. She said, ‘Good evening, madam,’ and looked at me anxiously, and then they both laughed loudly until they remembered to be respectful and stopped laughing. Then Gretchen tried. ‘How does it go?’ she asked. ‘Good,’ I said. ‘I like my house.’ At which they laughed a good deal more. Thomas looked on tolerantly, as though at children. He is interested in servants and workers, he thinks that a society can only flourish if all its people lead a full and healthy life. He knows the girls’ parents, and asked how they were.
She’d wanted to say to the maids, ‘There’s no reason for you to treat me so seriously, I’m just Irene.’ But of course, that was no longer true. There would be no more toasting cheese in front of the gas fire or sitting on the floor drinking wine or staying up until one heard the milkman on his round. No, she was a responsible housewife now. She sighed, but the letter must betray no sighs.
The flat has been redesigned by Thomas on the newest principles, appropriate for the best physical and mental development (this is how we speak). Thomas talks often about how the daily objects around us must be practical but graceful. We have a big sitting room onto the street, where I am now, with Thomas’s study next door. Beyond that is the dining room, furnished in the most up-to-date manner. The space between the front rooms and the back is called the Berliner Zimmer, it’s rather dark because the window’s in the corner. Our bedroom is at the back looking onto another courtyard, with a spare bedroom, where I hope you’ll come and stay, and another bedroom. For a child, she supposed.
The passage twiddles round to the bathroom decorated with white and blue tiles with the design of a little house in a garden, which Thomas put in. At the end of the passage is the kitchen. Gretchen has a little room beyond the kitchen, but Lisa sleeps in a cubbyhole under the roof, reached by a ladder. I was shocked, but that is the way here, and Lisa says she finds it much better than at home, where she slept higgledy-piggledy in a great big bed with her brothers and sisters.
Thomas has chosen beautiful colours, with stencilled decorations, and modern rugs and furniture by a designer called Bruno Paul. The curtains are all white and cream with abstract patterns. The furniture is very fine, though we aren’t allowed big armchairs you can sink into as at home as you have in London! No, you sit upright. Actually there’s not very much furniture since everyone is busy escaping from over-stuffed interiors, and enjoying the beauty of function. Thomas says the flat looks like an English house. I can’t see it, but I naturally agree. Anyway, here is a photograph Thomas took. He does it well, don’t you think?
She put down her pen. She did not say she’d been taken aback by the orderliness of the flat, the attention to detail, which left nothing for her to decide. She must never criticise Thomas or her new world to her family or her London friends. She must be loyal.
How distant this new world was from the old one, separated by so many hours in trains and boats, so many tickets and arrangements, such contrasting attitudes.
Thomas had taken on a new personality in Berlin. She thought that, unconsciously, he treated her like a character in a play. When she bought clothes, she was to bear in mind the colours of their rooms, the clothes must not be too high-toned or too dim. He’d suggested he might accompany her on shopping expeditions. When he asked her to sit where the light fell on her to advantage, she felt like Nora in her doll’s house, and refused.
Afterwards, she scolded herself. He wanted her to be happy. Would it be best to consent, to subordinate herself, as women were supposed to do? She tried to imagine doing this.
Thomas has thought so much about my needs. There is a big desk for me at the window of the Wohnzimmer. I shall resume drawing, I might even ask if I can use his study as a studio when he’s not using it. And there are many bookshelves, with space left for my books. Not much, in fact. There is a shelf of books about Berlin and Germany for me to study.
We are so happy in this flat. I realise how fortunate I am, to be living in this city.
She felt achingly homesick, suddenly, in a way she’d not done in Rome. She looked at herself in the mirror, and patted her hair. During the honeymoon she had worn it down first thing in the morning, and sometimes in the evening, as he loved her to do.
I know I am going to be happy here. Thank you for all your loving support, dearest Mamma and Papa.
A tear fell onto her writing paper and smudged the ink, but she suppressed the damage with her charming new blotter with its ivory edges carved into the shape of sunflowers. No more crying, she told herself sternly.
There was a knock. Dabbing her eyes, she cried, ‘Come in!’ It was Gretchen, wanting to know whether she would like some coffee. She seemed excited by the prospect. ‘No,’ said Irene petulantly, as though drinking coffee at a fixed hour every morning was another ritual to be imposed on her, as though her new function was to be the constant genteel consumption of food and drink. Gretchen looked disappointed, and Irene cried, ‘But yes please, it’s just what I would like, how kind.’ Gretchen beamed.
She must finish her letter. That morning Thomas had risen early, eaten a large breakfast, set off for the office. He told her he would be very busy at the office because of his long absence, but would spend Saturday afternoon and Sunday with her. It was all precisely planned. On Saturday they would go for a walk and attend a concert that he had chosen. On Sunday they would lunch with his parents and meet the assembled family. She looked forward to the walk. She dreaded lunch.
This afternoon my mother-in-law is visiting us here. That will be nice.
Nice? She was surprised at her own shyness. In London she’d met all sorts of people and gone to parties and not felt shy at all. But as for meeting all these strangers and being assessed for her looks and manners and knowledge of German and child-bearing abilities. . . It was worse, she thought, because a foreigner had got hold of their adored Thomas.
She wondered at the lameness of her English, already she seemed unable to speak English properly.
Enough for now. I must go out and make myself familiar with the neighbourhood. With dearest love. . .
Would her letter convey the proper level of happiness? Would her father read any doubts into it?
The coffee arrived on a lacquered tray, with little cakes on a plate decorated with a subtle pink and silver pattern, and a linen napkin, and a silver fork, all unfamiliar but clearly hers. It was touching, it was unbearable. ‘Will that be all?’ asked Lisa. Yes, more than all. Irene drank her coffee fast, ate one cake and hid two more behind the books, announced to her startled cook that she would be out to lunch, and fled into the sunny street. Would the servants, she wondered as she ran downstairs pinning on her hat, tell their master – her master? – that she had run out and never eaten the lunch they’d prepared?
12
Sophia stared morosely at her German teacher. Miss Wenham, in Sophia’s view, was not qualified to teach anything. She was a plain woman of indeterminate age, who always wore the same coat and skirt and made everything uninteresting. Sophia half-listened to the questions going round the class. ‘Will you go to Germany, child? Will you go to Germany, sir? Children, will you go to Germany? Has your friend been to Germany?’ Miss Wenham would read out these idiotic enquiries in English and the girls had to translate them. Sophia could not imagine ever wanting to know whether Edith Martin’s friend had been to Germany. It would be some time befor
e she was asked to translate, since Miss Wenham unimaginatively went up and down the rows.
Sophia detested her school. She hated the building in Harley Street, where everything was ugly, from the brick front to the mistresses and almost all the male professors. She hated the smell of floor polish. She hated lunch and having to finish what was on one’s plate. She hated curtseying to the staff, and attending the Class for Physical Exercise. She hated the dried-up old chaperones who sat wordlessly in classes taught by the professors, as though those ancient men posed a threat to one’s morals. She hated the school’s reputation for attracting less bright girls than the North London Collegiate. She despised the atmosphere of mildly artistic goodwill and the expectation that a girl’s role in life was to do the Season and be married off. Apart from her friend Laura, most of the girls were frivolous and snobbish. It was unbearably dreary. She knew she could gain the college’s Certificate of Associateship with no trouble, she couldn’t even pretend to be anxious. Besides which, though she knew she wasn’t anxious, she sometimes wondered whether, deep down, she might be.
She felt suffocated. If her mother had her way, Sophia’s whole life would be spent obeying rules: marriage to a suitable man, living in a suitable house and producing a suitable number of suitable children. Or worse, living as her mother’s companion, a prospect that was sometimes hinted at. I am only sixteen, she said to herself, and already I’m bored by my life. If only I could be a Suffragette and shake up the world rather than have to talk about the new altar cloth at St Peter’s and whether Lady Belfield might come to lunch.
The big question was whether her parents would let her go to university. Papa skirted round the subject. Mamma, having allowed Irene to escape the Season, was determined that Sophia should do it. Without their support, she could never afford university, it was unthinkable. Queen’s College was little help, preparing for university was considered odd. And then, did she really want to go? She didn’t want to be a freak.
Miss Wenham looked in Sophia’s direction. Defiantly, Sophia thought.
‘Sophia, “Would that you were going to Germany!’’’ Miss Wenham looked her pupil squarely in the eyes.
A titter ran through the class. Sophia was momentarily disconcerted – was Miss Wenham humorously suggesting she would welcome her departure? The titter was irritating.
Actually it was rather a difficult sentence. She hesitated. ‘Ach’ – she put a strong emphasis on this, it added authenticity. ‘Ach, würden Sie doch nach Deutschland gehen.’ She stared back at her teacher.
Miss Wenham gave a nod, though a foolish smile still played around her lips. ‘Dankeschön,’ she said flatly. She had probably spent quite some time preparing that one. She must be disappointed. Sophia, determined to learn German so she could talk to her new relations on the frequent visits to Berlin that she planned, always came first in the subject (and in most others, too).
The school bell rang. It was the last class of the day. As she tramped along hideous Harley Street, her thoughts touched on Andrew Beaumont. Did she love him? Not really, though he was sweet, always sending long letters from Oxford about poetry. She prodded a lamp post irritably with her umbrella. But at least somebody liked her. How strange it was, the way a person’s life was shaped by their appearance, particularly a woman’s. If you were unattractive, there was little to hope for. It was monstrously unjust.
She felt in her bag for the emerald-green silk scarf Mark had given her for Christmas. He wasn’t so bad, Mark; he’d hit on exactly the colour she wanted, had taken a lot of trouble to find a scarf that suited her. What was more, the colour irritated people because it suggested support for the Irish Nationalists. Woven round her neck, it made her feel less like a schoolgirl.
There were other difficulties at home. Dear Irene had gone, who’d told her never to give way to despair, it was the worst of sins. Instead, Edward was installed in the spare room, now known as Edward’s room. A poor substitute. He was always going to job interviews and holding forth about politics and preserving the House of Lords and holding the empire together. He had infected Elizabeth with his views, though she skirted round the threat posed by Germany, another favourite Edward topic. If Mark disagreed with him, Edward would wave him away like a tiresome child who knew nothing about the real world – though Mark was much more intelligent. Papa never commented on Edward.
She stared out of the omnibus at Park Lane. She hated what Park Lane represented. Nothing could be more despicable than those beastly dukes protesting about taxation that would slightly dent their enormous incomes but allow poor people some chance of surviving. Why did her mother long to mix with such people? When one evening Mamma had mentioned some titled woman she’d met, Sophia asked why anyone should be valued merely because of an accident of birth. Her father remarked, ‘Well, I’m sure the Independent Labour Party would agree with you. But I can’t imagine I’ll ever see a society where an inherited title isn’t regarded as a distinction. Perhaps when this Great War comes, we’ll see change.’
She felt herself sinking into self-loathing. She sometimes suffered from this, though it was a relief that her friends did, too. What did life hold for her? Imagine growing up into Miss Wenham.
Close to Hyde Park Corner she saw a glamorously dressed lady walking alone. A lady of the night, she thought excitedly, how much more attractive she is than I am or will ever be. She peered at her own dim image in the window, and thought, what hope is there for me? Who would want ever to have free love with Sophia Benson in the fifth year at Queen’s College Harley Street, thin and dull with carroty hair? My only admirer is much too timid for free love. She would have to settle for being a Suffragette, perhaps Suffragettes did free love when they were not chaining themselves to railings. She laughed, startling the other passengers, then remembered that she was feeling miserable.
When she arrived home she met Wilson crossing the hall with a tray. Wilson cried, ‘Oh Miss Sophia, do go upstairs, there is such good news.’ What could this news be? Irene coming home? Edward leaving? She hurried up to the drawing room.
‘Sophia!’ cried her mother. ‘Guess what has happened! Just guess! Your father is to be a High Court judge. He’s just telephoned. Isn’t that wonderful?’
Sophia was delighted, she thought her father the cleverest man she’d ever met.
‘He has reached the pinnacle of his profession, almost. And he will be knighted. Just think, Sir William Benson!’
‘Sir William Benson.’ It did have a certain ring, however much one despised such baubles. ‘That means you’ll be Lady Benson.’
‘Yes,’ said her mother. ‘Come and kiss Lady Benson, darling, and have some tea, and one of these cakes to celebrate. Now all we need is for darling Mark to pass his exams, and then everyone will be settled perfectly.’
She beamed. Sophia attempted a smile. Evidently she was incidental. No wonder she felt depressed.
13
Irene sat, trying to be amused by Simplicissimus, and waited. Thomas had said she must not answer the street doorbell but wait for her guests to be shown in. He’d also suggested she should hide a satirical magazine like Simplicissimus, which might be too strong for his mother. When the bell rang she hid it under a cushion and sat demurely.
Frau Curtius and Elise were ushered in and nervously she invited them to sit. They were her first guests here, she felt she was play-acting. ‘Frau Curtius. . .’ she began, but her visitor laughed and said, ‘“Frau Curtius” – no, I cannot allow that. My children call me Frau Mamma, will you too? And “du”, please. I am always telling my husband there is no need to be formal. Secretly I think he quite likes to be called Herr Gesandtschaftssekretär, but I say it is not the title that is important, it is the man.’
They sat down. Lisa hovered. There was a pause.
‘Would you like some tea?’ asked Irene. ‘Or coffee?’
‘Well, since this is an English house, we should have tea.’
‘Tea for three, please, Lisa,’ said Irene, play-ac
ting again.
‘I do hope you like the flat.’ Frau Curtius looked around the room. ‘We perfected it while you were on honeymoon. But it worries me, there is nothing of yours here, not a picture, not a book. It must seem like a stranger’s house.’ She looked piercingly at Irene, who blinked. ‘Well, that will change. My dear, I am very direct, my family often tell me I should hold my tongue, but it is meant kindly. Let me say two things. First – you must understand, for Thomas, the home is very important. He is always thinking about the house, its meaning, its function as a temple of domesticity, and so on and so forth. For him the habitation is central to the nature of a man or woman, a symbol of shelter, affection, inner repose. He is so earnest, the dear boy.’ She paused.
Irene had been sitting very still. She had the capacity to sit like an embodiment of Patience. At the Slade, artists had loved to use her as a model, her figure and face suggested so much, stated so little.
‘Yes, Thomas has talked about the family hearth.’
Her mother-in-law studied her tenderly. ‘Thomas says you are a bohemian, the house may not be so important to you. You must see what suits you.’
‘I am sure Irene has thought about these questions,’ said Elise. ‘She can decide for herself.’
‘Well,’ her mother replied, a little agitated, ‘she has all these new things to worry about, perhaps an old lady’s advice may be helpful. Marrying, moving to a new country – that is not so easy.’ She smoothed down her skirts. ‘You know, my dear, Thomas can be stubborn. When he was a child and building brick castles and houses, they had to be constructed as he determined. He and Elise would have fights, she too has a strong will.’
Surprised at this level of intimacy, Irene reminded herself she was a full family member.
Frau Curtius took her daughter-in-law’s hand. ‘These children operated in quite different ways. When Elise wanted something, she worked subtly. Thomas made a great drama, he told everyone why what he wanted was essential. But in the end, if one suggested other possibilities, he was willing to listen.’ She squeezed Irene’s hand. ‘We are so happy you are here. You know, you are the first woman he has truly loved.’
The Iron Necklace Page 5