‘I’m Austrian,’ I said between mouthfuls.
Later I’d have to get my dictionary out and check all the new words – porridge … spiral … roly-poly … I’d heard of Dunkirk via clandestine radio. It was when the Germans kicked the Brits out of France in 1940. During Dunkirk I’d been under the floorboards of a warehouse – in Poland, I think – trying not to sneeze from the dust. Above me were plundered Jewish Kiddush cups and Hanukkah candelabra. I supposed they were to be melted down. Me too, if I’d been found.
Constable Ribble puffed out his chest and fixed his eyes on me. ‘And now … we’d best get down to business, young miss.’
I froze, spoon halfway to my mouth.
‘Yes, after our meeting on the lane last night, well, I just thought I’d drop in and see how you were getting on here at Summerland.’
There was a long pause. I stared at my pink porridge.
Mrs Rover saved me by giving Ribble a friendly flick with her tea towel. ‘Leave the girl alone. Go catch some burglars, or poachers, or black marketeers, or whatever it is you do to justify your wages.’
He picked his helmet up and set his mug by the sink. ‘I may look slow, but there’s not a lot that I miss, Mrs Rover. I’ve been reading in the papers about Nazi spies hiding in the hedges and Hitler’s henchmen escaping dressed as nuns and suchlike. Wouldn’t want to find one of those in the shrubbery, now would you?’
He winked at me as he left. What sort of country was this, where the police winked and let you put jam in your porridge?
A bell rang – one of several on a long board in the kitchen, each labelled. The jangling one was for the drawing room.
‘Drat and botherations!’ cried Mrs Rover. ‘Quick, Brigitta, wash your hands and run a comb through your hair, and I’ll plait it up again. That’ll be Lady Summer. She got back before you were up, you lazybones, with Miss Bossy Baggs the maid – that’s Miss Vera Baggs to you – and she’s wanting to see you, sharpish.’
I suddenly lost my appetite.
Mrs Rover bustled me out of the kitchen and along a stone passageway. It was lined with toilet cubicles. Fifteen of them, painted air force blue.
‘Don’t ask,’ she said grimly.
We pushed through a door padded with thick green felt and into the main part of the house. It was vast, quiet and dim. On the walls more giant portraits and speckled mirrors. Through open doors glimpses of shuttered rooms. Furniture was draped in sheets, like ghosts you could sit on. Then, an archway, a ballroom and, good God … a piano! A proper concert grand. I stopped short. My fingers fluttered. This house was too quiet. It needed music. I needed music. Music, laughter, fun, freedom …
Not since before the war had I played a real note on a real piano, not once. My fingers had mapped out whole concertos on Fish-face Traut’s piano without ever pressing a key down to hear unseen hammers vibrate invisible wires for sound. I stayed with that imagined sensation for a moment. What would it be like to make music again …?
‘Quick march!’ ordered Mrs Rover. ‘Come on – left right, left right. Here … halt!’ We stopped outside a white door. She tapped politely. The door opened. A bony finger beckoned – come in – then a palm splayed – wait there – and the finger gestured shh, before flicking a dismissal at Mrs Rover.
Lady Summer was on the telephone.
Her voice was not how I’d imagined. She was not the gracious, welcoming queen of a fairy-tale house at all. She didn’t sound like summer roses or fresh strawberries on the lawn; more like the glass oranges upstairs – cold and repelling. She held the black phone receiver away from her mouth as if it might somehow contaminate her.
‘Let me remind you, you upstart ministry mouse, when I very generously allowed the air force to use Summerland for the duration of the war, it was on the understanding that the men billeted here would respect its age and heritage, and yet I return to find everything in a deplorable condition.’
I didn’t need a dictionary to tell me what deplorable meant – her tone was enough.
‘You have already had my report about the Nissen huts on the lawn, the golf balls clogging the fountain and the fifteen military conveniences lining my back passage … Excuse me! Do you find this amusing? I can assure you I do not. Nor did I smile to find beer bottles inside the piano and male underpants over the hall chandelier. Yes, I said underpants. I sacrificed my husband to this war … yes … I should think you are sorry to hear that … If you must know, he was run over in the blackout, but my son, my only son, was shot down during a bombing raid over Germany, so you see I have paid my dues! It’s time you paid for the damage done to the ancestral home, and that is my final word!’
She smashed the receiver onto the phone cradle and stood for a moment, containing her anger. Like the table and chairs, Lady Barbara Summer was all angles and spindly with it. Her dress, hanging from skeletal shoulders, blended with the lemon pastels of the cushions and curtains. Like the cushions, her figure was flat. Her cheeks were chalk white, with two spots of red rouge to match the dab of red on her lips. Her hair was set in perfectly parallel waves.
As she turned towards me her dress wafted at the hem like a cobweb and a hint of perfume sent me tumbling back in time to a memory I never knew I had – a bottle with a ribbon – a spray of scent – my papa kissing my mother …
Pay attention.
‘So – you are the uninvited guest? My housekeeper does have an unnatural weakness for waifs and strays. What is your name?’
‘Brigitta Igeul.’
‘German, I suppose.’
‘Austrian.’
‘Hardly, with that accent. I was a pupil at a very exclusive finishing school in Switzerland, you know. One of my dearest friends at that time was German. I know the accent when I hear it.’
‘I have been in Berlin, at the end of the war.’
‘Poor you,’ she said, without emotion. ‘Mrs Rover tells me you are a Jew. That you were in one of the Nazi camps during the war. Auschwitz, in Poland.’
I nodded.
‘She should not have let you stay here without my permission. What dark hair you have – is it verminous?’
‘No.’
‘Your identity papers state you are fifteen years of age?’
‘Yes.’ To be honest, I no longer remembered birthdays. I knew my supposed age because it was written on all the documents.
Lady Summer began to circle me. I felt naked under her gaze and dizzy from her perfume. Mama used the same scent, before the war; I was sure of it now.
‘You have good posture, I’ll concede that. Clean nails. Shabby clothes – par for the course these days. People have let standards slip. When I was a girl …’
Her voice drifted. Her fingers brushed the frame of a photo on the desk. It showed a boy in white sports gear, holding a flat wooden bat. Her son, I supposed, shot down over Germany. I envied him his grin, his short floppy hair and easy pose.
Now. Now was my chance. To show her the glove. To ask her, tell her, stab her – I wasn’t sure yet. All this time I’d thought of Summerland as a refuge, or a meeting place. Was it just a might-have-been? A cruel, unwelcoming joke? Mama had said it would be safe here. Had she lied?
I drew myself tall. ‘Lady Summer …’
There was a scratchy sort of knock at the door. She turned and the moment was gone.
‘Only me,’ said the creature who slid through the narrow gap. She was all soft and formless, from the droop of her cheeks to her sloping shoulders and puffy fingers. ‘I heard voices and wondered if you needed anything, my lady. No trouble at all if you do. I’m here to help … Oh. This must be the refugee. As if our rations weren’t stretched quite far enough already.’
‘Thank you, Miss Baggs. As I am sure you are aware, our sturdy Mrs Rover is capable of feeding an army so we need not worry on that score.’
Miss Baggs rippled. ‘Perhaps you are not aware that Mrs Rover has been giving this refugee jam with her porridge, my lady. I never have such a luxury.’
/> ‘No, I don’t imagine you do.’
I tried again. ‘Lady Summer –’
She interrupted me. ‘I understand that the Red Cross arranged your visa and passage to England?’
‘Yes.’
‘You should say, Yes, ma’am,’ corrected Miss Baggs.
‘Curious,’ said Lady Summer. ‘You were sent here even though I offered no such hospitality. Do I know you?’
Not yet.
She smoothed the fine wool of her dress. ‘Your documents state you are a seamstress. Do you sew well?’
That question made Miss Baggs wobble with indignation. ‘I do not need any help managing your wardrobe, my lady, unless you think my standards have somehow slipped and you no longer wish to honour me with the position of maid and companion, in which case please accept my resignation right now at this very exact moment, offered freely, despite my many years of faultless service –’
‘That will do, Vera. Can you sew, Brigitta?’
‘N-no.’
‘There!’ exclaimed Miss Baggs. ‘She can’t sew, so she needn’t be here.’
Stop stammering like a frightened child, I told myself. You’re trained to handle interrogation. Despite months spent planning this moment, every speech I’d ever prepared flew out of my head. What was I supposed to tell her? The truth? Could I just blurt out what I wanted … what I hoped for … what I was?
Hardly.
I’d wait until the nasty Baggs woman was out of the way, until I could be certain who to trust. There were things I could find out on my own first, I was sure of it. Besides, if I stayed at Summerland there could be more of that hot, sweet porridge. There might even be music.
I found my voice and spoke quickly. ‘I can work, my lady. I can clean your house. Take beer bottles out of the piano. Take underpants off the …’ I waved my hand towards the light fitting, since I couldn’t remember the English word she’d used.
Lady Summer folded her arms. Her elbows stuck out like knife points. ‘Thank you, that will do. And yet … there’s something about you, Brigitta Igeul.’ She pronounced my name perfectly.
The telephone bell jangled, making us all jump. Lady Summer snatched up the receiver. ‘I said that was my last word, you incompetent little desk-weasel! I beg your pardon?… Oh, Matron. My apologies. I was not expecting your call.’
As she listened her body sagged like a piece of perished elastic. ‘Being discharged? When? For certain?’
Miss Baggs sidled closer to me and muttered, ‘There is something about you, missy. My lady may be gullible, but I’m no fool. I’ll be watching you …’
She couldn’t say anything more because she wanted to listen in to the telephone conversation, and Lady Summer’s voice had dwindled almost to a whisper.
‘No, no problem at all. I understand it has been a long convalescence and his spirits aren’t … what they ought to be. He is coming home, that is the important thing. Where he belongs. We’ll be ready.’
Slowly she put the receiver down. I couldn’t tell if she was happy or nervous or both. Once she was facing us again her face was composed under its mask of powder and rouge.
‘Well, it seems your arrival is timely after all, Brigitta. That was the hospital. There is a patient arriving a week on Saturday. My son. We will need to prepare his rooms. You say you can work? There is no shortage of that required in Summerland. I intend to have this house restored to its former glory, in honour of my boy, and the long, illustrious line of Summer men. In the meanwhile, Mrs Rover will give all instructions.’
She glided to a strip of embroidered cloth near the door and gave it a pull. In the depths of the house, a bell rang. Before I could leave, her voice jerked me to a stop as sharply if one of my plaits had been pulled.
‘Oh, and Brigitta – regarding your time in that Nazi camp, you will say nothing of it, do you understand? You will not speak of Germany or about anything connected with the war. All that is past. We have to look forward now …’
Apple-and-Blackberry Crumble
In the days that followed, Summerland was no longer still or quiet. Together Sophie Rover and I threw open shutters, whipped off dust-sheets and lugged buckets of hot water made pink with stinging soap. I pretended I was Ursula, the ghost with a mop. It was important to be what people expected to see. An innocent refugee. A skivvy.
Holding a duster gave me a pretext to sidle into the many rooms at Summerland, looking for evidence of life here before the war. Mostly I found mouse droppings and empty spaces. The rooms I really wanted to search – Lady Summer’s bedroom and study – were kept locked. She didn’t trust me. Very wise.
‘It once took an army to keep this place running,’ Mrs Rover said. ‘Not a speck of dust, not a moth or fly left alive. I came here as a girl once, for the Bonfire Night party. That’s a big Summerland tradition for all the village. There were maids bobbing and menservants bowing and all sorts of pomp. Now it’s just the two of us and useless Baggsy – who’d’ve thought?’
We were preparing a bedroom and sitting room for the patient. I was glad of the work. It gave me something to do with my body, which was aching to run wild. I sloshed suds across floorboards and thought, This could have been my home, should have been my home. Mama had written to Barbara Summer before the war, begging her for refuge. Waiting for a reply, Mama told me about cricket and croquet and English roast beef. Lady Summer never answered. If she had, there would have been sponsorship and visas. We could have taken the ship across the Channel together. None of the horrors would have happened. No running, no hiding, no wood of the wardrobe pressing in on me day after day after day after day, night after night, year after year …
I took my fury out on the floor mopping, since I couldn’t legally kill those I held responsible for my war.
‘Steady on,’ said Mrs Rover. ‘We’re trying to clean the place, not drown it.’ She was scraping at a window which still had gummy strips of tapes criss-crossing each pane, to stop the glass shattering if a bomb fell. Just like the windows in the Trautwein apartment.
‘No bombs now at least. A couple of strays fell in the woods back in ’42 and hit the gamekeeper’s cottage, killing poor Roman Varley’s wife. I was at school with her. The village kids call the ruin the Bomb House and say it’s haunted. I told them – no such thing as ghosts.’
A shadow moved past the bedroom door just as she said that. Who was it? Ursula? Too tall. An airman? Too … delicate. Sunshine ghosts are rare and almost impossible to see.
Mrs Rover’s voice made the shadow vanish. ‘Oi, Brigitta! Since your head is so full of cobwebs, you might as well run up the ladder and clear those dusty ones around the light fitting. Don’t worry, I’m not going to look up your skirt!’
I was pulling it as far over my knees as I could.
‘As if I’m bothered about seeing your knickers after three years in the army. My godfathers – there were some horrors! Big grey pants like barrage balloons, fastened with elastic above the knee … proper passion killers. Talking of passion …’ Her voice dropped. ‘You’re not, are you?’
‘Not what?’
‘Pregnant?’
‘No! Impossible!’ I nearly fell off the ladder at the very thought.
‘That’s what me and my Tim thought, when we were courting. We only ever did it standing up so I thought we’d be all right, but no. Had to get married, him in khaki, me in a borrowed frock. Turned out it was a false alarm, but I’m stuck with a husband now, off and on. My advice is, keep away from boys, Brigitta, especially when they get that look.’
Face flushed red, I twirled the feather duster. Most of the cobwebs seemed to get stuck to my arms. A dry, curled-up spider dropped on a strand in front of my face, very dead. It reminded me of a time when I’d been curled up in the dark myself, very alive, very aching to move. A thousand ghost spiders had run across my bare face and arms before skittering away. I’d tried playing music in my head, but that only made my skin tingle more. Suddenly I was right back in that wardrobe aga
in and it seemed to be closing in around me, and it had been ages since Mama brought me anything to drink, and I heard footsteps across the rug, the key turning in the lock of the wardrobe, but it wasn’t Mama, it had to be Frau Trautwein opening the door … I’d be seen, discovered, dragged away, killed, and the door was stuck so she jerked at it more and I tried to shrink small enough to run away like a spider only I felt as big as an elephant but then Herr Trautwein called to say he was home, so she left and I didn’t die but I wanted to.
The memory was so fresh, so real my skin came up in bumps. I dropped the duster stick and opened my eyes to Summerland.
‘Butterfingers!’ came a sneer from the doorway. Not a ghost. This was the lumpy Vera Baggs. ‘Lady Summer needs a few items from Oakleys’. I would go myself, if I wasn’t so busy supervising preparations for the patient.’
‘I’d go myself if I wasn’t so busy actually doing the preparations,’ huffed Mrs Rover. ‘Here, Brigitta, could you pop down to Oakleys’ – the village shop? It’ll be good for you to get some fresh air and a bit of sunlight.’
‘We can’t trust her!’ snapped Miss Baggs.
‘What’s she going to do? Single-handedly invade England and set up the next Third Reich?’
‘I will go,’ I said.
I’d never bought anything in a shop before. It would be an adventure.
Daylight was dazzling. A breeze wafted through the back door, bringing the promise of trees, fields, freedom. A yellow-white autumn sun shone over ivy leaves and red brick walls. I walked out by the terrace. The grass was dewy, the moss was green. White clouds floated in the fountain water, reflections from a blue, blue sky. From the woods I heard the crack of timber being chopped. A spiral of smoke rose up through the branches. Woodcutters. There’d been a time in the war when we hid in a forest. We’d no matches for a fire and everything was wet. Mama wrapped me in her arms and hummed tunes from the Peter and the Wolf symphony, where the music brings all the characters to life.
Summerland Page 4