Summerland

by Lucy Adlington

  One note rippled into many. The sound spread and filled the room. I could have been anywhere or nowhere. All I knew was that my papa was alive, and I was finally, utterly playing music.

  The ghost played with me. A duet of living and dead.

  The last note died and the ghost vanished with it. An audience had gathered. Airmen around the ballroom walls, like grey flock wallpaper. Joe, more solid, was there too. Two women in the doorway, hair clamped in clips, faces white with night cream.

  ‘How dare you touch that piano!’ hissed Miss Baggs.

  ‘Who …? Who taught you to play like that?’ whispered Lady Summer.

  I bowed my head over the keys.

  ‘My mama taught me. She is dead now. I wish I was too.’

  Christmas Pudding

  Summerland in the snow. Is there anything more beautiful than fresh snowflakes falling softly on your face?

  ‘Get a shift on,’ called Sophie Rover through the kitchen window. ‘I need a hand with the sprouts!’

  I loaded up the coal shovel and lugged it back into the house.

  It took seven of us to get the Christmas tree in. Three to lift it – me, Mrs Rover and Mr Varley – and four little Varleys to dance around in excitement until Miss Baggs threatened to sweep them out with a broom, and she wasn’t joking.

  The tree was freshly cut from a grove in the woods. We heaved it into a giant pot of gravel and set it in the ballroom. There was to be a New Year party to celebrate Summerland’s revival: builders were arriving in January and the fifteen military toilets would finally be removed. Until then the ballroom was like a Siberian wasteland, because what little coal there was available had to be saved for special occasions only. The thing that warmed me was Joe.

  ‘My father planted the saplings when he was a boy,’ he told me. ‘Christmas at Summerland was always magical. Before the war.’

  His papa had died in a traffic accident. That was why his car – a Rolls-Royce – was kept locked in the garage and never driven. Joe said it was hard to miss his father. He hardly knew him. ‘He never did anything like this – decorating the tree. He was all about the house, the prestige, being a lord. I’ve no idea why Mother married him.’

  ‘Because she is the same?’

  ‘She never used to be. From what I can tell, she got up to all sorts of tricks when she was at school. That reminds me – you asked about her photographs from back then. She’s got an album …’

  ‘No. Thank you. Let’s do the tree.’ I’d lugged a box of decorations down from the attic. Joe dived in, finding long-forgotten treasures nestled in the tissue paper. I watched him fumble, clumsy with one hand. What would that be like?

  ‘Brigitta!’ Lady Summer appeared in the ballroom.

  I sprang to my feet. Things had been strange since I came back from the pictures and played Moonlight Sonata. Joe had mumbled something about the music – so beautiful. That embarrassed me. I hadn’t done it for him, though I danced inside to know he was impressed. Mama always said that in dangerous times it was best not to draw attention to yourself. Girls in particular have to pretend they know nothing, she warned. Otherwise men see them as a threat. We can’t afford to be noticed, or to be memorable – remember that.

  I’d drawn attention to myself at the cinema, which was worrying. I dreaded meeting Colin Oakley again. I kept seeing the film clip of the courtroom in my mind. Hanged by the neck until dead. That face, grey and grainy on the big screen. It probably wasn’t him. After six years, how could I even know what he looked like? Best not dwell on it. Be alive now.

  ‘Yes, Lady Summer?’

  She was distracted for a moment, watching Joe fiddle with the ribbons on the baubles. He was trying to tie loops so he could hang them on the tree. Wisely she didn’t offer to help. It was enough that he had come out of his rooms. She turned to me, holding out a sheaf of papers.

  ‘I found these. They may be of interest.’

  Music! My hands trembled as I leafed through the scores. Satie, Debussy, Chopin … I loved all these! ‘And Germaine Tailleferre,’ I said in wonder, recognising a composer my mama admired.

  ‘Indeed. Not as well-known as she should be. Madame Tailleferre taught at a conservatoire in Paris where a dear friend of mine studied.’

  That was when I noticed a name in faint pencil at the top of one page: Hélène Jacobs.

  The room stilled. Through sudden tears I saw single green needles on the fir tree and light sparkle on a glass snowflake. Hélène Jacobs. My mama.

  ‘A … a dear friend?’

  ‘A foolish girl who wasted her youth, her education, her talent, on a poor law student. I begged her to continue her studies, but she claimed to be deliriously happy. There was a child – a boy, I think. Perhaps they married, I don’t know.’

  ‘What … what happened to her … and the child?’

  ‘Enough interrogation! The war happened. Play these if you wish. You have talent, that is clear, beyond cleaning and a tendency to adopt stray gypsy children. Perhaps in the New Year we can see about finding a piano teacher for you. Goodness knows, we’ll need a distraction once the builders start work. First we have the New Year’s Eve party to look forward to, a fine Summerland tradition, made all the more special now my son is home. Perhaps you’ll play for us then, to accompany the string quartet. Go on, play something now.’

  Joe gave his mother a look. Her face softened just a little.

  ‘If you please,’ she added.

  I could tell her things about her old schoolfriend – my mama Hélène. Wipe that haughty look from her face. Rub her snooty nose in the filth of my history. Or I could keep my secrets. Keep living at Summerland. Keep Joe.

  I went to the grand piano and lifted the lid. I took Hélène Jacobs’s score and placed it in front of me. It was a lovely piece called Impromptu, one that she’d played for me on imaginary piano keys, humming the tune as her fingers showed me the pace and patterning. It would be difficult. Would I even remember how to read music? My eyes hurt. I realised they were filled with tears. I couldn’t do it – couldn’t bear to bring this piece of music back to life when she was so very dead.

  Mama, you taught me everything beautiful and you never gave up on me, not when we were all alone, not when we crouched in a pigsty, or suffocated under floorboards, or dodged along trains. Always you gave me music.

  Idiot! I told myself. You owe it to her. You have to play something. And so, wrapped in an old cardigan, with my fingers stiff and awkward from the cold, I began to play.

  On Christmas Eve Lady Summer, Miss Baggs and Mrs Rover went to church. Lady Summer said she’d make enquiries about the nearest synagogue in the new year, saying it was important I rediscovered my Jewish faith. Her interest surprised me. God, Jesus, prayers – none of it had meant anything to me during the war. I’d just wanted to get out and run free, and my religion made that impossible, thanks to the foul Nazi laws. Could I be Jewish again? Had I ever stopped? How did anyone ever know what they were? I was so messed up now.

  I spent the evening practising at the piano while Joe read by the light of the Christmas-tree candles. Always he kept the scarred side of his face away from me. When my fingers became too tangled and the notes jumped around like tadpoles on the paper, I lowered the piano lid. The ballroom was still. The ghosts were fainter than they used to be.

  ‘Are you happy that Summerland will be made beautiful again?’

  Joe looked up from his book. ‘This old junk-yard? It’s the past and I’m done with that, like my old cricket bats and tennis rackets. We should sell the place. Sell me why you’re at it – I’m old and useless.’

  ‘I will buy you. How much?’

  ‘How much have you got?’

  I thought of the money I’d saved so far. It wasn’t anywhere near enough to get me to Nuremberg in Germany, so why was I hoarding it? ‘What can I get for a penny? Penny for the guy?’

  His answer came back too quick for thought. ‘A kiss.’

  I couldn’t answer,
except for a clumsy goodnight. Once out of the ballroom, I ran down the corridor past one, two, three, four, fifteen military toilets. I was slower up the stairs to bed. Kissing Joe was out of the question, even if I wanted to.

  Which I did.

  Very much.

  I fell asleep holding my one grey glove.

  Movement woke me. A shadow in the dark. Ursula? No. This was no ghost. The shadow moved to the chest of drawers. An inch at a time I reached under the pillow for my knife. It was possible to slow the heart rate and the breathing down to a silent stillness; I knew that from experience. Through slitted eyes I played dead and kept watch. The shadow came towards the bed. I gripped the handle of the knife hard. A second later, the figure was gone and the door clicked shut. I was still holding the knife when I fell back to sleep.

  Knock knock.

  ‘Who’s there? Is it morning?’

  ‘Christmas morning – Merry Christmas!’

  It was Joe. Joe in my room. Luckily I was bundled in nightshirt and blankets. He was in slippers and dressing gown. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Have you opened your stocking already?’

  ‘Stocking?’

  ‘If you’re good all year, Father Christmas comes down the chimney and fills a stocking –’

  ‘I have not been good. And the chimney is blocked.’

  ‘And yet …’ Striding to the window, he jerked the curtains open, one at a time. It was still dark, so he switched the light on. The only spots of colour were the painting of the orange and a lumpy khaki sock hanging off a drawer knob. ‘You see?’

  The figure in the dark.

  ‘Did you …?’

  Joe laughed. ‘It wasn’t me.’

  ‘F-Father Christmas?’

  ‘Do you think he has an army green sock? Go on, open it. I’ve got one too …’

  Sophie Rover had made me a Christmas stocking.

  Joe sat on the end of my bed to open his. He quickly tore off bits of ribbon and brown paper. I took my time. Every little gift was a treasure. There was a rolled-up scarf to match my gloves – I put this on at once because the bedroom was freezing and it helped me to feel less undressed. There was a little metal biscuit cutter in the shape of a star. A toothbrush. A few twists of barley sugar. Homemade toffee and … I had to stick my hand right to the toe of the sock for the final present … an orange.

  My very own orange.

  ‘Your face!’ said Joe. ‘Haven’t you ever seen an orange before?’

  Yes, I had. I’d eaten one. A gift. The first year we hid at the Trautweins’ my mother stole an orange from the fruit bowl at Christmas. That was also the last Christmas anyone saw oranges, thanks to the war going badly for Germany. Mama sneaked it to me in the wardrobe. I was cramped and bored and cross. Our hands touched briefly as she passed it to me. Can’t stay, Liebling, I have to go join the Trauts for compulsory carol singing. This is for you.’

  I ate that orange in the dark, every last juicy segment. The Summerland orange I peeled with my knife and I shared it with Joe.

  ‘I have a gift for you,’ I said shyly.

  ‘Don’t need any more than this,’ he said, grinning, but he took the little parcel I had ready for him. It was a pencil set, bought from Oakleys’ shop.

  He waggled his empty sleeve. ‘What am I supposed to do with pencils?’

  ‘Draw, you idiot.’

  ‘With my elbow?’

  ‘With your left hand.’

  ‘I’m right-handed.’

  ‘Not any more.’

  How had my mother put it …? Adapt or go under.

  ‘Merry Christmas!’ cried Sophie Rover when I got to the kitchen. She gathered me up in a big hug despite her handfuls of spoon and tea towel. ‘Grab yourself a Christmas breakfast if you can find a free space at the table. Here, have a festive sprig.’ She tucked a little twig of holly into my hair.

  ‘Thank you for the sock, Mrs Rover.’

  ‘Don’t know what you’re talking about. Pass me that skillet, pet.’

  ‘What can I do?’

  ‘Nothing, my lovely … Unless … Could you just …’

  Christmas dinner on rations was an art. Mrs Rover was in her element. She chopped veg, boiled endless pans and kept opening the oven to check on the most delicious-smelling tray of dressed meat. Her face was pink and her hair was steamed to a frizz. She was beautiful.

  ‘Hand me that colander … Stir this … Before the war, when there were servants, and food in the shops, Summerland would have twenty or thirty guests for Christmas dinner,’ she said, juggling pans on the range. ‘Mind you, back in ’44 I did Christmas goose with all the trimmings for two hundred maniacs from the Army Air Corps. What a hoot that was. Bless ’em, they all thought they could fly by the time they’d had my boozy pudding.’

  ‘What’s boozy?’

  ‘You’ll find out at dinner. I’ve made two puddings – one for the fine folk and one just for you. Right. Let’s put the festive kettle on. Dig out my boots, will you, and my mackintosh.’

  ‘You’re going out? Aren’t you having dinner with us?’

  ‘Sit down with the missus? I don’t think so! I’m meeting Mr Rover today – yes, I forget I have a husband too sometimes. I’m quite fond of him, as long as we don’t see each other too often. He’s taking me for dinner at a hotel in town – fancy that. I shall have to mind my manners, won’t I, pet?’

  I hoped she didn’t. I liked her just the way she was.

  The dinner guests were all ancient and awful. I served them tea in the drawing room. One prehistoric relative was going on about how dreadful it was that Gant’s employed so many foreign workers. She sounded like a damp oboe – badly tuned and reedy. She didn’t even wait until I was out of the room before saying, ‘So that’s the Jew girl? It’s above and beyond the call of duty, my dear, taking on a charity case like that. I wouldn’t be so imposed on.’

  I would’ve spat in her tea, only I was on my best behaviour because Joe had agreed to show himself in public. He was dressed in proper clothes, with only one shirt button in the wrong hole. I itched to fasten it right, and to straighten his tie and to smooth back his lovely tufted hair, and … and then my thoughts took me to so many dangerous places.

  ‘Marvellous to see you up and about!’ coughed an elderly man in a bow tie when he spotted Joe. ‘Horrible … you know … being maimed so badly. But where there’s life there’s hope.’

  Joe said, ‘How very cheering.’ He endured an embrace from his mother, then used her as a human shield to avoid the same from Vera Baggs.

  Miss Baggs wanted to hold his saucer while he drank tea. ‘Your poor arm,’ she said, oozing with pity. I was just happy to catch his eye. To feel his gaze on me. To be in the same room.

  ‘Joe’s in the drawing room,’ I sang to Mrs Rover back in the kitchen.

  She gave me a funny look, but her eyes lit up. ‘Master Joseph, what a surprise! Go set another place at the table.’

  The dining room was swathed in holly and ivy. Cutting the branches had been tricky: little Varleys had appeared out of nowhere and quickly got stuck to holly prickles. I had set the table with silver cutlery and the Royal Doulton dinner service, and Mrs Rover had showed me how to fold the linen napkins into peacock tails.

  Roast beef was carved and lavished with meat gravy. Potatoes came out of the pan crispy on the outside and fluffy as cotton inside. There were mounds of vegetables and a tongue-biting sauce called horseradish. The taste of it folded time for me, back to a strange and sombre meal with Papa and lots of grown-ups I didn’t know who told me to sit still and gave me … maror, that was it The bitter herbs for Passover. I reeled at the memory. How much had I buried along with my old name and identity? How much had I lost? All those people at the table, where were they now? Had they hidden and survived, or …?

  Suddenly the family Christmas at Summerland seemed like a fairy tale, something I was just reading about, that happened to other people. My story was darker.

  ‘Penny for
your thoughts?’ sang Mrs Rover. She took up a big pan of round green things called Brussels sprouts, tipped them in a sieve and squashed them flat with a plate.

  ‘Vegetables must be cooked until they’re properly dead,’ she explained.

  Perhaps the servings were scant compared to pre-war. Perhaps there was a bit of tension every time Miss Baggs offered to cut Joe’s food into smaller pieces. Perhaps the quality of the beef was not what Lady Summer was used to. Even so, there was magic in that meal, especially when the pudding appeared. Sophie Rover had instructed me how to serve it. I’d stared at the bottle of brandy and the box of matches.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Bless you, you little innocent. Do it as I’ve told you, then tuck in to your own pudding. And watch your teeth …’ With that mysterious advice she was bundled in layers and out of the door, calling one last, ‘Ho! Ho! Ho!’

  So in the dining room I poured the brandy over the big round pudding and set it on fire. How it flamed! Blue and purple and orange! Joe broke into a pudding song – ‘For we all like figgy pudding’ – and even Bossy Baggs clapped her hands with delight. There was a jug of plum sauce and enough pudding for everyone ten times over. The guests found tiny charms hidden inside – some mad English tradition designed to break people’s teeth.

  As promised, there was another tiny pudding for me. Partway through my teeth cracked on something hard. I pulled out a silver coin – an English sixpence.

  Next it was drinks in the drawing room. Miss Baggs asked for a teensy-weensy sherry. I filled her glass to the brim so she couldn’t drink without spilling it.

  ‘Gifts!’ said Joe suddenly. He leaped up – how had I ever thought him ghostly, he was so pulsing with life! – and left the room, returning with a gift for Miss Baggs, and a few neat parcels for his mother. Nothing for me.

  ‘Sorry, Brigitta, there wasn’t enough time –’