I caressed Albie’s crown, observed the first silver lines in his hair, wondered if I should encourage him to give it all up. Some of his fellow officers had become farmers. They came to London sometimes, stopped by to see us, their tweed suits smelling of milk and cheese, their faces ruddy and wind-beaten. They seemed happier than us. Albert could do that; he belongs to the terroir. He could grow new roots. This is his land.
When I next saw Monsieur Carr, both his cold and his sunglasses had gone. His eyes were still rimmed with red, but he was full of the joys of spring.
‘I showed Korda your book,’ he said cheerfully. We were sitting in a pair of ancient wicker seats in his back garden. The weather echoed his mood. The air hummed with pollen; the trees in the garden were bursting with new leaves in a dozen shades of green. Then there was the blossom on the fruit trees: when there was a breath of wind, the petals took off, swirled in the air and landed on our shoulders like wedding confetti. Even the left side of Monsieur Carr’s face managed an upward smile.
‘He loves my life story, Korda does; he sees only glamour and privilege in it, even where there was just hunger and poverty. “I wish we could make your life story into a film, Prince,” he says, “I can see Trevor Howard in it, playing you.”
‘Trevor Howard, no less,’ Monsieur Carr repeated and chuckled. Whenever we talked about the film people, he was improbably enthusiastic and sarcastic at the same time.
‘You wrote it all down so well, Albertine, as though we were your own family. Such a sense of measure.’
‘It was hardly a huge task,’ I said. ‘The story typed itself. You told it well. But I wish you had given me more details.’
‘Korda mentioned that job for you again. There are cliques in Shepperton,’ he said. ‘Expressionists fight the realists. Duvivier now insists on speaking French, the Brits insist on pretending they understand. Gigi is there too from time to time, doing his bit, even missing school on occasion: Alexei has relented under our concerted pressure. Diana is chaperoning the boy and they both love it. They are the only ones who seem untouched by divisions. Gigi loves the costumes. In his little sailor suit, he looks uncannily like me at his age. But he seems to have taken against the actor who is playing Vronsky for some reason – fittingly, perhaps.’
‘I shall be glad to speak to Mr Korda’s secretary,’ I said. ‘It might be the right job for me, after all. I’ll give her a call.’
There was commotion in the hall, the sound of dog paws scratching on the tiles. Amur dashed into the garden, brushing his head against Monsieur Carr’s palm.
‘A job?’ Diana Carr asked. ‘You are not about to leave us, Albertine?’
Amur was now rubbing his back against my thigh, his beautiful silky back, his eyes so dark that they looked as though they had no irises.
‘No,’ I said, blushing. ‘I thought Monsieur Carr might like to have an informer amid the film crew when Gigi completes his acting duties. I think I can manage both.’
‘I am glad to hear it,’ Diana responded. ‘We like you so much. You seem to have a magic touch with our men.’
She smiled. There was no obvious malice in her words, no irony. Alex Carr had said that he was the one who had had to forgive Diana something. I did not think I would ever know the truth of it.
14
The Descending Blue
I never did call Korda’s secretary. Days after that conversation, mid-morning, after one of my classes with Elizaveta Maximilianovna, everything changed. Albie was away again. In Europe, he said. It had been a merry class, oiled by quantities of cherry vodka on her part, and on mine by a kind of euphoria induced by the fact that I suddenly and miraculously started to understand a great deal more, that I could answer her questions in Russian and in more than a few very basic words.
I would revisit the day, again and again, because I kept returning to those last moments before I had known how it would end, and they seemed impossible. How could I not have sensed anything? There was the whole night, then a good chunk of the morning when I did not know. Seven hours’ sleep, bracketed by two meals, a thousand steps under a million raindrops: how could all that be? If the earth slips off its axis, if the road under your feet disappears, how do you not know it and keep walking?
I walked from Elizaveta’s basement flat off Gloucester Road, back to Harrington Road in South Kensington, where I bought a copy of Le Monde in the same shop in whose window I had first spied the Carrs’ job advertisement. That had been barely five months earlier, yet it seemed like decades. The horrible, deep winter had already been transformed by memory into something beautiful, white and silent under the blanket of snow. There were the chilblain scars on my fingers, dark red with dry patches, to remind me of the hardship. Almost everyone had them, yet almost everyone loved that winter in hindsight.
Perhaps I deceive myself, but that morning the city sang to me for the first time. I had come to know the grid of streets between Earl’s Court and Hyde Park so well that I could veer off the beaten track, look up, notice a striking building, say Brompton Oratory, its dome dwarfing the mean streets to its east and creating a vision of Italia in Anglia, or the seemingly pointless Queen’s Tower alongside Imperial College, or simply see the sun, and realise where I was, the route I needed to take. People asked me for directions, and I gave them confidently.
Even my English seemed fluent. In Alexandria, I got used to calling my husband Albie because he teased me when I uttered the French version of his first name. When I pronounced Albert’s name now, I sounded the final t.
When I returned to our square, I saw Brigadier Abercrombie waiting at the top of the steps. He was wearing a mackintosh, a fedora on his head, and he was leaning against the pillar by the entrance with his left shoulder, his back turned to me, looking towards Chelsea as though he had been standing there for a long time, expecting me to appear from that direction. I sensed that something was horribly wrong even without seeing his face, so wrong that I wanted to turn away and run, as though, whatever he had to say, the non-delivery of the news would prevent its happening. Whatever the happening was. It was clear that the news had something to do with Albie. Such was my unspoken dislike of Abercrombie that I was convinced, in the split second before I took the next step, before I decided not to run away, that they had arrested Albie. ‘They’, for some unfathomable reason, included Abercrombie. ‘They’ were Albie’s own. The army, the intelligence services, the government; I had no idea.
But then Abercrombie saw me and I knew. Albie was not under arrest, he was dead. This man, his comrade, stood there, on the top of the stairs, waiting for me to approach, to unlock the door, to let him in. He expected me to crumple when I heard. He was not going to tell me anything out in the street. Except to confirm what I already knew, that what he had to say was not good.
‘I’m afraid I’ve some bad news, Albertine,’ he said. He had never used my first name before.
‘Bad news?’ I echoed. I already knew that it was bad. ‘How bad, Brigadier Abercrombie?’ I asked.
‘Can we step in?’ His voice was breaking. Speaking seemed far from easy for him too, and that meant very bad indeed.
I took a bunch of keys out of my handbag, unlocked the front door. It was suddenly too heavy, this door of ours, and Ian Abercrombie held it for me. I let him close the door behind me, heard the latch click.
We stood in the hall for a moment. He took off his fedora. Unbuttoned the collar button on his mackintosh. I fainted.
I remember trying to hold the coat rack the moment before I fell. I remember the metal under my fingers, the rustle of the coats as they dropped on the ground, the way the cloth cushioned the crash of the rack, as though everything took minutes, and in each one of those minutes I knew and did not know it yet. There was still time to save Albie’s life. I remember being held by Brigadier Abercrombie, wanting to fall further. I remember coming back, regaining consciousness, perhaps seconds later, perhaps hours, in the armchair by the fire. Which was unlit. Unlit fire behin
d a black grate, smelling of old ashes.
‘I’m afraid Albert is dead,’ Abercrombie said.
I said nothing in return. The soundless crying must have been as disorienting for him as it had been for everyone else before. He did not know about pogrom babies. I could not save Albie by making no noise now, yet I could not sob either.
‘How?’ I said. ‘Where?’
‘Berlin.’ He answered the second question first. ‘May I sit down?’
I nodded. Of course.
Still in his mackintosh, he took a seat opposite me, on the other side of the unlit fire, Albie’s seat. He undid another button, took a deep breath, as though the coat had been making it impossible to breathe. One of his shoelaces had come undone after I dropped. He was a big man, a large man, but his ankles were unbearably slim. I hated that.
‘Berlin,’ he repeated. Then, and this seemed astonishing, he started crying too. He made little gurgling noises, like someone trying half successfully to stop burping. Big wet blotches dissolved on the front of his beige coat, like drops of rain landing on a dusty pavement, in some scorched, dry place.
‘I’m so sorry, Albertine. I knew Albert for thirty-six years. We were at school together. We were in the war together. We were never not together. Except from now on. He’s … he was … the best officer we had. I’d no idea.’
‘No idea what?’ I asked.
‘No idea that things had gone this far.’
‘What makes you say that? How did he die?’
‘I’ll say this to you, and I’ll never say it again, because the consequences, if it became known, would be grave. For you and me. Both of us. Not even our own people know that I am telling you this. You could lose everything if people even suspected.’
As though I had not lost everything already.
‘I’m afraid we think it was suicide. I’m afraid we know it was,’ Abercrombie said.
I wanted to say that suicide was impossible. I could not say that it was impossible if it had happened.
‘How did he die?’ I asked again.
‘A train,’ he said. ‘Dahlem-Dorf. South-west Berlin.’
As though it mattered. As though the exact station mattered. As though the detail could alter the outcome. My parents, my sister, twenty kilometres east of Paris. Between Pomponne and Lagny-sur-Marne. I remembered that news too, the unwanted precision of it. For fourteen years, I had hated trains.
‘How did Albert die?’ I repeated the question.
‘Late yesterday evening.’ Again Abercrombie answered a different one.
So, I had a night without Albie when I believed he was still alive, I had a Russian-language class, I took a walk. There was this morning when I believed London was a happy place, a city singing to me. Had I turned away when I saw Ian Abercrombie, Albert could still be alive. Alive in my head, and is that not more than he was now, is that not life? He had told me once about an Austrian scientist whose thought experiment proved one could be dead and alive at the same time. I had failed to understand then. I knew it now. Albie was both dead and alive last night, this morning. Not now. It was too late.
‘I should not have come here,’ I said.
Abercrombie misunderstood.
‘We’ll help,’ he said. ‘We’ll need to agree on a story about the cause of death. We’ll sort it all out for you, Albertine. We’ll bring him back.’
‘Can you do that?’ I asked.
‘Oh, yes, the army can do everything. It is not our usual practice, but we’ll have to, this time. I mean, you won’t have to go to Berlin. Not now. We’ll fly the body back.’
‘Oh, the body,’ I said and shrugged, as though the body did not matter, as though I had only just realised that there was a body too.
‘Please don’t regret coming here.’ Abercrombie misunderstood again. He meant London. ‘We will look after you. You won’t suffer.’
‘I will, I promise you,’ I said.
‘We’ll provide,’ he said. ‘We look after our widows.’
‘A widow.’ Not an English word I’d ever used before.
‘How exactly did Albie die?’ I asked again.
‘The station was empty. There were no eyewitnesses except for the train driver,’ Abercrombie said. ‘A former soldier. A German one, I mean. The Eastern Front. Released early because of his skills, lucky bugger. He gave a statement. Albert was in uniform, he said. That was odd. There was no requirement. In fact, rather the opposite. But do you need these details?’
‘I can take them, Brigadier Abercrombie. I have already heard the worst.’
‘Albert was waiting for the train, the man said. He had noticed him from some distance, alone on the platform. There are sculptures at Dahlem, Dahlem-Dorf I mean, wooden carvings, human forms, like small huddles of people waiting for the train, like wooden families almost, but they are in fact benches. You only realise when you get very close. Albert was leaning against one, sitting in its lap almost, as though he was tired, facing the approaching train, and he stood up as it came nearer, still waiting. Nothing remarkable in any of that. Then the train was almost there and he took a leap. This is what the driver said. He did not fall under the train, he did not slide onto the rails, he took a leap, almost like someone trying to jump across, all the way to the other side. The grassy embankment. Except the train was there already. There was no way he could make it across. But the leap may be important. It could also be that he had spotted something or someone, that he gave chase. Those wartime instincts die hard.’
‘He took a leap,’ I echoed. ‘Except the train was there.’
How do you live after that?
They did bring Albie back. On a plane. I went to Croydon to see him return to England in a small, grey aircraft. I watched it, like some distant bird, a grey falcon, getting bigger as it approached to land. It touched the ground, then made a barely visible jump, as though it was about to take off again. There were men at the airport, men in uniforms, men in suits, shaking my hand, saying things, waiting for Albie. A zinc box, a Union flag. There was a salute but no other ceremony; that still lay ahead. They took the box away. I sat in an official black car with men I did not know, and we moved through South London while everything around me took on the shape of a coffin: carriages and lorries, the new power station by the river, buildings and barges, brown and khaki and grey, boxes and boxes full of bodies.
‘Did you have any idea that he was so unhappy?’ Abercrombie had asked the afternoon he had delivered the news.
Yes, I did, of course I did, but not unhappy in the way that makes people want to jump under, no, to leap at, to throw themselves at an approaching train.
‘No,’ I said, for that was the easiest answer. ‘Did you?’
‘Yes,’ Abercrombie said. He was the more honest of the two of us.
‘We had an idea that he was unhappy, Peter and I. We talked about pulling him out. Recalling him from the Berlin business, I mean. Do you remember that evening here? The Klipdrift we drank together? We were trying to persuade him to do something different, stop travelling, move out of London even. Bristol, for example. You could have got yourselves a lovely house in Clifton, or out in the countryside. One forgets how beautiful England is, here in Earl’s Court.’
‘One does,’ I said, although my knowledge of England, beyond the metropolis, was almost non-existent.
‘Everything seemed to get to him suddenly,’ Abercrombie continued. ‘He was a great soldier, Albert was, but he had underestimated the peace, the effort it took. Did he tell you much about his work?’
‘No, not really. I thought he was not supposed to,’ I said and cried again. Tears came in spasms, returning every time I thought they would stop. Perhaps this was how it was going to be from now on.
‘Do you have anyone who could be with you?’ Abercrombie asked. ‘You might find it impossible to cope on your own. Shall we send someone, at least until the funeral? Please tell me, Albertine. Just say the word.’
‘I have no idea,’ I said. ‘No idea
, Brigadier Abercrombie.’
‘The family is being informed about Albert’s death. He was a hero and he died like one. We will tell them, Albertine. We will advise his sister not to travel. There will be a memorial service for Albert at the garrison church in Darjeeling, while there is still a garrison, because of her. Your in-laws will be on their way here very soon. I know they were not close, Albert and his parents. I’ve known them almost as long as I’ve known him. Jolly decent people. There was no obvious reason for their estrangement. Albert wanted it that way, perhaps more than they did.’
He paused.
‘That was how Albert was, I’m sure you know. He would push you away when he needed you most. He told you that you’d be better off on your own.’
‘He told you to pull your socks up,’ I said, thinking of Abercrombie’s thin, child-like ankles.
‘Yes,’ Abercrombie said and gave a little smile. ‘Yes, precisely.’
The day before Albert’s funeral Peter Stanford met Albie’s parents at Liverpool Street Station and brought them over to Earl’s Court. They arrived in a strange car, a big black wagon with a double door at the back. I watched it park from the drawing-room window. I did not think it was them until the driver jumped out, opened Peter’s door, then the back door. An old man came out of the near side with painful slowness, obscuring my view, so that the next thing I saw was Peter Stanford holding a woman, cradling her in his arms like a baby. He carried her out of the car so that she barely touched the ground with her feet before the driver handed her two walking sticks, strange tripods, and she leaned on them and turned towards the house slowly, hunched, like some small sad arthropod. I went out to greet them.
‘Albertine,’ she said, pressing deep into my ribs at the back with a bony hand as we embraced. Albie’s father stood several paces away, his neck and his head protruding out of an unseasonal black coat like a tortoise’s head out of its shell. This could have been unbearably sad, except that I had already lost any calibration for the unbearable.
The driver took a folded wheelchair and two suitcases out of the back of the car and carried them into the hall. I pointed straight upstairs, to the open door of Albie’s and my bedroom. I had, notionally, moved into the spare bedroom just to its side, but was spending every night in an armchair, facing my marital bed through an open door. I pretended to read Albie’s copy of Days and Nights. The beginning of his letter to me, the letter I found inside it, now haunted me: the words were like the musical notes you know to be the leitmotif of a composition only when you hear the entire piece to its end.
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