Palace of Tears

by Julian Leatherdale

  Lisa read on:

  In the meantime, Freddie Wood had fallen in love with Freya and, alone and heartbroken, she accepted his proposal of marriage. Soon afterwards I was born. My family paid a heavy price for Robbie’s death. And we paid an even higher one for being German when the war came. I still believe Adam did his best to protect us from the hatred of people we thought we could trust. He frightened off an angry mob who burned the hotel’s German piano and wanted to hurt me and Freddie. But he could not stop the military taking my father away to a camp.

  My mother believed to her dying day that Adam used that hatred of our family to his advantage. With Freddie interned, Freya and I were poor and alone. Freya sold Adam the last painting of my grandfather’s so she would not have to sell the title to her cottage. In the end, Adam took the painting and the cottage. He wanted us to disappear so he could wipe away the pain of Robbie’s death, to make poor Adelina happy and erase his own guilt.

  What changed everything for me was when my mother nearly died from the Spanish flu in Liverpool. My father was about to be deported to Germany. My best friend, Astrid, was dying and Oskar, the German boy I loved – like your Brün – was also to be deported with his family. I was alone. When Freya recovered, she told me the truth about Robbie. I realised then I would do anything she asked of me.

  Freya had plans to get our cottage back. It meant she and I would have to stay in Australia for a while longer and we would act secretly, in the shadows. Poor Freddie would have to wait for us. Aunty Eveline and baby Greta, who had no future here, took our places on the boat to Germany, their passage paid for by the government. They joined Freddie in Dusseldorf with our relatives there. It required forgery of birth and marriage certificates so they became Mrs Freya and Miss Angela Wood, all easily done with help from Uncle Karl’s printing works and my mother’s exceptional artistic skill. I learned that all talented painters make talented forgers.

  That explained the names on the shipping list, thought Lisa. She imagined Freya hoped to bring them all home to Australia once she got her cottage and land back. If that failed, presumably she and Angie had intended to go to Germany to join Freddie, Eveline and Greta.

  Having failed to win back the cottage by legal means, Freya knew the only way to change Adam’s mind was through Adelina. She was the key. Adelina would persuade Adam he should give back the cottage. Through his devotion and sense of duty to his wife, we would unlock whatever decency there was left in Adam Fox in order that he make amends for the past and surrender the cottage.

  We had two allies in this plan. The first was Jane Blunt, the ex-governess who hated Adelina for sacking her and felt sorry for me and Freya. Since leaving the Foxes, Jane had become a well-known medium in the mountains under the name of Vera Glanville-Smith. She lived in a remote cottage at Mount Victoria, and it was here that my mother and I hid ourselves away. The second was my devoted childhood protector from school, Simon Rushworth. Since leaving school, this gentle and clever fellow had begun an apprenticeship as assistant to postcard photographer Harry Phillips.

  When we learned about the visit of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to the Palace, the timing was perfect. Miss Vera Glanville-Smith sowed the idea of a séance in the mind of the head housekeeper, Mrs Wells, who we knew had introduced Adelina to Spiritualism. Vera Glanville-Smith then staged a séance in which the spirit of Robbie demanded that Adelina ‘ forgive’. A copy of the postcard that I had shown Robbie the day of his death was used to unsettle Adam and Adelina. Late at night in Harry Phillips’ studio, Simon made the ‘spirit’ photos of Robbie that Mrs Wells gave to Adelina.

  We sincerely hoped the séance and photos would be provocation enough to change Adelina’s mind about the cottage and she would persuade Adam to give them back. We waited and waited but with no results. So we decided to take the next step.

  Everyone knew a film was going to be shot around the mountains, including at the Palace. The director was hiring locals for small roles as cast and crew. Simon got a job as a runner and introduced me to Mr Longford. My appearance had changed a great deal since leaving Meadow Springs and there was no one at the hotel who had laid eyes on me since I was eleven. With my new name, Laura, I was soon working on the film and Simon and I were both accommodated inside the Palace.

  Here, Simon and I executed our boldest plan. With leftover ends of film stock, Simon filmed a boy dressed up as Robbie. We projected this onto a column of dry ice in the hotel, convincing guests, Mrs Wells and later Adelina that they saw a ghost. It was the same trick Mr Longford had used for the ‘Spider’s Web’ dance in his film.

  Adelina was so moved by the sight of Robbie that I feared she might lose her mind. I persuaded Freya that one haunting was enough. We would achieve nothing by driving Adelina mad. The message from Robbie was clear: ‘make things right’. We were convinced Adelina would now persuade Adam to give back the cottage. The plan might well have worked, but Adam would not be moved.

  And there was one other complication no one had counted on. Adam began to fall in love with ‘Laura’, the girl who didn’t exist. It all started as harmless flirting at first and I played along so as not to arouse suspicion. I even hoped I could use this turn of events to our advantage: to learn more about what Adam thought and to influence him if possible. He talked to me of his plans to tear down the cottage and extend the hotel. I told him he must never destroy such a sweet place.

  As I realised his feelings towards me were becoming more serious, I dared not tell Freya for fear of breaking her heart. Imagine her sense of betrayal! I only hoped our plot to get back the cottage would be successful and I would be able to cast off my disguise and vanish into thin air. If that broke Adam Fox’s heart, so be it!

  Freya had one other plan up her sleeve. To threaten to expose as a forgery the von Gettner painting Adam had stolen from her. The only problem was she and Jane Blunt had the forged copy of the painting hidden in the cottage. They had to sneak inside the new art gallery Adam had built and substitute it for the real painting on the wall. I asked Adam to show me around his new gallery, and as he did I turned off the alarms and left the external door unlocked so Freya and Jane could enter.

  Lisa felt tears pricking at her eyes. She knew how this part of the story turned out from Jane Blunt’s letter to Angie. How poor Freya’s plan for revenge killed her.

  This plan too went horribly wrong. Adelina wandered the hotel that night looking for her son’s ghost and discovered my mother and Jane inside the gallery. She startled my mother, who upset a kerosene lamp and caused a fire to break out. The original painting was saved, Jane later told me, but my mother perished, all her plans in ruins. Now you will understand why Adam’s igniting a cake in the shape of the hotel upset me so much all those years later at his birthday party. I still have nightmares about Freya’s death.

  As you know, Adelina committed suicide on the night of the fire. Because of the séance’s prophecy? Out of grief for her son? Her husband’s infidelity? I do not know. Did I feel guilty? Yes, I did, and that guilt grew over the years as I became a wife and mother. But also, no. She spared my family no kindness or mercy when I was a girl accused of killing Robbie and when we were driven from our property during the war.

  Back in Germany, my poor father, already a broken man from his time in the internment camp, was crushed by the news of Freya’s death. He died of a heart attack soon afterwards. I was now all alone in the world. I could have asked for Uncle Karl’s help, I suppose, and made my way to Germany to be with Eveline and Greta. But Adam Fox had fallen in love with me – with the woman I pretended to be. And that was when Adam proposed marriage.

  ‘Good God! This is one of the strangest stories I’ve ever heard!’ Ulli looked at Lisa and Monika in amazement. His face was ashen with emotion. ‘That poor girl!’

  ‘Yes, that poor girl,’ echoed Lisa, unable to imagine what she would have done at age nineteen faced with the same choices.

  Here was a strange dilemma. My mother had been Adam’s true lo
ve and he had thrown her over for the sake of his respectable marriage and his magnificent hotel. She had borne him a son, my half-brother Robbie, who would have been the heir to the Palace had he not died. And here was Adam asking me, Robbie’s half-sister, to be Mrs Fox. Handing me my childhood dream on a plate. Perverse as it sounds, it felt like destiny.

  I was the only member left in Australia of those clever von Gettners, the family who did whatever it took to survive. I was being offered the chance to make a new life. My mother had been forced to lie about her own child. My own childhood had been rewritten because of that lie. Freya and I had woven an elaborate web of lies to catch Adam. Becoming Laura Fox would be the most ambitious, the most monstrous lie of all.

  But with this lie, I would save the cottage. I would become the queen of the Palace that neither Freya nor Adelina had ever been. My children – Freya’s grandchildren, Wolfgang’s great-grandchildren – would have the life that had been so unfairly taken from Freya and Wolfgang. I would avenge my mother’s death by taking her rightful place, having the life Adam should have given her. That is what I told myself when I said ‘yes’.

  Some might think it strange I could love a man like Adam. I confess at first my love was more about the Palace and everything it offered. But your father was not a monster. He was no saint either. He was charming and passionate and devoted. Eventually I fell in love with the best qualities of the man himself. Generous, funny, imaginative, daring. He was a loving father too. You, Lottie and Alan know that. We managed to make a happy life together, a good and exciting life.

  ‘Are you okay, Mum?’ asked Lisa, as her mother dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief.

  Monika nodded. ‘Yes, yes. I know the contents of this letter off by heart.’

  So what went wrong? I could not forget about the past. When Adam suggested we go to Germany for our honeymoon, it seemed as if God was playing a cruel joke. Freddie had died just two months earlier in Dusseldorf. I wanted to see Aunty Eveline and my cousin Greta, little Spatzi, but there was no opportunity to do so. We wrote to each other for years. Adam was generous with gifts and money, so I sent Eveline and Spatzi help whenever I could manage it.

  I saved up enough to pay for a passage by ship for Spatzi to visit me while Adam was away on business in 1936. She had grown into such a beautiful young woman and had fallen in love with a ‘junge’ called Stefan. They wanted to marry but his parents did not approve of a ‘fremde’, a foreign-born, non-German. The injustice of this prejudice, given the deportation of thousands of ‘Germans’ from Australia, defied words.

  Spatzi and I spent a wonderful eight days together, talking about the past and her future. She adored you children. Do you remember her? How I wished she had been able to stay. Especially given how things turned out.

  I thought I had made my peace with my life and with Adam. But then the second war with Germany broke out. So many bad memories came flooding back. German Australians were interned again and here was I, living a lie, safe from hatred. I fretted terribly for Eveline and Spatzi. I even began to think about Oskar, my childhood sweetheart, who I had not heard from since his family was deported.

  When I began working as a VAD nurse, I met a doctor at the American military hospital that took over the Palace. His name was Frederick, the same as my father. And he told me his secret: that his grandparents were German migrants to the USA, something he had managed to keep quiet so he could enlist. Your father had become withdrawn with the closing of the hotel. I was lonely and troubled by the fate of my family back in Germany. Frederick and I did not become lovers but we shared something intensely private and painful: the burden of a secret past.

  Lisa glanced at Monika. Little Monz, the trespasser at the hospital, had imagined a love affair between this man and her own mother. The fear of its discovery had filled pages of her diary.

  Frederick promised to help me get letters to my family in Dusseldorf. There were US Army mail channels that went through Switzerland, where the von Gettners had sympathetic friends who were willing to forward mail. The letters from Dusseldorf were infrequent and heavily censored but they were better than silence. I read that Stefan defied his parents. He and Spatzi married and she was expecting. Love flourished in the midst of war. I even wondered if the Red Cross might be able to track down Oskar, my long-lost sweetheart, who I knew would be fighting somewhere. It was absurd but I was convinced he would not be dead; maybe he was a prisoner-of-war. I thought about Freya a lot. I wished she was alive to see her grandchildren.

  Adam was convinced I had a lover of course and that all the letters I was writing were to him – which was why he lost his mind and split my desk open with an axe to discover my secret. We drifted apart and, yes, there were times I did hate him for what he had done to my family. That part of me that blamed him for Freddie and Freya’s suffering had been buried for so long. It all came to a head when I received a letter from Dusseldorf in July 1946. It had taken months to reach me. The letter said that Eveline, Spatzi and her child Ingrid had fled to Dresden to escape the bombing. Eveline and Spatzi were both killed in the firestorm. I blamed Adam for their deaths. Ingrid survived – now the only living link to my family.

  This all happened around the time you and Brün fell in love. I felt as if the past would never let me go. My own daughter had fallen in love with a young German boy. And then you fell pregnant. Difficult as this was, I seized it as a chance to make amends, to heal the wounds of the past. To save an unwanted child rather than give it away. To openly embrace a German family in Australia without shame.

  But Adam would not permit this to happen. I did hate him then and I slid into suppressed rage and depression. I let you and your baby down and I will never forgive myself for that. I thought about ending it all then, one way or another. Divorce, death. But I knew how it felt to be alone and terrified in the world, to have my family torn apart. And I swore I would not let that happen to my children.

  Lisa wiped the tears from her eyes so she could continue to read. Her voice was hoarse with emotion but she was determined to finish the letter.

  The war ended. Alan took over the hotel. I tried to find out more about Ingrid, the little girl who had survived Dresden. But I had no luck. And then I made a decision. There had to be an end to mourning the dead: Freya, Freddie, Eveline, Spatzi. I owed it to my children and my marriage to find a way back from this despair. I had to forgive Adam. My mother had not been able to do this and it had killed her.

  Adam and I did find each other again and the next ten years of our life together were genuinely happy. And then fate decided the slate should be wiped clean. Adam had the accident in the cottage garden that ended his life. And the fires came and picked out our home for destruction, leaving houses untouched on either side. It felt like God’s judgement.

  I have lived a lie. It is time for that lie to end. And so I have written you this letter. I started out pretending to be someone I was not. But my love for you, my children, and for my husband was real. Is real. I have truly become Laura, Adam Fox’s wife and your mother. I lived and I die as Laura Fox.

  I leave it up to you to choose whom you share this letter with now I am gone.

  With all my love,

  Mum

  Lisa put down the last page of the letter and looked up at Monika.

  Her face was streaked with tears. But she was smiling and nodding. She seemed to be proud of her remarkable mother.

  ‘Quite something that Angie,’ she said.

  EPILOGUE

  * * *

  Lisa

  October 2013

  Lisa had rung Tom the night of her visit to the Ritz and the reading of the letter from Angie. Monika had allowed her to photocopy the tissue-thin paper and Lisa then scanned and sent it to Tom.

  ‘Well, how do you feel?’ he asked her when she had finished telling him about Brün and Peggy. And Ulrich and Ingrid. And Laura and Angie.

  ‘I don’t know yet,’ she said. ‘It will take some time to sink in. But overall
, I feel . . . amazed. Amazed to be part of such an extraordinary family.’

  ‘Yes, that much is true.’ Tom laughed. ‘Not always a good thing, necessarily. But amazing.’

  ‘Yes.’ Lisa understood what he meant. They had both paid dearly for this dramatic legacy of silence and secrets. It was something at least to understand what had made Monika such a distant, injured mother, unable to love them fully. But it was another thing to let go of childhood pain and self-blame. That would come but it would take time.

  ‘How is Mum?’ Tom asked.

  ‘She’s different,’ said Lisa. ‘It’s hard to explain. She looks at me with real curiosity. She asks me things about my life. I actually feel closer to her than I could have ever thought possible. I only wish it would last. I even introduced her to Luke.’

  ‘Ah, yes, Luke! Now when do we get to meet him?’ asked Tom.

  ‘When you bring Natalie and the kids up for the party the owners are throwing at the Palace in October. It’s kind of a celebration of their progress. Very exclusive. They’ve invited all the Foxes. Make sure you put it in the diary. They’ll even put you all up in the hotel for free.’

  ‘Well that’s a date, I guess,’ said Tom. ‘I look forward to it.’

  Monika arrived in the black limousine which had collected her from the Ritz, much to the surprise of the staff and fellow residents. She had ‘dressed up’ for the occasion in a frock in crimson and grey, a light silk shawl in mercury silver with delicate drop earrings and a pearl necklace. She waved at the flashing cameras as she exited the car with her father’s beautiful wooden cane in one hand to support her and Luke Davis holding her other arm, beaming from ear to ear. He and Lisa had pulled off a miracle: they had persuaded Monika Fox to come back to the Palace after fifty-six years.

  A hot dry wind whipped up willy-willies of dust and tiny chips of gravel as men in their suits and women in their hats and finery made their way from the car park to the entrance. There was talk of a bushfire burning out of control out past Lithgow, heading towards Mount Victoria and the Grose Valley. It was unseasonally early for a fire incident and there were good reasons to be vigilant as the bush was very dry with a big spike in temperatures and drop in humidity. But there was no cause for panic.