The German Boy

by Tricia Wastvedt

  It took an hour to walk to Catford. Elisabeth’s address was written on the wrapping of her book and he found the house in a long street of bay-fronted villas. The garden had a laurel hedge and white-painted pebbles beside the tiled path.

  He expected a maid to open but a woman in a black dress came to the door. He could see she once had beauty like Elisabeth’s but it had been smothered by the years like a fall of dust. She said, ‘Nothing today, and I’ll thank you not to call again.’ Michael saw her eyes dart wildly over his greatcoat as if it alarmed her and she stepped back to close the door.

  ‘I have your daughter’s book, Mrs Oliver,’ he said. ‘I’m returning it, a text book Elisabeth collected yesterday from town.’ He hoped she wouldn’t notice the delphiniums. He held them close to his side, the blue flowers upside down, almost touching the path. As if she heard his thoughts, she looked down and saw them.

  ‘Perhaps you would kindly introduce yourself,’ she said.

  ‘I’m Rachel Ross’s brother. Michael. Elisabeth sometimes visits our home in Peckham, on Sundays with her sister.’

  He saw Elisabeth’s mother take in this information, blankness first and then the thoughts chasing round as she tried to fit the pieces together – the book and him, the flowers and Elisabeth. ‘I see, so you’re Michael Ross.’

  Suddenly he knew what she would ask next and he had no idea what Elisabeth had told her or what he should say now. The question came – ‘How is it you have her book, Mr Ross? Elisabeth was unwell when she came home yesterday. I assumed she had the book. I didn’t ask to see it, I had no reason to. She was upset, something had upset her.’ Her voice was smooth. She waited.

  He blundered through his answer. ‘I saw her by chance – the snow was slippery so I walked with her. I carried her book and forgot to give it back.’ He was impatient to get away; he had only planned to be there for a moment, deliver the book, his apology and the flowers, and go. He found himself cornered by his own stupidity.

  ‘Leave the book with me,’ she said at last. He held it out and she took it.

  ‘I wonder if I could speak to her myself, if you wouldn’t mind, only for a moment.’

  The woman hesitated, then seemed to come to a decision. ‘I told you, Elisabeth is unwell. And, as their mother, I’ve decided that my girls should rest on Sunday – and go to church. They won’t be coming to Peckham any more. Goodbye and thank you.’ Her mouth snapped shut.

  He was at a loss. In spite of her hostility, her eyes were begging that he understand and go away. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Ross. The flowers are most kind, I’m sure, but Elisabeth can’t accept them.’

  There was no doubt, but Michael could not think how to leave. Her jaw had tightened. He expected her to shut the door, instead she took a step towards him and spoke softly as if she was confiding in him. ‘I don’t know what happened, Mr Ross, but I should have guessed you’d have no manners. You’re arrogant, your kind, as if you own the world. Don’t pretend, young Michael Roth – oh, yes, I know your name, I’ve made enquiries.’ She looked triumphant. ‘Blood doesn’t lie, whatever you call yourselves these days, you and your family. I’m not a fool. You tell your grandma, in Catford we know she married Lemuel Roth and we don’t forget who’s Jew and who’s Christian. We remember things. We aren’t sopped with drink and witless like the folk of Peckham.’ She straightened up and went on, almost kindly, ‘I expect your interest in Elisabeth came about on her Sunday visits to your sister.’

  ‘No, that isn’t –’

  She cut across him. ‘Elisabeth would not have encouraged it, and I’m sorry for your feelings, Mr Ross. Good day to you. I don’t suppose we’ll meet again.’ She shut the door.

  He stood on the path. The shock of what had happened made him shiver. He’d never thought much about his diluted Jewish blood. Frankie teased him but that was all.

  The street was empty. He turned up his collar against the wind, and as he passed a horse trough he dropped the flowers in the icy water. He hoped someone would find them before they froze.

  • • •

  Elisabeth did not come to Neate Street again. Two Sundays after Michael’s walk to Catford, her sister spoke to him. Karen had ignored their mother’s ban on Sunday visits.

  He was cleaning brushes in the scullery sink when he heard the kitchen door open. Karen came across and put her elbows on the draining board, her chin in her hands.

  ‘My little sister says thank you for returning the book. And she says you shouldn’t have paid for a delivery boy to bring it, you could’ve posted it, or given it to Rachel.’ She dipped her finger in the oily water, leaned forward and trailed her name on the scullery window. Her hip touched against his thigh. ‘I saw you at the door. I don’t know why Ma didn’t tell Elisabeth you’d come yourself, but never mind.’ She straightened up, stretched her arms above her head and yawned. Her breath smelled faintly of oranges. ‘Lovely flowers. I fished them out of the horse trough. It seemed a shame. I’ve got them in a vase beside my bed.’ She turned to look at him. Her eyelashes were dark for someone so fair. ‘You’re awfully mysterious, Michael Ross.’

  He scraped paint from the palette, then Rachel called from the upstairs hall; she and Karen were off to see the Christmas lights in Piccadilly. After a moment Karen turned and he heard her walk away across the kitchen flagstones.

  When he looked around, she was watching him, leaning her slender body against the kitchen door. ‘Don’t worry. Elisabeth didn’t breathe a word, not even to me, but I could tell. Sisters always know. Perhaps I should visit your studio too one day.’

  He should have been amused by this girl, who was trying to be so modern. She was young and could not know the risks she took, but something warned him she was not like Elisabeth.

  8

  In December, Rachel left school and found employment in the wages office of a fashion house in Knightsbridge.

  ‘If I get my foot in the door and get noticed, you never know, they might let me train to do designs one day. That’s my dream, Nanna,’ she said to Lydia. They were waiting for the kettle to steam and Lydia was knitting – she couldn’t give it up even though the war was long over. ‘And here’s more gossip for you, Nanna. Karen is a key clerk at a posh hotel in Kensington. The customers are rich old men with money from the war. Millionaires, Karen says, with ugly wives.’

  ‘And Elisabeth?’

  ‘Oh, she’s started training now. I don’t suppose we’ll see her much. Heavens, Nanna, who’d want to do it? Blood and vomit and all sorts. Rather her than me.’

  ‘The girl’s an angel,’ Lydia said. ‘It’s such a shame she doesn’t come here any more.’

  ‘It’s her mother. She says Elisabeth’s got studying to do. She’d stop Karen too but Karen says she’s a working woman and old enough to do what she likes.’

  ‘Old enough to know she shouldn’t disrespect her mother, is what she is,’ said Lydia.

  She wondered about Elisabeth, if there was another reason why the mother kept her away. There was a mismatch between their families, it was true, but Catford was surely only a whisker more genteel than Peckham.

  At Christmas, Michael told them he was leaving. Lydia had known in her heart that one day soon he would. There was a time when this announcement would have made a grandmother proud, a wrench maybe but also a wistful kind of satisfaction in a job well done and finished as it should be. Now her family were like birds that kept falling out of the nest.

  Michael told them there was nothing to keep him here in London.

  ‘Nothing to keep you? Ha! There’s your father,’ said Vera acidly. ‘You think he’ll last much longer? You turn your back on all of us. You’re not the only one to suffer, we’re all upset.’

  Lydia saw Michael flinch. ‘Hush, Vera dear,’ she said. ‘Let him be. He hasn’t turned his back on Albert, or you, and he never will, but Michael needs to go and we must let him.’

  ‘He ought to be considering other people, not just himself.’

  ‘He’s cons
idering cows and sheep on Eddie Saunders’s farm,’ said Rachel.

  Michael said he had no plans, only to travel and to paint. He had saved some money. Half of it he gave to Vera.

  On the morning in February when he left, Vera went to work but Rachel stayed at home with Lydia to see him off. They watched him walk down Neate Street with Granddad Lemy’s old army rucksack slung over his shoulder. He turned and waved, then he was gone.

  Rachel shivered. ‘Come on, Nanna. It’s freezing, you’ll catch your death.’

  Lydia looked at the empty pavement. She had thought her heart couldn’t break again when it already had twice over.

  • • •

  Amsterdam

  Dear Elisabeth, an apology so long afterwards means little, but I’m sorry for that afternoon last Christmas when my rudeness to you was unforgivable. I hope that after rightly judging me ridiculous and unkind, you put the incident out of your mind.

  I think of you often.

  Michael Ross

  1929

  9

  The portrait of Pixie Fairhaven was in the drawing room of the Fairhavens’ house in Bloomsbury, and Frankie was accustomed to seeing it on her visits for tea or on the rare occasions when she was invited for dinner to equalize the numbers. Cara would rise from the dining table at Urban’s signal.

  Forgoing a cigar is bad enough but being banished at the port! Olivia would say. L’ancien régime, my darling, we have to fight it.

  The ladies would adjourn to the drawing room, where the painting hung above the maple chiffonier.

  Cara Fairhaven had so often directed her guests’ attention to the loveliness of her daughter, Pixie, as captured by a young and unknown artist whose looks were smouldering, who was modern, exclusive and abroad, that Frankie was beginning to forget the pain the first sight of it had caused her, so when she saw the girl in Fitzroy Street, she felt at first only surprise and pleasure.

  She was standing on the pavement by the door to the studio, looking up at the façade. Her vivid hair was pinned up under a hat with an embroidered badge. Michael had not said she was a nurse. ‘Hello,’ Frankie said. ‘Are you looking for Michael?’

  ‘Oh, yes, I am. Is he here, do you know? He’s been away, I think.’ She was prettier than Pixie Fairhaven’s portrait, as Frankie had known she would be, and had the kind of simple beauty that often goes unnoticed: skin that would never need powder or rouge, dark brows and clear grey eyes. She looked so young.

  The old lurching and falling in her stomach caught Frankie unawares. Her mind raced but she smiled, warmly she hoped, and said, ‘I’m Mrs Brion, a friend of his. I saw Michael not long ago in Amsterdam. Last June I think it was. And we were in Florence more recently. He’s very well. Should I remember you to him when I see him next?’

  The girl looked away. She understood. ‘Thank you. You’re very kind.’ Frankie could see that she was trying to gather her feelings back inside herself. ‘It’s been so nice to meet you, Mrs Brion. I shan’t delay you any longer, but when you see him, would you mind saying Elisabeth Oliver sends her regards?’ She fussed with the pleats in her shapeless regulation coat. ‘I’m his sister’s friend. He probably won’t remember me.’

  ‘I’m sure he will,’ said Frankie.

  Elisabeth might not have heard the words Frankie hoped would soften the lie; she had not seen Michael in the fourteen months he’d been away. The postcards from Amsterdam and Florence were the only news she’d had. Shame for her jealousy made Frankie step back as if their conversation was finished.

  Elisabeth didn’t turn to go but looked down at her feet, then up at the studio again. ‘Nursing must be so dreadfully exhausting,’ Frankie said. She had no idea why she said it, only that it seemed impossible to say goodbye.

  ‘I’m not a nurse, not yet. I shall enrol when I’m twenty-one but I can be an orderly and begin my study, so that’s what I’m doing – in a children’s fever ward. I like it very much. It’s not at all tiring.’ Elisabeth spoke politely and absently as if she’d said all this before, to aunts perhaps, or her mother’s friends. Frankie noticed shadows of tiredness beneath her eyes.

  They stood together on the pavement. There must be something that would break this impasse. ‘Let’s have lunch!’ said Frankie, hearing the jarring brightness in her voice. ‘There’s a lovely little restaurant just along the street. I’ll treat us.’ The invitation was gushing and it was no redress for the hurt she had inflicted.

  ‘That’s very kind, Mrs Brion, but I ought to get back. It always takes my lunch hour to walk up here from the hospital.’ So she often came to Fitzroy Street.

  ‘Then you must take my card, Miss Oliver. I live not far from here, perhaps you’ll visit me.’

  Elisabeth must have thought the invitation as odd as the sudden offer of lunch. They had nothing in common, a young student nurse and a rich American widow, except for suffering the same complaint. ‘I’ll be sure to tell Michael you came to see him.’

  Elisabeth took the card and put it in her purse.

  • • •

  The land George Mander gave Eddie Saunders was twenty acres of the Romney Marsh. It looked bleak to those who didn’t know it. The charabancs and tandems from the holiday sands at Hythe and Dymchurch never came out here, or from the cobbled sea-less port of Rye.

  Flat salt fields on the seaward side of Eddie’s land were bordered by a grassy dyke with dunes beyond and a beach of gritty sand. When the tide was out, half a mile of grey-green mud wrinkled to the Channel.

  Inland, willow and blackthorn grew along the marsh drains. There was an oak or elm here and there, and in the distance the spire of a church. The churches on the Marsh were often crooked on account of the sinking spongy land.

  Everywhere were sheep, hundreds of them, swans and coots paddling the ditches, a heron hidden by its stillness, and larks piping high up and invisible. Seagulls came in on the storms, brawling like hooligans. At dusk, a hunting barn owl quartered Eddie’s fields.

  It had been eighteen months since he’d taken George Mander’s offer of the land and thrown up his job of portering at Charing Cross, and every day Eddie still felt glad and grateful to be here, in spite of his exhaustion.

  Since seven this morning he had been doing a repair to a gate which he thought he’d have finished by noon. When it was done, it would be two hours’ work to light the stove, cook, heat water and have a wash. There were the lambs to feed and paperwork to do; the grocer in Hythe who took the eggs and milk liked to have the bills and the receipts in writing. Eddie’s desk was in the parlour, which had no glass in the windows, although it did have sacks of straw stuffed into the frames. The oil lamp cast a syrupy light which smoothed over the cracks in the plaster and wormy floorboards, but made ink on paper disappear. Perhaps he needed spectacles. He had never needed to write much down before.

  The sun was low and mist was rising in the chill. The slicing evening light stood each blade of grass beside its shadow, and flashes of the molten sun through the branches of the trees made Eddie squint. His collie ran in circles, rounding up gnats and gnawing at the rotten wood that had been sawn away, while the cows stood in a semicircle with their heads low, watching Eddie work, breathing hard and rocking as if their feet were cold. From time to time, they wandered off to graze, or came in close to inspect the tools.

  He liked their company and mending the rotting gate was not a chore. He was still unaccustomed to the pleasure of ownership: a shabby cottage, sheds and barn, some hens, and eight dairy cows past their best. Yesterday he’d been given two early lambs a neighbour was too busy to save. Eddie put them in straw-filled cardboard boxes by the stove underneath his shirts and breeches dangling on the airer. The lambs nodded off with their new polished hoofs tucked underneath. They were overdue a feed.

  Their weakness and dependence took Eddie back to all those nights when little Archie was a newborn. Lucy did the honours, then he took over with the burping and the soothing, and the changing too if need be – more fiddly than fol
ding a lady’s handkerchief and riper than a cowpat. Archie was never any trouble.

  They had been gone ten years and although it seemed no time at all there was another way in which Lucy and the few short months with Archie were another life. He hadn’t noticed when the change had come about, but it was a while since he’d woken in the night thinking Lucy was beside him. It used to be a feeling like a rush of sunlight in his head, then a plunging into blackness. And it had been a long time since he’d looked out for Archie in the faces of the babes he saw with their mothers at the shops, which in any case made no sense – Archie wouldn’t be a baby now, he’d be at school.

  It used to be a strain working with the lads at Charing Cross and a burden being attentive to his customers. There had always been an ache in his bones with the effort of being sociable. But here in Kent perhaps at last his soul was healing over with the lack of prodding and reminders. He was never caught out expecting to see Lucy at the stove stirring something in a pot when he came home, or with Archie on her hip walking out to meet him.

  These last few months he had begun to like the sight of people again and to enjoy a chat from time to time – with quiet Mr Mander, who was single too, or with the grocer’s boy who came out to collect the eggs.

  This empty even-tempered place had organized the memories and put them in the past. The wind had flattened out the creases in his heart and blunted the razor edge of grief he thought would always cut him. He didn’t feel impatient for the time when Lucy would be back to fetch him; it would come.

  All this might mean that he was mended, he didn’t know. Whatever it might be, he never went further in his mind than the day ahead. He worked his land, and ate and slept. He wasn’t a grieving widower any more, or the father of a baby boy, or Saunders the porter late of Charing Cross. He was no one and content to be so. Occasionally he pondered the future of Eddie Saunders and felt a distant curiosity as to what the man would become.