But Eddie sidestepped to the shed, leaving Rachel poised in anticipation. He unhooked the latch, propping the shed door open with his foot.
‘Oooh,’ said Rachel carefully, doubling back from the excitement she’d assumed without first ascertaining Eddie’s direction. Eddie had his boot heel planted out to hold the door and he leaned away to give Rachel a better view of the gloom inside, then he banged the shed hard, once, with his hand.
Nothing happened for a blink, then a bundle of hens came out as if someone had thrown them. The clattering and upset calmed and the hens settled, rearranging their feathers and muttering.
‘Orpingtons,’ Eddie said. ‘Good layers, good mothers to their chicks, and loyal.’
The hens beadily considered this. ‘The same as your dad kept at your old home in Neate Street. You said it was a dream of yours to have Orpingtons again.’
Rachel was staring at the hens and Eddie said, ‘When you came to visit me that first time, Orpingtons, you said, that’s what I’d like. You remember?’ Eddie waited, his big hands hanging and doubt beginning to cloud him over.
‘I do,’ Rachel said at last. ‘I do.’ She went across to Eddie, hooking her arm through his and they watched the hens tacking back towards the shed, their feathers shimmering in the dusk.
• • •
Agnes Mander’s reclusive life seemed at odds with the stack of condolence letters George Mander received after the notice appeared in The Times. He asked Vera Ross if she could recommend a caterer for the wake and she told him there was no need, she’d be glad to do her bit. She had grown fond of Agnes in spite of their quarrels.
‘There might be more than forty, Vera. Are you sure?’
The dining room and drawing room were opened up, but the guests gathered in the little sitting room, then spilled out into the garden. The late September sun brightened up the dark old leaves of summer and the bruised red roses with their petals falling. Along the borders, fading foliage and tattered flowers were wound around with bindweed.
George Mander saw his home in a way he never had before. The furniture was a sociable mix of good Georgian and overstuffed Victorian, there were smoke stains on the wallpaper, some fine porcelain and hideous paintings. The mahogany curtain poles had warped. Now his mother was gone, everything looked more vulnerable in his ownership.
On the morning of the funeral, Vera brought some extra help: her daughter, Rachel, and a friend from London, Elisabeth Oliver. To Mander’s surprise, he knew them both. Miss Oliver was the young woman he had seen on the train the last time he came down from London, but when Vera introduced her, Miss Oliver didn’t seem to remember him. Vera had already told him that her daughter Rachel was Eddie Saunders’s girl and Rachel turned out to be the friend who’d met Elisabeth Oliver at Hythe Station.
The dining table was laid out with platters of cold meats and savouries, ham, tongue, lobster-paste sandwiches. The two young women serving tea to his guests added to the feeling that the house was not his own. Miss Oliver and Rachel Ross were lithe and glossy, like young cats amongst staggering ancient dogs.
Mander moved from group to group and by late afternoon he had drunk more than he intended. No one seemed to want to leave and he wandered outside to the terrace where he stood for while enjoying the air and the gentle view across the mossy lawns and the paths with their ragged box and rosemary. On one side, by the orchard wall, there was a stone seat beneath an iron arch where his mother used to sit on days when she could walk outside. The arch was overgrown now with rose and jasmine. A puff of smoke was rising through the leaves.
He found Elisabeth Oliver sitting staring at her feet. She looked up and he saw her panic for a second as if she’d been caught out. She dropped her cigarette beneath the seat and covered it with her heel. ‘I’m sorry about your mother,’ she said almost belligerently as if to fend him off.
‘Thank you. That’s kind of you. I don’t suppose you remember but we met on the train in August. It must have been six or seven weeks ago.’
‘Yes, I do. Thank you for carrying my case.’
He could feel she’d rather be alone and he would leave her as soon as was polite. Her fingers were tapping her knee. She didn’t wear a ring.
‘I hope your little boy is enjoying his holiday. Is he at the sands today?’
‘He’s with Nanna Lydia – Rachel’s grandmother. He’s not mine, by the way.’
‘There are dunes out at Camber. They’re great fun for a child. You should take him.’
‘I’m not sure I will. It’s rather too far.’ She stood up.
He didn’t know why, perhaps it was the oddness of the day, perhaps it was the sherry, but he said, ‘Why don’t I drive you out tomorrow? The wireless forecast said it should be warm. The boy would enjoy it. I used to love the dunes when I was his age.’
‘You have a car?’ she asked.
‘The bicycle is only for special occasions.’
She nearly smiled, looking at him directly for the first time, and he was suddenly embarrassed at having asked her. ‘I have an appointment in Rye at twelve,’ he said, feeling ridiculous for the lie. ‘I’ll leave you at Camber for an hour or two and then I’ll bring you back. It would be no trouble.’
‘Thank you. It’s very kind but we have plans tomorrow.’ She gazed past him as if she didn’t know how to get away, then Vera’s voice was calling. ‘I must go,’ she said. She walked quickly along the path and up the steps, two at a time, her arms stiff and her head down as if she knew he was watching her.
After a while he went back inside. People were leaving and it took an hour or more to get them all into the cars.
When everyone had gone, Mander shut himself in his study to keep out of the way while they cleared the crockery into the kitchen. He could hear Vera chivvying the girls, who were singing a popular song he had heard lately on the wireless.
He must have dozed off because when he opened his eyes it was dusk and Elisabeth was standing in the lighted doorway. ‘Please come in,’ he said, getting up hurriedly. She must have seen him sleeping in his chair like an old man.
‘We’re just going,’ she said flatly. ‘I wanted to tell you I’d like to go to Camber after all.’
He switched on the lamp on his desk. ‘You’ve changed your plans?’
She looked tired. ‘Yes.’
‘Then I’ll collect you and Toby at ten.’
‘You know his name.’
‘You told me on the train from London.’
Her smile was almost warm, almost a smile of gratitude.
• • •
When he pulled up in the car, Elisabeth was waiting on the seafront with the little boy. ‘Good morning,’ Toby said. ‘My father has a Daimler too. Ours is black. I like your yellow one better.’
Mander said, ‘Thank you, Toby. I find it rather bright, I’m afraid. It was my mother’s choice.’
‘I thought I’d save you coming in,’ Elisabeth said, as Mander opened the car door for her. He wondered if she’d not told Vera she was meeting him.
She was wearing a cheap summer suit, slightly too tight and too short as if she had suddenly grown. On the train all those weeks ago she had looked older, stylish, although he didn’t much care for expensive Bohemian clothes, which seemed rather fake to him.
Elisabeth sat with her hands in her lap and Mander tried to make conversation. She looked across at him politely from time to time. He felt old and a fool. Last night he hadn’t slept. The whole day yesterday seemed unreal: his house crowded with strangers and black-plumed horses fidgeting on the balding gravel by the porch. And now the young woman who had kept him awake seemed unconnected with this awkward girl beside him. She was behaving as if he was a tedious uncle who had insisted on her company. Or perhaps she was just wishing he was someone else. The child was quiet in the back.
Mander parked the car by the dunes at Camber, and now that they had arrived it seemed odd to leave the two of them alone, but she didn’t invite him to stay. She had a ba
sket with towels and beach things. He wondered if she would swim.
‘I’ve brought sandwiches,’ she said. She had already kicked off her shoes and dropped her jacket on the sand. Her blouse suited her, white without sleeves or any fussiness. She tied a scarf round her hair. ‘We’ll wait here for you. It doesn’t matter what time you come for us.’
He walked back to the car feeling overdressed in his summer suit and hat. Sand had already filled his shoes. There was nowhere to wait nearby except a wind-blown café with metal chairs, so he drove on to Rye, where he strolled through the cobbled streets, had lunch in a hotel and visited an exhibition of local antiquities.
When he went back for her at three, the boy was digging with a spade and Elisabeth was lying on a towel in her bathing costume. Mander realized that young women probably did this kind of thing nowadays, unaccompanied. She was on her stomach reading and she didn’t hear him. She had taken off the scarf and her hair was falling forward over her book. The skirt of her swimsuit fluttered on the backs of her thighs. She did not look up but it came to him that she knew he was there.
‘Why are you wearing shoes?’ the boy said to him. ‘Why are you wearing a tie?’
Elisabeth stood up, brushed sand off her legs and put on the skirt over her swimsuit, stepping into it and reaching round for the button. Mander fixed his eyes on the horizon. ‘Shall I wait for you in the car?’
‘No, it’s all right. I won’t be long. There’s a hook on my blouse. Would you mind?’ She came across to him and scooped up her coppery hair. He wanted to bend down and kiss her neck.
‘Thanks,’ she said, not turning round. She packed up the basket.
‘Would you like a game of cricket, Mr Mander?’ Toby said.
Mander was glad Elisabeth didn’t cut across the boy as women often do and say, ‘I’m sure Mr Mander wouldn’t want to play’ or ‘It’s much too late for cricket.’ She was shaking out the towels and folding them.
‘Yes. Why not. A couple of overs,’ Mander said.
They set up the stumps, Mander took off his shoes and socks and stooped over the little bat. Elisabeth sat down on the sand again.
They played for a while. Toby bowled and Mander remembered when his joints were loose like Toby’s and his arms and legs were learning. They changed places and he showed Toby a better grip and how to block the ball. A cold evening breeze came in off the sea. They finished their game and shook hands.
‘I’d like to buy you a cup of tea,’ Elisabeth said. ‘You’ve been very kind to bring us all this way. We’ve had a lovely time. Thank you.’ This was more than she’d said to him all day.
They sat at a table outside the beach café and she poured the tea. ‘Sugar? One or two?’ She lived with Toby’s family, she told him. ‘Sit up, Toby darling, or you’ll fall off your chair.’ Her sister was getting married soon and lived in Germany, Rachel worked in a ladies’ fashion shop in Folkestone, and the three of them were at school together. ‘Would you like more tea, Mr Mander? More tea?’ She was born in Catford. ‘Mind out, Toby, your milk is on the edge.’ She was not engaged nor did she have a particular young man, although of course she met lots of interesting people, friends of her employers. Mr Mander shouldn’t assume she was the kind of girl who –
‘I’m not sure I’d assume you were any kind of girl.’ He smiled to soften the discourtesy of interrupting her.
‘Well, what you must think isn’t how I am,’ she said bluntly.
He was caught off guard and didn’t know how to answer her. The boy looked from one to the other. Mander looked into the teapot. ‘We need more hot water. Shall I order cake? And what must I think?’
She didn’t speak and he waited, at the edge of irritation because she was making this awkward for them both. ‘I don’t know,’ she said at last. ‘I’m sorry I was very rude yesterday – and this morning too.’
‘Elisabeth, I’m afraid I’ve forgotten most of yesterday, and as for this morning I still have a thick head, I’m ashamed to say, so the quiet was welcome.’
She seemed relieved, as if a weight had lifted or something was resolved. For the first time she seemed happy to be with him.
Toby asked, ‘Why do you ride a bicycle when you have a Daimler Double Six?’
‘It’s good for me,’ said Mander. ‘I save the car for special days like today.’
‘That isn’t what you told me yesterday.’ Elisabeth smiled and he saw how pretty her grey eyes were. ‘Vera says you own a factory.’
‘A foundry.’
‘I thought you’d have a farm, or a few farms that people like Eddie run for you.’
‘I don’t know anything about animals or growing crops. All I know is iron.’
‘And your business is doing well?’ she asked politely. Suddenly, he cared what she thought of him and he was searching in his mind for a reply. A woman’s expression could switch from interest to disappointment in a blink, like the shutters in a cat’s eyes. Elisabeth would assume his feelings were blunt with age; she didn’t know yet that getting older – and thirty-eight would seem old to her – isn’t any protection from embarrassment and hurt. The silence between them had stretched too long. He said, ‘I’d have preferred a different line of work but things happen and one finds oneself in a life one never intended.’ He cringed to hear himself sounding like a disappointed man.
‘I expect that happens to lots of people,’ she said softly. She gave the boy a handkerchief to wipe his hands and face, and when they left, she asked to pay the bill.
The sun was low behind them on the drive home. Toby fell asleep and Elisabeth leaned over to cover him with her jacket. ‘Didn’t you want children?’ she said.
He felt hurt that she put it in the past for him.
He drove carefully so as not to wake the boy, and slowly to prolong the journey home with her.
She sent a thank-you note a few days later, saying it would be nice to see him when he next came up to London and the afternoon at Camber had been one of the nicest of their holiday. She gave him her address in Richmond. Her handwriting was neat and rounded, set out on lines.
He was glad of the invitation to meet in London and he appreciated her politeness about the outing to Camber Sands, but he thought he would probably not see her again.
• • •
Over these last two months, with Elisabeth’s company for most of the day and with little Toby’s too, Lydia felt efficient in her mind again, as if she was plugged in to the Electric and moving smoothly and usefully about the bungalow.
In the mornings, after Rachel and Vera had gone off to work, Lydia and Elisabeth would sit together at the kitchen table with their second cups of tea and discuss tactics for the housework as a mother and a married daughter would – except they were probably more in tune than most and neither had a husband.
Elisabeth wasn’t bothering with her London outfits any more and had borrowed a cotton dress from Rachel. Toby was almost chubby, rosy in his cheeks with a pretty shade of sunshine in his skin. He was not so quick with his opinions, more able to leave it to Elisabeth to decide what was best for him.
The arrangement with the pony had worked out nicely. Most afternoons, Elisabeth took Toby along the beach to Eddie’s farm. She would walk beside the pony, Little Bear, for miles across the Marsh.
The two black mares were having themselves a holiday. Eddie had offered to teach Elisabeth to ride but she said she was more likely to take off from Dymchurch beach on a pair of wings than stay astride a horse and she was better with both feet on the ground.
Only once in their morning conversations did they refer to Michael and not much was said. Elisabeth asked if there had been any news since the letter saying he was in Munich. ‘We’re due to hear from him any day,’ said Lydia. ‘He promised Rachel he’d keep in touch.’
But something troubled Lydia. When she reached out in her mind to him, Michael wasn’t there – not like Lemy, who was dead but still contactable. She often talked to Lemy, and in all their years of marr
iage, she always had a sense of where he was. It was the same with Michael right from when he was a baby, but in the last few months he seemed to have disappeared. It was as if his wireless was switched off – or hers. She wondered why his most recent letter had been written by someone else with no explanation – it looked like the handwriting of a child. And Rachel said he’d gone to Munich with Elisabeth’s sister, who was marrying a German fellow, so what was anyone to make of that?
Lydia had always known the shine on Karen Oliver would cast a shadow. No sisters could turn out so differently as these two.
Elisabeth said, ‘What’s Munich like, I wonder, Nanna. And Paris.’ She sounded as if that wasn’t what she was thinking of at all.
‘Big and noisy, I shouldn’t wonder.’ Lydia was rolling out the pastry for a pie and Elisabeth was stringing beans. Some moments passed, each pretending to be busy. Lydia decided she would say it: ‘Once upon a time, I was so sure you and Michael would be a pair.’
‘Were you, Nanna? Why?’ Elisabeth looked up. Her eyes were wide and clear as they used to be.
‘It’s not easy to explain. Something went between the two of you that first time you came to Neate Street.’
‘What was it? What went between us?’
‘It isn’t something you can see and it isn’t love – not yet. The heart is slow to know itself, but you can’t stop a soul from flying to its nest. I saw it once before and I’d put my life on it.’
Elisabeth picked up another runner bean from the pile on the table and resumed her work. ‘Perhaps it’s just as well you didn’t.’
• • •
The Schroëders were due back in London, although Elisabeth had heard nothing for a month. The trunks were packed and waiting for Railway Collection. Elisabeth and Toby would leave tomorrow on the train.
There was a knock at the front door and Elisabeth called out, ‘It’s all right, Nanna. It’ll be the luggage men.’ Lydia heard voices in the hall, then quiet. Toby appeared at the kitchen door.
‘What is it, cherub?’ said Lydia. ‘Has there been a hitch?’
The German Boy Page 19