By eleven thirty, she was dazed with the traffic and the rush of people. She looked for the agency where she would register for work but lost her way amongst the thousands of little journeys whose trajectories she crossed. Her brain was numb with the suddenness of being here, the spiteful London wind whisking up her skirt and ironing down her hair. The air was laden with soot and too thick to breathe.
She walked aimlessly towards Mrs Brion’s house in Regent’s Park, Toby filling her mind, but then found she had turned into Fitzroy Street.
There was the archway between the houses in the shabby graceful terrace, no porch or step, the shadowy passageway sloping down. An opening would lead to wooden stairs, a landing and a clanging iron corridor, then another door would open on a bare white room coloured pink by the embers of a fire.
For a while, in that room, Michael had seemed to love her. She remembered the sensation, so light it didn’t take away her breath or make her heart beat faster, but the air was luminous and the smells of turpentine and linseed, the wooden boards and the fire, were each separate and complex. She had felt the weight and texture of her clothes against her skin and her mind had fallen quiet for the first time in her life.
Elisabeth looked up at the façade. She never knew which windows were the studio’s. If she went through the archway now, up the stairs and along the corridor, the door would be locked. Michael had been away for so long, he must have forgotten this place, as he had forgotten her.
How could it take so long to understand? What she had felt was an illusion and it would go on and on eating up her life until she smothered it, disowned it, cut it away, as Mr Caffin the surgeon failed to do.
She turned around, walked to the Post Office in the Tottenham Court Road and telephoned George Mander.
The telephone in her booth rings and she jumps. She has never made a long-distance call before and suddenly she has stage fright. It goes on ringing and people in the Post Office hear it even through the glass door of the booth. They’re staring so she unhooks the ear piece and listens for his voice. There are clicks as the operator makes the connection, then silence. ‘You’re through-hooo,’ sings a tinny telephone girl. Any moment now George Mander will speak and she must say something.
‘This is the residence of Mr Mander,’ says Vera’s voice.
Elisabeth’s mind scrabbles to grasp the surprise. Of course, he will be at work and she should have asked to be connected to the foundry.
‘Hello, hello, hello,’ trills Vera, and the sound of her is like coming home. Elisabeth still can’t speak but for a different reason – because tears are strangling her.
At last she says, ‘Vera, it’s me.’
‘Elisabeth? Elisabeth, is that you? Nanna told me all about it, what a shame. And little Toby, he’s going to miss you, poor mite, pushed from pillar to post, it isn’t right. A child shouldn’t be uprooted, it distracts them, takes their mind off growing, that’s my opinion. You’re lucky you caught me, I was just off to the shop, but here I am.’ There is a pause. ‘What can I do, my poppet? This call will be costing you.’ Another pause. ‘Is your mum all right? Are you settling back?’
The strangulation gets fiercer and Elisabeth can hardly breathe. The longing for Nanna Lydia and Toby, and for Rachel and Vera too, squeezes her rib cage and she can only open and shut her mouth.
‘Oh, ducky,’ says Vera softly, and that’s enough. Elisabeth heaves in a breath and the sobbing starts. It’s bursting out of her, she’s braying like a calf and people in the Post Office can hear this as well. They stare some more. Elisabeth hangs up and leaves, forgets to pay, has to go back. She has only been out of the door for a moment but already people have resumed their business of buying stamps and sending telegrams. They have forgotten the small event of a girl crying into a telephone.
• • •
Elisabeth knew George Mander was there when she walked up Ringstead Road and saw the yellow Daimler parked outside the house. The Ablett boys from Number 12 were lurking round the car and just the look of them could blister paint.
‘Paws off,’ Elisabeth shouted over her shoulder, hurrying up the path.
‘Some awfully nice friends you’ve got, dear,’ called Mrs Riddick sourly from across the road. ‘Two Daimlers in a week.’
Elisabeth fussed in the hall, fumbling with the buttons on her coat. George Mander taking tea with Mr and Mrs Mole would be two universes colliding. She could hear her mother’s voice. ‘… my other girl took a similar arrangement with a German gentleman and it worked out very nicely. She’s married to his son. I wonder, Mr Mander –’
Elisabeth sprinted down the passage, ‘Hello, everyone. Hello, George.’ She hadn’t called him George before.
‘Here she is,’ said Mr Mole.
‘Mr Mander has a proposal for you, dear,’ her mother said. ‘He has explained to Herbert and myself and we have consented to his asking you.’
George Mander smiled at Elisabeth. ‘No, not that, you’ll be relieved to know. Employment, if you’re interested. We need a clerk at the foundry and I’ve been looking for a while for someone who’ll do first-aid too. Just minor things – they happen from time to time. Vera tells me you were a nurse.’
‘You spoke to Vera?’
‘Yes, the other day. She mentioned you. She said your job looking after Toby had ended, unfortunately.’
He gave nothing away. If he knew about the telephone call, he would not embarrass her. He would probably never tell her this was why he came.
His suntanned face and black Harris overcoat were one world, as she had thought, and the pallid Moles in their sepia sitting room were another.
‘You’ve only just come back and now you’re off again,’ said Ernest Mole bleakly.
‘I’m sure Elisabeth will have other offers of employment, Mr Mole,’ said George Mander. ‘Perhaps you’d rather your daughter stayed at home.’
‘Elisabeth is too pretty and too clever to be mine,’ said Mr Mole, now chivalrous. ‘She’s her mother’s daughter and I want whatever makes her happy.’
‘Happy and independent,’ added her mother, whose cardigan and skirt blended with the furniture as if she was wearing camouflage. Mr Mole’s bald spot glinted with a bright reflection of the electric bulb.
‘Yes,’ said Elisabeth. ‘I’ll take it.’
‘You’d like to think about it, I expect,’ George Mander said.
‘No, I wouldn’t. Thank you. I accept.’
Her mother clapped as if Elisabeth had won something.
George Mander must have seen the trapdoor springing open and he stood up. ‘I could take you with me now, if that’s convenient. It would save another journey on the train and I’ll send for your trunk tomorrow.’
Her mother bristled. In a blink she was on guard for her daughter’s reputation. Years too late, Elisabeth thought.
With perfect timing George Mander added, ‘Mrs Ross, my housekeeper, has a room for Elisabeth until she finds accommodation.’
So he and Vera had arranged it all between them.
When they went outside, a pack of children were circling the Daimler and the Ablett boys were sitting in the gutter, poking at the tyres. Across the road and all down the street, people were suddenly busy putting out the milk bottles, the cat, getting the children in, chatting over the gate in spite of the perishing cold, sweeping the path regardless of there being no leaves left in Ringstead Road.
‘Goodbye, goodbye, my darling,’ her mother said loudly, kissing her. Anyone who wasn’t already looking would be now.
George Mander seemed untroubled by the audience. He shook Mr Mole’s hand, then her mother’s, and opened the car door for Elisabeth. When they drove away, people waved and Elisabeth waved back at the neighbours flapping handkerchiefs as if she’d turned into royalty. Children ran beside the pale yellow car squealing and yelling nothing, just making noise.
The car turned out of Ringstead Road towards the coast, back along the lanes she’d travelled a week ago with Toby.
>
A week ago she couldn’t breathe with the longing to be in Kent. There was nothing in the future except a feeble pointless hope. A week ago she hadn’t been to the studio in Fitzroy Street and understood at last that Michael had forgotten her.
She was balling up her handkerchief and pushing it against her eyes. George Mander must have noticed but he didn’t ask her why or try to comfort her, and she was grateful to him for yet another kindness.
When she woke up, a rug was over her knees. She must have been sleeping for an hour because a golden moon was hanging in the blue above the Downs and the headlamps of the car were pushing furrows through the dusk.
Elisabeth said, ‘Thank you, Mr Mander. George.’
The miles went past and the evening turned into night. They didn’t speak again, and the quiet in the car with him, the icy air, the warmth under the rug, were like a dream of travelling. The road was rushing water, flashes in the dark of bare twigs and hanging leaves, each one separate and furred with rime, trees looming up, white bones against the stars, a gate of chalk, a hare loping over frosty stubble. The moon was hardening and shrinking, high up now and silvering the hills.
At Lympne, the road came to the rim of the Romney Marsh and there it was, spread out below, flat as a plate from Hythe across to Rye, a thousand pearly squares of pasture marked out with ditches. Sheep sheds and lambing pens, cottages and barns, were charcoal lines and smudges in the moonlight. And beyond was the English Channel glittering like a bank of coal dust up to the horizon.
• • •
Dear Elisabeth,
I wish you would settle although I’m glad you have a job. A foundry in Kent sounds dreadfully dull but it’s better than nothing, I suppose.
I’m well but very tired. The birth is soon and Artur does everything he can for me but it’s my responsibility to bear a healthy child. We want a son.
My doctor tells me I’m a cask of precious wine maturing. I say I’m a barrel. My Paris dresses will never fit again but Artur says I was too thin and I see now that I wasn’t womanly. I also didn’t understand the duties of a wife or the importance of seeing my weaknesses and faults and working at improvement.
Happiness is found in dedication to your husband and your country. I had silly notions of what I had a right to but now I appreciate that happiness must be earned. You’ll discover this too when marriage comes for you.
I forgot your birthday and I know you’ll forgive me, darling. Pregnancy has made me stupid as well as fat and Artur is so patient with all my muddles.
We now have a kitchen girl as well as Cook, two gardeners, a boy to see to the dogs, and Hede too, of course. People are grateful to work for next to nothing and we do our best to employ as many as we can.
Please don’t think badly of me but I had to dismiss a gardener last week. I told him to cut down some firs which overhang the garden and he said it is unlucky to harm the trees. He said, poor man, the baby would be affected. How stupid can that be?
He’s elderly so I explained kindly and very simply that I’m only suggesting felling half a dozen, not the whole forest, and the trees can’t know I’m pregnant. I think these people can be dense on purpose. He dug his heels in and wouldn’t do it.
Artur is too busy to get involved and says the staff are my domain. I see now exactly what he means: that some people are determined to stagnate in ignorance and laziness.
And something else. I was upset and didn’t understand at first, but Artur has told Pappa and Mutti Landau they are no longer welcome in our house. I returned the cradle. Artur says they are exactly the kind of people who have brought Germany so low and we will soon have our child to consider.
We hear about the dreadful situation in America. It is greediness and Jews that have caused this disaster and we must learn from it. There is little sympathy here but the financial collapse affects us too and people are losing jobs and going out of business.
Thank goodness there is a guiding light. Our Leader, Herr Adolf Hitler is his name, shines brightly and we in the Party follow him with hope in our hearts. Herr Hitler personally signed a letter congratulating Artur on his talent for speaking passionately in public. He mentioned me! He thanked me for supporting Artur’s work. Our Leader seems to understand the lives of women as well as men. (He’s rather attractive, actually, and if I weren’t a married woman …!!!)
When the baby is born I shan’t have much time to write but I’ll think of you all the time, my darling, and keep my fingers crossed that you’ll find happiness too.
Marriage is making me a better person, and I’m beginning to understand how to lead a useful life. I feel as if I’m home. I belong to Artur and to Germany.
Karen
1930
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George Mander’s house was built of Kentish brick and knapped flint. It had the ease and presence of an important residence but was smaller than it seemed from a distance and on a scale that made it welcoming and homely. The façade was evenly proportioned, the walls had settled and the tiled roof had sunk in undulations. The back was a jumble of gables and pitches and fancy brick chimneys.
The twisted trunk of a wisteria leaned over a black oak porch; the blooms had finished and now the house was bearded with greenery which curled around the windows and gave the rooms a peaceful dusky light.
Every Friday, Elisabeth made up the wage packets in George’s study. She would drive from the foundry in the morning, then back again to give the men their cash. This had come about because she couldn’t concentrate at work with all the noise.
When she finished counting the money, entering the figures in the ledger and sticking down the envelopes, she would sit in the drawing room with a cup of tea, looking out at the garden.
She and George had played a board game on Sunday afternoon and the pieces were as they’d left them. Elisabeth tipped them in the box and folded up the wooden board. His mother must have loved games with dice because there was a cupboard full of them. He used to hate these games, he told Elisabeth, but it was different now.
It was almost a year since Elisabeth had come here to help with Mrs Mander’s funeral. The old lady’s things had been everywhere: a board like this one halfway through a game, hatpins and gloves on the table in the hall, a romance with the page marked by an envelope on a footstool by the sofa.
Vera said that Mrs Agnes Mander had been ailing but it looked as if death had caught her by surprise. So that must be another way: not inch by inch like Albert Ross but suddenly. Full stop. Life bangs shut like a book whether it’s finished properly or not, and all the things half done, all the plans and the practical belongings of a life, are adrift without a purpose or a destination.
Elisabeth thought of Nanna Lydia and wondered if there was any news. The doctor came almost every day now.
George was paying for the visits; Elisabeth had seen the bills. He took them from the pile of opened post on her desk in the office and put them in his pocket. He said nothing and she didn’t ask. He might be doing it for her because she loved Nanna, or for Vera, or just because he was the man he was. In this past year there were so many times when she had seen his generosity. She knew from the foundry ledgers he could not afford it.
The sun was streaming into the sitting room and showing up the worn upholstery and the stain along the ceiling. The wallpaper of exotic birds and flowers on pale blue silk had curled at the edges and come unstuck. Dusty needlepoint cushions were lined up along the sofas, and the piano stool was tapestry too. Perhaps Agnes Mander was a wife who passed her days playing sonatas and sewing.
On the piano there were photographs in little silver frames of family and friends. One was of Michael with Eddie Saunders and George, and the three of them had lambs around their necks like scarves, holding bunches of little hoofs in their fists and grinning at the camera.
‘Rachel’s brother,’ George had told her. ‘He stayed with Eddie one spring. It was years ago and he went off travelling, to paint in Europe. How I envied him. You’re old f
riends with Rachel so you know him, I expect.’
‘No,’ Elisabeth said. ‘Not really.’
These days, she was used to seeing the photograph and it was her habit to pick it up, look, put it down.
Today, she hardly glanced at all, easily ignored him and put the picture back amongst the others. She didn’t fool herself any more.
She trailed her finger along the mantelpiece and over a bronze figurine of a slender naked girl whose black face was expressionless. The girl held a swathe of bronze cloth that clung around her narrow hips. She seemed to be the only thing that never needed dusting. Perhaps George ran his hand over this naked girl.
The house was silent. Elisabeth opened the French doors and the sound of the sea was carried on the wind with the constant peevish bleating of the Romney sheep. A whistle trailed up through the air with the shushing of the engine pulsing underneath. A train must be on its way to Dungeness. She stood listening with the salty air on her face.
Then a voice shouted her name and someone was banging on the front door. It was Eddie Saunders with his hair on end, his shirt clinging and, behind him, a black mare sweating and blowing in the sun. ‘You’d better come,’ he said. ‘Nanna is asking for you.’
Vera is waiting on the doorstep when Elisabeth runs up the path and stumbles on the welcome mat. She’s already past, already opening Nanna’s bedroom door when Vera calls, ‘Michael has come home.’
Her hand is pushing on the door, her feet are carrying her into Nanna’s room, and her mind has stopped, wiped blank because this cannot be.
He is there, sitting by the bed holding Nanna’s hand. He turns and sees her, stands up, and everything is tipping as if the room is sliding them together like the pieces on a board sliding to the fold.
But they are still, Elisabeth just inside the door and Michael by Nanna’s side, because the moment they touch it will be the same and there will be no end. It was never an illusion.
The German Boy Page 21