When she stood watching them, they glanced up sometimes, briefly, as if she was something bumping softly on the window.
Rachel came to help Elisabeth wash her hair and to change the sheets which were still stained with mud. ‘It’s your sister’s caused all this trouble, what with her permanent wave and Paris coats and German la-di-da, and woe betide anyone who gets mixed up with her.’ Rachel yanked the blankets straight and thumped the pillows. ‘She’s always been the same. Eddie didn’t tell me much, but he said her husband was after Michael. What were they thinking of, the fools, going off like that?’
Elisabeth looked out of the window. Sunshine was flickering across the Marsh. Over Dungeness, the clouds were like mountains in the sky.
Rachel’s voice was punctuated with slaps of her hand flattening the eiderdown. ‘Don’t bother telling me what went on, I can’t keep up. I just hope Michael comes back soon.’ The headboard rattled as she pushed the bed back against the wall. ‘Mum needs him, what with Nanna and Grandpa Lemy passing on, and all those years looking after Dad.’ There was a pause. ‘Elisabeth?’ Rachel’s arms were folded across her aproned chest. ‘Michael didn’t even say goodbye.’
There was nothing Elisabeth could tell her. She closed her eyes. Her head was too heavy, her wet hair dripped down her neck, smelling sweet now after days when it was as rank as a pond.
‘Perhaps I shouldn’t care,’ Rachel said. ‘No one knows what’s in my brother’s mind so there’s no use in speculating.’ She rubbed Elisabeth’s hair with a towel as if she was putting out a fire, then set about the tangles with a comb, but gradually the disquiet worked out of her hands and she said gently, ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t take it out on you. None of this is your fault.’
In the evenings, George came into the bedroom to say goodnight. He was solicitous, remote, and Elisabeth held his hands tightly. ‘Please stay with me, George. Please talk to me. I’m sorry.’
‘There’s no need to be sorry, Elisabeth. It was my mistake for assuming I knew you better than I did. I thought Toby was like a son to you. He is to me. Now I understand what Michael Ross must mean to you.’
Whatever Michael meant eluded her because it had sunk too deep to bring up to the light. The days of Karen’s visit were in shadow too, and the story was too long and complicated to explain: the house in Neate Street, the studio, Francesca Brion, the New York Crash, and somewhere in that time was Paris. Chinese whispers. Each little change evolves from what went before, but bit by bit the meaning disappears, the direction meanders, loops, turns inside out.
George stood at the foot of the bed, his hands in his trouser pockets, his big handsome face half in lamplight and half in shadow, and his voice had an edge she’d never heard before. ‘I wonder if our marriage makes you happy, Elisabeth.’
‘Of course I’m happy, George. I am happy,’ she said. It was true but also a lie. How could it be both?
‘There’s something wrong between us and I think you know. Perhaps there always will be. You can be honest. There’s no dishonour if we’ve done our best. I won’t be unreasonable should you decide to leave.’
She could not be honest because the truth was shameful and it was not what George deserved. There was nowhere she would rather be than here with him, if Michael had gone without her.
• • •
George and Toby were sitting at the kitchen table, looking through a catalogue of bicycles. Perhaps it was their impenetrable attention to each other which made it possible to pick up her cardigan and purse and go out through the open door. She kept her head down, knowing George would notice, and she waited for him to read her guilt in the set of her shoulders and call out to her, but he didn’t. She walked across the fields to the station and took the little train to Dungeness.
A heap of burned timbers was on the shingle where Michael’s hut had been. The tar paint had been boiled by the flames and was still stinking, but the fire had been dead for days and sand was blowing across the charred remains.
A piece of the floor was intact, with the stove standing on its slab, and after a while her eyes could separate black from black and she saw a saucepan in the wreckage, a spoon, a window latch, a cup.
The pile of wood for the stove was untouched by the fire and a shirt was still pegged on the washing line. It had come half free, hanging on by a cuff, and Elisabeth reached up and pulled off the peg, but the wind grabbed the shirt and it looped up over her head, over the shingle bank, and flopped like a bird in the sea.
She had the peg in her hand. This was all he had left her.
A gull landed on the stove, planting its wide fleshy feet on the hotplate where the kettle used to warm. The seagull’s hooked beak was tipped with red: black-backed gull. Larus marinus. Toby had taught her the names.
A long time after, a car came. She heard the shingle crack under the tyres and the sonorous murmur of the engine on the wind. She had listened for this car so many times. There was no need to look. It was the yellow Daimler and George had come to take her home.
• • •
Mrs Francesca Blanche McCarthy Brion
Woburn Square, Bloomsbury
My dear Elisabeth
I trust all is well in Kent. I write because my nephew has asked to stay with me at weekends. Children often have these whims, and I’m sure before too long Toby will be asking to come to Kent again.
My sister is agreeable to whatever makes Toby happy and she thanks you and your husband for all you’ve done for him. I have told her how content and healthy he has been with you. I will send a car to his school in Tunbridge Wells on Fridays and bring him to London from now on.
As you see from this letter, I no longer live in Regent’s Park but in Bloomsbury in the house that belonged to Pixie Fairhaven’s family. You will remember Pixie? Michael Ross made a rather lovely portrait of her some years ago when he was working in his studio in Fitzroy Street.
Do come up and visit us – you and your husband will be most welcome.
Kindest regards,
Francesca Brion
24
In the weeks after they returned to Germany, Karen expected some retribution, but Artur seemed equable, absorbed. They never spoke about what happened in Kent.
When Hede found the rifle in his study, Karen had tried hard to explain it to herself. Perhaps Michael had given it to Artur. Perhaps it was a different rifle.
In her heart, she knew that Artur had guessed what happened on the train from Paris and punished Michael. The rifle was a trophy. She should despise her husband for what he’d done, but she felt a furtive heady joy in knowing she could inspire such jealousy. Artur would fight any man who tried to take her.
The past could not be changed, and saying she was sorry for her husband’s cruelty was all that she could do, but when Karen saw the scar on Michael’s face and his broken tortured hands, Artur had seemed to deserve a second infidelity, even if he hadn’t earned the first.
Michael’s forgiveness was a sweet relief. He said he wanted to relive the memory of the Paris train and, in that moment, so did she.
Now all she wanted was to show contrition and convince Artur that what she did in Kent was not her fault. He would not divorce her because the failure of a marriage would damage his career. He would do something else to make her pay.
Since Stefan’s birth, he had come into her room only when he wanted her, and since they returned from England, only once. She had woken early, it was barely light and Artur was standing by her bed. His boots were covered in earth and his uniform was filthy. An iron smell was in his hair.
Afterwards she knew it was hatred of Michael Ross that made him want her, not forgiveness or love. That was the last time. His indifference was her punishment.
But this would end one day, she told herself. He would desire her again and the thrill of it would breathe life into her like nothing else she’d ever known. The question of blame or guilt would cease to matter because he would belong to her again as she belonged to him.
<
br /> There was no letter from Elisabeth, and Karen didn’t write. Elisabeth was too far away to help and anyway she would never understand how all this had happened because of her.
1933
25
Elisabeth, my darling,
You must have heard the news. Artur and I, we feel like crying and laughing at the same time. We wonder if it’s a dream and we might wake up. Our Leader is Chancellor!
We went to Berlin last week. Herr Hitler was sworn in and there were thousands of people celebrating outside the Kaiserhof. Just the sight of it – a strong handsome man standing beside the old worn-out President – was enough to make everyone feel hopeful again.
Artur and I have been closer to our Leader than anyone around us in the crowd would have guessed, but we were happy to be with ordinary people, cheering and carrying our torches past the Chancellery. The noise was deafening, people couldn’t shout loud enough, women and children too, not just the men. There were Hitlerjugend boys climbing the trees in Wilhelmplatz.
It was a freezing night and little Stefan was wrapped up in his sheepskin jerkin and his hat. He rode on Artur’s shoulders and I swear he knew who the excitement was about. His sweet face was turned towards Herr Hitler all the time – people say he has this effect on children, and on animals too. They can sense his goodness and his kindness. It’s an instinct of all innocent things to recognize those who have integrity.
I wore my dark green Paris coat. You’ve always said real fur looks good next to my skin.
We are waiting to hear what post Artur will be appointed to. We’ve been assured of his place in the Party and we may have to move, but now our Leader will be more in Berlin, it doesn’t matter where we go.
Gunter and Anna-Marie are not as happy as us. We don’t see them much these days and when we do, they don’t acknowledge Artur’s success, which I feel shows their ignorance. They didn’t celebrate. Anna-Marie is proud of Artur secretly, I think, but she and Gunter don’t understand why Germany must change. They are stuck in the past, and liberal in the worst ways. They have Jewish friends, Artur tells me – need I say more!
But they do see I’m a good wife to Artur, perhaps better than they thought I would be. A good marriage depends on duty even more than love, and on husband and wife excelling in their different roles, which are equally important. Each person’s contribution can be measured – and perhaps their failures too – without the excuse of shared responsibility. I’m not sure how it works with you and George, and I can’t imagine how I would have learned without our Leader’s wisdom. Ma never told us anything useful.
I’m baking a cake for Artur’s birthday – or rather I shall watch the kitchen girl. I’m still hopeless at cooking. Stefan wanted to help, but Artur doesn’t like him doing girlish things. Stefan is so sweet and serious, I wish you could see him, darling. He knows numbers already and he speaks some English too. Artur is very proud of him.
I’ve had my hair permanently waved and it’s such a boon with all there is to do at home and entertaining too. You should ask George if you can have yours done. It means sleeping in a hair net, but it’s worth it.
As ever,
Karen
• • •
With her face over the sink, Karen could taste the odour of the flannel, the stinking drain and the metallic bitterness of the brass taps. Her mouth flooded with saliva and she sweated, leaning her arms on the rim of the basin and seeing nothing because her mind was turned inwards to her stomach.
The reflection in the mirror showed a yellow tinge beneath her skin. Her eyelids were thick with too much sleep and her cheeks were hollow. Two creases cut between her eyebrows.
She should see a doctor; she had been warned that her heart was weak. Artur must have guessed what was wrong and decided that a dead wife was preferable to the embarrassment if this one lived.
The heaving in her stomach subsided. She washed her face and sat down on the bathroom chair, leaning her cheek on the tiled wall. The thought of food was repulsive but her stomach cramped with emptiness. She waited for the sourness to rise up her throat again as she knew it would.
On the train from Salzburg, she imagined taking another when she got to Munich. She could go on to Paris, then to the coast and take a boat to England. The loneliness would be left behind, along with Hede’s smirk and Artur’s silence, and the ranting Führer.
The German train was sleek supercilious chrome, with pork and cabbage in the air and little scarlet swastikas like drops of blood on the crockery, the corners of the napkins, the studs on the stewards’ cuffs.
The French train would be polished wood and old blue velvet. The Channel ferry would be painted brown with olive-green upholstery in the cabins and swinging ten-watt lightbulbs. This would be home.
Nothing more than miles separated her from England. She could live with Elisabeth in her peaceful house on Romney Marsh with sheep outside the windows and starlings in the Kentish sky. One step followed by another would take her there.
But if she left now she would never see her son again so she must stay, and Doktor Hartog would help her. He had put a card in her hand the last time they spoke. ‘I am here, Karen my dear,’ Ruben Hartog had said, ‘should you ever need me.’
It was strange to be in Munich again, alone. She took a taxi from the station to the suburb named on Doktor Hartog’s card. The house was in a leafy street of large shuttered villas with iron gates. The young woman who opened the door was tall and blonde like Karen. Perhaps in another place, some other time, they would have been friends.
‘I wonder, is the Doktor here?’ Karen asked. The sickness gathering in her throat was so slight she could almost be imagining it, but she knew it would build and she must be quick. She held out the card.
The woman did not look. Her smile soured. ‘He is not here.’
Karen’s jaw had begun to ache as if she was eating salt. She swallowed down the thought of vomiting on Doktor Hartog’s doorstep. ‘I’d very much like to wait.’ She clenched her teeth together and concentrated on the woman’s face. ‘If you wouldn’t mind.’
‘You are a friend?’ the young woman asked.
‘Oh, no, not a friend. I’m not acquainted with Doktor Hartog personally. Not at all.’ An instinct for deception was learned just breathing the air of this new Germany. ‘He is a friend of a cousin of mine in London – also a doctor. I’m English, you see, although I live here in Munich and it’s not important but I’ve been asked to deliver a letter – just a card.’
Too long a speech, too many embellishments. Lies must be quick and lean. Karen gave the woman her nicest smile. ‘Between you and me, it’s rather a nuisance and I shan’t worry if I can’t.’
There was a pause. ‘He has gone. His wife and daughter travelled east, apparently, with the grandchildren.’ The woman sniffed. ‘I understand the Doktor did not go with them. Where he is, I’ve no idea.’ Her pupils seemed to narrow like a cat’s, then the question came, lightly, as if it was a kindness. ‘You need to see the Doktor for some other reason, perhaps?’
‘No. No. Just the letter.’ Karen could feel the blood draining from her face with the curdling sickness. The woman missed nothing. ‘It doesn’t matter in the least. I’m sorry to have troubled you.’
‘You would like to leave your letter? I cannot promise it will be delivered.’
‘Oh … thank you, no. I couldn’t. I promised to see to it myself – which is silly, but there it is.’
‘Of course.’ The woman’s face showed satisfaction and distaste as though she’d lanced a boil. ‘It is a pity, but it seems I cannot help. Good day.’ She stepped back to close the door. ‘Heil Hitler.’
‘Heil Hitler,’ Karen answered.
1937
26
Every hour there was daylight, Eddie had been digging out his animals. Ewes could tolerate the snow, but lambs wet from birth would freeze to death before they’d even suckled.
The lanes had disappeared and the marsh drains were smoothed ove
r, so a person had to use a stick to poke along like a blind man feeling his way or he’d end up buried to the armpits. Everything that marked the land was gone, hidden inside great banks of snow sculpted by the wind and which could contain a tree, a shepherd’s hut or a flock of sheep.
Then a thaw and the snow was water. After all the whiteness, the colours of grass and mud, the bark and berries seemed exotic, and slick like new paint on a picture. The Romney Marsh looked level to the eye until a flood showed up the subtle rises and hollows; now Eddie was spending his days wading to the islands of saturated ground to fetch his sheep and bring them home, or haul them to places that would take a corrugated shelter and a heap of straw. He used a half-barrel as a ferry for the lambs, loading them into their little boat to tempt the waterlogged ewes to swim with the collie bullying them behind.
He had been up since dawn, and he leaned his aching back against a tree and looked across the shimmer of floodwater to the swans fixed to their reflections. Beyond the swans was Fairfield Church on its temporary island. He lit a cigarette and held the smoke in his lungs to savour the warmth of it.
The day was closing over and he must cross the two hundred yards to the church to rescue any of his flock marooned there. There was no track across the pasture and even in the summer it was a tiresome walk for the women in their skirts and heels, and for the old folk. This coming Sunday, the parson and his congregation would take rowing boats to worship as they always did in times of inundation. The path to salvation in this parish required resourcefulness and stamina.
He had married Rachel in this church. He had never seen a girl so lovely, with her honey skin showing through the white lace sleeves, and smiling, head up, not shy at all. A bee was bumping round the posy she carried and a butterfly had settled on the flower in her hair. Inside the church was twilight, greenish, and cold as water in a well, but Eddie remembered the warmth that hope was pouring on his skin, and Rachel, bright and beautiful, just like the hymn.
The German Boy Page 26