by Susan Sallis
Meriel stopped and took a deep breath before rushing on again.
‘Mrs Smith did not mention any of this to Hermione until Hermione started work in the psychiatric hospital. Then she had to fill in a lot of forms and . . . well, it came up. Hermione reckoned her aunt must have been a pretty amazing person to be able to acknowledge her background the way she did during the war. Eva actually liked to be known as Schmidt. It helped when she was working in that club for the Free French and Poles and Czechs, and later when she was helping a few of the men from the holding camp for internees— You remember that was where she met Fritz. Are you with me, Rache?’
‘Yes.’ I felt sick. We were never to be free of the war. Not ever.
‘So why was Mrs Smith meeting with Eva that morning, Rache? Was it something to do with the Wingco? Was she feeding her sister-in-law information? Was the sister-in-law giving it to Fritz? How does it all fit in with that bloody, bloody tail fin?’
It was then I realized that Meriel was as distressed as I was. Still, it offered no comfort. I almost resented it – what right had she to be so concerned for my father?
She said, ‘One thing to be said for her, Mrs Smith, she was very worried about Eva’s death, though in fact she never came forward to identify the body. But that morning, if you remember, she didn’t arrive home until we were leaving Hermione. And then she came from the rough road. I reckon she cycled out to the holding camp and tried to find out whether Fritz was still on the loose. She knew about Fritz – Eva must have told her – maybe she had even met him and given him that blessed Swallow tie! There was more to it than just having a cup of coffee with Eva. She’d made an appointment . . . to see her sister-in-law?’ Meriel shook her head. ‘No. She’d made an appointment to see Fritz. She had something for him.’
I made a sound in my throat. She saw that I was at the end of my tether, and tried to put an arm around my shoulders. I straightened quickly so that my shoulders were out of her reach.
She said, ‘We’ve got to let it ride, Rache. It’s over and done with. Just let your father come to us for a while. It will work out, honey. I promise.’
I had to stop her talking about Dad. I said, ‘So . . . Eva Schmidt was the Wingco’s sister. Hermione’s aunt. Eva was in love with Willi Strassen. Quite a . . . a tangle.’
I looked at her just for a moment, and she nodded. She was so small and compact and delicate-looking. And she was as strong as steel. And, I realized, suddenly, I was not.
Tom and Rex had had a wonderful time at Upton-upon-Severn. In spite of losing his leg, Nobby Clarke had a boat, a big, cumbersome rowing boat: ‘built like a tank’, according to Rex. He had come on a charabanc trip to Upton soon after Tom and I visited him in Liverpool and had fallen in love with that stretch of the Severn. Part of the organized trip had been on the river, but only Nobby and his corporal friend had taken it up. Nobby had had to accept a fireman’s lift to get into the prow of the boat and had panted, ‘Never again – never a-bloody-gain.’ But he had ceased to care about getting in and out very quickly. The magic of this entirely new world, of seeing things he would never have seen from the bank, had enchanted him almost immediately. The curious silence of the heavy river, the dipping of the oars and the way they had creaked in the rowlocks, had made him part of another dimension. They had come to the end of the reach and there, in a small bay of shallow water and pebbles, had lain the bloated body of a dead sheep. ‘I like that kind of ending,’ he told Tom soberly. ‘I never wanted to die out there, in Burma. Too far away.’
So he had moved to Upton with his family and bought the boat. ‘’Tisn’t beautiful but I got to have something that won’t tip over when I get in – I sort of fall in, see.’ But there was nothing wrong with his arms, and they developed alarmingly under the regime he set himself.
Tom couldn’t stop talking about it. ‘Rex took him out in the Jaguar, and of course he enjoyed that. But then he wanted to show Rex what real travel was about and we went down to this little jetty and there was the tank – Rex called it that and Nobby says he’ll do the same – and he sat on the edge and just let himself go straight into the stern. Getting out is more difficult.’ Tom was so happy, I couldn’t tell him – not then – about Dad. He already knew Dad was going to fly out to stay with the Robinsons in the autumn, and he thought I was worried about that. Plus he thought I was still dreading the end of June and the end of Meriel’s precious visit. Actually . . . I think I wanted her to leave.
Before that happened, Meriel and I took Hermione to Malvern. In the Jag. There was a cricket match in the college grounds and Rex and a couple of other Americans ensconced themselves quite early in the solitary stand. Sheba was taking the children to the open-air pool in the morning where they were offering swimming lessons to the under-fives. Both Georgie and Vicky were expert swimmers and looking forward to helping the instructor. Meriel bought Daisy and Rose new costumes for the occasion. I had given up protesting about her generosity; actually, I had given up. Full stop.
Meriel and I took it in turns to drive the Jag; Hermione wasn’t interested. Neither was I, but I had to keep up a constant pretence now, for Meriel. I am not sure why this was; it had just happened.
That day it wasn’t too bad because of Hermione. I had always known that she was very clever, but I had forgotten that Dad had once told Miss Hardwicke that it was curiosity that drove learning. Hermione was curious; she wanted to know . . . things.
I thanked her for giving the children such a good time at Meriel’s and asked her how she was herself. I expected the old Hermione-type reply, over-polite, giving nothing away.
She said, ‘You mean with the job?’ She was sitting next to Meriel, and turned right round to talk to me in the back. ‘It’s like being a detective, really. You’re given clues but they’re not always the right ones, and they can be totally misleading. So you sort out what you think are the real ones, then you grill the patient and hope something will kind of fly out at you!’ She laughed and she was laughing at herself. She had changed.
‘Was it like that with Georgie?’
She rested her cheek against the leather and her strange colourless eyes softened. ‘Oh . . . Georgie. He is so special, isn’t he? Mind you, most of the kids with that syndrome are the same, they’re happy, they’re lovable and they’re different. They mustn’t be lumped together as regards achievement.’ She shifted her smile to Meriel, then back to me. ‘Georgie could be a standard bearer. That became obvious when he helped his friend Rebekkah to hold out her flowers for Mrs Roosevelt. He is not self-centred. As well as being supported, he is himself a supporter.’ She sighed. ‘In Georgie’s case it is a question of environment. Surrounded by loving stimuli, life will be good for him. His problems were created by us, by society in general, so we know exactly how to solve them. It’s not that difficult. And though you have to name various disorders, it’s a mistake to go by the labels you give out so readily. Each person is unique and it’s difficult to remember that – if you’ve stuck a big label on them saying Down’s syndrome or schizophrenic. So though you’ve got solutions, they have to be very carefully chosen.’
She sighed. ‘It’s a bit different for the patients in the psychiatric hospital. They have been wounded. No one can see their wounds but they are there. So they have to be found, and then there has to be a way to help them to heal themselves.’ She shook her head helplessly. ‘My prof says we’re in the business of finding solutions, which means we have to identify the problems first. Sounds pretty hopeless, doesn’t it? But if you can learn to be a good detective . . . well, it’s possible!’ She laughed again, ruefully. I found myself admiring her very much.
We climbed to the beacon and looked over all those English counties with their cathedrals and their rivers and their people. I looked sideways at the two women who had been schoolgirls just yesterday. Hermione held her skirt down against the summer breeze; Meriel let hers fly around her face. I had managed to sit on mine, so that it didn’t fly and I did not have
to hold it down. I wondered whether Hermione had noted our differences. Probably without realizing it, she was observing, assessing, diagnosing.
At that moment I felt pretty bad; I was in the company of two women who had accomplished a great deal already. I felt I was still at the starting line, and I was nobody’s favourite. Suddenly, Meriel pushed her skirt between her knees and gripped it there, then put one arm around Hermione and the other around me.
‘I wish you could meet my Aunt Mabe,’ she said out of the blue. ‘Here we are, still under thirty, still not really knowing anything, looking here and there and everywhere for something meaningful, something that will solve our problems, not really knowing what the hell we’ve been put on this earth for!’ She laughed. ‘Aunt Mabe never rushes. She is always just there. People come to her with their troubles and find solutions without her saying much – except to tell them they are marvellous people.’ She sobered suddenly. ‘Do you remember how, when I discharged myself from the maternity unit with Georgie, I asked her to meet me at the back gates in the car? I went out in my robe so that no one would guess I was actually leaving the hospital. She was there, with Vicky. Quite calm. Told me that everything would be fine, and of course I could keep Georgie and bring him up like a proper brother to Vicky. She told Rex to collect my stuff and make it all right with the hospital and he did it. He wouldn’t have done it for me.’ She squeezed us to her. ‘She gave me strength. And that’s what we can do for each other. The three of us. Like the bloody musketeers! We can give each other strength.’
‘Oh Meriel . . .’ Hermione’s voice was quavery. ‘That’s wonderful. I’ve always wanted to be like my Aunt Eva who was so strong. But this would be better still. Three of us. Like an isosceles triangle!’
I heard Meriel gasp and then shriek with laughter. She spluttered, ‘You can do the math. Rache can do the English. And I’ll sweep up the mess – how does that sound?’
Hermione laughed, too and after a second I joined them. It wasn’t the moment to be asking what mess Meriel would be sweeping up . . . and why should it be her with the broom?
They left two days later and I cried off going to Southampton this time. The owner of the Jag, who was one of the officers at the US camp at Fairford, drove them there, and Sheba went with them to help. We said our farewells the night before; it was less of a strain for the children. Rex said that, and for once Meriel agreed with him. We hugged and she said, ‘We’ll take good care of him, you know, Rache.’ Of course she meant Dad. And I said, ‘I know that.’ It seemed to satisfy her.
I didn’t know what to do with myself. I think it was a Wednesday, which was the day for Daphne’s Rhyme and Rhythm class, but the girls did not want to go without Vicky and Georgie. I suggested visiting Mrs Nightingale, who was living alone in the old family house and had been fervent with her invitations when we had called in with Meriel. I wasn’t sorry when they turned that down. We had had a life before the Robinsons came for the Coronation, but it was hard to remember it.
It was wonderful to see Tom after lunch. The girls no longer ‘went down’ for an hour’s nap, and the afternoon stretched ahead endlessly. They went mad when they heard his key in the door: ran into the hall and swarmed up his body yelling ‘Daddy Daddy!’ I wasn’t far behind them. I leaned against the living-room door, and smiled as he dropped his case and clutched his daughters instead. ‘You won’t be able to do that much longer,’ I said. They were almost three years old, and with Tom and me as parents they were not small.
They slithered back down, and he stooped with them. ‘Can’t do it now,’ he said breathlessly. We staggered into the kitchen while he explained that the Gaffer had declared the planning session ended when Maxine had arrived with a dog. ‘It’s a poodle.’ He accepted a cup of tea, grinning at Daisy as she vociferously demanded a ‘doodle’ of her own. ‘Not likely,’ he said immediately. ‘I’m scared of dogs.’ He looked up at me. ‘Can you understand why the Gaffer stands up to anyone – mayor, councillors, police, politicians . . . but not Maxine? And Maxine with a poodle, too!’ He slurped his tea. ‘I’m not criticizing. It means we can put you two on the bike seats and go down to the brook for a paddle!’ He smiled at me. ‘On the way home, we’ll pop in to see George, shall we? He’ll be missing them, too, and maybe getting cold feet about his trip.’
I smiled back and said, ‘I don’t think so.’ He raised his brows, but said nothing, and we got ready and loaded the girls on the backs of our bikes and cycled the two miles to Twyver’s Brook, where the remains of the dam Georgie had built last week was still hanging on to the bank.
When the girls were in bed that night I tried to explain to Tom why I found things ‘a bit flat’, as he put it.
‘It’s something to do with losing my memories.’ I spread my hands. ‘Meriel revived them at first. And now they’ve gone.’
He tried to comfort me. In the end I had to tell him about Dad. I hated doing it; I didn’t want anyone else to know that my dad was a traitor, not even Tom. But I simply couldn’t keep up the pretence that everything was OK; not any more.
We were in the garden. It was that sort of summer’s night. Mum used to call it balmy. Meriel would be on deck looking at these stars. Dad might be outside too, wondering what on earth he was getting himself into . . . but then he must have done all that kind of wondering before. Tom was silent; he seemed completely shocked. But then I knew he was trying to work it out. I wanted to reach for his hand, but thought it was better that he should reach for mine.
He did not.
After what seemed like for ever – he was so damned good at these silences – he said, ‘He told you this himself?’
‘Yes. How else would I know?’
‘You and Meriel, you enjoy cooking things up . . .’
‘You think I would cook up something like this?’
‘No. But sorry, I still don’t believe it.’
‘You said that as if I ought not to have believed it – d’you think I wanted to believe it?’
He let that one hang for another age. Tears were pouring down my face. I needed more than his hand, I needed his shoulder. I had lost Meriel, I had lost Dad and I really had lost Mum. I couldn’t afford to lose Tom.
Then he said slowly, ‘D’you think he believed it?’
I tried to do his trick and not speak. He must have heard . . . known . . . that if I had I would simply have exploded into sobs.
He said, ‘If the Gaffer hadn’t leaned on the Chief Constable and hushed up the business of Sylvia Strassen’s murder . . . if the actual murderer hadn’t been found hiding under the platform at the railway station . . . you might have been implicated, Rachel. D’you think something as random – accidental – as that might have happened to your dad?’
I looked at him through that summer dusk.
‘The Gaffer? Uncle Gilbert? How could he have known that Sylvia Strassen had come to see me?’
‘Because I told him. Reminded him that you were his goddaughter, too.’
‘Oh . . . Tom.’
‘It could have happened to George, Rache. Don’t ask me how. I haven’t had long enough to think. And there seem to be so many people implicated. Hermione’s dad as well as yours. Eva . . . Strassen himself. Even poor old Silverman.’
At last that hand came out for mine and I collapsed into his shoulder.
He whispered into my ear. ‘If he’d given them the Crown jewels, Rache, he wouldn’t have been a traitor. You know that.’
Of course I knew. I laughed as I sobbed. Laughed at myself for being such a fool. Then I held on to Tom. And kept holding on.
Fifteen
I THOUGHT IT would be harder than it actually was. I mean Dad going to stay with Meriel. But my feelings about Dad were so ambivalent I was almost glad of his absence. I thought I’d get it all straight in a few months, and everything would somehow become all right. In fact, better. Dad would be a proper ‘grandee’ to Rose and Daisy, and my special friend again. I worked on this from all angles; the best o
ne seemed to be an acceptance that the past was not real. The past was a series of dreams, cherished and polished beyond any kind of reality. I got out the folder where I kept my bits and bobs of writing, and I re-read all the stuff I’d got down about the summer of 1944, when Meriel and I had had our ‘awfully big adventure’. And I saw it for what it was: a series of events that I’d threaded together to make coincidental. Nothing had come of them; the people in them were victims of the war. We – Meriel and I – were victims of the war. Sylvia Strassen’s murder came under that heading, too. And nothing had come of that, either. I had thought I would be implicated, that I would drag Mum and Dad with me. Nothing had happened. The young man who had hit her with her old-fashioned flat iron had been returned to a German psychiatric hospital after a long drawn-out legal battle. He had never explained why he’d done it. No one would probably ever know, either, why Mr Silverman had hung himself. And after so many years, it was old news. It could all be filed away in the cellar beneath the Clarion’s offices in St John’s Lane with all the other world-shattering events that had never actually shattered the world.
I told myself that Dad’s horrific disclosure could go with them. It had happened, he had sold his precious invention to the enemy, and they had still lost the war. It had not made any difference. It could be filed, too. Eventually. What had emerged from all that was Meriel meeting Rex and me meeting Tom. Those meetings were what joined the past and the present. Not my father’s treason.