The Dower House

by Malcolm Macdonald

  He sighed. ‘But she’s very . . . I mean she’s almost a mind-reader. She can know lots of things about people without ever asking or being told. So I expect she does know. In her bones.’

  ‘In which case,’ Angela spoke carefully, ‘don’t you find it odd that she encouraged you to make this trip with me?’

  What Felix ought to have replied was: ‘Did I tell you she encouraged me?’ for, indeed, he had never told Angela any such thing and, until now, she had been just as careful not to ask. Instead he said, ‘I suppose – if she does know how I feel about you – she’s baffled as to why I’ve not done anything about it.’

  ‘Well, Felix, my darling,’ Angela exploded in frustration, ‘she’s not the only one! Why have you been doing nothing about it? You’ve had lots of chances – and never a better one than last night!’

  ‘I know! I know!’ he said wretchedly.

  ‘While you were lying there, two metres and a million kilometres away from me, I was lying there with tears running down my face.’

  ‘Oh . . . oh . . .’ He rolled his head in savage anguish on her shoulder until she put up a hand to cushion his weight.

  ‘Why?’ she whispered. ‘Why?’

  ‘Trocadéro!’ the conductor called out.

  ‘Oh! Let’s get off here!’ Suddenly animated, she grabbed his hand and dragged him along to the exit.

  The conductor reminded them that they had bought tickets to the Place de la Concorde but Felix just shrugged and, tilting his head toward Angela, said, ‘C’est la femme eternelle!’

  No argument there.

  ‘Here!’ Still tugging him by the arm she dragged him across the open space to the balustrade from which you get the most famous view of the Eiffel Tower. ‘Does this remind you of anything?’ She went right up to the balustrade, threw back her head, squared her shoulders, and clasped her hands in front of her, arms straight down in a V.

  Seeing her from behind, a commanding silhouette against the Eiffel Tower, he felt the hair rise on the back of his neck. ‘Hitler!’ he whispered. ‘Here. Right here!’

  She turned round, grinning joyfully. ‘The only time he ever visited Paris. He stood exactly here and did a little jig of pleasure.’

  Felix gazed down at the flagstones beneath their feet, trying to comprehend that the jackboots which had figuratively crushed the life out of so many millions and plunged the world into a crisis that might yet precipitate a further war – those jackboots had literally danced a little jig of childish joy right here, on these very stones. That stone, perhaps . . . or that one. He felt nauseous.

  ‘Don’t you see!’ Angela exclaimed, her eyes shining, her whole body a-quiver. ‘He thought he’d finished us off, both of us. Our deaths were among the millions in his mind when he stood here and danced his little jig. With France in his grasp he had secured the last escape routes out of Europe. From that moment on, we were in the trap and he could hunt us all down at his leisure. But where is he now? He’s dust and ashes and we’re here instead. And we’re alive and it’s our turn to dance!’ At which she grabbed him and whirled him off in a mad polka, round and round on the spot where that man had once dared to suppose he could lift his sights from Europe to take on the world.

  At the top of the Eiffel Tower he said, ‘I don’t really know Paris at all. There’s Sacré Coeur – I never went inside. All those times I went to Montmartre I never went inside Sacré Coeur. And the Panthéon . . . Napoleon’s tomb . . . never went there. Never went inside Nôtre Dame. That’s the Pont de la Concorde – the bridge with the famous Marly horses – I never walked across that one.’

  ‘The Louvre?’ she suggested. ‘You never went inside there?’

  He laughed and, bending his head to hers until they touched, said, ‘Sorry. I was just preparing you not to expect too much in the way of a tour.’

  ‘This is a good tour – un tour d’horizon!’ She swept a hand across the panorama. ‘But the tour I really want is one around the inside of your head. Paris can wait.’

  ‘What d’you expect to find?’

  ‘What I’d love to find is the reason why you thought you couldn’t trust your own feelings and why you thought something wonderful could never happen to you.’

  ‘You’ve never doubted such things in yourself?’ he asked.

  ‘Never. I can doubt my memory, my judgement, my reasoning, but never my feelings. How can you doubt feelings? Doubt itself is a feeling. It’s like saying doubt can doubt itself.’

  ‘But – more personally,’ he replied. ‘You were twice as long in Ravensbrück as I was in Mauthausen, and yet . . .’

  ‘You think that has made it impossible to have true feelings? Or to trust them?’

  He gazed down at cars that were smaller than the smallest Dinky Toys, at huge apartment blocks no larger than sugar cubes, at trees like moss. Somewhere down there, he thought, there must be hundreds of people who could explain this so much more clearly than I can. ‘You see . . . with Faith—’

  ‘To hell with Faith! Tell me about you, about me and you.’

  ‘No. The thing is . . . I thought, you see . . . that if I can find life so comfortable and congenial with her . . . stimulating ideas . . . laughs . . . trust . . . I mean, there may not be any love between us but there’s lots of emotional trust . . . but then, of course, I could never live a single hour without also thinking of you . . . and . . .’

  ‘What does “thinking of” me mean, Felix?’

  The sun emerged from behind a cloud, low in the sky and a fiery orange; it was as if a warm spotlight had suddenly been trained upon him. ‘I thought the worst thing for me would be to tell you I love you and then be rejected. But—’

  ‘You could at least—’

  ‘No – wait! There was something even worse – because, of course, I could feel that you were not indifferent to me.’

  She drew breath to say something bitter-sweet . . . and then thought better of it.

  ‘And,’ he continued, ‘it would have been even worse if I had been honest about my feelings and you had responded and . . . you know . . . got engaged . . . got married . . . and then found we are too emotionally damaged to . . . I mean, I couldn’t face the risk. What d’you think? D’you think we can?’

  She leaned out over the rail and watched people moving like ants, casting long shadows in the lowering sun. ‘You can see why bomber pilots have such easy consciences,’ she murmured.

  ‘Perhaps it’s possible?’ he prompted. ‘You and me?’

  ‘It will be a tender plant,’ she said. ‘And it won’t prosper if one of us keeps digging it up to see how the roots are getting along.’

  He stared past her, toward the sun; his gaze put her in mind of some raptorial bird – intense, bright-eyed, and yet chillingly expressionless. That, more than anything, gave her an intimation of the trouble he feared. She shrugged it aside; she, at least, was made of stronger, more optimistic mettle. ‘And you would be doing that – wouldn’t you!’ she insisted.

  ‘Words!’ he said scornfully as he took her face in his hands and moved close enough for their noses to touch. Staring deep into her eyes he saw them melt and liquefy; when she blinked, the tears overran her lower lids and sprouted on her cheeks. She tilted her face upward until her lips brushed his. He planted a tiny kiss at the more distant corner of her mouth . . . another in the centre . . . another at the nearer corner . . . and then the universe closed around them and it was as if they slaked a thousand-year hunger in one long, sustained kiss of immobilized passion. To a casual observer – and there were several up there on the topmost level – they were no more than a pair of lovers yielding to some trivial stimulus. Outwardly there was nothing to reveal that this kiss, at this moment, in this place, was the kind that changes the entire course of two people’s lives.

  And when it was over, they both felt an enormous sense of calm. Still too close to focus her clearly, Felix peered into the dark, misty pools of her eyes and thought, A lifetime will not be long enough.
/>   And Angela . . . well, to be honest, she was thinking, Must get him a better razor.

  Hand in hand they returned to earth in easy silence. They recrossed the Seine by the Pont de l’Alma and walked up the right bank, along the Quai de la Conférence, saying things like ‘Liebe dich!’ and ‘Je t’aime!’ as they strolled, because the things they really wanted to say were all too momentous and too ill-formed and, anyway, they didn’t need to be put into words just yet.

  They hugged so tightly into each other that their steps became clumsy and they had to relax a little. And then everything was funny – ducks, fishermen, the bateaux mouches, the floating swimming baths where intrepid Parisians could swim in filtered Seine water . . . they smiled or giggled or laughed aloud at each until they came back at last to earth.

  ‘Talking of the Dower House . . .’ she said

  ‘Were we?’

  ‘Well – we are now . . . what to do about it? Do you move in with me in Robert Street and travel out of town to work each day at the Dower House, in the studio part of what will be Faith’s cottage? Or what?’

  ‘I thought we’d just – you know – talk it over with Faith. She will certainly have her own ideas.’

  ‘She won’t give up the stabling for Jupiter too easily.’

  ‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘I’m glad you see the problem. D’you think we could buy your flat in Robert Street and keep it as a pied-à-terre? It would be nice to have a little place in Town. We could go to the opera . . . the theatre . . . concerts . . . without having to trek all the way out to Hertfordshire when it’s over.’

  She dragged him to a halt and jerked his arm to make him face her. ‘You’re serious!’

  ‘Well, I am doing quite well – largely thanks to Fogel . . . which really means largely thanks to Faith. I’ve been invited to become a sculpture tutor at the Slade – two days a week – and I have a commission from the BBC at Ally Pally and another from the LCC for a large piece in Battersea Park – and there’s a convent in Chelsea where they want—’

  ‘All right!’ Angela laughed. ‘I had no idea.’

  ‘And since I can’t buy the cottage . . . I mean, the gravel company is never going to sell the Dower House – it would make sense to buy a property somewhere. Your flat seems ideal. Or should we look around Primrose Hill? That’s also within walking distance of the West End and there are some lovely places there, starting at under five thousand.’

  ‘Five thousand? Whew! Could you afford that much?’

  ‘We.’

  She stopped and faced him. ‘We! Is that a proposal, Felix?’

  He took up both her hands and kissed them, first the right, then the left. ‘I suppose it is. Of course, you’ll need time to think it over.’

  She gazed skyward for about five seconds. ‘OK. I’ve thought it over and I accept. You did say five thousand? What about Faith – if you and I are living at the cottage . . . ?’

  ‘I’m sure we could reach some accommodation,’ he said vaguely.

  ‘You mean . . . no! She could stay on?’

  ‘It’s quite a big cottage – and there’s an unused one-up-one-down at the end. She could have that. And we could knock a doorway through to it so she could use the bathroom and kitchen.’ He laughed. ‘Just think! Back in ’forty-four – if anyone had told us then “Three years from now Hitler will be two years dead and you’ll be walking by the Seine, in a Paris free of Nazis, arm-in-arm with the one you love, discussing living in an English stately home and buying a pied-à-terre in London” . . . we’d have said he was delirious.’ After a pause he added, ‘I suppose that’s why I find it impossible to plan too far ahead.’

  ‘Or at all,’ she murmured.

  That night they did, indeed, have separate rooms.

  ‘Shall I come night-crawling?’ Felix asked at the parting of their ways.

  After a brief hesitation she said, ‘A bit treacherous? To our host and hostess, I mean? We have the sleepers tomorrow night.’

  When they kissed goodnight she felt him harden. She pushed him away. ‘Can you wait?’ she asked.

  ‘Sure.’ He set off for his room, adding over his shoulder, ‘It’s just hooked up to the wrong parts of the nervous system. The bits we can’t reach.’

  The dangerous bits, she thought.

  Wednesday, 1 October 1947

  They left their bags in a locker at the Gare du Nord and then, at her pleading, he rather reluctantly showed Angela his old apartment – or the exterior of the building, at least – in the Rue d’Argenteuil. ‘They took three Jewish families from that building over there,’ he said. ‘And I stood up there and wondered what I could do to help. Give them a character reference? Protest? Being German, I thought my protests might carry some weight!’ He gave a single harsh laugh that turned a few nearby heads.

  ‘Where had you been living for the previous nine years?’ she asked.

  He nodded ruefully. ‘Not in the real world. Being German, I hadn’t paid too much heed to the situation of the Jews. And then the police crossed the street and entered my building. I thought, Hello! I wonder who’s Jewish here?’ He sighed. ‘Oh – enough of this!’

  They set off for the Avenue de l’Opéra but had gone only a few paces when a man came running out, hatless, crying, ‘Monsieur Breit? Herr Breit? C’est vraiment vous-même?’

  Felix turned and after a shocked moment of non-recognition, cried, ‘Monsieur Tesnière! Vraiment?’ Then to Angela: ‘This is the gentleman who got word to Dufy. Oh Pierre . . . mon chèr ami!’ And he pumped the man’s arm fit to break its bones.

  It was a pleasant shock for Angela to hear herself introduced as his fiancée – the first public acknowledgement.

  ‘You must look after this gentleman, mam’selle,’ Tesnière told her solemnly. ‘He is a great artist.’

  ‘Ah, Pierre, you have no idea how important this young lady is!’ Felix slipped his arm around her. ‘And how precious.’

  Tesnière made an expansive Parisian gesture. ‘You must come up to the apartment. Hélène will be so pleased! I saved some of your smaller sculptures.’

  Felix’s jaw dropped.

  ‘It’s true. I have kept them for you. I knew you would be back.’

  The concierge was new; the introduction was brief. With the merest shake of his head, Tesnière nipped in the bud Felix’s questions about Mme Réage, the concierge of his day.

  Steps. These familiar – and safe again.

  ‘La Réage informed for the Gestapo,’ he explained when they were out of earshot . . . and he drew a finger across his throat. ‘In the Seine.’ Without a pause he continued, ‘You recall that it was just one flic and one Gestapo man who arrested you? Well, in the four or five minutes your apartment was empty and unguarded . . . pffft! Out came six little sculptures. I had to leave two or they would have been angry enough to search the entire building. They were angry anyway – but they had more important business that day.’

  Angela was surprised. ‘So when they released you that day – you didn’t come back here at all?’

  ‘Certainly not! I sat in a café – La vache qui rit – and sent light-hearted pneumatiques to my friends – because I knew the Gestapo would intercept them and it would make them relax. And meanwhile the best forger in Paris was producing the necessary papers – and so, by midnight, I was out of the city and on the road to Vichy France.’ He grinned at Tesnière. ‘Only five years ago, eh!’

  ‘We heard this,’ Tesnière said. ‘We knew you got away safely because they offered rewards for your capture. You joined the Resistance, I suppose?’

  Madame T. was waiting for them at the head of the last flight of stairs.

  ‘Hélène!’ Unusually for him, Felix took them two at a time.

  Moments later both had tears running down their cheeks. Angela realized she had never seen him cry. In the apartment Felix said, ‘But nothing has changed!’

  ‘What should we change?’ Hélène asked. ‘There is nothing in the shops half so good as this. Aiee,
it will be years before Paris becomes again the city we all knew.’

  It was an upper-middle-class apartment, instantly recognizable from dozens of French movies – polished wooden floors, silk-brocade wall hangings, and a mixture of Louis XVI and Art Nouveau furniture. Angela guessed it was mostly inherited and that their true taste was displayed in the pictures and sculpture and bric-a-brac, which were all uncompromisingly twentieth century, from Expressionist to abstract to objèts trouvés. Including . . .

  ‘Ah!’ Felix cried out in delight as his eyes fell on the six rescued masterpieces – not a difficult achievement, since they were all assembled on a low table near the porcelain stove. ‘I had forgotten these – truly.’ He picked them up, restlessly, one by one . . . put them down . . . picked them up again. ‘I mean, I knew I had abandoned some sculptures here, but I couldn’t remember which ones.’ He handed one to Angela. ‘I wasn’t bad in those days, eh!’

  She would have taken it for a rather artistic dumb-bell. ‘It feels beautiful,’ she said. ‘Granite?’

  He nodded. ‘Black . . . African – from Nigeria, I think. Ha – the egg I did for Fogel was not the first, after all! I had completely forgotten this one. Cararra marble, too! But actually, it’s just any old spheroid . . . Fogel’s is a real egg.’

  True? Angela wondered, or was he preserving the memory that the egg idea had come to him when he and she were lunching at Schmidt’s?

  She became aware that Mme T. was surveying – indeed scrutinizing – her. She and her husband were much of an age with Felix but their relationship was clearly protective toward him. ‘We have a friend who works on Le Figaro,’ she said. ‘He told us you survived the Nazi camp and had landed on your feet in England. I wanted to let you know about the sculptures but Pierre said no, you would surely come back one day and he wanted to see your face when he told you.’

  Pierre laughed. ‘And it was worth it!’

  ‘But our journalist friend said nothing of a fiancée?’

  Angela said, ‘That’s because he wasn’t at the top of the Eiffel Tower yesterday afternoon.’