Sam shook his head clearly preoccupied with the letter in his hand. “I must go to Zurich just to see if I can find a clue. Besides, I’m too restless, to be honest. I can’t settle down to civvy life, much as I hated the army. I’m going to travel. I’ve made a suggestion to Minnie Fisher that she goes and lives at Upper Park in my absence.”
“Minnie goes to live at Upper Park?” Deborah raised her head with interest at this potential piece of gossip.
“Of course I shan’t be there. I have told her she must use it for as long as she likes.”
“Are she and Alexander ... parting?” Deborah glanced sideways at Abel.
“Minnie finds herself in a very difficult position,” Sam replied. “One can understand it. It is very difficult, too, for Alexander.”
“Did you talk to Alexander?”
“No. Why should I? If Minnie wants to tell him she can. Anyway she hadn’t made up her mind. I thought you might keep an eye on the property while I’m away if anything goes wrong, any repairs need doing. That is, if you don’t mind?”
“Sam!” Abel leaned against the desk his arms akimbo. “Are you going to take an interest in the business or not? If not we would like to buy you out.”
“For the moment,” Sam replied, “I can say nothing. When and if I know what has happened to Bart I’ll make a decision. Meanwhile as I have a majority share I shall remain a sleeping partner and hope that you can make me a rich man. If I am to travel and stay in comfortable places I shall have need of all the money I can get.”
Later that morning, as he saw Sam out, Abel thought ruefully that it was not for nothing Bart had entrusted his business to his son. Sam was intent on travelling, leaving Deborah and himself to do all the work.
When he returned to the office Deborah was standing by the window watching Sam drive off.
“I shan’t be sorry to see my brother go,” she said taking Abel’s arm. “We’ll work much better with him out of the way. He’s too restless, a chip off the old block, if you ask me.”
“But he gets a large percentage of any profits. That’s what I object to. I knew Bart left him very well off. He’s as canny as Bart ever was.” Abel who had his wife to keep as well as his new establishment spoke feelingly.
“Darling,” Deborah put her head against his shoulder, “what does it matter as long as we’re happy and have enough? In time Sam might change his mind and we can buy him out. Who knows but that Bart might return?” She looked at him solemnly. “Who knows what the future will bring? We have to live for today. The war has taught us that much.”
The house in the prosperous Swiss city of Zurich was in a narrow street that had clearly seen better times. It seemed that some renumbering had been going on and, at first, Sam thought with a sense of despair that he wouldn’t be able to locate the exact building where Anton Lippe had lived or, hopefully, still lived even now.
Then beneath the freshly painted numbers he was able to make out the original digits and, finally, he found Number six, the number he had been looking for, quite legible under the newly painted number four.
He stood back and looked up at the house which had long ago been turned into apartments. There was a line of nameplates beside the door. Scrutinising them he could hardly make out any of the names, some had clearly been there a long time.
The door opened quite easily when he pushed it and he found himself in a tiled hall with a stack of unopened mail on the ledge of what had once been a fireplace. In front of him were two doors with nameplates on them and then a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
He looked at the names but they meant nothing to him. Then he began a slow climb to the top. On each landing were two doors, all with a nameplate on the door, none with the name of Lippe.
When he got to the top he felt a sense of despair. There was no sign of Anton Lippe’s name, or any way whereby he could possibly find out which apartment he had occupied nine years before.
He stood on the landing at the top of the house and then slowly began to make his way down again. Halfway down a door opened and an elderly woman emerged dressed in a squashed felt hat and a shabby grey coat with a shopping bag over her arm.
She glanced at him cursorily and turned to lock the door.
“Excuse me, madam,” Sam said in the halting German he had picked up during the war, “have you lived here for long?”
“Vous êtes Français?” The woman peered at him.
“Anglais,” Sam said.
“Ah!” The woman nodded and then said in reasonable but heavily accented English, “I thought you looked French. Now, in answer to your question I have lived here since 1925. Why do you ask?”
“Did you ever know a Herr Lippe?”
“Herr Lippe?” The woman gazed at the ceiling as if trying to recall the man in question. “Ah, Herr Anton Lippe.” She smiled at him triumphantly at this feat of memory. “I used to teach languages and so I have a good memory for names.”
Sam’s heart gave a bound.
“Yes, Anton Lippe. He either lived here or had an office here.”
“He lived here,” the woman said nodding her head vigorously several times. She pointed her finger upwards. “He lived at the top in a small apartment, like mine. They are all small here.”
“Lived?” Sam’s heart sank. “He is no longer here?”
“Oh no!” The woman shook her head. “He was a mysterious man. He was taken away, I think by the police. They cleared the whole place, everything, and left the door wide open for all to see. When I went up the following day to try and discover what had caused the upheaval the night before – we all heard it, but no one dared investigate at the time – everything was gone. The place was empty.” She made a dramatic gesture with her hand. “Cleaned out.”
“Why did they come for him?”
The woman shrugged. “They say he was a Jew. The Swiss, you know, didn’t like Jews and were in collusion with the Gestapo. Some of them, not all. Money changed hands. They were corrupt like all officials in wartime. I am not really able to say what happened. In those days we didn’t ask questions. It was too dangerous for everyone, even here in supposedly neutral Switzerland. Many Jews tried to get in and were refused and some that were here were expelled. Thank God those days are over. I am from Alsace myself. I would like to go back but I don’t suppose I ever shall.” She looked a little forlorn.
“And you knew nothing more about Herr Lippe?”
“Nothing. When he was here I seldom saw him, occasionally meeting him here on the stairs as today I have met you. He was the sort of person you don’t remember. I didn’t even know what he did; he was away a lot.”
“And when did this happen, this clear out?”
The women studied the floor frowning in an effort to remember.
“In forty-one or forty-two. I can’t really remember when, and I would never have thought about it again if you hadn’t reminded me. Was he a relation of yours?”
“No. Nothing to do with me at all. It is just that he might have provided some information I wanted about a relation of mine who also disappeared in the war. It seems he and Herr Lippe knew each other.”
“Uh!” The woman shrugged again clearly beginning to lose interest. “There are some things about which we will never know the truth. So many people disappeared, a whole way of life was lost.” She gazed at him mournfully. “I’m sorry I was not of more help to you in finding your relative.” She looked at his face intently for a moment or two as if committing it to memory, this wizened old woman with bright knowing eyes and unruly wisps of grey hair straggling from under her hat. “There are some mysteries you know that are not meant to be solved. Maybe you were not meant to find Herr Lippe or your relative. Good day to you, sir.”
“Good day,” Sam said standing aside to let her pass. “You have in fact been very helpful.” He was about to offer some notes and then thought better of it. There was a dignity about this former teacher of languages that made him think such a gesture would be resented, however m
uch her circumstances had altered.
He walked slowly out of the building after her and then stood in the road looking up at the top floors wondering which apartment had belonged to Herr Lippe and what sinister events had happened on that night all those years before when he and everything connected with him disappeared.
Sam lit a cigarette, turned up his coat collar against the cold and walked away.
Maybe it was true, he thought, that some mysteries were not meant to be solved.
It was that day in a side street in Zurich, six years after Bart Sadler had disappeared in Berlin, that his son, Sam, finally decided to put out of his mind for good the thought that he would ever see his father again, and start a new life.
Chapter Fourteen
August 1946
Dora examined the bunch of grapes still ripening on the vine critically. The vendange was still some time off, but the grapes were very small. They looked undernourished. Unfortunately, it was the same all along the terraces packed with vines which had largely gone uncared for during the war. For the past year she had been trying frantically to establish the crop, but she had not got Jean’s experience and could no longer call in the help they’d once had from the trained oenologists who had studied their craft for years. She knew that very little of this crop would be bought by the négociants and most of it would have to be thrown away as it had last year.
It was a depressing business.
She looked down at the river flowing past as timelessly as it had always done in war and in peace, through good times and bad. There was something so peaceful about the river. It seemed to unite her with Jean and his companions who lay in a quiet cemetery not far away, their graves lovingly tended by her and the relatives of the men who had died with him.
Jean was gone, but now, thank God, this area no longer echoed to the sounds of gunfire. A peace of a sort had broken out, though Europe seemed as far from recovery as ever. There was no actual war, but there was no actual peace either, and the news from further afield seemed like shock waves spreading outwards. Unrest continued in Palestine, where the Jews were trying to establish a Jewish state after the horrors of the Holocaust. There was civil war in China, insurrection in India, which wished to break with the Empire, and everywhere a great shortage of food.
Dora felt a hand on her shoulder and turned to see Sally looking at her.
“Take a break,” she suggested. “Let’s go and have a cup of good old-fashioned English tea.”
“Why not?” Dora smiled and, tucking her épinettes into the pocket of her apron, put her arm through Sally’s as they strolled back towards the house. There were still a few of the workers they had had for years tending the vines, but they were mostly old men now. Many of them had lost sons in the war; of the ones who remained most preferred work in the cities to the country. They smiled at her as she passed, and now and then she stopped for a word of greeting.
“I suppose you’ve known a lot of them for a long time?” Sally asked.
“Oh yes, and Jean knew their families all his life. Some of them he went to school with. Some families have been coming here for the whole of the century.” She sighed. “I don’t know for how much longer.”
“What do you mean?” Sally looked at her with concern.
“Well, I have to be realistic. How much longer can I stay here without an income? We have really no money coming in and there is a lot of investment needed, to say nothing of wages.”
“Can’t the family help?”
“You don’t suppose I’d ask them? Besides, Mummy already pays Louise’s school fees.” Dora looked thoughtful as they came to the back door of the farmhouse and walked into the dark cool kitchen, thankful to be out of the sweltering sun.
“You’re tired, dear, aren’t you?” Sally had gone over to the sink to fill the kettle as Dora took a seat by the table.
“Sometimes I feel like giving up.”
“You can’t mean it?”
“I do.”
“You mean selling up?”
“Yes, if I can get a buyer, and prices are low.”
“And do what? Go where?” Sally put the kettle on the stove and took a chair opposite her friend. Looking at her hand Dora noticed she no longer wore her wedding ring.
“Where’s your ring?” she asked.
“I took it off.” Sally rubbed her finger as though she had suddenly become self-conscious.
“I see.” Dora raised her eyebrows but made no further comment. Her own she wore, and would, for the rest of her life. “As to where I would go ...” she leaned back and studied the ceiling, “I don’t know. Can’t decide. A lot depends on what Louise wants to do.” Louise had remained at boarding school in England where she was happy; it gave her continuity.
“Might you go home to your mother?”
“No.” Dora shook her head vigorously. “Oh, no. Definitely not. I don’t feel English any more, well, not to the extent that I want to live there. Frankly I would rather stay here. Jean is here, close by. I know it sounds sentimental, but I wouldn’t like to leave Jean. Who would look after his grave? Then when Louise finishes school will she want to remain in England? I don’t know. She’s half French and this is her patrimony.”
Louise now came for the holidays, sometimes bringing lots of friends who envied her her lovely home and the carefree life she could lead there. An additional bonus was that there was no shortage of food.
Sally rose and, the kettle having boiled, made the tea and passed Dora her cup. “Biscuit?” she asked opening a tin.
“Thanks.” Dora stretched out her hand, looking at her with affection. “You are good.”
It was so comfortable here with Sally, so natural, undemanding. Sally seemed happy too. Moreover she looked bronzed and revitalised, much more relaxed than when she came.
Sally sat down munching her biscuit.
“I have a bit of money,” she announced after a while. “In fact I have quite a lot. Dad left me and Mum equal shares of his fortune.”
“Did he?” Dora studied her biscuit. “I didn’t know that.”
“Carson knew, of course, but he was very meticulous about touching my money.”
“Oh, I know. He was the same with Connie, wouldn’t touch a penny. It was because his father was such a spendthrift, always after women with money. He didn’t need it anyway, as far as I know.”
“The point is,” Sally continued nodding her head as if in agreement. “I do like living here. I love this place and I love the vines. I’d like to know more about making wine. What would you say if I suggested investing in the business, becoming a partner, you know, with you?”
“Do you mean it?” Startled Dora gulped down her tea.
“Yes, I do.” Sally stretched out a hand and gazed at her bare finger. “You asked about the ring. Well, I’ve finally decided to ask Carson for a divorce. He won’t say no. He’ll be relieved. And you ...” she looked nervously across the table, “would you mind? I mean if my living here became permanent? I could always move out of it didn’t work. We could be honest with each other.”
Dora rose, and going round the table bent and pressed her cheek against Sally’s.
“You know there’s nothing I’d like better in the world. In this big house there is plenty of room for both of us. It will give us both a new lease of life.”
“That’s settled then,” Sally said a little shakily. “I’ll get in touch with my English lawyer straight away.”
*****
23 September 1946
Hotel Ritz
Madrid.
Dear Minnie,
I hope you won’t mind a line. I just wondered how you were getting on. I hope the staff are looking after you. Do let Deborah or Abel know if you want anything and please don’t pay any bills! They should all be sent to them anyway. You must know that Dad left me very well off. Though sometimes devious in his business affairs, he was careful with money and invested wisely, which enables me to travel at my leisure and stay in the best hotels
. So please don’t think you need to contribute anything to the upkeep of Upper Park.
Well, I have been to Zurich and discovered that Anton Lippe, who knew my father, was arrested there during the war and taken away. I met an old lady who told me he was supposed to be a Jew! That is very ironic, because Bart wasn’t.
I knew then that my search for my father had ended and, barring some miracle, I would never see him again, so I wandered through Europe which, believe me, is in a pretty parlous state. Parts of Germany, mostly the cities like Berlin, Dresden, Munich and Bonn, are flattened. You can’t get a hotel room in Berlin that hasn’t had some damage done to it. I hated Berlin, anyway, and left as soon as I could. Prague, Budapest, Belgrade are similarly in ruins. Prices are prohibitive, foodstuff scarce and there are beggars everywhere.
It is very distressing to think this is what we fought for. Not for the first time I found myself wondering if it was all worthwhile.
Spain has been luckier. As you know it remained neutral during the war, and this is the first decent hotel I’ve found for weeks. But there is destruction from the Civil War and the regime is depressing. There are pictures of Franco everywhere and a strong police presence. Opponents of the regime are not tolerated and there are rumours of sudden disappearances and torture.
I’m going to travel a bit through Spain and then Portugal. If I can, I’ll go across to North Africa, Morocco and Algeria.
If you would like to write me a line you can get me poste restante at the following places: Seville (end September), Lisbon (first two weeks of October), Rabat (end of October), Algiers (beginning of November).
I’ll write again before then. It would be great to hear from you.
Sam
*****
Carson drew to a halt outside the house where, many years before, he had first courted Connie, not because he had wanted to but because his father had insisted that Connie’s fortune would help the family finances.
Carson blushed even now whenever he thought about it. Connie had been a shy, myopic young woman, awkward and bashful in his company. Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined the transformation a few years in Italy would make, so that when she returned years later to sell her guardian’s house he fell in love with her and this time only persuaded her with difficulty to be his wife.
In Time of War (Part Six of The People of this Parish Saga) Page 19