“No. No one.”
“We should turn on the heat. And make a fire in the hearth. For this weekend at least the house should be properly heated.”
In the end they decided not to leave at all that evening. Frederic went out to scrounge up something to eat somewhere, and Beatrice fired up the small gas ovens in all the rooms, brought wood up from the cellar and made a large fire in the living room hearth. For a while she left the windows open to drive out the moldy smell that hung between the walls. Later on, it grew cozily warm. Beatrice sat on the floor in front of the hearth, stared into the flames and realized that lightness and calm were slowly spreading within her.
Frederic came back with red cheeks, bringing a blast of cold with him. He had picked up food from a pub: a bowl of Irish stew, fish and chips, different kinds of bread and cheese, and a bottle of wine. They ate the meal in front of the hearth. They didn’t talk; they listened to the hissing of the flames and the creaking of the hardwood floor, which began to come back to life in the warmth.
“It is a beautiful feeling,” Frederic said at some point, “to sit here with you, Beatrice. I’ve spent countless evenings here alone. They’re evenings I don’t like to remember.” He leaned over to her and kissed her on both cheeks. He paused for a second, hesitated, then kissed her on the mouth.
She held her breath and sensed that her whole body had tensed up. Everything within her resisted. She remembered how soft and willing her body had become when Julien had kissed her, how she had longed for his caresses. She waited for these familiar feelings to set in again, but something in her seemed not to want to respond.
What the hell is wrong with me? she thought unhappily.
“I think I’d better go to my hotel now,” she said, and stood up. She brushed a few breadcrumbs from her dress and neatly smoothed her shirt, as if by doing so she could bring order and calm to her thoughts, too.
Frederic had also stood up. “I’m sorry if I was too forward just now. I didn’t mean to embarrass you, and certainly didn’t mean to drive you away.”
“No, no, I didn’t feel that way.” She knew that she was standing there as stiff as a board and that she gave off a formality that would have been appropriate anywhere else, just not on this February evening before the hearth. “Good night, Frederic. Leave the ovens on till morning.”
“But of course I’ll take you back to the hotel,” said Frederic, and helped her into her coat. “Maybe it would have been better to go to a pub. It wasn’t a good idea to spend the evening here in my home.”
“We couldn’t have done differently. The house was close to moldering.”
“True. In the future I’ll have to make different arrangements.”
They walked through the dark, quiet streets. The cold stung like needles. When they got to the hotel, Frederic said hastily, “It’s probably the wrong moment to tell you this, Beatrice, but there’s no sense in my always carrying it around unspoken within me. I love you. I don’t know if you return this feeling or if you can imagine being able to return it one day. But you should know how things stand with me.”
He drew her hand to his lips and kissed it, then he went off into the night, almost falling over in his haste, as if he had been afraid she could say something in reply that would forever destroy all of his hopes. She stood in the street a while longer and waited for the tension in her body to ease. Very gradually her blood began to flow normally again. Her heartbeat had found its old rhythm.
Perhaps this stiffness would soften, sometime, somehow. Perhaps the life would come back to her, would grow light again. Perhaps she would be able to love again.
Back in London they saw each other almost every day. Beatrice began to grow accustomed to his company, to having him around. He learned more and more about her, got to know the full story of her life and all the blows fate had dealt her, and he seemed to understand something of the inner pain that refused to fade. Eventually, she also told him about Julien. He listened to her, and then asked the inevitable question. “Do you still love him?”
She paused to think. “No. No, I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so?”
“I’m still a little wounded. Especially because he showed such a lack of consideration in putting my life in danger. And because he went off without a word as soon as the war was over. These things still hurt, even now.”
He looked at her thoughtfully. “If it still hurts, then he’s still there within you.”
She shrugged her shoulders and said nothing in reply. They were sitting in a bar in Soho, drinking dark beer and listening to the voice of the blues singer, a black woman, who was doing her best to keep the bar’s few patrons entertained. Outside, the first mild wind blew, carrying with it a hint of fresh earth.
“Would you like to come home with me?” Beatrice asked.
“Now?”
“Yes,” she nodded. “Now.”
The soft feeling was there. It had come suddenly, as immediate as the hint of spring outside. The armor came off. She could take his hand as they walked the streets. She could breathe deeply. She could look forward to him and to the night that lay before them.
She unlocked the front door. Still holding his hand, she led him up the stairs.
Helene was sitting on a suitcase outside the door to her apartment, and the look on her face was full of reproach.
“I’ve been sitting here for hours,” she said. “Where in the world were you?”
She spoke German, and thus immediately shut Frederick out of the conversation.
“What are you doing here?” Beatrice asked in return. She made a point of speaking in English.
Helene raised herself up from her suitcase. She looked pale and dead tired and more like she was forty than in her mid-thirties.
“I came to check on you.” She fell, ridiculously, back into her mother tongue, so that the exchange was now conducted in two languages and Frederic could only understand half of it. “You haven’t written in five weeks. At Christmas and New Year’s you were more than odd. I thought to myself, something’s not right. And so I decided to come check on you.”
“Helene, this is Frederic Shaye,” said Beatrice. “Frederic, this is Helene Feldmann.”
From all she had told him, Frederic knew who Helene was. He extended his hand to her.
“I’m very happy to meet you, Mrs. Feldmann. Beatrice has often spoken of you.”
Helene took his hand, but it seemed to take some effort on her part. She couldn’t manage a smile. “Good day,” she said stiffly.
Meanwhile Beatrice had unlocked the door to her apartment. “How did you get in the building?”
“A woman let me in when I explained I had come to see you.” Helene shuddered. “I’d have probably frozen down there otherwise. Or been assaulted. It is a horrible area, where you live. How do you put up with it?”
“I’m completely satisfied with it.” Beatrice knew that she had to have turned white with rage. Helene’s appearance couldn’t have been more unwelcome, more inopportune.
“You should have told me that you were coming,” she said.
“How could I have?” Helene sounded on the verge of tears yet again. “It’s impossible to get in touch with you.”
“You know very well that you can reach me through Mrs. Chandler. You could have found out the number and contacted me. But you deliberately didn’t do it, because you knew perfectly well that I don’t want to have you here.”
Helene now stood in the small room and clung to her handbag as if it was herself she was holding together. “Aren’t you at all happy to see me?”
“It might already have occurred to you that it wasn’t the most ideal time,” was Beatrice’s unfriendly reply.
Meanwhile Frederic had brought Helene’s luggage into the room and set it in a corner.
“I’d better go now,” he said quietly to Beatrice. “You two should be alone for the moment.”
She wanted to ask him to stay, but she realized angrily that with Helene present there was no sense in it. They couldn’t even have a polite conversation, so much tension was in the air.
“Will we see each other tomorrow?” she asked unhappily.
“Right now you’ve got a visitor you have to take care of,” said Frederic. “But we’ll talk on the phone, okay?”
He gave her a kiss. Out of the corner of her eye Beatrice saw Helene stiffen and press her lips together to a thin slash. Damned, jealous crow, she thought. She was fed up.
Helene became a bit more relaxed after Frederic had gone, but she still could not conceal her horror at the circumstances in which Beatrice lived.
“You’ve only got this one room, right?” she asked, after she had taken a thorough look around the room but hadn’t discovered any door leading further. “Where’s the bathroom?”
“There’s a toilet for all the tenants on this floor and the one above it,” Beatrice explained. “It’s halfway up the stairs.”
“Oh … How many people share this … toilet?”
“Seventeen or eighteen people. I don’t know exactly.”
Helene looked so gray and tired that she almost made Beatrice feel sympathy for her.
“Do you have anything for me to eat? And where can I sleep?”
“The sofa is my bed, actually, but you can have it.” Now she had to give up where she slept, too. “I’ll just put a blanket on the floor.”
“And …”
“What else do you want? Oh yeah, something to eat. Look in the cabinet over there.”
She gestured towards the corner, where she had her electric hot plate and kept her dishes and groceries in a little cupboard. Helene looked through the drawers and brought out some bread, a jar of jam, and a few cookies.
“You’ve got almost nothing in there. No wonder you’re so thin!”
“I don’t eat at home very often.”
“You eat with this … this Frederic Shaye?”
“In between tutoring sessions I often eat at one pub or the other. And frequently in the evening with Frederic, yes.”
It looked like the cookies that Helene had just put in her mouth would stick in her throat. “I don’t understand why you …”
“Yes?”
“Why you live like this. In this … pit of an apartment. We have a wonderful house on Guernsey. You …”
“Excuse me, Helene, if I put this so bluntly: I have a house on Guernsey, not we. It belongs to me. You’re allowed to live there, that’s all. And I will decide for myself where I live. And for the moment I would like to live in London and not on Guernsey. Can you finally get that into your head?”
The corner of Helene’s mouth quivered. “You want to live here because of this man. Because you’ve fallen in love with him.”
Beatrice didn’t answer. Damn it, she didn’t owe Helene any explanation.
“The way he looked at you!” Helene went on. “And the way you were looking back at him. I noticed right away that there are a lot of feelings between you. And why are you bringing him back to your apartment at night? It’s an extraordinarily improper time, and I think you should …”
Beatrice was aware of an acute pounding at her temples. Her nerves were buzzing.
Once and for all, she thought, put her in her place once and for all. It won’t ever stop otherwise. She won’t relent.
“Helene, you can of course sleep here tonight,” she said. “But I’d like to ask you to leave again tomorrow morning. I didn’t invite you to come visit me. I don’t want you here.”
“Excuse me?” Helene asked in disbelief.
“I don’t want you here,” Beatrice repeated. “I’m asking you to please leave tomorrow.”
“You’re not serious!”
“I’m completely serious. I live my own life. I have for years now. You’ve finally got to start living yours. You’re still young enough for it.”
The pallor in Helene’s face intensified. She looked almost gray — gaunt and weary.
“After everything that’s happened,” she said, “after everything we’ve gotten through together, there’s nothing that can ever separate us.”
Beatrice let herself down onto the sofa. To her Helene’s words sounded like a threat.
“Oh god,” she said softly. “You will never, never let me go.”
“We belong together,” Helene replied softly. “Why do you resist this?”
“Because I want my own life.”
“Our lives are bound together.”
“You’re leaving tomorrow.”
“I’m staying,” said Helene.
Helene stayed in London for almost four weeks. By the third day Beatrice knew that nothing she did would make her go. She could put her suitcase outside the door, but Helene would just sit herself down on it and refuse to move an inch. She was like a tick — worse than a tick, Beatrice thought. With ticks, when they’d latched on to a dog’s skin, you could twist and tug until they had to give up and let go of their victim, little legs flailing. With Helene, though, you could twist however much you wanted, but it still wouldn’t make her let go. In certain respects she was extremely nimble. She picked a goal and stuck with it. On the way there you could do whatever you wanted to her. She would roll herself up, let herself be twisted and stepped on and shoved left and right, and at the end she wound up exactly where she’d wanted to be from the start. She picked herself up, uninjured. She’d accomplished what she’d set out to do.
After a few days Beatrice gave up the struggle and conceded the field to Helene. She pulled back, avoided the apartment just as much as she could. She knew that this was the only strategy available to her — to at least wear Helene down. Retreat made it so that Helene’s tactics no longer worked. But it didn’t have the effect of making Helene give up her plans.
Beatrice spent most nights with Frederic, and with that their relationship began more or less officially, but it wasn’t the same as it would have been had they experienced their first night together on that spring-like February evening. Beatrice didn’t go to him now out of any romantic stirring, but rather because she didn’t want to go back to her apartment. She was irritated and enraged and she slept with Frederic out of a certain spite. Beatrice didn’t know if their love’s beginning had anything to do with the manner in which everything would eventually end, but at the very least Helene had succeeded in creating a situation in which there was a lingering disturbance, that first, mild disturbance between two people who love each other, which can be smoothed over, but which can also develop an unexpected strength.
Helene used her days in London to go from store to store buying up the things she thought Beatrice so urgently needed. She purchased a rug, a chair, pictures, kitchen appliances, potted flowers, a floor lamp with a silk shade, and other small things that did, in fact, make the hole that Beatrice lived in look prettier and more inhabitable. When Beatrice happened to come home one day she almost fell over backwards in amazement.
“What have you been doing here?” she asked once she’d finally gotten hold of herself again.
Helene, who was sure to be furious and hurt on account of Beatrice not showing herself for days, gave a gentle smile. “I thought I’d make it a little nice for you. I know you don’t have much money, but you certainly could have set this place up a bit more lovingly. Do you like the things I’ve bought?”
There was no doubting that Helene had taste. The rugs, pillows, and pictures all fit together wonderfully.
“Where did you get the money?” Beatrice asked in place of an answer. Helene received a very modest pension, left to her on account of her dead husband. It had taken a long time for the ruin of post-war G
ermany to even be able to start making payments, much less send them over to Guernsey.
“I live frugally,” said Helene. “And so I can allow myself to do a little here and there to make you happy.”
Beatrice sank into the new chair and stretched her legs out in front of her, exhausted. “What you’re doing doesn’t make me happy, Helene. You’re weighing me down. You force yourself into my life. You try to compel me to share your taste. You won’t understand that we’re two separate people.
“I’d like for you to feel at ease,” Helene said gently.
“And I’d like to just live my life,” Beatrice said in exhaustion.
At the end of March Frederic asked her to marry him. She had known that this question would come, but she had expected it to come later. She agreed, then went home to her apartment and informed Helene, who sat on the sofa with a towel wrapped around her newly-washed hair, that she and Frederic would be having their wedding soon. Helene’s face fell.
“You’re getting married?” she asked finally.
“Yes. We’re going to live together in Cambridge.”
“I will not be coming to this wedding,” Helene said, stone-faced.
“I wasn’t actually going to invite you,” Beatrice replied.
The next morning Helene packed her bags and took a taxi to the train station. She hadn’t said one more word to Beatrice in the remaining hours. She didn’t say goodbye when she left, either. She was as upset as a person can be. Beatrice hoped she would leave her in peace for a long while.
Frederic was stricken when he heard about this. He had heard a lot about Helene, but he had failed to fully grasp what was going on between her and Beatrice and what exactly their relationship was made up of.
“I believe I’ve driven the two of you apart for good,” he said unhappily.
“There was nothing to drive apart,” Beatrice’s response was curt. “We were never together in the first place.”
The Rose Gardener Page 37