After the Cabaret (2 page)

Greg got another surprise. From the appearance of the house, the hall and the stairs, he had had the impression that Lowenthal must be eking out a poverty-stricken old age, possibly in one room with a couple of gas rings. There would be a narrow iron bed, a wardrobe, a TV, old wallpaper, some curtains sagging sadly on a bent rail at the window. Instead, he was faced with a long sitting room, furnished with modest antiques, all gleaming with polish. Long lace curtains billowed at the tall windows. At the sides were other curtains of heavy brocade, obviously old but fresh. There were some nice watercolours and a small oil painting on the walls. To the left was another door, leading, Greg assumed, to a bedroom, kitchen or bathroom.

Lowenthal waved him into a low chair, with tapestry seat and arms. ‘I will make some coffee,' he declared.

‘Thank you, sir, but I'd rather not,' Greg said.

‘Not British coffee,' Lowenthal assured him.

Greg smiled. ‘That's not the problem. I only arrived yesterday from the United States. It's six in the morning for me.'

Lowenthal shrugged. ‘Very well.' He sat down opposite Greg.

‘This is a beautiful room,' Greg said.

‘I deal in antiques.'

‘Yes. I saw from the London telephone directory you have a store in Portobello Road.'

‘I have a manager but I go in several times a week. You must visit me there.'

‘Thank you. I should like to.' Greg drew a breath. ‘My letter will have explained clearly, I hope, what I'm trying to do. Shall I say a little more about it before I start asking you questions? I take it you don't mind questions?'

‘Why else would you be here,' Lowenthal said, ‘if I didn't want to answer questions?'

A little uneasy in his low Victorian chair, Greg looked directly at Bruno Lowenthal and asked, ‘I'm curious about why you've never spoken out before. There's no reference to you in Charles Denham's book. Or anywhere else. Why did you decide on silence?'

Bruno's thin lips twitched. He raised grey, bushy eyebrows. ‘No one asked me, dear boy. No one tried to find me. I didn't want to be found. I expect they think I'm dead. I've no wish to be thought otherwise.'

Greg paused, waiting for more. Nothing came. ‘You didn't want to remember?'

‘I was running a business. I still am. What good would all that gossip do to my business? None at all. Waste of time,' Bruno concluded.

‘But now?' Greg asked, terrified that this determined, angry old man would, on a whim, terminate the interview. Never ask a question if you don't want to hear the answer, he reminded himself, too late.

‘Now,' said Bruno Lowenthal, waving a hand, ‘
now
, it doesn't matter any more. Now – I will tell my own story, before somebody else gets in first – yes?' He spoke lightly, as if to involve Greg in the fun, but Greg, suddenly fearful
that a project similar to his own, but further advanced, was in the pipeline, asked quickly, ‘Who?'

Lowenthal appreciated his anxiety. ‘Don't worry,' he said, with an unsympathetic smile. ‘I know of nothing else yet.'

‘I'm glad to hear it,' Greg replied. But could he trust this man? He had thought to interview a man broken by the European history of war, treachery and ruin. Yet here he was, physically strong, economically viable, or so it seemed, and thinking at least on a level if not ahead of Greg himself.

‘So,' he said, ‘you want to tell your own story at last?' He produced the tape-recorder he'd had running in the pocket of his jacket from the moment he rang the doorbell. ‘Do you mind if I use this?'

‘Of course not,' replied Bruno Lowenthal.

‘The first time I met Sally Bowles she'd arrived from Germany, if you please. She turned up at the flat in the West End I'd been sharing with three others since war was declared. She'd been living in Berlin from nineteen thirty to thirty-six, went off with a young lover to the Spanish Civil War. There the man died. Apparently she returned to Germany in thirty-eight. Why, I didn't know.' He told Greg of Sally's unwelcome arrival at Pontifex Street with the baby, Gisela.

‘Then she went to bed,' Bruno continued, ‘in Alexander Briggs's bed. I was terrified. Briggs was very fussy about anyone being in his bed – often wouldn't let
me
in it. Unluckily he arrived soon after. He was furious when he heard Sally was in the flat – he loathed her. “My God!” he said. “Look at the place!” And he stared at the plaster dust and the boarded-up window as if Sally had been responsible for the bomb that had fallen nearby the night before.

‘The apartment consisted of three storeys – no distance
from Oxford Street, the BBC and Other Places, where secret work was going on. The bottom floor was a shop, selling expensive cakes. The whole building belonged to Sir Peveril Jones.

‘“Where's Mrs Thing?” Briggs demanded. This was the woman Sir Peveril paid to come in and look after the flat. She lived in Croydon. Her husband, now in the Navy, had filled her up with twins before he left so what with the tots and their infant ailments, and her being, when it came down to it, in the eye of the storm where the battle of Britain was concerned, her visits were less frequent than they should have been. The other residents always called her Mrs Thing. At first I thought that was her name and once called her by it, just after we moved in, causing much offence. How was I to know that that was the British generic name for those who do such work? Even the Communists, which we were, used it. So Briggs was angry. I wasn't calm myself.

‘It was I who had been faced with trading a small quantity of sugar for a baby's bottle of National Dried Milk from a woman in the street I barely knew, and put up with Sally turning the kitchen upside down when she made herself a cup of tea. There was no other milk – she helped herself from the baby's bottle.

‘Briggs was upset by the disorder and the lack of lunch. He had, no doubt, been trying to analyse some coded messages from occupied countries all morning. He was even more upset when I told him Sally had had a bath and was now asleep in his bed. I said, “Briggs. She may be a spy.”

‘He responded, “Don't get in a state, Bruno. She's not a spy. Not if it's really Sally. And if she is, put out the flags. If she's spying for the Germans they'll have surrendered by Christmas from sheer despair.”

‘“She's come from St Malo, wearing a suit bought in Paris. She has a pair of silk stockings, also French. Be serious, Briggs,” I urged him.

‘“I am,” he said. “From what you say, she thinks she can stay here. Well, she can't. Sally and her little illegitimate must take to the highroad before nightfall – better still, the moment she wakes up.”

‘“She asked me about somebody called Theo. She said it was urgent to find him.”

‘Briggs said, “Ah. So Theo's the villain of the piece. Well, I can't say I'm surprised. But there's no point in her trying to find Theo Fitzpatrick and get him to take over because, first, he can't be found and, second, even if he could be, he wouldn't.”

‘“Even so, you should tell the authorities about her,” I said.

‘Briggs laughed. “About Sally? The authorities? Sometimes you're very German, Bruno.”'

Bruno said to Greg, ‘Briggs told me, “I have a meeting at two o'clock. You must get her out by the afternoon, old chap. I can't face finding her and the infant here when I get back. Here's five pounds.” Which he handed me. And departed. Leaving me to wake her up and send her off. I gave her another couple of hours' sleep. I know what it's like to have been on the run. It had happened to me five years earlier – but that is another story.'

Suddenly Bruno stopped speaking. He said, as if surprised, ‘You know, I find this tiring. I have not thought of these things for many years. It seems so strange in London, now, to be looking back so far.' He paused for a moment, then went on, ‘So – I knew what being a fugitive was like, as I say. Two hours later I woke her up. The baby, beside her in the bed, began to cry. I told her, “Briggs came back. He says you must go.”

‘She sat up in bed, naked, and all she said was, “Damn. I might have known it.” Then she grinned and said, “I
can imagine how glad the family will be to see me after so long, especially with Gisela.” Then she got out of bed, with nothing on, went to the bathroom and came back struggling into her slip, which she had evidently rinsed out and hung up to dry. “There's nothing like it, I can tell you, the feeling of struggling into a wet petticoat,” she told me. But I had seen my sisters doing the same, in Berlin. She got her suspender belt and started to pull on her stockings.

‘“Your baby has wet the bed,” I told her, when I looked at the sheets. It was screaming now.

‘“I'm sorry, Bruno. But there it is. That's the worst of babies,” she told me. “Oh, God,” she groaned, then, “Oh, God.” She seemed overcome with grief.

‘“What?” I asked.

‘“I'll have to go back to the family. Oh God – mother and father aren't going to like this at all. Maman is French. She's very correct. I used to pretend she was English, just to cheer myself up.” She groaned again. Then she pulled herself together, did up her suspenders and said, “Well, there's not much choice, not with this baby.” She got into her stained suit, stood in front of the mirror and began to put on makeup.

‘Briggs kept his room very tidy. The furniture also belonged to Sir Peveril Jones and it was new, clean, pale-coloured, as was the carpet. I slept in the dressing room through a door, just a small bed, a wardrobe – maybe to keep up the conventions but, more because Briggs liked his privacy.

‘“Who else lives here?” Sally asked, putting on lipstick.
I told her. “God, what a crew,” she said. “Alexander Briggs, Adrian Pym, you, Julia Montrose. You'd think they'd give a girl and her baby a bed for the night.” But she didn't argue. She had been on the run and when they ask you to go you go, without argument. “You're queer?” she asked, slapping a powder puff all over her face. It looked strange when she did that in that room, I can tell you.

‘“Of course,” I said.

‘“Thought I didn't get much response from you wearing only my birthday suit,” she said, with a smile. Well, she had a pretty figure, and a pretty face, also, with those big dark eyes and the full mouth. Very good teeth, also. I suppose she was accustomed to getting a reaction from men.

‘And she left that day. I gave her Alexander's five-pound note, and a flannel shirt for the baby and a hand-towel for its bottom, with pins, so it wouldn't foul itself on the journey. As she left she asked, “Any news of Theo Fitzpatrick?” and I shook my head. “I'll come back and ask again,” she promised and, baby under one arm, still crying, she marched off down the street, turning half-way down to fling up her arm, fist clenched, in a Communist salute.

‘You can imagine – I breathed a sigh of relief and went back inside to clear up. She was very untidy, Sally. You'll want to know what I thought of her. Well, I didn't hate her. I didn't love her either. She was privileged, you see. OK, she was of the left, but when it came down to it there was the same old bourgeois background. A cold home, perhaps. But a cold home is better than no home at all. And then, look at what I was – gay, queer, a friend of Dorothy, one of
those
, whatever you call it.'

‘It was a nightmare at Pontifex Street,' Sally told her father and stepmother some weeks later over breakfast. Through the window, the roses were out in the garden, and beyond lay the orchard, the farms, then the green swell of the Malvern hills. ‘The atmosphere's gruesome, like a haunted house or something.'

Sally's father might have been listening. Sally's mother was not. Paris, her home, had fallen to the German Army. They had marched victoriously through Napoleon's Arc de Triomphe. Her heart seemed too numb for grief, her body felt like lead. She could scarcely bear to think of the defeat of France, her family and friends abandoned in that occupied country. Equally she could hardly bear to hear Sally's prattle, except to wish that she was more like her younger sister.

‘I suppose it would have been difficult, with so many on the premises,' Harold Jackson-Bowles remarked, with some restraint. For several days after Sally had rung, late at
night, from the station, he had shown no restraint at all. He had ranted and raved. Sally's absence – two years without a word, then out of the blue her unexpected arrival at the station, asking to be picked up, perhaps she didn't realise petrol was rationed – was of minor importance. Of more note, though, was – what she had been doing all that time. Parents, surely, had a right to know what their daughter was up to. The major issue, of course, was the baby Gisela, and who the father was.

Sally had borne almost wordlessly the attack, the questions, the appeals to common sense, smoking all the time, and in the face of her lack of response her father had wound down, finally, like a clockwork toy. Harry Jackson-Bowles was tired. Although he was long retired, a country gentleman now, he had been forced to go back to his factories, because both his managers had been called up, and he was now turning out soldiers' khaki shirts and drawers at an enormous rate. The women were doing three shifts a day in Birmingham, and Harry Jackson-Bowles four days a week. On top of that there was the anxiety. No one knew if the Nazis would invade but they had already conquered six countries in under a year. Who knew if they might not be coming up the drive at any moment? And his heart was heavy for his wife, Geneviève, and her friends and relatives who, though they had never been very nice to him, were under the iron heel.

Geneviève Jackson-Bowles, formerly Février de Roche, thought of her sister and brother-in-law in the big, high-ceilinged flat overlooking the Luxembourg Gardens, her nephews, Benoît and Charles, her other sister, Clothilde
and her husband. Where were they? What was happening to them now? How many would survive? Would she ever see them again? Such thoughts must be suppressed or she would go mad, thought Geneviève.