Authors: Stephen Benatar
He considered the situation with matching gravity.
“Well, perhaps we should try to give it the benefit of the doubt, old girl?”
I smiled. “And it truly wouldn’t have been such a good idea, either, having the whole family round when I introduced Sybella, because—well, like I say—you two are quite overpowering enough, without any reinforcements. Don’t you think she’s beautiful?”
I had added this on impulse, having just happened to look down at her as she knelt in front of the sitting-room fire and skewered another thick slice onto the toasting fork.
“Oh, Eric, don’t,” she said. “Now you’re making me go all red!”
“Good. You deserve it. Spike your guns a bit when you’re talking to Greer Garson.”
“And, anyhow, why does it have to be my rear view that’s being held up for everyone’s assessment?”
(“Everyone!” I said. “She
does
like to exaggerate!”)
“Very beautiful,” proclaimed my grandparents in unison. And then: “Sybella, do you know Greer Garson?” from the one, while from the other: “Well, if it’s true you think I don’t brook any nonsense, then ’d better live up to my reputation and demand to know precisely how you met and where and at what time and what both of you said and what both of you said immediately after
that
. And so on. And so on. I warn you—I intend to be relentless.”
“Yet, Grandma, we’ve only got an hour or two. How can we possibly hope to do it justice in only an hour or two?”
“Oh, what nonsense! You’ll be spending the night here! Even if it’s no more than beans on toast that you’ll be getting for your supper.”
“But we can’t,” I said. “We’ve left all our things at the Lion. And remember we’re on bicycles, so we oughtn’t to—”
“Your grandfather and I can lend you everything you need. And you, darling, can have your old room and Sybella the guest room—you must be crazy if you think that after four long years we could ever be satisfied with just an hour or two!”
Sybella, who was sitting back on her heels, turned her head and smiled, first at myself and then at my grandmother.
“That would be wonderful,” she said, “if you’re sure it really isn’t too much trouble.”
And I thought that I might have read something else in the look which she had directed towards me: that my own room and the guest room surely couldn’t be so
very
many miles apart? Therefore I gave in with as good a grace as she herself had shown. (I hoped I would have done so, anyway.)
What’s more, for the time being at least, the questions had stopped and the answer to that last demand for information could wait until my grandmother had poured the tea and my grandfather had collected the biscuit tin. (“We must have been warned in some strangely mystic way—only this morning your grandmother baked some Banbury Cakes; her first batch for weeks!”) The answer could wait, indeed, until that last piece of toast, fresh off the fork and smelling faintly of wood ash, had been thickly spread with homemade raspberry jam.
Even Toby was treated to a Banbury Cake—which for the sake of his figure he shouldn’t have been.
And what about that answer? Happily, it was a joint effort, Sybella providing it one minute, me the next, but often with the other butting in. When we had conferred on the train that morning, neither of us had seen any reason to depart too wildly from the externals of our meeting (my having seen her in the play; our subsequent encounter in a pub), nor be coy about the time which we had later spent together. What could there be in any of that to require concealment? Naturally there was no need to say anything of Major Martin nor of the major’s mission. And of course, along with mythical fiancés, we made no reference to Somerset House; and, in fact, didn’t even allude to the Victoria Embankment Gardens.
Which meant that in the end—despite our general faithfulness to the essential spirit of the story—our account was a little more fudged, perhaps, than factual.
Though, even so, not quite so fudged as common sense might have dictated.
“Then you’re saying you’ve only known each other for three days?” My grandmother gazed at me in consternation.
“Three very full days,” I said, without drawing her attention to the fact that it was actually more like two and a half. I was sitting with Sybella on a sofa which faced my grandparents’ chairs and which was covered in the same chintz. “And I realized after only three
hours
, practically, that this was the girl with whom I wanted to spend the rest of my life.”
“But what will your father say?” It was the first reference to my father since we had arrived.
“Oh…” I looked thoughtfully at the row of copper saucepans hanging in decreasing sizes from a beam above the mantel. “Oh, doubtless he’s going to be a little old-fashioned about it. Or should I put it another way? Doubtless he’s going to be
exceedingly
old-fashioned about it.”
“And I imagine your other grandparents will certainly follow his lead?”
“Yes, bound to.”
“Mmm. Hardly unexpected, one might say, from the little one knows of them.”
Ironically, the one person she’d left out was the one person most likely to show genuine pleasure and excitement (even if these would probably be expressed only in the absence of my father). Which might well, indeed, have been the reason for her omission. Yet my stepmother had never been a great deal mentioned in this house—not so far as I knew—unless I myself had been the one to mention her.
Even so, I tried to be as fair as I could, to both my father and his parents.
“Of course, the fact of Sybella’s being British would scarcely cause
anyone
back home to congratulate me at the moment.”
(Excepting again—in all likelihood—Gretchen.)
But most of the other comments that immediately succeeded the story of our meeting weren’t quite so happily disposed of. I mean, those addressed to me, rather than Sybella.
“What we just can’t understand, though—what we shall never understand—isn’t that right, Neville?—not even if we live to be a hundred—”
“Which only gives us another twenty-five years, my pet, so how about our now tottering off to the kitchen to put our hoary old heads together over this all-important question of the supper…?” My grandfather was already on his feet and offering both hands to my grandmother (which she didn’t really need) to help her out of her chair.
She demurred, however.
“No, darling, you’re very sweet and we can all admire your motives—no matter how thoroughly misguided—but this is still something that needs to be addressed.”
Her gaze returned to me.
“What we can never understand, Eric, because in so many ways you once bade fair to be nearly as kind-hearted as your foolish old grandfather here … and although we haven’t seen you in the past four years, we’re sure you can’t
altogether
have changed…”
But it seemed that even my normally outspoken grandmother might never get around to finishing her sentence. I myself had to help her out.
“What we can never understand,” I said, “is how on earth you could ever be over here, in England, on a spying mission for Germany?”
“Yes. And there’s no need to smile as you say it. It isn’t—it isn’t in the
least
bit—a smiling matter.”
“But Grandma. I’m a German citizen. Germany is my country.”
“And England is ours. It’s also Sybella’s. And it used to be your mother’s. And … well, shall I tell you something, my sweetheart? Something we thought we’d never have to tell you? Your mother didn’t even
like
Germany. Yes, that’s perfectly true. Over the years she came to feel less and less at home there. She’d never admit it until you were about five—before then had always claimed that it was only natural for a daughter to become a little tearful when saying goodbye to her parents—but every time she brought you here on holiday she found it harder to go back. Much! Towards the end she absolutely hated having to do so; it made her feel desperately miserable and, of course, it made your grandfather and me feel miserable as well.”
I could remember some of the anguish of those departures: how my mother had hugged me extra tightly on the train; how she had kept telling me that it was only a naughty little piece of grit which had flown into her eye.
I pursed my lips.
“In that case,” I said, “why
did
she go back?”
“She went back for your sake. Purely for your sake.”
And once more I felt that old familiar mix. Guilt and longing. Guilt and longing.
(I had asked my father: “Was it
my
fault that she died?” “No, of course not,” he had said. “If it was anybody’s fault it was mine.” Yet certainly as a ten-year-old I had never quite believed him.)
Sybella squeezed my hand again—during the past few minutes she had been regularly showing her support in this manner.
“But that’s ridiculous,” I said. “If she had decided to stay here, clearly I’d have stayed here, too.”
“You mightn’t have been allowed to, Eric You were by far the most important thing in your mother’s life; if she was ever afraid of anything, that fear was of losing you. Yet the point is … although she no longer felt a lot for your father, your father wasn’t a bad man. A little cold, maybe, but that’s the worst she would ever say of him. And cold or not he undoubtedly loved you, loved you devotedly; and if she’d taken you away, she knew he’d have moved heaven and earth to get you back. What’s more, there isn’t a court in the world which wouldn’t have supported him. Your mother realized that; she couldn’t have lied about his being unfit. And so she had to remain with him. Purely for your sake. In a country that she hated.”
“I had no idea,” I said, slowly. “I hadn’t the
least
idea.”
“Well, how could you? A little boy of five or six or seven? And naturally—
naturally
—you weren’t in any way to blame. But this doesn’t alter the fact that England was your mother’s true home, or that she came to care for it more deeply with every year that passed, both for England and for all the values England stood for. She’d died, of course, long before that filthy little man became Chancellor but even in the twenties she could see the way that Germany was going.”
I said: “Grandma, if you’re going to use expressions like that, Sybella and I will have to leave.”
“Come on, Carrie, my dearest. You’ve made your point. That’s fine! But now let’s go and think about the supper. We haven’t seen this lad of ours for such an age and whatever the circumstances it’s just like you yourself were claiming earlier—a lovely, shining miracle! So is there any miracle which
we
can now accomplish in the hope of doing it honour?”
“And may
I
help?” Sybella gave my hand a final squeeze and sprang up from the sofa. “Peel potatoes or something? Bring in some vegetables? I’d love to take a closer look at your garden.”
“Thank you, Sybella.” My grandfather had been standing by the hearth ever since trying to coax his wife out of her chair. “By the way, my dear, I expect you know that Eric’s mother was very nearly a Sybil. Just before the christening, Carrie and I still hadn’t decided between that and Penelope. Even in the trap on our way to the church! I fear we were almost thinking of divorce by the time we got there—glowering at one another across the font!”
“Which of you wanted which?”
“Oh, you’d have known the answer to that by the sheer sulkiness of my expression!”
“But I’m sure that by the time she’d been Penelope for just a week you must have wondered how any other name could possibly have suited her.”
“A week? More like a day. An
hour
!”
“And to tell the truth
I’m
actually a Sybil. But when I decided I wanted to act … well, comparisons are odious, aren’t they? … and then too, to my mind, it seemed practically presumptuous.” For some reason, this hadn’t yet come up between us, and she glanced at me with a smile that bordered on apology. “Also, as a girl, I had always wanted people to call me Sybella. It was the name of the heroine in one of my favourite stories and I found it dashing and romantic.”
Yet it was no good. None of it was any good. My grandmother’s attention was still rigidly focused on myself and although she prefaced her next question with a soft endearment it wasn’t at all a question likely to improve matters. She gave a long, regretful sigh.
“But, darling, you can’t refuse to recognize the fitness of that adjective—after all, filthy is as filthy does—surely your eyes have been opened a smidgen since 1939? We vividly recall your ostrich-like behaviour
then
, when at last we prevailed on you to read about the wholesale slaughter of the Jews! But for a sensitive and intelligent young man
still
to be trying to bury his head so deep … no, I simply can’t accept it, not of any grandson of mine nor of any child a loving mother once saw as being the very
raison d’être
of her whole tragically cut-short and disappointing existence—”
But, in fact, just at this moment it was my grandmother herself who was cut short.
“Carrie!
Shut up
! For God’s sake, woman, for the sweet love of heaven itself, won’t you just put an end to all of this,
right now
!”
I had never heard my grandfather speak to her like that. Shout at her like that.
And during the stunned silence which ensued, reminiscent of the sudden hush that had yesterday succeeded the hurling of a whisky tumbler to the floor, Sybella turned to me awkwardly.
“Oh, please, darling,” she said, “I should so much like to see the garden—won’t you take me out on a short tour, before the light goes, or the rain starts?”
And, during that same stunned silence Toby pulled himself to his feet and slunk behind the sofa, whining.
I said a short prayer; abandoned the retort I had been intending to come out with: “It wasn’t
the wholesale slaughter of the Jews
!”
Instead I asked—though not very graciously:
“Have you still got that file of newspaper cuttings? The one you collected back in ’39?”
It was not only ungracious. It was unpremeditated—possibly almost in the same category as my grandfather’s outburst. But, in some strange way, it may have been this second instance of complete unexpectedness which threw us both a lifeline: my grandmother and me.