Living with Strangers (17 page)

The next morning I overslept. I found Saul with Chloé, building castles in his study. There were shrieks as the tower fell to the floor, Chloé clapping her hands for more as Saul began the slow process all over again.

‘I’m sorry – I should have woken earlier.’

‘No matter,’ Saul said, leaning forward to balance another stack of bricks, ‘we’re having fun here.’

In these few days, this had become our pattern. As Molly kept up her local engagements, it left a space for Chloé and me to cover the shift, opening the French windows onto the garden if the sun was encouraging. Easter had passed and though Sophie was now on holiday from school, she spent hours in her room, working or practising, the mournful strains of her cello reaching us two floors below. I would make coffee for myself, fresh juice for Chloé and Saul and we nibbled biscuits Paul had made before leaving on his sandwich round.

‘Where are the others?’

‘Sophie you can hear, Paul’s taken your mother to the shops. I don’t drive now, they won’t let me. They won’t let me do much at all.’ Saul sat back in his chair. ‘They won’t even let me smoke my pipe. I ask you – what difference would it make now?’

I sat down on the floor to finish the tower, though Chloé’s attention had shifted and she crawled over to me. ‘You need to fight this, Papa, you need to give yourself the best chance.’

He waved a hand at me as if it were all a fuss about nothing. There was peace here in the room – a resignation. Outside, pigeons murmured on the fence; further away, at the end of the garden by the shed, rooks crawed angrily, marking their territory in the tall sycamores. Chloé settled into my lap and twiddled her hair.

Saul watched us both. ‘You’ve done well with her, Maddie,’ he said. ‘It can’t have been easy.’ His first reference to my status as a parent.

‘I had help,’ I said, old instincts pushing up my guard. ‘It wasn’t so bad.’

‘Now you can’t imagine life without her?’

‘It’s as if she’s always been there, waiting for me. You know, I thought when Sophie was born that I could never love anything as much, but that was part of the practice – the rehearsal. Chloé just brought her own love.’

‘And she’s brought it here too, we’re all grateful.’ Saul smiled down at her. ‘And her father?’ he said. ‘Perhaps I have no right to ask, but I’ve less time for diplomacy now. Where does he figure in her life? In yours?’

I moved Chloé onto the floor, where she resumed building. ‘We’re not in contact, Papa. It’s complicated.’

‘Now, why doesn’t that surprise me?’ There was no irritation in his voice, he continued to smile, watching us.

‘He was important – once. He was a big part of my life, for a while – before…’

‘And then he took flight?’

I thought of Jean-Luc, backing out of my room, racing down the stairs, disappearing into the street, into the night. I thought of him heading home and carrying on as if nothing had happened at all. I thought of the time I had left Chloé with Marie-Claude and gone to Paris with Sylvie for a treat and seen him on the Boulevard with Alice and how I’d hidden in a doorway until he’d gone.

‘It was more like going to ground. But he did send me some money – quite a lot. He bought me off.’

‘And you kept it?’

‘I kept it for the baby – for Chloé. I didn’t have much else, it made a difference.’ Suddenly I was faced with the remnants of other interviews in this room, the confrontations, trying to state my case. ‘Why?’ I said. ‘Shouldn’t I have done?’

But then I looked at Saul, this familiar stranger I hadn’t seen for seven years, lost in his chair, in his clothes, with his bony hands and the distant light in his eyes and I knew there was no threat, no challenge, just an ailing man near the end of his life who had only ever tried to do the right thing. In my head was Marie-Claude’s voice:
Can you really go on blaming them?
She who knew so little, understood it all. Blame, if blame it was that I’d harboured all these years, had fallen away, to be lost somewhere over the English Channel.

I got to my feet. ‘Coffee?’

‘I’ll just have water, thank you.’

I touched his arm lightly and went to the door.

‘Maddie?’ he said, ‘thank you for coming home.’

I was still no nearer knowing what had happened to Josef, but I had bridged many years with Saul. I knew that each day brought the truth closer.

*

Then one afternoon a few days later, as Saul and Chloé were resting, I sat in the kitchen with Molly, an unopened book in my lap. The cat lay under the radiator, purring loudly.

Molly’s knitting needles clicked. ‘You don’t have much luck, do you?’ she said.

Surprised, I looked up. I doubted she was referring to Chloé. I could see the connection growing daily between them – the small place they now carved in each other’s affections. ‘Luck?’ I said.

‘Your choices, what you’ve done.’

I opened my mouth, then closed it – old defences again. Seven years ago she had said much the same thing, only this time I knew she was right.

‘They were my choices,’ I said eventually, putting my book down on the floor. ‘I was free to decide how things went, what to do.’

‘Except Josef.’ Molly said.

I heard his name from a great distance, down a long tunnel. It rose up, echoing round the kitchen. ‘You didn’t choose that.’

Then my own voice, whispering, ‘Choose what?’

‘What happened. Why it happened.’

There was a pulse again in my ear. ‘What did happen, Molly? Why did he go?’ My words fell out and filled the room.

Molly put down her knitting and looked at me, searching my face, as I could never before remember her doing. Then she took off her glasses and laid them gently on the table.

‘We sent him away, your father and I. It was the only thing we could do.’

I lay awake, long into the night, cold and hot by turns. Molly’s voice still rang in my head, my own voice too, as the afternoon had passed and the truth, in words so long unspoken, was heard at last.

‘You must remember,’ Molly had said, ‘you must remember the times. The world was not as it is now. It was less than twenty years after the war – that’s not long. It was hard for us.’

‘I know we didn’t have much money,’ I said, ‘but that never mattered, did it?’

‘It wasn’t the money. In fact we fared better than some.’

I remembered the rambling conversations with Oma, discussions with Josef before we went to Lübeck. ‘The necklace?’

‘Yes, the necklace. It helped us to buy a house. I had a small inheritance from my mother too.’

‘So if it wasn’t money, what was it?’

Molly stood up then and shut the kitchen door. ‘Papa needs to sleep. I don’t want him to hear.’

She sat down again and turned away to the window. It had started to rain; tiny droplets trickled down the glass, gathering speed. Still I waited.

‘How much do you remember of that time?’

‘When Josef went?’

‘Before that. Before he left.’

‘I remember it was different. Everything changed when he went. I don’t remember details, just the change. Suddenly we weren’t
us
any more – it all seemed to fall apart. And nobody spoke. Papa came to tell me he’d gone, then nothing, nothing at all – for all this time!’ My voice rose – finding it at last had lent volume.

Molly put a finger to her lips.

I fiddled with the hem of my jumper, wanting a cigarette. ‘I’m sorry. I just don’t know why you didn’t talk – didn’t tell me what was going on.’

‘You were very young, Madeleine. There were… things. Things that had happened, that you wouldn’t have understood.’

‘Not then, maybe, but later on.’

‘By then it was too late. It had all closed up. Papa refused to talk about it – even to me. I was torn,’ she said, turning to me again, ‘between respecting his wishes – and my love for you. I saw what it was doing to you – how ill you were. All that business with the girls at school. God!’ she suddenly exclaimed, ‘that place has so much to answer for.’

‘But Papa’s job – it was so important to him, I remember. We could move to a bigger house, the school was good for Josef – he could do his art there – he did so well with it, didn’t he?’

‘And that was the problem.’

‘How? How was art a problem?’

‘Not art as such, but his art teacher. Do you remember him?’

‘Mr. Prentice – the tall one – looked like he spent his life indoors? Didn’t he run an art gallery?’

‘More to the point, he was on the school governing board.’

‘But what does this have to do with Joe, or Papa for that matter?’

Molly shifted on her chair. ‘When Papa came to England he was twenty. You know what was happening in Germany then – he’d had years of uncertainty, grown up with secrecy, learnt to give nothing away. When they came here he looked after Oma and Uncle Stefan. He worked at anything during the day and studied at night – taught himself English. He’d missed out on so much in Germany. Only a small quota of Jews were allowed into the universities.’

Most of this I’d heard before, some of it from Saul when we’d travelled to Lübeck.

Molly continued. ‘When I met Papa, he was already part-way through his degree. He studied during the war since he couldn’t enlist. An
enemy alien
they called him’

‘He told me how he had to report to a police station, couldn’t be out at night after certain times.’

‘When the war ended, he finished his Master’s degree. I was still nursing so we had a small income, but by then Adam had arrived and I needed to be at home. Papa started to apply for teaching jobs – the country was desperate for teachers, schools were going up everywhere, it should have been easy.’

‘But it wasn’t?’

‘During the war, there had been… incidents. Not on the scale of Berlin, but they suffered here too. They kept quiet about the fact that they were German – Papa would say they were Swiss, or Belgian, to avoid bricks through the window. And ironically, anti-Semitism was rife here too, in certain quarters. He found regular work eventually through the WEA teaching night school – you remember that was where we met – but there was no job security. I continued to work during the day while he looked after Adam, but that was hard – men didn’t do that, of course, it was a job for women. Oma helped out, but she was teaching too – her pupils were all over North London and she was away for many hours at a time. It made a difference when Papa became naturalised – at least officially, if not in the minds of many people. Those who didn’t despise him for being German, disliked the fact that he was Jewish – or simply the fact that he was foreign.’

‘Weren’t we going to change our name? To Fielding or something?’

‘That was the plan, but in the end Papa couldn’t do it. We dropped an ‘n’ from the end to make it less German – that was all. He’d lost so much – given up so much – his name, in some ways was all he had left.’

My name too. No longer a mouthful of stones.

‘We bought the little house after Josef was born. It was cheap and falling apart, but it brought security – reassurance, I suppose. Then you came along and, though we were bursting at the seams, we lived like that for five years until Papa got the job – the one he’d waited for, that he deserved. It was a new start, a Headteacher with new ideas – his name was Slater. He supported Papa’s application and took him on. You see, there’d been opposition to Papa’s appointment, from governors, from the local authority, quietly voiced but vocal enough.’

‘What kind of opposition?’

‘There were letters – threats.’

‘You mean blackmail?’

‘Yes, I suppose it was, but we sat it out and it all passed.’

We seemed to have drifted from the point. I feared Chloé would wake. ‘And Josef? The art teacher?’

Molly sighed, clasping her hands together. ‘Josef had a real talent. The school encouraged him – we all did. You remember his room? The posters, the murals, those picture stories all set out on huge boards?’

‘The schoolroom, too. You’ve kept them.’

‘Of course. When he was fifteen, this new art teacher started at school. He was an established painter – had quite a following –
and
he owned a gallery. The school were lucky to have him…’ Molly paused again. ‘He took Josef under his wing, so to speak.’

‘I remember Josef had extra lessons. They were always in the art room. His work was everywhere. I remember he changed a lot that year. I thought it was just me – that I annoyed him. We stopped spending time together. He was very wrapped up.’

‘And we thought he was worried about exams. Then one day, just before his birthday, he came home very late from school and went straight up to his room. That wasn’t normal, was it? He normally raided the fridge. At supper he was quiet, quieter than usual – silent even.’

The picture surfaced. That mealtime, like so many others – but not. Josef hadn’t spoken, all the way through. He left the table without clearing his dishes, Molly called him back, but he slammed the door. We’d looked at each other, then carried on with the meal; Saul said something about talking to him later. And later, there were raised voices in Josef’s room – indiscernible, unfamiliar. I’d never in my life heard Saul raise his voice, even at school.

Molly continued. ‘First thing next day, Josef was summoned to the Head’s office. Papa had already explained to the Head what Josef had told him – what had happened to him, what this teacher had done. He explained that this teacher had…’ Molly looked down at her hands, ‘…
done
things. Naturally the Head was very shocked, he couldn’t ignore it. But…’ Molly rubbed her eyes, ‘oh dear, it was all such a mess. This teacher simply claimed that your brother had made it all up – he said he was aware Josef had some crazy infatuation for him and this was all in his head – a sort of fantasy that went wrong. Happens a lot apparently – best to just leave it be. That’s what he said.’

‘But that’s ridiculous!’ Outrage rolled out down the years – a tidal wave of indignation. ‘So, he made out Josef was in the wrong? How could he think that? How could he say it?’ Molly had not been specific, but I didn’t need details.

‘It’s what happened. Perhaps we should have been more vigilant; perhaps we should have seen it coming. Josef was so…’

‘Likeable?’

‘Impressionable. We should have stopped the extra lessons, but that would have been very harsh. Art was his world then, it was all he cared about.’

I still couldn’t quite see the connection. ‘But how does this involve Papa? Why was Josef sent away when he’d done nothing wrong – when he was innocent in all this?’

‘Of course, Papa pleaded for an investigation, and for what it’s worth, I think the Head was in two minds. But this teacher had influence, he threatened to make life difficult for Papa if they took it any further. So the school – Papa and the Head – had to make it go away. A few other people got to know, though the Head did a good job of keeping it quiet. But I think your father panicked – he saw his security threatened – and that threatened all of us.

‘So Josef had to go – in case he talked – in case he tried to tell the truth again?’

‘Yes. The whole business had to disappear. But… there’s something else.’

‘Something else?’

Molly paused. ‘Part of the problem – what made it so hard – was that Josef was very secretive then, furtive almost. We didn’t know him very well.’

‘But you knew he wasn’t making it up. You must have known.’

‘Oh, I knew, of course I knew. But I’d also known for a long time that…’

Molly stood up. ‘I want to show you something.’ She left the room and I heard her rummaging in Saul’s study, opening and closing drawers. Saul must have woken, for I heard his voice, followed by Molly’s. ‘It’s alright, go back to sleep.’

She came back and put a photograph into my hands. I stared at it, at the two faces in the picture – smiling, fair-haired young men about my own age. Josef, unmistakably, and someone else.

‘This is Alex?’

‘Yes, this is Alex. I’d guessed – no, I’d
known
for a long

time that he –’

‘That he didn’t like girls.’ I finished Molly’s sentence as the final piece fell into place.

‘Exactly. So you see, perhaps this teacher recognised that too – and took advantage –
more
than an advantage.’

‘And Papa? Surely he must have known?’

‘He knew that Josef was,
different
shall we say, but he refused to discuss it – even so much later, when this photo came. You must remember that being ‘gay’ – I think that’s what they call it now – was an offence then, it was against the law, even here. In Nazi Germany, where Papa grew up, you could be imprisoned or shot. It’s another reason why your Uncle Jakob left Berlin – though I don’t think he was much better off in Lübeck.’

I thought then of Jakob, of his neat home, of how he’d never married. How much secrecy had my father grown up with? It was endemic – a way of life for him. Not speaking, I realised with some measure of consolation, was just his way of keeping demons from the door.

‘So, sending Josef away wasn’t only about the scandal?’

‘No. We really believed it was for the best – we hoped things would be easier for him over there. We feared he would walk a long and lonely road if he stayed here. We just never expected that he wouldn’t want to come back.’

I picked up the photo again, suddenly struck. ‘How long have you had this – when did Josef send it?’

‘About eighteen months ago – but Josef didn’t send it, Alex did.’

Again I opened my mouth but Molly put up a hand.

‘It was the first communication, the only thing we’d had in all that time. Alex wrote too, a long detailed letter about their life, how they met, even what Josef was doing – how successful he’d been.’

‘With his art?’

Molly nodded. ‘Graphic novels, they’re called. He’s quite well known in his field. Alex writes the text – that’s how they met.’

‘So, why did Alex write to you?’

‘I’m not sure. Because he cared, because family matters to him – I don’t think he has any of his own.’

I thought of Gil, of how ironic it was that others should see our disjointed unit as a model for family life. ‘Why didn’t you let me know?’ I said.

‘I should have done. I know that now, it was wrong to keep this from you. But when Alex’s letter came, you’d just had Chloé, so I decided against it. I knew you’d have so much to deal with. You had a new future – maybe I thought it was best to let the past lie. Then a few months ago, just before Christmas, I received a parcel, much as you did. In it were all the letters I’d written to Josef over the years – nearly forty of them.’

‘But – ‘

‘You weren’t the only one to write. He was my son – what did you think? That I’d forgotten him – cut him out, moved on?’

I sat motionless now. So Molly had known about my letters all along. ‘You knew I was writing to him?’

‘Of course I knew. I would have given you the address if you’d asked, but you didn’t ask and I didn’t want…’

‘To upset me?’

‘Yes, I suppose that was it. But you were upset anyway – so very upset. I just didn’t know what to do for the best.’

‘You could have talked to me – told me what was happening!’

‘Maybe, but then what? Even if you’d understood, what comfort would it have been? We didn’t know ourselves that he’d stay away for so long, that he’d just disappear. In the end it was his choice. And the saddest thing for us – it seemed as if we’d lost you too. I turned my efforts to the little ones – they needed me, I had to make progress where I could.’

‘But I needed you, Molly. I needed you too!’

‘I know. I know that now, and I’m so sorry.’

I wasn’t sure how much more I wanted to hear. I stood up and reached for the kettle; it gave me something to do with my hands. ‘One last thing,’ I said, plugging it in, ‘Did Adam know?’

There was a long pause, the kettle hissed.

‘Yes,’ Molly said.

‘All of it?