Authors: Esther Freud
‘That was all,’ Martha added, with an echo like a sob, and the four women stood unmoving in the room.
On the first Thursday of September, when Herr Baum came to roll their mother’s hair, Martha and Eva began to search the Berlin apartment.
‘Why in here?’ Martha asked, as they slipped inside and closed the door. ‘There’s not likely to be any trace of Schu in here.’
Eva looked over at the large, leather-topped desk and wondered how it was possible for Emanuel to disappear so completely. ‘You’d think he’d be allowed to send one letter out,’ she said, ‘wherever he is.’ And she sat down on the high-backed chair and, picking up his pen, dipped it in the jar of ink. The ink had thinned and hardened with disuse and she had to pierce a thick film with the nib to reach it. Then she set the soft side of the pen against the blotting paper and let it crease a dark dent into the weave.
‘Why don’t we just stay here until Bina gets back from the hospital?’ And Martha stretched out on Emanuel’s bed, lying back against a bank of pillows. ‘After all, we’re not likely to find anything.’
‘Yes,’ Eva agreed, ‘you’re right.’ But, despite herself, she began, one by one, to pull open the deep drawers of her brother’s desk. There was nothing much in them. Notes from studies he had made and the dissected bones of poems pulled apart and examined line by line. There were no hidden envelopes, no scrawled addresses, and as she pulled it, each drawer opened smoothly in her hand.
Martha rolled half-heartedly off the bed to peer beneath it. ‘Why would Mama even think of hiding anything in here?’ Having reassured herself of this, she settled down in comfort, folded her arms and stared stubbornly at the ceiling.
Eva found a small iron key in one of the inbuilt compartments of the desk. She tried it in the lock of each drawer and found that it turned with a smooth, identical click. How unlike Emanuel not to have a secret, and she frowned in disappointment as she thought of her own elaborate hoard of treasure suspended safely in mid-air. She let her fingers run in and out of the tiny range of boxes, all dusted and clear with polish, pulling out small objects as she came upon them. A penknife, a faded pebble, and in one, a heavy red and yellow rose picked while still in bud. Eva held the rosebud in her hands, staring into the oval mouth of leaves, and thought of the thin petals she had sent to him in letters, glued so delicately to the borders of each page. Would he be wearing them sewn into his clothes, laced against the Siberian winds with ink and faded flowers? She shook her head and replaced the rose.
Martha had drifted off into a fitful sleep, her feet twitching back and forth to the rhythm of a waltz. ‘One two three,’ her mouth moved sleepily.
Eva shook her shoulder. ‘Come on, we must look in one more room before Baum drinks his schnapps and Bina arrives home.’ Martha sat up, and wiped a tiny trickle of saliva from her cheek.
They closed the door with careful fingers and tiptoed off along the corridor. ‘Ssh,’ they hissed, stepping lightly over carpets, ‘ssh.’
Then Eva stopped and, with an amused smile, took her sister’s arm. ‘Why are we whispering?’ she whispered. And they both began to laugh.
‘Stop acting so suspiciously,’ Martha scolded her in turn, and they were about to go more noisily on their way when they heard the twittering voice of old Herr Baum call out from behind the drapes.
‘Can it be the charming Fräuleins Belgard?’ He swung open the door, a brush in his hand and a cluster of pins rustling in the pocket of his apron.
‘Come in for a moment,’ Marianna called, ‘and say good afternoon to our dear friend.’ Seeing no way to avoid it, the two girls stepped inside where they resigned themselves to lingering for another hour while their mother’s hairdresser regaled them with local news and gossip, all sweetly and discreetly wrapped, interspersed only with a regular shower of compliments thrown over their two heads.
It was after six when the apartment door banged shut and they heard Bina’s footsteps in the hall. Herr Baum peeled the cloth from Marianna’s shoulders and folded it carefully before placing it in his bag. ‘How fortunate. I shall have the opportunity to greet yet another of my favourite ladies.’ He gave the gleaming head of his most regular customer one last, loving glance.
Marianna escorted Herr Baum to the door and Eva and Martha trailed along behind. ‘Good evening.’ Bina came politely forward, flashing searching looks over his shoulder. Eva and Martha dropped their gaze. ‘Well, most likely we will see you again next week.’ She turned away from him in an attempt to catch her sisters as they backed hastily along the corridor.
‘Next week, then.’ Marianna rested her hand on the latch of the door, and as Eva hurried away she heard Herr Baum shuffle his feet and mumble something uneasy and apologetic about a small matter of outstanding credit.
‘So?’ Bina caught them in the drawing room, lounging on the sofa. Eva held a cushion against her for protection. ‘There’s nothing there,’ she said. ‘We’ve made a thorough inspection of the whole apartment, and there was nothing there.’
Martha glanced from her to Bina, and decided to avoid a fight. ‘Mama isn’t hiding anything,’ she agreed, and Bina, furious, sank down beside them.
At first Bina insisted on reading Schu’s last words aloud at intervals throughout each week. She kept her sisters cold and shivering at the far end of her bed, hoping to intensify the letter’s contents, and to cancel out the presence of their mother, who still came in to wish them all goodnight. But it was not long before Eva led Martha in a small revolt, in which they lay like hedgehogs under down and pretended to be asleep when Bina called to them.
‘Of course we won’t forget her.’ They sighed, huffing and struggling into their mother’s choice of clothes, and they glared at Bina behind her back for holding out so little faith in them.
‘It is very modern not to have a governess,’ the other girls at school insisted. ‘We’re doing everything we can to rid ourselves of ours.’ But the Samson sisters wrote that they were quite shaken by news of Fräulein Schulze’s sudden dismissal, especially in such uncertain times, and that they couldn’t imagine what Frau Belgard could be thinking of.
Marianna watched her husband, nodding and frowning over his newspaper, and had to stop herself from wondering who he was. ‘Do something, why can’t you?’ she muttered, through clenched teeth, her head trembling with the effort not to shout, and although at times she caught the unfairness of her thoughts, she couldn’t find it in her to forgive him.
‘I think, if you don’t mind,’ he mumbled, ‘I won’t be home for lunch today.’
Marianna caught her cold eyes in the mirror, waiting for a further explanation. ‘If that suits you, of course,’ she agreed, when nothing more was said, and she freed a coil of dark brown hair, letting it spring out of its comb.
She turned to him. She held out her hands, palms upwards, and opened her eyes wide. ‘Soon there won’t be any lunch to come home to. Have you any idea what it costs to find enough food to feed this family? I can’t survive indefinitely with so little money. I don’t see what you expect me to do.’
Wolf looked at her without an answer. He was quite convinced she knew that small amounts of gold had been removed by him each month from the safe behind the airing cupboard. Four squat boxes, one for each of their children, which had been growing in the dark, birthday by birthday, relative by relative, over the years.
Marianna sighed, and Wolf felt tempted to dig into his pocket for the key. He could skim it at her across the carpet and let her remove the next few coins herself. ‘I will do what I can,’ he said, and he reached over for the corner of her dressing gown, rubbing his finger down frayed satin and twisting it round his finger like a ring.
The Samson sisters arrived one afternoon to ask after Emanuel. Bina was on duty at the hospital and Martha had gone with the maid to queue for butter. Eva brought the girls into the drawing room where she’d been laying out new plans for her and Emanuel’s dream home. She’d laid foundations for the ground floor and was working on the bedrooms. She’d split the attic into two and given them a bedroom each with no room for any guests. People may visit, they’d both decided, but only for an afternoon.
Angelika and Julika sat opposite while Eva shuffled her papers out of sight. ‘There is still no news,’ she told them quickly, hoping to get the subject over with. And the two girls smiled and nodded, while, Eva felt sure, suppressing some new, exciting news about themselves. She couldn’t think of anything to say. She ran silently through stories, old or overheard, that might pass as her own to entertain them, and then just as she was sure they were about to burst and tell her everything, she heard her mother step into the hall.
‘How are you?’ They both rose in one sympathetic gesture, and Marianna set down a jug of bitter-smelling coffee. She poured it out with an apology, and as they sipped, another silence grew.
‘Mama.’ Eva turned towards her in a flash of inspiration. ‘Mama, could you tell us about your gambling days?’
Marianna blushed. The gambling story was a favourite of Wolf’s and until now she’d never been called upon to tell it. ‘It was so long ago, you can’t be interested?’ But both Samson girls set down their cups expectantly folding their hands as they prepared to listen.
‘Well, it was when my mother was still alive,’ Marianna told them, ‘and let me say, it was only one gambling day. At Monte Carlo.’ She settled into her seat. ‘I was eighteen when I set off on my honeymoon and at every hotel on our route there was a letter waiting from my mother who was most concerned about me. She even wrote to one hotel to request that the room be heated to fourteen degrees for our arrival as she did not want her only daughter, or her new son-in-law, to catch a chill. But for all her forethought we were still shown into an icy room – which I noticed had the number fourteen marked clearly on the door.’ The sisters laughed, their eyes floating into the future.
‘When we arrived at Monte Carlo there was an extremely frantic letter full of descriptions of men whose lives had been ruined by gambling at the casinos. She had read these reports in the paper. One man, apparently, had lost his entire fortune and was found hanging below a bridge, while another became so embroiled in debt that he never dared return home and was thought by his family to be wandering like a tramp through Switzerland. “Please, my dear Marianna, I beg you, use your influence to keep Wolfgang away from the casinos.”
‘I showed this letter to my new husband. “Read it very carefully,” I urged him. “It does seem worrying.” But Wolf laughed and said he’d already made plans for us both to go that night to the most famous casino in the town. “It’s all right,” he reassured me. “Everything of value is locked in the hotel safe and the money I’ll bring with me, I shall be quite prepared to lose.” He told me to put away my mother’s letter and to get ready for that night.
‘By the time we arrived at the casino I was very excited and longing to see inside. “Do you have a passport with you?” the manager asked, having taken a note of our names and address. No, we didn’t have passports. “Do you have any proof of your identity?” Wolf searched through the pockets of his jacket. No. We had nothing to prove who we were. “Well, I’m afraid,” the manager informed us, “we will not be able to allow you to come in.”
‘“But we are on our honeymoon,” Wolf protested. “My wife has been looking forward to this for several weeks.” But the manager only looked at us sadly and repeated the rules of the casino. Suddenly I remembered my mother’s letter. It was in my purse where I had folded it away. I pulled it out and showed it to him, “Herr and Frau Belgard,” he read, and in an instant we were inside, walking up the steps to the roulette tables where Wolf won enough money to buy me a white feather boa and a parasol.’ Angelika and Julika leant forwards, smiling in perfect joy. ‘And with the rest of the winnings we bought my mother some Swiss chocolate, and for years after she insisted it was the best she’d ever tasted.’
Eva watched her mother’s laughing face. ‘Can I pour you another cup of this disgusting coffee?’ Marianna asked, but the girls stood up to go. They left messages for Bina and Martha and, without having had a chance to commiserate at any length over Emanuel, the Samsons walked out into the street.
My mother was the owner of a tiny garden, two floors down and reached through someone else’s hall. There was a plum tree in the centre and a small polythene pond. While we talked she pulled up stems of elder, tugging at the roots with her bare hands.
‘Well, I hope Mike is contributing.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He sends me money every so often.’
A root cracked out of the earth and almost shot her backwards. ‘You should insist on something definite, a regular allowance.’
‘Oh, Mum.’
‘Take him to court.’ She was fuelling to be angry. ‘Force him to pay you proper maintenance.’
‘It’s only been three months.’ When she sat down beside me, rubbing the dirt from her hands on to her shorts, I argued, ‘I don’t remember you taking my father to court.’
‘Of course I didn’t. That’s why I’m concerned.’ And with one muddy finger she lifted the corner of her grandson’s hat. ‘I was young and stupid,’ she said.
‘Well, now I’m young and stupid too.’
‘No,’ she insisted, ‘you’re not allowed to be.’
‘Oh, Mum.’ She was right. Twenty-seven wasn’t young. ‘It’s just so difficult . . .’
‘It’s always difficult.’
‘Well, you know . . . with him not wanting to have a baby, being so clear . . .’
‘You think your father –’ And she stopped herself in time. ‘Well, let’s face it, he wasn’t down on his knees begging for another child. And now,’ she tried not to look hurt, ‘he sees more of you than I do.’
‘Oh, Mum, that isn’t true.’ For a while we sat in silence, squeezed together on the tiny patch of lawn. ‘It’s just you work so hard.’
‘Yes.’ She smiled, indulgent. In the last few years my mother’s life had been transformed. She’d given up the part-time jobs, the cleaning and childminding that had seen us through, and had learnt how to lay out artwork on computers. She spent weeks bubbling and absorbed, laying the flowers she’d always loved to draw one upon another, swirling them round into patterns, and always with another commission looming up.