Authors: Esther Freud
‘And as for this little fellow,’ Elisabeth stretched out her arms to him, ‘he looks . . .?’ We all stared into the wheat and cornflower of Sonny’s smiling face.
‘Just like his father,’ I explained, and they both laughed, accepting that I had found a civil way to introduce him. ‘He’s an actor.’ It seemed my duty to explain. ‘Working away.’ And I smiled, twisting my mouth against the sudden knot of pain. The envelope was lying where I’d left it, smooth and brown across the swirls of polish. ‘Is everything nearly sorted out?’ I turned the conversation, and without meaning to I stumbled. ‘My father tells me you went back to Germany, to Gaglow.’
John frowned as he took a long swallow of tea. ‘Yes, yes.’
‘We both went,’ Elisabeth said, and she laid a hand on his arm.
I lifted Sonny onto my knee. It gave me confidence, having him in my arms, and quickly, before the moment passed, I asked John, ‘Do you think, before the place is sold, I might go and visit?’
He looked surprised. He turned and pulled the envelope towards him. ‘Of course.’ He flicked quickly through the contents. ‘After all, it was Eva, your grandmother, who loved it best.’
‘What . . . how would I go about it?’ I asked, as I stood up. And he wrote down his telephone number and said that I should call him when I’d decided on the date.
‘Thank you so much.’ I smiled. ‘It was nice to meet you.’ They both waved at me as I pushed Sonny off along the street.
In order not to cheat them I walked up on to Parliament Fields, stopping to watch the last children prancing, like small horses, back and forth across the bright blue paddling pool. The sun was sinking, dusty again and hot, and the grass on the great swoop of the Heath had turned to hay.
I walked slowly up under the avenue of trees, pushing against the path, avoiding bicycles and joggers, whole families laden down with rugs, and then with one last open stretch of hill I came out on the top. A small cluster of people, panting and amazed, were all looking out over London, identifying the Post Office tower, the green dome of St Paul’s. I stood with them, taking in the still, high air, and then I turned and looked the other way. The hill dipped down and up again to a thin circle of pines, and in the distance I could see the reedy edges of the row of lakes. There were no buildings here and no sights, nothing to break the view, but in the distance, just below my breath, I could still hear the roar of city noise.
‘Pam?’ I had to call out to her through the shield of her machine. ‘I know you’re there.’ And, breathless, she picked up the phone. ‘Pam . . .’ I started, but she hissed at me that it wasn’t a good time.
‘I’ll call you later.’
‘Pam.’ I tried to warn her, but she didn’t want any of my words, and still whispering my meaning, I was cut off.
I didn’t hear from her until the next day. ‘Don’t tell me, I don’t want to know,’ I said.
But she was adamant that the news was good. ‘Listen, he’s not an actor.’
‘Not . . . an . . . actor?’
‘Can you believe it?’
‘Not really. What’s the catch?’
There was an ominous pause. ‘He’s an accountant.’
I couldn’t think what she meant.
‘He’s wonderful,’ she said. ‘Every morning he wakes up at eight and goes straight off to work, and when he’s finished he’s all happy and lighthearted and wants to meet up for a drink. It’s quite amazing.’
‘But, isn’t . . . isn’t he . . .?’
‘What? Boring?’ she answered for me. ‘I’m forgetting, you never met Bradly Teale.’ And we both laughed, relieved that he was over with.
‘Listen,’ I said, once she’d calmed down, ‘have you thought any more about our holiday?’
I could tell she hadn’t. ‘How would you feel about going to Germany? You know, just for a few days.’
‘Germany?’
‘There’s this house there, in the country.’
‘The country?’
And before I’d even explained about the attic bedrooms and the lake, the rose garden and the steep, straight drive up to the porch, I knew that she’d lost interest.
‘The thing is Alan might be going away on business.’
‘Alan?’ And I pretended Sonny had been sick right down my dress and that I’d call her back when I had time.
‘Oh, Mum.’ I lay prostrate under her plum tree while she sat with Sonny, introducing him to her fish. ‘I haven’t got anyone to go away with.’
‘What about Kate? Or Natasha.’
‘Yes.’ But neither of them had a break coming up for months and I needed to go now.
‘I’d come with you,’ she said, fluffing Sonny’s hair into a spike, ‘but I’m going to a conference about websites, and then I’ve got a great build-up of work.’
‘It’s such bad luck,’ I said sulkily, looking up into the sticky branches of the tree. ‘Maybe I’ll just go off on my own.’
‘You should,’ she said, ‘it’ll do you good.’ And she handed Sonny back.
*
When I left the travel agent I was trembling with the shock. I’d used one of Mike’s cheques to buy the ticket. A four-day return to Berlin and a slip of a ticket for Sonny at a fraction of the price. I would have liked to go for longer. If I was on my own, I told myself, but I knew that if I’d been on my own I wouldn’t have had the courage to go at all.
That night I sent off my passport to have the baby added. I marked the envelope Urgent, and explained that I was leaving in ten days’ time. I danced around the room with the tickets in my hand, wondering whom I could tell. Sonny was sick of hearing about it. He lay on his back with his legs in the air, looking with amazement at his toes. And then I thought I’d better call John.
‘Mr Godber? Hello. It’s me, it’s Sarah Linder.’
‘Oh, yes.’ He sounded distant, as if he only just remembered who I was.
‘I’ve decided to go, definitely. The week after next. To Gaglow.’ And it was only then that I stopped to ask if I’d called at a bad time.
‘It’s just my wife,’ he faltered. ‘Elisabeth. She’s unwell.’
‘I’m so sorry.’ I held the phone too hard against my ear, desperate for the words. ‘I’m so sorry to have troubled you.’
‘It’s all right.’ He sounded vague, as if his strength was all used up with worry.
‘I’ll call back another time.’ I heard him fumbling to replace the phone.
I sat with my head in my hands. ‘I don’t have to go,’ I told myself. ‘I don’t have to go.’ But somehow I felt I did.
Eva and Martha agreed that someone should force Kaiser Wilhelm to put an end to the war. But Bina was adamant, insisting that every surviving man be called upon to force a great last fight. ‘I thought you longed to have a revolution,’ Eva taunted her. ‘It’s what Schu-Schu would have wanted.’
‘A revolution.’ Martha was flushed and afraid, and she recounted how a group of officers, returning to the front, had been forced out of their train and made to return home. ‘The soldiers threatened them with hand grenades,’ she said, biting hard into her lip. And she wondered if it could really be true that the Emperor of Austria had run away, taking with him the Crown Jewels and followed by eighteen buses full of furniture.
‘It’s true, it’s true.’ Eva stood up, ‘I heard it in the street.’ And then, remembering what she had also heard, she sat down again. ‘There are people breaking into the big houses,’ she whispered. ‘Raiding them for food. Some families are slipping off in the middle of the night, taking anything that they can carry.’ And she had a sudden image of the Samson girls balancing a crate of soft white rolls between them.
‘Well, they won’t find anything at Gaglow,’ Martha said sadly.
‘No, they won’t find anything, not even ice.’ And Eva wondered how Manu would escape if he was hiding, like Gruber, in the ice-house cellar.
*
It was Dolfi who came in with the news. ‘The Kaiser has abdicated!’ Her face was bright red, her mouth delighted.
Marianna found that tears were in her eyes, but Wolf jumped up and struggled to pull open the window. He leaned out into the street and watched the stream of people marching solidly, the gold of girls’ uncovered heads bobbing in the sun. Soldiers carried long red flags, and in the bright November sunshine children played, whooping on the fringes of the crowd. Wolf looked quickly at his daughters and, touching his wife’s hand to let her know, he slipped away. ‘Wolf,’ Marianna called, but the front door had slammed, and instead they hung out of the windows to try to find him in the crowd.
Wolf marched, lightfooted with the revolution. No tears were falling here for Kaiser Wilhelm, the Empress or their six surviving sons. Lorries packed with soldiers honked and cheered, and sailors, waving flags, stirred up the people with songs.
The young men in the trucks, many of them not old enough for more than a small taste of the war, scanned the crowd for officers, ordering them to pull off their insignia and, if they refused, taking great delight in ripping them away, hurling the badges up into the air as trophies for the children.
Wolf was swept along, down the Linden and into Pariser Platz. The Brandenburger Tor was teeming, small black figures clinging to its surface, and as he stood, craning his neck, a long red flag was hoisted, unfurling from the centre of its arch. The afternoon had turned and in the cold half-dark of dusk the crowd began to swell. The pale women in their shawls were shouting, and men raised their fists and shook them at the palace. The Emperor’s motorcar bleated its way out of the
Schloss
and a great roar of delight rose up from the crowd. Wolf was pressed back and forth, and forced on to the bosom of a grocer’s girl, still in her overall and smelling of apples. ‘Excuse me. I’m so sorry.’ He struggled to step back a pace, but a truck rolled by, packed full of Russian prisoners, the men reeling with their sudden freedom and each one with a red cockade, like a little patch of blood, over one eye. The grocer’s girl was pushed sideways in the scuffle and Wolf was almost thrown under the wheels of the truck.
Dolfi came in and out all afternoon with news. ‘The royal palace has been broken into,’ she told Marianna, ‘and they are removing all the silver plate.’ Then they heard the trumpeting of horns that, until now, had led them to expect the appearance of the Kaiser’s motorcar. All four women jumped and Dolfi had to stop herself from racing back out into the street.
It was dark and Wolf was still not home. Marianna insisted that they sit down to an early supper and then, as if there was no such thing as a revolution just outside their door, she ordered them to bed. There was a firmness in her manner that made it hard to argue and the three girls retired to the small back room, sitting in a row and listening to the muffled noises of the night, broken up by shouts and the stray hot racket of a bullet.
Marianna was still waiting up for Wolf when a volley of machine-gun fire burst above her head. She had been dozing, picturing her husband in his soft black hat, sailing on the ripples of the crowd, when the force of the explosion shook her to her feet, pounding round the building, rumbling in a well of noise. Dolfi appeared at the door, her face white, her hands over her ears, calling to Marianna to get down, and then Eva rushed in and pulled her mother to the ground. They crouched together in the dark, tightly holding hands. The room had filled with smoke, the fumes from guns seeping in between the bricks. Eva began to crawl towards the window.
‘Eva,’ Marianna called, ‘come back.’ But Eva put her fingers on the sill and eased her body up. She could see small groups of soldiers, clutching their red flags, and an occasional figure as it sped away along the street, running to the safety of a house.
‘Do you see Papa?’ Martha called, shivering with Bina by the door, but as Eva peered out, she was knocked back into the room by a fresh blast that sent a film of powder spiralling from the ceiling. She lay flat, waiting for the noise to stop, straining for the quick breath of the others just across the room. The carpet under her hands was white with dust and the cannonfire rolled on and on. She wondered if it might be possible to sleep like this, to drift away on a great roll of sound, and then, just as she felt unable to bear it any longer, the machine-guns stopped.
‘Dolfi, would you make us all some coffee?’ Marianna rose gracefully from the floor, but Eva, a hollow in her ears, found she could not get up.
‘Manu,’ she wailed, ‘Manu,’ and with a deep sensation that things could never be put right she began to cry so loudly and so hard that she didn’t hear the shouting in the street below and the violent knocking on the door.
Marianna looked down at the body of her husband, lying where the men had left him, stretched out on her bed. He had not been shot, riddled with machine-gun pellets as she’d first feared, but had simply had the life squeezed from him by the pressure of the crowd. His eyes were closed, his glasses lost, and the deep frown jutting in a fork along his brow had loosened, giving him a look of calm. Two revolutionaries, apologetic and polite, had found him in the square, lying limp against a wall. They removed their soldier’s caps in the presence of Frau Belgard, and looked down sadly at their toes. ‘Caught up in the crush, poor old fellow,’ one said, blushing and looking round to check that he hadn’t spoken out of turn. There were footprints stumbling across the thin wool of Wolf’s suit, and his mouth was open, as if to catch a last thin gasp of air. Bina and Martha watched their mother, their hands over their mouths, while with a gracious nod she showed the soldiers out. ‘How can I thank you?’ She pressed their hands, and a tiny tremor passed over the pale set of her face.
*
The revolution lasted for three more days, but Marianna hardly noticed. She heard the guns below her window only faintly and the sound of fighting rising from the Reichstag. Her old aunt Cornelia arrived, the black umbrella flapping by her side, full of outrage over the armistice. ‘Dear Wolfgang may be better off,’ she lowered her voice, ‘wherever he is now,’ and the corners of her mouth turned down. ‘Another long winter of root vegetables, without fat or salt or sauce.’ She sat down opposite Marianna and loudly blew her nose, telling her how a young woman in her street had turned the gas on herself and her small child rather than face another winter with the blockade still in place. ‘There will be revenge, that’s the worst part of it, there will be some terrible revenge.’