The Dower House (15 page)

‘Did you know her name?'

‘Only . . . she called herself Maria but I'm sure it wasn't her real name. I gave my name as Edit. She spoke perfect German but I think her accent was Danish. Or not even accent, but intonation.' She spoke a few random words, putting a rising intonation on the final syllable –
diese Zeite . . . die Elbe . . . Querstrasse
.

Her ear was perfect – as one might expect from someone who devoted her life to analysing and recording sound. Felix could tell as much because the words were exactly as Marianne would have spoken them in her Scandinavian accent.

‘Extraordinary!' he said.

‘What d'you mean?' she asked suspiciously. ‘That's how she spoke.'

‘Oh I believe you. Your imitation is perfect. There's a Swedish woman at the Dower House – pretty close to Danish, I think. She's now married to Willard Johnson, that American architect I told you about – she speaks German exactly like that. She was in Germany during the war.'

‘A Nazi! Married to an American . . . living free here in England? I bet she's very pretty, yes?'

‘She was very young – and she's paid heavily for it since, believe me.'

He broke off a rose – a bourbon – and handed it to her like a peace offering, which she accepted with a smile. He moved her hand to place the rose beside her cheek. ‘No,' he said. ‘You still win.'

‘Oh!' She laughed, a strange staccato laugh, as if he had punched her and she was trying to show it didn't hurt. Tears simultaneously started in her eyes.

As she wiped one away she said, ‘The first time I cried after liberation was when I saw flowers – the first time I realized I still could cry.'

It was undoubtedly true, but he knew that was not what brought tears to her eyes now, and he regretted his thoughtless
jeu d'ésprit
. Why had he done it, anyway? Whatever had driven him to become an artist had enabled him to survive as an artist, emerge as an artist, and continue living as an artist. But whatever had driven her to become the personal recording engineer to one of the truly great monsters of this entire century had withered and died in one single, eye-opening recording session. She had been left to reinvent herself from the inside while maintaining every outward appearance of a self that she now loathed. Their paths could not have been more different. For as long as she lived she would be compelled to play the Flying Dutchman to her own unsalvaged conscience, never finding haven, never again being able to settle ashore.

‘All fantasies of what might have been are pointless,' he said, forcing a wan smile to her lips.

‘Perhaps we need them all the same,' she replied. ‘To defend us from the guilt of having survived when so many more worthy people, wonderful people, outstanding people . . . died. I often think of Milena Jesenská, one of the most wonderful people . . . I mean – can you imagine someone whose soul was so great that when she died, almost the entire camp, the prisoners, I mean, went into mourning? I don't mean we wore
black
– my God, that was the
SS
colour! But mentally we mourned. Can you imagine someone like that in a place where
hundreds
were murdered every day? And when I remember her I think how dare I survive when someone like her did not. She was Franz Kafka's lover. Have you heard of him? He died back in the twenties. The most gruesome thing – she told me once – is that he wrote a short story in nineteen-fourteen called
In der Strafkolonie
which exactly describes the Nazi
KLS
–
exactly
. We can't say it came without warning, can we.'

Monday, 9 June 1947

It was a lump of pure white Carrara marble, eighteen inches square at the base and some thirty inches high. It came to the Dower House on the flatbed of an
LNER
delivery lorry from Welwyn Garden City.

‘All yours, mate,' the driver said as he part-slid part-walked it to the edge. ‘Can you manage? Just lift it down.'

Felix trumped him, embracing the stone and drawing breath as if for a mighty lift.

‘Christ no!' the man yelled.

Willard emerged from the back door of the main house and ran to join them. ‘You're out of practice at this sort of thing,' he said, winking as he pulled Felix's arms away. ‘Tell you what – I'll get those old floor joists we dumped in the pheasant run.'

‘No need,' the driver said. ‘I was jokin.' He lifted two stout planks from the flatbed, which he passed to them; there were steel hooks at one end, which he manoeuvred over a bar at the tail of the lorry, making a long ramp. While Willard jumped up, ready to help him, he unstrapped a porter's trolley from the back of the cab and handed it down to Felix.

‘Now we're cooking with gas,' Willard said.

There were a couple of heart-in-mouth moments as they manhandled the marble down the ramp but it arrived safely at the bottom and, with the help of the trolley, was swiftly taken into the cottage and set squarely upon the braked turntable Felix had installed the previous week.

‘I'd offer you a cup of tea,' Felix told the driver, ‘but I don't have any. All I've got is beer . . . sorry.' And he turned away as if it was all over.

Willard let the man dangle briefly before saying, ‘Revenge is sweet. Come on – I could force myself to swallow a beer, too.'

He put his arm around the man's shoulders and steered him toward the kitchen, where Felix was laying out three glasses before fetching the beer from the larder.

‘Yeah, I asked for that,' the man said. ‘You almost give me a heart attack when I thought you was goin' to lift it down. Todd's the name – Todd Ferguson.'

They introduced themselves, said ‘Cheers', took deep gulps, and let out male-solidarity gasps of satisfaction.

‘What is this place, then?' Todd asked. ‘Last time we had a delivery 'ere it was a school. The driver told me he delivered a bale of cloth for makin' choirboys' cassocks. Catholics, they was, from Jersey. You an artist, then, Mister Breit, sir?'

‘No “sir”, please – for God's sake. We all use first names here – Todd. And yes, I'm a sculptor.'

Todd laughed. ‘Gonna carve one of them naked women, eh? I've seen 'em! What a life!'

‘Something very feminine, anyway,' Felix agreed.

‘You asked what this place is now, Todd,' Willard said. ‘It's a community of people who got used to the sort of communal life we all – or most of us – shared in the war and who don't want to go back to living in separate little boxes of brick and mortar. But we don't want the completely communal life we had in the war, either, so we're trying to build something in between.'

‘Blimey!' Todd's truculence vanished.

‘You think we're mad?' Felix asked.

‘No! Blimey no. I was sayin' to the missus only yesterday – we're already losin' that old wartime spirit. “Little boxes of bricks and mortar” – that just about says it. I wish I'd a thought of that. Says it perfectly.'

‘Have you been married long?' Willard asked.

‘Gracie and me got spliced in nineteen-forty. I was in the fire brigade she was a dispatcher. Got bombed out a foo months later. Lost everyfink. Come out to Garden City – still in the fire brigade, the local one. Bin 'ere ever since. Got free kids – a gel, a boy, and a noo little baby gel – Betty, Charlie, and we can't agree on no name for the noo one. I want Vera, cos of Vera Lynn. She wants Sheila, cos she likes readin' Sheila Kaye Smith. What abaht you blokes?' He looked at Faith's nylons hanging over the curtain rail above the sink, and then at Felix. ‘Married, then?'

‘Next best thing.'

‘Ooo-err!' Todd belly-laughed.

Felix wondered who Betty and Charlie were named after – Grable? Chaplin? Chan? Chester?

Marianne joined them at that moment. ‘I take it the stone has arrived? Can I see it?'

Todd leaped to his feet, almost upsetting the beer; rather sheepishly the other two followed suit.

She laughed. ‘For heaven's sake sit down!' She peeped into the studio. ‘Oh – that shall keep you busy, Felix!'

‘Todd,' Willard began while Felix went to the pantry for a fresh glass and more beer, ‘this is—'

‘No!' Felix shouted. ‘You Americans are barbarians! Marianne – this is Todd Ferguson, delivery driver for the
LNER
. Todd, this is Marianne Johnson – Willard's better half – his much better half.'

They shook hands. Marianne took the beer bottle and poured her own.

‘Smatterer fact,' Todd said diffidently, ‘I'm the goods depot
manager
in Garden City. I'm just drivin today cos we was short.' After a pause he added, ‘I tell a lie. We are short but I could of sent someone else. I picked meself cos I wanted to see this place and I wanted to know what you was goin' to do wiv that marble.'

‘Well, you'll have to wait to see the sculpture but we could show you over the place if you like.' To Willard he added, ‘I think we can show him around, don't you?'

‘I had that thought,' Willard agreed. Marianne nodded, too.

The men had finished their beers; Marianne took hers with her on the tour, during which she extracted his life history in greater detail. ‘So,' she said, ‘you've just turned twenty-eight and you're already manager of quite a large goods depot.'

‘Yeah,' he agreed. ‘I was deputy fire chief out 'ere in the war, and actin' fire chief at the end. I like organizing fings. I like to get everyfink runnin' . . . like well-oiled.'

Behind his back, Willard held out crossed fingers to Felix, who nodded vigorous agreement.

They took him to Nicole, who showed them over her and Tony's flat. Marianne tactfully withdrew ‘to prepare her place', which came next. Then Sally joined them and showed him over their place and the rest of the house, including the Prentices' flat – they being out for the morning. When they came to the empty front flat – the largest in the house – Felix warned him that Faith thought she had found someone who might want to take it.

The significance of the warning was not lost on Todd, suggesting as it did that if Faith had not found such potential tenants, the apartments were open to offer.

‘Who?' Sally asked. ‘I haven't heard this.'

‘A couple called Brandon. Isabella and Eric. She's something to do with fashion. He's a book illustrator – mainly for children. Does the odd spot of writing, too. They're coming at the weekend – I meant to tell you.'

Todd glanced at his watch.

‘Yes – sorry,' Felix said. ‘There's only one more to look at.'

They took him to the upstairs flat in the old Tudor part of the house.

‘We refer to this as the smallest flat,' Willard said, ‘but, in fact, it has the same number of rooms as Tony and Nicole's, and Adam and Sally's . . .'

‘And more than my cottage,' Felix added.

They showed him the hallway, which was long enough and easily wide enough for a generous kitchen; then the sitting room, which was quite large, and the two bedrooms, small by Dower House standards but as big as any in a modern suburban house.

‘And we could make a third bedroom if we took out that old slate water tank, which is huge – come see.'

The tank, bone dry and filled with cobwebs, measured some six foot by five by almost five foot high.

Todd gauged it with a knowing eye; the slate floor and walls were almost two inches thick. ‘Take some shiftin that would,' he said.

‘It would need some organizing,' Willard agreed.

‘It'd suit a man who's fond of organizing, though,' Marianne added.

Todd looked from one to another. ‘You blokes serious?' he asked.

‘Never more so.'

Felix nodded, Sally nodded; they turned to Nicole, who said, ‘Of course.'

‘Blimey! Stone the crows!'

They arranged for him to bring his wife, Betty, out that same evening.

Felix knew he should have started on the carving at once; instead, he went out to the walled garden and dug a whole barrow-load of comfrey roots. With every thrust of the spade he could almost hear Faith saying, ‘What on
earth
d'you think you're doing, man? You know how impatient Fogel is getting.' He dithered over lunch – he even washed up his plate, cup, and fork. But at last he could postpone the long-awaited moment no further. He opened the box from Tiranti of Charlotte Street and took out his new mallet and his set of new carving tools – with tungsten-carbide tips – and laid them out on the whatnot (as Faith called it) beside his carving stand. And only then did he dare even look at the block of marble.

He had imagined this moment so many times over the past three days but now that it had come he was completely at a loss. He knew why, of course, but was loath to admit it, even to himself. His last effort at stonecarving had been in the sheds at Mauthausen – just before the guard had dug him in the back with his rifle barrel – ‘
Du! Jude! Kom!
' – and led him to where they did the medical experiments. Now came the leap from
that
to
this
.

He spun the stone gently round, watching the interplay of light and reflected light. Soon it began to seduce him. Marble is chalk that has been to hell and back. Tempered and purified by Vulcan, it has gained an inner luminescence that gives its surface a depth no other stone can equal. Let the merriest sunlight fall upon granite and it immediately sobers down and returns to the eye, all dour and forbidding; it moans grim sermons at you from every granite chapel in the land. But let the merest shaft of that same light play upon the gentle face of marble . . . and back it dances, full of invitations to touch, to caress, to behave like an Italian.

He caressed it with the lightest touch of his widest chisel. Feather-gentle, it nonetheless left a mark; there would be no room for mistakes here. But what would constitute a ‘mistake'? He certainly didn't want to produce an egg-shape that looked as if it had simply been turned on a mechanical wheel; it had to be
carved
. And yet, when the viewer saw it first – that
premier coup de l'oeil
, as Bonnard always called it – he must think that that was how it
was
made: mechanically perfect upon a turner's wheel.