The Dower House (28 page)

(To discover who wins, look at the third letter in each name, starting at the top. It's right, too, I fear.)

Felix opened the folds of the second letter but instead of reading it from the top he let his eyes wander down the page, picking words and phrases at random, among them: ‘Gestapo . . . Vichy . . . living in the shadows . . . hundreds of thousands of corpses . . .'

He could not face it.

‘That was quick,' Faith said when he came back downstairs.

Nicole, forewarned by her own reading, was more perceptive. ‘I thought you might read just one and then stop.'

‘Does it show whether your father survived?' Faith asked.

He spread empty hands; Nicole shook her head.

‘For sure?' Faith persisted.

Felix held his breath.

Nicole shrugged. ‘It would be a miracle. I'm sorry, Felix. Of course, you know him better than anyone. When you read the second letter, maybe you will think it's a chance and I am pessimist.'

Faith realized that if Nicole was merely pessimistic, Felix would opt for triple-proof denial. ‘I'll just go and say night-night to Jupiter,' she said.

‘You want me to tell you?' Nicole asked when they were alone.

‘That's why she's popped out, I'm sure. She won't speak of it unless I do but she will fret and fret until she knows everything.'

Nicole shook her head in wonder. ‘You think only of her!'

‘Not
only
but a lot.'

So she told him as much as she thought he should know, but to certain of his questions she answered that he should read that for himself.

‘So?' Faith asked after she had gone home.

‘I'll read the other letter tomorrow. You can look at the first one if you like. I need to . . . to readjust to him. It's on my bedside table.'

He thought she would go upstairs immediately but instead she asked, ‘What about that transcript business – the transcript Angela made of that conference? Is she going to go back to Germany to try to find it?'

‘She's been in touch with the man who had it from Marianne – Herr Hermann Treite – and he
still
has it. And he's still living in Hamburg. So that's one big worry lifted. She doesn't want him to send it by ordinary post, though. She says the
BBC
is still riddled with Secret Service people.'

‘Do you believe that?'

‘I believe it's possible. I'm going to have a Scotch. You?'

‘Yes, why not!'

He continued as he poured their drinks, ‘I believe it's possible but I also know how easy it is for us ex-citizens of the Third Reich to see agents of the state under every stone.' He splashed a little soda in hers and brought it to her. ‘Doesn't it put you off wanting to work there?'

‘Television won't be in Broadcasting House. A little dicky bird told me that when they go nationwide they'll—'

‘What's that?'

‘It's
BBC
-speak for achieving full national coverage, except for a million or so people who will insist on living in valleys. Anyway, they're close to it now and this little bird also tells me they're negotiating to take over the old film studios in Lime Grove, near Shepherds Bush. But I didn't want to talk about television. The thing is—'

‘These “little birds”,' he said. ‘You have lots of them?'

‘No more than I need. The thing is – will Angela go over and collect this transcript?'

‘Why?'

‘I just wondered. Does your Tante Uschi live near Hamburg?'

He sat beside her and hugged an arm around her. ‘Are you worried I might go over there with her? Is that what all this is about?'

She handed him her empty glass. ‘A bird never flew on one wing – as the Irishman said.'

He gave her the refill. She went on, ‘I think it would be a
good
thing if you and she went over there together.'

Monday, 29 September 1947

Thanks to some nifty work by Corvo and an intervention by the Arts Council, Felix had a princely allowance of thirty pounds to take him to Hamburg, Kiel, and back. He had no intention of spending it all but he had had enough experience of being stranded and penniless in post-war Germany for one lifetime. He and Angela had arranged to meet at Victoria and take the Southern Railway's
Golden Arrow
service to Paris. There they would spend one or two nights with relations of Nicole's at Ville d'Avray, and, on the Thursday night, catch a through sleeper to Cologne via Brussels. A connection from there would get them to Hamburg around five on the Friday afternoon. Fortunately for their travel allowance, they had been able to pay the fares for the entire journey, including Felix's onward trip to Kiel, in sterling and in advance.

There had been a delicate moment when it came to agreeing the night-sleeper portion of the journey; each had hung back, waiting for the other to say, ‘Look, we're both grown up . . . not awkward teenagers . . . should be perfectly possible . . . share . . . without . . . you know . . .' but then Felix had said, ‘Dammit! We're neither of us paupers now. Don't we deserve a little luxury? I don't want to share with some
petit bourgeois
travelling salesman. Let's go first class and have a compartment each to ourselves!' And so it was.

But that long, delicate moment had been interesting, all the same.

His train to Kings Cross had been delayed, so she was at Victoria well before him. He saw her first, standing just inside the ticket barrier, looking toward the arch that opened into the concourse directly from the Tube exit – whereas he had deviated via the newspaper kiosk to buy
The Economist
– something meaty and magisterial to while away the hours. He paused a moment, set down his suitcase, and considered her.

She had fleshed out since he first saw her and was even more like a de Lempicka. When he saw the Dower House babies growing at the speed of light, and felt a strong desire for some of his own – a feeling he had never had before – he always pictured them in the strong embrace of de Lempicka arms, not Faith's.

He hefted his suitcase, resettled his trenchcoat over his shoulder, and stepped out into the concourse where she would be bound to see him. The radiant excitement of her recognition took his breath away.

The concourse beneath his feet was tired and stained, another war victim, still convalescent. He had a vision of khaki trousers, green-blancoed gaiters, once-shiny boots tramping . . . to the trains, from the trains . . . singing ‘Bless 'em All'. The chummy, carry-on-smoking-chaps war that Europe had not known. It faded like a cliché from the silent cinema.

‘Coach C is up near the front,' she said. ‘Oh – I was getting so worried.'

‘Your bags?'

‘I put them over our seats. It really is a de-luxe carriage. The porter said it wouldn't be too crowded but there's only one non-smoking Pullman in the whole train. Eee – aren't you excited?'

‘Paris, yes. Germany?' He seesawed his free hand.

‘Oh, it's not so bad there now. Even before the Marshall Plan, everything was a lot better already.'

They passed a solo engine, parked by the adjoining platform, hissing and pinging like a kettle rising to the boil.

‘The heat off those things!' he said. ‘You're going to have to speak German over there.'

‘Of course – when I have to. There's no need to start now. Anyway, I've been thinking about what you said – the language of Goethe and Schiller . . . all that.'

‘That was a good day,' he said.

‘Yes, it was! Here we are. I do like the way English platforms are the same level as the floors of the carriages, almost.'

One step
– this one of wood.

‘Down the far end,' she told him. ‘Table for two.'

When they reached it he hoisted their bags up to the luggage rack and they settled in the two window seats, facing each other. Looking about the carriage he said, ‘I like the pictures in our carriages on the
LNER
out to Welwyn – those coloured linocuts of
Fountains Abbey
and
The Vale of Evesham
. A world of permanence.' He leaned back and closed his eyes. ‘It
was
a good day – the twenty-seventh of May.'

‘How's Faith?'

He shrugged. ‘She was out riding when I left. Half-past six every day, rain or shine. Willard drove me to the station so she'll have to go in with Todd this morning.'

There was a shrill whistle but it must have been for some other train because the
Golden Arrow
did not move. The waiter took their order – coffee and Kunzle cakes, which Felix called ‘the nearest thing in England to
Sachertorte
'.

He continued, ‘It'll be interesting – Germany. Post-war. Terence – our economics brain who lives down in the gatelodge – says that England's limping along with out-of-date equipment that wasn't destroyed in the war while Germany thrusts ahead with brand-new industrial machinery everywhere. It's the Versailles of nineteen twenty-two stood on its head.'

She drew breath to speak . . . then thought better of it.

‘What?' he asked.

‘It's something I think about often. Sometimes I want Germany to suffer for what they did – we did – in the war. Then, other times, I know that would only be a repeat of the suffering after the nineteen-fourteen war . . . and all the horrors that led to.'

While she was speaking the waiter put down their coffee and cakes; Felix initialled the chit. There was a new, more distant shrill of a whistle, and this time the train started to move – smoothly, without a jolt. The coffee did not even tilt in their cups.

‘Those horrors couldn't possibly be repeated,' Felix said.

‘We're an inventive lot,' she countered. ‘We'd think of something.'

They emerged into the full light of day, into a south-London townscape so drab and tired that, for a long moment, it deprived them of speech. At last she asked, ‘Did you bring something to read? I saw a magazine in your raincoat pocket.'

‘Why? Actually, I have something Eric Brandon asked me to read . . . part of some book he's writing – about state patronage.'

‘I think it's very relaxing to sit and read on a train. We can talk again when there's some nice country scenery to look at. This is so . . .
schäbig
.'

‘Drab.' He picked up a Kunzle cake – a small cake in which the traditional crinkle-paper cup was replaced with one of crinkle-chocolate and filled with a dense, frothy-choclatey-chewy-nougaty cream. ‘Don't let me eat more than one of these,' he begged her before taking the smallest, make-it-last bite.

‘I suppose I could force myself to eat just one,' she replied, biting off a regular mouthful and closing her eyes in ecstasy.

He wondered how many fellow prisoners he would have killed just to be able to get one of these into his hands. Was that on her mind, too? He could just make out the title of her book:
The Woman of Rome
.

‘Good?' he asked.

‘Unpleasant,' she said, ‘but you have to keep on reading. Fascinatingly unpleasant. I was going to bring
The Diary of Anne Frank
, but then I thought . . . no.'

‘No,' he murmered, absent-mindedly fingering the second Kunzle cake, and opening Eric's folder of loose leaves, ‘perhaps not.'

From time to time she broke her communion with Adriana and her existentially inevitable drift into prostitution to watch Felix as he grappled with Eric's complex but constipated effort to reconcile artistic freedom with the patronage offered by the modern state. ‘Any good?' she asked as he laid the final sheet back in its folder. ‘It certainly held your attention.'

‘Wyndham Lewis did it better,' he said. ‘The free-ranging artist who accepts handouts from the state must ever after accept that he is now confined to a paddock. Didn't some scientists prove recently that the bumblebee cannot possibly fly?'

She laughed. ‘I read that somewhere.'

‘Well, I think Eric's saying that culture has come to a dead end. Art can no longer fly.'

‘And he's asking for
your
opinion? What are you going to tell him?'

‘I shall say I feel very like a bumblebee.'

‘The White Cliffs?' Angela murmured. ‘More like gray, don't you think?'

‘And the “bluebirds” turn out to be seagulls. Promises are so easy to make in wartime.'

‘But you can see why they haven't been invaded for almost a thousand years – and not for lack of trying. Do you get seasick?'

He leaned over the rail, staring directly down into the sea, enchanted by the flickering interplay of black and gray-green, offset by white streaks of foam. ‘Only when asked,' he replied.

‘I think I'm going inside.'

‘Below,' he told her. ‘On a ship it's called going below. Would you like to read my father's second letter? Or later, perhaps?'

She held out her hand. ‘I'd be honoured to be allowed to read it.' She found a seat that would allow her to glance up at the horizon from time to time; someone at work had told her it was the cure for seasickness. She unfolded the letter and smoothed it carefully on the cut moquette of the empty seat next to her. The pattern, self-consciously avant-garde in the Thirties, now seemed merely trite. She read: