by Esther Freud
‘Bina!’ The Samson sisters exclaimed in one accusing breath. ‘How cruel.’ But their faces opened up with admiration.
Eva lay back comfortably in her chair. She screwed up one eye to glance sideways at her sister and was surprised to catch the dark fury of her scowl as she patted and smoothed the blush out of her cheeks.
‘Manu,’ Eva called, as soon as the Samson motorcar had set them down at Gaglow, and she ran through the house, along the downstairs corridor and out on to the back lawn to find him. Instead she found her mother, bent over a rose bush, surreptitiously plucking at the dead heads of the flowers. ‘He hasn’t gone away again?’ she gasped, and Marianna, without looking up, said she needn’t worry, they’d got him until the autumn.
‘Emanuel,’ Eva shouted, running down towards the orchard, but she could see between the rows of stunted trees that he wasn’t there. The door to the walled garden was shut, and dragging her feet, she walked in a wide arc of the upper lawn, wading through a spray of wild raspberry and re-emerging on the sloping mound into which the ice-house had been built. The wall rose up out of the earth, only feet below the tiles, and as Eva scrambled round it, huffing and preparing to give up, she heard her brother’s voice. He was talking softly, with a laugh between each word, and she could almost hear his slanting smile.
‘I’m back, Manu, I’m back,’ she announced, shrieking round a pillar, and her brother, as if she’d given him a fright, sprang out towards her.
‘Manu?’
But there was her governess, leaning into the curved wall. ‘Evschen, you’re back already.’ And she stretched out a hand. Her face was milky white and dense, as if she’d just woken from a sleep. ‘We didn’t hear you.’ She laughed, and Emanuel dropped his shoulders and stepped towards them both.
‘How was the Castle?’ He put his arm around her, his face opening up especially for her, and Eva lolled blissfully between them, Schu-Schu and her brother, retelling every detail of each hour, until it was time to go into the house.
Emanuel had never been one of Fräulein Schulze’s charges. She had come to them when Eva was still a baby and Emanuel, already quite grown up at eleven, was studying with a private tutor.
At first Marianna did not realize the effect the governess was having on her daughters. In the space of a few months, Bina, always wayward and given to fits of temper, became distant and cold, and the other two, ruled as they were by their elder sister, followed suit with their behaviour. It was only after returning home from a month-long visit to a spa town that Marianna clearly saw how they had changed towards her. Instead of rushing, their little arms outstretched and groping for the presents she had hidden in her cape, they lined up stiffly and curtsied, one by one. ‘My darlings,’ Marianna gasped, horrified at this cold reception. ‘What manners!’ But the children just looked glumly down, as if they longed for nothing more than to return to the private world of their nursery. She’d kept them with her for as long as she could bear it, and then when their formality showed no sign of easing she gave up miserably and sent them away. She imagined them prancing freely out of their regulation finery and throwing feather pillows at each other under the treacherous freckled eye of Fräulein Schulze.
Marianna became determined to find some ground on which to dismiss the governess. She watched her closely day after day, stinging with the sight of her children’s growing adoration and unable to find the clue to her methods of seduction. She began to curse the bridge parties she had to arrange and the dresses that must be ordered and the three afternoons a week spent with a cloth over her shoulders while Herr Baum heated and rolled her hair. There were her piano lessons and her son’s education and the health of her husband, which was not always good. All these things stopped her, month after month, from finding any cause for complaint, and she shrank from dismissing the girl without some specific reason. She had almost given up when an excuse was sent to her in the form of Eva. She was just rushing out to Wertheim’s to buy stockings and new gloves when she noticed that the drawing-room door had been left open. Glancing in, she saw her youngest daughter standing with a marble in her hand. She was holding it up to the light, and as Marianna watched she popped it, like a sweet, into her mouth.
‘Eva!’ Marianna shrieked, seizing her by the shoulders, and Eva, who was relishing the smooth feel of glass rolling round her tongue, jumped so that the marble lodged hard into her throat. ‘Spit it out!’ Marianna ordered, pulling her round, and with her fingers she attempted to prise open her mouth. Eva choked and spluttered and began to turn a deep, dark red. ‘Help, for God’s sake!’ Marianna shouted, panic rising, and before she’d had a chance to peel away her gloves, Fräulein Schulze was pushing her aside. She grabbed hold of the girl and with a quick twist of her arm flipped her upside down, thumping her sharply on the back so that the marble flew out and rolled away across the floor.
Marianna found that she was shaking. ‘Whatever were you thinking of, leaving the child in here alone?’ And when Fräulein Schulze didn’t answer, she seized her opportunity and ordered that she pack up her things and go. ‘Evschen, my sweet child.’ She went to wrap her daughter in her arms, but Eva struggled free, running towards her sisters who, white-faced and full of fury, were clutching at Schu-Schu’s skirt.
‘A marble?’ Wolf raised an eyebrow. ‘Is that so very dangerous? But Marianna refused to answer. She had spent most of that afternoon in tears, waiting for him to return, and now that the news had been passed on she presented a cold composure to her husband that he failed to understand.
‘A month’s wages, is that all?’ he worried. ‘She has been with us over a year.’ And Marianna simply repeated that a seat was booked for Ulm in Fräulein Schulze’s name and she would need to be at the station by eight o’clock the following morning.
Marianna Belgard stood with folded hands and stared down at the red-hot, raddled faces of her daughters. ‘I shall manage,’ she had said when, earlier that day, Wolf mentioned that he might just possibly be expected to have dinner out with grain merchants recently arrived in town.
‘Come on now, my silly little loves,’ she ventured, when the display of grief continued unabated. ‘It cannot be the end of the world . . .’ But her voice was sunk in wails and the endless maddening repetition of Schu-Schu’s name. By late afternoon Marianna felt the strain of her own temper rising, and she had to stop herself from running to the kitchen for a basin of cold water. She imagined the gratifying sloosh of it as all three screaming mouths were startled into silence. But she gripped her hands, resisting, and sent out instead for Nanny from her evening off.
The following morning Bina still refused to eat, and Eva and Martha, having found small mementoes of their governess, a brooch and a bead-encrusted hairslide tucked under their pillows, howled with renewed strength. Marianna called the doctor out. ‘A possible case of fever,’ he diagnosed. ‘Not always serious, but in this case we cannot be too careful.’ And, with narrowed eyes, he prescribed a medicine to be administered at intervals throughout the day. Marianna, torn between respect and a reluctance to betray her children, wrote down his instructions and paid his bill.
‘What if they really have become ill?’ And having forgotten all about Eva, the marble and the suddenness of Fräulein Schulze’s departure, she began to administer the bitter-tasting medicine, forcing it down and driving one more spoke into the claim against her. Nanny was no help: attached to her as the children were, in the course of the last year Fräulein had succeeded in undermining her authority. Where once Nanny might have silenced them with a stern look and the withdrawal of some treat, now they only laughed at her. ‘I used to be your father’s nurse,’ she told them, ‘many years ago, and he would never have given me such trouble.’ And for a moment they were silent thinking over how their papa often stopped and pressed her chalky hand, laying it against his cheek, and calling her not Nanny but Omi Lise, as if she were a real-life grandmother.
After five more broken nights of wailing, it was Emanuel who suggest
ed that Schu-Schu might be reinstated. He stood in the nursery and watched his sisters, red-eyed and unrelenting, while Eva, exhausted from the effort to maintain the vigil, sat palely in her cot.
Marianna refused her son’s advice. Instead she drove with him to the zoological gardens, where they strolled along the gravel paths, breathing in the smell of the exotic plants and admiring the animals, the flock of pelicans and the great brown bear staring languidly out at them. ‘How sad,’ Emanuel said, his fingers clinging to the wire of the pen, his eyes fixed on the animal, whose paw scratched and scratched against the ground.
‘Come away,’ Marianna urged, the pink ends of his thumbs so vulnerable to one great swipe.
Emanuel took her arm. He was almost thirteen and growing taller by the month. He talked now and then about the day when he would begin work with his father, dealing grain on the exchange, and Marianna’s pride in him occasionally rose up and overwhelmed her. It seized her by the throat and squeezed delicious tears from her eyes. She gripped his arm and led him in the direction of the sea lions.
There was a café in the centre of the park where they sat down and ordered ices. It was hardly the weather for it, and they smiled at each other over the cold silver of their spoons.
Marianna longed to ask his opinion of the governess Schulze and the strange power that she wielded, convinced he would have some wise words with which to comfort her. How much more eagerly she would accept his judgement than her husband’s. Wolf, she knew, would be bound to tease her, turning her questions into an excuse to make light of the way she ran her house. As if the upbringing of her daughters could be compared in any way to a spring-clean. But she stopped herself from raising the subject, pushing away these thoughts and reminding herself that Emanuel must have his head free for Professor Essenheim, who came every morning to work with him on a whole variety of subjects.
Emanuel smiled mischievously across at her. ‘Now what?’ he asked, and she was sure he had guessed at what was really on her mind.
‘Another ice?’ she suggested, and they sat at their little table, chatting idly, and spooning up delicate mouthfuls of scented, frozen fruit, as they watched the people pass on their way to and from the zoo.
Chapter 4
For no obvious reason my father suggested we drop in to see his mother one afternoon after buying salmon from the fishmonger in St John’s Wood. I was eighteen, in my first year at drama school, and as far as I knew my existence had never been disclosed.
‘Will she know who I am?’ I asked, as we drew up outside, and he took hold of my hand and said there were days when she didn’t know who anybody was.
The house was flat-fronted and over-shadowed by a tree. It surprised me to find that my father had a key. ‘Mutti?’ he called, into the gloom of the front hall, and I followed him as he trod quietly through. There was a formal parlour, a pale rug over wooden boards, and a step down into the back room. And there she was. My grandmother. Eva. A person from another world. She looked at us and smiled. Her bright white hair was fastened in a bun and her eyes were pale and startling. ‘Good afternoon.’ My father kissed her hair, frowning down at a half-finished game of solitaire. I hovered in the corner. The room was panelled with dark wood, cabinets and shelves of varying lengths fitted tight into the walls on every side. There were drawers and small compartments and the flap of a hatch that led through into another room. I leant towards a photograph inside its frame, three young women in gauzy summer clothes, faded and beautiful with sun. ‘Mutti, this is Sarah,’ and my grandmother raised her eyes, opening them to let in white, and looked me over. I smiled and nodded but she moved her attention back to her game, and although I came and stood beside her, watching as she cheated marbles into holes, she didn’t look at me again.
My grandmother had a live-in companion, Meg. My father called her from the bottom of the stairs and with a thud and a great hoot she came thundering down. ‘Mr Linder! How lovely to see you!’ She glanced sideways at her charge and whispered in a sing-song voice, ‘She’s a stubborn one, she is, stubborn and sly.’ And then moving past us in a burst of whisky breath she put an arm around my grandmother’s neck and kissed her roughly like a child.
‘I’m Sarah,’ I offered, as she fixed me with an inquisitive grin. ‘Michael’s daughter.’
Meg flushed and fumbled, wondering how she’d managed to forget. ‘Sarah,’ she said, ‘Sarah!’ as if it was just coming back to her, and she made me sit down and remind her what I did.
‘I’m at drama school.’
She threw up her hands and told me she’d been married to an actor, well, two, in fact, and knew anyone and everyone there was to know in the business. ‘I’ll introduce you to the top producers,’ she insisted, with a heavy hand, and I thanked her, moving towards my father who was shifting about uneasily by the door.
‘Goodbye, Mutti,’ he whispered as he slipped away, but she didn’t look up from her game and my words to her were lost in a sudden and passionate embrace from Meg, insisting that we meet again very soon.
‘We’ll dine at Le Caprice,’ she called, through the closed window, and instead of answering we nodded to her as we drove away.
‘My mother, Meg, me and you . . . Shall we invite anyone else?’ My father, against all expectations, had booked for Saturday at the small Italian on the corner of his road.
‘I could bring Pamela?’ I offered, and the more I thought of it the more the idea appealed. Pam was my best friend, and although I’d only known her since the start of college we were bound together through sheer drama. Her family lived in Surrey and I’d often been invited there for the weekend where Pamela’s parents set out to soothe away the hardships of our student life. They set up barbecues, picnics and elaborate teas with instant cheesecake and cold crumbly flans. They drove us out to country pubs for scampi-in-a-basket, and afterwards, when we returned, they hovered over us with trays of cake and flutes of German wine. Pam’s mother even packed us treats to take back on the train. Chocolate biscuits, individually wrapped, and fat white eggy rolls. Pam remained slim and flawless, while I, as soon as we reached home, would lie beached up on my bed, promising myself a three-day diet of grapes.
Pamela Harris was tall and blonde with permanent mascara clogged above her eyes. In the third week of college I had saved her life. We were working late, rehearsing scenes from Wedekind, when the hushed intensity of Act Two was shattered by a roar. ‘PAMELA!’ It was a bellow followed by the pounding of the door, and Pam gripped hold of my hand.
‘PAMELAAAA!’ The students standing on the makeshift stage froze with their hands over their mouths. ‘I . . . love . . . you . . . Pamela.’ There were cracks and fury in his voice. Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire, and the gold hairs stood up along Pam’s arm. ‘I . . . fucking . . . love . . . you.’
He was desperate, frothing, Jack Nicholson with an axe, and so I pulled her up and skidded through the building. ‘Quick, hide in here.’ Together we squeezed into a cubicle, shivering and giggling, wincing against the sudden shattering of glass.
‘He’ll kill me,’ she insisted, so I helped to push her through a window high up above the sinks.
Pam stayed with me that night. She lay beside me in my single bed, trembling as she smoked, making me promise that I wouldn’t leave her even to get up for water in the night. ‘Of course I won’t leave you,’ I said, and curled against her arm, her ashtray balanced on my hip, and sank into a blissful and heroic sleep.
‘Sarah! My dear girl.’ It was Meg, already seated beside my grandmother, tiny and frail in a dust black dress. ‘Sarah.’ She got up and, both arms outstretched, crushed me against her bosom. ‘Sarah, Sarah, I want you to sit next to me.’
Pam took the seat opposite my father and, with one hand still gripped by Meg, I made the introductions. My grandmother looked from Pam to me. She held her shoulders straight, her head a little lowered, and when she smiled her chin turned into a point just like my own. ‘How do you do?’ she murmured, and I heard the forei
gn strength of her old accent.
‘Wine, we need more wine.’ Meg hailed the waiter and began to fill me in on the details of her first husband’s life, his triumphs and his failures. ‘It’s far, far worse for women,’ she warned, and with great snorts and sighs she searched around for the names of agents, the ones whose reputations had been strong when her last husband was alive.
‘Pam is studying drama as well,’ I broke in. ‘In fact she’s the real star of our year.’ Meg stopped in mid-flow to lean across and clasp her arm, releasing me to take hold of her glass. I took the opportunity to smile at my grandmother. If only I could think of one single thing to say.
‘Risotto,’ she whispered to my father, and he placed the order for her.
‘And for me,’ I agreed, hoping somehow to forge a link, but her eyes were fixed on Pam.
Pam laughed and gasped as Meg launched into a theatrical anecdote involving a deaf woman, her second husband and a dog. ‘That’s amazing, so what did he do?’ Pam sparkled right on cue and Meg tightened the grip around her arm. My father caught my eye and made a private face and I tried offering my grandmother the bread basket.
Eventually Pam backed off towards the ladies’. There was a silence while we caught our breath and, under the guise of ordering more wine, I slipped away to find her. ‘Pam, I’m so sorry.’ Her feet were just visible below the toilet door.
