by Esther Freud
‘Go on,’ Martha urged, an eager film of tears glinting in each eye.
‘Well,’ Marianna said more slowly, ‘they fell in love . . . immediately, the minute they set eyes on one another . . .’ She laughed, and Martha blinked, letting loose a drop of water on each cheek. ‘And the following day Papa came to the house where my mother lived and asked for permission to marry her. And so,’ Marianna folded her hands in her lap, ‘they became a couple.’
There was a silence in the carriage and Bina squinted disapprovingly. ‘Is that it?’
They were driving through thick woods along a track muffled by the first fall of leaves. The trees arched in places over their heads, splicing and covering them with branches of green shadow. Eva leant back in the carriage and looked up at the sky. ‘Without a single cloud,’ she murmured, and she began to count tiny wisps of white between the trees.
‘Please carry on,’ Martha urged, but Marianna shook her head, smiling and rearranging the fingers of each glove. She would have liked to go on, but she knew that their questions would inevitably lead to the sad fact of her father’s early death, and her mother’s subsequent decline. She would have preferred to tell them about her own meeting with their father, the flowers and dances and the romantic months of their engagement. She would describe for them the wedding feast, the roast gosling with new potatoes, the caviar and cucumber salad, but on this subject they refused to let her speak. She had no way of knowing that, with the help of Fräulein Schulze, they had devised their own history of her marriage. That she had been accepted entirely out of pity, and that a woman of higher sensibilities would never have allowed a man like Wolfgang Belgard to sacrifice himself for her.
It was late morning when they arrived. Frau Samson was already there with her daughters, more exquisite than ever in dresses of the palest pink with parasols to match. They set off to walk along the edge of the river. There was a narrow path dotted with jagged stones and in the distance the roar of a waterfall could be heard, crashing like an angry crowd. Angelika and Julika put up their shades, twisting them jauntily over their shoulders. Marianna and Frau Samson strode ahead.
‘Have you never seen the falls?’ Angelika asked, turning back to Bina. The path was so narrow in places they had to walk in single file.
‘No.’ Bina turned to Martha and Martha to Eva. Eva shrugged and stuck out her tongue. It amused her that the sun, which had shone so warmly earlier in the day, now continually disappeared behind a single fat grey cloud, which dodged and clung and followed the sun as if purposefully to make nonsense of the Samson parasols. But the sisters refused to take them down even when spray from the rushing stream sent shivers down their arms and their mother turned back to drape shawls over their shoulders.
The Belgard girls were dressed in white puffed-sleeved blouses and full polka-dot skirts. Bina swore it was the latest fashion, and she had had Schu-Schu pin up their hair in rolls that pulled back from their centre parting and twisted round the sides of their heads like harvest loaves. ‘My three little milkmaids,’ Marianna had exclaimed when the girls appeared at breakfast, and Bina told her it was the fashion of the Dolomites and that she’d read about it in a magazine.
The waterfall was ferocious. It fell into a black pool that frothed and spun under the rocks. Marianna and Frau Samson had reached it first and were leaning on a railing that was set up especially for sightseers. Their daughters joined them, and they stood, all gathered together, mesmerized by the hissing gargle of the water as it fell. ‘It is possible to climb right behind, and see it from the other side,’ Julika said, and she began to lead the way along a ledge of large damp stones that stretched into a cave.
‘Please be careful,’ Frau Samson called after them. Marianna watched as they lifted the ends of their skirts and tiptoed nervously along. She would have liked to exert her authority and order her daughters back, but the prospect of showing up her lack of influence restrained her and she only followed them with her eyes until the bright red of Eva’s skirt had disappeared behind a wall of water. Frau Samson remained silent, and both women leant against the railing and waited.
‘It’s completely dry in here,’ Eva gasped, and her voice made a hollow sound against the back wall of the cave. The others knelt down as near to the edge as they dared, tucking their skirts under the backs of their knees. The water slid past them in a huge, moving screen, shimmering and icy.
Martha’s teeth began to chatter and she edged back into the cave. ‘It’s pulling me forward,’ she said, and the others all laughed and teased but took the opportunity to move back an inch or two themselves. They squatted in a line and held each other’s hands. As their eyes became a little more accustomed to the spray and the dazzling sheet of water, they found they could make out the green shadow of trees and the shapes of birds as they flew low across their path. Angelika waved her arms in the hope that her mother might catch the pale pink spangle of her dress. And then the sun went dark behind a cloud and the water lost its luminance. It thundered past them in solid grey steel and crashed into the pool like cannonfire.
‘It’s horrible in here,’ Eva decided, convulsed suddenly with fear, and she thought of her brother living in a world where at any moment a dead body might fall in on him. Martha, relieved and close to tears, offered to take her out. They led the way, trembling as they placed each foot on the next safe stone, and gasping for air as they filed out into the light. The others followed quickly.
‘You should have come in,’ the Samson girls said to their mother, but they stayed by her side, each with a slender arm clasped round the width of her waist.
They had not heard from Emanuel for nearly a month when Wolf was asked, in a letter personally authorized by the Kaiser, if he would supply grain exclusively to the army. Wolf did not show the letter to the men with whom he worked, or mention it to Marianna, but placed it at the bottom of a drawer and prayed he would not be forced to make any decision before learning of the safety of his son. He took it out at the end of each day, after checking with his wife for news, and cursed it. Within a week a second letter arrived, delivered by a palace guard who told him he was under instructions to wait for the reply.
‘What is all this?’ His colleagues crowded around him, and Wolf told them that he was accepting an order to supply the army with grain, but on one condition: that he did it on a strictly non-profit-making basis. He wrote out his contract with slow deliberation, signing and sealing it with a set face, and took it down to the guard himself. The officer, who couldn’t have been much older than Emanuel, clicked his heels and turned sharply away.
Marianna was delighted. ‘At least I can think of Manu eating good fresh bread, wherever he is.’ Wolf nodded, and went through to his study without mentioning to her the terms on which the contract had been drawn up.
The following day a letter arrived. It had Emanuel’s smooth, blue writing on the envelope and the sight of it sent a sigh of relief shimmering through the house.
He said nothing to excuse his silence but started straight in with rapid, rambling news.
We have just completed a backwards march across the edge of Germany without knowing why or where we were going, and without permission to stop. Eventually we crossed the border into Russia, and were rewarded – but in the most unexpected way. We stopped, we sniffed, we charged . . . and there to our delight we discovered a cluster of beehives, which we immediately attacked, breaking up the combs of honey with our bare hands and cramming them into our mouths, swallowing and laughing until we were too full even to lick the last wax scales from our fingers. But, as always, we were forced to pay for this distraction. Night came on faster than expected and turned the air so bitterly cold that it was impossible to find water for the horses as everything was frozen up. We spent a particularly unhappy night, crashing about and smashing miserably at the ice. Early the next morning we set off again in the dark to travel further south to occupy a Polish village situated on a hill. By the time we reached it the sun had come out and,
although not melting the thick snow, it beat down on the white landscape so brightly that it cheered us up. And it was here, my dear family, that I was responsible for the first death of that day. Yes, as all the provisions that we had with us had run out, I transported a chicken into the beyond.
Marianna stopped reading and looked round at the confused, amused and slightly irritable faces of her family. She breathed, and having recovered from the shock of such a joke, continued.
This was the first opportunity we’d had to see the Polish villages in all their misery. The houses have wooden walls and mud floors, and in practically every one there is a person lying sick. Filthy children squat on the floor and the only food is usually a pile of potatoes heaped up in the corner. You cannot imagine how happy we were to be able to sit ourselves down on those mud floors and eat potato soup out of a filthy pan. But, before you rush off to try this particular delicacy, I should warn you that it can only be really appreciated after a diet of ice-cold pond water, drunk on an empty stomach.
Marianna folded the letter and smiled broadly before passing it, as always, along the table for her daughters to examine, one by one, for anything that she might have missed. It was only Wolf who trusted her, but today even he reached out for the sheets of paper as they fluttered from Bina to Eva over his coffee. ‘My dear family,’ he began again, and as Wolf read he sensed an icy desperation that had not been there in the light, warm tone of his wife’s rendition. Wolf began to sweat. He should never have allowed his son to leave. He should have hidden him, slipped him out of the country. He should himself be standing on a soap box under the avenue of limes preaching to the people on the futility of sending their sons to war. And instead he was feeding them, fattening them up for slaughter.
‘Wolf,’ Marianna called to him from the other end of the table, ‘what are you doing?’
He realized with a start that he was crushing Emanuel’s letter in his hands, mashing and tearing at the paper. ‘I am sorry.’ He looked round at the startled faces of his daughters. ‘I seem to have one of my headaches.’ Rather than go into the office, he went through to the back of the apartment. He pulled the blinds and lit a lamp. With his head – which really had begun to ache – propped up on pillows, he started to compose a letter to Emanuel. Usually he left this to his wife, confident that she would sign his name beside hers and that any thoughts she might lovingly express would also be his own. ‘My dear boy,’ he wrote, and paused, his pen hovering above the page. He let his elbow rest on the edge of the bed while he considered everything that he wanted to put down, his feelings about the war, which until now he had kept to himself, and the articles in newspapers that described young men, objectors, rounded up and imprisoned for their unpatriotic views. Wolf folded his arm across his stomach, and let the nib of the pen rest on his sleeve. He closed his eyes to get a clearer vision of the finished draft and, without having written anything at all, he fell asleep.
At midday Marianna came in to bring him some beef broth. She found the letter, dated and addressed, rising and falling on his chest and, making herself comfortable at the desk, she finished it, signing it tenderly from the entire family.
Marianna had a special fondness for Kaiser Wilhelm. As a child on her way to school she had seen his father in an open carriage drawn by piebalds, and whereas the other people stopped to curtsy or raise their hats, Marianna in her excitement found herself skipping off along the street, laughing and pointing and pursued by her anxious mother. But the Kaiser, rather than take offence, had lifted his hand most solemnly and given her a private wave, so that all along that street and for the rest of the school day she had become a small celebrity.
‘It is as if we had met up again,’ Marianna said that night, as she attempted to urge Wolf into a celebration of his contract. And whatever he said to the contrary she couldn’t shake off the belief that, in honouring her husband with such an order for grain, Kaiser Wilhelm was somehow continuing the warm and personal relationship between the families.
Chapter 8
‘I’ve had rather a good idea.’ My father was serving me one half of a lobster. I waited while he cracked the claws. ‘It doesn’t seem likely that we’ll finish the picture before the baby . . . well, not unless you’re very late.’
I dipped some white flesh into salt. I felt too tired even to imagine what he was going to say.
‘So, I thought, we’ll just have to incorporate the little squib into the picture.’
I laughed. ‘The baby? Are you serious?’ And I had an image of the paint all coming off as my stomach flattened and my breasts went down.
‘Of course, we’d make the studio very warm.’
I sucked soft meat out of a claw. ‘Does that mean there wouldn’t be much point in working any more today?’
‘Well . . . if you don’t feel up to it.’
‘I suppose all I’ll be doing afterwards is lying around, so I might as well lie around here.’ And the thought of my father’s unreal world, full of light and turps and delicate meals, appealed to me. ‘Your youngest ever model.’ I laughed, and as soon as I’d eaten the last shreds of the lobster, satisfying myself there was nothing left inside the splintered legs, I walked out into the afternoon to catch a bus.
It was an unusually hot spring. I planted sweet pea and cornflower seeds in tiny pots and lined them up against the windows. I pulled the sash cord up as high as it would go and wished and wished I had a garden. My bag was packed ready by the door and I spent most of my time answering the phone to say that no, no, no, I hadn’t had the baby. My mother rang to say I’d been seventeen days late, and taking heart that the baby would take after me I put my due date back. I bought Time Out and made a list of all the plays I hadn’t seen. ‘It’s now or never,’ I told Pam, and we set off for the National Theatre.
‘I don’t want to interfere,’ an usherette approached me as I sank into my seat, ‘but would you prefer to sit a little nearer to the exit?’
‘A very good idea,’ Pam said, and we agreed that if the play was really awful I could pretend to be in labour and give the audience a thrill. And then, deep down, I felt a pull. Dark blood pushing, the grate and rustle of a tiny bird. I decided to ignore it. There are fifteen more days to go, I told myself, fifteen whole days, and I let myself be drawn into the story of the play in which a group of astronauts were trying to find words to describe how they had felt in space.
Half-way through the second half I staggered out of my seat. The little click was recurring low inside, pulling in and out like tide. A kitten clawing at new cloth. It can take days, I told myself, or it might even be a false alarm, and I realized that, after nine long months of waiting, I was unprepared.
‘I’m fine,’ I insisted, backing into the ladies’, and then, on the white fold of the tissue, there was a streak of blood. My teeth shook with the shock. I stood up and leant against the door. My hands were trembling and I was freezing cold.
‘Pam,’ I hissed, and she swung round, shocked out of the play. ‘Yes!’ I nodded to her frantically, and she rummaged for our coats, making as much noise and fuss as possible, proud, for once, to draw attention to herself.
‘Are you all right?’ She wrapped me in my coat, and when I was still shaking she put her own over the top. ‘We’ll go straight to the hospital.’
‘But I didn’t bring my bag.’
‘You didn’t?’ She was alarmed, and then we both agreed it must be possible to give birth without the contents of a bag. ‘What’s in it anyway?’ I told her about my baby book and what it said you had to pack. The list started with This Book, a Video Recorder or Camera, and Something for your Birthing Partner to Eat.
‘We don’t have anything for you to eat!’ I wailed, and we both began to laugh.
‘Pam?’ But she had her hands determined on the wheel of her car and was bursting in great style through a string of orange lights. ‘Thanks,’ I muttered, and I closed my eyes, remembering to breathe.
‘Oh, yes, we’ve been expecting yo
u.’ The midwife smiled into her notes and she wired me up to a chart of graphs to check on the contractions. They came every four minutes, and I watched the needle of the graph rise up to make a hill, sloping down again when it was over. ‘Are you all right?’ Pam clutched my hand, and suddenly I was bursting with excitement.
‘So, did you bring your camera?’ the midwife asked, turning down the volume, letting the heartbeat fade away, so that I could get up off the bed.
‘In too much of a hurry,’ Pam explained, and the midwife straightened up with surprise.
‘Oh dear.’
‘I could go and get it I suppose. It isn’t far,’ and, instead of stopping her, the midwife bustled Pam away.
It was nice to be alone. I wandered about the room, touching the furniture, flicking one side of the curtain to look out into the street. There was an armchair, ribbed in beige like a friendly hippopotamus, and I stretched back into it, feeling the pain strengthen as I tested out positions. ‘Is there a dimmer for these lights?’ I asked, leaning out into the outside world, and a nurse, bustling along the corridor, shook her head. The lights ran right across the ceiling in thick tubes of white. I switched them off and the room fell suddenly away, reappearing slowly in a new soft grain of grey. Street lights filtered through the curtains and I put my head up to the window and looked out. People were parking cars and walking, whistling and hurrying home, and not one of them knew that tonight of all nights my baby was choosing to be born.
Pam opened the door. ‘Hi,’ she whispered, hushed by the new light, and she came and stood beside me at the window. ‘It’s beautiful out there, warm and clear,’ and I thought, It’s just like Christmas when you’re four years old.
At 2 a.m. the midwife came in to measure me. ‘Four centimetres.’ She looked disapproving. ‘There’s a long way to go yet, and the baby hasn’t even engaged. I’ll call the operating theatre, shall I? And tell them you’ll be down for the Caesarean.’ But another contraction came upon me and I had to roll onto my side to see it through.
