by Esther Freud
‘Can I just wait a little bit longer?’ I begged, and she tutted and said that she’d be back.
Pam looked at me as if I must be mad. ‘I’m just not quite ready.’ I tried to convince her that it wasn’t really painful, not yet. ‘It’s like being at a funfair, swooping down over the next hill.’
But Pam reminded me I hated funfairs. ‘When I have a baby,’ she said, ‘I’ll organize a surrogate mother, and then I’ll just collect it, you know, after it’s been washed and dressed.’
‘You wouldn’t,’ I said, but Pam smoothed her shirt down over her waist and laughed.
‘I would. Isn’t there anyone you want me to call?’ She had her phone, squat in her hand, her eyebrows raised.
‘Let’s wait,’ and I had to hold onto the back of the chair, remembering what I’d learnt. ‘Ohhhoooooohaaaaahhheeee.’
‘It’s like being back at drama school,’ Pam said, and she joined me, her low voice yodelling out, ‘Oooooeeeehooooow.’
The midwife blinked as she came in, but she didn’t switch on the lights. She laid both hands over the baby, head up, high under my ribs. ‘I’ve booked the theatre for seven,’ she said kindly, and this time I didn’t argue. When the birds began to twitter, Pam lay down on the bed and I moved around the room, breathing and humming and knowing all the time that I was never really going to be put to the test. It was like a week of rehearsals with the first night magically postponed. I drew the curtains and was surprised to see it was already light.
There were too many people in the theatre. It was bright white and freezing cold. ‘Pam, is that you?’ My body was lost to me from the chest down and there was Pam dressed up out of Casualty with a white mask over her face. I was battling with terror. She held my hand, ‘Just look at me,’ and we stared into each other’s eyes as a team of men and women, all busy with individual tasks, shimmered with steel just out of sight. ‘Who’d have thought it, eh?’ and, in a quick low voice, she glided through the day we met, lined up in leotards and tights while the head of the drama school strutted back and forth. ‘“I smoke, you don’t,”’ Pam mimicked, in his over-pompous voice, and we squeezed each other’s hands instead of laughing.
‘What are they doing? Oh, my God!’ One half of my brain was screaming while the other smiled, soothed, repeated the news that this was the most exciting moment of my life.
‘You’re doing brilliantly,’ Pam said. And then I felt a pulling of numb flesh, the tug of hands, and out of the still air a long, strong cry. I jolted around, and there above my eyeline was the wet and bloodied bottom of my baby.
‘It’s a boy,’ Pam whispered and someone laid him on me, just under my chin, too close to see.
‘It’s a boy.’ I repeated. ‘It’s a boy, I can’t believe it, it’s a boy.’ And everyone in the room began to laugh.
They laid him on a table, his arms and legs together like a lamb and I watched sideways as his cord was cut and he was wrapped up in a towel. Pam carried him to where I lay, walking on tiptoe like a ballerina with a glass bouquet, and at her elbow hovered a careful nurse. ‘It’s a boy,’ I said again, and my mouth was aching with a wreath of smiles. All the people working fast to stitch me up were laughing too, remarking on the size, the strength and beauty of my boy.
‘So, who does he look like?’ someone asked, down by my feet, and it occurred to me for the first time that he looked like Mike.
‘We’ll take him off to weigh him and get him warm,’ the nurse told me, and she ushered Pam out of the room.
‘You see, no one in our family has boys,’ I tried to explain, ‘hardly ever,’ but the shock of it all had made me dizzy and I closed my eyes.
Pam was waiting with my camera. As soon as I’d been lifted into bed she packed the baby into my arms. ‘Smile,’ and there I was, delirious with joy, gazing down into his perfect gummy face.
When I woke up my mother was beside my bed. The baby lay with his head against my arm, and she leant over to give us both a kiss. ‘I can’t believe I slept,’ and I remembered thinking I was too excited ever to fall asleep again.
‘I came straight here,’ she said, and I saw a stick of Seven-Eleven flowers standing in a vase, ‘there wasn’t anywhere open,’ and we both grinned down at the baby. ‘“And a child that is born on the Sabbath day is bonny and blithe, good and gay.”’
‘He is,’ I said, ‘he’s all those things.’ And we laughed to think that he was just a few hours old.
‘So what are you going to call him?’ Pam had reappeared, smelling of smoke, and she laid one finger against his hand, which even in sleep was held up quite flat like an important statesman.
‘Daisy Pamela Linder.’ I laughed, and we all turned to stare again into his face.
A nurse put her head round the door. ‘There’s a visitor for you,’ she said. And Pamela looked down at her feet. ‘I’m sorry . . . I got carried away.’
‘Tell him to come in.’ I sighed. And I pinched her on the arm. My mother stood up to arrange the flowers.
Mike shifted from one foot to the other, hovering, and then as if he should, he skirted round the bed to look down at his son. His face, amazed, filled up on the inside with a smile and he slipped one finger against the baby’s palm to see if it would grip. The fingers curled shut like a flower and Mike’s smile spilled out into a grin. ‘He’s great,’ he said, and nudging each other Pam and my mother slipped out of the room.
With his free hand Mike produced a bunch of flowers. White roses with soft thornless stems, ‘These are for you,’ and he laid them beside me on the bed.
‘Thanks.’
Still attached, he sat down on the narrow mattress, his elbow resting on my legs. I felt a small old thud of pain. ‘I haven’t named him yet.’ I would have liked to call him after my father, but unfortunately Michael had been all used up. My only other relatives were female. ‘How about Emanuel?’ I remembered.
‘Emmanuelle, like that seventies porno film?’
I pulled away from him as best I could. ‘Trust you to think of that.’
And then the baby raised his chin and yawned. It was a luxurious Walt Disney yawn and, without opening his eyes, he snuggled down again, making small sucking movements like a cat against a dish of milk.
‘Did Pamela tell you he was nearly born at the National Theatre?’ And together, silently, we considered Laurence and then thought better of it.
‘I hope that doesn’t mean he’s going to be an actor.’ Mike’s voice was gloomy, and I nearly told him about the theatre in Berlin.
‘How about Bert?’ I mused, but Mike was staring into the baby’s sleepy, rumpled face, his hair still wet, his eyes glued shut.
‘All right son?’ And for the time being we decided he might as well be Sonny.
My father arrived, dressed up in a suit with brightly polished shoes. He sat formally beside my bed. My legs had thawed but I was still dressed in my pale blue operation gown with drips and tubes attached. Sonny was what the midwives called ‘a good little feeder’. His mouth latched on and as he sucked my milk came in, swelling rock hard with what felt like a gallon of ice cream.
My father took a letter from his inside pocket. ‘They’ve discovered Gaglow.’ He looked as smily as a fox. ‘And there is no doubt at all that it belongs to us.’
I shook my head, amazed.
‘Well, usually it would be much harder to prove, but it turns out that the house was taken over by a real Nazi, some high-ranking official, and so they haven’t got a leg to stand on, pretending that it wasn’t seized.’
‘Is he still there?’
‘No, no, long dead. Apparently for the last ten years or so the house has been used as a training centre for Communist teachers.’
‘Christ, what will it be like?’
And for a while we sat in silence listening to the gulping of my milk as Sonny sucked, choking now and then and having to come off for air.
‘Was it very big, the house?’
‘Well, I remember it as being huge. Th
ere were stables, and an orchard. Apparently all the land around had once belonged to the house, but my grandfather was forced to sell it. You know, Jews weren’t meant to own land. They were only supposed to meddle around in business. But there were families, of course, that did own land, very grand and rich, who got away with it.’
‘How many rooms, do you remember?’ And I moved Sonny over to my other side.
My father folded the letter and tucked it back inside his suit. ‘Fourteen bedrooms? There was a nursery up on the top floor from where you could see right out over the gardens to a lake.’ And he drifted into silence.
Sonny was drunk with milk. His head lolled against my arm and he burped happily.
‘Might you go back and look at it?’
My father shook his head and, keeping his voice low for the baby’s sake, insisted he’d no intention of ever going back.
Chapter 9
Towards the end of February Emanuel came home on leave and during his one short week in Berlin he was inundated with visitors. The Samson girls called for him on the first day, and Aunt Cornelia, who had been unable to part with her recipe, arrived by taxi with the Tree Cake already made and shielded from the falling snow by two umbrellas.
Emanuel was ragged with exhaustion. He threw himself down on the sofa, and then immediately sat upright, swearing that he wouldn’t waste a moment of his leave in sleep. His mother and sisters crowded round him, craning forward, sniffing and smiling and trying to distinguish the unfamiliar smell of him. The burnt smell of fresh air. It had darkened his skin to oxblood and his hair was dry and light. Eva put out a finger and touched the sharp edge of his new beard. It bristled in strips of brown and red, circles of distinct colour. She tried to peer into his eyes, but he closed them, swaying slightly with the effort it took to stay awake. Marianna put a finger to her lips and began to ease her son back on to the cushions. He gave in heavily to the strength of her hands and let his head fall back, but then Wolf arrived home, and Emanuel started with the slamming of the door.
Wolf hurried forward. He pushed his way past Fräulein Schulze, hovering in the hall, through the crowd of his daughters, fully intending to clasp Emanuel in his arms, but when he saw him, rising stiffly to his feet, a stranger in his uniform, he only put a formal hand around his shoulder and patted him on the back.
Emanuel stayed in uniform. Everywhere he went people stopped and spoke to him, remarking on the latest news or asking after their own heart’s interest – regiments as far away as Egypt. Marianna gripped his arm and laughed. She told him how, as a tiny baby, his perfect face had made her reluctant to allow him out in public. ‘It was unfair on the other mothers,’ she said, and however much Emanuel teased her and protested, she would not desert her theory that he had been a child of astounding beauty.
The Samsons held a party in Emanuel’s honour. Marianna would have done so herself, but her husband insisted it was in bad taste. It was to be a costume ball. Costumes, Frau Samson felt, might distract from the impossible shortage of young men. Bina, Martha and Eva had only two days to prepare. They flew into a rage of activity, quizzing, teasing and howling at the household to help them create the perfect outfit. Schu-Schu suggested a theme from Ancient Greece. She ordered metres of white organza, draping them with folds and pleats of snowy cloth, tied in at the waist with twists of gold brocade. They were, she said, to go as Goddesses of Love.
Eva had a band of winter roses in her hair. She rushed back and forth glittering with excitement while Martha waited, calm and ready, and undeniably beautiful. She had inherited Marianna’s grace, the looseness in her wrists and ankles and the soft curve of her neck. Bina, disgruntled, turned to look at herself in the mirror. ‘Under normal circumstances you wouldn’t have even been invited to this dance,’ she reminded Eva, and she cursed the unfairness of the war. Bina was sixteen and growing steadily plumper. Her round face with its round eyes and mouth displeased her. She moulded her cheeks into a more pleasing shape, pulling at her hair and pressing back her ears until she recognized a hint of her mother’s graceful features, the charm and ease that disarmed everyone she met and the line of her nose, which was responsible, so Schu-Schu had often told her, for the beguiling of Papa.
‘Oh,’ Bina wailed, giving up. ‘I look ridiculous.’
Both her sisters crowded in on either side and insisted she looked perfect. ‘Spectacular.’ Eva winked.
Bina saw her and struck out. She slapped her sister’s ear, catching her finger on the sharp stem of a rose so that a drop of blood fell onto the white bodice of her costume. Bina let out a howl of fury.
‘What is it?’ Their governess appeared, and with one short diamond snip she cut out the stain. Bina stared despondently at the hole, made almost invisible by the layers of white behind it, until Schu-Schu took a needle and a length of thread and, with tiny stitches, set out to turn the repair into a delicate satin flower.
‘Oh, Schu, why can’t you come with us?’ Eva leant against her, but she only frowned and with strong teeth bit off the thread.
‘Are you quite ready?’ Their mother stood, amused and waiting in the doorway. She ignored the bent head of the governess.
‘They’ll be right with you.’ Fräulein rose, smoothing down her skirt, and the girls jostled among themselves for a last look in the mirror.
‘I’ll be waiting,’ Marianna said, and they heard the leather of her heels tap away along the hall.
‘Did you see that dress?’ Bina scowled. ‘So out of fashion.’ And Eva agreed that red wasn’t the right colour for her at all.
‘And those earrings.’ Martha shook her head and laughed. ‘Dragging down her ears.’
Emanuel was leaning into the room. ‘But, Manu, you’re not ready!’ Eva protested, looking at the unbuttoned tunic of his uniform. But he only smiled, laughing over their heads at Schu-Schu’s attempts to twist a last curl into Bina’s hair.
‘Hurry now,’ their father called from the front door. ‘Don’t keep your mother waiting.’ And without looking back for Schu-Schu or their brother they rushed off in a froth of white.
The party jostled with old men and younger sons, boys of seventeen, dressed up as soldiers and talking of nothing else than that the war would last until the date of their next birthday. Emanuel arrived half an hour late. ‘I wanted to walk,’ he whispered, as his sisters crowded round him like a flock of doves. His face was flushed and his hair curled damply from the snow.
‘Are you freezing?’ Eva asked, but Angelika and Julika were waiting for him by the door, ‘We need your help,’ and it transpired that an artist had been brought in to arrange a tableau vivant, and Emanuel was to be its centrepiece.
‘But not everyone’s help is needed, obviously,’ Bina said, as, blushing and protesting, Emanuel was led away. Very soon Angelika reappeared and asked that Eva might come with her too. Someone small and light was needed to stand with wings and a trumpet at the top of a ladder. A curtain would be drawn below so that from the audience she would appear to be suspended in thin air.
A gasp went up from the guests when the double doors were thrown apart and the tableau was displayed. It was a scene of military victory. Emanuel stood with his sword bared and the German flag fluttering above him. Actors who had been hired to play the conquered enemy lay dying at his feet, and a choir burst into song once the scene had been fully taken in. Eva stood at the top of her ladder, her wings balanced precariously, grinning, and once the sighing harmonies of the choir had faded out, she raised the trumpet to her lips and let out a long, discordant bellow. The crowd stirred, laughing and clapping and the floor was cleared for dancing.
Eva sat at the side and watched. She saw Bina glide past with a tall blond officer in squeaking boots, and Martha, graceful in the arms of a professor. As they danced Martha kept her face tilted, and her ear open to hear his version of the birth of Aphrodite. ‘She was born of sea foam, after the brutal castration of Uranus, and washed ashore, naked as the dawn.’ Martha paled, but he continued with de
tails of Aphrodite’s marriage and the child that she bore for her earthly Trojan lover. Martha’s ear glowed pink and her ankles quivered, but it took three long dances before she could ease herself away.
‘May I have the honour of this dance?’ It was Emanuel who had taken pity on her.
‘Oh, if you insist,’ Eva said, jumping up, and it was only then that she found she had forgotten to unstrap her wings.
‘Keep them on,’ Emanuel whispered. ‘It will give us more room.’ And when she stepped on his toes during the first waltz he laughed and called her his left-footed little angel.
On the last day of Emanuel’s leave, Marianna woke out of a hollow web of dreams. ‘It would be less cruel not to have allowed him home at all,’ she said, and the words formed in curlicues in the cold room. ‘It would have been far less painful.’ And, unable to bear the thought of his departure, she swung out of bed and let her toes feel blindly for her slippers. She would run through to his room and wake him. Force him to look her in the eye. Tell him that she hadn’t seen him properly and that he couldn’t possibly leave until, at the very least, they could reacquaint themselves. She twisted her hair as she hurried along, tucking it under the collar of her gown so that it formed a ridge down her back like the long moulded spine of a dragon.
Outside Emanuel’s door she stopped and calmed herself ‘Manu,’ she whispered, and when there was no answer, she eased the handle and went in. Emanuel was not in bed. She stood there for a minute, expecting to be startled as he stepped back from the window or rose up from his desk, and it took her several moments to see that the room was empty. The curtains were drawn back and, breathing hard to calm herself, she watched the snow falling in the street, swirling and catching on the hurrying figures as they went about the beginnings of their day.
