by Esther Freud
‘So, you’re prepared to follow us across the world?’ I looked sideways at him as we stepped out across the shiny floor.
‘I don’t seem to have much choice.’ He smiled.
‘As long as we stay away from America?’
‘Don’t push your luck.’ Awkward, suddenly, and shy, we walked through into the lounge.
We had to take a taxi from the station. ‘Will there be room for me?’ Mike asked, doubtful now as we drove fast along newly patched roads.
‘The house is huge.’ I laughed him down. ‘It has fourteen bedrooms at least, or maybe forty, and the teachers will all be off on holiday.’
The taxi driver was a large, red man with over-knuckled hands, who talked loudly at us while we strained out of the window to see. There were wheatfields and rye, and cows in clusters flipping their tails for flies, and then we were rattling up the drive towards the gritted oval of the porch.
‘It’s beautiful,’ I gasped, ‘beautiful,’ although what struck me most was that really it was hideous. The house was newly painted in apricot and cream, and roses, bred to flower right through the summer, grew from the gravel in tubs. I climbed out of the car. A man was clanking open the glossed double doors, but already I was edging towards the garden.
‘Good evening, welcome.’ The man strode towards us, and I introduced him to Sonny and then Mike. ‘Come, come inside,’ he called. ‘You’ll see we have some of your family’s original furniture. The grand piano, for instance, and some interesting tapestries.’ As he talked I found myself slipping off, clanking open the new wrought-iron gate, and skimming off alone across the lawn. The garden was mostly grass, with wide beds of roses, short bushes in pink and gold and red. They were set out squatly, divided up with fat, ferocious stems and without a weed between them. I turned to look up at the house. There were long french windows, closed against the heat, and under the shade of a veranda was stacked a large consignment of plastic chairs. The teachers, I imagined, breaking off to sit out in the sun, and I walked towards the edges of the garden where the lawn had been left to grow tall, running wild against a fringe of trees. From here I could see the high windows of the attic, and the orchard, gnarled and green, spreading out to one side of the house. There was a path of longer, rougher grass that led into the hill, and as I followed it under leaves of lilac I came upon the ice-house. It was dilapidated, its pillars peeling paint, and the leaves from last winter lay curled and dried across its floor. A stone bench curved into the wall and there was the square outline of a door. There was no handle and no catch, and as I traced it with my fingers I found that it had been sealed shut. I lay down on the bench and looked out through the avenue of leaves from where I could just see the shadows on the evening lawn. ‘Sarah,’ I heard Mike call, and then the little whimpering of Sonny, hungry for a feed.
I tried to imagine my great-grandmother living here, alone with her companion, Emanuel’s wife, while Germany boiled up towards another war. Schu-Schu, I thought, Gabrielle Belgard, and I wondered if they had minded much when Bina, Martha and Eva refused to come. They would walk the paths together, not always in their widow’s black, and in the early evening, drink coffee with cream out on the porch. I should tell my father how the curse must have been lifted, when Marianna went to Jerusalem and brought Schu-Schu home and I thought I caught their shadows, playing cards into the night.
‘Sarah,’ Mike called again. ‘We need you,’ and after a moment I jumped up and ran through the long grass towards the house.
Acknowledgments
I’d like to thank the following people who helped me with information, translations, photographs, memories, encouragement and notes: Gerta Calmann, Marianne Calmann, Dick Mosse, Lucy Mosse, Katharina Bielenberg, Josh Lacey, Kitty Aldridge, David Morrissey and the late Jo Kaufman.
Also for source material: Memories of My Youth by Elise Brash, The Letters of Carl Heinrich Hertz, Life in Russia, 1915–1917 by Richard Samson (with special thanks to the Institut für die Geschichte der deutschen Juden), and An English Wife in Berlin by Evelyn Blucher.
About the Author
ESTHER FREUD trained as an actress before writing her first novel, Hideous Kinky, which was short-listed for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and made into a film starring Kate Winslet. After publishing her second novel, Peerless Flats, she was chosen as one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists. Her other books include Lucky Break and Mr. Mac and Me, which won an East Anglian Book Award. She contributes regularly to newspapers and magazines, and teaches creative writing. Her first full-length play, Stitchers, was produced at London’s Jermyn Street Theatre in 2018, and in 2019 she was made a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Her ninth novel, I Couldn’t Love You More, was published in 2021.
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.
Also by Esther Freud
I Couldn’t Love You More (2021)
Mr. Mac and Me (2014)
Lucky Break (2011)
Love Falls (2007)
The Sea House (2003)
The Wild (2000)
Summer at Gaglow (1997)
Peerless Flats (1993)
Hideous Kinky (1992)
Copyright
SUMMER AT GAGLOW. Copyright © 1997 by Esther Freud. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Ecco® and HarperCollins® are trademarks of HarperCollins Publishers.
A hardcover edition of this book was published in 1999 by Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
FIRST ECCO PAPERBACK EDITION PUBLISHED IN 1999
REISSUED BY ECCO IN 2021
Cover design by Allison Saltzman
Cover art © Tali Yalonetzki
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
Digital Edition JULY 2021 ISBN: 978-0-06-321073-8
Version 05252021
Print ISBN: 978-0-88-001672-8 (pbk.)
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