by Rosie Thomas
If there was anything noticeable about the volume it was the lack of informal and family snapshots. Grace seemed to have had an unusually busy political and social year.
Elizabeth was about to close the heavy leather-bound covers when she noticed that there was a flap pocket at the inside back. She slipped her fingers into it, half hoping that she might discover some photographic negatives, perhaps scenes from some entirely separate and secret portion of Grace’s life.
Her fingers encountered something. She drew it out, and saw that it was a piece of lined paper torn from a book. It was covered with pencil writing, faded almost to the point of illegibility.
Holding the paper up the anglepoise lamp on her desk, squinting at each word, Elizabeth read Alice’s letter.
She read it again, and again. The parts of it that she could decipher made no sense. Was it a game, or some overblown girlish code, or simply gibberish? The talk of guards and guns and the Führer surely indicated one of those things. Elizabeth knew the facts: Alice had gone to Munich to learn German, like so many girls of her class and generation, and had died in an accident.
And afterwards, as if the grief of her loss had been too much for the rest of them to bear, it was as if she had never lived. The memories of her seemed all to have been locked away and then forgotten.
Elizabeth made a trip to Oxford. She found the old church and the graveyard, surrounded now by modern buildings of yellow brick and plate glass, and after an hour’s searching in the wet grass she stumbled across Alice’s grave. The simple stone tablet read:
Alice Hirsh, born March 1912, died in Germany, December 1936.
Ask not for whom the bell tolls.
And then Elizabeth went to call on Clio again.
The old lady was sitting in her usual place, under the portrait. Her sparse white hair was freshly washed and one of her nurses had teased it into a halo around her skull.
Elizabeth read the letter to her and explained where she had found it. Clio nodded her head very slowly.
Patiently, Elizabeth said, ‘I wonder if you could tell me what it might mean? She was only a young girl. Could there have been guards and a gun?’
She waited for a long moment until she was convinced that Clio must have forgotten the question. She opened her mouth to repeat it, but Clio darted a look at her. Her watery eyes seemed to peer obliquely outwards, and then skid away again to the contemplation of some inner mystery. It was this look, in particular, that convinced Elizabeth that Clio knew everything, and was telling nothing.
‘What does it mean?’ Elizabeth asked again.
‘I don’t know,’ Clio said. She closed her eyes. ‘Alice was very imaginative. You must have found out that much about her.’
‘I can find out hardly anything. History seems to have swallowed her up. It is almost as if she never was.’
‘I don’t know anything about that,’ Clio said.
She didn’t open her eyes, and Elizabeth closed her notebook on the brittle sheet of paper with a resentful snap.
Twenty-one
London, 1938
Julius was playing the D major Mozart Concerto again, but this time there would be no shrill whistling from brownshirts at the back of the hall. The audience at the Wigmore Hall would politely applaud his performance, not too loud or too long, and then disperse to restaurants and supper parties across London.
He put on his tailcoat over his white waistcoat and brushed the lapels out of habit rather than concern for his appearance. He was thinking about the conversations that would be held across those dinner tables; he did not imagine that many of them would touch for too long on the music, or his performance. He would play adequately, he was experienced enough to do that, but the need or the hunger – or even the ability – to achieve more had left him. There would be no fire or fury tonight; there had been none for a long while.
Julius looked at his watch. It was almost time. He flexed his wrists and his fingers, and then picked up his violin. With a practised sweep he tucked it under his chin, closed his eyes and began to play.
The music did not dispel the heaviness that afflicted his limbs as well as his spirit. There had been a time when it did, but now it seemed that he did not have even that resource left within him.
He lowered his bow, and put the violin down again. He sat in the dressing room’s armchair instead and waited for the call.
He came out on stage to the soloist’s applause. When he straightened after making his bow he caught sight of Grace at once. She was sitting in the fourth row, beside Lord and Lady Astor. T.J. Jones, one of the deputy Cabinet Secretaries, was also in the party. Julius was not surprised by the company. Grace had become a regular member of the Cliveden Set.
She was smiling up at him. Her face was like a circle of light in some great, dim space.
Under the cover of the applause that greeted the conductor for the evening he nodded gravely to her.
The normality of his response was a small achievement.
To see her even now gave him pleasure as well as pain, the fiercest combination of the two that was the only feeling that properly stirred him. Julius had stayed in London because there was always the possibility that their paths might cross somewhere, yet he was afraid of what he might do or say when they did meet. He did not want to weep or to implore her, but he did not want to let her out of his sight, now or ever again.
The conductor raised his baton.
Julius lifted his bow again, and began to play.
Tonight he was better than adequate, far better, because he was playing for Grace.
At the end of the concert when he took his bows he saw her white-gloved hands clapping in the dim space. He felt that he was being beaten between her palms. His body and his heart ached.
In the dressing room he took off his coat and hung it up, but he did not pull the ends of his white tie and loosen his collar stud, as he would normally have done. He was thinking, Surely she will come back. Just for a few moments, before she goes on to her political dinner.
When the tap at the door did come and he reached to open it he was already smiling. Her name was in his mouth.
When he saw the tall, silver-haired woman standing in the dingy corridor it took him a few seconds to remember that she was Isolde, Pilgrim’s one-time model and girlfriend. She raised a pencilled eyebrow at him.
‘Is this quite unwelcome?’
‘Of course not. No, of course it isn’t.’ He held the door open wider and Isolde strolled into the dressing room. She inspected it, and then turned to look at him.
‘You played wonderfully. Congratulations.’
‘Thank you.’ Julius peered vaguely around the small space. He felt confused, and silenced by disappointment that this visitor was not Grace after all.
‘Better than the last time I came to a concert of yours, eh?’
Of course, Isolde had been there with Pilgrim that night at the Berlin Philharmonic Hall. They had even taken him back to their studio, wherever it was, and he had stayed there for a few days. Hiding from the Nazis. It was odd that he had forgotten that. His memory played tricks on him nowadays. It seemed to obliterate large patches of time, and then to highlight apparently trivial events until they loomed enormously in his mind. He was haunted by recollections of meaningless meals and conversations that had taken place years before.
‘Yes, it was better that that. Look, I would offer you a drink, but I don’t keep anything here …’
Isolde seemed to stare challengingly at him. ‘We could always go to the pub. After you’ve changed.’
‘Yes, we could do that. If you would like to.’
There was another knock at the door. This time it was Grace who was standing there. Again, there was the impression of a bright light. Julius found the conventional words, somehow. He realized that he didn’t know how long it was since he had last spoken to her.
‘Grace, how wonderful. Come in, please come in.’
She put her hands on his arms and he k
issed her cheek. The shape and the scent and the feel of her were just the same. The memories of Berlin folded around him, splendid and suffocating.
‘Julius, I can see you’re busy. I just wanted to say that that was wonderful. The Mozart, especially.’ She was warm, and easy, and unaffected. ‘Hello, Isolde.’
‘We were just off to the boozer,’ Isolde said. She had never been an admirer of Grace.
‘Then I won’t keep you. I just wanted to look in and say hello.’
Julius thought that if anything Grace was pleased and relieved by the evidence that he was occupied with another woman, as if it absolved her from the responsibility.
Please stay, he wanted to whisper to her. Please.
He could have cursed Isolde. Grace and he were thirty-seven years old, and like an importunate child he still longed to catch hold of her and imprison her. He knew that Grace saw it too. Her face was suddenly shadowed by the nexus of memories and associations.
‘I’d better go,’ she whispered. ‘They’re waiting for me.’
Julius said woodenly, ‘Yes. Of course.’
There had been a time, perhaps a year ago – after Alice had died – when he would have begged her. At Vincent Street, or in restaurants, once in a booth at a nightclub, although he could not remember the sequence of events that had led them there, he would plead with her. He had wept, or shouted, or grovelled in any other way that might possibly affect her. He had no pride left, and no sense of propriety. It was simply that once he had possessed her, it was unthinkable to be without her.
He understood what until then had seemed an overblown metaphor; after Grace had gone away from him the world had come to an end.
She had stood firm, from the time of Alice’s funeral. Her strength had awed and amazed him.
‘We can’t go back to Berlin.’
They could not go back, nor could she make him understand that the heat of those guilty days had died within her. Once they were back in England, and she had seen Eleanor’s grief and Clio doggedly clinging to the hope of news from Rafael, the flame of love and hope inside her had simply flickered and gone out. There was no future for herself and Julius, and it was a weakness to have imagined that there might be.
Only she would have done anything possible to avoid causing him pain, and whatever she did do seemed to hurt him more deeply. In the end there had been nothing for it but to withdraw altogether. For months they had not seen one another at all. Grace had thrown herself back into her political career, in which dedication and ambition stood in almost convincingly for love and intimacy.
‘Thank you for the music,’ she said softly.
She put her hands on his arms again, white gloves against his white shirtsleeves, and kissed his cheek in return.
Outside the corridor the last members of the orchestra were hauling their instruments away. Grace drew her evening cape around her and listened to the echo of her own heels tapping on the cold tiled floor. She was going to dinner with the Astors in St James Square. The talk would be about Germany and Austria, and Chamberlain’s Anglo-Italian agreement with Mussolini.
‘The pub, wasn’t it?’ Isolde reminded Julius.
Obediently he took off his white tie and waistcoat and pulled on an old sweater and tweed coat. He put his violin into its worn leather case and packed away his tailcoat, then went out into the rainy night with Isolde.
They went to the nearest-but-one pub and sat down at a table in the saloon bar. Julius bought a whisky and lemonade for Isolde and a pint for himself. His head was still full of the sight of Grace with her bare shoulders swathed in fur.
‘Cheers,’ Isolde said brightly, and tipped her glass.
‘How is Pilgrim?’ Julius attempted.
Isolde shrugged. ‘You know Quint. The girls get younger and the drinks go down faster. I don’t know how many pictures he’s selling nowadays.’
Julius nodded. Looking at Isolde he saw that she was still a beauty of a kind. Her silver hair was dark at the roots and her triangular cat’s face was marked with lines, but her manner was still arresting. Several of the pub’s customers had glanced over at her. She might be as old as forty, he calculated, but she had kept her model girl’s body. He felt no stirring of interest in it.
Isolde was examining his face with her small head held on one side. She leant forward suddenly and said, ‘What’s wrong? You can talk to me about it if you want, you know. I’m a good listener.’
‘Nothing is wrong.’
Her warmth touched him, however. He had no wish to talk, but he bought her another whisky and lemonade. Isolde smoked Sobranie cigarettes and chattered to fill the silence. He noticed that she crossed and recrossed her well-shaped legs in front of him and turned in her chair so that the fabric of her skirt stretched over one hip.
‘You are not very like your brother,’ Isolde teased him at last.
‘Jake?’ Julius was startled.
‘Jake would have taken me home and been finished and on his way back to his wife by now.’ She blew out a long column of smoke, and sighed. ‘Or there was a time when he would.’
Julius knew that Jake had women, but he would not have put Isolde on the list.
‘Does that surprise you?’ Isolde’s ankle rubbed against his.
‘A little.’
‘First time was after some bloody private view of Pilgrim’s. Mobs of people, shouting at the tops of their voices, just like always. Albemarle Street, that’s where it was. That terrible portrait of her ladyship and your sister was part of the show.’
‘The Janus Face,’ Julius said.
‘That’s right. Bloody stupid. And Pilgrim was being cocky, and revoltingly rude to poor old Jeannie. So I took your black-bearded brother off home with me. Very nice it was too. I saw him a few times more after that.’ She shrugged her narrow shoulders again. ‘And then it stopped. Just one of those things. Ten, eleven years ago now. Would you believe it?’ Her smile had faded. She was looking down into her empty glass.
‘What happened to Jeannie?’
‘Didn’t you know? She died.’
Julius didn’t want to hear how.
Jeannie had been the first woman he had ever slept with, in his digs in Bloomsbury. She had been Pilgrim’s model and girlfriend also.
There was a symmetry in that, he thought, Jake and Isolde. Jeannie and me. He remembered Jeannie’s loosening flesh, and the fox-red bush of her pubic hair, and the way that her appetite had disconcerted him, the innocent boy.
He had not wanted to sleep with her again.
It came to him now that he had never wanted anything very much. The blankness of his life confronted him like a rock wall. He felt that he was looking up the cliff and from side to side, in search of a hand- or a toehold, but he could see nothing, only the sheer unbroken expanse, stretching away. It gave him vertigo. He felt sad for the poverty of a life that had slipped by almost unlived, and he was also full of fear.
All his adult life, he understood, he had been waiting for Grace. Even when she was married to Anthony, he had found some queer resistance within himself that had enabled him to go on waiting. Before Berlin he had even been content, in his passive way. He had been able to convince himself that there was ample time, in some stately and inexorable progress that they were making towards one another, and that in the end they would be joined together.
Then she had come to him, like lightning splitting a rock, and he had lost her again.
He had been right in Berlin. The central passage of his life had indeed been acted out within the yellow walls of the little hotel bedroom.
And the futility of everything else, before and after that, glared back at him from the cliff face.
Isolde was staring at him. ‘Poor Jeannie. She was drunk. Vomited in her sleep, you know, and then inhaled it. Drowned in her own mess.’
Julius closed his eyes. ‘I have to go, Isolde.’
‘One more drink,’ she said briskly. ‘I’m buying.’
He felt weak, as if standing
up and walking to the door presented some great obstacle. The two pints of beer he had drunk were gassy in his stomach. ‘Whisky, then,’ he said.
She came back from the bar with two doubles and put Julius’s in front of him.
‘Drink it,’ she ordered.
He did as he was told, like a sleepwalker.
‘All right,’ Isolde said, when the glasses were empty once more. She put her hand under his elbow and helped him to his feet.
Outside in the street she stepped squarely in front of him. Then she swayed forward so that her hips touched his and the length of her body came warmly against him. She took his face between her hands and kissed him on the mouth. Her tongue darted between his lips.
Julius shivered with cold. The feel of her cheek and mouth and her breasts pressing against him was negligible, neither exciting nor disgusting. It was as if both of them were slabs of meat, and he had no more sensation in his own layers of tissue and muscle and bone than he could detect in the woman’s.
Isolde’s hands fell to her sides. She drew her head back. ‘I see,’ she said. ‘That uninteresting, am I?’
‘It isn’t that –’
She cut him short. ‘Never mind. It was worth a try.’ Julius realized that she must be lonely, just as he was.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said humbly. There was no possibility of anything else.
Isolde was pulling her coat around her. Her hair looked greenish under the streetlights. ‘Look. I probably shouldn’t say this, but I will anyway. I saw you back at the Hall with your cousin. If it isn’t any good with you and her you shouldn’t wait about and let it corrode you.’
Corrosion was an interesting word, Julius thought.
He felt quite detached from this street scene. He might have just caught a glimpse of two strangers as he hurried past. It wasn’t corrosion. That was too hot and vicious. Atrophy, perhaps, or palsy.
‘You should go right away and do something else.’ Isolde was frowning, as if she were delivering advice of considerable complexity.
As he had gone away to Berlin, and stayed far too long, his senses slowly atrophying.
