A Chelsea Concerto

by Frances Faviell

  In June we found an old house about twenty-five miles from Chelsea at Claygate near Esher, and here we stayed until it was severely damaged by a flying bomb, and we returned to Chelsea. The house next to the church at Claygate was large, if not comfortable, and it had a rambling old-world garden. There was room for Catherine and Francesca, for Carla and for our coming baby, and for the many refugees who came to visit us there. It was astonishing how quickly they found their way from Waterloo and arrived full of troubles, as usual. To my surprise and delight the Welsh Guards were later stationed at Esher and I found Rex Whistler billeted on the very next house to ours with, as he remarked chuckling, ‘only the church between us’. It was from here that he left with his unit for Normandy on D Day, to be killed almost instantly.

  Our little colony in the Royal Hospital Road was sadly changed and depleted. The Ferebees had been obliged to move to another shop because of the complete wrecking of the one there. All our former neighbours were either dead or had moved away because of the devastation. It was too painful to return to that immediate neighbourhood even had we been able to find a house there. Only the Royal Hospital remained as beautiful as ever; in spite of its formidable list of bombs and severe damage its lovely facade was unchanged, and the kindness of the Fitzgerald family made it home to me whenever I went on my regular visits to the refugees. It was the very first place in London to which I took my son, John, born in an air raid, and a fine sturdy baby in spite of all the gloomy prognoses. He had no more faithful nurse and ‘baby sitter’ than Miss Hitler, whose maternal instincts found an outlet in guarding him.

  Later, in the autumn, I went with May Sargent to meet Penty, Kathleen’s younger daughter, at a London station. I was told that she had never mentioned her mother or her sister. It is difficult to know what is going on in the minds of normal people, but in those who are different – over whose minds a double veil is drawn – it is impossible. I don’t know how much Penty actually realized. I was told that she did not appear to have understood anything of what had happened to her home and family; but when she saw me a great trembling came over her, and for a time she could not say anything. Then she said, in the quick, slight, hesitating speech which was hers, ‘How’s the Green Cat?’

  THE END

  The following photographs did not appear in the original edition of A Chelsea Concerto. They are published now courtesy of John Parker, Frances Faviell’s son.

  1. The remains of Cheyne Walk, after the air raid described in Chapter XX

  2. Richard Parker, Frances Faviell and Vicki, early 1940’s

  About The Author

  FRANCES FAVIELL (1905-1959) was the pen name of Olivia Faviell Lucas, painter and author. She studied at the Slade School of Art in London under the aegis of Leon Underwood. In 1930 she married a Hungarian academic and travelled with him to India where she lived for some time at the ashram of Rabindranath Tagore, and visiting Nagaland. She then lived in Japan and China until having to flee from Shanghai during the Japanese invasion. She met her second husband Richard Parker in 1939 and married him in 1940.

  She became a Red Cross volunteer in Chelsea during the Phoney War. Due to its proximity to the Royal Hospital and major bridges over the Thames Chelsea was one of the most heavily bombed areas of London. She and other members of the Chelsea artists’ community were often in the heart of the action, witnessing or involved in fascinating and horrific events throughout the Blitz. Her experiences of the time were later recounted in the memoir A Chelsea Concerto (1959).

  After the war, in 1946, she went with her son, John, to Berlin where Richard had been posted as a senior civil servant in the post-war British Administration (the CCG). It was here that she befriended the Altmann Family, which prompted her first book The Dancing Bear (1954), a memoir of the Occupation seen through the eyes of both occupier and occupied. She later wrote three novels, A House on the Rhine (1955), Thalia (1957), and The Fledgeling (1958). These are now all available as Furrowed Middlebrow books.

  FURROWED MIDDLEBROW

  FM1. A Footman for the Peacock (1940) ... RACHEL FERGUSON

  FM2. Evenfield (1942) ... RACHEL FERGUSON

  FM3. A Harp in Lowndes Square (1936) ... RACHEL FERGUSON

  FM4. A Chelsea Concerto (1959) ... FRANCES FAVIELL

  FM5. The Dancing Bear (1954) ... FRANCES FAVIELL

  FM6. A House on the Rhine (1955) ... FRANCES FAVIELL

  FM7. Thalia (1957) ... FRANCES FAVIELL

  FM8. The Fledgeling (1958) ... FRANCES FAVIELL

  FM9. Bewildering Cares (1940) ... WINIFRED PECK

  Frances Faviell

  The Dancing Bear

  ‘You don’t want to mind about any of this,’ said the driver, waving a hand at the grey ruins and the greyer dust. ‘In a few days you’ll be so used to it that you’ll like them. Berlin’s a grand place! I’d rather be here than anywhere else in the world, and that’s a fact.’

  ‘No more perceptive portrait of Germany in defeat has been etched in word than Frances Faviell’s first book, The Dancing Bear, which made so powerful an impact upon me that I read it in a single sitting.’ Guy Ramsey, Daily Telegraph

  ‘Berlin during the decisive years from 1946 to 1949. … The prostitution which paid so handsomely; the black market which brought in rich rewards, although it meant that the Berliners had to part with treasured possessions; the night clubs which catered for still baser tastes; the impoverished intellectuals and the starving professors and the poor who had only their wits with which to eke out a bare sustenance—all this and much else the author describes with insight, incisiveness, and realism.’ Times Literary Supplement

  ‘There is great charity in this book; there is the sharp, limpid eye of the artist; there is sound realism; and there is an unswerving, passionate desire to tell the truth.” John Connell, Evening News

  ‘They were hard and terrible times, and brilliantly does Frances Faviell describe them for us. We meet the Altmann family and follow their joys and troubles. … The book is a brilliant pen-picture of the post-war years. We have British, French, American and Russian characters, but the background is always Berlin, and the strange tunes to which its bear danced.’ Liverpool Daily Post

  FM5

  The Dancing Bear – I

  IT was at the roundabout juncture of Reichsstrasse and Kaiserdamm that I first saw Frau Altmann.

  Among a traffic jam of all kinds of vehicles, from Occupational cars with the British, American, French and Russian markings, to miserable horses drawing heavy wagons, the old lady was pushing a handcart. On it were piled a small wardrobe, a desk and a sewing machine. She was absurdly frail to be handling such an unwieldy thing, and her short tired legs were fighting an uneven battle with the wheels of the cart on the slight slope.

  Our car was held up in the traffic, and I let down the window to see her better, for one of those sudden fogs was creeping over the whole Charlottenburg area and blotting out the gaping ruins. I noticed her distressed face, and the sweat running down it in spite of the chilly air.

  When the traffic began moving again at the policeman’s signal, she resumed pushing her cart, but her legs suddenly slid away under her, and the cart toppled its pyramid of furniture into the very middle of the traffic.

  Picking herself up immediately she ascertained that her goods were still intact, and began trying helplessly to lift the heavy articles. Passers-by stopped to gaze curiously at her, vehicles held up by the furniture in their path began a crescendo of hooting horns and klaxons, shouts and jeers were hurled at her from every side, but no one attempted to help her as she tugged unavailingly at the sewing machine.

  Our own British driver, Stampie, was not with me, the car being driven by a German who was rocking with laughter at this spectacle. Sliding back the panel of glass which separated us I said furiously, “Why don’t you help her instead of laughing?”

  “I!” spluttered the man, “I? Why should I help her?”

  I was too angry to argue with one of a race whose com
plete disregard for each other shocked me, so I got out and went to the old woman’s assistance.

  The traffic policeman, seeing the Union Jack on the car, immediately came over, saluted me and shouted to some onlookers to lend a hand. My driver had rather shamefacedly rushed after me, imploring me not to lift anything, and eagerly took my place. Soon there were too many helpers, and the things were piled neatly again on the cart.

  I looked at the woman’s face. She wasn’t really so old when one was close to her, but there was a weary droop to her thin shoulders and she was breathing now in great painful gasps as she wiped her face.

  She began thanking me in astonishingly good English and I asked, “Can’t you get anyone to help you with these things? They are far too heavy for you.”

  “My son was to have come—” looking round vaguely, “I can’t think what has happened to him. Fritz is a good boy.”

  She said this last rather defiantly as if to reassure herself, and broke off with a smile as tall lanky youth, with long untidy hair and a thin sullen race, came hurrying up. With a muttered greeting he pushed his mother aside and took the shafts of the cart.

  “Ach! Here is Fritz! What happened to you? I was getting quite worried.”

  He answered sulkily, “I was kept late; why couldn’t you have waited for me? You knew I would come—but no! You must go without me, and so cause all this commotion. You will be ill again, and I shall be blamed for it.” He blurted this out with his face averted as if he didn’t want to see me.

  His mother, who had introduced herself as Frau Maria Altmann, turned to me, holding out her hand.

  “Now all will be well, nicht wahr? My son will manage. Thank you a thousand times for your kind help.”

  “Frau Altmann,” I said quietly, “you are very exhausted; let your son see to these things. Get in the car and let me drive you to your home.”

  As his mother hesitated the youth said firmly, “Germans are forbidden to ride in Occupational cars—the gnädige Frau will get into trouble.” There was the faintest sneer in his voice although his eyes met mine squarely now.

  Frau Altmann looked longingly at the car; she was trembling; the incident had unnerved her.

  She said firmly, “Thank you, we haven’t far to go. I will accompany Fritz, but I very much appreciate your kindness.”

  They went off and I got into the car again. The driver said deferentially, “Do we proceed to the Reichsstrasse now?”

  “No. Follow the old lady and her son.”

  “Follow the old lady and her son?” he repeated maddeningly, “But why? The gnädige Frau will be late for her class.”

  “Follow them!” I said, cutting him short.

  He shut the door of the car with a gesture which, although perfectly polite, showed me that in his opinion all the British were mad, and we followed the old lady and her son.

  I was on my way to the Forces’ Study Centre in Reichsstrasse where I was helping at the improvised school run for the British children by British Troops Berlin, and it was too early for the class which I was to take there. The face of Frau Altmann attracted me in a way I could not explain. I wanted to see more of her, and I did.

  We had not gone more than two hundred metres or so when the little figure in its much too thin coat crumpled in a heap on the roadway, and this time she didn’t pick herself up. My driver was out of the car as quickly as I was, the son made little objection when I told them to lift her into the car.

  He gave me their address, which was quite near, and said he hoped his father would be in to admit us. He couldn’t accompany us, as if he were to leave the handcart unattended for even a few minutes, everything would be stolen.

  “Does your mother often faint?” I asked, for Frau Altmann was quite unconscious. He nodded. Apparently she had collapsed several times recently.

  “She’s not really ill,” he said shortly; “she’s hungry. She gives all the food to us—she won’t eat herself.”

  We drove to the address he had given me. Number thirteen seemed an impossible dwelling at first sight. It was a large ruined house standing in what had once been a garden. The entire upper storeys had disappeared, and twisted iron girders stuck up grotesquely and helplessly against the sky. The ground floor seemed fairly intact, although it looked very shaky and the windows were covered with cardboard and the door repaired with all kinds of odd pieces of wood. It bore the number 13 clearly, and the name ALTMANN.

  There was no bell, and I knocked twice. An elderly man with a calm gentle face and silver-white hair opened the door.

  “Herr Altmann?”

  He bowed courteously in the stiff military manner of pre-Hitler days and a look of acute anxiety came over his face when I told him that his wife was outside in my car, and could we carry her in.

  “She has only fainted.” I assured him, hoping that this really was the case, as we laid her on a bed in a small dark room. “It’s terribly cold in here. Haven’t you a stove anywhere?” I asked him as I chafed her icy hands.

  I was sorry that I had asked it. I should have remembered that there was no fuel except for the Occupation before he gently told me that they had none. We covered her with some blankets and I returned to the car for my brandy flask. It was becoming all too common to see people collapsing in the streets from hunger and I always carried brandy.

  She was coming to, and we poured some of the spirit between her blue lips. Presently she struggled up, protesting that she was quite all right, and trying to thank me. Her smile was the best thing I had seen on this grey and cheerless day.

  I asked Fritz, who arrived with the handcart as I was about to leave, if they had anything hot to give his mother. He said that they had no fuel, but that he would go to the Grunewald and try to find some wood to light the stove.

  She took both my hands in hers when I said goodbye. “Gott wird Dick belohnen!” she said.

  I could not get her out of my mind as we drove to the Study Centre where a sergeant was waiting for me to take over his class of older boys. There appeared to be a great commotion going on in the classroom. “Shall I sit outside the door in case you want me, Ma’am?” he asked. I inquired why he thought I should need him. “They’re pretty tough!” he said glumly. “Most of ’em have never had a proper tanning.”

  The sergeant was right. They were tough. And with no books, equipment or materials of any kind it taxed one’s resources to keep them interested. They had arrived before the Education Authorities had made any proper arrangements for them, and the Army with a commendable lack of red tape had improvised this school for them. They came from every type of home and from various types of schools. There was only one thing they all knew, the sergeant told me, and that was father’s rank.

  They stood there staring curiously at me. They knew me by sight from seeing me about the school. This was the first time I had taught them.

  “Sit down!” I said with more firmness than I felt. To my astonishment they sat.

  I was still thinking of Frau Altmann when the sergeant told me after the class that, the Major wanted to see me in his study, and over tea I told him of the incident. He said that as I had been so impressed with her English and her face, it was possible that he could find her some teaching.

  “That is, of course, providing that she wasn’t an active member of the Nazi party,” he added.

  Somehow I didn’t think Frau Altmann had been a member of any party—but one never knew. I was already learning to my surprise that there had apparently been very few Nazis anywhere. They just did not exist. If it was pointed out to the Germans that the Allies had a complete list of the party members in their possession, they would shrug their shoulders and say glibly that of course they had to belong, but, of course, yes, that just didn’t mean a thing.

  The study centre was a welcome relief from the horror of the dead ruin which was now Berlin. Troops were passing to and from classes, from the libraries, from music rooms and class rooms. They were young, healthy and astonishingly alive after t
he yellow-grey despairing faces in the streets. When I remarked on this to the Major he told me that few people realized what a splendid job the troops had done in Berlin during the past year.

  The Berliners, having been looted, starved, cowed and raped by the Mongol Russians’ conquering army, had been astounded that with the arrival of the British and Americans there had been no sackings, no shootings and no raping. Instead they had been made to help in the appalling and dreary task of restoring plumbing and drainage, and clearing up the debris left after the Battle of Berlin. The troops had worked with them, and with such a will that they had accomplished little short of miracles in the devastated city. The town was still one huge ruin—but it was now an orderly ruin, with the sewers working, the water supply restored and the lighting gradually coming back. Although it was still inadvisable to go out alone after dark, it was far safer than one could have imagined it would be a year ago.

  The troops had built the large Naafi building which contained not only the shop, but various clubs and offices, as well as Military Government House on the shell of old bombed-out buildings. The U.S. troops had built the magnificent Allied Commandatura Building where Germany was now governed by the four Occupying Powers. My husband had taken me to see this, and shown me the four flag-poles with the four flags fluttering—and in the restaurant the menu in four languages, including American.