The Fragile Hour

by Rosalind Laker

  “Fröken Marlow! Stop!”

  In horror at being addressed by her own name within earshot of everybody going by, a German or two among them, she spun round in alarm to see her aunt’s house-keeper running breathlessly towards her.

  Anna reacted swiftly. “Frida!” she exclaimed with pleasure, throwing her arms around the woman. “How good to see you! I’m just back in town.”

  Frida thrust herself away. “Don’t try to softsoap me! Why haven’t you called on Fru Johansen? She’s very upset!” Her voice was high-pitched in her outrage, the bright spots of colour in her cheeks as much from anger as from the exertion of hurrying.

  “Just give me a chance to explain.” Anna was aware that several people were glancing curiously in their direction. “I’ve wanted to visit her.”

  “You’ve chosen a very strange way to show it,” Frida snapped back angrily. “Never a look or wave whenever you went by.”

  “Please keep your voice down,” Anna implored in a whisper. “Do you want the whole street to hear what you’re saying? I’m here in Oslo secretly. Surely you can understand why?”

  “I understand all right.” Frida wagged her head knowingly from side to side. “You didn’t want your aunt to find out that you couldn’t stay away from that young man.”

  Incredulously Anna grasped what might be forthcoming, but they could not stand talking. “Come along, Frida. We must keep on the move or else some German will shove us on. We’ll go as far as the National Theatre and then we’ll go our separate ways. I’ll take your arm.” She took it before there could be any argument about it, but Frida hung back.

  “You’re going in the wrong direction away from the apartment. Aren’t you coming back there with me?”

  “I can’t. We have to talk about it. Now tell me which young man you mean.”

  “Don’t pretend that you don’t know,” Frida declared, allowing herself to walk on and subduing her tones, although she was no less angry. “Nils, of course. He was the only one you ever had eyes for! He knew how your aunt opposed a marriage between you, and so he persuaded you to return to Norway without her knowledge. After all, you’d lost your father — my sincere condolences there, of course — and there was nobody to stop you doing anything you wanted. Although Great Britain was already at war, you must have come back to Norway on a neutral country’s ship just before the invasion.”

  “You really have been putting two and two together, haven’t you?”

  “That’s not all. I know it’s Nils, who’s keeping you away from your aunt. He’s told you not to visit her and you’ve taken notice of him, which has hurt her deeply. I know your move to Oslo must be recent, or else Fru Johansen or myself would have spotted you long ago. Your aunt said that one day you were even wearing the kofte I knitted you. Sooner or later, I’d have picked that out in any crowd.”

  “So I’ve been found out,” Anna said with apparent guilelessness, taking advantage of Frida’s assumption as to why she had returned to Norway.

  “I’ll remind you that your aunt is no fool and neither am I.” This time Frida nodded in a self-congratulatory manner. “How you thought you could get away with it, I don’t know. Where is the young man? Are you meeting him somewhere?” She looked about sharply as they walked along, like a hen ready to peck an enemy.

  “No, I’m not.”

  “It’s just as well. I’d have given him a piece of my mind. I remember him as a boy, always ordering the other children about and they obeyed like sheep. You were one of them. Then every time he walked into your aunt’s country house, even when he was young, and later when he came to the Oslo apartment, he always made himself at home as if he owned the place, airing his political views that your aunt opposed, and knowing better than anybody else.”

  “Frida! Stop it! You’re being spiteful and vindictive! All because you and Rosa had somebody else in mind for me. I liked him, but I’d always loved Nils.”

  “So you’re still doting on him! Then I’ll say no more, except to ask you straight out if you’re going to continue to slight your aunt, or are you coming back with me?” They had reached the National Theatre and slowed their pace to a standstill.

  “I can’t see her yet. You’d do her and me the greatest favour possible if you’d forget you have seen me. Let my aunt think she was mistaken and you followed a stranger who looked a little like me. I’ll not use this street again, whatever the circumstances, and arrange to leave Oslo as quickly as possible.”

  “I’ll do no such thing!” Frida expostulated angrily. “What’s happened to you, Anna? Has Nils changed you so much?”

  “I’m just the same. He’s got nothing to do with my staying away.”

  “You always did defend him. I’m not telling your aunt anything but the truth.”

  Anna knew from past experience that Frida never made idle threats. “Then I’ll ask you to give her a message. Tell her I can’t visit her in the foreseeable future, but one day I’ll explain everything. Say also that I still love her as I always did. Will you do that?”

  “No, I won’t. If she draws her own conclusions that you no longer care what happens to her, that’s up to you.”

  “Why should anything happen to her?” Anna demanded anxiously. “Isn’t she well?”

  “She’s not as you remember her and rarely goes out these days. The doctor comes to see her now and again. Then there’s the danger of arrest too. When the Jewish family in the top apartment feared imminent transportation, they entrusted her with their valuables, some of religious significance. She has it all hidden in the apartment under the heavy bookcase. In the meantime we get enemy house-searches from time to time and if those possessions were discovered the Nazis would know the origin immediately. Surely you want to call on your aunt while you still have the chance? You wouldn’t want to add to her misery in some dreadful camp by letting her believe that she no longer matters to you?”

  “Stop it! This is emotional blackmail, Frida!”

  “So now will you come and see her?”

  Anna gave a reluctant nod. “I’ll come.”

  There was a triumphant bounce in Frida’s walk as they retraced their steps. She had missed Anna almost as much as her employer, and it would breathe new life into the home to have the girl around once again. At her side Anna was full of misgivings, uncertain of how her aunt would receive her. There had never been anything but harmony between them, but it sounded from Frida as if Rosa were deeply and irrevocably hurt. It was understandable in the light of the misinterpretation both women had put upon her staying away.

  As the lift ascended to the floor of her aunt’s apartment, Anna began to dread the meeting, for she could give no explanation to clear the air between them.

  “We’re here,” Frida said when the lift stopped, as if hinting that Anna had probably forgotten everything in her supposed infatuation with Nils.

  They entered the apartment and Frida went into the kitchen, letting Anna go alone into the drawing-room where her aunt awaited her. Rosa was standing with her back to the windows, making it difficult to see her expression, but she came forward at once and threw out her arms in welcome before Anna could speak.

  “My dear child!” she cried joyfully. “You’ve come!”

  They clung to each other and both shed tears, unable to speak at first. In spite of the high emotion of the moment, Anna was aware of the same lovely fragrance wafting about her aunt’s bosomy embrace as it always had in the past. Releasing each other, they both laughed in shared relief, knowing that nothing had changed between them.

  “How on earth can you get your favourite French perfume in these days?” Anna joked, wiping her wet eyes.

  Rosa gave a little chuckle. “I still have a few drops left in the last bottle I bought before the Occupation and I save it for special occasions. So I dabbed on some to be at my best when I saw you crossing the street with Frida. I’ll use the rest of it on the day the King comes home again!” Rosa was drying her eyes with a fine handkerchief trimmed
with wide lace, and she waved it to demonstrate how she would welcome the royal return. They both giggled a little foolishly, which amused them all the more, and felt extraordinarily optimistic as if that day of rejoicing were not far distant, even though the odds were against it.

  “You’re as elegant as ever, Aunt,” Anna said admiringly, standing back to look her aunt up and down. Rosa was a little thinner and she had aged, but her skin had not lost its bloom in spite of her sixty-odd years. Her make-up, although scant, emphasised her well-bred features, the arrogance of the nose with its delicate nostrils countered by the generosity of the mouth. Her china-blue eyes were as quick to sparkle with amusement as to swim with tears if she were touched to the heart as today. Ever a little larger than life, always dressing with flair to suit her exuberant personality, she was the same on this June afternoon as she had been all her life. Her pre-war Molyneux dress was coral georgette and flowed about her like a cloud, pearls in her ears and around her neck.

  “I had to give up tinting my hair,” Rosa said regretfully, patting it with a graceful hand. “My hairdresser couldn’t get the gold colour any longer.”

  “I think the platinum look of it suits you wonderfully. In fact, you look marvellous altogether, as if you’ve come straight from Paris.”

  Having been used to compliments all her life, Rosa knew how to accept them graciously. “Thank you, my dear. All I do know about myself today is that I feel twenty years younger just because you’re here again.”

  “I have worried about you,” Anna said as they sat down on one of the silk damask sofas. “Are you managing financially?”

  “It’s not easy,” Rosa admitted, “because, as you know, so many of my investments are overseas and nothing can come from there, and I’ve had to sell some jewellery, but all pieces that I never wore. But Frida and I manage very well. We live simply as everybody else does and, so far, no German officer has wanted to move in here, which I hope will last.” She shook her head impatiently. “But I don’t want to talk about myself. I want to hear all about you.”

  “I’ll tell you as much as I can, Aunt,” Anna said, looking around, “but give me a few moments to savour being home again. Nothing has changed, has it? Everything is how I’ve been remembering it.”

  “I believe it is.”

  Anna stood up and began to wander about the large and graciously proportioned room that was spread with a vast Persian rug, a treasure that vied with a rare collection of ivory as well as jade that her aunt and late uncle had bought on their diplomatic travels. Art Nouveau silver gleamed and on the walls were the paintings she had always loved. Three of them were early Munchs, which her uncle had bought at his wife’s insistence when the artist had been young and penniless, and on the opposite wall there were four striking paintings by Astrup purchased about the same time, together with a Monet, a Seurat and Degas.

  In an alcove by itself was a twelth-century ikon of remarkable beauty and rarity, depicting the Virgin with the Christ-child on her lap, her robes of sapphire edged with a braid of crimson and amber. Although the artist had elongated her face there was a look of extraordinary tenderness and tranquility with the faintest hint of a smile in the lips as she held the playful fingers of the baby reaching for a tendril of her hair. As he gazed up at her, the golden nimbi about their heads seemed to suffuse them both in a bonding heightened by the darker hues that backed them like deep, forest shadows.

  At some distant time in the past it had been housed in a carved oaken case with doors that closed over it. On the few occasions in Anna’s childhood when it had been shut she had waited, holding her breath, for it to be opened. Then, as the little doors swung wide the ikon shone forth, glowing and dominating magnificently all else in the richly adorned room.

  As a teenager with her mind full of love, Anna had learned that the priceless ikon was one of several valuable keepsakes Rosa had received from her German lover in halcyon days before the Great War. Her husband, a dull, self-important man according to Rosa, had been too wrapped up in diplomatic matters to suspect anything, his wife no more than a vivacious and beautiful social appendage, who was liked by everybody and could unwittingly bewitch people who were important to him. When he had first visited the Kaiser’s yacht in Norwegian waters he had not known that when his wife stepped on board at his side, her eyes met those of the man whom she was to love for the rest of her life.

  Anna knew that the ikon was the most treasured of all Rosa’s possessions for reasons she had never disclosed, but it must have been something exceptional. He had given her the parure of diamonds and emeralds after his first declaration of love, and other beautiful jewels had followed moments precious to them. He had bought the gilt and blue enamelled clock, which had belonged to Marie Antoinette, at an auction during one of their secret weekends together.

  The clock tinkled its melodious chimes as Anna came to the grand piano on which stood a collection of silver-framed photographs. She picked up one of the handsome German lover, Hans von Werner, with his deliciously wicked eyes and passionate mouth. He was in yachting attire and leaning on the rails of the Kaiser’s yacht during one of the many summers when his Imperial relative cruised the Norwegian fjords. Hans was always invited to join the party of guests on board and after meeting Rosa he never refused.

  “If Hans had not been killed on a French battlefield in the last war,” Anna mused aloud, “I wonder what he would have thought of all that Hitler has done to his country and the rest of us.”

  Rosa answered from the sofa where she sat. “He would have been horrified. Honour and integrity and respect for the rules of war had been instilled in him from his cadet days. I’ve thought of him every time the soldiers come rampaging through the building searching for goodness knows what and spilling out the contents of drawers and cupboards. No end of damage has been done at different times.”

  “Has nothing ever been stolen?”

  “I have missed a few little things easily slipped into a pocket, but the soldiers are forbidden to loot. My parure is with the rest of my valuable jewellery in the concealed safe, which they have never found.”

  “Shouldn’t your ikon be in there too?”

  “Then I couldn’t look at it and relive my memories every day. I close its doors quickly whenever the Germans come and then it looks like an ordinary carved plaque, too dark to catch the eye and be of interest. Luckily the soldiers usually start their searches on the floor below, which gives me plenty of time. Naturally it goes into the safe whenever I go out, just in case they should come then.”

  Still standing by the grand piano Anna replaced the photograph. “Where are the photos of you and Uncle with the King and the late Queen Maud?” she asked, glancing over the rest that were arranged there. “The American president has gone too and those of the British Royal Family. Have you hidden them with the Jewish valuables?”

  “Yes, I had to do that, or else the Germans would have smashed them up. Frida had no business telling you about my storing those belongings, because you’ll start worrying about me and that’s the last thing I want. But at least now, if she and I are taken ill or have to leave this place for some reason, you’ll be able to make sure that the Jewish treasures are returned to their rightful owners.”

  As Anna sat down again on the sofa, Rosa studied her thoughtfully. “You’ve grown up, my dear, haven’t you? I don’t just mean because you’re twenty-two now. You’ve seen something of life. Death, too, in these terrible times, quite apart from the loss of your father. Yet your looks have taken on a rare beauty as I always believed they would. Love can do that.”

  Anna smiled at her aunt’s romantic turn of mind. “If that’s the case, you must have been extra stunning during your time with Hans.”

  “I was,” Rosa replied without the least conceit. “So how is Nils?”

  “He’s still in my life, but not as you suppose.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Anna nodded. “There’s somebody else.”

  “Yet Nils
remains in the picture. I knew you’d never be free of him. That’s why I opposed the relationship when I did, you being too young to know your own mind and he much older and experienced with women. More than that, I could see that he was really in love with you and such a possessive man could have trapped you forever. Am I right?”

  “I’ll not deny it. He and I both know our lives are linked and always will be. I don’t know why it is, but we both recognise it. Yet there’s no need for you to be concerned any longer, because we’ve channelled our relationship into friendship.”

  Rosa decided not to express her doubt. “So who’s this new man?”

  “Someone with whom I want to spend the rest of my life. I can’t tell you his name yet, but I will one day.”

  “Is he in the Resistance with you?”

  The unexpectedness of Rosa’s perceptive question made Anna turn pale. “Whatever made you ask that?”

  Rosa smiled. “I never believed a word of Frida’s supposition that you had come back on a neutral ship and all that nonsense. You have a British passport and, since you couldn’t have returned to Norway as a Norwegian national, it would have been impossible for you to leave England in time of war, unless on some secret matter. I don’t know how you got here, and I’m not intending to ask, but I knew that not even Nils could have kept you from visiting me. Neither do I believe he would ever have done such a thing. He and I didn’t much like each other, but that wouldn’t have come into it.”

  “You’ve been as busy as Frida in working out everything about me,” Anna said, raising her eyebrows in mock-surprise while giving nothing away. “Just let her keep to her theory, but think whatever you like yourself. All I can tell you is that I’m working at Christina’s in Storgaten and have a tiny apartment on the top floor.”

  “Is that where you are? I haven’t been in that shop since early in the Occupation. Couldn’t you come and live here instead?”