Dark Angel

by Sally Beauman

  “You dance very well, Franz-Jacob. You know all the right steps.”

  “My sister Hannah taught me,” he replied, and stopped. “Es ist genug. We will not go on.”

  He released me and stepped back. It was a moment before I saw that he was listening. Then I heard it, too, cutting through the dying fall of the waltz, muffled by the corridors but discernible: a telephone ringing in another part of the house.

  I am not sure now whether those things that happened next happened slowly or swiftly; they seemed to do both. William summoning my uncle Freddie; Aunt Maud chattering once he left the room and then, when he returned, breaking off. Aunt Maud and Uncle Freddie withdrawing together, and a silence in the ballroom like the smashing of glass.

  We were summoned back to the drawing room to find Aunt Maud and Uncle Freddie standing before the fire, their manner awkward, like that of two conspirators. I think they had meant to speak to me alone but, faced with Franz-Jacob as well, could not summon up the will to suggest he leave.

  So it was that when Uncle Freddie told me there had been an accident, and Aunt Maud told me things were not certain, but I must be brave, their words seemed to come at me from a great distance. To this day I cannot remember exactly what they said.

  But I do remember Franz-Jacob: He stood listening by my side, looking down at his brown laced boots. When Uncle Freddie and Aunt Maud stopped, Franz-Jacob turned away.

  He crossed to the windows, pushed back the old curtain, and looked out.

  A high full moon rode the sky; it silvered the cockerel who crowed the dawn over the stables; it made the woods a mesh of shadows, the lake gunmetal, light and dark. Franz-Jacob looked at Winterscombe, then let the curtain fall.

  He gave that shrug of his, that European shrug, one shoulder lifted at the tricks of the world.

  “Es geht los,” he murmured; then, seeing that I listened and that I had not understood, he translated: “It is beginning,” he said. “It is beginning again. I knew it would. I heard it this afternoon in the woods.”

  They finally told me that my mother and father were dead, but it was not until a week had gone by. Then, I believed the talk of confusion, of hospitals. I think, now, that Uncle Freddie certainly knew they were dead when he received that first telephone call, and decided it would be better, less hard, if I came upon the truth gradually. He told me the truth, in the end, because he had a kind heart and did not like to see me hope. Even when he told me, there were confusions, and they remain to this day: No one could find out for certain how my parents died and why, and neither Uncle Freddie nor Aunt Maud seemed to mind that what information they could obtain was conflicting.

  Winifred Hunter-Coote, the person who had telephoned that night in the ballroom, spoke of riots, street violence, and Nazi louts. Aunt Maud, who knew Von Ribbentrop, the German Foreign Minister, once an adornment of London drawing rooms, wrote an imperious letter and was informed—in suave terms—that there had been a border incident, a case of mistaken identity which would, naturally, be investigated at the highest levels of the Reich.

  Many years later, after the war, I tried to discover the truth and was thwarted. This was a minor incident in the months leading up to engagement; the records would have been kept in Berlin; those records had since been destroyed.

  At the time, the newspapers took the matter up, briefly. I believe that one of my father’s old friends asked a question in the House, but in the tension of that September such questions were quickly dropped. The death of my parents was no longer news once the British Navy was mobilized; by the time Chamberlain returned from Munich with the promise of peace in our time, the newspapers had lost interest. There were more vital matters to discuss.

  Memory has its own way of applying salves, and there are many things about those subsequent weeks that I cannot remember. If I think back now, I see bright distinct images, a necklace of glass beads with gaps between them that I cannot fill. My parents’ bodies were flown back to England, and the funeral was held at Winterscombe. The small church was very crowded and I remember being surprised at that, for my parents rarely entertained and I had supposed them to have few friends. My godfather Wexton came, for he had been close to my mother as well as my uncle Steenie; he stood in the pulpit and read a poem about time and change which I did not understand but which made Jenna, who sat with me, weep. There were one or two friends from my father’s regiment in the Great War, and the parents of other friends who had fought in the trenches and never returned. There were people from children’s homes and from the innumerable charitable organizations for which my mother had worked. There were the orphanage children, with black armbands on their brown suits, and my friend Franz-Jacob, who sat in the pew behind me.

  When it was over, Winifred Hunter-Coote, who had sung the hymns very loudly, who was tall and magnificent in black bombazine, clutched me to her battleship bosom and gave me a mustachioed kiss. Then she fed me sweet tea and fish-paste sandwiches. She told me my mother was the finest woman she had ever known. “Ever!” she cried, with a glare around the room, as if expecting someone might deny her. “Ever. Bar none. She had the heart of a lion! I know!”

  That night, when everyone else had gone and Aunt Maud had retired early to bed, looking ill and old, I went up to the schoolroom and fetched down my atlas and brought it to Uncle Freddie.

  I had a fixed idea in my mind that I had not understood what had happened but that I might if I knew where the incident had taken place.

  I explained this to Uncle Freddie, and opened the atlas to the double pages that showed the whole world.

  There was that great expanse of red which was the British Empire, on which—Uncle Freddie had once explained—the sun never set. There was America, where my godmother Constance lived; there was Europe, where the boundaries changed so often and would shortly change again.

  “Where did it happen, Uncle Freddie?” I asked, and Uncle Freddie looked at the map in a hopeless, confused kind of way.

  I think, in truth, he was unsure, but he could see how eager I was, and so after a while he prodded Germany with his index finger in a firm way.

  “There,” he said. “It was just about there, Victoria.”

  I inspected the spot at which he pointed, somewhere to the left of Berlin. Then, to my great surprise, for Uncle Freddie was a grown man, he buried his face in his hands. When he surfaced, finally, and blew his nose, he looked at me with pleading in his eyes, as if he were the child and I the elder.

  “It brings so much back, you see. Being here—when we were children. The war. Your father fought, you know, and I never did, Victoria. I could have done but I didn’t. I was a coward, I expect.”

  “I’m sure you weren’t a coward, Uncle Freddie. You drove an ambulance, you—”

  “Yes, I was. I was a coward then. And I’m a coward still.” He took a deep huffing breath and fixed me with sad brown eyes.

  “This is terrible, you know. Absolutely terrible. I just can’t think straight. Oh, Victoria, whatever are we going to do?”

  “It will be all right. We’ll manage. We have each other.” I spoke very fast, in my mother’s tone of voice, because I was very afraid Uncle Freddie might begin to cry.

  “Uncle Steenie will be here soon,” I said. “It will be better then. Uncle Steenie will know what to do.”

  This seemed to cheer Uncle Freddie, for he brightened perceptibly. “That’s true. That’s true. Nothing daunts Steenie. He’ll find a way out…. Now, bedtime, I think, young lady.”

  I wanted to ask him why we needed to find a way out, but Uncle Freddie gave me no chance; he bustled me upstairs, and when Jenna had settled me for sleep, he came up to the night nursery. He announced he would read me a book to help me nod off.

  Uncle Freddie read with great vivacity, but his choice of reading matter was as unsuitable, in some ways, as that of my aunt Maud. That night, I remember, he read me a story that, in some ways, was similar to this one. Similar in certain respects, anyway, for it was a detect
ive story and it contained a murder. That murder, as I remember, was done with a knitting needle.

  Uncle Freddie, who relished gore, read it in a sepulchral voice with much rolling of the eyes.

  “Over my dead body!”

  Uncle Steenie had arrived, as promised in his cable, three days later, having been unable to obtain a berth on a ship from New York any earlier.

  Uncle Steenie loved arrangements, the more complicated the better, and I could see the gleam of future arrangements in his eye when I followed him up to his room. He gave me a chocolate truffle, which was somewhat stale; he took several restorative nips from the silver hip flask.

  “Now,” he said, “I want you to know, Vicky darling, that everything is going to be all right. I’ve fixed things perfectly. First, though”—he gave me a hug—“first of all I have a minor battle to fight. Just a little skirmish. You wait upstairs—there’s a good girl. I must talk to your great-aunt Maud.”

  I was alarmed by this reassurance. After all, I already knew that things were going to be all right—as all right as they could ever be, now. I would stay at Winterscombe with Jenna and William; Aunt Maud would be there some of the time, Uncle Freddie would be there some of the time; Uncle Steenie would make his usual flying visits. What could there have been for Uncle Steenie to fix?

  I did stay upstairs for a while, as he told me. Then I crept out onto the landing; then—the skirmish seemed to be taking a long time—I crept down the stairs. The morning-room door was ajar and my uncle Steenie had a high, clear, carrying voice.

  “Over my dead body!” Aunt Maud declared in furious tones, and Uncle Steenie interrupted her.

  “Maud, darling—be sensible! There’s going to be a war. If you believe the appeasers, I don’t—and neither does Freddie. What else do you suggest? There’s no money. Freddie can’t look after her. I’m sure you wouldn’t suggest I’d be suitable. The poor little thing looks quite crushed. What she needs is to go well away, to forget all this—”

  “Never. Not that woman. I won’t allow it, Steenie. There will be no more discussion, do you understand? This is one of your absolutely harebrained schemes, and it will go no further. There is no problem at all, except in your mind. Victoria will come to London. She will live with me.”

  “Harebrained?” Uncle Steenie began to sound peevish. “It’s not harebrained in the least. It’s thoroughly sensible. You happen to be prejudiced against Constance and always have been. She is the child’s godmother—”

  “Godmother! That was a mistake. As I said at the time.”

  “As soon as she heard, she offered to take Victoria in. Immediately. At once. No hesitation—”

  “She will do nothing of the sort, and you may tell her, Steenie, that I should take it as a kindness if she would not interfere. Victoria will come to London with me.”

  “And when the war comes, what then? You’ll stay in London, will you? That doesn’t seem so sensible, I must say. Besides, you’re not well. You’re not as young as you were—”

  “I am hardly in my dotage, Steenie, as you might have the goodness to remember.”

  “America is the obvious place—initially, anyway. Then, if there is a war, she will be perfectly safe. For God’s sake, Maud, we’re not talking about a permanent arrangement, just a temporary one. It would be good for the child. She would enjoy herself. She’s always wanted to meet Constance—you know how she asks questions about her—”

  “Have you been drinking, Steenie?”

  “No. I have not.”

  “Yes, you have. Your eyes are distinctly pink. I can always tell. You are becoming quite wild, and I suggest you go and lie down. There is nothing more to discuss. You will forget this ridiculous scheme, and I will forget you ever raised it.”

  “I shall not forget it.” Uncle Steenie now sounded truculent. “I might just point out, Maud, that Freddie and I are guardians, not you—so, technically, the decision is ours.”

  “Piffle. Freddie agrees with me—don’t you, Freddie?”

  “Well.” I heard my Uncle Freddie sigh. He never liked to arbitrate. “Obviously, Maud has a point.” He paused. “On the other hand, Steenie has a point too. I mean, if there was a war, America might be the best place. But I really don’t think that Constance …”

  And so it went on, for at least another half hour, wrangling and then more wrangling.

  I felt quite sure, when I went to bed that night, that my Aunt Maud would win, for Aunt Maud, though aging and sometimes vague, had a formidable will when challenged. I prayed hard and long that Aunt Maud would win, that I would go to live with her in London.

  If she lost, I could see a most horrible vision looming ahead of me. I would go to New York to stay with my godmother Constance, exactly as I had prayed to do, twice a day for so many months. The visit would have been made possible by my parents’ death; their death would have been brought about by my wicked prayers. “Oh, please, God,” I said that night, “I didn’t mean it. Don’t do this to me.”

  That night my Aunt Maud was vanquished, not by my Uncle Steenie’s arguments but by the vagaries of her heart. At dinner she had complained of pins and needles in her arm; she had accused Steenie of upsetting her. That night in bed she had a second stroke, more serious than the first, which left her paralyzed on her right side, unable to speak or write or fend for herself for many months. She recovered eventually, but her progress was very slow, and in the meantime Uncle Steenie prevailed. I think Uncle Freddie put up spirited resistance to the idea, but he had never been a match for his younger brother. I tried telling both uncles that I wanted to stay in England, but Uncle Freddie was afraid to cross Uncle Steenie, and Uncle Steenie refused to listen; he was in full gallop, the bit between his teeth. Nothing I could say would rein him in.

  “Nonsense, Victoria. It’s the best possible thing. Lots of little girls would give their eyeteeth for such a chance. New York—you’ll love New York! And Constance—you’ll love her too, just as I do. She’s such fun, Vicky. She goes everywhere; she knows everyone-but-everyone—you’ll have the most wonderful time. She’ll take you out of yourself, wait and see.”

  “I don’t think Daddy would have wanted me to go. Or Mummy. They didn’t like her, Uncle Steenie—you know they didn’t.”

  “Ah, well, there were reasons for that.” Uncle Steenie averted his eyes and waved his hands. “Forget all that, darling. None of it matters. All that is in the past.” He took a small nip and gave me his most roguish glance. “Anyway, that’s not strictly true. There was a time when your papa liked Constance very much indeed….”

  “Are you sure, Uncle Steenie?”

  “Absolutely sure. And she always liked him. So that’s all right, isn’t it?”

  He gave me his pink-and-white smile and, before I could argue any more, popped another stale chocolate truffle into my mouth. I left England on the Queen Mary on November 18, 1938, one month before my eighth birthday. We sailed from Southampton.

  Aunt Maud was not well enough to accompany me to the docks, so I said my goodbyes to her in London, in her once-famous drawing room overlooking Hyde Park. I was escorted to Southampton by Jenna, who was to travel with me, by my two uncles, and—at my request—by my friend Franz-Jacob. They all gave me presents for the voyage. Uncle Freddie gave me a batch of detective stories. Uncle Steenie gave me an orchid, which had a carnivorous look. Franz-Jacob gave me a box of chocolates.

  This present he produced at the last moment, on board ship, standing near the gangplank. Most of the other well-wishers had returned to the quay; my uncles were already ashore, and waving; the first confetti and streamers were being thrown.

  “Here.” Franz-Jacob pulled from his pocket a square gold cardboard box. It contained, I later discovered, eight exquisite hand-dipped chocolates, one for each year of my life. They were decorated with crystallized violets like amethysts, and with strips of angelica as green as emeralds. They lay couched in their smart box like so many jewels. Viennese chocolates: they must have been s
pecially sent, I think, by his family. Franz-Jacob presented this present with a small stiff bow, so his lank hair fell across his pale forehead.

  I was very touched that he should have gone to so much trouble but anxious not to embarrass him by appearing emotional. So I thanked him and clutched the box tight and hesitated. “I shall miss you, Franz-Jacob,” I risked at last.

  “You will not miss me. Distance is of no object between the hearts of friends.”

  He had prepared that small speech, I think, for he said it in a rehearsed and formal way. We looked at each other uncertainly; then, English fashion, we shook hands.

  “I shall write every week, Franz-Jacob. You will write too? You’ll let me know where they send you next?”

  “But of course I will write.” He gave me one of his impatient looks. He took from his coat pocket a pair of brown leather gloves, which he put on and carefully buttoned at the wrist.

  “I will write each Saturday. I will enclose a mathematical sum in each letter.” He came as close as he ever came to a smile. “I keep an eye on your progress—yes?”

  “No algebra, Franz-Jacob. Promise me, no algebra.”

  “Certainly there will be algebra. Algebra is good for you. Please remember this.”

  I think he knew I might cry, and tears would certainly have embarrassed him. The ship’s horns blew, which startled me. A woman next to me threw a bright-pink paper streamer into the air; I watched it coil out, flutter, then fall.

  When I turned back, Franz-Jacob was walking stiffly down the gangplank, and out of my life. I did not know it then—which was fortunate—but Franz-Jacob, whom I would have trusted with my life, would not keep his promise. He never wrote to me.

  The tugs were engaged, the hawsers’ freed; we began to edge away into the harbor. Jenna and I stayed by the rail for a long time, looking back through the drizzle of rain. On the quay a band played; my uncles waved; Franz-Jacob stood still. Their figures became smaller and smaller until, although we strained our eyes, we had to admit they were invisible.