Jamie noticed the gap. ‘And?’ He smiled.
‘And, I don’t know. Nothing. But I do like it there, yes.’
Ensconced on the train with its prickly seats, she thought about what she had not said to her brother. She had not said anything to her children and would surely never be able to tell Harry. She thought that there was no one she could tell. Not her mother, nor any of the friends from the Royal College with whom she still corresponded; and certainly not her newer acquaintances in Malvern, the other choristers and people she had met through mutual involvement with music; nor the staff at the schools where she taught.
To have a secret, to keep a part of yourself hidden, was a lonely thing. All her life she seemed to have had secrets which kept her apart from others. At school she had not wanted people to know about her parents’ divorce. Then she hadn’t wanted Harry to find out about the baby. Latterly she had tried not to let people in Malvern know how broken she was, not to be living with her daughters, or even that she was, or at any rate had been, a married woman with children. She didn’t see herself as a secretive person and yet she always seemed to have had something to conceal. She thought that Isobel and Emily were lucky to have each other to confide in. They would never have to bear secrets alone, as she had. And the world was changing so fast that the sorts of things she’d felt were shameful and private were talked about in the open now.
Jamie was so much younger than herself – and a boy – that she had never felt he could be someone she could talk intimately with. Iris tended to be preoccupied with her own life and not to invite private talk. Verity had been the friend Ruth had most trusted, but she had become so peculiar, partly because of being such an ardent Catholic and partly, Ruth supposed, because of her own situation as the mistress of a married man. Verity was a forbidden secret herself.
The train stopped and started: Charlbury, Kingham, Moreton-in-Marsh. Thin strips of cloud hung in the sky like sticklebacks in a clear stream, their undersides glinting in the dying light. Her own reflection appeared in the train window. This blurred other self seemed kindly, as if she had a spectral twin travelling along through the darkening fields beside her. She wasn’t alone, Ruth reminded herself. Not alone not alone not alone. The words percussed in her head, keeping time with the tat-ta tat-tat of the train.
Chapter 8
Ruth gave private piano lessons and also worked as a peripatetic music teacher at two of the local schools. It had been outside the smarter, larger school that she first encountered Ilse, arriving on a bicycle in a belted mackintosh the colour of wet sand. The stranger, still coasting, had begun to unbutton her coat with one hand, while the other remained on the handlebars, steering. Ruth had noticed something about the woman that she had never remarked in another person before: her collarbones. Their line was like the silhouette of a flying gull. The woman, who was about her own age, had smiled, wished her good morning in an accent Ruth could not place, then dashed ahead into the uncarpeted corridors of the school, the heels of her lace-up shoes clicking. There was a naturalness about her and she had a pretty smile, like the actress who played the second Mrs de Winter in Rebecca.
They had not met again for several weeks. Then, joining the other staff for tea in the common room one Friday, Ruth had found herself standing next to the same woman.
‘Hello,’ said Ruth. ‘I think we met the other day? I’m Ruth Longden.’ She extended a hand.
‘Ilse Erhard. I am teaching German.’
‘And I am teaching the piano,’ Ruth replied, smiling.
‘What is the name of this biscuit, the pink one?’ asked Ilse.
‘I believe they’re called Party Rings,’ said Ruth. ‘They’re for children really. They come in yellow too, look. And brown. I can’t see a brown one though. Must have all been eaten. People think they’ll taste of chocolate because of their colour, but they don’t, not really. Just of sugar.’
‘The colours are nice,’ said Ilse.
‘The colours are nicer than the taste,’ smiled Ruth.
Ilse smiled in assent. They stood munching. Somehow during the next quarter of an hour or so they had established that they both enjoyed the cinema and had arranged to meet for Saturday’s two o’clock matinée.
‘At the Picture House, then? Quarter to, in the foyer?’ said Ruth, gathering her music case.
It was the silliest film, a caper about doctors and nurses. Ruth felt slightly embarrassed that English humour should be so daft, so saucy, as if she, being English, were responsible. But Ilse laughed all the way through, as though Bernard Bresslaw and Joan Sims were the funniest people in the world. The spirit of the film stayed with them during tea afterwards, where they found themselves laughing at everything in the Blue Bird café: the resolute bad temper of the waitress, the paper doilies which kept sticking to the bottom of their cakes.
Saturday afternoons became their regular rendezvous, only interrupted on the occasional weekend when the children came to Malvern. They watched a film – Born Free, Alfie, several Carry Ons – then went out for tea and talked. Fantastic Voyage, with Donald Pleasance, was a favourite. Ruth said it was dotty, a word Ilse had never heard before. Thereafter it was always referred to as ‘the dotty film’. When The Sound of Music came round again, Ruth wasn’t sure what to do. She had seen the film during its first run, and been moved by the family’s refusal to kowtow to the Third Reich. Now she wondered whether to propose a different outing, perhaps to Worcester or Gloucester, to see a cathedral.
She did not know how Ilse would feel about the war. It was something they had never talked about. Ruth knew only that Ilse’s parents had had her late in life and that her father had died a few years previously and that she was an only child. Ilse wanted to see The Sound of Music. She had heard that Julie Andrews was fantastic. Yet afterwards Ruth was hesitant. Generally they discussed what they had seen, recalled favourite scenes. Now she could not think what to say.
‘I liked the dresses she made, out of those curtains,’ she ventured.
‘I liked the countess. She was so gracious,’ said Ilse.
‘Gracious in defeat,’ said Ruth.
‘Is that what you say? I didn’t know that phrase,’ smiled Ilse. ‘I have never been to Salzburg. It looks beautiful, the mountains and the lake.’
‘Is it far from where you grew up?’ asked Ruth.
‘Yes, very far. It’s on the other side of Germany. Austria. I was near the coast in the north, close to Denmark. Pasture country, with cattle. It was a farm where I grew up. Meadows, flat. Here in Malvern is the highest I have ever lived. It’s far from the sea here also.’
‘Have you been to the coast in England?’ Ruth asked.
‘Only to Harwich, from the boat, at the start of each term and the end. But I never spend any time there; I just get off the boat and onto a train, or onto the ferry. Once I came to Dover because I’d been on a little tour in Belgium with my mother.’
‘We should go!’ said Ruth. ‘We should go somewhere wild and lovely, like Wales or Cornwall. The Atlantic’s much nicer than the Channel.’
‘I would like that,’ said Ilse.
At the end of their outings they would part straight after tea, but after a time they simply fell into step and carried on their conversation. They walked along to Malvern Wells or over the hill to West Malvern, to see the sun setting. It reminded Ruth of the walks she had taken with Verity, when they were girls. The week which elapsed between their Saturday outings began to sag, to seem too long a time. Christopher still absented himself without explanation on Monday and Thursday evenings, as he always had. One Saturday, after tea, Ruth invited Ilse to dinner the following Thursday. She made chicken with mushroom sauce and Uncle Ben’s rice, copying a recipe of her uncle’s, adding a dollop of cream and a dash of Worcestershire sauce. She stacked kindling and logs in the grate in the study and laid a tray ready with coffee cups and a silver jug for the milk, and mints in silver paper arranged on a blue and white saucer. It was odd to feel nervous – there
was nothing, after all, to feel anxious about – but Ruth had never invited anyone to the house until now. It was not a house accustomed to visitors.
After eating they came to sit by the fire. Ruth found it difficult to sit still. Seeing Ilse here felt very different from meeting her in cafés and at the cinema. She found that she was restless, almost irritable. Nothing seemed quite right. The meal had looked pale and sludgy, and now the fire wasn’t burning properly, as if the logs were damp. Ruth went to the grate and knelt to work the small leather and brass bellows. After a few minutes of ineffective squeezing Ilse put down her coffee cup and came to crouch beside her at the hearth.
‘Shall I try?’ she asked, making to take the bellows from Ruth’s grasp.
‘Do,’ said Ruth, shifting a little to one side. ‘My mother always says that all women believe they have exquisite taste, but all men think they’re brilliant at making fires. Actually I don’t think I’m very gifted in either department.’
‘Well, I am good at making a fire, but I think my taste is not so good,’ laughed Ilse.
It was then that the oddest thing happened. As Ilse took the bellows, Ruth turned towards her, balancing on her heels and – entirely without thinking, as if compelled by an agency not her own – reached across and put her hand on her friend’s cardigan, over her right breast. As she did so she experienced a sensation of relief all through her body, as if she had been seasick before and now was able to right herself, returned to the safety of land. Neither of them said anything and neither of them moved.
Then Ilse leant forward and kissed Ruth’s mouth. Kissing a woman was quite unlike kissing a man. Ruth was astonished that it could be so different, when it was doing the same thing. It wasn’t just the softness of Ilse’s mouth, the smoothness of her skin; it was the smell of her, the smallness of her nose and chin, the way they fitted against her own. The feel of the other woman’s hair falling against her cheek. Even her breath was softer. Ruth seemed to be holding her face at an unfamiliar angle and realised that this was because she wasn’t having to reach upwards, because they were the same height. Ilse’s tongue against her lips was light and darting, less muscular and somehow less human than a man’s tongue. It felt more urgent, like a butterfly captured between the palms of her hands, impatient to be set free. While they kissed she did not let go of Ilse’s breast. She felt its surprising lightness now, and the nub of Ilse’s nipple through the wool.
It all seemed entirely right and natural. Nothing they did next seemed so unlike anything that Ruth had known before as the kissing had. The kissing was the only unfamiliar part. To be naked in someone’s arms, once they had undressed, to caress and taste a body and reach into its secret places: what difference did it make, whether it was a man or a woman? The desire was the same, the release from desire was the same. Ruth felt only joy and good fortune to have met someone so altogether lovely, someone she wanted to talk to and laugh with, whose body she longed to lie beside and reach for, whose curved back and legs slotted so neatly into the crescent of her own receiving stomach and arms later, through the long night when they went to her room.
On both the nights when Christopher went out, Ilse began to come over to the house. They talked, cooked, ate and made love, sometimes in Ruth’s bed and sometimes in front of the fire in the study, as they had the first time. On occasion some chance touch, a hand brushing against a wrist, set off a secret signal and they found themselves on the chilly bare tiles of the hall floor, kissing wildly almost before Ilse had taken off her coat. They had even, more than once, made love on the breakfast-room table. Ruth was taken aback every time by the beauty of Ilse’s body, the long curve of her hips, the voluptuous, surprising darkness of her nipples, the way they were at once firm and soft, like the leaves of a succulent. The enveloping softness of her arms. The heat and smoothness inside her. Afterwards they often bathed together in the big cast-iron bath, whose taps had dripped unchecked for decades, creating lengths of rough verdi-gris in the smooth white enamel. Ruth loved to wash Ilse’s hair, sitting behind her, filling a tall tin jug with rinse-water, pouring so that her wet hair lay fanned across her shoulders, glistening. Ilse had peculiarly long knobbly toes, with distinct gaps in between, the second toe ever so slightly longer than its neigh-bours. Ruth had never seen toes like these before, and she felt great affection for them.
Ilse began to teach Ruth some German. The words felt novel in her mouth, pleasing but unfamiliar, like a food she had never tasted before. Zwischen. Nützlich. Die Uhr ist stehengeblieben. Und so weiter. Allerlei. The word she liked best so far was Schlittschuhlaufen, because it sounded so very like what it described, the swish of metal skates on ice. Some German was already familiar to her – even if she did not understand the meaning – from her musical studies, or from choral pieces: ‘Entsündige mich mit Isop, dass ich rein werde; wasche mich, dass ich schneeweiss werde.’
Ruth knew that German had been the working language of many of the composers she most loved. She was acquainted with some of the Bach cantatas and masses, and had seen most of Mozart’s operas. After dinner in the evenings, she and Christopher often listened to opera on gramophone records. She had heard – although she did not much care for – the romantic Lieder of Schubert and Schumann. But she had never considered that these were the words Mozart and Beethoven and Bach had actually spoken; that these were the sounds which came out of their mouths when they bought a loaf of bread, or scolded a dog, or made some affectionate remark to their children. When they muttered, or added up a column of figures, or called out in their sleep.
What Ruth and Ilse did not already know about one another became for each a treasury of charm and wonder. Nothing was too trifling.
‘Did you have plaits when you were small?’ asked Ruth one day.
‘Of course! I was a little German girl. What do you think? I had two plaits and sometimes they were pinned on top of my head.’
‘Really?’ Ruth was never sure when Ilse was teasing. ‘No, really. I did. Next time I go home I will bring a photograph.’
‘Oh do! I’d love that,’ said Ruth.
Ruth would usually have had Isobel and Emily for half term, but their father had announced that he wanted to take them abroad, to Brittany. The girls had never been outside England before and they were very excited. They were going to have a cabin on the boat, with beds in it and a porthole, too, probably. Ilse stayed in Malvern for half terms, only going back to Germany to visit her mother for the longer holidays. Ruth suggested that she and Ilse should go to the coast for a few days. It wasn’t far, to Pembrokeshire; they could stay in a guesthouse in Tenby and make excursions.
Travelling together made Ruth feel shy. In the railway carriage they did not know how to arrange themselves quite. Ruth sat by the facing window, imagining that her friend would sit next to her, and they would enjoy the view together, but Ilse took the seat opposite, which meant her back was to the engine and she wouldn’t be able to see where they were going, which wasn’t nearly so nice. So Ruth suggested they swap places and then the tops of their legs touched as they moved in the confined space, making Ruth blush. Ilse looked suddenly unfamiliar, the bright sheen of her hair, the line of her jaw, the neatness of her ankles, almost formal, like a stranger’s. Ruth wondered if this was how Ilse seemed to other people, whether she seemed ordinary or foreign or – as she appeared to Ruth – both. She looked so self-contained, her modest optimism evident in the pretty curve of her mouth; her lovely tawniness. To Ruth she seemed infinitely touching. More than anything she wanted never to disappoint her.
It rained for the first two days but they didn’t mind. They explored the town and walked the shoreline beneath it, taking off their shoes to go barefoot on the beach at low tide. The dense wet sand was cold and hard beneath their feet. Their room had narrow twin beds; they slept in the one closer to the window, their legs entangled. The light coming through the scant floral curtains on the third morning announced sunlight. They bought a pork pie and some apples, a picnic to
take to Manorbier, where they planned to spend the better part of the day.
‘Are the beaches like this at home?’ Ruth asked as they sat at the far end of the crescent of sand at Manorbier.
‘It smells the same. I love that smell of the sea. But it’s flatter, where I come from. Bigger sky. There are dunes with spiky grass and very long beaches. It can be quite windy. Very windy. Before you reach the sea you sometimes see the sails of boats, and they look as if they are gliding through fields, before you can see the water.’
‘I remember dunes from when my grandfather read me The Riddle of the Sands,’ said Ruth.
‘I don’t know that book,’ said Ilse.
‘There’s no reason why you should,’ said Ruth, suddenly regretting that she had mentioned it. ‘It’s not all that good anyway.’
‘There are islands not far out, where people come for holidays. Near my house there are poplar trees and farms. Some of the old houses are like in England, you know, with wooden frames.’
‘Half-timbered. My father lives in a house like that.’
‘Yes. Fachwerkbauweise. In the town the buildings are tall, taller than here. They have little windows at the top, and orange roof tiles.’
‘Did you go to town much?’
‘Not so much. It was safer in the countryside and I had anyway to help on the farm. My school was in the village and there were enough shops there to get things you needed, like bread and soap, although they didn’t always have those. Not soap anyway. We were lucky because we could barter: we had our own eggs and milk and some vegetables. People came to us, they brought things.’ Ilse leant back on her elbows, looking out at the slate-green sea. ‘Our cows were brown and white, not brown like chocolate, but brown like old brick. Sometimes a cow would have white lashes on one eye and dark lashes on the other; I always liked those ones. And we had chickens also. Once a cockerel went mad and became fierce, like a dog. He chased me when I came from school. I was quite frightened, because with a dog you know it will bite, but with a bird you don’t really know what it will do.’
My Former Heart Page 11
