Dreams of Innocence

by Lisa Appignanesi

‘So I see,’ he focussed on the child.

  ‘Now, we’re going to make a nest for hedgehog out of leaves and things. Then we can come and visit him every day.’

  ‘And what if he already has a nest?’

  Janey looked at him in consternation, then up at Helena, ‘Ours will be better won’t it?’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘Come on, then,’ the child tugged at Helena’s hand. ‘It’s under the rhodos, Daddy. We left it some milk already.’

  ‘I’ll help you make the nest, Janey,’ Max Peters had just rejoined them. ‘I suspect Helena has come here to see Adam, not to play with hedgehogs.’

  The child looked with sudden suspicion from Helena to her father, ‘But she said she would and…’

  ‘Janey.’ Max Peters was firm.

  ‘Of course, it’ll be hedgehogs first,’ Adam intervened. He didn’t look at Helena as he reached for his daughter’s hand. ‘It’ll only take a few moments. And Ms Latimer has always believed in nature first.’ He raced ahead with Janey.

  ‘My son has left his manners in the city, I fear,’ Max Peters walked beside her. ‘We’ve only been here for a week and he’s devoted to the little one. Has missed her terribly. It would perhaps have been better if you had come after bedtime.’

  ‘Yes,’ Helena swallowed hard.

  ‘Are you in Germany for your newspaper?’

  ‘Not really,’ Helena took her courage in hand. ‘I wanted to talk to Adam about Max Bergmann.’

  He shot her a quick assessing look. ‘Unfortunate business, all that.’

  From his flat tone, Helena couldn’t determine whether Adam had shown him the Journal or not. It occurred to her for the first time that Max Peters would be more disturbed by it than any of them. In fact, it had been addressed to him. What a nearsighted fool she was becoming.

  They had reached the grove. Adam and Janey were crouching by the spot where the hedgehog had been sited. Adam was loosening the earth with a twig.

  ‘Is this the right way?’ the little girl called to her.

  Helena stooped. ‘A perfect start.’ While they were collecting snails, she had explained in great detail to the child how to construct an attractive nest.

  ‘You’ve made fast friends in my absence,’ Adam looked up from the ground and suddenly smiled at her with such warmth that the colour rushed into her cheeks.

  ‘Helena knows everything about hedgehogs,’ Janey declaimed seriously.

  ‘I can’t say I’m surprised.’

  ‘Now for some dry leaves - and some hay, if we can find it.’

  They scrabbled round for leaves coming up with only a few handfuls.

  ‘I shouldn’t have done so much tidying,’ Adam grinned. ‘We could try the compost heap round by the stables.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what, Janey.’ Max Peters suggested, ‘You and I could walk over to Frau Berta’s. We said we’d come and look at the horses. And there’s bound to be hay there.’ he looked meaningfully at his son.

  ‘Horses!’ Janey was full of enthusiasm. She took her grandfather’s hand without so much as a backward glance, only remembering to call out after a moment, ‘See you later.’

  ‘My daughter loves horses,’ Adam looked after them with a bemused expression.

  ‘So I see.’

  Silence fell between them, stretched itself so that the absence of speech became palpable. The chattering of birds grew disproportionately loud. When Helena dared to glance at him, he looked sullen, leaner in those pale jeans than she remembered him, rugged, somehow more dangerous. The eyes in the tanned face were unusually hard.

  Finally he made a move and they walked desultorily, still without speaking, towards the house.

  The living room, devoid of Johannes Bahr’s paintings, was strangely bare, despite the warm pinks of chairs and rugs, the mellow light pouring through the windows. Adam didn’t ask her to sit, simply stared out at the grounds.

  ‘I wanted to see you, Adam. I know I’ve behaved badly, contemptibly. But I wanted to talk,’ Helena blurted out at last.

  ‘You took a little time over it.’

  Helena swallowed. ‘Don’t make it harder than it is, Adam.’

  He veered round. ‘You don’t look as if it’s been very hard,’ his eyes skirted over her.

  ‘Surfaces deceive,’ she said softly. ‘I should know. I was taken in by them.’

  Silence covered them again. He paced for a moment, then sat down opposite her. ‘Alright, where do we begin?’

  She could read the anger in his eyes. She didn’t know what prompted her then, but she touched his hand and said first of all, hurriedly, as if to get that initial misapprehension out of the way, ‘I thought you were married.’

  ‘I have been,’ his expression didn’t change.

  He didn’t understand, Helena thought aghast. Or perhaps he no longer cared about what she thought, what she felt. She was suddenly incensed. ‘I have principles about these things, you know. I try not to double-cross my sisters.’

  His gaze was blank.

  ‘I thought you were lying. Deceiving me,’ she had started to babble. ‘I saw that picture of the three of you. Of Janey and her and I thought… Oh what does it matter what I thought?’ She leapt up, turned away from him. The stupid tears were biting at her eyes. She stared out the window, tried to blink them away. She should never have come.

  ‘Helena, may I kiss you?’ his voice was suddenly soft behind her.

  She nodded, yet felt unable to confront him. His lips were on her hair. He turned her in the circle of his arms and kissed her, tentatively at first as if they had never tasted each other before and then more searchingly, deeply, so that when he finally let her go she neither remembered why she had come nor why she had ever left.

  She gazed up into his eyes. They were laughing now, teasing.

  ‘What I like about you is the way you live up to your principles.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘When did you begin to think I was married, Helena?’ he drawled the words.

  She flushed, ‘After that first night. I…I couldn’t help myself the next time. I…you…’ she stumbled.

  He smiled at her. It was a tender smile. He ruffled her hair, ‘That’s precisely what I like about your principles. They give way to life. Sometimes, at least.’

  ‘Don’t laugh at me, Adam. I’m not feeling very strong about my principles.’

  He kissed her again. She was flying.

  ‘I’ve been such a fool,’ she murmured into his lips.

  ‘That makes two of us. I could never manage to keep you here, talk to you, without this getting in the way,’ he stroked her face, ‘without him getting in the way either.’

  ‘Max?’

  He nodded, ‘When you came, after his death, I wanted to protect you. I couldn’t bear the thought of your hopes for a father disintegrating in Max’s journal. I thought you’d hate me for being the two-fold purveyor of bad news. And the nephew of a Nazi to boot. But you hated me already.’ He drew back from her.

  ‘I didn’t,’ she shook her head adamantly, wanting his warmth again. ‘I was just suspicious, didn’t trust you, because of…’ she waved her hands at a loss. ‘I thought you knew things, were somehow implicated in his death. You did know things, but not what I thought.’

  He was gazing out the window now. The sun had begun its slow descent behind the mountain peaks.

  ‘Did I look as if I needed protection?’ Helena asked, not sure whether she had liked the sound of that.

  ‘You did. To me. Then,’ he shrugged. Suddenly he turned to confront her. ‘When did you find out? About my divorce I mean?’

  ‘Just before I received the Journal. When I was in New York. I’d asked James to have you checked out,’ she said, ashamed.

  ‘And you waited all this time? Over a month?’ There was astonishment in his voice and something else. Indignation.

  ‘I…I didn’t think you’d care after…after the way I’d behaved. My stupidity,’ she gestu
red helplessly. ‘And I had to sort things out. About Max. About what it meant.’

  ‘And is it all sorted now?’ his eyes were suddenly black.

  She shook her head, ‘That’s why I came.’

  ‘For Max? For Leo, I should say. For him again. Even now that you know!’

  ‘Not only that.’

  ‘Not only that,’ he echoed her.

  She stepped towards him, met his eyes, the tears biting at her own.

  ‘Do you care, Adam?’

  He turned away from her, walked blindly towards the drinks cabinet, poured them each a whiskey without thinking.

  He had wanted her for so long and had talked himself out of her for so long, that he was loathe to let either desire or pain run away with him again. The kisses, the passion, whatever it was that her body, her emotions seemed to convey, meant so little to her, that she had been ready to throw them away without even bothering to ask him directly about wife and marriage. As if what they had experienced together were just so much flotsam and jetsam thrown up by the tide, rather than the sea of life itself. And there it was, she had only to walk into the room and he was caught up in the rhetoric of romantic excess.

  No, this time he had to temper it until he knew with a greater certainty. And the timing was so bad. Janey had just arrived, he was so enmeshed in her. And his father. All those shadows from the past to be confronted, re-examined…

  He handed Helena the whiskey, willed his eyes into neutrality. She had that deceptively vulnerable look which came over her from time to time. He remembered it too well. But each time it was he who had ended by needing the protection.

  The sun had clambered behind a distant peak, leaving streaks of pink and pale yellow in its wake like a glorious memory.

  ‘Will you stay?’ he asked.

  ‘If I may, if it’s not difficult.’

  He hesitated visibly.

  ‘There’s plenty of room. It’s only…’

  ‘Only?’ Helena prompted him.

  ‘I get such confused signals from you, Helena.’

  ‘I’m a confused woman.’ She tried to make it into a joke, but her voice was strained. ‘You once told me you didn’t mind ambivalence.’

  ‘For a little while. Not forever.’

  ‘It’s hardly been forever. Besides I thought you were married.’

  ‘You might have asked. We’ve hardly lacked speech in our brief relations.’

  ‘It’s not only that…the marriage. It’s…’ She sought out his eyes. ‘It’s that I don’t know how to deal with these things. In myself. Can you understand that?’

  ‘What things?’ he growled, but he put his hand gently on hers.’

  ‘I don’t know. Emotions. Sexual emotions. I… I’ve only realised it in these last weeks, since I last saw you. I…’

  ‘How many men have you slept with since then?’ he suddenly asked.

  ‘None,’ she looked away from him. ‘I tried with one. It didn’t work. I couldn’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You appeared. In my mind’s eye, that is.’

  He examined her face. ‘What did the man say? When you stopped, I mean.’

  She gazed at him silently for a moment, then met him on it. ‘He offered me a session on the couch. He was sweet. He said something about early awakening and early blocking. Said I was a sex in the family lady.’

  ‘We all have sex in the family. Of one kind or another. Sex isn’t just a matter of private parts,’ his voice was hard. ‘Where do you think we learn it?’

  ‘I guess mine was bad. So I learned badly.’

  Tears leapt into her eyes and she rose, turned away from him.

  ‘Helena,’ he was instantly beside her, his arm round her. ‘I’m sorry. I just need to know. To know about you. Please don’t cry. I’ll make it up to you. I’ll beat them up. I’ll…please, Helena.’

  She told him then, stumbling at first, and in no particular order, she told him of the memories that had leapt upon her, here, while she was with him in Germany, shameful, shaming memories of her early life, of Billy and how she had escaped, of the tangled undergrowth of emotions and the struggle to control them, and how everything seemed suddenly to conspire to make her lose that control, - him, too, perhaps primarily him, though not only. How she had held on to Max as one holds on to a fetish of order, a principle that protects, yes a father. Needed him, particularly after the experience of India. But it wasn’t only that. How she had tried to find out, give his fatherhood a real basis, explored her buried past, visited, snooped.

  The growing darkness helped the talking. In it everything suddenly seemed clear, and as she spoke in the shelter of his arm, it occurred to her for the first time that she was in love with him, that love was in part being able to speak and be heard.

  ‘What I still don’t understand,’ he said softly after she had finished, ‘is why Max of all people?’

  ‘I’ve thought about that too. That’s almost been as hard as the rest.’ She tried to look into his eyes, but they were shrouded. She took his hand, held it. ‘It’s not only Max’s big ideas I was enamoured of, I think. I’ve never really understood his more philosophical writings, though I tried. It was his tone, that very apocalyptic dread that you’re so critical of. It raised my own fears to a grander level, generalised them, grounded the everyday hysteria in something bigger. Made it something shared. I don’t quite know how to explain it. But even as I try to explain it, I can feel its seductions. And dangers.’

  He brushed her hair with his lips, held her closer.

  She felt is as an affirmation, rushed on, ‘Yet I still stand by Max’s environmental campaigning, for whatever reasons he engaged on it. I don’t think the two are the same.’ She waited for his challenge.

  ‘Of course not,’ he murmured. ‘As long as you keep the language of purity out of it. It has a way of rebounding on the social fabric. But go on.’

  She faltered then, took a deep breath. ‘But that’s just it… I think what drew me to Max in the first instance was his saintliness, the lack of anything bodily about him, the asceticism. He felt pure. And certain within that purity. Certain of everything. That held me together,’ she paused.

  ‘Like a god,’ he let go of her hand, confronted her.

  ‘Not quite, though a little I guess, from your vantage point.’ She tried again, ‘It’s simpler than that. He was one of the few men I have ever met who never looked at me as if I were a woman.’

  ‘Because he would have preferred you to be a boy.’

  She took that. ‘Perhaps. But for me it wasn’t like that. It was simply the lack of anything sexual. And in a man I admired. He made me feel at peace. Strangely whole.’

  ‘That hardly leaves much room for me, Helena. I’m not a saint. I can’t even find a single aspiration in myself that points in that direction.’ He laughed a little grimly. I don’t even think I’m much good at being the vaunted new man. I haven’t quite mastered the veneer of saintly diffidence. Probably never will.’ He walked up to the long French windows and gazed out.

  ‘Adam,’ she came up to him. ‘Adam, I’m here. With you.’

  ‘Even though I’m not a saint?’

  ‘Because you’re not a saint.’

  He bent to kiss her then. But the sudden burst of noise in the hall made him draw back.

  Janey came racing into the room. ‘I’ve been on a horse. I rode a horse, Daddy.’ She leaped into her father’s arms.

  ‘That she did,’ Max Peters was just behind her. ‘And we’ve collected enough hay for a dozen hedgehogs,’ he looked at Helena humorously.

  ‘Tell us all about it, Janey,’ Adam’s eyes were only for his daughter. He stroked back the mass of flaming red hair from her face, wiped a streak of grime.

  That’s what it meant to have a father, Helena suddenly thought.

  ‘Well, first…’

  ‘Well, first, you go off and have a bath young lady and get your Dad to make you spic and span for dinner. I need a little adult conver
sation.’ Max winked at Helena.

  ‘Good idea,’ Adam patted her on the bottom and shooed her away. ‘Gramps has had quite enough of you for one day.’

  ‘He went on a horse, too. His was black and big as a mountain with a fat tail. Mine…’

  Max Peters poured himself a drink and sank back into an armchair. ‘She’s a lovely child, but she has a little too much energy for a man of my years.’

  ‘I can’t believe that,’ Helena demurred.

  ‘In another week, she’ll have exhausted Adam’s as well and we’ll have to find her playmates of her own age. It’s always like this. For two weeks, he can’t have enough of her and then things settle down to a more usual pace.’

  ‘Like a love affair,’ Helena muttered before she could stop herself.

  ‘Like and altogether unlike,’ Max Peters eyed her shrewdly, ‘though, I must say, you hadn’t struck me as the cynical kind, Ms Latimer.’

  ‘Helena, please.’

  ‘Helena, of course.’ He sipped his drink, ‘It’s one of the eventualities of divorced lives, I guess,’ he continued as if she hadn’t spoken, ‘Still, I’m rather pleased that Adam is a man who is interested in his child. My daughter, on the other hand, manifests an altogether remarkable disinterest,’ he chuckled. ‘So I guess we can conclude that interest in one’s children is neither gender-based nor a matter of genes, nor perhaps even of early family formations and deformations, though the last remains a little imponderable.’

  He cleared his throat and Helena had the distinct impression that he was trying to tell her something.

  ‘Janey seems a sweet child,’ she said a little inanely.

  ‘She is that,’ he paused, glanced out of the window for a moment and then straight back at her as if he might catch her unawares.

  ‘My son tells me that he sent you a copy of the journal Max Bergmann, or should I say Leo Adler, directed to this house before his death. The two of you seem to be closer than I’d imagined.’

  Helena swallowed, ‘Circumstances brought us together.’

  ‘And was it the same circumstances that led you to interview me?’

  ‘In part,’ Helena stumbled unsure of his sense. She had a feeling she was being interrogated. ‘But not really. I had no idea that Max Bergmann was…’