The Iron Necklace

by Giles Waterfield

  None of them had seen Così Fan Tutte. ‘It’s very little played, they say it’s immoral,’ remarked Margaret. ‘A story of inconstant love and deceit, what could be more unsuitable?’

  The conductor made his bow. The audience applauded faintly, but the music enwrapped them. The sunny Italian terrace and the Rococo costumes made their own world seem yet more dun.

  In the intervals they watched the audience processing slowly in a square formation round the Salon. ‘I suppose,’ said Barbara, ‘that folks in Boston would not approve of the opera. It’s wicked of the young men to test their ladies in this way. In Boston, we like to think that once married or plighted we stay that way. Though of course it’s not always like that: one’s heart is not so obliging, nor are circumstances.’ Barbara’s fiancé had been killed in 1918, a young professor of history.

  ‘Is it never like that?’ Mark asked wistfully, thinking of his own parents.

  ‘Oh sometimes, I believe. Margaret’s parents are models of affection, wouldn’t you agree, my dear? But as for my own parents, why, they lost interest in one another years ago, and my father’s had a mistress for ages, she and her husband are close family friends of ours. Everyone knows, they often dine together and play bridge, but nobody ever – ever – refers to the situation.’

  Taking their seats again, they bowed to the strangers sitting behind them. ‘You know,’ whispered Mark, ‘they say the best seats are taken by the concierges from the big hotels – they can afford anything. If the aristocracy come at all, they sit in the gallery in disguise.’

  The second act engaged them even more fully, so that Mark hardly noticed when Margaret brushed her hand lightly against his arm. As Fiordiligi sang ‘Per pietà, ben mio, perdona’, he put his free hand close to hers. She did not move. A little while later, as Fiordiligi fell faithlessly into the arms of Ferrando, he turned his head to look at her. Nothing. He looked again, and the faintest smile moved her lips.

  At the end they civilly saluted their companions in the box. ‘Sehr unmoralisch,’ said one of the men, ‘obwohl lustig.’

  ‘What did he say?’ Barbara asked.

  ‘Very immoral, but amusing. I don’t know if he really disapproved.’

  ‘I certainly disapproved.’ Barbara was given to parody, and had remarked that if she could find the right man, she would become a pure Boston matron within minutes. ‘Really, those girls behave disgracefully, and the men are no better. Only they all behave badly so beautifully, you can hardly find fault.’

  ‘It’s quite light-hearted,’ said Mark. ‘They are so frivolous about their emotions, it hardly matters.’ He found himself blushing.

  ‘But it seems to me they’re not playing a game, or only at one level.’ Margaret looked very serious. ‘Of course they are inconstant, and swayed by outside appearances, and by the idea of love rather than real love itself, whatever that may be. But surely when they sing together, what they are meditating on is the sadness of the human condition, where love is fleeting even though we believe it will be constant. We recognise love’s fallibility and incompleteness, but its beauty always deceives us, we are entranced, and there is virtue in that deceit.’ She touched her eyes, and gave a half-laugh. ‘To persist, love needs to compromise, no?’

  ‘Well, that’s ingenious,’ Barbara replied, ‘but I’m not persuaded.’

  ‘The fact that the action of the opera is light-hearted doesn’t mean that the emotions are superficial. To me the opera suggests that though love may be an illusion or at best an exaggeration, it can lift us to an almost divine state.’ She waved her hand at the auditorium, where the lights were being extinguished, the doors of the boxes closed. ‘Love is like a theatre, like this opera house, all illusion, but captivating. Of course, it can make one desperately unhappy.’ An usher put his head round their door.

  ‘Wir kommen, wir kommen gleich,’ said Mark.

  ‘It’s been a delicious evening,’ said Barbara.

  ‘Oh yes.’ And Margaret hid her shoulders in her soft white stole. ‘What better way to spend the evening than contemplating the follies and vagaries of lovers?’

  At the hotel an alluring supper had been laid out on silver and glass dishes in Margaret’s sitting room, which was lit by half a dozen candelabra. How pleasant, Mark thought, to be able to afford – not just in the ludicrous conditions of modern Germany, but all the time – such comfortable ease. After a while Barbara announced that she was going to bed, ‘Though I know that as a dutiful chaperone I should not be leaving you alone together. Mark, it’s been such a pleasure. Why don’t you join us in Vienna?’

  Once she’d gone, it was hard to know what to say. Mark remarked that he would try to come to Vienna. They agreed that since they both had trains to catch in the morning, it was not wise to stay up too late. He stood up to leave.

  ‘Well, if you must go. . .’

  ‘Margaret, would you. . . it’s probably ridiculous of me even to think of it. . . I suppose you wouldn’t. . . think of marrying me?’

  ‘Well there, thank you, how kind. But do you really mean it, aren’t you seduced by the music and candlelight? It’s very kind of you, Mark, but I don’t think so, I really don’t, but thank you for asking me, you dear thing. I don’t see how, I mean. . .’ She held out her hand.

  He returned to the lesser grandeur of his own hotel. He was completely unsure of his own feelings. He was not sure whether he felt hopeful, or even whether he wanted to feel hopeful.

  43

  Margaret and Barbara travelled to Vienna and Prague and Budapest, and then Italy, from where regular postcards announced that they were seeing all the sights and attending all the opera houses. Mark was too busy to join them: he hardly wanted to leave Berlin, the sense of imminent political chaos enthralled him. And he spent a great deal of time with Karl, who was being particularly affectionate.

  Finally a telegram arrived: ‘SAILING CHERBOURG 18 OCTOBER STOP IN PARIS FROM 14 OCT STOP DO COME IF POSSIBLE STOP STAYING HOTEL DE SEINE STOP M’. He went.

  They had three days in Paris. Barbara and Margaret were a little febrile, perhaps anxious to be on their way home. They ate meals in small restaurants off the Faubourg Saint-Germain. They walked along the Seine: ‘It’s a good place to say goodbye to Europe.’ On the last evening they promenaded in the Jardin des Tuileries, admiring the precise gravel paths and the regimented hedges. Barbara suggested she might have dinner alone at the hotel, she was tired, but ‘No’, they said, they wanted her company. Her presence made things easier: the chaperone system had its advantages.

  On their last morning he accompanied them to the Gare du Nord.

  They stood on the platform to say their goodbyes, wondered when they would meet again. ‘It’s been delightful,’ said Barbara, ‘but I must go and check the luggage.’ The platform seemed immensely long, stretching towards the Atlantic and the United States.

  ‘You know,’ said Margaret, ‘that question you asked me. In Munich.’

  ‘Yes.’ She was certainly going to say no.

  ‘You’ve never mentioned it again.’

  ‘I didn’t want to be a bore. I was waiting. . .’

  ‘Yes, I see that. Have you changed your mind?’

  ‘No. . . Have you decided?’

  ‘Yes, yes, I have. At least – I think I have. You see it’s so complicated. I mean, would we be happy? I’m not a very easy person, you know.’

  ‘So it’s no.’

  ‘I’ve hesitated such a long time, because I would like to say yes. I think the things one fails to do are worse than the things one does do – I must get on this train. I think we should see how it goes. I mean, it may work, it may not work. . . If I’m going to marry anyone, I’d like it to be you.’

  ‘Then. . . you mean yes?’

  ‘Yes, I think I do, yes, I do.’ The porters were slamming the doors, a late traveller hurried up the steps, friends of passengers made scrambled exits. ‘I really must get on, d’you think that clock is right? I just didn’t want to blu
b. . . I’ll send you a telegram from the ship. Dear Mark, darling, I do mean yes.’ The train doors were slamming, all but hers, she held onto the handle until a porter said, ‘Madame part ou non?’

  ‘Oh my God,’ she said, ‘why is it always the wrong time to do anything?’ And with a rapid kiss and a sobbing laugh she climbed into the train.

  A moment later her face appeared at the window beside Barbara’s. They waved their handkerchiefs as the train steamed past the blank ugly walls of the Dixième Arrondisement and towards the New World.

  Mark stood for a long time in the station, unable to leave its comforting anonymity. His mind went back to Berlin, and to the man there whom – he had to admit it to himself, since he’d been forced to admit it to the person in question – he loved. He wandered into the street and walked through the squalid neighbourhood. There, at least, he would not meet anyone he knew.

  It was natural, what he was going to do. It was natural, and right.

  What was he going to say to Karl, who would be so pleased to see him when he went back to Berlin? Would he say, ‘I am going to be married. We can no longer meet’? How would he bring himself to say that?

  But then he loved Margaret. Yes, he loved Margaret. He would be happy with her. If he married Margaret – when they married – he would not have to lead a double life. He would stay in the Diplomatic Service, and with her at his side he would rise even faster. There would be no gossip about his being over-emotional. And he could do his writing later in life, there was no especial hurry.

  He thought of Karl, and of the discussions with Karl’s friend, who was indeed a rich and powerful man, though he’d annoyed Mark by taking it for granted from their first meeting that he was a homosexual. But the man had been impressed by Mark (or so Karl said later) and had offered him very generous terms. And The Observer remained interested in taking him on. Karl had become impatient. He’d said, more than once, that as soon as Mark had left the Diplomatic Service they would move in together, there’d be no need for all this secrecy.

  Mark would smile and try to look enthusiastic. To live openly with another man. . .

  Marriage was much the safer option. And Margaret was very special.

  He stopped in front of a shop window that displayed an unappetising selection of breads and cakes. He saw himself in the glass. He was shocked to see that tears were running, very slowly, down his cheeks.

  44

  Irene sat in her studio in the Mommsenstraße. She did not want to paint more portraits or rural landscapes, she’d found her mind wandering as she painted a woodland scene. After a struggle with herself – most people would consider the picture highly proficient, even moving – she’d destroyed it. She wanted to continue to paint the scenes of Berlin that had been so well-received in her recent exhibition, and to take the approach further, making the paintings much larger. She wanted to give these paintings some of the apparent neutrality of the photograph: muted, subtle, almost monochrome. She planned to include many aspects of the city: the park at Charlottenburg, the confectioner’s on her street, the courtyard of a Mietskaserne, the Potsdamer Platz empty of traffic in the early morning. They all had a meaning for her, a meaning she hoped she could communicate.

  There was a practical problem. The paintings needed to be at least two metres high, possibly more. She surveyed the room, white and grey, perfect and domestic, and much too small. It would not do. Thomas liked to think of her at work in their house, but then he did not appreciate how hard it was to concentrate when at any moment Henry might run in.

  Footsteps. Well, she was to be interrupted. But it was not Henry or Dodo, it was her husband. She was surprised.

  ‘Are you not well?’

  ‘Oh yes, I’m well. I wanted to tell you, I have made a decision, a big decision. I hope you will not be angry.’

  ‘Only if you’re leaving me for another woman.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking, I shall be forty-five at my next birthday, and the truth is, my darling, when I look back at my career, I have achieved very little. The Siedlung seems as distant as ever. I do not have the reputation or the connections, I am very discouraged.’

  ‘I am so sorry.’

  ‘I have made a decision. Herr Ulrich and I will dissolve the practice. I have provisionally accepted a position with the city architects of Berlin. It is not quite what I had hoped for, but the job is secure, and they plan a series of housing colonies. . .’ He looked at her uncertainly. ‘All this is on condition, of course, that you approve.’

  ‘But of course I approve, if it is what you want to do.’

  ‘When one is young, one is idealistic, one thinks everything is possible. But as one grows older, one realises time is so short. What one can achieve is ridiculously limited, we have very little freedom unless we are heroic beings, we are bound by the circumstances of our birth and upbringing. All we can hope for is to be able to plough one little field, straight and well.’ She coaxed his unhappy mouth into a smile. ‘I hope you won’t speak like this to your new colleagues, they will not think you a cheerful addition to the office.’

  ‘They say I can also work privately – if anyone wants me to work for them, that is.’ He looked over her shoulder at her desk, where she had sketched a city street. ‘Very fine, yes. Of course, what I say does not apply to you as an artist, you can escape these shackles. I thought I was an artist, but no – I shall be an official.’

  She thought he might need a distracting shock. ‘I think it is a wise decision. I should tell you, I am going to look for a studio of my own, away from here.’

  ‘But your studio– don’t you like this studio?’

  ‘Indeed I do, but I need a space where I can execute large works. . . I need somewhere else.’

  ‘But. . . it is quite irregular. . .’

  She drew away from him. ‘To be honest, Thomas, I don’t mind that, it’s what I choose to do. I would remind you, my dear husband, that I have had some success. . .’

  ‘Whereas I am a failure.’

  ‘No. . .’

  They looked at one another for a long, silent moment.

  ‘You must do as you wish,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I must.’

  45

  Telegrams, telephone calls, Berlin to Philadelphia, Berlin to London, Philadelphia to Berlin.

  The wedding would take place in spring 1925 in Philadelphia, and the honeymoon in Europe. It would be a large wedding, with a reception for several hundred at Atholl, but the service, attended only by family and close friends, would be held in a small old church. Margaret insisted on St David’s; it dated back to the early eighteenth century, was built of white clapboard and stood among fields. She couldn’t stand the idea of parading down the aisle of a fashionable church, wrapped in white satin and being gawked at by Old Philadelphia murmuring, ‘My, I never thought that girl would get married. . .’ But at St David’s, where she’d gone as a child to sit beside her grandmother on a hard wooden pew and through the plain glass windows watch the clouds sailing by, she could feel at peace.

  Who should be the best man? So many of his friends had been killed. Alexander would not enjoy the role. None of the Graf set would really do, and anyway the Salts would be dismayed by a German best man. There was no one in the embassy. Then a letter of congratulation arrived from Harry Mansell in Washington. Who could be more perfect? He sent Harry a telegram that day, and he accepted. ‘Oddly enough,’ Harry wrote, ‘I’m going to be married myself at the end of the summer, a wonderful girl, you must both be at the wedding.’ So like Harry, never to be outdone.

  Mark began to see everything he did in Berlin in terms of last opportunities. ‘I’ll never see the lilac coming out in the Tiergarten again.’

  He had a long and very painful conversation with Karl, who told him he was a traitor to himself.

  46

  Boston, 15 January 1925

  Dearest Mark and I hope I may say ‘Dearest Margaret’, even though we have never met.

&n
bsp; I have received the invitation to the wedding. What an exciting event, I am so delighted for you both. And to think that, like me, Mark is marrying an American. It’s a very good thing to do, in my opinion.

  I know it will be a wonderful occasion, and that you will be very happy. But I hope you will understand if I don’t attend. I know it must seem odd, but running away to America (I’m sure that’s how it seems to all of you) was such a difficult thing to do, and something I worried about so much before I did it – when I stayed with Irene in Berlin just before, I could hardly sleep, I was fretting so much – that I need a while to recover. A big family wedding, with everyone there, and people inspecting me and discussing how I look and assessing John and seeing that he is a bit older than me . . . I can’t face it yet. Worst of all would be seeing Mamma and feeling guilty about leaving her, because I know I would.

  I may seem absurd to you, though I hope I don’t. I’m not yet ready. But I long to see you all, and we can meet in New York or Boston, or wherever. Just the four of us, I hope, that’s what I would like. The next time you are in the States – you will be too busy this time.

  I am very happy. And I think, in fact I know, that Mamma will be having an American grandchild in a little while.