Monika put down her cup of tea. She looked at Lisa with tears in her eyes. ‘Perhaps you’re right. My mind gives me so much trouble these days. I seem to be forgetting things.’
‘You dedicated this story to Brün and Peggy,’ Lisa said. ‘Who’s Peggy, Mum?’
Monika looked down at the table for a long time. She had become as still and quiet as a statue. Lisa waited, unsure if her mother had slipped back into her Alzheimer’s fog or shut herself away. At last she heard her mother speak in a low voice. ‘Peggy was my first child. They made me give her away.’
Monika wept quietly for some minutes and then recovered her composure, wiping her eyes with a tissue. ‘I can’t tell you this all at once. But I will, I promise. Next time.’
Lisa kissed her mother. ‘Please forgive me,’ she said.
‘I’m the one who should ask forgiveness,’ said Monika.
As Lisa left, she saw Monika pick up her pen and resume her writing.
So now the moment of truth was at hand.
‘This is a letter to Saskia’s mother. My grandmother. It is from her cousin in Australia. There are many of these letters. They wrote to each other often. See here: “Dear Spatzi”. That was my grandmother’s nickname. Spatzi. Sparrow.’
Lisa sat up straight. Spatzi? That made no sense at all. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘Spatzi was the friend of Laura – my grandmother – who visited her from Germany in 1936. Monika wrote about it in her diary.’
‘Yes, yes.’ Ulli was excited. ‘That’s her. She did come to Australia then. Only for a short while. She visited her cousin. Your grandmother. Here, I have a photo of them together during Spatzi’s visit.’
Ulli tapped at the keyboard and a photo appeared on the screen, a grainy snapshot of two women with their arms around each other. One of them was young, perhaps twenty, with fair hair and a sweet smile. But it was the other woman who made Lisa gasp. There was no mistaking that glossy black shoulder-length hair, thick-lashed eyes, and full red lips. Her glamorous grandmother. Laura. Lisa pointed at this familiar face on the screen.
‘So who’s that ?’ she asked Ulli.
‘My grandmother’s cousin. Angie.’
Angie? Had Ulli just said Angie? Luke looked at Lisa with undisguised shock. ‘I’m sorry, Ulrich, what did you say her name was?’
‘Spatzi called her Angie. I believe her real name was Angela. Angela Wood. There, you can see her signature at the bottom of the letter. She always wrote to Spatzi using that name. But in Australia everyone called her Laura. Laura Fox.’
Luke and Lisa look at each other dumbfounded. Whatever happened to Angie, poor Angie? Whatever happened to her? Lisa’s head reeled. How could Laura and Angie be the same person? The girl who broke your father’s heart. There must be some mistake.
‘Are you alright, Lisa?’ Ulli asked.
‘Yes, yes. This is just . . . a bit confusing.’ She laughed a little crazily. That had to be the understatement of all time. ‘Please. Please, go on.’
‘This is what I found out. Spatzi was born in Australia. Her real name was Greta. Her mother was Eveline, the daughter of a famous landscape painter. Wolfgang von Gettner. Eveline had a sister named Freya who also had a daughter. Angela. Angie. My grandmother’s cousin. I understand Eveline married an Australian who was killed in the First World War. And then, after the war, she and her baby daughter, Greta, came to Germany and settled with Eveline’s uncle in Dusseldorf.’
This was extraordinary. Lisa had been so moved by what she had learned about Freddie Wood’s internment and the deportations. She had not imagined for a minute that this tragedy was possibly part of her own family history.
Lisa looked at Luke. He appeared completely flummoxed. He had checked the shipping lists that registered Mrs F. Wood and Miss A. Wood as booked on a passage from Australia for Germany. He had seen no records for Eveline or Greta. But then he had not looked for them.
Ulli continued his story. ‘As she grew up, Spatzi kept in touch with her cousin Angie. Angie even came to Germany on her honeymoon with her husband. She wanted to see Eveline and Greta but she could not. So many years later Angie paid for Spatzi to visit her in Australia.’
Lisa was wide-eyed. Her mother’s diary had described her: ‘Spatzi, a good friend of Mama’s all the way from Germany, stayed the whole week. Very pretty, lots of fun.’ Lisa recalled that Adam had been away on business. Now all the familiar pieces of the jigsaw had been moved once more to tell a whole new story.
‘So . . . so what happened to Spatzi?’ she asked.
‘Well, that is a very sad story. She met a young man, Stefan, just before the war. They married and she fell pregnant with a little girl. My mother. They named her Ingrid. Stefan went off to fight in the war and was killed. Meanwhile, Dusseldorf was heavily bombed so Eveline took Spatzi and little Ingrid and decided to seek safety somewhere else. They chose Dresden.’
Lisa gasped. Her hands flew to her mouth.
‘Yes, I’m afraid so. Eveline and Spatzi were both killed in the raid, but by some miracle, Ingrid survived. She was only five years old.’
Lisa stifled a sob. She thought of her mother’s diary again. She remembered poor Brün’s tale of survival. She remembered Laura’s distress over the story Adam read from the newspaper. When did Laura learn the fate of her aunt and cousin?
‘Yes, it’s hard to imagine.’ Ulli sighed. ‘My mother was then adopted by a family in Stuttgart where she grew up greatly loved but haunted by memories. A year later, her uncle Karl in Dusseldorf tracked her down and handed over most of her mother’s belongings, which she had left behind, planning to return. These included the letters from her cousin in Australia. Angie.’
Tears were now trickling down Lisa’s face. She kept shaking her head in disbelief, trying to piece together everything she knew into a different pattern.
‘Trying to forget her past, Ingrid changed her name to Saskia. Strangely, though, she kept these letters of her mother’s. She met and married my father, Markus, and I came along a few years later. Which makes us third cousins, I believe,’ said Ulli. ‘It is a very curious story, don’t you think?’
‘Incredible,’ said Lisa. Incredible. ‘Thank you.’
‘I have only been here a few hours but I think Ingrid would have liked Australia,’ said Ulli. ‘I’m only sorry she never made it here like her mother did.’
Lisa and Ulli hugged. ‘Thank you, thank you,’ she kept saying, unable to find the right words to express the depths of her emotion.
She could not stop staring at the photo on the laptop screen. Her grandmother, Laura, with her movie-star good looks, her cryptic smile. She thought of the mermaid brooch, the gift from Laura on her twenty-first birthday. ‘A gift from my mother.’ Freya, the painter. Angie was Laura. Laura was Angie. How was it possible?
And then a realisation came to Lisa with shocking clarity and certainty.
Monika had known this story all along. She had held the key to this secret past the whole time. And right now she walked along a cliff edge, clutching that key in her hand, likely to miss a step at any moment and fall into an abyss of oblivion, taking the whole story of her family’s past with her. One thing was clear. That could not happen.
CHAPTER 33
* * *
Laura
Mosman, April 1996
Laura sat at her favourite writing desk, a copy of the one she had been given by Adam as a present before the fire destroyed their home. She looked in the mirror on the other side of the apartment. At ninety-four years of age, she looked like the White Witch now, she laughed to herself. That name she and Freya had made up for poor Adelina.
It was ten years since Alan had died in a car crash and twelve since Monika’s marriage failed. The punishment of the Foxes seemed to have no end. But why should these children, these innocents, pay the price of their parents’ sins? That she could never understand. Until she realised that it was her responsibility to be honest. The past could not be forgiven if it was not kn
own or understood.
She finally let go of the Palace after Alan’s death. Adam’s will had left her the sole shareholder and executor with provisions for the three children to inherit equal shares from any sale of the property, with poor Alan’s share to be divided between his siblings. Lottie used her inheritance to start a dance school for kids in Chicago. Monika was able to pursue her faltering writing career in comfort as a single mother. Laura bought a nice big apartment in Mosman and lived off her investments. Nobody could accuse Adam of not providing well for his family.
Laura’s heart had been torn in two by a deep grief but also a sense of liberation when she signed the papers to transfer the hotel to its new owners. They intended to appoint a well-established hotel chain to manage the property as they had no experience in running hotels. If the Palace had any future at all, then it was hopefully now in good hands. She felt she owed Adam that much.
She had been diagnosed with aggressive late-stage liver cancer six months earlier and the doctors had told her it was inoperable. She had decided to keep it secret from family and friends until the very end to spare everyone the drama. Her life had been filled with far too much of that and she wanted it to end with peace and dignity.
Her plans to slip quietly away were slightly derailed by her granddaughter’s unexpected twenty-first birthday invitation. She had loved the visits from Tom and Lisa when they were little but relations with Monika had grown impossible, especially after Michael left. Ah, my dearest Monika, always so determined to be independent but so very proud and unforgiving at times. She blamed herself too. She had interfered, given advice when it was not wanted. She had made this mistake too many times.
But going to the party was not a mistake. It was quite something to meet her grown-up granddaughter Lisa. The arts student who loved photography of all things. It was enough to make you believe in destiny. Laura smiled to herself. She recognised something of her young self in this girl. A quiet determination. An insistence on doing things her own way. It was a quality that could either be a blessing or a curse, depending on what opportunities life offered.
She had given Lisa her mermaid brooch. It was a precious thing, made by a friend of Freya’s to commemorate the wonderful mural she had painted in the spa at the Palace. Freya had given it to her when she thought she was going to die from the Spanish flu in Liverpool in 1919. It was time to hand it on, a kind of baton or torch from the woman artist of one generation to the next. Laura had no need of it now.
And then her granddaughter had asked her if she loved Adam Fox. At the end. What a question! Asked so solemnly. It seemed vital for Lisa that she should know the truth. So Laura had told her the truth as she remembered it. Yes, she had loved Adam to the very end and he had loved her. Despite everything. And then she had let slip her secret: ‘It was Angie who broke all our hearts, poor girl.’
Angie, poor Angie. Her secret self. Left behind so long ago, it was as if she were another person altogether. Abandoned, forgotten, lost in the dark. She, Laura, had chosen a new name, a new life. She thought she could leave Angie behind. But she found out – just as Adam had – that the past really never goes away.
So now it was time to tell her secret. At last. She would write a letter to Monika. A letter that undid the lie, set the record straight. A letter that hopefully threw some light into the shadows of Monika’s own life. It would be up to Monika if she was willing to share it with Tom and Lisa. She would not interfere ever again between a mother and her child. It would be Monika’s decision.
Was she a coward for doing it this way: a posthumous letter? Maybe, but it was better than no explanation at all. So Laura arranged herself at her beautiful desk and began to write.
CHAPTER 34
* * *
Monika
The Ritz, June 2013
‘Did you remind her I’m bringing a visitor?’ asked Lisa as they arrived at the Ritz.
‘Yes. She asked me to help her get all dressed up,’ said Fiona.
‘Give me a few minutes first, then I’ll come and get you,’ said Lisa to Ulli. She had no intention of ambushing Monika. She’d dropped in the day before and sought her mother out in the library, which had virtually become her private study. Nobody else seemed to spend time there so Monika was left alone to do her writing. Lisa had explained that she had a visitor from Germany who was the grandson of Spatzi. Sparrow. He wanted to meet her.
‘What did he tell you about Spatzi?’ Monika asked.
‘That she was a cousin to Angela Wood,’ said Lisa, watching her mother carefully. ‘Freya’s daughter. The painter from the cottage.’
‘Ah yes. Angie. So what does he want to meet me for?’
‘He has letters from Angie to Spatzi. He thought you might want to see them.’
Monika’s face paled a little and her eyes misted with tears. ‘I guess the time has come,’ she said. ‘I always knew it would. Yes, tell him to come. With the letters.’
So Monika was expecting Ulli’s visit today and, Lisa saw, had put on her best silk blouse, dark skirt, smart jacket, make-up, pearls, stockings. Fiona had brushed her grey hair into a tight shiny knot that made her look aristocratic rather than grim.
‘Of course I’m ready,’ she said when Lisa enquired, with a touch of her old impatience. ‘Don’t be silly.’
They sat down with cups of tea and an extra large box of chocolates which Ulli had brought as a gift. Lisa could tell Monika was quite taken with the young German’s good looks and manners. She had not seen her mother so animated for as long as she could remember.
Ulli told the story of his mother, Saskia, and his grandmother, Spatzi. Monika sat and listened with close attention. And then he mentioned Angie. He asked Monika if she wanted to see a photograph. She nodded. The photo came up on the screen. She sighed and nodded again.
‘So, there she is,’ said Monika. She looked at her mother with an odd mix of fondness that struggled with a note of bitter sadness. ‘Her secret is out. It is what she would have wanted.’ She put down her cup. ‘She was quite something, that Angie. The beauty, the actress. Made herself up like a character from a book. It takes courage to be a writer. To invent a person out of nothing. But it takes something else to invent yourself.’
Monika picked up her notebook, the one she had been writing in for the last week or so. The one she locked in her bedside drawer every night. That never left her sight. She opened it to the last page and pulled out an envelope, tired and worn. With hands that shook slightly she unfolded a letter and handed it to Lisa.
‘It is from your grandmother. She wrote it just before she died. Perhaps I should have shown it to you before. I didn’t know what was the right thing to do. Now you’ve made that choice for me.’
Lisa took the delicate onion-skinned paper in her hands. The handwriting was strong and clear and in dark fountain-pen ink that had not faded. She began to read aloud:
My darling Monz,
I am no writer like you, my clever daughter, so I ask you to forgive any failings of style in this letter. What I am about to tell you does not require much style. It is simply the story of a girl who decided to change her life without realising the cost to herself or others. I do not ask for your forgiveness for what I did; that would be too much to expect. But I hope you will forgive me for telling it to you now I am gone. I have thought about this a great deal and finally I decided it was better this way.
I am and always will be your mother. Who gave birth to you and raised you and loved you with a fierce and unfaltering love. Still do, as I draw breath. Nothing in this story changes that fundamental truth.
For years during and after the Great War, the schoolchildren in Meadow Springs sang a playground song: ‘Whatever happened to Angie, poor Angie? Whatever happened to her? She loved a boy as rich as rich though he did not love her.’
I am the answer to that song, my darling. My real name is not Laura. I was born Angela Wood and for most of my childhood I was called Angie. I am the girl from the cottage n
ext door to the Palace, the daughter of Freya von Gettner and Freddie Wood. You have heard stories about me, of course: stories that have been told in the village for years. That I was in love with Adam Fox’s first son, Robbie, and that on his thirteenth birthday I led him down to Sensation Point where he fell to his death.
That story is true. I did love Robbie even though I was only eleven and he was only thirteen. It is easy to mistake intense secret friendship for love when you are that young. What I truly loved was the Palace. I spent most of my childhood dreaming of being part of that forbidden world. It was a world that had once belonged to my mother, before her father lost his fortune. It was a world I felt entitled to but for a cruel twist of fate. My mother shared my sense of entitlement. Robbie was going to be my ticket to that world. When he died, my dream died with him.
When I was nearly seventeen, I found out that Robbie was in fact Freya and Adam Fox’s son – my half-brother.
Lisa gasped and looked at her mother in astonishment. Monika nodded.
When Adam was building his hotel, he and Freya had a passionate affair. She fell pregnant. Adam arranged for Robbie to be raised as his and Adelina’s son. This secret was a burden that Freya carried for years and one that I watched tear away at her soul.
You may understand now why I wanted us to adopt your baby girl and bring her up as our own. Because I had seen the cost of giving away a child. I had seen what it does to a mother. Twice Adam arranged for a woman he loved to give up her baby: first Freya and then you, his own daughter. Men have no idea what it is to make that kind of sacrifice or they would never allow it. I don’t think Freya ever forgave Adam for abandoning her the way he did. For betraying their love.
‘Good God! So that’s what happened,’ exclaimed Lisa, shaking her head. She and Luke had strayed close to the truth, even suspecting that Angie was Adam’s illegitimate daughter, but never for a moment thinking of Robbie. Monika’s eyes glistened brightly. ‘So much to learn,’ she sighed. ‘Too late.’
Palace of Tears Page 40
