by Rosie Thomas
The apartment in the Marais had only three rooms and a tiny kitchen with a cubicle containing a sit-up bath leading off it. There were interesting views of narrow streets and tall, twisted buildings from the windows, and Clio grew a few flowers in terracotta pots inside the tiny balconies. Grete had packed up some of Rafael’s books together with her paintings of Waltersroda and sent them from Berlin. Rafael put up shelves for the books, and hung the pictures. He acquired some carpentry tools of his own and made Romy’s rocking cradle, and then a neat little desk-table that held Clio’s typewriter.
Clio loved to watch him work. He was deft with his hands, and the logical progression from raw wood to stained and varnished furniture was infinitely pleasing. The rooms were slowly furnished, and became home.
Rafael could not practise the law in France, but he was sometimes able to find legal clerical work, and they both did translations for an academic publisher. They lived on whatever they could earn and on the remains of Clio’s Holborough inheritance, and when that was not enough Rafael worked as a porter at Les Halles. Sometimes Clio sold an article to Geoffrey Dawson or to one of the other newspaper editors, and she also began to write short stories. Two or three of these were published in Fathom, although Max Erdmann begrudged paying her the minuscule fee.
‘You are family,’ he protested.
Clio retorted in turn, ‘You would not want family to starve to death, Max, would you?’
Sometimes, in the quiet evenings, she took out the manuscript of her Berlin diary and worked on that.
After Romy was born, they divided the responsibility for her care between them. She was a placid baby who cried only rarely. As soon as she was old enough there were simple family expeditions to Versailles and Compiègne, and one wonderful summer holiday on the Breton coast.
Their anxieties were for the condition of Germany, and the threat of war when the Nazis entered the Rhineland.
Grete and Julius were still in Berlin and Rafael’s father was growing older and weaker in his house at the edge of the Thüringer Forest, and Rafael was often made impatient by his enforced exile. Clio learnt to recognize his darker moods, and to sympathize with his fear that he had slipped away from oppression and left others behind to suffer it.
But even so, Clio was to look back on these threadbare Paris years and the beginning of motherhood as the happiest time of her life.
When Nathaniel’s letter briefly explaining what had happened reached them, Clio agreed at once that Alice must come to Paris. They made space for her by moving Romy’s small bed into their own room, and on one sunny Sunday morning they went to the Gare du Nord to meet the boat train.
Alice held her single small suitcase in her hand and looked down from the high steps of the third-class carriage. She was almost the last person to leave the crowded train. Down at the end of the platform she saw Clio, bareheaded in a blue and white cotton summer dress, holding a plump toddler up in her arms. There was a big, blond-haired man beside her. Porter’s work had thickened Rafael’s muscles, making him look burlier than he once had done. They looked like a happy family.
Clio saw Alice at the same moment. She was struck by the change in her. Her broad face was blank, as if it had been wiped with a cloth, except for the dark hollows of her eyes. As they advanced to meet each other Clio was reminded of how Nanny used to dab the baby Alice’s face with a sponge, after nursery tea, long after the rest of them had grown old enough to use their napkins.
Alice was wearing a black shirt and her British Union of Fascists badge. The last group of passengers looked curiously at her.
‘Alice, darling,’ Clio called, and held open her arms.
Alice hesitated, and then glanced around to each side of her as if she was calculating which effect to aim for. Then she lifted her arm in a salute.
‘Heil Hitler,’ she said.
When Rafael held out his hand to shake hers she took it only after a small hesitation, and released it again at once.
They did their best to welcome Alice to Paris. On that first Sunday afternoon, the four of them walked along the quais. Romy ran ahead in little bursts, negotiating the uneven cobbles with her hands stretched out in front of her, and then peered back over her shoulder to make sure that her parents were still close by. Strolling French families in good Sunday clothes passed by them, some of them smiling their admiration of the little girl’s mass of fair curls.
‘Bateaux-boats,’ Romy called, pointing to the river barges. Her first language was an engaging trilingual mixture.
There were flower vendors beside the steps with wicker baskets full of blooms, and cages of tiny birds, and old men selling balloons and paper twists of coloured bonbons. Pavement artists made quick charcoal sketches and sold them for a few francs apiece. At one corner, near the Pont Neuf, they came to a little wooden kiosk offering newspapers and magazines.
Alice stopped, her attention caught by a newspaper photograph. While Clio and Rafael waited for her, holding on to Romy, she dug in her pocket and held out a handful of small coins to the kiosk man. As soon as the paper was in her hands she spread it out on the smooth stone coping of the river wall. Clio watched her puzzling out the words of the caption with her inadequate French.
‘What does it say?’ Clio asked at last.
Alice held out the paper. Clio saw a queer, nervous, glazed look in her eyes. Unwillingly, she looked down to see what it was that had captured her attention.
The photograph was of Hitler at the Olympia Stadium in Berlin. He was shown in profile, angrily leaving the tribune from which he had been watching the Games. The story beneath the picture announced that Jesse Owens, the black American athlete, had just won the two hundred metres and the crowd in the vast stadium had risen to salute him. Only the Führer had not stayed to honour his achievement.
Clio folded the paper again, and handed it back.
‘I think he is quite right,’ Alice said in a tight voice. And when Clio did not respond she added, ‘The Olympic Games should be a proud competition for the Aryan races. They should not be open to black mercenaries like Owens, or to Jews either. The Führer was quite right to leave the stadium.’
Clio looked down. The sun was still filtering through the branches of the plane trees and making irregular blots of light on the old cobbles. She saw her daughter’s face, turned upwards, and suddenly noticed that she looked like Grete under the baby curls. Rafael was standing a little to one side, seemingly watching the barges pass under the arches of the bridge.
‘I shall pretend that I didn’t hear what you said,’ Clio said.
‘I did say it.’
Clio was reminded of childhood arguments: I did so. No you did not. As the youngest Alice had often come off worst in those, except when Nathaniel intervened for her. With the thought came the sudden conviction that what was wrong with Alice was that she had failed to grow up. She was not a little girl any longer, but she had never fully metamorphosed into the twenty-four-year-old woman that her exterior presented to the world. She seemed unhappily frozen into adolescence.
Clio knew that her sister was unhappy. She could feel it seeping out of her. Whatever it was that had caused her to swallow Grace’s sleeping tablets in London was still with her, following Alice’s faltering tracks.
She made herself reach out and touch Alice’s arm, pushing through the prickle of dislike that she felt for her sister’s hostility to Rafael. She could ignore her politics, Clio thought, but not her rudeness to her lover. The arm was solid, almost resistant to her touch under the warm black stuff of her blouse.
‘I didn’t hear,’ she repeated. ‘Come on, let’s go home and have tea.’
They were difficult days.
Sometimes, Alice was like the child she had been in the Woodstock Road. She romped with Romy, rolling her over on the floor or on the bed until the child gasped with excitement, and then chased her the little length of the apartment until Romy hid behind a door or behind Clio’s legs, shouting in terrified delight, ‘Nei
n! Mummy, no!’
And then at another time Alice turned to Clio and said seriously, ‘You must be glad that she is so fair. At least she doesn’t look like a Jewess.’
‘Your own father is a Jew,’ Clio shouted.
Suddenly they found themselves squared up to each other, like fighting cats, ready to pounce. Clio was shaking so that she could hardly control herself but Alice was massively calm, even somnolent.
It was Rafael who put his hands on Clio’s shoulders and turned her away, sending her into their bedroom until she stopped shuddering with anger and her breath came more easily in her chest.
In bed at night, Clio lay against him. ‘I am sorry for what Alice says,’ she whispered. ‘I am ashamed.’
‘Don’t feel ashamed, and don’t be sorry except for Alice herself. What do you think has happened to her?’
At last, Clio answered, ‘Alice never had anything of her own, I suppose. All the acceptable attitudes had always been used up by the rest of us before she had a chance to try them out. This at least is her own. Except what she has learnt or copied from Grace. Alice always adored Grace, especially after she became an MP.’
Clio did not try to resist the notion that Alice’s attitudes were in some way the result of Grace’s influence.
A week went by. Alice seemed determined to test them by seeing how far she could go. At every opportunity she voiced hostility towards all things Jewish. Rafael was quiet and obviously troubled, but he remained outwardly friendly. It was Clio who found it increasingly difficult to be patient and tolerant when her sister was neither of those things. The current of her sympathy slowly dried up and drained away into the sands of disgust.
On the evening of the second Sunday, after Romy had been put to bed, there was a terrible argument.
They had been sitting over supper around the circular table in the window that looked down into the street. Clio made some meaningless remark about the charm of the old houses opposite to them, and Alice leant across to her with combative determination that seemed also touched with weariness. Perhaps at that moment even Alice was bored by the battle.
But she said, ‘French manners, French food, French views. Aren’t you proud at all to be British?’
Alice had eaten her share of the French pot au feu, Clio noted. She only answered, with a shrug, ‘Does it matter?’ London seemed a long way from these warm little rooms.
Alice would not let it go, now she had stirred herself up. She had lately taken to wearing a good deal of make-up and her cheeks began to burn under the sallow mask of it. Her bright red lipstick seemed to slip askew on her mouth.
‘Don’t you care about Britain?’
Clio regarded her coldly. ‘Not in the way that you and your fascist friends pretend to care. Britain will survive. I care far more about Rafael and Romy.’
Alice’s fist slammed on the table, making the plates and glasses ring.
‘There is no pretence. We are being led sideways towards a war with Germany by a conspiracy of Jews. We made peace with Germany in 1918 and the Führer is our friend.’
‘He is no friend of mine or Rafael, or of Julius or any of our friends in Germany. You have never been there, Alice. What do you know about the misery and the violence and the suffering caused by your precious Führer?’
Clio was shouting now, like Alice.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Rafael with his head resting on one hand, the broad fingers splayed out in the hair at his temple. He was wearing an old brown jersey with a strand of wool unravelling at the cuff. She thought how much she loved him.
‘Rafael spent months in Oranienburg. What do you think that was like?’
‘What had he done?’ Alice asked.
Clio’s hand shot out, but Rafael caught her wrist.
‘Don’t,’ he ordered her gently. It was as if there were no one else in the room. He spoke to her alone, for her alone to hear. Alice was completely excluded. ‘You will wake up the baby.’
Alice stood up. She rested her fingers for a moment on the cloth that was still scattered with crumbs from their dinner. Then she walked away and into her bedroom and closed the door. Clio and Rafael heard the key turn in the lock.
They cleared away the dishes and washed up, moving around one another in confined spaces, and made the little rooms tidy again, but Alice did not re-emerge. Later, in the darkness, they made love with Romy breathing evenly in her low bed next to theirs. Clio reached out for Rafael, blindly touching the landmarks of him, aware of the solidity of their happiness.
In the morning, they discovered that Alice was gone.
The door of her room was open, revealing the empty cupboard and the bedclothes roughly pulled up. Romy had woken them early, but Alice must have been up earlier still. She had crept out with her suitcase, leaving them no message.
Romy wandered into her old bedroom and peered around with interest.
‘Alice gone?’ she said.
‘Yes, Romy. Alice has gone, for a little while.’
Clio and Rafael waited anxiously for two days.
They had no idea where Alice might have gone, or even how much money she had had with her. Clio’s only conviction was that she had not returned home, either to London or to Oxford. On the morning of the third day she was on the point of telephoning Eleanor and Nathaniel when the wire came from Berlin: Alice here with me. Few days only. Don’t worry. Julius.
It was Alice who had directed him to wire, Clio knew that, and who had not wanted her to worry about her whereabouts. The two faces of her sister, the unstable fanatic and the affectionate child, slipped and slid in her memory, never coalescing.
‘She will see now what it is like,’ Clio said, through her anxiety.
‘Perhaps,’ Rafael answered.
Nineteen
‘The usual table, for the English lady.’
Alice followed the waiter through the crowded restaurant with her head up. She was becoming used to the glances from the other diners, and to the business of sitting alone at this usual table. She didn’t read, although she sometimes brought a newspaper with her, mostly for appearance’s sake. She ordered from the semi-comprehensible menu, chewed through whatever it was that was brought to her, and waited, watching the door and the other diners.
On her very first day at the restaurant she had been lucky. She had hardly been able to believe it when it happened, but the Führer himself had come in with a small party, and had been seated in an alcove diagonally across the room. He had not noticed her, of course, but she had been able to look at him from where she sat. Her food had gone cold as she repeated to herself, The Führer. Sitting across the room, where I could touch him.
She felt rewarded for everything.
Alice had not stayed for very long in Berlin. She discovered very quickly that there was no opportunity to reach him there. She had seen him once, in the Wilhelmstrasse, being driven in a big black Mercedes car. She had gone to some of the torchlight parades and big outdoor rallies to hear his speeches, but there she had been just one in a crowd of thousands, kept in her place by the police and Hitler’s stormtroopers. It had been stirring and magnificent to see the torchlights and hear the singing of ‘Deutschland über Alles’, and to be a part of so much conviction after the fighting and heckling that surrounded the fascists in London, but it was not what she wanted. Alice had decided that nothing less would do than to offer her allegiance directly to Hitler himself.
So she had told Julius that now she found herself in Germany she wanted to travel in order to see more of the country and its people. Julius had tried but he had been unable to change her mind, or to convince her that it was unsafe to wander around on her own. She had a little money, and she was more than old enough to take responsibility for herself.
Alice had come to Munich, where the Führer was at home. After a few days she had discovered the Osteria Bavaria and at once, by some miracle, he had materialized with the members of his inner circle, only a few feet away from her.
&nb
sp; She had come back every day, to eat her solitary meal.
The hope that he might come in and might even acknowledge her outweighed the discomforts of her cheap pension, the emptiness of the days, the suspicion that she was stared at and speculated about. Nothing mattered to Alice except the certainty that her devotion was unique, and her unshakeable determination that she was going to bestow it in the right place. Her love and her willingness to serve had gone unrecognized in London, and then had been humiliatingly rejected. Even now, the thought of that made her cheeks sting. But here, at the heart of fascism, she did not believe that she would be rejected again. The Führer would see her, and ask who she was, and then she would be drawn into the circle where she belonged.
It was only a matter of time, Alice told herself.
There was a little stir, near the door. There was Captain Rattenhüber, the head of Hitler’s bodyguard. The maître d’hôtel bent attentively to hear what Rattenhüber was saying. Then there was a brief flurry of waiters around the empty alcove table, and a moment later the Führer and his guests appeared. It was a smaller party than usual, Alice saw. She recognized Himmler, Lammers the Reichsnotar, and Hoffman, the photographer.
They passed by her table. Alice wanted to stretch out her fingers to touch his coat but she kept them out of sight, twisted together in her lap. Then, after they were seated, she saw the Führer glance in her direction at last.
His eyes seemed to burn straight into her head.
She longed to jump out of her chair and go to him, to invoke her relationship with Grace, to offer anything that might make him notice her properly. But then, after a moment’s examination of her face, he looked away again. He was absorbed in conversation at once.
Alice did not bow her head. She sat upright, with her hands still folded, while the hum of the restaurant went on around her.
Hitler asked Rattenhüber, ‘Who is that lady?’
The answer came quickly. ‘It is a young English Fräulein. Her name is Hirsh. She is staying alone at the Pension Post near the Mauerkirchstrasse.’
