by Nigel Packer
Thirty-Two
Anika stood as Daniel entered the ward and came across to the bedside, embracing her quickly and without fuss.
‘What’s the latest?’ he asked.
‘He seems to be okay. Still not talking, I’m afraid, but he appears peaceful enough.’
They looked down at the bed. Otto lay with his head raised on the pillows. His eyes were shut and his face as pale as the bandages round his head.
‘How much damage has been done? Do the doctors know yet?’
Anika shook her head.
‘They’re not entirely sure. The injury, apparently, was fairly superficial. It was quite a nasty cut, but it looked worse than it actually was. They say there was no serious damage done, either to the skull or … to the brain.’
Daniel nodded.
‘That’s a relief, anyway.’
He bent over to look at his father, while Anika continued, ‘Having said that, they are a little concerned about his slow response to treatment. They told me the concussion would normally have worn off by now.’
‘I see…’
Anika looked down at the resting face, which evoked a complex range of emotions within her. Sadness, of course, even a dash of pity; but also love, compassion and a certain underlying anger that Otto had been so bloody stupid. He had not been well for some time and had partly brought this on himself.
When she had first received the call from Angelo, Anika had exploded with recrimination. She had built up an additional store of anger while reflecting upon events on the plane across from Geneva. As soon as she arrived in London she was prepared to let Angelo, Chloe and anyone else involved in this ridiculous project have it straight between the eyes. Upon walking into the hospital ward, however, and seeing her husband unconscious, she felt her anger dissolve into something less vengeful.
It had briefly re-emerged, once or twice, in the past few hours; but having been given some time to think about the situation, she no longer especially blamed Angelo or the people behind the film. If anything she blamed Otto, but then she couldn’t blame Otto, because he had already suffered the consequences of his actions; and because she now grasped that she couldn’t have gone on protecting him for ever. Her impulse, to keep him safely out of harm’s way in the villa, had been unrealistic. Ageing and illness were unavoidable, and Otto was ultimately too headstrong a character to stay permanently wrapped in cotton wool. The project in London was foolish, Anika still believed. But it was his final attempt to assert his independence, and to answer the siren call of his own abandoned past. It had always been there, she realised, even though he had never once spoken about it with her.
His eyes opened as they sat waiting beside the bed.
Daniel leaned across.
‘Hello, Dad.’
A smile crossed Otto’s lips. He tried to speak but failed. Anika reached out and brushed her fingers across his cheek.
‘You must try to rest now, Otto,’ she said, leaning forward to rearrange the pillows. ‘You look very tired.’
He did not respond, but lay staring peacefully at the ceiling.
‘He does this,’ Anika told Daniel. ‘There are moments of clarity, when he comes to and recognises people. But then he drifts off again, who knows where? It seems to be a place that makes him happy, though, so maybe it’s best to leave him there.’
* * *
The following hours were painful, for any number of reasons. Both Anika and Daniel would have preferred to be alone with Otto. Yet they did their mutual best to be civil and in time they began to relax in each other’s company.
During a break, over a shared cheese sandwich in the hospital canteen, Anika asked after Daniel’s family. He told her about his daughter’s recent difficulties at school. She had struggled to assimilate with some of her new classmates and would be moving on to a different school the following term.
‘And Gillian is how old now?’ Anika asked him. ‘Eleven, twelve…? I’m sorry, I should know these things.’
‘She’s eleven,’ he said. ‘It’s hardly your fault, Anika. We’ve not exactly bombarded you with invitations to visit.’
Anika thought for a moment.
‘I know you’ve always felt uncomfortable about Otto and me being together.’
Daniel was taken aback by her honesty, but gave a small nod of acquiescence.
‘I won’t patronise you with some platitude about knowing how you feel,’ she continued. ‘I cannot possibly know, it’s something beyond my personal experience. But I’m aware that it must have been difficult for you.’
Daniel looked her in the eye at last.
‘In the early days, yes. But not so much now. I feel rather awkward around you … still … but not resentful. Not any more.’
‘That’s a relief to hear.’
‘The point is that Dad and I should have moved on from this silliness years ago. It’s not fair on you, that you should see so little of your stepfamily. Our behaviour must have seemed childish to you at times.’
Anika paused before replying. Her professional background in diplomacy could be useful at moments like this.
‘I realise that relations haven’t always been perfect between yourself and Otto, but I wouldn’t want you to think he has ever said anything untoward about you. Your father’s an honourable man, very loyal, as I’m sure you know. He keeps all family matters entirely to himself.’
‘I guessed as much. That’s his way.’
‘I have tried, on occasion, to persuade him to rebuild bridges. But always I have to approach it in a way that is … what is the word now?’
‘Indirect?’
‘Indeed. It’s no good trying to talk to him directly on personal issues. He has a tendency to seize up, emotionally.’
Daniel smiled as he looked at Anika.
‘I must admit I didn’t often see him any other way.’
‘He cares for you, though … profoundly. I’m certain he would like to heal the rift. But I’m not sure that he knows exactly how.’
‘It’s okay,’ Daniel reassured her. ‘I received a letter from him this morning, just before you called. It was written from Marlowe House and explained some things.’
Anika nodded, a little surprised.
‘I see.’
She stared out of the window and bit thoughtfully into her sandwich.
‘I believe I owe you an apology, Anika.’
She looked at him, startled from her thoughts.
‘Owe me an apology? Why?’
‘Many reasons. I’ve been unfair to you. Dad told me some things in the letter I hadn’t known before.’
‘Really?’
There was nothing stand-offish in Anika’s tone. She said this with a wide-eyed, almost childlike embarrassment. It roused in Daniel an unexpectedly protective feeling towards her.
‘It’s fine,’ he hastened to add. ‘It was nothing particularly personal. Just straightforward information … how you first met him in Talloires, for instance.’
‘That’s one of his favourite stories.’
‘They were the sort of details I should have known years ago. I would have known them, too, if I hadn’t been so evasive in my dealings with you.’
‘I see. Well, that’s nice, then. It’s good that you should know things a little better.’
‘It is.’
Daniel inspected his hands.
‘There was one thing in the letter, something I didn’t know before … Mum telling Dad that he must remarry one day.’
‘He never mentioned that to you?’
‘No.’
‘I suppose it would not have occurred to him.’
There was a look of concern on Anika’s face.
‘I wonder, sometimes,’ she added, ‘whether I could have done more to help solve these problems.’
Clearly it was something that had been troubling her.
‘Any issues I had were in my head, in the past,’ Daniel told her. ‘There was nothing you could have done to alter that. Tension
s would have arisen between Dad and me, whoever he became involved with … whenever it happened. We were both pretty damaged by what took place.’
‘Of course.’
Anika took another bite from her sandwich, mentally adjusting to this sudden shift in mood between them.
Daniel pressed on further.
‘You did a good thing, with Dad. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that you saved his life. Or at least gave it back to him.’
‘I don’t know whether I would go that far.’
‘He was in a bad way, when he met you. It’s safe to say you restored him. I honestly don’t know whether anyone else could have done that.’
Anika smiled, despite herself.
‘Your words are very generous, but it was not an act of charity on my part. I am no saint, I promise you. I loved your father very much, and I still do. There was no hardship involved, as far as I was concerned.’
She measured out her words, before continuing, ‘As we both know, Otto is complicated. He is difficult to get to know, and difficult to live with at times. But he’s also a special, interesting man – a beautiful man, in my eyes. If I restored Otto, then you might say that in some respects he helped to build me.’
Anika smiled as she remembered.
‘I was in my late thirties when I first met him. I was divorced, there had been several others. I was very much a woman of the world. Yet I feel now that I knew so little – almost nothing, in fact – before I met Otto. I suppose that’s the kind of person he is.’
‘It must have been hard for you. The early days, I mean. Given the state that Dad was in at that time.’
‘It was hard. Painful, at times. Things moved more slowly than I thought I could stand. I was quite swept off my feet, you see. I had never really met someone like your father before. All my life I had mixed with a very different type of person. Ambassadors, diplomats – buttoned-up people, as Otto calls them. Otto was buttoned-up too, in his way, but there was also something original about him. He had the brain of an artist, a scientist, a mathematician, all of them rolled into one. He was the Renaissance Man I had read about as a young woman studying in Utrecht. But this wasn’t sixteenth-century Florence, I had to remind myself. What was such a person doing sitting in this café in the middle of the Alps?’
‘So how much did he tell you, then, about Mum?’
‘I sensed straightaway that bad things had happened in Otto’s life. At first he gave no indication of what they might be. He was very much cut off from the world at that time. And so I was careful, patient, maybe even a little calculating, if that’s not too strong a word to use about someone in love. I was head over heels but I didn’t want to drive him away. And so I waited. We would arrange to meet up, now and then, for days out in Geneva. I would sit with a coffee in a bar near the station and wait for his bus to arrive from the mountains. We went to museums, to galleries, the opera and theatre. The mating rituals of the bourgeoisie – that is another phrase of Otto’s!
‘About five months after our first meeting, he asked if I would like to spend the weekend at his chalet in the Chartreuse. It was winter, the snow was falling, but we walked a little in the hills around and I tried to teach him some of the basics of cross-country skiing. He wasn’t terribly good at it. In the evening we sat huddled by the paraffin heater, drinking brandy and listening to the compact-disc player I had bought for him. Otto allowed himself no luxuries at first, but I was beginning to wear him down by this time. We only had one disc to play, though – Michelangeli’s recording of Debussy’s Préludes. We must have listened to it ten times that weekend. It was during the first evening that he told me the story of Cynthia. Later, we lay together in his bed. Yet throughout that night, and for some time afterwards, we were as pure as the falling snow outside.’
As she spoke, Anika glanced continually at Daniel, assessing his reaction. He looked down but gave no indication that he wanted her to stop.
‘The snow that weekend wasn’t just outside the chalet. The finer stuff blew inwards through the gaps between the rafters. When we woke the next morning, our blanket was covered with a powdery film of snow. Otto got a stepladder and fixed the problem in the roof, while I shivered beneath the covers and watched him work. The two of us could barely move beneath the many sweaters we wore that weekend. We must have had six layers each.’
‘And when did you start living together? I’ve never known that. I got word while at Cambridge that Dad was seeing someone else. After that I disconnected for a while.’
‘He moved in with me about six months later. I remember it was midsummer when we moved his belongings to my apartment. I was living in the Eaux Vives district at the time, in an apartment just south of the lake. It’s not the most swish part of Geneva, but it was centrally placed, I was in between jobs and the rent there was pretty reasonable. We stayed there three years before building the villa.
‘At weekends, when we lived in Eaux Vives, Otto liked to sit outside on the balcony with a coffee and a cigarette. He would sketch the view of the Jet d’Eau fountain, located near us at the lake’s edge. It was especially striking when seen from our balcony. The fountain was perfectly framed, you see, between the rows of the tenement buildings. It seemed to be standing at the end of our street. There was a certain time of day that Otto loved. Late afternoon, on those pulsating summer days that ignite the lake. By that time of day, the shadows from the tenements were lengthening, and the spray from the fountain looked like a vast silver flame between the rooftops. One day, when Otto was sketching that view in charcoal, I sat down beside him and asked if he thought he might like to become an architect again.
‘It was quite a big moment, although I tried to play it cool. I had been preparing myself to ask that question for weeks. By this time, Otto was putting his life back together; on a practical level, at least. I felt that this would be one of the final pieces in the jigsaw. I had a friend who worked for the council in Geneva. She mentioned to me a plan to commission a new urban garden, at a 1960s housing estate in Onex. An ornamental fountain would form part of the architectural brief. I knew that Otto had a fondness for fountains at that time.’
‘I see. So that’s why he came back with that particular project. I never really understood that before. You persuaded him.’
‘It was not so much persuasion. Otto was ready for it by that time, I think. Maybe he just needed someone to say those words to him.’
* * *
The following day, as they sat once more beside Otto’s bed, the doors of the ward opened and Angelo peered inside. Daniel shook his hand and Anika embraced him, with no sign of any reluctance or tension. It was Angelo’s lunch hour, he couldn’t stay too long. He was carrying some chocolates and a book on Frank Lloyd Wright.
‘Just been published – very good, apparently,’ he told them.
Angelo placed the gifts on the bedside table, where they stood alongside a bouquet from Chloe and the film crew.
Having checked on Otto, who appeared to be dozing, Angelo turned to speak to Daniel.
‘I realise this is hardly the time to talk shop, but thanks once again for all your help with the campaign to save the building.’
The look of surprise on Anika’s face caused immediate embarrassment all round.
‘Daniel didn’t tell you and Otto that he was involved?’ asked Angelo.
‘No,’ said Anika.
‘Oh, dear. Have I spoken out of turn?’
Daniel jumped in.
‘I thought it best to keep it quiet. I wasn’t sure how Dad would react, you see. I was planning to tell him later on.’
Anika looked at him.
‘Now it is I who should apologise. The day before Otto flew to London, I finally plucked up the courage to ask him why you weren’t helping out with the campaign. I must admit my words weren’t complimentary.’
She looked down at her sleeping husband and continued, ‘He brushed the matter to one side at the time. But I know how pleased he will be to hea
r it.’
‘It’s the least I can do – he’s my father. But it’s not just a family matter. Dad’s a great architect. Marlowe House is an important building. Work of that quality deserves to be recognised and protected.’
Anika began to readjust the flowers in the vase.
‘Otto would like to hear you say that. Architecture was … is … his life. For the past ten years he has described himself as retired, but look at what he achieved in that time. Designing constantly – an eco-house, a ski-station, a project to convert an old fruitière into a social housing scheme. He was writing endlessly, too. Letters, academic papers. And yet he seemed to feel he was inactive all those years. He was always telling me how lazy he had become. Otto had the mental energy of ten people, even then, even after his various operations. It made me wonder just what he must have been like at the peak of his powers. Back in the day, he and Cynthia together must have been something to behold.’
Once Angelo had gone, and they were sipping cups of coffee in the hospital canteen, Anika asked Daniel about his own career as an architect.
‘Why did you decide to follow in your parents’ footsteps? Did they encourage it?’
‘You would imagine that to be the case, but in fact, no. They were keen that I should make my own decision.’
‘That’s the right approach to take.’
‘Dad may be a strong-willed character, but he was careful not to influence me on issues such as that. Not consciously, at least; although I suspect with hindsight that he did influence my decision in other ways.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘There was one particular incident I remember as a child. The fact I remember it at all must be significant. We were visiting London Zoo, I must have been five or six at the time, and I remember I was keen to see the lions…’
He described to her in detail the story about running off and colliding with the bicycle.
