by David Fraser
Hilda had died in 1953. Under sixty years old, worried about her husband’s health, she herself had died suddenly, unexpectedly, leaving her family bereft and almost outraged. They depended upon her hugely. Before she died, she had done much to restore her beloved garden from the ravages of war.
John Marvell lived quietly in a house several sizes too big for him. To his continuing surprise his farms were infinitely more prosperous than before the war. It was, he told himself, natural, inevitable, but he could not entirely get used to it. Land, before 1939, had been a most unproductive investment. Farmers had been a depressed class, paying uneconomic rents to impecunious landowners. Farms had been hard, often impossible, to let. John Marvell had taken the management of the three largest farms into his own hands, installed an expert young manager and found himself making a remarkable amount of money. Land was expected to go ever higher in price.
John was sixty-eight years old, fitter than he had been for several years and very lonely. He had suffered from acute depression in the latter years of the war, despairing of ever seeing Anthony or Marcia again, wretched at the course of the world, exhausted, melancholic. He was quickly cured of this by his childrens’ return, then shattered again by his wife’s death. He could not get used to living without Hilda. John was lonely and Bargate was too large. At times he would exclaim –
‘It’s crazy, one old man living in a house this size!’
But he loved Bargate. He could not bear to contemplate leaving it, no longer hearing the familiar clank of particular doors shutting, sounds he would have recognized if recorded and played to him, blindfolded, anywhere in the world. He loathed the idea of sniffing no more the wood smoke from the logs burning in the inner hall, smelling no more the strong scent of the honeysuckle outside the libary window. He still, conscientiously, carried out his duties in the county. People said,
‘John Marvell’s well-named – he’s really splendid. Such a charming person, takes on anything, never says “no”. Sad for him in that great house on his own.’ For Bargate, previously considered a country house of modest size, now had the name of an unmanageable place, as perceptions of scale shrank all over England.
John, despite his loneliness, was not ill-content. He was in the place he loved. His two children had survived the war, and visited him often. He was esteemed by his neighbours and unostentatiously prosperous. ‘I’m a lucky man, undeservedly lucky,’ he said humbly to himself, and he had a well-merited name for helping the less fortunate in a hundred unrecorded ways. Only one – or, he conceded inwardly, one and a half-flies could be found in John’s ointment. The first was Anthony’s failure to marry.
John would dearly have loved a daughter-in-law. He would have hoped for grandchildren, and Bargate, even in these reduced days, would have been a fine place for them to visit, perhaps even to grow up. Anthony loved Bargate, and John had made over to him most of the land, but he doubted if his son would ever live in the house. He certainly would not do so alone. Bargate needed children, women, voices, confusion. Still, it might happen. Anthony might yet settle down. He was only forty-two, after all: or was it forty-three?
John knew in his heart that it was not Anthony’s age but his attitude which gave little hope in the matter of ‘settling down’. Yet Anthony was successful. Called to the Bar late because of war service, he had soon given up practice and joined an industrial company, helped by contacts made (oddly enough) in Oflag XXXIII. Anthony had prospered. He lived comfortably in London. He came home most weekends. Sometimes John would say with forced jocularity –
‘You ought to find a nice wife, old boy! You’re leaving it a bit late! You ought to start a family here and move me out, you know! You can do that at any time, as I’ve always told you.’
Anthony would shake his head, smiling, ‘Perhaps one day, Father.’ Non-committal. A quiet, strong man now, with the spontaneous movement of youth seldom in evidence, his smile was as it always had been, but a great deal less frequent. John knew his son liked women. Sometimes he would bring friends for weekends and John longed for Hilda’s shrewd eye, percipient comment. She would have said at once,
‘There’s nothing there. Nothing whatever between them. No spark.’
Or one day, perhaps –
‘Yes, I think he’s rather smitten.’
John, by contrast, felt unobservant, baffled. The same friends seldom came more than once or twice. Anthony always seemed happiest when the only other weekend guest was Marcia: and, of course, Robert.
For the other half-fly in the ointment was Robert Anderson. Or, John confessed to himself with irritated fairness, it was Marcia’s relationship with Robert, her husband.
Marcia had married Robert Anderson in 1946. He had been a staunch friend and supporter throughout that painful time when Marcia had been many times questioned over her activities during the war. Robert had become a frequent visitor to Bargate. He had, or so it seemed, re-established his close friendship with Anthony with whom he had shared so much. Robert was well-informed on the whole business – the whole wretched business, John said angrily to himself – of war-crimes, treason trials and so forth.
Marcia, anyway, had emerged unscathed from what John called ‘all that nonsense’. And Robert, although he had played no direct part, had been a sensible adviser, strong, honourable, calm. Hilda and John had watched, with anxiety, how obviously he was falling in love with Marcia. Marcia herself had been uncommunicative for a long time after her return to England. She had, John said fairly, ‘been through it’. Hilda did not dissent. About Robert, Hilda observed –
‘He’s head over heels in love with her. She’s not in the least in love with him. She feels he’s a rock – something strong and immovable. She thinks she needs that.’
‘He’s a handsome rock!’
‘That has little to do with it. He’s been a sort of saviour in her eyes. It might work. She might come to love him. I doubt it.’
John accepted Hilda’s assessment. He always did. They were, therefore, unsure how much rejoicing was appropriate when Marcia announced that she intended to become Mrs Anderson ‘quickly and quietly’. Hilda’s doubts were not dispelled by Marcia’s remarking,
‘Darling Robert, I know him so well. We can say anything to each other. Such a relief. And he’s clever, much cleverer than people think. Also such a relief. One doesn’t have to say things twice.’
Like Anthony, Robert had been called to the Bar after leaving the Army and taking his final examinations. Unlike Anthony he had continued to practise, and with surprising speed built up a considerable reputation, principally in civil cases. He, too, was prosperous. When he married Marcia in 1946 he had been poor.
‘They’ll have to scrape,’ Hilda said, unworried. She recognized Robert’s determination. Half-Scots, half-American, there was a dourness in him, a hard taste for achievement. But now, with no Hilda to share his worries, John felt uneasy. Marcia was surprisingly thoughtful as far as John was concerned – an excellent, kind, daughter, he said to himself. But she seemed to talk little to Robert when they were both at Bargate. She seldom spoke of him when he wasn’t there. Sometimes a light remark jarred on her father. He had said, not for the first time,
‘I wonder when Anthony is going to find a nice girl and marry her?’
‘Oh, he’ll stay single if you ask me! Dear, sensible, Ant!’
Robert himself behaved with politeness towards John – a politeness tinged at times with a certain fretful impatience. Once John heard Robert say to Marcia,
‘It can’t go on! It’s a lunatic way to live these days! One old man – he needs to spend thousands on the roof alone!’
John had been sitting, unobserved, in the darkness of a corner in the inner hall. Marcia had murmured something, cool, unsmiling. She had seen John. And John was unsurprised, unresentful that Robert found irritating his father-in-law’s way of life and domestic economy. ‘He’s quite right,’ he said to himself, equably. The farms appeared to keep bankruptcy comfortably at bay
for the time being. Meanwhile, whatever lay between him and Robert it was not affection. He esteemed his son-in-law, as others did. But Marcia had no child.
‘Yes, of course, it all started a long time ago, when we went to Arzfeld together. Now Ant, I want to talk to you seriously. We’ve got time.’
Anthony had arrived from London only twenty minutes before. Robert and Marcia had driven down an hour earlier. It was Friday. A tranquil, summer weekend stretched ahead of them.
‘Robert’s probably impatient –’
‘Robert will be perfectly all right. I want to talk to you about Lise von Arzfeld.’
Anthony halted and looked at his sister hard.
‘Are you going to start telling me, once again, that I ought to marry Lise von Arzfeld? Because I don’t intend to.’
‘No, it’s far too late for that. Anyway, she’ll never marry now. But it’s not just Lise I want to talk about.’
Anthony believed it. From the moment of Marcia’s return from Germany in 1945 she had been the one person he could talk to about Anna. Marcia had known and loved Anna. Marcia knew of his own love for Anna. Marcia certainly sympathized with him, even, it might be, understood his inability to feel anything profound for any other woman. But now the years had passed, now he did not choose to talk to Marcia about these things, and when she spoke of Lise the shadow of Anna, the shadow of their recollections of Anna lay between them, moved silently with them as they strolled in the evening through the gardens of Bargate.
Anthony knew, too, that Marcia was strongly affected by the fact that Franzi was his son. She had been faithful to her promise to guard this secret. She had never told Lise – she paid a visit to Lise at least every other year. It was inconceivable (‘Why?’ he would say to himself with a stab of concern: but it was so) that she should tell Robert. To all the world but Anthony and Marcia, Franzi was the son and heir of Kurt Langenbach, Luftwaffe hero, master-elect of broad lands in Lower Saxony.
Lise had taken Franzi to her heart when the confused, frightened little boy was recovered from horrible surroundings in 1945. Kaspar von Arzfeld was Anna’s closest cousin. Old Frau Langenbach died that April, one month before the capitulation, died in confusion and discomfort, moved from her home to an institution, deprived of any she knew or loved. Cousin Lise had taken Franzi to Arzfeld, brought him up, looked after him, loved him. Marcia, therefore, had seen a good deal of Franzi. On several occasions she had reassured Anthony.
‘He knows Kurt Langenbach, his hero-father, was the best aviator Germany ever produced. He knows his mother was murdered by wicked Nazis. He loves his cousin Lise. And his old cousin Kaspar.’
‘I don’t know what I want.’
‘You must leave it like that now. One day, when he’s old enough to take it, he deserves the truth. But not yet. After all, he’s inheriting a good deal at Langenbach.’
Anthony had digested all this. He had little idea how the inheritance laws had been constituted by the newly-fledged Federal Republic.
‘He’ll inherit Arzfeld, too, one day, I suppose,’ thought Anthony. ‘Who else? Unless Lise leaves it to some charity.’ And he thought what it might be like to have Franzi inheriting Bargate instead. He had paid two visits to Arzfeld, the last four years ago. Lise told Franzi to call him ‘“Uncle Anton”, as a great friend of your mother’. Had she said it with a twist of meaning? He fancied not. Lise knew how he had been sheltered by Anna, knew – without resentment – that he had been the cause of Anna’s condemnation, her death: but no more, he thought, no more.
Franzi had been uninterested, a strong, handsome fifteen-year-old when last sighted. Each Christmas Anthony sent him carefully chosen and expensive presents. He received letters of gratitude composed with equal care.
‘It’s not just Lise I want to talk about,’ Marcia said. She looked at Anthony with determination. She felt this was not going to be easy.
‘I’ve had a letter. Lise’s coming to England. I could never get her to do so before.’
‘Well, that’s splendid.’
‘I want to get her to Bargate.’
‘Of course, she must come to Bargate. Father will enjoy it when he gets used to the idea. We’ll talk to him this evening.’
‘She’s coming with Franzi.’
‘I see,’ said Anthony. He saw.
‘Lise thinks it will be a good holiday, a new experience for Franzi, before he goes to Marburg University. He speaks good English. I saw him the year before last, as you know.’
‘He always did speak passable English. Most impressive. German education.’
‘He’s seldom been away from Germany. He was seventeen when I saw him last. He’s charming – a little spoilt, but charming. And very good looking.’
‘When, exactly, does Lise plan to come?’
‘In July. I’ve got the dates. They’re going to drive. Franzi will drive her most of the time, I expect. He’s at the fast car stage.’
They strolled on in silence.
‘It’s the fortnight you said you plan to be here yourself,’ said Marcia abruptly.
It couldn’t be! Or, to be more exact, it could only be if Marcia had so fixed it. There was always summer work to be done on the farms and Anthony had, as usual, arranged leave from his employers to see to it personally. Marcia was watching him. She said,
‘They won’t get in the way. I’ve fixed Mrs Trapsell who’ll come in every day. Franzi will enjoy helping, I’m sure. He’s been brought up to farming, he’ll be interested to see the difference between England and home.’
‘I doubt it. Anyway, Lise will need to be looked after –’
‘I’ll look after Lise. I look forward to it. She’ll spend some time in London with us. I’m afraid Robert won’t like that –’
‘Does he resent Lise?’
‘Yes, she’s a bit of my life where he doesn’t belong. A bit of which he doesn’t much approve.’ Anthony moved the conversation back. He was by now used, with some sadness, to the fact that Marcia and Robert shared little. He felt a certain sense of responsibility. Yet he, himself, found Robert much less sympathetic than in the old days. He said,
‘Franzi will want to see London. He won’t want to sit here.’
‘It will do Lise good to be without him for a bit. If he wants to go to London you can show him things.’
‘Marcia, I have these weeks in July off because I’ll be very busy at Bargate. I don’t have to tell you that.’
‘And I don’t have to tell you,’ said Marcia, ‘that this is your son. That he’s nineteen, and here’s what I have to say to you, very important, I think it’s the right time to tell him the truth: him and Lise, so she can help. There are such things as natural feelings aren’t there?’
A long, pacing silence.
‘Marcia, natural feelings or no, I don’t think I can – tell him. It would – it might – destroy his peace of mind, his sense of identity. For what? To get a little emotional satisfaction for myself? To clear the account?’
Marcia looked at him. ‘Something about truth? Something about love?’
Anthony had never heard or seen her so serious. He was shaken. He said,
‘My God, Marcia, I don’t know how I’d do it.’
Marcia murmured,
‘Well, you’re the person who would best know how Anna would see it. I rather thought, darling Ant, that the two of you shared something worth acknowledging, perpetually. Isn’t that right?’
They neared the house.
‘Ant, you’re trembling.’ She was holding his arm tight. ‘After all these years, fourteen years, you call it a long time but you’re trembling!’
‘Well, why not?’ He pulled his arm away, his voice unsteady too. How could even Marcia understand what once had been?
‘Why can’t it thunder and get it over? It’s ghastly weather, July at its worst. What an awful evening to have to dress up and go out to dinner.’
‘They’re your friends, not mine. And it would be just as sticky if we stayed h
ere. Anyway, we’ll probably get a good dinner. Anthony says the Prendergasts live very well.’
‘I’m sure of it,’ said Robert Anderson. ‘Peter Prendergast would be a mean man if he didn’t. He’s made that company from nothing and he’s made it huge. But I never relished acting for them. He’s a shallow, disagreeable man, for all his business acumen. I’ve never envied Anthony working for him.’
Marcia recognized the evening as one which Robert had decided not to enjoy. There were many such. They had few serious rows. They simply liked different things and agreed on few subjects. Once she had found this stimulating.
‘Robert contradicts me, flatly, it’s splendid. He makes me think.’
Now she admitted dully to herself that their minds, their sensibilities were out of harmony. Marcia found it difficult to make conversation without Robert regarding it, all too patently, as inaccurate, misguided, or merely silly. And Robert no doubt found his own remarks treated with similar irritation or incomprehension. People, too, they had difficulty in sharing. Even Anthony, once so close a friend as well as so beloved a brother, could be a subject for disagreement. They were not, she knew well, really disagreeing about other things, other people. Behind every chilly or barbed exchange they were, painfully, saying things, hurt, hurting things about themselves.
Any reference to Marcia’s life in Germany, to her buried wartime years, brought irritated reactions from Robert which aroused exaggerated responses in her. She had only to mention Arzfeld, for instance,
‘I suppose they shut their eyes to what was going on, like most people, quick to denounce it afterwards. Or they were just frightened –’
‘No, it wasn’t exactly like that.’ Kaspar’s grave, hopeless face. Frido’s angry stories. No, it wasn’t exactly like that.
‘Of course it must have been pretty demoralizing to live in an atmosphere where an indiscreet word could land you in a camp or worse. We can’t imagine it.’ Robert was trying to be fair, judicious.
‘You shouldn’t exaggerate, Robert. It was wartime, after all. People in every country accept that you have to be discreet, loyal, keep your mouth shut, in wartime.’
