by David Fraser
And the attics? The narrow stair on which the longed-for footfall could only be Anna’s? For what were they now used?
‘Most things there are sold. Franzi will never live at Langenbach,’ said Lise. ‘It has given him some money. Not to use all by himself vet, of course.’
‘We say– “In Trust”.’
‘Yes. But you are right, for a young man he has a good deal. And Arzfeld one day, perhaps, if such places can be kept still by a family. I think that’s difficult everywhere.’
‘Very difficult.’
Anthony was thinking of Franzi’s inheritance. He knew all about his childhood, about a little boy dragged from his mother, beaten and starved. The wheel had certainly come full circle. Hesitantly he asked,
‘Does Franzi remember his mother?’
‘Certainly. You must speak to him of her. He loves to hear others talk of her.’
Lise said this so easily that Anthony could not believe she thought the subject delicate. He felt the need to be sure. He said – carefully – ‘He’s like his mother. Very von Arzfeld, you know. I can see it. I expect your father can.’
‘Yes,’ said Lise seriously. ‘I think so too. Sometimes I think I see a little Langenbach in him. But not so often. Not nearly so often.’
Marcia had looked thoughtfully at Anthony as soon as they found themselves together after her arrival.
‘How are you doing, Ant?’
She used the inelegant, once-irritating pet name much less now. He liked it.
‘He’s a charming boy.’
‘And you’re going to tell him, aren’t you?’
‘Marcia, I long to, in many ways. But is it really right? Isn’t it, perhaps, self-indulgent, on my part?’
‘I’m interested that you feel it might be. You weren’t keen on the idea when last we talked.’
‘I’m keen on it now.’
‘Well, as you know, I think you should. And I’ll tell Lise. Then she can help cope with him. She’s pretty sensible, you know. She’s much tougher than she looks. I’ll tell her when we’re in London together, if you like. I’d better wait until I hear from you that you’ve had your heart-to-heart with Franzi.’
‘That would be best,’ said Anthony, a sick yet excited sensation predominant. ‘Yes, that would be best.’
‘I’ll cope with Lise, she’ll be all right. Give me time. She’s devoted to the boy, she’s bound to feel deeply concerned, confused. Give me time.’
‘Don’t you think that Lise may have always suspected something?’
‘No, I don’t. And I’d know. Ant, I realize it’s going to be a hard task telling him. But I think it’s right. Be gentle. Be humble.’
‘How could one be otherwise?’
‘And be loving.’
‘Yes,’ said Anthony. He suddenly found a constriction in his throat. ‘Yes, that too.’
And Marcia carried Lise off. With only mild curiosity Anthony heard Marcia say as they got into the car, ‘A very odd thing happened the other day, Lise, love. You’ll never guess who turned up –’
He turned away. They shared many memories, those two. He had his own.
‘I’ll show you some of Sussex,’ said Anthony. It was a hot day.
‘Can we go in my car, Uncle Anton? You’ve not been in it yet!’
‘We’ll go by lanes, small roads. You’ll have to drive slowly and you’ll hate every minute of it. You’ll be itching for an autobahn, yearning for speed!’
‘I expect so, Uncle Anton!’
‘It’s extraordinary,’ thought Anthony, ‘how easy I feel with him, how I love his company, how I have known him, in my heart, for ever.’ He looked sideways at Franzi as they drove towards the white wooden gates opening from Bargate drive on to the narrow lane which led to the Flintdown road. ‘Yes,’ Anthony thought, ‘I know him all right.’ And the slender hand resting on the steering wheel was Anna’s hand. ‘Damn it, it’s the sheer love in the boy,’ thought Anthony. ‘He’s Anna’s son, every inch of him.’
‘And mine. And mine.’
‘I’ll open the gate.’
‘No, I know it, I’ll do it, Uncle Anton.’ Franzi was already out of the driving seat, coping with the awkward gate catch, jumping in again, driving on.
‘Hang on, we must shut it behind us. Cattle. Stop again. That’s why it was more sensible to let your passenger do it.’
‘Sorry, Uncle Anton. German officiousness!’
‘We’re making a cattle grid there, this autumn. And keep in to the left of the road, for God’s sake!’
Anthony loved the excuse to chide, to mock, to exercise, in appearance, a little affectionate tutelage. They drove southward in companionable silence towards the line of the Downs. For twenty minutes Anthony uttered nothing but a few crisp directions.
‘When you top the next rise you’ll see the Channel. It’s a wonderful viewpoint.’
They stopped and got out of the car, strolling for a little, sitting while Anthony pointed out landmarks. There was everywhere an enormous peace.
‘Your country is very beautiful, Uncle Anton.’
‘Yes, it is, isn’t it.’
‘I like to practise my English. But you still speak beautiful German, Uncle Anton, I like hearing it. Which shall we talk?’
‘Let’s talk both, just as we find it most easy, depending on what we want to say.’
When they got back into the car there was suddenly something awkward between them, as if each recognized that there had to be a change of style in their conversation, that it had to become more personal. The atmosphere had changed and Anthony knew that Franzi felt it just as he did, though nothing had been said. Where there had been ease now there was tension. They drove slowly westward, keeping to small roads, towards the border of West Sussex. Anthony felt himself impelled by some force outside himself when he heard his own voice saying –
‘How well do you remember your mother, Franzi?’
‘Better than people might suppose. I was five years old, you know, when they – took her away. Took me away.’
‘I know. I know what happened.’
‘It was the most terrible thing. I don’t think anything that happens in life can be as terrible as that.’
He talked for a little, without strain. Anthony discovered that they had never told Franzi much about Anna’s death, insofar as details were known. The boy was anxious to learn. Hints and guesses can fester more than the most brutal facts. He listened with gratitude while Anthony, painfully, carefully, told him all he knew.
‘They told you that I saw a good deal of your mother at that time? That she hid me, an escaped enemy prisoner of war, at Langenbach, nursed me, saved my life?’
‘Yes, Cousin Lise told me the story. It’s amazing. I can never understand it fully. I mean, it’s a romantic story, Uncle Anton, but it must have seemed, even to my mother, an extraordinary thing to do. I know she hated the Nazis and so forth, but after all there was a war and you were, were –’
‘An enemy. Yes.’
‘I can see even Cousin Kaspar von Arzfeld finds it hard to understand. And he loved my mother. And nobody could hate the Nazis more than him. They killed his son.’
‘Certainly. But I’m sure he finds it hard to accept, as you say. It was – what your mother did was – the action of a very brave, remarkable woman, you see. A person whose moral sense was much higher than –’
Anthony could not find the right words. It would be misleading to say ‘than patriotism’. Anna’s patriotism was profound.
‘Than that of other people,’ Franzi supplied.
One could settle for that.
‘I suppose war turns everybody’s moral ideas a bit upside down, Uncle.’
‘There’s an English saying “All’s fair in love and war”. It’s not true. Cruelty and injustice remain cruelty and injustice whether or not you’re fighting for your life, or however strong your passions. Decency and mercy are noble whatever flag you’re fighting under.’
‘Human qu
alities more important than causes.’
‘Causes matter too, Franzi. Causes matter too.’
They started speaking of Frido. Franzi knew the story well.
‘Cousin Lise adored her brother.’
‘So did everybody, rightly so. I’m glad to have the chance to tell you how he looked to me, a comparative stranger, an enemy as it turned out.’
He talked, finding himself remembering with greater vividness all the time. Franzi nodded, fascinated, his slender fingers moving as his hand rested on the steering wheel, as if he were fingering a clarinet.
‘The fact that I knew some of your people so – so well – helped me through what I think of as the first gateway to wisdom.’
‘Which is –?’
Anthony tried to speak casually, to avoid sententiousness.
‘To put oneself in another’s place. To ask “How would I have behaved?” To avoid being self-righteous, sanctimonious, scheinheilig. To condemn evil, but to remember that the evildoers are themselves what I suppose religious people would call the wandering, alienated children of God.’
He said it as lightly as he could. He didn’t know if Franzi believed in God.
‘Not easy, Uncle Anton.’
‘Not easy at all. The Nazi period was an aberration.’
Franzi said, ‘Germans could be found to do these things. I have read books, Uncle Anton, some people say they’re exaggerated but I don’t think so, books by survivors. Of the camps. The stories – not only the mass murders, but the obscenities, the humiliations, the things human beings were made to do so that their masters could laugh!’ He paused, rather breathless, remembering.
‘Horrible, Franzi, horrible, I know. And everywhere, regrettably, people can be found to whom tasks of the utmost beastliness become matters of routine, reward, promotion. Sensibilities get dulled quickly, Franzi, and some people start with precious few. And don’t forget that more camp guards than not were non-German – Poles, Russians, Latvians, and so forth. No race has a monopoly of brutality, Franzi.’
After a little Anthony said, ‘People are capable of all manner of disgusting behaviour when they are taught to regard other human beings as mere objects.’
‘And the Jews, for instance, were objects.’
‘Yes – threatening, malevolent objects for whom no humiliation could be too extreme, no policy too inhuman – because, you see, they were less than human, outside the ordinary limits. Words didn’t apply any more.’
He knew that he had to turn back from the relief afforded by history, world politics, back even from philosophy and morality, painfully back to themselves, to Anthony and Franzi. After a little he said,
‘Your mother’s action in saving me led to her arrest and her death, Franzi. You would have the right to hate me for that.’
Franzi’s slim hands were tighter on the wheel than they had been. He said,
‘Yes, I realize that. But I don’t hate you, Uncle Anton. I don’t quite understand it, but I’m sure my mother did what she felt she had to do. That she could do no other.’
‘What do you remember most about her? Describe it to me.’
‘Something gentle, very strong at the same time. Perhaps all mothers are like that.’
‘No, not all. Go on.’
‘When I was unhappy, upset about something, frightened, she only had to speak a word, touch me once, let me feel the skin of her hand against my cheek. Very soft, dry, cool –’
‘Yes,’ said Anthony. ‘Soft. Dry. Cool. Yes.’
‘Then I was peaceful. It was like being blessed.’
‘Go on.’
Franzi seemed to have run out of recollections. Anthony said,
‘Her voice? What do you remember about her voice?’ Franzi nodded, eyes on the Sussex road, absorbed.
‘Her voice. Always seeming about to smile. But that’s wrong, isn’t it? A voice laughs, it doesn’t smile.’
‘No, your mother’s voice smiled, you put it quite right.’
‘And everything – everything expressed very definitely. Strongly – kindly but strongly. I can’t think of her voice saying anything boring, or stupid, or cruel.’
‘Never. Franzi, your memory is absolutely correct. Can you remember what she looked like?’
‘A pale face. Brown hair. Tall – but I suppose everyone seemed tall to me. She used to take my hands and I would climb up her with my feet, as if she were a tree. I loved looking at her face. Something was always happening to it. It was never still. Like the voice – never dull. Alive. Am I right?’
‘Entirely right. Franzi, did your cousin Lise tell you that I – I and my sister Marcia, whom you know so well – first met your mother before the war began? We visited Arzfeld, you see.’
‘And my mother was there?’
‘No – we broke down in a car, Marcia wasn’t there. It was near Langenbach. Your mother rescued us. She always rescued people. And she drove us back to Arzfeld. Then I – I met her in London, when she used to visit her grandmother. As you know, you’ve got English blood, an English great-grandmother.’
Anthony tried to keep his voice conversational, as if at the level of social reminiscence. It was, he knew with self-contempt, an effort both absurd and unsuccessful. Franzi, however, seemed preoccupied with something else. He was frowning slightly. The afternoon was momentarily less brilliant. A small black cloud had drifted across from France to mask the sun. Still cowardly, Anthony felt the need to lighten the atmosphere, to remind them both of banality, weather, routes, traffic, people.
‘Next week these roads will be much more crowded. They have a big race meeting, horse racing – at a beautiful place near here, called Goodwood. At the end of July.’
They drove on in silence for a while. Franzi said ruminatively,
‘So you first met my mother before the war, at Langenbach, Uncle Anton! Then you met my father?’
‘No,’ said Anthony. ‘He was away. In Spain. Your grandparents, the Langenbachs were there, of course.’
Suddenly he knew, with complete assurance, that he loved Franzi, loved him as he had only once felt love for anybody, loved him deeply, proudly, painfully. It was at the same time natural and profoundly disturbing. The realization made him catch his breath. ‘Something about love!’ Marcia had said. Yes, indeed, a thousand times! It seemed as if the small cold lump in the heart which had been there so long, an irremovable part of him, was there no longer and he felt warm, transformed. He looked at Franzi. Yes, he thought, illuminated, astonished, I love him. He is my son, and I thank God for him and I love him with all my heart. It is right that he is with me now. It is right that he should hear me.
Franzi looked straight ahead, absorbed, still frowning a little. Then he turned his head, looked full into Anthony’s eyes for a second, and smiled.
‘Uncle –’
‘For God’s sake – Get over to the left!’
Franzi jerked the wheel and wrenched the car over to the left. Absence of traffic on the small country lane had led him momentarily to forget where he should be holding the car. It was, however, uncertain that he could have averted the accident, for the heavy, square, blue van belonging to an electrical components company was driving too fast down the crown of the narrow lane towards them, swinging too fast and too wide round the narrowing bend, bound for collision. As it was, the van caught the right-hand passenger side of the Mercedes like a sharp, merciless, slicing knife.
The ambulance took only twenty minutes to come. The spot was remote, no telephone near, the van driver and Franzi both shattered but without serious physical injury. A considerate householder, home three hundred yards away, heard the crash, drove to the scene, raced back, telephoned. By then, however, Anthony was dead.
Chapter 28
‘I did not believe you would come. I did not dare hope you would come.’
He spoke the words softly. He had been sitting at the table for twenty minutes. He had posted the note in good time. She must have received it.
‘I shal
l be at “L’Alouette” restaurant in Walton St from a quarter to one next Thursday, 9th September. I shall live only in the hope that you will lunch with me there.’
He wished to give her no difficulty or embarrassment about reply. With a humility which he had never evinced in earlier days he had simply made himself available, left the invitation like a sigh, a whisper in her ears, resigned to being taken for granted, spurned, or simply ignored. It had not been difficult to find her address. ‘I shall live only in the hope that you will lunch with me there.’ And for twenty minutes, feeling like a boy of eighteen, who waits nervous, sick at heart, thinking it impossible a woman can take him seriously, he sat in the restaurant called ‘L’Alouette’. One o’clock struck on the church tower in Pont St.
There was another movement at the swing doors. It was a small place. Every time the doors opened a slight draught, not unpleasant, brushed the tables. From his position at the far end of the narrow room he could see the street doors open, shut again. It happened every thirty seconds from the moment of his settling at this table. Every thirty seconds another sickening, deadening disappointment.
‘An aperitif, sir?’
‘I’ll wait. My guest will be here soon.’
Badgered by the waiter again, needing distraction, he ordered a drink at one o’clock.
‘My guest seems to be a bit late. I’d like a whisky.’
‘A scotch, sir? With soda water?’
‘With nothing.
He waited what seemed an age but was in fact one minute for the whisky, sipped it without taste or pleasure. He saw his reflection in the clear, brown liquid as he put the glass down. ‘Since when has whisky been reflective, Narcissus?’ – feeling an idiot, though nobody could have detected his thoughts, he had momentarily ignored the fact that the restaurant table mat was a circle of polished metal and had shown him his face through the whisky at the base of the glass. ‘Not much to lunch with!’ He had been surprised to see how distraught he had looked in that twisted reflection. The swing doors again, an infuriating sound, the draught of air, the renewal of tension. He carefully refrained from looking up. He’d order a solitary lunch and eat it, nauseated by it; he’d order it at one-fifteen.
