The Dower House

by Malcolm Macdonald

  After a pause she said, ‘One hesitates to ask any European DP about their family. Have you tried getting in touch with him over there?’

  ‘Like – Hey Uncle Tony . . . remember me? Here I am – penniless and in need of some pretty expensive hunks of stone . . .’

  ‘Penniless!’ she sneered. ‘Anyway, he might be a millionaire. Aren’t you even curious about him?’

  How to explain? Explain that his grandfather, an anti-Semitic Jew-turned-Protestant, to whom Hitler had been a god, was dead . . . that his mother was dead and his father was almost certainly dead, too . . . that he, Felix, had walked out on his father – his only known relative in the whole of Europe – in 1937 and had completely and wilfully lost touch with him from that day on? He said, ‘We are not . . . or I probably should say were not a loving family. My father quarrelled with my grandfather and I, in turn, fell out with him. Hitler did the rest.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t pry. But I do want to know a lot more about you than I know now. God, I’m gasping for a fag – will that pony mind if I smoke?’

  He laughed. ‘Feel free.’

  ‘You don’t?’

  ‘I used to – before I got TB.’

  ‘You’ve had TB?’ she asked excitedly as she extracted a Balkan Sobranie from a gold cigarette case lacquered coral red. ‘Are you cured?’

  ‘They said yes, but it leaves its mark behind. Why the sudden interest?’

  ‘Well!’ She took out a red-lacquered lighter and puffed her cigarette into life. ‘They’re bringing in a new law saying that every employer of a certain size must also employ a cripple or someone with a handicap. We’re close to that limit now. Fogel’s already got his eye on a sweet little dwarf who could be put on the switchboard but if your TB would count, we could postpone the evil day at least until the Modern Art Series is over.’

  ‘It would be doubly nice to be doubly useful,’ Felix said solemnly.

  ‘You’re not useful at all yet. Have you come up with an idea for your sculpture?’

  ‘Is he getting impatient, then?’ They had reached the top of the hill and Felix swung himself up beside her. ‘Keep the reins if you like – you obviously know what you’re doing. Why d’you smile?’

  ‘I’ve had ponies since before I could walk. I have a magnificent hunter now – Jupiter – who’s getting fed up with Rotten Row.’

  ‘How often d’you ride him there?’

  ‘Every morning before breakfast, every evening after work. I used to hunt him with the Badminton . . . still do on the odd weekend in the season. But he wants more. He deserves more.’ She gazed right and left. ‘This country looks very promising. What’s the local hunt like?’

  ‘I haven’t the foggiest. You must be quite well off.’

  ‘Ha!’ The note was half-angry, half-resigned. ‘You haven’t made a single inquiry about me at all, have you!’

  ‘I’ve wondered about you,’ he replied calmly. ‘And I have a stack of questions I’m going to ask of my future colleagues at Manutius – whenever I dare show my face there again . . . when I have my sculpture planned.’

  She was instantly placated. ‘Well, we can short-circuit all that here and now.’

  ‘This is Barwick Green,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, it’s lovely, I’m sure! Fire away.’

  ‘What d’you really want out of life? Surely not to play Crito to Fogel’s Socrates for ever?’

  ‘Whoooew! Ask me an easier one first. Like – why don’t I bring Jupiter out to the Dower House occasionally and ride around our park?’

  ‘Riding . . .’ he murmured. ‘Riding is good.’

  Their eyes dwelled in each other’s for one long moment of full-scale audit, after which he knew that his most urgent question of the day (and, he suspected, her most urgent question, too) had been satisfactorily answered. Her eyes danced and a new glow seemed to suffuse her skin. ‘What do I really-really-really want to do in life?’ she mused. ‘I want to shape something. I want to make something . . . and I want to control it. If I stay in publishing, I want to start something absolutely new, something no one has ever thought of before but which, when they see it being done, they’ll say, “Why didn’t I think of that?”’

  ‘And if you don’t stay in publishing?’

  ‘I used to think movies! But the great experiments have all been done. Maybe television is now the thing, the virgin thing. When they make it national, I think I might be near the head of the queue. And if you ever breathe a word of this, or even hint it, to another living soul . . . no, you won’t. I can tell. God knows how many secrets are locked away inside your head but I’m sure every last one of them is safe. Does anything ever shake you?’

  ‘Not any more. Very little, anyway.’

  ‘Was it really so bad – all-the-time bad? Never-letting-up bad?’

  He wanted to answer her. Nobody else ever asked these questions so directly; and they should be answered – not least because he would quite like to hear the answers himself. ‘What would constitute a loud noise in a shipyard?’ he asked. ‘In the rivetting section, say?’

  She drew on her cigarette and inhaled deeply, letting it out in a long, tight plume that hung raggedly on the motionless air behind them. ‘Right,’ she said.

  ‘No,’ he went on, ‘that’s too easy. I’ll tell you one thing about life in that camp. The worse it got – the harsher the treatment – the easier it became in one small but important way: the need to survive. When life gets that bad, all choices get narrowed down to just once choice – which, of course, is no choice at all. But I didn’t realize it until I was free again – when the men with the choices arrived. And that filled me with panic, you know? Suddenly I must decide . . . a thousand things. But I’ve lost the ability to do that. I’m talking about then – just after the liberation. Now it’s slowly coming back.’

  She gave a baffled sort of laugh. ‘You’re amazing, you really are. You describe the darkest nightmare anyone could imagine and you say, “But I’ll tell you one good thing about it.” Now at least I know how you survived when so many didn’t.’

  Along the lane to the Dower House gatelodge she clucked the pony to a trot. ‘He knows he’s going home,’ she said. ‘Does it feel like home to you now?’

  ‘I suppose it does. Though what makes it like home for me . . . no, this is going to sound ungrateful.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter. Ingratitude is my middle name. Go on.’

  ‘It’s not all English people. Willard Johnson is an American – married to Marianne, née von Ritter, Swedish. And Tony Palmer is married to Nicole, née Trocquemé, French. And—’

  ‘Quite a miniature United Nations! Do they fight? What do they all do, anyway?’

  ‘They’re all architects or interior designers – so far. But there’s a TV cameraman – I mean, he’s retraining at the BBC at Alley Pally – he’s probably going to take one of the apartments.’ Casually he added, ‘And there are two others yet to be filled.’

  She did not take the bait. ‘What a superb little gatelodge!’ she said. ‘Not so little, actually. Is that going, too?’

  ‘Probably not. There’s an economist from LSE looking at it. I haven’t met him yet. You asked if we fight, all us Europeans. Slow down! I ought to explain one or two things before you meet them.’

  With the lightest tug of her fingertips she slowed the pony to a walk and then a slow walk. ‘I’m all ears.’

  He explained about Marianne and her steel-baron father and Rudolf Speer and how she became involved with the three AMGOT officers and the liberation of Mauthausen . . . only breaking off when they came in sight of the lawn. ‘Good God!’ he cried. ‘Someone’s mowing it! That’s Willard. Hi Willard!’

  They waved. He waved back. The mowing machine was a large Atco with a four-foot cylinder blade – and a powerful motor to judge by its roar. It was heavy enough to roll as well as cut.

  ‘I wonder where he “liberated” that? He’s a great one for liberating useful things for the communit
y. Oh! And that’s his wife Marianne standing on the balcony on the top floor there.’

  ‘Whew! She looks like all those blonde gymnasts we saw in those German propaganda films before the war. Kraft durch Freude. Do we give her the Hitler salute?’

  ‘Don’t!’

  And he went on to describe Nicole’s war and how it had poisoned her relations with the Johnsons.

  Willard, having finished the leg that ended near the drive, cut the motor back to tickover and parked the machine at the lawn edge. ‘Felix, you old son-of-a-gun! So at last we get to meet the beautiful and talented Miss Bullen-ffitch. Hi!’

  Faith turned on Felix. ‘Who is this talented beauty? Have you been seeing Another Woman?’

  Willard laughed, unfazed. ‘Good one, lady!’ He turned his hand into a Colt 45 and shot her. ‘Felix told us he was meeting you at the station. In fact, he’s spoken of nothing else for days now. Well . . . back to the rockpile! I’ll see you at teatime – with clean hands.’ Halfway back to the mower he turned and added, ‘Good to know he wasn’t lying about you, Miss Bullen-ffitch.’

  ‘Did you tell them I was beautiful?’ she asked archly.

  ‘Not was. Are. What he said about teatime, by the way . . . well, it’s a sort of tradition in the community that when anyone visits us for the first time, they visit all of us. Someone makes tea, someone brings milk, someone brings sandwiches or scones – all very simple – and we meet in someone’s house for tea . . . which will be –’ he checked his watch – ‘in a couple of hours.’

  They turned the pony loose in the paddock and refilled his water trough. Then he showed her where she could stable her horse, and she said, ‘Yes.’ And after that they strolled around the grounds. The walled garden was still an acre of weeds but now there were a few strips tamed into producing salads, potatoes, and next year’s soft fruits. Faith said that with a bit of horsedung and some fertilizer the community could probably live off the produce of this one garden. ‘We just need to get rid of all these weeds and put up some rabbitproof fencing across the two entrances and fit a new spring to keep that gate closed at all times.’

  ‘Jawohl!’ he barked.

  She laughed at herself and took his arm. And then held it. She ran her eye over a couple of dozen fruit trees – apple, pear, plum, and damson – which had not been pruned since before the war. ‘We’d lose a season in getting those back into shape but after that they’d crop quite heavily,’ she said. ‘You have to open out the centre – the heart.’

  ‘Ah – that’s the difficult bit,’ he told her.

  ‘Oh Felix, darling!’ She leaned her head on his shoulder. ‘You are so self-sufficient and yet so . . .’

  ‘So . . . ?’

  ‘I can’t find the word. Not exactly “vulnerable” but . . . well, you’re about to enter a new sort of world. Or re-enter a world you once knew very well but a world that has changed out of all recognition while you were away. It’s much more brutal. The war killed the idea of patience. Everybody realized that death was just round the corner, potentially, so we had to pack in as much as we could now! It was almost a sort of madness. With some of us it actually was madness. And then there were people who made their fortune out of it, even doing good things, patriotic things.’

  ‘Like Fogel?’

  ‘Just like Fogel. His Illustrated Britain series was a wonderful thing in the war – and, of course, it’s still continuing, still necessary. It reminded people of everything British that was worth fighting for. It took a foreigner to see it and to inspire British writers to write it. And don’t forget his maps. Mundane as they were, they helped Adams and Palmer and Willard Johnson to find their way to you the day after VE day. But the thing you should realize now is that all those people – the ones who had “a bloody good war” – they are the new Medici, and they are hard men who don’t give second chances.’ Then, without a change in tone or pace, she added, ‘Shall I take off my skirt? Here?’

  ‘I will be a gentleman,’ he promised.

  They lay in the uncut grass and out-of-control comfrey and consummated the ambiguous and unspoken bargain that seemed to have developed between them ever since their first meeting at the V&A. And, to confirm its ambiguity, she said, as she slipped back into her dress, ‘This does not imply any commitment, you realize?’

  They had set up a couple of trestle tables in an L-shape on the back lawn. Two tables were not strictly necessary but they allowed Nicole to keep her vow that she would never sit at the same table as Marianne. The smell of new-mown grass hung on the late-afternoon air.

  Felix and Faith sauntered hand-in-hand around the Wilsons’ end of the house – the Victorian-Tudor extension. ‘Felix has suggested I should share his cottage across the yard there,’ she announced. ‘Does anybody mind? Also I have a horse who needs a good stable.’

  While the others were trying to remember how many bedrooms the cottage had, Arthur asked, ‘Have you got a car? The transport situation is getting pretty desperate. The bus doesn’t always get to Welwyn North in time for the eight-ten to Kings Cross.’

  The two of them sat across the outside corner of the L.‘I’ll drive Faith to the station every morning in the trap,’ Felix started to say, but Adam cut across him: ‘I’ll be getting transport next month – a van, quite a big one, a Jowett. We can bung a couple of old sofas in the back and travel in style. But we’ll all be able to catch the eight-ten. And we can all go shopping in it to Hertford or Garden City on Saturdays.’

  Willard said, ‘I was going to liberate a jeep, but that sounds a whole lot better. How did you wangle it? Last time I asked, the waiting list for any new vehicle was about a year.’

  Tony mimed the pulling of a string. ‘The Greater London Plan. Open sesame!’

  ‘But I still have to sign a covenant not to resell it within twelve months,’ Adam added.

  Willard shook his head. ‘What did we fight the war for, huh? How dare any government try to tell me what I can and can’t do with my own goddam property! The communists—’

  ‘We fought the war,’ Nicole said, ‘to beat the Nazis.’ Even had she added, ‘Not to marry them!’ her meaning could not have been clearer.

  Willard clamped his jaw tight. Marianne, taciturn as ever, shook her head almost imperceptibly.

  ‘Did you say you have a horse?’ Sally asked Faith.

  ‘Yes – Jupiter. Four-year old gelding, half thoroughbred, half Connemara. His grandsire won the Grand National back in the thirties. He’ll fly anything you point him at. Why? Do you ride?’

  ‘I used to. I hunted with the Cottesmore.’

  ‘Wonderful! You should get a horse yourself and we could ride to hounds together. What’s the local hunt like?’

  ‘The Herts. Slightly battered by the war, I’m told. But it’s good hunting country. I might take you up. Who d’you hunt with now?’

  ‘My people live near Hawkesbury so I go down and hunt with the Beaufort. My father’s joint-master this year.’

  Nicole saw Marianne draw breath and then hesitate; ‘I can ride, too,’ she said quickly – thinking of the donkeys on the sands at Deauville.

  Marianne smiled wanly at Felix.

  ‘I’m told you have some very good hunts in Normandy,’ Sally said. ‘Did you belong to any?’

  ‘No, but I can ride and, how you say? Leap?’

  ‘Jump.’

  ‘Yes – jump.’ She dug herself in deeper with every word.

  Felix said, ‘Any thought that Faith’s attraction to this place has anything to do with me has long since . . . pfff!’ He mimed a small explosion with his fingers.

  ‘Oh . . . diddums!’ She leaned across the table corner and kissed him – and all doubts about what she meant by ‘sharing the cottage’ evaporated.

  ‘What did you do in the war?’ May asked. Without even looking she reached behind her and slapped Sam’s hand as he reached for another biscuit.

  ‘Not fair!’ he protested. ‘Hannah had two and I only had one.’

  ‘W
ho says it’s got to be fair?’ she asked him. ‘Why don’t the pair of you push off and play on the lawn or something.’ As they raced away she turned to the company and said, ‘Will some of you others please have a baby soon, because I can tell you—’

  Nicole and Marianne spoke simultaneously. Nicole said, ‘I am . . .’ and stopped, while Marianne said, ‘I can tell you . . .’ and stopped. They stared at each other, abashed.

  Nicole turned to Willard. ‘When?’

  It was Marianne who answered, ‘We think July.’

  Nicole tossed her head in annoyance.

  ‘Same here with us,’ Tony said. ‘July – August . . .’

  Sally asked Marianne, ‘Are you sure? It’s not really showing.’

  Marianne rose. ‘If I pull in this smock at the waist . . . ?’

  ‘Me, too.’ Nicole, who was wearing a Regency-mode dress, did the same.

  ‘You can count me out!’ Faith assured them. ‘As far as I’m concerned, a baby is a benign tumour. I assisted at many births during the war – to answer your question, Mrs Prentice . . .’

  ‘May – please.’

  ‘May. I’ve seen enough little bags of bone and jelly come howling into this life to dampen the slightest craving for motherhood.’ She smiled all around to a sea of none-too-sympathetic faces. ‘Well – I suppose that’s me blackballed.’ She shrugged apologetically at Felix.

  ‘Not at all!’ Adam’s assurance was joined by the others with varying degrees of enthusiasm.

  ‘It’ll be useful to have someone who knows the ropes,’ Tony added.

  ‘No – ropes are for calves and foals,’ Faith assured him solemnly. ‘I’ve done that, too.’

  ‘What about you, Sally?’ Arthur asked. ‘You’re the only one who hasn’t . . .’

  ‘I’ve been waiting to say it. I think I’ll be due just after – well, a bit later this summer. That’s the prediction.’

  Shrieks of laughter from Sam and Hannah on the lawn turned their heads that way.

  After a short silence Willard said, ‘Won’t it be just great – this place teeming with kids!’

  Felix raised an eyebrow at Faith.

  No! she mouthed.