The Dower House

by Malcolm Macdonald

  ‘You could say the same about Picasso – draws and paints like an angel but in private life he’s a bastard.’ Felix wondered if she had ever slept with Heydrich.

  Meanwhile she was saying, ‘We knew they were doing unpleasant things to the Jews, of course – and this was even before they had to wear the yellow star – but we knew about all the race laws. And then there were bloody beatings-up. But I thought that had to be the work of the lower ranks of the SS – the dregs – and that such sensitive men as Heydrich and those senior officers would never lower themselves to behave like that.’ She gave a mirthless laugh. ‘You were right to speak of our “monstrous naïveté” back in those days. And of course they cultivated it, that façade of civilization. Anyway, after that first time, Heydrich always asked for me to record their music. I don’t know what happened to all those tapes and disks. Probably Bormann had them destroyed after the assassination. Bormann had no charm and Heydrich had too much. Ersatz, of course, like everything else in our lives back then. Shall we sit on this bench? I don’t think it’s good to walk too strenuously after a meal.’

  ‘Especially a heavy salad like that.’

  She dug him with her elbow as they sat down. Ducks paddled expectantly toward them but a little boy, out with his nanny, soon diverted them with a bag of crusts.

  Watching them fight for each morsel, Felix was reminded of scenes from Mauthausen. He said, ‘Takes you back, eh?’

  She reached a hand across the void between them and squeezed his arm.

  ‘Those recordings,’ he said. ‘Did they take place at the Interpol HQ?’

  She shook her head. ‘No. I first became officially involved with the SS in ’thirty-nine, when they set up the Gestapo brothel – Kitty’s, in Giesebrechtstrasse. I supervised the technical work – setting up the recorders . . . hiding the mikes. That’s a story in itself. I never believed all that Mata-Hari stuff where aged generals would cry out in their ecstasy, “The forty-fifth cavalry will be moved to Passchendaele at dawn on the twenty-third . . .” but it happened. Anyway, that’s when I had to take the SS oath – as Heydrich’s personal recording engineer, more or less. I mean not officially. Women didn’t officially join the SS until ’forty-two, of course. That’s when I also joined – officially. But Heydrich told everyone, already back in ’thirty-nine, to treat me as if I had the authority of an ss-Führerin. He was obsessed with knowing what people might be saying behind his back, you see. There was a rumour that he was a half-Jew, a Mischling, because his mother married a Jew – but that was her second marriage, a long time after he was born. So he was fanatical about secretly recording even his closest associates – especially them. But by nineteen forty-two he was dead and certain people who resented his patronage of me were after my blood. So by joining the SS and taking the oath I had walked into a trap.’

  ‘Is that why they sent you to Ravensbrück?’

  ‘No. I’ll tell you about that. Heydrich organized a conference at the Interpol villa in forty-two – the twentieth of January, that dreaded date for you. And for me! It was just a few months before he was assassinated. And after he was dead they accused me of recording it, that conference.’

  ‘And did you?’

  ‘Yes, of course. It was Heydrich’s orders. I had two tape recorders there and four wax-disc machines, to record everything – conversations in the anteroom . . . the lavatories . . . the hallway . . . everywhere. And he also ordered me never to tell anyone – because of his obsession. So I never admitted it – at least, not until after they tortured me for days and days.’

  ‘Why didn’t you admit it at once? They always get it out of you in the end.’

  ‘That’s why. That’s exactly why. They already knew I had recorded it. Because Eichmann came back that night . . . he had confiscated everyone’s notes. No one was allowed to take anything away from that meeting. And he came back to stir the ashes so the burned papers could not be put back together.’

  ‘He got away, you know. They never caught him.’

  ‘I know. But he certainly caught me! I was dismantling the microphones and cables when he turned up and I had to pretend I was actually installing them for an Interpol meeting the following week. But I could see he didn’t believe me.’

  ‘So why didn’t you admit it at once?’

  ‘Because I had to make them think my confession was their triumph. I had a much worse crime – in their eyes, I mean – to conceal. I not only recorded that meeting, I also made a transcript – a private transcript for myself. They would have shot me for that. In fact, I made two transcripts. One I recovered from where I had hidden it and I gave it to British army Intelligence – after the war, of course – and now they claim it’s “gone missing” – which I don’t believe.’

  ‘And the other copy?’

  The boy, the nanny, and the ducks had moved away; only a ragged breeze stirred the lake with illusions of fish shoals beneath its surface. She did not answer and he did not press her. At length she sighed and rose to her feet. ‘We must keep moving,’ she said, as if it were winter. They started to walk again, around the lake, toward the rose garden. ‘One of the difficulties in trying to explain what happened in the KLS – to people who weren’t there, I mean – is that none of it makes sense unless you know all of it.’

  He agreed. ‘It makes sense in a shallow sort of way – sensational sense, you could say – but it doesn’t connect. It’s like describing a rainbow to someone who was born colourblind. They can see the outline of the thing but not the thing itself. I don’t try. But with other survivors – with you – there’s no need. And no point.’

  Now she took his arm and shook it urgently in time with her words: ‘But I have the same problem in trying to tell you what happened at that conference . . . and why I made two transcripts . . . and why I joined the communist party – Yes! In nineteen forty-two, I – an officer in the SS – joined the communist party. And all because of what I heard at that conference. No!’ She closed her eyes and stamped her feet. ‘I heard nothing at that conference. That’s the most awful thing of all. There they were – all the top people in the SS except Himmler telling second-rank men from all of the Reich’s Ministeriums – ministries, I mean – telling them that the SS had worked out the most efficient way to kill millions of Jews and Romanies and poofs and . . . anyone they didn’t like . . . and they were now going to start doing it on a big, big scale . . . and when they’d finished, there wouldn’t be a single one of those inferiors left in Europe, nor in England if the Reich won the war . . . judenrein, they called it. The entire Europe will be judenrein and if you civilians argue against it or obstruct us or even just fail to cooperate, you could end up being liquidated alongside them . . .’

  ‘Um Gotteswillen!’ Felix felt the day shivering into something less than real.

  ‘Yes!’ she insisted. ‘And I didn’t hear a word! I was so busy checking recording levels . . . worrying about . . . I don’t know . . . bias in the valves or . . . grid feedback . . . decibels and overload . . . anything except what they were actually saying. It was only when I played it back – just to check that nothing had dropped out – that’s when I actually heard what they were saying, those fine SS gentlemen, one of which had been my hero. That’s when I made those transcripts and that’s when I put out seeking . . . how d’you say it?’

  ‘Put out feelers? You put out feelers toward the communists?’

  ‘Yes. Put out feelers – another strange expression.’

  ‘And obviously you succeeded, since you joined.’

  ‘Well . . . I never actually joined. I mean I didn’t ever have a party card, not then. I do now, of course. I still believe in communism. The communists saved my life in Ravensbrück. But back then she said I was too valuable, being inside the SS. It would be idiotisk to have any incriminating bits of paper. And she was my only contact. The only one I ever saw. She’s the one I gave that other transcript to. The Party must have it somewhere. They’ll bring it out in the war-crimes trial
s, I expect.’

  ‘Did you know her name?’

  ‘Only . . . she called herself Maria but I’m sure it wasn’t her real name. I gave my name as Edit. She spoke perfect German but I think her accent was Danish. Or not even accent, but intonation.’ She spoke a few random words, putting a rising intonation on the final syllable – diese Zeite . . . die Elbe . . . Querstrasse.

  Her ear was perfect – as one might expect from someone who devoted her life to analysing and recording sound. Felix could tell as much because the words were exactly as Marianne would have spoken them in her Scandinavian accent.

  ‘Extraordinary!’ he said.

  ‘What d’you mean?’ she asked suspiciously. ‘That’s how she spoke.’

  ‘Oh I believe you. Your imitation is perfect. There’s a Swedish woman at the Dower House – pretty close to Danish, I think. She’s now married to Willard Johnson, that American architect I told you about – she speaks German exactly like that. She was in Germany during the war.’

  ‘A Nazi! Married to an American . . . living free here in England? I bet she’s very pretty, yes?’

  ‘She was very young – and she’s paid heavily for it since, believe me.’

  He broke off a rose – a bourbon – and handed it to her like a peace offering, which she accepted with a smile. He moved her hand to place the rose beside her cheek. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You still win.’

  ‘Oh!’ She laughed, a strange staccato laugh, as if he had punched her and she was trying to show it didn’t hurt. Tears simultaneously started in her eyes.

  As she wiped one away she said, ‘The first time I cried after liberation was when I saw flowers – the first time I realized I still could cry.’

  It was undoubtedly true, but he knew that was not what brought tears to her eyes now, and he regretted his thoughtless jeu d’ésprit. Why had he done it, anyway? Whatever had driven him to become an artist had enabled him to survive as an artist, emerge as an artist, and continue living as an artist. But whatever had driven her to become the personal recording engineer to one of the truly great monsters of this entire century had withered and died in one single, eye-opening recording session. She had been left to reinvent herself from the inside while maintaining every outward appearance of a self that she now loathed. Their paths could not have been more different. For as long as she lived she would be compelled to play the Flying Dutchman to her own unsalvaged conscience, never finding haven, never again being able to settle ashore.

  ‘All fantasies of what might have been are pointless,’ he said, forcing a wan smile to her lips.

  ‘Perhaps we need them all the same,’ she replied. ‘To defend us from the guilt of having survived when so many more worthy people, wonderful people, outstanding people . . . died. I often think of Milena Jesenská, one of the most wonderful people . . . I mean – can you imagine someone whose soul was so great that when she died, almost the entire camp, the prisoners, I mean, went into mourning? I don’t mean we wore black – my God, that was the SS colour! But mentally we mourned. Can you imagine someone like that in a place where hundreds were murdered every day? And when I remember her I think how dare I survive when someone like her did not. She was Franz Kafka’s lover. Have you heard of him? He died back in the twenties. The most gruesome thing – she told me once – is that he wrote a short story in nineteen-fourteen called In der Strafkolonie which exactly describes the Nazi KLS – exactly. We can’t say it came without warning, can we.’

  Monday, 9 June 1947

  It was a lump of pure white Carrara marble, eighteen inches square at the base and some thirty inches high. It came to the Dower House on the flatbed of an LNER delivery lorry from Welwyn Garden City.

  ‘All yours, mate,’ the driver said as he part-slid part-walked it to the edge. ‘Can you manage? Just lift it down.’

  Felix trumped him, embracing the stone and drawing breath as if for a mighty lift.

  ‘Christ no!’ the man yelled.

  Willard emerged from the back door of the main house and ran to join them. ‘You’re out of practice at this sort of thing,’ he said, winking as he pulled Felix’s arms away. ‘Tell you what – I’ll get those old floor joists we dumped in the pheasant run.’

  ‘No need,’ the driver said. ‘I was jokin.’ He lifted two stout planks from the flatbed, which he passed to them; there were steel hooks at one end, which he manoeuvred over a bar at the tail of the lorry, making a long ramp. While Willard jumped up, ready to help him, he unstrapped a porter’s trolley from the back of the cab and handed it down to Felix.

  ‘Now we’re cooking with gas,’ Willard said.

  There were a couple of heart-in-mouth moments as they manhandled the marble down the ramp but it arrived safely at the bottom and, with the help of the trolley, was swiftly taken into the cottage and set squarely upon the braked turntable Felix had installed the previous week.

  ‘I’d offer you a cup of tea,’ Felix told the driver, ‘but I don’t have any. All I’ve got is beer . . . sorry.’ And he turned away as if it was all over.

  Willard let the man dangle briefly before saying, ‘Revenge is sweet. Come on – I could force myself to swallow a beer, too.’

  He put his arm around the man’s shoulders and steered him toward the kitchen, where Felix was laying out three glasses before fetching the beer from the larder.

  ‘Yeah, I asked for that,’ the man said. ‘You almost give me a heart attack when I thought you was goin’ to lift it down. Todd’s the name – Todd Ferguson.’

  They introduced themselves, said ‘Cheers’, took deep gulps, and let out male-solidarity gasps of satisfaction.

  ‘What is this place, then?’ Todd asked. ‘Last time we had a delivery ’ere it was a school. The driver told me he delivered a bale of cloth for makin’ choirboys’ cassocks. Catholics, they was, from Jersey. You an artist, then, Mister Breit, sir?’

  ‘No “sir”, please – for God’s sake. We all use first names here – Todd. And yes, I’m a sculptor.’

  Todd laughed. ‘Gonna carve one of them naked women, eh? I’ve seen ’em! What a life!’

  ‘Something very feminine, anyway,’ Felix agreed.

  ‘You asked what this place is now, Todd,’ Willard said. ‘It’s a community of people who got used to the sort of communal life we all – or most of us – shared in the war and who don’t want to go back to living in separate little boxes of brick and mortar. But we don’t want the completely communal life we had in the war, either, so we’re trying to build something in between.’

  ‘Blimey!’ Todd’s truculence vanished.

  ‘You think we’re mad?’ Felix asked.

  ‘No! Blimey no. I was sayin’ to the missus only yesterday – we’re already losin’ that old wartime spirit. “Little boxes of bricks and mortar” – that just about says it. I wish I’d a thought of that. Says it perfectly.’

  ‘Have you been married long?’ Willard asked.

  ‘Gracie and me got spliced in nineteen-forty. I was in the fire brigade she was a dispatcher. Got bombed out a foo months later. Lost everyfink. Come out to Garden City – still in the fire brigade, the local one. Bin ’ere ever since. Got free kids – a gel, a boy, and a noo little baby gel – Betty, Charlie, and we can’t agree on no name for the noo one. I want Vera, cos of Vera Lynn. She wants Sheila, cos she likes readin’ Sheila Kaye Smith. What abaht you blokes?’ He looked at Faith’s nylons hanging over the curtain rail above the sink, and then at Felix. ‘Married, then?’

  ‘Next best thing.’

  ‘Ooo-err!’ Todd belly-laughed.

  Felix wondered who Betty and Charlie were named after – Grable? Chaplin? Chan? Chester?

  Marianne joined them at that moment. ‘I take it the stone has arrived? Can I see it?’

  Todd leaped to his feet, almost upsetting the beer; rather sheepishly the other two followed suit.

  She laughed. ‘For heaven’s sake sit down!’ She peeped into the studio. ‘Oh – that shall keep you busy, Felix!’
>
  ‘Todd,’ Willard began while Felix went to the pantry for a fresh glass and more beer, ‘this is—’

  ‘No!’ Felix shouted. ‘You Americans are barbarians! Marianne – this is Todd Ferguson, delivery driver for the LNER. Todd, this is Marianne Johnson – Willard’s better half – his much better half.’

  They shook hands. Marianne took the beer bottle and poured her own.

  ‘Smatterer fact,’ Todd said diffidently, ‘I’m the goods depot manager in Garden City. I’m just drivin today cos we was short.’ After a pause he added, ‘I tell a lie. We are short but I could of sent someone else. I picked meself cos I wanted to see this place and I wanted to know what you was goin’ to do wiv that marble.’

  ‘Well, you’ll have to wait to see the sculpture but we could show you over the place if you like.’ To Willard he added, ‘I think we can show him around, don’t you?’

  ‘I had that thought,’ Willard agreed. Marianne nodded, too.

  The men had finished their beers; Marianne took hers with her on the tour, during which she extracted his life history in greater detail. ‘So,’ she said, ‘you’ve just turned twenty-eight and you’re already manager of quite a large goods depot.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he agreed. ‘I was deputy fire chief out ’ere in the war, and actin’ fire chief at the end. I like organizing fings. I like to get everyfink runnin’ . . . like well-oiled.’

  Behind his back, Willard held out crossed fingers to Felix, who nodded vigorous agreement.

  They took him to Nicole, who showed them over her and Tony’s flat. Marianne tactfully withdrew ‘to prepare her place’, which came next. Then Sally joined them and showed him over their place and the rest of the house, including the Prentices’ flat – they being out for the morning. When they came to the empty front flat – the largest in the house – Felix warned him that Faith thought she had found someone who might want to take it.