The Dower House

by Malcolm Macdonald

  ‘If he writes as well as he puts away a pint . . . I can believe it.’

  They drifted off toward the Palmers’ lawn and the two buffets. ‘Is it too early to light the boiler?’ she asked.

  ‘Give it another half hour,’ he advised.

  Todd Ferguson explained to a woman from Adam and Tony’s office that they ought to light a fire under their union organizer. The nationalization of the railways was going to double the wages of all its workers . . . or someone was going to get lynched. ‘They can afford it now they’re not paying dividends to all those idle-rich shareholders,’ he explained.

  Faith – who overheard him in passing and who also knew that her parents held shares in several British railway companies and were looking forward immensely to being bought out by the Labour government, since none of them had paid a dividend since 1923 – almost stopped to enlighten him. But her mission – hers and Angela’s – was too important for that.

  ‘Her real name was Angela Wirth,’ Felix told Marianne, up in her kitchen. ‘I kick myself now that it never crossed my mind. When she told me about “Maria”, she imitated the way you speak German perfectly.’

  Marianne stood well back from the window, at the farthest point from which she could still see Faith talking with Willard – and Angela sitting at a table a little way off. ‘It is she,’ she murmured. ‘Hardly has she changed. Yet never for one moment I imagined she should have lived.’ She closed her eyes tight. ‘Listen to my English! I believe I dream only. She won’t say anything to Willard?’

  ‘That’s the one thing you can be quite sure of. Nor will Faith. The problem is Nicole.’

  ‘Nicole?’ Marianne was aghast. ‘But she must never know. Never.’

  ‘It’s not fair to leave her in ignorance.’

  ‘No!’ She gripped his arm and shook it. ‘No! Please – never! Never must that one know. She is too . . . feeling?’

  ‘Emotional. But the way she treats you . . .’

  ‘That plays no part. I don’t mind. I admire her indeed. For what she believes, she is perfectly right. Please, now – no one must ever tell her. Not you. Not . . . Fräulein Wirth . . .’

  ‘Angela Worth. She’s made it English.’

  ‘Not her. And absolutely not Faith. You must make them to swear it.’

  ‘Angela’s worried . . .’

  ‘Promise you make them swear it!’

  ‘OK. Angela’s worried about the transcript she gave you. The one of—’

  ‘I know the one. I never read it all through – just enough to make me spew.’

  ‘You have it still?’

  ‘I know where it is – or should be.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I gave it to . . . well, it ended up with a comrade. In Hamburg. He was still living there when I left. But he has it. He works in the docks. Never I thought she’d come back for it.’

  ‘Unless he’s handed it over to the Russians.’

  ‘I don’t think so. He was quite . . . what’s the word? Like out-of-love?’

  ‘Disillusioned – with the communists?’

  She nodded. ‘Same with me. With the Soviet-style communism. Disillusioned.’ She tucked the word away.

  ‘And can’t you just explain all that to Willard?’

  She stared at him a long moment and said, ‘I want a father to my baby. Not a memory. Those things Nicole says . . . the things she does . . . I hardly notice them by now.’

  ‘So?’ Felix shrugged helplessly. ‘We have no right to tell you what to do. But can I suggest this – I’ll go down now and explain your wishes to Angela—’

  Marianne interrupted, ‘She’s not your girlfriend now? Faith’s not moving out?’

  ‘Why?’ He was taken aback. ‘What have you heard?’

  ‘Nothing!’ Marianne assured him – a little too earnestly, he thought.

  ‘OK. As I say – I’ll explain your wishes to Angela and you’ll recover from your “migraine” in about ten minutes from now . . . or discover it was just a passing headache or something. And then you’ll come back downstairs. And meanwhile, Angela will say confidentially to Willard something like “Did your wife ever work in an office in Berlin . . . in a very important office . . . an architectural design office . . . ?” Sort of edging toward the question rather than coming straight out with it. And at some stage Willard will ask why all the probing. And Angela will explain that she was a technician in Goebbels’s documentary-film department and they once did an interview with Speer in his office . . . and there was this ravishingly beautiful Danish girl . . . And Willard will say, “Swedish!” and then all is explained – including your “migraine”.’

  ‘How does that help?’

  ‘Well, I would think the last thing you’d want would be some ex-employee of Goebbels turning up today and recognizing you – not with Nicole standing just three or four yards away.’

  Marianne stared at him, slack-jawed. ‘I can imagine how you survived,’ she said. ‘But can Angela can carry it off? Carry it off – that’s right?’

  ‘A simple deception like this?’ He smiled condescendingly. ‘Never wonder if any survivor of the KLS can carry off a deception.’

  ‘Oh no!’ Sally had her eyes on a battered pre-war Austin Ten that had reached the start of the lime-tree avenue and come to a halt. ‘I think that’s Terence Lanyon’s car.’

  ‘Did he say they were moving in today?’ Tony asked.

  ‘No – definitely not until next week. The thing is, I don’t have the gatelodge key. Have you seen Bob Ambrose? I gave it to him to clean out that old wasps’ nest.’ She ran out into the drive and waved for Terence to come on up to the house.

  ‘A garden party!’ he exclaimed as he got out of the car and half-lifted half-slammed the door shut. ‘We are going up in the world.’

  ‘No Hilary?’ Tony asked, joining them.

  ‘She’s still packing up in Manchester. I’m on my way back so I thought I’d cry in in the passing.’

  ‘On your way back from the LSE?’

  ‘No. The Fabian Society have asked me to chair a symposium on welfare economics. Who’s here?’ All the while he spoke his eyes quartered the crowd.

  Tony was reminded at once of Willard, who had the same habit. ‘Have you eaten?’ he asked. ‘You should come and try some of Nicole’s offerings before they’re all gone.’

  When Sally told him how many useful people were at the party he said, ‘I think I’ll stay the night – if someone can kindly put me up?’

  ‘So let me get this straight,’ Bob said. ‘You’ve got to move a hundred-thousand people out of London – the ones Hitler never shifted – and you’re going to build copies of Welwyn Garden City sort-of dotted all around London, and in-between it’s all kept green and no one’s allowed to build nothing. Strewth!’

  Sir Patrick chuckled despite himself – for the last thing he wanted to talk about today was The Abercrombie Plan for Greater London, which had consumed his life for the past decade. ‘I wish, young man, that you could teach our politicians and civil servants to put things as concisely and as accurately as you. The only item you missed is our plan for the roads. We shall build a ring of roads around London, roads for motor vehicles only. All the other roads will either go over them or under them. So all traffic in London will be local traffic. All the rest will whizz around the outside on great highways that carry no local traffic whatever.’ His smile and his beetling brows invoiced a bright-bright future to Bob and his generation. ‘And now – if you’ll excuse me – I see a gentleman I very much wish to buttonhole.’

  ‘Nutty as a fruitcake!’ Bob said admiringly after he’d gone. ‘But you gotta hand it to him for conviction. You can’t deny that.’

  ‘It’s more sinister than that, matey,’ Eric said. ‘Did you hear the language? We will move them . . . We will give them houses, streets, parks to be proud of . . . We will give them light and air and sunshine . . .’

  ‘What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘I wouldn’t
have minded just one sentence beginning with they – as in “They may choose . . .”’

  ‘Fogel is talking to Sir Patrick Abercrombie,’ Faith said to Felix as he rejoined them. ‘I’d better go and see if he wants me there.’

  He caught her arm. ‘Just before you go. I’ve spoken with Marianne and she is absolutely, utterly determined that Nicole must not be told.’ Faith opened her mouth to object but he went on. ‘I agree with you. It’s wrong to let Nicole carry on the way she does. But today is not the day. We’ll have to work on it.’

  She looked as if she would still argue her point, but the urge to join Fogel was stronger.

  Still Felix held her back. ‘You should also hear this.’ He turned to Angela. ‘Marianne and I think that you should go to Willard and tell him how you were a recordist with a Propaganda Ministry film crew that visited Speer’s office. Tell him how Marianne stood out . . . the only woman on the top floor – and so beautiful – so, of course, you remembered her. And say she was Danish. Not Swedish. Let him make the connection. He’ll understand that the last thing she wanted was for someone with that sort of memory turning up and blurting it all out. Especially with Nicole so close. You can do this?’

  Angela nodded. ‘Did she say anything about the transcript?’

  Faith escaped and went in search of Fogel.

  ‘As far as she knows, it’s safe. She left it with a fellow communist in Hamburg. It’s best if you go and beard Willard in his den by yourself. Danish, remember. It’ll stop him thinking your association was anything more than that one day. I’m going to find Arthur and help him light the boiler.’

  ‘Beard? Den?’ Angela muttered as she walked away.

  Fogel didn’t notice Faith until she was a mere twenty paces away; then he gave her a surreptitious not-yet sort of sign. She paused, marooned in mid-lawn, and, to her dismay, found herself being approached by Hugh Wellington. ‘Miss Bullen-ffitch!’ he called out. ‘I knew I had seen you somewhere before. Do please forgive me for not recognizing you at once. You used to ride in Hyde Park, I think?’

  She could not place him in that context. ‘You rode, too?’ she asked.

  ‘Me? No! I couldn’t afford that. No, I go for a bit of a jogtrot round the Serpentine every morning before brekker, don’t you know. But I used to see you in Rotten Row on a magnificent chestnut.’

  ‘He’s here now – loose in the field beside the drive.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad I wasn’t mistaken. But what I really wished to talk to you about was Mister Breit. I gather from Mister Fogel that you’re the one who recruited him for this arts encyclopedia?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose I was.’

  ‘Just so. Just so. And that is why I’d welcome your advice, dear young lady. I think that a sculpture by him would also add lustre – as you put it – to our new quarters at Alexandra Palace. In the reception area. Not outside. It’s not the most salubrious part of London. And we’d want to take it with us if we ever moved to a more central location.’ He eyed her diffidently. ‘Could you . . . sort of . . . sound out the ground and – if favourable – introduce me sometime this evening?’

  He held his breath and only let it out when she replied, ‘You’ll need to talk first to me about that, Mister Wellington. I’m now his agent, you see.’

  And why not? she thought. God knows he needs one.

  ‘One great thing about the war,’ Bob Ambrose said to Mrs Tawney, ‘was that all the voluntary work – you know – like running canteens for bombed-out folk and the tea-and-a-wad service for the armed forces at the railway stations – things like that – it was all done by ordinary people . . . women in the WVS.’

  ‘I was in the WVS,’ Mrs Tawney complained.

  ‘Yeah – that’s what I’m on about. It brought you down to the level of being ordinary – like the rest of us. You and Lady Hunter. And very good at it you was, too, if you don’t mind me saying so. I take me hat off to you and her ’cos it can’t have been easy.’

  Mrs Tawney was desperate to have three rotten windows at the back of Monkswood – her ancestral home – replaced; and this awful common little man seemed to have the knack of getting building materials when no one else for miles around could manage it. What made it so galling was that her family had employed the Ambroses for generations.

  ‘I wouldn’t exactly call it difficult,’ she said. She longed to add, ‘After all, my ancestors have carried nourishing broth and uplifting pamphlets to your hard-up ancestors since time immemorial.’

  ‘No! You shouldn’t run yourself down, Mrs Tawney – making out like it was nothing. In the war, you come down toward our level and we come up toward yours – and we was all British and proud of it together. And we can’t go back now. That’s all gone forever. And I’ll tell you anuvver thing, I pity all these Europeans – and the Yanks – ’cos it never happened to them. Look at all these foreigners here today – they live among us and, fair’s fair, they pull their weight. And they’ll all get British passports, too, I shouldn’t wonder. But they’ll never really understand us like what you and me understand one another. And isn’t that the truth.’

  Reluctantly she had to admit that she could hardly have expressed it more trenchantly herself; more elegantly, certainly. ‘Talking of understanding one another,’ she said, ‘you know those heavy teak frames your grandfather made for the windows overlooking the back lawn at Monkswood?’

  ‘Willard Johnson?’ Angela asked. ‘The Willard Johnson?’

  ‘The one and only, lady. Try one of these egg-and-caviar smörgåsar? They’re almost gone.’

  ‘Thank you, yes. I’m Angela Worth, by the way – a friend of Felix.’

  ‘Lucky guy!’ He handed her the open sandwich on a waxed cardboard plate with a GI stamp.

  She took a bite and made appreciative noises. Then she said, ‘That lady who was here just now . . .’

  ‘My wife? Yeah – she got some kind of migraine, which she never—’

  ‘I think not,’ Angela said quietly.

  The smile left his face. ‘Tell me.’

  She leaned forward. ‘Did she work in Germany in the war?’

  After a pause he said, ‘Listen lady – we’ve all passed a lot of water under the bridge since then – as Sam Goldwyn said. So why don’t we—’

  ‘No! I worked in Germany, too. For Goebbels’ propaganda ministry. I was recording engineer on a film they made in a certain office? A very high office of a very important architect? And there was only one woman there – on that floor, anyway, a beautiful Danish—’

  ‘OK, Miss Worth. That’s a hit. A home run.’ He turned and gazed up at their kitchen window. ‘Migraine!’ He gave a brief, dry laugh. ‘No wonder she bolted.’

  ‘Well, you can tell her I had absolutely no intention to speak of it with her, except in private if the chance came. I am not so unsensitive. Unsensible?’

  ‘Either, I think. Or both. I doubt she’d want to talk about those days, anyway.’ He sized her up. ‘I guess you had to be a party member to work in that outfit?’

  Angela had not intended to answer as she did, but when she found the words on the tip of her tongue she did nothing to prevent them. ‘I was a communist – working secretly inside the Nazi party. And communist I still am.’

  His eyes dwelled coolly in hers an uncomfortably long time. ‘You know,’ he said at last, ‘I reckon that if I had been born a German, living in Germany back then, I just might have become a secret communist myself. Did the Gestapo ever catch you?’

  She stretched her arm until a few digits of her prisoner-tattoo showed.

  He smiled at last. ‘Well, you’re personally welcome here today, Miss Worth, despite your politics – they’d play better that side of the lawn.’

  She turned and saw Nicole, who was doling out small pieces of French bread on each of which she was spreading some sort of pâté.

  ‘That’s right,’ Willard said. ‘You’re very quick. You’d be welcome on that side all right. Her name’s Nicole Palmer, châtelaine o
f the apartment behind her and a fellow commie – but she’s also the finest cook you or I are ever likely to meet. And in these dark days we can forgive her almost anything for that. You really ought to go across and try that pâté.’

  As Angela thanked him again and turned to go, he added, laughing, ‘Tell her you were a Nazi party member . . . and then add that you were also an undercover communist. I’d just love to see her face!’

  Faith said, ‘Don’t stray too far, Mister Wellington. There’s someone I’d like you to meet.’ And she slipped away to find Corvo. But Corvo proved reluctant to leave his friend Julian with a young woman from the GLP office, who was obviously taken with him.

  ‘She might not realize about him,’ he complained as she dragged him away, ‘and he might forget himself, too. I suspect he can tack to port and starboard. Do I shock you, young lady?’

  ‘Not in the least, Corvo – may I call you Corvo? I have many friends who are queers.’

  ‘Really?’ He took her arm and stepped out. ‘Call me whatever you like, darling – but do call! Miss . . . ?’

  ‘Bullen-ffitch. But Faith will do. I’m going to introduce you to the man who lords it over the BBC’s junior branch at Ally Pally, so you—’

  ‘Television?’ He wrinkled his nose and slowed down again. ‘I saw it before the war – quite ghastly. Must I?’

  ‘I think so. There’s still space on the ground floor – and from there you can only go in one direction, you know.’

  He still dragged his heels but now it was in a more thoughtful mood.

  ‘I think you should challenge him from the start,’ she said. ‘Ask him a challenging question. He’s a man of forthright opinions.’

  ‘Black and white, eh? Well, it suits the medium – which is what I don’t like about it, the lack of subtlety.’

  ‘I think he’ll respond well to a challenge.’ She all but nudged him in the back as they joined the listening circle around the great man.

  ‘I’m Corvo,’ he said, offering his hand. ‘Tell me – what are you people going to do for the arts?’

  ‘Dear fellow!’ Wellington beamed at him. ‘You tell me! And if we like it, we’ll do it.’