The Dower House

by Malcolm Macdonald

  ‘Have you heard about him since? D’you know what he’s doing now?’

  Marianne shook her head. ‘You choose this door, you never find out what lies behind that door.’ After a pause she added, ‘And perhaps it’s best. Since the fifteenth of April, all is changed for me.’

  Angela darted her a surprised glance . . . then twigged what she meant. ‘Oh!’ she said with a mildly embarrassed laugh. ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Why? Does the date mean something to you, too?’

  Angela was silent a long moment before saying, quietly, ‘It was the day they indicted SS-Aufseherin Ruth Neudeck who was head of the extermination camp at Ravensbrück. The British sentenced her to death and they’ll hang her in Hameln any day now. My God, you and Willard were getting together again not half a dozen miles from where she was standing trial!’

  ‘You don’t . . . let be? Can one say “let be”?’

  ‘I could tell you the day and the hour when each of them was caught – the ones who didn’t kill themselves – their trials, the verdicts . . . everything. Don’t tell this to Felix. He wants all that to be over and done for. It isn’t, of course, but he needs to over-live it in his own way.’

  Marianne pressed her: ‘You don’t think his way might be better?’

  ‘For him, yes. For me . . . what I’d really like is . . . no. Some other time.’

  ‘More tea?’

  Angela tilted her head toward the window. ‘Talking of Felix – can you keep a secret? Oh! What a stupid question! The thing is – Felix and I met before the war. And we almost fell in love. In fact, I think I did. He’s forgotten it, thank heavens.’

  ‘Why?’

  She pulled a face. ‘I was a bit of a Nazi in those days. More than a bit – a Lumpen-Nazi. He hasn’t actually forgotten the occasion, but he doesn’t remember it was me. My hair was cropped very short then. We went rowing on the Wannsee. That’s how I pricked up my ears when they talked about arresting him. He was the “boyfriend” – if you can call him that after only one day – he was the one I thought most about in the KL. I nearly had a heart attack when he walked into Schmidt’s that day.’ She sighed. ‘Anyway – he’s out there in the garden. And he’s doing what you said – touching everything. I think I’ll go and find out about all that.’

  Halfway to the door she paused. ‘You know that moment – when you think you may be falling in love? You look at him and you’re thinking, I want to see a lot more of you, or even something so trivial like, The way your beard curls round just below your ear . . . it gives me gooseflesh of pleasure! You know that feeling?’

  Marianne nodded.

  ‘I think the first time Felix and I met again, since the war – or the first time we actually talked to each other – we went for a walk into Regents Park and he picked me a rose and held it here, beside my face, and he said, “No – you still win”.’ She laughed. ‘And then he was so embarrassed! But he did it without thinking, you see. And what I think is that he had that first falling-in-love moment and it horrified him!’

  ‘Horrified? Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. Did he think love – the capacity for love – was dead inside him and this was the horror of seeing the dead come to life? Or did he think I couldn’t manage . . . couldn’t respond? Because . . . I mean, we both know hundreds of KL survivors who honestly couldn’t. No matter how loving the other person was or how much their . . . their intellect persuaded them to try. Love is still years away for them. Did he think I’m like that?’

  ‘And are you?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘That’s very positive!’

  ‘Until that moment I wasn’t sure. But when he did that thing with the rose and when I felt my own response . . . then I knew!’

  Felix closed his eyes and ran his fingertips over the boughs of the apple tree – a Ribstone Pippin, Sally had told him. He murmured the name syllable by slow syllable. Pippin was a good name for a girl. If ever he had a daughter, that’s what he’d call her – Pippin Breit. His fingers sensed the different textures of the top of the bough, where the wood was in tension and the fibres were knotted in the king of all tangles, and then the underside, where it was in compression and the fibres had a long wavy form you could feel but not actually see. He had met these fibres before – in seasoned wood, ready for carving. It was a thrill to feel them here in their making.

  And the new scars where children had climbed. And old scars where skilled gardeners had opened out the heart of each tree to light and air – scars that begged the community to repeat the therapy before the wood went wild and gave nothing but little crabs.

  Some sixth sense made him open his eyes at last.

  Angela – gazing at him from the path, three or four paces away. ‘Do you see something different when you close your eyes and use your fingers?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s as immobile as any sculpture, but there’s a life inside it – a living quality . . . a livingness – that sculpture can never achieve. Do you know Bernini’s Portrait of Mister Baker in the V&A? Old Bernini could make marble look like flesh in ecstasy, but even so, it still feels like marble.’

  ‘If they heated it?’ she suggested.

  ‘That’s a thought!’ He laughed and, returning to the path, linked arms with her. ‘You are a very practical lady. How are you feeling this morning?’

  ‘Fragile.’ She pronounced it the French way – frah-zheel.

  ‘Too frahzheel for a gentle stroll around this wilderness?’

  ‘I can probably manage that.’

  They set off at a funereal pace to circle the semi-cleared half of the walled garden.

  ‘How’s Marianne?’ he asked. ‘A little less nervous about your reunion, I hope?’

  ‘I hope so, too.’

  ‘You haven’t talked about it?’

  He felt her arm lift as she shrugged. ‘There’s too much else to talk about. We’re both women, after all.’ The shrug turned into a laugh. ‘Perhaps you’ve noticed?’

  ‘Touché,’ he said.

  ‘Do you think she misses her family? She likes to give an impression that she’s calm and relaxed but every now and then I feel a –’ she clenched her fist – ‘a sort of . . . like knots inside her.’

  ‘Well, it can’t be easy – being married to Willard. She absolutely adores him – I’m not saying otherwise – but that doesn’t make it easy.’

  ‘I don’t know him, obviously. Yesterday he seemed very . . . American. Easy . . . casual . . .’

  ‘Try ruthless . . . driven . . . focussed . . . unsleeping . . . Tony and Adam saw him in action in the war – and I don’t mean with a gun. He carved out a Europe-wide empire of favours done and favours owed. Nothing illegal. Just a good ol’ boy doing well by doing good. And now he’s doing exactly the same thing among the architectural elite and the planning elite and the business elite here in England. Twenty years from now we’ll be able to walk around London, looking at all the grand new towers of steel and glass growing out of old bombsites, and we’ll say Willard . . . Willard . . . Willard . . .’

  ‘Oooiiy!’

  ‘Ask Adam. Ask Tony. When you know them better, they’ll tell you more.’

  After a pause she asked, ‘How will I get to know them better?’

  He was silent a moment, too. Then he said, ‘Time. Give it time.’ They were approaching an area where comfrey had completely ousted every other plant. Bindweed, cleaver, hairy bittercress, brambles – all the invasive scourges of the average garden had here met their match. ‘I must do something about this,’ he said glumly.

  ‘Why just you?’

  He hung his head. ‘It’s my fault, that’s why. I chopped the roots all up with a cultivator we bought in the spring. I thought it would kill them, but . . .’ He waved a hand to complete the confession.

  ‘It’s interesting about Marianne,’ Angela said. ‘D’you think she’s right about Nicole Palmer? If Nicole knew the truth about her?’

  ‘How can anyone know things like that fo
r certain? Nicole is very warm . . . very passionate . . . and completely honest. But honest like a child. You know how a child can try to deceive you, and be convinced it’s working, but their very honesty gives them away? If we told her the truth about Marianne’s war and asked her not to change all of a sudden, only gradually, she would try to go on sniping at Marianne – I mean, she’d see why Marianne thinks it would be necessary – and she’d really try her best. But everyone else would see through it. Her honesty would give her away. So Marianne doesn’t want to take the chance of letting Willard know the truth.’ After a pause he added, ‘And I can see her point.’

  ‘And yet Nicole spied for the French Resistance. Throughout the war. And she was never found out – in fact, she fooled her own people so well that they cut her hair off!’

  ‘I know. I was thinking the very same when I was saying those things. But, you see, I don’t believe she ever pretended to like the Germans. She just saw it was necessary to cooperate with them in order to survive . . . and they accepted that as a businesslike arrangement. She was efficient, impersonal . . . she hid all feelings . . . didn’t criticize or complain. And they accepted her at her own valuation. She didn’t need to pretend emotionally, you see. But that’s exactly what she’d have to do if she learned the truth about what Marianne really did in the war and the risks she took.’ He sighed. ‘Standing here isn’t going to clear this comfrey.’

  The resumed their slow perambulation.

  ‘Pigs!’ Angela said suddenly.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘If you could fence this off . . . we made a film at UFA in the first year of the war – how to clear land when you couldn’t get petrol for the tractor. You fence the land all round and you put pigs inside it. You’d have to find out if they like comfrey roots and if they’re not poisonous . . .’

  ‘We are thinking of getting a pig, in fact – to feed off the scraps we throw away.’

  ‘A couple of pigs would clear that patch inside a week – and leave it better than ploughing.’

  As they closed the gate behind them and turned toward the big house, they saw Tony coming toward them. ‘Is Nicole there?’ he called out, still twenty paces off. ‘She came out to gather some herbs. She usually starts there.’ He halted and faced more toward the west. ‘Damn! She must be down in the coppice. Bloody naughty – she knows she’s near her time.’ And he set off at a smart trot.

  ‘Shall we come and help look for her?’ Angela called after him.

  ‘No – we have a special family whistle. Thanks all the same.’

  A moment later they heard it as he stood at the woodland edge – six piercing notes to the rhythm of diddy-diddy-diddy.

  ‘She can’t possibly miss that!’ Felix said.

  ‘E-flat, E-flat, C, C, E-flat, E-flat.’

  He threw back his head and laughed – without wincing now. ‘I see a white shirt, grey trousers, a touch of red in his hair, all against the deep blue shadow of the woodland, hatched with the pale brown of the coppiced trees – all notes of colour. And you hear notes of music. We live in different worlds, eh?’

  This time she slipped her arm through his. ‘Complementary worlds?’ she offered.

  Thursday, 17 July 1947

  Willard took the steps down into the Palmers’ flat three at a time. ‘Hey-hey – buddy-boy!’ he called to Tony, who was wrestling with a tape measure on the first-floor landing. ‘Could you dash through to the Prentices and tell May that Marianne thinks her time has come?’ Over his shoulder he added, ‘I’ve called Mrs Harpur and I’ll meet her in the yard because she’ll never remember her way up in the dark.’

  The last of his explanation was more inferred than heard over the thud of his shoes as he raced for the ground floor.

  Nicole emerged from their bedroom. ‘I heard,’ she said. And, passing him, she started up the stairs.

  ‘What d’you think you’re doing?’ Tony asked. ‘Go back to bed. Everything’s all right. It’s all in hand.’

  Nicole turned at the entrance to the Johnsons’ flat. ‘Someone must be with her till May comes. You get May – go on, go on, go on!’ And she was gone.

  She found Marianne lying on the bed, wearing only a parachute-silk slip. The sheets were kicked away onto the floor. She was forcing herself to breathe deeply and slowly – until, that is, she saw who her visitor was. ‘What?’ she panted. ‘Willard said . . .’ She struggled to sit up.

  ‘Lie down! Tony has gone for May but it’s best you not are alone. She comes soon. But I have delivered two babies myself.’ Seeing Marianne’s wide-eyed response to this, she added, ‘Not mine! But girls in the Maquis who could not risk . . . you understand?’

  Marianne nodded – and relaxed slightly.

  ‘Ah oui,’ Nicole said as she jerked the creases out of the undersheet. ‘The risk! You also understand, I think. The risk . . . the war . . . the Nazis . . . secrets . . . the risk. You understand!’

  Marianne half-whimpered, half-laughed. ‘Nicole! Dear, dear Nicole! This is not the time . . .’

  Nicole ploughed on: ‘This Angela – the friend of Felix. She is from a concentration camp in the war, yes?’ She broke off suddenly. ‘How often are the . . .’ She mimed the idea of contractions by clenching and unclenching her fist.

  But Marianne took it for the communist salute and slumped in abject disappointment.

  ‘So bad?’ Nicole asked. She suddenly remembered the word from her pre-natal talk with Mrs Harpur. ‘The contractions! How . . . souvent? Often?’

  Marianne was gripped by one at that very moment. Nicole clasped her hand and, recalling how long she had been in the room, said, ‘OK – it’s not near yet. It’s lots of time. Just relax. Breathe like she told us. Just relax.’

  The spasm passed. Marianne stretched out and, closing her eyes, said, ‘No more talk of the war, eh? Nor the Nazis? Nor risk?’ She even managed a yawn.

  ‘You were not Nazi,’ Nicole murmured. ‘That Angela would never have been so close with you. I know I am . . . they say “emotional” but not a fool. One day you will tell me all of it, but already I know – from Angela behaving at you – I know you were not Nazi! Sssshh! Rest now. It’s good. It’s all right.’

  The relief from the pain of that minor contraction was like a narcotic. She felt her mind go spiralling down into . . . but no! Nicole’s words penetrated at that moment. ‘What?’ she asked as she struggled once again to sit up. ‘What did . . . I mean, has Angela . . . or . . . ?’

  ‘Shhh! It’s no matter now.’

  ‘But Felix was friendly with me from the beginning, too. Didn’t that make you think?’

  Nicole gave a huge, Gallic shrug and said, ‘Oh . . . Feeelix!’

  ‘What’s that mean?’

  ‘If Himmler himself would stand before Felix and give him his coat and said, “Brush that for me, please?” Felix will do it. He is a saint. Besides, he is a man and you are . . . quite . . . beautiful.’

  ‘There was nothing like that, I can promise you!’

  Another shrug. ‘There is always something “like that”. Shall I comb your hairs? It always relaxes me.’

  And that was the scene which greeted Willard on his return. ‘Well, fan my brow and part my hair!’ he exclaimed from the doorway.

  ‘You must go!’ Nicole was shocked. ‘Your part is long over – and your next part will soon begin. But not now.’

  ‘He can stay,’ Marianne murmured, stroking Nicole’s arm cajolingly.

  ‘Here?’

  ‘In Sweden many men assist at the birth – and I mean assister à as well.’

  ‘Tskoh!’ Nicole raised her eyes but made no outright objection.

  Willard crossed to the far side of the bed and half-lay half-sat beside Marianne. ‘How is it, honey? May is out for the evening. Tony’s down waiting for Mrs Harpur.’

  Nicole answered for her, ‘She has have . . . has had one twinge. But the water is not broken. Oh, this barbarian’s tongue!’ She glanced up at Willard and asked, truculently, ‘What are
you thinking, then?’

  ‘I’m just thinking, Nicole, how profoundly grateful I am – to you.’

  ‘Moi?’

  ‘To you, that when it counts – when it really, really counts – you can turn round like this.’

  ‘Tony says “bury the hatchet”. If we cannot bury the hatchet and make a different . . . avenir . . .’

  ‘Future,’ Marianne offered.

  ‘Vous pouvez parler français?’ she asked in surprise.

  ‘Mais bien sûr!’

  ‘Tiens! Tu n’as pas dit . . .’

  ‘Et quant à vous? Vous n’avez pas demandé!’

  Willard cleared his throat delicately

  ‘Ha!’ Nicole reached the comb across Marianne and tapped Willard on the wrist with it. ‘You see! Your wife has the English, German, French . . . and naturellement Swedish. Moi – I have English, German, French, and a little Spanish. We are European. You Americans and English, you are . . . isolés.’

  Willard winked at her. ‘When de Gaulle asked Ike to get the Yanks out of France by New Year’s, Ike said, “Including the ones we buried here?”’

  And Marianne just lay there wondering whether that switch from vous to tu meant anything other than that Nicole was more than a little ‘thoughtspread’ – as the Swedish word has it.

  Just before midnight Marianne was delivered, with no complications, of a healthy, placid, elfin-faced baby girl. Mrs Harpur laid the gory little bundle on her newly deflated belly and said, ‘Ten fingers, ten toes. We’ll just wait for the afterbirth. D’you think you could manage one more small push, there’s a dear?’

  When it came, she held it up and massaged the cord down toward the baby. ‘This is something I can never get the doctors to do,’ she said. ‘There’s a fair bit of blood in that and I don’t see why the babies shouldn’t get it. There now! She’ll thrive the better for that. And – do you notice? No crying! They hardly ever cry if they get that extra bit of blood.’ She clamped the cord and severed it. ‘I’ll just weigh the mite.’