The Dower House

by Malcolm Macdonald

  ‘Right!’ Willard stopped mopping Marianne’s forehead. ‘Roedean it is. I’ll get her name down tomorrow.’ He checked his watch. ‘Later today.’

  ‘You’d be more use bringing in that warm water,’ Mrs Harpur told him. ‘Seven pounds two ounces. A good weight for a firstborn – I’m surprised you didn’t show more. Test it with your elbow.’ She carried the baby back to the bed. ‘Hold her till the hot water comes.’

  The baby, half-wrapped in a towel, fitted snugly into the arc of Marianne’s arm. All those hours spent savouring this moment in her imagination had not prepared her for this intensity of pleasure; her eyes filled with tears.

  ‘Her head will change shape to more normal soon enough. Have you got a name for her?’

  ‘Siri. She looks lovely though, doesn’t she – even squashed like this? Look at those eyes.’

  Mrs Harpur laughed. ‘All their eyes have that intense colour. It won’t last forever.’

  ‘I want four,’ Marianne said. ‘Three more.’

  Willard returned with the water, singing, as he barged the door with his butt: ‘Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey . . .’ The baby did a three-stage yawn.

  ‘Shh!’ Marianne warned him. ‘You’ll wake up the Palmers and the Prentices.’

  The midwife took the baby, tested the water, and started to wash away the gore.

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ Willard said, ‘one reason I was so long was that Tony came up to say Nicole wouldn’t let him sleep until we had some news. Then he heard the Prentices returning, so they had to come up, too. May says she’s very sorry. It would happen the night they were out. I told her all’s well. May I hold her?’ Willard took his daughter and, demonstratively careful to support her head, cradled her in his right arm. ‘Aintcha gonna open your eyes, li’l darlin’?’ he asked. ‘I wouldn’t blame you, mind – keepin’ ’em shut. Oh! You heard me! My-oh-my – but you’re gonna break a l–o–t o’ hearts with them peepers. Oh yes – you surely are.’

  She gave a shivery little sigh and closed her eyes again. He passed her down to Marianne. ‘D’you feed her now?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  Mrs Harpur said, ‘Siri – where’s that name from, then?’

  Willard answered, ‘Marianne had a Cousin Siri who died in the war. She used to ferry Danish Jews across to Sweden and . . . the boat capsized one night. It’s a name to carry with pride.’

  Shrewdly Mrs Harpur detected an edge to his tone. ‘You’d have preferred something more American?’

  He shook his head. ‘Not once I heard that story.’

  The woman nodded. ‘I’ll take the placenta, then. Unless . . . ?’

  ‘Unless what?’

  ‘Unless someone’s got dogs here?’

  ‘Oh – thank you for that!’ Willard shut his eyes tight.

  ‘My dog thrives on them.’

  ‘Nicole!’ Marianne said. ‘Xupé and Fifi can share it. Put it in the fridge, honey.’

  ‘Honestly?’ He stared at her, still not entirely believing.

  ‘Honestly. It’s good.’

  He laughed feebly and turned to the midwife. ‘Well! I’ve heard of some peace offerings in my time but this beats the band. We haven’t always seen eye-to-eye with Mrs Palmer, below, but tonight she was magnificent.’

  ‘Good – that’s what I like to hear.’ She turned to Marianne. ‘I’ll pop back tomorrow sometime. And I should warn you – they don’t always enter this world so easy and so quick as that.’

  Willard took her back to the yard door and watched her wobble away on her bicycle, a mere silhouette against the feeble yellow circle of her front lamp. When he returned to the bedroom he fished out a key, and went to unlock one of the cupboards. ‘Shall we put her in her crib?’ he asked airily.

  ‘What crib?’

  He pulled out a modernistic affair, all bent out of a single sheet of laminated wood.

  Marianne propped herself up on one elbow and stared. ‘It’s beautiful! Have you made that?’

  ‘Designed it. I got Len to make it up – the guy we met at the Haymarket Theatre? He’s pretty good. This could be a prototype. We’ve had ten pounds of potatoes in it and we couldn’t rock it to overturn. Wanna try it?’

  ‘That bedding – it’s aired?’

  ‘It’s bone-dry in there. Feel it.’

  ‘Well – OK. She’s deep asleep. It must be hell – what she went through.’

  ‘It wasn’t exactly paradise for you, either, honey.’

  They laid her in the crib and Willard went to take a shower.

  ‘All’s well?’ he asked when he returned.

  Marianne nodded slowly, in time to rocking the crib.

  He put his hand to the dimmer – a 6kW monster liberated from a voltage regulator for an entire Quonset hut. ‘Sleep?’ he asked. ‘You’ve been through a lot, honey. I was so proud of you.’

  ‘Well, thanks-you kind, sir. I’m glad you were there. Actually, I don’t feel very tired. Let’s just lie back and look at the moon and talk.’

  ‘About Nicole?’ He dimmed the lights.

  ‘Yes. I must explain to you about Nicole.’

  But Willard already had a theory of his own. ‘When you took – remember at the midsummer party, when you took a plate of smörgåsar over to her stand . . .’

  ‘And she looked . . . knives?’

  ‘Daggers.’

  ‘She looked daggers at me.’

  ‘Yeah, but when you walked away – I was watching her – and she raised her hand like this and opened her mouth, as if she was going to call you back. But then she caught sight of me watching her and she all clammed up again. I think she was going to make it up there and then. And now, this evening, or yesterday evening – the birth and all – it gave her the best chance ever and she took it.’ Only then did he ask, ‘Has she explained it to you?’

  ‘She said it was seeing me and Angela Worth together . . . knowing that Angela was in a concentration camp, and being so friendly with me . . .’

  ‘What does she know about Angela – apart from that?’

  ‘I don’t know. It was hardly the occasion when one could—’

  ‘No – of course not. But what do we know about her, come to that. She told me she was a communist.’

  Marianne felt there would never be a better time than this. ‘She secretly recorded an important Nazi conference – on the orders of Heydrich. It was all about die Endlösung der Judenfrage. The Vernichtung.’

  ‘My God – is that what they called it!’

  ‘After Heydrich was assassinated they said she should have told them. And for that they sent her to Ravensbrück.’ She drew a deep breath before she continued. ‘If they had known she also made a transcript, they would have shot her instead. In fact, she made two transcripts. When she knew it was only a matter of days before they arrested her, she gave one to a friend in Berlin.’

  ‘And the other?’

  ‘The other she gave to me to pass on to the Swedish embassy.’

  Willard whistled, almost silently. ‘You go way back,’ he said quietly. ‘This is something you never told me, honey?’

  ‘There’s a lot you did in the war you never told me, either. Not that I want to know, mind. It’s over. That’s all over. And there are many things we never mention because – for some – it’s not over, and life is still cheap in Germany.’

  ‘I guess that’s right. So . . . why did she give a copy to you?’

  ‘If I tell you, will you keep it secret? It must never be told to anyone else. Not your family. Not our children. Otherwise I won’t tell you.’

  He thought it over. ‘Boy – this had better be worth it!’ he said at last.

  ‘Angela gave me many documents. That conference so shocked her that she joined the Resistance – or she became a one-woman resistance. And why me? Because we were friends after that day in Speer’s office and because I had legitimate reasons to call on the Swedish embassy. I took copies of many secret Nazi documents there, incl
uding that transcript . . .’

  ‘You were a spy? Hey – you were an anti-Nazi spy!’

  Marianne shook her head. ‘I was a go-between. That was all.’

  ‘Did you take stuff from Speer’s office – or only what Angela Worth gave you?’

  She shrugged. ‘Both.’

  ‘Then you were, too, a spy! You should get a medal. Why didn’t you ever say anything about this?’

  ‘That’s why it’s so secret. It must never come out that the Swedish embassy – the neutral Swedish embassy –carried out espionage in an alien—’

  ‘Oh, oh, oh!’ Willard’s cry would have been a lot louder but for little Siri. ‘Honey! Honey-chile! Every embassy of every nation in every capital engages in espionage and everybody knows it.’

  ‘I’m not a complete fool, Willard. But it’s one thing for people to know it generally and quite different to have exact details – names, years, particular embassies. Those diplomats I met – they are real individuals with real names. And they may be working in Washington now. Or London. Or India . . . Persia . . . Moscow! How can they do their work properly if every foreign ministry in the world has stark facts on file that they are spies. If you should know that an American diplomat is a spy . . . if you have names, places, dates . . . do you tell the world? Do you tell anyone? I don’t think so. I hope not. Well, I am a patriotic Swede, too. And if it was the price to pay that I not prove to Nicole that I, too, was anti-Nazi . . . alors – so it had to be.’

  Chastened, he said, ‘OK, OK. I guess you’re right. By God, I didn’t think it was possible for me to be more proud of you than I already was. But for me, you’ll always wear a purple heart – even if I’m the only one to see it.’

  She gave his arm a squeeze.

  He lay back and watched the first blush of the false dawn suffuse the southern sky.

  Ten days later Xupé and Fifi had another treat when their mistress had a six-and-a-half-pound baby boy, whom they named Andrew Mercier Palmer; Nicole felt that her Uncle Pierre Mercier was wealthy enough to deserve having her firstborn named after him.

  Monday, 25 August 1947

  That autumn Willard moved his office to the Brandons’ old flat in Curzon Street. He bought a little Bedford van, put an old Victorian sofa and a milking stool in the back, and drove to and from Welwyn North with Tony, Adam, and Faith to share the petrol. Adam’s Jowett stayed at the Dower House for emergencies, visits to the post-natal clinic, and so on. If any of the wage slaves wanted to get home earlier, they could usually rely on a lift from Garden City with Todd, who worked shorter hours than Willard. Everyone worked shorter hours than Willard.

  One evening, when Faith had done just that, she turned to Todd, as he lifted the bonnet to drain the radiator, and said, ‘Look at him!’ She pointed to the studio window, where Felix was just sitting and staring at something in the room ‘I don’t know what to do with him. Guess what he’s doing.’

  ‘Having trouble with the sculpture?’ Todd guessed.

  ‘No. With a bloody letter. It came two days ago and he’s done nothing but stare at it ever since.’

  ‘Two solid days?’

  ‘No. I mean he’s done nothing with the letter but stare at it. Nothing can stop him sculpting.’

  ‘Maybe he already knows what’s in it? Who’s it from?’

  ‘From a neighbour of his father’s. When they lived in Berlin. Before the war. And he thinks he knows what’s in it.’

  ‘He was in one of them concentration camps, wasn’t he, poor sod. I look at him sometimes and try to imagine, but it’s impossible, isn’t it. I mean – to live somewhere where the police can just walk in and take your life away. Without any law. It’s never been like that here, has it. What’s he think is in this letter, anyway?’

  ‘It’s quite bulky and you can feel other papers . . . documents . . . maybe even other letters inside. He thinks they may be from his father. So if it means his father’s still alive – they quarrelled, you know, quite badly – then that’s one sort of problem. But if it means his father’s dead, then that’s a different sort of problem. But it’s a problem either way. And he just doesn’t want to face it.’

  Todd hesitated before saying, ‘You don’t know whether to push him or not, eh?’

  She sighed. ‘It’s not the sort of problem that gets easier by being left to fester, is it. I try not to go on and on . . . anyway, he’s only listening half the time.’

  ‘And you don’t speak German yourself?’

  She saw his drift and, for a moment, it seemed like the answer; but the hope faded as quickly as it had risen. ‘Not nearly well enough.’

  ‘What about Marianne? Or Nicole? They all seem to speak each other’s lingos – beats me how they do it.’

  ‘Todd! Darling Todd!’ In a fit of exuberance she flung her arms about him and kissed his ear. ‘You’ve hit it!’

  ‘And you’ve found the way to get your Felix to take an interest in us at last.’

  She released him, snatched up her briefcase, and ran across the yard to the cottage. ‘Don’t worry,’ she shouted to Felix as she slammed the front door. ‘It’s just a little fling Todd and I are having. It doesn’t mean a thing.’

  He chuckled as he came from the studio to take her coat. ‘What were you talking about?’

  ‘That!’ She pointed at the still-unopened letter.

  ‘You discussed our . . . no, my personal affairs with him?’

  ‘Yes! Yes! Yes! Because I can’t discuss it with you . . . and it’s eating you out with worry . . . and it’s wearing me down, too. But Todd – wonderful, man-managing Todd, who knows more about human nature than you or I will ever fathom – he has come up with the answer.’

  She held her breath, forcing him to ask, ‘Which is?’

  ‘It’s obvious once you put your mind to it. We give it to Marianne, or Nicole – or, come to think of it, both – and ask them to read it and then either break whatever news there is gently to you or urge you to read it yourself. And there are no two people better – in all the world, I’d say – to do you that service. But I’m not going to push it on you. I’ll say no more. You can pour us a cocktail and I’ll . . . open a tin of baked beans or something.’

  In fact, she produced a tasty dinner of leek, bacon, and potato pie and bread-and-butter pudding. After which they went across the yard to the Wilsons and finished a game of Monopoly they had started four nights earlier. And then they went to bed and made pleasant, rather dreamy love for quite a while.

  Ten minutes after that, when normally they would both have been fast asleep, he said, ‘OK . . . but tell them it’s a favour to you – not to me!’

  And she answered at once and not at all sleepily, ‘You think it wouldn’t be a favour to me? My God – where have you been these past two days?’

  When Nicole returned the letter – or letters, in fact – she handed them to Felix but spoke to Faith. ‘He used to call her Tante Uschi.’

  ‘I know that,’ Felix said. ‘What does she say?’ He reached for the letters.

  ‘You have to read them. They are from your father and very beautiful. You will be proud. It’s nothing to hurt you.’

  ‘Cup of tea?’ Faith asked.

  Nicole laughed. ‘You English! Cup of tea! Crisis? Cup of tea! Yes please.’ She sat down and let out a great sigh. ‘Babies! Andrew is just sleeping through the night, but now he’s more awake by day, of course! It’s no peace.’

  ‘I’ll go and read these upstairs,’ Felix said.

  There were two letters from Frau Schneider – Tante Uschi to him. One of them was marked ‘Read this first’:

  My precious little Felix!

  I have learned from the Americans that you survived the war, and the KL at Mauthausen, they say, and so this is the happiest Week in my life for many Years. And you are safely in England, too, which makes me happier still. Let us all hope that Europe has now lost its Appetite for Wars for ever. After so much Suffering we deserve it, and you most certainly deserve Prosp
erity and a good Life in England.

  But now I must risk making more Unhappiness for you, though when you read these Letters from your Father you will understand why it must be so. And later, perhaps, when you take in Everything he has to tell you, you will feel as proud of him as any Son could be. But first I must explain why there are two Letters from me, both with the same date. This one is to tell you Everything you need to know before you read the first Letter from your Father. The second is to explain certain Things to you after you have read all he has to say. His Letters were certainly not written on the same Day – not even in the same Decade. He did not date them, which was typical, but the first was written in Berlin, in your old Apartment there, shortly before the War broke out; the second was written quite a long Time after we moved to Kiel, which we did in February, 1942.

  To me it will always be just Yesterday that he went away, and the Pain of it is as sharp as ever it was. For you, I hope it may have something of an opposite Effect. Your last Parting with your Father was full of Anger and Bitterness, but you were in the Right and he in the Wrong. I tell you that now. But I think I know my dear little Felix well enough to be sure that all those awful Things that have happened to you since have softened your Judgement – also that these Letters, one of them the last your Father ever wrote, will bring you all the Way back to the Love and Admiration you would surely feel if he were here at my right Hand and you at my left. Oh, if only I could make that Bridge right now! To take each of you by your Hands and join them. I would give those few Years that now remain to me – all of them I’d give – to be able to do that.

  Well, if I can’t do it in this Life, I’ll do it in the next. And this Letter and its Contents are a Preparation for such a wonderful Moment. I know you don’t believe in all that, but you will see. I shall have the last Laugh.

  Now you’ll see there is another Letter from me in this Packet. Please read the Letters from your Father before opening that one. I’ll say no more now. Open your Father’s letters and read them.

  All my Love

  Tante Uschi.

  There were two letters from his father, as well, marked only 1 and 2, each numeral circled in red. Perversely, Felix saw his hands move toward the one marked 2, as if, even now, he could not obey his father in the smallest detail.