The Dower House

by Malcolm Macdonald

  ‘Oh!’ Mme T gave a cry of delight and clapped her hands. ‘How perfect – Paris, the Eiffel Tower! It’s why you have no ring – yet.’

  Angela could not help laughing at this acute juxtaposition of Gallic romanticism and practicality.

  Felix explained that they were on their way to Germany, to Kiel, to see his aunt-by-courtesy, who might have all his mother’s rings still. And for that reason he begged that they would retain the sculptures until their return in a week or so’s time – and in any case he would be delighted if they would choose two of them to keep.

  Mme T prepared a light lunch, after which the four of them spent the afternoon walking to Père Lachaise to see the Epstein sculpture at the tomb of Oscar Wilde and the mausoleum of Abélard and Héloïse. It was there that Felix suddenly dodged behind one of the columns, saying, ‘Go on talking, act innocent!’

  After a full minute he relaxed and said, ‘That was close!’ Then, to Angela: ‘We should gently make our way toward the station.’

  ‘What was close?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m sure that was André Breton.’

  ‘Ah!’ The Tesnières were disappointed.

  ‘You know him?’ Felix asked.

  ‘No, but he’s a great man.’

  ‘He was. But surrealism is dead – aesthetic monkey-gland stuff kept alive by clowns like Dali.’

  At the cemetery gates Felix pointed out that the first tomb was for a family named Adam and he wondered if Breton’s fertile mind had ever made anything of that.

  They wandered back toward the centre until they reached that parting of their ways – a low-key parting since they’d be together again in a week or so. As he and Angela continued toward the station, Felix said, ‘I wonder if it really was Breton back there – or did I imagine him because he was in my mind the night before last?’

  When he explained the circumstances she asked what the two of them were doing in the countryside around Fontainebleau at night, anyway?

  ‘I don’t know why he chose Fontainebleau,’ Felix replied. ‘Maybe some association with François premier or maybe Leonardo, who designed the great staircase there? Anyway, he wanted to show me surrealism in action – that it was an entire politico-cultural process not just a wayward style of painting and poetry and stuff. So what we did was knock on people’s doors and offer to sell them a cow – or he’d offer to buy a cow if they said they already had one. And it had to be done in that total darkness you get in French villages at night.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, he had a point in a way. He thought the world had become too organized, too bureaucratic – too predictable. People needed to get back to the irrational – which, of course, comes at you out of the darkness of the mind.’

  ‘By buying and selling cows? The Führer had a much darker way than that.’

  Felix laughed grimly. ‘There was a lawyer who got the better of him that night, though. Breton introduced himself as Mister Corpse-Divine and offered to sell the man a cow and the lawyer said, “What shall I do with it then?” “Sell it back to me,” Breton explained, “at a profit, of course. Then I can sell it back to you for an even greater profit . . . and so on. And in no time at all our combined profits will be in the milliards and we can take all our promissory notes to the banks and take out loans for at least a couple of million.” And the lawyer asked why should the banks do that? And Breton said, “Because it’s no different from what they’re doing anyway – all day, every day!” So this lawyer promised to think it over. And when Breton and I were halfway back to the gate, he called after us, “We don’t even need a real cow.” And when we reached the gate, the fellow added, “Enchanté, Monsieur Breton!” He knew all along, you see. But even then, Breton had the last word: “I lied to you,” he called back. “It wasn’t a cow – it was an ambulance!”’

  The sleeping and dining cars were Pullmans and the standard was almost back to pre-war levels. Dinner was cordon bleu and the table wine – as always on France’s railways – was Châteauneuf du Pape, because, at its peak it never throws a deposit. They dined slowly and downed rather more wine than they might have done on any other night.

  Felix told her about the nuns at the convent in Manresa Road, Chelsea, who had commissioned a sculpture by him. ‘They want a Madonna and Child,’ he said. ‘We discussed something in stone, a pale, fine-textured granite with no obvious grain, but now I’m thinking more of doing something very fluid, very plastic, in bronze.’

  ‘When did you change your mind?’ Angela asked.

  ‘At the top of the Eiffel Tower.’

  ‘Because of what happened there?’

  ‘It must be. That was a liberation of . . . so much more than . . . I mean of my whole spirit. To be able to say “I love you” and—’

  ‘You can say that as often as you like!’

  ‘I love you. Everything around you is so . . . alive. And special. Stone can be rather static and pure – only someone like Bernini can persuade it to look like butter frozen after melting. Anyway – that’s marble as nature never intended it to look. If I want something as vibrant as that, it’ll have to be bronze. I know my limitations.’

  ‘That’s the second time you’ve mentioned Bernini to me, d’you realize?’

  His eyes narrowed. ‘When was the first?’

  ‘At the midsummer party, or the day after, when we went for a walk in the walled garden and . . . did you ever put pigs in that comfrey?’

  ‘Oh – that day!’

  ‘Yes – that day! When I saw you stroking the apple-tree wood like that I wanted you to stroke me instead. I longed to throw my arms around you and say, “Let’s . . .” you know.’

  ‘Well, I’ll say it for you now: “Let’s . . . you know!”’

  They kissed and caressed and undressed each other without embarrassment, languorously at first and finally with hasty abandon, so that they fell awkwardly between the sheets, which were tucked in so firmly that he could not rise above her without an angry struggle.

  ‘Here!’ As he was about to settle upon her she fished up his underpants from the floor.

  ‘What . . . why . . . ?’ he asked.

  ‘For when you finish like a gentleman.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘What were you going to . . . have you got a . . . an FL?’

  ‘Don’t you want a baby?’

  After a silence she said, ‘Do you?’

  ‘Yes. I think you’d make a wonderful mother – the best any child could ask for.’

  ‘Whew!’ She pulled a little away from him and lay back into the pillow, hands interwoven behind her head. ‘But I have a career.’

  ‘It wouldn’t interfere too much with that. You can work up to the eighth month – and go back to the job as soon as you like afterwards.’

  ‘And the baby?’

  ‘We can find a German girl who wants to learn English – or a French girl – during this visit. Maybe Tante Uschi knows of one. The French have this custom they call au pair—’

  She started to laugh. ‘Pasha Breit with his Anglo-German-French harem!’

  ‘Marianne’s getting a Swedish girl to live au pair and look after Siri so that she can go back to the drawing board. And Sally’s thinking of doing the same. There’s an unmarried mother in the village – a jilted GI bride-without-a-wedding-ring. She could look after both . . .’

  ‘Well! They’d have a fit in Germany but maybe it’s possible. But still I’d like to be in our own home and our own bed – and preferably with rings on our fingers – before we even think of starting babies.’ She groped down into the bed and giggled. ‘You won’t be starting many babies with that!’

  ‘I know . . . but if you just . . . yes, leave your hand there.’

  ‘Oo-ooh!’

  ‘Miraculous, eh? Oh! That’s fantastic . . . yes! Yes!’ He levered himself over her and she spread her thighs and let out a long, low moan . . . and . . .

  A sudden shiver passed over her.

  ‘What’s wrong
?’ he asked.

  ‘We just crossed the border into Germany. I know it.’

  He gave a baffled laugh. ‘So? We’re not going to stop. They already checked our—’

  ‘No! I just know it. I felt it.’ She shivered again.

  He lay beside her. ‘You’d rather not?’

  For a moment she was silent, breathing forcefully, panting.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he assured her. ‘I’m the insensitive one. I should have realized . . .’

  ‘What’s wrong with me?’

  ‘Nothing. Is this your first time?’

  ‘No! Well . . . yes . . . I suppose it is . . . in a way.’

  ‘Oh, Angela!’ He lay tight against her side, folding her in his arms. ‘Angela! Dear sweet darling love. You should have said.’

  She burst into tears, folding her face into his chest, sobbing with great, almost silent heavings of her body.

  ‘It’s going to be all right,’ he murmured. ‘Just don’t take it to heart.’

  When her crying had run its course she gave a huge, glutinous sniff and whispered, ‘Sorry!’

  ‘Nothing to be sorry for.’

  ‘I thought it would all be just . . . so natural.’

  ‘And it will be.’ He began planting little kisses all over her face.

  ‘Do “Sand in the right eye . . .” that thing Willard . . .’

  ‘Sand in the right eye,’ he said, raising himself on one elbow to perform the ritual. ‘Sand in the left eye. Shed a little tear – here’s mud in your eye! She sniffed heavily a couple of times and – at last – relaxed.

  Thursday, 2 October 1947

  At Hamburg Hauptbahnhof they saw a man standing by the ticket barrier, holding up a placard saying: Wirth/Breit.

  He introduced himself: ‘Hermann Treite.’

  Angela was taken aback. ‘Oh, but when I phoned you this morning . . . I didn’t mean you to . . .’ She held out her hand to shake his. But he raised it to within an inch of his lips and made a kiss, murmuring, ‘Ich küsse ihren Hand, gnädiges Fraülein.’

  She laughed. ‘Not exactly the greeting of a communist!’

  ‘And Herr Breit?’

  They shook hands. Felix took an immediate liking to him – a man at ease with himself and not above a little self-mockery. The New German, perhaps?

  ‘You had to ring off, Miss Wirth, before I could—’

  ‘The train was just leaving.’

  ‘I know. But I wanted to tell you . . . that is, to invite you to stay with me while you’re in Hamburg. I hope you haven’t booked a hotel?’

  Angela said that Felix knew a pension in St-Pauli and—

  ‘Good!’ he interrupted. ‘Then you can stay with me. I don’t know how the British government expects its people to survive abroad on just five pounds. I have a villa on the Elbchaussée.’

  He mentioned the name nonchalantly but they both knew that was the most elite quarter of the city, an area of stately villas each in its own parkland. They thanked him kindly enough – although at a pension they could have shared a bed.

  He picked up her suitcase and led the way out to a drophead Mercedes Sedanca de Ville of the kind favoured by the Führer for his triumphal cavalcades through conquered cities. He piled their cases on the front passenger seat and ushered them into the back. ‘I must say,’ Angela told him as they set off, ‘Marianne von Ritter’s description did not lead me to expect anything like this. She said you work in the docks. Are you still a communist?’

  ‘That was true when she knew me – I did work in the docks. And still do. The day after the British army drove into Hamburg I saw my chance. I was a civilian clerk in the military docks – the old U-boat pens. So I just walked away from that and I bought a horse and cart and started carrying rubble from the docks. I thought if I’m doing something useful, they won’t move me away from it.’

  ‘But almost the whole city was rubble,’ Felix said. ‘Where did you dump it?’

  He laughed. ‘I didn’t dump it – I graded it properly and sold it! Mostly to the city, for filling craters . . . mending roads . . . Within a year I had a dozen trucks – British army surplus. And also three fuel tankers. I was still carrying rubble but now also goods and fuel. And so it went on. I had unemployed boys carrying messages around the city on bicycles. Now they have Vespas.’

  ‘And it’s all legal?’ Angela asked.

  He was surprised. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well . . . rationing for one thing.’

  ‘Rationing?’ He shrugged. ‘It’s not severe. Next year they say it will end completely, anyway.’

  ‘Next year?’ Felix exclaimed. ‘You’ll be sending us food parcels next!’

  ‘You think that’s a joke? What about those Americans, eh – our enemies of three years ago? They’re giving us hundreds of millions of dollars to get back on our feet and stand up against the Russians. And to the British – their allies of three years ago? To them they say, “Now you can pay us back our war loans!” We’re lucky they weren’t our allies!’

  He had driven straight down to the northern bank of the Elbe, to Neumühle and Övelgönne, avoiding the Elbchaussée until forced to join it; the route also avoided the Reeperbahn area where Willard and Marianne had been reunited.

  ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘what is the ration in England now?’

  Angela answered, ‘A quarter-kilo of meat, ditto fat, ditto sugar, ninety grams of bacon, sixty of cheese, sixty of tea, two litres of milk, a pound of bread, and a hundred-twenty grams of bon-bons. And that’s it!’

  He looked at her askance in the mirror. ‘Well, that doesn’t sound too bad. It’s more than most Germans eat in a day.’

  They laughed. ‘That’s the ration for a week!’

  He whistled. ‘We must organize those food parcels!’

  They drove on past Klein Flottbeck and through Othmarschen.

  ‘All the trees!’ Felix sighed. ‘Gone!’

  ‘Blame last winter. We got as warm sawing them down as we did when burning them. A lot of land round here is owned by English merchants. The RAF never bombed it much, not even in 1942.’

  ‘Gomorrah.’

  ‘Yes. Even though the great Blohm and Voss armaments factories were just across the Elbe. And the Luftwaffe HQ just up the road here. Property is sacred to the English, Gott sei dank! Ah – that’s Jacob’s Restaurant. I have a table booked there for us this evening.’

  A few hundred yards farther up the Elbchaussée they turned into a once-imposing gateway, now stripped of all its ornamental ironwork, and started along a newly gravelled drive that led up to a large stucco villa, classical in style and dating, Felix guessed, from the mid-nineteenth century.

  ‘By the way,’ Treite said, ‘Birgit, whom you’re about to meet, likes to be known as Frau Treite. I will marry her one day, when there’s time, but I swear – if you take even a few days off in Hamburg nowadays someone else has stolen a contract from right under your nose. You are not married, eh? May I ask . . . that is . . . do you . . . what would your preference be for . . . ?’

  ‘We can share a room,’ Felix said.

  ‘Even a bed,’ Angela added.

  ‘Good.’ He relaxed, killed the motor, and stretched luxuriously. ‘Life is good. We don’t deserve it, but life is good.’

  ‘Our house never had a bathroom,’ Angela said after he had showed them their room. She felt the mattress and approved. The décor reminded her of Kitty’s, the Gestapo brothel in Giesebrechtstrasse – lots of pink, lots of silk, lots of smoky-grey glass, and carpets that swallowed your feet.

  ‘Our bath hung on a nail.’ Felix stripped to his waist and went to wash.

  ‘Ours too, but there was no special room. That remark of his – “we don’t deserve it, but life is good” – that was a sort of apology, you realize? I could feel all the way that he wanted to say something about us both having been in the KLS and also that he didn’t want to say anything, either. I think that’s the nearest he’ll get.’

  ‘Good
thing, too.’ He spoke through the towel as he scrubbed his face dry. ‘One of my fears was that people would dwell on it.’ He inspected the towel. ‘God, that train was dirtier than I thought.’

  ‘D’you suppose he’s completely legitimate? He’s certainly not the person Marianne remembers.’

  She took his towel, after a brief tussle. ‘We might as well get just the one dirty. We can share a clean one tomorrow.’

  ‘In England he’d certainly be classed as some kind of posh spiv – but that’s because there are so many thousands of rules and restrictions on everything there. I know we’ve only been in Germany less than a day but I already get the feeling that there’s a lot more enterprise and . . . I don’t know – freedom to do things here.’

  ‘I can’t wait to see what sort of woman Birgit is.’

  In fact, ‘Frau’ Treite was a surprise to them both. They half-expected a bubbleheaded showgirl, ignorant but self-assured, ten years his junior and pneumatic of build; but she was, if anything, slightly older than him, dark, reserved, and lissom in a little black dress. She wore small diamond earrings and an intaglio brooch depicting a lady in profile, in ivory on a brown enamel ground; that, too, was ringed in diamonds. Everything about her was tasteful and understated. Angela suspected that Treite would not marry her until he felt he was good enough to deserve her.

  But when the introductions were over and Manhattans poured out she said, ‘And it’s true you both survived the KLS?’

  ‘Katze!’ Treite gave an embarrassed laugh.

  ‘What?’

  He shrugged awkwardly. ‘Anyway, the people who put them in the KLS are either hanged or in jail or being hunted like rats. It’s over.’

  ‘The Ravensbrück trials have been held in Hamburg,’ Birgit said. ‘At the Curio House. They say there will be at least three more. They’ve already hanged quite a few.’

  Angela drew breath to name a few of her favourites but Felix cut her short: ‘Did Marianne tell you much about us?’ he asked Treite.

  But it was Birgit who answered with, ‘How is Marianne?’

  ‘You know her, too?’ Felix said.

  She glanced uncertainly at her man, who said, ‘You don’t know?’