“I’ll see how things turn out,” he quietly answered.
“Come on, Didi,” George burst in, “won’t you have another cognac?” George always called her father by his shortened first name, never “Father” or “Dad”, a very modern custom. But his mother-in-law was a different matter for him, so he called her “Mother”, an appellation she particularly enjoyed since she’d never had a son of her own. Not that she regretted having only two daughters, but a son would have been nice, somehow more permanent, she felt.
The two men had a few more glasses of cognac, and eventually they fell asleep on the sofa and in the armchair.
Nora went to the kitchen to begin with the clearing away of the dirty dishes. While she was loading the dishwasher, her mother joined her in the kitchen.
“They’ve all fallen asleep, even little Lisa. Can I give you a hand, my dear?” she asked. Without waiting for an answer, she went to the sink and began to clear things from there, turning on the water tap in order to rinse things, helping her daughter.
For a moment, Nora paused in her work, a serving-dish in her hands, looking at her mother sideways. “Is there anything wrong about Dad travelling to Germany on business?” she carefully enquired. “You don’t seem to approve.”
Her mother didn’t answer immediately but went on with her work at the sink. Nora wondered if she’d heard her, when the slow answer came.
“I don’t mind as long as it’s business.”
“What do you mean?”
“Of course, he has to see other businessmen in Germany, but I’m sure he also has his private agenda. He usually stays much longer than his business requires.”
“How would you know?”
“Well, his PR manager Bob Jenkins also thinks so. He told me so one evening when he was a bit tipsy at a party.”
“Did he tell you what kept Dad longer in Germany, then?”
“Of course, he didn’t have a clue either. He was just wondering, like myself.”
Nora thought for a moment before she answered. “You know, he’s been thinking back to his old days in Germany more often recently, don’t you?”
“He never tells me. But I can see he’s worried about something.”
“It’s probably because things have changed so much over there. Perhaps he wants to visit his old places, you know the places he knew as a child or as a young man, now that the borders are open, and you can travel all over Germany.”
The two women were silent, continuing with their work in the kitchen, both of them lost in thought. When at last the kitchen was in perfect order again, the door of the dishwasher was closed, and the button was pressed, the mother remarked, “I only hope it’s not a woman.”
Nora was shocked. Her father would never deceive her mother. He had such high moral principles. He’d never start an affair with another woman.
“I’m sure it isn’t,” she said with firmness.
“Well, I’m not so sure,” the mother slowly murmured.
“But you’ve got no proof, have you?”
“No, I haven’t. But I have this strange gut-feeling. When you know your husband, you can feel when he begins to lose interest in you. He doesn’t look at you the same way he used to, he doesn’t always tell you everything, and things like that. I just feel there must be another woman.”
Nora reassured her mother and comforted her with the observation that many older men were losing some of their former enthusiasm for their wives, and they needed their little secrets. Besides, what could it concern her even if he had a small affair with a woman in Germany who could never be a threat to her marriage, which of course was not the case with Dad?
Eventually, they dropped the subject. It was not mentioned again for many months. Meanwhile, Didi Woolf travelled to Germany more often. This was understood by his family and quietly accepted by everyone even though he gradually retired from his post with the American company. Already in 1987, when he reached 65, he had taken what they called semi-retirement, and between 1987 and 1989 he still kept some of his duties, especially the company’s important contacts with some of their Continental branches. They had said at the time that it was quite unusual for them to keep on an employee beyond his official retirement age, but because he was so popular with the Continental branches and his know-how was nearly indispensable for the company, he managed to convince them of the necessity of his continued service. He was generally considered as something like an éminence grise behind many of the more important decisions. However, by the beginning of 1990, he was finally an old age pensioner, a fully retired man with a golden retirement package in his bank account. Nobody, not even his wife, knew quite how much they’d given him, but Margaret, who knew more about these things and who spoke to Nora on the telephone from Boston, estimated a six-figure number.
Still he travelled to Germany from time to time. He said he wanted to remain up-to-date in German politics of the day, and he could keep on some of his former business contacts on a private basis. As he explained, he now had several good friends in Germany.
Later that year, as he was returning to England after his visit to Germany for the Reunification ceremony, Nora found another opportunity to speak to him privately, just between the two of them.
He was nervous. After telling his daughter everything about his activities in Frankfurt and Berlin, he fell silent.
Nora asked a daring question. “And what were your private activities over there? You know Mum thinks you’re having an affair.”
“Not really.”
“What do you mean, not really?”
“It’s a lot more complicated. I can’t tell you everything.”
“Well, just try. You know you can trust me. I won’t tell anybody.”
“You remember what I told you about that awful man who was following me around whenever I was in Germany?”
“Wolfgang, that was his name, yes?”
“Yes, Wolfgang Löffel. He made life difficult for me and an old acquaintance of mine.”
“Just an acquaintance of yours? A woman?”
“Yes, she used to be my girlfriend when we were kids. Her name’s Anna.”
“Are you still in love with her?”
“It’s not what you think. My feelings for her are not the issue. It’s what Wolfgang has done to her and what he’s told her about me. I can’t tell you all the details. Please, don’t tell Mum. Otherwise she will jump to the wrong conclusions.”
“What would be the right conclusions then?”
The father didn’t answer for quite some time. They both looked at each other. This was a crucial point in their relationship: Father and daughter asking themselves how much they could trust each other with sensitive information.
At last he found the right words. “Anna has never stopped loving me, but I have done some bad things which make it impossible for me to meet her again and face her with a clean conscience. Wolfgang has poisoned everything, he’s destroyed everything that has ever been of value between her and me.”
“And what are you trying to do now? What do you do when you’re in Germany? Are you meeting people? Are you trying to clear your good name in her eyes, or what?”
“I don’t think I’ll be able to do that. And I think I should just let things be. It’s no use. Perhaps I’m to blame as much as Wolfgang.”
“So when are you going to Germany again? And where will you be going? Does she live in Berlin?”
“No, she still lives in our old home town, a small town called Gera. It’s in Thuringia. I don’t know if I can go back.”
“Do you still have other old acquaintances in that town?”
“That’s what I don’t know. They’re probably all dead by now. Certainly, my own family are all dead, my Mum died before the War, Dad died in 1955, and my older brother Thomas went missing dur
ing the War.”
“Yes, I know,” Nora said. “You told us ages ago. But what about other old friends? I mean, you’re only 68. That’s not so very old. You might still find some people you knew and who knew you in Gera. Have you been there recently?”
“No, I haven’t been back for a very long time. And I probably won’t. It hurts too much.”
“So you haven’t actually seen this Anna woman on any of your business trips?”
“The last time I saw her was in 1939.”
“Then how do you know all those things about her?”
“First Wolfgang told me things, then he put me in touch with a cousin of Anna’s in Leipzig, a younger cousin called Henrietta. I met her several times. She’d spent most of the War with Anna’s family in Gera. So she knew her very well, and they kept in touch when Henrietta moved to Leipzig after the War. She told me many things I had missed through my absence in the West. There were good things, but also some terrible things.”
The father looked into the middle distance. Nora detected some tears in his eyes and decided to let things be for the moment. What she had learnt from her father gave her a lot of food for thought. She needed time to reflect, to decide whether to do anything about Dad’s story, whether to tell anyone, and if so, who could she tell?
* * *
In January, Mother had a heart attack. She was taken to the hospital, and after two weeks she was released. In March, Didi and Emily Woolf informed their daughters and their families that they were going to move south. The weather in Newcastle was too unhealthy for them, and they felt they were getting on in years. So they did what many retired people did if they could afford it: They moved to Eastbourne, the charming seaside town in East Sussex which, because of its attraction for retired people, was sometimes nicknamed “God’s waiting-room.” And indeed, the town had always had a very mild climate, with more sunshine than its neighbouring town of Brighton, due to the South Downs. This climate was ideal for elderly people. So the town boasted a great number of retirement flats, old people’s homes and special care homes. On sunny days, one could always find large crowds of elderly people with walking-sticks or in wheelchairs sitting along the flower-beds on the seafront, near the Victorian pier, surrounded by screeching seagulls.
Due to Didi’s substantial retirement package and because they got an excellent price for their big house in Gosforth, they could afford a very nice house in the more elegant part of Eastbourne called the Meads. It was only a five minutes’ walk from the seafront and within walking distance from the local village shops, with life in the Meads still feeling like village-life. One didn’t go down to the town centre of Eastbourne, which was below one’s standards. If one needed things from big shops, such as fashionable clothes, one naturally went over to Brighton or even up to London. Shopping in Eastbourne was for the lower classes. In other words, the Meads area was full of what people up in Newcastle would have called “snobs from the South.” However, the Woolfs soon found some friendly neighbours who were anything but snobs. Also, ever since his retirement, Didi had developed a taste for real ales, and the Pilot Inn, which was the local pub, offered some rather good brews. His regular visits to the pub got him in touch with even more friendly locals.
Of course, now they were much closer to Nora and her family. So, Nora often spent a pleasant afternoon with her parents, especially with her mother, on the seafront in Eastbourne or, when the weather was fine enough, up on the slopes of the South Downs. She was a little afraid, though, of the cliffs at Beachy Head. Whenever they walked up to the top of the cliffs she had bad nightmares in the following night, seeing her children falling down over the edge into the shingle below. This was because someone had told her that Beachy Head was the suicide-point number one in Britain, with an average of two suicides per month, because it was physically so easy just to jump down from the cliff. Her mother laughed at her. There was no need for fear if you were careful enough to stay away from the cliff edge. The children were warned accordingly, so on their usual walks over the Downs they always kept well away from the edge.
Mother’s second heart attack came in July. This time, the ambulance was too late. By the time the paramedics bent down over her prostrated figure in the living-room, Emily Woolf had left this world behind.
Twelve
The funeral was a very sad affair. There weren’t a great many people, since the Woolfs had only moved to Eastbourne a relatively short while ago and hadn’t had time to build up a large circle of friends. Some of their old friends came down from Newcastle, and Margaret managed to fly in from the States, albeit without her family.
Nora and George left their children with their neighbour. It was a fine day with a blue sky and only a few clouds travelling over the Downs. Nora hugged her sister in the car-park of the crematorium, which was situated at the town’s eastern edge, just off the road to Pevensey. They didn’t speak many words. They both felt that their mother had left them too early.
Later, Nora held her father’s arm as they entered the Hydro Hotel for the wake. He hadn’t shed any tears and hadn’t spoken to any of the funeral guests. Nora acted as a sort of hostess for everyone, while George looked after the practicalities of the arrangements. Margaret couldn’t dry her eyes, her tears kept pouring out even after they’d all left the crematorium.
Once seated, Nora sitting between her father and her husband, Margaret on their father’s right, the general silence that always prevails at the beginning of a wake gradually melted as people started to talk in low voices, and eventually the room was full of chatter. Nora asked her father if anyone was expected to make a speech. Instead of answering her he stood up and touched his glass with his knife. The guests fell silent.
“Dear family and friends,” he began, “I am not a great speaker, and I’m certainly not going to bore you with a long speech. However, I’d like to thank you for your sympathy and support in this dark hour for me. Thank you all for attending this last farewell for my dear Emily, I really appreciate it enormously.”
Everyone expected this to be the end of his speech. But he didn’t sit down, and after a long pause, which caused people to look at one another with puzzled faces, he raised his voice again.
“You know, I have seen many things in my life, and I have done many things, some good things and some not so good things. Sad as I am over dear Emily’s passing, nevertheless there’s a blessing in the fact that she could go before she had to learn about my bad things. Like this, she has left this world with a good image of her old husband.”
He paused again. Nora could see that what he’d said was received with mixed reactions, some people obviously thought he was joking, others considered his words a misplaced understatement, while yet others were merely shaking their heads. There was general puzzlement in the air.
Would he say any more?
He stood for over a minute, hesitating, before he sat down. He uttered a puffy sigh and looked down at the white table-cloth.
“Are you all right, Dad?” Nora enquired in a kind voice.
“Just give me a moment,” was his reply.
While everybody was busy with the food and the general conversation became more animated, Nora lost herself in deep thought. What her father had said struck her as part of a pattern which she had observed over the past few years. Sometimes there was no indication of such a pattern for months at a time, but occasionally - and more regularly in recent times, as it seemed to her - he said things that fitted the pattern. She couldn’t exactly define what the pattern was, but it had something to do with her father’s past, with his life before he’d met his wife, with Germany and with some of his former acquaintances there. He appeared to feel guilty about something that must have happened a long time ago. It might have been connected with that Wolfgang fellow, or perhaps with his old girlfriend Anna.
She remembered what he’d told her a few months ago and tried to
put together all the different pieces in the puzzle of his life. For one thing, there was Wolfgang, who must have done some bad things that involved Dad and Anna. But Dad said that he’d done some bad things, too, something that he keeps referring to more often now. What else could he have meant in his speech now? Suddenly, Nora’s mind fell back on her old interest in history and particularly in German history before and during the Second World War. How could her father have been involved? He’d said that almost everyone back then had done things that were not right. She could easily understand that. The Nazi system must have brainwashed most of the German people. So, he could just feel guilty about his own weakness when he believed what everyone else believed, namely that Hitler was a great leader and the German race was born to rule the world. But there had to be more. Why could Wolfgang bear him a grudge for which he was trying to make life difficult for him? Was it rather political? Or was it a private matter, involving Anna? Nora couldn’t find a reasonable explanation, or only in parts. If she had more time at her hands, she could travel to Germany and meet some people who’d known her father in the past. Or would she have to go to Switzerland, rather than Germany? After all, he’d spent some time there after the War, and what bothered his conscience now might have something to do with what he experienced there. What a pity she didn’t have the time to follow up these trails.
She was shaken out of her thoughts when her sister Margaret bent over her shoulders from behind. “Have you got time for a private chat later?” she breathed into her ear.
“Of course,” Nora replied.
Then the man opposite her at the table asked her a question about how her father was coping with the bereavement, to which she answered with the usual formulas. The man was a former business colleague of her father’s who had been quite a good friend up to his own retirement a few years back, when her father was still very active from his Newcastle base. His name was Ken Hughes and he still lived up north, she believed somewhere near Durham. She tried to be polite and responded to his friendly conversation with her best manners. But throughout the conversation, and indeed for the rest of the wake, her mind kept in touch with her former thoughts.
White Lies Page 19
