by Jessica Mann
Tamara had almost forgotten she was in a shop. She said hastily, ‘Of course. Can I help you?’
‘May I just have a look round?’
‘Yes, do. I mean, I’m sure that’s all right. I’m just minding the shop for the owner.’
‘Ah. I thought you didn’t look quite what I expected.’
His eyes were that very piercing blue that Tamara unscientifically associated with sexiness, under feather shaped, slightly glossy eyebrows: mid-thirties, probably, or perhaps older, forty even. A beautiful man, she thought appreciatively, remembering how her dead lover, Ian Barnes, always insisted that men could be handsome but not beautiful. But then he had been neither himself.
The man moved around the room, taking books from the shelves, leafing through them and replacing them.
‘Are you looking for anything in particular?’ Tamara said.
‘I am interested in art history. I deal in fine art.’
‘Really? Do you specialise at all?’
‘Paintings, sculpture, objets d’art.’
‘Well, I think upstairs is the place to look.’ Tamara heard Margot call her name from below. ‘Can you manage? I must just go down a moment – there’s an invalid in the house.’
‘Of course. Don’t bother about me.’
Margot wanted a drink and an audience. She was peevish at Jeremy’s absence. ‘You would have thought – I mean, it’s not as though . . .’ She thought it was his duty to stay by her side.
Tamara plumped the sour smelling pillows and left the full glass within easy reach. ‘I must go upstairs, Margot, there’s a customer.’
‘Really, it’s too bad. Jeremy shouldn’t . . .’
‘Not a bit. I’m enjoying myself.’
Up again to the beautiful young man.
Surprised at herself, Tamara thought the words, I really fancy him.
He was standing by the fireplace, reading the typescript of Margot’s work.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Tamara took it from his hands, and adjusted the rubber bands over the blue cardboard folder. ‘That isn’t part of the stock. It’s something I’m reading for a friend.’
‘It looks interesting,’ he said. ‘Are you a historian?’
‘I am an archaeologist.’
‘We are allies, then. Though most prehistory is beyond me.’
‘What period do you specialise in?’
‘I don’t specialise. I supply what clients tell me they want. At present I’m in London on behalf of an American client.’
‘You mean, they tell you to find them a Rembrandt?’
‘It is not so difficult as you make it sound. Tomorrow I shall look at an alleged Giotto. I have a good eye.’
Tamara stared into his good eyes. If our genders were reversed, she thought, I’d pinch his bottom. And then I’d ask him if he was doing anything tonight. And then . . . but it was the wrong place and time. The shadowed books, climbing out of sight in the dusk, muffled their words. The thought flashed through Tamara’s mind that she was in a graveyard, where high ambitions were buried. What greater intimation of futility could there be than the sight of these forgotten offerings?
‘A Giotto?’ she said. ‘It doesn’t sound likely.’
He turned at the sound of the front door slamming closed. Jeremy Ellice came into the room, carrying his loaded basket, his sparse, dark hair stuck by rain to his forehead.
‘A customer, Jeremy,’ Tamara said.
‘I came in to have a look at your art books,’ the customer said.
Jeremy turned on the lights to show the way upstairs. ‘Was there anything in particular?’
Margot’s voice came faintly up. ‘Is that you, Jem? Have you got my tablets?’ Jeremy’s lips tautened and he darted an unloving look in the direction of his sister’s summons.
‘You’ll have to excuse me for a moment. Would you go on up? Tamara, I’m eternally grateful, goodbye.’ Her coat was on the banisters, and he held it out for her, before going down the stairs.
Tamara opened the front door, and found that the customer was following her down the steps. She said, ‘What about your books?’
‘I shall look in a moment. Tamara. A pretty name.’
‘Tamara Hoyland.’
‘Kim Rice.’
‘How do you do.’
‘Just at present I do extremely well, thank you, and if you come to lunch with me tomorrow and look at the Giotto with me, I shall do even better.’
‘Alleged Giotto.’
‘The Tate Gallery? One o’clock?’
I made him say that, she thought, pulling away from the kerb in her tiny yellow car. I willed it.
Tamara turned the car in a neighbour’s drive. Kim Rice was still watching her, standing beside the open front door that seemed so unlikely an entrance to an emporium of books. Were many ordinary looking houses in residential streets places where commercial treasures changed hands? It threw a new light on suburban London.
But then, she reminded herself, anything can happen behind our secretive front doors. Only a few miles downhill and to the south was the house in Bayswater where Tamara had learnt the skills that had put Margot’s attacker to flight. It was called, on a tiny sign fixed to its railings, Health and Happiness House for Ladies and Gentlemen. I got more than a tanned skin and flat tummy there, she thought, weaving through the traffic with a verve that a different instructor had refined; and when she opened the front door of the house she lived in, her lips twitched in amusement at her own automatic caution as she obeyed the well-remembered rules: to fling the door inwards standing to one side; to listen before entering; to climb the stairs inaudibly; to act, if she was going to act, without hesitation. Yes, the faces of houses and of people could be equally well disguised.
Tamara Hoyland had completely redecorated her apartment since Ian Barnes, who had lived in it with her, died. Its contents had been sparse and mechanical, and she had replaced them with the kind of things that might have furnished this early nineteenth-century house when it was first built. She had painted the walls a sunny yellow, introduced an Empire bed, an embroidered carpet and chintz curtains. Winter flowering jasmine was creeping all over the large skylight and on the window sills pots of hyacinths and daffodils were just coming into bloom. The impression was of an old fashioned room in the country, but the gadgets were modern
Electronic eyes tracked the faces of callers to the house, and of those who were admitted to climb the stairs and wait outside Tamara’s fortified door. A system of bells and lights would frighten any intruder who managed, improbably, to breach the outer defences; another system carried immediate warnings to permanently manned guardrooms whence rescuers could be instantly dispatched. Disguised switches could activate recorders of sight and sound. Booby traps awaited unwary attackers, not least the booby trap that a ferociously trained and experienced Tamara represented to anyone who supposed her to be a weak or submissive female.
After two years of working for Department E, Tamara was accustomed to the precautions she took and the protection she attracted, and had never, in fact, needed to activate it. To her, the fortified room was a homely refuge and her daily life in it was unsophisticated, and hardly aided by modern gadgetry, so now she filled a rubber hot water bottle from a kettle boiled on a gas ring, and went to bed, with Margot’s manuscript, in bedsocks.
Chapter Eight
Artemis von Horn grew rapidly resigned to the unpopularity of her own country in Prussia. Later evidence confirms the impression she recorded in her letters; for instance, an observer recorded that the Queen of Prussia’s Mistress of the Robes refused to be introduced to a British diplomat, and a Prussian officer’s wife leant across her neighbour, an English lady, at a state banquet, to complain to the Prussian on her other side, ‘Je déteste les Anglaises.’
The Princess Royal of England, Princess Frederick William of Prussia, caused offence from the very beginning of her married life by having the ceremony in England. Everyone in Germany inferred that she had the wrong
attitude towards her new country, and Artemis heard much gossip to that effect, in the weeks after her own, and before the royal marriage.
In the middle of January, Joachim and Artemis were summoned to Berlin to greet the royal couple on their arrival. Artemis was relieved to be without her gaggle of new relations, since none of them chose to welcome the English alliance. Joachim was a friend of Prince Frederick William. They had studied together at the University of Bonn, where they had discussed reforms and liberalisation, and an additional message had commanded Artemis’s presence. ‘Her Royal Highness will be pleased to see the face of another English bride.’
Every man wore uniform, every woman many-layered skirts, with bare shoulders. The Court waited at the top of the Grand Staircase in the palace until cheering, unusual in Berlin, showed that the party had arrived. Artemis told Clementine how the Princess Royal had come running up the steps to sink in a low curtsey before her father-in-law, the Prince of Prussia, whom she had known in London. His Royal Highness had moved aside to greet his son before the Princess rose, her cheek tilted for the kiss he did not bestow, and I heard the Queen say, ‘You must be very cold.’ They say that the Queen is another who regrets the English match. But Her Royal Highness was quickly tactful. ‘I have only one warm place, and that is my heart.’ To me, as she made her cercle, she said, ‘I shall be glad to number you among my ladies.’ Little did we imagine, dear Clementine, that the day would come when one of us was to be an attendant upon a future Queen of Prussia! Yet I believe it may be an agreeable experience for me. HRH has not the air of one who is unhappy, or who has been forced into an unwelcome match for reasons of state.
Artemis must have looked for traces of similar coercion to that she had experienced, but the Princess Royal, unlike her, was blissfully happy, and Artemis did find that she enjoyed being at court. She found herself in the company of friendly girls of her own age, for the highborn dowagers appointed to the English Princess’s entourage only appeared on formal occasions and the Countess Perponcher, who was nominally in charge of the younger ladies-in-waiting, was pregnant and unwell. Vicky spent most of her time with the two young Prussian girls, Walpurga von Hohenthal and Marie Lynar, and with Artemis. They played schoolroom games together, ludo or draughts or halma, and, when they felt energetic, chased each other along the marble corridors of the Berliner Schloss, playing hide-and-seek in the dark, stuffy rooms, or frightening each other with macabre stories about the local ghost, known as the White Lady. They sang part-songs, painted, modelled in clay, and even carried on their education. Princess Vicky was glad to discuss the politics and history she had studied, and used to write essays on such topics as Ministerial Responsibility which she sent home for her father to correct.
Prussian men spent their time on military manoeuvres, from dawn until dusk and after.
The Princess Royal: Isn’t it hard on wives like ourselves, Artemis, that our husbands are always busy elsewhere.
Artemis: It seems to be the lot of Prussian ladies, Ma’am.
HRH (almost in tears): At home Papa and Mamma are always together. This is not what I expected at all.
I wonder what she did expect, Artemis wrote to Clementine. At the same time Vicky was writing to the Queen that her ladies were more like sisters than servants to her. Artemis’s letters do not give the impression that she felt sisterly emotions towards her royal mistress. The gulf fixed by royalty between itself and its servants was too wide for Vicky to know what real friendship between girls of eighteen could be. She said that her ladies were respectful, and so they had to be. The Queen had warned her daughter, ‘No familiarity, no loud laughing; kindness, friendliness and civility, but no familiarity except with your parents-in-law. Never let yourself go, or forget what you owe to yourself.’
Wally Hohenthal and Marie Lynar accepted Vicky’s occasionally chilling dignity without question, but Artemis had not been educated to revere the institution of royalty; rather, Mrs Lambert had spoken wistfully of the times she recalled from her own youth when all the thrones of Europe were tottering. Even Queen Victoria wondered then whether she should train her children for life as commoners. Mrs Lambert could remember the present, now senile, King of Prussia, when he had been forced to appease the populace by riding round Berlin saluting the bodies of the demonstrators his soldiers had shot, and handing out democratic pamphlets. At the same time his brother (now Vicky’s father-in-law) had fled to exile in London. It would probably be high treason to mention those days in the Berlin of 1858, but Artemis often thought about them when she watched the stately processions of the Hohenzollerns at their court. The English Princess Royal was probably the only one of them who felt anything but a bored distaste for the ordinary people they ruled.
HRH: At home it is a lady’s duty to tend her poor.
The Princess of Prussia (her mother-in-law): Here a lady’s duty is to tend her prayers and her family.
HRH: At home we have encouraged the provision of museums and art galleries for the people, of public libraries and charitable hospitals.
The Mistress of the Robes: The English Princess does not think that Prussia is good enough for her.
HRH: It is for us to initiate improvements.
The Princess of Prussia: It is not for you to decide where they are needed.
HRH (weeping): Papa has always taught me to say what I know to be right. Speak the truth and shame the devil.
In the same way that the princely family of Horn had ignored their attendants, who stood waiting to serve them in silence, the Prussian Royal Family ignored Artemis or Wally or Marie as they waited, not daring to lean against the wall; Artemis tried to distract her mind from her own physical malaises (she was feeling sick, and her back ached) by remembering details to write in her letters to Clementine. She saw that the English connection was increasingly unpopular. The Princess Royal’s education had reinforced her natural stubbornness, and in any case, no princess brought up in the artificial environment of a court could be expected to recognise her own limitations. Vicky’s pretty manners concealed an ineradicable arrogance and self-will.
One of the things Vicky was determined to do was explore the town of Berlin; this had not been forbidden, only because it never crossed anyone’s mind that she could think of such a thing.
HRH: We shall go incognita.
Marie: Oh, Ma’am, I don’t think we should. Your RH will be recognised.
HRH: There is no reason why we should seem different from other ladies.
Wally: But, Ma’am, other ladies do not do such things in Berlin.
Marie: But, Ma’am, your coachman’s livery will be known at once.
HRH: Nonsense, I have made up my mind. Tell the coachman to stop. I intend to walk.
(HRH walks, followed by ladies who wring their hands and wail.)
HRH: Look at the state those buildings are in. Something must be done.
Wally: It is only where the very poorest people live, Ma’am.
HRH: We have nothing so disgraceful at home. But it is my duty to see living conditions at their worst. Where should I look?
Wally & Marie (chorus): I don’t know, Ma’am.
HRH: I am determined to find out.
Marie (beginning to weep: she will be scolded by the Countess Perponcher for permitting this excursion): Oh, Ma’am, please take care.
The streets of Berlin were filthy channels between the buildings, with no paving for vehicles, no duckboards for pedestrians, or drainage of any kind. After rain, or in melting snow, they were deep in noisome mud. On main roads planks raised on stones allowed cleaner passage, but when an officer approached civilians stepped off into the mud to let him pass, and all pedestrians flattened themselves against the walls to keep clear of the unswerving troops of cavalry. No Prussian soldier would alter his course for a working class man, woman or child, nor be reprimanded if he ran one down.
HRH: At home the military may not frighten citizens so.
Wally: Oh, Ma’am, you are spattered with mud. Y
our dress . . .
HRH: You observe that the only building in good repair is the barracks.
Marie: Oh, Ma’am, may we not return? The district is not fit for you.
HRH: We shall continue.
The three ladies followed the Princess’s small, determined figure into a slightly less insalubrious street in which the ground floor rooms of most houses were used as shops. Some sold books or artists’ materials. A portrait was displayed in one, and when Vicky paused to look at it, she exclaimed, ‘It is my Grandmamma, Papa’s mamma, Princess Louise of Saxe Coburg.’
Prince Albert’s mother had run away from her disreputable husband, leaving behind the two small sons whom she never saw again, and died seven years later in exile. Inventive gossips said that she had loved her Jewish Chamberlain, and that he, not the Duke, was the father of Prince Albert.
Ignoring the protests of Marie and Wally, Vicky led the way into the shop, which consisted of a tiny, dark room, with stairs leading out of one corner into what must be the living quarters. The goods for sale were not displayed, but stored in leather trunks, and the counter was a small table covered with a red cloth. The shopkeeper came into the room through another door in the back wall, a bearded, patriarchal figure, with a small skull cap on his head.
Wally Hohenthal drew in her breath, and muttered, ‘A Jew.’
Vicky assumed her rare, quelling dignity, and commanded her to wait outside with Marie Lynar. Artemis alone was to remain.
Artemis noted that the Princess showed no prejudice against Jews or any other class of person, perhaps because her conviction that royalty was invariably superior made all other mortals equal in her sight.
The Shopkeeper: May I assist the noble ladies?
HRH: We should like to see the engraving in the window.
Shopkeeper: It is by Kriehuber, as the noble lady will see. The subject is not known.
