by James Runcie
He missed her German; the way she sang Bach’s aria ‘Flösst, mein Heiland, flösst dein Namen’ as she crossed from room to room, getting out the decorations for the Christmas tree, the pewter moon and stars, the little hanging gingerbread house, the frosted lanterns. He could still hear her teaching Anna to count in German from an early age, singing her nursery rhymes and lullabies – ‘Schlaf, Kindlein, schlaf’ – and he recalled the way the two of them would laugh at his attempts to join in when they sang, accusing him, so unfairly, of being tone deaf.
He remembered how, after the death of her first husband, he had first tried to show Hildegard his rudimentary German by repeating his two opening gambits, asking if she liked football (the question for men) and if she wanted to dance (the question for women). She had laughed at his pronunciation and his grammar but they had danced for a little moment in her front room all the same.
Had he known even then? he wondered. He was sure, now he said it to himself, that very first time; oh, at last, here you are, you are the person that I was meant to have found, thank God, thank you.
He thought of the long shadow of the war, of Hildegard’s bravery in coming to England and staying, her forgiveness and tolerance in the succeeding years and her acceptance of those who were still anti-German, only showing her nationality during World Cup football and by refusing to watch Dad’s Army, Colditz and Where Eagles Dare (even going to see The Sound of Music had been problematic). Her English became so fluent that people didn’t realise she was originally from Leipzig, but she still had trouble with certain aspects of pronunciation, bringing the letter ‘r’ to the front of her mouth when she was tired, so that words like ‘terrible’ became ‘te-ch-rible’, and ‘Thursday’ sounded as ‘Sssirstay’.
Sidney remembered how she only referred to him as ‘mein Lieber’ when she was cross with him; and how, on their last wedding anniversary, they had been too tired to make love.
Although she hated being teased, Hildegard insisted that she did have a sense of humour. She thought that it was funny to tell her favourite joke about a balloon with claustrophobia at every children’s party even though it could only be understood in German: ‘Ein Ballon sagt zum anderen: “Ich hab’ Platzangst.”’ He remembered the time she had laughed most, when he had told her his own joke about the English couple who adopted a German baby that said nothing until he was five years old. The new parents were very worried but little appeared to be wrong. Then, one day, the boy said: ‘This strudel is tepid.’ His mother shouted out with excitement: ‘Hans, you can speak! Why have you not spoken before?’ To which Hans replied: ‘Because up until now everything has been satisfactory.’
Sidney walked through the house and imagined his wife calling him as she opened the front door. Ich bin’s. It’s only me. He could still hear the sound of her keys landing on the hall table and remembered how he would get up from his desk and meet her as she came to find him. Da bin ich wieder. Here I am. Sometimes he closed his eyes and held out his arms as she approached so that he could simply feel the precision of her kiss on his lips – bin wieder da – before she took off her hat, coat and gloves and sought out the next task.
The hall was empty of people. A letter from Germany was waiting in the rack, the dog lead hung on a hook over Hildegard’s wellington boots, just by the walking stick that she had bought in order to be ‘a proper English countrywoman’.
Sidney followed his imaginary wife into the kitchen and couldn’t decide whether to make himself a cup of tea or pour out a drink of something stronger but settled on the speed of a glass of water as he remembered Hildegard singing as she cooked, with Anna shelling the peas or folding the almond mixture for Leipziger Lerche into the brown mixing bowl. He could see his wife turning to smile and asking him to lay the table, insisting on linen napkins even though it meant more washing and ironing. At breakfast she would always express surprise that he still ate his boiled eggs the wrong way round, with the big end at the top, because even though he would get the full flavour first, it meant there would only be white for the last spoonful and the meal would culminate in disappointment. If he ate them in the correct way, she insisted, with the little end at the top, then the experience would be one of continuous improvement. That was how a meal should be, she explained. It was like a piece of music, a three-part sonata; and she never did trust her husband to time eggs, roast meat so that it cooked through as it rested, or prepare red cabbage in the proper German way.
Finally she had given up on his foibles, just as he had decided not to contradict her when she told him, in one of her frequent battles to lose weight after the traditional Christmas excess of goose, Stöllen, Zimsterne and Lebkuchen, that potatoes were not fattening. It was just the butter that was the trouble, and black bread didn’t really count towards calories either and dark chocolate was perfectly acceptable as a dessert for those on a diet. At the same time, Sidney was grateful, although he had never quite said it enough, that his wife never complained when they went to meals with parishioners and Hildegard was given the English cuisine she could not stand: eggs in aspic, devilled kidneys, cauliflower cheese, bloody rare beef and banana fritters.
He took his glass of water through to the living room and looked at the only picture they had of Hildegard’s father, taken at a communist rally in 1932, the year before he was shot dead. It was next to the mantel clock her mother had sent them shortly after they were married and Hildegard’s first ever gift to him: a porcelain figurine of a girl feeding chickens. There was a reel of white cotton on the floor by the sofa with a pair of scissors and her little raffia sewing basket. What had she been about to do, Sidney wondered, sew on a button or patch a skirt, and what could have taken her away from the task?
He placed the glass of water on a coaster and sat down at the piano. He couldn’t decide whether to play a note or not. He looked down at the keys and wished he had learned. Then perhaps he could have practised his grief. He could hear Hildegard playing, swearing whenever she went wrong – Mist, verdammt, meine Güte – before setting off on a long stretch of a Bach partita or a Schubert impromptu and then stopping again – Das kann doch nicht so schwer sein – wishing her fingers could work faster and were more precise – hoping, just once, that she could see a piece through to her satisfaction. At the treble end of the piano was a half-squeezed tube of handcream, a decorated lacquer box containing gold and silver stars for her pupils’ music, worn-down pencils, a rubber, a sharpener and a metronome. He could hear her calling out encouragement, sometimes playing along two octaves higher, insisting on practice and repetition, breaking the music down into sections and then building it up again, like a swimmer emerging from a dive and heading out into open sea.
He left the room and remembered his wife’s tread on the stairs as she came up to bed, carrying Horlicks or hot chocolate, placing it by his side and then making a final check on Anna before the top light went out and she reached to hold his hand in hers. Then they would turn into their comfortable sleeping arrangement, she on her left side and he on his stomach (what she laughingly called his ‘royal position’ that took up more than half the space), and fall asleep.
Now Sidney sat on the bed in his daughter’s room, surrounded by rag dolls, teddies and stuffed animals. On the wall were posters of horses and ponies, and a childhood painting of a clown. He remembered his daughter’s favourite joke when she was a little girl. (What did the crocodile say when he was eating a clown? ‘This tastes funny.’) On the chest of drawers was the Black Forest weather house she had been given several Christmases ago, a photograph of her in the front row of the school netball team and the record player they had bought for her eleventh birthday. It had last played Black and Blue by the Rolling Stones. Her cousin Louis had given it to her. Next to it were copies of Jackie magazine, Anna’s wild-flower press and pony books, recent homework with a drawing of a house and the rooms marked in French, and a pink comb and brush, a tug of blonde hair still attached. He remembered Hildegard patiently untangling it
at the end of summer, before they went down to see his parents. The next time, he would have to do it.
Sidney looked at her favourite felt rabbit resting on the pillow and discovered her mother’s dressing gown hidden beneath it.
He went through to the bathroom and saw the items the family shared: the Imperial Leather soap, the Johnson’s baby shampoo that Anna complained about using because she was no longer a baby, the Colgate toothpaste and the three brushes in a mug: blue, green and pink. He opened the cupboards to look through cosmetics he had never bothered to find out about; foundation and concealer, Pond’s cold cream, several types of lipstick, bottles of Shalimar, 4711 and a new perfume that he knew Hildegard loved: Diorella. There was a razor and cream for shaved legs, tampons, pills for an underactive thyroid and a box of blood-pressure tablets.
He hadn’t discovered enough about Hildegard’s health, her feelings about Rolfe, her fears about the future, Anna, their marriage, old age. He had thought he had understood his wife better than anyone but now he began to question whether he had known her at all. How much of her character remained elusive? Did she deliberately keep things from him or had he lacked curiosity?
He knew that she was fond of Rolfe, and he trusted what she told him, that it was nothing more than affectionate friendship. Sidney had those kinds of friendship himself, not least with Amanda, but why had Hildegard needed to see another man in the first place and what could he offer that Sidney could not? Even though he had wanted their love to be complete, perhaps it was not and he had failed her. But what more could he have done and how could he have made her happier?
Was she happy?
He thought so, content enough, in as much as any human being can ever be free from pain and anxiety. She had never really complained. She had not run off with Rolfe or fled to Germany, not that the simple act of staying was enough to justify her continuing affections – perhaps she was doing so only for Anna – but then Sidney remembered what Hildegard had written on his birthday card earlier that year: ‘if ever beauty I did see, which I desired and got, ’twas but a dream of thee’.
He opened the wardrobe in their bedroom and started to go through his wife’s clothes, divided simply into winter and summer: everyday suits in navy, grey and cream; the hats for church and funerals; the all-purpose knee-length black dress with the square neckline and the three-quarter sleeves; her favourite blouses with the Peter Pan collars and the long pleated skirts that she once said she was too old to wear. He found the midnight-blue satin ballgown she had once worn for the Lord Mayor’s Christmas party and then said she hated; and there amidst the wobbly hangers holding slips and shawls was the famous floral summer dress that Sidney had not liked enough and, when challenged, had made the disastrous observation that it looked as if his wife was wearing ‘half the garden’.
There were dresses, tops, shirts and trousers he was sure that he had never seen before; a white blazer, a duck-egg-blue cotton smock, a pale-brown trench coat. Below, on a shoe rack, were the lace-up walking shoes Hildegard wore around town, burgundy mules, a pair of ankle-strap stilettos, tan leather slides, ballet flats and Dr Scholl’s summer sandals. They were leaning against a hard-sided suitcase that looked new even though they had had it for years. Sidney sensed once more the regret that he hadn’t taken his wife abroad more often, he hadn’t earned enough, he hadn’t appreciated her.
He remembered her getting up in the mornings, often before him, putting her clothes on in the dark and then coming back and changing them in the light because she had not been able to tell if her tights were blue or black and, besides, the outfit didn’t work and it was safer to wear what she always wore. Perhaps there should be a uniform for piano teachers and clergy wives, she had once suggested, and Sidney had said there might as well be one, since the pressure to conform to the norms of polite society was still rife.
He sat on the bed and studied the chest of drawers that contained his wife’s underwear, tights, gloves, scarves and jewellery. Underneath a framed print of Vermeer’s View of Delft were framed photographs of their marriage, of Anna’s first day at school, of a holiday on Rügen Island. They were propped up in front of her purse, yesterday’s earrings, and a book that she was in the middle of reading: Heinrich Böll’s The Train Was on Time. Inside, marking her place, was a postcard: ‘Ich bin so froh, Du hattest Zeit mich zu besuchen. Mit lieben Grüßen, Dein Rolfe.’
So glad you had the time to see me?
When had that been?
And ‘Dein Rolfe’ – ‘Your Rolfe’?
It had to be said that the man was persistent.
Had Sidney loved his wife enough? What was ‘enough’? If love could be measured, he thought, surely it did not count as love? His affection should be indefinable, unfathomable, unaccountable, beyond measure. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways . . .
Now that it was gone there was nothing left to count.
He could try, he thought, to resume a normal life as priest and father – indeed he would have to – but he would only be occupying a part, like an actor unable to remember his lines.
That night, Sidney lay down on the right of the bed, keeping his wife’s side empty, and then, when he could stand it no more, he turned over and onto it, lying across it, stomach down, as if smothering her absence, the obliteration of desire.
He thought he could hear her voice, telling him she was still with him, but it was only the wind.
Ich bin bei dir.
The next morning, he went to register the death at the Old School House in Market Street: Hildegard Annaliese Chambers, formerly Staunton, née Leber, born Leipzig 15 June 1923, died Ely 18 October 1976.
It was a day of bright, low sun, the kind of weather, he remembered, that they had had at their wedding. He looked at the last leaves on a sycamore tree outside the registry office and imagined they were either birds or dead souls, waiting to fall into limbo, their grip on the branch of life too frail to hold on for much longer.
When Anna returned home from school – she wanted to go, it would stop her thinking only of Hildegard – she asked her father why, if they thanked God after Louis had come back safely, they didn’t blame him for taking her mother away. ‘He’ was either active in the world or he wasn’t.
‘It’s hard to explain.’
‘Do you understand it, Dad?’
‘I think prayer is a way of trying to understand.’
‘But what if there’s no answer? How can God “explain” this? Mum wasn’t old.’
‘I think that’s why people pray. It is a form of hope.’
‘Even if they are deluded?’
‘It’s not only that. It’s both a way of making sense of the world and a form of submitting; of saying that we cannot know everything. We have to acknowledge our weaknesses, our fallibilities, and understand that not everything revolves around us.’
‘Then I’ll try.’
‘And what will you pray for?’
‘For Mum. I’m going to write her a letter. The funeral director suggested it. Then we can put it in her coffin.’
‘What are you going to say?’
‘All the things I never said to her when she was alive. I’d like you not to read it, Dad. I’d like it to be just between us.’
‘I understand.’
They began to make tea and toast. Anna liked crunchy peanut butter; Sidney preferred honey. He only just stopped himself from pulling down a third mug for his wife. They hadn’t decided what to have for supper.
‘What shall we do about your mother’s wedding ring?’ he asked.
‘Did they take it off?’
‘The undertakers did in case we wanted to keep it. Mothers often give them to their daughters. You can wear it on your right hand.’
‘I’m too young.’
‘You won’t be young for ever.’
‘You should have it, Dad.’
‘Then I’ll keep it for you.’
‘Unless you’d like Mum to be buried with it?’
‘I don’t know, Anna. There are so many decisions to be made and there isn’t enough time.’
‘You never discussed this?’
‘I didn’t think your mother was going to die.’
‘Ever?’
‘If I thought about it too much I was worried it would happen.’
‘That’s a selfish way of thinking, isn’t it?’
Anna said the words sadly but they still sounded more hostile than perhaps she had intended.
‘I’m afraid so,’ Sidney replied. ‘But then I’m not sure that there is any other way. We can’t always help our thoughts.’
‘We can try to stop them. Bad thoughts. Not let them rise.’
‘Or not act on them.’
‘Did you ever ask Mum about Rolfe?’
‘Yes, I did. But let’s not discuss that now.’ Sidney could not help himself. ‘Did you?’
‘You told me not to.’
‘I don’t remember doing that.’
‘You did.’
‘And did you obey?’
‘I hate him, Dad. And I hated her for seeing him. I never knew why she needed him as a friend. And I hated you for seeming not to care.’
‘I did care, Anna. I thought if I showed how much I minded then it would make everything worse.’
‘Do you think Mum was punishing you for Amanda?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve done nothing wrong.’
‘She wanted an Amanda of her own.’
‘No, she had me.’
‘But she didn’t.’
‘She did, Anna. And she liked Amanda.’
‘Not all the time.’
‘When did she say that?’
‘She was annoyed. When you went to that art auction and Amanda bought that stupid painting.’
‘She didn’t tell me.’
‘You were supposed to know, Dad. You were meant to guess. You think you are so sensitive to every situation and you couldn’t even tell if your own wife was happy or not.’
