A Girl Called Flotsam

by John Tagholm

  And just as she had felt a succession taking place even before the death of her own mother, so she looks at her child and knows that it is happening again, that into the hand she is holding the future is flowing.

  She returns, hand in hand with her child, along the foreshore where for six hundred years fish will be unloaded for market until it becomes too difficult to bring them so far into the centre of the city and the ancient site will become offices where businessmen come and go and barely gave the river a backward glance.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  ‘I’m back,’ her mother announced. Beatrice looked at her watch on the bedside table. It was slightly after nine in the morning and she imagined her mother waiting until now to make the call assuming that this is when Beatrice normally started her day. ‘Are you free later?’ Beatrice, in fact, had been up since just before seven and had already had coffee and croissant in her favourite café, a stylish glass cube recently opened within the heart of the old market. Whilst there, she had written an email to Graham Roth informing him of her progress with the Joseph Troumeg story, offering him no details but indicating that she was on to something very interesting and would need to return to France once more. It was both bait and smokescreen. She had thought about calling Harry, but had hesitated and now her mother, with immaculate timing, had come between them. Was she free later? She found it hard to answer, for in one sense she was and in another not at all.

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘You don’t sound frightfully sure.’

  ‘I’m not. Let me call you back.’ And she rang off, not wanting to feel the guilt which her mother would have undoubtedly induced by whatever she would have said next. Instead, she made the call she wished she had made earlier.

  ‘Harry, good morning. I wanted to thank you for yesterday. You got me thinking.’

  ‘How nice to hear from you so early. About what, exactly?’

  ‘I’m not really sure. A number of things, I think. I’ve got to go back to France and I just wanted to tell you.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. It must be so tantalising to be on the edge of piecing all your information together. I’m excited for you. I know what it feels like.’

  She hadn’t expected this response, predicting that he might have been disappointed and so for the second time that morning wasn’t quite sure how to continue the conversation. ‘I’ll call you from Paris. And let me know if you have any more news on Flotsam. I introduced her to my friend Amanda yesterday and she didn’t know what I was talking about.’

  ‘We never went back to the river. Maybe next time. Do give me a call. I’m really keen to know what more you find.’

  It was with a vague sense of dissatisfaction that she rang off although she tried to ignore it and made a call to the Maison Clemenceau instead. Eventually she was put through to Elliot Honeywell, who, although perfectly charming, had no recollection of her visit.

  ‘Beatrice who?’ he said and she carefully took him through who she was and what she was trying to discover.

  ‘I gather that your nephew is looking after some of Odile’s possessions, letters and mementos, that sort of thing,’ she said.

  ‘You know Odile, do you? She was the love of my life.’

  ‘I’m trying to find out more about her and I wonder if you would give me permission to look through some of her stuff.’

  Beatrice wondered if he’d understood and waited, hearing his breathing on the line. ‘What can it matter? She’s dead now. She’s beyond harm, no one can hurt her.’

  ‘I don’t want to hurt her, Mr Honeywell.’

  ‘Do as you will,’ he said.

  Beatrice was uneasy about this less than satisfactory permission and was equally apprehensive about the call she had to make next. Simon Honeywell answered abruptly and his manner didn’t change when she announced herself.

  ‘Changed your tune have you?’

  ‘I’ve been talking to Elliot,’ she said, ignoring his hostility, ‘and I asked permission to read Odile’s letters. He said I could go ahead.’

  ‘And what about my permission?’

  ‘That’s why I’m phoning. I wonder if you would allow me to see them?’ Beatrice knew that he would procrastinate, use the moment to his advantage and she decided to pre-empt the counter proposal by offering a further inducement herself. ‘And I’ll tell you what I have discovered so far. You might be surprised.’

  ‘And how do you intend to do this?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, we could have a drink. I’m coming to Paris tomorrow. We could meet at six, say?’ It was, as she predicted, as easy as that and he agreed, giving her directions to a bar opposite the church of St Sulpice. She already knew that she wouldn’t traduce the memory of Odile by revealing what she had discovered, not all of it at least. It was, like Simon Honeywell, a means to an end.

  This left one more call.

  ‘Hello mother. Sorry to have kept you waiting. How was your trip back from Toulon?’

  ‘France would be fine without the French,’ she said, ‘but the cruise was lovely. I’ll tell you about it later, shall I? The usual place? Good.’

  Beatrice booked Eurostar for the following morning, wrote a note to Amanda to thank her for lunch, enclosing an old dry cleaning bill for Harper and then, having decided to walk, put on her trainers and set off for Oxford Circus taking in the three markets, Spitalfields, Smithfield and Covent Garden. She was feeling strangely light and could have broken into a run, an unusual experience given that she was heading for a lunch with her mother. She was preoccupied with other thoughts, though, and the two miles evaporated in what seemed the blink of an eye. Along the way, somewhere just north of Holborn, where the Fleet flowed unnoticed beneath her feet, she began to think of Flotsam and she wanted to hear Harry talk about her once again, building the picture of her life, his enthusiasm and knowledge giving her dimension and making her real. Somewhere around here, he had told her, she might have played, in the days when the river Fleet could be seen and flowed between banks that rose on either side of the Farringdon Road. It would have been quicker for her to go up to the right, along Holborn, but she veered slightly southwards, through Lincoln’s Inn Fields and then across into Covent Garden where, Harry explained, the early Anglo-Saxons had lived and, who knows, even Flotsam herself. By the time she arrived at John Lewis she was ready to do battle with her mother and had the answer to what she knew would be her opening statement already prepared.

  ‘You’re late.’

  ‘I walked here and it’s hard to gauge time when you’re on foot.’

  ‘You look quite flushed. You’re not ill are you?’

  ‘It took almost two hours. I feel great.’ Everything had to be a skirmish, no warm welcome and how-nice-to-see-you, but pistols drawn at once. Beatrice could barely conceal her smile. ‘In some ways, mother, I’ve never felt better.’

  ‘Goodness, what’s brought this around? It doesn’t mean you’re going to question me again, does it? I sincerely hope not. Maybe it’s another man.’ She looked quickly at her daughter. ‘It usually is.’

  ‘Are you jealous of the men in my life, mother?’

  ‘There, you see, you are going to question me. Of course not. Whatever gave you that idea? And I don’t know why you’ve got that look on your face.’

  Beatrice was still smiling. ‘You were going to tell me about your cruise, I think.’

  ‘Shall we order first.’ Her mother bristled and tried to catch the eye of a waitress.

  ‘Although I really shouldn’t eat another thing after the meals on the ship.’

  ‘I’m going to France again tomorrow,’ Beatrice said. ‘To continue my work.’

  ‘With the man?’

  Beatrice shook her head. ‘I’m going to read some letters written by a German to a French Jew just before the last War.’ Eileen Palmenter frowned at her daughter. ‘I thought you might be interested to know more.’

  ‘The things you get up to. And why would I be interested?’

  �
��Because I am. He was with the German embassy in Paris and I’m intrigued that he had a relationship with a Jewish woman.’

  ‘There are too many films about the Jews and the war. It’s all they teach in school these days. It’s like the Tudors and the Stuarts never existed.’

  ‘Yes, what I knew about Anglo-Saxon England you could have put in a thimble before Saturday. I was taken to the British Museum by an expert and he showed me a world I’d never known.’

  ‘Is this your man?’ Her mother sniffed into her napkin.

  ‘Not exactly. He’s an archaeologist. He specialises in bones. Do you remember the skull I told you about?’

  ‘Did you darling, I can’t remember? What do you mean not exactly?’

  ‘He’s just someone I’m working with.’

  ‘Well, he seems to have cheered you up. I wonder how long it will last.’

  ‘Perhaps that’s what you could do with, mum. A man to cheer you up. Unless you’re keeping someone secret from me?’

  ‘Really, Beatrice. I’ve told you I don’t want to be questioned like that.’

  Beatrice looked at her mother, a good looking woman not yet sixty, her hair fashionably straight and cleverly dyed blonde, not overweight, her age yet to show itself in her fingers and neck and assumed she must have had admirers after her father’s death. This, however, was history that she didn’t want her daughter to know about and so it would remain secret. ‘But you’re happy to ask about the men in my life.’

  ‘That’s different.’

  ‘Anyway, as I was saying, I’m going to Paris again and then probably on to Marseille and perhaps even Germany.’

  ‘Meanwhile I’m thinking of moving,’ her mother said, as if she hadn’t heard. ‘Down to the coast, to be nearer to Jean. She’s got a lovely place near Lymington. You might want to help me find somewhere.’

  The point of the meal was now clear which brought the smile back to Beatrice’s face. ‘Of course, mother. What will you be looking for, a detached cottage with a rose covered porch?’

  ‘Yes, something like that. I’m not very good with mortgages and contracts and I thought you could give me a hand.’

  The pursuit of the truth behind the life of a woman who had her head shaved in front of a crowd on the boulevard St Michel because of a relationship with a German, the appearance of a doctor of archaeology with a special interest in the bones of our Anglo-Saxon forebears and the strange family history of the world famous Joseph Troumeg seemed to be of no interest to Eileen Palmenter whose world was soon to shrink even further into a corner of Hampshire where she would expect her daughter to visit but whose life she would continue to ignore.

  ‘Of course I will.’

  For the rest of the meal they talked about the proposed move, the sale of her current house, the state of the market, the coastline of the south of England, the need for more peace and quiet, the rise of crime in the suburbs and the atrocious rudeness of the French. Afterwards, when Beatrice walked home, her mood no less buoyant than earlier, she considered how her mother believed she had sovereign rights over her daughter, who was no more than a troublesome serf in her kingdom. It was not her duty to reveal anything of herself beyond the authorised version and this was why Beatrice could not fill the back of a postcard about the life and times of Eileen Palmenter.

  She took a different route back, walking through Soho and picking up the river at Charing Cross and tracking the great curve to Blackfriars Bridge where the City began to rise up and present St Paul’s at its peak. The tide was out and river was listless. Flotsam might have walked where she was now, although she knew the Embankment would not have existed and the river would have been wider, almost touching Whitehall and further on, held back by the steep rise to The Strand. She walked on to London Bridge and stopped to look down on the rotting timber stays which marked the limit of the old quays, split by a redundant cobbled slipway. She climbed the low slope into the heart of the City, through the passages to Lombard Street, her body curiously alive as she cut through the old rights of way, hemmed in on all sides by the looming presence of modern London which, despite its gleaming brashness, could not suppress and obliterate the signs of the past, the trapped graveyards, the old milestones, the corners of ancient walls and the unmistakable sense of the past just under the surface. When finally she turned off Moorgate and saw the solid whiteness of Christ Church standing at the end of her road, newly resurrected in all its glory, it was like an affirmation of the past and confirmed her own mood of satisfaction.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  She turns, thinking she hears someone move past her, but there is no one. She is standing near her home, at the point where Lombard Street would later meet the old footpath to Angel Court, not far from where the muscular bulk of the Bank of England will be built above the river Walbrook. She watches the stream curving away southwards in pursuit of the larger river and she walks along its bank, turning to wave at her mother framed in the doorway.

  She is unlike her mother. Her hair lighter and thicker, her face fuller but they have the same eyes, deep brown, so that there is barely a shade between the iris and the black of the pupils. She also frowns when she stares, appearing to concentrate even if at that moment she is thinking of something else. Her mother says it makes her appear older and that she has wisdom beyond her years. Her fingers are long, as her father’s had been and she has his certainty of balance. On her wrist she wears the bracelet of coloured stones.

  She breaks into a run heading downhill to the quays where her mother tells her she used to play at the same age. She has learnt two languages in the south and has picked up scraps of many others and loves the look of surprise on the sailors’ faces when they realise she can understand them. She marvels at her independence and knows that this has been handed down to her, a gift of freedom

  Later she returns and finds her mother working at her bench. The golden brooch is almost finished and the entwined birds reminds her of other places, of wider horizons. In the border, between the deep red garnets, her mother has inlaid rounds of dark blue enamel and from time to time she takes the brooch outside to examine it in the daylight. When the counsellor comes to collect it he carefully lifts it from the table, glancing at her mother, its creator and as he does he lets it rest in the palm of his hand. The girl watches him examining it and listens to her mother telling him about the birds, creating a picture of their life under the southern sun, of their raised crests and strange calls. The sky there was truly this blue, she tells him and the birds were lovers. He carries it outside, just as she had done, so that the daylight catches the gold and emphasises the depth of the blue inlay. He takes it away with him, bowing as he leaves and she notices the sadness on her mother’s face. She takes her hand and tells her she is remembering the brooch that her mother had made for her, at this same table and which now lies lost under the very blue sky that she has just been describing. She remembers her mother telling her the story of its loss and her delight at her own mother’s response, her sympathy and her laughter and her simple joy in explaining that she could always make another brooch but never replace her daughter.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  It was raining on St Sulpice and its twin towers were lost in grey. Beatrice ran towards the bar, her umbrella twisted inside out by the wind, her hair attempting the same trick. Although she was on time, she knew he would be there and he greeted her coolly, taking in her dishevelled appearance and nodding at her to sit on the stool next to his. She was prepared for his attitude and found this sort of meeting, shorn of any possible romantic complication, very easy. She was in need of information and this, after all, was her job and one she did well. He pushed a drink towards her and waited for her to begin, knowing full well he had all the cards. Around them in the bar several other couples were also involved in similar games of give and take. Beatrice ran her fingers through her short, wet hair and unwrapped herself from her coat.

  ‘So,’ she said, ‘thank you for coming out on such a te
rrible evening to see me. I appreciate it.’ She watched him raise his eyebrows in disbelief. She noticed he was wearing cuff-links and that he had a gold ring on his little finger marked with the feathers of the Prince of Wales. ‘Why is it that rain in Paris seems even wetter than in London?’ She took a sip of her kir and looked at him over the rim of the glass before putting it down and arranging it in the centre of its black coaster.

  ‘Look,’ she said. ‘I’m not going to trade myself for your permission to look at Sebastian’s letters to Odile. It’s not a swap I want to make. But I would be grateful for the opportunity to see them.’

  ‘And what if I say no?’

  ‘I had time to think about that on the train,’ she said. ‘Then, I suppose I would go to Germany, to find Sebastian Traugott’s family. Maybe Odile’s letters to him have survived. One way or the other, I’ll find out what happened.’

  She saw him weigh the odds, deciding which card to play next and she could see him decide to stretch the game out a little longer, hoping to trump her later.

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Why not.’

  She could see that Odile meant very little to him, merely a distant adjunct to his uncle’s life and since he appeared to have scant affection for his relative, why would Odile register on his radar at all?

  ‘C’mon,’ he said. ‘Drink up.’

  It wasn’t far to the rue du Bac but it was into the wind and rain and he made no concessions as he strode ahead. Once inside, he pointed at the bathroom and when she came out the box was already on the table and she could hear him in the kitchen. ‘Help yourself,’ he shouted through. She would have preferred to be alone, to slowly immerse herself in an almost forgotten relationship which took place eight decades earlier in the most unlikely circumstances, but she had no option but to continue to be aware of the shadow of his presence. She saw that the two letters he had brought to the Brasserie Île St Louis were loose on the top of the tied bundle. When she saw that the others had been carefully arranged by date, this carelessness annoyed her, although by now it should have been what she expected. Her irritation was replaced by the tingle of apprehension as she slipped out the earliest letter, dated the winter of 1933. She noted it was written in French from an apartment on the rue du Louvre and, probably because French was his second language, Beatrice was able to read Sebastian’s words quite easily. The letter spoke of joy and caution and Beatrice was able to deduce that Odile worked for one of the government ministries and that Sebastian had met her at a reception. He wrote, she gathered, because so often they couldn’t meet, since he would have lost his job if it became known that he was seeing a Jew. He would meet her at night, in private and he spoke of the fear of being found out, yet as she read further letters, it was clear that he loved her and that he was prepared to risk a great deal for her. Beatrice broke the chronology of the letters by sliding out the last, dated November 1938. “You will know the worst by now. The assassination of vom Rath means that I am being sent home. I will see you tomorrow, mon amour, and we will decide what to do. Although these are difficult days, I remain always yours, Sebastian.”