by Sarah Rayne
I have reread those last two sentences, and I wonder, as I have often wondered, how people can say there are no links between the great religions of the world.
I dare say you are smiling as you read all this, and saying, ‘Oy, that Maurice Bensimon, he is such a dream-spinner.’ If ever I were to write my memoirs, the dreams I would spin of these years would be dark ones. So on consideration, I shall never do so. I will only say, instead, that whatever Schönbrunn is, or is not, he has the most extraordinary strength of mind and will of any man I have ever met, and his courage is humbling.
It seems too much of a risk to entrust his actual letter to the post, so instead I am copying down the main information here for you. Performing such a mundane task will help to calm my mind and will fill up the hours until I can be on my way to Waterloo Station.
Schönbrunn writes:
‘One of the curious things about this place is that when the word Auschwitz is uttered, one simply thinks of the camp itself – the grim grey barracks inside the barbed-wire, as if it is a desolate and solitary entity set amidst a wilderness. But although wilderness there is, the old town of Oswiecim is quite nearby, and people still live in it. I will not say they live in normality, but they pursue their lives as well as they can.
‘The Germans have drained the swamps that once lay everywhere, but traces of the dank, misty bogland still linger, and it is as if a dark miasma hangs over the old town – as if the misery and the fear has seeped outwards from the camp itself.
‘Since the occupation, the population has dwindled to a sad fragment. A great many people have been driven from their homes, and numerous small villages have been wiped from the map entirely. It saddens and angers me to think of those lost villages – their histories vanished, their stories and their people wiped from the landscape for ever.
‘In happier circumstances I would have wanted to delve into Oswiecim’s history, but I shall not do so. I want no memories of this place to lodge in my mind.
‘Part of me is praying Sophie and Susannah Reiss will not be here – that this will prove to be a false lead. But there is another part that hopes they are here, because that will mean I can take action to rescue them. But if Mengele does have them I cannot bear to contemplate what may be happening to them.
‘I beg you, do not let the Reiss family know any of this.’
Schönbrunn then went on to write that he had found lodgings in the town.
‘They are not good, but I have stayed in worse. My landlady is a lugubrious but kindly soul, and this morning she told me how everyone in the area knows what goes on inside the camp.
‘“They think they keep the secrets of what they do in there,” she said, “but we all know that exterminations go on all the time. And there are the experiments, also – performed by the one they call the Angel of Death.”
‘My mind sprang to attention at this, but as if I had never heard the name – as if it is not burned into my brain – I only said, “Who is the Angel of Death?”
‘“He works on the children,” she said. “Terrible things, they say he does. He is not always there – he has other places he visits and where he works. But I have seen him walk around occasionally. He looks for the children – it’s said he always has sweets in his pockets for them. He talks to them and listens to their tales.” A pause. “And then he carries them off to his laboratories,” she said.
‘“What happens to them there?”
‘“No one knows. But few of those children are ever seen again.”
‘“You know that for certain?”
‘“No. I know the other deaths are for certain, though. When the wind is in the right direction the stench comes into the town. It cannot be mistaken – it is from the continuous burning of the bodies,” she said. “Thick, sweet, mixed with the acrid stench of the heat. You taste it in your nose for days. You would like coffee now?”
‘The coffee is terrible, gritty and sour, but today I drank it thankfully, hoping it might wash away her words. It did not, of course.
‘Oh, M.B., one day this may all be part of the past and they may build monuments and memorials to the people slaughtered here, but nothing anyone can ever do will succeed in wiping from my mind the things I am seeing – the hopelessness and the fear in the faces of the people being herded along the railway tracks towards the camp. Those images have seared into my mind like acid, and they will always be black and grey and drenched in despair, threaded with spider webs of railway lines that all lead to one place. There will be no colour in my memories of Auschwitz.
‘Please remember that if you do not hear from me again, you should not assume I have failed.’
The letter ended on this half-optimistic, half-warning note. But despite the optimism I fear we shall not hear from him again – not ever. This morning came a visit from one of the miscellany of people who make up that secret network. How the man had tracked me down in this modest boarding house on London’s outskirts – how he even knew of my existence – I have no idea. But he did find me somehow.
‘I believe we have lost him this time,’ he said, facing me in the dingy guests’ lounge, sipping tea (we cannot get coffee at the moment).
My heart did not sink at his words; it seemed to constrict as if iron bands had clamped around it.
I said, ‘He’s indestructible.’
‘Not this time.’ He looked at me very levelly. He has that direct look Schönbrunn’s people almost always have. ‘I saw him for myself. I saw him go towards those gates—’
‘Auschwitz?’
‘Yes. I was waiting for him in hiding – there is not much hiding, but Schönbrunn found a place. But I was close enough to even read the legend above the gates. Arbeit Macht Frei.’
‘Work will free you,’ I said, half to myself.
‘Yes. Was ever there a crueller irony than those words? Beyond those gates are the barracks with their rows of grim cell-like rooms – and the places about which those dread rumours have circulated. We do not need to name them. We both know what they are. Schönbrunn waited until he heard army trucks coming along the road. Then he walked out and waved them down.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know.’ A shrug. ‘He never tells anyone all of his plans. I could not see what the trucks carried – not prisoners, I don’t think. Supplies of some kind, perhaps. There was some interchange between Schönbrunn and the driver – I could not hear it, and it was in rapid German anyway. Then three of the soldiers sprang out of the truck and almost threw him into the vehicle.’
‘And?’ I said, as he broke off.
‘They drove through the gates into the camp,’ he said. ‘My belief is that he had some story ready to tell them – he has used several, as you know.’
‘But this time they did not believe him.’
‘Or,’ said my companion, ‘this time someone was one step ahead and had warned the Nazis that he was coming.’
‘A traitor among his own people?’
‘I’m afraid so. In which case, Schönbrunn will now be dead.’
If Schönbrunn is dead I cannot see how we will ever find out what happened to Sophie and Susannah. But I shall stay hopeful that being taken into Auschwitz was part of his plan – that he intended to get in there all along, and that he spun those Germans a deliberately thin cover story. But it is a vain hope.
And so the whereabouts of the Reiss twins is as unknown as it ever was. I fear we may never find out the truth.
M.B.
FOURTEEN
Nell was having a good Monday morning, following an excellent weekend. On Saturday the Japanese customers had not only bought the Regency sofas, they had also bought the inlaid table. There had been much courtesy and compliments, and Mr Hironaka had extended an invitation to Nell to visit his family if ever she were in his country.
She had spent most of Sunday morning applying Danish oil to a late-Elizabethan dower chest, which would replace the sofas in the shop window, and at midday Michael had taken her and Bet
h to lunch at one of Oxford’s many riverside inns, after which Beth had gone to spend the rest of the afternoon with a school friend. Nell and Michael had ended up at Quire Court and had made slow, deeply satisfactory love, with the light fading gently on the Court’s old stones outside and sun slanting across the bed. Afterwards Michael had said something about the serenity of ancient, undisturbed ghosts, and Nell had thought it might be better not to tell him yet that she was considering bashing down walls and demolishing ceilings, and risking plunging the serene ghosts into distracted madness and probable mass exodus.
Monday had dawned full of sunshine and promise, and over breakfast Beth had talked with exuberance about Michael’s latest project for the Wilberforce history books.
‘Elizabeth the First and Guy Fawkes and stuff. He’s going to write about Wilberforce’s ancestors and I’m going to help.’
‘He’ll enjoy doing that. And it’ll help your history lessons as well.’
‘I thought,’ said Beth, giving her mother a cautious look, ‘that he could have a musician Wilberforce somewhere. Um, like when they had minstrels. They travelled around and wrote their own music and stuff. A bit like pop stars today,’ said Beth, with unexpected perception.
‘That sounds quite a good idea.’
Beth beamed, then said, ‘D’you think I could suggest it to Michael? Only I don’t want him to think I’m trying to kind of push in on things.’
‘I think it would be fine to suggest it,’ said Nell. ‘But I’m pleased you asked before you actually said anything to him.’
‘If you and Michael got married,’ said Beth, hanging over her breakfast so that Nell could not see her face, ‘I ‘spect he’d wouldn’t live in College any more, would he?’
‘I expect not, but we’re fine as we are, and you’re—’
‘Entering into the realms of fantasy,’ finished Beth.
‘Yes. Are you having any more toast? And have you got your gym things ready?’
‘Yes and yes. Don’t fuss,’ said Beth.
After Beth had been delivered to school, Nell spent an hour with Godfrey Purbles, inspecting the rooms in the bookshop, and discussing with him how practical it would be to knock through from her own premises to make one large shop.
‘If you could make it double-fronted,’ said Godfrey, ‘that’d make really lovely premises. The thing to do is to get a good builder to take a look. You don’t want to go smashing sledge hammers into supporting walls and bring the upper floors and the roof crashing in.’
Nell remembered Michael’s serene ghosts, and said, no, certainly she did not want to do that.
‘I tell you who’d be good to ask about the work,’ said Godfrey. ‘Jack Hurst. His firm have been builders in Oxford for ages – he did that archway for me last year. Wait a bit, I’ve got his phone number somewhere.’
Nell took the phone number gratefully, and went back to her own shop to phone the bank, pleased to be told that someone could see her later that day. After the meeting she would tell Michael what she was considering. Would she find she could open up to him about the finances of it all? Money was one of the few things they never really discussed. When, two years earlier, it had been decided that she would move to Oxford and she had found the Quire Court premises, he had made a cautious enquiry as to how she would be financing the move – doing so with a diffidence that suggested he found the subject a difficult, unfamiliar one. Nell, who had still been finding her way through a number of minefields after her husband’s death, but who had been determined to be independent, had said, rather abruptly, that she was fine, thank you, there was enough dosh in the kitty.
Michael had said, ‘Well, if not …’ and left it at that.
Remembering this, Nell wondered if he would make a similar semi-offer when she told him about Godfrey’s shop, and if so what she would do about it. To have a business partnership of any kind would cement their relationship in a rather odd way. Not matrimonially but fiscally. Always, of course, assuming he had money to invest and that she had not misunderstood that previous conversation. She had no idea what a don’s salary was, or what he earned from the Wilberforce books.
How likely was it that he had been subconsciously or subliminally thinking the two of them might eventually get together under one roof? Nell had a sudden tantalizing image of a tall old house somewhere on the city’s outskirts, not too far from Oriel or Quire Court, filled with books and music, often invaded by Michael’s colleagues or even his students. It was a good image, but Nell was not sure if it was a workable one. Michael’s place seemed to be his rooms at Oriel. Her place seemed to be here, in Quire Court.
She locked up and went out to the little house behind the shop to put on a business-looking suit for the meeting with the bank. Assuming it was all favourable, when she got back she would telephone Godfrey’s builder, Jack Hurst, and ask him to give her a quote for the work.
She was perfectly prepared for the bank to try to dissuade her from cashing in the bonds, and to counsel extreme caution over the proposed plan. What she was not prepared for – what she angrily realized she ought to have foreseen – was that the bonds, if cashed before their expiry date which was two years away, would not yield anywhere near as much as she had calculated. There were penalties for early redemption and, to compound the problem, the bonds themselves had suffered from the disastrous economic situation of the last couple of years.
‘They’d recover if you left them,’ said the Small Business Adviser, whom Nell was trying not to think looked as if she had just left school. ‘The interest would roll over and mount up in the last twelve months, like endowment mortgages used to. See now, going on the figures you’ve given me, you’re several thousand short of the amount you want. It’s not a huge sum, though, and it’s not necessarily unreachable. We could see if a short-term business loan might be accepted. To cover that shortfall.’
‘I’m a bit hesitant about that. If I’m going to draw on these bonds and have a loan on top …’
‘Yes, you wouldn’t have much of a safety net, would you?’ She nodded, obviously understanding this, and flipped to another screen on her laptop. ‘You’ve got that separate fund for your daughter with us as well, haven’t you?’
‘Yes, but that’s cast-iron untouchable. I used one of my husband’s insurance payouts for that.’
‘It’s looking fairly good,’ said the adviser, turning the laptop so Nell could see. ‘Enough to put her through university comfortably, or provide a deposit for a house.’
‘Or backpack round the world,’ said Nell, smiling.
‘And why not? I’ll do a printout for you so you’ve got up-to-date figures for that.’ She set the printer whirring, then said, ‘I like your concept for these two shops, though. I think it could be profitable, and I hope we can work something out for you. That idea you’ve got about using the annexe behind your own shop for weekend courses – I love that.’
‘I’ve organized those courses before,’ said Nell, grateful for this approval. ‘When I lived in Shropshire. It works well – you book people into nearby pubs and hotels, depending on what they want to pay, and hold simple workshops and even have a visiting speaker over the two days of the course. Bookbinding or the history of glassware or something like that. And perhaps throw in a conducted tour around a suitable historic house in the vicinity.’
‘I’d sign up for all that,’ said the adviser. ‘I think though, at this stage you need to get some more exact figures. The cost of assigning the lease to you and a builder’s estimate – maybe even an architect’s as well – for knocking the shops into one unit. Once we’ve got that, we can make a more precise forecast and go from there.’
‘That would be sensible,’ said Nell. ‘Godfrey – Mr Purbles – has already asked the landlords for a figure on the lease. And I’ll get quotes for the work – he’s recommended a builder, as well. As soon as I’ve got those I’ll contact you again. Thank you very much.’
‘I haven’t helped much so far,’ said t
he business adviser.
‘No, but you’ve clarified things. And you’ve been encouraging about the whole idea. That means a lot.’
She went back to Quire Court, still undecided, and spent the next hour unpacking some pieces of glassware she had acquired at a house sale the previous weekend. Beth had come with her to the sale and had loved the tension and the excitement of the auction. They had chosen the pieces they wanted beforehand and Beth had been entranced by the bidding procedure. It was pretty cool, she said afterwards, to have a mum who did things like that.
The glass was going to look very good indeed, and Nell washed it all carefully. But as she did so, one level of her mind was replaying the meeting at the bank. The thought of using up almost all of her careful stash of funds was suddenly alarming, and the prospect of a loan on top of that was outright terrifying. Supposing the venture failed? Supposing there was an even worse plunge in the economy? Supposing she became ill and could not run the shop? There would be absolutely no funds to fall back on, because Beth’s fund was indeed untouchable. As she placed the glassware in the smaller of her two windows and set out some Victorian jewellery with it, she thought it would be a bitter blow if she had to back out.
But when Godfrey came into the shop just before she was closing, clutching a letter and looking anxious, the prospect of backing out loomed even closer.
‘The freeholder’s figure for the assignment?’ said Nell, glad for once that there were no customers in the shop and they could talk freely.
