Authors: Esther Freud
‘He freed himself from a closed water tank,’ an indignant voice yelled back. ‘Nothing could be much better than that!’
And Eva whispered to herself that it was better than anything ever in the world.
‘Manu?’ She looked around for him. He had let go of her hand, and she’d been so caught up in her reverie that she hadn’t seen him disappear. People everywhere were shoving and hurrying, swirled up with excitement for the new sensation of Berlin. Breathing hard, she pushed her way out of the crowd, keeping her head tilted up to catch sight of her brother. She’d almost given up when she saw him standing at the edge of a group. He was staring down at his feet, his head a little to one side, and she was surprised to find he wasn’t looking round for her. ‘Manu.’ She began to run towards him, and then a woman in a pale green coat stepped out from the group and took his arm. She turned him towards her and let her arms circle his back. Eva saw her face over his shoulder, eyes closed, wide cheeks bunched up in a smile, and in a strange cold flash she recognized her.
‘Schu-Schu?’ she gasped, and Fräulein Schulze’s eyes opened and stared right into hers. Eva came a few steps nearer, shivering suddenly with cold and wondering why, after all this time, she wasn’t happier to see her. Schu-Schu’s red hair had darkened. It was brushed upside down under a straw hat, and her hands, out of their gloves, were large and blotched.
‘Emanuel?’ Fräulein Schulze turned him round to face her. He blushed and smiled weakly, nodding at them both, but she was ordering him with her eyes to speak.
‘Eva,’ he said, ‘Evschen, let me explain,’ and he gulped and stumbled round for air. Schu-Schu took hold of his hand. ‘I’d like you to meet my future wife,’ he said, and the governess’s face opened up with triumph.
Eva walked slowly towards them, extending her hand, and then at the last minute, dangling and out of place, she saw her mother’s ruby earrings. They hung snug against her freckled neck, the red dull below her hair, and, without intending it, she pulled her hand away. Her sandals clattered on the cobbled street as she turned round and ran, and with Schu-Schu’s blind smile in her eyes she kept on till she reached home.
After a week my passport came back with Sonny’s name and birth-date printed in the back. ‘My last excuse,’ I wailed to Pam, but she was off to a hotel near Macclesfield to watch Alan play a business game of golf.
‘Shall I drop in on my way?’ I could hear her guilt at finding a new man with such indecent speed, and I remembered just in time that I was going to baby-massage. ‘Actually,’ I told her, ‘the man who runs it’s quite attractive.’
‘It’s run by a man?’
‘He’s a sort of gentle, brawny type with a tattoo.’
Pam was unconvinced. ‘Listen, in case I don’t speak to you before you go, have a great time.’
‘Thanks, I will.
‘I will,’ I said again, because I still didn’t know where I was going. I sat down and wrote John Godber a card. ‘I’m so sorry to have called at an inconvenient time and I hope your wife is . . .’ I crossed out the last line. ‘I hope Elisabeth.’ No. ‘I hope everything –’
It was impossible. I was too frightened of her death to send a get-well card.
‘Dear Mr’, I began once more without much faith, but just then the telephone rang.
‘There’s a letter for you here.’ It was my father. ‘Shall I open it?’
I could hear him ripping at it before I’d had a chance to speak. ‘How very peculiar,’ he was talking away from the phone, ‘it’s from my cousin,’ and he read out the address of Gaglow, the directions from the train and the news that I was expected there in three days’ time. ‘Has he roped you in to do his dirty work?’ He was bristling for a fight, and I had to calm him with assurances that it had been all my own idea.
‘I just wanted to see the house before it’s sold.’ I had been going to tell him. ‘And I happened to bump into your cousin . . .’
‘You’ll be able to tell me what it’s like.’ His voice was almost inaudible and then, slowly, carefully, he warned, ‘I hope you realize that some of what I told you may not actually be true.’
I pressed my ear against the phone, ‘That’s all right,’ and I smiled at the shiver that had run right through me at the story of the curse.
‘So,’ he went back to the details of the letter, ‘you can either hire a car or take the train. Of course, I only remember driving down in my grandmother’s carriage. Four horses, or possibly six . . .’
‘With a coachman in gold cuffs.’ And we both began to laugh. ‘Dad.’ It was true, suddenly, that I was going. ‘Why don’t you come too? Just think how fascinating it would be, and if it’s not,’ I grasped wildly around, ‘you can do charcoal sketches of Sonny while he’s asleep.’
There was a silence at the other end and my heart slowed down.
‘I think not,’ he said kindly. ‘But if there’s anything you need?’
I assured him that I was fine. ‘Just one thing.’ I caught him as he was about to go. ‘What happened to Emanuel, after the war?’
My father sighed. ‘Well, after the war he wrote a book, or some kind of thesis, predicting how inflation would get out of control. His mother tried to get it published. She took it all over Berlin but no one showed any interest, said it was rubbish, but Emanuel had the foresight to collect all the family assets and exchange them for gold. And so, of course, while everyone else was desperate with piles of useless banknotes the family still had their supply of gold, which proved to be the one thing of lasting value.’
‘So was she accepted eventually, his wife?’
‘Absolutely not.’ I could tell that this was the part he most enjoyed. ‘She was blamed for everything, and mostly for taking my uncle away. They went to live in Palestine. He was offered a job as the manager of Barclays Bank. The bank was on the Mount of Olives. The Olive Branch, I called it,’ and he laughed in silent gasps into the phone.
‘The Olive Branch.’ I grinned, imagining him as a small boy, revelling in the joke.
‘My mother would never discuss him, but I know my grandmother did go to Jerusalem for his funeral.’ He stopped and then, under his breath, he muttered in a singsong voice, ‘“We are going to Jerusalem.” It’s just a song, a game my mother used to play with me when I was small. “We are going to Jerusalem . . .” ‘and he drifted off, so that I could hear him, opening the lids of empty paper boxes, looking half-heartedly for food.
‘I suppose his health was all broken down from being in those Russian camps. Is that why he died so young?’ I tried to draw him back.
‘Yes,’ he agreed, ‘it must have been,’ and he promised to call me the second I got back.
There was a pile of green mats in one corner and I took one and laid Sonny out. ‘How’s he been?’ It was Martin, the massage teacher, standing over us, remembering that my baby was a boy. I blushed and struggled with his dungarees. ‘Fine, really good.’ I took him in with one quick close-up glance. His hair was short and dark, his face wide open, and as he leant in I noticed the nails on his fingers, round as moons. Martin laid a hand on the sweet white of Sonny’s tummy, ‘He’s a lovely boy,’ and he turned to me with an approving look. ‘Very relaxed.’ It was the ultimate in compliments and I filled up inside with warmth, basking in smiles, as he moved off around the room.
‘OK, let’s start with those legs, hand over hand, plenty of oil.’ The class had started, and all my concentration was taken up with looking into Sonny’s surprised eyes while I stretched and soothed and greased his rollmop legs. ‘Loosen those hips, tap the ankles, one two three.’ We moved on to the arms, letting their elbows glisten through our grip, easing out fat fingers.
Sonny lay on his stomach and stretched his shoulders up into an arc. ‘Strong boy.’ Martin nodded as he passed, and I swelled under the rosy glow of praise. But none of the babies would tolerate much more on their fronts, and soon they were slipped and flipped into soft towels while the women turned to each other with stories of vaccines, sore nipples and the endless broken saga of each night.
I bundled Sonny up into my arms and took him to where Martin was standing in the centre of the room. ‘Would you hold him for a moment?’ I nodded in the direction of the loo.
My face was flushed as I caught it in the mirror, washing the oil off my hands, ‘Ssh,’ and I tried to shake the wild, unlikely thoughts out of my head.
When I came back Sonny was lying along Martin’s folded arm, his chin cushioned against muscle, his body lounging lion-like along a branch. He raised his eyes lazily to mine and smiled. Martin hadn’t seen me and he kept on around the room, rocking Sonny gently as he went, answering questions and stooping down to give advice. ‘This is a great way to hold your baby.’ He saw me and smiled. ‘It’s very soothing and it balances out the weight.’
I held out my arms for Sonny. ‘I’ll try, but he’s too heavy for me like that,’ and I showed Martin how I liked to hold him, up against my shoulder, nuzzled into my neck.
‘Well, get your partner to come along.’ He raised his eyebrows, and I smiled without answering in a way I hoped made everything quite clear.
Once I’d packed away my towels I lingered by the door. ‘I won’t be here next week, but I’ll be back.’ And with Sonny already drooping into sleep I sparked my eyes in his direction.
The next morning there was a card from Mike. It had a picture of the sea, rough green against a jagged beach, and when I scooped it up I saw it was addressed to me. ‘Sarah, I’ve got a week off suddenly and it coincides with the ferry. I’ve got to see you both. I’ll ring as soon as I arrive. Please please don’t be busy.’
I took the card upstairs and set it with the others. I wanted to spit at it, blot the writing out with bile, but instead I stood and read it over until the words had turned into a song inside my head and I had to turn it round to face the wall.
I went and got the tickets, smoothing them over with my hands. ‘Please please don’t be busy.’ And I thought how we’d always been just out of step. We lacked timing, and our dreams were made of fragile, separate things. Our last fight had been over a car. Our last before we knew about the baby. There was a Citroën parked out on the street, a beautiful pale blue with cushioned seats, its long back drooping out on to the road like soup. I’d often watched it, rising off the ground with steam, and now it had a little cardboard sign, For Sale. I swung myself against him. ‘We could set off across America, have an adventure. Take it in turns to drive.’
But he only pulled away and said he didn’t want an adventure. ‘Anyway, you know that I can’t drive.’
‘You could learn? Don’t you want to learn?’ I was too excited to let him alone.
‘All I want to do,’ he said, ‘is work.’ And suddenly it occurred to me, standing out there by the velvet car, that this might be the truth.
‘It doesn’t appeal to you at all, to drive across America with me, not ever?’ Little cracks of glass were splintered across my chest and it was difficult to hear what he was saying.
‘No,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t.’
‘So what do you want?’ I was pushing things too far. His eyes contracted, each iris spinning with alarm, but instead of ‘Nothing,’ he put out his hand, just in time, and suggested lunch.
We spent an ice-cold afternoon, hand in hand, wandering through Camden Lock. His fingers felt all floury, the palms half drained of blood, but I wasn’t going to be the one to lose my hold. We walked round and round, using the objects on each stall to give us time, pushing our way through people, united warmly for a moment against the pushing crowd. It only needed one more word from either of us, but as soon as we got home Mike leant into the television, pulling it as close to him as it would go, so I took a book and climbed straight into bed. My chest was aching, hardened with suspense, and the half year’s doom was like a wrap around my throat. The light was out when he came in and we lay sleepless, side by side, our knees bent up like ice picks in the sheet.
When I woke Mike was lying with his arms around me. ‘Sarah,’ he said, half laughing, and we made love with our eyes wide open for the first time in months. It’s over, I thought, it’s over. It seemed pointless to be careful, to abide by any normal laws, and I argued hotly in the tangle of the bed that, if we were too distant for America, there was no point in stooping into intimacy while I scrabbled in the bathroom for my cap.
I turned the postcard round again. ‘Please please don’t be busy’, and I had to conjure up the dark look on his face when I’d told him that my period was late.
I took courage from John’s letter and called to thank him for arranging Gaglow. ‘How is your wife?’ I asked, and he told me that she was remarkably recovered. ‘Mr Godber?’ There was one more thing I wanted to know. ‘Could you tell me what happened to your aunt . . . the woman that Emanuel Belgard married?’
He paused, and I wondered suddenly just how much my father had made up. ‘Of course, of course.’ I could tell that he was smiling. ‘Schu-Schu? She went to live with my grandmother after Emanuel died. Surely Michael remembers. She lived out at Gaglow as Omi Marianna’s companion, Schu-Schu, an enormous woman with red hair and great feet like a man.’
‘Of course,’ I said, as if I’d simply forgotten. ‘I see.’
‘It’s why they hated going there, the sisters. It’s why we never went.’
‘Of course,’ I said again. ‘Thank you so much.’
‘But, sadly, there were no children.’
‘No, no children, I knew that.’ And we said goodbye.
That night, while Sonny slept, I calmed myself with packing. How many different outfits could a baby get through in four days? But all the same I laid out jumpers, sun-suits, hats and vests, and a tiny pair of stripy swimming trunks.
I weeded through my wardrobe taking down the clothes I never wore. I tried them on, admired them and then, unable to see a reason why I’d want to wear them simply because I was abroad, I hung them up again. Eventually I packed my favourite jeans, some shorts and sandals, and for travelling, my tulip summer dress.
That night I dreamt about the ice-house. It was flooded with a golden light, its pillars rising, the fluted tops floating off into the clouds. Underneath the floor my feet were freezing cold. I woke up and pulled a blanket over me, and as soon as I went back to sleep my dream picked up where it had drifted off.