Authors: Esther Freud
I saw my great-grandmother drinking beer, just like my mother with a thin cigar, and then there she was, an old frail lady, holding Emanuel’s uniform up to her throat, pleading with the new Nazi soldiers, not to take away her house, ‘He gave up his strength for the Fatherland,’ but her voice trailed off, the words turning into tiny smoky rings so that the men pushed past her to smear their painted signs over the ice-house walls.
I left Sonny bouncing in his chair and heaved the bags down to the front door. They bulged with nappies, sun-cream, books and clothes, and I hoped the driver of my mini-cab would be prepared to help. I propped the door open with the pushchair and, racing up again to collect the boy, I pushed the bags out on to the step. I could feel the sharp corners of Mike’s letter, stiff against my hip, and relishing the postmark I thought I’d wait to post it at Heathrow. I’d written first thing that morning, before getting out of bed. Nothing personal, I’d insisted, just bad luck, and I saw even in the sharp ink strokes of his name how much I’d changed towards him. Then my cab drew up against the kerb. I could hear its engine running noisily, and the door swung open before I’d had a chance to turn round. But it wasn’t for me. It was a gleaming London taxi, not my cab at all, and Mike, with one small bag, was stepping out. ‘Sarah, for Christ’s sake.’ He glared at me, surrounded by luggage, and then flying round he reached over to the driver for his change.
I sat with Sonny on the basement wall and watched him. I could see the fluster of his hands as they dipped into his wallet, and then the taxi flashed on its orange light. ‘Do you want to take this on, love?’ the man called out, and I told him I had a mini-cab coming.
Mike surveyed us both, his face creased up with travel, his eyes confused. ‘How long have I got?’ I reminded him, in case he’d forgotten, that the local taxi firm was always late. There was a silence and I felt my heart slip sideways. ‘I’m only going for four days. It wasn’t planned – I mean . . .’ Furious to be caught up again so fast, I fingered the white corner of his letter.
Just then my car pulled up and I began to drag one bag towards it. Mike picked up the pushchair and it unfolded in his arms. ‘Where to?’ the driver asked, and lowering my voice, I said to drive fast to the airport.
Mike held open the door for us, and then, instead of closing it, he slung in his own bag, and walked round to the other side. ‘All right, son?’ He leant over to the baby, and Sonny blazed a gummy smile into his eyes.
The car swerved round a bend. ‘I would have brought his seat,’ I started, ‘but I couldn’t carry anything else.’ But Mike wasn’t listening. He was crooning and whistling, singing and smiling, while Sonny reached up to catch his chin.
‘Where are you going, then? Which terminal?’ the driver asked, and I leant over the seat and told him we were flying to Berlin. There was a sudden silence, and when I glanced round to explain, I saw that Mike had produced a tube of bubbles and was blowing pink and purple volleys into the car. ‘Mind yourself.’ The driver batted them away and Mike opened a window, turning Sonny round so he could watch the bubbles drift out into the day.
‘How did you think you were going to manage?’ Mike rammed our luggage with an unwieldy trolley.
‘I’m fine,’ and I tried to demonstrate by keeping both sets of wheels running in the same direction. ‘You’d be surprised how helpful people are when you’re on your own.’
‘So you’re going all the way to Germany to escape me?’
We were wandering through the lanes of checking-in, looking for our queue. I waved my ticket at him. ‘I bought these last week, long before I got your card.’
Mike shook his head at me. ‘Let’s see,’ he said, easing them out of my hand. ‘Are these refundable, do you think?’ Before I had a chance to stop him he had backed away.
‘You bastard!’ I hoicked Sonny up out of his pushchair and gathered up the bags. ‘Mike!’ But he had disappeared.
The people in my queue were watching me so I shrugged my shoulders and settled back into line. I’d simply explain that my tickets had been stolen, robbed right out of my hand, and, after all, I had any amount of witnesses.
The queue shuffled slowly forward and I hardened my resolve. It was as if, until now, I hadn’t wanted to go, hadn’t been quite sure. But, now, nothing was going to stop me. I heaved my bags back onto their trolley and moved forward in the line.
We were one stop from the desk when Mike struggled through to us. He had a shiny British Airways folder and from inside he took our tickets. ‘No problem, the plane’s only half full.’ He handed them in to the desk. ‘We’d like to sit together,’ he said, and I hugged Sonny against me as if nothing unusual was taking place.
‘So, you’re prepared to follow us across the world?’ I looked sideways at him as we stepped out across the shiny floor.
‘I don’t seem to have much choice.’ He smiled.
‘As long as we stay away from America?’
‘Don’t push your luck.’ Awkward, suddenly, and shy, we walked through into the lounge.
We had to take a taxi from the station. ‘Will there be room for me?’ Mike asked, doubtful now as we drove fast along newly patched roads.
‘The house is huge.’ I laughed him down. ‘It has fourteen bedrooms at least, or maybe forty, and the teachers will all be off on holiday.’
The taxi driver was a large, red man with over-knuckled hands, who talked loudly at us while we strained out of the window to see. There were wheatfields and rye, and cows in clusters flipping their tails for flies, and then we were rattling up the drive towards the gritted oval of the porch.
‘It’s beautiful,’ I gasped, ‘beautiful,’ although what struck me most was that really it was hideous. The house was newly painted in apricot and cream, and roses, bred to flower right through the summer, grew from the gravel in tubs. I climbed out of the car. A man was clanking open the glossed double doors, but already I was edging towards the garden.
‘Good evening, welcome.’ The man strode towards us, and I introduced him to Sonny and then Mike. ‘Come, come inside,’ he called. ‘You’ll see we have some of your family’s original furniture. The grand piano, for instance, and some interesting tapestries.’ As he talked I found myself slipping off, clanking open the new wrought-iron gate, and skimming off alone across the lawn. The garden was mostly grass, with wide beds of roses, short bushes in pink and gold and red. They were set out squatly, divided up with fat, ferocious stems and without a weed between them. I turned to look up at the house. There were long french windows, closed against the heat, and under the shade of a veranda was stacked a large consignment of plastic chairs. The teachers, I imagined, breaking off to sit out in the sun, and I walked towards the edges of the garden where the lawn had been left to grow tall, running wild against a fringe of trees. From here I could see the high windows of the attic, and the orchard, gnarled and green, spreading out to one side of the house. There was a path of longer, rougher grass that led into the hill, and as I followed it under leaves of lilac I came upon the ice-house. It was dilapidated, its pillars peeling paint, and the leaves from last winter lay curled and dried across its floor. A stone bench curved into the wall and there was the square outline of a door. There was no handle and no catch, and as I traced it with my fingers I found that it had been sealed shut. I lay down on the bench and looked out through the avenue of leaves from where I could just see the shadows on the evening lawn. ‘Sarah,’ I heard Mike call, and then the little whimpering of Sonny, hungry for a feed.
I tried to imagine my great-grandmother living here, alone with her companion, Emanuel’s wife, while Germany boiled up towards another war. Schu-Schu, I thought, Gabrielle Belgard, and I wondered if they had minded much when Bina, Martha and Eva refused to come. They would walk the paths together, not always in their widow’s black, and in the early evening, drink coffee with cream out on the porch. I should tell my father how the curse must have been lifted, when Marianna went to Jerusalem and brought Schu-Schu home and I thought I caught their shadows, playing cards into the night.
‘Sarah,’ Mike called again. ‘We need you,’ and after a moment I jumped up and ran through the long grass towards the house.
I’d like to thank the following people who helped me with information, translations, photographs, memories, encouragement and notes: Gerta Calmann, Marianne Calmann, Dick Mosse, Lucy Mosse, Katharina Bielenberg, Josh Lacey, Kitty Aldridge, David Morrissey and the late Jo Kaufman.
Also for source material:
Memories of My Youth
by Elise Brash,
The Letters of Carl Heinrich Hertz, Life in Russia
, 1915–1917 by Richard Samson (with special thanks to the Institut für die Geschichte der deutschen Juden), and
An English Wife in Berlin
by Evelyn Blucher.
ESTHER FREUD
was born in London in 1963. She trained as an actress before writing her first novel,
Hideous Kinky
, which was shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and was made into a feature film starring Kate Winslet. She has since written five other novels. Her books have been translated into thirteen languages.
Her most recent novel is
Love Falls
.
Hideous Kinky
Peerless Flats
The Wild
The Sea House
Love Falls
Lucky Break
First published in Great Britain 2009
Copyright © Esther Freud
This electronic edition published 2012 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
The right of Esther Freud to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 4088 3143 4
www.bloomsbury.com/estherfreud
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