The Dower House (24 page)

‘It must be wonderful to belong to a nation that carries no such baggage,' Angela remarked.

After a silence, Marianne said, ‘I've dreamed of you rather much. Perhaps it will stop now. I hope so.'

Angela just stared, uncertain how to respond.

‘The strange thing was – the dreams were all
about
you but you never appeared in them.'

‘How?'

‘The typical sort of thing, I'd go into a shop – a dress shop, say – and while I'm looking at dresses one of the assistants comes up to me, very quietly, and hands me a packet. It could be a packet of fish or a brick . . . anything. But it's a secret. I know she has risked much to pass it to me. And she says, “Get this to her somehow. Don't fail.” And then I spend the rest of the dream looking for you. And never can I find you. I can be on a platform at Hauptbahnhof and there are all these other strange platforms – new platforms – up in the air over my head and I just know you're on one of
them
but I can't find a way to get up there. And even when I find a stairway going up, I end in the cellars. Or I find an elevator but it goes all the way to the roof, not to stop at the platforms where you are. I have had many such dreams.'

‘Why fish?' Angela asked. ‘Did we meet once in a fish shop?'

‘No. It was only fish once. Another time it was a brick . . . and a tiny violin . . . and a big brass key, like for a church . . . it can be anything, but always is it dangerous for me and urgent I should carry it to you. And always they give it me in a strange shop – the brick in a baker's . . . the violin in an auto-dealer . . . like that.'

‘Perhaps now we have met again, that, too, will happen in the dream. I think if you find me in the next dream like that . . . how often, by the way?'

‘Once or twice every month – less since I'm waiting for this baby.'

‘If you find me at last, it will stop.'

Angela half-turned to go back indoors but Marianne said, ‘Do you think Felix has dreams?'

‘Everyone who was in a
KL
has dreams.'

‘I thought so. Sometimes, in the morning, quite early, I see him out in the walled garden – the kitchen garden, they call it – and he's not gardening. He's just walking around touching things – touching the apple trees, the wooden posts that Sally has put up for her beans, the artichokes Nicole is growing . . . as if he needs to touch them to be sure of them. And I think,
Poor man – you had a bad night!
D'you think I'm right?'

Angela shrugged. ‘I'm surprised to hear that.'

‘Why?'

‘Because Felix is different from most other prisoners. He went in as an artist, remained an artist, and came out as an artist. I think he is the least-damaged man I know. But hardly anyone else ever came out being the same
sort
of person as they went in. I was a sound technician before and a sound technician after, but when I was
in
Ravensbrück – not. In there I was . . . a penitential. I didn't
welcome
the punishment – no one could welcome what happened inside there – but I made myself accept it because . . . well, because of what I had been before. In fact . . .' She hesitated.

‘What?'

‘Perhaps we should get back to the party. They've all gone indoors for something.'

‘I bet I know exactly what's happening – they're talking
Art
. Corvo is saying Art is now for the people and Eric is explaining that means committees of artists are telling each other “you itch my back and I'll itch yours”.'

Angela was about to correct her but then thought, No, actually, that's right! ‘You should go back to bed at least,' she said.

‘I will. Just tell me what you were going to say.'

‘I will. Just tell me what you were going to say.'

‘Why? I would have been—'

‘Otherwise the other prisoners would start to think I was still in the
SS
and sent to spy on them. I was like a . . . a
Seiltänzerin
, whatever that is in English – up on a high wire. High-wire dancer?' After a pause she said, ‘There's something else. There was a lunatic sort of excitement in provoking her . . . steering that narrowest line between life and death. And then, after the liberation, I went to Berlin Zoo one day and, wandering around among the big cats and the bears and wolves and things – carnivores – I felt an almost irresistible urge to reach a hand into their cages and pet them. You can't actually do it, of course. You'd have to climb over the barriers. But I wanted to do it. And then I realized – I was trying to recapture that deadly excitement. I won't go near a zoo now, because one day I just might do it.'

‘What about that
Oberaufseherin?
Have you ever . . .?'

‘I gave the British a deposition. Hundreds of us must have done the same – about all of them. They let die Heugel off with prison. She's the one I really wanted to see hanged. But they hanged Völkenrath. Albert Pierrepoint, England's top hangman, he did it. One of the first – the thirteenth of December nineteen forty-five!' After a pause she added, ‘There's a colleague at the
BBC
who thinks he can get me a copy of the film. They filmed all the executions, you know.'

‘D'you have somewhere to sleep tonight?' Felix asked.

Angela told him that Marianne had offered one of their bedrooms – and the bed. Beds were more at a premium than rooms tonight.

‘I still think it's pretty amazing,' Faith said. ‘The story about you and her in the war.'

‘You do understand that none of us must ever let Willard know the truth about it?'

‘Of course,' Faith assured her. ‘Completely.'

‘And that includes telling Nicole.'

Faith was still less positive at that. ‘I just hope she'll understand when the truth finally comes out.'

‘Isn't that something we all have to learn?' Felix asked. ‘That we
never
know the full truth about anything, so we must be careful to judge. She's doing to Marianne what those barbarians with the hair-clippers did to her – jumping to conclusions.'

‘I think Marianne's wrong, mind,' Angela continued. ‘Willard would be more tolerant of her past than she imagines.'

‘It isn't that,' Felix said. ‘You have to remember that Willard has deserted her once already. She was deeply in love with him and she thought he felt the same about her – which he
did
. But he had to go back home to Boston and try to live without her before he realized it. And during that time her life was . . . nothing. Worse than nothing. People wouldn't help her because her parents are stinking rich and they thought she should go back to them. Especially as she was under twenty-one. But she would rather starve to death than do that. So if there's only a one-in-a-million chance that Willard would desert her again, she still won't risk it.'

Angela considered this a moment and then said, ‘So!
He's
the one who must be careful, then.'

‘Who's left?' Tony asked Adam.

‘The chief went back with Fogel in his taxi – mid-evening. The village people have all gone, I think. Most of the others came by train or bus, so they're stuck here until tomorrow – or later today, I mean. Corvo and chum have a bed in our place – next to our bedroom. I don't really want to go to bed until I'm sure they're fast asleep.'

‘And – talking of which . . . your little friend Eve?'

‘Why d'you say it like that?'

‘Don't come all innocent! But you've got a bloody nerve . . . shitting on your own doorstep like that.'

‘Like what?'

‘The war's over. We've no excuse for carrying on like that now.'

‘Oh, come on! She's getting married next month – to someone she calls “Trev”. She just wants a bit of a fling before she walks into the trap and hears it slam shut behind her. Now where's the harm in that?'

‘In an anonymous box in a no-name street in London . . . none. But . . .' Tony hesitated and then blurted it out: ‘It's different – being in a community.'

‘I don't see that. I think we're a pretty liberal lot here.'

‘Not in that way. How d'you think Arthur's going to feel. I mean, if you're prepared to be unfaithful to Sally – right here where we all live – and with the whole community and God knows how many guests here – Arthur's going to wonder if there's anything you'd stop at. And not just Arthur.'

‘You?'

‘No! I bloody know you, mate. That's why I'm taking the trouble to tell you this. I think you should draw a five-mile
cordon sanitaire
around the Dower House and enjoy all your extramaritals
outside
it. Just don't shit on our dream – OK?'

Sunday, 22 June 1947

Deeply hung-over, Felix lay in a shop doorway. A
book
shop doorway – though he couldn't say how he knew that. And he couldn't bear to open his eyes, so painful was the light, even of early dawn.

He knew it was early dawn because a water cart went by, darkening the sky and sprinkling the dust. Some of it even wet his face.

But the water was warm – almost hot?

He opened his eyes and discovered it was not a water cart but a dog – one dark Z of a leg cocked up over his face.

He woke with a merciful jolt – and was less perturbed than he might otherwise have been, for it was not the first time that particular dream had jerked him awake and he had the vaguest memory of its happening to him for real, in student days in Berlin.

‘I know you're awake.'

Faye . . . voice husky today.

‘How d'you know I'm awake?' He still did not open his eyes – the real ones, not the ones in the dream.

‘It was the fly, crawling over your face – and, of course, the way you cried out “
Juden raus!
”.'

‘Liar!' He opened his eyes at last.

Her hair was dishevelled but her face was immaculate; makeup could not have improved it. Objectively, he ought to be in love with her. If this face had appeared in his waking dreams in Mauthausen, he would have adored her beyond the point of folly.

So why not now?

‘Perhaps I dreamed it,' she said. ‘What were
you
dreaming about?'

‘I couldn't possibly tell you.'

‘Ooooh! Like that, was it?' She reached a delicate finger across the small gulf between them and stroked his arm seductively.

He laughed, carefully. ‘All right! I'll say this much. I was lying asleep in a shop doorway and a dog came along and – to put it delicately – marked his territory, which included my face.'

‘Oh . . . God!' She shrank from him and curled up. ‘Are all your dreams like that?'

‘I don't know. I'm sure I do dream but every bit of it usually vanishes the moment I wake up. I don't have nightmares, if that's what you're asking. Lots of the
KL
people do, but I don't.'

‘Is that good or bad?'

He shrugged. ‘Time will tell. But I'm certainly not going to lie on a couch to find out.'

‘You've been talking to Eric Brandon.'

‘Not about that.'

‘He's so scornful about psychiatry and analysis and stuff . . . I found myself wondering if Isabella doesn't perhaps have a weekly lie-down in some clinic in Swiss Cottage. By the way – d'you know if Willard has taken over the Brandons' lease on their flat in Curzon Street?'

He nodded and then winced. ‘Last month, but he won't be doing anything there – adapting it as a drawing office, I mean – until after the baby.'

‘A West End address and a Mayfair phone number . . . he's cottoned on to the vulnerabilities of the British pretty swiftly.'

Felix sat up gingerly, favouring his head. ‘I'm going to make several litres of tea. You?'

She rose from the bed, trailing an accidental sheet that fell away to reveal a living Canova – one of the Three Graces. His heart thumped an extra systole; it might or might not be love but it was just as thrilling. ‘I'll wander over and patronize Willard and Tony's breakfast effort.' Deliberately prissy, she added, ‘We should aawl suppaawt voluntary effaawt.'

She stood in the bath and ladled pan after pan of cold water over herself; Felix sat in the doorway and sketched swift notes on the tumbling, tossing restlessness of lithe flesh. Then, because she had left the plug in, he lay in the bath and rolled over and over in the fractionally warmer water while she, towelling herself, said, ‘I can see – and I mean literally
see
– why the public schools go in for all those cold baths.'

A short while later, as Felix waited for the electric kettle to boil, she crossed the yard and, happening to glance up, saw Marianne and Angela at one of the top-floor windows. She flapped an exhausted hand at them and they waved back.

‘D'you think she suits Felix?' Angela asked.

‘I don't think anyone suits Felix,' Marianne replied. ‘He's a beset – beseiged? – artist. He'll offer himself to his work . . .'

‘Sacrifice himself.'

‘Yes, sacrifice. So he wouldn't understand why his lover should come before.'

‘But,' Angela objected, ‘Faith is “beset” too – a fanatic. She's fanatic about Faith. Felix is dedicated to his art and Faith is dedicated to Faith's career. Perhaps they are ideal for each other?'

Marianne took a step back and eyed her shrewdly. ‘But that's not what
you
hope?'

Angela smiled slightly and gazed at a floating tealeaf in her mug. ‘I don't think love is ever possible for me again. And I suspect it may not be possible for Felix, either. So – in a completely different way – maybe I'm as ideal for him as Faith?'

‘Were you ever in love – really deep? Really hot?'