The Other Side of Love (27 page)

“Smoke Gets In Your Eyes’. A song that Kathe had loved.

His partner was pressing her breasts against his stiffly starched shirtfront. He stepped back, bowing the polite way small boys are taught at dancing class before he led her to a table, hopefully hers. He headed for the open french door behind which stood one of the portable bars.

A group of guys he knew were drinking and discussing what else? - the Polish crisis.

“There’s going to be a war over this mess, McAllister,”

somebody said.

“You can bet your bottom dollar on it.”

“Let the Poles get skewered, let the English and French fight the Germans. Who gives a flying fart?”

McAllister responded.

“Just so long as the good old Atlantic Ocean stays between us and them.”

“Couldn’t agree more,”

somebody chimed in.

“So what if they have suicidal urges over there in Europe? It’s none of our business.”

“Don’t count on that, old buddy. We’ve got Chosen People here, and Roosevelt’s their boy.”

“Roosevelt’s a savvy politician. A bolshie Democrat maybe, but nobody’s fool. If a war develops from this Danzig screw-up, which I sincerely doubt, he’ll pass.”

“Double Scotch,”

Wyatt said.

“Hey, Kingsmith! You were just in London, weren’t you? What think you? Are the British gung-ho to leap to the aid of Poland?”

“You better hope they are.”

Amber liquid sloshed over cut crystal as Wyatt took a long gulp.

“Because, if they don’t, that bunch of cut-throat Nazi bastards will chew up that side of the Atlantic. Then watch out! You know their motto:

“Today Germany, tomorrow the world.”

“

“The problem with you, Kingsmith, is you’ve swallowed the bull that each and every German’s a direct descendant of Attila the Hun. Well, let me tell you. I was over in Berlin this spring. Business for the bank. A beautiful clean city, and you couldn’t meet a more hospitable bunch. Polite. Gregarious. On the streets you saw adorable kids. Everybody neat and well-fed-looking. Like it or lump it, Hitler’s done wonders.”

“Yeah, Wyatt, what’s eating you?”

Fredrick McAllister swayed on his feet.

“Didn’t I see you mooning over that dishy German cousin of yours?”

“Shut your fat mouth.”

“So she’s the problem. What happened? She give you the gate?”

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Wyatt clenched his fists to swing. Then suddenly he was sprawling in a low French petit point chair.

“Enough fur and fangs,”

somebody was saying.

“In case you guys haven’t noticed, this is a civilized gathering.”

“Don’t tangle with Kingsmith,”

somebody else said.

“Right now he’s bad joss.”

Wyatt slumped in the deep cushion thinking of the clean city, the polite hospitable folk who put up signs and broke windows, thinking of Kathe with her swastika Olympic badge. The band switched to

“A Foggy Day in London Town’, another of their songs. Wyatt lurched to his feet.

Without saying goodbye to his host or hostess, the guest of honour, his parents, he brushed by the liveried butler at the front door.

Rossie and Humphrey had given him a red Packard convertible when he had graduated from law school. He sobered up a little as he jogged to the immense oval courtyard where he’d parked it amid the other non-chauffeured cars.

“Wyatt,”

Humphrey called, puffing after him.

Wyatt stopped.

“Oh, hi, Dad.”

Humphrey caught up.

“Aren’t you staying for the supper?”

“I’ve a living to make,”

Wyatt said.

“It’s time for me to head back to New York and get to work.”

“Work? But you’re staying at the inn with us.”

Wyatt was moving towards the tightly packed lines of cars.

“Sorry, Dad, but a client wants to contest his long-deceased grandfather’s will. He’s tried before. And I, as newesAassociate, have been given the job of finding a loophole in one of me clauses.”

An elaborate ironwork torchere lit Humphrey’s full-cheeked concerned face.

“Wyatt, listen, maybe I should go over there.”

“To Carrothers, Uzbend and Hanson? Dad!”

“I meant Berlin. Even as a boy Alfred was set in his ways, a stodgy type, but he’s not like Euan, he’s not hard as nails. I’m sure I could convince him to move up the wedding date.”

“Dad, how many times do I have to say it? There’s not going to be a wedding.”

“If only Katy could see how unhappy you are.”

“Hey, you’re barking up the wrong tree. I’m doing great, if a bit overworked. And the split was by mutual consent.”

“She still writes to you all the time.”

“We’re friends, Dad, good friends.”

Wyatt concentrated on rubbing a bird speck from the convertible hood.

“As cousins should be, right?”

Teetering on his small patent-leather pumps, Humphrey peered

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into Wyatt’s taut smile. After a moment, he touched Wyatt’s sleeve.

“Drive carefully, son.”

Leaving Newport, Wyatt recalled this advice. He pulled over and slept. It was morning when he finally reached Manhattan. Without thinking it through, he headed for the Lower East Side, parking on Delancey Street. The signs of the dark narrow shops were in Hebrew. No Sunday quiet here. Pushcart vendors argued vociferously with their customers. A group of grey-bearded men shouted with swooping gestures. Children shrilled as they circled around some sort of game with a top. A pair of girls pointed upwards to indicate one of the bright coats that dangled like flags from the poles jutting out into the streets. A pickle-seller thrust his burly red arm in his barrel. Next to him a vendor hawked big soft pretzels. Shawled women lingered gossiping outside a butcher’s shop. Men and little boys in ankle-length black coats and black hats hurried down steps into a basement from whence came the sound of dissonant liturgy.

I should know more about the religion, he thought. More? That’s a laugh. I don’t know one damn thing.

But which Judaism should he study? The coarse exhilarating version surrounding him? Its opposite, the decorum and unrelenting stiffness within Judge Leventhal s brownstone?

And why had he pushed thoughts of learning about his father’s people from his mind while he was bound to Kathe? Had he feared seeing them through the eyes of a citizen of the Third Reich?

There was a tap on the rolled-down window. A little boy in a skullcap and ragged trousers held up a newspaper printed in Hebrew. Wyatt shook his head. The boy glanced shyly at him. Wyatt realized that, wearing his rumpled white dinner-jacket in mid-morning, he must be a bigger curiosity than the people around him. The boy reached into his canvas satchel for the fat Sunday e$tion of the New York Daily News.

FRENCH BEEF UP MAGINOT LINE

Wyatt handed over a coin.

IV

Unlocking the apartment, Wyatt dropped his overnight bag on the chair, then bent to retrieve the Saturday mail, which the super had pushed under the door. Fanning the envelopes, he saw a half-dozen addressed in the familiar, delicately spiked hand but postmarked Amsterdam.

Puzzled, he dropped his parents”

letters in the salver, carrying

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Kathe’s to his room. He forgot about the postmarks as he read the tender passages.

She was in Bavaria with Sigi, and the scenery was magnificent. She was back in Berlin. And she missed him. And she loved him. She loved him.

The silence of the empty apartment engulfed him. If she loved him this much, would she be writing about it in Germany? Wouldn’t she be here in his bed telling him? Why did she insist on playing out the farce that she was obeying a parental injunction? If she ached the way he did, would she give a damn what she had promised?

She still writes to you all the time, Humphrey had said.

Wyatt tore up the letters, the tendons of his hands standing out as if he were strangling a rabbit. He yanked open the narrow top drawers of his bureau, shoving the mass of German-stamped envelopes into his wastebasket.

Sitting at his desk, he took out his stationery, writing the date:

8 23 1939

He stared at the numbers for nearly five minutes, then blew his nose and began to write rapidly.

Dear Kathe,

This isn’t the sort of thing I’m good at, so forgive me if I use the wrong wording. The simple truth is there’s no correct way to write this letter.

Ever since I left you in London it’s become even more clear to me that we can never makA go of it.

I’m what I am, haunted by ghost*that cannot be laid to rest. And you’re on the other side of the fence, a German. The world is the problem between us, but that doesn’t alter the situation. In your heart you must know as well as I do that the difficulties are insurmountable.

Even the family, seeing only the surface, knew the truth. You and I aren’t made for each other. That’s one lucky thing about not being officially engaged. The break-up is less formidable.

I’ve already been stepping out.

At the lie, his pen stopped. It took a minute or so before he was calm enough to write again.

I’d feel far less of a heel if you were dating and enjoying yourself, too. Let a few guys wine and dine you, Kathe Kingsmith, and you’ll make the same discovery I have.

f

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You’ve been boxed up and housebound long enough.

This is not to belittle what we had. The romance was a very special part of being young. Let’s not ruin it by dragging things out. This way we can keep on being friends.

WYATT

He folded the sheet unevenly, slashing the Griinewald address across the envelope. He trotted to Madison Avenue, getting to the mailbox just as the first Sunday pick-up was being emptied into the leather pouch.

Returning to the apartment, Wyatt glimpsed himself in the elevator’s gold-veined mirror. Once he had witnessed the death of a man hit by a delivery-truck, and the luckless pedestrian had worn the same expression, lips drawn flat against his teeth, eyes wet and bewildered by the terminal agony.

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1939

VICIOUS POLISH ATTACK ON GERMAN RADIO STATION

UNARMED GERMANS SLAUGHTERED

Headline in

“Volkischer Beobachter’,

1 September 1939

GERMAN MEMORANDUM PROVESJpMGLAND’S GUILT

Headline in

“Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung’,

2 September 1939

The task will be hard. There may be dark days ahead. But we can only do the right as we see the right, and reverently commit our cause to God.

From a speech broadcast by George VI,

3 September 1939

Araminta could feel the grit of the perfumed salts beneath her, and the water of her pre-dinner bath was nearly cold, yet she didn’t move. She lay brooding about her latest argument with Peter. She had lost her temper often enough with him - a redhead’s prerogative - but before this afternoon none of their rows had attained a physical dimension. The explosion had occurred when he told her that his parents were inviting her - finally - Ťspend the last week of August at Mainwaring Court, their estare in Buckinghamshire. A sharp burst of pain had shattered her thin if skilfully applied veneer of uncaring sophistication.

“Can’t you see?”

she had shrieked.

“I’m a goddam going-away present before you join that RAF squadron of yours!”

With that, she had hit him. Even as she had delivered the palm-tingling blow to his cheek, she was aware that her actions proved the Earl and Countess of Mainwaring correct. Araminta Kingsmith, whose patronym was smeared across the top of newspaper advertisements, whose great-grandfather had started out his career as a ragpicker, whose grandmother had been a parlour-maid, was irrevocably common. What could be more common than making this scene in full view of everyone in the Strand? Nevertheless, those red splotches on Peter’s pale cheek had brought an exultant relief, and she had yelled: Til tell them what they can do with their bloody week!”

Peter’s the third son, not the heir, she thought, a rebellious kick sending perfumed splashes on to the new bathroom tiles - all three upstairs

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bathrooms at Quarles had recently been renovated. What the devil difference can it make to the Earl of Mainwaring who Peter spends his time with or marries?

There had never been a hint of proposal from him; she still saw her other young men. Peter, although transparently besotted with her, was in no position to take on a wife without his parents”

approval - and the lack of invitations to any one of the five Mainwaring homes certainly didn’t signify approval. He didn’t have a bean other than the generous income his father allotted him. In her top drawer was The Times with the Honourable Peter Shawcross-Mortimer’s First printed amid the Oxford and Cambridge examination results; but, alas, a First in Classics wasn’t a commodity high in demand on the labour market.

And all I’ve got is the pocket money Daddy gives me.

Sighing, she reached for the big soft towel and caught her reflection in the mirrored door. Long slim legs, large firm breasts, deeply indented waist, gracefully curved buttocks.

God, I lead the poor darling a merry waltz! she thought. We’re both a bit dotty from the sheer weight of all this sexual frustration.