Waiting for Sunrise (45 page)

There is this myth that death by drowning is the best of all deaths amongst the dozens or hundreds available to us human beings – that with drowning your end arrives simultaneously with a moment of pure exhilaration. I will hold on to that idea but the rational side of my brain asks who provided this testimonial? Where’s the evidence?

When I saw my mother’s body in the undertaker’s at Eastbourne she did, however, look serene and untroubled. Paler than usual, a slight bluish tinge to her lips, her eyes closed as if she were dozing. I kissed her cold forehead and felt a pain in my gut as I remembered the last time I’d made that gesture, holding her warm in my arms. ‘I won’t let you be dragged down by this.’

Hamo tells me there is an unopened letter at Claverleigh waiting for me but I don’t need to read it to know that it will be her confession. Hamo, in his kindness, bless him, ventured the theory that it might have been some awful accident – a slip, a fall, unconsciousness. But I told him I was convinced it was suicide and the letter would merely confirm that. Her body had been found at dawn on the shingly beach at Eastbourne, left by the retreating tide – the proverbial man out walking his dog at first light – she was fully clothed, all her jewellery removed and one shoe missing.

I find myself, all of a sudden, remembering something Wolfram Rozman said to me – it seems eons ago, back in that impossible, unimaginable world before the war began, before everybody’s lives changed for ever – when, having been asked what he would have done if the tribunal had found against him, Wolfram had said – blithely, inconsequentially – that he would have taken his own life, of course. I can bring him into my mind’s eye effortlessly – Wolfram standing there in his caramel suit, swaying slightly, tipsy from the celebratory champagne, saying in all seriousness, ‘In this ramshackle empire of ours suicide is a perfectly reasonable course of action.’ Wolfram – was it just bravado, the swagger of a born hussar? No, I recall, it was said smilingly but with absolute rigid logic: once you understand that – you will understand us. It lies very deep in our being. ‘
Selbstmord
’ – death of the self: it’s an honourable farewell to this world. My mother had made her honourable farewell. Enough.

Hugh and the Faulkner family are deeply shocked. I feel my grief burn in me alongside a colder, calmer anger. My mother is as much an innocent victim of this whole Andromeda affair as are those two men I killed in a sap one June night in no man’s land in northern France. The causal chain reached out to claim them just as it did Anna Faulkner.

My darling Lysander,

I will not allow myself, or my stupidity, to harm you or endanger you in any way. You should understand that what I am about to do seems an entirely reasonable course of action to me. I have a few regrets at leaving this world but they are wholly outweighed by the benefits my imminent non-being will achieve. Think of it that way, my dear – I am no longer here, that’s all. This fact, this state, was going to arrive one day therefore it has always seemed to me that any day is as good as the next. I already feel a sense of relief at having taken the decision. You are now free to move forward with full strength and confidence and with no concerns about your foolish mother. I cannot tell you how upset I was after our last conversation, how you were intent on imperilling yourself, on taking a course of action that was plainly wrong, only to spare me. You were prepared to sacrifice yourself for me and I could not allow that, could not live with that responsibility. What I am about to do is no sacrifice – you must understand that for someone like me it is the most normal of acts in a sane and rational world.

Goodbye, my darling. Keep me alive in your thoughts every day.

Your loving mother.

Images. My mother. My father. How she wept at his funeral, the endless tears. The grim flat in Paddington. Claverleigh. Her beauty. Her singing – her rich mellow voice. That terrible sunlit afternoon in Claverleigh Wood. At meals when she talked the way she would unconsciously tap the tines of her fork on her plate to emphasize the point she was making. That night I saw my father kissing her in the drawing room when they thought I was asleep. The way they laughed when I walked in, outraged. The cameo she wore with the letter ‘H’ carved in the black onyx. How she smoked a cigarette, showing her pale neck as she lifted her chin to blow the smoke away. The confidence with which she walked into a room as if she were going on stage. What else could I have been with those two as my parents? How can I best avenge her?

Dr Bensimon saw me two hours ago. I telephoned him as soon as I had returned from Eastbourne.

‘I wish I could say it was an effort fitting you in at such short notice,’ he said. ‘But you’re my only patient today.’

I lay on the couch and told him bluntly and with no preamble that my mother had killed herself.

‘My god. I’m very sorry to hear that,’ he said. Then, after a pause, ‘What do you feel? Do you feel any guilt?’

‘No,’ I said immediately. ‘Somehow I want to feel guilt but I respect her too much for that. Does that make any sense? It was something she thought about and decided to do. In cold logic. And I suppose she had every right.’

‘It’s very Viennese,’ Bensimon said, then apologized. ‘I don’t mean to be flippant. Choosing that option, I mean. You’ve no idea how many of my patients did the same – not spontaneously – but after a great deal of thought. Calm, rational thought. Have you any idea what made her do it?’

‘Yes. I think so. It’s connected with what I’m doing myself . . .’ I thought again. ‘It’s to do with this war and the work I’m doing. She was actually trying to protect me, believe it or not.’

‘Do you want to talk about her?’

‘No, actually, I want to ask you about something – about someone else. Do you remember that first day we met, in Vienna, at your consulting rooms?’

‘The day Miss Bull was so insistent. Yes – not easily forgotten.’

‘There was another Englishman present, from the Embassy – a military attaché – Alwyn Munro.’

‘Yes, Munro. I knew him quite well. We were at university together.’

‘Really? Did he ever ask you anything about me?’

‘I can’t answer that,’ he said, apologetically. ‘Very sorry.’

I turned my head and looked at Bensimon who was sitting behind his desk, his fingers steepled in front of his face.

‘Because you can’t remember?’

‘No. Because he was my patient.’

‘Patient?’ I was astonished at this news. I sat up and swivelled myself around. ‘What was wrong with him?’

‘Obviously I can’t answer that, either. Let’s just say that Captain Munro had serious problems of a personal nature. I can’t go any further than that.’

I sit in 3/12 Trevelyan House with a bottle of whisky and a cheese-and-pickle sandwich I bought from the pub on the corner of Surrey Street. I telephoned Blanche and told her what had happened and she was all sympathy and warm concern, inviting me to come round and stay with her. I said that day would come soon enough but I had to be on my own at the moment. There will be an inquest, of course – so we must wait before we can bury her – my mother, Annaliese. I want tears to flow but all I feel is this heaviness inside me – a leaden weight of resentment, this grinding level of anger that she should have felt she had no more choice than to do what she did. To take her jewels off and walk into the sea until the waters closed over her.

17. A Cup of Tea and a Medicinal Brandy

The next day passed slowly, very slowly, Lysander felt, as if time were responding to his own desultory moods. He kept to himself as much as possible, staying in Room 205 with the door closed and locked. At midday he sent Tremlett out to buy him some pastries from a luncheon-room in the Strand. He ran through the plans he had made for the evening again and again. He was trying to convince himself that this exercise would be significant, possibly revelatory. At the very least he would be wiser – one step closer, perhaps.

In the middle of the afternoon, Tremlett called him on the telephone.

‘The White Palace Hotel on the line, sir.’

‘I don’t stay there any more.’

‘They say your wife has been taken ill.’

‘I’m not married, Tremlett – it’s obviously a mistake.’

‘They’re very insistent. She had a fainting fit, it seems.’

‘All right, put them on.’

He waited, hearing the clicks and buzzes as the connection was made. Then the manager came on the line.

‘Mrs Rief is in a very, ah, agitated state.’

‘There is no “Mrs Rief”, as it happens,’ Lysander said. Then he realized. ‘I’ll speak to her.’

He heard the receiver being held away and footsteps approaching.

‘Hello, Hettie,’ he said.

‘You’ve moved,’ she said accusingly, angrily. ‘I couldn’t think how else to find you.’

‘I’ll be there in ten minutes.’

He took a taxi to Pimlico and found her in the resident’s lounge of The White Palace with a cup of tea and a medicinal brandy. He locked the door so they wouldn’t be interrupted but Hettie took this as an invitation to intimacy and tried to kiss him. He pushed her away gently and she sulkily sat down again on the sofa.

‘I‘ve got three whole days,’ she said. ‘Jago thinks I’m on a sketching holiday on the Isle of Wight. I thought being on an island would convince him more.’

‘I can’t see you, Hettie,’ he said. ‘There’s a flap on – I’m working day and night. That’s why I sent you the telegram.’

She frowned and tucked her knees up underneath her. She pouted and tapped her forefinger on her jawbone – one, two, three – as if counting down, mentally. Then she pointed the finger at him.

‘There’s someone else,’ she said, finally. ‘I’m right, aren’t I?’

‘No . . . Yes.’

‘You’re a swine, Lysander. A bloody fucking swine.’

‘Hettie. You went and got married. We have a child but you didn’t even bother to tell me.’

‘That’s different.’

‘Please explain how.’

‘What have you done to me, Lysander?’

‘Hang on a second. Can I remind you of events in Vienna in 1913? You had me in prison with your damned lies. How dare you?’

‘I was helping you. Well, maybe not at first, but I was later.’

‘What’re you talking about?’

‘Those men persuaded me to drop the rape charge so you could be set bail. Udo was furious, practically threw me out –’

‘What men?’

‘Those two at the embassy. The attachés – I forget their names.’

‘Munro and Fyfe-Miller.’

‘If you say so.’

Lysander began to think fast.

‘You saw Munro and Fyfe-Miller?’ he asked. ‘While I was under arrest?’

‘We had a few meetings. They told me what to do – to change the charge. And they gave me money when I asked for some. After you escaped they were very helpful – offered to take me to Switzerland. But I decided to stay – because of Lothar.’ She looked at him aggressively, as if he were somehow to blame for all the mess. ‘They asked me lots of questions about you. Very curious. And I was very helpful, I can tell you that. Told them all sorts of interesting titbits about Mr Lysander Rief.’

Was she lying again, Lysander wondered. Was this pure bravura? He felt confusion beginning to overwhelm him once more. He reached over and finished off her brandy. First Munro turned out to have been Bensimon’s patient and now there seemed to be some form of collusion between Munro, Fyfe-Miller and Hettie. He tried to see what the connections and consequences might have been but it was all too perplexing. What had really happened in Vienna in 1914? It made him very uneasy.

Hettie leapt up from the sofa and came over to him, sliding on to his lap, putting her arms round his neck and kissing him – little dabbing kisses on his face, pressing her breasts into his arm.

‘I know what you like, Lysander. Think what fun we can have – three whole days. Let’s buy lots to eat and drink and just stay in. We can take all our clothes off . . .’ She reached for his groin.

‘No, Hettie. Please.’ He stood up, slipping easily out from under her – she was so small, so light. ‘I’m engaged to be married. It’s over. You should never have come. I explicitly told you not to come. You’ve only yourself to blame.’

‘You’re a bastard,’ she said, tears in her eyes. ‘A fucking mean bastard man.’ She carried on swearing at him, the volume increasing, as he put on his greatcoat and picked up his cap. He left the room without looking round. He didn’t mind the abuse but the last thing she screamed at him was, ‘– And you’ll never see Lothar in your life!’

The New London Theatre of Varieties, just off Cambridge Circus, was indeed new to Lysander. He would never have acted there as it was mainly a variety and vaudeville hall, although one that specialized in ‘ballets, French Plays and Society Pieces’. In the theatre guide he’d consulted – he wasn’t interested in the programme but the facilities – he had read that ‘the tourist will find that the audience forms part of the entertainment’. This was a code, he knew, for ‘prostitutes frequent the lobby bars’. The New London was an obsolescent type of Victorian theatre where the public could drink at the theatre bars without having to pay for the show. It was originally a way of supplementing the night’s takings but the system inevitably brought other trade with it. Lysander remembered some old actors of his acquaintance reminiscing fondly about the prices and the quality of the streetwalkers available – the higher up you went in the theatre – from the stalls to the bars at the dress circle, upper circle, amphitheatre – the cheaper the girls. A better class of gentlemen also came to these public theatre bars because it provided perfect camouflage – there was plenty of time to scrutinize and select while ostensibly doing something entirely innocent: going to the theatre – how very cultural and educative.