Some Old Lover's Ghost (25 page)

Voices assailed her as she unlocked the front door and walked down the hall.

‘Mummy, Daddy dropped the jelly and it went all over the carpet—’

‘I have to put a call through to Paris—’

‘Mrs Franklin, Joshua rubbed syrup in his hair, so I gave him a bath.’

She put her arm around Rosi and drew her into the dining room. ‘Joshua – Melissa – there’s someone I want you to meet.’ Gently, Tilda drew Rosi forward. ‘I want you to meet Rosi Liebermann, who is your extra sister.’

C
HAPTER
S
EVEN

‘Rosi was the first of my extra children,’ said Tilda, after she had introduced us. It was Tilda’s eighty-first birthday party.

I shook hands. I estimated that Rosi Liebermann was now in her late sixties. She was tall and Junoesque, draped in colourful scarves, her long grey pigtail wound in a coronet around her head.

‘I was a dumpling,’ Rosi said, and laughed. ‘I grew four inches in my twelfth year, and acquired a magnificent bosom. No wonder that poor woman ran from me on sight.’

‘Rosi is a writer,’ said Tilda, but I knew that, of course. In my mid-teens, I had been addicted to Rosi Liebermann’s long, escapist, historical epics.

One of the great-grandchildren grabbed at Tilda’s knees and in spite of her age, in spite of her frail health, she scooped him up and the crowds closed around them. Her family had spread through The Red House; they shrieked and argued everywhere. Cars were parked along the street, visitors squeezed through the tall, tight ranks of box hedges, and were spat out onto the forecourt of the house. The doorbell rang constantly, and the sound of champagne corks was like a drumbeat. The room heaved and throbbed with Tilda’s confident, noisy, successful
relatives. Those who did not dress elegantly, dressed originally; those who were not beautiful were stylish or unusual. There wasn’t a plain, dumpy, dull person there.

I turned back to Rosi Liebermann. ‘So many of Tilda’s children and grandchildren seem to be terribly illustrious.’

Her pleasant face creased in a smile. ‘Oh, I think that I’m forgotten already. My sort of fiction doesn’t last. Joshua is famous, of course. It’s a pity he couldn’t be here today.’

‘I can’t see his son,’ I couldn’t resist saying.

‘Patrick?’

Whenever I heard a car draw up outside, I looked out through the open window, but it was never the blue Renault. I felt exasperated with myself for looking; I told myself that Patrick had invited me to Wheeler’s to help with the book. That was all.

‘Tilda has always been very close to Patrick,’ said Rosi. ‘He stayed here in the school holidays when he was a child.’

The Red House, with its secret gardens and tall trees, must have been a wonderful place for a child. ‘And you, Miss Liebermann?’ I asked. ‘Did you once live here?’

‘I holidayed here, that’s all. I was married by the time Tilda bought The Red House.’

‘I’ve been researching the
Kindertransporte
,’ I told her. Ten thousand children had been scooped up and saved from Nazi Germany in 1939 – a fraction of the doomed six million, but a significant number nevertheless. ‘The train journey … Holland … getting ready to leave Germany … Do you remember it?’

Rosi put aside her glass. ‘I can’t remember the weeks before I left Berlin. I suspect that my parents must have tried to make life normal, unmemorable. Although those were not, of course, normal times. I didn’t really understand what was happening until we were at the station in Berlin, and it was time to leave. I thought I’d see my parents again in a few weeks’ time, you understand. But when the engine started up, I saw how my mother went behind my father and put her hands over her face. She could not bear to see me go. She could not bear to think that it might be the last time.’

I whispered, ‘And was it?’

‘Oh yes. Both my parents died in Auschwitz.’

I mumbled something inadequate, appalled by such a separation, such loss.

‘Tilda and Max became my family. Tilda and Max and Aunt Sarah. I stayed with Aunt Sarah for much of that first year in England. I was unwell – tonsillitis – and the doctor thought I needed country air, so Tilda sent me to the Fens. When Max was sent abroad by his newspaper in 1939, he didn’t think it safe to take me to Paris. I hadn’t a proper passport or visa, you see, so I went back to Aunt Sarah. The Franklins returned to London in December, and we all spent Christmas together. Then, in the New Year, Max was posted to Amsterdam.’ Rosi paused. ‘I knew that Tilda found it hard to choose – whether to go abroad with Max, or to stay in England so that all her children could be together – so I told her how much I enjoyed living in Southam. And it was true, I did enjoy it. I was a city girl, so the country was a great adventure to me.’

Someone yelled, ‘Rosi! Rosi – come over here and tell Tilda what Professor Hermann said—’ and Rosi Liebermann excused herself and disappeared into the throng.

I heard feet crunching on the gravel below, and looked down again. I glimpsed Patrick’s fair head first and then, framed by the box hedge, I saw the dark-haired woman who walked beside him, and the little girl who held her hand.

I guessed who they were, of course. The woman must be Patrick’s wife, and the child must be his daughter, Ellie. I grabbed a glass of orange juice from a tray and ducked through the crowd, escaping along the corridor, heading for the little room that Tilda had set aside for me. I had fallen into the routine of driving to The Red House on Monday, talking to Tilda and staying overnight, and returning to London on Tuesday afternoon. I spent the rest of the week writing up my notes and doing background research.

The room was cluttered with box-files and notebooks referring to the
Kindertransporte
and the Refugee Children’s Movement.
Looking around, I acknowledged that I felt miserable because, compared to Tilda’s, my own family was pale and anaemic. A father, a sister, two nephews and a brother-in-law. The sum total of my living relations. My father and I invariably irritated or upset each other, my nephews were too young for sensible conversation and, if my brother-in-law wasn’t working, he was so tired that he snored in an armchair in front of the television. Though I love my sister, we both seem to want what the other has. I envied Tilda her large, noisy, colourful family. It was what I should have liked for myself, and I did not enjoy the feeling of exclusion that an outsider must inevitably endure at a celebration such as today’s.

I tried to distract myself by thinking about the question that had recently preoccupied me: the events of the year of 1947. I had asked Tilda, but she had said, maddeningly, ‘We have only reached 1939, Rebecca. I am too old to dart around the years.’ Tilda was organized and autocratic and, over the months, I had become very fond of her. She had never lost the energy and impulsiveness of her girlhood; her enthusiasm and love of life made me feel tired and cynical.

I collected some documents, enough to keep me busy through the weekend, and slipped out of the house. I thought that Tilda, surrounded by her relatives, would not notice that I had left without saying goodbye. I had almost reached the gate when I heard footsteps behind me. I looked back.

Patrick was running down the path, a small child clasped in his arms. The documents slipped out of my hands and swooped and fluttered, clinging to the wide topiaried boxes like posters on a billboard.

He said, ‘I saw you from the solar.’

I grabbed at the papers. The action filled in the typically awkward silence that followed. ‘I have to go.’

‘Joan’s about to serve the food.’

I shook my head. ‘It’s a family thing, Patrick.’ I made sure I didn’t sound too forlorn. ‘And I’ve work to do.’

‘I’ll walk you to your car.’

I said sharply, ‘Won’t your wife miss you?’ and he looked down at me.

‘Jennifer? I don’t think so.’ He sounded weary rather than bitter. The little girl wriggled in his arms, looked at me briefly, and said, ‘Put me down, Daddy. I want to play in the trees.’

Patrick said, ‘Ellie, this is Rebecca. Rebecca, this is my daughter, Ellie,’ but she had gone, jumping out of his grasp, ducking under the twisting yellow branches of the box.

‘She’s beautiful,’ I said, and she was.

‘She’s a livewire.’ He watched her adoringly. ‘She spent the weekend with me. She won’t sit still for more than ten seconds at a time, will you, Ellie?’ He held out a hand, and she squirmed out from the box tree and ran to him, and he hugged her.

We walked along the road to where I had parked my car. The countryside was at its best: a froth of May blossom on the hawthorns, leaves uncurling on the trees. I unlocked my car door and put the documents on the back seat. Ellie, in blithe disregard of her white party dress, played happily in a puddle at the side of the road. Patrick, like his daughter, looked fidgety.

He said, ‘I’ve been so damned busy, but I meant to phone you.’

‘About Daragh?’

‘Daragh?’ He looked bewildered. ‘No. I thought that we—’

‘Patrick. Oh,
Ellie
. Patrick, how could you?’

I looked up. Jennifer Franklin, her beautiful face creased with displeasure, marched along the verge and pulled her daughter out of the puddle. ‘Patrick, her
dress
. I bought it in
Paris.’

I thought it time to go. I called a quick farewell, climbed into my car, and drove away.

The doorbell rang just as I tipped the contents of the box onto the floor. When I peeped out of the window I saw Toby. My hand shook as I took the chain off the door.

‘I thought I’d call in on my way home,’ he said. He stood on the front step, untypically hesitant. ‘Bit of a nerve coming here like this, I know, but there are things we should talk about.’

He followed me into the living room. I said, ‘I thought everything was said last October.’

‘I was a bastard. A complete bastard. I don’t blame you for hating me.’

I felt an ill-natured pleasure in his discomfort. ‘I don’t hate you, Toby,’ I said lightly, as I heaved a pile of books from an armchair so that he could sit down. ‘I did once, but I don’t now.’

‘You’re indifferent to me. I think that’s worse.’

I wanted to say all the harsh, vindictive things I had not been capable of saying when he left me. Then I saw the misery in his eyes, and I felt ashamed of myself, and went into the kitchen to make coffee. The simple, repetitive actions calmed me: measuring the beans, grinding them, pouring on the boiling water, arranging biscuits on a plate. I thought of my mother, scrubbing the kitchen floor after my father had come home from college in one of his more rancorous moods, or Jane, rinsing out baby clothes in the sink, her eyes sapphire chips set in planes of stone.

I carried the coffee in, poured it out. Black, no sugar: it irked me that I had not forgotten. I said, ‘Why now, Toby? After so long?’ I had built a fence around myself in the months since we had parted; I did not want him to breach it.

‘I tried before, but I couldn’t. And the longer you leave it, the more difficult it becomes – the more aware you are that you should have done something weeks or months ago. Then I thought I’d write, but that would have seemed cowardly.’ He looked up at me. ‘When we lost the baby, I just couldn’t cope. Nothing like that had ever happened to me, you see, Rebecca. I couldn’t accept it, I wanted to pretend that it hadn’t happened.’

My first feeling was one of surprise. Then a flicker of relief. I had always assumed that Toby had left because of me, because I was somehow not up to scratch. That the failure of our relationship was my responsibility. Yet Toby’s version of events convinced me: it fitted my knowledge of the man I had once loved. Toby Carne was the only child of doting parents. He had been to Westminster and then to Cambridge and he had become a successful barrister.
He had probably had everything he wanted until the day his child had begun to bleed from my womb, six and a half months too early.

‘I’m not trying to make excuses,’ he added. ‘I just wanted to explain. I don’t think I was particularly rational at the time.’

People react to loss in different ways. After our mother died, my sister Jane fell in love with Steven, got married, and had two children, all in the space of three years. Whereas I put on a stone and a half, and wept whenever I saw a fifty-fivish woman in a blue suit. Quite a lot of fifty-fivish women wear blue suits.

There was a long silence. Of course, Toby’s explanation had come too late. Although, if I was honest with myself, a month would have been too late, or a week, or a day, or an hour.
I don’t think we should see so much of each other
. Those words had sown a seam of distrust that I was unable to rid myself of. I shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter now.’

He smiled, interpreting my muttered words as forgiveness. I realized then that I was free of him. Once his smile would have melted my heart. Now, not a vestige of that sharp, sudden initial attraction lingered, and for that I felt profound thankfulness.

He said suddenly, ‘I saw that television programme you made.’

‘Sisters of the Moon
? Rather an appropriate theme, don’t you think? Lost babies, I mean.’

The smile faded. A considerable proportion of the documentary had been devoted to attempting to track down the daughter of Ivy Lunn, the woman who had been raped and incarcerated in a mental institution. I had found Ivy’s child – a pensioner herself now – living in a council house in Letchworth and, with the permission of both women, we had filmed their reunion. Tacky, I suppose, but touching all the same.

He asked me what I was doing now, and I explained about Tilda. Toby’s eyes narrowed and he said, ‘She’s some relation to Patrick Franklin. You telephoned me—’

‘Tilda is Patrick’s grandmother.’

‘I’ve come across him a few times. And I know Jenny, of course.’

‘Patrick’s wife? What’s she like?’

‘Beautiful. Quite stunning.’ I had seen that for myself. ‘She modelled for a while, you know.’

‘But … difficult?’

Toby looked surprised. ‘Not at all. Jenny is perfectly sweet. They split up because of the family, didn’t they? Poor old Jen couldn’t cope with the in-laws. She said they closed ranks, made her feel an outsider. Wouldn’t let her in on the family secrets.’