Some Old Lover's Ghost (29 page)

I dressed and, armed with a map, went out to find coffee. I had visited the city twice before, with Toby. I remembered the Rembrandts in the Rijksmuseum, and the water-buses on the canals at night, their reflections shimmering in the moonlight. I had only two days in Amsterdam; on Thursday I would drive to Scheveningen to interview Leila Gilbert, Hanna Schmidt’s daughter, so I could not afford to waste time. I caught the water-bus and sat with the students and the tourists, looking down at the olive-green waters of the canal and across to the old houses of the wealthy merchants. Tilda and Max had moved to Amsterdam at the beginning of 1940. Before that, they had spent a few months in Paris. Holland had maintained a neutral status after the outbreak of war, though Max, of course, saw the fragility of Holland’s position. Rosi Liebermann, as she herself had told me, had remained in England with Sarah Greenlees. Max had been convinced that to take Rosi abroad would be to risk her life. Not for the first time, nor for the last, Tilda had had to make an agonizing choice between people that she loved. But Tilda had enjoyed Amsterdam: Jan had joined the Dutch army, leaving Emily to run the business while Tilda worked as a volunteer in the refugee hostels. Their friendship flourished once more.

Alighting from the water-bus, I began to walk to the van de Criendts’ house. Jan van de Criendt had sold furniture and fine rugs. He had imported the rugs from the East, and the furniture from all over Europe, including England. He had retired to the coast years ago, and now the van de Criendts’ former house was a bar, and tourists gathered at the little tables on the forecourt. I sat down at a vacant table and ordered a sandwich and a beer. I peered into the darkened interior of the house, but failed to
imagine Tilda and Emily laughing together amongst Persian rugs and chests and old clocks. While I waited for my lunch, I took my notebook out of my bag and leafed through it. In April 1940 the German army had invaded Norway, and Max had almost sent Tilda and the children home. But Joshua had measles and was too ill to travel, and by the time he had begun to recover the British navy had reached Norway with the intention of securing its liberty. Max’s pessimism had bowed, not for the first time, to Tilda’s optimism and joie de vivre. She had been unable, she had explained to me, to believe that the worst could happen. Tilda had looked at the canal-boats laden with red and yellow cheeses and gorgeously coloured tulips, at the housewives scrubbing their front steps, and had been unable to believe that such tranquillity could be brutally and deliberately destroyed.

I drank my beer and ate my sandwich. Then I wandered slowly back to my hotel, enjoying the early evening sun on my bare arms and legs. The city seemed populated only by lovers: they lounged at the bridges, adoring their reflections in the water; they kissed at street corners, limbs entwined, their mutual passion excluding the rest of the world. I thought of Patrick, of the afternoon at the farmhouse and of the night we had spent at the small hotel in Penrith, and I closed my eyes and shut away the noises of the city, and longed for him. And I wondered whether Tilda’s fear of separation from Max – an uncharacteristic fear for so independent and spirited a woman – had not been connected in some way with Daragh. Whether under-occupied and alone, her thoughts – her desires – returned to her first love. I thought of Tilda here, in Amsterdam, in 1940, waiting for the storm to break.

She never slept well when Max was away. In the early hours of the morning, she heard his key turn in the lock. Tilda switched on the lamp.

‘Max.’

‘Ssh.’ He put his finger to his lips, and came to sit on the bed
beside her. He had been away for a fortnight; he still wore his raincoat, and Tilda saw that his shoes were caked with mud. There were deep shadows of weariness around his eyes, and his face looked thinner.

‘Are you hungry?’ She seized his hand. ‘Shall I make you something to eat?’

He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, darling – didn’t mean to wake you. Go back to sleep.’ He peeled off his raincoat and jacket, and unknotted his tie. She did not sleep, but watched him.

‘Was it awful?’

‘Pretty bad.’ He never said more than that. Max had two compartments to his mind: the work one and the family one. He took great care to keep the two divided.

‘Are you coming to bed?’

‘Not yet.’ In the dim light, his eyes seemed not blue, but black. ‘Tilda, I’ve booked a passage back to England for you and the children and Charlotte.’

‘When?’

‘Tomorrow. I meant to get back sooner but I was held up. You must leave, Tilda.’

‘And you?’ she whispered.

‘I’ll be staying on for a while. Martin Willet will pick you up at lunchtime and drive you to the Hook of Holland.’ Martin was a stringer for one of the Amsterdam newspapers. ‘I have to leave before midday.’

She felt cold inside. ‘Max, you must come with us.’

‘I can’t.’ His expression was grim. ‘I have to stay until the end, don’t you see?’

She thought that ‘the end’ had such an ominous ring. She was leaving Max alone in a crumbling, dangerous Europe. She hugged him, pressing her face against the folds of his shirt so that the tears that stung the corners of her eyes were blotted, invisible.

In the morning, the task of packing, of deciding what to take and what to abandon, did not detract from the anxiety of seeing Max leave. Tilda took the lucky coin that she wore around her
neck, that she had found all those years ago in Southam, and put it over Max’s head. Then she held him very tightly. When he had gone, she stood for a moment at the window, her back to the children, her eyes closed. Then she became very busy again, running round the house, making sure that they had left nothing vital behind. She found a rag doll under Melissa’s bed, and a snowsuit belonging to William van de Criendt stuffed down the back of a chair. When Martin Willet arrived, she helped him assemble the children and Charlotte Sykes and put the luggage in his car. Then she locked the front door, put the key through the letterbox, and did not look back.

Now that the decision had been made, the journey through the network of narrow, cobbled streets and humpbacked bridges seemed frustratingly slow. She wanted to be away, she wanted to be settled again. Martin stopped the motor car outside Emily’s shop, and Tilda grabbed William’s snowsuit, and ran in. The shop was deserted, the dark, polished tables, the painted chests and carved mirrors gathering dust. Tilda called out, and climbed the steep, narrow stairs.

Emily was in the kitchen; William was sitting in his high chair. Emily looked pale and drawn.

‘I think William’s going down with a cold. He was up all last night.’ Emily looked at Tilda. ‘What is it, Tilda? Tell me.’

‘We’re going home. We’re to take the midday ferry.’

‘Oh.’ The single sound was a small, painful gasp.

‘Come with us, Emily, please. If Max says we’re to go, then it’s because he thinks that Germany’s about to invade.’ Tilda saw the tremor of shock in Emily’s eyes. ‘He’s usually right about things like that. You can’t stay here, you might not be safe. Come back to England with us.’

‘I can’t leave Jan.’ The sunlight cast dark hollows onto Emily’s face. She tried to smile. ‘I’ll be all right. I’ve loads of tins of sardines and things stored up in the cellar, just in case. And it won’t last long, Jan says. The Germans can’t defeat Holland and Belgium and France, can they?’

Tilda’s throat ached. She remembered Ely and Miss Clare’s
Academy, and how both Emily and she had fallen in love with Daragh Canavan. She said gently, ‘You don’t look well, Em.’

‘It’s just the curse, I think.’ Emily’s skin had no colour, and her eyes seemed to have sunk back into her skull.

‘I’ll have to dash.’ Tilda’s voice faltered.

‘Good luck, old thing.’ Emily turned aside, but not quite quickly enough.

‘Emily?’ The expression on Emily’s face frightened Tilda. ‘Emily, what is it?’

Emily gasped. ‘Nothing. Nothing.’

‘Emily.’
Tilda covered Emily’s clenched fist with her hand. ‘You’re ill, aren’t you?’

Emily didn’t speak at first, and then the words tumbled out. ‘I have the most awful pain in my side. I’ve had it for two days now and it’s getting worse and worse. I’m afraid, Tilda—’ She broke off and closed her eyes, and when she spoke again it was with a trace of the old, confident, bouncy Emily.

‘It’s all right, it’s nothing. You must go, Tilda – you’ll miss the boat. Go. Please.’ She turned her face away.

Tilda hesitated, and then hugged Emily, and ran back out to the car. Throughout the drive from Amsterdam to the Hook of Holland, the children asked her questions and demanded drinks and entertainment, and she answered them mechanically. Holland’s green, flat countryside unreeled behind her, but she did not see it. She saw only Emily’s face, sick and frightened and alone.

At the Hook of Holland, Martin unloaded their luggage from the car, Charlotte took Melissa’s hand and Tilda carried Joshua. They pushed through the crowds of soldiers and sailors. Joshua almost swooped out of Tilda’s arms, eyes wide, when he heard the hooting of a ship’s funnel. Gulls shrieked, and the air was thick with fish and salt and diesel.

The queue at the ferryport snaked across the foyer. Tilda turned to Martin. ‘You go back to Amsterdam, Martin. We’re fine now.’

‘Max said—’

‘Honestly, we’ll be fine.’ She stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. ‘You get back to the office.’

Martin raised his hat, and disappeared into the crowds. The queue shifted slowly forward. Melissa grew bored, so Tilda played I Spy with her. Joshua wriggled out of Tilda’s arms and shuffled around the hall on his bottom making hooting noises. Tilda hauled him back every now and then and thought about Emily. Jan was away, Emily did not know where. William had a bad cold. Jan’s only relative was Felix, his younger brother, miles away in north Holland. Most of Emily’s neighbours were single men or old couples: she knew no-one well in Amsterdam, and her Dutch was still uncertain. Tilda bit her nails and wiped Joshua’s nose and escorted Melissa to the lavatory and remembered the way Emily had said,
I have the most awful pain in my side
.

They had reached the counter where their tickets were checked. ‘Four passengers?’ asked the steward.

‘Three,’ said Tilda suddenly, and handed Joshua to Charlotte. ‘I have to go back to Emily. She’s ill.’ The decision, now that she had taken it, was unavoidable. Charlotte gaped at her. She looked frightened.

‘You’ll be fine, Lottie.’ Tilda scrabbled in her purse and extracted all the English money that Max had given her. ‘Get a train from Harwich and a taxi from Liverpool Street. Here are the house keys. I’ll be back in a day or two – I have to make sure that Emily’s all right.’ She moved a step forward; she could hear grumbles from the queue behind her.

‘Mr Franklin—’ said Charlotte nervously.

‘Max will understand. And besides, I shall be back before him.’

From over Tilda’s shoulder, an upper-class English voice said loudly, ‘I say, do put a step on there—’

‘Remember Joshua’s chest-rub and make sure you watch Melissa when she brushes her teeth at night, or she’ll eat the toothpaste.’

‘Frightfully
inconsiderate—’

A steward had taken their luggage; Charlotte stepped
onto the gangway, Joshua in her arms, Melissa holding her hand.

‘And they must both take their malt extract. Josh likes his spread on a rusk.’

Melissa, her eyes and mouth wide with alarm, stared at her retreating mother. Josh waved a grubby hand. Melissa’s face screwed up and she tried to pull away from Charlotte. An elbow jabbed Tilda in the small of her back. Charlotte looked back once, smiled a watery smile, and disappeared with the two children and the steward into the ferry. Melissa’s wail was a thin, high-pitched lament at her abandonment.

There was a pain beneath Tilda’s ribs. She thought it was her heart. She stood aside, aware of an awful loneliness, and a conviction that she had done something irretrievable. A group of travellers, the men in striped blazers and straw boaters, the women in silk dresses, pushed past her. Tilda took a deep breath and elbowed her way back through the ticket office, towards the railway station.

All her doubts disappeared when, back in Amsterdam, she ran up the stairs behind the van de Criendts’ shop, and found Emily curled up on the couch, a hot-water bottle on her stomach. William was playing on the floor. Emily’s eyes widened when Tilda opened the door, and she tried to get up. Emily protested; Tilda promised to catch the night ferry if the doctor said that Emily was well enough to be left alone. But the doctor, hauled by Tilda out of his surgery, diagnosed appendicitis and operated that evening. Tilda remained in Emily’s apartment, looking after William. It was 5 May. On the evening of 9 May, Emily discharged herself from the nursing home and took a taxi back to her home. On the morning of 10 May, the German army invaded Holland.

Tilda was giving William his breakfast when the first of the aeroplanes swooped over Amsterdam. To begin with, she cursed it because she was afraid that the noise might wake Emily, who had had a bad night, and then, when that plane was followed by second, and a third, she was seized by a terrible fear. When
William had finished his bottle, she put him back in his cot and ran outside in her dressing gown. The street was full of people, looking up. The aeroplanes drew circles in the sky, and on the tail of each one was a swastika.

With Emily propped on the sofa, wrapped in blankets, Tilda watched the soldiers dart around the roads and the high, narrow buildings, as though they were playing a game of hide and seek. Throughout the day, rumours reached them – that the Dutch had capitulated, that the Germans had been overwhelmed and had withdrawn, that Nazi paratroopers had landed in the polders of north Holland and were blowing up the dikes that protected the land from the sea. On 11 May the order went out for all German refugees in Holland to remain inside their houses. On 13 May, Emily’s neighbour, tears streaming down her face, told Tilda that Queen Wilhelmina had taken ship for England. Emily refused to believe her. The bakers’ shops were still open, the housewives still cleaned their steps; everything seemed so normal. The following day, the man who sold flowers in the streets told them that the Nazis had bombed the port of Rotterdam and that thirty thousand people had been killed. The dull pounding and the distant plumes of black smoke lent credence to the rumours.