The House at Tyneford (4 page)

We all gathered in the drawing room. Those who had chosen to attend the party had apparently decided by unspoken accord to dazzle in their finest. If coming to the Landau party was dangerous, then they may as well be resplendent. The men were dashing in their white tie and tails. The ladies wore dark furs or dull raincoats down to the floor, but when they removed their chrysalis coats we saw that beneath them they sparkled like tropical butterflies. Margot’s dress was shot silk, indigo blue as a summer’s night and studded with silver embroidered stars, which twinkled as she moved. Even fat Frau Finkelstein wore a plum-coloured gown, her white, doughy arms puckered by tight gauze sleeves, her grey hair plaited into a crown and studded with cherry blossoms. Lily Roth conjured a feathered fascinator from her bag like a magician and fastened it in her hair, so she resembled a bird of paradise. Every lady wore her jewels, and all of them at once. If in the past seeming garish or extravagant or petty bourgeois had troubled us, now, as we felt everything sliding away into blackness, we wondered how we could have worried about such things. Tonight was for pleasure. Tomorrow we would have to sell our jewels—Grandmama’s spiderweb diamond brooch, the gold bracelet studded with rubies and sapphires that the children had teethed upon, the platinum cuff links given to Herman when he made partner at the bank—so tonight we would wear them all and shine beneath the moon.

Julian sipped burgundy and listened to Herr Finkelstein’s stories, smiling easily in all the right places. I’d heard them all—the time he met Baron Rothschild at a concert, and the baron, mistaking him for someone else, had tipped his head and the baroness her sherry glass: “And who on earth would have dreamed there was a smart fellow as bald and round as me? I must find my double and shake his hand.” I rolled my eyes, bored from a distance. Julian saw me and gestured for me to join them; I shook my head and edged away.

I knew this was my last party as a guest. I studied the manservant in his black tie, and impassive face, and tried to imagine myself as one of them, refreshing glasses and pretending not to hear conversation. Pity I’d never said anything worth eavesdropping upon when I’d had the chance. From my vantage point, I saw Margot and Robert whispering in the corner, hand in hand. I had it on good authority that flirting with one’s spouse in public was the depth of ill manners (with someone else’s husband it was perfectly fine, of course), but once again Anna informed me that within the first year of marriage it was quite acceptable. I hoped Margot had written their first anniversary in her diary along with a note to “stop flirting with Robert.” She would be in America by then, and with something like regret I realised I would not be able to tell her to behave. I must write and remind her. Although, I mused, it was possible Americans had different rules, and I wondered if I ought to point this out to her. At that moment, I was feeling charitable toward my sister. While at most parties I watched as the men swarmed around Margot and Anna, tonight I had caught little Jan Tibor surreptitiously glancing at my bosom, and I felt every bit as sophisticated as the others. In the darkness of the hall I puffed out my chest and fluttered my eyelashes, imagining myself irresistible, a dark-haired Marlene Dietrich.

“Darling, don’t do that,” said Anna, appearing beside me. “The seams might pop.”

I sighed and deflated. My pink sheath dress had once belonged to Anna, and although Hildegard had let out the material as much as she could, it still pinched.

“It looks lovely on you,” said Anna, suddenly conscious that she may have wounded my feelings. “You must take it with you.”

I snorted. “For washing dishes in? Or for dusting?”

Anna changed the subject. “Do you want to ring the bell for dinner?”

The bell was a tiny silver ornament, once belonging to my grandmother, and it tinkled a C sharp, according to Margot, who had perfect pitch. As a child, it had been a great treat to put on my party frock, stay up late and ring the bell for dinner. I would stand beside the dining room door, solemnly allowing myself to be kissed good night by the guests as they filed in for dinner. Tonight as I rang the bell, I saw all those parties flickering before me, and an endless train of people walking past me, like a circular frieze going around and around the room, never stopping. They chattered loudly, faces pink with alcohol, all obeying Anna’s dictate of gaiety.

My family was not religious in the slightest. When we were children, Anna wanted Margot and me to understand a little of our heritage and at bedtime told us stories from the Torah alongside tales of “Peter and the Wolf” and “Mozart and Constanze.” In Anna’s hands, Eve was imbued with the glamour of Greta Garbo, and we pictured her lounging in the Garden of Eden, a snake draped tantalisingly around her neck, a besotted Adam (played by Clark Gable) kneeling at her feet. The Bible stories had the wild and unlikely plots of operas, and Margot and I devoured them with enthusiasm, mingling the genres seamlessly in our imaginations. Eve tempted Adam with Carmen’s arias and the voice of God sounded very much like the Barber of Seville. If anyone had asked Anna to choose between God and music there would have been no contest, and I suspected that Julian was an atheist. We never went to the handsome brick synagogue on Leopoldstadt; we ate schnitzel in nonkosher restaurants, celebrated Christmas rather than Chanukah and were proud to be among the new class of bourgeois Austrians. We were Viennese Jews but, up till now, the Viennese part always came first. Even this year, when Anna decided we would celebrate Passover, it had to be a party with Margot in her wedding sapphires and me wearing Anna’s pearls.

The long dining table was covered with a white monogrammed cloth, the plates were gold-edged Meissen and Hildegard had polished the remaining family silver to a gleam. Candles flickered on every surface, a black rose and narcissus posy (rose for love, black for sorrow and narcissus for hope) rested on each lady’s side plate and a silver yarmulke lay on each gentleman’s. Anna insisted that the large electric lamp be left off and candles provide the only light. I knew that it was only partly for the atmosphere of enchantment that candle glow casts, and more practically to hide the gaps on the dining room walls where the good paintings used to hang. The family portraits remained: the one of me aged eleven in my flimsy muslin dress, hair close-cropped, and the images of the sour-faced, thin-lipped great-grandparents with their lace caps, as well as Great-great-aunt Sophie oddly pictured among green fields and a wide blue sky—Sophie had been agoraphobic, infamously refusing to leave her rancid apartment for forty years, but the portrait lied, recasting her as some sort of nature-loving cloud spotter. My favourite was the painting of Anna as Verdi’s Violetta in the moments before her death, barefoot and clad in a translucent nightgown (which had fascinated and outraged the critics in equal measure), her eyes beseeching you wherever you went. I used to hide beneath the dining room table to escape her gaze, but when I emerged after an hour or more, she was always waiting, reproaching me. The other paintings had gone, but they left reminders—the sun-bleached wallpaper marked with rectangular stains. I shrugged—it shouldn’t matter now whether the paintings were here, since I would not see them. But when leaving home one always likes to think of it as it ought to be, and as it was before, perfect and unchanging. Now when I think of our apartment, I restore each picture to its proper place: Violetta opposite the painting of breakfast on the balcony (purchased by Julian as a present for Anna on their honeymoon). I have to remind myself that the pictures had vanished before that last night, and then, with a blink, the walls are empty once again.

The chairs scraped on the parquet floor as the men helped the ladies into their places, gowns catching on chair legs and under feet, so that the hum of chatter rippled with apologies. We all peered around the table with interest, hoping that ours would be the amusing end of the party and the others did not have better dinner companions. Herr Finkelstein adjusted his yarmulke so it neatly covered the bald disk on his head. The men alternated between the ladies, stark in their black and white, ensuring that none of the women’s rainbow dresses clashed beside one another. Anna and Julian sat at opposite heads of the table. They exchanged a look and Anna rang the silver bell once more. Instantly the diners fell silent and Julian rose to his feet.

“Welcome, my friends. This night is indeed different from all other nights. In the morning my younger daughter, Elise, leaves for England. And in another few weeks, Margot and her husband, Robert, depart for America.”

The guests smiled at Margot and then at me, with envy or pity I could not tell. Julian held up his hand and the hum of conversation dulled once again. He was pale, and even in the half-light I could see beads of perspiration on his brow.

“But the truth is, my friends, we already live in exile. We are no longer citizens in our own country. And it is better to be exiled among strangers than at home.”

Abruptly he sat down and wiped his forehead with his napkin.

“Darling?” said Anna from the other end of the long table, trying to keep the note of anxiety from her voice.

Julian stared at her for a second and then, recollecting himself, stood up once more and opened the Haggadah. It was strange—until this year we had always hurried through the Passover Seder. It had become a kind of game, seeing how fast we could race to the end, reading quickly, skipping passages so that we could reach Hildegard’s dinner in record time, preferably before she was even ready to serve it, causing her to puff and grumble. This night we paused and, by tacit agreement, read every word. Perhaps the God-fearing among us believed in the prayers and hoped that, due to their diligence, He would take pity. I did not believe this, but as I listened to stout Herr Finkelstein singing the Hebrew, double chins trembling with fervour, I was torn between scorn at his religious faith (I was Julian’s daughter, after all) and a sense of congruity. His words licked around me in the darkness, and in my mind’s eye I saw them shine like the lights of home. I pictured Anna’s Moses, a hero of the big screen (James Stewart, perhaps) leading the Jews into a rose-red dessert and then something older, a glimpse of a story I had always known. As a modern girl, I fumbled with my butter knife, embarrassed by Herr Finkelstein’s chanting. He gazed heavenward, oblivious to the dribble of schmaltz wobbling at the side of his wet lips, and I wanted him to stop, never to stop.

We murmured the blessings over the cups of wine, and the youngest, Jan Tibor, started the ritual of the four questions: “Why is tonight different from all other nights? Why tonight do we eat only matzos?”

Frau Goldschmidt pushed her reading glasses up her nose and recited the response: “Matzo is used during Passover as a symbol of the unleavened bread that the Jews carried with them when they escaped out of Egypt, with no time for their uncooked bread to rise.”

Margot snorted. “A Jewish household with empty cupboards? Not even a loaf of bread? Seems unlikely to me.”

I kicked her under the table, hard enough to bruise her shin, and I felt a small pulse of satisfaction as she winced.

“Elise. The next question,” said Julian, in his no-nonsense voice. He held up a sprig of parsley and an eggcup brimming with salt water.

I read from the worn book in my lap: “Why is it that on all other nights we eat all kinds of herbs, but on this night we eat only
maror
, bitter herbs?”

Julian placed his book facedown on the table and looked at me as though I had really asked him a question to which I wished to know the answer. “Bitter herbs remind us of the pain of the Jewish slaves, and the petty miseries of our own existence. But they are also a symbol of hope and of better things to come.”

He did not glance at the Haggadah, and as he continued I realised that the words were his. “A man who has experienced great sorrow, and then has known its end, wakes each morning feeling the pleasure of sunrise.”

He took a sip of water and dabbed his mouth. “Margot. The next.”

She stared at him and then glanced down to her book. “Why is it that on all other nights we don’t dip our herbs at all, but on this night we dip them twice?”

Julian dipped a sprig of parsley in the pot of sweet
charoset
and leaned across the table to hand it to me. I popped it into my mouth and swallowed the sticky mixture of apples, cinnamon and wine. He bathed a second piece of parsley in the salt water and gave it to me, watching as I ate. My mouth stung with salt, and I tasted tears and long journeys across the sea.

A
fter dinner Margot and I stole onto the balcony. The rich beef stew had been one of Hildegard’s best; I wanted to cram myself with the taste of home while I still could. Margot tossed a few cushions onto the floor, and we sat side by side, looking at the shaking leaves on the tops of the poplar trees.

“You will write, Bean,” she said.

“Well, I shall try. But I expect to be rather busy with bridge parties, lawn picnics and such.”

To my surprise, Margot clutched my hand. “You must write, Elise. No joking.”

“Fine. But my handwriting’s terrible and I don’t plan on improving it.”

“That’s all right. It will give Robert something else to complain about. And you know how happy that makes him.”

My litany of faults had provided Robert with another source of interest, and consequently I felt he ought to show a little more gratitude toward me. The balcony doors creaked and Anna stepped out. Margot and I shuffled along to make room for her on our bed of cushions. I kicked off my shoes, which were starting to pinch, and wiggled my toes in the cool night air. Anna had painted my toenails scarlet, and I thought they looked very fetching—it seemed a shame to wear shoes at all.

“You are to take the pearls with you, Elise. Hildegard will sew them into the hem of your dress tonight.”