The Storm Sister (The Seven Sisters #2) (61 page)

‘You really are part of an illustrious line, aren’t you?’

‘Well, the big question is, Ally, are you?’ Thom said slowly. ‘When you left last night, I had a long think about how you could be related to the Halvorsen clan. As my father
Felix was an only child, and neither grandparent had siblings either, I’ve only come up with one solution.’

‘And what is that?’

‘I’m worried you’ll be offended, Ally.’

‘Just hit me with it, Thom, really, I can take it,’ I urged him.

‘Okay, well, given my father’s chequered history with women, I’ve wondered whether there is a possibility he had an illegitimate child. That perhaps even
he
doesn’t know about.’

I stared at Thom, collating mentally what he was saying.

‘I suppose it’s a theory, yes. But Thom, please remember there’s no proof yet that I’m any blood relation to the Halvorsens. And I feel very uncomfortable appearing out
of the blue and crashing in on your family history.’

‘Listen, the more Halvorsens, the merrier in my book. I’m currently the last of the line.’

‘Well, there’s only one way to find out. And that’s to ask your father.’

‘I’m sure he’ll lie,’ Thom said bitterly, ‘as he normally does.’

‘From how you describe him, I’m hoping he’s nothing to do with me at all.’

‘I’m really not trying to be negative, Ally. There just isn’t an awful lot of positive,’ Thom shrugged.

‘Okay,’ I said, moving the conversation on, ‘let me work out the generations. So, Jens and Anna had a son named Horst.’

‘They did, yes.’ Thom went to his bureau and took a book from the top of it. ‘This is the biography I wrote and I drew up a Halvorsen family tree. Here,’ he said, handing
it to me. ‘It’s at the back of the book before the acknowledgements.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Horst was a fine cellist and went away to study in Paris, rather than Leipzig,’ Thom continued as I searched for the page. ‘He returned to Norway and played for the Bergen
Philharmonic for most of his life. He was a lovely man, and even though he was ninety-two when I was born, I still remember him being active in my early years. It was he who first put my fingers to
the violin when I was three, so my mum told me. He died at the age of one hundred and one, having never suffered a day’s illness in his life. Let’s hope I’ve inherited his
genes.’

‘And what about his children?’

‘Horst married Astrid, who was fifteen years younger than him, and they lived here at Froskehuset for most of their lives. They had a son whom they named Jens after his grandfather,
although he was always known as Pip, for some reason.’

‘And what happened to him?’ I asked, confused, as I studied the family tree.

‘This is the story I mentioned and it’s pretty harrowing, Ally. Given you’re not well, are you sure you’re up to it?’

‘Yes,’ I said firmly.

‘Okay. So, Jens Junior proved himself a talented musician and set off to Leipzig to study, just like his namesake before him. But of course, it was 1936 and the world was changing . .
.’

Leipzig, Germany

November 1936

Jens Horst Halvorsen – more commonly known as ‘Pip’, a nickname given when he was just a tiny seed in his mother’s stomach – walked swiftly
towards the grand pale-stone building that housed the Leipzig Royal Conservatory for Music
.
This morning he and his fellow students had a master class with Hermann Abendroth, the famous
conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and he was tingling with excitement. Since coming to Leipzig two and a half years ago after the narrow musical confines of his hometown of Bergen, a
whole new world had opened up to him, both creatively and personally.

Instead of the beautiful – but, to Pip’s ear, old-fashioned – music from the likes of Grieg, Schumann and Brahms that he had listened to with his father, Horst, since
childhood, the Conservatory had introduced him to composers that were alive now. His current favourite was Rachmaninoff, whose
Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini
, which had premiered two
years ago in America, was what had first inspired Pip to write his own music. As he walked through the wide streets of Leipzig, he whistled the tune under his breath. His studies in piano and
composition had fired his creative imagination and exposed him to progressive musical ideas. As well as admiring Rachmaninoff’s brilliance, he had also been spellbound by Stravinsky’s
The Rite of Spring
, a piece so modern and daring that even over twenty years after its Paris premiere in 1913, it still prompted his own father, an accomplished cellist himself, to
pronounce it ‘obscene’.

As he walked, Pip thought about the other love of his life, Karine. She was the muse that inspired him and drove him forward to improve. One day, he would dedicate a concerto to her.

They had met at a recital in the Gewandhaus concert hall on a chilly October evening over a year ago. Pip had just begun his second year at the Conservatory and Karine her first. In the foyer of
the Gewandhaus, waiting to take their seats in the back row of the audience, she had dropped a woollen glove and Pip had retrieved it for her. Their eyes had met as he’d handed it back to her
and they had been inseparable ever since.

Karine was an exotic mix of French and Russian parentage and had been brought up in a distinctly bohemian household in Paris. Her father was a French sculptor of some renown and her mother a
successful opera singer. Her own creativity had found its
m
é
tier
in the oboe and she was one of the few women to study at the Conservatory. With her black hair as velvety
as a panther’s coat, and glittering dark eyes that sat above angular cheekbones, Karine’s skin, even in the height of summer, always remained as pale and white as Norwegian snow. She
dressed in a unique style, shunning the usual feminine adornments and preferring trousers paired with an artist’s smock or a tailored jacket. Far from making her appear masculine, her clothes
only enhanced her sultry beauty. Her only perceived physical imperfection – which she complained about regularly – was her nose, apparently inherited from her Jewish father. Pip
wouldn’t care if it was the size of Pinocchio’s after a lie. To him, she was perfect, just perfect.

They had already discussed their future together: they would do their best to find jobs in orchestras in Europe, then they hoped to save enough to go to America and build a new life there. This
was more Karine’s dream than his, if Pip was honest. He could be happy anywhere as long as she was by his side, but he understood why she wished to go. Here in Germany, the anti-Jewish
propaganda spread by the Nazi party grew apace and in other parts of the country, Jews were continually being harassed.

Luckily, the mayor of Leipzig, Carl Friedrich Goerdeler, was still a staunch opponent of the Nazi ethos. Pip assured Karine daily that nothing bad would happen to her here and that he would look
after her. And when they married, he always added, she would have a Norwegian surname to replace her rather more obvious ‘Rosenblum’ – ‘Even though you
are
a
beautiful rose in bloom,’ he would tease her whenever the subject arose.

But today was a glorious sunny day and the tense rumblings of the Nazi threat seemed distant and over-exaggerated. He had decided that morning, despite the chill in the air, to take the pleasant
twenty-minute stroll to the Conservatory from his lodgings in Johannisgasse rather than take the tram. He reflected how the city had grown since his father’s day. Although Horst Halvorsen had
lived in Bergen most of his life, he’d been born here in Leipzig and the knowledge of a family connection gave Pip an extra sense of belonging.

As he neared the Conservatory, he passed the bronze statue of Felix Mendelssohn, the music school’s founder, which stood outside the Gewandhaus concert hall. He mentally tipped his cap to
the great man before checking his watch and stepping up his pace as he realised he was cutting it fine.

Two of Pip’s close friends, Karsten and Tobias, were already waiting for him, leaning against one of the colonnaded arches that formed the entrance to the school.

‘Good morning, sleepyhead. Karine kept you up late last night, did she?’ Karsten enquired with a mischievous grin.

Pip smiled amiably at his teasing. ‘No, I walked here and it took longer than I thought.’

‘For God’s sake, hurry up you two,’ interrupted Tobias. ‘Do you really want to be late for Herr Abendroth?’

The three of them joined the steady stream of students now filing into the Großer Saal, a vast space with a vaulted ceiling supported by rows of pillars and an upper gallery that looked
down onto the ground floor and the stage. It was used as both a lecture theatre and a concert hall. As Pip sat down, he remembered his very first piano recital here and grimaced. His fellow
students and professors were a far more critical audience than any he would find in public concert houses in the future. And indeed, his performance then had been duly analysed and torn to shreds
afterwards.

Now, two and a half years on, he felt almost impervious to any acid remarks about his playing; the Conservatory prided itself on producing professional musicians who were toughened up and ready
to walk out of its doors to join any orchestra in the world.

‘Have you seen the newspaper this morning? Our mayor has gone to Munich to meet with the Party,’ whispered Tobias as they took their seats. ‘No doubt to be put under further
pressure to employ their anti-Semitic tactics here in Leipzig. The situation becomes more dangerous by the day.’

A rousing cheer went up as Hermann Abendroth entered the hall, but as Pip applauded, his heart beat a little faster at the news Tobias had just imparted.

That evening, he met with Karine and her best friend Elle in their usual coffee house that lay between his lodgings and theirs. The two women had been thrown together in their first term at the
Conservatory, when they’d been allocated a room together. As they were both French by birth and shared a mother tongue, they had bonded immediately. Tonight Elle had brought along her young
man, Bo, of whom Pip knew little other than that he was also a second-year music student. As they ordered a round of
Gose
beers, Pip was struck by the contrast of Karine’s arresting
dark-eyed looks against Elle’s blonde, blue-eyed prettiness.
The gypsy and the rose
, he thought as their drinks arrived at the table.

‘You’ve heard the news, I presume?’ Karine lowered her voice as she spoke to him. These days, one never knew who was listening.

‘Yes, I have,’ he replied, seeing the tension etched on Karine’s features.

‘Elle and Bo are worried too. You know Elle is also Jewish, even though she doesn’t look it. Lucky her,’ Karine murmured before turning her attention to her friends sitting on
the other side of the table.

‘We think it must only be a matter of time before what is happening in Bavaria starts to happen here,’ Elle said quietly.

‘We must wait and see what the mayor can do whilst he is in Munich. But even if the worst happens, I’m sure they won’t touch students at our school,’ Pip reassured them.
‘Germans have music in their hearts and souls, whatever their politics.’ As he spoke, he wished that his words did not have such a hollow ring to them. He looked across the table at Bo,
whose haunted eyes were sombre as he rested his arm protectively around his girlfriend’s shoulder. ‘How are you, Bo?’ Pip asked.

‘I am well enough,’ he replied.

He was a man of few words who had earned his nickname because of his insistence on carrying his cello bow with him everywhere he went. Pip knew he was one of the most talented cellists at the
Conservatory and great things were predicted for him.

‘Where will you spend Christmas?’

‘I . . .’ At that moment, Bo looked over Pip’s shoulder and his body jerked in shock, the colour draining from his face. Pip turned to see two SS officers in their distinctive
grey uniforms sauntering through the door, pistols sheathed in leather holsters around their waists. Pip watched Bo shudder and avert his eyes. Sadly, it was hardly an uncommon sight in Leipzig
these days.

The two men surveyed the occupants of the café, then sat down at a table close by.

‘We are not sure of our plans yet,’ Bo replied, recovering himself. He turned to Elle and whispered something to her, then a few minutes later they stood up to leave.

‘They are both so frightened,’ Karine sighed, as she and Pip watched the pair depart as unobtrusively as they could.

‘Is Bo Jewish too?’

‘He says not, but so many lie, even if they are. His concern is for the woman he loves. I think they may leave Germany soon.’

‘And go where?’

‘They do not know. Paris perhaps, although Elle says Bo worries that if Germany wishes to make a war, it will reach France too. My home.’ Karine reached out her hand, and as Pip took
it, he could feel it trembling.

‘As I said, let us see what happens when Mayor Goerdeler returns,’ Pip repeated. ‘If necessary, Karine, we too will leave.’

The following day, Pip walked through the soft grey November mist of the Leipzig morning on his way to the Conservatory. As he approached the Gewandhaus, his legs almost buckled under him as he
stared at the crowd that had gathered in front of it. Where only yesterday the glorious statue of Felix Mendelssohn, the Jewish founder of the original Conservatory, had stood proudly, there now
lay nothing but a pile of rubble and dust.

‘Oh dear Lord,’ he muttered under his breath as he hurried past everyone, hearing the chants of abuse shouted out by a large crowd dressed in their Hitler Youth uniforms standing
amidst the ruins of the statue. ‘It has begun.’

When he reached the Conservatory, a mass of shocked students filled the entrance hall. He found Tobias and walked over to him. ‘What has happened?’

‘It was Haake, the deputy mayor, who ordered the destruction of the statue. It was all planned for when Goerdeler was in Munich. Now he will surely be forced out. And then Leipzig is
lost.’