The Dower House (5 page)

‘Actually, Marianne is Swedish,' Wilson said. ‘Or, I suppose, American now.'

‘She's also an architect in her own right,' Willard added.

She saw the surprise in Felix's eyes and realized he thought she looked too young to be qualified. ‘An apprentice,' she added.

‘It's not a bad profession to join these days, madame,' Felix said.

‘Listen!' Willard said. ‘I can't take all this sir, madame,
gnädige Frau
, stuff. It's Marianne, Willard . . . Felix – OK, Adam?'

Smiles all round.

‘Well!' Adam rubbed his hands briskly. ‘I don't think the pony can haul all four of us to the top of the hill so . . .'

‘Pony?' Willard said.

‘Petrol's rationed in case you didn't know.'

‘Gee! I should've thought. I could have fixed you up with some.'

Adam threw back his head and laughed. ‘Fix! Whenever I hear that word, I think of you, Willard.' To Felix he added, ‘Whatever you want, Willard can “fix” it.'

Willard nodded. ‘Be proud to,' he said as they wandered out to the station forecourt.

‘I can walk,' Felix said. ‘Let Mrs Johnson ride. Marianne.'

‘I shall lead the pony,' she said, walking straight up to him. ‘We can walk all the way and give this ol' fella a break.'

Adam could detect Willard's vowels in her speech.

‘Tony told me you married Sally Beaumont?' Willard said. To Felix he explained, ‘Another goddam architect! But she's special. She was his boss in
AMGOT
and
the designer of the famous British army “spider” hut. She had the highest-ranking wartime commission in the women's services – acting-temporary brigadier. None of us made it above colonel.'

‘Or even major,' Adam added. ‘She's going into private practice when . . . well, you'll see.'

Marianne had meanwhile been appraising the pony. ‘A creature like this should be worth a fortune in Hamburg,' she said. Then, to Felix: ‘That's where I was living since the liberation, until we got married last month. D'you know it?'

The two men glanced in dismay at Felix, whose heart fell. How could he make them understand he didn't require their solicitude – or not in such small ways as that? If they wanted to pull strings to get him commissions, a free studio, a pension or two . . . fine. But not all this pussyfooting – as if he still had
feelings
, for heaven's sake.

‘Hamburg!' he said. ‘My favourite city – what's left of it! I suppose it had to be done. Ironic, though, that it was the most anti-Hitler city in all Germany. He got a very poor reception there.'

‘You've seen it?' Willard asked.

‘Several times. I went there for medical tests. And convalescence.'

‘Not during . . .' Adam faltered.

‘No.' He chuckled drily. ‘Not
during
. Funnily enough, I, too, was there last week. We must
just
have missed each other.'

When they realized he was joking they laughed. Too much.

Adam cut in: ‘As I was saying – Willard was with us the day you were liberated. In fact, Tony and I were present as guests of the American section of
AMGOT
.'

‘I remember,' Felix said – which embarrassed them because, as Adam had been about to add, Willard had been on the far side of the camp at the moment when he and Tony had realized that the Felix Breit they were helping was
the
Felix Breit. And Felix had lapsed into a near-coma by the time Willard arrived.

‘Liberated?' Marianne asked.

Adam explained. She reached across him, squeezed Felix's arm, and looked ahead, rather fixedly.

They reached the bottom of the slope below the forecourt and turned left, facing a reluctant pony up the hill. The watery sun cast shorter shadows on the slope ahead of them and soon their outlines were lost in the blunted, lacy penumbra of new, half-formed leaves on the overarching trees.

‘So what's with this Great Secret out here in the boondocks?' Willard asked Adam. ‘Tony was very cagey. It had better be good.'

‘It'll be interesting, anyway,' he replied. ‘Interesting to hear what you think of it.'

‘And that's all you're going to tell us?'

‘Until I can just say
voilà!
Tony and Nicole are there already, waiting for us – so I can promise you a wonderful high-tea, conjured out of nothing.'

‘Yeah – that's another thing I meant to ask: She was back in Trouville, you two were in Hamburg – how did those two get together again?'

‘He went back and found her. Couldn't face life without her.' He paused and asked Marianne, ‘Why the grin?'

‘When you said “went back and found her”,' she replied, ‘so was it with Willard and me.'

‘All last winter,' Willard confirmed. ‘I used to sit in my office staring at the Mystic River, seeing her face in every ripple.'

Adam levelled an accusing finger at him but said nothing.

Willard said it for him. ‘I know, I know. You done tol' me!'

‘What did he tell you?' Marianne asked.

‘Never mind.'

‘I told him he was a fool if he ever thought he could go back home and forget you.'

‘Adam – how nice! When was that?'

‘Right after . . .' he began and then fell silent.

Felix could feel the tension rise again.

‘Oh, I get it,' she said flatly. ‘Right after I was denazified.'

‘Oh, Marianne!' Felix heard Willard murmur to his left. But he kept his gaze on the woman, who turned to face him at last.

‘Now you know,' she said. ‘I will understand perfectly if you should now wish to—'

‘Her parents were the real Nazis,' Willard said. ‘They deliberately sent her to Germany and—'

‘Please!' Felix forced a laugh and then followed it with one that was more genuine. ‘We draw a line, right? How old were you, Marianne? Eighteen?'

‘Seventeen. Albert Speer was great friend to my father. We supplied steel. It should be smart for a steel maker to keep on the good books of Hitler's favourite architect – especially since he also was Minister for Armaments!'

‘A bit like the gravel company with Tony Palmer and me,' Adam tried to say. ‘As will soon be explained . . .'

Felix and Marianne ignored him; unspoken secrets were being passed behind their words. Besides, nothing that had happened in England this century could in any way equate with this.

‘Who can answer for his or her opinions and actions at seventeen?' Felix asked. ‘Not me, I do assure you! I had no love of the Jews, either – when I was seventeen and did not even know I
was
a Jew. For that I have
my
shame to carry. We draw a line, OK? The whole of Europe must draw a line. I have earned the right to say this, otherwise I am still not free. Sorry, Adam – the gravel company, you said? Were you telling Willard about this house that you and he—'

‘Da-dee-da-dee-da . . .' Adam sang loudly. ‘It's a secret until we get there – which will be in about five minutes.'

‘Have you and Tony telled Nicole of me?' Marianne asked Adam.

‘Not yet,' he confessed awkwardly.

‘Then I will – so soon as we meet. It's not fair on her – not after what has happened her.'

‘Oh?' Felix asked.

‘Willard was telling me yesterday night. Nicole worked as chef on her uncle's restaurant on Trouville during the war. It was much . . . I mean very popular with Germans and so the maquis asked her to pretend to collaborate to get information out of them – which she has done. Her secret was well kept – too much so that, after liberation they have done to her what they have done to all
collaborateuses
.' She mimed the shaving of her head.

Felix whistled. ‘And she doesn't know . . . that you . . . ?'

‘She shall. That's what I say.'

Having reached the hamlet of Harmer Green, at the top of the hill, they all mounted the gig and set off on the more or less level drive toward Dormer Green. The county councils were putting back the road signs all over England. The one at the hilltop said
TEWIN
and
DORMER GREEN
.

‘Are we close now?' Willard asked.

‘Close enough, maybe,' Adam replied. ‘I'll end the suspense, anyway. Tell me – d'you remember a night we spent beside an overturned truck on Lüneburg Heath? We were headed for Bielefeld and left the road.'

‘Vaguely . . . were we sober?'

‘D'you remember what we talked about?'

He nodded. ‘The destruction of Hamburg.'

‘And of Europe generally. But especially about the chance it had given us to rebuild everything in a different way – a chance that we hoped would never come again but which we mustn't miss? Does that ring a bell?'

‘I seem to remember a depressing conclusion – that people wouldn't take the chance. They'd play safe and go back to all the old ways – the old ideologies.'

Adam became slightly agitated; he wanted Willard to remember it exactly. ‘We realized that we – the architects who would be needed in our thousands to rebuild this shattered continent – we could play our part. Surely you remember? Where three hundred slum houses had stood back-to-back in cramped little alleys we could
sweep
them all away – if the
RAF
or the Luftwaffe hadn't already done it for us. We're doing it now, in fact. We're turning the city green. And in each green oasis we're raising those three hundred families high into the sky in clean, modern, comfortable machines-for-living-in.'

‘The things we say under the strain of war!' Willard laughed uncomfortably.

‘OK, you played the cycnic then and—'

‘Too damn right! My ol' grampappy had dreams like that. He used to say that if the working man was paid a decent wage and given good housing . . . education . . . health . . . all that, he and his family would divide their time between the library, the art gallery, and the concert hall.
Everyone
would be cultured and civilized!'

‘But that's true – they would. Look at the thousands of ordinary people – men in the street – and women – who went to Dame Myra Hess's concerts at the National Gallery during the war.'

‘There's a connection?' Adam could sense he was getting nowhere with the global argument. ‘There was also the way
we
were going to live – putting our own ideals into practice. Can't you remember our list? Our no-no list, you called it?'

Willard gave a reluctant laugh. ‘God, I'd forgotten that.' He scratched an ear. ‘Let me see. We were against the nation-state and its chauvinism – all kinds of nationalism. We wanted—'

‘Yes, but personally. For ourselves. What were the things we rejected for ourselves?'

‘While we were still sober, you mean? I guess . . . the Victorian family and the old lines of authority. The tyranny, the cruelty, the economic dependence of woman on man . . .' He turned apologetically to Marianne. ‘You know the sort of thing. It's hardly new.'

‘You don't believe it any more?' she asked.

Adam grew impatient as he saw the discussion slipping away yet again. ‘We wanted to take the next step beyond.'

‘Maybe. I can't remember what it was, though.'

Adam sighed. ‘You can – you just don't want to. In a little while now I'm going to show you a house – a large English country house, mainly Georgian with a Tudor remnant and a Victorian addition, and stables and outhouses . . . walled garden . . . five acres of wilderness that was once lawns, formal garden, fish pond, shrubbery . . . et cetera. I think
all that
is our “next step beyond the Victorian nuclear family”.' He let the words sink in before he went on. ‘Imagine eight or nine families living there. All like us. All about our age. We each have our own part of the house, of course. Not by virtue of title deeds or padlocks or anything like that, but just by common consent. I'd even say
communal
consent. But we have one kitchen where we cook one main meal each day and we all eat it together. And we play billiards or ping-pong or whatever we want in
our
communal playroom. And we have
our
music room. And
our
gardens. And this –
our
pony and trap in which
we
go shopping each Saturday. But the
our
and the
we
in all those things is not “Mum and Dad”. It's
all
of us, including the children. We are the community of the future! It's the next stage of civilization. But even more than that, it's our only hope of moving forward from the tight, cloying, inward-looking, neurosis-breeding, festering, stultifying cocoon of the Victorian family.' He leaned triumphantly back and asked quietly. ‘So what do you say? Tony and Nicole are already in, as I said. You'll see them when we get there. And Sally, naturally.'

Willard let out a deep breath he did not realize he had been holding. ‘Gee, Adam, what the hell were we drinking that night? Are you sure it was
just
liquor?'

Marianne began speaking suddenly, almost intoning her words, ‘An Englishman.' She nodded toward Adam: ‘A Frenchwoman . . . an American with English, Italian, and Greek forefathers . . .'

‘I didn't know that,' Adam said, staring at Willard as if he saw him in a new light.

‘. . . and a Swede with German and Irish in the blood.'

‘Nicole has Irish blood, too,' Adam said ‘A little. And German cousins.'

‘And Felix?' she asked. ‘Is there room for him, too?'

‘I was just about to say . . .' Adam began.

But Willard reached out and took Marianne's hand. ‘Honey? Are you seriously considering this fantasy?'

‘The same like you.'

‘I am?' He shook his head in disbelief. ‘You know – I have the craziest feeling.'