Chocolate Girls (49 page)

‘I’m not.’ She put her plate down and turned to Anatoli. ‘David was not my husband’s son.’ Briefly, she explained how David had come into her life. ‘He is Jewish, though I am not. Hermann Mayer was his real father. When David’s mother escaped to England, Hermann stayed in Germany. It is only quite recently that we found out who David’s real family are.’

Anatoli listened with deep attention. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees.

‘How extraordinary. How, well,
fitting
that we should meet. I have to confess that when I got your letter, I wanted just to throw it away. My reply the first time was abrupt and too hasty. I apologize for it.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Well, in a way it does. That time, in that place, it is something you try to forget. The truth is, I was only there for a few days. They tried not to let many of the forces stay in Belsen for too long. It drove people mad. It was beyond any inhumanity that you can imagine. And the risk of disease was acute. But even a few days there . . .’ He shook his head and was silent for a moment. ‘Hermann Mayer was only one of so very many in the extremity of suffering. Typhus was killing the camp inmates like flies, on top of all the suffering they had already endured. The place was . . . Well, the smell—’ His face twisted. ‘I can still taste it in my nostrils when I think of it . . .’

He lapsed into silence, so Edie said, ‘He lives with his sister, Annaliese, in Haifa. From what David has written to me, he has never been able to lead a normal life since.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ Anatoli said. ‘Many survivors have managed to make a life, I know, and they are to be much admired. But others . . . Well, who knows? People disintegrate for far less reason. God knows, relief workers broke under the strain . . .’

He stopped again for a moment, then spoke more briskly. ‘Look – really the details are too much to tell you . . . But the thing about Hermann was – well, of course he saw us and we were the British Army. And he wanted to tell me that his wife had died in England. I didn’t really understand what he meant and of course I was busy – the work was overwhelming. We were burying thousands every day. He had typhus and I took him to the hospital. There was no bed for him but when I put him down in a space on the floor, he grasped the collar of my coat. I could easily have pulled away – he was weak as a straw. He could barely speak, but his eyes were begging me . . .’ Anatoli paused for a moment, then went on. ‘I saw that he wanted me to embrace him. I stayed kneeling and I did my best to wrap my arms round him again. The man was a bag of bones. He said he would never forget me, and that was when he made me tell him my address. He made me say it three or four times . . .’ Anatoli stopped speaking for a moment and Edie was moved to see that his eyes were full of tears.

‘He must’ve remembered your address all this time.’ ‘Yes—’ He took out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes. ‘And yet I never heard from him. I thought he had probably died.’

The two of them talked and talked for the rest of the afternoon. It grew dusk. Anatoli made more tea and Edie told him about bringing up David, and about Frances and Janet and working at Cadbury’s. He told her that he had been born in St Petersburg in 1906 but his parents had emigrated to England a few years later, so he had only the very dimmest memories of the place.

‘My father made musical instruments,’ he told her. ‘One of those violins there, on the piano, was made by his hands.’ He got up and laid the instrument in her lap and Edie admired its lovely curving shape, the rich sheen of the wood.

‘It’s beautiful,’ she said. ‘So are you a musician?’ ‘No.’ He put the violin back on the piano. ‘I am a pharmacist! But of course I play. Margot was a fine pianist and we used to spend many hours playing together. I was brought up to live and breathe music, the violin especially of course. It’s just part of life – I have never made my living by it.’

‘Will you play something for me?’ She was surprised how relaxed she was with him, that she felt she could ask anything.

‘Oh – well, let’s see.’

He shuffled through some scores, stood one on the piano stand and picked up his instrument. A second later, music was pouring out round the room. He did not seem to need the music after all and closed his eyes and Edie, knowing she was unobserved, gave all her attention to the music with its high, minor-key melancholy. The violin seemed to touch the notes of all the lingering sadness in the world. By the time he had finished there were tears running down her cheeks.

‘Yes—’ He appeared undisturbed by her emotion. ‘It does that. That is why I can only play occasionally – not all the time.’

She wiped her eyes and smiled at him through wet lashes. Anatoli laughed suddenly, giving a bow. ‘Thank you. I have not had an audience for some time!’

Edie noticed suddenly how it was. ‘My goodness, what time is it? I must go or I’ll never get home tonight!’

Anatoli told her it was six o’clock.

‘I will take you to your railway station,’ he said.

‘Oh, you don’t need to do that – it’s all the way to Euston.’

‘That’s all right. What else should I do this evening?’

Edie gathered up her bag, unexpectedly delighted by this offer, finding herself reluctant to leave this cosy room, his conversation.

‘Well – that’s ever so kind of you . . .’

He smiled, with his mischievous twinkle. ‘Madam – it would be a pleasure. In fact this entire afternoon has been a pleasure.’

The week after Edie met Anatoli Gruschov, their letters crossed in the post. Edie wrote a polite note to Anatoli thanking him for the afternoon they had spent together. She had been glad of his company back to Euston, and he had been very gentlemanly, taking her arm as they stepped in and out of the trains on the Underground.

‘You must be careful of yourself,’ he said.

When they parted he kissed her on each cheek and stood watching as she walked towards the train. She waved and saw his arm, clad in the woolly jumper, raised in reply. With a pang she got on the train. She had never had a day quite like it. But she did not let this feeling show in the letter. She told herself that Anatoli would show the same warmth and interest to anyone who crossed his path.

But his note arrived the day after she posted hers, thanking her also for taking the trouble to make the visit. She felt her heart beat faster as she read the rest.

‘I have not spent an afternoon that has given me so much pleasure in a long time and on my return to my house, which felt sadly empty in your absence, I thought it a great shame that we have no other reason or excuse to meet. Even at my age I’m looking to justify myself with excuses! But perhaps you would not find it too forward of me if I were to suggest that I might visit you in Birmingham one day?’

‘What does he say?’ Frances asked. She had already had the full story from Edie.

‘Oh – just thanks for the visit.’ She folded the letter and put it away. Should she reply? If she did, what was she getting herself into? But then, she reasoned, he might not ever come. He was just being polite. She wrote back, briefly, saying that if he was ever up in Birmingham she would be very happy to see him again and left it at that.

She didn’t spend time dwelling on this, though, because two other letters arrived which both took over all her and Frances’s thoughts. The first, at the beginning of August, was from Janet and its tone was breathless:

Edie and Frances spent many an hour discussing this new development. They both knew how much Janet had craved children and they were glad to hear she was so happy.

‘The only thing that really bothers me,’ Frances said, as they sat out at the back of the house one warm evening, ‘is other people’s reactions and prejudices. You know what people can be like. If they wanted to bring them home, I can well imagine people saying all sorts of awful things about Janet and how they come to have coloured children.’

‘Hmm.’ Edie looked round at her. In the half light she saw how fragile Frances looked. It was another painful reminder of her growing old.

‘Well, I suppose if they won’t believe the truth when they hear it, more fool them. You’ve never been one to take any notice of people gossiping.’

‘No, I know.’ She sighed. ‘We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. It would have been so much more straightforward if they could have had their own.’

Edie was touched. She had never heard Frances openly expressing this regret before.

Then the letter from David arrived. Edie read it on the way in to work. It was quite short – he promised he would write again soon to fill them in on all the news – but he had something to say which could not wait.

After more expressions of love and concern for her feelings, he signed off.

Edie stopped at the corner of Bournville Lane, quite oblivious to anyone around her, and read the letter through twice more, trying to take in what he was saying. That he wanted to live in Israel. That he was never coming back . . . The thing she’d feared most. And that he was thinking of marriage . . . Marriage, already! Edie stood trying to breathe properly as she slipped the letter into her bag. She felt an anger, and a hurt too deep for tears to surface yet. Oh, she had thought she was letting go of David, allowing his life take its course, but she had not been prepared for this. For all that he had found his father and was so involved with all these people in Israel, what she had held on to was the thought that come September he would return to her, to take up his university place in London. But now he was making a break far more radical and final than she had ever dreamed of. Settling down in Israel! How had all this happened so quickly? In those moments of panic she felt certain she would never see him again.

She said nothing to anyone, but it was a desperate day at work. As the hours passed on the line, checking and assembling the little trays of chocolates, she passed through her darkest emotions yet of hurt and rejection, and of fear for her own future: that she would spend all her life now abandoned and alone. In the evening she broke the news to Frances, trying to be as calm and matter-of-fact as she could so as not to distress her. She was even more protective of Frances these days. Frances was of course also upset but tried to be comforting and positive. But to Edie it felt as if the whole of her world was crumbling and she needed to be alone. She went up to bed early that night and finally allowed the tears to come, sobbing out her pain and anguish for her boy, who always seemed to have to move further away from her, over the horizon until she could no longer see him. She knew he was a good boy, that he did not want to hurt her, but this didn’t help to take away the agony of it.