Tamar (20 page)

“I . . .” He could not speak the next words. Instead he looked down at his hands and said, “I am so cold.”

She came down to him then. “Dear God, Ernst, you must be frozen. Come into the kitchen.”

She moved past him. She was, amazingly, wearing perfume: a warm flowery animal scent that hung almost visible on the cold air.

He followed her and then stopped, his senses overwhelmed, just inside the kitchen door. He had been greedily inhaling Marijke’s scent, but now this was obliterated by rich aromas of cooking. The warm air in the room was laden with the smells of meat, of baking apples, of bread, and something he didn’t recognize — something spiced and sweet. A delicious spasm of hunger went through him, and he had to swallow saliva hurriedly so as not to dribble like a child. The table was laid with the Maartenses’ best china, each piece rimmed with a narrow band of gold glaze as delicate as lace. At the centre of the table two candles burned in a branched holder wreathed in holly, the berry clusters brighter than droplets of blood. The tree stood at the far end of the room on a chest covered with an old Turkish rug. Its branches were hung with slender twists of glass, like icicles, and frosted red and amber globes that glowed with blurred, reflected flames. To Dart’s eyes, still tearful from the cold, the room seemed filled with threads of light like drifting cobwebs spun from gold.

Marijke stood the lamp on the dresser and lifted her arms in a gesture that was almost apologetic. “Happy Christmas, Ernst.” She said it in a way that suggested she had done all this only for him, and it was inadequate.

“I don’t know what to say,” he said. “You . . . This is all so beautiful. Thank you for inviting me.”

“Oh, don’t be silly. You had to be here. Take your coat off. Come to the stove and warm yourself up.”

They stood side by side. She lifted the lid from the bigger pan. “We’re having a sort of British Christmas dinner. I think the chicken should be roasted, but it was an old bird and would have been too tough. So we’re stewing it with vegetables and some herbs from the garden. Does that sound all right? It looks all right, I think. It’s been cooking for hours.”

She spoke more quickly than he was used to. It occurred to him that she might be as nervous as he was.

“It smells incredible,” he said.

“Good. And in here, look, is this thing that we found in the supply drop.”

She lifted the other lid, releasing a cloud of vapour. Dart peered in and saw something the size of a baby’s head wrapped in white cloth.

“Apparently it’s a traditional English Christmas pudding. Christiaan says you’re supposed to steam it. For ages and ages. It smells nice, though, doesn’t it? I think it’s got some kind of alcohol in it.”

“Ah. Yes. Rum, perhaps. I’ve had it before. The English have something they call custard with it. Yellow.”

All of a sudden the heat and the smell of food and her irresistible nearness and the effort of talking made him so giddy that he thought he might black out, or fall against her and hold her. He went to the table and leaned heavily on it.

She turned and looked at him. “Ernst? Are you all right? You look terribly pale.”

He made a huge effort to repel the darkness swarming into the edges of his vision. “I’m fine. Just the change in temperature, I think.” He turned a chair so that it faced her and sat down.

“Would you like coffee? There was some in the drop.”

“Yes, thank you. Coffee would be good. Christiaan is here?”

“Yes, of course. He is still upstairs.” She glanced over her shoulder at him. “With Oma,” she added quickly. “She’s not well.”

Oma. He had forgotten she existed. Not good. His world was melting, spilling over the limits of his concentration.

“Your grandmother’s sick? What’s wrong with her?”

She kept her back to him, fussing with the coffeepot, moving things on the stove.

“Exhaustion, mainly. She’s been in Loenen, with her cousin’s family. She came back yesterday and had to walk almost all the way. She should have stayed there, I told her. But there was a child born who died and she thought she shouldn’t. She’s caught a chill, but I think she’ll be well enough to have dinner with us.”

Then the door opened and Tamar came in, rubbing his hands together and grinning. Dart stood and Tamar embraced him, slapping Dart’s back.

“Happy Christmas, my friend,” Tamar said. “What do you think of all this?” He gestured at the table, the tree. “Good, isn’t it? Did Marijke tell you we’re having chicken? And English pudding? My God, we’re going to eat like kings! And why not? I think we deserve it, don’t you?”

His presence had tilted the delicate nervous balance in the room. The quiet intimacy of a few moments earlier had been jolted into this hearty maleness. Dart had trouble adjusting.

“Yes,” he said. “I was just saying to Marijke. It’s fantastic in here. How is Oma?”

“What? Oh, well, she’s miserable, of course. There was a child —”

“Yes,” Dart said. “Marijke told me.”

“Did she? Right. Well, Oma’s very upset, naturally. And the journey back was hard on her. She’s got a bit of a cold, but you know Oma — tough as old boots.”

Dart glanced at Marijke. It seemed to him that Tamar was being grossly offhand, but Marijke was taking it well, smiling bravely. She brought two cups of coffee to the table.

“I’ll go up to her,” she said. “The food is almost ready.”

Dart watched her leave the room. The way her body, her legs, moved inside the green dress. He sipped his coffee, and when he raised his eyes, Tamar was looking at him thoughtfully.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Dart said.

Tamar nodded, still watching Dart’s face. “That was a hell of a thing, the other night. To tell you the truth, drops scare me shitless. Especially big ones like that, when there are lots of people involved. You know what I mean? Someone talks, says something in the wrong place, and you end up getting shot to pieces in a damn field in the middle of nowhere. You did very well.”

“Thank you.”

“Did you get everything you needed?”

Dart sipped, looking into his cup. “Yes.”

Tamar nodded again, slowly, then smiled and leaned back in his chair. “I feel so good tonight,” he said. “Know why?”

Dart didn’t. He waited.

“It’s because all this is so . . . normal. Do you understand what I mean? Here, this kitchen, the food, the tree — it’s like life used to be, before. And I didn’t think, couldn’t have imagined . . . You know when we jumped out of that bloody plane? It never crossed my mind that three months later you and I would be celebrating Christmas like this. Yet here we are, doing what normal people used to do in normal times. I went up to the heath and cut that tree down, and Marijke decorated it, and I thought what a mad thing we were doing while people all over the country are starving and dying. We should feel guilty, I suppose. But tonight, right now, I don’t.”

He reached across the table and seized Dart’s wrists, startling him. “We must have a good time tonight, my friend. Because this is the most subversive thing we could be doing. This”— and here he gestured at the room again —“this is the continuation of war by other means. Joy is the true enemy of fascism. So we shall be joyous.”

He has been drinking, Dart thought.

As if he had read Dart’s mind, Tamar jumped up and went to the dresser. He returned with two of Oma’s china tumblers and Ruud van der Spil’s cognac. Dart noticed that the level in the bottle had fallen significantly.

“Here,” Tamar said, pouring large shots. “Have some of this. You still look a bit like a ghost. Cheers.”

Dart drank; the liquor left a hot track through the middle of his body that felt good.

“Something else too,” Tamar said, reaching into a trouser pocket. “Look at this. A Christmas present from Nicholson, I think.”

It was a large buff office envelope, folded in half. The letter
N
was pencilled in one corner. It contained a wad of crossword puzzles clipped from newspapers.

“Thirty!” Tamar said. “Mostly from
The Times,
at a glance.” He grinned happily. “Warmth, good food, something to drink, and a crossword to do after dinner. We are having a little interlude in heaven, my friend.”

The door opened then, and Marijke and her grandmother came in. Dart stood and stooped to be kissed. The old woman was wearing a red shawl over her usual black, but this festive garment could not disguise the fact that she was frailer than before. Dart thought she had aged a good deal since he last saw her. There was a slight yellowness to the whites of her eyes and a ragged edge to her breathing; the climb down the stairs had been hard work for her. She refused to sit in the armchair and took a seat at the table.

Tamar and Marijke busied themselves at the stove, leaving Dart to deal with Oma. She gazed absently at him for several moments, then began one of her mimes. Without Marijke to translate, Dart felt at a loss. He smiled and nodded.

“Yes, Oma,” he guessed, “it is very cold. Bad weather for walking, yes. The room is beautiful, though. The food smells good. Yes, I’m very hungry.”

The chicken stew contained chunks of carrot and potato, and translucent segments of onion; the meat was slightly fibrous but good. They sucked it from the bones and wiped their plates clean with bread that Marijke had made with the British flour. Oma sat back and sighed with pleasure, or perhaps exhaustion, when she had eaten half of what was on her plate.

After a silent and contented interval, Tamar lifted the Christmas pudding from the pan. He made a comedy of unwrapping it from the hot cloth, dancing about and blowing on his fingertips. He finally got it onto a warm plate and brought it to the table; it was dark chocolatey brown and glistened stickily. Oma and Marijke peered at it with deep suspicion.

Marijke said, “If it’s disgusting, we can have baked apples instead.”

“Of course it won’t be disgusting,” Tamar said. “It’ll be delicious. It was probably made from the finest ingredients by the head chef of the Ritz Hotel in London, exclusively for the SOE. Do you think the RAF would send one of their planes through hellfire to deliver a nasty pudding? Now then, pass me the cognac.”

Tamar filled a serving spoon and heated it in the flame of a candle. “Ruud van der Spil would probably shoot me dead if he saw me doing this with his precious booze. Here we go.”

A lick of flame ran over the surface of the liquid. Tamar emptied the spoon onto the hot pudding and, for just a few seconds, it wore a transparent cloak of flickering blue fire. Marijke laughed and applauded. Oma, alarmed and wide-eyed, put her hands to her chest as if she had witnessed one of the devil’s prettier tricks.

Tamar served thick wedges of the pudding into gold-edged bowls. He stared at Marijke, smiling, waiting for her to try it first. She made a comical face, then, like someone doing something brave and possibly suicidal, slid a spoonful into her mouth. The others watched and waited. Dart, tense and enraptured, saw the tip of her tongue lick traces of taste from her lips. Her eyes closed and her mouth moved thoughtfully. Then she swallowed and carefully put the spoon down.

“Well,” Tamar said, “what do you think?”

Marijke waggled her hand beside her face like someone who had been told an outrageous piece of gossip. “It is a scandal,” she said, very seriously, “to have so many things in one pudding.” Then she smiled delightedly. “It is incredible. Have some; have some!”

They ate, making little groans of pleasure.

“Raisins,” Tamar said. “And almonds, are they?” He lifted a plump little chunk of something red from his dish. “What is this, Marijke?”

“Some sort of preserved cherry, I think. I can taste things I thought I’d never taste again.”

“Nutmeg,” Dart said. “Mmm . . . figs too. Amazing. Where did they get all this stuff? I never saw any of it in England.”

“It would be wonderful with cream,” Marijke sighed. “Can you imagine?”

Oma, chewing busily, waved her hand in a dismissive gesture: what they had in their dishes was sinful enough without cream.

Dart made a startled sound and the others looked at him. Frowning, he took something small and flat from his mouth.

“What have you got there, Ernst?”

Dart held the object nearer the candle. “It’s a coin. British, but I’ve never seen one like it before.” He peered at it. “It’s old. The date is eighteen something.”

“Ah, I know what this is. You’re lucky tonight, my friend.”

“Damn right. I could have choked on it.”

Tamar laughed. “True. This is one of those crazy English customs. They put a little silver coin in the Christmas pudding, and the person who finds it gets to make a wish. Guaranteed to come true. Never fails.”

“What a nice idea,” Marijke said. “So go on, Ernst. What are you going to wish for?”

Tamar laid a hand on her wrist. “No, no. Ernst mustn’t tell us. It has to be a secret wish, or it won’t work.”

They all watched Dart, smiling and expectant. He tried very hard not to look at Marijke, but he could not help himself. “I don’t know what to wish for,” he confessed.

Marijke tipped her head slightly, and in that moment Dart lost focus on everything except her face.

“Of course you do,” she said. “I know what I’d wish for. I bet you’d wish for the same thing.”

Her dark gaze was fixed on him, and there was no mistaking the message it contained. He had no name for the emotion that swept through him. He closed his eyes and held them tight shut until he had some control over it.

When he opened them, Tamar was grinning at him. “That was obviously a very serious wish. I hope with all my heart it comes true. Now, more, anyone?”

Julia Maartens went to bed not long after the meal was over. The effort of eating had tired her, and then she had a spasm of coughing that left her looking feverish. Marijke filled two stone hot-water bottles to warm the old lady’s bed; then, after a slow ritual of good nights, took her upstairs.

When the two men were alone, Tamar brought the oil lamp to the table. “Crossword?”

“Yes, why not?”

Tamar shuffled through the wad of crosswords, choosing one he liked the look of — using a selection process Dart did not understand — and found a pencil. Then he lifted the cognac bottle and looked at Dart enquiringly.