The Poellenberg Inheritance (15 page)

In his opinion, and he had been very emphatic on the telephone, the newspaper report of a month ago had been correct. The General was still alive.

‘Darling, why don't you sit down and relax? I've brought the newspapers, it's a lovely afternoon.' The Brigadier looked up anxiously at his wife. She wore slacks and gardening gloves; her face was lined and tired. Overhead the sun was burning in an empty sky; the scent of roses was strong in the still air, birds perched in the beautiful old medlar tree beside their garden chairs and sang.

It was a dreamlike English summer afternoon, too hot to work, a time for peace and silence, for reading the Sunday papers and waking afterwards from a light doze to drink tea and eat home-made cake. This had been their idyll for many years; their lives had passed in uninterrupted calm and mutual compatibility. They gardened, they read, they talked and held hands like lovers, which, in spite of their ages, they still were. Their life together had been good. It was an almost biblical phrase which the Brigadier enjoyed using to describe something entirely satisfactory in the sight of God and man. He held out his hand to her and she obeyed him, sitting at his side. She leaned back and closed her eyes. In repose her face was beautiful; it had a purity of feature that delighted him as much as the day he first saw it, in a freezing attic in her own home, that enormous stuccoed house in Munich which his commanding officer had commandeered. She had been a young woman then, frightened and hostile, facing an enemy intruder who had come up the back stairs and been a witness to her humiliation and despair. She had been burning pieces of broken furniture in the grate to keep herself and Paula warm. The child was in bed and coughing miserably. Gerald Ridgeway would never forget that first meeting with his wife. He had fallen in love immediately, and for the first time in his life. There was a nice, conventional English girl at home whom he expected to marry one day; she disappeared from possibility as soon as he saw the German woman's sculptured face, and flinched at the tragedy in her eyes. He had loved her from the first moment of their encounter, and his intensity of feeling had not diminished. She didn't sleep well; she was restless and sad. The serenity which was their greatest achievement had disappeared.

‘Darling,' he said. ‘Do stop worrying. It's all over now.'

‘I don't believe it,' Magda Ridgeway said. ‘I lie awake, thinking it will all come out, that the world will know and wherever we go, people will point us out. How do you think our friends would feel if they knew who I was – who my husband had been?'

‘It's a long time ago,' he said. ‘Nobody cares now.'

‘Our generation cares,' she said. ‘They fought in that war, they were part of it all. The stain will never be washed away for them. It can never be washed away for me.'

‘You mustn't say that.' He turned to her quickly. ‘You had nothing to do with what happened!'

‘I was married to him for ten years.' His wife spoke slowly as if it were an effort. ‘I entertained those creatures in my home, I lived with the spoils he took from families who were shipped away and murdered. I was part of it all, Gerald. I lived with death, I lay in its arms and I bore it a child. That was the most horrible part – that obsession with the child.' She shivered. ‘Without pity, without one human feeling for anyone or anything, and yet when it came to the baby he was besotted! Do you know, he used to spend hours in the nursery, playing with her? Sitting by the cot, watching every movement, holding her hand in his fingers. When I went upstairs I'd hear him talking away to her, crooning and humming like a woman. If she cried, he would rush to the nursery and shout at the nurse – I was nauseated by it. I tell you, I found it so horrible that I couldn't go near her myself. And he knew this. He was very angry with me because I didn't love her. But I couldn't; she was his. Whenever she looked at me they were his eyes. I felt as if I'd given birth to a monster; that was why he loved her, because she was the image of him. Poor Paula – I just couldn't help it. And in my heart I've never really got over that early feeling. It makes me very guilty.'

‘You've been a wonderful mother,' her husband retorted. ‘Don't talk nonsense. I'm afraid she's just been spoilt, that's all. And losing James has made a difference. She's soured. It's nothing to do with you, my sweetheart. And you can stop thinking about Bronsart and the past. He's dead, and so is that man Black. There's nothing to connect you.'

‘I remember Black so well,' she said. ‘Albrecht Schwarz, a little man, very dapper in his uniform. He adored the General; he followed him like a shadow. I remember him standing in the room when they first brought the Poellenberg Salt to the house, and my husband laughing. “How do you like your table centre?” That's what he said to me. I knew where it came from; I'll never forget the shame. My father and the Von Hessels' grandfather were friends. I ran out of the room, and do you know what he did? He brought Paula down out of her cot and showed it to her! “It's for her,” he said to me afterwards. “She touched it and she laughed. She liked it! So she shall have it – my gift to her!” Not long after that it was taken away and I never saw it again. I never asked what he had done with it, I didn't want to know. He was like a madman, things were going so badly for us in the war. He was worse than I had ever known him. He talked of going to fight in Russia with his S.S. division and wiping every Russian off the earth. I used to pray he'd go and never come back And that prayer was granted. Do you know, that's when I believed in God?'

‘I know,' the Brigadier said. ‘You told me. And he is dead, and nobody can bring him back whatever Paula does.'

‘And the Salt? What did Black tell her – why has she gone to Paris?'

‘I don't know,' he admitted, ‘but I am sure it will all come to nothing. You have no real reason to worry.'

His wife looked at him. He too looked tired and fresh lines had appeared round the eyes and mouth. She brought his hand up to her lips and kissed it.

‘This has put years on to you,' she said sadly. ‘I have only one fear. One terrible fear and I can't get rid of it. What if that devil
is
alive?'

‘He isn't,' Gerald Ridgeway said. ‘But if the impossible turned up and he had escaped – we'll face it, as we've faced everything, my darling. Together. And don't you worry. Whatever comes out of all this, I will protect you.'

‘By God,' Fisher said ‘Look at this – Heinrich Von Hessel is here! He's staying at the Ritz!'

He passed the newspaper to Paula; they were having breakfast in the dining room of their hotel. It was a morning ritual which had never appealed to Fisher. Sitting up and eating at an early hour had bored him and he eschewed the habit as a waste of time. Now he looked forward to going down and waiting for Paula to come in; after the first few mornings he went to her room and they came down together. He could see by the hotel management's attitude that they were thought to be lovers. He only wished they had been right.

There was a bizarre horror about what had happened that clung to them when they left the old woman. Paula kept rubbing her cheek though the spittle had long disappeared. She shivered, in spite of Fisher's arm around her. It was an unnerving experience, crude and physically disgusting. Hate had come up and spat in her face. Fisher blamed himself for having taken her there. But if he hadn't he would have gone away like the men from the Sûréte, believing the old woman to be suffering from senile delusions.

Senile she was, and mentally confused. But for that moment the fog of age had cleared from her mind. There was no doubt about the reaction when she saw Paula, or that angry scream. ‘He was an old man with white hair – but I knew him by the eyes …' The man was still alive. He was old and his hair was white, but he had the same distinctive eyes and she had known him. She had remembered with the clarity of her maternal grief, the face of the man who had sentenced her son to death.

Shrieking and fighting to get at Paula, the old woman had brought back the terror of the last phase of the war. Through her, Paula had been shown her father walking among a crowd of cowed and frightened men, dragged off the Paris streets as hostages, coldly selecting victims with a movement of his riding crop. In this way he had sentenced Madame Brevet's son to death, watched by the distracted, weeping mother, who had gone to the prison in search of her son. There was no ban on relatives going to look for missing sons and husbands. It spread the news through the city when there were witnesses to the executions. Through her words the figure of the General rose like a devil in the squalid little room, dressed in his sinister black, pitiless and inhuman, sending the shrinking boy to the firing squad. She had looked into his face she yelled, and cursed him. And she had seen that face again in a crowded street twenty-five years later, and remembered it. If Fisher and her daughter-in-law hadn't held her, she would have attacked Paula with her nails. On the drive back Paula said nothing. Alone in the hotel Fisher put his arms round her.

‘That was terrible for you,' he said. ‘I wish to Christ I hadn't taken you.'

‘It was so real,' Paula said. ‘She made it so real; I could see it happening.'

‘I'm going to get you a drink,' Fisher said. ‘You're shaking. Go and sit down.'

‘I suppose,' Paula said slowly, ‘that I suspected it. When I heard he was S.S. and on the wanted list, I knew he'd done this kind of thing. But it didn't sink into me. I knew it, but I couldn't believe it. Do you understand that?'

‘I think so. Here, drink this. Come and sit with me.'

‘She made me see it,' Paula said. Fisher had his arm round her. She didn't seem aware of it. She went on talking, looking ahead, holding the glass of brandy in both hands. ‘The more she screamed and struggled to get at me, the more I could see her in the prison yard, begging and pleading with them not to take her son. And my father standing there, pointing with his stick …'

‘All right,' Fisher said. ‘Now that you know it, now that you've accepted it, do you still want to find him? Are you quite sure?'

‘Yes.' Paula turned to him for the first time. ‘Yes, I have to find him. Nothing can alter that. He's my father, he's part of me. Whatever he's like, whatever he did, I have to see him face to face. I have to hear his side.'

‘But then what?' Fisher asked her. ‘Isn't it better to keep the illusion? How will you feel if he turns out to be the kind of man that old woman talked about today – a soulless bastard, or half cracked like you said Schwarz was – you've got to think what may be at the end of this.'

‘If he's sick,' Paula said, ‘I shall take care of him. That would be the easiest of all. If he needs me, I'm his daughter. He's been in hiding for all these years; he must have paid for what he did.'

‘And you could forgive him?'

‘I want to,' she said. ‘I want to find him and have him put his arms around me. I know you think I'm crazy, but that's what I want. When I was a child I used to watch my mother and Gerald going off together, and think if only my father could walk through the door or up the garden, and come and take me away with him. I created him, Eric, because I had nothing else. Now I know he's real and everything in me is crying out to find him. To see him and touch him. To make the dream into a reality.'

‘And you're prepared to find that it's a nightmare?' Fisher asked her.

‘I don't think it will be,' she said. ‘I don't think anything he's done will matter to me. I don't think I'll care.'

‘I see,' Fisher said. He got up and poured himself a drink. ‘I love you, Paula.' He spoke quietly, watching her. ‘I know I'm not much of a substitute but couldn't you make do with me instead?'

Paula shook her head. He looked unhappy and strained. It occurred to her suddenly that she had hurt him.

‘No, darling. It's not the same thing. I'd never be happy with you if I walked away from him now. Our turn will come when this is over.'

‘It may never be over,' Fisher said. ‘He may take you away from me for ever.'

‘I don't believe that,' she said. ‘But till I see him, I can't promise. You will go on helping me, won't you?'

‘That was our bargain,' Fisher said. ‘And I'll keep to it, if that's what you want. But don't expect me to be happy about it. Don't expect me to see you run into your father's arms and give three bloody cheers.'

‘I won't,' she said. ‘But just remember this. I love you too.' She had gone up to him and kissed him, and nothing more was said. When he came to bring her down to breakfast in the morning, she appeared relaxed, but he looked tired and tense, as if he hadn't slept well. On the way to the lift she took his arm. Reading the
Monde
a little later over the breakfast table, Fisher had seen the news of Prince Heinrich's arrival.

‘Now,' he said, ‘why the hell has he come here? I cabled the mother about you coming to Paris. I suppose he wants to check up. There's one thing I won't have, and that's the client breathing down my neck.' He folded up the paper and threw it down. ‘I shall go and pay the gentleman a call and make that clear.'

Twenty minutes after he applied at the reception desk, Fisher was shown up to the Prince's suite. The hotel had been uncooperative when he asked to have a message sent up. The Prince was not to be disturbed. Fisher suggested aggressively that they had better put it to the test. Reluctantly the reception spoke to the deputy manager, who referred it higher still. Fnially Fisher was taken up to the first floor by a page boy.

At the door of suite F/G the boy left him. He knocked and a minute later a man in the dark coat and trousers of a personal valet opened it and speaking in very bad French, invited him inside. Fisher spoke briskly in German. The valet bowed. His Highness was expecting him; if he would wait in the sitting room for a few moments.