A stranger to herself, p.42
A Stranger to Herself, page 42
Sometimes Caroline, her former sister-in-law, came to stay at Cheyne Walk. She’d returned from Malaya when her husband died in 1939 and had been widowed for the third time, when her new husband was killed at Arnhem. She now lived with the Despencers in the country, staying with Violet when she occasionally came up to town. She’d put on weight, given up all but a light powdering of her coarsened complexion, and taken to wearing sensible country clothes and shoes. ‘I loved all my husbands, Vi,’ she’d said to Violet and her husband one evening, ‘but I’ve given the whole thing up now, and taken up gardening. It’s more predictable than matrimony and, let’s face it, to have been widowed three times is almost a joke to most people. They think you must have polished them off.’
Duncan had said, ‘You’ve had a time, though, Caroline, haven’t you?’ and somehow managed to make her feel better, a bit of a rogue, young again.
A sudden gaiety, like the old Caroline’s, came into her face. ‘Duncan. You’re such a flirt. Isn’t he, Violet? My goodness, even now, if I met one like you, Duncan, I could almost desert the peas and tea roses, leave them to wither on their stems. But,’ she said, ‘the dentist’s appointment is in the morning so I’d better go to bed and get up my strength. It’s all right for you, Violet – you’re quite unflagging.’
‘She’s been a goer in her time,’ remarked Duncan, after Caroline had gone upstairs. Violet had winced internally. Caroline was only four years older than she was. Fifty-three then, and married to a handsome man nine years younger, Violet didn’t welcome the sight of her contemporary, Caroline, sitting there, looking such a frump and saying her only interest now lay in her garden. Nor did she want to hear her husband talk about Caroline as if she were an ancient monument, like Mrs Keppel, or Sylvia Pankhurst.
Anyway, Violet told herself on that gloomy February morning, poor old Felix had turned out to be almost her only remaining link with the past. So that was that. And Allie – Allie, she thought wistfully, had been in America with Donald Farrar since he’d decided, finally, in 1938, that his children were old enough for him to leave his wife. Not that she’d seen Allie for years before she left, anyway. Rosalind Despencer was back in the south of France with her girlfriend, Arabella Crick, part of a group of writers and artists, some ex-servicemen, who had retreated from the cold and austerity of Britain after the war. Leaving Felix, Violet thought again. She pulled herself together and said to the butler, ‘Can you also get rooms ready for Mr Maidstone and Mrs Johnson? If the fog gets much worse they may want to spend the night.’
She went down the steps, in her smart suit and coat, and got into the car. As she drove slowly along the Embankment, peering through fog, she now thought of what had happened in France, which she almost never did. Nor did she usually let herself remember what had passed between herself and Sophie Levine years later, because of it. She decided she must be haunted today. But then, she asked herself, what choice did I have in France – what choice, afterwards, when Frederick died?
Violet had panicked when Frederick died, peacefully in his sleep, in 1946, loved by his new Italian wife and respected by everybody. He had been knighted after the war for his war-time work in co-ordinating military supplies and for his part in the commission set up afterwards to rebuild Germany. Therefore, when Sir Frederick Levine died at fifty-six and his obituarists claimed, using classic terms, that he had been loved by his family and friends, respected by all who knew him and honoured by his country, in his case, they spoke the truth. He left behind a grieving widow and a very worried ex-wife. His experiences with Violet in the thirties had taught him one thing: that Violet, deprived of what she wanted, could be very inventive and destructive. Abandoning any idea of justice on the one hand, or revenge on the other, he’d given her ample money.
Once Frederick was dead Violet feared the vengeance of a son who had refused to see her for more than ten years, who must still remember the experience of being a fourteen-year-old public schoolboy during his parents’ scandalous divorce. What must have been said about it by parents of other boys at the school, and relayed to him by them, must have given him a cruel year. He had not wanted Joanna to live with Violet afterwards. He had been there when, half-collapsed and leaning on a nurse, she’d been brought back to Cavendish Square. Robert was now in charge of Levine-Schreft. Twenty-seven, bereaved, beset by many post-war problems Frederick had not had time to begin solving, he was not likely to be merciful to her, thought Violet.
With Frederick’s allowance gone, Duncan’s salary from the Foreign Office and her own from the House of Commons were not going to keep the house at Cheyne Walk functioning. Salaries had not been increased during the war, prices were rising, taxation was high with a Socialist government in power. The Mackinnons had been living to the hilt. There were no savings. All Violet had behind her was about twenty thousand pounds worth of jewellery she’d acquired. If she had to sell it, she wouldn’t get the full value. She couldn’t explain where it came from and would have to sell it cheaply, as if she’d stolen it.
She knew that her husband was not, on the face of it, a man who consciously thought about money. He seemed the sort who was perfectly happy to sleep on a sofa and keep a couple of shirts in a drawer. The reality was that he expected nothing but comfort. If he wasn’t looked after in a warm house, with staff, good food on the table, and accounts at a tailor, a shirtmaker and a shoemaker’s, in some charming and indetectable way he would evaporate, materialising later as the husband of a younger, richer woman. Violet also knew that she wouldn’t be able to function as an MP if she had to cope in a smaller house with ration books, fuel shortages and all the practical problems of a modest, post-war household. They’d had to ration bread and potatoes now. Would she be able to explain to Duncan why they were eking out slices of grey, war-time bread? Admittedly, there were women MPs who managed to run their various households with far less money. But they had in their lives mothers, sisters, husbands even, who were prepared to go out with string bags to bring in scanty provisions, fetch coal for fires, accept post-war shabbiness and difficulties. And they were not married to Duncan Mackinnon. One or two had loyal housekeepers, but Violet couldn’t even imagine Duncan making do with a loyal housekeeper, eating fish pie in a small dining-room with a few worthies, while a Mrs Treadgold appeared in the doorway, asking if they’d finished, because she wanted to do the washing up. Whereupon she, Violet, would tell her she would do it, push an ashtray towards Harold Wilson to knock his pipe into and start clearing the table. A cosy scene, perhaps, but would Duncan enjoy it? Violet wondered. It was unlikely.
Frederick’s will was crucial. Even before Violet found out the terms she began to complain to Joanna that things, now Frederick was dead, might become difficult for her. Joanna, deeply shaken and grieving for her father, appeared not to understand her mother. Joanna in any case was not worth much as an ally. Nor was her other daughter, Pamela, whom Violet saw twice a year, at the decree of Harry Christian-Smith. Pamela was afraid of her mother. Harry disliked her. Violet guessed that any appeal to Pamela for Frederick’s money would be blocked by Harry on the grounds that Violet was divorced, had remarried, and had no claim on the Levines, dead or alive. Violet therefore took the bull by the horns, and went to see Sophie. It was 1946. They had not met since Pamela’s wedding in 1933.
When Violet went into the drawing-room at Cavendish Square one afternoon, five days after Frederick’s death, Sophie was drawn but composed. She sat a little straighter. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve come with condolences, Violet.’
‘I’m naturally very sorry …’
‘I’m sure,’ Sophie had said drily. ‘But I’m an old woman whose son has died. He might have lived longer if he’d enjoyed a long and happy marriage. However, he was not so blessed. But that’s over and I don’t want to go into it. And now I feel sure you’ve come for money. Frederick warned me years ago that you’d do this if he died while you were still comparatively young.’ Sophie, upright, in black, in the chair in which she had always sat, was cold and clear-headed.
Violet was alarmed by her manner. And the last words had confirmed her worst fears. ‘I’m not in his will then?’ she burst out, losing composure.
Sophie didn’t quite smile at Violet’s alarm. She answered, ‘No. You’re not in the will. He wasn’t prepared to acknowledge you in that way. It would look as if he’d forgiven you. He hadn’t and he didn’t want anyone to think he had.’
‘Generous to the last,’ said Violet bitterly.
‘He could have broken you in various ways. You know that. He didn’t, chiefly for the sake of his children. He didn’t want any more of the sort of fuss and scandal he knew you were capable of producing.’
‘Perhaps you should call them our children,’ retorted Violet.
‘Forgive me if I’ve violated your feelings as a mother,’ Sophie said. ‘Perhaps they run deeper than I, or anyone else, had ever noticed.’
‘I suppose, knowing Frederick’s left me nothing, you let me come here just to humiliate myself.’
‘No,’ Sophie told her. ‘I agreed to meet you because Frederick said I should make up my own mind about what to do. He said he thought you had no means now of extorting money from the family. But I think he underestimated your capacity to make trouble. I think you’re very wicked, Violet.’
Violet, not caring now about Sophie’s abuse, since she saw an offer was about to be made, sat more calmly, waiting to find out what it would be. The drawing-room clock ticked on in the silence, as it had always ticked. A door shut upstairs, even the slight sound was familiar. She suddenly remembered the house, empty and dust-sheeted, during the First World War. She’d pulled things together down at Farnley when she came back from France. Sophie hadn’t dared show dislike so strongly in those days.
‘Wicked?’ she burst out. ‘Sophie, how could you know anything about it? You, who’ve spent your whole life doing nothing? How could you have been either good or bad? People who don’t do anything, don’t make any mistakes.’
Sophie ignored this. ‘I don’t want a discussion. Above all, I don’t want an argument. I’ve outlived my husband, and both my sons. I’m grieving for them all now. When this is over, I never want to see you again. I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I shall sell Farnley – the farms, the house and most of the furniture. And I’m going to give you the proceeds, all of them. In return you have to do two things. Firstly, sign a paper to say that in future you’ll make no further claims on this family. In that, I believe I’m doing exactly what Frederick would have thought sensible. Secondly, and this is entirely for my own satisfaction, I want your truthful account of what happened to Sonny and Germaine.’
Violet sat quite still. She had not expected this. She did not want to tell Sophie about Sonny and Germaine. She thought of the farms, the house, the furniture. Then she said, ‘And if I tell you, who will you tell?’
‘Just Louis Schreft,’ said Sophie Levine. ‘He knows you’re the only person who can tell us the whole truth. And he wants to know. His sister, Didi, of course, died …’ and Sophie paused, looking hard at Violet. ‘Sonny and Germaine must be dead, and Marcel, Germaine’s husband, and there may have been a child … Perhaps you don’t understand – Louis wants to know what really happened to his sister’s children. So do I.’
‘I told you when it happened—’ Violet began.
‘You told me what you could get away with. I didn’t expect anything else. I know you too well – you were protecting yourself. But I never believed you. You don’t understand, Violet – human sympathy isn’t another of your great strengths and in any case, how could you comprehend the pain of being, now, the oldest member of a family, half of which has disappeared, mostly in ways we shall never know about. All we can do is imagine, and that’s terrible. You didn’t tell the whole story after it happened. I need the truth. You can tell me, and above all, Louis, something about Sonny and Germaine.’ She raised her head, looked straight at Violet and challenged her, ‘It’s quite simple. If you tell me a story which makes sense, I’ll give you the proceeds from Farnley. It’ll be a good deal of money, perhaps two hundred thousand pounds.’
Violet asked urgently, ‘But will Louis speak? Will he tell anybody?’
‘I stayed with Louis in Paris a, month ago,’ said Sophie. ‘We agreed that not knowing what happened is worst of all. Louis won’t tell. All I want is your account of what happened to Sonny and Germaine.’
‘And Germaine’s husband, and the baby,’ Violet said determinedly.
Sophie nodded, satisfied. ‘At last we come to it. So the baby was born?’
Violet became angry. ‘It was you who urged me to do it. Frederick – but first you. Now, suddenly, I’m the villain of the piece. But you, Sophie, got me to do it. You were using Frederick’s money as a lever.’
Sophie nodded. ‘And you agreed, and we paid, didn’t we? Paid you for trying. And heard how when you went to look for them, they’d been discovered and arrested, the day before. But I didn’t believe you. I know you. You won’t hear any reproaches from me whatever happened. I only want to know. Come along, Violet, it’s the truth, or no Farnley. That house and the land will keep you nicely from now on. So – speak up.’
Violet told her the full story of what had happened to Sonny Coton, his sister Germaine, her husband and their threadlike baby, who whimpered, but could not cry, who had been born in the cellar in Occupied Paris where they’d lived in concealment for eighteen months, never able to go out. She explained how she had hidden them all in the back of the bread van due to rendezvous outside Paris with people who would get them to the coast, and then back to England. Sophie Levine listened in silence.
‘So you were captured, taken for interrogation?’ she said. ‘What made the Germans let you go? After all, you were smuggling Jews out of the country. They ought to have shot you.’
‘It was just a local post – I knew the Captain a little.’
‘And …?’ Sophie asked.
‘All right,’ Violet said vigorously. ‘He knew they might have money or jewellery. I told him I’d tell him where it was in exchange for my freedom. I even said I’d do it again – find more Jews wanting to escape, betray them for profit. Which we’d split. The idea appealed to him. What would you have done?’ Violet said in a cold voice. ‘Confessed and died? Would that have helped Sonny, or Germaine, or Marcel?’
‘No,’ said Sophie evenly. ‘So that was the last you saw of them, as they took them away?’
Violet said, ‘Yes,’ repressing the memory of the grey uniforms, the rifle-butts pushing the weak Sonny, Germaine, and Marcel into a long grey corridor, Germaine clutching her undernourished baby and glancing back, just once, to look at Violet – or was it just a glance past her at the open door, showing, behind, a bit of street, the branches of a tree, a tiny piece of blue sky?
‘Did you find out where they were taking them?’ Sophie asked.
‘They didn’t tell me their plans. I didn’t ask them.’ She recalled her own fear, the knowledge that she was about to be interrogated, perhaps tortured. She’d only glanced at the party being pushed down that long corridor before turning to the German officer, in her character as a French bakerwoman, saying, ‘Be merciful, Captain, I beg you.’ She looked at Sophie and said, ‘Don’t judge me. This was your idea.’
‘I know,’ Sophie replied. ‘I know.’ She sighed. ‘Thank you, Violet. Now, at least we know.’
After Violet had gone, her back, held so straight during the interview, began to bow. She sat slumped in her chair, a tear rolling down her cheek. The tick of the clock seemed very loud. She imagined Violet, erect and energetic, calling a taxi and driving back to Cheyne Walk, her life on course again, as a result of telling her the truth about the deaths of three people and a four-month-old starving baby. Like a cannibal, like a cannibal, mourned Sophie. But this time, it won’t profit her at all. God will make sure of that.
Violet, walking away from Cavendish Square, breathed deeply, like someone coming up from under water. She’d imagined, after giving her official report in London, when she hadn’t revealed she knew the people hiding in the van, and after having told another story to Frederick and Sophie, that she’d never have to talk or think again about what had happened. Later, on the way back to Chelsea, she decided Sophie would honour her part of the bargain, give her the proceeds of the sale of Farnley. And, as a matter of fact, she still had the remainder of Germaine Coton’s jewellery, hidden elsewhere in the van, at her own bank, in London.
Now, six years later, Violet peered through her foggy windscreen in Parliament Square. ‘What choice did I have?’ she muttered to herself, steering carefully into the House of Commons car park.
Kate Higgins, June 19th, 1991
Di wasn’t in when I got back to the flat in dusty London sunshine. Rog was. He came out of the spare room when I came in, leaving the door open. The bed which I could see opposite had been slept in. There was a sleeping-bag on the floor too. Rog had a screwdriver in his hand. ‘Someone kicked over the lamp,’ he explained. ‘I fixed it.’
‘There’ve been a few people here while I’ve been away,’ I said.
‘Di never let them in your room,’ he told me.
It wasn’t the reassurance I wanted, somehow. ‘Well, it’s her place,’ I said.
‘Cup of tea?’ he asked.
‘Be nice.’ He shut the door of the room. The lock clicked. I watched him go into the kitchen and realised I still didn’t have keys to it. I felt uneasy. Up to now I’d taken a modest view of my own position in the flat, just paying my share of the rent and bills and splitting the chores but assuming Di had basic control. She paid the bills, the flat was in her name, that was the way she liked it. But in spite of my clean-up the place was looking neglected again. The plumber hadn’t come to fix the dripping tap in the bathroom. There were envelopes looking like bills all over the mantelpiece. Also there was a locked room where unexplained guests slept. I didn’t know them. No one told me they were there. Why not? You can’t have a locked room, with a secret, in a council flat. I hadn’t asked any questions about the room. Constantly betrayed by a lover, baffled by mysterious phone calls from an anonymous woman, writing my biography and living in the past, there seemed to be things I hadn’t caught up with. Something funny was going on, I decided. I followed Rog into the kitchen and asked, ‘What’s happening? Has Di turned this place into a safe house? What’s happening in that room?’
