September Morning, page 26
Besides, she thought, breathing in the sweet-scented grass of the orchard, what did she have to go back to Cornwall for? She would miss her mother, she still did, but she was too old for any of that homesick nonsense now. Her stepfather would definitely disapprove of any long-term arrangement here, of course, and would point out the wasted years at a Swiss finishing school.
Too bad, Celia thought defiantly. It was her life – and you had to be tough to survive these days. And anyway, what about Wenna’s wasted academy years, which had led her to singing in a London nightclub!
* * *
Wenna burst into tears the minute she read her mother’s letter. Fanny looked at her in dismay.
‘Gawd Almighty, what’s wrong, duck? Your Ma’s not been taken ill, has she?’
‘No,’ Wenna said, as soon as she could speak. ‘I’m being silly, that’s all. I mean, I knew it was coming, but now it’s settled, and it just seems so sad and final, that’s all.’
Fanny smiled faintly. She’d heard enough about the proposed merger of the clay companies to guess immediately what Wenna was getting at. Privately she thought it just made good business sense. She put her arms around the girl.
‘You’re just too soft-hearted fer yer own good, my duck. It’s this clay-company stuff, I s’pose?’
Wenna nodded, her face full of misery. ‘Mom sounds so brave, and there’s a bit in the letter where she tries to make me laugh about Uncle Theo smashing up his television set.’
‘Oh, my good Gawd!’ Fanny said, staring. ‘You folk never do things by halves, do yer?’
‘But I know she’s really sad about it all,’ Wenna went on passionately. ‘Killigrew Clay was – well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say it was in her soul like it was in my great-grandmother’s – but it was so much a part of her life.’
‘Now you just listen to me,’ Fanny said briskly. ‘So these two companies have become one, and I’ll refrain from makin’ any funny-cum-naughty remarks about that, ’cos I can see yer ain’t in the mood. But bleedin’ ’ell, darlin’, nobody’s died, have they?’
As she paused for breath, Wenna felt her face flame with embarrassment.
‘Oh, Fanny, I wasn’t thinking. Poor Georgie—’
‘I wasn’t thinking about that neither, so stop yer frettin’. All I meant was, when it comes down to it, the most important thing in this world is having yer ’ealth and strength, and yer mother’s got that in plenty. I bet by now she’s thinkin’ of other things, and she won’t let any of this get her down for long. So don’t you, neither. The last thing she’ll want is a sob letter from you or a tearful phone call, so you just keep your pecker up, d’yer hear?’
She got a watery smile in return. ‘I know you’re right, Fanny. But I’ve got to say something, just so she doesn’t think that I don’t care.’
Fanny hugged her, her eyes suddenly moist. If she’d ever wanted a kid, she thought, she’d have wanted one exactly like this one.
‘She knows you care, lovey.’
Wenna wriggled free and continued perusing the letter with only the occasional sniff now. ‘She also says she might be doing some writing again. Proper writing this time – a sort of historical booklet.’
‘Fancy that now,’ Fanny said, never having had any inclination to do anything that sounded so dull, but readily admitting that Skye had quite a brainbox on her shoulders. Writing about anything, and especially about boring historical stuff, was well outside Fanny’s limitations, but somebody had to do it, she supposed cheerfully.
‘Anyway, Mom says the new company will do well, so I’m sure she means it. She’s a great survivor,’ Wenna added proudly. ‘All our family were, wouldn’t you say so, Fanny?’
‘Course they were,’ Fanny said, not knowing the half of it, but thankful that Wenna was recovering fast.
For a minute she’d been afraid she would want to rush back to Cornwall and vegetate, when already there were big plans afoot to launch her in a Saturday spot in the new year, when Gloria del Mar would be starting rehearsals for a coveted role in a Broadway musical. Now might just be the right time to push ahead with the plans for Wenna, to cheer her up. It would cheer Georgie up too, she thought hopefully, knowing how his dark depressions over his parents came and went.
Lately they had got more frequent, and decidedly darker, she thought anxiously. He kept predicting that things could only get worse, that they had only seen the tip of the iceberg yet. She always hated it when he talked like that, as if he carried the weight of the world on his thin shoulders.
* * *
In November, Georgie Rosenbloom had another letter from an old friend that he couldn’t bear to show even to his wife. The agony of what was happening in Germany was starting to affect him deeply, but the most recent news of what was virtually a massacre burned into his very soul.
According to Jackie Cohen, there had been an organised reign of terror carried out throughout the country; Jewish-owned shops had been looted, and innocent Jewish citizens beaten senseless. Thousands of people had died in one night. The reality of it was only just dawning on many of his countryfolk who were fleeing Germany in panic.
‘I won’t leave,’ the letter went on. ‘This is my home. Here I was born and here I will die, old friend, just as your mother and father did. All I will say is, pray for me, and for our brothers and sisters. I will write again when I can.’
Georgie brooded over the letter continually, until the day Fanny discovered him silently weeping and she demanded to know what was wrong. Everything else faded out of existence as she held him in her arms. Whatever she had been in the past she was completely devoted to her Georgie, whose dry wit had sadly deserted him in recent times. It broke her heart to see him suffer like this.
Once she had got the gist of it, she was outraged.
‘We must bring Jackie here to safety, and any others who want to come with him,’ she said at once.
He shook his head. ‘He won’t do it. You’ve read the letter. He’s a proud man and an old one. Why should he leave? The old ones are stubborn, but it’s the children I’m sorry for. They’re the innocent ones caught up in this evil. There’s nothing we can do for them.’
He was steeped in pessimism, and there was nothing she could say to comfort him. He spent long hours at the synagogue and she let him go, knowing it gave him strength, but privately thinking it did no good at all. Fanny admitted that her religious faith began and ended with what people could do for one another, not in some mumbo-jumbo candle-lighting rigmarole, or whatever it was they did.
The newspapers were soon full of the latest outrage, and the government was starting to take action, she reported to him. Many parts of the empire were offering to take in refugees, including Britain, the way it always had.
‘I daresay,’ Georgie said, with a rare bitterness. ‘But your pompous Mr Chamberlain also says there’s a limit to how many refugees Britain can accept.’
‘I s’pose there is. But he ain’t my Mr Chamberlain,’ Fanny said vigorously. ‘I never voted for ’im.’
‘You never voted for anyone,’ Georgie reminded her.
She looked at him anxiously. If ever he needed a boost, it was now, and she knew just the way to give him one. She smothered the smile she felt coming on, knowing how she would have put a double meaning on her words on another day – another age, it seemed now.
‘Wenna’s going home to Cornwall for Christmas. I think we should go too. You know the invitation is always open to us, and it will take us out of ourselves.’
‘It won’t change anything.’
‘It won’t change anything by staying here, neither. Bleedin’ ’ell, Georgie, think of something else for a while, can’t yer? Think of me.’
He looked at her in surprise, as if only just realising she was there at all, but the tortured look left his eyes for a second to be replaced by something else.
‘There’s nothing wrong, is there? If I thought I was losing you too—’
‘No, there’s nothing wrong,’ she scowled, almost wishing that there was for a minute, so he’d have something else to worry about. That was a wicked thing to think, because at least they both had their health and that counted for a hell of a lot in this world. ‘So shall I sort it out with Skye that we all go down there for Christmas?’ she persisted. ‘She’ll be glad of the extra company now Celia’s gone to America.’
‘I doubt that she’ll care if we’re there or not, but do what you like,’ he said listlessly. ‘It’s all the same to me where we are, since I won’t be celebrating anything.’
‘Well, yer not going to put a bleedin’ damper on things, neither,’ she snapped. ‘So yer can get that into yer head right away, my son.’
‘Yes, Mamma,’ he said, with the first ghost of a smile she’d seen on his face in weeks. But the smile was more haunted than Fanny realised.
* * *
Skye read the front-page features in the London newspapers as well as the Informer with growing horror. The headlines were huge and black, underlining the seriousness of the whole situation. With practised ease, she skimmed every article, picking out the essential facts. The tension grew with every day that passed and following Hitler’s march into Czechoslovakia, it seemed obvious that his fanatical goal was to conquer Europe, if not the world. To do what he was doing to an entire race of people, was to fill every decent person with shame and outrage.
The small matter of their own European markets shrinking for both china clay and White Rivers pottery, seemed petty in the extreme now, compared with the suffering that was being endured elsewhere. It looked as though nothing was going to stop it.
‘I’ve heard from Wenna,’ she told Nick one evening, ‘and she says Fanny and Georgie want to come here with her for Christmas. They’ll be closing the Flamingo Club for a couple of weeks apparently, and Wenna says she’ll have some exciting news to tell us about that. You don’t have any objection to them all coming here, do you?’
Her eyes dared him to do so, and he shrugged, saying he could always keep himself occupied if Fanny’s coarseness and Georgie’s laboured humour all got too much for him. But then he relented, seeing the indignation on her face.
‘Of course I don’t mind. The poor devil’s had enough to put up with lately, anyway. This house is big enough for an army, and it may be the last Christmas of its kind that we’ll see for a while, so let’s enjoy it while we can.’
Skye wouldn’t comment, knowing exactly what he meant, and refusing to put it into words.
‘I’ll call Fanny this evening, and tell her we’d love to see them,’ she said.
But before she could do so, Fanny called her. It wasn’t a long call, she just stated the facts in a strange, calm voice that didn’t sound like Fanny’s voice at all, then she said that she had to go away and see to things.
Wenna came on the line, and the mood was totally different.
‘Oh Mom, it was terrible,’ Wenna wept hysterically. ‘One minute everything was fine, and then – and then – oh, I don’t know how to say it—’
‘Just slow down, honey. Take a deep breath and tell me exactly what happened,’ Skye said.
Wenna gave a huge gulp. ‘We were having dinner, and Georgie wasn’t eating a thing. He just sat staring at his plate, and Fanny was scolding him, you know the way she does. Then suddenly Georgie got up from the table and said there was something he had to do, and we were to get on with our dinner and not to wait for him.’
‘And?’ Skye prompted.
‘So we did. Got on with our dinner, I mean, which just seems so awful now, but we didn’t know, did we? How could we have known?’
‘Then what happened?’ Skye asked sharply.
‘Well, we didn’t have to open the club as it was Sunday, and when he didn’t come back Fanny got the hump as she calls it, and said we should go to bed. So we did, and in the middle of the night there was a loud hammering on the door that woke us both up. I heard Fanny go downstairs to answer it, yelling to Georgie that for two pins she’d make him stand outside all night if he’d forgotten his key. A few minutes later I heard her screaming.’
Wenna found herself reciting the story parrot-fashion, as if to hold the horror of it all at bay.
‘I ran down to see what was happening, and two policemen were holding her up. One of them told me to fetch her some brandy. Then they told me that Georgie had walked calmly along Westminster Bridge, climbed onto the parapet and jumped. If a passer-by hadn’t seen it and reported it, they might not have found him for days. His wallet was still in his pocket, which was how they identified him.’
‘Dear God,’ Skye said, horrified, visualising it all too well. ‘That poor sweet man! His state of mind must have been in turmoil for him to do such a thing.’
‘I know. And now Fanny’s blaming herself for not seeing it coming. But how could she? Georgie kept everything so much to himself these last months. And I – I just don’t know what to say to her any more.’
Skye heard the bewilderment and grief in her young voice, and knew at once what she had to do.
‘I’ll be with you in a day or two, darling, just as soon as I can arrange it, and I won’t leave until you’re both ready to come back to Cornwall with me.’
Cornwall. Where she had once believed in her naivety that everything could be solved, and all ills could be healed.
As she thought it, Skye realised how foolish and infantile that had been. Nothing could heal the pain that Fanny was going through now, except time. And pathetic though the platitude sounded to her, Skye knew it was true.
* * *
‘You’re going to London?’ Nick asked.
‘I have to. Fanny needs me, and so does Wenna. Once the funeral’s over I’ll bring them both back here as soon as possible. They were coming for Christmas, anyway.’
‘A bright Christmas it’s going to be, isn’t it?’
‘What would you have me do then – leave them to spend a miserable time alone in that flat above the empty club? I thought you had more compassion than that,’ she said angrily. ‘Fanny must be in a terrible state, and this has obviously hit Wenna hard. She was so very fond of Georgie.’
‘I’m sorry, darling,’ he said, contrite at once. ‘You’re right, and they must come down here as soon as possible.’
‘What I also have to do is write to Celia,’ she said uneasily, her thoughts leaping ahead. ‘We all know what demons drove Georgie to this, and I wonder if it will affect any remaining feelings she has for Stefan von Gruber.’
‘Why on earth should it? You can’t stamp all Germans in the same mould as that madman, Hitler. You of all people know that. Herr Vogl would never have been a party to such evil doings, and nor would any other sane person going about his daily business.’
‘I know. But I can’t help being thankful that nothing more came of the romance between Celia and Stefan. What would have become of them if they had married and their countries were heading for war – as you keep reminding me they are?’
She shivered as the enormity of it filled her mind, blocking out for a moment the horror of what had happened to Georgie Rosenbloom. But their fates were all linked together, and in those moments she found it hard to separate the one from the other.
‘I’m sure Celia’s glad she’s well out of it,’ Nick reassured her. ‘Now, I’ll find out when there’s a suitable train for you, and I suggest you get some sleep, darling.’
But she insisted on going into her study and writing to Celia first. She couldn’t put it off. How could she ever sleep, when once her head touched the pillow she knew it would be filled with images she didn’t want, but couldn’t avoid. Images of Georgie jumping off Westminster Bridge and sinking into the sinister dark water of the Thames and giving no resistance while he was sucked under and drowned.
Her forehead was beaded with sweat as other, unwanted images crowded into her mind. Were her family and everyone they touched cursed with this same awful self-destructive urge? She remembered how Granny Morwen’s friend Celia had drowned herself in a milky clay pool all those years ago. How Theo’s father Walter had walked into the sea when everything became too much for him. Now Georgie Rosenbloom. Was there a terrible pattern to all this that none of them could avoid…
‘Drink this, Skye,’ ordered Nick. A glass of spirit was thrust into her hand. ‘You can’t take on everyone else’s burdens, my love.’
‘It seems to me that’s just what Georgie did,’ she said, as she swallowed the bitter spirit with a grimace. ‘And I know it can’t be done.’
‘Then write your letter and come to bed. And maybe later you can write a personal obituary for the Informer. People here won’t have known Georgie, but they’ll know of our connection with him, and it may help them to understand things happening in Germany more personally. It will help you, too.’
She didn’t speak for a long moment and then she shook her head. ‘I love you for your understanding, Nick, but I don’t think that’s a sensible idea. I’m afraid it might just remind people of the time we brought the German youths here to work, and stir things up all over again. We’re all involved in this now, whether we like it or not. In our own small backwater way, we’re already at war, aren’t we?’
The thought of it loomed ahead of her like a spectre. Already, times were changing at a breakneck speed and there was no way it could be stopped, not by ineffectual governments or by personal tragedies. Only a fool could deny it.
* * *
Two days later she reached London at the end of a long and wearisome journey, and took a taxi to the Flamingo Club. Wenna fell into her arms and began to cry helplessly.
‘I’m so glad to see you, Mom. Fanny’s being so odd and working feverishly, and the place is full of strangers.’
‘What kind of strangers?’
‘Policemen and doctors and reporters and accountants and clients from the club, of course, and the new manager.’
