The Iron Necklace Page 2

  Edward Jenkinson came up the stairs, talking to a dark, striking-looking girl Mark did not recognise. Edward, or Teddy, it was not clear which, was a new phenomenon in their family life. He seemed cheerful: clearly he liked a party. He waved jovially. ‘Hello there, not joining in?’

  Mark could see his mother gesturing at him. She liked him to be seen, since, as she often told him, he ought to be less shy; he was special, people would enjoy meeting him. It really was time to emerge, into the friendly company of Uncle George and Aunt Lavinia and their children. They were a lively, good-humoured family; their optimism always encouraged him.

  The reception was engulfed in vivacious noise. The hospitality was lavish. There was champagne, champagne, champagne, and Mosel provided by Thomas’s family, and vast quantities of little sandwiches and cakes from Searcy’s. By the time they were ready for speeches everyone was a little tipsy, glowing in the balmy afternoon, the long windows having been opened onto the deep balcony and the plane trees in the square.

  Everyone enjoyed the speeches. Mr Benson was characteristically dry. He said he would miss his daughter but at last he’d be able to finish the book he’d been working on for ten years as his younger children were less demanding. He welcomed so many friends from abroad. He thanked his wife, his constant helpmeet. She laughed and cried at the same time.

  Friedrich, the best man, apologised for his bad English – ‘I want to make better my English,’ he stated, ‘but not with an audience of five hundred people!’ He laughed at his own jokes, it was hard to resist. He said, in capturing Irene Benson, his brother had won Germany’s finest victory since Waterloo – ‘though the fighting was hardly less violent, and when finally my brother wins the battle, we are all thinking, will he ever win such a battle again? But Thomas adores England – do you know about this? When he is young, he comes to London to study the architecture – always the architecture, he talks about nothing else, except Irene, and maybe one or two other girls, but they are a long time ago, you understand. Then he comes home and we hear always about England, how fine it is, the people are so friendly, the houses so comfortable, the humour so amusing, we are driven mad. We all think he would like to be English, he wants to look English, he has his hair cut by an English barber, he uses English slang, and I have to tell you, someone once actually thought my brother was English – Thomas was delighted, even though this person was blind and deaf and came from Russia. So when I first came to England, I said to myself, I am sure I will not like this country. In Germany we are suspicious, you know. They say it is so old-fashioned and the people are pompous and cold. But after a few days, I realise I am completely wrong! England is wonderful, and beautiful too! I am a convinced Anglophile, within one week. Now I plan to come and live here and study business, so my English will be better than Thomas’s and who knows, I may find an English bride.’

  He paused for a moment. ‘Of course, I cannot hope to find an English bride as beautiful, as kind, as good, as Irene. Now, with her, Thomas will become not only a fine man, but a fine husband and a fine father. With such a wife, he can face anything. Now, I say a few words in German.’ He drew himself up to his full height. ‘Und jetzt, meine Damen und Herren, ist es mir eine Ehre auf Sophia und die anderen Brautjungfern anzustoßen. To the bridesmaids.’

  They drank the toast and clapped and even cheered, and the English guests remarked, surprised, how humorous he was.

  It was Thomas’s turn. This was the man, Mark reflected, who was taking away his sister, but the speech disarmed him. Thomas thanked the Bensons for their kindness and recalled how he and Irene had met. Then he announced that he wanted to speak seriously. ‘I apologise, it’s our national failing.’ He hoped that in an age when Britain and Germany shared many noble objectives – improving social conditions at home, advancing technology and scientific understanding, teaching the arts of civilisation to primitive peoples – they would not forget the gentler friendships and emotions they shared. The British and the Germans were kinsmen, sprung from the same stock, united by years of friendship. He cited the extended connections between the royal families of Britain and Germany. He trusted that his marriage would follow this example. ‘Though ours will be a German house, it will also be English. I won’t undertake to try to transform Irene into a German, or indeed anything else – I know that, whatever I say, she will behave as she chooses.’ They laughed at that. ‘But I hope that in our new home we shall succeed to create a household and family that will unite the best of the English and the German traditions, and that our friends from England will feel, when they walk over our threshold, that they are at home.’ And then, rather slowly, he spoke a few words in German, and if they did not understand him, everyone appreciated the warmth and affection behind his remarks. ‘Laßen Sie mich mit einem Toast auf meine Braut beenden, an deren Hand durchs Leben zu gehen, mein Glück sein wird. Prosit!’

  The guests raised their glasses and surrendered to the enjoyable emotions appropriate to a wedding. Then Mark saw in the midst of the artistic set a back turned on the bridal couple. So Julian had come, after all. Mark knew that when Irene had told Julian about her engagement, he had shouted, burst into angry sobs, vowed he would never speak to her again. Now here he was, red in the face, wearing a not-too-clean suit.

  Other people’s lives were mysterious. Mark was thankful that he’d never had an affair, if it led to so much pain. But of course he too would marry one day.

  His eyes returned to the new couple as they moved among their guests, Thomas in the lead, Irene a little flushed. He asked himself: this perfect love which means you lose yourself in someone else – was that what Irene felt for Thomas? Mark was sure it was what Thomas felt. But Irene?

  There was a stir from the artistic corner, raised voices, jostling bodies. Julian emerged, pushing his way to the middle of the room until he was staring at Thomas, who, always polite, held out his hand to this stranger. Julian glared, moved towards the bride. He thrust aside the man she was talking to, and placed himself in front of her, legs apart.

  Julian did not frighten Irene. ‘I am happy to see you here.’ She held out her hand. He raised it to his lips, kissing it fervently. She pulled it away. ‘I’m glad you could come.’ She took her husband’s arm and they moved away.

  Mark was disconcerted when Julian caught his eye. But he only said, ‘Mark, hello. Happy occasion, eh? Pleased?’ Mark felt sorry for him. Julian was not such a bad fellow, it was just that love made him miserable. ‘I love her, you know that, I love her.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mark.

  ‘I always have. You see, Mark, it’s not just a romantic dream. I just love her, everything about her, the whole woman. I can’t imagine ever feeling like this about anyone else.’

  ‘It might be best to try.’

  ‘I can’t.’ Then he pulled himself together, looked penetratingly at Mark. ‘She loves you very much. She was so angry when I mobbed you up at that party – sorry about that, old boy. She said, whatever I thought about you at first sight, underneath you’re as good as gold. You’ll miss her too.’

  ‘Yes, I shall.’

  Julian was fiercer and yet softer than when they’d met before. He was like a dark hairy animal. For a moment he could see why Irene had liked him.‘Will she ever come back?’ Julian’s eyes glistened.

  After a while, people moved downstairs to wave the couple off. Mark held back. In the almost empty drawing room he noticed himself in one of the long mirrors. Well, I suppose I don’t look so bad, he thought. Hair fairly much in order, face pleasant if rather flushed, features regular. Move on, Mark, he told himself. Looking at oneself in a mirror is not something a man does. Then he saw, reflected, someone looking in his direction. It was Paul, Thomas’s brother.

  The two reflections regarded one another, Paul unsmiling but intent. Then Paul said, ‘You must be sad, that your sister leaves you, and comes to us.’

  They went down the broad marble staircase together and joined the waiting crowd. A moment later, Irene
and Thomas appeared in their going-away clothes. Mark kissed Irene goodbye, shook Thomas’s hand. Thomas put his arms round Mark. Mark stiffened, immediately regretted it.

  As the couple stepped into the waiting Daimler, Mark was overcome by a sense of loss and hopelessness. He could not explain it. But the feeling did not last.

  Paul turned to him, saying, ‘Will you show me something of London, my new brother-in-law? My new friend, I hope?’

  4

  Pandora and her mother sit surrounded by albums. But the albums have been arranged neatly, as though they are to be seen in a certain order.

  ‘Honestly, Mum, these wedding photographs are extraordinary. Look at them all, in their silk dresses and their tail coats, lined up like the royal family. When I’m married, if I ever am, I want the event to be about love and commitment, not about showing I belong to a superior social caste.’

  ‘Darling, I’m sure you’ll be running around naked celebrating Flower Power and smoking hash. Still, they look happy, don’t they?’

  ‘Your father was so handsome.’

  ‘I remember him as handsome when I was a little girl. That’s Aunt Sophia, frowning, hating having to wear a bridesmaid’s dress.’

  ‘I must go and see her one of these days.’ Pandora moves closer to her mother and squeezes her hand. ‘It’s sweet of you to show me these pictures. I hope it doesn’t upset you.’

  ‘These don’t upset me, no. The ones of Mother and Father in Berlin when I was a little girl, those make me sad.’

  ‘Who’s that young man beside your father?’

  ‘Freddy, that’s Freddy. He was the best man. I never knew him. They said Sophia was very fond of him. Two brothers marrying two sisters, what a thing that would have been. And that’s another of Father’s brothers, and that’s my German grandmother, such a wonderful person. All dead now, all dead, except Sophia. At least I suppose the Germans are dead, I really don’t know. Shall I turn the page?’

  ‘Who is this confident-looking person? Cousin Edward, it says?’

  ‘That’s Edward from Canada. You know all those Jenkinson cousins who’ve made so much money? He was their father. Shall we turn over?’ Pandora looks at her mother enquiringly. Her mother laughs. ‘You look just as you used to look when I was telling you fairy stories.’

  ‘It’s a pity you never wrote them down.’

  ‘Oh nobody would want to read anything by me. I remember Edward as large, and limping, and not keen on Germany.’ There was a pause. ‘There were rumours about Edward. . . Will you put some more coal on the fire, Pandora?’

  5

  One evening a few days after the wedding, Teddy and Mark sat in the drawing room drinking brandy. Dinner had been dull. Mamma had chatted about the wedding and how nice the Germans had been – things she had said already – and gazed adoringly at her nephew. Mark thought ruefully that he had been supplanted, as though Teddy were a long-lost son. Teddy, it seemed, was already making ‘contacts’, as he called them. He talked and talked, mostly about the shipping business in Canada. What he said was not dull exactly, but somehow crude. Papa had been almost silent, seemed distracted. Sophia occasionally asked difficult questions. Mark was glad when dinner was over.

  Brandy was not usually drunk in that house, but now that Teddy had appeared, it seemed everything was possible. Once the others had gone to bed, Teddy sprawled on the sofa, his feet on an arm. His face was rosy to the point of redness but he was not bad-looking. He seemed unwilling to go to bed, pumped Mark for information.

  ‘What are your sports, Mark?’

  Mark muttered about doing a lot of rowing at school (which was barely true) and the subject passed. The truth was, he hated playing games, was ashamed of his ineptitude.

  Teddy was prone to generalisations about the world, and Canada, and Britain, and whole categories of people. He disliked the French (especially French Canadians), and the idle working classes, and Jews. ‘Jews, they’re trouble,’ he said. ‘Best keep out of their way.’ He had further aversions. ‘One of the problems with this country – thank God we don’t have too much of it in Canada – is you have so many fairies, as I understand. D’you ever come across them?’ Mark mumbled something like a negative. ‘Can’t be doing with them, a danger to the nation, the whole way we live.’

  Mark did not comment. What a pain this man is, he thought.

  Teddy wanted a job, preferably in shipping, and a wife. ‘A good straightforward girl, and if she’s got connections, so much the better – I’m a bit of an old cynic.’ And he laughed. ‘D’you know a lot of girls?’ He seemed disappointed when Mark said that at school you met none and at Cambridge very few, and that the girls you came across in a clergyman’s family in Dresden were not always electrifying. ‘We’ll work on it together,’ said Teddy. He had some introductions through people in Canada, he’d already arranged to call on a couple of chaps in the City. Clearly his sociability was well planned.

  Towards midnight Mark began to feel so tired he could only nod. He wished Teddy would go to bed.

  Teddy laughed. ‘You look fed up,’ he said. ‘You look as though you were thinking, who is this stupid colonial, why doesn’t he stop talking?’

  It was exactly what Mark had been thinking and he laughed.

  ‘I am a colonial, but I’m not completely stupid. D’you know how I was brought up? We kept the whole story quiet, but you’d better know, I think. When Mother died I was ten, and I was taken in by the vicar of our church and his wife. They were kind to me, they had no children of their own, they wanted to adopt me but somehow that was not possible. I was sent to boarding school when I was twelve, a school for the sons of churchmen. The vicar fixed it, Uncle Matthew, as I called him. It was very hard, high-thinking, not much to eat, so cold in winter you’d not believe it, in chapel your breath came out in an icy puff. Then I went to university, money came somehow through Uncle Matthew, he said it came from my father, but – more brandy, old boy? – but I never believed that. When I met my father in Toronto not so long ago he was a broken-down old man, no good to anyone – tried to borrow money from me, in fact. No one loved me much except Uncle Matthew and Aunt Anne.’

  Mark looked at him in astonishment. He was crying. Crying? His big blustering cousin Teddy, crying?

  ‘Sorry, old man,’ he said. ‘You don’t want to hear all this. I must be drunk. I am drunk. Anyway, just remember, I had to keep fighting. Money – I realised how important it is, it’s what shapes how we are. Anyway, when Aunt Elizabeth wrote and invited me to the wedding, I thought, well, why not? Why not get to meet my real aunt and uncle? Why not see the Old Country? And here I am.’

  ‘Mamma is delighted you’re here. It quite makes up for Irene. She adores you already.’

  ‘A great lady, your mother. She seems like a mother to me. I plan to stay. Anyway, don’t mind me if I talk on and on about the French, just a way of carrying on. Germans – Germans I do not like. . . Though they seemed pretty nice at the wedding. I think I’d better be going to bed. Good night, so glad I’m here. . .’ And he lurched out of the room, cuffing Mark over the head in a friendly way as he went.

  Mark followed him, reflecting as he put out the lights that perhaps Teddy was not such a bad fellow, not so insensitive after all.

  6

  On the boat train they hardly spoke. The night in the station hotel had not been as she’d imagined. They were both so tired that they fell asleep as soon as they were in bed, and woke at two to find the light burning. Irene next woke to the bustle of the traffic and the station, and lay wondering what would happen when her new husband stirred. Not much did happen. He smiled, gave her a kiss, put his arm round her neck and pulled her head towards him. Then he said, ‘We must stand up and take our breakfast, we must be in good time for our train.’

  The journey was quiet. She stared at the Kent countryside disappearing behind them, she found its prettiness comforting, as she always had when setting out to Paris or Dresden or Florence. But this time she was leaving
for good. Each oast house, each church, seemed to be joining in a chorus of farewell.

  Thomas had bought a book at the station that identified the historic buildings they would be passing, and from time to time he refreshed Irene’s memory. This involvement in the past was not something she was used to. The last thing in the world she and her friends had ever done was look at old buildings; what they liked was to talk about the Post-Impressionists and Wyndham Lewis and Maeterlinck. But she felt it was good for her.

  ‘Your countryside is so gentle. Wait till I show you Bavaria, you will love it, so dramatic, so spiritual. Sadly there is nothing to show you around Berlin, just scrub and woods.’

  They still spoke English to one another, though she’d insisted that in Berlin they’d speak German. ‘We shall be a German couple, we must be German through and through,’ she’d said sternly.

  He’d smiled. ‘Perhaps on Sundays we will speak English. And our children must learn English as a mother tongue.’

  The sun negotiated its way past the stained window and the curtain, bathing Thomas’s face in gold. He looked like a radiant Apollo. What would it be like, marriage to a god? But then the ancient gods had their weaknesses, while Thomas apparently had none. She almost wished he did.

  She hardly knew Berlin. When she was studying at the Dresden Academy, her friends told her there was nothing to see in the vulgar capital, full of marching soldiers and notices telling you not to spit, unlike the refined, beautiful city of Dresden. Even the museums, they said, were fatiguing.

  She shook herself. She was looking forward to the future. London had become too familiar. Now was the moment for her to achieve something new in her work, to escape the eternal feminine concentration on charming domesticity. Perhaps she could work as an illustrator, English design was much admired by the Germans. She must forget the debates that had gone on so long in her mind – Thomas or not Thomas, Germany or not Germany. There was no going back now.