The Rose Gardener Page 34

  A limp shell, she thought. In his eyes, no matter what, I’m not anything else.

  She had to get off the topic of Michael at all costs. He flitted around her head like a ghost and was just starting to settle in permanently. Too well she knew the pounding, incessant loop of bad thoughts that he could lead her into once he got in her head.

  “Alan’s father,” she said. “Is he still alive? I mean, are he and Beatrice divorced, or is she a widow?”

  Helene lowered her voice. “I don’t know if I can tell you this …” There was no question that she would tell her. “Other than myself, only Mae knows … and I believe that she’s kept quiet for a change.”

  “About what?”

  Helene spoke even more quietly, and Franca had to make an effort to understand her. “The man Beatrice was married to, Frederic Shaye, is not Alan’s father!”

  “No?”

  “No. She was unfaithful to him — and Alan is the product of this affair.”

  “Oh …”

  “Yes. She spent a summer here on Guernsey — that must …” Helene paused to think, “it must have been 1956 or ’57 … no, it was 1956. She stayed for quite a long time. She wanted to sell her parents’ house … She was looking for a buyer …”

  “Where was she living then?”

  “Over in England. In Cambridge. Shaye was a professor at a college there. Beatrice had decided never to come back to Guernsey, and Shaye had convinced her to dispose of her parents’ property here. On her own she’d never have thought of it — after all I still lived here in the house.” It was obviously important to Helene to make this distinction. Shaye was the scoundrel, not Beatrice. Franca had her doubts that things were just as Helene saw them. Beatrice had probably been thoroughly interested in burning all her bridges behind her. After everything that Franca had already heard, she had probably also been quite eager to have Helene at least partly out of her life.

  “I often went and visited them in Cambridge,” Helene continued, “and I actually thought Frederic had nothing against me. He always acted so friendly … But I believe in secret he was constantly conspiring against me.”

  “Why,” asked Franca, “didn’t you go back to Germany after the war? Back to your home?”

  “You’re too young,” said Helene. “You didn’t experience that time. After the war ended, suddenly no one in Germany was ever for the Nazis. If you listened closely, they were all basically resistance fighters. That meant that everything, absolutely everything, was thrust onto those higher-ups in the Nazi regime who were still around. Erich was dead, but nevertheless he was then as he had been before the perfect embodiment of the enemy ideal that was floating around everywhere. As his widow … God, I was simply afraid. I didn’t want to go back and have to experience everybody pointing their finger at me.”

  “But surely you had family in Germany.”

  Helene shook her head. “No. Only my mother. But she’d been bedridden since even before the war. A severe stroke when she was just fifty years old had made it so she needed permanent care. She lived in a home and no longer recognized anyone. She wouldn’t have recognized me either.”

  “Have you never gone back to Germany?”

  “Once. In April 1951, for my mother’s funeral. But I came back the next day.”

  “There’s one thing I don’t understand,” said Franca. “It seems strange to me that it was that much better for you here. I mean, the Germans were here for five years as an occupying army. People couldn’t have had the friendliest things to say about you!”

  “A great deal of solidarity had developed in the last year, which brought the widespread famine,” said Helene. “Beatrice has told you about it I’m sure. Hatred and anger were in relatively short supply. Of course there was hostility, including some that was directed at me. But there was a limit to it. As a whole it was likely better for me than would have been the case in Germany.”

  “But you were rather alone after Beatrice was gone …”

  Helene’s eyes clouded over. “I have never understood why she left Guernsey,” she said vehemently. “Right after the war … Well, okay, she wanted to find out what had become of her parents. For that she had to go to London. But then she didn’t want to come back. She came to finish school and get her diploma, and then she went to Southampton, to attend university. I begged her to stay here. She didn’t want to grow roses, she explained, and I said she didn’t have to do that, by God, there were other options as well. She didn’t want to stay in her parents’ house, she kept saying. Neither of her parents, you must know, survived the war.”

  “Oh no!” Franca said, horrified.

  Helene nodded significantly, and Franca caught herself thinking that these circumstances had not been at all disagreeable for her — a thought that caused her still more horror. She had to be careful lest she develop a certain image of Helene.

  “How did her parents die?” she asked.

  “Her father died in a bombing raid on London in 1941. They took him, lifeless, from the rubble of an office building where he worked as a night watchman. Afterwards her mother fell into a severe depression. She moved out of her sister’s house and must then have lived in disreputable circumstances in East London. She had no contact to her only child and had now lost her husband as well. Neighbors told Beatrice that she drank to forget the pain, that she was often drunk already at nine o’clock in the morning, stumbling out in the streets. She took her own life with liquor and pills towards the end of 1944.” Helene let out a deep sigh. “A horrible tragedy. At age sixteen, Beatrice was an orphan. All she had left was me.”

  “A tragedy which the Nazis were responsible for,” Franca reminded her. “Had Guernsey not been occupied, the family would have kept on living happily, and in peace. Did Beatrice not have a problem with this? A problem with you, I mean? As someone who … had ties to the enemy?”

  Helene’s facial expression made it clear that Franca had without a doubt hit upon a sore point, but she quickly managed to regain control of herself.

  “No,” she said coolly, “she didn’t. I was her best friend, a stand-in mother, her role model … she knew that I had never identified with the Nazis’ ideology. She was fully capable of making that distinction.”

  Franca decided not to pursue the matter further. Helene had built up her own personal truth, and there was no changing any of it. Perhaps, she thought, you shouldn’t even try to change an eighty-year-old woman.

  “Who is Alan’s father, then?” She asked, to come back to where the conversation had started.

  “A Frenchman,” said Helene. “Julien. He worked for us during the war.”

  “Julien? She got involved with him again?”

  “You know about him?” Helene asked in consternation.

  Franca wasn’t sure what exactly Helene knew, and answered evasively, “She’s mentioned him once or twice.”

  Helene seemed unhappy about this. No doubt she’d have liked to have been Beatrice’s only confidant.

  “She had a relationship with Julien during the war,” she said, again lowering her voice down to a whisper. “An unpleasant business, which she unfortunately didn’t reveal to me at the time. I would have been able to help her. But no matter. After the war it was over, Julien went to France, Beatrice to England, and I don’t believe they were in touch with one another for years. That summer they met by chance here on the island. Julien had his wife with him; he wanted to show her his past, but had certainly not counted on suddenly bumping into Beatrice. Some of the old feelings must have been rekindled, it must have been a romantic moment … well, in any case, they got together a few times, and at the end of the summer Beatrice had still not found a buyer for the house, but she was pregnant.”

  “She told you this?”

  “No. But I found out about the relationship. And so when her child came, I
could put two and two together. Only Julien could have been the father.”

  There was a long pause. “And then?” Franca asked.

  “And then,” said Helene, “I went to Frederic Shaye and told him everything.”

  The ticking of the kitchen clock drilled into Franca’s ears. She thought she hadn’t heard right.

  “I’m sorry?” she asked finally.

  “The marriage with Frederic Shaye ended in divorce,” Helene explained. Her tone was neutral. “Beatrice and the baby came back to me.”

  That evening Michael called again to ask when Franca thought she’d be coming home. Franca said that she didn’t know.

  “How is it you’re actually going to keep paying for this strange little adventure of yours?” Michael asked icily.

  “We have a bank account here on Guernsey,” Franca reminded him.

  “We? I have a bank account. You should get this straight, we’re talking about my money.”

  “I’m a co-signer on the account. For years I was good enough to come here regularly on your behalf and …”

  “My God, this is something you don’t discuss over the phone,” Michael hissed. “You really are clueless!”

  “I know. You’ve told me this every single day of my life for the past ten years or so.”

  “Probably because it’s the plain truth.”

  She withstood the impulse to just hang up again. She couldn’t end conversations that way every time.

  “Why don’t we do it like this. Why don’t we not call each other for a while?” she suggested. “Let me figure out how it’s supposed to go for me from here on out, and you try and figure out how it’ll go for you. We both need a little time.”

  “I don’t see what we’d need time for. First and foremost, it makes absolutely no sense trying to figure out something that we’re not talking to each other about. Nothing will come of it.”

  “Michael,” said Franca, “you have a mistress. You have to get it straight, all on your own, whether you want her or me. You don’t need to speak with me about this. I can’t help you with it.”

  “I see. So you’re going to sit around and waste my money on Guernsey for as long as it takes for me to come running back to you, full of remorse.”

  He just can’t be anything other than revolting, thought Franca, almost sadly. “I don’t think I’m wasting our money here,” she said pointedly. “And it’s not about you running back to me full of remorse. It’s simply about you coming to a decision. Whatever that ends up looking like — you’ve got to come up with it.”

  “You sound like a goddamn schoolmaster,” said Michael, and this time he hung up.

  Franca went into the dining room, where Beatrice was sitting at the table, a glass of red wine and a newspaper in front of her. She wasn’t reading anything, however, she was only staring at the table’s surface, lost in thought.

  “Am I disturbing you?” Franca asked.

  Beatrice looked up. “No, of course not. I haven’t a clue what time it is. Would you like to eat something? I’m afraid I won’t be able to cook today, but …”

  “No, thanks. I’m not hungry. Could I have a bit of wine? My husband’s just called, and every time he manages to make me depressed.”

  “Drink as much as you want,” said Beatrice and pushed the bottle towards her. “This won’t be the last glass for me today either. I also need something to pick me up.”

  Franca took a glass out of the cabinet and sat down next to Beatrice.

  “You’re worried about Alan, right?” She said carefully. “Helene mentioned something this morning.”

  “If I know Helene, she didn’t mention anything; rather she related everything in the most highly detailed way imaginable,” said Beatrice, but added right away, when she saw Franca’s face, “not to worry, I don’t mind. I’ve told you so much now already, a few more details won’t make any more of a difference. As far as I’m concerned you’re welcome to know everything.”

  “Where is Helene this evening?”

  “She’s gone out to eat with Mae. Mae is deeply upset because I said that Maya is a good-for-nothing and a whore, and now Helene wants to try and get her spirits back up. Ostensibly it’s for the sake of our friendship, but in truth it’s only got to do with her. Mae frequently accompanies her on shopping and coffee-drinking outings, and Helene has a terrible fear that that could all be over if we keep fighting.”

  “Could this business with Maya really jeopardize your friendship?”

  Beatrice made a dismissive gesture with her hand. “Oh, come on! Mae knows exactly what I think of Maya, I’ve told her a hundred times already. She’s just got to sulk a bit for propriety’s sake. The only one she can still impress with that act is Helene.”

  “Have you spoken to Alan?”

  “My fingers are constantly itching to make a grab for the phone,” Beatrice admitted, “but I’m still holding myself back. Alan is forty-three years old. The fact is I can’t get involved anymore.”

  “I don’t understand why he’s so captivated by Maya,” Franca said. “She’s a pretty girl, but I don’t find her particularly exceptional. He can have just about anyone else.”

  “He wants her. Don’t ask me why that is. Why do people fall in love with one another? Why do you get it so bad sometimes that you can never get free from the other person, even if you get hurt and humiliated over and over again? Or is it these same constant injuries that make a real end to a relationship impossible? Sometimes I think Alan won’t find his way out of the relationship until there’s some equivalent level of force to balance things out. But maybe I’m reading too much into him and all the rest of it. Maybe there’s just something about her that’s so captivating that he can’t let go.”

  “She’s with him now, right?”

  Beatrice’s face remained unmoved, but her eyes clouded over with sorrow. “Yes, she’s with him. And she’s probably telling him all about how much she loves him and how fundamentally she’s changed. And he’ll grasp this straw and hold on tight. Until she disappoints him again and he suffers through a great deal of pain.”

  “You can’t protect him,” Franca said softly. “Not forever. He’s grown.”

  Beatrice lit a cigarette. She smoked it in the hectic, nervous way that Franca had often observed in her by now. “I know. I tell myself over and over. It’s his life, they’re his experiences. He’s got to go through them. But on some level he’s still my child. And will always be my child.”

  “You’re very attached to him?”

  “I raised him on my own. Maybe that makes the relationship very strong. There’s no counterbalance there. No partner on whose shoulders you can unload this or the other burden. There were always just the two of us, Alan and me.”

  “And Helene,” said Franca softly.

  Beatrice made a face. “Correct. I’d almost forgotten Helene. Helene ruined my marriage with Frederic Shaye — has she told you this? And you should have seen the drama that she made of it, once the business with Frederic started, once she realized that I would leave her …”

  NOVEMBER 1952 TO SEPTEMBER 1953

  Beatrice was sick that autumn, seven years after the end of the war, sick in her soul. She crept through the November London fog and saw the hopelessness all around her as a reflection of her own inner state. She had responded to her final parting with Julien, and to learning of the death of both her parents, by fleeing into unbound activity. She had gone back to Guernsey and finished school, and she had defied a screaming, accusatory Helene and gone to attend college at Southampton. She had kept herself afloat with various part-time jobs, had dressed in threadbare coats with too-short sleeves and shoes with holes in their soles, had studied and slaved, and had avoided stopping for even one moment to turn her attention towards anything other than her work. Now it was all behind her.
She had a degree in English and Romance Languages to her name, but she couldn’t find work and soon stumbled into a black hole. She couldn’t distract herself. All she had repressed, events, fears, and worries, welled up within her without cease, flooded over her, ripped her with them down into the abyss. For the first time she confronted the feeling that the death of her parents had unleashed within her, and she met with a pain so intense it left her struggling for air. All at once she realized that she had lost everything. She hadn’t a single person left in the world with ties to her. She had barely any contact with her relatives in England, and the few that still remained were strangers to her. Deborah and Andrew were dead. She felt she couldn’t bear to go back to Guernsey, couldn’t bear the house, the island. And with that she no longer had a home. She was moving around in a vacuum. All around her there existed only deep pain and sadness.

  She lived in East London, in one of the depressing workers’ districts in which the damages caused by the German bombs had still not been repaired. Here there was part of a roof missing, over there were broken windowpanes replaced with cardboard that had been stapled in place. Rubble was piled up in the courtyards behind buildings and sometimes in the middle of the street as well. In summer, there had been leaves on the few trees peaking over the walls, but now, in fall, there were only bare branches jutting up into a gray sky hung with clouds, intensifying the feeling of utter hopelessness.

  Beatrice had rented a room in Bridge Lane in a gray, dirty building. There were always puddles in front of the door that you had to tiptoe around, and inside the building there was trash on the stairs and all manner of empty bottles lying about. Most of the building’s residents were unemployed; many were also alcoholics; whole families lived crowded into tiny apartments. Heated arguments and violence were the daily routine. Beatrice couldn’t avoid hearing about most of it, which made her even more melancholy and upset. She earned her meager livelihood as a French tutor for wealthy society ladies, and it depressed her to come back in the evenings from the beautiful, well cared for houses of West London to the rubble-strewn neighborhood where she herself lived. She hadn’t gone to school to sow seeds of vocabulary and grammar in the heads of spoiled, slow-witted women with laborious little exercises. But then again, that all hardly even mattered any more. Even if she had suddenly realized her dream of working at a publishing house, she wouldn’t have been happy. The losses she had suffered weighed on her too heavily. The feeling of emptiness and loneliness had her pinned to the ground. There were times when she longed for Guernsey, when she thought of the fields, the cliffs, the view of the ocean and of the sky, which was bigger and clearer than the sky over London. But in allowing herself such a feeling, such a thought, she paid immediately with the pain unleashed by the memories breaking loose within her. She thought of her parents, of her childhood, of the roses and of the warmth which had filled every single day. She thought also of the years of the war, of this strange time in which it had sometimes seemed to her as if she had been trapped in an evil dream. And already that stifling feeling was in her head again. Her throat constricted, her breathing grew labored, she could hardly move her arms and legs any longer, and it was as if even her heartbeat were slowing under the weight of the sadness.