The Seven Letters Read online

  ‘No, I didn’t mind,’ said Claudette.

  ‘Good.’ said Bella, releasing her grip.

  As she left Claudette caught sight of Lilia, she was watching through her black, heavily lined eyes. Her false eyelashes were coming unstuck on one eye, she had lit a cigarette and wasn’t eating. Claudette carried on walking out of the room just as two more women entered it. They mouthed ‘who’s that?’ to the others. She could see the reflection of them in the mirror as they pointed at her.

  ‘That’s Françoise, our new mysterious, mousy maid,’ said Bella loudly. There was a shout of laughter as Claudette headed downstairs; at the bottom Perrine was waiting.

  ‘They are all bitches, but they are harmless bitches. They pick on everybody and each other all the time. Lilia and Nannette are the nicest, but Bella is trouble, it’s in her nature. And she’s the one they all want.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The Boches, of course, they all try to book her, she does anything, if you see what I mean?’ Perrine raised her eyebrows. ‘They’re all lost souls, though, I feel a bit sorry for them at times. My mother can’t believe I work here, but she doesn’t object to the money I bring in.’

  ‘What happens after dinner?’

  ‘The Boches arrive and mayhem ensues,’ said Perrine. ‘Keep out of the way, we’re not expected to be around. They have lackeys outside, you’ll see them sitting in cars in all weathers waiting to drive their captains and generals home.’

  Claudette looked at Perrine and asked, ‘Is your name made up by Madame Odile?’

  ‘No, it’s very strange but they all think we’re working under assumed names, because they are, they think it will protect them. When this is all over and we’ve won France back I reckon they’ll disappear like ghosts in the night clinging to their real identities.’

  ‘Why do they do it?’ Claudette asked. ‘It’s demeaning.’

  ‘You tell me how demeaning it is on payday when you and I get our wages and they get theirs,’ Perrine said with a smile. ‘If I had their looks I’d do it. Have you ever seen a group of more beautiful women?’

  ‘No,’ Claudette replied, still reeling from the experience, ‘they are incredible.’

  ‘And they have brains, all of them. They’re playing the long game,’ added Perrine. ‘They are the survivors.’ The doorbell rang giving Claudette a start. ‘Don’t worry it’s only Agnès, she’s always here by 9.15pm.’

  Agnès was a tiny woman dressed in a simple black dress and heavy flat shoes, also black. She bowed her head slightly at Claudette as they were introduced, but there was no eye contact and she said nothing. She reminded Claudette a little of her mother and her heart pinched a little.

  ‘Agnès helps,’ said Perrine, and with that the old lady bowed again and began to take the stairs slowly, her progress desperately laboured and difficult.

  ‘Why doesn’t she take the lift?’

  ‘No one but the girls, the Boches and Madame Odile, it’s the rule.’ They made their way down to the kitchen. Madame F was sitting down wafting herself with a fan, the room was sticky hot and airless. Jacques was in a suit looking stiff and uncomfortable. Marie was clattering pots and pans in the sink, soapy pots piling up on the draining board.

  The smell of garlic and herbs and cooked apples lay heavy in the room. Claudette’s stomach growled as Perrine sat down heavily beside her, brushing the loose hair off her forehead. It was a stiflingly hot night and in spite of the open windows, no air was circulating.

  Perrine and Claudette returned to the dining room just before ten. Half the food was left and most of the pudding, but the carafes of wine were empty. They carried everything downstairs again, Claudette looking at the remains of the food and wishing she could eat the leftovers.

  ‘We can have anything we like when it’s returned to the kitchen. It’s a shame your parents aren’t nearby, I take dessert home for my mother,’ Perrine explained. ‘Make the most of it, this is Saturday night’s dinner, it’s not like this every day!’

  When the kitchen was cleared up and Madame F had retired to bed in her small room off the kitchen passageway, Perrine left.

  ‘What about the curfew?’ Claudette had asked.

  ‘If they stop you, say “Ercol” and it’s no problem, but I only live at the end of the street and everyone knows me here.’

  Claudette and Marie climbed the stairs to the attic at ten thirty in exhausted silence. Claudette wanted to see what was behind those double doors on each landing, but there was silence. As they reached their rooms Marie turned to Claudette, her skin sallow under the dull light. ‘Sleep well; I’ll wake you up at six thirty. Madame F says I must talk you through everything you have to do, so it’s going to be a long day.’

  Claudette felt the ache of tiredness in her body and the overpowering need for sleep. ‘One other thing,’ Marie added, ‘whatever you hear in the night, don’t get up; ignore it. Even if it sounds really bad.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  ‘Kill me now,’ said Matt as we lifted the boxes out of the boot. ‘What the –?’

  ‘Puritans?’ I replied. ‘Is that what your house was like growing up then?’

  ‘They make my family home look like a bordello. “We only read the word of the Lord!” how sixteen sixty-three is that? That gave me the creeps. And those stockings –’

  ‘Tights,’ I corrected him.

  ‘Those tights, heavens to Betsy, talk about thick, and it’s so sticky hot today. What do they wear in the winter, for God’s sake? They were like the maiden aunts in my family. Horrid.’

  We walked back along the small lane, the clouds brooding and black above us, a fresh breeze was blowing in on the back of them. Merioneth was standing by the open front door of number four.

  ‘I’m dreading this next one,’ Matt whispered from the side of his mouth. ‘I’m seeing the woman from Blackadder who liked sitting on spikes.’

  The room couldn’t have been more different. It was packed with furniture, books, two very old stand alone radios, well past their useful days, and a green sofa with wooden hand rests straight from the seventies. It was covered with a tatty crocheted blanket in bright green and yellow with scalloped pink edges. In the middle of the overcrowded and quite gloomy living room was an old woman, her white hair so coiffured it could only be a wig. Her eyes were heavily pencilled and her thin face was heavy with thick powder.

  ‘Do come in,’ she said more brightly than we expected. ‘Take a pew.’ Her voice was kind and stronger than she looked. Matt put the box down by the front door. ‘Lucy!’ she shouted. ‘It’s three o’clock, dear.’ She turned to us. We were both sitting on the seventies sofa, Matt next to a very fat, white cat who was fast asleep. ‘Or, as I like to call it “Gin O’clock”.’ She chuckled and gave us a wink in such an endearing way that I took to her immediately. ‘Lucy dear, do come!’ she called again.

  Lucy appeared at the door wearing a walking coat spotted with rain. She smiled at us and acknowledged Merioneth who was, I suddenly realised, still standing at the threshold rather nervously.

  ‘Do go away dear,’ said the old lady dismissively. ‘Lest we infect you with our debauchery.’ She waved the back of her hand at the cousin who left without a murmur. ‘Oh, thank goodness for that,’ she said with great annoyance. ‘It’s like having a wet weekend arrive if either of those two come round.’

  ‘Bertie,’ said Lucy, taking off her coat, ‘be nice.’ Lucy was much younger, late sixties or early seventies perhaps, her complexion clear and healthy, someone who spent a lot of time outside. ‘Would you like a G and T?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes please,’ said Matt. ‘I’d love one.’

  ‘I’m driving.’ I added, looking sideways at Matt, astonished he would drink a cocktail so early in the day, but he ignored me.

  ‘I’ll make yours more T than G,’ sa
id Lucy warmly as she withdrew back into the kitchen. We could hear the bottles clinking and the fizz of the tonic being opened.

  ‘Now, my dears, what can I do for you?’ said Bertie, her eyes twinkling through heavy black lashes.

  ‘We’ve brought Freddy’s things with us for you to do with what you like,’ I explained.

  ‘Such as what, my dear?’

  ‘Photographs, programmes, posters, theatrical stuff and some legal documents.’

  ‘Oh, dear poor old Freddy. Such a loss.’

  We both nodded. ‘I adored him,’ I told her with all honesty.

  ‘We all did,’ she replied, her face clouding over. ‘We all did. But life must go on, do you see? It must go on.’ She had formed a fist with her bony hand and she thumped on the arm of her chair.

  Matt stroked the cat’s head and down the length of its body and as he ran the back of his finger over the fur, its ears twitched with appreciation. We neither of us knew what to say next. I felt like we were intruding in the life of another family where another world existed.

  After a short pause I ventured a question. ‘Were you very close?’

  ‘Oh yes, my dear, yes indeed, I adored him, you see.’

  ‘Did you go to see all his plays?’

  ‘Oh yes, London, Bristol, I saw them two or three times. He was a genius and not recognised, that’s the problem, not as recognised as he should have been.’ She heaved a great sigh, her mouth pursing. ‘So sad about what happened. I would have thought one could buck oneself up, such a great loss, don’t you think?’

  ‘I do,’ I said. ‘But he was bipolar, he had no control over it.’

  ‘My dear, we had no time to be depressed, we had the war, do you see? I’m ninety-four, I didn’t reach this grand old age by being upset about every little thing.’ She was getting a little testy and I could tell she didn’t take prisoners.

  ‘Do you know if Freddy was German born?’ Matt asked, changing the subject for which I was grateful.

  ‘Oh no, dear, if anything he was French by birth,’ Bertie replied. ‘What an odd thing to say, that doesn’t make any sense to me at all.’ Lucy brought a tray of drinks and a bowl of ice with bright silver pinchers sticking out of it. The cat looked up, stretched out a small pink paw, yawned and went back to sleep. Matt accepted his drink and said thank you to Lucy. There was a somnolent atmosphere in the room, the gentle tick of a clock, the feeling that time stretched out more in this room than elsewhere in the world. Lucy pulled up a tapestry-backed chair and joined us.

  ‘Why do you ask?’ she enquired.

  ‘Oh, it’s just that we found a signed photograph of Marlene Dietrich and on the back it said: “To Fredrik, from one sad German to another.” It’s written in German.’ Matt stood up, went over to the box and produced the envelope with the photograph and the letters in it. He slid out the picture and passed it to Lucy who then handed it on to Bertie. The old girl’s thin, pencilled eyebrows knotted together as she considered it and stroked her powdered chin with thin fingers.

  ‘You see, Freddy knew everyone, the Oliviers, the Richardsons, his address book really does take some reading,’ she said.

  ‘Do you have it?’ asked Matt, beating me to it.

  ‘Oh no, no, it would be with his things in his house,’ Bertie replied adamantly. ‘No, no, I’m absolutely sure of that.’

  ‘We didn’t find it,’ I told her.

  ‘What were you doing looking?’ asked Bertie, a little too sharply, I thought.

  ‘We’ve been helping to sort out everything for Harriet. She couldn’t have managed to go through his things in such a big house on her own. There was a lot to do.’

  ‘I see,’ said Bertie. Her eyes darted from me to Matt and back. She took a huge gulp of gin. ‘And, tell me, what else did you find?’ Her face, and I could have been wrong, took on a rather accusatory expression. It was fleeting, but disconcerting.

  ‘These,’ I said, emptying the letters out of the envelope and handing them to her.

  Her hands were very old, withered in fact, with purple veins. Her yellowed nails bore a single stripe of bright pink polish. I was struck by the fact she read the letters without the need for glasses.

  ‘Now that is what I describe as a mystery,’ she said, taking another sip from her glass. ‘It’s very strange indeed. Lucy, my dear, go and fetch me the big box.’ Lucy returned with a large hatbox, sepia in colour with pictures of Victorian women wearing bonnets around it. It was held together by the paper wrapped around it, the cardboard was crumbling and left a dusty deposit in Lucy’s wake.

  ‘Open that up, young man,’ she directed Matt. ‘You will find in there a folder, it has pictures of fruit all over it.’ Matt began looking. The box contained all manner of certificates and bills, invoices, a copy of her will, hand-written letters and finally the folder.

  ‘That’s it, open it up, dear,’ she instructed. Matt did as she told him and pulled out two or three papers. One of them had been screwed up and then folded out flat again, the top half torn off.

  ‘That’s the one,’ Bertie said, pointing with a bony finger.

  It was a Xerox of a letter. Matt read it and passed it to me.

  I have written so many times, I know that you must have received my letters because they were never returned. Please do write to me, or call I am at Oxford University, Christchurch.

  Yours, in hope,

  Fredrik.

  I turned it over – the reverse was blank.

  ‘How strange is that?’ asked Matt. ‘I mean, that you should have one of Freddy’s letters too.’

  ‘But you see, I thought it was to a girlfriend or such, I never imagined it was his father,’ said Bertie. ‘I mean it still could be a girlfriend, there’s no date, no addressee. I kept it because it’s the only bit of handwriting of his that I have. You see, I think you can learn so much about a person by their writing. Don’t you?’

  ‘So what do you know about Freddy?’ I asked. My curiosity was piqued.

  ‘Well, his mother adored him, I do know that, yes, she adored the boy. She worked in London as a translator.’ Bertie took a large swig of her drink, with the ice cubes barely defrosted it rattled. She held it out for a refill. Lucy obliged immediately. She asked us too, but we had hardly touched our drinks.

  ‘What did they do?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The people who gave her a job, was it the civil service, a shop perhaps or a private company?’

  ‘Oh yes, private I think, investment bank and what not. I really don’t know. I am nearly ninety-five you know.’ Lucy passed her glass and she sipped it again as if she’d been waiting for it for a while.

  ‘Was Freddy’s father German?’

  ‘Who was?’

  ‘Freddy’s father. German?’

  ‘Oh no, he was one of us, British through and through.’

  ‘Do you think he might have known Marlene Dietrich, by any chance?’

  ‘Oh, my dear,’ Bertie replied. ‘He knew everyone.’

  ‘What was Freddy’s mum’s name?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Freddy’s mum.’

  ‘His mother?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It was… her name, now let me think.’ She took another sip, her mouth puckered around the glass. I saw the fine hairs above her lip, the heavy foundation plastered over her face to conceal her age. ‘I’ll have to come back to her,’ she said. ‘I don’t remember, you see she died before I knew her, I was in South Africa with my husband.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ I replied. ‘So your brother employed her eventually?’

  ‘Yes, yes, she did work for him, for Elwyn not Dafydd, that is, never get them confused. Perfect French, you see, and she learned English very quickly.’

  ‘And the boy Freddy?’ />
  ‘They paid for his childcare; she must have been very much appreciated. Now, what was her name?’

  ‘And they came to live in the big house?’

  ‘Oh, no, no, she was gone by then, he lived at the big house with Elwyn and Catherine, after she died. The mother, now what was her damned name?’ She took a sip, ice-cubes chinking. ‘They made him a ward, they were his guardians.’

  ‘What did she die of?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What did she die of? Was she ill?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Freddy’s mother.’

  ‘Oh no, my dear, that’s the thing, she was murdered.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  Perrine and Claudette were sweeping down the stairs with stiff brushes. Claudette blew a strand of hair out of her eyes and spoke in a low voice. ‘I don’t like this carpet at all now, it’s a nightmare to clean.’ They were talking in low voices because the house was full of sleeping people. The Sunday morning stair cleaning was a ritual, Perrine had explained to her, because everyone was asleep.

  ‘It’s the only place I know in Paris that has a stair carpet,’ she said. ‘Except for the big hotels, of course. And the stupid thing is no one except us uses it.’ The door above them opened with a rush of air and the elevator was called. They both watched as a German descended, his back to them. He was straightening his tie and pulling the cuffs of his jacket into place. He had the red and gold insignia of a Bereichsleiter on his shoulders. His cap was under his arm, and the reddish brown hair that was thinning on top covered a freckled scalp, but that was all they could see of him. He left the lift on the ground floor and they listened to the creak of his boots as he strode across the marble lobby.

  ‘Boches,’ said Perrine. ‘I hate them. They scare the life out of me. I have no idea why Madame F thinks that way, they have ruined France.’ She rubbed the back of her hand across her forehead, leaving a dusty mark.