“I’m so sorry,” Ilse murmured, stroking Audrey’s hair. “I never thought the loss of our fathers would be a tragedy we shared so soon.”
Audrey closed her eyes against Ilse’s soothing touch.
She thought about how her father had been happier after they returned to London. The distance from Berlin had helped him leave some of his heartbreak behind, and he made a little space for Audrey in his life.
Growing up, Audrey had never had a birthday celebration because it was also the anniversary of her mother’s death. It was as though the two events somehow cancelled one another out in the great cosmic scoreboard. The James family let every August third pass by in silence whilst they stared at it, like some beast that might attack at the smallest sound.
But on her sixteenth birthday, her father had come home from work and found her at the bench of their black baby grand, playing Debussy’s Reverie. She heard the creak of the door, the thunk of the lock, but kept playing. Victor had walked silently into the room and sat behind her in his favourite green club chair with the brass studs, and listened. When she finished, she’d turned to face him with a small smile and was shocked to see that he was struggling to hold back tears.
“She would have been very proud of you,” he said.
It was the only time in her life that Audrey’s father had ever made any reference to her mother’s existence. She wished she could go back to that moment, wrap her arms around him, and tell him she was sorry for the pain in his soul.
“What are you going to do now?” Ilse asked gently, pulling Audrey from the past.
“What do you mean?”
“Well…” Ilse wavered. “You’ll need to leave, won’t you? Go home to settle things, like your aunt said?”
Audrey sat up. “Don’t even speak of me leaving, Ilse. Of course I’m going to stay.”
She had hoped that if her father came up with a way to get them to England, she still might have been able to convince Ilse to come with her, despite the unknown fates of her mother and brother. But that door was closed to them now. Minna didn’t have the connections her father did, or the resourcefulness.
Come what may, they were entirely trapped in Berlin. Trapped with Müller and Vogt.
The sliver of light in the dark—the thread Audrey clung to in her grief—was Ilse.
“I can’t go back to London. This is my home,” she said. “Here. With you. It always has been.”
Chapter 11
Kate
ALNWICK, ENGLAND | NOVEMBER 2010
Kate sits back in her armchair, brow furrowed in sympathy. Since Ian left two hours ago, she’s been listening as Audrey relayed her experience of her time in Berlin before the war broke out. Her childhood, all the way up to the Night of Broken Glass in the fall of 1938, Ira Kaplan’s murder, Ruth and Ephraim’s abduction. Working for the Nazi officers when they confiscated the house. Her father’s sudden death.
Sue was right: box o’ secrets, indeed.
There’s a queue of questions in Kate’s mind, and she stares at the fire, wondering where to begin. She added a log a while ago; it’s low and glowing now.
“Did you know, after the fact, the extent of the pogrom during Kristallnacht?” she asks.
Audrey presses her wrinkled lips together. “Yes, we heard stories of that night. Hitler’s ultimate objectives became clear very quickly after that. I overheard more detail from Müller and Vogt than what was in the papers. And later, at work, I learned things.”
Kate waits for her to elaborate, but Audrey shakes her head.
“It doesn’t bear repeating, my dear. There are some things we can’t ever unsee. Unhear. Even if we want to. I won’t be the one to put those images in your head.”
“I understand.” Kate’s dad was Jewish. She’s well educated in the Holocaust. She can imagine what Audrey’s referring to. “How did you manage it?” she asks instead. “Living in the house with those monsters? Keeping Ilse hidden from them?”
“Immense caution. A great deal of sacrifice. And pure determination, I think. It was incredibly difficult.”
She’s already provided some glimmers of the answer, but Kate ponders how to frame her next inquiry. It wouldn’t be a loaded question for a woman of Kate’s generation, but Audrey’s time was very different.
“So…” she starts. “You said that you stepped out with Ian’s grandfather when you came back from the war.”
“In the fifties sometime, yes, for several years. We were very fond of each other; he was a good man. Soft and transparent and kind. Just like Ian. Refreshing, particularly for a man of his generation. But I broke his heart. It is one of my greatest regrets. And I assure you,” she says with a knowing look, “that is a competitive category. I thought I could stiff-upper-lip my way into a new life, you see. Everyone was carrying on, after the war. Trying to forget the impact the whole thing had on the world. On their friends, families. Everything they had lost and would never know or see again. The entire axis of the world shifted, but we were meant to just keep on because there was no other option. You’ve run up here for a new life, Kate, because your old one caved in beneath you like some great sinkhole. I came up here, met Martin, and ran headlong into a courtship that was doomed from the start because I was desperate for companionship and stability and a fix for all that had gone wrong. For requited love. But I failed. I failed in moving on, and I failed in loving Martin as he deserved to be loved because I hated myself,” she says. “And a person can’t love through a shield of self-loathing. It simply doesn’t work.”
They meet eyes, and there’s a vulnerability in Audrey’s that pushes Kate forward.
“You were in love with Ilse, weren’t you?”
“Oh, yes, very much so,” Audrey replies, her eyes bright. “It was the most consuming love I’ve ever experienced. I don’t know whether you’ve known that kind of love, Kate, but my God. It changes you on a cellular level.”
Audrey’s frankness surprises Kate: the guilelessness with which she speaks about her feelings for Ilse brings a lump to her throat. She picks at the cuticle on her thumb, uncomfortably aware that she doesn’t, in fact, know the kind of love Audrey is talking about.
“What happened to her? To Ilse?”
Audrey drops her gaze, taps the edge of her mug. “I don’t believe I’m ready to talk about that yet, dear. In fact, I think that’s all I can manage for now.”
They sit in silence together for a few minutes as Kate’s mind fills up with more questions. Audrey seems to see them floating to the surface before Kate has even opened her mouth.
“That’s enough for today.”
Kate nods, trying to figure out how to move on from such a weighty conversation. “What would you like for dinner?” she asks finally. “I’ll go—”
