Page 27 of An Invitation to the Kennedys
‘What do you mean?They were here a few days ago.’She had heard them.The sound of Hannah practising that she waited for and ticked off for reassurance in her mind:Still there.
‘And now they’re not.’He shrugged and moved his mop in a swirling circle that came close to Doris’ feet.She knew if it touched her, she would scream.She jabbed the lift button again.
‘Not so hard,’ he said, avuncular, reproving.‘You must be patient.’
The lift cranked upwards too slowly for her agitation so that she rattled the iron grille.She realised that the sound of the violin had been false reassurance.She should not have hoped to hear it.She should have hoped the opposite – that they were gone.Before the Gestapo came to get them.
Chapter Fourteen
Berlin
Doris
Within days the flat next door was emptied.Two men traipsed up and down the stairs, thehausmeisterscurrying after them, warning them to be careful.Furniture was dragged down and put into the back of a lorry.Doris watched, trying to believe that it was to be driven to join Hannah, her father, Beatrice, but the way everything was thrown in, without care, told her this wasn’t so.She saw a leg broken off a sofa, and an old wardrobe, heaved in sideways, land on a heap of cushions that burst, sending feathers everywhere.
She watched from her window as they carried an old bureau with brass-handled drawers out from the building entrance towards the truck.
‘Careful!’The man at the front who walked backwards shouted to the man who held the bottom end.On top of the bureau was balanced a pile of books that slid as they moved, and a small black violin case.Doris left her window, changed her shoes for a pair of high black patent heels and went down in the lift, pulling the grille savagely shut behind her.She waited outside on the street that smelled of rubbish, ignoring the men, who saluted her respectfully from the lorry, where they were making space for the bureau by heaving other pieces roughly out of the way.She stood, as though waiting for a taxi, tapping the toe of one shoe impatiently on the greasy cobblestones.When the men had gone back upstairs, she crossed to the lorry.They had left the back open and the bureau was wedged into the corner within easy reach, the violin case still on it.She grabbed the handle and dragged the case out, tucked it under her arm and marched back into the building and up to her flat.Only when she got inside and closed the door did she breathe, or so it felt.She opened the case at the table, lightly touching the worn green velvet that lined it, then lifted out the violin, small and confiding in her hands.She placed it on her shoulder and plucked the second string with her finger.D.At the sound – so round and sweet and thoughtful – something inside her let go and the tears she hadn’t known she was holding back came in a wave.
It was only a few days later that new people arrived.A family.Again she watched from her window as they unloaded their effects and had them carried upstairs.She watched a large blonde lady in a flowered dress stand and talk to thehausmeisterfor a long time.He showed, she thought, a great deal of deference.Two sullen boys of maybe twelve and thirteen wearing the uniform of the Hitler-Jugend – khaki shirts tucked neatly into black shorts – carried what they could manage with ill-grace but left most of the work to the removal men.
They met the next day, although Doris had hoped to avoid them for longer.‘We are neighbours.’The woman thrust a hand at her.Doris took it and felt her own squeezed heartily.‘I haven’t had a chance to come and say hullo,’ the woman continued.‘We didn’t get much warning of the move.’She laughed.‘And we’ve had such a time of it.’
‘How did you come by the flat?’Doris asked, smiling politely.She could feel the two boys watching her, the older one with admiration.
‘It became available suddenly,’ the woman said.‘We would have moved immediately – we were so cramped in our last place – but the previous occupants’ furniture was so dowdy.’She gave a little laugh.‘We had to clear it entirely before moving in.Not a thing could we keep!’She laughed again.‘Did you know them?’
‘No,’ Doris said.She snapped open her crocodile skin handbag and took out a gold cigarette case.She offered the woman a cigarette, which she accepted, and took one herself.‘I didn’t.’She realised her hand was shaking so that she would never be able to hold the lighter steady.‘Be a darling,’ she said to the older boy, handing him her lighter.He stepped forward eagerly and lit both the cigarettes.
‘Here,’ he said, blushing as he handed the lighter back.
‘What a pretty lighter,’ the woman said, admiring the mother-of-pearl handle.
‘A gift,’ Doris said.‘From Herr Göring.’She angled the lighter so the woman might read the inscription on the underside:To a dear friend, affectionately, and the impeccable regularity of the signatureHermann Göringwith two dots lettered precisely over the ‘o’.
‘How wonderful!’the woman cried, clasping her hands.
‘I must get on,’ Doris said, putting the lighter back in her bag.
‘Of course.’The woman stood back respectfully to let her pass.It had been a gift, Doris thought as she walked away.But not to her.The ‘dear friend’ was Chips.The lighter had been given to him after his visit to Germany for the Olympics two years earlier.Doris had pinched it, with Honor’s encouragement.
She began to stay out more, and later even than before.She found so little peace now in her flat.Sometimes, if she woke too early, in the moment before she knew where she was, she fancied she could hear the scraping of Hannah’s violin so that every time she had to realise she did not.She no longer liked to sit and read by the open windows or play records on the gramophone.So she said yes to every party, every invitation.And maybe that was how she began to realise these were less than they had been.Something had changed.Maybe, she thought, it was simply the mood, which darkened as summer wore on, swelling angrily with the heat.But maybe not.
First it was Hans Fritzsche, whom she met at a party at the Adlon hotel where more than half the men now wore uniform of one kind or another.How few colours went with khaki, she thought, looking at the women in their carefully muted variations of black, white and grey.‘Such a pity you were indisposed,’ he said, handing her a glass.
‘Champagne?Thank you.’
‘Not Champagne.’He looked affronted.‘Sekt.’
‘Far superior,’ Doris said quickly.She took a tiny sip.
‘How is your head now?’
She decided to pretend to take him seriously.‘Perfectly fine, thank you.’She smiled warmly.‘How kind you are.’She put a gloved hand on his arm.‘I was so sorry to leave, but I feared I would make your party terribly dull if I stayed.And I couldn’t have borne that.’
He looked mollified.A little.But it wasn’t enough.
Later, Ilse, the daughter of the newspaper editor, came over and asked, ‘What did you say to offend Frau Becker?’This was the administrator’s wife.
