On Sunday they attended the family ceremony of Mittageßen. Irene had not visited her parents-in-law’s new apartment before. ‘It is large, twelve rooms or so,’ Thomas said. ‘I cannot persuade them to live in a modern way, they say they have a position to maintain – though I convinced my mother to have a new style of bedroom, at least.’
They walked through the orderly streets. ‘Bleibtreustraße,’ she said. ‘Does that mean “Stay True Street”?’
‘No, no, Bleibtreu was a general. I can remember when Charlottenburg was all market gardens and villas, and Berliners came here for their summer holidays. The villas were charming, with gardens and fountains. But the city expands so fast, we must always be building and rebuilding and pushing further out. Menzel painted the edge of the city so well, little scraps of countryside with the buildings marching ever onwards.’
‘I find it very pleasant,’ said Irene. ‘The regular height of the buildings, and the tree-lined streets.’
‘At least here in Charlottenburg the houses are of good quality. But you should see the buildings going up in Kreuzberg, the entrepreneurs piling people into tiny spaces.’
‘You must show me, I’d be interested.’ She remembered, she’d once found this sort of discussion impossibly boring.
‘Well, if I take you there, you’ll see why my work is important. In Charlottenburg we think we are superior to the vulgar people of Berlin, even if a little dull.’ He looked up and down the solid street. ‘Here in the Pestalozzistraße I can’t see a single person who is not obviously going to church. But then dullness is the price you pay for respectability, you know.’ He liked to pretend she’d once led a life of debauchery.
They arrived in a square surrounded by new apartment buildings, with a red-brick church in the middle. ‘There you are,’ said Thomas, ‘that is the Trinitätskirche, a monster of a church, Neo-Romanesque if you please. Was ever anything so stupid? The Kaiserin opened it, and the crowds applauded, just because the imperial couple was there.’ He scowled at the church. ‘If people are unable to see how unsuitable such buildings are for our life today, what hope is there for our society?’
What I feel for him, she told herself, is a mature love, unlike my love for Julian. Julian had been infuriating, he’d tease and tease until it was painful. But she’d missed him cruelly, hugged the thought of him when she could not hug his body, held imaginary conversations with him, breathed his pet names to the air. When things were going well with Julian, she’d been a whole and happy woman, most of all during their long hours of intimacy. Well, she mustn’t be sentimental. She must remember that Julian ‘would just not do’, as her mother put it. It was not so much his hopelessness about arrangements or money, it was his roving eye. Always he said, ‘But she doesn’t mean anything to me, only you do, Irene.’ But how could she believe him? These thoughts were so familiar that meanwhile she could go on asking questions about the development of public parks, Thomas’s current topic. Thomas would be true to her, she was sure of that, he would treu bleiben. She smiled faintly.
Thomas noticed her smile – private, unconnected to anything he was saying. He continually found himself watching her. In Italy, they’d been so happy. In Berlin he felt himself on trial, and everything around him, his family, his friends, his work, their apartment. Was Irene happy? Was this the life she wanted? Did she love him wholly, for ever? When these thoughts overwhelmed him, he immersed himself in work and indeed the office piled business on him: as soon as he’d returned from their honeymoon, the head of the practice, rubbing his hands, had said there were two projects for his immediate attention. But even at work, the thought of his wife tugged at him, so that though at times he was brilliantly happy, raising his eyes from his desk and looking out of the window as if the view would contain his beautiful Irene, this happiness never lasted. He could not ask her why she smiled because the true answer might be – what? That she despised him, found his explanations tedious, disliked Germany? Yet he knew she did not think like that. And all the time he must remain civilised, suppress anger. Only at night, holding her in his arms, was he at peace.
She said, ‘I feel I hardly know your parents, at least not your father.’
Thomas laughed. ‘He is a dear man, he loves pretty girls and gossip, he giggles a good deal. I think you will like him.’
The houses in the Schloßstraße were handsomely self-confident. Each elaborately planted front garden was protected by a neat iron fence, and in the centre of the street rows of trees sheltered a sand path for riders. At the end stood the interminable yellow Schloß Charlottenburg, under its bronze-green dome. ‘The people who live in this street like to think they are members of the court, though there’s been no court here for years.’ He pressed her arm tenderly, realising perhaps how nervous she was. ‘They will be so pleased to see you. On Sunday mornings neighbours and relations call for a glass of port, but they leave at twelve. Look, we are punctual, it is two minutes past.’
Along the path they went, through the double street doors flanked by Renaissance columns with iron gargoyles protecting the bases, up a broad flight of stairs carpeted in deep red with lamps supported by golden arms and a mirror on the half-landing. The door was held open by a parlourmaid, who smiled and stared. Thomas took the maid by the hand and introduced her as ‘Unsere liebe Mathilde’.
Mathilde smiled even more broadly and said, ‘Ach, die Dame ist so schön, gnädiger Herr.’
Through lofty double doors bustled Frau Mamma, propelling her husband by the arm. ‘My dear Irene, this is the first of many visits, we are all so happy.’
‘Indeed we are,’ chorused her husband, planting an enthusiastic kiss on Irene’s cheek. She felt like an exhibit in a fair.
Frau Mamma walked Irene up and down the rooms with their high, moulded ceilings, and parquet floors, and tall windows looking onto the trees. Her Salon opened on one side into the smoking room. The opposite door led to the dining room, with the music room beyond, and then to a smaller room filled with flowers. ‘My winter garden, obligatory in Berlin.’ The focus of the Salon was a round table with a velvet cloth, surrounded by chairs and a long sofa. The green-papered walls were thickly hung with paintings in gold frames: pastels of early nineteenth-century ladies and gentlemen, watercolours of the Black Forest, a signed photograph of a personage in a gold frame topped with a crown. The low bookshelves were surmounted by gilded vases and busts of German philosophers and musicians, and piece after piece of Meissen.
‘Family things,’ said Frau Mamma. ‘You might like to see the paintings I have bought. Come into the music room.’ Off they went, followed by Mathilde, busily pretending to tidy the room.
‘We like French painting very much, the Barbizon school particularly. This is Daubigny, do you like his work? You know, our director at the Nationalgalerie is trying to introduce us to these new Impressionists – I don’t know what I think. Mathilde, the room is quite tidy, please go and help Bettina.’
‘It is terrible what he is doing, buying this French rubbish,’ said her husband. ‘An insult to the public.’
‘So the Kaiser thinks, though in my view the Kaiser should concentrate on battleships. This little still life is by Fantin-Latour – beautiful, don’t you think? Herr Thoma here, in his paintings you see the soul of the country. . . Of course, we have our own shocking artists who use horrid strident colours. Though when Herr Steinbaum insisted I go and look at the new galleries, I did begin to understand a little why he and Thomas like the new artists. One must strive to remain open-minded as one grows older.’
‘I am not at all open-minded about modern art,’ remarked Herr Papa, and smiled happily at Irene. ‘What I am open-minded about is female beauty, that is the best beauty to my mind. Hang Kant, for me women win the prizes every day.’
‘Hush, Christian. So these are my pictures, and soon my other jewels will be here. Today it is just our children and their children. Usually some old aunts and cousins come, but I thought meeting the whole Ahnengalerie at your first lunch. . . Would you like to see my bedroom? It’s been redesigned with the advice of a fine young architect.’
They went down a long corridor to a large bedroom. The room was white, with a few touches of green. ‘He chose green,’ said Thomas’s mother, ‘because he said I was evergreen. Was that not foolish of him? Naturally, I was flattered. He said we had to dispose of our great neo-Gothic bed with its tapestry hangings. We married into it but Thomas said it was absurd. Then we had a disagreement. I like Jugendstil furniture. Thomas told me that it was yesterday’s fashion, but I said I’ll be modern but only up to a point.’ She laughed. ‘When I gave away the old bed my husband was indignant, but now he’s proud of the new room. Yes, our Thomas, your Thomas, can do anything.’
Irene smiled pleasantly and stared out of the window. When she looked back, her mother-in-law was considering her. She told herself, I must never let my guard slip, not for one moment.
Frau Mamma took her hand. ‘And I must show you,’ she said, ‘this mother and child in porcelain. I think it’s charming – don’t you? – but Thomas says it’s vulgar, so I keep it here out of sight. These material things, they’re not important in the end, but they are enjoyable, and comforting too. The great test, I suppose, for people like us, would be how we would manage if our comforts disappeared.’
They heard the doorbell. In came Lotte, the second daughter, and her husband Max, the doctor, with one child holding her mother’s hand and the little one carried by a nurse. Max kissed his mother-in-law on both cheeks, then her hand. They fell upon Thomas and Irene.
‘I am so sorry that we have not yet visited you,’ Lotte cried. ‘We thought you would want to settle in. But tomorrow?’
Paul appeared, composed as always, and then Freddy, tousled as though just out of bed. ‘Last night I went to a ball, I only got to bed at six. We are so happy to have you with us. What a honeymoon you’ve had, longer than many marriages these days.’
‘Shhh, Freddy,’ said his mother.
The last arrivals were Elise and her husband, Major von Steinaeck, in the resplendent uniform of the Garde-Infanterie-Regiment Nr. 4, with their son in a sailor suit, and their little daughter. Elise wore her crucifix prominently, like a rebuke. She kissed Irene politely. The major kissed her hand and retired to a corner.
The family talked as though they’d not met for months, rattling on as they moved into the dining room with its table covered in a stiff white cloth and vases of flowers, an epergne laden with fruit, shining silver. Irene sat beside Herr Curtius, Thomas beside his mother. It was above all, Irene thought, Frau Mamma who created this atmosphere of cordiality.
Herr Papa explained the dishes to Irene. They began with Rindfleischsuppe mit Perlgraupen, a subtle beef soup with grains of pearl barley, flavoured with celery and cauliflower and nutmeg, a soup much more flavoursome than anything one found in England. This was served with dry sherry. With an air of excitement, the maids re-entered with the main course, Hirschragout, venison in a piquant creamy wine sauce that revealed new tastes at each turn of the fork: dark bread, lemon rind, cloves, onions, Gurken. With this they drank Burgundy. And finally a sumptuous Nachtisch involving chestnuts and cream and little biscuits, and though everyone had already eaten a great deal the Nachtisch, accompanied by the finest Rheinwein, tempted them all, many of them twice. Irene blessed her loose clothing.
They questioned Irene at length, exclaiming at the excellence of her German. They wanted to know whether she liked Berlin, and (smilingly) what she thought of Thomas’s ideas about decoration. They asked whether he chose her clothes, and roared with laughter when she said, ‘Well, only hats. . .’ He looked uneasy.
Herr Papa was much taken with his daughter-in-law. He was anxious she should enjoy her lunch, watched closely as she negotiated each course and burst into a proud smile when she said how delicious the food was. ‘Mathilde! Unsere erste Schwiegertochter mag das Rehfleisch – erzähl Bettina das.’ In due course he proposed a toast ‘Auf den König von Württemberg,’ and they raised their glasses enthusiastically. Then ‘Auf den Kaiser.’ This was greeted with less ardour, even a mild groan.
‘But another toast is in order: to the King of England!’ cried Freddy, in English. General enthusiasm.
‘And I have another toast – to Thomas and our new sister, Irene.’ Paul bowed to Irene, and they all raised their glasses. She had to drink to each in turn.
After this there was a subdued hum. All through the meal Irene had been growing happier among these kind people in whose company she would be spending her life. When she caught Thomas’s eye, she smiled back without reserve. Then the major cleared his throat as though about to make a speech.
‘I too would like to say something. Irene, you are very welcome in this family.’ The others shifted in their seats. ‘But I have to warn you of something. You come to us as an Englishwoman. We Germans have no difficulties with the English as individuals, we stem from the same roots. But you must understand, not everybody in Germany likes the English.’ Frau Mamma looked pleadingly at Elise, but her eyes were fixed devotedly on her husband. ‘They say the English have not been good friends to Germany. In our great war against France, England secretly assisted the French. Now England tries to prevent the development of our empire. And now they mock us in the newspapers, in the theatres, in novels, showing us as aggressive and bombastic. So you must not be surprised, if outside this family people are not always so friendly.’
He paused. There was an uncomfortable hush. The major did not lose his air of defiance. ‘Naturally, I do not say I agree.’ He bowed his head in her direction. ‘You yourself are very welcome.’
Elise nodded a few times, as though he had settled the matter. The others looked at their plates.
‘No person of any intelligence in England believes in these prejudices,’ Irene said, not confident that this was true. ‘I thought the same was true of Germany. Have you ever been to my country?’ The major had refused to attend her wedding.
‘No.’ He cleared his throat. ‘You should understand, what I say is not necessarily my own view, but that of some of my fellow officers, and the people at large.’
Thomas leant forward, but his mother put her hand on his arm and it was Freddy who replied. ‘Heinz has strong views. As for me, I plan to go to England and live there as long as I’m allowed. I have another toast: to friendship between our nations. England and Germany!’
They drank to that enthusiastically. Conversation resumed, Herr Papa recounting ludicrous mistakes he’d made on his first visit to London, many years before. Elise and her husband left first, Irene and Thomas soon after.
‘I’m very sorry,’ said Thomas. ‘I had no idea he would talk like that. I see him very little, their views are so unlike mine.’
‘Must I expect to meet such attitudes often?’
‘My mother will speak to Heinz. . .’ He hesitated. ‘You were a great success. I have seldom seen my father so animated. You will have to sit next to him often.’
‘Often?’
‘Every Sunday. . . No, no, my dearest, just now and again. Frau Mamma never complains if I do not attend. And there’s another thing. I’ve been talking to my uncle and aunt about buying a plot of land on their estate, for our little house. Would you like that?’
She dragged herself out of her gloom. ‘Yes, but can we afford it?’
He looked slightly affronted, as he did when money was mentioned, and waved his hand. She felt embarrassed, but she thought she had a right to understand their finances.
‘Is it a beautiful place?’
‘Beautiful? Well, it’s not dramatic. But the village is as it must have been a hundred years ago. It is very natural – there you feel the beating heart of an older Germany, beneath the meadows and the beech forests. I think we could be happy there.’ He looked at her in that adoring, pleading way of his.
As they walked home, she thought about what Heinz had said and how she might react another time. Would she speak out vigorously? Defending England would have seemed absurd to her until recently, but now. . .