The Diplomat's Wife (16 page)

“Yes. My name is Marta Nedermann. I—”

“Marta!” Delia exclaims. Her face breaks into a wide smile, lifting her cheeks until they threaten to eclipse her eyes. “I had no idea it was you.” She waddles across the foyer more quickly than her girth would seem to permit, then reaches up and kisses me on both cheeks, her flowery perfume tickling my nose. “Rose wrote me all about you. I sent in the paperwork to extend her visa, and get you one, too.” So Dava was right. Rose had wanted me to come to England with her. “But I wasn’t expecting you girls for a few months yet. What are you doing here?”

I hesitate. “Do you suppose we could sit down?”

“Of course, how rude of me! You must be exhausted from your trip.” She ushers me through the door on the right into a parlor. The furniture, a couch and two chairs, is covered in matching pink-flowered silk slipcovers. Framed photographs cover the coffee table, windowsill and mantel. “Charles,” Delia calls loudly. The butler appears once more. “Two cups of tea, quickly, please.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

After he leaves, Delia gestures to the sofa. I hesitate, not wanting to dirty the fine fabric. “Come sit,” she urges. “I’m sorry if Charles was rude. We’ve had so many people coming to the gate these recent months, beggars mostly. It’s a shame what this war has done to people’s lives. We try to help when we can, of course, but there have been some unsavory types, too. Hooligans who would just as soon cause trouble. We have to be careful.” As she sits down at one end of the sofa, a large gray cat appears and leaps into her lap. “This is Ruff,” she says, scratching behind the cat’s ears. “He’s nearly fifteen years old. Rosie named him. I tried telling her that the name was better suited to a dog, but she was quite a stubborn child.”

I try to imagine quiet, gentle Rose as stubborn. The war must have changed her so. Then I notice a painting above the mantel of a young girl with a delicate face and strawberry-blond hair. “Is that Rose?”

Delia smiles. “Yes. In the summers when Rose didn’t come here, we would meet at the family villa on the coast near Trieste. We had a local artist paint her portrait when she was nine. It’s always been my favorite.” Watching her eyes dance as she studies the painting, dread rises in me.

Charles reappears with the tea and pours two cups for us before leaving again. Delia hands one of the cups to me. “No sugar, I’m afraid. We’re all out of ration cards until next week and there doesn’t seem to be any to be had on the market.” She means the black market, I realize with surprise. It was hard to imagine a woman such as Delia procuring things illicitly, but her tone is matter-of-fact, as if doing so is a routine part of life since the war. “So how is my dear Rose? And what brings you here?” She stirs her tea. “I mean, Rose wrote that you were going to be coming with her. Is she not well enough to travel yet?”

I take a sip of tea, forcing myself to swallow over the lump that has formed in my throat. “Mrs. LeMay, you know that Rose was terribly ill.”

A grave look crosses her face. “Yes. She’s suffered from her blood affliction for many years. But she wrote me from Salzburg that she was getting much better, stronger every day. Thanks to you and a nurse, Dana or something.”

“Dava. She was very good to both of us.” I pause. “Rose
was
getting better.”

“Was?” Delia speaks slowly, a look of realization crossing her face.

“You don’t mean…?”

“I’m afraid so.”

Her face pales. “What happened?”

“She developed a terrible fever a few days ago. The doctors and nurses did everything they could for her, but the fever was too much, given her weakened state. I’m so sorry.” Delia stares straight ahead, not speaking. I reach out, take the teacup from her shaking hands and set it down. “Perhaps I should call Charles?” She does not answer but buries her face in her hands, sending the cat flying from her lap. Her back shakes as she sobs silently.

A few moments later, she looks up again. “I begged her to come here and live with me before the war. But her father was too sick to travel and she wouldn’t leave him. She said Amsterdam was their home, that everything would be fine.” We all thought that, before the war, I want to say. “I just can’t believe that she’s gone,” she sniffles. “She was like my own child.”

“I know.” I reach out and touch her hand. “She talked about you all the time. She was so excited about coming here and starting a life with you.”

“She was the only family I had left.” Delia wipes her eyes.

“Was…was she happy? At the end, I mean?”

“Very. She was in a beautiful place, with good care and friends.” I describe for her the palace and the grounds. Then I reach into my bag and pull out Rose’s belongings. “Here.” I show her a picture Rose had drawn of the view from the terrace of the mountains and the lake at sunset.

“It’s beautiful.” She reaches into the small pile of Rose’s belongings and pulls out a letter. “This is from me.”

“I know. She kept all of your letters. She loved you very much.”

She does not speak for several minutes. “And you came all the way here to give me these?”

“Yes. Dava suggested that I come. But I didn’t have a visa of my own so I used Rose’s. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Of course.” Delia wipes her eyes, managing a smile. “That was very kind of you. But what will you do now? Are you planning to go back to the continent, or will you stay in England?”

I hesitate. It feels strange to speak about my plans for the future so soon after informing her of Rose’s death. “Neither, actually,” I say at last. Quickly, I tell her about Paul.

“An American soldier!” Her eyes brighten slightly. “That’s terribly romantic.”

“He’s coming to meet me in London in just under two weeks,” I add. “Then we’ll travel to America together.”

“What will you do until then?”

“I don’t know,” I admit. I still have a little of the money that Dava gave me, but it isn’t enough to keep me for two weeks, even at the worst of boardinghouses.

“You’ll stay with me,” Delia says decisively. I look at her, surprised. “I have this big empty house all to myself. I can show you London before you go.”

“I wouldn’t want to impose…” But even as I say this, I feel myself melting into the comfort of the warm room.

“Not at all,” Delia insists. “I would love the company. And you can tell me all about your time with Rose. It would be a blessing, really.”

“Thank you. That would be lovely.”

“No, I should be thanking you, for bringing the news of my niece and her belongings home to me. Now, where are your bags? Are they on the porch or did you leave them at the station?”

I shift uncomfortably, then gesture to my small satchel. “This is everything.”

A look of surprise flashes across Delia’s face, then disappears again. “Of course, how silly of me. Don’t worry,” she adds, patting my hand. “We can get you whatever you need. Charles,” she calls, her voice rising. The butler appears in the doorway again, as if he’d been waiting to be summoned. “Miss Marta is a good friend of my niece’s.” The butler nods and I can tell from his somber expression that he heard our conversation and knows about Rose’s death. “She is going to be staying with us for a few weeks. Please show her to the guest room and see that she has everything she needs.” She turns back to me and pats my hand. “We’ll talk more in the morning.”

“Miss?” Charles gestures toward the doorway. I stand and follow him back through the foyer and up the stairs. At the end of the hallway he opens a door and turns on a light, revealing a spacious bedroom. A wide bed with a wrought-iron headboard is centered against the far wall, covered in a cornflower-blue duvet that matches the curtains. On the opposite wall there is a large oak armoire and a dresser. The room smells pleasantly of dried flowers and spices. It is the nicest room I have ever seen. “The lavatory is just through there,” Charles adds, pointing to another door. “Please let me know if you need anything.”

“I shall. Thank you.” When he has gone, I sink down on the bed, trying to process all that has happened. I made it to London, brought the news. And I even have a place to stay. Suddenly I am very tired. I change into my nightgown and climb in between the crisp linens. I picture Paul. Had it really only been this morning that we said goodbye? I desperately wish that I could go back in time. I would gladly trade this grand room for the narrow bed in the Servicemen’s Hotel to be with him. But there is no going back, Dava had said. Only forward. And it is less than two weeks until Paul and I will be together again. I reach inside the neckline of my gown and wrap my fingers around Paul’s dog tags. My eyes grow heavy and I drift to sleep, clutching the cool metal and seeing his face in my mind.

CHAPTER
11

“T
hank you,” I say as I step out of the black taxicab onto the curb. I close the door and, as the taxi pulls away, look up at the hulking Kings Cross train station. Throngs of travelers move briskly through its open double doors. A shiver of excitement runs through me. In less than an hour, Paul will be here.

I join the crowds and make my way inside. A long concourse of shops and kiosks runs down the right side of the station. To the left, perpendicular to the shops, sit a half-dozen train tracks, separated by platforms. Each runs beyond the open arch at the end of the station, then either curves away or disappears into the horizon.

I walk toward the large board that hangs above the tracks announcing train arrivals and departures. It clacks noisily as the numbers turn over, updating the train information. Paul did not say exactly where he would be coming from, or identify a specific train on which he would arrive. Indeed, when I studied a map of London a few days after arriving at Delia’s, I was surprised at his choice of station: Kings Cross is to the north of the city, with trains coming in from central England, not the Channel coast as I expected. But Delia explained that there were a number of American military bases located north of London in the Midlands and East Anglia. Paul would likely be flying in with his unit, she explained, and if so he would come to London on the line that ran down from Cambridge, arriving at Kings Cross. The board indicates that a train from Cambridge is scheduled to arrive on track three at seven-fifteen, forty-five minutes from now.

Paul’s train. I shiver again. Of course, I don’t know for certain that he will be on that one. Seven o’clock was a guess on his part, a prearranged time he had set when his travel plans were uncertain. He could have arrived already. I spin around and scan the concourse, half hoping to see him having a coffee or browsing at the magazine racks. But he is not there. It is not seven yet, I remind myself, pushing down my disappointment. I had set out from Delia’s house early to allow plenty of time to make my way across the city by Tube. But as I prepared to leave, Delia offered to come with me, or at least have Charles drive me to the station. I politely declined, wanting my reunion with Paul to be private, but she insisted on calling a cab and giving me money for the fare.

Delia’s full, smiling face appears in my mind. She’s been so hospitable, despite her sadness over losing Rose. “I’m going to show you the best of London,” she announced at breakfast the morning after my arrival. Over the next two weeks, she led me around the city with an energy that belied her age and size. We had tea at the elegant Food Hall at Harrods, rode a double-decker bus to see Westminster Abbey, Big Ben and Parliament, wandered through the antique stalls and secondhand shops at the Portobello Road market. One afternoon when it was too rainy for sightseeing, Delia took me to see
Henry V,
starring Laurence Olivier, at the massive Cinema Odeon in Leicester Square. We talked a great deal, over meals and as we walked, and I told her about Rose and our time together in Salzburg. Delia recounted her travels as a younger woman to Italy and the south of France and even to Morocco. As if by unspoken agreement, we avoided speaking of anything sad. I did not tell Delia of Rose’s condition when she had arrived at the camp, or the little I knew about how she had suffered during the war. Nor did I talk about what I had been through in prison. And Delia had her own unspoken stories of hardship, I knew, of long, terrifying nights in the recent war spent huddled in the cellar with Charles as the Nazi bombers roared overhead. It was as if neither of us could bear any more sorrow right now but were content to enjoy each other’s company and the memories of happy times.

I found the days with Delia pleasant and I was grateful for her generosity. But each night as I lay in bed, I marked off another day in the calendar in my head: eight days gone, six to go, nine days gone, five to go, and so on, counting the days until I would see Paul. Two days earlier, I received a postcard in the mail from him, bearing a black-and-white photograph of the Eiffel Tower.
Counting the days till our reunion,
he’d scribbled.

Reunion.
My heart jumps at the word. I dreamed of this moment so many times over the past few weeks, it hardly seems real. I barely slept at all last night, but lay awake, fretting. What if things are awkward between us, if he doesn’t care for me as much as he thought? It is not as if we really know each other very well. Staring at the tracks now, I brush these fears aside. Things with Paul will be as wonderful as ever. But other, more practical, questions persist: What will happen once he arrives? Will he come to the second guest room that Delia graciously offered, or is he planning to stay at another servicemen’s hotel? I also wonder how long we will remain in London, what needs to happen before we can leave for America.

Wiping my moist palms on my skirt, I turn back to look down the concourse. It is Friday evening and the station is thronged with travelers—men in suits carrying briefcases on their way home from work, families toting children and luggage for weekend excursions. But signs of the war remain everywhere. A wounded British soldier makes his way painfully across the station on crutches. At the station pub, a group of women, still wearing factory work clothes, talk over pints of beer. An advertisement for the latest autumn fashions sits beside a large sign admonishing that rationing is still in effect.