The Great Husband Hunt (32 page)

Now Poppy, it is certainly time for you to bring Sapphire and Emerald home to New York instead of lingering amongst strangers. I didn't wish to be ungracious when we visited you at Kneilthorpe Castle, but your aunt and I noticed a worrying lack of attention to feminine grooming. Before you know it Sapphire will be a young woman, and valuable time is being lost. Neck whitener must be applied regularly if it is to have any noticeable effect, as you should not need reminding.

On your return Honey will be only too happy to help you with the great task that lies ahead of you. She has been in low spirits and it will be so beneficial to her to have something to do. Little Abe is a comfort to her, of course, and is very highly thought of at the bank, but a son is not a daughter.

Which brings me to the main point of my letter. Before you sail, you MUST ascertain the whereabouts of Murray and bring him home with you. Picture postcards from foreign parts are a poor substitute for the comfort and gratitude I'm sure Judah is owed.

We know he has been in a place called the Low Countries, but I fear he also has the intention of visiting Paris, France, and we all know what can happen to a person there. You must make it your job to find him. You will find as I did that duties and industry are a great balm after the loss of a loved one, and, of course, you will restore peoples good opinion of you by retrieving what you have carelessly mislaid.

By the by, your aunt now has ulcerated veins.

Please give our fondest regards to Her Majesty. We are following with interest the young King's friendship with a fallen woman.

Your loving mother

I had no intention of returning to New York. I was lost and lonesome without Reggie, crying into my pillow for him every night, and I missed Murray, too, but it didn't seem like it was my place to go running after him, dragging him back to his father's account ledgers. His leaving wasn't my doing. He had mislaid himself. I had never said a cross word to him in my life, and besides, I had no idea where the Low Countries were.

I hung on at Kneilthorpe, watching Sapphy sprout bosoms and Sir Neville grow more sallow and silent. Bobbity became joint master of the Belvoir, Angelica moved back to Bagehots, and Mr. Hitler annexed Czechoslovakia. The roof leaked but no one came to repair it. Each rainy day required another pot or bucket to be found to catch the drips, Murray's white garden turned brown, and suddenly, in the fall of 1938, I could endure no more.

“I think I'll take Em and Sapphy to Paris for a while,” I told Bobbity, quite prepared for her to argue against it. But all she said was, “Probably for the best. Then Merrick can close up the leaky quarters. One spends such amounts keeping the old place heated to American standards.”

Kneilthorpe had never been heated to American standards.

I said, “Does that mean we shan't have a home here anymore?”

It wasn't myself I was concerned for. I have always had the ability to create a home wherever I find myself, with whatever few sticks I can beg or borrow. But Emerald had her ponies, and Sapphire was rather attached to Angelica. Bobbity never really answered me.

“Well,” she said, “if it comes to another war I suppose we shall be requisitioned, same as in the last lot.”

44

Everyone seemed to be talking up a war, but in Paris we found no sign of it. We stayed at the Athenée and had such fun buying witty hats and getting our portraits photographed. Humpy was still in rue Vavin, though looking rather old, Nancy and Orville Lord had fled to California, Coquelicot was a
boulangerie,
and Ava Hornblower was wearing a trilby hat and affecting to be a war correspondent. Of Cousin Addie, whom I thought my girls might be amused to meet, and Russian Stassy, whom I intended to snub, there was no trace.

I said, “Humpy, did you happen to run across my stepbrother?”

But Humpy didn't recall him.

“Jack Barty's in Tangier,” he said, “and I believe Gil Catchings went to Buenos Aires. Or was that Oca? So many people on the move, Poppy.”

I said, “The other possibility is the Low Countries. Any idea how I get there?”

“To Brussels and then bear left,” he said, “but you mustn't go now. It's far too dangerous. And, anyway, I need your help. I need some money.”

People like the Choates and the Merricks and the Bagehots, they had large houses, and unfortunates to farm their land, but none of them had proper money. They wore the same old jewels every year and had the elbows of their jackets patched.

“Of course,” I said. “How much?”

“Well…,” he said.

I said, “Have you been losing at cards?”

“Oh no,” he said, “nothing like that. There are people who need to go to America, you see. They have to have tickets and papers and it all takes money.”

I had always paid my own way when I got the urge to travel.

I said, “What kind of people?”

“Your kind,” he said. “Things are getting pretty ugly, you know? For anyone…
juif
…”

I said, “Are they? We've found things rather agreeable here.”

“Please take my word for it,” he said. “You should think of going home yourself.”

I said, “But we only just left. And I can't tell you how melancholy the place makes me feel, without Reggie.”

“I didn't mean Kneilthorpe,” he said. “If it comes to a showdown, I'm not sure even England will be a safe haven. You should go home to America. Put as many miles as you can between yourself and the Hun.”

Humpy made the forthcoming war sound very thrilling. I wrote out a check immediately.

“Will this do it?” I asked.

“It's a start,” he said.

Rescuing people would turn out to be a good deal more costly than I had expected. Little by little I detected signs of war fever. Stores put up their shutters and left them there. Sandbags appeared in the streets. Sometimes, at night, I heard scuffles beneath the windows of our suite, but in the morning there was never any sign of anything amiss.

Emerald's letters to her ponies dwindled from daily to weekly, and she learned to love riding in the Bois de Vincennes. And Sapphire, for the first time in her life, seemed happy. She liked Paris.

Humpy had an endless supply of poor artists and writers who needed help in getting to America, and I believe Sapphy enjoyed the idea that we were engaged in dangerous, mysterious work.

“It's like catching the smugglers,” she said, “in
Spring Term at Tiverton Towers.”

I still was not entirely convinced by all the whispering and sad faces and wondered sometimes whether Humpy was being taken for a ride and me along with him. I walked around the city all the time and never saw a single Hun.

I said, “I do hope you'll keep track of these people, so they can pay back their fare.” I could tell by his face he was doing no such thing. He didn't even have a list of their names.

“If it's bothering you, Poppy,” he said, a little testily, considering how many of his friends I was sending on vacation, “why don't you have some of their work, as collateral. Paintings and so forth. I'm getting quite a collection myself. Frankl. Mellin. I've some interesting pastels by Vblescu. They'll probably be worth something if one waits long enough. Why don't you pick out a few pieces for yourself?”

This at least added a little interest to the project, but quite often I didn't like what was being offered.

“Heaven's sakes, Mom,” Sapphy said to me one day, “you don't have to like it.”

We were looking at some small gloomy oils by Rinkelmann. I hated them.

“No,” I said. “I'm sorry. No sale. Mr. Rinkelmann will have to find someone else to pay for his jaunt.”

“A jaunt!” she said. “It's not a jaunt. He has to escape from oppression.”

I said, “Sapphire,
I
had to escape from oppression. I had to go to the Cunard office and buy our tickets and arrange for our trunks and all the while your grandma Jacoby and your great-aunt Fish were oppressing me, oppressing me, oppressing me. You are too young to understand.”

“Mom,” she said. “I do understand. And if you won't buy Rinkelmann a ticket, I will.”

Of course, Sapphire was nowhere near coming into her money. But she threatened to sell her silver vanity set and her jade egg and whatever else it might take, so I relented and wrote another check. Rinkelmann then promptly disappeared. I don't believe we ever heard of him again, but Humpy was right about one thing. Those little oils fetched quite a decent price eventually.

45

They said we were at war but nothing happened. We heard from Angelica that she was going for a driver in the army and I thought of dashing back to do the same myself, but Emerald cried and said she didn't want to be an orphan. We stayed on.

One of the dividends of war was that Ma's letters stopped appearing on my breakfast tray, reproaching me for staying away, giving me weekly reminders that Murray was still unaccounted for and probably lay dead and unmourned in some foreign hellhole. Another was that everyone became rather gay while they still had the chance. Some of the
juifs
had their windows broken and were called unkind names, so I began the precaution of frequently making the sign of the cross whenever I was out and about. I had learned how to do it in England and I found it a very useful habit.

One day in the spring of 1940 Humpy took me to one side.

“Poppy,” he said, “I rather think it's time you made a move. I think I'm going to insist.”

I said, “To New York?”

“Of course to New York,” he said, “while the going is good. It could be pretty bloody awful for you, if the Germans arrive.”

I'd never seen him look so worried.

I said, “I'll leave if you do.”

“But it's rather different for me,” he said.

I said, “How is it different? I've been in a war before, you know? I worked for the Red Cross. I can fly a biplane.”

“Well,” he said, “you have children. You must think of them. You're also too old for war work,
real
war work. And well, to be perfectly blunt Poppy, you're very obviously Jewish.”

Humpy was famously inexpert on the subject of female looks. I had once heard him praise Nancy Lord's legs. Still, I knew he cared for me, and for my girls, and I began to wish we'd made a run for Kneilthorpe. He shook his head.

“England's done for,” he said. “America's the only hope. I may even join you there myself, if I can finish what I've started here. I must get papers for Lionel and René.”

Lionel was another of Humpy's special young friends and René was Lionel's brother. He played the cello and Sapphire had a crush on him.

I broke the news to Em and Sapphy.

I said, “We have to go to New York for the duration.”

They both kicked up. Emerald said she had to return to Kneilthorpe and rescue her ponies before the Germans ate them. Sapphire said it wasn't decent for us to run away when so many other people couldn't. This was an argument I never could follow.

I said, “We have to go on a train and then a flying boat, and it'll be a great adventure because we may get bombed or shot down. And when we get to New York, who knows, Uncle Murray may be there.”

Every night I sent out thought waves to him. “Be there, you fool. Please be there.” We drank a very good champagne that final evening, but Humpy was in a bad humor. He had decided to come with us as far as Lisbon, to see us safely aboard a clipper.

He said, “I feel it's what Reggie would have wanted.” But even after it was all agreed, he seemed to be arguing within himself. I believe it was about “unfinished business” as he called it, but as I told him many many times, he had been as generous with his time as I had with my money and one could not be expected to solve all the problems of the world and his wife.

He was carrying just one small bag, and grew quite impatient when I told him I'd had our trunks sent ahead to the railroad station.

“Trunks!” he cried. “Didn't I say most particularly to travel light?”

But we were traveling light. Eight pieces between us didn't even begin to accommodate our needs. I had had to leave a full-length leopard and two foxes in the care of the Athenée, and photo frames and shoe trees and a thousand other useful things.

I said, “I'll be back next year.”

The concierge said, “Bien sûr, Madame,” but I dare say I was no sooner out of the door than he was dipping his grubby hands into my boxes. I never saw any of those things again.

The Gare d'Austerlitz was hell. The whole city seemed to be there and it was impossible to find anyone who could be sent for luggage or information. We were pushed and squeezed by every class of person and if we had not had Humpy with us I doubt we ever would have found our train. The great glass vault was filled with steam and a thousand echoes of uncouth voices and doors slamming and whistles blowing. Humpy and I were forced to shout at each other.

I said, “Where are our seats?”

“Better climb aboard,” he yelled.

I said, “We do have seats?”

“Not as such,” he yelled back. “Just climb aboard.”

I said, “But who can we send to find our trunks?”

He began to climb down out of the doorway.

“Poppy!” he said. “Bugger the trunks. Get onto the bloody train.”

Then something happened.

The train began to move. Humpy grasped my arm and I turned to grasp Sapphire's, but she wasn't there. She had been right by my side, but suddenly she was gone and where she should have been there were only crude types determined to push me to one side.

“Sapphy!” I yelled at Humpy. He was preparing to jump down. Then we both heard Em. She was behind him, trapped in the corridor with strangers and unfortunates.

“Mommy!” she cried. “Don't leave me!”

I don't know who pulled Humpy back inside. I only know there was nothing I could do. I watched the train slide away with Humpy looking for me, open-mouthed, and Emerald, hidden from view. They were gone without me. Our luggage was lost. And so was Sapphire.

I wept, but no one came to my assistance. People thought only of themselves that night, and I have made it a rule to avoid railroad stations ever since.