Assegai

She woke in the dawn to find Leon sitting cross-legged over her. ‘You’ve been watching me!’ she accused him.

‘Guilty as charged,’ he admitted. ‘I thought you were never going to wake up. Come on!’

‘It’s midnight, Badger!’ she protested.

‘Do you see that big shiny thing peeking at you through the chinks in the thatching? It’s called the sun.’

‘Where do you want to go at this ridiculous hour?’

‘For a swim in your magical pool.’

‘Well, why didn’t you say so?’ she asked, and threw back the blanket.

The waters were cool and slippery as silk over their bodies. Afterwards they sat naked in the early sunlight to dry off. When the warmth had soaked into them and charged their blood, they made love yet again. Afterwards she said solemnly, ‘I thought nothing could be better than yesterday, but today is.’

‘I want to give you something that will always remind you of how happy we were on this day.’ Leon stood up and dived from the ledge.

She watched him growing smaller and less distinct as he swam down, until finally he had faded into the depths. He was down for so long that she grew anxious until, with a lift of relief, she saw him coming up. He broke through the surface and, with a shake of his head, flicked his wet hair out of his eyes. He swam to the bank below her and clambered up on to the ledge. Then he held up a necklace of ivory beads strung on a leather thong.

‘It’s beautiful!’ She clapped her hands.

‘Two thousand years ago, when she passed this way, the Queen of Sheba offered it to the gods of the pool. Now I give it to you.’ He looped the necklace around her throat and tied it at the nape of her neck.

She looked at the beads as they lay between her breasts, and stroked them as though they were living things. ‘Did the Queen of Sheba really pass this way?’ she asked.

‘Almost certainly not.’ He laughed at her. ‘But it makes a good story.’

‘They’re so lovely, so smooth and delicate.’ She turned one between her fingers. ‘Oh, I wish I had a mirror.’

He led her to the end of the ledge and stood beside her with his arm around her waist. ‘Look down,’ he told her. Silently and seriously they regarded their naked images in the mirror-like surface of the water. At last Leon asked softly, ‘Who is that girl in the water? Her name isn’t Eva von Wellberg, is it?’ He watched her expression crumble and her eyes mist with incipient tears. ‘I’m so sorry. I promised not to make you sad.’

‘No!’ She shook her head. ‘You did the right thing. We’ve had our little dream together, but now it’s time to face reality.’ She turned away from the reflections in the pool and looked up at him. ‘You’re right, Leon. I’m not Eva von Wellberg – von Wellberg was my mother’s maiden name. My name is Eva Barry.’ She took his hand. ‘Come and sit with me and I’ll tell you all you want to know about Eva Barry.’ She led him back to the ledge and they sat cross-legged, facing each other.

‘I must warn you that it’s a mundane and grubby little tale, not much for me to be proud of, and very little in it for your comfort, but I shall try to make it as painless as possible for both of us.’ She drew a deep breath, then went on: ‘Twenty-two years ago I was born in a little village in Northumberland. My father was an Englishman, but my mother was German. I learned the language at her knee. By the time I was twelve my German was almost as good as my English. That was the year my mother died of a terrible new disease, which the doctors called infantile paralysis or poliomyelitis. The sickness paralysed her lungs and she suffocated. Within days of her death my father was struck by the same disease and his legs withered away. He spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair.’

At first she spoke deliberately but then the words spilled out of her in short, breathless rushes. Once she began to weep. He took her in his arms and hugged her. She pressed her face to his chest, and her tears were hot on his skin.

He stroked her hair. ‘I didn’t mean to cause you distress. You don’t have to tell me. Hush now. It’s all right, Eva, my darling.’

‘I do have to tell you, Badger. I have to tell you everything, but please hold me tight while I do it.’

He picked her up and carried her to a place in the shade away from the waterfall so that it would not drown her voice. He sat with her in his lap as though she was a hurting little girl. ‘If you must, then tell me,’ he invited her.

‘Daddy’s name was Peter, but I called him Curly because he had not a hair on his head.’ She smiled through the tears. ‘He was the most beautiful man in the world, despite his bad legs and his bald head. I loved him so very much, and wouldn’t allow anybody else to look after him. I did everything for him. I was a clever child and he wanted me to go to the university in Edinburgh to develop my natural gifts, but I wouldn’t leave him. Despite his ruined body he had an extraordinary mind. He was an engineering genius. Sitting in his wheelchair, he dreamed up revolutionary mechanical principles. He formed a small company and hired two mechanics to help him build the models of his designs. But he hardly had enough money to feed us after he had paid his workmen’s wages and for the materials. Without money, the patents were worthless. With money, they might have been converted into something of real value.’

She broke off and sniffed back her tears, then wiped her wet nose on his chest. It was such a childlike gesture that he was deeply touched. He kissed the top of her head, and she cuddled against him. ‘You don’t have to go on,’ he said.

‘Yes, I do. If I am ever to mean anything to you, you have a right to know all these things. I don’t want ever to hide anything from you.’ She took a deep breath. ‘One day a man came with great secrecy to Curly’s workshop. He said he was a lawyer, and that he represented a client who was enormously rich, a financier, who owned factories that built steam engines and rolling stock, motorcars and aeroplanes. The client had seen Curly’s registered designs in the patents office in London. He had recognized their potential value. He proposed an equal partnership. Curly would provide his intellectual properties and this man the finances. Curly signed an agreement with him. The financier was German so the contract was in German. Although his wife had been German, Curly understood no more than a few simple words of the contract. He was a gentle, gullible genius, not a businessman. I was a child of fifteen, and Curly never mentioned the contract to me before he signed it. He should have done so because I would have been able to read it to him. I handled all our expenses, and I had become good with money. Perhaps he realized that if I had known of the contract I would certainly have tried to dissuade him, and Curly hated arguments. He always chose the easier option, and in this case it was simply not to tell me about it.’ She broke off and sighed, then visibly braced herself to continue.

‘The name of Curly’s new partner was Graf Otto von Meerbach. Only he wasn’t a partner, he was the owner of the company. In a very short time Curly learned that by signing the contract he had sold the company and all the patents it owned to Meerbach Motor Works for a pitifully small sum. One of Curly’s patents led directly to the creation of the Meerbach rotary engine, another to a revolutionary differential system for Meerbach heavy vehicles. Curly tried to find a lawyer to help him regain what rightfully belonged to him, but the Meerbach contract was iron-clad and no lawyer would touch the case.

‘The money from the sale of the company did not last us long. Although I scrimped and saved, Curly’s medical expenses ate it up. Doctors and medicines . . . I never knew they cost so much. Then there was the rent, gas and warm clothes for Curly. The circulation in his legs was bad and he felt the cold terribly but coal was so expensive. In winter he was always ill. For a few months he had a job in the mill, but he was off sick from work so often that they dismissed him. He could get no other work. Bills, bills and more bills.

‘Two days after my sixteenth birthday Curly had one of his attacks. I ran to fetch the doctor. We already owed him more than twenty pounds but Dr Symmonds never refused to come when Curly needed him. When he and I got back to the room in which we lived, we found that Curly had killed himself with his old shotgun. Many times before I had tried to sell that gun to buy food, but he would never part with it. Only as I stood beside his headless corpse did I realize why he had been so stubborn about keeping it. That marvellous brain of his was splattered all over the wall behind his wheelchair. Later, when the undertaker had taken him away, I had to mop up the stain.’

Her body was racked by silent sobs, and he could find no words to console her. He pressed his lips to the top of her head and held her until the storm abated. ‘That’s enough, Eva. This is taking too much out of you.’

‘No, Badger. It’s cathartic. I’ve kept it bottled up inside me for years. Now I have somebody I can tell it to. Already I can feel the benefit of letting the poison pour out at last.’ She pulled back and saw the pain in his eyes. ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I’m being selfish. I didn’t realize what this was doing to you. I’ll stop now.’

‘No. If it helps you, let it all out. Go on. It’s hard for both of us, but this is one way I can get to know and understand you.’

‘You’ve become my rock.’

‘Tell me the rest.’

‘There’s not much more to tell. I was alone and the funeral took all the money I had left. I didn’t have enough to pay the rent. I didn’t know which way to turn. I took a job in the mill for two shillings a day. Curly had a friend with whom he had played chess and he and his wife took me in. I paid them what I could and helped his wife with their children.

‘One day a stranger came to visit me. She was very elegant and beautiful. She said she was a childhood friend of my mother’s but that they had lost track of each other. She had only heard my tragic story recently and had determined to find me and look after me for the sake of my mother’s memory. She was so kind and friendly that I went with her unquestioningly.

‘Her name was Mrs Ryan and she had a splendid house in London. She gave me my own room and new clothes. I had a tutor and a dancing teacher. A woman came twice a week to instruct me in etiquette. I had a riding instructor, and my own horse, a darling little filly called Hyperion. The strangest thing was how assiduously Mrs Ryan made me practise my German. She was quite ruthless. I had a succession of German teachers and worked with them for two hours a day, six days a week. I read aloud all the German newspapers and discussed them with my tutors. I read aloud histories of the German nation from the time of the Holy Roman Empire to the present. I did the same with the works of Sebastian Brant, Johann von Goethe and Nietzsche. Within the first year of this intensive study I could have passed readily as an educated native-born German speaker.

‘Mrs Ryan was like a mother to me. She knew so much about me and my family. She told me things about them that I hadn’t known. She knew how Curly had been tricked out of his company, and told me about Otto von Meerbach. We spoke of him often. She said he had murdered Curly just as surely as if it had been his finger on the trigger of the shotgun. Although I had never laid eyes on him, I began to hate him with a burning passion, and Mrs Ryan subtly fuelled the flames of my loathing. She had an important job in the government. Not until much later did I have any idea what it might be, but we spoke often about how privileged we were to be the subjects of such a noble monarch, and citizens of the most powerful and far-reaching empire the world had ever seen. We should welcome any opportunity to serve King and empire. We should train ourselves to meet any call that might be made on us. We should be ready to make any sacrifice that duty and patriotism demanded.

‘I took her words deep into my heart and worked even harder than she demanded. I was never given the opportunity to meet any men except the servants, my tutors and teachers, so I had never known how beautiful I was, or that most men would find me irresistible.’ She broke off and shook her head ruefully. ‘Oh dear. Please forgive me, Badger. That sounds terribly immodest.’

‘No. It’s the simple truth. You’re beautiful beyond the telling of it. Please go on, Eva.’

‘Beauty and ugliness are random occurrences. The difference is that beauty fades and becomes another form of ugliness. I place no value on mine, but others did. It was one of the three reasons why they chose me. The second was my intelligence.’

‘What was the third?’

‘I had suffered a terrible wrong, and I was eager for retribution.’

‘I find this fascinating in a dreadfully sinister way. My skin is beginning to creep.’

‘For my nineteenth birthday the dressmaker made me a magnificent ballgown. Mrs Ryan stood beside me as I tried it on for the first time. Together we looked at my reflection in the full-length mirror.

She said, “You’re very beautiful, Eva. You’ve become everything we hoped you might be.” There was something sad and regretful in the way she said it. I thought little of it at the time because, of course, I had no idea what they were planning. Then she smiled and the sadness vanished. “Tomorrow night I’m holding a birthday party for you,” she told me.’ Eva laughed. ‘It was a very strange birthday party. Mrs Ryan and I went in a cab to a house in Whitehall, one of those magnificent government buildings. Four men were waiting for us. I had imagined that there would be dozens of young people, but there were just these four old men – the youngest was at least forty. Three were dressed in gorgeous military uniform. They must have been very senior officers for they wore glittering decorations, stars and medals. The fourth was thin and severe-looking. Mrs Ryan introduced him as Mr Brown. He was the only civilian in the group. He wore a black frock coat and a high collar.

‘We sat down to dinner at a round table in the centre of a large room, with massive chandeliers suspended from the ceiling. The panelled walls were hung with huge canvases of battle scenes – I remember one was a painting of Nelson dying on the deck of the Victory at Trafalgar, and another was of Wellington and his officers at Quatre Bras, watching the charge of Napoleon’s hussars. A band was playing in the gallery and, one after another, the officers danced with me. While they did so, they questioned me as though I were in the dock.

‘I cannot remember what we ate because I was so nervous that I lost all appetite. A servant poured champagne into my glass, but Mrs Ryan had warned me and I didn’t touch it. At the end of the meal all four men conferred in low tones that I couldn’t follow, then seemed to come to some agreement, for they nodded and looked extremely pleased with themselves. The evening ended with a speech from Mr Brown about duty and sacrifice. That was the end of my birthday party.

‘Two days later I met Mr Brown again, this time in less salubrious circumstances. We were in a musty office, filled with files of old papers in another part of Whitehall. He was kind and avuncular. He told me I was privileged to have been selected for a task of the utmost delicacy, which was vital to the interests and security of our beloved Britain. The stormclouds of war were gathering over the continent, he said, and soon the nation would be engulfed in flames. I couldn’t understand what this had to do with me – and all his rhetoric had a stultifying effect upon me until he mentioned the name of Otto von Meerbach. My attention was immediately riveted. He suggested that I was in a position to perform a memorable service for King and empire, and at the same time find retribution for the terrible wrongs my father and I had suffered at the hands of Graf Otto. All I had to do was induce him to tell me information that would be vital to Britain’s military interests.’

She laughed again but this time with genuine amusement. ‘Can you imagine, Badger? I was such a naïve and innocent little ninny that I hadn’t the faintest idea how I was supposed to make him tell me his secrets. I asked Mr Brown outright, and he looked mysterious and exchanged a glance with Mrs Ryan. “If you agree to do as we ask you will be taught,” he said.

‘As I recall, my exact words to him were “Of course I will. I just want to know how.” ’ She broke off, sat upright and looked solemnly into Leon’s face with the violet eyes he adored. ‘Nearly a year after I made that contract with the devil they deemed I was perfect in the role they had chosen for me. I learned everything there was to know about Graf Otto except, of course, the secrets I was to wheedle out of him. By then I knew that he was estranged from his wife of ten years, but as both he and she were good Catholics they were unable to divorce. There would be no question of my being coerced into marrying him once he had fallen under my fatal spell.’ She laughed without humour at this piece of hyperbole. ‘Mr Brown and Mrs Ryan placed me in the way of Graf Otto von Meerbach. It was arranged through one of the military attachés at the British Embassy in Berlin that I should be invited to his hunting lodge at Wieskirche. I had been taught my duty and I did it,’ she said flatly but, like a drop of dew on the petal of a violet, a single tear clung to her bottom eyelashes. ‘I was a virgin when I met Otto von Meerbach, and in mind and spirit I still was, until yesterday. My darling Badger, I don’t want to go into any more detail, and even if I did you would not want to hear it.’

They were silent for a while, then Eva could contain herself no longer. ‘Now that you know about me, do you despise me?’

Her voice was muted and her expression stricken. He reached out to her with both hands and cupped her face, gazing into her eyes so that she could see the truth of what he was about to tell her. ‘Nothing you have done, or ever will do, could make me despise you. You have let me into your soul and I have found only goodness and beauty there. You must remember also that when you look at me you are not looking at a saint. It was you who told me we are both soldiers. I have killed men in the name of duty and, like you, I have done many other things that I’m ashamed of. None of that matters. All that matters is that we are together now and we love each other.’ With his thumb he gently wiped away the tear.

At last she smiled. ‘You’re right. We love each other and we have each other. That is all that matters.’