After the Cabaret Read online

  After the Cabaret

  Hilary Bailey

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  A Note on the Author

  Chapter 1

  A grey, damp November day in London.

  Gregory Addams Phillips, BA UCLA, Rhodes Scholar, Cambridge University, now assistant professor (untenured) of modern English literature at Fraser Cutts, a small but prestigious university in Virginia, walked up the cracked steps of 11, Cornwall Street and approached, nervously, the peeling front door of the Victorian terraced building. He felt a twinge in his left, quarterback’s knee. The British climate, he thought. Didn’t the Brits invent housemaid’s knee?

  He stared at the left-hand side of the entrance, bewildered by an array of doorbells, of different styles and dates, some looking out of use, some unlabelled, none offering the name he was looking for. Then he rang one marked with a printed business card, much dirtied by London smut. He waited. He had a six-month working break from Fraser Cutts and a contract with a major publisher. He had flown the Atlantic to get here, not knowing what he would find, what there was to find, whether he would be able to find it. This moment was the apotheosis of a year’s work and arrangements; the ensuing moments could be the making or breaking of his career. And now as he stood on the stained concrete landing before a front door, he was too nervous to care what might happen next. He was tempted to duck down and look through the letter-box, but that would be an undignified attitude in which to be found when – if – the door was opened.

  What happened next was that he heard feet coming heavily downstairs, not a young man’s tread, then sounds in the hall of what his two years in Britain had taught him was an ironical exchange: ‘Oh, thank you – thank you so very much.’ The voice, a man’s, artificial in tone, came closer to the door, ‘Thank you, Mrs Bulstrode, that will be all.’ It was a high, slightly unsteady voice with traces of a German accent.

  Greg Phillips came to life. All his repressed anxieties leaped up like warriors from earth in which dragon’s teeth had been sown. My God, he thought, it’s Bruno Lowenthal. Bruno Lowenthal: the man no one had heard of, no one had thought to find, for fifty years. But I did. And in about one second he’s going to open that door, and I’m going to talk to him …

  Chapter 2

  Coming downstairs, Bruno thought, Yes, Mr Phillips, I suppose it is you, Mr Phillips. This is me, Bruno Lowenthal. And I’m going to tell you what I want you to know and no more. Then it will be goodbye.

  The first time I set eyes on Sally Bowles it was June 1940, at Pontifex Street. I’d come in, I remember, with a string bag containing some peas and a rabbit. I’d been gone hours. I got caught in a raid. And there she was, standing in the middle of the room in a pink Chanel suit, filthy, oil stains on the skirt and an even more unpleasant smear on the jacket, her black hair all messy, as if she’d spent the night in an open boat – and, of course, she had. I noticed that the suit, though dirty, was new and that she’d hitched up the skirt, had her foot on the sofa, and was rolling on one of a brand-new pair of silk stockings.

  She turned, fastening a suspender. She grinned at me and said, in her slightly husky voice, ‘Bruno – darling – I bet you didn’t expect to see me here, turning up like a bad penny.’

  Chapter 3

  After the scuffle in the hall which involved, as Greg so dearly hoped, old Bruno Lowenthal, he was still waiting on the steps. Below him in the basement he noticed window-boxes with flowering geraniums on the sills. A fig tree was growing down there in a concrete tub, a bush he didn’t recognise in another. He knew the strange way they lived over here, nothing purpose-built, houses converted into apartments then back into houses, warehouses redesigned as apartment buildings, churches, chapels, railway stations and post offices as homes, studios, offices. The dearest wish of all Britons was to live in a two-hundred-year-old hop mill called the Old Oast House.

  Staring at the closed front door, Greg was surprised to find these thoughts drifting through his mind. He was confused, must be. Yesterday he had handed the keys of his office and apartment to the woman who would be taking over from him for the remainder of the semester at Fraser Cutts. Then he had driven his files, a lamp, a rug and some suitcases to his parents’ house in Oakridge, California, for storage. He’d caught the plane and travelled eleven hours to London, back to a country he had not visited for nearly seven years and had left with very confused feelings. He’d taken the underground to Bayswater and booked into the small hotel he remembered from vacations all those years ago.

  He had jet-lag – and more. Probably he should not have phoned Bruno Lowenthal, he thought, on the evening he arrived, at two in the morning by his body clock, and asked to come round at eleven next morning. Now he was going into a crucial – the crucial – interview. If he blew it, everything, or nearly everything, would be lost.

  He wondered if it would be better if Lowenthal, if it was him in there, didn’t open the door at all. He could come back and try again when he was better adjusted to the time. Had he been standing there hours or minutes? His jet-lag wouldn’t tell him. Should he ring the bell again? Or turn and run? How long had he been there, like a hopeful lover, or maybe like a hunter in the bush, prey sighted, finger on the trigger? Then he heard the lock turn. Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God, said a voice in his head.

  The door opened a crack. There was a chain on it. He said through the crack, ‘I’m Greg Phillips. Are you Mr Lowenthal?’

  And the accented voice said, ‘I’ll open the door.’

  Chapter 4

  The night before, a freak bomb had dropped nearby – some lonely, lost German bomber had overshot the coast, where the battle of Britain was raging.

  Now plaster dust from the ceiling lay all over the room and one of the windows was blocked by a piece of cardboard that bore the words Tate and Lyle.

  Having fastened her stocking, Sally produced a compact from somewhere and began to powder her grubby face. ‘Bruno – it is Bruno, isn’t it? Excuse, darling. Someone told me about you and Briggs. I’m so demoralised. The time I’ve had. Where’s Loomie?’

  She meant Adrian Pym, of course. Oh, those upper-class nicknames, those Biggins, Cocos, Dumphies, Heffers, Tatas and Simsims – b
ut at least her use of the soubriquet made it less likely that she was a full-blown German spy. She couldn’t be German, at any rate. No German could have been so unselfconsciously grubby in that particularly English way. Bruno was still suspicious, though. ‘What’s that got to do with you?’ he asked.

  She said desperately, ‘And where’s Theo? I absolutely must find Theo. It’s a matter of life and death.’

  He had no chance to answer for from behind Sir Peveril’s dusty white sofa, which was minus one seat-cushion and not improved by the ceiling plaster, came a thin, nasty, wailing sound, like a cat at night. Sally assured him, ‘Honestly, darling, it hasn’t made a sound since St Malo. You haven’t got a drop of milk in the house, have you? That would be lovely. And, please, darling, do tell me where Loomie is.’

  Still holding the string bag, Bruno crossed the room and went to look behind the sofa, though he was pretty sure he knew what he’d find. There on the floor, lying on the missing sofa cushion, was a baby, bare-legged, barefoot and wrapped in a dirty yellow cardigan. Sally said, ‘It’s only a little one,’ and laughed.

  She was putting on lipstick now, but underneath the powder and the grime Bruno noticed that she looked quite worn out. She was about thirty, with short dark hair, a small nose, pale skin, very large brown eyes with dark shadows underneath. She would have been pretty, he thought, if she’d been a bit cleaner, a little less tired and a little more composed.

  This was Bruno’s first sight of Sally Bowles.

  Chapter 5

  Greg was surprised by the figure he saw in the narrow, four-feet-wide, dark-painted hall. He knew that Bruno Lowenthal was nearly seventy-eight years old, Jewish, European-born, and had pictured a small, frail man, worn down by age – and Europe.

  In the old black-and-white photographs of Bruno (in bathing trunks, at Cannes, or in a Homburg and suit, or dining in a London restaurant with friends) he had been a tall, apparently blond, muscular young man. Greg had believed – wrongly, he now saw – that Bruno would have changed over the years into a bent old fellow such as one might see walking the pavements of New York, or being helped along by a stronger wife in a retirement village in Florida. However, Bruno Lowenthal was still six feet tall, almost as tall as Greg, and his shoulders were still broad; he stooped only a little. His face was heavily wrinkled, his eyes very blue, sharp and unkind. His head was topped by a shock of unkempt white hair, yellow in front – from the effects of nicotine, Greg supposed. Indeed, he now held a cigarette in a big, wrinkled hand, smoke streaming up to the discoloured ceiling, as he stared at Greg. In the other hand he had a large bunch of keys. He wore a black roll-necked sweater and baggy grey trousers. On his feet were tartan carpet slippers. He did not, Greg reflected, look unlike some of the older professors from his Cambridge days, smart, often nasty, known, though not to him, as having had a gilded youth in the days before the war, perhaps not having reaped all the rewards due to them.

  ‘I’m very pleased to meet you, Mr Lowenthal,’ said Greg.

  ‘Well – you’d better come in, but quickly.’ He turned abruptly and led the way along the passage, which was painted dark green up to the height of about four feet, then dirty primrose yellow above. They went up linoleum-covered stairs to the first floor. It reminded Greg of some old black-and-white British movie about gritty bad times and crimes in the 1950s. And this was a high-rent area. What was going on?

  As he mounted the stairs, Lowenthal kept up a good pace, wheezing as he went, the smoke from his cigarette blowing back across Greg. The house didn’t smell at any rate, thought Greg, who knew the mingled odour of cooking, cats and grime that often accumulated in these old, unventilated British houses.

  The landing at the top of the stairs was covered with more linoleum, in the same dark red as below. Ahead was a door of dark, cracked varnish, the original wood showing through in strips. Lowenthal bent stiffly to release a stout lock at the bottom of the door, then straightened to open another. He stuck a third key in a Yale lock, then turned the door handle. ‘Please come in.’

  Greg got another surprise. From the appearance of the house, the hall and the stairs, he had had the impression that Lowenthal must be eking out a poverty-stricken old age, possibly in one room with a couple of gas rings. There would be a narrow iron bed, a wardrobe, a TV, old wallpaper, some curtains sagging sadly on a bent rail at the window. Instead, he was faced with a long sitting room, furnished with modest antiques, all gleaming with polish. Long lace curtains billowed at the tall windows. At the sides were other curtains of heavy brocade, obviously old but fresh. There were some nice watercolours and a small oil painting on the walls. To the left was another door, leading, Greg assumed, to a bedroom, kitchen or bathroom.

  Lowenthal waved him into a low chair, with tapestry seat and arms. ‘I will make some coffee,’ he declared.

  ‘Thank you, sir, but I’d rather not,’ Greg said.

  ‘Not British coffee,’ Lowenthal assured him.

  Greg smiled. ‘That’s not the problem. I only arrived yesterday from the United States. It’s six in the morning for me.’

  Lowenthal shrugged. ‘Very well.’ He sat down opposite Greg.

  ‘This is a beautiful room,’ Greg said.

  ‘I deal in antiques.’

  ‘Yes. I saw from the London telephone directory you have a store in Portobello Road.’

  ‘I have a manager but I go in several times a week. You must visit me there.’

  ‘Thank you. I should like to.’ Greg drew a breath. ‘My letter will have explained clearly, I hope, what I’m trying to do. Shall I say a little more about it before I start asking you questions? I take it you don’t mind questions?’

  ‘Why else would you be here,’ Lowenthal said, ‘if I didn’t want to answer questions?’

  A little uneasy in his low Victorian chair, Greg looked directly at Bruno Lowenthal and asked, ‘I’m curious about why you’ve never spoken out before. There’s no reference to you in Charles Denham’s book. Or anywhere else. Why did you decide on silence?’

  Bruno’s thin lips twitched. He raised grey, bushy eyebrows. ‘No one asked me, dear boy. No one tried to find me. I didn’t want to be found. I expect they think I’m dead. I’ve no wish to be thought otherwise.’

  Greg paused, waiting for more. Nothing came. ‘You didn’t want to remember?’

  ‘I was running a business. I still am. What good would all that gossip do to my business? None at all. Waste of time,’ Bruno concluded.

  ‘But now?’ Greg asked, terrified that this determined, angry old man would, on a whim, terminate the interview. Never ask a question if you don’t want to hear the answer, he reminded himself, too late.

  ‘Now,’ said Bruno Lowenthal, waving a hand, ‘now, it doesn’t matter any more. Now – I will tell my own story, before somebody else gets in first – yes?’ He spoke lightly, as if to involve Greg in the fun, but Greg, suddenly fearful that a project similar to his own, but further advanced, was in the pipeline, asked quickly, ‘Who?’

  Lowenthal appreciated his anxiety. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, with an unsympathetic smile. ‘I know of nothing else yet.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ Greg replied. But could he trust this man? He had thought to interview a man broken by the European history of war, treachery and ruin. Yet here he was, physically strong, economically viable, or so it seemed, and thinking at least on a level if not ahead of Greg himself.

  ‘So,’ he said, ‘you want to tell your own story at last?’ He produced the tape-recorder he’d had running in the pocket of his jacket from the moment he rang the doorbell. ‘Do you mind if I use this?’

  ‘Of course not,’ replied Bruno Lowenthal.

  Chapter 6

  ‘The first time I met Sally Bowles she’d arrived from Germany, if you please. She turned up at the flat in the West End I’d been sharing with three others since war was declared. She’d been living in Berlin from nineteen thirty to thirty-six, went off with a young lover to the Spanish Civil War. Ther
e the man died. Apparently she returned to Germany in thirty-eight. Why, I didn’t know.’ He told Greg of Sally’s unwelcome arrival at Pontifex Street with the baby, Gisela.

  ‘Then she went to bed,’ Bruno continued, ‘in Alexander Briggs’s bed. I was terrified. Briggs was very fussy about anyone being in his bed – often wouldn’t let me in it. Unluckily he arrived soon after. He was furious when he heard Sally was in the flat – he loathed her. “My God!” he said. “Look at the place!” And he stared at the plaster dust and the boarded-up window as if Sally had been responsible for the bomb that had fallen nearby the night before.

  ‘The apartment consisted of three storeys – no distance from Oxford Street, the BBC and Other Places, where secret work was going on. The bottom floor was a shop, selling expensive cakes. The whole building belonged to Sir Peveril Jones.

  ‘“Where’s Mrs Thing?” Briggs demanded. This was the woman Sir Peveril paid to come in and look after the flat. She lived in Croydon. Her husband, now in the Navy, had filled her up with twins before he left so what with the tots and their infant ailments, and her being, when it came down to it, in the eye of the storm where the battle of Britain was concerned, her visits were less frequent than they should have been. The other residents always called her Mrs Thing. At first I thought that was her name and once called her by it, just after we moved in, causing much offence. How was I to know that that was the British generic name for those who do such work? Even the Communists, which we were, used it. So Briggs was angry. I wasn’t calm myself.

  ‘It was I who had been faced with trading a small quantity of sugar for a baby’s bottle of National Dried Milk from a woman in the street I barely knew, and put up with Sally turning the kitchen upside down when she made herself a cup of tea. There was no other milk – she helped herself from the baby’s bottle.

  ‘Briggs was upset by the disorder and the lack of lunch. He had, no doubt, been trying to analyse some coded messages from occupied countries all morning. He was even more upset when I told him Sally had had a bath and was now asleep in his bed. I said, “Briggs. She may be a spy.”