‘The black hair and the kohl-enhanced eyes,’ said Francesca.
‘Illusion,’ said Alice, smiling. ‘Smoke and mirrors. I did it all on a shoestring, but I was used to that. And quite soon I did find Conrad again which was the greatest joy of all. Or perhaps Conrad found me. He had been in Dachau. Another terrible place, but there was music there – a few small orchestras that the commandants had set up, and Conrad had been part of one of them.’
‘I don’t understand that,’ said Liam, leaning forward.
‘The orchestras?’
‘Yes. It doesn’t square with what the Nazis were doing to you all. The brutality and the mass-killings. Oh wait, though, it would be a kind of egotistic culture-trip for them, wouldn’t it? “See how civilized we are”?’
‘Exactly,’ said Alice. ‘The concerts were rather makeshift, but many of the musicians were classically trained and very gifted. And the idea that they were promoting serious music made the Nazis feel very good about themselves. Also it conferred a great prestige on them. Conrad once told me that the music saved him,’ she said. ‘At the time, he meant it saved his life – there was no death sentence for the camp musicians – but I think it saved him in other ways.’
‘It helped him to endure the…the hardships?’ said Lucy.
‘Yes. Music was his one real passion,’ said Alice. Her eyes suddenly had a faraway look, and Lucy saw that despite the sharp mind, she really was very old. Ninety? Ninety-three? Yes, she must be at least that.
But then Alice said briskly, ‘Too many memories,’ and made an impatient gesture as if to brush them away. ‘I am recounting a history to you,’ she said. ‘And we do not need romantic memories getting in the way.’
‘Personally I’m in favour of all the romance I can get,’ said Liam.
‘Well, there was plenty of that. Your mamma was born in those years, Lucy. Mariana. Conrad was going through a gothic period at the time; a dark period. Perhaps none of us had quite shaken off the darkness of the camps – probably most of us never did shake it off. But Conrad had written Deborah’s Song for Deborah, and now he wanted to write a piece of music called “Mariana in the Moated Grange”.’
‘Tennyson,’ said Liam after a moment.
‘What a pleasure to meet an educated man,’ said Alice, regarding him with approval. ‘Yes, Tennyson. I planned that I would bring Mariana and Deborah up together, of course. That when there was a little more money, we would all live in England. Because I did get back into films, of course. You all know that. I became again the adventuress with a past – and now I really did have a past. And Conrad began to give concerts again, and I made a couple of films that replenished the coffers very nicely indeed, and that were quite well thought of—’
‘Erich von Stroheim?’ said Lucy. ‘The Passion Master?’