to make do with their company until I can come home to you. Don’t be sad, don’t cry. I hesitate to say I told you to be careful, not to rush around, and I shan’t say it. Or even think it. But rest now, and wait, and I’ll be home soon to look after you. I know a child is the one thing you most want, but don’t forget that you’ve got me.
Lily searched hungrily for the next letter, examining the postmarks for 1932, for June.
Next to the picture of you on my table, a dark red carnation is standing in a narrow vase. Just as you love them, it is admiring you. But you look sad, and I’m trying everything to make your lovely eyes a little happier. Last night I lay awake, thinking about our plans for Palestine, and all the difficulties involved in settlement and travel. You must bear the possibility of this in mind, my love, because the time is coming when we will have to find somewhere else to go.
Lily folded the letter, the cream of the paper, the grains watery as silk, and as she slid it into its envelope she pressed it to her nose. There was the sweet, sour smell of tobacco, the dry dustiness that threatened to make her sneeze, and she wondered if this was Lehmann’s smell, sealed in a capsule, or more likely the smell of a cupboard in North London where the other Lehmann had stored them in their carrier bag through all these years.
Dear Nick ,
I’m still here. I just thought, as you were working so hard … Lily chewed the end of the pen. She hadn’t told him she was taking Fern Cottage on for another month. I just don’t know if I’m cut out to be an architect . She hadn’t meant to write that, but since she’d been here she didn’t know if she was the right person to redesign a kitchen, organize a team of builders while they refurbished a house. Was she ambitious enough, she didn’t know, to create her own buildings, to do what Lehmann had done, to invent himself, not once, but twice. ‘So? What then…?’ She could see Nick’s face. ‘Go back to waitressing?’ She felt a wave of anguish that after three years of training she still didn’t know what she wanted to do. I’d like to make a house , she was doodling now, not just design it . It would be surrounded by larches, looking out to sea, it would be sustainable, adaptable, in tune with its environment. Maybe I’ll go on one of those self-build courses … and she remembered that there were packs you could order from Sweden. Wooden houses with verandas running round two sides.
When she’d first met Nick she’d been a waitress at a restaurant in Covent Garden. She’d started working there part-time to supplement her art school grant. But gradually her hours had lengthened, doubled, until, almost without realizing it, the restaurant was at the centre of her life. It was like a family, the small evening world of it, the hierarchy, the bonuses and rules. It gave her pleasure, slipping into her uniform, the black and white of such a limited choice. She loved arriving, walking against traffic, when everyone else was finishing for the day, and now she thought of it, she could almost feel the linen skirts of the tables, smell the cane baskets and bread sticks, hear the crunch of the tiny Hoover as it rolled over the tablecloth for crumbs.
But when she met Nick she’d felt ashamed. ‘Is this what you really want to do?’ He’d cupped her face in his hands, looked at her so intently she felt she must be worth much more.
‘Not necessarily,’ she faltered. ‘Not for ever…’
Lily’s paintings were ranged around her walls. They snaked in and out of her bedroom, were lined two deep along the hall.
‘Can I?’ Nick was heading for the largest of them, while Lily lurched forward in alarm.
‘No,’ she said, ‘please don’t.’
But Nick ignored her, turning a whole row round to face the room. ‘They’re lovely.’ He was staring into a pale and chalky landscape, a light-filled space of calm. ‘But… Unless you show them, have an exhibition,
Lily searched hungrily for the next letter, examining the postmarks for 1932, for June.
Next to the picture of you on my table, a dark red carnation is standing in a narrow vase. Just as you love them, it is admiring you. But you look sad, and I’m trying everything to make your lovely eyes a little happier. Last night I lay awake, thinking about our plans for Palestine, and all the difficulties involved in settlement and travel. You must bear the possibility of this in mind, my love, because the time is coming when we will have to find somewhere else to go.
Lily folded the letter, the cream of the paper, the grains watery as silk, and as she slid it into its envelope she pressed it to her nose. There was the sweet, sour smell of tobacco, the dry dustiness that threatened to make her sneeze, and she wondered if this was Lehmann’s smell, sealed in a capsule, or more likely the smell of a cupboard in North London where the other Lehmann had stored them in their carrier bag through all these years.
Dear Nick ,
I’m still here. I just thought, as you were working so hard … Lily chewed the end of the pen. She hadn’t told him she was taking Fern Cottage on for another month. I just don’t know if I’m cut out to be an architect . She hadn’t meant to write that, but since she’d been here she didn’t know if she was the right person to redesign a kitchen, organize a team of builders while they refurbished a house. Was she ambitious enough, she didn’t know, to create her own buildings, to do what Lehmann had done, to invent himself, not once, but twice. ‘So? What then…?’ She could see Nick’s face. ‘Go back to waitressing?’ She felt a wave of anguish that after three years of training she still didn’t know what she wanted to do. I’d like to make a house , she was doodling now, not just design it . It would be surrounded by larches, looking out to sea, it would be sustainable, adaptable, in tune with its environment. Maybe I’ll go on one of those self-build courses … and she remembered that there were packs you could order from Sweden. Wooden houses with verandas running round two sides.
When she’d first met Nick she’d been a waitress at a restaurant in Covent Garden. She’d started working there part-time to supplement her art school grant. But gradually her hours had lengthened, doubled, until, almost without realizing it, the restaurant was at the centre of her life. It was like a family, the small evening world of it, the hierarchy, the bonuses and rules. It gave her pleasure, slipping into her uniform, the black and white of such a limited choice. She loved arriving, walking against traffic, when everyone else was finishing for the day, and now she thought of it, she could almost feel the linen skirts of the tables, smell the cane baskets and bread sticks, hear the crunch of the tiny Hoover as it rolled over the tablecloth for crumbs.
But when she met Nick she’d felt ashamed. ‘Is this what you really want to do?’ He’d cupped her face in his hands, looked at her so intently she felt she must be worth much more.
‘Not necessarily,’ she faltered. ‘Not for ever…’
Lily’s paintings were ranged around her walls. They snaked in and out of her bedroom, were lined two deep along the hall.
‘Can I?’ Nick was heading for the largest of them, while Lily lurched forward in alarm.
‘No,’ she said, ‘please don’t.’
But Nick ignored her, turning a whole row round to face the room. ‘They’re lovely.’ He was staring into a pale and chalky landscape, a light-filled space of calm. ‘But… Unless you show them, have an exhibition,
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