‘Where did you get those?’
‘From the clock repair man. Is not far from here.’
He said it as though it were perfectly obvious. That a prisoner of war could wander into town and borrow some tools from an horologist and fix an antique music box belonging to a woman who had just escaped a madhouse. I couldn’t help but giggle, which utterly bemused him, though he didn’t ask. He never asked. He just went about his work.
‘Do you know what you’re doing?’ I asked him, before setting out for groceries, now that I had some money again.
‘In Salzburg, I used to repair organs.’
I shook my head, unable to assimilate this new information.
‘What do you mean?’
‘For the church,’ he said, gently unscrewing the casing from underneath the gold-plated box.
‘You used to repair church organs?’ I repeated and he nodded without making eye contact.
‘As a boy. With my father. Then I studied mechanics at G?ttingen University. I like fixing things,’ he said, a broad smile stealing across his face.
How had someone like him ended up on a Luftwaffe airplane, crash-landing in Ireland? Perhaps for the first time, I began to wonder if he had killed anyone. He had been stationed in occupied France. I watched his eyes flicker keenly over the minute workings inside the music box and how he gently removed the little automaton bird that sat on top. His hands were smooth; long fingers with clean, precisely cut fingernails. His blonde hair had grown long at the front and without the gel he once used, it slipped into his eyes, and he shook his head to dislodge it. Sitting in my shop, he looked perfectly at home. He had brought two old wooden chairs and a table from who knew where. Josef just had a knack for finding what was needed. Nothing ostentatious, but simple and sufficient.
He made me laugh without meaning to. In fact, that was how he seemed to exist in the world. Just making it better, without meaning to.
Dublin, 1944
‘I am to be repatriated.’ Josef stood in the doorway, rigid from head to foot in his uniform.
‘When?’
‘Now.’
His voice betrayed no emotion. I nodded as if this information was perfectly fitting. Surely some part of me had expected this. Nothing lasted for ever and his precarious position here was clear to us both. And yet we had created a bubble of existence where the outside world and its changing winds could not penetrate, until now. I was holding a book that had constantly tumbled from its space on the shelf, no matter where I put it or how snugly it fit between its neighbours. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. I clung to it now, trying to find some kind of steadiness.
‘Is there someone waiting for you? In Austria?’
I had never asked. Truth be told, I had not wanted the answer before now. But now it was time to face reality. Perhaps it would help me to let him go.
‘My father. There is no one else.’
He looked at me and I could see in his eyes what his words meant. I ran to him, threw my arms around his neck and buried my face in his chest. It was the first time we had even touched and so it should have felt unfamiliar, but it didn’t. It felt like the only place I ever wanted to be. He hesitated at first, but after a moment’s pause, he encircled me with his arms and I could feel his warm breath on my neck.
I pulled back to look at his face. His eyes looked straight into mine and held all of my world within them.
‘Mein liebling,’ he said.
All of this time, we had kept our distance from one another. I suddenly realised that, at least for my part, it was purely out of fear of losing another person that I loved. I had fooled myself into thinking that if I didn’t allow myself to get close to him, I wouldn’t miss him if he left. Stupid, stupid woman. Intimacy is only one string on the bow. The instrument still plays the music.
He took my hands in his, turned my palms upwards, then lifted them to his face, one on each cheek. Then he took each one and kissed them. The sadness that always seemed to tug at the corners of his mouth was still there, but there was something else. A vulnerability he had not let me see before.
It felt like time had slowed, just for this moment, as if he wasn’t being whisked away from my life. I tilted my head upwards and let my lips linger next to his. I could feel his breath and watched as he let his eyes close. I brushed my lips ever so lightly around his mouth, then kissed the corners that would curl in a smile when he thought I wasn’t looking. His arm pressed tightly against my lower back and when I could no longer hold back, I let myself melt into him. We felt like one person and I knew that no matter what happened, I had met my true soulmate, and maybe that was enough. Just knowing he was out there, breathing, living, would have to be enough.
I couldn’t watch him leave. It was only when the engine of his motorbike faded that I went back out on to the street. Empty once again.
Chapter Fifty
MARTHA
Have you read the end of the book?
I blinked at Henry' message on my phone. The sun wasn’t even up yet. Had he spent all night reading it?
I texted back:
No
I mean, I’d peeked ahead. Everyone does that, don’t they? But it’s hard to make sense of an ending when you don’t have all the facts. A Place Called Lost was the story of a building that may never have existed in real life and a potential custodian who was most likely a fictional character. The one thing it hadn’t mentioned was the one thing Henry was desperate to find – the manuscript.
‘The manuscript,’ I whispered to myself. The leaves on the tree shimmered and shook as I said it. I stretched my arm up over my head and touched the wood, so familiar to me now. How could I even begin to explain it to him when I couldn’t even explain it to myself?
We arranged to meet up later and speak in person. Another bittersweet conversation where I would pretend that I hadn’t fallen in love with him. I groaned loudly and got up to prepare Madame Bowden’s breakfast. I took my frustration out in the kitchen, banging saucepans and plates, and brought a plate full of sausages and scrambled eggs to the dining-room table. I finally decided that I would tell her about Opaline’s book and the documents we’d stolen from the asylum. I was glad Henry had given them to me, but he was right – it did not make for happy reading. To have lost her daughter in that awful place, she must have wanted revenge on her brother. I know I would have. I thought of Shane and his accident. Madame Bowden had hardly flinched.
Something was tugging at my mind and I wondered why she hadn’t come down for breakfast yet. Every morning she was the one to wake me with her shrill voice and endless demands. What if there was something wrong with her? With every step I climbed I told myself I was being stupid and that she was just having a nice long lie in, but I didn’t really believe it. I knocked on the door to her bedroom and, after a moment, let myself in. My eyes adjusted to the scene. Her bed had not been slept in and she herself was nowhere to be seen.
‘Madame Bowden?’ I called out. ‘Are you there?’
The door to the ensuite was slightly ajar, but on further inspection, it was empty.
‘Hello?’ I called out on to the landing, but the house had such an air of stillness that I knew I was alone.
I checked downstairs for a note but there was nothing. Of course she did not have a mobile phone, so I couldn’t call her. She refused to have her daily movements monitored by technology companies. I wasn’t sure what to do and spent the morning wandering from room to room, looking out of the windows at the street outside every few minutes.