Free The Sea House by Esther Freud Page A

house on the corner of Mill Lane. It was the glass and wooden building Max had marvelled at on his first day, with one steep side, dark wood and frosted glass. Below the slope, like a garden plateau, was the terrace with its picket fence, and there on the terrace, looking out, was Elsa, a hat held to her head. When she saw them, she took her hat off and waved, and then almost as suddenly she disappeared from view. She reappeared to open the side gate and, taking Max’s hand, she led him triumphantly into the garden, where under a triangle of trees the table was laid for lunch. There were flowers twisted round each place mat, petals floating in the centre on a plate, and, as Max turned to her, he could see just from the shape her mouth made that it was German she was about to speak.
‘Hello, welcome.’ Klaus was striding out of the house, and Elsa’s face closed up again, her mouth swallowing the words. ‘Come and look around, will you?’ Klaus put a hand on Max’s arm, and Elsa nodded to him. ‘Bitte,’ she said just under her breath as Klaus ushered him away.
The house didn’t smell of Heiderose, exactly, but it smelt familiar just the same. The same oil that they used to polish the furniture, could that be it, that made this house smell like every other German home? He stood there for a moment, until he realized Klaus was waiting for him to speak. ‘Yes, yes, most unusual,’ he said, waking from a sort of dream, and he followed his host across to the open staircase, light rippling between each laddered step. Upstairs, he glanced into a bedroom, a white rug spread on golden hardwood tiles, and then out they went on to the terrace, where, just as he’d suspected, there was a high blue stripe of sea.
    ‘Hiddensee.’ Gertrude leant in towards Max. ‘Was it an island? This place where you and Elsa… never met?’
Max nodded, and to draw the place towards him he closed his eyes. Hiddensee. His sea-horse of an island, its narrow tail and ridged rock of a head.
‘Vitte.’ Elsa formed the word, and he realized he’d had his eyes closed for too long. ‘I’m almost sure I know which house.’ They all turned to watch Elsa as she bit into her lip. Her face was like a mirror, her eyes a map, and Max sat suspended as he waited for her to travel the length of the longest street and come upon his house. ‘Was it near the bakery?’ she said then, and, stretching her hands out like a psychic, ‘There was a pear tree, a huge pear tree, growing outside.’
Max closed his eyes again as the house swam into his view and he could feel her across the table from him, like the secret member of a club.
‘Is she right? Was there a pear tree?’ Gertrude was impatient. ‘Outside Vitte?’
‘No, no,’ Klaus joined in. ‘Vitte was the village. The houses there didn’t have names. Isn’t that so, my El?’
‘Just marks,’ Max spoke up. ‘Each fisherman had a mark, which they scored into the wall.’ With his finger Max drew an X on the tablecloth. He traced a line across the top of it, and added a tiny squiggle to one toe. It dented for a second and was gone. Klaus took a pen and a notebook from his pocket and slid them across to Max.
‘Go on,’ he said, ‘you’re the artist.’
The pen was smooth to hold, the black ink soft as wine. The signs rolled out. X’s and Z’s with forks and tongues and roofs, A’s and R’s with twists and swirls. There was one sign like a flash of lightning and another like a horse. He’d made a study once of all the Vitte house signs, and now to his surprise they came crowding back.
‘You’d think’ – Gertrude examined them – ‘that it would be easier to learn to read and write.’
Very carefully Max drew a flat-headed A, with what looked like a hangman’s arm. ‘This was our house. It belonged to a fisher family called Gau.’ Helga, he thought, but he didn’t say her name. ‘And yes,’ he looked at Elsa, ‘we were beside the bakery.’ He had a vision of his governess