Free The Dower House by Malcolm Macdonald Page A

didn’t mind. Collectors were often more willing to come across than cocottes – and they weren’t limpets when it was time to move on.
    The decor of the tea room at the V&A , once criticized by the Victorians for its incongruous modernity, was now a museum exhibit in its own right – a lofty, clattery, echoing hall, lined from skirting to apex in glazed tiles, unique to this particular tea room. Waitress service, suspended in 1939, had not returned; three skinny ladies dispensed almost sugarless tea, completely sugarless biscuits, and one slice of buttered bread per person. But customers could lard it with as much raspberry-flavoured turnip jam as they liked. The glass tabletop was cracked and the corner clips harboured samples of ancient snacks.
    Miss Bullen-ffitch insisted on paying for herself – fourpence. ‘Bread on ration!’ she said disgustedly. ‘Even in the darkest days of the war it was never rationed. Everything else was, but not bread. Mind you – when you think of the winter we’ve just kissed goodbye . . .’
    â€˜I wasn’t here,’ he said. ‘I was in Germany. It was bad there, too. Trees hacked to bits in all the parks. People hammering the sides of coal wagons, just to collect the dust.’
    She was unable to compete. Perhaps she thought they deserved it.
    â€˜Who is this Fogel?’ he asked.
    â€˜Wolf Fogel, my boss. He’s a publisher here in London. Well, he doesn’t actually publish books himself. Not yet. He compiles them for other publishers. D’you know the King Penguins?’
    â€˜Birds?’
    â€˜Never mind. It’s not important, really. The only reason I mentioned him is that your grandfather did a painting in a villa belonging to my Mister Fogel’s grandfather – Julius. It overlooked a lake on the outskirts of Berlin. If he can find the painting, it might help prove his title.’
    â€˜The lake was the Wannsee, probably. I know it.’
    â€˜That’s the name. Am Grossen Wannsee . So did your grandfather have a villa there, too?’
    â€˜I don’t think so. Ours is not a communicating sort of family. Wannsee is one of Berlin’s “lungs” – as architects like to say.’
    â€˜Don’t they just! Anyway, although the communists have seized the villa, Fogel still wants to establish title because, apparently, he’s the only one to survive out of the whole family. He got out just before the war. Wouldn’t it be awful to be in that situation – all your family dead except . . .’ She caught his expression and clapped her hand to her mouth. ‘Oh, my God!’
    â€˜I agree.’ He smiled. Later he realized that the smile had been uncharacteristic of him – to smile so immediately, anyway. He was so hungry these days for female company – and, be honest, female flesh – that, with any other young woman, he would have withheld it to make her feel a guilty little debt. What instinct assured him, so soon, that this one was different?
    â€˜You’d better tell me all about yourself,’ she said. ‘Otherwise I’ll put my foot in my mouth every time I open it.’
    â€˜If you’ll return the favour and tell me all about your Mister Fogel?’ It occurred to him that a Jew who had escaped just before the war and had become prosperous during it, might have a conscience that could be played upon. And him a publisher, too.
    â€˜So you’d rather hear about him than me!’ she teased.
    â€˜I think I already know quite a lot about you.’
    Each audited the other for a moment before she said, ‘Well? Go on.’
    He told her as much of his story as he thought she could tolerate.
    â€˜You sum up people in the twinkling of an eye,’ she said. ‘Now I understand why. You must be very good at it, else you wouldn’t be here. I wonder what you’ll make of Fogel?’
    â€˜If we