The Words I Never Wrote Read online

  Cordelia tipped her champagne flute in response.

  “Well, good luck to you. If your writing plans develop, you might want to get in touch.”

  Henry Franklin passed her his card and moved on.

  * * *

  —

  CORDELIA WANDERED OUT TO the garden. Rose pink paper lanterns had been hung in the borders, above the long silver spears of carnations, and knots of guests were standing in the half-light, smoking and sipping champagne. She quickly crossed the shaved lawn, past the tall spikes of delphiniums, and proceeded down to the far end of the garden, where the shrubs had been allowed to run rampant, and wildflowers pushed up through the tangle of weeds. There was a small pond, haunted by frogs and dragonflies, and a bank of honeysuckle, Lonicera japonica, that covered the mossy wall, perfuming the air. She and Irene had always loved this patch. When they were little, the vigorous old climber provided a useful hiding place in any number of games. Parting the thick fronds, you entered a den of green gloom that would fall into place like curtains, voluminous enough to envelop a child entirely.

  Now, in the dusk, the intense yellow flowers danced like minute flames amid the denser light of the leaves, and Cordelia stood quite still, letting the low music and distant conversation recede, straining to hear the other sounds, the soft batter of moth wings against the lanterns and the rustle of night birds in the brush, as though she might catch among them an echo of hidden laughter and childish voices. Instead she had only a sense of their childhood vanishing, the years slipping through her fingers like sand.

  The click and flare of a match sounded, followed by the brief flicker of a cigarette, and a pale shape approached, resolving itself into Irene.

  “Thought you might be here.”

  Irene poked up a tendril of hair that had fallen from her elaborate chignon. “Don’t lurk, Dee. Come up to the nursery. There’s something I want to show you.”

  She laced her fingers through Cordelia’s and tugged imperiously.

  “Shouldn’t you be doing something bridal?”

  “Ernst is talking about German nationalism. Dad’s debating pacifism. I’ve escaped.”

  They went round to the side of the house to the basement and passed through the kitchen to a baize door only the servants used, up several flights of linoleum-covered stairs, Irene tripping slightly on her dress, until they reached the top of the house and the room that would always be called the “nursery,” even though it was more than a decade since anyone had played with its rocking horse or wooden puzzles, or rearranged furniture in the dollhouse, or fantasized that the narrow space running the length of the house was a palace or jungle or an alien planet.

  Cordelia pushed the door open, then hesitated. The room seemed charged with the stored memory of arguments and excited laughter and the murmuring of stories from the bookshelf, whose familiar fantasies were still lined up, their spines turned like the backs of playing children. Treasure Island, A Little Princess, Little Lord Fauntleroy.

  “It’s ages since I’ve been in here.”

  She trailed her fingers through the rocking horse’s mane and then seized on a crystal globe resting on the mantelpiece. It was just the right size to be cupped in both palms, and it contained a house and a pair of minute girls, one in pink, the other in blue, playing in the garden.

  “My snow globe!”

  “It was mine first, I seem to remember.”

  Playacting, Cordelia imprisoned the globe tightly against her chest, as though her sister might tear it away from her. “I know. But I loved it!”

  “How d’you know I didn’t love it too? Anyhow.” Irene turned away. “Come over here.”

  As Cordelia restored the snow globe to its place on the mantelpiece, Irene crossed to the far end of the room, by the window overlooking the garden. There two child-size chairs stood at a table, their seats painted in faded pastel, IRENE ELIZABETH CAPEL, and CORDELIA ROSE CAPEL. Drawing out her own chair, she sat down and arranged her shining skirts.

  “Got you a present.”

  On the table stood a large, handled case, around a foot square, crafted of black leather. She pushed it toward Cordelia.

  “Go on. Open it.”

  “What is it?”

  Irene tapped the pale almonds of her fingernails impatiently on the catch. “Don’t ask, Dee! Just take a look.”

  Grinning, Cordelia undid the latch, though she had already guessed what was inside. Lifting it out, she gasped.

  “Don’t keep looking like it’s a bomb about to explode! It’s an Underwood Portable. Same kind Daphne du Maurier uses.”

  “Heavens, Irene.”

  “I’m looking on it as an investment. It’s my first step to being the sister of a famous novelist.”

  “That’s never going to happen.”

  “No harm in trying.”

  Irene’s eyes were suddenly bright with tears.

  “I love it! But what about you? Isn’t there something you want? How are you going to keep busy in Berlin?”

  “Oh, I imagine I’ll be perfectly busy without trying. Ernst tells me it’s exhausting. Parties and more parties.”

  Irene had a manner of speaking that meant you could never tell if she was being serious or ironic. In a way, it had become part of her, Cordelia thought. Her sister was both things at once. Irene meant what she said, yet she wanted you to understand that the opposite might also be true—as though she was intensely aware of the inherent contrariness of life and that nothing should ever be taken for granted. Even so, she had to be joking. Although Irene’s social life had always been frenetic, she couldn’t want to go to parties all the time, could she?

  “And the fact is”—Irene lowered her voice theatrically—“Ernst’s very keen on family.”

  This word was spoken with humorous emphasis, as if to encompass not only the preliminary matter of sex—so far unfamiliar to Cordelia—but also the resultant babies and bottles and stern German nannies.

  “Oh, of course…”

  Blushing, Cordelia fingered the typewriter, circling the indented moons of its pristine keys. It seemed to symbolize far more than the glinting machine it was, although she wasn’t certain why. She thought of her impulsive confession to Henry Franklin, that she wanted to be a writer.

  “I saw you in the drawing room,” Irene told her. “Watching everyone. Observing them. Perhaps you should be a spy.”

  “I could never be a spy. The moment I discover anything I always want to tell everyone. Starting with you.” She gave her sister a rueful smile. “You should be the spy. You’re so good at secrets. You hide all sorts of things from me. When you got engaged you didn’t tell me for a week.”

  “Not fair. Ernst needed to ask Dad’s permission. Then he needed to smooth things with his family. They seem to regard me as an English version of Wallis Simpson, stealing their son and heir away.”

  “You’re hardly stealing him away! You’re going to be living there, after all. And it took ages before you told us.”

  Irene shrugged her slender shoulders. “I was a coward. I didn’t want to upset the parents too much.”

  Impulsively, Cordelia jumped up and enfolded her sister in a hug, crushing the delicate satin of her bridal gown.

  “I don’t think you’re a coward! I think you’re incredibly brave. Moving abroad. Going all that distance away from your family and friends.” And me, Cordelia thought fiercely, but didn’t say.

  “It won’t affect us, you know.” Irene detached herself and clasped her sister’s hands. “We’re sisters, after all.” Her voice had lost its undertone of mockery. “Never forget that. We’ve always shared everything, so now we’ll just have to share our experience. We’ll write all the time. That’s why I bought you the typewriter. And you’ll come over to stay.”

  “You bet.”

  “Besides, you’ll be so invo
lved with your new writing career.”

  Cordelia frowned doubtfully at the Underwood, poised on the table between them.

  “Whatever that is.”

  “You’ll find it, Dee, I’m sure of it. Or it will find you.”

  Chapter Four

  Irene, as so often, was right.

  A week later a letter was brought in by Jennie, the maid, along with the toast and butter and English breakfast tea. Irene and Ernst had left Birnham Park the morning after the wedding to take a honeymoon on the Baltic coast, and there was already a desolate feel to the breakfast table. The leftover lilies, thrust into new vases, were browning, their heavy stamen tongues hanging over wilting petals. Cordelia’s mother was ticking off a list concerning wedding presents—noting in her immaculate scrawl beside each item the address of the donors and precisely who should be thanked—and her father was squinting at The Times, reading about Fred Perry winning Wimbledon.

  Cordelia was tapping the crown off a boiled egg when the maid slid the envelope onto the table beside her. Inside was a card.

  Dear Cordelia,

  If you are still interested in the writing business, there is a vacancy here that might interest you. Please call my secretary to arrange a time when we can talk.

  Yours sincerely,

  Henry Franklin

  Associate Editor

  Cordelia glanced up, heart hammering, to see if anyone had noticed. She felt urgently that this astonishing news should be concealed, as though it were a secret message or in code. In a split second a door had opened into a world of which she knew nothing and she was being given the chance to pass through it, yet no one had turned a hair. The breakfast table looked exactly as it always did. Robbie, the West Highland terrier, was nosing at a crust dropped on the floor. Her father was folding The Times in quarter sections in preparation for his daily duel with the crossword. Stashing the note into her pocket with a glow of excitement, she rose to leave the table, brushing past the flowers as she went.

  “Careful of the lilies,” said her mother, without glancing up. “They stain.”

  * * *

  —

  THE NEWSPAPER OFFICES WERE in Fleet Street.

  Cordelia walked quickly from Victoria Station, skirting Buckingham Palace, down the Mall, and then along the Strand past the Royal Courts of Justice. She had dressed in a jacket and skirt of pale Wedgwood blue, teamed with sober black Mary Jane shoes, and tamed her hair into a tight, finger-waved bob, in a look that aimed to convey all the professionalism and experience she didn’t possess. As she made her way through tall brick buildings, squinting down their basement gratings through windows of thick, mottled glass, like beer bottles, an intoxicating mixture of excitement and nerves surged, and to quell it she began mentally reciting the advertising slogans she passed. OVALTINE GIVES HEALTH AND VITALITY. PHILIP MORRIS, THE THROAT TESTED CIGARETTE. ALL THE BEST PEOPLE DRINK CO-OP TEA. It was a tried-and-trusted way of soothing anxiety. She chanted the lines in her head, like poetry.

  The building she sought was the grandest in the street, a vast porticoed edifice faced in Portland stone, with two enormous modernist figures carved into the façade. Through the brass revolving doors she stepped inside a vaulted hall, decorated with bronze and crystal hanging lamps and white marble walls.

  She was conducted up a flight of stairs and down a corridor, to a dim paneled office bearing the plaque ASSOCIATE EDITOR and found Henry Franklin once again in his mustard suit, standing beside a drinks trolley.

  “Ah, Cordelia. So glad you could come. Sherry?”

  He waved a decanter invitingly, but Cordelia shook her head. She had scarcely ever drunk alcohol, let alone at eleven o’clock in the morning. In the same jocular manner, Franklin gestured toward an older man alongside him, who emanated the distinct odor of stale tobacco and whose eyebrows sprouted abundant gray bristles like a human badger.

  “This is Mr. Evans, our foreign editor.”

  Evans proffered a callused hand and regarded her with frank skepticism.

  “Miss Capel here is fluent in French,” Henry Franklin continued. “She knows slang and everything. She was telling me that she needs an occupation, perhaps connected with writing. As it happens, Mr. Evans has just informed me of a temporary vacancy, so it occurs to me that two little birds have lined themselves on my windowsill for one stone.”

  Mr. Evans’s badger eyebrows narrowed over jaundiced eyes. “I hear you have more than one language.”

  “I also studied in Munich.”

  He didn’t need to know that she had gone to Germany to learn singing, and spent six months eating strudel, watching operettas, tea dancing, and shopping. She had picked up the language easily enough. She always did. Languages seemed to lie buried inside her, just waiting to be unearthed.

  “Perfect,” said Franklin, rubbing his hands with the air of a car salesman having got an expensive Jaguar off his books. “It’s the French you’ll need. The vacancy is in our Paris Bureau.”

  “Paris! To be a journalist!”

  Mr. Evans failed to suppress an indignant splutter. “I’m sorry, Miss Capel, if you have been in any way misled.” His voice choked with indignation. “Engaging you as a journalist would, of course, be impossible. Leaving aside your complete lack of experience, you understand it is entirely unacceptable for a woman to work on the editorial side of the newspaper. It might involve working alongside men. Especially at night. And that would never do.”

  “Oh. I see,” she faltered, chastened. “In which case, what did you mean?”

  “The assistant’s job lasts six months and involves secretarial duties. We could pay three guineas a week.”

  “What exactly would secretarial duties mean…?”

  Cordelia had even less idea of what a secretary might do than a journalist.

  “Telephoning. Taking down copy. Making yourself useful to our man out there. Typing letters, that kind of thing.” Scenting hesitation, he frowned. “You do type, I assume. We don’t have any use for a secretary who doesn’t type. There are other girls we could put in place…”

  “Of course. I have my own machine. An Underwood Portable.”

  “That settles it, then…” Franklin beamed benevolently, no doubt to compensate for the foreign editor’s scorn. “You sound just the candidate for the job. And it could well be, if you still want to try your hand at writing, that you’ll get the chance. Paris is the place for haute couture shows and suchlike, and our lady readers do appreciate the chance to keep up with the latest styles. If you typed up some fashion notes, we could see if we liked them.”

  Cordelia was still trying to digest this astonishing offer as Franklin led her back downstairs. The jovial air had evaporated and she sensed his insouciance had been for Mr. Evan’s benefit.

  “Thanks for coming in, Cordelia. I meant to ask. Did your sister get off all right?”

  “Yes. They’re honeymooning on the Baltic coast.”

  “Ah. Very fashionable with the new regime. A favorite destination of Herr Hitler too, I understand.”

  “I shouldn’t think that crossed Irene’s mind.”

  “You’re right. But it might have occurred to Herr Doctor Weissmuller.”

  In a rush of confidence brought on by the morning’s events, Cordelia burst out, “Thank you so much, Mr. Franklin. I thought I was going to miss my sister terribly, but this will make all the difference.”

  They descended another flight of stairs, pushed through swing doors, and entered a cacophony of sound. It was a Valhalla of light and noise peopled by men in shirtsleeves, some on the telephone and others lounging against their desks, smoking pipes. The dusty, bookish scent of a library was shot through with the electric tang of ink and the adrenaline of news. A mulch of discarded stories, first drafts, and old papers littered the floor, and on the wall four clocks proclaimed the time in New York, Lo
ndon, Berlin, and Moscow. At the end of each row secretaries sat typing furiously, seemingly oblivious to the deafening clatter around them. Some of the men were rolling up their copy into cylinders that they inserted in a series of pneumatic tubes fixed to the walls.

  “The newsroom,” explained Franklin, leading her along the rows. The prickle of eyes, like the sharp brush of nettles, followed Cordelia as she walked. “These are the fellows who Evans feels might prove unsuitable workmates,” he added, deadpan. “Company policy, I’m afraid, but I can’t imagine many of them would be any great danger to virtue.”

  At one desk, a thin young man was holding a newspaper theatrically in one hand and declaiming poetry to his colleague.

  “They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead,

  “They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed.”

  As Cordelia passed, he glanced up.

  “Damn. I can’t remember any more. Or the author, for that matter.”

  She registered a fine, taut mouth and dark brows above liquid brown eyes. A brush of hair swept back and tamed with Brylcreem. He grinned, but Cordelia looked quickly away and braced herself, summoning as much authority as she could, trying to conceal the surging excitement that pounded beneath the buttons of her jacket.

  She had a job! The typewriter Irene had given her had made it happen, just like that. The simple ability to translate words into small black stamps of print gave her an authority she had never previously possessed. At that moment the Underwood, snug and gleaming as a conker in its case, seemed to gain an almost mystical power, as though it were not merely a professional instrument and a lasting connection with Irene, but a talisman.

  It had brought her luck already.

  Chapter Five

  Villa Weissmuller,

  Am Grossen Wannsee,

  Berlin

  August 1, 1936

  Darling Dee,