Chapter 4 - The kiss
The little girl digs in the large garden at the bottom of a sweeping lawn sloping gently from the villa. Her mother sits in a wicker chair on the covered porch running from one end of the house to the other. She is strikingly beautiful, with large, expressive eyes, a slim, graceful figure and luxurious auburn hair that falls to her waist. Today, it’s swept into a sleek chignon cinched by a tortoiseshell hair comb. She wears a tailored ivory linen dress with a flowered shawl draped loosely over her shoulders. Her garnet earrings catch the afternoon sun and her gold bracelets, seven for each day of the week, jingle as she turns the pages of her book.
With a small hole dug, the child takes the battered trowel found in the garden shed and carefully unearths a flower. It needs a sunnier spot, she says to no one in particular.
The little girl can’t recall how long she and her mother and brother hid in the forest after the war started. There was spring, like it is now, then summer and then a bit of winter. That’s when her mother said her father’s men found them. She can’t remember her father, but she remembers his men. They wore heavy wool tunics with knitted sleeves and collars, brought briefcases full of money and secreted the little family to new hiding spots. After the forest, it was a farmhouse. Winter was much easier in the farmhouse with its big woodstove and real beds. Then another briefcase with money, and a new home in a big city, a flat in a tall building.
The girl liked the building. Children could play in its gardens. She was even allowed to join from time to time. There she would watch them run to meet their fathers coming home from their offices after work. The men wore smart-looking suits and hats perched straight and low. The war seemed far away.
The family had to be careful in their flat, though. Enemy soldiers lived next door.
“Remember the language you spoke with Anna,” the mother asked her children, referring to a long-ago governess. It was the language of the enemy. “We’re only going to speak that language from now on.” Hiding in plain sight took careful crafting. The little girl became anxious trying to remember which language to speak.
“Who are those men with briefcases?” she asked her mother one morning as they settled into the flat.
“Your father’s soldiers.”
“Why does Papa have soldiers?”
The woman paused. How does one explain war to a seven-year-old?
“Do you remember when Papa left and we had to go to the forest?”
The little girl scrunched her nose. She no longer remembered what her father looked like. She only remembered leaving home. It was the middle of the night and she was upset at having to abandon her toys and books.
“Everyone was very sad to see enemy soldiers in our country,” her mother continued. “We all wanted to do something to make them go away. Papa and men from his factories decided to become soldiers themselves. Papa took a lot of his money and bought things his men would need to fight the foreign soldiers. Then he went to fight with them. He uses his money to keep paying for what his men need.”
“And what we need,” the little girl said, thinking of the briefcases.
“Yes,” replied her mother. “Papa makes sure his soldiers keep track of us for him. Papa always knows where we are and when we need something.”
The child started to speak but caught herself. She didn’t want to upset her mother.
“I don’t know when Papa will come home, but he will come back to us,” her mother said.
The girl stops planting. Three flowers are in much sunnier spots now. She doesn’t know what kind of flowers they are, only that they are yellow. Mama will know, she says, again to no one in particular.
She pulls herself up and starts toward the porch. She’s approaching its steps when she suddenly halts, frozen in place.
A man has stepped onto the porch at the far side opposite her mother. He’s carrying a briefcase but doesn’t look like one of her father’s soldiers, with their homemade military jackets. This man is smartly dressed, in a double-breasted charcoal wool suit with a white shirt and dark blue striped silk tie, gleaming cufflinks at his wrists. His hat is dark grey, wide-brimmed, with a black band and pinched crown, not like the berets worn by her father’s soldiers. It sits low and straight on his brow. His shoes are black leather and polished.
He looks like he’s coming home after a day at the office, the girl thinks, remembering the men in the apartment building.
The man walks toward her mother. His pace is measured but determined.
Before the child can cry out, her mother spots the man and grips the arms of her chair. He’s by her side now, removing his hat. The child watches her mother slowly rise.
“It’s over,” the man says, kissing her mother’s hand.
So that’s what Papa looks like, the child thinks.
“I want you to know the kind of man your grandfather was,” my father wrote to me after my mother died. “Except for your uncle, I’m the only person remaining who knew him.”
My father met his father-in-law shortly before he and my mother married.
“Your grandfather was an honourable man of great integrity. His friendship was genuine, and he accepted responsibility however it came to him, whether he chose it or not.”
My grandfather wanted to study art to become a painter, but his father, the founder of a large, successful industrial company, needed a successor.
“So your grandfather, in spite of his dream to be an artist, took up the responsibility of running the company. He took it on with great skill and enthusiasm, and grew it into a very wealthy enterprise.”
“When war came, he used his great fortune to help finance the resistance and fought in it. He, your grandmother, mother and uncle were in constant danger.”
For a couple of years after the war, the family were able to return to life as it was before the conflict. My mother and uncle went to school and my grandfather began rebuilding his damaged factories and properties. But it was an illusion. Their broken country was seduced by the false promise of a quick recovery peddled by a new tyrant, and was overrun again. Everything my grandfather owned was confiscated, and the family was forced to flee. Once again, though, my grandfather had a plan.
“Before his property was confiscated, he sent his entire fortune to a friendly bank in a safe country, telling his hostile government he had placed an order to buy new equipment and material to rebuild his factories.”
My grandfather’s plan was to cancel the purchase order and retrieve his money from the foreign bank after the family escaped, thus bankrolling a life of great comfort in a new, peaceful country far from tyranny.
But he grew troubled.
“It was here that your grandfather profoundly demonstrated his integrity and honour.”
As he revealed to my father, my grandfather felt it wouldn’t be right to live abroad luxuriously while so many in his homeland suffered. He knew his employees’ livelihoods depended on his factories being rebuilt. And he felt a strong responsibility to his country and the critical industry he had spent decades helping to build.
“So your grandfather allowed the order to proceed, the equipment was duly sent to his country, and his money was gone.”
“Imagine the ordeal he faced: to maintain his integrity even if it meant great hardship for his family. In the end, your grandfather did not regard his integrity, honour and principles as transient values to be abandoned when circumstances changed.”
Life was difficult for the family in their new country. My grandparents built a small cottage after much saving, and worked low-paying factory jobs for the rest of their lives. Money was always scarce, a trial my grandmother felt keenly. But they saw both their children through university, marry and start families of their own. And my grandfather was able, at last, to follow his dream, my father told me.
“He set up an art gallery in their home, displaying some of his work and promoting the work of local aspiring artists. He was happy, pursuing the ambition so close to his heart.”
My grandfather died as a result of the same winter car accident that claimed my grandmother. While she died within days, he lingered in hospital until May, the same month in which, nearly 30 years before, he had walked across the porch to kiss his wife’s hand.
The Robins Hollow Charity Fund is founded on my grandfather’s unbroken commitment to a life of honour, integrity and principle. Through sharing his passion for art with children and youth, the fund will continue his legacy, helping them create a brighter future.
Creativity changes lives. Your donation to the Robins Hollow Charity Fund helps children and youth discover their potential and grow in confidence, hope and success. Thank you for your support.
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