What Only We Know: A heart-wrenching and unforgettable World War 2 historical novel

by Catherine Hokin

  Paul’s patronising tone had bunched Otto’s hands into fists and turned his back rigid. Liese waited for her father to notice his friend’s distress and soften. He didn’t.

  ‘Haus Elfmann is my life, Otto. I thought it was yours. My father, who you seem to have such little regard for, built this business from a tailor’s shop. I am not going to dismantle it and run away because a few store owners are in trouble. Perhaps the Tietz and Wertheim stores were riddled with irregularities, did you think about that? If so, fine. Let the Party bring in their bureaucrats and their moneymen. Anyone can run a store. What we do is special: we create dreams; we transform lives. That’s not a job for uniformed pen-pushers. So tastes are changing? Isn’t that the nature of fashion? If they want loose waists and drab colours, we’ll make them a line. And we’ll carry on with the rest. There will always be women like Frau Goebbels who want life’s finer things. I’ll talk to her. Get her to talk to him. This will blow over. The Elfmann name is irreplaceable; it is Berlin at its finest. Spook yourself as much as you like: I’m not going to sell.’

  ‘Then you’re making a mistake.’

  Liese’s voice rang out so loud, both Otto and Paul jumped.

  ‘Liese, I told you to wait outside. This is not your argument.’

  ‘I’m what?’ Paul moved slowly round the desk, brushing away Otto’s flapping hands.

  Liese focused on the satin-striped wallpaper rather than her father’s narrowed eyes and held her ground. ‘You’re making a mistake, Papa, and you have to listen. Otto is right. Things aren’t just difficult; they’re falling apart. If we don’t do something, as unimaginable as it sounds, we’ll lose everything. I was there today, at the store. It was horrible. Bruckner hates us.’

  ‘Does he? And that matters to me why?’ Paul’s voice was like velvet, his eyes like a panther’s.

  Part of Liese wanted to move away from him; to apologise and be his dutiful little girl again. When she didn’t, Paul’s voice took on a sneering edge that knotted her stomach.

  ‘Oh, I see where this is going. You think the views of a shop manager matter more than mine. You think because a clerk says jump that Paul Elfmann should jump. Are you a communist now? Is that it? Has Michael recruited you for his little gang? Do you want to see everything I’ve worked for taken away and redistributed to the masses?’

  ‘No, of course not!’

  Liese gathered herself up, determined not to be silenced.

  ‘I love the salon as much as you do. It’s my whole life, as much as it is yours. I don’t want to lose it – the thought terrifies me. But you keep saying we’re different and I’m not so sure anymore that we are. We’re Jews, Papa. Whether you agree with that or not, it’s what the Party says we are. We have to face what that means.’

  You have to face what that means. You have to be my father, do the right thing and protect us.

  She didn’t have the language to explain that to him. When he shook his head and sighed, she knew it wouldn’t matter if she had.

  ‘To think I had such hopes for you, that I was growing proud of you. Maybe it’s time I looked for a successor with a bit of backbone, who won’t panic at the first whisper of a problem and let me down.’

  The first whisper of a problem? Was he truly so deluded?

  ‘When have I ever let you down? Who could have worked harder to learn from you than me? I’m not the one at fault here—’

  ‘Leave it, Liese. I know you mean well, but this doesn’t help.’

  ‘But I can’t stay silent, I can’t do nothing. This is my future too…’

  But Otto’s hand was on her elbow and she was out in the hall before she could find the right argument.

  ‘He wouldn’t listen then.’

  Michael. He must have come into the building while she was fighting her father.

  Liese pressed against the door, holding it ajar, and waved him away.

  ‘I don’t need another one of your sermons.’

  Instead of leaving, he slipped in beside her. ‘What’s happened?’

  Part of her wanted to chase him away; part of her needed the old Michael. He was, after all, one of the Haus Elfmann family: surely if anyone could understand the shock of this, it was him?

  She turned round to face him, so she was sure he was listening. Maybe if she was honest and didn’t take up a position, or let him get angry and take up an opposing one, they could find a way through this together.

  ‘It was awful today. At Hertie. They won’t deal with us. Their new man treated us like we were worthless. And then, on the way home, it was as if I’d never looked properly at the streets before. I don’t think we’re different anymore, Michael; I was foolish to ever say it. And I don’t think we’re safe. Uncle Otto tried to tell Father that and I tried to tell him and, no, he won’t listen. I don’t know what it is, if it’s arrogance or some blind faith in Haus Elfmann’s standing. I don’t think even your father knows what to do.’

  Michael’s response wasn’t a tirade or a lecture, but neither was it the reassurance she had hoped for.

  ‘I knew this would happen. I told Father not to go when Bruckner’s letter came, but he thought he knew better. He thought The Fixer could stride in and call the shots.’

  ‘You knew they’d cancelled the order?’ Liese’s tongue felt too thick for her mouth. ‘Why on earth didn’t you tell me?’

  Michael scratched his head as if the idea had never occurred to him.

  ‘Would you have listened to me any more than he did?’

  ‘Of course I…’ But he raised an eyebrow and she couldn’t finish the sentence. ‘No. I don’t suppose I would. But I’m listening now.’

  She leaned back against the wall. Inside Paul’s office, the argument was still raging.

  ‘I wish I hadn’t been there today. Seeing your father so powerless; being treated as though we were worthless. Bruckner was so comfortable doing it. And yet Father was just as comfortable dismissing everything Uncle Otto and I said. He’s convinced Haus Elfmann is above all this mess.’

  She paused, remembering the ease with which Bruckner had insulted them.

  ‘It’s going to get worse, isn’t it? Father is wrong: no Jew is safe, are they – no matter what they’ve achieved? No matter how loyal they feel to Germany?’

  Michael shook his head.

  ‘Then is Otto right, should we leave?’

  ‘It’s one option. Starting up somewhere else. But Paul will have to move fast because that window is closing. Applications to emigrate are getting harder and more complicated and the cost is escalating.’

  ‘You said that’s one option. What are the others?’

  ‘You could join us and fight back. Or do nothing, like your father wants, and pretend nothing will come.’

  Liese rubbed her forehead, where a headache was gathering.

  ‘You make it sound like we’ve got choices, but not one pathway you’ve offered guarantees that the salon – or we – will be safe. Tell me there’s another one that does.’

  Behind the door, Otto was still pleading for Paul to see sense.

  Michael slipped an arm round Liese’s shoulders. She already knew he had nothing to say.

  Four

  Karen

  Aldershot, August 1976

  Frimley base, training cadets 9 a.m.–6 p.m. Mess dinner (Aldershot) 7–10 p.m. Mrs Hubbard available from 1.30 p.m. if required.

  Karen crumpled the note and threw it into the bin. Why did he keep doing this? Writing these ridiculous notes, providing a schedule of his whereabouts, as if she couldn’t guess where he was. It was not as if his days varied. It was not as if she cared.

  Have a lovely day, Karen darling. I’ve left you £5: go shopping; treat yourself.

  That would be a nice change.

  Perhaps she should write back, treat him to her day: bed till whenever; lazing around till it’s time to serve chips and get leered at; smoking; playing Thin Lizzy full blast with the windows wide open. That might give him enough insig
ht into her life to leave her alone.

  And what was this ‘Mrs Hubbard is available’? Why on earth did he think that was news? She was always available, always sticking her nose in. And this idea that Karen still spent her summer holidays with their neighbour: didn’t he know that she’d finished with that charade long ago? The effort of remembering the quirks and ignoring the digs from the endless troop of grandchildren had lost its allure by the time she was fourteen. ‘Send her round whenever you like’ had faded to a polite fiction. Didn’t he know anything?

  Karen stared out of the window at the neatly clipped lawn. Sixteen: it was the worst age to be. Still treated like a child. Still two more years before she could go to university and get out. Still two more years of sidling round each other in a too-small house.

  Things could all have been so different, if only Mother had stayed. If only she hadn’t been so selfish. Surely she had known that needing a mother never stopped? That it didn’t fade because you were sixteen, not six? Hadn’t that mattered to her at all?

  Karen rubbed at her temples, where a headache was threatening. So she was feeling rudderless and sorry for herself, big deal. Wallowing in it wouldn’t make the day brighter.

  She turned to where the kitchen table was set and waiting, as it was every morning: the cutlery neatly aligned, the rose-and-ribbon-patterned bowl paired with its matching cup and saucer.

  He tries – you could give him credit for that.

  Another thing that never changed: when her conscience pricked about her father, it did it in her mother’s voice. Karen had stopped wondering why long ago; she preferred to focus her efforts on ignoring it.

  She was starving though: last night’s lumpy mash and charred sausages hadn’t been one of her best culinary efforts. Ignoring the waiting box of Weetabix, Karen jammed two slices of bread into the toaster. He had left orange juice out as well, the chilled jug and matching glass covered by a cloth. She ignored those too and tipped coffee granules into a mug.

  Breakfast made to her liking, she stuck a packet of cigarettes in her jeans’ pocket and went out into the garden.

  It was barely ten o’clock and the air was already too warm. Forty days without rain, a dozen with the mercury climbing over thirty degrees; the forecasters unable to promise any change coming. The country was heatwave-obsessed, the spreading drought the only conversation.

  Karen blew a series of smoke rings over the lifeless grass. It was so crisp one careless match and it would crackle like a bonfire. That would be something to fill up the day with.

  She sat down on a sagging deckchair and imagined a sheet of flame that would leap over fences, devour the dried gardens and swarm into the woods like a flickering army. If she blew really hard, maybe she could summon up a wind, dance the fire down the lane, red and fat and greedy enough to swallow the school – with any luck, the base.

  And then he’d move you somewhere else and you’d lose the last cobwebbed trace of her.

  Karen stubbed out her cigarette and fed the ends of her toast to a dusty sparrow, trying to ignore the itch in her eyes. ‘Don’t cry. It won’t bring her back.’ That was good advice apparently – it was certainly all she had ever been given – but sometimes the tears punched like a boxer.

  She doesn’t deserve them. Karen blinked the garden back into focus. She left. If she was here, I’d be happy.

  She hated that voice, the one that was definitely all hers, that crept in more and more often and made her feel like a traitor. It was the same voice that pointed out mothers and daughters shopping together, giggling over coffee cups and standing in cinema queues. That made her want to howl for a hug like a four-year-old.

  Karen lit another cigarette, put it out, went into the kitchen for more coffee, came back out empty-handed and didn’t know whether to sit or stand or scream. Inside the house, the hall clock struck ten-thirty. How could the day be creeping by so slowly? How could she bear another one that limped along with only her thoughts to fill it?

  Karen dropped back into the deckchair and wandered listlessly through her day. She had a waitressing shift at the Wimpy in the precinct, but that didn’t start until five. She could finish her school reading list. Except all she had left on that was To Kill a Mockingbird, and characters torturing themselves over good and evil and the meaning of morality was hardly the distraction she needed. She could go to the lido and swim her mind blank. Except the heat would have already filled up its pools like human soup and the happy families milling there would make her teeth grind. Normally, she would have called Angela, her closest friend, but she was out of contact for at least another week, waltzed off by her parents for a fortnight at the beach.

  ‘We would have asked you to come with us, but I wasn’t sure how you felt about the seaside after…’ Mrs Roberts had waved her hand and left the sentence hanging. Mr Roberts had turned purple and far too jolly. In the end, Karen had felt sorry for Angela.

  There were other people she could call, but there was no one she was as comfortable with, and certainly no one who would put up with this prickly mood as blithely as Angela.

  New school, new faces; new girls who didn’t think she was the odd one. A brand-new start and a big circle of friends. That hadn’t exactly worked out to plan.

  Her first day at secondary school five long years ago flew back so vividly, Karen could almost see her eleven-year-old self outlined in the kitchen doorway. Blazer too big, skirt too long. Hoping so hard that things would get better, it hurt.

  Army kids. Karen had walked down the lane on that blue September morning picking them out. They were easy to spot. Always in groups, always loud, throwing out their shared impenetrable slang to keep away the unwanted. Even the new year’s intake, with uniforms as oversized as Karen’s, carried a confidence she couldn’t conjure.

  As they converged on the school gates, older girls swarmed, sucking up the new members of their tribe. Karen had hovered on the edges of the playground, trying to match names to the few faces she recognised, wishing with every crossed finger they wouldn’t recognise her. She knew no one else from her junior school who had got a place at Aldershot County; she had forgotten, however, that there would be girls from the Aldershot army base. Girls she had encountered on her scattered visits there, who found her secluded life in the village, and her too-shy mother, peculiar. Who sniggered at Karen’s babyish clothes, as if, at eleven, their flared trousers and checked shirts had made them the height of sophistication.

  To her relief, none of them spoke to her as the classes were called into line. For the rest of the morning, Karen scurried where she was told, clutching her timetable with its confusion of teachers and rooms, happy to be a very small part of the herd. By lunchtime, she hadn’t got lost, she hadn’t stood out. She had found bodies to tag along with; she had swapped names and shared smiles. The day seemed survivable. Then she went into the playground and the nudges began.

  The one who swaggered over, her cronies formed up in a block a pace behind, was square-cut and narrow-eyed and far too certain of her standing. She barrelled across the playground, thumping to a stop toe to toe with Karen, swamping them both in the heavy scent of sugared oranges that most of the girls in the school seemed to be doused in. What was it someone had said the perfume was called? Aqua Manda? Whatever the name, breathed in at such close quarters, the smell made Karen’s eyes sting.

  She wrinkled her nose in an unconscious imitation of her mother; her opponent’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘Why did she do it?’

  ‘Who? What?’

  Karen’s interrogator tapped her finger to her head, much to her pack’s delight. ‘Your mother, stupid. Why did she top herself?’

  Mouths dropped; Karen’s new allies shuffled back. No one would meet her eye.

  ‘Come on, slowcoach: speed up and catch me. It was your mother, wasn’t it? Who killed herself in the summer? Who was found dumped on the beach down by Brighton like a load of wet washing?’

  Nothing made sense, and all of it did. K
aren wanted to clamp her hands over her ears and run, but she sensed that would only lead to a chase. Despite her wobbling knees, she stood her ground.

  ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. It was an accident.’

  The girl’s throaty cackle turned a teacher’s head. ‘What, she accidentally went swimming with her clothes on? Well that’s a different take: she didn’t kill herself then; she was just a nutter.’

  The scream brought the teacher running, but not before Karen had left dripping scarlet tracks across the girl’s fleshy face and a bruise already blooming.

  She was still kicking when they dragged her to the Headmistress’s office. She was still refusing to speak when her father arrived, covered in apologies.

  Their hushed conversation circled. Perhaps it’s too soon; she needs more time at home. No, she needs routine and structure. This type of behaviour won’t happen again.

  It wasn’t until Father marched Karen to the car that she finally found her own voice.

  ‘Is it true? Is it true? Did Mummy not drown by accident like you said? Did she kill herself?’

  Over and over, until he slammed on the brakes.

  ‘Stop it! I won’t have this hysteria. Your mother died, isn’t that enough?’

  ‘No! No, it’s not. Tell me the truth. Tell me she didn’t do it on purpose.’

  Her father had pushed her grabbing hands away with a force that left her breathless.

  ‘Not when you’re like this. Not when you’re yelling. You’re too old to be so out of control. Why must you be so selfish? Why can’t you be quiet? Why can’t you be good?’

  The same words he’d hurled at her in the street in Brighton, when she’d shouted at him for being dull and old and no fun at all. When her mother had stopped pointing out how prettily the sun shone on the water and started one of her headaches. The day before the world tipped over.