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

by Catherine Hokin

  That had shut him up but, for once, she hadn’t turned immediately away and she had seen his reaction. He looked so forlorn it threw her.

  ‘You could tell me about my mother’s family before I go. If you wanted.’

  He had opened his mouth, closed it again. The pause stretched out further than Karen could bear.

  ‘Forget it. I thought you wanted to talk, but you just want to lecture. Why does it still matter who comes from where? We’ve been at peace with Germany for nearly forty years – why can’t you remember that? Why can’t you accept that the war’s long over?’

  What was it he’d said?

  ‘You’re wrong. You’re so wrong. Some things never end. The war’s not over and you’re caught in its crosshairs just as tightly as me.’

  It didn’t make any sense. And it had scared her. She wouldn’t admit that. She had gone back to storming out of rooms every time he brought the trip up. But it had scared her, and the pain in his face when he said it had scared her even more.

  He was coming down the garden path – another few steps and he would see her. It wouldn’t be a simple goodbye; it would be another fight she didn’t have the strength for. As she hesitated, Andrew caught sight of her, raised his hand and started to say something Karen had no interest in hearing. She grabbed the money and the sandwich and ran for the door.

  She willed away the Channel crossing. Every stopping point as they wound their way from Calais through Antwerp and Cologne dragged. All Karen wanted was to get to Berlin. She tried her best to be enthusiastic about the journey, if only not to draw attention. She oohed and aahed with the rest of the girls when they were decanted from the coach in picturesque town centres where church spires carved out the skyline and medieval peasants could have wandered unchallenged. She clicked her camera as directed in cobbled squares whose pungent market stalls left Miss Dennison and Miss Grainger – or Denny and Grunger as the girls had long ago christened them – misty-eyed. She swallowed up the facts the teachers stuffed them with, ready to regurgitate them in the endless quizzes they set rather than let the girls loose in the evenings. Anything to make the days pass.

  ‘Barely forty years since those dreadful bombing raids and what a wonderful job they’ve done. Everything has been so beautifully restored you can barely see the joins.’

  Denny’s favourite line as she huddled her pupils round each day’s architectural offering, her voice dropping on bombing and lifting on joins as if her praise could compensate for the damage.

  Karen – ‘our little architect in waiting’ – dutifully admired the stepped gables, the window-studded facades and the delicate arches. They were beautiful, no one could deny that, but she longed for something that was a little less storybook. For a past she could connect to. Then they arrived at the Helmstadt border crossing point between Germany’s East and its West, and all her ideas about the country had to be hastily reassembled.

  ‘No nonsense, girls. No getting off the coach. If the East German soldiers decide to come on board and check your passports individually, be quick when they ask you. They can hold us up for hours here if they have a mind.’

  Karen peered out of the window, her curiosity piqued by the uncharacteristically shrill edge in Grunger’s tone. The physical effects of the Second World War, from what she had seen on the journey, had been tidied away, the devastated cities patched up and made whole again. Germany’s battered people, she presumed, must have longed for quiet after the onslaught they had lived through, and then, sixteen years after the war’s end, the Soviets had taken the sectors of the country they were given to manage in 1945 and cut them away. Now, there were two Germanys, split by a 900-mile-long border: the Federal Republic in the West and the Deutsche Demokratische Republik, which contained the still partly West-controlled city of Berlin, in the East. Karen knew that – she had studied that. Seeing its reality, however, was a different thing altogether.

  There was nothing storybook about the border. Low windowless huts squatted between the traffic lanes like overweight guard dogs. Red and white barriers dissected the road, flagpoles muscled up on either side: stars and stripes and Union Jacks to mark out the West in one direction, the compass and hammer-stamped banners of the DDR floating a little higher over the East. There were towers. There were soldiers flinging orders. There were an awful lot of guns.

  ‘They’re getting on!’

  Whoever squealed was quickly shushed.

  The rifles slung across their backs as casually as fishing rods gave the two baggily uniformed boys an older man’s swagger. They didn’t make eye contact or smile, despite the giggles and blushes that greeted them.

  By the time the coach was released, everybody’s mood had sharpened. Karen perched on her seat remembering her flippant words to her father: the war’s long over. She stared out of the window as the no-stops, heavily speed-restricted drive took them past barbed wire and watchtowers. Now she was in East Germany, staring into its blatantly military face, her father’s anguished response suddenly took on a new depth.

  She wasn’t the only one to feel the change. One by one, the girls stopped chatting.

  The exhale when the coach reached the checkpoint on the outskirts of Berlin was thick enough to be tangible. That crossing was a far quicker affair, the soldiers jauntily waving them through happily American.

  ‘We’ve sailed across the socialist sea, girls!’ The soldiers’ winks had turned Grunger giddy. ‘And reached the island of Berlin. A little piece of the West clinging on among the Reds.’

  The coach rattled on; the city unfolded itself in a penned-in muddle that pinned Karen to the window. It was austere rather than pretty – stripped clean of the columns and arches she had expected.

  ‘Don’t worry – there are plenty of parks and far lovelier areas than what you see here.’

  Karen wasn’t worried at all; she was fascinated. As they drew closer in, she could see that Berlin had its share of crumbling once-ornate buildings, but these were overshadowed by sleek-sided housing blocks lined up in rows like perfectly polished teeth.

  ‘It’s all a bit… clinical.’ The sniff that followed the sneering comment from the back of the bus echoed round the coach.

  Denny smiled across the aisle at Karen. ‘Take no notice. Your classmates are being classical-loving snobs because they think that’s what they’re meant to be. This is a city reinventing itself – look with your cleverer eye and enjoy it.’

  She pointed out an art gallery as she spoke that was all angles and edges and as unlike a home for old masters as Karen could ever imagine. Nothing in Berlin was what she had imagined. It was so different to anywhere she had seen before. Bits of the city were still broken, pocked with old bullet holes and filled with weed-choked bomb sites not filled in since the war. Bits of it were unashamedly modern. Apart from a huge battered belfry flanked by what looked like giant metal honeycombs, there was barely a church spire to be seen. What there was, pulling the eye like a magnet, was the Wall.

  It snaked grey and brooding, a round-topped concrete punch twice the height of the people milling past it. It slashed through the city, blocking off streets, cutting across corners, appearing and reappearing as if its map had been drawn by a shaky-handed toddler. Twice, the coach driver took a wrong turning and it jumped out in front of them, dissecting a park, looming over a playground, bricked-up eyeless buildings clinging to its edges like scabs.

  Karen was equally mesmerised and daunted by the Wall’s blankness, by its hand-in-the-air stop-here brutality.

  On the first night, she gazed down from the dormitory window long after her companions had fallen asleep, drawn like a moth to the spotlights which marked out the Wall’s grip on the city. Neon blazed on one side; darkness swallowed up the other. Karen followed the outline as far as she could and realised Grunger was right: Berlin, or at least its western side, sat as isolated from the rest of West Germany as an ocean-edged island. Its brightness against the rolled-up-early eastern sector was too much. The lights ma
de the city appear overdone, like it was trying too hard. It looked at once vulnerable and brash.

  It looked like the kind of place that wouldn’t easily surrender its secrets.

  It wasn’t until their third and final day that the girls proved themselves fit to be allowed to explore Berlin unsupervised.

  By the time that decision was announced, Karen had started to concoct escape plans, convinced she would be trapped forever on the coach shuttling them from one ‘essential sight’ to the next. She had made herself dizzy twisting and turning, trying to read street signs, trying to guess which disappearing corner might lead to the city her mother had known. She couldn’t concentrate at the rickety Potsdamer Platz viewing point, although the Wall’s death strip and anti-tank traps and the rifle-wielding guards had the other girls excitedly pointing. She tried, but she couldn’t share the interest when the scrubby rise between the defences was revealed as Hitler’s buried bunker. The wasteland was too wide, the buildings visible in East Berlin too far away to feel like they had once inhabited the same city. What if part of her mother’s story was stuck over there? Karen climbed down from the platform far quicker than the others, feeling the Wall’s threat closing in on her, personal and real.

  ‘Go in pairs remember; watch out for each other!’

  The girls burst from the coach like a dam exploding, all the teachers’ instructions on sticking together and taking care on the subway instantly forgotten.

  Karen stuck tight to a group heading towards the Kurfürstendamm until Denny’s chirping panic floated away. The shopping street was packed. Crowds weaved round the display cabinets that dotted the pavements and the café tables that were full despite the crisp March air. Karen slowed down, loitering by a theatre as if attracted by its posters. Her classmates called out to her to hurry; she called back that she would. Within seconds, they were lost in the blur.

  Shoppers swung round her, laden with bags. Waiters flew in and out of wide-windowed cafés five times the size of anything Aldershot could offer. The moment she had been counting down to had finally arrived, but Karen was rooted to the spot, overwhelmed by the size of her task and the pitiful amount of information she had gathered to help her. Giggling through the shopping centres and department stores and trying to sneak into a bar suddenly seemed endlessly attractive.

  I need not to be me, the English girl abroad and out of her depth. I need to be somebody smarter.

  One of the cafés buzzing with life caught her attention. Karen began to watch the customers flowing in and out. There were plenty of groups and couples, but, unlike in the tea shops at home, there were also women sitting alone, some with books, some simply watching the world pass by; all of them looking perfectly at ease. Spotting a vacant table, Karen shook out her shoulders and dived in.

  ‘Ich möchte einen Kaffee, bitte.’

  The waiter appeared to understand and an ashtray and matches followed as her confidence increased.

  Karen sipped her coffee, lit a cigarette. Nobody knew her; no one was judging. When the waiter returned with the bill, she had her map and the fragmented addresses copied from the wedding certificate spread out ready.

  ‘Konnen Sie mir helfen? Ich versuche Haus Herber zu finden.’

  He shrugged.

  Karen scrabbled round the remains of her German.

  ‘Es ist in Budapest Straβe?’

  He grinned. ‘English?’

  Karen nodded.

  ‘I don’t know Haus Herber, but Budapester Straβe is by there.’

  He pointed towards the belfry that was now drilled into Karen as the Kaiser Wilhelm Gedächtniskirche.

  ‘It’s only a few minutes’ walk away.’

  ‘Danke. And how would I get here?’

  Karen passed him the piece of paper with the Lindenkirche’s address. He studied it for a moment and then pulled out a pen and drew a black line joining two underground stations.

  ‘That is not so close. Too far to walk. It’s not interesting. Houses, nothing special. I can show you better places.’

  He was very attractive and, from his surprise when Karen got up without taking the bait, not used to being turned down.

  She left the café with a spring in her step that lasted almost as long as it took her to walk twice up and down Budapester Straβe. There was nothing to see. The shop was long gone; she should have guessed that it would be. And then, as she rubbed at her eyes to stop the pricking tears betraying her, she finally spotted them. Faded letters on a narrow building’s lintel, half-hidden by a larger sign, but picking out the name she’d been searching for: Haus Herber, the word Früher etched above it in slightly smaller script. Karen couldn’t remember that exact word, but it was enough like the word Frühling, the one for spring, to make earlier a reasonable guess.

  She pushed open the glass door to a tinkle of bells.

  ‘Guten Tag. Kann ich Ihnen helfen?’

  Karen hovered on the doorstep, uncertain of anything except that O-level German would be no match for this.

  Despite the modern-looking nameplate outside, the interior of Richters Schneiderei was a soft-hued time capsule. Wooden drawers lined one wall, spilling over with pastel spools of lace and curling ribbons. Bolts of cloth stretched along the other two, grouped in a rainbow of patterns and shades. A solid-looking counter marked off with metal numbers ran across the waxed floor like an elongated tape measure. Karen had a sudden image of her mother smoothing fabric across its top, slicing sharp lines with her scissors, and had to swallow a sob.

  ‘Sprechen Sie Englisch?’

  The woman standing behind the counter moved forward. She was neatly dressed in a dark blue skirt and blouse and far younger than Karen wanted her to be.

  ‘Ja. Some. Are you wanting material?’

  Karen shook her head. ‘No. I’m looking for someone. My mother. I think she worked here, when it was Haus Herber. She was a seamstress.’

  The woman frowned.

  Karen groped for the word on the wedding certificate that she had seen echoed on the sign.

  ‘A Schneiderin – seamstress? It was a long time ago – 1947.’

  ‘1947?’

  The woman gave a low whistle, which made her look even younger.

  ‘You said your mother, but you are English?’

  ‘Yes, but she was German, from Berlin. Her name was Liese Elfmann.’

  ‘1947 is too long for me. But my grandmother perhaps could help. She worked here in the 1940s, before my family eventually took the business over. She is upstairs.’ The woman stuck out her hand. ‘Hannah Richter.’

  The firm handshake made Karen feel steadier.

  ‘Karen Cartwright.’

  Hannah bustled away, calling for Oma. Karen stayed where she was, listening to the footsteps overhead, the murmur of voices. Trying not to hope for the impossible.

  When Hannah returned, she brought her older self with her.

  ‘Oma has no English. Tell me again and I will do my best.’

  Karen spread her story out; Frau Richter watched her intently as Hannah translated it into German. When the old woman answered her granddaughter, she spoke in a stream far too quick for Karen to follow.

  ‘I am sorry. Oma did not know her.’

  All those words just to say no? Karen tried to keep her smile in place.

  ‘Thank you. For your time. For trying.’

  She turned to go, nodding to the old lady whose lined face was unreadable. ‘Danke. Auf wiedersehen.’

  ‘No, wait – Oma says she didn’t know your mother herself, there were a lot of girls who worked here apparently, and some didn’t stay long. But she knew the name you said – Elfmann. She remembers a Haus Elfmann in Berlin before the war. It was a famous… I don’t know the word in English; here we say Modehaus.’

  ‘Fashion house or salon?’ Karen could hardly breathe.

  ‘Yes, that sounds right. Salon. Like the French would say it. Oma says it dressed everyone. The father was Paul and there was a daughter, she thinks, called Liese
.’

  Karen could have leaped across the counter and kissed them both.

  ‘That must be her! That must be my mother! Where is the salon now? How do I find it?’

  She stopped. Neither woman was smiling.

  ‘What?’

  Hannah’s English suddenly became rather more stilted.

  ‘It’s not possible. Where it was isn’t there anymore.’

  ‘Do you mean it’s like here, it’s changed hands? But someone might still remember. Like your grandmother did.’

  The old lady whispered something too low for Karen to hear.

  ‘No. You don’t understand. Hausvogteiplatz, where the old Modehaüser were based, is in the East now. Behind the Wall. There’s nothing to find, no one to ask.’

  The answer was half-expected, but it still shook her.

  Karen was about to make her excuses and take her misery outside, but Hannah hadn’t finished. She glanced at her grandmother who sniffed.

  ‘And, also…’

  The air shifted. Karen felt it like a temperature change.

  ‘The Elfmann family. They were Jewish.’

  Karen frowned as Hannah started fussing with a length of green fabric heaped on the counter.

  ‘You must know that many Jews lost their businesses during the war? That many didn’t survive.’

  Many?

  Karen wasn’t sure that was the word she would have chosen to describe the Holocaust, but she didn’t know how to say that without causing offence. Hannah still wouldn’t meet her eye. Her father had said Liese was German, but he had never mentioned anything about her being Jewish. Unless that was another secret.

  Karen kept her voice neutral. ‘But my mother did survive it. Are you sure the Elfmanns were Jewish?’

  The old woman sniffed harder.