by Celia Rees
“Are you religious?” he asked, suddenly.
“No, not especially. Why do you ask that?”
“Oh, nothing.” he shrugged. “It’s just that pendant you’re wearing. The Black Madonna of Cze˛stochowa, isn’t it?”
“Oh.” Edith’s hand went to the medallion. “Dori gave it to me. For protection.”
“We all carry something.” Drummond’s hand strayed to his top pocket. “She must be a good friend to give you that.” He looked at her with a strange kind of respect. “Let’s hope she doesn’t need it back.”
“Why should she?” Something about his tone made her look up sharply.
“No reason.” He shrugged. “How do you know Dori?”
There was a softening round the eyes, the quirk of a private smile as he said her name, that made Edith think that he might have been one of Dori’s many lovers. Maybe still was.
“Through Adeline Croft.”
“The American journalist?”
“Yes, do you know her?”
“Met her a couple of times.”
They were having that kind of conversation. People of brief acquaintance, trying to discover people they might have in common.
“And Vera?” Edith ventured. “How do you know her?”
“How do you?” he countered.
“I don’t. I’ve only met her once.” She hesitated. “Well, twice if you count Dori’s party. I know her hardly at all.”
She omitted to mention the third time at the Service Women’s Club. He looked at her again, as though he knew she was leaving something out but respected her for doing so. His smile widened as if she’d passed some kind of test.
“You must have made quite an impression.”
“Why do you say that?”
“At the party. She spoke to you. She cuts people she’s known for years. Claims short sight. She can’t be bothered, is closer to it.”
“You know her well, then?”
“Well enough.” It was his turn to be evasive. “People in common, you might say.” He stared out of the window, his face suddenly closed and distant as if they had wandered away from safe ground. Then he looked back, as if he’d decided something. “Vera and I will be working together. War Crimes Commission.” He looked down at the badge on his cap. “Find out what happened to our chaps. Hunt down murdering Nazi bastards. Bring them to justice.”
He turned away again, as if that was all he had to say about it. Within moments, he was asleep. The scene outside had turned wintery, dykes and rivers covered with the dull-gray, green gleam of ice, the fields dusted with snow. Like Johannes Janson’s Winter Landscape but without the skaters. Edith took out her pen and notebook, casting her eye over the debris on the table, selecting the croquette: a meat mixture, good way to use up leftovers. Basically a rissole . . . She wrote quickly, creating the recipe, looking up every now and then as she gathered the ingredients.
Sprawled in the seat opposite, head against the window, mouth slightly open, Drummond looked younger, his body loose, the tension erased from his face. He reminded her a bit of her brother-in-law Ted: the contained strength, the straight eyebrows over greeny-gray eyes, even the slight gap between the teeth.
The train jolted and Drummond was suddenly awake. Edith looked away quickly, not wanting him to think she was staring. The pen jerked in her hand, stabbing the paper, blotting the page.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Oh, I—I’m.” She looked at the pen in her hand, the notebook on her lap. “You know, just jotting down a few things. I collect recipes. Foods I encounter—menus, and so on.”
“Our picnic?” He seemed amused by it.
“Well, yes.” She glanced down at the notes she’d been making. “Food tells you a lot about a person. Allows you to see beneath the surface display.”
“What does this—” he motioned toward the debris “—tell you about me?”
“Oh, you’re sophisticated, well-traveled, cosmopolitan. You’re a bit of a maverick, willing to improvise, cut corners, break rules. Well-educated, good at languages, intelligent. You are charming, especially to women, but men like you too—”
“Spare my blushes!” He laughed. “You can tell all that? No need for palms?”
“Yes. Food reveals a great deal. It also serves to fix the memory. Better than a diary. Even years later, the recall is instant. Diaries can be dull. Trite.”
“And not allowed.” His look was frank and level. “I see.” He settled back into his own memory. “I do see.”
“So?” she asked. “What do you see?”
He leaned forward again, hands clasped. “The desert. Been out all day with Long Range Desert Group. Infernally hot. Stopped when the sun went down.” His eyes went distant. “I can see this long dune, like a knife against a violet sky. We were starving. All we’d got were hard biscuits and bully beef. This Kiwi chopped the tops off the tins with his bayonet. I can see him now, the tattoo on his bare arm. Corned beef had melted to slurry. We scooped it up with biscuits, ate it from the tin. Out there under the stars, it tasted better than foie gras.” The train jerked violently then slowed in a series of juddering halts. “What’s wrong with this damned train? We’ll never get there at this rate.”
He rubbed at the glass, but removing the condensation made no difference. The world outside had gone a misty, pearl gray. A horde of children appeared like ghosts out of the fog, running alongside the halting train, shouting, “Haben Sie Brot?” Some of the occupants of the dining car ignored them but others opened the windows and from all along the train came a shower of sandwiches, cigarettes, loose and in packets, chocolate bars.
“It was bad here,” Drummond said as the children swarmed toward the tracks. “They were more or less starving by the end of the war. The winter will be making it hard again. It’ll be the same thing from now on. Wherever the train stops or slows, crowds of children come from God knows where shouting: “Chockie Tommee! Fags Tommee! Butties Tommee!” The chaps throw them what they don’t want or what they can spare just to watch them scrabbling and fighting over it. Or maybe they feel sorry for the poor little sods.” Drummond threw what was left of the sausage and a couple of children dived for it. “You’ll see plenty like these where you’re going.”
One child did not move, just stared up at them. A little girl in a thin cardigan over a summer dress and what looked like sandals. She was just standing there in the enveloping mist, on ground gray with frost. Edith recalled a Control Commission briefing: a tall, sharp-featured woman in battledress tunic and navy skirt, an Education Officer who had just come back. She’d shown slide after slide of urban devastation, interspersed with grubby-looking children, playing in mountains of bricks and fallen masonry. “You won’t know what it is like until you get out there,” she’d said, white faced and solemn, as if she had scarcely believed it herself. Edith had noted down statistics: Cologne 92 percent of buildings unusable, only 162 primary schools in the whole of Schleswig-Holstein; but it was the children sitting on the rubble, their faces pinched and sullen, who had stayed with her. Whatever else she might be doing, she was there to make a difference to the lives of children. She must never lose sight of that.
The train gained speed. Drummond glanced out of the window. “Border soon. Papers at the ready.” Edith suddenly remembered the dratted gun. Her concern must have shown. “No need to look so worried.” He leaned forward. “They never search or anything. Well—” he grinned “—almost never.”
The checks were cursory, papers and passports only. Formalities over, the groups around them became more relaxed, passing round bottles of brandy and schnapps.
“It’s strange,” Drummond said, nodded toward the window. “Some places hardly touched, as if there had never been a war.” They were passing Bad Bentheim. It looked just like a postcard, or something from a fairy tale, a great castle standing on a bluff; the red roofs of the town spread out below it, dusted with snow. “Others . . .” He shrugged. “almost utterly destroyed.
It’s the same all over Germany.”
The next town of any size was Rheine. Here, the marshaling yards had been bombed extensively, the devastation spread out to the surrounding town, the houses and buildings bordering the line reduced to burned-out, blackened shells. The sidings were filled with the remains of goods trucks and wagons, sides splintered, burned down to the wheels; derailed engines lay rusting on their sides. Some recovery work was going on. Men cutting up a tender, the falling arc of yellow and red sparks the only color anywhere.
“Good to see someone trying to do something, even if it’s only righting an engine.” A burst of raucous laughter from the people sitting on the other side of the aisle caught his attention for a moment. “That’s what we do here while we’re supposed to be sorting out the mess we’ve created. Get drunk. Dream of other lives.”
Drummond looked away to the men working in the growing darkness.
The devastation grew greater as they approached Osnabrück. The train seemed to slow so that they could get a better look. As far as the eye could see, on either side of the line, only the odd church spire was left standing. In the distance, the jagged outline of what had once been blocks of tenements stood black against the last of the day.
“Serves them right, that’s what I say!” A girl’s voice, sharp and high, broke the silence that had spread through the carriage. She followed her remark with a fluting note of nervous laughter and there was a subdued rumble of agreement. The light was going, night coming on. The window turned into a reflecting mirror, and Edith studied the girl against the scrolling phantasmagoria: smoke curling from her cigarette holder, her vivid lipsticked bow of a mouth frozen in laughter, her eyes dark below thin, penciled brows, short blond hair set in sculpted waves.
Drummond watched the group, his mouth set in a straight line.
“The train divides here.” He stood up. “This is where I leave you.”
He retrieved his belongings and shrugged on his greatcoat. They stood in the corridor. Drummond lit a cigarette.
“You’ll be a while. Engine change. The damage here is immense. It gets worse the farther north you get.” He nodded toward the dining car. “Not sure how much help they’re going to be. Good war types, skittish about civilian life, wanting to prolong the party. Can’t blame them, really, I suppose. Pretty dreary back home, what with rationing and all that. Here you can have anything you want.” He stared into the darkness outside. “And I do mean anything.” He looked back at her, his gray-green eyes hardened to serpentine. “Don’t get me wrong—I’m not soft on them. The Germans. I’ve seen Belsen, which is more than that lot has. Believe me, everything you’ve heard about that place is true, and it’s not even the worst, not by a long chalk, but this ‘give them a dose of their own medicine’ . . .” He shook his head. “I don’t go along with it. We need civilians. I’m not saying we don’t. Military has enough to do. I’m just not sure we’re getting the right sort. I don’t mean you, of course. You’re not like them at all, or the other kind, for that matter.”
“The other kind?”
“Bureaucrats, pen pushers with briefcases full of red tape. Either that, or Colonel Chinstraps.” He smiled down at her. “Don’t let them tie you up in it, Edith. They’ll find a hundred reasons to do nothing. Find your own way. Get things done.” A whistle blew. “I’d better be off.” He pulled down the window and gripped the outside handle to open the carriage door. “Thank you for making the journey such a pleasant one.” He gave her a mock salute. “Auf Wiedersehen!”
He shouldered his bag and turned to wave before he set off down the long platform. Edith was sorry to see him go. She’d liked Drummond. He was intriguing. Easy, amusing company, although he’d been reluctant to talk overmuch about what he was actually doing here, or what he’d done in the war. “Oh, you know, this and that in the usual places.” Some men’s reticence came from a desire to forget, get on with civilian life. He wasn’t like that, the opposite in fact. Still in uniform. Very much the soldier. It was not what was said, but what wasn’t that mattered. The words unspoken.
Edith went back to her compartment. The blinds were drawn now, blue lights in operation. Most of the carriage was asleep. It was warm enough in there, even stuffy, but cold outside, very cold, she could feel it through the window. She arranged Dori’s coat like a blanket, turning her face into the corner. The worn moquette, the smell of dust and smoke, reminded her of another journey she’d taken.
Easter 1933. Going to see Kurt for their long-anticipated reunion after that wonderful summer. It had been cold then, but not as cold as this. She’d booked a couchette but had found it taken. Too shy to oust the large Germany lady who occupied it, she had slunk back to her place in the ordinary carriage and sat huddled into the corner, unable to sleep. She hadn’t eaten all day. The sandwiches she’d brought had turned rancid. Fish paste. Not a wise choice. But it was not hunger that had kept her awake. It had been nearly a whole year since she’d seen him but now she was on her way, now it was finally happening, her anticipation, her excitement were rapidly evaporating, distilling into fear. She’d wanted to halt the inexorable forward motion of the train, stop the wheels from turning, send them into reverse to take her back to everything that was safe, to the world she knew.
She shifted in her seat, trying to find a more comfortable position. It wasn’t just the smell of the moquette, in the cold, early morning, eerie blue-lit darkness, fear was seeping into her like the chill through the seal around the glass. Had she done the right thing? Was she really cut out for this? Was she mad to do it? That’s what they thought at home. Should she have stayed there? Done what was expected? She’d had a job, a family, security. Chucking it all could turn out to be the very height of folly. She was already feeling at a disadvantage, as though everyone else knew the ropes. They probably didn’t, but that was little comfort. There had been a hectic quality about that group in the dining car that she’d found disconcerting, as though they were using brandy and bravado to allay their own insecurities.
What if this journey turned out as badly as that last one?
Gradually, the rhythm of the rattling carriage, the turning of the wheels on the tracks, lulled her into a fitful sleep broken by sudden jolts and starts, voices shouting, whistles shrilling, steam shunting, the hiss and shriek of the engine as it rolled into stations and out again taking her on, deeper into Germany, into the dark unknown.
7
Hotel Atlantic, Hamburg
5th January 1946
Breakfast Menu
Mushroom Omelette
Oeufs au Jambon
Rolls & Comfiture
Coffee
I chose the Omelette over the Ham and Eggs.* A good choice--made with real eggs, flecked with tarragon, and scattered with champignons. Everything about it “continental,” from the deep-yellow yolks to the strongly scented tarragon to the tiny wild mushrooms.
See recipe for Savory Omelette in Cheese, Eggs, and Vegetarian p. 178. Add 5 or 6 mushrooms (sliced). *Breakfast dishes p. 229.
For sweet version see p. 180. Simple dish but needs great care. One has to be as watchful as when preparing something more complex, like crêpes suzette, or there is a danger of ruining it--most unpalatable.
Edith woke stiff and cold as the train pulled into Hamburg Hauptbahnhof. End of the line, she was practically the last person on the train. She collected her suitcase and stepped down to the platform. There was no glass between the vast, curved girders of the great arching roof. The clouds of smoke and steam from the engine billowed up into the blackness. A few snowflakes sifted down, starring the sleeve of her coat.
At the end of the platform, the Rail Transport officer came out of his small makeshift booth, not at all happy about leaving the comforting warmth of his paraffin heater for the biting cold of the open station.
He barely glanced at Edith’s travel documents, just jerked his head toward the barrier. Edith picked up her suitcase and walked on through the cavernous station. She was to brea
k her journey in Hamburg before going on to Lübeck. It was 5:55 a.m. by the huge station clock. She looked around the deserted station, at the signs and notices, the heavy gothic lettering, and the doubts and fears of the night journey faded. She took a firmer grip on her suitcase, heard her own heels echoing as she made her way to the main entrance. She was here. In Germany. She had arrived.
She halted. The orders hadn’t specified exactly where in Hamburg, just she’d be “met.” There was no sign of anybody, and she had been traveling for almost two days. She was cold, tired, in need of a hot bath and coffee, and not at all certain what was going to happen next.
“Miss Graham?”
Edith turned at her name. A man in uniform was running after her. She was nearly at the entrance to the station. What she had taken to be a pile of rubbish stirred; a bundle of rags wriggled and burrowed deeper into a filthy corner. There were people here, sheltering from the cold.
“You don’t half go at a clip. Thought I’d missed you.” The man touched the peak of his cap. “Jack Hunter, ma’am. Your driver. I was in the RTO’s hut getting warm.” He shepherded her out of the station, skirting round a frozen mound of rubble that had once been one of the towers at the main entrance. “Car’s over here.”
A driver. She hadn’t been expecting that. Very grand. She could hear the chorus at home, Edith getting above herself. He conducted her to a black Humber parked by the side of the station. He was tall, well over average height, bulky in his overcoat. Dark hair curled from under the edge of his cap.
He opened the trunk and stowed her case and traveling bag. “You travel light.”
“I’m having the rest sent over.”
“Very wise.”
He held the rear door open for her.
“I’d prefer to sit up in the front, if you don’t mind.”
“Suit yourself.” He got in next to her and started the car.
“Would you mind telling me where we are going?”
“Atlantic Hotel. Regional Headquarters. You aren’t due in Lübeck ’til Monday. Office is shut. Weekend, see? Miss Esterhazy booked you in here. Recover from your journey, like.”