by Celia Rees
“I’d better not. I still have those blasted Fragebogen to get through. There are good people,” she said as they went into the dining room. “Dismissed by the Nazis, Trade Unionists, and so on. They’re mostly getting on a bit, but they’re still around. I think they could be used to recruit staff. They know the difference between those who were dedicated Nazis and those who weren’t. Better, at any rate, than a bunch of retired policemen who don’t speak German and are only here to add to their pensions. It drives Jeff mad!”
“Who’s Jeff?”
“He works in Public Safety. They vet the Germans.”
“Is Jeff your boyfriend?”
“Oh, no. We’re not going out or anything! We go to the pictures sometimes, that’s all.”
A sudden swipe of rose madder across Roz’s cheek said it might be something more.
Before she could say anything, a waiter came to show them into the dining room.
“They feed us well, Miss Graham,” Roz said as she picked up a menu. “Mostly out of a can, bland, boring, but there’s plenty of it.” She put on her glasses to see what was offered that day. “Cabbage, now. That won’t be out of a can, nor the potatoes. Beef is another thing. Spotted Dick.” She grimaced. “I might give that a miss. I’ve put on pounds since I came out here.” Miss Esterhazy laughed, showing little pearly teeth. “Food is all anybody ever talks about. And drink, of course.” She gazed out of the window. “Us in here stuffing ourselves and swilling; them out there more or less starving. The German ration is hardly enough to keep body and soul together. It seems wrong.”
She broke off and looked around at the other diners. She didn’t need to say what didn’t seem right to her, or to Edith, for that matter, but that was how things were. To the victor, the spoils.
“Staffing is not the only problem,” Roz said as their soup arrived. “All the textbooks are ‘contaminated’ by Nazi ideology, even the math books are useless. Needless to say, there aren’t any replacements. Then there’s the buildings. Those still standing need repair or are in danger of being requisitioned for other uses. Even when we have got a building, there’s no fuel to heat it. There’s a shortage of everything. And the children. Lübeck’s already overcrowded, more coming adds to a significant refugee problem, children separated from parents and vice versa. And we’ve got to get them into the schools. Lack of shoes is a particular difficulty, given the winter we’re having. Add that to a lack of adequate clothing and nourishment—how can children learn with no food inside them? Most come after no breakfast at all. Sorry.” She smiled her apology. “I’m running on a bit.”
“Not at all,” Edith said as she finished her rather gluey soup. “It’s best to know.”
Roz laughed as the next course arrived: brown stew, boiled cabbage, and mashed potatoes, carefully marshaled on the plate. “See? I was right!”
“The Brigadier made it all sound more than a little, er, hopeless,” Edith ventured as the waiter came to collect their plates.
“He’s pretty overwhelmed, poor lamb. Just about given up, easier to sit on your hands. It doesn’t have to be like that.” Roz moved the cruet with nervous fingers, making patterns on the tablecloth. “There are things we can do. I’ve got ideas. But he won’t listen. I’m just a secretary.” She sighed and looked at her watch. “No time for coffee. I’d better be getting back.”
“I’ll walk with you.”
They retraced their steps back to the office. It was colder, if anything. A dusting of snow falling.
“Your friend, Jeff?” Edith asked, as they passed the faded messages fluttering in the bitter wind. “Could he find somebody?” She kept her voice casual. “A German, I mean.”
“I could ask him.” Roz stopped and looked at Edith. “Who is it?”
“A woman I knew before the war.” Edith brushed a gloved hand over the little notices. “From the east. Prussia up near the Polish border. She had relatives near Lübeck. I wondered if she was here, that’s all.”
“It’s possible. There’s a lot here from the east. Give me her name and I’ll pass it on to him.”
11
CCG Billet, Lübeck
7th January 1946
Billet Dinner
Beef Broth with Dumplings
Braised Beef
Sauerkraut, Carrots, Peas
Steckrübengratin
Rice Pudding with Apricots
Cooking is done by Germans, and the food reflects that. Not all of it popular with the billetees. Instinctively suspicious of the dumplings in the broth, although they were delicious. Disliked the Steckrübengratin—-made from swede and they share my feelings about sauerkraut!
The billet was in a large suburban villa situated in another untouched suburb. A German girl answered the door and showed Edith in without a word. She took her bag and disappeared upstairs. Another girl took her coat and hat.
“Danke. Wie heißen Sie?”
“Grete.”
“Danke, Grete.” She smiled, but Grete did not smile back.
An English girl in an unbuttoned CCG battledress jacket appeared in the doorway of the sitting room smoking a cigarette with nervous vigor. She regarded this exchange with impatience, prominent blue eyes unblinking. She looked young, despite the aggressive smoking, younger than Roz, the roundness of childhood still in her face. She wore her curly brown hair severely parted, pinned at the sides in an effort to tame it. She was wearing a red roll-top sweater under her jacket and slacks instead of a skirt.
“You must be the mysterious Miss Graham.” She pushed herself off the doorframe. “I’m Angela. Angela Parker. Friends call me Angie.”
“Nice to meet you, Angela. I’m Edith.”
“Come in. You must be perishing.” Angela led the way into a high-ceilinged room, heated by a large ceramic stove in the corner, gratifyingly warm after the cold outside. Angela threw herself down into a leather armchair. “Make yourself at home.”
She waved a hand toward an overstuffed settee adorned with a quantity of appliqued cushions. Edith sat down as directed and looked round the room. Empty bookcases, but the heavy sideboard was laden with ornaments—ceramic flowers, figurines, decorated vases, porcelain animals: a Bambi, a rabbit, and a couple of German shepherd dogs, painted plates showing thatched chalets, water mills, pastoral scenes. Images of an idealized Germany, long gone if it ever existed. A note: Not To Touch Plse was tacked next to the display. Her eyes were drawn up to the wall above, to the pale oblong space where the portrait of Hitler must have been.
“Sorry about the getup.” Angela pulled at the collar of her sweater. “It’s bloody cold in the office. Working in coats, scarves, gloves, the lot.”
“What do you do?”
“I’m a typist in the Legal Division. You?”
“Education.”
“Don’t think we’ve got anyone from your mob. There’s six of us now. Seven with you. Not a bad crowd. Would you like some tea?”
“Oh, yes, please. That would be lovely.”
“You!” It took Edith a second to understand that the girl was addressing Grete. “Tea. Quick. Schnell, schnell. Comprenez?”
“Verstehen,” Edith said quietly.
“Sorry?”
“Verstehen,” Edith repeated. “It’s the German word for understand.”
“German speaker, eh?” the girl said with some distrust. “Doesn’t do to spoil them.”
“Who?”
“The girls who work here particularly, but any of them, really.” She waved her cigarette as if to indicate the German nation in general. “It doesn’t do to be the least bit familiar,” she added with certainty, “or they’ll take advantage.” She stubbed out her cigarette with a quick jabbing motion. “Still a bit too arrogant for my liking, and look where that got them? We’re here to teach them a lesson, not pal with them. Don’t you agree?”
Edith could not have agreed less, but said nothing. This girl must have been at school for most of the war and probably hadn’t been here long but had quick
ly picked up the prevalent prejudices. In order to be accepted, no doubt, be part of the crowd.
“Put it down on the table.” Angela spoke to the German girl loudly and slowly, enunciating each syllable, as though she was half-witted. “Now. Go. I will pour.” She turned to Edith. “How do you like it?”
“Milk. No sugar.”
“It’s real milk. Not out of a tin,” Angela said with some pride as she poured the tea. “Don’t worry, Edith, you’ll soon get the hang of it,” she added, with the brisk patronage of the very young.
“How long have you been here, Angela?”
“Positively ages. Since October. I’m an old hand. I can show you the ropes.” She handed a cup to Edith. “We like to have dinner about seven-thirty. Drinks down here at seven. You’ll have a chance to meet the others. Oh, and we like to dress. Not too formal, but it gives us an excuse to get out of this beastly uniform.”
Edith’s room was warm. Warmish, anyway. Heated by a stove in the corner. The bed was made up, her suitcase on the top of the covers, her battered Gladstone by its side. Dori’s fur coat swung alone in the hulking mahogany wardrobe. Precious few hangers, she should have thought of that, but plenty of storage space. Even when her trunk arrived, she doubted she would fill half of it.
Steam curled from a china basin and ewer placed for her on a marble-topped washstand. A towel, worn but clean, hung from a rail at the side. The German girl must have brought it up for her. Dinner would be soon. She found her toiletry bag, stripped off her uniform. She seemed to have been in it for days.
She put on her shantung dressing gown and went over to the walnut-veneered, kidney-shaped dressing table and began to set out her things: her Mason Pearson hairbrush, Bluegrass talc, box of face powder, claiming the space as her own. The stool was too high. The dusty-pink velvet seat was slightly worn on one side, faintly marked by old spillages, the trace of a lipstick smear. As Edith adjusted it down, she wondered what had happened to the woman who’d once lived here. No one knew or cared less. Got what she deserved, that’s what would be said, but Edith could not help but think about her putting on lipstick and powder in that automatic way one does when off to dinner, or a dance, or just shopping, meeting friends for cake and coffee, without the least inkling. Where was she now? Turned out of this grand house, her comfortable life, to go where? She’d had to leave all this. Edith touched the Art Deco green glass trays that furnished the dressing table. The matching frosted glass-lidded bowl still held dusting powder. Gardenia. The scent of the woman who had left it. She was reminded of Elisabeth.
The room was at the back of the house and looked out over the garden. Steps led from a wide terrace to the flat expanse of lawn going down to a scatter of fruit trees, their branches black against an iron-gray sky.
Footprints marked a well-trodden path through the snow to the bottom of the garden before disappearing into a tangle of bushes. Perhaps there was a woodpile down there, or something, although there were plenty of logs cut and stacked under the eaves. Curious.
The smell of cooking percolated from below, carrying with it the hint of what they would be eating for dinner, a whiff of beef boiled with root vegetables and beneath that something else. Insidious and persistent, sharp but with a musty under note of decay. Sauerkraut. Her mind shied from the memories it evoked. She found herself swallowing. The slightest hint brought instant nausea. She wondered if she might make her excuses, but it was her first night. They were supposed to dress, Angela had said. She reviewed the contents of her suitcase and selected a midnight-blue jersey dress with a shawl collar—not too formal, but not too casual either—and hoped it would do.
She pulled on a pair of heels and went downstairs to cigarette smoke and conversation gusting from the sitting room. As she came in, the room went quiet.
“Edith! Come and join us!” Angela rushed to fill the silence. She’d changed into a tight navy skirt and a silk, spotted blouse tied at the neck. “Let me introduce you . . .”
Miss Barratt, Miss Potts, Miss Jones, Miss Campbell. Respectively, Lorna, Ginny, Frances, and Jo all stared, as wary as a new class. Edith tried to fix them in her mind as she would do at school. Lorna Barratt: older, tall redhead, long, pale face. Ginny Potts: young looking, pretty, pointed nose, chin-length light-brown hair pushed back with an Alice band. Frances (Franny) Jones: thin face, narrow shoulders, deep-set dark eyes, crisp black hair set into tight waves. Jo Campbell: good-looking, slightly bohemian, short dark hair tied with an emerald scarf, scarlet lipstick, large brown eyes outlined with khol. They all worked in clerical or secretarial positions in various branches of the Control Commission: Miss Barratt in Finance, Miss Potts in Public Safety, Miss Jones in the Quartermaster’s Office, Miss Campbell in Displaced Persons.
“What’s your poison, Edith?” Angela asked, going over to a line of bottles on the wide sideboard. “We’ve got most things. Whisky and soda? Gin and It?”
Edith settled for a whisky and soda.
“Bottoms up!”
“Here’s mud in your eye!”
They raised their glasses then all spoke at once, eager to fill in the newcomer, impress her with how much they were “in the know.” The shortages—soap generally, soap flakes in particular, be sure to ask for a box of Lux when you write home. “Oh, and STs,” Ginny said, with a sideways glance at the others. “Make sure you get sent plenty of those.”
“Yes, jam rags always in short supply,” Angela added loudly, defying Jo’s impatient sigh and Lorna’s disapproving frown.
The subject changed to food. Plentiful but monotonous, prone to unaccountable shortages. One week no potatoes, the next? Potatoes but no onions. There was sauerkraut, every nose wrinkled, and root vegetables—especially swede, cue for further nose wrinkling. Everything else was out of a can. Who cooked? Frau Schmidt, the housekeeper, with the help of the German girls, who also served and did the cleaning, washing, and general housework. None of these girls slept in the house. They went home in the evening and came back in the morning to light the fires, heat the water, and prepare breakfast.
“We don’t have to do a thing. It’s a jolly good life, really,” Angie summed up. “Better than at home, anyway.”
The others nodded. They were from Leicester, Bedford, Salisbury, Brighton. English provincial. They spoke of their hometowns with pride but little nostalgia. Better here.
Talk turned to Frau Schmidt, a “real treasure” running the house and keeping the German girls up to snuff. Her husband, Stephan, on the other hand, was altogether useless, didn’t do much of anything, unless Molly was doing the asking, then he jumped to it all right! Heaven knew why Frau Schmidt put up with him . . .
Edith had yet to meet the housekeeper, or the mysterious Molly, but at that moment, as if summoned, in the housekeeper came.
“Frau Graham? So pleased you have come, gnädige Frau!” She smoothed her palms down her wraparound apron before shaking hands. “Grete tells me you speak German. Good. Good!”
She nodded. Every word set her glossy, chestnut curls bobbing, the set and texture so unvarying that it had to be a wig. Her smile exposed gleamingly even dentures that didn’t quite fit. There was something false about the smile, and it wasn’t just the teeth. Her eyes remained as hard as onyx. She was a large woman, buxom, with a fresh, shiny complexion, as if her skin was about to burst. “It is how I am,” she would say. “The way I was born.” Edith wasn’t so sure. Most of the Germans bore at least some of the marks of malnutrition. Frau Schmidt was positively rubicund. Not everyone had suffered privation during the war, and she wasn’t doing too badly now, by the look of things.
Frau Schmidt was charming enough to the residents, rather less so to the servant girls. From the beginning, she regarded Edith with a certain caution: older, more senior, and could speak German. Frau Schmidt was not in a position to show any kind of outright hostility, but she would not be above making Edith’s life in the billet less than comfortable through little, irritating acts of sly subversion: belongings misla
id, laundry misdirected, requests ignored or not carried out.
After the first introductions and the buzz of sharing knowledge with a newcomer, the girls in the billet more or less ignored Edith. The talk swirled and eddied around her. She might as well have been eating alone. The meal that first evening began with soup: beef broth with dumplings. The girls negotiated the thin liquid, carefully avoiding the little dumplings. Braised beef followed, more gravy than anything, served with a kind of swede gratin. “Swede again!” Miss Campbell grimaced, and the others laughed as if at some shared joke. The sauerkraut was even less popular. None of them touched the pile of grayish-green shreds. Even the sight of it, the sour rottenish smell of it, was enough for Edith. She could feel a migraine beginning, the pain in her right temple sharpening, a flickering of the light as though a bulb was about to pop. For once, she almost welcomed it. It would give her an excuse to leave the table. Give it a few more minutes.
Edith tried to focus on the talk around her. One of their number was missing. Molly. Molly Slater. Frau Schmidt had already inquired as to her whereabouts, and the talk centered about her: Molly did this, Molly said that.
There was a screech outside and the sound of a powerful engine dying to an idling growl. Ginny Potts ran to the window.
“That’s her now.”
Miss Slater came in with much theatrical shivering, clutching what looked very much like a mink coat around her.
“Darlings! It’s positively brass monkeys out there.”
“Did you come home on the motorbike?” Ginny ventured.
“In this weather? Dressed like this? Are you mad? Mercedes, if you don’t mind!”
As if to confirm it, a horn honked twice, an engine roared and wheels squealed.
“You’ve missed dinner,” Lorna offered.
Molly grimaced. “Small mercies! Now, will someone please get me a drink before I expire!”
Angie hurried to obey. Molly took her seat at the end of the table. Ginny offered her a cigarette.