The Dressmaker of Dachau

by Mary Chamberlain

  Ada took the documentation, read the title, Distressed British Subject. She traced her name with her finger, Ada Vaughan. British citizen, displaced in the course of conflict, eligible for repatriation to the United Kingdom.

  She’d heard how the Germans had bombed London. What if the house wasn’t there? How would she find her family?

  ‘It will be fine,’ Sister Brigitte said. ‘They’ll be so happy to see you.’

  She held her pass in her hand. Keep these papers on you at all times. They are valuable documents. Non-transferable.

  She didn’t have long.

  The jeep had an open top. It was early June. The weather had turned and the air was soft and warm.

  ‘It ain’t a limousine, I know,’ Frank said. He and Sister Brigitte were sitting in the front, Ada balanced on the small bench seat behind. ‘Not built for ladies, I’ll say that. But she’s a sturdy little warhorse,’ he patted the steering wheel affectionately. ‘And she’ll get us there.’

  He turned round and grinned. ‘I never thought you were a real nun,’ he said. ‘I knew when I first clapped eyes on you. You gotta be something else.’

  He was driving fast and Ada had to hold tight to the back of his seat. He tooted his horn at an emaciated dog, veered round a hole in the road.

  ‘Just would you believe it? I told the Sarge. You remember him? I said to the Sarge, guess what Sarge, you know that nun you rescued? Well, turns out she wasn’t a nun. Just a regular dame. But say, Ada—’ he turned round again. ‘You’re some looker.’

  Ada smiled a thank you. An unfamiliar surge of heat crept up her face. Frank’s hair was short and jagged beneath his cap. There were specks of dandruff on his collar. His hands gripped the wheel, dark hairs curled from the cuffs of his jacket.

  ‘So, you’re going back home,’ he went on. ‘Leaving me all alone.’

  Munich was full of people. They were shabby and thin, wandered round with string bags in their hands, or packages wrapped in brown paper. One stopped an American soldier, pulled out a clock from the package. The soldier shook his head. Rubble had been bulldozed into mounds twenty or thirty feet high. Women and children were swarming over them, picking at the stones with bare hands, digging with bits of broken wood or scraping at the surface. A woman was pulling at something buried deep, tugging it out through the broken bricks which tumbled down the slope as she did so.

  ‘What are you going to do there?’ Frank said.

  ‘Where?’ Ada said.

  ‘Back home.’

  Ada shrugged. She hadn’t thought, not beyond that first moment when she opened the door and saw them all, Mum, Dad and the rest.

  ‘Come to America,’ Frank said suddenly. ‘I’d look after you. Feed you up.’ He glanced sideways to Sister Brigitte. ‘As God and Sister Brigitte are my witnesses, I’d make an honest woman of you. We wouldn’t be rich, but we’d do all right. Put all this behind you. Start a fresh. Land of opportunity. What do you say, Ada?’ He turned round and grinned at her. ‘Marry me.’

  ‘Marry you?’ Ada laughed. ‘I don’t know you.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’ Frank was shouting above the noise of the engine. ‘I knew when I first clapped eyes on you. You’re the one for me.’

  ‘And Thomas?’

  ‘Kids too, I love them all.’

  Ada saw his shoulders rise, high enough to swallow the sky. ‘If you were the only girl in the world, and I were the only boy.’ His voice soared above the clatter of the street, pure as a caress, clean enough for heaven itself. It reminded her of her father who sang like a nightingale. He used to sing this song too, standing round the piano in the pub, or serenading her mother in the kitchen on the good days when they weren’t arguing. Ada had not heard anything so beautiful for a long time. Maybe she could follow that voice. America. Marry Frank.

  He slowed down, turned and faced her again, ‘Nothing else would matter in the world today. We could go on loving in the same old way.’ He stopped, concentrated on navigating his way through the broken street. A woman rushed up to them in a shabby skirt and a man’s shirt and shoes, hammered on the side of the jeep.

  ‘You fat Yanks,’ she was yelling. ‘What about us Germans?’

  Ada looked away, took a deep breath and opened her mouth.

  ‘A garden of Eden just made for two

  With nothing to mar our joy.’

  Sing, Frank. Sing, please.

  They had left the city and were on the open road to Dachau. Here and there a farmer was ploughing the land, or sowing seeds, coaxing the countryside back to life. There were orchards with small pellets of new-born fruit. Apples, Ada guessed, or cherries. Villages with wooden houses and heavy, over-hanging roofs. One or two of the houses had geraniums in boxes on the balconies, gaudy red blossoms against the black, seasoned wood behind. Thomas.

  ‘Ada, I don’t think you should raise your hopes,’ Sister Brigitte cautioned. ‘I don’t want to see you disappointed. Or hurt.’ She turned round in her seat and faced Ada. ‘Maybe best to leave it.’

  ‘I can’t,’ Ada said. ‘I must know.’ She had lived with the heartache of Thomas, with the dread and despair of losing him. She couldn’t stop her search now, before she had even begun. ‘What if Father Friedel didn’t go to the orphanage? Gave him straight to Frau Weiss. We must be able to trace her.’

  ‘You have no proof that child was Thomas. Just because you wanted it to be true doesn’t make it so. Have you thought of that?’

  If Sister Brigitte thought she was on a fool’s errand, she would prove her wrong. Ada knew, as only a mother could know, that the child was Thomas. She would find him. Rescue him. The orphanage would tell her where he was. Frau Weiss would be traced. Thomas would recognize her. He’d come with her. She’d have to teach him English, but he’d pick it up fast enough. Knock at the door in Theed Street. Ada? Ada, is that you? Oh my lawd! And who’s this little lad? Tommy. This is Tommy. She’d look behind, beckon him to come. Oh, I nearly forgot. This is Frank, Mum. We’re getting married.

  ‘Here we are,’ Frank said, steering the jeep up a driveway towards a large house. He stopped the car, helped Sister Brigitte down, then Ada. He leant against the bonnet, and fished out his cigarettes from his pocket. ‘I’ll wait here.’

  Ada squeezed Sister Brigitte’s hand. This is it. They pulled the bell and heard it ring inside, a deep sonorous gong, like a cymbal. No one came. They rang again. Ada looked at Frank, called over to him, ‘Are you sure this is the place?’

  ‘As far as I know.’

  ‘Wait,’ Ada said. She leant towards the door, ear flat against the wood. ‘Someone’s coming.’

  They heard bolts wrenched back and a key turn. A woman in a grey dress and a stiff white apron and cap opened the door.

  ‘Ja? Was wollen sie?’

  Ada took a breath. She hadn’t spoken German for a month, and wasn’t sure how to start. ‘I’m looking for a child,’ she said. ‘A little boy. My little boy. I believe he may have come here. As a baby.’

  ‘Believe?’ the nurse said. ‘May? Did he or didn’t he?’ She narrowed her eyes at Ada. ‘You’re not German, are you?’

  ‘No,’ Ada said, ‘I’m British.’

  ‘How could we have a British baby here?’

  ‘You wouldn’t know he was British,’ she said. ‘A priest, Father Friedel, brought him. He’d just been born.’ Still bloody from the birth, the cord tied with an old piece of string. Ada saw him now, his limbs spread-eagled, a little frog with bulging eyes. ‘In 1941, February 1941.’

  The nurse snorted. ‘So long ago.’

  ‘But you’ll have records,’ Ada said. ‘You could check.’

  ‘Records? They were destroyed in the bombing. Ask him.’ She tilted her head at Frank. ‘Ask the Americans where the records are.’

  ‘But do you remember?’ Ada said. ‘Father Friedel. He was old. He would have had the baby in his bag.’

  ‘How would I know?’ she said. ‘I wasn’t here then.’ She turned to Fran
k, shouted at him. ‘We need food, medicine. The children are ill. Typhus. We need help.’ She faced Ada again. ‘Not time-wasters.’

  She stepped inside and began to close the door. Ada slipped her foot onto the threshold.

  ‘He had a teddy bear,’ Ada said. ‘A little knitted bear.’

  The nurse rolled her eyes. ‘Every child has a knitted bear.’

  ‘A brown one.’

  ‘Brown ones.’ She squeezed the door against Ada’s foot. Ada winced. She could not give up.

  ‘Frau Weiss,’ she said. ‘Do you know Frau Weiss?’

  ‘Weiss?’

  ‘The Commandant’s wife?’

  ‘The Commandant?’ she said, ‘Oh no. I don’t have anything to do with that lot. Never have. Nazis? I was never a Nazi. No, you can’t accuse me.’ She pushed the door harder.

  ‘I’ve lost my son,’ Ada’s voice was cracking. Keep calm. Calm. ‘She had a little boy. She and the Obersturmbannführer.’

  ‘I’ll tell you this for free,’ the nurse snorted again, ‘Martin Weiss was never married.’

  ‘He was.’ Ada knew, for sure.

  ‘No.’ The nurse was shaking her head. She squinted at Ada, leant forward and whispered, ‘Sodomite.’ Ada clasped her hands to her lips. Sister Brigitte looked puzzled and Ada wasn’t sure if she had heard.

  ‘He used to hang round here,’ the nurse went on in a soft voice. ‘I wasn’t born yesterday. I put a stop to that. Nearly cost me my job.’ The nurse had let go of the door and was standing with arms akimbo.

  ‘No,’ Ada said again. ‘That’s not possible. He had a wife. He had a son.’

  ‘I don’t know who the floozy was in that big house,’ the nurse said. ‘But she wasn’t his wife. And that wasn’t his son, unless he strapped his member to a toothbrush.’

  She kicked Ada’s foot away and slammed the door. The sound reverberated through Ada’s body, snapping her hope in half, strewing it across the barren gravel of the road. There was no wife, no Frau Weiss. She was some other woman with no name, vanished forever.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Sister Brigitte was saying, leading Ada back to the car. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘But Frau Weiss—’

  ‘An alias,’ Frank said. ‘Whoever was living with him has skedaddled. It’s a lost cause.’ He stood by the jeep shuffling his feet. ‘No papers. No record. No nothing. Needle in a haystack.’

  ‘You can’t be sure,’ Ada raised her voice. Frank had no right to say such cruel things. She saw it now. She could never go to America. Not without Thomas. She had to stay here, search for him.

  ‘Ada,’ Sister Brigitte said, taking her hand and stroking it. ‘You’ve done as much as you can.’

  ‘The Sister’s right,’ Frank said. ‘Come back again, when everything’s back to normal. In a year or so. Look for him then. People don’t know nothing now.’

  Ada looked at Frank. ‘You have him,’ she said. ‘You told me. You Americans have him. He’s a prisoner. Weiss. Ask him. What’s her name? Where is she?’

  ‘Listen, Ada,’ he said, squinting into the sun so his face screwed tight. ‘I’m sorry for your loss and all that. But I think we got bigger questions to put to Weiss than his girlfriend’s name.’ He pronounced it ‘goil’. His goilfriend’s name.

  Thomas had been taken from her four years, four months and ten days ago. He was alive.

  ‘Ada.’

  She ran down the driveway, back into the road. She could see the chimney of the camp over the rooftops. The streets were crowded with people and she had to dart and dodge, watching her step on the uneven cobbles and churned-up road. She could hear Frank’s jeep behind her. He was blasting the horn, revving the engine. She turned a corner.

  And there he was.

  In a brown trilby hat and a beige trenchcoat. Moustache, spectacles, smile. Hello Ada.

  ‘Stanislaus,’ she shouted, ‘Stanislaus.’

  He crossed the road. She raced after him, her breath surging in short, painful thrusts. She was weak, about to collapse. She had to catch him. Talk to him. Tell me you got lost. Tell me you looked for me. Dreamed about me, every day. You and me Ada, when the war’s over, we’ll make a go of it. She’d thought about him every day, thoughts hurling like a Catherine wheel, sparks of love and hate. Stanislaus and Thomas. Her family.

  He was gone. She stopped, panting. She must be imagining things.

  TWO

  London, July 1945

  Ada sat in the Ladies Only compartment of the train, staring at the peppered mirror opposite and the advertisements for Eastbourne and Bexhill-on-Sea, poster-blue skies and bright yellow sands. Southern Railways. The train was dirty, the windows thick with sooty smuts. She smiled at the other women with their curled sandwiches in greaseproof paper. Fish paste. Liver paste. Pilchards. The young lady from the Women’s Voluntary Service, a comely figure in green uniform and pink lipstick, had given them the sandwiches when they climbed on board. It was a long time since Ada had seen someone like that, someone womanly. She ran her hand down the hollows of her body. She went in where she should have gone out. No bosom. No hips. She was fatter than she had been before, thanks to Sister Brigitte, but she could still count her ribs. The other women in the carriage were thin too, all DBS’s like her. Distressed British Subjects. That’s what they called them. She thought she’d been a prisoner or an internee. That, at least, gave her a character, a persona with a past, after all these years. But a DBS? Who was that?

  Home. Should she knock? Open the door and walk right in? Hello. Only me. It’s our Ada. She’s back. Cissie, her sister. She was eleven when Ada left. She’d be a young woman now. Out at work. Their big sister, safely home. All together again. Alf and Fred, Bill and Gladys, Mum and Dad. Sitting in that kitchen, warm from the range and steamy from the washing draped to dry. Ada, love, put the kettle on. Let’s have a cup of tea. Maybe Dad would send Fred to the pub for a jug of stout. Good to have you back, girl. Mum fussing. Neck of lamb from O’Connor’s. Pearl barley. Dumplings. You could do with some weight, bit of feeding up.

  Ada rubbed the window with her cuff but the dirt was on the outside and it was difficult to see through. They shunted through dilapidated towns and dog-eared villages. England was poorer than she remembered. The fields in between the towns flared ochre and green in the bright July sun, glowed with life and colour. There were woodlands, heavy oaks and beech and more houses. Suburbs. Chuggety-chug, semi-detached houses covered in pebbledash. Chuggety-chug through allotments and gardens with bean frames and early potatoes. Mum had always wanted to move to a place like this. Purley. Purley Oaks. Sanderstead. Her friend Blanche had moved to the suburbs. Petit bourgeois, Dad had said. Nobody lives in Purley.

  The train was down to a dawdle. Balham. Clapham Junction. This was London? Whole streets gone, nothing but empty façades and lopsided walls. Anxiety began to scratch at her gut. Ada pressed her nose against the glass. Some of the ruins had been fenced off and displayed clumsy notices Keep Off and Danger. She could see children climbing through the stones, holding their fingers like guns. Bang bang. Battersea, the power station still standing. Vauxhall. There was the Thames, in full view. It was low tide, the banks brown as slugs, the river a dirty worm, busy with tugs and barges and dredgers. She pulled down the window. She could hear their hooters, echoing from side to side. She’d heard them as a child, melancholy trumpets of loss.

  County Hall. That was still there and Big Ben. She sat forward. The river. This was wrong. You shouldn’t be able to see the river, not from here. Where had all the works gone? The timber yards and brickmakers? The Tramways Department and the printers? The storage and the wharfs? Where were the gantries? Where was Belvedere Road?

  Her mouth tasted dry, the metallic salt of panic. What about their house, their street? What if they weren’t there? Had her family been killed? Blasted away, their gnarled limbs and tortured bodies dug from the broken bricks and twisted boards? Or what if they’d moved? How would she find them?

  The train pulled
into Waterloo. The sewing machine had been too heavy to lift into the luggage rack, and there hadn’t been a porter to hand so Ada had pushed it under the seat. She picked it up, stepped down. They were hustled off the platform and into a makeshift office with ‘Joint War Organisation’ pinned to the door. The woman in charge was busty, her chest straining at the buttons of her grey uniform. Her skirt was drawn tight across her hips, creased round the groin where she sat. She was huffing, shuffling papers, annoyed, as if Ada was disturbing her.

  ‘If you were a soldier,’ she said, slamming the files on her desk, ‘a proper prisoner of war, I’d know what’s what. I wouldn’t be dealing with you for a start. But civilians.’ She curled her lip. ‘Women. What do we do with you?’

  ‘I don’t mean to be a nuisance,’ Ada said, looking behind her at the other women in the queue. ‘I’m not the only one.’

  The busty woman looked at Ada and shook her head. ‘More’s the pity.’ She pulled out a large, black money box from a drawer and slapped it on the desk. ‘There’s not much we can do for any of you, except give you the fare home.’ She fished out four half-crowns and handed them to Ada. ‘Ex gratia,’ she said.

  Ada didn’t know what that meant but it felt like charity. Didn’t see why she should be made to feel like a tramp.

  ‘You have got somewhere to go, I take it?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Ada said, looking the woman in the eye. ‘Yes.’ She placed the coins back on the table. ‘It’s all right. I don’t need them. I only live round the corner.’

  The woman raised an eyebrow. ‘Take it,’ she said. ‘It’s all you’re going to get. You can apply for your coupons. Over there.’ She pointed to some forms. ‘Are you single?’

  Ada nodded.

  ‘Hmm.’ The woman snorted, leant to one side and, looking over Ada’s shoulder, called, ‘Next.’

  Ada took the money, picked up her sewing machine and walked out into the station concourse. Waterloo. She wanted to pinch herself. Here she was, at last. Home. The machine was heavy. She fingered a half-crown. Left Luggage. She’d collect it later. Get Dad to carry it for her, or Alf or Fred. What you doing with this, Ada? Bring it all the way back, did you?