Winter of the World

by Ken Follett

  Maud addressed him in the crisp upper-class English she had spoken as a girl. "I must see your commanding officer immediately."

  Carla admired her mother's nerve and poise, as always.

  The sentry looked doubtfully at Maud's threadbare coat, but after a moment he tapped on the door. It opened, and a face looked out. "English lady wants the CO," said the sentry.

  A moment later the door opened again and two people looked out. They might have been caricatures of a British officer and his wife: he in his mess kit with a black bow tie, she in a long dress and pearls.

  "Good evening," Maud said. "I'm frightfully sorry to disturb your party."

  They stared at her, astonished to be spoken to that way by a woman in rags.

  Maud went on: "I just thought you should see what you're doing to these wretched people outside."

  The couple looked at the crowd.

  Maud said: "You might draw the curtains, for pity's sake."

  After a moment the woman said: "Oh, dear, George, have we been terribly unkind?"

  "Unintentionally, perhaps," the man said gruffly.

  "Could we possibly make amends by sending some food out to them?"

  "Yes," Maud said quickly. "That would be a kindness as well as an apology."

  The officer looked dubious. It was probably against some kind of regulation to give canapes to starving Germans.

  The woman pleaded: "George, darling, may we?"

  "Oh, very well," said her husband.

  The woman turned back to Maud. "Thank you for alerting us. We really didn't mean to do this."

  "You're welcome," Maud said, and she retreated down the path.

  A few minutes later, guests began to emerge from the house with plates of sandwiches and cakes, which they offered to the starving crowd. Carla grinned. Her mother's impudence had paid off. She took a large piece of fruitcake, which she wolfed in a few starved bites. It contained more sugar than she had eaten in the past six months.

  The curtains were drawn, the guests returned to the house, and the crowd dispersed. Maud and Ada grasped the handles of the cart and recommenced pushing it home. "Well done, Mother," said Carla. "A carton of Gitanes and a free meal, all in one afternoon!"

  Apart from the Soviets, few of the occupying soldiers were cruel to Germans, Carla reflected. She found it surprising. American GIs gave out chocolate bars. Even the French, whose own children had gone hungry under German occupation, often showed kindness. After all the misery we Germans have inflicted on our neighbors, Carla thought, it's astonishing they don't hate us more. On the other hand, what with the Nazis, the Red Army, and the air raids, perhaps they think we've been punished enough.

  It was late when they got home. They left the cart with the neighbors who had loaned it, giving them half a pack of Gitanes as payment. They entered their house, which was luckily still intact. There was no glass in most of the windows, and the stonework was pocked with craters, but the place had not suffered structural damage, and it still kept the weather out.

  All the same, the four women now lived in the kitchen, sleeping there on mattresses they dragged in from the hall at night. It was hard enough to warm that one room, and they certainly did not have fuel to heat the rest of the house. The kitchen stove had burned coal, in the old days, but that was now virtually unobtainable. However, they had found the stove would burn many other things: books, newspapers, broken furniture, even net curtains.

  They slept in pairs, Carla with Rebecca and Maud with Ada. Rebecca often cried herself to sleep in Carla's arms, as she had the night after her parents were killed.

  The long walk had exhausted Carla, and she immediately lay down. Ada built up the fire in the stove with old news magazines Rebecca had brought down from the attic. Maud added water to the remains of the lunchtime bean soup and reheated it for their supper.

  Sitting up to drink her soup, Carla suffered a sharp abdominal pain. This was not a result of pushing the handcart, she realized. It was something else. She checked the date and counted back to the date of the liberation of the Jewish Hospital.

  "Mother," she said fearfully, "I think the baby's coming."

  "It's too soon!" Maud said.

  "I'm thirty-six weeks pregnant, and I'm getting cramps."

  "Then we'd better get ready."

  Maud went upstairs to fetch towels.

  Ada brought a wooden chair from the dining room. She had a useful length of twisted steel from a bomb site that served her as a sledgehammer. She smashed the chair into manageable pieces, then built up the fire in the stove.

  Carla put her hands on her distended belly. "You might have waited for warmer weather, Baby," she said.

  Soon she was in too much pain to notice the cold. She had not known anything could hurt this much.

  Nor that it could go on so long. She was in labor all night. Maud and Ada took turns holding her hand while she moaned and cried. Rebecca looked on, white-faced and scared.

  The gray light of morning was filtering through the newspaper taped over the glassless kitchen window when at last the baby's head emerged. Carla was overwhelmed by a feeling of relief like nothing she had ever experienced, even though the pain did not immediately cease.

  After one more agonizing push, Maud took the baby from between her legs.

  "A boy," she said.

  She blew on his face, and he opened his mouth and cried.

  She gave the baby to Carla, and propped her upright on the mattress with some cushions from the drawing room.

  He had lots of dark hair all over his head.

  Maud tied off the cord with a piece of cotton, then cut it. Carla unbuttoned her blouse and put the baby to her breast.

  She was worried she might have no milk. Her breasts should have swollen and leaked toward the end of her pregnancy, but they had not, perhaps because the baby was early, perhaps because the mother was undernourished. But, after a few moments of sucking, she felt a strange pain, and the milk began to flow.

  Soon he fell asleep.

  Ada brought a bowl of warm water and a rag, and gently washed the baby's face and head, then the rest of him.

  Rebecca whispered: "He's so beautiful."

  Carla said: "Mother, shall we call him Walter?"

  She had not intended to be dramatic, but Maud fell apart. Her face crumpled and she bent double, wracked by terrible sobs. She recovered herself sufficiently to say, "I'm sorry," then she was convulsed by grief again. "Oh, Walter, my Walter," she wept.

  Eventually her crying subsided. "I'm sorry," she said again. "I didn't mean to make a fuss." She wiped her face with her sleeve. "I just wish your father could see the baby, that's all. It's so unfair."

  Ada surprised them both by quoting the book of Job: "'The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away,'" she said. "'Blessed be the name of the Lord.'"

  Carla did not believe in God--no holy being worthy of the name could have allowed the Nazi death camps to happen--but all the same she found comfort in the quotation. It was about accepting everything in human life, including the pain of birth and the sorrow of death. Maud seemed to appreciate it too, and she became calmer.

  Carla looked adoringly at baby Walter. She would care for him and feed him and keep him warm, she vowed, no matter what difficulties stood in the way. He was the most wonderful child that had ever been born, and she would love and cherish him forever.

  He woke up, and Carla gave him her nipple again. He sucked contentedly, making small smacking noises with his mouth, while four women watched him. For a little while, in the warm, dim-lit kitchen, there was no other sound.

  ii

  The first speech made by a new member of Parliament is called a maiden speech, and is usually dull. Certain things have to be said, stock phrases are used, and the convention is that the subject must not be controversial. Colleagues and opponents alike congratulate the newcomer, the traditions are observed, and the ice is broken.

  Lloyd Williams made his first real speech a few months later, during
the debate on the national insurance bill. That was more scary.

  In preparing it he had two orators in mind. His grandfather Dai Williams used the language and rhythms of the Bible, not just in chapel but also--perhaps especially--when speaking of the hardship and injustice of the life of a coal miner. He relished short words rich in meaning: toil, sin, greed. He spoke of the hearth and the pit and the grave.

  Churchill did the same, but had humor that Dai Williams lacked. His long, majestic sentences often ended with an unexpected image or a reversal of meaning. Having been editor of the government newspaper the British Gazette during the General Strike of 1926, he had warned trade unionists: "Make your minds perfectly clear: if ever you let loose upon us again a general strike, we will loose upon you another British Gazette." A speech needed such surprises, Lloyd believed; they were like the raisins in a bun.

  But when he stood up to speak, he found that his carefully wrought sentences suddenly seemed unreal. His audience clearly felt the same, and he could sense that the fifty or sixty M.P.s in the chamber were only half listening. He suffered a moment of panic: How could he be boring about a subject that mattered so profoundly to the people he represented?

  On the government front bench he could see his mother, now minister for schools, and his uncle Billy, minister for coal. Billy Williams had started work down the pit at the age of thirteen, Lloyd knew. Ethel had been the same age when she began scrubbing the floors of Ty Gwyn. This debate was not about fine phrases, it was about their lives.

  After a minute he abandoned his script and spoke extempore. He recalled instead the misery of working-class families made penniless by unemployment or disability, scenes he had witnessed firsthand in the East End of London and the South Wales coalfield. His voice betrayed the emotion he felt, somewhat to his embarrassment, but he plowed on. He sensed his audience beginning to pay attention. He spoke of his grandfather and others who had started the Labour movement with the dream of comprehensive employment insurance to banish forever the fear of destitution. When he sat down there was a roar of approval.

  In the visitors' gallery his wife, Daisy, smiled proudly and gave him a thumbs-up sign.

  He listened to the rest of the debate in a glow of satisfaction. He felt he had passed his first real test as an M.P.

  Afterward, in the lobby, he was approached by a Labour whip, one of the people responsible for making sure M.P.s voted the right way. After congratulating Lloyd on his speech, the whip said: "How would you like to be a parliamentary private secretary?"

  Lloyd was thrilled. Each minister and secretary of state had at least one PPS. In truth a PPS was often little more than a bag-carrier, but the job was the usual first step on the way to a ministerial appointment. "I'd be honored," Lloyd said. "Who would I be working for?"

  "Ernie Bevin."

  Lloyd could hardly believe his luck. Bevin was foreign secretary and the closest colleague of Prime Minister Attlee. The intimate relationship between the two men was a case of the attraction of opposites. Attlee was middle-class: the son of a lawyer, an Oxford graduate, an officer in the First World War. Bevin was the illegitimate child of a housemaid, never knew his father, started work at the age of eleven, and founded the mammoth Transport and General Workers' Union. They were physical opposites, too: Attlee slim and dapper, quiet, solemn; Bevin a huge man, tall and strong and overweight, with a loud laugh. The foreign secretary referred to the prime minister as "little Clem." All the same they were staunch allies.

  Bevin was a hero to Lloyd and to millions of ordinary British people. "There's nothing I'd like more," Lloyd said. "But hasn't Bevin already got a PPS?"

  "He needs two," the whip said. "Go to the Foreign Office tomorrow morning at nine and you can get started."

  "Thank you!"

  Lloyd hurried along the oak-paneled corridor, heading for his mother's office. He had arranged to meet Daisy there after the debate. "Mam!" he said as he entered. "I've been made PPS to Ernie Bevin!"

  Then he saw that Ethel was not alone. Earl Fitzherbert was with her.

  Fitz stared at Lloyd with a mixture of surprise and distaste.

  Even in his shock Lloyd noticed that his father was wearing a perfectly cut light gray suit with a double-breasted waistcoat.

  He looked back at his mother. She was quite calm. This encounter was not a surprise to her. She must have contrived it.

  The earl came to the same conclusion. "What the devil is this, Ethel?"

  Lloyd stared at the man whose blood ran in his veins. Even in this embarrassing situation, Fitz was poised and dignified. He was handsome, despite the drooping eyelid that resulted from the Battle of the Somme. He leaned on a walking stick, another consequence of the Somme. A few months short of sixty years old, he was immaculately groomed, his gray hair neatly trimmed, his silver tie tightly knotted, his black shoes shining. Lloyd, too, always liked to look well turned out. That's where I get it from, he thought.

  Ethel went and stood close to the earl. Lloyd knew his mother well enough to understand this move. She frequently used her charm when she wanted to persuade a man. All the same, Lloyd did not like to see her being so warm to one who had exploited her, then let her down.

  "I was so sorry when I heard about the death of Boy," she said to Fitz. "Nothing is as precious to us as our children, is it?"

  "I must go," Fitz said.

  Until this moment, Lloyd had met Fitz only in passing. He had never before spent this much time with him or heard him speak this number of words. Despite feeling uncomfortable, Lloyd was fascinated. Grumpy though he was right now, Fitz had a kind of allure.

  "Please, Fitz," said Ethel. "You have a son whom you have never acknowledged--a son you should be proud of."

  "You shouldn't do this, Ethel," said Fitz. "A man is entitled to forget the mistakes of his youth."

  Lloyd cringed with embarrassment, but his mother pressed on. "Why should you want to forget? I know he was a mistake, but look at him now--a member of Parliament who has just made a thrilling speech and been appointed PPS to the foreign secretary."

  Fitz pointedly did not look at Lloyd.

  Ethel said: "You want to pretend that our affair was a meaningless dalliance, but you know the truth. Yes, we were young and foolish, and randy too--me as much as you--but we loved each other. We really loved each other, Fitz. You should admit it. Don't you know that if you deny the truth about yourself you lose your soul?"

  Fitz's face was no longer merely impassive, Lloyd saw. He was struggling to maintain control. Lloyd understood that his mother had put her finger on the real problem. It was not so much that Fitz was ashamed of having an illegitimate son. But he was too proud to accept that he had loved a housemaid. He probably loved Ethel more than his wife, Lloyd guessed. And that upset all his most fundamental beliefs about the social hierarchy.

  Lloyd spoke for the first time. "I was with Boy at the end, sir. He died bravely."

  For the first time, Fitz looked at him. "My son doesn't require your approval," he said.

  Lloyd felt as if he had been slapped.

  Even Ethel was shocked. "Fitz!" she said. "How can you be so mean?"

  At that point Daisy came in.

  "Hello, Fitz!" she said gaily. "You probably thought you'd got rid of me, but now you're my father-in-law again. Isn't that amusing?"

  Ethel said: "I'm just trying to persuade Fitz to shake Lloyd's hand."

  Fitz said: "I try to avoid shaking hands with socialists."

  Ethel was fighting a losing battle, but she would not give up. "See how much of yourself there is in him! He resembles you, dresses like you, shares your interest in politics--he'll probably end up foreign secretary, which you always wanted to be!"

  Fitz's expression darkened further. "It is now most unlikely that I shall ever be foreign secretary." He went to the door. "And it would not please me in the least if that great office of state were to be held by my Bolshevik bastard!" With that he walked out.

  Ethel burst into tears.
<
br />   Daisy put her arm around Lloyd. "I'm so sorry," she said.

  "Don't worry," Lloyd said. "I'm not shocked or disappointed." This was not true, but he did not want to appear pathetic. "I was rejected by him a long time ago." He looked at Daisy with adoration. "I'm lucky to have plenty of other people who love me."

  Ethel said tearfully: "It's my fault. I shouldn't have asked him to come here. I might have known it would turn out badly."

  "Never mind," said Daisy. "I have some good news."

  Lloyd smiled at her. "What's that?"

  She looked at Ethel. "Are you ready for this?"

  "I think so."

  "Come on," said Lloyd. "What is it?"

  Daisy said: "We're going to have a baby."

  iii

  Carla's brother, Erik, came home that summer, near to death. He had contracted tuberculosis in a Soviet labor camp, and they had released him when he became too ill to work. He had been sleeping rough for weeks, traveling on freight trains and begging lifts on lorries. He arrived at the von Ulrich house barefoot and wearing filthy clothes. His face was like a skull.

  However, he did not die. It might have been being with people who loved him, or the warmer weather as winter turned into spring, or perhaps just rest, but he coughed less and regained enough energy to do some work around the house, boarding up smashed windows, repairing roof tiles, unblocking pipes.

  Fortunately, at the beginning of the year Frieda Franck had struck gold.

  Ludwig Franck had been killed in the air raid that destroyed his factory, and for a while Frieda and her mother had been as destitute as everyone else. But she got a job as a nurse in the American zone, and soon afterward, she explained to Carla, a little group of American doctors had asked her to sell their surplus food and cigarettes on the black market in exchange for a cut of the proceeds. Thereafter she turned up at Carla's house once a week with a little basket of supplies: warm clothing, candles, flashlight batteries, matches, soap, and food--bacon, chocolate, apples, rice, canned peaches. Maud divided the food into portions and gave Carla double. Carla accepted without hesitation, not for her own sake, but to help her feed baby Walli.

  Without Frieda's illicit groceries, Walli might not have made it.

  He was changing fast. The dark hair with which he had been born had now gone, and instead he had fine, fair hair. At six months he had Maud's wonderful green eyes. As his face took shape, Carla noticed a fold of flesh in the outer corners of his eyes that gave him a slant-eyed look, and she wondered if his father had been a Siberian. She could not remember all the men who had raped her. Most of the time she had closed her eyes.