The Minister was responsible for all three Baltic States, a situation which was described by a former incumbent, Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen, in a brilliant parody of the Athanasian creed. Service attachés, Army, Navy and Air Force, were shared out around the Eastern Baltic, the Military attaché, Croxton Vale, being domiciled in Riga. In such a small community junior staff were constantly invited to parties and picnics. Everyone knew everyone else and gossip was a form of indoor sport, colourful but on the whole harmless. This intimacy amongst the diplomatic community was delightful, though it gave rise to many awkward situations when war broke out.
Although Latvia itself tended to be claustrophobic, local society was varied. As mentioned earlier, there was little communication between the Latvian-speaking elements and the British, owing to the language difficulty. The Balts provided a completely different society with a feeling of wider horizons lost, and a nostalgic aura of their dominant past. Sparkle was added by the White Russians who had settled in Latvia after the Russian Revolution and adapted to their reduced circumstances with considerable style. They were responsible for the delicious food at the Hotel de Rome and in some private houses. They provided the gipsy music in the night spots, and a certain reckless gaiety. They were the leaven in the Lutheran lump.
On February 25th, 1939, the three Baltic States signed a declaration of neutrality. This may have helped to ease their growing sense of insecurity but it was unlikely to influence the plans of their powerful neighbours.
On the renewal, until 1945, of the Non-Aggression Pact between the USSR and the Baltic States, Litvinov made a speech in which he emphasized the great importance that the Soviet Union attached to preserving the independence of the three countries. Then came a hint of warning to Little Red Riding Hood from her grim old ‘grandmother’. ‘This declaration is made in a spirit of sincere benevolence with the object of enhancing the confidence of the Baltic States in the inability of the Soviet Union to remain an idle bystander in the event of an open or covert attempt to endanger the right of self-determination of these States or to restrict their independence.’
In other words, it was clear that any move by an outsider which affected the Baltic States would serve the Soviet Union as a pretext for gobbling up its small neighbours.
On March 15th German troops entered Prague and on March 22nd Memel was annexed by Germany and Hitler made a triumphal entry into the city. A note was sent by our Foreign Office to the Riga Legation saying that in the event of war they would be unable to send extra personnel. Would anyone on the spot like to join the staff of the Legation or Consulate on the outbreak of hostilities? If so, details and references should be forwarded at once. With Donald Gainer, the Consul-General in Vienna for whom I had been working before our move, as referee, my application was sent to London.
As in Vienna, Kenneth was concerned with visa problems and spent his morning in the public office, but whereas in Vienna the staff struggled for nine and ten hours a day to deal with the flood of visa applications, the Riga Consulate worked only the normal 33-hour Foreign Office week. The Riga Jews, understandably, felt the need of a bolt-hole, but were unwilling to abandon their homes and prosperous businesses and move to a country where amenities were lacking, the climate uncongenial, and the Arabs frequently hostile and sometimes murderous. Many of the richer Baltic Jews owned property in Palestine, as Israel was then called, or had relations there. On the strength of this they would obtain a visa, but leave it unused, returning on its expiry to ask for a renewal. Now visas are supposed to be used for a purpose, not as a form of insurance. The franker clients would explain that what they wanted was ‘Bin Visum in der Westentasche’ (a visa in the waistcoat pocket). Others would declare that pressing business called them to Palestine, but that their doctor had forbidden them to travel as yet owing to—and here followed the most remarkable selection of complaints. It was fascinating to discover how many indispositions would allow one to carry on one’s business, dine at Schwarz’s and enjoy the summer at the Strand, and yet be incapable of doing the same sort of thing in Tel Aviv or Haifa. But as long as the visa problems were just a battle of wits and not tragic, as in Vienna, it was all good fun.
One day Kenneth came back from the office with the news that the authorities had decided that in ten years’ time a Jewish Arab state would be set up in Palestine. Meanwhile, to reduce friction between the two races, immigration would be restricted.
‘I smell trouble,’ said Kenneth. ‘Any form of restriction is bound to increase demand.’
Chapter 5
Arrangements for the boys’ journey to Riga were proving difficult. Air fares were beyond our means and the train journey across Europe, changing in Berlin, was too complicated for a couple so young and travelling on their own. The boat would not only take them straight from the Pool of London to our front door, but with children’s tickets and 25% diplomatic discount the return fares would cost only £5 each including five days full board (the price quoted by Baedeker in 1865 for the trip from Hull to Riga by paddle steamer).
Unfortunately, the BALTABOR, in which the boys were to travel, had run aground on a sandbank outside Liepaja harbour and become a total loss, and no alternative reservations were available. This was a bitter disappointment.
However, when we returned from an Easter trip to Helsinki we found a telegram to say that the boys would arrive in two days’ time. Easter magic—or a triumph for my mother, who would never acknowledge an insurmountable obstacle to any project which she felt to be important.
The BALTONIA tied up in the Export Harbour and when we boarded her we found the boys in the saloon, settling their drinks bill—ten assorted bottles, mostly tonic water which they had drunk with three lumps of sugar in each glass.
‘May I have a word with you?’ said Captain Butcher (decorated later, during the war, for bravery). ‘They’re nice little chaps and we enjoyed having them on board. The mate kept an eye on them, saw that they cleaned their teeth and all that, but I had to beat them once. A deck hand reported that they had stuck their heads out of the portholes and were shouting across between their cabin and the lavatory. Dangerous that. One can’t be too careful. Of course, I didn’t beat them very hard.’ Whatever he did, it had not affected the boys’ admiration for the captain.
There was an instant rapport between Lotte and the boys. She had planted a date stone in a pot which she kept on the side of the stove and tended most lovingly. So far, there was no sign of a sprout, but Lotte, like many better-known people, believed in talking to plants and we would hear her murmuring, ‘Come now, just a little drink. You must grow big and strong because I want to sit beneath you in my oId age.’ To the boys this seemed a sensible provision for the future, and they agreed with Lotte that the shaggy stuffed dog which spent most of its time on the crocheted counterpane of her bed, should be accorded the rights and privileges of an individual. Communication with Lotte presented no problem, as they had learnt German at Rindseln and, now that they were at school in England, we wrote to each other in that language so that they should not forget it.
On the first morning in the Ausekla iela the boys commandeered a heavy polishing pad which Lotte used to push over the parquet with one of her large feet in its plaid bedroom slipper. They devised a game related to curling that resulted in a lot of incidental floor polishing, a by-product which Lotte was quick to appreciate.
When they arrive in new places children are often slow to talk of their own affairs, their minds having switched over to ‘receiving’. From time to time scraps of information about school would emerge, but their thoughts were engaged with new impressions of Latvia, as different from those of their previous visit as my own.
‘Where is Jimmy?’ Mark asked suddenly one day. I explained that he was in Germany, working in a factory.
‘He was a kind man,’ said Sam. Mark nodded gravely. I don’t think they ever referred to Jimmy again.
The year was poised between winter and spring. The s
un shone brilliantly on branches swollen with buds, as yet tightly packaged. The thick layer of ice built up on the city roads during the winter had been cut away, street by street, the traffic patiently bypassing to avoid the six-inch step left by the cutters as they advanced. It would be another month before the parks were filled with flowers, but it was time to plan for summer, which began when the schools closed in May.
Summer warmth was of short duration but the days lengthened until, at the end of June, the sun scarcely dipped below the horizon at midnight. Just as the crops, sown late and harvested early, were quick to ripen, -so human activity expanded into the long hours of sunlight and the need for sleep diminished.
West of Riga lay the Strand—twenty-five kilometres of sandy beach fringed by dunes and pine forests. With the exception of the gingerbread pavilion of the old Kurhaus at Edimburg and the hydropathic establishment at Maiori, no building has been allowed within sight of the sea. In the forest behind the dunes were the dachas, wooden houses of varying sizes and pretensions in which people spent the summer. A long metalled highway linked the various resorts, while sandy tracks edged with boardwalks branched off into the forest. Each dacha was surrounded by a low fence of white palings, and tall pines rose from amongst the lilacs and flowering creepers of the gardens. Everyone who could afford it moved down to the Strand at the beginning of summer, the husbands commuting to Riga by train and the wives passing their days bathing and gossiping over coffee on the shady verandahs.
Now we had to find a dacha. With one or two scribbled addresses we set out with the boys for the railway station. The train stopped at Tornakalns and Zasulauks in the suburbs of Riga. Imanta, the station for the race course at Solitud, lay within the official city limits, but after Babite the railway crossed the river Lielupe to Bulduri, the first stop at the Strand.
Instead of flowing north into the sea the Lielupe veers east towards Riga and runs parallel with the beach so that the Strand, for a distance of about eight miles, forms a narrow strip between river and sea, giving the inhabitants a wonderful choice of bathing, fishing and sailing.
At this time of year the Strand was deserted, all the dachas silent and shuttered and looking very small amongst the forest trees.
‘Darzkopibas iela?’ we asked the level-crossing guard. He pointed towards the river. We crossed the metalled road and set out through the deep sand drifts swept onto the boardwalks by the early storms, and cocooned beneath the snow for five months. Here and there a piece of fretting had come away from a gable under the weight of the snow, or a gate sagged on its hinges. It was as if the set for a Chekov play had been left abandoned when filming was over.
We found our address and unlocked the small house, aromatic with the tang of freshly sawn timber. No-one had yet lived in it and the landlord said we might choose the paint for the windows and doors. Although ten minutes’ walk from the sea, it was close to the river. The kitchen stove was shining new. There were three bedrooms, a living room, an enclosed verandah and—most unusual luxury for a small dacha—a bathroom and a modern loo. The garden was just a strip of forest with the larger trees felled. Around the stumps the first buds of the blueberries and wild strawberries were emerging. We decided to look no further. In a month’s time this would be our home, and the boys would enjoy it in the summer holidays.
The boys were fascinated by the Flea Market, as we were too. The market was held in the Moscow Suburb beyond the station, and was a happy hunting ground for junk of all sorts, as well as occasional objects of value—clocks, lanterns, weapons, samovars, ikons and even jewellery. In the same area peasant women sold hand-woven linens and gloves and socks knitted in intricate patterns.
The Moscow Suburb, built, on the site of a fourteenth-century Russian trading post, had been for about two hundred years a refuge for runaway serfs who, if they were not recaptured within two years by their masters, gained their freedom. A serf in those days could be bought and sold—a manservant for 30—50 roubles and a maid for 10, while a child fetched only 4. An agricultural labourer and his family were usually exchanged for livestock, while a skilled craftsman was worth about 100 roubles. Many of these escaped to the Moscow Suburb and earned a good living.
One day we found in the Flea Market a heavy book with romantic Victorian engravings of the Teutonic Knights with their banners and chargers and helmets crowned with heraldic beasts. The boys were impressed to hear that Jimmy was a descendant of one of these legendary figures, but nevertheless delighted to discover that Alexander Nevsky had lured them onto the frozen surface of Lake Peipus so that their horses slipped and fell and the Knights, helpless in their heavy armour, crashed with their mounts through the ice and were engulfed.
At the beginning of May the boys left. They were quite happy to return to school, and the close bond between them spared us any signs of unhappiness at parting. Ten days later a letter arrived from my mother telling of their safe arrival. Sam had been allowed to steer the ship, but Mark was upset because he had dropped the tooth he planned to send me into the Kiel Canal.
Chapter 6
Delight in the boys’ company had distracted our attention from the worsening situation in Europe. The after-glow of Munich had faded rapidly. ‘Peace in our time’ was proving the illusion that it had always seemed to us.
The Spanish Civil War had ended in January and the foreign participants had withdrawn, the Germans with a wealth of practical military experience and the Italians with the conviction that the Italo-Spanish feelings of mutual dislike were well founded. The Spaniards, on both sides, had shown bravery, cruelty and loyalty to the opposing causes to which they still held, at least inwardly. The foreign idealists of Left and Right had gone home confirmed in the ideas with which they had started out. Spain, its people starving and its cities eroded by gunfire, was left alone with its mourning and retribution, and the material miseries which we were to share in a small degree when, two years later, we were posted to Madrid in early 1941.
At the end of March, Britain had offered full support to Poland in the event of attack by a foreign power. Colonel Beck, the Polish leader, returned the compliment when he visited London on April 9th. Britain was dipping her toe in the water.
At the same time my sister wrote from Prague that the Legation was again functioning in an outwardly normal manner. With the German occupation of Czechoslovakia and the proclamation of a Protectorate, most foreign powers, including the Americans, had conformed and replaced the brass Legation plate with that of a Consulate-General. The British, however, continued to operate under the old title and the Germans, for the moment, let this pass.
‘Prague is full of German troops and lorry loads of SS’, wrote my sister. ‘The Czechs, whom we used to find a little grim and officious, are so much more likeable when they’re down. They are born martyrs, in the finest sense, quietly dignified and talking of the time when freedom will be reborn. The Buss monument and the Czech war memorial are always piled with flowers.
‘We are buzzing with rumours, of course. They say a million German soldiers will march in and buy up all the food supplies. Soap is scarce and the factories can’t make any more as fat may not be used for this purpose. Everyone is going on a spending spree. Some fear the depreciation of the Czech crown; others that even if the currency keeps its value, there will be nothing to buy with it. The unhappy Jews feel it is wise to spend any money they haven’t managed to get out of the country.
‘It can only be a matter of days until the Germans lose patience and insist that the Legation closes. There is very little work, so we knock off at midday and play darts and enjoy what diplomatic drink is left in the cellars. We are down to gin and tap water now.’
On April 29th, Germany demanded the surrender of the Free City of Danzig and at the same time, the Anglo-German naval agreement was abrogated.
In May, the Germans and the Latvians signed a nonaggression pact which was not likely to make either party sleep more soundly, since the Germans had no reason to
fear attack by a country with a population smaller than that of Berlin, and the Latvians were too experienced to place much reliance on German undertakings.
The stability of Europe was being eroded like a sand castle which crumbles a little more at each succeeding wave.
Chapter 7
In the middle of May our household necessities for the summer were loaded onto one of the vans which clogged the road to the Strand. Life in summer was simple, and non-essentials were left in Riga. As the dacha was new and would need all sorts of fittings the tool box was an important item. The heavy curtains in the flat were unsuitable, so we had gone to the Flea Market and bought vegetable-dyed linen. Flax was a staple crop in Latvia and one could always tell which farmers were growing it by the stench from the ponds where the stems were plunged to rot until the fibres could be separated from the pulp. Most farmer’s wives owned one of the large looms on which coarse linen was woven, as well as rugs made from strips of rag. Just as they ignored kilometres and referred to versts, the peasants still used the arsheen, measuring twenty-eight inches, instead of the metre when selling cloth. This was apt to confuse one’s calculations.
Even when empty, the dacha had a welcoming air, but once furnished it took on the innocent gaiety of a child in a new dress and clean pinafore. Lotte was already planning to clear a little path from the front door and plant flowers among the tree stumps. It was full summer now and the air resinous with the scent of the pines.
A few days later my mother arrived and we went to fetch her at the docks opposite our flat. For years, the sea had been one of the few things that frightened her, but when her life suddenly narrowed to widowhood in a Devonshire village, a spirit of adventure overcame her apprehensions. Although her languages were limited, my mother had a natural gift for conveying her meaning, even to people who were totally deaf, and Lotte and she were soon deep in a conversation which neither of us could understand.
Baltic Countdown: A Nation Vanishes Page 4