by Ian Porter
But then something as ridiculous as a sack of potatoes ended the moment.
One of the large hessian sacks, haphazardly propped up against Dorothea’s stall, fell over and its contents spilled out. As the cascading produce started to tumble and roll along the cobbles, those in the queue closest to the incident surged forward to grab a free sample. But no sooner had they done so, and they were tossing them away in disgust. Others ran forward to grab the cast offs only to similarly reject them. A cry went up for people not to bother because the potatoes clearly had blight. Some accepted this while others, wanting to see for themselves, rushed forward to see the greenish blight-riddled pulp that had once been potatoes. Groans of despair issued forth. People looked around the marketplace with the thousand yard stare of the defeated. Did they give up and go home with empty bags to their starving children, or head for the back of another queue on the off chance other stalls had better produce?
Inspiration was to hand. One woman wondered whether she had just spent ten hours waiting for blighted potatoes. She pulled over the next sack to see if that too was afflicted. It wasn’t. And with the die, not to mention the potatoes, cast, she sank to her knees and started helping herself to the produce. And she did not stop when her little bag was full. She put the bag down to free both arms to pull up the two bottom corners of her apron. She then barked under her breath to the child by her side to load more potatoes into what was now a cloth bowl. As the little girl did this, another woman rushed towards them with a grim look on her face. But rather them stop them she copied their larceny. The three pilferers almost immediately became four, then it was five; within a few seconds it was scores surging forward to scrabble on the ground helping themselves. All the stall’s sacks were quickly pushed over and emptied as a free-for-all ensued. Some left their place in an adjacent queue to join the melee.
Dorothea looked around the square for a policeman to help her. She was not surprised when there was not one to be seen. Why would there be? The police had more important things to do than guard potatoes.
She looked at her assistants, who stared back at her in bewilderment. Her own look of disbelief went into the crowd, then to its periphery. Her eyes fell upon the soldier whom she had caught looking at her a short while earlier. But this time there was to be no return of her gaze.
Someone from the melee collided with the soldier, which had his army training kick in, and within seconds he was embroiled in an attempt to control the dangerous crush. He pulled people to their feet. Pushed others back. But it was hopeless. He tried shouting.
“German people! Fellow Germans!”
It was merely an attempt to gain people’s attention. There was little point in shouting anything more complicated or meaningful to a mob. Most were ignoring him in any case, though not all. A little old woman glanced his way.
“I must have potatoes!” she shouted theatrically. “I haven’t had meat or fat for three weeks. My stomach has turned against marmalade. I can’t live on it any longer.”
And with that she dived to the floor to look for her food of choice.
“Curses on the military!” shouted another tiny woman over her shoulder as, bathed in sweat and bow-legged with the strain, she made off with a booty in her apron so large that it was doubtful she would get the whole load home without the contraband being reacquainted with the cobbles.
It was the last sight he saw before he blacked out.
The next thing he knew, he was being tended by the woman who had earlier caught his eye. She was on her haunches leaning over him.
“I see you are back with us soldier,” she said matter-of-factly. “Someone hit you over the head with an ersatz sign. Rather ironic don’t you think, as it was no substitute for the real thing, such as a cosh. That would have put your lights out quicker than an English air-raid. You’ll be on your feet soon enough actually.”
The soldier mistakenly took this to mean that he could be on his feet immediately. He attempted to get up but started to feel blackness threaten to close in on him again, so slumped back on to the cobbles of the square.
“Dried vegetables, dry bread, marmalade and a hero’s death,” said the woman. “A cheery little song we all sing here on the Home Front these days, soldier. And if you keep trying to get up, perhaps you will enjoy this fate sooner rather than later.”
Peter looked at his nurse perplexed. What strange things to say to a man. She is not so lost perhaps. A good looking woman for sure, but an unusual one.
“Yes nurse,” he said dryly.
“You are sarcastic I think soldier,” she replied. “But you are right of course. I am a nurse. Or at least I was. I will care for you now.”
He had actually been right the first time about Dorothea’s gaze. She was lost. Not being the confident woman she appeared to the rest of the world, it was only by retreating back into her clipped, rather arrogant nurse personae, the result of years of training by her intimidating no-nonsense matron, which enabled her to deal with this situation. She dropped to her knees and cradled the man in her lap. The light blow to his head would not normally have poleaxed a fit, tough soldier whom she suspected was a few years younger than her, perhaps thirty, though he looked older. She suspected it was only a temporary ageing. She could see it in his eyes. He had influenza.
Chapter 12
“I have so often advocated the communal kitchen as a solution of many of our present-day difficulties that it is heartening to find that the Ministry of Food is taking the matter up…The need of some communal system of catering and cooking is the deeply-felt want of the moment.”
Women’s Sphere, British Pictorial Newspaper 1918
The two most important skills for the driver of a motor car were to have the ability to swerve round horses safely and be a good mechanic. The new-fangled inventions were always breaking down. Klara Weber was almost unique in being a woman who possessed both skills. All those occasions she had balanced scenery precariously along the seats of an open motor charabanc and then driven it from one theatre to another, had come in useful. The ex-Berlin Opera Company chorus girl was now that very rare breed, a chauffeuse.
And she had just proven her credentials by jacking up her new employer’s motor for a wheel change. The swap duly done, she now donned her military style tunic, dark brocade coat and peak cap complete with her pride and joy, her badge of driving proficiency. She then bent down and deftly rubbed road grit off her navy-blue serge skirt before clapping her hands, as much in enthusiasm for her job as to remove any dirt. Then on went her worn, wrinkled brown leather driving gauntlets, and she was ready.
Her employer, Frau Ute Burchardt, had remained on board during the stop, drafting her latest proposal. She considered motors were all very well but they were no replacement for the railway carriage when it came to writing while one was on the move. So this delay was not without its compensations.
“Well, this is a splurge!” shouted Klara as she leapt into the driver’s seat, full of the joys of a job well done and keen to take on whatever the road next had in store for her.
“May I entreat you not to be so noisy and explosive Klara,” came the rebuke from the back seat. “You must not lack dignity.”
“I am such a goose. I think I must have a great deal of the child in me yet. Your advice will make me more than ever cautious,” answered Klara with honest self-deprecation.
“Great heavens, no my dear, you have a grand character for brightness,” reassured Frau Burchardt. “And what women need is a great deal more stirring up. It is simply that we must forever be on our guard to appear serious in front of those who would otherwise believe us frivolous.”
“Right ho,” said the chauffeuse. “Do call me Aldo by the way. It’s a nickname I picked up because of my short hair. I did a spot of male impersonation on the boards you know.”
“Very well my dear, Aldo it is. But promise me you will never do such work again
. We are not here to impersonate. We are here to be ourselves.” And with this, a gloved hand reached forwards out of the car window into her driver’s eye-line, to beckon them forward. “From this time the road is open.”
Aldo smiled and nodded enthusiastically in appreciation of her employer’s somewhat theatrical gesture, as she wrestled with the heavy, unwieldy gear lever to set the car in motion.
This was the first journey they had undertaken together, and in the hour they had spent making their way from the suburbs to the city centre, Aldo had noticed what a charming woman her new employer appeared to be. She could seemingly admonish, praise, compliment and educate in one sentence. And she was so wonderfully informal. She had insisted that she be addressed as Frau Ute. Apparently she did this with many people. It was her way of retaining the respect a lady of her social standing expected, and a woman of her age deserved, while also retaining a level of conviviality.
Within ten minutes they were pulling up at their destination; the office of the Deputy Commanding General. This government department ran many aspects of the German Home Front. An old civil servant stood in attendance at the entrance and dutifully help up a hand in welcome and opened the front door for the affluent looking woman who had just alighted from the back of the motor car. The man’s impassive expression belied the surprise he felt that the woman had not waited for her driver to help her out of the vehicle. His thoughts became rather more readable when said driver, another woman, appeared to have the audacity to wish to follow her employer into the building. But as the car owner passed him by, she had clearly seen his change of expression.
“Let her in my good man,” she said casually over her shoulder without so much as a backward glance, as she carried on into the once grand, now faded reception area of the great building. “She’s with me. We don’t stand on ceremony nowadays. And please be kind enough to have someone guard the motor.”
The man wanted to give her a ‘who the hell do you think you are’ look but kept his scorn and derision hidden beneath a veneer of respectful deference. His flat feet, not without difficulty, shuffled him ahead of the two women before he motioned that they should follow him.
“The dear old buffer,” exclaimed Aldo warmly with only a whiff of unintended condescension.
Her employer let it pass.
******
Once the cost of the carcass, the farmer and the slaughterhouse had been taken into account, it was clear that Fritz did not have the working capital for such a venture. The deposit he had paid to secure the deal with the zoo had taken most of his available cash. He needed a loan. A big one. He could probably get the money through a black market contact but they would be sure to want to know what the money was for, and he was unwilling to tell such people his business. Firstly, once the underworld realised the value of the carcass, it might disappear from the zoo overnight. There was also the possibility that the enterprise could prove a flop. The difficulties of getting an elephant carcass from zoo to restaurant plates were many. Supposing restaurants wouldn’t touch the meat? Or the meat went off? Merely transporting such a huge thing from the zoo to the slaughterhouse had its problems. The farmer or the slaughterhouse might pull a fast one on him. And then he would be in serious debt to serious men. And if he failed to make good the repayment, he could find his throat coming in to painful and deadly contact with a knife down a back alley.
And almost equally importantly, he wanted to do this as a legitimate enterprise. With no sordid backstreet loans. With no underworld involvement at all.
But when he considered his options, whom did he know, who was a legitimate, trustworthy, discreet person who was wealthy enough to fund such a venture, yet had perhaps an anti-establishment devilment within them that would entertain such an extraordinary operation? There was only one such person. The woman who bought black market petrol from him at vastly inflated prices for her motor car.
******
Aldo answered the knock on the door. The shortage of servants during the war meant that Frau Burchardt was now reduced to having just three. A cook who doubled as housekeeper; a maid who doubled, tripled and quadrupled as pretty much every other female servant; and a chauffeuse who not only dressed in trousers but did all the work that had hitherto been done by the butler and footmen. And this included answering the front door.
Fritz was not the sort of man who would have been expected to use the front entrance. Before the war, a liveried footman, rather too full of his own importance, would have cast a very wary eye down both his own nose and the length of Fritz’s unkempt form. But these were different times. And young ex-stage performer Aldo, had not been trained in the finer points of servant snobbery.
“Good morning,” she said before bending down to whisper. “You’re the black market chap aren’t you? Shouldn’t you be coming round the back to see cook. No offence and all that.”
Fritz bid her a good morning too, and assured her that no offence had been taken. He agreed that he would normally use the back entrance but then explained in hushed tones that he wished to see Frau Ute on a rather delicate business matter.
“Jolly good,” said the chauffeuse conspiratorially, and quietly bid him to enter with some enthusiasm.
Chapter 13
“Were it not for the artistically painted signs you would never dream it was a National Kitchen…It is dainty and pleasing to the eye and the goods delivered are in appetising form. The business done is enormous.”
Scarborough Evening Post, 1918
Dorothea was relieved to have a day off from the market stall. It being horse-meat day, everyone would swarm to the butchers’ shops. This break in proceedings was allowing her to visit a woman whom she had been advised was well connected and was using her position within the upper middle classes to further the causes of women. Frau Burchardt had been pressuring the Ministry throughout the war to give women more responsible roles within the war effort. But she had been beating her head against a brick wall for much of the time, so had agreed by letter to have Dorothea come to visit at her home with a view to the two of them discussing how the Women’s Suffrage movement may be able to offer assistance in some way.
As she made her way up the street towards Frau Burchardt’s impressive home in the best part of town, Dorothea noticed a rather shady, rain-coated, high-lapelled man being ushered out of the front door and down the newly hearthstone rubbed steps by a young woman wearing, of all things, trousers. Dorothea was surprised at the young woman’s smile. She did not appear to be sending the character away with a flea in his ear as one would have expected. The man negotiated the half a dozen steps onto the pavement with a spring in his step and headed her way. As he was about to pass her, he nodded and touched his wide brimmed felt hat in what could have been a mark of gentlemanly respect towards her, though she suspected it was more to shield his face than anything else.
The young woman was shutting the door when she spotted Dorothea at the foot of the steps looking up at her.
“Oh, you must be Frau Lipp!” she shouted enthusiastically. “Do come in won’t you?”
Dorothea did as she was beckoned, and within moments the young woman had introduced herself as Aldo the chauffeuse, and gushingly told her how much she and Frau Burchardt had been looking forward to meeting her. Dorothea was then shown in to a sitting room and plied with a glass of lemonade. The lady of the house immediately glided in from another doorway, having just changed from the tweeds in which she had received her black marketeer, into the suitably light and flimsy affair that tea with a lady demanded. She welcomed her guest and offered her a seat. The two women sat down on formal hardback chairs facing each other a few feet apart. Dorothea assumed that the servant would now be dismissed from their presence, but to her surprise the young woman helped herself to another such chair and pulled it up next to her employer.
Such apparent temerity was readily explained.
“We don’t stand
on ceremony here Frau Lipp,” said the lady of the house. “Aldo may only be a servant but she is also a woman, and therefore is germane to all my dealings concerning the woman’s role. And she is a woman of many talents. She is a chauffeuse, or should I say chauffeur, as the role should not be made feminine I think you would agree. She is also a mechanic, footman, carpenter and maid. Just as all women are servants of the Fatherland at this terrible time. But are we not all asked to be mere maids? Maids of munitions, maids in hospitals, maids selling ersatz from market stalls. Our greatest talents, our great brains are not being used. Oh, and do call me Frau Ute by the way.”
Dorothea’s surprise was replaced by delight. She thought hospital nurses clearly did use their brains, but otherwise agreed with every word this woman had spoken. And she thought it was rather charming that the lady had replaced her surname with her Christian name. Dorothea believed she could work with this Frau Ute. The two women, with the occasional interjection from Aldo, then enjoyed an involved, animated conversation about German women’s underused role during the war, and what could be done about it.
And the great attraction of this new relationship, from Dorothea’s point of view, was that she herself could stick to being very much a backroom worker. This new acquaintance was the sort of woman who would actually take up the cudgels. For her part, Frau Burchardt was delighted that a clearly intelligent, middle class woman such as Frau Lipp had such a wonderfully common touch to the point where she was willing to work in a marketplace and serve ordinary people for the good of the cause.