by Ian Porter
But despite the brevity of their meeting, they had parted on good terms, with her requesting that he contact the restaurant owner in Dresden to keep a couple of steaks by for her. She intended to have Aldo drive the two women all the way to Dresden to enjoy an elephant steak meal.
The terse nature of her summons had him thinking that perhaps she had indeed driven to Dresden. He had contacted the owner to keep a couple of steaks back for her, but perhaps the man hadn’t. Or perhaps he had. That might actually have been worse. Another possibility was that she had found out somehow that he had sold the carcass to a bar rather than a plush restaurant, and for less than she believed he should have. Perhaps there was a suspicion he had fiddled her out of some of her profit?
Then it dawned on him that the summons could be about something far more serious. Could someone in Mrs Burchardt’s circle come to realise that they had all had been paying way over the odds for cheap Spanish medicine, which was no better at staving off the flu than anything else? Supposing one of her friends had contracted the disease and died? Fritz felt a sudden terrible realisation that he could be in big trouble.
Aldo, wearing a face-mask, met him at the front door. She was far more formal and serious than usual. And did not thank him for the medicine that he had provided when she had suffered the flu. A further sense of foreboding swept over him. Was her mood simply governed by the considerable events that she had been through recently? Flu, then attacked in a riot, then Germany surrender. Or was he in big trouble with her employer?
She took his hat and as she ushered him in to the house, asked if he would like some ersatz coffee. Fritz was confident that, despite Aldo’s straight face, she must be joking. She wasn’t in such a dull mood after all. He chuckled, thanked her politely and confirmed with mock delight that of course he would love some.
He was shown in to the parlour and motioned to sit. Frau Burchardt was already in situ. She was not wearing a face-mask but Fritz noticed that their two respective chairs could not have been further apart. They would have to contact their business in slightly raised voices. Aldo busied herself pouring, and then serving coffee for two, before leaving them alone.
Fritz looked at the liquid in his coffee cup. It really was ersatz. What on earth was going on?
Ute Burchardt looked at him with no hint of the usual smile of welcome. There was a hardness; a coolness to her. Fritz braced himself. He was convinced that whatever she was about to say, he was not going to like it.
The conversation began as he might have expected with her asking him about the trip to sell the elephant. Their previous rushed meeting at the bank had not included any great debrief about the Dresden deal so Fritz gave an accurate, honest account of the trip and transaction, but his questioner did not appear overly interested in the answer. She just nodded rather absent-mindedly and confirmed that is was good that things had gone so well.
“Are you still planning to have Aldo drive you to Dresden to partake?” he asked lightly.
“No I am afraid not,” she replied. “I no longer own a motor car. My motor was turned over and later set on fire by protesters. It was insured of course, but I have no desire to replace it. I will no doubt purchase a small vehicle in due course. What would poor Aldo do without a motor to drive eh? But my previous great motor was a frivolous luxury in this day and age don’t you think?”
Fritz did not know whether to answer or not. It was his experience that wealthy people often ended sentences with what sounded like questions, but were not at all, and they were certainly not expecting answers. He took a sip of what he considered disgusting coffee and hoped his client would get to whatever point she was planning to make.
“I see you do not enjoy my coffee,” she said, with perhaps a touch of humour in her voice. “I have something of an economy drive going on here at the moment. Not to save money you understand. I want, no, I need to do my bit for the German people. I am no longer living in my ivory tower. It is the principle do you see?”
There’s another of those sentence ending questions that weren’t questions. Annoyed with himself for not having hidden his disdain for the coffee, he thought he should say something.
“No, no, not at all Frau Ute er Burchardt, the coffee is most fine. It is just that I am feeling rather under the weather today.”
“Oh yes, indeed, you mentioned that in your note. I am sorry to hear of it,” she said without any hint of sincerity. “Let me cut to the chase. I would like to ask your advice on something. You clearly have farms supply you with some of your black market produce. And I know farms are struggling, what with the government’s demands, the loss of men and horses to The Front and so on. Would you know of one that might wish to go into partnership with me?”
Fritz was completely taken aback. He had certainly not seen this coming. What on earth had happened to cause this? But his was not to reason why. He tried to think quickly on his feet. How could he make something out of this?
Frau Burchardt was a step ahead of him. She spoke again.
“I would pay you a commission of course. You negotiate the right deal for me at the right farm and I will return to you my share of our elephant escapade. It needs to be a farm with expertise in dairy. Perhaps one that has just lost cows in the latest slaughter.”
“Klaus Winterhager!” Fritz had blurted it out as if his host had thumbscrews on him. “He’s the farmer who advised me about the slaughterhouses for the elephant carcass. He has just lost his dairy herd due to the government’s demands. He’s perfect.”
“He is indeed,” agreed his benefactor. “The idea is that I will pay for a new dairy herd to be introduced to the farm. And all milk produced will be given away free to the German poor.”
She knew Patemann was sure to interrupt her to point out that no farmer would agree to such a thing, so she had a flat hand raised like a policeman directing traffic before he could do so. She fixed him with a steely stare, dropped her hand and continued.
“I will pay this man Winterhager the going rate for whatever income he would normally have received from the milk. I will also send him a woman to work free of charge on the farm. Her name is Fraulein Wende. She will oversee the production and transportation of the milk and be my representative on the farm. I am sure you understand what that means? And when the present food shortage ceases, presumably sometime after the Allied blockade ends, I will end my control of the milk production, and sell or if he cannot afford this, rent the cows to the farmer. I expect you to earn your commission by negotiating the rate for this on my behalf. Of course, if I find out that you have negotiated a deal that is more beneficial to your friend Winterhager, than it is to me, I do not think I need to tell you that a woman like me has friends in high places, who can make things difficult for someone like you. After all, some people believe the black market contributed to our losing the war. Emotions run high on the matter. I am sure you understand Herr Patemann?”
There was the question to end the speech again. But this time Fritz knew it was a question he did need to answer. He had not taken offence at the inherent threat. It was just business. And yes, he did understand what she meant about the woman Wende. She would be there on the farm to make sure the farmer did not get up to any fiddles at her employer’s expense.
“It would be an honour to serve you in this capacity Frau Burchardt,” he said, formally bowing his head slightly. And he meant it.
******
Once the initial shock of what Fritz had to say to him had subsided, Klaus could not help but be delighted by the proposed business venture. It was a far better idea than his had been to have camera film and the influenza outbreak as the basis of a business. Not just because it was an opportunity to become a dairy farmer again and earn money that was guaranteed by a benefactor rather than rely on the vagaries of post war entrepreneurship, but because he saw it as a chance to do something positive for his fellow Germans.
Th
is free milk idea would give him a chance to give something back. He would throw himself into the project. He did not like the idea of some busybody woman coming to supervise him, but he had to admit that he was a dog which had quite fairly been given a bad name.
The finer points of exactly how this project would work, were then thrashed out by the farmer and the black marketeer. But progress was becoming slower and slower as Fritz had to continually stop to clear his head. Flu was getting on top of him. Eventually the discussion was done with Fritz slumped in an armchair, eyes closed. And when a question by Klaus went unanswered, and the farmer shook the man without success, it was clear no answer would be coming forth that day.
Chapter 38
“Allerlei Ersatz!..If there must be a substitution, then to me you are the dearest.”
Soldier holding a nurses hand in
Kriegszeitungder 1. Armee,
(German pictorial newspaper) 1918
While she had been visiting England before the war, Dorothea had been invited to attend a Women’s Social & Political Union medal ceremony at the Royal Albert Hall for Suffragettes who had been on hunger strike in prison. She had been introduced to some of the medal winners, including Kitty Marion, a woman a little older than herself, whom she detected had a slight German accent.
Was there a trace of Westphalia in that voice? Kitty was asked about this and it transpired that she had been born and brought up in Germany, and yes it was in Westphalia, until she migrated to Britain as a fifteen year old, a quarter of a century earlier.
Kitty’s German was better than Dorothea’s English, so she had enjoyed using her mother tongue for a change. The two women had hit it off immediately.
Her new friend had gone to see Kitty, who was an actress, in pantomime. She had also visited her at her home in Brighton, where they had put the world to rights as they marched along the sea-front promenade arm in arm. Kitty had also confided that her allegiance to the Suffragette cause had led her to be force fed over two hundred times, which had both appalled and impressed Dorothea. Their friendship had quickly blossomed and they had stayed in touch until the Allied blockade ensured that not only did foodstuffs not get into Germany, but such things as letters did not get in or out.
The last correspondence that Kitty, or Katherina Schafer to use her real name, had managed to get to Dorothea in 1914, just as war broke out, had mentioned that she had been under threat of being interned as an enemy alien and deported from Britain. But some old Suffragette allies with contacts in high places, had managed to arrange for her to be allowed to emigrate to the United States.
But with the war, if not the blockade, now over, postal services were less disrupted and Kitty had managed to get a letter to her friend via a contact in Sweden. The letter had informed its eager recipient that Kitty had not, as one might have expected, joined the American women’s suffrage movement, which was still fighting for the vote, because she had been drawn into another fight for women’s rights. She had joined the movement to change America’s birth control laws. The long term plan was to set up the first American birth control clinic. This had led her to seeing the inside of an American prison. She had just been released, having served a sentence for breaching obscenity laws.
Kitty invited her friend to her adopted home city of New York as soon as she was able to travel out of Germany. They could see all the sights. Times Square, the Statue of Liberty, Coney Island, Grand Central Station, and perhaps they could sell a few copies of Birth Control Review while they were at these places. They attracted good numbers after all.
The two women swopped further letters, and as travel plans were formulated, it became apparent that no transatlantic liners were as yet leaving Germany for America. If she wanted to travel sooner rather than later, she would need to get a ship to England and travel to the US from there.
This was no hardship for Dorothea. England may have been the enemy for the past four years but it had been a war between politicians, not peoples. Visiting England would also give her an opportunity to meet up with her old Suffragette friend Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence.
******
Peter was in a quandary. He wondered whether he was in love with Dorothea. He was certainly in love, but was he in love with a nurse, rather than an actual woman? He had heard how it was quite common for soldiers, even happily married ones, to fall in love with their nurses. It was a natural occurrence. One moment you’re in a filthy foxhole up to your waist in water, wondering if the next bullet propelled your way had your name on it, when suddenly there’s an explosion, and the next you know of anything you’re in a warm, clean bed being attended to by a nurse in her attractive uniform. She is your mother tucking you in at night as a small boy; your favourite sister in whom you confide the most innermost secrets and concerns; your saviour taking away all that terrible pain with her drugs and care. She is the perfect woman. Why would you not fall in love with her?
He and Dorothea made each other laugh. Both had a sardonic, sarcastic sense of humour. And they had the same outlook on life. They shared a similar political view, not just in general terms but in their scathing opinion of how their government had run the war. They also agreed that it was the flu that had finally defeated Germany and that but for the deadly outbreak the war would have continued ad nauseum. There was also a shared cynicism about the economic forces that had caused the nonsensical war in the first place. And Dorothea had been impressed that this new man in her life agreed with her on what could be the thorny subject of women’s rights.
But could Peter trust his feelings? Or were they a wartime substitute for the real thing? An ersatz?
Peter was a thirty year old upper working class divorcee; Dorothea a thirty six year old lower middle class widow. He was bright, but she was brighter. Not a huge age, class or intelligence gap, but gaps nonetheless. The war had highlighted the huge differences between the classes. And an age gap was unusual when the woman was the older one.
And while he had been relieved to escape the mistake of marrying his first girlfriend, and was now keen to have a relationship with someone more suitable, he was unsure whether Dorothea was so eager to have another man in her life. She had been remarkably open with him about the huge mistake her marriage had been. She greatly enjoyed Peter’s company, and was quite gushing with her sentiments towards him. She had told him that “I adore you,” but while the verb could be used in a profound manner by some, he appreciated the expression was more of a throw-away line when coming from the overly dramatic Dorothea.
They had made love unusually early on in their relationship, at her bequest. She was clearly enjoying the freedom that first widowhood, then the war and in turn the end of the conflict had afforded her. She was certainly in love with life as it was now. It was a different world from the one she had left behind. But was she in love with him as well as her new life?
There was also the fact that he was a toy-maker by trade. Admittedly a very good one; there was none better, though he said so himself. But his life living in the working class East End of Berlin before the war was a world away from Dorothea’s. She may have trained as a nurse, and certainly retained the common touch, but she had spent much of her adult life as a lady of leisure living in the leafy suburbs.
And there was one final subject of concern. The very basis of their mutual attraction. They were opposites who had attracted. He was down to earth; reliable; stoic; and before this war came along at least, mentally strong. Dorothea, for all her veneer of knowing worldly wise sophistication, was flighty, erratic and presumably due to her previous family problems, lacking confidence in her inner self. The war had left him in need of a nurse; she in need of a patient. Just the one patient. Despite much talk of her joining the German Red Cross nursing effort, she had never done it. He suspected that even if the war had dragged on longer, she always would have found some reason for not donning the uniform. Not that he had minded. It was good to have her all to hi
mself.
But could these magnets keep their positives and negatives facing in the right directions now that the very thing that had brought them together had finally ended? Could two such mismatched people settle down to a life with each other?
He thought this would not normally be a pressing problem. The whole thing would work itself out, one way or another, over time. If they were to be simply ships which passed in the night, it would become apparent soon enough.
But before they had become seriously involved, Dorothea had arranged to travel to America as soon as she could, to visit an old friend of hers. And Peter’s usual self-confidence dissolved when it came to the subject of Dorothea and him. He liked to think that he was not being paranoid, but he had to accept that he was at the very least concerned. Would she return to Germany? Would she fall in love with America? Worst still with an American?
Perhaps she understood his unsaid concerns because out of the blue, she addressed them.
“I do not want you to come to America, Peter,” she said with her usual cool frankness. “Listening to two old girlfriends chew the cud would hardly be fun for you. And it would not be fun for me worrying about you. And besides you cannot afford the fare and you would not want me to pay for you would you? But why don’t you come to England with me? I need a bodyguard and translator. I doubt my German accent is something that will win me many friends over there after all. I have forgotten much of the English I learned before the war. You speak it better. You were obviously a good boy at school and listened to your English teacher. I did not. I have to get two trains and a boat to reach London. I have taken a room in a hotel there for one night before I get an underground train across the city and then a train to Southampton for the ship to America. It is quite a journey from Berlin to Southampton I think. It would be very nice to have you with me on it. You see me off to America and then come home here.”