‘Real coffee?’ Sophie inhaled the scent. They still spoke German, for Simons or Grünberg might overhear, or someone from the farm who had come up to the Lodge. It was also necessary for Sophie to improve her fluency.
‘Dolphie brought white sugar, too, enough to make jellies this summer.’
In France they said that most of the harvest was sent to Germany — that Germans lived fat and lazy on French cheese and forced labour. Sophie suspected that most food went to the armies, as it must in any country in this war.
‘Does Dolphie come here often?’
‘He used to. It hurt him badly, when he discovered my treachery.’
‘But he forgave you?’
Hannelore smiled. ‘Dolphie does not forgive. But he loves me. What other family do he and I have to love?’ She put down her empty coffee cup. ‘Come, Simons will clear the table. You need to choose more clothes.’
‘Dolphie won’t mind my wearing Amelia’s things?’
Hannelore looked amused. ‘Why else keep them, except to be used? Though I only stored the best — her taste was not good. Darling Sophie, so bourgeois with your new clothes. My court dress in England was made from the fabric my grandmother had worn and the furs were my mother’s, altered for the new fashion. I still wear my grandmother’s chemises — good silk lasts for generations.’
‘Not her underpants?’ replied Sophie facetiously.
‘My grandmother did not wear underpants — they were a scandalous new fashion. I believe mine were the first in our family. Miss Lily dictated that underpants were advisable for any new woman who wished an active lifestyle where more than an ankle might be seen. Sophie, you have not spoken of Miss Lily since you have been here. There is something I must tell you.’
Sophie sipped her coffee, looking at her enquiringly.
‘I went to see her at Shillings, a few months before war was declared, the day before I returned to Germany. I wanted to tell her that my help against the fascists was not merely because I felt guilty at Nigel’s death, though that had made me see Hitler and his henchmen for what they truly were. Sophie . . .’
Sophie put down her coffee cup.
‘Miss Lily did not expect me. I found her in the orchard, gathering late apples, the sunlight on her face, her arms bare. I saw Nigel, Sophie.’ Hannelore smiled. ‘A second later I saw Miss Lily once again. But she knew what she had revealed. We talked a little after that. She allowed me to say sorry for all that I had caused, and all that she had lost, too. She told me you were happy with your Daniel, but . . . but I took your husband, Sophie. I destroyed Nigel, even if I did not kill anyone.’
Sophie sat wordless. Impossible to say that Lily was now living as Bob — she of all people knew what one might scream if tortured. If they had known the right questions to ask, if they had known how much information she had, and kept on torturing her, day after day instead of giving up so soon, she might have poured out answers. She could not burden Hannelore with another secret to hide. And yet . . .
‘I am happy with Daniel,’ she said at last. ‘Or I would be, if I could be with him now. And the years Lily lived with us as my sister-in-law were some of the happiest I have known. The children don’t know yet. We’ll wait till they are older.’ And when the war was over, and Nigel could decide whether ‘Aunt Lily’ might return.
‘How is Miss Lily? Please?’
Sophie hesitated. ‘She was reported missing after the fall of France.’
Hannelore gave a small cry. ‘Not Miss Lily! But why keep it secret?’ She shook her head as she answered her own question. ‘We are Miss Lily’s lovely ladies, all across Europe and America. It is the one thing that links us all. Lorrimer is correct to keep her death secret.’
‘She may be still alive,’ said Sophie hurriedly. ‘So many have been lost in the confusion of the Occupation. I . . . I can’t believe that she is gone.’ Which was true, too.
‘There are many families who will only be able to count their losses when the war ends. We can pray it will be soon.’ Hannelore stood. ‘Come. Let us choose a wardrobe for you.’
She slid into the pattern of Hannelore’s days. She could not dig potato beds, but she could weed if she sat on a sack to ease her feet and back. To her surprise, although Hannelore dined separately, she spent hours in the kitchen with Grünberg, making Käsespätzle, egg noodles, together, a task much easier with two, or three when Sophie joined them, clumsy at first but soon able to fill the noodles almost as well as the others, to be served with a cheese sauce, fried onions and chives.
Neither Grünberg nor Simons commented on her short hair, nor her sudden appearance. Sophie suspected they knew she had been up in the bedroom. But in war there were secrets, and a wise person did not ask, especially when the alternative to the Lodge was Dachau.
The three women made pretzels together, scented with caraway seeds; and potato dumplings, a difficult dish of raw and cooked mashed potatoes with nothing else to bind them; and they chopped cabbage and early apples for sauerkraut, most of the ingredients grown at the farm or at the Lodge itself with its orchards and hothouses.
Hannelore and Grünberg discussed what should be saved in the store cupboard, how the precious sugar might be used. It was, perhaps, the same ease Hannelore had once had with servants and now felt without thought around the two women from Dachau.
To Sophie’s even greater surprise Grünberg seemed to regard Hannelore . . . not as a friend exactly, but with ease and friendliness. She accepted Sophie with matter-of-fact sympathy.
She had perhaps once been a large woman, not fat, probably, but broad and tall in her faded dress with its prominent yellow Star of David. Now she was hunched from past harsh treatment — starvation or even torture, Sophie supposed, like her own but for a longer period, until Grünberg had been transferred here. Except for luxuries like coffee and chocolates, she and Simons ate the same food as Sophie and Hannelore. Sophie could see how neither woman would want to jeopardise her position at the Lodge.
‘Were you a cook?’ she asked idly one day, as she tied the small bunches of herbs that Grünberg dried and smoked over the fireplace.
‘I was an industrial chemist.’
Sophie blinked in surprise. ‘Does that make you a better cook?’
Grünberg smiled. Most of her teeth were missing. ‘Better. If you know the temperature at which egg white coagulates you are more confident with baking soufflés. But I mostly cook the dishes my grandmother taught me. She grew herbs, like the ones here, and had an orchard.’
‘A farm?’
‘A summer lodge.’ Grünberg hesitated. ‘Frau Müller, I worked for a year in Alsace-Lorraine. I also studied in London for three years to get my doctorate. Your accent . . .’
‘Ah,’ said Sophie.
‘I want to tell you I will say nothing. Simons and I know that the prinzessin has been guilty of some disloyalty.’ Her mouth quirked. ‘The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend, but nor would I betray them. Simons though . . .’
‘She cannot be a Nazi!’ The other woman was resentfully scrubbing somewhere, as she did most mornings, to be followed by the continual task of fetching wood and feeding the stoves, and cleaning out their ashes and the dust that left on furniture.
‘No. Simons was a musician, a cellist, though after chilblains and now years of scrubbing I do not think she will be able to play professionally again. She also has a family and will do — or say — whatever might be needed to try to keep them safe.’
‘Don’t you have a family?’
‘Not now,’ said Grünberg, and said no more.
Chapter 36
CARRYMAN’S
Cocoa Chocolate Beetroot Fairy Cakes
Very rich and chocolatey!
⅓ cup CARRYMAN’S Cocoa
⅓ cup buttermilk or soured milk
1¾ cups self-raising flour
2 large or 4 small beetroot, cooked and peeled, and either puréed or grated
1 cup brown sugar, well pressed down
(optional, and hardly needed with the sweetness of the beetroot)
2 eggs (optional: the beetroot will help bind the cake and keep it moist)
⅓ cup butter, or another ⅓ cup buttermilk or soured milk
Heat oven to medium before you begin mixing, or your fairy cakes may not rise well. Heat the cocoa in the buttermilk till almost at the boil. Remove from the heat and cool. Mix in the other ingredients gently. Place in greased patty pans. Bake for about 12 minutes or till they bounce back when you press the tops lightly. Don’t overbake. The cooking time will vary according to the size of the fairy cakes — large ones will take longer to cook.
From Delicious Recipes from CARRYMAN’S Cocoa, 1942 edition
1943
JAMES
London smelled of smog and dust and the faint reek of explosives, even here, so far from the East End where the damage had been the worst. James kept his office window shut, but the smog crept like a yellow cat, always waiting to sneak inside.
He closed the file of the latest intelligence report on Auschwitz, and sat there, gazing into dust-hazed air, wishing he could wipe away the images the words had conjured. Impossible, once you had read them. All countries he’d known were capable of atrocities, including his own. People chose not to see, and when it was over, conveniently did not remember. But this . . .
He thanked God he had Ethel back in his life now. Ethel was convinced humanity was good, even if life twisted individuals or even nations into evil; that empathy could be taught, and society guided into kindness. After a few hours of Ethel’s practicality as she dished out stew for him and the Polish family, James could almost believe that it was true.
A brief knock on his office door. His secretary entered, a man of what James regarded as impeccable breeding — in other words, one with no hint of the aristocracy or old school tie. James had recruited him as a scholarship boy from Oxford.
‘Mr Lorrimer, Leo Marks’s girls have translated a coded message from Holland, or rather Germany via the pigeon post. I thought you would wish to see it immediately.’ He held it out.
Three words and two letters. SafeLodgePlotsSH
James kept his voice emotionless. ‘Thank you. Yes, you were right to bring it at once.’
The sensible young man merely nodded and immediately left the room.
James stared at the words again, in case somehow he had misread them, misunderstood. But it was clear. Sophie was alive and at the Lodge. She and Hannelore were safe and either plotting, or knew of further plots against the Führer.
Thank goodness he hadn’t notified Daniel when his agents in Paris had been unable to find any trace of Sophie at Fresnes or elsewhere. He had almost been certain she’d been executed, but until he was sure he could not tell her family that.
And now? He could let them know she was alive. No more than that.
So much.
He had to make a phone call first. He lifted the receiver and asked for the number. Less than a minute later — Lorrimer’s calls had almost the highest priority in Britain — the phone rang. He lifted the receiver. ‘Bob? She’s safe. She’s with our mutual friend, where they once met before. They both are safe.’
Chapter 37
Some of the most notable heroes in our history have been women. But nevertheless, girls should preferably exercise the virtues of patience, persistence and resignation. They are destined to tend to the running of the household . . . It is in love that our future mothers will find the strength to practise those virtues which best befit their sex and their condition.
Paraphrase of a Vichy Government textbook, urging the Nazi values of motherhood housewifery and a minimum of education
JULY–DECEMBER 1943
SOPHIE
Spring had been beautiful. Was it wrong to clasp moments of happiness and let them warm you, simply because bare branches suddenly wove bright leaves, because viburnums scented the garden and even her bedroom, when she opened her window to shake the winter’s dust from the carpet by her bed? Wild tulips, irises and tiny jonquils bloomed in explosions of colour, while the meadows across the lake were the lilac of crocus flowers.
It was in spring that Hannelore had first taken Sophie into the forest, both of them, Sophie thought, looking ridiculously Germanic in dirndls and shawls, but the wide skirts were useful to carry beech or fir or hazelnut shoots uncrushed, which would be added later to soups and stews. Soon it seemed there were leaves that needed harvesting everywhere, though Sophie found it hard to see them, even though they were there in abundance.
Hannelore laughed. ‘You need to learn to see what is in front of you. I did this every year as a child.’
‘Even a prinzessin?’
‘Especially a prinzessin. How can one rule an estate if one does not know it? See — Frauenmantel.’ She handed a leaf to Sophie.
Sophie tasted it — pleasant enough, if faintly bitter. It would be eaten fresh, and dried, too, to store for winter.
She recognised Löwenzahn or dandelion at least. Dandelion it seemed, was especially precious, its root baked like parsnips if picked at the correct time, the young leaves sweet, the flowers made into a cordial. Bärlauch or bear leek was vaguely familiar as the wild garlic of Britain, its leaves to be rooted out of pasture because when cows ate it, it tainted the milk. Sorrel, stinging nettles and clover she knew too, but not that they could be so valued as salads or vegetables, or that the growing abundance of Giersch could be used like parsley. There was blood root, too, that Hannelore said gave a colour and new fragrance to schnapps.
‘Hannelore, when will Dolphie come?’
Hannelore bent down with gloved hands to pick young nettle tops. ‘When he can. When it is safe to do so.’
‘But why doesn’t he write?’
Hannelore straightened. ‘Because I am his beloved niece, his only relative, but no longer keep house for him, am no longer on his arm at official functions. All this will have been noted. Perhaps he has acquired another mistress to wear on his arm, who I might have objected to, or we quarrelled, if I suspected he no longer had sufficient fervour for our leader. All this makes me safer, if his loyalty is suspected. It makes you safer too.’
‘But don’t you miss him?’
‘Like a knife has twisted in my heart. As you must feel, when you think of your family in Australia, of Miss Lily, in England.’ She bent to her harvesting.
Sophie did not ask again.
There had been no letter, no visit, no news of turmoil after the Führer’s death. Now in midsummer the Lodge’s own gardens were also ready for harvest. Sour cherries, to be blended with potatoes and fermented with some of their precious sugar for a cordial that was so powerful Sophie choked on the first sip. But alcohol was the best of pain relievers, and all the more valuable in war-time for that.
Redcurrants needed no sugar for their jelly to set, though it did not last well without it. Grünberg made a redcurrant tart with a meringue top, blackcurrant pancakes, elderberry syrup, jellies and preserves of raspberries, prickly blackberries and even more vicious gooseberries that tore Sophie’s hands no matter how carefully she picked around their thorns. But nothing in a war year could be wasted.
White asparagus season, and Grünberg and the silent Simons feasted on steamed asparagus too, sometimes even with sauce Hollandaise, or with a sauce of pounded walnuts that Grünberg concocted. Asparagus could be dried for winter soups, and though they did that, too, it was a pity to waste the summer succulence. They ate the strawberries fresh, too, the tiny wild ones with their intense taste — it could take Sophie and Hannelore a morning to fill a tub — and later in summer the large ones cultivated in the hothouse that also grew cucumbers, tomatoes and pumpkins.
And always, always, there were potatoes, beetroot, cabbages, cabbages, cabbages, carrots, onions, turnips and more cabbages, the mainstays of their diet, though Grünberg did miracles even with these: garlic-scented cakes of grated potatoes, herb-flavoured potato dumplings, cabbage sautéed with caraway or sweetened with appl
es, flour and potato noodles that needed a rich cheese covering but instead were dotted with more herbs and a little of the fresh cheese made at the farm. Roast beetroot soup, a cream made somehow from almonds, cabbage rolls filled with minced rabbit, carp stuffed with its liver and more carp and herbs. The kitchen smelled of smoke-cured herbs like wild thyme, and of fermenting sauerkraut. Franz brought them fresh-caught trout, or bream, which Grünberg served with berry sauces.
And Dolphie did not appear. But there must be a ‘next’ plot, and if that failed another plot, and another. Any day now the negotiations that would end the war must start.
The Lodge still had no radio. Those at the farm were evidently following Dolphie’s orders from his last visit to tell the prinzessin nothing. Australia might be filled with Japanese or with Americans, or even Martians, for all Sophie knew.
All she knew for certain was that the war was not over, for old Franz was suddenly called up, though he was over sixty, and then there was no cheese or milk or butter, for all the cows were confiscated for meat for the army, and his wife and daughters-in-law ordered to move to Munich for factory work. But Franz made a chicken coop at the Lodge before he left, and moved the hens, young chickens and the rooster there, so they had eggs, and even sometimes an old hen or young unnecessary rooster to eat.
Hannelore knew how to trap a rabbit, how to fish for trout in the stream on the Lodge grounds, or net carp as they floated above the muddy bottom of the lake. Sophie suspected that Grünberg also knew how to fish, but neither she nor Simons was allowed past the vegetable gardens.
Every day, every hour, she and Hannelore listened for the sound of Dolphie’s car, coming to announce that at last Adolf Hitler could no longer plan to rule the world. Sometimes they thought they heard him coming, but each time it was a far-off plane, or what might have been tanks rolling along the distant road to Munich. But they never spoke of the engine sounds they heard, or even met each other’s eyes. Hope was hard to bear, and the only affliction, perhaps, that was easiest borne alone.
Legends of the Lost Lilies Page 27