Blue Train Picnic
Broodje kroket
Rookwurst (Smoked Sausage)
Mustard
Hard-boiled eggs
Genever
Broodje kroket: Not unlike a rissole, flecked with parsley. Made with leftover meat, minced or chopped, mixed with onion but bound with a béchamel then formed into a fat sausage, crumbed and deep fried. Eaten in a bridge roll with mild Dutch mustard.
More like a rissole than a croquette. Find under Meat (66, 63). Can be baked at Regulo 7 (or 6 depending on the oven) or fried for 9 or 10 minutes (turn after 5).
Hook of Holland station. A blue enamel token gave her a place on the train to Hamburg. The line of carriages stood the length of the platform; at the head of them the huge engine hissed steam. Travel came down to a game of snakes and ladders. Liverpool Street Station to Harwich. Boat to Hook of Holland. Now she was on the train to Hamburg. So far, no snakes.
She stowed her leather Gladstone in the nets and took a window seat, resolutely facing the direction of travel. The window was grimed from the outside but she wiped at it, impatient to get going. The stationary train conjured other platforms on other stations. She felt herself slipping backwards into memories she’d been trying to avoid. The awkward farewells at Coventry. The family assembled to see her off, the parting stilted, still coloured by the row that had blown up when she had announced her intention to go to Germany and work for the Control Commission.
‘Are you out of your mind, Edith? I’ve never heard of anything so ridiculous!’
Her sister, Louisa, led the attack since Mother had taken to her bed.
Louisa was the beauty in the family. Even as a child, her looks had gone beyond prettiness. Rich, auburn hair, large dark eyes in a heart-shaped face. Louisa had been her father’s favourite, everybody’s favourite. Spoilt and headstrong, she’d married young. The war had been a godsend to her, allowing her to leave her life in the suburbs and travel with her handsome RAF husband to bases all over the country. But now all that was over. All the glamour had gone. Now this. Just when she was having to adjust to civvy street, normal life again, Edith was planning to swan off. Not only that, but the responsibility of caring for Mother would naturally fall on Louisa. It wasn’t right. It was against the natural order of things and it had put her into a towering rage. She had her own family. Edith was a spinster: it was her job to look after Mother.
She had invited herself and the rest of the family round for a Sunday teatime conflab. Perfectly turned out, as always, in a striped silk shirt and pearl-grey costume, her lustrous hair scrolled back and caught at the nape in a snood, she strode about the small front parlour, full of righteous indignation, gesturing with her cigarette.
‘What on earth are you thinking of? How could you dream of doing such a thing? What about Mother? How will she cope? You know there’s no help to be had these days …’
Brothers, Ronald and Gordon, fell in with her as they always did, adding their chorus: ‘Lou’s got a point there’, ‘Have you thought it through, old thing?’, ‘Aren’t you a bit long in the tooth?’
‘I’m not that old …’
‘Not far off forty!’ Louisa laughed, sneering and harsh.
The sisters-in-law, Trudy and Vi, joined in, bleating protests, shocked that she should dare to break away, duck her responsibilities as the spinster daughter of her elderly mother. Their real fear was that they’d have to take over care of Mother, do the housework, the washing, the shopping, the gardening, keep the lawn mowed and the hedges trim.
Edith tried to explain that she was not doing this out of spite, or to shirk her responsibilities. She wanted to do something. All through the war, she’d seen others leave to join the forces, do useful work. She’d done nothing. She felt wasted, unfulfilled, as though she’d missed an important experience. Others had risked their lives, done things that meant something, that counted. All she’d done was trudge backwards and forwards to school, call registers, teach the girls, come home, do the garden, dig for victory, manage the ration, cook supper, listen to the wireless with Mother. This was her chance to make a real contribution. All this just earned an exasperated stare from Louisa.
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Edith! What do you take us for?’ Her carefully drawn brows arched higher and her red-lipsticked mouth curled with contempt. ‘I’ve never heard such claptrap.’ Louisa turned away to light another cigarette, cupping her talloned fingers as if she was standing in a gale.
Only her brother-in-law, Ted, had been sympathetic. He stood by the mantelpiece, hands in his pockets, as handsome and affable as ever, his dark hair sleek and close to his head, brushed back from a prominent widow’s peak. He’d watched the row, a slight smile showing the gap between his perfect white teeth. Louisa had married him for his looks rather than his prospects.
He was the only one Edith could really talk to, the only one with whom she had the least thing in common. He was a teacher, too. He’d volunteered early and got a commission. Louisa didn’t want to see her husband diminished by civilian life but Ted didn’t seem in the least bothered about swapping his RAF uniform for grey slacks and a sweater and returning to his profession. He was looking forward to the part he might play in the changes the new Education Act would bring.
He carried out the tea things with Edith. Barely touched. A precious tin of salmon had gone into the sandwiches; a whole week’s butter ration into the fruitcake. The raspberry buns, Mother’s favourite, had been waved away with a peevish, ‘You know the pips get under my plate.’
‘Never mind,’ Ted grinned. ‘Kids’ll polish that lot off. Let’s go out shall we? See how the garden’s doing.’
He lit his pipe as they stepped outside. They walked down the York-stone path past the flowerbeds and lawn. Children dodged in and out of the shrubbery. Ted’s pipe smoke wreathed up through the cold, damp air like a veil. They stopped at the vegetable patch, brassica stumps still in the ground, a forlorn row of sprouts, the bean sticks showing ghostly in the mist.
‘I really ought to dig it over,’ Edith said. ‘Get the broad beans in.’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll see to this.’ Ted knocked out his pipe on the sole of his shoe. ‘What does Leo think? Have you been in touch at all? You were pretty close at one time. His ma’s in a nursing home, Lou tells me. House and land sold to a builder. Plans afoot to develop all round there. Must have made a pretty penny.’
There was no jealousy. It was just an observation that chimed with the family’s perception of Leo; he was the rich one, private school and Oxford. Not like us.
‘Met him a couple of times during the war, in London, you know,’ Ted went on. ‘Always cagey about what he was up to. Got the impression that it was pretty hush-hush.’ He looked over at her. ‘Thought I saw you with him once, on the Strand. You were visiting your pal Stella. Never said anything.’ Ted turned to her with his wide, white smile. ‘You go off and do it, kid. You need to get away from here. You’ve done your turn with your ma. Let the others take over. Lou will grumble, but she’ll manage. They’ll need good people over there. It’s a bit of a mess, from what I hear. You deserve this chance.’
A shrill whistle sounded. Doors slammed. A long blast signalled departure. Edith relaxed into her seat as steam billowed past the window and the wheels began to turn, slow at first then faster. This felt entirely right. The right thing to do. She suddenly knew that she would not be going back. Not ever. She should have made the break a long time ago.
‘Mind if I join you?’ A young army officer stuck his head into her compartment. ‘Not many seats left.’
‘No, please do.’
‘Phew! Only just made it!’ He pulled off his glove with his teeth and held his hand out to her. ‘Alex Drummond. Bulldog, inevitably.’
Edith laughed. ‘I’m Edith. Edith Graham.’
Bulldog. One of those forces sobriquets: Tinker Taylor, Chalky White. Medium build, not very tall, but there was a strength about him, in the squareness of his shoulders and the easy, physical confidence with which he moved and held himself. His pleasant face was just short of handsome, wide across the eyes and forehead with a strong squarish jaw. More bull terrier than bulldog but the nickname suited him.
‘Nice to meet you, Miss Graham.’ He lifted his bag one-handed and boosted it onto the nets. He looked down at her, quizzically. ‘Haven’t I seen you before?’
‘I don’t think so …’
He removed his cap, revealing bronzish hair, tightly curled, like a Greek statue, short at the sides, as though he’d just had a haircut.
‘New Year’s Eve. Dori’s party. As we came in, you were leaving with Leo Chase.’
‘Of course. You were with Vera Atkins.’
He smiled, seemingly delighted by her recognition, the connection made. He took off his greatcoat and sat opposite her. Edith smiled back. She had a suspicion that this was more than a coincidence, probably Dori or Vera keeping an eye on her, not that she minded. It was a relief to be watched over and she’d be glad of the company.
‘I suppose we both look a bit different out of our finery.’ He nodded towards the coat she was wearing. ‘Though that is a rather splendid fur.’
‘Dori’s.’ She pulled the coat closer about her. ‘She insisted I take it against the cold.’
‘Thought it wasn’t Control Commission issue.’ Drummond glanced at the badge on the cap on her lap: CCG, gold interlocked letters. ‘Is that who you’re with?’
Edith nodded.
He opened his cigarette case, automatically offering it to her.
‘I don’t. Thanks.’
‘Sensible woman.’ He snapped the case closed and lit his cigarette. ‘Make sure you take up your ration. Germans would rather be paid in cigarettes than marks. Strictly against regulations but everybody does it. Going far?’
‘Hamburg. Then Lübeck. I’m stationed there. Education Officer.’
‘All the way, then.’ His smile showed a slight gap between his front teeth.
‘You?’
‘Bad Oeyenhausen. I leave the train at Osnabrück.’
They sat in silence. Edith looked out of the window. Drummond finished his cigarette.
The train was taking them through the outskirts of Rotterdam. Evidence of heavy bombing: broken buildings blackened and hollowed, warehouses crumpled as if they were made out of cardboard. In the distance, huge cranes lay, unhinged and twisted, listing into the river.
‘Rotterdam took two doses.’ Drummond stared out at the devastation furling past their window. ‘Germans in ’40 then we had a go – shipyards, docks and the E boat pens.’
‘E boats?’
‘Fast attack craft.’ He folded his arms, his jaw set. ‘Bloody nuisance to our shipping, so it had to be done.’
They lapsed into silence again. Eventually, the train left the urban destruction behind and they were in a flat, geometric landscape, drab greens and browns with dykes and polders and windmills. Everyone’s idea of Holland, culled from geography books and travel guides, but textbooks and Baedeker didn’t show the broken bridges, their metal spars sprawled in the rivers as if pulled from their abutments by some giant fist.
‘Want some of this?’ he took out a flask and two thimble-sized metal cups. ‘Genever. Have a drop. Keep out the cold.’ He poured her a tot of gin. ‘Cheers!’ He threw his back and poured himself another. ‘Wonderful! Not like that London stuff. That just makes you drunk. This is warming, sustaining. A real aqua vita.’
Edith sipped cautiously. She didn’t usually drink neat gin in the middle of the day. The spirit was thick, almost oily, and aromatic with the piney sharpness of the juniper and other flavours she couldn’t name.
‘Just the thing, eh?’ He reached over and poured her another. ‘You missed a good party. Pity you had to leave so early. It was one of Dori’s best ever.’
‘So I hear.’
Edith looked out at the passing villages. Places one might glimpse for a fleeting moment but would never visit. In the middle distance, a man drove a horse-drawn cart, hunched over his reins; in the foreground, a couple of men shod in clogs plodded along a glistening, muddy road. It could be Brueghel. Medieval.
‘I say,’ he began. Edith turned back to find Drummond smiling at her. ‘I was thinking about going along to the dining car, such as it is. Perhaps you would care to join me? Food is pretty poor on these trains.’ He picked up his knapsack. ‘Luckily, I’ve brought provisions. You’re welcome to share.’
The dining car when they reached it was almost full. They slipped into a table. Drummond took out a napkin bundle tied neatly at the top. He undid the knots and unwrapped a series of packages.
‘We have broodje croquetten with mustard – meat croquettes wrapped up in a soft white roll, really delicious – and rookworst – Dutch smoked sausage – and hard-boiled eggs. I’m always starving after the crossing but can’t eat the muck they serve up when we get to the Hook.’ He shuddered. ‘So I breakfast at this little café. Hot rolls, real jam, proper coffee. Just the job. I have them make a little picnic up for me.’
He portioned the food carefully. He had good hands for a man, broad across the backs, but not fat; neat nails with short, strong fingers. Edith always noticed hands. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was. The food was delicious. Different. Continental.
‘Are you religious?’ he asked, suddenly.
‘No, not especially. Why do you ask that?’
‘Oh, nothing,’ he shrugged. ‘It’s just that pendant you’re wearing. The Black Madonna of Częstochowa, isn’t it?’
‘Oh,’ Edith’s hand went to the medallion. ‘Dori gave it to me. For protection.’
‘We all carry something.’ Drummond’s hand strayed to his top pocket. ‘She must be a good friend to give you that.’ He looked at her with a strange kind of respect. ‘Let’s hope she doesn’t need it back.’
‘Why should she?’ Something about his tone made her look up sharply.
‘No reason.’ He shrugged. ‘How do you know Dori?’
There was a softening round the eyes, the quirk of a private smile as he said her name, that made Edith think that he might have been one of Dori’s many lovers. Maybe still was.
‘Through Adeline Croft.’
‘The American journalist?’
‘Yes, do you know her?’
‘Met her a couple of times.’
They were having that kind of conversation. People of brief acquaintance, trying to discover people they might have in common.
‘And Vera?’ Edith ventured. ‘How do you know her?’
‘How do you?’ he countered.
‘I don’t. I’ve only met her once.’ She hesitated. ‘Well, twice if you count Dori’s party. I know her hardly at all.’
She omitted to mention the third time at the Service Women’s Club. He looked at her again, as though he knew she was leaving something out but respected her for doing so. His smile widened as if she’d passed some kind of test.
‘You must have made quite an impression.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘At the party. She spoke to you. She cuts people she’s known for years. Claims short sight. She can’t be bothered, is closer to it.’
‘You know her well, then?’
‘Well enough.’ It was his turn to be evasive. ‘People in common, you might say.’ He stared out of the window, his face suddenly closed and distant as if they had wandered away from safe ground. Then he looked back, as if he’d decided something. ‘Vera and I will be working together. War Crimes Commission.’ He looked down at the badge on his cap. ‘Find out what happened to our chaps. Hunt down murdering Nazi bastards. Bring them to justice.’
He turned away again, as if that was all he had to say about it. Within moments, he was asleep. The scene outside had turned wintery, dykes and rivers covered with the dull-grey, green gleam of ice, the fields dusted with snow. Like Johannes Janson’s Winter Landscape but without the skaters. Edith took out her pen and notebook, casting her eye over the debris on the table, selecting the croquette: a meat mixture, good way to use up leftovers. Basically a rissole … She wrote quickly, creating the recipe, looking up every now and then as she gathered the ingredients.
Sprawled in the seat opposite, head against the window, mouth slightly open, Drummond looked younger, his body loose, the tension erased from his face. He reminded her a bit of her brother-in-law Ted: the contained strength, the straight eyebrows over greeny-grey eyes, even the slight gap between the teeth.
The train jolted and Drummond was suddenly awake. Edith looked away quickly, not wanting him to think she was staring. The pen jerked in her hand, stabbing the paper, blotting the page.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked.
‘Oh, I— I’m,’ she looked at the pen in her hand, the notebook on her lap. ‘You know, just jotting down a few things. I collect recipes. Foods I encounter – menus, and so on.’
‘Our picnic?’ He seemed amused by it.
‘Well, yes.’ She glanced down at the notes she’d been making. ‘Food tells you a lot about a person. Allows you to see beneath the surface display.’
‘What does this,’ he motioned towards the debris, ‘tell you about me?’
‘Oh, you’re sophisticated, well-travelled, cosmopolitan. You’re a bit of a maverick, willing to improvise, cut corners, break rules. Well-educated, good at languages, intelligent. You are charming, especially to women, but men like you too—’
‘Spare my blushes!’ He laughed. ‘You can tell all that? No need for palms?’
‘Yes. Food reveals a great deal. It also serves to fix the memory. Better than a diary. Even years later, the recall is instant. Diaries can be dull. Trite.’
‘And not allowed.’ His look was frank and level. ‘I see,’ he settled back into his own memory. ‘I do see.’
‘So?’ she asked. ‘What do you see?’
He leaned forward again, hands clasped. ‘The desert. Been out all day with Long Range Desert Group. Infernally hot. Stopped when the sun went down.’ His eyes went distant. ‘I can see this long dune, like a knife against a violet sky. We were starving. All we’d got were hard biscuits and bully beef. This Kiwi chopped the tops off the tins with his bayonet. I can see him now, the tattoo on his bare arm. Corned beef had melted to slurry. We scooped it up with biscuits, ate it from the tin. Out there under the stars, it tasted better than foie gras.’ The train jerked violently then slowed in a series of juddering halts. ‘What’s wrong with this damned train? We’ll never get there at this rate.’
He rubbed at the glass but removing the condensation made no difference. The world outside had gone a misty, pearl grey. A horde of children appeared like ghosts out of the fog, running alongside the halting train, shouting, ‘Hagen Sie Brot?’ Some of the occupants of the dining car ignored them but others opened the windows and from all along the train came a shower of sandwiches, cigarettes, loose and in packets, chocolate bars.
‘It was bad here,’ Drummond said as the children swarmed towards the tracks. ‘They were more or less starving by the end of the war. The winter will be making it hard again. It’ll be the same thing from now on. Wherever the train stops or slows, crowds of children come from God knows where shouting: “Chockie Tommee! Fags Tommee! Butties Tommee!” The chaps throw them what they don’t want, or what they can spare just to watch them scrabbling and fighting over it. Or maybe they feel sorry for the poor little sods.’ Drummond threw what was left of the sausage and a couple of children dived for it. ‘You’ll see plenty like these where you’re going.’
One child did not move, just stared up at them. A little girl in a thin cardigan over a summer dress and what looked like sandals. She was just standing there in the enveloping mist, on ground grey with frost. Edith recalled a Control Commission briefing: a tall, sharp-featured woman in battledress tunic and navy skirt, an Education Officer who had just come back. She’d shown slide after slide of urban devastation, interspersed with grubby-looking children, playing in mountains of bricks and fallen masonry. ‘You won’t know what it is like until you get out there,’ she’d said, white faced and solemn, as if she had scarcely believed it herself. Edith had noted down statistics: Cologne 92 per cent of buildings unusable, only 162 primary schools in the whole of Schleswig-Holstein, but it was the children sitting on the rubble, their faces pinched and sullen, who had stayed with her. Whatever else she might be doing, she was there to make a difference to the lives of children. She must never lose sight of that.
The train gained speed. Drummond glanced out of the window. ‘Border soon. Papers at the ready.’ Edith suddenly remembered the dratted gun. Her concern must have shown. ‘No need to look so worried.’ He leaned forward. ‘They never search or anything. Well,’ he grinned, ‘almost never.’
The checks were cursory, papers and passports only. Formalities over, the groups around them became more relaxed, passing round bottles of brandy and schnapps.
‘It’s strange,’ Drummond said, nodded towards the window. ‘Some places hardly touched, as if there had never been a war.’ They were passing Bad Bentheim. It looked just like a postcard, or something from a fairy tale, a great castle standing on a bluff; the red roofs of the town spread out below it, dusted with snow. ‘Others,’ he shrugged, ‘almost utterly destroyed. It’s the same all over Germany.’
The next town of any size was Rheine. Here, the marshalling yards had been bombed extensively, the devastation spread out to the surrounding town, the houses and buildings bordering the line reduced to burnt-out, blackened shells. The sidings were filled with the remains of goods trucks and wagons, sides splintered, burnt down to the wheels, derailed engines lay rusting on their sides. Some recovery work was going on. Men cutting up a tender, the falling arc of yellow and red sparks the only colour anywhere.
‘Good to see someone trying to do something, even if it’s only righting an engine.’ A burst of raucous laughter from the people sitting on the other side of the aisle caught his attention for a moment. ‘That’s what we do here while we’re supposed to be sorting out the mess we’ve created. Get drunk. Dream of other lives.’
Drummond looked away to the men working in the growing darkness.
The devastation grew greater as they approached Osnabrück. The train seemed to slow so that they could get a better look. As far as the eye could see, on either side of the line, only the odd church spire was left standing. In the distance, the jagged outline of what had once been blocks of tenements stood black against the last of the day.
‘Serves them right, that’s what I say!’ A girl’s voice, sharp and high, broke the silence that had spread through the carriage. She followed her remark with a fluting note of nervous laughter and there was a subdued rumble of agreement. The light was going, night coming on. The window turned into a reflecting mirror and Edith studied the girl against the scrolling phantasmagoria: smoke curling from her cigarette holder, her vivid lipsticked bow of a mouth frozen in laughter, her eyes dark below thin, pencilled brows, short blonde hair set in sculpted waves.
Drummond watched the group, his mouth set in a straight line.
‘The train divides here.’ He stood up. ‘This is where I leave you.’
He retrieved his belongings and shrugged on his greatcoat. They stood in the corridor, Drummond lit a cigarette.
‘You’ll be a while. Engine change. The damage here is immense. It gets worse the further north you get.’ He nodded towards the dining car. ‘Not sure how much help they’re going to be. Good war types, shy of civvy street, wanting to prolong the party. Can’t blame them, really, I suppose. Pretty dreary back home, what with rationing and all that. Here you can have anything you want.’ He stared into the darkness outside. ‘And I do mean anything.’ He looked back at her, his grey-green eyes hardened to serpentine. ‘Don’t get me wrong – I’m not soft on them. The Germans. I’ve seen Belsen, which is more than that lot has. Believe me, everything you’ve heard about that place is true, and it’s not even the worst, not by a long chalk, but this “give them a dose of their own medicine” …’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t go along with it. We need civilians. I’m not saying we don’t. Military has enough to do. I’m just not sure we’re getting the right sort. I don’t mean you, of course. You’re not like them at all, or the other kind, for that matter.’
‘The other kind?’
‘Bureaucrats, pen pushers with briefcases full of red tape. Either that, or Colonel Chinstraps.’ He smiled down at her. ‘Don’t let them tie you up in it, Edith. They’ll find a hundred reasons to do nothing. Find your own way. Get things done.’ A whistle blew. ‘I’d better be off.’ He pulled down the window and gripped the outside handle to open the carriage door. ‘Thank you for making the journey such a pleasant one.’ He gave her a mock salute. ‘Auf Wiedersehen!’
He shouldered his bag and turned to wave before he set off down the long platform. Edith was sorry to see him go. She’d liked Drummond. He was intriguing. Easy, amusing company, although he’d been reluctant to talk over-much about what he was actually doing here, or what he’d done in the war. ‘Oh, you know, this and that in the usual places.’ Some men’s reticence came from a desire to forget, get on with life in civvy street. He wasn’t like that, the opposite in fact. Still in uniform. Very much the soldier. It was not what was said, but what wasn’t that mattered. The words unspoken.
Edith went back to her compartment. The blinds were drawn now, blue lights in operation. Most of the carriage was asleep. It was warm enough in there, even stuffy, but cold outside, very cold, she could feel it through the window. She arranged Dori’s coat like a blanket, turning her face into the corner. The worn moquette, the smell of dust and smoke, reminded her of another journey she’d taken.
Easter 1933. Going to see Kurt for their long-anticipated reunion after that wonderful summer. It had been cold then but not as cold as this. She’d booked a couchette but had found it taken. Too shy to oust the large Germany lady who occupied it, she had slunk back to her place in the ordinary carriage and sat huddled into the corner, unable to sleep. She hadn’t eaten all day. The sandwiches she’d brought had turned rancid. Fish paste. Not a wise choice. But it was not hunger that had kept her awake. It had been nearly a whole year since she’d seen him but now she was on her way, now it was finally happening, her anticipation, her excitement were rapidly evaporating, distilling into fear. She’d wanted to halt the inexorable forward motion of the train, stop the wheels from turning, send them into reverse to take her back to everything that was safe, to the world she knew.
She shifted in her seat, trying to find a more comfortable position. It wasn’t just the smell of the moquette, in the cold, early morning, eerie blue-lit darkness, fear was seeping into her like the chill through the seal round the glass. Had she done the right thing? Was she really cut out for this? Was she mad to do it? That’s what they thought at home. Should she have stayed there? Done what was expected? She’d had a job, a family, security. Chucking it all could turn out to be the very height of folly. She was already feeling at a disadvantage, as though everyone else knew the ropes. They probably didn’t, but that was little comfort. There had been a hectic quality about that group in the dining car that she’d found disconcerting, as though they were using brandy and bravado to allay their own insecurities.
What if this journey turned out as badly as that last one?
Gradually, the rhythm of the rattling carriage, the turning of the wheels on the tracks, lulled her into a fitful sleep broken by sudden jolts and starts, voices shouting, whistles shrilling, steam shunting, the hiss and shriek of the engine as it rolled into stations and out again taking her on, deeper into Germany, into the dark unknown.