Billet Dinner
Beef Broth with Dumplings
Braised Beef
Sauerkraut, Carrots, Peas
Steckrübengratin
Rice Pudding with Apricots
Cooking is done by Germans and the food reflects that. Not all of it popular with the billetees. Instinctively suspicious of the dumplings in the broth, although they were delicious. Disliked the Steckrübengratin – made from swede and they share my feelings about sauerkraut!
The billet was in a large suburban villa situated in another untouched suburb. A German girl answered the door and showed Edith in without a word. She took her bag and disappeared upstairs. Another girl took her coat and hat.
‘Danke. Wie heißen Sie?’
‘Grete.’
‘Danke, Grete.’ She smiled but Grete did not smile back.
An English girl in an unbuttoned CCG battledress jacket appeared in the doorway of the sitting room smoking a cigarette with nervous vigour. She regarded this exchange with impatience, prominent blue eyes unblinking. She looked young, despite the aggressive smoking, younger than Roz, the roundness of childhood still in her face. She wore her curly brown hair severely parted, pinned at the sides in an effort to tame it. She was wearing a red roll-top sweater under her jacket and slacks instead of a skirt.
‘You must be the mysterious Miss Graham.’ She pushed herself off the doorframe. ‘I’m Angela. Angela Parker. Friends call me Angie.’
‘Nice to meet you, Angela. I’m Edith.’
‘Come in. You must be perished.’ Angela led the way into a high-ceilinged room, heated by a large ceramic stove in the corner, gratifyingly warm after the cold outside. Angela threw herself down into a leather armchair. ‘Make yourself at home.’
She waved a hand towards an over-stuffed settee adorned with a quantity of appliqued cushions. Edith sat down as directed and looked round the room. Empty bookcases but the heavy sideboard was laden with ornaments: ceramic flowers, figurines, decorated vases, porcelain animals: a Bambi, a rabbit and a couple of German shepherd dogs, painted plates showing thatched chalets, water mills, pastoral scenes. Images of an idealized Germany, long gone if it ever existed. A note: Not To Touch Plse was tacked next to the display. Her eyes were drawn up to the wall above, to the pale oblong space where the portrait of Hitler must have been.
‘Sorry about the get-up.’ Angela pulled at the collar of her sweater. ‘It’s bloody cold in the office. Working in coats, scarves, gloves, the lot.’
‘What do you do?’
‘I’m a typist in the Legal Division. You?’
‘Education.’
‘Don’t think we’ve got anyone from your mob. There’s six of us now. Seven with you. Not a bad crowd. Would you like some tea?’
‘Oh, yes, please. That would be lovely.’
‘You!’ It took Edith a second to understand that the girl was addressing Grete. ‘Tea. Quick. Schnell, schnell. Comprenez?’
‘Verstehen,’ Edith said quietly.
‘Sorry?’
‘Verstehen,’ Edith repeated. ‘It’s the German word for understand.’
‘German speaker, eh?’ the girl said with some distrust. ‘Doesn’t do to spoil them.’
‘Who?’
‘The girls who work here particularly, but any of them, really.’ She waved her cigarette as if to indicate the German nation in general. ‘It doesn’t do to be the least bit familiar,’ she added with certainty, ‘or they’ll take advantage.’ She stubbed out her cigarette with a quick jabbing motion. ‘Still a bit too arrogant for my liking and look where that got them? We’re here to teach them a lesson, not pal with them. Don’t you agree?’
Edith could not have agreed less, but said nothing. This girl must have been at school for most of the war and probably hadn’t been here long but had quickly picked up the prevalent prejudices. In order to be accepted, no doubt, be part of the crowd.
‘Put it down on the table.’ Angela spoke to the German girl loudly and slowly, enunciating each syllable, as though she was half witted. ‘Now. Go. I will pour.’ She turned to Edith. ‘How do you like it?’
‘Milk. No sugar.’
‘It’s real milk. Not out of a tin,’ Angela said with some pride as she poured the tea. ‘Don’t worry, Edith, you’ll soon get the hang of it,’ she added, with the brisk patronage of the very young.
‘How long have you been here, Angela?’
‘Positively ages. Since October. I’m an old hand. I can show you the ropes.’ She handed a cup to Edith. ‘We like to have dinner about 7.30. Drinks down here at seven. You’ll have a chance to meet the others. Oh, and we like to dress. Not too formal but it gives us an excuse to get out of this beastly uniform.’
Edith’s room was warm. Warmish, anyway. Heated by a stove in the corner. The bed was made up, her suitcase on the top of the covers, her battered Gladstone by its side. Dori’s fur coat swung alone in the hulking mahogany wardrobe. Precious few hangers, she should have thought of that, but plenty of storage space. Even when her trunk arrived, she doubted she would fill half of it.
Steam curled from a china basin and ewer placed for her on a marble-topped washstand. A towel, worn but clean, hung from a rail at the side. The German girl must have brought it up for her. Dinner would be soon. She found her toiletry bag, stripped off her uniform. She seemed to have been in it for days.
She put on her shantung dressing gown and went over to the walnut-veneered, kidney-shaped dressing table and began to set out her things: her Mason Pearson hair brush, Bluegrass talc, box of face powder, claiming the space as her own. The stool was too high. The dusty-pink velvet seat was slightly worn to one side, faintly marked by old spillages, the trace of a lipstick smear. As Edith adjusted it down, she wondered what had happened to the woman who’d once lived here. No one knew or cared less. Got what she deserved, that’s what would be said, but Edith could not help but think about her putting on lipstick and powder in that automatic way one does when off to dinner, or a dance, or just shopping, meeting friends for cake and coffee, without the least inkling. Where was she now? Turned out of this grand house, her comfortable life, to go where? She’d had to leave all this. Edith touched the Art Deco green glass trays that furnished the dressing table. The matching frosted glass-lidded bowl still held dusting powder. Gardenia. The scent of the woman who had left it. She was reminded of Elisabeth.
The room was at the back of the house and looked out over the garden. Steps led from a wide terrace to the flat expanse of lawn going down to a scatter of fruit trees, their branches black against an iron-grey sky.
Footprints marked a well-trodden path through the snow to the bottom of the garden before disappearing into a tangle of bushes. Perhaps there was a woodpile down there, or something, although there were plenty of logs cut and stacked under the eaves. Curious.
The smell of cooking percolated from below, carrying with it the hint of what they would be eating for dinner, a whiff of beef boiled with root vegetables and beneath that something else. Insidious and persistent, sharp but with a musty under note of decay. Sauerkraut. Her mind shied from the memories it evoked. She found herself swallowing. The slightest hint brought instant nausea. She wondered if she might make her excuses but it was her first night. They were supposed to dress, Angela had said. She reviewed the contents of her suitcase and selected a midnight-blue jersey dress with a shawl collar – not too formal, but not too casual either – and hoped it would do.
She pulled on a pair of heels and went downstairs to cigarette smoke and conversation gusting from the sitting room. As she came in, the room went quiet.
‘Edith! Come and join us!’ Angela rushed to fill the silence. She’d changed into a tight navy skirt and a silk, spotted blouse tied at the neck. ‘Let me introduce you …’
Miss Barratt, Miss Potts, Miss Jones, Miss Campbell. Respectively, Lorna, Ginny, Frances and Jo all stared, as wary as a new class. Edith tried to fix them as she would do at school. Lorna Barratt: older, tall redhead, long, pale face. Ginny Potts: young looking, pretty, pointed nose, chin-length light-brown hair caught back with an Alice band. Frances (Franny) Jones: thin face, narrow shoulders, deepset dark eyes, crisp black hair set into tight waves. Jo Campbell: good-looking, slightly bohemian, short dark hair tied with an emerald scarf, scarlet lipstick, large brown eyes outlined with khol. They all worked in clerical or secretarial positions in various branches of the Control Commission: Miss Barratt in Finance, Miss Potts in Public Safety, Miss Jones in the Quartermaster’s Office, Miss Campbell in Displaced Persons.
‘What’s your poison, Edith?’ Angela asked, going over to a line of bottles on the wide sideboard. ‘We’ve got most things. Whisky and soda? Gin and It?’
Edith settled for a whisky and soda.
‘Bottoms up!’
‘Here’s mud in your eye!’
They raised their glasses then all spoke at once, eager to fill in the newcomer, impress her with how much they were ‘in the know’. The shortages – soap generally, soap flakes in particular, be sure to ask for a box of Lux when you write home. ‘Oh, and STs,’ Ginny said, with a sideways glance at the others. ‘Make sure you get sent plenty of those.’
‘Yes, jam rags always in short supply,’ Angela added loudly, defying Jo’s impatient sigh and Lorna’s disapproving frown.
The subject changed to food. Plentiful but monotonous, prone to unaccountable shortages. One week no potatoes, the next? Potatoes but no onions. There was sauerkraut, every nose wrinkled, and root vegetables – especially swede, cue for further nose wrinkling. Everything else was out of a tin. Who cooked? Frau Schmidt, the housekeeper, with the help of the German girls, who also served and did the cleaning, washing, and general housework. None of these girls slept in the house. They went home in the evening and came back in the morning to light the fires, heat the water and prepare breakfast.
‘We don’t have to do a thing. It’s a jolly good life, really,’ Angie summed up. ‘Better than at home, anyway.’
The others nodded. They were from Leicester, Bedford, Salisbury, Brighton. English provincial. They spoke of their hometowns with pride but little nostalgia. Better here.
Talk turned to Frau Schmidt, a ‘real treasure’ running the house and keeping the German girls up to snuff. Her husband, Stephan, on the other hand, was altogether useless, didn’t do much of anything, unless Molly was doing the asking, then he jumped to it all right! Heaven knew why Frau Schmidt put up with him …
Edith had yet to meet the housekeeper, or the mysterious Molly, but at that moment, as if summoned, in the housekeeper came.
‘Frau Graham? So pleased you have come, gnädige Frau!’ She smoothed her palms down her wraparound apron before shaking hands. ‘Grete tells me you speak German. Good. Good!’
She nodded. Every word set her glossy, chestnut curls bobbing, the set and texture so unvarying that it had to be a wig. Her smile exposed gleamingly even dentures that didn’t quite fit. There was something false about the smile and it wasn’t just the teeth. Her eyes remained as hard as onyx. She was a large woman, buxom with a fresh, shiny complexion, as if her skin was about to burst. ‘It is how I am,’ she would say. ‘The way I was born.’ Edith wasn’t so sure. Most of the Germans bore at least some of the marks of malnutrition. Frau Schmidt was positively rubicund. Not everyone had suffered privation during the war and she wasn’t doing too badly now, by the look of things.
Frau Schmidt was charming enough to the residents, rather less so to the servant girls. From the beginning, she regarded Edith with a certain caution: older, more senior and could speak German. Frau Schmidt was not in a position to show any kind of outright hostility but she would not be above making Edith’s life in the billet less than comfortable through little, irritating acts of sly subversion: belongings mislaid, laundry misdirected, requests ignored or not carried out.
After the first introductions and the buzz of sharing knowledge with a newcomer, the girls in the billet more or less ignored Edith. The talk swirled and eddied around her. She might as well have been eating alone. The meal that first evening began with soup: beef broth with dumplings. The girls negotiated the thin liquid, carefully avoiding the little dumplings. Braised beef followed, more gravy than anything, served with a kind of swede gratin. ‘Swede again!’ Miss Campbell grimaced and the others laughed as if at some shared joke. The sauerkraut was even less popular. None of them touched the pile of greyish-green shreds. Even the sight of it, the sour rottenish smell of it, was enough for Edith. She could feel a migraine beginning, the pain in her right temple sharpening, a flickering of the light as though a bulb was about to pop. For once, she almost welcomed it. It would give her an excuse to leave the table. Give it a few more minutes.
Edith tried to focus on the talk around her. One of their number was missing. Molly. Molly Slater. Frau Schmidt had already enquired as to her whereabouts and the talk centred about her: Molly did this, Molly said that.
There was a screech outside and the sound of a powerful engine dying to an idling growl. Ginny Potts ran to the window.
‘That’s her now.’
Miss Slater came in with much theatrical shivering, clutching what looked very much like a mink coat around her.
‘Darlings! It’s positively brass monkeys out there.’
‘Did you come home on the motorbike?’ Ginny ventured.
‘In this weather? Dressed like this? Are you mad? Mercedes, if you don’t mind!’
As if to confirm it, a horn honked twice, an engine roared and wheels squealed.
‘You’ve missed dinner,’ Lorna offered.
Molly grimaced. ‘Small mercies! Now, will someone please get me a drink before I expire!’
Angie hurried to obey. Molly took her seat at the end of the table. Ginny offered her a cigarette.
‘Andy gave me a lift back from the Mess. He’s such a sweetie.’ She fitted the cigarette into an ivory holder. Lorna leant over to light it for her. ‘I say, the path is most awfully slippy. I thought Stephan was supposed to clear it?’ She extended an elegantly shod foot. ‘I could have laddered my nylons.’ She looked up from studying her shapely, neatly seamed leg and her gaze fell on Edith. ‘And who is this?’
‘This is Edith,’ Angela supplied. ‘She arrived this afternoon.’
‘Did she?’ Molly’s look was both appraising and shrewd. Although she showed no hint of recognition, Edith knew her immediately as the girl from the train with the film-star looks and the metallic-blonde hair set in shingled waves. ‘Well, Edith,’ she drawled. ‘Welcome to our lowly abode.’ Molly turned back to the others. ‘Now, you’ll never guess …’
With that, Edith was dismissed. Molly gathered in her audience. When Edith left the table, they hardly seemed to notice, too busy offering Molly eager court. It had been like that at school. There was always one who held sway, the others offering up their ordinariness to her as if presenting bouquets.
‘Shut the bloody door, will you!’ A voice called after her and Edith heard distinct sniggers. ‘And goodnight to you, too!’
If the job looked well nigh impossible, the billet was going to be purgatory. What was she doing here? She hauled herself up the stairs. Had she made the most dreadful mistake?
She blamed the oncoming migraine for her sudden, plummeting mood. She barely made it to her room before vomiting what little she’d eaten. She lay down, no longer able to fend off the feelings that were taking hold of her. When she closed her eyes she saw ribbons of scarlet and black.
March, 1933. Nazi Party banners rippled down the front of Heidelberg station. Kurt was supposed to meet her there. She’d expected him on the platform, at the barrier, but there had been no sign of him. She’d moved heaven and earth to get here arranging an exchange between her school and a Lyzeum in Heidelberg through her friend, Stella Snelling, who was working there as an assistant. Stella was leaving to take up a post back in England. A teacher from the Lyzeum, a Fraulein Rolf, would take Edith’s place at the girl’s grammar. The Head had been all for it. ‘Admirable initiative,’ she’d called it.
Kurt had initially been overjoyed at the news. His letters had been full of passion and plans. The walks they would take, the places they would visit, all the other wonders he wanted to show her, share with her. His voice came through his writing so clearly that he might have been whispering to her. His English rushed and slightly stumbling, the words tumbling in his eagerness, with occasional lapses into German when he could find no other way to express what he wanted to say. Then his letters became less frequent, shorter, the English more careful and correct. He had been busy at the University with his work and various societies and organizations he’d joined.
It all made sense now, but at the time she’d agonized over the difference in his letters. She’d read and reread them on that awful train journey to Germany, wanting to keep alive the dreams he’d woven, but deep down knowing that he had changed, just as brilliance in the early morning brings with it the promise of rain.
She waited and waited at the station, at a loss for what else to do. She watched people coming and going, arriving and leaving, the fear she’d felt on the train slowly congealing into dread. When he finally appeared, he kissed her on the cheeks, as if she were a cousin, some female acquaintance. His smile was as ready as ever but he seemed distant, preoccupied. He was sorry not to meet her train but the recent elections had made things difficult. He had to be somewhere right now but he would see her later. He hailed a cab for her and disappeared back into the crowds. Still, she grasped at some small rags of hope. She’d arrived at a bad time. There was trouble in the city. There had been elections, fighting in the streets. The evidence was everywhere: slogans daubed on walls, posters defaced or torn, Adolf Hitler glaring down from every lamppost with his chopped-off moustache.
When she saw Kurt later, it would be different.
But it wasn’t. They met at a café down by the river. The place was crowded with SD men in brown uniforms, swastika armbands and kepi caps, drinking beer, eating wurst and sauerkraut, which was all they seemed to serve. Kurt was sitting at a table under linden trees, the dapple of the delicate, pale-green leaves playing on his blue shirt. The girl who came to take their order was in traditional dress, smocked white blouse, embroidered waistcoat, her black dirndl skirt trimmed with red rickrack. Kurt ordered beer, bockwurst and kraut.
‘There is a thing you must know,’ he started. He had a certain expression when he had something awkward to say, a rictus of the mouth, the lips drawn back into not quite a smile. He had that look now. Edith put down her knife and fork. ‘There is no easy way to say it,’ he swept his fair hair back from his forehead, another thing he did when he was nervous. ‘The thing is,’ he paused again, her silence increasing his unease. ‘I have to tell you. It would not be fair otherwise to you, or Elisabeth. I’m engaged.’
‘Who’s Elisabeth?’ Edith asked. It was the only thing she could think of to say.
‘My fiancée.’ He twisted the heavy gold signet ring on his middle finger. It was set with a carnelian intaglio; it looked old – and valuable. She’d never seen it before.
‘I see.’ The ‘s’ sounded thick, as if her mouth was stuffed with cotton.
‘I hope we may still be friends, Edith.’ His rictus smile widened. ‘I value your friendship so much.’ He looked down at the ring he was turning and turning on his finger. ‘You will never know—’
Edith was no longer listening. The sound around her, the men laughing and shouting, was turning into an impossible roaring. She looked down at the pale length of flaccid boiled sausage, the green and yellow heap of fermented cabbage, breathing in the sour stench of it. Her mouth flooded with saliva. ‘Excuse me,’ she managed to say and barely made it to the roadside, bent double, heaving, with the SD men laughing, banging their steins on the table, chanting zu viel bier. He did not come to her. When she recovered, he had already left; the girl was collecting the money and the untouched plates.
Edith walked, blinded, the sunlight suddenly dazzlingly bright. The red, white and black banners ribboning down the buildings flapped and flared at the edges, the crooked crosses flexing and twisting. The rotten onion smell gusting from the crowds around her was overpowering. This was the beginning of her migraines. She would grow to know the signs. She had to stop several times to heave into the gutter, much to the disgust of passers-by. Some blind instinct found her at the Lyzeum. Luckily, there was nobody about. She staggered up to her small room at the top of a twisting staircase, drew the curtains tightly against the stabbing of the light and collected the washing bowl from its stand. Ragged surges of nausea lurched through her. She lay down on the narrow bed, grateful for the pain. It stopped her thinking about Kurt.
A tentative knocking, hours later. The black tide had receded. She struggled to get up and fell back again.
‘Are you all right?’ A narrow-faced, anxious-looking young woman with dark, curly hair came into the room. She approached the bed, concern in her fine dark eyes. ‘I looked in earlier but you were sleeping. Are you unwell?’
‘It’s a migraine, I think.’ Edith glanced helplessly at the sour-smelling basin of vomit at the side of the bed. ‘I’m sorry. I—’
‘Oh, you pour thing!’ The young woman whisked the basin away. She came back with fresh water. ‘Drink this then I’ll get you some linden tea. It is good for headaches and stomach upsets.’ She sat on the side of the narrow, iron-framed bed. ‘I am Sarah, by the way, Sarah Weill. I have the room next door.’
Sarah made the Lyzeum slightly more bearable. There was no question of going home. Edith would have to stick it out for the term even though she didn’t like it. Not at all. It wasn’t just what had happened with Kurt, there was an unpleasant atmosphere in the school. The Head, Fraulein Weber, was near retirement; her deputy, Fraulein Grafstadt, was helping her out of the door. Fraulein Grafstadt was a thoroughgoing Nazi, proud of being an early member of the Nationalsozialistische Frauenschaft. She had taken to wearing her swastika armband to school and was followed by others, particularly Fraulein Wilhelm, Head of P.E., an amazonian of a woman with huge breasts and a pin-head who put the girls through endless drills and bouts of vigorous gymnastic ribbon dancing. These two ruled the school. They insisted on the Hitler salute at the beginning and end of lessons; they encouraged the girls to join the Bund Deutscher Mädel and to inform on any girls, their families, or teachers who expressed disloyalty to Hitler and the National Socialists. The one or two Jewish students had a particularly hard time. Fraulein Weill came off worst of all.
‘I’m leaving,’ Sarah said finally. ‘It’s only a matter of time before they get rid of me anyway. There are new laws all the time. I won’t give them the satisfaction.’ She paused, fighting the tears back, biting her lip. ‘Daniel and I have plans.’ Daniel was Sarah’s boyfriend, a young communist and Jewish, he was in even more danger than she was. ‘We will go to Amsterdam. He has family there. Then we will go to America. Daniel says there is no future for us in the whole of Europe. I don’t like to impose on you, but …’
‘Will I help? You don’t have to ask.’ Edith took her hand. She smiled although tears threatened, whether for Sarah and her kind, or for herself, she couldn’t tell.
Sarah went after lessons on a Saturday. Edith took her suitcase to the station. If anyone asked, she was taking English books to a friend at the University. Nobody asked. Sarah left the school as if she was just going out for the evening. She would not be missed until Monday when Edith reported that she was sick with a fever and keeping to her room. That gained her a day or two. The staff lived in mortal fear of infection spreading through the school. Her absence wasn’t noticed until the Wednesday. By then, Edith profoundly hoped that Sarah and her fiancé were far away.
She claimed ignorance but no one believed her. She was told to pack her bags. She’d never been so glad to leave anywhere, even though she dreaded what would happen on her premature return. The Head’s reaction had been unexpected. ‘You poor girl! It must have been hideous! That Herr Hitler. Dreadful man. I was just about to send Fraulein Rolf packing.’ She’d sniffed. ‘Filling the girls’ heads with all sorts of rubbish. I won’t have those kinds of views peddled here.’ Edith had burst into tears at her unexpected sympathy. Miss Jameson had patted her shoulder, suggested a few days off. The days had turned into weeks. ‘Nervous Exhaustion’ Dr Elliot had called it. A convenient cover for a broken heart.
She must have slept. She woke to a tentative knocking.
‘Gnädige Frau Graham?’
A face peered round the door, thin and dark, framed with black curls. For a moment, Edith thought that it was her Lyzeum friend, Sarah.
‘I am Seraphina.’ The girl entered carrying a heavy ewer. She was more roughly dressed than the other girls, her hair half-hidden by a kerchief, her faded wraparound overall far too big for her, the sleeves of her blouse rolled up above the elbows. ‘I bring hot water.’
Her eyes widened as they went from the washstand to the basin now by Edith’s bed.
‘I’m sorry, I …’
‘No, no,’ the girl put the ewer down. ‘I will take away. I’ll tell Frau Schmidt you are not well.’
‘No, no,’ Edith put out a hand. ‘Please don’t.’
She couldn’t bear a fuss and something told her that Frau Schmidt would make one.
‘I tell no one, if you don’t want.’ She dipped Edith’s flannel in the ewer, squeezed it out and came over to the bed. She pressed the flannel to Edith’s forehead with light, gentle touches. Her cracked, reddened hands smelt of lye. ‘Tell me what I can do.’
She looked down at Edith, her tiny face puckered with concern. She was smaller than the others, slightly built and appeared younger, scarcely into her teens, although she was probably older than that. There were deep shadows, like brown thumb marks, under her eyes and her skin was the colour of cheap paper.
‘Water. I’d like some water.’
‘I bring.’
She glanced back from the door. With her large, dark eyes and delicate bone structure, the girl must have been very pretty. Would be pretty again one day. Edith hoped so, anyway. She left as quietly as she came. Edith lay back. Who was she? Not German. Czech perhaps? Jewish certainly. As she’d leaned over to apply the flannel, Edith had seen the blue numerals tattooed on her bare arm. What had her life been before all that horror engulfed her? Edith had no idea. Every indication had been stripped away.