Refugee Potato pancakes
(Kartoffelpuffer)
Potato peelings
Handful of flour
Salt and pepper
Take potato peels cut them to very small pieces mix them with some flour and salt fry them on top of the stove. (Seraphina’s recipe – refugees subsist on this)
Edith got back to rather an ugly scene.
Frau Schmidt and Miss Slater had the German girls gathered together in the hall. To the others they were just ‘those girls’, ‘this girl’, or ‘that girl’ but Edith was getting to know them, or as much as they would allow. She chatted while they made her bed, brought her morning tea, hot water. Hilde was the most forthcoming. Blonde, fresh faced. Originally from Hanover, family bombed out in ’44. She’d been sent to an aunt who lived in a village outside Lübeck. She cycled in every day. Grete, smaller, sharper featured, a native of the town and relative of Frau Schmidt. Magda, thin, dark with darting brown eyes. She was from the east and said very little about what had happened to her, very little about anything. And there was Seraphina. The others waited at table, brought hot water, changed the beds. Seraphina was treated like a skivvy. She waited on Frau Schmidt and the others and did the heavy, dirty jobs: clearing snow, hauling coal and logs, clearing out the stoves, lighting fires. Jobs that Stephan was supposed to do. Exempted by his war injuries, presumably.
Hilde, Grete and Magda were standing apart from Seraphina. They had the same look of innocence mixed with faint accusation, as if the combination would deflect blame from them. Seraphina stood, head held high, her large, dark eyes shiny with tears that she would not shed.
The other residents were watching from the stairs or the doorway of the sitting room.
‘What’s all this?’ Edith stripped off her gloves. Some sort of hoo-ha in the billet really would put the tin lid on it.
‘It has come to my notice,’ Miss Slater’s tone had a pompous ring that she’d no doubt learnt from some superior at work. ‘It has been brought to my attention by Frau Schmidt, that Seraphina has been stealing.’
‘I see.’ Edith unpinned her hat.
Miss Slater looked to Frau Schmidt to take up the story.
‘She is Jewish,’ the older woman said with a look of contempt. ‘What can you expect? I give her a chance. Now this happens. I should have known better.’
Seraphina continued to stare straight ahead. Edith wondered again what her life had been before. There was an intelligence in those eyes and something altogether refined about her looks and demeanor that this terrible time had failed to erase. Whatever her past life, Edith doubted that she’d been destined to skivvy for the likes of Frau Schmidt. But such a job was highly sought after. If she lost this, she would lose everything. They would be queuing up to take her place. Probably were already. Frau Schmidt would have someone lined up, that was certain.
‘A Jew!’ Miss Slater’s lip curled at the word and she gave a little shudder of disgust. ‘I might have known.’
‘How could you not have known?’ Edith said as she took off her coat. ‘Did you not see the numbers on her arm?’
Of course she hadn’t. Until this moment, Seraphina had been beneath her notice.
‘What is Seraphina supposed to have stolen?’ Edith asked. She kept her voice even, as she would do in school.
‘Not supposed,’ Miss Slater spat out. ‘Did. She was caught red-handed by Frau Schmidt.’
Edith turned to the older woman. ‘And what was it that Seraphina was caught stealing?’
‘Potato peelings.’
Edith looked from one to the other. ‘All this is about potato peelings?’
‘It’s against the rules,’ Miss Slater countered. ‘Germans are not supposed to take food home. Even scraps and leftovers.’
‘Are they not? Where does it go, then?’
Miss Slater shrugged. ‘Into the rubbish, I suppose.’
‘Or into Frau Schmidt’s basement.’ She turned to the other German servants. ‘Is that not so, girls?’
They said nothing but Hilde’s ready colour gave them away and Frau Schmidt’s blustered denial died in her throat.
‘So, it’s all right for Frau Schmidt to take leftover food,’ Edith went on, ‘and presumably the others, if Frau Schmidt can spare anything, but not Seraphina? Is that right?’
She bit back her anger, determined not to lose her temper, but no one else was going to defend Seraphina, they were all looking away, eyes averted, and she wouldn’t – couldn’t – put up with what was happening here.
Miss Slater’s face became stubborn, sullen. ‘It’s against regulations. She should be reported.’
‘I see. And none of us do anything against regulations? That’s a very fine watch, Miss Slater.’ Edith took the girl’s arm. ‘Mind if I take a better look?’
It was black market almost certainly. Miss Slater made to pull her arm away, but Edith’s grip tightened.
‘Swiss, if I’m not mistaken. And expensive.’ She turned it to see the face. ‘Very expensive. Would you mind telling us where you got it?’
‘It was a gift.’
‘Oh, from whom?’
‘An admirer,’ she shook her arm free. ‘I’ve had it ages.’
‘Really? And that’s a nice pendant you are wearing. I haven’t seen it before. Gold with what looks like a ruby at the centre. It looks old.’
‘It’s a family heirloom, if you must know.’
‘So it will have a British Hallmark, won’t it? Can I see?’
Edith held her ice-blue eyes until she looked away.
‘How would I know?’ She turned away in sulky petulance, a protective hand over the pendant. She rallied. ‘Look here, you’ve no right—’
‘I was merely proving a point,’ Edith said, keeping her voice mild. ‘You have no right, either. Neither have any of you.’ Her tone hardened as she looked around at the other girls. ‘How much do you pay in cigarettes for your laundry to be done? Your hair? The alterations to your clothes? We all do it but it is strictly against regulations. You could all be reported. I suggest we leave Seraphina alone, don’t you? Is it really worth ruining anybody’s life for a few potato peelings?’
No one said anything.
‘I simply don’t have time for this. I have to get ready. I’m going out.’ Miss Slater flung the riposte over her shoulder as she ran upstairs.
‘Who’s for a drink?’ Angela turned back into the sitting room now the show was over. ‘I could do with one after that!’
The others followed in a ripple of excited, nervous laughter, anxious to dispel the recent awkwardness and presumably hoping that Edith would not report the lot of them.
Frau Schmidt shooed the German girls towards the kitchen.
‘Frau Schmidt, might I have a word?’ Edith called the woman back. ‘I don’t want to see Seraphina suffer in any way as a result of this … misunderstanding. And I don’t want to see her being the only one stuck with the heavy work. See to it that it’s shared equally between the other girls, or better still I’d like to see Stephan doing a bit more, or I might start asking some questions of my own. Like what is he doing here, anyway? And why are you two camped in the basement? Which is, as I understand it, against the famous regulations. Seraphina? Will you bring my bag up for me? I don’t want dinner and I have paperwork to do.’
Edith turned for the stairs, noting with satisfaction Frau Schmidt’s defeated nod as she trudged down the steps to the basement.
‘Sit down, Seraphina.’ Edith shut the door. ‘I want to talk to you.’
Seraphina sat down, taking a fraction of the edge of the bed.
‘Did you take them?’
‘The potato peels? Of course. They all do. Frau Schmidt and the other girls. I wanted to make Kartoffelpuffer, potato pancakes, for my sister. She is hungry. Sick. She needs food. They all take food. I thought they would not mind.’
‘But they did.’
Seraphina nodded.
‘One rule for them, one rule for you, eh?’
Seraphina gave a weary shrug. ‘Hilde, and Magda, they say nothing but Grete tells Frau Schmidt who goes to Miss Slater.’ She looked up at Edith. ‘I thought she is British and would be on my side. What is a few potato peels to you? I was surprised.’
‘We have our own share of bigots and anti-semites.’
‘It is everywhere?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘I’d like to go someplace where that is not so.’
Edith stared at the girl. She could think of no answer.
‘Tell me, Seraphina,’ she said. ‘Where are you living?’
‘We have a place in a house.’
‘Not in a camp?’
‘No.’ She shook her head vigorously. ‘I won’t live in a camp. I don’t care how bad the place is where we live. I’d rather live on our own.’
Edith took out cigarettes. ‘Do you want one?’
Seraphina took a cigarette but refused a light.
‘Here. Have the whole packet. Have two. And here’s chocolate. For your sister. She’s sick you say?’
‘Yes, very sick. She needs medicine but I have no money, nothing.’ Seraphina wiped at the tears that she’d refused to shed earlier. ‘I don’t know what to do.’
‘I’ll come and see her tomorrow. There, there,’ Edith put her arm round the girl’s narrow shoulders and offered her handkerchief. ‘We’ll see what needs to be done to make her better. Meanwhile, you heard what I said to Frau Schmidt, if anything like this happens again, or if she gives you heavy jobs to do, I want to know. Really, that woman. I’ve a good mind to get rid of her.’
‘You can do that?’ Seraphina looked at her with awe.
‘Oh, yes,’ Edith clicked her fingers. ‘Like that.’
All Germans were intensely vulnerable; every aspect of their lives subject to the Control Commission. As a Senior Officer, Edith could do more or less what she liked.
‘But you mustn’t,’ Seraphina’s thin face grew deadly serious. ‘She is very powerful.’
‘Powerful, how?’ Edith asked.
‘She knows many people. They can make trouble.’
‘For me?’
Seraphina shook her head quickly.
‘For you?’
Seraphina nodded just as fast.
‘Oh, I see. What kind of people, exactly?’
‘I— I can’t say. But,’ she lowered her voice, looking round like a hunted field mouse, as if Frau Schmidt might be lurking, ready to pounce. ‘This is not her house although she says it is. She was just the housekeeper. I heard Grete saying. The family left when the British come. Then Frau Schmidt has the house to herself.’ She paused. ‘Those little animals – in the parlour.’
‘The porcelain pieces?’
Seraphina nodded. ‘They are special. Porzellan Manufaktur Allach. Made in Dachau for the SS.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I know,’ Seraphina said quietly, her small hands locked tightly. ‘Frau Schmidt tells me I must not touch, even to dust. Not that I would.’ Her face puckered with loathing and disgust. ‘They cannot show the picture of Hitler anymore but they keep these things that are not so obvious, to show they have not changed. If you look, you see.’ She turned an ornament over and signed double lightning flash runes in the air. The mark of the SS. ‘That Stephan,’ she lowered her voice still further. ‘He is not Frau Schmidt’s man. He is hiding, she is helping him.’
This all made sense. Edith could never quite square the elegant bedroom furniture, the pretty little pink stool in particular, with Frau Schmidt’s ample behind. And Stephan. He looked younger than Frau Schmidt, which wasn’t suspicious in itself, of course, but they seemed ill-suited. He didn’t like rough work, shirked most of it, and there was something about his attitude. The sullen resentment could be a profound distaste born of shock, as if he could not quite understand how this was happening to him.
‘Thank you, Seraphina.’ The girl took it as her cue to go. ‘No, wait a moment. These Kartoffelpuffer. How do you make them?’
Seraphina looked mystified. ‘They are poor people’s food …’
‘I collect recipes. Indulge me.’
Edith picked up a pencil and rummaged in her bag for paper. She found the Mess menu card and wrote the recipe on the back.
What the girl had told her chimed with what Adams had said about the fear that still held sway here, of hidden forces under the surface. Like they’re afraid of something. As though the people we’re looking for still have influence and power. Seraphina hadn’t said as much, but that’s whom she meant. He is hiding. She is helping him. Did she mean hiding himself, or hiding someone else? And how exactly was Frau Schmidt helping? And the porcelain animals. Crafty. A little shrine to the old regime hidden in plain sight. If anyone recognized the mark, Edith could see Frau Schmidt sliding out of it as quick as you like. Oh, a misunderstanding! They belong to the people who had lived here before I moved in!
Small things, straws in the wind, but this was something she could give to Adams. And at last recipes for Dori. Vienna Steak and Kartoffelpuffer. Refugee potato pancakes. The matching of the recipes told its own story of luxury and lack.