In June 1948 I had a letter from Max asking me to meet the train.
He had again been away for several weeks, communicating only by telegram or letter. Since the War he had spent more time out of the office than he had through the whole period of hostilities. Many of the young men who had left the firm in 1939 had returned, of those that did return some left unable to cope with the humdrum nature of their old jobs, but sufficient numbers stayed to relax the burden of work on the rest of us. So Max’ absences just meant I did more of his work and passed client issues that I would normally have dealt with down to the returnees – all of whom had been my seniors before they left for war. In many ways it was a difficult period.
Several times I asked Max where he went on his trips – a question one could then reasonably ask as the necessary secrecies of the war receded into memory. He said that some work had only just begun with the ending of the war. He said that this work was the most important work of all. In the harsh winter of 1947 when we all looked back, even to the war years, with fond memories of being warm, he spent many hours in his office with the Occupied notice hanging on the door. Whenever we saw him he appeared distracted, angry, frustrated but more than anything he was worried. He told me that living in the peace was far harder than in wartime because in peacetime you felt that things should be able to be done and they weren’t “At least in wartime there is an excuse for failure” he said.
And then his mood lifted. He became lighter-hearted and even jovial. His visits away became fewer and farther between until, in June 1948, he said he was off on his last trip. I ventured to ask him where he was going. “Austria then France. I will send you instructions. I will need your help Ted.” It was one of the first occasions on which he called me Ted.
So it was with a degree of curiosity that I had read his instructions which arrived from France some days later. I followed them to the letter.
I was on the platform as requested, as the train arrived at Lime Street Station, appearing through a fog of steam through the deep cutting. The train was crowded and there was chaos as the travellers dismounted, acquired their luggage and porters and made their way to the taxis lined up along the length of the platform.
I had been told to look out for a young woman who would be carrying a small brown cardboard suitcase. She would have blonde hair, tied tightly off her face and she would be wearing a light grey belted gabardine raincoat. As the crowd cleared she was not difficult to spot even though her hair was covered by a headscarf tied underneath her chin.
“Monika Heller?”
“Oui, Yes, I have sorry.” She was flustered and ill at ease, almost frightened. Her eyes, very dark, very opaque, gave nothing away apart from the fact that she, as so many others, had suffered.
“My name is Mottram, Ted Mottram, and I have been asked by Major Fischer to meet you and take you to your lodgings.”
I spoke slowly as I had been told her English was not good.
“Where is Major Fischer?” She was looking around her, anxiously.
“He will not be here for some time. You will be well looked after. He has sent enough money to take care of you for a while.”
It was many years before I knew anything of how she had spent the years before I met her off that train, and then only when I read Max’s papers.
Max had told me something of her background, how she had no family and had come from France as a displaced person under the children’s programme. She seemed to me rather too old to be treated as a child but that was not for me to question.
Max had arranged lodgings for her in Birkenhead with Elsie Holt, a widow hardly older than Monika herself but with a young child. Bill Holt had been a merchant seaman lost in the North Atlantic a month after their wedding. Monika would be safe and comfortable there, as well as being company and a help to Elsie, while we established whether she would be able to undertake the work that was being planned for her. Max had told me that Monika was not good with adults and he had it in mind that she should find work as a ‘mother’s help’, ‘nanny’ would be too grand a name as she was completely un-qualified.
It seemed a good idea. People would be only too pleased to have someone who did what they were told and asked no questions, who neither smoked nor drank alcohol and who would have no designs on the man of the house. She would not be attractive to men, I felt sure about that, her manner was distant and formal, and her eyes would warn any man off before they would even thought of making any advances.
She had told me that she had worked with children during her time in the camp in France and had loved them for their innocence. I felt sure they would love her for her almost childlike qualities.
They would not feel threatened and neither would she.
I saw her once a week when I dropped in the rent envelope and spoke with her for a few minutes each time. Her English certainly did improve as she spent most of every day talking with Elsie and helping her look after young Billy. “She’ll do” was Elsie’s verdict when I raised with her the idea for Monika’s future as a mother’s help.
At the beginning of September 1948, when all her paperwork had come through, I drove Monika to meet her new employers.