She stopped, panting for breath, her throat raw. The tear-filled help me she wanted him to hear impossible to voice, the pain she was in too all-consuming to move past.
Her father was staring at her, not moving, his mouth open and useless. There was such shock on his face, and such sorrow, Karen thought for a moment he might have glimpsed below her anger and seen her need. And then he roared and she knew he hadn’t seen her at all.
‘Be quiet! Who do you think you are, questioning me like this? What do you think you know about life? All these theories, they’re nonsense; they’re utterly ridiculous. You’re meddling in matters that are nothing to do with you and I won’t have it. What your mother was, what our marriage was, is none of your business. This rudeness stops right now, young lady. Right now.’
Karen wanted a father; she’d got a parade sergeant. She doubled over, winded, a hand pressed to her mouth to hold back the nausea.
‘Oh God, Karen, I didn’t mean to sound so harsh. I’m—’
He realised he’d gone too far; on some level, Karen knew that. It didn’t matter. He wasn’t quick enough to repair the fault. Before he could get any more words out, she ripped the gulf threatening between them wide open.
‘It was your fault! She killed herself because of you as much as me – more, from the sounds of it. I hate you. I’ll never stop hating you. I wish you had died instead of her!’
She threw herself up the stairs and into her bedroom; gave way to sobs that wracked through the house. If she had paused for a second, if she had turned round, she would have seen her father crying as heartbrokenly as her. But she didn’t spare him a glance.
Five
Liese
Berlin, July–November 1938
Why was she torturing herself like this? What was the point?
It was July, the summer season was in full swing; in any other year, the book would be bursting with fittings. This year, page after page had stayed blank, the few orders recorded there sitting as awkward as ink blots.
Liese flicked through them, as she had done last night and the night before. A day dress for Frau Posen. An evening gown for Frau Kohlmeier. Three more entries that were equally reticent. No jackets trimmed to match the dresses. No coordinating hats and gloves. No beaded capes or chiffon wraps in a week’s worth of colours. A handful of orders, all specifying plain cuts and pared-back trimmings. Haus Elfmann’s clientele was not simply shrinking, it was afraid to show off any traces of wealth.
She closed the book and switched off the lamp. The accounts were waiting, but she couldn’t bear to look at them. Two years ago, even with the loss of the Hertie account, no one at Haus Elfmann had worried about the salon’s financial security. Money was there to be spent; there was always plenty more to replace it. Now, those days felt like a lifetime ago. The banks had withdrawn credit in April; their last backer had swiftly offered his regrets. Liese had slashed the wages bill to the bone, but the red numbers kept rising.
All the hours she had spent in this office crowded round her. Listening to Paul daydreaming collections. Watching Otto pore over the budgets that brought her father’s fantasies to life. The salon’s rhythms had once seemed as unshakeable as the seasons they followed. ‘I don’t want to direct the salon. I want to be its chief designer.’ Was it only two years since she had said that? Now here she was, trying to hold the whole house together in hands far too young for the task, spread thinner than tracing paper and knowing barely half what she needed.
She wasn’t balancing the weight alone, not entirely. There was a handful of seamstresses still working, women who had never worked anywhere else and were stamped through with loyalty to the salon as deeply as she was. Who, like Liese, had never imagined their future to lie anywhere else. And there was still Otto. He did his best to keep the wheels turning, but, with Adefa tightening its grip on the industry, he spent more days on trains, criss-crossing the country grubbing for suppliers, than he did in the salon.
As for Paul… Liese rubbed eyes that ached more than an eighteen-year-old’s should. He hadn’t replaced her, although he had threatened to. She hadn’t reacted when he dealt with her ‘insubordination’ in his office by ignoring her; she was too used to that treatment for it to matter. When he finally asked her why she was still coming in every day even though she wasn’t wanted, she had told him the truth.
‘I love the business as much as you. It’s my family; it’s what you brought me up to believe was important. If you won’t walk away from it, neither will I.’
He hadn’t questioned her commitment again after that, but nowadays he came to the salon in a rush and tore through his visits. His behaviour was erratic. One day he would be close-mouthed and secretive, squirrelling away money in padded brown envelopes when he thought she wasn’t looking. The next, he would be loud and demanding. He was never listening. He was always ‘too busy’ to consider what now or to review empty ledgers. He was maddening and exhausting and no help to anyone.
‘I’m best used as an ambassador; you and Otto can manage the shop.’
He threw the line out like a compliment or a carefully considered decision, refusing to admit he was as frightened of the future as her, refusing to face it. Liese knew all too well that if Paul stood still for a moment, the way the days forced her to, the silence would stick to him.
The salon was running down, wearing out piece by piece like a tired old watch. There was no more hushed chatter in the public rooms, no more shushed babble backstage. The workrooms were frozen. There were no hissing irons, no clattering scissors, no pulleys creaking muslin-shrouded dresses like clouds across the roof. The curtains in the dressing rooms bloomed dust in their pleats; the gilt mirrors in the showroom sprouted tarnished patches like age spots. Memories were all that made up the salon now, as easily pulled out as pins. The canopied front door opened so little its hinges had stiffened. Their last customers sat at home and summoned, turning Liese into a peddler, hawking her patterns and her ribbons through back doors and garden gates.
‘I’m not selling.’
Paul’s repeated refusal continued to ring through the hallways, not that anyone heard. Not that there was anything left to sell, beyond a building and a tattered idea. For all Paul’s bravado, and whether he chose to believe it or not, the Party had still ground the Elfmann business to dust.
So they can remove us. So they can lift us out of our lives…
Michael had been proven right and these days was involved with the resistance deeper than ever. Gone with his comrades far more than around, even though Liese needed him, if only to share her fears. She didn’t bother him with that anymore: the demands of the struggle always won over the whims of fashion, and how could she blame him for making that choice? Liese lived in the same battered reality as Michael: she woke up most days wondering how dresses could possibly matter.
But I have to keep it all going because what else can I do?
She couldn’t imagine what a life without the salon meant. As her father’s heir, she had expected to live outside the narrow roles that most women of her social position inhabited. She had certainly never yearned after the purely domestic kind of life that the Nazis proclaimed kept women happy: a home, a husband, children – nothing more. And now, even if she had wanted that, the men she had once mixed with had either disappeared or, with her heritage, wouldn’t look twice at her.
There is nothing left but the salon, so the salon must keep going.
She told herself that every day to get herself out of bed, to paper over the truth that the salon no longer mattered, that the world she once inhabited had splintered. That every circle her life had overlapped was slipping away. Clientele; workforce; the fashion community whose origins she had never spared a thought for before the Party changed the rules of ownership and belonging.
As Otto had predicted, Hertie’s renaming had been only the start. Business after business had been wrenched out of Jewish hands, or been defamed and ruined. New plaques swarmed across stores and salons
. Old owners disappeared as legacies that should have endured down the years were plucked away or left to wither. Faces familiar since childhood had vanished overnight, taking their skills to London or to America, or to anywhere religion wasn’t the first question asked.
‘We could follow. With our reputation, we wouldn’t be starting from scratch. Look how well others have done.’
Otto had kept pushing; Liese had kept hoping that Paul would listen, although she no longer bothered adding her voice to the argument. Instead, as fashion house after fashion house closed and reopened, all shiny and German, and still no one came for Haus Elfmann, Paul took it as proof that the salon was invincible.
‘Down they all go and look at us standing.’
Some days, Liese wondered if he was going mad.
The clock on the desk struck ten.
She should go home. She was so tired, more tired than she had ever been through the sleepless nights a show demanded. Sitting now, alone in the dark, Liese could have cried for those days and their nail-biting bustle. They were gone. Autumn/Winter 1937 had been the salon’s last showcase, although no one knew it until the day itself dawned. The fear, the excitement, the rituals, the weeks and weeks of work, all that ran on the same. But, this time, invitations went unanswered and no one requested tickets, not even Agnes Gerlach. Helena Stahl, who was still battling to do her job in the publicity department, didn’t tell anyone that. As she didn’t tell anyone that she had been forced to pay the invisible-on-the-day journalists to attend. She had said nothing, until the moment of opening clicked by and the door stayed firmly shut.
‘I thought it would be all right. This is Haus Elfmann; nobody ignores us.’
A reasonable assumption, if it hadn’t been for the Party memos suggesting people should.
The showroom stayed empty. The dresses expecting their debut sat unhatched and unwanted in their muslin cocoons. Paul shouted; Otto wrote letters. Neither was heard.
As Berlin’s mood stiffened, the Elfmann clients who could choose where they shopped went to rub shoulders with Nazi wives at Romatzki and at Maggy Rouff – Frau Goebbels’ new favourite designer. The clients who couldn’t go anywhere else stretched their dresses across the seasons, or ordered travelling costumes, plain and practical garments; one-off purchases. As for the department stores, the German ones had followed Herr Bruckner’s lead and abandoned Haus Elfmann; the international ones were nervous of Hitler’s posturing and couldn’t be relied on to come.
‘You’re the last fly in the web. They’ll swallow you up too – you wait.’ Helena’s parting shot, delivered when Paul blamed her, nastily, for the show’s fiasco.
It had wormed under Liese’s skin and led to dreams she woke from, heart racing, legs kicking; giant spiders in pursuit.
The quarter-hour chimed.
She stretched her stiff neck. She should go home, except the emptiness there would be worse than here. Her parents rushed round their nights as much as their days, flitting through the receptions they could still wrangle invitations to, Margarethe dressed in Paul’s designs, as if anyone still cared. There was no one waiting for her, no one to share and soften the day.
Liese stopped that thought as it started to spiral. If she began to feel sorry for herself, she would never leave the chair. If she imagined the next day unfolding exactly like this one, she wouldn’t have the strength to step into it.
Not home then, but perhaps the workroom. The seamstresses were struggling with the dress Paul had demanded for Margarethe’s upcoming birthday dinner. Its design involved flounced cape sleeves with chiffon cascades which needed delicate work and lengths of material their plundered stores could barely stretch to. Solving the most efficient way to create those would take the concentrated work needed to wear her out and buy a few dreamless hours on the sofa.
Liese rubbed her fingers supple again and was about to get up when the door opened.
She shaded her eyes, expecting a light to snap on. Someone entered, but the room stayed dark. The footsteps weren’t Paul’s fast click or Otto’s shuffle. They were soft, deliberate.
Liese pulled up her feet as a figure headed towards the desk.
Drawers slid open; papers rustled. A hand pushed back an unruly flop of hair.
She switched on the lamp.
‘What are you doing?’
Michael stared at her like a rabbit a step away from a fox and jumped, dropping one of the envelopes Liese knew was stuffed full with notes. Envelopes she had so far resisted, despite their temptation.
‘Are you stealing? Surely not. You can’t need money so badly you’d do that. If something’s wrong and you’re desperate, why wouldn’t you just ask?’
Then he turned more fully towards the light and the money and what Michael was or wasn’t doing no longer mattered. His face was striped with blood, his left eye swollen and bruised. He didn’t seem to hear her gasp; he didn’t waste time on an apology.
‘I didn’t know if you’d listen. And I’m not taking it for me – it’s for the resistance. This money will pay for leaflets and the campaign we need to encourage recruits.’ His defence gathered speed, bristling him with energy, pushing him onto his toes. ‘We need to get the word to more people that we’re here, that we’re fighting back. We need to get the workers out of the factories and marching.’
Liese was barely listening: she couldn’t take her eyes off the damage to his face. She moved round the desk and reached for his purpling cheek.
‘What on earth happened to you?’
He brushed her frightened hand away.
‘It’s nothing. We ran into a patrol. There was a fight. We got away. If we’d had more men, they wouldn’t have chased us in the first place. Which is why we need to pull in more members. It’s time to mobilise, Liese: we just need one big push to make people understand what Hitler is doing. How he’s feeding his war machine while working men go hungry. How Austria is the start, not the end of his plan. How we have to take action and stop him.’
He had snapped to attention like a soldier, his one good eye burning bright as a beacon.
The sight of his cuts and bruises throbbed through her. Liese knew Hitler’s annexation of Austria the previous March, and the harsh measures taken there against the communists and the Jews, had lit a flame under Michael. She was hardly surprised that his behaviour, that his belief that an uprising was possible, had crystallised. She sympathised – how could she not? – but that didn’t mean she had to like the danger his actions exposed him to.
‘Forget about all that. Have you seen the state you’re in? Won’t you let me call a doctor?’
He shook his head. ‘I’m fine.’ He grabbed the envelope back from the desktop where it had fallen. ‘I need to get this where it’s needed.’
He was wild-eyed, barely looking at her. Liese’s stomach flipped as she realised the lengths he was prepared to go to.
‘You’re going to get yourself killed.’
Michael grabbed a second envelope and slammed the drawer shut. The casual way he ignored her fear and helped himself, without any thought for who might take the blame for his stealing, suddenly made her see red.
‘Didn’t you think someone would notice the money’s gone? Weren’t you worried who might have been blamed? I don’t get it, Michael: some seamstress who’s barely clinging on as it is could have lost her job. How does that fit with your love-of-the-worker principles?’
Why didn’t you trust me enough to ask for my help? Why won’t you let me help you now? was what she wanted to say, but her pride wouldn’t let her.
Michael stuffed the money in his jacket.
‘Don’t be so melodramatic. There’s plenty left – too much for anyone to notice what I’ve taken. And your father can spare it; the struggle needs it far more than he does.’
That he was right didn’t help. Liese was suddenly so weary of it all, so sick of the stupidity. Paul hiding money while he pretended his business, and his country, was healthy. Michael believing a handful o
f men and some poorly printed leaflets could slow down a Führer who had rolled over Austria without a hand raised in protest. Her, eighteen and thinking she could stop a crumbling fashion house from collapsing, or that it mattered anymore if it did.
I don’t want to do this; I’m done.
The realisation caught her by the throat. She didn’t believe in the business. Not with the passion she once had, not with a passion like his. How could she?
‘Take it.’
The speed with which his mouth dropped open would have once made her laugh.
‘What am I doing? Why am I trying to pretend that dresses are still important? It’s a fashion salon – that’s not the same as a family, no matter how much I try to kid myself it is. It’s going to fall sooner or later. So take it. Fund your campaign and your recruiting. I hope it works, I really do. And I hope you won’t get shot.’
She stared at the cuts marking his face and shivered at the prospect of worse.
‘Have you thought about that, Michael? About getting wounded or killed and what that would do to Otto? Or about how crushed he’d be if he could see you standing here, clutching your spoils like a common thief, rather than doing the honest thing and asking? When the salon crashes, you’ll be all he has. Doesn’t that matter to you at all?’
His hands twitched; his face flushed. If he had said yes of course it does, she would have emptied the drawers and given him everything.
‘No. I can’t let it. The cause is what matters. Beating the Nazis is what matters. Family is nothing next to that. And if I can see that, even though I know how much my father cares about me, surely, with the parents you’ve been saddled with, you can see it too.’
What Only We Know: A heart-wrenching and unforgettable World War 2 historical novel Page 8
