What Only We Know: A heart-wrenching and unforgettable World War 2 historical novel

by Catherine Hokin

  Michael got to his feet so briskly, Karen lost the thread of her argument.

  ‘This has not been an easy conversation for either of us, but I hope it has helped. If you ever return to Berlin, perhaps we can meet under happier circumstances.’

  He sounded like he had memorised a script.

  Karen gaped at him as he motioned her up and directed her to the door.

  ‘Goodbye, Fraulein Cartwright. Please remember me to your father. It is growing late. It is time I retired for the night. Markus will see you out.’

  Karen was through the flat and out in the hallway, the front door clicked shut, before she could gather her breath.

  ‘What just happened?’

  ‘He managed you.’ Markus leaned against the wall and reached into his pocket for his cigarettes. ‘He’s a master at it.’

  He offered Karen the packet; she took one but couldn’t hold her hand steady enough to light it.

  ‘I guessed he would be careful and I was right. He knew exactly how much he was prepared to give and, when you managed to get too close and he realised he’d slipped over his lines, he closed you down.’

  Karen waited while Markus struck another match and took a deep drag on the cigarette. She was out of practice: the nicotine made her head swirl.

  ‘I didn’t imagine it, did I? There were things he said that pointed to something else happening after Lottie’s murder. Something that made my mother marry a man who, at one point at least, she didn’t seem to like very much.’

  ‘No, you didn’t imagine it.’

  Karen dropped the cigarette and ground it furiously into the wooden flooring.

  ‘So what do I do? I leave tomorrow evening. There’s nothing here that will open my father up. I’ll tell him I know about Lottie and he’ll say I’ve heard everything. But I haven’t.’

  This time, when her voice rose, Markus pulled her into his arms. Her head dropped onto his shoulder; she was almost sure she felt his lips on her hair.

  This would be easier. Sleep with Markus and forget all the rest. Go home with a nice memory and move on.

  She looked up at him. There was such kindness in his face, and more. If she kissed him, she knew exactly how the night would go…

  ‘I can’t.’ She stepped back, slipped out of his embrace. ‘I want to, but I can’t. I need to go back in there, Markus. I need to try again.’

  It was a moment before he answered.

  ‘I know. But he won’t open up again to you, not tonight.’

  ‘Then what do I do?’

  ‘Let me try.’

  Karen was about to refuse, but he wouldn’t let her jump in.

  ‘I’m not taking over; I’m not pushing you away. But maybe, on my own, I can drag something else out of him. Will you trust me?’

  Trust. The hardest of feelings, and she didn’t need to think before she answered.

  She took his arm and went down to the street, let him call her a taxi.

  When she got back to the hotel, she crawled into bed exhausted, expecting to lie there picking over every word and every nuance of the night’s half-revelations. She closed her eyes, waiting for the lake and Liese’s shocked face to slide in, waiting for Lottie’s terrified cry. Instead she saw Markus, felt the warmth of his arms like an anchor.

  The world steadied itself a little.

  She slept without dreaming until morning.

  ‘Last night didn’t go the way that we hoped then?’

  Markus didn’t need to answer: his face was as crumpled as his shirt; his eyes were puckered. Karen looped her arm through his and led him into the dining room.

  ‘Get some food into you and then you can tell me.’

  She fetched warm rolls from the buffet and ordered strong coffee.

  ‘Have you slept at all?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  Markus slathered honey on the bread and devoured it in two bites.

  ‘I think I dozed against the wall in the corridor while I was waiting for him to go to sleep, and then I got home and I was too wound up to try.’

  He didn’t seem to notice he wasn’t making sense. Karen waited while the waiter poured their coffee. Markus drank that without noticing either.

  ‘I’m not following you – maybe you need to start at the beginning. What happened when you went back up to the flat?’

  ‘We fought. My father is a stubborn, impossible man and I am an ungrateful son. That was the outcome, although the saying took longer.’

  Karen pushed her plate away, her appetite gone.

  ‘I’m sorry. Sorting out my family wasn’t meant to drive the two of you apart.’

  Markus sighed. ‘It didn’t. This is nothing that hasn’t been said before or won’t be said again and it always starts the same way: with something personal that gets knocked down by his political dogma. “The state has given you a good life, so be glad of it.” “The state doesn’t dig up the past because to do so is indulgent, not productive. Your duty is to respect that.” On and on like a record on repeat. I love him and I admire him, I really do, but the man is a dinosaur. If it was up to him, the DDR would have swallowed up the West, not the other way round. He thinks our lives under the old regime were ordered; I think they were narrowed down to nothing. We love each other deeply, but it’s not a gap we can close.’

  Karen saw the pain on his face and knew, no matter what he said, that she was responsible for part of it. There were as many layers in his life as there were in hers, although she suspected his growing up had been a far more complex thing to navigate.

  ‘You never considered leaving? I don’t mean escaping, I mean applying to go to the other side. People did – we saw the reports when it happened.’

  Markus closed his eyes. For a moment, she thought he was annoyed at the question, then he looked at her with his soft smile and she realised he was simply trying to frame his answer in a way that wouldn’t make her feel stupid.

  ‘I imagine those reports made that type of legal crossing over sound easy. It wasn’t. It was just as dangerous as crawling through a tunnel or leaping over the Wall. Choices weren’t simple here, Karen. Everything had two faces: applying to leave meant rejecting the East, a conscious decision that left your card literally marked. The minute anyone raised a request, the state closed its doors. No university, no decent job, no healthcare; for the one applying and for the rest of their family. And nine times out of ten the application would be rejected. Then, unless you preferred to be sent to prison on some trumped-up and unanswerable charge, the only work available would be what the government you had turned your back on was gracious enough to provide. Working for the state was the end for too many good people: they were turned into spies to keep feeding the system.’

  ‘So you felt you had no choice but to stay? Especially given Michael’s position?’

  ‘Exactly. If I’d tried to leave, I would have broken Father’s heart and ruined his life, never mind mine. My wanting out would equal his failure. So I never really considered it. Being a good son mattered to me more, although he doesn’t believe that at the moment.’

  When she reached out her hand, he hung on to it.

  ‘What happened last night, Markus?’

  ‘I tried to reason with him. To get him to understand that what happened to Liese is still causing damage. That you had a right to know, and he had an obligation to tell. I wasted my breath. He thinks “this constant talking is a Western disease”. So I lost my temper. Also a waste of breath. Never argue with a man who’s spent sixty years soaked in communism. I swear he could win a debate against Death. Anyway, I got nowhere. He asked me to leave and I went.’

  Karen rolled the crumbs on her plate into a ball and refused to give into tears.

  ‘You tried. I’m grateful. You’ve done more for me than you needed to, and I know more than I did when I came. Lottie’s death was reason enough for my mother killing herself, whatever else did or didn’t happen. People marry for all sorts of reasons. Who knows what really causes
anyone to commit suicide. Maybe it’s time to accept that I can’t find answers that don’t want to be found.’

  ‘Karen, look at me.’

  When she did, he brushed away the tears that had escaped her furious blinking.

  ‘That’s a brave face, but you don’t believe what you’re saying and neither do I. Which is why I went back.’

  He reached into his jacket and took out two folded pieces of paper.

  ‘What are those?’

  ‘Newspaper articles, from my father’s clippings file. Michael is a record-keeper.’

  He grinned as she frowned.

  ‘Not in a bad way – he’s no Stasi recruit, although I’m sure they would have loved to have snared him. I told you I didn’t know much about his past. Like you with Liese, I’ve had to piece it together from snippets. I do know that he was captured at the end of the war when the Russians sacked Berlin and he survived that because he was Jewish and because he could speak their language. And then, of course, because he told them he was a communist and had worked for the resistance. He made it through. A lot of his comrades weren’t so lucky: they died or stayed missing. What I’d forgotten until you came was that Father kept looking for them, and kept records of anything that might turn into a lead. He was always cutting things out of the newspapers – trial reports and police discoveries. So last night I waited till he was sure to be asleep and then I let myself back in and went through his papers.’

  Markus held out the yellowing scraps. ‘What can I say? You’ve finally turned me into a spy and therefore a good DDR citizen, although I’m not sure I’ll be boasting about that anytime soon. Anyway, these were all I could find for the time between your mother’s return and her wedding. It’s not as much as I hoped. Perhaps he wasn’t so systematic with his records then.’

  Karen smoothed the brittle papers out.

  The oldest of the two was dated 2 December 1946. It was short, barely a handful of lines, and reported the disappearance of Commandant Fritz Suhren from his Hamburg cell only days before the Ravensbrück War Crimes trial was due to start. Suhren’s name was thickly underlined.

  Karen read it through and didn’t know what to make of it.

  ‘Do you think Michael was following the trial, or Suhren’s escape at least, because of Liese? When he was talking, he kept mentioning protecting her, hinting at the lengths that he and Andrew went to. Do you think they were trying to find Suhren? To bring him to justice?’

  Markus waved for more coffee.

  ‘Maybe. That crossed my mind. But it’s an odd pairing to go Nazi hunting: a British soldier and a German communist.’

  Karen waited until the waitress had gone again, her mind whirring.

  ‘Perhaps it’s not as unlikely as it sounds? My father was in the Royal Military Police and Michael wasn’t short on connections.’

  The more she looked at the underlined words, the quicker the storyline started building.

  ‘And we know my father liked to play the knight in shining armour where my mother was concerned. Maybe finding Suhren was some kind of offering? Or maybe they hoped Suhren would give evidence at the trial about the soldier who killed Lottie. He must have been there, if what Michael said about him pulling Liese out from the other women right after it happened was true. He would have known who the man was: surely even in that place such a brutal act would have stood out? They could have been hoping to identify the killer and get justice. It actually makes sense when you think about it.’

  Karen picked up the other cutting, scanning it quickly for a link to Ravensbrück, or the quest she could suddenly see their fathers undertaking. Then she read it again more slowly. The disappointment was the same.

  ‘I don’t see what this one has got to do with the other.’

  The second article, dating from February 1947, was longer – a plea from the Berlin police for help with identifying a body which had been recovered from the River Spree. Karen read the details aloud, hoping Markus might stop her when she reached the connection.

  ‘“The woman’s body, which was dislodged from a patch of reeds when the river thawed, was wrapped in sacking and weighed down with a large stone. Preliminary identification has been hampered by what the Berlin Police refer to as ‘substantial facial injuries’. A post-mortem is scheduled for next week. It is hoped this will help establish the exact cause of death and furnish some clues to the victim’s identity. The victim was well dressed and wearing a wedding ring. Providing useful information in this case may lead to a reward.”’

  She stopped and waited, but Markus said nothing.

  ‘I don’t get it, I’m sorry. What has this got to do with the Ravensbrück trial or my mother? Unless something had happened – maybe my mother had gone missing? Do you think that might be it: she had disappeared and Michael thought the body was hers?’

  She was in danger of crumpling the paper. Markus took the articles back and folded them carefully into an envelope.

  ‘That’s possible. Or perhaps, given the trial was coming and all kinds of secrets might have been about to spill out, he thought it was another prisoner from Ravensbrück who had been disposed of, and he wanted to prepare her, or keep her safe. I’ve no more clue to how these are connected than you. Or even if they are. But whether there’s a link or not, I think you should take them back to England. Show them to your father and see where, if anywhere, that leads. In the meantime, I’ll do some digging, see if the newspaper the second one came from still exists and has archives. It’s not much, but surely it’s something new to push Andrew with?’

  Karen wasn’t convinced, but she put the envelope into her bag.

  ‘What if Michael notices they’re missing?’

  For the first time since he arrived at the hotel, Markus smiled.

  ‘Then we’ll know that they matter.’

  The dining room had emptied while they were talking; theirs was the last table waiting to be cleared. Karen checked her watch. Ten o’clock. She had hours before her flight. The trip had been exhausting – the demands of new clients and old mysteries had drained her. She felt old, lost in other people’s emotions. She glanced over at Markus, at the face which was as kind as it was handsome. His feelings hadn’t seemed important to her when she first arrived; that wasn’t true anymore. There was a connection between them she knew she hadn’t imagined. Something good could come out of this, if she was brave enough to try.

  ‘Would you like to be just Markus and Karen for the day?’

  He sat back, watching her carefully. ‘Explain.’

  ‘Two people who’ve recently met, who find each other… interesting. Who’ve had enough of the past and not enough of the present.’

  He grinned. ‘Who live in the West and have never heard of the East? Who listen to music some people might call decadent? Who spend money without thinking on frivolous things and kiss in the street without caring?’

  ‘If you like.’

  He jumped up, grabbed her hand.

  ‘I like it, Karen Cartwright. I really, really like it.’

  This time, when he pulled her into his arms and kissed her, she didn’t hesitate.

  He looks happy and even better than the nurses said.

  There was a croquet match in progress on the lawn behind The Mountbank and Andrew was in the thick of it – laughing at a misplaced shot, bowing in mock deference to a more skilful player.

  Perhaps this is who he is when I’m not around: popular, carefree.

  It was a sobering thought.

  Someone must have spotted her, alerted him. Andrew turned to the edge of the lawn, where Karen was hovering, and put down his mallet. Karen waved and was saddened, but not surprised, when he hesitated and took his time walking over.

  ‘I stayed away because everyone seemed to think that was for the best, but I’ve been keeping up with your progress. You look even better than I thought you would – you look really well.’

  She meant it. In the nearly two months since she had seen him, the hollows in his
cheeks had plumped out and his face had recaptured its colour.

  ‘I know you have. Thank you. And yes, I tire quicker than I would like and I need to take care, but the doctor is happy with my progress. I have my own flat in the complex now – it’s very pleasant.’

  He paused, but not long enough for her to speak.

  ‘I trust your visit to Berlin was what you hoped it would be?’

  His eyes were wary, his manner formal. She sensed he would wave her goodbye if she let him.

  Karen took a steadying breath: this could not come out rushed and garbled.

  ‘I’m sorry. For everything. For not being kinder. For the things I accused you of. For not being a better daughter.’

  Andrew took a step back; ran his hand through his hair.

  Karen didn’t know what else to do but keep going.

  ‘I thought you were trying to control her. I know now you were trying to protect her. I should have trusted you more.’

  There was a carved wooden bench a few feet away. He sat down heavily on it. To Karen’s relief, he left space for her to join him.

  ‘You found Michael then?’

  She nodded.

  ‘You know about Lottie?’

  When she nodded again, he sank back against the slats and closed his eyes. Karen started to panic.

  ‘Are you all right. Oh no! Is it your heart again?’

  ‘I just need a moment.’

  Karen was half off the seat to get help when she felt his hand on her arm. He straightened up but didn’t move it. Karen sat as still as if a butterfly had found her.

  ‘What else did he tell you?’

  ‘Not much. He said you found Mother at a train station on her way back from the concentration camp. That you took her to hospital. That you… Michael said you developed a crush on her.’

  Her father smiled. ‘That makes us sound like teenagers. I suppose, in a way, we were. Six years of war took our youth away. I was what in 1945 – twenty-nine? It sounds old enough to have had plenty of girlfriends, but I hadn’t. I certainly had never met anyone as lovely as your mother. And I was a romantic, casting myself as a knight in shining armour. Not that she ever asked me to. I think, if I’m honest, which I was less inclined to be then, she hated that I saw her that way, as someone who needed rescuing. It certainly wasn’t how she saw herself. Sometimes, I pushed her too far and her eyes would flare. I liked that sparky side of her.’