by Celia Rees
“What do you think?” Edith asked.
“Sounds like pneumonia. Perhaps TB. She’ll be in for a while, either way.”
“What are her chances?”
The doctor shrugged. “Who knows? Fifty-fifty? Less.” He took her wrist again and turned it to show the numbers tattooed there. “She’s gone through a lot already by the looks of this. We’ll do our best.”
He moved to a nearby sink to wash. Seraphina had been watching him: his face, his hands, the movement of the stethoscope across Anna’s thin body, with some intensity. Her gaze had shifted to their faces, following the exchanges, but she said nothing until they came to take her sister away.
“Where are they taking her?” She turned to Edith.
“To another part of the hospital.”
“I must go with her.”
“That might not be possible, Seraphina. They are going to make Anna better. You have to trust them.”
“No.” Seraphina’s thin hand gripped the metal rail of the bed. “We stay together.”
“You can stay.” Sister Winston spoke in German to Seraphina. “We need helpers on the wards to clean, help with the beds. Can you do that?”
Seraphina nodded. It was the first time Edith had seen her smile.
“Very well.” She turned to Edith. “The German nurses have a hostel. I’ll see if I can get her in there.”
“I can’t thank you enough,” Edith replied. “She’s a good girl. Hardworking. She—”
“She’ll be fine. We’ll look after her and her sister.”
“Will you let me know, one way . . . or the other?”
“Of course. I’ll send a message with Jack.”
“I’ll be back when I can. Meanwhile—”
“She’s in good hands. We’ll do everything we can.”
15
CCG Billet, Lübeck
18th January 1946
Billet Dinner
Cabbage Soup with Spaetzle
Piroggen, Cabbage, Fried Onion
Blaubeere
Küchen & Custard
Flavors of the country. Spaetzle and especially Piroggen speak of the east. My Prussian source may have recipes. Our nearest equivalent would be Stuffed Pancakes. Basic Recipe. 4oz Flour, 1 egg, 1/2 pt milk. Beat for 5 minutes, stand for 2 hours, fry in 1oz lard or bake on saucers at Reg. 4.
It had been another long day. Edith was tired. All she wanted was a stiff whisky and a hot bath, preferably both at the same time.
“Miss Graham. Edith.” A voice came from the stairs. “Might I have a word?”
“Miss Barratt. Lorna.” Edith looked up. “How can I help you?”
Lorna Barratt was the tall, quiet redhead who worked as a secretary in the Finance Department. They called her Rusty. One of Molly’s soubriquets. She didn’t seem to like it very much, but the name had stuck.
“It’s about Molly. Miss Slater,” Lorna started.
Edith sighed. “I’m really not interested in Billet tittle-tattle, Lorna. You should know that by now.”
“I’m worried.” Lorna frowned. “It’s not just me. We all are.”
Edith could see her bath disappearing.
“Anyone in there?” She nodded toward the sitting room. At least she could have the whisky. “Want anything?”
Lorna shook her head and perched on the edge of the settee, nervously clasping and unclasping her thin fingers. She’d obviously been put up to this by the others and was feeling uncomfortable. Despite her fatigue, Edith was intrigued.
“Well,” she began, “it’s awkward, you see . . .” She paused and bit her lip. “The thing is . . .”
“Come on, Lorna.” Edith sipped her drink. “Spit it out.”
“Well, the thing is.” She held her hands still now, knotted together. “We’re worried because Molly, Miss Slater, has been seen out with . . .” She looked away, torn between sharing a confidence and betrayal.
“Seen out with whom?” Edith was baffled by the dramatics. It was hardly a crime, after all. Unless . . . “A German?”
Lorna shook her head emphatically, her thick, copper-colored hair threatening to break free of its restraining barrette.
“Oh, no! She wouldn’t look at one of them!”
“I didn’t think so.” Edith swilled the remains of her drink. “So, what’s the matter? Is she pregnant?”
“Oh, no!” Lorna looked shocked. “Nothing like that.” Then she paused and thought. “At least, I don’t think so. You can never be sure, can you?”
“What is it then?”
“It’s . . .” The girl hesitated again, trying to find the best way to frame the revelation. “She’s going about with this chap, and he’s not a good sort.”
“Oh? What sort is he?”
“You know the new girl, Agnese? The one we’ve got instead of Seraphina?” Frau Schmidt hadn’t wasted time. The girl was there the next morning. “It’s her brother. They call him Val. Molly’s been knocking about with him for a while now. He’s from Latvia. You know that watch? The one you spotted? He gave it to her and the locket and other jewelry and other things as well. Silk stockings, perfume, I don’t know what else. She’s always boasting about it. You know what she’s like with showing off. He’s got a motorbike and wears a leather jacket. Takes her to places. Berlin. And he’s promised to take her to Paris. Then to America.”
“America? How’s he going to do that?”
“She didn’t explain.” Lorna shook her head. “She says he’s exciting. She says the mess is full of chinless wonders and old men.”
Edith smiled. “She’s right there.”
Lorna gave the ghost of a smile back. “I suppose . . . But it is practically fratting.”
“It’s not really fraternization, though, is it, if he’s not German?” Edith frowned as she tried to thread through the prejudice and suspicion. “If he’s Latvian, then he’s a displaced person, and she’s free to go out with him if she wants to.”
“I know, but . . .” Lorna paused to collect her thoughts. “Well, it’s just not done. Not by girls.”
Men were different. Fraternization had been strictly forbidden during the first phase of the Occupation, but that had proved impossible to police when sex, like everything else, was on sale for a tin of corned beef or a packet of Players.
“And he might not be one—a German—but he’s jolly pally with them.” Having overcome her initial reluctance to share this confidence, Lorna was willing to say more. “He’s very thick with Stephan. He drinks schnapps with him and sometimes, when he drops Molly off, Stephan goes out with him on his motorbike. Ever since she met him, Molly’s been like this with the Frau.” She crossed her fingers. “They were always going to get rid of Seraphina, if you ask me, so that Agnese could have her job. We, the rest of us, were glad when you stood up to them about that. We—we didn’t agree with what Molly said. You know, about her being Jewish, and so on. We wanted you to know we’re not like that. Where did Seraphina go, by the way? Do you know?”
“Her sister’s very ill.”
“Oh, I’m sorry . . .”
“She’s being well looked after. In hospital in Hamburg. Seraphina’s with her.”
“Oh, I’m glad. I wouldn’t want anything bad to have happened . . .”
But you weren’t concerned enough to intervene, Edith wanted to say, but let it go. They were only girls, after all, not strong enough to stand up to Molly and Frau Schmidt.
“There’s something else. Have you noticed?”
Breaking the rule Not To Touch Plse, Lorna picked up a pretty porcelain candelabra: pink-cheeked, rosebud-lipped cherubs, chubby arms bearing a torch aloft. It was one of a pair. Edith picked up its twin and turned it over to reveal the twin swords of Meissen.
“Not my cup of tea but valuable, I would think.”
Lorna nodded. “But that’s not it.” She turned the candelabra around in her hands. “The thing is, they weren’t here last week. New things appear, while others disappear, haven’t you notic
ed? There’s actually more here than when we came. Frau Schmidt obviously doesn’t think we see it.”
Edith set the candelabra down and picked up an innocent-looking bunny. The bottom was marked with the twin runes of the SS and a single word: Allach. She put it back. Peter Rabbit it was not.
“Have you said anything to her?”
“She says she’s just bringing things up from the basement. She’s always shifting things about with that friend of hers, the one that looks like a ferret.”
“Frau Kaufmann?” Edith smiled at the accuracy of the observation. Frau Kaufmann was a frequent visitor, dropping in for a chat, or to borrow this or that. She was small and thin, slightly stooped, her nose permanently pink and moist, wiry salt-and-pepper hair tied up in a headscarf and small, shiny bead eyes that were never still. “You don’t think Frau Schmidt is just ‘shifting things about’?”
“No. Why would she?” Lorna frowned. “And the things don’t go together. Some are, well, nice, others ghastly. As if they’d belonged to different people, with different taste.”
“People who are not Frau Schmidt?”
Edith recalled the conversation she’d had with Roz about black-market dealings.
“Well, yes. That’s not the only thing. I don’t know whether you’ve noticed, but we run out of things: tea, sugar, butter, coffee, cocoa, much more quickly than we should.”
“All things that can be traded on the black market?”
That was straightforward stealing. Edith pressed her lips together. She couldn’t abide this kind of petty dishonesty.
“Well, yes . . .”
“I see. Well, that much is easily solved. We’ll just appoint another Billet Officer. We’ll discuss it over dinner this evening, but I think a change of regime is in order. You seem a sensible girl. I will nominate you. Agreed?”
Lorna looked more than a little alarmed at the prospect but nodded.
“Good. A simple vote should do. Will the others go along with it?”
“I think so. Although Molly won’t like it, and we’re all a bit scared of her.” She gave her nervous laugh. “But, well, some of the girls are getting fed up.”
“Oh, why’s that?”
“She’s forever asking little favors, but sometimes they’re not so little, and they’re scared they might get into trouble.”
“Who might ‘they’ be?”
“Well, specifically, Ginny, Frankie, and Jo.”
“What kind of favors?”
“Oh, bits of information, where things are kept.”
Edith frowned, trying to remember their occupations. Public Safety, Quartermaster’s Office, Displaced Persons. It would make sense.
“There is another thing.” Lorna stopped, then went on in a rush. “Some of us aren’t sure she can, well, be trusted. Things have gone missing. Things sent from home. Soap, toothpaste, toiletries. Bits and pieces, mostly, but more valuable things, too.” Lorna’s voice dropped. “Molly either made light of it, or . . .”
“Blamed Seraphina?”
Lorna’s pale cheeks colored. “Exactly. But we don’t think that. Not now.”
Molly Slater did not grace them with her presence that evening, which made deposing her considerably easier.
The cuisine was taking a distinct lurch to the Teutonic. Perhaps the girls were getting more used to it; they ate up the spaetzle, the little egg noodles that made the cabbage soup much more palatable, without any complaint. The main course was greeted with more circumspection. They inspected the piroggen with some suspicion, nibbling cautiously at first, but the meat dumplings were filling and savory. First one then another declared them “not bad.” The blueberry pudding was an equal success.
Edith stayed behind as Hilde and Magda came in to clear.
“So, who does the cooking?” she asked.
The two girls looked at each other.
“We share,” Hilde said. “Do it together.”
“The piroggen were excellent. Just right for a cold day.”
Magda blushed. Edith caught the fleeting glimpse of a smile.
“They reminded me of a time I spent at a friend’s house in East Prussia before the war. The cook made something very similar. She gave me the recipe but I lost it.” Edith looked up at Magda. “Could you write it for me?”
“Yes, of course.” Magda ducked her head. “It is my grandmother’s recipe.”
“And the blueberry pudding?”
“I made that,” Hilde said. “We collected the blueberries from the forest last summer. Frau Schmidt preserves them in schnapps her cousin makes from potatoes.”
“So, you two do the cooking?”
“Grete helps as well.”
“What about Frau Schmidt? What about her? What’s she like?”
The two girls looked at each other, then looked away.
“As a cook, I mean.”
Hilde bit her lip. Magda shook her head very slightly. Good cook or not? On balance Edith thought not, but Frau Schmidt had these two terrified. Edith had planned to ask them questions, about their new workmate and her Baltic brother, what they knew of the Schmidts’ domestic arrangements, but they had the look of a goose that could see the wolf over her shoulder.
Sure enough, Frau Schmidt appeared just at that moment. The two girls flinched at her harsh, chiding bark: Fort mit Euch! Ihr verschwendet nur die Zeit der gnädige Frau—Be off with you! You’re wasting the lady’s time! They made for the stairs, Frau Schmidt driving them before her. At the top of the flight, Frau Schmidt looked back with her improbable porcelain smile and her shiny nightshade eyes.
Edith stared back, anger stirring inside. Who the hell did she think she was? What on earth was going on here? Hadn’t these girls had enough fear in their young lives, without being terrified of Frau Schmidt and her kind? Hadn’t they left that sort of fear behind? Edith was wondering what she could do about that when there was a light knock at the door.
“Hereinkommen.”
Magda sidled in and took a folded paper from her apron pocket. A recipe for Piroggen written out in neatly sloping Sütterlinschrift.
“Thank you, Magda.”
The girl was making for the door. Edith called her back. “May I ask something?” She turned; thin fingers twisting her apron betrayed her nervousness. “Where are you from in Prussia? How are you here?”
“From near Königsberg. The Russians came. Then.” She bit her lip to stop it from trembling, unable to find words for what happened then. “Eventually we escaped.”
“There are many people from Eastern Prussia here, aren’t there?”
Magda nodded.
Lübeck harbored a sizeable population of East Prussians. They had come in waves. Some, like Magda, before the war ended, fleeing the advancing Russians; others later, expelled under the Potsdam Agreement, their homeland now part of Poland. Incomers from a particular locality tended to cluster together. There was a chance that Magda might know something regarding Elisabeth.
“Do you know any of them?”
“Some, I know.”
“Then I wonder if you can help me?” Edith went on. “The friend, the one I stayed with whose cook made the piroggen. I’m trying to trace her. She might be in Lübeck. Her name is von Stavenow. She’s from an estate, southeast of Königsberg. Have you heard that name?”
Magda shook her head a little too fast, eyes darting longingly toward the door.
“Perhaps you could ask around? I would very much like to see her. Could you do that for me?”
“I will try.” Magda released the crimped fabric of her apron.
“Thank you, Magda.” Edith held up the recipe. “And thank you for this.” She took cigarettes from her handbag. “Have these for your trouble.”
Magda pocketed the packet and fled.
She knew something. Getting her to part with the knowledge would be the difficulty. She seemed very frightened, but of whom, or what? Edith took the recipe upstairs along with the billet menu, printed in Frau Schmidt’s careful ca
pitals. Fear was always significant.
Dori
34 Cromwell Square, Paddington, W2
Cabbage Soup and Spaetzle, Piroggen, Blaubeere Küchen. The rush of memory left Dori reeling, falling back far into the past. Such food was common everywhere east of the Elbe. She saw her grandmother in her boots, stiff embroidered skirt, waistcoat, blouse, and kerchief, feeding the geese down by the stream that chattered and rushed through their village. And in the corner of the house that served as the kitchen, wafting the fire to get the embers glowing, curtained by the bunches of herbs that hung from the beams, scraping little pieces of white dough from a wooden board, dropping them into the water. “This is how to do it, Dorota. Now you try.” Spaetzle. Nokedli in Hungarian, Halušky in Slovak.
Dori claimed that she could neither cook, nor sew, it was part of her legend, but of course she could. No girl growing up in a village like hers could possibly be without those talents. Her grandmother had taught her in the one room that they used for everything. She could see her father’s big black boots standing next to the bed, the leather folded at the ankle, rounded to the muscular bulge of his calves; next to them, her mother’s slippers embroidered with green leaves and pink flowers.
As they sat and sewed together, Dori’s grandmother would tell her about her great-great-grandfather. How he had come from the north, a metalworker, marrying a girl from the village. He had laid the cornerstone where they were sitting now and had hauled great trees from the forest, shaping them into logs, building them up to form thick walls, hammering the beams holding up the steeply pitched roof of split spruce, weathered now from its first bright gold to dove gray. He had done all this himself. His name, Josef Kováč, was carved into the great central beam, along with the year the house was built, 1796, and charms for protection, petal patterns enclosed in a wheel. He had driven nine long iron nails into the wood above the door, to keep out the Devil and the unquiet dead. Dori’s grandmother told her this as she taught her to embroider, sitting in the southeast corner, under the icon of the Mother and Child. Dori still had the kerchief, her first piece, the only thing she still owned from that time. “May the Mother protect us,” her grandmother would mutter, as she bordered an apron with a repeating pattern: two triangles, one point balanced on the other, one arm up, the other down. The Mother. Sometimes, she carried flowers. “All the patterns mean something,” her grandmother would say as they embroidered skirts, shirts, sheets, and pillowcases. “Some are for men. Some are for women. Tulips, pomegranates, they are for fertility. Hearts for love. Birds, especially peacocks, those are for marriage.” Dori shook out the piece she was embroidering. A nightdress embroidered with peacocks. Her grandmother was working on sheets with a frieze of tulips, pomegranates, and hearts. She was fifteen. Betrothed to a boy from the next village. He was seventeen, tall and slender, his long, dark hair soft and slippery, his first mustache as soft as otter’s fur. Dori knew she couldn’t do it. She never threaded a needle again.
