War's Last Dance

by Julia Underwood

  'Come on, you two. That's enough of that. I'm going to show Mrs. Barton to the car. Madame, your chariot awaits!'

  He grasped Isabel's hand briskly and ceremoniously tucked it into his elbow, addressing Bill casually over his departing shoulder.

  'You, Major Barton, take care of the child and the luggage. I am going to look after your lovely wife.'

  Isabel turned back to laugh at Bill.

  'Help, I'm captured!'

  ‘No,’ John whispered breathily into her ear, making her giggle, 'I'm the one who's captured. Come, let us away. The rest of the party will follow.' And with a theatrical flourish he strode towards the exit.

  Isabel laughed up at him. What a nice man. A few inches taller than Bill and thinner, he had almost blue-black hair and the most amazing sapphire blue eyes. His uniform looked as if it had been poured onto him. He’s incredibly good looking, she thought, almost like a film star. If she wasn’t so besotted with her husband she might have fancied him already. She let John lead her off the platform into the forecourt.

  John swept her with an imperious swagger from the smoky station and into the back of the waiting car, helping her in with solicitous hands. She managed the manoeuvre with as much dignity as she could muster. Climbing around the tipped-up front seat required considerable flexibility.

  'I'm going to have to part from you for a moment, my darling. Your husband will want to sit in the back with you. We don't want him getting jealous, do we?' He patted her hand before releasing it.

  The army driver swung the cases into the boot at the front of. Bill carried Penny in his arms and soon caught up. The child had relaxed her head onto his shoulder, her thumb tucked in her mouth and clutching her precious Teddy in her other hand.

  ‘Look, Daddy, there’s no engine. He’s putting the cases in the front.’

  ‘That’s right. It’s a Volkswagen. The engine’s in the back.’

  ‘That’s very funny,’ said Penny as Bill put her on the ground and he climbed into the back of the car next to Isabel.

  John took his seat in the front and stretched his arms out towards the child.

  'Come, Penny, sit on my knee. I want to hear all about your journey.'

  Penny looked at him doubtfully from under frowning brows, but couldn’t resist his grin and the questioning angle of his head and jumped in. Soon she was chatting with unaccustomed volubility, clearly besotted.

  ‘We’ve been on a big boat and a train. It was ever such a long way,’ she prattled.

  John laughed when Penny told him about being sick all over the Dutchman.

  ‘It was horrid, but it made him go away.’

  'You know, I've often felt tempted to do that to a fellow traveller. But I don't think I'd get away with it. It helps being a pretty little girl with big brown eyes.’

  Isabel forgot her weariness as she snuggled up against Bill in the back of the car. Her bones ached and her muscles were weak and she felt as if she hadn’t eaten in a week, but with his solid strength beside her she felt as if she could tackle the whole ghastly journey again.

  Her heart still pounded from the joy of their reunion. As she became calmer she clung to his hand, never wanting to let go, and gazed out of the car's small windows. She had no words as she looked at the horrors beyond those windows. How awful it was!

  'Steady on, love, you’ll be breaking my fingers in a moment.'

  The driver skilfully navigated the narrow channel between the walls of rubble. Isabel knew that the car, Hitler's famous 'Volkswagen', a car for the people, had been embraced by the allies as a suitable vehicle to get them about. It resembled a crouching scarab from the outside, a beetle without the antennae. This one was painted a matt khaki. Army insignia and CCG shields were painted on the rounded wings. The utilitarian interior showed no concession to luxury. The engine rattled noisily, but it had a bustling business-like efficiency as it propelled them through the ruined streets.

  'Air-cooled,' explained John later, 'much better in winter. You don't get frozen radiators and breakdowns. Believe me; it gets very cold in Berlin.'

  Isabel acknowledged this information politely. She knew nothing of cars as her family had never owned one; nor did she know anyone else who had. Even Bill's wealthy mother didn't possess a car of her own and hired a chauffeur-driven vehicle or used taxis when necessary to take her to Knightsbridge or bridge parties with her cronies. She would never dream of getting on a bus or Tube.

  Isabel watched Penny fondly; she seemed to be happy with John. The child was recovering rapidly from the journey and her good humour filled the car with giggling at his absurdities.

  'Look, Penny,’ John pointed, 'there's the Tiergarten - that’s what the Germans call the Zoo. It means “animal garden”.’

  ‘I’ve been to the Zoo in London; I liked it. I rode on a camel. Will you take me to the Zoo here - please?'

  'Sorry, there aren’t any animals there now. Not even any camels.'

  'Did they all run away?'

  'Well, some did. But I think a lot of them just died; there was no food for them, you see. And some were eaten.' replied John.

  'Eaten? From the Zoo?'

  'Yes, even the penguins. Taste like fish, you know.'

  'Urgh! I couldn’t eat a penguin.’

  John kept to himself the true, grim reality of the conditions they had found in the Zoo. He remembered the solitary emaciated elephant, trumpeting forlornly in his pen and the hippo swimming round and round the bloated corpse of his mate in his fetid pool. They were dependent on desperate German volunteers risking their lives to feed them on whatever they could scrounge. Elephants were very partial to rose petals, it seemed. The antelopes, goats and camels had been eaten and the carnivores had died from starvation or escaped into the forests, to be shot eventually by hunters.

  John pointed out what interesting features of the city remained, whilst Isabel and Bill whispered together on the back seat like a pair of teenagers.

  Soon more trees stood at the sides of the roads and less rubble strewed the surface. The houses grew larger and more architecturally commanding, set back from the roadway by carriage drives and shrubbery. Here damage was less terrible than in more central parts of the city; they had reached the Grunewald, a residential suburb set amongst woods.

  'Well, this is it,' said Bill as the driver deposited them at the kerb and started to unload the luggage.

  Isabel tried not to shudder as she saw the outside of the house. The stonework showed evidence of artillery fire where chunks had been blown out by shells and shrapnel. Four wide steps led to solid wood double doors from which gouges of timber had been wrenched by gunfire, with holes right through in places. A piece of plywood nailed on the inside covered these breaches. Chicken wire was stretched and tacked across the dangerously cracked glass panels in the upper part of the doors. They opened onto the echoing vastness of the hallway. As she stepped in Isabel found that she couldn’t restrain herself.

  'My God, Bill! You could hold a football match in here!' she exclaimed, gazing about in awe.

  'I know, it's ridiculous, isn't it?'

  'My Mum's house would fit in here twice, no, three times.'

  'Well, we have to share the hall with Dennis, you know. He lives upstairs. His wife Emma’s coming over soon. I expect she’ll be company for you.'

  Isabel continued to look at the hall and the wide staircase, holding tight on to Penny’s hand. Was this where they were going to live? In this battered palace that looked like somewhere that a giant had decided to demolish with his bare hands.

  Irma crept from her room at the back and stood, stiff and huge- eyed, by the tiled stove, which later Isabel learned was called a kachelofen after the Dutch tiles from which it was made. Bill held out his hand.

  'Irma, come and meet Mrs. Barton.'

  Irma stepped forward and bobbed, too shy to speak. Isabel felt embarrassed too. She had never dreamt of having a maid of her own. She smiled gently and extended a hand towards the girl. How thin she lo
oked, but very pretty with her big blue eyes and that thick flaxen hair wound in plaits around her ears.

  'Hello, Irma, I'm very pleased to meet you. And this is Penny.' She ushered the child forward.

  Irma's face broke into a brilliant smile; shyness forgotten. 'Ah, the little one, wie hübsche!' She bent down and began to help Penny out of her coat. 'You and I will become great friends I think. Come…’ she glanced at Isabel, 'if I may, I will take her to the kitchen and make her a drink and she can have some of the biscuits I have made. Would that be good, kleine?'

  Penny followed Irma into the kitchen, buoyed up with the prospect of food.

  Bill guided Isabel on a tour of the apartment. They walked into a room with a wide window that overlooked the garden, around which someone had draped quantities of white muslin. A stuffed rabbit leaned against the pillows on the bed.

  ‘It’s lovely, Bill. And so bright.’

  'That’s Penny's room. Irma found the toy at the market.’ He stepped out and opened another door. ‘And this is ours, I hope you like it.'

  Bill led Isabel into the room next to Penny’s. The furnishings were sparse, but imposing; a wide double bed stood centrally on one wall, a wardrobe of intimidating proportions loomed against another. A pair of unmatched small tables stood at each side of the bed. A threadbare rug, the colours faded to a muted patina, lay on the bare, polished boards. Muslin also festooned this large window.

  'He bought the bed with cigarettes,’ John informed her, leaning against the doorframe.

  'As well as some of the other stuff,’ said Bill. ‘The wardrobe was here, marvellous isn't it? The Russians probably couldn’t move it, it weighs a ton.'

  Isabel gazed longingly at the huge bed piled high with pillows and a thick feather eiderdown; a welcoming nest. How wonderful it would be to throw herself on to it and give in to her exhaustion. But that wouldn’t be fair to Bill and John. She bounced on the edge of the wonderfully comfortable mattress and scrutinised the massive, elaborately carved wardrobe, monument to some Bavarian artisan.

  'Well, I should just about be able to fit my pathetic collection of clothes in there! Where's the bathroom?'

  'Top of the stairs. There are two bathrooms up there. The other is Dennis’s. Too complicated to get one put in down here, I'm afraid. The budget wouldn’t run to all that plumbing.'

  Moving across the wide hallway, Bill opened double doors to the drawing room. The late afternoon sun still shone outside so Isabel's first view was encouraging. Green and golden light flooded through the French windows onto the parquet floor polished to a sparkling sheen by Irma. She hardly noticed the scratches in the wood, the inexpertly patched plaster and the lack of paint.

  Each end of the room, which stretched from front to back of the house, had a window. A rounded bay overlooked the street at one end and French doors opened into the garden at the other. An oak fireplace, carved with bunches of fruits and flowers, was built into the wall opposite the door to the hall. Logs and coal were laid in it, ready to be lighted. An ornate side table stood on the same wall as the door, with bottles and glasses on it. Two sagging armchairs, wide and comfortable-looking, were upholstered in faded blue velvet. A large sofa faced the fireplace, its upholstery a frayed tapestry weave. Several small tables had been arranged haphazardly amongst the furniture.

  'What a lovely room! So light.' Isabel sank onto a sagging old chair, laughing as her weight displaced the soft cushions. 'Whatever happened to the springs? I may never get up again!'

  She picked up a roughly hewn piece of pinkish marble from the low table in front of the chair.

  ‘What’s this? It looks like a slice of petrified steak.’

  ‘Ah, that,’ said John, ‘that’s a lump of Hitler’s desk, liberated from the Chancellery. Everybody grabbed a chunk as a souvenir. The Russians had smashed it up when they looted the place, just left the bits lying around. It’ll make a good paperweight.’

  Isabel dropped it hurriedly onto the table where it came to rest with a resounding clunk. ‘Hitler’s desk! God, how horrible.’ She shuddered to think that the monster may have touched that same piece of stone.

  John produced a bottle of French champagne from somewhere, a vintage Veuve Cliquot. He popped it open expertly and poured it into mismatched glasses waiting on the ornately inlaid table etched with scratches and gouges by the previous tenants.

  'A toast, I think. To Mrs. B. Welcome, and may you be very happy in Berlin.' John grinned at her cheerfully.

  'To Mrs. B.' echoed Bill. He whispered in her ear, 'I love you - it's wonderful to have you here.' Isabel stroked his face tenderly.

  'This is lovely, John. I don't think I've had champagne since before the war. Where on earth did you get it?'

  'No questions, no pack drill, my love,' answered John, tapping his nose meaningfully. 'But anything you need and can't find at the NAAFI, come to me, I can get almost anything, even in Berlin.'

  Bill looked at him sharply. 'You'll get yourself into trouble, John, messing about with those black market wallahs. Steer clear of them - really, I mean it.'

  'Come on, Bill. Don't give me a lecture today. A man's got to do what he can to survive in this hellhole. Besides, I'm putting away a nice little nest-egg for the future Mrs. Marriott, whoever she may be.'

  'Just be careful, John. You hear of some nasty 'accidents' happening to people who interfere with the system. There are some real thugs in that racket. All the gangster dross of Europe has jumped on that particular bandwagon. Half of them are living on our hospitality in the DP camps. ’

  John shrugged and sipped his champagne.

  They had become quite merry by the time John rose to leave and Isabel remembered Penny.

  'Where's Pen? I haven't seen her for hours.'

  'Irma will be looking after her. She adores kids.’ Bill said.

  They found Penny fast asleep and tucked up in her bed, the thick feather cover forming a mound over her and the new rabbit tucked in beside her teddy. Irma sat by the bedside gently crooning a song in German. The tune sounded familiar to Isabel.

  'What's that?’ she asked Bill. ‘Such a pretty song.'

  'Brahms Lullaby - everyone knows that one.’

  ‘Guten Abend,

  Gute Nacht

  Mit die Rosen bedacht …’

  Chapter Nine

  Berlin, September 1946

  The first weeks in Berlin filled Isabel with a mixture of horror, awe and surprise. Horror at the scale of the devastation in the city; awe at how the inhabitants managed to survive their personal hell and surprise at how the occupiers were coping and managing to sustain some sort of order.

  During the day the streets and railway stations thronged with people. Refugees still poured into Berlin at the rate of hundreds a day, by rail and on foot or by any sort of transport they could find. Sometimes an Army vehicle would hoist an exhausted refugee on to the back, risking a bollocking from the Sergeant. They were not supposed to show sympathy for or help the enemy, but many of the DPs were not Germans, coming from countries all over Europe. Often they had been used as forced labour in the factory camps or were escaping the Soviet occupation in Eastern provinces. The influx put enormous pressure on the infrastructure of the city. Although some kind of water supply and sewerage had been restored they frequently broke down and the electricity supply remained unreliable. As candles and lamp oil were hard to come by, at night the city was often plunged into silent darkness. A strict curfew was enforced and armed Allied soldiers in pairs patrolled the streets at night. They were frequently ambushed, their weapons and boots stolen, and left for dead amongst the cliffs of rubble.

  On moonlit nights the outlines of the ruins were lit in eerie stark relief against a silver backdrop. At these times, after curfew, there pertained the stillness and silence of a world abandoned by man and God.

  People wandered the streets, searching for food; a constant preoccupation. Isabel learnt that at the War’s end the ration was insufficient to sustain life, even less
than that supplied to internees of Nazi concentration camps. But American aid increased and by the time Isabel arrived, the ration rose. Supplemented by foraging, hunting (even for squirrels and wild birds) and the black market, people survived.

  In an impromptu market set up near the ruined Reichstag and other sites, people sold the possessions they had no use for to Allied soldiers for tinned food and supplies from the PX, the American army’s store, or the NAAFI, the British equivalent. Many desperate women turned to prostitution to feed their children.

  The best jobs were in catering; rich pickings could be gleaned from the slop buckets and dustbins of the occupiers’ clubs, hotels and messes. Back in England there was no sympathy for the Germans’ plight; bread had been added to the list of rationed foods. But conditions were much worse in Germany as Isabel wrote to tell the family, though they refused to believe all of her stories.

  ‘Why should we give them anything when bread is rationed? That didn’t happen even during the War. They lost the war didn’t they?’

  ‘But we can’t just let them starve, they’re not all evil. Babies and children are dying,’ Isabel wrote. ‘There’s a lot of sickness, thank goodness we had all those inoculations before we left home.’ She remembered their painful, swollen arms after injections; Penny had been quite ill.

  Bill worked with the Control Commission, trying to sort out former Nazis from the ‘good’ Germans and interrogating DPs. Once having filled out a questionnaire, a fragebogen, about their wartime activities, those passed as non-Nazis were given a certificate, nicknamed a ‘persilschein’, which entitled them to a ration card and work.

  ‘Why’s it called a ‘persilschein’?’ asked Isabel.

  ‘It’s a joke - because Persil washes whiter than white. So they’re clean as a whistle. To be honest, it’s ironic because according to the people we’re talking to hardly anyone was a member of the Party at all. No one actually owns up to it,’ Bill explained.