‘Australia?’ Sophie asked tightly.
‘Ah, your country is still facing our brave non-Aryan allies, the Japanese, who are starving, and who dare not tell their generals they are losing, and the generals dare not tell their emperor. I think the Japanese will fight till the second-last man. Once there is no one to inform on the last man, he may surrender too. The Americans have taken over Australia now, instead. It is a most convenient base for their Pacific war, which you and they are winning. The Japanese are losing far more slowly than we are, because there is much territory for the Allies to reconquer and many islands before they reach Japan, and then the fighting will be savage as the Japanese battle for their homeland. But your country is safe.’
But not for those who fight, she thought. And not for those who wait and those who mourn. Please, let the pigeon have arrived . . .
‘Whose army will reach here first?’ asked Hannelore tightly.
At first Sophie didn’t understand, then she remembered. The Russians had raped and killed civilians in revenge at the end of the last war. Hannelore had been tortured. Now they might both be in the path of the Soviet forces.
‘I don’t know.’ For the first time Dolphie spoke seriously. ‘Nor do I know when. We need to make you a hiding place, down in the cellars, to be safe from bombs or mortar fire, too. The cellars will be looted, but if we pull shelves across the door to the smaller wine cellar and pile sacks against the wall where the shelves once stood, you and the servants should be safe for days, even weeks, if you stock it well. You must put your jewellery down there too, your identity papers, any small things of value.’
‘I’ve been thinking the same thing,’ said Hannelore quietly. ‘But I didn’t . . .’
You didn’t want to prepare to lose a war, for that would betray your uncle’s hopes, thought Sophie. But now we have no choice.
‘We will do it now,’ Dolphie announced, as cheerily as if he planned a skiing trip, ‘and then we will choose the best of wines for lunch, and dinner. Tell the kitchen! Kill the fatted calf!’
Hannelore managed a laugh. ‘We do not have a calf. But there are young roosters, and we have champagne.’
‘Young roosters for an old rooster who has fallen from his perch. Perfect, my Hanneleine. But not the decadent French wine. We need schnapps! There are still two bottles in the cellar. Sophie knows nothing about schnapps. We must teach her!’
He put his arm about Hannelore’s shoulders as they walked towards the house.
Sophie looked at the man talking with such gaiety as he and Hannelore crossed the courtyard. He might have helped her get a message to her loved ones, and he had not. He could have helped her escape, and Hannelore too, and he had not. It was too late for him to help her now. For a moment she felt like beating her fists against his back.
But she was here, not ashes in a French field. Dolphie had saved her, and she was sure it had not just been because her presence might be useful. Despite it all Sophie could not hate him, this man whose gentle hands had cared for her with more compassion than necessary. She did not know what she felt for him just now, but it was not hate.
Her friend still had this one day with her uncle. She followed them inside.
Luncheon was perfect, Miss Lily perfect, with two graduates to guide it and an ex-chemist in the kitchen to furnish the table, and two roosters sacrificed. One would become a coq au vin for dinner — decadent French Bordeaux, it seemed, could be used for that, even though it was not the elderly rooster required for true flavour — the elderly roosters had been eaten long ago.
There had been little time to create a perfect luncheon, but Grünberg had done wonders: a mushroom consommé, truite au bleu, a quick fricassee of rooster breast, leaving the tougher parts and bones to simmer for tonight, a red fruit pudding with blackcurrants and redcurrants, raspberries, strawberries and cherries cooked quickly in juice, with a little cornflour to thicken it, the almond cream to replace the dairy the farm no longer supplied. The schnapps was . . .
Sophie sipped the clear liquid cautiously. Its sharpness seemed to heat her entire body, then suddenly she tasted them, smelled them, from plum blossom to heavy ripe fruit. ‘You are right. It’s quite magic!’
‘Naturally. It is the soil and sunlight of my country! Now taste this, and feel the difference.’
‘Cherry?’
Dolphie poured himself more from the first bottle. ‘A little softer than the plum, but less fruit scent. The last liquid to be distilled has the most fruit flavour, but it is milky and too low in alcohol to keep. Here, try the plum again.’
The schnapps was heady, the lunch rich in laughter and memories, as Sophie learned more about Hannelore and her uncle than she ever had: two children escaping from Nanny and her birch stick to gaze at the parents they seldom met, much less ever played with; the first time Hannelore curtseyed in a long frock to her father, as a four-year-old, and tripped, and Nanny’s stick emerged again for a beating as soon as they were back in the nursery, and somehow in the telling and with the schnapps, it was truly hilarious.
It was the schnapps, possibly, that lowered her defences far enough to ask a question she had puzzled about for over twenty years and would never know the answer to unless she asked it now. ‘Dolphie, when we met, back in the last war.’
‘You mean when you shot me, liebe Sophie?’ he asked cheerfully.
‘Yes. Were you going to stop chlorine gas being used? Or were you there to observe its effects?’
‘Both.’ He looked at her steadily. ‘The latter was my official purpose.’
‘Dolphie gave me the co-ordinates and date to give to you to pass on to Miss Lily, so your soldiers might be protected from its horror,’ said Hannelore soberly. ‘Did you ever doubt?’
‘Yes,’ said Sophie as Dolphie said wryly, ‘Obviously.’
‘And I’m sorry I doubted,’ Sophie added.
He poured himself more schnapps. ‘Don’t be. I think that day was the last of my innocence, thinking that people of goodwill on either side might work together to stop a war, or even its worst punishments. Too many people are in love with war for wars to end. Too many love the riches they may make, too many crave adventure and, even when they see its pain and loss, they do not walk away. When one person feels pain, they crave to make others feel their pain as well. Why does war continue now, despite its horrors? Because men keep on fighting.’
For a moment Sophie could smell the mud and blood, the stench of rotting flesh and faeces mixed with disinfectant, the never-forgotten smell of the last war’s trenches. I have been at war for five years, she thought, and yet I have seen no fighting. The only bullets I have seen were fired at me.
But had she, too, subconsciously longed for adventure when she stepped into George’s plane so unquestioningly? It had been easy to say that love and duty had carried her across the world, and yet she had left both of those behind her.
I will never leave again, she promised fate. Just take me home, and keep all who I love safe, and I will be fulfilled.
‘The last war showed us what happens to those who lose,’ said Hannelore, bringing her back to the present.
‘And yet you worked for Britain,’ said Sophie.
‘No. I gave information that might defeat the Nazis and save my country. When Germany loses this war the Nazis will be swept away.’ Hannelore looked at Sophie earnestly. ‘Liebe Sophie, there was good in the Party once, and good people joined it, too. People who cared about the poor, who labour in the factories, the children who were starving — so much was good.’
‘It was always evil,’ said Sophie flatly. ‘The nonsense of a master race, the anti-Semitism, a philosophy that says kill or imprison all who disagree with you.’
‘Sophie,’ said Hannelore gently. ‘This is our only day.’ She looked at Dolphie. ‘What shall we do?’
‘I wish a last waltz with Sophie. May I have that?’
Sophie managed to smile at him. ‘Of course! I will be seventeen again, in the most ravishing white silk dress, a
nd you the most handsome, charming man I have ever met.’
‘And while we dance we can believe we have our whole lives ahead of us. Put a record on the gramophone and we will dance. But not alone — Hanneleine, call a woman from the kitchen and dance with her. I want to see you dance!’
They danced. It was strange to feel a man’s hand in hers again, his other decorously on her back. Last time she and Dolphie had danced it was moonlight and love, and the dance had been a prelude to what might have been a shared lifetime.
Now it was an ending, yet Hannelore laughed as Grünberg whirled her around the room. A chemist could also be a most excellent dancer indeed, almost as good as a German count. At the end Grünberg bowed and her face seemed to glow with unaccustomed pleasure, too. ‘I must attend to dinner, if you wish to eat.’
‘Of course we wish to eat!’ Hannelore looked flushed, and happy, and possibly only Sophie saw the tremble of her fingers. ‘I will go down to the cellar and find the best, the very best champagne, too. I want it even if it is decadent. Dolphie, will you come with me?’
Dolphie glanced at his watch, an unwelcome reminder of the passing of the day, then picked up the bottle of plum schnapps, still with a half-inch of liquid. ‘No. I will go out to the lake and drink a toast to my swans, and tell them they have been most clever not to have been eaten. And then Sophie will put on a silk dress, perhaps, and we will dance again?’
He stepped towards Sophie and gave her a chaste kiss on the forehead. ‘You will care for Hannelore,’ he said quietly, as Grünberg slipped back to the kitchen and Hannelore followed her down the corridor towards the cellar door. ‘Not just now, but after the war, too?’
‘I will. But her service to England will protect her, too.’
‘Make sure she lives till then.’ He lifted her hand, kissed it, clicking his heels formally. ‘I have loved you,’ he said casually. ‘I loved Miss Sophie Higgs, I loved the Countess of Shillings, and I love Mrs Daniel Greenman. I have loved what might have been, as well.’
He smiled at her, still with a strange radiance that had not come from alcohol, though perhaps the schnapps had added to it. ‘I do not expect you to say that you love me. You have become most rich in love, my Sophie, since our first dance before the war. So many people love you. I have only truly had Hannelore. She loves us both, like the brother and the sister she always longed for.’
‘I love her, too. Dolphie . . .’ She had never quite known what she felt for him, much less what to say now. Then suddenly she did. ‘I have loved you, too, always. But never all of you, except in the might have been, and so I could not marry you. I loved Nigel totally and fully. I love Daniel deeply and absolutely and long for him each hour. But you have always lingered in my mind and heart, and with love, too.’
She lifted his hand, and kissed it. ‘There. I repay your perfect German manners with Australian vulgarity. Dolphie, Hannelore is my sister. We lost each other, for a while, but we shall not lose each other again.’
‘That is good. And now I will lift my eyes up to the hills and ignore the flash of binoculars and simply see the beauty. If I must die I am glad it is midsummer, when my land is clothed in green and the plums are ripening, and others will make schnapps from them when finally peace is come. But I will have my own peace now. I wonder if the swans will sing for me?’
He smiled at her again, still drinking in every moment of the day. Sophie blew a kiss to him as she left the room to change and felt no betrayal of Daniel, for this was a few seconds and a love of a very different kind, mixed with so much that was not love at all.
She had reached the top of the stairs before she realised what Dolphie meant by hoping that the swans would sing. Swansong! How could she have been so stupid? She ran down and out the door, then heard the shot and knew it was too late.
There would be no last dinner, and no tears either. Dolphie had last seen his beloved niece laughing. His final moment had been with the land he loved. Perhaps no woman could compete with her.
And there he was, slumped on the grass, the hole in his forehead surprisingly neat, with only the smallest trickles of blood. For a strange moment Sophie imagined she saw the land reach up to cradle him. The image vanished. She began to run towards his body, then stopped as another black car drove over the rise, followed by a second and a third.
Had the watchers been waiting for the shot? She remembered Dolphie checking his watch. Of course he had not been given till midnight — how inconvenient to collect a body at midnight. She was suddenly sure he had been given until three pm.
And he had lived it perfectly.
She slipped back into the kitchen as soldiers hauled Dolphie’s body to the second car. Hannelore had not reappeared. Down in the cellars she would not have heard the shot, would still be searching for the best of wines. She would not even know the cars had come.
Grünberg and Simons stared at her, then turned as a man strolled into the kitchen from the hall, in his fifties perhaps, and smiling. He wore civilian clothes of excellent cut; one arm was in a silk scarf sling, and a cut across his forehead was healing. He inspected the two women with the Stars of David on their dresses, then glanced at Sophie, in her good but faded dress. ‘I am Herr Stauffen. Where is the prinzessin?’
Grünberg said nothing. Sophie suddenly realised the woman’s instincts were better than her own. This man did not intend to let Hannelore live here in peace. Possibly he did not intend her to live at all. But first he would want information from her — Dolphie’s friends, associates, everything she knew.
Sophie edged towards the back door. If she could yell in fright or defiance near the cellar steps Hannelore could slip behind the shelves, hide till . . .
‘She is in the cellar,’ said Simons. ‘The prinzessin and her uncle talked often. You will find she knows a lot.’
Herr Stauffen looked at Simons with interest. ‘Did you hear what they said?’
‘No,’ said Simons. ‘They made sure that no one did.’
‘Interesting. And who is she?’ He pointed to Sophie, but spoke to Simons.
‘She is the cook,’ said Grünberg.
Herr Stauffen’s gaze did not move from Simons. Simons hesitated then said, ‘Yes. She is the cook. From Munich, but her home was bombed, so she came here.’
‘She is an excellent cook,’ said Grünberg.
‘Good. Then she will cook for me. I need a place to recuperate.’ He looked back down the corridor. ‘Kommen!’
Four soldiers appeared, army privates. ‘You.’ He pointed to two of the men. ‘The prinzessin is in the cellars. Make sure the entrance is blocked and the house and gardens checked in case there is another exit. Do not let her escape.’ Herr Stauffen gestured to Grünberg and Simons. Two soldiers grabbed them by the arms. Neither resisted as they were led away. Neither looked back at Sophie.
I must live, she thought. She could not fight this man, these soldiers or, rather, she could try, but she would not win. If she lived, her family would have a mother and wife again. If she lived and Hannelore lived, she might help her friend survive. But only if she lived . . .
‘There is coq au vin for dinner,’ she said hurriedly, curtseying and carefully not meeting Herr Stauffen’s eyes, thanking God for the year and a half of practice that had so improved her accent. ‘There is gooseberry pudding and fresh noodles and salad from the hothouse.’
‘You are lucky there is coq au vin,’ he said. ‘It smells most excellent. If it had not . . .’ He shrugged. ‘There are many cooks.’ He strolled away, back through the house that was now his.
Sophie sat, her legs no longer her own, and listened to her life change again.
Chapter 44
Eggless, Butterless, Sugarless Teacake
½ cup currants
Fresh orange juice
1 cup self-raising flour
½ cup buttermilk
3 cups grated apple
Soak the currants overnight in the orange juice till plump. Drain and mix with the other ingredient
s gently. Bake in a moderate oven for about half an hour till firm on top. Eat while warm, for the cake grows stale and crumbles quickly. A little butter spread on each slice will be more effective than adding butter to the cake mixture.
If butter, eggs, sugar or lard is available, cream 4 tablespoons butter or lard with 6 tablespoons brown sugar then mix in 2 eggs to add to the other ingredients.
Bald Hill Progress Association Cookbook, 1944 edition, contributed by Mrs Harry Harrison (Midge)
JULY 1944
DANNY
He was filthy — one of the poddy calves had the squits and he was covered in it. He was just about to head up to the house to wash before dinner — he and Annie were going to the Friday night dance in Bald Hill once he cleaned himself up — when he saw Rose slowly making her way towards him through the frost-browned thistles. He watched her with happiness and relief; sun-touched from the months of recuperation at home, though she’d mostly either been on the phone or dictating to Miss Murphy, who even had to bring her shorthand notebook to the breakfast table to keep up with her employer as she regathered the threads of her empire. But much of the dictating had been done with her feet up on the verandah. Rose had even managed to attend the last two board meetings in Sydney, and had insisted the board come to the hospital for a meeting there before she left. She hardly needed the walking stick now, except on rough ground like this.
He grinned at her as she drew closer. ‘Felt like a break from balance sheets?’
‘I need to talk to you,’ she said stiffly. ‘In private.’
‘Don’t get too close. I’m pretty stinky. What’s up?’
‘I’m pregnant.’
He stopped, a cloud of bushflies hovering around him. ‘You can’t be!’ She’d only lost the last plaster cast two months ago, a week before Paul was recalled back to his ship.
‘Well, I am.’ She hesitated. ‘It was only once. His final leave.’
Possibly, all across the war-torn world, women were confessing, ‘It was his final leave.’
Legends of the Lost Lilies Page 32
