Millions dead, millions still uncounted, killed for the crimes of race, religion, physical defect. Killed with careless incompetence, as well as efficient brutality.
You did not kill like that from duty. You killed because it gave you pleasure. She had once been glancing idly through one of Daniel’s books at Thuringa, for one had to find something to do when the land was cows and proper shops a day’s drive away, when she saw a chapter called The Psychopath, and read it. It described people like those who had designed and run the camps, camps for innocents and those courageous enough to stand or fight against evil.
But those Violette killed had deserved to die.
Did they? Every single one? She suddenly did not know.
She did know that she had enjoyed the challenge, had felt no guilt, only triumph as the numbers rose.
Psychopath. The book had said you were born one. But she . . . she had been made, crafted by Grandmère. If you had been made, could you be unmade?
She did not know that either.
She rose from her seat and walked slowly up the aisle, then out into the foyer and to the street. Uniforms, American and English and Free French, women, children smiling, even an accordion player on the street corner. Dancing was permitted now, even encouraged. Maison Violette’s salons would be crowded with women needing festive gowns.
She did not think she would design a dress again.
She had given her staff a month’s paid leave, every one of them, for prisoners were returning and others lost must be sought, and every life rearranged. Even Madame Thomas had left for the seaside and Violette had gone with her for two weeks. Madame was Tante Thomas now for young Tomas, and the childless family who had welcomed him had Madame Thomas as an adopted aunt for life as well. Violette had even found a puppy, hungry and abandoned in a gutter, to complete the promise that Tomas should have a dog.
She should be lining up to buy food. The last year had depleted even her stores and the black marketeers’. The liberators had come, but food for civilians was still desperately short. She supposed she should feel hungry. She found that she was not.
She approached Maison Violette’s front doors and stopped. A man sat on the step. He stood as she approached. Not in uniform. True to his conscience then, as she had been to hers. But his scars were new.
‘George.’ She did not run to him nor even offer her cheek to kiss. All she could think to say was, ‘How has your war been?’
‘A taxi-driver’s war. I flew planes.’
She doubted it had been like that. ‘The scars?’
‘Shot down.’
She nodded, merely to acknowledge what he had said. She had heard of pilots of bravery and skill who nudged the German rockets from their course. Sometimes she had dreamed she’d seen George doing that. It did not matter now.
‘James Lorrimer asked me to find you, though I was coming to you anyway.’
‘He did not want me during the whole war, but wants me now?’
‘He thought you might want to know — Sophie is safe, in England.’
She thought a brief prayer of gratitude, to match all those where she had prayed Aunt Sophie would be safe, but all she said was ‘Good.’ The guilt that stained her now was too great for even Sophie’s death to add to, nor did Sophie’s survival diminish it. ‘My parents?’
‘I . . . I’m sorry. There was a fire at Shillings. They died together, getting people out.’
Violette imagined the scene. It seemed a fitting conclusion to their lives. She should feel grief. George seemed to be waiting for her to cry at the news, perhaps, or to produce her key to invite him inside.
‘Lorrimer said I could take three weeks’ leave when I found you,’ he said cautiously at last. ‘I wondered if we might spend them together.’
‘It’s been five years.’
‘I haven’t changed,’ he said simply. ‘The moon is still made of green cheese.’
‘I have not changed either. That, I think, is the problem.’ Violette would not tell him how she had spent the war, nor even the deaths before it that she had flung from her conscience as ‘necessary’ or ‘deserved’. She would not burden him. Let him remember young love and think just that. ‘We were too young.’
She smiled at him and shook her head. ‘My most dear George. Find another love, and go with God.’
‘Violette . . .’
She thought George would touch her then. But he stepped back as she took out her key to unlock the front door. He had seen more in her face, perhaps, than she had wished to show. She did not want comfort, and certainly not from a man she loved but must not keep. And when she looked out of the window five minutes later, an hour later, or a day perhaps, he had gone.
Bien.
It was time for Violette to vanish too.
Chapter 56
One of English’s sillier sayings is that ‘life must go on’. There are times when a life should most definitely end. But a life’s ending may be played in many ways . . .
Miss Lily, 1912
Midge Harrison’s Sweet Potato Sugarless, Eggless Fruit Slice (extremely good)
1 cup finely chopped fresh pineapple, peaches, apricots or other fruit to hand
2 cups sultanas, or chopped dates, or a mix of both
1 large sweet potato, peeled and chopped
Fresh orange juice, water or cold tea
3 tablespoons mixed spice
4 tablespoons golden syrup
2 cups plain flour
Cover dried fruit and sweet potato with orange juice, water or cold tea, or a mix of all of them, in a saucepan. Simmer till the sweet potato is soft. The sultanas will now be plumper and almost twice their size. Mix in spice and golden syrup. Cool. Gently fold in the flour. You may need a bit more or less water, cold tea or orange juice — depends how liquidy your fruit mix is.
Pour into a wide baking tin greased and floured. The mixture should only come halfway up the tin or even less — this slice shouldn’t be deep.
Bake in a moderate oven for about 45 minutes or till the middle is firm when you press it lightly. Cool in the tin, then cut into squares.
Keep in a sealed container in a cool place for up to a week. This will not last like a conventional dried fruitcake or biscuits, but it is moist and delicious.
JUNE 1945
HANNELORE
Midsummer and the thrush was singing, the only song perhaps in this ruined land, as Hannelore carried another basket of potatoes across what once had been a lawn.
Behind her two soldiers from the United States carried out yet another stretcher. The Lodge was a small haven for those who suffered injury and starvation at Dachau, a refuge from the illness that left even more bodies needing graves dug in frozen soil, for typhus had swept the camp again, even after liberation; nor had there been enough food or shelter for the inmates who had survived as snow froze the land and its starving people.
Of the hundred prisoners who had been billeted here, more than twenty had already died, despite vegetable soups and nursing. Here, at least, it seemed that potatoes had still been planted, cabbages in their usual orderly rows, even the greenhouses miraculously intact, but beyond the Lodge and its farm and wood, Germany starved, with so few to have planted crops to harvest and half its people injured, ill or ‘displaced’. It might be years before ‘plenty’ returned.
Yet even the chickens had been waiting for her here, and the swans on the lake. It seemed that the Nazis had honoured their promise to Dolphie, in their own vicious way. After all, they had not killed her, only left her to die. Her home had been tended. And now she had not died, Dolphie’s money and possessions were hers to claim, as was Dolphie’s late wife’s money, kept, it seemed, in a Swiss bank account. She also had the accumulated income from her factories, though those that had not been bombed had all been burned before or during the invasion.
Her factories. She could not bear to think of what she had never even thought to ask, all the years before the war when she had accepted their increasi
ng profitability without asking how, or why.
Instead she hired cooks, orderlies, cleaners and nurses and fired three of them the first day, or, rather, they left, despite the guarantee of food and wages, for they would not tend Jewish patients. It was not just cities that had turned to rubble, but human hearts.
Only two of the women who had shared the factory hut and escaped with her were still here. Frau Fischer was still recovering from her wound as well as burns, ulcers and starvation. The other was Judith, cooking and nursing as Hannelore did, too, for many of those who had survived Dachau would need care for years, or some for all their lives. Neither woman had formal qualifications, but decades of experience, born of wars and tragedy. The other women had recovered enough to begin the search for their lives again.
Money helped. Money could buy help to go home; to find out if home existed; to buy another place to live, even if it was a temporary perch. With enough money you could buy food. Money could not bring back what was lost, of course, nor could it wipe away the terror and the agony. Money had also allowed her to turn the Lodge into a hospital, while the American authorities to whom she had given the rest of the property tried to find enough resources to feed and care for so many left starving, sick and dying in the camps, with a third of Europe, perhaps, having lost their homes or trying to find their way back to them.
‘Ma’am?’ The American soldiers had discovered that she no longer answered to ‘Prinzessin’.
‘Yes, Captain?’
‘I just came to tell you that our men and supplies have finally caught up with us.’ He nodded at the potatoes. ‘I reckon you don’t need to keep digging those up yourself now. The new medical staff should arrive tonight, too. But please,’ he added quickly, ‘we don’t want to turn you out of your home.’
‘That is kind of you. Thank you.’
Hannelore waited until he had left, then walked slowly to the kitchen, already under the control of uniformed men, placed the potatoes on the bench, then made her way to her old bedroom.
The trundle bed where she had slept in the first weeks Sophie had been at the Lodge was gone, needed for the patients. She had been needed for the patients, too, but no longer.
She sat upon the bed and remembered. There was, in fact, little joy in her memories, except the times with Dolphie, his loss still an almost incomprehensible pain. Hers had been a life of duty until an Australian called Sophie Higgs had made a snowman at Shillings Hall. Liebe Sophie, who she had loved, betrayed and loved. But she had loved her country and betrayed it too, not by aiding the Allies, but by failing to see her own source of wealth, the corruption at the heart of Hitler’s dream.
True evil is the refusal to see or feel when others are hurt or killed. But what of those who did not even think to look? Surely their crime — her crime — was worse.
Hannelore had heard murmurs that there would be trials of war criminals for crimes against humanity. She would not be among their number. Ironically, being made a prisoner and slave worker had made her safer. The Allied authorities assumed she had spied for England, but she had really spied for Germany, to see the Nazi Party vanquished. But nonetheless she deserved to die for crimes against so many people, and crimes against herself.
She had prepared for this. Not cyanide, with its sudden pain. She would give herself a final gift, a drifting off to sleep, so she could remember happiness before she died. She had taken the sleeping tablets from the doctor’s bag that afternoon, to add to the four she had left from when her burns were fresh. Physical pain was bearable. Pain of the soul was not.
She took those first tablets, and then the others, a slightly different shape, softer and flavoured with peppermint. She smiled at that. How American, to flavour medicines. As if those who craved sleep cared about the taste.
The first, the second, then the twenty-fourth. She lay down neatly, and remembered.
A music box, when she was nine.
Sledding with Dolphie, at fourteen, the air stinging their skin . . .
The snowman, with Sophie. Dancing at the ball while Sophie danced with Dolphie, hoping that just perhaps there might still be peace, and Sophie would be her aunt, a sister. Sophie, promising her sunshine and kangaroos.
Sophie, who had forgiven her.
Hannelore had not even seen a kangaroo yet, but she had seen sunshine. She let her eyes shut, and felt her body drift into its warmth.
She woke, cold. This could not be heaven then, nor hell. Even purgatory would not leave her cold, and stiff too.
‘So you have woken.’ The voice was still expressionless. Hannelore turned. Judith watched her from the chair. ‘I saw you steal the tablets. It was simple to substitute them.’ She almost smiled. ‘I made them from those American peppermints.’
‘How did you know?’
‘That you intended suicide, not sleep? Because I have seen thousands lose the will to live and I saw it in your eyes. I also know the factories were yours. I heard your uncle talk of them. But I did not tell the other women.’ Judith shrugged. Her eyes were no longer sunken, but the shoulders were skeletal still. ‘So. You have killed yourself, as you deserved. What now?’
‘I . . . I don’t understand.’
‘You were judge, jury and executioner. The sentence was carried out. In most jurisdictions if the condemned survives, then they are pardoned. Do you care to pardon yourself?’
‘No,’ said Hannelore, sitting up. Her body felt like melted marshmallow, and her brain refused to comprehend.
‘Good. You should not be pardoned. Work out your sentence here on earth.’
‘How? I’m not needed.’
‘You have money. Use it.’
‘Others can use it, to make what recompense is possible. I have prepared a trust ensuring that.’ She had named James Lorrimer as her trustee, the one she trusted to carry out the compensation, and to understand why.
‘You have a body and a mind, then. Use those.’
‘I don’t think I have the strength,’ admitted Hannelore.
The woman stared at her. ‘There must be something in this world you want.’
‘Only to leave all this behind, every fallen leaf. I cannot stand it.’
‘Nor can I, though I do not know how to escape, or even where I wish to go. But I escaped Dachau. I will escape this too,’ said Judith. ‘Surely there is something you have always wished for?’
‘I wanted to see a kangaroo once.’
‘What . . .?’
‘They are large animals that hop. In Australia. Across the world.’
‘I know what kangaroos are. It seems a small ambition.’
Hannelore found herself smiling in memory. ‘It has been the largest ambition of my life, since I was a young woman. To leave behind duty, and position. To become simply a friend, to visit another friend and see a peculiar animal for no more reason than it would be interesting, and fun.’ Hannelore added softly, ‘To no longer be myself.’
Judith nodded. She did not speak. She sat, while Hannelore watched midsummer leaves out the window. At last Judith said, ‘I envy you. I have nothing. No family. No life. Not even a dream of kangaroos. But in the night sometimes I wake and want to fly, fly high and far to leave all I have known behind.’
‘Australia is perhaps as far away as one can go.’
Judith shrugged. ‘I have been asking questions about all these far countries. Australia does not like refugees, especially Jewish ones, or women. They will take single men only, men who can work.’
‘You could be a visitor. Travel in comfort, not as a refugee. To see if you like kangaroos. Not with money from the factories,’ added Hannelore awkwardly. ‘The money my late aunt-in-law left is in a Swiss bank. It can only be claimed in person.’
‘You would send me on a holiday to Australia?’ asked Judith incredulously.
‘Yes.’
‘Will you come on this holiday too?’ asked Judith quietly.
Hannelore stared at her, life dawning within her. ‘If you invite me.’
>
More silence. Hannelore heard the thrush. Restitution, she thought. With everything I have, for my whole life. Duty, once again. Yet duty — with sunlight, with kangaroos, with Judith, perhaps even with Sophie, too — no longer seemed to crush her, but gave her wings of light.
At last Judith said, ‘Hannelore, will you come to Australia with me, to see kangaroos? To see if Australia is far enough away and a place where we can build our lives?’
Hannelore closed her eyes. It was not fair, that she, who was guilty of so much, should be blessed with this. But had anyone ever glimpsed that elusive creature ‘a fair life’?
‘Yes,’ said Hannelore.
Judith put out her hand, scarred from chilblains, crooked from digging potatoes and even harder work.
Hannelore took it, her own hand scarred by work and fire. ‘We will go together,’ she said.
Epilogue
I do not send you out into the world as swans, although you have their grace. Nor are you eagles, although I hope you fly as high, and see as clearly. You are not doves, either, for though doves have been called the birds of peace, so far they have been singularly unsuccessful. Perhaps you are what doves might be, if they had the strength and courage to say, ‘This is wrong. Let us sit together, not in anger, but to mend the cracks in our broken world.’
Miss Lily, 1914
SPRING 1976
SOPHIE
‘The kangaroo is in the rose garden again,’ noted Daniel, dressed in shirt, socks and nothing else, glancing out the bedroom window as he hunted for his bow tie.
‘It won’t hurt the roses. It just likes grass.’ Sophie lay back on the pillows, enjoying the view of her husband, though even these days it was still . . . indecorous . . . for women of her age to admit they felt desire, or act upon it.
Daniel pulled on his underpants. ‘I know perfectly well that kangaroos don’t eat roses. But if young Hoppy has found a way in, then either someone’s left the gate open or there’s a hole in the fence.’
Legends of the Lost Lilies Page 40
