Winter, p.52
Winter, page 52
‘Every day without fail,’ said Erich Hennig.
‘And he’s teaching our little Theo to play,’ said Lisl proudly. ‘Erich says he has real talent.’
‘That’s wonderful,’ said Pauli. He liked the Hennigs’ twelve-year-old son and had become a beloved uncle.
‘Erich could give a recital, but the doctor says it would be bad for the arm.’
‘I’m not sure I could,’ said Erich, ‘unless it was of short pieces. I couldn’t manage a long work.’
‘Erich was in Warsaw,’ said Lisl proudly. ‘Six concerts for the soldiers. He met General Steflea, the Rumanian chief of staff.’
‘How wonderful,’ said Pauli, who had never heard of the fellow.
‘And all the top field marshals and generals,’ added Lisl when she saw that her brother-in-law wasn’t very impressed.
Pauli pushed his plate away. Clearing a space on the table before saying something important was a mannerism he’d had since childhood. ‘I hear you’ve converted the top floor into an apartment,’ he said.
‘Now, wait a moment, Pauli,’ said Erich defensively. ‘It’s just until I’m back at work again.’
‘It’s not for the rent,’ said Lisl. ‘I needed someone living in, now that Erich has to have someone to look after him.’
‘I haven’t come to ask you for a share of the rent money,’ said Pauli. ‘I want you to find a bed for someone. I’ll pay you if you wish.’
‘It wouldn’t be possible,’ said Erich hastily.
‘Of course it would,’ said Pauli. He drank the water in his glass and reached for the jug to pour more.
‘Won’t you have a glass of wine?’ said Erich. As he was pouring some for himself, his hand shook.
‘I don’t drink,’ said Pauli.
‘I wish Erich wouldn’t drink,’ said Lisl. ‘The doctor said it’s not good for him.’
‘The doctor knows nothing,’ said Erich bitterly. ‘He doesn’t even know what’s wrong with me.’
‘The apartment is occupied,’ said Lisl. She looked at Erich and then Erich looked away and drank his wine.
‘They’ll have to move out,’ said Pauli. He was determined to have the matter settled the way he wanted it, and his tone of voice revealed that determination.
‘They can’t move out,’ said Lisl. ‘They are refugees – they have no proper papers and nowhere to go.’
‘Ostarbeiter?’ said Pauli.
‘Dr Volkmann and the Frau Doktor are living up there,’ said Lisl, blurting it out defiantly. And yet Pauli didn’t miss the fear in her voice. He was the Gestapo man to them, and to many other people, too. People were frightened of him. No matter how he tried to reassure them, it was no good.
‘Volkmann? The dentist?’
It was Lisl who spoke. Her husband kept a discreet silence. Erich had never been noted for his heroism. After the zeppelin crash, Erich Hennig had run for his life. He’d run nearly two kilometres before falling into a ditch and breaking his ankle. But Lisl had mettle enough for both of them. Defiantly she said, ‘They had nowhere to go. Men went to arrest them, but they weren’t at home. The girl who worked for them ran to his surgery to warn him and they never went home again.’
‘I didn’t know about that,’ said Pauli. ‘I started going to another dentist a long time ago. I lost touch.’
‘If we put them out on the street they’ll be picked up. Is that what you want?’ Lisl asked.
‘Whatever made you take the Volkmanns in?’ Pauli asked, still trying to get used to the idea.
‘He was always so kind and patient with Papa,’ said Lisl. ‘I couldn’t say no to them.’
What an amazing reason for putting yourself in jeopardy, thought Pauli, but he wasn’t surprised. Most such reckless courses were started upon for small personal reasons rather than for moral or political ones. His time with the Gestapo had demonstrated that over and over again. ‘Do they never go out?’ said Pauli.
‘Dr Volkmann goes to work at the Jewish cemetery at Weissensee,’ said Erich. ‘He says he’s safe there. Is that true, Pauli?’
‘Yes, he’s safe. They certainly won’t allow Aryans to dig graves for Jews, so as long as there are Jews to be buried they’ll let the Jewish cemetery-workers and undertakers continue in safety.’
‘Frau Volkmann helps me in the house,’ said Lisl.
‘Working in the house? Cooking and washing, Frau Volkmann?’ said Pauli. She’d been so delicate and ladylike.
‘Things change,’ said Erich, having decided that Pauli was not going to report them for harbouring the Volkmanns. He didn’t look at them. He was getting very drunk.
‘They’ll have to make room for another person,’ said Pauli. ‘Lottie is coming out of prison. She’ll have to be hidden.’
‘Lottie is coming out?’ It was Lisl’s turn to be surprised.
Pauli nodded. ‘I have to find somewhere she can hide. I didn’t know about the Volkmanns, but perhaps that makes it easier for everyone.’
Erich was still staring at nothing in particular and sipping his wine. Eventually Lisl said, ‘And Peter is still in America?’
‘Yes, Mama had a letter. It was posted months ago, but it got through. She was very excited.’
‘Poor Peter,’ said Lisl. ‘I suppose he worries about Lottie.’
‘She’ll be all right if you let her stay with the Volkmanns.’
‘They haven’t got much room up there, Pauli.’
‘They’ll have to manage,’ said Pauli. ‘It’s better than being in a camp, isn’t it?’
‘What about rations?’ said Lisl. ‘It’s difficult enough with the Volkmanns.’
‘I’ll see what I can do about that. I know someone who works in the department that deals with rationing. We might get some emergency cards, like they give to air-raid evacuees. It would help out.’
‘And I’ll need some extra blankets,’ said Lisl. ‘It’s all right for the time being, while the weather is warm, but it gets cold at the top of the house in winter, and we can’t keep the heating on all the time.’
‘We have lots of blankets,’ said Pauli. ‘And sheets and things, too. I’ll talk to Inge when she gets back.’
‘You’re going to tell Inge, then?’ said Lisl.
‘Of course I am. Why not?’
‘We never told her about the Volkmanns,’ said Lisl. ‘She’s my own sister, but she can be unpredictable about this sort of thing.’
‘What sort of thing?’ said Pauli.
‘The regime,’ answered Lisl without hesitation. ‘Inge won’t hear a word said against the regime; you must know that, Pauli. I told her a joke once, a silly joke about the Führer. . . . She flared up and gave me a lecture about the war effort. For a moment I thought she was going down to the People’s Court to report me!’ Lisl laughed. It was a joke, of course: she didn’t really think her sister would report her to the notorious Volksgericht.
‘I’ll talk to Inge when she gets back,’ said Pauli, although in the back of his mind was the notion that it might be better not to talk to her.
‘What I’d really like to do,’ said Lisl, leaning forward as if to demonstrate her carnestness, ‘is to start a tea room.’
‘Not again,’ said Erich, without turning to look at them.
‘Tea room?’ said Pauli.
‘It would be perfect. We’re only a step away from Kant Strasse and not far from Ku-damm. It wouldn’t cost much to make it look really grand.’
‘A tea room?’ said Pauli again. ‘Here?’
‘Downstairs.’
His back still turned to them, Erich said, ‘Not being far from Ku-damm won’t help. People don’t stroll past here the way they stroll on the Ku-damm.’
Pauli realized that his presence was providing them with an excuse to argue through him. It was a device that married couples sometimes resorted to; he remembered doing the same sort of thing himself at times.
‘They would come if it was a nice place. There are so many people walking about aimlessly – soldiers and their girls, war workers on vacation and foreigners. A tea room wouldn’t be much work: afternoons and early evenings. And I’d use the two downstairs rooms that we never go into now. I’d enjoy doing it, Pauli, and it might bring in some money.’
Erich turned round to face them again. He’d finished the wine in his glass and now he poured himself more. It was French wine, Pauli noticed. The Hennigs might have been short of money, but they lived well nevertheless. ‘What will people say when it gets round that Erich Hennig the concert pianist is running a tea room?’ he said.
‘Be reasonable, Erich darling,’ Lisl said. ‘You won’t let me take a job, and a little extra money would solve all our problems.’
‘You’d need a licence,’ said Erich. He was bent very low over the table, so that he only had to lift the glass a tiny way to his lips.
‘Leave all that to me,’ she said. ‘Will you let me try, Erich?’
He pulled a face. ‘The rooms downstairs are in a terrible mess.’
‘The Volkmanns would help me. Dr Volkmann is good at decorating, and Lily will help me clear it all up.’
Erich Hennig was softening. ‘You mustn’t put the best furniture in there. Certainly not those valuable dining-room chairs.’
‘Do you think I’m stupid, Erich darling? Of course I won’t put the dining-room chairs in there – they were Mother’s dearest possession. I can rent or borrow what I need. Or there are places where they sell furniture from places damaged in the air raids. Some of it is very good.’
‘Where will you put that old upright piano?’
‘I thought of leaving it there, Erich. If things went well, I might get a pianist, or even a trio, to play. People need cheering up these days.’
‘What do you think, Pauli?’ Erich asked.
‘It’s worth a try,’ said Pauli. ‘I’ll bring Fritz Esser along. If he started bringing his girlfriends here, you’d become famous.’
‘I don’t want Fritz Esser and his girlfriends,’ said Lisl. ‘It’s not going to be that sort of place.’ Though she smiled enough to make it a joke, there was an underlying sincerity in her voice. Pauli wondered what she meant, but he didn’t ask.
‘You’re an old man now, Peter’
‘You look the part, Peter,’ Glenn Rensselaer told him as they walked along Baker Street, London. Rensselaer, sixty-two years old, wore a well-cut English herringbone-weave three-piece suit, a brown felt hat and brogues. There were crowds on the street, mostly in uniform of some kind or other: Women’s Royal Naval Service officers with their schoolgirl-style brimmed hats, bearded Norwegians, Australian airmen in their special dark blue, Canadians with their green-tinted khaki, Polish officers in their spiky caps and, looking in the shopwindows, pretty girls in fur coats, who always lingered where the soldiers passed.
‘I feel like a fraud,’ said Peter Winter, who was dressed as a colonel of the U.S. Army. ‘And everyone treats me like a fraud. Or at least the Americans do.’ They stopped, waiting for a break in the traffic before they crossed the road.
‘It’s your accent,’ said Glenn. ‘If you spoke stumbling English with a heavy German accent you’d be immediately accepted. Army intelligence, as you well know, is filled with German emigrants. But you speak excellent English with a very British accent. That’s darned difficult for a GI to reconcile with an American colonel’s uniform.’
‘I’ll have to take elocution lessons,’ said Peter. ‘And why don’t you wear a uniform? Tell me that, Uncle Glenn.’ There was a break between a red double-decker bus and a transporter lumbering under the weight of a Matilda tank, and the two men dashed across the road, narrowly avoiding a woman despatch rider on a powerful motorcycle.
‘Cut out the “Uncle”, will you Peter. Uniform? Well, I learned my lesson about uniforms back in the old days. If we sent a lieutenant to a meeting, the British sent a captain, and so on and so on. Finally I decided to drop my honorary rank and revert to civilian. That way the British don’t know how much authority I have, and I don’t get brass hats breathing down my neck.’
‘I wish you’d told me,’ said Peter.
‘You’ll be all right, Colonel. You’ve got me to back you up: I’ve got no one to back me up.’
‘I thought you were the big boss.’
‘Yes, but I’m the boss of nothing. For the time being we are the poor relations here. We have to use RAF planes to drop our agents, and that means we have to line up, cap in hand, along with the Free French, the Poles, the Czechs, the Dutch and all the governments in exile.’
‘Why don’t we use American planes?’ Peter asked.
‘Hallelujah! Walking into that RAF group captain’s office and telling that toffee-nosed SOB what he can do with his airplanes is a pleasure I’m much looking forward to. But the RAF are flying over Germany every night. They have all kinds of magic boxes, so they can find a map reference and put an agent down right where he must be. Our flyboys are trained to fly in daylight. And they fly in formation, which means only the formation leader has to know where he is – and even then he can use the maps to help him find his way. No, Peter, agents have to be dropped in the dark, and for the time being that puts us into the hands of the British, including that pretentious goldbrick we just talked with.’
They came to a small, rather smart block of flats, its windows covered with the sticky net cloth that was supposed to prevent glass from flying when bombs exploded. They went up the short flight of steps – each bearing a strip of new white paint to help in the blacked-out streets – and pushed open the doors. From outside, the building looked like many of the other small blocks of expensive apartments in Saint Marylebone, London, but like most of the others this one had been taken over for official use. Inside the door were two armed U.S. military policemen in white webbing belts and white gaiters. One of them was sitting with his feet up on a chair listening to the radio playing ‘I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire’. He jumped to his feet and saluted, then turned the radio down, looked at their identification cards, and got them to sign the book.
‘How are you doing, Sergeant?’ asked Glenn amiably.
‘Not bad, Mr Rensselaer,’ said the cop. ‘Not bad at all.’
‘We won’t wait for the elevator,’ said Glenn. ‘It’s only two floors up.’ As they started up the stairs, ‘I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire’ got suddenly louder.
They passed through a room where three large metal Type H containers were being packed with guns, radios and rations before being parachuted into occupied Europe. They walked down a narrow corridor to a door marked ‘G. Rensselaer. Operations Staff Only’. Once inside Glenn’s poky little office, they sat down. Peter looked out the window onto Seymour Place.
‘Want a drink? Coffee? Tea?’ Glenn asked.
‘No thanks. It’s exciting to be in London again. And to be here! It’s odd to think that we’re only round the corner from Grandfather’s house,’ said Peter. His hair was no longer cut very short, but he was still tanned from the California sun. They’d flown him over the Atlantic. That was a measure of high importance in these days of priorities.
‘Yes, this section of town has been chosen by most of the exiled governments,’ said Glenn. ‘I guess they want to stick close to the British Special Operations Executive in Baker Street.’
‘How much do the British know?’ asked Peter.
‘Officially they know nothing. The deal we made with them is the same as that made by the others. The Dutch and the French don’t want to reveal anything about the men they ask the RAF to drop into Europe, and we have the same arrangement. But the British are not stupid. They know that we have no underground movement over there, the way the French and the Belgians and the Dutch do. So they must guess that we are parachuting in German Americans for our own purposes. Tomorrow you’ll meet a man named Piper – Sir Alan now, they gave him a knighthood last year – he’s one of the top British intelligence people. You met him once. I brought him to Travemünde back when your grandmother was still alive. It was the year you had the sailing accident that made your mother go grey.’
‘Mama, go grey?’
‘Sure, you must have noticed that.’
‘No, I never did. Is that the man Mama fell in love with?’
‘So you knew about that?’
‘Not at the time. Pauli told me many years later. I can’t clearly remember him, except that he was tall and spoke German with a funny accent.’
‘That’s the guy. He fell for your mother. I would never have taken him there if I’d guessed what was going to happen.’
‘Did it affect Mama so much?’
‘I don’t know. I was thinking of Piper. You know, he still has a photo of your mother in a frame.’
‘After all this time?’
‘It’s together with other pictures of friends and acquaintances, but I know him well enough to know . . .’
‘And you approve?’
‘Don’t be such a . . .’
‘A stuffed shirt?’
‘Right. Don’t be a stuffed shirt, Peter. Boy Piper loved Veronica, and maybe it would have been better if she’d gone off with him.’
‘Is that what you told her?’ There was a note of displeasure in Peter’s voice.
‘She’s your mother, but she’s my sister,’ said Glenn doggedly. ‘Maybe you should remember that. And Boy never married.’
‘And he’s a friend of yours.’
‘He’s a good guy. You’ll see that. There are plenty of wrongos in this town, but when the British get it right, they get it really right.’
‘I’ll look forward to meeting him,’ said Peter.
‘Well, don’t upset him. Just about everything we have right now, from thumbtacks to parachute training, is because of Boy Piper’s say-so.’
‘I won’t upset him.’
To change the subject Glenn said, ‘How are your guys coming along?’
‘One of them will never be good enough, but the best three are ready. I can’t teach them anything more. What are their chances, Glenn? Of getting back, I mean.’
