‘The furniture was piled in another clearing.’ Marius led the way across the yard. ‘Jewellery, toys, everything small and valuable was slipped into haversacks and kit bags. They were like locusts. The entire countryside was stripped bare, of people, valuables, food. All that was left was empty houses. Which displaced Polish families from the south were resettled in.’ Marius took his wife’s hand. ‘And thankfully for me, one of those Polish families was Jadwiga’s.’
Brunon walked up the steps to the front door of the house. He held out his hand to his grandfather for the key. But Marius held back.
‘Are you sure you want to go inside, Fräulein Charlotte?’
‘It’s a long time since I’ve been Fräulein Charlotte, Marius. I’m plain Charlotte now. And yes, I am sure. I would like to see it again, just one more time.’
Brunon opened the front door. Charlotte was conscious of everyone standing back, waiting for her to make the first move, and she stepped inside.
Charlotte almost reeled back, overwhelmed by the smell of paint and varnish. Looking down, she saw that she was standing on new parquet flooring.
‘All the floors had to be replaced,’ Marius explained. ‘The winters of forty-six and forty-seven were cold ones. The Russian soldiers ripped up the blocks to feed the boiler; afterwards, the authorities put down cheap linoleum. It didn’t last long.’
Charlotte felt she was expected to say something. ‘This is good quality wood.’
‘Not as good as the old flooring, but at least it’s free from the scuff marks your mother used to chide the maids for never being able to remove.’ There was a huskiness in Marius’s voice that Charlotte found difficult to ignore.
‘Is this new, too?’ She touched the staircase, unsure whether the stairs and balustrade had been stripped of varnish and restored, or entirely replaced.
‘Like the floor, the rails were used to feed the boiler.’
‘Whoever did this had a good eye for the original. You said that you helped?’
‘As much as I could,’ he admitted diffidently.
‘You did well, Marius. It would have been dreadful if Grunwaldsee had crumbled into rubble.’ She glanced up at the ceilings. They were obviously new, but the ornate coving and ceiling roses were identical to the old.
‘These were cast from moulds of the original. There were just enough pieces left for the plasterer to recreate the patterns.’ He sank down on the bottom step of the stairs and looked around. ‘The hall suffered the most at the end of the war because it’s where the soldiers used to wait for their orders. But if you go into the drawing room you’ll see it still has the old fireplace.’
Charlotte opened a door on her right. Unfurnished, the size of the room was breathtaking. The long casement windows overlooked the woods, framing the lane that led down to the lake. She walked to the hearth and ran her hands over the smooth marble. ‘Not just the fireplace,’ she whispered. ‘Even the tiled surround has survived.’
‘And two of the chandeliers in the ballroom.’ Marius rose to his feet and opened the double doors to the largest room in the house. ‘They broke the third one when they tried to take it down, so they decided to leave the other two and clean them where they hung.’
It was the same wherever they went. A ghost of an old house that lived on in new, shining, beautifully proportioned rooms with walls, ceilings and floors devoid of ornament and furniture. The colours were the same as they had been in 1945: green and gold in the drawing room; blue, white and silver in the ballroom and formal dining room; red in the billiard room, although the table had been ripped out. Charlotte felt as though she had stepped back to the eighteenth century when Wilhelm von Datski had brought his Hanoverian bride to Schloss Grunwaldsee and, deciding that the old red-brick castle was no longer to his liking, had torn it down and employed an architect to erect the classical family home of Grunwaldsee on the foundations.
Only the kitchen made no concession to the history of the house. Modern, stainless-steel work surfaces, black and white units and gleaming tiles hid the scars that had been inflicted during the Communist era, when it had been a riding school and hotel that catered for the elite.
‘I’ve kept the best until last.’ Marius walked through the kitchen and servants’ corridor back to the main hall and the library. Dark wood shelves lined the walls but Charlotte saw that, although similar to the original, they too were new.
‘The shelves as well as the books were fed into the boiler?’
‘All of them, as were the ones in your father’s study.’ Marius opened a door that led into a smaller, cosier room. At the opposite end of the house to the ballroom it overlooked the lake.
‘How many rooms are there?’ Laura was bewildered and amazed by the size of the house.
‘I never counted,’ Charlotte answered. ‘Do you know, Marius?’
‘For a house that served an estate the size of Grunwaldsee, not that many. On this floor, apart from the kitchen, store rooms and servants’ quarters, there are two drawing rooms, the informal and formal dining rooms, the ballroom, library, study, billiard room, your father’s study, separate estate office, the conservatory and four general purpose rooms.’
‘General purpose?’ Laura looked quizzically at her grandmother.
‘My mother used one as her morning room, one as her study, and another as a sewing room for the housekeeper. My brothers commandeered the fourth and refused to allow anyone, even the maids, inside. I dread to think what they did in there.’
‘Serious smoking and drinking,’ Marius disclosed. ‘I climbed in through the window when I was six years old and got horribly ill on the beer and cigarettes they fed me. Do you remember this?’ He ushered them into the room that had been Charlotte’s father’s study.
‘Papa’s cupboard,’ Charlotte cried out. ‘So something is left after all.’ She walked over to an immense, carved, ebony cabinet that filled a generous-sized alcove from floor to ceiling. ‘All the estate records going back to the thirteenth century were kept in here.’ She opened the door and looked inside. It was empty. ‘Why wasn’t it burnt?’
‘The wood’s hard. The Russians were too lazy to take an axe to it when there was easier kindling to be had.’
‘After everything that’s happened, Papa’s cupboard is still here. I can scarcely believe it.’
‘Try moving it, Fräulein Charlotte. Ten men failed. The builder couldn’t even replaster the wall behind it. I’m sorry we can’t go upstairs,’ Marius continued, as they returned to the hall. ‘Furniture was moved in there yesterday. In fact, if you had been a week later I think all the rooms would have been furnished.’
‘Then the new owner intends to make Grunwaldsee his home?’ Charlotte grabbed the door post for support.
‘I don’t know, he hasn’t confided in me.’ Marius saw Charlotte sway and offered her his arm. ‘It’s almost time for supper. You will stay and eat with us?’
‘Please,’ Jadwiga coaxed in Polish, guessing that Marius had extended another invitation.
Charlotte looked to Laura, who was walking ahead of them down the steps with Brunon. ‘Only if it’s not too much trouble for you.’
‘Trouble? In your family home?’ Marius commented indignantly, as though Charlotte had never left the place. ‘This evening you must move out of the hotel and in with us. Brunon will help you with your cases.’
‘Thank you, but no, Marius. A visit is one thing but I could never sleep at Grunwaldsee again.’ Charlotte glanced across the courtyard at the tiny two-roomed lodge. She was touched by Marius’s invitation. It had obviously been extended from the heart, without thought to practical arrangements. ‘The hotel is very comfortable, and, if we may, we’d like to come back again.’
‘Tomorrow?’ Marius brightened at the thought. ‘I’ll harness one of the carriages, and we will drive over the estate and visit the church.’
‘You still have the original carriages?’ Charlotte asked, as they drew close to the stables.
‘Two of the old ones, and this beauty.’ He went into the stable, opened a stall and led out the mare Brunon had shown Laura earlier. ‘Here is our pride and joy, soon to be a mother, which is why she is in here.’
A lump rose in Charlotte’s throat. ‘She looks like Elise.’
‘And so she should, she’s descended from her. We hid her foal on Zalewski’s farm. At the end of the war we brought her back and bred from her. What do you think? Not as good as her great-granddam but something of the spirit?’
‘Something.’ Charlotte buried her face in the horse’s neck in the hope that no one would see her tears.
‘Laura said earlier that she can ride,’ Brunon said to his grandfather. ‘Can I take her riding around the lake tomorrow?’
‘You can ride?’ Marius asked Laura in German.
‘Of course she can ride,’ Charlotte said proudly. ‘She has von Datski blood.’
TUESDAY, 23 DECEMBER 1941
I have written so little this year. Running Grunwaldsee takes every waking minute. Brunon and I have been working sixteen hours a day just to keep the farms going, but however much we produce, there never seems to be enough left to feed the workers after the War Office quota has been filled.
At Irena’s and Brunon’s insistence, I visited Warsaw to entertain the troops. I knew Irena would look after Erich and Grunwaldsee as well as I could. She kept repeating that the troops have so few pleasures. She hopes that someone in authority will think of organizing entertainments for the soldiers in Russia. Wilhelm is always in her thoughts.
We played in a concert hall outside the walls of the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw. I asked about the people inside. Herr Schumacher took me aside and said the area inside the walls was one of several that the Reich has set aside to contain Jews and it is wiser not to ask questions about what goes on within them. Nina, who had special leave from Berlin to join the concert party, had travelled through the ghetto on a tram. She told me conditions inside are dreadful. The streets and houses are filthy and unkempt; the people dirty, unwashed, dressed in rags and clearly incapable of looking after themselves or their children properly.
I remembered the scenes outside Irena’s parents’ house. Are Ruth and Emilia in the Warsaw ghetto or one like it? And if so, how are they supporting themselves? It is hard enough to find food and clothes for everyone at Grunwaldsee, and we have the small profits of the estate and, when necessary, our savings to live on. I recalled Georg then, and asked Nina if she had seen any soldiers inside the ghetto, but she said no one is supposed to talk about it. I wanted to go on the tram ride myself, but there was no time. After two days I had a telegram from Irena telling me that Mama had taken a turn for the worse.
I returned to find Mama frail, weak and agitated. Irena said she began to look for Papa the moment I left. Irena tried to soothe her and keep her quiet, but she left her bed and the house in the middle of the night and walked down to the lake. One of the land army girls saw her wading into the water at three a.m. I was so pleased that someone had stopped Mama before she drowned that I didn’t ask the girl what she was doing down by the lake at that time in the morning. Brunon confided that she is over-friendly with the son of one of the tenants who was home on leave.
Irena was dreadfully upset. I had trouble convincing her that it wasn’t her fault and that Mama would have left her bed in the middle of the night even if I had been home. Mama is getting more and more confused, and there is nothing that any of us can do to help her. Her shell is with us but for most of the time her mind is out of our reach.
Last week two of the land army girls left to get married. The estate has never been so short-handed. Worst of all are the people who persist in thinking that we are sitting on mountains of butter, cream, milk and meat. Even people who should know better, like the Adolfs, expect us to provide a little extra for them at this time of year.
The war news is not good. Since America has joined the Allies it feels as though we are fighting the whole world. But tonight was truly special. I invited the Adolfs and Papa and Mama von Letteberg to join us for the holiday. Frau and Herr Adolf and Mama von Letteberg came today and will stay until the New Year. Irena and I played the piano while the others sang carols and decorated the drawing room and the tree. For a few hours I think we all managed to forget the war, but not the people we have lost. I know Claus’s brother Peter was in all our thoughts.
Secretly we are all hoping that the twins and Manfred Adolf will come home for Christmas, although no one dares say so, in case our hopes are raised only to be dashed. Irena cries every time she thinks that she and little Marianna might not see Wilhelm over the holiday. She is seven months pregnant, although Marianna is only sixteen months old.
Claus wrote and warned me that he won’t be home. He doesn’t think it right for the commanding officer to take holiday leave when the men can’t. But there’s no reason why his father shouldn’t come here to be with Mama von Letteberg. I’m sure he will make the effort. She simply hasn’t been the same since she had the telegram about Peter.
I have managed to keep back a goose for our Christmas dinner. After the War Office took their requisition there were only two left fit for killing, and I insisted Brunon take one. We owe him everything. I could never keep Grunwaldsee going without his loyalty, common sense and help.
We cut down a tree as usual, but as sugar is in such short supply there are some very odd sweets for the children on its branches this year. Brunon and the other old men have been busy carving, and Irena, Minna, Martha and I did some sewing, so every boy will have an animal of sorts and all the girls a rag doll, although we had to cut up old dresses to finish them. I dread to think what it will be like next year if we haven’t won the war.
At least there are plenty of vegetables, and we pooled our fat rations to make stollens. Almonds are rarer than bananas, but we made walnut marzipan and it does not taste at all bad. Presents were a problem. I packed Claus a parcel of all the tinned food I could find, including the last of our liver sausage. I only hope he gets it. I put his rank on the outside in large red letters, so if anyone dares to thieve from a colonel I hope they get caught and punished.