‘Nothing. And as it’s common knowledge that I’m a stubborn, impossible old woman, you’ve no reason to feel guilty. As soon as I can book a flight, I will leave for Europe. I’ve been planning this trip for years. You’ve just given me a reason not to delay any longer. You won’t tell my grandson or anyone else about this?’
‘Unfortunately, as you well know, I can’t without your permission. We will see you again?’ It was a plea more than a question.
She didn’t answer. Kissing him lightly on the cheek, she murmured, ‘That’s for your father.’
He stood at his window and watched as she left the building, her long black skirt and autumn-coloured scarves blowing in the breeze.
‘Doctor Andrews?’
He turned to see his nurse in the doorway behind him. ‘Shall I contact Boston or New York to arrange an appointment for Ms Datski?’
‘No,’ he answered abruptly.
‘Then I’ll phone admissions to arrange a bed?’
‘No.’
‘But –’
‘Send in the next patient.’
‘And Ms Datski?’
‘Keep her file to hand, and hope that we need it.’
Charlotte drove home slowly, observing the speed limit for the first time in years. When she realized the irony of what she was doing, she laughed out loud. After receiving the news David had just given her, she should be careering recklessly into whatever time she had left, instead of crawling cautiously along in the slow lane. But she was going home for the first time in over sixty years and it suddenly seemed very important that she get there in one piece.
She stopped her car at the head of the private drive that meandered through the woods towards her New England clapboard house. The leaves of the bulbs she had planted when she had bought the place thirty-six years before were withering into the mulch beneath the trees. Every spring a carpet of daffodils, crocuses and bluebells spread colour down to the banks of the lake. Their end marked the advent of summer.
Opening her window, she checked her mailbox, taking time to breathe in the scent of the pinewoods and the lake beyond the house. Was it her imagination or could she smell the last of the cherry and apple blossom? Fragrances that reminded her of a country which no longer existed. But then, everything she had created here had been built and planted to that end, resulting in a flickering reflection, no more substantial than that of an image caught on the surface of a pond, of a home she had loved and been forced to abandon sixty years before. Closing her mind to her memories, she took her mail and drove on over the rough track towards the house. Leaving her car on the gravel driveway, she opened her front door and walked through to the kitchen. She filled the kettle before thinking better of the idea. There was a bottle of white wine in the fridge, and she carried it and her letters up the stairs to her studio.
It was her favourite room. Covering the whole of the first floor, one-third of the space had been given over to open deck; another third was glassed in like an English conservatory, leaving the wall in the remaining third to prop up her paintings. Glancing at the completed canvases she’d spread out that morning, she congratulated herself on a job well done, before opening the wine and curling into a wickerwork chair with her mail. She dropped three unopened circulars into the bin before finding one she wanted to read – a large, fat envelope from her English granddaughter.
After years of exchanging daily e-mails she was amazed Laura had consigned anything to the post. She cut it open with her thumbnail and extracted a file marked ‘Grunwaldsee’. She opened it and a sheaf of photocopies dropped out. She unfolded them. There was no mistaking what they were: documents with passport-sized photographs overlaid with official stamps decorated with the eagle and swastika of the Third Reich. Images of her father, mother, her brothers Wilhelm and Paul, her sister Greta, and herself, impossibly young, stared up at her. All six locked into a past she had never entirely escaped.
Dear Oma,
This is the most difficult letter I’ve ever had to write. Please, don’t ignore it, or the copies of the documents and the questions they raise, as I’m sure Aunt Greta and my father would do.
I came across the original of this file in the Berlin Document Center when I was researching a documentary – it doesn’t matter what. I don’t have to ask if you and Aunt Greta were members of the Nazi Party; these papers prove you were. I would like to know why you joined and more about your life in Grunwaldsee …
Charlotte shuddered and turned back to the photocopies. If she had suspected their existence she would have … what? Told Laura and Claus about the past? Burdened them with the secrets that had haunted her for nearly sixty years?
… I am not asking just for myself but for the entire family, especially Claus’s unborn child, because, in time, he or she will ask questions, just as I am doing now. No matter how father and Aunt Greta try to pretend that the war and Hitler are ancient history and of no consequence to generations born after the events, it simply isn’t true. We deserve to know the truth and hear it first-hand, not stumble across it in a dusty file as I have done.
Please, Oma, I love you so much, and a part of that love is respect. I want to continue feeling that way about you and I won’t until I hear your side of the story …
Charlotte glanced across at the canvases she had taken such pleasure in a moment before. Could she offer Laura the truth as an explanation that would bring a degree of understanding from her granddaughter? Forgiveness was too much to hope for. She had never been able to forgive herself for joining the National Socialist Party. As a result she had never left the past behind her. But the blame, guilt and regrets were entirely hers – not her grandchildren’s. There had to be some way of making Laura see that much.
I love you so much, and a part of that love is respect.
Dropping the letter and photocopies into her lap, she picked up the telephone and, without even checking the time difference, dialled Laura’s mobile; it was answered on the sixth ring.
‘Laura, can you talk?’
‘Yes.’ Her granddaughter’s voice was thick with sleep.
‘I woke you?’
‘No …’
‘Please, don’t lie to me, not even about small things. I received your letter. Are you still in Berlin?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll be with you in a few days. I’ll get a flight as soon as I can. I’m going home – to East Prussia,’ she explained to the silence. ‘And I’d like you to come with me, but I’ll understand if you don’t want to.’
‘You’ll tell me …’
‘Everything,’ Charlotte interrupted, ‘but not on the telephone. Can you spare the time to accompany me?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘I’ll let you know when I’ll be in Berlin. Before I see you, I need to talk to your father and to Uncle Erich.’
‘When you see my parents, give them my love.’
‘I will, but I intend to stay in England for only one day.’
‘Oma …’ There was only the slightest hesitation. ‘Thank you.’
‘I love you.’
Charlotte hung up, then flicked through the directory before dialling a second time. The bookings and arrangements with her agent’s office proved more straightforward than she’d expected. Suddenly she realized she had very little time to pack, sort through her possessions and plan what she was going to say to Erich and Jeremy. But lost in the past, she continued to sit and stare blindly out over the lake.
‘Oma, you upstairs?’
Shaking herself from her reverie, Charlotte pushed the photocopies and Laura’s letter beneath the cushion of her chair and composed herself. Claus always had been far too sensitive to her moods for her peace of mind.
‘Up here, Claus,’ she called in a voice she’d intended to sound light, but came out brittle. Forcing a smile, she relegated all thoughts of Laura’s letter into the ‘think about later’ compartment of her mind, which she had filled to capacity with painful memories and problems over the years. Hopefully, there would be enough time left for her to deal with all of them.
Her grandson climbed the stairs, his massive, raw-boned clumsiness making her tremble for the safety of her paintings.
‘I saw the car …’ A frown furrowed his forehead as he lumbered towards her. ‘Wine in the middle of the day? You celebrating, or drowning your sorrows?’
‘Celebrating.’
‘You don’t have stomach ulcers?’
‘Only very small ones,’ she lied, clinging to the story she had woven around her symptoms.
‘Are they going to operate?’
She shook her head. ‘No operation, only a disgusting diet.’
‘It can’t be that disgusting if it includes wine.’
‘You’re clucking like an old hen.’
‘I’ll ring David and ask if wine’s allowed,’ he threatened.
‘Today’s the last day of my old diet, tomorrow the first of the new.’
‘In that case, you’d better come to dinner tonight. Carolyn’s cooking.’
‘What time do you want me?’
He gave her a hard look. She had never agreed to dine with them so easily before. Usually an appointment had to be made two weeks in advance and then only after a certain amount of arguing and checking of diaries.
‘Seven-thirty all right?’
‘Fine.’ She held up her glass. ‘Want some wine?’
‘I’ll carve crooked chair legs all afternoon if I do.’
‘Still making that dining set?’
‘I enjoyed doing the table but twelve chairs are six too many. Who in their right mind wants to serve a dozen people a formal, sit-down meal in this day and age?’
‘Someone who can afford a caterer and your hand-made furniture. There’s coffee in the kitchen.’
‘Beer?’
‘In the fridge; help yourself.’
He returned with a can and no glass. Ripping open the top, he took the chair next to Charlotte’s and propped his long legs on a table piled with magazines. ‘This room is perfect. I feel so at home I have no qualms about making a mess, and the view is magnificent. Much better than ours. We’re too close to the lake to get a wide perspective.’
‘Move in while I’m away if you want. I’ve decided to pay a visit to East Prussia.’
‘Poland,’ he corrected.
‘Part of it will always be East Prussia to me.’
‘We’ll go with you after Carolyn’s had the baby.’
‘The flight’s booked. I’m leaving Boston tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow? But we were always going to make the trip together, and we can hardly take Carolyn when she’s eight months pregnant,’ he complained.
‘It would be too risky, even if the airline allowed her to fly.’ Reaching for the wine bottle, she replenished her glass.
‘Are you telling the truth about the ulcers?’ He narrowed his eyes.
‘You doubt your grandmother’s veracity?’
‘Only when it comes to her health and the cost of the presents she hands out on birthdays and Christmas.’
‘Undergoing all those tests made me realize I’m mortal. I’ve no intention of dying just yet, but I’m not going to get any younger or stronger than I am now, and I want to see my home again before I have to be wheeled around it in a chair. I rang Laura, she’s coming with me.’
‘Two women on their own in Poland. Haven’t you heard what’s been happening in the Eastern bloc? There’s a breakdown of law and order. The Mafia –’
‘That’s Russia,’ she interrupted impatiently, ‘and everyone knows the press exaggerate.’
‘At least stop off in Germany. Perhaps my father or brother could go with you …’ His voice trailed off when he realized what he was suggesting.
‘Do I need to remind you why you left Germany to come and live with me?’
‘Perhaps not my father or brother,’ he said ruefully, ‘but there’s Uncle Jeremy.’
‘Claus, I may be old but I’m not senile. Both my sons would rather keep me at a three-thousand-mile distance, which suits me very well, as that is precisely where I prefer to keep them. And, of my four grandchildren, Erich is too strait-laced and Luke too young to put up with me. Which leaves you and Laura, and, as Carolyn’s condition rules you out, Laura and I will have to manage as best we can without male protection. I’m sure we’ll survive.’
‘How is Laura?’ he asked.
‘Well,’ she answered cautiously.
‘Happy?’
‘She sounded fine.’
‘No sign of a man on the horizon?’
Charlotte shook her head. ‘The curse of the happily-married is wanting to match-make the world. Laura is a career woman.’
‘Only until she finds the right man.’
‘Perhaps.’ Charlotte would never have admitted to Claus that the lack of one special person in Laura’s life had also bothered her since Laura had turned thirty. She was inordinately proud of the cutting-edge, award-winning documentaries her granddaughter produced, which had been televised world-wide. But she couldn’t help feeling that Laura’s lifestyle of constant travelling and nights spent in hotel rooms had to be a lonely one.
‘I wish there was some way that Carolyn and I could go with you.’ Claus set his beer down beside his chair.
‘You should have given the matter some thought eight months ago.’
‘It was going to be our trip,’ he protested, refusing to see any humour in the situation.
‘But we never made it because I foolishly kept putting it off. I’ll check out the country. If there’s anything left worth seeing, you and Carolyn can go next year.’
‘I suppose so.’ He finished his beer and left his chair. ‘Can I help?’ ‘All I have to do is cancel my appointments for the next month or so.’
‘And pack,’ he reminded her.
‘A few clothes. I can manage. Take care of the house for me?’
‘I will.’ For an instant, he reminded her of his grandfather. Tall, blond, blue-eyed and impossibly good-looking, but then, a colonel in the Wehrmacht of the Third Reich would never have grown a beard and moustache, or dressed in sawdust-covered jeans and a tattered sweatshirt, let alone loafers on bare feet. Physically alike, yet so different in character, temperament, attitude – and philosophy. ‘Thank you.’
‘For what?’
‘Living with me in my dotage, and staying on after your marriage. Being here every day and caring.’
‘And I suppose you’ve done nothing for us, like allowing us to build a house in your backyard and giving me the money to set up in business.’