‘Didn’t Greta look for him?’
‘It was Greta who put him in there.’ Despite what the Mother Superior had said about Greta taking Erich to safety, Charlotte had never been able to forgive her sister for abandoning her son.
‘Your father would have horsewhipped her,’ Marius said in disgust.
‘Probably.’ Charlotte couldn’t bring herself to talk about it. ‘After I found Erich, and Greta – not that she was glad to see us – I discovered Irena had survived.’
‘And her baby?’ Marius asked.
‘Died soon after he was born.’
‘A boy.’ Marius’s face fell. ‘How Wilhelm would have loved him.’ Charlotte didn’t trust herself to make a comment. ‘So you, Greta, and Irena all ended up in the north of Germany at the end of the war?’
‘Not that Greta wanted to see Irena any more than she wanted to see me and Erich, for all that she had bandied Wilhelm’s name around her new friends.’
‘The conspirators were brave men. If they had succeeded things would have been very different.’
‘Perhaps, but Irena would disagree with you about the bravery, Marius. Ravensbruck had changed her,’ Charlotte said sadly. ‘She wasn’t the Irena we knew. She had suffered a great deal, not only physically, but mentally from not knowing where her daughters were, or what was happening to them. She was very bitter.’
‘She was entitled to be.’
‘I helped her search for Marianna and Karoline. Marianna was almost too easy; we located her in an orphanage within a week of my finding Irena, but we didn’t find Karoline. That was the hardest, not knowing whether she had been killed, died from disease, or been adopted. When our last attempts to track her down failed, Irena took Marianna and moved to the south of Germany. She changed her name and went to a town where no one knew her. She said she didn’t want any reminders of her life with Wilhelm, including me.’
‘She never wrote to you afterwards?’
‘No, and I couldn’t write to her because I didn’t have her address. I wrote to Manfred to thank him for saving my life and asked after Irena, but if he received my letter he never replied. I would have liked to have known what happened to Marianna, but I never heard any more.’
‘And your husband?’
Charlotte looked at Marius and saw that he knew at least some of the story. ‘Greta wasn’t the only one who married a British officer. While I was helping Irena to look for Marianna I received a parcel containing Claus’s gold watch, identity card, the contents of his pockets and a note:
Regret to inform you Colonel Claus Graf von Letteberg was killed in the defence of Berlin, thirtieth of April 1945
. It had taken over a year to reach me.’
‘So that is why you married an Englishman?’
‘You and your mother worked for the Russians. I married an Englishman. Was there any difference, Marius?’
‘I didn’t mean that as a criticism, Fräulein Charlotte …’
‘There was nothing to keep me and Erich in Germany.’
‘Not even the Russian captain,’ he said quietly. He saw her looking at him. ‘My mother and father guessed that there was something going on between you almost from the time you arranged for them to move into Grunwaldsee, Fräulein Charlotte.’
She fell silent. There was no point in denying the obvious. After the war, when Russia had become ‘the Cold War enemy’ and she had Erich and later Jeremy to worry about, it was different. But what did it matter to either of the boys now, what she had done when they were children? Or in Jeremy’s case, before he was born. ‘I never was any good at lying, or hiding my emotions, Marius.’
‘They kept all the Russian POWs in the church for a week before sending them back to Russia. The Communist regarded prisoners of war as traitors who had betrayed the Motherland. Imprisoned first by one side then the other, and treated abominably by both. But the captain and the others weren’t treated badly while they were here. My mother and I smuggled food to them when we could.’
‘The Captain saved my life, Marius. He risked his own life and the lives of all his men for me.’
‘Leon told my mother that the captain had killed a man who was trying to kill you. After he told her where we could find your mother and Minna, we expected to find you, too. When we didn’t, the captain begged us to look for you and, if you were alive, to hide you somewhere where he could find you if he escaped. He talked about escape right up until the time they marched all the POWs east. Of escaping, finding you and building a new life somewhere away from Russia and Germany.’
She smiled. ‘It was a hopeless dream, Marius. We both knew it.’ ‘When my mother was forced to accept that my father would never come back to her, she used to say, “The best of life lies in our dreams and memories.”’
The jacket Charlotte had draped loosely around her shoulders fell on to the lawn. Marius picked it up and replaced it, but Charlotte was so lost in the past she hardly noticed.
Charlotte and Marius were still sitting beneath the shade of the pergola half an hour later when a young man walked across the lawns towards them.
‘Mischa, I didn’t know you were back.’ Marius rose to his feet and shook his hand.
They spoke urgently for a few minutes in Polish, then Marius led him to where Charlotte was sitting, a cold cup of coffee and mangled strawberry tart still set on the table in front of her.
‘Fräulein Charlotte, may I present Mischa Sitko, the present owner of Grunwaldsee. Mischa, this is –’
‘Charlotte Datski.’ Charlotte rose from her chair and offered the young man her hand. Like Marius, he kissed it.
‘May I?’ Without waiting for permission, he pulled up a third chair and sat with them. ‘I saw your granddaughter riding down by the lake with Brunon.’
‘The horses need exercising,’ Marius murmured defensively. Mischa laughed and slapped Marius lightly across the shoulders.
‘I wasn’t complaining, Marius. I am glad to see Brunon working on my account. Your granddaughter – Laura – told me you lived here, Fräulein Datski. I took the liberty of telephoning my grandfather who was going to come to Grunwaldsee at the end of the week. He has decided to come sooner so he can meet you. You do want to meet him?’
‘Your grandfather intends to live here with you?’ Charlotte bristled at the thought of being at the beck and call of the new owners of her family home.
‘With me?’ Mischa repeated. ‘You misunderstand the situation. I bought and renovated Grunwaldsee with funds my grandfather allowed me to access. But then, he knew that even if I made a balls-up of rebuilding this place the investors would be able to sell it again for what he had paid out.’
‘That isn’t fit language to use in front of a lady, Mischa,’ Marius reprimanded.
Marius’s attitude took Charlotte back to the gentler days before the war had changed her life. She couldn’t remember the last time a man had rebuked another for swearing in front of her. ‘Why does your grandfather want to meet me?’
‘Because you’re a famous artist and he has some of your original works waiting to be hung on the walls of the main house.’
‘Really?’ Charlotte asked in surprise.
‘He enjoys collecting art.’
‘Should I have heard of him?’
‘No. And, although he helped me to buy Grunwaldsee, we don’t own it.’ Mischa turned to Marius. ‘We wanted to keep it as a surprise, because there will be an official announcement in the press soon. The house, the gardens and the land all belong to a charitable trust. I am to take care of the estate, with your help and Brunon’s, Marius. That’s if Brunon wants to live and work here.’
‘What kind of charitable trust?’ Charlotte asked suspiciously.
‘That is for my grandfather to say. He doesn’t want to give away too many of his plans, just yet. He had a hard task persuading my father to let me come here. My father wanted me to work for him after I graduated, but now he’s grooming one of my younger brothers to take over his business interests when the time comes. He has enough sons to choose from. I had seven half-brothers when I last counted.’
‘Large family,’ Charlotte commented.
‘Families. I have had five – or is it six? – stepmothers. It was useful; they were always too busy watching my father to notice what I was doing, and my father was too busy chasing women to pay any attention to me. He wanted me to become a doctor or lawyer, but by the time he found out what I was studying it was too late.’
‘What did you study?’ Charlotte asked.
‘Nothing useful,’ Mischa answered evasively. ‘But does anyone learn anything worth knowing in university?’
Marius asked the question uppermost in Charlotte’s mind. ‘Are you going to turn Grunwaldsee into a hotel?’
‘Let’s just say that a house this size has to be put to some practical use. It’s the only way to preserve the place. Few people these days have the money to run a mansion without using it as a base for a business. You were lucky to have been brought up here, Fräulein Datski.’ ‘And unlucky to have lost it, Mr Sitko,’ Charlotte commented without rancour.
‘Mischa,’ he corrected. ‘No one calls me by my surname, except my grandfather when he’s angry with me, which fortunately isn’t often. So what can I tell my grandfather? Will you meet him when he arrives?’
Charlotte looked across to the house and saw Laura and Brunon riding into the yard. ‘Yes, I see no reason why we shouldn’t stay for another few days.’
‘Good. I’ll telephone him to tell him the good news. Good afternoon, Fräulein Charlotte Datski.’ He kissed her hand again and sped off.
‘Incredible young man,’ Charlotte observed to Marius.
‘Direct, or, as some people are fond of saying, you know exactly where you are with him.’
Charlotte saw Laura walking towards her, and braced herself for a scolding for not spending the day in bed. ‘I will see you the day after tomorrow, Marius.’
‘I can fetch you in the car. But won’t you come again tomorrow?’ ‘I have no idea what plans Laura has made with Brunon, but I think
I really will follow doctor’s orders and rest tomorrow.’ Ignoring his proffered hand, she hugged and kissed him. ‘Thank Jadwiga for the strawberry tarts and coffee, Marius.’
‘Do you think modern architects deliberately design the public areas of hotels to look like the interior of cruise liners?’ Laura asked Charlotte as they walked down an endless windowless corridor on their way from the dining room to their rooms.
‘I believe they simply cram the maximum number of rooms into the smallest possible space.’ Charlotte unlocked her door and switched on the light; Laura followed her inside. The maid had been in, and Charlotte’s towels had been twisted into swan shapes on her bed, her reading glasses perched on the beak of one, a red geranium balanced on the head of the other.
‘It’s stuffy in here. I can understand the cleaning staff closing the French doors against burglars but not drawing the blinds. Open them and the window for me, please, darling?’ Charlotte stooped down and unlocked the mini-bar.
Laura did as her grandmother asked, then stepped outside and looked out at the lake. Twilight had fallen, greying the woods that encircled the bank and casting purple shadows across the waters. A yacht dipped towards the jetty at Grunwaldsee. She wondered if Mischa sailed and, if so, if he had bought a boat and berthed it on the lake. She glanced back into the room and noticed that the bottle of pills the doctor had left for Charlotte lay untouched on the bedside cabinet.
Charlotte saw her looking at them. ‘If I can’t sleep tonight I will take two. I intend to take it easy tomorrow and have a lie-in.’
‘Then you admit, even after everything the doctor said about you needing to rest, that you didn’t take them today?’
‘Guilty as charged.’
‘You look …’
Charlotte caught sight of herself in the mirror. ‘I know what I look like, darling, but, as the doctor said, I’m exhausted. Emotionally from seeing Grunwaldsee, and physically from travelling and now that enormous dinner. It’s years since I’ve eaten two let alone three courses. But I never could resist sour herrings, and they were good, weren’t they?’
‘I’m not sorry I ordered them. Everyone should try everything at least once in their life,’ Laura replied.
‘You ate them.’
‘The jury is still out on whether I liked them.’
‘But the duck in black cherry sauce and the cherry blinis smothered in cream that we had for dessert were delicious, weren’t they?’
‘They were. I only wish you had eaten everything on your plate.’ Laura had been increasingly concerned about her grandmother’s lack of appetite during the few days they had spent together.
‘Eat little, often and healthily, or so my doctor keeps telling me. But I might make an exception for those cherry pancakes and have them again for breakfast. I’d almost forgotten what they tasted like.’
‘Did you used to eat like that every day at Grunwaldsee?’ Laura pulled a chair close to the edge of the balcony and sat down.
‘I don’t know about that, but we certainly had cherries every day in season. And, at harvest time, our cook – Marius’s grandmother, Martha – and our housekeeper would set up trestle tables in the ballroom to feed all the workers. They would cover them with food from one end to the other. But to start we always had sour herrings.’ Charlotte opened a bottle of mineral water she had taken from the fridge and carried it, together with two chilled glasses and a bottle of vodka, on to the balcony table. ‘Like a nightcap?’
‘Russian style?’ Laura smiled.
‘Polish.’ Charlotte set the bottles down.
‘Thank you.’ Laura took the glass of water Charlotte gave her and added a measure of vodka. ‘So, we both met the new owner of Grunwaldsee today.’ It was a subject that, conscious of the other diners around them, they’d skirted over dinner.
‘He’s extraordinary, isn’t he?’ Charlotte moved her chair so she could look at the section of lake that fronted Grunwaldsee, although she could see very little except the light on the jetty and a faint glow that might, or might not, have been a light in the summerhouse window.
‘He is,’ Laura agreed. ‘He also said that he wasn’t the first Russian to live on the estate. Russian prisoners of war worked there during the war.’
‘They did.’ Charlotte’s heart beat erratically.
Laura sipped her drink. ‘And that Paul and Wilhelm were twins … I would have rather heard it from you, Oma,’ she reproached.
‘I’m sorry. Somehow there never seemed to be a right time to talk about the past.’
‘To me?’
‘To you, to Claus, to young Erich and Luke. I tried to discuss it with your father and Uncle Erich before I met you in Berlin, but they didn’t want to know. Both believe it has no relevance to their lives now. Perhaps they are right.’ Charlotte glanced back into the room.
Her diary and the book she had brought were lying neatly stacked on her bedside cabinet. She rose from her chair, crossed the room and picked them up. ‘This is my diary. I started it on my eighteenth birthday in 1939 and have kept it, on and off, ever since. To be truthful, more off than on. I started reading it the day before I left America for England and it was amazing how much I had forgotten. Not events, but emotions. I only have a few more pages to read, but, if you really want to know about the past, I will give it to you tomorrow.’
‘To read?’
‘As a gift.’ She held up the diary, pristine no longer as it had been when Hildegarde and Nina had given it to her on the train out of Russia at the end of that fateful Hitler Youth tour, but battered and stained by use and the passage of years. ‘When I began it, I was a very silly young girl who dreamed of a fairy tale wedding and life in a castle.’
‘Bergensee?’ Laura ventured.
Charlotte smiled and shook her head. ‘I dreamed of a wedding, but my imagination never reached as far as marriage. And, I was so bored by politics I refused to think about, or discuss, anything serious until politics destroyed my way of life and so many people who were very dear to me.’ She hesitated for a moment. ‘It also holds the story of a love that changed my life.’
‘To Claus’s grandfather?’ Laura asked.
Charlotte looked her in the eye. ‘No.’
‘That’s what my father used to tell us. That Uncle Erich’s father was the love of your life.’
‘He was wrong.’
‘Did you ever care for Grandfather?’ Laura questioned.
‘Did he tell you that I didn’t?’ Charlotte countered. When Laura didn’t answer her, she murmured, ‘Yes, of course, Julian must have believed that I used him.’ She carried the books out on to the balcony and sat opposite Laura again. ‘After the war, Germany was in chaos. I had nothing until I started working for the British army. I didn’t even have enough money to buy food for Erich. Then I met your grandfather. We had both lost people we loved. He was kind to me and I desperately needed kindness. In return I tried to be kind to him. I think we both mistook mutual respect and pity for love, which it most certainly was not.’
‘Grandfather lost someone?’ Laura asked.
‘His first wife and baby daughter in the London Blitz. Has he never told you?’
‘Secrets seem to run in the family.’ Laura took another sip of her vodka and water. ‘I must have been twelve years old before I made the connection between you and Grandfather, and even then I couldn’t believe that you’d once been married. Shared the same house and produced my father. Grandfather is so …’ Laura searched for words that wouldn’t sound either derogatory or patronizing. ‘Middle-class English,’ she said finally. ‘And you’re so European, cosmopolitan and artistic. Why did you marry him, Oma?’
‘Middle-class and English meant security for me and, more importantly, for Erich. After living through the war, I’d had enough … excitement … for ten lifetimes. I’d also been seriously ill and I wasn’t sure that I could carry on looking after Erich. Your grandfather might not have been the best stepfather in the world, but he meant well and he wanted to give Erich every advantage of upbringing and education. It’s a pity his idea of advantage included a public school education and a separation that neither Erich nor I appreciated at the time.’
‘So you never loved him?’ Laura asked bluntly.
‘Not in the way a woman should love her husband, no,’ Charlotte confessed.
‘And Uncle Erich’s father?’
‘Claus von Letteberg was a German aristocrat, career soldier and gentleman who subscribed to the accepted philosophy of his country and the time; that a woman’s place was in the home. Not that I was ever immersed in drudgery. No von Letteberg wife had to cook, clean or scrub, but she was expected to bear children and oversee the housekeeper and maids. I realized on our wedding night that I’d made a huge mistake. I’d fallen in love with love, not the man. But we were only together a few days before he had to rejoin his regiment. And during the war I hardly saw him. He took his duties as an officer seriously, although he was neither a Nazi nor an ardent supporter of Hitler. And,’ she gave Laura a small smile, ‘he had his mistresses.’
‘You accepted that he had other women?’ Laura was aghast at the thought that any wife, let alone her beloved grandmother, could accept her husband’s infidelity so calmly.