Griselda was registering the visitors for the medical wards.
“Next please,” she said, to the line of tense, anxious and fearful visitors, mainly women, carrying bunches of flowers and boxes of cakes. Next, this time, was a man, a tall, dark, thin man, in a caped overcoat too heavy for the summer weather, wearing a wide-brimmed hat, pulled down so that his face was in shadow.
“Your name, please. Who have you come to see?”
“You, I think,” said the visitor. He said, in a low voice, “I am a runaway, an escaped patient. I want to see you and Dorothy before they lock me up again.”
Griselda looked into the shadow under the hat. The queue of women was stolid and anxious.
“I am a prisoner in Alexandra Palace. There I had influenza and pleurisy so they sent me to the hospital at Millbank. The war is over, but we may not go home until they finish signing the peace. I have stolen these clothes. Friends—prisoners—had a story of a Valkyrie on the battlefield, asking after Wolfgang Stern …”
Griselda was speechless. Wolfgang said “I can sit and wait for you?”
“You’d better sit. You look unsteady.”
“Oh, I am, I am. I may faint at any moment. Then you would have to admit me, which I should… ” Dorothy came hurrying. “Griselda—a shock—”
“I know. He’s here.”
Dorothy looked rapidly round.
“He isn’t here. He’s in Portman Square.” Griselda nodded in the direction of Wolfgang, hiding in his hat. “There—”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Your brother is in Portman Square. He’s alive. He was in Munich. He made his way home.” Griselda trembled.
“And your brother is here under that hat. He escaped. He was in the hospital at Millbank—”
Wolfgang stood up, began to shake and sat down again, grinning weakly.
“Find a cab,” said Dorothy. “Find Hedda. Get him into the cab.”
There were flocks of willing girls from schools for ladies, doing voluntary work. Two serious-looking ones from Cheltenham Ladies’ College were despatched on these errands, and Dorothy went over to look at her German brother in the shadow of his brim. She took his hand and measured his pulse. “Far too fast,” she said. “You should be in bed.”
In Portman Square there was happiness, a little giddy, mixed with apprehension, as the two old-young men told the little they could bear to tell of the chaos that had engulfed them. The English papers, at first cautiously welcoming, and then alarmed, had reported the succession of governments in Bavaria between early November 1918 and May Day 1919. The monarchy had been dislodged by huge crowds of the starving and desperate—mutinous soldiers and sailors, radical Saxons from the Krupp armaments factory, Schwabing Bohemians and anarchists, thousands of angry women, and an army of enraged farmers led by the blind demagogue, Ludwig Gandorfer. These had all been enchanted by the oratory of the wild-eyed and shaggy bearded socialist Kurt Eisner, who trimmed his beard and formed a government which could neither govern nor feed the people. Charles/Karl had never really supposed he would see anarchists in power. In December Erich Mühsam, to whom he had listened in the Café Stefanie as he advocated free love and all goods in common, led four hundred anarchists to occupy a newspaper office. In January there was an election in which Eisner won less than 3 per cent of the vote. In February, on his way to the Landtag to resign, he was shot down by Count Anton Arco auf Valley, a part-Jewish anti-Semite, who was himself shot down by the guards.
The anarchists took power. They were led by the gentle Jewish poet Gustav Landauer, whose beard and rhetoric were flowing. The “Schwabing Soviet” nationalised everything, closed all the cafés except Café Stefanie and put the students in charge of the universities. They searched houses for hoarded food and found none. There was no food and the Allies were blockading the borders. The Foreign Secretary, a mild man, wrote urgent letters to Lenin and the Pope, complaining that someone had stolen his lavatory key.
In April there was an attempted putsch by the government in exile, and briefly, a Bavarian soviet, led by another Jew, the Spartakist Eugen Leviné. The exiles, reluctantly, having hoped to regain Bavaria with Bavarian troops, asked for help from the federal German army. They took Starnberg and Dachau. The White Terror came next. Landauer was brutally slaughtered. Leviné was formally executed. The Ehrhardt Brigade, a Freikorps unit, wore on their gold helmets the primitive sexual symbol that had formed part of the blazon of the Thule Society, with its theories of pure and impure blood, the “ancient coil,” the hooked cross, the swastika. They sang full-throated songs in its praise. Order was restored in the Bavarian capital.
The Reds fought bravely, especially in the railway station, where they held out a day and a night.
Charles/Karl, stiffly, asked Wolfgang and Dorothy if they had news of the Stern family. They said no news had come out of Munich, no trains ran, letters went unanswered.
Charles/Karl said that Leon Stern had been killed in the railway station, fighting for his ideas. Wolfgang bent his head. There was a silence.
Charles/Karl said he had been to the Spiegelgarten of Frau Holle. Anselm Stern and Angela were as well as they could be, though thin and hungry. They thought they would move to Berlin, as Munich was now not a good place for Jews.
It had not occurred to Dorothy to ask whether her father was Jewish and he had not felt a need to tell her. She said, slowly,
“Perhaps, when all this is over, they could come here.”
They could make magical plays for a new generation of children. Angela could work, in London, in Kent, somewhere in peace. The idea seemed both possible and unreal.
• • •
They sat, the survivors, quietly round the dinner table, and drank to the memory of Leon. Ghosts occupied their minds, and crowded in the shadows behind them. They all had things they could not speak of and could not free themselves from, stories they survived only by never telling them, although they woke at night, surprised by foul dreams, which returned regularly and always as a new shock.
Katharina lit the candles which had been brought out for the occasion, and stood in silver candlesticks.
Philip sat at the end of a table in a wheelchair that supported his leg. He was next to Dorothy, who was opposite Wolfgang. Charles/Karl was sitting next to Elsie, and their hands touched. Katharina watched her daughter watch Wolfgang Stern. Griselda had become fixed, efficient and almost spinsterly as the war went on. Katharina was almost resigned to seeing her close herself into a college. Now her composed face was discomposed and hungry in a way Katharina had never seen. Katharina asked Wolfgang if he would like more soup, and used the familiar “Du.” He smiled, and his grim face was livelier. She gave more soup to her frail and bony son, and to his wife, who watched him fiercely and fearfully. She gave more soup to Hedda, who was tired but almost contented, having worked hard and usefully all day, and to Ann, who had become attached to Hedda. She gave more soup to Dorothy, who gave more to Philip, who said it was delicious. Delicate dumplings lurked beneath the golden surface on which a veil of finely chopped parsley eddied and swayed. Steam rose to meet the fine smoke from the candles, and all their faces seemed softer in their quavering light.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This novel owes a great deal to many people, who have told me about things, shown me things, and shared their knowledge. People always thank their patient partners at the end of their acknowledgements, but I want to thank my husband, Peter Duffy, at the beginning. He has shown me southern England, driven me to odd places, and shared with me his considerable knowledge of the First World War, including his books. He has found things out about distances, modes of transport and buildings, and checked (some of) my mistakes. He has also been patient.