‘Laura was very busy when I spoke to her. Wrapping up a documentary she’s been filming in Berlin. She asked me to give you both her love.’
‘We knew she was in Berlin. Let me take your coat, Mother.’ Marilyn opened the hall cupboard and took out a hanger in readiness.
‘I’m flying to Germany tomorrow.’
‘You’re staying with Erich and Ulrike for the summer?’ There was an edge to Jeremy’s voice. He didn’t want his mother to stay in his house, but he had always disliked her spending time with Erich. Charlotte wondered if her sons would ever get over their childhood jealousy of one another. Then she recalled the rivalry between her and Greta, which had been no different and, if anything, even more bitter. And still was, thought Charlotte, if she was honest. At least on Greta’s side …
‘No, Jeremy, I am not spending the summer with your brother. But I intend to pay Erich a fleeting visit before going on to see Laura in Berlin. From there we’re flying to Warsaw.’
‘Poland? Whatever for?’ Jeremy demanded.
‘I still think of the north-east of the country as East Prussia, but then I’m a foolish old woman who occasionally prefers to live in the past than the present.’
‘Please, go in, Mother.’ Jeremy stood back to allow her to walk ahead, and she preceded him into the living room.
Jeremy had recently retired from the army, but the change from military to civilian life had made little impact. Thirty years of living in officers’ married quarters had given him and Marilyn a taste for the bland, solid, functional furniture the army provided for the use of senior brass and their families. The room was a carbon copy of the ones they had occupied during Jeremy’s postings and he had dutifully sent her photographs of every Christmas. Needing the luxury of her own space, Charlotte chose to sit on one of the easy chairs.
‘Eastern Europe is a dangerous place, Mother.’
‘You’re usually the first to point out how the press sensationalize every situation, Jeremy. Besides, Laura is coming with me.’
‘Laura can hardly look after herself, much less anyone else,’ he snapped.
‘She seems to have survived quite well on her own for the past few years, as well as make quite a name for herself as a producer of quality documentaries.’
‘But you’ll be two women alone. An obvious and easy target for criminals. And really, why go at all when there is no pressing need? Especially at your age, Mother.’
‘You think I should be knitting socks in an old folks’ home instead of visiting the country I grew up in?’
‘I had forgotten how flippant you can be. I must protest –’
‘Looks like your protests will have to wait, Jeremy. Isn’t that your doorbell?’
Marilyn rose from the sofa. ‘It’s Aunt Greta. I thought, as you two hadn’t seen one another for years, that I’d organize a surprise reunion.’
‘A surprise for me or Greta, or both of us?’ Charlotte questioned.
‘Marilyn told her that you were coming yesterday,’ Jeremy revealed. ‘We didn’t want it to be too much of a shock. You know she has a weak heart.’
‘She’s always had one, Jeremy.’
‘Pardon?’
‘Hadn’t you better let her in?’ Charlotte steeled herself.
Her fragile relationship with her sister had passed breaking point shortly after the end of the war. The last occasion she had been in Greta’s company she had found it extremely difficult to check her temper, and when she’d had time to mull over the things her sister had said and done then, she’d wondered why she had even bothered to try.
‘Good evening.’
Greta sailed into Jeremy’s hall, her husband John dutifully trailing in her wake, just as he had done all their married life.
Jeremy kissed his aunt’s cheek. ‘Please, allow me to take your coat, Aunt Greta.’
‘Thank you, Jeremy; it’s good to know that chivalry isn’t quite dead.’ She handed him her scarf and stood still, arms extended, so he could remove her quilted silk jacket. ‘Marilyn, here are the baking tins I promised you. Now that I’m getting on I don’t bake as much as I used to, and it’s a waste to leave them in the cupboard gathering dust.’ She handed over a bulging, disintegrating, stained Marks and Spencer carrier bag before turning to her husband. ‘You left the trays of seedlings I promised Marilyn in the car.’
‘I put them at the back door. It’s what you told me to do,’ he reminded her meekly.
‘Good.’ She glanced into the living room and finally acknowledged her sister. ‘Don’t get up, Charlotte.’
‘I won’t. I’m a little dizzy, probably from jet-lag.’
‘Then you won’t mind if I don’t bend to kiss you,’ Greta said tartly. ‘I’m a martyr to arthritis these days.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ A sufferer herself, Charlotte’s commiserations were sincere, but Greta couldn’t resist a snipe.
‘I can’t understand why anyone should find flying tiring when all they have to do is sit in a chair and be waited on by cabin staff.’
‘Perhaps it’s the five-hour time difference.’ Charlotte gazed at Greta as she swanned into the living room. She would be ninety-four in a few months, but had retained the slim figure they had both inherited from their mother, and, with her grey hair rinsed pale-blonde, she looked twenty years younger than her true age. However, she still had the habit of pursing her mouth and looking disapprovingly at the world. It was an expression Charlotte remembered well.
‘I’ll call Luke. He’ll want to say hello to you, Aunt Greta, Uncle John. And to you, of course, Mother.’ Jeremy went to the stairs and bellowed his seventeen-year-old son’s name, leaving Charlotte wondering why Jeremy hadn’t called him when she’d arrived.
‘Luke spends every minute he can in the attic playing computer games,’ Marilyn explained when Jeremy yelled his son’s name a second time.
Greta lowered herself on to the other easy chair and arranged herself comfortably, leaving her husband to sit between Jeremy and Marilyn on the sofa. ‘I see you’re looking well, Charlotte, but then, you have no excuse not to. Unlike us married ladies who have husbands to care for, you have nothing to do all day except pamper yourself.’
‘You know me. I’ve always been a stickler for brushing my hair and cleaning my teeth,’ Charlotte retorted.
Greta eyed Charlotte’s long, large-beaded amber necklace, teardrop earrings and bracelets. ‘I see you’re wearing Mama’s amber.’
Charlotte only just managed to quell her annoyance at the comment. ‘You know full well all the family jewellery was lost in the war, Greta.’
‘So you say.’
Greta’s scepticism set Charlotte’s teeth on edge. ‘I bought the bracelets and earrings in the Dominican Republic in the seventies. They have fine amber there.’
‘And the necklace?’
‘Is the one I was given on the 1939 Allenstein orchestral tour of Russia.’ Charlotte fingered her beads.
‘Given?’ Greta raised her finely pencilled eyebrows.
‘By the host family I stayed with in Moscow.’
‘Russians!’ Greta exclaimed.
‘It was a tour of Russia, arranged by the German and Russian authorities, Greta. The countries were allies at the time.’
‘I don’t remember you ever receiving a present as magnificent as that from strangers,’ Greta commented.
‘They weren’t strangers to me, Greta.’
‘Obviously, if they were that generous.’ Greta placed her handbag on her lap and wrapped her hands around it as though it was in imminent danger of being stolen.
‘Oma! How long have you been here? It’s great to see you.’ Luke ran in, sat on the arm of Charlotte’s chair, flung his arms around her neck and kissed her cheek. ‘Those are fantastic games you sent me for Christmas.’
‘Claus thought you’d like them.’ Charlotte opened the airline bag she’d carried in with her and extracted a parcel. ‘And he sent you these. He was going to post them to you for your birthday but he thought you wouldn’t mind getting them early.’
Luke tore off the wrapping paper. ‘Wow! Thanks, Oma.’
‘Thank Claus, not me, and don’t forget to e-mail him.’
‘I won’t.’
‘Aunt Greta and Uncle John are here, Luke,’ Jeremy prompted. Luke climbed off the arm of Charlotte’s chair and shook Greta and John’s hands before returning to Charlotte. ‘Last summer was super, Oma. Can Laura and I come and visit you and Claus again?’
‘Of course you can.’
‘I was glad to hear that Claus is about to become a father. I always say that the best things in life are the children and the flowers,’ Greta declared.
Charlotte considered Greta’s observation odd given that she had never wanted children of her own. ‘That was one of Hitler’s favourite sayings, Greta.’
‘Was it? I never paid any attention to Hitler,’ Greta lied. ‘I was only saying the other day to John that we ought to pay you a visit, Charlotte. I’d like to see your house.’
‘It’s very modern,’ Charlotte said pointedly. ‘Even the furniture. I’m gradually replacing everything with Claus’s designs. That is when he has time to execute my commissions. His work is very much in demand.’
‘I’m surprised he set up business in America, not Germany.’
‘Claus did marry an American, Aunt Greta. Sherry?’ Marilyn offered Greta a tray of drinks that Jeremy had poured.
‘I trust Claus’s wife is intelligent enough to learn German and teach it to the child,’ Greta commented.
‘She is,’ Charlotte answered.
‘Claus should return to his homeland. Things are so much more peaceful, prosperous and stable in Germany. Besides, Claus’s family name is a well-known and respected one. His business would be more successful there.’
Charlotte shook her head when Marilyn offered her the tray. She had never liked sherry and sensed it wouldn’t mix easily with Samuel’s five-star brandy. ‘Haven’t you been following the news, Greta? Germany is doing well, yes, but the cost of reunification has been an enormous drain on the economy. Unemployment is high in some regions, and there’s a resurgence of Fascism. Turks and other guest workers are sometimes persecuted and attacked by neo-Nazis, and even discriminated against by the government. They don’t even have the right to vote in the country that taxes their wages.’
‘Why should they, when it’s not their country?’
‘Not their country, Greta?’ Charlotte questioned. ‘Tens of thousands of Turkish guest workers’ children have been born in Germany. Most of them have never even visited Turkey, and some don’t even speak Turkish.’
‘You can hardly blame the German government for the deficiencies of Turkish parents, Charlotte,’ snapped Greta irritably. ‘Germany’s problems have always stemmed from over-generosity to foreigners. If the government hadn’t opened the doors of the Fatherland to an endless stream of ungrateful guest workers and refugees from every ailing Communist and Muslim country in the world, ordinary, hard-working German men and women wouldn’t have to pay such high taxes to fund the welfare payments of idle immigrants who refuse to work.’
‘Perhaps the German government could solve the problem by confiscating the foreigners’ money and businesses, like Hitler did with the Jews,’ Luke chipped in.
‘Luke! Have some regard for your grandmother and great-aunt’s feelings,’ his father intervened sharply.
‘Please, Jeremy, don’t stop the argument now. I’d be interested to hear Greta’s reply.’ Charlotte looked at her sister.
‘Jeremy is right. Politics should not be discussed at a family gathering. They should be friendly, happy occasions.’ Greta sipped her sherry.
‘How can they be, if the younger generation are denied the right to air their opinions?’ Charlotte asked.
‘I see you’re encouraging Luke to be as headstrong as you were as a child, Charlotte.’
‘Seventeen isn’t a child, Aunt Greta,’ Luke countered. ‘Although, given the way I’m treated in this house, you wouldn’t think so.’
‘Child or not, you appear to have inherited your grandmother’s faults. Too many thoughtless words, and too much heedless action for your own and your family’s good.’
‘I’ll second that, Aunt Greta,’ Jeremy agreed. ‘Have you heard the latest madness? Mother and Laura are going to Poland.’
‘To Grunwaldsee?’ Greta reddened in anger as she stared at Charlotte.
‘I’d like to see our home again.’
‘In God’s name, why? Won’t it grieve you to see Russians strutting about in our house, putting their feet on Mama’s furniture, drinking in Papa’s study?’
‘The Russians have left Poland, Greta, and I doubt any of our family furniture has survived. Everyone I’ve talked to who has been back, has confirmed that the Russian army stripped every house of every moveable object at the end of the war and shipped the lot to Russia.’
‘Then there’ll be nothing left for you to see.’ Greta sat back in her chair and cradled her sherry. ‘And absolutely no point in you going back.’
‘They won’t have shipped back the countryside, and if a few bricks of the old house have been left standing, I’ll be content.’
‘Content!’ Greta exclaimed indignantly. ‘You have a harder heart than me, Charlotte. After all that we suffered as a family, all that we lost –’
‘It was a long time ago, Greta,’ Charlotte interposed, more exhausted by a quarter of an hour of her sister’s company than eleven hours spent in flight and queuing at airports.
‘Papa always said that you had a callous streak.’
‘He never said it to me.’ Charlotte had always known when her sister was lying.
‘I remember it all as though it were yesterday,’ Greta added.
‘Principally the happy times, I hope, Greta. I was telling Samuel Goldberg in the car on the way here that I’ve just finished illustrating a new edition of classic European fairy tales. Painting all those castles, woods, lakes, wolves, wild boars, princesses and dragons made me think of our childhood. We were happy at Grunwaldsee.’
‘Before the Russians took it from us,’ Greta said bitterly. ‘I simply cannot believe that you want to go back.’
‘I hope to be there before the end of the week.’
‘I’d rather die than see our old home destroyed. But then, you never were sensitive, Charlotte.’
Charlotte’s temper finally broke. ‘And you are even more reluctant to face up to facts now than you were at the end of the war, Greta.’
‘Luke, I need help in the kitchen.’ Taking her sherry, Marilyn went to the door.
Luke edged further up the arm of the chair, closer to Charlotte. ‘Your mother needs your help, now, Luke,’ Jeremy barked in his officer’s voice.
‘You only want me out of the way so Grandma and Aunt Greta can discuss politics and family history. Well, I’m entitled to know –’
‘See what you’ve done with your insistence on going back to Poland, Charlotte? Upset the entire family. Even dear little Luke.’ Removing a scrap of lace and silk from her pocket, Greta dabbed her eyes.
‘I think “dear little Luke” will get over it.’ Charlotte suppressed a smile at the wicked wink Luke gave her. ‘And it’s not as though I’m asking you to go back with me, Greta.’
‘What good does it do to open old wounds? I suffered. Oh, how I suffered …’
‘There, there, Aunt Greta.’ Jeremy went to her and patted her hand. Charlotte couldn’t help wondering if her son would have been as eager to console his aunt if Greta had a more direct heir than her two nephews.
‘The soup is ready,’ Marilyn announced nervously through the dining-room hatch. ‘It’s your favourite, Aunt Greta.’
‘Cream of asparagus?’ Greta brightened at the thought.
‘Carrot and coriander,’ Marilyn said apologetically.
‘Ah. A carton from the supermarket.’
Charlotte thought she saw even the normally implacable Jeremy heave a sigh of relief when Greta and her husband departed after dessert had been served and the coffee pot emptied.
‘Aunt Greta is very good to us,’ Marilyn said defensively as she gathered the cups on to a tray. ‘She’s very thoughtful, always bringing us plants for the garden, homemade jam, and bottled vegetables.’
Luke, who had disappeared upstairs at the coffee stage to try out the computer games Claus had sent him, returned in time to utter an ‘Ugh’.
‘I bottle vegetables and fruit, too,’ Charlotte reminded him.
Luke made a wry face as he took the chair next to Charlotte’s that John had occupied. ‘I forgive you, Oma, because, unlike Aunt Greta, you don’t try to make me eat them.’
‘Luke! Have you been drinking?’ Jeremy asked, somewhat superfluously given that his son was breathing lager and tobacco fumes across the table.
‘Me?’ Luke tried and failed to look innocent.
‘I’ll search that attic –’
‘I’d appreciate a hand with the dishes, Luke,’ Marilyn broke in.
Charlotte sensed that Marilyn was hoping to avert a full-blown row between father and son. ‘Help your mother, Luke.’ She surreptitiously slipped a roll of banknotes into Luke’s hand when she rose to her feet. ‘I have business to discuss with your father.’
‘We can go to my study, Mother.’ Jeremy was glad of an excuse that enabled him to overlook his son’s behaviour. Luke was becoming increasingly belligerent and difficult to handle. In the last two months, even mild reprimands had turned into full-scale confrontations. Jeremy had made no secret of the fact that he couldn’t wait for his son to go to university. His worst nightmare was that Luke wouldn’t achieve the grades required, and would be forced to spend an extra year at home re-sitting his A-Levels.
‘Do you need help with your business affairs, Mother?’ Jeremy asked hopefully. He ushered Charlotte into his study, closed the door and sat behind his desk, leaving her the only other chair in the room, an uncomfortable wooden upright. She felt like a petitioner facing a bank manager.
‘No, thank you. I have everything under control, but as I’m here I’d like to tell you about the arrangements I’ve made to dispose of my estate.’