Winter of the World

Even Ethel was shocked. ‘Fitz!’ she said. ‘How can you be so mean?’

At that point Daisy came in.

‘Hello, Fitz!’ she said gaily. ‘You probably thought you’d got rid of me, but now you’re my father-in-law again. Isn’t that amusing?’

Ethel said: ‘I’m just trying to persuade Fitz to shake Lloyd’s hand.’

Fitz said: ‘I try to avoid shaking hands with socialists.’

Ethel was fighting a losing battle, but she would not give up. ‘See how much of yourself there is in him! He resembles you, dresses like you, shares your interest in politics – he’ll probably end up Foreign Secretary, which you always wanted to be!’

Fitz’s expression darkened further. ‘It is now most unlikely that I shall ever be Foreign Secretary.’ He went to the door. ‘And it would not please me in the least if that great office of state were to be held by my Bolshevik bastard!’ With that he walked out.

Ethel burst into tears.

Daisy put her arm around Lloyd. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said.

‘Don’t worry,’ Lloyd said. ‘I’m not shocked or disappointed.’ This was not true, but he did not want to appear pathetic. ‘I was rejected by him a long time ago.’ He looked at Daisy with adoration. ‘I’m lucky to have plenty of other people who love me.’

Ethel said tearfully: ‘It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have asked him to come here. I might have known it would turn out badly.’

‘Never mind,’ said Daisy. ‘I have some good news.’

Lloyd smiled at her. ‘What’s that?’

She looked at Ethel. ‘Are you ready for this?’

‘I think so.’

‘Come on,’ said Lloyd. ‘What is it?’

Daisy said: ‘We’re going to have a baby.’

(iii)

Carla’s brother, Erik, came home that summer, near to death. He had contracted tuberculosis in a Soviet labour camp, and they had released him when he became too ill to work. He had been sleeping rough for weeks, travelling on freight trains and begging lifts on lorries. He arrived at the von Ulrich house barefoot and wearing filthy clothes. His face was like a skull.

However, he did not die. It might have been being with people who loved him; or the warmer weather as winter turned into spring; or perhaps just rest; but he coughed less and regained enough energy to do some work around the house, boarding up smashed windows, repairing roof tiles, unblocking pipes.

Fortunately, at the beginning of the year Frieda Franck had struck gold.

Ludwig Franck had been killed in the air raid that destroyed his factory, and for a while Frieda and her mother had been as destitute as everyone else. But she got a job as a nurse in the American zone, and soon afterwards, she explained to Carla, a little group of American doctors had asked her to sell their surplus food and cigarettes on the black market in exchange for a cut of the proceeds. Thereafter she turned up at Carla’s house once a week with a little basket of supplies: warm clothing, candles, flashlight batteries, matches, soap, and food – bacon, chocolate, apples, rice, canned peaches. Maud divided the food into portions and gave Carla double. Carla accepted without hesitation, not for her own sake, but to help her feed baby Walli.

Without Frieda’s illicit groceries, Walli might not have made it.

He was changing fast. The dark hair with which he had been born had now gone, and instead he had fine, fair hair. At six months he had Maud’s wonderful green eyes. As his face took shape, Carla noticed a fold of flesh in the outer corners of his eyes that gave him a slant-eyed look, and she wondered if his father had been a Siberian. She could not remember all the men who had raped her. Most of the time she had closed her eyes.

She no longer hated them. It was strange, but she was so happy to have Walli that she could hardly bring herself to regret what had happened.

Rebecca was fascinated by Walli. Now just fifteen, she was old enough to have the beginnings of maternal feelings, and she eagerly helped Carla bathe and dress the baby. She played with him constantly, and he gurgled with delight when he saw her.

As soon as Erik felt well enough, he joined the Communist Party.

Carla was baffled. After what he had suffered at the hands of the Soviets, how could he? But she found that he talked about Communism in the same way he had talked about Nazism a decade earlier. She just hoped that this time his disillusionment would not be so long coming.

The Allies were keen for democracy to return to Germany, and city elections were scheduled for Berlin later in 1946.

Carla felt sure the city would not return to normal until its own people took control, so she decided to stand for the Social Democratic Party. But Berliners quickly discovered that the Soviet occupiers had a curious notion of what democracy meant.