‘Does that mean you’re going to marry him?’
Giving Maxim a very direct look, she said carefully, ‘I don’t know, darling, he hasn’t asked me.’
‘But if he did ask?’ Maxim insisted.
‘I might.’
There was a short pause, and then the boy asked so quietly she could hardly hear him, ‘What would happen to me?’
‘Nothing would happen to you,’ Teddy exclaimed, sitting up in her chair, frowning. ‘You’d be with me. And in any case, if I ever did decide to marry Mark, or anyone else for that matter, I certainly wouldn’t do so until your parents were here. Surely you know that.’
Maxim nodded. ‘You’ve always said we’d live together. You and me and Mutti and Papa. If you married Mark, I suppose you’d have to live with him, wouldn’t you, Teddy?’
‘Yes. But we’d find a house or a flat very close to your parents, and I’d see you every day, and nothing would be very much different,’ she reassured him quickly, sensing his insecurity. She looked across at him, smiling, her love and devotion reflected in her eyes.
‘I know,’ Maxim said, but nevertheless a glum expression settled on his face and he glanced down at his plate.
Teddy was now watching him closely. She was suddenly worried about him, wondering how to make him feel better, when he lifted his head and stared back at her. There was such bereftness in his eyes, such a stricken expression on his face, she sucked in her breath in concern and her chest tightened:
‘Maxim, whatever is it? Don’t you like Mark Lewis?’
‘Yes,’ he muttered. ‘He’s nice…’
‘But?’
‘No buts, Teddy.’
‘Well then, what is it, darling?’
His voice was very small and it quavered slightly when he said slowly, ‘What if Mutti and Papa don’t come? What if… what if something’s—’ The boy broke off, unable to voice his fears about his parents, and he sat back in his chair, biting his lower lip, fighting the sudden rush of emotion filling his throat.
Teddy was alarmed by his words, and she immediately jumped up and went to sit in the vacant chair next to his. She put an arm around him and held him close.
After a moment, she said gently, ‘They’re safe, Maxim. Try not to worry. And they will come to London, once the war ends and things get back to normal. But whatever happens, I want you to remember that I will always be here for you, and I’ll look after you, until you’re grown up if necessary. I’ve told you that many times before, now haven’t I?’
‘Yes,’ he whispered against her shoulder, fighting back his incipient tears.
‘You’re my boy, don’t forget, and I love you very much.’
‘I love you, Teddy.’
THIRTY
Maxim’s half term was over a few days later, and he returned to Colet Court, and Teddy went back to her voluntary work at the local Red Cross office.
It seemed to her that after this the weeks rushed by at breakneck speed, and almost before she could catch her breath Maxim was home again in December for the holidays. Christmas and the New Year were the best they had spent in years, they both agreed wholeheartedly on that. This was not only because of Mark, who was with them for part of the festivities, and made a great fuss of Maxim and Teddy, but because the news about the war grew better and better every day, and filled them with hope.
As January of 1945 turned into February, Allied troops were spreading out across the whole of Europe, and the entire country was betting that peace would come in the spring.
One day, towards the end of April, as Teddy stood in the kitchen preparing breakfast for Aunt Ketti and herself, she could not help thinking about Stubby’s father’s prediction. It suddenly struck her that Mr Trenton had been right in the end. All of the British newspapers were saying that the collapse of Nazi Germany was only a matter of weeks, and Arthur Trenton had constantly told her and the boys that they would be celebrating victory well before Maxim’s eleventh birthday in June.
Teddy sighed to herself as she put the cups and saucers on the big wooden tray. There were times, like this morning, when she could hardly bear the waiting… her mind was forever focused on the Westheims. It had been a long time… six years since Paris, when Ursula had put them on the boat train to Victoria Station. How proud she and Sigmund would be of Maxim today. What a truly remarkable boy he had turned out to be. So brilliant at school, yet not at all vain or boastful about his scholastic achievements, and he was such a nice boy as well, and so very normal. At Christmas, when Mark’s mother had met him for the first time, she had said he was a little gentleman, and this had caused Teddy to fill with pleasure; her pride in him knew no bounds. His parents would be surprised, of course, when they saw him. He had sprung up even more than ever in the last couple of years, and he was rather tall for his age, looked older than he was.
Teddy heard the rattle of the letter box in the front hall, and she wondered if it was the post or the newspapers which had been pushed through. After carrying the tray of breakfast china into the dining room, she walked down the hall to the front door; the morning papers were on the floor, and she picked them up along with the post, which lay underneath.
The postman came early today, she thought, tucking the newspapers under her arm, and shuffling through the envelopes, hoping to find a letter from Mark.
Her face lit up at the sight of his handwriting, and, wasting no time, she hurried back to the kitchen, flung the newspapers and the mail down on the kitchen table and ripped open his letter. As always it was loving and romantic, and full of plans for his next weekend leave, and for the future. She read it through twice, and, still smiling, she slipped it into her pocket.
As she swung around, intending to fill the kettle for the tea, her eye caught the Daily Express, which lay front-page up on the table, and the smile on her face congealed.
Stepping over to the table, she grabbed the paper, stood staring at the headlines and the photographs, her eyes widening with shock, her face freezing into rigid lines of horror.
Names of places leapt off the page at her. Ohrdruf… Belsen… Buchenwald. The most fearful words stabbed at her eyes. Death camps… atrocities… inhumanity… extermination… Jews… millions murdered… genocide.
She lowered her eyes to the pictures. They stunned and horrified her, so graphic were they in the foul, inhuman story they told of the most unspeakable brutality and cruelty, a terrible testament to the pitiless torture and mass murder of innocent people.
Teddy’s hands began to shake uncontrollably, and she had to put the newspaper down on the table. She snapped her eyes shut, not wanting to see or read anything else, but then she forced herself to open them at once. She had to know more.
She stood with her head bent over the table, her eyes scanning the photographs. Half-naked people, emaciated beyond recognition as human beings, were living skeletons, hollow-eyed and hairless, staring vacantly out from behind the barbed wire fences of the camps. And yet more photographs… of gas ovens and torture chambers, of heaps and heaps of bodies dumped haphazardly like so much rubbish in mass graves, of experimental medical laboratories, and lampshades made of human skin, and mountainous piles of discarded false teeth and eye glasses and shoes, and more bodies, and still more, of men and women and little children and even babies, all victims of the Nazi death machine.
Teddy brought her hands up to her mouth as the first sob broke free from her throat. Scalding-hot tears fell down her face and splashed onto the newspaper, and she wrapped her arms around her body, rocking backwards and forwards, crying out, ‘Oh God, no! Oh my God, no! It’s not possible! It just can’t be… it can’t have happened!’ But she knew it had.
She fell into a chair, her legs collapsing under her weakly, and she doubled over in anguish, clapped one hand over her mouth once more, to stifle the scream of pain and outrage rising in her throat.
After a while, Teddy was able to calm herself sufficiently to reach for the other newspapers. She was fully aware that t
o read on would be harrowing, yet she was unable to resist. It was imperative that she knew everything there was to know.
The Daily Mail carried as many photographs as the Express, as did the Daily Telegraph, and the accounts she read in all three papers were virtually the same, reporting the ghastly and horrendous facts. British and American troops had entered camps in western and eastern Germany in the last few days, and what they had found there had been overwhelming in its indescribable horror. The first camp to be liberated was Ohrdruf near Gotha, and there the Americans had discovered ditches filled to overflowing with four thousand bodies, including Jews, Russian prisoners-of-war and Polish slave labourers who had been systematically starved to death, or so neglected and denied medical treatment they had died of disease, or had been most cruelly murdered. When the British had entered Belsen they had been outraged, shocked and appalled by what they had found, and the Americans, who had liberated Buchenwald, had reacted in the same way, stunned by the scenes which had greeted them. General Bedell Smith, General Eisenhower’s chief of staff, was quoted as saying that among the newly liberated camps, Buchenwald was ‘the acme of atrocity’.
Waves of nausea washed over Teddy, and she swayed slightly in the chair; she thought for a moment that she was going to vomit, to be violently sick, but the feeling eventually passed. She put the Telegraph on the table with the other papers, reeling from what she had read, her mind unable to absorb any more.
***
Teddy sat for a while at the kitchen table, staring blankly into space, but finally she roused herself, rose and put the kettle on, stood near the stove waiting for it to boil. Once it had, she made the morning tea in the brown pot which Aunt Ketti preferred, put a cup and saucer and a small pitcher of milk on a tray, doing everything by rote. All she could think of were the horrifying reports in the papers.
Carrying the tray upstairs, she pushed open the door to her aunt’s room and went inside. Light was filtering in through the blackout curtains. She glanced at the bed, wondering whether her aunt was awake, when Ketti said in her usual bright voice, ‘Good morning, Theodora. This is a treat, getting a cup of tea in bed.’
‘Good morning,’ Teddy replied quietly, hardly trusting her own voice, placing the tray on the window seat. She then drew back the curtains swiftly, and brilliant sunlight streamed into the bedroom, making her blink.
Teddy carried the cup of tea over to her aunt, who now sat propped up against the pillows.
‘Thank you,’ Ketti said, and instantly noticed that Teddy’s hand was shaking slightly as she passed her the cup. She glanced at her face, saw that it was white and drawn. ‘Teddy, you look awful. Whatever is it? Is something wrong?’
Teddy could only nod.
‘It’s not Mark, is it? Nothing’s happened to him, has it?’ Ketti cried, filling with alarm, sitting bolt upright.
‘No, it’s not Mark,’ Teddy said, and sat down heavily on the edge of the bed. Not knowing quite how to begin, she started in a roundabout way, saying slowly, ‘Aunt Ketti… that committee you’re on, the refugee committee affiliated to the synagogue…’
‘Yes, what about it?’ Ketti asked with a tiny, puzzled frown.
‘You’ve told me stories, horrendous stories, which came from some of the European refugees your committee has been trying to help.’
Ketti nodded. ‘You’re referring to the dreadful things they said happened in the concentration camps, aren’t you?’
‘They’re true. Absolutely true,’ Teddy whispered hoarsely. ‘And they’re not concentration camps, they’re death camps. The proof is in this morning’s papers, proof for the whole world.’
Ketti pulled back slightly, staring at her niece, finding it difficult to comprehend what she was saying. ‘I don’t understand,’ she muttered, shaking her silvered head from side to side.
Teddy explained. ‘British and American troops have started to enter those camps, liberate them, in the past few days, and what they’ve found is so ghastly, so horrifying, it’s beyond understanding. Unbelievable cruelty, and human degradation of such enormity it staggers the mind. Millions have been slaughtered. Jews, Russians, Poles, Slavs, and Gypsies, but mostly… Jews.’
The cup and saucer Ketti was holding began to rattle violently in her trembling hands, and Teddy leaned forward, took them from her, placed them on the bedside table before she spilled the tea all over herself.
‘It doesn’t seem possible,’ Ketti whispered, her skin turning the colour of putty, her eyes wide and staring in her stark face. ‘They couldn’t… they wouldn’t dare—’
‘They did!’ Teddy said in a low, fierce voice. ‘And the British newspapers are calling it genocide.’ Later that day Ketti went looking all over the house for Teddy, concerned about her.
She found her in Maxim’s room, sitting in a chair, staring at the photographs of the Westheims on the chest of drawers. Teddy swung her head and looked around, as the door was pushed open, and Ketti knew that she had been weeping.
‘Are you all right, dear?’ Ketti asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Am I intruding?’
‘No, come in.’
Ketti did so, and sat down on the edge of the other chair. She was aware that Theodora was filled with worry about the Westheims, but she had been afraid to mention them thus far today. She still hesitated to do so even now, for fear of upsetting Teddy further.
Almost as if she knew what her aunt was thinking, Teddy said, ‘Ursula and Sigmund have been the focus of my thoughts ever since I read the newspapers, Aunt Ketti, as I’m sure you probably realise.’
‘I do, Teddy. You care for them deeply, so it’s obvious you would be more worried than ever about them after… after what we’ve read.’
‘I haven’t been able to get the newspaper photographs out of my head… those heartbreaking images are indelibly imprinted on my brain. Oh Aunt Ketti!’ she cried, her voice anguished. ‘What if Sigmund and Ursula did end up in one of those monstrous places?’ Her voice faltered and her eyes filled. ‘I’m so afraid for them, in agony about them, and I don’t seem able to think straight, to function properly.’
Ketti said, ‘I know it’s hard, but you must be hopeful, positive. And you must remember that the last message you received from Arabella von Wittingen was very reassuring.’
‘But that was such a long time ago, several years now.’
‘Never mind.’ Ketti bent forward urgently, and continued in her most reassuring voice, ‘The princess hasn’t been in touch since then, I know that; on the other hand, this only leads me to believe that things are status quo. She told you then, when she telephoned from Switzerland, that the Westheims were staying with the von Tiegals at the Schloss Tiegal in the Mark Brandenburg, where they were safe. And you’ve said over and over again to me that they would definitely be safe there.’
‘Yes, and the von Tiegals could easily be hiding them. There are dozens of passages and dungeons underneath the castle, which is centuries old. I think there are even some secret rooms and corridors.’ Teddy looked across at her aunt and went on, ‘I don’t doubt they’re all right if they’re at the Schloss. But I can’t help wondering if they remained there. This has always been my worry… that they left for some reason, went back to Berlin. Once in the city, they could have been arrested and sent… to a camp, or they could have been killed in an Allied bombing raid.’
‘We’ve gone over this so many times before, Teddy dear, and I’m not trying to dismiss your concern or diminish your reasons for it. God only knows, you have good cause to worry about Ursula and Sigmund. But you must hold the thought that they are surviving, wherever they are, whatever their circumstances. If you don’t, you’ll drive yourself mad.’
Teddy was silent.
Ketti said slowly, softly, And Teddy dear, there’s Maxim to think of. The boy needs you so very much.’
‘I’ll never give up hope for them,’ Teddy said. ‘I will go on believing they are alive until I have proof… proof that they’re not.?
??
THIRTY-ONE
The red-white-and-blue Union Jack hung out of every window, fluttering in the breeze.
People danced in the streets, cheering and singing, laughing and crying, and they hugged and kissed each other, friends and strangers alike, filled with jubilance, happiness and pride.
Corridors of brilliant light streamed out of windows no longer blacked-out against enemy bombers, and bonfires blazed the length and breadth of the land as effigies of Hitler were devoured in their flames. And the pubs were filled to overflowing with the revellers, who toasted the boys in blue and khaki, and each other, and cried, ‘Long live Winston, he’s brought us through!’
It was the night of Tuesday, May the eighth, and the whole of England was rejoicing. The day before, in the early hours of Monday, May the seventh, at two-forty-one A.M. precisely, General Alfred Jodl, the representative of the German High Command, and Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz, the designated head of the German State, signed the act of unconditional surrender of all German land, sea and air forces in Europe to the Allied Expeditionary Force and simultaneously to the Soviet Union. The war with Germany was suddenly, and finally at an end.
Great Britain was victorious.
And the British were celebrating Victory Day in Europe. They had taken to the streets to do it, and what better place to share their joy with their ecstatic fellow citizens on this national holiday, which would forever after commemorate the destruction of the most evil regime in the history of the world.
Teddy and Aunt Ketti were amongst the thousands of people who stood near the House of Commons, waiting for the Prime Minister to make a speech. He had spoken to the nation on the wireless at three o’clock that afternoon, but the crowds still wanted to hear more from this British bulldog, their beloved Winnie, their great leader—possibly the greatest leader their country had ever known—who had brought them to a victory hard won and honourable.
The roar of the crowd and the cheering were overpowering, deafening, when he appeared on the balcony of one of the Government buildings at ten-thirty that night, wearing his ‘siren’ suit and giving his famous V for Victory sign with his right hand.