Читать книгу World War 2 Thriller Collection: Winter, The Eagle Has Flown, South by Java Head - Jack Higgins, Justin Richards - Страница 20

Both boys liked to visit Omi. Harald Winter’s widowed mother, Effi, lived in a comfortable little house on the coast, near Travemünde. They went each summer, with Nanny, Mama and Mama’s personal maid. From Berlin they always got a sleeping compartment in the train that left from Lehrter Bahnhof late at night and arrived at Lübeck next morning. They alighted from the train and watched the porters pile the luggage onto carts. The children were taken to see the locomotive, a huge hissing brute that smelled of steam and oil and of the burned specks of coal that floated in the sunlit air. Omi always met them at the station in Lübeck. But this time she wasn’t there – only the taxi. It was a big one – a Benz sixty-horsepower Phaeton, more like a delivery van than a car – and it could seat sixteen people if they all crammed together. The driver was a white-haired old fellow named Hugo who would laboriously clamber up onto the roof. There, on its huge rack, he’d strap a dozen suitcases, Mama’s ten hat boxes, a travelling rug inside which were rolled a selection of umbrellas and walking sticks and four black tin trunks so heavy that he’d almost overbalance with the weight of them.

The house itself was a gloomy old place with lace curtains through which the northern sunlight struggled to make pale-grey shadows on the carpet. Even in the dusty conservatory that ran the length of the house, the warmth of the summer sun was hardly enough to stir the wasps from their winter torpor.

Omi always wore black, the same sort of clothes she’d worn back in 1891, when Grandfather died. She spent most of the day in the room on the first floor: she read, she sewed, and for a lot of the time she just remembered. The room was furnished with her treasures and mementoes. There were two large jade dragons and a whole elephant tusk engraved with hunting scenes. There was a big photo of her with Opa on their wedding day, and portraits of other members of the family, and there were stuffed birds in glass cases and green plants that never bore flowers. She called the little room her salon and she received her visitors there – although visitors were few – and looked out the window across the Lübeck Bight to the coast and the water that became the Baltic Sea.

Peter and Paul wouldn’t have looked forward so much to their visits had it not been for the Valhalla. The Valhalla was a small sailing boat that had once belonged to Opa. In his will Opa had bequeathed the little boat to a neighbour. But whenever the two Winter boys arrived, the Valhalla was theirs. The neighbour didn’t know his sailing boat was called the Valhalla. On its bow was painted the same name that had been there when Winter bought it from a boat builder in Travemünde: Domino. But for the boys it was always called Valhalla: the hall in which slain warriors were received by Odin.

The Valhalla gave the boys a unique chance to be away from any kind of supervision. They took little advantage of this cherished freedom except to laze and, more important, to talk and argue in that spirited and curiously intimate way that children only do when no adults are within earshot.

‘You’ll change your mind again before you are fourteen,’ Peter told his ten-year-old brother with all the mature authority of a fourteen-year-old. ‘I wouldn’t go to cadet school; I’d hate it. I’m going to be an explorer.’ He trailed his hand in the water. The wind had been swinging round for the last hour or more, so that Peter had had to adjust the sail constantly. Now the boat was moving fast through the choppy water of the bight. The sun was a white disc seen fitfully behind hazy clouds. There was little heat in the sun. Visitors did not come to this northern coastline to bask in the sunshine; it was a brisk climate, for active holidaymakers.

The boys were dressed in yellow oilskins and floppy hats, just like the real sailors who sailed the big ships out of Kiel, along the coast from here. The younger boy, Paul, was crouched in the stern, hugging his knees. His hair was long and had become even more blond as he got older. People had said that his hair would darken, but adults had been wrong about that as about most other vital things he’d wanted to know. He said, ‘You’re good at mathematics. You’d have to be good at mathematics for exploring, wouldn’t you?’

‘Yes,’ said Peter, who’d recently come top in mathematics.

‘I’m no good at anything except sport: hockey, I’m good at hockey. Papa says the cadet school will be best for me. I’ll never be any good at mathematics.’

‘No, you won’t,’ said Peter.

Paul looked at his elder brother. It was a simple statement of fact: Paul was no good at mathematics and never would be. Adults all said that he was young and that soon he’d understand such scholastic subjects. The adults perhaps believed it, but it wasn’t true, and Paul preferred to hear his brother’s more brutal answer. ‘And then after cadet school I’ll be a soldier and wear a uniform like Georg.’ Georg was a young soldier who was walking out with one of the housemaids in Berlin.

‘Not like Georg,’ said Peter. ‘You’ll be an officer and ride a horse and parade down Unter den Linden and salute the Kaiser on his birthday.’

‘Will I?’ said Pauli. It didn’t sound at all bad.

‘And go off and fight the Russians,’ said Peter.

‘I wouldn’t like that so much,’ said Paul. ‘It would mean leaving Mama and Papa.’ He loved his parents as only a ten-year-old can. His father was the person he envied, respected and admired more than anyone in the whole world; and Mama was the one he ran to when Papa scolded him.

‘There’s more wind now,’ said Peter. The sail was drumming and there were white crests on the waves. ‘Take the helm while I fix the sail.’

Big storm clouds moved across the hazy sun. It went dark quite suddenly, so that the sky was almost black, with only a shining golden rim on the most distant of the clouds, and a bright shimmer of water along the horizon. ‘Is it a storm?’ said Paul. Two years ago they’d sailed through one of the sudden summer squalls for which this coast was noted. But that was in a bigger boat and with a skilful yachtsman in charge.

‘It’s nothing,’ said Peter. But as he said it, bigger waves struck the hull with enough force to make loud thumping noises and toss the small boat from side to side.

‘Pull the rudder round,’ said Peter.

The little blond boy responded manfully, heaving on the tiller to bring the boat head on to the waves. ‘But we’re heading in the wrong direction now. We’re heading out to sea,’ said Paul. The waves were getting bigger and bigger, and when he looked back towards Omi’s house the coast was so far away that it was lost in the haze of rain. Paul was frightened. He watched his brother struggling with the sail. ‘Do you want me to help?’

‘Stay at the tiller,’ called Peter loudly. He’d heard the note of fear in his young brother’s voice. He let go a rope for long enough to wave to encourage him. It was then that one of those freak waves that the sea keeps for such moments of carelessness hit the boat. The deck was slippery and Peter’s wet shoes provided no grip upon the varnished woodwork. There was a yell and then Pauli saw the sea swaddle his brother into a dirty-green blanket of water and bundle him away into the fast-moving currents.

Peter had never been a strong swimmer and hit by half a ton of icy-cold sea water, the breath knocked out of his lungs, he opened his mouth. Instead of the air he needed, he swallowed cold salty water, and felt his stomach retch at the taste of it. Sucked down into the cold water, he somersaulted through a dim green world until he no longer knew which way was up.

‘Peter! Peter!’ There was nothing but milky-looking waves and mist, and the boat raced on before the gusting wind. Pauli jumped to his feet to pull the sail down, and before he could move aside the tiller was torn from his hands strongly enough to whack him across the leg, so that he cried out with the pain of it. He couldn’t reef in the sail, he knew he couldn’t: it was something his brother always attended to. ‘Peter! Please, God, help Peter.’

Some distance away from the boat, Peter came to the surface, spluttering and desperately flailing his arms so that he got no support from the water. Still encumbered in his yellow oilskin jacket, he slid down again into the hateful green, chilly realm from which he’d just fought his way. He closed his mouth only just in time to avoid a second lungful of sea water, and let the water close over him, twisting his arms in a futile attempt to claw his way back to the surface. The green water darkened and went black.

When Peter saw daylight again, the waves were still high enough to smash across his head. Like leaden pillows, they beat him senseless and scattered a million grey spumy feathers across the heaving sea. He could see no farther than the next wave and hear nothing but the roar of the wind and the crash of water. It seemed like hours since he’d been washed overboard, and – although it was no more than three minutes – he was physically unable to save himself. His small body had already lost heat, till his feet were numb and his fingers stiffening. Besides the temperature drop, his body was bruised and battered by the waves, and his stomach was retching and revolting at the intake of cold salty water.

There was no sign of the Valhalla, but even had it been close there would have been little chance of Peter’s catching sight of it through the grey-green waves and the white, rainy mist that swirled above them.

No one ever discovered why little Pauli jumped off the stern of the Valhalla and into the raging water that frightened him so much. Many years later explanations were offered: his wife said it was a desperate wish to destroy himself; a prison psychologist interpreted it as some sort of baptismal desire; and Peter – who heard Pauli talk about it in his sleep – said it was straightforward heroism and in keeping with Pauli’s desire to be a soldier. Pauli himself said it was fear that drove him from the safety of the boat into the water; he felt safer with his brother in the sea than alone on the boat. But that was typical of Pauli, who tried to make a joke out of everything.

Little Pauli was a strong swimmer and unlike his brother, he was able to divest himself of the oilskin and prepare himself for both the coldness and the strength of the currents into which he plunged. But, like his brother, he was soon disoriented, and couldn’t see past the big waves that washed over him constantly. He swam – or, rather, flailed the heaving ocean top – hoping he was heading back towards the coast. Above him the clouds raced overhead at a speed that made him dizzy.

The squall kept moving. It passed over them as quickly as it had come, moving out towards Bornholm and Sweden’s southern coast. The racing clouds parted enough to let sunlight flicker across the waves, and then Pauli caught sight of the yellow bundle that was Peter.

Had Peter been completely conscious, it’s unlikely that the smaller child would have been able to support his brother. All drowning animals panic; they fight and thrash and often kill anything that comes to save them. But Peter was long past that stage. He’d given up trying to survive, and now the cold water had produced in him that drowsiness that is the merciful prelude to exposure and death.

Peter’s yellow oilskin had kept him afloat. Air was trapped in the back of it, and this had pulled him to the surface when all his will to float had gone. They floated together, Pauli’s arm hooked round his brother’s neck, the pose of an attacker rather than a saviour, and the other arm trying to move them along. The coast was a long way away. Pauli glimpsed it now and again between the waves. There was no chance of swimming that far, even without a comatose brother to support.

They were floating there for a long time before anything came into sight. It was a boy at the oars of a brightly painted rowboat, trying to get to the Valhalla, who saw first a yellow floppy hat in the water, and then the children, too. The oarsman was little more than a child himself, but he pulled the two children out of the water and into his boat with the easy skill that had come from doing the same thing with his big black mongrel dog, which now sat in the front of the boat, watching the rescue.

The youth who’d rescued them was a typical village child: hair cut close to the scalp to avoid lice and nits; teeth uneven, broken and missing; strong arms and heavy shoulders, his skin darkened by the outdoors. Only his height and broad chest distinguished him from the other village youths, that and the ability to read well. To what extent it was his height, and to what extent his literacy, that gave him his air of superiority was debated. But there was a strength within him that was apparent to all, a drive that the priest – in a moment of weakness – had once described as ‘demoniacal’.

The seventeen-year-old Fritz Esser looked at the two half-drowned children huddled together in the bottom of his boat and – despite the pitiful retching of Peter and the shivers that convulsed Pauli’s whole body – decided they were not close to death. He rowed out to where the poor old Valhalla had settled low into the water, its torn sail trailing overboard and its rudder carried away. ‘It will not last long,’ he said, ‘it’s holed.’ Pauli managed to peer over the edge of the rowboat to see what was left of their lovely Valhalla, but Peter was past caring. Esser, aided by the black mongrel, which ran up and down the boat and barked, tried to get the Valhalla in tow, but his line was not long enough, and finally he decided to get the two survivors back to dry land.

He put them in an old boat shed on the beach. It was a dark, smelly place; the only daylight came through the chinks in its ill-fitting boards. Inside there was space enough for three rowboats, but it was evident that only one boat was ever stored here, for most of the interior was littered with rubbish. There were furry pieces of animal hide stretched on racks to dry. There was flotsam, too: a life preserver lettered ‘Germania – Kiel’, torn pieces of sails and old sacks, broken oars and broken crates and barrels of various sizes arranged like seats around a small pot-bellied iron stove.

Esser wrapped sacking round the boys and poked inside the stove until the sparks began to fly, then tossed some small pieces of driftwood into it and slammed it shut with a loud clang. The necessity of closing the stove became apparent as smoke from the damp wood issued out of the broken chimney. It was only after the fire was going that the boy spoke to them. ‘You’re the Berlin kids, aren’t you? You’re from the big house where old Schuster does the garden. Old Frau Winter. Are you her grandchildren?’ He didn’t wait to hear their reply; he seldom asked real questions, they found out soon enough. ‘You come here with your mother, and the flunkeys, and your father comes sometimes, always in some big new automobile.’

Peter and Pauli were huddled together under some sacking that smelled of salt and decaying fish. As the stove flickered into life, and the air warmed, the hut became more and more foul. But the children didn’t notice the odour of old fish or the stink of the tanned hides. They clung together, cold, wet and exhausted; Pauli was looking at the flames in the tiny grate, but Peter’s eyes were tightly closed as he listened to Fritz Esser’s hard and roughly accented voice.

‘I hate the rich,’ Esser said. ‘But soon we’ll break the bonds of slavery.’

‘How will you do that?’ asked Pauli, who, typically, was recovering quickly from his ordeal. It sounded interesting, like something from his 101 Magic Tricks a Bright Boy Can Do.

Esser wracked his brains to remember what the speaker from the German Social Democratic Party had actually said. ‘Capitalism will perish just as the dinosaurs perished, collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions. Then the working masses will usher in the golden age of socialism.’

Half drowned he might be, but Pauli could perceive the majesty of that pronouncement. ‘Is that how the dinosaurs perished?’ he asked.

‘You can scoff,’ said Esser. ‘We’re used to the sneers of the ruling classes. But when blood is flowing in the gutters, the laughing will stop.’

Pauli had not intended to scoff but decided against saying so while the role of scoffer commanded such a measure of Esser’s respect.

‘We have a million members,’ Esser continued. He spat at the stove and the spittle exploded in steam. ‘We’re the largest political party in the world. Soon they’ll start to arm the workers and we’ll fight to get a proper Marxist government.’

‘Where did you find out all this?’ Pauli asked. It sounded frightening but the strange boy was not unfriendly: just superior. His chin was dimpled and his brown eyes deep and intense.

‘I go to meetings with my father. He’s been a member of the SPD for nearly ten years. Last year Karl Liebknecht came here to give a speech. Liebknecht understands that blood must flow. My father says Liebknecht is a dangerous man, but my uncle says Liebknecht will lead the workers to victory.’

‘Did your father tell you about the dinosaurs and the blood in the streets and all that?’ asked Pauli.

‘No. He’s soft,’ said Esser. He stoked the fire to make it flare. ‘My father still believes in historical evolution. He believes that soon we’ll have enough deputies in the Reichstag to challenge the Kaiser’s power. If Germany had a proper parliamentary democracy, we’d already be running the country.’

Pauli looked at his saviour with new respect. It would be just as well to remain friends with a boy who was so near to running the country. Peter had opened his eyes. He had not so far joined the conversation, but it was Peter who, having studied Fritz Esser, now identified him. ‘You’re the son of the pig man, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, what of it?’ said Fritz Esser defensively.

‘Nothing,’ said Peter. ‘I just recognized you, that’s all.’ Peter coughed and was almost sick. The salt water was still nauseating him, and his skin was green and clammy to the touch, as Pauli found when he hugged his brother protectively.

For Pauli and Peter – and for many other local children – the pig man was a figure of rumour and awful speculation. A small thickset figure with muscular limbs and scarred hands, he was not unlike some of the more fearful illustrations in their books of so-called fairy stories. The ‘pig man’ wore long sharp knives on his belt and went from village to village slaughtering pigs for owners too squeamish, or too inexperienced with a knife, to kill their pigs for themselves. He was to be seen sometimes down by the pond engaged on the lengthy and laborious task of washing the entrails and salting them for sausage making. So this was the son of the pig man. This was a boy who called the pig man ‘soft’.

In an unexpected spontaneous gesture of appreciation, Pauli said goodbye to Fritz Esser with a hug. Forever after, Pauli regarded Fritz Esser as the one who’d saved his life. But Peter’s goodbye was more restrained, his thanks less effusive. For Peter had already decided that little Pauli was his one and only saviour. These varying attitudes that the two boys had to the traumatic events of that terrible day were to affect their entire lives. And the life of Fritz Esser, too.

It was the pig man himself who took the boys home. Still wrapped in the fusty, stinking old sacks that gave so little protection from the remorseless Baltic wind, they rode on the back of his home-made cart drawn by his weary horse. It was more than seven kilometres along the coast road, which was in fact only a deeply rutted cart track. The smell of rancid fish and pork turned their stomachs and they were jolted over every rut, bump, and pothole all the way. When they got to Omi’s, the pig man and his son were given a bright new twenty-mark gold coin and sent away with muted thanks.

It was only after the Essers had gone that the two children were scolded. Who would pay for the boat? How did they come to fall overboard? Didn’t they see that a storm was coming up? How could they not come directly home after being rescued? All three women asked them more or less the same questions; only the manner of asking was different. First came the regimental coldness of Omi’s interrogation, then the operatic hysteria of Mama’s, and finally that of their Scots nanny, who, after their hot bath with carbolic soap, put them under the cold shower and towelled them until their skin was pink and sore.

The children took their chastisings meekly. They knew that such anger was just one of many curious ways in which grownups manifested their love. And they’d long ago learned how to wear a look of contrition while thinking of other things.

Now that they no longer had the Valhalla, the children spent their days on the beach. They walked back along the coast road to Fritz Esser’s boathouse. Very early each morning, Esser went out in his boat to fish. He caught little: he had neither tempting bait, good nets, nor the skills and patience of the successful fisherman.

The boys always arrived in time to welcome him back. But Fritz never showed any disappointment when his long hours of work had provided nothing in return. He was always able to manage the crooked smile that revealed a wide mouth crowded with teeth. Every day, of course, the children hoped to see him towing the Valhalla back to them. And each day their hopes diminished, until finally they went to Fritz just for something to do.

Despite the disparity in age, Fritz Esser enjoyed the company of the two children. He let them help him with painting and repairing the boats he was paid to look after. He showed them how to sew up torn sails and caulk the seams of boats that belonged to holidaymakers who’d left them too long out of the water. And all the time he lectured them with the political ideas that came from the booklets he read and the conversations he liked to listen to in the bar of the Golden Pheasant on the Travemünde road, and to the words of his hero Karl Liebknecht.

At the back of the Golden Pheasant there was a big room that was used for weddings and christenings and meetings of the SPD. That was where, last year, Fritz had listened enraptured to the fiery little Karl Liebknecht. In his pince-nez, neatly shaped black moustache, well-brushed black suit and high, stiff collar, this thirty-nine-year-old member of the Prussian Diet looked more like a clerk than a revolutionary, but from his very first words his speech revealed his passions. He denounced the international armaments industry, ‘the clique who mint gold from discord’. He denounced the Kaiser and Bendlerstrasse, where the generals ‘at this very moment are planning the next war’. He denounced the Russian Tsar and all the ‘parasites’ that made up Europe’s royal families. He denounced the capitalists who owned the factories and the police who were their lackeys. He denounced the rich for exploiting their riches and the poor for enduring their poverty.

A big crowd filled the Golden Pheasant that Friday evening. Most of them had come because he was the son of the great Wilhelm Liebknecht (close friend of Karl Marx and a leader of the short-lived revolutionary republic of Baden), not because they wanted to hear this arrogant and unattractive man, whose only notable achievement so far was to have served an eighteen-month prison sentence for treason.

Karl Liebknecht had none of the qualities that a successful orator must have. His clothes made him look more like one of the cold-eyed bureaucrats they all feared and detested than like a man who would lead them to the golden land they were looking for. His educated Hochdeutsch and his manner – urban if not urbane – set him apart from this audience of fishermen and agricultural workers. Liebknecht’s message didn’t appeal to men who were looking for immediate improvement in their working conditions rather than an ultimate world revolution.

Only the very young have time enough for the sort of promises that Karl Liebknecht gave his audience that night. And only a few local youngsters like Fritz Esser were moved by this strange man.

Although the Winter boys had only a hazy idea of what it was all about, something of the excitement that Fritz Esser showed was communicated to them. And Fritz liked striding up and down declaiming the principles of Marxism to this enraptured audience of two. Pauli loved the sounds of Esser’s words, though the fiery rhetoric of hatred held no meaning for him. Peter sensed the underlying belligerence, but Fritz Esser’s flashes of easy humour and his simple charm won him over. And when Esser told them that as fellow conspirators they mustn’t repeat a word of what he said to the policeman, to their family, to any of their household, or even to anyone else in the village in case Fritz was sent to prison, the two boys were totally devoted to him. What a wonderful thing it was to share a secret with a boy who was almost a man. And what a secret it was!

During the final week of their summer vacation, ‘Uncle Glenn’ arrived. Veronica’s younger brother, Glenn Rensselaer, had a habit of turning up unexpectedly all over the world. The first Veronica heard about his visit to Europe was a telegram from the post office of a liner due to arrive at Hamburg next day: ‘Arriving Thursday with friend. Love, Glenn.’ There was a flurry of domestic preparations and for Veronica, speculation, too. Who was the friend and was this just Glenn’s jocular way of announcing that he had come to Europe on his honeymoon?

The speculation ended when Glenn arrived Friday noon, together with an Englishman named Alan Piper. They’d met on the ship coming over from New York: ‘The Kaiserin Auguste Victoria: twenty-five thousand tons. The biggest liner in the world and she’s German.’ It was typical of Glenn that he delighted in the achievements of the Old World almost as much as those of his own countrymen. Glenn had insisted that, since Piper had a month or two to spare before reporting back to the Colonial Office in London, he should accompany him on his tour of Germany, beginning at the house in Travemünde.

Alan ‘Boy’ Piper spent much of his time apologizing for all the extra work and trouble he was causing to the household. He apologized to Veronica so many times that Glenn finally said, ‘Don’t be so goddamned British. They have slaves to do all the work in this country. And Veronica loves a chance to speak a civilized language.’

He was right about his sister. Her mother-in-law had not been well for a few days and was allowed only bread and beef broth, having it served in her upstairs room. So Veronica played hostess to the unexpected house guests, and there was no need to speak anything but English.

Veronica adored her young brother but she was also enchanted by the shy Englishman. He was a little older than Veronica, an unconventionally handsome man with short brown – almost gingerish – hair, a lean bony face, and curiously youthful features that had long ago earned him his nickname ‘Boy’. He insisted that his life had been uneventful compared with her brother’s. From Merton College, Oxford, he’d gone to South Africa, and stayed there working as a colonial government official, although, as Glenn pointed out, he’d been there right through some of the bloodiest encounters of the Boer War.

‘He’s a soldier of fortune, like me,’ said Glenn Rensselaer.

‘Nothing as exciting as that, I’m afraid,’ said Piper modestly. ‘My father was a government official in Africa, and so far I have simply followed in his footsteps.’ He smiled. He had the face of a youngster – fresh and optimistic, and unwrinkled despite the African sun.

‘So what are you doing in Germany, Mr Piper?’ said Veronica. She took care to address him as ‘Mr Piper’, and yet there was a mocking note in her voice that some might have said was flirtatious. ‘Is it another excursion among the natives?’

‘Indeed not, Mrs Winter. I’m on leave. This visit to Germany, as delightful as it is already proving to be, was quite unplanned. When I returned to London to start this year’s leave of absence, I was very disappointed to learn that I would not be returning to Africa. The two Boer Republics we fought, and the Cape and Natal, become what is to be called the Union of South Africa. I would like to have been there to see it.’

‘South Africa’s loss is our gain,’ said Glenn.

‘I will drink to that,’ said Veronica.

The Englishman picked up his glass, looked at her and saw those wonderful smoky-grey eyes, and, after a fleeting moment, smiled.

Veronica looked down as she drank her wine, and yet she could feel the Englishman’s eyes upon her and despite herself, she shivered.

‘My life has not been nearly so colourful as your brother’s, Mrs Winter. I believe him to be one of the most extraordinary men I’ve ever met.’

‘Really?’ She was pleased to look at her brother and smile. ‘What have you been up to, Glenn?’

Piper answered for him. ‘He’s been everywhere and done everything. He’s even panned for gold on the Klondike.’

‘And a lot of good it did me: I finally sold out my claims for three hundred dollars and some supplies.’

‘He’s worked for Henry Ford and turned down a job with the U.S. Army team that surveyed the Panama Canal. He’s broken horses, repaired automobiles, and even flown an aeroplane.’

‘An airplane?’ said Veronica; even she could still be surprised by Glenn’s doings.

‘Just the once,’ said Glenn. He bent forward and forked some more cold pork, without waiting for the table maid to offer it, trying to cover his embarrassment at Piper’s laudatory remarks. Having swallowed it, he took a sip of wine and wiped his lips. ‘There was a guy on the ship coming over, a rancher. I’d worked for him a couple of times. He spent half the voyage filling Boy’s head with tales about me. You know how Texans like to spin a yarn to a Limey.’

‘And why exactly are you in Germany, Glenn?’ she asked her brother.

‘Dad told me that your husband knows Count Zeppelin. I was hoping he’d arrange an introduction for me.’

‘Count Zeppelin? Is he so famous that they’ve heard of him back home?’

‘They’ve sure heard of his airships,’ said Glenn. ‘Last September there was some kind of air show in Berlin….’

‘Yes,’ said Veronica. ‘Berliner Flugwoche at Johannisthal. There was a prize of one hundred and fifty thousand marks. Harald took the boys. They were there when an airplane flew from Tempelhof to Johannisthal: ten kilometres!’

‘Orville Wright was in Berlin at that time. And down in Frankfurt they had an airship meet: the Internationale Luftschiffahrt Ausstellung.’ He pronounced the German words with difficulty. ‘And suddenly a lot of people are taking a new interest in airships: especially big rigid airships. I want to see one of them, fly in one and find out what they’re like to handle.’

‘But surely you heard – the latest one, Deutschland, only lasted a couple of weeks. It’s a complete wreck. There were amazing pictures in the newspapers.’

‘Oh, sure LZ7: I know about that. But he still has the LZ6 flying, and a trip in that will suit me fine.’

Veronica turned to the Englishman. ‘And you, Mr Piper, do you share this obsession with flying machines that seems to be sweeping the world?’

‘Up to a point, Mrs Winter.’

‘He’s just being polite,’ said her brother. ‘I talked him into coming with me to see the zeps, because he can speak the lingo. I can’t speak German, and I don’t suppose Count von Zeppelin is going to be able to speak English.’

‘You’d better learn not to call him Count von Zeppelin: von Zeppelin or Count Zeppelin, but not both together.’

‘Is that so?’ said Glenn thoughtfully. ‘I know these Europeans get darn mad if you get their titles wrong. There was an Italian countess I once met in Mexico City. She wanted me to…’ He stopped, having suddenly decided not to go into detail.

Veronica laughed. She realized that the account of Glenn’s colourful experiences with horses, motorcars and canals had been carefully edited in order not to offend her.

‘And so you speak German, Mr Piper?’ she asked as the servants cleared the plates.

‘For my work I had to learn some Cape Dutch, Mrs Winter. It seemed foolish not to persevere with my German.’

‘He reads the kind of intellectual stuff you like, Veronica. I offered him my brand-new copy of Lord Jim when he was sitting alongside me on the promenade deck. And darn me if he didn’t wave it away. He said he doesn’t read Conrad because he doesn’t stretch the mind. I felt like punching him in the ear. That’s how we first got talking.’

Piper – even after his three months’ stay in America – had still not got used to this direct style of speaking. ‘I didn’t exactly say that, Glenn…’

‘He’s reading Das Stunden-Buch in German!’ added Glenn Rensselaer. ‘It took me half an hour to learn how to pronounce the title.’ Veronica noticed the mutual regard of the two men; somehow friendships between women didn’t flourish so easily and quickly.

‘I’m afraid that Rilke is too much for me,’ Piper admitted. ‘All that symbolic imagery requires a better knowledge of Germany and Germans.’

‘Oh, but it’s a wonderful book,’ said Veronica. ‘Don’t give up.’

‘I’ve tried so hard. The chapter I’m reading now: I’ve reread it, dictionary in hand, at least four times.’

‘Perhaps if we read a few pages together…’ Veronica stopped and hurriedly poured cream over the sliced peach. She hadn’t meant to say that…. She made her racing mind stop. She’d never looked at, not even thought of, another man in all the years she’d been married. When she first discovered that Harry had installed that very young girl Martha in an apartment in Vienna, she’d gone to pray in the Votivkirche, and so steal a glimpse at the street where his mistress was living. Yet, even in that hour of anguish, she had never thought of betraying him. But then she’d never met a man who might be able to tempt her to betrayal. Now, suddenly, she realized that.

‘That would be most civil of you, Mrs Winter,’ said the Englishman. ‘Sometimes it’s just a matter of understanding the heart of the author. Just a few pages properly understood might open a new world to me.’

‘I’m not a scholar,’ said Veronica. ‘I’m a thirty-five-year-old Hausfrau.’ It was her clumsy attempt to change direction.

‘I can’t let that go unchallenged,’ said Piper. ‘I cannot think of anyone in the world more likely to change my life.’

On the day that Father arrived, it rained without stopping. Not just the cold, thin drizzle through which the boys would walk, bathe in the ocean, or, in the happier days of the Valhalla, sail. It fell in great vertical sheets of water from slow-moving grey clouds that came from the North Sea to rain upon the bight.

While everyone prepared for Harald Winter’s arrival, the boys wandered through the house, getting in everyone’s way and feeling low. On previous days, Uncle Glenn or his English friend Mr Piper had kept them entertained with stories, tricks and card games. Pauli particularly liked Mr Piper’s magic and even learned to do some of the conjuring tricks himself. But today the two house-guests had gone to look at the wonderful old city of Lübeck and were not expected back until evening. By that time Father would have arrived.

Peter finally found something to do. Cook let him help prepare the vegetables. She needed the extra hand because the scullery maid was sick and the kitchen maid had been ordered away to ready the rooms on the second floor that Harald Winter and his wife used when both were there together.

After a brusque rejection by his grandmother, who wanted to sleep, Paul went in search of his mother. He found her in the turret room at the top of the house. It was a tiny circular room with a wonderful view of the countryside. This was where she liked to sleep when Father wasn’t with them. She was looking through her clothes in the wardrobe, taking her dresses out one by one and examining them before putting them on the bed for her maid to take to the other bedroom.

Paul stared at his mother. She did not look well. Her face was white but her eyes were reddened as if she’d been crying. ‘What is it?’ she said. She sounded angry.

‘Nothing,’ said little Pauli. ‘Can I help you, Mama?’

‘Not really, darling,’ she replied. Then, seeing Pauli’s disappointment, she said, ‘You can take my jewellery case downstairs. It will save Hanna a journey.’

Pauli always coveted his mother’s jewellery case. It was made of beautiful blue leather and lined with soft blue velvet. Inside, it was fitted with little drawers and soft pockets and velvet fingers upon which Mama’s rings were fitted. Pauli couldn’t resist playing with all the fittings of the box. It was such fun to pull out each drawer and see the sparkling diamond brooches or strings of pearls lying within. He looked at Mama, but she was completely occupied with her dresses – choosing one for Papa’s return, Pauli decided. He continued to play with the jewel box. Suppose it was a pirate ship and each drawer concealed a cannon, and as some unsuspecting boat came along … Oh dear: the contents of a drawer fell onto the carpet. How clumsy he was. He felt sure he would be scolded, but today it seemed as if nothing could divert her attention from her dresses.

Pauli picked up the tiny gold earrings, the large gold earrings, the pearl earrings, the diamond earrings that Mama wore only with her long dresses and pendant earrings. Two of each. He counted them again and then saw a silver earring on the carpet. Then there must be another …rolled under the bed, no doubt. He went flat on the floor to find it. Yes, there it was. And … there was something else there too. He pulled it out. A wristwatch. A large gold wristwatch with a seconds hand.

‘What are you doing, Pauli?’

‘I found a watch, Mama.’

‘What do you mean, Pauli?’

‘I found it under the bed, Mama.’ He showed her the wristwatch proudly. It was a fine Swiss model with a leather strap and roman numerals like the church clock.

‘Oh my God!’ said his mother.

‘It belongs to Mr Piper, Mama. I noticed him wearing it.’ He looked at his mother. He’d never seen her so horror-struck.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I borrowed it from him. Mine stopped last night at dinner.’

‘Shall I give it to him?’ said Pauli.

‘No, give it to me, Pauli. I’ll tell the chambermaid to put it in his room.’

‘I know which is his room, Mama.’

‘Give it to me, Pauli. He might be angry if he hears I’ve dropped it on the floor.’

‘I won’t tell him, Mama.’

‘That’s best, Pauli.’ His mother clutched the watch very tight and closed her eyes, the way children do when making a wish.

Three days after Papa arrived, everyone went to Kiel and stayed in a hotel. It was a momentous trip. Mama wore her new ankle-length motoring coat and gauntlet gloves. Papa drove the car. Its technology was no longer new, but he loved the big yellow Itala and clung to it, even though some people thought he should drive a German car. It was the first time he’d taken the wheel for such a long journey, but he knew that Glenn Rensselaer was able to make running repairs and the chauffeur was ordered to stay near the telephone at Omi’s house just in case something went very badly wrong. Glenn sat beside Harald Winter, the Englishman and Mama at the back, the two children in the folding seats. There were no servants with them. The servants had gone by train. As Harald Winter said, ‘It will be an adventure.’

It was not just an excursion. Harald Winter didn’t make excursions: he had an appointment in the Imperial Dockyard. The next day, while a sea mist cloaked the waterfront and muffled the sounds of the dockyards, he met with a young Korvettenkapitän and two civilian officials of the purchasing board of the Imperial German Navy. Harald Winter had not been forthcoming about the subject of his discussion. It concerned the prospect of a naval airship programme, and that was categorized as secret. The department was already named; it was to be the Imperial Naval Airship Division – but so far it consisted of little beyond a name on the door of one small room on the wrong side of the office block. Last year the appearance of the German army’s airship Z II at the ILA show in Frankfurt am Main had made the future seem rosy. But this year everything had gone wrong. The destruction of that same airship – one of the army’s two zeppelins – in a storm near Weilburg an der Lahn in April was followed by the loss of Count Zeppelin’s newly built Deutschland in June. To make matters worse, a competitor of Zeppelin had built a semi-rigid airship that not only beat Zeppelin’s endurance record by over an hour but arrived at the autumn army manoeuvres complete with its own mobile canvas shed. Now all the admirals and bureaucrats who’d delayed the decisions about purchasing zeppelins were congratulating themselves upon their farsightedness.

But while Harald Winter was sitting across the table from the earnest young naval officer and two blank-faced officials, his wife, children and guests were on the waterfront admiring the assembled might of the new Germany navy.

‘Look at them,’ said Glenn Rensselaer, indicating a dozen great grey phantoms just visible through the mist. ‘German shipyards have never been so busy. The one anchored on the right is a dreadnought.’ He used his field glasses but failed to read any name on the warship.

‘Three dreadnoughts last year, and four built the year before that,’ said Piper. Today the Englishman was looking like a typical holidaymaker, in his striped blazer and straw hat. ‘That makes the German navy exactly equal to the strength of the Royal Navy.’ He took the glasses Glenn Rensselaer handed him but didn’t use them to look at the ships.

‘No,’ said Glenn. ‘You British have eight dreadnoughts and at least three more on the slipways.’ He wore a cream pin-striped flannel suit with his straw boater at an angle on his head. The incoming sea-mist had made it too cold for such summer attire on this promenade. He had a long yellow scarf and now he wound it twice round his neck. Veronica noticed and wished she’d chosen something warmer. The cotton dress with its broderic anglaise trimmings was made specially for this holiday, but the dressmaker had not calculated on the spell of cold weather.

The Englishman nodded. ‘Perhaps you’re right.’

‘And what exactly is a dreadnought?’ said Veronica.

‘Oh, Mama!’ said young Peter, looking back from where he was climbing on the railing to get a better view. ‘Everyone knows what a dreadnought is.’ Little Pauli climbed up beside his brother.

‘It’s a new type of battleship,’ said the ever-attentive Piper.

‘They all look the same to me,’ said Veronica.

‘Maybe they do,’ said Rensselaer, ‘but when the British built HMS Dreadnought in 1906 it made every other capital ship obsolete. Steam-turbine engines, bigger guns and all to a common calibre: faster and more deadly than anything previously built. Now the strength of any navy is measured by the number of dreadnoughts they have. It took that Kaiser of yours a couple of years to get started, but now he’ll bust a gut rather than let the Royal Navy outgun him.’

‘Get down, Peter,’ Veronica called to her son. ‘You’ll make your trousers dirty and we haven’t brought any more with us.’ The Englishman smiled at her. ‘It’s so difficult without the servants,’ said Veronica.

Glenn Rensselaer took back his field glasses again and studied the big dreadnought. ‘Do you think they brought her through the canal, or is she too big?’ Now that the Nord-Ostaee-Kanal directly connected Germany’s North Sea Fleet with the Baltic Fleet, it had vastly increased Germany’s naval potential. Still using the field glasses, Glenn Rensselaer eventually answered his own question: ‘Too big, I think. That’s probably why they are working so hard to make it wider and deeper.’ Even without the glasses one could see the sailors moving about the deck in their white summer uniforms. From the size of the sailors it was easy to judge the dimensions of the huge battleship. ‘She’s big,’ said Glenn Rensselaer, ‘very big.’

Veronica, hampered by the fashionable hobble skirt, had walked on and now Piper followed her. The crisp cotton dress with its high tight lace collar and the lovely new hat with silk bow and artificial flowers made her look wonderful, and she knew it. The others were out of earshot by the time he caught up with her. It was the first chance for Veronica to speak privately with the Englishman since her husband had arrived, but she said only, ‘I wish my brother wouldn’t speak so disrespectfully of His Majesty. It has such a bad effect on the children.’

‘I know, Mrs Winter, but your brother means no harm, I’m sure of that.’ He smiled at her and she smiled back.

She felt very happy. It really didn’t matter what was said. She loved the Englishman and he loved her. There was no need to say it. There was no need to say anything at all, really.

They’d hoped that the mist would lift, but it was one of those days when the Kiel Bight remains shrouded in fog until nightfall. When they got back to the hotel, Harry had still not returned from his meeting. Alan Piper ordered tea. Glenn chaffed him about this curious English ritual, but they all sat together in the glass-sided lounge, exchanging small talk, until the Englishman took the restless boys outside to the promenade for another look at the warships.

Left without them in the lounge, Veronica turned to her brother and said, ‘There won’t be a war, will there, Glenn?’

He looked at her and took his time before replying. ‘Dad is convinced that there will be. The folks would like you to come back home; I guess they tell you that in their letters.’

‘Yes, they do.’ She poured more tea for herself. She didn’t want it, but she was nervous.

‘This year you didn’t get to see them in London.’ He sat back in the armchair and crossed his legs. Big bony skull, wide cheekbones, and easy smile – sometimes he looked so like Father, and so like little Paul. She’d not noticed before how much of a Rensselaer her son looked.

‘It would be so easy for them to come here.’ She didn’t want to talk about her parents. It would make her feel guilty, and she didn’t want to feel guilty.

‘Dad’s not too fond of the Germans; you know that. And since the sudden death of the King of England, the Kaiser is determined to prove himself the master of Europe. Dad says he’s dangerous, and I agree.’

‘It’s just not fair,’ said Veronica. ‘Everyone blames the Kaiser, but all he wants to do is make Germany as strong as the other powers. What’s so bad about that?’

‘It’s the way he goes about it: he struts and rants and always wears that damned army outfit with the spiked helmet. That military posturing doesn’t go down well in Paris and London and New York. They like statesmen to wear dark suits and carnations and make speeches about peace and prosperity.’

‘Harry says that European armies are only suited for colonial wars.’

‘Suited, maybe. But they are fast becoming equipped for something far more destructive. What about these airships that can float right over big towns and toss explosives down on the city hall? Look out the window and see the guns on that dreadnought: one of those ships could shell a coastal city and remain out of sight while doing it. And what about these huge conscript armies that Prussia has had for over a hundred years? You don’t need conscript armies for colonial scraps. Right? Back home I’ve been down through the South…I walked through the ruined streets of Richmond, Virginia, and it’s enough to make you weep. The same goes for cities in the Carolinas and Georgia. What is it – fifty years back? And they still haven’t rebuilt everything that the fighting destroyed. And the bitterness remains…. It’s terrible, and that’s the kind of war that these damned Europeans are going to have, unless I miss my guess.’

‘You frighten me with such talk, Glenn.’

‘I promised Dad that I would have a serious word with you. Don’t you ever miss your friends and your folks and your family? How can you be happy with all these foreigners all the time?’

‘I don’t want to say anything hurtful, Glenn, but these “foreigners” are my friends and my family now.’ Glenn would never understand how much Berlin meant to her. She loved the city: the opera, the ballet, the orchestras, the social life, and the intellectual climate. She loved the crazy, uncomplaining, shameless Berliners, with their irrepressible sense of humour. She loved the friends she’d made and her husband, and her incomparable sons. How could Glenn expect her to abandon everything that made life worth living and start all over again in a cultural wasteland like New York City?

‘Do you mind if I smoke my pipe? I can’t think properly without a taste of Virginia.’ From the pocket of his double-breasted flannel jacket he took a tobacco pouch, safety matches, and a curly meerschaum pipe.

‘I don’t mind, but maybe it’s not permitted here. There’s a smoking room at the back of the restaurant.’

‘Baloney! People smoke everywhere nowadays. People smoke on the street in New York, even women.’

‘That sounds horrible.’

He lit the pipe, which was already charged with tobacco. ‘It was the flies that got me started,’ he said between puffs at the pipe. ‘I was working on a ranch in Texas, and the smoke was the only way you could keep them out of your eyes and mouth. I saw guys go crazy.’

‘I’d love to see New York again,’ she admitted with what was almost reluctance. ‘Just for a visit.’

‘You’d never recognize New York City these days, sis. I know your husband is reckoned a big shot in that automobile of his. But I stood in Herald Square and saw it jammed so tight with automobiles that none of them could get going.’ He laughed and puffed his pipe. He’d affected a pipe when he first came to see her in Germany, the year after Peter was born; Glenn was seventeen then. He’d tried to look grown-up but he’d choked on the tobacco smoke, and she’d brought him fruit when he went to bed feeling sick. She felt a sudden pang of regret that she’d left her family so young. They’d grown up without her, and she’d grown up without them.

‘And Dad and Mama like it in New York?’ she asked.

‘They don’t spend much time downtown any more. But, sure, Dad likes it. While your Harry was betting on airships, Dad was betting on the automobile. He invested in steel, oil and rubber and is getting richer by the minute.’ He puffed on his pipe again. ‘You didn’t mind my bringing Boy with me?’

‘Of course not, but if I’d known earlier, I could have had things better prepared. Those little rooms you have…’

‘The rooms are fine, sis, and I’m sorry we just descended on you. I didn’t realize how sick your mother-in-law is. It must make a lot of work for you.’

‘It’s good to see you, Glenn. Really good.’

‘Boy is stuck on you; you know that, don’t you?’ he blurted out. She had the feeling that he’d been trying to find a way of saying it ever since they’d first begun to talk.

‘Yes, I know he is.’

‘You get to know what a man’s like when you drink with him. And I’ve knocked around a bit, sis. I’ve met a lot of people since I last saw you. He’s a regular guy.’

She said nothing for a long time. He was her brother, and she felt she should respond. ‘He wants me to go away with him.’

‘Boy does?’ He was discomposed. He thought she’d just be flattered, and laugh. He wished he’d not mentioned it.

‘I don’t know what to do, Glenn. The children would never understand. Peter would feel I’d betrayed them, and Pauli just dotes on his father.’

‘Buck up, sis. It’s nothing to cry about.’

Glenn could not advise her; she’d known that before confiding in him. Glenn was her younger brother: their relationship precluded any chance that he could talk to her about such things and keep a sense of proportion. ‘Please don’t say anything to anyone, Glenn. I’m still trying to make up my mind. Boy wants me to bring the children, too.’

Glenn Rensselaer shook his head in amazement. ‘You’re a dark horse.’

‘I love him, Glenn. I don’t know how it happened in such a short time. I thought it was something that only happened in books and plays. But I love Harry, too.’ She turned her head away as the tears welled up in her eyes.

‘Divorced women are not received in our sort of society.’ He had to warn her. Glenn was a good man. He’d only wanted to make her happy, and now he found himself involved in her moral dilemma, the sort of thing he couldn’t handle.

‘I couldn’t go without the children, Glenn….’

‘It’s a big step.’ That bastard Harry, despite his philandering, would probably deny her a divorce: he detested the Englishman, Glenn could see that. So his sister would be living in sin in a society where such sinners were punished here on earth. The idea of that happening to his sister pained him. And yet Harry was a swine….

‘I couldn’t take Harry’s sons from him and give them to another man. That would be a sin, wouldn’t it?’ She wiped her tears away.

‘We only have one life. I’m not a priest.’

‘Hush! They’re coming in,’ said Veronica, catching sight of Piper and the two children coming up the path. As the doorman swung open the doors, the sound of a ship’s band playing on the sea front came to their ears. They were playing Sousa; such bold Yankee music sounded strange in these German surroundings.

Harald Winter’s final meeting with the representatives of the Imperial German Navy’s purchasing board had not left him in the best of moods. The meeting had ended with a gesture that Winter regarded as provocative. One of the civilians produced photographs of the army’s latest airship, the Parseval III, flying over Leipzig. Manufactured by Zeppelin’s brilliant rival, August von Parseval, it was a most efficient flying machine. It was big: its envelope contained five thousand cubic metres of gas. It had two hundred-horsepower engines and carried eight passengers. And yet the whole contraption could be deflated and taken away by horse-drawn wagon. This miracle was achieved by having no rigid metal framework. But the prospect of airships without a rigid metal framework had little or no attraction for Harald Winter. He left the meeting in a rage.

He snapped at the hotel staff and at his personal servants. When he was unlocking his decanters for a drink before dressing for dinner, he even found fault with the children.

‘They are getting out of control,’ he said.

‘How can you say that, Harry? Everyone remarks on how well behaved they are.’

‘They’re allowed to roam all through the hotel. And Pauli even pesters me when I’m working.’

‘And you snap at him. I wish you’d be more patient with little Pauli. He adores you so much, and yet you always reject him. Why?’

‘Pauli must grow up. He’s like a little puppy that comes licking your hand all the time. He wants constant attention.’

‘He wants affection.’ Harald Winter had never shown much affection to her or to the boys. He’d always said that earning money should be sufficient evidence of a man’s love for his family.

‘Then let him go to Nanny. What do I pay her for?’

‘Harry, how can you be so blind? Little Pauli loves you more than anyone in the whole world. You are his life. You hurt him deeply when you send him away with angry words.’ She didn’t want to pursue the subject. She tried to decide whether she could endure her corset as tight as this for the entire evening. Some women were abandoning corsets altogether – it was the new fashion – but Veronica still kept to the old styles.

Harald Winter poured brandy for himself and added a generous amount of Apollinaris soda water. He drank some and then turned his attention to the faults of their guests.

‘They act like a couple of spies,’ he complained. ‘Do you think no one notices them out on the promenade using their field glasses and making sketches of the warships?’

‘Spies?’ said Veronica. ‘You’re speaking of our guests; and one of them is my kith and kin.’

Harald Winter realized that he’d gone too far. He retracted a little. ‘I didn’t mean your brother, I meant the Engländer.’

‘No one was making sketches, Harry, and the field glasses belonged to Glenn.’

‘Piper is obviously a spy,’ said Winter. He had never really liked the English, and this fellow Piper, with his absurdly exaggerated good manners and the attention he gave to Veronica, was a prime example of the effete English upper class.

‘You sound like a character in those silly books the children read. If the ships are secret, why are they anchored here for everyone to see? And if you are convinced that Mr Piper is a spy, why bring him here?’

‘It’s better that he be someplace where the authorities can keep an eye on him,’ said Winter.

‘You didn’t repeat these suspicions to the people at Fleet Headquarters?’

‘I felt it was my duty.’ He put his glass down with more force than was necessary.

‘Harry, how could you! Mr Piper is our guest. To report him as a spy is…’

‘Ungentlemanly?’ asked Harry sarcastically. Nervously he smoothed his already well-brushed hair. A German wife would know better than to argue about such things.

‘No gentleman would do it, Harry,’ she told him. ‘No English gentleman would do it, and neither would a member of the Prussian Officer Corps. The officers to whom you reported your suspicions of Mr Piper will not see it as something to your credit, Harry.’ It was the first time she’d confronted him with such direct imputations. Harry’s already pale face became white with anger.

‘Damnit, Veronica. The fellow is sent to South Africa without any army rank. He learns to speak Afrikaans and wanders around anywhere that trouble arises. Then the fighting ends and, when you’d think Piper’s expertise is most needed, the British give him a year’s leave and he decides to go and look at zeppelins. But before that he turns up in Kiel, studying the most modern units of the Kaiser’s battle fleet through powerful field glasses.’

‘Must you Germans always be so suspicious?’ she said bitterly. ‘It was you who suggested bringing him to Kiel. You knew the Fleet would be here for the summer exercises – you told me that yourself. Then you report him for spying. Have you taken leave of your senses, Harry? Or are you just trying to find some perverse way to show these naval people how patriotic you can be?’

Her accusation hit him and took effect. His voice was icy cold, like his eyes. ‘If that’s the way you feel about us Germans, perhaps you’d be happier among your own people.’

‘Perhaps I would, Harry. Perhaps I would.’ She rang the bell for her bath to be run. She would be pleased to get back to her mother-in-law’s house. She didn’t like hotels.

Those final summer days at Travemünde marked a change in the children’s lives. They became both closer together and further apart. They were closer because both children knew that Pauli’s desperate leap overboard had saved his brother’s life. Both carried that certain knowledge with them always, and although it was seldom, if ever, referred to even obliquely, it influenced both of their lives.

They became further apart, too, for that summer marked the time when their carefree childhood really ended and they both, in different ways, faced the prospect of becoming men. Pauli, genial and anxious to please, did not relish the prospect of going to cadet school and becoming a member of the Prussian Officer Corps, and yet he accepted it, as he accepted everything his parents proposed, as the best possible course for someone of his rather limited abilities.

Peter’s ambition to be an explorer was, like so many of Peter’s ambitions, a way of describing his desire for freedom and independence. Peter was strong and respected strength, and his narrow escape from drowning made him see that strength came not only from intellect or muscles: strength could come from being in the right place at the right time. Sometimes strength could come from loving someone enough to jump into the sea. Peter had always considered his little brother weak, but now he wasn’t so sure.

The last two days at the house near Travemünde were filled with promises and farewells: false promises but sincere farewells. Glenn and his English friend were the first to go. When would the boys come and see Glenn in New York? Soon, very soon.

Then Peter and Paul went off to find Fritz Esser. He was in his boat shed, chopping wood and bundling it for kindling. He said he was sorry that the Valhalla had never been found again. Perhaps it would turn up. Wrecks along this coast reappeared as flotsam on the beaches after the autumn storms. ‘See you next year,’ the boys told him.

‘I won’t be here next year. My papers will come for the army, but I won’t go. I’ll be on the run.’

‘Where will you hide?’ asked Pauli. They had both come to admire the surprising Fritz Esser, but little Pauli hero-worshipped him.

‘People will shelter me,’ said Esser confidently. ‘Liebknecht says the Party will help.’

In the corner of the old hut Peter spied splinters of beautifully finished white hull, just like that of the Valhalla, but he didn’t inspect them closely. Sometimes it is better not to know.

Along the beach they saw the pig man. He grinned and waved a knife at them: they waved back to him and fled.

The boys said goodbye to Omi, too. They heard their father whisper to Mama that by next year Omi might no longer be here. They kissed Omi goodbye and promised to see her next year.

Veronica went up to the little turret room and spent a few minutes alone there. She would never see the Englishman again: she knew that now. She could never go away without the children, and yet she could not bring herself to take them away from her husband.