Winter of the World

1

1933

Carla knew her parents were about to have a row. The second she walked into the kitchen she felt the hostility, like the bone-deep cold of the wind that blew through the streets of Berlin before a February snowstorm. She almost turned and walked back out again.

It was unusual for them to fight. Mostly they were affectionate – too much so. Carla cringed when they kissed in front of other people. Her friends thought it was strange: their parents did not do that. She had said that to her mother, once. Mother had laughed in a pleased way and said: ‘The day after our wedding, your father and I were separated by the Great War.’ She had been born English, though you could hardly tell. ‘I stayed in London while he came home to Germany and joined the army.’ Carla had heard this story many times, but Mother never tired of telling it. ‘We thought the war would last three months, but I didn’t see him again for five years. All that time I longed to touch him. Now I never tire of it.’

Father was just as bad. ‘Your mother is the cleverest woman I have ever met,’ he had said here in the kitchen just a few days ago. ‘That’s why I married her. It had nothing to do with . . .’ He had tailed off, and Mother and he had giggled conspiratorially, as if Carla at the age of eleven knew nothing about sex. It was so embarrassing.

But once in a while they had a quarrel. Carla knew the signs. And a new one was about to erupt.

They were sitting at opposite ends of the kitchen table. Father was sombrely dressed in a dark-grey suit, starched white shirt and black satin tie. He looked dapper, as always, even though his hair was receding and his waistcoat bulged a little beneath the gold watch chain. His face was frozen in an expression of false calm. Carla knew that look. He wore it when one of the family had done something that angered him.

He held in his hand a copy of the weekly magazine for which Mother worked, The Democrat. She wrote a column of political and diplomatic gossip under the name of Lady Maud. Father began to read aloud. ‘ “Our new chancellor, Herr Adolf Hitler, made his debut in diplomatic society at President Hindenburg’s reception.” ’

The President was the head of state, Carla knew. He was elected, but he stood above the squabbles of day-to-day politics, acting as referee. The Chancellor was the premier. Although Hitler had been made chancellor, his Nazi party did not have an overall majority in the Reichstag – the German parliament – so, for the present, the other parties could restrain Nazi excesses.

Father spoke with distaste, as if forced to mention something repellent, like sewage. ‘ “He looked uncomfortable in a formal tailcoat.” ’

Carla’s mother sipped her coffee and looked out of the window to the street, as if interested in the people hurrying to work in scarves and gloves. She, too, was pretending to be calm, but Carla knew that she was just waiting for her moment.

The maid, Ada, was standing at the counter in an apron, slicing cheese. She put a plate in front of Father, but he ignored it. ‘ “Herr Hitler was evidently charmed by Elisabeth Cerruti, the cultured wife of the Italian ambassador, in a rose-pink velvet gown trimmed with sable.” ’

Mother always wrote about what people were wearing. She said it helped the reader to picture them. She herself had fine clothes, but times were hard and she had not bought anything new for years. This morning, she looked slim and elegant in a navy-blue cashmere dress that was probably as old as Carla.

‘ “Signora Cerruti, who is Jewish, is a passionate Fascist, and they talked for many minutes. Did she beg Hitler to stop whipping up hatred of Jews?” ’ Father put the magazine down on the table with a slap.

Here it comes, Carla thought.

‘You realize that will infuriate the Nazis,’ he said.

‘I hope so,’ Mother said coolly. ‘The day they’re pleased with what I write, I shall give it up.’

‘They’re dangerous when riled.’

Mother’s eyes flashed anger. ‘Don’t you dare condescend to me, Walter. I know they’re dangerous – that’s why I oppose them.’

‘I just don’t see the point of making them irate.’

‘You attack them in the Reichstag.’ Father was an elected parliamentary representative for the Social Democratic Party.

‘I take part in a reasoned debate.’

This was typical, Carla thought. Father was logical, cautious, law-abiding. Mother had style and humour. He got his way by quiet persistence; she with charm and cheek. They would never agree.

Father added: ‘I don’t drive the Nazis mad with fury.’

‘Perhaps that’s because you don’t do them much harm.’

Father was irritated by her quick wit. His voice became louder. ‘And you think you damage them with jokes?’

‘I mock them.’

‘And that’s your substitute for argument.’

‘I believe we need both.’

Father became angrier. ‘But Maud, don’t you see how you’re putting yourself and your family at risk?’

‘On the contrary: the real danger is not to mock the Nazis. What would life be like for our children if Germany became a Fascist state?’

This kind of talk made Carla feel queasy. She could not bear to hear that the family was in danger. Life must go on as it always had. She wished she could sit in this kitchen for an eternity of mornings, with her parents at opposite ends of the pine table, Ada at the counter, and her brother, Erik, thumping around upstairs, late again. Why should anything change?

She had listened to political talk every breakfast-time of her life and she thought she understood what her parents did, and how they planned to make Germany a better place for everyone. But lately they had begun to talk in a different way. They seemed to think that a terrible danger loomed, but Carla could not quite imagine what it was.

Father said: ‘God knows I’m doing everything I can to hold back Hitler and his mob.’

‘And so am I. But when you do it, you believe you’re following a sensible course.’ Mother’s face hardened in resentment. ‘And when I do it, I’m accused of putting the family at risk.’

‘And with good reason,’ said Father. The row was only just getting started, but at that moment Erik came down, clattering like a horse on the stairs, and lurched into the kitchen with his school satchel swinging from his shoulder. He was thirteen, two years older than Carla, and there were unsightly black hairs sprouting from his upper lip. When they were small, Carla and Erik had played together all the time; but those days were over, and since he had grown so tall he had pretended to think that she was stupid and childish. In fact, she was smarter than he, and knew about a lot of things he did not understand, such as women’s monthly cycles.

‘What was that last tune you were playing?’ he said to Mother.

The piano often woke them in the morning. It was a Steinway grand – inherited, like the house itself, from Father’s parents. Mother played in the morning because, she said, she was too busy during the rest of the day and too tired in the evening. This morning, she had performed a Mozart sonata then a jazz tune. ‘It’s called “Tiger Rag”,’ she told Erik. ‘Do you want some cheese?’

‘Jazz is decadent,’ Erik said.

‘Don’t be silly.’

Ada handed Erik a plate of cheese and sliced sausage, and he began to shovel it into his mouth. Carla thought his manners were dreadful.

Father looked severe. ‘Who’s been teaching you this nonsense, Erik?’

‘Hermann Braun says that jazz isn’t music, just Negroes making a noise.’ Hermann was Erik’s best friend; his father was a member of the Nazi Party.

‘Hermann should try to play it.’ Father looked at Mother, and his face softened. She smiled at him. He went on: ‘Your mother tried to teach me ragtime, many years ago, but I couldn’t master the rhythm.’

Mother laughed. ‘It was like trying to get a giraffe to roller-skate.’

The fight was over, Carla saw with relief. She began to feel better. She took some black bread and dipped it in milk.

But now Erik wanted an argument. ‘Negroes are an inferior race,’ he said defiantly.

‘I doubt that,’ Father said patiently. ‘If a Negro boy were brought up in a nice house full of books and paintings, and sent to an expensive school with good teachers, he might turn out to be smarter than you.’

‘That’s ridiculous!’ Erik protested.

Mother put in: ‘Don’t call your father ridiculous, you foolish boy.’ Her tone was mild: she had used up her anger on Father. Now she just sounded wearily disappointed. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about, and neither does Hermann Braun.’

Erik said: ‘But the Aryan race must be superior – we rule the world!’

‘Your Nazi friends don’t know any history,’ Father said. ‘The Ancient Egyptians built the pyramids when Germans were living in caves. Arabs ruled the world in the Middle Ages – the Muslims were doing algebra when German princes could not write their own names. It’s nothing to do with race.’

Carla frowned and said: ‘What is it to do with, then?’

Father looked at her fondly. ‘That’s a very good question, and you’re a bright girl to ask it.’ She glowed with pleasure at his praise. ‘Civilizations rise and fall – the Chinese, the Aztecs, the Romans – but no one really knows why.’

‘Eat up, everyone, and put your coats on,’ Mother said. ‘It’s getting late.’

Father pulled his watch out of his waistcoat pocket and looked at it with raised eyebrows. ‘It’s not late.’

‘I’ve got to take Carla to the Francks’ house,’ Mother said. ‘The girls’ school is closed for a day – something about repairing the furnace – so Carla’s going to spend today with Frieda.’

Frieda Franck was Carla’s best friend. Their mothers were best friends, too. In fact, when they were young, Frieda’s mother, Monika, had been in love with Father – a hilarious fact that Frieda’s grandmother had revealed one day after drinking too much Sekt.

Father said: ‘Why can’t Ada look after Carla?’

‘Ada has an appointment with the doctor.’

‘Ah.’

Carla expected Father to ask what was wrong with Ada, but he nodded as if he already knew, and put his watch away. Carla wanted to ask, but something told her she should not. She made a mental note to ask Mother later. Then she immediately forgot about it.

Father left first, wearing a long black overcoat. Then Erik put on his cap – perching it as far back on his head as it would go without falling off, as was the fashion among his friends – and followed Father out of the door.

Carla and her mother helped Ada clear the table. Carla loved Ada almost as much as she loved her mother. When Carla was little, Ada had taken care of her full-time, until she was old enough to go to school, for Mother had always worked. Ada was not married yet. She was twenty-nine and homely looking, though she had a lovely, kind smile. Last summer, she had had a romance with a policeman, Paul Huber, but it had not lasted.

Carla and her mother stood in front of the mirror in the hall and put on their hats. Mother took her time. She chose a dark-blue felt, with a round crown and a narrow brim, the type all the women were wearing; but she tilted hers at a different angle, making it look chic. As Carla put on her knitted wool cap, she wondered whether she would ever have Mother’s sense of style. Mother looked like a goddess of war, her long neck and chin and cheekbones carved out of white marble; beautiful, yes, but definitely not pretty. Carla had the same dark hair and green eyes, but looked more like a plump doll than a statue. Carla had once accidentally overheard her grandmother say to Mother: ‘Your ugly duckling will grow into a swan, you’ll see.’ Carla was still waiting for it to happen.

When Mother was ready, they went out. Their home stood in a row of tall, gracious town houses in the Mitte district, the old centre of the city, built for high-ranking ministers and army officers such as Carla’s grandfather, who had worked at the nearby government buildings.

Carla and her mother rode a tram along Unter den Linden, then took the S-train from Friedrich Strasse to the Zoo Station. The Francks lived in the south-western suburb of Schöneberg.

Carla was hoping to see Frieda’s brother Werner, who was fourteen. She liked him. Sometimes Carla and Frieda imagined that they had each married the other’s brother, and were next-door neighbours, and their children were best friends. It was just a game to Frieda, but secretly Carla was serious. Werner was handsome and grown-up and not a bit silly like Erik. In the doll’s house in Carla’s bedroom, the mother and father sleeping side by side in the miniature double bed were called Carla and Werner, but no one knew that, not even Frieda.

Frieda had another brother, Axel, who was seven; but he had been born with spina bifida, and had to have constant medical care. He lived in a special hospital on the outskirts of Berlin.

Mother was preoccupied on the journey. ‘I hope this is going to be all right,’ she muttered, half to herself, as they got off the train.

‘Of course it will,’ Carla said. ‘I’ll have a lovely time with Frieda.’

‘I didn’t mean that. I’m talking about my paragraph about Hitler.’

‘Are we in danger? Was Father right?’

‘Your father is usually right.’

‘What will happen to us if we’ve annoyed the Nazis?’

Mother stared at her strangely for a long moment, then said: ‘Dear God, what kind of a world did I bring you into?’ Then she went quiet.

After a ten-minute walk they arrived at a grand villa in a big garden. The Francks were rich: Frieda’s father, Ludwig, owned a factory making radio sets. Two cars stood in the drive. The large shiny black one belonged to Herr Franck. The engine rumbled, and a cloud of blue vapour rose from the tail pipe. The chauffeur, Ritter, with uniform trousers tucked into high boots, stood cap in hand ready to open the door. He bowed and said: ‘Good morning, Frau von Ulrich.’

The second car was a little green two-seater. A short man with a grey beard came out of the house carrying a leather case, and touched his hat to Mother as he got into the small car. ‘I wonder what Dr Rothmann is doing here so early in the morning,’ Mother said anxiously.

They soon found out. Frieda’s mother, Monika, came to the door; she was a tall woman with a mass of red hair. Anxiety showed on her pale face. Instead of welcoming them in, she stood squarely in the doorway as if to bar their entrance. ‘Frieda has measles!’ she said.

‘I’m so sorry!’ said Mother. ‘How is she?’

‘Miserable. She has a fever and a cough. But Rothmann says she’ll be all right. However, she’s quarantined.’

‘Of course. Have you had it?’

‘Yes – when I was a girl.’

‘And Werner has, too – I remember he had a terrible rash all over. But what about your husband?’

‘Ludi had it as a boy.’

Both women looked at Carla. She had never had measles. She realized this meant that she could not spend the day with Frieda.

Carla was disappointed, but Mother was quite shaken. ‘This week’s magazine is our election issue – I can’t be absent.’ She looked distraught. All the grown-ups were apprehensive about the general election to be held next Sunday. Mother and Father both feared the Nazis might do well enough to take full control of the government. ‘Plus my oldest friend is visiting from London. I wonder whether Walter could be persuaded to take a day off to look after Carla?’

Monika said: ‘Why don’t you telephone to him?’

Not many people had phones in their homes, but the Francks did, and Carla and her mother stepped into the hall. The instrument stood on a spindly legged table near the door. Mother picked it up and gave the number of Father’s office at the Reichstag, the parliament building. She got through to him and explained the situation. She listened for a minute, then looked angry. ‘My magazine will urge a hundred thousand readers to campaign for the Social Democratic Party,’ she said. ‘Do you really have something more important than that to do today?’

Carla could guess how this argument would end. Father loved her dearly, she knew, but in all her eleven years he had never looked after her for a whole day. All her friends’ fathers were the same. Men did not do that sort of thing. But Mother sometimes pretended not to know the rules women lived by.

‘I’ll just have to take her to the office with me, then,’ Mother said into the phone. ‘I dread to think what Jochmann will say.’ Herr Jochmann was her boss. ‘He’s not much of a feminist at the best of times.’ She replaced the handset without saying goodbye.

Carla hated it when they fought, and this was the second time in a day. It made the whole world seem unstable. She was much more scared of quarrels than of the Nazis.

‘Come on, then,’ Mother said to her, and she moved to the door.

I’m not even going to see Werner, Carla thought unhappily.

Just then Frieda’s father appeared in the hall, a pink-faced man with a small black moustache, energetic and cheerful. He greeted Mother pleasantly, and she paused to speak politely to him while Monika helped him into a black topcoat with a fur collar.

He went to the foot of the stairs. ‘Werner!’ he shouted. ‘I’m going without you!’ He put on a grey felt hat and went out.

‘I’m ready, I’m ready!’ Werner ran down the stairs like a dancer. He was as tall as his father and more handsome, with red-blond hair worn too long. Under his arm he had a leather satchel that appeared to be full of books; in the other hand he held a pair of ice skates and a hockey stick. He paused in his rush to say: ‘Good morning, Frau von Ulrich’, very politely. Then in a more informal tone: ‘Hello, Carla. My sister’s got the measles.’

Carla felt herself blush, for no reason at all. ‘I know,’ she said. She tried to think of something charming and amusing to say, but came up with nothing. ‘I’ve never had it, so I can’t see her.’

‘I had it when I was a kid,’ he said, as if that was ever such a long time ago. ‘I must hurry,’ he added apologetically.

Carla did not want to lose sight of him so quickly. She followed him outside. Ritter was holding the rear door open. ‘What kind of car is that?’ Carla asked. Boys always knew the makes of cars.

‘A Mercedes-Benz W10 limousine.’

‘It looks very comfortable.’ She caught a look from her mother, half surprised and half amused.

Werner said: ‘Do you want a lift?’

‘That would be nice.’

‘I’ll ask my father.’ Werner put his head inside the car and said something.

Carla heard Herr Franck reply: ‘Very well, but hurry up!’

She turned to her mother. ‘We can go in the car!’

Mother hesitated for only a moment. She did not like Herr Franck’s politics – he gave money to the Nazis – but she was not going to refuse a lift in a warm car on a cold morning. ‘How very kind of you, Ludwig,’ she said.

They got in. There was room for four in the back. Ritter pulled away smoothly. ‘I assume you’re going to Koch Strasse?’ said Herr Franck. Many newspapers and book publishers had their offices in the same street in the Kreuzberg district.

‘Please don’t go out of your way. Leipziger Strasse would be fine.’

‘I’d be happy to take you to the door – but I suppose you don’t want your leftist colleagues to see you getting out of the car of a bloated plutocrat.’ His tone was somewhere between humorous and hostile.

Mother gave him a charming smile. ‘You’re not bloated, Ludi – just a little plump.’ She patted the front of his coat.

He laughed. ‘I asked for that.’ The tension eased. Herr Franck picked up the speaking tube and gave instructions to Ritter.

Carla was thrilled to be in a car with Werner, and she wanted to make the most of it by talking to him, but at first she could not think what to speak about. She really wanted to say: ‘When you’re older, do you think you might marry a girl with dark hair and green eyes, about three years younger than yourself, and clever?’ Eventually she pointed to his skates and said: ‘Do you have a match today?’

‘No, just practice after school.’

‘What position do you play in?’ She knew nothing about ice hockey, but there were always positions in team games.

‘Right wing.’

‘Isn’t it a rather dangerous sport?’

‘Not if you’re quick.’

‘You must be ever such a good skater.’

‘Not bad,’ he said modestly.

Once again, Carla caught her mother watching her with an enigmatic little smile. Had she guessed how Carla felt about Werner? Carla felt another blush coming.

Then the car came to a stop outside a school building, and Werner got out. ‘Goodbye, everyone!’ he said, and ran through the gates into the yard.

Ritter drove on, following the south bank of the Landwehr Canal. Carla looked at the barges, their loads of coal topped with snow like mountains. She felt a sense of disappointment. She had contrived to spend longer with Werner, by hinting that she wanted a lift, then she had wasted the time talking about ice hockey.

What would she have liked to have talked to him about? She did not know.

Herr Franck said to Mother: ‘I read your column in The Democrat.’

‘I hope you enjoyed it.’

‘I was sorry to see you writing disrespectfully about our chancellor.’

‘Do you think journalists should write respectfully about politicians?’ Mother replied cheerfully. ‘That’s radical. The Nazi press would have to be polite about my husband! They wouldn’t like that.’

‘Not all politicians, obviously,’ Franck said irritably.

They crossed the teeming junction of Potsdamer Platz. Cars and trams vied with horse-drawn carts and pedestrians in a chaotic melee.

Mother said: ‘Isn’t it better for the press to be able to criticize everyone equally?’

‘A wonderful idea,’ he said. ‘But you socialists live in a dream world. We practical men know that Germany cannot live on ideas. People must have bread and shoes and coal.’

‘I quite agree,’ Mother said. ‘I could use more coal myself. But I want Carla and Erik to grow up as citizens of a free country.’

‘You overrate freedom. It doesn’t make people happy. They prefer leadership. I want Werner and Frieda and poor Axel to grow up in a country that is proud, and disciplined, and united.’

‘And in order to be united, we need young thugs in brown shirts to beat up elderly Jewish shopkeepers?’

‘Politics is rough. Nothing we can do about it.’

‘On the contrary, you and I are leaders, Ludwig, in our different ways. It’s our responsibility to make politics less rough – more honest, more rational, less violent. If we do not do that, we fail in our patriotic duty.’

Herr Franck bristled.

Carla did not know much about men, but she realized that they did not like to be lectured on their duty by women. Mother must have forgotten to press her charm switch this morning. But everyone was tense. The coming election had them all on edge.

The car reached Leipziger Platz. ‘Where may I drop you?” Herr Franck said coldly.

‘Just here will be fine,’ said Mother.

Franck tapped on the glass partition. Ritter stopped the car and hurried to open the door.

Mother said: ‘I do hope Frieda gets better soon.’

‘Thank you.’

They got out and Ritter closed the door.

The office was several minutes’ walk away, but Mother clearly had not wanted to stay any longer in the car. Carla hoped Mother was not going to quarrel permanently with Herr Franck. That might make it difficult for her to see Frieda and Werner. She would hate that.

They set off at a brisk pace. ‘Try not to make a nuisance of yourself at the office,’ Mother said. The note of genuine pleading in her voice touched Carla, making her feel ashamed of causing her mother worry. She resolved to behave perfectly.

Mother greeted several people on the way: she had been writing her column for as long as Carla could remember, and was well known in the press corps. They all called her ‘Lady Maud’ in English.

Near the building in which The Democrat had its office, they saw someone they knew: Sergeant Schwab. He had fought with Father in the Great War, and still wore his hair brutally short in the military style. After the war he had worked as a gardener, first for Carla’s grandfather and later for her father; but he had stolen money from Mother’s purse and Father had sacked him. Now he was wearing the ugly military uniform of the Storm troopers, the Brownshirts, who were not soldiers but Nazis who had been given the authority of auxiliary policemen.

Schwab said loudly: ‘Good morning, Frau von Ulrich!’ as if he felt no shame at all about being a thief. He did not even touch his cap.

Mother nodded coldly and walked past him. ‘I wonder what he’s doing here,’ she muttered uneasily as they went inside.

The magazine had the first floor of a modern office building. Carla knew a child would not be welcome, and she hoped they could reach Mother’s office without being seen. But they met Herr Jochmann on the stairs. He was a heavy man with thick spectacles. ‘What’s this?’ he said brusquely, speaking around the cigarette in his mouth. ‘Are we running a kindergarten now?’

Mother did not react to his rudeness. ‘I was thinking over your comment the other day,’ she said. ‘About how young people imagine journalism is a glamorous profession, and don’t understand how much hard work is necessary.’

He frowned. ‘Did I say that? Well, it’s certainly true.’

‘So I brought my daughter here to see the reality. I think it will be good for her education, especially if she becomes a writer. She will make a report on the visit to her class. I felt sure you would approve.’

Mother was making this up as she went along, but it sounded convincing, Carla thought. She almost believed it herself. The charm switch had been turned to the On position at last.

Jochmann said: ‘Don’t you have an important visitor from London coming today?’

‘Yes, Ethel Leckwith, but she’s an old friend – she knew Carla as a baby.’

Jochmann was somewhat mollified. ‘Hmm. Well, we have an editorial meeting in five minutes, as soon as I’ve bought some cigarettes.’

‘Carla will get them for you.’ Mother turned to her. ‘There is a tobacconist three doors down. Herr Jochmann likes the Roth-Händle brand.’

‘Oh, that will save me a trip.’ Jochmann gave Carla a one-mark coin.

Mother said to her: ‘When you come back, you’ll find me at the top of the stairs, next to the fire alarm.’ She turned away and took Jochmann’s arm confidentially. ‘I thought last week’s issue was possibly our best ever,’ she said as they went up.

Carla ran out into the street. Mother had got away with it, using her characteristic mixture of boldness and flirting. She sometimes said: ‘We women have to deploy every weapon we have.’ Thinking about it, Carla realized that she had used Mother’s tactics to get a lift from Herr Franck. Perhaps she was like her mother after all. That might be why Mother had given her that curious little smile: she was seeing herself thirty years ago.

There was a queue in the shop. Half the journalists in Berlin seemed to be buying their supplies for the day. At last Carla got a pack of Roth-Händle and returned to the Democrat building. She found the fire alarm easily – it was a big lever fixed to the wall – but Mother was not in her office. No doubt she had gone to that editorial meeting.

Carla walked along the corridor. All the doors were open, and most of the rooms were empty but for a few women who might have been typists and secretaries. At the back of the building, around a corner, was a closed door marked ‘Conference Room’. Carla could hear male voices raised in argument. She tapped on the door, but there was no response. She hesitated, then turned the handle and went in.

The room was full of tobacco smoke. Eight or ten people sat around a long table. Mother was the only woman. They fell silent, apparently surprised, when Carla went up to the head of the table and handed Jochmann the cigarettes and change. Their silence made her think she had done wrong to come in.

But Jochmann just said: ‘Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome, sir,’ she said, and for some reason she gave a little bow.

The men laughed. One said: ‘New assistant, Jochmann?’ Then she knew it was all right.

She left the room quickly and returned to Mother’s office. She did not take off her coat – the place was cold. She looked around. On the desk were a phone, a typewriter, and stacks of paper and carbon paper.

Next to the phone was a photograph in a frame, showing Carla and Erik with Father. It had been taken a couple of years ago on a sunny day at the beach by the Wannsee lake, fifteen miles from the centre of Berlin. Father was wearing shorts. They were all laughing. That was before Erik had started to pretend to be a tough, serious man.

The only other picture, hanging on the wall, showed Mother with the social-democratic hero Friedrich Ebert, who had been the first President of Germany after the war. It had been taken about ten years ago. Carla smiled at Mother’s shapeless, low-waisted dress and boyish haircut: they must have been fashionable at the time.

The bookshelf held social directories, phone books, dictionaries in several languages, and atlases, but nothing to read. In the desk drawer were pencils, several new pairs of formal gloves still wrapped in tissue paper, a packet of sanitary towels, and a notebook with names and phone numbers.

Carla reset the desk calendar to today’s date, Monday 27 February 1933. Then she put a sheet of paper into the typewriter. She typed her full name, Heike Carla von Ulrich. At the age of five she had announced that she did not like the name Heike and she wanted everyone to use her second name, and somewhat to her surprise her family had complied.

Each key of the typewriter caused a metal rod to rise up and strike the paper through an inky ribbon, printing a letter. When by accident she pressed two keys, the rods got stuck. She tried to prise them apart but she could not. Pressing another key did not help: now there were three jammed rods. She groaned: she was in trouble already.

A noise from the street distracted her. She went to the window. A dozen Brownshirts were marching along the middle of the road, shouting slogans: ‘Death to all Jews! Jews go to hell!’ Carla could not understand why they got so angry about Jews, who seemed the same as everyone else apart from their religion. She was startled to see Sergeant Schwab at the head of the troop. She had felt sorry for him when he was sacked, for she knew he would find it hard to get another job. There were millions of men looking for jobs in Germany: Father said it was a depression. But Mother had said: ‘How can we have a man in our house who steals?’

Their chant changed. ‘Smash Jew papers!’ they said in unison. One of them threw something, and a rotten vegetable splashed on the door of a national newspaper. Then, to Carla’s horror, they turned towards the building she was in.

She drew back and peeped around the edge of the window frame, hoping that they could not see her. They stopped outside, still chanting. One threw a stone. It hit Carla’s window without breaking it, but all the same she gave a little scream of fear. A moment later, one of the typists came in, a young woman in a red beret. ‘What’s the matter?’ she said, then she looked out of the window. ‘Oh, hell.’

The Brownshirts entered the building, and Carla heard boots on the stairs. She was scared: what were they going to do?

Sergeant Schwab came into Mother’s office. He hesitated, seeing the two females; then seemed to screw up his nerve. He picked up the typewriter and threw it through the window, shattering the glass. Carla and the typist both screamed.

More Brownshirts passed the doorway, shouting their slogans.

Schwab grabbed the typist by the arm and said: ‘Now, darling, where’s the office safe?’

‘In the file room!’ she said in a terrified voice.

‘Show me.’

‘Yes, anything!’

He marched her out of the room.

Carla started to cry, then stopped herself.

She thought of hiding under the desk, but hesitated. She did not want to show them how scared she was. Something inside her wanted to defy them.

But what should she do? She decided to warn Mother.

She stepped to the doorway and looked along the corridor. The Brownshirts were going in and out of the offices but had not reached the far end. Carla did not know whether the people in the conference room could hear the commotion. She ran along the corridor as fast as she could, but a scream stopped her. She looked into a room and saw Schwab shaking the typist with the red beret, yelling: ‘Where’s the key?’

‘I don’t know, I swear I’m telling the truth!’ the typist cried.

Carla was outraged. Schwab had no right to treat a woman that way. She shouted: ‘Leave her alone, Schwab, you thief!’

Schwab looked at her with hatred in his eyes, and suddenly she was ten times more frightened. Then his gaze shifted to someone behind her, and he said: ‘Get the kid out of the damn way.’

She was picked up from behind. ‘Are you a little Jew?’ said a man’s voice. ‘You look it, with all that dark hair.’

That terrified her. ‘I’m not Jewish!’ she screamed.

The Brownshirt carried her back along the corridor and put her down in Mother’s office. She stumbled and fell to the floor. ‘Stay in here,’ he said, and he went away.

Carla got to her feet. She was not hurt. The corridor was full of Brownshirts now, and she could not get to her mother. But she had to summon help.

She looked out of the smashed window. A small crowd was gathering on the street. Two policemen stood among the onlookers, chatting. Carla shouted at them: ‘Help! Help, police!’

They saw her and laughed.

That infuriated her, and anger made her less frightened. She looked outside the office again. Her gaze lit on the fire alarm on the wall. She reached up and grasped the handle.

She hesitated. You were not supposed to sound the alarm unless there was a fire, and a notice on the wall warned of dire penalties.

She pulled the handle anyway.

For a moment nothing happened. Perhaps the mechanism was not working.

Then there came a loud, harsh klaxon sound, rising and falling, which filled the building.

Almost immediately the people from the conference room appeared at the far end of the corridor. Jochmann was first. ‘What the devil is going on?’ he said angrily, shouting over the noise of the alarm.

One of the Brownshirts said: ‘This Jew Communist rag has insulted our leader, and we’re closing it down.’

‘Get out of my office!’

The Brownshirt ignored him and went into a side room. A moment later there was a female scream and a crash that sounded like a steel desk being overturned.

Jochmann turned to one of his staff. ‘Schneider – call the police immediately!’

Carla knew that would be no good. The police were here already, doing nothing.

Mother pushed through the knot of people and came running along the corridor. ‘Are you all right?’ she cried. She threw her arms around Carla.

Carla did not want to be comforted like a child. Pushing her mother away, she said: ‘I’m fine, don’t worry.’

Mother looked around. ‘My typewriter!’

‘They threw it through the window.’ Carla realized that now she would not get into trouble for jamming the mechanism.

‘We must get out of here.’ Mother snatched up the desk photo then took Carla’s hand, and they hurried out of the room.

No one tried to stop them running down the stairs. Ahead of them, a well-built young man who might have been one of the reporters had a Brownshirt in a headlock and was dragging him out of the building. Carla and her mother followed the pair out. Another Brownshirt came behind them.

The reporter approached the two policemen, still dragging the Brownshirt. ‘Arrest this man,’ he said. ‘I found him robbing the office. You will find a stolen jar of coffee in his pocket.’

‘Release him, please,’ said the older of the two policemen.

Reluctantly, the reporter let the Brownshirt go.

The second Brownshirt stood beside his colleague.

‘What is your name, sir?’ the policeman asked the reporter.

‘I am Rudolf Schmidt, chief parliamentary correspondent of The Democrat.’

‘Rudolph Schmidt, I am arresting you on a charge of assaulting the police.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. I caught this man stealing!’

The policeman nodded to the two Brownshirts. ‘Take him to the station house.’

They grabbed Schmidt by the arms. He seemed about to struggle, then changed his mind. ‘Every detail of this incident will appear in the next edition of The Democrat!’ he said.

‘There will never be another edition,’ the policeman said. ‘Take him away.’

A fire engine arrived and half a dozen firemen jumped out. Their leader spoke brusquely to the police. ‘We need to clear the building,’ he said.

‘Go back to your fire station, there’s no fire,’ said the older policeman. ‘It’s just the Storm troopers closing down a Communist magazine.’

‘That’s no concern of mine,’ the fireman said. ‘The alarm has been sounded, and our first task is to get everyone out, Storm troopers and all. We’ll manage without your help.’ He led his men inside.

Carla heard her mother say: ‘Oh, no!’ She turned and saw that Mother was staring at her typewriter, which lay on the pavement where it had fallen. The metal casing had dropped away, exposing the links between keys and rods. The keyboard was twisted out of shape, one end of the roller had become detached, and the bell that sounded for the end of a line lay forlornly on the ground. A typewriter was not a precious object, but Mother looked as if she might cry.

The Brownshirts and the staff of the magazine came out of the building, herded by firemen. Sergeant Schwab was resisting, shouting angrily: ‘There’s no fire!’ The firemen just shoved him on.

Jochmann came out and said to Mother: ‘They didn’t have time to do much damage – the firemen stopped them. Whoever sounded the alarm did us a great service!’

Carla had been worried that she would be reprimanded for causing a false alarm. Now she realized that she had done exactly the right thing.

She took her mother’s hand. That seemed to jerk Mother out of her momentary fit of grief. She wiped her eyes with her sleeve, an unusual act that revealed how badly shaken she was: if Carla had done that, she would have been told to use her handkerchief. ‘What do we do now?’ Mother never said that – she always knew what to do next.

Carla became aware of two people standing nearby. She looked up. One was a woman about the same age as Mother, very pretty, with an air of authority. Carla knew her, but could not place her. Beside her was a man young enough to be her son. He was slim, and not very tall, but he looked like a movie star. He had a handsome face that would have been almost too pretty except that his nose was flattened and misshapen. Both newcomers looked shocked, and the young man was white with anger.

The woman spoke first, and she used the English language. ‘Hello, Maud,’ she said, and the voice was distantly familiar to Carla. ‘Don’t you recognize me?’ she went on. ‘I’m Eth Leckwith, and this is Lloyd.’

(ii)

Lloyd Williams found a boxing club in Berlin where he could do an hour’s training for a few pennies. It was in a working-class district called Wedding, north of the city centre. He exercised with the Indian clubs and the medicine ball, skipped rope, hit the punch bag, and then put on a helmet and did five rounds in the ring. The club coach found him a sparring partner, a German his own age and size – Lloyd was a welterweight. The German boy had a nice fast jab that came from nowhere and hurt Lloyd several times, until Lloyd hit him with a left hook and knocked him down.

Lloyd had been raised in a rough neighbourhood, the East End of London. At the age of twelve he had been bullied at school. ‘Same thing happened to me,’ his stepfather, Bernie Leckwith, had said. ‘Cleverest boy in school, and you get picked on by the class shlammer.’ Dad was Jewish – his mother had spoken only Yiddish. He had taken Lloyd to the Aldgate Boxing Club. Ethel had been against it, but Bernie had overruled her, something that did not happen often.

Lloyd had learned to move fast and punch hard, and the bullying had stopped. He had also got the broken nose that made him look less of a pretty boy. And he had discovered a talent. He had quick reflexes and a combative streak, and he had won prizes in the ring. The coach was disappointed that he wanted to go to Cambridge University instead of turning professional.

He showered and put his suit back on, then went to a workingmen’s bar, bought a glass of draft beer, and sat down to write to his half-sister, Millie, about the incident with the Brownshirts. Millie was envious of him taking this trip with their mother, and he had promised to send her frequent bulletins.

Lloyd had been shaken by this morning’s fracas. Politics was part of everyday life for him: his mother had been a Member of Parliament, his father was a local councillor in London, and he himself was London Chairman of the Labour League of Youth. But it had always been a matter of debating and voting – until today. He had never before seen an office trashed by uniformed thugs while the police looked on smiling. It was politics with the gloves off, and it had shocked him.

‘Could this happen in London, Millie?’ he wrote. His first instinct was to think that it could not. But Hitler had admirers among British industrialists and newspaper proprietors. Only a few months ago the rogue MP Sir Oswald Mosley had started the British Union of Fascists. Like the Nazis, they had to strut up and down in military-style uniforms. What next?

He finished his letter and folded it, then caught the S-train back into the city centre. He and his mother were going to meet Walter and Maud von Ulrich for dinner. Lloyd had been hearing about Maud all his life. She and his mother were unlikely friends: Ethel had started her working life as a maid in a grand house owned by Maud’s family. Later they had been suffragettes together, campaigning for votes for women. During the war they had produced a feminist newspaper, The Soldier’s Wife. Then they had quarrelled over political tactics and become estranged.

Lloyd could remember vividly the von Ulrich family’s trip to London in 1925. He had been ten, old enough to feel embarrassed that he spoke no German while Erik and Carla, aged five and three, were bilingual. That was when Ethel and Maud had patched up their quarrel.

He made his way to the restaurant, Bistro Robert. The interior was art deco, with unforgivingly rectangular chairs and tables, and elaborate iron lampstands with coloured glass shades; but he liked the starched white napkins standing to attention beside the plates.

The other three were already there. The women were striking, he realized as he approached the table: both poised, well dressed, attractive and confident. They were getting admiring glances from other diners. He wondered how much of his mother’s modish dress sense had been picked up from her aristocratic friend.

When they had ordered, Ethel explained her trip. ‘I lost my parliamentary seat in 1931,’ she said. ‘I hope to win it back at the next election, but meanwhile I have to make a living. Fortunately, Maud, you taught me to be a journalist.’

‘I didn’t teach you much,’ Maud said. ‘You had a natural talent.’

‘I’m writing a series of articles about the Nazis for the News Chronicle, and I have a contract to write a book for a publisher called Victor Gollancz. I brought Lloyd as my interpreter – he’s studying French and German.’

Lloyd observed her proud smile and felt he did not deserve it. ‘My translation skills have not been much tested,’ he said. ‘So far, we’ve mostly met people like you, who speak perfect English.’

Lloyd had ordered breaded veal, a dish he had never even seen in England. He found it delicious. While they were eating, Walter said to him: ‘Shouldn’t you be at school?’

‘Mam thought I would learn more German this way, and the school agreed.’

‘Why don’t you come and work for me in the Reichstag for a while? Unpaid, I’m afraid, but you’d be speaking German all day.’

Lloyd was thrilled. ‘I’d love to. What a marvellous opportunity!’

‘If Ethel can spare you,’ Walter added.

She smiled. ‘Perhaps I can have him back now and again, when I really need him?’

‘Of course.’

Ethel reached across the table and touched Walter’s hand. It was an intimate gesture, and Lloyd realized that the bond between these three was very close. ‘How kind you are, Walter,’ she said.

‘Not really. I can always use a bright young assistant who understands politics.’

Ethel said: ‘I’m not sure I understand politics any more. What on earth is happening here in Germany?’

Maud said: ‘We were doing all right in the mid-twenties. We had a democratic government and a growing economy. But everything was ruined by the Wall Street crash of 1929. Now we’re in the depths of a depression.’ Her voice shook with an emotion that seemed close to grief. ‘You can see a hundred men standing in line for one advertised job. I look at their faces. They’re desperate. They don’t know how they’re going to feed their children. Then the Nazis offer them hope, and they ask themselves: What have I got to lose?’

Walter seemed to think she might be overstating the case. In a more cheerful tone he said: ‘The good news is that Hitler has failed to win over a majority of Germans. In the last election the Nazis got a third of the votes. Nevertheless, they were the largest party, but fortunately Hitler only leads a minority government.’

‘That’s why he demanded another election,’ Maud put in. ‘He needs an overall majority to turn Germany into the brutal dictatorship he wants.’

‘Will he get it?’ Ethel asked.

‘No,’ said Walter.

‘Yes,’ said Maud.

Walter said: ‘I don’t believe the German people will ever actually vote for a dictatorship.’

‘But it won’t be a fair election!’ Maud said angrily: ‘Look what happened to my magazine today. Anyone who criticizes the Nazis is in danger. Meanwhile, their propaganda is everywhere.’

Lloyd said: ‘Nobody seems to fight back!’ He wished that he had arrived a few minutes earlier at the Democrat office that morning, so that he could have punched a few Brownshirts. He realized he was making a fist, and forced himself to open his hand. But the indignation did not go away. ‘Why don’t left-wingers raid the offices of Nazi magazines? Give them a taste of their own medicine!’

‘We must not meet violence with violence!’ Maud said emphatically. ‘Hitler is looking for an excuse to crack down – to declare a national emergency, sweep away civil rights, and put his opponents in jail.’ Her voice took on a pleading note. ‘We must avoid giving him that pretext – no matter how hard it is.’

They finished their meal. The restaurant began to empty out. As their coffee was served, they were joined by the owner, Walter’s distant cousin Robert von Ulrich, and the chef, Jörg. Robert had been a diplomat at the Austrian Embassy in London before the Great War, while Walter was doing the same thing at the German Embassy there – and falling in love with Maud.

Robert resembled Walter, but was more fussily dressed, with a gold pin in his tie, seals on his watch chain, and heavily slicked hair. Jörg was younger, a blond man with delicate features and a cheerful smile. The two had been prisoners of war together in Russia. Now they lived in an apartment over the restaurant.

They reminisced about the wedding of Walter and Maud, held in great secrecy on the eve of the war. There had been no guests, but Robert and Ethel had been best man and bridesmaid. Ethel said: ‘We had champagne at the hotel, then I tactfully said that Robert and I would leave, and Walter –’ she suppressed a fit of giggles – ‘Walter said: “Oh, I assumed we would all have dinner together”!’

Maud chuckled. ‘You can imagine how pleased I was about that!’

Lloyd looked into his coffee, feeling embarrassed. He was eighteen and a virgin, and honeymoon jokes made him uncomfortable.

More sombrely, Ethel asked Maud: ‘Do you ever hear from Fitz these days?’

Lloyd knew that the secret wedding had caused a terrible rift between Maud and her brother, Earl Fitzherbert. Fitz had disowned her because she had not gone to him, as head of the family, and asked his permission to marry.

Maud shook her head sadly. ‘I wrote to him that time we went to London, but he refused even to see me. I hurt his pride by marrying Walter without telling him. My brother is an unforgiving man, I’m afraid.’

Ethel paid the bill. Everything in Germany was cheap if you had foreign currency. They were about to get up and leave when a stranger came to the table and, uninvited, pulled up a chair. He was a heavy man with a small moustache in the middle of a round face.

He wore a Brownshirt uniform.

Robert said coldly: ‘What may I do for you, sir?’

‘My name is Criminal Commissar Thomas Macke.’ He grabbed a passing waiter by the arm and said: ‘Bring me a coffee.’

The waiter looked enquiringly at Robert, who nodded.

‘I work in the political department of the Prussian police,’ Macke went on. ‘I am in charge of the Berlin intelligence section.’

Lloyd translated for his mother in a low voice.

‘However,’ said Macke, ‘I wish to speak to the proprietor of the restaurant about a personal matter.’

Robert said: ‘Where did you work a month ago?’

The unexpected question startled Macke, and he replied immediately: ‘At the police station in Kreuzberg.’

‘And what was your job there?’

‘I was in charge of records. Why do you ask?’

Robert nodded as if he had expected something like this. ‘So you have gone from a job as a filing clerk to head of the Berlin intelligence section. Congratulations on your rapid promotion.’ He turned to Ethel. ‘When Hitler became Chancellor at the end of January, his henchman Hermann Göring took the role of Interior Minister of Prussia – in charge of the largest police force in the world. Since then, Göring has been firing policemen wholesale and replacing them with Nazis.’ He turned back to Macke and said sarcastically: ‘However, in the case of our surprise guest I’m sure the promotion was purely on merit.’

Macke flushed, but kept his temper. ‘As I said, I wish to speak to the proprietor about something personal.’

‘Please come and see me in the morning. Would ten o’clock suit you?’

Macke ignored this suggestion. ‘My brother is in the restaurant business,’ he ploughed on.

‘Ah! Perhaps I know him. Macke is the name? What kind of establishment does he run?’

‘A small place for working men in Friedrichshain.’

‘Ah. Then it isn’t likely that I have met him.’

Lloyd was not sure that it was wise for Robert to be so waspish. Macke was rude, and did not deserve kindness, but he could probably make serious trouble.

Macke went on: ‘My brother would like to buy this restaurant.’

‘Your brother wants to move up in the world, as you have.’

‘We are prepared to offer you twenty thousand marks, payable over two years.’

Jörg burst out laughing.

Robert said: ‘Permit me to explain something to you, Commissar. I am an Austrian count. Twenty years ago, I had a castle and a large country estate in Hungary where my mother and sister lived. In the war I lost my family, my castle, my lands, and even my country, which was . . . miniaturized.’ His tone of amused sarcasm had gone, and his voice became gruff with emotion. ‘I came to Berlin with nothing but the address of Walter von Ulrich, my distant cousin. Nevertheless, I managed to open this restaurant.’ He swallowed. ‘It is all I have.’ He paused, and drank some coffee. The others around the table were silent. He regained his poise, and something of his superior tone of voice. ‘Even if you offered a generous price – which you have not – I would still refuse, because I would be selling my whole life. I have no wish to be rude to you, even though you have behaved unpleasantly. But my restaurant is not for sale at any price.’ He stood up and held out his hand to shake. ‘Goodnight, Commissar Macke.’

Macke automatically shook hands, then looked as if he regretted it. He stood up, clearly angry. His fat face was a purplish colour. ‘We will talk again,’ he said, and he walked out.

‘What an oaf,’ said Jörg.

Walter said to Ethel: ‘You see what we have to put up with? Just because he wears that uniform, he can do anything he likes!’

What had bothered Lloyd was Macke’s confidence. He had seemed to feel sure that he could buy the restaurant at the price he named. He reacted to Robert’s refusal as if it was no more than a temporary setback. Were the Nazis already so powerful?

This was the kind of thing Oswald Mosley and his British Fascists wanted – a country in which the rule of law was replaced by bullying and beating. How could people be so damn stupid?

They put on their coats and hats and said goodnight to Robert and Jörg. As soon as they stepped outside, Lloyd smelled smoke – not tobacco, but something else. The four of them got into Walter’s car, a BMW Dixi 3/15, which Lloyd knew was a German-manufactured Austin Seven.

As they drove through the Tiergarten park, two fire engines overtook them, bells clanging. ‘I wonder where the fire is,’ said Walter.

A moment later, they saw the glow of flames through the trees. Maud said: ‘It seems to be near the Reichstag.’

Walter’s tone changed. ‘We’d better take a look,’ he said worriedly, and he made a sudden turn.

The smell of smoke grew stronger. Over the tops of the trees Lloyd could see flames shooting skywards. ‘It’s a big fire,’ he said.

They emerged from the park on to the Königs Platz, the broad plaza between the Reichstag building and the Kroll Opera House opposite. The Reichstag was ablaze. Red and yellow light danced behind the classical rows of windows. Flame and smoke jetted up through the central dome. ‘Oh, no!’ said Walter, and to Lloyd he sounded stricken with grief. ‘Oh, God in heaven, no.’

He stopped the car and they all got out.

‘This is a catastrophe,’ said Walter.

Ethel said: ‘Such a beautiful old building.’

‘I don’t care about the building,’ Walter said surprisingly. ‘It’s our democracy that’s on fire.’

A small crowd watched from a distance of about fifty yards. In front of the building, fire engines were lined up, their hoses already playing on the flames, water jetting in through broken windows. A handful of policemen stood around doing nothing. Walter spoke to one of them. ‘I am a Reichstag deputy,’ he said. ‘When did this start?’

‘An hour ago,’ the policeman said. ‘We’ve got one of them that did it – a man with nothing on but his trousers! He used his clothes to start the fire.’

‘You should put up a rope cordon,’ Walter said with authority. ‘Keep people at a safe distance.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said the policeman, and went off.

Lloyd slipped away from the others and moved nearer to the building. The firemen were bringing the blaze under control: there was less flame and more smoke. He walked past the fire engines and approached a window. It did not seem very dangerous, and anyway his curiosity overcame his sense of self-preservation – as usual.

When he peered through a window he saw that the destruction was severe: walls and ceilings had collapsed into piles of rubble. As well as firemen he saw civilians in coats – presumably Reichstag officials – moving around in the debris, assessing the damage. Lloyd went to the entrance and climbed the steps.

Two black Mercedes cars roared up just as the police were erecting their cordon. Lloyd looked on with interest. Out of the second car jumped a man in a light-coloured trench coat and a floppy black hat. He had a narrow moustache under his nose. Lloyd realized that he was looking at the new Chancellor, Adolf Hitler.

Behind Hitler followed a taller man in the black uniform of the Schutzstaffel, the SS, his personal bodyguard. Limping after them came the Jew-hating propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels. Lloyd recognized them from newspaper photographs. He was so fascinated to see them close up that he forgot to be horrified.

Hitler ran up the steps two at a time, heading directly towards Lloyd. On impulse, Lloyd pushed open the big door and held it wide for the Chancellor. With a nod to him, Hitler walked in, and his entourage followed.

Lloyd joined them. No one spoke to him. Hitler’s people seemed to assume he was one of the Reichstag staff, and vice versa.

There was a foul smell of wet ashes. Hitler and his party stepped over charred beams and hosepipes, treading in mucky puddles. In the entrance hall stood Hermann Göring, a camel-hair coat covering his huge belly, his hat turned up in front, Potsdam-fashion. This was the man who was packing the police force with Nazis, Lloyd thought, recalling the conversation in the restaurant.

As soon as Göring saw Hitler he shouted: ‘This is the beginning of the Communist uprising! Now they’ll strike out! There’s not a minute to waste!’

Lloyd felt weirdly as if he were in the audience at the theatre, and these powerful men were being played by actors.

Hitler was even more histrionic than Göring. ‘There will be no mercy now!’ he shrieked. He sounded as if he was addressing a stadium. ‘Anyone who stands in our way will be butchered.’ He trembled as he worked himself up into a fury. ‘Every Communist functionary will be shot where he is found. The Communist deputies to the Reichstag must be hanged this very night.’ He looked as if he would burst.

But there was something artificial about it all. Hitler’s hatred seemed real, but the outburst was also a performance, put on for the benefit of those around him, his own people and others. He was an actor, feeling a genuine emotion but amplifying it for the audience. And it was working, Lloyd saw: everyone within earshot was staring, mesmerized.

Göring said: ‘My Führer, this is my chief of political police, Rudolf Diels.’ He indicated a slim, dark-haired man at his side. ‘He has already arrested one of the perpetrators.’

Diels was not hysterical. Calmly he said: ‘Marinus van der Lubbe, a Dutch construction worker.’

‘And a Communist!’ Göring said triumphantly.

Diels said: ‘Expelled from the Dutch Communist Party for starting fires.’

‘I knew it!’ said Hitler.

Lloyd saw that Hitler was determined to blame the Communists, regardless of the facts.

Diels said deferentially: ‘From my first interrogation of the man, I have to say that it is clear that he is a lunatic, working alone.’

‘Nonsense!’ Hitler cried. ‘This was planned long in advance. But they miscalculated! They don’t understand that the people are on our side.’

Göring turned to Diels. ‘The police are on an emergency footing from this moment,’ he said. ‘We have lists of Communists – Reichstag deputies, local government elected representatives, Communist Party organizers and activists. Arrest them all – tonight! Firearms should be used ruthlessly. Interrogate them without mercy.’

‘Yes, Minister,’ said Diels.

Lloyd realized that Walter had been right to worry. This was the pretext the Nazis had been looking for. They were not going to listen to anyone who said that the fire had been started by a lone madman. They wanted a Communist plot so that they could announce a crackdown.

Göring looked down with distaste at the muck on his shoes. ‘My official residence is only a minute away, but it is fortunately unaffected by the fire, my Führer,’ he said. ‘Perhaps we should adjourn there?’

‘Yes. We have much to discuss.’

Lloyd held the door and they all went out. As they drove away, he stepped over the police cordon and rejoined his mother and the von Ulrichs.

Ethel said: ‘Lloyd! Where have you been? I was worried sick!’

‘I went inside,’ he said.

‘What? How?’

‘No one stopped me. It’s all chaos and confusion.’

His mother threw her hands in the air. ‘He has no sense of danger,’ she said.

‘I met Adolf Hitler.’

Walter said: ‘Did he say anything?’

‘He’s blaming the Communists for the fire. There’s going to be a purge.’

‘God help us,’ said Walter.

(iii)

Thomas Macke was still smarting from the sarcasm of Robert von Ulrich. ‘Your brother wants to move up in the world, as you have,’ von Ulrich had said.

Macke wished he had thought to reply: ‘And why should we not? We are as good as you, you arrogant popinjay.’ Now he yearned for revenge. But for a few days he was too busy to do anything about it.

The headquarters of the Prussian secret police were in a large, elegant building of classical architecture at No. 8 Prinz Albrecht Strasse in the government quarter. Macke felt proud every time he walked through the door.

It was a hectic time. Four thousand Communists had been arrested within twenty-four hours of the Reichstag fire, and more were being rounded up every hour. Germany was being cleansed of a plague, and to Macke the Berlin air already tasted purer.

But the police files were not up to date. People had moved house, elections had been lost and won, old men had died and young men had taken their places. Macke was in charge of a group updating the records, finding new names and addresses.

He was good at this. He liked registers, directories, street maps, news clippings, any kind of list. His talents had not been valued at the Kreuzberg police station, where criminal intelligence was simply beating up suspects until they named names. He was hoping to be better appreciated here.

Not that he had any problem with beating up suspects. In his office at the back of the building he could hear the screams of men and women being tortured in the basement, but it did not bother him. They were traitors, subversives and revolutionaries. They had ruined Germany with their strikes, and they would do worse if they got the chance. He had no sympathy for them. He only wished Robert von Ulrich was among them, groaning in agony and begging for mercy.

It was eight o’clock in the evening on Thursday 2 March before he got a chance to check on Robert.

He sent his team home, and took a sheaf of updated lists upstairs to his boss, Criminal Inspector Kringelein. Then he returned to the files.

He was in no hurry to go home. He lived alone. His wife, an undisciplined woman, had gone off with a waiter from his brother’s restaurant, saying she wanted to be free. There were no children.

He began to comb the files.

He had already established that Robert von Ulrich had joined the Nazi Party in 1923 and had left two years later. That in itself did not mean much. Macke needed more.

The filing system was not as logical as he would have liked. All in all, he was disappointed in the Prussian police. The rumour was that Göring was equally unimpressed, and planned to detach the political and intelligence departments from the regular force and form them into a new, more efficient secret police force. Macke thought that was a good idea.

Meanwhile, he failed to find Robert von Ulrich in any of the regular files. Perhaps that was not merely a sign of inefficiency. The man might be blameless. As an Austrian count, he was unlikely to be a Communist or a Jew. It seemed the worst that could be said of him was that his cousin Walter was a Social Democrat. That was not a crime – not yet.

Macke now realized that he should have done this research before approaching the man. But he had gone ahead without full information. He might have known that was a mistake. In consequence, he had been forced to submit to condescension and sarcasm. He had felt humiliated. But he would get his own back.

He began to go through miscellaneous papers in a dusty cupboard at the back of the room.

The name of von Ulrich did not appear here either, but there was one document missing.

According to the list pinned to the inside of the cupboard door, there should have been a file of 117 pages entitled ‘Vice Establishments’. It sounded like a survey of Berlin’s nightclubs. Macke could guess why it was not here. It must have been in use recently: all the more decadent night spots had been closed down when Hitler became chancellor.

Macke went back upstairs. Kringelein was briefing uniformed police who were to raid the updated addresses Macke had provided of Communists and their allies.

Macke did not hesitate to interrupt his boss. Kringelein was not a Nazi, and would therefore be afraid to reprimand a Storm trooper. Macke said: ‘I’m looking for the Vice Establishments file.’

Kringelein looked annoyed but made no protest. ‘On the side table,’ he said. ‘Help yourself.’

Macke took the file and returned to his own room.

The survey was five years old. It detailed the clubs then in existence and stated what activities went on in them: gambling, indecent displays, prostitution, sale of drugs, homosexuality and other depravities. The file named owners and investors, club members and employees. Macke patiently read each entry: perhaps Robert von Ulrich was a drug addict or a user of whores.

Berlin was famous for its homosexual clubs. Macke ploughed through the dreary entry on the Pink Slipper, where men danced with men and the floor show featured transvestite singers. Sometimes, he thought, his work was disgusting.

He ran his finger down the list of members, and found Robert von Ulrich.

He gave a sigh of satisfaction.

Looking farther down, he saw the name of Jörg Schleicher.

‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘Let’s see how sarcastic you are now.’

(iv)

The next time Lloyd saw Walter and Maud he found them angrier – and more scared.

It was the following Saturday, 4 March, the day before the election. Lloyd and Ethel were planning to attend a Social Democratic Party rally organized by Walter, and they went to the von Ulrichs’ home in Mitte for lunch beforehand.

It was a nineteenth-century house with spacious rooms and large windows, though much of the furniture was worn. The lunch was plain, pork chops with potatoes and cabbage, but there was good wine with it. Walter and Maud talked as if they were poor, and no doubt they were living more simply than their parents had but, all the same, they were not going hungry.

However they were frightened.

Hitler had persuaded Germany’s aging President, Paul von Hindenburg, to approve the Reichstag Fire Decree, which gave the Nazis authority for what they were already doing, beating and torturing their political opponents. ‘Twenty thousand people have been arrested since Monday night!’ Walter said, his voice shaking. ‘Not just Communists, but people the Nazis call “Communist sympathizers”.’

‘Which means anyone they dislike,’ said Maud.

Ethel said: ‘How can there be a democratic election now?’

‘We must do our best,’ Walter said. ‘If we don’t campaign, it will only help the Nazis.’

Lloyd said impatiently: ‘When will you stop accepting this and start to fight back? Do you still believe it would be wrong to meet violence with violence?’

‘Absolutely,’ said Maud. ‘Peaceful resistance is our only hope.’

Walter said: ‘The Social Democratic Party has a paramilitary wing, the Reichsbanner, but it’s weak. A small group of Social Democrats proposed a violent response to the Nazis, but they were outvoted.’

Maud said: ‘Remember, Lloyd, the Nazis have the police and the army on their side.’

Walter looked at his pocket watch. ‘We must get going.’

Maud said suddenly: ‘Walter, why don’t you cancel?’

He stared at her in surprise. ‘Seven hundred tickets have been sold.’

‘Oh, to blazes with the tickets,’ Maud said. ‘I’m worried about you.’

‘Don’t worry. Seats have been carefully allocated, so there should be no troublemakers in the hall.’

Lloyd was not sure that Walter was as confident as he pretended.

Walter went on: ‘Anyway, I cannot let down people who are still willing to come to a democratic political meeting. They are all the hope that remains to us.’

‘You’re right,’ Maud said. She looked at Ethel. ‘Perhaps you and Lloyd should stay home. It’s dangerous, no matter what Walter says; and this isn’t your country, after all.’

‘Socialism is international,’ Ethel said stoutly. ‘Like your husband, I appreciate your concern, but I’m here to witness German politics first hand, and I’m not going to miss this.’

‘Well, the children can’t go,’ Maud said.

Erik said: ‘I don’t even want to go.’

Carla looked disappointed but said nothing.

Walter, Maud, Ethel and Lloyd got into Walter’s little car. Lloyd was nervous but excited too. He was getting a perspective on politics superior to anything his friends back home had. And if there was going to be a fight, he was not afraid.

They drove east, crossing Alexander Platz, into a neighbourhood of poor houses and small shops, some of which had signs in Hebrew letters. The Social Democratic Party was working-class but, like the British Labour Party, it had a few affluent supporters. Walter von Ulrich was in a small upper-class minority.

The car pulled up outside a marquee that said: ‘People’s Theatre’. A line had already formed outside. Walter crossed the pavement to the door, waving to the waiting crowd, who cheered. Lloyd and the others followed him inside.

Walter shook hands with a solemn young man of about eighteen. ‘This is Wilhelm Frunze, secretary of the local branch of our party.’ Frunze was one of those boys who looked as if they had been born middle-aged. He wore a blazer with buttoned pockets that had been fashionable ten years ago.

Frunze showed Walter how the theatre doors could be barred from the inside. ‘When the audience is seated, we will lock up, so that no troublemakers can get in,’ he said.

‘Very good,’ said Walter. ‘Well done.’

Frunze ushered them into the auditorium. Walter went up on stage and greeted some other candidates who were already there. The public began to come in and take their seats. Frunze showed Maud, Ethel and Lloyd to reserved places in the front row.

Two boys approached. The younger, who looked about fourteen but was taller than Lloyd, greeted Maud with careful good manners and made a little bow. Maud turned to Ethel and said: ‘This is Werner Franck, the son of my friend Monika.’ Then she said to Werner: ‘Does your father know you’re here?’

‘Yes – he said I should find out about social democracy myself.’

‘He’s broad-minded, for a Nazi.’

Lloyd thought this was a rather tough line to take with a fourteen-year-old, but Werner was a match for her. ‘My father doesn’t really believe in Nazism, but he thinks Hitler is good for German business.’

Wilhelm Frunze said indignantly: ‘How can it be good for business to throw thousands of people into jail? Apart from the injustice, they can’t work!’

Werner said: ‘I agree with you. And yet Hitler’s crackdown is popular.’

‘People think they’re being saved from a Bolshevik revolution,’ Frunze said. ‘The Nazi press has them convinced that the Communists were about to launch a campaign of murder, arson and poison in every town and village.’

The boy with Werner, who was shorter but older, said: ‘And yet it is the Brownshirts, not the Communists, who drag people into basements and break their bones with clubs.’ He spoke German fluently with a slight accent that Lloyd could not place.

Werner said: ‘Forgive me, I forgot to introduce Vladimir Peshkov. He goes to the Berlin Boys’ Academy, my school, and he’s always called Volodya.’

Lloyd stood up to shake hands. Volodya was about Lloyd’s age, a striking young man with a frank blue-eyed gaze.

Frunze said: ‘I know Volodya Peshkov. I go to the Berlin Boys’ Academy too.’

Volodya said: ‘Wilhelm Frunze is the school genius – top marks in physics and chemistry and maths.’

‘It’s true,’ said Werner.

Maud looked hard at Volodya and said: ‘Peshkov? Is your father Grigori?’

‘Yes, Frau von Ulrich. He is a military attaché at the Soviet Embassy.’

So Volodya was Russian. He spoke German effortlessly, Lloyd thought with a touch of envy. No doubt that came from living here.

‘I know your parents well,’ Maud said to Volodya. She knew all the diplomats in Berlin, Lloyd had already gathered. It was part of her job.

Frunze checked his watch and said: ‘Time to begin.’ He went up on stage and called for order.

The theatre went quiet.

Frunze announced that the candidates would make speeches and then take questions from the audience. Tickets had been issued only to Social Democratic Party members, he added, and the doors were now closed, so everyone could speak freely, knowing they were among friends.

It was like being a member of a secret society, Lloyd thought. This was not what he called democracy.

Walter spoke first. He was no demagogue, Lloyd observed. He had no rhetorical flourishes. But he flattered his audience, telling them that they were intelligent and well-informed men and women who understood the complexity of political issues.

He had been speaking for only a few minutes when a Brownshirt walked on stage.

Lloyd cursed. How had he got in? He had come from the wings: someone must have opened the stage door.

He was a huge brute with an army haircut. He stepped to the front of the stage and shouted: ‘This is a seditious gathering. Communists and subversives are not wanted in today’s Germany. The meeting is closed.’

The confident arrogance of the man outraged Lloyd. He wished he could get this great oaf in a boxing ring.

Wilhelm Frunze leaped to his feet, stood in front of the intruder, and yelled furiously: ‘Get out of here, you thug!’

The man shoved him in the chest powerfully. Frunze staggered back, stumbled, and fell over backwards.

The audience were on their feet, some shouting in angry protest, some screaming in fear.

More Brownshirts appeared from the wings.

Lloyd realized with dismay that the bastards had planned this well.

The man who had shoved Frunze shouted: ‘Out!’ The other Brownshirts took up the cry: ‘Out! Out! Out!’ There were about twenty of them, now, and more appearing all the time. Some carried police nightsticks or improvised clubs. Lloyd saw a hockey stick, a wooden sledgehammer, even a chair leg. They strutted up and down the stage, grinning fiendishly and waving their weapons as they chanted, and Lloyd had no doubt that they were itching to start hitting people.

He was on his feet. Without thinking, he, Werner and Volodya had formed a protective line in front of Ethel and Maud.

Half the audience were trying to leave, the other half shouting and shaking their fists at the intruders. Those attempting to get out were shoving others, and minor scuffles had broken out. Many of the women were crying.

On stage, Walter grasped the lectern and shouted: ‘Everyone try to keep calm, please! There is no need for disorder!’ Most people could not hear and the rest ignored him.

The Brownshirts began to jump off the stage and to wade into the audience. Lloyd took his mother’s arm, and Werner did the same with Maud. They moved towards the nearest exit in a group. But all the doors were already jammed with knots of panicking people trying to leave. That made no difference to the Brownshirts, who kept yelling at people to get out.

The attackers were mostly able-bodied, whereas the audience included women and old men. Lloyd wanted to fight back, but it was not a good idea.

A man in a Great War steel helmet shouldered Lloyd, and he lurched forward and bumped into his mother. He resisted the temptation to turn and confront the man. His priority was to protect Mam.

A spotty-faced boy carrying a truncheon put a hand on Werner’s back and shoved energetically, yelling: ‘Get out, get out!’ Werner turned quickly and took a step towards him. ‘Don’t touch me, you Fascist pig,’ he said. The Brownshirt suddenly stopped dead and looked scared, as if he had not been expecting resistance.

Werner turned away again, concentrating, like Lloyd, on getting the two women to safety. But the huge man had heard the exchange and yelled: ‘Who are you calling a pig?’ He lashed out at Werner, hitting the back of his head with his fist. His aim was poor and it was a glancing blow, but all the same Werner cried out and staggered forward.

Volodya stepped between them and hit the big man in the face, twice. Lloyd admired Volodya’s rapid one-two, but turned his attention back to his task. Seconds later the four of them reached the doorway. Lloyd and Werner managed to help the women out into the theatre foyer. Here the crush eased and the violence stopped – there were no Brownshirts.

Seeing the women safe, Lloyd and Werner looked back into the auditorium.

Volodya was fighting the big man bravely, but he was in trouble. He kept punching the man’s face and body, but his blows had little effect, and the man shook his head as if pestered by an insect. The Brownshirt was heavy-footed and slow-moving, but he hit Volodya in the chest and then the head, and Volodya staggered. The big man drew back his fist for a massive punch. Lloyd was afraid it could kill Volodya.

Then Walter took a flying leap off the stage and landed on the big man’s back. Lloyd wanted to cheer. They fell to the floor in a blur of arms and legs, and Volodya was saved, for the moment.

The spotty youth who had shoved Werner was now harassing the people trying to leave, hitting their backs and heads with his truncheon. ‘You fucking coward!’ Lloyd yelled, stepping forward. But Werner was ahead of him. He shoved past Lloyd and grabbed the truncheon, trying to wrestle it away from the youth.

The older man in the steel helmet joined in and hit Werner with a pickaxe handle. Lloyd stepped forward and hit the older man with a straight right. The blow landed perfectly, next to the man’s left eye.

But he was a war veteran, and not easily discouraged. He swung around and lashed out at Lloyd with his club. Lloyd dodged the blow easily and hit him twice more. He connected in the same area, around the man’s eyes, breaking the skin. But the helmet protected the man’s head, and Lloyd could not land a left hook, his knockout punch. He ducked a swing of the pickaxe handle and hit the man’s face again, and the man backed away, blood pouring from cuts around his eyes.

Lloyd looked around. He saw that the Social Democrats were fighting back now, and he got a jolt of savage pleasure. Most of the audience had passed through the doors, leaving mainly young men in the auditorium, and they were coming forward, clambering over the theatre seats to get at the Brownshirts; and there were dozens of them.

Something hard struck his head from behind. It was so painful that he roared. He turned to see a boy of his own age holding a length of timber, raising it to strike again. Lloyd closed with him and hit him hard in the stomach twice, first with his right fist then with his left. The boy gasped for breath and dropped the wood. Lloyd hit him with an uppercut to the chin and the boy passed out.

Lloyd rubbed the back of his head. It hurt like hell but there was no blood.

The skin on his knuckles was raw and bleeding, he saw. He bent down and picked up the length of timber dropped by the boy.

When he looked around again, he was thrilled to see some of the Brownshirts retreating, clambering up on to the stage and disappearing into the wings, presumably aiming to leave through the stage door by which they had entered.

The big man who had started it all was on the floor, groaning and holding his knee as if he had dislocated something. Wilhelm Frunze stood over him, hitting him with a wooden shovel again and again, repeating at the top of his voice the words the man had used to start the riot: ‘Not! Wanted! In! Today’s! Germany!’ Helpless, the big man tried to roll away from the blows, but Frunze went after him, until two more Brownshirts grabbed the man’s arms and dragged him away.

Frunze let them go.

Did we beat them? Lloyd thought with growing exultation. Maybe we did!

Several of the younger men chased their opponents up on to the stage, but they stopped there and contented themselves with shouting insults as the Brownshirts disappeared.

Lloyd looked at the others. Volodya had a swollen face and one closed eye. Werner’s jacket was ripped, a big square of cloth dangling. Walter was sitting on a front-row seat, breathing hard and rubbing his elbow, but he was smiling. Frunze threw his shovel away, sailing it across the rows of empty seats to the back.

Werner, who was only fourteen, was exultant. ‘We gave them hell, didn’t we?’

Lloyd grinned. ‘Yes, we certainly did.’

Volodya put his arm around Frunze’s shoulders. ‘Not bad for a bunch of schoolboys, eh?’

Walter said: ‘But they stopped our meeting.’

The youngsters stared resentfully at him for spoiling their triumph.

Walter looked angry. ‘Be realistic, boys. Our audience has fled in terror. How long will it be before those people have the nerve to go to a political meeting again? The Nazis have made their point. It’s dangerous even to listen to any party other than theirs. The big loser today is Germany.’

Werner said to Volodya: ‘I hate those fucking Brownshirts. I think I might join you Communists.’

Volodya looked at him hard with those intense blue eyes and spoke in a low voice. ‘If you’re serious about fighting the Nazis, there might be something more effective you could do.’

Lloyd wondered what Volodya meant.

Then Maud and Ethel came running back into the auditorium, both speaking at the same time, crying and laughing with relief; and Lloyd forgot Volodya’s words and never thought of them again.

(v)

Four days later, Erik von Ulrich came home in a Hitler Youth uniform.

He felt like a prince. He had a brown shirt just like the one worn by Storm troopers, with various patches and a swastika armband. He also had the regulation black tie and black shorts. He was a patriotic soldier dedicated to the service of his country. At last he was one of the gang.

This was even better than supporting Hertha, Berlin’s favourite soccer team. Erik was taken to matches occasionally, on Saturdays when his father did not have a political meeting to attend. That gave him a similar sense of belonging to a great big crowd of people all feeling the same emotions. But Hertha sometimes lost, and he came home disconsolate.

The Nazis were winners.

He was terrified of what his father was going to say.

His parents infuriated him by insisting on marching out of step. All the boys were joining the Hitler Youth. They had sports and singing and adventures in the fields and forests outside the city. They were smart and fit and loyal and efficient.

Erik was deeply troubled by the thought that he might have to fight in battle some day – his father and grandfather had – and he wanted to be ready for that, trained and hardened, disciplined and aggressive.

The Nazis hated Communists, but so did Mother and Father. So what if the Nazis hated Jews as well? The von Ulrichs were not Jewish, why should they care? But Mother and Father stubbornly refused to join in. Well, Erik was fed up with being left out, and he had decided to defy them.

He was scared stiff.

As usual, neither Mother nor Father was at the house when Erik and Carla came home from school. Ada pursed her lips disapprovingly as she served their tea, but she said: ‘You’ll have to clear the table yourselves today – I’ve got a terrible backache, I’m going to lie down.’

Carla looked concerned. ‘Is that what you had to see the doctor about?’

Ada hesitated before replying: ‘Yes, that’s right.’

She was obviously hiding something. The thought of Ada being ill – and lying about it – made Erik uneasy. He would never go as far as Carla and say he loved Ada, but she had been a kindly presence all his life, and he was more fond of her than he liked to say.

Carla was just as concerned. ‘I hope it gets better.’

Lately Carla had become more grown-up, somewhat to Erik’s bewilderment. Although he was two years older, he still felt like a kid, but she acted like an adult half the time.

Ada said reassuringly: ‘I’ll be fine after a rest.’

Erik ate some bread. When Ada left the room, he swallowed and said: ‘I’m only in the junior section, but as soon as I’m fourteen I can move up.’

Carla said: ‘Father’s going to hit the roof! Are you mad?’

‘Herr Lippmann said that Father will be in trouble if he tries to make me leave.’

‘Oh, brilliant,’ said Carla. She had developed a streak of withering sarcasm that sometimes stung Erik. ‘So you’ll get Father into a row with the Nazis,’ she said scornfully. ‘What a great idea. So good for the whole family.’

Erik was taken aback. He had not thought of it that way. ‘But all the boys in my class are members,’ he said indignantly. ‘Except for Frenchy Fontaine and Jewboy Rothmann.’

Carla spread fish paste on her bread. ‘Why do you have to be the same as the others?’ she said. ‘Most of them are stupid. You told me Rudi Rothmann was the cleverest boy in the class.’

‘I don’t want to be with Frenchy and Rudi!’ Erik cried, and to his mortification he felt tears come to his eyes. ‘Why should I have to play with the boys no one likes?’ This was what had given him the courage to defy his father: he could no longer bear to walk out of school with the Jews and the foreigners while all the German boys marched around the playing field in their uniforms.

They both heard a cry.

Erik looked at Carla and said: ‘What was that?’

Carla frowned. ‘It was Ada, I think.’

Then, more distinctly, they heard: ‘Help!’

Erik got to his feet, but Carla was ahead of him. He went after her. Ada’s room was in the basement. They ran down the stairs and into the small bedroom.

There was a narrow single bed up against the wall. Ada was lying there, her face screwed up in pain. Her skirt was wet and there was a puddle on the floor. Erik could hardly believe what he was seeing. Had she pissed herself? It was scary. There were no other grown-ups in the house. He did not know what to do.

Carla was scared, too – Erik could see it in her face – but she was not panicked. She said: ‘Ada, what’s wrong?’ Her voice sounded strangely calm.

‘My waters broke,’ Ada said.

Erik had no idea what that meant.

Nor did Carla. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said.

‘It means my baby is coming.’

‘You’re pregnant?’ Carla said in astonishment.

Erik said: ‘But you’re not married!’

Carla said furiously: ‘Shut up, Erik – don’t you know anything?’

He did know, of course, that women could have babies when they were not married – but surely not Ada!

‘That’s why you went to the doctor last week,’ Carla said to Ada.

Ada nodded.

Erik was still trying to get used to the idea. ‘Do you think Mother and Father know?’

‘Of course they do. They just didn’t tell us. Fetch a towel.’

‘Where from?’

‘The airing cupboard on the upstairs landing.’

‘A clean one?’

‘Of course a clean one!’

Erik ran up the stairs, took a small white towel from the cupboard, and ran down again.

‘That’s not much good,’ Carla said, but she took it and dried Ada’s legs.

Ada said: ‘The baby’s coming soon, I can feel it. But I don’t know what to do.’ She started to cry.

Erik was watching Carla. She was in charge now. It did not matter that he was the older one: he looked to her for leadership. She was being practical and staying calm, but he could tell that she was terrified, and her composure was fragile. She could crack at any minute, he thought.

Carla turned to Erik again. ‘Go and fetch Dr Rothmann,’ she said. ‘You know where his office is.’

Erik was hugely relieved to have been given a task he could manage. Then he thought of a snag. ‘What if he’s out?’

‘Then ask Frau Rothmann what you should do, you idiot!’ Carla said. ‘Get going – run!’

Erik was glad to get out of the room. What was happening there was mysterious and frightening. He went up the stairs three at a time and flew out of the front door. Running was one thing he did know how to do.

The doctor’s surgery was half a mile away. He settled into a fast trot. As he ran he thought about Ada. Who was the father of her baby? He recalled that she had gone to the movies with Paul Huber a couple of times last summer. Had they had sexual intercourse? They must have! Erik and his friends talked about sex a lot, but they did not really know anything about it. Where had Ada and Paul done it? Not in a movie theatre, surely? Didn’t people have to lie down? He was baffled.

Dr Rothmann’s place was in a poorer street. He was a good doctor, Erik had heard Mother say, but he treated a lot of working-class people who could not pay high fees. The doctor’s house had a consulting room and a waiting room on the ground floor, and the family lived upstairs.

Outside was parked a green Opel 4, an ugly little two-seater unofficially called the Tree Frog.

The front door of the house was unlatched. Erik walked in, breathing hard, and entered the waiting room. There was an old man coughing in a corner and a young woman with a baby. ‘Hello!’ Erik called, ‘Dr Rothmann?’

The doctor’s wife stepped out of the consulting room. Hannelore Rothmann was a tall, fair woman with strong features, and she gave Erik a look like thunder. ‘How dare you come to this house in that uniform?’ she said.

Erik was petrified. Frau Rothmann was not Jewish, but her husband was: Erik had forgotten that in his excitement. ‘Our maid is having a baby!’ he said.

‘And so you want a Jewish doctor to help you?’

Erik was taken completely by surprise. It had never occurred to him that the Nazis’ attacks might cause the Jews to retaliate. But suddenly he saw that Frau Rothmann made total sense. The Brownshirts went around shouting: ‘Death to Jews!’ Why should a Jewish doctor help such people?

Now he did not know what to do. There were other doctors, of course, plenty of them, but he did not know where, nor whether they would come out to see a total stranger. ‘My sister sent me,’ he said feebly.

‘Carla’s got a lot more sense than you.’

‘Ada said the waters have broken.’ Erik was not sure what that meant, but it sounded significant.

With a disgusted look, Frau Rothmann went back into the consulting room.

The old man in the corner cackled. ‘We’re all dirty Jews until you need our help!’ he said. ‘Then it’s: “Please come, Dr Rothmann”, and “What’s your advice, Lawyer Koch?” and “Lend me a hundred marks, Herr Goldman”, and—’ He was overcome by a fit of coughing.

A girl of about sixteen came in from the hall. Erik thought she must be the Rothmanns’ daughter, Eva. He had not seen her for years. She had breasts, now, but she was still plain and dumpy. She said: ‘Did your father let you join the Hitler Youth?’

‘He doesn’t know,’ said Erik.

‘Oh, boy,’ said Eva. ‘You’re in trouble.’

He looked from her to the consulting-room door. ‘Do you think your father’s going to come?’ he said. ‘Your mother was awfully cross with me.’

‘Of course he’ll come,’ Eva said. ‘If people are sick, he helps them.’ Her voice became scornful. ‘He doesn’t check their race or politics first. We’re not Nazis.’ She went out again.

Erik felt bewildered. He had not expected this uniform to get him into so much trouble. At school everyone thought it was wonderful.

A moment later, Dr Rothmann appeared. Speaking to the two waiting patients, he said: ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can. I’m sorry, but a baby won’t wait to be born.’ He looked at Erik. ‘Come on, young man, you’d better ride with me, despite that uniform.’

Erik followed him out and got into the passenger seat of the Tree Frog. He loved cars and was desperate to be old enough to drive, and normally he enjoyed riding in any vehicle, watching the dials and studying the driver’s technique. But now he felt as if he were on display, sitting beside a Jewish doctor in his brown shirt. What if Herr Lippmann should see him? The trip was agony.

Fortunately, it was short: in a couple of minutes they were at the von Ulrich house.

‘What’s the young woman’s name?’ Rothmann asked.

‘Ada Hempel.’

‘Ah, yes, she came to see me last week. The baby’s early. All right, take me to her.’

Erik led the way into the house. He heard a baby cry. It had come already! He hurried down to the basement, the doctor following.

Ada lay on her back. The bed was soaked with blood and something else. Carla stood holding a tiny baby in her arms. The baby was covered in slime. Something that looked like thick string ran from the baby up Ada’s skirt. Carla was wide-eyed with terror. ‘What must I do?’ she cried.

‘You’re doing exactly the right thing,’ Dr Rothmann reassured her. ‘Just hold that baby close a minute longer.’ He sat beside Ada. He listened to her heart, took her pulse, and said: ‘How do you feel, my dear?’

‘I’m so tired,’ she said.

Rothmann gave a satisfied nod. He stood up again and looked at the baby in Carla’s arms. ‘A little boy,’ he said.

Erik watched with a mixture of fascination and revulsion as the doctor opened his bag, took out some thread and tied two knots in the cord. While he was doing so he spoke to Carla in a soft voice. ‘Why are you crying? You’ve done a marvellous job. You’ve delivered a baby all on your own. You hardly needed me! You’d better be a doctor when you grow up.’

Carla became calmer. Then she whispered: ‘Look at his head.’ The doctor had to lean towards her to hear. ‘I think there’s something wrong with him.’

‘I know.’ The doctor took out a pair of sharp scissors and cut the cord between the two knots Then he took the naked baby from Carla and held him at arm’s length, studying him. Erik could not see anything wrong, but the baby was so red and wrinkled and slimy that it was hard to tell. However, after a thoughtful moment, the doctor said: ‘Oh, dear.’

Looking more carefully, Erik could see that there was something wrong. The baby’s face was lopsided. One side was normal, but on the other the head seemed dented and there was something strange about the eye.

Rothmann handed the baby back to Carla.

Ada groaned again, and seemed to strain.

When she relaxed, Rothmann reached under her skirt and drew out a lump of something that looked disgustingly like meat. ‘Erik,’ he said. ‘Fetch me a newspaper.’

Erik said: ‘Which one?’ His parents took all the main papers every day.

‘Any one, lad,’ said Rothmann gently. ‘I don’t want to read it.’

Erik ran upstairs and found yesterday’s Vossische Zeitung. When he returned, the doctor wrapped the meaty thing in the paper and put it on the floor. ‘It’s what we call the afterbirth,’ he said to Carla. ‘Best to burn it, later.’

Then he sat on the edge of the bed again. ‘Ada, my dear girl, you must be very brave,’ he said. ‘Your baby is alive, but there may be something wrong with him. We’re going to wash him and wrap him up warmly, then we must take him to the hospital.’

Ada looked frightened. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘I don’t know. We need to have him checked.’

‘Will he be all right?’

‘The hospital doctors will do everything they can. The rest we must leave to God.’

Erik remembered that Jews worshipped the same God as Christians. It was easy to forget that.

Rothmann said: ‘Do you think you could get up and come to the hospital with me, Ada? Baby needs you to feed him.’

‘I’m so tired,’ she said again.

‘Take a minute or two to rest, then. But not much more, because Baby needs to be looked at soon. Carla will help you get dressed. I’ll wait upstairs.’ He addressed Erik with gentle irony. ‘Come with me, little Nazi.’

Erik wanted to squirm. Dr Rothmann’s forbearance was even worse than Frau Rothmann’s scorn.

As they were leaving, Ada said: ‘Doctor?’

‘Yes, my dear.’

‘His name is Kurt.’

‘A very good name,’ said Dr Rothmann. He went out, and Erik followed.

(vi)

Lloyd Williams’s first day working as assistant to Walter von Ulrich was also the first day of the new parliament.

Walter and Maud were struggling frantically to save Germany’s fragile democracy. Lloyd shared their desperation, partly because they were good people whom he had known on and off all his life, and partly because he feared that Britain could follow Germany down the road to hell.

The election had resolved nothing. The Nazis got 44 per cent, an increase but still short of the 51 per cent they craved.

Walter saw hope. Driving to the opening of the parliament, he said: ‘Even with massive intimidation, they failed to win the votes of most Germans.’ He banged his fist on the steering wheel. ‘Despite everything they say, they are not popular. And the longer they stay in government, the better people will get to know their wickedness.’

Lloyd was not so sure. ‘They’ve closed opposition newspapers, thrown Reichstag deputies in jail, and corrupted the police,’ he said. ‘And yet forty-four per cent of Germans approve? I don’t find that reassuring.’

The Reichstag building was badly fire-damaged and quite unusable, so the parliament assembled in the Kroll Opera House, on the opposite side of the Königs Platz. It was a vast complex with three concert halls and fourteen smaller auditoria, plus restaurants and bars.

When they arrived, they had a shock. The place was surrounded by Brownshirts. Deputies and their aides crowded around the entrances, trying to get in. Walter said furiously: ‘Is this how Hitler plans to get his way – by preventing us from entering the chamber?’

Lloyd saw that the doors were barred by Brownshirts. They admitted those in Nazi uniform without question, but everyone else had to produce credentials. A boy younger than Lloyd looked him up and down contemptuously before grudgingly letting him in. This was intimidation, pure and simple.

Lloyd felt his temper beginning to simmer. He hated to be bullied. He knew he could knock the Brownshirt boy down with one good left hook. He forced himself to remain calm, turn away, and walk through the door.

After the fight in the People’s Theatre, his mother had examined the egg-shaped lump on his head and ordered him to go home to England. He had talked her round, but it had been a close thing.

She said he had no sense of danger, but that was not quite right. He did get scared sometimes, but it always made him feel combative. His instinct was to go on the attack, not to retreat. This scared his mother.

Ironically, she was just the same. She was not going home. She was frightened, but she was also thrilled to be here in Berlin at this turning point in German history, and outraged by the violence and repression she was witnessing; and she felt sure she could write a book that would forewarn democrats in other countries about Fascist tactics. ‘You’re worse than me,’ Lloyd had said to her, and she had had no answer.

Inside, the opera house was swarming with Brownshirts and SS men, many of them armed. They guarded every door and showed, with looks and gestures, their hatred and contempt for anyone not supporting the Nazis.

Walter was late for a Social Democratic Party group meeting. Lloyd hurried around the building looking for the right room. Glancing into the debating chamber, he saw that a giant swastika hung from the ceiling, dominating the room.

The first matter to be discussed, when proceedings began that afternoon, was to be the Enabling Act, which would permit Hitler’s cabinet to pass laws without the approval of the Reichstag.

The Act offered a dreadful prospect. It would make Hitler a dictator. The repression, intimidation, violence, torture and murder that Germany had seen in the past few weeks would become permanent. It was unthinkable.

But Lloyd could not imagine that any parliament in the world would pass such a law. They would be voting themselves out of power. It was political suicide.

He found the Social Democrats in a small auditorium. Their meeting had already begun. Lloyd hurried Walter to the room, then he was sent for coffee.

Waiting in the queue, he found himself behind a pale, intense-looking young man dressed in funereal black. Lloyd’s German had become more fluent and colloquial, and he now had the confidence to strike up a conversation with a stranger. The man in black was Heinrich von Kessel, he learned. He was doing the same sort of job as Lloyd, working as an unpaid aide to his father, Gottfried von Kessel, a deputy for the Centre Party, which was Catholic.

‘My father knows Walter von Ulrich very well,’ Heinrich said. ‘They were both attachés at the German embassy in London in 1914.’

The world of international politics and diplomacy was quite small, Lloyd reflected.

Heinrich told Lloyd that a return to the Christian faith was the answer to Germany’s problems.

‘I’m not much of a Christian,’ Lloyd said candidly. ‘I hope you don’t mind my saying so. My grandparents are Welsh Bible-punchers, but my mother is indifferent and my stepfather’s Jewish. Occasionally we go to the Calvary Gospel Hall in Aldgate, mainly because the pastor is a Labour Party member.’

Heinrich smiled and said: ‘I’ll pray for you.’

Catholics were not proselytizers, Lloyd remembered. What a contrast to his dogmatic grandparents in Aberowen, who thought that people who did not believe as they did were wilfully blinding themselves to the gospel, and would be condemned to eternal damnation.

When Lloyd re-entered the Social Democratic Party meeting, Walter was speaking. ‘It can’t happen!’ he said. ‘The Enabling Act is a constitutional amendment. Two thirds of the representatives must be present, which would be 432 out of a possible 647. And two thirds of those present must approve.’

Lloyd added up the numbers in his head as he put the tray down on the table. The Nazis had 288 seats, and the Nationalists who were their close allies had 52, making 340 – nearly 100 short. Walter was right. The Act could not be passed. Lloyd was comforted and sat down to listen to the discussion and to improve his German.

But his relief was short-lived. ‘Don’t be so sure,’ said a man with a working-class Berlin accent. ‘The Nazis are caucusing with the Centre Party.’ That was Heinrich’s lot, Lloyd recalled. ‘That could give them another seventy-four,’ the man finished.

Lloyd frowned. Why would the Centre Party support a measure that would take away all its power?

Walter voiced the same thought more bluntly. ‘How could the Catholics be so stupid?’

Lloyd wished he had known about this before he went for coffee – then he could have discussed it with Heinrich. He might have learned something useful. Damn.

The man with the Berlin accent said: ‘In Italy, the Catholics made a deal with Mussolini – a concordat to protect the Church. Why not here?’

Lloyd calculated that the Centre Party’s support would bring the Nazis’ votes up to 414. ‘It’s still not two thirds,’ he said to Walter with relief.

Another young aide heard him and said: ‘But that doesn’t take into account the Reichstag president’s latest announcement.’ The Reichstag president was Hermann Göring, Hitler’s closest associate. Lloyd had not heard about an announcement. Nor had anyone else, it seemed. The deputies went quiet. The aide went on: ‘He has ruled that Communist deputies who are absent because they are in jail don’t count.’

There was an outburst of indignant protest all around the room. Lloyd saw Walter go red in the face. ‘He can’t do that!’ Walter said.

‘It’s completely illegal,’ said the aide. ‘But he has done it.’

Lloyd was dismayed. Surely the law could not be passed by a trick? He did some more arithmetic. The Communists had 81 seats. If they were discounted, the Nazis needed only two thirds of 566, which was 378. Even with the Nationalists they still did not have enough – but if they won the support of the Catholics they could swing it.

Someone said: ‘This is all completely illegal. We should walk out in protest.’

‘No, no!’ said Walter emphatically. ‘They would pass the Act in our absence. We’ve got to talk the Catholics out of it. Wels must speak to Kaas immediately.’ Otto Wels was the leader of the Social Democratic Party; Prelate Ludwig Kaas the head of the Centre Party.

There was a murmur of agreement around the room.

Lloyd took a deep breath and spoke up. ‘Herr von Ulrich, why don’t you take Gottfried von Kessel to lunch? I believe you two worked together in London before the war.’

Walter laughed mirthlessly. ‘That creep!’ he said.

Maybe the lunch was not such a good idea. Lloyd said: ‘I didn’t realize you disliked the man.’

Walter looked thoughtful. ‘I hate him – but I’ll try anything, by God.’

Lloyd said: ‘Shall I find him and extend the invitation?’

‘All right, give it a try. If he accepts, tell him to meet me at the Herrenklub at one.’

‘Very good.’

Lloyd hurried back to the room into which Heinrich had disappeared. He stepped inside. A meeting was going on similar to the one he had left. He scanned the room, spotted the black-clad Heinrich, met his gaze, and beckoned him urgently.

They both stepped outside, then Lloyd said: ‘They’re saying your party is going to support the Enabling Act!’

‘It’s not certain,’ said Heinrich. ‘They’re divided.’

‘Who’s against the Nazis?’

‘Brüning and some others.’ Brüning was a former chancellor and a leading figure.

Lloyd felt more hopeful. ‘Which others?’

‘Did you call me out of the room to pump me for information?’

‘Sorry, no, I didn’t. Walter von Ulrich wants to have lunch with your father.’

Heinrich looked dubious. ‘They don’t like each other – you know that, don’t you?’

‘I gathered as much. But they’ll put their differences aside today!’

Heinrich did not seem so sure. ‘I’ll ask him. Wait here.’ He went back inside.

Lloyd wondered whether there was any chance this would work. It was a shame Walter and Gottfried were not bosom buddies. But he could hardly believe the Catholics would vote with the Nazis.

What bothered him most was the thought that if it could happen in Germany, it could happen in Britain. This grim prospect made him shiver with dread. He had his whole life in front of him, and he did not want to live it in a repressive dictatorship. He wanted to work in politics, like his parents, and make his country a better place for people such as the Aberowen coal miners. For that he needed political meetings where people could speak their minds, and newspapers that could attack the government, and pubs where men could have arguments without looking over their shoulders to see who was listening.

Fascism threatened all that. But perhaps Fascism would fail. Walter might be able to talk Gottfried around, and prevent the Centre Party supporting the Nazis.

Heinrich came out. ‘He’ll do it.’

‘Great! Herr von Ulrich suggested the Herrenklub at one o’clock.’

‘Really? Is he a member?’

‘I assume so – why?’

‘It’s a conservative institution. I suppose he is Walter von Ulrich, so he must come from a noble family, even if he is a socialist.’

‘I should probably book a table. Do you know where it is?’

‘Just around the corner.’ Heinrich gave Lloyd directions.

‘Shall I book for four?’

Heinrich grinned. ‘Why not? If they don’t want you and me, they can just ask us to leave.’ He went back into the room.

Lloyd left the building and walked quickly across the plaza, passing the burned-out Reichstag building, and made his way to the Herrenklub.

There were gentlemen’s clubs in London, but Lloyd had never been inside one. This place was a cross between a restaurant and a funeral parlour, he thought. Waiters in full evening dress padded about, laying silent cutlery on tables shrouded in white. A head waiter took his reservation and wrote down the name ‘von Ulrich’ as solemnly as if he were making an entry in the Book of the Dead.

He returned to the opera house. The place was getting busier and noisier, and the tension seemed higher. Lloyd heard someone say excitedly that Hitler himself would open the proceedings this afternoon by proposing the Act.

A few minutes before one, Lloyd and Walter walked across the plaza. Lloyd said: ‘Heinrich von Kessel was surprised to learn that you are a member of the Herrenklub.’

Walter nodded. ‘I was one of the founders, a decade or more ago. In those days it was the Juniklub. We got together to campaign against the Versailles Treaty. It’s become a right-wing bastion, and I’m probably the only Social Democrat, but I remain a member because it’s a useful place to meet with the enemy.’

Inside the club Walter pointed to a sleek-looking man at the bar. ‘That’s Ludwig Franck, the father of young Werner, who fought alongside us at the People’s Theatre,’ Walter said. ‘I’m sure he’s not a member here – he isn’t even German-born – but it seems he’s having lunch with his father-in-law, Count von der Helbard, the elderly man beside him. Come with me.’

They went to the bar and Walter performed introductions. Franck said to Lloyd: ‘You and my son got into quite a scrap a couple of weeks back.’

Lloyd touched the back of his head reflexively: the swelling had gone down, but the place was still painful to touch. ‘We had women to protect, sir,’ he said.

‘Nothing wrong with a bit of a punch-up,’ Franck said. ‘Does you lads good.’

Walter cut in impatiently: ‘Come on, Ludi. Busting up election meetings is bad enough, but your leader wants to completely destroy our democracy!’

‘Perhaps democracy is not the right form of government for us,’ said Franck. ‘After all, we’re not like the French or the Americans – thank God.’

‘Don’t you care about losing your freedom? Be serious!’

Franck suddenly dropped his facetious air. ‘All right, Walter,’ he said coldly. ‘I will be serious, if you insist. My mother and I arrived here from Russia more than ten years ago. My father was not able to come with us. He had been found to be in possession of subversive literature, specifically a book called Robinson Crusoe, apparently a novel that promotes bourgeois individualism, whatever the hell that might be. He was sent to a prison camp somewhere in the Arctic. He may—’ Franck’s voice broke for a moment, and he paused, swallowed, and at last finished quietly: ‘He may still be there.’

There was a moment of silence. Lloyd was shocked by the story. He knew that the Russian Communist government could be cruel, in general, but it was quite another thing to hear a personal account, told simply by a man who was clearly still grieving.

Walter said: ‘Ludi, we all hate the Bolsheviks – but the Nazis could be worse!’

‘I’m willing to take that risk,’ said Franck.

Count von der Helbard said: ‘We’d better go in for lunch. I’ve got an afternoon appointment. Excuse us.’ The two men left.

‘It’s what they always say!’ Walter raged. ‘The Bolsheviks! As if they were the only alternative to the Nazis! I could weep.’

Heinrich walked in with an older man who was obviously his father: they had the same thick, dark hair combed with a parting, except that Gottfried’s was shorter and tweeded with silver. Although their features were similar, Gottfried looked like a fussy bureaucrat in an old-fashioned collar, whereas Heinrich was more like a romantic poet than a political aide.

The four of them went into the dining room. Walter wasted no time. As soon as they had ordered, he said: ‘I can’t understand what your party hopes to gain by supporting this Enabling Act, Gottfried.’

Von Kessel was equally direct. ‘We are a Catholic party, and our first duty is to protect the position of the Church in Germany. That’s what people hope for when they vote for us.’

Lloyd frowned in disapproval. His mother had been a Member of Parliament, and she always said it was her duty to serve the people who did not vote for her, as well as those who did.

Walter employed a different argument. ‘A democratic parliament is the best protection for all our churches – yet you’re about to throw that away!’

‘Wake up, Walter,’ Gottfried said testily. ‘Hitler won the election. He has come to power. Whatever we do, he’s going to rule Germany for the foreseeable future. We have to protect ourselves.’

‘His promises are worth nothing!’

‘We have asked for specific assurances in writing: the Catholic Church to be independent of the state, Catholic schools to operate unmolested, no discrimination against Catholics in the civil service.’ He looked enquiringly at his son.

Heinrich said: ‘They promised the agreement would be with us first thing this afternoon.’

Walter said: ‘Weigh the options! A scrap of paper signed by a tyrant, against a democratic parliament – which is better?’

‘The greatest power of all is God.’

Walter rolled his eyes. ‘Then God save Germany,’ he said.

The Germans had not had time to develop faith in democracy, Lloyd reflected as the argument surged back and forth between Walter and Gottfried. The Reichstag had been sovereign for only fourteen years. They had lost a war, seen their currency devalued to nothing, and suffered mass unemployment: to them, the right to vote seemed inadequate protection.

Gottfried proved immovable. At the end of lunch his position was as firm as ever. His responsibility was to protect the Catholic Church. It made Lloyd want to scream.

They returned to the opera house and the deputies took their seats in the auditorium. Lloyd and Heinrich sat in a box looking down.

Lloyd could see the Social Democratic Party members in a group on the far left. As the hour approached, he noticed Brownshirts and SS men placing themselves at the exits and around the walls in a threatening arc behind the Social Democrats. It was almost as if they planned to prevent the deputies leaving the building until they had passed the Act. Lloyd found it powerfully sinister. He wondered, with a shiver of fear, whether he, too, might find himself imprisoned here.

There was a roar of cheering and applause, and Hitler walked in, wearing a Brownshirt uniform. The Nazi deputies, most of them similarly dressed, rose to their feet in ecstasy as he mounted the rostrum. Only the Social Democrats remained seated; but Lloyd noticed that one or two looked uneasily over their shoulders at the armed guards. How could they speak and vote freely if they were nervous even about not joining in the standing ovation for their opponent?

When at last they became quiet, Hitler began to speak. He stood straight, his left arm at his side, gesturing only with his right. His voice was harsh and grating but powerful, reminding Lloyd of both a machine gun and a barking dog. His tone thrilled with feeling as he spoke of the ‘November traitors’ of 1918 who had surrendered when Germany was about to win the war. He was not pretending: Lloyd felt he sincerely believed every stupid, ignorant word he spoke.

The November traitors were a well-worn topic for Hitler, but then he took a new tack. He spoke of the churches, and the important place of the Christian religion in the German state. This was an unusual theme for him, and his words were clearly aimed at the Centre Party, whose votes would determine today’s result. He said that he saw the two main denominations, Protestant and Catholic, as the most important factors for upholding nationhood. Their rights would not be touched by the Nazi government.

Heinrich shot a triumphant look at Lloyd.

‘I’d still get it in writing, if I were you,’ Lloyd muttered.

It was two and a half hours before Hitler reached his peroration.

He ended with an unmistakable threat of violence. ‘The government of the nationalist uprising is determined and ready to deal with the announcement that the Act has been rejected – and with it, that resistance has been declared.’ He paused dramatically, letting the message sink in: voting against the Act would be a declaration of resistance. Then he reinforced it. ‘May you, gentlemen, now take the decision yourselves as to whether it is to be peace or war!’

He sat down to roars of approval from the Nazi delegates, and the session was adjourned.

Heinrich was elated; Lloyd depressed. They went off in different directions: their parties would now hold desperate last-minute discussions.

The Social Democrats were gloomy. Their leader, Wels, had to speak in the chamber, but what could he say? Several deputies said that if he criticized Hitler, he might not leave the building alive. They feared for their own lives, too. If the deputies were killed, Lloyd thought in a moment of cold dread, what would happen to their aides?

Wels revealed that he had a cyanide capsule in his waistcoat pocket. If arrested, he would commit suicide to avoid torture. Lloyd was horrified. Wels was an elected representative, yet he was forced to behave like some kind of saboteur.

Lloyd had started the day with false expectations. He had thought the Enabling Act a crazy idea that had no chance of becoming reality. Now he saw that most people expected the Act to become a reality today. He had misjudged the situation badly.

Was he equally wrong to believe that something like this could not happen in his own country? Was he fooling himself?

Someone asked if the Catholics had made a final decision. Lloyd stood up. ‘I’ll find out,’ he said. He left and ran to the Centre Party’s meeting room. As before, he put his head around the door and beckoned Heinrich outside.

‘Brüning and Ersing are wavering,’ Heinrich said.

Lloyd’s heart sank. Ersing was a Catholic union leader. ‘How can a trade unionist even think about voting for this bill?’ he said.

‘Kaas says the Fatherland is in danger. They all think there will be bloody anarchy if we reject this Act.’

‘There’ll be bloody tyranny if you pass it.’

‘What about your lot?’

‘They think they will all be shot if they vote against. But they’re going to do it anyway.’

Heinrich went back inside and Lloyd returned to the Social Democrats. ‘The diehards are weakening,’ Lloyd told Walter and his colleagues. ‘They’re afraid of a civil war if the Act is rejected.’

The gloom deepened.

They all returned to the debating chamber at six o’clock.

Wels spoke first. He was calm, reasonable and unemotional. He pointed out that life in a democratic republic had been good for Germans, overall, bringing freedom of opportunity and social welfare, and reinstating Germany as a normal member of the international community.

Lloyd noticed Hitler making notes.

At the end Wels bravely professed allegiance to humanity and justice, freedom and socialism. ‘No Enabling Law gives you the power to annihilate ideas that are eternal and indestructible,’ he said, gaining courage as the Nazis began to laugh and jeer.

The Social Democrats applauded, but they were drowned out.

‘We greet the persecuted and oppressed!’ Wels shouted. ‘We greet our friends in the Reich. Their steadfastness and loyalty deserve admiration.’

Lloyd could just make out his words over the hooting and booing of the Nazis.

‘The courage of their convictions and their unbroken optimism guarantee a brighter future!’

He sat down amid raucous heckling.

Would the speech make any difference? Lloyd could not tell.

After Wels, Hitler spoke again. This time his tone was quite different. Lloyd realized that in his earlier speech the Chancellor had only been warming up. His voice was louder now, his phrases more intemperate, his tone full of contempt. He used his right arm constantly to make aggressive gestures – pointing, hammering, clenching his fist, putting his hand on his heart, and sweeping the air in a gesture that seemed to brush all opposition aside. Every impassioned phrase was cheered uproariously by his supporters. Every sentence expressed the same emotion: a savage, all-consuming, murderous rage.

Hitler was also confident. He claimed he had not needed to propose the Enabling Act. ‘We appeal in this hour to the German Reichstag to grant us something we would have taken anyway!’ he jeered.

Heinrich looked worried, and left the box. A minute later Lloyd saw him on the floor of the auditorium, whispering in his father’s ear.

When he returned to the box he looked stricken.

Lloyd said: ‘Have you got your written assurances?’

Heinrich could not meet Lloyd’s eye. ‘The document is being typed up,’ he replied.

Hitler finished by scorning the Social Democrats. He did not want their votes. ‘Germany shall be free,’ he screamed. ‘But not through you!’

The leaders of the other parties spoke briefly. Every one appeared crushed. Prelate Kaas said the Centre Party would support the bill. The rest followed suit. Everyone but the Social Democrats was in favour.

The result of the vote was announced, and the Nazis cheered wildly.

Lloyd was awestruck. He had seen naked power brutally wielded, and it was an ugly sight.

He left the box without speaking to Heinrich.

He found Walter in the entrance lobby, weeping. He was using a large white handkerchief to wipe his face, but the tears kept coming. Lloyd had not seen men cry like that except at funerals.

Lloyd did not know what to say or do.

‘My life has been a failure,’ Walter said. ‘This is the end of all hope. German democracy is dead.’

(vii)

Saturday 1 April was Boycott Jew Day. Lloyd and Ethel walked around Berlin, staring in incredulity, Ethel making notes for her book. The Star of David was crudely daubed on the windows of Jewish-owned shops. Brownshirts stood at the doors of Jewish-owned department stores, intimidating people who wanted to go in. Jewish lawyers and doctors were picketed. Lloyd happened to see a couple of Brownshirts stopping patients going in to see the von Ulrichs’ family physician, Dr Rothmann, but then a hard-handed coal-heaver with a sprained ankle told the Brownshirts to fuck off out of it, and they went in search of easier prey. ‘How can people be so mean to each other?’ Ethel said.

Lloyd was thinking of the stepfather he loved. Bernie Leckwith was Jewish. If Fascism came to Britain, Bernie would be the target of this kind of hatred. The thought made Lloyd shudder.

A sort of wake was held at Bistro Robert that evening. Apparently no one had organized it, but by eight o’clock the place was full of Social Democrats, Maud’s journalistic colleagues, and Robert’s theatrical friends. The more optimistic among them said that liberty had merely gone into hibernation for the duration of the economic slump, and one day it would awaken. The rest just mourned.

Lloyd drank little. He did not enjoy the effect of alcohol on his brain. It blurred his thinking. He was asking himself what German left-wingers could have done to prevent this catastrophe, and he did not have an answer.

Maud told them about Ada’s baby, Kurt. ‘She’s brought him home from the hospital, and he seems to be happy enough for now. But his brain is damaged and he will never be normal. When he’s older he will have to live in an institution, poor mite.’

Lloyd had heard how the baby had been delivered by eleven-year-old Carla. That little girl had grit.

Commissar Thomas Macke arrived at half past nine, wearing his Brownshirt uniform.

Last time he was here, Robert had treated him as a figure of fun, but Lloyd had sensed the menace of the man. He looked foolish, with the little moustache in the middle of his fat face, but there was a glint of cruelty in his eyes that made Lloyd nervous.

Robert had refused to sell the restaurant. What did Macke want now?

Macke stood in the middle of the dining area and shouted: ‘This restaurant is being used to promote degenerate behaviour!’

The patrons went quiet, wondering what this was about.

Macke raised a finger in a gesture that meant You’d better listen! Lloyd felt there was something horribly familiar about the action, and realized that Macke was mimicking Hitler.

Macke said: ‘Homosexuality is incompatible with the masculine character of the German nation!’

Lloyd frowned. Was he saying that Robert was queer?

Jörg came into the restaurant from the kitchen, wearing his tall chef’s hat. He stood by the door, glaring at Macke.

Lloyd was struck by a shocking thought. Maybe Robert was queer.

After all, he and Jörg had been living together since the war.

Looking around at their theatrical friends, Lloyd noticed that they were all men in pairs, except for two women with short hair . . .

Lloyd felt bewildered. He knew that queers existed, and as a broad-minded person he believed that they should not be persecuted but helped. However, he thought of them as perverts and creeps. Robert and Jörg seemed like normal men, running a business and living quietly – almost like a married couple!

He turned to his mother and said quietly: ‘Are Robert and Jörg really . . . ?’

‘Yes, dear,’ she said.

Maud, sitting next to her, said: ‘Robert in his youth was a menace to footmen.’

Both women giggled.

Lloyd was doubly shocked: not only was Robert queer, but Ethel and Maud thought it a matter for light-hearted banter.

Macke said: ‘This establishment is now closed!’

Robert said: ‘You have no right!’

Macke could not close the place on his own, Lloyd thought; then he remembered how the Brownshirts had crowded on to the stage at the People’s Theatre. He looked towards the entrance – and was aghast to see Brownshirts pushing through the door.

They went around the tables knocking over bottles and glasses. Some customers sat motionless and watched; others got to their feet. Several men shouted and a woman screamed.

Walter stood up and spoke loudly but calmly. ‘We should all leave quietly,’ he said. ‘There’s no need for any rough stuff. Everybody just get your coats and hats and go home.’

The customers began to leave, some trying to get their coats, others just fleeing. Walter and Lloyd ushered Maud and Ethel towards the door. The till was near the exit, and Lloyd saw a Brownshirt open it and begin stuffing money into his pockets.

Until then Robert had been standing still, watching miserably as a night’s business hurried out of the door; but this was too much. He gave a shout of protest and shoved the Brownshirt away from the till.

The Brownshirt punched him, knocking him to the floor, and began to kick him as he lay there. Another Brownshirt joined in.

Lloyd leaped to Robert’s rescue. He heard his mother shout ‘No!’ as he shoved the Brownshirts aside. Jörg was almost as quick, and the two of them bent to help Robert up.

They were immediately attacked by several more Brownshirts. Lloyd was punched and kicked, and something heavy hit him over the head. As he cried out in pain he thought: No, not again.

He turned on his attackers, punching with his left and right, making every blow connect hard, trying to punch through the target as he had been taught. He knocked two men down, then he was grabbed from behind and thrown off balance. A moment later he was on the floor with two men holding him down while a third kicked him.

Then he was rolled over on to his front, his arms were pulled behind his back, and he felt metal on his wrists. He had been handcuffed for the first time in his life. He felt a new kind of fear. This was not just another rough-house. He had been beaten and kicked, but worse was in store.

‘Get up,’ someone told him in German.

He struggled to his feet. His head hurt. Robert and Jörg were also in handcuffs, he saw. Robert’s mouth was bleeding and Jörg had one closed eye. Half a dozen Brownshirts were guarding them. The rest were drinking from the glasses and bottles left on the tables, or standing at the dessert cart stuffing their faces with pastries.

All the customers seemed to have gone. Lloyd felt relieved that his mother had got away.

The restaurant door opened and Walter came back in. ‘Commissar Macke,’ he said, displaying a typical politician’s facility for remembering names. With as much authority as he could muster he said: ‘What is the meaning of this outrage?’

Macke pointed to Robert and Jörg. ‘These two men are homosexuals,’ he said. ‘And that boy attacked an auxiliary policeman who was arresting them.’

Walter pointed to the till, which was open, its drawer sticking out and empty except for a few small coins. ‘Do police officers commit robbery nowadays?’

‘A customer must have taken advantage of the confusion created by those resisting arrest.’

Some of the Brownshirts laughed knowingly.

Walter said: ‘You used to be a law enforcement officer, didn’t you, Macke? You might have been proud of yourself, once. But what are you now?’

Macke was stung. ‘We enforce order, to protect the Fatherland.’

‘Where are you planning to take your prisoners, I wonder?’ Walter persisted. ‘Will it be a properly constituted place of detention? Or some half-hidden unofficial basement?’

‘They will be taken to the Friedrich Strasse Barracks,’ Macke said indignantly.

Lloyd saw a look of satisfaction pass briefly across Walter’s face, and realized that Walter had cleverly manipulated Macke, playing on whatever was left of his professional pride in order to get him to reveal his intentions. Now, at least, Walter knew where Lloyd and the others were being taken.

But what would happen at the barracks?

Lloyd had never been arrested. However, he lived in the East End of London, so he knew plenty of people who got into trouble with the police. Most of his life he had played street football with boys whose fathers were arrested frequently. He knew the reputation of Leman Street police station in Aldgate. Few men came out of that building uninjured. People said there was blood all over the walls. Was it likely that the Friedrich Strasse Barracks would be any better?

Walter said: ‘This is an international incident, Commissar.’ Lloyd guessed he was using the title in the hope of making Macke behave more like an officer and less like a thug. ‘You have arrested three foreign citizens – two Austrians and one Englishman.’ He held up a hand as if to fend off a protest. ‘It is too late to back out now. Both embassies are being informed, and I have no doubt that their representatives will be knocking on the door of our Foreign Office in Wilhelm Strasse within the hour.’

Lloyd wondered whether that was true.

Macke grinned unpleasantly. ‘The Foreign Office will not hasten to defend two queers and a young hooligan.’

‘Our foreign minister, von Neurath, is not a member of your party,’ Walter said. ‘He may well put the interests of the Fatherland first.’

‘I think you will find that he does what he’s told. And now you are obstructing me in the course of my duty.’

‘I warn you!’ Walter said bravely. ‘You had better follow procedure by the book – or there will be trouble.’

‘Get out of my sight,’ said Macke.

Walter left.

Lloyd, Robert and Jörg were marched outside and bundled into the back of some kind of truck. They were forced to lie on the floor while Brownshirts sat on benches guarding them. The vehicle moved off. It was painful being handcuffed, Lloyd discovered. He felt constantly that his shoulder was about to become dislocated.

The trip was mercifully short. They were shoved out of the truck and into a building. It was dark, and Lloyd saw little. At a desk, his name was written in a book and his passport was taken away. Robert lost his gold tie pin and watch chain. At last the handcuffs were removed and they were pushed into a room with dim lights and barred windows. There were about forty other prisoners there already.

Lloyd hurt all over. He had a pain in his chest that felt like a cracked rib. His face was bruised and he had a blinding headache. He wanted an aspirin, a cup of tea and a pillow. He had a feeling it might be some hours before he got any of those things.

The three of them sat on the floor near the door. Lloyd held his head in his hands while Robert and Jörg discussed how soon help would come. No doubt Walter would phone a lawyer. But all the usual rules had been suspended by the Reichstag Fire Decree, so they had no proper protection under the law. Walter would also contact the embassies: political influence was their main hope now. Lloyd thought his mother would probably try to place an international phone call to the British Foreign Office in London. If she could get through, the government would surely have something to say about the arrest of a British schoolboy. It would all take time – an hour at least, probably two or three.

But four hours passed, then five, and the door did not open.

Civilized countries had a law about how long the police could keep someone in custody without formalities: a charge, a lawyer, a court. Lloyd now realized that such a rule was no mere technicality. He could be here for ever.

The other prisoners in the room were all political, he discovered: Communists, Social Democrats, trade union organizers and one priest.

The night passed slowly. None of the three slept. To Lloyd, sleep seemed unthinkable. The grey light of morning was coming through the barred windows when at last the cell door opened. But no lawyers or diplomats came in, just two men in aprons pushing a trolley on which stood a large urn. They ladled out a thin oatmeal. Lloyd did not eat any, but he drank a tin mug of coffee that tasted of burnt barley.

He surmised that the staff on duty overnight at the British embassy were junior diplomats who carried little weight. This morning, as soon as the ambassador himself got up, action would be taken.

An hour after breakfast the door opened again, but this time only Brownshirts stood there. They marched all the prisoners out and loaded them on to a truck, forty or fifty men in one canvas-sided vehicle, packed so tightly that they had to remain standing. Lloyd managed to stay close to Robert and Jörg.

Perhaps they were going to court, even though it was Sunday. He hoped so. At least there would be lawyers, and some semblance of due process. He thought he was fluent enough to state his simple case in German, and he practised his speech in his head. He had been dining in a restaurant with his mother; he had seen someone robbing the till; he had intervened in the resulting fracas. He imagined his cross-examination. He would be asked if the man he attacked was a Brownshirt. He would answer: ‘I didn’t notice his clothing – I just saw a thief.’ There would be laughter in court, and the prosecutor would look foolish.

They were driven out of town.

They could see through gaps in the canvas sides of the truck. It seemed to Lloyd that they had gone about twenty miles when Robert said: ‘We’re in Oranienburg’, naming a small town north of Berlin.

The truck came to a halt outside a wooden gate between brick pillars. Two Brownshirts with rifles stood guard.

Lloyd’s fear rose a notch. Where was the court? This looked more like a prison camp. How could they put people in prison without a judge?

After a short wait, the truck drove in and stopped at a group of derelict buildings.

Lloyd was becoming even more anxious. Last night at least he had the consolation that Walter knew where he was. Today it was possible no one would know. What if the police simply said he was not in custody and they had no record of his arrest? How could he be rescued?

They got out of the truck and shuffled into what looked like a factory of some sort. The place smelled like a pub. Perhaps it had been a brewery.

Once again all their names were taken. Lloyd was glad there was some record of his movements. They were not tied up or handcuffed, but they were constantly watched by Brownshirts with rifles, and Lloyd had a grim feeling that those young men were only too eager for an excuse to shoot.

They were each given a canvas mattress filled with straw and a thin blanket. They were herded into a tumbledown building that once might have been a warehouse. Then the waiting began.

No one came for Lloyd all that day.

In the evening there was another trolley and another urn, this one containing a stew of carrots and turnips. Each man got a bowlful and a piece of bread. Lloyd was now ravenous, not having eaten for twenty-four hours, and he wolfed down his meagre supper and wished for more.

Somewhere in the camp there were three or four dogs that howled all night.

Lloyd felt dirty. This was the second night he had spent in the same clothes. He needed a bath and a shave and a clean shirt. The toilet facilities, two barrels in the corner, were absolutely disgusting.

But tomorrow was Monday. Then there would be some action.

Lloyd fell asleep around four. At six they were awakened by a Brownshirt bawling: ‘Schleicher! Jörg Schleicher! Which one is Schleicher?’

Maybe they were going to be released.

Jörg stood up and said: ‘Me, I’m Schleicher.’

‘Come with me,’ said the Brownshirt.

Robert said in a frightened voice: ‘Why? What do you want him for? Where is he going?’

‘What are you, his mother?’ said the Brownshirt. ‘Lie down and shut your mouth.’ He poked Jörg with his rifle. ‘Outside, you.’

Watching them go, Lloyd asked himself why he had not punched the Brownshirt and snatched the rifle. He might have escaped. And if he had failed, what would they do to him – throw him in jail? But at the crucial moment the thought of escape had not even occurred to him. Was he already taking on the mentality of a prisoner?

He was even looking forward to the oatmeal.

Before breakfast, they were all taken outside.

They stood around a small wire-fenced area a quarter the size of a tennis court. It looked as if it might have been used to store something not very valuable, timber or tyres perhaps. Lloyd shivered in the cold morning air: his overcoat was still at Bistro Robert.

Then he saw Thomas Macke approaching.

The police detective wore a black coat over his Brownshirt uniform. He had a heavy, flat-footed stride, Lloyd noticed.

Behind Macke were two Brownshirts holding the arms of a naked man with a bucket over his head.

Lloyd stared in horror. The prisoner’s hands were tied behind his back, and the bucket was tightly tied with string under his chin so that it would not fall off.

He was a slight, youngish man with blond pubic hair.

Robert groaned: ‘Oh, sweet Jesus, it’s Jörg.’

All the Brownshirts in the camp had gathered. Lloyd frowned. What was this, some kind of cruel game?

Jörg was led into the fenced compound and left there, shivering. His two escorts withdrew. They disappeared for a few minutes then returned, each of them leading two Alsatian dogs.

That explained the all-night barking.

The dogs were thin, with unhealthy bald patches in their tan fur. They looked starved. The Brownshirts led them to the fenced compound.

Lloyd had a vague but dreadful premonition of what was to come.

Robert screamed: ‘No!’ He ran forward. ‘No, no, no!’ He tried to open the gate of the compound. Three or four Brownshirts pulled him away roughly. He struggled, but they were strong young thugs, and Robert was approaching fifty years old: he could not resist them. They threw him contemptuously to the ground.

‘No,’ said Macke to his men. ‘Make him watch.’

They lifted Robert to his feet and held him facing the wire fence.

The dogs were led into the compound. They were excited, barking and slavering. The two Brownshirts handled them expertly and without fear, clearly experienced. Lloyd wondered dismally how many times they had done this before.

The handlers released the dogs and hurried out of the compound.

The dogs dashed for Jörg. One bit his calf, another his arm, a third his thigh. From behind the metal bucket there was a muffled scream of agony and terror. The Brownshirts cheered and applauded. The prisoners looked on in mute horror.

After the first shock, Jörg tried to defend himself. His hands were tied and he was unable to see, but he could kick out randomly. However, his bare feet made little impact on the starving dogs. They dodged and came again, ripping his flesh with their sharp teeth.

He tried running. With the dogs at his heels he ran blindly in a straight line until he crashed into the wire fence. The Brownshirts cheered raucously. Jörg ran in a different direction with the same result. A dog took a chunk out of Jörg’s behind, and they hooted with laughter.

A Brownshirt standing next to Lloyd was shouting: ‘His tail! Bite his tail!’ Lloyd guessed that ‘tail’ in German – der Schwanz – was slang for penis. The man was hysterical with excitement.

Jörg’s white body was now running with blood from multiple wounds. He pressed himself up against the wire, face-first, protecting his genitals, kicking out backwards and sideways. But he was weakening. His kicks became feeble. He was having trouble staying upright. The dogs became bolder, tearing at him and swallowing bloody chunks.

At last Jörg slid to the ground.

The dogs settled down to feed.

The handlers re-entered the compound. With practised motions they reattached the dogs’ leads, pulled them off Jörg, and led them away.

The show was over, and the Brownshirts began to move away, chattering excitedly.

Robert ran into the compound, and this time no one stopped him. He bent over Jörg, moaning.

Lloyd helped him to untie Jörg’s hands and remove the bucket. Jörg was unconscious but breathing. Lloyd said: ‘Let’s get him indoors. You take his legs.’ Lloyd grasped Jörg under the arms and the two of them carried him into the building where they had slept. They put him on a mattress. The other prisoners gathered around, frightened and subdued. Lloyd hoped one of them might announce that he was a doctor, but no one did.

Robert stripped off his jacket and waistcoat, then took off his shirt and used it to wipe the blood. ‘We need clean water,’ he said.

There was a standpipe in the yard. Lloyd went out, but he had no container. He returned to the compound. The bucket was still there on the ground. He washed it out then filled it with water.

When he returned, the mattress was soaked in blood.

Robert dipped his shirt in the bucket and continued to wash Jörg’s wounds, kneeling beside the mattress. Soon the white shirt was red.

Jörg stirred.

Robert spoke to him in a low voice. ‘Be calm, my beloved,’ he said. ‘It’s over now, and I’m here.’ But Jörg seemed not to hear.

Then Macke came in, with four or five Brownshirts following. He grabbed Robert’s arm and pulled him. ‘So!’ he said. ‘Now you know what we think of homosexual perverts.’

Lloyd pointed at Jörg and said angrily: ‘The pervert is the one who caused this to happen.’ Mustering all his rage and contempt, he said: ‘Commissar Macke.’

Macke gave a slight nod to one of the Brownshirts. In a movement that was deceptively casual, the man reversed his rifle and hit Lloyd over the head with the butt.

Lloyd fell to the ground, holding his head in agony.

He heard Robert say: ‘Please, just let me look after Jörg.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Macke. ‘First come over here.’

Despite his pain, Lloyd opened his eyes to see what was happening.

Macke pulled Robert across the room to a rough wooden table. From his pocket he drew a document and a fountain pen. ‘Your restaurant is now worth half of what I last offered you – ten thousand marks.’

‘Anything,’ said Robert, weeping. ‘Leave me to be with Jörg.’

‘Sign here,’ said Macke. ‘Then the three of you can go home.’

Robert signed.

‘This gentleman can be a witness,’ Macke said. He gave the pen to one of the Brownshirts. He looked across the room and met Lloyd’s eye. ‘And perhaps our foolhardy English guest can be the second witness.’

Robert said: ‘Just do what he wants, Lloyd.’

Lloyd struggled to his feet, rubbed his sore head, took the pen, and signed.

Macke pocketed the contract triumphantly and went out.

Robert and Lloyd returned to Jörg.

But Jörg was dead.

(viii)

Walter and Maud came to the Lehrte Station, just north of the burned-out Reichstag, to see Ethel and Lloyd off. The station building was in the neo-Renaissance style and looked like a French palace. They were early, and they sat in a station café while they waited for the train.

Lloyd was glad to be leaving. In six weeks he had learned a lot, about the German language and about politics, but now he wanted to get home, tell people what he had seen, and warn them against the same thing happening to them.

All the same he felt strangely guilty about departing. He was going to a place where the law ruled, the press was free, and it was not a crime to be a social democrat. He was leaving the von Ulrich family to live on in a cruel dictatorship where an innocent man could be torn to pieces by dogs and no one would ever be brought to justice for the crime.

The von Ulrichs looked crushed; Walter even more than Maud. They were like people who have heard bad news, or suffered a death in the family. They seemed unable to think much about anything other than the catastrophe that had happened to them.

Lloyd had been released with profuse apologies from the German Foreign Ministry, and an explanatory statement that was abject yet at the same time mendacious, implying that he had got into a brawl through his own foolishness and then had been held prisoner by an administrative error for which the authorities were deeply sorry.

Walter said: ‘I’ve had a telegram from Robert. He’s arrived safely in London.’

As an Austrian citizen Robert had been able to leave Germany without much difficulty. Getting his money out had been more tricky. Walter had demanded that Macke pay the money to a bank in Switzerland. At first Macke had said that was impossible, but Walter had put pressure on him, threatening to challenge the sale in court, saying that Lloyd was prepared to testify that the contract had been signed under duress; and in the end Macke had pulled some strings.

‘I’m glad Robert got out,’ Lloyd said. He would be even happier when he himself was safe in London. His head was still tender and he got a pain in his ribs every time he turned over in bed.

Ethel said to Maud: ‘Why don’t you come to London? Both of you. The whole family, I mean.’

Walter looked at Maud. ‘Perhaps we should,’ he said. But Lloyd could tell that he did not really mean it.

‘You’ve done your best,’ Ethel said. ‘You’ve fought bravely. But the other side won.’

Maud said: ‘It’s not over yet.’

‘But you’re in danger.’

‘So is Germany.’

‘If you came to live in London, Fitz might soften his attitude, and help you.’

Earl Fitzherbert was one of the wealthiest men in Britain, Lloyd knew, because of the coal mines beneath his land in South Wales.

‘He wouldn’t help me,’ Maud said. ‘Fitz doesn’t relent. I know that, and so do you.’

‘You’re right,’ Ethel said. Lloyd wondered how she could be so sure, but he did not get a chance to ask. Ethel went on: ‘Well, you could easily get a job on a London newspaper, with your experience.’

Walter said: ‘And what would I do in London?’

‘I don’t know,’ Ethel said. ‘What are you going to do here? There’s not much point in being an elected representative in an impotent parliament.’ She was being brutally frank, Lloyd felt, but characteristically she was saying what had to be said.

Lloyd sympathized, but felt that the von Ulrichs should stay. ‘I know it will be hard,’ he said. ‘But if decent people flee from Fascism it will spread all the faster.’

‘It’s spreading anyway,’ his mother rejoined.

Maud startled them all by saying vehemently: ‘I will not go. I absolutely refuse to leave Germany.’

They all stared at her.

‘I’m German, and have been for fourteen years,’ she said. ‘This is my country now.’

‘But you were born English,’ said Ethel.

‘A country is mostly the people in it,’ Maud said. ‘I don’t love England. My parents died a long time ago, and my brother has disowned me. I love Germany. For me, Germany is my wonderful husband, Walter; my misguided son, Erik; my alarmingly capable daughter, Carla; our maid, Ada, and her disabled son; my friend Monika and her family; my journalistic colleagues . . . I’m staying, to fight the Nazis.’

‘You’ve already done more than your share,’ Ethel said gently.

Maud’s tone became emotional. ‘My husband has dedicated himself, his life, his entire being to making this country free and prosperous. I will not be the cause of his giving up his life’s work. If he loses that, he loses his soul.’

Ethel pushed the point in a way that only an old friend could. ‘Still,’ she said, ‘there must be a temptation to take your children to safety.’

‘A temptation? You mean a longing, a yearning, a desperate desire!’ She began to cry. ‘Carla has nightmares about Brownshirts, and Erik puts on that shit-coloured uniform every chance he gets.’ Lloyd was startled by her fervour. He had never heard a respectable woman say ‘shit’. She went on: ‘Of course I want to take them away.’ Lloyd could see how torn she was. She rubbed her hands together as if washing them, turned her head from side to side in distraction, and spoke in a voice that shook violently with her inner conflict. ‘But it’s the wrong thing to do, for them as well as for us. I will not give in to it! Better to suffer evil than to stand by and do nothing.’

Ethel touched Maud’s arm. ‘I’m sorry I asked. Perhaps it was silly of me. I might have known you wouldn’t run away.’

‘I’m glad you asked,’ Walter said. He reached out and took Maud’s slim hands in his own. ‘The question has been hanging in the air between Maud and me, unspoken. It was time we faced it.’ Their joined hands rested on the café table. Lloyd rarely thought about the emotional lives of his mother’s generation – they were middle-aged and married, and that seemed to say it all – but now he saw that between Walter and Maud there was a powerful connection that was much more than the familiar habit of a mature marriage. They were under no illusions: they knew that by staying here they were risking their lives and the lives of their children. But they had a shared commitment that defied death.

Lloyd wondered whether he would ever have such a love.

Ethel looked at the clock. ‘Oh, my goodness!’ she said. ‘We’re going to miss the train!’

Lloyd picked up their bags and they hurried across the platform. A whistle blew. They boarded the train just in time. They both leaned out of the window as it pulled out of the station.

Walter and Maud stood on the platform, waving, getting smaller and smaller in the distance, until finally they disappeared.