The Beaufort Sisters. Jon Cleary

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СКАЧАТЬ widespread was the destruction of Germany. They passed queues of people standing outside shops, Germans wearing the wardrobe of the defeated, half-uniforms, thin ersatz tweed, worn fur coats, and all with the same pale, hopeless faces. The jeep was halted by a military policeman at a cross-street and Nina became acutely aware of the people standing on the sidewalk waiting to cross. She was wearing for the first time the camel hair coat that her mother had had made for her and specially dyed a not-too-unbecoming khaki. She looked at a young girl her own age, saw the thin cotton dress covering the thin bony body; the girl stared back at her, face expressionless. Then Nina saw the envy and hate in the dark eyes and she turned away, too inexperienced in the expressions victors should wear.

      ‘Don’t show pity,’ said Colonel Shasta, who had been watching her. ‘That’s the last thing they want.’

      ‘It’s difficult not to show it.’

      ‘Tell that to the men who fought them.’

      They drove into Hamburg, crossed the Lombard Bridge and after getting lost several times at last found the office Colonel Shasta was looking for. It was in a large house two blocks back from the Altersee; next door to it was another large house that was a club for British officers. Except that they needed a coat of paint, neither house looked as if it had suffered at all from the war.

      ‘Rather grand, aren’t they?’ Nina said. ‘I wonder if any Germans still live around here?’

      ‘Every house in the street has been commandeered,’ said a voice behind her and Colonel Shasta. ‘The fruits of victory. I was told you were due here today. I’m Major Davoren, Commanding Officer of the unit that’s taken over this house. I’m afraid UNRRA has been moved to a larger but less attractive place than this.’

      He was dark-haired, good-looking, with a black moustache and dark eyes that might have been tired or just bored. He was tall, with heavy shoulders, and a certain ease of movement that suggested he might have been an athlete before the war. There was a row of ribbons on the breast of his battle tunic, including, Nina was to learn later, the ribbon of the Military Cross.

      ‘Could you have someone direct us?’ Shasta asked.

      ‘I’ll take you there myself.’ He got into the back of the jeep and, it seemed, looked at Nina for the first time. ‘Straight ahead, driver, then second right.’

      ‘This is Miss Beaufort,’ said Shasta, grinning. ‘I don’t think she is accustomed to being called Driver.’

      ‘Awfully sorry.’ But Davoren’s apology sounded perfunctory. ‘Shall we go, Miss Beaufort?’

      Nina let in the gears with a crash and the jeep jerked forward. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Shasta grin again, but Major Davoren was behind her and she couldn’t see how he had reacted. She hoped she had snapped his head off.

      Five minutes later they drew up outside a large block of apartments that had been converted into offices. Shrapnel marks pitted the walls and there was a huge black scorch mark stretching up a side wall, as if someone had tried to burn a hole in it with a giant blowtorch. The block had none of the dignity of the house they had just left.

      ‘Blame us English,’ said Davoren. ‘I’m afraid the army is claiming all the best for itself. As I said, the fruits of victory.’

      ‘You don’t believe in rehabilitation for the Germans?’ said Nina.

      ‘The young and idealistic,’ said Davoren, who couldn’t have been more than eight or nine years older than Nina. ‘Could you spare me a few minutes with Miss Beaufort, Colonel?’

      ‘I’ll be inside.’ Shasta climbed out of the jeep. ‘Don’t scratch his eyes out. I think we’re still supposed to be allies.’

      He went into the apartment block, carrying his valise, and Davoren slid into the vacated seat beside Nina. ‘Well, we seem to have got off on the wrong foot.’

      ‘You have, not me.’

      ‘I’ve been fighting these bloody Germans for five and a half years. I’m not naturally vindictive, but I haven’t yet got round to feeling magnanimous. I lost my parents and my only sister in an air raid on London, wiped out by a V-2. What are you doing for dinner this evening?’

      She was surprised to hear herself say, ‘Nothing.’

      That was Friday and he took her to dinner at the Atlantic Hotel. The dining-room was full of British officers in khaki, Control Commission personnel in blue and German women in tow. There appeared to be no German men and only a few British women, all of whom looked with hatred at the Fraulein, none of whom was less than good-looking and most of whom were beautiful.

      ‘Fraternization doesn’t seem to worry you men. What would happen if one of those English girls came in here with a German man?’

      ‘She’d be shown the back door. We have to have standards, you know.’

      ‘Double standards, you mean.’

      ‘Of course. What else makes the world go round?’ But he smiled as he said it and his charm almost persuaded her that he only half-meant what he had said.

      He took her home early to the billet where she was staying for the weekend. ‘There’s a curfew on and some of the MP’s can get a bit bloody-minded if they catch an officer with a good-looking girl. Pity you’re not staying here at the Atlantic, you could have invited me up to your room.’

      She let that pass. ‘I stayed here with my parents when I was a child.’

      He raised an eyebrow. ‘You did it in style. I came to Hamburg for a week before the war. I stayed in a dreadful sleazy little room over behind the Reeperbahn. Girls kept knocking on my door all night.’

      ‘Poor you.’

      Saturday night he took her to a cabaret in the cellar of a bombed-out theatre. This time there were plenty of Germans, men as well as women; some of them looked remarkably well-fed for people whose official food ration was supposed to be only 1000 calories a day. Nina peered through the cigar and cigarette smoke, listened with her Berlitz-acquired ear to the conversations going on around her.

      ‘They are making business deals!’

      ‘Black marketeers,’ said Davoren. ‘This cabaret is the sort of stock exchange for it all. If you want to make any money on your PX issue, this is the place to come.’

      ‘I don’t need money.’ He knew nothing about her or her family; she revelled for the first time in anonymity, as if it were some sort of vice. ‘Do you come here and sell things?’

      ‘No. I’m not really interested in money. I shouldn’t say no to a fortune, but I don’t care for this piecemeal way of getting rich. Oh, I daresay in ten or fifteen years’ time some of those jokers will be fat, rich pillars of society – that is, if Germany ever gets off the ground again. And some of our own chaps are making a nice little bundle. But it’s not for me.’

      ‘Don’t you have any ambition? I don’t mean for this sort of thing. But – ’

      ‘Not really. I’m a day-to-day type. I’ll probably stay on in the army and if I don’t blot my copy-book I’ll retire as at least a brigadier. All that СКАЧАТЬ