The Secrets of the Notebook: A royal love affair and a woman’s quest to uncover her incredible family secret. Eve Haas

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СКАЧАТЬ grew I became a little bit cheeky and was banned from German classes for laughing at the red-haired Miss Jones’s German accent. Never allowed to attend her class again I was sent to study Latin instead.

      Lottie kept writing to me just as she promised she would, keeping the memories of Berlin alive, telling me how much she missed me and filling me in on everything I was missing. The moment her letters arrived I would rip them open and devour every word, feeling a mixture of excitement at her news and sadness at the reminder of everything I had left behind back home. Some of it was puzzling. She told me, for instance, that her ‘best hour at school’ was on Saturdays when she learned ‘all about Hitler’. Another letter told of her ‘joy’ at having ‘danced for Hitler’. It was 1936 and the occasion was the Olympic Games. I showed the letters to my father in the hope that he would explain why Lottie wasn’t as frightened of Hitler as we had been. His face became grave as he read. Alarmed by her tone, he forbade me from writing to her any more. It didn’t occur to me to disobey any direct order he gave me, but it made me deeply miserable as Lottie’s letters kept coming, each one expressing greater degrees of puzzlement and hurt at my sudden and unexplained silence. My father’s decision, however, would eventually prove to be more than wise.

      Meanwhile my grandmother, Anna, was living in Czechoslovakia with her other son, my father’s brother Uncle Freddy. He had left Berlin back in 1923, during the Great Depression after World War I, and before Hitler’s reign of terror was beginning to take hold. Uncle Freddy had been offered a new job in Brno, Czechoslovakia, working for Himmelreich & Zwicker, a large textile manufacturer, as their export director. By 1933 he had joined Victoria Assurance in Reichenberg as Managing Director. My grandfather, Samuel, died suddenly around that time, at the age of 72, from an undiagnosed twisted bowel, leaving Granny Anna a widow at 68. Influenced by my father’s plans to leave, she too must have decided that Berlin was becoming too dangerous because she went to live with Freddy and his family in Reichenberg, which was near Prague. It was while she was there that my brother Claude, who was thirteen years old by then, and I went to visit her for the last time. I spent many hours with her in her room during the two or three weeks we were there. We talked about the family and the future, and she would read me poetry. I had an autograph book, which I asked her to sign. She took it from me with a smile and sat down to write:

      When once you are a grandmamma, and sit in the rocking chair with Grandpapa and dream of your joyful childhood days, remember your Oma Annchen.

      I can still clearly remember saying goodbye to her after that visit on Prague Railway Station. I wanted to stay wrapped in her loving arms forever but eventually Claude had to take me by the hand and lead me to the departing train, otherwise it would have rolled away without us. I wouldn’t have minded missing the train at the time so that I could stay with Anna a little longer, but I knew in my heart that that was not going to be possible. I turned to wave to her all the way down the platform and then leaned out of the window once we had boarded and were pulling away, craning my neck for one last look at her small figure disappearing into the distance as the steam from the engine settled on the platform between us.

      My grandmother and I were very similar in appearance. She used to say that she saw her young self in me, maybe because we were both very sensitive and thoughtful in our characters, and we both liked writing poetry. I have older cousins who say they too can see the physical likeness now that I have reached the age that we all remember Granny Anna being.

      At the time we left she still had Uncle Freddy and his family with her, although I knew that my cousin, his daughter, Marlies, didn’t love her like I did. Soon, however, they would be gone too and she would be completely on her own. It was memories like those which were feeding the nightmares I was suffering from on our nights in the bomb shelter in Hampstead as the war we had been escaping from finally came to London.

      As late as 1937 my father and mother decided we should return to Europe to visit Anna back in Reichenberg because they were becoming increasingly concerned about her health. I had recently received a worrying letter from her:

       My Beloved Evchen,

      Again a year has vanished without my being able to embrace you, my loved ones. Two and a half years you have been away from me. Health and all good wishes for 1937. Your old oma is not well health wise. In thought a very heartfelt New Year.

      When they told me about the trip I was beside myself with excitement at the thought of seeing her after so long apart. Claude was still with us in 1937 and the four of us travelled first to Muhren in Switzerland. Our parents must have been talking to other people along the way who had more firsthand experience of what was going on in Czechoslovakia, or perhaps they were reading things in the papers that worried them, because they changed their minds at the last moment and left Claude and me in a hotel in Muhren and went on together without us. This was deeply upsetting for me after having built up my hopes of seeing Anna again.

      I think that going back was a big decision even for them but they played down their concerns for Anna in order not to frighten me any more than they had to. In fact at that stage I was more disappointed than frightened, having been so looking forward to seeing my grandmother again and still not fully realising the scale of any possible danger to any of us. My sadness at being left behind was lifted slightly on the morning that I came down to breakfast in the hotel and found my idol, the dancer and film star, Fred Astaire, sitting at the next table, but even that dreamlike encounter couldn’t lift my spirits for long.

      Anna was being very well looked after by her son, Freddy, and Czechoslovakia was still a safe haven, being so far away from the tyranny inside Germany. We returned to England but I had not been able to see my granny again. The situation in Europe deteriorated after that, especially when Hitler was allowed to march into and annex Austria without a fight. From then on we followed the news of the apparently unstoppable march of the German Army on the radio and in the newspapers. Opinion in England at that time was divided between those who believed that declaring war on Germany was our only hope of stopping their territorial ambitions and those who thought we should go for appeasement and do everything we could to avoid starting another war like the First World War, which had wiped out almost an entire generation of young men. My parents were firmly of the belief that however terrible war might be, Hitler could only be stopped by force and that sooner or later England would have to join in to protect itself from being invaded as well.

      For my mother the move to England had meant making huge adjustments to her status and lifestyle. To begin with she had no help in the house at all and found it hard to have to do everything for herself. My father, on the other hand, was just as comfortable in London as he had been in Berlin. He made friends with interesting people like the famous filmmaker, Alexander Korda and his brother. He had even got to know the Elgar family when he bought Sir Edward’s derelict Netherall Gardens home in 1935 from his daughter not long after the great composer died, with the intention of rebuilding it and selling it on. The house was just around the corner from where we were now living in a ground floor flat at 51 Fitzjohn’s Avenue. While clearing out the attic my father found an old and very valuable violin hidden. It was an emotional episode for the Elgar family when my father arranged for it to be reunited with his daughter.

      My father was endlessly intrigued by the English and they in turn seemed to be intrigued by him. His positive attitude to our new homeland rubbed off on me.

      ‘The English policeman,’ he told me soon after we arrived, ‘is your best friend. Not like a German policeman.’

      I decided he was right when on my way to school, I first saw a London ‘Bobby’ at the end of my road, Fitzjohn’s Avenue, holding the hands of two schoolchildren whom he was helping to cross the road. From that moment on I never felt frightened or insecure in England, even with the Nazi threat building up just across the Channel, but I often thought about my grandmother and wondered what terrible fate СКАЧАТЬ