Winter: A Berlin Family, 1899–1945. Len Deighton

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

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

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

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

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

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

      ‘What are you doing, Pauli?’

      ‘I found a watch, Mama.’

      ‘What do you mean, Pauli?’

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

      ‘Oh my God!’ said his mother.

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

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

      ‘Shall I give it to him?’ said Pauli.

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

      ‘I know which is his room, Mama.’

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

      ‘I won’t tell him, Mama.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      ‘Maybe they do,’ said Rensselaer, ‘but when the British built HMS Dreadnought in 1906 it made every other СКАЧАТЬ