One Last Summer (2007) (34 page)
If he had, would it be so much worse than the school he is in now? At least he could have continued to speak his own language, and been brought up with children who would not have bullied him and blamed him for the war.
The worst is the knowledge that I have failed Claus and Papa and Mama von Letteberg. They would have been devastated at the thought of a Graf von Letteberg growing up in an English boarding school.
Married life with Julian is not at all like married life with Claus. He goes out every Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday evenings, and, as we go to church on Sundays, that gives us very little time together. He is so tired most nights when he comes to bed that he only wants me once or twice a week, and it is soon over. For that I am grateful. It is hard to bear another’s man’s touch after you, Sascha.
But for the sake of the child I am carrying, and Julian and Erich, I must make more of an effort, which means no more self-pity, writing in this diary, or thinking and writing in German. Which also means saying goodbye to you on this page, Sascha.
I could no more stop breathing than stop thinking of you. But from this moment on I will work hard to become everything Julian wants me to be: an English wife and mother.
Charlotte turned the page of her diary. The words had conjured up all the dreary, cold, damp darkness of those first years in England, and she saw herself back again in Julian’s dismal, brown-brick, three-bedroomed, semi-detached house in the London suburb, its windows curtained with blackout material that shut out most of the light. They’d never saved enough coupons to replace them.
She recalled Erich’s misery whenever they visited him in school, and the fracturing and eventual severing of the close relationship they had shared when they had lived at Grunwaldsee. His heartbreaking withdrawal from her when he did come home at half-term and holidays.
The silent meals she had shared with Julian, no longer the dashing captain who had brought her flowers and chocolates, but a careworn man, with a perpetual frown on his face, who rushed between work and ex-servicemen’s and political party meetings.
SUNDAY, 29 MAY 1955
Julian has taken Jeremy and Erich, who are home for the weekend, from school to church, and I am alone in the house. I have lost yet another child. My fourth miscarriage since Jeremy was born. The doctors have warned me that it must be my last. The lack of medical care after Alexandra’s birth damaged my womb. I was lucky to have Jeremy.
Poor Julian is disappointed. He would have liked more children, especially a daughter to replace the one he lost, but he will not consider adoption.
Jeremy is sickly, always ill with coughs and colds, which I put down to this damp climate. I wish he were in better health. I worry about him. Julian adores him. But much as I love Jeremy, every time I look at him I can’t help thinking of Alexandra, our daughter who never drew breath, Sascha. She would have been ten years old now, and every year I remember her birthday. I cannot celebrate the day when I lost both of you, but I think of you and hope that wherever you are, you are together.
I wouldn’t have believed it possible to miss anyone as much as I still miss you, Sascha. I am busy all day long, cleaning the silver and dusting the ornaments that Julian doesn’t allow the daily to touch, making the stolid English meals he insists we eat, washing and starching his shirts because he doesn’t trust the laundry. My mind is never on what I am doing. Instead, I spend hours imagining how our lives might have been if I had fled east with you and your men instead of west.
Would we have met a less suspicious Russian officer? Or would I have still lost Alexandra? Would you and Mama and Minna have been killed anyway?
I realize that, in spite of my determination to become a good English wife and mother, I spend far too much time living in the past, which is not fair on Erich, Jeremy and Julian. Whenever life goes badly and I am unhappy – as I am now – I turn to this diary, if not to write in it then to read it.
So I have promised myself for the second and final time that this will be the last entry. When I have finished writing I will lock it away in my old suitcase in the attic and not look at it again until I am an old, old woman.
I must live in the present and think of Julian, Jeremy, and Eric, who is Erich Graf von Letteberg no longer, but Eric Templeton, a very English fifteen-year-old boy, who has ambitions to study international law at Oxford. I like to think that his father and grandparents would be proud of his accomplishments, if not his nationality.
So, Sascha, this has to be our final goodbye.
For all of Charlotte’s determination that would be her last entry, there were seven more.
SATURDAY, 30 SEPTEMBER 1955
So much has happened and, like every other crisis in my life, I have only this diary to turn to. Erich and I are on a boat going to West Germany. I cannot bring myself to think of it as my homeland. That was and always will be East Prussia, but now that the Russians, Americans and British have divided the country between Belorussia and Poland I am resigned to never seeing Grunwaldsee again. However, the unbelievable has happened. I will see Claus.
Three weeks ago I received a letter in the afternoon post from the Red Cross, informing me that Standartenführer Claus Graf von Letteberg was not dead, but newly released from Soviet custody and the Siberian prison camp where he has been held since 1945. He is not the only one. Hundreds if not thousands of women all over Germany have received the same news about their husbands, sons and brothers, and I can’t help wondering how many wives, like me, have remarried and made new lives for themselves and their children.
When I read the letter I broke down and cried, and that was how Julian found me when he came home that evening from work, crying in the kitchen with no dinner cooked.
He telephoned Greta, who came round at once. She urged me to contact the Red Cross so they could inform Claus that I had married again and wanted nothing more to do with him. But all I could think of were the vows I had made to Claus in Grunwaldsee church and the lectures Mama had given me on the sanctity of marriage.
I know that I never made Julian – or Claus – happy, but if Claus needs and wants me, he has prior claim and it would be my duty to go to him. So, I told Julian and Greta that I had made up my mind to go back to Germany and meet Claus and talk to him.
Poor Julian, he looked dreadfully confused. He arranged to take the following day off from work, and we drove to Erich and Jeremy’s school. Fortunately, Erich’s summer examinations had finished, and when we told his housemaster that we had serious family business to discuss with him, he arranged for us to see Erich in private.
Erich says he can only just remember Claus, which is not surprising given how few times Claus was able to visit Grunwaldsee during the war. I sensed that, after eight years of trying to conform and be accepted as English, it was hard for Erich to grasp that he has a German father who wishes to see him. But he agreed to meet Claus, although he has reserved the right to finish his education in England; at Oxford if he is offered a place there.
Telling Jeremy that I was leaving the country with Eric was much, much worse. Jeremy cried, he screamed and then begged me to stay with him. He even said Erich should go to Germany by himself. Jeremy has never liked Erich and Erich has never liked or accepted Jeremy.
I knew that Erich was jealous of Jeremy when he was a baby because Jeremy stayed at home with me. By the time Jeremy started school, the eight-and-a-half year gap between them was an insurmountable barrier. I had hoped that if they couldn’t be friends as children, they might be as young men, but it looks now as if that will never happen.
Being a gentleman, Julian told me that he will wait for me to write to him after I have seen Claus. I promised I would do so. Then he surprised me by asking me to sign a paper giving him full custody of Jeremy should I decide to remain with Claus.
I pleaded that it was far too soon for me to make any decisions about my own future, let alone Jeremy’s, but he was most insistent. I think I even half-promised him that I would return to him as soon as I had seen Claus, but all he said was if that happened, he would tear up the paper.
The only time I had ever seen Julian so adamant before was when he refused to discuss taking Erich out of boarding school. The last thing I wanted to do was quarrel with Julian or part from him on bad terms, so I signed his paper. After he had locked it into his desk drawer he asked me if I knew what I would be giving up if I decided to stay with Claus.
It was then I realized that Julian has never loved me or Erich, or even considered us as people in our own right. We are nothing more than pets to him. Pets he treats kindly enough, but only when we do what he wants us to, while conforming to his idea of what a wife and stepson should be.
I couldn’t believe that he was trying to keep me with him by threatening to take away my child and I told him so. He said he couldn’t believe that I was prepared to walk out on him after all he had done for Erich and me: caring for us when we had nothing; buying our food; paying my hospital bills when I had a breakdown; marrying me when most Englishmen would have walked away from a German widow.
Like the time Irena said dreadful things to me, I knew that Julian wanted to hurt me because I had caused him pain, but I couldn’t listen to any more of his ranting, so I went upstairs and packed my bag. He was very cool when he saw Erich and I on to the boat train at Victoria station.
Now I have to face Claus. What will he think of me and my marriage to an Allied soldier? Will he see it as a betrayal of him and my country? Will he hate me for allowing Erich to be educated in an English public school? How can we ever pick up the pieces of what little life we had together, even if we want to?
TUESDAY, 2 OCTOBER 1955
West Germany
Before I saw Claus, a major came to speak to me. He told me that conditions in the Russian prison camps were harsh, and tens of thousands of German soldiers died in Siberia. All things I already knew. Didn’t he think I read the papers?
Some say that the suffering the Russians inflicted on our soldiers is just retribution for what the Germans did to the Jews in the concentration camps. I think it is just one more example of the sickness that stems from war.
After the major left, Claus’s doctor came to see me. He warned me that Claus’s health was completely broken in Russia and he will be an invalid for the rest of his life. He will never be strong enough to do any physical work again and, because of the lack of any kind of medical care, he is susceptible to infections and illness. He finished by bluntly informing me that Claus needed a nurse more than a wife.
He was right. When I went into the ward and saw Claus and his fellow patients, I felt as though I was looking at Sascha and his men back in the barn at Grunwaldsee.
Claus’s eyes reminded me of those of the stags my father and brothers used to corner in the woods before they shot them. He has aged thirty years in the ten since I last saw him. His skin is yellow, like parchment, his hair white, and his hand shakes like that of an old man.
Among other things, the doctor is treating Claus for exhaustion, malnutrition and stomach ulcers. Claus’s right arm was amputated in the field by a medic at the end of the war and the stump has never healed properly, so the doctor is trying skin grafts.
When the medic removed the arm, he took off Claus’s jacket; all his personal possessions, including his watch, were in it. Claus thinks it must have been left behind when the Russians captured him and his men, and that is why I received the contents of his pockets together with a letter saying that he had been killed.
It doesn’t take much imagination to picture just how many soldiers’ bodies were left lying unattended, so it was an understandable mistake.
The first question Claus asked me was how long I intended to stay in Germany. I told him as long as he needed me and I meant it. He looked so lost and broken I felt I couldn’t say anything else.
Claus did not say anything for ten minutes, and when he finally spoke his voice was hoarse. If I hadn’t known him better I would have thought that he was crying. He said that I was his wife and he would always need me. Claus didn’t mention my marriage to Julian – or Jeremy – although I know the Red Cross told him about both of them.
After we spent half an hour together I went to the waiting room and fetched Erich. Claus couldn’t believe how tall he has grown. He was so proud of him, and I was happy when I saw that he was prepared to love Erich just as a father should. I am glad I insisted that Erich keep up with his German.
Once the initial awkwardness was over they couldn’t stop talking to one another. Claus has agreed that Erich can return to England to finish his education and, if he is accepted at Oxford, study law there.
So, father and son are happy in their reunion. I have a new role as a nursemaid and I am content. Both Claus and I have received some compensation from the West German government for the loss of our pre-war bank accounts. It is not much, but, together with Claus’s back pay, we hope it will be enough to buy a small apartment in West Germany, Claus favours the south of the country. As we cannot return to Allenstein it doesn’t matter to me where we go.
Claus’s pension won’t support us, but, as he is sick, it will be up to me to go out and somehow earn money. I am looking forward to working. It will give me something to do other than housework.
Now that I have finished writing this, I will write to Julian and ask him to arrange to annul our marriage. I will also write to Jeremy and try to explain why I have to stay with Claus in Germany. He is very young, but in time I hope he will understand that, much as I love him and need to be with him, Claus is very sick and needs me more.
WEDNESDAY, 21 SEPTEMBER 1955
I have been applying for positions as a translator. While I was waiting in a publisher’s office for an interview I looked at some children’s books. The illustrations were very poor so I went out and bought some art materials. Once the paintings I am doing are finished I will return to the publisher, who has agreed to look at them. The von Letteberg name is still good for something.
There was the longest gap yet before the next entry.
FRIDAY, 2 SEPTEMBER 1966
Claus died at two o’clock this morning. It was a release from a long and painful illness. Or rather, his body died. I think his soul died somewhere in Siberia in 1945.
The stomach cancer that killed him was slow-growing, dehumanizing and agonizing. He pleaded with his doctor more than once to give him something that would kill both the pain and him, but the end when it came was calm and mercifully peaceful.
I nursed him and I was sorry for him, but there was nothing left between us at the end except my sense of duty, Claus’s gratitude for my presence – and Erich.
Claus never touched me or shared my bed after he returned. Sometimes I think he saw me as a reminder of a past he regretted so much he could never move on.
As there is nothing left to keep me here, I am making arrangements to leave Europe for America. My publishers say they will continue to commission me no matter where I live, and dear Samuel Goldberg, who persuaded so many publishers to put work my way after he saw my illustrations in an English copy of Hansel and Gretel, has agreed to act as my European agent.