When she finally admitted the truth of her condition, Michael’s transition from overzealous friend to pompous father had cracked her long-held patience in two.
‘I know it’s not ideal and André is the worst choice I could have made. Thank you for pointing that out with such eloquence. And I’m grateful for everything you’ve done, but if you tell me one more time that I can’t manage, our friendship is finished. I’m pregnant; I’m not incapable. I ran the business for nearly two years while you swanned round playing the rebel. I looked after everyone then. I can do the same now.’
Their row had blown up and spilled out and dragged Paul and Margarethe into the sea of judgement Liese refused to step into. Part of her wanted to walk out then; to let them sink or swim without dragging her down further. But the ties of family, however worn they were, still had enough bite to hold. So she had stayed. She had ignored her parents as they moaned and belittled her. She had taken charge.
The three of them could live at each other’s throats, but they couldn’t live for long on their dwindling stack of money, or rely on Michael’s handouts that came from goodness knows where. Fashion was all she knew, so Liese went back to Hausvogteiplatz, where the freshly Germanised fashion industry still operated, and came back with a job. She never told any of them what that had cost her. How it had ached to walk past Haus Elfmann and find it locked and barred, the windows cracked, the canopy in tatters. How it had stung to stand outside building after building whose names were once a supply-book shorthand and find them whitewashed and rechristened to fit a Germany that no longer had a place for people like her. How deep the humiliation of knocking on doors all along Mohrenstraβe and Kronenstraβe ran, doors that the Elfmann name would once have swung open, and having every one of them slam at the first sight of her papers.
Later, when Liese replayed the day for her parents, she scooped out its humiliations and let Paul believe it was her skills and their reputation that had triumphed. She let him think that the Elfmanns weren’t forgotten. She couldn’t hit him with the word charity, or admit that, by the time she heard a voice calling, not spitting at, her name, she had no pride left to bargain with.
‘Fraulein Elfmann! It is you! What are you doing outside in such dreadful cold?’
The fur-wrapped woman exiting from the coat-maker’s, whose receptionist Liese was about to join battle with, was all smiles, as if they had last met in a coffee shop the previous morning.
‘And what are you doing back here? We thought you had moved.’
Irena Zahl. Liese managed a smile as the name popped back. She had been one of the salon’s most extravagant customers, although not one who had stayed a moment past when she should.
Liese had opened her mouth to trot out something meaningless, but the day had scratched open too many scars.
‘No, we didn’t move. We were chased out, and the house and the salon and everything was taken. We have no money, so I’m looking for a job, but I’m Jewish, so there’s not one to be had.’
To Frau Zahl’s credit, she blushed. Then she came closer and inspected Liese’s pinched face and dirt-spattered coat, and she winced.
‘A job? But you’re not some common seamstress – you’re the heir to—’
She had stopped, coughed; pushed the shop door back open again.
‘You’re someone with skills any business would be lucky to have in their workplace. This showroom and the trade that goes with it belongs to my family now. I’m not going to pretend to you that is right. Let me see what can be done.’
Liese had begun sewing coat linings and collars that afternoon and had done the same eye-aching work ever since, until her body had grown too bulky to sit at the sewing table.
And as soon as Lottie is weaned, I will have to go back.
Liese stared at the sleeping baby, her heart aching at the thought of leaving her, but there were too many mouths depending on her skills to pretend she had any other choice.
‘What are you going to do now?’
Michael had turned away from the darkening window while Liese was fretting at the future and picking over the past. He held up his hands as she frowned.
‘Don’t jump down my throat. I’m not going to try and tell you what to do or give orders. I wouldn’t dare anymore. You’ve proved yourself stronger than most of the men I know.’
His smile was a shadow of the grin that used to turn his face boyish. That had disappeared with the one-line letter announcing Otto’s death and giving no reason. Or offering him a body to mourn with.
‘All I want is for you to be safe, Liese. Except I don’t see how you can be when you’re trapped in these streets that are too like a ghetto and worn thin trying to look after what amounts to three babies.’
There was too much truth in his words to dismiss them.
Liese could hear her parents moving about on the other side of the wall; she could hear the grumble that would steadily rise to a whine. ‘We’re hungry. What are we eating? Why have we waited long past what was always our dinner time?’ The daily complaints that took no account of long hours stitching in poor light or the grind of empty purses, or of giving birth. That cared only for their never-full-enough stomachs and did nothing to fill them. She imagined herself returning to the workroom, leaving Lottie to be watched over by her grandparents; to be neglected. It was as unimaginable as recovering their lost lives.
As the commentary on the lack of cooking smells grew louder, Lottie stirred in her makeshift cradle and began mewing. The soft sound caught at Liese’s heart as if a cord still ran between them. Nobody mattered anymore but Lottie. Nobody’s needs could come before hers.
‘Will you take a letter to Frau Zahl for me?’
She could see Michael wrestling with his previous promise not to direct her.
‘Don’t worry. I’m not going to keep trying to balance it all. There’s a real baby now; it’s time for everyone else to get up on their feet.’
She nodded to the opening door.
‘They can’t be my problem to manage anymore. They’re going to have to start pulling their weight.’
She reached into the makeshift cradle and stroked Lottie’s cheek.
‘If they want to eat, if they want to live here, they’re going to have to stop acting like royalty, rethink their lives and work.’
Eight
Liese
Berlin, September 1940–October 1941
‘Hush now, sweetheart; don’t be afraid.’
Liese settled the wriggling baby against her shoulder and wondered who her words were meant to calm. Lottie never cried when the sirens sounded; she barely flinched when the bombs fell. The war’s first air-raid alarm had shrieked across the city a year ago, in the early weeks of the little girl’s life, and had remained its music. Three long tones, a wail and a howl. The endlessly repeating pattern rattled Liese’s bones; Lottie could chirp it like a song.
‘Watch the pretty lights now.’
Another unnecessary instruction. Lottie’s arms were already out, her fingers curling to catch the red and green flares floating like fireflies past the smudged glass and trace the searchlights’ silvery webs. It wasn’t the nightly lights or noise that unnerved the little girl, it was silence. When the raids stopped, or in the pauses in between the night’s onslaughts, then her eyes grew wide and she started to babble, only settling when Liese cooed and whispered nonsense into her ear. Lottie was a war baby, the whole of her short life shaped by the conflict’s sounds and cruelties. If Liese regretted anything about her daughter’s coming, it was that.