Opposite Sides (36 page)

Past memories welled up
inside him and he relived the pain and anguish he had felt when he
had lost his parents:

‘
Vaterland! O
Vaterland
! (Fatherland! O
Fatherland!)

O machtig ist
der Trieb des Vaterlands
! (How powerful is
the urge of the fatherland!)

The call was growing
stronger.

Die fremde,
falsche Welt ist nicht fur dich
.’ (The
harsh, false world is not for thee.)

Death was his companion
day and worse by night. The strained face of his father, that last
look on a weary face, the staring eyes that only looked forwards to
the only life he knew on the Western Front. The final time Papi
looked upon his children and cried. He could hear the anguished
voice of his own mother when the news of Papi’s death reached them
via the skinny telegram boy and now he longed for the protection of
his own childhood.

He felt the pull of the
place where he remembered his own happy childhood: the echoing cry
of the eagle that soared across the Alps, the gurgling of the
Salzach as it cradled icy flows under Mozart Bridge and the sweet
smell of dark frothy beer overflowing mugs that decorated the
outdoor tables during those warm, balmy evenings of summer. He
yearned to relive those memories and the thoughts of them chewed
deeply into his heart. Besides, he could do nothing for Andrea. Her
predicament made him feel helpless and the hopelessness of the
situation was pulling him into the darkness of dispair. He yearned
for the embracing security and comfort he had once known and at the
point when his emotions seemed to be consuming him, he resigned his
job, vacated his apartment and left London with only a few pounds
in his pocket.

Hans thought about
Gerald’s suggestion. At the time it did not make sense but now,
things were different. He had nothing to hold him back any more.
His world had collapsed. The savings he thought he had been safely
putting aside in a good interest-bearing account had gone. Andrea’s
inheritance, he liked to call it, and if he could have left the
capital alone for fifteen years or so, it would provide his
daughter with enough money to give her a good start in life. It had
been a good plan and now it had come to nothing. The financial
world had failed him and all his plans were collapsing into a huge
empty void.

Look, why
don’t you pop back to Germany and Austria for a while, old chap?
It’ll give you a new lease on life and you can always come back
when you’ve sorted yourself out. We will hold the fort while you’re
away.

It sounded like good
advice now, advice that nedded to be taken straight away. However,
to walk away from all obligations he had towards the child was
still something he was finding very difficult to do but the new
thoughts of seeing his brothers and aunt and uncle again kept him
from falling into the precipice of no return.

Anne had been the saving
angel, or so Hans thought at the time. She told him she would look
after the baby after the christening, yet it was Miss Turner who
gave Hans a glimmer of hope. She suggested that it could be
possible that the baby would not be placed in an orphanage if he
could show that he had an attachment to the child and was prepared
to support her in some way. She had told Hans that if he could send
what money he could spare to help with the child-minding duties and
make it plain to the authorities that he was prepared to support
the child, there was a good possibility that the child could remain
with Anne. It was like grasping for a straw but it might be worth
trying.

As soon as all the papers
had been signed, Hans was told that Anne would be taking the baby
with her to her parents’ large house in the country. Hans was told
not to worry as Nanny Goodman, who had been Anne’s childhood nanny,
needed something useful to do in her later years and Nanny Goodman
was so pleased to have a baby to look after again that life for the
elderly nanny was looking brighter again. As soon as little Andrea
arrived, Nanny cooed and fussed over her and was so happy to be
back in the old nursery once more. Meanwhile, Anne was happy to
keep in contact with him and she often wrote and told him how the
baby was progressing and asking him to make the time to visit them
before he left. Now, Anne promised to keep in touch from the moment
he left England in the hope that when he did return, he would have
forgiven the child and forgotten all the anger he had felt towards
her, for the child was innocent and was all he had left of the
proof of his and Caroline’s love for each other.

Hans spent a few
wonderful months in Salzburg where he saw Heidi again. She had
enjoyed her time in England and when she had returned home, she had
found herself a job, together with a young man to match. Heidi was
now the proud mother of three little children, a pair of twin boys
and a baby girl. But Hans was restless and had an urge move on. It
was not that Austria had changed but it was not the place he
remembered as a child and he now felt disconnected and like a
stranger. It seemed that everyone except Heidi had either moved
away in search of work or had become so old that they did not
recognise him any more. Even Oma was not around any more so his
last connection with Salzburg had been severed.

He took the night train
to Berlin and arrived at the Hauptbahnhof early in the morning.
Rush hour had not yet begun so it was easy to find a seat on the
tram out to his uncle’s. Reluctantly he confided to his uncle that
all his investment money had gone and that he did not own even a
single pound in British currency. He admitted for the first time
that he was destitute, no better than those who stood staring on
the street corners or gathered the cigarette stubs from the
gutters. And all the while, Hans kept the secret of his child to
himself, secretly dreading that one day the child would be taken
and put in one of the dreadful orphanages that one reads about in
the newspapers. He could only wait to hear from Anne and hope that
conditions would change.

But things were becoming
far worse than anything he had imagined. Germany’s republic was
suffocating under struggling and fractured politics and now that
the economy was shrinking again, the government was looking as if
it were close to collapsing. Everyone he spoke to said something
needed to be done but as the days passed, Hans began to realise
that there would be no protection for those who dared disagree or
question what was happening around them. Uncertainty fuelled
unrest. Discontent steered people into a mire of differing opinions
as they floundered around in a sea of primeval mud. Out of its
depths new parties began to emerge, new ideas and new hopes for
prosperity, all struggling for supremacy before the country
collapsed back into anarchy as it sank even deeper into the
quadmire.

Feelings were
no better at home, either. Uncle Karl was one of the discontented.
Life was not worth living when he was around. Business was
difficult and Germany’s foreign markets had dried up since they had
been prevented from selling their goods overseas. That was making
Karl Kl
ö
n’s mood
sour and his fuse short. He insisted Hans had better make himself
useful if he hoped to stay around and, besides, he needed someone
to tout for new customers in an effort to prevent the firm from
sliding into insolvency. Hans tried but it was hard and frustrating
work as people just did not have much spare cash and many were not
prepared to dig deeper into their barren pockets.

Hans had not intend to be
away from England so long. Weeks became months and before he
realised, a couple of years had somehow slipped by. Anne and Gerald
had married and had set up house in the larger of the two cottages
that stood near to her parents’ house. They were so wonderful, for
they had continued to be parents to Andrea even after Hans had
written to say his payments would not be as large nor as frequent
as before. Nanny Goodman, who looked after little Andrea, had moved
in with the Brookfield-Smiths and had been kept on to look after
Anne while Gerald was away on business which amounted to at least
three full days in the week. As well as that, he still spent many
weekend afternoons flying with a friend of the family who had been
in the Royal Flying Corps so Anne did not see very much of her
husband. She wrote and told Hans not to worry about a thing, for
having little Andrea around was good experience for her and at the
same time she could learn a little about motherhood,
herself.

When Andrea had began
talking, Anne had written and told him of her own happy news. At
that time Hans had seriously considered applying for adoption in
the hope that the British authorities would allow him to to do so.
He had written a letter to say that Andrea could be sent directly
to his aunt and uncle in Germany who would be able to provide the
child with a loving and stable home life but he omited to write
that neither his aunt nor his uncle had any knowledge of such a
child. And as the weeks passed, Hans became anxious for the reply.
When it did finally arrive in the afternoon post, the response was
most inconclusive. He would have to prove paternity and as the
child still had close relatives in England, it was doubtful that
the authorities would give permission for the child to leave the
country, especially with the increasing instability in Europe and
the worsening situation in Germany. Hans knew he needed to settle
his own affairs before he would be able to offer Andrea a stable
home so any real positive moves on his part to apply for custody
had to be put on hold, for the time being, at least. He was most
relieved when Gerald and Anne wrote to say they thought it was best
to leave the child where she was for the time being.

Meanwhile, German
politics were becoming more and more unstable as each succeeding
government fell. More elections, more uprisings, more elections
again but nothing could stop the slide. The republic staggered and
swayed as though it were about to die. Von Papen became the new
Chancellor but he had little support in the Reichstag. There was in
fear of civil war as riots broke out daily in the streets of
Berlin. How Renard managed to get into the city centre was beyond
Hans as he had been told that the military police were preventing
people travelling in and out of the city centre to try and control
the situation but Renard found a way and each evening he would
return with stories one did not really want to hear. Then, the
unemployment figures exploded and the city soup kitchens tried
vainly to fill the bellies of the new underprivileged as conditions
returned to the dark days of the early twenties. Rife inflation
indicated another collapse in the currency. Things were looking
very bleak, indeed.

Hans travelled outside
the city trying to seek out new markets for his uncle. Renard was
telling them about the closure of some of the small shops in the
city that had been in undesirable streets. At first, Hans took
little notice of what his brother was saying but the more he went
out into the small towns on the city outskirts, what he noticed was
beginning to impinge on his consciousness most strongly; shops,
once thriving, were closed and boarded up. Slogans of hate had been
scrawled over shop windows or across barred doorways in poorer
areas but was now starting to make its ugly appearance in the
better areas. Name-calling, stone throwing hooligans threatened all
those who dared to be different and those who complained, appeared
to disappear. It was safer to pretend neither to hear, nor to
see.

Axel brightened things up
for a while when he invited Hans to stay with him for a few days
during one of his holiday breaks. Axel had been attending lectures
at one of the large vocational colleges during the day and had
found work not far from Hamburg working on the night shift in a
factory which was making aircraft parts. He talked to the floor
manager and Hans was offered a part-time position on the assembly
line for a few weeks as an important order needed to be finalised.
When the job ended Hans was quite relieved. The experience had been
just long enough to make him realise he did not have the skills or
the stomach to work in such a noisy and hot factory environment
where beads of sweat constantly trickled down his back as parts
constantly arrived in front of him, and together with the constant
pressure to join them together, he discovered muscles he never
thought he had. The night shift seemed long as his body longed for
rest but even so he found it almost impossible to sleep during the
day. He looked into the bathroom mirror and a pair of tired, red
pair of eyes looked back. He counted off his days and found his
mind fogging as he longed to be back with his aunt and
uncle.

Back in Berlin again with
a return to normality. Even uncle Karl’s constant complaining was
normal but Hans could switch himself off from that by heading for
the safety of his bedroom. He had it to himself as Renard had moved
out. Then one evening during supper, uncle Karl could contain his
frustration no longer. As aunt Laura cleared away the cheeses and
wooden cheese platter, her husband first wiped his mouth and then
gave a loud cough to clear his throat.

“
This damn
system!” He gripped his mug in a strong grip and banged it down on
the table as if he wanted to smash it into a thousand pieces. “If
some thing’s not done soon, the whole country will be ruined.
Bloody Bolsheviks! They will be the ruin of us!”

“
I remember
hearing that Bolsheviks were blamed for backing the Trade Unions in
England, uncle. Strikes all the time.” Hans was not able to share
in the anger and frustration of his uncle.