March 1939
A wild wind blew in from the north, ‘straight from Siberia’, as Mrs Allman the cook remarked, but Sarah stepped out into the garden of Flint Cottage with optimism, seduced by the sunlight on the grass and the puffs of cloud dashing across a sky of boundless blue. Only for the cold to cut right through her, forcing her back inside to fetch a thicker coat. Even then her enthusiasm to start work on the vegetable bed quickly waned and she retreated to the shelter of the potting shed.
Here it was gloomy and draughty, but smelled comfortingly of earth and creosote. A rummage on the shelves brought forth riches; a few garden tools, boxes, potting compost and some envelopes of seeds. After several trips from the shed with pots and compost she established herself in the sun-warmed conservatory and was as happy as the proverbial Larry for the rest of the morning, sowing lettuces and summer flowers, dreaming of deep blue spikes of delphiniums and the delicate scent of sweet peas that she remembered from working in the headmistress’ garden at school.
Remarkably, her little Hibiscus syriacus plants from India had survived the severe winter, but she pondered the wisdom of planting them outside yet. The blooms had been a delicate pink with a dark red heart in India and she hoped they would be here, though the soil was different. She knew exactly where she wanted them, right in front of the cottage, but maybe she should consult Mr Hartmann about the matter.
The thought must have summoned him, for shortly after luncheon he appeared, knocking softly on the frosted glass door of the conservatory. For a moment Sarah imagined this man in jacket and collared shirt to be Ivor, but he was taller and burlier than Ivor. Anyway, he couldn’t be. Ivor had returned to Aldershot. She wasn’t sure whether she was relieved or disappointed. Her feelings about Ivor were complicated.
‘Come in,’ she called, glad to have Mr Hartmann to talk to about her work. Her mother and sister had no interest in the messy business of gardening, appreciating only the beauty of the results.
‘Hello. My goodness, you’ve been busy.’
He smiled to see her pots and trays and agreed with her about her hibiscus cuttings, that they should be kept inside for the moment and planted outside once the frosts had gone. His manner was as usual polite and encouraging, which gave her confidence.
‘Here’s me rattling on,’ she said. ‘Did you call for something in particular?’
‘Yes. I’m on my way to Cockley Market to have some tools sharpened,’ he explained in his soft accent, ‘and wondered if you wanted me to take any of yours.’
‘Oh, I do,’ she said, getting up. ‘That’s so kind. There are some shears I found in the shed that are probably blunt and a pruning saw . . . I’ll fetch them, shall I?’ She started to pull on her coat, then paused, her mind working. ‘I say, would you mind if I came with you, Mr Hartmann? I’d like to choose a really good pair of secateurs.’
‘Of course. If you promise not to call me Mr Hartmann. My name’s Paul.’
‘Pol.’ She repeated it as he had pronounced it. ‘And I’m Sarah.’
He’d borrowed the shooting brake and proved a more cautious driver than Ivor as they set off down twisting lanes where primroses bloomed and the hedges foamed white with blackthorn blossom.
‘It’s lovely, isn’t it, your countryside here?’ he remarked. ‘So flat, the wide skies, it reminds me of home. And when you grow things, well, I think you come to love the land that gives them life.’
‘Yes, that may be true,’ she said, thinking of their garden in India. ‘Someone, Mrs Richards, was it, said you were from Hamburg.’
‘Yes. And I read Botany at the university, where my father taught, but after . . . after what happened . . . I was not able to continue my studies.’
‘I’m afraid . . . I don’t know about what happened. Though please, I won’t be offended if you don’t wish to speak about it.’
‘I don’t mind. It helps me keep him alive to me. Quite simply, my father protested against discrimination once too often at the university. One of his colleagues betrayed him. Maybe more than one, who knows. Anyway, he was arrested and later, well . . . it is enough to say that he did not survive. Listen, none of you here really understands how bad it is in Germany. Landowners like Sir Henry, they dream of past glories. Of course they do not want war. Nobody should want war, but it’ll be the only way to stop it all. Turn down that heater, please, if it’s burning you.’
‘No, no, it’s fine.’ Sarah considered what it must be like to be betrayed, like Herr Hartmann, by your own countrymen, your colleagues. It could never happen here, that would be incomprehensible, the very idea of it. She felt uncomfortable all the same. What if Paul was right? Maybe their way of life, their freedoms, could only be preserved by war against Hitler and all he stood for. Suddenly, she felt ashamed for not understanding.
They passed the rest of the journey in relative silence, Paul lost in his thoughts, for when she glanced at him he was frowning, his eyes on the road. She folded her hands on her lap and watched a flock of birds follow a horse-drawn plough, trees swaying in the wind. It was all so beautiful that it was hard not to be happy. She knew she had a great capacity for happiness, which made her feel even guiltier about Diane.
Cockley Market wasn’t busy and they were able to park right outside the ironmonger’s. Inside, Sarah breathed in the comfortable smells of leather, oil and animal feed. She chose and paid for her secateurs, then sat on a stool while Paul Hartmann conducted his business with the knife grinder. The old man who served him breathed strenuously and she noticed his scarred hands. When he spoke to Paul, his mouth twisted with bitterness. She understood at once that it was Paul’s accent that disturbed him. The man was likely to have seen active service in the last war, she decided, but still rage boiled in her. An old war was hardly the younger man’s fault, was it? Why did some people react with so little intelligence, like a dog that had been kicked once, which damned all humankind. She felt she should apologize for the knife-grinder’s attitude, though Paul would surely know that not all Englishmen were like him.
When he was ready to go, it was the desire to make some public gesture that made Sarah say in the knife-grinder’s hearing, ‘Paul, would you mind if we had tea somewhere. I’m feeling a little headachy,’ as though they were good friends, at ease together. Which they would be, she decided. So what if he was only a gardener? He was far better educated than she was. They had so much to talk about, too. For a moment the face of her late father flashed through her mind. They both grieved, but Paul’s loss was so different that she felt humbled. It was impossible to compare the two.
The cosy teashop they found, with its panelled walls, had probably once been the parlour of a house. They established themselves at a table in the bay window, where between the gingham curtains they watched a man chase his hat down the street. A shy young waitress came to write down their order.
‘I’m sorry about the man in Askey’s,’ Sarah said, when the girl had gone. ‘He was awfully rude.’
‘Ach,’ Paul said with a shrug. ‘It was worse at home. Here they cannot get you thrown in prison if they do not like you.’
‘I feel ashamed.’
His eyes found hers and he smiled. ‘You have nothing to be ashamed of. Your family has shown me and my mother nothing but kindness.’
In truth, Sarah thought as the maid carefully laid out the tea things, her mother and sister had been too absorbed in their own lives to notice the gardener much. During the sunny February, Paul had visited Flint Cottage several times to clear the worst of the brambles and trim the shrubs at the front, but it had been Sarah who had paid him. He had protested, but she insisted. ‘Your mother is not at all well,’ she reminded him. He had let slip that she was prone to bronchitis and her nerves were in shreds. ‘You must need to pay the doctor.’
In a moment of enthusiasm she made a sponge cake once and walked with it up to the Hartmanns’ cottage herself. Such a pretty place, she thought as she waited, but nobody answered her knock so she left the tin on the doorstep with a note. A few days later the empty tin was returned with a letter of thanks penned in shaky italics and the promise of an invitation for the Baileys to call ‘in the spring when I’m sure I’ll feel much better’.
‘How is your mother?’ she asked now.
‘Better than she was, thank you,’ Paul replied. ‘She has always had a delicate constitution.’ Although there was no one else in the room, he lowered his voice. ‘She nearly died having me, you know, and my parents were told by the hospital to have no more children, which is why I have no brothers or sisters. Herr Klein, the consultant who treated her, was Jewish, and he left Germany with his family for America two years ago. My parents’ friendship with him was used as another black mark in the case against my father.’
The tea was ready to pour now, strong, hot and restorative. Sarah closed her eyes briefly as the warmth flowed through her. Teacakes arrived, scented with cinnamon and dripping with butter. How homely it all was. She could almost push away thoughts of the events that Paul described.
It was in the car home in the gathering dusk that he spoke more about his father. He did not look at her, but spoke as though to himself, remembering, his voice stumbling with grief and anger over the worst parts of his narrative.
Klaus Hartmann had been a lecturer in biology at the university for twenty years. His name had more than once been mentioned for preferment, but then he’d added his name to a letter protesting against the exclusion of Jewish students and found his path to promotion was blocked. His response was a heartfelt resistance to the regime’s interference in higher education. He declined invitations to join conferences organized by the government; he continued to teach any student who wished to learn, no matter what their background. Paul and his mother did not know exactly which activity it was that had triggered the Gestapo’s visit to their modest house in the Rotherbaum quarter early one morning in November 1937 and Klaus’ subsequent arrest and incarceration. There was to be a trial, the charge: treason, but it kept being postponed, due to ‘the illness’ of the defendant. Frau Hartmann and Paul were admitted to the prison hospital to see him, and were shocked to see the bruised, emaciated figure lying barely conscious in the bed. Only his eyes spoke to them and they were full of pain and fear. Klaus clutched his wife’s hand as though he’d never let her go and she broke out sobbing. ‘What have they done to you?’ It was only a few days later that his lawyer came to the house with the news they’d dreaded. Klaus Hartmann was dead, the official reason given that he’d been shot during an attempt to escape.
‘We know that’s not true,’ the lawyer said heavily. ‘You saw him. How would a man in his condition be able to escape? He was beaten, you saw that for yourselves. Frau Hartmann, I beg you, take Paul and leave Germany. There’s no future for either of you here and it will become dangerous to be English if there’s war. It is best if you go home.’
‘Home! My mother’s parents were dead and she had lived in Germany since she was eighteen, when she’d been sent to live with a German couple to learn the language. Lady Kelling’s mother was my mother’s cousin,’ Paul went on, ‘and in the end she wrote to them. The Kellings have been kind to have us.’
‘I’m glad.’ In fact, Sarah thought he had spoken stiffly when he mentioned the Kellings and wondered if they had not treated this little German branch of the family in distress with as much kindness as they might. However, she’d still not met Sir Henry and Lady Kelling, so maybe it was too early to form such an opinion.
Instead she said, ‘Do you intend to continue being a gardener?’
He slowed the car to let some schoolchildren cross. When they set off again, he answered her. ‘My plan eventually is to finish my doctorate. There’s a botanist with my specialism at Cambridge University I might write to, to see if he’d be my supervisor, but I need to save some money first. We were able to bring nothing out of Germany . . .’
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, ‘I expect you would worry about leaving your mother, too.’
‘That’s it exactly. You understand.’ He glanced at her and smiled. ‘It’s been dreadful for her losing my father and she grieves deeply for him. Maybe when it’s warmer she will start to feel a little stronger, and if I move to Cambridge perhaps she would come too. At the moment, though, the arrangement here suits her and she won’t think of going anywhere else.’
He sighed, and Sarah saw how much the situation frustrated him. At twenty-six, a year older than he was, she knew a little of how he felt, that life and youth and the possibility of a future were ebbing away. Her parents’ generation had lost so much in war. Would it soon be the children’s turn?