The Beaufort Sisters

‘Harry? When did you get so familiar with him?’

But Lucas rang Harry Truman and the President spoke to someone who spoke to someone and in August 1945 Nina sailed for Europe as an accredited worker for UNRRA.

On the night before she left home the four girls gathered in Nina’s room. Margaret was now almost sixteen, Sally was twelve and Prue, the late arrival, was five-and-a-bit. Nina had laid out the treasured possessions of her childhood and girlhood and invited her sisters to take their pick.

‘You’re not going to be a nun.’ Margaret was jealous of her sister’s chance for adventure. ‘You might want to keep these when you come back.’

‘Can I have your car?’ Sally was mechanical-minded and not interested in any of the things laid out on the bed. ‘I’ll drive it around the gardens.’

Prue was picking over what was offered. ‘I’ll take them all,’ she said.

Nina hugged her youngest sister, gazed at the other two. ‘I’m just the first. When you are all old enough, we should all go out and help the poor of the world.’

‘What’s the poor of the world?’ asked Prue.

‘I think we’d all look rather silly trying to be Sisters of Charity,’ said Margaret, practical-minded. ‘We can always get Daddy to write a cheque. The poor don’t want people like us fussing over them.’

‘They needn’t know who we are. We could always change our name!’

‘I don’t want to change my name,’ said Sally.

‘I do,’ said Prue. ‘I’d like to be called Mickey Rooney.’

A few weeks later Nina wished she had changed her name before applying to UNRRA. She crossed the Atlantic on the Queen Mary on a return trip after it had transported almost a division of GI’s back home. The music this time was Rum and Coca-Cola, but there was no dancing; Tom Pendergast was dead, but a British merchant naval officer winked and waved at her and got no further than the political boss had nine years before. She landed in Southampton and flew from England to Frankfurt in Germany in a MATS cargo plane. She landed in Frankfurt on the day that the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on the other side of the world; but the bang wasn’t heard and nobody seemed to hear or even feel the ripples spreading into the future. The UNRRA people were waiting for her, some of them with quite open hostility. They made it plain that they thought theirs was no job for spoiled rich kids with political pull. For the first time she realized there was a handicap to being a Beaufort.

Her boss was a retired colonel who had worked with Herbert Hoover on the American Relief Administration after World War One. ‘Don’t worry, Miss Beaufort. I was young then and there was the same opposition towards me. But some day the young are going to take over the world.’ Then added, because he, too, had grown old, ‘God help it.’

‘Am I doing a good job, Colonel Shasta?’

‘As well as anyone on the team. I have to go up to Hamburg next week and see the British. Would you care to come with me as my driver and secretary?’

‘Won’t that cause gossip, Colonel?’

‘I hope it does. I’ll be flattered. But you’ll be safe with me, Miss Beaufort. I’m that old-fashioned sort, a faithful husband. My wife, who lives in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, also happens to have antennae than can pick up any immoral thoughts I may have on this side of the Atlantic. I believe it is called extrasexual perception.’

So in October, two months after landing in Germany, Nina drove up to Hamburg with Colonel Shasta. She had become accustomed to the bomb damage she had seen around Frankfurt, but it was still a shock to pass through the towns on the way north and see how widespread was the destruction of Germany. They passed queues of people standing outside shops, Germans wearing the wardrobe of the defeated, half-uniforms, thin ersatz tweed, worn fur coats, and all with the same pale, hopeless faces. The jeep was halted by a military policeman at a cross-street and Nina became acutely aware of the people standing on the sidewalk waiting to cross. She was wearing for the first time the camel hair coat that her mother had had made for her and specially dyed a not-too-unbecoming khaki. She looked at a young girl her own age, saw the thin cotton dress covering the thin bony body; the girl stared back at her, face expressionless. Then Nina saw the envy and hate in the dark eyes and she turned away, too inexperienced in the expressions victors should wear.

‘Don’t show pity,’ said Colonel Shasta, who had been watching her. ‘That’s the last thing they want.’

‘It’s difficult not to show it.’

‘Tell that to the men who fought them.’

They drove into Hamburg, crossed the Lombard Bridge and after getting lost several times at last found the office Colonel Shasta was looking for. It was in a large house two blocks back from the Altersee; next door to it was another large house that was a club for British officers. Except that they needed a coat of paint, neither house looked as if it had suffered at all from the war.

‘Rather grand, aren’t they?’ Nina said. ‘I wonder if any Germans still live around here?’

‘Every house in the street has been commandeered,’ said a voice behind her and Colonel Shasta. ‘The fruits of victory. I was told you were due here today. I’m Major Davoren, Commanding Officer of the unit that’s taken over this house. I’m afraid UNRRA has been moved to a larger but less attractive place than this.’

He was dark-haired, good-looking, with a black moustache and dark eyes that might have been tired or just bored. He was tall, with heavy shoulders, and a certain ease of movement that suggested he might have been an athlete before the war. There was a row of ribbons on the breast of his battle tunic, including, Nina was to learn later, the ribbon of the Military Cross.

‘Could you have someone direct us?’ Shasta asked.

‘I’ll take you there myself.’ He got into the back of the jeep and, it seemed, looked at Nina for the first time. ‘Straight ahead, driver, then second right.’

‘This is Miss Beaufort,’ said Shasta, grinning. ‘I don’t think she is accustomed to being called Driver.’

‘Awfully sorry.’ But Davoren’s apology sounded perfunctory. ‘Shall we go, Miss Beaufort?’

Nina let in the gears with a crash and the jeep jerked forward. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Shasta grin again, but Major Davoren was behind her and she couldn’t see how he had reacted. She hoped she had snapped his head off.

Five minutes later they drew up outside a large block of apartments that had been converted into offices. Shrapnel marks pitted the walls and there was a huge black scorch mark stretching up a side wall, as if someone had tried to burn a hole in it with a giant blowtorch. The block had none of the dignity of the house they had just left.

‘Blame us English,’ said Davoren. ‘I’m afraid the army is claiming all the best for itself. As I said, the fruits of victory.’

‘You don’t believe in rehabilitation for the Germans?’ said Nina.

‘The young and idealistic,’ said Davoren, who couldn’t have been more than eight or nine years older than Nina. ‘Could you spare me a few minutes with Miss Beaufort, Colonel?’

‘I’ll be inside.’ Shasta climbed out of the jeep. ‘Don’t scratch his eyes out. I think we’re still supposed to be allies.’

He went into the apartment block, carrying his valise, and Davoren slid into the vacated seat beside Nina. ‘Well, we seem to have got off on the wrong foot.’

‘You have, not me.’

‘I’ve been fighting these bloody Germans for five and a half years. I’m not naturally vindictive, but I haven’t yet got round to feeling magnanimous. I lost my parents and my only sister in an air raid on London, wiped out by a V-2. What are you doing for dinner this evening?’

She was surprised to hear herself say, ‘Nothing.’

That was Friday and he took her to dinner at the Atlantic Hotel. The dining-room was full of British officers in khaki, Control Commission personnel in blue and German women in tow. There appeared to be no German men and only a few British women, all of whom looked with hatred at the Fraulein, none of whom was less than good-looking and most of whom were beautiful.

‘Fraternization doesn’t seem to worry you men. What would happen if one of those English girls came in here with a German man?’

‘She’d be shown the back door. We have to have standards, you know.’

‘Double standards, you mean.’

‘Of course. What else makes the world go round?’ But he smiled as he said it and his charm almost persuaded her that he only half-meant what he had said.

He took her home early to the billet where she was staying for the weekend. ‘There’s a curfew on and some of the MP’s can get a bit bloody-minded if they catch an officer with a good-looking girl. Pity you’re not staying here at the Atlantic, you could have invited me up to your room.’

She let that pass. ‘I stayed here with my parents when I was a child.’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘You did it in style. I came to Hamburg for a week before the war. I stayed in a dreadful sleazy little room over behind the Reeperbahn. Girls kept knocking on my door all night.’

‘Poor you.’

Saturday night he took her to a cabaret in the cellar of a bombed-out theatre. This time there were plenty of Germans, men as well as women; some of them looked remarkably well-fed for people whose official food ration was supposed to be only 1000 calories a day. Nina peered through the cigar and cigarette smoke, listened with her Berlitz-acquired ear to the conversations going on around her.

‘They are making business deals!’

‘Black marketeers,’ said Davoren. ‘This cabaret is the sort of stock exchange for it all. If you want to make any money on your PX issue, this is the place to come.’

‘I don’t need money.’ He knew nothing about her or her family; she revelled for the first time in anonymity, as if it were some sort of vice. ‘Do you come here and sell things?’

‘No. I’m not really interested in money. I shouldn’t say no to a fortune, but I don’t care for this piecemeal way of getting rich. Oh, I daresay in ten or fifteen years’ time some of those jokers will be fat, rich pillars of society – that is, if Germany ever gets off the ground again. And some of our own chaps are making a nice little bundle. But it’s not for me.’

‘Don’t you have any ambition? I don’t mean for this sort of thing. But – ’

‘Not really. I’m a day-to-day type. I’ll probably stay on in the army and if I don’t blot my copy-book I’ll retire as at least a brigadier. All that without having to fight another war – I’ll be dead before there’s another one.’

‘My God, what a limited vision!’

‘Oh, it has its compensations. You, for instance. Would I have met you if I’d been back in some office in London trying to make my fortune?’

‘What did you do before the war? Had you any ambition then?’

‘I had just come down from Cambridge when my country called me. I started out to be an archaeologist, studied Arabic, was going to dig up all Tutankhamen’s relatives. But I grew tired of that and I read History instead. One of the things I learned from that was that ambitious men usually finished up dead ahead of their appointed time.’

‘You should have met my grandfather. He was ambitious at ten and he lived till he was eighty.’

‘Ah, but did he succeed in his ambitions?’

‘Up to a point,’ she said and he smiled, mistaking her caution.

Then a man came to their table, bowed to Nina, clicked his heels and shook hands with Davoren. He was small, blond, tanned, athletic: ten years ago Nina could see him springing off vaulting-horses into posters extolling the Youth Movement. Or spurting out of starting-blocks in pursuit of Jesse Owens and the other black Americans at the Berlin Olympic Games. Davoren named him as Oberleutnant Schnatz, late of the Luftwaffe.

‘A good German, aren’t you, Rudi? Well, not a Nazi. But his morals aren’t the best.’

Schnatz smiled, unoffended. ‘Morality is only a matter of degree, Tim, you know that. After what we have been doing to each other for the past six years, what is a little black market?’

‘Rudi went to Oxford,’ Davoren explained. ‘They always had less concern for morality there than we at Cambridge. We played tennis against each other, each of us got a Blue. Baron von Cramm once tried to seduce him at Wimbledon, but I never got that far. What can I do for you, Rudi, though the answer is no, in advance.’

Not even Vassar, let alone Kansas City and the Barstow School, had prepared Nina for the decadence she was witnessing. Two girls went dancing by, arms wrapped round each other, oblivious of the sneers of the men watching them. Three whores came in, sat down and were in business at once; three pink-cheeked British subalterns fell on them like choirboy rapists. Four men sat at a corner table, heads close together, greed giving them a family resemblance. Evil, or anyway sin, hung in the air as thick as the cigar and cigarette smoke and Nina shivered with the thrill of it. She knew that back in the Thirties Kansas City had been known as America’s Sin City, but it could never have been like this. Without knowing it she was suffering from the tourist’s astigmatism, seeing foreign evil as worse and much more interesting than the home-grown variety.

‘I understand your lady friend is an American. I’m looking for contacts in the American zone.’

Nina saw Tim Davoren sit up a little straighter in his chair, felt his legs brush against hers under the table as they tensed. A thin blonde girl with a clown’s face had come out on to the small stage at the end of the cellar and was singing Little Sir Echo in German; or so Nina thought, till she caught some of the words and realized it was an obscene parody that had the audience who understood it holding their sides. But she was listening with only half an ear, more intent on Tim Davoren and Rudi Schnatz.

‘Rudi old chap, you’re asking for a poke in the nose. British heavyweights have never been much good, but I think I could flatten you.’

‘You are twice my size, old chap. I’m not Max Schmeling.’

‘I shouldn’t have threatened you if you were.’

‘You may not be brave,’ said Nina, ‘but I’ll poke anyone in the nose who says you’re not gallant.’

Schnatz smiled, taking her remark as encouragement for himself. ‘Miss Beaufort, I would not wish to get you in trouble either with Major Davoren or your American authorities. But there is a lot of unrest in the American zone, I’m told. A lot of GI’s wish to go home. Some of them may like to make some money to take home with them. If you should hear – ’

‘Go away, Rudi,’ said Davoren, ‘and don’t trouble the lady. I mean it.’

Schnatz looked at him, then at Nina: neither of them was smiling. The rest of the room laughed its head off at the clown singer; the lesbians rose behind Schnatz, hand in hand, heading for their bed. He bowed to Nina, nodded to Davoren and went away, disappearing behind the lesbians into the smoke and laughter.

Davoren took Nina’s hand, pressed it. ‘I know Rudi wasn’t a Nazi and I don’t think he’s a criminal, not at heart. But if he should try to get in touch with you again, give him – I think you call it the bum’s rush. Those chaps are going to get into an awful lot of trouble one day.’

Sunday night he took her to bed, in his room in the big house where he was billeted with seven other officers. He was surprised when she told him she was a virgin and he lay back on the pillow and scratched his head as if puzzled and worried.

‘You mean you’ve never had a lover?’

‘Depends what you mean by lover. I don’t think I’ve actually been in love. I had crushes on several boys I met at college and I had what I suppose you call affairs. But all I did was some heavy petting. I never went all the way.’

‘All the way. It sounds like jumping off a cliff.’

‘To a girl, losing her virginity is like jumping off a cliff. You only do it once. Lose your virginity, I mean. After that I suppose it becomes, um, a habit.’

‘Don’t ever think of love-making as a habit. The postures of it are ludicrous, but it’s still a beautiful experience. And beautiful experiences are not the result of habit.’

‘How many girls have you made love to? You sound like Casanova. Where are you going?’

‘To get the international defence weapon – a French letter. You obviously haven’t come prepared.’

‘I think my father would die if I got pregnant.’

‘I don’t see the connection, unless American fathers have some sort of umbilical union with their daughters.’

‘Would you marry me if you got me pregnant?’

‘Are you proposing to me?’

‘I don’t know – am I? Good God, how things sneak up on you! I think I am in love with you.’

He kissed her gently. ‘You’re far too honest, darling heart. And too forward. You should have let me speak first.’

‘Shut up and get back into bed.’

But as he entered her she knew she had indeed spoken too soon, that he was not in love with her.

She went back to Frankfurt next morning with Colonel Shasta who asked her no questions but looked as if he had the answers anyway. All he said when they got back to Frankfurt was, ‘Take care, Nina. Germany right now is no place to make commitments. You’re very young.’

‘You sound like my father, Colonel.’

‘I’m trying to. I have a daughter your age back home.’ Then he asked his only question: ‘Does Major Davoren know who your family are?’

‘Not yet.’

‘You’d better tell him, then. It may tell you, one way or the other, whether his intentions are honourable or not.’

But she didn’t tell Tim, at least not for a couple of months. They met each weekend in villages and towns between Frankfurt and Hamburg, finding accommodation in inns and small hotels that had not been requisitioned by the Military Government. By the time she found she was pregnant he had told her he loved her and she believed him. Or wanted to.

They were in a village on the border of the American and British zones. From the inn they could see the white empty fields stretching away under the grey sky; the dark green river appeared unmoving as it curved below the village. Beyond the river a small copse looked like stacked firewood, black and leafless; two blackbirds sat motionless on a fence, like ebony ornaments. It seemed to Nina that all the seasons had stopped forever in an eternal winter. Despite the fire in the grate in their bedroom she felt cold, colder and more miserable than she had ever felt in her life before.

‘I didn’t expect you to be pleased. But I hoped you’d – understand. At least that.’

He stood beside her at the window, but not touching her. From the side of the inn came shouts and laughter as some children fought their own war with snowballs.

‘I do understand – if that’s the word you want. I’m not an utter bastard, darling. And I’d be pleased, too – in other circumstances.’

‘What other circumstances?’

‘Why didn’t you tell me your family is rich? Really rich?’

‘Who told you?’ she demanded.

‘Simmer down. Wasn’t I supposed to know? Rudi Schnatz told me – evidently he made his contacts in the American zone after all. I suppose my English insularity is to blame – if I were really educated I should have known that you are right up there with Barbara Hutton and that other American heiress – Dorothy Duke? Doris Duke. But I’m not educated. I obviously took the wrong subjects at Cambridge.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake stop it! None of that’s important – ’

‘You thought it was or you would have told me. Were you afraid I’d fall in love with your money instead of you? You didn’t trust me, that’s the important point.’

She knew he was right. But she was too worried and upset to make concessions; unaccustomed to crises, she reacted selfishly. ‘What are we going to do then? I’m not going to have an abortion.’

‘Well, that leaves only one alternative, doesn’t it?’ He sounded disappointed that she had vetoed an abortion; or perhaps her angry and frightened ear only made him sound that way. ‘We’ll have to get married.’

‘Have to? Good God!’

The children had given up their snowball fight and gone elsewhere. The inn was suddenly quiet, listening. She bit her knuckles, stifling any further outburst. Ladies never made a show of themselves: her mother stood invisible in the corner of the room, telling her how to behave. But her mother would never have got herself into this situation and there was no knowing how she would have reacted if she had. All the decorum Nina had been taught in Kansas City meant nothing in a cold room in an inn in faraway Germany.

‘I think we’d better spend the rest of the weekend talking this over. I’m sorry I got you into this, darling. Really.’ He moved to take her in his arms, but she pulled away.

‘No, I want time to think. Don’t touch me – please. I can’t stay the weekend – Colonel Shasta wants me back in Frankfurt tonight. They are expecting trouble from the GI’s – there’s a lot of talk about demonstrations. They want to go home. Colonel Shasta wants us all off the streets, just in case.’

‘Do you want to go home, too?’

Suddenly she did want to go home. She felt miserable, frightened and selfish; the poor of the world would have to wait. Unconsciously she put a hand on her belly, as if the baby were already apparent. ‘I’ll have to. I don’t think UNRRA would want this sort of bundle for Europe.’

‘Stop that sort of talk! Cheapening yourself isn’t going to help.’

She did up her camel hair coat, pulled on her gloves. ‘We can’t talk to each other in this mood.’

‘I’d better see you back to Frankfurt.’

‘I’ll be all right. I’m not the helpless little mother just yet. I’ll call you during the week, when I’ve thought some more. No, don’t kiss me – ’ She was close to tears: to have him kiss her would be like turning a key in a dam.

‘I’ll marry you,’ he said quickly. ‘Despite your family.’

He had made a mistake in adding the last sentence. She shook her head, realizing how much she belonged to those back home. She hadn’t escaped by coming to Germany: she needed now, possibly always would, the security in which she had been brought up.

‘I’m part of our family and they’re part of me. That’s something we’d have to understand right from the beginning. They won’t be against you – why should you be against them?’

He sighed. ‘I wasn’t drawing battle lines. But if we marry, I’m marrying you, not them. I’d say the same whether they were rich or poor. I’ll ring tonight to see if you got back all right.’

Driving back to Frankfurt in the jeep Colonel Shasta had lent her, Nina was only half-aware of the traffic. She did not see the US Army truck that stayed behind her all the way from the village north of Kassel right through to the outskirts of Frankfurt. As she came into the city she had to slow; traffic had thickened and after a few blocks came to a halt. She leaned out of the jeep and up ahead caught glimpses of soldiers spread out in a thick human barricade across the road. She could hear chanting, loud and angry: she had never thought the word Home could have any threat to it. At once she felt frightened and looked about for a way to get out of the traffic jam. She was not normally nervous and she wondered if approaching motherhood made one so; then she ridiculed the thought, laughing at herself. The row with Tim had just upset her, all she really wanted was to get back to her billet and burst into tears.

‘We’ll get you out of this, Miss Beaufort.’ The GI, earflaps of his cap pulled down, thick woollen scarf wrapped round the lower half of his face so that his voice was muffled, had come up quietly beside the jeep. ‘It looks pretty ugly up ahead. Just back up and follow us.’