The Beaufort Sisters Read online

  ‘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 som
e 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.’

  She wondered who the soldier was, that he knew her name. Probably someone she had met on one of her visits to a military office; it was impossible to recognize him behind the scarf and earflaps. She put the jeep into reverse and followed the army truck as it backed up and swung into a side street. The sound of the chanting demonstrators was drowned now by truck horns being punched to the rhythm of the chant. Then a shot rang out and the blaring horns and chanting suddenly stopped. A moment later there were angry shouts and the sound of breaking glass. In a moment of imagination she wondered if she was hearing echoes of the Thirties: had the streets of Frankfurt clamoured like this when the SS had been rounding up the Jews? Street lights came on in the gloomy afternoon and the scene all at once became theatrical, a little unreal, a grey newsreel from the past. But the angry, yelling soldiers streaming down through the stalled traffic were real enough, frighteningly so.

  She looked back and saw the GI gesticulating to her from the back of the army truck, which had turned round and was facing down the side street. She slammed on the brakes of the jeep, jumped out and ran to the truck. The GI reached down, grabbed her hand and lifted her easily, as if she were no more than a small child, into the back of the truck. The canvas flaps were pulled down and abruptly she was in darkness.

  ‘Thanks. I’m glad you came – ’

  Then a hand smothered her face and she smelled chloroform on the rag that was pressed against her nose and mouth. She struggled, but an arm held her, hurting her. Then the darkness turned to blackness.

  2

  ‘My name is McKea, Magnus McKea,’ said the tall American major in a voice that sounded slightly English; Davoren wondered if he had been an actor before he had joined the army. ‘I’m with the legal staff down at Nuremberg on the War Crimes thing. Colonel Shasta suggested I should come up and see you. It’s about Miss Beaufort.’

  Davoren laughed, leaning so far back in his chair to let the laugh out that he looked in danger of falling over backwards. He was in his office in the big house on the Kasselallee, the walls papered with maps that he no longer looked at. Orderlies came and went in the corridor beyond the open door, all of them armed with the piece of paper that made them look as if they were too busy to be asked to do something by an officer or NCO. He was safe in British Army occupied territory and here was some Yank come to accuse him of something that was the best joke he had heard in ages.

  ‘You mean Miss Beaufort’s condition is a war crime?’

  Major McKea looked puzzled. ‘Don’t joke, Davoren. Kidnapping is a crime, period.’

  Davoren sat up straight, suddenly sober. ‘Good Christ – she’s been kidnapped?’

  ‘Yesterday some time. She didn’t return to her billet last night – ’

  ‘I know. I rang the billet, but some girl said she thought she’d seen Miss Beaufort come in and go out again.’

  ‘She was mistaken. Miss Beaufort never got to her billet. Her jeep was found abandoned in a Frankfurt suburb last night. An hour later Colonel Shasta got a ransom note to be passed on as quickly as possible to her father. He signalled Washington and they got in touch with Kansas City. I was brought in to represent Mr Beaufort till he gets here – my father is the Beaufort family lawyer. Nina’s father is being flown over by the Air Force. He’s expected in Frankfurt sometime tomorrow.’

  Davoren was silent, but his face was expressive enough; he was too close to the war, to the cheapness of life, to be hopeful. Then he looked across at McKea. ‘I’m sorry I laughed. It was a stupid private joke.’

  ‘You said something about Miss Beaufort’s condition. Is she pregnant?’

  Davoren nodded. ‘Does her father know about me?’

  ‘I don’t know, unless Nina wrote him. I don’t think anyone knows about you, except Jack Shasta. He thought you should be told.’

  ‘Why didn’t he tell me last night?’

  ‘I don’t know. I guess he was too concerned with getting in touch with Nina’s father.’ He lit a pipe, puffed on it. ‘I’ve known Nina since she was just a kid. We were never close, she’s about ten or twelve years younger than I, but I always liked her.’

  Davoren saw the enquiring look through the haze of pipe smoke. ‘I love her, if that’s what you’re asking me. I didn’t think of her as just someone to jump into bed with.’

  McKea ran a hand over his crew-cut, thinning red hair. ‘I didn’t mean to imply – sorry.’

  Davoren got up, closed the door against the traffic in the corridor. This was no longer British Army occupied territory: it was his own and very personal, too. He remained standing, his back to the maps on the wall. The maps were pre-war, marked with towns that now were only rubble: they only seemed to deepen the lack of hope he felt. Nina could be buried anywhere in the havoc.

  ‘Is there any hint of who’s kidnapped her?’

  ‘Nothing definite. We think it’s probably Krauts. God knows, they have enough reason to be asking for money.’ It was difficult to tell whether McKea was critical of or sympathetic to Germans. But then he said, ‘The country’s full of communists and socialists, you know.’

  Magnus McKea came from one of the oldest families in Kansas City, Missouri, a family whose conservatism had a certain hoariness to it. The army, and Europe itself, had opened up his tolerance, but he still tended to suspect any liberal thought that fell into his head, as if it might be the beginning of a brain tumour. He had a slightly fruity voice that almost disguised his Middle West twang. He had been fortunate or unfortunate enough, depending on one’s point of view and ear, to have had an English grandmother who had refused to speak to him if he spoke to her in what she described as a nasal infection. His grandmother, in earlier times, would have been scalped for her arrogance towards the natives. He had not enjoyed Europe, neither the war, the Nuremberg trials nor the havoc and misery that passed for conquered territory. All he wanted was to go home, but he had too much sense of duty to demonstrate towards that end.

  ‘Oh? I thought they’d all been killed off by the Nazis.’

  McKea wasn’t sure whether Davoren meant to sound sa
rdonic or not. ‘Not all of them. Half a million dollars, which is what they’re asking – what’s the matter?’

  ‘The Beauforts are that rich?’

  ‘I shouldn’t imagine Lucas Beaufort would miss half a million dollars. Finding the money is no problem – I believe he is bringing it with him this evening. In the meantime we’re looking for leads to the kidnappers, just in case – ’

  ‘Just in case they don’t hand Nina back to her father?’ Davoren tried to keep any emotion out of his voice; but he was suddenly afraid for Nina’s safety. ‘Are you expecting me to give you a lead?’

  ‘We thought you might have a suggestion – ’

  Davoren clicked his fingers. ‘Rudi Schnatz! Do you have transport?’

  ‘I have a jeep and driver outside – ’

  ‘Let’s use it!’

  McKea, a man accustomed to taking his time, had to hurry to keep up with Davoren as the Englishman led the way out of the house. They got into the jeep, Davoren gave the driver directions and twenty minutes later they pulled up outside a decrepit old house just off the Elbchaussee. On the other side of the street a row of bombed-out houses, like jagged gravestones, was an ugly testimony to the recent past. On a broken wall was scrawled a plea for the future: Let Communism Re-Build These!

  ‘You see?’ said McKea. ‘They’re not all dead.’

  ‘It’s in English. Maybe some of our chaps put that there.’

  McKea said nothing, dismayed that communists might have fought on the wrong side; he had already decided that the Russians at Nuremberg were the enemy of the future. Even the British, usually so reliable, had tossed out Churchill for Attlee and his socialists.