For Mum, who, being born in 1914, has always said she was probably the cause of the conflict!

With love and thanks for support and encouragement over half a century

When my grandmother died recently, the sorting out of her belongings was left to me. I found it a saddening task, but I couldn’t help feeling that she herself was happy at last.

I loved to listen to her talk about her life. Such a long, colourful life, stretching all the way from the last years of Queen Victoria. She was a crusading journalist, a great voice in the women’s cause, a staunch pacifist, a local councillor and supporter of many charities; she was also a supportive mother, and a fond grandparent. I thought I knew all about her. Now I realize that what she allowed me to share was an edited version, for among her belongings I discovered a manuscript, written some years ago in a clear, firm hand.

The accompanying letter was more recent, addressed to me in writing gone spidery with age. Now at last I understand some of the hints she let drop, with her ice-blue eyes sparkling. She had secrets she was keeping. But she wanted me to know the truth, in the end.

My dear Maggie,

You have often asked me about my life and let me indulge myself in recounting my memories. Bless you for that. An old woman does love to reminisce.

You’ve also been kind enough to say that my story is worth recording. Be that as it may, some years ago I did put pen to paper – you will remember the time I was convalescing from surgery and had nothing to do but read and scribble. I began this account then, and I found it so absorbing a pastime that I continued it. I’ve tried to be as honest as I can – that’s why I intend to keep it to myself until after I’m gone, to spare my own blushes. It may be a little too frank in places, but I believe you will understand and not be too appalled by the things your ancient grandmother did, and said, and thought, in the days when she and the world were young.

I still vividly remember the spring and summer of 1911, the year I turned eighteen. To be young, then, in Germany, was a magical thing. Youth was the hope, the inspiration, of a nation riding high on arrogance and optimism.

Die wunderschönen Tage! Those wonderful days! A time of dancing, swimming and boating, horse riding and playing tennis. How we laughed, my three handsome escorts and I, as we motored in Willi’s new Benz, noisily weaving through the streets of Berlin, sending horse-drawn carts scattering, tooting the horn to waken wooded suburbs. That’s how I learned to drive, zooming at fifteen miles an hour along the lakeside with dust flying in the faces of enraged elder citizens out exercising their dogs. We were rich, youthful, members of the elite, children of the Fatherland. The world was at our feet.

But even then, in quiet moments when I let myself slow down from the whirl of playing out those merry hours, I could sense the clouds gathering. Changes were coming. How great, I didn’t then guess. And for me, personally, the ending of the idyll was to be swift and painful.

One

Waking abruptly, from a fitful, dream-filled sleep, I found the cabin airless and my body drenched in sweat. My corset and drawers clung to my skin; even my camisole was damp. Faint moonlight glowed behind the curtain at the porthole. The shuddering throb of the steamer’s engine rattled every bone in my body and, from the bunk below, my companion’s snores had grown so loud that further sleep was impossible. Moving as quietly as I could, I tossed back the single sheet that covered me and slid my bare feet to the rungs of the ladder.

My stomach felt uneasy, perhaps because it was empty. On the long rail journey that had swallowed yesterday in a haze of unreality, I had only picked at my food. Now I needed air. I could hardly breathe in the close, humid atmosphere of the cabin aboard the SS Medusa.

Groping in the darkness for my clothes, I donned them with fumbling slowness, then bent to feel for my shoes. As I did so, my hair let loose a final pin and fell heavily over my shoulder. I shook it back and combed it out with my fingers. Dishevelment hardly mattered. At that small hour of the morning, no one would see me.

The slight snick of the latch caused the snoring behind me to pause. The sleeper turned over, making the mattress rustle, then settled back into a steady rhythm as I slipped out into deep shadow, taking a welcome breath of fresher air, tangy with salt. A few yards away, bright moonlight sliced across the upper deck. Overhead, the stack belched a mixture of smoke and steam that hung in blobs, small clouds dotting our route across a rippled sea so calm it looked more like pond than ocean. And, behind the ship, the wake opened foaming, silvered arms, as if yearning, as I was, for the receding coastline.

But I mustn’t look back. Ahead, like pale clouds spread low across a dark horizon, England was waiting.

Slowly, bracing myself against the juddering and swaying of the ship, I made my way down to the lower deck and stood at the rail to let the breeze ruffle my hair. My hand found its way into my pocket, where I felt the edges of the folded paper secreted there. That hateful letter…

‘You all right, dearie?’

The voice jerked me out of bleak thoughts and I looked round to see beside me one of my fellow passengers from yesterday’s train. ‘Thank you. Yes,’ I replied, and turned my head away, blinking wet lashes.

Until she spoke I hadn’t realized I was weeping. My mind had been miles away, back in Berlin.

‘Lor’, but it’s hot!’ The young woman made a pantomime of fanning herself with her hands, and gave up with a little grimace that laughed at her own efforts. ‘Hot? Heiss? Sorry, dear, you probably don’t understand a word I’m saying. Only, I could have sworn I’d heard you talking English to that man you’re travelling with.’

Of course. Though travelling second class, this fair-haired young woman had, I now recalled, spent the entire journey across Europe parading up and down the first-class corridor, solely for the purpose of making eyes at my escort. I was tempted to prevaricate, to pretend that I didn’t understand her, but, ‘I am English,’ I replied.

‘Are you? But… the conductor on the train reckoned you were German. Fraulein von—’

‘You were asking about me?’

She hesitated, confused, then excused herself, ‘Only out of interest, dear. You know – being cooped up on the same train and all.’

‘Quite.’ Deliberately turning my shoulder, I moved a few paces on along the rail, towards the stern, using my fingers to wipe away the remnants of tears beneath my eyes. I wished she would go away. Friendly as she seemed, I was in no mood for conversation; I had come on deck only for some air, and to think. The events of the past two days seemed like a bad dream, but, if I doubted my memory, the letter in my pocket provided tangible proof that all was true.

‘Anyway,’ the bright voice said at my elbow, ‘I said to Elsie – that’s my friend, the red-headed one, you may have noticed her. There’s seven of us. Call ourselves the Gala Girls – song-and-dance troupe. We’ve been doing a six-week tour of the old Continong. Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin… Anyway, I said to Elsie, I’m sure I heard that young lady talking English. But the conductor said your name was Fraulein von Wurthe.’

Her face, lifted to mine, was alight with friendly curiosity, reminding me of an overeager puppy. Perhaps, at that hour, in mid-Channel, caught between future and past, one world and another, it was good not to be the only one awake and restless.

‘That is correct. I am called Katarin von Wurthe.’

‘Pleased to make your acquaintance, I’m sure.’ She stuck out a hand, giving me a smile so disarming that I found myself shaking hands with her. ‘My name’s Love,’ she told me. ‘Judy Love. You don’t mind me chatting like this, do you? Only, we both seem to be in the same boat and—’ Hearing what she had said, she laughed aloud. ‘That’s good – in the same boat. We are, aren’t we, without a word of a lie? No, I meant… neither of us can sleep and it’s the middle of the night and all. Stupid to stand on ceremony. I don’t know about you, but I’m glad of someone to talk to. I was dreading this voyage. Last time I was sick as a pig the whole time. Mind you, it was rougher then. It’s like a millpond tonight.’

‘Yes.’ Resigning myself to continuing the acquaintance, I studied her from a corner of my eye. She held her big-brimmed hat with its overblown roses in one hand, leaving her piled butter-blond hair bare, strands falling loose round her face and neck. Her flounced blouse and tunic-style skirt were of cheap material, crumpled and soiled from travelling. From the way she minced when she walked, I guessed she was wearing a hobble garter under that narrow-hemmed skirt – the latest Paris fashion, over which Mother and I had argued bitterly.

At the thought, a wave of homesickness assailed me. What wouldn’t I give to be arguing now about hobble skirts, and whether it was right for me to wear a revealing décolletage, or pad my hair to balance a hat draped with a dozen ostrich feathers…

‘I hoped I’d be able to sleep tonight,’ Judy Love was saying, ‘but it’s stifling in that lower-deck saloon. I expect you’ve got a cabin, have you? Hot in there, too, was it?’

‘I slept for a while,’ I conceded, ‘but I was having bad dreams, and the snoring from the other bunk was so loud. In the end, I decided it might be better out here on deck. At least it’s quiet.’

She was staring at me in a strange way, her mouth half open. ‘You… you’re sharing a cabin?’

‘Unfortunately so. We were late in booking. Mrs Joosens was not pleased to be asked to share, but when the problem was explained to her—’

‘Mrs Joosens?’

‘The fat Dutch lady who joined the train at Oldenzaal yesterday. You must have seen her – mountains of pigskin luggage.’

‘Oh – oh, yes, I did, now you mention it. So it’s her you’re sharing with?’

‘Of course.’ The relief on her face gave me pause. ‘Why, what did you think?’

‘I thought you meant…’ Despite the moonlight, I could see her colour had risen, darkening her plump cheeks. ‘No, nothing, dear. Take no notice of me. You’re obviously a young lady. I told Elsie she was barking up the wrong tree.’

‘Liebe Zeite!’ I managed. ‘Are you suggesting that Mr Wells and I—’

‘Oh, not me, dear. That’s what my friend Elsie said. She makes up stories about people. To while away the time, you know. She reckoned your gentleman friend was probably a playboy. And you travelling incognito as his niece, or something, dressed up like a schoolgirl to make it look innocent. And then when you mentioned snoring, I thought, well…’

Part of me was affronted by her suggestion; another part was amused, even flattered. To be taken for Mr Wells’s mistress… Even Mother had displayed few qualms at allowing me to travel with him. But then, it would not occur to her to imagine anything improper between two such unlikely candidates as her unremarkable daughter and the handsome man who had once been the idol of her own set.

She had kept me young in clothes and manners even after I grew taller than she. Only on my eighteenth birthday, nearly three months ago, had I been allowed to put my hair up for the first time. For this present journey I had been made to dress like a schoolgirl, though I had left the boater, and the navy jacket with its silly sailor collar, back in the sweltering cabin. If Mother could have seen me, out on the open deck in such a state of unladylike undress, with my hair falling loose, she would probably have fainted.

But then – the thought came sneaking like a naughty boy after apples – while I was in England Mother wouldn’t be there to adjudicate over every item of my clothing. If I accepted the college place which my uncle Frank had arranged for me, I might stop being the prim young miss just out of the schoolroom and become my own woman. I might even defy all decrees and study journalism, after all.

But the spurt of rebellion died as swiftly as it had risen: I did not want to be in England. I wanted to go home! I wanted to see Carl-Heinz and have him tell me it was all a mistake, that in truth he loved me still. But I couldn’t even recall his face. All I could see was Willi, staring with such fierce, cold triumph. It had been he who delivered the letter…

‘Should’ve listened to my own head, not Elsie’s silly notions,’ Judy Love was saying apologetically. ‘I mean, your Mr Wells may be a bit of a dandy, but he’s probably a real gentleman.’ She slid me a sidelong look, adding, ‘Married, is he?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘Is he your guardian?’

‘He’s more in the way of a postman delivering a special package,’ I informed her wryly. ‘His responsibilities will end once we reach… once we reach our destination.’ I had almost said ‘home’, but Denes Hill was not my home, nor ever would be. ‘I hardly know him. He’s my grandfather’s solicitor. That’s where we’re going – to my grandfather’s house.’

‘In London?’ she asked hopefully.

‘In Norfolk. Though I may go to college in London if…’

But it was not my movements that interested her. ‘Is that where Mr Wells lives, too – in Norfolk?’

‘As far as I know.’

‘Just my luck.’ Wistfully, she added, ‘Ever so good-looking, isn’t he?’

‘Is he?’

‘Hadn’t you noticed? Lor’, dearie, you are young.’

‘I’m turned eighteen!’ I said, stung.

Her smile turned lopsided. ‘Quite an old lady, then. Lor’, it seems an age since I was eighteen.’ She sighed. ‘A lot can happen to a girl in five years, you mark my words. Anyway… tell me about Norfolk. I’ve never been there. What’s it like?’

‘I don’t remember much.’ Letting out a long breath, I stared out across the moon-glimmering sea. ‘We left in the spring of… it must have been nineteen-oh-two. I was eight at the time. But we hadn’t been there long. Less than two years.’

‘So where were you before that?’

It was a long time since I had thought of the years before Berlin. Now the mists stirred and glimpses of the far past appeared, sluggish with disuse – a secure, sunlit childhood, in a big house in a valley by a river, with green mountains soaring all around…

‘I was born in Cumberland,’ I said aloud. ‘But Mother took me back to Denes Hill – my grandfather’s house in Norfolk – after my father died. It was there that she met my stepfather, Friedrich von Wurthe. He was in the German diplomatic service, attached to the Embassy in London. He used to come and stay at Sandringham, which is quite near Denes Hill.’

‘Sandringham – the King’s house?’ she asked, impressed.

‘That’s right. King Edward took a fancy to Pa and often invited him to stay at Sandringham, so I understand. Queen Alexandra – I should say the Queen Dowager now, I suppose – she has a small house on the beach where her guests sometimes go. For private visits. Quite informal.’

She was regarding me with open-mouthed awe. ‘You mean… you’re acquainted with the royal family?’

‘I played on the beach with the young princes and princesses – King George’s children – and their cousins. And I once had tea in the garden at Queen Alexandra’s bungalow. That’s how Mother met Pa – at the beach. But after they were married we went to live in Berlin. My stepfather is now chairman of the von Wurthe bank.’

‘Lor’!’ She flapped her eyelashes alarmingly. ‘And me and Elsie had the nerve to— If I’d known who you were, I’d never have dared speak to you.’

‘Whyever not? I’m no one. I’m no different from you.’ At that moment I felt it to be true – she and I were two human females, swept together for a brief hour, like leaves on an eddying stream. With the dawn, fate’s current would separate us, probably for ever, but for this moment we were equals. Besides, apart from my background, what did I have to commend me? I was a girlchild, a stepchild, not especially beautiful, nor especially talented, and with few prospects. Indeed, it seemed to me on that night, with my life poised at a crossroads, that I no longer knew who I was or where I belonged. Even my name was borrowed: though for convenience I had been known as Katarin von Wurthe, my real name was Catherine Louise Brand.

Of my own father, William Brand, I knew little – I remembered him only as a terrifying creature confined to a stifling, malodorous sickroom. Mother had been awfully young when they married, scarcely older than I was now, and widowed after a few years. But that was long ago, of no importance. More sharp in my mind was the immediate past – the last few unhappy days, culminating in the letter I still clutched in my sweating palm. It seemed like a live thing, pulsating there against my flesh.

I found I wanted to talk, to say aloud what was in my mind and discover for myself what I felt about it. Leaning on the rail, watching the silvered wake churn up the sea, forming a curve that stretched far behind us, I said, ‘I’m not even sure what I’m doing here, except that my family decided I might be safer in England. Because of the danger.’

‘What danger?’

‘Why…’ I looked at her in disbelief. How could she not know? ‘The danger of a European war. Surely you’ve been aware of it?’

‘Oh, that’s rubbish!’ she broke in, dismissing rumours of international unrest with a flip of her hand. ‘Everybody said there’d be a war last year, but it never happened, did it? There won’t be any war now, you’ll see. I said to Elsie, the newspapers love to blow things up out of all proportion. Bang the drum a bit and the men start strutting about, going all patriotic.’

‘I think it’s a little more serious than that,’ I said.

‘Oh, it’ll blow over. After all, your Kaiser’s a first cousin to our King. Your Crown Prince was a guest at the coronation in London only a few weeks ago, wasn’t he? I know there’s lots of soldiers everywhere in Germany, but they just like to dress up and strut about. It’s in the Prussian blood. Very smart and handsome they are, too. I had my share of officers queuing at the stage door, I can tell you. Think about it, dear – if things were as bad as they reckon, would me and my friends have been shown such a good time in Berlin, us being British and all?’

Doubtfully, I answered, ‘Even so…’ The eastern sky began to lighten with dawn over the low contours of England as I thought back on the events which had brought me to this night. All at once I was seeing things with a cold clarity that burned my brain as, for the first time, I began to perceive a pattern I had not recognized before. Was it possible? Had the threat of war been only an excuse? Had my family colluded in sending me into exile solely because I had dared to love the wrong man?

What I knew of politics then was what I heard at the dinner table, what I read in the headlines and what my friends said. But even I knew that, for some years past, a feeling of grievance had been stirring in Germany.

In that summer of 1911, unrest had woven itself deeper into the fabric of our lives. The papers had been full of patriotic bluster concerning a place called Agadir in Morocco, where France had done something that had forced the German government to send a gunboat. In response, Britain’s Mr Lloyd George had made an inflammatory speech, issuing a warning which had antagonized all Germans. In the streets of Berlin one had felt anger growing and wherever a group gathered there had been talk of war. Germany would not be threatened. Not for long! Tempers grew short. The Berlin bear was growling, the Prussian eagle testing his wings to defend his eyrie…

Understanding few of the deeper ramifications, I was disquieted when Mother and Pa began to talk of sending me away to England because of the danger. How could trouble in far-off Morocco possibly spread to reach us in Berlin?

The unrest disturbed the business community and the resulting uncertainty set my stepfather on edge. He came home late from the bank, looking more and more harassed. He ate his dinner hurriedly, which gave him indigestion, which in turn made him snappish. His moods unsettled the entire household. That was why Mother had become especially nervy and anxious for my safety, I decided. We were all out of sorts, what with the sultry weather, and the worry, and the wild talk… Being absorbed in my own immediate, private concerns, I dismissed more distant thunders.

Mother and I had never been close. When I was young I always felt that I was a nuisance to her and nothing I did ever pleased her. I was never good enough, or pretty enough, though as I grew up and became useful she tolerated me more. She had, anyway, her new family to think of – at regular intervals, two years apart, she had given Pa three sons, my little half-brothers Rudger, Pieter and Hansi. Pa also had a son from his first marriage – Fritzi, a few years my senior. He had been away, at school and military college, most of the time I was in Berlin. Even so, I had grown fond of him and regarded him as a big brother.

My stepfamily had readily accepted me and been kind, if not openly affectionate – displays of emotion were despised by the Prussian male. But, though Pa had a soft spot for me as the only girl in the family, he believed in discipline and expected unquestioning obedience from all of us. He had insisted that Mother and I should speak German unless we were alone, but that was no problem: I had soon become bilingual. As I grew up, however, I developed a mind of my own and lately I had found myself more and more in conflict with Pa. He didn’t like being argued with, especially by a young woman. Nor did he approve of my ambition to study journalism. I suspect he was instrumental in having the University of Berlin turn down my application for a place – a blow which ruined my plans for the future. And when he discovered I had been to hear the socialist campaigner, Clara Zetkin, speak, he forbade me to go out of the house for a whole week; he even burned the piece I had written about it and, for a while, relations between us were openly hostile. Torn between us, Mother sided with Pa. She always did.

The distraction of my eighteenth birthday, and putting my hair up, was followed by my first proper grown-up ball at the officers’ mess at the military academy. I wore a gown of palest dove satin, trimmed with pink lace, and my dance card was full all evening. My stepbrother Fritzi escorted me, along with his best friends Carl-Heinz von Siemens and Willi von Sturm, all three of them scions of old, aristocratic families, all officers of the Third Hussars, currently attached to the Crown Prince’s guard, tall and fair and fine in their braided uniforms with swords at their sides. The Kaiser loved military accoutrements – parades, uniforms, horses and all the show of Prussian military might – and Berlin was full of fine young soldiers, who went everywhere in uniform, giving a colourful gloss to the crowded streets. But none were finer than my three champions. They called themselves my musketeers, and dubbed me Fraulein D’Artagnan. We were inseparable, the four of us.

Or so I had fondly thought.

At the ball, my beautiful Carl-Heinz kissed me for the first time, in an arbour scented by gardenias. My cup was full. If he loved me then my future was secure. But we kept the secret for ourselves, knowing that our parents would say we were too young – Carl-Heinz was not yet twenty-one.

My stepfather had a fine house in the lakeside suburb of Wannsee, not far from the new palace at Potsdam, so it was convenient for Carl-Heinz to come there after duty. We met secretly on the shores of Lake Havel and walked in the pine forests there, making plans. But recently my sweetheart had once or twice missed our rendezvous, and then one evening – only two days before I found myself recounting it to Judy Love – Willi von Sturm had turned up instead.

I lifted my hand, opening stiff fingers to take out the letter and unfold it for Judy Love to see. ‘He brought me this. It’s from Carl-Heinz. It says… It says he didn’t intend that I should take him seriously. It was a flirtation, and I should have known a man of his background could never consider a wife with no name or fortune. It says I was a fool if I thought otherwise, and I should go home to England and never come back…’

Her hand was on my arm, offering comfort. ‘I’m sorry, dear. I’m truly sorry. Men can be such beasts.’

‘But he did mean it!’ I cried. ‘It’s this letter that’s a lie. Oh… why didn’t I see it before? It’s obvious that Willi made him write it!’

Willi, with his smiling mouth and his cold blue eyes, his waxed blond moustache, his duelling scar, his overweening arrogance…

‘That’s what Fritzi was trying to tell me!’ I mourned. ‘He said something about… I didn’t take it in. I suppose I didn’t want to listen. But what he meant was that Willi von Sturm had orchestrated it.’

That evening at dinner I had been in a state of shock. All I could think of was the letter – the fact that Carl-Heinz didn’t want me. But the presence of an unexpected visitor from England – the solicitor, Mr Wells – had obliged me to compose myself.

‘Mr Wells came to tell us that my grandfather is ill and wants to see me again before he dies,’ I told my new acquaintance. ‘Everyone agreed I should go and I let them persuade me. Before I knew it, I was on the train. And Willi was there, in the crowd, at the station. Making sure I left. Oh… you see! It’s not Carl-Heinz who has played me false, it’s all of them – his toffee-nosed family, and my parents, and Willi – plotting to separate us. They can’t do this.’

The sun had lifted its first bright rim over the horizon, its light ample for me to read the letter. The words still said the same, but I knew he had written them under duress, driven by his family and by his brother officers of the élite guard, the high-born, the blue-blooded, determined to close ranks and make him deny his feelings for a penniless little Ausländerin.

‘I shan’t let them do it!’ I cried, thumping my fist on the rail. ‘I shall write to him and tell him that I know he didn’t mean it. I shall ask him to wait for me. In a few years, when we’re of age, they won’t be able to stop us.’ So saying, I folded the letter again and returned it to my skirt pocket.

Close beside me, Judy Love was peering up at my averted profile, all but bursting with interest. ‘That’s right, dear,’ she soothed. ‘Time solves all. You’ll probably meet some nice English boy and—’

‘There will never be anyone else for me.’

‘You think that now. But, I mean, if he let himself be bullied into writing a letter like that, maybe he’s not the one for you. In a few weeks’ time you’ll feel differently. After all, you’re off to Norfolk, to see your family. That’ll be nice.’

‘Will it?’ I remembered so little about Denes Hill. I didn’t care about Denes Hill.

‘Oh… No, sorry. It won’t be much fun if your grandfather’s dying.’

That was not what I had meant. ‘I didn’t say he was dying, I said he was ill. At least, that’s what I was told.’

‘Don’t you believe it?’

I forced myself to think of what lay ahead, though I hardly dared put my own doubts into words. ‘I don’t know what to believe. It’s all so fearfully convenient. For Mr Wells to arrive at just that moment… I expect Mother wrote and asked the family to take me in for a while, to get me away from Carl-Heinz. Why else should Grandfather suddenly want to see me? Even if he is ill… He’s shown no interest before. None of them has. Oh, Grandmother sends cards and small presents at my birthday and Christmas. Tokens, dutifully sent. But they never cared about me.’

‘Perhaps they want to make up for it.’

‘Perhaps.’ I wished I could believe it.

The English coast was near now, gentle hills gilded by the rising sun behind a great estuary full of ships. But what waited further on, at the end of my journey, was unclear.

‘Is your mother the only child?’ Judy Love asked.

‘No, though she’s the oldest. The others… The only one I really know, because he’s been to visit us two or three times in Berlin, is Uncle Frank. He’s a darling. But then he’s different – he’s an artist. Mother says he’s much too fond of the ladies ever to be faithful to only one. My oldest uncle, Harry, is married, but he has no children, as far as I know. Why do you ask?’

‘I was just thinking. I mean, if your grandfather wants to see you before he dies, well… maybe he’s left you something in his will.’ Her eyes shone at the thought of it. ‘Does he have a lot of money?’

The question eased a bitter laugh out of me. ‘You’ve been reading too many bad novels, Miss Love. My grandfather may be a wealthy man, but he has a wife, and four sons, and another daughter apart from my mother. I am not about to become a rich heiress.’

Her face fell. ‘Oh.’

The ship began to manoeuvre towards the estuary. Around us, other people emerged from cabins and saloons, to watch as we came into harbour. The air was thick with crying gulls, the sun glaring into my aching eyes. Another hot day lay in prospect. And somewhere ahead, hidden by distance hazed in morning brightness, waiting behind more hours of travelling on dusty trains, lay the county of Norfolk, and a house named Denes Hill, where lived my English relatives, the Rhys-Thomases.

I was truly adrift, on currents that swept me ever further from people and places familiar and dear, while driving me inexorably closer to an alien shore. But I had to go on. I couldn’t go back. Not yet.

Perhaps never, a voice in my head said clearly and, in sudden panic, I looked back, hoping for a last glimpse of the far, receding shore. But it was lost behind a haze of dawn mist, a swell of ocean, and a roll of sudden thunder.

Disembarking from the ship in the crowded confusion of Parkeston Quay, I felt like an automaton, worked by clockwork. A leaden depression had settled on me, and my head was thick from lack of sleep and from the oppressive weather. I saw Judy Love with her friends, making for a train bound for London. She waved at me, calling, ‘’Bye, dear. Good luck,’ but her main purpose was to draw my escort’s attention, which she succeeded in doing, briefly – I felt him hesitate and look round as he hustled me towards the dining car of our own train.

Once we had been conducted to our table, Mr Wells settled back opposite me to study the breakfast menu. Judy Love had been right – he was good-looking, in a dark, rakish, mature sort of way, tall and well built, wearing a formal stiff collar and tie with his tailored summer tweeds. The black hair round his ears was faintly silvered, and the moustache he wore made me think of a riverboat gambler I had seen in a cinematograph. I could imagine him playing poker, winning or losing fortunes with little outward display of emotion. What was he thinking behind that calm façade as he ordered a full English breakfast, with China tea?

My own appetite had deserted me. I drank a cup of coffee and several glasses of iced water, but my main recollection of that part of the journey is seeing watchful, khaki-clad soldiers patrolling beside the line, carrying guns.

A mountainous lady at the table opposite ours exclaimed, ‘I never thought I’d live to see the day when British soldiers were obliged to keep watch on the English coast for fear of Huns!’

‘Not to worry, m’dear,’ her bewhiskered husband replied. ‘Our lads are exercising, that’s all. Nothing for you to worry your little head about. Didn’t you see those naval vessels in the harbour? Britannia still rules the waves. If Kaiser Bill dares to try anything, he’ll get short shrift. No matter how many spies he has lurking among us.’

At this, the lady glanced straight at me and, finding me watching her, did not look away but instead stared into my eyes with bright challenge, her mouth tightening. It was I who snapped my head away, feeling my colour rise. Did she take me for a German spy?

‘Cold?’ Mr Wells’s voice made me start. From over the top of that morning’s Times, a pair of umber eyes regarded me levelly. ‘I thought you shivered.’

‘Oh, I… I wasn’t aware of it.’ If I had shivered it was not from cold but from a sudden malaise of the soul. I stared again at the view, seeing another file of soldiers walking beside the track. Preparing to defend the coast against invasion by Germany? Dear God…

Two

The Channel crossing, my conversation with Judy Love, and our arrival in England seemed like a part of the nightmare when I surfaced from more troubled dreams. Head heavy, neck cricked, I felt myself being gently rocked, carried along amid an odour of stale smoke and dust. Clickety-clack, clickety-clack. After twenty-seven hours we were, at last, on the final stretch of this wearisome journey, aboard the afternoon train from King’s Lynn to Hunstanton.

As I forced my eyelids to part, sunlight glared through my lashes, making me squint. I was slumped in a corner of the carriage, with my nose all but pressed against the window and my straw boater askew. Seated opposite me, his back to the engine, the lawyer was perusing a local paper he had bought from a vendor at King’s Lynn station. Blinking, I forced my muscles to straighten into a more decorous position as I covertly repositioned my boater, anchoring it securely with its long hatpin.

A glittering expanse of green and blue beyond the window resolved itself into grassland with the sea gleaming beyond it, the horizon meeting a clear summer sky where gulls flashed bright wings. Cows grazed on rich pasture dotted with great yellow buttercups, blue forget-me-nots and dancing scarlet poppies. I had forgotten how beautiful Norfolk could be.

But, ahead of us, storm clouds trailing skirts of rain drove a straight line across the blue sky. Beneath their mud-dark swirling, sunlight still flooded a long wooded hill which dominated the skyline, a double-headed butt of land whose further promontory jutted out almost into the sea.

The sight woke long-forgotten memories, surprising me. Of course…

Twisting in his seat, Oliver Wells peered out of the window as if to see what had caught my attention. ‘Storm coming,’ he observed. ‘Thank God for that! Some rain will be welcome to break this heat.’

‘Yes, indeed,’ I agreed, and saw him lift a wry eyebrow before applying himself to the Lynn News and Advertiser again. To him, I surmised, the view held nothing but the familiar and unremarkable. For me, it had stirred a kaleidoscope of impressions both happy and unhappy, all blurred behind nine years of absence.

Before I could fully recapture any of those misted memories, another image intruded. Among tall grasses just beyond the fence that guarded the railway, I saw a young man clad in a dark bathing dress. Dripping wet, hair flattened to his head as if he had just come from the sea, he stood rigid, up to his knees in pasture. He was staring straight at me, as if he had been expecting me.

I must have started, or made some small exclamation, for Mr Wells looked up. ‘What is it?’

‘There…’ I gestured out of the window, but now that I looked again there was no man, nor any sign of disturbance in the grasses except the ruffling of a rising breeze. ‘For a moment I thought…’ How foolish! My heart was thudding uncomfortably and I had to force my lungs to expand. I managed a breathy laugh. ‘No, nothing.’

Giving me a strange look, he shook his paper and pointedly resumed his reading, as if annoyed to have been disturbed. He considered me more and more a little oddity, with whom he had been saddled much against his will.

Closing my eyes, I tried to relax for the last few minutes before we reached the halt at Eveningham, but I was wide awake now, my heart unsteady, my mind imprinted with the face of the young man I had just seen. Tall, long-limbed and broad-shouldered, with a lithe, athletic body displayed in that wet bathing suit, he had reminded me of Uncle Frank. I had seen the drops of water on his face, even the way his eyelashes stuck together. He had been real. Oh… he must have lain down, hiding himself, I rationalized. Perhaps he was there with his girl. The grass was probably longer than it appeared.

But I didn’t entirely believe it. Instinct told me there had been something odd about the man, standing there so still, so close to the line, watching the train. He had looked at me, as if he knew me. As if he were trying to convey some message…

We drew in under the wooded rise of the first hill, to pause briefly at Snettisham station, between beach and village, with the storm rolling ever closer. From there, the railway curved round the hill, heading across sandy wastes of gorse and ling, closer to the sea. Half of the water gleamed blue; the rest mimicked black clouds which now hung close above the cutting that drove through the lowest slopes of Denes Hill.

Landward, the curve of the ridge sheltered the horseshoe-shaped valley where lay the village of Eveningham, red and grey roofs among trees, with the squat tower of the church presiding from its place halfway up the ridge. On gentle slopes around the village, harvest was in progress – I could make out a horse-drawn sail reaper sweeping through the crop, and small figures binding sheaves, setting them in stooks with a sense of urgency. Even as I watched, the approaching storm drew a shadow across the harvest field, shutting off the sun, threatening the ungathered acres.

Denes Hill was darkened, too.

For the first time in hours I thought of my grandfather, and was stricken by unease. What if he were really ill? Perhaps dying? What if he really had asked for me? I should be ashamed for coming so grudgingly.

Strange, how memory came back in fragments, sharpening into focus like pictures in a magic lantern show as I drew closer to those scenes of childhood. The house, the people, the dark, secret woods; family picnics on the beach in summer, and looking for birds’ eggs and wild flowers; cold winter mornings stuck in the schoolroom with slow Tom and clever, spiteful Vicky… The glimpses were all strung together by a ragged thread of unhappiness. I had felt unwanted – even by my own mother.

The newspaper rattled noisily as my companion folded it and tossed it aside. After a moment, he cleared his throat, making me look at him again.

‘Before we arrive,’ he said, ‘I’d like, if I may, to give you some advice. You will probably consider that it’s not my place, but since your mother and stepfather gave you into my keeping I am, in effect, in loco parentis, and so…’

‘Yes?’ What was he trying to say?

‘Katarin… Kate… Forgive me, but… I think you might be wise not to insist on being known as Miss von Wurthe. As you may have gathered, people of German extraction are somewhat suspect in England at the moment. It will be difficult enough for you to go about and meet people, unless you curb that accent you’ve developed.’

‘Accent?’ I was genuinely surprised.

‘Are you unaware of it? My dear girl… Your English is good – of course it is – but you have acquired a pronounced guttural inflection which makes you sound like a foreigner. And, if you don’t mind my saying so, a more pleasant demeanour wouldn’t go amiss. If you’re going to treat your family to sullen silences and icy disdain…’

I stared at him, hurt and disbelief robbing me of words. Yes, I did mind his offering such advice, as if I were a child to be reprimanded. I already felt lost and alone. How could I be ‘pleasant’ when my whole life was being upturned?

Before I could find a coherent reply, the train sighed into the halt at Eveningham. Mr Wells opened the door to climb down to the platform, offering me his hand.

I refused it, saying, ‘I can manage, thank you.’

Descending, unable to look at him, I saw the line ahead disappearing into a cutting, among woods that spread thickly up a slope which, here, was steep, showing outcrops of weathered red carrstone. I was only minutes away from a reunion with my English family.

Lightning and a long, tumbling drum roll of thunder accompanied the banging of the train’s door behind us. The light had faded to dull copper-grey and stinging dust swirled up on a wind that brought a scent of rain. In the station yard, a horse and cart waited for us. The driver seemed nervous, anxious to be on his way before the storm broke.

‘They din’t say nothin’ about passengers,’ he complained. ‘I was given to understand as how somebody else would fetch you, sir. That old cart en’t very comfortable for a lady.’

‘Well, it’ll have to do,’ said my escort.

However, just as the man was loading the last trunk, a large open-topped motor car, magnificent with silver paintwork and silver-plate fittings under a film of dust, roared into the yard. Trailing a choking cloud of yet more dust, it slewed round to halt beside me amid a spattering of small stones. As the dust cleared, my uncle, Frank Rhys-Thomas, grinned up at me, doffing his battered Panama as he leapt out of the car. He reminded me