Ken Follett: Winter of the World (Century Trilogy 2)

He went to the foot of the stairs. ‘Werner!’ he shouted. ‘I’m going without you!’ He put on a grey felt hat and went out.

‘I’m ready, I’m ready!’ Werner ran down the stairs like a dancer. He was as tall as his father and more handsome, with red-blond hair worn too long. Under his arm he had a leather satchel that appeared to be full of books; in the other hand he held a pair of ice skates and a hockey stick. He paused in his rush to say: ‘Good morning, Frau von Ulrich’, very politely. Then in a more informal tone: ‘Hello, Carla. My sister’s got the measles.’

Carla felt herself blush, for no reason at all. ‘I know,’ she said. She tried to think of something charming and amusing to say, but came up with nothing. ‘I’ve never had it, so I can’t see her.’

‘I had it when I was a kid,’ he said, as if that was ever such a long time ago. ‘I must hurry,’ he added apologetically.

Carla did not want to lose sight of him so quickly. She followed him outside. Ritter was holding the rear door open. ‘What kind of car is that?’ Carla asked. Boys always knew the makes of cars.

‘A Mercedes-Benz W10 limousine.’

‘It looks very comfortable.’ She caught a look from her mother, half surprised and half amused.

Werner said: ‘Do you want a lift?’

‘That would be nice.’

‘I’ll ask my father.’ Werner put his head inside the car and said something.

Carla heard Herr Franck reply: ‘Very well, but hurry up!’

She turned to her mother. ‘We can go in the car!’

Mother hesitated for only a moment. She did not like Herr Franck’s politics – he gave money to the Nazis – but she was not going to refuse a lift in a warm car on a cold morning. ‘How very kind of you, Ludwig,’ she said.

They got in. There was room for four in the back. Ritter pulled away smoothly. ‘I assume you’re going to Koch Strasse?’ said Herr Franck. Many newspapers and book publishers had their offices in the same street in the Kreuzberg district.

‘Please don’t go out of your way. Leipziger Strasse would be fine.’

‘I’d be happy to take you to the door – but I suppose you don’t want your leftist colleagues to see you getting out of the car of a bloated plutocrat.’ His tone was somewhere between humorous and hostile.

Mother gave him a charming smile. ‘You’re not bloated, Ludi – just a little plump.’ She patted the front of his coat.

He laughed. ‘I asked for that.’ The tension eased. Herr Franck picked up the speaking tube and gave instructions to Ritter.

Carla was thrilled to be in a car with Werner, and she wanted to make the most of it by talking to him, but at first she could not think what to speak about. She really wanted to say: ‘When you’re older, do you think you might marry a girl with dark hair and green eyes, about three years younger than yourself, and clever?’ Eventually she pointed to his skates and said: ‘Do you have a match today?’

‘No, just practice after school.’

‘What position do you play in?’ She knew nothing about ice hockey, but there were always positions in team games.

‘Right wing.’

‘Isn’t it a rather dangerous sport?’

‘Not if you’re quick.’

‘You must be ever such a good skater.’

‘Not bad,’ he said modestly.

Once again, Carla caught her mother watching her with an enigmatic little smile. Had she guessed how Carla felt about Werner? Carla felt another blush coming.

Then the car came to a stop outside a school building, and Werner got out. ‘Goodbye, everyone!’ he said, and ran through the gates into the yard.

Ritter drove on, following the south bank of the Landwehr Canal. Carla looked at the barges, their loads of coal topped with snow like mountains. She felt a sense of disappointment. She had contrived to spend longer with Werner, by hinting that she wanted a lift, then she had wasted the time talking about ice hockey.

What would she have liked to have talked to him about? She did not know.

Herr Franck said to Mother: ‘I read your column in The Democrat. ’

‘I hope you enjoyed it.’

‘I was sorry to see you writing disrespectfully about our chancellor.’

‘Do you think journalists should write respectfully about politicians?’ Mother replied cheerfully. ‘That’s radical. The Nazi press would have to be polite about my husband! They wouldn’t like that.’

‘Not all politicians, obviously,’ Franck said irritably.

They crossed the teeming junction of Potsdamer Platz. Cars and trams vied with horse-drawn carts and pedestrians in a chaotic melee.

Mother said: ‘Isn’t it better for the press to be able to criticize everyone equally?’

‘A wonderful idea,’ he said. ‘But you socialists live in a dream world. We practical men know that Germany cannot live on ideas. People must have bread and shoes and coal.’

‘I quite agree,’ Mother said. ‘I could use more coal myself. But I want Carla and Erik to grow up as citizens of a free country.’

‘You overrate freedom. It doesn’t make people happy. They prefer leadership. I want Werner and Frieda and poor Axel to grow up in a country that is proud, and disciplined, and united.’

‘And in order to be united, we need young thugs in brown shirts to beat up elderly Jewish shopkeepers?’

‘Politics is rough. Nothing we can do about it.’

‘On the contrary, you and I are leaders, Ludwig, in our different ways. It’s our responsibility to make politics less rough – more honest, more rational, less violent. If we do not do that, we fail in our patriotic duty.’

Herr Franck bristled.

Carla did not know much about men, but she realized that they did not like to be lectured on their duty by women. Mother must have forgotten to press her charm switch this morning. But everyone was tense. The coming election had them all on edge.

The car reached Leipziger Platz. ‘Where may I drop you?” Herr Franck said coldly.

‘Just here will be fine,’ said Mother.

Franck tapped on the glass partition. Ritter stopped the car and hurried to open the door.

Mother said: ‘I do hope Frieda gets better soon.’

‘Thank you.’

They got out and Ritter closed the door.

The office was several minutes’ walk away, but Mother clearly had not wanted to stay any longer in the car. Carla hoped Mother was not going to quarrel permanently with Herr Franck. That might make it difficult for her to see Frieda and Werner. She would hate that.

They set off at a brisk pace. ‘Try not to make a nuisance of yourself at the office,’ Mother said. The note of genuine pleading in her voice touched Carla, making her feel ashamed of causing her mother worry. She resolved to behave perfectly.

Mother greeted several people on the way: she had been writing her column for as long as Carla could remember, and was well known in the press corps. They all called her ‘Lady Maud’ in English.

Near the building in which The Democrat had its office, they saw someone they knew: Sergeant Schwab. He had fought with Father in the Great War, and still wore his hair brutally short in the military style. After the war he had worked as a gardener, first for Carla’s grandfather and later for her father; but he had stolen money from Mother’s purse and Father had sacked him. Now he was wearing the ugly military uniform of the Storm troopers, the Brownshirts, who were not soldiers but Nazis who had been given the authority of auxiliary policemen.

Schwab said loudly: ‘Good morning, Frau von Ulrich!’ as if he felt no shame at all about being a thief. He did not even touch his cap.

Mother nodded coldly and walked past him. ‘I wonder what he’s doing here,’ she muttered uneasily as they went inside.