Legacy of War Read online

  ‘Then I agree, I must also thank Brigadier Gibbins,’ Gerhard said. ‘And I thank you, Peter, from the bottom of my heart. I would have died without you.’

  ‘Think nothing of it, old boy. Anyone in my shoes would have tried to help. Inhuman not to.’

  Gerhard nodded thoughtfully. He frowned as he collected his thoughts and the others gave him time, knowing that there was something on his mind. Then he said, ‘Here we are, talking about the war. I can’t help but think of the terrible things I saw . . . You know I was imprisoned, but before that I spent three years on the Russian Front. I was at Stalingrad, almost to the very end. I saw what was done to the Jews – the firing squads, the gas vans. All my closest friends were killed.

  ‘Sometimes I feel cursed by fate to have had to endure so much horror, so much suffering and death. But then I tell myself, no, I am blessed, truly blessed, for I have experienced a miracle. I stumbled to the edge of the grave, but I did not fall in. I lived.’

  Gerhard looked at the others, knowing that they had suffered as much, or more than him, and that they shared his feelings in a way most ordinary people could never do. He went on, ‘And when I awoke from the sleep of death, the first thing I saw was an angel . . . Saffron, my true love.

  ‘I would like to propose a toast. And I have been wondering what we should be drinking to . . . Good fortune, maybe – or love, or friendship, or peace – but what I would like to toast is what we all share . . .’ He raised his glass. ‘To life, the greatest blessing of all.’

  They drank again and then their food was served. Up to this point, Peter Churchill’s wife Odette, a slender, dark-eyed brunette had been happy to listen while the others talked. Now she spoke in a French accent.

  ‘I am sure you will understand, Gerhard, that it was not easy for me, the thought of having lunch with a German . . .’

  ‘Of course,’ Gerhard replied.

  ‘But then Saffron wrote to me and I learned how you two had met before the war and fallen in love, and Peter told me that you had both been at Sachsenhausen at the same time. I realised that you had been a victim of the SS, just like me. Now we have met and, well, I can understand why Saffron fell in love with you.’

  ‘Merci beaucoup, madame,’ said Gerhard, with a nod of the head.

  Odette gave a quick, sparkling smile before composing her features and replying with equal formality, ‘Je vous en prie, monsieur . . . But there is one thing of which I am curious. Did you ask Saffron’s father for permission to marry his daughter? I would very much like to know how he reacted when he heard his daughter was marrying a German.’

  Gerhard grinned. ‘Good question! And I am not just any German. My family and Saffron’s have a certain . . . ah . . . history . . .’

  ‘My father killed his,’ said Saffron, in such a casual way that no one was sure how to respond.

  That process was made all the more tricky when Gerhard remarked, in an equally offhand tone, ‘It is only fair to say that my father had been trying to kill her mother, who was at that time, his mistress.’ He paused for a beat and then added, ‘Though she was actually in love with Mr Courtney.’

  ‘Well, that’s Africa for you,’ said Saffron casually, while the others were trying to work out who had been killing, or loving, whom.

  ‘My dear, this is too fascinating, and one day you must tell me the whole family history,’ said Odette. ‘But for now I would like your husband to answer my question.’

  ‘And I shall,’ Gerhard assured her. ‘As you know, I was very ill when Saffron found me. It took me several months in a Swiss sanatorium to recover, although even then, I was still weak. All that time, Saffy was at my side. Anyway, when I was finally well enough to travel to Kenya, which the doctors agreed was the perfect place for me to complete my cure and regain my full strength . . .’ He paused and glanced around the table. ‘It’s paradise, you know, a Garden of Eden. And Saffron’s home, the Lusima Estate . . . ach, I don’t have the words to describe how beautiful it is. So, I still haven’t answered your question, madame . . .’

  ‘Indeed not,’ said her husband, ‘but I’m greatly enjoying your failure to do so. Garçon! Another two bottles of wine, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘We took the train to Genoa,’ Gerhard went on. ‘From there we sailed to Alexandria, where we boarded another vessel that took us through the Suez Canal and down the coast of East Africa to Mombasa. Saffy’s father Leon and her stepmother Harriet—’

  ‘Who is the loveliest stepmother any woman could hope to have,’ Saffron interjected.

  ‘. . . were waiting on the quayside to meet us. Leon took us to lunch and of course he hadn’t seen his daughter in years—’

  ‘Four, to be precise.’

  ‘. . . so I sat there for most of the meal while they caught up with each other’s news.’

  ‘I dare say you were quite relieved not to be the topic of conversation yourself,’ Churchill observed.

  ‘Absolutely . . . Then, after the puddings had been eaten, Harriet stood and said, “I think it is time for us girls to go and powder our noses.” I had no idea what she meant by that. But they walked away and I realised they were going to the ladies’ room . . . and I was alone with Saffron’s father . . .’

  Leon Courtney assessed the tall, thin, war-ravaged thirty-five-year-old man sitting opposite him as thoroughly as he might any other investment his family was going to make.

  Not bad, so far, he thought to himself. Impeccable manners, respectful to me, charming to Harriet, plainly dotes on Saffy. Top marks, too, for letting us get on with it and not trying to make himself the centre of the conversation. Not a show-off. Nothing like his bloody father. Now let’s see what he’s made of . . .

  ‘Would you like a glass of brandy with your coffee?’ Leon asked.

  Gerhard gave a half-smile. ‘I’m not sure my doctor would approve.’

  ‘Nonsense. Nothing like brandy to buck a man up.’

  Gerhard looked at Leon, eye to eye, letting him know that there was a strong, confident character behind that ailing façade. He gave a wry dry chuckle.

  ‘On second thoughts, yes, thank you, I will have a brandy. I suspect that I may need it.’

  ‘Good man.’

  Two coffees were served, accompanied by the brandies, both doubles. Leon knew, but Gerhard did not, that there was a pleasant garden at the back of the hotel at which they were dining, where one could sit in the shade and be waited on hand and foot. Harriet was under strict instructions to take Saffron outside and remain there until further notice.

  ‘I’ll send a boy to fetch you when we’re done,’ Leon had said.

  ‘Go easy on the poor man,’ Harriet had warned him. ‘He’s not well and Saffron adores him. If you make an enemy of him, you’ll be making an enemy of her too.’

  Leon had grunted at that, but he loved his daughter very deeply and had learned to trust and respect her. She would not have chosen this man, let alone waited all war for him, unless he deserved it. Still, Leon wanted to see for himself what his prospective son-in-law was made of.

  He let Gerhard savour his first sip of brandy and said, ‘So, you want to marry my daughter, eh?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Gerhard said, no pleading or ingratiation in his voice, a straightforward statement of fact.

  ‘You know that I will kill you if you ever harm a hair on her head.’

  Gerhard surprised Leon. He gave another one of his gently amused smiles and replied, ‘If I ever harmed Saffron, you would not need to kill me. She would already have done it herself.’

  Leon could not help himself. He laughed. ‘Well said! Of course she would. But could you defend yourself against her, eh?’

  Gerhard shrugged. ‘At the moment, no, I could not defend myself against a small child. But when I am well again and have my full strength, I am not a bully, Mr Courtney – not like my father – but I am not a weakling either, and . . .’ He paused, grimaced, thou
ght for a second and said, ‘I flew my first combat mission over Poland at dawn on 1 September 1939, the first morning of the war. I was on active duty continuously from then until my arrest in September 1944. Looking back, let me tell you what I can truly be proud of. I always did my best to care for the men under my command. I was awarded some of the highest medals for gallantry that my country has to offer. And finally, the most important thing . . . All those medals were stripped from me, along with my rank, when I stood in a Berlin courtroom and refused to save myself from prison by swearing my loyalty to that murderous lunatic Adolf Hitler.

  ‘I tell you this, Mr Courtney, so you appreciate I am not a weak man, either physically or morally. We both know that Saffron will never, ever let a man dominate her. But also she could never love a man who let her dominate him. And she does love me. So we are equal.’

  Yes, you are, Leon thought. My girl has truly met her match. That’s why she didn’t let go of him. She knew she’d never find another.

  ‘I dare say you’ve thought a bit about this moment,’ he said. ‘Asking for my daughter’s hand in marriage – wondering how I’d take it, eh?’

  Gerhard smiled. ‘A bit, yes . . .’

  Leon grinned. ‘Me too. I had a long list of questions for you. Don’t think there’s any need for them now.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  Leon’s expression grew serious. ‘A lot of people here in Kenya lost family, men they loved. Some may give you the benefit of the doubt, but most won’t. It won’t be easy. Not for you, not for anyone . . .’

  ‘I imagine not.’

  ‘But Saffron loves you with all her heart, I have no doubt of that.’ Leon gave a knowing chuckle. ‘That’s the only way we Courtneys do anything – flat-out, way over the limit.’

  ‘I knew that from the moment we met,’ said Gerhard. ‘When Saffy came flying off the Cresta Run and landed in the snow at my feet.’

  ‘Ha! That’s my girl! And now I also have no doubt that you love her too – and that you’re nothing whatever like your father.’

  ‘That’s true, for sure. I have spent my entire life trying to be nothing like my father.’

  ‘Then I would be delighted, and proud to welcome you into our family, Gerhard. I ask no more than, love my girl and make her happy. As long as you do that, you will have my friendship, my support and my help if ever you need it. And if you don’t . . .’

  Leon let the words hang in the air for a moment, then summoned a waiter.

  ‘Be a good chap and send a message to Mrs Courtney. She’s in the garden with my daughter. Tell them that it’s safe to return to the table.’

  ‘We stopped off in Nairobi to get our marriage licence and we had the service a few days later in the chapel at Lusima,’ said Saffron.

  ‘The choir were workers from the estate,’ Gerhard said. ‘I thought the choirs in Bavaria were good, but my God, those African voices . . . It sounded like angels singing.’

  ‘Of course, that was when my darling husband discovered that he actually had two fathers-in-law, not one—’

  ‘Oh, but that’s too much, even for you, darling!’ laughed the sixth member of the party, Brigadier Gubbins’ former secretary Margaret Jackson.

  ‘No, it’s true,’ Gerhard assured her. ‘Lusima is huge, more than one hundred thousand acres.’

  ‘Much more,’ Saffron murmured.

  ‘About one tenth of it is farmland, and all the workers come from the Kikuyu tribe. But the rest of the land is kept wild and the people who live there are Maasai, who roam across the country, herding cattle. Saffron and I have built our own home there, by a watering hole where the animals come to drink. We called it Cresta Lodge, after the Cresta Run in St Moritz, where we first met.’

  As he spoke, Gerhard could see the others being seduced, as he had been, by the idea of the private African kingdom where Saffron had been born and raised, a world away from the grey, foggy, bomb-scarred streets of post-war London.

  ‘While the lodge was being built, we lived with Leon and Harriet, but I was managing the project, so I often camped at the site,’ he said. ‘One morning I woke up before dawn, which is one of the very best times for seeing game, so I decided to go for a walk. It was quite chilly, because Cresta Lodge lies at an altitude of around seven thousand feet and the nights are cold at that height. The air was still and clear, and the loudest noise was the buzzing and chirping of insects around me.

  ‘There are some low hills behind the house, and I was heading towards them when I saw a big, dark shape moving behind the top of the rise ahead of me. It still wasn’t quite light, so I stopped to look more closely and I realised it was an elephant, a great bull, coming over the brow towards me. More shapes appeared, another bull and then the females and young, all in a line. A couple of the babies were holding their mothers’ tails with their trunks as they trotted along behind them.

  ‘I remember being struck by how gentle and loving the mothers were to their children, and how serenely the herd moved across the landscape. But at the same time, there was a kind of equal, but opposite impression that these were the mightiest and potentially deadliest creatures I had ever seen. They were like huge, grey, living tanks, trampling everything in their path. I stood absolutely still as they walked past me, no more than thirty yards away, partly because I didn’t want anything to disturb this magical sight, but also because I thought, “I don’t want to get that big bull angry!”’

  The story was heard in silence and greeted with appreciative smiles and laughter. ‘Encore!’ Leo Marks called out.

  Gerhard grinned. ‘If you insist . . . Some nights, I would drive home after the building work stopped, because, well, as great as it was to camp out under the stars, it wasn’t as great as being with Saffron. There are two or three main tracks that cross the estate. They aren’t tarmac, or anything like that, but the earth is packed hard, so you can drive at a decent speed. One night I was coming up to a corner that goes around a grove of trees, so you can’t see around the other side. You’d think that’s not a problem. I mean, there are no other cars on the road. So I went around the corner at quite a speed because I was in a hurry to get home and, right in the middle of the track, was a female rhino with her young. She took one look at me and went away up the road with her kid at her heels. Let me tell you, the great big, leathery, fat backside of a female rhino running away from you is not a pretty sight. But it is a lot more attractive than the sight of the same rhino from the front, charging in your direction.’

  Gerhard paused and added, ‘Another time I drove into a pride of lions who were having an orgy that reminded me of a few Berlin clubs I knew, back in the wild days before the Nazis. But that is a long story and not suitable for a respectable restaurant in broad daylight.’

  ‘Tell us about the native population,’ said Peter Churchill. ‘One sees rather disturbing stories about Kenya in the press these days. You know, those rebels—’

  ‘The Mau Mau,’ Saffron said.

  ‘That’s the bunch. Do you get any trouble from them where you are?’

  ‘Not yet, thank heaven,’ said Saffron. ‘The Mau Mau belong to the Kikuyu tribe. The Kikuyu are farmers and we have quite a few living and working on the part of the estate that’s given over to farmland and plantations. But out in the wild, where Gerhard and I live, the people are Maasai, cattle herders, and they aren’t involved in Mau Mau at all.’

  ‘The chief of the Maasai on the Lusima estate is an extraordinary man,’ Gerhard said. ‘He’s called Manyoro. Many years ago, when Leon was a young army officer, Manyoro was his sergeant. Leon saved his life.’

  ‘Manyoro was injured in a fight with a rebel tribe called the Nandi,’ Saffron explained. ‘My father carried him on his back for days to get him to the sacred mountain, Lonsonyo, where his mother lived, so she could treat Manyoro’s wounds. She was a healer, she had amazing powers, I’ve experienced them myself. Ever since then, Manyoro and my father have considered themselves to be brot
hers.’

  ‘But surely a white man can’t be that close to a black man, not in a place like Kenya,’ Marks said. ‘From what I can gather, the place is stuffed with bloody idiots who think Negroes are one step removed from monkeys.’

  ‘It is, and they do,’ Saffron agreed. ‘But as you say, they’re bloody idiots.’

  ‘Trust me, Leo, Manyoro is a second father to Saffron,’ Gerhard said.

  ‘Poor Gerdi.’ Saffron leaned over and gave her man a consoling pat on the back. ‘He thought he’d survived the third degree after he’d got past Daddy Courtney. Little did he know he was in for another talking-to from Manyoro.’

  ‘He made it as plain as Leon Courtney had done – if I hurt Saffron in any way, he would be my mortal enemy.’

  ‘He was only like that because he loves me so much. Once I’d assured him that I knew I’d found the right man, he gave Gerhard a huge hug, and started giving me a lecture instead.’

  Gerhard grinned. ‘You should have heard him. He was telling Saffy that she had to give me many, many children—’

  ‘I’ve managed two so far, one of each, and that feels like quite enough.’

  ‘What are they called?’ Margaret asked.

  ‘Alexander, who’s four, and Nichola, who’s two. But we always call them Zander and Kika because that’s how they say their names.’

  ‘Did you bring them with you to England?’

  Saffron’s face fell as she gave a shake of the head. ‘No. We thought about it, of course. But it’s much better for the children to be at home with their grandparents and their nanny, surrounded by people who love them. They’d have been miserable traipsing around Europe with us, too young to understand what was going on or where they were.’ She smiled wistfully. ‘I got a letter from Harriet this morning. She wrote about how happy Zander and Kika are and what fun they’re having, being spoilt rotten by everyone. She was only trying to reassure me, but of course it made me weep buckets.’