大象传媒

Mine is an ancient tale, already old in biblical times: your land is invaded, you are defeated and the victorious army withdraws, leaving behind its garrison. Peace rules, the soldiers lie idle. Boredom sets in; the rules relax. The virile young men, suddenly inactive, wonder what on earth they are doing so far from home, They miss their mothers or their sweethearts. Fraternising may be frowned upon, but the body has its own language, and it is not political! The word "enemy" reveals its ambiguous nature. The enemy may be loathsome, but certain representatives of it do seem rather desirable, and not only desirable, but also available in abundance, since they have lost their own young men to yet another senseless war. Nature does the rest. It was thus that I fell into the hands of the enemy, or more fair and accurate to say, into the arms of my future husband. Arrangements were vague and hasty. Suffice it to say, at nineteen I was more than ripe to leave home. Here I must sing the praises of my mother, eternally. A war widow - and I, her last child to abandon her - she did not raise an eyebrow, but gave me her blessing to follow my love, whom she had only once met fleetingly. With the confidence of youth and careless of risks, I packed my meagre belongings into a brand-new suitcase and - in a propeller-driven Viscount - flew to the country that had so recently bombarded and flattened mine. Looking back, I am amazed and impressed how irrelevant that seemed in the face of romantic love. Was I so ignorant, so innocent, or so idealistic not to consider possible problems? A mere teenager, I have to confess that the thought of failure never even entered my head. As for hurdles, well, my life from 1939 until that day of my departure from Germany had been an almost continuous obstacle race, so that was the norm. Nothing in life so far had fallen into my lap; ease was not part of my expectations. But success was! I brought to that venture a single-mindedness bordering on blindness. Today, almost fifty years later, I know with complete certainty the two ingredients, which paradoxically combined to make my dream come true. The first was absolute faith in God, and therefore, indirectly in myself; the second is harder to define, but I can only call it trauma. My childhood had collided dramatically with World War II. Terrors and losses had been almost daily, so that in order to survive at all I had become impervious to all manner of suffering, both physical and emotional. I registered both, but had learnt not to react to them in order to preserve vital energy. I did not allow myself the appropriate sensitivities to snubs, injustices, neglect and abandonment. I had one aim only, and for that I was prepared to sacrifice almost anything, swallow any insult, forego any comfort: I was going to recreate all that I had lost, not just an up-to-date copy of it, superimposed on the past, but an idealised version into which all my dammed up creativity could flow -forever and ever! If the dimensions of this aim smacked of teenage megalomania, they were nonetheless completely sincere and an accurate reflection of what I felt myself capable of, with the help of God, Master of unlimited creativity. The reality looked like this: I owned one suitcase, the contents of which consisted of two skirts, two sweaters, one blouse, two volumes of poetry, a framed Japanese print, toiletries, night- and underwear, and the Bible I had been given when I was confirmed. Irrespective of your IQ - I had three languages - as a foreigner, you could do one of three things: hospital cleaning, domestic help, or au pair work. I chose the last, which was the least well paid, but had the advantage of spending time with small children, some of it out of doors. The town was Brighton, so the sea was an added lure. I already knew that I was not made for the great indoors! Since the age of thirteen I had been suffering from raging eczema. Was I hoping that a complete change of scene, extra sunshine and fresh sea air might help to heal the most obvious of my afflictions - the one manifesting on the surface? A mild South Coast received me at Christmas time and it took me all spring to realise fully that the winter I was used to and was expecting daily to arrive, would never come. The gentle climate wrought the first miracle, when indeed my skin, used to Polish winters*, improved out of all recognition. On that account, at any rate, I was ecstatic. I also fell in love with the gentle and feminine landscape, full of soft curves and delicate colours, which so appealed to my artistic temperament. The relief of looking at miles of open sea, with its endless variations from blue to green, pearly grey and slate colour, after looking at oceans of dusty rubble for so many years, was most healing. I was prepared to expand, to let benign nature wash away my past, and give myself fully to this country and the present. *I was born in Silesia, now part of Poland. So it came as a shock to realise that this country had no need of me. It had done just fine without me for centuries and would do so in future. My aims and ideals were alien to English teenagers, and I learnt quickly how to keep them secret. I was told I was too serious. I avoided the Club frequented by the other au pair girls, painfully aware that I had a lot of catching up to do before I could enjoy the carefree junketing, the silliness, the obsession with the other sex, and what impact I might or might not have on the males. I had made my choice and felt disinclined to look right or left. Why was I so sure so young? Alas, this man of my choice had earlier decided to do his Post-graduate Certificate of Education in London, almost as soon as I arrived, so that I found myself quite alone in this country, where, as yet, I knew nobody. His family had received me with awkward silence, polite but suspicious. They could make nothing of me, nor I of them. I did not fall into any of the familiar categories, was at best a disappointment, at worse an "enemy alien", that absurd and dreadful label so difficult to get rid of. If only the beloved son could have brought home an English rose with a double-barrelled name, the Kingdom of Heaven could have been ushered in - but now this! It became evident that our courtship would have to weather many a storm before reaching the haven of marriage, if indeed we were destined for such a place. I had been granted a work permit for twelve months; there were no other commitments or promises of any kind. Looking back, I think I had every reason to be serious. I had well and truly burnt my boats, and though I never regretted this, I became aware of the enormity of the task I had set myself. Unless I could build some kind of bridge between these two nations, I would remain lonely and displaced, unable to reconcile one value system with another, not to mention grappling with the English sense of humour. Perhaps I had been na茂ve to assume that the kind of Englishwomen who required au pair girls, were busy professionals or possibly artists, or otherwise engaged in more demanding work, that prevented them from looking after their own children. I thought I knew all about hard-working women. The combination of the Protestant work ethic and the scarcity of strong young men after the war had brought out a tenacity and resilience in the postwar generation of German women that was almost superhuman. Driven by need and the realisation that they would wade through rubble forever or drown in chaos, unless they themselves were willing to undertake the hard labour of clearing up the mountains of brick and debris, which was their inheritance, they became slaves to the destructiveness of the previous generation. For over a decade I had lived in this atmosphere of relentless and backbreaking work, had watched the tireless gangs of women clearing the ruins, brick by brick, bucket by bucket, lorryload by lorryload, returning exhausted to their fatherless children at night. Now, I was unable to adjust my scale of values overnight and struggled with feelings of contempt, indeed was in shock to realise that my employer would wander about in her dressing gown till mid-morning, manicure her hands and paint her fingernails, then get into her long car and drive off to meet her friends for shopping and coffee. She would return for a light lunch, then disappear for her "restie", while I took the three children to the front, promenading up and down, pushing a huge coach-built pram. Sadly, it was the size and style of this contraption that made it impossible to get down to the actual beach, a frustration I suffered from increasingly as spring and eventually summer arrived. I longed to be in the water, to splash and shout, to be part of the summer and sea rather than a distant observer. I felt only half alive, yet knew that I would never get permission to do more than promenade. It would not have been considered safe - or decent. I had grown fond of the children, especially the baby, and I did not dislike their mother, but I had found myself unable to share her world, could not sympathise with her concerns. Something was askew, irreparably. I sang the baby asleep with the songs of my childhood, that inexhaustible supply of German folksongs, from lullabies to love poems, from jolly little tunes to Lieder, which kept my dreams alive, but did not get me closer to my aim. I lived for the rare weekends, when my prince would come, for whom I had plotted such a wonderful future, but even that did not entirely dispel my melancholy, for he seemed not to share this idyll I carried in my heart: our life was to be all roses, a house full of laughing children, a garden forever in flower, exuberance and fulfilment in all departments! How could he not see it, welcome it, share my vision? Instead, we clashed and quarrelled, wasted the precious few hours of his visits, parted upset and bewildered. My romantic ideals and his angry young man phase simply would not be reconciled. Alone for days, and sometimes weeks, I became withdrawn, analysing and questioning our different values. What were they really worth? On every level, culture shock shook the edifice of my conditioning. Were hard work, cleanliness and efficiency virtues, or merely neuroses? Were aggression, carelessness and arrogance signs of a healthy young male, or merely arrested development? The war between two nations gave way to the battle of the sexes, and the violent clash between two very different personalities. My attempts to contain the excess emotion in silence were not always successful, but I could not give up my dream. If I made more effort, surely I would win through? My life having been overwhelmed by outer chaos and rubble, I was not able - or prepared - to recognise an equivalent, inner state of war, of battles in the mind and the ruins they left behind. All I could see was this tantalisingly beautiful country, this perfect setting for my future. How could anyone live here and not be happy? I would allow my past to be washed away, accepting renewal and rebirth. Instead, I had walked straight into someone else's past, a life damaged in a far more subtle way, over which I had no control. It seemed that we might have to spend some time clearing away each other's rubble. By mid-summer I gave up my job, hoping another employer might be more stimulating. Alas, after the initial excitement of a baby arriving prematurely onto the hall carpet, we settled down into the same dull routine. This time it was Hove Park where I pushed my charge in his buggy and was propositioned by a young photographer to become his model. When I inquired after the nature of the pictures, it was soon obvious that it would not be my kind of adventure, and I declined. Later I learned that foreign girls were considered easy victims - young, underpaid and often attractive - and men posing as photographers were frequently prowling around the park. Summer trickled by. Eventually, with only moderate enthusiasm, Marcus decided that we should get engaged, only to announce a few weeks later that we were now disengaged again; he had changed his mind. Was this the price I paid for belonging to a defeated nation, or just some flaw in a fickle character? Always trying to protect and preserve my dream, I said nothing, but my silence was just as maddening and his inner storm would rage, while I tried desperately to work out whether these displays of erratic behaviour were "English" or simply Marcusian. He accused me of tiresome - nay, inhuman - consistency. We were obviously ideally suited, would fill each other's dips and hollows to perfection! If only he had faith in me, in my vision of the future, in God. But he was the born agnostic, and faith not his strong point. Despite this, there was a second engagement, and this time Marcus's mother rummaged around in some dusty treasure boxes till she found the remembered diamond ring. Was it possible? Could I be an acceptable daughter-in-law? I had learnt to be cautious, looking out for pitfalls and booby traps. Instead, it was Marcus who felt trapped, turning into a reluctant fianc茅. How could it have been otherwise? He had his own subtle way of being consistent. Eventually it was immigration laws that came to the rescue, that stark and insurmountable fact that my work permit was running out and would finally expire at the end of the year. Now what? No amount of dithering, excuses or delays could save Marcus from a clear-cut decision: to marry or not to marry. He had finished his P.G.C.E. and started his first teaching job in Windsor Grammar School for Boys. Meanwhile it was late November and his small flat high above the Thames was wrapped in one of the last peasoupers this country was to know. Only a stone's throw from the Castle, impenetrable mists hung above the river, adding gloom to the unresolved situation. On 31 December I would have to leave the country. Under pressure of this threat, the decision was born: he would marry me on 29 December; savour his freedom to the last possible minute. That was flattery indeed. It just gave me time to fit in a near-death experience and be saved by a hasty appendix operation, to part-convalesce, and then to rush back to my Fatherland to borrow my sister's wedding dress, to swear my allegiance to the English Queen and Crown, fill in some forms to make absolutely sure I was not a Polish spy in disguise -and off we were. Oh no, not quite. My prince had not allowed enough time for reading the banns, so at the eleventh hour we had to drive all the way to Chichester in torrential rain to get His Grace, the Bishop's permission and blessing. At last! Wars must be forgotten, weapons buried, old obstacles cleared away, new bridges built. Peace must be celebrated. At 2 p.m. on 29 December I walked down the aisle, a radiant bride in a hurriedly altered dress and a white lotus flower balanced on my head, eager to be united with my prince, whose last act of resistance was to lose his voice the day before the wedding, so that he could not utter a resounding "I will" at the appropriate moment, but produced a hoarse croak instead. I was sent on my way with the final accolade from my mother-in-law: "My husband became a Catholic, my son married a German, all I need is for my daughter to produce a black baby, and my cup will be full." It was as good a send-off as any for a successful marriage in which my dreams came true one by one, but the greatest gift of all has been a lasting peace between our two countries.

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