Chocolate Cake With Hitler by Emma Craigie

Author:Emma Craigie [Emma Craigie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781907595349
Publisher: Short Books
Published: 2011-07-26T16:00:00+00:00

I think it was when I was about eight that Uncle Leader’s war really started affecting our lives. Before that there’d been a bit of bombing, which I thought was quite exciting, but from this point the war became annoying. We had to go and stay with the Goerings in Upper Salt Mountain. Mummy thought that we weren’t getting enough sleep because of the air raids in Berlin.

The Goerings are ghastly. Luckily Empire Marshall Goering – Uncle Herman, as we were told to call him – was hardly ever there. He is disgustingly fat; he always has little globs of sweat on his pudgy face and he breathes really loudly as if he’s about to die. Auntie Emmy, the High Lady, as all the servants call her, is all silk and talcum powder and wafts in and out of rooms in flowing lavender dresses. When she talks she pats her hair and gazes into the distance and her words float away before you can catch them. Most of the time she was away too, visiting her older children in Switzerland. Eddakins, their golden girl, was about three years old then. Silly little curls and vile spoilt behaviour.

Their house in Upper Salt Mountain appears to be on top of the world. Even though you look out over huge snowy mountains you feel like you are in the sky. The house itself is like an enormous cottage, something out of a fairy tale on the outside, but inside everything is modern and plush – lots of rugs and unnecessary little tables and glass ashtrays which you aren't allowed to touch. There are lawns and woods, a swimming pool. Supposedly everything you might want. I don’t know why it’s horrible but it is.

We’d only been there two days when Mummy told us at breakfast that she would have to leave after lunch to go to her clinic in Dresden to rest her heart. I just remember feeling completely sick. None of the others seemed to be listening. She said, “Miss Oda will look after you until I am well enough to come back. It won’t be long.” But it was obvious it would be.

We all hated Miss Oda. We nicknamed her Ear Phones because she had a spiral of plaited hair wound over each ear, and she was such a phoney. She was always really polite in front of Mummy or the Goerings, and then really rude when they weren’t there. She called Auntie Emmy a Jew lover. “The High Lady’s abandoned us, hasn’t she, Eddakins? Swanned off to her Jew friends and left us with these young hooligans. Nobody asked me if I could look after them. No. Mummy and Papa can’t cope with the little darlings so they dump them on us. I’m worn out with running round after refugees. Do I get any thanks? No. And as for Little Miss (that was me) – she thinks she’s the cat’s whiskers. She’s a sly little devil, blubbing on the phone to Mummykins, making out she’s all hard done by.

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