Miss Graham's Cold War Cookbook by Celia Rees

Author:Celia Rees [Celia Rees]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2020-03-16T17:00:00+00:00

22

44 Möllnstrasse, Lübeck

25th February 1946

Wild Boar Steinhof

A robust dish from the north. A reminder of times gone and places lost forever. The boar is marinaded in a strong red wine, pungent with juniper and thyme from the forest, onions and carrots from the kitchen garden, strong spices – clove and peppercorns. The cooking is long and slow. A dish from the past, a fragrance and flavour that lives on now only in memory.

‘Not far.’ Edith smoothed the creased scrap of paper. ‘It must be up here somewhere.’

Had the boy got it right? Could Elisabeth be here? Part of her hoped he’d got it wrong. After so long, what would they say to each other? So much had happened, so much was altered. All the dreadful things that she’d learnt about Kurt. How much did Elisabeth know? More than years measured the gap between then and now.

Edith made herself concentrate on the numbers as Jack crawled along Möllnstrasse. It was the right kind of area, or had been once. Elisabeth’s cousin might well have had a town house here. The handsome houses had escaped bombing but they showed every sign of dereliction and decay: roofs sagging, eaves rotting, windows boarded, wide gravel paths weed choked, steps broken, woodwork ripped away for firewood. A few were burnt out, looted by DPs or slave workers when the original residents, dead or displaced, failed to return. None of these houses would be empty. Every scrap of shelter was precious, fought over, in a city swelled to more than twice its normal size by refugees.

As they bumped along the rutted road, the houses grew better kept. These would be in the greatest danger. Edith could not see anyone at the windows or shutters but she could feel eyes watching. There was no fear of looting. Those days were over. What the residents feared now was the delivery of a British Requisition Order. Everyone to vacate the premises with what they could carry. The house taken over for billets, messes, offices, whatever the British saw fit.

There was a lorry parked at the foot of the drive to a large house. Edith couldn’t see a number but she was pretty sure that this was it. Soldiers stood about smoking, lounging against the lorry’s dropped tailgate, enjoying the weak winter sun, listening to an argument going on. Jack stopped the car and got out. He nodded to one or two of the men, exchanging a cheery greeting. They grinned back. Looked like their man was getting the worst of it. He was being addressed by a woman standing at the top of a flight of steps. She was speaking English, her clear, ringing voice held just the trace of an accent. Edith knew the voice immediately. She had found Elisabeth.

The sergeant stood holding a clipboard in front of him, like a shield.

‘You were warned a week ago now. You should have vacated. You must leave immediately.’

‘But we have many families living here.’ Anxious faces watched from the windows. ‘You will make thirty, more, people homeless.

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