The Helsingør Sewing Club Read online

  Stupid question, really. Of course it didn’t. To this day her own immature comment made her flush with embarrassment.

  Sighing deeply, she put the letters in the box. She’d take them round to her mother later. Together they would open them and decide on the best way to respond.

  In the narrow kitchen with its blue-painted cupboard doors – a colour that had never changed for as long as she could remember – she plugged in the electric kettle she’d brought. Tea made, she grabbed a packet of biscuits and a roll of bin liners, lifted the keys to the cellar off a hook by the door, and went outside again and round to the gable end of the building to the cellarway.

  The concrete steps were still wet from a shower earlier, but the cellar was dry and warm, the small windows having recently been replaced by double glazing by the Housing Department in a token nod to renovation. A quiet hum came from the locked boiler room to her left, dust motes danced in the air, and the familiar smell of wood, laundry powder, and bicycle oil assailed her. Cecilie stopped for a moment on the doorstep in the sudden realisation that this was the last time she’d ever come here. The last connection to her childhood.

  She smiled as a memory intruded, of playing down here with her cousins. How they used to have races down the corridor, from one end of the building to the other, or playing tag running in and out of the connected rooms; laundry room, wood workshop, bike storage, ducking under sheets and pillow cases or dodging the older kids souping up their mopeds away from prying eyes.

  Occasionally they would skip rope or play hopscotch, outlining a pattern of rectangles on the floor with chalk. If she closed her eyes, she could almost hear the sound of banging doors, the slapping of sandals against concrete, and the muted echo of high-pitched voices.

  She unlocked the door to her grandmother’s private cellar room and propped the door open with an old tin bucket in case a draft from the main door caused it to slam.

  The room was about two by three metres with a high cobweb-covered window at the end, an old wardrobe to the right of the narrow door, and a shelf rack on the left, stacked high with cardboard boxes, faded ink indicating their content. Because of the open door to the laundry room opposite, it was surprisingly bright in there. Even so, Cecilie switched on the ceiling light – a single fly-specked bulb – if only to provide a sense of comfort, and put her mug on a space on the shelf where she was unlikely to knock it over.

  ‘You deal with it, please,’ her mother had said of the cellar. ‘There’s nothing down there I want. Nothing any of us want, I think.’

  Her face tightened in irritation that none of her cousins had offered to help, excusing themselves with kids-this-and-kids-that, but in hindsight there was hardly room for more than one person, and she preferred tackling it on her own anyway. She began the seemingly monumental task by going through the labelled boxes that been stored there for years, blowing away the fur of dust on top and discovering, to her horror, the corpses of all manner of creepy-crawlies that had become trapped inside.

  Most of it was junk, like old newspapers and magazines she didn’t think would be of use to anyone, and a box of yellowed tablecloths made of fine, old-fashioned linen. They were too big for a normal-sized dining table, but one of the aunts might want to sell them to an antique shop. There were old children’s shoes and several pairs of rusty ice-skates, the kind designed to be strapped onto the wearer’s own boots, two boxes of empty jam jars, old-fashioned crockery too ugly to be retro, moth-eaten jumpers from her mother’s childhood, tarnished picture frames without the glass, and a stack of children’s books with old-fashioned spellings which were disintegrating at the spine.

  A box of Christmas decorations made her go, ‘Ooh,’ and having picked out the few broken baubles, careful not to cut herself, she put the rest aside for the eldest of her aunts who liked to make a real fuss of her Christmas tree.

  After having replenished her mug of tea twice, the shelves were devoid of boxes. Some of the junk went straight in the communal bins, the rest Cecilie carried to her car.

  She’d saved the old wardrobe till last. Inside it, which she knew from last time she was down here with her grandmother, was a selection of old dresses which had fascinated her as a child, and that she and her cousins, both boys and girls, had used for dressing up on the rare occasions they were allowed.

  The dresses were still there, each wrapped in a protective cover. When Cecilie had started in her current position as English and Drama teacher at Old Hellerup High School, and been tasked with revamping the props for the Drama Department, she’d asked her grandmother if she could make use of the dresses. The answer had been a resounding no.

  Ten years later, in hindsight, Inger’s refusal made perfect sense. Dating back to the 1940s and 1950s, with a few from the swinging 60s thrown in, the dresses were probably valuable and belonged in a museum rather than in the hands of stroppy high-school kids who didn’t appreciate their cultural significance.

  Except Cecilie wanted them for herself.

  Briefly, a guilty colour rose in her cheeks over her selfishness. This was the main reason she was glad none of her cousins were helping clearing out the cellar. They had their families, their supportive husbands/wives and their blonde, perky-nosed, and confident children. What did she have? The dresses from their grandmother’s youth seemed like a fair exchange, and in her own head she’d managed to persuade herself this was what her grandmother would have wanted anyway.

  There were fifteen in total, ranging from elegant ladies’ suits to evening dresses, some so glamorous it was hard to imagine the kind of occasion her practical grandmother would have worn them. Reverently she lifted them out one by one and folded them neatly into an IKEA bag she’d brought for the purpose. Another day she’d see what could be salvaged and worn again, perhaps with a few adjustments.

  Then she started on the shoes, flattening the shoe boxes as she went along, but these were too worn and scuffed to be of interest to anyone, and they went straight in a black bin liner. One of the shoe boxes contained an old wooden cigar box instead. Puzzled by this parcel-within-a-parcel, she flicked the lid open, then sat back on her haunches in surprise.

  Even in the fading afternoon light the tarnished jewellery shone with a dull glow – broches inlaid with what looked like amber, gems and semi-precious stones in several colours, rows of pearls held together by elaborate clasps, heavy bracelets too chunky for her grandmother’s delicate wrists. Despite their tarnish the pieces were stunning but probably fake, otherwise why else would they be in the cellar?

  That’s odd, she thought. She’d never seen her grandmother wear anything other than her wedding ring and her gold Dagmarkors, the Danish crucifix traditionally given to a baby girl at birth or to a young woman on her confirmation.

  Yet the discovery charmed her. Had Inger Jensen been into amateur dramatics in her youth, or had she simply been a closet magpie, attracted to shiny objects? It was as if a window had opened into a part of her life, the kind you never imagined your grandparents to have had because to you they were just, well, old.

  Cecilie wondered if her mother knew anything about this and resolved to ask her later when she dropped by.

  A slip of paper was tucked in underneath one of the larger pieces, and she unfolded it. On it, in her bold and distinctive hand, her grandmother had written:

  Property of Mrs Nathan & Mr David Nathan

  The little hairs at the back of her neck stood on end as she considered those words. Was the jewellery stolen? And had Inger’s bad conscience compelled her to hide it in the cellar? Cecilie couldn’t imagine her grandmother as a thief, but how else could it have come to be in her possession? Again the question came back to her why these pieces were in the cellar. If the jewellery had been given to her grandmother as a gift, wouldn’t she have worn it? Or if it was genuine, sold some of it when money was tight, which it had been sometimes when Cecilie’s mother was growing up? Given the note in the box, it was more likely her grandmother, or maybe both her grandparents, had kept it safe on behalf of someone else and forgotten about it. Surely there could be no other explanation.

  But what do we really know about other people when it comes down to it? Just look at her husband, Peter.

  Wishing she could un-see her find, she snapped the lid shut, and put the cigar box in the bag with the dresses. Her mother was fragile at the moment; perhaps it would be best to run this by her father first.

  She locked the cellar door behind her and headed towards the outer door, laden down by the last two bags. Then she stopped, returned to the room and unlocked it again, thinking of the note she’d found with the jewellery. Something was niggling at the back of her mind.

  Had she forgotten anything?

  No. The room was completely empty except for the shelf rack and the old wardrobe and ready for the house clearance company next week. Shaking her head, she locked it again and went back upstairs to the flat to collect her things. Then, as she said her final goodbye, she walked around the abandoned rooms, touching the woodwork, the textured wallpaper, which was darker in places where pictures had hung, and the pencil marks measuring the grandchildren’s height as they grew. This flat was the last link to her childhood, to a time of fewer complications, and the loss was two-fold.

  ‘I’ll miss you, Mormor,’ she whispered to the silent room.

  Leaving the old tenement building, she stopped by the recycling centre and dropped off the rubbish, then rearranged the IKEA bag and the few boxes in the boot of the car, breathing in a curious mix of cellar odours and a faint hint of her grandmother’s perfume. She was about to close the hatch when her eyes fell on one of the letters she’d found on the doormat.

  Sender, D. Nathan, Tel Aviv

  That was it. She knew she’d seen the name Nathan before.

  Frowning, she snatched it up. It had to be the David Nathan who owned the jewellery, surely? It would be too much of a coincidence otherwise. But why had Inger never spoken of a David Nathan before? She had been a born storyteller and had loved regaling her grandchildren and anyone else who would listen with wonderful tales from her many years.

  Inger Jensen had had a few secrets, had perhaps hidden more from her family than her illness and the cigar box in the cellar. What they were, Cecilie couldn’t even begin to fathom, and her grandmother couldn’t tell her now.

  But perhaps this David Nathan had some answers.

  Chapter Two

  Helsingør

  September 1943

  The train stopped with a jolt, and I adjusted my travel suit, which consisted of a plain grey pencil skirt and one of my father’s old dinner jackets that a tailor had turned inside out and repurposed to fit a woman’s figure. I’d perched a red felted wool hat on my head at a rakish angle to give the impression of a young woman about town, yet inside my stomach roiled with nervous tension.

  This was my first time in Helsingør since before the Nazis invaded and it was also the first time I’d travelled by train without my parents. My last train journey had been a trip to Rungsted Beach four years ago, and I’d sat on a blanket with my mother and father and drunk coffee from a flask. I’d been seventeen at the time, and it had been real coffee. Slowing my breath, I allowed my memory to take over. Waves breaking gently, seagulls squawking, the tang of sundried bladderwrack littering the sand. It seemed like a lifetime ago, and the substitute coffee, which was all you could get these days, was just that; a substitute.

  Today the train was packed with German soldiers, young men, some of them still only boys, and I found myself surrounded by them, my red hat a single splash of colour amongst the grey-green of the Wehrmacht. One of them had been trying to catch my eye throughout the journey, but I’d kept my gaze firmly fixed on the landscape rolling by, ignoring his disappointment.

  I’d never been much of a flirt, and even if I’d occasionally wished that I knew how to, especially when passing the neighbour’s handsome son on the stairs, I did not possess that skill.

  ‘Hello, Inger Bredahl,’ he would say in a sing-song voice and with a teasing glint in his eyes, and I’d go red and tongue-tied and hate myself for feeling so awkward in his company.

  But I would never flirt with a German, no matter how attractive and attentive he was. That sort of behaviour earned you a bad reputation.

  As I rose to retrieve my suitcase from the luggage rack, the flirtatious soldier jumped to his feet, and I felt a moment of alarm.

  ‘Erlaube mich,’ he said and lifted it down for me. Allow me.

  ‘Thank you,’ I muttered in German, one of the few words I knew of that hated language, and slid past him, ignoring the rest of his company who politely stepped aside to let me leave the compartment first.

  Most Danes avoided any kind of engagement with their occupiers wherever possible, but even as I loathed what they represented, I always experienced a small pang of guilt when cold-shouldering them. Especially when they were being friendly. It went against the grain with me to be rude, as it would with anyone who’d been brought up to be polite and kind, and in the end were they not just people like me?

  I pushed open one of the three heavy wooden doors of the railway station and crossed the large square in front of it, then briefly I looked back at the station. Built in the style of a Renaissance castle with turrets and a crenellated centre gable, it was said to be the finest station building in Denmark, and it pleased me to see that despite its proximity to Helsingør shipyard, so far it had avoided being hit by the British Lancaster bombers.

  After three years of German occupation and three years of what felt like endless bombing by the Royal Air Force, I still found it hard to see an end to the war. The British might be Denmark’s friends and allies, but how could you appreciate this when you cowered in the basement, listening to the drone of aeroplanes, bombs whistling as they fell, the crash of impact deadened to a thump by the shelter walls? The not-knowing what might be gone the next day, your familiar landscape rearranged. People dead who had been alive yesterday. The bombers were careful not to target civilians, but they made mistakes. I shuddered at the thought.

  Over the summer the mood had changed in Copenhagen, and in other cities too. As people heard about the various German military defeats, which were reported by Danish newsreaders on the illegal radio station Radio London, they became bolder. Clashes broke out between young Danes and German soldiers, and the resistance movement upped their sabotage. The Germans demanded the death penalty for sabotage, the government refused, and on the 29th of August they had resigned. Martial law was imposed.

  Denmark was fed up with being ‘Germany’s breadbasket’, and responded with widespread strikes and civil unrest. The capital had been like a seething cauldron ever since.

  So when I told my parents that I’d applied for a job as an assistant to a bookbinder in Helsingør, they were more than happy for me to leave the capital and stay with my father’s brother, Uncle Poul, in the relatively quiet seaside town.

  My uncle and his wife lived in a narrow cobbled street running perpendicular to St Olai Church Square. The cobbles were still slick with rain from earlier in the day, and to keep my balance in my heeled brogues I had to walk in the middle of the alley, stepping over the gratings covering the drains.

  Still-flowering crimson hollyhocks framed the green-painted door of the small cottage, and as usual it was unlocked so I let myself in. My aunt, Marie, was in the kitchen, drying the dishes.

  ‘There you are,’ she said matter-of-factly, wiping her hands on her apron. ‘I could’ve sent Jens to pick you up from the station, but I can see you made it just fine.’

  I put down my suitcase and gave her a quick hug. ‘It’s not far and I enjoyed the walk.’

  A young man appeared in the doorway to the parlour and sent me a lopsided grin. ‘Hello, Inger.’

  I stared at him for a moment, trying to place him. ‘Jens? I don’t believe it. You’ve grown so much!’

  ‘I’m sixteen, actually.’

  ‘Of course you are. Only, I didn’t expect…’

  He laughed. My cousin hadn’t just grown. Broad-shouldered and square-jawed like the actor Cary Grant, he towered over his mother, and he’d become a man. Only his unruly thatch of fair hair remained of the boy I last saw five years ago.

  ‘Jens is at the grammar school now,’ said Aunt Marie, and even her usual no-nonsense demeanour couldn’t quite disguise her pride.

  ‘Here, let me take that.’ With a cheeky grin, Jens picked up my suitcase and took the stairs at the back of the kitchen two steps at a time.

  ‘Put it in Gudrun’s room,’ Aunt Marie called after him.

  In our exchange of letters my aunt had suggested that I share with Gudrun, Jens’s older sister, who was about the same age as me, instead of sleeping in the tiny unheated room behind the parlour which was mainly used for storage. I was grateful for that, but hoped it wasn’t going to inconvenience Gudrun.

  ‘Sure.’

  Aunt Marie turned to me. ‘I hope you’re hungry. We’re having fried pork with apples. I queued outside Kødbørsen, the butcher’s, this morning and managed to buy eight slices of bacon. With potatoes and rye bread it should be enough for the five of us, even with Jens’s appetite. We’ll eat at six when your uncle is back. This evening he’s helping to dig for peat, so it’s a little later than usual. And Gudrun works at the brewery where they finish at five. In the meantime, I suggest you unpack your clothes and hang them in Gudrun’s closet. She’s made space for you.’

  ‘Thank you, I’ll do that. And I love æbleflæsk. I haven’t had that in years.’

  Aunt Marie made a sound which sounded like contempt for the kind of food ‘city folk’ might put on the table, and returned to her dishes.

  The thought of dinner made my mouth water. It had been difficult for my parents to buy bacon as the Germans would confiscate most pigs, although farmers were allowed to keep some stock for rearing. It was fortunate that Aunt Marie had managed to get any, but Helsingør was surrounded by farmland, and I imagined it was easier to get in a town this size, as opposed to the capital.