Her Mother’s Hope

to another pile of papers.

Ten girls had already written their names on the list. Marta added hers to the bottom and filled out the form carefully. The clerk looked it over. “You have a good hand, Fraulein. Do you speak English?”

“I’ve come to learn.”

“Do you plan to return to Switzerland?”

She didn’t know. “Eventually.”

“Too many of our young people are going to America. The land of opportunity, they call it.”

“I miss the snow. I miss the mountains.”

“Ja. The air is not so clean here.” He continued reading her form. “Ah! You worked with Warner Brennholtz at the Hotel Germania!” He smiled and nodded as he pulled his wire-rimmed glasses down. “I spent a week in Interlaken three years ago. Best food I’ve ever eaten.”

“Chef Brennholtz trained me.”

“Why did you leave?”

“To learn French. I’m here to learn English. There are more opportunities for employment for those who can speak multiple languages.”

“Very true. Do you speak French?”

She gave a prim nod. “Assez de servir.” Enough to serve, but little more.

“You’ve accomplished much for one so young, Fraulein Schneider.” He glanced over her form again. “Dressmaking, graduate of Haushaltungsschule Bern, trained by Frau Fischer and Warner Brennholtz, delivered a baby, and managed a boardinghouse in Montreux…”

“I am a long way from accomplishing what I want, Herr Reinhard.”

Herr Reinhard put her form on the top of the pile. “I will see what I can do.”

Marta moved into the Swiss Home for Girls and waited. She had spent more than she intended seeing Paris. While other girls came and went, Marta kept to the house, trying to shake the head cold she had contracted on the journey to London and helping the housemother, Frau Alger, keep the common rooms clean and neat. She wondered if she had made a mistake in coming to England. The drizzling rain and heavy, soot-scented mists of London depressed her, and Frau Alger said good jobs were scarce.

A message came from the consulate, signed by Kurt Reinhard. The wife of the Swiss consul needed an assistant cook for a dinner party that evening. Marta washed and put on her uniform, packed quickly, and headed to the consul’s mansion by taxi.

She went to the servants’ entrance and found herself greeted by a harried maid. “Thank goodness!” She waved Marta inside. “Frau Schmitz is frantic. She has twenty guests arriving for dinner in less than two hours, and Chef Adalrik’s wife became ill this afternoon and had to be taken to the hospital. Another maid quit this morning. We have only one upstairs maid and me.”

After the cold, damp air outside, the heat of the kitchen felt momentarily wonderful. The familiar smell of good Germanic cooking reminded her of the Germania Hotel and Warner Brennholtz. Other things struck her as well, but she decided it was better to be in a smoky, windowless kitchen than out in the damp looking for work. She set her suitcase aside and removed her coat as the maid introduced her to the grim-faced, gray-haired chef. Adalrik Kohler barely glanced at her. “Go with Wilda. Help her set the table for twenty.”

“How many courses?”

“Four. Frau Schmitz wanted six, but I can’t manage more without my wife. When you finish, come back to the kitchen. Oh, and, Fraulein, this is not a permanent position. As soon as Nadine recovers, you will go.”

“I came to learn English. It is more likely I can accomplish that in an English household.”

“Good. Then you will not be disappointed.”

With Wilda’s help, Marta covered the table with white damask and set out the Royal Albert Regency Blue dishes with crystal stemware and silverware. Two silver candelabras and an arrangement of purple and white lilacs adorned the center of the table. Marta folded the white napkins into peacock tails and set them in the middle of each plate. Frau Schmitz, a dazzling blonde woman in her forties, came in dressed in a blue satin gown. Diamonds sparkled at her throat as she walked around the table, inspecting each setting. “It will do.” Marta gave a quick curtsy and headed for the kitchen.

By the end of the evening, Marta’s legs ached from going up and down the stairs from the basement to the second-floor dining room. When the guests left and the kitchen had been cleaned from top to bottom, Wilda took her upstairs to the fourth-floor maids’ quarters.

Over the next week, Marta worked in the smoky, airless kitchen and carried breakfast trays to Frau Schmitz in her third-floor bedroom. She carried trays to the day nursery and served the nanny and the three polite, but rambunctious, Schmitz children. She carried trays laden with crumpets, cucumber sandwiches, and tea cakes to the second-floor parlor, where the lady of the house liked to have high tea using her Royal Albert Regency Blue dishes and silver tea service. She carried more trays into the dining room each evening when Herr Schmitz came home for dinner with his wife, and more trays up to the children’s dining room on the third floor, where the nanny presided.

Nadine returned, and despite Frau Schmitz’s complaints about money, Adalrik insisted Marta remain in her employ or he would leave. “Nadine is not fully recovered. She hasn’t the stamina to go up and down the stairs twenty times a day. Marta is younger and stronger. She can manage.”

After a month, Marta caught another cold, which sank into her chest. By the end of each day, her legs ached so much she could barely drag herself up the four flights to the cold room she shared with Wilda. Collapsing into bed, she dreamed of stairs winding up like Jacob’s ladder to heaven. Flights of stairs angled to the right and left, until they disappeared in the clouds. Even after a night of sleep, Marta awakened feeling drained.

“Your cough is getting worse.” Nadine poured hot water and brewed tea with lemon. “This will make you feel better.”

Adalrik looked grim. “See a doctor before you get any worse. You don’t want to end up in the hospital the way Nadine did.”

Marta had no illusions. Adalrik wasn’t concerned about her health, but about whether Nadine would have to return to upstairs duties. “A doctor will only tell me to rest and drink plenty of fluids.”

Nadine made certain she had plenty of broth and tea with milk, but rest proved elusive and the chest cold grew worse.

“She’s ringing again,” Adalrik told Marta. An evening soiree had lasted far into the night, and Marta had been on duty until the last guest left and everything had been washed and put away. “She’ll want her breakfast served in bed.”

Marta prepared Frau Schmitz’s tray. She managed to climb the first flight of stairs before a fit of coughing gripped her. She set the tray down heavily and coughed until the spasm passed. Lifting the tray, she climbed the rest of the stairs.

“This breakfast is cold.” Frau Schmitz waved her hand. “Take it away and bring me another tray. And be quicker next time.”

Marta made it halfway down the first flight of stairs when she began to cough again. Struggling for breath, Marta sank onto a step, the tray on her lap. Frau Schmitz came out and peered down the stairwell and disappeared back into her room. A moment later, Nadine went up the stairs. Marta managed to stand and make it downstairs to the kitchen.

Nadine came in right after her. She gave Marta a pitying look. “I’m sorry, Marta, but Frau Schmitz says you must go.”

“Go?”

“She wants you out of the house. Today.”

“Why?”

“She’s afraid of contamination. She says she doesn’t want her children getting croup.”

Marta gave a bleak laugh. Oddly, she felt relieved. Another trip up those stairs and she would have come tumbling down. “I’ll go as soon as I receive my pay. And would you ask Wilda to collect my things please? I don’t think I can walk up those stairs again.” Chest hurting, she coughed violently into her apron.

When Nadine left, Adalrik put the back of his hand against Marta’s forehead. “You’re burning up.”

“I just need rest.”

“Frau Schmitz is afraid you’re consumptive.”