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  When we finished I was told that, not long after Ann Judith died, that bastard Frederich remarried a wealthy widow who lived near by. How could he? After all she did for him? Anyway, Frederich obviously regretted it because when he died in 1861, aged eighty, eleven years after Ann Judith, he was buried with his first wife. I didn't bother to ask what happened to the merry widow.

  When I met Julian Clary to shoot the titles for Who Do You Think You Are? we compared notes on our programmes, and both confessed to being disconcerted by the German connection that they unearthed. Indoctrinated during the war to hate the Germans and all they stood for, was it possible that it had a more profound effect on my attitude than I was prepared to admit? I was shaken by my reaction. Was I – lovely Guardian-reading liberal that I am – a racist?

  In a story written by Mark Twain in response to the Philippine–American war of 1899–1902, an ancient stranger enters a church and says to the congregation:

  Beware lest when you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory.

  Then he says this bitterly ironic prayer:

  O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolate land in rage and hunger and thirst . . . We ask it in the spirit of love of Him who is the source of love, and who is the ever faithful refuge and friend of all who are sore beset and seek his aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.

  From 'The War Prayer' by Mark Twain

  10

  Westphalia · Berlin

  PLENTY OF GERMANS HAD flown over my head, but I had only ever met one, face to face, in my life. Apart that is, from the pale, young captured soldiers we stared at like animals in a zoo, through the wire of their prison camp, in Wilmington, near my home in Bexleyheath.

  In the fifties, I lived for several months in a big rooming house near Bromley when I was playing in the repertory company. Mrs Kaiser was my landlady. Orangey-gold crinkly hair, steady hazel eyes, and a nervous shyness. I did not question her about her previous life, but she told me once that she and her family had fled Germany before the war when they saw the brown shirts multiplying, and knew of children reporting their parents for criticism of the Führer. At least 70,000 others left Germany, 55,000 of them to Britain. They were mainly, like Mrs Kaiser, well educated and talented – doctors, musicians, writers, filmmakers – and Germany's loss was Britain's gain. I do not think Mrs Kaiser was Jewish, just appalled at what was happening in her country. So I didn't count her in my impression of the Germans. I sided with my parents, who, having experienced two world wars started by Germany, were convinced they were a dangerous nation.

  Then, not long after I finished filming Who Do You Think You Are?, I was asked to play Fraulein Schneider in the musical of Cabaret. She is an Aryan German who falls in love with a Jew during the rise of Nazism in Berlin. My first fear was that I might not have the stamina or vocal agility to do a musical, so I ran through some of the numbers with the musical director, David Steadman, to see if I could still sing. That seemed OK, so now I had to decide if I could get inside the mind of this character, empathise with her dilemma. Judging from my reaction to my German roots, that might prove to be more difficult.

  I have never been able to travel to Germany since the war. It wasn't a conscious moral stance or grand gesture, I just didn't want to go. I still didn't. But I knew I had to. Both to further pursue my search for the Zurhorsts, and to get a feel for Isherwood's Berlin if possible, as well as hopefully to rid myself of this phobia. I booked to go to Westphalia, the Zurhorst family home. The plane flew to somewhere called Munster. It didn't sound terribly inviting.

  On the train from Munster to Bramsche I felt sick with fear. Irrational but real. There was an elderly couple sitting opposite me, and I found myself thinking that cliché: 'What did you do during the war?'

  My arrival at Bramsche didn't fill me with bonhomie. A few people alighted with me and soon disappeared. I was totally alone, in a bleak little unmanned station. The travel agent who had booked my journey had been assured there would be taxis outside. I doubt if there had been such a thing, ever. A horse perhaps or a mule. I ventured up a deserted road, lugging my luggage, and encountered two taciturn civilians.

  'Taxi?'

  'Nein.'

  That was the extent of their help. Eventually, I found a shop that reluctantly gave me a card with a taxi number on it. I sat down on my case and waited for it to arrive. Several people passed by and not one gave me so much as a nod. When after about an hour the taxi came, not a word was spoken on the journey through completely flat featureless countryside.

  Malgarten Monastery, where I was to stay, looked lovely, if forbidding. To get to the door, I walked past a beautifully tended cemetery. A woman led me through echoing corridors to a room painted in warm orange ochre with fragments of ancient murals on one wall. Things were looking up. I unpacked and went to ask her if I could have something to eat. She had disappeared. It was like the Mary Celeste. I began to think all the inhabitants were in the graveyard.

  I wandered around the monastery, hoping for even a friendly ghost who might know of a nearby café. Outside, the road showed no signs of life. In an empty room I found a telephone directory. No phone. Thank God for mobiles. Sure enough, there were several Zurhorsts all keeping up the peculiar name tradition. Rudiger, Bernuhet, Joachim, Helmut and – rather unfortunately – Ranke, Stank and Traute, who sounded like a German branch of Dyno-Rod. I tried ringing one of these numbers, only to be greeted by a torrent of German, a language I find difficult to take seriously after all the wartime Hitler imitations and Danny the dachshund in Larry the Lamb. So, I studied my map and decided that tomorrow I would just turn up, as a nice surprise, at the nearby farm marked on my map as 'Zur Horst'. If I didn't die of starvation in the night.

  The next morning, hearing voices, I came upon a group of Lycra-clad cyclists stuffing themselves with breakfast. It dawned on me that this place was a hostel, where you provided your own food. I affected a wan and hungry look, but no one offered me so much as a Rice Krispie. In fact, no one spoke to me.

  I slapped on some make-up, and a smart dress, and set off on foot in the boiling heat for my ancestral home. About a mile along the road, I found a broken sign marking the entrance to the Zurhorst Farm. After another trek down an endless driveway, between flat ploughed land, I saw in the distance a dilapidated, low house with tumbledown farm buildings either side of a crumbling courtyard. Hot and sweaty and gasping for a drink, I made for what looked like a farm shop, where three women glared at me. A wiry wrinkled crone edged forward with the two others standing guard behind, ready to spring at me should I attack. I pointed at myself, smiling and nodding.

  'Zurhorst.'

  Instead of throwing her arms around me with delight as I had hoped, she narrowed her eyes and turned and snorted at her bodyguards. Thinking she had misunderstood – understandable, turning up unannounced as I had – I showed her my copy of the family tree, tracing with my finger their names leading to mine. She was unimpressed. She was probably nothing to do with the family. Wordlessly, she led me into the dark interior of the house, and sat me in a small room full of tables, which I presumed was a sort of canteen. And left me alone. Once more, all contact with humanity was cut off.

  After about half an hour, I wandered into the courtyard. A howling dog, covered in cuts and blood, limped up to me and I looked desperately around for help. Then I heard the banging and spluttering of an engine. Along the drive, an old jalopy jerkily approached. Out stepped a tiny tramp in a battered hat, with years of grime embedded in his face and hands.

  He ignored the bleeding dog and stood awkwardly in front of me muttering, 'Joachim.'

  He attempted a smile, but the deeply etched lines were not eas
ily bent upwards. Still, he spoke a few words of English. I thought at least there might be a glass of water or a cup of coffee in it. But no chance. Joachim hobbled into a room stuffed with dark brown furniture, and showed me a beautifully painted family tree. There was my branch of the family starting with Hermann. I wanted to feel something profound but hunger, thirst and sweatiness precluded ancestral pride.

  And that was it. My return to my roots; an episode from Cold Comfort Farm. Instead of a tearful welcome over a glass of champagne, my relations seemed to dislike my interruption of their work, eyeing with suspicion my smart outfit and makeup. And maybe my Englishness. There was no time for sentimental chit-chat or tending to sick dogs. Their lives seemed to be harsh rural labour. A bit different from Frederich and Ann Judith, poncing around in tax exile on Guernsey, having their portraits painted. Thank goodness my branch of the family got the hell out of it, and sought their fortunes elsewhere.

  On the trudge back, I passed a place that seemed to be a restaurant. At last. Of course, no one was around, but at least the door was open and I collapsed on to a chair inside. After a time a huge man of middle years, sporting an alarmingly unsuitable gel-spiked hairdo, appeared. He spoke halting English and had a decidedly odd fixed grin. I now found myself in a performance of Of Mice and Men. After guzzling down a glass of water, I asked if I could have a meal. He looked astonished and did the usual Westphalian disappearing act. In the distance, I heard a lot of angry shouting from a female voice.

  'Meine Mutter,' he said apologetically as he returned.

  I guessed it was she who had made him don an ill-fitting black jacket and bow tie. He ushered me, with great ceremony, into a huge dining room swagged with chintz and decorated with dust-coated plastic lilies. He bowed low and handed me a lengthy elaborate menu. I was the only customer.

  The sauerkraut and weird sausage were pretty disgusting but as it was the only place to eat I had no option but to return the next night. I caught fleeting glances of the crimson-haired, heavily made-up fat mother who did all the cooking but she never emerged to greet me. I did wonder if the scenario would turn out to be a Westphalian Psycho. I was glad I wasn't staying there and using the shower.

  I tentatively made friends with the gentle giant, whom I christened Lennie. He told me in a whisper that his mother would not have him in the kitchen with her, which made it difficult collecting the food, as he was the only waiter. I wondered why he had chosen this miserable life, and he told me that once he had worked all over the world on cruise ships.

  I asked, 'Why did you give that up?'

  He shrugged, casting a glance towards the kitchen, 'You have to settle down and have a family.'

  I was glad he had a life of his own. 'So you're married? Where is your wife?'

  There was a long pause.

  'She left.'

  I was nervous when he told me he had something special to show me. It turned out to be a framed letter received by his father in 1938. Proudly, he pointed out the Heil Hitler at the end. I couldn't understand the letter and didn't much want to so I was confused as to how I should react.

  I said feebly, 'Oh, that's nice.'

  Encouraged by my compliance he went on to tell me that during the war judges stayed at the hotel who presided over courts that were held in the monastery. I shuddered to think what those courts might have been. That night I did indeed discover a small cell, with a metal door, covered in bolts and locks, down the corridor from my room.

  All told I did not feel I had come home. In fact I could not have felt more alien. Especially after an alarming encounter with some workmen doing demolition work in the grounds of the hostel. I went for a stroll and passed a cobbled path that they were laying.

  I expressed admiration in sign language and thumbs up, 'Gut.'

  'Sie sind Englisch?'

  My German did not extend to explaining my ancestry so I just said, 'Ja, ich bin Englisch.'

  They did not react.

  When I returned from my walk, and attempted to cross their work area, one of the men drove a digger, very fast, straight at me. I should have jumped aside, but I could see it was no jolly jape, but meant to frighten me. And so it did, but I stood my ground. I felt belligerently British, and I was damned if I would run away. He skidded to a halt, just short of my body. I graciously bowed my head to him and the other two who were watching, smiled sweetly, and walked past muttering 'bloody Boche' through my teeth. All my latent racism raged through my head. Instead of thinking all people in the sticks of any country are, by my reckoning, a bit odd, I blamed the whole German race for this nutter's behaviour.

  Not long after the war, in 1949, I hitchhiked through Holland to work for a voluntary organisation doing some reconstruction work near Apeldoorn, just across the border from Westphalia. Then our welcome was ecstatic. But in Holland we were the liberators. It dawned on me that in rural Germany I was still the enemy. In fact the British had only very recently left a nearby air-force camp, much to the regret of Lennie and his mother because the officers used to eat in their restaurant. But to most of the inhabitants I suppose we were an unwelcome occupying power. My northern friend from Solo was stationed there just after the war and remembers being spat on in the street: 'You bombed us.' The digger men probably hated me more than I hated the Germans. That gave me pause for thought.

  That night, I heard music coming from one of the distant barns. There was a Mozart concert in progress. I sat on the steps outside, soothed by the beauty of the music. I reminded myself that Bach, Beethoven, Richard Strauss and Wagner were all German, and contributed greatly to my quality of life. Yet, as I stood in the street with my case next morning at 4 a.m., hoping that the taxi would turn up to start me on my journey to Berlin, I couldn't help remembering Ernest Bevin's comment to Sir Brian Robertson about the Germans:

  'I tries 'ard, Brian, but I 'ates 'em'.

  Welcome to Berlin. It was with a jaundiced eye I took in my first sight of the city during the drive from the airport. My antipathy to all things German wasn't helped by my Turkish taxi driver who, like others of his ilk, bent my ear with all that was wrong with the city and its inhabitants. He'd been there for thirty years and never had he felt more threatened. A unified Germany was a dangerous thing. Healthcare was non-existent. He could get no treatment for his bad back, rotting teeth and near blindness – as his driving demonstrated.

  My arrival at the Brandenhof Hotel was the first pleasant event since landing in Germany; super luxury and affable staff. In my minimalist room, I recognised a lamp based on a Bauhaus design that gave me pleasure, if very little light. It reminded me of another area of German genius. The congenial hotel manager welcomed me with flowers and suggested a boat trip to get a first impression of Berlin as a whole.

  It appeared to be a vast construction site. A mixture of decaying old buildings and sensational new modern design, incorporating solar panels and wind machines. This impression was reinforced when I wandered around on foot. I wanted to go on a guided tour but though I got myself to Zoo station I couldn't find the meeting place. The buildings all looked identical. I managed to get completely lost despite two guidebooks and a map. Every bus or metro I took landed me in Alexanderplatz, in the old eastern sector. When I decided to have a look at it, the main road was closed and the whole area flattened ready for reconstruction. I felt thoroughly disorientated. My map was hopelessly out of date.

  Exhausted after a frustrating day, I spotted a sign advertising Thai massage back near the hotel. The tiny pretty girl looked confused and I apologised for not booking but asked if she could fit me in as a favour. She reluctantly led me into a perfumed candlelit small room and invited me to lie on the floor on a stained blanket. She gave me a gentle massage, and I thanked her very much and gave her a large tip for being so sweet. Whereupon she surprisingly kissed me fondly on the cheek. When I related this incident to the manager of the hotel, he roared with laughter and pointed out that the place was a brothel, and I was probably a kinder customer than the
girl was used to. So I spent a sleepless night worrying about her and the sex trade.

  The next day, with the help of the hotel staff, I was slightly more organised. On their advice, I attempted to buy a Will-kommen ticket that allowed me to travel on anything, anywhere, but the man in the office at the dreaded Zoo station was so aggressive and uncooperative that I told him to stick his Willkommen up his Arsch and left.

  Gradually mastering the transport system, I set about visiting one or two sights. But I still felt ill at ease. However, I was glad to see that, unlike in Budapest, it seems the Germans are confronting their past. Parties of schoolchildren were solemnly listening to talks by their teachers in several war museums. In front of one exhibit, which was a re-creation of a shop wrecked on Kristallnacht, a small group of youngsters sang a quiet little song that tore my heart.

  In the jagged frightening Holocaust Memorial building, I was frozen with fear in the dark tower when the door clanked shut and the only light was a slit in the ceiling, through which I could hear the distant city sounds. A brilliantly conceived sensory experience, more telling than all the heartbreaking exhibits illustrating the suffering of the Jews during the Holocaust.

  At the newly trendy Scheunenviertel area of Mitte, I found it hard to reconcile the juxtaposition of smart restaurants and coffee bars with the monuments and plaques telling stories of Jews herded out of these same buildings and marched along these now boutique-lined lanes. I even regarded as sinister the way Berliners, young and old, obeyed their green-man pedestrian-crossing signs whether there was approaching traffic or not. Deliberately, I crossed when I shouldn't, even if I risked being run over.