Kitabı oxu: «The Secrets of the Notebook: A royal love affair and a woman’s quest to uncover her incredible family secret»

PROLOGUE
The FIRST GLIMPSE

I SAW THE notebook for the first time in London in 1940 and was instantly enchanted by the mystery of the story surrounding it. It was wartime and we were in our flat in Hampstead where we had been living ever since we had escaped from Europe in 1934. All through the previous night we had suffered a terrifying air raid, which at dawn had left the three of us feeling shaken.

My father had brought the book to the breakfast table, never having mentioned its existence to me before. It was still in its envelope, tied with a green ribbon. He must have decided that now I had passed my sixteenth birthday it was time for me to be given some knowledge about the family secret. Perhaps he had waited before explaining the little book’s history to me until he thought I was old enough to be trusted not to tell anyone else. Or maybe the closeness of the bombs the previous night had reminded him of his own mortality and he didn’t want to risk the secret dying with him. I never knew what caused him to choose that morning to fetch it from wherever he had been hiding it since we’d arrived in London, and to take it from its envelope in front of me.

‘What’s that?’ I asked as he sat down with us.

‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ he said, trying to underplay its importance as my mother poured the coffee. ‘Just a diary.’

‘I didn’t know you kept a diary.’ I was surprised. In my youthful ignorance I had thought I knew everything about my beloved father.

‘Well,’ he looked uncomfortable for a second, as though he had been caught out not telling the whole truth. Was he having second thoughts about telling me, now that he was sitting beneath my mother’s firm and slightly disapproving gaze? ‘I don’t keep a diary,’ he said with a smile.

‘It’s just an old family memento,’ Mother said brusquely, clearly coming to his rescue in some way. I don’t know if he had consulted her about telling me that day, or whether he had reached the decision alone, but they exchanged a look that I couldn’t understand and then seemed to come to a decision simultaneously to go ahead with the revelation. My father passed the book to me.

‘Be careful, Eve,’ he said, as if I were a small clumsy child who might drop and break it. ‘It’s very old.’

It was heavy for something so small and as I cradled it in my hands I saw there was a grand family crest of some sort embossed on the silver gilt cover. It felt solid and substantial as I gently ran my thumb over it. I opened the first page and read out loud the elegantly written inscription inside. It was in German.

‘The beautiful owner of this book is dearer to me than my life – August your protector.’

I looked up enquiringly but neither of them said anything, both concentrating on their breakfast.

‘Who is this August?’ I asked.

They exchanged another nervous glance and then my father seemed to decide to take the plunge.

‘He was royal,’ he said. ‘A Prussian prince. He was your great, great grandfather, Eve.’

‘Anna’s grandfather was a royal prince?’ I said after considering the thought for a few moments. I tried to imagine my sweet, arthritis-ridden old grandmother being that closely related to royalty and failed. Princess Anna – it seemed too fantastical to be true.

‘He married Emilie Gottschalk, the daughter of a Jewish tailor, and …’ my father seemed to be hesitating; was he wishing he had never started the conversation, eager to squash my enthusiastic curiosity? Was it all too embarrassing to talk about?

‘We know very little, and it is only word of mouth,’ he carried on with conviction, then seemed to want to change the subject as quickly as possible, as if I had now been told all I needed to know and there was no point in going any further. ‘Except that this little pocket-book is all there is …’

‘Why is this all there is?’ I stroked the little book again. I wasn’t going to leave it at that. What sixteen-year-old girl would be willing to dismiss the idea that she might be descended from a prince without coming up with a thousand new questions. ‘What about Anna’s mother? What was her name?’

‘Charlotte,’ my father said, avoiding my eyes and those of my mother as he continued to eat his breakfast. ‘She was Prince August’s daughter.’

‘Well,’ I said, feeling slightly frustrated by how evasive they were both being. ‘There must be records of her life—’

‘Eve,’ my father put up his hand to stop me in my tracks. ‘My mother gave me—’

He stopped speaking for a moment, as if mustering enough strength to keep his emotions under control in front of me and I immediately felt guilty for having forced him to talk about my grandmother, Anna, like that. Anna was sending us letters intermittently via the Red Cross, which was in itself very worrying, although she professed to be alright, I knew he was partly hoping that if she did get arrested then she wouldn’t linger and would leave this earth before her suffering became too great, while the other half struggled with the idea that he might never see her again, would never be able to say goodbye and might never know the truth of what had happened to her in her final days. My own deep-rooted fears for her safety were distressing for me too, as the truth of the desperate situation for all Jews who remained in German-occupied Prague had begun to dawn on all of us.