“Tell me who’s supposed to help me with the work in the fields? Don’t think I’m going to slave away out there again all by myself while Flora is at the service of complete strangers.” Hannah’s voice was thick with irony, and carried some despair, too. She sounded like someone whose hopes were being dashed in front of her and who could do nothing to stop it from happening. “A young woman, alone, in a strange town! Really, Helmut, it’s too dangerous.”
“I’d be in good hands there, with the family.” Wringing her hands, Flora looked back and forth between her parents. “Please . . .”
In the end, neither Helmut nor Hannah could deny Flora her wish. What good reason did they have? The twins offered to take over Flora’s share of the work in the fields, and the family decided to leave the flower beds behind the house fallow—her absence would not leave too huge a hole.
“I can already hear what the people will say when they find out we’ve sent Flora away a second time to learn to be a florist,” Hannah complained, but everyone in the family knew that she really did not care at all about the opinions of people in the village.
When, a week later, Flora packed her bag, Helmut and Hannah each had a heavy heart. Instead of letting it show, they wished her the best and gave her some pocket money, and a parcel of seeds as a gift for her hosts. Helmut, of course, would not let anyone tell him he could not carry his daughter’s luggage to the station.
Besides Helmut and Hannah, Suse also came to say goodbye. She, too, did her best to hide her sadness at Flora’s departure.
“What is wrong with us?” Hannah cried. “As seed traders, we should be used to saying goodbye. We do it every year, after all. You’d think we’d have some experience in it by now.”
Helmut sighed. “There are some things you never get used to. They just get harder with the passing years.”
Hands on hips, Suse looked Flora up and down with a critical eye. “I think you don’t care about the flowers at all, really. You’re only going to Baden-Baden because the Sonnenschein family has an interesting son.”
“Who knows? Maybe I’ll marry him and the whole flower shop will belong to me,” Flora said, and she and Suse broke into a fit of giggling.
“Suse! Flora! Jokes like that are not appreciated,” said Hannah, shaking her head, but in the face of the cheerfulness of the two young women, she and Helmut felt at least a little relieved.
With her head against Helmut’s chest, Hannah watched the train roll away. Only when the last car was no more than a dark spot in the distance did she let her tears flow.
“It’s just for a summer,” Helmut murmured into her wind-tossed hair.
“We don’t know that. Not yet,” Hannah sobbed.
Chapter Seven
Although it was only midmorning, Ernestine Sonnenschein already felt as exhausted as if she had worked an entire day. With trembling knees, she settled onto one of the armchairs that faced the front window. Outside, the sun smiled down from a blue sky, reminding her that it was time she got to work in the garden. A good housewife, of course, started the garden work much earlier in the year. Could she really burden Kuno with turning over the garden beds on top of everything else? Or ask him to trim the hedge? So often lately, her husband had been too tired to do even the simplest things, a condition she could well understand herself. And his dizzy spells were a worry!
She could not take care of the garden. At least, not right at that moment. Ernestine’s eyelids fluttered nervously when she saw the paper beside the inkpot. She had not yet put together the meal plan for the coming week.
She forced herself to close her eyes for a long moment, but instead of the calm and order she longed for, thoughts went scurrying through her mind like rowdy chickens. Three courses at lunch, at least two in the evening—any less would have been too meager for a decent shopkeeper’s household, although Kuno and Friedrich often told her that she did not need to go to all the trouble. Kuno even said he would be satisfied with bread and cheese in the evenings.
Bread and cheese?
Ernestine could not recall her friend Gretel—the wife of Mr. Grün, the pharmacist—ever telling her about bread and cheese as an evening meal. She could not recall Gretel talking about her meal plans at all, which Ernestine took as a sign of good breeding.
Nor did Die Gartenlaube, the magazine delivered to the house each week, ever mention bread and cheese for supper. Its articles were always about housewives for whom putting the most diverse meals on the table every day was a priority.
What was she supposed to put on the table for lunch? Soup? A plate of vegetables with some ham? No, ham was too elegant for a Monday. Bacon was suitable for Mondays, and not too expensive.
Suddenly, it was there again, the thought that Ernestine hated so much, namely that it was her fault that money was in such short supply in the Sonnenschein household. Would not a more skillful housewife have found a better way to budget long ago?
Ernestine found the thought of money embarrassing. And a wife could not simply go to her husband and ask for more money. Nor could she count on Kuno or Friedrich to help when it came to dealing with the household. Both relied on Ernestine to keep everything sorted out, and they never bothered themselves with how she did it.
That apprentice girl that Friedrich had taken on was an excellent example. Was she, Ernestine, asked even once if she was prepared to take on this new burden? Or if there was enough housekeeping money to feed an extra mouth?
And of all the times he could have chosen, Friedrich brought the girl in when Kuno was doing so poorly. “Flora will help Father in the shop,” he’d asserted. Oh, no doubt her son meant well, but what did Friedrich know about real life? And—while she was on the subject—what did Kuno know about it?
Soup. They would have soup for lunch that day. Or a stew? Or plain broth?
Flora Kerner . . . Ernestine still did not know exactly how Friedrich had met the young woman. She was supposed to arrive on the midday train and would probably knock on their door sometime in the afternoon. That was good, because it meant Ernestine did not have to think about welcoming her with a meal.
“Flora Kerner wants to learn floristry. In return, she will take on some of Father’s workload. You will thank me soon enough for this,” Friedrich had said tersely.
Thank him? The things her son got into his head!
With a sigh, Ernestine looked out the window. The apprentice girl was not yet in sight, thank heavens, but she certainly had a wonderful view of all the horrible roadworks going on outside. Half the street had been torn up and turned into a huge ditch, and the coaches, street workers, and pedestrians had to share the other half. Workers shoveled piles of dirt from here to there and back again, or just stood around getting in the way. Everyone was cursing at everyone else. It was a madhouse.
Just then, Ernestine saw Sabine appear from around the corner with a shopping basket filled to bursting hanging from the crook of her arm. Her cheeks were red and her lips pursed as if she were whistling a tune like some street urchin. How could any human being be so untroubled?
Were those leeks in Sabine’s basket? Ernestine could not remember writing leeks on the shopping list, so why had the maid bought them?
Though, a good leek soup with cream would not be the worst thing to put on the table for lunch. Or as a welcoming meal for the Kerner girl that evening. With a silver candelabra on the table . . . Then the girl would see that she had come to a good household. Suddenly, Ernestine’s heart felt lighter. Time to put together the rest of the meal plan. With renewed energy, she dunked her pen in the inkpot.
Reluctantly, Ernestine interrupted her painstaking management of the household to have lunch with her husband, but her son did not come home, and without Friedrich the midday meal was a quiet and quick affair.
The moment the table was cleared, there was a knock at the door, and Ernestine looked up with a frown. Sabine was standing in the doorway and beside her was . . .
“The girl from Württemberg! My goodness, you’re already here!”
Chapter Eight