Page 53 - My Story (final)

there were ten of us, so it must have been several delicious pizzas. The friendship blossomed, the men
liked each other – who couldn’t like Tom? He was funny and erudite and respectful with a wonderful
sense of the ridiculous. Janet was more serious and always striving but not always successfully and you
loved her for it. Through the Bryans I met more of the international community. We went to something
called the Frauenring and at one of their meetings discovered Helen Senior whose husband, Derek, was
working for ICI – we women were all camp followers in those days. Not one of us was there because of
our jobs, it was all, “What does your husband do? Who is he working for?”

Helen and Derek had three children – Robert and Dinah who were just either side of Toby, “und
ein Baby” I can hear Helen saying in her careful German. The baby was Susannah, then about a year old.
Helen and I got chatting and became good friends and she introduced us to Jean and Gerry Baptist, who
was then in advertising, whose two children, Polly and Mark were about the same age as Robert and
Dinah. With the Bryans the eight of us became inseparables and we went to all the fun fairs and festivals
and celebrated all the processions together. We have a photograph somewhere of everyone on our
balcony with large glasses of wine watching the girls of the Gymverein parading by. Helen and Susan were
members of this Verein and the mothers had been told only twenty-four hours before that the girls had
to be dressed in white tunics with big red sashes at the hip. Thank goodness for my mother’s old linen
sheets. One of them became two tunics, the red sashes were provided, and my two girls were the only
ones with the bows over their left hip. We didn’t notice until they were parading but all the other girls
had the bow over the right hip!

Helen being the oldest of the Seniors, Baptists and our children was often put in charge during
our parties and revels and occasionally even baby sat while we went out. Our men played tennis every
Saturday evening and this was followed by dinner at one or other of our houses. Later the Bachs
introduced us to another American couple, Dorothy and Henry Retter, an architect. This was Henry’s
second marriage and he was a good bit older than the rest of us. He loved to play tennis and was very
competitive with these younger men who would laugh at him and give him a hard time. What my children
remember about Henry was his old Mustang with its distinctive horn with which they would announce
their arrival. Henry’s full name was Heinrich Helmut Retter von Haydn and he spoke not one word of
German!

They later had a baby, Claudia, and Dorothy called me some days after she got home from the
hospital to ask whether I would take the baby and give her a bath! She was too scared to handle her. I
took the baby and gave Dorothy lessons in bathing an infant, but I think what she really needed was
counseling to give her some confidence.

It was also through the Bryans that we met Liz and Adolph af Jochnick at a party one evening. She
was very beautiful with dark curly hair and he was a handsome young Swede who was with Hueblein and
seemed to be introducing Germany to Kentucky Fried Chicken. They are still part of our lives.

There is one more story to be told about the Bryans. Janet had been in hospital and was perhaps
released too early. I dropped her girls off after Brownies one evening and she was covered in hives and
breathing with difficulty. I called the hospital and said we were on our way, called Tom to meet us there,
threw a few toiletries in a bag, put Carrie and Helen in charge and set off. It was a horrible journey, not
too far but the weather was awful, the roads under repair and Janet was groaning and obviously having
difficulty breathing. We arrived, and some nurses rushed out to meet us, left me in the waiting room and
hauled Janet off. I sat there, little bag at my side, waiting for Tom. Suddenly the double doors at the end
of the room opened to two doctors and a nurse, heading straight for me. They hauled me to my feet and
started to march me off – to what? I stammered, I stuttered and just as we were going through the doors,
I managed to get out that I wasn’t the patient and that she had already been taken care of. Fortunately,
Tom arrived just then and was able to corroborate that I was not his wife and, as far as he knew, not in
need of their attention. Whew!

Helen started at the Humboldt Gymnasium (secondary school) in Bad Homburg in September
1968 or ’69. She went there with Martina Schollenberger who was in a parallel class. The Schollenbergers
lived across from us and had two girls, Martina and Ute who was Susan’s best friend and a younger son.
Susan and Ute would take their Barbie dolls out to the Bugel, a lovely hill that was perfect for sledging in

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