The distance from London to the port city of Liverpool on the Irish Sea was 175 miles, but the Grand Arch marking the entrance to Euston Rail station was already awash in salt water. The tears of ninety evacuee children, their parents, siblings, and other relatives threatened to flood the capital with sorrow. Murphy and I had made our farewell in private at the Savoy. Words choked off in his throat as he shut the door of the black cab and sent me on my way. I had been told it was important for me to show nothing but good cheer and a positive outlook in front of my assigned girls. Weeping on my husband’s shoulder, Miss Pike informed me bluntly, would be frowned upon. I left him standing, desolate, outside the hotel as the cab drove away.
I consulted the official CORB information sheet for the twentieth time. It assigned me and my little brood of children to Platform 7, Car 12, Compartment 3.
Squaring my shoulders and hopefully my emotions, I strode into a great hall the size and shape of Noah’s ark. Founded over a hundred years before as the first intercity station in Central London, Euston’s train shed was sixty feet high and several city blocks in length.
Apparently Miss Pike’s admonition to keep a stiff upper lip had not received wide acceptance. Arriving at Platform 7 was like witnessing the unveiling of a tableaux entitled “Grief, More Grief, and Still More Grief.” Little knots of parents and children mingled with previously unknown families. They now shared the prospect of thousands of miles and untold months of separation.
Amid the throng were handfuls that were not grief-stricken. I spotted Raquel shepherding her trio of orphans. Fair skinned, with wild curls, the Jewish sisters, seven-year-old Yael and nine-year-old Simcha, looked wide-eyed but comfortably secure, tucked beneath Raquel’s arms. The eleven-year-old gypsy, Angelique, dark-eyed, serene, and beautiful, drank in the scene as a poet or an artist might absorb the emotions of others to be brought out later in a truthful depiction of this moment of human longing.
Mariah likewise managed her brood without tears. Mariah’s petite, plain-featured sister, Patsy, fumbled with her ticket, dropped it, stooped to retrieve it, and in the process dumped the contents of her handbag. Mariah placed her sister against a stone pillar. Patiently, she attached three-year-old Michael to one of Patsy’s hands and five-year-old Moira to the other. Then Mariah regathered all the fluttering papers and rolling coins. In the midst of this cheerful, pragmatic care-giving, Mariah managed to catch my eye and smile. America! she mouthed and I bobbed my head in return.
Guitarist Pablo, tall and darkly handsome, was surrounded by his admiring choirboy charges. James and John were locked in an embrace with their parents. Tomas and Peter appeared excited. I reflected that where most of the others were leaving loved ones behind, the two Jewish-Czech brothers were going to rejoin their father.
Someone at my elbow cleared her throat with the sound of a watchdog barking. “Missus Murphy,” observed Miss Pike sourly, “you’re late. Where are your girls?”
“I’m looking for them now,” I said.
“Follow me.” She added something that sounded like “unreliable foreigners,” but a train’s scream obscured her words.
I did not ask her to repeat them.
Beneath a sign reading Car 12 I located my assigned covey. Miss Pike favored me with a withering glance designed to make sure I did not move another inch, then departed without waiting to hear my thanks.
I was fortunate that my duty involved children who were from outside London. They had already said their good-byes before traveling to Euston Station with a temporary escort, so I was spared their ordeal of separation.
The girls who would be my responsibility from here to New York stood beneath the placard like a shipment of school uniform dressmakers’ models. Each wore sensible shoes, a heavy fabric skirt, a jacket over a plain blouse, and each carried a single small suitcase. I wondered if the ship’s manifest would read: Style: Preteen English Schoolgirl. Quantity: Five.
It was hard to dispel this image of goods in transit because each child had a tag affixed to her buttonhole giving her name and age. Nan, 11 yrs. Margaret, 12 yrs. Alice, 12 yrs. Lindy, 11 yrs. Betsy, 9 yrs.
I read each badge aloud, then introduced myself. “I’m Elisa Murphy. I’m your chaperone for our trip.”
“We know all about you,” Alice erupted. “You’re a famous violinist, and you escaped from the Nazis. You’re going to Hollywood because everyone thinks you’re a ringer for Hedy Lamarr, but I think you’re much prettier, really, I do.”
“Alice!” Nan snapped. “Don’t gush so. It’s embarrassing.”
Sensible Nan with her bobbed hair and black-rimmed glasses. Just when I was enjoying the unexpected notoriety too.
Though all five girls had previously known each other, of my temporary wards, only Betsy and Lindy were related. Cousins from East Sussex, Betsy was two years younger, spoke when Lindy spoke, and nodded when her cousin nodded. Lindy had bright blue, darting eyes. She missed nothing while taking in everything.
“Look,” Lindy said, pointing at a small boy being led by the hand toward the first-class carriages. “There’s Robin Hood again.”
The reference was not hard to identify. Against the drab browns and blacks worn by most of the evacuee children, the lad in question had a forest-green cloak topped with a pointed hood. Amid the departing leaves of England’s autumn, he looked like a moment of spring or a living illustration from a work by J. M. Barrie.
“Robin Hood?” I asked.
“Robert Snow,” Lindy explained. “American.”
“American,” Betsy chirped.
Young Robert was accompanied by an attendant uniformed as a nurse, but a few paces ahead walked his parents: Gerald Snow, the MGM executive, and his blond, fur-collared wife.
“We all call him Robin Hood,” Margaret insisted.
“Don’t be rude,” Nan said.
Lindy’s brow wrinkled. “Poor little boy.”
“Poor?” Alice retorted. “They’re Americans. They’re all rich as Midas.”
“No,” Lindy observed, “I don’t mean that. Look how he’s staring at his father. He wishes his father would hold his hand, instead of leaving him to the nurse. Can’t you tell?”
I instantly liked Lindy and was certain that, though she was not the oldest of my group, she was the brightest. I could depend on her to help the others. “Are you all from the same town?” I asked.
“Three of us are from Hastings,” Alice asserted. “Lindy and Betsy are from Lewes. That’s with an e, isn’t it, Lindy?” she asked. “Lewes. Oh, I suppose I mean, two e’s.”
But Lindy’s attention was fixed elsewhere. “Can’t you just feel what they’re feeling?”
“Who, dear?” I inquired.
“That boy, there.”
I recognized my friend Connor Turner of the choristers. His Irish whistle poked out of his coat pocket like a sword. The face of the woman who knelt to Connor’s height was streaked with tears. She hugged the boy fiercely.
“Alone,” Lindy said. “Either his father is off at the war, or…”
Connor patted his mother’s back and smiled for her. Don’t worry, I saw him say. From his inside jacket pocket the child produced and offered a handkerchief. Connor’s mother dabbed her cheeks and made an effort to echo the smile.
“Liverpool. The train standing at Platform 7 is for Liverpool,” the public address system announced, and the tableaux began to break apart: half to board the waiting transport and half to remain behind, nursing their sorrow.
Miss Pike hustled down the length of the platform, demanding compliance with the announcement.
“Come on, Lindy,” Betsy urged.
“Wait one moment more.” Lindy gazed openly at Connor and his mother.
I stood beside the girl to witness the conclusion of Connor’s farewell. The boy’s mother pressed the scrap of fabric to her lips, then tucked it back inside his coat pocket. Kissing Connor on the forehead, she shook Pablo’s hand, then hurried away. Guitarist chaperone and five choirboys entered the coach next ahead of ours.
“Wasn’t that just too painful?” Lindy said.
“Yes,” I agreed. “And sometime when Miss Pike isn’t watching, you and I will let ourselves have a good cry for him and for all the good-byes.”
Lindy nodded, taking me seriously. “It’ll be our secret,” she confided. “I’m keeping a notebook, you see. Poems and such. I’m going to write them for Mum and send her letters because she has no one but me. Perhaps one day I’ll write a book. Share all my memories, lest they be forgotten.”
I decided I liked this eleven-year-old poet very much. I prayed that our journey together would be a happy memory she could record to comfort her grieving mother.
Lindy touched my violin case. “I do hope you will play for us each night before we sleep. Mum and I have heard you perform on the BBC. Before Hitler, you played in Vienna. And last week, a Mozart violin concerto. Which one?”
“‘Concerto #3 in G major.’ He wrote it when he was only nineteen.”
“Very beautiful,” Lindy said soberly.
“You like music, then? Do you play an instrument?”
“Piano. A bit. But I can sing.”
“We all sing,” Nan declared confidently.
Lindy clasped Betsy’s lapel, pulling her along. “We should have a talent night.”
Young Betsy echoed her cousin. “A talent night!”
“Like an Andy Hardy movie!” Alice was ecstatic at the prospect of Life imitating Art.
“No sad songs allowed,” Margaret concluded. “We must keep morale high!”
Plans for shipboard entertainment were already underway as we boarded, scrambling to take our seats. Songs were selected for the performance even before the locomotive whistle shrieked and the train to Liverpool lurched into motion.
It was pitch-black when, thirteen hours after departing London, we reached a vacant boarding school in Liverpool. Lindy and little Betsy had become my shadows. Lindy, with her notebook open, jotted notes about her companions and our adventure.
It was almost 10 p.m. when we staggered into the girls’ dormitory. Fifty iron cots were jammed into a space meant to house no more than twenty-five children. Most of the evacuees fell onto their beds and were asleep before they had time to think of home.
I shared a room with Mariah and Raquel. Patsy and her two little ones roomed with another mother of young children. Exhausted, we were ready to turn out the light when I heard a small knock on our door.
Raquel was already unconscious.
Mariah moaned and turned over, covering her head. “Wake me when it’s over.”
“Miss Elisa?” I recognized Lindy’s voice.
Opening the door, I saw that Lindy and Betsy had now been joined by the gypsy girl, Angelique.
“What are you girls doing? Still awake?”
Lindy extended her notebook and pencil to me. “Angelique belongs to your friend Raquel. She told me about the last time she saw her mother. She told me that I should write my mother a letter and mail it before the ship sails. Because we’ll be in the Atlantic after tomorrow and who knows how long it will be before my mum gets a letter from me.”
Betsy and Angelique nodded in unison.
Through bleary eyes I replied, “An excellent idea, Lindy. But tomorrow is time enough.”
“No,” Angelique interrupted. “You must write at the bottom of her letter.”
“Me?” I asked.
Lindy explained. “It will help my mum, you see? If you write a note and promise her that you’ll take good care of me in the crossing. You’ll tell her all will be well and that she must not worry.”
Both Betsy and Angelique concurred.
Lindy continued, “You see, I’m the last. My brothers both killed…and my dad too. Mum was worried about torpedoes. Afraid to send me away to America. But afraid for me to stay. I’ve told her all about you. If you write a postscript and promise her you’ll look after me…”
Betsy piped, “And me too.”
“Yes. Of course.” I nodded and took the notebook and the pencil. What could I write to assure Lindy’s mother?
Opening the door I admitted the trio. I sat at a small wooden desk and, by the dim light, scanned the last page of Lindy’s letter.
“Mum, tell Aunt Candice that little Betsy and I are staying very close to one another, sleeping tonight in a dorm with lots of other girls sailing to America. I have made friends with a girl my own age named Angelique—I call her Angel—who fled from Spain and then France and now is sailing with the Hollywood entertainment group. There are also boy choristers from Westminster who will sing in Hollywood. We heard them singing in the next compartment on the train, and I asked them to perform in our talent program. They have agreed.
We have all heard there are navy men in great ships who will be sailing all around our ship to prevent U-boats from attacking us. We are eager to start off.
Please, Mum, do not worry, as all is well. The BBC violinist Elisa Lindheim Murphy is escort for our group, and we will have music lessons on board and a talent show. I will sing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” with Betsy and my other friends. Now Elisa will write to you about me.
Please do not answer this letter, as I will be in the mid-Atlantic. Excuse the handwriting. The train was joggly, and so was the bus.
Good-bye for now from your loving daughter, Lindy, and the others.
Your loving daughter, Lindy
XXXXXX
Lindy wrote in the letters P and S for me. I opened my Bible to Psalm 91 and started my postscript.
P.S.
Dear Mrs. Petticaris,
What a lovely girl your Lindy is! She cheers us all up and brings such light into our midst. I am so blessed to have such a beautiful and cheerful soul as Lindy to help me with the others. My own children made the crossing to America, and I know how you must worry, but I know all will be well. I am comforted by this promise from the Psalms, “He shall give His angels charge over thee to keep thee in all thy ways” Psalm 91:11!6 God has placed His angels around your dear angel, and I promise I will also watch over her on our journey to America!
Sincerely, Elisa Lindheim Murphy
I returned the letter to Lindy, who read it aloud to her companions. She thanked me with a hug.
“That’s for Mum. I know she will smile when she reads this.”
We did not hear the approach of Miss Pike. The dour matron, clothed in a long flannel nightgown and nightcap, loomed in the doorway. “What’s all this!” she demanded. “What! What! Don’t you know it’s past curfew?”
The trio of girls cowered.
I rose from the desk. “I had an important letter to write to Lindy’s mother.”
“You could accomplish your task before curfew, Missus Murphy.”
“It was past curfew when we arrived here, Miss Pike.” I motioned the girls to hurry back to their dorm as I dealt with the tyrant.
“You are a representative of CORB—and as such you will obey the rules.”
I countered, “I am a private citizen escorting these girls as a favor to your organization. Now I must ask you, Miss Pike: what are you doing up and about after curfew? Morning will come awfully early.”
My question flustered the grim woman. She blinked at me through her thick glasses and then with a harrumph scurried off to her own quarters.
Grateful Lindy had come to me seeking comfort for her mother, I settled down on my groaning cot with the promise of Psalm 91 fresh in my mind: “A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee.”7
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.
PSALM 23:4 ESV
VIENNA, AUSTRIA
DECEMBER 21, 1937
I heard the bells of St. Stephan’s Cathedral ring as I set out to the music school today. Each ominous, mournful clang marked a step I took toward the Musikverein and the hidden Guarnerius Rudy told me about.
Overnight, Nazi gangs have been busy. The streets are plastered with posters. Jews out of Vienna! the handbills shout. As fast as Austrian police remove them, three more spring up.
I carried an empty violin case with me. I did not think anyone was watching me or had heard Rudy’s dying request for me to get the violin, but I was still fearful someone might have followed. It would not do to enter the building empty-handed and emerge carrying a violin.
In the music school hallway echoing with the emptiness of the holidays, I have found the Guarnerius violin exactly where Rudy said: behind the case containing the grinning jaws and empty eye sockets of the skull of Joseph Haydn.
The presence of death seems a fitting metaphor for all that is happening around me. Jews are being assaulted. Rudy tortured and killed. My father confined in the living hell called Dachau. Austria is dying and will soon be as dead as Haydn.
I heard a piano being played somewhere in the warren of practice rooms. I think now it was the ghost of Haydn mocking all our efforts to snatch lives from the ravening Nazi jaws.
I switched the violin cases as Rudy told me to do. Rudy’s broken body was vivid in my mind as I resisted running from the hall.
Tonight, Rudy’s handsome face, battered beyond recognition, will not leave my thoughts. Was there a reason Rudy hid the violin case behind Haydn’s skull? Perhaps the skull is a warning…or perhaps it is a prophecy.
Hear my cry, O God, listen to my prayer…for You have been my refuge, a strong tower against the enemy. Let me dwell in Your tent forever! Let me take refuge under the shelter of Your wings!
PSALM 61:1, 3–4 ESV
VIENNA, AUSTRIA
DECEMBER 1937 (CONTINUED)
A miracle this diary is still here. The police were waiting in my apartment when I returned home. The little Jewish man who lived downstairs let them in. I am certain he was too afraid to warn me they were there, even though he told me of danger to my friends in the Jewish Quarter.
The Shupos told me they were checking the stories of everyone in the orchestra and asked why I had missed the performance. I did not want to tell them I had seen what happened to Rudy. I repeated my tale of having been ill because of hearing the news that my brother was sick and my family would not come to Vienna for the holidays.
A nondescript man drew a nondescript notebook from a matching coordinated overcoat. Flipping over several pages, he advised that I had been reported as being away from home for several hours. The other man, with his scuffed shoes and shiny, dark blue suit, eyed me suspiciously.
“Of course,” I said indignantly, “I had to make a phone call. You can check if you like.”
I denied having seen Rudy that evening.
They tried to get me to admit being well-acquainted with Rudy, but I evaded it. I took a high moral tone and told them Rudy had brought trouble on himself. They said I had been seen at the concert hall. If I was well enough to go out, why wasn’t I performing?
I extended my hands, which were genuinely trembling. “I’m a violinist. How can I play like this?”
Suddenly my stomach turned over, and I was genuinely nauseous too. When I looked at my own hand, I suddenly had a vision of Rudy’s, all hacked and bloody.
They tried to suggest Rudy and I were lovers, but this was safer ground, and I was able to laugh scornfully. I told them that the American newsman John Murphy was my lover and that he would certainly be interested in hearing about their interrogation in my apartment. This shook them up a little.
They believed me, apologized, pleading the need to complete their routine investigation, and left.
After they departed, I began to shake in earnest from my toes to the top of my head and shiver uncontrollably. Had these men seen what had been done to Rudy—to that bright, talented, heroic life? And they were here, pestering me, instead of finding the Nazi thugs who killed him?
6 KJV
7 Psalm 91:7 KJV