We now had to get everyone quickly and quietly off the beach.
‘Here, carry these, will you?’ Miss Carter thrust a bundle of clothes into my arms. ‘We’re taking everyone to Queenie’s. Torches off. We don’t want to attract attention.’
There were thirty-two refugees in total: thirty-two wet, frightened, exhausted people, who’d travelled through a storm in a sailing boat meant to hold ten. How awful their lives back home must’ve been to take such a risk.
And these weren’t fighters or soldiers, but the sort of people you’d walk past every day in the street: men with grey hair, a girl and her brother holding hands, two old ladies whose dripping wet glasses kept sliding down their noses. Baby Reuben, now safely wrapped in his blanket again, back in his mother’s arms. But, to my growing concern, there was no sign of a pretty seventeen-year-old girl amongst them.
Mrs Henderson seemed to be looking for someone too: ‘I’ve not seen her yet,’ she was saying to Queenie. ‘I’d recognise her from her picture, I’m sure I would.’
Following the crowd along the beach, I caught up with Ephraim. He was carrying a bedroll under one arm, a suitcase in the other.
‘Have you seen Sukie?’ I asked him.
‘She’s not here, Olive.’ He sounded irritated. ‘So she can’t be involved, can she?’
‘She must be,’ I insisted. ‘She had the code.’
In frustration, he raised his shoulders skywards. ‘I don’t know what’s happened, all right? A mix-up? An accident? All I know is she’s not here, so stop asking.’
*
Back at Queenie’s her kitchen was bright, warm and soon very full of people peeling off wet coats and thawing their hands by the fire. It was a completely different room to how I’d remembered it on our first night here. Something was actually cooking on the stove and the table was laden with plates, bowls, spoons and loaves of bread.
‘Welcome, everyone,’ Mrs Henderson announced, clearing her throat. ‘Or should I say Shalom? Forgive my rusty Hebrew, please, eat all you can.’
Thick carrot soup was ladled on to plates and into bowls, and when they ran out, into cups. With each serving, Queenie also gave out envelopes, which people seemed equally grateful for. They were, Miss Carter told me, fake identity papers.
‘We need it to look official,’ she explained. ‘On their own papers, these people wouldn’t be allowed into our country, sadly.’
‘So they’re staying here for just a few days?’ I asked, remembering what Queenie had told me.
‘Only until they’re strong enough to travel on. We’ll try to keep it as low-key as possible, but you know what this place is like – someone’s bound to stick their beak in, somehow.’
Yet the mood in Queenie’s kitchen right now was joyful, almost giddy, like that of a birthday tea or a Christmas dinner. We’d been part of something no one had expected to succeed and against the odds it had. Yet for me it felt bittersweet because Sukie wasn’t there, so I was glad to be kept busy, slicing bread, offering refills of soup.
‘You’ll have heard the news?’ Mrs Henderson sidled up to Miss Carter, who was next to me cutting more bread. ‘Our contact didn’t make it on to the boat.’
I stopped slicing to listen.
‘No, no,’ said Mrs Henderson quickly, keen to dispel the concern on Miss Carter’s face. ‘We’ve had no reports of a casualty. Apparently, she ran off as the boat was leaving. They couldn’t wait. They had to sail without her.’
Miss Carter looked shocked. ‘How very odd. I thought Mrs Arby was one of the best.’
Mrs Arby: that name again. The contact from London who everyone trusted, but no one seemed to have met. I watched as Miss Carter threaded her way across the room to break the news to Ephraim and Queenie. Their reactions were similar – a nod, a shake of the head, a look of disbelief – as if they’d expected better from their mysterious Mrs Arby.
After the initial relief, the mood in the room grew quieter, more thoughtful. Some of the refugees had already fallen asleep in their seats, Ephraim’s hand-knitted socks warming their feet. Little Reuben was snoring heartily. His mum, a lady called Miriam, let me hold him for a moment, and I marvelled at his tiny pink fingers and the jet-black curls on his head.
‘Isn’t he?’ Miriam spoke perfect English. ‘He’s only five days old, you know.’
And theirs wasn’t the only incredible story. By the fire, a brother and sister – Jakob and Elise – played cards like normal families did. Except their parents had been sent to a camp in Poland, and they’d only escaped a similar fate after a sympathetic doctor hid them both by strapping them to the underside of a stretcher, then carrying them into a waiting ambulance.
Mrs Henderson told me all this. And really, it was quite a lot to take in. We also managed to track down the rightful owner of the waterlogged suitcase, a small, dark-haired woman called Judith. Ephraim said he’d go back to the lighthouse to fetch it for her. I asked him to check on Cliff while he was there.
‘We hit a huge wave yesterday and it fell overboard.’ She spoke in German which Queenie translated. ‘It’s a miracle it turned up on this beach – a sign we were meant to come here.’
I wanted to hear more of her story, but by now there was a mountain of washing-up to do, and Mrs Henderson was bustling me towards the sink.
‘Let’s make a start on these dishes,’ she ordered. ‘I’ll wash, you dry.’
The sight of all the dirty plates made me suddenly aware of how exhausted I was. It was the middle of the night, after all. But as we worked, we got talking some more about the refugees and I soon forgot to be tired.
They were mostly from Austria, Mrs Henderson told me, all Jewish but for one young woman – a ballerina – whose Romany parents had been put in prison by the Nazis. She was called Lyuba Zingari, which I thought a marvellous name, and was trying to get to America to become a famous dancer.
‘Hitler’s persecuting the Roma people too,’ Mrs Henderson explained. ‘It’s dreadful. I often wonder where it will all end.’
Amongst the Jews were Mr Geffen, a concert violinist; a writer called Mr Krauss who’d travelled with his mother; the Schoenman family who made puppets from scrap cloth and string. Their three daughters, Rosa, Anna and Mimi, could play just about any musical instrument you could name.
‘That Mimi Schoenman.’ Mrs Henderson pointed a soapy finger at a tall, pale girl with startling green eyes. ‘She sings like one of God’s own angels, so I’m told.’
The other refugees were librarians, a baker, three men who wrote for newspapers, a singer, a shopkeeper, and two young women who were teachers, called Fräulein Weber and Frau Berliner. Hearing their stories made me sadder, somehow, because these people weren’t strangers any more – they had names, did important jobs, had exciting futures ahead. One of them was only five days old.
Like the people in that miserable newsreel, they all had yellow badges sewn on to the left breast of their coats. They were star-shaped, the word Jude written in handwriting clumsier than Cliff’s. They weren’t badges to be proud of like the ones we got at school for good work. Their only purpose, it seemed, was to make sure people knew: you were one of those ‘types’ Hitler loathed.
How could these people be made to feel ashamed of who they were? I hadn’t thought I could hate the Nazis more than I already did. Now, though, I really understood why Sukie was so distraught at what was happening in Europe. We weren’t Jewish, but we were human beings and that was more than enough reason to be outraged.
‘Look at those two,’ Mrs Henderson said, nodding in the direction of Esther and her dad.
I let out a long breath. It was hard and lovely seeing them nestled against each other, like they fitted, somehow. My dad gave hugs like that too. It was odd – and rather comforting – to think it was something Esther and me had in common.
Mrs Henderson handed me another soapy plate. ‘Esther’s father’s a doctor. He’s called Dr Wirth.’
‘So is that Esther’s real surname?’ I asked.
‘The Jenkins family, who took her in after the Kindertransport, gave her their surname. She didn’t expect to see any of her family again. This was supposed to be a fresh start for her, here in England. Her mother, God bless her, was already dead. Her father was in trouble with the authorities.’
‘For doing what?’ Though I had pretty much guessed the answer: he was Jewish.
‘It’s just so stupid,’ I said, drying the plate rather roughly. ‘How can you hate someone just because of how they live their life?’
Mrs Henderson sighed. ‘People like to have something to hate – it makes life easier when things go wrong if there’s someone to blame. Think about what happened here today with that pilot, Olive.’
She meant how quickly the crowd turned on him. It was frightening how easily normal, pleasant people got whipped up into nastiness. The possibility that something similar had happened to Esther’s family disturbed me.
‘But it’s worse than that, isn’t it?’ I said, thinking. ‘The German pilot was a fighter from the enemy side. Esther’s family were … well … just people.’
‘Yes, my dear,’ Mrs Henderson sighed again, blowing damp strands of hair off her face. ‘Normal, educated, cultured people. It was all very well, the Kindertransport, but what good’s a child without its parents? You saw what it did to Esther.’
‘Well, I’m glad they’re all here,’ I said. ‘I’m glad you helped them.’
Mrs Henderson looked sad. ‘But we can’t save everyone … our government needs to take some responsibility and do much, much more. We should be helping them flee Hitler, not turning them away. We’ve had to smuggle these good people in like criminals.’
*
That night Mrs Henderson took in ten refugees. Queenie kept the rest at the post office, where beds were made up on whatever mattresses and chairs could be found. It was daybreak when the house finally quietened down.
‘You look done in,’ Ephraim said, handing me my coat. ‘I’ll finish up here. You go on to bed.’
The sink was full of dirty plates again but I was too tired to argue. And I felt bad for leaving Cliff, who I’d barely given a second thought to all night.
After the heat and noise of Queenie’s, it was nice just to be outside. It wasn’t raining any more. The storm had passed, leaving the air salt-sharp, and the gulls shrieking like they did after bad weather. At the sides of the street, the gutters were full of shingle blown in from the beach. Everything else – cobbles, roof tiles, windows – glistened like it’d all been scrubbed clean.
It was hard to believe so much had happened in just a few hours. All at once I felt a bit overcome and started to cry, quietly, to myself.
‘Olive?’ Someone called. ‘Wait a second, will you?’
Turning, I saw Miss Carter hurrying down the street. I wiped my face with my hand and smiled wearily. ‘Did I forget my hat?’
‘No.’ She stopped in front of me. ‘Ephraim told me you had an idea that your sister might’ve been on the boat?’
I gave a little shrug.
‘I’m sure your sister is a marvellous girl,’ she said, her hand gentle on my arm. ‘But she’s not involved in any of this. She never has been.’
I welled up again and tried staring at the ground. At Miss Carter’s feet in their large, immaculate leather brogues.
‘She’s gone missing, though,’ I muttered dismally. ‘And she had a coded note in her pocket, but no one seems to know how it got there.’
Miss Carter sighed patiently. ‘Look, I can see you’re upset, and I understand. But you have to be realistic, I’m afraid. Your sister must’ve disappeared off somewhere else. Did she have a boyfriend, perhaps?’
‘Ephraim,’ I stated.
‘Oh.’ Miss Carter seemed taken aback. ‘Right … I didn’t know.’
‘Sukie hated Hitler and wanted to help people, and the night she went missing she did meet a man, but he didn’t seem like a boyfriend …’
Staring at Miss Carter’s hair, cut short at the neck I fell silent. She was tall, wore glasses. It struck me that she could – in the right clothes, from a distance – pass as a man.
Perhaps she saw the realisation in my face. For suddenly something seemed to click in her brain too and she narrowed her eyes at my coat.
‘No,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘That’s impossible.’
‘What is?’
She didn’t answer. Backing away from me and breaking into a run, she disappeared up the street.