Prague,
April 1943
Dear J.W.
I am deeply relieved that I can tell you the children have all reached England safely and are presently being cared for by various trustworthy organizations. Homes will be found for them with English people, and perhaps one day they can be reunited with their families.
We have lost too many of our people to the gas chambers and I’m afraid we shall continue to do so, but at least we are saving some of our children.
M.B.
The School House,
April 1943
Dear M.B.
Your message brought more joy and relief to everyone here than I can convey. We can never be sufficiently grateful to Schönbrunn.
If you are able to let us know where the children are, it would give all the parents so much comfort.
J.W.
When the children reached England, they had to separate and go to different places. Several of them cried, but Leo and the twins managed not to. They clung to one another though, and Sophie said they would not say goodbye, because it was a forever kind of word. Susannah said they would all soon be going home anyway. Schönbrunn had promised that.
‘And we’ll always know if there’s anything wrong,’ said Sophie.
‘I’ll know, as well,’ said Leo, and hoped this was true.
Leo was taken to a place called Willow Bank Farm in England, which was owned by a brother and sister called Hurst. Simeon Hurst and Miss Mildred Hurst.
‘They’re good people,’ Schönbrunn said. ‘They’re one of a number of families who are prepared to give a home to children like you. I think you’ll be all right here, Leo.’ He knelt down and took Leo’s hands in his. ‘And you’ll be safe,’ he said. ‘That’s why your parents wanted you to come here. To be safe.’
‘From the Ovens.’
Schönbrunn’s eyes flickered, but he said, ‘Yes, you’re quite safe from those, Leo.’ He stood up. ‘I think your friends, the twins, will be living quite near, so you’ll most likely see them. Will that help?’
‘Oh yes.’ Leo would put up with a good deal if Sophie and Susannah were nearby.
Willow Bank Farm was not like anywhere he had ever known. There were fields and animals, and the farmhouse smelled of cabbage and carbolic. The chairs were not very comfortable and the table where they ate their meals was a bare, scrubbed one, not like the glossy one at home, which Leo’s mother polished every week. Each night, after supper, Mr Hurst read the Bible to them, Miss Hurst nodding in approval over her mending basket. Leo had never seen a Bible before and he did not understand many of the words in it.
His room was at the top of the house, looking across fields and trees. There was a place to hang the few things he had been able to bring with him, and a shelf for books. A kind of picture with words in sewing hung over his bed. He knelt on his bed and traced the words with one finger, trying to understand them, but his English was not enough.
At first he put the silver golem on the window ledge by his bed, because it would look after him and he liked to wake up in the morning and see it there. But the Hursts were horrified; they said it was a heathen image and not something that could be on display. Leo managed to understand most of this, although he had no idea what a heathen image was. He explained, as well as he could, that the golem was a piece of home – of his family – and he must keep it. He was allowed to put it in a drawer in his room, but each night, after the Hursts had gone to bed, he set it on the window ledge, so that it would not feel shut away, and so that Leo would know it was looking after him. He always made sure to put it back in the drawer before breakfast, and he supposed this was a bit deceitful, but he could not help it. He wondered if the twins were allowed to have their silver golem in their bedroom, or if they, too, had been told it was a heathen image.
On Sundays the farmhouse smelled of boiled mutton – occasionally roast lamb, although that was rare and was generally accompanied by Farmer Hurst’s talks about how sacrifices to the Lord must be without blemish. This precept, however, did not appear to apply to the more elderly sheep of Willow Bank’s flock, whose flesh found its stringy way on to the dinner table more frequently than any other dish. Leo, obediently eating whatever was put in front of him, thought that when he was home he would never eat mutton again.
Mr Hurst tilled the land and saw to the sheep and oversaw the labourers who worked for him. Miss Hurst looked after the house and cooked and cleaned, which she did very thoroughly, because cleanliness was next to godliness. When she was not cooking or cleaning, she was at church.
Leo was taken to church and to something called Sunday School. He was made to learn prayers and told to always speak English, and he was pulled into a culture he had not previously known existed. It was bewildering and desperately lonely, but his father had said he must do whatever he was told, and Schönbrunn had said it would not be for very long. Leo trusted his father and he trusted Schönbrunn, so he tried to do all the things expected of him, and he did his best to learn English. He seemed to be quite good at this, and he discovered that he liked learning new words and trying them out.
He thought there might be letters from his parents, but Miss Hurst said there was a war going on, an evil, wicked war it was, and it meant letters were very difficult to send. Leo might write to his parents, of course, and they would post the letters, and trust in the Lord that they were delivered safely. Leo was given paper and a pencil, and he wrote very careful letters every week. He did not know if his parents received them, but he told himself they did, and he imagined them opening the letters and reading them and being pleased that he was safe and working hard and being looked after.
After a while he found he was becoming interested in the stories about Jesus Christ that the Hursts told him, and he found he was also starting to look forward to the music played in the church. Listening to the massive velvet of the organ chords, he could almost forget the aching misery for his parents and his friends at home. He thought the men who had written this music had known about being lonely and fearful and this made a link for him with the music. He was allowed to join the choir, which he liked and which was friendly.
Each day he was sent off to school, which was quite difficult at first because of not knowing very much English. But Sophie and Susannah were there as well, because they were living nearby, exactly as Schönbrunn had said. They were with people called Mr and Mrs Battersby.
When the grown-ups were not around, Leo and the twins talked about their homes and their families, and the people they were living with now. Once Sophie was worried because there had been a man near their house; he had been in the street, and he had come up to them and talked to them in their own language. They had not answered him; they had run to their house and slammed the door hard. Susannah thought they should tell somebody, but it did not seem anything very much, so they decided not to.
They talked about the man for a while, then they talked about Schönbrunn. When Mr Hurst and his sister told Leo about Our Lord Jesus, Leo thought Jesus had probably looked exactly like Schönbrunn. He told the twins this, and they agreed. Sophie said she would like to marry Schönbrunn when she grew up.
They did not talk about the Ovens or the Angel of Death. Leo did not think they dared.
Christmas was not something Leo had known much about at home, except as something other people did, but the Hursts said it had to be celebrated, because it was the birth of Our Lord. Leo tried to explain about Hanukkah, the wonderful Festival of Lights, which they had at home and which all the children had loved, but Mr Hurst said they were not having any of that Jewishry in their house, and Miss Hurst sniffed disapprovingly at the very idea.
She said they would have to ask a few neighbours to eat Christmas dinner with them, because it was expected. Mr Hurst supposed they would have to ask that Mr Porringer again, but he gave his sister fair warning that if he started his airs and graces like last year, not to mention his suggestive remarks, he, personally, would show Mr Porringer the door. He was nothing but a shopkeeper, said Mr Hurst with a rare display of uncharitable feeling towards his neighbour.
‘A dispenser,’ said Miss Hurst. ‘It’s a chemist’s shop, Simeon. An old family firm.’
‘Lot of nonsense.’
There was a special church service, which they all attended, and the neighbours came to eat the dinner Miss Hurst had cooked, including the vicar and his sister. Mr Porringer came as well. He did not say very much, but he ate a great deal. The guests were still there by teatime, and Leo had been allowed to invite the twins for this part of the day. There were turkey sandwiches, a cream trifle and mince pies. Farmer Hurst was watchful that they did not eat too much and make themselves ill, but Miss Hurst, who had been drinking elderflower wine with the vicar all through dinner, was more indulgent and said they could have as much as they wanted.
After her fourth glass of wine, Miss Hurst told Leo that sin was everywhere and it was necessary to always be on guard against it. There had been sin in their own family, said Miss Hurst in a very solemn voice. Her face was red and her eyes were blurry, and once she slopped some of the elderflower wine on the table, which Leo found deeply embarrassing. After the wine had been mopped up, she began to tell the vicar about her family. There had been someone who had been wild and godless – a black sinner, said Miss Hurst, oh yes he was, they had proof of it, here in this very house. It had been their own great-uncle, or maybe it was great-great, she was not exactly sure.
Mr Porringer, who had a doughy face and small eyes like a watchful pig, said that would be Mr John Hurst would it, ah yes, he thought so, the man had been a byword in the area, there was no other term for it. Folk still remembered John Hurst – why, his own grandfather, that had started the family chemist’s business, used to speak of John Hurst, and in no flattering way, said Mr Porringer, tucking his chins righteously into his stiff Sunday collar.
‘It’s the shame of it that hurts,’ said Miss Hurst. ‘Simeon and I have worked all our lives to atone for the wickedness of that man. For the sins of the fathers visit on the children, even unto the third and fourth generation. That’s so, isn’t it, Vicar?’
The vicar, who appeared to be having some difficulty in focusing on Miss Hurst or, in fact, on anything else, mumbled that it was necessary to be vigilant about sin. He had three attempts to say the word vigilant, and gave it up in favour of watchful.
Miss Hurst said she would not dream of criticizing the Bible or saying this particular text was unfair, but it made you think. After this pronouncement she succumbed to a fit of hiccups, and the vicar’s sister finally helped her up to her bed. Mr Porringer wandered round the house looking at things and once Leo saw him open the sideboard drawer, but he closed it when he realized Leo had seen him. He told Leo he had a nephew about Leo’s age, but Leo did not think this could be right, because nobody at school had an uncle called Porringer. It was not a name you would forget. Sophie said Porringer Pigface was just making an excuse to snoop around. Susannah thought he might really be a burglar, whether he had a nephew or not.
Left to their own devices, Leo and the twins finished up the mince pies and carried plates and cups out to the scullery, which was what Leo had been taught to do at home, and which the Hursts liked him to do here. The twins came out to help so as to avoid Mr Porringer, and then Sophie discovered there was still some elderflower wine in the bottle, so they tried it before going back to the sitting room. Susannah said it was awful, like drinking turpentine, and spat it out in the sink, but Sophie and Leo drank an entire glass each. It did not really taste like turpentine, but it tasted peculiar, and it gave Leo a headache.
It snowed hard all night, and when Leo woke up his room was filled with white light. He still had the headache from yesterday, and by this time it was a very bad headache, but he thought it might be from the white glare of the snow rather than the elderflower wine. It was making him feel quite sick, so he could not eat any breakfast, but Miss Hurst, who appeared to have got over her hiccups and blurred eyes, said that was because he had eaten too much yesterday. It was a pity that everywhere was snowbound, or she would have suggested a good brisk walk in the fresh air, she said. But the road was practically impassable already, and the wireless had said more snow was on the way. Still, Leo could help Mr Hurst to clear the paths, which ought to blow the cobwebs away, and then they would have cold turkey and vegetable soup for lunch.
The snow-clearing did not cure Leo’s headache at all, and by the middle of the afternoon he had started to be very ill indeed. There was a throbbing pain in his head, a red mist kept coming down over his eyes, and sudden uncontrollable sickness sent him running blindly to the privy just outside the scullery to be painfully sick.
He began to think he was inside a nightmare, because everything was starting to seem distorted. Miss Hurst and the farmer stood at his bedside, and their faces seemed to swell then shrink, and their voices came booming down a long tunnel, so that Leo was not sure what they were saying. But there seemed to be some kind of argument going on – something to do with Miss Hurst wanting to ask somebody to come to the farm, to which the farmer was objecting, saying something about God’s will, and snow chains. But in the end Miss Hurst stumped angrily down the stairs and Leo heard the ping of the telephone. He pulled the sheets over his head then, because the bedroom light was hurting his eyes.
A man came shortly after that; he had a kind, creased face, and he carried a large black bag, and he sat on Leo’s bed and looked in his eyes and took his temperature, then asked Leo to try to sit up and to bend over to touch his knees with his forehead. When Leo could not do this, he said, dear, oh, dear, this was worrying, and Leo must be taken to Deadlight Hall. There was an outbreak of something – a word Leo did not know – which was affecting a number of children in the area. The man used the word brain several times, which was terrifying, and said all the children who had this illness were being kept together and nursed. He would take Leo to the Hall himself, right away, he said. Perhaps Miss Hurst would kindly pack a few night things.
Farmer Hurst demurred at first, saying it was a lot of fuss about what was nothing more than a bilious attack; children in his day had not had illnesses with fancy names like meningitis, and it was a bad journey to Deadlight Hall in this snow, what with the lanes being iced up and more snow to come. But the man who Leo supposed was a doctor insisted it must be done, and then Leo was sick again, which seemed to decide matters.
The journey to Deadlight Hall was horrid. It was growing dark, and the car jolted and slithered on the icy roads, and twice ended up in the hedges, and the doctor had to drive and reverse over and over again to get back on the road. Leo, wrapped in a blanket, huddled miserably on the back seat clutching a pudding bowl in case he was sick again, thought they would go on and on driving through the darkening world with the sky bulging with snow waiting to fall, and that they would never get anywhere. But in the end they did get somewhere; they got to Deadlight Hall, and that was when, as well as feeling dreadfully ill, Leo had started to feel frightened.
Deadlight Hall was not a real hospital. It was a horrid dark house with old trees all round it, so that it seemed to crouch behind them as if not wanting to be seen. There were round, staring windows and creeping shadows, and oil lamps glowing in corners like yellow watching eyes. The doctor carried Leo up stone steps and inside.
‘You’ll be all right, my boy,’ he said. ‘It’ll be all right.’
As they went inside, Leo could hear cross voices; somebody was saying something about it being ridiculous to expect them to turn a dingy old place into a hospital overnight, absolutely crazy it was, and no proper supplies and goodness knew how many more children to come.
The doctor carried him into a long room with high, narrow beds, and a squat iron stove glowing in one corner. There was a smell of hot metal and shadows flickered from the stove’s light. Leo began to think he might have died and gone to hell. He knew about hell by this time – the real place, not the swear-word some of the older children used at school – because the Hursts talked about it. Mr Hurst said it was where sinners went: the devil carried them down into hell and watched them burn for ever and ever. So Leo must be very watchful that he did not become a sinner. Miss Hurst had said, glumly, that even if you did not commit sins of your own, you might be held accountable for the sins of your ancestors. The devil had you all ways.
Leo had thought he had been watchful as Mr Hurst said, and he had not thought he had been bad enough to be counted as an actual sinner, but clearly either he – or somebody in his family – must have been, because this place looked as if it was the hell that Mr Hurst had talked about.
There were children in the room with him – he had not known that there was a part of hell kept specially for children, but that was what it looked like, because there were about ten of them, some quite small, one or two around Leo’s age, and they were all lying on narrow beds, crying with pain, or struggling to get away. But the people in charge would not let them get away, even though they were fighting and even though some of them were shouting, and others were beating the air with their fists. Leo, bundled on to a chair while a bed was made up for him, stared at everything, and through the red shimmery haze that kept coming and going in front of his eyes, he saw that the people in charge were really devils. They wore ordinary clothes, and they said ordinary things like, ‘Drink up your medicine’ and, ‘You mustn’t try to get out of bed,’ but Leo thought they were devils, as sure as sure. When they moved to and fro across the squat iron stove, their eyes shone red and glinted from the glow.
It was not until later that night that he discovered that Sophie and Susannah were there as well. He was not sure what he felt about this. He liked having them with him, but not if it meant that they too were bad, black sinners, and going to burn in hell for ever and ever.
They managed to wave to one another, and when no one was in the room, they both tiptoed across to his bed and sat on it, one on each side.
‘Are you ill?’ Leo said in their own language. They were not supposed to use it at school, but it was friendly and reassuring to use it now.
Sophie glanced towards the door, then said, very softly, ‘No. We pretended because we wanted to get away from the house. We’ve been so frightened.’
‘What of? Why did you pretend?’
‘We saw that man again,’ said Sophie. ‘The one who talked to us in the street that time.’
‘In our own language.’
‘It’s what our parents and Schönbrunn told us to be careful about,’ said Sophie. ‘We’re worried that somebody came after us when we left our village. All the way to England.’
‘We’ve seen other people watching us,’ said Susannah. ‘Standing outside the house for ages. In the rain and everything.’
‘Hiding behind trees and things.’
Leo said, ‘But why would anyone do that?’
‘We thought it might be something to do with – you know – the Ovens.’
Leo stared at her in horror. The Ovens: the nightmare from home.
‘And then some children near us got ill with this menin-thing, and they were brought here,’ said Sophie. ‘Susannah thought if we pretended to be ill as well, we might be safer in here. We didn’t think anyone could get at us. But …’ Sophie broke off and glanced nervously around again. ‘But now we aren’t sure.’
‘And,’ said Susannah, ‘the really bad thing is that now we’re here, we think …’
‘What?’
‘We think this is where the Ovens are.’
‘But they’re at home,’ said Leo, after a moment. ‘That’s why we had to come here.’
‘We think they’re here,’ said Sophie. ‘We can smell hot iron, like a huge stove burning.’
‘Isn’t it the stove over there you can smell?’ said Leo. The stove was in the corner, and it was hissing quietly to itself. It was not a friendly kind of stove, like the one at home; it was fat and swollen and ugly, and it had short iron legs.
‘No, it’s a bigger heat. Massive. And old. Ancient. We can sort of hear it.’
Sophie did not try to explain what she meant by hearing the massive old heat, and Leo did not bother to ask, because this was the kind of thing the twins often said. He asked what they would do.
‘We don’t know. We might try to run away. Properly, I mean. Miles and miles away.’
‘But it’s snowing,’ said Leo, horrified. ‘And where would you go?’
‘We don’t know yet.’
‘People in stories run away and they’re usually all right,’ said Susannah. ‘Somebody always finds them and takes them to wherever they want to go. Sometimes it’s in a forest, and there’s a cottage. But it’s always all right in the end.’
They all knew this was true.
‘But the really frightening thing,’ said Sophie, whispering even more softly, ‘is that our mother used to talk about the Todesengel coming for us.’
The Todesengel. Leo was able to think partly in English now, and he said, half to himself, ‘The Angel of Death.’
‘Yes. We aren’t sure what she meant, but she was really frightened about it. We think it had something to do with the Ovens.’
‘We think,’ said Susannah, ‘that it might be here now, that Angel.’
‘But angels are good, aren’t they?’ Leo knew this from Sunday school.
‘We don’t think this one is. We heard Mother tell our father she would do anything to stop the Angel of Death getting us. So we think it’d be better to run away, even in the snow.’
Leo could not decide if this was sensible or not. He felt too ill to think about it clearly; his head hurt too much, and he thought his bones were burning. But he said, ‘If you run away, I’ll help. I’d come with you if I could.’ He would not care if he was dying, he would still help his beloved twins, and he would run away with them if they asked him to.
‘Will you? We’d like that. We’ve brought the silver golem with us. My father said it would protect us, and Schönbrunn said so as well, so it must be true.’
‘It’s your golem, really, of course, so we think it’ll be extra good,’ said Susannah.
‘Although we might need to sell it to get some money.’
Leo started to ask how they would go about this, but the door opened, and the twins gasped, and scurried back to their own beds. A thin lady with narrow, bony shoulders, scraped-back hair, and fingers like dry sticks, came in and walked round the beds. There was to be no talking, she said. Her name was Sister Dulce, and she was here to make them better. They must all do what she told them. It seemed to Leo that she stared at the twins when she said this.
Shortly after this, two men came in and did something to Susannah as she lay in the bed. Leo could not see what it was, but there was a large needle and a metal tray, and whatever was done made Susannah cry and squirm with pain. He clenched his fists and wished he dared go over to the bed to stop them, but he was not brave enough. He heard some of what was said, but he did not really understand it. One of the men used words that sounded like lumbar puncture, which was puzzling because Leo thought punctures were what cars had, and then another talked about spine fluid, which sounded terrible. One of them said, ‘Look here, can’t we put the child out to do this?’ and Sister Dulce said, ‘We can’t. You know that. She’ll have to endure it.’
‘What about her sister?’
‘Leave it until tomorrow morning. I’m still not sure about her.’
‘How about that one?’ said the man, looking across to Leo’s bed. ‘He’s only just been brought in, hasn’t he?’
‘Yes, but leave him as well for the moment.’
Leo burrowed back under the sheets, and shut his eyes, and through the haze of pain and fear he heard Sister Dulce say they must all go to sleep, because it was eleven o’clock at night, which was no time for children to be awake. She went out, closing the door, and the room became silent, apart from the occasional sob from Susannah’s bed. Sophie was next to her; Leo could see her hair spilling over the pillow. Most people could only tell them apart because Sophie’s hair was redder than Susannah’s. If Susannah was hurt, Sophie would be hurting as well. Leo knew this, and he hated it for them.
He lay on his side, watching the stove. If he half-closed his eyes, he could make it seem to move. Or was it moving by itself anyway? Yes, it was. It was waddling forward towards the nearest bed. Leo half sat up, alarmed, and he was just wondering whether to call out to the others, when he heard another sound. This time it was not anyone crying or the stove, it was someone walking around outside this room.
It ought not to have been frightening to hear those footsteps, because people had been walking around ever since Leo got here. But these footsteps were different. They were slow, sort of dragging. Across the room, Sophie sat up and looked towards Leo’s bed.
‘Can you hear that?’ said Leo, as loudly as he dared.
‘Yes.’
‘Who is it?’ Leo did not dare ask if it might be the Angel of Death, the Todesengel so feared by the twins’ mother, but Sophie heard the thought, of course.
He said, ‘Is Susannah all right? What did they do with that needle?’
‘It hurt a lot,’ said Sophie, her voice wobbling. Leo knew she was trying not to cry. ‘They dug it into Susannah’s back, into her bones. They’re going to do it to me tomorrow.’
‘And to me,’ said Leo, remembering this with a shiver.
‘And after they’ve done that,’ said Sophie, her voice trembling even more, ‘they’ll take us to the Ovens. That woman – Sister Dulce – she’s the one.’
‘But where—?’ began Leo, then broke off. ‘Someone’s coming,’ he said. ‘Lie down. Pretend to be asleep.’
Sophie flopped down at once, and Leo turned on his side, watching the door. After a moment, it began to open, not quickly and firmly in the way Sister Dulce and the others had opened it, but slowly and stealthily, as if whoever was there did not want to be seen or heard. Leo’s heart started to race. Very gradually, the door opened wider, and a shadow fell across the floor – it was a black shadow, but the red from the stove ran in and out of it. Leo lay absolutely still, waiting for it to go away, but it did not. It stood in the doorway as if looking round.
Then a low blurred voice said, very quietly, ‘Children, are you here …?’
Leo was shaking uncontrollably, and his head was hurting so much he thought it might explode.
‘Children, are you here …?’ There was a pause. ‘I’ll find you … Wherever you are.’
It’s come for the twins, thought Leo, sick with the horror of it all. This is what they saw – it’s what followed them to England, and watched their house. It’s followed them in here.
The shadowy figure stepped back into the passage, and Leo sank gratefully back into the pillows. It was all right. Whatever had been there had gone away. The twins were safe and everything was all right.
Except that everything was not all right. There was a movement across the room, and to his horror he saw two small figures walking hand in hand to the door. Sophie and Susannah.
They went very quietly across the room, almost like shadows themselves, not looking towards Leo. Sophie’s arm was round Susannah – Leo thought Susannah must be still hurting from the needle pushed into her bones earlier. They went through the door and it closed with a soft little click.
Were they running away as Sophie had said? Surely they would not go out into the snow by themselves? And Leo could not believe they would run away without telling him, either. Sophie had said they would like it if he went with him. Or did they think he would follow them? We’ll always be linked, they had said that night. We’ll always know if one of us is in trouble.
Leo did not know what to do, but what he did know was that the shadow was still out there – he could feel that it was. Which meant the twins would walk straight into it.
His whole body was still burning up and his bones felt as if they were melting with the heat, but he would put up with worse than this to help his beloved twins. He got out of bed and went across to the door.