‘This is her train, Lizzie. Keep your eyes peeled so we don’t miss her.’
‘I don’t know what she looks like.’
‘I told you, darling. She has long dark hair.’
Perhaps she won’t come, Lizzie thought hopefully. Perhaps they’ll have changed their minds at the last moment and decided to keep her in Austria. We’ll stand here waiting until everyone’s gone and then Mummy and I can go home by ourselves and everything will be just as it’s always been. The engine slowed to a halt and clouds of white steam hissed out. The doors started opening, passengers appearing, porters wheeling their trolleys forward, people streaming down the platform towards the barrier. Her mother stood on tiptoe, craning her neck. ‘I can’t see her yet …’
‘Mind yourself, miss.’ A porter steered his laden trolley past her. More trolleys trundled by and more and more people. Her mother was still on tiptoe, searching. After a while, the stream became a trickle and then ceased altogether. Her mother looked worried. ‘She must have missed the connection at Harwich. That’s what’s happened. Oh, dear.’
‘No, she didn’t.’
Someone had got out of the very last carriage at the very end of the train and was standing all alone at the far end of the platform. Even at that distance Lizzie knew it was her.
They had to buy platform tickets and walk the whole way down because the girl didn’t move, and even when they got quite close she still went on standing there, a suitcase at her feet. Lizzie’s mother hurried up.
‘Hallo, Anna. Do you remember me? Welcome to England. Willkommen.’
She was more than pretty; she was beautiful. Her hair was long and so dark it was almost black, her skin pale, her eyes green with thick lashes. And she was tall – much taller than Lizzie – and dressed in a grown-up coat of blue wool cloth. She neither smiled nor spoke, but simply stared. I’m going to hate her, Lizzie thought in despair. She’s stuck-up and horrible.
‘This is my daughter, Elizabeth.’ Her mother was shouting very slowly, as though the girl were stone-deaf. ‘Have you got some more luggage? Une autre valise?’
‘Ein Schrankkoffer …’
‘Of course, a trunk. It will be in the luggage van. Don’t worry, we’ll go and find it now.’
The trunk was a huge brown thing with metal bands. The porter struggled to heave it onto his trolley and then into the luggage space beside the taxi-driver where it stuck out. Lizzie sat on one of the tip-up seats inside, facing her mother and the girl. Her mother was speaking very distinctly and pointing as they drove along. ‘This is the old City of London, Anna. In some places you can still see the wall that the Romans built round it when they were here … look how narrow some of the streets are. There was a big fire in the seventeenth century and nearly all the houses were burned down because they were made of wood and built so close together …’ The girl stared blankly out of the window as though she hadn’t understood a word. ‘… and this is Oxford Street – a famous shopping street in London. Look, there is one of our policemen – over there, in the dark blue uniform and helmet.’ Lizzie knew her mother was trying to be kind and jolly but she wished that she would stop. The girl wasn’t interested; she didn’t care one bit about any of it. When they got home there was another struggle to get the trunk into the hall with the taxi-driver muttering things under his breath. Then Hodges stomped up from the basement and started muttering too as he took over. Her father came out of his consulting-room and started spouting away in German but the girl didn’t seem to understand whatever it was he was trying to say. There was an awkward pause. Her mother said brightly, ‘Lizzie will show you to your room, Anna – won’t you, Lizzie? Lizzie speaks a little French. Elle parle un petit peu le français.’
The girl followed her up the stairs to the third floor without a word. Lizzie opened the door. ‘Votre chambre à coucher.’ She could manage that all right. ‘J’espère que vous l’aimez.’ Her mother had spent ages making it nice, so she’d better like it. They’d had the walls repainted and had new curtains made and bought a new dressing-table from Heal’s and a new cover for the bed. Actually, it was much nicer than her own. The girl didn’t speak or look a bit impressed. Lizzie opened the next door to the old nursery, except that it wasn’t the nursery any more There was a new sofa and a new carpet on the floor. Her old toys had all been stored away in the cupboard, the doll’s house shoved into a corner and a cloth put over the table.
‘Bitte, wo ist das Badezimmer?’
What on earth was she saying? Something in German … ‘I don’t understand. Je ne comprend pas.’
‘La salle de bain. La toilette.’
Light dawned: she wanted the lavatory. Lizzie showed her where the bathroom was and went into her own room, not knowing what to do next. She sat on the bed and put her head in her hands. It was going to be awful. Awful.
How was she going to endure it? This dreadful country, these strangers shouting at her in their hideous language or, worse, murdering her own? The mother had gone on and on in the taxi until she had thought she would scream. As for the daughter, she had looked at her as though she wished she’d never come. Well, she wished it too. She felt sick: sick in her stomach from the sea-crossing and sick in her soul from missing Mama and Papa and Grandmama and home. What a dreary country this England was! Everything so drab and dirty – the port, the railway stations, the train carriage, the streets. Even the countryside which Mama had said was supposed to be so beautiful had looked flat and dull from the train window. And, of course, the skies were all grey. Everything was grey. Grey, grey, grey. She washed her hands at the basin and stared into the mirror, scarcely recognizing herself. She was looking at a stranger. Someone with a dead white face and lifeless eyes whom she didn’t know. Her real self had stayed behind in Vienna. There was knocking at the door. Tap, tap, tap. The mother’s voice sounded from the other side. ‘Are you all right, Anna?’ Why couldn’t they leave her alone?
‘Anna? Tout va bien?’
‘Oui, madame.’
‘We just wondered because you’ve been in there such a long time. There’s some tea downstairs. Come down as soon as you’re ready. Descendez au premier étage quand vous êtes prête.’
What a terrible French accent she had. She spoke it as though she was speaking English. No proper French rs at all. Grandmama would be horrified. ‘Anna?’
‘Oui, madame. Sofort.’
She would have to go downstairs and do as the mother said and sit and be very polite, when all she wanted was to be alone. She dried her hands and went down the stairs. The mother was there waiting at the first floor and baring her teeth in her horse smile. ‘We’re in the sitting-room at the back, Anna. Le petit salon. We always have tea in there.’
The soft furnishings were all in flowery patterns, not a bit like at home where everything was elegant. The mother and daughter were sitting on the flowery sofa but, luckily, the father wasn’t there so she wouldn’t have to try to understand his dreadful German. A maid in a white apron and frilled cap was just leaving the room and stared at her as though she were a curiosity. The mother was pouring tea from a china pot, not a beautiful silver one like Grandmama’s. ‘Do you take sugar, Anna? Du sucre?’
She shook her head. Sugar in tea? She had never heard of such a thing.
‘Pass it to Anna, will you, Lizzie.’
The daughter got up and brought the cup and saucer over to her. The china had flowers all over it, too, like the chair covers and curtains. ‘A cucumber sandwich, Anna?’ The mother was holding out a plate. She shook her head; she couldn’t have managed a crumb.
‘A cake, then, perhaps?’ Another plate with lumplike things on it was offered. She thought of Grandmama’s honey kuchen, blitz torte, mandelchen…
‘Nein, danke.’
The mother smiled at her. ‘No, thank you. That’s what you would say in English. No, thank you.’
She lifted her teacup, drank and retched. Whatever she had swallowed it wasn’t proper tea. They had put milk in it and it tasted disgusting. She clapped her hand to her mouth.
‘Entschuldigen … Excusez-moi.’ Hand over her mouth, she rushed from the room.
‘Chuck me over the glue, Matt. This bit hasn’t stuck properly.’
Matt picked up the tube and handed it over. He watched Guy putting a tiny dab of glue on the end of the wing rib and easing it carefully back into place. The ceiling in Guy’s bedroom was festooned with model aeroplanes. Suspended from fishing-line, they climbed and dived and swooped at all angles. This was the latest.
‘What’s this one?’
‘A Hawker Super-Fury.’
‘Looks jolly fast.’
‘It’s the fastest interceptor fighter in the world. Top speed of two hundred and seventy-three miles an hour. But that’s nothing to what fighters will do in the future. And they’ll all have one wing, not two. Biplanes’ll look old hat.’ He sanded part of the balsa-wood fuselage and blew on it. ‘The Americans have got one or two monoplanes already and so have the French, and they’ll soon make one that goes faster than the Fury. We’ll have to watch out we don’t get left behind.’
Matt glanced up at the seaplane soaring over his head. ‘Well, we won the Schneider trophy with that one up there, didn’t we, so we must have some pretty good designers.’
‘The Supermarine’s just a racer, not a fighter. Not the same thing. Still, they’ll learn from it. By the time I get to fly there’ll probably be some terrific new fighter.’
Guy was always talking about learning to fly. He’d got it all worked out. When he went up to Oxford in three years’ time he’d join the University Air Squadron and then the Royal Air Force. Father wanted him to go into the Navy, of course, but even though Guy liked sailing and ships a lot, he liked aeroplanes better. Next to the Supermarine was a plane marked with black German crosses, a red heart, a green laurel wreath and a white cross with arms bent at right angles. ‘What’s that one?’
‘An Albatross. It was flown by a Hun ace called Werner Voss; those are his actual markings. There was a piece all about him in one of the model mags. The cross is a good-luck symbol – a swastika. He shot down forty-eight RFC planes in ten months. One of our chaps got him in the end, though, in a Spad.’
‘The Germans aren’t allowed to build planes now, are they? Not since the Great War ended.’
‘Only ones for flying clubs and passengers. Nothing military. Just as well for us. Father always says you can never trust the Huns.’
Matt went on watching Guy working on the fuselage, sanding and blowing by turn as he smoothed it to a sleek, rounded surface. Bean Goose had never been found – not even a trace of her, so she must have gone to the bottom. It made him wretched to think of her, rotting away on her own down in the darkness – all because of him. Father was still waiting to hear from the insurance people about the claim. Perhaps it would be refused, in which case they wouldn’t be able to get another boat. Perhaps he’d never have to go sailing again. He wasn’t sure if he’d have the guts to do it. Yesterday he’d walked down to the jetty by himself and stood looking at the river and his stomach had started churning in fear just at the sight of the water. Anyway, they were going back to school tomorrow so he needn’t think about it. Not for weeks and weeks.
‘This is the drawing-room.’ Lizzie stood aside so the girl could see into the room. Overlooking Wimpole Street, at the front of the first floor, it was the biggest room and ran the whole width of the house. The tall windows stretched almost from ceiling to floor, and there was a huge marble fireplace and two beautiful sparkling glass chandeliers. The furnishings were blue and cream and gold and Lizzie thought it looked lovely. What on earth was drawing-room in French? She hadn’t a clue. Still, the girl could see for herself what it was, though she didn’t look very interested. Lizzie pointed towards the grand piano at the far end of the room. ‘Do you play the piano? Est-ce que vous jouez le piano?’ No, that wasn’t right. It was du piano. The girl shook her head anyway. She showed her the dining-room at the back of the house, next to the little sitting-room, and then went on down the staircase where it swept round and widened out rather grandly onto the black and white marble hall floor. ‘The ladies used to come down here in their crinolines – that’s why it’s so wide.’ She pointed to the way the wrought-iron balustrade curved outwards but the girl didn’t seem to understand and it would be hopeless trying to explain in French. ‘My father has his consulting-rooms on the ground floor, so we can’t go into any of them. Mon père travaille ici.’ Miss Cobb, the ancient secretary, who’d been around for years and years, was pounding away on her typewriter behind her office door next to the waiting-room. The consulting-room door was closed. Her father would be seeing patients until evening. She would show the girl that bit later on. ‘Do you want to see the kitchens down in the basement?’ She opened the door that gave onto the basement stairway. ‘Voulez-vous voir la cuisine?’ The girl shook her head so she took her back upstairs again and paused at the second floor. ‘My parents’ bedroom is on this floor and two spare rooms for if anyone stays and two bathrooms. We’re on the floor above this, of course, and there’s another floor up above us – un autre étage. Just attics.’ She wasn’t going to mention the studio. ‘That’s where the maid sleeps. La bonne. Elsie. You saw her at teatime. Well, that’s it. C’est tout. Unless you want to see the garden. Le jardin?’ The girl shook her head again. ‘Ich bin sehr mude.’ She was holding onto the banister and looked as pale as a ghost, as though she was going to faint. ‘I am very tired. Please, I sleep now.’
She didn’t come down to supper and when Lizzie was sent up to see if she wanted anything to eat the bedroom door was firmly shut. She was just going to tiptoe away when she heard a faint sob, and then another. When she tapped on the door the noise stopped at once. ‘Do you want anything to eat? Avez-vous faim?’ There was no answer. She opened the door a crack. Supposing she was ill, or something? The curtains were drawn, the room in darkness, the girl a hump under the eiderdown. ‘I say, are you all right?’
Anna answered then, all in German – a long stream of it. Lizzie shut the door hurriedly and went away.
Liebe Mina,
I do not know how I am going to survive. I have been here for six weeks and it seems like a year. I am so homesick I could die. You would hate this country as much as I. The sun hardly ever shines and it has rained for the last five days without stopping. London is nothing like as beautiful as Vienna and Mademoiselle Deuchars was quite right about most of the English. They are dull and dowdy and they shout at me when they speak. I cannot understand their stupid language and nobody speaks German and if they speak any French it’s so bad I can hardly understand that either.
The house where I am living is big and quite old. It would be very nice except that it is always freezing cold. I don’t think the English feel the cold because they don’t seem to mind at all. The food is always cold too. The kitchens are down in the basement and everything has to be carried all the way up to the dining-room on the first floor. Of course, by the time it gets there it’s not hot any more. Not that it would have been much better before. English food has no taste at all.
The father is a psychiatrist like Papa. He looks at me sometimes as though he knows how unhappy I am and talks at me in very bad German. The mother tries to be nice to me all the time, but I can’t understand what she’s saying. The English all speak their words as though they were eating them. As for the daughter, Lizzie, well, she tries hard to be nice, too, but I can tell that she hates my coming here. She hides away somewhere in the house to avoid me. On Saturdays the mother and father drive me to the nearest synagogue and wait outside. Grandmama would be very upset but they don’t understand that we are not supposed to go anywhere by car on the sabbath. I shan’t tell them.
The daughter and I walk to the school which is nearby. It’s a girls’ day-school, like ours in Vienna, and some of the girls are just as horrible. We wear a hideous grey uniform with felt hats and ugly black shoes and I have to tie my hair back. They’ve put me in the same form as Lizzie because I don’t speak English, so all the others are two years younger and act like babies. At first they tried to talk to me but I couldn’t understand them so they gave up. Now they leave me alone and I sit at my desk, saying nothing at all. I think I’m the only Jewish girl in the school. They are all Christians but not Roman Catholics. They belong to something they call the Church of England. We have prayers every morning before lessons. We all march in and stand in rows in the assembly hall and somebody reads from the Bible and then we sing a hymn. Jesus is mentioned all the time. Of course, I don’t sing. I just open and shut my mouth and pretend. The teachers are all old except our French teacher, Mademoiselle Gilbert. She’s not elegant like Mademoiselle Deuchars but she is très sympathique and she and I talk a lot together. She says I will soon learn English because I have an ear for languages but I don’t want even to try. They don’t teach them any German at the school and most of the girls are very bad at French. And they are very clumsy. They barge about and slouch at the table. Grandmama would be upset about that too.
I haven’t played the piano since I came here. I lied and told them that I had given it up. I don’t know why but I don’t feel like playing here at all. I don’t feel like doing anything. All I want is to come home. I am so envious of you, Mina. You are so lucky to be in Vienna. If I could only come back I would never grumble about anything again. I write to Mama and Papa every week and beg them to let me return but they say I must stay here for the time being. I shall die of homesickness and then perhaps they will be sorry. Please write to me often, Mina, and tell me everything that you are doing. It will make me even sadder but at least I won’t feel so very far away.
‘Anna Stein, why haven’t you eaten your sausages?’
‘They are of pigs, Miss Mitchell. I am not permitted.’
‘What do you mean, not permitted?’
‘We must not eat the flesh of pigs.’
‘I never heard such nonsense. Who says so?’
‘It is commanded in the Torah. It is not kosher.’
‘Not what?’
‘It is not clean.’
‘Are you having the impertinence to suggest that the school kitchens are dirty?’
Miss Mitchell was glaring at her from the end of the table. The other girls were turning round to stare, some giggling, some sneering. ‘No, Miss Mitchell.’
‘Then eat your sausages at once. No food is to be left on plates.’
‘I regret that I cannot.’
‘Cannot? Of course you can. You’ll sit there at table until you finish every scrap of them.’
She went on sitting there. Pudding was served to everyone else – a suet roll with currants that they called dead baby because that was exactly what it looked like, and, of course, the bright yellow custard that was always poured over everything. The two sausages sat side by side in a congealing puddle of grease at the edge of her plate. They had hard, shiny skins and one of them had burst so that she could see pinkish-grey stuff poking out. She kept her eyes fixed on the plate while the chattering and clattering went on around her. Chairs scraped the floor and grace was said. For what we have received may the Lord make us truly thankful. Amen. How could they be thankful for pigs’ innards and dead babies? Miss Mitchell paused on her way out. ‘You will remain there, Anna, until you have eaten your sausages. You must learn that good food is not to be wasted.’ The maids came to clear the tables and giggled at her. She ignored them completely. The big clock on the wall ticked on. She could hear the bell being rung for the beginning and end of each lesson. After the final bell for end of school, a prefect put her head round the door.
‘You’re to go and see Miss Foster in her study at once.’ She looked at her scornfully. ‘Honestly, what a fuss to make. I thought Germans ate sausages all the time. Sausages and sauerkraut.’
‘I am not German. I am Austrian.’
‘It’s the same thing, isn’t it? You all speak German.’
‘No, it is not the same at all. And I am Jewish as well so I cannot eat pig.’
‘Pork, you mean. Why on earth not? We all do. You’re in England now so you should jolly well do what we do. And you’d better get a move on. Miss Foster’s waiting. At once, she said.’
She knocked at the study door and heard the headmistress’s sharp ‘Enter’. Miss Foster, so bony and gaunt, was sitting ramrod straight at her desk. ‘I am waiting for your explanation for this wilful disobedience, Anna. Miss Mitchell tells me that you refused to eat your lunch.’
‘Jewish people are commanded not to eat pig’s flesh.’
‘I am quite aware of that, thank you, but this happens to be a Christian school, founded for Christian girls, strictly in conformity with the principles of the Church of England. I am afraid that you must conform to our rules and traditions. You can’t expect us to cater differently for you and you alone. Do you consider yourself special in some way?’
She could not understand everything that the old woman was saying; she spoke too fast. ‘I cannot eat pig. It is a mitzvot.’
‘Speak only in English, please. I accepted you in our school against my better judgement and so far the experiment has proved a signal failure. You have been here for more than half a term, Anna, yet you appear to have made minimal progress in the English language. Until you do so you will be unable to progress in any other direction. My staff report that you make very little effort. What have you to say about that?’
What was she saying? Something about her English. ‘I do not understand.’
‘Then it’s high time that you did. I shall arrange for you to have extra tuition in English for the remainder of this term. As for this nonsense about pork, as long as you attend this school you will abide by its rules in every respect. If you do not then you will have to leave. You may go now.’
When she went to get her coat and hat and change into her outdoor shoes she found Lizzie was waiting for her in the cloakroom. ‘Did you get blown up?’
‘What is that?’
‘Was Miss Foster angry?’ Lizzie looked at her anxiously. ‘She can be absolutely beastly.’
‘She was not nice. But I do not care.’
‘What about the sausages? Did you eat them?’
‘I did not eat them, no. I will never eat pig. Never.’
‘Well, we’d better go home. They’ll wonder where we are.’
They walked back to the house in Wimpole Street. She never called it home or thought of it as that. Home was hundreds of miles away in the cobbled Wallstrasse in Vienna. Vien, mein liebes Vien … Home was Mama and Papa. Home was Mama playing the piano and Papa listening and beating his hand gently in time. It was the red velvets of the salon and the soft gleam of crystal and gilt. It was the street lamplight slanting through the shutters into her bedroom at night. It was the gardenia scent that Mama always wore, and the rich aroma of Papa’s cigars. Home was eating lovely food. Home was talking in German: understanding and being understood. It was not, and never, never could or would be, the house in Wimpole Street.