Aunt Sheila met them at Burnham station in the open Alvis. ‘My goodness, Lizzie, I hardly recognized you. You look very grown-up.’ Lizzie fingered her short hair self-consciously. She was rather sorry now that she’d got rid of the plaits. Anna sat in the front seat, beside Aunt Sheila, and her long hair blew around her like a thick dark veil. They drove out of Burnham and along the lane that led to Tideways. The hedgerows had the dry and dusty look of late summer and some of the cornfields had already been harvested. In one of them a reaping machine drawn by two big shire horses was cutting a steady swathe through the crop. The car dipped under the railway bridge and the lane came out at the river’s edge. The tide was high and several ships were on the water, sails bellied out with wind. ‘Guy and Matt have gone out,’ Aunt Sheila said. ‘But they’ll be back soon. We have a boy from their school staying with us for a while. He was at a bit of a loose end for the holidays, poor chap, so we asked him here and they’ve taken him sailing with them.’
They went along by the river then turned in through the white gateway, past the clump of trees with the two tall Scots pines and up the gravel driveway to the front door. Nereus came out to greet them. He looked fatter and there were grey hairs round his muzzle that hadn’t been there the previous summer, and he moved more slowly. Lizzie and Anna were sharing the same bedroom as before and Lizzie went to look out of the open window at the view of the river. Among the boats she caught sight of one in the distance with a red sail. ‘I think I can see the Rose. Shall we go down to the jetty and wait for her to come in?’
Anna had flopped onto her bed. ‘It’s too hot. You go, if you like.’ Lizzie went downstairs and Nereus, who was lying in the hall, rose stiffly to his feet to follow her through the drawing-room and out onto the terrace and across the lawn. She walked down the wooden steps at the far end and out onto the jetty. The river was shimmering in the evening sunlight and she had to shade her eyes to see the Rose again, much closer now, coming steadily towards her. Guy was at the helm, Matt beside him, and she could see a third figure as well. Matt waved and she waved back. She stood watching and waiting as Guy brought the boat in. The mainsail came tumbling down and she drifted gently alongside. Matt hopped out with the painter, grinning. ‘I wasn’t sure if it was you at first, Lizzie.’ He tied the rope securely. ‘What’ve you done with your plaits?’
‘Cut them off.’
He was a lot taller, though still not as tall as Guy. He’s sixteen now, she calculated. He and Anna are the same age. Guy was still messing about in the boat but the third figure had sprung out onto the jetty. ‘This is Otto,’ Matt said. ‘He’s staying with us. He’s from Germany.’
‘I am very pleased to make your acquaintance.’ The boy stepped forward to shake her hand very formally. He was just as tall as Guy with hair so fair that it looked bleached, and very pale blue eyes. Guy had jumped out, looking irritated. ‘That damned halyard keeps slipping … Oh, hallo, Lizzie. How are you?’ He didn’t seem to notice her new hair at all.
They walked up to the house and went round to the side entrance to clean up at the tap. As they all went through from the kitchen passageway into the hall, Anna was coming down the stairs. She had changed into a different frock – a new one that she had brought back from Vienna. And she was wearing lipstick. She stopped when she saw them, one hand on the banister, and there was a moment’s dead silence before Guy spoke.
‘Hallo, Anna.’
‘Hallo, Guy.’ She smiled at Matt. ‘Hallo, darling Matt.’ She came down the rest of the stairs.
Matt said, ‘I’m taller than you at last, Annie.’
‘So you are.’
‘This is Otto von Reichenau. From Berlin.’
Otto bowed and clicked his heels. ‘Wie geht es Ihnen, es ist schon Sie kennenzulernen.’
Anna froze. She looked at him coldly with her beautiful green eyes. ‘If you do not mind, I prefer to speak in English.’
Otto was up by six o’clock. His father had always insisted on early rising and the habit had become so ingrained that he could never sleep late. He had taken to going for a walk before the others came down for breakfast. The old black dog was lying on a rug in the hall and thumped his tail. Otto could hear the cook at work in the kitchen as he let himself quietly out of the side door. Outside he stopped for a moment. It was a beautiful morning. The sun already felt quite warm and the birds were singing loudly. He could never remember hearing such birdsong in Germany. He skirted the lawn, his feet marking the dew. The croquet hoops and stumps were still there from the evening before and the memory of his humiliating defeat still rankled. He had never played the game before but that gave him no excuse to have finished last. The girl, Anna, had not played fairly. She had kept knocking his ball out of the way so that he had had no chance of making progress. Guy had won, Matt had been second, Lizzie third, Anna fourth and himself the very last of all. They had stood waiting for him to finish, watching him, and he had been so furious that he had missed the final hoop five times before he had managed to hit the ball through. They had all found it very amusing. ‘Bad luck!’ Guy had said casually. ‘You’ll soon get the hang of it. How about some tennis?’ But in his anger, he had refused.
He had watched them play a doubles – Matt and Anna against Guy and Lizzie – and nobody took that seriously either. The grass court was full of bumps and holes so that they kept getting bad bounces, and the chalk lines were not clear in some places. He noticed several wrong calls and tried to correct them. ‘Your serve was out, Lizzie. It crossed the line.’ Guy had flapped a hand. ‘Doesn’t matter, Otto. Matt took it.’ Anna hit the ball so hard and so wildly that it kept going out and he had to go and retrieve it like a dog. He had begun to wonder whether she was doing it on purpose. Matt managed well with his crippled arm but he was no match for Guy. Otto pitied him. Physical imperfection was a grave misfortune. Ideally, the human race should be bred for perfection, just as racehorses were bred to eliminate all faults. A teacher at school had pointed this out to them. Otto had watched Guy’s tennis and seen that he was good. Of course he wasn’t playing anything like his best. He had been letting Lizzie do most of her own shots, but Otto noticed that he had poached just enough to make sure that they won in the end. By then it was no longer light enough to continue playing, otherwise he would have liked to take on Guy and make up for the croquet humiliation. He had studied his strokes carefully. Guy’s forehand was very strong, but his backhand was erratic and his second serve always fell too short. He was sure that he could beat him.
Otto walked on down to the jetty. The river was flat calm, sea birds pecking about in the mud and seaweed at its edges. He had brought his camera so that he could take some more photographs, as his father had instructed. The scenery looked drab and featureless to him. He didn’t think any of it was a patch on the Schlei at Schleswig or that the North Sea was anything like as pleasant for sailing as the tideless Baltic. The Baltic was one of the most beautiful places he knew. Deep and clear and cold fiords. Sheltered inlets. Water shining between folds of hills. Green pastures and woods on the lower slopes with scattered farms and white cottages. Nothing he had seen in this corner of England could compare. As for the Ransomes’ boat, he had barely been able to conceal his scorn. He looked her over now, tied up at the jetty. Rose of England! Such a ridiculously grand name for an old tub. The contrast with his father’s yacht could not have been greater. Under sail or power, Nixe cut effortlessly through the water; she was graceful, responsive, elegant – a water-nymph like her name. She had three sails, a foredeck, a roomy cockpit and, below, a well-appointed saloon and cabin. And she towed her own dinghy. The Ransomes’ boat had no engine, two tiny lockers, and was clearly designed to wallow round the shoals taking on netloads of stinking fish.
He watched the sea birds for a while, and the gradual creep of the incoming tide over the wet mud. The girl, Anna, was very beautiful, of course. When he had first seen her standing on the stairs he had been quite struck … so struck that he had almost been unable to speak. And then, in a little while, he had realized that she was a Jewess. There had been several families of Jews living in the same building as his father’s apartment in Berlin – until they had all moved away. His father had always been at pains to point them out and had forbidden him to have anything to do with them. So he had learned to recognize a Jew easily. And Berlin was full of things mocking Jews – cartoon posters of ugly, avaricious old money-lenders, crude slogans daubed on walls, boycotting banners carried in streets, books in shops … he had seen a children’s book called The Poisoned Mushroom all about how to detect the poisoned mushrooms – the Jews. They had only themselves to blame, his father said. The Jews had taken over too much for their own good: banks, stores, businesses, professions. They were everywhere. And all the time they grew richer and more powerful, trampling over the backs of the Aryan people. Jews were not Germans. They were foreigners, breeding like cuckoos in borrowed nests. It was time to be rid of them. To purge the Fatherland. Germany must be cleansed. The Führer himself had preached it at the big rally that Otto had gone to with his father in Berlin last year. Above the Führer’s head a great banner had proclaimed: The Jews are our misfortune. His father would not be pleased if he knew that the Ransomes had invited a Jewess; it would be wiser not to tell him.
He walked along the edge of the shore for some distance, taking photographs. At dinner the evening before, he had brought up the subject of the Royal Navy with the captain, but his polite questions had been met with only the vaguest answers and the captain, far from seeming proud of his country’s fleet, had said something about ‘a few old buckets still managing to stay afloat’. Otto thought that he would never understand the English. Whenever they had something that they had reason to be proud of, they acted as though it was nothing special at all.
By the time he had returned to the house, curtains had been drawn back at windows and there was a tantalizing aroma of frying bacon when he let himself in through the side entrance. He felt ravenously hungry. Captain and Frau Ransome were seated at the dining-room table and Guy was helping himself from the silver dishes on the sideboard. Frau Ransome smiled at him. ‘Good morning, Otto. They say on the wireless that it’s going to be lovely today. I’ve suggested to Guy that you all go off in the Rose with a picnic. Would you like to do that?’
‘Of course.’ He would have preferred to challenge Guy to a tennis match but he had been taught to defer to a hostess. ‘I should like that very much.’
‘Like to take the helm, Otto?’
‘Oh … thank you.’
Matt, holding the jib sheet, watched The Hun scramble aft and take over the mainsheet and tiller from Guy. He seemed astonished at being invited to do so. The patched mainsail filled with wind and Rose swung round obligingly and headed upstream. Otto looked every bit as competent as Guy and Matt guessed that, like Guy, he must think the boat something of a joke. He had told them about sailing in the Baltic and all about his father’s wonderful yacht. Poor old Rose couldn’t compete. But Matt liked her. He felt safer and more confident with her than he had ever done with Bean Goose. There was something kindly about the way she responded and she was far more forgiving of mistakes. If any boat could ever cure him of his fear of the sea, Rose might do it.
‘Are you going to choose the picnic place, Guy? Because if so, I hope there will not be flies.’
‘You can choose it, Anna.’
‘You are in a very generous mood. What is the matter with you?’
‘What do you mean, what’s the matter with me?’
‘Well, it is most unusual. In general, you want to do everything.’
‘Rubbish.’ Guy turned his head. ‘I’d go about pretty soon, Otto.’
‘OK. Ready about. Lee-oh,’ Otto said in his very correct English. He put the helm over and Rose heeled very gently; they all ducked their heads under the boom as it went over. He hauled in the mainsheet and Matt trimmed the jib. There was just enough wind to carry them along at a slow and stately pace. Anna stood up, shielding her eyes against the sun.
‘We must find a nice field with no cows. I think I can see one.’
‘Sit down, Anna.’
‘I cannot see unless I stand up, Guy.’ She stood on tiptoe, making the Rose rock. ‘Yes, there is one further on, on the left side.’
‘Port, Anna. Not left. How about somewhere to land?’
‘I cannot see that yet.’
‘We have to have a decent place to put the boat safely. We can’t just stop and get out, you know. This isn’t a bus.’
Guy and Anna went on wrangling over it. The first spot turned out to be no good.
‘What is wrong with it?’
‘Not enough room for a boat.’
The one after that wasn’t right either.
‘Why not?’
‘It was all mud, Anna. Rose would get completely bogged down. We’d have a frightful time pushing her off again.’
‘We could leave her in the water.’
‘There was nothing to tie her to, and we don’t happen to carry an anchor, in case you hadn’t noticed.’
Luckily the third was all right. There was a bit of firm beach – just wide enough to take the Rose – and Otto timed everything perfectly, bringing her in side-on, sails down, to drift to a stop. They dragged her up onto the shore by the forestay and the shroud, unloaded the picnic and carried it across to a shady spot under a tree.
‘Satisfied, Anna?’
‘The grass is not so good, but at least there are no flies.’
‘If I hear you grumbling about a single thing, I’m going to throw you in the river. That’s a promise.’
‘You would not dare to, Guy.’
‘Try me.’
‘Supposing I can’t swim?’
‘You said you could. I presume you were telling the truth about a thing like that.’
‘Of course I was.’
‘Then you’d better watch out.’
The rug was spread out and the girls unpacked the picnic and everything was fine, Matt thought, until Otto started to talk about Berlin. To hear him, you’d think there was no other city in the world to touch it. The streets, the squares, the monuments and buildings were magnificent, the stadium for the Olympic Games the greatest ever built. They all listened politely, except for Anna who suddenly said, ‘But you have Adolf Hitler and he is not magnificent at all.’
Otto flushed. He said something sharply in German and Anna answered him in German too. Then she said, in English, ‘Otto believes Adolf Hitler to be a very great man. I said I thought that he is not very great, but very evil.’
‘Anna knows nothing of our Führer and yet she insults him.’
‘Shut up, Anna,’ Guy said lazily. He leaned on his elbow and took another bite of his sandwich. ‘Don’t be rude about Otto’s Führer.’
‘It is not a joke this time, Guy.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake … this is supposed to be a picnic.’
‘Have another sandwich, Otto,’ Lizzie said quickly. ‘The cucumber ones are awfully good.’
‘Thank you. I apologize. I forget myself.’
Anna had turned her back on him and he still looked very upset. Matt couldn’t imagine getting upset about somebody saying things against Mr Chamberlain. Actually, they said them all the time. Lizzie was offering the sandwiches round again. He was rather sorry about the plaits; they’d been so much a part of her. Guy was lighting one of his cigarettes and there was another argument with Anna who wanted to try one.
‘You’re too young.’
‘That’s silly. You’re only eighteen.’
‘And you’re only sixteen. Your parents wouldn’t approve.’
‘They are not here so they cannot know.’
‘You won’t like it. It’ll make you sick.’
‘How can you know? You don’t know everything, Guy.’
In the end, he let her take a puff and laughed heartlessly when she started coughing. ‘I told you so.’ He offered one to Otto who shook his head.
‘I think it is not very healthy, but thank you.’
He was a rum sort of chap, Matt thought. He hardly ever smiled and he didn’t think he’d ever seen him laugh. Not once.
On the way back from the picnic, Anna was allowed to take the helm, once they were out in midstream. Guy sat right beside her showing her what to do.
‘There is no need to tell me three times, Guy.’
‘Well, you didn’t do it properly the first or second. And if you don’t keep her to windward you’ll be in trouble. Look at the burgee.’
‘The what?’
‘The little flag at the top of the mast. That’ll tell you what the wind’s doing.’
‘I cannot look at everything at once.’
They were rounding the bend after Shortpole Reach when the Chilvers’ Grey Heron came into view, Tom and Harry waving. Anna let go of the tiller to wave back so that Guy had to make a grab for it. The two boats passed within a few yards of each other and Tom yelled across.
‘Come over tomorrow afternoon for some tennis, all of you.’
The Chilvers lived two miles upstream from the Ransomes, on the opposite bank. Guy, who had learned to drive during the Easter holidays, borrowed the Alvis and Otto sat in the front passenger seat with Anna, Matt and Lizzie in the back. They had the top down and Guy drove fast, roaring along and changing gear with a flourish. The house was older than Tideways, and a lot grander, too. ‘They’ve got bags of loot,’ Guy commented drily as they spun up the long drive. ‘As you can see.’
The brothers were outside, knocking up on an immaculate court. No bad bounces like at Tideways, Lizzie thought; the grass was so smooth you could have played billiards on it. Tom and Harry came over, dressed in equally immaculate tennis whites. They were both fair and good-looking – Harry a younger and slightly smaller version of Tom.
‘How about some mixed doubles?’ Tom suggested. ‘OK with you two girls?’ He was looking at Anna as he spoke. She was dressed in a long white cotton skirt and a yellow silk blouse – not proper tennis things at all – and she had borrowed an old pair of Matt’s outgrown gym shoes. She shrugged. ‘We are not at all good, are we, Lizzie?’
Tom smiled. ‘That doesn’t matter a bit. It’s only a game. How about you and I taking on Lizzie and a partner? Just for a set. Her to choose.’
‘If you like. You had better choose well, Lizzie.’
She chose Matt because she didn’t want him left out of things and because Guy was too good. She suspected that Otto was, also. She felt all right with Matt. He wouldn’t mind in the least if they lost – which they did. Two games to six. Tom had aimed lots of his shots at her which meant, of course, that they kept losing the point. The balls came whizzing at her over the net, very fast and low, and often she couldn’t hit them at all. ‘Sorry, Matt,’ she said, as they came off the court. ‘I played awfully badly.’ ‘No you didn’t, Lizzie, you were brilliant. I went and let you down.’ He winked at her. ‘Still, as Tom says, it’s only a game.’
The next match wasn’t a game at all.
‘OK, Guy. Harry and I challenge you and Otto. Best of three sets.’ Tom was smiling but Lizzie knew it was going to be a serious contest. She and Matt and Anna went and sat on the grass bank by the court. ‘Wake me up when they have finished,’ Anna said. She lay back and put her straw hat over her eyes.
Lizzie had been right about Otto. He was just as good as Guy. In fact, his serve was better, she thought – very hard and very fast indeed and his backhand across the court was like lightning. Harry kept missing it which annoyed Tom. The score reached four all. ‘It’s going to be close,’ Matt whispered. At five four to Guy and Otto, with Otto serving and within a point for the set, there was an argument over whether Tom’s return shot was in or out. Tom maintained that it was in.
‘I saw the chalk go up. Didn’t you, Harry?’
‘Yes, definitely.’
Guy said easily, ‘Actually, I’m pretty sure it was out, Tom. I had a fairly good view from here.’
‘The ball was out. I also see very well. It was beyond the line.’ Otto looked at Tom coldly. ‘You are mistaken.’
‘I saw the chalk go up, old chap, like I said. That means it was in.’
‘You suggest that I lie?’
‘I’m just saying you didn’t see it properly. Harry and I know this court pretty well.’
Guy called up, ‘What do you lot think?’
‘I think it was out,’ Matt told him. ‘Lizzie’s not sure and Anna didn’t see it at all.’
‘Oh, well. We’d better play it again, Tom.’ He wiped the sweat off his forehead.
‘It was out and Tom knows it,’ Matt muttered.
They replayed the point and Otto, who was clearly furious, smashed the ball over the net and double-faulted. The Chilvers went on to take the game and then the set. Guy and Otto won the next set, though, by six games to three. Lizzie crossed her fingers. One each. Whoever got the next would win.
At five games all, Anna sat up. ‘What is happening?’
‘They’re even,’ Matt told her. ‘One of them needs to get two games ahead now.’
‘Has Tom cheated again?’
‘Well, there’ve been a couple of doubtful points.’
‘He wants very much to win. But I think they will lose and it will serve him right.’ She lay down again and replaced the straw hat.
Otto delivered the shot that won the match – one of his bullet-like backhands that went down the tramlines, straight past Tom who threw his racket at it in vain. Tom and Harry forced smiles as they shook hands all round and Guy clapped Otto on the back.
Tea was served on the lawn, wheeled out by a butler, and Mrs Chilver appeared, shading herself under a parasol. She was charming to everyone, and especially charming to Guy and Otto. Tom and Harry came out to see them off in the Alvis and Tom climbed on the running-board to peer in at the dashboard. ‘How fast does this thing go? Oh, not that much.’ He hopped off. ‘I say, how about a sailing race next? Grey Heron against that old tub of yours. What do you say?’
Guy pressed the button and the engine burst into life. ‘If you like.’
‘We’ll give you a good start. Make it fair.’
‘No need for that.’
Tom grinned. ‘Suit yourself, then. You won’t have much of a hope, old chap.’
They sped away down the drive, spurting gravel. ‘We can’t possibly win, of course,’ Guy said. ‘There’s not much point in taking them up on it. We haven’t a chance.’
‘How do you know that? You cannot be so sure.’
‘I’m being realistic, Anna.’
‘You are being a coward.’
‘You don’t know the first thing about sailing, so you can keep quiet. Rose simply can’t match Grey Heron for speed and that’s that. We’re going to look complete fools.’
‘Is that all you care about?’
‘I’d sooner not give the Chilvers the chance to crow over us, as a matter of fact.’
‘Crow? What is this?’ Otto translated into German for her. ‘Well, they will crow very much if you do not do this race. ‘Won’t they, Matt?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘Perhaps you’d like to sail her then, Matt?’
‘Do not be so mean, Guy. I think we should all sail her. All of us against those cheats.’
‘I told you you didn’t know anything about sailing, Anna. If we all go, then Grey Heron will have finished by the time we’re halfway. The more people, the slower Rose’ll be able to sail. And she’s slow enough already.’
‘All right. Then you and Otto must take her. It is because you two won the tennis match that they want this race. They believe they will win, so you must make them wrong.’
Tom telephoned in the evening. ‘Kick-off at ten hundred, Guy? We’ll come down to you and we can start from there. Down to the Whitaker buoy, round and back. First to cross level with your jetty wins. OK?’
‘OK.’ He heard Harry laughing in the background before Tom had put down the receiver.
Otto sat in the London train, staring out of the window. The English countryside could be very beautiful in some places, it was true. He had always believed that Germany had the best scenery, the most beautiful old towns, the best architecture, the best art, the best music, naturally … but some things in England were not so bad. He had enjoyed his visit to the Ransomes’ home far more than he had expected. Of course, they hadn’t really wanted him there, but they had hidden it carefully. They had been very polite. Taken him everywhere, shown him everything, included him as though he were one of the family. Captain Ransome had not talked much about the Royal Navy, though he had tried several times to encourage him to do so, but he had always been civil, and Mrs Ransome had always been kind. He liked her. He liked Lizzie very much, too. She was not so different from a girl he knew in Berlin – Martha, the younger sister of his friend, Karl. Lizzie was liebenswert sweet, the English would say. He had not really known Matt before the visit; because he was two forms lower in the school, he seldom saw him. Now he knew him better, he liked him too and pitied him even more for being a cripple. Deformity was a dreadful affliction. He prided himself on his own body; it was important to exercise constantly, to make sure that he kept it in perfect condition. Guy, of course, had a good physique, though he did not seem to care much about it. To smoke was bad for the lungs. If one smoked, one could not run so fast. It was a pity that there might be no chance to run another race against Guy; it was always a good competition between them. There would be no athletics in the one remaining term at the English school. Winter would begin and there would be only rugger – a game he did not care for. In any case, he was to take the examination for English university and so there would not be much time to spare. He wanted to go to the university in Berlin but his father kept insisting that he stay longer in England.
The train plunged suddenly into a long dark tunnel and then emerged, just as sudddnly, into sunlight once more. Otto no longer noticed the scenery; he was thinking about Anna. He must be careful. He should not see her again. His father would be very angry if he knew that he had found a Jewess attractive; that he had spent the whole visit watching her whenever he could. Fortunately, she had not been aware of it. He must put her out of his mind. He must remember all that his father had told him about the Jews and how dangerous they were. He must forget Anna and her bewitching beauty: forget her voice, her smile – never, ever turned on him – and her lovely hair that he had wanted many times to reach out and touch. She must be banished ruthlessly from his thoughts, for what she was – an impurity, a canker.
Otto stared at the passing fields but without seeing them. He saw only Anna’s face. Just for a moment he would allow himself to think again about his last evening at Tideways when she had played for them after dinner. Mrs Ransome had requested it and she had gone to the grand piano in the drawing-room and sat down and played for over an hour. He had had no idea that she was such an accomplished pianist and he had stood on the terrace, just outside the open French windows, where he could watch her all the time unobserved while he had listened entranced. She had played Liszt and Schubert and Chopin and then a string of Strauss waltzes, her fingers dancing across the keys. His father preferred the music of Wagner. At home, the apartment walls trembled to recordings of his operas. They were soul-stirring, uplifting, electrifying, of course, but the playing of Anna was like a balm; it had soothed him as much as it had delighted him.
Otto stopped himself. He must think no more about her. In two days he would be back in Berlin for the remainder of the holidays. There would be friends to see and plenty of things to occupy his mind. He would be attending a big rally of the Hitler Jugend at the Lustgarten and they would march with banners and bands through the streets of Berlin. The Führer himself was expected to attend to receive their salute and to address them. It would be a great occasion.
In his luggage, on the rack above his head, were the rolls of film taken during his stay at Tideways. Most of it was of the coastline, the estuary, the river, but there would be some of the Ransomes and of Lizzie and Anna. He would destroy any negatives of Anna and keep only the ones of the others and of the house and of the old boat. He smiled to himself. The big joke was that they had won the race against Grey Heron. Not because they had sailed any faster or better, but because the Chilver brothers had been overconfident and gone too close to a sandbank after rounding the estuary buoy. Grey Heron had gone aground and Rose of England who had been crawling along behind, like a tortoise after a hare, had sailed majestically past and gone on to finish to loud cheers from the jetty, while her rival was still stuck fast. It had been very amusing and they had all laughed, himself included. Guy had clapped him on the back once again, like after they’d won the tennis match. Sweet Lizzie had flung her arms round him and kissed him on the cheek in her excitement. To celebrate the victory and Rose’s triumph they had all carved their initials on her port bow. He had hung back at first, not sure whether he was included, but Matt had handed him the penknife. ‘Your turn, Otto.’ He had carved his next to Anna’s.
He looked at the gold wrist-watch that he had been given for his eighteenth birthday – one of the best that money could buy. The train would be arriving in London within twenty minutes. It was time to collect himself and restore sense and order to his thoughts. Rose winning was not so wonderful. It had been what the English would call a fluke – ein dusel – and nothing to be proud about. Grey Heron, the far superior boat, should have won. To champion the undeserving underdog was typical of the sentimental English and if he was not very careful he would start to think and behave like they did. They were a degenerate nation, he reminded himself. They befriended Jews. England was no longer the great Empire that she had once been, but a declining power, while Germany was in the ascendant with a glorious future. She had been ground into the dust by her conquerors but she had risen up despite them and nobody could stop her now.
‘They’d got them brain washed – all the young people.’ The old man is looking indignant. ‘The Hitler Youth. I’ve read about it since. All boys and girls from six to eighteen years old had to join and they marched them up and down Germany and taught them to be little Nazis.’
My throat feels dry. ‘I wonder if I could have a glass of water …’
‘You can have a cup of tea, if you like.’ He puts his pipe on the mantelpiece and heaves himself stiffly out of his armchair. ‘Won’t be a minute.’
I wait by the window, looking out at the river, and wonder if I am completely mad to take all this trouble. The boat is evidently a wreck – she’ll probably fall apart if she’s moved. Is it worth the effort? It happened a long time ago and a whole new generation has grown up which knows almost nothing of Dunkirk, and cares less. And then I think of what the Rose of England did. Of what they all did. Of what it meant and how it turned the tide of history. And I know that I am not so mad after all.
The old man comes back, carrying a tin tray with two mugs on it and a plate of plain biscuits. He hands me the mug with A PRESENT FROM SOUTHEND written on it and offers a biscuit. I’m not hungry, only thirsty, but I take one to be polite. ‘You’d better sit down, then.’ He points at the sofa and lowers himself creakily into his armchair again. ‘Can’t get used to doing for myself,’ he says. ‘Molly always saw to everything. So I don’t bother much. Not much point just for one, anyway.’ The tea is oversweetened dishwater, the biscuit stale, but none of it matters. What matters to me is whether I am going to be able to persuade him. ‘Shall I go on?’
‘If you like.’ He leans back in his chair, head against the antimacassar. ‘What happened with the parents – the Jewish ones in Vienna? They needed to get a move on with it, if they wanted to get out in time.’
‘They had a lot of trouble with the necessary papers. It could take a long time … months, years even. By the spring of 1937 they were still waiting. And then the grandmother fell ill and there was no question of them leaving until she was better.’ I’m very thirsty so I drink some more dishwater and then see that he is looking at me expectantly, waiting for me to go on. ‘Guy passed his exams for Oxford and went up in the autumn of that year. So did Otto. He was accepted by the same college.’
‘That father of his would have been some sort of spy. Sent to find out everything he could about us. Anything useful to the Germans. Worming his way into places to see who might be on their side. Some people here were all for the Nazis, you know. There were high-up folks who were pally with Hitler. It makes me sick to think of it.’ He bites into one of the stale biscuits. ‘Did Guy fly, then? Like he always wanted?’
‘Yes, he did. He joined the University Air Squadron and learned to fly on Tiger Moths.’
‘I always rather fancied the idea of being a pilot, myself. Used to watch them coming over in their Hurricanes and Spitfires. Of course I was too old by then, and my eyesight wouldn’t have been good enough, anyway. They wouldn’t have me in the army either. Not for anything. Molly was glad about that, but I always felt … well, left out of it all. Did my bit with the ARP, of course, but it wasn’t the same. Another biscuit?’
‘No, thank you. Shall I carry on?’
‘May as well.’