by Helen Peters
One day Miss Marshall asked me a question that nobody had asked me before.
“What do you enjoy, Anna? What sorts of things did you like to do at home?”
When I told her I used to play the piano, she said I could come to her house after school any time I wanted to and practise on hers. The piano was in the front room of her cottage, just down the lane from school. On warm autumn days, she kept the window open, and sometimes I would look up from playing to see a group of my schoolmates standing outside, listening.
The seasons passed too. The dusty roads and golden wheat fields of August gave way to dewy mornings and spiders’ webs, autumn leaves and fat brown conkers, each one a shining treasure to be unwrapped from its spiky green casing, only to fade within days to a disappointing dullness. I learned the names of the jewel-like berries that glowed in the hedgerows: rosehips and haws, blackberries and sloes.
Christmas came, with holly cut from the hedgerows, a tree cut from the woods and paper snowflakes cut from newspaper, strung on the cottage windowpanes with threads of cotton. In my stocking – an old wool sock of Uncle Bert’s – I found a bar of chocolate, a tangerine and a pink sugar mouse. Best of all, I found a box of drawing pencils and a book called Ballet Shoes, about three orphaned girls who have to make their own way in the world. I loved that book.
Then came the terrible bitter cold of January, February and March, when we all huddled round the kitchen table in the warmth of the Rayburn stove, dreading the time when we had to take hot-water bottles to unheated bedrooms, where the icy wind blew through the gaps around the draughty windows.
And then came signs of spring, with flowers whose English names I learned and loved. First the snowdrops and daffodils poked their way up through the frozen earth, then celandines, wood anemones and primroses, while the hedgerows bloomed with blackthorn blossom.
I met Miss Marshall in the lane one day, when I was walking to the shops on an errand for Aunty Rose. I had crouched down to examine a cluster of primroses, thinking I would like to draw them but I didn’t have a pencil in the right shade of yellow.
“Such a comfort, nature, isn’t it?” Miss Marshall said. “The way it just does its own thing, to its own rhythms, regardless of the hideous mess we humans are making of the world. I do find it reassuring that, however bad the news may be, the trees still come into leaf and the flowers into bloom.”
Since the outbreak of war, there had been no post between England and Germany. There were only Red Cross letters. You were allowed to write a maximum of twenty-five words, and only family news, nothing political or related to the war. It was better than nothing, but only just.
Now that I couldn’t write long letters to my parents any more, I started to keep a diary. It helped to have a place where I could write down my thoughts and feelings, and writing them down helped me organise them in my mind a little better. I still kept the box in my head locked up tightly though. There were some thoughts I couldn’t write down.
I tried not to think too much about what life might be like for my parents, but there was a constant knot of worry inside me, which only loosened slightly when a Red Cross letter arrived. Only very slightly, though, because letters had to be sent via the Red Cross headquarters in Switzerland, so they took weeks or even months to get to me. I knew my parents had been all right when they sent the letter. But were they still safe now?
In bed in the blackout, trying to stave off the worries and the nightmares, I would fantasise that they had somehow managed to leave Germany and were on their way to me right now. I imagined them walking into the cottage kitchen as we were eating breakfast, or appearing in the school playground, or coming down the village lane towards me.
One drizzly grey afternoon in March, I was walking home from school with Molly and Frank as usual. We passed the blacksmith’s forge just as the bus from Castlebridge drew up on the other side of the road. The passengers spilled out, and there, in the jumble of raincoats and hats and umbrellas and shopping baskets, I saw my mother, in her dark-green coat. My heart somersaulted. I gasped and dashed across the road, narrowly missing a bicycle that swerved to avoid me.
“Look where you’re going, idiot!” shouted the cyclist, glaring over his shoulder.
I didn’t care. I dodged my way through the throng at the bus stop.
“Mama! Mama!”
The woman in the green coat turned round.
She wasn’t my mother. She was just an English woman in a green coat.
Everybody else turned round too. One woman said hello to me. I ignored her. My eyes were so blurred with tears that I could barely see. I stumbled back across the road. I didn’t look at Molly and Frank, but I knew they were staring at me. I walked on in front of them, my head to the ground.
Molly ran to catch up with me. “Are you all right, Anna?”
I couldn’t speak.
“Did you think you saw your mum?”
I nodded. She walked along beside me for a while in silence. Then she put her hand on my arm.
“It must be horrible, being so far away from them.”
I quickened my pace. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“All right.”
She said nothing more, and we continued in silence. After a while, she slowed her pace until she was walking with Frank again, and I was stomping ahead of them, head down in the chill March drizzle.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
A Perfect New Daughter
One morning in April, Miss Ambrose handed back my essay on the Battle of Hastings and said, “I think you’re ready to move up to the top class, Anna.”
I glowed with pride as I carried my things to the empty desk next to Dorothy’s at the back of Miss Marshall’s classroom. I was in the top class at last!
But then I glanced at Molly and saw the frown on her face. She caught my eye and gave me a smile and a thumbs-up sign. But I had seen her real reaction, and the warm feeling had disappeared.
After tea that evening, Aunty Rose went to get ready for her WI meeting, and Uncle Bert and Frank went out to work in the garden. Molly sat at the kitchen table to do her homework. I fetched the broom from the scullery to sweep the kitchen.
“Oh, you are good, Anna,” said Aunty Rose, as she pulled her coat off the peg in the hall. “Thank you so much.”
The front door closed behind her. Molly looked up from her book and said, “I wish you’d stop being such a goody-goody.”
I stopped sweeping and looked at her.
“What do you mean? What is a goody-goody?”
Molly gave an impatient sigh. “You know, always helping around the house, doing everything you’re told the second you’re asked to do it.” She put on a silly voice. “‘Let me do that, Aunty Rose. How can I help you, Aunty Rose?’ It’s really annoying. You’re showing me up.”
“Showing you up?”
“Making me look lazy. I do all my chores, but now you come along and start doing all this extra stuff, actually offering to do more jobs all the time. And on top of that, working really hard at school, and playing the piano, and everyone knows you’re Miss Marshall’s favourite. I can see Mum and Dad looking at me like they’re disappointed with me. Like now they’ve got a perfect new daughter and I’m not good enough for them any more.”
“Oh, no!” I said, horrified. “I just like to help your parents, because they’re so good to me. It’s the only way I can repay them for their kindness. And also…”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to say it.
“Also what?” asked Molly irritably.
“Also, because I like to be busy. It helps me not to think about … things.”
“Oh,” said Molly, looking slightly ashamed. “Well, just be a bit less eager to please, can’t you? It’s annoying.”
I nodded dumbly. “All right.”
“Well, don’t look so upset. It’s nothing to get upset about.”
And she turned back to her homework.
I felt as though she’d hit me. The last thing I’
d wanted to do was upset her. I wanted to shout: I don’t want to be their daughter! I have my own parents! I didn’t want to live with a strange family in a strange country. I’m just trying to make the best of it!
But that would sound ungrateful and rude.
How would I feel if I were in Molly’s position? If my parents had taken in a refugee child and showered them with such generous love and affection? I’d probably have felt exactly the same as she did.
So after that I tried to help a bit less around the house. It was horrible. Whenever Aunty Rose mentioned a job that needed doing, I would instinctively say, “I’ll do it,” and then I would catch Molly’s glare from the other side of the table. I’d either do the job and face her annoyance, or make up a reason why I couldn’t do it after all, and feel terrible. It felt like walking a tightrope, and it gave me a permanent stomach ache.
But though I might try to do a bit less housework to spare Molly’s feelings, there was no way I was going to try less hard with my schoolwork. In my next Red Cross letter, I told my parents I was now in the top class. I knew how happy that would make them. I had promised them I’d make the most of every opportunity I was given, and there was no way I was going to break that promise.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The Ashcombe Anti-German League
We’d been expecting air raids and bombing as soon as war was declared. Uncle Bert built an Anderson shelter in the garden and made it quite cosy inside. But for some reason nothing much happened for months and months and months.
Then one morning in April 1940 I came down for breakfast and saw the headline in Uncle Bert’s newspaper. “Hitler Invades Norway and Denmark!”
I turned cold. He was coming closer. What would happen now?
But, once again, nothing much did seem to happen. Troops were sent to Norway, and there were naval battles, but it never really seemed clear which side was winning. Denmark was under Nazi control though. I tried to avoid hearing the news. After all, I could do nothing about it, and hearing about Nazi victories only gave me nightmares. When the wireless was switched on, I left the room if I could, and went upstairs to read. If I was helping in the kitchen and couldn’t get away, I recited times tables in my head to drown out the announcer’s voice.
Anyway, Norway and Denmark were a long way away.
But then, in May, Germany invaded Holland and Belgium overnight. When we heard the news on the wireless the next morning I felt paralysed with terror.
“All those poor, poor people,” said Aunty Rose. “Their lives ruined, and all for a few madmen hell-bent on world domination.”
What would happen to the lovely Dutch ladies at the train station? Had they been Jewish too? Thank goodness I had managed to bring Ezra to England. I wondered where he was now. He must have grown so much. He might even be walking. He would think his foster parents were his real parents. When his mother came to fetch him after the war, she would be a stranger to him.
Winston Churchill took over from Neville Chamberlain as Prime Minister, which pleased everybody.
“He’s a proper leader,” said Uncle Bert. “Old Hitler won’t be able to get away with anything now Winston’s in charge, you wait and see.”
But even Churchill didn’t seem to be able to stop the Nazis. The Dutch surrendered after only a few days, and then it got even worse.
The Germans invaded France.
France! What if they reached Paris? Where was Uncle Paul now? Would the Nazis find him? And what would they do to him if they did?
I tried to push the thoughts out of my mind, but it was impossible when all the talk in the school playground was about the Germans invading us by parachute.
“They dropped into Holland in the dead of night, wearing Dutch and British army uniforms,” said Ernie Hibbert. “Thousands of them, all disguised as British and Dutch soldiers.”
“My nan says they’re going to land all over England disguised as nuns,” said Margaret. “If you see a nun, check what she’s wearing on her feet. They have army boots on under their habits, she says. That’s what gives them away.”
“Sometimes they come disguised as vicars,” said Nancy. “You can’t trust no one no more.”
“You can trust our vicar,” said Dorothy. “He’s been here years and years.”
Nancy rolled her eyes. “I wasn’t talking about him. I mean newcomers. Strangers.”
“Like her,” said Billy Townsend, pointing to me.
Everyone’s eyes turned on me.
“In Holland,” said Billy, “there were all these Germans what’d been living in Holland for years and years, good as gold. No one had a clue they were secretly Nazis all along. And when the German parachutists landed, these Germans all came rushing out to help them take over Holland. I read it in the paper. That’s why Churchill’s rounded up all the Germans living over here. Sent them all to internment camps, so they can’t help the parachutists when they come.”
“Only if they’re over sixteen,” said Margaret. “It said in the paper. All enemy aliens over the age of sixteen.”
“Exactly!” said Billy, triumphantly. “It’s just like I said. That’s why Hitler’s using schoolgirls for spies. No one ever suspects girls. I bet she’s collecting information the whole time and sending it back to Hitler. Stanley said he saw her drawing the church the other day. What’s she drawing the church for, except to send the drawing off to Hitler so as he can bomb it?”
“Don’t be an idiot,” said Molly. “If Hitler wants to bomb the church, he doesn’t need Anna’s drawing to help him. I’m sure Hitler knows what a church looks like.”
“My dad’s out in France fighting the Nazis,” said Billy, “and he says he doesn’t see why he should be risking his life to protect this country against the Germans when some German girl’s allowed to live over here and go to our school and all the time she’s sending information back to Hitler. I don’t believe she’s a refugee at all. She doesn’t look like a refugee. She’s not poor. Look at her clothes. And she can play the piano. Poor kids don’t play the piano.”
“I hate Hitler,” I said, my stomach churning. “I had to leave my home because of Hitler.”
Billy raised his eyebrows meaningfully. “I bet you did.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” said Nancy.
“Nothing,” said Billy. “I’m just saying, I bet Hitler was very happy for you to come over here and send information back to him. I bet that suited him just fine.”
Everyone was looking at me. Even Molly didn’t say anything. Nor did Nancy or Margaret or Dorothy.
“Churchill thinks he’s sorted everything out,” said Billy, “locking up all the Germans over sixteen, when there’s kids like her allowed to live free, drawing targets and sending letters back to Germany full of secret information. I bet old Hitler’s laughing his head off, fooling Churchill with that trick. But you don’t fool me, German girl. I know what you’re up to.”
The bell rang for the end of break. I felt sick. My head throbbed and I couldn’t think. Miss Marshall set us a comprehension on an extract from Treasure Island. I kept trying to read it, but the words were just meaningless marks on the page.
In the row in front of me, Billy was writing a lot more than usual. Every now and then he nudged Ernie and showed him what he’d written. Ernie nodded in approval, and sometimes he pointed to something on the page and whispered to Billy. Occasionally he turned and glanced at me.
I dropped my pencil over the front of my desk and leaned forward to pick it up, trying to read what Billy had written. Ernie nudged him and he covered the book with his arms.
But not before I’d seen my name written on the paper.
I sat at my desk, my head throbbing. At the end of the lesson, Billy tore the page out of his exercise book, folded it and put it in his pocket. At dinner time I saw him showing it to people in the playground. Other people started looking at me suspiciously. I stayed with Molly, Nancy and Dorothy and he didn’t come up to us, but I saw Margaret on the
edge of a group huddled around Billy.
During afternoon lessons, there were a lot of whispered conversations going on. Margaret was whispering to Molly the whole time we were copying a map in geography. When I put my hand up to answer a question in arithmetic, the room went silent. Everybody was looking at me, scrutinising my face, listening intently. Even my friends. Even Molly.
Just before the end of school, I saw my chance. Billy took his jacket off and hung it on the back of his chair. A folded piece of paper stuck out of the pocket.
I dropped my pencil on the floor and ducked under my desk to retrieve it. As I picked it up with one hand, I pulled the piece of paper out of Billy’s pocket with the other. Then I sat at my desk again, tucking it into the pocket of my dress.
Molly chatted away as usual on the walk home, but I had my hand on the folded paper the whole time and I barely heard a word she said. As soon as we got home, I went to the bottom of the garden, sat under the apple tree and unfolded it.
It was a list, in Billy’s neatest handwriting.
The Ashcombe Anti-German League
Evidence For Anna being a German Spy
She’s German.
She’s a schoolgirl – perfect disguise, no one would suspect her.
She sends letters to Germany – probably coded messages to Hitler.
She gets letters from Germany, written in German. Probably coded instructions from her spymasters.