Anna At War

by Helen Peters

  She’s drawn pictures of places in Ashcombe and sent them to Germany – probably to help the German bombers find their targets.

  She speaks nearly perfect English. Trying to pass as an English girl so she can spy for Germany without being suspected.

  She reads English books. Probably trying to learn things about England to tell Hitler, so he can train other spies to act like English people.

  She’s quiet and very well behaved – trying to fit in and not cause suspicion.

  She says she came to England because her family was being persecuted by Hitler, but how do we know? There’s no evidence that she was persecuted. She brought fancy dresses and she can play the piano, so we know she’s not poor.

  Evidence Against Anna being a German Spy

  None

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  On the Outside

  Sitting there, reading that list, I felt completely alone in the world.

  What could I do? Would Billy turn everyone against me? How could I defend myself? I couldn’t prove that I wasn’t a spy, so how could I convince them? And what if Churchill decided to intern Germans under sixteen too? Would I be taken away to a prison camp?

  I stayed there until Aunty Rose called me in for tea. I was dreading facing them all and having to pretend to be normal.

  But their attention was on other things. They had just heard on the BBC that the Germans had reached the port of Calais, on the French coast.

  “Twenty miles away!” exclaimed Aunty Rose. “To think those evil men are only twenty miles from Kent. It doesn’t seem possible.”

  I sat, frozen, ice-cold with terror.

  Nowhere was safe any more.

  Images flashed through my mind. Nazi jackboots marching through Ashcombe. Swastikas hanging from the flagpoles.

  What would they do to me?

  “Are you all right, Anna?” asked Aunty Rose. “You’re white as a sheet. Don’t you feel well?”

  “No,” I said. “I might go and lie down.”

  My legs shook when I stood up. I gripped the banister rail as I walked upstairs.

  My heart raced and my head spun.

  If the Nazis came, I would have to run. I wouldn’t let them catch me and I couldn’t get the Deans in trouble. I would go and hide in the woods.

  No. They would search the woods with dogs and guns.

  I would go to London. I had no money for the train fare but there must be ways to sneak on without paying. I could pretend to be an orphan. Somebody would look after me, surely.

  Bloomsbury House! I would go to Bloomsbury House, where the Refugee Committee had their offices. One of those ladies would take care of me.

  I pulled my little case from under my bed and packed my clothes, along with Heidi and Ballet Shoes. I looked at the box of my parents’ letters on the bedside table. Molly would notice if that was gone. I would have to put it in the case at the last minute. I made a space for it at the side.

  I slid the case back under the bed. My heart was still thumping, but I felt slightly calmer. At least I had a plan.

  The next week at school was really horrible. People huddled in corners, whispering and shooting glances in my direction. When I walked past them, they nudged each other and stared at me.

  My friends still stuck by me though. At least, none of them said or did anything nasty, but I could tell they were thinking things they weren’t telling me.

  The war news was getting even worse. The Germans trapped the retreating British and French armies at Dunkirk, on the Normandy coast. As well as the Navy, lots of people were crossing the Channel in little boats to bring the soldiers home, and it seemed that everybody in the village was waiting for news of their men.

  On Sunday afternoon, Aunty Rose asked me and Molly to go with her to visit Mrs Digweed, an elderly widow.

  “Poor woman, both her sons are out in France and she’s beside herself waiting for news,” Aunty Rose said. “You two will be a nice distraction for her.”

  We took her some eggs and a jar of plum jam. As we drew near to the crossroads by the church and the war memorial, we saw the Air Raid Patrol warden and another man, Joe Thomas, digging a hole around the signpost.

  “Gosh,” said Molly. “They’re doing it already.”

  We had heard on the news yesterday that the government had ordered every signpost in the country to be taken down, so if German parachutists landed, they wouldn’t know where they were.

  The warden took hold of the white-painted post and wobbled it. It had four arms on the top, printed with the names of the neighbouring villages.

  “That should do it, I reckon,” he said to Mr Thomas. “Let’s give it a go.”

  Mr Thomas straightened up and laid down his spade. Both men grasped the post and heaved it out of the ground.

  “Hello, Mrs Dean,” called a woman’s voice. We turned to see Miss Marshall coming out of the church, carrying a stack of parish magazines.

  We all said hello, and then Miss Marshall said, “I thought I’d better take these. There’s not much point removing the signposts if a parachutist can just walk into the church and find the name of the village printed on the front of the magazine.”

  “Goodness, yes,” said Aunty Rose. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  I shivered at the thought of a Nazi parachutist striding into the village church. Miss Marshall must have noticed, because she gave me a rather strained smile.

  “Ignore me, Anna. I’m just being silly. I hope you’re not worrying about all these rumours of parachutists and suchlike. People are getting a bit hysterical at the moment.”

  It didn’t seem hysterical to me. It seemed completely realistic. How could Miss Marshall sound so calm? Didn’t she know what would happen to her if the Germans invaded?

  When I was nine, we had walked into our classroom one Monday morning to find a man in a black suit standing at the front. He held a cane in his hand. He told us he was our teacher now, and his name was Herr Molsen.

  “But where’s Frau Schmidt?” asked Klaus. We all liked Frau Schmidt. She was decent and fair, and she rarely used her cane. And after that girl had spat at me, Frau Schmidt had patrolled the playground every break time.

  “Frau Schmidt has left the school,” Herr Molsen said.

  He wore a swastika badge on his jacket. He made me and Esther, the only other Jewish student, sit at the back of the classroom, with an empty row of desks between us and the other children, as though being Jewish was an infectious disease.

  He told the class that every time he walked into the room, we must all stand up and raise our right arms in the Hitler salute. He demonstrated it, stabbing his right arm straight out in front of him, palm down.

  “Heil Hitler!” he shouted.

  “Heil Hitler!” shouted everyone except me and Esther. My stomach was jumping with nerves, but I kept my head down and my arms by my side. Papa had told me I never had to say those words.

  Then I glanced up and caught Herr Molsen’s eye. He was glaring at me with a look of such hatred that I shuddered and lowered my head again.

  “You! You at the back! Raise your hands!”

  To my astonishment, Esther slowly raised her hand.

  “Heil Hitler,” she mumbled.

  My mouth was dry. I was trembling with fear, petrified that Herr Molsen would stride across the classroom and strike me with his cane.

  “Sit down,” he said, “and take out your books.”

  I risked another glance at him.

  He wasn’t looking at me. I sat down and took out my book.

  Herr Molsen never looked at me or spoke to me again. It was as though he had decided I didn’t exist. And at break time that day, I discovered that the rest of the class had taken their cue from him. None of the other children, not even Ingrid, would play with me, speak to me or even look at me. They acted as though I was invisible. When I tried to speak to them, they simply turned their backs and carried on their conversations.

  My parents could tell someth
ing was wrong but when they asked me I said everything was fine. I didn’t want to make them more worried than they already were.

  Now I looked at Miss Marshall, talking to Aunty Rose. Did she realise that if the Germans invaded she would be replaced by a teacher who would turn all the children into Nazis?

  “I’m glad I’ve seen you, Mrs Dean,” she said. “I wanted to let you know how wonderfully Anna’s getting on at school. Her progress is really remarkable. Her English is almost flawless, and she’s doing superbly in her other subjects too.”

  I didn’t dare glance at Molly. I never asked for praise, I wanted to tell her. I just want to learn.

  “Molly’s doing extremely well too,” said Miss Marshall, to my great relief. “I’m very keen that both of them try for a scholarship to the grammar school next year. They’re such bright girls, it would be a terrible waste of their potential to leave school at fourteen.”

  “Oh, well,” said Aunty Rose uncomfortably. “I’m not sure. Isn’t the uniform very expensive? And then there’s all the books they’d need.”

  “I’m sure there’s something we could do about that. I’ll have a think. Perhaps Bloomsbury House might be able to help with Anna’s expenses.”

  “I don’t know,” said Aunty Rose. “They don’t seem to have a lot of money for luxuries.”

  “Education isn’t a luxury, Mrs Dean,” said Miss Marshall.

  “Maybe, but fancy uniforms and Latin textbooks certainly feel like luxuries when your children are wearing shoes they’ve grown out of and you’ve no idea how you’re going to afford new ones for the winter.”

  “Yes, of course,” said Miss Marshall. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to cause offence.”

  “None taken,” said Aunty Rose, forcing a smile. “You’re just doing your job. And it’s lovely to hear how well the girls are doing.”

  But her face was clouded over as we walked to Mrs Digweed’s house.

  Mrs Digweed had just had a postcard from her younger son to say he was safely back in England and would be coming to see her next week. Her happiness cheered us all up, and we left her with hopeful assurances that she would be bound to hear from her other boy very soon.

  As we walked back, we saw the greengrocer outside his shop, balanced precariously at the top of a ladder. He was painting out the village name on his sign. Now it just said _______ Greengrocers. We looked at the neighbouring shops and saw that their signs had been changed in the same way. Ashcombe General Stores was now _______ General Stores and Ashcombe Bakery was _______ Bakery.

  “Them parachutists won’t have a clue where they are if they land in our fields now,” he said triumphantly, as we passed his ladder.

  “He seems to think he’s outwitted Hitler all by himself,” muttered Aunty Rose, when we were out of earshot. “I think it might take a bit more than Will Eaves and a paintbrush to stop a Nazi invasion.”

  That evening, as always, while Clover sat purring on my lap, I opened my box of letters.

  I always kept them in order, with the most recent one on top. But tonight the letter at the top of the pile was one from several months ago.

  That was very strange.

  I took them all out and checked through them. A few of the others were in the wrong places too. I put them back in order and counted them. They were all there.

  Had I accidentally put them back in the wrong order last night? Or … had somebody else been rummaging through the box?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Betrayed

  When everybody filed into the classroom on Monday morning, I saw Billy go up to Molly’s desk and whisper something. I couldn’t make out his words or her reply, but I saw them both glance surreptitiously at me. I averted my eyes and sat down miserably at my desk.

  The morning passed in the same way all recent mornings had passed. Dorothy was the only person who still treated me exactly as she always had. Thank goodness we shared a desk.

  At playtime, after I had given away the disgusting bottle of tepid milk, Dorothy and I went to the garden. We had arranged to meet all the garden monitors there, but nobody else turned up, so we swept out the shed and neither of us mentioned the fact that the others hadn’t come.

  After break, Miss Marshall set us yet another comprehension exercise. Just as we were about to start, Miss Carragher, the infants teacher, came in and said something to her.

  “Get on with your work, everybody,” said Miss Marshall. “I’m just popping over to the infants.”

  The comprehension passage was an extract of a poem called Hiawatha. I loved the rhythm of it.

  Something in the hazy distance,

  Something in the mists of morning,

  Loomed and lifted from the water,

  Now seemed floating, now seemed flying,

  Coming nearer, nearer, nearer.

  With the teacher gone, the noise level grew and grew. I tried to lose myself in the poem, but people were getting out of their seats and milling around, and I gradually became aware of a group gathered in front of Miss Marshall’s desk. Molly was there, and so was Nancy.

  They were craning their heads to read a piece of paper that Billy was holding. They were staring at it, whispering and darting glances at me.

  Had Billy written another list, accusing me of more treachery?

  I caught Molly’s eye. She flushed guiltily. Billy caught my eye too, and shoved the paper at Molly. As it changed hands, I saw the handwriting.

  My mother’s handwriting.

  For a moment I sat there, disbelieving. Then, boiling with rage, I sprang out of my seat, dashed up the aisle and snatched the letter from Molly.

  “You traitor!” I screamed. “You evil thief! How dare you? How dare you go through my private things? My only things, my precious things, the only things I have from my parents! How dare you? How could you?”

  Molly’s face was white. Her eyes were huge and terrified. The room was utterly silent. The class held its breath.

  “Miss Marshall’s coming!” somebody hissed.

  Everyone scurried to their seats. When Miss Marshall walked back in, I was bending silently over my books like everybody else. But inside, I was a boiling cauldron of rage and hurt.

  I didn’t speak for the rest of the morning. Dorothy whispered, “Are you all right?” and I nodded. Apart from that, I had no communication with anybody.

  When we were dismissed after dinner, I headed towards the big elm tree in the far corner of the school field.

  “Anna, wait!”

  It was Molly. I kept my head down and quickened my pace.

  “Anna, please wait.”

  “Go away.”

  “Please, just let me talk to you.”

  “Leave me alone.”

  I reached the tree. It grew right next to the fence. There was nowhere to go from here.

  Molly caught up with me. She reached out for my arm. I shook her hand away.

  “Get off me.”

  “Anna, please. I’m so sorry.”

  I glanced at her face and saw, to my surprise, that she had tears in her eyes.

  “I’m so sorry. I was such an idiot. I should never have taken that letter. It’s just… It was Billy. He just kept on and on about you being a spy, and he had all these reasons, and I thought, well, we don’t have any actual evidence that you’re not.”

  A sound came out of my mouth: a harsh, explosive sound.

  She hurried on. “He said it was my patriotic duty to bring in one of your letters, just in case. So he could look at it and see if it was in code. He said he knew how to decipher codes. I told him you weren’t a spy, but he said it couldn’t do any harm just to check, and I owed it to my country not to take any chances. I’m so sorry. It all sounds so stupid now. I should never have taken any notice of him. He was just… He just kept going on and on, and I… I was an idiot.”

  I looked at her pathetic, tearful face, and my boiling anger and hurt turned into cold, hard hatred.

  “I’m finished with you, Molly
Dean. You’ve done the worst thing you could possibly have done, and you know it. You know how much those letters mean to me. You know they’re all I have from my parents. But you just don’t care.”

  “I do care. I just—”

  “You probably enjoyed doing it. It probably made you feel important. You’ve never really wanted me here, have you? You pretended to be so friendly and helpful and nice, but you’ve always secretly resented me. You don’t like it when I do well at school. You even accused me of trying to steal your parents. As if I would want to do that! I have my own parents! All I’ve ever wanted is to live with them. And why on earth would I want to help Hitler? You know Hitler hates Jews. You know he put my father in a concentration camp. Why would I be on his side? You’re as bad as Billy. You’re as bad as the Nazis. You’re a horrible person and I’m never going to speak to you again.”

  Molly was sobbing now, tears streaming down her face.

  “Please, Anna. Please, please forgive me. I’m so sorry, I truly am.”

  “I will never forgive you, Molly Dean,” I said. “Never. Not for as long as I live.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  If the Invader Comes

  After what Molly had done, I wasn’t going to pander to her by helping less in the house. I made sure I was occupied for every moment of every day. I also started going to bed early with a book. When I heard Molly coming upstairs, I would lie down and pretend to be asleep, so I didn’t have to speak to her. I left the house earlier in the mornings, telling Aunty Rose I’d been made a classroom monitor and had duties before school.

  I still walked home with Molly and Frank, but only because I didn’t want Frank to know anything was wrong. He would chat away about his day and he didn’t notice that I would just talk to him and never say a word to his sister.

  Molly was making a big effort to be nice, always approaching me cautiously, as though I was a mistreated dog who might attack at the slightest provocation. I ignored her as much as possible without making things obvious to the rest of the family. I avoided eye contact and only spoke to her when I absolutely had to.