‘Aunt Miriam?’
She looked up at the new note in his voice. ‘Yes, George?’
The words fell over each other in their hurry to get out. ‘May we put a phone call through to home? Or to Tante Gudrun? I … I hoped Mutti would ring me but she hasn’t. I want to know how Papa is. I want to write to them. Please can I write to them? I …’
Aunt Miriam waited till he had finished. She looked at the sausage, then put her fork down. ‘George, I wanted to talk to you this morning. I need to tell you …’
‘Tell me what?’ asked Georg.
‘A letter came from your Aunt Gudrun yesterday. I wrote to her as soon as you arrived to let her know you were here safe and well. I was careful not to mention you by name. I said “a package”.’
I am a package, thought Georg.
‘I wrote to your mother at your home address too, but my letter came back yesterday as well. It had been opened, but not by your mother, I think. Don’t worry. I was careful what I wrote to her too. Things … things are not good in Germany.’
‘But Mutti? What did Tante say about Mutti and Papa?’
‘Your aunt says that your house, all your father’s property, has been confiscated. That means the government owns it now,’ she added when she saw Georg didn’t understand.
‘Our house? Why? It’s ours!’
‘Because they say your father is Jewish.’
‘But he isn’t! Jews are different. Everyone knows that,’ he said cautiously, because he was no longer sure, but wanted to hear what Aunt Miriam would say. Aunt Miriam knew things, like who was the President of America and why it was really called the United States.
‘Did your parents tell you that Jews were different?’ asked Aunt Miriam quietly.
‘No. Papa said I was too young to understand.’ Grown-ups told you that when they were afraid that you would understand, thought Georg. But he didn’t say that to Aunt Miriam. ‘Papa said I wasn’t to listen when people talked about Jews.’
‘As though if you don’t listen it doesn’t matter.’ Aunt Miriam shook her head. ‘George, by the Nazi system your father is Jewish. I tried to tell him, to warn him, but he said that he knew the German people better than I did. The land of Goethe and Schiller, he said.’ She shook her head again. ‘Your father could never see that people can be both good and bad, that a land can have beauty as well as evil.’
‘You think Germany is evil?’
Aunt Miriam sighed. ‘I don’t suppose Germany is any more evil than any other country, though I could never say that in public. There are fools in this country too, but just now Germany has one for a leader.’
‘No! The Führer isn’t …’ Georg hesitated.
‘The Führer is a tiny little man who wants to be a big one,’ said Aunt Miriam evenly. ‘And he wants to make his country bigger too. Germany was in a bad way when he came to power. And he’s done good things — bringing the nation together again. But to do that he blamed all the hardships on the Jews, creating hatred and fear, to give communists and fascists and every unemployed peasant a common enemy. The Jews. Sometimes it’s as though hatred spreads like the flu. One person gets it, then another and another.’
‘You are a Jew.’ Georg made it a statement, not a question.
‘No. But Herr Hitler would call me one. My grandfather — your father’s grandfather — was Jewish. He stopped practising his religion when I was a little girl and your father was still a baby. My mother is a Gentile — non-Jew — just like yours; and for practising Jews that means we are Gentiles too. But to Hitler you are still a Jew.’
‘I am not!’
‘To the Nazis you would be Jewish,’ said Aunt Miriam wearily.
Georg was silent. It didn’t make sense. But so much didn’t make sense these days. Did any of it ever make sense? he wondered. Had the world changed, or had he just realised parts of it were stupid and wicked?
His mind came back to the most important thing. ‘Our home is gone?’
‘Not gone. But it isn’t yours now. All your father’s money, everything he and your mother owned, it’s all been taken by the government.’
‘Then where is Mutti now?’ But he knew the answer even as he asked it.
‘I don’t know. Your Aunt Gudrun doesn’t know, or if she does she won’t tell me. She says her sister has vanished and that she has brought shame on the family by marrying a Jew.’
‘No!’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Aunt Miriam simply. ‘If it helps, I think perhaps your aunt knew someone would open and read her letter before it got to me. A Nazi, who might use her words to try to find your mother, or put your aunt in prison if she helped her. Perhaps Gudrun has helped your mother to somewhere safe.’
Georg remembered how Tante Gudrun had vanished on that awful day. Perhaps, he thought.
‘I … I am sure your mother is safe,’ said Aunt Miriam. ‘She acted quickly to get you out. She’ll make good decisions now. But I don’t know where to write to her. We have to wait till she sends us a letter. Maybe the Nazis will let her leave.’
‘I will write to Hitler. Hitler will make things right. He can order them to let Mutti come here, and —’
‘George, Hitler is the one who hates the Jews.’
‘But …’ His world was breaking into pieces. All the things he had been so sure of — his home, his parents, the glory of the Führer — it wasn’t just that they were no longer there for him. It was as though they never had been — not as he had thought they were.
‘Why?’ It had seemed to make sense when he had thought that Jews were evil.
‘I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because things were so very bad in Germany after the last war. Maybe when things are bad it helps to have someone to hate.’
Georg thought about that. ‘Then if you make people happy the hate would go away?’
‘Yes. No. It isn’t simple. I just don’t know.’
Georg thought about giving Hitler a penny ice cream between two wafers. Hitler would eat it and smile …
No, a penny ice cream had only given him a penny’s worth of happiness. It hadn’t covered up the pain. A penny ice cream wouldn’t be enough for Hitler either.
‘Aunt Miriam, did the letter say how Papa is?’ He watched her to see her reaction.
Aunt Miriam’s face went carefully blank. ‘No. I’m sorry. Gudrun didn’t mention your father. She … she asked me not to contact her again.’
‘Will you?’
Aunt Miriam stared at him, then down at the newspaper. ‘I don’t know,’ she said at last. ‘I think if she knew something we should know Gudrun would tell us, despite what she says. Maybe your mother will find some way to get a letter to us.’
There is something you’re not saying, thought Georg. It was what he hadn’t been thinking too. Dead, he thought. You won’t say maybe Papa is dead. I won’t say it either. If we say the word aloud or think of it too often it might be true.
‘I have some other news.’ Aunt Miriam tried to smile. ‘I have spoken to the building supervisor. They’ve agreed that in the circumstances you may stay here.’
‘The circumstances?’ He could leave his clothes in the cupboard. The hated suitcase could be put out of sight under his bed.
‘I told them the truth. Part of the truth. That your mother is abroad and can’t get back just now. I said she was Swiss though, not German. You must remember that if anyone asks you. It will explain your accent too. George, we will be at war with Germany soon. There is a lot of anger against Germans now.’
He stared. War happened somewhere else, in Prague or the Sudetenland or Spain.
‘I just want you to be prepared,’ said Aunt Miriam. She stood up, and scraped her congealed sausages into the bin. ‘Let’s go to this library and then we can have a good lunch somewhere and feed the swans.’
Chapter 11
MAY TO DECEMBER 1939
The year crept on.
Summer brought long days, longer than at home, and twilights that stretched forever. Sometimes it
even brought blue skies. There were tomatoes in the shops and strawberries that brought a sweet pang of home, and lettuces. Summer school holidays began, with children in the streets holding hands with their parents. Sometimes the group of boys played ball in the park. They asked Georg to join in once.
It was fun, being with other boys again. But the boys left for their tea without even telling him their names and for some reason they never came back to the park.
Part of him missed having friends. Mostly he tried not to think about what he missed, in case it all came tumbling in.
No letter came from Germany; no telephone call either. Every day when he came back from the library he hoped Mutti might be sitting in the foyer, waiting, in her flowered dress and the green coat. But she never was.
The library was the heart of his days now. Aunt Miriam had told the lady — the librarian — that same story she had told people in the building: that he had been sick and was still not strong enough for school, and that his Swiss mother was abroad and could not return. He thought he sounded more English now. He listened to the wireless, mouthing the words, as soon as it came on in the morning and at night while he was waiting for Aunt Miriam to come home.
Sometimes they were hard words for a German boy to repeat. The English on the wireless spoke of the Nazi menace, the German threat. Sometimes they spoke of the treacherous Hun.
That’s me, thought Georg. I am the Hun.
He read Aunt Miriam’s newspaper too. There were things that were hard to understand, even when Aunt Miriam explained them; they were frightening too.
The government was giving ‘Anderson’ air-raid shelters to everyone in London and other cities that could be bombed. There was a photo and a diagram of the shelters, to help people work out how to put them together. The shelters were made of corrugated iron and looked no bigger than a bed. People had to bury them in their gardens, so they could hide in them when the bombs fell. Corrugated iron wouldn’t stop a bomb but, if you were lucky, the dirt you piled on top of it might.
We have no garden, thought Georg. Where will we go if bombs come?
Mutti had sent him to England — so far — to be safe, but the newspaper made it sound as if there was no safety, not even here.
In May the paper said Hitler and Mussolini of Italy had signed a pact, to say that they would fight together if there was war.
He looked at a map of the world in the library that day, and stared at the pink splodges all over it. Canada, Australia, India, Burma, so much of Africa. It was hard to understand. England had the biggest empire on earth — there was more pink than any other colour. How could it be in danger, even from Germany and Italy combined? Of course Germany had the Führer, while England only had Mr Chamberlain, whose voice was as dry as English toast. The German army and navy were the biggest in the world. German soldiers were the best in the world too. He hesitated at that. Were they really? Or was that what he’d been told? Were they the best like Jews were bad?
He asked Aunt Miriam that night. She sighed and slipped her shoes off as she sat down on the sofa. ‘Get me a cup of tea, George, there’s a lamb.’ The days in her office were even longer now.
He made the tea carefully, one spoonful for Aunt Miriam and one for the pot, taking the pot to the kettle and not the other way around, so the water would be hot when it poured onto the leaves. He was proud to be able to make tea now. Adults in Germany drank coffee, but he had never made it; he never went into the kitchen except when Lotte was making Kugelhopf and let him lick out the bowl.
Aunt Miriam sipped the tea gratefully, then dunked in her Garibaldi biscuit. The English ate biscuits from packets, bought at the shop, instead of cakes made at home. At least Aunt Miriam did.
At last she spoke. ‘People say the sun never sets on the British Empire, and that’s true enough.’ She smiled briefly. ‘Yes, it is the biggest in the world. But we don’t have nearly as many soldiers as Germany. Nowhere near as many aeroplanes or ships, and certainly nothing as massive as Germany’s battleship, the Bismarck. Germany has been preparing for this war for ten years; and England has done nothing in that time.’
‘Nothing?’
She shrugged. ‘Not enough then. England hoped to negotiate a way to avoid a war. I hoped too. But lately, well, war is coming for us whether we want it or not. If we don’t fight we will be ruled by Hitler and his Brown Shirts.’
People who hate Jews, thought Georg, but he didn’t say it.
‘But England will win? The empire will fight too?’
‘The empire will fight.’ She shook her head. ‘However, the empire isn’t like it looks on the map, George. India has millions of people but very few soldiers, even though they’re good ones. Australia looks big but it’s mostly desert and there aren’t a lot of people. Canada too has more forests and lakes than people. Africa — well, Germany has colonies there as well.’
‘So Germany might win a war,’ said Georg slowly.
Aunt Miriam shut her eyes. Her face was hollowed with weariness. ‘I studied history at Oxford. Your father studied his poets. He studied dreams and words. I studied what people did and tried to understand why. Countries that begin wars rarely win them, George. Maybe because greed stops them seeing situations clearly. And maybe because only a certain sort of madman leads his country to invade another.’
‘But Hitler has already won in Czechoslovakia, in Austria …’ Though the Austrians didn’t fight back, he thought.
Aunt Miriam opened her eyes. ‘I didn’t say victory would be quick. Or easy. Ten years, a hundred … but we’ll win, George. We won last time, despite the odds. We’ll win again.’ Her smile looked almost sad. ‘Or perhaps I am like your father too. Perhaps I only see the patterns in history that tell me what I want to see: that our tiny island has a chance of winning, of defeating a country determined to persecute and kill many of its own people as well as outsiders.’
Ten years of war. A hundred. He glanced out the window and down to the street. A horse was dragging a cart piled high with rubbish. A man in filthy grey clothes called out, ‘Rag and bones! Bring out your rag and bones.’ The cart came in the evenings after people had eaten their dinner. Aunt Miriam had let him take down the chop and roast lamb bones last week, but there were none today. The man and the cart looked so normal. So safe. It wasn’t fair that the world could look safe while darkness hid around the corner.
It wasn’t fair at all.
He read the newspaper every morning after that; it was usually slightly crumpled after Aunt Miriam had read it over breakfast. Ten thousand Jewish women marched through the streets of a place called Palestine to ask the English rulers to let more Jews come from Germany to Palestine. But it seemed the Führer wouldn’t let them out, nor the English rulers let them in.
He wondered if they would let Mutti in to England if Papa wasn’t with her. Aunt Miriam would help if she could, but he didn’t ask Aunt Miriam what she thought. If he didn’t know for sure then he could still hope that one day — someday — there’d be a knock, a phone call, a flowered silk dress down in the foyer.
In August Hitler and Stalin of Russia promised not to fight each other. At least that was better than Russia promising to fight England too. The newspaper that day had an article about a new type of plane too: it had been invented in Germany and was called a ‘jet’. It went very fast by pushing out jets of hot gas.
For a moment Georg was proud of his country and then remembered it wasn’t his country any more.
Sometimes now Aunt Miriam’s women friends came round to supper. They all worked like Aunt Miriam, which disappointed him, as he hoped some might have children. The women wore skirts and jackets like Aunt Miriam did, and shoes with stumpy heels. They were women who knew things, like Aunt Miriam; and they talked about them too.
He listened when Aunt Miriam and her friends talked. He handed around cups of tea on a tray, just like Lotte had done. He bought a cake at the bakery and served it on little plates too. It wasn’t as good as Lotte’s Kugel
hopf. The cream was thin and sweet and sort of rubbery, not like real cream at all. But Aunt Miriam’s friends smiled at him, and said how lucky Aunt Miriam was to have a nephew like him.
‘I know,’ said Aunt Miriam. He knew she meant it too.
He sat on a stool by the door, so quiet that they mostly didn’t notice him, so he could listen to them talk, to hear things that even Aunt Miriam might not tell a child.
They talked of the ‘Polish crisis’ and of how Hitler had offered not to fight England if the English allowed him to have the part of Poland called Danzig.
It had seemed so simple back in Germany. The Führer had to free the Danzig Germans from Polish rule! But here it wasn’t simple at all.
One of Aunt Miriam’s friends called Hitler ‘that frightful little man’. That hurt a little too, though he wasn’t quite sure why.
The library was better. The stories there were far away: boys battled boa constrictors in the jungles; and a girl called Dorothy was swept up in a tornado and taken to a land called Oz.
He took to going to the library earlier and earlier each day. It was shut at lunchtime, but one day when he was about to leave the librarian asked if he would like to share her sandwiches. They were cheese and pickle, and she gave him a cup of milky tea, the first that he had drunk. He didn’t like it much, but drank it to be polite.
Her name was Mrs Huntley. She told him about her daughter, quite grown up now. She and her husband had gone to Australia, the big pink splodge on the bottom of the world, ‘where there are lots of butterflies, dear, and it’s hot even in winter. They like it there, but it’s a dreadful long way away. I never get to see the grandbabies at all. They send me photographs, of course, but it isn’t the same.’
Next day he brought his sandwiches down to the library, and hoped she would ask him to stay again. She did. She had made an apple teacake, and they had a slice each for lunch and for tea as well, before she closed the library to go home to make her husband’s supper.
Now if there was no one else in the library who needed their books stamped Mrs Huntley would take him around the shelves and show him books that he might like, even books in the ‘Adults’ room. A book on keeping bees, which was most interesting, one called Birds of the Marshes and one on keeping hens too. Georg thought he would like to keep hens. Or a dog. A dog that he could hug for warmth and comfort. A dog would curl up on the sofa with him, on the long nights while he waited for Aunt Miriam to come home.
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