The Pearl Thief

by Fiona McIntosh

  It was a reassuringly old-fashioned sort of store, just a few shelves in the centre with tins and bottles of products, but mostly people were browsing to kill time while waiting to be served at the counter for everything from cheese to flour. Hampstead was not yet consumed by the novelty of supermarket fever that was overtaking the south; he was no fan, preferring to step onto the sawdust and taste the metallic smell of a butcher’s shop to have the aproned man behind the counter talk him through the best cuts. Every now and then he liked to shop for food with the same pleasure he shopped for clothes or a new umbrella. He loved the toasty, comforting smell of a bakery with its blocks of burnished ‘high tins’ or feeling smug at walking back out, having resisted the urge to buy a glossy strawberry jam tart. His favourite, though, was the local coffee shop that roasted its beans daily in small batches and ground them for customers. The fragrance could instantly lift his mood. And he could smell it now, above the slightly sour tang of wheels of cheese and the sugary promise of biscuits in tins waiting to be lifted off their greaseproof paper and into brown paper bags. His belly rumbled; buttered toast and thickly cut marmalade – not his first choice – from early this morning would not keep him going all day. This reminded him he had run out of Marmite and so he stepped into one of the two aisles and hunted down a jar. Good. That gave him an excuse for arriving at the counter.

  ‘Yes, sir?’ the woman said, wiping her hands on her apron. ‘Sorry for the wait. What can I get you?’

  ‘Er, just this, please,’ he said, placing the squat jar of yeast extract on the counter. She looked surprised and he privately admitted it was an odd purchase for a man in a three-piece suit who looked like he belonged in the city. ‘Did you know the originators of this product in Staffordshire believe it helped win both world wars because it was mandatory in rations?’

  The woman chuckled and his appearance was forgotten. ‘My son assures me it is named after a French casserole, which is very strange, don’t you think?’

  His turn to grin. ‘Hence the shape of the bottle – an attempt at an earthenware casserole, perhaps? Even more intriguing is the discovery that it was invented – quite by accident – by a German scientist in the previous century.’

  ‘I’m sure most British don’t know that!’ she said, ringing up the pennies on her till.

  He found a sixpence in his coins and handed it to her.

  ‘And your change,’ she said, handing him back heavy, silken coppers that spoke of constant handling. ‘Shall I put this in a small bag?’

  ‘Thank you. Er … do you mind if I ask if you’re Helen Evans?’

  She blinked. ‘I am, yes.’

  The shop was now mercifully quiet. Her husband strolled over. ‘I’m John Evans, the owner.’

  Edward held out a hand in greeting. ‘Mr and Mrs Evans, my name is Edward Summerbee. I’m a solicitor and I’ve travelled up from London today on a mission – a mercy mission, you could say.’ It was suddenly a lot more difficult to face these people than he had anticipated and he found himself clearing his throat, half from embarrassment and the other part of him cautioning that what he was about to do might cause them suffering.

  ‘Oh, yes? How can we help?’

  He took a breath. Damned either way. He decided in that heartbeat that he would never live with the regret of not trying to find Katerina’s brother. The boy had a right to know his living family, surely?

  He gave a tight smile. ‘Er, this is awkward, please forgive me. It’s not my intention to cause any disruption to your lives but information you could give me might change the life of a friend of mine for the better.’

  They both frowned, casting a worried glance at each other.

  ‘What’s this all about?’ Helen Evans said. ‘You’re making me anxious.’

  He shook his head and raised a palm to appease her. ‘No, please don’t fret. My friend is a war refugee.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ John Evans said. He looked interested but no less troubled.

  Edward pressed on. ‘Her name is Katerina Kassowicz.’ They waited. The Evans couple were patient – he’d give them that – but he’d better hurry or risk being asked to move on as new customers arrived. ‘She believes all of her family – that includes four siblings – were killed during the occupation of Czechoslovakia.’ Now the Evans exchanged a fresh look of distress; they were beginning to guess what might be coming. He hurried on. ‘She has no idea that her brother survived and that he was sent on one of the Kindertransports to London. I believe that your son is —’

  The bell jangled its interruption behind him and he wanted to yell for the customer to leave and just let him finish.

  Helen Evans’s worried expression relaxed. ‘It’s Summerbee, isn’t it?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Mr Summerbee, I’m sorry that your friend is alone in the world but I can save you a lot of trouble. Henry – that’s our boy – did come from Czechoslovakia, but he doesn’t have a name even remotely like your lady friend’s.’

  ‘Nevertheless, his name when he arrived into your care was Hersh Adler, right?’

  The woman blanched and her lips thinned with distress.

  ‘Now, look here,’ her husband began.

  Edward gave them no more time to interrupt. ‘I can tell you the date he arrived. I can even tell you the colour of the blanket he was wrapped in. I can certainly give you the name of the two people who delivered Hersh to you here in Hampstead. And I can assure you, his name is not Hersh Adler. It’s Petr Kassowicz.’

  ‘How dare you barge in here and make accusations!’ Helen Evans said, hysteria creeping into her voice.

  Her husband squeezed her arm to calm her. ‘Be right with you, Mrs Shephard,’ he said tightly towards the canned food.

  ‘No hurry, darlin’,’ she called from behind the aisles, no doubt eavesdropping, Edward thought.

  ‘Please leave now,’ John Evans murmured in a strangled whisper.

  ‘Please, this is not an accusation. It’s the truth. May I just speak with your son?’

  ‘No, you can’t! They’ve had years. We’ve raised him since he was not much more than a baby. He’s my son. He doesn’t need to know about his family. Someone told us that if we hadn’t heard by a decade after the war, they were likely dead. Now I feel badly for those folk, really I do. But while he may not be our flesh and blood, he’s our child in every other way. Don’t you bring all this trouble into his life.’ Mrs Evans was pointing a finger at him. ‘My husband asked you to leave.’

  There was no point in lingering. He raised his hat to them. ‘I’m sorry for the distress but I do have to speak with your son. He’s over twenty-one and has a right to know, as indeed his sister needs to know he survived.’

  ‘Get out!’ Helen Evans had lost her manners and Edward knew it was best to retreat.

  ‘My sincere apologies.’ He hurried towards the door.

  The jangling of the bell behind him echoed how his nerves suddenly felt. A couple of children about nine years old, he reckoned, skidded to a halt on bikes.

  ‘Penny for the guy, mister?’ one of them asked, nodding his head towards a sad pile of clothes to the right of the shop, near some bushes. They’d stuffed arms and legs to achieve a poor semblance of a figure and his face was depicted with a vivid green mask, the colour of shamrock. The familiar masks could be purchased in red or green for a ha’penny in most corner shops.

  ‘You’re joking, aren’t you, lads? We’re still in April – you’re seven months ahead.’

  ‘We just want to get ahead of our competition, mister.’ One of them grinned mischievously.

  He found a penny and tossed it into the tweed cap on the ground next to the slumped dummy of Guy Fawkes. ‘Boys, do either of you know a Hersh Adler?’

  They shook their heads. ‘Nope.’

  ‘He works here. His parents own the shop,’ he pressed.

  ‘D’ you mean Henry?’

  ‘Er, yes, I do.’

  ‘Henry said he’d help us choose the best fi
reworks in November.’

  ‘Did he? Good. Where can I find Henry?’

  ‘He’s a lifesaver. He works up at the Ponds,’ one of the boys continued, flicking a thumb in no real direction.

  ‘The Ponds?’

  The door opened and John Evans loomed. ‘Go on home, boys. I don’t want to see that wretched Guy Fawkes outside this grocer’s until next November, do you hear?’

  They mumbled they had.

  ‘Still here, Mr Summerbee?’

  ‘Just leaving,’ he said. He walked on up the hill, wondering how to find out what the boys had meant, when he saw a familiar figure struggling up ahead. He hurried to catch up. ‘I had no idea you were going to drag your trolley so far. Do you need help?’

  ‘You again, eh? Are you following me?’

  He laughed. ‘I’m not. My name is Edward Summerbee and I’m lost, actually.’

  ‘On the way to your aunty’s? Well, that shows how often you don’t visit, eh?’

  She’d trapped him so he changed tack like any good solicitor. ‘Are you sure I can’t help?’

  ‘Quite sure, young man. I do this walk each day – good for me, the doctor says.’

  ‘I’m too early for my aunt. I’m looking for somewhere called the Ponds … would you know what that —’

  ‘The Swimming Ponds?’ She pointed. ‘Follow your nose. Who’s your aunty, then?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Go on with you,’ she said. ‘Stop pestering me. Take her some flowers.’

  He lifted his hat with a polite grin and set off. Right enough, he soon emerged onto the Heath and felt rewarded by the sprawl of countryside and copses that breathed for London on the doorstep of the metropolis. Within moments the air felt cleaner and Edward found a fresh bounce in his tread. He’d been too long in the city without a break. When all of this was done, he was going to plan a few days away – striding the moors in the north, perhaps?

  He could see the first of the lakes – one person braving the depths. He recalled now reading about the swimming ponds that were said to be fed by iron-rich springs and good for the health.

  It was astonishing that anyone would want to glide around in the dark waters while he was rugged up against the cold. A sign pointed him to the mixed ponds and he opted to head that way, skirting the leafy lane down which was a secluded lake for the use of female pond swimmers only. He doubted he’d find a young male lifeguard there.

  He arrived at the mixed pond, which had, by his count, six swimmers doing slow laps. He spotted two lifeguards and made his approach; neither of them looked young enough to be the man he sought and he felt his belly dip with disappointment.

  ‘Will Henry Evans be around today?’ he asked one.

  ‘He already is. Over there,’ one of the guards said, and Edward’s attention snapped around in the direction in which he was pointing to a man in a lifeguard’s uniform crouched talking to a swimmer, whom Edward could now see was a young woman in a bathing cap. ‘Are you swimming today, sir?’

  ‘Er, no. I have a message to pass on to Henry Evans from a family member, if that’s all right?’ Stick to the truth, he decided.

  The man shrugged. ‘It’s a free country. But he’s known as Hersh around here; prefers it. But it’s good you’ve come – you can drag him away from that girl he’s all moony about before her brothers and uncles do it for him.’ He swept a hand across the scene. ‘These are the men in her family, keeping an eye on her.’

  Edward couldn’t be more confused … so not Henry. He raised a hand in a greeting: ‘Hersh?’ The fellow heard and turned his way. He watched the young man say something to the girl before he straightened. She swam away from the bank towards the other side. ‘Hersh Adler?’ Edward asked again.

  ‘That’s me,’ he said, approaching, and Edward was struck by the unnerving gangly similarity to Katerina, in spite of his darker hair and features; he had a similar loose-limbed, angular quality. Or am I imagining it? Edward wondered.

  But as the man called Hersh Adler, who was also known as Henry Evans, drew close, Edward could sense his pulse accelerating. He could feel the normally silent, suddenly thunderous sound of his blood rushing beneath his ears, as though the gate of a weir had been opened. A moment of dizziness left him with a rising sense of euphoria. There was no mistaking this man; instantly all his doubt about himself and his decision was washed away, like detritus down a street drain in a big downpour. His conscience was clear; he had stuck to the law, not broken any of his code, but he had something far better – surely? – to give Katerina now. He knew he had found Petr Kassowicz because it was written in the man’s features: the cat’s eye! The mark of the Kassowiczs was on him. The secret behind the supposed death of Petr and his equally secret escape from the Nazis was yet to be explained – might never be – but now all Edward cared about was bringing the two survivors of this tragic family back together.

  ‘You go by the name of Hersh Adler?’

  The strange-eyed man regarded him with understandable suspicion. ‘And Henry Evans when I’m not at the Ponds.’

  Not secretive, then. ‘So I gather from your parents.’

  The young man frowned in consternation.

  ‘Is it because you’re unsure of which best suits you … or perhaps feels like you?’ Edward wondered.

  ‘Amongst other reasons. Who are you, please?’

  Edward kept it brief but explained he was a London solicitor trying to help a friend, a Jewish survivor. ‘Would you care to join me on that bench?’

  ‘So you’re a solicitor. Why do I matter to a friend of yours?’

  ‘Because I think in helping me to help her, you might also solve a puzzle of your own.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Because I can tell you your real name and what happened to your family in Prague.’

  The grocer’s boy, yet to learn that he was the son of a much-admired European glass manufacturer and art collector, stared at the solicitor as though he had just walked up and told him he was from a planet called Mars.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I think you know what I’m referring to but I can understand this is a shock. I’m sorry that I couldn’t give you more warning of my visit. It’s unfair but life hasn’t been fair to your Czech family, and finding you could right the balance.’ Edward hated how bitter he sounded. He just desperately wanted the discovery of Petr Kassowicz to make a difference, and for the boy’s sister to regard him with anything but that cool loathing in the expression she’d left him with.

  ‘Let me think about it first.’ The youngster looked shocked but spoke to Edward in a tone that landed on Edward to make him feel like a travelling salesman offering cut-price curtains or furniture on hire purchase.

  ‘Young man, please understand. I know who your family is. I can connect you to the people you have probably spent a lifetime wondering about.’ He wasn’t ready for the tall youngster to suddenly bend as if doubling up in pain.

  Edward was at his side. ‘Henry … Hersh …’ He swallowed. Damn it, say it. ‘Petr?’

  A low sob escaped from Katerina’s brother. ‘Please be real; don’t lie to me.’

  It was heartbreaking to hear the pain in his voice. ‘This is no lie. You have living family.’

  Later, when they’d excused themselves from the worried onlookers, he sat next to Petr on one of the Heath’s benches. He noted it had been donated by a family with a surname as whimsical as his own: Cinnamon. It was even in memory of a man called Edward. He smiled to himself but regarded the 24-year-old who was now slumped over, holding his head.

  Since that single sob he’d made no sound as Edward had shared all that he knew, how he’d found the truth of that snap decision in 1939 as Petr’s father had handed him over to be carried under a different name and how the woman who had taken him from his father had never forgotten.

  There were tears but they were slow and silent; not many but enough to hint that a life shift was occurring within the fellow formerl
y known as Hersh.

  ‘I don’t know why your siblings were told you’d died but there would have been a reason that was justified in the minds of your parents, I’m sure. Perhaps Katerina might be able to offer up some thoughts on that when you meet.’

  Edward paused for the boy to speak, waited while he dragged the back of his hand across his cheeks.

  ‘I’ve been coming here most days of my teenage years in the hope of finding a connection to my birth family. I almost gave up hope but thought to myself I’d give it one more summer.’

  Edward smiled. ‘Sounds like our meeting was meant to be.’

  His voice carried wonder. ‘I have a sister,’ he said, finally straightening. He sounded awed.

  ‘You had four of them. I doubt Katerina is ever going to let you go once she hugs you. She’s a beautiful woman and you both look alike.’

  Petr grinned self-consciously. ‘How did she survive? You haven’t told me anything about how she escaped death or the clutches of the enemy.’

  ‘It won’t be an easy story for her to tell, or for you to hear, but let it come from her lips. It’s her tale and it’s traumatic and courageous and only she knows what your household was like without you in it. Your mother … well, Katerina can explain all of this.’ He sighed. ‘What about your parents – John and Helen? How will they feel about you learning about your past? I feel badly going behind their backs when they expressly warned me against it. However, you’re an adult and you deserve to know the truth of your family and Katerina deserves to enjoy a relationship with you. The Kindertransports were not designed to separate you all for good – simply to keep the young safe – and the hope was always to reunite the families.’

  ‘Mum’s frightened she’ll lose me. Dad wants me to take over the shop, maybe turn it into one of those new supermarkets and get on with my life as their son. I can’t blame them. They just want me to be happy, normal, married, living close by …’