Yummy. That seemed a nice word.
Sophie Rover had been rolling pastry and listening to the wireless. It was news from the Nuremberg trials. Witness reports about horrors at Auschwitz. She saw me and twiddled the dial with floury fingers until music came on.
‘Beethoven,’ I said, without thinking. ‘Fifth Symphony.’
Mrs Rover stared. ‘By ’eck, you know the classy stuff.’
I looked at my feet. The first booming notes of Beethoven’s Fifth had been played on the BBC’s radio broadcasts to Europe. We thought of it as victory music. We secretly tuned in as often as we could. That was only when the Trautweins were out, of course, and Mama was always careful to have the volume so low the neighbours wouldn’t hear … and to reset the dial to Hitler’s usual bombastic lies as soon as we were done.
‘Classical music’s boring,’ cried Angela. ‘Come on, B, or we’ll miss the bus. Ta ta for now, Auntie Sophie, and thanks for minding baby Daisy!’
‘Wait up, Brigitta,’ said Mrs Rover suddenly. ‘Have a spot of pocket money. You’ve worked hard all week. You might see something you like. Off you go – enjoy yourselves!’
Vera Baggs oozed in from the main house. ‘Watch yourselves, more like. Behave properly, Brigitta, and don’t talk to strange men.’
Why did I need to watch myself when it seemed as if everyone else was watching me already?
On the bus, Mrs Goose rummaged in a string bag and pulled out a rainbow jumble of needles and wool.
Angela groaned. ‘Mum’s trying to teach me how to knit jumpers for the local W.I., which stands for Wibbling Idiots –’
‘Don’t listen to her nonsense,’ said Mrs Goose. ‘The Women’s Institutes are making jumpers for orphans in Europe. We do them in stripes to use up odd bits of wool.’
I stared out of the bus as we came to a junction and there was a massive brick building like a ship. I twisted in my seat to read the sign over the entrance way. Gant’s.
‘That’s Gant’s, that,’ said Mrs Goose. ‘Belongs to the Summer family. It’s back to making gloves now, but it was all bombs and bullets during the war – munitions, you know.’
So that was how it was. Lady Summer owned the factory that made the bombs that blew people up.
After a bad-tempered attempt to loop wool and poke needles, Angela flung the knitting down.
‘Mum, I don’t see why we should send jumpers to Germany – no offence – when we’re short of everything here. Charity begins at home, after all. I’m sick of shortages and hand-me-downs, and even bread on ration. Next thing, we’ll be needing coupons for air. I wish they’d ration homework – I’ve got tons, and I don’t see why I have to do it. It’s not like I’ll need any of that stuff once I get a job. Brigitta, what do you want to be when you grow up?’
Before I could answer, she told me a long list of spectacular careers she’d be perfectly brilliant at.
I tuned her out and played a little music in my head. Debussy, not gloomy Beethoven. Reflections in the Water made me think of a lake sparkling with summer sunshine, not puddles and clouds. When I was very, very small Mama once had played Reflections in a concert hall, but I couldn’t remember anything except that the seats were hard and people clapped a lot.
To give my fingers something to do since I didn’t have a piano, I took up Angela’s knitting. It was second nature to me, to read a pattern and work the stitches. What else could I do in hiding, when it was too dark for books and I’d run through my musical repertoire? Before the wardrobe, Mama and I knitted our way across Europe as we tried to find a country safe for Jews. We unravelled old knitwear, washed and wound the wool, then made it up into new garments to sell. Baby clothes bought train tickets. Sturdy socks paid for potatoes.
‘Ooh, look …’ Angela jabbed me in the ribs and pointed to a boy about my age on the street outside. ‘He’s eight out of ten all right.’
I looked. He was OK.
‘Don’t you like boys?’
I blinked. What was the right answer?
‘I’d smooch him, wouldn’t you?’ she said. ‘Quick, Mum, this is our stop!’
‘Brollies up!’ said Mrs Goose cheerfully. Her umbrella had a duck’s head for a handle.
Angela dawdled, waiting for the eight-out-of-ten boy to pass. When he did, she winked. He winked back. Mrs Goose twirled her umbrella to shield her daughter before she shooed us both through the rain.
‘Here we are. Victoria Department Store.’ Mrs Goose announced. ‘Bombed in the Blitz and all rebuilt now. Have you ever seen anything like it?’
I had, once, running down a street lit with flames. Hold my hand, Mama ordered, as if I could have slipped free, her grasp was so tight. Shop windows were smeared with hate, or cracked, or shattered completely. Don’t buy from Jews! Jews OUT!! Our shoes crunched on broken glass. Shop dummies were tumbled about, missing clothes and arms and heads. I thought we’d run forever, but Mama stopped suddenly. She pulled me into one of the shops and began grabbing things from a pile on the floor.
‘We’ll have these, these and … this. Quick, come on.’
‘That’s stealing.’
She gave a harsh laugh. ‘These Jews don’t need it as much as we do.’
I remember the dress she gave me to wear. It was blue with a white collar. I hated it. I tried my hardest to grow out of it. When it was finally splitting at the seams Mama somehow found me another one. Red with acorn buttons down the front. I hated that one too. By then my hair was down to my shoulders. Long enough for braids, which I also hated.
‘Very pretty,’ Mama said.
‘This shop is amazing,’ Angela gushed. ‘It’s called Victoria after the old queen. There are four floors and a lift, and a cafe. Mumsie, you did say we could have cake …’
‘We’ll see. Come along, Brigitta. I’ll give a list of Lady Summer’s requirements to an assistant and they’ll put it on the Summerland account. Brigitta? Are you listening?’
I was staring at the gloves. There were hundreds and hundreds of them in trays, in boxes, on wooden display forms, all waiting for hands. Dark, coloured, pure white … plain, pearled, embroidered, leather, woollen, lace …
Gants for Gloves! cheered a happy sign.
I looked for grey gloves, wrist length, with tiny button fastenings, like the one tucked safely in my skirt waistband. I’d had to leave my suitcase unattended in Summerland, but I’d brought my secrets with me. I knew I wouldn’t find the glove to match mine here though. My papa had it. Or he’d lost it, thrown it away, forgotten it. Forgotten me.
‘Brigitta!’ Mrs Goose parped like a horn and directed me towards a lift. It took all my courage to step inside the metal box and let the door close. I put my hands out as the floor began to move.
Angela sniggered at me. ‘Haven’t you ever been in a lift before?’
‘No,’ I whispered. Mostly I was unnerved at being trapped. No windows. No chinks. No keyholes to spy out of. Part of me was also disturbed at my own reflection. There was nothing wrong with me, but I didn’t look right. Stupid skirt. Long black plaits. If Mrs Goose could have produced a pair of scissors from her crocodile bag, I would have happily snipped my hair short there and then.
A bell chimed. The lift doors opened onto a sea of underwear. I shrank away.
‘It’s all right,’ said Angela. ‘They’re only girdles. They don’t bite … unless some cheeky boy tries to get inside them!’
‘Nothing like the lovely things we had before the war,’ sighed Mrs Goose.
‘What do you think about Colin Oakley?’ Angela asked suddenly. ‘He’s got a Saturday job and everything. He drives for Gant’s, the glove factory. Do you think he’s a seven or an eight? Ten is highest. Only Joseph Summer ever got a ten from me, back before … you know. The crash.’
‘Come here, Angela!’ Mrs Goose’s voice lowered to a loud whisper. ‘Brassières!’
I followed them through waves of peach, pink and white … silk, net, elastic and rubber.
‘It’s my firs
t fitting,’ Angela confided. ‘Awfully inconvenient having bosoms, when you’re doing sports. They bounce around like little lambs. I’m going to ice-skate in the Olympics one day. Or win the tennis cup at Wimbledon. I can’t decide. You’re all right, you’re as flat as an ironing board. Bit of a late starter, are you? I say, how d’you fancy that?!’ She stopped at a cardboard torso modelling two pointed pads of satin with ribbon straps. ‘Spiral stitching. That’d give even a boyish figure like yours a bit of ooh la la. Oh, don’t worry, you pad them. With cotton wool, or socks – or a whole jumper in each cup, in your case, ha ha.’
‘An-ge-la dar-ling …’ Mrs Goose’s voice was now drawn out in warning. While her mother quibbled over coupons with a shop assistant, Angela picked up various bras. She found a titchy one and pointed to me … then a huge double-boulder-shaped bra labelled ‘Avro’ which she mimed would do nicely for her mum. Finally she put the Avro one on her head like a bonnet.
She was funny. If I’d wanted friends, she might have been one.
I didn’t have any coupons to buy clothes. I did have quick fingers though and big coat pockets. I took the plainest bra I could find, guessing the size.
The Gooses shopped for hours. I was summoned to carry things – packages of purchases for the new patient mostly. I shuddered to see Mrs Goose select a set of swirly patterned purple pyjamas and pitied the patient having to wear them. Ditto the matching dressing gown.
‘I’m utterly ready for cake!’ announced Angela eventually. ‘I could eat a horse.’
‘Horse tastes bad,’ I said, remembering starving Berliners scuttling out of air-raid shelters to slice pieces of a horse that had been killed by a bomb.
‘Ugh, that’s disgusting. Mother, you promised we could eat at the Palm Court Cafe. Come on, B, it’s on the top floor. We can take the stairs if you’d rather.’
Cake. I hadn’t had cake or tarts or ice cream since 1939. No, that wasn’t quite right. Mama always tried to find treats, even in the worst times. She’d once found only slightly stale pastries in a bakery bin. They had little raisins in and tiny crystals of sugar. I couldn’t believe I was going to have cake now, for real.
The cafe was very elegant, like Vienna before the war. We brushed past potted plants to a room filled with wicker furniture, twee cushions and … a piano!
Mrs Goose pulled me away from it. ‘You sit in the corner, Brigitta, behind the pillar. Are you hungry?’
I was ravenous. For music.
I think a waitress came. I think there was a pot of tea for Mrs Goose and glasses of something for me and Angela. I think cake appeared – thin wedges of sponge with jam in between the layers and a dusting of icing sugar. I barely noticed. The pianist had arrived, wearing a suit that had been ironed too many times. He had dark hair, a long face and sorrowful eyes. I scanned the cake eaters and tea drinkers. If the pianist was a Jew – and I thought he was – would anyone mind that he was sitting down, or object to him playing? Men had been shot for less in the war. But now, here, nobody seemed to care. Perhaps I could relax just a little?
No. I heard Mama’s voice telling me ladies always sat up straight and kept their knees together, just so.
The pianist began with a simple, old-fashioned melody. A little tune to lighten a dull afternoon. I recognised it straightaway and played along, inside my head. Mrs Goose’s smile softened. ‘Moonlight Sonata,’ she sighed. ‘This takes me back years.’
‘Nostalgia alert,’ muttered Angela.
‘It was long before the war, when Lord Summer had just brought his new bride back to Summerland, or maybe when Joseph was just a baby. One of Lady Summer’s foreign friends from school days came to stay. We were invited to an evening’s entertainment. I remember it so well – that girl’s piano playing would melt stone.’
Angela yawned and finished her cake. ‘B, can I have your slice if you don’t want it?’
‘Angie dear! Don’t talk with your mouth full!’
I let Angela take the cake. I was savagely wishing that everyone would just shut up shut up shut up so I could listen.
It was the happiest, saddest half-hour I’d known since the war ended.
They wanted to leave before the pianist was done, some nonsense about catching the bus back to the village. And of course I had to go with them. As we left, the pianist happened to look up. He saw my expression – or did he see something else? – and he nodded, just once.
Outside, the lights of Victoria Department Store shone into a twilit world of umbrellas and cars and upturned collars. I touched Mrs Goose’s arm. ‘Excuse me – you mentioned a girl at Summerland, before the war …?’
Angela interrupted. ‘Will you just look at that? Begging in the streets. He should find a job.’ She was staring at a man puddled in rags and rain. He had a sign saying: Can’t Work. War Wounded. Can you Help?
I suddenly remembered the money that Mrs Rover had pressed on me on my way out. It wasn’t much – two silver shillings – but it was a fortune to me. All the money I had in the world in fact. I put it into the beggar’s bowl.
‘He’s sozzled!’ said Angela. ‘Drunk and disgusting.’
I quoted her earlier words politely: ‘Charity begins at home.’
‘Oh bother. I suppose so. Mum, have you got any change …?’
The crocodile bag opened, charity was dispensed. The wounded veteran looked up at us with bleary gratitude. I didn’t feel good giving my money away, I just knew how it felt to be ignored when you needed help.
The bus home was jam-packed – Angela’s expression. Rain pounded. The windows were steamed up. This time I sat on the aisle. My lap was loaded with shopping, my head was full of music, one note trickling over another. I didn’t know how I’d be able to keep it all in; to keep still till I got home – I meant, to Summerland.
We got to the stop by Gant’s factory. Angela wiped condensation off her window. ‘Ugh, look!’ I thought she was going to comment on some boy and give him a low mark out of ten. Instead she gave an ugly laugh. ‘Darkies. Don’t stop for them.’
‘Gant’s girls, I bet,’ said Mrs Goose without much interest. ‘I hear coloureds make good machinists.’
I didn’t think the bus would even slow down, let alone stop. But it did – quite a way from where two wet figures were standing, drenched. The door at the back slid open. A passenger got off. The two girls on the pavement raced up.
‘We’re full,’ said the conductor. ‘You’ll have to wait for the next one.’
One of the girls backed away. The other wasn’t so easily put off. ‘Wait longer in this rain? Come on, you can squeeze in two more.’
‘I said, no room.’
‘You’re kidding me! We’re only little.’
‘Go back where you came from!’ muttered one of the passengers.
‘What, Liverpool?’ said the girl with scorn.
‘So mouthy,’ said Angela.
I stood up. ‘Here is a seat.’
Angela tugged at my coat. ‘Don’t make a scene.’
The conductor ignored me and went to slide the door shut.
‘Here is a seat!’ I said again more loudly, face flaming, heart pounding. ‘There is room for everyone, you stupid people!’
‘Oi, I’ll have none of your lip on my bus!’ objected the conductor.
‘I will leave your bus!’ I shouted.
I dropped all the parcels and did just that.
The doors slid shut and the bus drove away.
‘Well,’ said the gutsy girl on the pavement, ‘that showed them. Now we’ll all three of us get even wetter.’
Fish ’n’ Chips
Connie was the bolder of the two, I learned. I could see that, even bedraggled and drenched, she was a force to be reckoned with. A determined expression, bright eyes and shoulders set back, ready to take on the world. She introduced herself, then her companion.
‘My pal Val. Say hi, Val.’
‘Hi.’ Val had a squeaky voice, like a violin tuning up.
‘I am Bri
gitta.’
‘You’re a fool,’ said Connie, laughing and shaking her head. ‘Fancy making a fuss on the bus. I love you for it. Mostly people are all right once they get over staring, and wanting to poke your hair to feel how springy it is.’
‘People ask me if it’s hot in Africa,’ said Val.
‘It can be hot in the Sahara,’ I said, remembering Mama’s whispered geography lessons, with a battered old atlas.
‘Except I’m from Jamaica. I came over as an ATS girl – that’s army. They would’ve sent me back when they realised I was coloured, but all the paperwork was completed and they needed us recruits when all’s said and done. I mopped floors and scrubbed bathrooms for the duration – my bit to beat the bloody Jerries. Oh drat, you sound foreign – you’re not German, are you?’
‘Austrian.’
Val’s mouth dropped open. ‘Are you really? With convicts and kangaroos and everything?’
Connie gave Val a shove. ‘Austrian, not Australian. Though they have plenty of criminals in Austria, namely Mr Heil Hitler.’
I did not like to see her mock Nazi salute.
Val just shrugged. ‘They might have kangaroos in Austria too – you don’t know.
Darkies, Angela had called them. Someone else on the bus had called them a word beginning with N that I didn’t know.
Vermin, lice, darkies, foreigners, scum. Every language had its own ways to turn people into nothing.
‘You said you are from … Liverpool?’ I didn’t know this town.
‘That’s right,’ replied Connie. ‘British born and bred. Served in the air force during the war, selling sweets and aspirins to the fly boys at East Summer air base. It was all right when I was in uniform. Back on civvy street you get gumpf from idiots, like those on the bus. All they see is the colour of your skin.’
‘Not in the blackout, they didn’t!’ Val laughed, twirling the horn case in her hand.
‘That’s right. They shouted, Put that light out! when we smiled, and we’ve got to keep smiling, haven’t we, Valerie, my lovely?’
Summerland Page 6