‘Mine’s bigger,’ said Angela Goose. She wrapped her arms around her turnip in a sulk. The shadows it cast made her face look gruesome.
‘They’re all terrifying,’ said Mrs Rover soothingly. ‘I shan’t sleep a wink tonight I’m so frit.’
‘And we make these because …?’ I was lost for words.
Angela sighed. ‘I told you – it’s All Hallow’s Eve. Don’t you know anything? The spirits of the dead come out tonight! Ghosts and ghoulies and things that go bump! This is what we do at Halloween. We make lanterns and tell ghost stories.’
She had been glaring at me since she arrived at Summerland with her brother. As soon as Mrs Rover left the room, Angela pinched my arm hard. ‘That’s for leaving us in the lurch the other day. You’re crazy, you know that? Jumping off the bus to make room for coloureds! I told my dad and, well, he stuck up for you, which was really annoying, because he’s my father not yours. Anyway, he said it’s important to speak out about things you believe in, even if that sometimes means you’re thrown to the lions.’
‘I thought she went to a dance, not to see lions?’ said Andrew, frowning.
‘He meant the first Christians, stupid. They were always getting eaten alive. Anyway, I told Dad I didn’t see what the problem was, calling those girls darkies. They are dark.’
Angela really had no clue why that scene on the bus had been so horrible. If you’re used to throwing stones, you don’t stop to think how it feels to be hit by one.
‘They are people,’ I pointed out.
‘That’s what Dad said, except he phrased it more like, They’re all God’s children and then he went on about loving everyone equally.’
Andrew giggled. ‘Angie loves Colin Oakley. She drew a heart with his name on it.’
‘Shut up, you little twerp, or I’ll pinch you too!’ she threatened.
Andrew scooted out of his sister’s reach. ‘He likes Brigitta best anyway.’
‘He does not! Does he? Did he tell you that? Stupid boy. Doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Anyway, that’s not why I’m cross with you, Brigitta. I’m mad because I had to carry all your parcels when you ditched us.’ Angela lowered her voice. ‘They were for Joseph Summer, weren’t they, those things we bought in town? Have you seen him? What does he look like? Miss Baggs was in the shop talking about scars and bits missing. He must be hideous or he wouldn’t hide away all the time. Baggs says the door is kept locked from the inside. That’s so weird.’
‘What’s weird?’ Mrs Rover came bustling into the kitchen with a dinner tray. The patient had barely touched his supper. What was so wrong with him he didn’t eat food when it was offered, and he kept himself hidden on purpose even when it was safe to come out? I took his breakfast up every morning. I’d put the tray on the floor and knock. After about a minute the bolt would slide back, the door would open and a hand would emerge to pull the tray inside.
Mrs Rover repeated her question. ‘What are you calling weird?’
‘Brigitta,’ said Angela quickly. ‘Don’t you think she’s odd? She’s never done Halloween. She doesn’t know what Harvest Festival is either. How about Christmas, B?’
‘I am Jewish.’
Had there been something like a harvest festival back home when I was small? I remembered rustling leaves and fat fruit decorations. It suddenly hit me hard how much I’d lost during the war. Not only my parents and relatives, also my roots. My heritage. All those things that add into the mix of making us who we are. Now I was slowly getting used to the fact that it was safe to be Jewish in England. In fact I was getting used to a lot of things. The turnip lanterns lit the faces of three people who knew me. Who maybe liked me.
They didn’t know me of course.
I checked the clock and put on oven mitts. When I opened the oven door a waft of gingery heaven filled the room.
Andrew squealed. ‘Parkin! Parkin!’
‘Specially for Halloween,’ beamed Mrs Rover. She slapped his hand away. ‘Wait till it cools. Brigitta, cut it into squares and leave it on the rack.’
I breathed in the amazing aroma. It was called Yorkshire parkin and it tasted like gingerbread. I knew that because I had licked the bowl out. Before the war we’d been at something Christmassy. I forget which town or country. A market, I think. There were glass baubles and spiced wine … and iced gingerbread stars. Mama gave me a star all for myself. I’d nibbled the icing off first.
When the parkin wasn’t so hot I eased squares of it out of the tray and onto the cooling rack. Andrew raced past and snatched two, one for him and one for Angela.
With her mouth full Angela cried, ‘Can we tell ghost stories now?’
‘Let me get a cushion to hide behind first,’ said Mrs Rover, who didn’t look like someone who’d hide even if a Tiger tank was bearing down on her.
‘Just so you know, Auntie Sophie, I’ve decided I’m going to be a bestselling author. I’ve started a story already. It’s going to be three books long and feature a beautiful schoolgirl hockey player who outwits evil Nazis hiding in the Peruvian jungle.’
‘Are there Nazis in the jungle?’
‘Bound to be. They’re everywhere – I heard it on the radio. Spies and war criminals. Come on, B, leave the washing-up. Prepare to be thrilled, chilled and spooked out of your skin! Gather round, gather round,’ she went on, a little pointlessly since we were all at the table already. ‘Midnight, the witching hour draws near …’
‘It’s only six o’clock,’ piped up Andrew. He showed me his wristwatch. ‘I can tell the time.’
‘Shut up!’ hissed Angela. ‘We’ve got to be home by seven, so it’s as close as we can get to midnight. Anyway, as I was saying … The witching hour draws near, and the chill of Halloween enters our bones! ’Tis a night to test our courage. Ghosts of the graves all around, I summon you now –’
‘Woe, woe, woe …’ A dismal voice made us all jump.
‘Who goes there?’ challenged Andrew. ‘Friend or foe?’
‘Mrs Rover, oh my poor head!’ A creature pushed open the door from the main house. It was a hideous apparition: Vera Baggs in a fluffy yellow bed-jacket, a frilled net nightcap and a flower-sprigged nightgown down to her ankles. She spluttered into a handkerchief. ‘If I didn’t have such an iron constitution I would surely be in my grave by now.’
‘Cold still making you poorly?’ Mrs Rover asked politely.
‘It’s not a cold!’ Miss Baggs sneezed again. ‘It’s the flu. I’ve only left my sick bed to request a little glass of your ginger wine, for medicinal purposes.’
Mrs Rover fetched a bottle from the scullery and passed Miss Baggs a glass.
‘Not that little!’
Mrs Rover poured some more. ‘And how is Lady Summer?’
‘Nothing like as bad as I am. The aches! Oh – is that fresh parkin? No, no, I’ve no appetite at all … Far too poorly. I’ll, er, just take a few pieces back to bed with me …’
She wasn’t long gone when we all started to laugh.
We sat in the kitchen until the candles guttered, the wicks were snuffed and Mrs Rover switched the lights on again. ‘Home time for you two little terrors,’ she announced, giving Angela and Andrew a hug.
‘Can’t Brigitta have a cuddle too?’ asked Andrew.
‘Don’t be stupid,’ scoffed Angela. ‘Sophie’s our aunt. Brigitta’s got her own.’
Did I have aunts? Was there anyone from my family left alive? How could I know? I had to forget all those names and faces. They belonged to before the war.
When they’d gone, Sophie Rover patted my shoulder. ‘Don’t mind Angie, she’s got a good heart. She gets lumbered with baby Daisy and little Andrew all the time.’
I thought about that. Had my mother felt lumbered with me? She could have survived so much more easily without a child. Unlike me, she ‘passed’ as non-Jewish, which meant she was acceptable to the Nazis. Otherwise she’d never have been able to work for the Trautweins, who had a photograph of the Führer in their bedroom
. Did they say, Night night, Hitler, as they snuggled into bed?
Mama had to dust that picture, and the one on the piano.
‘Our Führer will see us through,’ Frau Trautwein used to say, when it was clear that Allied bombers would soon reach Berlin, despite her husband’s continued denials that a single bomb would ever fall. ‘Our leader has all sorts of secret weapons ready to win the war. Ray guns and radio-controlled flying bombs that can wipe out whole cities at a time.’
‘Won’t that be nice,’ Mama replied. The old Traut didn’t understand sarcasm.
Would my mama have abandoned me to save herself?
Never.
Did my papa?
Absolutely.
I’ll find you, he called out.
Here I am. No sign of you, was my answer.
There was no sign of life in Summerland at midnight. The ghosts, on the other hand, were gathered around the ballroom piano. Judging by their winks and nudges, it was just as well there was no sound because the song was definitely rude.
I went softly, softly along the first-floor landing. Vera Baggs had a little room off the main bedroom, where Lady Summer slept. The only sound I heard was a series of wet snores and snuffles from Miss Baggs. Right at the end of the corridor, was a room I’d only seen in daylight. It was called the Blue Room, because it had lovely blue Chinese wallpaper and faded silk curtains. My mama would have loved it. Blue was her favourite colour, especially when matched with grey.
There was a wardrobe in the Blue Room. I’d had to clean a mouse nest from under its clawed feet. There were mirrors on the wardrobe doors. When I pulled the curtains open I saw a ghostly image. Was that me or Mama haunting the glass?
‘It’s the guest-room,’ came a quiet voice. ‘Or it was when guests actually came here.’
I turned. The dead bomb aimer was in the doorway, in the shadows. I said nothing. I was still churned up at the thought that he’d lost his life helping others lose theirs.
‘I’m glad I found you,’ he went on.
‘You want to talk about bombing people?’ came my angry whisper.
‘I want to apologise. You were right, what you said before. On missions, we never did worry about what happened on the ground. We were there to deliver our payload and get home safely. As far as we were concerned, the more dead Germans the better. We didn’t think of them as people. We couldn’t. We just wanted to win the war.’
He shocked me into silence He wasn’t done. ‘That doesn’t mean I’m not sorry for what I did. What we all did. I’ve thought about it ever since, wondering how many houses I flattened, how many innocent people I killed.’
I went to perch on the window seat, away from the wardrobe and the mirror. Night enveloped us both. Darkness was familiar. I imagined the airman was haunting the wardrobe I once lived in. A friend I could talk to about anything I liked.
‘It’s Halloween,’ I began, unable to just blurt my story out cold. ‘We made Yorkshire parkin.’
‘I used to love Halloween! We did apple bobbing …’
‘What is that?’
‘You put apples in a barrel or bowl of water and have to catch one in your mouth – no hands – if you want to eat one.’
I smiled. ‘We made turnip lanterns today. Then we told ghost stories …’ I let the words linger. ‘In the kitchen earlier, Angela talked of a woman called Lettuce, but I thought that was a salad.’
‘Lettice! It’s a name,’ he laughed. ‘She must have meant Lettice Varley, the gamekeeper’s wife, killed in the cottage. I knew about that. Do you suppose she haunts the Bomb House now?’
He didn’t seem to mind talking about ghostliness, so I went on, marking time while I gathered up all my courage and all my English words. I would tell this dead boy what had happened. I couldn’t keep everything squashed inside me any longer. My hopes, my plans, they burned inside me like a candle in a lantern. The dead could keep secrets, even if I couldn’t trust anyone living.
‘I don’t know ghost stories; I only know real ghosts. In all places, there are the dead. In all houses, all seas, all rivers. In the sky and the ground. Peacetime ghosts, and millions more from the war. Sometimes, if the love is strong, ghosts can help you.’ My voice was so low I almost hypnotised myself. ‘One night in Berlin, the bomber planes flew. The – how do you call it? – air-raid noise …’
‘Siren?’
‘Yes. The air-raid siren, it was loud. People ran downstairs to the Kellar … the cellar, you say? With babies, and food and warm clothes. One girl, she couldn’t go down to the cellar because she would be arrested, so she stayed in the house and her mama stayed to keep her company. The bombs falling … explosions all over the city. Louder and louder the aeroplanes. Closer and closer the bombs, then BOOM! The house was hit. Top floor went to ground floor. Bedroom to cellar – all gone flat.’
‘And the girl?’
‘Dead, in the ruins. Lying in a broken piano, next to a broken Adolf Hitler picture and a broken wardrobe, and her broken mama.’
‘Her mother was dead?’
‘Like dust in the wind, a soul with no body. Then the girl moved. She breathed.’ I took a deep breath in, as if coming back to life. ‘She moved. She was … gefangen …’ I mimed it.
‘Trapped?’ he suggested.
‘Yes, trapped. No help. No people. Fires were burning, close and hot. Suddenly the girl hears a voice. Hold my hand, says the voice. Don’t let go. There is a hand, a grey hand, reaching. The girl takes it and climbs out of the fire and bricks and broken piano bits. She is escaped. She looks for the lady who helped her – it was her mama. Her mama’s ghost helped the girl out.’
‘The girl – that was you?’
‘When the daylight came, in the smoke and dust the girl had one thing in her hand, from the ghost helping. It was one grey glove.’ I pulled the grey glove out and laid it flat on my palm. In the wardrobe mirrors, my reflection held out a glove too. Almost a matching pair.
‘I have not shown this before. It is my secret. I am come to Summerland to find the other glove. I know who had it. A man. His name …’
His name.
Something clicked in my mind. I was an idiot. A stupid potato-headed idiot. I pointed at the ghost. ‘You … Wie hießt du? What is your name?’
‘What … what do you mean?’
‘Who are you?’
‘Don’t you know? Who do you think I am?’
Delusions came crashing down inside me, like the Trautweins’ obliterated house. ‘You’re Joseph Summer, ja? Not a ghost. I cannot tell you things.’ I covered the grey glove quickly. ‘Come closer, where I can see you. Why do you hide?’
‘No – I …’ His shadow shifted.
‘Wait! Don’t go. Please, tell me … Do you remember, before the war, a man … name Golanski …?’
The corridor was empty. The patient’s door clicked shut. The bolt slid home.
Toad in the Hole
Summerland was a fridge. Only the kitchen was snug. There were no fires in the bedrooms. Lady Summer permitted herself a small amount of coal in the study, where she worked sorting bills and harassing men at the ministry who still hadn’t managed to remove the fifteen military toilets.
One of my jobs was to fill stone bottles with hot water at bedtime. These were wrapped in towels to warm the beds. I had one myself, and an extra blanket in my little attic room. It was starting to look quite homey up there. Sophie Rover showed me how to crochet strips of old stockings into a rug so the floor wasn’t bare. I had a picture too.
I’d been in other attic rooms for Lady Summer, searching through the cobwebs and clutter for things to bring out of storage. I liked it up in the eaves. There were chinks in the roof where sun-fingers poked through. Among the lumber I searched for photographs from when Lady Summer was a girl. No luck. I found a lot of Joseph’s things. Cricket bats riddled with woodworm. Tennis rackets with saggy strings. Tarnished trophies for sporting wins. All the things a normal boy might have in a normal life.
&nbs
p; When I was done fetching down boxes of old books and crockery sets and clocks that didn’t tick, I smuggled the picture I wanted into my room. It was quite small, with a wooden frame carved into oak-leaf shapes. The colours were mostly dark – smudges of brown and black – but in the middle of the murk there was a half-peeled orange and a knife. You could see every dimple on the peel, almost smell it. I wanted to bite into the juicy segments and taste how sweet it was. I set the picture on the chest of drawers in my room so I could admire it from my bed.
I ran down the frosty avenue to the village, with letters to post. My own envelopes were mixed with the rest. I’d written to the Jewish Agency and to the Red Cross. It was a huge risk of course. If they had any news of a Golanski, they’d have to write back to me at Summerland, which meant the authorities would know where I was. Not good. The other problem was Vera Baggs. She liked to collect the post as soon as it arrived. How would I explain away letters addressed to me? Who’ve you got to write to? You’re nobody, she’d say.
I could see the Goose children were in the village, bundled in warm woollies. Angela was pushing baby Daisy in a giant pram. Andrew pushed a doll of a man in a wheelbarrow. The man had bulbous arms, straw coming out of his trousers and a crayoned face. His hat looked very much like Miss Baggs’ best hat. In fact, it was Miss Baggs’ best hat. It suited him better.
Andrew waved me over and held out an empty jam jar. ‘Penny for the guy!’
‘What are you doing?’
‘We’re going to burn him,’ Andrew said.
Angela butted in.‘Once we’ve taken him round the village and cadged enough money to buy firecrackers at Oakleys’. Come with us.’
‘I don’t want to burn anyone.’
‘It’s an English tradition,’ said Angela. ‘You have to learn our culture if you’re going to live here. This is the first Summerland bonfire since before the war. The whole village is invited.’
‘We’ve got two pennies now,’ Andrew boasted. ‘One’s from Mum. Dad says we shouldn’t be such … what was the word, Angie?’
‘Heathens.’
‘That’s it. Heathens don’t believe in God, except we do – we just want to have a big fire, don’t we?’
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