Suddenly a piece of chalk hit me on the ear.
‘Attention!’ shouted the French teacher. ‘You, girl, stand up.’
All eyes turned to me. Slowly I rose. The teacher said something in French. I stared at her. She repeated it, much more loudly. Her fingers gripped a board rubber, as if ready to throw that next. Then she said, in English, ‘Answer me, girl!’
I blinked and replied, in fluent French, ‘I’m sorry, madame, but with all respect I cannot answer as I did not understand the question, since your French accent and grammar are so bad.’
It took a while for her to translate my words. When she did, her face went as white as chalk. She slammed down the board rubber and rushed from the room. The class erupted, banging desk lids and spilling little pots of ink as they cheered.
Angela stared at me in amazement. ‘I think we must now elevate you to the status of a god, Brigitta.’
The final lesson of the day was hardest. It wasn’t even because I was stupid. I just couldn’t do it. Needlework.
‘You’ll be great at this,’ said Angela, prodding me in the ribs. ‘You were a seamstress in the war, in that prison camp – Auschwitz – right? Can you just run up a gorgeous dress and humiliate this teacher too?’
I looked at the scraps of gingham cotton everyone was labouring over, some with tongues stuck out, some with eyes crossed.
I folded my arms.
‘I will not sew.’
‘Why not? Look sharp – Miss is coming over …’
Miss was indeed coming over, an angry pucker between her eyes. I knew that expression. It meant interrogation. How far to the door? The window was closer …
‘Miss, can you help me?’ One of Angela’s friends waved her hand for attention. ‘I think I’ve just stitched this to my school skirt by accident.’
‘Miss … can you thread my needle?’ wailed another friend.
‘Miss, I’m in a right tangle, can you do it for me …?’
I smiled. How quickly people rally round each other.
When the final bell rang children exploded out of the school and spilled into the streets all around. I got a few friendly slaps on the back and an invitation to try out for the hockey team – What was hockey?
I couldn’t wait to tell Joe all about it. It was too windy to go up on the roof so we met in the conservatory – a room called the Winter Garden, full of unhappy spider plants. It overlooked the terrace and had wicker chairs with bits that stuck in you when you sat down.
‘School’s hell,’ was Joe’s verdict.
‘It was also fun.’
‘Yeah, it was fun too, except I was sent to a stuffy boarding school. I miss it, sort of – the pals, not school. It nearly cured me of loving books, we were fed such stodgy texts. Now reading’s about all I do. I used to love sports! Cricket was wizard. Rowing was all right. Some of the rags we got up to!’
‘Rags?’
He grinned. ‘Messing about. Playing jokes.’
‘Like the airmen at Summerland who put underpants on the shandy— what do you call it?’
‘A chandelier. Did they do that? Excellent fellows. Are you shocked? Boys will be boys …’
‘Boys can behave badly. Girls have to be good.’ One of many sex differences I was puzzling over. What made a boy a boy, or a girl a girl?
‘Yeah, I suppose,’ said Joe. ‘We maybe got up to a few tricks in the RAF too. We burned a piano one night, when we got our wings. Don’t hit me! It’s air force tradition. There was also something going on with toilet seats, but I don’t remember that bit. Too much beer.’
‘Why don’t you see your friends now?’
‘Who’d want to see me?’ He turned a bit savage. ‘One old chum came to the hospital when I was convalescing. The pity on his face … I promised myself no one would look at me like that again.’
‘I look at you.’
‘You don’t mind what I’m like.’
That was true.
He shifted a little closer. I didn’t move away. How close could I let him get? He didn’t know me. He didn’t know the worst of me. There was still such a lot I had to find out; I couldn’t lose sight of why I’d come to Summerland in the first place.
‘Joe, do you know a name … Golanski?’
‘You asked me this before. Golanski? Sounds Russian, or Polish.’
‘Polish. Do you know of him?’
‘Was it one of the airmen stationed here? I know a lot of Poles came over to do their bit after Hitler invaded Poland. There were a few in my squadron. Decent chaps. But, no – Golanski doesn’t ring a bell.’
I wasn’t sure why bell-ringing was relevant, but it was another setback. Time to try something else.
‘I am interested in, er, local history. Your mother – does she have photographs of before the war? Perhaps of her time in school … her schoolfriends …?’
‘Probably. I’ll get her to dig some out if you’re that keen, no problem.’
As easy as that! So why did I feel so nervous about uncovering the past? Was it because I was somehow enjoying the present so much? The wind outside made the glass panes of the Winter Garden rattle. I shivered.
Violet Creams
It was not my fault the trip to the cinema turned into one of the worst days of my life.
I bumped into Colin while he was helping out in the shop one day after school. It was icy, but the river still tumbled unfrozen under the bridge, and it wasn’t the sort of cold that ate into your bones. I’d known winters where the breath inside your lungs seemed to freeze.
Colin bagged up all the things on my list, then said, ‘Hey, I’m off on Saturday afternoon. Do you want to come to the pictures?’
I was so surprised I said yes.
Later, I met Joe on the moonlit roof. I’d fetched up hot water bottles and we both had blankets.
‘Getting a bit nippy,’ he said. ‘Are you all right to stay up here for a bit? Not too cold?’
‘I’m freezing!’
He offered me space under his blanket. Like a coward, I just stayed huddled in my coat.
‘It is mad, meeting up outside, but the house is so dreary. Mother’s obsessed with restoring it all for my inheritance, even though we’ve barely got two shillings to rub together. I couldn’t give a monkey’s about living here. I’d be off like a shot if it wasn’t for …’ He grimaced and flapped his empty sleeve.
‘Where would you go?’
‘Anywhere. Everywhere. Pointless talking about it. I can’t fly any more, so what would I do?’
‘What do you like to do?’
‘Flying. Sport. Messing about. Drawing, I suppose. I used to sketch a lot before I joined the RAF. Even in briefings, I always had a pencil to doodle. What about you?’
‘I can’t do anything.’
‘Oh, come off it. You must have talents. And you’re whole and healthy, aren’t you? Me, I’m washed up before I hardly got started. Crashed and crippled and too scared to leave my room except to talk to you. Maybe I should join a circus, as a freak.’
‘I will come too. We will ride elephants and swing on the … what do you call it?’
‘Trapeze? Sure, why not? I’ll be a one-armed trapeze artist. In the meanwhile, what would you like to do? You can’t clean toilets for the rest of your life.’
‘Will you clean your own, Lord Summer?’
‘Fat chance. That’s not the point.’
‘I need a job.’
‘You could get a better one.’
‘Do you want me to leave?’
‘No!’
The word came out like a bullet. He lowered his voice to a whisper. It lured me closer.
‘No, I definitely don’t want you to go. You’re the only thing that makes this place bearable.’
‘You can’t hide forever …’
‘I can do what a bloody well like! I mean … Sorry. I’m just so messed up. I should just pull myself together. Snap out of it. Be a man, they say.’
I sometimes felt the same way.
‘Here I am,’ he continued, ‘moping around in the dark like a ghost, good for nothing. Don’t laugh, but I thought you were a ghost when I first saw you that time, dancing on the terrace.’
‘I thought you were a ghost also. There are many in Summerland.’
‘Really? That old yarn about the drowned maid?’
‘Her name is Ursula. She has a mop and bucket.’
Joe did a double take. ‘You’ve seen her?’
‘Yes. Many times. Also, the airmen, from the war.’
Now he did pay attention. ‘Ghosts of the guys who were stationed here? That’s incredible. Are you pulling my leg?’
I wanted to touch his leg. Was that bad?
‘I am serious. The ghosts are in all the house. Sometimes in uniform. They read books, play games. They don’t know they are dead.’
Joe was silent for a while. ‘I never thought about it before, whether people really haunt places. It’s … hard … to think my crew, my friends, might be ghosts somewhere, wafting around our old airbase, or up in the clouds above Germany.’
I had a vision of ghosts raining down from those clouds and the dead soaking into our skin.
‘War’s not as exciting as you think it’s going to be, is it?’ he said finally.
That’s when I decided Lady Summer had been right, the day we first met. We had to pretend there’d never been a war. We had to enjoy ourselves today and have fun and adventures and live. Enough worrying about what might happen.
‘We could dance!’ I said, leaping up. ‘I’ll teach you the steps I know. I’ll hum the music. You could come out with me to the airfield on Saturday nights. They have a band there – Connie Snow. The music is sensational.’
He backed away from me – ‘No!’
So I told him I was going to the pictures with Colin and he said fine and I said fine and it was all fine, goodnight, thank you very much.
The Picture Palace in town was dazzling – bright lights and glam film posters. The pavement was jammed with young people queuing for tickets. I loved how everyone was laughing and flirting and messing about. Colin had slicked his hair back, and he wore a tie. He kept looking around proudly as if to say, Hey, this is my girl. I wasn’t anyone’s girl. I saw my reflection in the glass of the poster cases, wearing my red check coat. Did I look pretty? Did I want to look pretty?
Colin talked non-stop about his job, his friends, his favourite films and anything else that came into his head. I hoped he’d shut up once the film started.
‘I used to come to the cinema loads with Joseph Summer and other lads from the village,’ he said. ‘Then Joe joined the RAF and thought he was better than the rest of us, swanning around in his uniform and jawing about his training. I could have been a hero too, if the war hadn’t ended so soon.’
I’d been to the cinema before, during the war. I can’t remember which city it was, or even what language – somewhere on the way to Berlin. Mama used to buy one ticket and sneak me in. I had to hide at her feet in case the police came, and we’d stay and watch the same film over and over. Jews weren’t allowed in cinemas, but it was warm in there and better than being on the streets all day.
‘Chocolate?’ Colin shoved something at me – a blue box wrapped in a white ribbon. ‘They’re almost impossible to get,’ he boasted, ‘what with rationing. I saved up from my Saturday job at Gant’s. Go on, they’re for eating, not just for looking at.’
I pulled the ribbon bow and lifted the lid of the box. Fat, round chocolates nestled in crinkled paper cups. My mouth watered just looking at them. I picked one out and nibbled a tiny bit from the edge. Heaven!
Colin got a funny expression. The look. He was watching my lips. I stopped savouring the chocolate and chomped the whole lot … and had to resist spitting it out. It was disgusting!
‘They’re violet creams,’ he said proudly. ‘Only the best.’
They tasted like old ladies. Not that I’d ever eaten old lady. I remembered Frau Trautwein had a precious glass jar of something perfumed called talcum powder. She dabbed it on after a bath. Afterwards the apartment would be haunted by the smell of dead flowers.
Colin steered me through the crush towards a shell-shaped double seat at the back of the auditorium. I was amazed at how grand everything was – red velvet and gold scrolling, with just a few scuffs and sweet wrappers. In the gallery above, younger kids were dangling over the barrier dropping spitballs. The couple in the next double seat along were already plastered together, nuzzling each other’s necks.
I took off my coat and put it between me and Colin.
He must have been tired, because as the lights dimmed he yawned and stretched an arm out along the back of the seat.
First up was a comedy show about a fat man and a thin man who just couldn’t help bashing each other with ladders, stepping on garden rakes and falling in pots of paint. The fat man got so exasperated and the thin man was so feeble … I laughed so hard I thought I’d crack a couple of ribs. They were called Laurel and Hardy and they were the best thing I’d ever seen in my entire life. The whole cinema – hundreds of us – were lifted up with that laughter.
The lights came on and Colin moved his arm, cracking his shoulder back into place. I don’t know why he sat like that if it made him sore.
‘Would you like an ice cream?’
I was still sunny with laughter. ‘Yes, please!’
As vanilla cooled my mouth, I thought how generous Colin was. I’d been with him on the dance floor. He wasn’t afraid of life. When the lights went down again I moved my coat so it wasn’t between us.
When I asked, ‘What is next?’ it took him a moment to realise I was talking about the pictures, not where his hand could settle.
‘Usually a couple of short newsreels, then the main feature,’ he answered. We were shoulder to shoulder.
The big screen flickered. There were white scratches running down the title of the next film: A Defeated People.
Colin never saw a single scene. He seemed to be trying to lick me. He kept getting hair stuck on his lips, but I never felt a single one of his kisses. The film was so real I thought they must have pulled memories out of my head and wound them onto a reel to project. Germany: vanquished. A camera panning over flattened cities and rubble mountains. Hard-faced survivors tasting the ashes of humiliation. Mixed with the film soundtrack, I could hear English voices in the cinema – They got what was coming to them … No more than they deserve … Poor beggars. Not so Sieg Heil now, are they? On the screen a German housewife poured out her bitterness by a pump that wouldn’t pour water: Alles ist kaput, she moaned. It’s all ruined.
That was the past, I told myself. Houses could be rebuilt; pumps could be mended. I wasn’t going to think about war any more.
Colin had a hand on my leg. I moved it off. The first news film ended. A new one began. This one was footage of the Nuremberg trials. Newspaper headlines made real by cinema. Scenes of liberated Horror Camps interspersed with shots of Hitler’s henchmen awaiting judgement.
Colin was breathing heavily. I couldn’t hear the commentary. I pushed him away. They were filming in the courtroom. The faces were a black-and-white blur – judges, lawyers, Nazi criminals – oh no, not him, not that face from so long ago, not now, not here, not several feet high on a screen for all the world to see …
I rose from the seat, not knowing if I should fly into the screen or pull my eyes from their sockets.
I called out one word.
‘Papa!’
My papa. Alive and he hadn’t come for me. Alive and he didn’t want me.
In Nuremberg, in the courtroom, a judge was reading out verdicts …
Death by hanging … Death by hanging … Death by hanging …
Colin pulled me down into the seat. ‘Are you all right?’
Shh, said the crowd. The main feature was starting, to a ghastly wail of violins. It was called A Matter of Life and Death and it was about an English bomber pilot and the girl he loved. I knew
this because Colin had told me when he invited me to come. I saw nothing of the film, nothing of the actors. The music was a soundtrack to my own emotions, which I was desperately folding up and putting away in the deepest hidey-hole of my mind.
‘Did you have a good time?’
Somehow I was home. Sophie Rover had kept meatuntooveg warm in the oven for me, but I wasn’t hungry.
‘Enjoy your day off?’ sneered Miss Baggs, when we passed in a corridor.
I did not go to see Joe at midnight. I did not even undress and go to bed. I stood in the dark in my room, holding the one grey glove, trying to understand everything I had seen. Then, distraught, I walked through the house.
No clocks ticked. The ghosts had scattered … all except one, waiting for me on the first-floor landing. I knew her already. She was the wisp of sunshine ghost I’d seen briefly while cleaning Joe’s rooms all those weeks ago. The spider-thread ghost glimpsed in the mirror of the Blue Room. At night she drifted beyond the clusters of airmen, too faint to make out clearly, too persistent to ignore.
The Blue Room was more grey than blue tonight. The ghost was standing with her back to me at the unshuttered window and the bright crescent moon shone through her body. When I blinked she was gone. Behind me. At the bottom of the stairs. Pausing while I caught up.
Wait for me.
As if in a trance, I pushed open the ballroom doors. I needed more light – even pale moonlight would do. The ghost didn’t move as I opened the curtains and shutters. She sat on the piano stool, her face still turned away. My feet moved so I went with them. To the piano. To the stool. I sat down also, enveloped in memory. She was with me as I straightened my back.
Hours we’d practised together before the war, me as a child in her lap, my small hands on top of her supple ones. Her breath warm on my hair. Her love wrapped round me. Since the war I had never coaxed a sound from a piano.
Now I lifted the lid of the Summerland grand piano. Set my feet to the golden pedals. With reverence I let my fingertips graze the keys. They were cold. I shivered.
I took a deep breath. With my eyes closed I let my finger push down on a black key. C sharp. The vibration was pure ecstasy. My whole body thrummed. I played the note again, picturing the felted hammer touching wire. One note rippled into many. Beethoven. It had to be him. A German composer for German memories. I began with the low G of sonata No. 14 – the Moonlight.
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