‘So brave. So handsome. Such a shame …’
Connie finished the first set of songs with a flourish and went off for a nip of sherry with the band. The fizz went out of the party. I looked over at Joe, then at the grand piano. If he could come out of hiding, perhaps I could too.
My dress rustled as I sat down. The seat was warm from Charlie. I couldn’t follow his fabulous fingering. I riffled through his music until I found a piece we’d been playing earlier. With any luck everyone would be too busy talking to listen.
‘Could everyone be quiet, please! We have our very own piano virtuoso here in Summerland.’
I whipped round. That was Joe calling attention to me. Fine. I’d show him.
‘Guten Abend, meine Damen und Herren … Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Tonight I am going to play for you. It is a song by a man I don’t know in a film I have not seen.’
For some reason, they all laughed. I tinkled out the opening bars of Fats Waller’s ‘Ain’t Misbehavin’ ’, feeling more and more fabulous as the song played on.
Someone started singing. Unbelievably, it was Joe. I stopped dead in the middle of a chord. He was draped over the piano with his empty sleeve looking nicely nonchalant.
‘Nice uniform,’ I said.
‘Ma said it was fancy dress tonight, so I’m disguised as a war hero.’
‘No bomb dropping,’ I warned.
‘You’re the bombshell,’ he teased. ‘I can’t keep my eyes off you.’
‘It’s not right … It’s not me …’
‘Whatever you do is you. Now keep playing … I’m making my musical debut here. Ahem.’ He gave a little cough, let me begin the song again, and happily murdered the first verse, which was all about being happy alone because he was saving all his love for me.
They were just song lyrics. I knew that. They were very convincing though.
It was so much fun that other guests began to join in. Joe looked so happy, so alive, I suddenly got an idea of what he must have been like before the war . It made me wonder, what would we both have been like without a war? Him without his scars inside and out; me … No time to think about that now! The band jumped onto the stage and the drummer began a stormy beat. Colin took Angela through the steps and before we knew it the party was back in full swing.
My face! I must have been lobster red. Too much fun, too much attention. I couldn’t speak to Joe any more. Couldn’t look at anyone. I jostled through the crowds to get out on the terrace and breathed in great lungfuls of cold air. It was snowing still, melting in dark spots on my paper skirts.
Someone began to croon behind me. It was Colin, warbling about a pale moon and starry eyes.
I didn’t turn around. ‘Aren’t you dancing?’
‘Are you avoiding me? I haven’t seen you properly since our date. I notice His Lordship has crawled out of his cave. We could ask the band to play something for him. Perhaps the hokey-cokey. Do you know that one? “You put your right arm in, your right arm out. In, out, in, out. You shake it all about …” Oh, he can’t, can he? No right arm.’
‘You’re drunk.’
‘With love.’
My lip curled. ‘Don’t be silly.’
‘Oh, come on, don’t be so standoffish. You’ve been leading me on for ages now, Brigitta, with your moody behaviour and your touch me not looks.’
‘Don’t touch me.’
‘Girls like you can’t help yourselves, blowing hot and cold, all wrapped in mystery. I’d like to unwrap you …’
‘Get off me!’
His breath was sharp with alcohol and his lips were wet. ‘C’mon, this is what you like, isn’t it? Someone to be strong and masterful. A real man. I’ve never been with a Jewish girl before …’
And you won’t now, you creep.
I was backed up against the stone wall of the terrace, slipping on drifts of snow. He was like an octopus, hands everywhere at once.
‘Shall I take these off?’ he mumbled, fingers going up my skirt to my underwear.
From inside I heard Connie singing about love and I thought I’d be sick.
‘No, no, no! Hände weg, du dreckiges Schwein!’
I knew where to knee him all right. Down he dropped with his hands at his groin, so I kicked him again, and because my hands weren’t doing anything, I punched him too, right on the eye, and I wasn’t sorry, and I had my fist up to swing again, the dirty pig, who did he think he was, I’d beat him to a pulp, except …
Except I heard my name.
‘Brigitta! Where’s Brigitta? There’s someone to see her …’
My white kid glove had blood on it. My dress was crumpled and my hair was limp from melting snowflakes. I spat on Colin and left him crying.
‘Where’s the piano girl? Tell her to go to the front door … here she is! Brigitta, you’ve got a visitor.’
I steadied my breath. A visitor? ‘Who?’
Angela got to me through the crowd. ‘A foreigner …’
Golanski? My heart fluttered.
‘… called Francine or something. She worked with you in the war, she says. She’s tracked you halfway across Europe. Come on, hurry up, it’s about to strike midnight.’
Joe waved at me over a sea of faces. I was carried along, like a leaf on a stream. I couldn’t go back, only forward, into the Summerland entrance hall.
‘Here she is!’ cried Lady Summer. ‘Brigitta, what a marvellous surprise. Oh, it’s time! Midnight!’
All around me people started counting. Ten, nine, eight, seven …
They had drinks and paper hooters. A squat woman in scarf, coat and shawl stood dripping snow on the hall’s chequered floor.
‘Here she is!’ said Lady Summer again. ‘Here’s Brigitta!’
… six, five, four …
The woman looked me up and down.
… three, two, one!
‘Happy New Year! Happy New Year!’
The giant clock on the rooftop began to ring midnight. The first chimes of 1947. People linked arms and began to sing, ‘Should auld acquaintance be forgot …’
The woman looked me up and down and, in a strong Eastern European accent said,‘She is not Brigitta Igeul. I have never seen this girl before in my life.’
Hard Cheese
I stopped breathing. Heard my mother’s voice pulsing in my head.
If we are found, you know what to do, don’t you? Run and hide, and don’t look back. Do not look back.
So I ran.
‘Oh no, you don’t,’ wheezed the woman. She tackled me like a rugby player. Down I went crashing onto the hallway floor.
‘Get off me, get off me!’ I shouted in German. ‘You don’t understand – let me go.’
‘Like hell,’ she shouted, also in German. ‘You shite-bag imposter. Where is she? What have you done with her? Where’s my friend Brigitta?’ With each word she banged my head onto the black and white floor. I had the vague thought that it would be my job to wipe the blood up.
‘Not Brigitta?’ cried Lady Summer. ‘What do you mean, not Brigitta?’
Somebody hauled the woman off me. It was Joe, still strong even with one arm. I didn’t stop to thank him. I ran. What else could I do? I didn’t want to see their faces when the chimes stopped and the truth sank in.
I dashed out of the front door and into the snow. Motor cars were parked everywhere. Where now? Who was she? Where had she come from? How did she know Brigitta? How had she found me?
I ran fast, vaulting the fence, sprinting past the house, around the lake, into the woods. Which way was best? Didn’t matter. They’d track my footprints in the snow.
Mama had said, If you have to run, dodge side to side if they’re shooting. Go through water if they have dogs. Get as much distance on them as you can. You must stay alive, Liebling, you must!
They wouldn’t have guns, not yet. Would they follow? Perhaps they’d let me go. Why should they care anyway? But no – Joe cared. Joe would follow. Joe mustn’t find me; mustn’t see me now
…
My thoughts were faster than my legs.
Lights were slashing the night. Car headlamps? Guests leaving the party? Quick as a squirrel I chose a tree that looked easy to climb and scrambled up. Minutes, days, hours passed and I heard voices, faint through the woods. I shivered, sending snow flurrying down. They were looking for me.
What could I do?
Wait it out.
Stay hidden.
Keep alive.
Someone with a flashlight passed about fifty paces from my tree, then moved on. Darkness closed in again. How long should I wait? Until everyone had gone? Until daylight revealed my hiding place? Until I froze to death?
I could hear no music. No jazz, no jive, no swing. Not even the blues. I was too far away. And it was too cold. I would truly die if I didn’t move soon. I blew on my fingers, just enough to get them to uncurl and grasp branches again. With as little sound as possible I slid down the tree trunk. Which way now? Where could I go, dressed in paper, pearls and kid gloves? I’d no money, no food, no knife … and no grey glove.
The English had an expression – hard cheese. I’d heard Mrs Rover use it to mean tough luck. That’s what this was. The hardest cheese in the history of yellow dairy products.
Hello, 1947.
The woods were still. No owls, no foxes, no hunters. I took one step in the snow. Whack! Something hard cracked the back of my head. I pitched forward onto the snow.
‘Got her!’ came a savage cry.
‘Pile on!’ shouted a host of voices, coming closer. Before I could twist and run again, I was weighted down by heavy bodies. My arms were jerked back and tied. Something wet and woollen went over my head.
They had me. Not the Gestapo. Not the SS. Not even Jew-hunting peasants in a Polish forest. My predators were the children of Summer village.
Who was there, hustling and prodding me along? Nellie, I thought. She had a slingshot capable of bringing down rabbits or fleeing refugees. It could have been her stone smacking into my skull. From various muted words, I guessed at Colin and Poppy Oakley, Angela Goose … and others I didn’t recognise. They must have formed a posse to seek me out. What a great game to play at a New Year’s party.
When I stumbled over snow and roots I was hauled upright. Where were they taking me? Not Summerland – I would have heard people or music. We were deep in woods still.
‘In here …’
That was Colin. I should have knocked all his teeth out back on the terrace, and his brains too, such as they were.
Where had they brought me?
A hand yanked the cloth off my head.
Oh.
Not good at all.
It was cold in the Bomb House. Snow had fallen through the wrecked roof, blown into banks up against the walls, and settled into neat white lines along the ceiling rafters. The floor was soon scuffed up by many pairs of boots, and by the marks of my feet being dragged to the middle of the ruin.
The hunters circled me with a ring of blinding torch beams.
‘Light a fire,’ said Colin.
‘There’s nothing to burn,’ said Angela.
‘Her dress is paper – that’s flammable.’ Colin laughed, like he was joking, except I could tell by the sudden silence that the other kids were wondering, Can we burn it? Shall we burn it? One little match of a bad idea is all it takes to set violence flaring. This was not going to end well for me.
The more I struggled, the more the crêpe paper ripped. Off came one sleeve. Down fell my bra strap.
‘Look at that!’ said Colin, with a funny catch in his voice. ‘Her bosom’s fallen out! She pads her bra with socks! She’s such a fraud, even her titties are fake!’
My face burned hot. ‘Let me go!’
‘Not a cat in hell’s chance, you fake. Not till we know who you really are. Hold her, Angie.’ Colin unknotted his tie and used it to bind my wrists even more tightly behind my back while Angela gripped my ankles.
‘Stop kicking!’
‘Please let me go! You don’t understand –’
Slap! Colin’s hand left my cheek stinging.
‘Easy to hit someone when they can’t hit back,’ I taunted.
Slap! Blood filled my mouth as my head snapped sideways.
‘You shouldn’t hit girls,’ said Andrew, hiding behind his sister. What was he doing here? He shouldn’t have to see this, shouldn’t have to be part of it.
Colin jumped up on a fallen block of masonry, immediately putting himself in charge. ‘It doesn’t count when she’s a Nazi.’
There. The word was said. Lines were being crossed, one after another. The circle round me widened as all the kids took a step back.
Colin loomed above everyone, arms folded. ‘She ran. That proves she’s guilty, right? She said she was a prisoner in Auschwitz. Look at her arms. Show them, Angela – no tattooed number like real prisoners in the Horror Camps had.’
Angela pulled my wet gloves down and twisted the skin on my arms. She frowned. ‘Weren’t you in that place?’
‘I don’t like this,’ wailed Andrew.
‘I asked you a question! Were you in Auschwitz?’
I spat blood into the snow. ‘No. I was not in Auschwitz.’
‘Is your name Brigitta?’
‘No.’
The other kids gasped. It was like they were an audience – no, a jury, in a courtroom, Angela as prosecutor and Colin … Colin was puffing himself up to be judge.
‘What is your name?’ asked Angela.
I was silent.
‘Why isn’t she Brigitta?’ cried Andrew.
Angela burst out, ‘She must be a spy! They said Nazis are hiding in England. I read a story about it in Girl’s Adventure magazine, where the gym teacher is sending coded messages back to Hitler and only the girls of the Lower Fourth could stop her plans to kill the king.’
‘Hitler’s dead,’ scoffed Colin. ‘I don’t think she’s a spy.’
‘I am not a spy,’ I said.
‘As if you’d admit it if you were. No, I think I know your secret.’ Colin jumped down off his rock and began to circle me. ‘It was at the cinema that I first had my suspicions –’
‘You never suspected her!’ interrupted Angela. ‘You fancied her and you took her on a date.’
‘Never mind about that. I was right next to her when a film came on about the Nuremberg trials. She stood up, pointed to the screen and shouted, ‘Papa!’ when she saw the Nazis all lined up. Prisoner in the dock, do you deny it?’
‘I saw the film, but it was …’
‘Oh, put a sock in it.’ He stuffed the sock fallen from my chest into my mouth. I choked on wet wool and outrage.
You can’t just do this. You can’t just turn on me. Except I knew they could. This was how it went, from It couldn’t happen here, to, It is happening here, right now.
Colin jumped back to his vantage point. ‘The military call this kind of set-up a kangaroo court. Evidence is presented, the jury decide on a verdict and a sentence is pronounced.’
‘I want to go home,’ said Andrew.
‘Silence in court!’
I wanted to go home too. I wanted to go back in time to the life we had before the war, when Papa came in singing and Mama had a piano. When life was full of picnic meals and glasses chinking and big people talking all at once. When I didn’t have to hide.
They wouldn’t really take this all the way to the end, would they? No matter how many times Mama told me to trust no one, she also impressed on me, The world has good people and bad. Some don’t know which way to swing, but they’re mostly good most of the time.
Right now, here, they were mostly bad.
Colin had everyone’s attention. ‘We know she’s a Nazi. We know what the Nazis did in the war. Nellie, they bombed your mum to death in this very house. They shot our Joseph down and left him a wreck …’ I squirmed at that. Joe was not a wreck! ‘They tried to starve us all to death and take over the world. We all know what the punishment for being a Nazi is.
’
‘We could give her to the police,’ said Angela.
‘We are not going to the police. She’ll just spin some story and bat her eyelashes at Ribble to fool him …’
‘Like she fooled you?’
‘Who just revealed her true evil identity? I’m in charge here, and I say she’s guilty. Guilty. Guilty!’
All the others joined in – guilty, guilty, guilty. All of them except Nellie and Andrew. Andrew began to snuffle. ‘I don’t like this. Is Brigitta in trouble because she killed Jesus?’
‘Go home,’ said his sister. ‘You’re too young.’
Andrew clung to her leg. ‘Daddy said in church the Jews killed Jesus, and Brigitta’s a Jew.’
‘Shut up, Andrew!’ Colin gestured for Angela to remove the sock from my mouth. ‘Has the prisoner got anything to say in her defence?’
I retched and gasped and spat into the snow.
‘Don’t do this …’ was all I managed before Angela shoved the sock back in.
‘I thought you were my friend,’ she said angrily.
Colin was taking his jacket off. Unbuttoning his braces. Snapping his fingers for Angela to hand over her belt. Fastening belt and braces together. Looping them over a low beam of the Bomb House roof.
‘This court pronounces the imposter shall be hung by the neck, like her Nazi scum dad.’
In the torchlight I saw the slanted ghost of Nellie’s mama, Lettice Varley, standing next to her daughter. Her face was expressionless. Was she waiting for me to join her, to keep her company with the other dead?
They wouldn’t do this. Couldn’t do this. This was England. These were my friends.
Having gone so far, they didn’t stop to think.
I resisted as hard as I could, with my hands and feet tied. They held my legs until the noose was round my neck. They heaved. The beam creaked. I was stretched onto tiptoes. I heard a horrible choking sound. Me. My neck was on fire. The noose pulled higher. I was dangling.
‘Kill her, the Nazi!’ hissed Colin. ‘No, Andrew! Get out of the way!’
Andrew was kneeling on the floor. He had hold of my kicking legs, but not to pull them down, to hold them up. I just flailed, desperate to get another breath, another breath, a last breath …
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