From the letters, I knew where Brigitta was from. Thanks to Francine, I knew where she’d been sent to – Auschwitz. After that, who knew? Papa said I wasn’t to get my hopes up. He said there were few survivors from that place. He spoke with the Red Cross, with Jewish relief agencies, and with a sunken-eyed Slovakian woman who’d only just arrived in London as a refugee. She looked a hundred and was probably only twenty. I made her a cup of tea too. Papa interviewed her in private. He seemed both sad and excited afterwards.
‘The things human beings can endure,’ he said. ‘But that lady knows someone who knows someone who’s heard of someone else, and that’s how it goes.’
There was talk of tickets for the boat train and a trip to France.
‘I don’t have a passport, or identity papers,’ I warned Papa, when he told me I was coming too.
‘Leave that to my mother,’ said Joe. ‘She’s in London now and she means business. Give her five minutes with the man in charge at the Passport Office and you’ll have your papers – all we need is a photograph.’
Cue: a studio trip. Flash – there I was, in black and white. Me, myself, David.
A day later a large package arrived at the RAF Club where Joe and I were staying. We each had a single room, up in the rafters. I loved looking out over the city, with its smoking chimneys and twinkling windows. We met up at midnight in honour of the Summerland tradition. Sometimes we talked, sometimes we didn’t, and what happened then didn’t need words.
I pulled the string off the parcel and unfolded the brown paper to find spare clothes, books – for Joe – and his awful, adorable purple pyjamas. There was also a strange drawing. I think it was a car in front of a house. The accompanying letter was written in military capital letters.
DEAR DAVID AND LORD J,
YOU’LL NEED CLEAN UNDERWEAR IN LONDON IF NOTHING ELSE IN CASE YOU GET KNOCKED DOWN BY A BUS SO HERE YOU ARE AND OTHER CLOTHES BESIDES. DAVID, I’M GLAD YOU FOUND YOUR DAD, LOOKS LIKE YOU’RE AN ARMY KID NOW. I’LL MISS YOU. I GOT A CAT, A REAL UGLY BRUISER. I’M CALLING HER BAGGSY, SHE HISSES AT NOTHING, MAYBE SHE SEES GHOSTS.
LOVE SOPHIE ROVER
PS THE GOOD LUCK CARD IS FROM NELLIE VARLEY. SHE COLOURED IT IN, AND COLOURED IN MY KITCHEN TABLE WHILE SHE WAS AT IT, CHEEKY MONKEY.
PPS A LITTLE BIRD TOLD ME YOU MIGHT BE GOING ABROAD SO HERE ARE SOME FRENCH FANCIES. DON’T EAT THEM ALL AT ONCE.
PPPS IF YOU MEET ANY NAZIS KICK THEM FROM ME
French fancies were little square sponge cakes covered in pink and yellow icing. We ate them all at once. Joe tasted of sugar when we kissed goodbye. That had to be in private, not on the platform at Waterloo. He had offered to come to Europe, but we both knew he should get back to Summerland, if only to stop Mrs Rover overfeeding the builders.
‘I’m going back to help, not to hide,’ he assured me.
When the time came to leave, I felt as if I’d been torn in two.
‘Keep dancing,’ he whispered. ‘Come back to me …’
How different my voyage back across the Channel was from my journey to England. Papa booked a cabin so we could get some sleep. We didn’t. There was too much to talk over, too many years to share. I told him about the Trautweins, the Varleys and sherry trifle. About Mrs Rover’s endless meals. About Connie, fish ’n’ chips, Land Girls and Gant’s. About swing, jive, jazz and all the piano music I’d ever loved.
I said nothing about what had happened in the Bomb House.
He spoke of Mama’s smile, and how she’d sung to me when I was a baby, and the time she took me onstage with her for a prestigious piano recital, bundled in a basket at her side, and I never made a single sound until the applause began, when I cried until she picked me up and let me play with the piano keys.
I wished I’d known that he hadn’t forgotten us, that he’d been looking for us all along. I wish Mama had known I wouldn’t always be alone.
Our search took us to the French capital. Mama called Paris the City of Lights. We arrived on a freezing winter afternoon. Parisians clattered out of the Metro on wooden-soled shoes. Young people wore their ski clothes in the streets it was so cold.
Papa commandeered a car and a driver. We drove round the main sights – the Eiffel Tower looked smaller than I expected and very grey in the rain – then headed out of the centre to a quieter neighbourhood with no bullet marks on the masonry. We got lost, found ourselves, stopped for a coffee and set off again, eventually slowing to a halt outside a dress shop of all places. The sign above the door read: Le Ruban Rouge – The Red Ribbon.
‘Ready?’ asked Papa.
‘Ready.’
A bell chimed beautifully as I pushed the door open. Inside, the walls were painted white, softened with green plants and displays of cheerful fabric flowers. There were neat wooden chairs with embroidered cushions and a table showing fashion magazines. Two Frenchwomen were admiring a dress on a mannequin. It had a narrow waist and a long, flared skirt. In a back room I heard sewing machines whirring and the chatter of happy young voices.
A girl about my age came to greet us. She was small with bright eyes and rosy lips that curved as if a smile was about to appear.
‘Bonjour et bienvenue, messieurs,’ she said with a smile.
It would take a while before I got used to being called a monsieur instead of a mademoiselle.
She looked us both up and down. ‘I see from your clothes you are English, perhaps? And yet … not so English in manner. I sense a story?’
‘Who is it?’ called a voice from the back.
‘Two intriguing strangers,’ the girl called back. Then to us: ‘Can I help you?’
I spoke French also, wincing a bit at my German accent. ‘We are looking for someone – Brigitta Igeul. We had news that perhaps she worked here, or that you know of her?’
The girl tipped her head on one side, like a squirrel.
‘Very well,’ she said, after a moment. She whisked away to the back room and returned with another girl. This one I recognised at once. She was older and warier than her photograph. I’d been her, before I became me.
‘Brigitta …’
The real Brigitta Igeul put her hand up to her mouth.
‘You don’t know me,’ I went on hurriedly. ‘My name is David Golanski. This is my father, Captain Golanski. We’re not here to make trouble. We come from a friend. You know a woman called Francine?’
Another girl came from the back room, wearing a pink dress with embroidered buttons. She was tall and strong, and looked ready to protect the others. All three of them now talked rapidly in a mixture of languages. They knew Francine all right. Just from listening in I could tell they had all worked together in the sewing room in Auschwitz. They hadn’t known anyone else from the workshop had survived.
Brigitta turned to me. ‘Tell me about Francine. Where is she? Is she alive? Is she well?’
‘She is very alive and very well. I will tell you everything. First, allow me to give you these …’ From my jacket pocket I took a bundle of papers and photographs. They’d had a long journey from Brigitta’s Austrian home to the warehouses at Auschwitz, to bombed-out Berlin, to England and now delivered into the hands of their rightful owner. Brigitta had her memories back.
All three girls wept to see Brigitta’s precious pictures and letters, then clapped with delight to hear of Francine and her voyage to New York. They invited us to stay in the shop to celebrate. We said we were sorry, we had another journey to make. We left, after exchanging addresses and kisses. I liked their lovely shop, even if I was glad I didn’t have to wear dresses any more.
Papa bought pastries from the bakery next door. There were not a lot of cakes to choose from. Paris in 1947 was still hungry. He got little squares of sponge covered in pink icing. Nowhere near as nice as Mrs Rover’s French fancies.
We walked through the park opposite the shop and sat on a bench under an apple tree. Its branches were bare, waiting for spring and blossom time.
Papa asked, ‘We have one night
in Paris – what would you like to do?’
My answer came without hesitation. ‘Go to a jazz club.’
‘Jazz? Your mother went to see Josephine Baker at the Folies Bergère once, did you know that? She sneaked out there with a couple of schoolfriends; I remember her telling me. She loved every minute. I think the thrill of breaking rules was part of it. Very well. I’ll treat you. I’ve got a lot of birthdays to make up for, after all. What’s the matter? What did I say?’
It was silly really. I’d lived as Brigitta for so long, I couldn’t remember when my own birthday was.
Jazz piano was on my fingertips as we left Paris and travelled by train across France and into Germany. Before we arrived in Berlin the music tempo slowed and I was back to playing Germaine Tailleferre, then Beethoven – the beautiful Moonlight Sonata once again. By the time we reached the suburbs of the city I had no music left. At the station Papa arranged an army jeep and a driver. The military were everywhere, just as I remembered. People still looked so thin. I felt guilty for my feasts in Mrs Rover’s kitchen. It was desperately cold. My bones were chilled like ice even though the air was still.
Our first stop was along a street of ghosts. Bricks from bombed-out houses were now neatly piled on either side of the road. The few intact windows had desperately respectable net curtains.
There, in that patch of wasteland, that was where the Trautwein apartment had been before the bombs dropped and I crawled from the rubble. Hitler’s portrait frame, the piano and the wardrobe had long since been burned as firewood. That gap in the street was where I had spent cramped years hiding. They were not lost years. I had had my mama almost every single day.
There, on that corner, I had limped barefoot and bleeding to the help centre opened by the Nazi Women’s League, to get clothes and a coat … and an accidental new identity. There, where flowers would bloom in spring, that was where I’d scraped a grave for my mother. The stony soil was flattened down now. The grave marker was gone, probably for firewood too.
‘Shall we bury her gloves here?’ Papa asked.
‘No. Give them to someone whose hands are cold.’
Papa took my hand.
‘I miss her,’ I said.
‘Me too.’
We stood there side by side as Papa recited a prayer, then we each picked up a small stone and placed it at the grave site. Goodbye, Mutti, my amazing mama. There was no ghost now.
It was a long journey north-west to Hamburg, where the next round of war-criminal trials would take place. Hamburg’s ghosts clustered thick as weeds as we made our way to the law court. From Papa’s office I dialled the operator for an international telephone call. Lady Summer answered after several rings. She made a few polite enquiries, hissed, Get down, you wretched cat – that is not a scratching post, it’s a Chippendale, then called for her son.
When I finally heard Joe’s voice across the crackling line I almost couldn’t speak for happiness.
‘You did it,’ he said. ‘You’re out in the world.’
‘The trials will be long, but then we are coming home.’
‘To Poland, or Berlin?’
‘To England, you idiot. To you. After that …’
He laughed. ‘After that, it’s wherever we want to go, whatever we want to do! I absolutely can’t wait.’
People often talk about the war. How exciting it was, or how awful. Me, I’m done with all that. Done hiding from it, done talking about it, done looking back.
I am going to seize life hard, and I won’t let go. I look forward to seeing Summerland in summer.
Author’s Note
When I first visualised a refugee with a suitcase walking up the drive to a Yorkshire country house, I imagined it was one of the characters from The Red Ribbon, my previous novel. (Readers had been asking me, ‘What happens next?!’) However, some way into the story I was startled to discover all was not as it seemed … Yes, even an author can be surprised by their own plot twists. Suddenly everything fell into place.
I had set out to write a love story based on the experiences of young people in the post-war period. I ended up exploring many themes around secrecy and identity, as well as the lasting trauma of Jewish children persecuted during the Holocaust.
Summerland is fiction – a work of imagination – but the strands are drawn from many real wartime sources. David’s predicament was partly inspired by the true story of a hidden child named Richard Rozen, as well as other memoirs that mention Jewish children disguised for their own protection. It was startling to learn how deeply children internalised their new identities in order to survive in a world where they could be denounced, deported and murdered simply for being Jewish.
I had the good fortune to meet a gracious Holocaust survivor called Hanni Begg. When Hanni began to speak of her childhood, it was eerily similar to aspects of Summerland. Hanni had been a hidden child in Berlin during the war – a terrifying experience for any Jew. Then came the Allied bombing raids. Her father was killed. ‘I had to bury my own father,’ she quietly told me. Hanni made her home in England after the war and was happy here. Like many survivors, she seized life, worked hard and celebrated her new freedoms.
Sophie Rover – perhaps the real star of Summerland – is drawn from memories of being wonderfully overfed by my grandmother Ella, who made the best steamed-puddings-with-custard in the whole world.
* * *
I loved listening to the relevant music while I wrote this story, both classical and modern tunes. I even took a lesson on a grand piano, so I would know how it felt to sit and play the opening notes of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. By staggering coincidence, my piano teacher had, in turn, been taught by Nelly Ben-Or, a hidden Jewish child whose love of music helped her endure years of fear in World War Two.
Here are some of the music and songs that make up a soundtrack to Summerland:
Ella Fitzgerald sings T’aint What You Do (It’s the Way That You Do It)
Adelaide Hall sings I Can’t Give You Anything But Love, Baby
Elisabeth Welch sings Stormy Weather
Fats Waller plays Ain’t Misbehavin’
Dinah Shore sings The Nearness of You
Flanagan and Allen sing Run Rabbit Run
Glenn Miller plays In the Mood
Vera Lynn sings It’s a Lovely Day Tomorrow
Rebecca Clarke – Rhapsody for cello and piano
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Don Giovanni
Claude Debussy – The Snow Is Dancing, from the ‘Children’s Corner’ suite
Germaine Tailleferre – Romance for piano; Fleurs de France for piano
Ludwig van Beethoven – Piano Sonata No. 14 in C# minor, known as the Moonlight Sonata
Lucy Adlington
Lucy Adlington is a writer and clothes historian. Her novels for teenagers, including The Diary of Pelly D, Burning Mountain and The Red Ribbon have been nominated and shortlisted for the CILIP Carnegie Medal, the Manchester Book Prize, the Leeds Book Prize and the Rotherham Book Award. She tours the UK with dress history presentations and writes history books for adults, including Women’s Lives and Clothes in WW2: Ready for Action and Stitches in Time: the Story of the Clothes We Wear.
Find out more at www.historywardrobe.com or on Twitter: @historywardrobe
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First published in Great Britain in 2019 by
HOT KEY BOOKS
80–81 Wimpole St, London W1G 9RE
www.hotkeybooks.com
Copyright © Lucy Adlington, 2019
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written pe
rmission of the publisher.
The right of Lucy Adlington to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 9781471408281
This eBook was produced using Atomik ePublisher
Hot Key Books is an imprint of Bonnier Books UK
www.bonnierbooks.co.uk
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