Christina barely noticed. Apart from Charlie’s racing pigeons in their hut in the garden, number twelve was standing empty, waiting for her and Jack to move into it. It was a roomy, family house. Roomy enough to accommodate not only any family she and Jack might have, but her mother and grandmother as well. She knitted her hands together tightly. If her mother and grandmother were alive. If they could be found.
‘You don’t think you’re perhaps building your hopes up too high?’ Kate had asked her doubtfully the previous evening as they had sat in the kitchen at number four, enjoying mugs of milky Ovaltine.
‘No,’ she had said shortly, closing herself off as she had closed herself off from everybody, apart from Carl. He alone understood how nothing else in her life mattered apart from the search they had embarked on. He understood how impossible it was for her to even think of anything else. And the letters he had received from organizations such as the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration and the International Tracing Center, were proof that their search wasn’t without hope. People were being traced and found. Families were being reunited. The International Tracing Centre in New York had confirmed that they had both Bergers and Franks on their files, but there had been no Jacoba Berger, no Eva Frank.
‘We must try and trace anyone on the International Tracing Center lists who was arrested at the same time as your mother and grandmother, and who were living in the same area at the time of their arrest,’ Carl had said, refusing to be deterred. ‘They may very well have all been taken to the same camp. They may have known your mother and grandmother. They may be the perfect short-cut to our finding them.’
Christina stared unseeingly down the High Street and its seemingly endless row of market stalls. No-one else talked so positively. No-one else talked of her mother and grandmother as if they were still alive.
‘For how can they be, bubbeleh?’ Leah had said, bewildered, time and time again. ‘They were arrested and taken off in a truck, and no-one has seen or spoken to them since.’
‘We don’t know that!’ she always responded fiercely. ‘They may have been released! And if they had been, how would they have been able to find me if I was already on my way to Switzerland, or even, perhaps, on my way to England? They may be looking for me just as I am looking for them!’
‘Then why for hasn’t your grandmother written to me, her old friend?’ Leah always asked unhappily. ‘Why has there been no letter enquiring if you are here?’
It was a question never answered. A question it was, impossible to answer.
‘I’ll ’ave ’alf a stone of potatoes, four pounds of onions and three pounds of apples,’ a regular customer said, breaking in on her reverie. ‘And if that’s dew on those lettuces I’ll take two of ’em.’
Christina shovelled up a weighing scale scoop of potatoes. An idea had been growing in her mind for days now, an idea she hadn’t voiced to anyone, not even to Carl. She rattled the potatoes into her customer’s large wicker basket. What if she were to go back to Heidelberg? What if she were to make enquiries about her mother and grandmother in the town that had been their home; in the town where they had been arrested?
‘You’ve weighed me three pounds of onions, not four,’ her customer pointed out, not very kindly. ‘And have you heard the news about Harold Miller? Nellie says he’ll be home by the end of the month.’
Christina added an onion to the weighing scoop. ‘Yes,’ she said, wondering if she would be allowed back into Germany. ‘I’d heard. It’s wonderful news.’ And if she did go back, how would she manage for money? She doubted if Albert would be able to lend her any, and she knew that Carrie and Danny wouldn’t be able to. And there were other considerations as well. How, for instance, would she be able to endure all the terrible emotions that being in Germany again would arouse in her?
‘You might look a bit happier about it,’ her customer said tartly. ‘Some people suffered more than others in the war. And Harold Miller’s one of them.’
‘Heidelberg?’ Kate put down the potato she had been peeling. ‘Heidelberg? You can’t mean it, Christina! You can’t mean it in a million years!’
Christina removed a toy train from a kitchen chair and sat down. ‘I do mean it,’ she said steadily. ‘If you think about it, Kate, it’s the most logical next step to take. Heidelberg was our home. If my mother and grandmother are alive and looking for me, it’s where they would begin their search. And it was in Heidelberg that they were arrested. If all surviving Nazi files and records are now in the hands of the Allies, there may well be files in Heidelberg which could tell me where my mother and grandmother were taken.’
Slowly Kate wiped her hands on her apron. Initially, when Christina had first embarked on her search for information as to where her mother and grandmother had been taken and what had happened to them, she had been utterly sympathetic. She, too, would have wanted to know. She would have wanted to know in order that she could grieve for them without the added mental torment of wondering and wondering how, and where, they had died.
Christina, however, was no longer searching only for information. The wild hope that her mother and grandmother might have survived had turned into the obsessive conviction that they had survived, and that, with enough effort on her part, she would find them and be reunited with them. Kate bit the corner of her lip. Such a conviction could, surely, only lead to crushing, annihilating disappointment, and it would be a disappointment which, because of the sympathy and encouragement she had given, she would be partially responsible for. With growing apprehension, she wondered how Christina would bear the blow when it came. She had always possessed an air of Dresden-china fragility, but now she was beginning to look positively unwell. There were blue shadows beneath her eyes, and her delicately boned face was taut and pale.
She said, choosing her words carefully, ‘Dad is making all the enquiries anyone could possibly make. If there are any authorities in and around Heidelberg that can be helpful, then he will contact them. It’s best to leave it to him, Christina. Truly it is.’
Christina shook her head, her silk-dark hair falling forwards, framing her face. ‘No,’ she said fiercely. ‘I must go back. Until I spoke about it, I wasn’t sure. Now I am. I must search for them myself, Kate. And I will find them! I know I will find them!’
Kate glanced at her wall clock. It was only five-thirty. Leon wouldn’t be home for nearly another hour, and even when he did come home, she doubted if anything he might say would change Christina’s mind. The only person likely to do that was Carl. ‘How about a walk?’ she said, knowing that if Christina agreed, she would have to substitute spam and chips for the cottage-pie she had been going to give Leon for his dinner. ‘We could go over the Heath and down into Greenwich and call on Dad. He may have some more news for you, and even if he hasn’t, you can talk over the pros and cons of going to Heidelberg with him.’
She took off her apron. ‘Daisy is out playing with the other two Graces. She and Rose and Beryl are inseparable these days. We’ll have to take Matthew and Luke with us, though. I’ll put Luke in his push-chair. He doesn’t like it too much, now that he’s three, but it serves a purpose when there’s no time for dawdling.’
She opened the back door, taking Christina’s silence as acquiescence. ‘Matthew! Luke! Come in and wash your hands. We’re going to visit Grandad.’
‘You’re hoping your father will change my mind for me, aren’t you?’ Christina said as they walked out of Magnolia Terrace and began to cross the main road flanking the Heath.
‘Yes.’ The traffic was busier than usual, with office-workers beginning to make the homeward trek out of the City into the suburbs, and it was with relief that she trundled the push-chair off the tarmacadamed surface and on to springy grass, Matthew trotting along by her side, Hector obediently at their heels. ‘Of course I am. I think it’s a terrible idea. You’re going to be face to face with hideous memories—’
‘I’m alw
ays going to have hideous memories,’ Christina said abruptly, pushing a wing of jaw-length hair away from her face.
‘You don’t know what people’s reaction to you will be,’ Kate said, equally abruptly. ‘How can you voluntarily return to a country that tried to annihilate your entire race?’
‘Because I may still have family living there.’
They had reached the part of the Heath known as Point Hill. Down below them lay a view of London stretching from the bomb-damaged docks in the east to Alexandra Palace in the north, and the City and Westminster in the west. It was a view that always made Kate catch her breath. A view that always filled her with a rush of fierce pride and love for the city that was her home.
‘And I can’t come to any harm,’ Christina continued as they came to a mutual halt, staring out over the vast panorama that was London. ‘Hitler’s dead, remember? Germany is occupied by Allied troops.’
‘Can we go through Greenwich Park, Mummy?’ Matthew tugged at Kate’s skirt as Luke grizzled and grumbled at being confined in the push-chair. ‘Can we visit the deer?’
‘We can go through the park, but we can’t visit the deer. We haven’t time.’
With luck, her father would be as appalled by Christina’s decision to return to Germany as she was. Even if he wasn’t, even if he encouraged her, how could Christina carry out her intention? She was a civilian. Civilians couldn’t travel to Germany, not unless they were on government business or had a special permit.
‘Daddy-Leon comes home through the park, doesn’t he?’ Matthew said, unhappy at his mother’s introspection and trying to gain her attention again. ‘Might we see him? Might Daddy-Leon come with us to Grandad’s?’
‘If we see him, he will.’ She and Christina turned away from the view and began to walk in the direction of Greenwich Park’s southern side entrance. ‘Why don’t you have a game with Luke to see who sees him first?’
‘And then I can run to meet him, can’t I?’ Matthew said, recovering from his disappointment over the deer. ‘Luke can’t run to meet him, ’cos he’s in a push-chair.’ He skipped along at her side, holding on to the pushchair as he did so. ‘Only babies ride in push-chairs, don’t they?’ he said in happy self-importance. ‘Luke’s still a baby, isn’t he? He isn’t a big boy, is he? He isn’t a big boy who has a great-grandad and . . .’
‘I’se not a baby! I’se not!’ Luke yelled, drumming his heels against the push-chair’s footrest in impotent fury.
Two well-dressed middle-aged women, about to enter the park gates, paused. ‘Dear, dear, dear,’ one of them said in mock chastisement, beaming down at Luke, ‘what a little tantrum! The Bogyman will come and get you if you don’t mind your temper.’
Luke stopped yelling and stared up at her, his attention caught. What was a Bogyman? It didn’t sound very nice.
‘Mummy . . .’ he began doubtfully, ‘what’s a . . .?’
‘And what lovely curls he’s got,’ the woman said, this time directing her beaming smile at Kate. ‘More like a little girl than a little boy, isn’t he? ’Course, darkie children always are bonny. Is he from Barnardo’s? Are you just taking the little chap out for a walk?’
Kate’s polite, answering smile, died. ‘No,’ she said, a note in her voice Christina had never heard before. ‘He’s not from Barnardo’s. He’s—’
‘He’s just like a little gollywog,’ the woman’s companion said indulgently, ruffling Luke’s tight, silky curls. She bent down over the push-chair, saying in a baby voice, ‘Golly, Golly, Golly. Who’s a lovely Golly then? Golly, Golly, Goll—’
Kate removed the woman’s hand from Luke’s hair, her eyes ablaze with the force of her anger. ‘His name isn’t Golly. It’s Luke. And he isn’t from Barnardo’s! He’s my son!’
Furiously she bumped the push-chair over the park gate’s shallow step, striding down the footpath at such a pace that Matthew and Christina had to run to catch her up.
‘What’s the matter, Mummy?’ Matthew panted, bewildered and distressed. ‘Why did that lady call Luke a Gollywog? Why are you so angry? Why . . .’
Kate came to an abrupt halt. Putting the push-chair’s brake on she bent down and put her arms reassuringly around him. ‘That lady was being rude and ignorant and patronizing,’ she said, speaking very slowly and quietly so that he would understand how very serious she was. ‘She didn’t mean to be, but she was. And whenever people call Luke by anything other than his proper name, even if they do so thinking they’re being friendly or funny, you must be very fierce about it. Because if you aren’t, people might never know how rude and hurtful and . . . and belittling they are being. Luke’s name is Luke. It isn’t anything else. It isn’t Golly or Sambo. It’s Luke.’
Her voice was unsteady and Matthew’s arms tightened around her. ‘I’ll remember,’ he said, not understanding why she was so upset, but not wanting her to be upset any longer. ‘I won’t let anyone call Luke names. I promise.’
She hugged him, painfully aware that there would be times when it would be impossible for him to stop people calling Luke names and aware too that, because the incident had taken her by surprise, it had resulted in her putting far too much on Matthew’s shoulders, far too soon.
‘Does that happen often?’ Christina asked quietly as Matthew ran on ahead of them and they resumed their walk.
‘Often enough. It’s something Leon warned me to expect, but it’s something I’m never going to docilely accept, not ever.’
The late afternoon, a short while ago so crisply golden, suddenly seemed to have lost its radiance. She looked down the steeply sloping pathway towards the distant gate leading out into Nelson Road, Greenwich. A dark, muscular figure had just turned into the park; a figure that made her pulse beat faster and her heart race.
‘It’s Daddy!’ Matthew shrieked joyously. ‘I’ve won the game! It’s Daddy! It’s Daddy!’ With all the speed of a little tornado he began hurtling down the tree-lined pathway, Hector bounding ahead of him, barking furiously.
‘Out! Out!’ Luke demanded frantically, wriggling to free himself from the push-chair reins. ‘Want to meet Daddy! Want to run to Daddy!’
With joy bubbling up in her throat, Kate bent down and released him, lifting him clear of the push-chair and setting him down on his feet. The day was beautiful again. Beautiful and infinitely special. For the first time ever, Leon was no longer ‘Daddy-Leon’ to Matthew. He was simply ‘Daddy’. ‘Don’t run too fast or you’ll fall,’ she said to Luke as, with eyes bright with tears of happiness, she watched Matthew run into Leon’s arms; saw Leon swing him round and round; heard their happy, loving, joy-filled laughter as it merged with the sound of Hector’s excited barking and the sound of tug whistles rising from the nearby river.
Chapter Seventeen
Bowler-hatted and gloved, and wearing a vicuña overcoat, Joss Harvey stomped up the polished wood stairs of his City solicitors. Kate Emmerson, née Voigt, no doubt thought she’d been deviously clever in allowing him access to Matthew. She no doubt thought such contact would satisfy him and preclude him from trying to obtain custody of Matthew. He snorted in derision as a female minion hurried out of Cyril Habgood’s plushly furnished sanctum to greet him. She hadn’t been clever at all, by God. She’d been an absolute ninny. The contact he had since had with his great-grandson had merely served to reinforce his determination to remove the boy permanently from her care and to rear him himself. And thanks to the offensive environment in which Matthew was living, such a task was going to be exceedingly easy to achieve.
He snorted to himself again as he was ushered into Cyril Habgood’s holy of holies. Despite every appearance to the contrary, he had known his former employee was a slut from the moment she had told him she was pregnant with his grandson’s child. How could she be anything else? Respectable young women did not have babies out of wedlock. No doubt if Toby had lived, he would have married her, but the girl would still have been a slut. How could a girl who had happily embroiled herself with a black W
est Indian seaman be anything else?
‘Morning, Joss!’ his solicitor said sunnily, rising from behind his massive mahogany desk to greet him. ‘Wonderful weather we’re having for late October! Or is it news of the income tax cuts that’s making me feel so equable? A reduction from ten shillings to nine shillings in the pound isn’t to be sneezed at, is it?’
‘I’m not here to chat about the Budget,’ Joss said abruptly, shaking Cyril’s hand and then seating himself heavily in the leather chair facing the desk. ‘I’m here to find out how you’re going to block a Black Sambo’s application to adopt my great-grandchild.’
Leon shipped oars and reached for the hand-rolled gasper tucked behind his ear. It was good to be back on the dear old Thames. Compared to a lot of other recently demobbed men, he was exceedingly lucky. Not only, as a Thames lighterman, had he been able to return immediately to a job he knew and loved, but he was even sailing the very same barge he’d been sailing before the war had broken out. The last six years had left the Tansy a little bit the worse for wear, but she was still a solid craft. As she rocked and bobbed safely out of the main shipping line, he took his mid-morning toke, watching the build-up of shipping heading up-river towards London’s wharves and warehouses. There were oilers and tugs gunnel-deep with coal and tea and ballast. A boat from Norway surged up-stream, its decks piled high with planed timber. Another boat was from Sweden. Another from Denmark. He watched them without envy. The Thames would do for him, thank you very much. He’d had enough of foreign seas to last him a lifetime.
He took a last drag at his cigarette before tossing the butt into the eddying water. He was bound for Greenland Dock and he still had quite a bit of river to cover. He set the Tansy to hug the south shore off Woolwich Arsenal, wishing he had Matthew with him. Perhaps this coming Saturday, if he had overtime, he would suggest to Kate that Matthew spend the day aboard the Tansy. Luke would want to come too, of course, but he wouldn’t be able to keep his eyes on two of them, and it was Matthew who was mustard-keen to sail the river.
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