Octavia's War

by Beryl Kingston

  ‘Sensible ones,’ her father said, reading her mind.

  ‘Four pounds a week.’

  ‘Be reasonable, Tavy. That’s far too much. You’d be inundated with applications.’

  That had to be admitted. ‘Well, three pounds ten then.’

  ‘I would say twenty-five shillings,’ J-J advised. ‘However, given your views on exploitation, perhaps thirty.’

  So the wage was agreed, with the proviso that if they found the right person it could always be increased, and Octavia went indoors to her study to write the advertisement. Then she walked across to the kitchen to make it up with her cousin.

  It took a considerable time and much hugging for Emmeline was profoundly upset and needed to tell her cousin all over again that she simply couldn’t do so much work. ‘Not with the best will in the world.’

  ‘But if we can get a good girl,’ Octavia urged, ‘that will make all the difference, won’t it.’

  Eventually after demurring for a long time, Emmeline agreed that it would and, as the matter seemed to be settled, she dried her eyes and put on her straw hat and the two of them went off arm in arm to post Octavia’s letters.

  ‘It’s so peaceful here,’ she said as they walked beneath the burgeoning lime trees in the avenue. ‘You don’t think there’s really going to be a war, do you?’

  The anxiety on her face reminded Octavia of something she’d said in the garden. ‘What’s all this about Arthur joining the Territorials?’ she asked.

  ‘And that’s another thing,’ Emmeline said. ‘I can’t think what’s got into him. Edie told me this morning. “Joined the Territorials,” she said. And I said, “Whatever for?” and she just shrugged. You know how she does. I don’t like it, Tavy. I mean, that’s the army to all intents and purposes. If there is a war he’ll be in the thick of it and we don’t want that. We had quite enough of that with our poor Cyril.’

  ‘He hasn’t been laid off, has he?’ Octavia asked. It seemed the most likely explanation.

  ‘Oh no,’ Emmeline said. ‘Nothing like that. I asked her. But there’s something going on. She had that look, you know the one, all sort of stiff faced and not telling you anything, like she had when he was laid off that time. I tell you, Tavy, I don’t like it one bit.’

  They’d reached the letter-box on the corner. Octavia slipped her letters into the slot while Emmeline watched. Now whatever was going to happen next would depend on what sort of answer they got and both of them were privately praying that it would be a good one.

  What they actually got in the next two days were three bundles of letters each tied together with an elastic band.

  ‘Good heavens above,’ Octavia said. ‘I know there’s a lot of unemployment but I never realised there’d be this many people looking for work in Wimbledon. It’ll take for ever just to read them and sort them through. And we’ll have to see them on Monday by the latest, Em. It doesn’t give us much time.’

  ‘We’ll do it between us,’ Emmeline told her. ‘Three piles: definitely possible, quite good, and no good at all.’

  By the end of the evening they’d sorted the letters into possibles and impossibles and reduced the possible pile to the six women they most liked the sound of. Then there was nothing more to be done except answer the letters and wait until their six candidates arrived.

  They were a varied bunch and they’d come from all over the British Isles: South Wales, Tyneside, Slough, West Ham, Glasgow. ‘No work, you see, Miss Smith,’ they explained. ‘Not where we live.’ But they were all very eager to please, so eager, in fact, that Octavia was touched to the depths of her socialist soul and wanted to employ them all. However, one was all she needed and that one soon emerged from the group.

  Her name was Janet Sanderson and she was pale and skinny and looked as though hard work would make her collapse, but there was something endearing about her. With her stick-thin legs and her chirrupy perkiness and that bright red jumper, she reminded Octavia of the robin who sang to her every day in the garden. She said she came from Tyneside and lived with her cousin in Putney.

  ‘She works on the telephoane, miss,’ she told Octavia. ‘They wouldn’ tek me on account a’ me accent.’

  ‘Are you used to housework?’ Octavia asked her.

  ‘I ought ter be,’ the girl said, rather ruefully. ‘I done enough of it.’

  ‘It’s a big house,’ Octavia warned her. ‘There would be a lot of work.’

  ‘Couldn’t be worse than the doale, miss,’ Janet said, and grinned at her.

  I like her, Octavia thought. She’s got the right spirit. I think she’d suit us very well.

  That was Emmeline’s opinion of her too, although for a different reason. She was much too sensible to entertain any romantic notions about robins and red jerseys, her concerns were entirely practical. ‘I think she’d be more likely to do as she was told,’ she said to Octavia as they walked round the garden while their six applicants waited in the study, ‘being young. Some of the others would have their own ways of doing things and I’d prefer to have things done my way.’

  So the decision was made to Janet’s very obvious delight.

  ‘We would want you to start at half past eight tomorrow morning,’ Octavia said. ‘Would that be agreeable?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. It would.’

  ‘Don’t be late,’ Emmeline warned. ‘We’ve got a lot to get through tomorrow.

  ‘I’ll be there on the dot, ma’am,’ the girl promised.

  And so she was, appearing at the kitchen door as the clock struck the half-hour and donning her apron ready for work as soon as she was inside the kitchen. ‘Where would you like me to start, Mrs Thompson?’ she said. It was the perfect opening.

  ‘I’ve got a list here,’ Emmeline told her, pointing to her little notice board. ‘We’ll start with the breakfast things. Use the trolley.’

  So the trolley was used and the table was cleared and brushed free of crumbs – ‘Use this little brush and pan, do you see? I keep that specially for crumbs’ – and the dirty dishes were washed and put neatly away and the list was followed obediently and cheerfully for the rest of the morning. But just as they were preparing the lunch, the doorbell rang and change arrived with a shuffle of small feet and terrible smell.

  ‘If you please, Mrs Thompson,’ Janet said, returning to the kitchen when she’d answered the door. ‘You’ve got company.’

  ‘Tell Miss Smith,’ Emmeline said, not looking up from the pudding she was mixing. ‘She deals with company.’

  ‘I have, ma’am,’ Janet said, ‘onny she said I wor to tell you, like.’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ Emmeline said, putting down her spoon. ‘They’re not here already, surely to goodness, wretched people. And just when we’re getting on so well. It’s too bad.’ And she went off to attend to them, scowling all the way.

  There was no doubt how wretched they were. She could see that as soon as she stepped inside the study. They stood together in a small huddled group, four dark-haired children, in foreign-looking clothes: three little girls wearing cotton frocks, dark coats and berets, and a little boy in a cloth cap several sizes too large for him, who was clinging to his sister’s hand and shivering.

  Their escort was a handsome woman in a tweed suit who was talking to Octavia. She turned as Emmeline came in and introduced herself as Stella Hutchinson. ‘These are the Cohens,’ she said and explained unnecessarily, ‘I’m afraid they’ve been rather seasick.’

  Emmeline looked at their stained clothes and sniffed. ‘So I see,’ she said. ‘Do they have a change of clothing?’

  ‘They’ve got a case,’ Mrs Hutchinson said. ‘But I haven’t had time to see what they’ve brought in it. They’re rather bewildered, poor little things, so I thought the best thing to do would be to get them here to you as soon as I could.’

  ‘They’ll need a good wash,’ Emmeline said, ‘clean clothes or not. We can’t have them standing around smelling like that. It’s not pleasant. Do they speak
English?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘But you speak German presumably.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Then tell them my name is Mrs Thompson and that I’m going to give them a bath and they’re to do as they’re told and then they shall have dinner afterwards. They look as if they could do with some nourishment.’

  Mrs Hutchinson spoke to the children in German and at some length while Emmeline rang for Janet, fidgeted with impatience and wrinkled her nose against the smell of vomit. Eventually the children seemed to have understood for they were all nodding and at that Emmeline took the little boy by the hand and walked towards the door.

  ‘Come along,’ she said, and brisked them all out of the room and upstairs to the bathroom, with Janet following in attendance. ‘Two at a time, I think,’ she said, ‘and we’ll wash their hair while we’re about it.’

  When Octavia came upstairs half an hour later to see how they were getting on, she found the two eldest children sitting on the bathroom floor swathed in towels while Emmeline and Janet had the two younger ones on their laps and were rubbing their hair dry.

  ‘They haven’t got much in the way of clothes,’ Emmeline said. ‘I shall have to go out presently and buy them some knickers. Poor little ducks. We’ll have our dinner first though,’ she said to the child on her lap, ‘eh? I expect you could do with it.’

  Poor little ducks, Octavia thought, smiling at the words and the affection with which they’d been spoken. It was what Emmeline had called her own children when they were babies. Dear little ducks. Despite her worries, this was going to be all right. Em might get cross and complain, but when it came down to it her heart was in the right place. ‘I’ll leave you to it then,’ she said.

  Emmeline was disappointed when her new little ducks ate so little at dinner time but she was ready to excuse them. ‘We can’t wonder at it,’ she said to Octavia. ‘Not after being so seasick. I shall make some little light cakes for their tea and see if that will tempt them.’

  ‘So it will be all right for me to go to school tomorrow?’ Octavia said, grinning at her.

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ Emmeline said. ‘We’ve got everything under control, haven’t we, Janet? Now I’m off to get those knickers and I think I might buy them some warm cardigans too. Their coats are very lightweight.’

  The start of a new autumn term was always a joy to Octavia. It was so good to be back in school, to see her old colleagues again and hear what they’d all been getting up to during the summer holiday, and taking her first assembly invariably filled her with a sense of ineffable well-being. It was so good to be sitting in her familiar chair on the platform with the staff sitting behind her, the new prefects ranged at the back of the hall in their red sashes and their black gowns, and all the little first-formers, wide-eyed and bandbox neat in their new uniforms on the front benches. My school, she thought proudly, as she always did. My fine, strong, intelligent, lively school.

  But the talk in the staff room at their first break was more serious than she’d ever known it, for Helen Staples, who taught English, and Phillida Bertram, their Art teacher, had spent the entire holiday in Germany. They’d gone to Munich to see the latest paintings in the ‘House of Art’ but they’d come back talking about the terrible things they’d seen and heard in the city streets.

  ‘There are troops everywhere,’ Helen said. ‘We saw a parade in Berlin, didn’t we Philly, and there were hundreds of them all marching along like robots with guns on their shoulders and the most dreadful helmets you ever saw, bellowing some awful song. They scared the life out of me.’

  ‘All very ugly,’ Phillida agreed. ‘Oh, they’re smart enough. Their uniforms are very fine, a sort of grey-green, and everything’s polished and clean but it’s the impression they give. They don’t look human. You feel they’d be absolutely ruthless if it came to obeying orders. They’d do as they were told without a thought, no matter what it was. I find that alarming.’

  ‘And what were the paintings like?’ Octavia asked.

  ‘Horrible,’ Phillida said. ‘Either pornographic, or – well, what shall I call them, Helen?’

  ‘Militaristic,’ Helen said. ‘Handsome young men in greygreen uniforms, all looking healthy and well-fed, off to war waving flags, looking noble. And invincible, of course. About as far away from the reality of war as the artists can get and all of a piece with those bellowing men in the streets. Propaganda, of course.’

  ‘It makes you wonder what’s going on behind the scenes,’ Morag Gordon said, putting down her coffee cup. ‘You hear such rumours.’

  So Octavia told them about her refugees. ‘If the next family I get can speak English,’ she said, ‘we might find things out.’

  The four children left her two days later wearing their new cardigans and with a shopping bag full of fruit and sandwiches for the next stage of their journey. Four days after that they were replaced by a young woman called Gerda, who had a babe in arms and a toddler and was worried about her husband who’d been left behind. ‘Very bad,’ she said. But as Octavia quickly discovered, that and ‘Thank you’ was all the English she knew.

  ‘I shall have to learn German,’ Octavia said to her father. ‘That’s all there is to it. Not being able to communicate is very trying.’

  Gerda stayed for four days and when Mrs Hutchinson came to collect her, she said goodbye to Octavia and Emmeline with tears in her eyes. ‘You good,’ she said passionately. ‘You rescue good.’

  ‘It’s the least we can do,’ Octavia told her. ‘The least any of us can do and we’re glad to do it.’

  ‘They’re grateful for so little,’ she said to her family over dinner that night. ‘It makes me wonder just what horrors they’ve had to endure. I wish they could tell us. I’d like to know what’s really happening out there. Morag’s right. I’m sure we don’t know the half of it.’

  But it wasn’t until the Mannheim family came to stay with her that she heard what was going on.

  They were an obviously middle-class family from Berlin, mother, father and two little girls of seven and eight called Miriam and Rachel, and they came to stay in the middle of November, bringing money and jewellery stitched into their clothes so that they could pay their way. They said they’d had terrible trouble trying to get out of Germany, ‘you would never believe how difficult it is’, and now they were planning to take ship to America, where Mr Mannheim hoped he would be able to get a job. They were well dressed and courteous and they all spoke English, in the father’s case extremely well. He’d been a journalist, he told them on his first evening at Parkside Avenue, ‘but of course, that is no longer permitted.’

  ‘Why is that?’ J-J asked. ‘Are people afraid to employ you?’

  ‘No, sir,’ Mr Mannheim said. ‘It is because it is against the law. Jews are not allowed to teach, or farm, or work in films or the radio, or be journalists, by order of the Führer.’

  Professor Smith was shocked. ‘Has it come to that?’ he said.

  ‘Actually, that is the least of our worries,’ Mrs Mannheim told him. ‘We might perhaps tell you a little more about it, but later in the evening.’ And she flashed a warning glance in the direction of her two daughters.

  ‘Yes, quite,’ the professor said. ‘We mustn’t forget the pudding. Emmeline has something rather special for us tonight.’

  Later that evening when Johnnie was out with his friends and Miriam and Rachel were safely upstairs and well out of earshot, the Mannheims told their hosts what life was like in Hitler’s Germany.

  ‘For a start,’ Mr Mannheim said, ‘you must understand that nobody is allowed to oppose this man. Not that many would dare to now. It is altogether too dangerous. Since May, he has established a new court which he calls “the people’s court”, but which of course is no such thing. It consists of two judges chosen by Herr Hitler and five high-ranking Nazis, also chosen by Herr Hitler, naturally, and its function is to try cases of treason against the state, or in other words, disagr
eeing with Herr Hitler. It sits in camera and there is no appeal against its judgement.’

  It sounded corrupt in the extreme. ‘What sort of punishments can it impose?’ Octavia wanted to know.

  ‘Death,’ Mr Mannheim said, ‘or banishment to a concentration camp, which could well be tantamount to death.’

  ‘Even his own followers are not safe,’ Mrs Mannheim said. ‘You have heard of the Night of the Long Knives, doubtless.’

  There had been something about it in the papers. ‘The night they shot Ernst Roehm,’ J-J said.

  ‘He and hundreds of others,’ Mr Mannheim told him. ‘It was what they call a purge. And these men were all members of the SA, don’t forget, the Storm Troopers association, his closest allies.’

  ‘Dear God!’ Octavia said. ‘It sounds like a nightmare.’

  ‘It is a nightmare,’ Mr Mannheim said. ‘Nobody is safe, and the Jews least of all.’ Then he stopped and turned to look at his wife and there was pain on his face.

  ‘I would not wish to pry,’ J-J said, ‘for we know how difficult this must be for you, but we know so little that anything you can tell us would help us to understand, and I do feel we should try to understand. It seems to me that it is only by ordinary people telling one another what is happening that the truth will emerge.’

  ‘What we are facing,’ Mrs Mannheim said, ‘and face every day on every street, is hatred. Hitler hates the Jews. I don’t know why, except that it must be something very deep-seated, something in his psyche. But for whatever reason, he hates the Jews. There is no doubt about that at all, he makes no secret of it, and he and his henchman, Dr Goebbels, have taught the Germans to hate us too. None of us are safe. We can be spat at, or sworn at, or punched and kicked for no other reason than because we are Jews and happen to be in the way of someone who wants to vent their anger on us. I have not dared to let my daughters out in the street for a very long time. It is very ugly.’