The Tunnels of Tarcoola

by Jennifer Walsh

  David’s father came back, chatting animatedly to Andrea’s mother, who was pink in the face and silent. David’s mother stepped forward.

  ‘Chris! Great to see you. Grab a plate, you’ve got some catching up to do. Now, red or white wine?’

  When they were all settled Moshe refilled his glass, spread out the box and its contents on the coffee table, and began.

  ‘This story starts in 1932, when Josef Freudenthal married a lovely young woman called Naomi Weinsheimer. Well, let’s surmise she was lovely. You’ll allow me some poetic licence here.’

  He held up a marriage certificate.

  ‘Josef was a Czech national, some sort of industrialist with interests in various German cities as well as Prague. The happy couple set up house in Berlin, and their lives were complete with the arrival of a son, Oskar, in 1935. Here is the birth certificate.

  ‘But the 1930s, as it turned out, was not a good time for a young family in Europe. Not if you were Jewish, anyway, like the Freudenthals. Things came to a head on the night of the ninth of November, nineteenth thirty-eight. Hatred, stirred up by Hitler for his own purposes, boiled to the surface. People rampaged through the streets of German cities, attacking Jews and wrecking their shops and businesses. They call it Kristallnacht because of all the broken glass. On that night many Jews were killed and many more were taken away, nobody quite knew where.

  ‘Josef and Naomi were in Berlin, at the epicentre, and we can only imagine their terror. Afterwards, they seem to have made up their minds that Naomi and little Oskar would be safer in Czechoslovakia, so Josef sent them to Prague.’

  He held up a handwritten note.

  ‘This,’ he said with pleasure, ‘is in Yiddish. I had to enlist the help of my old friend Arnold in translating it. Yiddish was spoken in Jewish families right through Eastern Europe before the war. My parents spoke it when I was young, but I’m pretty rusty now. The letter says, more or less, “Dearest Josef, I miss you, I hope you are being careful, I pray that this madness will end soon and we can come home, etcetera.”

  ‘Well, as we know, the madness didn’t end, and things got very bad very quickly for Jews in Germany and Czechoslovakia. So Josef Freudenthal hatched a plan. He moved his money out of Germany, probably into Switzerland, and got himself a new, false identity – Josef Woolf. Now we find Josef Woolf marrying an American woman called Myrtle Carlyon.’ He held up another marriage certificate.

  ‘An American woman?’ cut in Andrea. ‘But is she . . . ’

  ‘The dreaded Mrs Woolf, yes.’

  ‘The Mrs Woolf who came here after the war?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But does that mean she wasn’t really . . . ’

  ‘Let’s finish the story first, then we’ll discuss the implications, hmm?’ Moshe shuffled the papers, looking for the next bit of evidence.

  ‘Now, Naomi knew about this sham marriage . . . ’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said Kitty. ‘Did he marry this American woman or not?’

  ‘He married her,’ said Moshe patiently, ‘but it wasn’t legal because he was still married to Naomi. It was what’s called bigamy. I’m afraid Josef Freudenthal – or Josef Woolf if you like – was a bigamist.’

  ‘Oh, poor Myrtle,’ said Kitty.

  ‘No, not poor Myrtle at all. She knew quite well what she was doing. Josef was a rich man, and he would have paid her to do this. See here, we have another letter from Naomi, in which she says . . . hmmm . . . “Tell Myrtle I’m grateful.” ’

  ‘Why would they do that?’ asked Kitty’s mother.

  ‘I would assume it was because Myrtle was American,’ said Moshe. ‘She could get him out of Europe, to America. Once he got there, he probably planned to go back to his original identity and arrange to bring out Naomi and the boy. Of course, he had no idea that that would have been impossible. Impossible.’

  He sighed heavily and gazed at the floor, lost in thought for a while. The others waited politely. At last he resumed.

  ‘However, it seems Myrtle got cold feet in September 1939, when war was declared. So she deserted him, leaving this note: “Dear Joe, Getting too hot round here for little old me. See you in Berlin or New York after the war, depending who wins. Look after all that loot, honey. I’ve got your IOU for my share. So long, Myrtle.” ’

  ‘Charming,’ said Andrea’s mother.

  ‘What’s an IOU?’ asked Andrea.

  ‘Literally, “I owe you” ,’ explained David’s mother. ‘The plan must have involved him paying Myrtle more money when they all got to America.’

  ‘So what happened next?’ asked Kitty, bouncing with impatience.

  ‘Well, there’s a big leap here, because we find Josef in Australia, having managed to bring his money and get himself established here. No doubt his idea was to set himself up somewhere safe and send for his real wife and child.

  ‘However, in October 1939 the Nazis began to deport Jews from Czechoslovakia to Poland, transporting them in locked passenger trains. Those who survived the journey were put into Polish ghettos. It seems Naomi and Oskar went to the Warsaw ghetto.

  ‘Conditions in the ghettos were bad, very bad, and thousands of people died of starvation and random killings. In early 1941, Josef received this letter from a friend, smuggled out of Warsaw. The letter’s in Czech, so I had to have it translated. With it is a death certificate in Polish. I had a Polish friend look at it, just to make sure.’

  His sombre expression was enough to tell the rest. Kitty and Andrea were both crying. Kitty’s mother bowed her head and covered her eyes.

  David’s father brought in a tray of coffee, and Moshe paused to pour himself a cup. When he sat down again the white cat jumped onto his lap and curled up, purring.

  ‘So Naomi died in the Warsaw Ghetto, as did many thousands. Josef never had a chance of getting his family out. Not a chance. I doubt if he ever understood that.’

  David’s mother Linda got up and went into the kitchen, kissing the top of Moshe’s head as she went past.

  ‘After the shock of receiving that letter,’ continued Moshe, ‘I suppose Josef just threw himself into work. He built up his business, became an important man. And Clarissa . . . I had no idea that Clarissa Gordon was alive, girls, until you told me what you had found out. From what I can gather, she came to Tarcoola originally as the housekeeper. It’s a classic story, isn’t it? She was young and beautiful, and her world couldn’t have been further away from the one he had escaped. I suppose it was her innocence that appealed to him. He doesn’t seem to have told her anything about his past. Whatever . . . In January 1942, he married her.’ He put a marriage certificate on top of the pile.

  Linda started bringing plates of cake and biscuits into the room.

  ‘Here, let me help you,’ said Andrea’s mother, jumping up.

  ‘Do you know something?’ said Moshe. ‘I was at their wedding. My parents were invited because my father had worked on the garden.’ He smiled at the two girls. ‘See that photograph on the wall, with me as a baby? I didn’t realise until now what the occasion was, but it’s written on the back.’

  It was one of those pictures that you never notice because it had always been there, among the other black-and-white family photos. David looked now in astonishment. The slender, bearded young man, clearly Moshe’s father, and the dark-haired woman beside him were both focused on the baby in her arms. Behind them he could see a stone wall, just like the one that enclosed the rose garden.

  ‘So Clarissa’s marriage wasn’t bigamy?’ Kitty was saying.

  ‘Certainly not. Naomi was dead, and he was never legally married to Myrtle, so his marriage to Clarissa was quite legitimate. In fact, what we have here is the proof that Josef Woolf, or should I say Josef Freudenthal, was legally married to Clarissa Gordon. As he didn’t leave a will, she is his heir, and as she is still alive, she is the owner of all his property, and has been all this time.’

  ‘The mistress of Tarcoola,’ said Kitty.

  ‘Quite
.’

  ‘But still,’ said Linda, handing round plates, ‘wouldn’t Buckingham be his descendant? That would give him a claim on the estate. Certainly under German law . . . ’

  ‘I’m ahead of you there, my dear.’ Her father beamed at her. ‘Harold Buckingham is not Josef Woolf’s descendant. The internet being a wonderful thing, I was able to discover that Myrtle Carlyon married one Walter Buckingham in Idaho in 1941. Harold Buckingham is their grandson. If Myrtle has no claim on Josef Woolf’s estate, then Harold doesn’t either.’

  ‘We’ve got him! Papa, you’re a genius. And you kids!’ To David’s intense embarrassment, Linda danced around, exchanging high-fives with everyone.

  ‘And Oskar?’ asked Kitty in a small voice. ‘What happened to Oskar?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Kitty. One little boy, in the ghetto . . . ’

  ‘Does it say anything more about him in any of the letters?’

  ‘There is only one veiled reference. It says something like “Oskar has been taken.” ’

  ‘Is that good?’

  ‘No, I can’t imagine that’s good. I don’t think Josef’s friend could bring himself to give more details. You don’t want me to tell you what they did with small children, now, do you?’

  Kitty, Martin and Andrea were wide-eyed, but they all nodded. David shifted uncomfortably. He had heard all this before.

  ‘Well, they rounded them up from time to time and took them away, in trucks or trains. Away from their parents. They took small children, old people, the weak, the sick – anyone who was not useful. They were never seen again. I don’t want to say any more than that.’

  Kitty’s mother hugged her tight.

  ‘But anyway,’ said Paul O’Brien, ‘all this proves that Clarissa Gordon is the surviving Mrs Woolf, and she really owns Tarcoola?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Moshe, as the other adults nodded and murmured assent.

  ‘I can sort of understand why Josef couldn’t bring himself to tell her the story and left her these papers instead,’ said Kitty’s mother, ‘but why didn’t he make sure she understood how important they were, and tell her she must show them to someone after he died?’

  ‘Well, he probably never imagined that Myrtle would ever show up and make trouble. But then Clarissa had a stroke of bad luck.’

  He reached over to the sideboard and produced a printout, a facsimile of a newspaper article.

  ‘I went through the newspapers at the State Library with, I must say, infinite patience. I found this small article from 1946. The tone is rather unpleasant so I’ll just summarise. Apparently Clarissa was kind enough to put on little garden parties for American servicemen stationed here after they entered the war. One of them happened to be Myrtle’s cousin. He eventually made his way home to some desolate mid-west town, described the experience in detail and told the story of the mysterious Mr Woolf and his suicide. So word reached Myrtle’s ears.

  ‘Now I think that, being a bit of a gold-digger and being in possession of her own copy of the sham marriage certificate, Myrtle decided to descend on Australia and claim to be the real Mrs Woolf. It worked like a dream. It’s a great pity Josef hadn’t told Clarissa that the papers in the box would help her in such a circumstance.’

  ‘Poor Miss Gordon,’ said Kitty. ‘Mrs Woolf took everything she had. She didn’t want her to take the box too, so all she could think to do was to keep it hidden.’

  Moshe sighed heavily. ‘Josef knew there were bad times coming. But even he never imagined how bad it was going to be. They must have all thought the war would finish, and everyone would go home, and everything would just go back to the way it was before.’

  ‘Come on, Papa,’ said his daughter, putting an arm around him. ‘We’ve done something good here today.’

  ‘We certainly have!’ He beamed around the room. ‘Let’s you and I get all this paperwork processed, then we’ll give Buckingham the good news. Then Kitty, you can give Clarissa her treasure back.’

  Kitty nodded happily.

  ‘I have put the word out about Oskar,’ Moshe went on gently. ‘I still have quite a network of friends – my parents’ friends really – all over the world, and there are organisations that trace people from the ghettos and the camps. Sooner or later we’ll find out what happened to him.’

  ‘What are you going to do about the solicitor’s letter? From Harold Buckingham?’ asked Kitty’s mother.

  ‘Oh, Linda’s drafting the sweetest reply, informing them that the documents don’t belong to him. She’ll include relevant photocopies. Wouldn’t you love to see Buckingham’s face?’

  Cleaning up afterwards, David said to his grandfather, ‘Those men really were going to kill us.’

  ‘For what it’s worth,’ said Moshe, ‘Josef Woolf would have believed you. He understood that there’s evil in the world.’

  MARTIN picked up the phone in the hall. It was Samantha.

  ‘I don’t suppose I should be calling you,’ she said meekly.

  ‘Well . . . you know . . . ’

  ‘Only, that day we talked . . . later on that day my dad got really, really mad, and he’s been really, really mad pretty much ever since. So I wondered if maybe something happened.’

  ‘Why don’t you ask him?’

  ‘You’re kidding, right?’

  There was a silence.

  ‘Well—’

  ‘I—’

  ‘No, you go first.’

  ‘Since you ask,’ Martin said stiffly, ‘it was good that you called me that day. Whatever those men were going to—’

  ‘Martin, I don’t want to know any details, okay? Just that everything turned out all right.’

  ‘Oh. Yeah, everything turned out fine for us. And thanks for warning me.’

  ‘I’m glad I did.’

  ‘So your dad’s upset?’

  ‘Spewing.’ She gave a little giggle. ‘He fired those men. He says New Zealanders are useless. He’s got new security guys now, and they don’t speak English. He just yells louder, and wonders why they still don’t understand what he’s saying.’

  There was another silence. Then she spoke in a low voice.

  ‘I don’t suppose you’ll ever want to speak to me again.’

  ‘Well, you know – after that . . . ’

  ‘I understand, I really do. I just . . . I just wish I knew before all this . . . I really like you, you know? I wish we could have just met, and had coffee . . . ’

  ‘That was good,’ he admitted. ‘I liked that café.’

  ‘Did you really?’

  Martin took the plunge. ‘I couldn’t do that dance thing, but we could go to the café again, if you’re up for it.’

  ‘Sure!’

  ‘Only this time I’ll call you, okay?’

  ‘Sure, Marty. Any time.’

  CLUTCHING the box, Kitty bounded upstairs, tapped lightly on the door and slipped into the room.

  ‘Hello! I’ve brought you something. Oh!’

  Miss Gordon was sitting in her chair by the window, her soft white hair haloed with light. Her face lit up with a radiant smile.

  ‘Kitty! Look who’s here. ‘

  A man was in the room. She hadn’t noticed him at first because he was standing by the door, arranging some flowers in a vase on a small cupboard. He was a bit older than Moshe, bright-eyed, alert and well-dressed. He stepped forward and held out a hand.

  ‘Sorry to startle you.’ He had a deep, pleasant voice and an American accent. ‘I’m Clarissa’s stepson, Oskar Freudenthal. I believe I have a lot to thank you for.’

  ‘HIS mother smuggled him out of the ghetto in the early days,’ Kitty explained to the others. They were sitting in the grass at the tip of the park, enjoying a sea breeze at the end of a sweltering day.

  ‘Remember that letter that said “Oskar has been taken?” That’s what it meant, but they couldn’t say it outright in case the wrong people saw it. A Polish family took him in and pretended he was theirs. All they knew was his real name and tha
t his parents were trying to get to America. After the war, when he was old enough, he migrated there himself. He spent his whole life searching, but he couldn’t find them. Remember Moshe said there were organisations that trace people? Oskar was in touch with all of them, but he was looking for Freudenthals in America. He’d never even heard the name Woolf. Then Moshe’s message went up on some bulletin board, and he saw it!’

  ‘So how does Miss Gordon feel?’ asked Andrea. She and David were leaning against each other, back to back.

  ‘She’s come alive. She’s got a family now. It turns out Oskar comes to Australia quite often. His daughter lives in Sydney, and there are grandchildren. They’re all going to visit her.’

  ‘What’s going to happen to the house?’ asked Martin.

  ‘Oskar said they’ll fix it up eventually, starting with the garden. He’s really interested in finding out what Mr Woolf wanted done with it.’

  ‘Can we meet him?’ asked Andrea.

  ‘Yes, he wants us to show him the garden, and the little boy of course, and everything else. He’s suggested we have a picnic there. I thought on the grass, in front of the lady? He’s going to bring Miss Gordon! She can’t walk that far, but they have wheelchairs at the home, so he’ll borrow one of those. I think we’d better invite your grandfather, David.’

  ‘We wouldn’t be able to keep him away.’

  ‘Miss Gordon’s going to get dressed up, and she’ll be wearing her special necklace. She was so happy to see it again. Mr Woolf gave it to her on their wedding day, and she didn’t even know there was anything else in the box.’

  ‘Well, we’ll all get dressed up too,’ said Andrea. ‘This will be a party to celebrate Miss Gordon’s new life, okay?’

  ‘Great,’ said David. ‘We’ll bring the food.’

  ‘Am I invited?’ asked Martin sheepishly.

  ‘Hey, bring your girlfriend!’ said David. Both girls raised their eyebrows. ‘She is a direct descendant of the wicked Myrtle,’ he reminded them. ‘She can do a sort of apology.’

  ‘No way!’ cried Andrea, throwing grass at him. His protests were lost in a flurry of arms and legs, screams of laughter and flying grass as the sky turned from violet to pale green and lights flicked on, reaching across the darkening water.