Somewhere Over England

by Margaret Graham

  Then Hans came and shovelled the path and so they helped, nodding and smiling, and wondering if, one day, he would betray Herr Weber. Ilse came with ashes, salt and sand and scattered them on the ice which had been beneath the snow and in moments it became soft and brown and ugly and Helen turned from it, watching the sundial far out across the garden near the orchard. Children passed behind the hedge which looked foreshortened against the depth of the snow and Helen listened to their laughter and made herself ignore the ugliness of the path.

  Later they drove to the forest on roads cleared of snow and chose the Christmas tree and took the toboggan down a thirty metre slope again and again. The snow clumped in Helen’s hair and scarf and trickled down her neck but all she could feel and hear was the laughter of her husband as he watched, his leg too stiff to participate, and that of her son mingling with her own. On and on they went until the sky turned pink and the sun lost its weak warmth. She and Chris took the last run together. Chris in front, then Helen, and as the wind caught her cheeks and the toboggan jarred and flew, she held Chris tightly and did not want the slope to ever end because now, this minute, she had her family safe and close.

  That night they watched a torchlit procession from the window and Chris thought it was pretty, like a moving Christmas tree but his father said that sometimes things were not as they seemed and then Chris saw that they were soldiers.

  On Christmas Eve Chris went with Helen and Oma to the attic and she showed him the decorations, the electric candles, the crib and its figures, the provisions. They carried boxes down and decorated the tree so that it was ready for the evening, for it was tonight that they would have their presents, Helen told him. Frau Weber smiled and said that it was because it was the German way and, after all, he was half German.

  Chris looked at her and then at Helen. ‘I can’t say that at school,’ he said.

  Helen looked away and then at Mutti who touched her shoulder. ‘I know. I know,’ was all she said.

  That evening they opened their presents before they ate. They were set on low tables either side of the tree which shimmered with silver strips, baubles and electric candles. Set before the tree was the crib. Hans and Ilse came to receive their gifts and there was the sound of paper crackling and laughter until Hans turned on the radio for the Government’s Christmas Eve broadcast and Helen heard in this room, so full of gifts and light, the voice which had changed so many lives.

  She looked at the tree and counted the candles, she breathed deeply ten times and then counted the candles again because she wouldn’t listen. No, she would never listen, not even to the sound since the words would escape her anyway. She looked at the Advent wreath of fir branches which was hung from plaited blue, green and red ribbons suspended from the ceiling in the dining-room. Christoph had lit it before they started to open the presents, his arm steady as he reached forward, held up by Heine, his face red from the cold of the day. She had kissed him when Heine lowered him and he said that she smelt of ginger. She laughed because she had baked ginger biscuits most of the morning, cutting him out a Hansel and Gretel for his stocking which she would put on his bed tonight because he was also half English.

  Before dinner, before they left the tree, Herr Weber went to the piano which stood in the corner of the room and played carols for them and when he came to ‘Silent Night’ Helen sang it half in German half in English as her present to the Webers. Her voice was pure and strong and there was silence for a moment when she finished.

  During dinner the smell of ginger and honey mixed with the cool white wine and took away the strong taste of the carp and horseradish which Helen had found strange and Chris could not eat. She smiled, doubting if he could have eaten even his favourite food, bacon and eggs, after the tea of toast and honey and the cakes, and she felt the flush in her own cheeks from the afternoon’s tobogganing. Talk flowed gently and quietly and for now there was peace for each of them.

  Herr Weber told Christoph of the Opera House in Hanover where Heine had been taken as a child to see the children’s play. How the chandeliers had sparkled and the seats had pricked him so that he wriggled all the way through. How the gilt boxes full of officials and their families had glistened. He told him how his father had taken the toboggan out one day with his friends and come back so late that there were icicles on his mittens, his hat, even his nose. He laughed gently when Christoph said that today he had gone down on the sledge with his mother because his father was an old man with a stiff leg who could only watch.

  Helen did not laugh at the words which dropped from Chris’s mouth, wondering if Heine felt the pain of them as she did, but he looked at her with his eyebrows raised.

  ‘This is how you bring up your son is it, Frau Weber? To show such scant respect for his father?’ He was laughing, his blue eyes clear and without hurt.

  Helen laughed then and lifted her glass to him, to the man he now was, looking from him to their son. So like Heine except for those eyes and she looked up at the Advent candles. One, lit on the first Advent Sunday was burnt almost to a stub. The wax from today’s was burning with a strong firm flame. She could smell the pine and the honey.

  She could not remember a Christmas with her father. Would he have laughed? Would he have sat on a toboggan? She thought so. Would her mother? She knew she would not.

  She thought of her mother on Christmas day when they walked through Hanover. She had left presents and cards with her but her mother had sent none out to Germany in the car.

  Frau Weber had said this morning that she sent a card each year but never heard in return. As they walked in the air which was so cold it hurt her lungs, Helen felt the tension knot in her shoulders but pushed it away because it was Christmas and she was happy. She kicked at the ice which had chipped and protruded up into the road. Frau Weber took her arm.

  ‘Come, Helen. Do not be left behind, they miss you.’

  Helen looked up and waved as Heine and Chris called.

  ‘Yes, I was just thinking,’ she said, smiling at Frau Weber.

  ‘There is much to think of these days,’ Frau Weber said as they walked along down the alley into the centre. Heine and Chris carried the red ball which had been in his stocking from Father Christmas. It showed up clear and shining against the snow, the grey buildings with icicles hanging like witches’ fingers from the eaves. Would her own mother have wanted to hurry to join with everyone else? She knew she would not. She would have tried to hold her back and would not forgive her when she pulled away. But that was all in the past. She could not hurt her ever again. This was Christmas and she was far from England.

  As they reached the men, Helen smiled and looked at her mother-in-law; the daylight showed up the lines around the eyes, the hair which was almost white. She looked fragile, strained, her skin almost translucent. Did she know of Herr Weber’s activities? It never seemed safe to ask. There were many people in the city centre, walking, nodding, and Helen moved to look into the window of the toy shop where the shelves were now half empty. She turned to call to Chris and saw an old man slip and fall in amongst the milling crowd. She moved to help but Heine caught her arm.

  ‘Leave him,’ he said, pulling her round, back to the shop.

  His hand was tight on her arm and she stared at him and then twisted round again. Chris was staring as the old man struggled on the unsanded ice near the road. He was still on the ground, his black coat and hat smudged with white. His earlocks too.

  ‘Are you mad?’ Helen said. ‘Let me help him.’

  Chris was looking across at her now, his face puzzled. Helen looked at Herr Weber, at his wife. They did not move to help but turned away as though they had not seen, but they had seen because Herr Weber’s face was white. Those in the square did not help either but passed either side. Still the old man could not rise.

  ‘He is a Jew. If we help him Father could be in danger. There is too much to lose, too much work yet to be done.’

  Again Helen looked at the old man and then at Heine. S
he looked at Chris then and saw him move to help but he was only six and not strong enough.

  ‘Let go of me, at once,’ she said to Heine. ‘I do not bring up my child to pass an old man who has fallen, or is he just a fragment?’ Helen turned to Herr and Frau Weber who were standing with their backs to them, looking in the window. ‘Move on, don’t be seen with us. I shall try to protect you.’ Her voice was quiet but firm.

  She followed Chris, lengthening her stride, holding his arm, talking, and then Heine saw him nod and throw his mother the ball which she missed. He saw its redness against the black of the old man’s coat, saw it land by his leg, saw Helen’s hand reach for the ball, saw Chris stand on his other side, shouting for his ball. And then the man was up, walking away quickly. Too quickly for him or anyone else to have seen what had happened in the crush. The Webers had no need to fear.

  Helen held her son’s hand as they walked towards him but she could still feel the thin arm, the smell of poverty, the cultured voice which had said, ‘Danke,’ while she had said, ‘I’m so sorry. So sorry.’

  She stood before Heine now, her face gentle. ‘I was the only one who could go. Chris and I were the only ones who could go and there was no possible way we could have walked on. It was our gesture. Do you understand?’ She didn’t touch, just stood there and waited, still feeling that thin arm.

  ‘I love you,’ Heine said and kissed her, turning from her only when Chris called.

  ‘Catch,’ and the ball hit his arm.

  Heine had wanted to help too.

  Her mother’s telegram arrived the next day.

  ‘Return immediately. Stop. I am unwell. Stop. Mother.’

  CHAPTER 5

  They arrived in the Avenue at midday on the 30 December having travelled almost without stopping. It was cold. A heavy mist coated the trees, the last few skeletal leaves hung like rags and the houses looked grey.

  Her mother was sitting up in bed eating a lightly boiled egg, which, she said, a neighbour had kindly cooked just a moment ago. Helen just looked at her, at her pink cheeks bearing no trace of illness, at her permed hair tucked into a hairnet.

  ‘Just a touch of flu, after all,’ her mother said and her smile was the same as it had been when Helen came out from the cupboard.

  Helen turned, and left the room, straightened the pictures on the stair wall, placing her feet carefully on each stair, concentrating on this, not on her anger which was so intense that she felt sick. She walked into the kitchen where Heine was lighting the gas under the kettle. There was a smell of sulphur from the match, a smell of gas from the front ring.

  ‘Stay in here,’ she said. ‘Whatever you hear, stay in the warm.’ She smiled at Heine, at Chris, but did not stop and explain.

  She returned upstairs, made up the spare bed in that bleak room and then told her mother that she would stay for three days so that the neighbours did not have to boil eggs for her and watched the smile increase.

  ‘Heine will stay with me and you will move to the spare room, as you felt Father should. There is no room for Heine unless we use your bed.’

  The smile disappeared, the eyes were dark, and Helen was glad. She took her arm and led her without speaking, without listening to the harsh voice. She helped her into the bed and now she spoke again.

  ‘Should I hang a damp blanket to contain the germs?’ she asked. ‘Would that be wise, Mother?’

  She left her then with the anger hanging in the air between them.

  In the front room on 31 December, she and Heine saw in the year of 1939 with mulled wine, praying that peace would endure, that somehow Hitler could be stopped without great carnage; that hostility would not blossom in England towards Germans and Italians. That in Germany, God was with Heine’s parents.

  As they drank quietly together Heine touched Helen’s hand and said, ‘Your mother is widowed and lonely. We have our lives before us and one another. We should be generous, my darling. Ask her to join us, please.’

  She said nothing, just looked at the fire and the flames which lurched round logs and coal. She did not want her mother down, she did not want to see in the New Year with her in case, somehow, she tainted it with her presence.

  ‘Please,’ Heine said again. ‘There is enough bitterness and pain throughout the world without continuing a feud within our own family.’

  So Helen helped her mother down the stairs although she was not fragile enough to need help. She eased her into a chair, handed her a glass of warm wine, feeling the heat from her own as she sat and watched her mother smooth her satin dressing gown and sip with pursed mouth. Yes, all right, Mother, she thought as she sipped her own wine, tasting the warmth in her mouth. All right, I shall do as Heine says and be generous tonight and in the future, but I will never let you spoil any part of my life ever again.

  In January the gas mask drills which had been desultory for the past year took on a new urgency in the schools, and in Germany Jews were banned from cinemas, theatres and concerts. They were banned from being vets, pharmacists and dentists and so the refugees continued to pass through Helen’s flat.

  In February her mother complained that she earned too much from Ernest’s pensions to claim a free air raid shelter and Helen said that she was not in one of the priority target areas anyway, as she, Heine and Chris were.

  Helen was glad when Heine began digging in early March when the soil was frost-free and easier to work. It helped to feel they were doing something as the tension in the press mounted, as people grew edgy and ignored the warm spring. She watched as he sliced the spade deep into the earth at the bottom of the narrow strip of garden behind the flat, heaving cold heavy sods on to the lawn. She was glad that her arms tugged at the shoulders when she and Chris put them into the rust-smeared wheelbarrow and then transferred them to the left side of the garden where the sun struck in the afternoons. She was glad to be working, to be doing something to protect themselves, glad too to be creating from that need a rockery which would thrive. For she wanted flowers to bloom; even if bombs fell from black-crossed aeroplanes she wanted flowers to bloom, then some sanity would remain.

  She watched as Heine dug again and again, the sweat soaking his shirt, his hair. There was a smell of fresh earth; there were old pennies, pipes, bottles, tiles and Heine smiled each time they fell from his spade and then threw them up to Chris who would hold them, turn them, then put them to one side to take to school for the ‘precious table’. Worms bored holes in the straight glossed sides of the pit as the weekend passed and Helen took them to the rockery which now held small, wide-spaced plants, and it seemed almost a game as the sky turned blue and the trees budded and blossom bloomed. Almost.

  At three feet Heine stopped and helped Helen drag in the fourteen steel sheets which had been dropped off on the pavement by council lorries to each building in the street. Her hands tore through gloves and her shirt was ripped at the shoulder as they dragged them one by one through the narrow passage-way into the garden.

  Sandbags had been left also and while Heine fixed the sheets in the late afternoon Helen and Chris doused the bags with creosote to stop them rotting and the smell sank into their skin and their hair and their lungs and although they slept with their windows wide that night they could still taste it in their mouths the next morning.

  Helmut arrived that morning and so Heine was too busy to ease the sandbags against the shelter and Helen was taking photographs in the studio, but the next week, with Helmut helping, they pushed and carried and kicked the sandbags into place and Helen’s back felt as though it would break. Chris threw earth on the roof of the shelter with the spade he had taken to Eastbourne and Helen did too, but with a large shovel. It would be added protection against blast and shrapnel. She called to their neighbours, the Simkins, who then did the same. She lifted Chris who would not be seven until December – but already weighed enough to be twenty, she whispered into his neck.

  ‘Higher, Mummy, I can’t reach,’ he called.

  She growled and
he laughed but she lifted him higher still and then he threw the seeds – forget-me-nots, love-in-the-mist, marigolds – across the shelter roof, and for a moment Helen wondered whether they would be at war when the flowers bloomed.

  They painted the inside walls white while Chris broke cork tiles into pieces with his fingers, leaning over, watching the pile of bits grow on the upturned dustbin lid. An ant ran over his shoe and then on into a crack. Some bark was caught under his fingernail and he dug it out, rolling it between his fingers. It was bouncy and warm.

  ‘Smaller, Chris,’ Heine called and so he worked for another hour and then he climbed down into the shelter and threw the cork at the wet paint, again and again until the cork stuck to the sides. And he nodded as his father said that the pieces would absorb the moisture and prevent condensation.

  ‘It’s going to be a good play-house, Dad,’ he said.

  They had to hang a blanket not a door, the inspector said when he called. ‘Don’t want to be shredded by splinters now, do we?’ Helen looked from him to the rockery. Would the alpines take root and bloom, she wondered, not wanting to hear the words.

  In the middle of March Hitler took over Prague and spring-cleaned the country, Heine said between thin lips. Czechoslovakian Jews now began to come and the flat was full again. Claus had written from America that he still had not established an agency for the partnership but was working for another firm to make some contacts. It would take at least two years, he said, and Helen had been glad because England was her country. Heine had been worried.