War Brides

by Helen Bryan

  “Keep still. This is your wedding dress,” her mother said.

  “What?”

  Something was draped and pinned on her head, blurring her vision. Lace. The tablecloth. “Hurry!” her mother and Frau Zayman urged, turning her round, tugging at buttons. Tanni was blinded by lace and confusion.

  “Hurry,” said Frau Zayman.

  “At once!” thundered her father beyond the door.

  “Mutti?” Everything was a blur. They were pulling her along.

  “Bruno may take his wife to England,” Tanni’s mother said in her ear as they went. “Listen to me, this way you will be safe. You are too old for the Kindertransport.”

  Tanni heard Lili’s voice asking loudly why was Tanni dressed like that, was she a princess?

  “Like a ghost,” interjected Klara, “with the tablecloth over her face!”

  “A bride, darlings,” someone said. “Tanni is a bride.”

  They told her to stand still, just here, among the packing boxes in her father’s study. Beneath the haze of her veil Tanni looked up. She was standing under a sort of wedding canopy contrived from a velvet curtain. Where had it come from?

  Frau Zayman asked where the two witnesses were. “There,” said the rabbi, pointing to the old man and Anton, whom he had brought along for the purpose. Anton was staring at her in anguish and Tanni wanted to bolt to her perch in the fig tree to stop this happening, but beneath the wedding canopy she was hemmed in by Bruno and Frau Zayman on one side, and her parents on the other.

  Lili and Klara were each holding a hand, staring up at her. “What’s a bride?” demanded Klara. “I want to be a bride! Can I be a bride too, Tanni?”

  “Someday you can,” said Tanni, responding automatically from habit.

  “Bride,” said Lili and smiled adoringly at her sister. “Tanni looks pretty.”

  “Walk round Bruno seven times, quickly!” Frau Joseph ordered. Numbly, Tanni obeyed, her head turning to gaze in despair at Anton from beneath her veil. They could hear shouting in the street, coming closer. In Dr. Joseph’s study candles flickered and the rabbi muttered rapidly. They lifted the veil off Tanni’s face. Something wrapped in a napkin was thrust under Bruno’s foot and Tanni heard glass break. Anton uttered a choking sound. The twins squealed.

  “Ssssh,” said Tanni automatically, the little mother.

  “Mazel tov!” cried her mother and Frau Zayman in unison, voices faltering. Other glass shattered in the street while the shouting and the sound of heavy boots grew louder.

  “We must go. We must try to protect the synagogue!” said the rabbi over Tanni’s father’s protests. “Hurry!”

  He and Anton ran out of the house, and Tanni’s father bolted the front door behind them—but not before Tanni glimpsed a mob followed by uniformed soldiers rounding the corner shouting, “Jews out!”

  “Hurry,” urged her father again and shepherded his family to the back of the house.

  But Tanni pulled away and ran back to the window. “Anton!” she screamed. “Oh, Papa, the soldiers caught the rabbi and Anton! Please…what is happening?”

  Her father grabbed her and dragged her toward the garden door. When they reached it her mother snatched her from him. “My beloved child,” said her mother, hugging Tanni hard. Then she kissed her and bent to prize Klara and Lili away from Tanni’s knees. “Darlings, be brave and do as I say.”

  “Be a good wife. Be safe.” Frau Zayman’s eyes were huge and frightened in her white face. The crowd began howling outside as more glass broke, more shots were fired.

  Tanni’s mother thrust the carpetbag Tanni had seen on the sewing room floor into her hands. “Your trousseau. We prepared some things—a bride must always have a few things, we thought there was more time. Go safely to England and be ready to look after your sisters when they come.”

  “Tanni and Bruno must leave while they can! Go!” Dr. Joseph shoved Tanni toward the garden door. Behind him her mother called, “We will see you in England as soon as—”

  “Papa, let Lili and Klara come with me now!”

  “No room in the boat,” hissed the old man. “Come!”

  Her father was dragging the garden door open. “Child, they will be with you soon, God willing. They have papers for a children’s train, the Kindertransport. It will be better if you are there first, ready to look after them. Promise to take care of them whatever happens. Give me your word, Tanni!” Tanni nodded mutely. “Now go!” ordered Dr Joseph, pushing Tanni and Bruno hard through the garden door. Somewhere nearby an ominous crackling grew louder. Clouds of smoke billowed overhead. There was gunfire, and more glass shattered. A cheer went up. “Juden raus! Alle Juden raus!” A woman’s scream rose above everything. Above the noise there was a sound of someone pounding on the Josephs’ front door.

  As Dr. Joseph shoved Bruno after her, Tanni looked back. Her mother was huddled over the twins, gazing toward the front door. Tanni heard more glass smashing. Frau Zayman waved her handkerchief helplessly. “Tanni, Tanni, don’t leave us. I’m scared,” Klara wept. Lili blew kisses with both hands.

  Tanni was frantic. “I can’t leave them!”

  “Go!” her father roared above the noise and gave his eldest daughter a last hard push. “The mayor promised to protect us—I attend to his crippled son. Go!”

  “I promise, Papa,” Tanni cried, but the heavy garden door had already slammed, and the old-fashioned iron lock clunked into place. Immediately afterward there was a splash from below as the heavy key landed in the river. With the old man shouting at them to hurry, she and Bruno stumbled down the dark path on the riverbank, acrid smoke choking them.

  A small boat was waiting, already untied by the anxious old man. It rocked wildly as Tanni tripped and fell over the seat, banging her shin. There was water in the bottom of the boat, and the skirt of her wedding dress was soaked. As the boat slipped away from the shore she began to shiver and clutched the carpetbag to her as Bruno and the fisherman rowed. Above them orange flames roared into the sky. There was a crash as the roof of the synagogue collapsed.

  Panting, Bruno and the old man pulled hard on the oars, and the boat moved slowly away from the bank. Then it caught the river current and went faster. Behind them the town walls, the flames, chanting, and gunfire grew fainter. Soon there was just the night, the dark river, and the red sky, the sound of the oars slapping the water, and the cold. Tanni’s wet feet were numb. What was happening to her family? She wanted to throw herself over the side and swim back.

  When Bruno looked up he saw that her teeth were chattering and that she was hugging her flimsy veil round her shoulders. At once he rested his oar and made his way to where she was crouched. He took off his coat, draped it round her shoulders, and kissed her brow. Tanni looked at him blankly. Bruno was her husband.

  5.

  Crowmarsh Priors,

  March 1939

  As he waited for the afternoon train from London to Brighton, the Crowmarsh Priors stationmaster, Albert Hawthorne, sat at the desk in the tiny office and picked up yesterday’s papers. He skipped the stories about Slovak separatism in Czechoslovakia, “Cabinet Optimistic over Relations with Berlin,” and someone named Goering holidaying in the Riviera. Someone or something called the Baldwin Fund wanted to “get them out.” Jews, it looked like. Foreigners, anyway. He skipped that too.

  He paused loyally to read the caption beneath the picture of the king and queen in the royal box at the opera house with the French president and his wife. Albert didn’t hold with the French. The king looked strained and unhappy—all the responsibility of being a king, Albert guessed—but by his side the plump little queen was beaming beneath her tiara and had one gloved hand raised cheerfully in a wave. He whistled softly at a picture of the new model Daimler and decided to wait until after the train had come through to study the cricket scores in the Test match against South Africa.

  He turned the page. A big headline—“Police Arrest Chums of Duke and Duchess of Windsor”—caught his eye, w
ith a photograph of people in evening dress splashing in a conga line through the fountains at Trafalgar Square. The men’s evening dress was askew and they appeared to be brandishing champagne bottles, while the women were soaked and looked as if they had nothing on at all. Right at the front of the photo a pretty girl was shrieking with laughter, holding onto a tall, fair-haired man with one hand and holding up her wet skirt so high with the other that there was a shocking view of her legs. In the background the police were closing in. The caption read, “Admiral’s Madcap Daughter Arrested Again!”

  Albert read on. There had been a society ball at the Savoy, and afterward a party of revelers had gone on to the Café de Paris. Which, according to the police, they had left at dawn, reluctantly—some had banged on the doors, demanding to be let back in. The revelers had stopped taxis, thrown out the occupants, and forced the cabbies to drive to Trafalgar Square, where a number were subsequently arrested. “See the editorial on page ten, ‘Scandal of a Modern Debutante.’”

  It was the kind of story Albert relished. It confirmed his view that the upper classes were no better than anyone else and that the country was going to the dogs. He tut-tutted as he turned to page ten and read:

  There are only three occasions on which a well-bred girl should be mentioned in the papers: when she is born, when she is married, and when she dies. After reading of the shocking behaviour and events of last Saturday in Trafalgar Square, as reported on the front page, Miss Falconleigh’s escapades raise issues of public concern. This paper feels it is pertinent to inquire whether her father is competent to command in the Admiralty when, evidently, he cannot command within his own domestic circle.

  An unmarried girl’s reputation is priceless, easily jeopardised by thoughtless behaviour and any departure from decorum. Normally girls of Miss Falconleigh’s age and position in society are strictly chaperoned to guard them from any whiff of scandal. Typically they are not allowed to travel alone with young men in taxis, and nightclubs remain forbidden to any respectable girl, even in our reckless age. Miss Falconleigh, however, has openly cavorted about town and, we regret to say, has been photographed leaving many of London’s least salubrious nightspots and most scandal-ridden private parties. Her escorts have included a number of well-known playboys, Argentine polo players, and personal friends of His Royal Highness, the former Prince of Wales.

  Her only chaperonage, if it could be called such, has been that of Lady “Baby” Penrose, a former finishing-school chum of Miss Falconleigh, who, though married, is possibly not the most vigilant of matrons, as she is only a year older than Miss Falconleigh. It is to the credit of neither that she shares Miss Falconleigh’s taste for notorious establishments. The sad fact is that Miss Falconleigh has been in one public scrape after another since she was presented at Court. Allowances may be made for the fact that she lost her mother when very young, but we must ask why her father neglected to ensure that some respectable older female friend of the family oversaw Miss Falconleigh’s entrance into society.

  Albert was so engrossed in all this that the London train was pulling into the station before he knew it. Crowmarsh Priors was only a small country station with few passengers coming and going, but his duty was to be on the platform, hat on, whistle to the ready, when the trains pulled in. As he straightened his cap he was reminded that his wife, Nell, would enjoy the newspaper’s advertisements for the new spring hats, so he’d best remember to take it home.

  He wondered who the sole female passenger was when she stepped down onto the windy platform. No ladies from Crowmarsh Priors had gone up to London today. If they had Albert would have known. So she couldn’t be Mrs. Richard Fairfax, who sometimes went up to London, although she was a slender, well-dressed young woman of about Mrs. Richard’s age. Far smarter clothes than Mrs. Richard’s though. Probably for the de Balforts at Gracecourt Hall, although their visitors usually dashed down from London in their motorcars at the weekend and never arrived by train on a Tuesday.

  The young woman had a gloved hand clamped to her head to hold on to her bit of a hat. Her hair flew about wildly as she struggled to hold down the skirt of her costume when the March wind blew rain splattering across the platform. Albert couldn’t help noticing she had shapely legs and pretty ankles. He reminded himself that a right-thinking man with a wife and growing daughter had no business ogling strangers’ ankles.

  On closer inspection he saw that the young woman was a girl, really, for all her finery. She had turned to direct the removal of an extraordinary amount of luggage from the train onto the platform. As the engine steamed impatiently, Albert counted five large trunks, an assortment of grips and several vanity cases, a smart handbag, and a handsome crocodile dressing case.

  The guard nodded to him that all the bags were off and rolled his eyes as he gestured at the mountain of luggage on the platform. He reached back into the train and tossed out what Albert was waiting for: a bundle of the newspapers that passengers had left on their seats, tied with string. The guard was a tidy man who would have thrown them away, but Albert thought it was a shame to waste them. “Cheerio then,” he called. Then he called, “All aboard,” in his loudest stationmaster’s voice and blew his whistle, even though, as usual, no one was getting on.

  As the train chugged away, Albert fetched the station’s ancient baggage cart and rolled it toward the newcomer and her luggage. Her back was to him as she looked in the direction of the village where smoke was curling above a few slate roofs and brick garden walls into sodden gray skies. A row of Georgian houses with fanlights and polished brass on the doors faced the village green. Mrs. Richard Fairfax lived in one of those. There was an old flint church with a Norman tower, surrounded by a graveyard, and behind it the vicarage. Directly across from the church an imposing Queen Anne house with tall windows was visible behind wrought-iron gates set into a brick garden wall. There was a pub, a greengrocer’s, a butcher’s, and he knew where the red pillar-box stood. The drizzle had driven everyone inside, except Jimmy, the butcher’s boy, whizzing past the station turning on his bicycle, and the cows in the next field, who placidly chewed their cuds, regardless of the wet.

  A delicate flowery scent drifted to Albert’s nose. Unaware that he was doing so, he straightened up. “Let me help you with that luggage, madam…miss,” he amended. Up close she was just a slip of a thing. Her full lower lip was trembling and, Albert thought with disapproval, it was rather too scarlet for nature. Paint! And where there was paint, there was powder, he thought darkly. No respectable girl should get herself up like a hussy. Then he noticed the smooth cheek, the defiant little nose, and determined chin. The girl’s dark blue eyes met Albert’s. She blinked back tears and his heart melted.

  “Is this Crowmarsh Priors? All of Crowmarsh Priors?”

  “Indeed it is, miss.” Albert nodded fondly at the village. To a Sussex man like Albert Hawthorne, there wasn’t a better spot in England.

  The girl cleared her throat. Something about her was familiar, Albert thought. He was sure he had seen her recently…then it dawned on him. The papers! She was the girl in the fountain! But now on the platform, she looked ladylike, and she certainly had expensive luggage…

  She clutched the fur boa that was draped over her shoulders and stared defiantly at him. “Perhaps you could direct me to Glebe House?”

  Albert was astonished. She was staying with old Lady Marchmont! Whatever for? he wondered. Lady Marchmont was a widow, had no children, and never had people to stay. Perhaps the girl was a relative. She certainly didn’t strike Albert as the sort who came as a paid companion, like the whey-faced creature with spectacles and thick lisle stockings who had arrived to keep poor bedridden Lady de Balfort company during the last years of her life. Albert shook his head. Lady Marchmont would eat a paid companion for breakfast.

  How a pretty girl with such a determined look about her—not to mention rouge—would get on in the forbidding atmosphere at Glebe House he didn’t like to think. He was just wondering if he ou
ght to warn her about what to expect when he heard the sound of footsteps hurrying across the station’s gravel forecourt. A tall, disheveled young man in a clerical collar dashed onto the platform. He stopped just before he collided with the girl and Albert, and gasped, “Hullo, Albert!” and snatched off a rather unfortunate hat. He apologized breathlessly for being late and said he hoped he had the pleasure of meeting Miss—Miss—er…Lady Marchmont’s goddaughter, whom he was supposed to meet.

  The girl’s sapphire eyes widened as dismay battled with amusement on her pretty face. Her eyelashes fluttered tremulously as she gazed up at the odd young man, who started apologizing all over again, stammering incomprehensibly about urgent parish business, the brasses, the late vicar, and the Mothers’ Union.

  Albert guessed that he would have babbled for the rest of the afternoon had not the girl cut him short. She moved her crocodile case to her left hand, then held out her right. “How do you do? I’m Frances Falconleigh,” she said sweetly. “So kind of you to take the trouble to meet me. You must be Oliver Hammet, the new vicar. My godmother wrote to me about you.”

  “Not at all,” began the vicar, flushing and hanging on to the girl’s gloved hand. “Not at all! Welcome to Crowmarsh Priors! So glad…not at all…really, it’s quite a pleasure…too delightful!”

  Frances gave a strangled giggle. “You’re a perfect angel to look after me when you’re so frightfully busy. I don’t know what I should have done without you!”

  “Delighted to be of service,” Mr. Hammet stammered. “Ahem! Er, do allow me to take that, Miss Falconleigh. I’m sure it’s far too heavy for you,” he said, at last releasing Frances’s hand in order to take her dressing case.

  “Thank you!” she cooed.