by Helen Bryan
The growing bubble of excitement inside her at the prospect of seeing Bruno meant she could hardly swallow her tea and toast. After breakfast Evangeline took Johnny when she walked with the older children to school so that Tanni could get ready. As soon as they were gone, the doorbell rang. It was Alice, on her way to school. She handed Tanni a parcel wrapped in brown paper. Inside Tanni found a pullover and cap she had knitted for Johnny in heavy oiled wool she had purloined from the Dorcas Society’s stock. Tanni thanked her profusely and gave her a hug.
As soon as Alice had gone, she bathed, careful not to fill the tub above the four-inch mark painted inside it. Then, wrapped in her blue dressing gown, she washed her hair and rinsed it with vinegar to make it shine.
When Evangeline and Johnny reappeared, she was drying her hair in front of the range. The doorbell rang again. This time it was Frances, in her Land Girl uniform. She held out an elegant dressmaker’s box with a French name on it in gold lettering.
“For me?” asked Tanni in disbelief. Frances was so glamorous that Tanni had always been too shy to say much more than “good morning” to her. Frances nodded, with a smile, so Tanni thanked her, opened the box, and gave a cry of delight. Inside, beneath the tissue paper, she had found a cream silk nightdress and peignoir, with lace and wide satin ribbons.
“It’ll help keep his, um, morale up, darling,” Frances said wickedly. “Take off that dressing gown and try on the peignoir—yes, just as I thought! That cream shade is perfect with your dark hair,” said Frances, “and, lucky you, you’ve more bosom than I have.” Tanni blushed—the negligee showed a great deal of it.
“I’ve got just the thing to go with that,” Evangeline exclaimed and ran upstairs. She returned with a bottle of French scent. “Schiaparelli,” she said.
Tanni remembered a similar bottle on her mother’s dressing table, and the dark feelings hovered, but she decided resolutely that they were not going to ruin the day. She dabbed a little on her wrist. “Bruno will hardly know me!” She giggled.
In her best frock, feeling clean and new, Tanni was in the sun-filled morning room, humming while she put her new things into the carpetbag with Johnny’s clothes, nappies, and toys. “What a fine house!” a voice behind her said.
Johnny, who had been about to crawl under the sofa after the cat, paused to stare at the stranger. Then he scrambled to his mother and hid behind her legs.
Tanni was gazing at the solid form of a short, vaguely familiar man with glasses who was taking off his overcoat and pulling funny faces at her son. Suddenly flustered and shy, she felt like hiding too. Then Bruno bent down to sweep a startled Johnny into the crook of his right arm and hugged her tightly with his left. He kissed her cheek. “So,” he said. “My family!”
“Oh, Bruno!” She and Bruno had spent so little time together as husband and wife that she was more accustomed to thinking of herself as a mother than as a wife. Now she would have to get used to being married all over again. She thought how much she liked the solid feel of him under his rough tweed jacket.
Johnny squirmed, the cat fled, and Bruno swung his son over his head. Soon Johnny was shrieking with laughter and kicking. Tanni protested that Bruno would make him sick, so Bruno produced a boiled sweet, unwrapped it, and popped it into Johnny’s open mouth. There was silence as Johnny sucked, so Tanni, uncertain what to talk about, took a pile of Johnny’s clothes out of the carpetbag, unfolded and recounted them. Several times.
“What a lot of things,” said Bruno, eyeing the pile on the sofa.
“Everyone’s been so kind. My friend Alice, who teaches the children at school, made this.” She held up the jumper Alice had brought, one arm longer than the other. Bruno raised his eyebrows and she giggled. “Constable Barrows carved him these animals when he was making some for his own baby, and Evangeline made him a quilt with the alphabet on it and got down her husband’s old nursery furniture from the attic. It has rabbits painted on it—”
“Tanni!” Bruno said and swept her into his arms. They were talking softly, absorbed in each other, when Tanni saw, from the corner of her eye, that Johnny had pulled himself up on a side table and his sticky fist had grasped a Limoges shepherdess he had had an eye on for weeks. His mouth was wide open and he was about to test his new front teeth on the frothy china skirt when Tanni swooped.
Just then the black motor that had dropped off Bruno half an hour earlier pulled up, with two figures in the front seat. Tanni fetched a basket that contained a dozen of the household’s precious eggs and a pot of honey and another basket with hyacinths from the garden for the Cohens. She kissed Evangeline good-bye, then pinned on her hat. The driver put the carpetbag and hyacinths in the boot, and then Tanni and Bruno got into the backseat with Johnny between them and the basket of eggs on Tanni’s lap. The car drove away.
The young man billeted with Constable Barrows was in the front with the driver, but the glass partition was up so Tanni could not hear what they were saying to each other. His profile reminded her of a little English animal that Alice called a ferret. Several times he looked back and winked at Johnny, so Tanni smiled at him. She knew his name was Bernie. Elsie talked about him when she brought potatoes and sometimes illicit tins of beef or fish that she traded for one of Evangeline’s game pies.
Tanni had so much to tell Bruno about their life in Crowmarsh Priors when they were alone. Alone! She felt a thrill of anticipation. The sun-drenched spring landscape rolled by, and she and Bruno took turns to point out cows and horses in the fields to Johnny. She glanced at her husband, wondering if he felt the same sense of excitement as they approached London.
But the sight of the devastation the enemy had wrought since she left dented Tanni’s high spirits. By the time the car reached Bethnal Green, picking its way through the rubble and the yawning spaces where buildings had been, the sky had grown overcast. Rabbi Cohen, looking older, came out to welcome them with Tante Berthe, who gave Tanni a long hug and made much of Johnny. She exclaimed with joy over the eggs, the honey, and the flowers.
Inside, the house smelled deliciously of soup and baking and something familiar and spicy. Tanni sniffed. Cinnamon. She closed her eyes, seeing the Passover table in her own home, set a day in advance with a damask cloth, the best dishes; for days the kitchen would have been a hive of activity, with her mother at the center of it all. Frau Anna and the maids would have been sent home, exhausted after a thorough spring-clean of the entire house while Frau Joseph, enveloped in a white apron, chopped and roasted, showing Tanni how to add a pinch of this or that, demonstrating how finely apples should be sliced or horseradish grated, and letting the twins pick over a bowl of dried fruit.
Tanni opened her eyes. Tante Berthe was holding out a plate of sugared matzo and almond biscuits. She took one and broke off a bit for Johnny. “Everything smells delicious,” she said to Tante Berthe. “Thank you for inviting us.” A long table had been wedged into the sitting room at an angle to accommodate as many people as possible, covered in an embroidered white cloth, gleaming china, and glasses. Beneath the smell of cooking Tanni detected bleach and fresh ironing. The rabbi had disappeared into his study with Bruno. Tanni felt herself relax. Thoughts of what would happen when she and Bruno were together and she was wearing her negligee filled her head. In fact, it was hard to think of anything else.
Tante Berthe thought Tanni looked blooming. The WVS woman had been right to send her to the country. Eighteen months ago, when she had last seen her, Tanni was a specter with dark circles under her eyes and hollow cheeks, distraught at having signed a paper that meant she had to leave London where her family expected to find her, or be put in a camp.
“Come, my dear, I’ll show you where you’re to sleep.” She led the way up the stairs to a tiny room under the eaves. A good-natured impulse had inspired her to put her best embroidered linen sheets, often borrowed for bridal nights, on the two narrow beds she had squeezed together, and to tuck Johnny’s cot round a corner on the landing. Tanni stroked the sh
eets. “What lovely work, it reminds me of…oh, Tante Berthe, don’t make me wait. What news do you have of Lili and Klara?”
“You must be patient. Rachel is the only one who can answer your questions. She and her family are coming for the Seder, and you can speak to her.”
When Tanni opened her carpetbag to give Mrs. Cohen their ration books, the silk negligee spilled out. Tante Berthe smiled to herself. It cheered her to think of young people under her roof—and who knew? Maybe they would begin another baby here. She pinched Tanni’s cheek affectionately. She must fatten her up a little, in case…
So many of the Cohens’ friends arrived later to squeeze round the table for the Seder that the sitting room was packed. Rachel, with her mother, husband, and four-year-old son, arrived last. She was pregnant and so large that everyone had to move sideways again to make room for her. The candles were lit, and after the Kiddush everyone shifted a little, pretending to recline to drink the first cup of wine. The glasses were refilled, and Rabbi Cohen continued with the Haggadah and the ritual foods: the lamb bone, the matzohs, the parsley sprigs, the slivers of horseradish root. They ate the last with Tante Berthe’s special haroseth, a recipe passed down on her mother’s side of the family for generations, which combined dried apples and dates, raisins, spices, and wine. Rabbi Cohen’s voice quavered with emotion as he answered the ritual questions asked by Rachel’s little boy, because Johnny was too young. By the time they came to the hard-boiled egg dipped into salt water, people at the table were weeping for loved ones at the mercy of the Nazis in Europe.
Eventually Tante Berthe wiped her eyes and got up to serve the rest of the dinner, which she had spent days preparing. Most of those present had lent her their ration books for the day she had scoured Whitechapel, begging, cajoling, and bullying greengrocers and kosher butchers to get what she needed. Tanni rose to help her.
Soon the table was crowded with dishes, and Tanni marvelled that Tante Berthe had managed to make such a feast despite the rationing. There was beetroot soup with egg drops, gefilte fish with horseradish, chopped liver, sweet and sour chicken, tzimmis with short ribs, a potato kugel, and a vegetable kugel. There was an aubergine salad and then a dish of baked apples stuffed with dried fruit and a honey-soaked sponge cake made from matzo flour. Finally Tante Berthe produced plates of tiny macaroons. Afterward everyone joined in reciting grace after meals and then drank the third glass of wine.
Unused to alcohol, even in such tiny glasses, Tanni felt light-headed as they sang the closing prayers and songs. She emptied her fourth glass of wine hardly tasting it, her cheeks pink, then got up unsteadily to help Tante Berthe clear the table. “I’m going to talk to Rachel in a minute,” she whispered in Bruno’s ear.
“No, you help Tante Berthe, and I’ll speak to Rachel,” said Bruno firmly, “while you put Johnny to bed. I’ll be up soon.”
Tanni obeyed dreamily, and Rachel followed Bruno into the rabbi’s study. She had been dreading this moment.
“Whatever you have discovered, Tanni has been very ill,” Bruno began, “and we must take care that she is not made ill again. She feels responsible for her sisters—she hopes and believes they are in England, and it is just a matter of your committee finding where they have been sent. If you know anything, please tell me now. If it is bad news I will break it to her gently. Also, you may have information about which, officially, I must know nothing. You will understand that I must not compromise my position with the authorities, but on the other hand I must help my wife and our families. In return for your help, I promise to assist your committee as far as I can—for example, if you have information that needs to be confirmed there may be ways I can help. I will not say how.”
Rachel rubbed the small of her aching back and considered. Bruno did not have to say any more about the need for discretion. Everyone had been warned over and over about careless talk costing lives. She didn’t know what he did, but with his languages and his sharp mind, she was sure he was working for Military Intelligence at a high level. Her committee, on the other hand, operated with few resources beyond a group of determined women, out of desperation and on a shoestring, far outside the scope of officialdom, gathering information by any means available through a tenuous network of fragile links composed of family members, neighbors, and refugees from imperiled Jewish communities across occupied Europe. The War Office turned a blind eye. They were unconcerned about Jewish civilians behind enemy lines, but had discovered that the committee’s network of informants were sometimes a source of information about RAF pilots missing in enemy territory.
“As far as the Joseph twins are concerned, there is bad news. They are definitely not in England—if they were, we would have found them by now. With some difficulty we traced them to the last Kindertransport, which did not leave Austria until June. There were problems when the border guards demanded bigger bribes than had been agreed to let the train pass. By the time the negotiations were completed, the train had been diverted to France, where the children were taken off. They were kept at a transit camp for most of August and then put on trains for Le Havre and the ferry to England. They were due to sail on the day England declared war. That meant the children became enemy aliens and not allowed entry. We think the children were put back on the train at Le Havre, and it went south. They could be anywhere in Vichy, France, probably in a displaced persons’ camp.”
Bruno grimaced. He knew that those were hellholes, overcrowded with Republican refugees from Spain who dared not return now that the Nationalists had triumphed. Food and medicine were in short supply; crime and disease were rife. It was no place for two unprotected little girls.
“I know that the Quakers and the Jehovah’s Witnesses are being allowed into the camps to help with relief operations—so long as it suits Nazi propaganda—and the American consul in Marseille is sympathetic and helps unofficially as much as he can. Is there information through those channels?” he asked.
Rachel nodded. “The Quakers try to keep track of unaccompanied children so that they can be reunited with their families. So far there is no record of the Joseph girls in the French camps—but of course some children may have died or been removed from the train en route.”
“But you will keep looking?” Bruno asked, though he wondered what they could do even if the twins were found alive in a camp.
“Of course, but we are trying to help so many people that it is like emptying the sea with a thimble.”
“And Dr. Joseph and his wife—my mother? I have made every possible inquiry through every possible channel. Other than the fact that they are no longer at my mother’s flat, there have been nothing but dead ends.”
Rachel turned away so he would not see the tears in her eyes. Tears came so easily now at the news she often had to give, news she could not sweeten with any hope. “Our contacts have been able to give us a little information. An elderly man, a relative of one of my colleagues, had been Dr. Joseph’s patient and confirmed they were living with your mother, but that the night Lili and Klara left with the Kindertransport, the Germans arrested all the Jews in their quarter. If Tanni’s parents and your mother were among them, they were probably deported to a German labor camp to make munitions. They say people from the quarter your mother lived in have been seen in Oswiecim, also called Auschwitz. But until we know for sure, say nothing to Tanni.”
“We have American contacts in Marseille who pass funds to the Quakers for the transit camps. I will ask them to keep trying. As for Auschwitz…” Bruno shuddered.
“I know. We will do what we can,” promised Rachel, wearily. She repeated it many times each day. They were overwhelmed with people like Bruno and Tanni begging for information about their loved ones.
When Bruno went upstairs, he found Tanni wrapped in her peignoir brushing her hair. Johnny was asleep. She turned to smile at him, laying a finger on her lips. “Johnny was exhausted. His first proper Seder! Now Bruno, tell me what Rachel said! Don’t keep me in suspense—I’m sure you have goo
d news.”
Bruno’s mother had once warned him that the Josephs would not consider a dressmaker’s son a worthy husband for their beloved eldest daughter, no matter he had adored her from his youth. But there she sat, his wife, the mother of their son, a welcoming smile on her lips, her hair tumbling over her shoulders, glowing with the contentment of a happy evening, his presence, and the certainty of good news. Bruno’s heart tightened. He would protect her from unhappiness for as long as he could and tell her only that Rachel and her group still had no definite news. But even that could wait.
He took the hairbrush from her, sat down on the bed, and began to brush her hair, slowly. How soft and shiny it was.
“Bruno! Tell me!” But Tanni shut her eyes and relaxed against him. Bruno put the brush down and buried his face in her neck. She turned and they put their arms around each other. “What did Rachel say?” Tanni murmured, but Bruno pulled her down with him. “Shh, not now, my sweet one. Not tonight. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”
14.
Sussex Downs, August 1941
There had been no air raid warning, only the drone of an approaching airplane to alert them just as the village children went out to play after lunch on Saturday when a lone German Heinkel 111 suddenly roared low over Crowmarsh Priors. By the time anxious mothers had dropped the washing-up and rushed out in their aprons to drag their children to safety, the bomber was over the downs, twisting and rolling across the sky to escape the RAF Hurricanes now in pursuit.
Albert Hawthorne thought they must be trying to force the German away from the village and out over the channel before they shot it down, but to his surprise the Heinkel turned back sharply and headed for cover in a bank of dark clouds rolling inland from the sea. Too late.
“Go to it! Get ’im, lads!” Albert shouted as the RAF gunners opened up. Mesmerized, the village watched as the Heinkel veered off course, belching black smoke. Half a minute later it was circling back toward land, wobbling in the sky, tipping sideways and falling out of the clouds, nose down, coming toward the village. Then it dropped out of sight and a loud explosion sounded somewhere on the downs.