by Helen Bryan
“Three, and only because his ship was in port for repairs,” said Evangeline shortly. “It wasn’t for long either.”
“And I know how much you want a baby…you keep going to see that doctor in London…” Frances trailed off. It had struck her that if she married Hugo, he would want a baby at once, then another. Usually people with titles wanted “an heir and a spare” as soon as possible. Fond as she was of Johnny, she couldn’t imagine having a baby of her own any time soon. Couldn’t imagine wanting one. All that growing fat and then actually giving birth—such a messy business and no end of agony! And then there was the sex part. No, somehow she was altogether disinclined to imagine sex with Hugo.
“You never know what might happen when the war’s over,” said Evangeline. “But I better warn you, Tanni got another letter today from those people she knows in London. It’s upset her and she’s trying not to say anything about it tonight because she doesn’t want to spoil your evening. She says you’ve been so kind to her.”
Frances was conscience-stricken. All she had done was given Tanni a spare negligee.
In the morning room, Tanni had gotten up to stretch, her hands on the small of her back. “Genever!” she cried, recognizing the bottle on the sideboard. “Wherever did you get it? My father used to make his patients take it after meals. It tastes horrible.”
“I know, I tried it while I was dressing,” said Frances, making a face. “Warming, though. Like some?”
Tanni nodded. “It’s practically medicine, so it’ll be good for the baby.” However vile it tasted, genever was a reminder of home. She turned away so Frances would not see her smile fade.
After the Passover Seder, Tante Berthe, who was still upset by her internment, had warned Tanni never to speak German, not even in private, because you never knew who might overhear and report you as a spy. Tanni must be especially careful, she had added, not to offend any of the people in the village where she was living.
According to Tante Berthe, nowhere was really safe for Jews now. “Internment,” she said, in a frightened whisper, was what the Germans were doing in Europe to them. Who knew what else happened? The British might even decide to follow the Germans’ example—Rachel said because of the labor shortage, conscription for women was coming and people, especially the upper classes, were beginning to say there should be peace with Germany. Tanni knew that was true—she had heard Lady Marchmont say it. It was just as well that Tante Berthe had never met her.
Bruno had reassured Tanni over and over again that his job as a military translator meant that he, and Tanni and Johnny, would not be locked up in a camp, but after the Cohens’ experience Tanni believed nothing was certain, no matter how kind Evangeline, Alice, Frances, and Elsie were.
Tante Berthe had also warned her that with the baby coming, it was not good to worry, but Tanni found the trying not to worry was even more of a strain. Although she kept everything to herself, her mind was as swollen with worries about what she must and must not do, or say, as her stomach was with the new baby.
Frances poured glasses of sherry from the decanter on the writing desk, then handed Tanni a generous quantity of genever. Tanni closed her eyes. It smelled worse than she remembered, but she gulped it down. In no time she felt light-headed and more relaxed.
A little later Alice arrived, her hair arranged inexpertly in the new “victory roll” style. She had with her a plate of lumpy gray slabs. “Carrot fudge!” she announced proudly.
“Too delicious!” exclaimed Frances, trying to look delighted but surreptitiously parking the plate behind Tanni’s apple cake.
Alice had discovered an ancient lipstick while she was tidying her mother’s room and now applied it in the mirror over the fireplace. Then she craned her neck to check the effect with her new hairstyle in the candlelight. It looked better if she stepped back a few paces.
Evangeline had brought the gramophone and records, lively new music that she said was called “swing” and slower, moody sounds she referred to as “jazz,” explaining they had been recorded by a friend in Paris. In a change from her usual slapdash attire, Evangeline had raided the trunks in the attic and found a beaded dress that dated from Penelope’s youth. She had also dug into the jewel box Richard had given her for some amethysts that had once belonged to Richard’s grandmother, unaware that he had once promised to have them reset for Alice. The overall effect was striking, and for once her beauty was apparent.
Seeing the jewelry on Evangeline, Alice took a sharp breath and tossed down her sherry in one gulp.
Elsie came in with a new red silk scarf draped dramatically over her shoulders, then flounced out again. She returned, brandishing an ebony cigarette holder, with two platters of inexpertly trimmed sandwiches covered with damp tea towels. “I made these meself. Surprise! Tinned salmon!” she announced triumphantly. “And…fish paste!” she said less certainly. Bernie had sworn blind that Frances would like it. The toffs where he worked had made quite a carry-on when a consignment of it turned up at their offices. They’d assured him it was “quite the thing.” He told Elsie it cost the earth, that he’d tried it, and it was disgusting. Toffs didn’t ’alf ’ave strange tastes. Elsie had licked it off her fingers in the kitchen and gagged as the nasty little black things popped fishily in her mouth. Bernie was right. It tasted like the fish Mum bought cheap on a Monday, past its prime. She whipped off the tea towel.
“Bloater?” asked Alice, wrinkling her nose at the fishy smell and squinting. “Hasn’t it gone a bit black?”
“Elsie darling! Caviar!” gasped Frances.
Elsie told her it was a present from Bernie, who had sent his apologies. She whispered to Frances, “’E’s been sent for, urgent.”
Dressed up, bathed, and looking forward to a special dinner, the five young women relaxed. They felt glamorous and worldly sipping their drinks and listening to jazz and waiting for the men. For the moment they stopped thinking about responsibilities and rationing, shortages and aching backs, drawing out the enjoyment as long as they could. They finished the sherry and Frances said they might as well have some of the wine.
Tanni drank more genever. Now that she was used to the taste it wasn’t so bad.
A cozy, cheerful glow settled over them. “Whatever can be keeping Oliver and Hugo?” they asked each other from time to time, but they were a little tipsy and hardly cared.
All at once they had their answer. The air raid siren shrilled, and they heard planes approaching in the distance. Alice, whose cheeks were flushed with unaccustomed alcohol, muttered, “Damn! They must have been warned to stand by for Home Guard duty. Shelter, everyone! I have to run.” She threw on her coat and left.
“Bloody Jerry!” muttered Frances. “Come on, we ought to go to the shelter—or down to the cellar, at least,” she said. “Otherwise Alice will—”
“To ’ell wiv’ Alice! We shan’t all fit in the shelter, anyway, not with Tanni so big. I’m stayin’ put for once,” said Elsie defiantly, lighting another cigarette. “To ’ell wiv Alice and to ’ell wiv the Jerries!”
“Let’s have another drink, then,” said Evangeline, in no hurry to get up either. Now that she had a chance to sit down, she realized how exhausted she was after all the cooking, then wrestling a screaming Maude and Tommy and Kipper into the bath before they went to bed, something they loathed, mistrusted, and resisted. Their family had taught them that baths in winter were unhealthy. Margaret Rose Hawthorne was sensible for her age and would get them down to the shelter in the wine cellar.
If only Laurent had taken her to France straight after she had come to England. She tried not to think about what she had overheard the drunken little Frenchman in the Soho pub say to him. Not realizing that Evangeline spoke French and could understand every word, he had nudged Laurent knowingly and referred to the North African girl with two children who depended on Laurent, so much so that he could never stay long on his rare trips to England.
“Just a joke, darlin’,” muttered Laurent in h
er ear later. “You know I love you…”
Evangeline closed her eyes, waiting for drink to blot everything out. She knew in her bones that the North African girl had been more than a drunken Frenchman’s joke. Laurent was what they called at home a “hot-blooded man,” and there had been no word from him for months. She tried to rein in her imagination but failed.
“So, it’s unanimous!” said Frances, brandishing the wine and genever bottles, then refilling everyone’s glass. For the next hour the four stayed put, drinking, daring Jerry to make them move, getting hungrier.
Alice returned to giggles and drunken bravado. She was chilled to the bone in her thin coat and huddled by the fire, shivering with a caviar sandwich and a large brandy since they had finished the sherry. There was a full moon and the ARP had rung to say there had been heavy raids over London, Birmingham, and Exeter. Though the all-clear had sounded in the village, the Home Guard had been ordered to stay on duty.
At last Evangeline said they had better eat or the food would be ruined. They went into the dining room and filled their plates, admiring Frances’s carefully laid table with Hugo’s roses in the center, opening a little in the warmth of the fire. Frances poured more wine, and they lifted their glasses to each other.
The evening wore on. They moved back to their places round the morning room fire for coffee, rather weak coffee, but no one cared. They felt warm and pleasantly full for once. They had eaten most of the food, drunk all of the wine, smoked all of Elsie’s cigarettes, and finished an entire bottle of brandy. Frances pulled the cork from another with a loud “pop” and they all laughed uproariously. Chestnuts roasted on the hearth. The fire crackled, and from time to time they took turns to crank the gramophone. In the background the jazz was lovely, if somewhat melancholy.
“No reashon to leave this to go shtale,” said Frances, tipping more brandy from the second bottle into everyone’s glasses. They were all rather drunk now, especially Tanni, who had gotten through most of the genever by herself.
“Poor Oliver and Hugo, shtill on duty,” Alice said dreamily from the depths of her armchair. She supposed she was tiddly. It felt nice.
The clock struck eleven, then midnight. No one moved. Frances was glad that Hugo hadn’t come back, and it was just as well that Oliver hadn’t either. She was now finding it too much effort to get out of her chair. The bottle was now being passed around by leaning in each other’s direction.
“Blimey, Tanni, you’ve bloody finished that gen stuff,” exclaimed Elsie, suddenly spotting the empty bottle rolling on the floor. The tip of Tanni’s nose was red and she had gone quiet, staring into the fire.
“Lordy,” said Evangeline and hiccupped…“You shouldn’t of done that…”
“Don’t care,” muttered Tanni, propped in a nest of cushions. She was eating the last of the carrot fudge.
“Me neither,” said Evangeline.
Alice hiccupped too and raised her glass. “To…end to the war. God shave the king. The prime minister…and…and…abshent friendsh…thoshe in peril on the sea.” They drank.
“You next, Frances…’s your birthday.”
“To…Evangeline…lovely shupper, Tanni’sh new baby…Johnny and Elsie and Bernie and Oliver…to the war’s end of course. And to…end of the blackout and clothing coupons and no more whale meat ever…dancing at the Shavoy…gardenia corsages…Madame Vionnet…Parish!”
“Hear hear!”
“Amen,” said Evangeline, brooding drunkenly on the Algerian woman and not in a mood to toast anything.
“Elsie?”
Elsie stood up unsteadily.
“To me promotion! Leader said.”
“The leader promoted you?” Frances was incredulous. The woman had recently accused Elsie of being a German saboteur because she was so hopeless with farm machinery and animals.
“I’m ’ead rat catcher now, aren’t I?” Elsie said proudly.
This was greeted with shrieks of laughter and hiccups, “Head rat catcher?”
“Well—there’s only one for the time bein’—me—but when there’s more I’m to be rat catchin’ team leader. Fancy! Me own supply of poison and all. Arsenic! Cyanide! Talent for destruction, she said I ’ave, might as well use it on rats because I’d used it on everyfink else. Wait till Agnes and Mum and Vi’let and Jem and the twins ’ear.”
“Congratulations!”
“Well done, Elsie!”
Tanni began to cry. The others stopped laughing. Bewildered, they looked at each other, then at Tanni. Then, one by one, they got up, somewhat unsteadily, and gathered round her. Alice asked, “Is it the baby? Oh, Tanni, you aren’t due for…weeks!”
“Maybe…we…ought to—um—ring Sister Tucker?” asked Frances reluctantly, realizing that Sister Tucker would be scandalized to find them all, especially the expectant mother, drunk as lords.
The genever had sapped Tanni’s usual restraint. “Not the baby.” Her face crumpled and she burst into tears. “It’s the…the twins!”
18.
Crowmarsh Priors,
Frances’s Birthday:
Into the Small Hours
“What…is…she…talking about?” asked Frances, struggling to sit upright.
“Must have been something Elsie said. She should have known better, sho thoughtlesh of her!” said Alice accusingly.
“Do shut up, Alice!” said Frances, who was trying to think clearly and finding it difficult.
Elsie perched on the arm of Tanni’s sofa, patting Tanni’s shoulder and glowering at Alice. Alice didn’t know nuffink about people, she thought. Tanni was the only person Elsie knew who understood when Elsie talked about missing Mum and the others. Bernie and Frances meant well, but neither of them had much family to miss. Evangeline clammed up if you mentioned hers, and as for Alice—the less said about Mrs. Osbourne the better. Now it occurred to Elsie for the first time that, besides Bruno and Johnny, Tanni might have a family somewhere too, even though she’d never talked about them. And now she was crying about some twins.
“’Ere, Alice, you’re the sort as always ’as a ’ankerchief. Tanni needs one.” Sullenly Alice groped for it and passed it to Elsie.
“There, there,” said Elsie, bending over Tanni. “Blow yer nose, and tell us wot’s the matter.”
Curled in an armchair, Evangeline was finishing her brandy. “Elsie, you weren’t to know, but Tanni pinned a photo over her bed. Two women, a man, and two little girls who look alike. Family, I think. I gather they’re all missing. Her aunt Bertha…warned her not to talk about them—said she’d be arrested if she did.”
“Who’d arrest Tanni?” demanded Elsie indignantly. “And where is her family missing from?”
“Tanni, try to calm down—not good for the baby, you know. Tell us about it. Won’t let…anyone…’rest you,” said Frances.
The look of concern on everyone’s faces was too much for Tanni. She blurted out, “Evangeline’s right. I mustn’t…yes, I will tell you.” She reached into her pocket for an envelope and unfolded Rachel’s letter. “From London. Some friends there are trying to find what has become of everyone.” She wiped her eyes. “They can’t find my parents or Bruno’s mother in England. They were supposed to come, but they’ve disappeared in Austria, probably arrested and sent to a work camp in Poland with all the Jews in their neighborhood.” Tanni gave a sob. “But Lili and Klara, my little sisters, were on a special children’s train coming to England, now they’re probably in France, in a displaced persons’ camp…if…they’re not dead!” She started to cry again.
“Who?”
“Are they supposed to be in England?”
“Wot’s this all about?”
“Elsie, hush up and let Tanni tell us!” ordered Evangeline.
“Tanni, stop crying,” Frances said sharply. “Where in France?”
Tanni found the place in the letter with her finger. “It’s called Gurs.”
“Wait. Let me see if Aunt Muriel had a map. My geography’s fuzzy.” Fr
ances went unsteadily into the room that had been Sir Humphrey Marchmont’s study—which had been kept as he left it—and returned with an ancient Baedeker. She turned the pages, clumsily hunting for a map of France, thinking what a bit of luck it was that the Home Guard were still on duty and it was just the five of them. Tanni would never have said anything with the men around. She found the page and put the book on Tanni’s lap.
Evangeline and Alice came across to lean over Elsie’s shoulder to see the map on Tanni’s lap. Tanni peered at it. “Here,” she pointed to the place on the map not far from the Spanish border. “My friends learned that when Lili and Klara’s Kindertransport was turned away from England it went here, to Gurs, where there is a big displaced-persons’ camp. First it was refugees from the Spanish civil war. Many Spanish people stayed, but the camp is now full of people fleeing the Nazis who thought they would be safe. When the children arrived in Gurs the Germans had not occupied France.”
“How on earth did you find them?” asked Evangeline.
“Some Americans, Quakers, I think, keep records of the names and ages of all the children who are without their parents. My friends sent them money and told them that the Joseph family in England were hunting for twin girls who should have been on the train. The Quakers finally sent word there was no record of Klara and Lili Joseph in Gurs, alive or even dead. They always noticed twins because for some reason the Germans had several times sent the police, the Milice, to the camp to find any twins and they always took them away.
“Then the Quakers heard that a priest had snatched several children as they got off the train, before the guards saw. They have probably been living with local people. They tried to learn if Lili and Klara had been kept from the camp, but they had to be careful and it took a long time. Finally they heard that twin girls might be living with an elderly couple in a village some distance from the camp. The priest finally admitted he had placed them with his sister and her husband. One had been slower than the other and he thought their name badges had said ‘Klara’ and ‘Lili.’ The Quakers are willing to help, although they are not supposed to, because the Germans have ordered that Jews, even children, who are not French, must be turned over to them. Informers are everywhere and the priest, the Quakers, and those hiding Jewish children are at risk of being arrested themselves and shot.”