The Star and the Shamrock

by Jean Grainger

  As she stood waiting for the kettle to boil, she saw the letter once more. Absentmindedly, she opened it, preparing to throw the entire contents in the bin. Nothing from Ballycreggan was of even the vaguest interest to her.

  To her surprise, however, the envelope did not contain a letter from an estate agent. Instead, there was another smaller envelope inside, addressed to her, but at her mother’s home in Ballycreggan. The post office must have redirected it. She pulled out the flimsy envelope with its foreign stamps. Intrigued, she opened it and extracted a single sheet.

  Dear Elizabeth,

  Please forgive my audacity at writing to you like this. We have never met, but I am Ariella Bannon. My husband, Peter, was, I believe, a cousin of yours. His father, Paddy, was your father’s brother. I am a Jew.

  Peter and I have two children. Liesl is ten and Erich is seven, and I am desperate to get them out of Germany. My husband is missing – I assume he is dead – and I fear for the safety of my children if I do not manage to get them away until all of this is over.

  A family friend can arrange for them to leave on the Kindertransport, but I cannot bear to put them on not knowing where or to whom they would be going. I know it is a lot to ask, but I am begging you – please, please take my children. I will see that you are paid back every penny of the expense incurred by having them as soon as I can, but for now, there is nothing to do but throw myself on your mercy and pray.

  I have tried to get a visa to leave with them, but I have been unsuccessful.

  They are very good children, I promise you, and would do everything you say, and Liesl is very helpful around the house. They are fluent in English and can also speak French and Italian. If you can find it in your heart to help me, you will have my eternal gratitude.

  Yours faithfully,

  Ariella

  PS. Please write back by return, and if you can agree, I will make the arrangements as soon as possible. Every day, things get worse here.

  The kettle whistled, but Elizabeth switched off the gas beneath it. She sat down, forgetting all about her tea. She reread the letter.

  A million thoughts crashed over her, wave after wave. The primary feeling was sympathy – poor Ariella, what a choice to be faced with; the poor woman must be out of her mind. She never knew her cousin was called Peter; in fact, she had to rack her brain to even recall a mention of either her uncle or her cousin. Somewhere in the deep recesses of her memory, she thought that her mother may have said something, but it was a vague recollection at best.

  This woman wanted Elizabeth to take over the care of her children. They would be her sole responsibility for a time as yet to be determined. Could she do it? She was a teacher, but she’d never been a mother, and she knew nothing of raising children. Who would take care of them when she was at work? Where would they sleep? Her house only had two bedrooms. What if they hated her, hated life in England? What if they cried to go back? Elizabeth liked her own company and her small silent home – it was an oasis of calm after a day in school – and the idea that she would soon have to share it with two little strangers filled her with trepidation. But Ariella would not have asked if she were not desperate. Elizabeth would have to do it.

  She sat at her kitchen table, trying to visualise this German family, her cousins. She thought she may have remembered a few Christmas cards as a child – they were a different shape to Irish ones, square rather than rectangular, and they were more like postcards. Pictures of snowy mountains. When her father died, even the Christmas cards stopped. Her mother was certainly not going to have anything to do with foreigners.

  She had enough money to pay whatever costs would be incurred in taking care of two children. Her mother’s legacy remained untouched in the bank, and her teaching salary was building up year after year. She’d paid Saul for the house, though after Rudi’s death, he tried to write it off, and apart from a few groceries, she had hardly any outlay.

  The irony that she was going to get a chance to be a mother, after all these years, was not lost on her.

  She had hoped that she would become pregnant right away after she and Rudi got married in June of 1918, and she did. The joy of that memory was chased immediately by the horror of that child’s loss. She’d never had another relationship, though there had been a few overtures from men over the years. It was like she was frozen inside. She couldn’t allow herself to feel that deeply again. They say that grief is the price of love, but it was a price she could never pay again.

  It took years to come to terms with the fact that not only had she lost Rudi but that she was never going to be a mother. And now here she was offering to be just that to two total strangers.

  Sighing, she pulled out a notepad and pen and took note of the address in Berlin.

  ‘Dear Ariella…’ she began.

  Chapter 4

  ‘Why are you crying, Mama?’ Erich’s little face was pinched as he came into the bedroom. Hastily, she stuffed the photos under the pillow and turned to him. Ariella longed to see his open smile once more, but it had been a long time since anyone in their house had smiled.

  ‘I’m not, my darling. I just had something in my eye.’ She smoothed his dark hair, and his big brown eyes looked up at her with absolute trust. He’d stopped asking where his papa was, but at night, he insisted on sleeping in her bed and would whisper, ‘You won’t leave, Mutti, will you?’

  She hated lying, and technically, she didn’t lie. She would not be the one doing the leaving, but she would put her darling children on that train if it were the last thing she ever did. She and the rest of the Jewish community watched with horror as each day it seemed the Nazis got stronger. The thugs in the brown uniforms operated entirely without check, and non-Jews just stood by and did nothing. Well, most did. People who tried to stop it ended up missing, like Peter.

  She’d sold everything she could sell, and now there was no money left. There was hardly anything to eat, and she gave Liesl and Erich what little she could scavenge. She knew she was weakening due to the lack of food, but she had no choice.

  Elizabeth’s letter had come just in time. Frau Braun had handed the post over wordlessly but with a hardness in her eyes. Ariella was used to that look now.

  Elizabeth would take them. She sounded nice and kind and explained that she no longer lived in Ireland but in the English city of Liverpool. If Ariella were happy with the children going there, she would be glad to offer them a home for as long as was necessary. They would leave Thursday night from the Lehrter Bahnhof. It was Tuesday, and she would have to tell the children that night. Try as she might, she could not find the words. Every explanation she came up with died on her lips as she rehearsed over and over in her head.

  She had their suitcases packed. The organisers were very specific – one small sealed suitcase each and no more than ten Reichsmarks. That particular rule didn’t apply to her, as she had no money to give them. She embroidered their names into each garment at night as they slept, laundering and preparing quietly. She put in photographs of herself and Peter, and of the four of them at her cousin’s child’s bar mitzvah. She added one of Peter and his father, and on the back she wrote, ‘Paddy and Peter Bannon from Ballycreggan, Ireland’. It might help them, who knew? They would be given tags with their names and a number to place around their necks, and a corresponding number would be placed on the suitcase. The children would be accompanied all the way to England, and she was assured they would be placed into the care of her husband’s cousin once on British soil. The woman who organised the Kindertransport was kind, if harassed looking. Ariella knew what a wrench it was, but she also knew that Liesl and Erich were the lucky ones. They only got on because their father was gone, and because Nathaniel had pulled some strings.

  Liesl appeared at the door. She was so like Peter it took her breath away sometimes. Dark hair, dark eyes and a slight build. She was so clever, and so creative. She had been top of her class before all of this horror. Neither child had been to school for a long
time. Their school was closed to Jews. Some feeble attempts were made at providing a Jewish school, but it was far away and it wasn’t safe for them to be out on the street, so Ariella kept them at home. She spent her days improving their English, and when they asked why they didn’t do their French or Italian exercises as they always did, she said English was the best of all the languages. They read books, wrote stories and played make-believe to build their already extensive vocabulary.

  Ariella had tried at the beginning to maintain their schoolwork, but in the face of everything that was happening, it all seemed so pointless. So instead, she read them stories, and they drew pictures and played imaginary games. She tried to keep things somewhat normal, though in reality, it was nothing of the sort.

  ‘Mutti?’ Liesl asked. She was a perceptive child; she knew something was wrong.

  Ariella took a breath. She would have to do it. She led them to the bed and sat them down. How often had they crept in to that very bed on weekend mornings for a cuddle with her and Peter? He would tickle and play with them, telling them funny stories about talking dogs and tap-dancing parrots. She would get up and run down to the bakery for bread, and they would breakfast together on their little terrace in the spring and summer, and in the sunny kitchen on winter mornings. Peter’s job with the bank was a good one, and they had a very nice apartment. She’d heard of lots of Jews being evicted from their homes and the Nazis moving their people in, but that hadn’t happened to her yet. It was only a matter of time, though.

  ‘My darlings, I have something to tell you, and you are going to have to be very brave, as brave as the knights we were reading about in the story last night.’ She forced some brightness into her voice. Her children eyed her warily; there were no nice surprises these days.

  ‘You two are going on a very exciting adventure to England, and you’ll be going first by train and then by boat. And when you get there, Papa’s cousin, a lovely lady called Elizabeth, is going to take you to her house. There are other children to play with and lots of food, and it is going to be wonderful.’ She refused to allow the tears that stung the back of her eyes to fall.

  ‘But you’re coming too, Mutti?’ Liesl asked uncertainly.

  ‘No, my love, not at the moment – this is a train just for children. I will follow later, once I get the papers I need together.’ She tried to make it sound like a minor bureaucratic hiccup, not the almost complete impossibility it really was.

  ‘No, Mutti, we’ll wait and go when you are going.’ Liesl was adamant.

  ‘I’d love that, Liesl, I really would, but you and Erich have to go ahead and I’ll follow you. It will be easier for me to get a permit and all of that if I am alone. And Cousin Elizabeth is going to take very good care of you…’ She knew she needed to convince Liesl. Erich would go where she told him, and if Liesl was with him, he would be all right. But her daughter had her father’s stubborn streak. Peter was a wonderful man but obstinate sometimes, and Liesl was just like him.

  ‘No!’ Liesl shouted. ‘I won’t go without you! I can’t!’

  Erich was starting to get upset now as well.

  Ariella caught her daughter’s eye, willing her to understand, silently pleading with her to go along with it for Erich’s sake. ‘You can, darling, I promise you. You can do it. You’ll be taken care of all the way, and all you and Erich need to do is stay together, look after each other, until I can join you.’

  ‘We can’t stay here.’ The words dropped like heavy rocks.

  There was something about her daughter’s voice… She often wondered about it afterwards. Something changed in Liesl.

  Ariella gazed deeply into her daughter’s eyes. All her life, she had made things better for her – bandaged her knee when she fell, cut the crusts off her toast, stitched the eye back on her teddy bear – but there was no fixing this, and her look communicated that in a way no words ever could. ‘No darling, we can’t. This is not a country for us any longer. We must go.’

  A long pause until eventually Liesl spoke. ‘And you promise you will follow us? You swear you will?’ The girl’s eyes burned into her mother’s.

  ‘I will. While I have breath in my body, my beautiful children, I will do everything I can to get to you. But now you will have to be brave and strong, everything Papa and I know you are, and take that train. Will you do that for me? For Papa?’

  Erich looked up at Liesl and put his hand in hers. Solemnly, she answered for both of them. ‘We’ll go, Mutti. We’ll stay together, and we’ll wait for you in England.’

  Ariella opened her arms, and they moved into her embrace. The three of them stood there for a long time.

  Chapter 5

  Elizabeth stood at the barrier along with all the other Londoners awaiting people getting off trains at Liverpool Street station. At the appointed time, a group of children led by several adults issuing instructions in a foreign language that she assumed was German appeared at the platform and walked into the main concourse.

  Elizabeth went up to a woman she judged to be in her sixties, who was carrying a clipboard and had a whistle around her neck.

  ‘Hello. My name is Elizabeth Klein, and I am here to collect two children, Liesl and Erich Bannon?’ It felt odd to be saying her maiden name to identify two little strangers. She had not been Elizabeth Bannon for so many years.

  The woman looked at her as though she was slightly confused.

  ‘You are involved with the transfer of German refugee children, are you not?’ Elizabeth asked. Perhaps she’d asked the wrong person.

  ‘Yes, yes…of course, yes. Let me get the list. I’m sorry, it’s been a long journey and I…I’m sorry. Now what did you say your name was?’ The woman was European, her English heavily accented.

  Around them, other people were approaching other adults in the group, all with the same purpose. The children stood together, huddled and terrified. Elizabeth was shocked to see so many really young children, even a few toddlers in the arms of older ones. They made a pathetic sight.

  ‘Klein, Elizabeth Klein, and I am to collect Liesl and Erich Bannon.’ Elizabeth spoke clearly and slowly.

  The other woman ran her finger down a list until she came to an entry for Bannon. ‘Yes, we have them here. You’re their father’s cousin it says here?’ The woman checked her list again, removing and replacing her half-moon spectacles several times.

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ Elizabeth confirmed.

  ‘And your address?’ the woman asked, eyeing Elizabeth for the first time.

  ‘Fourteen Barrington Close, Liverpool.’ Elizabeth waited until the woman confirmed it, then glanced once more at the huddled group of children. Which two were they, she wondered.

  ‘Right. Well, if you just wait, I’ll get them for you.’

  The woman walked towards the group and called, ‘Erich und Liesl Bannon, deine Cousine ist hier.’

  Two children stepped forward from the centre of the group and followed the woman back to where Elizabeth stood.

  ‘Have you met before?’ she asked.

  ‘No, no, we haven’t.’ Elizabeth smiled at the children and put out her hand. ‘Willkommen, freut mich dich kennenzulernen.’ She used the only German phrase she knew.

  Liesl accepted her hand. ‘Nice to meet you,’ she replied shyly in English.

  ‘Hello, Liesl,’ Elizabeth said, relieved. Ariella said they spoke English fluently, but she did wonder if their mother had just said that to convince her to take them.

  ‘And this must be Erich?’ She turned to the little boy, hiding behind his sister.

  ‘Yes. This is my brother.’ Liesl gently nudged him out, and he moved a few inches so she could at least see his face.

  Elizabeth got down on her hunkers to be eye level with him and spoke very slowly. ‘I am Elizabeth, and I am going to take care of you.’

  She didn’t know if he understood or not, but his sad little eyes locked with hers, and she hoped he felt reassured.

  She filled out the necessary for
ms, took their suitcases from the pile on a large trolley, and together they walked out into the July sunshine.

  Over tea and a sticky bun, she discovered they could both speak English as fluently as their mother had promised.

  ‘Mutti can too,’ Erich said proudly. ‘My papa works for a bank, so he doesn’t need it, but my mutti learned it when she was young, and then she taught us.’

  ‘Well, that’s wonderful. I’m so relieved because I can’t speak German at all. I was worried how I would communicate with you.’ She smiled and was happy to note some of the tension leaving them.

  ‘Do you have a dog?’ Erich asked.

  ‘No. I don’t have a dog, but there is a little cat that comes for a saucer of milk every day – I leave it in the backyard for her. Perhaps you would like to take over feeding her, Erich?’

  The little boy seemed enthusiastic about the prospect, and Elizabeth turned her attention to Liesl. ‘So, Liesl, how are you feeling? You must be tired, I imagine?’

  Elizabeth talked to children all day long, and she knew – behind her back at least – that many of the parents and staff thought she did better talking to the children than the adults. But there was something different about this. She was nervous.

  ‘Yes,’ Liesl confirmed, but contributed nothing more. She never let go of Erich’s hand, even as she sipped her tea.

  ‘Well, we have to stay in a hotel tonight because it would take too long to get back to where I live this evening. So I thought we could stay here in London and take the train to Liverpool tomorrow.’

  She felt foolish. When she’d booked the Devonshire Arms Hotel off Finsbury Park, she thought it might be a treat for them. But now that she’d met them, she realised they were lost and sad and so far from their home – where they slept was the least of their problems.

  ‘It’s going to be all right,’ she said, though she had no idea whether or not that was true.