She said nothing, just let him cry into her chest as she smoothed his hair. Liesl caught Elizabeth’s eye over his head, and in that instant, there was an unspoken sentence, a depth of understanding far beyond what eleven-year-old Liesl should have had to comprehend.
A single tear leaked from the corner of the girl’s eye, and Elizabeth squeezed her hand. No words were needed.
The days afterwards were a blur, and Elizabeth did her best to comfort them. She fed them and held them and talked when they wanted to talk, but mostly they crept about the house like a pair of little ghosts. It broke her heart. They ate and slept and went to school, but it was as if the life had been drained out of them.
She tried to get more information, but the contact in the Kindertransport knew nothing further, and despite writing again to Ariella, there was no news from Berlin.
Elizabeth took the children to the farm for the prayer service for their father and for so many others as well. It was a solemn occasion, and the Kaddish would be said for Peter every day for thirty days. Liesl and Erich didn’t go every day, but they were frequent visitors. She encouraged it; she thought it gave them comfort to be around people who understood.
That night she went to Shabbat with Daniel seemed like a lifetime ago. She had tried to bring his name up in conversation with the others when she accompanied the children, but nobody wanted to talk about him. It was as if this were yet another betrayal, and they were meeting it with steely stoicism as they had so many others. She’d managed to glean that he was awaiting trial – he’d been charged and was in prison in Belfast. It was all kept very quiet, no mention of it in the papers, but the sentence for espionage was always death, and it could be carried out at any time.
Everyone seemed to believe he was guilty. She knew Rabbi Frank didn’t believe it – he’d said so when he told her the sad news about Peter – but even he would not be drawn.
Talia drove the school bus now, and the children, apart from Liesl, liked her very much. She hadn’t popped in since the day she told Elizabeth to stay out of it, and while she always said hello and was pleasant, there was a distance that wasn’t there before.
The children were playing football in the yard after school as usual. A match, the locals against the refugees, had been going on every day for weeks. The score was currently eighty-seven goals to ninety-four.
Talia sat in the bus, waiting patiently. Elizabeth decided it was time to break the ice. She crossed the playground.
‘Tea?’ she offered with a smile. ‘I’m afraid all of the coffee is gone.’
‘Thanks.’ Talia grinned and her face lit up. She must have been feeling bad about the rift as well. She jumped out of the bus and followed Elizabeth. As she sat on a desk, she examined her nails. ‘Farming hands was not my plan,’ she said with a rueful grin. ‘I imagined by now I’d be swanning about the salons of Europe being lauded as the next van Gogh, not chasing bloody chickens and weeding turnips.’ Despite her grumbling, she was good-tempered.
‘So how are things at the farm?’
‘All right.’ She sighed. ‘We are working hard though, the tractor is out of action, and this time we have no Daniel to fix it.’
The mention of his name hung between them.
‘He feels so bad about everything. This is just another problem.’ Talia took the cup.
‘You’ve heard from him?’ Elizabeth asked directly, trying to sound more casual than she felt.
Talia looked at her, but her hazel and amber eyes gave nothing away. ‘Yes, he wrote to me. He just wanted to say he was sorry for…well, for everything, I suppose. We were close, both being from Vienna and all. He was afraid he’d made trouble for everyone.’
‘So he admitted it?’ Elizabeth’s heart was thumping in her chest, cold sweat prickling between her shoulder blades.
‘Well, more or less. He is sorry, that’s all he said really.’ Talia sighed again and gazed into the middle distance, lost in thought.
Elizabeth was taken aback by her reticence, as she was normally chatty and open.
‘And the case against him?’ Elizabeth was determined.
‘He’ll be tried under the new Treachery Act, I suppose, and the only sentence if found guilty is death, either by hanging or firing squad.’ Talia’s voice was flat.
The two women sat silently, neither one willing to show her hand.
‘You think you know someone, don’t you?’ Talia said, suddenly looking very young.
‘I don’t know. I just… It’s all so…so strange.’
‘It is,’ Talia agreed. ‘I don’t know what I expected, but he’s from my city. I… Well, it doesn’t matter now.’ She shrugged. She looked like she had the weight of the world on her shoulders.
‘I know you didn’t know each other, but surely you must have had some mutual acquaintances even? Put two Irish people together for five minutes and they’ll have found at least ten people they both know.’ Elizabeth smiled. She wanted the conversation to remain casual, but she couldn’t just leave it at that.
‘No, but Vienna is a big place. He lived in Floridsdorf in the north part of the city, and I was from Liesing in the southwest. My parents – well, my mother, she was Jewish, but my father was agnostic. My mother used to go occasionally to temple in her younger days, I think, and once her parents died, she wasn’t really practising, so I didn’t know any Jews. We didn’t live in a Jewish neighbourhood, so…’
Daniel had told her that Talia’s parents were dead, two more victims of the hateful regime that was crushing Europe.
‘I’m sorry about your parents. Daniel told me.’ Elizabeth tread carefully, as it was not the done thing to raise with the refugees the fate of those left behind, but Talia was different to them; she was more open.
She nodded, acknowledging the sentiment but saying nothing.
‘Have you been to see him in prison?’ Elizabeth had been toying with the idea before this revelation. She didn’t even know if she could, and if she did, would it bring doubt over her involvement? If it was just herself she had to worry about, she would have tried, but she had Liesl and Erich to think about. She could do nothing that might result in them being taken away from her. They’d lost so much already.
‘No. I didn’t. I think maybe the rabbi has, but I’m not sure.’ She put down her cup. ‘I’d better get them back – homework and chores and all of that.’ She smiled. The conversation about Daniel was over.
‘Elizabeth.’ Talia turned back, her hand on the door. ‘In class the other day, when I was drawing people, Erich came up and asked me if I could draw someone from a description. I didn’t really know what to say, but he told me that they lost their photographs of their parents when your house in England was bombed and that he wanted to look at his father and mother’s faces.’
Elizabeth inhaled raggedly. ‘It’s true they lost everything. So did I. I wish they had even one photograph. It’s so hard for them. It’s all just so…’
From nowhere, the tears came. Throughout the entire process, she hadn’t cried – Peter, Daniel – but now, hearing Erich’s simple request, it was the last straw.
Talia came back into the room and put her arms around Elizabeth. She rubbed her back as she cried, making soothing sounds.
‘It is so hard, I know… I lost my parents too, and I know I’m older, but it’s so difficult. And it all seems so senseless. If it is all right with you, I will try to do what Erich asks. I will get him to tell me about their parents and see if I can make a likeness. For Liesl too if she wants, though she doesn’t like me much. It won’t be as good as a photo, but it might be something.’
‘Would you do that for them?’ Elizabeth asked, drying her tears. ‘It would mean so much if you could…’
‘I can try.’ Talia smiled.
‘I would be so grateful, and I’ll pay you of course…’
Talia raised her hand. ‘No…nothing. We are together, we are the same, and we must help each other when we can.’
‘Thank you, Talia. It would mean so
much to them.’
The younger woman smiled again. ‘You are a kind woman, Elizabeth. You didn’t know these kids, nor even their parents, and yet you took them. And not just that, you love them like they are your own. It takes a special person to do that. Daniel saw that in you, and I see it too.’
Elizabeth looked down; she did not want Talia to see the devastation in her eyes.
‘He talked about you a lot,’ Talia said quietly.
‘Well, that’s all water under the bridge now, isn’t it? If he’s guilty, then he will hang.’ Elizabeth heard the hard edge in her voice at the thought of Daniel being led to the gallows. Sweet, funny, kind Daniel. It was hard to accept.
Chapter 18
July, 1941
‘Do you think we’ll be allowed to use the beach tomorrow? It’s getting very hot now,’ Erich said to Elizabeth as they sat down to tea and Irish stew. Meals were heavy on potatoes and carrots, which she grew in the back garden, and very light on meat. ‘I’d love to go for a swim.’ He sighed wistfully.
Elizabeth thought for a moment. ‘I don’t think so, not the main beach anyway, where I used to swim as a child. But I think they’re talking about allowing access to the shale beach on the Ards road, you know the one? Where you caught the crabs last summer?’
‘Oh, but we want to go to the sandy beach,’ Erich complained.
‘I know you do – we all do – but the RAF need all of that for the base, so we’ll have to let them. Remember, everyone must do his or her bit, and if it means giving up our lovely beach, then that’s what we must do.’
‘Do you think the Germans will come again to bomb Ballycreggan?’ Erich asked, his eyes worried.
With the ever-expanding RAF base not five miles away, the answer was obvious, but she would temper her response. The reality was the entire coastline, with all of the military activity, would be a very attractive German target.
‘No, darling. This is only the countryside. I know we think it’s a big base, but compared to the ones in England, it’s not, so I doubt nasty old Adolf wants to waste his bombs here.’ She smiled and piled his plate high with vegetables in stock. She was going to use the top of the milk for some strawberries from the garden for dessert.
After tea, Erich went to the village green to play football with the local boys and Liesl helped to wash up.
‘I think they might try again to bomb the RAF base out at Ballyhalbert, though?’ Liesl knew not to voice such opinions around her younger brother.
‘Well, if they do, they’ll get plenty of response.’ It was all Elizabeth could say to reassure her.
‘If the war is still on when I’m a grown-up, I’m going to sign up to fight Hitler.’
Elizabeth dried her hands and placed them on Liesl’s shoulders. Since the news of her father’s death, the child had become even more solemn. Elizabeth knew she believed her mother was dead too, and it was all too much pain to bear.
‘I will pray every single night that by the time you’re a grown-up, this mad world will be at peace once more. It will happen, I am convinced of it. With the Russians over in the east, we have help, and it is only a matter of time until it’s over.’
‘But even if it ends, nothing will go back to how it was.’
‘No, it won’t, but you can go home…’ She was treading very carefully. There was a tendency to treat Liesl as older than she was because she was such a diligent, serious child, but Elizabeth had to keep reminding herself that she was only eleven. She would be twelve next month.
What would become of the Bannons when the war was over was never discussed, but Elizabeth wanted Liesl to understand that if she wanted to go back to Germany, then she could.
‘Will we have to?’ the girl asked, suddenly looking so much younger.
‘Well, it depends.’ Elizabeth wondered what the best thing to say was. Since that night when she told them about Peter, and Erich had asked where Ariella was, Liesl had not mentioned her. Before that, their mutti had been a regular feature of their conversation.
The same was true with a lot of the refugee children. They just stopped talking about their parents. Liesl and Erich had been with Elizabeth for two years now – a long time in the life of a child.
Elizabeth spoke slowly, watching Liesl’s reaction to the words carefully. ‘It all depends on your mum, doesn’t it? Maybe she’ll want to stay in Germany, and then you will want to go back to her. Or she might even want to come here. We have lots of room. But the decision will be yours, my darling, and for as long as you and Erich want it, you will always have a home with me.’
Liesl seemed to relax. ‘Some of the others are saying that we’ll be put back on trains and just dropped off at the station where we got on the Kindertransport.’
Elizabeth drew her into a hug. ‘No, my love, that won’t happen. Of course, those children whose families are back in Germany or Austria or wherever they came from will go home and be reunited. But those who don’t, well, they’ll have to stay here, I would imagine.’
‘But we don’t have to go back?’ Liesl wanted to be sure.
‘No, Liesl, you can decide for yourself.’
‘I don’t think I’ll be going back. Do you?’
Elizabeth pressed her lips to Liesl’s dark hair. ‘I don’t know, darling. I really don’t.’
‘Elizabeth?’
‘Yes?’
‘Was Daniel your boyfriend?’
The question caught her unawares. When Daniel was arrested, she explained as best she could what the police thought, and they had not asked about him since.
‘No, no, of course he wasn’t. Why do you ask?’ Elizabeth prayed Liesl would not see that the question flustered her.
‘Viola said that she overheard some of the adults talking about him up at the farm and that one of them said you were his girlfriend. And then the rabbi came in and got cross with them for gossiping.’
‘No. Daniel and I were just friends,’ she said firmly.
‘But you think he is a spy?’ Liesl asked, her gaze never leaving Elizabeth’s.
She recalled Talia’s revelation that Daniel had written and apologised. He had as much as admitted it.
‘I really don’t know what to think.’ The child deserved for her to be honest. ‘I can’t imagine him as a spy, but then… I…I just don’t know.’
‘Could you just ask him?’
‘But Daniel is in prison, pet…’ Elizabeth had thought she understood.
‘So why don’t you visit him then, if you’re friends? Or at least ask if you’d be allowed or even write to him. If someone said something about me or Erich, you wouldn’t just accept it without question, would you?’
The child had a point.
‘Well, Talia had a letter from him…’ she began.
‘But you only have Talia’s word for that. You didn’t see the letter, did you?’ Liesl demanded, more forcefully now. The mention of Talia seemed to set her off.
‘No,’ Elizabeth admitted. ‘But she has no reason to lie, and she said Daniel apologised for what he’d done –’
‘Did he admit it?’ Liesl interrupted. ‘Did Talia say Daniel confessed?’
‘No, not as such, but, Liesl, my love…’ Elizabeth was desperate for her to understand. ‘I can’t just walk up there, demand to see him, you know. What he’s accused of is extremely serious, and anyway, I promised Mr Morris I wouldn’t have anything to do with Daniel now,’ she finished miserably.
Liesl sat at the kitchen table and Elizabeth sat opposite. Liesl reached over and held Elizabeth’s hand in hers. ‘He’s our friend. I don’t think he did anything wrong, and deep down, neither do you. You could go and hear what he has to say, or at least write. I know you are probably trying to protect us, but we’d like you to go to see him. We hate the idea of him being all alone in prison with nobody. After everything Daniel’s done for us, doesn’t he deserve that much?’
‘Well, as I said, it’s complicated…’ Elizabeth began.
‘But if I were put
in prison for something, even if I did it, you’d visit me, wouldn’t you?’ Liesl said bluntly.
‘Yes, I would… It’s just –’
Before she could continue, Erich burst in. ‘A Yank kicked the ball with us. He’s from Mississippi, but he’s in the RAF ’cause his mum is British, and he came over to join up. He said loads of other Yanks were trying to join up too, and a lot of them pretended to be Canadian so they could get in, but he didn’t have to, and he gave me this.’ The little boy spoke without taking a breath, such was his excitement. He held a stick of chewing gum aloft triumphantly as if it were the FA Cup, his eyes glittering with excitement.
The arrival of even more RAF personnel in the village certainly caused excitement, and the children, the boys and the girls, were mesmerised by their smart uniforms and confident swaggers. According to Talia – who attended the village dances with some of the other girls on the farm – and the village grapevine, there were quite a few romances going on with the local girls when the men were off-duty.
‘Well, that was very kind of him. I hope you said thank you. And people from America are called Americans, not Yanks.’ Elizabeth smiled at his excitement.
‘I did.’ He nodded, stuffing the pink gum in his mouth and ignoring her admonishment. ‘And he asked me where I was from, and I told him, and he said he and the other chaps were going to bomb Hitler to hell for what he’s doing.’
Elizabeth hid her disapproval. That was not the kind of talk she wanted around Erich, as he was quite riled up enough as it was.
‘I told him to come over to meet you and to have a cup of tea. He’s on the way,’ Erich announced cheerfully.
‘What?’ Elizabeth said exasperatedly. ‘Why?’
‘Because I told him you were pretty and you had no husband, so he said he’d like to meet you. His name’s Bud.’ Erich couldn’t understand the problem. ‘He has chocolate and all sorts of stuff,’ he said, as if to seal the deal.
Before Elizabeth had time to remonstrate with him further for inviting total strangers into the house, there was a knock on the door.
The Star and the Shamrock Page 13