If I found a moment, I wrote yet another letter, or occasionally the odd note in my journal, feeling that I must keep a record of the injustice unfolding in our lives. If I sat idle, I would think about the conditions in which they kept the men, whether there was ill treatment of the Germans, with Hitler’s armies sweeping through the Low Countries. And if I thought about that, I would imagine those soldiers landing at Southampton, coming over the bridge in their trucks, requisitioning the hostel, and what would happen to me then? I mostly forced myself to stop my imaginings when they had been allowed to reach this point. What good would it do Emil? England had not been invaded. The only people being rounded up were refugees, a situation I must set myself against with any weapon at my disposal.
At my desk, the paper blank in the typewriter, shoulders aching from my hours at the laundry mangle, I heard the door slam downstairs, the girls’ thunderous boots on the kitchen tiles, their cacophony of accents. They were the noisiest, most vigorous young women I had ever come across. I could hear them now, teasing each other about their beaux, soldiers at the nearby barracks, idle since Dunkirk, creating havoc in the town in the evenings. ‘You don’t mind them big, do you, Lorna?’ a girl called Evelyn was shouting from below. ‘I thought you were going to jump on him right there and then!’ Most of the ribbing was kind. I could not help but like them, though they seemed slightly intimidated, in spite of towering over me. I think they thought me a little posh, intellectual. The knowledge of my German ‘fiancé’, gleaned in the town, made them additionally wary, and so when I was in the room there was among them a slightly remote respect, a thoughtful watching. It was quite clear that when I was not in the room I was the frequent subject of their tireless gossip.
At first they had been more forthcoming with me, more inclusive, but soon after they arrived there had been a procession of the evacuated soldiers from France through the town. One morning in late May as I waited for news, and began to give up hope of hearing anything amid the frenzy of the evacuation, a gaggle of the Land Girls returned at about eleven, banging the front door, hurtling into the kitchen to find me. ‘Miss JACOB! You must come now or you’ll miss them! The boys are coming!’ I took off my apron and stepped outside with them. Out on the bridge I could hear the tooting of horns and cheers from up around the bend, coming down towards the town. And then there they were, truck after truck filled with khaki-garbed men, shyly grinning, waving to the swarm of girls risking life and limb to run among the vehicles. My girls could not help themselves. They too ran after the lorries, cheering and shrieking. The streets were filling with the townspeople, come out from the shops and houses. The young men’s faces, in the weak sunlight of southern England, looked tired, slightly disbelieving.
I stood at the side of the road with a couple of the shyer girls as the men passed. The girls waved and smiled and I, deeply glad that these soldiers were safe, wished that I could see that Emil was too, with the evidence of my own eyes, as I saw these men now, solid and real, out of danger, at least for now. Jostled by the crowd, I felt a wet drop on my face though the sky was clear and blue. I looked to my left, where it had come from, and there was a tall, thin woman staring at me, hands on hips. I sensed from this woman’s demeanour, and from the gasps of the Land Girls beside me, that she had spat on me. I drew my handkerchief from my pocket and wiped my face, waiting for an explanation. ‘You’ve got a nerve,’ the woman said. I did not know how to defend myself, not knowing what I had done, though a twisting in my stomach gave me a clue. There had been hints of this even before the arrest—sudden silences in the post office when I entered, an abrupt cessation of invitations to the Women’s Institute meetings, not that I’d ever attended them.
‘Here!’ piped up one of my girls. ‘What’d you do that for? That’s filthy, that is!’
‘She’s a German’s tart,’ said the woman. ‘And that’s what we think of that sort of thing round here. She ought to be strung up.’
‘Now just listen,’ I began, and faltered. It was no use. The throng around us were all looking at me now. The Land Girls were waiting for me to say it wasn’t true. The faces of people I recognised, all around me, had become the faces of strangers. I tried again. I had been taught to stand up for myself, not to be bullied by the mob. I knew how to speak to a heckling crowd. You remembered that they were human, that individually each had a heart, and conscience. ‘Emil is a refugee. If you knew what he has suffered—’
‘She goes to Germany all the time!’ the woman told her audience. ‘Wouldn’t surprise me one bit if they were spies.’
There was general assent in the grumbles of the crowd. Everyone was standing very close. I feared that if I tried to speak further, I would go to pieces, and I refused to do that in front of these people. I knew that they were ignorant before they were hateful, but what was the difference when you were at the centre of a pack of them, having the air squeezed out of you? I stepped onto the road and walked alongside the procession, chin up, until I reached the bridge and home. It is their experience of the last war, I told myself. It is their lack of education. But you could not say that for the vicar’s wife, Mrs Bantree. She had been to Cambridge. I was not used to being actively disliked, and it set the tone for the months to follow while I waited for news of Emil. I felt something settle around my shoulders and over my head, like a widow’s shawl, that cast me into a dim silence.
The weeks passed with no news, only the drudgery and occasional amusement of caring for the Land Girls. My past began to feel unreal. Sometimes I had to find a quiet moment to go upstairs to look at his medal, his clothes, the pair of work boots, the packet of letters from Germany he had left behind, to furnish myself with proof. His clothes were losing the smell of him, his tobacco and cologne. The streets were quiet as everyone waited to see what would happen when the war began properly. No one looked at me, and I knew that it was brave and decent of the laundrywoman to keep coming. One day, battling along the high street in the rain with umbrella and shopping bags because the grocer would no longer deliver, I saw a woman, the wife of a refugee, Mrs Schlindwein. It seemed that she had already seen me and was eyeing me warily from beneath her rain bonnet. Surely you’re going to give me the time of day, I thought. And then: Well, I will give her no choice. ‘Hello, Dora,’ I said loudly as the woman approached. ‘Any news of Isaac?’
She stopped and looked into my face wordlessly for a moment. Then she said, ‘Hannah, they are going to send them away.’
‘What on earth do you mean? They are already sent away.’
‘Away from England. Away from Europe. To other continents.’
‘How do you know this? What have you heard?’ My hand I realised, because she looked at it, was gripping her forearm.
She shook her head, looking away from me. She had some source she would not reveal. ‘You must see,’ she said. ‘It is so unfair for us. How can they trust the other Germans? I’m sure your Emil is decent, but how would anyone know? But the Jewish men . . . Isaac was in a camp. This will kill him.’
I said no more but bustled away down the hill towards the river with my umbrella and baggage. I had never felt more alone, though the hostel was filled with noisy young women taking a day off in the rain. I could not walk down the street without people staring at me, not giving a damn now, apparently, whether I noticed them doing it or not.
That night I sat at my desk, back aching, staring at a piece of writing paper—on the desk, not in the typewriter—on which at some point I had written Dear Mother and nothing else. It was smudged. A cold mug of coffee sat before me. I must have dozed off with my hand on the paper. One of the girls was singing. The sound of her voice, and of the other girls’ sudden silence, was what had woken me. I did not know the song and could not make out many of the words but it sounded like an old folk lament for a faraway love. One of those heartbreaking things where the woman is left with a baby on the shore waiting for the fishermen to find his body at sea. I undressed as quietly as I could so as not to miss any o
f the song, but she was soon finished, her voice replaced by the rush of water beneath the building. But not for long. The girls started up singing all those songs they drag out in wartime, songs from my childhood.
As I laid my head on the pillow I remembered the singing of the German boys from before the war, their pure voices, wide smiles. There were several groups of them in the first year or so of the hostel. They were all now old enough to fight and die, those hundred or so boys we had looked after. Hans was still just fourteen, though more than old enough for the Hitler Youth. I could not bear these thoughts that came at night. I pushed them away from me and fell into sleep.
The next day, there was a knock at the door in the middle of the afternoon, just as the girls were returning from the farms. I was trying to get tea onto the table, huge plates of jam sandwiches and tea in the big pot. I asked one of the girls, Milly, a flighty girl with two or three soldiers on the go from the base, to finish up while I answered the door. She was a pretty girl. She gave me a slightly cow-like stare before scurrying off into the kitchen and I wondered if that was her appeal to the soldiers: that sensual, stupid slowness, followed by an eagerness to please.
At the door was a man I had not seen for years, Kenneth Timms. I knew him at Ruskin, and he had visited us before the war, but since then had become a Labour MP for a Midlands electorate and rarely came this far south, into dense Tory territory. He was one of the men to whom I had written trying to find news of Emil. He had aged, as they all had, but Kenneth wore the years heavily. His face held a pinched expression and the wild curls of which he was always a little proud at Ruskin had gone now. He was almost completely bald. For a moment I didn’t recognise him. When I did he seemed to be in disguise. I remembered I used to have something of a crush on him at college. ‘Kenneth!’ I said eventually. ‘Please come in. How are you?’
He seemed bewildered by the kinetic force and volume of the Land Girls tearing about the place, stealing each other’s sandwiches, shrieking at one another, sloshing tea all over the table.
‘Come through,’ I said. ‘Where it’s quiet.’
I tried not to rush him, sitting him down next to me at the desk in the back office. ‘You are a long way from home, Ken. What brings you down here?’
‘A Labour conference in Southampton.’
I knew that I should ask about it, and how his daughters were, but I could not wait. ‘Do you have news of Emil?’
It seemed he had been waiting for permission to speak, as it tumbled out now in a rush in his Derbyshire accent. ‘Hannah, I do have something, and it is rather worrying. I am not sure if it concerns Emil or not. It is very difficult to obtain accurate information. You see, a ship was sunk in the Irish Sea last Tuesday. The Arandora Star.’ I stared at him for several seconds, motionless.
‘What seems to have happened is that they sent a shipload for Canada. They were Italians and Germans. I am told that they were all fascists, category A, the ones interned in thirty-nine. Emil would not be in that category, but it is all so confusing. We receive a different memo every day.’
I forced myself to speak. ‘What happened to the men on board?’
He looked at me, stricken. ‘They were lost, my dear. Only a few hundred saved.’
‘Of course,’ I said after a few moments, ‘Emil is not a fascist. They know that.’
‘No, no.’ He put his hand on mine. It was a little moist. ‘They have always been clear about the categories. But still . . .’
‘What Kenneth? What is it?’
‘My constituent, Mrs Singer—her husband was category C, classed unequivocally as a refugee. He was on it. He was lost.’
In the other room the girls grew rowdier. ‘Don’t be such a little tramp!’ one shrieked. If those girls started off the war with morals, by God they were gone now. I began to chew a nail. Usually I managed to control this habit, which I regarded as revolting, in company. In private, Emil always told me to stop. I find I am doing it even now, when I pause typing to remember.
I placed my hands in my lap and looked him in the eye. ‘Kenneth, thank you for coming all this way. I have not received a letter. I will not believe he was on board until I see a letter. If you could get an actual list—in any case, I feel that I would know, somehow.’
‘They won’t give out a list. They will only say yes or no if next of kin gives them a name. That is what I came to tell you. Here is who you write to.’ He handed me a scrap of paper. ‘You should contact them yourself.’
At the door, I could tell he wanted to say that he was sorry, but I would not have it. I hurried him out to his car, shook his hand, thanked him for coming, slipped the ragged triangle of paper in my apron pocket and returned to the house.
When he had gone, I began to peel the carrots for dinner. We had an enviable supply of fresh vegetables with the girls doing the work they did. For once, I did not ask the girls to help in the kitchen. After they had cleared the tea things, I sent them out to walk in the fields. It was so beautifully fresh, after rain the day before.
As I prepared the stew, I told myself, many times: I am peeling carrots. I am peeling potatoes, and occasionally: There is no letter. He is not on the list. The thought hovered. I batted it away. There had been no letter about anything at all. They are not in touch with you, I went on at myself. For one thing, you are not his wife.
When the stew was done, and there were no pressing tasks for the moment, I sat down at the table and examined my poor fingernails. Even then, as my stiff body at last unfolded, I could not allow myself to believe he was lost. I simply refused to do it. I sat very still, and quiet, waiting for the girls to return.
A week later, I scolded one of the girls for attempting to malinger as the others trooped off to their work blearily in the cool early morning. She was another one of those with rather a complicated love life. She said she had a cold, and her eyes and nose were red, but I had heard one of them crying in the night. I was unsympathetic, giving her a little speech about her duty to serve with the troops at their lowest ebb. Eventually the wretched girl sloped off after the others, ready to sob anew. I had simply wanted the place to myself for a few hours and, it seemed, was prepared to act the bully to ensure that I had my way. After the girl had finally gone, I sat down with a cup of tea and a saucer of biscuits in a square of sunlight at the long trestle before an empty sheet of paper, with the address Kenneth gave me in my hand. I might as well know once and for all, I was thinking when I heard the slither of the mail falling to the mat. As always I told myself to expect nothing, either good or bad.
I made myself wait for as much as five seconds and then walked quickly to the door. I saw it immediately, a blue envelope, a handwritten address, a letter that looked different, personal, precious, poking out from amid the official guff. I knew even before I picked it up, leaving the others where they lay on the mat; it was his handwriting, addressed to me at Mother’s, crossed out and sent on to me here. I ripped it open as I returned to my seat, tearing straight through the address printed on the back. The letter would mean nothing until I saw its date. The delays with the censors meant it might have been sent at any time. It was dated the fourth of July. After the sinking of the Arandora Star. I held the pieces together with jittery fingers. I was suddenly ravenously hungry and crammed a biscuit in my mouth, feeling I had not eaten properly for weeks.
Douglas Camp
Isle of Man
4th July, 1940
My dearest Hannah,
I hope you have received the previous letters which I sent to you. I have received nothing from you, but I believe that you do not know where I am. They have offered to send us to —— and said that wives can follow. I have told you this before.
If you have received my previous letters, I am sorry to repeat the information.
Everyone knows that you are my darling wife. You should use my name now. Write to the Home Office. Ask your friends to help you. There might not be time to wait for arrangements. Organise yourself, in case.
I could not believe I held something so precious in my hands, my dusty hands that had scrubbed and peeled and washed all morning. I shall do whatever he requires of me, I told myself. More. I will not falter. I had a week left of the young women. I would write to the Youth Hostel Association and ask them to find another warden for the next billet. I began to calculate what my few possessions were worth. I had a friend from college whom I had already bothered endlessly but whom I must now ask to help me get permission to travel to the country beneath the censor’s ink, whatever it might be. He would probably be glad to do this, to be rid of me at last. I knew that this was how persistence worked, how you received eventual consent for what you asked. You went on until that moment when they just wanted it to be done with, for them to be shot of you. I’ve seen that look on some official’s face many times. The one that says: Oh dear Lord, not you again. And then you know you have them.
Hannah & Emil Page 25