They brought him out and there seemed a difference in him. He moved easily, gracefully again. He smiled as he sat down. Still I felt that urge to touch him that made me want to scream, that I had to press down in order to speak, to make the most of our few minutes. At least now Jill had gone it was just us and the soldiers. I had learned not to care what they heard, or at least to speak in German when I did. ‘You look well,’ I said.
‘Really? Well, I feel not so bad. The food is making me fat. But you look anxious. What’s the matter?’
And I was saying it, without having known that it was what I planned. ‘I think that I must after all go to Melbourne. I must find reliable work.’ I could not look at him.
He sighed. ‘That’s good news. This place does not suit you.’
‘Oh, but I feel dreadful. It seems terrible to think of leaving you. I thought with Mrs Stuart’s help I might stay until they released you.’
‘They feed me. I don’t need money. I have conversation and chess and a job in the workshop. This could take years. How long does a war last? You cannot wait in this town.’
‘I’ll come back, as soon as I can afford it.’
‘Don’t, Hannah. Not out here.’
I was close to tears, though I had disciplined myself to save them for my sleep-out and the cover of night. ‘You’re giving up, aren’t you? That’s why you seem different. I’ll get an answer soon from my MPs. In Melbourne I’ll be able to go and see people, to make our case in person.’
‘You need to work. Life is simple for me when I keep calm and quiet. The days pass so slowly, waiting for your visits. The others, they make quiet lives in here.’
‘You want to forget about me. It’s easier for you.’
‘No. No, Hannah.’
The guard behind Emil, whom I had not seen before, was looking at me. They were about to eject me. I knew the signs. He looked away. I put my hand to the mesh, our signal, and felt the paper push against it. ‘I will reclaim our lives—you will see,’ I whispered as the doors opened. He shook his head and stood. I left quickly with my guard.
At the gate I had to unclench my fist so that the note did not disintegrate in my hot hand. There was a very tall Aboriginal guard who saw me out. He said nothing but from his pocket he drew forth a beautiful peach and handed it to me wordlessly, holding my eye from a full foot and a half above, giving a little nod. Of all the kindnesses, that one returns so vividly. I smell peach when I think of it, and remember his liquid eyes, narrowed in the bright day. As I began my walk I ate the peach, in lieu of a drink, and it was so perfectly ripe that juice ran down my neck as I ate it.
Clear of the gates I read my note. The writing was tinier even than before, as for once he had information to impart: two items, just a few words, but important ones. One was the name and address of a woman from a refugee organisation in Melbourne, Edith Hart. The other was this: Home Office liaison officer to arrive: Major Temple. Staying in Melbourne.
Note in one hand, peach in the other, I felt a little steel return to my spine. I walked quickly home and began to pack.
Emil
TATURA, 1941
It was green in this place to which they had all been moved; vegetables were growing, and he could hear and occasionally saw children in the family camp, when they ventured to the fence. Through a gap, a little boy had given him a green tin plate on which he had painted flowers. He had thought of Hans more than usual, the day the boy had given it to him. Fifteen now. Young enough, still, to be at home with Ava, to be off to school every day with satchel and scuffed shoes.
The food was very good and they were well organised here, as in Hay. There were the theatre groups and the café and the lectures. But Solomon had been moved to a different hut. It made his days a little heavier, longer, though he ran into him from time to time moving about the camp and it had something of the feel of being young and wandering about town, stumbling across a friend, filling an hour with talk. In this camp there were Nazis mixed in with them and it was a constant effort to avoid run-ins. He did not want fights with them here, where it did no good, where any argument was theoretical and could only disturb the equilibrium he had gained. He must avoid large emotions in order to keep himself intact. Hannah, so far as he knew, did not yet know where he was. The minutes went by at a distance from him. He watched the activities in the camp, did his job in the workshop—mending things: bed legs, dental tools, spectacles—ate and slept. He tried to remember passages from books and he kept his eye out for an engine to fix, but he no longer played chess. He helped a young man secretly build a radio on the proviso that he brought him no news of outside, whatever he might pick up on the airwaves. He must shelter himself from time, for now.
One day at the workshop his colleague came in and said, ‘There was a package for you, Becker. I’ll look after things here if you want.’
He left without speaking and went to the administration block. The strange milky lake beyond the huts shone faintly. A soldier gave him a packet with her handwriting on it. It was fat and held together with a much-taped sheet of brown paper. He slipped it under his arm and went back to his hut, lay on the bed to open it.
‘What you got there?’ called a talkative man from Stuttgart, cutting his toenails at his bunk. ‘Food parcel?’
Emil ignored him. He had made his privacy through reticence.
He took a knife from his soap crate, began to slit open the package. Onto his chest slid a number of folded wads of paper. He began to unfold one, and another: copies of Hannah’s correspondence with Temple. He let them lie there, slipping off his body and onto the bed. Do I wish to know? he thought, but already he was beginning to arrange them, in date order, to find out what was happening to him out there, to the status of his name.
They started off politely enough. They told his story in a way he did not entirely recognise, although the facts were true. If the world of one’s life were a fat sphere, these fragments she described were the point where the ball touched the ground. But she arranged them well for the purpose. You could hear the stump speech in the way she addressed herself to officialdom.
It seemed Temple would not grant her an interview. Emil had had his own interview with him in Hay. He seemed a decent man, sympathetic, but he could not alter the parameters of their dilemma. Emil must go home alone, if a passage could be found, or stay behind the wire. The Australians had not asked for him and did not want him. Hannah could do as she pleased; she was British, after all. Temple had said to him, softly, echoing Solomon, ‘If you would consider returning alone, she might find her own way later.’
In the first few letters, Hannah had just about held back her temper. There was cajoling and charm, and then, when she did not get satisfaction: ‘My life—or what the British authorities have made of it—means nothing to me. I am familiar with your appearance from the daily press. I am also familiar with the appearance of your car. As a last resort I shall place myself directly in its path.’
His body became rigid. Why have I been sent these now? What has she done? But then his pulse slowed, his body relaxed. The parcel was addressed by her hand, and that clumsy taping was her work too. She was given to the dramatic turn of phrase, he reminded himself. And it was almost funny, what she had threatened. She was the last person in the world to stop fighting and lie down in the road. If Hitler himself were coming down the street she’d be demanding an account of what he thought he was doing.
She bullied Temple with the names of those she knew in England, with friends in the Melbourne press. Temple’s brief, polite notes acknowledged her letters, restating the position of the Australian government, retreating into official blankness. Then, finally, a note to Emil from Hannah.
Emil—Harts continue to be kindest souls imaginable. However did you get on to them? Dear Edith has found me a job on a university survey. Will leave me less time to haunt Temple and none for pieces for paper but is solid means of support. Will use in argument for your release—that I can now support us both
. Another piece of goodish news: some talk of releasing men for skilled war work. Will push this line as hard as possible.
Love and fortitude,
Hannah
He went out and looked over the grey-blue dish of water lining the shallow valley beneath the clouds. The shadow of the guard tower passed across his neck as he walked back to the workshop. At his bench was the toy he was making in his spare time. He had taken the wind-up mechanism of a broken toy discarded from the family camp and fitted it to the legs of a little marionette he had carved. He’d been working on it for weeks. It was difficult to get the little person to stay up, to balance well enough to be able to manage movement. He felt the weight of the doll in his hands, tightened the screws that held it balanced in position, carefully wound the key and watched it walk across the bench, the full length of it, straight and steady, before falling onto the ground. He laughed and picked it up, carved his initials under its foot.
Hannah
MELBOURNE, 1942
At the dawn of 1942 I regarded my most impressive achievement as having survived 1941 without quite succumbing to despair. I was staying in a tiny room at the back of the Australia Hotel in Collins Street and had been found a full-time job by the refugee people, helping to carry out a university survey on housing in which I interviewed working and unemployed people in Fitzroy and Collingwood and other suburbs close to the city about housing conditions. Thrilling as it had been to be paid to write, freelance wages kept me reliant on the charity of my friends and did not permit me easy sleep.
I arrived one January afternoon at the tiny slum cottage of a Polish refugee in his seventies to discover that he was out. I sat on his low brick wall, happy to rest my feet for a while. My refugee was fifteen minutes late, and I was stunned to see as he shuffled towards me that his face was covered in fresh purple bruises. He apologised to me, his hand shaking. I took hold of it. I remember the bones and the tremor which even my own hand did not still. ‘Ruffians give me fright at station. Bad boys punch, call reffo.’ He would not let me go to the police, whom he called fascists, or go and fetch ice from Hoddle Street.
We went and sat at the table in his tiny dim kitchen. He could tell me little for coughing and trembling and gingerly touching his puffed-up face, but I made him tea and we chatted in German for a while, which he knew much better than English, and he talked of his beautiful daughter. He lived on meat-paste sandwiches and shakily rolled cigarettes, and his trousers seemed to meet his braces without touching his narrow body. ‘You vood luff hir,’ he said several times, rheumy-eyed, as he followed me to the door. I didn’t like to leave him, but I had to be away, and he said that his neighbour was coming at six with beer and soup, so he would not be alone for long.
My room was filled with the narrow bed and the sound of the laundrywomen laughing and gossiping. I backed onto the service rooms of the hotel and along my corridor the maids and waiters slept. On the floor above, I had discovered, slept Major Temple. One of my refugee people had let it slip that he stayed here, and I now spent a good portion of my wages staying in this dismal room and drinking coffee in the café opposite where I could observe his comings and goings.
He generally returned from the barracks at about six or so, and I sat on my bed, scribbling a note at my bedside table, making a carbon copy in my journal. Dear Major Temple, I wrote:
I have now fulfilled all requirements anyone might make of me in order to get satisfaction in the case of my friend Emil Becker. I have attained a full-time position with the university if he were to be released into Australia and require support. And I have had some interest from a munitions firm desperately in need of qualified engineers.
Despairing of a sudden attack of compassion that would lead your employers to fund my passage home, I have done everything anyone might ask of me to have our case viewed favourably. I imagine that I need not remind you that Mr Becker has been officially ‘ free’ for fourteen months now?
I await as always your advice and instruction.
Yours sincerely,
Hannah Jacob
P.S. I suppose you wouldn’t have time to see me for just two minutes, would you?
About as soon as I had finished copying the letter there came a knock at the door and I started, feeling caught out at something. My first thought was that it was him, Temple, come somehow to tell me off for the tone of my letter before I had even got it to him. I opened the door, unable to step very far back into the room because of the overwhelming presence of the bed. It was my friend Edith, whose name Emil had miraculously found for me. She was as small as I, as sturdy and determined, clever-looking, with thick glasses and orange hair, interested in the lives of those without power or advantage. Sweeter and gentler though, quietly resolved, diplomatic. She reached a hand forward through the crack to grasp my wrist. ‘Another letter! Is it for the fortunate Major Temple?’
I smiled in spite of myself. ‘It is. I try not to let a day go by without letting him know I think of him.’
‘You have not even taken off your hat, Hannah dear. I’ll take it up, if it’s finished. You rest for a moment. And then I have something rather wonderful to show you, if you can manage a walk.’
‘I couldn’t ask you to go sneaking around the corridors.’
‘It will be fun. He might catch me at it!’
‘You can deliver it if you like, but I shall come with you. I can’t send you off on your own.’ I folded the letter and handed it to her and she was off smartly ahead of me along the corridor to the back stairs, clutching the letter to her chest like a child with a prize-winning essay approaching the stage. In the stairwell I heard her footsteps release the floorboards as she skipped upwards. I was rather tired from my day walking the streets for the survey and the gap between us grew.
By the time I reached the upper corridor I heard her voice and felt the hair rise at the back of my neck. He has caught her at it! I thought. I rounded the last stair to see her shape in the dim corridor, looking up at someone beyond a doorway. Temple was tall. Oh dear. My lovely respectable Edith, caught skulking around a hotel on my behalf. ‘Perhaps you could talk to her in person, Major Temple,’ she was saying. ‘Why, here she is now. It would ease her mind no end to have a conversation with you.’ She turned and smiled, beckoned me on with the gesture of a traffic policeman. ‘Hannah dear. Here’s your man. Just on his way out to dinner. We’re lucky to catch him!’
Indeed, there he was, my elusive target, whom I had seen only at a distance, in his uniform as always but without jacket or hat, tall, heavy, annoyed with these little ones in his doorway. He smelled of boot polish and tobacco. His thick moustache was somehow more intimidating close up. Behind him was an immaculate room, the long Melbourne evening light thrown across a large, crisply made bed. My letter was in his hand. He had clearly picked it up and opened the door immediately, something I hoped for every time I put a note under his door. Until now he had been too restrained to respond in such a way. But now it struck me—dear Edith had had the gall to knock on the door of his private quarters!
I was too exhausted for niceties, and in any case I had worn them out in my earlier letters. Here we all were. It was now or never. ‘Major Temple, I must tell you I cannot bear another day of inaction. What will you do to resolve our case? Mr Becker has been interned now for twenty months. I warn you that before I throw myself in front of a tram, as I fear I must soon, I will write an awful lot of letters. It is something I have become proficient at.’ I felt Edith’s small fingers at the inner crease of my elbow.
‘Will you let me speak, Miss Jacob?’ Temple said. The annoyed look had gone. He was kind, I see that now. I know that he had his own worries, his own people in France for whom he could do nothing. He would probably have changed my troubles for his gladly.
‘Of course. Of course you may speak, Major.’
‘I must admit I was never sure if all the claims you made about the quality of your friends were quite true, but I am convinced. The German Refugee Associatio
n, under pressure from the Youth Hostel Association, the British Metalworkers’ Union and three Labour MPs, have promised to wire funds for your return to England.’ Edith squeezed my arm. ‘So with your permission, I will advise Mr Becker to apply for a transport.’
‘Is this really true?’ I found that I had taken the fabric of his sleeve. Edith laughed as Temple looked at the cloth clenched in my fingers and I released it.
‘Yes, it is. Although you must bear in mind that transports are unpredictable just now. There’s a war on, you may remember.’
‘Oh, yes. Thank you, Major. Well, what now? What do I do next?’
‘I’ll send you a note about arrangements, if you can wait perhaps two days while I make enquiries.’
Edith had a firmer grip of my arm and was steering me away from the door. ‘Thank you, Major Temple. I am sure Hannah can wait for your instructions.’
The door was closing. He nodded and was gone and we were scurrying along the corridor, holding hands like children running from the scene of a prank. ‘I cannot believe it,’ I said. ‘Edith, if you were not here to witness it, I would not believe it.’
‘Well I was, and glad of it. Get your bag. I’ll show you my surprise, and then Molly’s got some soup on for the refugees. We’ve got some excellent people at the moment. You must meet them. There’s a violinist with the most beautiful instrument. We don’t let him in without it. Then dinner is always so good he feels obliged to play until very late.’
It was a warm evening and we walked away from the tall buildings of the city to the east. It was refreshing to be away from the dark corridors of the hotel that I had been haunting for weeks for a sight of him. How revolutionary, simply to knock! Australians could be wonderful. Edith chatted, holding my elbow, while I looked around me at the worried people, the sandbagged doorways, stunned. I was to go home, and see my mother and brothers, with Emil. We reached Fitzroy Gardens, where Edith and her family had taken the refugees for a picnic the weekend before. I loved it there. It was a proper city park, in a square, with long avenues of trees, garden beds, people quietly living, walking, unhurried, for a moment or two apparently untroubled. You always saw some soldier or sailor in the shadows on his jacket under the trees with a giggling girl. For once, this evening, I did not begrudge them the touch of each other.
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