Some Girls, Some Hats and Hitler

by Trudi Kanter

  “Do you remember how cold it was last year?” I ask Walter. It was the only time I could remember him wearing his father’s coat—black, nutria-lined, with a Spitzbieber collar. “That coat made you look so rich.”

  Walter laughs loudly.

  I wonder what my parents are doing.

  I had managed to save seven shillings and sixpence to buy a Parker cigarette lighter for Walter, my first present to him in England. It made my Christmas.

  9

  I go to Barbara’s Hat Salon to collect payment for my hats. “We’re so sorry you can’t stay on here,” Valerie says. Barbara nodded in agreement. I was sorry, too. And hurt, and bitter. They money they paid me for my collection of hats was half of what I was entitled to. I knew how much they had charged their customers, and even with the import duty, they had made an enormous profit. What they paid me didn’t even cover my costs in Vienna. And my collection had lifted them into the first rank of milliners.

  They gave me a check and took me through Bond Street, across Oxford Street to Vere Street, and into Barclays Bank. Barbara introduced me to the manager, a corpulent man with a damp handshake. We exchanged a few words, I signed a form, and I left, the proud owner of a bank account with one of the biggest banks in England. I thanked Valerie and Barbara, said good-bye, and never went to see them again.

  Next morning at nine, I am to start at the Clarendon Hat Company as head designer. When Walter brings me breakfast in bed, I say, yawning, “I don’t mind working late at night, but I hate getting up early.”

  “It’s all about the time of day you were born. It must have been late at night when you stuck your little nose into the world.” He laughs. “Come on, you lazy thing, you have to be on time. This is a real job.”

  “What are you going to do today?”

  “I’ll do some shopping: meat for dinner, a tin of fruit. We need milk. Then I’ll go to the Gaumont. For sixpence, I can sit through as many performances as I like. That way, I’m saving money for the gas meter and learning English at the same time.”

  I walk to the bus stop in the High Road; the cold morning air stings my cheeks and makes my eyes smart.

  Clothes in the shopwindows are brown, tan, and gorse green. I admire a smart petrol-blue pullover with a roll-neck. It would suit Walter. Nightdresses have changed from pale blue and pink cotton to red and blue floral flannel.

  The flower seller in the street has gone. The woman at her fruit cart wears knitted gloves, one gray, one black. She has cut off the fingertips so that she can handle money quickly. A strong breeze blows across a sky streaked with dark, racing clouds. I take my place in the queue at the bus stop. A middle-aged man stands in front of me. He wears a gray felt hat, creased raincoat, and shoes that haven’t seen polish for a long time. A fat pipe sticks to his lip. Three chirpy young girls are rubbing their gloveless hands together. They giggle as the wind ruffles their skirts, blows brown and blond hair across their cheeks. I clutch my hat and glance at my reflection in an optician’s window. In this unkind light, my hair burns as red as fire beneath the small-brimmed brown felt. I look like a schoolmistress. The man in front of me removes his pipe from his mouth, spits, and puts it back again.

  Our bus arrives. It is half past eight.

  I remember everything about that morning. A new chapter has begun. I am no longer my own boss. For the first time, I am an employee. Yet I feel happy and proud. I feel as though I have joined a club. A club of people who travel to work together, early in the morning. People who have jobs. These are chosen people, and I am one of them.

  I arrive at the Clarendon Hat Company and, remembering my reflection in the optician’s window, take off my hat and let my hair loose.

  A young, uniformed porter opens the lift door and takes me up to the third floor. I walk into the workroom of the Clarendon Hat Company, cool, upright, at five minutes to nine.

  “Good morning, ladies,” I say. There should be eighteen milliners, but only half of them have arrived. I notice Belinda, the assistant designer, is sitting in the designer’s chair, at the designer’s table—my chair, my table—her nose buried in papers. She doesn’t look up.

  “Good morning, Belinda,” I say loudly as I walk past. “Be so kind as to clear my table of Miss Stradler’s belongings, and your own. And please change that chair—I prefer an armchair.” She blushes crimson.

  I stalk through the glass doors into the office. “Good morning,” I greet Gwen and Alice, the secretaries. They glance up and mutter, “Good morning, miss,” before returning to their files.

  I take off my brown mackintosh and walk over to my desk. I can see them following me with hostile eyes; when I look across at them, they quickly busy themselves with their work.

  I put a photograph of Walter and one of my parents on my desk, with a small vase containing three pink chrysanthemums. Alice jumps up to fetch some water for them.

  I return to the workroom. It lacks glamour, excitement. How I miss Steffi. But Belinda has carried out her instructions.

  Fritz Levy comes in at ten o’clock, spreading his benevolent smile around the workroom.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Ehrlich.” What seem like hundreds of large, white teeth are directed at me. “I hope you have found everything to your liking.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Levy. Everything is fine.”

  “Can you come to my office,” he looks at his watch, “in, say, half an hour?”

  His office is small and elegantly furnished. He pulls up a chair for me. His desk is covered with files and correspondence. Red velvet curtains are half-drawn.

  “Please sit down. We have a lot to talk about. And we need to get to know each other, don’t you think?” His teeth gleam.

  On the walls are several framed awards from Germany. A large photograph of a slim lady stands on the desk. Her eyes are intelligent, her features delicate.

  “My wife. You’ll like her. We have a son—he’s seventeen. He doesn’t want to come into the business, though—he wants to study law. I suppose you are too young to have children?”

  “I’m not too young,” I say. “But I have no children.”

  “You need to learn the ropes as quickly as possible,” he says. “We need to start on our spring collection, and you’ll have to go to Paris.” He looks for my reaction, catches my surprise, grins and shows his teeth. They are beginning to annoy me.

  Alice brings coffee and smiles at me as she leaves the room.

  “You don’t take sugar? Are you slimming? Miss Stradler hardly ate at all. She missed her fiancé very much. He kept on telling her that there was going to be a war, and that she would get stuck here. She’s too good for him. Miss Stradler is a very capable woman, a perfectionist. Lucky man! He will sleep in a well-made bed.”

  At six o’clock, I hurry to catch my bus. It crawls along Oxford Street, Edgware Road, Kilburn High Road. At Victoria Road, I jump off and race home, taking the stairs up to our room two at a time. Walter is chopping up onions for a stew.

  “I’m going to Paris! He’s sending me to Paris on my own! I’m going to see my friends again, the fashion shows, walk along the Champs-Elysées—hurrah!”

  That night, I suddenly think about leaving Walter behind. He will be alone, and I will be without him. He must be thinking the same thing. We hold each other tightly.

  In the morning, Walter asks, “How will you be able to go to Paris? You don’t have a passport—we’re stateless. Austria doesn’t exist anymore.”

  I don’t know what I’m going to do. I need a stateless paper, but I have no idea how to get one or how long it will take. I don’t even know if Mr. Levy will be able to help—he has a German passport and hasn’t encountered this problem before. But I underestimate him. Two days after I show him my Austrian passport and explain the situation, he hands me a British stateless document, which secures my reentry into England. Suddenly, he seems quite intelligent and charming.

  10

  March 1939, Paris

  Dear Mother,

 
; I saw a Frenchwoman with sapphire blue eyes like yours. She wasn’t as pretty as you, though. Isn’t life full of surprises? Here I am, in Paris, and it isn’t so long ago that I thought I had said good-bye to it forever. I am so happy to see it again, even under a cloudy sky. Sometimes a weak sun breaks through and brings back memories of our lovely autumns in Vienna, when I waded through golden leaves. Do you remember? When I came home, you were waiting with hot chocolate and whipped cream.

  Paris is full of foreigners. Cars and taxis still speed down the wide, tree-lined boulevards. The food is still too rich, too many sauces.

  On the surface, life here seems to be the same. Luxurious, lighthearted. But deep down, I know they are afraid. I miss you more than ever.

  Trudi

  12 April 1939

  Dear Trudi,

  The British Consulate has informed us that our visas are on the way to Vienna. They will tell us when we can collect them. Truderl, my child, I am praying. I am confused. There is so much to do, I don’t know where to start. I wish you were here. No, I don’t!

  Your father sends his love.

  Mother

  104 George Street, W1, is in the middle of a row of tall, narrow, terraced houses. Mrs. Brindle, an old lady, opens the door.

  “You’ve come to see the flat?”

  She takes us up a narrow staircase to the first floor and opens the door to a large living room, the same size as our room in Victoria Road. Sunshine streams through the windows, spills out of the doorway, lingers on the landing. In my imagination, I have already moved in. Next to the living room, a well-equipped kitchen has white walls, a dark red tiled floor, plenty of light from a large window.

  On the floor above are two good-size bedrooms and a white tiled bathroom.

  “I’ll leave you alone,” Mrs. Brindle says. “You’ll want to talk it over. Have a good look around. The rent is ten pounds a month, payment in advance.”

  “Walter, I love it!”

  Walter hesitates. “I like it very much, but it’s too expensive. We’ll definitely be able to find something cheaper.”

  “I want this one,” I sulk. “It’s so central. I could walk to work; that would save money. We’re so lucky to find a flat like this. Look, darling, I earn five pounds a week now, and you’ll soon earn money yourself. We’ll manage.”

  “Your parents will be here soon. There will be four of us. Money will be tight.”

  Three weeks later, we move in. Our large wooden crate from the storage facility in Holland arrives. We laugh when we unpack the rugs we stole from Walter’s flat in Vienna. Here is my clock. Its chime has a soothing effect.

  * * *

  It is May; my parents are arriving tomorrow. I jump for joy, waving their telegram at Walter. I make vegetable soup, Father’s favorite, and veal in lemon sauce, Mother’s speciality. I bake a cake made with grated walnuts, sugar, chocolate. No flour.

  Victoria Station, platform 11. The Golden Arrow is twenty minutes late.

  “Let’s find somewhere to sit down.” Walter takes my arm.

  “No! Please! I don’t want to miss them.”

  Half an hour later, we hear the train approaching, a long hoot. There are sheets of white steam. Finally we see its broad black face, hear the screeching brakes. Doors open, people spill out, lots of people. I don’t see my parents. I run alongside the train, all the way to the end. The crowds are thinning out as I run back.

  “They’re not here! What’s happened?”

  Walter gets on the train to look for them. Suddenly, through my tears, I see a tall, white-haired gentleman helping a tiny lady down the steps from the coach to the platform. My thin father. My shrunken mother.

  I’ll feed you. I’ll love you. I’ll make you forget.

  PART EIGHT

  The Phony War

  (London, 1939)

  1

  On Sunday, 3 September 1939, I see a policeman wearing a tin hat. On top of our red pillar-box is a yellow square of gas-detector paint. The street is deserted. Everyone is listening, waiting, at home, abroad, at sea. Germany has invaded Poland; Warsaw is being bombed. The clock strikes eleven.

  “The ultimatum has expired,” Walter whispers.

  I close the window. We sit at the kitchen table, staring at the wireless, trying to understand what Chamberlain is saying.

  “Everything that I have worked for, everything that I had hoped for, everything that I had believed in during my public life, has crashed in ruins.”

  Outside, silver barrage balloons float in the blue sky.

  “Now may God bless you all and may he defend the right, for it is evil things that we shall be fighting against, brute force, bad faith, injustice, oppression, and persecution. Against them I am certain that right will prevail. We are now at war with Germany.”

  As his thin voice fades away, the first air-raid warning sounds loud and clear. A false alarm? A siren to shock us into the reality of war?

  We rush to our “shelter,” a coal cellar in front of our house. Nothing happens, so we go back inside.

  War: gas masks, ration cards, trains full of soldiers.

  We sit by the wireless and listen. All men between the ages of 17 and 65 were eligible for the Local Defence Volunteers; Air Raid Precautions were being organized, and the mass evacuation of children from cities to the countryside.

  The shadow of war spread across Europe. No one believed Hitler’s assurances that he was not interested in further conquests.

  “This madman will not stop now.” Father shakes his head. “France will be next, then us.”

  2

  In July, about five weeks before the war began, Gina, Pepi’s girlfriend, had telephoned. Her voice is shaky.

  “Trudi, I’m so worried.” Now she is crying. “Pepi arrives tomorrow at three o’clock.”

  “But that’s good news, isn’t it?”

  “I’m so afraid that they won’t let him in—I don’t know what to do.”

  Next day, I wait at Croydon Airport for my ex-husband to arrive. I think about our wedding, the synagogue dressed in yellow and white flowers, garlands around the arches, hanging from the rails. There was a faint yellow scent in the air.

  Why did I divorce him? Now that I am married to Walter, I have come to realize that there can’t be red roses every day. A good marriage means having someone to talk to at night, someone you can fight with and fuss over. Someone you trust.

  What will I do if they won’t let Pepi in? If they discover the discrepancy between the date of birth on his passport and the one on his application form? They can’t send him back to Hitler, can they? Surely they can’t. I will fight for him. I’ll smile at them; I’ll cry. I realize I am twisting my handkerchief so hard I have nearly torn it.

  And then I see him. Gray flannel trousers, white shirt, sleeves rolled up. He carries his hat in his hand. His thick, brown hair is disheveled. When he smiles, his full mouth splits wide open.

  We run toward each other. I want to hold him for a long time.

  Gina is waiting outside. I watch them embrace.

  “It was all straightforward,” I tell Walter later. “The immigration asked the usual questions and stamped Pepi’s passport with an entry visa.”

  “How lucky.”

  “I’m not so sure it was luck. An English immigration officer doesn’t overlook a thing like that. I think he was a very kind man.”

  “You’re right—but it’s still lucky. How is Pepi?”

  “The collar of his shirt is too big. There are lines under his eyes. I couldn’t really talk to him—Gina was there. He’s coming to see us on Sunday.”

  He comes regularly on Sundays. Once, he asks me, “Shall I marry Gina?”

  “Do you love her?”

  “Yes,” he says, looking past me.

  “Then you should marry her, of course. Why ask me?”

  “I don’t know,” he says. He got married a few weeks later.

  * * *

  I have the flu. Pepi sits by my bed, drops the s
poon, bends down to pick it up, and spills his coffee.”

  “Why are you so jumpy? Is something wrong?”

  “Gina’s pregnant.”

  “I envy her,” I say unhappily.

  “If you envy her, why don’t you have a child?”

  “We have tried, Pepi. The doctors can’t find anything wrong, but still I don’t get pregnant.”

  “It’ll come, you’ll see,” he says, stroking my hand. “But Trudi, should we have the baby? I don’t earn enough money to look after a family.”

  “It’ll come, you’ll see.” I laugh. “Of course you must have the baby! You know that where there are children, God will provide?”

  God did. Pepi found a very good job at a gentlemen’s outfitters in Great Portland Street. After his baby son was born, he brought him around every Sunday. Dicki was an exceptionally beautiful child. I loved playing with him; he would laugh and shriek and put his little arms around my neck.

  Pepi missed his family who were now in America, and a few months later he, Gina, and Dicki left for New York.

  * * *

  The Home Office set up tribunals across Britain, run by lawyers, justices of the peace, and judges. They placed enemy aliens into one of three categories. Category A meant internment; Category B meant no internment but certain restrictions; Category C meant freedom. At the end of October, we were summoned to the town hall. As refugees from Nazi oppression, we were put in Category C—it all seemed very straightforward.

  The term phony war was coined by American journalists. The war had not begun, and life seemed to be carrying on much as normal. True, all “places of entertainment” had been closed: there were no football matches, no swimming pools, cinemas, or theaters, no racing. And travel, food, clothes, and other necessities of life were subject to restrictions. But even so, it did not feel as though there was a war.