The Little Ship

by Margaret Mayhew

  ‘Well, it’s very nice. Awfully grand. Isn’t it, Anna?’

  She was looking round. ‘So much gold … so much glitter.’

  He said carefully, ‘As a matter of fact, it is not to my taste. But we did not choose the furnishings.’

  ‘Whoever painted these horrible pictures?’

  ‘They are all by German artists.’ He did not actually care for them much either. They were supposed to depict the many and varied glories of the Fatherland but, privately, he considered them rather overblown and vulgar; not even very well painted.

  Anna had walked across to the large, full-length portrait over the fireplace. She blew a stream of smoke casually in its direction. ‘So this is your wonderful Führer, Otto? He looks just like Charlie Chaplin.’

  She was goading him, of course. He would not rise to the bait. ‘It is always hard to capture the inner being of a person in paint. Is that not so, Lizzie? You will agree? We discussed this.’ Lizzie nodded, looking uncomfortable.

  The drinks were brought in on a silver tray and he invited them to sit down. It was all very formal and very different from at Tideways where they had lounged around in casual clothes, chatting idly. Anna sipped at the martini and smoked her cigarette. ‘What exactly does your father do, Otto?’ She was still needling him.

  ‘He was appointed to our embassy here to do special liaison work.’

  ‘Oh, what sort of liaising?’

  ‘Fostering interests of all kinds between this country and Germany. Promoting the relationship between us. The Führer much admires Great Britain.’ They were his father’s very words, used to smooth over many awkward enquiries.

  ‘And have you ever met Herr Hitler?’

  ‘I had the honour, once, yes.’

  ‘The honour?’

  ‘I considered it so.’ He met her eyes in appeal. In German he said quickly, ‘Please, Anna, let us not talk like this. Can we speak of other things?’

  ‘Lizzie does not understand German,’ she replied in English. ‘Nor does she understand Germans. Do you, Lizzie? She does not understand what they are doing. She really has no idea. You should tell her more about your so-marvellous Führer, Otto. About his Sturm Abteilung and his charming Schutz Staffel and most especially about his kind and delightful secret police, the Gestapo.’

  ‘Lizzie does not wish to hear these things.’

  ‘I do not blame her. I wish I had not heard of them myself.’

  ‘Oh, Anna, don’t …’ Lizzie was pink with embarrassment, almost in tears. ‘Don’t let’s spoil the evening. Please.’

  Anna hesitated and then shrugged. ‘All right. For your sake, Lizzie, we shall talk about nice, safe things, if you want. Just as though nothing at all was happening. We will all play let’s pretend.’

  She kept her word and he was as charming as he knew how to be. He even risked some small jokes. He was especially complimentary about England and the English, about Oxford and about his visit to Tideways. They talked about the Rose of England and the race, and the tennis match, and about anything that he could think of that was pleasant and pleasing. He talked to Lizzie more than he talked to Anna because it was safer, and she chattered away to him. He could tell that she was anxious to make amends for Anna’s behaviour and he was grateful. Sometimes he felt that he loved her, too, but it was the love of an older brother for a younger sister. It was not the same as he felt about Anna. Whenever he dared, he looked at Anna. He watched her speak and laugh and smile. He watched her drink her wine and eat her food. He watched her smoke the cigarettes that he had lit for her. And, as he did so, he knew that his strategy had failed hopelesly.

  His father returned from Berlin a week later. He was exultant about his audience with the Führer. ‘Everything is good, Otto. All danger, all obstacles have been eliminated. The way ahead is clear for the stufenplan. The Wehrmacht now has a million men. Germany will become a great power, step by step. First in Europe, and when this is achieved, overseas.’ His father walked excitedly about the room. ‘We are to expand first to the East. Austria and Czechoslovakia will be annexed as soon as possible. The groundwork has been well laid in Vienna and very soon the Austrian government will have no choice but to accede—’

  ‘I thought there was to be a plebiscite.’

  ‘The Führer has persuaded Dr von Schuschnigg to cancel it. What could be more natural than for Germany and Austria to be joined? We shall be welcomed there with open ams. The Führer will drive through the streets of Vienna in triumph, you wait and see. After that, it will be the turn of the Czechs.’

  ‘And will nobody oppose us?’

  ‘Oh, Great Britain and France may squeak and squeal and throw up their hands in mock horror, but they will do nothing. They want only to avoid another war. Peace at any price. We have both seen this for ourselves, Otto. You have told me how the young men at Oxford joke about a war. They do not take it seriously. They are not prepared. Some of them do not even wish to fight for their country. We have seen the way they play the fool; how slack and sloppy they have become. Once Great Britain was great; now her people are slothful, careless, weak … We shall have no difficulty at all. Herr von Ribbentrop says the same and he knows the English well. He has the ear of those who count.’ His father paused and glanced at him. ‘Naturally, you will not breathe one word of this conversation to a living soul.’

  ‘Naturally not.’

  His father resumed his pacing. ‘The Führer always wished great Britain to become our ally, but he knows now that he cannot count on this. So he desires her to remain neutral instead. When Lord Halifax visited the Berchtesgaden, the Führer was told that Great Britain considers Germany as a bulwark against the Bolsheviks. She will turn a blind eye so long as we do not interfere with her Empire. Mr Chamberlain is anxious to appease us at all costs. Nothing could be better. The way is clear.’ His father stared out of the window for a moment and then turned round smiling. ‘I hear that you had guests to dine here in my absence. Two charming young ladies.’

  ‘That is correct.’

  ‘Who were they?’

  ‘One is a cousin of Guy and Matthew Ransome. The other is a friend of hers. They were both also visiting the Ransomes’ home when I stayed there. It was agreeable company for me.’

  ‘Of course, Otto, it is quite natural for you to wish to entertain young ladies … Remember, however, that any serious attachment to a foreigner is unacceptable. You will be expected to make your choice, when the time comes, from among your own people. The British have some excellent qualities but they are a mongrel race. I should not wish my grandchildren to come other than from pure German stock.’

  Thank God he had no suspicion. None at all. The servants had not identified Anna. Thank God for the mongrel race, where as many were dark as fair. Otto listened to his father talking on again about the great future that lay ahead. Austria … to be annexed as soon as possible. Anna’s family in Vienna. The SS … There was, of course, nothing that he could do.

  Anna heard her name being called as she walked down Wimpole Street. Otto von Reichenau came up behind her and spoke in German. ‘Excuse me, Anna, may I come a short way with you?’ He didn’t wait for her agreement but started walking along beside her. ‘You’re going shopping, perhaps?’ He looked strange. Very pale and tense. She wondered if he had been ill.

  She said coolly, ‘Yes, I am, as a matter of fact.’ What was he doing here? What was his game?

  ‘I hope you enjoyed the dinner the other evening?’

  She hadn’t enjoyed it a bit: the place had reeked of Nazis, and the portrait of Adolf Hitler had sickened her. He had looked down on her with his cruel stare – a silly little man all puffed up in a fine uniform with eagle badges and an iron cross and a big black swastika patch on his left sleeve. His moustache looked as though it had been gummed onto his upper lip and his hair cowlicked across his forehead. How could people pay so much attention to such a creature? How could they believe all his lies and his crazed rantings? How could they not see the e
vil?

  Otto went on, ‘It was a great pleasure for me but I realize that it may not have been so for you.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t pleasant for me to sit and eat in a Nazi household. But Lizzie enjoyed it. She feels sorry for you, you know. I can’t imagine why.’

  ‘She has a kind heart.’

  ‘I know. She’s too trusting. I’m not.’

  He walked in silence for a while, staring ahead, not looking at her. ‘I wanted to speak to you again, if you don’t mind. Just for a moment.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Lizzie told me that your mother and father still live in Vienna. That they wish to come and live here in England?’

  ‘They don’t wish it. They’d much sooner stay in Vienna, which is their home. I should much sooner be there myself. But they are afraid of your precious Führer and what may happen.’

  She quickened her pace. They had reached Wigmore Street and crossed to Cavendish Square.

  ‘He only wishes the good of the German people.’

  ‘And what does he wish my people?’

  ‘I believe it’s thought better that they should find somewhere else of their own to live.’

  She said angrily, ‘How is that possible? We are driven out from everywhere.’

  ‘That is regrettable—’

  ‘Regrettable!’ She whirled round to face him. ‘Is that all you have to say to me, Otto?’

  He was even paler. Ashen. ‘No.’

  ‘What else then?’

  ‘I want to warn you that you should tell your father and mother to leave Vienna and Austria as quickly as possible. They should not delay.’

  ‘They can’t leave at the moment. My grandmother’s ill.’

  ‘Is it impossible for her to travel?’

  ‘It wouldn’t be easy.’

  ‘Nevertheless, tell them that they must go immediately. Somehow they must find a way. It’s imperative. And on no account should you return to Vienna yourself.’ He looked at her gravely. ‘Please do as I say.’

  She didn’t trust him. ‘What do you know about it?’

  ‘I hear things.’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘I’m sorry but I can’t tell you.’

  ‘Why should I listen to you? Why should you care? We’re only dirty Jews to you.’

  ‘No, Anna,’ he said. ‘You’re not.’

  Before she could speak again, he had turned quickly on his heel and walked away. She stared after him, but he didn’t look back.

  ‘Waltzed into Austria in the March, didn’t they? I remember Molly saying to me: if we don’t watch out they’ll try and do the same to us one day. Of course, I didn’t believe her at the time. Nobody lifted a finger to stop them. Not us, not the French – nobody. Mark you, most of the Austrians didn’t mind too much. Like that German bloke said, it was a walk-over. They’d already got Nazis in their own government, and they were in a mess themselves, so they made it easy for Hitler. It was a joyride for him.’ Mr Potter reaches for his pipe and tobacco pouch from the mantelpiece, knocks out the ash into the fireplace and begins to fill it again. ‘They put the Welcome mat out when he went to Vienna.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘Did the daughter warn her family, like that German boy told her?’

  ‘She tried, but her grandmother was too ill to move. Anna’s parents stayed to look after her until she died the following October. By the time they were free to leave, they were told that their papers were no longer in order. The Nazi regime had set up a special office in Vienna that sold emigration permits to Jews. At a price.’

  He strikes a match and applies it. The pipe bowl glows red and clouds of smoke rise into the air. ‘The daughter must have been a bit worried.’

  ‘She was desperate. Her friend, Mina, wrote to her and told her how badly the Nazis were treating the Jews. That they were making them scrub the streets of Vienna on their hands and knees. That she and her mother had been forced to wash buildings and pavements and that crowds had jeered at them and the Nazi soldiers urinated on them.’

  He looks disgusted. ‘Did that happen to Anna’s parents?’

  ‘If it did, they never told her. They wrote that they would soon be coming to England. They had sold jewellery, furniture – everything they could – and expected to be given their new papers any day. Anna went on waiting. And hoping.’

  He puffs out more smoke. ‘Then it was Munich, I remember. The Czechs were trying to hold out against the Nazis and we let them down. Sold them out for a worthless piece of paper with Hitler’s name on it. I remember Chamberlain coming back from the Munich Conference waving it. He thought he’d stopped a war. Soon found out he’d done nothing of the sort.’ He nods at me. ‘Carry on, then.’

  I collect my thoughts. ‘Munich was in September 1938. Guy was just starting his second year at Oxford by then. Anna had gone to the Royal Academy of Music in London, to study the piano and violin. Matt had started as a medical student at St Thomas’s Hospital in London, living in digs, and Lizzie had been allowed to leave school and go to art college. In November the violence against the Jews all over Germany suddenly exploded on Kristallnacht when the Nazis burned thousands of synagogues and smashed the shopfront glass of Jewish stores. They killed a hundred Jews and marched thirty thousand more to concentration camps. All in one night. Goebbels, the Propaganda Minister, orchestrated it.’

  He grunts. ‘Nasty piece of work, Goebbels. And Himmler. And Goering. The whole pack of them. Was that young German, Otto, over here then?’

  ‘Yes, he was still at Oxford, in the spring of 1939. His father hadn’t yet been recalled.’

  ‘Should’ve been kicked out long before. We’re fools the way we let these people into the country – spies, terorists, lunatics … foreigners all plotting against us and we let them stay. Like I say, we never learn.’

  Chapter Twelve

  Matt stuck his head round the studio door. ‘Hodges let me in. He said I’d find you up here. Hope you don’t mind, Lizzie. I can see you’re at work.’

  She put down her brush. ‘I’m only messing about.’

  He came into the room, grinning at her. ‘Just been to the dentist. No fillings to do and time to spare, so I thought I’d pop by and see if you and Anna were around.’

  ‘Anna’s not back from the Academy yet. She’s practising for some concert. Playing the violin in one of their orchestras.’

  She hadn’t seen him for more than six months, not since last summer when she and Anna had gone to Tideways again. He’d changed a lot. He was taller and broader and his features had altered subtly. But the grin was just the same. ‘How are you, Lizzie? How’s art college?’

  ‘Fine, thanks. How about you? How are you getting on at St Thomas’s?’

  ‘Nose to the grindstone for the next six years. Still, it’ll be worth it.’

  ‘I remember you telling me ages ago that you wanted to be a doctor.’

  ‘Did I?’

  ‘It was when I first came to stay on my own. We’d been out sailing – in the Bean Goose – and I’d got an awful crack on the head from the boom. We were walking back to the house and you said you wanted to be a doctor one day. You were very kind about my lump on the head and put ice all over it.’

  ‘I remember that bit. There was a huge egg on your forehead and you were very brave. You wouldn’t let us see that you were crying.’

  ‘I thought then that you’d make an awfully good doctor. You had healing hands.’

  He held up his left arm. ‘Hand, actually.’ The tweed jacket concealed his deformed right arm completely. She had noticed how he always kept it out of sight now. ‘Mother always used to tell me the same. I could cure her headaches just by touching her. Or so she said. I even got rid of Mrs Woodgate’s neuralgia once and that was no mean feat. Still, they haven’t let us loose on real people yet. It’s all books and labs so far. But I think I might make a reasonable GP if I don’t frighten my patients to death.’ He moved forward and admired the painting that she was wo
rking on. ‘I say, that’s terrific.’

  She didn’t think it was at all. To her, the fruit looked as though it was made of wax. She couldn’t get the bloom on the grapes, or the texture of the orange skin or the subtle colours in the pear. At college she was discovering what a lot she had to learn.

  Matt wandered about the studio, looking at things. ‘How’s Anna?’

  ‘Frantic about her parents. They’re still in Vienna, waiting for their emigration papers.’

  He frowned. ‘That’s bad news. Especially now Hitler’s grabbed Austria. We might have to go to war with Germany and they’ll get stuck there.’

  ‘Do you think it’s going to come to that?’

  ‘It could do, easily.’

  ‘I thought the last war was supposed to end all wars.’

  ‘It was. But they didn’t reckon on Hitler.’ Matt stood looking out of the attic window, his back to her. ‘Anyway, I hope to God they’ll let me fight in it. Guy’s OK, lucky blighter. He’ll go straight into the RAF and fly fighters. I won’t be a doctor for years and I bet they’ll count me out for anything else because of my bloody arm.’

  She had never heard him speak about it like that before. He sounded full of bitterness and quite wretched. Not a bit like Matt. But in the next moment he shrugged and turned to smile at her. ‘Oh well, I expect there’ll be something I can do.’

  ‘I have come to say goodbye.’

  Guy, lounging sideways across an armchair, looked up from his book. Otto was standing in the doorway, all togged up in a suit and tie. ‘What? Are you off somewhere?’

  ‘I have to return to Berlin.’

  ‘Now? What about the rest of term?’

  ‘My father has to leave at once and I am to go with him. He insists.’

  ‘That’s rather bad luck. You’ll miss the Commem.’

  ‘I know, but unfortunately my father does not consider a college summer ball to be of the first importance.’

  ‘Couldn’t you twist his arm? It’s always such a good bash.’