Of Love and Other Wars

by Sophie Hardach

  ‘You must be—’

  ‘I’m sorry, I thought you were—’

  They looked at each other and laughed. He scratched the shaven nape of his neck, and she knew at once that this was something he always did when he felt embarrassed. She almost put her hand out to run her fingers over the stubble: it would have felt familiar, she was certain of it.

  They went through the list together.

  ‘That one didn’t make it,’ he said, and pointed at a name.

  ‘Neither of them?’ Grace said. Her pen hovered above two surnames.

  ‘The girl is here. The boy . ⁠. ⁠. we’ll try to put him on the next one.’

  Grace thought: how can I know you this well, better than I know the Friends I have prayed with for years?

  Then he was gone, lost in a mass of people. Grace turned to the tea urn. Frightened boys and girls descended from the train, clutching their satchels. They were served tea and sandwiches and the best smile she could muster. Grace leaned against a pillar and closed her eyes for a moment.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  Her eyelids pinged open. He stood there and scratched the nape of his neck.

  He had to leave with the other Friends, he said, but . ⁠. ⁠. would she perhaps like to meet him later that afternoon? It was his first time in London and he had to go back the next day.

  Of course, she said. They agreed to meet at her office that evening.

  She took the children to Samhuinn House, a new school in Hampstead that had offered to take them until foster families were found. Grace’s office was at the end of a long corridor of dorms on the fifth floor. That evening the exhausted children quickly fell asleep. The corridor was quiet. It was a warm late-summer night and she waited for him by the window. She thought about where they could go. She never went out at night and did not know any fashionable places. She did not know any unfashionable places, either. She only knew the tea shop on the corner, and that closed at six.

  Then he came running up the stairs two at a time and she realized it did not matter.

  They sat on the fire escape, their legs dangling high over the patio. He talked about his journey, the children: white as chalk on the train to Holland, green on the boat to Harwich, mud-coloured after their first day on soggy English soil. Childhood holidays spent with Friends in northern England had left him with a love of the language and a horror of English food.

  ‘They gave us . ⁠. ⁠. Scottish eggs?’

  ‘Scotch eggs.’

  ‘I would not have thought such a thing could exist.’

  ‘What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common.’

  A look of incomprehension was on his face. She bit the left side of her tongue. Proving her frumpiness by quoting the Bible: another bad habit.

  ‘It’s in The Acts. Rise, Peter; kill and eat – that one? When God commands Peter to eat all sorts of unclean things. Pigs, bugs, birds . ⁠. ⁠.’

  ‘And Scotch eggs,’ he said. ‘But they really were uncommon.’

  A cold English drizzle ruined the summer night. He pulled her back under the roof, protecting her head from the rain with his hand. He slid the hand down to the nape of her neck, and then he kissed her. She was dreadfully embarrassed initially, especially when he prised her lips apart with his tongue. But by the third kiss she found that they were rather good at it. The fact that as a girl she had twice practised kissing with Margaret from First-Day school helped. She would have left it at the first attempt, in which Margaret was the groom and she was the bride. But Margaret claimed her right to another round where she would be the girl; it was only fair.

  He smelled of some slightly spicy soap, like scouring powder mixed with cinnamon, and she thought: this is what soap smells like in Hamburg.

  It was not the first time she spent the night at Samhuinn House, but it was the first time she spent it in the company of a man. She kissed him again and dared to bite his lower lip. He bit her back a little harder. He must have brought the soap with him. She would have liked to ask him for a bar, but of course she did not. They went inside to escape the rain, sat on the floor and leaned against her desk. He talked about his group of Friends who used to cycle out to the seashore, swim and play the guitar, before their gatherings were broken up by the Hitler Youth.

  She lied a little and said she loved swimming. It was forgivable, that tiny lie. Her unstoppably inventive mind pictured them on their wedding day, giggling about the fact that she had never actually gone in further than ankle-deep. ‘And you told me you loved swimming!’ More giggles. And she could not help but feel a little smug about this romance, about the fact that she had escaped another stifling night at home, that she had left behind her parents trapped in eternal nagging bitterness and broken free to find such giddy passion.

  Dawn rose far too soon.

  How could she not have asked him to stay?

  ‘It can’t be all that safe for you in Hamburg.’

  He smiled. If he stayed in England, the next train might not be allowed to leave.

  ‘I’ll be back on another train.’

  It had been a little awkward, taking him back to the station. He washed in the bathroom at Samhuinn House before the children woke up, and they had breakfast in the tea shop on the corner. His cheek had felt soft against her hand in the evening. When the waiter was busy serving another couple, she quickly reached out and stroked his cheek again: already it felt a little rougher. He grinned.

  ‘I must look like a bandit.’

  ‘It suits you.’

  ‘Next time when we meet I’ll be clean-shaven. As smooth as an egg.’

  ‘A Scottish egg?’

  The other Friends were milling around on the platform but no one smirked or, God forbid, winked. They would no sooner have suspected Grace of kissing a stranger on a fire escape than Mary Pye of performing the dance of the seven veils.

  He discreetly squeezed her hand before boarding the train. She thought she should say something, make some pledge or promise, but she could not think of anything and clearly, neither could he. He stuck his round face out of the window and looked like a boy again. A freckled boy on his way to a Friends’ summer camp. She waved after him as the train pulled out.

  When she got back, she checked the bathroom of Samhuinn House, just in case he had left the soap there.

  *

  The platform had been warmed by the sun that day. Now it was chilly.

  Brisk men in coats and bowler hats strode past, black umbrellas tucked under their arms, wary eyes on the sky. When she glanced up at the big station clock Grace saw that they had been waiting for over an hour.

  She walked over to the elderly couple and told them that in all likelihood the train would not come. Yes, they had half expected that, what with the borders shut and all, but then they had hoped one more train might get through. The elderly lady smoothed her thin hair back on one side in a nervous reflex, forgetting that it had been carefully curled and set for the great welcome.

  Someone tugged at Grace’s coat. Little Inge had run away from her group.

  ‘Well you really oughtn’t to have done that. Now they’ll all miss their train, when people will be waiting for them in Hertfordshire,’ Grace said primly, and took her hand. Inge pouted and played with the cardboard tag that dangled from a string around her neck.

  ‘What’s that on your lips?’ she asked. Then she let go of the card and hugged Grace with her face turned up, her chin pressing into Grace’s stomach, her old-fashioned long braids swinging back.

  ‘On my lips?’ Grace ran her tongue over them. ‘Oh. Lipstick.’

  She took out a tissue and wiped her mouth. They walked away from the platform, two serious females.

  2

  Grace asked everyone. She asked the Red Cross nurses who came into her office for a cup of tea. She asked the Orthodox rabbi who brought over a whole orphanage from the Continent. She even asked Mary Pye – risking humiliation at the hands of Paul and Charlie – because you never kn
ew, somehow Mary Pye had a way of keeping up with news from Friends everywhere. But no one had any idea of the whereabouts of a freckled, round-faced young man called Morten.

  She wrote to the Hamburg address he had given her as he’d boarded the train to go back, but there was no reply. It seemed impossible that a person could simply vanish. She considered writing to the Society of Friends in Hamburg, but with all they must be worrying about, how could she bother them with such a trivial thing? She might even cause them problems for receiving letters from England.

  Perhaps the government was right and the war would last three years. And after three years, a train would pull into Liverpool Street Station. A young man would hop off. Oh, the reunion! The tears and the laughter. And jokes, jokes about that innocent first meeting: ‘Would you care to meet up in the afternoon?’ ‘I don’t know . ⁠. ⁠. perhaps just a quick cup of tea on the fire escape?’ More laughter.

  He would admire her for her steadfastness during the war.

  Raw eggs, she read in the paper, raw eggs beaten with honey and a shot of brandy were the best way to strengthen one’s nerves.

  *

  They stopped taking the air-raid signal seriously, and the children came back from Hertfordshire. Grace had painted the dorms blue and the hallway yellow while they were away. The widow who had helped her run the makeshift children’s home at Samhuinn House chose to stay in the country, so the school sent her a German instead: a man like an evening shadow, tall and lean and very quiet, until she asked him casually if he knew any German Friends.

  He pushed his horn-rimmed glasses down to the tip of his nose and stared at her as if she was mentally impaired. His eyes lay deep in their sockets, close together, and where other people would have glanced sideways, he ever so slightly turned his head. This had the most unsettling effect. His ears were like the handles on the blue jugs in the breakfast room, and Grace could not help but picture a pair of invisible hands that grabbed them and rotated the head from side to side.

  ‘I have many German friends,’ he said. ‘Of course.’

  ‘I mean Quakers. Sorry. We refer to them as Friends.’

  He had never heard of Quakers. She explained that they were a religious movement inspired by—

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘A cult.’

  She sniffed. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch your name.’

  ‘Hoffnung. Max Hoffnung.’

  He did not seem particularly interested in hers.

  She took him into her office and explained the workings of Samhuinn House. The Nazis let a limited number of children leave Germany and Austria. The parents had to stay behind. Quakers, who were accepted as neutral, accompanied the children from the Continent to Britain. To help as many families as possible, they took only one child from each family. Regrettably, this meant—

  ‘There is no need to explain this to me,’ Mr Hoffnung said. ‘I’m from Berlin.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Grace had lost her thread and shuffled some papers to buy time. It would be easiest, she decided, to simply take him through the weekly routine. Meals, school, bedtime, ‘... and every Sunday, the Parade.’ She bit her tongue. ‘I’m sorry. Every Sunday, visitors.’

  ‘The Parade?’

  ‘No, no, no, it’s not called the Parade. It’s simply the day when potential foster parents visit Samhuinn to see if they would like to give one of the children a new home.’

  ‘Parade is a fitting name for it.’

  ‘As I said, it’s not a parade at all . ⁠. ⁠.’

  She was close to tears. This had been part of her script for her reunion with Morten. She had planned to tell him about all these things that went through her mind at work: Visitor’s day is the worst – I always think of it as the Parade!

  Mr Hoffnung took out a fountain pen, walked up to her weekly timetable and crossed out the entries for Sunday.

  ‘The Parade is cancelled.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘From now on, foster parents can make a request for a certain age or sex if there is a good reason. But we will not let them pick the children like fruit in the grocery.’

  Grace attempted a sarcastic smile. ‘What a wonderfully effective strategy for finding foster parents. They will be queuing all the way from Clapham.’

  Mr Hoffnung did not know where Clapham was.

  ‘I’ve seen those parades you mention. Ten couples, fifty children, and in the end they always choose the blonde and blue-eyed little girls.’ He leaned against the door. ‘You are of course in charge. If you would like to continue the Parade, I can buy you a new timetable.’

  She gave in, but told herself that it was only to humour him.

  In practice, nothing much changed. The older children, the unlovely ones, were trained as maids and cooks. They spent their spare time on the Heath, skating on the frozen pond, where Grace herself tried to concentrate on her figures of eight.

  A quiet mind, a fearless heart, a tidy conscience.

  She repeated it to herself as she skated. An endless loop.

  A quiet mind, a fearless heart, a tidy conscience.

  If she knew how to swim, she could join the Red Cross and help the poor chaps in the Atlantic.

  A quiet mind . ⁠. ⁠.

  Raw eggs and brandy.

  Mary Pye told her after Meeting: ‘I’ve written to my cousin, who tells me our Friends in Hamburg are experiencing great hardship. This will come as no surprise to thee . ⁠. ⁠.’

  Inge refused to take off the string around her neck, the cardboard tag with her name and address that she had worn since she arrived on a train from Berlin.

  Grace told her it was unsightly. The cardboard was frayed, the string frayed. It made her look like a frayed, grey parcel. Would she not rather look like a pretty little girl?

  ‘If I take it off,’ Inge said earnestly, ‘how will my parents find me?’

  3

  A few weeks before Christmas, Grace walked into the breakfast room where Mr Hoffnung was supervising the younger children. When one of the boys reached for the jam pot Mr Hoffnung muttered something. The little hand wandered back to the plate, leaving the pot untouched.

  ‘What’s this about?’ Grace asked.

  ‘Jam or butter,’ said Mr Hoffnung. ‘Jam or margarine. They have to choose.’

  She laughed. ‘Rationing’s to start in the new year, not yet.’

  ‘This has nothing to do with rationing.’

  ‘Well, why shouldn’t they have margarine and jam?’

  ‘It’s indulgent.’

  ‘Indulgent! These children can hardly be accused of being spoiled.’

  ‘No, because their parents brought them up on good principles. Like margarine or jam.’

  Aware of children watching, Grace laughed again and pretended that she did not care. On her way out of the dining room she noticed that every single slice of toast was spread with either jam or butter, never both .

  Some instinct made her avoid the breakfast room over the next few days. Mr Hoffnung, for his part, rarely came into her office. The old widow had spilled about the place like a leaking bucket, now wandering into the breakfast room, now pottering about in the office, now peeking into the dorms. With Mr Hoffnung, the division was clear. He ruled over teapots and dinner plates at one end of the corridor. She took care of lists, accounts, begging letters at the other end.

  ‘A question. Do you know why this school is called Samhuinn?’ he asked her when they passed each other in the corridor after breakfast.

  ‘It was set up by some progressive types. They named it after a pagan spring festival in Scotland.’

  Mr Hoffnung chuckled, which was a very rare sight. She mentally revised his age. His earnest leanness had made her put him at thirty or so, but when he laughed, he looked like a gawky, awkward young man of twenty.

  ‘Why is that amusing?’

  ‘Because the pagan spring festival is called Beltane!’ He was now laughing openly. ‘Samhuinn is the opposite of the spring festival. It mar
ks the start of winter, you see. One may best describe it as the festival of the dead. They must have made a mistake, those progressive types! A big mistake! The festival of the dead!’ She asked him to keep his voice down but he continued laughing until he disappeared back into the breakfast room, exclaiming between bursts of laughter: ‘The-Festival-of-the-dead school!’

  She concluded that Mr Hoffnung was unhinged, but it would not be very Christian to ask the school to sack him.

  The following week, through the open door of her office, she watched him walk past, awkwardly hugging a stack of paperbacks. He returned empty-handed, then walked past with another stack of paperbacks.

  What could he be up to? Well, it was none of her business.

  She looked at her watch. She had a few spare minutes before her meeting with the principal: some parents had complained about noise from the fifth floor, and the School was beginning to question whether converting the floor into a makeshift children’s home had been a good idea. There was enough time to write another letter to Morten. She would write it and keep it until she saw him again, and then she could hand him a whole fat bundle of letters, proof of her unwavering affection.

  ‘Dear Morten . ⁠. ⁠.’

  She heard a loud clatter from the dining hall. Then a softer thump.

  Grace changed the ‘Dear’ to ‘Dearest’.

  Max Hoffnung’s paperbacks were strictly his concern. He could use them as a footstool, for all she cared.

  A short silence was followed by the sound of Mr Hoffnung’s voice in that lecturing, strident tone of his, then silence again. Then another loud clatter and a softer thump.