Finding Rebecca: A Novel of Love and the Holocaust (5 page)

“All right, you can stay here for a
few hours, Rebecca. Uncle Uli is going to look after you. I will be back soon
and we’ll see about you coming over to play.” All three children smiled,
thinking that those few hours would stretch into forever.

They played in the tree house for a
while and then Uli took them down to the rock pools and they waded through the
cool water with their shoes and socks in their hands and the sun gentle on
their faces. They wanted to go swimming but had forgotten their swim suits so
they stayed at the rock pools and threw stones instead. Uli taught them how to
throw them so that they flew faster and they watched the ripples in the water
as the stones plinked in. They stayed down there all morning and Uli brought
them back up to the house where Stefan was waiting for them. He did not smile
as they walked in and Christopher immediately sensed that they were in trouble.
But they weren’t. This was different.

“Hello children, did you have a nice
time down at the beach with Uncle Uli?” They all nodded in almost perfect
unison. “Uli, can you take Alexandra down to the tree house for a moment?” Uli
picked up the little girl he called ‘Sonnenschein’ and carried her out into the
garden. Stefan asked the children to sit down at the table and Rebecca folded
her little arms as she sat down. “Rebecca, you like coming here don’t you?”

She looked across at Christopher and
then back at Stefan and Christopher felt his heart jump as she answered. “Yes,
I wish I could stay here all the time.”

Stefan smiled as the little girl
looked up at him and looked at his son and his pleading eyes. “I spoke to your
parents, both your parents.” Rebecca’s face froze. “After I saw your parents I
went down to the police station and I spoke to that nice policeman, Sergeant
Higgins. I must tell you Rebecca that your father does not want you to come
here and play. He doesn’t want you to play in the tree house or with
Christopher and Alexandra at all.”

“But Father…”

“Be quiet, Christopher. Let me
finish.” He ran his hands through his thin brown hair and then back down to the
table. Christopher had never seen him quite like this before. “But I spoke to
your mother and also with Sergeant Higgins and I’ve decided to let you play
here.” Christopher gasped and Rebecca smiled and Stefan even tried to smile
too. “I thought long and hard about it and I really did not want to go against
your father’s wishes, but I think that it is for the best.”

“Oh, thank you, Mr. Seeler.”

“But if you get into any trouble, I
will go straight down to your mother and tell her and you’ll never be able to
come up to this house again. Do you understand?”

“Oh yes, of course. I will be really
good.” She beamed and looked over at Christopher who was as happy as he could
ever imagine being. Rebecca stayed that afternoon and also for dinner and went
home afterwards and came again the next day and every day for the rest of that
summer. They decorated the tree house with pictures they drew and laid out a
tablecloth on the shelf and they all cried when Uncle Uli went back to Germany.

It barely mattered that they were in different schools
because still Rebecca came. They still played together almost every day even if
they never saw one another in the morning. Rebecca usually asked to stay for
dinner as her mother rarely cooked and when she did Rebecca said she could
hardly touch it, so Christopher’s father sometimes let her stay. She would also
ask if she could stay the night but Christopher’s father would never allow that,
so Christopher would walk her down the road until the bush bent around and
Rebecca’s house came into view and run back home looking over his shoulder to
see if her father might have seen him on the road.

The letters became their way of
seeing one another, a way that her father would never understand because the
language was their own. They were surrounded by language. By the time
Christopher was 12, he was fluent in German and English and could understand
whole conversations in French and even Jèrriais.
 
What Rebecca lacked in German she made
up for in French but their language was different from any of them.
Gunde de viznay bin lion’s mane reiv,
would
mean that they would meet at the Lion’s Mane at 4, the number on the end being
the German but backwards.
It was a
language only they knew and, apart from them, only Alexandra knew existed.
 
By the time they were twelve they had
named all the crags and headlands beaten by the waves in winter and split by
the summer sun. They would arrange to meet there, by the Lion’s Mane, the
Butterfly’s Table or the Angry Horse. When they met they would speak in
gibberish, as if their language was entire, and burst out laughing at the
ridiculous sounds spilling out of each other’s mouths and the puzzled looks of
whomever happened to be there with them, whether that was Alexandra, or Percy
Howard or his brother Tom, or one of the other children that lived nearby.

Christopher was fifteen when he
arrived home from school with Alexandra and she was there, her head down on the
table, her light brown hair covering her face entirely. Rebecca looked up at
him, her blue eyes twinkling with tears.
 
She had a large bruise staining her left cheek. Christopher saw his
father sitting beside her at the kitchen table, his face taut from the same
dismal anger that overtook Christopher whenever Rebecca’s father beat her. She
looked up at Christopher and then down at the table again. Christopher sat down
beside her at the table because he wanted to be the one to comfort her and he
felt it inside, the pang of jealousy that it had been his father she had come
to and not him, but he dismissed it immediately, embarrassed in front of
himself.

“Rebecca’s been here for about half
an hour,” Stefan whispered in English. “We got her cleaned up but she’s still
very upset.
 
She hasn’t said much.”

Christopher glanced up at his father
and then at Rebecca. Alexandra had come around and was hugging her from behind.
Stefan placed his hand on the spill of hair on top of her head and kept it
there and Christopher took her hand. They stayed like that for a few seconds
before Christopher spoke.

“What did he do this time, Rebecca?”

She lifted her head off her arms, her
eyes reddened and bulging wide. She brushed the hair away from her face and sat
up in the chair. “Can I have a glass of water?”

“Of course, get her a glass of water,
Alexandra, please.”

“Yes Father,” Alexandra answered.
Rebecca waited until Alexandra had returned and she had the water in her hand
to start talking.

 
“It all started last week when my father
said that since I was fifteen now and that it was time that I left school to
get a job. I told him that I wanted to stay in school, at least for another
year or two. But he got angry and hit me. Peter tried to stop him, but he hit
Peter too.”

 
“What did your mother say?” Christopher
asked.

“Oh, she said that she left school
when she was fifteen and that if I wanted to stay then I should be allowed, but
then we haven’t much money and my father’s paintings haven’t sold these last
few years. She also said something about the textile factory. She still talks
about that place even though she lost her job there two years ago.” Each word
collided with the last in the rush of the effort to get them out.

“Did she try to stop your father when
he hit you?” Christopher asked.

“Yes, at first. But he tells her that
it’s the best thing for me. She said that my father loves us very much and that
everything he does is for us. We were in the kitchen and she sat me down and
did my hair, although she didn’t do a good job at all and I had to do it myself
afterwards. She was slurring her words and she started crying. I heard her go
into the bathroom and then a crash.”

“What happened then?” Stefan asked,
his eyes closed and the words spoken through clenched teeth.

“I tried to get in. I wanted to help
her. I could hear her groaning on the floor and then the sound of glass cracking
or breaking. She screamed something at me but I could hardly make out what she
said. I was so scared, I just wanted to run out of the house and come up here
or anywhere but I had to help her. She’s my mother.”

“Of course,” Stefan said.

Christopher looked into Rebecca’s
face, amazed that she wasn’t crying. He tried to imagine his own mother, what
he remembered of her, being stuck behind a door and he unable to reach her. He
looked at his father and then at Alexandra and took Rebecca’s hand once more. “What
happened then?” he asked.

“I got the door open and I saw her
lying on the floor with an empty bottle and with sick on the ground. She was
crying but I picked her up and cleaned her up and put her to bed. I told Peter
about it later on that night when he got home from work and he got angry and
started shouting at her. Then my father arrived home and they were all
screaming at each other. Peter said that he was never going to let my father
hit him again.” She paused, the silence in the room descending on each one of
them, almost crushing them, until she began again. “I never saw my father so
angry and he picked up a poker from the fireplace and ran at Peter.” She looked
at Christopher and then at Stefan and Alexandra. “He hit out at Peter, striking
him in the arm and Peter went down. He was standing over him about to hit Peter
with the poker so I picked up a piece of coal and threw it at his head.”

Christopher squeezed her hand, the
tears welling in his eyes.

Rebecca seemed to ignore Christopher
and he felt the sting as she drew her hand away and stared out in front of her
as she spoke. “The coal hit him on the side of the head and he swung at me
instead. I saw Peter get up and run out of the room. And I saw my father come
around.” The tears were coming now, distorting her voice into a whisper. “He
drew up the poker and said he was going to teach me a lesson I’d always
remember and then I heard Peter behind him, holding my father’s shotgun. He
said that if he touched me that it would be the last thing he would ever do. My
father said that he was sorry and told Peter to calm down.”

Stefan let out a deep breath and
stood up. Rebecca stopped and looked at him as he took a glass from the
cupboard and set it down. Alexandra walked over to him and embraced him, pushing
her head onto his shoulder as he held her.

“It’s all right Father,” she said.
“We’ll look after her.” His mouth moved, as if he wanted to say something in
reply but no words came and he set her back down and filled the glass with
water and returned to the chair.

“I’m sorry, Rebecca, please continue,”
Stefan said.

“I stood behind Peter as my father
explained that he was sorry and that he was just trying to defend my mother.
Peter didn’t believe him and told him that nothing he said could change the fact
that he was leaving and that he was taking me with him.”

Christopher’s heart froze in his
chest. “What?” he said but Rebecca ignored him, still staring out into space.

“My father apologized for hitting him
and told him to put down the gun. Eventually he did but Peter went straight to
his room and wouldn’t talk to my father. My mother put me to bed. She hugged me
and asked me to forgive my father and that he only wanted the best for us.”

“He’s got a funny way of showing it.”
Christopher said.

Rebecca glanced at Christopher and
then away. “Then, last night Peter told me to pack my things and that we were
leaving. We never even said goodbye.” Christopher couldn’t understand why she
was crying now, why this would upset her.
 

“Where did you stay last night?”
Alexandra asked.

“We’re staying with his friend Ronald
Smart, just down the road.”

“I know the Smart family, they’re
good people,” Stefan nodded.
 

 
“I went back to see my parents this
morning, but my father got angry and said that it was my fault that Peter left
and that I had destroyed our family.”

Christopher felt his fists tense, but
he knew not to say anything.

They sat there for a while. Christopher
looked to his father, but even he didn’t seem to know what to say. It was a few
minutes before he spoke. “I’m proud of you Rebecca,” he said and got up to walk
away towards the counter top where the raw materials for that night’s dinner
were laying untouched. He picked up the knife and pressed it down on top of the
carrots, the blade impacting with the wooden cutting board with a loud clack.

“Can I stay for dinner, Mr. Seeler?”

“Of course you can, Rebecca, of
course you can.” He tried to smile but his swollen red eyes betrayed him and he
turned his head to stare out into the greying dusk outside. “Christopher, why
don’t you take Rebecca and Alexandra down for a walk on the beach before
dinner?”

They left him there, the cracking of
the knife on the board ringing in their ears as they pushed open the front door
and even as they stepped out into the front yard. Rebecca stopped talking as
they left the house and the conversation slowed and then stopped as the three
children made their way past Rebecca’s house on their way down to the beach.
Christopher knew he shouldn’t be walking past the front of their house with
Rebecca, but somehow it didn’t seem to matter anymore and none of them even
commented that they were breaking their own cardinal rule as they shuffled
past. They continued down towards the seafront, past the beach and along the
coast, where they sat in a row, with Rebecca in the middle, overlooking the
grey waves crashing against the rocks below.