Great Meadow (20 page)

At the docks at Newhaven next day we waited with a big crowd of people for the
Pevensey Castle
to get tied up. Gulls were wheeling and screaming all round the end part where the propellers were churning the water, ropes swung out across to the rails, and there was a drifting of steam from the huge orange funnel, and it was all rusty, close to, and the people standing on the decks (and there were a lot of them really) didn't do anything. I mean they didn't wave, or cheer or call to the people on the dockside. There were quite a few policemen about too. It all felt a bit peculiar. Then the gangplank rumbled up across the cobbles, and men in uniform went striding up. My father suddenly put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘There's Sutton! I can see Sutton, but not anyone else.' Then he waved, and someone by the rail waved back. I just recognized a face I knew from
The Times.
Sometimes he had
come down when they were doing special photographs for the back page. So I waved too. After all, it was welcoming, and I did know him. Well, I had met him. But he didn't see me, just our father, and he raised his hand with two fingers, and my father said, aloud, ‘Just two. Oh! Damn!' So I could feel he was pretty upset.

Then people started getting off and coming slowly down the gangplank, and Mr Sutton suddenly pulled two children close beside him. He bent down and spoke to them, then he pointed down to us and they half waved. When they had all got down on to the cobbles, they had to go into a big Customs place with all the other people, which my father said was for passports and papers and so on, and we'd have to wait. So we did. It was quite a funny feeling really because, although some people looked quite happy and cheerful, and met friends, there wasn't any shoving and laughing like there usually is if you come ashore. Some people were actually crying. In public. I mean, it really was pretty peculiar, and I wondered if anyone had died on the ship, or perhaps there had been an accident? But our father said no, no accident, and no one had died on the ship, as far as he knew anyway, but that these were people who had all come from Germany. When I asked why, he said it was the new rules. They were not wanted, and if they didn't leave they'd be sent to prison. I could see that he was quite upset or something because he was biting the side of his cheek, and that was always a bad sign, when we noticed him doing it.

But then he said well, there would be plenty of room in the car now, depending on how much luggage there was. I wasn't sure what it was all about, but I didn't want to ask too many questions. Not then anyway.

We went into the Customs place, where there were masses of people milling about. It was very gloomy, with yellow walls and hanging lamps with green tin shades, and there were posters on the wall of castles, like Arundel and Herstmonceux, and of lots of laughing people on beaches, and of the Southern Railway everywhere.

But no one was laughing in the crowd. They were just talking and holding bags and papers. Then Mr Sutton was there, and quite close to. Of course, I remembered him, and he shook hands, and said to my father, ‘No Krauses, they didn't make it, but I've got the children.' He was looking pretty tired. His eyes were red and he hadn't even shaved. Behind him were the two children. He got them to come forward through the crowd and said, ‘This is Eric, remember? His sister is Sophie. He speaks English, she doesn't. There is no luggage, just what they have.' We all shook hands, and Sophie curtsied to my father, which was a surprise, and Eric nodded his head with a short sort of jerk, and shook hands. Then we all walked into the open. Which was better. Outside, I mean.

I was going to help the girl, Sophie, with her bag, but she pulled away from me, which was a bit rude. But Mr Sutton said just let her hang on to things, they had had a dreadful time over the last few days. Our father explained about the O.M. and that Mrs Bogaerde (he didn't call her anything else to Mr Sutton) and our nanny were waiting at the cottage, and did he want to come back with us because there was plenty of room in the car and a bed at the cottage if he wanted it? But he said no, he'd just like to have a quick word, and then get up to London, and they went away together.

So we went to the O.M. and I said to Eric that they could sit in the back and I would be in front with my father, and he said, ‘That is most kind of you. What is your name?' I told him, and he said he was Eric and that this, and he put his hand on her head, was his sister Sophie. He was my age, she was almost the same as my sister, so I told him that, and he looked polite and asked if they were to come in the motor car with us? I said yes. We'd go to our house and they would have a jolly nice room and had they had any food on the boat? Eric said they were too tired to eat but Mr Sutton had given them a sandwich and some tea. Which wasn't very nice to taste, and he laughed, a very little bit, when he said it, but Sophie just stood there, holding her bag, with a label fluttering on it. It said her name,
Sophie Anna Krause.
And she was crying. Without making a noise.

At the cottage our mother came running down the path through the sweet-pea trellis and the vegetables, waving like anything. I saw Lally come out to the lean-to door with a cloth in her hand, and Sophie, who was walking with me, suddenly dropped her bag and ran towards our mother and threw her arms round her knees. Our mother said, ‘Sophie! Oh! Sophie!
Comment allez-vous, ma belle?'

And I said to my father that was French and not German, and he said, ‘Well, you know your mother: all foreign languages are the same to her.'

But Sophie was crying, and holding on pretty tight. Then Eric quickly came past me, picked up Sophie's bag with his own and stood before our mother. ‘Good day, Aunt Maggie. I am very happy to see you!'

Our mother got up and gave him a terrific kiss, and said to come up to the house, but she looked back and raised her eyebrows at our father who just shook his head. She put a hand to her mouth, but turned away and called to Lally to come and meet the children, only, her voice was too loud, and a bit wobbly, as if she had been crying as well. But she hadn't.

My father and I walked up the path, watching Lally being introduced. Then my sister came out and everyone was in a sort of huddle shaking hands, but Sophie wouldn't leave my mother, she just hung on to her.

‘Do you know them very well? Eric called our mother “Aunt
Maggie”.'

‘Pretty well. She is very good with children, you know that. She'll be
very
unhappy because Mr and Mrs Krause aren't here.'

‘Can I ask why, Papa?' I felt I ought to know, so as to tell my sister. Stopping down by the rhubarb clump, he said that the authorities came for Mr Krause, and Mrs Krause refused to leave him, so Mr Sutton had to take the two children during the night and got them to France, and that was all I needed to know. It was because they were Jews. All the Jews had to leave Germany now. We walked on up the path and that was that. I mean he didn't say any more, and I knew he would not. Yet.

Eric said he liked his tea very much. Lally had made them some poached eggs on toast, and even Sophie ate them, while my sister talked and talked to her and showed her all sorts of interesting things, like her cigarette card collection of film stars and a dried sea-horse and her jewel box. Well, it was only some soppy old rings from crackers
and a glass bead bracelet from the lucky dip down at the vicar's sister's shop, by the Flats.

But she was being jolly kind and Sophie was
very
pretty, with huge brown eyes. She did look a bit like a big doll, which is probably what my sister liked about it all – she hardly spoke to poor Eric. Then she actually gave Sophie the bracelet, and put it on her wrist, and Lally said, ‘Oh! My word! How lovely, and doesn't it suit you?' Which was pretty potty because Sophie didn't know what she was saying anyway, and it was just anyone's old bracelet really. But, I suppose, it was very nice and welcoming.

After tea Eric and I went for a walk up to the little church, and I told him about it and the cottage, and he nodded his head and smiled and seemed very interested. Then I said did he know how long they could stay? Because we could go to the Fair at the Tye down by the river next week, and he said he didn't know anything except they had some friends in somewhere called Crickle-wood, and then maybe they would go to America. I thought that sounded pretty exciting, but he didn't really seem to think so. Just smiled and looked miserable behind it. So to try and cheer him up a bit I told him about how terrible it was last year for us all, and about Lally and my sister in the isolation hospital and me getting burned. I showed him my arm, which was still a bit shiny, and prickly from time to time. He was quite curious because, he said, he was going to be a doctor one day, and he hoped I was ‘very recovered'. I said I was, and we just wandered back to the cottage. He wasn't interested in the Dearly Beloveds and Departed This Lifes much, didn't even look at them really, so I didn't dawdle about.

About two days later a huge car arrived in Waterloo Square in the village and some very expensive-looking people collected them, with lots of kisses and hugs, and drove them away, I suppose to the Cricklewood place. My sister said that Sophie could keep her bracelet, and we all waved and they just went. That was the last we ever saw of them. The expensive people spoke marvellous English, a
bit
Cockney, but English anyway. They kissed my mother, and the woman was wiping her eyes, and my father said it was a most dreadful world and it wasn't the sort of place he'd been fighting for in his war. The man, who was called Mr Krause also, agreed and hoped
we'd
be spared what his brother and sister-in-law had suffered. So Eric and Sophie had a
real
aunt and uncle, and that didn't make it seem quite so awful. I mean, they had kith and kin.

As long as you weren't Jewish, anyway. But they were a bit depressing. Honestly.

Mr Wilde said it was the hottest August he had ever known and it brought all the wapsies out something terrible. He wrapped up the bacon, the butter and the half of Red Leicester, and then Miss Maltravers called us from her little cage and said, ‘Look what you've got! A postcard from your parents from Deauville, France. Aren't they the regular gad-abouts? And there's a letter here for Miss Jane. Postmark Richmond, so I reckon that's news from home.' But I just said thank you politely, even though I was a bit fed up because she had read our card before we had. But that was the trouble with postcards and Miss Maltravers. There was nothing you could do about it.

We went across to Wood's the butcher's with Lally's note about the mince, and the kind of blade he had to use, coarse or fine. Mr Wood, who was very fat and jolly, with his straw hat on and striped apron, said Miss Jane knew her mind all right, just what she wanted. Mrs Wood in the cash desk was fanning herself and saying upon her word, it had never been so hot, and what with the flies life was dreadful, even with all the windows open – but no draught – she felt like one of the dead chickens hanging on the rail. She looked a bit more like something else up there, but of course I didn't say so.

Outside, in the white sun, there was no one at all in the village, except two old men sitting under the chestnut tree in the shade, but stuck on the trunk of the tree there was a poster, all red and yellow:
Tilling's Zoo and Circus!
In a square under a picture of a roaring tiger there was a crayoned message saying it would be on the Tye on the 18th–19th, which was good news because that was the day after next. The Fair was already being got ready on the Tye by the church.
Brownrigg's Pleasure Rides for Families
was being set up, the middle part was already done, and the stalls were being marked out. At the end of the green they were setting up the poles for the circus tent. It was very exciting, especially because I had some money from our father put aside for the event, as Lally said, and not to be touched until then.

We'd seen all the activity on our way down from the cottage, and so after we got the ‘messages' we went back to the Tye to read our postcard. Sitting in the shade I read it aloud to my sister, who was busy picking a bunch of flowers for Lally. It said, ‘Darlings: Wonderful and very hot, marvellous food. Do you remember this place marked X? Love, Mama.'

And I remembered all right. It was a very nice restaurant right on the promenade, and it had a big terrace where you could have drinks and ice creams, and there were waiters with white aprons, and an orchestra playing all the time, and masses of people laughing and talking and smoking. Our mother was looking really marvellous in a green turban, and she was smoking through a long green cigarette-holder, and we were with all the Chesterfields, our very best friends. There was Uncle John, and our father, and Beth, Angelica and Paul, plus our Lally and their sort-of-Lally, Miss O'Shea. We sat at a separate table, and the grown-ups were all together drinking.

There was a bit of a wind that day, and all the parasols were frilling in the wind. There were gulls high above, planing and sailing, just as they did at Newhaven and Cuckmere. The only sad thing was there was no Aunt Freda. She had eaten a bad mussel at dinner the night before, so she was what my father called ‘prostrate'. It was bad luck, because I liked her best of all my pretend-aunts.