Authors: Olga Levy Drucker

Kindertransport (4 page)

BOOK: Kindertransport

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How could I have known that Mrs. Gordon's little girl was to prove a far worse headache than Lydia had ever been?

JILL

T
hat weekend I spent with my head in the kitchen sink, while Mrs. Liebman scrubbed my scalp as if her life depended upon it. I feared that I would have no skin left on my head, let alone hair. The soap she used reeked. I wanted to throw up. I protested loudly. But the more I screamed, the harder she scrubbed.

Lydia was noticeably absent.

“Never mind Lydia. Her turn is coming. She can't get away with it this time,” her mother snarled. I lifted my head to rub some stinky soap out of my burning eyes. “Not yet! I'm not done with you, young lady! There will not be a single louse left on you when you go to your new place, if I have anything to do with it.” With that she scrubbed harder than before. I felt as if somehow the whole business had been my fault.

But I had recognized a word:
louse
. In German the word sounds the same:
Laus
. Now I knew what I had caught from Lydia. I was mortified. I lowered my head
obediently into the smelly sink and let Mrs. Liebman scrub away.

On Monday morning a shiny black limousine parked outside the dreary basement flat of the Liebmans'. I watched from behind the sooty lace curtains as a chauffeur opened the car door. A slender leg in silk stockings and high-heeled shoes emerged. Mrs. Gordon had come to fetch me.

My head still felt sore from the delousing. But at least it didn't itch anymore. Mr. Liebman was already sleeping. Mrs. Liebman, much to my surprise, kissed me on the cheek. Lydia pinched my arm one last time. I quickly stepped on her foot. Then I was off and away.

Through the limousine windows I watched London fly past us. Cathedrals. Department stores. People rushing about. Women with umbrellas and shopping bags over their arms. Men swinging umbrellas and briefcases. Little dogs straining on leashes, as little dogs will. Lines of children snaking along in twos, a teacher in front and one in back to catch the stragglers. Suddenly I thought of my real school in Stuttgart, and even of Herr SchÃ¼ler. A huge wave of homesickness threatened to drown me.

I was very quiet. After some time we left the busy city behind. After more than two hours' drive through the English countryside, we came to another city.

“Norwich,” explained Mrs. Gordon. It was the first thing she had said since we had left London.

More old buildings, black with age. A cathedral. People rushing about. Children. Dogs. My breath was steaming up the windowpanes, as we hurriedly drove past.

Soon we came to the suburbs. Wrought-iron fences and tall hedges hid the houses behind them. At first they were quite small, semidetached and all alike. Gradually they became larger, more opulent. At times they could barely be seen from the road. They stood, like palaces, at the end of long, tree-lined driveways. Tall, graceful Elizabethan chimneys emitted smoke, the only sign that people lived there.

Our limousine turned into one such driveway and pulled up to the entrance of what looked to me like a castle. The chauffeur came around to open the door for Mrs. Gordon and me.

No sooner was I out of the car than a girl about my size hurled herself out of the house and threw herself at her mother.

“Mummie! Mummie! Where were you so long? I wanted to come with you! And we have to get to the stables by half past two, have you forgotten?”

I was beginning to recognize one or two words here and there, but she was certainly speaking much too fast. All I got was: “Mummie,” “Come with you,” and “half past two.” I checked my watch. It was only eleven.

Her mother said something reassuring to her, dismissed the chauffeur, and led the way inside.

My eyes nearly popped out of my head. The cool, marbled foyer was filled with great pots of flowers. At home, Mama also kept flowers in the house, but only in summertime. I had never heard of flowers before May, at the earliest. This was only April. Where had they come from? I learned later that in back of the garden were greenhouses, where gardeners coaxed flowers and tropical plants to grow all year round. But I didn't know that then. I was very impressed.

Again I had to share a room, this time with soft, frilly beds, neatly made up. I wondered briefly what Mama was using my blue room for these days. This room was all pink and white. Blue, I thought, would have been better.

The girl's name was Jill. She was quite pretty. Her long yellow curls fell softly about her shoulders. She had a way of tossing her head when she spoke that made them dance as if they had a life of their own. Her eyes were as blue as mine. But I had this creepy feeling that evil lurked behind them. Evil? Well, perhaps just â¦ hate. Just looking at them made me shiver. She wore Shirley Temple shoes. Patent leather. Black. I looked down at my own sturdy oxfords. Laced. Brown. I wished I could hide my feet under the plush carpet.

We had tea in a glassed-in breakfast room that led into the garden. I tried to follow the conversation, but no luck. Jill was obviously talking about me. She pointed at me
several times and giggled maliciously. But from Mrs. Gordon's voice I could tell that she told Jill to stop it. Jill stuck out her tongue at me, then pouted.

Lunch was served an hour later in the formal dining room. A fire roared in the fireplace. If it hadn't been for Jill, everything would have been perfect.

Mrs. Gordon spoke to me in German. It sounded funny, and I was dying to laugh at the way she pronounced the words. But in my head I could hear Mama telling me to be polite. Mrs. Gordon said I could come along to watch Jill have her riding lessons.

The girl changed into her riding clothes. She left her frilly white dress rumpled on her bed, jumped into her jodhpurs, and pulled up her wondrous boots. Oh, to have an outfit like that, I thought. Then, with her helmet under her arm, she stepped into the waiting car, ahead of her mother. I followed slowly, kicking pebbles along the driveway. The chauffeur drove us to the stables.

Jill pranced merrily around the field on a fine-looking mare, while Mrs. Gordon and I perched on the rail, watching her. For the first time in all my eleven years, I knew what envy was. To wear those riding clothesâthat would have been one thing. But to sit proudly atop a sleek, muscular animal such as this horseâoh, that would have been paradise itself! Its long, blond mane flowed in the wind; its gentle eyes grew wild with excitement as its hoofs, barely touching the ground, thundered past. Oh, I wanted to ride! I became obsessed by the thought. I would
learn English quickly, so that I could tell Mrs. Gordon that I wanted to ride.

But when I learned enough to ask, the answer was always the same: “Soon. Maybe next time. Yes, soon.”

Days melted into weeks, weeks into yet another month. On Sundays, Jill went to church with her parents, while I stayed home with the housekeeper. On Mondays and Thursdays I was taken along to Jill's riding lessons. Always I hoped that this time my prayers would be answered.

They never were. Was Mrs. Gordon so insensitive? Or was she simply unaware that this strange little creature, meâwhom she surely had rescued from a life of poverty in the slums of London, and from certain persecution, possibly death, in Germanyâcould think of wanting anything more?

In Stuttgart I had been the spoiled darling of my family. All I had to do was ask, and sooner or later I'd get what I wanted. I thought of the longed-for scooter, and the roller skates, now unused and rusting in back of some closet at home. Now I was the onlooker; Jill the spoiled darling. I â¦ I was merely the guest passing through, until a “more permanent” home could be found for me. For I knew that Mrs. Gordon had no intentions of keeping me. Whatever would she do with this little Jewish refugee?

I began to fight with Jill.

I fought for what I had come to expect from the world. I fought for what I thought were my rights. I used my
feet, my hands, my fingernails. I changed from being an easy-to-please, cheerful child into a screaming, snarling, scratching, spitting little monster. The world, as it turned out, didn't care. But Mrs. Gordon did.

“If you don't behave yourself,” she told me, “I will have to send you back to Germany.”

BOARDING SCHOOL

W
ell, of course, that didn't happen. Though, as you might imagine, I had mixed feelings about her threat. Back to Germany? Back to Mama and Papa? What could be so bad? By now the six originally promised weeks had turned into several months. Why did I have to be here anyway? Had anybody ever asked me?

But I wasn't totally stupid. I knew. I knew that I was better off here, no matter how awful I might think it. It was still better here than back home in Germany, where unspeakable things were happening to Jews. I knew that if Mama and Papa didn't manage to leave soon, Papa might wind up in Dachau again. Or worse! The reason they had let him out in the first place was that they made him promise to leave Germany. I knew my parents were trying in every way possible to leave. They wouldn't give up; I knew that. The question was mainly: Where to? They had sent me here to England, where Hans had come
before me, where we both would be safe, where life was still normal, and where no one hated another for having a different religion. I couldn't let them down. I was sure they wouldn't be too pleased to see me back.

For two whole days I managed not to fight with Jill. It was hard. I felt the pressure building up inside me, like a tea kettle with water boiling inside and no place to let it out. Tomorrow was another riding lesson. Maybe this time â¦

But there was to be no “this time.” Soon after breakfast that day, I had yet another visitor. She was small, quite frail, her white hair combed back tightly from her face and coiled on top of her head. She wore steel-rimmed glasses and old-fashioned, clean, sensible clothes. She looked extremely old to me, though she probably wasn't much over sixty. Her cheeks were rosy pink.

“Say how d'you do to Miss Carter,” Mrs. Gordon told me. “She's the headmistress of the boarding school for girls in Norwich.” She told me its name. “Miss Carter has very kindly agreed to take you on.”

Miss Carter took off her brown leather gloves and offered me her hand. I shook it politely and curtsied, as Mama had always expected of me. My tongue was stuck to the roof of my mouth.

“I expect you will like it very much at my school,” said Miss Carter in a tinkly voice like a silver bell. She smiled kindly, and I could hear her false teeth click in her mouth. “We're all very excited about your coming.”

I had a million questions, but they all got glued to the back of my throat.

As a last well-meaning gesture, Mrs. Gordon's chauffeur was ordered to take us to the boarding school. As I looked back I saw Jill waving to me. She was wearing her riding outfit.

“What's your name?”

“How old are you?”

“Where d'you come from?”

“Don't you speak English?”

The girls clustered around me, all talking at once. They sounded like sparrows twittering. Here and there I recognized a word or two.

“No English. German,” I said.

“Sprechen Sie Deutsch?”
said one, a heavy girl with thick glasses and long hair. The others were convulsed in laughter. I was the only one who didn't get the joke. With her atrocious pronunciation I had not even understood the question!

We were gathered in the courtyard of the old mansion that served as the boarding school. It was situated on a pleasant, tree-lined street on the outskirts of the city. The tall steeple of the famous cathedral could be seen above the rooftops, if you twisted your head just so.

All the girls wore uniforms. They looked so smart in their mauve tunics over lilac blouses and purple blazers.
Their school ties were purple, black, and white striped, knotted just like a boy's. They all had on black velour hats with hatbands that were striped the same colors as the ties.

Instantly, my yearning to ride a horse was replaced for such a uniform. The tunic that Mama had our seamstress make for me before I left Stuttgart was close, but not quite right. For one thing, it was navy blue, not mauve. Also, the pleats were altogether different. I longed to look like everybody else.

An older girl approached our little cluster. She was about fifteen, maybe sixteen.

“Sh! Here comes June!” someone whispered. They flew apart like a flock of birds at the fall of her footsteps. To my surprise, June headed straight for me.

She held out her hand and smiled. She wore the same blazer as everyone else, but on her lapel I noticed a little pin in the shape of a capital
P
. That must stand for something important, I thought.

“I'm June,” she said. Rudely I stared at her pin. “Oh,” she laughed, “that means I'm a prefect. Sort of puts me in charge of the younger girls, like you. First you get to be a junior prefect, then a prefect. Do you want to come with me to my dormitory? I think I have an old uniform up there that I outgrew. It might fit you. If not, we'll make it fit. Won't hurt trying it on, anyway.”

I understood “come with me,” and “uniform.” The rest didn't really matter.

Oh, if all my wishes could have been fulfilled as quickly as this one! From that day on, I stuck close to June. I found out that she was Miss Carter's niece. Not only was she a prefect, she was the head prefect. Her power was absolute.

The girls my age began to tease me. “June's little pet,” they called me when they thought I couldn't hear or that I didn't understand. But I was learning the language faster than they realized. I decided it might be better to stop trailing June.

We had a French teacher that everybody hated. Her name was Mademoiselle Donaldson. It didn't sound so French to me. I think I hated her more than the other girls did, though. After all, I thought, I had enough to do to cope with English, never mind French! I enthusiastically helped set a trap for Mademoiselle Donaldson. The wastepaper basket from under her desk, filled with trash, was carefully balanced on top of the door. A string attached to it, when pulled, would cause the basket to turn and empty its contents on the teacher's head when she walked into the room. It worked perfectly. But guess who got punished!

“Who did this?” Mademoiselle Donaldson asked.

No one moved.

The French teacher wanted the whole classâall thirteen of usâto stay after school. I raised my hand.

“Please, Mademoiselle Donaldson, I have did it. Let you me stay, yes please?”

The other girls giggled. But Mademoiselle Donaldson didn't even smile.

“Is this true?” she asked. No one answered; no one moved. I nodded my head vigorously. “Ja â¦ I mean, yes.”

I had to write a hundred times on the black board:
I will never be bad again.

Next morning I was the classroom heroine.

“What did she make you do?”

“Did she whack you on the knuckles with her ruler?”

“Did you have to go to the headmistress?”

When I told them, they seemed disappointed. They turned from me in disgust. “That's all?” I heard one of them mumble. But one girl, slightly taller than the rest, came to my rescue. To this day I'll never know why.

“Leave her alone. She's a refugee. She's here all by herself.”

“Aw, Prissy, we're only having a bit of fun.”

“You heard me. Leave her alone,” said Prissy. She put her arm around me and walked me to my desk. I had no more trouble from my classmates after that incident. Prissy saw to that.

May. June. July. Still no Mama and Papa.

Then came the summer holidays. Prissy asked me: “Where are you spending the summer?”

I had wondered about that myself. Hans was in London, but he was busy working, and anyway, what did he know about eleven-year-old sisters? I shrugged. “Don't know.”

“Then you're coming home with me. Miss Carter said you could.”

“What about your parents?”

Prissy's eyes opened wide. “My parents? They'll agree. Of course.”

Once again I had not been consulted. But this time I was happy to accept.

BOOK: Kindertransport

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