Let Me Whisper You My Story (13 page)

T
HERE WAS EXCITEMENT
at Hartfield House. A sackful of letters had arrived. Many were from the Red Cross, that had been searching for our families. I couldn’t believe that all this had taken so much time, but Martha explained there were millions of displaced people and not just children. Husbands were looking for wives and wives were looking for parents. The list went on and on.

The letters from the Red Cross were read first by Martha and her assistants. ‘A lot of you don’t speak your own language anymore,’ she explained, ‘and I need Peter to translate the letters for us.’

It seemed strange that so many of us had forgotten our first language. I was to discover much later that this was not so unusual. Some of us associated the war and our countries of birth with the most horrible of memories and had ‘chosen’ to forget. This was particularly true of the younger children, who having had a much smaller vocabulary had replaced it with English and no longer remembered their native language.

I remembered German. Greta had chosen to forget it. Martha and Peter occasionally spoke German to new arrivals at Hartfield, and I listened in, but I did not speak it anymore. It was part of a past I needed to forget.

Hartfield House was so large that Martha had her own office. In it were cabinets filled with files on each child and their last known address. The office was panelled with dark wood, and on the walls were old paintings of rural England, small houses and large fields, grain being collected, peasants stacking hay. One by one, we were called into the office. Martha sat behind the large oak desk and Peter sat to one side.

Jacques went in first. He came out smiling. ‘Well, that was nothing new. I shall move in with my aunt and uncle next week. No-one else has claimed me so I can be adopted.’ He pushed his dark hair away from his eyes.

‘And your parents, do you know what happened to them?’ I asked. He became deaf again and walked right by me.

Other children were told of relatives who had finally been located in places as far away as South Africa and Australia. These children came away from Martha’s office with looks of wonder on their faces. Some children, however, left the office crying.

‘I’m scared,’ Eva told me as her name was called out. A few minutes later she emerged from the room jumping with excitement. ‘They’ve found my brother. He is twelve years older than me and he is living in America. Not far from Hollywood. I will be leaving to stay with him. My parents are gone. I’ll miss them forever, but at least I have my brother. A real brother.’

Greta was called in. She was gone for quite a time. When she came out her face was unreadable. She shrugged. ‘Nothing, no-one. I am lost, but any time now my aunt and uncle will be here and they’ll take me home with them. Though how they are going to manage with me and all their own children I don’t know.’ She yawned into the air, and broke into a small run. ‘I’m going outside.’

Finally, it was my turn. Trembling, I walked inside the office. ‘Sit down, Rachel,’ said Martha, closing the door behind me. ‘We have two letters for you, from Germany. This one is from someone called Freddy and his grandmother, Gertrude. I believe his family helped you when you were in hiding?’

Freddy. Freddy had written. Dear Gertrude too. ‘I knew they’d write. I knew they would,’ I said. Then I shook my head, for I had to ask the question that was haunting me. ‘My family?’

Martha’s face was unusually serious. ‘Rachel, my dear child, you know that many people died. Many innocent people. How wonderful that you were hidden. It’s good to know that people risked their lives to save you.’ Martha put on her glasses. As she leaned over the second letter in front of her, they slid precariously to the tip of her nose. She bit her lower lip then said, ‘I shall read to you what we’ve been able to discover through the Red Cross.’

Peter sat next to me. I knew, just looking at his face. I knew. Martha opened a neatly folded letter. I could see a crest on it. An official letter.

I don’t want to hear this. Don’t tell me. No. No.

‘It says, my dear Rachel, that your mama died in 1944 in a concentration camp; that your papa and sister have
not been located but are presumed dead also. Also gone are your aunt and uncle and cousin Erich. Agnes is also presumed dead, although her name does not come up on the list for deaths in concentration camps.’

Hope, my small but all-important companion, had abandoned me. I had nothing left. ‘So, it is just me? I am the only one left?’

‘You are the only one we can be sure is alive, Rachel. Oh my dear, I am so sorry.’

‘Would you like me to read Freddy’s letter?’ Peter asked gently.

‘No, no,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to hear Freddy’s letter. You have made a mistake about my family. I can see them all so clearly in my mind. They can’t be gone.’

I stumbled out of the room. I ran to the dormitory, buried my head in my pillow and cried into the world’s longest scarf. Miri’s journal fell from the scarf. I picked it up from the floor and read the words on the open pages:

One day I shall fly

I shall soar

Above the roar

Of guns and death

There is a place

And I’ll find it

Oh, Miri, I thought. Among all your sorrows you still had hope.

I fell asleep with the open journal across my stomach and the scarf under my head and didn’t wake until
lunchtime when the noise of the other children in the dormitory startled me. Greta shook me.

‘Try to buck up. That means “cheer up”. My English is growing every day. Martha told me about your family. I know it’s a shock, but we have each other. You are my sister. I am yours.’

I sat up, cradling the journal, pushing Greta’s arm away.

‘Stop it, Greta. How can you understand? Anyway, what with the royal family and your aunt and uncle, you have nothing to worry about.’

‘
You
stop it, Rachel. Look at you. Do you know how lucky you are to hold your mother’s scarf and see those beautiful lines of knitting that she did with her own fingers? To read your sister’s words as if she was sitting beside you? Those are memories you can touch and hold. I can’t do that. I make memories. So what’s wrong with that?’There was a crack in her voice.

‘Nothing, nothing, Greta. I’m sorry.’

‘I have a wardrobe too, you know. Like the one you told me about. It’s in the woods, past the boundary fence of Hartfield, near the edge of the stream. There’s a big oak tree. It must be hundreds, no, maybe thousands of years old. I bet if it could talk it could tell a tale or two. There is a hollow in its trunk, just big enough for me to fit. That’s my wardrobe. My safe place.’

I nodded, hardly taking in anything she said.

‘I worked out where you are on the world’s longest scarf. You were the youngest in the family, so your mama chose this pink strip just here.’ Greta held up the scarf, pointing to about fifteen rows of pink knitting, between
large sections of red and blue. ‘See, that’s you, Rachel. You with your pink bows. The little one in the family.’

I looked at it, astonished. I’d thought that maybe Mama had just run out of pink wool, for it was the smallest stripe on the scarf, but when I looked at that fine knitting I changed my mind. No, there I was, Mama’s skinny little one, fifteen rows in the world’s longest scarf.

I slunk unwillingly off my bed, put the scarf and journal under my pillow, and went with Greta to the dining room. I wasn’t hungry, but Greta linked arms with me and repeated, ‘We are each other’s family now.’

‘A
ND SO YOU
have no…’

‘…parents?’ finished Timothy.

Both twins’ faces were flushed under their thousands of freckles.

‘Here, catch this.’ Tony threw a ball to me. I tossed it back with a punch to it. ‘So, is it true…about your family?’

‘Yes, it looks like my whole family’s gone.’

I tripped. The lightness of my words shocked me. How could I say this so casually when my heart was breaking?

‘Clumsy, Rachel.’ Timothy bent down and pulled me upright. I rubbed a scraped knee. The school bell went and we filed up in class lines.

I couldn’t tell Tony and Timothy how I really felt. I couldn’t tell anyone.

Greta caught up with me on our way to class. ‘Eva leaves for America and Hollywood tomorrow. What a
dream. She will meet famous movie stars, even Clark Gable, I’m sure, and tell them about us and maybe they will adopt us. Wouldn’t it be something if we could both be adopted by the same movie star?’

‘What about your aunt and uncle?’

‘It seems that they are so busy, so tied up with all their children. You can imagine how heartbroken they are that they can’t take me in, but I accept it.’ She shrugged and her eyes were unreadable. ‘We would have a swimming pool, servants, and might even get a role in the movies if we went to Hollywood. What do you think, Rachel?’

‘I think you should write books about great adventures, but in the meantime be careful. You don’t know what’s real and what isn’t.’

Greta looked at me from the corner of her eye. ‘I know the difference. I have always known the difference.’ She walked ahead to the classroom, then turned suddenly, her face distorted by a scowl. ‘You know what’s real. Can you tell me that you prefer real life? Haven’t you ever preferred your dreams?’

I bit my lip. I carried my own memories. The wardrobe; the make-believe world of meadows and farmlands and plenty of food. I was sure the other children had their own escape routes as well. I was trying to lay these memories to rest. I had to move on. Greta needed her dreams, though, as much as she needed food for her stomach.

The other children made fun of her fancy background. They knew the difference between fact and fiction. Most of them didn’t speak about their experiences, particularly
those who had come from concentration camps. They carried a heavy silence with them. Eva and Mary, the Hungarian girls, plucked from Auschwitz at the end of the war, had talked quietly to each other before Eva left for America. But they’d put up a heavy stonewall if anyone asked them questions about that dreadful place.

At first there’d been a general tolerance towards Greta’s fantasy world. Then, as the children adjusted to English life, most of them yawned and walked away when she spoke.

E
NGLISH HAD BECOME
my first language. In Hartfield House, where we talked English all the time, new words were being thrown at us and there was no choice but to ask what they meant and to start using them as soon as possible.

Greta meantime continued to talk about her fantasy life and finally Martha, worried about her, arranged for Greta to see a psychiatrist.

‘He says I know the difference between fact and fantasy and that for now I need my fantasies,’ she told me after the visit. ‘I really don’t need to see a psychiatrist, Rachel. I’m not crazy, you know.’

At school we were asked to write a poem for homework. The poem was to be about Hartfield. If you were a local child it was about the village, if you were a refugee then you wrote about Hartfield House.

Miss Wetherby liked my poem so much she asked me to read it to the class:

Hartfield House

When I came to Hartfield I could not even speak

I just did as I was told. I could not even weep.

I kept my bed quite tidy, had new clothes I could wear

I ate my food quite quickly and soon had shiny hair.

People come on weekends as if we’re on display

They look us over, study us, sometimes take us away

They become our parents, and we go to live with them.

I find this very scary; they could bring us back again if they don’t like us.

The class was silent after I read it. The Hartfield House children shuffled their books or looked awkwardly at each other. Even the English children seemed unsure of what to say.

Miss Wetherby clapped enthusiastically. ‘You expressed yourself with such honesty, Rachel. That’s hard to do. Well done.’

Awkward clapping followed. I felt embarrassed and exposed and was glad when someone else read a more cheerful poem.

‘S
O
, R
ACHEL
,
WHAT
do you think?’

Tony and Timothy’s mum, Molly, had asked me for dinner.

‘You’d be our sister,’ Timothy called out across the table. ‘I’m nice. I’ll let you call me rude names all the time.’

‘We need another kid in this family. Then we’ll outnumber the adults,’ Tony added.

‘Shh,’ their father, Tom, said. His brown eyes were soft with goodness. Not Papa’s eyes, but kind anyway. ‘Here, pass the salt, Tony. Rachel, we’ve come to know you over these past many months, and we’re fond of you. We can offer you a home and a family. You can call us Ma and Pa, like the boys do. You will be treated just the same by us.’

‘We know you’ve lost your family, Rachel,’ Molly added sadly. ‘We can’t replace those you’ve lost, but this can be a new life for you. You won’t just have us, love. You’ll have cousins and a grandmother who comes to visit from London and regularly loses her false teeth down the back of her bed.’

Everyone laughed. It gave me a chance to catch my breath. Cousins? I had cousins already. Yes, they were dead, but their memory was alive and too fresh to be replaced with others. Parents? I had parents too. Miri? I didn’t want twin brothers to replace an irreplaceable sister.

Their kindness seeped through me, warming me. How could I tell them?

‘You’re so good to me,’ I finally said, stumbling over the words. ‘If I were to choose a new family, it would be you. But I can’t. I feel like I’m giving up on my own family. I just can’t.’

A tear trickled out of Molly’s eye. Tom took a deep breath then nodded.

‘You can change your mind any time,’ Tony told me.

‘We want you to be our sister,’ Timothy added.

I felt hot tears on my cheeks. I brushed them away and began to eat toffee pudding. It was hot and sticky and coated my teeth and I gratefully sucked in the sweetness of the pudding and the family around me.

N
EW CHILDREN ARRIVED
at Hartfield House as other children were adopted. There were some older girls this time, aged about fifteen.

Five were Hungarian. They’d been recovering in hospital from typhus and were thin with big eyes. Mary held their hands and spoke to them in Hungarian. The other children were French and there was one German girl. Two boys and one girl had been in hiding.

I watched them as they wolfed down food and explored the garden. Peter patiently translated for them and began to give them English lessons. Soon, they’d be at school. At fifteen it was doubtful they would be adopted, but the Red Cross would sift through their files trying to find any surviving relatives.

Greta and I and the twins had begun secondary school. I was thirteen. The original secondary school had been bombed by the Germans after the London Blitz. The new two-storey secondary school was bright and welcoming. The windows were large and the corridors wide. The assembly hall did not have the usual paintings of previous headmasters or headmistresses. They had been destroyed in the bombing.

We wore navy uniforms with pleats, belts and wide straw hats, which were not at all flattering.

At school, Greta showed exceptional ability in creative writing. The twins, who were slightly younger than us, were good at maths. I was one of those students who got by in most subjects. I loved art and music, and learned to play the clarinet, though not very well.

Sometimes a rabbi visited Hartfield House. He told Bible stories and taught us about being Jewish. If the weather was good we had these lessons under a large oak tree in the garden.

‘Where was God when the Jews were being murdered?’ one of the older girls, Gabi, asked. She was German, and had been in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. She had learned English at the hospital, and then at the refugee camp she’d been in after the war.

Here was a question that was in all our minds, but we’d been afraid to ask, and to ask a rabbi took special courage.

‘There are questions in life that cannot be answered,’ the rabbi replied sadly. ‘We do not always understand the ways of God.’ His face was covered with whiskers and his eyebrows definitely needed a trim. He wore a large black hat on his head.

‘Perhaps there isn’t a God,’ Gabi responded. Her voice was hard and sharp, like the crack of a whip. Some of the children gasped when she questioned the existence of God. You couldn’t say that to a rabbi. What if God was listening? One child stared anxiously at the sky as if awaiting bolts of lightning to strike us.

‘We cannot hold God responsible for such evil,’ explained the rabbi.

‘But why didn’t he stop it?’

‘God gave us free will. He always hopes that we shall love one another as he intended, but we have the free will to choose.’

Gabi shrugged. She sucked thoughtfully on a blade of grass before asking, ‘Is it true that the Jews are going to have their own country in Palestine?’

‘We hope so,’ replied the rabbi. His face was troubled. ‘Out of the ashes of the Holocaust, we may get a Jewish state in our biblical homeland, Israel. There are many countries who feel this is just. We shall know soon.’

I never found out about Gabi’s experiences in Bergen-Belsen, but once I caught her in the garden holding a rose that had fallen on the grass. She smelt the rose for a long, long time, and stroked the red petals.

‘I think maybe God made the flowers, and the kind people and all those things in the world that are beautiful,’ she said to me.

‘I think God would be sad at the way things have turned out,’ I answered awkwardly, because I wasn’t really sure what I thought. ‘But remember we’re here. The family that loved me and hid me shared their food with me to keep me alive.’

‘Maybe the love they had in them was from God, and the Nazis were just plain evil,’ replied Gabi. ‘Maybe God doesn’t understand evil anymore than we do.’

She put the flower in her pocket and walked away.

How long was it since I had thought about God? I remembered the deal I’d made with God when Miri and Erich took off their Jewish stars and went out walking, all those years ago. I thought again about the
emaciated child I’d seen at the hospital window. Was it wrong to blame God? I didn’t know.

I went to Martha’s office. ‘I want to read Freddy’s and Gertrude’s letter now.’

She smiled. ‘Well, that’s wonderful, Rachel. You do remember your German?’

‘Of course,’ I answered. ‘I don’t need to forget it like some of the other children here. I was saved by a German family. My family would have starved without food from a German woman.’

Martha went to her filing cabinet. She came back with a letter. I looked at the German postcode and the crisp handwriting.

I took the letter into the garden and crouched behind a rose bush, hoping that I wouldn’t be disturbed.

My silent Rachel,

Do you speak now? How do you manage without my wardrobe? Have you found another? Do you watch the birds that sit on your window ledge?

Do you remember when we crept down the staircase that night, when all the world was on fire and people did not know in which direction to run?

I think of you often. You must be about fourteen years old now. I am close to sixteen. Almost a man
.

In Germany we all know what happened to the Jews. I feel the shame. I cannot believe that I did not want my grandparents to take you in. I was a child and I hope you forgive me for my lack of understanding.

When they liberated the concentration camps and we Germans saw what they had done in the name of racial
purity, we said we could not believe it. I think, though, that many knew. Too many. Perhaps the world will change now.

If you write, use the address above. We are staying with my grandmother’s sister just outside Frankfurt. The Russians now occupy Leipzig.

I send you my greetings and hope you are well and happy
.

One day when we meet again, please call me Freddy
.

Always, your friend
,

Freddy

There was a letter from Gertrude, too. She was old and ill and I remembered how she stroked my hair, risked her life for me in the air-raids, and told me that times would change. In the letter, written with the spindly writing of old age, she asked me to forgive her for taking my mother’s frying pan.

I replied that very afternoon, sitting at the table in the living room. Peter helped me with some of the German words I needed for my letter.

30 April 1947
,

Dear Freddy,

You won’t believe this but I’ve forgotten a lot of my German. Everyone here speaks only English because we are all from different countries, so that’s all I hear all day.

I am in a beautiful orphanage for Jewish children in England. I go to school, and have lots and lots of friends. And Freddy, I can speak now. Yes, my voice is back. Everyone complains that I don’t stop talking!

I have already been asked once to be adopted but I said no. Any time now the right people will come along and want me.

I remember the night when all the world was on fire, and we sat on the steps and watched. But, Freddy, I try to forget things now. It is because of the stone in my stomach. I shall never forget you, though. Even if you were horrible to me at first, you will always be my friend, Freddy.

Tell dear Gertrude that she should keep using my mother’s frying pan. It’s what Mama would have wanted. Also, tell her that I love her.

I received news about my family through the Red Cross. They died.

From your friend,

Rachel