Let Me Whisper You My Story (15 page)

I
RAN OUTSIDE
to tell Greta. She was busy shaping a small snow-child. Her cheeks were bright red.

‘I’m very happy for you,’ she said to me as I danced around the snow family holding my letters high in the air. But she didn’t sound happy. She silently stooped to pick up handfuls of snow and returned to moulding the snow family.

I went to the living room and sat at a desk, and quickly wrote two letters, one to Papa and Miri and the other to Freddy.

Dear Papa and Miri,

I cannot put into words how I feel about finding you. I am so happy and I cannot wait to see you both again.

Arrangements will be made here for me to travel to Australia. If only Mama and the rest of the family had survived.

Everyone has been so kind to me. I have so much to tell you. I was saved by a wonderful German family,
Gertrude, Heinrich and Freddy. I missed you every moment we were apart.

I am sure I will love Australia. I am reading about it from books in the school library.

My English is wonderful. I think so, anyway. However, I have forgotten a lot of German words, and Peter, our number one translator here, is helping me to write this in German to you.

I shall write in more detail next letter, but want to get this off to you straight away
.

Soon we shall be together
,

your Rachel

I tore out another sheet of lined paper and wrote:

Dear Freddy,

Can you believe it? My father and sister are alive. They are in Sydney, Australia, and finally, finally we were able to make contact through the Red Cross. I shall see them again.

Freddy, I am so excited. I shall be going by ship to Australia and shall have a bunk bed in a small cabin, and if there is a storm, I shall sleep underneath it!

Please tell Gertrude I love her and my mother would have loved her too. Mama died, you know
.

Your dear friend
,

Rachel

‘S
O
,
YOU
’
RE GOING
away.’ We’d finished eating dinner. Greta and I were sitting with other children on a sofa
near the open fire in the lounge room. Greta was struggling to look happy. She couldn’t manage it. Tears rolled down her cheeks.

‘You are so lucky, Rachel,’ one of the boys said. ‘You’ll be going to Australia. They have wonderful beaches there.’

‘You have your father now, and a sister,’ said another child. ‘I wish that could happen to me.’

In my newly found happiness I’d forgotten about the orphans at Hartfield. What would become of them? Some would get adopted, but what about the others? What about Greta?

I reached out and hugged her. ‘I’m happy for me. But I want the same for you, too. For all of you. Tell me the truth, Greta, do you have an aunt and uncle in England?’

‘I am so tired. I’m going to bed,’ said Greta, and she stood up and left the room.

The next day we were in the garden together. Snow was still falling, covering the trees with a white shroud. We trudged through the snow in our heavy coats and gloves, cheeks pink with cold.

Snowflakes dotting her face, Greta turned to me suddenly and said, ‘All right. I’ll answer that question you asked me last night. No, I don’t have an aunt and uncle in England. I have no-one in England. And no, before you ask me, the Queen and King and Princesses are not my friends.’

‘Well, you know, that’s not such a surprise. Nobody really thought they were.’

‘And no-one will ever adopt me, because I’m not special, I’m not cute, I am not a small child, and I like to make up stories to make my life interesting.’

‘But why stories that obviously aren’t true? Why the royal family?’

‘Their lives are like fairy tales. I knew it was silly, but for a moment there when I first arrived at Hartfield everyone wondered if it was true. One of the children asked me when the royal family was coming to Hartfield so she could wear her best dress, and I loved that. Everyone was envious of my connections. It’s part of me now. Sometimes I even see Princess Elizabeth and myself on a double swing together, playing and talking. Next to you, she is my best friend.’

‘Stop it, Greta. She isn’t your best friend. She’s a married woman, not a little girl. You aren’t a little girl either.’

‘Hmm. Yes, I suppose I do know that, so you can leave me alone now.’

Snow fell silently on bare branches. Was it true that each snowflake was different from the other, like our fingerprints, like all the different stories that made up the miracle of surviving the Holocaust?

‘Greta, what happened to you in the war?’

‘I can’t talk about it.’

‘Greta, you’re my best friend. You make me laugh. You made me feel better when I cried.’

Greta put her gloved hands in her pockets. ‘Nobody really wants me. Not even the royal family. I thought the Queen of England was supposed to be the mother of all the English people. I wrote to her, you know. No, really, I’m telling the truth. I did. I received a formal letter back from Buckingham Palace. The Queen got someone else to write to me. Imagine that. She thanked me for my
letter but said it’s impossible for her to adopt me, or something like that. You can imagine how I feel.’

‘Did you really write to the Queen? Really? Come on, let’s go inside now. My breath will turn to ice soon. Come inside.’

L
ETTERS WENT BACKWARDS
and forwards between Papa, Miri and me. Then a letter came from Freddy. In the meantime Greta seemed to have settled down, although her fibs about her imaginary friends were more frequent. When Martha handed me my letter I opened it quickly. A small photograph slipped out of the letter. Greta, who was with me, grabbed it. ‘Ooh! He’s handsome.’

‘Give it to me. That’s mine.’

She handed over a passport size photograph. Freddy. His arms were folded. He was all grown-up and no longer skinny. I thought he might even have muscles, but it was hard to tell by the suit he was wearing. His blond hair was combed to one side on his head and he was smiling at me—for me.

‘You’ve gone red. Bet you like him.’

‘He and his family saved me. Of course I like him.’ I turned, holding the photograph away from Greta. I ran to the dormitory ahead of her and hid under my bunk bed to read Freddy’s letter:

Dear Rachel,

I am very happy you have found your father and sister. I am sorry about your mama. At least, though, now you have some family.

My grandmother died. She always spoke of you, Rachel. She said that saving you reminded her that it’s possible to make a difference. This is what she has taught me.

There has been no word from my father so it seems he died too. I live with my great-aunt, my grandmother’s sister. I am working in a shop by day baking bread (a good place to be when the country is on food rations) and I study at night. I want to be a teacher. A good teacher. I want to be part of rebuilding Germany from the inside out. You can put up buldings but rebuilding thoughts and ideas is different.

I have an English friend here who stayed on when the Red Cross left Germany. My English is terrible, but I’m learning, because one day, Rachel, I have to see you again.

I hear in Australia they talk English strangely and everyone has nicknames. Maybe, when I come to visit, you can call me Fred.

I am enclosing a photograph
.

Your dear friend
,

Fred(dy)

‘Let me see.’ Greta had discovered me under the bed and immediately crept under it to join me. ‘Tell me what he says. You know I can’t read German anymore.’

‘Bet you can if you try,’ I replied. My face felt hot. Freddy was coming to Australia to see me.

Greta wriggled closer to me. ‘Oh, you like him. Let me look at his photograph again. Rachel has a boyfriend. Rachel has a boyfriend,’ she teased.

‘Maybe,’ I answered smugly. ‘And when I move to Australia he’s coming to see me.’

Greta abruptly twisted herself away from me. ‘You’ll be glad to see the back of me,’ she said, as she stood up.

I didn’t go after her. She was my best friend, but I had so much to think about now. My father, my sister, and now Freddy coming one day to Australia.

I finally got up from under the bed and put my letters under my pillow. I looked around for Greta but couldn’t see her. I was sorry for her, but I felt so excited I wanted to slide down the bannisters.

Later, as it was beginning to get dark, I searched for her again. I couldn’t find her anywhere. I even checked under her bed in the dormitory. You never knew with Greta where she’d turn up. It was then I noticed that the world’s longest scarf had gone.

I thought quickly. Nobody would touch my scarf. No-one. Everyone knew what it meant to me. If Greta had taken it, there had to be a reason. I ran from room to room in the house. No Greta.

I found Martha inside her office at her desk, typing a letter. She looked up, her nimble fingers still on the keys. ‘Goodness gracious, Rachel, your cheeks are flushed.’

‘Martha, Greta’s disappeared. I’ve searched everywhere for her, and she’s not in the house. I think she’s taken my scarf too.’

Martha stopped typing immediately. ‘Oh, I hope she hasn’t rushed out in the snow. It’s getting late.’

‘Why does she do these things? What’s wrong with her, Martha?’

‘Greta’s not well. She hasn’t been for a long time. She makes up stories to escape the past.’

‘I know that.’

Martha stood up. ‘We have to find her quickly. It will be dark soon. Tell me, you’re her best friend. Where would she go?’

‘I don’t know. I have no idea.’ My mind was a blank.

Martha called for Peter, who asked the other adults working there to help. We dressed warmly and holding torches began searching the grounds. We couldn’t see Greta anywhere. She seemed to have been swallowed up by the swirls of snow that lay everywhere.

‘Don’t go further than the fence,’ Martha said as she caught up with me. ‘We’ll let the police know. We have to pray that she’s safe. Peter’s checking the outside sheds.’

We continued to search. A dusty moon appeared then disappeared behind snow clouds. The snow deepened. Even with a thick coat and gloves, I still felt half frozen.

The police arrived with long-beamed torches and joined the search. The Hartfield children pressed their noses against the windows of the house, watching.

We searched and searched. Eventually, I was sent back to the house. Martha came in and the other children went to bed, though I doubted that anyone slept. I crept downstairs in my pyjamas and sat in an armchair by the frosty window with a blanket around me, watching snow fall against the window and the beams of torches light up the darkness outside.

I searched my memory for clues. Had she ever said anything to me that would help us find her? Maybe she’d gone onto the main road and had hitched a ride
somewhere. Somehow, I couldn’t imagine Greta doing this. Her cheerful chatter hid a lot of fear and I couldn’t see her on a dark road asking a stranger for a ride.

Why had she taken my scarf? She’d said how lucky I was to have the scarf, to have a reminder of my mother, and how lucky I was to have my sister’s journal. Suddenly I remembered her saying the only place she felt really safe was in her ‘wardrobe’. That was it. Her wardrobe was in the hollow of the oak tree near the stream.

Dressed in my pyjamas with the blanket around me I ran outside the house to where Peter and Martha were taking a tray of hot cocoa to the searchers. ‘Martha,’ I gasped. ‘I know where to find Greta.’

Together with three policemen, Martha, Peter and I raced to the rear of the house, to the outskirts of the boundary, and from there we plodded with torches through the woods to the old oak tree adjoining a small stream.

Martha shone a torch inside the hollow. Sure enough, there was Greta, curled up with the world’s longest scarf wrapped around her neck and covering her chest. She was barely conscious but managed to whisper, ‘What are you doing here?’

Peter reached inside the hollow and pulled her out. He carried her to the house, and we wrapped her in blankets and sat her in front of the fire. Greta’s lips were blue and her face was the colour of white chalk.

She closed her eyes, then stirred, and her eyelids fluttered. I began to panic.

‘I’m not sure about an ambulance. I think she’s going to be all right,’ said one of the policemen. Martha
propped up Greta’s head and wet her lips with warm tea, and Greta opened her mouth and drank. Slowly, colour returned to her cheeks and lips.

‘Good thing she had that long scarf around her. It doubled as a blanket,’ one of the policemen said. ‘She wouldn’t have made it through the night otherwise.’ I took the scarf and held it against me.

Peter suggested a nice warming tea and the policemen and helpers followed him into the kitchen.

‘I’m running you a hot bath, Greta,’ said Martha, helping Greta to her feet, ‘then it’s off to bed.’

Later, when Greta was tucked in under heavy blankets I whispered to her from my own bed, ‘Are you going to be okay?’

‘I don’t know.’

G
RETA DID NOT
speak at breakfast, which frustrated the other children who wanted answers. ‘Just tell me why,’ asked Gabi. Greta grunted and eventually I said, ‘Leave her alone. She’ll be all right. She just needs time to herself.’

After breakfast, Martha asked that we go to her office. Greta sat on an armchair in front of the fireplace. She looked at the flames.

‘So, Greta, the truth this time. Begin. Tell us your story.’

Tears ran down Greta’s face. She wiped them with a hanky, then looked sideways at me.

‘I
am
happy for you, Rachel. I’m sorry I ruined your day. I’m sorry I took the world’s longest scarf. I didn’t mean to.’

‘Greta, your story—the truth, please,’ implored Martha.

‘All right, Martha. Give me a moment.’ Greta took a deep breath. Each dancing flame that she stared at became a memory and the pupils of her eyes reflected pinpoints of light. ‘We were on a railway platform. We were to be taken away. All around us were Nazi guards. My father had gone before us. I think I told him I loved him before he left, but I can’t be sure.’