Munich Signature (21 page)

There was still a glimmer of daylight when Murphy and Elisa guided Charles toward the small water taxi that would carry them the rest of the way to London. The great Thames River was a nautical highway for these boatmen who ferried passengers from the great liners to their ultimate destinations.

Ten watermen gabbed together on the wharf like an exclusive club. There was some prearranged order that ordained who would take the next customer. Until each man’s turn came up, he seemed not to notice the disembarking passengers. The watermen smoked their pipes and cigarettes with an air of nonchalance, like country squires after a partridge dinner. Conversation was split evenly between politics and the weather, both of which were equally changeable and gloomy lately. Leather-skinned faces often turned toward the sky above the Houses of Parliament.

“Did y’ hear ol’ Chamberlain speak over the wireless last night? The man ain’t foolin’ no one, I say. If things is really gonna get better, then why, I ask y’, does Chamberlain carry that umbrella everywhere?”

“He’s scared of them pigeons in Trafalgar Square, that’s what!”

“Aye! The ol’ man is scared one of them birds will think ’e is a bronze statue and dirty ’s ’ead!”

“Naw! Chamberlain carries that umbrella in case Hitler decides t’ drop bombs on England, that’s all!”

Murphy cleared his throat to get their attention. “Personally I like the pigeon theory,” he remarked.

The smiles of the boatmen faded. One of them had forgotten that his turn was up. Brims of caps tipped respectfully. Amusement disappeared from squinting eyes as the watermen appraised their unattended customers.

“It’s your party, Darcy!” Hands shoved the boatman Darcy out of the circle.

Darcy was clad in soiled brown corduroy trousers and a jacket that matched. He wore a black eye patch over his left eye, and his embarrassed grin displayed a blank space where his front teeth should have been. He wore his boatman’s badge fastened to his jacket. He flipped it with his thumb and sizing them up said, “Fares t’ the Savoy is six pence for each—you an’ the lady an’ the lad. Three pence for each trunk, sir. Tariff is fixed for us with the badge.” He said this last so that Murphy would know he would not be cheated. He had already begun to hoist the trunk to his shoulder. Charles clung to the cello case. “An’ y’ll carry that yourself, lad?” He smiled toothlessly at Charles, who valiantly tried to lug the heavy case by himself. Finally Murphy reached down for the handle, and the two of them lifted it together.

A pleasant breeze drifted over the Thames as the water taxi carried them past the ancient sites that lined the river. The boatman kept a running monologue going on behalf of the trio. He pointed at each landmark and explained the history as if he had built the place with his own hands and then written the script for showing it to the tourists.

“First time in London, lad?” he asked Charles, but did not wait for an answer. “Well, then, that right there is the Tower of London! First it was a great fortress, see, but seein’ as how the river is damp, they turned it into a prison for traitors where they waited till the axeman chopped off their ’eads. ’Course, King ’enry the Eighth also chopped off the heads of several of ’is wives. Then Mary chopped off the heads of the Protestants, and Elizabeth chopped off the ’eads of the Catholics.” He pointed first to Tower Bridge and then to London Bridge. “Why, I can’t even count the number of fine English ’eads what ’ave grinned down from the spikes on me ancestors!” With hardly a breath drawn he squinted his good eye at Murphy and said, “And y’re a Yank, ain’t y’?”

“Yes, I—,” Murphy began, but it did no good.

The boatman continued his monologue. He tapped his patch and described its origin with all the enthusiasm of the other landmarks. “I’m partial t’ Yanks. Grew fond of ’em when we fought the Huns together in the Great War! Tha’s where I lost me eye and picked up a bit of shrapnel in me leg as well. Bothers me a bit when it rains. Bothers me most always. Like now. As for losin’ me choppers—” he grinned at Charles, who seemed fascinated with his mouth—“I just got up one mornin’ and they come out like the stars. An’ I tol’ me missus she musta belted me in me sleep ’cause me teeth was just lyin’ there in me bowl of porridge! What do y’ think of that?”

Charles, understanding very little of the man’s prattling, shrugged in response.

“A quiet one, ain’t y’?” The boatman did not seem terribly disappointed that Charles was no competition for the airwaves. Ten minutes more he traversed the well-trod pathways of his memory for items that might be of interest to newcomers. “Why, everyone has ’eard the nursery rhyme ‘London Bridge’! Y’ve ’eard it, lad! Sing it with ol’ Darcy!” Then the boatman began a rousing solo rendition of “London Bridge.” He stopped on the line. “Take the keys an’ lock her up . . . ” The shadow of the great old bridge loomed above them. “See them pilings? Why, the old heathens used t’ protect the bridge from harm! Bet y’ didn’t know that, eh?”

Just past London Bridge and round a bend of the Thames, the water taxi slipped into place along a row of boats at the dock below the Savoy Hotel. “Educational.” Murphy fumbled for the tip and the fare as Elisa smiled and then began her own conversation with the boatmen in the Czech language.

The smile of Darcy faded into a hurt look. “Didn’t understand a word I said, did she?” he asked Murphy.

Elisa was now thanking him in French, then again in German; and then in Italian she briefly told him that he might apply for a position as a travel guide to Mussolini and Hitler together if they ever visited London. No doubt such tales would change their opinions about the gentle and civilized British.

“What’s she saying?” the boatman whispered to Murphy.

“She says you would make a wonderful tour guide,” Murphy replied.

Murphy tipped him enough so that he smiled happily. “Any time, gov’! Just ask for me by name. I got it all memorized, y’ see.” He bowed gallantly before Elisa. “When y’ learn a bit of the King’s English, miss, come back an’ I’ll tell it t’ y’ all again so y’ know a bit about English culture and civilization, see?” Not waiting for a reply, Murphy took Elisa by the elbow and nudged her gently toward the steps that led up from the docks.

***

The Dolphin Hotel on High Street in Southampton was not an elegant hotel, but it was clean and inexpensive which, for Bubbe Rosenfelt, was all that mattered. She and Herbert had stayed in the little establishment dozens of times. Herbert complained of the noise from the trains across from Radley’s and the enormous Southwestern Railway Hotel, so staying at the Dolphin had become a habit that Bubbe had not altered even after Herbert had died.

Occasionally a new clerk would cock a suspicious eyebrow when he read the name Rosenfelt. Obviously Jewish. Why don’t they go to Ramsgate for their holiday where there is a synagogue and a college for Jews?

Whenever clerks put on airs, Bubbe simply rang the bell again to call the manager. For thirty-eight years the management of the Dolphin had remained in the capable hands of Mr. Tyler, a stout, phlegmatic man with a wooden face unmoved by any trace of a smile—except when he saw “Missus Rosenfelt” had returned to his hotel.

This morning a young, haughty man with the precise accent of one who had attended public school received Mrs. Rosenfelt. He sniffed, and his mouth turned down at the corners when he read the old woman’s signature. “So sorry, madame, we may be full tonight. The season, you know. Perhaps you would be wise to check elsewhere. Radley’s, perhaps. Or the Southwestern Railway Hotel.”

Without replying, Bubbe banged her hand against the bell on the desk. She waited a moment and then rang again.

“I am certain Radley’s would have a place for you,” the young man suggested again.

The cherrywood door behind him swung open and Mr. Tyler ambled out, looking as weary and uninterested as ever. Bubbe smiled as the man’s fleshy lids opened with happy surprise at the sight of her.

“Why it’s Missus Rosenfelt herself!” he cried.

The young clerk looked at him in amazement. He had never seen Mr. Tyler smile, let alone display excitement.

“So good to see you again.” Bubbe extended her hand. It had been nearly three years since she had seen Mr. Tyler. He seemed a bit balder and a bit wider, but otherwise unchanged.

“I’ve though of you often!” He was already out the swinging door to gather up her luggage. “Bless my soul! I thought you might have gotten ill or died without letting me know!”

“Would I do such a thing after thirty years?” She laughed.

“What room number are you in?”

“Why . . . Bubbe looked momentarily confused. “Your clerk tells me there is no room for me here and suggested Radley’s.”

The smile on Tyler’s face dissolved and turned to stone again. “What? No room?”

The clerk was now terrified. Work was so hard to get nowadays in England, even if one had a public school education. “Well, I thought—”

“You thought, you thought, you thought!” Mr. Tyler scowled. “Give me the key to number twelve.”

“Twelve?” This was too much for the clerk. A suite with a sitting area and a private bath. Who was this old Jewish woman, anyway? Royalty? A member of Lord Montefiore’s family? He snatched the key from its hook and handed it reverently to Mr. Tyler.

“Twelve indeed for our Missus Rosenfelt!” Mr. Tyler huffed and puffed toward the aged metal cage of the lift. “Have you been in America? Or still all the time in Hamburg?”

“Germany,” she replied flatly. Her tone told him everything. It was happening again. She had predicted it before the Great War in 1914, and now there was more than a hint in her voice that war was coming. “And am I glad to be out of there, I can tell you, Mr. Tyler! Oy! Such a place! In Hamburg they are building battleships! And what battleships they are, too!”

“And your family?” he asked, struggling to stack the luggage in the lift and squeeze in after it. As he slid the grid shut, he turned back toward the wide-eyed clerk and said indignantly, “Radley’s, indeed!”

Mr. Tyler refused her tip, as he had ever since she had become a widow. He loitered in the corridor and listened sympathetically as she spoke of Klaus and Maria and the children onboard the
Darien
. Had there been any word of a ship of refugees near Southampton?

Tyler considered the question and told her that he had not heard of anything unusual, and that certainly the arrival of a freighter full of German refugees would have caused a stir in Southampton.

“I am sailing on the Queen Mary,” she said confidently. “And plan to have their papers in order by the time they arrive.”

“They will land in New York, then?”

Bubbe Rosenfelt did not know how to answer. She was unsure where they would land. After all, travel arrangements had not been made by the offices of Thomas Cook. There was no itinerary. “My granddaughter and her family will be in New York, of course. That is where I will be. I began there and will end my days there.”

“I have always had a hope you might settle here in Southampton.” Mr. Tyler blushed a bit. Embarrassing for a man of seventy-three, but Bubbe Rosenfelt was still a handsome woman for her age. “Well, I’d best give that clerk a talking to.”

“Don’t discharge him, Mr. Tyler,” she said gently. “After all, the fellow thought he was doing his social duty for the sake of such a fine house.”

The lower lip jutted thoughtfully forward. “Then I shall teach him the manners he should have properly learned in school, and I shall send him to the parson for a bit of a history lesson about the chap who said there was no room at the inn, eh?” He tipped an imaginary hat to Mrs. Rosenfelt, then moved with uncharacteristic determination toward the lift.

Bubbe stood at the door and listened to him mumble to himself all the way down, and she pitied the snobbish young clerk who had tried to send her away.

***

Shimon opened his eyes at the sound of children whispering beside his cot. The faces of five well-scrubbed little girls blinked back at him as if he were a strange creature pulled from the sea.

The oldest girl held a green glass beer bottle filled with a bouquet of five white paper lilies. The second oldest nudged her hard in the ribs and hissed, “Well, give it to him,
silly
!” The other girls joined in. “Give him the flowers, Trudy! Give him the flowers!”

“Hello,” Shimon said in a hoarse voice that made them all fall silent as they gawked at him a moment longer.

At last the smallest of the girls moved forward a step. She put her chubby hands on the metal frame of the cot and leaned closer to study the bandages on Shimon’s head. “Hello,” she said in a small voice. “My name is Ada-Marie. Does it hurt very bad?”

Shimon cleared his throat. He was uncertain of his voice. It seemed like such a long time since he had spoken to a child that he was not sure his vocal cords would work for the occasion. “Ada-Marie is a very pretty name,” he croaked. He did not reply to her question about the pain, which was still intense.

The other girls then crowded forward. “And I am Gretchen.”

“I am Katrina.”

“My name is Louise, and she is Trudy.” Louise jerked a thumb at Trudy. “Trudy is the oldest, which is why she gets to hold the flowers.”

“But we all made one for you!” Gretchen said.

“Even me!” Little Ada-Marie touched a dilapidated flower with a pudgy finger.

“Mama helped Ada-Marie,” Louise explained with an air of authority. “But Trudy thought of the idea.”

At that, Trudy blushed and stepped forward with the rest to present the bouquet to the invalid stranger. “We hope you get better soon,” she whispered, her blush growing deeper as he took the bottle in his massive hand and held it on the pillow.

“Yes!” Ada-Marie clapped her hands. “We are glad you did not die like the grown-ups said—”

A hard nudge from Gretchen silenced the little one. “Ada-Marie! Don’t say such things!”

“Don’t push, or I will tell Mama!”

From behind the little chorus the doctor chided, “That is enough, girls. We must let our patient rest.”

Shimon looked pained. He did not want them to go. It had been so long . . . too long . . . since he head heard small voices utter kind words to him. “Please,” he gasped, “just a minute more. Stay.” It was ridiculous, he knew, but there were tears in his eyes. He blinked them away and tried to smile. Flowers. Paper lilies made by children. Had he ever seen anything so beautiful before?