My Family for the War (22 page)

Resolutely I slipped between some adults so as to first lose myself among unfamiliar children. The art of fleeing consists of taking advantage of unexpected situations. But I didn’t get very far.

“Where do you belong, dear?” One of the WVS women stopped me.

“Camden Elementary School,” I replied, hoping that this school actually existed.

“That must be platform five. I’ll take you there!” She cut a path through the crowd for us, gave Hazel a sympathetic look, and stretched her hand out to her. “Don’t be frightened, darling, I’ll put you right onto the train!”

When Hazel saw her uniform, she immediately let go of my coat and trustingly took the woman’s hand. They walked in front of me, I in the rear. I wouldn’t have a better opportunity. Leaving Hazel alone on the platform wouldn’t have bothered my conscience, but I hadn’t intended for her to be put on the wrong train! I wavered for three valuable seconds.
Just as I finally decided to put my own welfare first, I heard the plaintive cry, “But I’m from Finchley!”

There wasn’t enough room to make a dash for it. I collided with three or four people, then two WVS women came from the front, and that was that. “Frances Shepard, have you lost your mind?” snarled Mrs. Collins as I was handed over to her.

“We wanted to use the loo!” I claimed, trying to release my arm from her talon-like fingers that were digging into my flesh. “Just ask Hazel!”

Half a dozen children said they also needed the bathroom, and there was no question of fleeing now. Sitting on the toilet, I saw Mrs. Collins’s shoes through the crack in the door. The right foot tapped impatiently. “Well, what’s taking so long? I thought it was an emergency!” she sneered.

After a minute I gave up and left the stall with my head hanging.

My schoolmates swarmed, screaming and shoving, into the train. I heaved my suitcase onto the luggage rack, kept my coat on, and took the seat next to the aisle. Hazel had become wary and sat in the compartment farthest from mine.

Finally the doors were closed, and the whistle sounded. I heard the loud hissing of the locomotive as we slowly started moving.

NOW! I sprang out of my seat. Within a fraction of a second I was at the exit, turned the handle with all my strength, threw all my weight against the door, and felt it fly open. The ground below my feet was moving, white steam flew in my face, a black hole opened up between the platform and the
train. For one moment it took my breath away, then I closed my eyes and jumped…

. . . and I was out! I felt a powerful blow and flew through the air, not knowing where, floated as if weightless in the dark space between two seconds that stretched out much longer. In a flash I thought I was dead, crushed between the train and the platform, but I was lying on my stomach, feeling no pain, only a strange, heavy weight on my back that was squeezing the air out of me.

Mrs. Collins climbed off of me, flipped me onto my back and gave me three or four slaps in rapid succession. I was lying in the narrow, dirty space outside the compartment and between two cars, while outside, the landscape rushed by and someone struggled to close the door as the train gathered speed.

They certainly hadn’t imagined that I would try again. I heard Mrs. Collins scream as I tore away from her and threw myself against the door again.

This time there were three of them: Mrs. Collins, the other teacher, and a WVS woman. They dragged me down the aisle, a shrieking, flailing bundle of arms and legs, and Mrs. Collins screeched—not at me, but at the pale, horrified faces crowding the compartment door: “Take a good look, children. This is what it’s like when you come from Germany, and don’t know any better!”

Chapter 12

I lost all sense of time. Were we in the train for two, four, five hours? My own clock seemed to be running backward—I saw Amanda and Uncle Matthew as we said good-bye in front of the school, the pattern of the sunlight on my bedspread when I had woken up that morning; I saw myself writing my first letter to Bekka, over and over.
My foster parents are inviting you to come live with us in London.

I had no doubt the train was going in circles. It was clear that we could only arrive back in London, and this time I wouldn’t spend one minute sitting on the bench. I would walk straight past the tables with the ladies from the committee—I beg your pardon, but my foster parents are waiting, and I’m going home now!

Even when we stopped at a tiny platform in the middle of nowhere and got off, I refused to believe I had been evacuated. And so, on Friday evening, the first of September 1939, we arrived as unexpected guests in Tail’s End. A series of volunteer aid workers swarmed out immediately with Mrs.
Collins to find additional places for us to spend the night. Three hours later I was standing at the front door of the only Jewish family in the village.

Tail’s End. Two dozen houses of rough brick on either side of the one street, an Anglican church, a tiny school. There was a marketplace with a village well and a pub, the Hound and Horn. There was also a post office, a baker, a butcher, and a general store. After walking around for five minutes, you’d seen it all.

“You’ll sleep here,” Mrs. Stone had said, opening the door to a tube-like room containing two cots and a changing table. The room was so narrow that even the gaunt Mrs. Stone brushed against the wall as she walked alongside the cots and the thin mattress leaning there. “When you close the door at night, you can lay the mattress crossways in front of it. You’ll be sleeping with Rachel and Luke, our two youngest. Show me what you’ve brought with you.”

She reached for my suitcase, and I was so taken aback that I immediately handed it over. With a critical look, she laid it on the changing table and started unpacking it, carelessly mixing up my clothing, and felt the travel candle. Finally, she found what she had apparently been looking for: the metal box with my collected letters, photographs, and purse. With a satisfied look she shook the coins into her hand, and I saw my meager savings disappear into her apron.

“They pay me six shillings eight pence a week for your room and board,” she said. “You know, of course, that that doesn’t come close to covering the cost.”

I nodded, ashamed. I had no idea how much six shillings
and eight pence would buy, but I did know that the Shepards hadn’t been paid at all.

“Ooh, that’s nice,” Mrs. Stone said. She reached for the travel candle and took hold of… thin air.

“It was lent to me! It belongs to my foster parents in London,” I cried, held the candlestick behind my back, and stared appalled into her resentful face.

“Just so it’s perfectly clear from the start,” she snapped at me. “We are not your foster parents, we are your hosts, and you will behave accordingly, understood?”

“Of course,” I murmured.

“You can put your suitcase under the bed. And now come with me.”

I closed my suitcase and hurried to follow her. I had seen children in the kitchen as I had arrived, and now I was expecting to be introduced to them, but Mrs. Stone led me directly into the washroom. “Here,” she said, pressing an iron into my hand, adding nastily, “What is it?” when she saw my embarrassed expression. “I suppose you didn’t have to work with your posh London family?”

I swallowed. “It’s Shabbat! We’re not allowed to iron,” I answered feebly.

“I don’t believe I need a child to tell me how to practice my own religion,” Mrs. Stone retorted, and slammed the door behind her.

I am
not
going to cry! I ordered myself. Not because of a couple of days. Not because of a beast like Mrs. Stone! Thief! Breaker of Shabbat! She doesn’t deserve to be cried over!

Soothing contempt spread through me. The two hours
that passed before Mrs. Stone let me out of the washroom went by in a flash. I only wavered in my resolve for a very brief moment—when she discovered two burn holes in the bedclothes and gave me a resounding slap.

“How stupid can you be? You have no trouble opening your mouth for insolent backtalk, but to admit that you don’t know how to iron, well, that’s too much to manage!” she screamed at me. With my head bowed, I sat at the dinner table between her children, whose looks might just as well have burned holes into me.

“Can we trade her in? I don’t like her.” The boy next to me must have been about eight years old. “Shut your mouth, Herbert,” his father answered.

Mr. Stone possessed a not-unfriendly face that for a split second even curled into a smile when he gave me his hand. But one look from Mrs. Stone had put him in his place, and all evening he only spoke that one sentence: “Shut your mouth, Herbert.”

At least now I knew the names of three of the children. The four-year-old must have been Rachel, the baby was Luke—my two roommates. Herbert’s older sister was ten or eleven and didn’t think to introduce herself; I found out the next day that her name was Pearl.

But to be honest, the Stone children didn’t interest me in the slightest. I was so hungry I could hardly think about anything other than the soup that was simmering on the stove. The smell steaming from the pot made me so weak I had to hold on to my bowl with both hands.

But not for long. “So, here you are,” said Mrs. Stone as she detached my right hand from the plate and set Luke in
my lap. She placed a bowl of babies’ porridge in my soup bowl and handed me a spoon, and as I watched the Stones pass the soup, bread, and butter around, I slowly realized that I was responsible for feeding the baby.

And I will
not
cry! I reminded myself with some effort, and dipped the spoon in the porridge.

Unfortunately, I had no experience with babies. I couldn’t be sure if they generally ate so slowly, or if Luke was merely the slowest baby in England. As the Stones filled their bowls for the second time, he was still on my lap, and I had the growing suspicion that he spat out more than I had managed to get in him. Mrs. Stone finally caught on and freed her son from my arms. “You are really the clumsiest child I’ve ever met,” she said, shaking her head, and shoved the pot of soup toward me.

At last! I eagerly reached for the ladle, tried to dip it—and hit metal. I slowly tilted the pot and looked inside. It was as good as empty. As I looked up in disbelief, my eyes met the spiteful sneers of the two older children.

“Dump the rest in your bowl,” Mrs. Stone said indifferently.

I did as I was told and got ten spoonfuls of cold soup and the handful of crumbs that were left in the breadbasket, which I shook into the bowl as well. As I ate, I smiled at the Stones. This is certainly a joke, I thought. They must have hidden my real dinner in the pantry!

“And now you can clean up with me,” Mrs. Stone ordered. “Mind you, remember where everything goes. Starting tomorrow I won’t be helping you anymore.”

Two hours later, as I laid my mattress crossways in front
of the door, I was still expecting someone to come and bring me my dinner. But one after the other, the Stones brushed their teeth at the tiny sink in the washroom and went to bed. In spite of my hopefulness, it became quiet, quieter, and finally completely silent outside the door.

Only Rachel whined in her bed. “I want a story!”

“I don’t know any,” I said, now indeed close to tears. “I’m too hungry.”

“But Mum said you have to tell us our stories now! I’ll call Mum if you don’t!”

I was starting to understand how things worked in this house.

After about four days, Mrs. Collins began to wonder why I came to school with my suitcase every day. “Surely you’re not so bold as to try another escape right under my nose?” she asked distrustfully.

“I can’t leave the suitcase unguarded, or the Stones will steal my things,” I explained truthfully.

Mrs. Collins sighed. “I’ve seldom met a child so prone to exaggeration,” she remarked, and just seeing me drawing breath, she cut me off before I could say anything else. “I know you’d say anything to get back to London, but I can’t do anything about it, do you understand?” she asked irritably. “You’re here now, and until an authorized person turns up and convinces me otherwise, you will stay here!”

The local teachers had decided that their school was too small to house another class. And so we met on the village green, the other children sitting on blankets and I on my suitcase, and Mrs. Collins looking anxiously at the heavens
whenever even the tiniest cloud appeared. She had to teach outdoors and she wasn’t in the mood for any more problems.

“But I’m not lying!” I defended myself with a trembling voice, to which she didn’t respond. She did tolerate my carrying all my possessions around with me after that, though.

If there was anyone in the Stone household who ranked lower than me, it was Dolf, the dog. The large, shaggy mutt was shoved and ordered around and even kicked if he didn’t get out of the way. Even little Rachel called to him disdainfully, “Ey, Dolf!” He and I became friends almost immediately.

“May I take Dolf for a walk?” I asked during the midday break.

Mrs. Stone decided that I could have the afternoon free between washing up after lunch and setting the dinner table. Four hours for me, four hours without the Stones! I didn’t even have to take Luke with me.