Anne Frank's Tales from the Secret Annex (6 page)

W
HEN THE TIME
came to decide whether or not to let our big back room, we had to fight hard to overcome our pride, for who is used to having a stranger, much less a paying one, in the house?

But when times are hard and the rent is badly needed, you have to put aside your pride, and lots more besides. Which is just what we did. The back bedroom was cleared out and furnished with odds and ends, though there were far too few of those for the stylish bed-sitting-room we had in mind.

So my father set off, poking around auctions and public sales, coming home one day with this gem, and the next day with that one. After three weeks, we had a pretty wastepaper basket and an adorable tea table, but we still needed two armchairs and a decent wardrobe.

My father set out again. This time, as a special treat, he took me along. We arrived at the auction hall and sat down on a row of wooden benches, next to a couple of
frazzled junk dealers and assorted shady characters. We waited, and waited, and waited. We could have waited till a new day dawned, because they were auctioning only porcelain that day!

Disappointed, we retraced our steps, only to return the next day, not very hopeful, to try again. But…this time we were in luck, and my father was able to snap up a really beautiful oak wardrobe and two leather club armchairs. To celebrate our new purchases and what we hoped would be the speedy arrival of our lodger, we treated ourselves to tea and cake and went home in good spirits.

But, oh dear, when the armchairs and wardrobe arrived the next day and had been moved into the room, my mother discovered that the wardrobe had these strange little traces of sawdust. My father took a look…and found that it was indeed riddled with woodworm. It’s just the kind of thing they don’t put on the tag, nor is it possible to see these things in a dark auction hall.

After this discovery, we took a closer look at the armchairs. Surprise, surprise, they were also infested with woodworm. We called the auction hall and asked them to pick up the items as soon as possible. They came, and my mother heaved a sigh of relief when the auction furniture was finally through the door. My father couldn’t help sighing either – at the thought of how much money he had lost.

A few days later, my father ran into a friend who had a few pieces of furniture he was willing to lend us until we could find something better. So the problem was finally solved.

Then we sat down and wrote an ad to be hung in the window of the bookshop on the corner, and agreed to pay for it to be displayed for a week. Soon people were coming to look at the room. The first was an elderly gentleman hoping to find a place for his unmarried son. Everything was almost settled when the son himself spoke up, and he said such crazy things that my mother seriously began to wonder if he had all his marbles. She was right, since the elderly gentleman hesitantly admitted that his son was a bit out of the ordinary. You wouldn’t believe how fast she showed those two the door.

Dozens of people came and went, until one day the door opened to a short, fat, middle-aged man who was willing to pay a lot and had few demands, so he was quickly accepted. This gentleman actually gave us more pleasure than trouble. Every Sunday he brought chocolate for the children and cigarettes for the adults, and more than once he took us all to the cinema. He stayed with us for a year and a half, then moved into his own flat, together with his mother and sister. Later, he used to drop by from time to time and swear that he’d never had such a good time as he’d had with us.

Once more we put an ad in the window and once more our doorbell was rung by young and old, short and tall. One of them was a fairly young woman wearing the same kind of bonnet they wear in the Salvation Army, so we quickly dubbed her ‘Salvation Army Josephine’. She got the room, but she wasn’t as nice to share the house with as the fat man. First of all, she was terribly messy, leaving things all over the place. Second, and more important, she
had a fiancé who was often drunk, and he was even less charming to have around. One night, for instance, we were startled out of our sleep by the doorbell. My father got up to take a look and found himself confronted with the inebriated fiancé, who kept clapping him on the shoulder and saying, over and over again, ‘We’re mates, aren’t we? Yeah, we’re real mates!’ Bang…the door was slammed in his face.

When the war broke out here in May 1940, we gave her notice and let the room to a thirty-year-old man of our acquaintance who was also engaged. He was nice, but he had one failing: he was terribly spoiled. One time, during the winter, when we were having to economize on the electricity, he complained bitterly of the cold – a shameful exaggeration, since the heat in his room was turned up as high as it would go. But you have to humour your lodgers sometimes, so he was given permission to switch on the electric fire occasionally for an hour or two. What do you think he did? He kept that fire turned on full blast all day long. We begged and pleaded with him to economize a bit, but it didn’t help. The electricity meter kept ticking faster and faster, so one day my fearless mother took the fuse out of the box and disappeared for the rest of the afternoon. She then blamed the fire for supposedly blowing the fuse, and the young man was obliged to sit in the cold. Nevertheless, he was also with us for a year and a half, until he left to get married.

Once again the room was empty. My mother was about to place another ad when a friend called up and foisted a divorced man on us who was in urgent need of
a room. He was a tall man, about thirty-five years old, with glasses and a very unpleasant face. We didn’t want to disappoint our friend, so we let the room to him. He too was engaged, and his fiancée often came to the house. Not long before the wedding they quarrelled and broke up, and he rushed headlong into a marriage with someone else.

Just about then we moved and finally got rid of our lodgers (hopefully once and for all)!

Friday, 15 October 1943

I
WAS SEVENTEEN
, a pretty young girl with curly black hair, mischievous eyes and…lots of ideals and illusions. I was sure that someday, somehow, my name would be on everyone’s lips, my picture in many a starry-eyed teenager’s photo album.

Exactly how I’d become a celebrity or what direction my career would take was of little concern to me. When I was fourteen, I used to think, ‘All in good time,’ and now that I’m seventeen, I still think that. My parents suspected almost nothing of my plans and I was smart enough to keep them to myself, since I had the feeling that if I ever got a chance to be famous they wouldn’t like it and that, at least to start with, I’d be better off on my own.

You mustn’t think that I took my daydreams seriously or that I thought of nothing but fame. On the contrary, I studied as hard as ever and always had my nose in a book – for my own pleasure.

At the age of fifteen, I passed my exams and switched
from a three-year grammar school to a language school. In the mornings I went to school and in the afternoons I did my homework and played tennis.

One day (it was autumn), I was at home, cleaning out my junk cupboard, which was filled with boxes of every shape and kind, when I came across a shoebox marked ‘Film Stars’, in great big letters. The moment I laid eyes on it I remembered that I’d promised my parents to throw it out and that I’d probably tucked it away where nobody could find it.

Curious, I lifted the lid, took out those neat little bundles and started removing the elastic bands. I was so engrossed in those made-up faces that I couldn’t stop, and two hours later, when someone tapped me on the shoulder, I jumped and looked up from where I was sitting on the floor, surrounded by a mound of clippings and boxes. They were stacked so high that I could barely step over them to go and have a cup of tea.

Later, when I was clearing up the mess, I put the
film-star
box to one side. That evening, as I was poring over it again, I came across something that I couldn’t get out of my mind: an envelope filled with pictures, big and small, of the Lane family, whose three daughters, I read, were film stars. I also found the girls’ address, so…I picked up a pen and paper and began writing a letter in English to Priscilla Lane, the youngest of the three daughters.

Without telling a soul, I posted this little epistle. In it, I wrote that I’d love to have pictures of Priscilla and her sisters and asked her to please answer my letter since I took a keen interest in her entire family.

I waited for more than two months, and though I didn’t want to admit it to myself, I’d actually lost hope of ever getting an answer. It was hardly surprising, since I realized that if the Lane sisters had to write long letters to all their fans and send each of them a photograph, they’d find themselves, after only a few weeks, doing nothing all day but answering their correspondence.

But then one morning…just when I’d stopped expecting a reply, my father handed me an envelope addressed to ‘Miss Anne Franklin’, which I eagerly ripped open. My family was curious to know what it was, so, after telling them about my letter, I read Priscilla’s answer out loud.

She wrote that she couldn’t send me any pictures without first knowing more about me, but that she’d be prepared to write back if I would tell her more about myself and my family. I replied, in all truth, that I was much more interested in her as a person than as an actress. I wanted to know if she went out in the evening, if Rosemary made as many films as she did, etc., etc. Much later, she gave me permission to call her by her nickname, Pat. Apparently Priscilla was so taken with my ‘writing style’, as she put it, that she was more than happy to send me long letters in return.

Since our correspondence was entirely in English, my parents could hardly object; after all, it was excellent practice for me. In the letters that followed, Priscilla told me that she spent most of her days at the studios, and outlined her daily schedule. She corrected my mistakes and posted the letters back to me, though she wanted me
to return them. In the meantime, she also sent a series of pictures.

Though Priscilla was already twenty years old, she was neither engaged nor married; still, it didn’t bother me in the least, and I was terribly proud of my film-star friend.

And so it went throughout the winter. Then one day, in late spring, I received a letter from the Lanes, in which Priscilla asked me if I’d like to fly to California and stay with her for two months during the summer. I jumped up and down so hard I nearly hit the ceiling, but I hadn’t counted on my parents’ numerous objections: I couldn’t travel on my own, I couldn’t possibly accept such an invitation, I didn’t have enough clothes, I couldn’t stay away that long…and all the other objections that worried parents have when it comes to their offspring. But I had my heart set on going to America, and I was determined to go.

I wrote and told Priscilla of all these objections, and she came up with a solution to every one. In the first place, I wouldn’t have to travel on my own, since Priscilla’s companion would be coming to The Hague for four weeks to visit her relatives and I could fly back with her. Some kind of escort could surely be arranged for the return trip.

Naturally I’d get to see a lot of California. But my parents still objected to the plan, this time on the grounds that they didn’t know the family, and that I might feel out of place…

I was furious. It was as though they begrudged me the opportunity of a lifetime. Priscilla was being incredibly
nice and considerate, and the upshot of all the fuss was that, after a personal letter from Mrs Lane, the argument was finally decided in my favour.

I studied hard during May and June. When Priscilla wrote that her companion would be arriving in Amsterdam on 18 July, my preparations for the big trip began in earnest.

On the eighteenth, Father and I went to the station to meet her. Priscilla had sent me a picture, so I picked her out in the crowd almost immediately. Miss Kalwood was a small woman with greying blonde hair who talked a lot and spoke incredibly fast, but she looked quite pleasant and nice.

Father, who had been in America and spoke excellent English, talked to Miss Kalwood, and every once in a while I put in a word or two.

We had agreed that Miss Kalwood would stay at our house for a week before going back, and the week simply flew by. Even before the first day was over she and I had become friends. I was so excited on 25 July that I couldn’t swallow a single bite of breakfast.

Miss Kalwood, on the other hand, was as cool as a cucumber. But then, this wasn’t her first flight. The entire family went to Schiphol Airport to see us off. At last… at long last, my trip to America had begun.

We flew for nearly five days. On the evening of the fifth day, we arrived at a place not far from Hollywood. Priscilla and her sister Rosemary, who is one year older, met us at the airport. I was rather tired from the journey, so we quickly drove to a nearby hotel.

The next morning, we had a leisurely breakfast before getting back in the car, which Rosemary herself drove. We reached the Lanes’ house in just over three hours, and I was given a warm welcome. Mrs Lane showed me to an adorable room with a balcony, which was to be mine for the next two months.

It was not difficult to feel at ease in the hospitable Lane home, where there was a constant buzz of activity and fun, where you stumbled over any number of cats with every step you took, where the three famous stars did more to help their mother than an ordinary teenager like me had ever done at home and where there was so much to see. I quickly got used to speaking a foreign language, especially since I had known a bit of English before I came.

Priscilla was free during the first two weeks of my stay and showed me round much of the surrounding area. Almost every day we went to the beach, and little by little I got to know people whose names I’d heard so often. Madge Bellamy was one of Priscilla’s best friends, and she frequently went with us on our sightseeing trips.

People who knew Priscilla would never have guessed that she was so much older than I was. She and I were simply friends. After the first two weeks, Priscilla went back to work at Warner Bros., and they let me go to the studio too, which was sheer bliss. I went with her to her dressing room and stayed there while she was busy with the takes.

She finished early on the first day, so she took me on a tour of the studio. ‘Hey, Anne,’ she suddenly said. ‘I’ve got a great idea. Tomorrow morning, why don’t you go down
to one of those casting offices, where all the beautiful girls go, and see if they’ve got anything for you. Just for fun, of course!’

‘Oh, I’d like that,’ I replied, and the next day I really did go to a casting office. It was unbelievably busy, with a long queue of girls waiting outside the door. I joined them and after half an hour found myself on the other side of the door. Though I’d made it inside, it still wasn’t my turn; there were at least twenty-five girls ahead of me. So I waited again, for an hour or two, until my turn came.

A bell rang, and I bravely stepped inside the office, where a middle-aged man was seated behind a desk. His greeting was fairly abrupt. He asked my name and address and was very surprised to hear that I was staying at the Lanes’. When the questions were over, he looked me up and down again and said, ‘Are you sure you want to be a movie star?’

‘Yes, sir, very much, if you think I have the talent,’ I replied.

He pressed a buzzer and immediately a smartly dressed girl came in. She motioned for me to follow her. She opened a door, and for a moment all I could do was blink, since the room was filled with a blinding bright light.

A young man behind a very intricate camera greeted me in a friendlier way than the older man in the office, and told me to sit on a high stool. He took a few pictures, then rang for the girl, who led me back to the ‘old’ man. He promised to let me know whether or not they wanted me. Delighted, I turned down the road to the Lanes’ house.

A week went by before I heard from Mr Harwich (Priscilla had told me his name). He wrote that the pictures looked quite good and that he would see me the following day at three o’clock.

This time I was ushered in ahead of the others because I had been sent for. Harwich asked me if I’d like to model for a company that made tennis rackets. The job was just for one week. After hearing what the pay was, I said yes. A call was made to the tennis manufacturer, and I met him the same afternoon.

The next day I reported to a photo studio, which I was supposed to go to every day for a week. I had to change clothes continually, stand here, sit there, keep a smile fixed on my face, parade up and down, change again, look angelic and re-apply my make-up for the umpteenth time. I was so exhausted every evening that I had to drag myself to bed. After three days, it was all I could do to make myself smile. But…I felt I had to keep my agreement with the manufacturer.

On the evening of the fourth day, I was so pale when I arrived at the Lanes’ that Mrs Lane forbade me to do another day’s modelling. She even called the tennis manufacturer and had him cancel the contract.

I thanked her from the bottom of my heart.

After that I was free to enjoy the rest of my unforgettable holiday, and now that I had seen the life of the stars up close, I was cured once and for all of my delusions of fame.

Friday, 24 December 1943