Bombs on Aunt Dainty (23 page)

“So you see, as long as I can think and write I am grateful to the old rabbi up there for every day that he keeps me on this extraordinary planet.”

She felt better, but there was still something wrong. It was hiding from her, but it was there – a kind of horror, she
imagined it crouching at the foot of the bed. It was to do with Uncle Victor and it was terribly important.

“Papa?” she said.

“What?”

She couldn’t think. Think and write – he had said think and write. But Uncle Victor hadn’t been able to think and write. He had just lain there – brain damage, Aunt Dainty had said, doesn’t remember, better he should have died years ago. But didn’t a stroke have the same effect – wouldn’t Papa …?

“Papa!” cried Anna, clutching his hand, “but if you couldn’t think …?”

His face was blurred as she tried to focus on it, but his voice was clear and calm.

“Then of course I should not want to go on living. Mama and I have talked about it.”

“But how?” she cried. “How—how could you …?”

She made a great effort and his face suddenly reassembled, so that she could see his eyes and the extraordinary, confident smile with which he spoke.

“Mama,” he said, “will think of something.”

The cold spell had ended by the time Mama came back from the country. Anna recovered from her ‘flu in thin sunshine and the world suddenly looked more hopeful. The Professor announced that Papa’s health had improved. His blood pressure was lower, and the effects of the stroke had almost disappeared.

“I told you,” said Papa. “The old rabbi up there is on my side.”

Gradually the war began to run down.

There were still buzz-bombs, so you could still get killed, but they were fewer. The news on the radio was always good, and for the first time since 1939 small glimmers of light were allowed in the streets at night. One day Max appeared to announce that his squadron was being disbanded.

“No more flying,” he said quite regretfully, to Mama’s rage. “I suppose it really will all be over quite soon.”

As the armies advanced, pictures appeared in the papers and on newsreels of devastated German cities. Hamburg, Essen, Cologne – they were not places Anna had ever seen,
and they meant nothing to her. Only once, when she heard on the news that the Grunewald had been set on fire, something stirred inside her.

The Grunewald was a wood near their old home. Long ago, when she and Max were small in the past which she never thought about, they had tobogganed there in the winter. Their sledges had made tracks in the snow and it had smelled of cold air and pine needles. In the summer they had played in the patchy light under the trees, their feet had sunk deep into the sand at the edge of the lake – and hadn’t there once been a picnic …? She couldn’t remember.

But that was all before.

The Grunewald that was burned was not the one she had played in. It was a place where Jewish children were not allowed, where Nazis clicked heels and saluted and probably hid behind trees, ready to club people down. They had guns and fierce dogs and swastikas and if anyone got in their way, they beat them up and set the dogs on them and sent them to concentration camps where they’d be starved and tortured and killed …

But that’s nothing to do with me now, thought Anna. I belong here, in England.

When Max said to her, later, “Did you hear about the fire in the Grunewald?” she nodded and said, deadpan, “It’s just as well we left.”

As the spring grew warmer, she started to draw again. It began one day in her lunch hour. She was walking aimlessly
through some little streets at the back of Vauxhall Bridge Road when she saw a child. He was the fourth she had seen since she had come out and she thought, the war really must be ending if the children are coming back! This one was about ten and was sitting on a heap of rubble, staring up at the sky with a pleased expression. I suppose he’s glad to be home, thought Anna.

There was something about him – the way he was clasping his skinny knees, the way his over-large sweater hung loosely on his shoulders, the way he squinnied up at the light – that was very expressive. Suddenly she had a great desire to draw him. She did not have a sketchbook with her, but found an old letter in her handbag. Feverishly, she started to draw on the back. She was so anxious to get the boy down on paper before he moved or stood up and walked away that she didn’t have time to worry about how best to do it. She just thought, that goes like that and that goes like that, and there’s light on his face and on his knees and a dark patch of shade under his chin…and suddenly there was the drawing, she’d done it and it looked just right!

She walked back to the office in a daze. It’s come back, she thought. I can do it again! That evening at art school she made two good drawings and when she rode home on the tube, for the first time in months she chose not to read, but drew an old man asleep in his seat. That came out well, too.

Suddenly she couldn’t stop. She bought a new sketchbook
and filled it in a few days. At weekends, in her room above the garage, she worked on a painting of shelterers. This time she planned it more carefully and it had at least something of the feeling she had wanted to put into it. She also painted a portrait of Mama. Mama posed for it, crouched over Anna’s paraffin stove and looking, as always, both crushed and ebullient at once, and Papa said it was one of the best things Anna had done.

Finally, she gathered all her work together in a portfolio and put it down in front of John Cotmore.

“You were talking about a scholarship,” she said.

He looked pleased. “I hoped you’d do that,” he said.

Anna glanced at the whiskery man, not far away. “Do you think he’d like to see my work as well?” She did not want the scholarship on John Cotmore’s recommendation alone.

“All right,” he said after a moment.

The whiskery man came over and he and John Cotmore looked through the portfolio together. John Cotmore said “Good” and “I like that” several times, but the whiskery man said nothing.

Damn, thought Anna, suddenly wanting nothing in the world so much as three years at art school, why couldn’t I have left well alone?

John Cotmore had finished.

“Well,” he said, “what do you think?”

The whiskery man ignored him. There were still two drawings which he hadn’t seen and he looked at each one
in turn, slowly and methodically. He was north-country and did not like to be hurried. At last he turned to Anna and she saw to her dismay that he looked quite annoyed.

“Don’t act so daft, girl,” he said. “You must know you’ve got enough here to get you anything you want.”

After he had moved away, John Cotmore smiled at her.

“Well,” he said, “that’s that. Now the world lies before you.”

She smiled back, carefully.

“You’ll get your scholarship,” he said, “and there’ll be peace and all the young men will be coming home.”

She shrugged her shoulders. “Oh,” she said, “the young men …”

“Who will be much better for you than I ever was. Except for your drawing.”

She was packing her work back into the portfolio and one of the drawings caught her eye. It
was
good.

Suddenly, on an impulse, she said, “Thank you for teaching me to draw.”

She could feel how pleased he was. The air all round them was filled with his pleasure.

“You always were my favourite student,” he said and, almost absent-mindedly, he let his hand rest on her shoulder. She was conscious of a sudden warmth, a curious fluttering sensation (extraordinary! noted the little man in her forehead) and then Barbara was upon them. Her placid mouth was set in a firm line and she was carrying his briefcase and his duffel coat.

“Come on, John,” she said. “We’re having the rabbit.”

He withdrew his hand quickly.

“It’s been stewing for hours,” she said. “And then you’ve got to look out those drawings for your exhibition.”

He sighed and stood up.

“There, you see, Anna,” he said, “all the world lies before you, while middle-aged people like us have to go home and eat rabbit.”

“Speak for yourself,” said Barbara. She peered at the drawings which Anna was putting away. “Are you going to try for that scholarship?”

Anna nodded.

“I should think so, too,” said Barbara.

In April the British and American armies overran the first concentration camps, and the first horrifying descriptions appeared in the press and on the radio. Anna was astonished at the reaction. Why was everyone so surprised? She had known about concentration camps since she was nine years old. At least now the English will understand what it was like, she thought.

She watched the newsreels, repelled but not shocked. The gas chambers, the piles of dead bodies, the pitiful, skeletonlike survivors – it was all terrible, she thought, terrible, but no more terrible than what she had tried for years not to imagine. As the appalling stories poured out, as the indignation burst forth all round her, she could think of only one thing – that at last it was over. At long, long last it had stopped.

Berlin fell at the beginning of May. Had there been fighting round their house, their garden? She pushed the thought aside. It didn’t matter. It’s finished, she thought. I need never think about it again.

For a few days there were rumours and unconfirmed reports. Hitler was dead, he had been captured, he was holding out, he had surrendered – and then at last an official statement. The war in Europe was over.

On the day set aside for official rejoicing, Anna, Mama and Papa went to have lunch with the Rosenbergs. The flat in Harley Street was back in use, and Aunt Louise was already worrying about the peace.

“Whatever you do,” she said to Mama, “don’t tell Fraulein Pimke that the war is over!”

“Why not?” said Mama, surprised.

“Because she’ll use up all the rations and we’ll have nothing left to eat. She thinks that food will automatically become plentiful the moment the war stops.”

“But surely—” began Mama.

Aunt Louise waved her down.

“After all, it doesn’t really matter to her,” she said. “And she’s old and quite deaf and she doesn’t speak a word of English, so she wouldn’t hear from anyone else. In fact, if we’re careful,” – Aunt Louise suddenly became quite happy – “there’s really no reason at all why she should ever find out about the peace!”

Max arrived in time for lunch, and the Professor proposed a toast.

“To us!” he said. “Who would have thought, five years ago, that we would outlive Adolf Hitler?”

“And to the English,” said Papa. “They won the war.”

Aunt Louise made everyone stand up to drink to the English and worried whether she wasn’t supposed to fling her glass on to the floor afterwards (“Only we have so few left,” she said) until Max reassured her.

“A wonderful wine,” said Papa.

The Professor showed him the bottle.

“Johannisberger-Schloss,” he said, “from the Rheingau. I’ve kept it specially for this.”

They looked at each other.

“Perhaps one day …”

“Perhaps,” said Papa.

Fraulein Pimke, though unaware of what was being celebrated, had cooked a delicious meal.

“Well, and what now?” asked Aunt Louise afterwards. “Will you be going back to Cambridge, Max?”

“When I’m demobilised,” said Max. “I hope by next term.”

“And then you’ll become a lawyer,” said the Professor. “Perhaps you’ll become such a judge, with a wig like a poodle and a long coat with fur on. You could never have done that if it hadn’t been for Hitler.”

Max grinned. “I have a lot to thank him for.”

“Anna has won a scholarship at her art school,” said Papa, and she was warmed by the pride in his voice. “She too will be starting next term.”

“Really?” said the Professor.

Anna looked at him. He was sitting with his back to the window, his arms folded across his chest. The colours of his face, his clothes and the chair he sat in glowed dark and rich in the shadows of the room. They made a curious, complicated shape against the rectangle of light behind him. I’d like to paint that, she thought as the conversation flowed round her, and began to work out how she would do it.

“…isn’t that true?” asked Max.

“What?” she said startled, and he laughed.

“I was explaining,” he said, “that you’re the only one of us to whom the emigration has made no difference. I mean, if Hitler had never happened you wouldn’t have learned three languages and you might have avoided a certain amount of worry, but you’d have ended up exactly the same as you are now, wandering about with a vague expression on your face and looking for things to draw. It really wouldn’t matter whether you were in Germany or in France or in England.”

“I suppose not,” said Anna.

She thought of her scholarship, and John Cotmore, and Mrs Hammond with her old ladies, and a policeman who had once lent her a shilling, and fire-watching in Putney, and Trafalgar Square in the dusk, and the view of the river from the 93 bus.

“But I like it here,” she said.

A little later, Max got up to go.

“Walk to the tube with me, Anna,” he said.

Papa stood up too and embraced him.

“Goodbye, my son,” he said. “May you be as successful in peace as you have been in war.”

“And ring up as soon as you hear anything,” said Mama. “About Cambridge and being demobilised. And don’t forget to tell them about your scholarship.”

Anna and Max rode down in the lift in silence. The commissionaire opened the door for them, and they could hear singing in the street outside. He glanced at Max’s uniform.

“Quite a day,” he said. “Young Englishmen like yourself have a right to be proud of themselves.”

They grinned at each other.

The street was full of Union Jacks. A few girls in paper hats were dancing to the music of an accordion, and a soldier was sitting on the pavement with a bottle by his side. They picked their way among them.

“Well,” said Max, as so many times before, “and how is everything?”

“All right,” said Anna. “Papa seems quite well, doesn’t he, and they’re both very pleased about my scholarship. But Mama is going to lose her job again.”

“Why?” asked Max.

“It seems her boss has promised it to his niece when she comes out of the Women’s Land Army. Mama doesn’t mind too much at the moment – she says it was just a
stop-gap and she’d rather work for English people, anyway. But I don’t know – once everyone comes out of the Forces it’ll be even more difficult for her to find a job than before.”

Max nodded. “It doesn’t sound as though the peace would be much help to them.”

They had reached Oxford Circus, but Max showed no sign of catching the tube and they walked on down Regent Street.

“Perhaps one day,” said Anna, “Papa’s works will be published again in Germany.”

“It will be a long time,” said Max.

“And I suppose now the war is over we’ll all be naturalised.”

They both smiled at the thought of Papa as an Englishman.

“Mama can’t wait,” said Anna. “She’s going to drink tea with milk and love animals and go to cricket matches. There’s no end to the things she’s going to do.”

Max laughed. “But it won’t make any difference,” he said.

“Won’t it?”

He shook his head.

“You and I will be all right, but they’ll never belong. Not here.” He made a face. “Not anywhere, I suppose.”