Hannah & Emil (48 page)

MELBOURNE, 1942

At the dawn of 1942 I regarded my most impressive achievement as having survived 1941 without quite succumbing to despair. I was staying in a tiny room at the back of the Australia Hotel in Collins Street and had been found a full-time job by the refugee people, helping to carry out a university survey on housing in which I interviewed working and unemployed people in Fitzroy and Collingwood and other suburbs close to the city about housing conditions. Thrilling as it had been to be paid to write, freelance wages kept me reliant on the charity of my friends and did not permit me easy sleep.

I arrived one January afternoon at the tiny slum cottage of a Polish refugee in his seventies to discover that he was out. I sat on his low brick wall, happy to rest my feet for a while. My refugee was fifteen minutes late, and I was stunned to see as he shuffled towards me that his face was covered in fresh purple bruises. He apologised to me, his hand shaking. I took hold of it. I remember the bones and the tremor which even my own hand did not still. ‘Ruffians give me fright at station. Bad boys punch, call reffo.' He would not let me go to the police, whom he called fascists, or go and fetch ice from Hoddle Street.

We went and sat at the table in his tiny dim kitchen. He could tell me little for coughing and trembling and gingerly touching his puffed-up face, but I made him tea and we chatted in German for a while, which he knew much better than English, and he talked of his beautiful daughter. He lived on meat-paste sandwiches and shakily rolled cigarettes, and his trousers seemed to meet his braces without touching his narrow body. ‘You vood
luff
hir,' he said several times, rheumy-eyed, as he followed me to the door. I didn't like to leave him, but I had to be away, and he said that his neighbour was coming at six with beer and soup, so he would not be alone for long.

My room was filled with the narrow bed and the sound of the laundrywomen laughing and gossiping. I backed onto the service rooms of the hotel and along my corridor the maids and waiters slept. On the floor above, I had discovered, slept Major Temple. One of my refugee people had let it slip that he stayed here, and I now spent a good portion of my wages staying in this dismal room and drinking coffee in the café opposite where I could observe his comings and goings.

He generally returned from the barracks at about six or so, and I sat on my bed, scribbling a note at my bedside table, making a carbon copy in my journal.
Dear Major Temple
, I wrote:

I have now fulfilled all requirements anyone might make of me
in order to get satisfaction in the case of my friend Emil Becker. I have attained a full-time position with the university if he were
to be released into Australia and require support. And I have had some interest from a munitions firm desperately in need
of qualified engineers.

Despairing of a sudden attack of compassion that would lead
your employers to fund my passage home, I have done everything
anyone might ask of me to have our case viewed favourably. I imagine that I need not remind you that Mr Becker has been
officially ‘ free' for fourteen months now?

I await as always your advice and instruction.

Yours sincerely,

Hannah Jacob

P.S. I suppose you wouldn't have time to see me for just two
minutes, would you?

About as soon as I had finished copying the letter there came a knock at the door and I started, feeling caught out at something. My first thought was that it was him, Temple, come somehow to tell me off for the tone of my letter before I had even got it to him. I opened the door, unable to step very far back into the room because of the overwhelming presence of the bed. It was my friend Edith, whose name Emil had miraculously found for me. She was as small as I, as sturdy and determined, clever-looking, with thick glasses and orange hair, interested in the lives of those without power or advantage. Sweeter and gentler though, quietly resolved, diplomatic. She reached a hand forward through the crack to grasp my wrist. ‘Another letter! Is it for the fortunate Major Temple?'

I smiled in spite of myself. ‘It is. I try not to let a day go by without letting him know I think of him.'

‘You have not even taken off your hat, Hannah dear. I'll take it up, if it's finished. You rest for a moment. And then I have something rather wonderful to show you, if you can manage a walk.'

‘I couldn't ask you to go sneaking around the corridors.'

‘It will be fun. He might catch me at it!'

‘You can deliver it if you like, but I shall come with you. I can't send you off on your own.' I folded the letter and handed it to her and she was off smartly ahead of me along the corridor to the back stairs, clutching the letter to her chest like a child with a prize-winning essay approaching the stage. In the stairwell I heard her footsteps release the floorboards as she skipped upwards. I was rather tired from my day walking the streets for the survey and the gap between us grew.

By the time I reached the upper corridor I heard her voice and felt the hair rise at the back of my neck.
He
has
caught her at
it!
I thought. I rounded the last stair to see her shape in the dim corridor, looking up at someone beyond a doorway. Temple was tall. Oh dear. My lovely respectable Edith, caught skulking around a hotel on my behalf. ‘Perhaps you could talk to her in person, Major Temple,' she was saying. ‘Why, here she is now. It would ease her mind no end to have a conversation with you.' She turned and smiled, beckoned me on with the gesture of a traffic policeman. ‘Hannah dear. Here's your man. Just on his way out to dinner. We're lucky to catch him!'

Indeed, there he was, my elusive target, whom I had seen only at a distance, in his uniform as always but without jacket or hat, tall, heavy, annoyed with these little ones in his doorway. He smelled of boot polish and tobacco. His thick moustache was somehow more intimidating close up. Behind him was an immaculate room, the long Melbourne evening light thrown across a large, crisply made bed. My letter was in his hand. He had clearly picked it up and opened the door immediately, something I hoped for every time I put a note under his door. Until now he had been too restrained to respond in such a way. But now it struck me—dear Edith had had the gall to knock on the door of his private quarters!

I was too exhausted for niceties, and in any case I had worn them out in my earlier letters. Here we all were. It was now or never. ‘Major Temple, I must tell you I cannot bear another day of inaction. What will you do to resolve our case? Mr Becker has been interned now for
twenty months
. I warn you that before I throw myself in front of a tram, as I fear I must soon, I will write an awful lot of letters. It is something I have become proficient at.' I felt Edith's small fingers at the inner crease of my elbow.

‘Will you let me speak, Miss Jacob?' Temple said. The annoyed look had gone. He was kind, I see that now. I know that he had his own worries, his own people in France for whom he could do nothing. He would probably have changed my troubles for his gladly.

‘Of course. Of course you may speak, Major.'

‘I must admit I was never sure if all the claims you made about the quality of your friends were quite true, but I am convinced. The German Refugee Association, under pressure from the Youth Hostel Association, the British Metalworkers' Union and three Labour MPs, have promised to wire funds for your return to England.' Edith squeezed my arm. ‘So with your permission, I will advise Mr Becker to apply for a transport.'

‘Is this really true?' I found that I had taken the fabric of his sleeve. Edith laughed as Temple looked at the cloth clenched in my fingers and I released it.

‘Yes, it is. Although you must bear in mind that transports are unpredictable just now. There's a war on, you may remember.'

‘Oh, yes. Thank you, Major. Well, what now? What do I do next?'

‘I'll send you a note about arrangements, if you can wait perhaps two days while I make enquiries.'

Edith had a firmer grip of my arm and was steering me away from the door. ‘Thank you, Major Temple. I am sure Hannah can wait for your instructions.'

The door was closing. He nodded and was gone and we were scurrying along the corridor, holding hands like children running from the scene of a prank. ‘I cannot believe it,' I said. ‘Edith, if you were not here to witness it, I
would not
believe it.'

‘Well I was, and glad of it. Get your bag. I'll show you my surprise, and then Molly's got some soup on for the refugees. We've got some excellent people at the moment. You must meet them. There's a violinist with the most beautiful instrument. We don't let him in without it. Then dinner is always so good he feels obliged to play until very late.'

It was a warm evening and we walked away from the tall buildings of the city to the east. It was refreshing to be away from the dark corridors of the hotel that I had been haunting for weeks for a sight of him. How revolutionary, simply to knock! Australians could be wonderful. Edith chatted, holding my elbow, while I looked around me at the worried people, the sandbagged doorways, stunned. I was to go home, and see my mother and brothers,
with Emil
. We reached Fitzroy Gardens, where Edith and her family had taken the refugees for a picnic the weekend before. I loved it there. It was a proper city park, in a square, with long avenues of trees, garden beds, people quietly living, walking, unhurried, for a moment or two apparently untroubled. You always saw some soldier or sailor in the shadows on his jacket under the trees with a giggling girl. For once, this evening, I did not begrudge them the touch of each other.

As we emerged at the eastern end of the park and crossed the road into a wide street lined with lovely white, yellow and pink houses and blocks of flats, Edith stopped before a gate, felt about in her bag and held a key before my face, smiling.

‘What is this, Edith?'

She said nothing but pushed open the tall black iron gates, took me down a little pathway that ran alongside a pale yellow building, and opened a door at the back. I followed her into a corridor off which we found a bright, clean kitchen, a small sitting room looking out at a lemon tree and the street, a ginger cat in a patch of sun on the wall, and at the side of the building a bedroom with a double bed, made up, a dressing table and plain wooden rack with empty hangers. There was even a bookcase with books that looked rather like novels and poetry. In every room were tall white-framed sash windows that let in the evening light slanting through the trees.

‘What do you think?' she asked, looking pleased with herself.

‘I'll admit you have me baffled, Edith. You heard Temple. I am to go home. In any case, lovely as it is, I could never afford it.'

She explained to me that the tenant, a tutor of their acquaintance, was off to help with communications in Darwin, and didn't mind receiving just a little rent, if someone could feed his cat.

‘But Temple says we can apply for a transport. I can stay at the hotel until then, rather than move again and inconvenience everybody.'

She smiled. She had the patience and bearing of a nun. ‘It is wonderful news, of course, but ships are unpredictable. When you have to give up the flat, we have plenty of people who would look after it. The hotel is expensive and your room is
really awful.
We've been plotting to get you out of it since you moved in.'

I gave a forlorn laugh. We were standing in the sitting room. I sat down on one of the old stuffed chairs, looking out to the street. Edith sat on the other, laying her arms along its sides. She looked pleased with herself. A woman walked by on the street with an enormous navy blue pram. The cat got up and arched his back. ‘Is that to be my cat? That ginger one on the wall?'

‘I believe so. His name is Tigger. I'm told he sleeps on the bed, and that he will not tolerate being put out.'

‘Then I suppose I shall have some company at last.'

Emil

Emil, making his bed, saw a familiar head pass the window. The thick wavy hair, round glasses. Then he was in the door, smiling a little sadly, and dressed in a uniform of a similar colour to the Australians who guarded them, but without the hat. Emil waited for him to speak. ‘For now, Emil, it is goodbye.' Emil stood from the bed. ‘I have been placed in a working party. We leave this afternoon.'

‘Well, really, that's wonderful news.' Emil held out a hand to shake. Solomon looked efficient and handsome in his uniform. He'd not seen him in clothes that fitted him for a long time. ‘What do they have you doing? Picking fruit?'

‘We are to load and unload freight where the rails meet at the state border.'

‘Explain to me this piece of nonsense.'

‘Apparently, New South Wales and Victoria have differently gauged tracks.'

Emil stared at his friend, who was smiling. ‘This is true?' Solomon nodded. ‘I would like to meet these Australian engineers and ask them where they went to school.'

‘It's work. I'd like to thank them.'

‘Where do you stay?'

‘Albury. In digs. A farm I think.'

‘Not a camp.'

‘No.' Solomon held out his hand once more. ‘It cannot be long now, Emil. Hannah is unstoppable. And the camp is emptying out.'

‘Just we old men left now.'

‘I'll see you in Melbourne before Christmas. I'm sure of it.' Solomon put his hand in his pocket and pulled something out, spread his hand before Emil's face. He was holding out the little globe Emil had first seen in the Isle of Man boarding house on Solomon's packing crate. ‘For you, Emil.'

‘No, Sol.'

Solomon opened Emil's hand and pressed it into his palm. ‘It has brought me luck.'

Emil did not watch him leave the hut. Later, through the workshop window, he saw them gathering outside the mess hall in their new uniforms. Young men, laughing, giving one another little shoves, hoisting big bags onto shoulders without effort. A truck sent up dust in front of them, and they lined up to get on. Solomon cast a glance back at the workshop, then jumped up into the back with the others. Beyond the huts the gates swung open, and they were gone.