Her Hungry Heart (8 page)

‘I think you should open the package, Mimi. I am certain
your father would approve. And you should remember what Jack said: there might be clues inside.’

She seemed still to be hesitant, pondering what to do. ‘Daddy gave this to Mashinka when he said goodbye to us on the ship when we sailed from England.’

‘Did he say anything else, Mimi?’ asked Jack.

‘I don’t remember. It was so long ago, and so many terrible things have happened since then.’

An uncomfortable silence had fallen over the room. They were snapped back to the reality of this child’s plight, and of the other lost children like her. For all the present chatter and laughter, the worn pictures, she was still a child alone in the wilderness of war, and only on a sabbatical from that because she had been taken in by them.

The Queen seemed more affected than the others, projecting yet again in her mind the hundreds of thousands of Mimis in her own country who were even less fortunate. The silence was broken by Jack who finally took control of the situation. ‘Why don’t I open that for you, Mimi? This is after all my case.’ That seemed to relieve everyone. They all started talking at once. Mimi handed the packet to Jack, who, with the permission of the Queen, sat down next to her to open it.

He took the scissors from Mimi and was about to use them. She stopped him. ‘I think we must save the string.’

Jack was not going to dispute her wishes. He worked on the knots with the help of the pointed end of the scissors.

Mimi watched Jack struggling with the knots. She caught the excitement and enthusiasm of everyone in the room about her parcel. She listened to them chattering about her pictures and offering silly guesses at what the parcel might contain. There were giggles, laughter even. She wondered what all the excitement was about. Why didn’t she feel the same way? All she could feel was utter relief to be rid of the parcel. She had never felt much curiosity about the yellow-wrapped leather envelope. Too much anxiety from her life
with Mashinka and Tatayana was focused upon it. How could it be anything good, anything important? Now Jack had suggested that there might be clues in it to reunite her with her father. In seconds the parcel would be open. Another reminder of her past agonies would be removed. That seemed more important than any hope of clues. She could feel herself drifting away from all the fuss going on around her. Memory took over. She could almost see, almost hear, her father, recalling that last time she had been with him. When she had begged him not to send her away, he had told her, ‘Nothing is more important to me than your being safe and out of this hell. You will want for nothing. There will be laughter and fun with Mashinka and Tatayana. None of the struggle for survival that war brings. When I come to get you, I will find a happy child, who has been made as safe as possible. Then it will all have been worth it. That’s why, Mimi, you must never tell anyone your real name or my name. Nor who your daddy and mummy are. Pretend, it must always be pretend for us until after the war when we can return safely to Prague. Pretend, always make believe that you are Mashinka’s little daughter. Then we will all be safe. I promise I will come to find you, and make up for all these years of separation to you. You must be Mimi Kowalski now. Pretend I am a Kowalski, and your beautiful real mummy never existed. That we are Kowalskis, just like Mashinka and her brother.’

She shook her head, trying to excise from her memory his last words to her. How could he have been so wrong? Safe, yes. Away from the bombs, yes. He had done his best. She imagined the upset he would feel to know how hungry they had been, how awful life in the Blocks had been for her. How his plans for her had all gone so wrong. Except one: she was safe and still very much alive. And Maxi, with his obsession for the war, had made her understand as she had not done in the Blocks how lucky she was to be even that.
She vowed that, when she and her father found each other again, she would never tell him of the agony of those years without him.

She caught herself wringing her hands. She watched herself for a few seconds. It took all her willpower to stop. At last the string had been removed. While being undone the oil-skin cracked. The thick, red leather envelope with its brass lock was revealed. It held everyone’s gaze.

‘I’ll have to break this lock,’ declared Jack.

‘Do you have to?’ Mimi appeared concerned.

‘Got a key?’

‘No.’

‘Then what choice do we have? Sorry, Mimi.’

She shrugged. Ernie was sent to the kitchen with cook. They needed something strong and sharp.

It was more a cosmetic lock than a safety device. It broke without too much effort. Jack lifted the flap and placed the leather case on Mimi’s lap.

One deed was for a property: the house and garden at 45, West Eleventh Street, New York City. A second was for an apartment building on Central Park West in the same city. A Morgan Guarantee Bank of New York savings account book. All three documents were made out to Mimi Alexandra Kowalski.

Jack looked up from the slim, folded property deeds with their red wax seals and narrow satin ribbons tied through the silver grummets. The room was quiet. Everyone was waiting for him to tell them what the documents meant.

‘Are they clues?’ asked Maxi.

‘They might be,’ answered Jack.

‘Well, what exactly are they, Jack?’

‘Will those papers find my father?’ asked Mimi.

‘Whoah, hold on there. One question at a time. Pierre, they could be clues. They’re not exactly clues that are gonna tell me where Mimi’s father is, but they could lead us
on to further clues. The great thing is now we’ve got something to go on.’

‘Are they not property deeds?’ asked one of the teachers.

‘That is exactly what they are.’ He passed the documents over to Ernie. Turning to Mimi, he asked, ‘Maybe we should talk about this in private, Mimi. Would you prefer that?’

‘Not really.’

‘Don’t look so glum. I think we have incredibly good news here.’

‘We do?’

‘Yes, very good news. Ernie’s going to read through these documents, and then we will explain it all to you. The best we can before we talk to the lawyers in New York who have drawn them up. As for the bank book, it has only one entry, and that’s dated October 1938, the amount one thousand dollars. But that doesn’t mean anything. Deposits might have been made over the years and not entered in your pass book. It is your pass book, Mimi, because it’s made out in your name.’

‘Does that mean I have a thousand dollars?’

To Mimi and the other children that was a fortune. When Jack said, ‘Yes, and I can’t promise but I think probably much much more,’ the whooping, the hollering and the children dancing around her made Mimi laugh. Ernie took advantage of the moment and pressed on. ‘Let’s go through the rest of this case. Maybe it has other surprises in store for you.’

In the zippered compartment Jack found two black velvet pouches and a long, narrow, two-inch-deep tin, its once garishly painted lid no longer a picture but flaked paint. Jack had seen such tins before. They normally contained long, slim, hand-rolled Havana cigars. There was usually the distributor’s name and address, a date, on the bottom of the box. Eagerly, he turned it over, but his hopes were
quickly shattered. The stamp read, Augustus Phillipe Ltd, Rue Bonaparte, Paris, October 1935, No. 411. The name and address of the purchaser were certain to be recorded, but the swastika was flying over Occupied France. No hope there of tracing Mimi’s father. At least, not until after the war. Only Jack seemed preoccupied with the box: all other eyes were riveted on the velvet pouches.

He placed the box in his lap and handed one of the pouches to Mimi. She untied the silk cords, opened the pouch and withdrew from it a diamond and black pearl necklace. The stones and pearls were enormously large and beautiful. There were gasps of astonishment from all around the room.

‘I forgot all about this necklace.’

‘Was it your mother’s, Mimi?’ someone asked.

‘Yes, but I didn’t know we had it with us.’ She turned to Juliet and asked her, ‘Don’t you think it’s beautiful?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘Now I’ve got something for you to wear when we play dressing-up.’

‘Oh, may I, Mimi?’

How could either child understand the value of the necklace, or the significance it had in Mimi’s life? The second pouch contained another necklace, a long chain solidly set in diamonds, and from it hung a cross. A priceless object of art. Made of 22-carat gold, it was inset with nine emeralds, square-cut, each stone more than an inch across and surrounded by round-cut diamonds. ‘Walnuts and peas.’

‘What did you say, Miss Tolset?’ the Queen asked the teacher who had spoken.

The still-astonished teacher answered, ‘Walnuts and peas, ma’am. They are the size of walnuts and peas.’

‘And Russian, I think,’ added the sovereign. And to Mimi who had brought the cross to the Queen so that she might have a closer look at it, she said, ‘Mimi, how very beautiful.
They are yours. And you now have in your hands a treasure worth a great deal of money. A not-so-modest fortune.’

A fortune? They had had a fortune in their possession during all those years when they went hungry and wore rags. When Mimi had been a virtual prisoner of poverty and the Blocks, dependent on the kindness of a fruit-pedlar for understanding and company. None of it made any sense to her. This treasure in her hands, living at Beechtrees. It was too unreal. Reality was her years in the Blocks, isolation and poverty, and the drink that destroyed Mashinka’s brother, made her crazy and unable to cope with day-to-day living. Reality was the wasting away of Tatayana, who had slipped into a deep melancholia from which she never returned except for short spells when she resumed her role as tutor to Mimi.

She passed the jewels around for her friends and benefactors to admire. She felt strangely detached from the excitement the contents of her envelope had created, but happy. Everyone was having such a good time. After the initial dazzle of the jewels, clearly Mimi was the least impressed with her newfound wealth. Each of the people there tried to make her understand the significance of these discoveries for her. Everyone spoke at once. A buzz like a swarm of chattering birds filled the room.

‘You are no longer poor, Mimi.’

‘You have money for anything you want, Mimi.’

‘Clothes, lots of clothes. And you can buy a horse, your very own horse.’ That was Juliet.

‘I’ll teach you to shoot, and you can buy a matching set of guns.’ Everyone laughed at Maxi’s suggestion.

‘A house, all your own, although we would want you still to live with us. And we could all go there on week-ends.’

‘Your future is secure.’

They all meant well, and she appreciated that, but it never penetrated the wall of fear still surrounding her. Her fear of loss had been with her for too long for her to believe
a real change of fortune had come to her. It was the Queen who finally made her understand that, while the search went on for her father, she would have financial security and be able to live in comfort with someone to care for her. That her father had indeed provided for her. The puzzle was that her guardians Mashinka and Tatayana had been so devastated by their emigration to Chicopee and what they found there, they had not seen that their destitution and misery could have been avoided. They needed only to have been brave enough to face the reality of their situation and have opened the package. It was a desperately sad story, a stupid waste of life and resources.

Mimi understood what the Queen was saying, but she was preoccupied with thoughts of her father. They had all suffered the shame of having failed this brave and handsome man who had done so much to make them safe and happy and preserve them from war. ‘When you find him, tell him I am here, and safe and well. I am happy, and life has been very sweet. I have the leather case, and he mustn’t worry.’ That’s what she would tell Jack to tell her father. She owed her father that. Mimi thought that she should tell that white lie, not for herself alone but for Tatayana and Mashinka as well.

Ernie, having read through the deeds, went to Mimi. She was now sitting on a cushion on the floor at the feet of the Queen, Juliet next to her. He squatted down next to her and reassured her. ‘Mimi, remember the FBI always gets its man. We’ll find him. But you have to help. You can begin by remembering the past is gone for ever. Wipe it from your mind. No more scrubbing floors for cook, or getting up at five to do your work in the kitchens. You do understand?’

‘Yes, yes, yes.’ A note of annoyance in her voice. ‘I am not stupid, Ernie. I can understand, but you don’t. I can’t forget running away from Prague, being chased across countries that didn’t want us, hiding and being hungry, and leaving my father, my mother.’ She hesitated at that point,
then recovered herself and continued: ‘My mother Mashinka, how could she not have known we were desperate? Enough to open this case. Our lives would have been so different, and Tatayana and Mashinka wouldn’t have died in misery and unhappiness, crazy and lost. Just the way I was when Mr Pauley brought me here. We could have lived in a house like my father thought we were living in, one like this. My poor father … if he had ever known what happened to us, what would he have thought. Maybe that’s what killed Tatayana and Mashinka, knowing we had all let him down. He thought we were strong. We were weak and very stupid. Why didn’t we live the way he wanted us to? I will never let him down again. I know what has happened here today and I know it’s all real and true. But in my heart I can’t believe that I won’t be hungry again, that I will have a beautiful, sunny room like Juliet’s that’s all my own. Not until my papa finds me.’

Her distress was obvious. Everyone in the room tried to dampen their enthusiasm, to make it easier for Mimi, who had not the least idea of the value of the things in her possession.

‘One last look into that tin, Mimi,’ suggested the Queen, ‘and then, in celebration of your good fortune, we will all have a sherry, even the children.’ That relieved the tension in the room and brought smiles to the children’s faces. Childish giggles rippled through the room again.