Kindergarten (7 page)

“And the enormous bosoms.”

“And the enormous bosoms.” Jo giggled. “If it did have those, it might explain why people are so,
rude
about Sal’s books.”

“Never a week goes by without some headmaster having heart failure.”

“This book…This book…”—Jo began to keel over in slow motion, an expression of apoplectic horror on his face—“contains scenes of…
masturbation
!”

“Whatever that might be.”

“Whatever that might be.”

Corrie looked at his watch. “The carol service will be starting soon.”

Jo searched for his wellington boots under the table.

“I expect we’ll be the only people there. When they tell you that you’re singing a solo”—his voice became suddenly effete—“one does tend to imagine that one’s not completely solo, and that there will be people there to listen to one.”

“One does.”

“I’m the vicar in the empty church.”

“Verily.”

Jo stood up and put the wellington boots on.

“I’m going to sing whether anyone’s there or not.”

He looked at the wooden weather-house on the dresser. Both figures, the man and the woman, were inside the house, their backs turned on the outside world.

“I know just how you feel,” he said.

The telephone began to ring in the hall.

“I bet I know what that’s about,” Jo said, and went out.

He came back in a few minutes later, nodding his head.

“Cancelled? “

“Cancelled. I’ll just go and tell Lillie”

When he came back in, Jo pulled on his anorak and took down Dad’s umbrella.

“I said I was going to sing whether anyone was there or not.”

Corrie made a move towards the hallway, to go out to the Green from the front door, but Jo went through the sun lounge and opened the door into the garden at the back.

“Come on,” he said to Corrie. “Quick, before Baskerville makes a break for it.”

Corrie had to bend down, sharing the umbrella with his brother, bumping into him, standing on his heels, until he took it from him and held it over both of them. Jo led him out on to the path which ran alongside the end of the garden, along the top of the low cliff above the beach. He turned left towards Gun Hill, and some time later, wet and breathless, they were walking into St. Edmund’s churchyard.

He followed Jo, to stand in front of Mum’s grave.

Jo took a torch out of his anorak pocket, and they looked at the writing on the gravestone.

There was a bunch of copper-coloured chrysanthemums on the grave, their petals separated and scattered about.

“They didn’t last long in the rain,” Jo said.

Then, just as he had done in Lilli’s dining-room, he began to sing, naturally and unself-consciously, his head back, his hands thrust into his anorak pockets, his voice perfectly distinct above the sound of the rain on the umbrella.

“In the bleak mid-winter
          Frosty wind made moan;
Earth stood hard as iron,
          Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
          Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter,
Long ago…”

As Jo sang, Corrie felt again the mood he had entered looking at the
Wind in the Willows
calendar in the kitchen, and hearing the words of the nativity at Lilli’s: the sense of time passing, of things slipping away. It was the dying fall of “Long ago.”

While Jo was singing at Lilli’s, Corrie had thought of Mum’s funeral service, of sitting there with his whole attention concentrated on the daffodils in the vase on the table at the front of the church, shutting out everything else around him, thinking of Rousseau, falling waters, unpopulated greenness.

He was known to be a polite boy, respectful, well-mannered, shy. When people smiled at him, he smiled back, as though he were happy.

“He seems to be taking his mother’s death very well,” they said. “He’s been so mature about the whole thing. Wonderful with Jo and Matthias.”

How easily people can be fooled, he thought, not with pleasure, aware of depths within himself, little doors deep inside his head, doors that should never be opened.

Only Dad had seen him crying.

One night, two weeks after the funeral, he wanted to cry. He couldn’t stop himself any longer. It was late at night, and he was scared that Jo—in the adjoining room—might hear him. He knelt down in the bathroom, with the light off, his head pressed down on the edge of the bath. Cool air rose from the plug-hole. The smell of Pears’ soap. He watched a tear run down the side of the bath, like following raindrops down a window-pane, the rug pressing into his knees through his thin pyjamas, and then had to leave the bathroom because he was making a noise and Jo was just along the corridor.

He went downstairs, looking for somewhere to cry. Dad found him in the pantry, sitting on the bottom shelf beside the bread-bin, his feet resting on the potatoes in the vegetable rack, bent over, crying into a tea-towel smelling of lemon-juice.

Dad stood in the doorway, in his dressing-gown, looked at him for a moment, came inside, and they remained with their arms around each other for a long time in the darkness. He never said a word the whole time, and never said anything about it afterwards.

Dad hadn’t been fooled.

Corrie had always felt that he would have been friends with his Mum and Dad even if they hadn’t been related. Sometimes he called them by their first names, Pieter and Margaret. They had both been twenty-one when he was born. They were always ready to discuss his theories with him, and always said “Thank you” if he did something for them. When he was small—smaller—Dad used to give him rides on his shoulder, and in the weeks after Mum’s funeral they seemed to go back to those times they had together. Dad wrestled with him, lifted him up, threw him into the air. It was a bit embarrassing at his age, but it was nice. Dad gave him little jobs to do, and sat with him, talking, side by side, as he painted, did the garden, or sorted out the files in the office. One week they changed round all the furniture in the house, and Dad let him choose the new colours to repaint the downstairs rooms. He took them all out in the car every week, and they would talk about everything they’d seen. He left him alone when he wanted to be alone. Dad had talked with him about how much he missed Mum. When they were in London—the time they had gone to see Lilli—Dad had taken him and Jo to the National Gallery one morning, and pointed out to them the place where he and Mum had first met, in front of “A Young Woman Seated at a Virginal.” Corrie still smiled inwardly to himself whenever he saw a reproduction of this painting.

It was when he was outside alone that he felt the pressures of the outer world. He felt the weight of other people all around him. Every time he left the house, he had to prepare himself. A walk across the Green involved a need to greet and smile at half a dozen people. Because he was small and serious, adults often took it upon themselves to coax a smile out of him when he was alone with them. They all seemed to be taller than he was. He dreaded being alone with Mr. Arundel, the newsagent. He sometimes longed for a shop where he could go in and not be known, just buy a magazine or a packet of sweets, as he could in that shop in Lowestoft, without the need for the smile, the greeting, a few polite enquiries, the need to be good-natured, nice, a brave and well-brought-up boy.

Over coffee, in any one of a dozen houses in Southwold, he would have been a subject of interest and concern. Women he hardly knew, who passed him in the street and said “Hello, Corrie,” or “How’s your grandmother,” would be looking him up and down as they smiled and passed a few polite words. They would report back to each other in an interested, casual way, a subject for conversation, well meant, wanting to help, but they would report back.
I saw Cornelius this morning. How is he now?

“He seems to be taking his mother’s death very well.”

“He’s been so mature about the whole thing.”

“Wonderful with Jo and Matthias…”

W
HEN
J
O
finished singing, they moved out towards Church Street to make their way back home.

Faintly, the voices had come out of the darkness and across the emptiness, high and clear in the cold air, shrill little voices singing of hope and steadfastness. The fir-tree is a symbol of faith. It is always green, in summer, and in winter also, when it is snowing. It is noble and alone. It comforts and strengthens us.

H
IS
COPY
of
Grimm’s Fairy Tales
was an awkwardly large volume to read in bed. He had tried to read it lying on his side, but he had to use both hands to hold the book, it was so heavy, and his wrists ached painfully and gave way. He ended by sitting up in bed, the book opened against his upraised knees beneath the bedclothes, his music notebook lying on top of his school atlas on the bed beside him.

He looked at Lilli’s illustration for “Hansel and Gretel” on the wall at the side of his bed, studying it as he often did, lying in bed before he went to sleep.

D
R
. E
RNST
J
ACOBY
Berlin-Charlottenburg

24th November 1938

Dear Sir,

Please allow us to tell you about our position, and about our hopes. We hope you listen kindly to the situation in which we and our family find ourselves. Mrs. Katherina Viehmann has told us about your school, and about your kindness, and we have looked at your prospectus with great interest. We are friends of Mrs. Viehmann.

You know, dear sir, how matters stand with us in Germany, and since the events of this month the situation for Jews in this country is developing and becoming worse. We were compelled to give up our practices as doctors here, and, though it is now difficult to leave Germany without having a very particular reason for doing so, we hope to get government permission to emigrate to the United States. We need somewhere where our children will be able to continue their education and wait in safety while we try to carry out our plans. We ourselves make all efforts for leaving Germany, so that, within sight, the children could return in their father’s house. It would also be good for them, for their English and for their health in the summer, because there are forbidden all the swimmingbaths and all the parks.

We think our plans may take about a year to work. We do not know how long we will have to wait before we can leave the country, and, when we go to the United States, we do not think we could take the children with us, as it will be difficult for us at first to settle there and begin again.

We have three children: a girl of thirteen, a boy of twelve, and a girl of ten. They do not know any word of English, and if they learn well for a year, it will help them to settle in a school in America.

We have many questions to ask, which we hope do not trouble you.

Is it possible that you manage with our children, who do not know English? They know much, much less than Kurt and Thomas Viehmann when they first came to your school. Will it be too difficult for them with strangers in a foreign place? Is there, perhaps, a teacher who can speak German, so that, when, in the first time, they may feel unhappy, they would have someone who could listen to them? My wife and I speak English quite well, and we shall instruct our children so that they will have a little basis, and not feel so lonely if they can talk to their comrades. We will show them pictures so that England can become a place they can imagine. The oldest boy and girl have learned French and Latin in their “Gymnasium.” We do not know, perhaps this will help to learn English for them.

We are worried about the holidays, as the children will have no home. The children, as Jews, can only have passports which prevent them coming back to Germany again. Where could they go? Could they stay in the school? We know no one in England.

Your prospectus says the fee of 90L per annum. This part is difficult for us to write. We have a severe loss over the last five and a half years because of the situation here, and we are limited in our money. We will be allowed to leave Germany with a very little amount only, which we need to begin a new life in America. If you would be able to allow a special agreement for three children it would be valuable to us. We think we would be able to spend at the very maximum 20L per month for all the three children. This payment will be safe when we are in America, because whatever new restrictions are made on the transfer of money from Germany this cannot be affected. Until this time, the children’s grandmother in Warsaw, and a friend who is now living in Prague have agreed to pay, though it will be difficult for them. We do not think that we will be able to pay, ourselves, from Germany. We know the difficulties that Mrs. Viehmann had.

Need we buy new clothes for them, the uniforms and the equipment, if they will be only in England for a year? What should they bring in the way of suits and other necessities? Do the boys generally wear long trousers? What do they require for sport? Must they buy the required English school-books already over here, or are they supplied in the school? Would they be allowed to wear ordinary clothes? It would be difficult for us to spend the money on many new clothes. Their clothes are not fashion clothes, but are suitable for children, and practical for school. Please excuse all these questions, but once the children are in England, they will have no money to buy anything.

If all works well, we hope our children can be at your school for the January term. When does the term begin? Could they stay somewhere before the term begins?

We hope you will listen to our questions with sympathy.

We ask you to tell us quite frankly whether you have any reason why you would prefer us not to send our children over. After recent events, you might see things from a different point of view, and we are anxious not to cause you or your school any difficulties. The position in Germany is such that we cannot make any firm promise to you about what might or what might not happen in the future, and the chances are that things will not turn better.

Our children are good and decent little people, and behave very well. You will not regret taking them into your school. Please don’t mind the trouble we cause you. We love our country, but we must leave Germany.