Bombs on Aunt Dainty

by Judith Kerr

  She pronounced them ooh-boats, which made them sound as though they had their mouths open ready to swallow him up.

  “What sort of research?” asked Mama who had been good at physics at school. “Anything interesting?”

  Otto nodded. “Rather hush-hush, I’m afraid,” he said. “You remember the Cambridge professor who was interned with me – he’s in it too, with a few other men. It could be quite important.”

  “But do you know,” cried Aunt Dainty, “when he came home his father didn’t recognise him. I talked to him. I said, ‘Victor, this is your son – don’t you remember?’ But we’re not sure if he realises even now.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Mama. “How is Victor?”

  Aunt Dainty sighed. “Not good,” she said. “In bed most of the time.” Then she cried, “The soup – we must eat!” and rushed out of the room.

  Otto pulled some chairs round a table which was laid in a corner and then helped his mother carry in the food. There were hunks of brown bread and soup with dumplings.

  “Knoedel!” cried Mama, munching one. “You always were a wonderful cook, Dainty!”

  “Well, I’ve always liked it,” said Aunt Dainty. “Even in Germany when we had a cook and six maids. But I’ve learned something new now – how do you like my curtains?”

  “Dainty!” cried Mama. “You didn’t make them!”

  Aunt Dainty nodded. “And the cushions on the sofa, and this skirt, and a whole lot of bits and pieces for the lodgers.”

  “She saved the money for a sewing machine out of the rent,” said Otto. “She had to let the rooms upstairs when I was interned – with Father the way he was. And now,” he said fondly, “she’s turning the place into a palace.”

  “Ach Otto – a palace!” said Aunt Dainty, and for someone so large she looked quite girlish.

  Mama, who could hardly sew on a button, couldn’t get over it. “But how did you do it?” she cried. “Who showed you?”

  “Evening classes,” said Aunt Dainty, “at the London County Council. They cost practically nothing – you should try them.”

  While she was talking she had cleared away the soup dishes and brought in an apple tart. She cut a piece for Otto to take to his father and doled out the rest.

  “Do you think Victor would like me to go in and see him?” asked Mama, but Aunt Dainty shook her head.

  “It would be no use, dear,” she said. “He wouldn’t know who you were.”

  After supper they moved back to the oil stove and Otto talked about Canada. He had had a bad time on the way there, locked in the overcrowded hold of a boat, but it had not shaken his faith in the English.

  “It wasn’t their fault,” he said. “They had to lock us up. For all they knew we might have been Nazis. Most of the English Tommies were very decent.”

  The Canadians, too, had been very decent, though not quite as decent, he implied, as the English, and he was particularly pleased that his new job was an English venture. “But I’ll get paid in Canadian dollars,” he said, “and I’ll be able to send some home.”

  Mama questioned him again about his work, but he would only smile and say that it was very small.

  “And Otto so clumsy with his fingers!” cried Aunt Dainty, “Just like his cousin Bonzo.”

  “Whatever happened to him?” asked Mama, and they quickly slid into the kind of conversation which Anna had heard at every meeting of grown-ups since she had left Berlin at the age of nine. It was an endless listing of relatives, friends and acquaintances who had been part of the old life in Germany and who were now strewn all over the world. Some had done well for themselves, some had been caught by the Nazis, and most of them were struggling to survive.

  Anna had either never known or forgotten nearly all these people, and the conversation meant little to her. Her eyes wandered round the room, from Aunt Dainty’s curtains past Otto’s books piled high on a shelf to the table with its bright cover and to the door beyond it.

  It was half-open and she suddenly realised that there was someone standing outside, staring in. This was so unexpected that it frightened her and she glanced quickly at Aunt Dainty, but she was pouring coffee and Mama and Otto were both facing the other way.

  The figure at the door was old and quite bald and there was a curious lopsided look about the head which had a scar running down one side. It was dressed in a kind of shift and as Anna looked at it, it moved one hand in a vague gesture of silence or farewell. Like a ghost, thought Anna, but the eyes that stared back at her were human. Then it tugged its shift closer about its body and a moment later it was gone. It could not even have been wearing shoes, thought Anna, for there had been no sound.

  “Black or white?” said Aunt Dainty.

  “White, please,” said Anna, and as Aunt Dainty handed her the cup she heard the front door close.

  Aunt Dainty started. “Excuse me,” she said and hurried out of the room. She was back almost at once, looking distraught.

  “Otto!” she cried. “It’s your father. Quickly!”

  Otto leapt up from the sofa and rushed for the front door while Aunt Dainty stood helplessly among the coffee cups.

  “He runs away,” she said. “He keeps doing it. Once he got right to the end of the street – in his nightshirt. Luckily a neighbour saw him and brought him back.”

  “What makes him do it?” said Mama.

  Aunt Dainty tried to speak in a matter-of-fact voice.

  “Well, you know,” she said, “when he first came out of the concentration camp it was happening all the time. We couldn’t make him understand that he was no longer there, and I suppose he had some idea of escaping. Then it got better, but lately –” she looked at Mama unhappily. “Well, the brain was damaged, you see, and as people get older these things get worse.”

  There were muffled voices outside and Aunt Dainty said, “Otto has found him.”

  The voices sorted themselves into Otto’s, trying to soothe, and a kind of thin crying.

  “Oh dear,” said Aunt Dainty. She looked anxiously at Anna. “Now you mustn’t let this upset you.” Suddenly she began to talk very fast. “You see, when he gets like this he doesn’t know any of us, especially Otto because he hasn’t seen him for so long. He thinks he’s still in the concentration camp, you see, and he thinks we’re…God knows who he thinks we are, and poor Otto gets very distressed.”

  The front door slammed and Anna could hear them on the stairs, Otto talking and the old man’s voice faintly pleading. There was a bump at the bottom of the stairs – someone must have slipped – and then Otto appeared at the open door with his arms round his father, trying to guide him back to his bedroom, but the old man broke away and tottered towards Mama who involuntarily stepped back.

  “Let me go!” he cried in his thin voice. “Let me go! Please, for God’s sake, let me go!”

  Otto and Aunt Dainty looked at each other.

  “Did he get far?” she asked, and he shook his head.

  “Only two doors away.”

  The old man had found some apple tart on the table and began absently to eat it.

  “Father –” said Otto.

  “My dear, it’s no use,” said Aunt Dainty, but Otto ignored her. He moved a few steps towards his father – carefully, so as not to frighten him.

  “Father,” he said, “it’s me – Otto.”

  The old man went on eating.

  “You’re no longer in the concentration camp,” said Otto. “We got you out – don’t you remember? You’re safe now, in England. You’re home.”

  His father turned his face towards him. The cake was still in his hand and his nightshirt had somehow got caught round one of his bare ankles. He stared at Otto intensely with his old man’s eyes. Then he screamed.

  “Ring the doctor,” said Aunt Dainty.

  “Father –” said Otto again, but it was no use.

  Aunt Dainty went quickly over to the old man and took him by the shoulders. He tried to struggle, but he was no match for
her, and she led him back to bed while Otto went to the telephone. Anna saw his face as he passed her and it looked as though he were dead.

  She and Mama did not speak at all until Aunt Dainty came back into the room. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I wish it hadn’t happened while you were here.”

  Mama put her arms round her large shoulders. “My dear Dainty,” she cried, “I didn’t know!”

  “It’s all right,” said Aunt Dainty. “I’m used to it now – as far as one ever gets used …” Suddenly tears were running down her face. “It’s Otto,” she cried. “I can’t bear to see him. He’s always been so fond of his father. I remember when he was small he used to talk about him all the time.” She looked towards the bedroom where the old man was battering feebly on the door. “How can people do such things?” she asked. “How can they do them?”

  When they were sitting on the bus on the long ride home Anna asked, “How did they get Uncle Victor out of the concentration camp?”

  “It was a kind of ransom,” said Mama. “Dainty sold all her possessions – she was quite rich – and gave the money to the Nazis. And Otto was already in England. He talked to someone at the Home Office and got them to agree that Victor could come here – otherwise the Nazis would never have let him go.”

  “That’s why he always says the English are wonderful,” said Anna.

  She wondered what it would feel like to be Otto. Supposing it had been Papa in the concentration camp…It did not bear even thinking about. She was glad that at least Otto had his job. She could imagine him in Canada, throwing himself into the work with no thought of anything else, to blot out what had been done to his father, to help the wonderful English win their war. Whatever research Otto was given to do, she thought he would do it extremely well.

  “Mama,” she said, “what’s very small in physics?”

  Mama was cold and tired. “Oh, you must know,” she said. “Molecules – atoms – things like that.”

  Atoms, thought Anna – what a pity. It did not sound as though Otto’s research would be very important.

  A few days later Otto came to say goodbye. His father was better, he said. The doctor had prescribed some new sedatives and he now slept most of the time.

  “Keep an eye on my mother,” he asked Mama, who promised to do so.

  Just before he left he handed her a leaflet. “My mother asked me to give it to you,” he said, a little embarrassed. “She thought you might be interested – it’s all about her evening classes.”

  Anna glanced through it after he had gone. It was extraordinary what you could learn for a modest fee – anything from book-keeping through Ancient Greek to upholstery. Suddenly she noticed something.

  “Look, Mama,” she said. “There are even classes in drawing.”

  “So there are,” said Mama.

  Unbelievingly they checked the fee. Eight shillings and sixpence a term.

  “We’ll ring up first thing in the morning,” said Mama.

  Chapter Fifteen

  They spent Christmas in the country with the Rosenbergs. The Professor’s sister and her two boys had gone to stay with another relative in Manchester, where the schooling was better, and the atmosphere was much more peaceful than when Anna had been there before. Everyone was happy because the Americans had finally come into the war, and the Professor even said it might all be over by the end of 1942.

  Aunt Louise had decorated a Christmas tree which filled a corner of the dining room, and on Christmas Day Max managed to come for lunch by dint of hitching lifts both ways. He was learning to fly and had almost completed his training as a pilot. As usual, he had emerged top of all the exams and had already been recommended for a commission.

  Anna told him that she was going to drawing lessons after the holidays.

  “A life class,” she said, “at a proper art school.”

  “Good show,” said Max because that was what people said in the Air Force, but Aunt Louise flew into a flutter of amazement.

  “A life class!” she cried. “Oh dear! You’ll meet all sorts of people there!”

  It was impossible to tell whether she considered the prospect dangerous or attractive, but she clearly thought it fraught with excitement. As a result Anna was a little disappointed when, a week or two later, she went to her first evening class at the Holborn School of Art.

  She was directed to a large, bare room with a wooden platform and a screen at one end. A few people were sitting about, some with drawing boards propped up in front of them, some reading newspapers. Nearly all of them had kept their coats on, for the room was very cold.

  Just after she had come in a little woman with a shopping bag arrived and hurried behind the screen. There was a thump as she put the bag down and a potato rolled out from under the screen, but she retrieved it quickly and emerged a moment later in a pink dressing gown.

  “Christ, it’s freezing,” she said, switched on an electric fire aimed at the platform and crouched in front of it.

  By this time Anna had helped herself to some drawing paper from a stack marked one penny a sheet and pinned it to one of the boards which seemed to be for general use. She got out her pencil and rubber and sat astride one of the wooden forms provided, propping up her board against the easel-shaped front like the other students. She was ready to learn to draw, but nothing happened. On one side of her, an elderly woman was knitting a sock and on the other, a youth of sixteen or so was finishing a sandwich.

  At last the door opened again and a man in a duffel coat appeared.

  “Late again, John!” sang out the youth next to Anna in a strong Welsh accent.

  The man looked across the room with absent-minded blue eyes before his attention focused.

  “Don’t be cheeky, William,” he said. “And you’d better do me a good drawing today, or I’ll tell your father what I really think of you!”

  The Welsh boy laughed and said, “Yes sir,” with mock respect, while the man threw off his duffel and went to confer with the model.

  Anna heard him say something about a standing pose, but the model shook her head.

  “Not tonight, Mr Cotmore,” she cried. “My feet aren’t up to it.”

  She had taken off the pink dressing gown and was standing there with no clothes on at all and with the electric fire casting a red glow on her rather tubby stomach.

  Anna had been a little nervous of this moment. She had wondered what it would feel like to be in a roomful of people all looking at someone naked. But everyone else took it so much for granted that after a minute or two it seemed quite normal.

  “I’ve been queueing an hour for fish,” said the model and indeed, even without her clothes, it was only too easy to imagine her with a shopping bag in her hand.

  “A sitting pose, then,” said the man called Cotmore and covered a chair on the platform with what looked like an old curtain for the model to sit on. When he had arranged her to his satisfaction he said, “Well keep this pose for the whole evening.” There was a rustle of newspapers being put down; the woman with the sock reluctantly rolled up her wool, and everyone began to draw.

  Anna looked at the model and at her blank sheet of paper and wondered where to start. She had never spent more than a few minutes drawing anyone, and now she would have two and a half hours. How could one possibly fill in the time? She glanced at a girl in front of her who seemed to be covering her entire paper with pencil strokes. Of course, she thought – if you made the drawing bigger it was bound to take longer and you could put in more detail. She grasped her pencil and began.

  After an hour she had worked down from the model’s head to her middle. There was something not quite right about the shoulders, but she was pleased with the way she had drawn each of the many curls in the model’s hair and was just about to start on the hands which were folded on one side of the stomach, when the man called Cotmore said, “Rest!”

  The model stretched, stood up and wrapped herself in her dressing-gown and all the students put down their
pencils. How annoying, thought Anna – just when she was getting into her stride.

  A murmur of conversation went up from the class, newspapers were unfolded, and the woman next to her went back to her knitting. Anna found that in spite of having kept her coat on, her feet and hands were frozen.

  “Chilly tonight,” said a man with a muffler and offered her a toffee out of a paper bag.

  The model came down from her throne and walked slowly from one drawing-board to the next, inspecting the different versions of herself all round the room.

  “Have we done you justice?” called Mr Cotmore. He was surrounded by a small group of students, the Welsh boy among them, and they were all chatting and laughing.

  The model shook her head. “They’ve all made me look fat,” she said, and went glumly back to her chair.

  When Anna returned to her drawing at the end of the rest it did not seem quite as good as before. The shoulders were definitely wrong: the trouble, she realised, was that she had drawn the right shoulder higher than the left, whereas the way the model was sitting it was the other way round. How could she not have seen this before? But it was too late to change it, so she concentrated on the hands.

  They were folded together in a complicated way, with the fingers interlaced, and as she tried to copy all the joints and knuckles and fingernails she became increasingly confused. Also, she could not help noticing that as a result of the mistake over the shoulders, one arm had come out longer than the other. She was staring at it all, wondering what to do, when a voice behind her said, “May I?”

  It was Mr Cotmore.

  He motioned to her to get up and sat down in her place.

  “Don’t draw it all in bits,” he said, and began a drawing of his own at the side of the paper.

  Anna watched him, and at first she could not think what he was drawing. There were straight lines like scaffolding in different directions, then a round shape which turned out to be the model’s head and then, gradually, the rest of her appeared among the scaffolding, supported by the straight lines which indicated, Anna now realised, the angle of the shoulders, the hips, the hands in relation to the arms. It was all finished in a few minutes and although there were no details – no curls and no fingernails – it looked far more like the model than Anna’s drawing.