by Judith Kerr
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.”
The crowd had thickened and they stopped for a moment to let a man with a child on his shoulder pass them. Someone saluted Max and he had to salute back.
“You remember,” he said, “what you used to say in Paris? That as long as you were with Mama and Papa you wouldn’t feel like a refugee?”
She nodded.
“Well, now I suppose it’s the other way round.”
“How, the other way round?”
Max sighed. “Nowadays,” he said, “I think that the only times they don’t feel like refugees is when they’re with us.”
Anna stared at the scene around her – the flags, the noise, the relaxed, contented faces – and thought of Mama and Papa travelling back to Putney on the tube.
“We’ll just have to do the best we can,” she said.
At Piccadilly Circus Max left her, and she walked into the crowd. The square was swarming with people, they were all around her, old men, people in uniform, couples holding hands, women with children. Some danced or sang, some were drinking, but most of them, like herself, were just walking about. No processions, she thought. No waving of banners. A sailor had climbed to the top of a lamppost. A small boy shouted, “Wheee…” and then made a crunching noise like an explosion. “No,” said the woman with him. “No more bombs.”
As she reached the centre of the square, the sun came out and everything suddenly leapt into colour. Water flashed in the fountain. An airman, his uniform changed from grey to blue, splashed some on a laughing girl in a pink dress. A bottle blazed momentarily, passed from hand to hand. Two women singing “Roll Out The Barrel” in printed blouses seemed to burst into flower. Pigeons wheeled. The sky shone.
At the foot of the fountain a soldier leaned, fast asleep. He was half-sitting, half-lying, his head supported by the stone. The sun lit up the top of his face, one hand clutched a kitbag, the other trailed, open, on the pavement. The legs sprawled exhausted. There was something triumphant about the way he slept. If only he doesn’t wake up, thought Anna.
She got out her sketch-book and began to draw.
About the Author
Bombs on Aunt Dainty
Judith Kerr was born in Berlin of German Jewish parents. Her father, Alfred Kerr, a distinguished writer, fiercely attacked the Nazis long before they came to power and the family had to flee the country in 1933 when Judith was nine years old.
Bombs on Aunt Dainty is the second title in a trilogy of books based on Judith’s own experiences. The first, When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, tells the story of the last-minute escape from Germany, village life in Switzerland, the family’s refugee existence in Paris and their final arrival in England. The trilogy continues with Bombs on Aunt Dainty and A Small Person Far Away, which deal with her growing up in wartime London, her time at art school and her marriage to the writer, Nigel Kneale.
Judith is also well known as the author and illustrator of picture books of which the best-known are the hugely popular Mog stories and The Tiger Who Came to Tea, which has now been in print for over thirty years. She lives in London with her husband. They have a film designer daughter, a novelist son – and a cat, called Posy.
Also by Judith Kerr
When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit
(also available as a Collins Modern Classic)
A Small Person Far Away
Out of the Hitler Time
Copyright
William Collins Sons & Co Ltd in 1975
First published in Collins in 1998
This edition published as Bombs on Aunt Dainty by
HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2002
HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,
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www.harpercollins.co.uk
Text copyright © Kerr-Kneale Productions Ltd 1975
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work.
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EPub Edition © MAY 2012 ISBN: 9780007375714
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