Pennies For Hitler

by Jackie French

  But of course it was impossible in a flat.

  ‘I’ve found a place for you at the Gresham School,’ said Aunt Miriam one Saturday. It was omelettes for breakfast — a supper dish at home but something the English ate in the morning instead — with grilled summer tomatoes and toast with jam.

  ‘It’s a good school — a bus ride away, but better than the local. Your English is good enough to pass muster now.’ She smiled at him, the abstracted smile that was the only kind she had these days. ‘You’ve done very well, all on your own. I’m proud of you. We’ll go and buy your school uniform today.’

  It was a nice uniform: grey flannel pants, a dark blue blazer and a dark blue cap. He was glad now it was a day school, not a boarding school. He’d be able to see Mrs Huntley after school and there’d still be weekends with Aunt Miriam.

  He put the clothes on in the evenings, alone in the flat waiting for Aunt Miriam to return. He looked in the mirror and tried to imagine himself doing maths and playing cricket with his friends. An English boy with English friends.

  The chance of school vanished.

  The Gresham School announced that in August it would evacuate all its students to High Martin Manor, in the country, away from any bombs that might fall on London.

  ‘I think it best,’ said Aunt Miriam carefully, ‘if you don’t go away with the school to the country. Not when you don’t know anyone.’

  Not till I’ve proved I can fit in, thought Georg. Not till no one would suspect that I am German.

  The uniform hung lonely in the cupboard. He had worn it so couldn’t send it back. He guessed that if he ever wore a school uniform he’d have grown out of this one.

  He knew now just how much having a German nephew living with her might hurt Aunt Miriam too. Having an English father and an English passport made him English only as long as he sounded right.

  He worked even harder on his accent. He read the newspaper over and over, so he’d know English things. He tried to imagine himself doing the things the children did in his English storybooks: sailing boats and building fires and playing at the seaside. But what was a sandcastle? Could you really build a whole giant castle out of sand?

  They called it Operation Pied Piper in the newspaper. Over three short days three and a half million children had to leave England’s cities — cities, like London and Manchester and Liverpool, that might be bombed. They were taken by train or buses or even trucks west to Wales or to villages far from the coast.

  ‘Do I have to go?’ asked Georg.

  ‘Parents don’t have to send their children. But children need to be safe.’

  ‘Will you send me?’

  She bit her lip. ‘I haven’t decided. Do you want to go?’

  ‘No.’ It wasn’t just that he was scared that strangers might find out he was German and put him in a camp behind barbed wire. Aunt Miriam and her flat and Mrs Huntley’s library were the only safe things he knew. Aunt Miriam mightn’t know much about children, but she was his.

  She nodded slowly. ‘Very well. But if … if things get bad you may have to leave then. And …’ She hesitated. ‘I shouldn’t tell you this, George. Don’t repeat it.’

  Who would I tell it to? he wondered. To Mrs Huntley? To Mutti, in my dreams?

  ‘My office may be transferred out of London. Its work is too important to be lost to bombs.’

  ‘Where would we go?’

  ‘No one’s told me. No one has said anything official yet. Somewhere in the country: that’s all. Somewhere that doesn’t look like it would be worth a bomb.’

  A cottage, thought Georg. That’s where his books said people lived in the English countryside. No one would think of bombing cottages. He imagined packing the dreaded suitcase again; it would be worth it to go to a cottage in the country. In books cottages had roses around the door. Röslein, röslein, röslein rot … Maybe they could have some hens. He might even be allowed a dog.

  He watched from afar as the children assembled in the park, one of the nearly two thousand assembly points just in London. He didn’t want to get too close in case someone thought he was one of them and accidentally took him too.

  The children had a suitcase each — smaller than his, like a school bag — and brown labels around their necks on pieces of string. Some of them were crying. The little ones held the big ones’ hands.

  Mothers huddled in clusters at the other end of the park. There were few men. Even today, the men had to work, though their children were being taken away. The organisers didn’t allow the mothers too near. Some of the women covered their faces with their hands as though they couldn’t watch.

  Mutti would have watched, thought Georg. Mutti looked at me till the suitcase closed. He knew in his heart she had watched the suitcase as it was carried down the path and down the street. She would have followed it to the station if she hadn’t been afraid that someone would see her and wonder about the suitcase with him inside.

  It began to rain: a cold grey drizzle like the clouds had simply melted onto the ground.

  Buses drew up, long buses with hungry mouths like lions that swallowed the children one by one. Every time a bus drew away fewer children were left behind.

  A woman screamed. She fell to the ground, sobbing. She still sobbed as two older women helped her away.

  At last there were no more buses. The organisers herded the remaining children into two lines, each couple holding each other’s hand. They began to march, left right, left right, across the road then down towards the train station.

  The mothers followed.

  The buses had been cool and silent. It was different with the hiss and chuff of trains. The children clambered into the carriages. They leaned out, their cardboard labels dangling. They waved and shouted — at their mothers, at the porters, at children who hadn’t yet boarded. It was almost like a holiday was coming, not a war.

  The mothers waved too, coming nearer now the official guardians were on the trains.

  ‘You be a good girl now?’

  ‘You write as soon as you get there, you hear?’

  ‘No mucking up! You behave yourself, or I’ll come down and give you what for.’

  ‘And change your vest every night and don’t forget to take that medicine …’

  No one said ‘I love you’. No one said ‘I’ll miss you’ or ‘My world will crack when you are gone’. No one said ‘I don’t think I can bear this, but I will’.

  He hadn’t said those words either. For the first time he wondered if they even needed to be said.

  He waited till the last train had vanished down the line, till the last mother had shoved her damp handkerchief in her pocket and trudged slowly out of the station, before he left too and went back to the flat, silent till he turned the wireless on.

  He was listening to the wireless one evening, repeating the phrases the announcer said, when there was a knock at the door. He started — no one had ever knocked at the door when he had been there alone before. The maid had her own key, Aunt Miriam’s friends only came when she was there, and the doorman downstairs took deliveries.

  The doorman must have allowed whoever this was up.

  For a second his heart seemed to rip in two. It was Mutti! Or Mutti and Papa …

  He opened the door.

  A tall man stood there, with long, thin legs like a grasshopper’s and grey hair under his tin hat. He peered down at Georg. ‘Good evening, laddie. I’m Captain Hawkins, air-raid warden. Can I speak to your mummy or daddy?’

  ‘My aunt isn’t at home,’ said Georg carefully.

  ‘What? Oh, yes, the doorman told me. You’re —’ he looked at the list ‘— Marks, George and his aunt, Marks, Miriam. Well, you’ll do, laddie.’ He reached into a box, out of sight in the corridor, and pulled out two strange bundles. ‘Gas masks,’ he said.

  ‘Gas masks?’ repeated Georg. For a moment he thought it might be a reference to his own name, Marks.

  ‘To put on if there is a poison gas raid,’ said Capt
ain Hawkins patiently. ‘The Jerries sent poison gas down on us in great big canisters in the last war. I was in France. Chaps coughed up blood —’ He saw the expression on Georg’s face and stopped. ‘Well, just you make sure you put yours on if you hear the siren, and you give your auntie hers too. Can you do that?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Georg.

  ‘Right, see how I do it? Suck in your breath, then hold the mask in front of your face and pull the straps over your head as far as they will go.’

  Captain Hawkins’s face vanished in the gas mask. He looked even more like an insect now: a strange, evil insect. He pulled the mask off and became human again.

  ‘Now you try it. Make sure you don’t twist the straps now.’

  Georg took the thing and placed it over his face. It felt peculiar and stiff and he couldn’t see very much. It smelled horrible too. This is meant to make me feel safe, he thought. Safe from gas, like the shelters are to keep us safe from bombs.

  He didn’t feel safe at all.

  One day there was no newspaper when Georg got up and wandered out into the kitchen. He looked in the bin, in case Aunt Miriam had used it to wrap scraps, then in the living room, but it was nowhere.

  Aunt Miriam must have taken it to work, he thought. He missed it. The newspaper had news from Germany every day now. It wasn’t news he liked to read, but at least he could see his homeland’s name in print and know that it was still there. Somehow seeing the word ‘Germany’ made it possible that Mutti was safe, and Papa too.

  But the library received newspapers every day. He waited until the old lady with the yellow headscarf who came in every morning to read it had finished with it; and the old man with the pipe too. Mrs Huntley didn’t mind if he went into the ‘Adults’ room these days. She knew he liked the magazines, the books on animals and the encyclopaedias that only the Adults section had.

  He sat in one of the shabby leather chairs, still warm where the pipe man had sat on it, and began to read: comics first, and then a leaf through the pages looking for German news.

  It was on page six. He read it, then read it again. The paper began to shake. He saw it was caused by his hands trembling and put the whole thing down.

  So this was why Aunt Miriam had taken the newspaper away today. Not because she needed it, or wanted to read it on her way to work.

  She had taken it to stop him reading this.

  The Jews in Germany were being put in places called concentration camps where they had to work to help Germany win the war. They were tortured there — whipped and beaten with sticks. Hitler himself had ordered the floggings.

  Georg tried to keep his eyes wide open, to stare at the people passing outside the window, at the dog on a lead walking along the street. Anything … anything to keep the pictures from his head.

  Papa, his back red with blood, just like the blood on his head …

  No! He couldn’t think that! He couldn’t!

  Mutti, screaming in pain …

  No! Now he was gone, and Papa … now Papa might be gone, Mutti must be safe. No one would think she was Jewish now. He tried not to think of her huddled by a barbed-wire fence in a camp and crying.

  No, Mutti wouldn’t cry. She hadn’t cried when they hurt Papa. She hadn’t let the tears fall for her son, at least not when he could see. Mutti wouldn’t ever cry because of Hitler.

  Now Hitler might be coming here.

  Georg was at the library the day the war arrived.

  No other young people used the Children’s room now. Occasionally he saw other children in the distance: even a mob of boys once. A few families must have kept their children home, like him. But none of those left in this part of London used the library.

  Mrs Huntley smiled at him when he arrived. She had assumed that he wasn’t to be evacuated because of the illness Aunt Miriam had told her about. But today she seemed distracted.

  The streets were emptier than he had ever seen them. It wasn’t just that the children had vanished. Most of the adults had gone somewhere too. Were grown-ups also leaving London now? But Aunt Miriam would have told him if they were, and he didn’t like to ask Mrs Huntley. Mrs Huntley knew how to find a book about polar bears, but he thought she didn’t understand the world outside like Aunt Miriam did.

  He found a book, an old Boy’s Own Annual he hadn’t seen before. It told him how to build an underwater spear gun. It didn’t seem like something you could use in a pond, but maybe if he ever went to the seaside like children in the books —

  Someone yelled outside. The sound of cheering echoed from down the street. Mrs Huntley ran outside and into the tea-shop next door.

  Georg stared. Mrs Huntley had never left the library during the day before. A minute later she was back. She slipped back behind her desk, hunched up with her cardigan wrapped round her as if she was cold.

  He approached her quietly. ‘Are you all right? Why are they cheering?’

  She looked at him, her face wet. ‘It’s war, dear,’ she said flatly. ‘Mr Chamberlain says we’re at war.’

  ‘With Germany?’

  There didn’t seem anyone else to be at war with, other than Germany’s friends of course. Mrs Huntley nodded. ‘My Ernest was in the last war.’ She added in an almost whisper, ‘Lost his leg on the Somme.’

  Georg had a vision of a man waking up one morning and not remembering where he had left his leg, hopping about in the fields looking for it. He thought of grey-faced, legless men, sitting on street corners, their shabby hats on the footpath beside them, hoping for coins. No, he thought, Mr Huntley lives in a house, with Mrs Huntley.

  ‘Gassed him too. He’s still up most nights, choking and gasping, trying to get some air into him. That’s why I have to work here. Now we’re for it again. The whole horrible mess of it —’

  It was as though she suddenly saw Georg again. She gave him a tight smile. ‘Don’t you worry, dear. We saw the nasty Huns off last time. We’ll see them off this time too.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Georg. He forced himself to add, ‘We will.’

  A week later Mrs Huntley was in tears again. ‘My dog, Blondie. The papers said pets have to be put down … All resources are needed for the war effort. Can’t be wasting good food on dogs.’ She wiped her eyes savagely. ‘Poor old boy. I’d have shared my last crust with him, if I could. Had him near fourteen years. Hundreds of them all in a pile at the vet’s: dogs and cats and a horse too.’

  Georg thought, I won’t be getting a dog then. Even if we go to a cottage I can’t have a dog.

  Planes thundered overhead, grey metal against a greyer sky: bombers or planes carrying troops to squadrons in France or Poland — no one seemed to know.

  The main streets suddenly were ‘one way only’ — cars piled with families, dogs that had been spared being put down, suitcases, even chairs and tables tied on the roofs, rumbling out of London. Trucks trundled through the streets, taking paintings from the galleries and crates from the museums. All the treasures of London were being taken away to safety from the threat of bombs.

  All of London seemed to be moving, except for them, and Mrs Huntley and the library.

  But the bombs didn’t come.

  There were no street lights now, in case they showed the German bombers where to drop their cargo. He helped Aunt Miriam fit thick blackout curtains to every window in the flat. No crack of light that might lead the enemy up the river to London could show in the whole city. He wasn’t allowed to turn a light on now unless the curtains were pulled. The nights were getting longer again, so he pulled them before he left the flat each afternoon, so he didn’t have to fumble his way across to the windows in the dark when he got back.

  Registration day arrived. They lined up to register at the baker’s shop, the butcher’s and the grocer’s for the new ration books. No one knew what food would be rationed yet, but everyone knew that life would be hard.

  England didn’t grow enough food to feed her people, so it all needed to be rationed so everyone could get a fair share and le
ave enough to feed the men in the army and the navy and air force. You couldn’t fight on an empty belly. Civilians — those who weren’t in the army or navy or air force — would get what was left. The newspaper explained how to keep chickens for eggs or rabbits for meat or plant a vegetable garden.

  Georg liked the idea of rabbits, though not the killing them or meat part. Even keeping rabbits was impossible in a flat. Maybe they could have a garden in the park. But the men were piling walls of sandbags in the park now. He supposed the soldiers could hide behind them to shoot at the enemy when they arrived.

  Aunt Miriam filled the larder with cans of baked beans and canned salmon. They weren’t rationed. ‘If things get bad,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s best to have something in reserve.’

  Christmas was coming. Georg watched the calendar, waiting for 6 December, Nikolaustag, St Nicholas Day. But Aunt Miriam didn’t remind him to put his shoes outside the front door the evening before. He waited till she was asleep, then opened their front door and checked outside in the hall, to see if other people had put their shoes outside. No one had.

  He put his shoes out anyway, but next morning they were empty, not filled with oranges or nuts, not even a bunch of twigs to show that he’d been bad.

  There were Christmas trees in the shop windows now. Mrs Huntley had a tree branch in the library that she had asked Georg to help decorate too, with coloured balls and tinsel instead of proper Christbaumgebäck, the special little Christmas biscuits that Mutti made in the shape of stars and lambs and tiny trees before baking them and hanging them on their Christmas tree. He would have liked a Christmas tree in their flat, like they had at home. But Aunt Miriam worked even later these days and was always tired.