by Dirk Bogarde
I prayed, very hard, across the room from my bed, to my altar, not to let her die, and thought it was a jolly bad mark not to see an ambulance close to once again. But perhaps I’d get the scarlet fever. And that would be very interesting.
But I didn’t.
Chapter 9
Sometimes, when our father had his holiday in the summer, they didn’t go to France for all the time, but spent half of it with us at the cottage. That was pretty good because we often went down to the sea. Our favourite places to go were: one, Birling Gap, two, Cuckmere Haven and three, Newhaven. Bishopstone was pretty interesting, too, because it had some ruined cottages and a big chunk of a windmill. No one much came there because they had to cross a railway line to get to it, and that put trippers off, thank goodness, and the beach was all pebbles.
It was all pebbles at Cuckmere, and all pebbles at Birling Gap, only, there was a bit of a wrecked submarine stuck in the shingle which was very interesting. Our father said it was a German one which had got hit in the war. It was rusty, with holes and barnacles and things. At low tide you could poke about in it for sea anemones and crabs, although our father said it was rotten there for swimming.
Newhaven was pretty good because there was just one big sandy bay below the Ship Inn, under the fort, by the long jetty. When it was low tide it was really good, and not many people went there, but we did. On the other side of the huge jetty it was all pebbles and long wooden breakwaters. Once, years ago, I couldn’t swim and Lally said that was rubbish, anyone could swim it was ‘instinctive’, like with dogs. So she gave me a bit of a shove and I fell off the breakwater and into the sea. But it wasn’t ‘instinctive’, or whatever she called it, at all. I went down for miles, and it was all grey and swirly, and I remember seeing a huge bit of wavery seaweed floating past and I really got the wind up. Then a man in red bathing-drawers dragged me out and gave me a terrible telling off for getting other people into trouble! I ask you! Honestly! I had just been pushed in! But I was coughing and gasping, so I couldn’t tell him. Lally was banging me on the back and thumping me on the chest and I was just hoicking up buckets and buckets of sea water which was foul-tasting, and my eyes were all running and stinging, and I thought swimming was a potty thing to do. If dogs did it easily, well, they were jolly lucky. I couldn’t. And didn’t.
I mean, I didn’t mind shrimping. That was really jolly good. Our father came usually as well, because he liked pottering about in the rocks at Cuckmere. Sometimes he went swimming in his grey woollen swimming-drawers with a modesty panel. Which was a bit silly because we knew what he looked like, shaving, with no clothes on, but he didn’t like undressing on the beach with strange people. Shrimping was all right because he could just roll up his flannel trousers, and we would get really masses of shrimps, all jumping and twitching, and then cover them with green seaweed to keep them fresh on the journey home.
Sometimes he would make one of his little fires in the pebbles with driftwood and we would boil the shrimps there and then, all fresh from the sea, and eat them with bread and butter. That was really the best part. Even my sister didn’t mind it because Lally said that fish were coldblooded and couldn’t feel anything horrible. Mr Jane had told her that. He used to go fishing up at Teddington Lock and Eel Pie Island, and he said they never felt a thing. So if he said so (and he caught thousands of fish), it must be right. Anyway, it made it easier to enjoy beach-boiled shrimps.
Our mother didn’t much like the seaside part. She always had a huge Japanese paper parasol, never took off her dress, and just sat in the shade reading her novels. Honestly, she might just as well have stayed at home. And she thought so too, but she quite enjoyed the tray of tea our father and Lally carried down the cliff-ladder from the café at Birling Gap. It was just a wooden shack-place, and smelled of varnish and the same blue stuff which the lady doctor used for my burned arm. There was a huge hissing tea urn on the counter, shiny buns under a glass dome and, sometimes, if you were early, sandwiches, only my father said that they tasted of good-quality linoleum, so not to bother. But you could get Fry’s chocolate bars, Lally’s very favourite, and coffee fudge, which our mother liked, or buy postcards of the Seven Sisters (those were the white cliffs above) and the Birling Gap Hotel. But the tea, in little metal pots, was best, with a sixpenny deposit for the tray; in case you didn’t take it back. Really, that was the best part about Birling Gap. Getting down the cliff-ladder was a bit difficult, and Lally and our mother shrieked terribly when the wind blew their skirts up, but that was all part of the seaside.
It made it feel very like a holiday. If you went to Cuckmere you had to put your car in the big barn at Exceat Farm, then cross the road, through the five-barred gate, and walk all along the windey river to the beach. It was a bit of a fag, really, because we had to carry all the picnic things, the hamper, kettle, spirit stove, plus all our mother’s cushions for sitting on the beach, and the shrimping-nets and bathing-towels. It was like an Arabian caravan, our father said, and it felt like it. Walking all along the riverbank . . .
There wasn’t time for me to really peer into the water and see all the amazing things in the shallow streams trickling off the Cuckmere. There were little green crabs and efts and tiny flounders which skipped about in the mud, and sometimes a huge heron splashed and plashed about in the reeds, but every time I stopped to watch they all screamed out not to dawdle. So I had to hurry up, quick sharp. A bit boring really.
Except one day when we were down on the rocks, just my father and me. He was poking about in one pool, and I had the net and bucket, when he said, ‘I want you to come to Newhaven tomorrow, just you, no room for anyone else. We’ll go to meet the Pevensey Castle from Dieppe. Now, there may be some people we have to bring back to the cottage for a little stay. Not long. They might have luggage, so that’s why I can only take you to help with things. All right?’
So I said all right, and were they friends of his and he said yes, they were very nice. He’d got a message on the telephone from The Times. It was all a bit of a surprise, but our mother and Lally had made the arrangements for beds and so on. So I said that was quite interesting and he said he didn’t know exactly how many there would be, perhaps four, but they didn’t speak any English . . . well, not much . . . but we’d have to manage for a few days, I said what do they speak, and he said, ‘German. Your mother and I stayed with them in Cologne that year, remember?’ Then he said that if we had enough shrimps we should get back to the others, so we walked up the beach, and he said that our mother would have told my sister, so everyone would know what was happening. Except he didn’t say names or anything, just some friends.
Well, it was a funny sort of day. Lally was setting out the cups and things. Our mother was unwrapping sandwiches and singing to herself. My sister was looking at me with her I-Know-A-Secret face, a sort of smile, so I nodded at her so she would know that I knew about the people who were coming, and our father suddenly called out, ‘Kettle!’, which was boiling away on the stove, and I thought it was all pretty curious and secret-sounding.
At the docks at Newhaven next day we waited with a big crowd of people for the Pevensey Castle to get tied up. Gulls were wheeling and screaming all round the end part where the propellers were churning the water, ropes swung out across to the rails, and there was a drifting of steam from the huge orange funnel, and it was all rusty, close to, and the people standing on the decks (and there were a lot of them really) didn’t do anything. I mean they didn’t wave, or cheer or call to the people on the dockside. There were quite a few policemen about too. It all felt a bit peculiar. Then the gangplank rumbled up across the cobbles, and men in uniform went striding up. My father suddenly put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘There’s Sutton! I can see Sutton, but not anyone else.’ Then he waved, and someone by the rail waved back. I just recognized a face I knew from The Times. Sometimes he had come down when they were doing special photographs for the back page. So I waved too. After all, it was welcoming, and I did know
him. Well, I had met him. But he didn’t see me, just our father, and he raised his hand with two fingers, and my father said, aloud, ‘Just two. Oh! Damn!’ So I could feel he was pretty upset.
Then people started getting off and coming slowly down the gangplank, and Mr Sutton suddenly pulled two children close beside him. He bent down and spoke to them, then he pointed down to us and they half waved. When they had all got down on to the cobbles, they had to go into a big Customs place with all the other people, which my father said was for passports and papers and so on, and we’d have to wait. So we did. It was quite a funny feeling really because, although some people looked quite happy and cheerful, and met friends, there wasn’t any shoving and laughing like there usually is if you come ashore. Some people were actually crying. In public. I mean, it really was pretty peculiar, and I wondered if anyone had died on the ship, or perhaps there had been an accident? But our father said no, no accident, and no one had died on the ship, as far as he knew anyway, but that these were people who had all come from Germany. When I asked why, he said it was the new rules. They were not wanted, and if they didn’t leave they’d be sent to prison. I could see that he was quite upset or something because he was biting the side of his cheek, and that was always a bad sign, when we noticed him doing it.
But then he said well, there would be plenty of room in the car now, depending on how much luggage there was. I wasn’t sure what it was all about, but I didn’t want to ask too many questions. Not then anyway.
We went into the Customs place, where there were masses of people milling about. It was very gloomy, with yellow walls and hanging lamps with green tin shades, and there were posters on the wall of castles, like Arundel and Herstmonceux, and of lots of laughing people on beaches, and of the Southern Railway everywhere.
But no one was laughing in the crowd. They were just talking and holding bags and papers. Then Mr Sutton was there, and quite close to. Of course, I remembered him, and he shook hands, and said to my father, ‘No Krauses, they didn’t make it, but I’ve got the children.’ He was looking pretty tired. His eyes were red and he hadn’t even shaved. Behind him were the two children. He got them to come forward through the crowd and said, ‘This is Eric, remember? His sister is Sophie. He speaks English, she doesn’t. There is no luggage, just what they have.’ We all shook hands, and Sophie curtsied to my father, which was a surprise, and Eric nodded his head with a short sort of jerk, and shook hands. Then we all walked into the open. Which was better. Outside, I mean.
I was going to help the girl, Sophie, with her bag, but she pulled away from me, which was a bit rude. But Mr Sutton said just let her hang on to things, they had had a dreadful time over the last few days. Our father explained about the O.M. and that Mrs Bogaerde (he didn’t call her anything else to Mr Sutton) and our nanny were waiting at the cottage, and did he want to come back with us because there was plenty of room in the car and a bed at the cottage if he wanted it? But he said no, he’d just like to have a quick word, and then get up to London, and they went away together.
So we went to the O.M. and I said to Eric that they could sit in the back and I would be in front with my father, and he said, ‘That is most kind of you. What is your name?’ I told him, and he said he was Eric and that this, and he put his hand on her head, was his sister Sophie. He was my age, she was almost the same as my sister, so I told him that, and he looked polite and asked if they were to come in the motor car with us? I said yes. We’d go to our house and they would have a jolly nice room and had they had any food on the boat? Eric said they were too tired to eat but Mr Sutton had given them a sandwich and some tea. Which wasn’t very nice to taste, and he laughed, a very little bit, when he said it, but Sophie just stood there, holding her bag, with a label fluttering on it. It said her name, Sophie Anna Krause. And she was crying. Without making a noise.
At the cottage our mother came running down the path through the sweet-pea trellis and the vegetables, waving like anything. I saw Lally come out to the lean-to door with a cloth in her hand, and Sophie, who was walking with me, suddenly dropped her bag and ran towards our mother and threw her arms round her knees. Our mother said, ‘Sophie! Oh! Sophie! Comment allez-vous, ma belle?’
And I said to my father that was French and not German, and he said, ‘Well, you know your mother: all foreign languages are the same to her.’
But Sophie was crying, and holding on pretty tight. Then Eric quickly came past me, picked up Sophie’s bag with his own and stood before our mother. ‘Good day, Aunt Maggie. I am very happy to see you!’
Our mother got up and gave him a terrific kiss, and said to come up to the house, but she looked back and raised her eyebrows at our father who just shook his head. She put a hand to her mouth, but turned away and called to Lally to come and meet the children, only, her voice was too loud, and a bit wobbly, as if she had been crying as well. But she hadn’t.
My father and I walked up the path, watching Lally being introduced. Then my sister came out and everyone was in a sort of huddle shaking hands, but Sophie wouldn’t leave my mother, she just hung on to her.
‘Do you know them very well? Eric called our mother “Aunt Maggie”.’
‘Pretty well. She is very good with children, you know that. She’ll be very unhappy because Mr and Mrs Krause aren’t here.’
‘Can I ask why, Papa?’ I felt I ought to know, so as to tell my sister. Stopping down by the rhubarb clump, he said that the authorities came for Mr Krause, and Mrs Krause refused to leave him, so Mr Sutton had to take the two children during the night and got them to France, and that was all I needed to know. It was because they were Jews. All the Jews had to leave Germany now. We walked on up the path and that was that. I mean he didn’t say any more, and I knew he would not. Yet.
Eric said he liked his tea very much. Lally had made them some poached eggs on toast, and even Sophie ate them, while my sister talked and talked to her and showed her all sorts of interesting things, like her cigarette card collection of film stars and a dried sea-horse and her jewel box. Well, it was only some soppy old rings from crackers and a glass bead bracelet from the lucky dip down at the vicar’s sister’s shop, by the Flats.
But she was being jolly kind and Sophie was very pretty, with huge brown eyes. She did look a bit like a big doll, which is probably what my sister liked about it all – she hardly spoke to poor Eric. Then she actually gave Sophie the bracelet, and put it on her wrist, and Lally said, ‘Oh! My word! How lovely, and doesn’t it suit you?’ Which was pretty potty because Sophie didn’t know what she was saying anyway, and it was just anyone’s old bracelet really. But, I suppose, it was very nice and welcoming.
After tea Eric and I went for a walk up to the little church, and I told him about it and the cottage, and he nodded his head and smiled and seemed very interested. Then I said did he know how long they could stay? Because we could go to the Fair at the Tye down by the river next week, and he said he didn’t know anything except they had some friends in somewhere called Crickle-wood, and then maybe they would go to America. I thought that sounded pretty exciting, but he didn’t really seem to think so. Just smiled and looked miserable behind it. So to try and cheer him up a bit I told him about how terrible it was last year for us all, and about Lally and my sister in the isolation hospital and me getting burned. I showed him my arm, which was still a bit shiny, and prickly from time to time. He was quite curious because, he said, he was going to be a doctor one day, and he hoped I was ‘very recovered’. I said I was, and we just wandered back to the cottage. He wasn’t interested in the Dearly Beloveds and Departed This Lifes much, didn’t even look at them really, so I didn’t dawdle about.
About two days later a huge car arrived in Waterloo Square in the village and some very expensive-looking people collected them, with lots of kisses and hugs, and drove them away, I suppose to the Cricklewood place. My sister said that Sophie could keep her bracelet, and we all waved and they just went. That was the last we ever saw of them
. The expensive people spoke marvellous English, a bit Cockney, but English anyway. They kissed my mother, and the woman was wiping her eyes, and my father said it was a most dreadful world and it wasn’t the sort of place he’d been fighting for in his war. The man, who was called Mr Krause also, agreed and hoped we’d be spared what his brother and sister-in-law had suffered. So Eric and Sophie had a real aunt and uncle, and that didn’t make it seem quite so awful. I mean, they had kith and kin.
As long as you weren’t Jewish, anyway. But they were a bit depressing. Honestly.
Mr Wilde said it was the hottest August he had ever known and it brought all the wapsies out something terrible. He wrapped up the bacon, the butter and the half of Red Leicester, and then Miss Maltravers called us from her little cage and said, ‘Look what you’ve got! A postcard from your parents from Deauville, France. Aren’t they the regular gad-abouts? And there’s a letter here for Miss Jane. Postmark Richmond, so I reckon that’s news from home.’ But I just said thank you politely, even though I was a bit fed up because she had read our card before we had. But that was the trouble with postcards and Miss Maltravers. There was nothing you could do about it.
We went across to Wood’s the butcher’s with Lally’s note about the mince, and the kind of blade he had to use, coarse or fine. Mr Wood, who was very fat and jolly, with his straw hat on and striped apron, said Miss Jane knew her mind all right, just what she wanted. Mrs Wood in the cash desk was fanning herself and saying upon her word, it had never been so hot, and what with the flies life was dreadful, even with all the windows open – but no draught – she felt like one of the dead chickens hanging on the rail. She looked a bit more like something else up there, but of course I didn’t say so.
