An East End Girl

by Maggie Ford

  Flustered, frightened, fearing the worst and not knowing quite what to do, she watched the car turn and speed away. Still in shock, she made for her nearest neighbour’s house, her only thought to ask if her neighbour’s husband would drive her to town. Then came a second shock.

  Opening the door to her frantic knocks, the woman stared blankly at her saying her husband was already in bed, and, without another word, closed the door in her face, leaving her staring, stunned. She tried three other neighbours in turn, all with almost the same results. The husband either in bed or going to bed or, worse still, too busy.

  It was that last excuse that brought an unpleasant flicker of truth just what her situation was. She hadn’t realised it before but this build-up of anti-Semitism was touching even her, Anglican to the core except that she was married to a Jew. Funny, she thought as she stared at the last closed door, as she had once told Cissy, she never thought of Teddy as Jewish, only German.

  Now with growing sickness in her heart, she got herself back to her house, knowing that whatever she did now must be done by her alone. Going to the garden shed, she unearthed one of the bicycles she and Teddy used for keeping themselves fit cycling on fine days. Gathering up a sleepy Noelle, she dressed her, settled her in the rear wickerwork child seat and, ignoring the child’s whimpering protests at being woken up, set off to pedal the six miles to Sankt Marien, glad that the terrain here was flat, and she was as yet still not too pregnant to push a bike.

  At the hospital she was met by the same stony faces of nurses and doctors as the policemen had presented.

  ‘You will find your husband in the general ward,’ was all she was told, her frantic enquiries in poor German as to how badly hurt he was ignored. ‘You must collect him in two days. He will be strapped up and ready to go home.’ And this from the very hospital that only a few months back had helped her so willingly and well to finally become pregnant.

  She found him awake and in pain, his chest strapped with wide, frayed bandages beneath a buttonless, grubby pyjama top, his left arm in a splint, his face so swollen and bruised she hardly recognised him. He looked as if he had been hurriedly patched up with whatever had come to hand and left to get on with it; not even a bell beside him to ring should he need help.

  Between winces of pain he managed to tell her that he had been set upon by a gang of thugs as he’d gone to his motorbike. They had said something about Jews not being worthy of owning motorbikes. She heard the whispered name, Brownshirts, and knew with a chill of goose pimples that this had been no mere onslaught by a few drunken louts.

  It was almost midnight when she returned home. She noticed lights on in her house and realised that in her haste she’d forgotten to turn everything off. The wireless was still playing to itself as she came in – the German Anthem before closing down for the night.

  In sudden fury at all that had happened, she took off her shoe and flung it with all her strength at the thing. Her aim accurate, the heel cracked the flimsy fretwork of the speaker in the centre, but the anthem went on playing as though nothing had happened, mocking her almost. ‘You’ll – not – escape,’ the stately, slow, solid rhythm of the anthem seemed to say. ‘Not ever – not ever…’

  Weeping, she gave herself up to her defeat, letting the weeping drain away all the horror of the evening, ignoring a wondering and very sleepy Noelle. Then weary, tears finally exhausted, she got up, turned off the now silent wireless and took her back to her bed, kissing her soft cheek and tucking her in before going to her own bed.

  It cost precious Reichmarks to hire a taxi to bring Teddy home two days later. No amount of pleading allowed him any longer stay in hospital, beds were needed for more urgent cases – good Germans, she was brusquely told. Had she been in England, she’d have retaliated against such rudeness, but she wasn’t in England. So she left, making no fuss, supporting Teddy as best she could to the taxi, surprised how she, a fiercely proud Cockney, could have changed so much. It was belittling.

  For the next few weeks she nursed him, watched him slowly return to normal. But still in no fit state to work, his business was sinking. Soon there’d be no business, no clients, no money coming in. Something had to be done. She saw him settled after crawling like an old man to the table to eat, then took herself off to his empty study to write to Cissy about what had happened. She still could not demean herself to outright begging, filling her letter merely with hints, hoping Cissy might read between the lines and automatically offer help.

  But it wasn’t the letter she sent. On the way to the postbox a few yards down the road, Noelle toddling beside her, her path was suddenly barred by five uniformed young men who had just got out of a car.

  Her name rudely demanded, she felt obliged to tell them, hating the feeling of being cowed. They leered.

  ‘Jew!’ One of them spat out.

  Regaining some of her courage, she drew herself up, her own small height dwarfed by each young man.

  ‘I am English and Anglican,’ she returned in German. ‘I was baptised into the Church of England, and that is that!’

  ‘But married to a Jew,’ came the statement.

  ‘Yes, but he doesn’t…’

  ‘And this is your Jewish child.’ One of them took hold of Noelle’s arm, who, frightened by the stranger, began to cry.

  In a rush of motherly defence of her child, her old Cockney temper flaring, Daisy reached out, dragged her back, at the same time landing a sharp smack on the opponent’s brown sleeve.

  ‘She’s adopted. Leave her be! How dare you!’

  To her surprise the man did not grab Noelle back. Laughing, the five moved on, pushing her roughly aside as though she were dirt. Her heart thudding with sickening beats as she bent to wipe Noelle’s tears she saw them pause to take note of her house. She straightened up as they came sauntering back.

  ‘A splendid house your Jewish husband has,’ one of them drawled. ‘It is not proper that Jews should own such a splendid house while many good Germans live in poor tenements. This will be looked into, Fraulein Helgott.’

  Getting back into their car, they drove off looking very pleased with themselves.

  Their last ominous words echoing in her head, the way they had grabbed Noelle, she didn’t tell Teddy of her encounter, but sat down and rewrote her letter to Cissy, this time the begging letter she had put off for so long.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Cissy looked forward to Thursdays. Thursdays were special.

  Early closing, Eddie’s mother giving eye to young Edward, it was an opportunity to ride up to Knightsbridge to gaze in the windows of big department stores like Harrods, to dream and masochistically mull over the chances she had missed: with a little thought, how easily she could have played her cards better. But she had gone ahead, had gone against Langley and had her baby; had made a fool of herself because she hadn’t learned to be hard. Too late now to start regretting, of course, but it was like a magnet that drew her, this regret; unable to escape its pull – in a way didn’t want to escape.

  Of course she was tormenting herself, dreaming of Paris, buying wild perfumes, beautiful clothes, jewellery in the exclusive expensive boutiques of the Rue Royale, wearing them for him, luxuriating to have him slowly divest her of the clothes she’d bought as they made love in that fine apartment in Montparnasse. There had been the fun, the crazy madcap escapades of the twenties. People like that still had mad, mad parties, still did crazy things. No hectic Charleston now, jazz pushed into the background, women in slinky bare-backed satin dresses, hair marcel-waved, faces differently made up, now they rumba’d and tango’d, but they still spent and spent in spite of the continuing Depression in which those like herself must struggle.

  The West End with Hollywood films displaying the elegance she had once indulged in; but she was merely a housewife, a mother, a small dealer in ladies knitwear, even the dream of selling Paris fashions gone.

  Moving away from the display window of this, one of London’s most exclusive s
hops, its expensively dressed mannequins with painted faces and unbelievably long eyelashes smiling at her, taunting her, she sidestepped to avoid a couple, so busy consulting Harrods’ window that they didn’t notice her. But Cissy had drawn in a startled gasp.

  Langley Makepeace – that slim and elegant grace of him, that suave self-assured expression of his – it was him. He hadn’t changed a bit and Cissy’s heart seemed to leap with an arousal of what she had once felt for him. She only just managed to stop herself calling his name.

  The woman on his arm was also slim and elegant, beautifully dressed – that sleek beige summer dress and wide-brimmed hat could only have come from Harrods itself. She had to be his wife, moving beside him with the easy confidence of the happily married woman. Seeing her arm through his, his hand covering hers the way it had once covered her own, sent a shock of envy through Cissy.

  Even as it did, they merged with other shoppers going in through the swing doors and out of sight. He hadn’t even noticed her; had he done so, would probably not have recognised her anyway. She still tried to dress reasonably well, but was no longer the person he would remember, she felt suddenly drab, poor; felt as though she had been a kerbside beggar he’d passed. She felt degraded for all he hadn’t seen her. All she wanted to do now was run away in case the pair came out and he did recognise her. What an embarrassment. He had no idea that she had borne him a child, must have long ago forgotten her.

  She felt sick, the world blurring behind tears which she fought to stem, all that self-destructive pleasure of recalling the old days flushed out of her, she made her way blindly towards the underground that would get her a train back home. That old life she had known was truly gone and couldn’t be brought back no matter how she yearned and dreamed and pretended. She knew that now. She knew also that she would not come near Knightsbridge to dream ever again and that Thursday from now on would be just humdrum Thursday.

  The letter lay on the living room table. Cissy stared down at it in disbelief and something near to horror. Not at what Daisy had written but the importance it had for herself. There could be no question of not helping her and Theodore. She had to, no matter what it cost. But it would mean having to confess a daughter to Eddie to do so. Everything ruined, her marriage destroyed.

  She felt an unbearable anger towards Daisy for putting her into such a position. Unjustifiable she knew, but as she sat alone, Eddie’s mother having gone home and Eddie yet to come home, her only thought was how dare Daisy place her into such a situation? She should never have gone to Germany in the first place, and surely Theodore must have known what was going on there. He wasn’t an idiot yet had taken Daisy, and more importantly Noelle – her daughter, not theirs – into danger.

  More to the point, though, it was herself she was really angry at, but it was easier to aim her fury at Daisy, transferring some of the blame from herself for not having taken more interest in Noelle. And now she would reap the harvest of it all. And yes, it could ruin her marriage but what could she do after all Daisy had done for her once? In a strange way, that made her feel even more angry.

  And now she waited with dread for Eddie to come home, wondering how on earth she was going to break the news to him that she had another man’s child hidden away in Europe – explain away the long years of not telling him. The tale would be long and laboured, trying to explain how it had been, trying to appeal to his better nature. Better nature? He would have to be a saint to bear this without wanting to half kill her, or, worse still, walk out on their marriage. God, what a mess!

  She smoothed the single page and read again the abject, pleading words Daisy had written. How could she ignore them and walk this earth untouched if anything were to happen to them, and to her daughter? She couldn’t.

  By the time Eddie’s footsteps sounded on the stairs up from the street, Cissy was a bag of nerves, filled with fear for Daisy and Noelle, and for herself, still rehearsing how best to tell him.

  ‘Sit down a moment, Eddie,’ she said, trying to sound neither too timid and penitent nor too brash and defiant. ‘I’ve something I have to tell you.’

  He smiled at her. ‘Can’t it be after dinner? I’m starved.’

  ‘I don’t think I should wait until after dinner,’ she said quickly. ‘I’ve had a letter from Daisy. And there’s a lot I think you ought to know before I tell you what she says – what she’s asking.’

  Theodore’s expression was dark as he sat watching his wife pace the bedroom. ‘You should never have written such a letter to your friend,’ he admonished but she continued to pace.

  ‘If you think I’m going to stay here and be persecuted when someone might be able to help us, then you must be mad. We should never have come here in the first place. We were all right in Paris. But you had to drag me here – just so you could put a silly stone on your father’s grave. Now we’re stuck here. Even if we had enough to go to England, the three of us, who’s to say we’d be allowed to leave? We’ve no extra money for bribes.’ Teddy was bankrupt, his clients gone, boycotted by non-Jews, his own people mostly having lost everything, like himself.

  ‘I should think they’d be most happy to let us leave,’ Teddy said, watching her pacing. ‘If they want Germany for what they term good Germans, I would imagine undesirable elements such as we appear to be would be virtually asked to leave.’

  ‘Then why did they come here to look at our passport? You heard what they said. Ours wasn’t worth the paper it’s written on. If you can’t see beyond that hint, I can. What if they suddenly take it away, then where will we be? All I want to do is go back home. I’m English. I belong in England.’

  ‘And I am German.’

  She stopped pacing to glare at him sitting quietly on the dressing table chair watching her. ‘I suppose you’re going to say you belong in Germany. You’re not German, you’re a German Jew. There is a difference or there is now. What’s Germany done for you?’

  ‘It is my homeland.’

  ‘One that allows Hitler’s mobs to beat you up.’ His face still held traces of bruising and his arm was still in plaster, not expected to be rid of it for three more weeks yet. ‘One that allows a hospital to throw you out on the street – that lets gangsters, and that’s all they are, the SA, beat you up and manhandle our Noelle…’

  ‘She is not our Noelle,’ he reminded calmly. ‘She is your friend’s child.’ He hadn’t once risen to her anger. It wasn’t in his nature to become easily riled. But his even temper riled her.

  ‘Cissy doesn’t want her,’ she flared at him. ‘You and I love Noelle so she is ours, and if you’re happy to stand by and see her mauled by SA thugs, I’m not! If you won’t come to England with me. I’ll go on my own and take her with me.’

  Teddy stood up, frowning, the first real flicker of retaliation she had seen throughout her whole tirade, which had been going on for some twenty minutes unchallenged.

  ‘My dear, you cannot easily use our passport for yourself alone. In most countries that is not allowed unless you have one in your own right, and when we married you gave up your own for a married passport, you may recall. And would you really go and leave me here?’

  She was deflated. ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘We are a family,’ he continued as she stood looking at him, tears filling her eyes. ‘We cannot leave each other behind. We cannot do as we please without the agreement of the other, or we are no longer a family. I too regret coming here. I was a fool. I should have foreseen how things were going, but I was blind and sick with longing for my homeland, as you are now for yours. I love Germany. It is my home.’

  Daisy was mollified. Her voice came small and wavering. ‘I know. But I love mine too. England. It’s always been safe in England.’

  ‘It was safe here in Germany once.’

  ‘But it isn’t any more, and England is still safe. Oh, Teddy, I want to leave. I have to leave. I’m so homesick. Like you were – remember? I want to see my family and feel safe, have Noelle safe.’

&
nbsp; She saw his eyes mist over at the mention of Noelle’s safety. He chewed his lip. ‘But we have no money.’

  ‘That’s why I wrote to Cissy to help us. Eddie still owes us money. She can’t ignore that fact. We’ve helped them, and we helped her when she most needed it. She can’t have forgotten. And there’s Noelle. I know she let us carry on looking after her, but she is her mother, and when a mother knows her own daughter is in danger, she’ll do anything to save her. She might not want her back, but she couldn’t stand by and see her at risk. It wouldn’t be natural.’

  Teddy’s expression was solemn as he regarded her. ‘But she has so far not replied to your letter. And it is many weeks already.’

  Daisy dropped her gaze, closing her eyes tightly against the look he was giving her, against the harsh connotation in that reminder.

  Cissy sat at the living room table, the blank sheet of paper before her. It was the hardest decision she’d ever had to make, and she felt she’d made some hard decisions in her life. Eddie had finally told her it was up to her to do what she thought best, leaving it in her lap. But she couldn’t blame him for that – in this case.

  She had stood before him that evening, twisting her hands as he looked up at her from the chair where she’d asked him to sit. His enquiring expression had been entirely innocent of what she had been about to say, and it had wrung her heart that she could have duped him for so long. How dare she? Love was pouring out of her for him, such love as she had never truly felt before – not even for Langley, but now with Eddie she feared it had come too late, aware that she was about to destroy what they’d had with her belated truths.

  She’d begun hesitantly, then taking herself in hand began again. ‘Eddie, you know when I went abroad?’ He had nodded slowly.