‘Don’t be silly, I know you can’t, but I’m just trying to explain to you that I’m up to my eyes. I’ll try and find out where this Kemble Street is and then if it isn’t too far away, I’ll do my best to visit the Federmans, but I doubt if it’ll be in the next few days.’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Avril said, hearing the note of exhaustion in her sister’s voice. ‘Miss Everard said she’d get her to write, I just thought... well, never mind. By the way, Dr Masters was asking whether you’d be visiting us again soon. D’you know, I think he’s taken quite a shine to you, Caro.’
Caroline recognised her sister’s teasing, but what she said brought a smile to Caro’s lips. She liked Henry Masters and from what she could tell from a very reserved and private man, he seemed to like her, too. However, all she said was, ‘Doubt if I’ll be down for some time, not unless Hitler decides to lay off us for a while.’ As if the talk of Dr Masters triggered an idea she went on, ‘Has he seen Charlotte? Dr Masters, I mean. Perhaps he should give her the once-over now that her amnesia has gone.’
‘Not entirely gone,’ Avril reminded her. ‘She still doesn’t remember the raid or the hours leading up to it.’
‘All the more reason to let Dr Masters have a look at her. She may have some physical damage to her brain.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Avril. ‘Well, I’ll mention it to Miss Everard and see what she thinks. As David is constantly reminding me, it’s Miss Everard who is her foster mother, not me.’
‘How’s that going?’ asked Caro with interest. ‘The Miss Everard thing?’
‘Amazingly well, as far as I can tell. They came over for Christmas dinner as I told you and there seemed to be a comfortable understanding between them. Charlotte’s not afraid of her, if that’s what you’re worried about.’
It had been what Caroline was worried about, but now all she said was, ‘That’s all right then, good.’
When Avril had rung off, Caroline got out a map of London and tried to find Kemble Street. She had no idea where to look and stared at the myriad of streets in frustration. Some of them were so small that the name wasn’t even written on the actual street. How was she going to find this Kemble Street, let alone go there? St Michael’s was again full to capacity with children who’d lost their homes and, some of them, their families. They were as close to Croydon as they’d ever been and the bombing had been significant right up until Christmas Eve. As no raids materialised on Christmas Day, nor the two days thereafter, she began to feel a glimmer of hope that the worst was over. It wasn’t, of course, and on the evening of Sunday 29 December the firestorm launched by the Luftwaffe engulfed not only the city and docks area, but outlying parts of the capital as well. When the siren began its warning, she took the children into the shelter in the garden and there they stayed from six p.m. to early the next morning. They’d heard bombs falling with booming explosions that shook the ground, they’d heard the bombers droning across the sky over their heads, a steady roar, they’d heard the clanging of fire engine bells as the fire engines hurtled from place to place to try and contain the conflagration that London had become. When the all-clear sounded and they finally crept out of the shelter, Caroline Morrison first, they found themselves looking at the remains of what had been St Michael’s. The roof gone, the walls collapsed inward, leaving only a few brave fingers of stone pointing defiantly to the sky.
For a moment Caroline stared at the ruins and then with a tremendous effort gathered her wits about her. The children in her care had to be housed somewhere else and quickly. She led them out of the cramped, cold shelter into what had been the garden.
‘Now then,’ she said, ‘we need everyone to be very sensible. We’re all going to walk down the road to the rescue centre. You may see people being helped by the fire brigade and we mustn’t stop and stare, or get in their way. Get into twos and hold hands. You older children look after the younger ones.’ With Matron leading them at the front and Mrs Downs bringing up the rear, Caroline Morrison kept walking along beside the crocodile of children, making sure no one dropped out and that no by-stander said anything that would halt their progress.
When they reached the rescue centre they found it completely overwhelmed with people who had been bombed or burned out. Miss Morrison, turning up with an extra twenty-five children, found the person in charge, a Mrs Small, at her wits’ end.
‘I don’t know what to do with them all,’ she cried.
Caroline was very sympathetic, but adamant that space had to be found for them somewhere. She stayed at the centre all day, demanding that some of the children should be syphoned off and sent to other homes across London.
‘How many orphanages and homes are there?’ she demanded of poor Mrs Small. ‘They don’t all have to go to the same one!’
‘I’m doing the best I can,’ snapped Mrs Small, and indeed she was. By the end of the day every child had been found a place to sleep, for that night at least. It took another four days to find each of them a satisfactory longer-term solution to their homelessness. Caroline refused to be fobbed off with promises.
‘This is the second time these children have been bombed out,’ she said. ‘We need to find them somewhere, quickly, where they can feel safe.’ At last it was achieved and Caroline, Matron and Mrs Downs were suddenly at a loose end. None of them had a place to go, but they didn’t mind that; provided the St Michael’s children had new homes, they were satisfied. The three of them had moved into a local pub, miraculously still standing, which had guest rooms upstairs. They had to share a room, but at least they had a roof over their heads.
‘What’ll we do now?’ wondered Mrs Downs.
‘Well, we’re not needed here for a while,’ Caroline said. ‘There’s no home left for us to run. I expect they’ll find us something very soon, but I suggest we each go somewhere and have a few days’ rest, or rather, I should say, a few nights’ rest. None of us have had any leave for more than a year, so it’s time for a break to recharge our batteries before they find us another place for our children’s home.’
‘Where should we go?’ wondered Mrs Downs. ‘I haven’t got anywhere except perhaps to my cousin in Yorkshire.’
‘Then I suggest you go there,’ Caroline said. ‘We all need to sleep, undisturbed, for a few nights. I shall go down and stay with my sister. I suggest you leave your contact details with the local authority. That’s what I’m going to do, then they can contact you when they have a new job lined up.’
The day Caroline was going to take the train down to Somerset she remembered her promise to try and find Kemble Street and the Federmans. She still had no idea where the street might be, but decided that the quickest way to find it was to take a taxi. All taxi drivers had to know where every street in London was and the quickest way to reach it. It would cost, she knew, but she decided that it was worth the money simply to find Charlotte’s foster parents and tell them that she was all right. She’d tell them how much safer Wynsdown would be and try and convince them to let Charlotte stay there for the duration of, if not the war, then at least the Blitz.
She had no luggage to speak of. All her possessions had been destroyed in the bombing, but she did have a bank account and she withdrew enough money to buy herself another set of clothes. This she accomplished very quickly and then began to look for a taxi. She found one at Oxford Circus and persuaded him to take her to Kemble Street, which he assured her was in Shoreditch. As they travelled through the town she stared out of the window, horrified at the havoc caused by Sunday’s bombing raid. She had seen in a newspaper a picture of St Paul’s, standing tall, its famous dome silhouetted against the battle-torn sky, but it hadn’t conveyed the devastation she could see round her now.
The cab turned into Kemble Street and as she looked along it, Caroline’s heart sank.
‘What number, lady?’ asked the cabby, leaning back to speak through the glass partition.
‘Sixty-five,’ murmured Caroline.
The driver pulled in to
the side of the road and she got out. ‘Will you wait a minute?’ she asked. ‘I shan’t be long.’ And she knew she wouldn’t. A row of odd-numbered houses had been burned out, standing stark and black against the afternoon sky, and sixty-five was in the middle of them. She walked slowly towards it, her eyes taking in the damage. No one could be living in these houses now, blackened and roofless. As she stood and looked at them a man appeared from the far end of the street. He walked up the road, his eyes fixed in front of him as if to avoid looking at the ruined houses.
‘Excuse me.’ Caroline put out a hand to halt him. He stopped and looked at her blankly, as if seeing her for the first time. ‘Excuse me,’ she said again. ‘Can you tell me what happened to the people who lived here? I mean, are they all right? Were they safely in a shelter?’
The man glanced at the houses and said, ‘Who knows?’
‘I just thought you might know what had happened to them. I’m looking for a couple called Federman. I think they lived at number sixty-five. Did you know them?’
The man still didn’t seem quite with it, as if he didn’t really understand the question. ‘They’ve gone,’ he said.
‘Gone? Gone where?’
The man gave a strangled laugh. ‘How should I know? Gone, that’s all. Burned to bits in Hitler’s Blitz.’ He grinned and, seeming to like the rhyme, he repeated it in a sing-song voice. ‘Burned to bits in Hitler’s Blitz. Burned to bits in Hitler’s Blitz.’ He looked round him and added, ‘Just like my Mary. I’m looking for her. She’s gone, too. I’m looking for Mary. Have you seen her?’
At that moment a younger woman came hurrying along the street and reached out an anxious hand to take the man’s sleeve.
‘Come along, Tom, it’s time to go home.’
‘I’m just looking for Mary,’ he said plaintively.
‘I know you are,’ the woman said gently, ‘but she ain’t here no more. Come on, Tom, time to go home.’
She gave Caroline an apologetic smile and led the man away, holding tightly to his hand as she would that of a young child.
Caroline wanted to ask her if she knew the Federmans, but it seemed pointless. The poor woman had other things to think about, and it was clear that even if the Federmans had survived the raid, they were no longer here. She returned to the still-waiting cab and climbed back in.
‘Paddington station,’ she said. It would be almost as quick and much cheaper to take the Tube as she normally would have done, but she felt worn out, both mentally and physically. She sat back in the taxi and allowed herself to be driven across London. She still had a long journey ahead of her and knowing how the trains were behaving these days it could take anything from three hours to twenty-three. But Caroline didn’t mind. She was going to see Avril, to stay a few days and be cosseted. She would have to tell poor Charlotte that her home in Kemble Street was no more and she wasn’t looking forward to that. How much more, she wondered, could the poor child take?
The journey was long and cold. When she finally arrived at the station in Cheddar, Caroline was exhausted. The train was unheated and she’d had to change twice, waiting on freezing platforms as night fell. She managed to put a call through to the vicarage to say she was coming and she’d stay the night in Cheddar and come up on the morning bus. However, to her amazement and delight, Henry Masters was waiting for her at the station.
‘The vicar told me you were on your way, so I thought I’d come and get you. Don’t want to have to find a place to stay at this time of night.’ Henry picked up her small bag and led the way to his car.
‘Oh, that’s wonderful,’ cried Caroline. ‘How long have you been waiting? I had no idea when I’d get here.’
‘Oh, not too long,’ Henry said airily as he opened the passenger door for her. ‘Come on, get in and let’s get you home.’
Henry drove slowly up the lanes to Wynsdown. The snow still lay on the fields and was heaped at the side of the road, but with the occasional spin of its wheels, his little car made it up to the village.
When Avril opened the front door and saw Caroline standing, pale-faced, on the step, she gathered her into her arms.
‘Caro!’ she cried. ‘You’re here!’
*
There was no reply to Charlotte’s letter to the Federmans. She waited for the post every day, but in vain. Miss Morrison had been to see her soon after she’d arrived in Wynsdown and gently broke the news that 65 Kemble Street was a burned-out ruin.
‘All the houses on that side of the road were destroyed by fire,’ Miss Morrison told her. ‘No one could live there now, but it doesn’t mean that your foster parents were killed. I expect they were in a shelter somewhere and are quite safe.’
Charlotte didn’t agree. She knew that they wouldn’t have gone to Hope Street, the nearest shelter. If they’d been in the house they’d have been sheltering in the cellar. For a moment she could picture the underground room with its mattress and two old armchairs, the candles and the blankets in their box. Uncle Dan had always said it wasn’t deep enough to protect them from a direct hit, but was it deep enough, Charlotte wondered now, to protect them from a firestorm sweeping through the building above them?
‘Did you see anybody in the street?’ she asked. ‘Was there anyone there you could ask about them?’
‘No,’ replied Caroline, ‘well, only a man who was looking for his wife, Mary. But I think he was a little crazy... from the bombing, you know. It takes some people that way.’ She nearly went on to say, ‘I think she must have been killed,’ but just caught herself in time. No point in robbing the child of the tiny scrap of hope she was holding on to, if indeed the strange man had been looking for someone who lived in one of the houses. And indeed there was no real reason to think that the Federmans had been in the house during the raid; surely they’d have been sheltering somewhere.
‘Did you look in the cellar?’ asked Charlotte.
‘The cellar?’
‘Yes. It’s where we went to shelter. Uncle Dan fitted it out for air raids.’
‘No,’ said Caroline, ‘no, I didn’t look in the cellar, I’m afraid. I didn’t know there was one. But I’m sure the houses must have been searched by the rescue services.’
‘So they didn’t get my letter,’ Charlotte said. ‘If there is no house the postman won’t leave any letters, will he? What do they do with all the letters sent to bombed houses?’
‘I don’t know, my dear,’ Caroline said gently.
Charlotte nodded. ‘So, I have lost them, also.’
Caroline longed to hug her, but the girl held herself aloof, though tears brimmed in her eyes. Caroline knew that she had to deal with the news in her own way and it was clear that she was determined not to break down. Caroline admired her courage, but felt it would be better for Charlotte in the long run to cry her unshed tears.
27
It was freezing. A cold fog rolled in off the sea and invaded every quarter of the camp, its damp greyness matching the mood of all the inmates. The weather had been cold and miserable for the past three weeks and everyone was getting on everyone else’s nerves. Rows broke out over the smallest things, the slightest of issues boiling over into violence. Boredom was the great enemy. There was little for the internees to do apart from the day-to-day running of each house, and that took up little time. They played cards and wrote letters, anxious to keep in touch with families still living at home. But Harry Black knew better than to set himself against the card sharks, and he had no one to write to.
Harry hated being cooped up indoors and went out, walking round the camp even in the most foul weather, simply to get away from the others in the house. His worn clothes offered little protection against the icy wind and smothering fog and when he returned his teeth were chattering with the cold.
‘Better to stay in during this weather,’ Alfred Muller said to him one evening. ‘I know you’re bored, but there’re things you could do to counter the boredom, you know.’
‘What things?’ snapped Harr
y. ‘There’s nothing I want to do here in this shithouse.’
‘Getting angry with me won’t help,’ said Alfred calmly. ‘You’re an intelligent man,’ he went on, consciously using the word ‘man’. Many of the other inmates treated Harry as a boy to be ordered about, a boy with no say in how things should be done, and Alfred knew Harry resented it. ‘You could set your mind to learning something new; something that’ll stand you in good stead for when you get out of here.’
‘Oh yeah,’ Harry drawled, ‘like what?’
‘Perhaps you could improve your English,’ suggested Alfred. Since all the internees in the house were German, that was the language they spoke and Harry had reverted to his native tongue. ‘Are you planning to stay in England after the war?’
‘No,’ said Harry firmly, ‘I’ve had enough of England. I came as refugee from the Nazis and the English locked me up. If this bloody war ever ends I’m off to Australia.’
‘They speak English in Australia,’ pointed out Alfred. He was used to dealing with recalcitrant teenage boys and Harry was no different from many he’d worked with during his career as a teacher.
‘Yeah, well so do I,’ Harry snarled and, turning on his heel, slammed out of the kitchen, leaving Alfred staring at the door with a rueful smile. Not ready to learn yet, he thought, but even so, he’s a bright boy and with a little help he could go far.
Harry went upstairs and flung himself on his bed. He hadn’t been to school for years and he sure as hell wasn’t going back now. He didn’t need to learn anything new, he knew how the world wagged. It was everyone for himself and Harry worked hard at getting what he wanted. Or at least he had until he’d been dumped in here. He looked round the room which he shared with three others. The beds were crammed in a row, with scarcely room to walk between them. A narrow locker beside each provided the only storage space for each man’s personal belongings. Harry had very few. The suitcase he’d had with him when he was arrested had been returned to him when he left Brixton, but it contained very little, just his few clothes. He had no books or pictures, nothing to remind him of his parents or his home in Hanau. His money, he’d been assured, would be returned to him when he left the camp. When he left the camp! The very words filled him with fury. He was expected to stay here and rot until either the British won, which seemed increasingly unlikely, or the Nazis invaded and took over the country. Then, no doubt, he’d be recognised as a Jew and find himself in yet another camp and he’d heard enough about those to be chilled by that prospect.
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