Somewhere Over England

by Margaret Graham

  ‘Ah, Munich.’ The man sluiced the shaving soap from his face and Heine ran his hand over his own chin. It was rough but he had nothing with which to shave or clean his teeth.

  ‘My name is Isaac Stein. I have been in England since 1919,’ the man said, watching him carefully. ‘I have a spare razor if you would care to borrow it.’

  Heine looked at him, at his face which was narrowed and wary and recognised the look. It had been on the face of the fallen Jew in Hanover.

  The door was opening as he said, ‘Thank you, that would be most welcome.’

  He reached across as Isaac handed it to him but a hand with thick hairs and raised veins gripped his wrist and as Heine turned he saw the young blond man and Meiner.

  ‘Aryans do not use Jew-boys’ razors.’ It was the young man again, his hand gripping tighter still. Heine looked at Isaac who said nothing, just waited.

  Heine at last felt angry, a deep fierce anger which slashed at Mrs Carstairs, at himself, at the world for tearing his family apart, at this blond young man who dared to touch him and speak such filth and he turned, lifting his knee into the German, bringing down his free hand against his neck, then sweeping his fist round to catch the side of his face and nose.

  The grip on his wrist was gone and the German lay on the tiles, his nose bleeding, his mouth slippery with saliva, his throat heaving as he gasped for air, and there was no pity in Heine because it had all gone on for long enough. Meiner had been watching from the door.

  ‘Hauptmann Meiner, I met your brownshirts in Munich. You taught me many things. Now your friend knows some of them too.’

  Heine turned back to Isaac and kept his hand from shaking, though he did not know how, as he began to shave.

  ‘Did you know that in Southern France and Northern Italy they call brown the colour of the beast?’ Heine said, fighting to keep his voice level whilst Meiner pulled the German boy over to the sink, washing him, throwing water on him.

  ‘You will pay for this,’ Hauptmann Meiner said but Heine would not look at him. He washed the soap from his face, handed back the razor to Isaac and followed him from the room. He felt cold now but not frightened. He was tired of running. Just so damn tired of running, he told Isaac, and so angry.

  Breakfast was bread and margarine and stewed tea which coated his teeth, but his hands shook so much that Isaac had to lift the cup to his lips. His hands were throbbing now and he kept seeing the blood and hearing the gurgling, and was angry that he shook so much. It was not through fear, it was just reaction. He looked at the men who ate around the table. They were quiet as Isaac told them what had happened and then one old man turned to say, ‘It is good to hear such news.’ His eyes were dark and his face drawn.

  Heine was glad that for the first time he had fought back.

  After breakfast he was interrogated again and it lasted until the evening when he moved his bunk to be nearer Isaac and the non-Nazis who had accumulated at the far end.

  For the next two days he was questioned but on the fourth he was left in peace for a day.

  By then the Nazis and Hauptmann Meiner had been transferred to another camp but there were other Nazis to take their place and they talked in loud voices of the victory that would soon be theirs: of the Dachaus they would build in Britain when Hitler came. They sang the ‘Horst Wessel’ at night when the others wanted to sleep, they jeered the challahs which a new internee brought in for the Sabbath, telling them that the plaited bread was like the blonde hair of the Aryan maidens who were the women of the master race.

  Heine talked quietly to men he met; those who had fled from the terror which was now Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, who moved away from the raucous noise and tried to understand why they were here, locked up with those whom they thought they had escaped. At night, only at night, Heine allowed himself to think of Helen and Christoph.

  When the police had been to collect his passport they had brought back clothes and shaving kit, a mirror, a hairbrush, and it helped to know that Helen’s hands had held them but he could hardly bear the loneliness which tore at him.

  The questions stopped in the second week and the next morning his section of the gallery was told they would be moving, that they must gather their luggage together. They were taken in unheated lorries away from London, sitting quietly, huddled together for warmth. They were driven to the siding of a railway station, jerking past large heaps of coal until they stopped and were ordered out, jumping to the ground on numb feet, reaching up to help the old men down. They stood near discarded sleepers beside the track, letting the elderly sit on the stacked wood, turning their backs to the wind, collars up, hats pulled down with their gas masks hanging from their arms, their cases at their feet.

  A train arrived after half an hour and the guards formed them into columns, marching them along the chippings. One old man stumbled and Heine caught him before he fell. They embarked from a deserted platform at the count of three and then they rumbled off to an unknown destination.

  Isaac was not with him. He had not been transferred yet but there were other friends. There was Albrecht who had fled in 1938. There was Werner whose parents were in a concentration camp. There were Georg and Wilhelm who had lived in England since they were six and were now twenty. There were the Nazis too.

  In the carriages they were forbidden to lift the blind or open the window. Neither could they move about. Drinking water was not available and though they travelled throughout the day they were not allowed to buy tea at any of the stations that the train eased into.

  They arrived at four p.m. at an unnamed station, parched and no longer talking, but they knew it was near the sea. They could tell from the gulls and the smell in the air. They were marched through the town with the Nazis holding up their arms in salute. The crowd jeered and Heine wanted to explain, to tell them that all Germans were not like this but as the sounds of the ‘Horst Wessel’ drowned out the gulls he knew it was no use.

  They marched out of the town and down a lane where leafless hawthorn grew and the December wind was chill. It was darker now but there was light enough to see the gates that Heine and his friends straggled towards though the Nazis still marched.

  There were low white painted wooden huts set in neat rows behind flowerbeds containing hard pruned roses and an empty swimming pool with a solitary spring board. Lichen grew on the tiles and momentarily Heine saw Helen marking in the number six on the bridge parapet. The guards pointed towards one large single storey building.

  ‘Down there,’ they said. ‘Assemble in there.’

  Heine took Willi’s arm, a boy of eighteen who had walked alongside him from the train. He had told Heine quietly, his voice hesitant, his eyes anxious, that his father was in Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where he too had been but had escaped. He was glad to be back in a camp, he told Heine, because the English guards would protect him when the Nazis came and Heine did not point out that there were already Nazis here. He just patted his arm and kept close to him, because he would want someone to take care of his own son.

  The lounge they filed into was carpeted and there was no longer the sound of crisp Nazi boots marching and Heine was glad to see their militaristic fervour thwarted by a piece of worn Axminster. The settees were comfortable but everyone was still hungry and thirsty. They were not given anything yet but were called in groups of ten to see the doctor.

  Heine was called with the boy, Willi. He was examined and interrogated but only for two or three hours this time. They were escorted in groups of eight to huts by two soldiers with bayonets fixed who told them that they were at a bloody holiday camp.

  ‘Comes to something,’ one had said to the other, ‘when you put these buggers into a bloody holiday camp.’

  Heine said nothing because there was nothing to say.

  They were pushed into a hut filled with four two-tiered bunks and no one moved as the door locked behind them. They still had not eaten or drunk. There was a mirror, a wardrobe and hot and cold running wat
er and Heine felt proud of the British. Proud that they treated their prisoners as they did and he smiled at Willi and nodded.

  Two hours later they were called back to a large hall where they were served tea, cheese and bread from two trolleys, each with an urn, one of which dripped on to a folded dishcloth. Nothing had ever tasted so good. Willi ate too, tearing at his bread, hiding some in his pockets until Heine told him that this was not a concentration camp, that the British would feed him again.

  The Camp Commandant spoke to them when their meal was finished; explaining that they could only leave the fenced sleeping quarters under military guard. That they would only leave those quarters in order to eat in the dining-room.

  ‘A camp leader must be chosen to be responsible for the performance of your obligations and your conduct as prisoners-of-war. He must be able to take the necessary measures to see that any orders I may give are complied with, and put any complaints or suggestions before the Commandant of the Camp. This leader must form a committee which will be responsible for the cooking arrangements, education, recreation, even hairdressing.’ He paused. ‘One last point. Everybody who wishes to can appeal to the Home Office for release and Advisory Committees have been set up to examine cases.’ His voice was crisp and professional.

  Heine sat quite still, hope in him once more. There was more than a murmur of conversation. People were laughing, slapping one another’s arms, and the Commandant smiled before he left.

  The Commandant stopped at the door and called back, ‘You have three-quarters of an hour to hold the election for your camp leader. You will then be escorted back to your quarters.’

  There was a pause in the talk then and Heine ran his hand along the wooden table. The grain was straight and smooth from the scrubbing of many years. He would appeal as soon as he could and be home. Perhaps by Christmas. He watched as a tall man stood up. He was not young, and his voice was loud as he called for quiet, moving towards the back of the room where he could be seen by everyone. He stood next to an urn that still steamed.

  ‘I propose Captain Rettich for Camp Leader,’ he said into the quiet which had wrapped itself around the room. ‘We must show these British how efficient the Germans are. We must run the camp along clear lines for the short time we will be here. Our Führer will destroy these British before long. We all know that.’

  He pointed to a man who sat smiling quietly. Another man stood up. ‘I second Captain Rettich.’

  Heine looked around at the nodding heads knowing by now that the vast majority in the room were Nazis, most of them prisoners-of-war whose ships had been sunk. They would win any election but they must not be unopposed. Oh no, they must not be unopposed again.

  He looked down the table. The men with him were liberals, Jews, refugees, all were non-Nazis.

  He said quietly, ‘We must not just let them take control. They must know there is opposition; that their authority will be questioned. Someone should stand against them.’

  Heine waited for an answer; there was none. He looked around the room. The Nazis were talking and laughing now. They must announce a nomination soon or it would be too late, there would not even be a vote.

  Herr Thiene said, ‘I have a wife, you see, and she is unwell. I want to be fit to argue my appeal. However, I will stand if no one else will.’

  Others nodded, shrugging, talking, and at the next table it was the same. Willi said as he leaned back in his chair, ‘I have seen the Nazis in the internment camp I started in. They beat a man to death who stood against them.’

  There was silence and then a cheer was heard from across the room and Heine thought of his father in Hanover, his friend in Munich, but then he thought of Helen and the life he owed her, her grunting tears when he had hit her what seemed like years ago.

  There was not much time now. The Nazis were beginning to raise their hands, their laughter was louder still.

  Friedrich, who sat at the end of the table, leaned forward. ‘We should not ask our friend, Herr Thiene, to challenge these people.’

  Heine knew that this was true and as he heard the Nazis he spoke. ‘Nominate me, Willi, second me, Herr Thiene.’ He felt he could not breathe.

  Willi looked at him. ‘You know what you are doing, Heine? They could hurt you.’

  Heine pushed him up. ‘Quickly now, there is no time.’

  He listened as Willi called out the nomination, listened as Herr Thiene seconded him, and knew that this would make him the spokesman against the Nazis. He listened hard to the words, watched closely the hands which voted for the Nazis, the fewer hands that voted for him. He pushed away the thought of Helen’s face if she ever came to know what he had done.

  He had not won the election but the wire fence around the huts did not suffocate him as it had previously done. The guards with their fixed bayonets meant nothing because he was fighting back. At last he was fighting back and he felt strong again.

  The next day he bought camp notepaper which the inmates called eggshell paper and wrote to Helen restricting himself to the twenty-four lines they were allowed.

  He told her that they were by the sea. That the gulls woke them in the morning. That he loved her. That he was going to appeal. That smoking was not allowed outside the dining-hall, that he would miss her and Chris at Christmas in five days time. That he worried about them and the hostility that they lived amongst in their street.

  He did not tell her that he had been punched in the stomach as he left the dining-hall that morning and warned to keep away from his Moishe friends but that he had caught his assailant across his cheek as he turned to leave.

  The next day was 21 December and the Nazis held a festival, for it was the day the Teutonic pagans celebrated the solstice. Timber was set ablaze for this occasion with the Commandant’s permission, but Heine wondered whether the man ever saw the Nazis’ salute raised in the light from the bonfire.

  On Christmas Eve Willi sang ‘Silent Night’ and Heine remembered Helen’s voice soaring as they listened to her in the candlelight of his parents’ home and that night he wept but so did many others.

  In January the snow was heavy and it was cold, so cold, and Heine stood with Willi and watched the Nazis build snow swastikas and Herr Thiene said that when the thaw came they would melt as, in time, the Third Reich would.

  ‘But when will that be?’ Willi asked and no one answered.

  The Camp Committee was set up in January under the direction of the Camp Leader and it was in charge of the food distribution as arranged. There seemed never to be enough for the non-Nazis. Heine lodged a complaint with the Camp Leader. It was ignored. He lodged a complaint for the Camp Commandant through the Camp Leader. It was not passed on.

  He stopped the Camp Commandant one day and told him and knew that Nazi eyes were watching. The next day the food improved but he was beaten in the latrines. After that the non-Nazis stayed together, close together, and Heine’s eyes and lips healed but they had kicked his leg and that still did not mend.

  In late January he received his first letter from Helen.

  My darling,

  At last I know where you are. Your letter only arrived in the second week of January. We are well. Christoph continues to go to Dr Schultz and so far there has been no bombing.

  I know it was my mother who caused all this. I cannot speak to her now, or see her. I am happier this way but miss you so much and long for you to be at home with us. How is your appeal going? Please write and tell me.

  It is a relief to know that you are safe, away from the hostility which you would otherwise face. That comforts me each night.

  I will write again soon, my love.

  Helen.

  In March Heine received leave to attend the Advisory Committee. Herr Thiene had already been released and Heine missed him and Wilhelm too. He stood at the window looking out at the snow as he pulled on gloves that Willi lent him and hugged the boy to him before he left. He had taught him English and mathematics and anything else that he could becau
se he needed to feel useful as much as the boy needed the attention. But could he really be called a boy? Willi had seen too much to ever be young again.

  The guards were knocking on the door now and Heine walked down the snow-cleared path, dirty with ash and sand and laughed at the shoes and slippers that were thrown at him by his friends for good luck. It was like being in Germany again, the Germany of his youth. He did not look at the huts where the Nazis lived and from which came the sound of jeers. He knew they were at the windows and he would not look at their faces.

  He travelled by train under guard, and then by Underground to Piccadilly Circus and wanted to run to Helen, he was so close. They walked through to Burlington Street and his breath was visible in the cold. People passed them, hurrying, busy, free. There were posters on the newspaper stall and he saw the headlines: ‘US peace mission fails.’

  He wanted to stop and buy one, to see newspaper ink on his fingers again because they were not allowed the sight of one in the camp and lived on rumours. He looked again at the headlines. Britain would need the United States in order to survive. Would they ever join in?

  As he sat before the panel of ten his feet and hands hurt with the warmth and he held Willi’s gloves and told them where and when he was born. What his business had been, his present address.

  ‘How often have you been abroad?’ they asked and he replied with the truth.

  ‘When was your last visit?’

  Again he replied with the truth.

  Here they stopped and the Chairman looked at the others, slowly. Again and again they took him back over that journey.

  ‘Why did you go?’

  ‘To see my parents.’

  ‘Yes, but why then? War was so close. Wasn’t it strange?’

  Again and again they asked and he held the gloves tighter each time because he could not tell them why. To do so might injure his father. Word might get back. Oh God, Helen, he thought as he looked at the dark panelling, at the Chairman’s face, so set, so dark. Oh God, I’m not going to come home now. I know I’m not. He pushed down the panic. Could he tell them of the camera? His knuckles were white as they held the gloves. He knew he couldn’t. ‘But you see, it was because war was so close that I went. I needed to see them again. Surely you can understand that?’ He watched their faces. Would it be enough?