War Brides

by Helen Bryan

  Now that she had something to do, Tanni perked up. When Johnny finished nursing she put him down, washed herself as well as she could in the sink in her room, then washed her hair and combed it dry. She sponged Johnny and changed him, then put on her cleanest dress and her hat. She had lost so much weight that the dress was far too big. She must get out the little sewing kit again and take in the seams. She would do that after she had tidied the room and aired the bed, but before she did any of it she would speak to Tante Berthe.

  She wrapped Johnny in a crib sheet, picked up her handbag, and shut her door quietly. Hearing the wireless in the sitting room, she tiptoed past to avoid alerting the landlady. Outside she wondered if it was too hot for the baby or whether she should have wrapped him in another layer. Could small babies get a chill even on a hot day? It was so hard to know. If only her mother were there. But soon she would be, Tanni thought, and her heart lifted. What a lovely sunny afternoon it was. She hummed a little song to Johnny as she walked along.

  The Cohens lived many streets away, in a small neighborhood in Bethnal Green where the women all wore head scarves and men had long curls of hair under big hats and wore black suits and white shirts open at the neck. There were children everywhere and people were conversing in a language Tanni couldn’t understand. She remembered Anton’s description of his Orthodox relations, and her heart contracted. No, she mustn’t think about Anton now: she was a married woman and a mother.

  When Tanni reached Tante Berthe’s street she saw two smartly dressed ladies with clipboards, wearing hats, kid gloves, and polished shoes. They looked out of place among the other women in the street, who were mostly dressed in black, with long skirts and thick stockings, their hair covered. The two elegant strangers reminded Tanni reassuringly of her mother. As she drew closer she heard them speaking in the kind of clipped, precise English she had learned at school. She smiled shyly at them, as a large family of black-clad children walked past with their father, who averted his eyes.

  One of the ladies muttered, “There are just so many of them! How do their parents tell them apart! And they still won’t consider evacuation. The parents don’t even speak English properly. Quite, quite stubborn too. The children should be forcibly evacuated, if you ask me.”

  “Frankly, Penelope, one quite understands why the Germans—”

  “Indeed! Come along, we’re wasting our time.” Both ladies climbed into a black car with a driver.

  Tanni hurried on to the Cohens’ narrow house. Sweet peas bloomed cheerfully in the small front garden and starched white curtains hung at the front windows.

  Rabbi Cohen was busy in his study, but his wife welcomed Tanni warmly, kissing her and making a fuss over Johnny. Then she led Tanni down the passage into a crowded little kitchen sweet with the smell of baking. Several women were crowded together in chairs round a pile of papers on the kitchen table. They looked up as Tanni came in, and Tante Berthe introduced her. The women all had kerchiefs wound tightly round their heads and stared at Tanni’s hat, a fetching one Frau Zayman had concocted from the felt of Dr. Joseph’s oldest gray homburg, then trimmed with scraps of ribbon and some leftover veiling, and Tanni’s brown curls tumbling beneath it. But they smiled when they saw Johnny, reaching to stroke his cheeks and shifting their chairs to make room for her. Johnny fell asleep.

  Tante Berthe brought tea in glasses with lemon, a plate of almond cake, and a bowl of dark cherries. Tanni sat politely quiet while the others talked, sipping tea and eating a piece of cake, thinking how delicious it tasted. She was anxious to show Tante Berthe her mother’s letter, but the other women were debating something in the language Tanni didn’t understand. She stopped listening and waited for a chance to speak. Meanwhile she took a second, then a third piece of cake, licking her fingers with obvious enjoyment. Tante Berthe beamed and pushed the cherries toward her.

  Finally there was a break in the conversation, so Tanni wiped her cherry-stained fingers on her handkerchief, then took the precious envelope from her handbag. “Tante Berthe, I need your advice, please. I had a letter from my mother,” she began in German. Mrs Cohen said something to the other women, who nodded. With Tante Berthe translating for those who did not speak German well, the letter was passed round for all to read, together with the photo and Klara’s carefully printed note.

  “My little sister,” said Tanni proudly. “She’s very clever. But my mother wrote in April and the letter just reached me today. The twins are only five and speak no English. Lili is, has always been a little slow and Klara has to look after her. They must have lost my address before they reached England. I don’t know where my parents and Frau Zayman have gone. Since Bruno is away I can’t ask him what to do. I thought you, Tante Berthe, and the rabbi would know how I can find them all.” Johnny woke and whimpered, and Tanni put him on her shoulder to jiggle him quiet, wondering how soon she could get him home and feed him. “I can’t wait for them to see Johnny!”

  Tante Berthe’s kind face was grave. “My dear…” She hesitated, her eyes darting round for permission to speak. The women exchanged glances. One after another they nodded stiffly. “It may be they have not reached England yet. As your mother says, these are difficult times. We know that many Jews, like your parents, want to leave Germany and Austria, but doors are closing to them everywhere. We are part of a committee trying to help Jews in Europe, and we know the difficulties…”

  “Yes, but my family have left and are here now.”

  A younger woman named Rachel burst out impatiently in English, “Difficulties? Pah! It’s impossible! Things are very, very bad in Austria, bad in Poland, worse in Germany. It is hard to obtain a permit to leave, even with a huge bribe. And who can pay a bribe now? The Nazis have confiscated Jewish property, and people who were not poor before are poor now. So many countries turn their backs. They close their doors to poor people. It is a little easier for children, but even for them there are difficulties. My husband liaises with the Kindertransport, finding homes for the children arriving in England. They are efficient people. If your sisters had arrived you would have been informed, I promise, so I do not think that they can be here. We are getting word that the Nazis have arrested many, many people in Austria. For resettlement…”

  “They call it resettlement,” interjected another woman, “when people are forced out of their homes to slave for the Germans in labor camps, herded like animals, even children and the old…”

  Tanni struggled to follow the English. Surely no one would ever send Papa to work in a labor camp, she thought uneasily. He was a doctor and highly respected. As for Mutti and Frau Zayman, what earthly use would they be as laborers? “Mutti didn’t say anything about camps, just that people were being moved. But if the letter was written months ago, they must be in England now. My parents made definite arrangements for Klara and Lili on the Kindertransport in April and my parents had exit visas to follow as soon as the twins left.”

  More worried looks were exchanged across the table.

  Johnny started to cry in earnest. Tanni patted his back and her smile faded. She looked from one woman to the other, and her voice rose with anxiety. “You see, I promised Papa—it was the last thing I said! Bruno and I were running away and there was no room for the twins in the boat. He said I had to go first and made me promise to look after the little ones in England. Now it is my responsibility to find them. I was so ill with the baby that I…I forgot a lot of things,” Tanni admitted guiltily. “It was my fault if someone couldn’t tell me the girls had come. There must have been a letter or a phone call, but I was in bed and too tired to get up and they must have thought I had gone away—but now that I’ve recovered I must find where they are. We were all supposed to go to Oxford to live when my parents came—perhaps they couldn’t find us in London and went to Oxford to look for us.” Tears welled up. “My fault…” Her lower lip trembled and tears spilled.

  The older women tutted. The poor girl looked awful—such dark circles under her eyes and so thi
n that her dress was hanging on her. Tante Berthe rose and put her arm around Tanni’s shoulders. “Of course it’s not your fault, Tanni,” she said comfortingly. “The time after a baby is born can be very hard.” The other women nodded and murmured agreement. “Take Johnny home, my dear. We will try to find your family. If your sisters were indeed with the Kindertransport we should be able to trace where they are.”

  “And if they were not? So many children, so many…” said the woman named Rachel, her head in her hands.

  “Hush,” muttered another. “The poor girl is upset enough.”

  “And Mutti, Papa, and Frau Zayman?”

  More looks. “We will begin with the Kindertransport—it is easier to trace—but we will do what we can to find your parents and Bruno’s mother,” said Tante Berthe, patting her hand. “Meanwhile, Tanni, my husband says it is important not to speak of anything we have said outside this house. Not one word. If we are to help Jews elsewhere we must be so careful. The English…”

  “The English are as bad as the Germans!” huffed Rachel. “You have no idea how careful we must be to avoid attracting the attention of the authorities. Each of our members keeps different information in her head. No one knows everything so that if one of us is interned or questioned she cannot jeopardize the work of the whole committee.”

  “Shush, Rachel! Enough already. But Tanni, take care not to speak in German, even to Bruno. They listen everywhere, and if war with Germany comes they will intern people who appear to be enemy aliens.”

  “Intern?” asked Tanni. “What is that?”

  “Detained in a camp, like a prison.”

  Relief at the prospect of help and hopes of seeing her family soon were now submerged under fresh worry. Tired now and anxious to get Johnny home to feed him, Tanni rose, thanked Tante Berthe, and made her farewells. She walked home as quickly as she could, Johnny howling most of the way, heavy in her aching arms. What if they were put in one of these camps? Would they take Johnny away from her? She hugged him tightly, unable to bear the idea.

  When she entered the house the smell from the kitchen of something frying in hot, stale fat turned her stomach. The landlady intercepted her in the cramped passageway. “There’s a lady waiting to speak to you. She’s in the parlor.”

  Tanni went quickly into the gloomy little room. A familiar figure of a woman in a smart costume and hat stood up and her heart leaped. Suddenly everything was all right again. Her mother had found her after all. “Mutti!” she exclaimed happily. “Oh, Mutti, I knew you’d come—” She stopped midsentence and her heart plummeted. It was not her mother. She recognized one of the well-dressed ladies she had seen on the pavement on the way to Tante Berthe’s.

  “Mrs. Zayman?” the woman said uncertainly, checking her clipboard. The girl with the baby looked impossibly young to be married, much less a mother, although judging by what she had seen in Bethnal Green, if she was Jewish, who knew?

  Tanni nodded, too stunned with disappointment to speak.

  “How do you do. My name is Penelope Fairfax, and I am from the Women’s Voluntary Service. The government expects that we will soon be at war with Germany, and for safety’s sake we are evacuating mothers and children to the country. It is expected that the Germans will bomb or gas London and the other cities.”

  Tanni stared at her. What on earth did she mean? “War?” Tanni repeated the unfamiliar English word.

  “I’m afraid so. Now, Mrs. Zayman, just sign this form and we can send you and your baby to a safe place away from London.”

  Tanni struggled to understand. “Away from London?” she asked. How could she possibly go somewhere else? What about Bruno, her parents, and the twins? How would she manage without Tante Berthe? Her head swam. She fought back panic and tried hard to make herself understood in English. “Excuse me, please, but I cannot go, my sisters, my parents, my mother-in-law, they are arriving, I must wait here, in London, for them. We are to go to Oxford when they come. I cannot—”

  “Nonsense, Mrs. Zayman.”

  Cannot indeed! These people seemed to think there was room for every Tom, Dick, and Harry in England, Penelope thought crossly. Already the billets on her list were overcrowded and goodwill was stretched to the breaking point. Also, it was getting late and she had eight more families on her list for whom she needed signatures of consent. She looked at the girl and her baby closely. Foreign, but both looked clean. No sores or coughing, the girl’s husband working for the War Office. The baby, unlike most of the scrawny London urchins on her list, was well fed and healthy. With the current shortage of billets, Penelope feared it was only a matter of time before one of her colleagues decided that, as she stayed mostly in her London flat, her own large house in Crowmarsh Priors had plenty of room for evacuees.

  She quickly decided to billet this girl and her baby with Evangeline before she was landed with some much nastier children. Her dozy daughter-in-law needed something worthwhile to do. With darling Richard away on active service, Evangeline had too much time to mope. It was time the girl pulled her socks up and got on with things, now that she had recovered from her miscarriage. Whatever could have possessed Richard to elope with the American floozy and break poor Alice’s heart? Penelope bit her lip in annoyance. She could never come up with an answer to that question.

  She had tried, she honestly had, for Richard’s sake, but languid Evangeline was hopeless as a naval wife, and darling Alice would have been a wonderfully sensible and active one, a real asset to his career. “Evangeline reminds one of something rather exotic, like an odalisque!” she had exclaimed once, unburdening herself to a friend. “Or a cat,” she added, after a moment. “She’s as secretive as a cat.” And what was worse, Evangeline was remarkably careless about her dress, never making an effort, wearing any old thing, even Richard’s cast-off shirts and pullovers. It came of being American, Penelope supposed. They were an uncivilized lot.

  “Too dreadful, darling!” said her friend sympathetically. “How fortunate she’s stayed in the country and they’ve not gone to quarters somewhere like Plymouth, where his superior officers would notice.”

  “As would their wives!”

  Penelope decided to write Evangeline that evening. She would tell her firmly that it was time she pulled herself together for Richard’s sake. She must think of her duty and prepare to take in an evacuated mother and baby.

  An indignant wail as Johnny woke recalled Penelope to the dingy parlor and her list of billets. “Really, Mrs. Zayman, it gives us no end of trouble when mothers are so awkward about signing.” Penelope’s tone grew sharper. “And I had better tell you for your own good, the government is talking of internment for German and Austrian nationals, so if I were you I should sign at once, unless you would prefer internment.”

  “Internment?” asked the girl, jiggling the howling baby.

  “A camp, where people have to stay during the war.”

  “But if I sign this paper I am not going to a camp?”

  “Quite!” snapped Penelope, holding out a pen. Her head was beginning to ache. “In fact, you will be going to a rather lovely house in Sussex, much better than you might have expected. Count yourself lucky!”

  Two days later Rabbi Cohen came and took Tanni to Victoria Station, promising the ladies’ committee would notify her as soon as her sisters were found. “Don’t worry, Berthe and Rachel will see to it.” He said Bruno knew where she would be and approved of her going. He and Tante Berthe had talked it over and decided it was a good idea for her to go, especially if it meant she wasn’t at risk of internment. He reminded her, in a kindly but serious voice, that she was a wife and mother, that she must try to manage and make the best of things because Bruno’s work was very important, and someday she would understand. For now she must look after Johnny, stay well and safe, and keep her spirits up. Tanni nodded and promised, trying to hide her distress. “Good girl!” said the rabbi.

  7.

  East London, Late

  August 1939
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br />   The man who collected rent from the shabby two-up, two-down houses on North Street, near the London docks, made his rounds on Monday, wash day, when housewives were certain to be in. Those who had the rent money ready watched closely while he counted it and noted it in his little book, then closed the door behind him with relief. Those who hadn’t the right amount calculated desperately what excuse they could use to put off payment till next week.

  When Mrs. Pigeon went to the door to answer the knock, her face was creased with anxiety. The children in the room behind her held their breaths. Their dad must have found where she’d hidden the rent money again. When he laid hands on it he quickly disappeared to the pub or the dog races, leaving the children to whistle for their dinner. He would come home late and shamefaced, unsteady on his legs, and there would be a loud argument, sometimes the sound of a slap. Next day their mum would turn the house upside down rooting for something to pawn to Uncle. There wasn’t much left.

  When she opened the door they all stared, open-mouthed, at the person on the step. “That’s never the rent man!” exclaimed one child. It was a lady, dressed like the queen in the photos of her in the papers: a smart costume, a hat with little brown and red feathers sticking up at the back, hair nicely dressed under the veil. She had gloves on, a handbag, polished shoes, and shiny legs. On North Street, women wore thick brown cotton stockings, knotted above the knee, and house slippers, even outdoors. “Good morning, Mrs. Pigeon.” The lady sounded like people on the wireless.

  The children craned for a better view, while their mother stood solidly, blocking the doorway, apron wrapped over her faded housedress and holding Violet on her shoulder. The lady had called before, but after what sounded like an argument Mum had always shut the door in her face before the children got a glimpse of her. This time, the lady quickly wedged a polished shoe in the doorway and spoke in a loud, firm voice.