I laid my notebook on the smooth old wooden counter and tried to record something of what I had witnessed since setting foot on Australian soil two days before. Everything I grasped and pinned to the page represented a dozen more astonishments I could not contain. Every few minutes I checked the large clock above my head. I see in the notebook that my handwriting was even more of a scrawl than usual. It does not matter; I remember. I close my eyes and there is Mrs Stuart, bending over the flour sack with her metal scoop while past the open door of the store go the girls in their striped dresses and the boys in their shorts to the primary school. There is a girl with dark plaits who reads as she walks. I watch her disappear into the brightness of the street.
Finally, the horn of a car sounded from the street outside. I heard the children’s voices calling cheerfully: ‘Miss Jacob! Miss Jacob!’ and smiled. ‘We’ve got a motorcar!’ It seemed Jill had come to some arrangement with the proprietor about another of his vehicles.
‘They miss you already!’ called Jill from the car. I can’t imagine it was true, but she did her best with me.
Mrs Stuart opened the door and clasped my hand in her long, bony fingers. ‘Good luck,’ she whispered, but in the next moment I was leaping off the verandah without time for reflection into the blinding light of the morning, down to the car, yanking open the heavy door.
Jill laughed. ‘Got a sweet old duck to take you in, then? You’re a marvel, Hannah.’ She looked better for sleep, her old glamorous self, and I felt encouraged too for seeing her restored so. The children were playing a game in the back where one jumped up as the other sank down and vice versa. They had managed to become proficient at it, like circus performers. Jill and I peered up at the guard tower beyond the last house. ‘What shall we find here, do you think?’ she said quietly as she pulled up the handbrake.
We sat for a moment, contemplating the prospect, now that we were here at last.
Our friend from the previous afternoon emerged from his hut at the sound of our doors slamming and scuffed across the dusty road. The day blazed with heat and the cicadas were deafening as he approached. This time he smiled, and greeted us by name. He made a show of checking his watch. ‘On the dot, ladies. Leave the car here and follow me. Don’t worry. Bill will keep an eye on it.’ He gestured behind him to a man up in the guard tower, who waved at us. The children waved back, smiling.
Our soldier let us inside the fences through two gates and we followed him along a path amid forlorn gardens tended by a young, tragically thin Jewish boy, who looked at the children as they passed with large sad eyes. I thought I heard a cello, and dismissed it as heat-induced imagining until Henry said, ‘Mummy, there’s music.’
‘Heavens,’ she said, ‘so there is,’ and smiled at him.
‘That’s the Hay–Berlin Chamber Orchestra practising,’ said the soldier. ‘Lucky to have them.’
We came to a one-roomed building, identical to the sentry office, where the soldier stopped. Beyond it was the inner cluster of huts where the men lived. ‘Come and wait in here please, everybody. They won’t be long.’
I led the way into the heat of a long room, divided across the centre widthways by a wall of chicken wire. I stared at it. They could not mean to keep us apart with this thing. Close on my heels were Jill and the children. ‘You have got to be joking,’ Jill whispered. Sweat streamed from my forehead; the tin roof made the place like an oven. We sat down on two benches that faced the wire, the little family on one and me on the second, edging away from each other in readiness. Even so, we were a mere few yards apart, and would be witness to every word of the other’s reunion.
In came our digger and stood at the door, his bayonet fixed. For a moment I wanted to laugh. But then, above the faint clatter of tin plates, soldiers shouting orders, the chamber orchestra, footsteps sounded, close in the dirt, and the door at the other end of the hut was opening, letting the sounds in, and he was first to enter, followed by the man I assumed to be Mr Paul Baum. Then there was their own mirror image of our soldier, who closed their door and guarded it with his own bayonet. All this I noted in a fraction of a second; it was such a small space, across which Emil was walking, sitting down opposite me, and I could not breathe or speak. I knew his walk, the dark shape of him, through the mesh that separated us. For a moment the room was absolutely silent but for the muted sounds outside and a fly that had come in with the men.
I stared at him, taking in what I could through the blur of the wire. He did not smile. He was so thin, even in the face, and his hair had greyed shockingly with a new white streak at the temple. I put a hand to the wire. He did the same. I felt pressure, not skin. ‘Is that Daddy?’ Henry said from their side of the room. I stared at Emil. Elation warred with shock beneath my ribs.
‘Emil,’ I whispered. ‘What has happened to you? Are you ill?’
‘Not now. On the ship.’ His voice was hoarse. I wondered whether he was sleeping.
‘How do they treat you?’
‘Well, here. The ship, the British, not so good.’
We were silent for a moment. I looked at his eyes, dark holes, indistinct beyond the mesh. I was looking for a message, the story of everything that had happened to him. Paul sang quietly for the children with the distant orchestra. Suddenly, Emil smiled and in his face the man I had known leaped to life, though I saw, my stomach falling away, that there was a new dark gap amid the lower row of his teeth. ‘I cannot believe you are here. In Australia! My own little Hannah. It is a miracle.’ His smile disappeared again.
‘When can I see you?’ I glanced at the soldier who guarded Emil’s door. His eyes were concealed beneath the deep brim of his hat. ‘Not like this—properly?’
Emil shrugged and looked down at his hands, clasped together between his knees. I could see from the way his clothes hung from his gaunt shape, even through the chicken wire, that he had lost a frightening amount of weight. There was so little of him. Something rose in my chest. I felt an urge to hunt down someone in authority and call for an immediate improvement to conditions. I glanced at Mr Baum. He was of reasonable weight. Why was Emil so dreadfully thin?
‘Are you eating?’
‘Not much. The food is good though. We have great chefs. Really, you would not believe the things to come out of that kitchen. But I have not recovered from the boat very well.’
I switched to German. Paul would understand, if he was listening, but at least Jill and the children would not. ‘I want to touch your skin,’ I said quietly, looking into his eyes, the dark shape of them. The guard behind Emil looked up sharply as soon as I spoke in this other language. ‘I want to be with you privately.’
‘Hannah, Hannah. Keep your wishes small.’
‘No, there must be a way. Things can always be arranged.’ I lowered my voice, in spite of my German. ‘Do they take bribes? Jill tried yesterday but perhaps she did not do it right. Or perhaps she asked the wrong one.’
‘I don’t think so. Some have tried. Sometimes they’ll get you things but mostly not. In any case, have you suddenly become rich since I saw you last?’ I laughed grimly and shook my head. ‘Then it’s more important to worry about how you will live. I’ll be fed every day for as long as this goes on. And you are thin. But listen, I must tell you something—I don’t know what it means for us. Everything is confusing.’ He shook his head. ‘I cannot believe that you are here.’
Then I spoke in a rush, in English now, speaking over Paul’s singing, Jill’s whispers, as though I knew I needed to prevent him saying what he would say next. ‘There is a kind woman who owns the store in the town. She has said that I can stay. I will try to pay her for food later, but of course I cannot earn a living here. I have been making notes on everything, my impressions. I thought just at first I might try and offer a piece to the newspapers in Sydney and Melbourne. I know it is a flimsy chance but it is all I have at the moment. I cannot imagine there is much call for translation from French or German at this end of the world.’
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p; He answered in English. ‘Oh, good. Good, Hannah. There are refugees here who wrote for the press before they were interned, about the European situation. It’s difficult for the papers to get hold of people who know. You are an expert! But soon you must go to a city. You’ll suffer out here. It’s the end of the earth.’ His voice was faint with speaking this much. ‘But listen, I’ve received an official release.’
I found myself on my feet. I gave out a laugh. From the corner of my eye I saw Emil’s guard tilt his head back to look at me. ‘Whatever do you mean? Then why are you still here?’
‘They will only release me to put me on a ship to England.’
I sat slowly. ‘What?’
‘The Australians will not release me here.’
‘Do you mean to say that if I had stayed at home, you would have returned?’
‘Hannah, I am so sorry.’ He put his hand up to the wire. ‘It is astonishing that you came. We will discover what to do. At the least we know, it is a mistake. They have admitted it. Perhaps they will return you too.’
‘But I came to be with you. I spent my last penny to come. My union friends, they said you would at some point be released here, with your qualifications. I came all this way to help you. I cannot afford to return.’ My voice had risen. I felt a little shift in the room. The children looked at me. I caught Paul’s eye and he looked down quickly. The guard behind Emil looked at his watch and the man behind me shifted his weight on his heels—I felt it through the boards under my feet.
Emil glanced at him for a moment. ‘Listen,’ he said, leaning forward. ‘Find out what you can from the Home Office. Tell them I am an engineer. I can do war work, here or in England. That is what I want to do. To work and to be with you. Will you tell them? Tell them we will do what they say, so long as we can be together. Yes?’
I nodded and felt a sudden hot breeze as our guard opened his door at the same time as his colleague. ‘Come on now,’ said our man. ‘That’s it till next week, ladies. The men’ve got exercise now. Got to keep ’em strong now, hey?’
I felt something jab my hand through the wire. I glanced down—it was a little roll of paper, which I concealed quickly in my palm—then back at Emil. Polly was whining: ‘Daddy, another song, please!’ and Emil was already gone, the first out the door. Paul, smiling shyly at Jill, and briefly, apologetically at me, followed him.
‘Wait just a moment, ladies. Let them go.’
I stood from the bench, staring at the closed door through which he had come and so quickly left. I had never been in such a hot, close room. All of a sudden I could smell bodies: sweaty children, the unwashed hair of the men, carbolic soap. I felt that I could hear the heat coming down through the tin roof. Blasts of it, like the sound of my blood surging through my veins as my ear hit the pillow at night.
We were all silent in the car, even, for once, the children. I unscrolled the little roll of paper. It read, in tiny letters: ‘I will never again board a ship without you.’
Emil
Even on the river a layer of red dust had settled like a volcanic crust. The men did not care. They knew the water was beneath and that it would be cool and lovely, and they jumped in from high on the banks, calling like birds in the instant before immersion. In seconds the thirty or so men were in the water, paddling and splashing like an outing of schoolchildren.
The previous day they had spent inside the hut, cramming paper in the cracks around the windows, venturing across to the mess with handkerchiefs over their mouths, while the top inch of every paddock for a hundred miles to the west blew across them towards the sea. The sky was red like hell and they sniped at one another in ways no one was proud of, then or afterwards. Two boys stumbled down the hut steps for a fight in the yard and they all went out to watch and shout. Emil saw their shapes clutch one another amid the red cloud and roared until his lungs were tight and dry.
‘I’m told they’re sending someone to deal with us, case by case,’ Solomon said, stretched out on the steep bank in his underwear, brown rivulets streaking his skin as though it were a map of topographical features.
Above them on the bank a digger dozed against a tree, hat tipped over one eye, rifle leaning against the trunk behind him. He was one of those who would not train a gun on the men unless he was at that particular moment observed by a superior officer.
‘I try not to listen to these rumours.’ Emil was shaving the gluey dust from his calves with a sharp-edged blade of grass.
‘Some of the men know him. A Jew. Major Temple. They think he will be sympathetic.’
‘He will have no particular reason to be sympathetic to me.’
‘But you have Hannah in your corner.’
Emil nodded. Smiled in the shifting shade of the tired old gums. ‘I do. This Temple would turn his ship about if he only knew.’
That night Emil did not know whether he was hot or very cold. Solomon whispered from his bed, ‘You’re shivering.’
‘Is it cold tonight?’
The moon fell on Solomon’s face, casting his cheeks and neck into deep shadow. His bristles made the bottom half of his face black. ‘No. Do you want me to get the doctor?’
‘I’ll sleep it off.’
‘Emil, it strikes me that you could return to England, that your Hannah is resourceful enough to follow in her own time.’
‘Boats go down every day. We cannot go separately. I will wait.’
He dreamed, but he did not only dream. He found himself outside, his cheek against gravel and dust, vest sticking to his skin. I am not in my bed, he told himself, opening his eyes. Bright light from the towers blinded him and he closed them again. I am out in the night. He could see the station, where they had come in, beyond the guard towers and the fence. He was panting. I ran, through woods. I swam through water. He bent his knees and brought them under himself, rose slowly to his feet. I am ill. I must walk carefully.
A man appeared in front of him, a soldier. He knew the uniform. They were kind but they had not always been. There was something else inside them, the men who looked like this. The man took his elbow. ‘Becker, hey? Infirmary for you, I reckon.’
He shuffled along, allowed himself to be led, assisted. He could not fathom whether he was a prisoner or a convalescent. In any case he must preserve himself, he must place one foot in front of the other, until his vision cleared.
Hannah
I felt like a tiny, hapless figure whipped by biblical fury during those weeks in Hay. Dust storms were followed by floods, in which the town and the camp became gelatinous with wet, reddish clay. Shrimps, eggs dormant for years, were animated with the sudden deluge and the river and its tributaries were suddenly filled with the little creatures.
Jill moved the children to Melbourne. My last image of them as I stood on the bright street after they waved goodbye: the three of them turning away, holding hands, bent-headed, their necks pale strips of skin exposed to the sun, disappearing into the shade beneath the upstairs verandah of the hotel. Apart from missing them more than I had thought I would, I had now to walk out to the camp pouring with sweat or drenched by a downpour for the single visit I was permitted per week. I vented my frustration in letters to MPs here and at home and attempted to write calmer letters to Mother, about the flowers and the food. To my brothers I made light of my fate, and my own efforts. Geoffrey was we knew not where, because he was not allowed to say, while Benjamin was preparing fighter pilots to face the appalling odds of aerial warfare, and so I just about found the decorum not to wail endlessly of my misfortune.
Christmas drew near and the strangeness of heat and isolation grew with such events as the Griffith truck’s delivery of pine trees to the store along with boxes of decorations. One morning the mail delivery came a little earlier than usual. I was sitting on the stool behind the counter and about fell off when I saw my name on the envelope. Here at last, I imagined, was word from one of my MPs informing me he was to take on our case personally, having been outraged by our treatment. It was
in fact from the editor of the Age in Melbourne, with the news that he would be printing my impressions of Australia. He enclosed a cheque for a pound and three shillings, appearing to be thrilled by my European experience, and invited me to send more work. I sat on the high stool behind Mrs Stuart’s counter in the general store and my body vibrated with the fulfilment of an old longing. I thought immediately of my father, who had wanted us all to be writers. At that moment Mrs Stuart entered the store from the house. ‘Are you all right, dear?’
‘Yes, yes, yes! I have some money for you. I have been paid for a piece. It is to be printed!’
Mrs Stuart was silent for a moment, looking out to the blinding street. ‘I don’t expect payment, Miss Jacob. Your bed doesn’t cost me anything, and you eat like a bird. Save your money. No doubt you’ll need it soon enough.’
I could not look at her. I wished I had the means to refuse her kindness. I am afraid at that moment I could not even open my mouth to say thank you.
I wrote a few more pieces for the Age: one on what it was like to live in London amid the Battle of Britain, another on the crossing, and one on the life of Hay, a town which had doubled its population overnight with the arrival of two thousand Germans and Austrians and where the locals had to accustom themselves to the towers and floodlights and parades of refugees on their way through town on working parties and excursions to the river. On Saturday nights the townspeople gathered in the street at the front of the store to gossip and I listened to them from the sleep-out at the back, quite unashamedly quoting them in my story.
Just before Christmas, I walked to the camp, my feet for once reluctant and slow. I had forgotten my hat and the sun glared through the clouds. I would be bright red by the time I arrived, but he had seen me in every state now from sodden to wilting. It would have been crueller to arrive with hair just combed and clothes beautifully pressed, while he sat there in his mismatched clothes, hair greying by the moment.
Hannah & Emil Page 31
