As we emerged at the eastern end of the park and crossed the road into a wide street lined with lovely white, yellow and pink houses and blocks of flats, Edith stopped before a gate, felt about in her bag and held a key before my face, smiling.
‘What is this, Edith?’
She said nothing but pushed open the tall black iron gates, took me down a little pathway that ran alongside a pale yellow building, and opened a door at the back. I followed her into a corridor off which we found a bright, clean kitchen, a small sitting room looking out at a lemon tree and the street, a ginger cat in a patch of sun on the wall, and at the side of the building a bedroom with a double bed, made up, a dressing table and plain wooden rack with empty hangers. There was even a bookcase with books that looked rather like novels and poetry. In every room were tall white-framed sash windows that let in the evening light slanting through the trees.
‘What do you think?’ she asked, looking pleased with herself.
‘I’ll admit you have me baffled, Edith. You heard Temple. I am to go home. In any case, lovely as it is, I could never afford it.’
She explained to me that the tenant, a tutor of their acquaintance, was off to help with communications in Darwin, and didn’t mind receiving just a little rent, if someone could feed his cat.
‘But Temple says we can apply for a transport. I can stay at the hotel until then, rather than move again and inconvenience everybody.’
She smiled. She had the patience and bearing of a nun. ‘It is wonderful news, of course, but ships are unpredictable. When you have to give up the flat, we have plenty of people who would look after it. The hotel is expensive and your room is really awful. We’ve been plotting to get you out of it since you moved in.’
I gave a forlorn laugh. We were standing in the sitting room. I sat down on one of the old stuffed chairs, looking out to the street. Edith sat on the other, laying her arms along its sides. She looked pleased with herself. A woman walked by on the street with an enormous navy blue pram. The cat got up and arched his back. ‘Is that to be my cat? That ginger one on the wall?’
‘I believe so. His name is Tigger. I’m told he sleeps on the bed, and that he will not tolerate being put out.’
‘Then I suppose I shall have some company at last.’
Emil
Emil, making his bed, saw a familiar head pass the window. The thick wavy hair, round glasses. Then he was in the door, smiling a little sadly, and dressed in a uniform of a similar colour to the Australians who guarded them, but without the hat. Emil waited for him to speak. ‘For now, Emil, it is goodbye.’ Emil stood from the bed. ‘I have been placed in a working party. We leave this afternoon.’
‘Well, really, that’s wonderful news.’ Emil held out a hand to shake. Solomon looked efficient and handsome in his uniform. He’d not seen him in clothes that fitted him for a long time. ‘What do they have you doing? Picking fruit?’
‘We are to load and unload freight where the rails meet at the state border.’
‘Explain to me this piece of nonsense.’
‘Apparently, New South Wales and Victoria have differently gauged tracks.’
Emil stared at his friend, who was smiling. ‘This is true?’ Solomon nodded. ‘I would like to meet these Australian engineers and ask them where they went to school.’
‘It’s work. I’d like to thank them.’
‘Where do you stay?’
‘Albury. In digs. A farm I think.’
‘Not a camp.’
‘No.’ Solomon held out his hand once more. ‘It cannot be long now, Emil. Hannah is unstoppable. And the camp is emptying out.’
‘Just we old men left now.’
‘I’ll see you in Melbourne before Christmas. I’m sure of it.’ Solomon put his hand in his pocket and pulled something out, spread his hand before Emil’s face. He was holding out the little globe Emil had first seen in the Isle of Man boarding house on Solomon’s packing crate. ‘For you, Emil.’
‘No, Sol.’
Solomon opened Emil’s hand and pressed it into his palm. ‘It has brought me luck.’
Emil did not watch him leave the hut. Later, through the workshop window, he saw them gathering outside the mess hall in their new uniforms. Young men, laughing, giving one another little shoves, hoisting big bags onto shoulders without effort. A truck sent up dust in front of them, and they lined up to get on. Solomon cast a glance back at the workshop, then jumped up into the back with the others. Beyond the huts the gates swung open, and they were gone.
Half the beds in his hut were empty, and he, free for so long now, spent his days wandering the perimeter, listening out for the few children left in the family camp, and avoiding the Nazis who, like the old trade unionists who would or could not return to England, were not allowed out. They were the old men here now, the over-forties, and spent their days gardening or tinkering in the workshop like men who no longer had a proper use. He had not seen Hannah for two months. She was working and it was difficult for her to visit even at the weekend, as the train did not come right to the camp, and she had to write ahead and ask to be met by the camp administration, and they did not always have someone available.
He had a new job in the camp garden since so many had left, and as he crouched among the cabbages, weeding, a soldier, Peebles, approached. Emil was pleased to see him. He was a profoundly grumpy man and Emil found his unremitting sourness and refusal to put on a good front charming and quite fitting, given the circumstances. ‘Telegram, Becker. Haven’t read it. Bound to be bad news. Just warning you.’
Emil stood, took the piece of paper.
Money wired from England for my passage. Temple arranging transport for both of us. Awaiting details. Really true. Love, Hannah.
‘Bad news, is it?’
Emil laughed. ‘Yes, terrible.’
‘Thought so. Sorry. I did warn you.’ And he was off, mooching towards the offices, hands in his pockets.
Emil crouched back down in the earth, its smell lifting in the warm day. He felt the sun on his neck, gave in at last to his imaginings. He was in a cabin with her on a cargo boat. Their bodies were together. They would sleep, they would eat, they would wash, some part of themselves touching. In the dark of the cabin, in the light on deck. And if they were torpedoed, they would never be apart again.
Digging in the garden, in the quiet of the emptying camp, he thought to himself: I must write and tell Solomon. His little globe has brought me luck already.
He sat on his bed at half past two, Hannah’s battered case next to him, retrieved at Hay from a shed piled high with the remnants of the refugees’ possessions stolen on the Dunera. He could no longer do up one of the catches because of a dent in the top of the case but he could not leave it behind, it was hers. In any case, he had nothing else in which to put his things.
There were two sets of clothes given to him by the Refugee Emergency Council, the plate with the painted flowers, a razor and toothbrush he hoped to replace before the journey if his guard would allow him to stop en route to the port, and a copy of The Good Soldier Svejk, given him by Solomon, whom he would not now see before leaving. He had written him a letter, giving Hannah’s mother’s address, and saying that he would see him after the war, if he had a mind to return to England.
He kept his hands in his lap. He had already smoked two of the cigarettes from the packet in his jacket pocket, and he had only eight remaining. There was a small amount of money left from his claim for goods lost on the ship but he hoped they would not be too expensive on board. The light in the room fell suddenly and then there was a drumming on the tin roof and lightning flashed up the men’s things, all their curious little objects: eggs, bright feathers, matchstick boats. On one bedside table there was a tiny replica of Hay camp with a row of trains pulled up nearby. The huts were made of matches, the trains were real toy trains sent from who knows where, and the man who made it had also found real barbed wire to run along the top of his chicken-wire fence. He had sawn
off men, the wrong scale, from rows of football players from one of those special tables, and put them on a rush mat, a little ball of dough amid their feet. Emil took in all these things in the flashes of lightning and hoped that the weather would not prevent him being taken to Melbourne in time.
At half past three the men returned from tea and threw themselves on their beds, talked noisily, opened windows and shouted things out to passing friends. His neighbour Kaufmann looked at him curiously. He sat down on the bed opposite Emil’s. ‘When does your boat sail, Becker?’
‘In three hours.’
‘You won’t make Melbourne in time. Where’s your escort?’
‘The car was due at three.’
The man put a hand on his shoulder and went out with the others. There was a performance at the café tonight. The cellist Rosen had had his official release, and this was the last time they would hear him play.
Peebles brought a telegram at five. It was still raining and the hut was dim in the light of its bare bulb. The shoulders of his uniform were dark from the storm, his face shining. Emil watched from the bed as he dripped on the wooden floor all the way along the room between the beds. He handed him a wet, blue slip of paper. For once Peebles left without comment. The telegram read: Last minute hitch in sailing plans. Army had to put on some extras. Trying to get word to Miss Jacob before she leaves for port. Sincerest apologies, Temple.
Emil stood, put his case under the bed and went out into the rain. He heard the performance. It was Bach. The man played beautifully. He made his way past the huts and café, where the music was too much to bear, and along to his vegetable garden. Here the rain was enough to drown it out. His shovel sat upright in the earth where he had left it the day before upon receiving the telegram that he was to sail. The wooden handle was wet and gleaming in the dusk. He pulled it with a sharp heft from the ground and began to dig new rows, rivulets of water gathering at his collar and pouring down between his shoulder blades until his shirt and jacket stuck to him like burnt skin. He’d been given a broad field in which to grow vegetables for the camp. He could dig for years and not be done.
Hannah
I returned from the port, where Temple had found me and sent me home again. I do not remember it clearly. I did not write about it in my journal—I could not bear to relive it. I can hardly bear to recall it now. Temple, towering over me in the rain-drenched crowd at the dock as I brandished my useless tickets up at him. A mad walk in the rain—I caught the wrong tram and had to walk from the city back to the flat. There was my key, under the mat, where I’d left it for Edith to pass on to the next tenant. The cat, I remember, was beside himself because I had accidentally shut him out. He was spiky with the rain and tried to scratch me when I reached down to pick him up to dry him. From his point of view, it was a fine thing they had given my berth to Liverpool to soldiers.
Later that night Edith and her sister Dorothy came with enormous sandwiches they had made me for the voyage and taken to Port Melbourne, where they had waited until the ship sailed, and had then caught sight of Temple and extracted an explanation. Edith went out and returned miraculously with coal and made a little fire in the grate. We were all soaking and I got us nightdresses and a bottle of sherry and we sat there in a sort of stupor, listening to the rain and the fire. I think that Dorothy read us some of Nettie Palmer’s poems. They knew her through their university friends and had given me a collection. When their clothes were dry they put me to bed, borrowed an umbrella and walked to their tram in the dark and rain.
I heard nothing at all from Emil. I resolved to go up there as soon as I could make arrangements for them to pick me up at the other end. I wrote every day to ask but some censor somewhere was having a fine old time with my correspondence and I did not hear back at all.
More weeks of listening in dank cottages to my refugees and sweatshop workers and old women looking after even more ancient mothers. They did not want to complain. They thought they would lose their homes, such as they were. Everyone grim about Japan. Nothing, nothing from Emil.
Then I got a letter from the manager of a munitions factory, with whom the metalworkers’ union had been in touch on Emil’s behalf. He told me that the men would not work with a day-release internee but that if I could get Emil released properly he could use him. I telephoned work from the box in the park to tell them that I would be late and took the tram to South Melbourne at once. I rang on the bell of a large brick factory and a secretary came to fetch me. She took me through the immense hall of the building; we passed great guns half made on mammoth benches, men working silently at baffling machines. The heat and noise were intense. I was taken in and introduced to the manager, frowning over a ledger, who looked up, astonished to see me. ‘A telegram would have been plenty, miss.’
I clutched my gloves before me. ‘I wanted to come and to promise you that if you will hold a position, I will do absolutely everything in my power to have Mr Becker released. I wanted you to know that, very definitely. I will be sending your letter to the Department of Labour and National Service, and I shall try and get satisfaction for you as soon as I possibly can. You will not be sorry for giving us this chance.’
He nodded, stunned, looked at his secretary hovering by the door, and she pulled my arm gently, guiding me once more out across the factory floor. She opened the entrance door for me and shook my hand. I was glad of the touch, but could not speak to thank her, and got a tram immediately for the university so that I could be at work without having missed too much of my day.
Then, again, things went darkly quiet. I lay awake every night fearing that Emil must be closer and closer to some desperate act. Still no one at the camp would give me news of him or confirm that they could collect me from the station if I went up there on the train. In my bed I thought: I will buy a car, the cheapest available, or steal one, and I will just drive it. Less capable people than I drove all the time. But Emil had tried, briefly, to teach me. The memory of him in Benjamin’s car, in a lane in Hampshire, slamming the door, his back disappearing in the rear-vision mirror. You cannot be this terrible. It is not possible.
And so every morning I woke to reality and prepared myself for another day of work, and waiting. I ate everything Edith tucked away in the cooler whether I felt like it or not. I took extremely long walks in the evening to pass the time. I had no choice but to survive.
The season began to turn. The lovely flat was dark soon after I got home from work and I had to relinquish my grip on a portion of my savings for some warmer clothes and decent boots. Everything I had brought from England and managed upon had now just about given out. I came home on a Friday, put my key in the door and thought, perhaps I will not go out walking tonight. It is dark already, and I’m tired, and I might just draw a bath and go to bed. As I went to push the door inward it pulled away from me. A little jolt went through my arm and he was there, somehow inside, thin and old and just about smiling. We paused in front of one another on the doorstep, an eerie space between us with no wire screen. I could see the exact shape of him, of his body, of his face. He reached forward and pulled me to him and in spite of his thinness he was all heat. It went through me and around me. I could not let go.
Emil
They would not let him stay with her the night before they married. The Harts conjured him up a room at one of the colleges and in the morning their brother, Max, came with a suit and tie. He stood in the corridor holding it aloft. ‘It’s not exactly a morning suit,’ he said. ‘But I hope it will be all right for you.’
Emil nodded and closed the door, took in the suit. Old but not worn bare. It smelled very clean. He had lost the capacity for casual conversation in the last quiet months at Tatura. The world seemed unpredictably noisy, and he had no wish to add to it. And he must learn again that habit of responding in English without long reflection first. Solomon would come soon, he was due at any moment. They would talk for a while, he would be at ease, be himself.
He liked the park near th
e flat and he and Hannah went for quiet walks during which he had to still the flutter in his heart when she withdrew her hand to look for her glasses in her bag, or get the matches for him. The roar of the factory had been a shock. He had not been able to sleep the first night for the headache. But after a week of it he found it restful to be at work, to smoke a cigarette when the break bell went, standing in the sunlight of the dusty street with all the others, beginning to recognise the faces, watching women take their small children up the road to the market. The rhythm of it, rising early to catch the right tram, pouring onto the street with the others as the sun was sinking, this was the correct shape to a day. These movements helped him back into his body.
When Max had knocked he had expected trouble of some kind. He had learned to keep his hopes small and not far distant and now he must learn again to make them large and confident, to become himself again, the man who had hopes for himself and the world, who made his plans and followed them through. The boy without shoes who becomes an engineer. The one who comes back.
‘I will marry today,’ he said quietly into the room, looking out at the chapel, covered in ivy, and there were Edith and Dorothy and old Mrs Hart in their pale dresses and gloves and hats, waiting for Max beside a glossy black car. They’re going to fetch her, he thought. He felt light, like laughing, but carried the echo of that knock at the door: that at any moment there would be a telegram saying that his release was a mistake, that the wedding banns were not really posted, that he was the wrong Emil Becker and must go back to his place in the camp. He closed his hand on a piece of paper in his pocket, his landing permit, which gave him the right to live, work, marry.
Hannah & Emil Page 33
