‘It’s a good theory,’ he said at the end of the discussion. ‘So long as you acknowledge how far most of it is conjecture. And admit that conjecture is a complicated word for guesswork. There are two drawbacks that I can see.’
‘What are they?’
‘Almost impossible to prove at this distance of time.’
‘I’m not planning on a criminal case,’ said Kit. ‘I just want to know the truth myself.’
‘You will never know the truth if you content yourself with theory,’ said Hargreaves. ‘Theories are two a penny, evidence is worth its weight in gold.’
‘There speaks a copper. But OK – point taken. And what’s the other drawback?’
‘Your theory takes us up to the point of your kidnapping. With Frank Novello taking his family to Sicily as part of a criminal plan. But it takes us no further. And what happened afterwards is in some ways the most puzzling thing of all.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘How did you, as a result of the abduction, emerge as the adopted son – albeit probably not legally adopted – of a pair of sensitive, responsible, admirable people who were law-abiding to a fault and generally do-gooding. Do you get my point?’
‘Yes. Don’t mock them.’
‘I’m not. I just sound as if I am when I use long words. Let’s face it, you were fantastically lucky, and you’ve profited by what happened to you at the age of three to emerge happy, balanced, intelligent. To account for that we need to know something more about what happened after the abduction in Trepalu. What was the connection between your adoptive parents and whoever arranged the kidnapping?’
‘What sort of thing do we need to know?’
‘First and foremost, were you abducted to order, with your future with the Philipsons already mapped out?’
‘Or?’
‘Or were you abducted first, then made available for adoption, probably to people who were desperate to adopt but consistently turned down – age, past record, whatever the cause. Britain is very careful, where – say – the US hands kids over to film stars, drunks, druggy people with a whole chronicle of busted-up marriages and relationships. That, at any rate, is how the situation there looks from over here.’
‘My mother used to say that most of the impressions British people have about the Americans are wrong.’
‘Fair-minded as well as all the rest,’ said Hargreaves with a lopsided grin. ‘Oh well, mebbe, as the Scots say.’ He heaved himself off the table and started collecting notebooks and files.
‘Here, you’re not going yet, are you?’ asked Kit.
‘Yes. You forget, kiddie, that I’m a policeman, and not a private eye. I’m paid by the municipality, not by a casual private client who wants his past, his wife or his dog’s past looked into.’
‘Isn’t there any other possible connection between the Novello family and Jürgen and Genevieve?’
Hargreaves stopped by the door.
‘Any number, I would guess. Possibilities I haven’t thought about because I’m not a thinker by nature. One thing occurs to me – as sort of halfway house between the two I’ve just mentioned. Is it possible that you were taken so that you could be offered to the Philipsons in order to entrap them into a situation where they could be forced to do something, or forced to wink at something other people have done – for fear of losing you, the precious child they had longed for all their married life?’
Kit thought.
‘I suppose so. Though I never got the feeling of their being entrapped.’
‘Think it through. And get to know more about the Philipsons: the English people who adopted them in 1939, their families in Germany or Austria who sent them on the Kindertransport to save their lives, find out about their careers and occupations when they grew up.’
He seemed to be forgetting, Kit thought, that only Jürgen was German by birth.
Two days later Kit was just beginning to recover from one of Isla’s English, or rather British breakfasts. It was an example of excess that he was considering giving up, especially as Isla refused to excuse him from more than two of the eight items on her choice list.
‘I’ll have a boiled egg tomorrow,’ he said, patting his new belly.
‘Two,’ said Isla. ‘With some good, buttery soldiers.’
‘No, I want—’
But at that point the telephone rang.
‘Kit,’ came the well-known voice of Hargreaves, ‘I’ve been thinking—’
‘You said you never did.’
‘I didn’t quite say that. I’ve been muddling about with my brain on the subject of your adoptive father.’
‘Jürgen. Yes.’
‘He was adopted by an English family after coming here in the Kindertransport – Kids’ transport. And that adoption was very successful – right?’
‘Right. My grandparents – or adoptive grandparents, as I now know – were really nice people.’
‘I’ve been thinking that the success of his own adoption meant that Jürgen was predisposed towards adoption, and willing to consider some way of bringing it about for him and his wife – some way that was a bit dicey.’
Kit considered.
‘I suppose that’s a possibility. Where does it take us?’
‘You’ve never told me if he made this Kindertransport journey on his own, or whether he had brothers or sisters with him.’
‘A sister. She was eight at the time, so he was certainly dependent on her.’
‘I’m sure she would have contributed to the success of the Philipsons’ adoption.’
‘Oh, no question of it. Jürgen always paid tribute to her.’
‘I’m guessing she’s no longer alive.’
‘No, she died a few months after Jürgen. She had heart problems most of her life. Hilda was her name – with an “e” in the German form. If she was still alive I could cut a number of corners, because I think she must have known almost everything about Jürgen’s life and opinions. She was nice too. I liked her. We saw her every year, in the summer, and she always brought me a well-considered present. The way to a child’s heart …’
‘No living husband?’
‘No husband at all.’
‘Partner, lover, flatmate?’
‘She lived with another cashier at the bank. Female. With or next to, in neighbouring flats, I think. Sorry, I should have mentioned what she did for a living. She and this flatmate both worked for Coutts’ bank – very old, rather posh, and definitely exclusive. The head branch is in the Strand.’
‘I know them. We have a branch in Leeds.’
‘Anyway she and this friend – Binkie her name was – both lived in this large house in Twickenham.’
‘Of the lesbian persuasion, I’m guessing.’
‘I have no idea. Genuinely – I’m not trying to hide anything. I saw her friend once or twice when she came up with Aunt Hilda to the Edinburgh Festival. But I wouldn’t have understood what lesbianism was, and I wouldn’t have been able to interpret the signs, so you can forget all the usual jokes.’
‘Don’t be so bloody self-righteous. Actually I’ve always been a great supporter of women’s rugby. It gives us something to talk about. I sometimes have problems with that, with women.’
‘I can imagine.’
‘Sarkiness will get you nowhere. Anyway, if they lived together, Hilda’s early life, her family, must surely have come up for discussion.’
‘I’d imagine so. But how can I get in touch? I can’t even remember the friend’s surname – or her real Christian name, come to that.’
‘Ring Coutts’ bank. Talk to the personnel department.’
The more Kit thought about the idea the more he liked it. The person he spoke to in the personnel department was one of those people that old-fashioned firms run to – the one who’d been there since she left school.
‘Hilda Philipson,’ she said. ‘Oh yes, I knew her well. Lovely person: always smiling, though she’d had more than her share of ill health, and alw
ays ready to help. I can tell you she was a great loss – to atmosphere as much as anything else.’
‘Yes, that’s how I remember her. I’m her nephew. My own parents have died in the last few years, and there’s something come up that I think Hilda may have talked over with Binkie.’
‘Oh, dear old Binkie!’
‘I’m afraid I don’t remember her real name.’
‘Barbara Southcott. Are you wanting to contact her?’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘Just send a letter to us here, with PLEASE FORWARD on it. I’ll keep an eye on the post and make doubly sure that it gets to her.’
‘I’ll write today.’
Two days later he received a phone call from Binkie – brusque but definitely friendly. Two days after that he was sitting in her front room in Twickenham, and she was ministering from a tray of tea and cakes.
‘I know from what you told me on the phone,’ said the rather old-fashioned-looking woman, probably in her late sixties, ‘that you are looking into the circumstances of your adoption by Jürgen and Genevieve and you’d welcome any light Hilda may have thrown on the matter in conversation with me. Forgive me if I say that I’m used to and comfortable with the idea of an adopted child wishing to find out and make contact with his birth parents. The adopted child who wishes to find out about his adoptive parents seems a much odder phenomenon.’
She spoke precisely, almost pedantically. An ideal witness, Kit thought.
‘I understand your bewilderment,’ he said, matching his tone to hers. ‘Can we just say for the moment that, to the best of my knowledge, I was abducted from my birth parents at the age of three, while they were on holiday in Sicily.’
He said no more. Binkie’s face showed her shock. Then she shook herself and put her hand on his to show she trusted his account.
‘Ask what you like,’ she said.
‘Right. And thank you. How much did you know about Hilda’s German background?’
‘Not much. Nothing ordered. What I mean is we never sat down and talked about what happened chronologically. It was just a question of things coming up – when talking with me, with people at work, even with the local clergyman. I’m a churchgoer, by the way, but Hilda was a non-believer. Never practised Judaism.’
‘Perhaps not surprisingly,’ said Kit. ‘What kind of things came out in these conversations?’
‘Little things. Like having a ticket collector on the train to London with a kindly smile. “Somehow I knew from him that it was going to be all right,” she said. “We’d had so few kindly smiles at home.”’
‘Did she say much about her mother and father?’
‘The memories of them were mostly of her mother. Naturally. The memories I best remember her mentioning were of the days and weeks after Kristallnacht. Somebody rang her mother, and when she put the phone down – because you had to be very careful what you said on the phone – she turned to Hilda and Jürgen and clasped her hands: “They offered the people coffee and sandwiches. Think of it! They were welcoming!”’
‘Who was she talking about? Who were “the people”?’
‘The people who were applying for permits to go to Britain. And other places too – America, Australia and so on. After “the night of glass” the queue stretched along the streets around British embassies and consulates in all the bigger towns like Frankfurt. And when the applicants got into the consulates they were treated kindly – fed, given good advice, which was even more welcome. If you got a residence permit for the whole family you might get, for example, a husband or wife out of custody if they’d been arrested, or even if they’d been sent to a camp. At that stage the Nazis wanted to be rid of the Jews by emigration more than they wanted to kill them.’
Kit was silent for a moment.
‘So far Hilda’s memories seem almost happy ones.’
Binkie considered this.
‘They mostly were. They were the only ones Hilda could cherish, the ones that enabled her, privately, to look into the darker ones. I remember her saying: “You can’t believe the fear we felt.” That was the only time that she mentioned the terrible things she had seen.’
‘Did her mother try to leave Germany with the children?’
‘Yes, she did, but she was not successful. She was the daughter of a very influential – once influential – rabbi. Maybe that was the reason – a family literate, educated, used to political action. Dangerous to let out abroad. Anyway, for the rest of 1938 and the first half of 1939 she put all her strength into getting the children to England, and strengthening Hilda’s nerve and resolve and trying to see potential danger and difficulties.’
‘What about the father?’
‘Ah yes – the father …’ She took a sip of her tea. ‘Hilda almost never mentioned her father except once, when she said he helped to get permits for her and Jürgen.’
‘Why not mention him, then?’
‘Of course it could be mainly because he was almost never there – seldom at least. That was in Frankfurt, where the family had always lived. He, I think, was in Vienna.’
‘You would have thought that, if the mother couldn’t get out herself, the obvious person to go with the children was the father. If he’d been arrested she might have joined the queues to get an exit visa for him.’
‘Yes. You might have thought that. I think there must have been some reason, though. Why she didn’t do that, I mean.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘Because Hilda once said, not long before she died, and said it as if it was a tribute to her mother, not a criticism: “At least she didn’t try to get a permit for father. She never joined a queue for him.”’
Kit looked at Binkie, and Binkie looked back at him. Both were wondering what was the significance of the gnomic praise.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Transport
‘Think of it,’ said Binkie, pouring out another cup of tea and handing Kit a plate of cake. ‘Think of the bravery of the woman – sending her children out to completely unknown futures. And don’t just think of the bravery – think of the desolation.’
‘Yes, I was imagining the figure of the mother,’ admitted Kit, nodding vigorously. ‘Was she allowed to see the children off? Was she on the platform pretending the separation would only be for a short time? Inevitably one fixes on her, rather than on the father who was … well, what was he doing? Flitting around Germany or Europe as a whole? In hiding somewhere?’
Binkie did not answer at once.
‘And what about the children too?’ she said at last. ‘Particularly Hilda. She was just old enough to understand, but not really to understand in depth. Think of the desolation she must have felt! And the sense of being deserted by both parents – understanding that at least her mother knew it was for the best, the only possible escape, in fact, but still feeling that she was being shunted off.’
‘Did she show signs of bitterness towards her mother, then?’
‘Never,’ said Binkie forcefully, obviously regretting bringing that matter up. ‘Ignore what I said. Treat it as a piece of amateur psychoanalysis: that that was what she must have felt, though I have no evidence at all that she did.’
‘But of course, you knew her much later, when she must have come to see things more deeply, more clearly.’
‘That’s true.’
‘Was she the complete English girl when you first came to know her?’ asked Kit.
‘On the surface,’ said Binkie cautiously. ‘She’d been in England twelve years by then. No accent, nothing one could clutch on to that was foreign. Oh no … there was one thing I did notice, one odd thing: the fact that if anyone surprised her, by, for example, coming up behind her and speaking to her, she would not only jump (we might all do that), but her face would be taken over entirely by fear, by blank terror.’
There was a silence for a few seconds in the room. Then Kit said: ‘I see. How horrible. Did that make you think?’
‘In a limited sort of way. I assu
med she might have been bombed in the Blitz. But I never asked her, not then. And even as things came out I never asked. In our circles that was something one did not do. I just hoped things would emerge.’
‘And I’m guessing that they did. Was there any occasion that you remember particularly?’
Binkie put her cup down and leant against the back of her chair, breathing hard.
‘I remember the Coronation,’ she said at last. ‘1953. We were all wild with patriotic fervour: it was the beginning of a new age, we thought. Though with Mr Churchill as prime minister and Mr Attlee as leader of the opposition it was really the old men having their last throw. We couldn’t, of course, afford any of the places on offer on the route: rooms like that were fetching what then seemed like a fortune. We had to find a position on the Mall near Buckingham Palace the moment we left work the day before and hold it all night. That meant we saw the procession, kept the position for the period of the service in the abbey (some people had portable radios we could listen to it on), then we saw the procession back to the palace, the queen wearing her crown now, and then the appearances on the balcony and all that. Thrilling!’
‘It must have been an exciting day.’
‘Oh it was – marvellous. But one thing I remember was when we were making plans. We were going through everything we must do, rather envying those who had an easier berth, and I said: “It’s worth it, putting up with a bit of hardship.” And out came from Hilda: “You don’t know what hardship is. You haven’t been a Jew in Nazi Germany.” I was flabbergasted. I just stammered: “I’m so sorry, I didn’t know,” and she said: “Forget I said it.” But of course, I never did. Couldn’t. But it made me wonder, all the time, what she had been through, and how she had escaped from it.’
‘And what did she tell you?’
A Stranger in the Family Page 12
