Isobel's Story

by Jennie Walters

  ‘Isobel can manage,’ Gran told him. ‘You save your efforts for the garden.’

  It would take some getting used to, having him so close at hand. I was all fingers and thumbs at the dinner table, feeling the intensity of his stare, and didn’t eat much. It was exciting, though: catching the odd glimpse of him through the window and thinking that now we might have a chance to get to know each other.

  Somebody else in the house felt very differently, however. Eunice came straight into the kitchen early the next morning, still wearing her hat and an aggrieved expression underneath it. ‘I’m handing in my notice, Mrs S,’ she said, without further ado. Her arms were folded across her chest as if to keep in the emotion bubbling up inside. ‘You can’t expect me to work with a load of foreigners, and Jews at that - it’s just not fair. There’ll be trouble, you mark my words. Things will go missing and we’ll end up getting the blame. They should stick with their own kind, go to London or some other place where there’s plenty of that sort already. It’s not right for them to come down here.’

  I looked at Gran, wondering how she’d react. All she said was, ‘I take it you’ve thought this over?’

  ‘Yes. I’ll work till the end of the week and then I shall be off. There’s a week’s holiday owing to me, if you remember.’ And she marched self-righteously out.

  Gran sighed. ‘Well, I can’t say I’m surprised. Sissy’ll be next, I shouldn’t wonder, and then what will we do?’ She put a clean towel into my arms. ‘Take this to the lad’s room, will you? I forgot to give it him yesterday and now there’s Her Ladyship ringing for me.’ Up on the wall, the drawing-room bell was jangling so furiously it practically jumped off the board.

  Eunice really was a piece of work. What harm was Andreas doing anybody, least of all her? She knew nothing about him, I thought, walking down the passage past the studio and then knocking on the door of the bedroom next to it, even though he’d been outside at work for a good hour. Of course there was no reply, so I pushed it open and went inside. The room was small and on the dark side, but the rich wood panelling made it seem cosy. There was a neatly-made bed in one corner and a chest of drawers in the other with a washbasin on the wall between them, and that was about it. A suitcase had been pushed under the bed next to a pair of black polished shoes and I could see the folded edge of Andreas’s pyjamas peeping out from under the pillow, but otherwise there was hardly any sign of him at all. I looked around, not knowing what I’d expected to find but disappointed all the same that it wasn’t there.

  Then quietly, furtively, knowing it was wrong but not able to stop myself, I started to pull out each drawer of the chest in turn. In the bottom one, nestled in the sleeves of a jumper, I found a sheaf of letters, an envelope full of photographs, and a silver knife, fork and spoon, engraved on the handles with the initial ‘R’ and some sort of crest. Of course I’d never have read the letters (anyway they were all in German), but I couldn’t resist sitting on the bed and looking through the photographs. Andreas at six or so with chubby cheeks and a broad grin, a cross-looking rabbit clutched to his chest; a formal studio portrait of the family, Andreas as a baby on his mother’s lap with his father standing proudly behind, one arm resting on her shoulder; a more recent picture of his mother, too, looking much older, and one of the apartment building where they must have lived in Berlin; the view over a lake with mountains in the background, and then the picture of a girl, smiling into the camera, her dark hair wound in plaits around her head. Who was she? I found the picture unsettling for some reason - perhaps because she was about my age, and looked so happy.

  I must have stared at the photographs for quite a while before coming to my senses and cramming them back into the envelope, thoroughly ashamed of myself. I smoothed down the blanket on which I’d been sitting, laid the towel on the end of the bed and hurried back to the kitchen. By the time Gran came in, I was innocently drying up the breakfast plates.

  ‘Is something wrong?’ I asked, seeing the preoccupied look on her face and instantly afraid of what Lady Vye might have said.

  ‘You could say so.’ She sat down heavily at the table. ‘Her Ladyship won’t hear of a foreign governess, she says she’ll be giving the children funny ideas. I’ve to tell the Refugee Committee there’s no vacancy after all.’

  ‘‘We can’t stop her coming, not now!’ I protested. Alina Lukowski was a real person with a name and a history, not just a statistic. We’d offered her a chance; it was too cruel to turn around now and snatch it away. Anyway, how could Lady Vye object to a governess who spoke four languages without even seeing her, just because she was Polish? Or Jewish? Perhaps that was the problem. I seemed to remember Sissy telling me the children had had a French nursery maid before her.

  ‘I’m getting too old for all these shenanigans,’ Gran grumbled. ‘First Eunice handing in her notice - and who knows where we’ll find another housemaid - now this.’

  I thought quickly. ‘Maybe you can say it’s too late, that Alina’s already on her way.’

  ‘And then what will happen? She’ll be sent away with a flea in her ear as soon as she arrives.’

  ‘But at least she’ll be in this country! If there’s no job waiting for her here, she’ll never get out of Poland.’

  Gran threw up her hands. ‘What can I do? Lady Vye won’t have the girl in the house under any circumstances, and that’s that. I’ll have to write to the Refugee Committee and ask them not to send her after all.’ She looked up at the clock. Tell Mr Huggins not to take the post till I’ve finished, will you, dear? He should be in the pantry.’

  Letters to be sent waited on a silver tray in the hall; after breakfast, Mr Huggins stamped them and took them down to the village post box. I didn’t tell him to wait for this one, but luckily that morning he was behind with the post anyway and the letters were still waiting for him on the hall table when I scurried past, shortly after Gran. It was just as well she hated using the telephone, I thought, slipping the envelope addressed to the Jewish Refugee Committee into my pocket. Let’s see if Lady Vye really had the heart to send Alina away once she was actually here.

  Ten

  Advice to Refugees

  The English people have freely and liberally given you a place of refuge. Show them by your courtesy to others, your consideration for all people, your kindness, that they have been justified in their generosity.

  From a leaflet given to refugee children arriving at Dovercourt camp in 1938/9

  ‘What is wrong? Is there some mistake? I don’t understand.’ Alina Lukowski looked anxiously at each of us in turn. ‘I wait at the station but nobody came and a man told me to take the bus. Do you not expect me?’ She rubbed her forehead with trembling fingers.

  ‘There’s been a mix-up,’ Gran said, frowning. ‘I’m sorry, dear, but there’s no vacancy for a governess here after all. I wrote to the Refugee Committee - they should have told you not to come.’

  ‘So what am I to do?’ Alina sounded on the verge of panic. ‘I have no more money for the train. Where will I go?’

  ‘Sit yourself down.’ Gran pulled out a chair. ‘We’ll soon get everything sorted out, don’t you worry. Take off your coat and catch your breath for a minute.’

  ‘Surely now Alina’s here, she could go and see Lady Vye?’ I asked, smiling at our guest to show her I thought everything was going to turn out all right.

  Gran drew me to one side. ‘There’s no point,’ she whispered. ‘You know what Her Ladyship’s like. She’ll send the poor girl packing quicker than you can say knife. Oh, what a mess! What on earth are we to do with the girl?’

  I felt a knot of panic gnaw at my stomach; maybe my wonderful idea wasn’t quite so wonderful after all. And then it suddenly struck me. ‘Why don’t I put the kettle on?’ I said brightly. ‘We might as well have a cup of tea.’ And I beckoned Gran into the scullery with a jerk of my head for another furtive conversation.

  ‘Eunice is leaving tomorrow, isn’t she? And you still haven’t found anyon
e else. Maybe Alina could be the new housemaid!’

  ‘But Lady Vye doesn’t want any more foreigners, she told me that in no uncertain terms.’ Gran was losing patience. ‘This isn’t some daft plan of yours, is it?’ she added suspiciously.

  ‘What if she never finds out Alina’s Polish? You can’t tell just by looking at her.’ Alina had a smooth, oval face framed by light brown hair cut in a bob: almost English-looking. Something about her clothes was subtly different - the cut of her heavy overcoat, the narrow buckles on her shoes, the shape of her brown felt hat - but once she put on an apron, she’d look just like anyone else.

  ‘You can tell as soon as she opens her mouth,’ Gran said. ‘She might speak English all right but she’s got a funny accent.’

  ‘But Lady Vye won’t ever speak to her!’ I hissed. ‘How often does she talk to Eunice? The most Alina would ever have to say is “Yes, ma’am” and ‘No, ma’am” once in a blue moon. Come on, Gran, it’s worth a try. What else are we going to do?’

  ‘I don’t know what the girl would say. Who ever heard of a housemaid who could speak four languages and play the piano?’

  I glanced back through the scullery doorway to where Alina was sitting at the kitchen table, her back slumped and her head propped up on one elbow. Tiredness and defeat came oozing out of her in great waves. ‘We can always put it to her. If she’s desperate enough, she’ll agree.’

  ‘What shall a house-parlourmaid do?’ Alina asked, after we’d explained the situation.

  ‘It’s cleaning, mostly,’ Gran told her. ‘Make the beds, change the linen on Fridays, tidy and dust the bedrooms, mop the bathrooms, vacuum and clean downstairs. Wait at table now and then if the Vyes are having company.’

  ‘This whole big house? Only me, alone?’

  We told her that most of the house wasn’t lived in, only a few of the bedrooms and bathrooms upstairs being used (Sissy looked after the children’s rooms while we cleaned our own) and downstairs, mainly the drawing room, the breakfast room and the dining room. Gran liked to mop the kitchen floor herself, not trusting Eunice to make a proper job of it.

  ‘All right,’ Alina said bleakly at last. ‘I will do it.’ Because really, what option did she have?

  ‘You think she must be grateful. Look at this good thing you have done for her and she does not even say thank you.’ Andreas held up a pencil at arm’s length and squinted along it, marking off some measurement with his thumbnail which he checked against the drawing on his lap. It was a lovely spring afternoon and the Hall lay spread out below us in the sunshine. Alina had been part of the household for a couple of weeks by now, Gran having introduced her to Lady Vye as the new house-parlourmaid, Angela Lucas. We didn’t know what she thought about the position - then again, we didn’t really know what she thought about anything.

  ‘Shouldn’t imagine you’ll get much work out of that one,’ Eunice had said with some satisfaction, pulling on her gloves for the last time. ‘Looks like a puff of wind would blow her away. Well, goodbye, Isobel.’ She’d pinched my cheek with her hard leather fingers - affectionately, I hoped. ‘Look after your granny, won’t you? Don’t let them take advantage.’ There was no need to ask who she meant by ‘them’.

  That night, I’d lain in my bed and listened to Alina sobbing in hers on the other side of the wall until I couldn’t bear it any longer and crept into her room. ‘Are you all right?’ I whispered. ‘Do you want to come in with me for a bit?’ But she’d only turned her face to the wall and shrugged my hand off her shoulder. Eunice was wrong about one thing, though - we soon discovered that Alina could work for hours. She was a neat and methodical housework machine, going about the duties that used to be Eunice’s. And all the time, she hardly spoke a word.

  ‘She doesn’t have to thank us,’ I said, stung by Andreas’s remark. ‘I just wish she’d talk to me.’

  ‘You cannot wish anything from her.’ He looked up from the drawing with an expression in his dark eyes that was hard to understand. ‘Perhaps you think, oh, if this was me I will be so happy to have a friend who helps me in this country. But she is different than you. English people have saved her life but she cannot be your friend so quick. She thinks about things you do not know.’

  ‘Then tell me! I want to find out.’

  He sighed and laid down the sliver of charcoal. ‘All right, I will try. First, she thinks every minute about her family in Poland, how she can get them out of there. Perhaps they say to her, now, Alina, you must find a way for us to come to England too, ask the good people you meet for help. But everyone has done so much already, she cannot ask for more. She knows she has always to be grateful and that is hard. And then she thinks, why do I escape, when so many stay behind? I do not know the word for that.’

  ‘Guilty,’ I said, feeling the very same thing myself.

  ‘Yes, she is always guilty. Like me. The other Jewish boy at school, Hans, and my cousin - and my mother, for sure - I think about them all the time. What happens to them now? And then perhaps Alina does not want to leave Poland but her parents said she must. They have sent her away, she thinks. Do they really love her? Or perhaps she has a boyfriend and she is afraid he will die.’

  ‘Why won’t Alina talk to you about all of this, though?’ I asked.

  ‘We are both Jews but I am not so religious as she is. And I am German, she hates me for that.’ He started to sketch the winding curve of the drive. ‘She is not like one of your friends. You know the basket in Mr Tarver’s shop with the sign of “damaged goods”? This is Alina and me. We are damaged goods, not nice like ordinary people.’

  I watched the children playing hide and seek in the trees around us, thinking this over. Tristan was home for the Easter holidays at last and I’d taken him and the girls up to the Fairview Tower, about a mile from the house through the gardens and up a hill between an avenue of oaks. It was one of Gran’s favourite places, although she probably couldn’t climb up there now. We’d found Andreas sitting on the bench at the foot of the tower, sketching. I wasn’t surprised to see him because it was one of his favourite spots, too; in fact I’d been hoping he’d be there.

  Somehow we’d fallen into becoming friends. One Sunday afternoon when no one else was around, I’d seen him working in the greenhouse and plucked up the courage to in and talk. It was shortly before Alina was due to arrive, and I’d been wanting to ask him for ages exactly how he’d managed to escape from Germany. He told me his mother had found out about a programme of trains taking Jewish children to England - the Kindertransporte, it was called - and pulled every string she could until his name was down on the list. ‘Every day she comes to the office until they say they will take me, and my cousin, Gisela, too. But in the end I am on the train and Gisela is not. She has a problem with the passport or something.’ His cousin was fifteen, he told me, and loved ballet and horse-riding lessons. She was probably the girl in the photograph, though of course I didn’t admit to having looked at it.

  ‘She can still come though, can’t she, when it’s sorted out?’

  He sighed. ‘There are so many now who try to leave, I don’t know when she has another chance.’

  ‘It must have been awful, saying goodbye to everyone.’ I tried to imagine.

  ‘This was so strange, I cannot tell you.’ He was putting seedlings into pots, carefully firming the compost around their fragile stems. Now he paused for a moment, gazing out of the greenhouse window. ‘The train leaves in the middle of the night, so it was dark. The parents must wait behind a gate, the Nazis have said they cannot cry or make any noise. They watch as the children get on the train. Many of the children are younger than me, and excited, waving like this is a … what is the word? An adventure. The parents watch and don’t move, like they are made of stone. Suddenly a man breaks through and runs on to the platform, and I think the guards must shoot him but they don’t. The train is leaving and out through the window he pulls his little girl.’

  ‘He couldn’t bear to let her go?’
>
  Andreas nodded. ‘And I wished I had a father who would come and pull me off that train, more than I ever wished anything in the world.’

  ‘You mother was braver than that, though,’ I said. ‘She was thinking of you, not herself.’

  He gave me a searching look. ‘That is right, you understand.’ Neither of us spoke for a while, then he hunched his shoulders and let them drop in a shrug of despair. ‘But come, we will talk of other things.’ And he started to tell me about happier times before his father died: visits to his uncle and aunt in the country, trips to the theatre in Berlin, shopping at the market and buying bread from the baker at the end of their street. ‘Good dark German bread, not like English cotton wool.’ He smiled to let me know he was teasing. ‘And now it is your turn. Say some of the things when you were a little girl.’

  So I told him about picnics with my brothers on Clapham Common and the big bonfire on Guy Fawkes’ night, about going to the cinema on Saturday mornings, and the seaside holiday we’d had in Clacton before Alfie was born and my father became sick. I told him about having to creep round the house when Dad was really bad, and about falling ill myself and having to go to the sanatorium - even about thinking that maybe I was going to die too, which I’d never told anyone before, not even Mary and Vi. He didn’t say very much, just nodded from time to time to show he was listening. I could have stayed for hours in that snug greenhouse, sitting on the floor with my arms wrapped around my knees; by the time I eventually emerged, it felt as though we knew each other properly at last.

  Just before I had to leave. The next day was Good Friday: Mum and the boys would be arriving in the afternoon and then we’d be going home together on Easter Monday. ‘Would you let me have that picture?’ I said now, looking over Andreas’s shoulder at the sketchpad.

  ‘No,’ he replied, and I was blushing for having asked when he added, ‘I make you a better one. But you will come back, won’t you, in the summer?’