“We made up such a good story about your crucial role in the discovery of the Nazi buildup in Sudetenland, we almost believed it ourselves,” Peter said.
“There it is.” Lotti pointed at a row of redbrick cottages as they drove down a quaint village street. “Oak Tree Cottage.”
“Which one?”
“Next to the butcher’s shop. With the faded yellow door.”
“Aren’t we stopping?”
“We have to return the car to Muriel,” Peter said. “And announce the safe arrival of our precious cargo from Paris.”
He maneuvered the Bentley down a narrow, bumpy lane; overhanging tree branches scraped the roof and windows as they passed. They tumbled out, and Lena found herself in front of a more substantial house than those on the village street.
She was more interested in learning further details of Josef’s arrest in Krakow, and Peter and Lotti’s journey across Poland, than in seeing a lot of new faces. But half a dozen new faces were sitting around a dining room table, finishing off lunch. A tall, gray-haired man leaped up to greet them immediately, extending a long arm and a charming smile, introducing himself as Alistair, kissing Lena on both cheeks and slapping Otto on the back with a chuckle. A large, rust-colored dog bounded underfoot. Two young men and a couple in their thirties smiled politely, and at the head of the table was a woman Lena assumed must be Muriel. She did not get up, but her face flushed with pleasure.
“Lena, my dear, welcome to England,” she said. “We’ve heard so much about you. We’re simply delighted to have you here.”
“Thank you so much.” Lena tried to pronounce th correctly, but it still came out sounding more like zsank you.
“How is Paris? How are the French coping with the war? They don’t have a blackout on the Champs-Élysées, do they?” asked one of the young men, sitting immediately to Muriel’s left. He had a bright, fresh demeanor and short wavy hair; he looked about eighteen. His broad cheeks and angular jaw bore a striking resemblance to Muriel’s.
“No, just for a few days—I think last September—but not since then,” Lena replied.
“Of course not,” declared the woman at the other end of the table. “The French are far more sensible about this sort of thing, aren’t they? I don’t suppose they have food rationing, either?”
“No, there was some talk of it, but nothing yet.”
“We all have a wretched little ration book now,” Alistair said. “Such a nuisance.”
“Rationing is a much fairer system of distribution when food is scarce,” retorted the young man whom Lena took to be Muriel’s son. “Surely you’re not taking the Tory position that the wealthy should be allowed to hoard as much as they want.”
“Believe me, Milton, the wealthy will find a way around rationing.” Alistair turned back to Lena. “Meat rationing goes into effect here tomorrow. As you can see, we’re making the most of it here today while we still can.”
There was a huge, much-depleted joint of roast beef in the center of the table, along with various bowls of vegetable remnants. Lena caught a whiff of the meat and realized she was very hungry.
“I say, can I offer you anything to drink?” Muriel said. “Or eat? You have had lunch, I presume? We’ve rather made pigs of ourselves here, I think, but I’m sure we could put together something.”
Lotti quickly replied, “Oh, no, we don’t want to impose. We just wanted to say hello as we dropped off the car. Lena hasn’t even seen Oak Tree Cottage yet, and Emil and Tomas are waiting for us.”
“Well, we’re looking forward to seeing you all back here tonight,” Muriel said, rising to approach the visitors, still crowded around the doorway. Lena noticed with surprise that she walked with one arm extended in front of her and that her eyes roamed in unfocused, random movements. Otto reached out to take hold of her arm and guided her toward them.
She clasped Lena’s left hand in both of hers. “I do hope you’ll be happy here, my dear. We can’t offer much compared with the delights of Paris, but we’ll do our best to provide some diversion.”
“Thank you so much,” she said again.
As they walked back up the driveway, Lena said to Otto, “You didn’t tell me Muriel is blind.”
“Oh, didn’t I? I suppose that’s because after a while, you just don’t notice.”
Oak Tree Cottage was smaller and more primitive than Lena had imagined, but she was charmed by the low ceilings, the crooked beams that traversed the walls, and the lattice-patterned windows. There was a fire in the grate and a sweet little cat curled up on the hearth, and in the kitchen a pot of hot soup. It was not roast beef, but it was warm and filling and accompanied by a delicious, crusty brown bread.
As they ate, the conversation returned to the exchange of news about all their mutual friends and acquaintances.
“Do you remember Gustav?” Peter said. “I ran into him a few weeks ago at the Czech refugee office in London. He jumped from a moving train near the Dutch border to avoid being shunted back into Germany. He’s living somewhere near Birmingham.”
“Tell her about Hilde,” Lotti said.
“Oh God, yes, poor thing.” Peter chuckled. “Hilde Spitzova. We met up with her in Poland, near Katowice. She was smuggled across the border under a pile of manure in a ramshackle wagon and still reeked two weeks later.” He screwed up his face, as if he could still smell her now. “But she made it, I believe. We heard she got a domestic-worker permit and is somewhere in Essex.”
Amazing exploits, probably exaggerated, but utterly satisfying nevertheless; Lena felt drunk on the camaraderie. It was as if they were describing an exciting new motion picture, except this was real—ordinary young people caught up in extraordinary times. But the news wasn’t all good. A friend of Peter’s had made it to the Polish border but hadn’t been heard from since. And Lena became aware of Emil sitting in silence next to her, head buried in his soup. She hadn’t known him well back in Prague. Josef was more in their group, Emil a couple of years younger but the spitting image of his brother.
“I’m so sorry to hear about Josef,” she said.
“Yes, it’s ironic,” he said, a quiver in his lower lip. “It was Josef’s idea for us to try to reach England.”
“What did he say in his letter?”
He shrugged. “By the time he was released and had new papers, the war had started. He couldn’t make it through Poland.”
Lena gave his hand a gentle squeeze. “He’ll be all right. He’s very resourceful.”
Emil nodded. He gave Lena a grateful smile and helped himself to another slice of bread. “Tomas should tell you the story of how he got an exit permit,” Lotti said, looking over to the table by the window.
Tomas seemed odd. Lena hadn’t known him in Prague, either. After wolfing down his soup, he’d retreated to the window, where he was bent over little pots of paint and some sort of buttons. But he looked up now, as if suddenly coming to life, and said, “I managed to get an invitation from a long-lost aunt in Dubrovnik.”
“The clerk at Gestapo HQ didn’t know how to spell Yugoslavia,” Lotti said, with a shrill laugh.
“I said I didn’t know, either. Trying to sound as helpful as possible, I suggested she just put ins Ausland instead.”
“Ins Ausland!” Lotti said, giggling again. “Abroad! Can you believe it?”
“So that’s what she did,” Tomas said. “And I duly hopped on a train to England. I suppose if she knew how to spell, I wouldn’t be sitting here.”
Lena laughed, too. “Who would have thought any of us would be here, in this little village in England?” she mused.
“Thank goodness you’ve now joined us,” Otto said, taking her hand and raising it to his lips. As if on cue, Lotti and Peter jumped up from the table, clearing plates.
“We’re going for a walk,” Lotti announced, pulling Emil out of his seat. “Come on.” She glared at Tomas.
“What?”
“Lena needs to get settled in.” And with a bundling of s
carves and jackets, they were out the door, leaving Lena and Otto alone in the cottage. Lena laughed, felt herself blushing. Otto led her up the creaky staircase to the front bedroom and pulled her onto the bed.
CHAPTER 13
SUSSEX, APRIL 1940
After Lena’s arrival in the household, the sleeping arrangements called for some flexibility. The two couples took turns using the front bedroom, alternating with sleeping in the living room, with a camp stretcher shoved next to the sofa, reinforced by suitcases placed underneath to support the extra weight. They shared the cold tap in the kitchen as the only place to attend to basic hygiene. In spite of the cramped conditions and her uncertainty about the future, in spite of her ever-present worry about her family, Lena felt happier than she had in a long time. In her reflection in the mirror, she saw the color returning to her cheeks. She loved waking up with Otto next to her. She nestled into the cocoon of his embrace and the close-knit companionship of the group. She grew fond of Masaryk the cat; he often chose her lap. It was a sheltered bubble, bound to rupture sooner or later, but Lena was powerless over the timetable and just about everything else, so she was determined to enjoy it while it lasted.
The savage winter had yielded to a glorious spring. Hundreds of tiny leaf buds decked the trees around the churchyard and the square; daffodils, crocuses, primroses, and tulips gleamed in front gardens. The surrounding woods were alive with fresh new growth. It was green, green, green.
The back garden at Oak Tree Cottage was transformed. When Lena arrived, it was merely a cold void to dash through on the way to the coal shed or the outhouse; now it became much-needed extra living space. Peter and Emil raked away dead leaves and cut back overgrown brambles to create a sheltered den that trapped the sun. A wobbly table was procured from Muriel, and a few wooden crates served as seats.
There was still the blackout to contend with, and rationing for a few items, like butter, bacon, sugar, and now meat, but otherwise it was hard to believe this was wartime. The early introduction of “summer time” meant long hours of evening daylight before the blackout screens had to be applied. There were complaints in the village about the dark mornings, but the inhabitants of Oak Tree Cottage were rarely awake early enough to notice. They stayed up late reading, talking, listening to music on the gramophone, or playing charades. Peter, of course, was a natural master of miming, but Tomas, too, had a surprising talent: his impersonation of Neville Chamberlain made Lena laugh until her stomach ached.
Otto spent the days writing, churning out pages at a furious rate and with an apparent renewed sense of purpose. Lena sat and watched him hunched over the typewriter, chewing on his lower lip as he concentrated on his work. It was new, this chewing habit, but she found it endearing. She was trying to focus on the hem of a fine silk dress: sewing work that Lotti had taken on to supplement the group’s meager income. Lena was no seamstress but felt obliged to contribute. She had applied for her allowance from the Czech Refugee Trust Fund, but it had not come through yet.
Lotti did most of the cooking, putting together delicious soups and stews on the little primus stove.
“Did you learn to cook at home?” Lena asked.
“My mother showed me some things. We could afford only a part-time cook, so she did most of it herself. What about you?”
“My mother never did anything,” Lena said. “We always had a cook. Did your mother keep a kosher kitchen?”
“She went to the kosher butcher, of course, but beyond that, no,” replied Lotti. “She always thought the two-sets-of-everything idea was ridiculous. Can you imagine trying to do that in this kitchen?” She laughed.
As beautiful as the spring was, it brought with it the potential end of the stalemate in the war. Otto believed that Hitler had been just biding his time, waiting for better weather, before he launched a new offensive in the West.
“It will be ferocious,” Otto said.
“But the Germans have lost their earlier advantage,” Tomas said. “The French and British have been building up their defenses.”
“The Times says the blockade of Germany is beginning to bite,” Lotti said. “Hitler will soon be forced into a truce.”
Otto said nothing more, chewing on his lip. In bed late at night, after he made love to her, Lena asked, “What’s going to happen, Otto? Are we going to be all right? Will France withstand an onslaught? Will the people in Paris be safe?”
“I don’t know, mein Schätzchen; I don’t know,” he said, as she lay in the crook of his arm. It was dark as ebony in the room, the blackout screens preventing even a chink of moonlight from illuminating his face. She didn’t ask those questions during the daylight hours, when she would have had to look into his eyes.
In the evenings, they often wandered down to The Hollow. They were always made to feel welcome; they took baths, sampled cowslip wine and local beers, listened to the large collection of classical music, or heard Muriel sing and play the piano. She had a repertoire of traditional Sussex folk songs and a beautiful voice, strong and resonant. And she was pursuing plans for the production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The whole village was expected to participate. She persuaded Tomas and Lotti to create a forest backdrop from a combination of dried leaves and twigs, scraps of green and brown velvet, and a papier-mâché cliff face.
Milton spent more time in the village, having resigned from Oxford at the end of the Hilary Term. He saw no point, he declared, in reading history in an ivory tower when momentous events were unfolding before his eyes.
“I’ll probably be called up to start making history myself any day now,” he said.
Muriel engaged him in gentle banter about his changing views; two terms at Oxford had apparently caused him to abandon his pacifist, anti-imperialist stance that he would have nothing to do with this war.
“It’s the war that’s changed, Maman,” he said. “We have to defeat fascism.”
His relaxed way of talking with his mother fascinated Lena. When alone, they spoke French, a practice they continued if Lena was the only other person present. She found it hard to imagine such intimacy with a parent and viewed their relationship with a mixture of curiosity and envy. Milton was almost twenty, but he seemed immature. He’d apparently led a sheltered childhood, educated by French and German governesses, before attending an exclusive private day school nearby. His brief foray to Oxford had been his first time away from home.
He loved to spend time with the Oak Tree Cottage refugees, and they enjoyed his company. One day, he proposed an excursion to Brighton on the South Coast. They took the train from the station down the hill in Bigglesmeade, and then changed for the main line at Lewes. After weeks in the country, Lena loved sampling the joys of urban living. They wandered through Kemptown and the Lanes, past charming shops, tearooms, and pubs, and then for miles along the promenade, past the piers, heading west toward Hove. The sun was shining, but a bracing sea breeze coated everything with a taste of salt. Lena was enthralled; she had been to the sea only once before, on that holiday to Constanta with her family.
But where was the soft golden sand she recalled from the Black Sea, the sand that you could squiggle your toes into, run on barefoot? What was that in its place, stretching ahead in an endless line of gray?
“It’s a pebble beach.” Milton let out an easy, gentle laugh. “Shingle, stones,” he explained.
“You don’t have sand on the beaches in England?”
“Yes, in some places. Farther west, at Chichester. And in Devon and Cornwall. But here we have pebbles.”
They climbed down a set of stone steps. The pebbles felt hard and painful underfoot, but up close, their gray was far from monolithic. There was pale gray, dark gray, blue-gray, green-gray, mingled with some tan and white and yellow; some of the stones were striped, some speckled black and white, all jumbled in a random assortment.
At the water’s edge, the surf tumbled in rhythmic motion, to and fro. Each retreat of the waves drew a mass of pebbles away from the shore, then
back with a thundering roar. The group stood shoulder to shoulder, mesmerized by the power of the sea. Lena tried to focus on the course of one particular pebble, light gray with distinctive black spots, as it was churned back and forth, but she lost sight of it in the undertow.
On an impulse, they went to the Odeon in Kemptown to see Gone with the Wind and emerged late into the moonless night, missing the last train out of Lewes. They had to walk back to Upper Wolmingham along dark lanes meandering through sleeping villages.
When they woke late the next day, it was to the news that Hitler had made his move. The Germans had invaded Denmark and Norway. It had taken them just as long to walk home from Lewes as it took the Wehrmacht to conquer Denmark.
CHAPTER 14
SUSSEX, MAY 1940
For months, the map of Europe tacked to the wall above the sofa had been largely ignored. The colors were faded, the top edge sagged in the center, and the lower right corner flapped in the breeze every time the front door opened. It was like the ugly wallpaper Otto remembered from his grandfather’s house in Bavaria: after a while, you didn’t notice it, even though you walked past it several times a day.
But now, the map became the center of attention.
At the clink of the letterbox announcing the arrival of The Times, Otto jumped up, wanting to be the first to scan the headlines.
“What did I tell you?” he said.
He knew he shouldn’t sound so smug. But really—so much for all that nonsense about a quick truce, or the blockade forcing Hitler to his knees.
“Let me see.” Tomas grabbed the newspaper and walked over to the map. Armed with a fresh supply of gray pins from the village shop, he had assumed responsibility for meticulously documenting the advance of the Wehrmacht.
“What’s the latest?” Emil asked, coming down the stairs.
“Doesn’t look good. A German division has broken through, deeper into France. I’m trying to find St. Quentin.” Tomas peered through his thick glasses, scouring the northeastern corner of France, a pin poised in his right hand.
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