When It's Over

by Barbara Ridley

  The conductor opened the door to the compartment. He glanced at Peter sprawled out on the seat, looked as though he was about to offer a reprimand, but then thought better of it.

  “Tired him out, have you?” He gave a gentle laugh. “Lower the blinds, love. It’s blackout time.”

  Lena took one more look outside. The moon was even brighter now in the growing darkness. This same moon would be gazing down on Otto, wherever he was, and on Ernst, in England now, it seemed, and on Prague, too, on Máma and Sasha. She stared up at the silver orb, with its beguiling smile, and banished it behind the shade.

  CHAPTER 21

  LINGFIELD RACECOURSE, SURREY, JUNE 1940

  It was the nights that Otto dreaded the most. He had lost count of how many he’d spent in this cell. It wasn’t even a cell, exactly, but an improvised version, in the racetrack stables, reeking of horse manure, with a hard concrete floor, no furniture, hot and stuffy. It wasn’t too bad during the day, when he could wander around, but at night it was unbearable. Noises traveled easily between stalls: the sounds of snoring and coughing, and incessant chatter, speculation and squabbling.

  It was worse than listening to Emil and Tomas arguing, or Peter carrying on as if he knew the answer to everything. It called for the same strategy: Otto refused to get embroiled in these conversations. Even that morning, when he’d seen Lorenz Schönmann perched on a bale of hay, eating porridge and waving him over, Otto had been evasive, brushing off Lorenz’s questions about everything he’d done since Prague, not wanting to go into all that, not wanting to confront how much things had changed, how much he had changed. Lorenz had heard Otto was working on a book about Spain, but Otto didn’t want to talk about that, either. He had his typewriter with him, but he was beginning to think he might never finish the book.

  Perhaps Lena was right: he was changing, becoming a stranger even to himself. When he was with her, he felt forced to counterbalance her hopelessly naive optimism. He needed to point out the reality of the situation; it was a mantle he wrapped himself in to create a buffer, but he had thought he could shrug it off anytime. Now he wasn’t so sure.

  Otto felt a heavy inertia he did not recognize. In earlier days, he would have been organizing, lining up alliances, plotting the best strategy for when the Nazis arrived. He watched from afar as some of his fellow inmates took steps along those lines—well, not that, exactly, but there was an advisory committee negotiating ways to improve life in the camp, and the musicians were organizing a concert, whereas he, Otto Eisenberg, sat on the sidelines.

  Being arrested had shaken him. He had thought he would be protected by Muriel’s influence. When the French authorities had been on the verge of scooping him up, she had come to his rescue with an entry permit for England. Surely she could keep him out of the clutches of the British police. The pounding on the cottage door so early in the morning, the heavy footsteps following him upstairs as he went to pack, the thick shoulders squeezing either side of him in the back of the car as they carted him off—just to recall these events made his heart hammer at his throat.

  He remembered another pounding at a door, this one in the dead of night, long ago in Berlin, when he’d seen the storm troopers in the street below, had climbed out onto the roof and hidden in the nook behind the chimney, watching in horror as Rudolf and Max, good comrades, were dragged off. Never to be seen again. Presumed to be in Dachau.

  Another roll call. Unbelievable. That morning, they had counted 893 men filing onto the grandstand and filing out again. Next time it was 882, then 897. None of these numbers seemed to satisfy. The commandant, who had a ludicrous white handlebar mustache, repeatedly shuffled through his papers, trying to resolve the discrepancy. Two uniformed police officers joined the debate, gesturing to the group of new arrivals on the far side of the arena. One of them removed his helmet and scratched his head in what could have been a pose from a Laurel and Hardy routine.

  “Mein Gott! Look at them!” said Schmidt, the man paired up with Otto in the stalls. “They can’t get anything right. They need a good lesson in Aryan efficiency.”

  Otto refused to speak to him, but Schmidt—who used only his last name—stuck to him like a leech, following Otto around during roll call, in the lines for food, even out to the latrines, talking nonstop.

  “When the Wehrmacht arrive, they’ll show them how to run this place,” he continued.

  That day there had been at least fifty new arrivals: men of all ages, some young and brisk, others stiff with arthritis. One dark-haired youth, his eyes darting with fear, had appeared at Otto’s stall that afternoon, just before this latest roll call announcement. He clutched a small rucksack and his allocated bale of straw. Otto moved his own paillasse farther into the corner to make room for him, showing him how to smooth out the makeshift straw mattress. The boy was tall and lanky, fifteen at most. He certainly didn’t look like a Nazi sympathizer, looked Jewish, in fact, though Otto was reluctant to ask. But the boy appeared so frightened, Otto had to say something.

  “Wie heisst du? What’s your name?”

  “Karl. Karl Weiss.”

  “Bist du allein? Are you alone? No family?”

  “Mein Vater . . . Sprechen Sie Englisch? Do you speak English?”

  “Yes. You don’t speak German?”

  “No, not really. My father is German, but I’ve lived here since I was a baby.” Otto thought he might burst into tears. “My father was picked up a week ago. I don’t know if he’s here. We never found out where he was taken.”

  “Put your things over there,” Otto said, pointing to one corner of the stall. “Schmidt, get up, for heaven’s sake. Make some room for the boy.”

  There were shouts from the far end of the stables; a posse of army officers strode through, rallying everyone out again for the roll call.

  “Come on . . . Karl, did you say your name was? Perhaps you’ll see your father out in the arena.”

  As they traipsed outside again, the rumors were flying. A group was to be shipped off tomorrow, destination: Australia, if one self-appointed expert was to be believed.

  “Not a bad option,” he declared in a grating Bavarian accent. “Hitler won’t be able to reach us there.”

  Australia? Otto was broadsided by a wave of panic. Could he really be deported to the other side of the world, with no chance to communicate with anyone? He might never see Lena again. He knew he’d been too harsh with her that last night in the cottage. He should have apologized. Once he’d recovered from the shock of his arrest, he’d assumed it was temporary, that somehow his release would be arranged, that they would be together again, soon. Suddenly, he missed her, wanted her. Funny how a feeling could creep up on you like that. Like when you have been writing for hours and suddenly realize you are hungry. How would she manage without him? If only he could write to her. It was always easier to put things in writing. But no one was allowed any letters, in or out.

  Yet maybe he was right to tell Lena not to be swayed by emotions. You had to keep your wits about you in times like these. To survive, it had to be every man for himself. If he hadn’t climbed out onto that Berlin roof, if he had stayed behind to help Rudolf and Max, what would that have achieved? He had saved himself then, and he had to save himself now. Perhaps the Bavarian was right: being dispatched to the Antipodes would certainly put him out of the Gestapo’s range. Tomas had friends who had been waiting for Australian visas for months. It could be viewed as a very desirable destination.

  Major Mustache was shifting through his papers while the sergeant fussed with a megaphone.

  “Testing. Testing. One, two, three, testing.”

  The volume alternately boomed and fizzled as everyone shuffled forward into the collecting ring, where one would normally have expected to see horses paraded before a race. Dozens of guards stood by, armed with fixed bayonets. New barricades of barbed wire now surrounded the arena.

  “Gentlemen, may I have your attention, please?”

  There was an ear-pierci
ng squeak of feedback, which startled the commandant so much that he jerked backward and stepped on the toes of the officer standing behind him. The ever-present Schmidt, on Otto’s right, muttered his disgust. The boy Karl, on Otto’s left, rotated his head and shoulders in sweeping circles as he searched for his father.

  Up front, there was more fiddling with the megaphone. Finally, the sergeant adjusted something and the show was back on.

  “Ahem. Yes. Gentlemen, as I was saying,” the commandant resumed. “I am here to inform you that a group of one hundred internees will be departing forthwith to another location. I regret to say that I am not permitted to reveal your ultimate destination at this juncture. When I call your name, please proceed to collect your belongings and reassemble at the far side of the arena. You will be departing within the hour. Everyone else, please remain where you are. Thank you.”

  A rumble swept through the crowd.

  “In an hour? I thought it was tomorrow,” shouted one man to Otto’s left.

  “Quiet!” roared the sergeant.

  The commandant shuffled through his papers again. He needed two hands for this, so the megaphone was back with the sergeant, who held it in place just above the mustache.

  Names were called out, one by one, and checked off as they left the ring. Adolf Ackermann, Georg Adler, Gustav Beuer. It seemed to be alphabetical. Otto held his breath after the Ds, chewing on the corner of his lower lip. If he believed in God, he might have prayed. But he wouldn’t have known what to pray for. Was it better to be selected or not? The names continued, but the order now appeared completely random: there was a Regner, a Moser . . . and then Hans Schmidt. Schmidt elbowed his way forward, turning to Otto with a solemn look on his face.

  “Auf Wiedersehen, mein Freund,” he said softly.

  The group selected was getting larger, almost eighty, Otto judged. They were assembling on the other side of the grandstand. If there were to be only a hundred, his odds of being included were now pretty low. Something perverse made him want to be picked now, as though it were a much-sought-after prize. Perhaps it was better to get out of here, to leave this continent and escape the Nazis.

  A young man named Kurt Guttmann was called forward, a pimply-faced youth with spectacles and trousers that were several centimeters too short. Another one who could not be much older than sixteen. It was ridiculous to be locking up children like this. What were they thinking? It was almost as bad as the Nazis rounding up youngsters for the Hitler-Jugend brigades, goose-stepping across playgrounds. His own brother, Hans, had rushed off to join their ranks at a tender age.

  “Otto Eisenberg.”

  Otto was jolted out of his ruminations and froze. He couldn’t move. “Otto Eisenberg,” the commandant repeated, more loudly.

  Otto stepped forward, his legs heavy as lead. So he was to go after all. He would be sent away from Europe and its rotten failed democracies, away from its botched revolutions and burgeoning dictatorships, away from the advancing Panzer divisions. He would no longer have to constantly look over his shoulder. He could start a completely new life, raising kangaroos or whatever it was they did down there.

  “Erich Weiss.”

  “Dad!”

  A scream came from where Otto had been standing. He turned to see the boy Karl run into the arms of a stocky man approaching from the far side of the crowd. Everyone watched as father gripped son in a bear hug. Karl was sobbing.

  “Please, let me take my boy with me,” the father said, choking back tears. “I can’t leave without my boy.”

  Karl looked in the direction of the army officers, and his gaze landed on Otto. Their eyes locked.

  “For heaven’s sake,” the commandant said, thrusting the sheets of paper into the sergeant’s hands. “Do you think I’m running a family reunion here?”

  “We have our one hundred men, sir,” the sergeant said. “You recall they were most particular about that, sir.”

  “He can take my place,” Otto heard himself say. “Let the boy have my place; let him go with his father.”

  Hours later, the moon rose over the grandstand and cast bright shadows through the stables. Somewhere in the distance, a violinist played something that sounded like Mozart. It was much quieter tonight; the mood had turned somber. Otto relished the privacy of a stall to himself.

  CHAPTER 22

  SUSSEX, JULY 1940

  It rained during the night. Not a hard rain, but a steady pitter-patter on the awning over the front door. Lena slept lightly. Each time she turned over, she opened her eyes and tried to make out the shapes of the familiar objects in the room—the fireplace, the table by the window, the worn armchair—but it was too dark. Yet even if she couldn’t see the details, Lena felt comfortable here in the living room. She finally had a room of her own. In the week since Otto’s arrest, she had slept downstairs every night. After the others tucked themselves into bed in the two rooms upstairs, she sat in the armchair, cradling a last cup of tea in her own little space. She could keep the light on as long as she wished. She didn’t have to fight for the covers. And she could jump up as soon as she awoke or lie daydreaming, whichever she preferred.

  Of course, she worried about Otto every day. But she was getting used to being alone, and rather shamefully enjoying it. She felt as though she had elbow room after being cramped in a tight box. It was naughty to feel this way, especially as she had not been more successful in securing Otto’s release. They had achieved nothing since her and Peter’s trip to London, nearly a week prior.

  Perhaps the new day would bring some good news. Muriel had sent Alistair to meet with someone in the Home Office. He was to spend the night at his club in the West End and return before lunch.

  Lena willed herself to remain optimistic. It was incredible that someone with such staunch anti-Nazi credentials could be locked up as an enemy alien. They should be looking to Otto for advice, not arresting him. The authorities would surely recognize that if they heard the full story.

  The rain appeared to have stopped. All was quiet upstairs. She opted for an early-morning walk before noise and chatter overtook the living room.

  Outside, tiny raindrops glistened on each blade of grass, each leaf. Billowy cumulus clouds piled up behind the church spire, moving east quickly, in shifting formations. Lena squinted at them, shielding her eyes from the sun. She remembered a game she and Ernst had played when they were small, lying on their backs on the hill behind their babička’s summer house, watching the clouds between the treetops, creating stories based on the faces or animals they imagined there.

  But Ernst was no longer a little boy gazing at clouds. He was a grown man in uniform, stationed at an army base in the north of England. Lena had just received a letter from him. He expected Father to join him any day now, in one of the final shiploads evacuated from the South of France. And he had enclosed a permit for Lena to come and visit, to stay overnight in the officers’ guest quarters. Peter was encouraging her to go; he and Alistair pored over the map, located Cholmondeley Park, and debated whether Crewe or Chester would be the closest train station.

  “I’m sure you could hitchhike from Chester without any problem,” Peter said. “There must be lorries going to and from the base all the time. I could come with you, if you’d like.”

  “No,” Lotti said, rather too quickly, glancing from Peter to Lena and then back again. “I’m sure Lena wants time alone with her family.”

  “Yes, I would prefer to go on my own.”

  She didn’t want to jeopardize her friendship with Lotti, especially as there had been no further word from Eva. She needed the closeness of one solid female friendship at least.

  “But I have to wait until Otto’s been released,” she continued. “I can’t leave here not even knowing where he is.”

  Opposite the church, a footpath took off to the right; they often took this route through the fields to The Hollow. Soon she was swishing through the pasture, ankle deep in wet grass. She saw a flash of movement at the far s
ide of the field: a large, russet-colored dog romping toward her, tail flailing high in delight. Bringing up the rear, a man approached from the direction of The Hollow. It must be Alistair, out walking Lancelot. Was he back from London so soon? What news did he have?

  She waved in his direction, and he waved back. As they approached each other, however, she saw that the gait was too lively to be Alistair, the build too slim. It was Milton, running now to catch up with the dog, who was upon her, jumping up to greet her, drooling on her skirt.

  “I thought you were Alistair,” she said.

  He laughed. “You sound disappointed.”

  “No. Sorry. It’s just . . . I was hoping Alistair might have some news about Otto.”

  “Of course. I understand,” Milton said. “Down, boy!” He grabbed Lancelot by the collar. “Actually, Alistair called a few minutes ago. He’s taking the nine o’clock train. He sounded quite optimistic, said he met with someone in Whitehall, but I couldn’t catch the details. It was a bad connection.” He continued walking in the direction from which he had come; Lena retraced her steps, without discussion, to accompany him. “We’ll find out soon enough.”

  They reached a large oak tree, where the path forked. “I’m heading over to Copley Woods to stretch my legs,” Milton said. “Would you like to accompany me? Then we could go back to wait for Alistair. Mother was hoping you would join us for lunch.”

  “Yes, thank you. I would like that.” Her feet were drenched, but she didn’t care. “It’s such a beautiful morning.”

  They walked on in silence. “So, you’re back on leave?” she asked after a while.

  “Just twenty-four hours. I’m fortunate to be based so close.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “In Portsmouth. It’s on the coast, not too far from here.”

  “And how . . . I mean, how does it seem to you now?” Lena asked tentatively.