For the past year, there had been horrifying reports, outlandish rumors about the treatment of Jews by the Nazis. Executions and wholesale massacres. In the East. Mostly in the Baltic States and the Soviet Union. And in the ghettos in Poland. Nothing like that in Prague, thank goodness. But it was very worrying.
She wanted Máma to know she was being brave through these raids, that she knew what to do, that she was here with friends and with Otto. She wanted Máma to know she could be proud of her; that she was practically fluent in English now; that she had been promoted to assistant supervisor at the Food Office; that she could quickly grasp the regular changes in the food rationing regulations. She wanted to tell Máma about the English people, how accepting they were of all this rationing, what a fair and equitable system it was, with many working people eating more balanced diets than before the war. She wanted Máma to know how accepted she felt here; that she had a nice little flat—tiny, but perfectly fine for her needs; that she was learning to cook with whatever was available.
If only there was a way to reach her. But all she could do was wait and hope.
It was just after midnight when the all clear sounded. At least the bombing didn’t go on all night, like it had in the blitz.
“That’s it, ladies and gents,” the warden said. “Time to go ’ome to your beds.” He threw open the doors to the outside world. He chuckled. “Ain’t it nice of Hitler to give us a chance to get a bit o’ kip? Watch your step, now.”
They went out into the night. The acrid smell of smoldering debris filled the air. Emergency vehicles screeched through the streets. They picked their way through streets littered with shrapnel fragments, broken glass, and spent anti-aircraft shells. A huge blaze lit up the sky in the direction of King’s Cross; its orange-gray glow took the edge off the darkness. Even so, Lena was afraid of tripping into some unseen crater, and she clutched at Otto and Lotti, one on each side, as they progressed gingerly down the block. Lena caught her toe on a large piece of metal and stumbled.
“Ouch!” she cried. “There’s debris everywhere.”
“I thought it sounded close,” Otto said.
But two blocks farther, Lotti’s street was unscathed.
“Thank God,” she said. “I couldn’t face . . . Not now.”
“I know,” Lena said, hugging her on her doorstep. “Are you going to be all right?”
“Yes. I’m exhausted. I’ll go straight to sleep. I’m on duty at seven A.M.”
Lena and Otto made their way home.
“Please, please, let’s hope our street didn’t get hit,” Lena said. She also couldn’t endure being bombed out again. Of course, that was nothing compared with being injured—or worse. But she couldn’t bear the thought of picking through the filth and dust, trying to retrieve whatever was salvageable, those endless trips to the town hall to file for rehousing or new furniture, the forms to fill out. Starting all over again—if they could even find something.
As they turned the corner into Donegal Street, Lena held her breath. But it looked as if all was well. Just a few broken windows across the street, and some tiles fallen off the roof. They had been spared. It was all so arbitrary. Lena didn’t believe that nonsense about a bomb having your number on it. But how was one to make sense of it, who was hit and who wasn’t, who survived and who perished? You did your best, you took sensible precautions, heeded the warnings—but that didn’t always save you. Shelters weren’t infallible.
Sometimes there was no escape. Some people—like Lena’s friend, Sheila, at work—believed prayer could save you. But that didn’t make sense to Lena, either. She had abandoned religion long ago. The events of the last few years had done nothing to tempt her back. If God was so powerful that he could heed your prayers, why couldn’t he put a stop to all this? And what about those who died? Was she to think they had not prayed hard enough or well enough? That God had therefore punished them? If that were the case, this God seemed like a nasty piece of work.
No, Lena wasn’t going to pray to a God she couldn’t respect. But she pressed her thumbs and crossed her fingers, and when Sheila gave her a little wooden four-leaf clover for her birthday and explained it signified good luck, Lena was amused but touched. It came from Sheila’s village near Belfast; it was smooth and painted bright green and fit snugly in her palm, and she saw no harm in keeping it—just in case. She tried to hold in her mind an image of the end of the war, and of being with Máma and Sasha. The song the people sang in the shelter reverberated through her head:
I know we’ll meet again/Some sunny day.
Ultimately, deep down, we all believe we will survive. How else to carry on? We all believe we are immortal, invincible, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary.
The following morning, Lena was startled awake by the sound of pounding on the front door. She grabbed her watch. It was seven thirty. Who on earth could it be at this hour?
She threw her overcoat over her pajamas. Otto was fast asleep, curled on his side, just his hair protruding from the covers. She had forgotten to ask what time he had to work this morning. She slipped on her shoes and went downstairs.
Lena opened the front door to the sight of Eva standing on the stoop, suitcase in hand. She looked haggard around the eyes, but her hair was carefully styled, as usual, and . . . was that lipstick? Where had she found that?
“Thank goodness! You’re still here,” she said breathlessly. “I was afraid you might have left for work.”
Lena ushered her in and gave her a hug. “Co je?” she said. “What’s wrong?”
“I was bombed out last night. Huge raids in Hackney. Like nothing we’ve seen in years.”
“Yes, we were hit hard here, too.” They started up the stairs.
“Oh, this is nothing compared with the Hackney Road. Whole streets knocked out. The East End always gets the worst of it.”
Lena let it stand. This kind of one-upmanship was common at work; she didn’t see the point. There was never any way to prove who suffered the most. The BBC was always vague on details: keep the enemy guessing was the rule.
“Let’s have some tea,” she said, once they reached the flat. “Put your things down. You must be exhausted. Are you still with What’s-His-Name? Your airman?”
“Martin?” Eva tossed her hair back over her shoulders and twisted her face into a sneer of disgust. “Pfft . . . Turned out he was married! Can you believe that? With a two-year-old and another baby on the way!” She peered into the bedroom, where Otto was beginning to stir. Lena walked over and closed the door.
“I did meet an American sergeant the other night,” Eva continued. “He gave me some lipstick! The Americans seem to be able to get their hands on anything. You wouldn’t believe the food they eat. Plenty of meat, chocolate, everything. And he’s going to bring me nylon stockings when he next comes to London on leave.”
“You’re amazing,” Lena said with a laugh.
“Listen, do you think I could stay with you for a while?”
“You’re welcome to our sofa,” Lena said. “Until you find something.” She had to offer.
“Are you still working at the Food Office?”
“Yes.” Lena looked at her watch. “I have to get ready to leave.”
“Can you pick me up a new ration book? I lost mine somewhere.”
“You know I can’t do that.”
“Can’t you just put an extra book in your handbag as you walk out the door?”
“No! I can’t. Sorry. Do you still have your ID card?”
“Yes, I have that.”
“So take it to the town hall and get reregistered here.” Lena checked her watch again. “Then go to the Food Office at King’s Cross. The local grocer is Edwards, on Pentonville Road. Look, I have to get dressed. Are you hungry?”
“Starving.”
“Help yourself. There’s bread on the shelf. Just the usual National Wheatmeal, I’m afraid, but I do have some nice plum jam from the country. My neighbor Mavis has a sister-in-
law in Devon. She sent up a batch for Christmas.”
Lena went into the bedroom, closing the door behind her. Otto was beginning to stir. “Are you working today?” she asked him.
“Late shift.”
“Eva’s here. She was bombed out last night. She needs to stay here, sleep on the sofa, until she finds something else.”
“That could take a while.”
“I know. I might ask Mavis if Eva can stay with her.”
Lena dressed, then went back to the kitchen and poured the tea while Eva chatted away about her American, who had the improbable name of Chuck. Lena was only half listening, her mind already on work—they were preparing the changeover to the new twelve-month ration book, and there was already mass confusion in the office.
Just as she was preparing to leave, Otto emerged, fully dressed.
“Look who’s here,” Eva said, with a huge smile, as if his presence were somehow a surprise. “It’s good to see you, Otto.”
Otto smiled and ran his eyes over Eva. Lena noticed for the first time that she was wearing a very tight black woolen jumper that dramatically highlighted her curves. Otto poured himself tea.
“I’ve got to go,” Lena said, giving him a kiss. “See you tonight.”
She closed the door of the flat behind her and paused on the landing. She had a brief, uneasy feeling about what might happen behind that door. Then she hurried down the stairs.
CHAPTER 29
LONDON, MARCH 1944
“You can leave that now,” Bert yelled. He was standing on the other side of the assembly line, next to a row of filling machines. “Bring over the twenty-millimeter shells from C Block.”
Otto pretended not to hear him. The clamor of the massive machines provided good cover: the loud plumph of the necking machine as it came down and closed the casing, the thump as the girls released the foot pedals, the background whine of the grinding wheel. He hated this petit bourgeois foreman ordering him around.
But Bert was next to him now, tapping on his shoulder, shouting in his ear. This time it was just “Get the twenties from C,” with a jerk of his head.
Otto grunted. He lifted three more packets of filled shells and placed them in the wooden box on the bench. He preferred to load them as they came off the line. Now they would pile up. Especially with Marge and . . . what was that other one’s name? They all looked alike in their full-length protective clothing and their covered hair. But they were quick workers. Marge was the fastest, and there would be two full boxes’ worth by the time he returned. It didn’t make sense to change to the 20 mm’s so soon before lunch.
He pushed open the heavy steel door and stepped into the blinding sunlight. It had turned into a sunny day. He squinted in the bright light reflected off the roof of C Block, across the yard. You didn’t get the smell over here so much; the clouds of soot belching out of the power shop behind Small Arms usually wafted in the opposite direction. Here, it was nice enough to sit for a while, enjoy the sun. But, of course, if he dallied too long, Bert would be out looking for him with his “get a move on, we ain’t got all day,” when that was precisely what they did have: all day.
He entered C Block, adjusting his eyes to the dim light inside, and loaded up a cart with crates of empty shell cases. Out on the yard again, he spotted Harry Robinson pushing a similar load toward A Block. Harry was a porter, too, but he worked in Caps and Detonators. Harry was also the shop steward, and the only person here whom Otto considered a friend.
“Meetin’ Monday night, Otto,” Harry shouted across to him. Otto waved back in acknowledgment.
“Gotta talk to you at dinner,” Harry yelled as he retreated.
Yes, he’d want to talk about the union meeting. It was hard to organize in here. There were all the different shifts and days off. And then the fact that it was mostly women. You couldn’t get them to attend meetings. They said they had to rush off after work to shop or collect the kids. And when they’d tried to hold the meetings at lunchtime, Bert had reported them to Mr. Spencer himself, and there had been a hell of a fuss.
Otto remembered his first day here, how he’d been excited to join the proletariat. In Berlin, he’d stood at the factory gates, handing out broadsheets; now he would be inside. But it hadn’t turned out the way he’d imagined. He had come prepared with ideas about how to organize, but just doing the work of a porter was much harder than he had anticipated. Most of his efforts in the first few weeks had been focused on keeping up with the pace. Once he’d grown more accustomed to the routine and his body was stronger, he’d discovered most people were not interested in his political ideas. Or they pretended not to understand his accent.
He had spoken to Lena about this once; she’d said naturally anti-German sentiment made it difficult for him to be an effective organizer. But no one except for Harry knew he was German. They fell for the story that he was Polish. His name didn’t sound Polish, of course, but that showed how ignorant they were, these English workers. Harry said that for most of them, foreigners were indistinguishable. “You’re all wogs, far as they concerned,” was how he put it.
No, it wasn’t that Otto was German; that wasn’t the problem. He just didn’t speak English well enough. Only last month, he’d been trying to make a very important point about the management’s proposal to introduce piece rate, but apparently he didn’t pronounce it correctly—it came out sounding more like peez rate—and Arthur, that odious little man from Receiving, yelled out, “I ate me bloody peas for dinner, mate,” and the whole room collapsed in laughter, and Otto lost his train of thought and someone changed the subject and that was that.
He propped the door open with one foot and maneuvered his trolley over the threshold. The grimy, acid smell of the workshop stung his nostrils. Marge and the other girl were packing the completed. 303s into the boxes at the end of the line. This was strictly against the rules, but Bert was nowhere in sight. Otto pushed his load over to the corner and went to finish what was supposed to be his job.
“Thanks,” he said to Marge, as he took a stack of packets from her. “Can’t understand why he had us change just before lunch.”
“I know, love,” she shouted over the machine noise. “But it gives us a bit of break, don’t it?”
She had that yellowing of the skin around her eyes that came with constant exposure to the cordite. Otto was grateful he didn’t have to handle it directly himself.
“Anyways,” she continued, “can’t be fussy. Them Spitfires needs them all, don’t they?”
The Spitfires: providing escort to the bombers that were pummeling Berlin and Hamburg and Dresden night after night. This was what Otto couldn’t understand: Why hadn’t the German proletariat risen up in rebellion against the Nazis by now? Hitler had promised them no casualties. They must be completely disillusioned. Why weren’t the workers taking over factories like this one in Germany, seizing the arms, and joining forces with their comrades in the advancing Red Army?
He loaded the boxes of completed shells onto another trolley, collected the docket from the shelf, and pushed out into the sunshine again to transport this consignment over to the building known as Shop 73. Here, rows of identical boxes were stamped and cataloged and constantly guarded by military police officers, before being shipped off under cover of darkness. The workers weren’t supposed to know that they were making ammunition for Spitfires, but it was common knowledge.
As Otto approached, he saw the officer on duty was one he did not recognize: tall and thin and with that unmistakable English upper-class way of holding his head at just the right angle to regard everyone else with a sneer. Otto hoped he could avoid having to speak. With the regulars, he no longer worried about his foreign accent; he had managed to blend into the scenery enough to be accepted. But he didn’t like the look of this one.
Otto handed him the docket for inspection and then pretended that the wheel of his cart needed attention, as a way to avoid eye contact. He jiggled the cart and nudged the caster with his boot.
Behind him, he was relieved to see Fred Wallace coming over from the Booster Shop, wheezing under the strain of his load. He had to be sixty, with terrible lungs. Otto helped with the last few yards.
“Cor blimey,” he whistled through the large gap in his front teeth. “Thanks, mate.” He tipped his cap to Otto and then to the officer. “Here you are, guv.” He stopped to catch his breath. “Ten crates of the finest. Each one with a special message for Jerry: ‘Get lost!’” He started to laugh, setting off another bout of wheezing, but he continued undeterred. “I says to the girls back there . . .”
Fred was garrulous enough for both of them. Otto got away without saying a word. He hated sneaking around like this. Peter and Emil didn’t have to. They were full-fledged Allied servicemen, welcomed like heroes into the RAF—Emil a pilot, just as he’d dreamed about back in the village, and Peter a qualified radio engineer—just because they were Czech, not German. Even Tomas had been assigned to a Civil Defense Service unit in West Ham, until a bomb got him.
What did the Czechs know about fighting the Nazis? They weren’t there on the night of the Reichstag fire. They didn’t witness the unleashing of the Stormtroopers and the Nazi propaganda machine; they didn’t live through the mass arrests. Same went for Lena. She was so full of herself now, ever since her promotion to assistant something, always showing off how much she knew about the latest rationing rules, how well she knew the language, wanting to speak English at home.
Perhaps he could catch Eva tonight after work, take her out for a drink before Lena got home. Last Tuesday they’d gone to the King’s Head and talked for hours. She wasn’t afraid to speak German in public, and she listened attentively to everything he said, and she had a pert little nose and a dimple in her cheek when she smiled.
When It's Over Page 20
