My Family for the War

by Anne C. Voorhoeve

  “Was that the secret?”

  I nodded.

  Amanda slumped against my arm. “If you plan to take Frances away from me, I will have to go into hiding with her,” she said dully to Mrs. Lewis.

  “Take me away!” I was horrified.

  Mrs. Lewis smiled reassuringly. “I don’t think that will be necessary. You’re not the only girl who has been trying to do something like this for her parents. But no more secrets, understood? Your parents in Germany are relying on us to make sure you’re all right.”

  “My parents in Holland,” I corrected her, and was surprised at how nice that sounded. Amanda showed her to the door.

  When she returned, I was still sitting on the armrest.

  “Honestly now,” she said seriously. “Is that it, as far as secrets are concerned?”

  “Well,” I said hesitantly, “there’s also Professor Schueler…”

  “Oh, Frances.”

  “. . . but only once a week, and not at his house, but at the Café Vienna, on Tottenham Court Road,” I quickly admitted, trying to play it down.

  “Wait just a moment. You’re telling me that you’ve been riding into the city all this time, to a pub, and I haven’t noticed anything?”

  “On Mondays,” I affirmed, noticeably quieter. “That’s when you’re…”

  “At the nursing home.”

  “And it’s not really a pub, it’s a café,” I hastened to add.

  Amanda grabbed me by the arms and shook me. “Frances, I trusted you!”

  “I’m sorry! I didn’t want this to happen,” I cried. “I didn’t know they’d send somebody here.”

  “No, you didn’t,” Amanda said grimly. “But Iris March, that scheming old witch! Don’t cry, it’s not your fault. Tell me instead why you gave her our address.”

  “She knows someone who needs help,” I moaned. “A sick lady named Mrs. Soderbergh.”

  “Wilma Soderbergh? I know her too. I was at her funeral just yesterday,” my foster mother answered coolly.

  I wiped my hand across my face. “It’s too late anyway,” I said with a trembling voice. “My parents are in Holland. They like it there. They don’t want to come to England anymore.”

  “What did they write, then?” Amanda asked, more friendly now.

  I gave her the letter. “You can keep me,” I answered, and burst into tears.

  Chapter 11

  Evacuation

  One day, about three weeks before the summer holidays, the teachers didn’t call us back into the building after recess like they normally did. Instead, they had us gather in groups around them and after a few minutes, Mrs. Collins came out on the front steps and called for silence.

  “Today we’re going to have a little drill,” announced Mrs. Collins. “We are going to line up by twos holding hands. And once we’re all in order, we will march in line to the Underground station, like a crocodile!”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. In Germany, we only had fire drills occasionally, always accompanied by a lot of noise and sirens. Here we marched blithely, hand in hand, through the neighborhood. It was strange, though, how the people on the street stood still, regarding us earnestly and mournfully as we cheerfully trotted past them.

  My mother seemed to be enjoying the summer. She had found work at a gigantic strawberry farm, and the letters she sent me were covered with reddish stains. Her letters even smelled faintly of strawberries. At first I thought I was imagining it, but when I held out a letter to Amanda, she smelled it too!

  The letters from my father, though—two or three sentences scrawled in a thin, shaky hand—worried me. Four days after he went to the sanatorium, he was taken to the hospital for an emergency operation. It seemed my mother had gotten my father to Holland just in the nick of time, and by now I was very happy that they hadn’t waited any longer for my help.

  Mine were not the only letters Mamu received these days. Amanda asked to borrow my dictionary. She disappeared for two hours, and when she returned, she handed me a densely written page. “Could you read this through and tell me what needs to be corrected?”

  Eagerly, I threw myself down on the armchair and read aloud:

  Dear Frau Mangold,

  Now that you and your husband happy in Holland are, want my husband and I write to say that you for Frances not worry. She is a very sweet girl and every day with us a great joy to have.

  She has accustomed very bravely, although she missed you painfully and of her parents talks without end. Frances has for much tried to do, so you very proud of her must be, so is Frances proud that you got out of Germany your husband!

  Mine husband and I have asked in the summer to visit Holland with Frances, but there is a problem with visa: When Frances leaves England, it can be that she is not allowed to come back. So if you agreement, we rather not risk. But Frau Mangold, I very want to say that I everything do for you to have Frances back safe and healthy, as soon as all madness past.

  We enclose some photographs that we in our garden made, where how well Frances goes you see, and how she has already grown in great deal. Now you want all your energy to concentrate on not to worry, but rather in Holland to settle, and prays our whole family for your husband fast to get well.

  Faithfully yours,

  Amanda Shepard

  I put the letter down. “Don’t you dare change a single word!” I said.

  Amanda grinned. “You mean it will at least give your poor mother a good laugh? Well, that’s fine by me!”

  I got up to give her the letter back, and suddenly found myself in her arms again. I held Amanda so tightly that she gasped for air. “My mother would drop everything and come get me if she had any idea how much I love you!” I declared without thinking about it. Amanda didn’t say anything, but when I let her go, I could see her reply in her eyes.

  If I thought we would see Gary off on a pier, or that he would stand, dressed in a white-and-blue uniform, on the deck of a magnificent ship, saluting as it majestically steamed out of the harbor accompanied by fanfares, then I was to be deeply disappointed. We gathered at an ordinary train station in the south of London, which shimmered in the summer heat. Gary wasn’t even wearing a uniform. “A few months’ basic training,” he joyfully proclaimed, “and then we board ship.”

  He gave me a brotherly punch. “Will you get a uniform then?” I inquired.

  “Of course! Take a good look—you’ll never see me like this again!” he cheerfully ordered, a remark that didn’t improve his parents’ mood. Although they’d had six weeks to get used to the idea, I was still the only one who was happy about Gary joining the navy. Worse, Amanda’s dogged refusal to talk about it, even now, baffled me.

  “I never found anything wrong with your appearance,” was her curt response.

  “Oh, Mum!” Gary said quietly and put his arm around her shoulders. Even if she still didn’t answer, she tolerated Gary’s gesture, and after they had walked a few steps, she hesitantly wrapped her arm around his hip. I felt like a great weight had been lifted.

  When it was time, dozens of future sailors stormed the train. “See you in December!” Gary yelled before the train started to roll, enveloping my brother and the other boys in a white cloud. That was it. No uniform, no tears, not a single grand moment. He was simply gone.

  We drove back into the city in silence. I stared out the window and let the blurred landscape flit past. Now I’m an only child again, I thought, feeling depressed and pleasantly tragic at the same time.

  But as the bridge over the Thames became visible, I leaned forward eagerly. “Look,” I exclaimed. “What’s that?”

  High above the city floated several silvery objects, moored to steel cables. They looked like giant inflatable animals. “Is there a holiday? A festival? A sporting event?” I wondered. In England, there were a lot of peculiar traditions, and I would have hardly been surprised at an inflatable animal race!

  “Those are barrage balloons,” Uncle Matthew explained. “They must have st
arted installing them this afternoon. If there’s an air raid, they’ll force the enemy planes to fly at a higher altitude, and that makes them less accurate.”

  I almost asked, “Less accurate at what?” But it occurred to me that my foster parents weren’t in the mood to explain anything about war. So instead I said, “Or else the pilots will laugh themselves silly and crash in the Thames!” which to my delight elicited a little smile from Amanda.

  Not that there was any getting around the topic of war. The newspapers were full of headlines like “Will There Be War?” and when we returned home from the station, a little brochure was hanging out of the letterbox. “I have three of those now,” Amanda said impatiently, and laid the pamphlet next to the telephone.

  As I walked past, I glanced at the cryptic title: Public Information Leaflet No. 3—Evacuation Why and How? I made a note to myself to look up the new word evacuation in my dictionary later. That same evening, I was going to my room when I passed Amanda sitting on Gary’s bed, lost in thought. “Matthew and I have been thinking about something,” she said hesitantly. “I wonder, Frances, if you could imagine sharing our home with another child.”

  Another child? At first I thought she wanted to have a baby, and I felt a pang of jealousy, but Amanda continued talking. “Gary’s room is free now, and the Refugee Committee is still frantically looking for foster parents for children from the kindertransport.”

  I couldn’t speak. A dreadful roaring began in my ears, and Amanda’s silhouette began to flicker, as if she were about to dissolve into thin air.

  “Frances, what’s the matter?” Her voice sounded distant and hollow.

  “I have a friend,” I enunciated with great effort.

  “A friend… ? But of course! Is she still in Berlin? What’s her name?”

  “Her name is Bekka… and I took her place.”

  It’s a strange feeling, seeing the floor come up at you. A sharp pain shot through my right arm, and then I was sitting on the rug, without the faintest idea how I’d gotten there. Amanda knelt down next to me and screamed for Uncle Matthew, and I cried loudly because I hurt my wrist when I fell.

  Later, when I was lying in bed, I mulled over how the Shepards—after all the shocks and frights I had already put them through—could possibly be interested in taking in another unpredictable refugee child. In the middle of the night I got up, took a pen and pad, and for the first time in six months wrote the words Dear Bekka. They looked so wonderful that I got goose bumps, and I had to mutter the words out loud several times before I finally grasped that what I was writing to tell her wasn’t a dream.

  London, 28 July 1939

  Dear Bekka,

  Do you still have that Mickey Mouse suitcase? You’d better get it out, because you’ll need it soon! As of today, there’s an extra room in our house, and we thought you might like to have it!

  It’s true, Bekka—my foster parents, Amanda and Matthew Shepard, are inviting you to come live with us in London! I told them about you and about our quarrel, and I can hardly believe that we might have a chance to make up.

  I’m so excited, Bekka! I hope you’re not cross with me anymore. I want to tell you that it was just as horrible for me as it was for you when you didn’t get a spot on the kindertransport. I have no idea why they took me. That wasn’t fair. Maybe they drew names. But now you have a place, and not with just anyone, but with the dearest people in the world. They are just as you imagined back then, do you remember? You were right!

  The Shepards will start arranging everything tomorrow, and they think you could be here by the end of August. They say you sound like a strong, brave girl, and they don’t dare imagine all the mischief we’ll get into together…

  Berlin, 3 August 1939

  Dear Ziska,

  I cried like a baby when I read your letter. I’ve been so sorry about what I said to you, but I was too much of a coward to write. And now you’ve found a place for me. When I think that we’ll see each other in a few weeks, I get all giddy!

  But Ziska, I’m so worried about my parents. They’re trapped—the Germans don’t want them here, but they won’t let them leave either. I don’t understand it! When I get to England, I’ll start looking for a sponsor for them right away. I’m excited about the Shepards, but I don’t think I’ll really be happy until my parents are safe too. Sometimes I’m so happy when I think that I’ll finally be able to leave, but then other times I can’t stop crying.

  My mother sends her love and is so grateful.

  London, 16 August 1939

  Dear Bekka,

  Today I’m sending a picture of us so you can start getting used to us. It was taken this weekend in the yard. The boy in the picture isn’t Gary, but Walter, my friend from the kindertransport, who spent the Sabbath with us. The older man is Professor Julius Schueler, from Munich. And the beautiful flowers won’t be around much longer, because the government is distributing corrugated sheet-metal bunkers that everyone has to build in their yard.

  Nobody talks about anything but war. We also had to get gas masks this week. They stink so horribly of rubber that I feel sick when I put it on, and I wonder what’s the point of a gas mask if it makes you sick just to put it on?

  The radio is on all day, and Amanda and our housekeeper, Millie, are trying to stock up on anything that was rationed or that they couldn’t get during the last war. But don’t think that it’s dangerous here! These are only security measures, and no matter what, it’s still a thousand times better than everything we experienced in Germany.

  Berlin, 24 August 1939

  Dear Ziska,

  Today I got the date for my kindertransport! I leave the evening of Saturday, 2 September, and on Monday, the 4th of September, I will arrive at the Liverpool Street station.

  My mother hums to herself while she looks over my things. That’s something I haven’t heard for a long time, but she probably just wants to calm herself.

  Your preparations for the war sound exciting. Don’t think for a minute that I’m scared! My father says that war is the only thing that can still save us Jews, so as far as I’m concerned, it can start whenever it likes!

  Give my regards to everyone—the Shepards look so sweet in the photo. But what made me happiest of all was seeing a picture of my best friend, Ziska!

  “News from Bekka!” With these words I stormed into the parlor, where Amanda was sitting at the secretary, reading her own mail. “She’s coming on September fourth!”

  Overjoyed, I came up behind her and wrapped my arms around her.

  Amanda stroked my hand without taking her eyes from the letter that lay before her. “Wonderful! But I’m afraid you have something else first.” She sighed. “You’ve been summoned to school tomorrow afternoon.”

  “During the holiday? Have I done something wrong?”

  “No, it’s just a drill for the evacuation. You’re to bring your gas mask and a light travel bag, what you would need for an emergency.”

  I remembered the pamphlet I had seen in the mail, along with the word I had meant to look up. “What is… evacuation?”

  Amanda looked at me, astonished. “But I thought… it says in the letter that you already had a drill before the holiday!”

  “A drill? They took us to the tube station and back again. That was evacuation?”

  Amanda hesitated. “Not exactly,” she replied. “Evacuation means that you’re to be brought to safety. You’ve already been evacuated once—from Germany. Now there’s a plan to send the children of London to the countryside in case the Germans… are serious.”

  “The children?” I could feel my face turning red. “Without their parents? But… why?” I blurted.

  My foster mother sat up a little straighter, adopted a firm tone, and became matter-of-fact. “Because no one can say what’s going to happen. England is an island; if the Germans cut off our sea routes, they can cause all kinds of shortages and starve us out. Not to mention the fact that if they attack London, it will be hell
. You’d be spared that ordeal in the country, Frances. I remember very well living through the war in the city, and believe me, you do not want to go through that!”

  “But I only just found you!” I exclaimed. “And what about Bekka?”

  “If it comes to that, you two will go together. This time you wouldn’t be alone!”

  “Can they make us go?”

  Amanda looked past me. “Yes,” she answered.

  I took a step backward. “You’re lying! I can see it!” I yelled.

  “No, dear. The Refugee Committee makes that decision. There’s nothing we can do.”

  “We’ll see about that! I’m going to write to my mother! If she tells the committee that I’m to stay with you, there’s nothing they can do about it!” I cried.

  My hands were trembling so much that I could hardly write the short note to Mamu.

  London, 28 August 1939

  Dearest Mamu,

  You’ve got to help me! If there’s war, they want to take me away from the Shepards and send me off into the countryside. Please send me the following note immediately: “Dear Refugee Committee, I hereby request that my daughter, Frances Ziska Shepard Mangold, not be evacuated, but rather be permitted to stay with the Shepard family in London.” Please do it as soon as you can, Mamu, so I’ve got something to show them! I’ll also write to Frau Liebich so she gives Bekka the same letter. Bekka is coming September 4. More soon—I have to post this before the mailbox is emptied!

  I ran as if my life depended on it. I reached the mailbox two streets away at the same time as the post office van, and gasping for breath, I gave the mailman my letter.