‘Is it?’ asked Mark in his mind.
The imaginary mum would nod. ‘It’s what I do all the time,’ she’d say slowly. ‘Turn off the TV, avoid arguments with people like Mrs Latter who want to discuss everything and sign petitions and things. But…’ and she’d shake her head. ‘That’s what people in Germany did, didn’t they? They didn’t agree with Hitler. Or not with everything he did. But they went along with it, till it was too late. They simply shut their eyes and let things happen.’ The imaginary mum would nod her head and look at him seriously. ‘You’ve made me think a bit,’ she’d say.
And then she’d start listening to the news all the time and going to demonstrations and signing petitions like Mrs Latter, which would be really embarrassing…and anyway, Dad said most of the time Mrs Latter just got people’s backs up.
And maybe Mum would have to go to prison if someone like Hitler did get into power, and there was no way he wanted her to go to prison, or spend all her time involved in stuff like Mrs Latter.
But maybe… maybe…
‘What’s up?’ asked Mum, the real Mum. ‘Porridge too hot?’
‘It’s okay,’ said Mark.
Mum sighed. ‘Look, ask me questions when I’m not so rushed. Okay?’
‘Okay,’ said Mark.
chapter twelve
The News
There was still no sign of Ben at the bus stop on Monday.
‘He must have a really bad cold,’ said Anna.
‘His mum told my mum she didn’t want him going to school in the rain in case it got worse,’ said Little Tracey. ‘’Cause he gets asthma sometimes when he gets a cold. Come on, Anna!’
‘Come on what?’ asked Anna.
‘Go on with the story about Heidi,’ said Little Tracey.
For a moment Mark thought she was going to refuse—would say she’d forgotten how it went over the weekend or something like that.
But instead, Anna began, and the story flowed as if there had been no break, as though it was as clear as a movie in her mind, and all she was doing was describing what she saw and heard on the screen inside her mind.
‘Frau Leib brought her news one morning,’ said Anna, her voice clear and low. ‘Along with the fresh goat’s milk in the bright green china jug with the flowers on it.’
(Two of Frau Leib’s nannies were in milk now. One was called Lottie and the other Hildegard, after two old friends of Frau Leib. Heidi wasn’t at all certain if she would want a goat named after her but she never said so to Frau Leib, and sure enough, the next baby goat was called Heidi.)
Frau Leib waited till Fräulein Gelber had gone upstairs to write the letters she seemed to be so often writing now.
Frau Leib seemed to know that Fräulein Gelber wouldn’t approve of gossip, particularly the gossip she had today.
‘They sent him away!’ she whispered excitedly, as she stoked the fire in the old cracked stove. ‘Just last night and Lisl came running over to tell me this morning.’
‘Your daughter? What did she say? Sent who away?’ asked Heidi.
‘Herr Henssel!’ Her voice was happily horrified. ‘He has the farm over past the mill. No one would have guessed! None of us guessed!’
‘Guessed what?’ wondered Heidi, but Frau Leib went on as though she hadn’t heard.
‘His sister married a draper in town.’ She lowered her voice and brought her wide, shiny face close to Heidi’s. ‘A Jewish draper. The sister and her husband disappeared a long time ago, and everyone thought, Oh, they have been taken to the camps. Herr Henssel never spoke of them. But Herr Henssel has been sheltering his sister and her husband all the time! He has been hiding them so they wouldn’t take them to the work camps! Someone must have seen, someone must have noticed, and they must have notified the authorities, because today they took him away—took them all away. Oh, it is awful!’, but Frau Leib’s small eyes had the joyous gleam of a good gossip nonetheless.
‘If the Jews just go to the camps to work, why did Herr Henssel have to hide them? Are the camps so terrible?’ asked Heidi.
Frau Leib shrugged. She didn’t care what the camps were like. The things that were important happened in her village, or to people she knew.
‘Are there any other Jews near here?’ asked Heidi.
‘Not in our village, not any more. But before the war, in town, there were the Solomons, of course, in the drapers’ shop—not that I ever went there, you understand. My husband would have been angry if I went to a Jewish shop. And there was Herr, oh, what was his name? The teacher at the school, and the doctor, not the new one, the old one. One of his children went to school with Gerta, who married my… but you know that, I showed you the photo of the wedding, and the Führer sent a copy of his book with his signature just inside the cover. Not that I have ever read it. I have sometimes taken it and looked inside. I have looked at it often. Such a wise clever book. But now, of course, all the Jews have been sent to the camps…’
‘Heidi!’ Fräulein Gelber stood at the door. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Helping Frau Leib,’ said Heidi.
Fräulein Gelber fixed them both with one of her hardest looks. It was evident she had heard at least the last part of the conversation.
‘It is time for your lessons,’ she announced, although the only lessons they had had recently were the passages Heidi read at night by the light of the candles on the table and the fire in the stove, while Fräulein Gelber sewed or looked at the flames as though she were far away and listening to a voice that was not Heidi’s at all.
‘Yes, Fräulein Gelber,’ said Heidi.
Brown water splashed across the road as Mrs Latter pulled the bus up to the curb.
chapter thirteen
Heidi’s Plan
‘I’ve guessed what happens now,’ said Mark.
They were at the bus shelter. (‘You want to go early again?’ Mum had demanded in disbelief.)
The rain still melted from the clouds. Ben was still in bed with his cold.
‘What?’ asked Little Tracey eagerly.
‘I bet Heidi organised some escape plan for the Jews from the concentration camp. Now she’s found out what’s happening, I mean. Or she spies on Hitler and passes on the information.’
Anna looked at him steadily. ‘Would you spy on your father?’ she asked him quietly.
‘No,’ said Mark. ‘But my dad isn’t Hitler.’
Anna shook her head. ‘How could she spy on him? It had been months since she’d seen him. And even then just for a few minutes. Who would she pass information on to? Besides, she didn’t know all that much—she didn’t even know they were all meant to be killed in the camps. She only knew enough to wonder, what Jews were like? That’s what no one seemed to be able to tell her. Just that they were different.
‘Well, she was different too. And somehow she built up a picture of Jews in her mind. Jews were people just like her, with red marks on their faces and one leg just a little short. Different people, who had to be hidden away.’
‘So she did try to help them,’ said Mark at last.
Anna shrugged. ‘Sort of. She made a plan. She’d keep a watch out for any Jews who came to their garden, who needed help. And she’d hide them in the old hen-house down past the orchard where no one went except in summer when the plums were ripe.’
It was easy at first. She told Fräulein Gelber that she was going to clean out the hen-house for the rabbits, for when the doe had babies.
Then she shovelled out the muck. It was the first time she had held a spade and her hands became sore. She spread fresh straw down. Fräulein Gelber gave Frau Leib money for the straw and Frau Leib’s husband brought it to the house.
It didn’t look too bad when she had finished.
There had to be food, too. That was the next part of the plan. When they came to the garden for shelter she would have to feed them. She could take a little from the kitchen of course, but it might not be enough.
So she took jars from the cellar, just o
ne each day—things like plum jam and cherries in liqueur and honey—and she hid them in the hay. There were some tins in the kitchen and she’d have liked to take them too, but Fräulein Gelber might have noticed and blamed Frau Leib. If she and Frau Leib both took food from the kitchen, Fräulein Gelber was sure to notice sooner or later.
It took her a month, and then it was finished. Then she settled down to wait.
‘When did the Jews come?’ asked Little Tracey eagerly.
‘They never came,’ said Anna. ‘Of course they never came. It was late in the war by then and they were in concentration camps and very few escaped from those. But it was all that she could do.’
‘But surely she could have done something else?’ demanded Mark.
‘What? Locked herself in her room and said she wasn’t coming out or wouldn’t eat till they shut down the concentration camps?’
‘Something like that,’ said Mark lamely.
‘What good would that have done?’ asked Anna fiercely. ‘Do you think they would have paid any attention?’
‘But she was Hitler’s daughter!’
‘But no-one knew that, and besides, who listens to kids?’ demanded Anna. ‘Especially not back then. Even today…’
She was right, thought Mark. She’d done what she could, even if it was no use at all.
‘Maybe it would have been different when she grew up,’ he said at last. ‘She could have organised protests then. People would have listened to her if she said she was Hitler’s daughter.’
‘Maybe,’ said Anna. ‘But that never happened. There was never any chance of it happening. Because things changed, just a few months later.’
‘Hey kids!’ It was Mrs Latter’s voice. Mark stared. They’d been so engrossed in the story they hadn’t even noticed the bus.
‘Thought you’d changed your minds and decided not to go to school today,’ joked Mrs Latter as they climbed on. She was wearing her teapot hat today, the one with the emu embroidered on the front. ‘What were you all gabbing on about down there?’
‘Oh, just things,’ said Mark. He hated to think what Mrs Latter would say if she’d heard Anna’s story. She’d be on at them about racism and all that.
He glanced at Anna. She sat remote in her seat, not looking at him. She had become quieter ever since she started telling the story, he realised. As though it disturbed her—just like it was disturbing him.
chapter fourteen
Wednesday
Drip, drip, drip went the water as it drizzled from the bus shelter roof.
The drips had dug a sort of trench along the edge of the shelter. There was quite a big hole now.
It had become a routine, thought Mark, as he looked at Anna. As soon as she arrived with Little Tracey the story began. He and Little Tracey listened. It was Anna’s story, and she’d tell it till it was finished.
How would it finish? wondered Mark suddenly. Would it go on and on till Heidi was grown up? Or did she die in the war?
Hitler had killed himself, he remembered, and that woman he married right at the end of the war. Eva Braun, that was her name. They had both killed themselves.
No, that couldn’t happen to Heidi. It couldn’t! Anna couldn’t make it end that way!
Anna frowned across the shelter, as though she hunted for the words that would make the story exactly right. Anna could make the story turn out any way she wanted.
Couldn’t she?
‘…and she could hear the sounds of planes above the house during the night,’ Anna continued. ‘More and more planes came now.’
Mark tried to empty his mind. He was missing the story. And anyway he was silly to worry. All of Anna’s stories ended happily. Like the one about the disappearing fish and the secret passage under the school.
But this was different.
‘That night was different,’ Anna said. ‘It was just before they went to bed. Fräulein Gelber had let the fire die down. It was a wood fire, but even wood was getting precious now.’
There had been a great stack of wood when they first arrived at the house. Sergeant Amchell was supposed to chop wood for them, but he had been helping with the ploughing over at the farm. It was more important than chopping wood, Fräulein Gelber agreed.
Suddenly there was a rumble in the distance. Not a plane sort of rumble; not even the faint echo of an air raid far away.
‘That is a motorbike,’ said Fräulein Gelber sharply. She went to the door as the motorbike pulled up outside and she opened it before anyone could knock.
Heidi strained her ears to hear. It would have been bad manners for her to go to the door as well. Anyway this might be one of those times when she wasn’t supposed to be noticed, as though she didn’t exist, had never existed.
Fräulein Gelber closed the door. Her eyes were shining.
‘We are to go to meet the Führer,’ she whispered, as though spies might be listening at the window or round the door. ‘Quickly! Into your best dress, and your coat, and your good shoes. Hurry!’
A car arrived just as she came down the steps. Like the motorbike, its lights were shaded, so it could not be seen by a plane flying above.
Fräulein Gelber had changed her clothes too. She wore her best hat with the tiny feather. Her hand was trembling as she ushered Heidi through the door and into the car.
She should be excited, Heidi thought, as the car turned slowly through the gates and began to creep down the lane. It had been, oh, how long had it been since she had seen her father? Over a year, perhaps.
Once she had hoped that he might write her a letter. She had studied hard so she could read it by herself when it came. But no letter had ever come.
Long ago, sometimes there had been phone calls. But there was no phone at the house where they lived now.
She should be excited. But somehow she just felt flat and scared.
The car drove through the village and Heidi looked at it curiously—it was only the second time she had seen it. Frau Leib talked about it so often it was almost as though she knew it. She hoped she might catch a glimpse of the children Frau Leib spoke of. But everyone was indoors.
Past the village, past the church. There was another car pulled up at the side of the road, in the even darker shelter of a tree.
Heidi’s car stopped. The driver stepped out and opened their door. Heidi scrambled out first. Fräulein Gelber started to follow her, but the driver shook his head. ‘Only the child,’ he said.
It seemed a long way from their car to the other. Heidi’s white socks shone in the moonlight (a tiny moon, a cheese rind of a moon). Her shoes shone back tiny moons too.
The back door of the other car opened. Heidi slid onto the seat.
There was no driver. He must have been told to keep his distance. There was no one to see or hear.
‘Well, Heidi,’ said the Führer, ‘have you been a good girl?’
‘Yes, Duffi,’ whispered Heidi.
The Führer bent to kiss her on the cheek. His lips were very cold.
‘You have been good?’ he asked again. It was as though he was thinking of something else, not even hearing when she said ‘Yes’ again.
‘Fräulein Gelber has been good to you?’
‘Yes, Duffi.’ It was as if that was all she knew to say. She’d thought of so many things she would say to him—let me come to Berlin, let me help you, look after you, work for you. The words were still in her head. But somehow there was no reason to say any of them now.
‘She is also a good girl,’ said the Führer slowly. ‘She can be trusted. So few people can be trusted. They are all betraying me. Do you know that, Heidi? All of them! All of them!’ His voice rose in the confines of the car.
Heidi shook her head. What should she say? What did he want her to say? ‘I am still on your side, Father,’ that’s what she ought to say. ‘You can always trust me.’
Heidi was silent.
The Führer looked at her, as though he had just remembered she was there. ‘You let me know if th
ere is anything you need,’ he instructed her, though he didn’t tell her how. ‘And you listen to Fräulein Gelber. She can be trusted. But you must always be on your guard.’
‘Yes, Duffi,’ said Heidi, for the last time.
‘I have to go,’ said the Führer. ‘There is so much to do and they will be waiting for me,’ and Heidi knew then that he hadn’t come all this way just to see her.
He kissed her cheek again. She slid along the seat, and out the door and walked back to the other car.
The engine of the Führer’s car muttered. The car pulled out onto the road. Heidi watched it as it passed. She lifted her hand to wave, but it was too dark to see if the Führer waved back.
‘You are lucky,’ said Fräulein Gelber, as their car slid back down the lane to home. ‘With all his other concerns, the Führer still stopped to visit you!’
It was obvious she was bitterly disappointed at not seeing the Führer too, but she was trying to hide it for Heidi’s sake.
For a moment I existed, Heidi thought. But she didn’t say the words aloud.
chapter fifteen
Ben Returns
‘Ben’s here already,’ said Mum, as the car drove up to the bus shelter next morning.
‘His cold must be better,’ said Mark.
Mum nodded. ‘Mind you keep warm,’ she said, as though the mention of Ben’s cold had reminded her. ‘There are so many bugs going around. And keep your jacket on at lunchtime.’
‘Yes, Mum,’ promised Mark.
‘And try not to get your feet wet.’
‘Mum!’ protested Mark. He got out of the car slowly. Blast Ben. Why couldn’t he have stayed home just another couple of days?
‘Hi,’ said Ben, blowing on his hands to warm them. ‘I saw your car from our place, coming down the road, so I raced over here. You’re early, aren’t you?’
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