She didn’t come down to supper and when Lizzie was sent up to see if she wanted anything to eat the bedroom door was firmly shut. She was just going to tiptoe away when she heard a faint sob, and then another. When she tapped on the door the noise stopped at once. ‘Do you want anything to eat? Avez-vous faim?’ There was no answer. She opened the door a crack. Supposing she was ill, or something? The curtains were drawn, the room in darkness, the girl a hump under the eiderdown. ‘I say, are you all right?’
Anna answered then, all in German – a long stream of it. Lizzie shut the door hurriedly and went away.
Liebe Mina,
I do not know how I am going to survive. I have been here for six weeks and it seems like a year. I am so homesick I could die. You would hate this country as much as I. The sun hardly ever shines and it has rained for the last five days without stopping. London is nothing like as beautiful as Vienna and Mademoiselle Deuchars was quite right about most of the English. They are dull and dowdy and they shout at me when they speak. I cannot understand their stupid language and nobody speaks German and if they speak any French it’s so bad I can hardly understand that either.
The house where I am living is big and quite old. It would be very nice except that it is always freezing cold. I don’t think the English feel the cold because they don’t seem to mind at all. The food is always cold too. The kitchens are down in the basement and everything has to be carried all the way up to the dining-room on the first floor. Of course, by the time it gets there it’s not hot any more. Not that it would have been much better before. English food has no taste at all.
The father is a psychiatrist like Papa. He looks at me sometimes as though he knows how unhappy I am and talks at me in very bad German. The mother tries to be nice to me all the time, but I can’t understand what she’s saying. The English all speak their words as though they were eating them. As for the daughter, Lizzie, well, she tries hard to be nice, too, but I can tell that she hates my coming here. She hides away somewhere in the house to avoid me. On Saturdays the mother and father drive me to the nearest synagogue and wait outside. Grandmama would be very upset but they don’t understand that we are not supposed to go anywhere by car on the sabbath. I shan’t tell them.
The daughter and I walk to the school which is nearby. It’s a girls’ day-school, like ours in Vienna, and some of the girls are just as horrible. We wear a hideous grey uniform with felt hats and ugly black shoes and I have to tie my hair back. They’ve put me in the same form as Lizzie because I don’t speak English, so all the others are two years younger and act like babies. At first they tried to talk to me but I couldn’t understand them so they gave up. Now they leave me alone and I sit at my desk, saying nothing at all. I think I’m the only Jewish girl in the school. They are all Christians but not Roman Catholics. They belong to something they call the Church of England. We have prayers every morning before lessons. We all march in and stand in rows in the assembly hall and somebody reads from the Bible and then we sing a hymn. Jesus is mentioned all the time. Of course, I don’t sing. I just open and shut my mouth and pretend. The teachers are all old except our French teacher, Mademoiselle Gilbert. She’s not elegant like Mademoiselle Deuchars but she is très sympathique and she and I talk a lot together. She says I will soon learn English because I have an ear for languages but I don’t want even to try. They don’t teach them any German at the school and most of the girls are very bad at French. And they are very clumsy. They barge about and slouch at the table. Grandmama would be upset about that too.
I haven’t played the piano since I came here. I lied and told them that I had given it up. I don’t know why but I don’t feel like playing here at all. I don’t feel like doing anything. All I want is to come home. I am so envious of you, Mina. You are so lucky to be in Vienna. If I could only come back I would never grumble about anything again. I write to Mama and Papa every week and beg them to let me return but they say I must stay here for the time being. I shall die of homesickness and then perhaps they will be sorry. Please write to me often, Mina, and tell me everything that you are doing. It will make me even sadder but at least I won’t feel so very far away.
Deine Anna.
‘Anna Stein, why haven’t you eaten your sausages?’
‘They are of pigs, Miss Mitchell. I am not permitted.’
‘What do you mean, not permitted?’
‘We must not eat the flesh of pigs.’
‘I never heard such nonsense. Who says so?’
‘It is commanded in the Torah. It is not kosher.’
‘Not what?’
‘It is not clean.’
‘Are you having the impertinence to suggest that the school kitchens are dirty?’
Miss Mitchell was glaring at her from the end of the table. The other girls were turning round to stare, some giggling, some sneering. ‘No, Miss Mitchell.’
‘Then eat your sausages at once. No food is to be left on plates.’
‘I regret that I cannot.’
‘Cannot? Of course you can. You’ll sit there at table until you finish every scrap of them.’
She went on sitting there. Pudding was served to everyone else – a suet roll with currants that they called dead baby because that was exactly what it looked like, and, of course, the bright yellow custard that was always poured over everything. The two sausages sat side by side in a congealing puddle of grease at the edge of her plate. They had hard, shiny skins and one of them had burst so that she could see pinkish-grey stuff poking out. She kept her eyes fixed on the plate while the chattering and clattering went on around her. Chairs scraped the floor and grace was said. For what we have received may the Lord make us truly thankful. Amen. How could they be thankful for pigs’ innards and dead babies? Miss Mitchell paused on her way out. ‘You will remain there, Anna, until you have eaten your sausages. You must learn that good food is not to be wasted.’ The maids came to clear the tables and giggled at her. She ignored them completely. The big clock on the wall ticked on. She could hear the bell being rung for the beginning and end of each lesson. After the final bell for end of school, a prefect put her head round the door.
‘You’re to go and see Miss Foster in her study at once.’ She looked at her scornfully. ‘Honestly, what a fuss to make. I thought Germans ate sausages all the time. Sausages and sauerkraut.’
‘I am not German. I am Austrian.’
‘It’s the same thing, isn’t it? You all speak German.’
‘No, it is not the same at all. And I am Jewish as well so I cannot eat pig.’
‘Pork, you mean. Why on earth not? We all do. You’re in England now so you should jolly well do what we do. And you’d better get a move on. Miss Foster’s waiting. At once, she said.’
She knocked at the study door and heard the headmistress’s sharp ‘Enter’. Miss Foster, so bony and gaunt, was sitting ramrod straight at her desk. ‘I am waiting for your explanation for this wilful disobedience, Anna. Miss Mitchell tells me that you refused to eat your lunch.’
‘Jewish people are commanded not to eat pig’s flesh.’
‘I am quite aware of that, thank you, but this happens to be a Christian school, founded for Christian girls, strictly in conformity with the principles of the Church of England. I am afraid that you must conform to our rules and traditions. You can’t expect us to cater differently for you and you alone. Do you consider yourself special in some way?’
She could not understand everything that the old woman was saying; she spoke too fast. ‘I cannot eat pig. It is a mitzvot.’
‘Speak only in English, please. I accepted you in our school against my better judgement and so far the experiment has proved a signal failure. You have been here for more than half a term, Anna, yet you appear to have made minimal progress in the English language. Until you do so you will be unable to progress in any other direction. My staff report that you make very little effort. What have you to say about that?’
What was she saying? Somethi
ng about her English. ‘I do not understand.’
‘Then it’s high time that you did. I shall arrange for you to have extra tuition in English for the remainder of this term. As for this nonsense about pork, as long as you attend this school you will abide by its rules in every respect. If you do not then you will have to leave. You may go now.’
When she went to get her coat and hat and change into her outdoor shoes she found Lizzie was waiting for her in the cloakroom. ‘Did you get blown up?’
‘What is that?’
‘Was Miss Foster angry?’ Lizzie looked at her anxiously. ‘She can be absolutely beastly.’
‘She was not nice. But I do not care.’
‘What about the sausages? Did you eat them?’
‘I did not eat them, no. I will never eat pig. Never.’
‘Well, we’d better go home. They’ll wonder where we are.’
They walked back to the house in Wimpole Street. She never called it home or thought of it as that. Home was hundreds of miles away in the cobbled Wallstrasse in Vienna. Vien, mein liebes Vien … Home was Mama and Papa. Home was Mama playing the piano and Papa listening and beating his hand gently in time. It was the red velvets of the salon and the soft gleam of crystal and gilt. It was the street lamplight slanting through the shutters into her bedroom at night. It was the gardenia scent that Mama always wore, and the rich aroma of Papa’s cigars. Home was eating lovely food. Home was talking in German: understanding and being understood. It was not, and never, never could or would be, the house in Wimpole Street.
Chapter Four
‘Open wider, please.’
Guy opened his jaws as wide as they would go. Old Payne had been drilling away like a road-mender and it was hurting a lot; once or twice he’d winced in spite of himself. He started the old trick of counting the plaster rosettes along the ceiling and when he got to ten a searing stab of pain made him grip the chair arm hard.
‘Bit tender, is it?’
He shook his head firmly. He was blowed if he’d let Mr P. have the pleasure of knowing it. The chap was a sadist. Had to be, to be a dentist at all. Eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen … the third rosette from the end still had that chip out of it … sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. Christ, it was agony … Start all over again, quick. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight …
‘That’s the drilling done, then. Quite a bit of decay there, I’m afraid. Not as fortunate with your teeth as your brother, are you?’
Matt had never had a filling in his life, the lucky so-and-so. He’d been in and out in a jiffy, as usual, and now he’d be going through all the Punches in the waiting-room, which was the only decent part about going to the dentist. Guy probed gingerly with his tongue round his back tooth; the drilled-out hole felt like a crater. The nurse had come in and was grinding up the filling stuff in a glass dish. He peered sideways and saw that she wasn’t the usual old frump. This one was quite young and not bad-looking. Must be new. As his mouth was now full of cotton wool and the bubbling hookah thing, he smiled at her with his eyes. She smiled back and went on grinding away.
‘Open wide again, please.’
Payne started dumping in the filling and packing it all down, prodding and scraping and prodding. Guy didn’t care, now that the drilling was over. This part was easy.
‘Take a rinse.’
He sloshed around his mouth with the pink water and spat out the silver bits into the basin where they swirled away. Thank God that was over. The nurse had gone but he passed her in the hall on his way to the waiting-room and this time gave her a proper smile. Matt looked up from Punch.
‘You were ages.’
‘Three fillings. One whopper.’
‘Bad luck. Mother went off to Debenham & Freebody to do some shopping. She says she’ll meet us at Aunt Helen’s.’
Guy groaned. ‘That’s fatal. They’ll start jawing away and we’ll be there for ever.’
‘We can talk to Lizzie.’
‘What about?’
‘Well, I’d like to see those paintings of hers. You said they were good.’
‘Not bad for a kid her age.’
They walked from the dentist’s in Harley Street round to Wimpole Street. Guy banged the knocker and Hodges opened the door. Their aunt was out shopping as well, apparently. ‘But Miss Elizabeth is at home. And Miss Anna.’
‘Miss Anna?’
‘The Austrian young lady. She is living here at the moment.’
Guy had forgotten all about her. ‘We’ll go and find them.’ He caught a strong whiff of drink from the manservant as they passed him. When he wasn’t lugging coal around or polishing the silver or answering the door or Mrs Hodges’s bidding, it was a known fact that Hodges spent his time in the wine cellar. Uncle Richard would have sacked him years ago if it hadn’t meant sacking Mrs Hodges too, which, according to Aunt Helen, was unthinkable. The first-floor sitting-room was empty and Guy was about to give a yell up the stairs to Lizzie when he heard the sound of the piano being played in the drawing-room. He beckoned to Matt and the two of them listened for a moment outside the closed door. ‘That’s not Lizzie, Matt whispered. ‘I heard her practising once. She can’t play anything like as well as that.’
Guy turned the handle gently and opened the door. A girl was sitting at the grand piano over by the window, her back half-turned to them. He could see her long dark hair but not her face. He made a sign to Matt to keep quiet and they went on watching and listening from the doorway. He’d no idea what the piece was; something mournful by one of those chaps like Chopin or Liszt. He watched the way the girl swayed as though she was playing with her whole body, not just her hands. When she came to the end he and Matt both started clapping. The piano lid fell down with a crash as she leaped to her feet and whirled round to face them. She said something in a foreign language and, though he couldn’t understand a word, it was clear that she was pretty angry.
He stepped forward, both hands raised in mock surrender. ‘Terribly sorry if we startled you. I’m Guy and this is my brother, Matt. We’re Lizzie’s cousins. You must be Anna. Anna from Vienna.’ She was quite tall and older than he had expected. He’d imagined some little girl of Lizzie’s age but this one must be fourteen or fifteen. And she was beautiful – in a dark, foreign sort of way. Well, she was Austrian and Jewish, which made her doubly foreign, of course. ‘I am sorry,’ he said again, loudly and clearly. Perhaps she didn’t speak much English. ‘We did not mean to frighten you.’ He smiled at her – his very best smile.
‘I am not deaf.’ She didn’t smile back. ‘You spy on me. You and him.’
‘No. Not at all. We heard the music and wondered who it was. You’re most awfully good.’
‘I do not play.’
‘But we just heard you. Didn’t we, Matt?’
‘I don’t think she wants us to know,’ Matt muttered.
‘Why ever not?’
‘Don’t know. But we’d better make ourselves scarce.’
‘Hang on a minute.’ Guy turned to the girl again. ‘Where is Lizzie?’
‘She is up in her studio. She is painting there. It is private. Do not disturb.’
Damn cheek, he thought, Lizzie was their cousin. He said over his shoulder, ‘Go and tell Lizzie we’re here, Matt. It’s the room on the right at the top of the attic staircase.’ When his brother had gone he folded his arms across his chest, confronting the girl. She had the most amazing green eyes he’d ever seen. And she really was incredibly beautiful. He tried another smile. ‘Well, how are you liking it here, in England?’
‘I detest it.’
He was shocked. How could anybody hate England? It was the best country in the world. ‘It’s not so bad, surely?’
‘I think so.’
The Little Ship Page 7
