The Gathering Storm

by Bodie Thoene

  The door slammed closed, and I felt as though I had escaped a room where the heat had been turned up too high.

  Eben was barely visible in the darkness. I could hear the grin in his voice. “I keep looking at the chimney for sparks. Scorch your dress as you passed?”

  I laughed. “Incendiary bombs have nothing on them. I’m afraid the house will ignite when he plays her the Rudy Vallee recording.”

  From behind the blackout curtain we heard the phonograph belch out the first notes of the Rudy Vallee song, “Orchids in the Moonlight.”

  “When orchids bloom in the moonlight,

  And lovers vow to be true,

  I can still dream in the moonlight

  Of one sweet night that we knew…”

  “Well,” Eben said, “I guess that’s it.”

  “Must be,” I said too loudly. I felt my eyes widen, and I clamped my hand over my mouth.

  Eben mused, “You think a man like Mac McGrath is a fan of Rudy Vallee?”

  “Hmmm. Must be. I don’t know about Eva. I mean, she’s Polish.”

  There was a long pause as we imagined the rugged bachelor alone in his room playing Rudy Vallee phonograph records as he dreamed of love.

  I whispered in astonishment, “Mac MacGrath? Could it be?”

  Then Eben snorted, and I began to laugh. We laughed until our stomachs hurt. Leaning against the pillar we howled until tears flowed from our eyes.

  Gasping for breath, Eben grabbed my arm and led me quickly down the walk. “We are quite thoughtless.”

  “Insensitive.”

  “Crass.” More gales of laughter as we shuffled along the sidewalk with no destination or purpose in mind.

  “Where shall we go?” Eben said cheerfully.

  “I don’t know. I suppose back to St. Mark’s.” For the first time in days I was happy. “I can sleep in the choir loft.”

  Instead of returning immediately to St. Mark’s, Eben and I climbed to the top of Primrose Hill Park. The details of the city were lost beneath a blanket of darkness. He spread his jacket out on the grass beneath a plane tree, and we sat down. I tried very hard not to imagine the romance of Mac and Eva in my little flat at the foot of the hill.

  I asked, “How long do you think I will be banished from my own bed?”

  “You should give them a few days alone, I should think,” Eben answered.

  “A honeymoon. It may be their only chance.”

  “The Germans have moved their planes to new bases in France—much closer to us. Soon it will become very difficult indeed for this little island, I think.”

  “Then I’ll let Eva and Mac stay in the flat as long as they can. To be alone.”

  “Yes. Kind of you. We can’t know how bad it will become. How much time we may have? Kind of you, that is, if you have a place to sleep.”

  “The church first. And then I was thinking the Young Women’s Christian Association.”

  “The one on Great Russell Street?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Overflowing, I’m afraid. They’ve double-bunked all the women in one wing and returning BEF soldiers have taken over the rest.”

  “Oh well, then. I’ll stay at the church. After all, I have experience with difficult living arrangements. You should have seen us camping in Papa’s Fiat.”

  “Ah, yes. I forgot you are a seasoned pro at this sort of thing.” He laughed. After that he was silent, thoughtful for a time. I did not interrupt his reflection.

  Eben said at last, “Again, I am sorry about your husband.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You were not married long.”

  “You knew our fathers in Berlin. We were friends, and then…I knew I loved him. We were together in Brussels for a short time, but then the war came and he had to go. Not much time to get to know each other, I suppose—hardly any—but I loved him. With all the passion of a first love.”

  “You were so young. Are,” he corrected himself, “are so young.”

  “I was young. All of us were young. But then we grew up when Hitler drove through the streets and the crowd of his old friends followed him. Or when the first Gestapo agent knocked on the door. You know, young in years is not young at heart. I sometimes feel as though I have lived ten lifetimes.”

  His head bowed slightly as I spoke. “I understand.”

  Something in the tenor of his voice told me again that this was a man well acquainted with suffering. What did I know about Eben Golah really? He had come to my father’s study to speak of the exodus of Jews from Germany. He had given us the warning of impending attack on the day of Kristallnacht.

  Somehow he had escaped the onslaught. But what did I know about his own suffering?

  I asked, “Tell me about yourself. I know my father thought well of you. And Bonhoeffer too. The others.”

  “But they did not heed my warning. They only half-believed it would come to this.” He spread his hands over the city. “This night. This moment.” He groaned softly. “I see the fires yet to come. I feel the heat.”

  “When?”

  “Soon. Weeks at most, and then it will begin. Here.”

  “How can you know?”

  He did not reply, but I understood he had no doubts. “So, you have a job. A purpose.” He had changed the subject.

  “I suppose I’ll continue on at the church.”

  “You are an excellent linguist. Translation. Your father taught you well.”

  “He believed language was the most important….”

  “How would you like an official position with us?”

  “Us?”

  “The Jewish Agency. Immigration. Working together with the U.S. and the British governments. We need a skilled translator. An English language teacher. Someone to help refugees learn English. To help them tell their stories in a common tongue. For more placements, you understand? They cannot work if they can’t speak English.”

  I brightened, suddenly feeling I had some purpose in the midst of this chaos. I could see past my own personal loss and help others like myself to find solid ground upon which to stand. “Yes. I have already been…”

  “We know how you have been working. We have been watching.”

  “Where?”

  “At St. Mark’s. I’ll arrange for you to have a salary. I will be your liaison. You’ll bridge the gap between the wide world and those who are lost in it. You’ll speak for those who have no voice.”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow? You’ll need a good night’s sleep. I’ll walk you back to the church now. Tomorrow morning we’ll begin.”

  22

  The casualty lists grew longer every day. So many brave men had died in France. So many women, mothers, sisters, and wives grieved. I was only one young widow among thousands in England. With these, my sisters of the heart, I put my suffering behind me for the sake of the living.

  As the bombing of England increased I fingered the telegram and prayed I might remember the greater need. The heart of my father called me to press on. I was consumed by the desire to do what I could for those whose suffering and loss were beyond my own.

  The Nazi invasion of the Channel Islands of Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney, and Sark sent another wave of desperate refugees to the shores of England. French Jews who had fled to the islands, hoping to escape battles in their homeland, arrived with the departing British. They escaped across the stormy Channel waters in tiny sailboats, fishing boats, and skiffs. British patrol boats rescued some while others washed onto British beaches planted with tank traps and land mines strung with concertina wire.

  The suspicions of the British government about every new arrival were heightened as the Nazi air assault along the coast increased, and news of casualties poured over the wires. The German invasion of England seemed certain…and imminent.

  Eben came to my office with a long list of Jewish Channel Island refugees. He was all business, scarcely looking at my face. “The Jewish Agency needs your help placing 163 Jews from the
four islands. Many among them do not have documentation. Most are secular Jews. Women with children sent from France, Holland, and Belgium by their husbands to wait for the end of the war. With the fall of France, no French Jew will be going home any time soon.”

  I scanned the list of new arrivals. French and Belgian women were not difficult to place as servants. The Dutch were at a disadvantage because of their Germanic-sounding accents. “More Dutch Jews than French,” I said, very businesslike. “And so many youngsters.”

  “Do your best, Lora. I know…we know, you will do your best.” He thanked me and turned to go. Then, as if he had a second thought, he turned round and took an envelope from his pocket. “I wrote this some time ago. For you.” He placed it on the corner of my desk and hurried from the room.

  My heart was pounding. I waited until his footfall receded down the corridor. The door to the street slammed. I rose and closed my door, shutting out the clamor of children’s voices as they practiced English in an adjacent classroom.

  Lifting my chin and drawing a breath, I picked up Eben’s letter and slowly opened the envelope. An old black-and-white photograph fluttered to the ground. Retrieving it I saw it was a picture of me between Mama and Papa beside the white rose tree that embraced the iron fence outside the White Rose Inn in Switzerland. I did not remember Eben had snapped it.

  It was the only photograph of my father that survived.

  “Papa.” I smiled and propped it up on the base of my desk lamp.

  Looking into the envelope I found a folded paper, containing a closeup of myself, so young and innocent, standing alone among the blooming roses.

  Eben’s message to me was thirty-six lines inscribed in a beautiful Victorian hand. The words were arranged vertically on a hand-drawn trellis of thirty-six roses.

  For Lora—The White Rose.

  Sweet

  familiar

  scent

  gentle

  hands

  embrace me

  before

  I see

  you

  rosetree

  white

  roses

  seeking

  light

  you

  climb

  joy

  spilling

  over

  impossible

  walls

  tenacious

  promise

  full

  bloom

  lavish

  expectant

  you

  raise

  your

  face

  shine

  beautiful

  epitome

  revealed

  fulfilled

  I read each word again and again, grouping them in different combinations, like bouquets of roses. Each time I read his poem I found a new and different meaning.

  My heart heard the breathless rhythm of love and hope.

  The London heat was oppressive. Citizens lounged in the parks and slept on roofs and balconies. My little office doubled as my sleeping quarters since Mac and Eva had taken over the flat. It had only one tiny window that would not open more than a few inches.

  It was almost teatime. Eben, visiting the shelter with members of the Jewish Agency, poked his head in the door and called me to come join them. I stood up from my desk and suddenly the room began to spin. The air turned pale yellow. Suddenly everything went black.

  I awakened on the floor. Eben fanned me with a magazine as worried faces of strangers peered down at me. One of the contingent was a physician. He checked my pulse and listened to my heart, and with a disapproving look at my cot in the corner, asked me if I had a home and if I ever left St. Mark’s.

  Hermione in her high-pitched, public school accent declared I had given up my own flat for newlyweds. “She has barely seen the outside of St. Mark’s since Eva’s wedding! She stays in here all day and all night, too.”

  I simply lay on the floor, too hot and weak to stand. I did not have to answer even one question.

  The doctor declared, “Young woman, sleeping and bathing and eating among the ebb and flow of strangers for weeks on end is wearing on anyone. You must return to your own flat for a few days’ rest.”

  Hermione clucked her tongue in sympathetic agreement. “My dear, Eva and Mac have had your house to themselves quite long enough, I should say. You’ve given them a decent interval alone. Go home tonight. Sleep in your own bed.”

  The memory of my Primrose Hill bedroom seemed like a distant dream. The thought of a good long soak in a cool tub sounded like heaven. Eva and I had shared a room for months. I imagined she and Mac had pushed our twin beds together and made one big bed. I could sleep in Jessica’s old room. A private bedroom and a WC, a kitchen, and a sitting room with a piano sounded like a mansion after sharing a lavatory with a hundred women and children.

  Eben drove me home to my little Primrose Hill flat and helped me to the door. I heard the phonograph playing. I went no further than the front steps. “I’m not bursting in. I won’t go in there alone unless I know I’m not interrupting anything.”

  “I’ll have to put my foot down. No Rudy Vallee, eh? No tango in the middle of the night. You need your rest. Yes. I can see it here in the light. You have lost the bloom on your cheeks.”

  He knocked loudly, then rang the buzzer. After a time Eva answered, peering cautiously through the crack in the door. Her eyes were red and puffy. She had been crying, and when she saw me on the step, rushed to embrace me.

  It seems I had returned home just in time for the newlyweds’ first spat.

  Eben observed me holding Eva in my arms. He gave me an admonition, “If it gets too difficult, I will share my little garret room in Hampstead with you. Everyone in London is sleeping around.”

  I looked at him with indignation. “I will not, and no, you most certainly will not.”

  He saluted and grinned. “My apologies. Of course. What I mean is, you may have the use of my place, and I will go…somewhere else. The tube stations are all converted into sleeping quarters in the event of air raids. Very democratic. Rich and poor alike. I will take my pillow to the High Street tube station and no one will think the worse for me if I sleep on the platform.”

  Eva was sobbing and muttering in incoherent English. There was something about the prime minister’s wife and Mac being humiliated. She would not tell me more. Eva ran into the house.

  My shoulder was damp from Eva’s tears.

  Eben asked, “Are you certain about staying? Mac would say, ‘Out of the frying pan and into the fire.’”

  I thanked Eben for his offer. “Very gallant of you. But I think we will manage well enough.”

  “We shall see. And now, my dear Lora, I wish you good luck and bid you good sleep.”

  I entered the flat and saw the program for the government press reception on the entry table. The importance of the day for Eva came flooding back.

  Today had been the foreign press meeting with Prime Minister Churchill at Number 10, Downing Street. Mac had arranged for Eva to attend with him and meet Mr. Churchill. For days, Mac had coached her in protocol. Eva had practiced exactly what she would say to the eminent leader of wartime Britain.

  Something had gone terribly wrong. Eva sat alone at our dining table. Her head was cradled in her hands. She glanced up at me through red, swollen eyes.

  “Why are you crying?” I asked, hanging my umbrella on the hook beside the door.

  She shook her head like a small child trying to deny the obvious. “This marriage! I am out of the frying pan and into the tea kettle!”

  “I see,” I said.

  She dabbed her eyes, wanting me to see that she had indeed been crying and would continue to do so. She asked through plugged sinuses, “How was your day?” The question was followed by loud sniffing, and then honking, as she blew her nose on a kerchief.

  I started to tell her everything but thought better of it. Eva was making it clear that the conversation would be about her, no matter where we b
egan.

  She attempted to smile through her tears. “Oh, Lora. Me and Mac are not okie-dokie.”

  “Where’s Mac?” I asked, suddenly alarmed.

  “Off to the public house, I suppose. Dowsing his unhappinesses while I am sobbing over split milk.”

  I mentally translated. Mac was drowning his sorrows, and Eva was crying over spilt milk. “Eva, why don’t you tell me in French what has happened.”

  Her head wagged broader than before. “I promised Mac only English. How will I ever be a real American if I can’t get it right?”

  “I understand,” I said, comprehending the importance of mastering the language of her new life. “But whatever has happened?”

  Her shoulders shook. She could barely speak. “I have hit my head upon a stony wall.” More sobs followed.

  I made a pot of weak tea, fetched two mismatched china cups, and sat opposite her. “Here. A cuppa, as the natives say.”

  “I do not care what they call it,” she muttered in perfectly correct French. Then back to American, “Absolution I am a failure. I did not get it right.”

  “What didn’t you get right?”

  “Mac told me what I must say when meeting Mister Churchill at the foreign press meeting. I practiced. You heard me. Night after night. I am bird in a fool’s gilded lily.”

  “I won’t make you explain it.”

  “Please, don’t. I got it right with the Prime Minister, Lora. But no one told me she would be there too.”

  “She?”

  “Churchill’s wife. Clemmie.”

  “Oh.”

  “I had to speak to her, didn’t I?”

  “Unavoidable, I suppose.”

  “I did my best. First I addressed Mister Churchill. All very proper. ‘And how do you do, Mister Prime Minister.’ But then there SHE was. And so I said, ‘I am very also pleased to meet you, dear Prime Mistress.” Poor Eva’s shoulders shook as she confessed. “Prime Mistress! Oh, dear me! I am not okie-dokie!”

  I patted her back. “Poor Eva. Perhaps she didn’t notice.”

  “Notice! The whole room fell silent. Mac turned as red as that.” She pointed to the red book cover of her copy of Proper Etiquette in British Diplomatic Society.