by Debbie Rix
The girls spent the next half hour unpacking their things and arranging the room to their satisfaction. The Latimers had thoughtfully provided a mahogany dressing table mirror, which they had placed on the table. But after Mrs Latimer had left them alone to unpack, Imogen and Helen, preferring to keep the table for homework and letter-writing, moved it onto the tallboy next to the door. It now stood next to a silver-framed photograph of the Latimer’s two sons: tall fair-haired boys, wearing hiking boots and corduroy knickerbockers, standing at the summit of one of the local landmarks, smiling in the sunshine.
Imogen thought them rather handsome, and was disappointed to learn they no longer lived at home. The tallboy had been cleared of its contents – spare linen and so on – in readiness for the arrival of the two girls, and they filled it with their school dresses, nightclothes, underwear and ‘home’ clothes. They had arrived with just one suitcase each, so the tallboy was far from full. Nevertheless, Mrs Latimer had also cleared a space in the small hanging cupboard in one corner of the bedroom. Pushing Mr Latimer’s best Sunday coat and Mrs Latimer’s ancient fur to one side, the girls squeezed in their school coats, hats and walking boots. They hung their satchels over their bedposts, and satisfied that the room was ready, came downstairs to find Mrs Latimer.
Standing in the back garden of the house in the fading evening light, Mrs Latimer led Imogen and Helen down a crazy paving path that ran alongside the flower beds on either side of the garden.
‘We’ll pick a few apples later,’ Mrs Latimer said, indicating an orchard at the bottom of the garden that led onto an area of common land. ‘There’s a good crop this year.’
Beyond the orchard and the common land, stood the hills and mountains that formed the startling backdrop to the market town. They rose up majestically – green at the foot, blending through to purple and grey near the summit.
‘There’s Skiddaw, just to the left,’ Mrs Latimer explained, naming the various hills. ‘And Blencathra straight ahead.’
Imogen had spent many summers with her grandmother in the north of Scotland and was used to mountains and lochs, but the hills behind the Latimers’ home were truly remarkable.
‘Soon they’ll be covered with snow,’ said Mrs Latimer dreamily. ‘It’s a beautiful sight. We’re so lucky to live here.’
She looked down at Imogen and Helen, and smiled.
‘Come on girls, let’s go and have some tea.’
Delighted at the thought of food, Imogen and Helen scampered back up the path and into the house. At the back door, as Mrs Latimer headed for the kitchen, Imogen caught Helen’s arm.
‘She’s nice, isn’t she?’
‘She is,’ agreed Helen.
‘I think,’ said Imogen, ‘compared to poor Joy, we’ve rather landed on our feet here…’
‘Yes,’ said Helen, agreeably, ‘I think you might be right.’
A couple of days later, after attending church, and eating a delicious Sunday lunch, Imogen wrote her first proper letter home.
3rd September 1939
Keswick,
The Lake District
My dear Mummy and Daddy,
I think that I am really settled down now at the Latimers. As I told you, I am sharing with Helen, who is really quite nice – but poor Joy is very unhappy I think.
She is with Mrs Metcalfe whose four sons have just gone to war. All she does all day is weep. Well! I call that a very cheerful sort of hole! And she’s sharing with a horrid girl – called Millicent. I feel so sorry for her, poor kid.
Mr and Mrs Latimer are so sweet (Mrs L is writing to you).
They are a retired school master and school mistress. The house is white, has a dining room, sitting room and kitchen with a lovely garden front and back. Upstairs are bathroom, WC and three bedrooms –spare, ours and Mr and Mrs L’s.
The predominant colour in the house is Presbyterian blue, although the Lats are C of E and I went with Joy to St John’s this morning with a school party.
Has the car been requisitioned yet? Do come to see me if poss.
Well, tons of love and take care of yourselves,
Imogen
PS Have just heard War declared. Mr and Mrs L invited Helen and myself into the drawing room to listen to the radio and we heard Mr Chamberlain. I thought he sounded rather upset. It all seems an impossibility when you stand on the shores of Lake Derwentwater and look at the wonderful scenes.
PPS please send brogues and other brown shoes and Macintosh (either one) and if poss my yellow coat and brown hat – not Breton (don’t bother with hat if you cannot manage).
Love once more, Imogen
The following morning, just as Imogen was leaving the house, adjusting her school hat in the hall mirror, a letter floated down onto the Latimer’s door mat addressed to her in her mother’s meticulous hand. Imogen snatched it up eagerly, determined to read it as she walked to school.
3rd September 1939
Gosforth,
Newcastle-upon-Tyne
My darling Imogen,
I received a postcard yesterday giving me your new address. It’s good to know that you have arrived safely and have a roof over your head. I look forward to hearing your news and hope the family you’ve been assigned to are good and kind.
We are all well here. We heard Mr Chamberlain speaking on the radio – did you? I thought he sounded very gloomy indeed and it’s hard to keep one’s spirits up.
Imogen, absorbed in her letter, crossed the road without looking either left or right. She was startled by the ringing of a bicycle bell, and the sound of screeching brakes. She looked around to find an elderly man lying in the road next to his bike, extremely red in the face.
‘Sorry,’ she said, helping him up. ‘I’m so sorry.’ He pushed her aside irritably, and brushed himself down, muttering, ‘stupid girl!
‘Well – if you’re quite all right?’ she asked anxiously, before running the rest of the way across the road and watching him weave his way, uncertainly, down the road. Heading towards the town, she found a bench and sat down to finish the letter in peace. She skimmed over her mother’s description of a bridge game she had played the previous day with their neighbours. Mrs McMasters, it seemed, had been complaining about the unfairness of her two adored eldest sons, Jonnie and Philip, having to join up. But Imogen’s eye was drawn to her mother’s mention of Freddie, the McMasters’ youngest son.
…Only Freddie is still at home. He’s studying architecture at King’s College, Newcastle, and as it’s considered a reserved occupation, he’s been allowed to complete his first two years. But he’s joined the RAF squadron at the University.
Imogen leaned back and looked up into the clear blue sky, and thought about Freddie. At nineteen, he was four years older than Imogen, but in spite of the age difference they had become close over the last couple of years. After Freddie’s older brothers left home for work and university, he had found himself slightly at a loose end, and had occasionally invited Imogen to play tennis with him at the local club. Slightly to his chagrin, he discovered she could beat him hands down, through sheer guile and determination – at least that’s how he later explained the score line.
‘Well done!’ he’d said to her in the tennis club bar, where he bought her lemonade. ‘I’m impressed.’ He sipped his pint. ‘But don’t you dare tell my brothers you can beat me!’
‘Maybe I will, maybe I won’t,’ Imogen had replied teasingly.
Imogen began to walk towards her school, daydreaming about Freddie. How like her mother to mention him – it was as if she had an ability to see right into Imogen’s mind, and understood the appeal of the older boy for her daughter. After all, Imogen thought, how could she not be a little bit in love with Freddie – with his wavy dark hair flopping over his pale grey eyes, his adorable laugh and sweet nature? To a fifteen-year-old girl he seemed impossibly glamorous and grown up. But reading about his exciting life at university in her mother’s letter, Imogen realised, gloomily, that he was bound t
o be snapped up by an older girl, maybe even married, while she was stuck in the Lake District.
As she approached the school gates, reading the final paragraphs of her mother’s letter, Joy called out to her.
‘Hey there stranger. I’ve been waiting for you.’
‘Oh hello,’ said Imogen. Joy was carrying her lacrosse stick. Her brown hair was, as usual, tied up in pigtails that stuck out at a jaunty angle beneath her school hat. She peered over Imogen’s shoulder at her letter, her brown button eyes shining with curiosity.
‘What’ve you got there?’
‘Just a letter from home,’ Imogen said, folding the letter up and putting it in her blazer pocket.
‘Anything interesting?’ Joy asked as they walked through the playground towards the main door.
‘Not really. Just a bit of news about Freddie McMasters.’
‘Do I know Freddie?’ asked Joy, opening the door.
‘No, I don’t think so. He’s a neighbour. I don’t think you’ve met him.’
‘Well, by the look on your face,’ said Joy, ‘I think it’s time you told me all about him.’
Chapter Four
Färsehof Farm
October 1939
Karl’s letter, secreted in Magda’s bible, became a source of constant anxiety. Every morning when she woke, Magda wondered whether today would be the day she should show it to her mother. As she washed her face and hands in the china bowl in her room, as she brushed her hair, twisting it into the long blonde plaits that hung on either side of her oval face; as she dressed in warm stockings with the navy skirt and white shirt of the Young Maidens, she tussled with her brother’s instructions that the letter should be kept a secret and destroyed. By preserving it, she had already broken his trust. To show the letter to her parents would be a double betrayal.
Magda knew her mother was desperate to know what was in the letter. Every morning at breakfast, her mother would lean forward expectantly, her mouth half open to ask a question but finally saying nothing. Magda understood, and felt guilty for upsetting her. If she was honest, she wanted her mother to read the letter – to explain what Karl had meant. Why did they have the blood of the Kalman family on their hands? Surely they were not dead… they had simply moved? But then she remembered her brother’s instructions to ‘say nothing’ and once again resolved to keep the letter hidden.
An added complication was that Magda knew her mother would be unable to resist looking for the letter. This complicated game of ‘hide and seek’ was familiar: for whenever Magda tried to keep anything private her mother would search for it. Magda had learned to leave little tell-tales around her room – a piece of thread on her bedside table or in her desk drawer. If, when she came home from school, the thread had been moved, she knew her secret had been discovered. There was a boy at school named Otto. A year or so older than Magda, he had developed a crush on her, writing her love letters which he left in her desk at school – letters which she brought home and read in secret, before stashing them away in the bottom drawer of her clothes chest. They both horrified and delighted her. She was thrilled that anyone should love her, but hated the way he expressed it. He wrote of wanting to put his hands on her body, to ‘touch her in secret places’ – an idea which filled her with fear and revulsion. It would have been logical to destroy his letters, but she felt compelled to keep them – as part of her relished the feeling of power she had over him. So she wrapped them in newspaper, with one corner of the paper turned down, and buried them in her bottom drawer beneath a layer of nightdresses. One afternoon, she had come home from school to find the clothes had been slightly rearranged and the neatly turned corner on the newspaper parcel had been flattened out. The thought of her mother reading these obscene missives was appalling and shameful. But rather than confront her mother, Magda resolved instead to find a better hiding place, moving them to the bottom of her wardrobe beneath a broken floorboard.
One dark evening at the end of October, Magda sat at the kitchen table after school, swinging her legs rhythmically against the chair, watching as her mother prepared a large vat of damson jam on the range.
‘Lotte loved that jam,’ Magda said.
Her mother, hot from the steam, pushed her fair hair, irritably, away from her face.
‘It’s damson jam, isn’t it?’ Magda asked.
‘What?’ her mother said, crossly.
‘The jam… it’s damson isn’t it?”
‘Yes Magda. I have a large crop this year, so I’m making jam.’
‘Mutti…’
‘Yes Magda…’
‘Mutti… please tell me why Lotte and Dr Kalman left the village.’
‘Oh for heaven’s sake!’ Her mother sounded exasperated. ‘Why do you need to know?’
‘Because she is my friend,’ Magda said simply.
‘Was your friend, you mean.’ Her mother was picking stones out of the jam with a spoon, and laying them on a large plate.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Magda.
‘You cannot have a… Jewish friend,’ her mother said impatiently. ‘I’m sorry but that’s the way things are now.’
‘Why?’ Magda asked. ‘That’s unfair. Tell me… do you know what happened to them?’
‘You really want to know?’ Her mother swung round furiously, and sat down heavily, opposite her daughter, her arms folded in front of her.
‘Yes,’ said Magda, nervous suddenly of the truth.
‘I was in the haberdasher’s shop in the village,’ her mother began. ‘I was buying fabric for a new dress for you. I was holding a piece of pale pink cotton up to the light… you know how dark it is in there, and I wanted to check the colour… that it would suit you.’
Magda nodded.
‘I saw Dr Kalman coming into the square with Ester his wife, and the children – Lotte and her little brother Ezra. They were carrying their suitcases. I had seen Ester a few days before. She had been very quiet, I remember… upset. I tried to get her to talk, but she wouldn’t. I was going to go out into the square, and ask them where they were going. But Mr Wolfahrt, the haberdasher, held my arm. “Don’t,” he said to me.’
‘Why were they leaving?’ Magda asked. Käthe’s grey-blue eyes filled with tears.
‘Some of the villagers spat on them; young men from the Hitler Youth – that boy you know, Otto – he was one of them.’
Magda blushed, remembering the letters.
‘They pushed and shoved them,’ Käthe went on. ‘I remember thinking, why are those boys not in school? The truth is, they run wild. They have become informers, you know… on villagers who they think are not patriotic enough.’
Magda’s eyes widened. ‘Really?’
‘Oh yes,’ said her mother. ‘We have spies in our midst, Magda, and they are children. They even reported one of your teachers. They said he did not show enough respect for the Führer – can you imagine? When I was a child we were expected to show respect for our teachers. Now these boys are in charge.’
Tears ran down Käthe’s face and she fidgeted nervously with the edge of her apron.
‘But what of Dr Kalman?’ Magda asked softly.
‘I saw people I knew – people we sit next to in church – bullying them, pushing them. They shouted “You’re not welcome here… get out – back to your own people.” I was shocked. I thought these women were my friends, but the way they treated the Kalmans – their own doctor, who was a good man, and his wife and family – it was disgraceful. Then the boys started up again – shouting and spitting. I said to Mr Wolfahrt, “Those boys should show more respect. Dr Kalman is a professional man, for heaven’s sake.” My hand was on the shop’s door handle and I was about to go out into the square and argue with the young men, reason with the others, when Mr Wolfahrt leaned over and locked the door. “Leave them, Madam Maier,” he whispered. “I’m afraid you can do nothing for them now. Let them leave the village… hopefully they will find peace somewhere else.”’
Tears poured down Kät
he’s flushed cheeks, and she wiped them away roughly with the edge of her apron.
‘I let them down,’ she said. ‘Maybe I could have stopped it, but I was afraid.’
She stood up again, and turned back to stirring her jam. ‘I thank God that your brother Karl is in England,’ she said. ‘Do you remember a very devout Catholic boy called Klaus who lived in the next village? He tried to stand up to the Hitler Youth. He accused them of being un-Christian, and begged them to atone for their sins. They took him away. No one has seen him since – not his parents, nor his brother…’
She turned around and leant against the range, looking at her daughter with tears in her eyes.
‘So Magda, my darling, however sorry I feel for the Kalmans, I love you and Karl more, and I would do anything to protect you. I can’t help Ester and Dr Kalman and I can’t stop the hatred in our village. But I can watch over you and I can pray that Karl is safe. I just wish I knew how he was.’
Magda went over and wrapped her arms around her mother’s waist, burying her face in her mother’s breast. Käthe leant over and kissed the top of her head and Magda suddenly released her and ran upstairs, returning with the letter.
‘Mutti… I’m sorry,’ she said, holding it out to her mother. ‘Here is Karl’s letter.’
Her mother broke into a broad smile. She hurriedly wiped her flushed face and sticky hands on the edge of her apron and took the letter from Magda, kissing the envelope. She sat down in the big pine chair at the head of the table and read. When she had finished, she folded it back into the envelope.
‘Come,’ she said, holding her arms out to her daughter, ‘let me hold you.’
Magda sat on her mother’s lap, resting her head on her shoulder, her arms wrapped around her neck.
‘I understand why you felt you could not show it to me,’ Käthe said, softly. ‘You didn’t want to betray his trust.’
