My Family for the War (26 page)

On one of the first warm spring days in the middle of April, seven or eight of us were sitting at the village well as usual. By then, only twenty-three of the original forty evacuated children were still in Tail’s End, and that morning Mrs. Collins had shocked us with a totally unexpected bit of news: Plans were under way to evacuate us farther from the threatening coast to the safety of the interior!

This affected not only those of us from London, but all the children of Tail’s End as well, and for days no one spoke of anything else at the Stones’. It had already been decided that Pearl and Herbert would go with us, but Mrs. Stone didn’t want to be separated from Rachel and Luke.

I had never expected to feel sorry for Mrs. Stone, but when I saw her red, bleary eyes, I couldn’t help it. “It’s not so bad,” I told her. “And this will be my third evacuation, so I should know!”

But nothing could comfort her or make the decision any easier.

“This time things will run more smoothly than the evacuation from London,” decided Lesley. “We should give Mrs. Collins a list of which of us want to be placed together in a new family.”

“Good idea,” said Hazel, moving closer to me.

She and I were among the first to be recorded on Lesley’s list. We turned to look at each other contentedly, and at the same time, my glance rested briefly on the distant figure of a solitary woman climbing the road from Tail’s Mews. She
had obviously gone into the city with the train, which only stopped twice a day at the neighboring station since the war. This was clear because she had a hat and an umbrella—unusual for our little village.

“If the younger Stone children are coming, we have to take Luke too. Luke Stone,” I dictated to Lesley. “He’s much more used to me than to his older siblings.”

“Oh, yes! Luke is so sweet!” raved Hazel.

“And a dog,” I added. “Adolf Stone.”

Lesley stopped writing. “You’re joking,” she said, to which I replied, “In certain circumstances, dogs are allowed to come along!” which was a bald-faced lie. In truth, I was convinced I’d be able to house Adolf if I had him with me. Shrugging her shoulders, Lesley wrote, “Adolf Stone, dog.” But she added a question mark next to it.

Meanwhile, several of us had noticed the woman walking toward us. In Tail’s End, with its sixty or so inhabitants, anything unusual on the village’s one street aroused interest. “Is that Mrs. Caine?” asked Brigid.

“No. Maybe it’s Mrs. Tingle,” answered Karen, and turned her attention back to the list.

“Frances? Are you all right?” Hazel’s puzzled voice reached my ear.

I slid down from the edge of the well, reeling with shock. I stared at the woman, who was still quite far away. I whispered, “It can’t be!” although I already knew it was true. Maybe I was just afraid that she would vanish before my eyes, like the vision of my father on the beach.

“Is that her mother?” someone muttered, and Hazel answered, “No, she’s in…” But I didn’t hear the rest. I
was running down the street, faster and faster, until my feet barely touched the ground. It felt like I was running backward through time: spring, winter, fall, summer. By the time I reached her, I had never been away.

“I thought I’d never see you again!” I said breathlessly.

How had I thought for even a second that I could forget her? She held me at arm’s length, while in a wave of happiness I rediscovered everything that was familiar to me—her wonderful, radiant smile, her warm green eyes, her cheerful, loving look. I could see in the way she looked at me how much I must have changed in the eight months since we had last seen each other. “Good heavens, Frances, is it really you?” she said, and laughed, her voice full of tears.

Amanda Shepard walked up the street into Tail’s End and back into my life—she was simply there again.

“Is there anywhere nearby where we could talk undisturbed?” Amanda asked me.

“Talk?” I echoed, shocked. The thought that her sudden appearance could have a specific purpose hadn’t occurred to me, and suddenly I saw what I had failed to notice in my joy at seeing Amanda again: She looked tense. Her face was pale, her cheekbones stood out, and I saw fine lines under them that definitely hadn’t been there last summer. I thought about how worrisome the last few months must have been for her, but there was something else in her face, and it scared me.

All at once I became very calm. “We can go into our classroom.”

We walked through the nave and into the side room that housed our little school. “Look!” I led Amanda to the world map. “This flag is Gary! And down here is Frank Duffy.” And I watched her pretend to read the names. “It’s about Papa, isn’t it?”

“Yes, dear,” she said quietly. “I’ve brought you a letter from your mother.”

“She asked you to bring me a letter?”

“Yes. She probably thought it would comfort you a little.”

I looked at her attentively. “She was right,” I said.

Amanda looked away. “Did she say anything else?” I wanted to know.

“That… is also in your letter.”

Amanda, who had stood quietly looking out the window while I read and reread Mamu’s letter, came over and sat next to me on the edge of the table. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am, Frances.”

But I didn’t know what to say about Papa yet.

“Is London safe?” I asked.

“No!” answered Amanda decisively.

I looked down again at the piece of paper with the signature, and of all the possible steps I could take, the only one that I could even fathom.

“The train leaves at seven?”

“You shouldn’t rush things. Perhaps I can find a room for the night.”

“No. Let’s go.”

The Stones stood in the hall, bewildered, while I packed my few belongings.

“We don’t live in luxury here, as you can see,” Mrs. Stone remarked to Amanda. “Four children, the smallest still in nappies, and then a fifth on top of that… it wasn’t easy!”

Ever since my foster mother from London had crossed the threshold, fear had been all over Mrs. Stone’s face. Her refugee, her servant girl, the lowest of all, was being collected by this beautiful, well-dressed lady who spoke with a quiet, cultivated voice, and who lovingly called her Frances “dear.” Mrs. Stone couldn’t know that I had never told Amanda about the horrible beginning of my stay in Tail’s End, but she doubtless experienced this fairy-tale ending from the perspective of the terrified stepmother who knows she is about to be exposed!

“There’s one other thing…” I said to Amanda. “What about Adolf?”

“We’ll take good care of him,” promised Mrs. Stone.

“He likes to be rubbed under the chin,” I said. “Right here. And maybe he didn’t go for walks before, but now…” I pulled him toward me urgently and buried my face in his coat.

This couldn’t be happening! I had just learned of Papa’s death and felt nothing, absolutely nothing, and now I was crying about a dog!

“Don’t worry, we’ll do everything for him!” said Mrs. Stone, who was obviously ready to promise me anything I wanted. “Please excuse me for a moment!”

She rushed off importantly. I let go of Adolf and didn’t look at him again. “We still have to see Mrs. Collins,” I reminded Amanda.

She snapped my suitcase shut. When we reached the bottom of the stairs, a beaming Mrs. Stone was already waiting for us with a bag bursting with food from her pantry. I didn’t get the satisfaction of refusing her peace offering. Amanda accepted the bag without the slightest hesitation.

“Many, many thanks, Mrs. Stone! Fresh butter! Eggs… and such a tremendous piece of cheese! I can’t imagine how many stamps I would need…”

“Don’t mention it,” Mrs. Stone modestly replied, but it was impossible not to see that her pangs of conscience had already subsided, and that the elegant lady from London had sunk to the level of a normal city-dweller who couldn’t eat her fill of eggs! The rest went quickly. The Stones shook my hand—there were no embraces. We’d had an arrangement and gotten used to each other over time, but there had never been any doubt that when the time came, they would be happy to see me go.

The news of Amanda’s arrival had already reached Mrs. Collins, who was waiting for us in her room at the Hound and Horn.

“Are you sure you want to go back?” she asked, holding the letter Mamu had sent. “You’ve made some nice friends… little Hazel…”

“I should never have left in the first place,” I countered. “My father says so too.”

Mrs. Collins turned to Amanda. “It appears that our group will soon be leaving for Wales. You can find out more at school, if you should happen to change your mind.”

Amanda nodded after taking a quick sidelong glance at me.

“Well then, best of luck, Frances,” said Mrs. Collins. “Let’s hope the war is over before we start to get used to all this!”

If by “all this” she meant good-byes, horrible news, or hundreds of thousands of parentless children wandering throughout England, she didn’t say.

Outside, my friends were still sitting on the edge of the well and Amanda said, “We have plenty of time for you to say good-bye to everyone.”

But I simply shook hands with each of them, and if I had had a choice I would have skipped even that. I wanted to remember the lovely feeling of having belonged rather than a farewell.

That evening on the road to Tail’s Mews, I suspected for the first time that I wouldn’t see my mother again for a very, very long time, and that Amanda and her family were the only home I had left.

It’s difficult to mourn someone you haven’t seen in almost a year and a half—even more so if you only learn of his death in a letter. The shock, the pain, the sadness for my father had occurred after the pogrom when I lost him; now that I was sitting in a train to London, I didn’t know how I could bring myself to feel that loss again.

But I could have cried for Mamu. Papa had been her life. She had never stopped fighting for him, hoping for him. Suddenly I was terrified at the thought of having to write to her when I returned. No words from me could do justice to her loss; no tears from me could match her pain. What on earth could I ever say to her again?

Through the window, the colors flitted by into gray twilight. The dim lighting on the train made me sleepy. Amanda took bread and cheese from Mrs. Stone’s bag as the other passengers looked on and cut some for us. She laid the food on my leg without a word; I took it and ate obediently, now happy that we had something for supper.

Walter’s amusing descriptions may have prepared me, but what we saw as we left King’s Cross station can only be described as shocking. I had never experienced Euston Road or the square in front of the station as anything but lively and colorful, with pedestrians rushing by, taxis honking their horns, buses sluggishly pushing forward during the day, and at night a steady stream of lights whizzing past. Now, once we got outside, there was nothing but gloomy, numbing darkness.

“Blast!” muttered Amanda. “Fog—tonight of all nights, when we have to take a taxi. Give me your hand, Frances!”

I don’t know why she thought it necessary to ask, since I instinctively grabbed her coat with our first step into nothingness. And now I knew why my blackout-experienced foster mother had brought an umbrella: Like a blind person, she tapped the ground to the left and right as we moved forward, making a
clack-clack
that was somewhat reassuring.
We made our way along the station’s outer wall and quickly reached the taxi stand.

I was quite dazed as we got off the train, but if I had needed anything more than the eerie scene at our arrival to wake me up, this taxi ride was it. I stared straight ahead with my eyes wide open, every fiber of my body alert, while Amanda and the driver debated—in the middle of the pitch-black hole that had swallowed us—whether we were passing this or that street.

It was half past one when we finally arrived at Harrington Grove. We felt our way through the garden, I heard the searching scratch of a key on wood, then we stood bathed in light, and a voice with an unmistakable German accent enthusiastically exclaimed, “I knew you would make it back tonight!”

Until that moment, I had totally forgotten that Walter would be at our house! After a few seconds of confusion it occurred to me that as of a few weeks ago, he lived here too. This surprise, along with the almost blinding light awaiting us inside, left me standing in the middle of the foyer, disoriented and blinking. “Hey, Ziska, I’m really sorry about your father,” said Walter awkwardly as he gave me his hand.

He was wearing pants and a cardigan that had been Gary’s, and I remembered him being shy during his last visit to the house, but that had changed so drastically that I hardly recognized him. We went into the kitchen, where a small but complete evening meal was waiting, and for the first time in months I heard a blessing in Hebrew again.
I’m back!
I told myself, stunned, and let my eyes wander as
we ate. Meanwhile, Walter told Amanda how his day at the movie theater had gone, and although I didn’t much feel like talking, I didn’t like it one bit that these two had obviously shared experiences that didn’t include me!