The Children's War Read online

  “The restaurant! I don’t think you’ll find one on this old tub.” The face withdrew.

  Ilse forced herself to read every word of passages she knew by heart. Anticipation, especially this kind, was so much more interesting than surprise. Most surprises, at any rate those she had experienced, had nothing pleasant in them at all. The scraping sound was the suitcase being pushed from side to side, the clicking was the sisters opening it. A rich smell arose. Ilse cast a sideways look. There was a Camembert and a packet of butter wrapped in several layers of newspaper and greaseproof paper, which rustled. Her mouth was watering. There was a good slab of pumpernickel and a knife and napkins. The dragging sound was Frau Ginsberg pulling a big leather bag out into the centre of the cabin to use as a table. She inserted a knife, prised apart slices of the dark bread and buttered them. The rich smell of cheese filled the cabin.

  The thin sister caught her looking and fluttered her hands in an anxious way. “Please, sit with us. We’d so like the company,” said Fräulein Tischler. “We really would.”

  Ilse put the book into the net and scrambled down. The sisters offered food to the nun, who gravely shook her head. Ilse tried not to eat too fast. The cheese was wonderful. Frau Ginsberg levered open a jar of gherkins, saying she had preserved them herself.

  The suitcase was full of food: tins of meat and anchovies, two bags of coffee beans, a thick packet of cakes and preserves. Perched on top was a box of sticky delicacies, which Frau Ginsberg appraised and then closed again.

  “These pastries and tarts are from the best pâtissier in Marseilles. On the Canebière. He’ll miss us, even if nobody else does. Look, my child,” and she held up a flask of coffee in one hand and a tin of condensed milk in the other.

  Ilse savoured France. When the cheese was gone, she lingered over the crumbling pastry, licking the apricot jam from her fingers.

  “Have another one?”

  “Yes, please.”

  The more Ilse ate, the more Frau Ginsberg beamed. She herself nibbled daintily but continually at the sweet things, while her sister hardly ate at all.

  “So, my child, you are going to meet somebody?”

  Ilse smiled and nodded.

  “What’s a little girl like you doing all on your own?”

  Good as the pastries were, she did not have to swallow the questions too. There was a time to speak and a time to be silent. Old Shatterhand, who had the strength of a bear and the cunning of a fox, understood this well. Not everyone could fathom his wisdom. He had made his plan, looking at the river, had thought through his dilemma and predicted the outcome. “Didn’t I tell you that when I drown, then we are safe?”

  “Won’t you at least tell me your first name?”

  “Ilse,” said Ilse severely. “I think you must think I am younger than I am. You know, Frau Ginsberg, I am quite old already. Nearly fourteen.” She was used to being taken for a ten-year-old.

  “Ilse. What a pretty name.” She was not offended, not at all. “It’s good to be with somebody who speaks our language. And a young lady, too. We are lucky. We’re two old women sick of each other’s company, aren’t we? We’ve been in France for six months. Before that Holland. And now we are going to South America. Who would have thought that I would travel so at my age? When I was a girl I wanted to. But now, I just think of Dahlem and the lovely house—all gone now.”

  She ignored the way her sister frowned and plucked at her sleeve. Ilse was tired suddenly and her head kept dropping forward, though she knew that it was rude. The fat lady talked on, while Ilse tried to keep awake. Snatches of her words reached her. “. . . the most beautiful coats,” she heard. “What stitching, mink, beaver, anything. Such workmanship,” and later she burst out indignantly, “He was a hero—in the Great War!” Ilse’s head drooped. Frau Ginsberg should not talk so much. Telling people things did nobody any good. If you spoke, people pushed things out of you, but if you were quiet they would give up eventually.

  “Ilse? Where are you headed for? Because you may be going the same way as us.”

  “Look how tired she is, poor darling,” said the thin sister in a whisper. “Let her be.” And she was the one who helped her to her feet and then up into the bunk.

  The boat, which was supposed to sail at six, left much later. In the night, the weather became stormy. Ilse woke to see Fräulein Tischler kneeling between the bunks on the little strip of floor and supporting the big head with its coiled plaits while Frau Ginsberg was sick again and again until all the pastries had returned to the surface and there was nothing left to come up. Fräulein Tischler stroked her sister’s head in the kindest way. She draped a small towel over the nasty basin. Then she sat on the edge of the bottom bunk and held it for a long time, not so much from solicitude as from the impossibility of putting it anywhere. No stewards would come, of course, even though there was a button to press to call for them. There was no help to be had from anyone.

  Ilse lay very still and held herself in readiness, and thought through the many different things that might happen, until her imagination was tired from the effort and gave up. Each time the ship rolled one way the widow moaned, then gave a horrible groan as the vessel sank upon itself. Eventually she fell quiet. Ilse peeped down. Perhaps it was the dim bulb over the door, which could not be turned off, that had turned her puffy face such a peculiar sallow colour. Dark circles lay under her eyes.

  Abandoning the basin, Fräulein Tischler climbed carefully up into her berth and looked across at Ilse, who pretended she was asleep. Ilse would have liked to read her book, sleep being out of the question with all the noise and motion, not to mention the smell, but she dared not put her reading light on. On the bunk opposite, the thin sister cried continuously and, it seemed, inconsolably. She did it silently, as though by practising the art she had grown expert. The little French nun, who had not spoken to any of them, was silent. Perhaps she slept, though it hardly seemed possible with so much suffering just a metre away.

  Waking to the sound of the trolley bus creaking up the Wuppertal hill, to the faint singing of Tante Röschen in the bathroom and the drumming feet of cousins Max and David fighting on the stairs, Ilse lay with her eyes closed, exulting at her success. It was her most cherished ambition to stay overnight with her big cousins, no longer to be the baby who never could be left. Her mother put her to bed at her aunt’s house, just the way she did at home in the Landsweg. The breakfast table had been set with an extra place, between the boys. A tiny spoon carved of horn lay ready for her speckled morning egg. Ilse would lie upstairs, listening to the soft farewell on the doorstep, the assurances that Tante Röschen would telephone at once if anything were amiss. Always before, the sounds of her mother leaving had made her lose her nerve and run down in her nightgown, desperate for the familiar, clamouring unreasonably to go home. Why then, as the noises of the house increased around her, was her anxiety growing? As she abruptly opened her eyes to wake for the second time, the deception was revealed. The world was a blur of unhappiness. Ilse scrubbed hard at her face with a grubby handkerchief. She scolded herself for her stupidity, for the feet belonged to passengers going on deck and the boys were long gone. Max and David must be young men by now. They had said goodbye in 1934, sold up and left for Palestine. The English let people in if they had enough money. Even then, it had cost 15,000 marks, the price of a house. After that there was no family left in Germany, since Grandfather Salomon did not count. Nor did her mother’s only relative, Tante Käthe in Krefeld, so old that she had always to be reminded who Ilse was. She was the one who said that “that child is not one of us.” In spite of this they visited her twice yearly, taking flowers and sugared almonds. Though she was the only relative they ever saw and Ilse wanted to love her, she was not able to bear the way the old lady ate the nuts, crunching them all up greedily and then picking little pieces out of her teeth with a sweeping and poking finger.

  Ilse scrambled down and tried to spruce herself up. Frau Ginsberg lay with her eyes closed, se
emingly asleep. Her sister was nowhere to be seen. The boat was no longer rocking. The nun, who had apparently not taken off her clothes at all and did not seem to have any luggage, folded up her bunk and clipped it to the wall. She went away. Ilse hurried up on deck. The sea was perfectly flat. The day grew hot and clear as she watched the glitter on the waves. It was March 26th, Ilse’s thirteenth birthday. She thought of the present in the case, which her mother had packed in a brown box right at the bottom, so no temptation would come her way. She would open it in Meknès. Fräulein Tischler came wandering along the deck looking for her, offering something to eat. Ilse shook her head. She felt a constriction in her chest, a tightness which prevented even the thought of food.

  By the afternoon, a dark smudged line could be seen, the North African coast. The guidebook had insisted that the first glimpse of the coastline was something no traveller to the Dark Continent should miss. Now that she had seen it, Ilse went down to fetch her case. She should be ready. Her uncle might be in a hurry to get away. Frau Ginsberg, restored and with her hair once more tightly braided, took a lace blouse out of the suitcase, one with a lilac trim, and put it on. She rummaged, found matching lilac leather gloves. She was smartly turned out in a suit of navy blue with silk stockings. Savagely, her sister attacked her jacket with a brush that removed lint. Back on deck, Ilse braced her suitcase between her legs for safety. The port of Oran was called Mers el-Kébir and for centuries had been a den of pirates. She looked for black sails but saw only a tugboat ahead and two small fishing boats.

  Passengers were jammed up against the railings long before they steamed slowly into the quay past a long row of rusty boats, unloading not people, but huge crates. Ilse leant against the saloon walls and waited. When people got off she would have a better view. She wore the winter coat, which would not fit in the case, fearing that if she were to try and carry that too she would lose it. It was very hot inside the coat. Those at the railings were pointing and laughing, chattering loudly to one another.

  People were starting to disembark. Spotting a gap a few metres away, she wriggled as near as she could to the railing and peered down, shading her eyes. Hundreds of people were standing below, some holding signs on pieces of paper or card. The writing was too small to read, too far away and the light too bright. She looked at men in headdresses and long robes, women in light clothes and high heels. Baggage was being unloaded in a hubbub of people shouting and pushing. Two women fell with screams into each other’s arms. A customs officer with a blue uniform leant against the whitewashed building of the Douane and puffed a cheroot. Somebody pushed their way up against the flow and shouted up, “Hast du meine Blutwurst?”2

  A hand touched her sleeve. Frau Ginsberg, reaching past a big bearded man, said that she should go with them. The sun showed up funny indentations in her thickly powdered face and released a wave of eau de cologne. Her sister looked apologetic. “Here is the plan, my child. We will all wait a little while until things ease and keep an eye on the luggage. I need a porter, and what about you—what if you got lost in the crowd?”

  “I won’t get lost,” said Ilse.

  “You’re small, stand next to me. Who is coming for you?”

  She was a kind woman; she meant well.

  “Is somebody coming?”

  Ilse did not speak. The two women gave each other meaningful glances. Ilse was not a baby but thirteen and capable of travelling on her own, and she wanted them to go. Her money was in a purse in the deepest pocket of the coat. She kept her hand round it. She had been very careful and it would be enough. It would get her to her uncle’s house if necessary.

  “Surely you’re going to be collected, my dear?”

  “Don’t worry.” Fräulein Tischler was hovering. “People never know what time these boats are arriving.”

  She thought that she was being helpful. Ilse did not look at them. She stared down at the quay.

  Willy was awfully handsome, her mother had said. He would be easy to recognise, for he had hair her mother said was “just like yours.” On the piano in their old home, their proper house, among the silver frames stood a photograph of a very tall young man, with his arm round a pretty girl. This doomed, romantic couple had only had a few years together. Her mother, generally so precise, would not say what had happened to the wife, though she evidently had had something to do with her only brother leaving Germany forever. Willy and his broken heart were part of general conversation. But her parents had said other things too, lowering their voices so she had to strain to hear. Willy, her mother had said once, could never say no. “Good thing he wasn’t a girl.”

  She scanned from right to left and back again. In the crowd below she could not see a single redheaded person. Ilse touched each button on her coat from bottom to top and then each of the mother-of-pearl buttons on her cardigan, from top to bottom and never the other way round. Mother-of-pearl was precious and special. They were all there, as was the button on the back of the waistband of her skirt. Finally, bending quickly, she touched the laces on her shoes. They were done up tight in double bows. The arrangements for the long and difficult journey had actually been perfect. It was very natural that things could not be as she and her mother had imagined in the long evenings spent sitting together, sewing and practising French. She realised that they had been wonderful evenings. They had found plenty of things to laugh about in the guide. Lore had been so amused by the idea that the people of Marseilles, with the whole sea at their disposal, chose to eat bouillabaisse, a soup concocted out of odd bits of fish. Her mother had knitted the cardigan and had sewed each tiny button on with a double thread, stitching the ends in neatly to the back of the ribbon binding, making each safe. There was something about the tightness of the stitching and the care of it that was unbearable.

  Ilse gulped, but the air did not go where it should. Her head ached. She was dissolving. Fräulein Tischler kept trying to give her a piece of paper, an address in Casablanca, the hotel where Ilse could stay with them. She whispered that Ilse was not to mind, her sister’s interference was well meant. She was sad because of her little girl, who had died years ago. Ilse put the paper in the pocket of the coat that she hated, that was much too hot. There was no reason for her to care about a little girl she did not know, who had happened to have a look of her. If only she had not mentioned it. Why was it, then, that it was Fräulein Tischler, not her sister, who seemed the sad one? Ilse might have said this, had she been able to speak. There was sadness everywhere. It rose from the sea, a mist that slipped through the small gap between the ship and the land where all the strangers stood. Ilse was drowning, with no hope of ever coming up.

  Something very big, something white was weaving through the crowd, catching the light as it edged to the very front. The letters shone and danced. They re-formed as she blinked, then blurred again unstoppably. The European in a cream suit and hat was taller than anyone else and the sign itself was simply enormous. He took off the hat and waved it in huge sweeps, from side to side. The brilliance was the sun irradiating thick reddish-blond hair. The scarlet letters, professionally executed, were huge: WILLKOMMEN IN ORAN, LIEBE ILSE!3

  “You see,” Ilse said. “You see!”

  She waved with all her strength. He waved back. She explained to Fräulein Tischler that the sun here was very strong and it affected a person’s eyes. Then everything speeded up and she was hurrying down to the docks, she was on the land, spirited through the crowd and he took hold of her and swung her up and round. He was laughing. He did look like Lore. She stared at his skin, which was tanned dark, his dazzling, very pale blue eyes. His laughter at her looking at him was delightful. His hair, thick and glossy, grew back in a wave just like a film star’s, just the way her mother had always wanted hers to.

  “Your friends want to say goodbye.”

  The sisters, looking incongruous, one tall and one fat, stood a little way off like an island lapped by a sea of cases and bags. Willy gave them his card, thanked them for keeping an eye
on his niece. Ilse, who was not in the habit of embracing people she hardly knew, found herself giving Frau Ginsberg a kiss, at which the big face crumpled alarmingly. At that moment a porter picked up their leather bag, which was much too heavy for one man to lift, and its handle came off. Frau Ginsberg’s lilac gloves twisted in lamentation and then Ilse saw no more, for Willy was off, swinging her case, and she was running to keep up with his long legs. They dashed through customs—nobody stopped Willy Lindemann. People knew him. They greeted him and smiled.

  They drove all the way to Meknès in his big American car. It was a long way but Willy said he loved to drive, said he loved his car, which was so big that a person could comfortably lie full length in the back seat. When her uncle smiled, his mouth curled up and pleasure crinkled his face. He had long elegant hands, which smoked and gesticulated and loosely held the wheel. The car purred on. The day was bright and the sun laid down a blanket of comfort. Meknès was a royal city, a beautiful city. She would speak French. He and his wife, Toni, had a simple place but she would like it. The pleasures came in snatches as the nodding of her head woke her up. They would go to the cinema. Swimming. On picnics. He presented these marvels to her as though she was a normal child with the right to such things. Weariness and relief overwhelmed her. He stopped the car, insisted that she stretch herself out on the back seat and put her coat over her; he gave her his jacket as a pillow. He did not care if it creased, what did that matter? They could stay the night somewhere if he felt tired or perhaps not. They would see. It would be good to get back to Toni. The motor hummed and the road curved in her head, and Toni was like Tante Röschen only younger, with a kind face and soft, warm body.

  Willy was whistling. It took a moment for her to realise where she was and that this noise was intended to wake her, this gentle touch his hand on her shoulder.

  “Wake, little one. You must see this.”

  Yawning, Ilse tried to get up. It was cold. Her legs were stiff. She rose from the darkness behind to the rim of light coming over the world. Meknès climbed out of the plain, minarets sharp-cut like a child’s picture book of the Arabian Nights, ochre walls flushed pink by the dawn sky. They leant on the hot bonnet and marvelled. He had driven all night and he wasn’t tired; he put his arm round her and Ilse laid her head upon his shoulder, and they sat quietly until the sun edged up above the towers.