Bombs on Aunt Dainty (4 page)

“By the way,” said Max telepathically, “what’s all this you wrote to me about a secretarial college?”

She said, “I’m starting next week.”

He considered it, looking already, she thought, like a lawyer weighing up a tricky question in Court. Finally he said, “Well, I suppose it’s the right thing to do at the moment. But not for good. Not for you. Not in the long run.” Then a thought occurred to him. He leafed impatiently through one of his books, found what he wanted and started again to write.

Anna walked back to her digs, brushed her hair and changed into the only other dress she had. It was her old
school dress made of grey corduroy and when she had worn it at Miss Metcalfe’s on Sundays she had thought it hideous. But Mama had found an old lace collar at the bottom of one of the trunks they had brought away from Berlin and with that, now that Anna had lost most of her puppy fat, it looked quite elegant. She returned to find Max putting away his papers and George surveying the high tea which the landlady had spread out in front of the fire. George’s bath had not been a success. Fearing that if he delayed too long he would not be able to have one at all, he had plunged in when the water was barely luke-warm and had sat in it, getting progressively colder, unable to face climbing out into the even colder air of the bathroom. However, at least it had now been dealt with and the problem of washing himself would not arise for another week, he told Anna with satisfaction. “Which prompts me to remark,” he added, “that you look remarkably clean and wholesome. Is that the latest fashion?”

She explained that it was what she had worn at school on Sundays.

“Really?” said George. “How extraordinary. My sister always wears a sort of a brown sack.”

From this they got to talking about George’s sister’s school where they had to curtsey to the headmistress every time they met her and which sounded not much better than Miss Metcalfe’s, and then about schools in general. Perhaps Max was right, thought Anna. Perhaps George was just as nervous of her as she was of him, and with this thought she
began to relax a little. She was in the middle of telling him about a remarkable ceremony at Miss Metcalfe’s when a guinea-pig monitor had been stripped of her rank, when it was time to leave for the cinema.

They picked their way through the icy blackout to see a thriller in the company of Bill and a girl with frizzy hair whom Max, to Anna’s surprise, appeared to admire. Her name was Hope and she looked at least three years older than Max, but when he whispered, “Don’t you think she’s attractive?” Anna did not like to say “no”. The film was very bad and the audience, which consisted largely of undergraduates, took a noisy interest in it. There were boos for the villain and ironical cheers for the heroine who was trying to ward him off, and cries of “Come on Clarence!” whenever the lumbering hero appeared in pursuit. In the end the villain threatened to throw the heroine to a poorly looking crocodile which, the audience pointed out, was clearly in need of feeding, and when she was rescued in the nick of time the remaining dialogue was drowned in cries of “Shame!” and “RSPCA!” Anna thought it all wonderfully funny and glowed through the rest of the evening which they spent eating more doughnuts in a café. At last George and Max said goodnight to her at the door of her lodgings and she felt her way through the darkened house to her room and her freezing bed where she clutched her hot-water bottle, thought in wonder about this extraordinary world her brother was part of, and fell asleep.
“Well, how do you like Cambridge?” asked Max the next afternoon. They were waiting for her train at the station and she did not in the least want to leave. They had spent part of the day punting on the river – the weather had been warmer – with Max and Hope arguing fitfully in a punt propelled by George, while Anna was in another with Bill. George and Bill had tried to ram each other and in the end Bill had fallen in and had invited them back to sherry in his rooms while he changed his clothes. He lived in a college three hundred years old, and under the mellowing influence of the sherry George and Bill had both urged her to come back to Cambridge soon.

She looked earnestly at Max on the darkening platform. “I think it’s marvellous,” she said. “Absolutely marvellous.”

Max nodded. “I’m glad you’ve seen it.” She could see the happiness in his face in spite of the darkness. Suddenly he grinned. “And there’s another thing,” he said. “Don’t tell Mama, but I think I’m going to get a First.”

Then the train roared in, astonishingly filled with soldiers and sailors. She had to squeeze past a pile of kitbags to get on, and by the time she had managed to pull the window down the train had started. She shouted, “Thank you, Max! Thanks for a marvellous weekend!” But there was a lot of noise and she was not sure whether he heard her. One of the sailors offered her part of his kit-bag and she sat on it all the way back to London. It was a long, weary journey – much slower than on the previous day. The light from the blue-painted bulb in the corridor was too dim
to read by and every time the train stopped more soldiers got on, even though there hardly seemed room for them. Liverpool Street too was filled with troops and, as Anna picked her way among them in the patchy half-light of the station, she wondered where they could all be going. Then a newspaper poster caught her eye. It said “Hitler Invades Norway And Denmark!”

At first, when Anna had learned the news of Hitler’s attack on Scandinavia, she had been very frightened. In her mind she had heard again the voice of the woman at the Relief Organisation talking about the Nazis. “They said, ‘We’ll get you wherever you go because we’re going to conquer the world!’“ But then nothing had happened and life seemed to go on much as usual. Some troops were sent to Norway – the Danes had given in without a fight – and there had been a battle at sea, but it was hard to tell who was winning. And after all, Scandinavia was a long way off.

She started her secretarial course and Judy and Jinny came home for the holidays. Papa was asked by the Ministry of Information to compose the text of some leaflets to be dropped over Germany – the first work he had had for months – and Max and George went on a walking tour and sent her a postcard from a Youth Hostel.

Her one overwhelming desire now was to learn shorthand as quickly as possible, so as to get a job and earn some money. Each day she went to the secretarial school in Tottenham Court Road and practised taking down
dictation on the little machine provided. It was quite fun. Instead of pressing down the keys singly as on a typewriter you pressed them down like chords on a piano, and each time the machine printed a syllable in ordinary letters on a paper tape. It reproduced the sound of the syllable rather than the spelling so that “general situation” for instance became “jen-ral sit-you-ai-shn”, but it was still quite easy to read, unlike the shorthand squiggles which had defeated her in the past.

Judy and Jinny were impressed with her new grown-up status, and she did not mind leaving them every morning to lounge about in the spring sunshine while she went off to practise her shorthand. There were one or two other refugees like herself at the school and the Belgian principal Madame Laroche said that with their knowledge of languages they were all bound to get good jobs. Anna, she said, was one of her best students, and she often sent for her to demonstrate the system to potential clients.

The week before Whitsun was warm and sunny, and by Friday Anna was looking forward to the long weekend as the secretarial school was closing at lunch time and Monday was a holiday as well. She was going to spend the afternoon with Mama and Papa, and Mama’s cousin Otto was coming to see them. For once she was bored with practising and she was glad when, half-way through the morning, Madame Laroche sent for her to demonstrate her shorthand to a middle-aged couple and their mousy daughter. They did not seem very promising customers, as
the father kept saying how stupid it was to waste money on new-fangled methods and the daughter just looked frightened.

“Ah, and here is one of our students,” cried Madame Laroche as Anna came in – or at least that was what Anna thought she had probably said. Madame Laroche talked with an impenetrably thick Belgian accent and was very hard to understand. She motioned Anna to a chair and took a book from a shelf. Anna looked round for the English assistant who normally dictated to her, but there was no sign of her.

“I will dictate to you myself,” said Madame Laroche excitedly, or words to that effect. Clearly the father had stung her into determination to prove the excellence of her system at all costs. She opened the book and said, “Der doo glass terweens.”

“What?” said Anna, startled.

“Der doo glass terweens.”

“I’m sorry,” said Anna, beginning to blush, “I didn’t quite understand …”

“Der doo glass terweens, der doo glass terweens!” cried Madame Laroche impatiently and she tapped her finger on Anna’s machine and shouted something that sounded like “Write!”

There was nothing for it but to take it down.

Anna typed “Der doo glass ter-weens” carefully on the paper tape and hoped that the next bit might be easier to understand – but it wasn’t. It was just as incomprehensible
as the beginning and so was the next bit and so was the bit after that. Every so often Anna recognised a real word, but then the dictation dropped back again into gibberish. She sat there, red-faced and miserable, and took it all down. She wished it would stop, but she knew that when it did she would have to read it back, which would be worse.

It stopped.

And just as Anna was wondering how she could possibly survive the next few minutes she was struck by an idea. Perhaps the dictation really had no meaning. Perhaps Madame Laroche had dictated gibberish to her on purpose, to demonstrate that the system could record even sounds that did not make sense. She suddenly felt much happier and began quite confidently to read back what she had taken down.

“Der doo glass terweens,” she read, carefully pronouncing it just as Madame Laroche had done, and went on from there.

But something was wrong. Why was the father puffing and choking with suppressed laughter? Why were the mother and even the mousy daughter tittering? Why had Madame Laroche’s face gone pink with anger and why was she shouting at Anna and piling the book, the machine, the paper into her arms and pushing her out of the room? The door slammed behind her and Anna stood in the corridor, dumbfounded.

“What happened?” asked one of the English teachers, emerging from another room. She must have heard the noise.

Anna shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said.

The teacher took the book which was still open from the top of the machine. “Is this what she dictated to you?” she asked. “The Douglas twins?”

“No,” said Anna. What Madame Laroche had dictated to her started with “der doo glass terweens”. You could not possibly mistake “the Douglas twins” for “der doo glass terweens”.

But you could, with Madame Laroche!

“Oh!” she cried. “They must have all thought …” She looked at the teacher. “What shall I do? They must have all thought I was making fun of her accent! D’you think I’d better explain?”

They could hear Madame Laroche shouting excitedly in her office.

“Not just now,” said the teacher.

“But I’ve got to do something!”

There was the sound of chairs being pushed back in the office, overlaid by a burst of masculine laughter and an incomprehensible but clearly unfriendly remark from Madame Laroche.

“Come along,” said the teacher firmly and propelled Anna along the corridor and into one of the classrooms. “Now you just get on with your work and put this little misunderstanding right out of your mind. I’m sure that by Tuesday it will all have been forgotten.”

Anna sat down at an empty desk and began, automatically, to take down the dictation slowly read out
by a senior student. But how could she forget all about it? she thought. It had been so unfair. Madame Laroche had no right to shout at her when she had always worked so well. No one in the school could understand her Belgian accent – she must know that. And as for thinking that Anna was making fun of her…I’ll go and tell her, thought Anna. I’ll tell her she can’t treat me like this! Then she thought, suppose she doesn’t believe me? Could one be expelled from secretarial school?

By the end of the morning she was in such a state of confusion that she could not make up her mind either to go home or to face Madame Laroche. She went to the cloakroom where she stared at her reflection in the mirror and alternated between framing grand phrases with which to justify herself and taking the teacher’s advice and forgetting the whole thing. Eventually a cleaner came to lock up and she had to go.

When she emerged into the corridor she found that everyone else had left. Probably Madame Laroche had gone home too, she thought, half-relieved – but now the whole weekend would be spoiled with worrying. Oh, damn! she thought – and then, as she passed Madame Laroche’s office, she heard someone talking inside. Quickly, without giving herself time to think, she knocked and went in. She had expected to see one of the teachers, but Madame Laroche was alone. The voice came not from her but out of her radio.

“Madame Laroche,” said Anna, “I just wanted to
explain …” She had meant to sound fierce but found to her annoyance that she merely sounded apologetic. “About this morning…” she started again.

Madame Laroche looked at her blankly and then waved to her to go away.

“But I want to tell you!” cried Anna. “It wasn’t at all as you thought!”

The radio had suddenly stopped and her voice sounded absurdly high in the silence.

Madame Laroche got up and came towards her and Anna saw to her horror that there were tears in her eyes.

“Mon enfant,” said Madame Laroche quite clearly in French, “the Germans have invaded Belgium and Holland.”

Anna stared at her.

“What will my people do?” asked Madame Laroche as though Anna would be able to tell her. Then she said again, “What will they do?”

Anna wanted to say something sympathetic but could think of nothing. “I’m sorry,” she stammered. Guiltily, she realised that she was still fretting about the misunderstanding over the Douglas twins. But as Madame Laroche seemed to have forgotten all about it, it must be all right.

“Mon Dieu!” cried Madame Laroche. “Don’t you understand what it means? How would you like to have the Germans here, in England?” And as Anna remained helplessly silent she shouted, “Well, don’t just stand there! Go home, for heaven’s sake! Go home to your parents!”

Anna went out of the office, through the building and out into the sunshine. The street looked just as usual. Even so, she began to run, dodging the other pedestrians on the pavement. When she was out of breath she walked as fast as she could, then she ran again until she reached the Hotel Continental. There she found Mama and Papa in the lounge with Cousin Otto and surrounded by excited Germans, Czechs and Poles. Cousin Otto’s eyes were shining above his large Jewish nose and his hair hung untidily into his face. Everyone was talking and even the porter behind the desk was giving his views to anyone who would listen.

“They’ll be smashed to pieces!” Cousin Otto was saying triumphantly. “It’s just what the English have been waiting for. They’ll go in there and smash the Germans to smithereens. The French will help, of course,” he added as an afterthought. Cousin Otto had an infinite admiration for England. To be English to him was to be perfect, and he was quite upset when Papa disagreed with him.

“I don’t trust Chamberlain,” said Papa. “I don’t believe the English are ready for battle.”

“Aha!” cried Cousin Otto. “But you don’t understand them. Just because a man like Chamberlain
appears
not to be doing anything, doesn’t mean that he’s not organising it all secretly. That is the British understatement. No drama or fuss – and he’s fooled the Germans completely.”

“He seems also to have fooled the British Parliament,” said Papa. “I understand they are trying to get rid of him at this very moment.”

“Such a time to choose!” wailed an old Czech lady, astonishingly dressed in a tweed coat and flowery hat as though ready to flee from the Germans at a moment’s notice.

Cousin Otto looked troubled. “Parliamentary procedure,” he said, comforting himself with the Englishness of the phrase.

It was touching, thought Anna, that he should be so pro-English for he had, so far, not fared too well in his adopted country. In spite of two Physics degrees he had only succeeded in finding work in a shoe factory.

“What I want to know,” cried the old lady, poking Cousin Otto in the chest with a bony finger, “is, who is minding the shop?”

“Perhaps we should go upstairs,” said Mama.

The Hotel Continental did not provide lunch on weekdays and they usually filled in the gap between breakfast and dinner with a snack in Papa’s room.

Cousin Otto accepted gratefully. “I’m dying for a cup of tea,” he confessed as Mama went scurrying in and out with the kettle, cups and some buns she had stored in her room next door. He sat on Papa’s bed, drinking tea with milk like the English, and asked Anna if she had any messages for her brother, as he was leaving for Cambridge himself that afternoon in the hope of getting a job.

“What sort of a job?” Mama wanted to know.

Cousin Otto began to touch every bit of wood within reach. “Touch wood!” he cried. “In my own line. There is
a professor of physics there – I was a student of his in Berlin – and he has asked me to come and see him.”

“Oh, Otto, it would be wonderful,” said Mama.

“Touch wood! Touch wood!” said Cousin Otto and touched the bits of wood all over again. It was difficult to remember, with his old-maidish ways, that he was barely thirty.

“Well, just give Max lots of love and ask him to write,” said Mama.

“And wish him luck for his exams,” said Anna.

“Oh, I forgot,” cried Mama. “The exams must be quite soon. Tell him not to write – he’ll be too busy.”

Papa said, “Would you give Max a message from me?”

“Certainly,” said Cousin Otto.

“Would you tell him –” Papa hesitated. Then he said, “I think that now the Germans have attacked, Max may want to volunteer for one of the fighting forces. And of course he must do whatever he thinks right. But would you ask him, please, to discuss it with the University authorities first, before he makes up his mind?”

“But he’s only eighteen!” cried Mama.

“It’s not too young,” said Cousin Otto. He nodded at Papa. “I promise I’ll tell him. And when I get back to London I’ll ring you up and tell you how he is.”

“That would be most kind,” said Papa.

Cousin Otto stayed a little longer, chatting and drinking tea, and then it was time for him to catch his train. Soon afterwards Anna went back to the Bartholomew’s. She had
arranged to spend Saturday with Judy and Jinny. She had hardly seen them since their return from school and they had such a good time playing tennis and sunning themselves in the garden that they decided to spend Sunday the same way.

Most of the Sunday papers carried pictures of Winston Churchill, who had become Prime Minister instead of Chamberlain, and there were several eye-witness accounts of the German invasion of Holland. Huge numbers of Nazi parachutists had been dropped from aeroplanes, disguised as Dutch and British soldiers. To add to the confusion, Germans who had been living in Holland for years and whom no one suspected of being Nazis, had immediately rushed to their aid. The Dutch were fighting back and the French and the British were on their way to help them, but clearly the Germans had a strong foothold. There was a map of Holland with thick arrows breaking into it from Germany and an article headed “If Germany Captures Dutch And Belgian Coasts”, but, said Jinny, the Sunday papers always exaggerated and it was no use minding them.