Bombs on Aunt Dainty (9 page)

Mama could not help her.

Another plane came over and another stick of bombs tore down.

If I think about it now, thought Anna, if I imagine it, then when it happens, when I’m trapped in a little hole with tons of rubble on top of me …

Again the terror surged over her.

She tried to fight it down. I mustn’t fight and scrabble to get out, she thought, I must keep quite still. There may not be much room, much air …

Suddenly she could almost feel the tight, black cavity shutting her in and it was so frightful that she leapt into a sitting position as though she had been stung, to make sure it hadn’t happened. She was panting for breath and Mama said, “Anna?” again.

“I’m all right,” she said.

The German lady was moaning and beyond her two Czech voices were murmuring some kind of prayer.

I have to get used to it, she thought, I must! But before
she had even finished the thought such terror engulfed her that she almost cried out. It was no good. She couldn’t do it. She lay with clenched teeth and clenched hands, waiting for it to subside.

Perhaps it won’t be so bad when it happens, she thought. Perhaps it’s worse thinking about it. But she knew that it wasn’t.

The planes kept coming and the bombs kept bursting while the German lady wept beside her. Once Mama shouted at the German lady to control herself and at some time during the night Papa moved his mattress over to Mama so that they were all near each other, but it made no difference.

She lay alone in the dark, trying to shut out the terrible picture of herself screaming mutely in a black hole.

At last she became so exhausted that a kind of calm came over her. I’ve got used to it, she thought, but she knew that she hadn’t. And when at last the shuddering crashes stopped and a little light filtered into the cellar with the sound of the All Clear, she thought, well, after all, it wasn’t so bad. But she knew that this, too, was untrue.

When they inspected the damage they found that the few remaining windows had gone. The top of the church tower which Anna had been able to see from her room had collapsed and there was a ragged hole in the roof of the church. And on the other side of Bedford Terrace, only a few yards along, where there should have been a house,
there was only a heap of rubble in which nobody and nothing could have survived.

“Direct hit,” said the porter.

“Who lived there?” asked Anna.

She was standing in the cold morning air in her trousers and an old sweater. The wind blew through her clothes and she had wrapped a handkerchief round her hand where she had cut herself on a piece of broken window glass.

“Refugees from Malta,” said the porter. “But they always went to the public shelter.”

Anna remembered them – frail, dark-skinned people in clothes far too thin for an English autumn. As soon as the air-raid warning sounded they would pour out of the house with a curious twittering sound and hurry fearfully down the street.

“All of them?” she asked. “Did all of them go to the public shelter?”

“Nearly all of them,” said the porter.

Then a large blue car swept round the corner from Russell Square, negotiated some rubble in the road and stopped inexplicably outside the hotel. The driver opened the door and a little round man climbed out. It was Professor Rosenberg.

“I heard it was bad last night,” he said. “Are you all right?”

Anna nodded and he swept her ahead of him into the lounge where Mama and Papa were drinking some tea which Frau Gruber had made.

“I think the girl should get out of all this for a bit,” he said. “I’m driving back to the country this evening. I’ll pick her up and take her with me.”

Anna demurred. “I’m all right,” she said, but tears kept coming into her eyes for no reason and Mama and Papa both wanted her to go.

In the end Mama decided it by shouting, “I can’t stand another night like the last with you here – I wouldn’t mind if I knew you were safe!” and Papa said, “Please go!” So Mama helped her to pack, and about five o’clock she drove off in the back of the Professor’s great car.

She leaned out of the window, waving frantically until the car had turned the corner. All the way to the country she carried with her the picture of Mama and Papa waving back as they stood among the rubble of the shattered street.

It was night when they arrived. Already as the car had zigzagged out of London, detouring round blocked streets and unexploded bombs, dusk had begun to fall, and the Professor had urged the driver to hurry so as to get clear of the city before the bombers came. Anna climbed out into the country darkness, sensed rather than saw great bushy trees surrounding a large house and caught a whiff of acorns and autumn leaves before the Professor propelled her through the front door. While she was still getting adjusted to the brightness of the hall a gong sounded somewhere in the depths of the house. The Professor said, “Go and find your Aunt Louise,” and disappeared upstairs.

Anna wondered where Aunt Louise could be and, for lack of a better idea, decided to follow the sound of the gong. She went through a large drawing room furnished with soft chairs, sofas and elaborately shaded lamps, into an equally large dining room where the long lace-covered table was laid for about a dozen people. There she found another door covered in green baize and had just decided to open it when the gonging stopped and Aunt Louise, dressed
in a long velvet gown, burst into the dining-room with the stick still in her hand.

“There will be no dinner …” she announced.

Then she saw Anna and threw her arms round her, accidentally hitting her with the padded end of the stick.

“My dear!” she cried. “Are you all right? I told Sam to bring you. Are your parents all right?”

“We’re all all right,” said Anna.

“Thank God,” cried Aunt Louise. “We heard that last night was terrible. Oh, it must be so awful in London – though here, too, there are problems. The dinner …” She drew Anna through the green baize door. “Come,” she said. “You can help me!”

In the narrow corridor beyond they met two maids in frilly aprons.

“Now Lotte! Inge!” said Aunt Louise. “Surely you must see reason!” But they looked at her sulkily and the one called Inge sniffed. “What’s said can’t be unsaid,” she remarked, and the one called Lotte added, “That goes for me too.”

“Oh really,” wailed Aunt Louise. “Who would have thought, just because of some kippers!”

They passed the kitchen with five or six saucepans steaming on the range.

“Look at it!” cried Aunt Louise. “It will all spoil,” and she almost ran to a room beyond. “Fraulein Pimke!” she shouted and tried to open the door, but it was locked and Anna could hear someone weeping noisily inside. “Fraulein
Pimke!” Aunt Louise shouted again, rattling the door handle. “Listen to me! I never said anything against your cooking.”

There were some unintelligible sounds from within.

“Yes I know,” shouted Aunt Louise. “I know you cooked for the Kaiser. And for all the highest in the land. And I wouldn’t dream of criticising, only how was I to know that the maids wouldn’t eat kippers? And then, when the butter ration…Fraulein Pimke, please come out!”

There was a shuffling sound followed at length by a click. The door opened a crack and an ancient tear-stained face peered out.

“…never had my food refused before,” it quavered. “And then to be shouted at on top of it…eighty-two years old and still trying to do my best …” The corners of the mouth turned down and more tears ran down the wrinkled cheeks.

“Now Fraulein Pimke,” said Aunt Louise, cunningly inserting an arm through the crack and drawing her through the door (very much, thought Anna, like extracting a snail from its shell). “What would the Kaiser say to see you weeping like this?”

Fraulein Pimke, deprived of the shelter of her room, blinked and looked confused, and Aunt Louise weighed in quickly while she had the chance.

“I didn’t mean to shout at you,” she said. “It’s just that I was taken aback. When I found that the butter ration had gone on the kippers. And then, when the maids gave
notice…Fraulein Pimke, you’re the only one I can rely on!”

Fraulein Pimke, slightly mollified, blinked at Anna. “Who’s this?” she said.

Aunt Louise saw her chance and took it.

“A bomb victim!” she said firmly. “A little victim of the London blitz!” She caught sight of the handkerchief round Anna’s hand and pointed to it dramatically. “Wounded!” she cried. “Surely, Fraulein Pimke, you cannot let this child go without her dinner!”

By this time she had somehow manoeuvred the group towards the kitchen door, and Fraulein Pimke went in like a lamb.

“Thank you, thank you!” cried Aunt Louise. “I knew I could count on you – the Professor will be so pleased!”

Then she led Anna back into the drawing room which was now filled with people in evening dress. Anna’s lack of sleep was catching up with her and after the terrors of the previous night everything was beginning to feel like a dream. She was introduced to various people, most of whom seemed to be related to the Professor, but it was difficult to remember who they all were.

There was a little cross-looking woman who was the Professor’s sister and two boys younger than Anna who might or might not be her sons. But what was a man dressed in a silk suit and turban doing there, and was he really a maharajah as someone seemed to have said? She was uncomfortably conscious of her trousers and old sweater, but a red-haired woman in a black dress kindly
told her that she looked very nice and even appealed to her husband for confirmation, and he said something about the battlefront and asked her what it was like being in the blitz.

It turned out that no one in the house had spent a night in London since the beginning of the air raids, and they asked her endless questions as though she were some strange creature from another world. The maharajah, if he was one, kept saying, terrible, terrible, and how did people survive, which was silly, thought Anna, for what else could you do if you had no choice, and an old lady with an ear-trumpet said, “Tell me, my dear, is it true that there is a great deal of noise?”

Dinner, served sulkily by Inge and Lotte, was unbelievably good and with her stomach delightfully full, Anna almost fell asleep during the ritual listening to the nine o’clock news which followed it.

The Professor put a proper bandage on her cut hand, which everyone insisted on referring to as a wound, and by this time the dreamlike quality of the evening had so far taken over that she was not in the least surprised when Fraulein Pimke appeared in dressing gown, slippers and hairnet to kiss everyone good night. “Was the dinner good?” she whispered to each guest, and even the maharajah said, “Yes,” and let her kiss his hand.

Anna was almost staggering on her feet when at last Aunt Louise took her to her room. It was clean and pretty with new sheets on the bed. Outside the window there were trees and a great calm sky. No bombs, no planes, no noise.
Mama and Papa…she thought as her head sank into the pillows, but she was so tired and the bed was so soft that she could not finish the thought and fell asleep.

It was bright daylight when she woke up. For a moment she looked in astonishment at the white walls and flowery curtains. Then she stretched out again in the bed with a marvellous sense of well-being. She felt as though she had just recovered from a severe illness – it must be having slept all night without interruption, she thought. When she looked at her watch she found that it was nearly noon.

She got up quickly, putting on her skirt instead of her trousers (but it had been difficult to wash anything in London and it did not look much better) and went downstairs. The drawing-room was empty except for the old lady with the ear-trumpet. When she saw Anna she smiled and shouted, “A great deal of noise, eh?”

“Yes, but not here,” Anna shouted back.

Outside the French windows she could see grey clouds moving across the sky. With luck Mama and Papa would have had a fairly quiet night. She was not hungry and anyway it was too late for breakfast, so she went outside.

The wind was strong but not cold and whirls of leaves skimmed across the terrace in front of her. At the end of the terrace was what had been a lawn, but now the damp grass coiled round her calves and even her knees as she walked through it. It was a very large lawn, and somewhere about the middle she stopped for a moment with the wind
blowing round her face and the grass swaying below her. It was like being at sea and, perhaps because she had had no breakfast, she felt almost giddy with the motion.

Beyond her the grass sloped down towards a row of trees and when she reached them she discovered a stream running beneath them. She squatted down to look at it, and just as she did so the sun came out and the water, which had been mud-coloured, turned a bright greeny blue. A small fish appeared, hardly moving above the sandy bottom and very clear in the sudden light. She could see every shiny scale fitting round the plump body, the round, astonished eyes, the shape of the delicate tail and fins. As it stood among the currents, it looked sometimes green and sometimes silver and its spade-shaped mouth stretched and shrank as it opened and closed. She sat staring at it, almost feeling it with her eyes, but she must have moved, for it suddenly darted away, and a moment later the sun went in and the stream turned brown and dull again.

Some leaves floated down from the trees above her and after a moment she got up and walked back towards the house. She could still see the fish in her mind. If one could paint that, she thought. The wind blew through her hair and through the grass and, suddenly intoxicated, she thought, and giraffes and tigers and trees and people and all the beauty of the world!

She found most of the house guests assembled in the drawing room and they all asked her if she was feeling
better, except for the old lady with the ear-trumpet who was too busy peering through the dining-room door to see if lunch was ready yet. Aunt Louise, worn out with the domestic dramas of the previous night, was resting in her room, and the maharajah was nowhere to be seen.

The Professor was talking about the old days in Berlin.

“Grandmother’s birthday,” he said. “Do you remember how all the children used to come?”

His sister nodded. “She used to give them all presents,” she said.

“Thank God she didn’t live to see how it all ended,” said the Professor.

Then the door opened and the maharajah appeared, rather to Anna’s relief, for she half-thought she might have dreamed him. He was still wearing his turban but an ordinary dark suit, and everyone at once tried to speak English for his sake. Only the old lady with the ear-trumpet suddenly said loudly in German, “She used to serve the best gefilte fish in Prussia.”

Anna wondered whether the maids who had given notice would be serving lunch, but to her surprise they were both in the dining room, all smiles and attention. (She discovered later that Aunt Louise had simply raised their wages.) She sat next to the maharajah who asked her again about the air raids and told her that he had been so frightened by the first one that it had made him ill, and that the Professor had brought him out to stay in the country until he could get a passage back to India.

“You are my benefactor,” he said to the Professor, pressing his hand.

“And of all of us in this house,” said the red-haired lady, and the Professor looked pleased, but in a worried way, and said a little later that it was awful how food prices had risen since the war.

Anna asked where the two boys were, and the Professor’s sister told her that they went to a grammar school in the nearby town but were not learning anything because all the good teachers had been called up.

“Nonsense, you fuss too much,” said the red-haired lady, which made the Professor’s sister very angry, and within minutes, to Anna’s surprise, everyone had been drawn into a fierce quarrel. Only the maharajah contented himself with saying, “Education is the finest jewel in a young man’s crown,” with which no one could disagree, and the old lady asked Anna to pass the gravy and quietly ate everything in sight.

On the whole, it was a relief when lunch was over and most of the house guests announced that they were going to their rooms to rest. From what? wondered Anna. It had begun to drizzle and she did not feel like going out again, so she wrote a note to Mama and washed some of her clothes in a laundry room she discovered beyond the kitchen.

When she returned to the drawing room it was still only half-past three and there was no one in it except the old lady who had fallen asleep in her chair with her mouth
open. There was a magazine on a table and Anna leafed through it, but it was all about horses and in the end she just sat. The old lady emitted a faint snore. There was a bit of fluff on her dress quite close to her mouth and every time she breathed it moved very slightly. For a while Anna watched it in the hope that something might happen – the old lady might swallow it, or sneeze, or something – but nothing did.

The room grew slowly darker. The old lady snored and the bit of fluff moved with her breath, and Anna was beginning to feel that she had been there for ever when there was a sudden flurry of activity.

First Lotte came in with the tea trolley. The old lady who must have smelled the tea in her sleep immediately woke up. Aunt Louise, followed by the other house guests, appeared in her long velvet gown and drew the curtains and switched on the lamps, and then the two boys burst in from school. Their mother at once began to cross-question them. Had they learned anything? What about their homework? Perhaps Anna could help them with it? But they brushed her aside with a quick look of dislike at Anna, and turned on the radio very loud.

Aunt Louise clapped her hands over her delicate ears. “Must we have that frightful din?” she cried.

One of the boys shouted, “I want to hear Forces’ Favourites!”

Their mother, suddenly changing sides, said, “Surely the children can have
some
pleasure!” and at once everyone
became involved in another argument which continued long after the boys had crept out to listen to their programme in the kitchen. Aunt Louise said they were spoiled. Their mother said that Aunt Louise, having no children of her own, knew nothing about it. The red-haired lady said that there was a terrible atmosphere in the house – you couldn’t breathe – and the old lady made a long speech which no one could understand, but which seemed to accuse some unspecified person of interfering with her sugar ration.