The Gathering Storm (24 page)

But not fast enough.

A circling bomber, satisfied with the destruction of the ship, spotted us. It dove toward our fragile ark, guns blazing.

We burrowed into every makeshift cavity, girls and baby beneath,
Jessica and me next, men atop the heap.

A line of splashes marched directly toward us as the bullets ripped
into the sea. One shattered the sternpost of the lifeboat, another splintered the gunnel near my head, and the third struck Sergeant Walker.

Throwing up his hands toward his head, his body jerked upward and toppled sideways into the water.

Without hesitating an instant, Judah dove in after him.

A fist of smoke wrapped greasy fingers around us, shutting out vision.

"Captain!" Howard called urgently. "Sergeant!"

"Judah," I yelled. "Where are you?"

We paddled in circles, heedless of whether the plane would renew the attack or not.

No trace of either man did we locate.

We drifted for a long time after that, unable to find the heart to row.

Eventually Lieutenant Howard roused himself. "Let's pull ourselves together," he said with difficulty. "There's a boat. Let's make for her."

191

The rescue craft coming to our aid was a French canal boat. Already crammed to the rails and rigging with scores of the rescued, including many children, a broad-faced woman shouted to us, "Just a moment. I'll toss you a line."

And that was how we reached port in England: in a rowboat towed from the stern of an aging canal barge.

But I thought little of this at the time. It seemed incredibly unjust that Judah and the good sergeant, who had accomplished so much and brought us so far, should have died so near to safety.

One small tragedy among thousands during those grim days, it still left me feeling bitter and angry.

192

^{PART SIX}

A time to weep, and a time to laugh; A time to mourn, and a time to dance.

ECCLESIASTES 3:4

₁₇

LONDON JUNE 1940

I

t was nearly time for the evening service at Westminster Abbey— the hour when we gathered in the deep gloom of that ancient house to sing prayers for all the brave boys fighting the Nazis in France.

Like many other refugees in London, Jessica and I had not missed
attending a service since we arrived from the miracle of Dunkirk.

We were about to be late. Thunderclouds gathered above Regent's
Park, and I had misplaced my umbrella. Jessica was impatient as I searched the flat we shared with another young refugee named Eva Weitzman. I was irritated. Had I left it on the bus? Was someone walking around London protected from the impending rain by my umbrella?

Jessica stood, impatient to leave our flat in the tall Georgian house at the foot of Primrose Hill. The three girls and baby Shalom were already in the below-ground flat where our landlady, Arlice, baby-sat for us.

The BBC radio news blared the reports of the Nazi Blitzkrieg sweeping through France. Our prayers seemed more important than ever.

And so was our need for comfort. Tyne Cott had been overrun. We heard Papa was killed in the last bombardment just before the final Nazi onslaught. I was numb with grief.

Where was my umbrella?

Those of us who had escaped from Europe and made our way

~ 195 ~

to freedom knew that the great, unnumbered mass of human suffering was made up of individual stories. Even one single refugee child strafed and killed by a Luftwaffe fighter along the road from Belgium to France was too many. I could not think of one child left dead along the highway. The story of one was too painful, too real. Better to hear the estimates of the numbers of dead and dying and forget that each one had a story. There were too many innocent victims to memorialize in one BBC broadcast.

Where had I put my umbrella?

The world as we knew it was coming to an end, yet I could only think of myself. It was as though there was no tragedy—no story but
my own. There was me, selfish and self-absorbed.. .and then were those
hundreds of thousands of refugees all lumped together into one trag
edy. I knew, because Eva had told me, entire populations of Jewish vil
lages in Poland were machine-gunned and dumped into mass graves.

I could only think of my husband, Varrick, out there...somewhere. There was no story but him and me. Holding onto the belief that he still lived and would join me in London was my one prop. Our love was the hub around which the universe revolved.

"It's going to rain. I'll have to buy another umbrella." I sighed.

The knock at the door and the sad-eyed messenger boy with the telegram signaled the end of my hopes and dreams.

"Missus Kepler?" He did not look into my face.

Jessica stood at my shoulder. I felt her firm hand on my arm as I took the wire and closed the door. "Steady," she said.

My own voice, distant, as if it belonged to someone else, panted
Varrick's name, praying: "Oh! Not Varrick! Please God, not Varrick."

Eva, silent and pale, stood in the doorway of the sitting room as I
tore open the telegram. Her bright blue eyes brimmed with tears. Her beloved Mac McGrath, a news photographer with the Trump European News Service (TENS), had sailed off with the flotilla of little
ships to rescue the desperate British Army at Dunkirk. She knew Mac
might not return. We all knew. Yet in this moment, Eva's fears were all focused on me and the dreaded envelope in my trembling hands.

~ 196 ~

The typewritten words on the yellow slip of paper blurred for a moment, then came into sharp focus. The air around me became heavy, too thick to breathe, as I stammered aloud the curt, matter-of-fact message about my husband...

"Deep regrets
STOP
your husband Varrick Kepler
killed
STOP
Heroic action near
Cambrai STOP
Deepest condolences."

Jessica groaned. Eva gasped and rushed to my side.

The telegram fluttered like a dry leaf from my fingers. The world spun and darkened as my knees buckled. I collapsed slowly to the floor.

I do not know how long I was unconscious. A cool damp cloth dabbed my face. I did not want to awaken to the nightmare of reality. Squeezing my eyes tight, tears escaped and trickled down my face.

"No. No. Can't be."

Jessica's voice said, "Lora? Maybe it's a mistake. This is all they sent? No explanation?"

Eva whispered, her words tinged with a Polish accent, "The world
collapses. Chaos in France. How can we know what is certain?"

Jessica said, unconvincingly, "We'll pray. They could have got it wrong."

Eva said, "I will ask at the news office. Surely TENS reporters will
have some way to check the list of casualties."

I opened my eyes. Jessica's worried face hovered above me. Eva stooped and held a glass of water to my lips. "Drink, Lora. Drink."

The cool liquid on my tongue pulled me back toward consciousness, but I did not attempt to sit up. "Jessica, am I...is it a dream? Varrick?"

She did not answer at first. The telegram lay beside us on the black-
and-white-checkered foyer tiles. The handle of my umbrella stuck out
from behind the coat rack. I fixed my gaze on it and thought, if only I had
found it earlier, we would have been gone and missed the telegram.

197

Jessica held me in her arms, as Mama would have done. "Poor darling. Loralei. Dear Lora."

So, it was true. How many months had it been since I saw him last? Six? Eight? More? I couldn't remember. But always I had thought of him as being somewhere...alive. Yet even as the Nazis rolled over Europe, Varrick, my beloved, had been killed.

Twenty-two years old and already a widow, my life seemed finished before it had begun.

Jessica brushed back my blond hair from my eyes. I lay with my
head in her lap. Yet we were now more than sisters. We were two women, widows, united by grief at the loss of our husbands.

"So," Jessica said, as our tears mingled, "it has come to this. Papa warned them all. It seems so long ago now, yet it has come, just as Papa said."

I wondered how many other women would receive the confirmation this week that missing sons and husbands would never
come home again. The large tragedy—the imminent fall of France—
suddenly fragmented into hundreds of thousands of shards that tore my soul.

"No more!" I cried, covering my ears.

With a nod, Jessica asked Eva to switch off our radio.

Eva turned her eyes away from our grief. I heard the front door close behind her. She was going to the Abbey—one soul among thousands of Londoners, praying a miracle for the fighting men and the women who waited for them. Then she would return to the TENS news office where all the news from France would be grim.

Jessica and I did not attempt to rise. I closed my eyes as she gently stroked my cheek.

Jessica did not move or attempt to rouse me as I slept where I had fallen. The tile was cold and hard. I opened my eyes. Jessica's head leaned against the wall as she dozed. Lightning flashed through the

~ 198 ~

still open blackout curtains. She started and awakened. The sitting room was like a photograph, washed in monochrome silver.

Thunder followed like cannons. The downpour pounded on the roof, cascaded down the windows.

"The rain," Jessica said.

"I knew it was coming." I wondered about the men fighting in France. Were they cold? Was it raining there?

I regretted I had not gone to the Abbey to pray with Eva.

"What time is it, Jessica?" I croaked.

Just then the clock chimed nine times.

"Nine o'clock." She shifted her position.

I sat up slowly but did not rise. We sat together on the tiles, resting our backs against the wall of the entry.

The house was dark. The city was dark. But London did not sleep.
Anti-aircraft gun emplacements crowned the brow of Primrose Hill Park. Members of the Home Guard kept watch over the great city. Air-raid wardens prowled the streets in search of even a glimmer of light escaping from behind blackout curtains.

The clock, like Jessica's steady heartbeat, measured my life in time before and after the telegram. How many seconds, minutes, hours, since Varrick died? All the time I had been living, I had imagined him alive too. He had not died when the first rumor of his death reached me. I had been right not to believe that.

During the long months of our separation, I thought of him think
ing of me, desiring me in the night, and I had been content in a restless
sort of way. I could not imagine my beloved's blood spilled out on a field. Hadn't Papa taught us that righteousness and truth are stronger
than evil? I had been certain happiness would win out in the end. It had
to be. Life for me was still the stuff of fairy tales before the message.

I had been happy not knowing the truth, hadn't I? My ignorance had left me with reason to carry on.

False hope had, in the end, laid me out flat. He had not died when first I heard it, but he had still died!

What hope remained to give me purpose?

~ 199 ~

Every twilight we had gathered in the great echoing stone hall of Westminster. How many times had I looked up and thought I heard the agonized prayers of generations now beyond their earthly grief? The ancient ones who had whispered heartache before I lived were now reunited in heaven with the men they had prayed for and lost. When the harmony of the Psalms died away, had I not heard their voices echo in the vaulting? Someday, I thought, another generation would sit in the Abbey and hear my prayers emerging from the stones. What truth would a generation yet unborn hear in the echoes of my life?

For me, Varrick's death had not taken place in France. My husband had perished this very night before my eyes.

How many others would die before this night ended? Evening prayers were no longer about me and Varrick. I had crossed over the line of demarcation...into another life.

"They are coming to England," I whispered to Jessica. "All the boys who escaped."

"I was praying for them. For their wives and mothers. Just now."

"What was it the BBC was reporting before the telegram? Food and blankets. Clean clothes? The trains from Dover crammed with wounded. Rail station platforms overflowing with survivors." I struggled to stand. "Poor fellows. I must go there, Jessica. Help them. So many. But every one of them—any one of those boys-could have been my Varrick. Perhaps on his journey some woman brought him food. Perhaps—"