Bombs on Aunt Dainty Read online

  “I’d love to,” said Anna. The Writers’ Club was not very exciting, but now that her future was settled she felt restless. She walked quickly to the bus stop with Papa, trying not to think of the fact that soon her days would be filled with shorthand instead of drawing.

  “The meeting is for the German section,” said Papa who was its president. “But the tea” – he smiled at himself for explaining the treat – “will be genuine English.”

  When they arrived at the club’s premises near Hyde Park Corner most of the other writers were already assembled – a collection of the usual intelligent refugee faces and the usual frayed refugee collars and cuffs. Several of them came to greet Papa at the door, were introduced to Anna and said how like him she was. This often happened and always cheered her up. Nobody, she thought, who looked so like Papa could be completely hopeless.

  “Is she going to follow in your footsteps?” asked a small man with pebble lenses.

  “I used to think so,” said Papa, “But now I think she is more interested in drawing. At the moment” – he raised a hand regretfully – “she is planning to become a secretary.”

  The man with the pebble lenses raised both hands in regretful echo. “What can one do?” he said. “One has to live.”

  He and Papa went to sit on a small platform while Anna found a seat among the other writers. The theme of the meeting was “Germany” and a number of writers got up to speak. What a lot of them there were, thought Anna. No wonder there was no work for them.

  The first one spoke about the rise of the Nazis and how it could have been avoided. Everyone except Anna was very interested in this and it provoked a whole succession of smaller speeches and arguments. “If only …” cried the writers. If only the Weimar Republic…the Social Democrats…the French in the Rhineland …

  At last it came to an end and a sad man in a pullover rose to read out extracts from a diary smuggled out through Switzerland which had been kept by a Jewish writer still at liberty in Germany. Anna knew how such people lived, of course, but it was still horrifying to hear the details – the penury, the petty persecutions, the constant threat of the concentration camp. When he had finished, the other writers sat in silence and gazed gratefully at the moulded ceiling, and the large windows overlooking Hyde Park. At least they had got out in time.

  There followed a completely uninteresting dissertation on the regional differences between Frankfurt and Munich, and then Papa stood up.

  “Berlin,” he said, and began to read.

  When, at the age of eight or nine, Anna had first realised that Papa was a famous writer, she had begged him to let her see something he had written and he had finally given her a short piece that he thought she might understand. She could still remember her embarrassment after reading it. Why, she had thought in shame, why couldn’t Papa write like everyone else? She herself was going through a phase at school of writing long, convoluted sentences full of grandiose phrases. She had imagined that Papa’s writing would be the same, only even grander. But instead Papa’s sentences had been quite short. He used ordinary words that everyone knew, but put them together in unexpected ways, so that you were startled by them. It was true that once you got over your surprise you saw exactly what he meant, but even so…Why, Anna thought, oh why couldn’t he write like other people?

  “A little too soon, I think,” Papa had said afterwards and for years she had been shy of trying again.

  Now Papa was reading something he must have typed quite recently on the rickety typewriter in his room. It was about Berlin. She recognised the streets, the woods nearby, there was even a bit about their house. That’s just what it was like, thought Anna.

  Then Papa had written about the people – neighbours, shopkeepers, the man who looked after the garden (Anna had almost forgotten him), the owl-eyed secretary who typed Papa’s work. This bit was rather funny and the writers in the audience all laughed. But where were all these people now? asked Papa. Did the owl-eyed secretary raise her hand in the Hitler salute? Had the grocer joined the Storm Troopers – or had he been dragged off to a concentration camp? What had become of them after the Nazis had stolen their country? (Here Papa used a very rude word which made the writers gasp and then titter in relief.) We do not know, said Papa. Hitler has swallowed them up. And yet, if one went back perhaps it would all look just as it had looked before. The streets, the woods nearby, the house…He ended with the words with which he had begun. “Once I lived in Berlin.”

  There was a moment’s silence and then the writers rose up as one writer and clapped and clapped. As Papa came down from the platform a small crowd formed round him, congratulating him and shaking his hand. Anna kept back but he found her near the door and asked “Did you like it?” She nodded, but before she could say any more they were swept into the room beyond where tea had been prepared. It was a lavish spread and while some writers made an effort not to appear too keen, others could not resist flinging themselves upon it. The tea had been provided by the main English section of the club and a sprinkling of English writers appeared along with it. While Anna ate an éclair and tried to tell Papa how much she had liked the piece about Berlin, one of them came up to talk to them.

  “I heard the applause,” he said to Papa. “What were you speaking about?”

  Papa, as usual, did not understand, so Anna translated for him.

  “Ach so!” said Papa and adjusted his face to speak English. “I talk-ed,” he said, mispronouncing the mute ed at the end of the word as usual, “about Germany.”

  The Englishman was taken aback by the Shakespearean accent but recovered quickly.

  “It must have been most exciting,” he said. “I wish so much that I could have understood it.”

  When Anna got back to the Bartholomews’, much later, she found a letter from Max inviting her to Cambridge for the weekend. Everything is happening at once, she thought. She forgot her shyness in telling Mrs Bartholomew all about the invitation, about Papa’s reading at the club and about her new career.

  “And when I’ve finished the course,” she ended triumphantly, “I’ll be able to earn three pounds a week!”

  Like Papa, Mrs Bartholomew looked a little regretful.

  “That’s very good news,” she said after a moment. “But you know, don’t you, that you can live in this house as long as you like, so that if ever you should change your mind …”

  Then she went off to find a coat of Jinny’s for Anna to wear during her weekend with Max.

  Chapter Three

  All the way to Cambridge in the train Anna wondered what it would be like. What would they do? What would Max’s friends be like? Would she be expected to talk to them and if so, what on earth would she say? The weather had turned cold again and soon after the train had left London it began to drizzle. Anna sat staring out at the soggy fields and the cattle sheltering under dripping trees and almost wished she hadn’t come. Supposing nobody liked her? And indeed, why should they like her? Nobody else did much, she thought morosely – at least not people of her own age. The girls at Miss Metcalfe’s had not thought much of her. They had never elected her as a prefect, or as dormitory captain, or even as dining-room table monitor. For a brief time there had been talk of making her guinea-pig orderly, but even that had come to nothing. And Max’s friends were boys. How did one talk to boys?

  “Not a very nice day,” said a voice, echoing her thoughts. It belonged to a tweedy woman in the seat opposite. Anna agreed that it wasn’t and the woman smiled. She was wearing a hat and expensive, sensible shoes like the mothers at Miss Metcalfe’s on Parents’ Day.

  “Going up to Cambridge for the weekend?” said the woman. Anna said, “Yes,” and the woman went at once into a description of the social delights of what she called the “varsity”. Her three brothers had been there years ago, and two of her cousins, and they had all invited her for weekends – a gel could have such fun. Theatre parties! cried the tweedy woman, and May balls, and picnics at Grantchester, and e
verywhere you went so many, many delightful young men!

  Anna’s heart sank farther at this account but she comforted herself with the thought that there could hardly be May balls in March and that Max would surely have warned her if he had planned any grand goings-on.

  “And where do you come from, my dear?” asked the tweedy woman, having exhausted her reminiscences.

  Normally when people asked her where she came from Anna said, “London,” but this time for some inexplicable reason she found herself saying, “Berlin,” and immediately regretted it.

  The woman had stopped in her tracks.

  “Berlin?” she cried. “But you’re English!”

  “No,” said Anna, feeling like Mama at the Refugee Relief Organisation. “My father is an anti-Nazi German writer. We left Germany in 1933.”

  The tweedy woman tried to work it out. “Anti-Nazi,” she said. “That means you’re against Hitler.”

  Anna nodded.

  “I should never have thought it,” said the tweedy woman. “You haven’t got a trace of an accent. I could have sworn that you were just a nice, ordinary English gel.”

  This was a compliment and Anna smiled dutifully, but the woman was suddenly struck by another thought.

  “What about the war?” she cried. “You’re in enemy country!”

  Damn, thought Anna, why did I ever start this?

  She tried to explain as patiently as she could. “We’re against Germany,” she said. “We want the English to win.”

  “Against your own country?” said the woman.

  “We don’t feel that it is our country any more,” began Anna, but the tweedy woman had become offended with the whole conversation.

  “I could have sworn you were English,” she said reproachfully and buried herself in a copy of Country Life.

  Anna stared out at the grey landscape rolling past the spattered window. It was ridiculous, but she felt put out. Why couldn’t she just have said she came from London as usual? Max would never have made such a mistake. This whole expedition is going to be a disaster, she thought.

  When the train finally drew into the station at Cambridge her worst suspicions seemed to be confirmed. She stood on the platform with an icy wind blowing straight down it, and Max was nowhere to be seen. But then he appeared from behind a corner, breathless and with his gown flying behind him.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I had a lecture.” He looked at the scarlet coat which Mrs Bartholomew had lent her. “That’s very dashing,” he said. “Judy’s or Jinny’s?”

  “Jinny’s,” said Anna and felt better.

  He picked up her case and hustled her out of the station.

  “I hope you’ve brought a thick woollen nightie as well,” he said. “Your lodgings are somewhat cool.”

  They turned out to have no heating at all – a vast, icy cave of a room – but it was not far from his own and the landlady promised to put a hot-water bottle in her bed at night. While Anna was tidying herself she tried to imagine the tweedy woman spending a night there and decided that her Cambridge weekends must have been very different. Max paid for the room – bed and breakfast cost ten shillings – and then they set off to walk through the town.

  By now the rain had stopped, but there were still patches of water everywhere. The sky above the rooftops was wet and grey with shambling clouds which thinned occasionally to shimmer in half-hearted sunlight. They crossed the marketplace, picking their way between shoppers and dripping tarpaulins, and then they were suddenly engulfed by a crowd of undergraduates. The High Street was filled with them. They were splashing through the puddles on their bicycles and pushing along the pavement in noisy groups. There were black gowns everywhere, and long striped scarves, and everyone seemed to be talking, or shouting greetings to friends across the road. Several of them waved to Max, who seemed to be very much at home among them, and Anna thought what fun it must be to belong here.

  Every so often, between greetings, he pointed out a landmark through the turmoil – a building, an ancient bit of wall, a cloistered passage where, centuries ago, someone had walked, a seat where someone else had written a poem. The stone of which they were made was the same colour as the sky and looked as though it had been there forever.

  In the doorway of a tea-shop Max was accosted by two gowned figures.

  “Discovered at last!” cried one. “And with a strange woman!”

  “A strange scarlet woman,” said the other, pointing to Anna’s coat.

  “Don’t be an idiot,” said Max. “This is my sister, Anna. And these are George and Bill who are having lunch with us.”

  Anna remembered hearing about George who had been to school with Max. He was a good foot taller than herself, so that she would have had to throw back her head to see what he looked like. Bill’s face was more within range and looked pleasant and ordinary. They pushed their way through the crowded shop to a table in the corner. As they sat down George’s face sank into view and turned out to be cheerful, with an engaging look of permanent astonishment.

  “Are you really his sister?” he asked. “I mean, if you had to be somebody’s sister, surely you could have found someone better than old Max here?”

  “With his lecherous ways—”

  “And his boots so stout—”

  “And his eyes which swivel round about—”

  “And the horrible way his ears stick out!” George finished triumphantly.

  Anna stared at them in confusion. Had they just made that up? Or was it some kind of English verse that everyone except her knew?

  George was leaning towards her.

  “Surely, Anna – I trust I may call you Anna – surely you could have found someone more suitable?”

  She would have to say something. “I think –” she began, but what did she think? At last she brought out, “I think Max is very nice.” She was blushing as usual.

  “Loyal,” said George.

  “And comely,” said Bill. “Wouldn’t you say comely, George?”

  “Definitely comely,” said George.

  They were off again and she found that all that was required of her was to laugh, which was easy. They ate baked beans on toast followed by doughnuts and cups of strong tea. Bill tried to wheedle an extra spoonful of sugar out of the waitress, but she refused.

  “Don’t you know that there’s a war on?” she said, and Bill pretended to be amazed and cried, “No one told me – how ghastly!” and made so much noise that she gave him some sugar just to stop him.

  “You young gentlemen are so insinuating,” she said, snatching the sugar bowl away and, as an afterthought, “I don’t know what the Government would say.”

  The idea of the Government worrying about Bill’s extra teaspoonful of sugar was so remarkable that George, Bill and Max all needed another doughnut to get over it.

  Anna watched them admiringly. How witty they were, she thought, and how handsome, and how English – and how strange to see Max virtually indistinguishable from the other two.

  “Actually it’s funny,” said George. “That business of ‘Don’t you know that there’s a war on’. It doesn’t really seem as though there were, does it?”

  “No,” said Max. “I don’t know what I thought it would be like if there was a war, but you’d imagine something more – well, urgent.”

  Bill nodded. “When you think about the last one. All those people being killed.”

  There was a pause.

  Anna took a deep breath and decided to contribute to the conversation. “When I was small,” she said, “I was always very glad that I was a girl.”

  They stared at her. Max frowned slightly. She’d made a mess of it as usual.

  “Because of wars,” she explained. “Because girls couldn’t be sent into the trenches.”

  “Oh yes, I see,” said George. They seemed to expect something more, so she gabbled on.

  “But later my mother told me that there’d never be another war. Only by then I’d got used to the idea – of
being glad that I was a girl, I mean. So I suppose it was really a good thing. Because,” she added with a degree of idiocy that astonished even herself, “I am a girl.”

  There was silence until, mercifully, Bill laughed.

  “And a jolly good thing too!” he said.

  Never again, thought Anna. Never again will I say anything to anybody, ever.

  But George nodded just as though she had said something sensible. “My mother was the same. She was always telling us that there’d never be another war. She was quite upset when this one happened.” His normal look of astonishment had intensified and some sugar from the doughnut had become stuck round his mouth, so that he looked suddenly very young.

  “But I suppose if someone carries on like Hitler in the end there’s nothing you can do but fight him.”

  “Fight him to the death!” Bill narrowed his eyes. “My God, Carruthers, there’s a machine-gun nest on that hill!”

  George raised his chin. “I’ll go alone, sir.” His voice trembled with emotion. “But if I don’t come back …”

  “Yes, yes, Carruthers?”

  “Tell them it was – for England.” George stared bravely into the distance. Then he said in his ordinary voice, “Well, I mean, it’s so silly, isn’t it?”

  They finished their doughnuts thinking how silly it was. Then Bill said, “I must fly.”

  “Literally?” asked Max.

  “Literally,” said Bill. He belonged to the University Air Squadron and they practised every Saturday afternoon.

  George struggled to extract his long legs from under the table. “Flicks tonight?” he said.

  “Sure.” Bill waved in a way that might or might not include herself, thought Anna. “See you then.” And he loped off into the street.

  They waited while George wrapped a scarf round his long neck. “Actually,” he said, “I suppose it must feel even funnier to you – the war, I mean.” He looked at Max reflectively. “I always forget that you weren’t born here. It never occurs to anyone, you see,” he explained to Anna. “I’m sure Bill thinks he’s British to the backbone.”