The cabbie gave Teddy his hand, and pulled her up, and Maxim scrambled to his feet. The cab-driver said, ‘The bleedin’ Germans don’t know when to stop! Take your lad and run to the tube, ducks. This bloomin’ raid ain’t going to be over for a bit, mark my words.’
‘Yes, that’s where we’ll go,’ Teddy exclaimed. ‘And thanks.’
Without giving his abandoned taxi a second glance, the cabbie began to sprint towards Marble Arch. Teddy retrieved the paper bag of shirts, took hold of Maxim’s hand, and together they ran as fast as they could, hard on the heels of the friendly cab-driver, following him to the tube station at Marble Arch.
***
The cheery little cabbie had disappeared in the crowds thronging the underground station by the time Teddy and Maxim raced down the steps.
The platform was jammed with people, mostly women and children who had been visiting the shops, out on a Saturday morning jaunt. There were a few men, but not many. Most of the menfolk of England were with the fighting forces… in the army, the navy or the air force.
Panting and heaving, and considerably out of breath, Teddy and Maxim stopped at the bottom of the stairs. They were lucky enough to find a corner spot near the flight of steps and they sat down and wedged themselves close together, to make room for someone else.
They were both unnerved by the ordeal they had just gone through, had not really recovered from their narrow escape, and for a long time they sat in silence, calming themselves, collecting their scattered senses.
‘Don’t be afraid, Maxim, we’re safe here,’ Teddy said to him at last.
‘I’m never afraid when I’m with you, Teddy,’ Maxim replied, and took a handkerchief out of his pocket. He spat on it and began to pat his knee with the damp corner of the hankie.
Leaning forward, Teddy exclaimed, ‘Did I hurt you when I pushed you to the ground?’
Maxim shook his head and grinned at her. ‘It’s just a graze, and it doesn’t smart, honestly. Well, not really.’
She frowned and bent over him, examining his knee. ‘It doesn’t look bad; still, it ought to have some iodine on it…’ She raised her head and scanned the crowd. ‘Usually there are Red Cross nurses covering all of the underground stations during a raid. But I don’t see one, do you?’
He shook his head. ‘Anyway, I’m not hurt. Please don’t fuss, Teddy, I’ll wash my knee in the men’s toilet at Lyon’s Comer House. We’re still going there for lunch, aren’t we?’
‘At this rate, if the raid keeps up, it’ll be more like tea that we’ll be having,’ she muttered.
Maxim did not respond. He leaned back against the base of the steps, stretched out his legs and sat staring at his shoes for the longest time, his young face preoccupied, and thoughtful. At last he turned his dark eyes to hers, and said in a low voice, ‘Thanks for shielding me the way you did.’
‘I will always protect you, Maxim. For as long as I live. You’re my boy, and I love you very much.’
‘I love you, Teddy.’
Maxim did not say anything after this, and neither did she. But in a short while his hand crept into hers and he drew even closer to her, rested his head against her bare arm. And they sat quietly, feeling safe together, knowing that whatever happened they had each other.
Suddenly, unexpectedly, the lone voice of a stranger rang out in the underground, a woman’s beautiful soprano reaching high to the ceiling as she began to sing, ‘There’ll be bluebirds over the white cliffs of Dover, tomorrow, just you wait and see. There’ll be love and laughter, and peace ever after, tomorrow, when the world is free.’
As the woman went on singing, people began to join in, lending their own voices to hers as she picked up the verse, and soon the whole underground station reverberated with the wonderful sound of the crowd singing their hearts out, Teddy and Maxim included. ‘The shepherd will tend his sheep, the valley will bloom again and Jimmy will go to sleep in his own little room again. There’ll be bluebirds over the white cliffs of Dover, tomorrow, just you wait and see.’
Once the song was finished, the woman stood up and shouted, ‘We’re not going to let the Jerries get us down, are we?’
‘NO!’ the crowd bellowed back.
‘Then let’s keep on singing!’ the woman shouted.
‘How about Pack Up Your Troubles In Your Old Kit Bag?’ an elderly lady cried.
‘You’ve got the wrong war, ducks!’ their little cabbie retorted, unexpectedly popping up next to Teddy and Maxim, and grinning at them.
‘Let’s have I’m Gonna Get Lit Up When The Lights Go Up In London,’ another person called out.
The crowd roared its approval of this suggestion, and the soprano started them off. They followed her lead, and once this number was finished she began another, and then another, and another after that, and the crowd sang along for the next hour.
Teddy and Maxim joined in, enjoying themselves, the raid certainly not forgotten but pushed to one side for a while. And they found themselves enveloped in the extraordinary warmth and friendliness of these Londoners with whom they now shared a common fate, and the common bonds of courage, perseverance, cheerfulness and defiance.
It was an air-raid warden who broke up the sing-song when he pushed his way down the crowded steps, blowing his whistle enthusiastically. Voices fell silent at once and dozens of pairs of eyes were focused on him intently.
‘The All Clear has just gone off,’ he called to them. ‘You can leave, it’s safe now. But file out in an orderly fashion, please. We don’t want any accidents down here. There’s enough trouble up there.’
Maxim sprang to his feet, stretched out his hand, and helped Teddy to get up.
‘I’m going to have beans on toast,’ he said to her as they slowly mounted the steps, following the hordes of people out of the underground. ‘What are you going to have for lunch?’
‘The same I suppose. There’s never much choice these days, lovey, is there?’ she answered, and realised that she was quite hungry. Survival, she thought. That’s what it’s all about. I must make sure we survive until Hitler is defeated and the world is a free place again.
TWENTY-FOUR
Maxim placed the two new shirts on top of the other clothes in the suitcase on his bed, closed the lid, locked it, and carried the case to the door.
Then he turned around and walked back to the chest of drawers near the window, where he stood for a moment looking at the photographs. He always did this before returning to boarding school, and over the past two years it had become something of a little ritual.
There were three pictures, large, framed in silver, and carefully arranged in a semi-circle on the chest. One of them in particular held Maxim’s attention and he stared at it intently. It was his favourite because whenever he remembered the day the picture had been taken he experienced a surge of happiness, and the sadness inside him went away for a while.
The photograph was of the four people he loved the most in the whole world. He was in it, too, and it had been taken on his fourth birthday in 1938, in the garden of their country villa in the Wannsee, near the two lakes of the same name, on the outskirts of Berlin.
Aunt Hedy had been the photographer, and she had arranged the little family group exactly the way she had wanted, had seated them on the lawn underneath the linden trees down by the edge of the little lake, the Kleiner Wannsee.
He sat between Mutti and Papa. His grandmother was next to his father, and Teddy was on the other side of his mother, and they were all smiling and their faces looked radiant in the bright sunlight filtering through the leafy branches of the trees. It was a happy picture, just as the day had been a happy one, and it had remained etched in his memory since then.
When he closed his eyes, as he did now, he could picture everything exactly the way it was that afternoon, could conjure it up, so that every nuance was vivid, every detail crystal clear, and he could relive it again…
***
He was four years old today.
He
stood in the vast garden shielding his eyes against the bright yellow sun. The day was beautiful. The sky was blue, filled with puff-ball white clouds, and down at the bottom of the sloping green lawns the lake glittered like glass and the big white sails of their boat billowed about in the wind.
His nose twitched. He caught a whiff of lilacs mingled with the scent of roses, and the tangy smell of brine wafted up from the lake. He ran across the lawn to the table under the weeping willow tree. It was spread with a white damask cloth and set for eight with his mother’s fine bone china. Nearby, on another table, were piled many beribboned boxes, full of fanciful toys and games and picture books, he was quite sure of that.
He heard his mother’s voice calling him and suddenly she and Papa were standing there next to him, smiling, and hugging him, and out of the corner of his eye he saw Aunt Sigrid and Uncle Thomas walking across the lawn to join them. Behind Uncle Thomas walked his chauffeur, Heinz, who was carrying a very large object wrapped in brown paper. Heinz put the package down in front of him, and Aunt Sigrid cried, ‘It’s for you, darling!’ and she helped him to rip the paper off; and then before his eyes stood the most beautiful rocking horse he had ever seen, with a golden mane and flaring nostrils and a polished saddle trimmed with silver bells.
Papa placed him on the rocking horse and pushed him, and he rode it excitedly for a while, and Aunt Hedy took many photographs of him until finally his father said, ‘Enough,’ and lifted him down. Next, everyone gave him the other presents in the pretty boxes, and Aunt Hedy said, ‘Now I want a family group,’ and she led them to the linden trees and they sat down, whilst she snapped and snapped her camera.
Walter suddenly appeared on the terrace, and led the way down the steps and across the lawn, carrying the big silver tea tray, and behind him came a small procession composed of Marta, Gerda and Anna, the three maids from the mansion in the Tiergartenstrasse, and even Frau Muller, the cook, was in the little procession. The trays the four women held out in front of them were laden with tea, sandwiches and fancy cakes and marzipan pigs and a Schwarzwalder Kirschtorte oozing rich brown chocolate and cherries and whipped cream, which Frau Muller had made specially for his birthday as an extra treat.
His grandmother took hold of his hand and led him to the table. ‘You have the place of honour, sweetheart,’ she said, and then they ate the special birthday tea and everyone chattered and laughed and was happy.
Not long after tea was finished, Walter came walking down the terrace steps again, this time bringing a birthday cake with four red candles on it, and everyone sang the special birthday song, and he sang it too, which made them all laugh. And when the song was finished he huffed and puffed and blew out the candles and made a wish, just as Mutti had told him to do, and everyone kissed him and hugged him again, and it was the best day, the happiest day he had ever spent…
***
After a few seconds, Maxim opened his eyes and stared again at the photograph taken on his fourth birthday. It had been the last one he had spent with his parents. They had planned to be in London with him and Teddy to celebrate his fifth, but they had not come because Gangan was so sick and they had been unable to travel. And then the war had started and they were trapped in Berlin. He had celebrated six more birthdays without them and this had made him very sad.
He thought about his parents every day, wondering where they were and what they were doing, and he worried a lot about them. He knew bad things were done to Jews in Germany. Teddy had told him that when he was seven. ‘You’re old enough now to know,’ she had said, and had gone on to explain that this was the reason his father had wanted them to leave Germany in the first place. But he was sure his parents were safe. He had always been close to them, and he would have known if something terrible had happened to them, would have felt it in his heart if they were dead. And so, like Teddy and Aunt Ketti he truly believed they were still alive.
He loved Teddy very much, and he knew she loved him. When he had been small, and Mutti had not come, he had cried a lot, and Teddy had rocked him in her arms and comforted him, and made him feel safe. He did not know what he would do without Teddy, she was the most important person in his life after Papa and Mutti. When his father and mother finally arrived they would all live together in a big house here in London, perhaps in Regent’s Park or Hampstead. He supposed Aunt Hedy would live with them too, but he did not know whether his grandmother would, since he was not sure whether or not she had died. Gangan had been a very, very old lady even six years ago, and then she had fallen ill, and perhaps by now she had gone to Heaven to be with Grandfather Westheim. He would miss her if she had.
Maxim’s glance shifted to the other photographs.
One was of his parents in 1935. Teddy called it ‘the portrait’ because they were posed together in evening clothes, his mother in a white satin gown with a little cape and glittering diamond necklace, his father in white tie and tails.
The third photograph was of Mutti and Teddy and him standing outside the Plaza-Athenee Hotel in Paris; it had been taken by the head concierge who was always so nice to them.
Stepping closer to the chest, Maxim now pulled open the top drawer, took out Papa’s black leather wallet which he had given to him the day before he and Mutti and Teddy had gone to Paris. He opened it and took out the enlarged snapshot of Mutti, which was his father’s favourite.
His mother was standing on the jetty at the villa in Wannsee, with the lake shimmering in the sunlight behind her. How beautiful she was with her halo of blonde hair, her bright, curving smile, her lovely, lustrous eyes. He kissed her face and then quickly slipped the picture back into one side of the wallet. In the other section were the pieces of paper his father had given him when he was little, but he did not take them out because he knew the words very well by now. ‘These are the standards by which to live your life,’ Papa had told him. He had not understood some of the things his father had written down, at least not then, for he had been only a little boy, only four. Now that he was ten and grown up, he knew what the words meant, and he intended to live by those standards, which were his father’s.
Returning the wallet to its given place in the drawer, Maxim picked up the carved wooden horse which his father had also given him just before he had left Germany. He touched the little horse gently, thinking first of Papa and then of Mutti, loving them so much.
He shut his eyes tightly, squeezing back the tears that suddenly pricked behind his lids. ‘Be safe,’ he whispered out loud. ‘Be safe. Come back to me, Mutti and Papa. Please, please come back to me.’
He stood there for the longest time, clutching the little horse and swallowing his tears as the sadness returned and once again filled him up inside.
‘Maxim! Maxim!’ he heard Teddy calling from downstairs. ‘It’s time to go!’
He put the horse next to the wallet in the drawer and closed it, and gave the photographs a last lingering glance before running over to the door. Picking up his suitcase, he took a deep breath, threw back his shoulders, and went out.
***
‘I hate railway stations!’ Maxim announced vehemently as he and Teddy walked down the platform at Victoria.
Teddy glanced at him swiftly and although she made no comment her heart shifted inside her.
‘You always have to say goodbye at railway stations,’ he muttered, and stopped walking abruptly.
She also came to a standstill and turned to look at him. His fresh young face, so healthy and rosy and lightly tanned by the summer sun, had suddenly set in rigid lines and she saw his mother’s stubbornness in his tightened mouth and in the proud tilt of his little chin.
‘I know, darling,’ she said softly, putting the suitcase down, reaching out and squeezing his shoulder.
‘I had to say goodbye to Papa at the railway station in Berlin and to Mutti in Paris, and whenever I go back to school it’s you I leave behind, and I don’t like the feeling it gives me inside.’
She pulled him to her and hugged hi
m close to her body. ‘I’m not going anywhere, I shall always be here for you, and anyway you’re clever enough to know there is a difference when we say goodbye. The circumstances are different from those other times.’
‘I suppose… but I still hate railway stations!’
‘It’ll be different soon, Maxim. Once the war is over Colet Court and St Paul’s won’t need to be evacuated any longer and will return to London, and you’ll be able to become a day boy and live at home.’
He nodded and his face began to brighten. ‘Stubby’s father says that our two schools have played a big part in the war effort. After all, Colet Court houses recruits, and St Paul’s is General Montgomery’s headquarters. He’s an old boy of St Paul’s, don’t forget.’
She laughed. ‘How could I! Neither you nor Stubby are likely to let me. In any case, once things return to normal the two schools will be housed in their old buildings in Hammersmith again. And talking of Stubby’s father, isn’t that Stubby himself standing over there looking rather forlorn?’
‘Gosh, it is! I wonder where Mrs Trenton is? She usually brings old Stubby to the station herself. Come on, Teddy, let’s go and see what’s up.’ So saying he hitched his satchel of books over his shoulder and hurried off, looking behind him once and beckoning urgently to her.
‘Don’t trail your new raincoat on the ground!’ she shouted after him, following more slowly, hampered as she was by the large suitcase, her purse and a carrier bag full of sandwiches and buns for their lunch.
‘Hello, Teddy,’ Stubby said politely as she drew closer.
‘Hello, Alan. Where’s your mother?’
‘She had to dash off. She’s got an appointment in Whitehall this morning. At the Ministry of Works. Something to do with Dad’s business. She’s been sort of trying to run it since my uncle had a heart attack, while Dad’s in the RAF. She knew you were bound to arrive any minute with Duke, and that you’d see me safely on the train.’