The Gathering Storm

  The confrontation went downhill fast. The Mayfair magistrate was called in. He agreed with Mrs. Reese and Colonel Taylor that St. Mark’s must be cleared of dangerous foreign influence immediately. By morning, he promised, the human debris of the war in France would be swept away. Mayfair would be Mayfair once again.

  It was late when I heard Inga crying softly in the choir loft. “It is my fault, Lora,” she sobbed. “I’m so sorry! I should not have argued with her. It was wrong of me to change the baby’s nappies. I did not think of it. I am so sorry. My fault. I’ve brought trouble upon everyone.”

  I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her against my chest. I stroked her hair and my thoughts flew to everything she had survived to come to this beloved haven of freedom. How could it be that Inga, who had endured so much brutality, could now blame herself for Mrs. Reese’s fury? Could Inga believe they were being punished because she had changed a baby’s nappies in the sanctuary?

  I had witnessed such madness in Berlin. I had heard of a Jew beaten to death because he had dared to sit on a park bench beside an Aryan woman. The act of violence had no context to any reasonable person. It was cruelty for its own sake—perverted demonic pleasure. And now there were those who ruled nations and made laws that granted mindless brutality a right to exist in society. The world of Europe was upside down.

  But here? In London? This was the place we had all dreamed of coming! I thought of the death of Inga’s family. Her brutal rape by a gang of Nazi men along the highway to the sea. Did this dear young woman believe she had caused the evil men had committed against her?

  After a time, Inga’s trembling ceased. I said softly, “You must not blame yourself, Inga. Not ever, ever again. It is not your fault when evil people do brutal things. They choose to punish simply because they have the power to do so. Inga! You must never blame yourself for the evil others have committed against you.”

  She did not reply. I saw that once again she had lapsed into silence. Her expression was stunned, her eyes unseeing. When I said her name, she did not acknowledge my voice.

  “So, you are gone again,” I whispered.

  I slept on the pew with Inga in my arms through the night. In the morning when trucks came to collect their precious cargo and carry them away, Inga was first to climb onto the transport. She did not look back or answer me when I called to her. Her eyes were empty as she stared through the slats.

  As suddenly as St. Mark’s Church had filled with the destitute and desperate refugees, it had been emptied out.

  I had taken my freedom for granted. My American documents were ready to be presented if any petty bureaucrat demanded to know what I was doing in England.

  The order by which the refugees of St. Mark’s were arrested demanded that every unclassified person between the ages of sixteen and sixty be incarcerated until a determination of status could be made. Mothers with small children would not leave them with us. The misery was palpable.

  Had they fled the Nazis only for this?

  Children whimpered. The heat radiated off the cobbled streets. Here and there I saw self-satisfied expressions on the faces of our Mayfair neighbors. It was no secret that many viewed the transportation of enemy aliens out of London as a precaution. No matter that the “enemy mob” was actually Jews about to be imprisoned by the very Nazis they had fled from.

  Madame Rose, back again from Wales for yet another cargo of refugees, warned the commander in her gruff American accent there would be a great outcry in America.

  But he paid no attention.

  Midmorning, more livestock trucks pulled up at the front doors of the church. A collective groan rose through the ranks of those who waited.

  Stricken, Hermione buried her face in her hands. “Not here! Not in England!”

  I watched in horror as nearly everyone who had come to us for help and refuge was loaded and driven away. “Where will they be taken?” I cried in anguish.

  A young Home Guard soldier remarked cruelly, “Straight to hell, for all I care. They’re Jerries, ain’t they?”

  Madame Rose stepped between me and the youth. She was a fortress he could not get past. “What is your name?” she demanded.

  “Ted Walker, if it’s any of your business.”

  “I’ll make it my business.”

  “A Yank.”

  “And a well-connected Yank.” She pulled out the front page photograph of her and her orphans arriving with the Dunkirk ships in Dover.

  “Ah,” he said, studying the newspaper. “I thought I recognized you.” His face reddened. He tried to laugh off his rudeness.

  She would not have it. “Young man, this is Lora Kepler. Also American. Daughter of the brave and famous Christian theologian Robert Bittick, lately murdered by the Nazis. Her father fought the Nazis before you were out of knee britches. Stand down, or you shall think the bricks of this hallowed building have fallen upon your head.”

  She was too much like the head mistress of a school for the fellow not to obey. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, tucking his chin.

  “Now,” Madame Rose insisted. “Apologize.”

  He tipped his hat. “Pardon me.”

  Madame Rose continued. “And you will treat every man, woman, and child in this sorrowful exodus with respect, or I will personally see to it you are set to work cleaning latrines…for the duration of the war.”

  My imagination worked overtime. I remembered the stories of Nazi concentration camps. Would there be food for the little ones? Beds? Clothing?

  I raised my eyes to see Eben hurrying up North Audley Street as the last truck rumbled past him. He raised both arms as if in an embrace. His expression was as angry and troubled as my own.

  “What’s this? What’s this?” Eben cried as he reached us.

  Madame Rose replied with disgust, “You know very well what this is. Not content to intern the men, someone has ordered all the shelters be emptied. And so everyone…”

  Eben’s head wagged in disbelief as the cattle truck rounded the corner. “Not here. Not England.”

  I felt ill.

  Hermione wrung her hands. “What to do? What to do?”

  Madame Rose wagged the folded newspaper in the air like a club. “We fight. We speak out. For those who have no voice.”

  25

  It was hot that afternoon as Eben and I made our way to the TENS offices near teatime. I wondered what the temperatures must be in the Bermondsey warehouse, where our people were interned.

  We hurried past the Coal Hole pub near the Savoy Hotel. From within I clearly heard the latest anti-refugee drinking song.

  “As I go rolling down the Strand,

  I see them strolling hand in hand.

  And I really don’t,

  I just don’t understand

  Why there are so many Jews

  Around, in London…”

  Eben’s lips pressed together in an angry line as the chorus followed us.

  “Why can’t the Jews simply disappear?

  Hitler’s got them on the run in Germany,

  Why can’t we do the same thing over here?”

  I halted midstride as Inga’s face came to my mind. Eben stopped after a few paces and turned as if to ask me what I was waiting for.

  Pressing my fingers to my temples to counter a pounding headache, I asked, “Why do they hate so much?”

  Empty palms up, Eben looked at the sign above the Coal Hole entrance. “If only we could see the demons who stand behind these fellows and whisper in their ears.”

  I argued from the center of the sidewalk: “Not here. Not in England.”

  “Everywhere, Lora. And in every generation.”

  “That still doesn’t explain why.”

  There was no time to waste, yet Eben pulled me from the crowds on the Strand into the cool portico of the Savoy Hotel. I was aware that only the elite of society could afford this place. With a nudge, Eben guided me through the revolving door, past the uniformed doorman, and into the lobby.

&
nbsp; “Where are we going?” I asked, uncomfortable among the wealthy hotel guests who sipped tea and ate delicate sandwiches from silver trays. My pocketbook was empty. I could not afford even a cup of tea.

  In spite of this, Eben spotted a vacant camel-backed sofa and we sat down in the midst of London’s opulent society. I smoothed my working class skirt, my back ramrod straight. The clatter of fine china teacups and sterling silver cutlery accented the murmur of conversation.

  “I want you to remember this.” Eben’s glance swept the room.

  “Remember this?”

  “It is an illusion. This world is as unreal as a stage set in a Noel Coward play. The real world is the refugees who swelter inside a warehouse across the river in Bermondsey.”

  I watched as a waiter poured Darjeeling tea from a polished tea service for four matrons in elegant hats. I thought of the faces of mothers and children in the cattle trucks being driven away to internment.

  Eben put his hand on mine. “Do you understand what I am saying?”

  I nodded “yes,” then shook my head “no.”

  He replied, “For these, the suffering of others is an intrusion. How can one enjoy scones and strawberry jam when London is suddenly crowded with people who have lost everything? So these”—he swept his hand across the picture of ease—“they hate the Jews who remind them of the dark storm gathering force thirty miles across the Channel. Even in Buckingham Palace the royals tell themselves and one another that the Jews really had it coming. The Jews brought trouble on themselves in Germany, they say.”

  As if to confirm Eben’s words, a woman’s shrill, aristocratic voice remarked, “What is it about? Why should we fight a war because Hitler invaded Poland?”

  Eben arched an eyebrow. “There. The thoughts of a lady who no doubt is welcome at the Chelsea Flower Show, or in the gardens of the Palace. How can Jews fight against the Nazis and high society as well? I say this woman will terribly miss the Paris fashions. She will lay down at night knowing her lack of haute couture is the fault of Poland, and she’ll blame the Jews, who disturbed the ambitions of Hitler.”

  Once again the misery of Inga came strongly to my mind. She and the others had been herded into a brick warehouse on the South Bank.

  Eben asked, “Who comes to your mind when you hear such a thing? Or when you hear a song such as the one we heard on the street?”

  I replied honestly, “Inga. A Belgian Jewish girl a bit younger than me. Family killed. She…was…beaten. Beaten and raped by a Nazi gang. Somehow made it to the coast of France. Made it here. Interned now.”

  Eben raised his chin as if to sniff the wind. “Bring it down to one soul. Inga, orphaned and raped, sipping tea in the lobby of the Savoy. Can you imagine? Eh? She brought it on herself, didn’t she?”

  I understood. “So they sing, ‘Why can’t the Jews simply disappear?’ And they will make them disappear.”

  “All right. That’s the way it is. And then here we are, reminding the tea and crumpets crowd of unpleasant realities.” He paused a long moment. “I read the words of the prophet. Oh, it was centuries ago. Ezekiel 33. ‘I have set you on the wall as a watchman to warn my people. Whether they heed you or not, the warning you give will be imputed to you as righteousness. But if you hear the trumpet of the enemy and do not sound the warning, then the blood of my people will be upon you.…’”

  Suddenly the pleasantries and complacent detachment of the crowd in the hotel lobby were more than I could take. “I am afraid for them.”

  “Yes. Oblivious, they have made this their Paradise. Hitler has another goal for England: oblivion and living hell.”

  “I am more afraid for Inga. No hope left for her.”

  I followed Eben’s gaze to the black tuxedoed maître d’ who eyed us with concern. I had no gloves. I did not wear a hat. Our incongruous appearance had made an unpleasant ripple in the lobby. The maitre d’ walked toward us with an official demeanor.

  “We are about to be cast out of Paradise.” Eben smiled bitterly.

  “May we help you, sir?” The maitre’d bowed ever so slightly.

  Eben ignored him and said to me, “There is always a reason when God brings someone into your thoughts. You must not delay. Go to the internment center. Tell Inga what we are doing. Tell her and the others that I’ve gone to the news office and the press will assail Parliament and the Palace. We will not find the help we need among the residents of the Savoy. Tell her, with God’s help, we intend to turn this around.”

  “May we help you?” the unsmiling maitre d’ asked a second time.

  Eben said, “We are in search of Eden.”

  “Sir?”

  “Well then, is this Parliament?”

  “Parliament? I beg your pardon?”

  “Is this the Palace, then?”

  “No, sir, this is the Savoy.”

  “Then, no, thank you, you cannot help.”

  Cool and focused, Eben and I determined to meet back at St. Mark’s Church in two hours. We parted and went separate directions under the glaring eyes of the hotel guests: I, across the river to the Bermondsey warehouse, and Eben to the TENS news office.

  Crossing the river by the footbridge below the Savoy, there was just time enough for one last glimpse of St. Paul’s Cathedral.

  Then I plunged into the squalor of warehouses with bricked-up windows. In walking rapidly through the crooked South Bank lanes and sweltering alleyways en route to Bermondsey, it was easy for me to imagine I had entered the world of Charles Dickens.

  In point of fact, Dickens would have recognized it all as well. This was the world of the cut-purse and the debtor’s prison. This was where press gangs swooped up unwary drunken sailors and shipped them off for lengthy and dangerous sea voyages. This was the world of rag-pickers and beggars; of Fagan and the Artful Dodger.

  But those images, however grim, were too romantic. I recalled Papa explaining that Dickens’ own father had been imprisoned for debt. To keep from starving, the young boy, who would later become the master Victorian storyteller, worked twelve-hour days, labeling bottles of boot polish.

  So things in London had always had a grim side. But this was the twentieth century. It was an age of learning and achievement; of philanthropy and enlightenment; of the brotherhood of man.

  Try telling that to the refugees who lost everything in Germany and Poland and Czechoslovakia. Try explaining the wonders of the modern age to the evacuees who had barely escaped from the Continent with their lives.

  Try explaining to Inga why she was locked up in a warehouse on the South Bank of the Thames.

  I squared my shoulders and took a deep but cautious breath. The Thames was tidal much farther upriver than here. Just now the tide was out, exposing acres and centuries of muck. And the breeze, it seemed, always blew from north to south. It spared London but asserted the abiding presence of the river to Southwark, and Bankside, and Bermondsey, at least half of every day.

  A pair of wharf rats quarreled over a rotten head of cabbage. I hurried on.

  The abandoned warehouse that had been requisitioned for refugee “housing” was far enough from the river that its walls did not drip slime or grow mold. In a curious contrast to the surrounding air, it had a sharp, pungent scent that I had trouble placing at first.

  “Tannery,” explained the guard when I presented my credentials and asked for admittance. “No more bales of hides, but the caustic soaked into the walls, like. Cowhides in one door, shoe leather out t’other. Hotter it gets, the stronger the smell.”

  The interior still had three floors, pierced at intervals with wooden ramps and staircases. The men occupied the uppermost floor, orphans and mothers with children the bottom, single women and older children the middle level.

  I found Inga in the midst of a chicken wire jungle. The entire second story had been subdivided by wooden frames and tacked-up farm fencing into twenty inmate dormitories. Bunks, four high, occupied the outer walls of each pen. The center of the enclosure was left bar
e and sported a couple wobbly tables and a handful of unmatched wooden chairs.

  A game of checkers moved with all the flash of a snail race, closely observed by women for whom observing the rats fighting for the cabbage would have been an exciting spectacle.

  Inga sat alone on the bottom bunk in the darkest corner of the room. She barely glanced up when I entered and sat beside her on the thin mattress.

  In a word, Inga looked limp. Her hair hung in unwashed strands, concealing her forehead but exposing one shell-like ear. The girl’s shoulders drooped, and her chin almost touched her chest.

  “Inga,” I said softly, taking the young woman’s hand in mine.

  “Hello, Lora,” Inga acknowledged at last. “Have they put you in here too?”

  I felt guilty when I shook my head. “This is not how it’s going to be. We are working on it, Eben and me. Others, too. We have friends with the American news agency. You’ll see.”

  “Did you know there are Nazis here?” Inga asked without seeming to hear my words of hope. “They say Hitler’s coming here; will be here within weeks. They whisper it, but with pride. They still hate Jews, but they are afraid of the rest of us, so they keep to themselves.” The girl turned hopeless, empty eyes on me. “Can you imagine anyone being afraid of me?”

  “You just have to be strong a little while longer,” I encouraged. What could I say that would make any difference? What did I have to offer that was not empty words? “I know—at least I think I know—how you feel; what you’re going through. But war is just starting to become real to the people of England. I remember when I didn’t believe what was happening; how I could wake up one day and find everything as it was before Hitler. You’ll see. The Brits are confused, but their hearts are right. They want to do the right thing, and they will. Just wait a little longer.”

  Looking toward the blank wall, Inga said, “There’s just nothing left of me. I’m hollow inside, Lora. I have no strength left.”

  In an instant I remembered what Eben had said to me in the lobby of the Savoy. God had a reason when someone came strongly to mind. Perhaps this moment of need in Inga’s life was the reason I was here.