Against the Wind (12 page)

Betsy and Angelique nodded in unison.

Through bleary eyes I replied, “An excellent idea, Lindy. But tomorrow is time enough.”

“No,” Angelique interrupted. “You must write at the bottom of her letter.”

“Me?” I asked.

Lindy explained. “It will help my mum, you see? If you write a note and promise her that you’ll take good care of me in the crossing. You’ll tell her all will be well and that she must not worry.”

Both Betsy and Angelique concurred.

Lindy continued, “You see, I’m the last. My brothers both killed…and my dad too. Mum was worried about torpedoes. Afraid to send me away to America. But afraid for me to stay. I’ve told her all about you. If you write a postscript and promise her you’ll look after me…”

Betsy piped, “And me too.”

“Yes. Of course.” I nodded and took the notebook and the pencil. What could I write to assure Lindy’s mother?

Opening the door I admitted the trio. I sat at a small wooden desk and, by the dim light, scanned the last page of Lindy’s letter.

“Mum, tell Aunt Candice that little Betsy and I are staying very close to one another, sleeping tonight in a dorm with lots of other girls sailing to America. I have made friends with a girl my own age named Angelique—I call her Angel—who fled from Spain and then France and now is sailing with the Hollywood entertainment group. There are also boy choristers from Westminster who will sing in Hollywood. We heard them singing in the next compartment on the train, and I asked them to perform in our talent program. They have agreed.

We have all heard there are navy men in great ships who will be sailing all around our ship to prevent U-boats from attacking us. We are eager to start off.

Please, Mum, do not worry, as all is well. The BBC violinist Elisa Lindheim Murphy is escort for our group, and we will have music lessons on board and a talent show. I will sing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” with Betsy and my other friends. Now Elisa will write to you about me.

Please do not answer this letter, as I will be in the mid-Atlantic. Excuse the handwriting. The train was joggly, and so was the bus.

Good-bye for now from your loving daughter, Lindy, and the others.

Your loving daughter, Lindy

XXXXXX

Lindy wrote in the letters
P
and
S
for me. I opened my Bible to Psalm 91 and started my postscript.

P.S.

Dear Mrs. Petticaris,

What a lovely girl your Lindy is! She cheers us all up and brings such light into our midst. I am so blessed to have such a beautiful and cheerful soul as Lindy to help me with the others. My own children made the crossing to America, and I know how you must worry, but I know all will be well. I am comforted by this promise from the Psalms, “He shall give His angels charge over thee to keep thee in all thy ways” Psalm 91:11!
⁶
God has placed His angels around your dear angel, and I promise I will also watch over her on our journey to America!

Sincerely, Elisa Lindheim Murphy

I returned the letter to Lindy, who read it aloud to her companions. She thanked me with a hug.

“That’s for Mum. I know she will smile when she reads this.”

We did not hear the approach of Miss Pike. The dour matron, clothed in a long flannel nightgown and nightcap, loomed in the doorway. “What’s all this!” she demanded. “What! What! Don’t you know it’s past curfew?”

The trio of girls cowered.

I rose from the desk. “I had an important letter to write to Lindy’s mother.”

“You could accomplish your task before curfew, Missus Murphy.”

“It was past curfew when we arrived here, Miss Pike.” I motioned the girls to hurry back to their dorm as I dealt with the tyrant.

“You are a representative of CORB—and as such you will obey the rules.”

I countered, “I am a private citizen escorting these girls as a favor to your organization. Now I must ask you, Miss Pike: what are you doing up and about after curfew? Morning will come awfully early.”

My question flustered the grim woman. She blinked at me through her thick glasses and then with a harrumph scurried off to her own quarters.

Grateful Lindy had come to me seeking comfort for her mother, I settled down on my groaning cot with the promise of Psalm 91 fresh in my mind: “A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee.”
⁷

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.
P
SALM
23:4
ESV

VIENNA, AUSTRIA

DECEMBER 21, 1937

I heard the bells of St. Stephan’s Cathedral ring as I set out to the music school today. Each ominous, mournful clang marked a step I took toward the Musikverein and the hidden Guarnerius Rudy told me about.

Overnight, Nazi gangs have been busy. The streets are plastered with posters.
Jews out of Vienna!
the handbills shout. As fast as Austrian police remove them, three more spring up.

I carried an empty violin case with me. I did not think anyone was watching me or had heard Rudy’s dying request for me to get the violin, but I was still fearful someone might have followed. It would not do to enter the building empty-handed and emerge carrying a violin.

In the music school hallway echoing with the emptiness of the holidays, I have found the Guarnerius violin exactly where Rudy said: behind the case containing the grinning jaws and empty eye sockets of the skull of Joseph Haydn.

The presence of death seems a fitting metaphor for all that is happening around me. Jews are being assaulted. Rudy tortured and killed. My father confined in the living hell called Dachau. Austria is dying and will soon be as dead as Haydn.

I heard a piano being played somewhere in the warren of practice rooms. I think now it was the ghost of Haydn mocking all our efforts to snatch lives from the ravening Nazi jaws.

I switched the violin cases as Rudy told me to do. Rudy’s broken body was vivid in my mind as I resisted running from the hall.

Tonight, Rudy’s handsome face, battered beyond recognition, will not leave my thoughts. Was there a reason Rudy hid the violin case behind Haydn’s skull? Perhaps the skull is a warning…or perhaps it is a prophecy.

Hear my cry, O God, listen to my prayer…for You have been my refuge, a strong tower against the enemy. Let me dwell in Your tent forever! Let me take refuge under the shelter of Your wings!
P
SALM
61:1, 3–4
ESV

VIENNA, AUSTRIA

DECEMBER 1937 (CONTINUED)

A miracle this diary is still here. The police were waiting in my apartment when I returned home. The little Jewish man who lived downstairs let them in. I am certain he was too afraid to warn me they were there, even though he told me of danger to my friends in the Jewish Quarter.

The Shupos told me they were checking the stories of everyone in the orchestra and asked why I had missed the performance. I did not want to tell them I had seen what happened to Rudy. I repeated my tale of having been ill because of hearing the news that my brother was sick and my family would not come to Vienna for the holidays.

A nondescript man drew a nondescript notebook from a matching coordinated overcoat. Flipping over several pages, he advised that I had been reported as being away from home for several hours. The other man, with his scuffed shoes and shiny, dark blue suit, eyed me suspiciously.

“Of course,” I said indignantly, “I had to make a phone call. You can check if you like.”

I denied having seen Rudy that evening.

They tried to get me to admit being well-acquainted with Rudy, but I evaded it. I took a high moral tone and told them Rudy had brought trouble on himself. They said I had been seen at the concert hall. If I was well enough to go out, why wasn’t I performing?

I extended my hands, which were genuinely trembling. “I’m a violinist. How can I play like this?”

Suddenly my stomach turned over, and I was genuinely nauseous too. When I looked at my own hand, I suddenly had a vision of Rudy’s, all hacked and bloody.

They tried to suggest Rudy and I were lovers, but this was safer ground, and I was able to laugh scornfully. I told them that the American newsman John Murphy was my lover and that he would certainly be interested in hearing about their interrogation in my apartment. This shook them up a little.

They believed me, apologized, pleading the need to complete their routine investigation, and left.

After they departed, I began to shake in earnest from my toes to the top of my head and shiver uncontrollably. Had these men seen what had been done to Rudy—to that bright, talented, heroic life? And they were here, pestering me, instead of finding the Nazi thugs who killed him?

⁶
KJV

⁷
Psalm 91:7
KJV

10

LIVERPOOL, ENGLAND
AUTUMN 1940

A
t daybreak Miss Pike rousted us out of the dormitory and onto buses. Every morning there was a lull in the Nazi bombing raids between when the last of the night squadrons departed for Germany and before the massive daylight attacks began. Taking advantage of this window of relative safety, we were hustled to the docks.

It was there we got our first glimpse of the SS
Newcastle,
which would be our home for the next week, as well as our passport to a world without war. She was eight decks high from keel to bridge and loomed over the dock like a floating block of London flats. Her two smokestacks puffed gently, as if welcoming us aboard.

The contrast to blacked-out and partially demolished wartime London could not have been greater.
Newcastle
was sparkling clean. Though her hull was gray,
Newcastle
’s superstructure was gleaming white and her funnels adorned with black and red stripes.

None of my girls had ever been farther from home than London. Alice claimed to have visited Paris, but no one believed her. Memorable outings for Lindy and Betsy had been occasional trips to the pleasure pavilion at Brighton. Margaret’s eyes were wide, and Lindy was hurriedly scribbling in her notebook. Betsy tugged at her cousin’s sleeve. “Lindy!” she said urgently. “It’s huge! Won’t we get lost?”

“Not to worry,” Lindy assured her. “Elisa will look after us.”

I would not have to meet all their needs alone, I learned.
Newcastle
had a complement of two hundred officers and crew. Of these, over half were from India—
lascars
, they were called. Since there were only ninety evacuees with the CORB program, sometimes it felt as if each child had a personal servant.

Dressed in white cotton tunics, wearing slippers with turned-up toes, and sporting turbans in pink or orange or sky blue, the lascar stewards were also far outside my girls’ experience. Margaret pointed and whispered to Alice: “Are they wearing their pajamas?”

“I think it’s wonderful,” Lindy breathed. “Like genies from the
Arabian Nights.
”

The first steward to greet us at the top of the gangplank bowed from the waist to receive Lindy aboard. “Welcome, missy,” he said. “May I show you to your stateroom?” For a girl from Lewes with two
e
’s, it must have been a most memorable moment.

My girls were bunked together, with me in an adjacent cabin.

As soon as the full muster of refugee children, chaperones, and paying passengers were accounted for,
Newcastle
got up steam, unmoored, and moved out into the channel.

Whereupon we dropped anchor.

“Why are we stopping?” Alice fretted. “Are we sinking? Aren’t we going to America after all?”

The explanation, delivered by Pablo, was simple: “The
Newcastle
sails as part of a convoy. We cannot leave until all the other ships are ready. Tonight we wait here; tomorrow, we sail.”