Against the Wind (29 page)

When I put on my hundred-year glasses I knew Lindy’s mother would also forgive me. So would Murphy and Katie and Louis and Charles. When we met in heaven, they would all forgive me for not coming home as I had promised.

There was a roaring in my ears when there was no wind. Was it the sign of my approaching death? Whether my last breath came during this gray, fog-shrouded half light or during the blackness of night, that did not seem to matter either.

“A plane,” Connor’s tiny voice croaked. He sounded like the bleating of a newborn lamb.

The roaring increased.

John roused himself from where he lay against his brother’s shoulder. Through swollen, cracked lips he slurred, “He might be right.”

James waved feebly at the veil of vapor overhead. “Never see us…anyway.”

This final taunting angered me. Ships had turned away, whales had offered pretend rescue, fog banks had mimicked safety…now this?

“Jesus,” I said. “Help.”

Engine sounds roared past overhead. The airplane sounded close enough to touch, certainly close enough for us to be seen.

Another craft motored past us. We might as well have already been in a watery grave instead of buoyed upon it.

Tomas sponged his brother’s forehead with a brine-dampened rag. “Whole flight…of them. Wish we could…shout.”

Connor stood on unsteady, quaking legs. “I’m going…I’m going to climb the mast.”

Hallucinating for certain. The child had no strength with which to climb. Even if he did, what good would it do?

Or what harm? Anyway, I had no energy with which to stop him.

Hand over hand, Connor managed it. Halfway up the mast he missed a grip and almost fell. His tin whistle dropped from his pocket, bounced on the railing, and splashed into the sea.

I watched him climb, certain his body would likewise plunge into the ocean.

While I lay there, looking up, something astonishing happened. It was as if the edge of an unseen hand sliced downward through the clouds and swept a portion of them aside. As cleanly as the bow of my violin sawed across the strings, that precise a gap appeared in the fog.

I stared into clear blue sky…in time to witness a floatplane with British markings fly past and leave us behind.

“Flare,” Browne said, lunging to his feet and falling over Podlaski. “Flare!”

Connor reached the top of the mast. “Another one’s…coming.”

Barrett fumbled with a smoke canister. The igniting ring broke off in his hand.

Browne snapped open the breach of the flare gun but could not locate the shells.

The drone of the flight of planes was diminishing. A last lone member of the group appeared behind the others. In seconds it too would be gone.

Reaching inside his jacket Connor drew out the pocket handkerchief he had offered his mother at the train station. Clinging to the swaying mast with one hand, Connor waved the small scrap of white. “Down here. Look here. We’re here.”

The plane was already beyond us. I groaned as I realized the pilot could no longer see us. The twelve-count rhythm of the waves was fully victorious at last.

Connor continued to signal valiantly. I did not have the heart to tell him he was wasting what little strength he still possessed.

And then the note sung by the floatplane’s engines changed.

“Sunderland flying boat,” James offered to no one in particular.

The machine, which had dwindled to a black speck, began to grow larger again. “Seen us!” Connor said triumphantly.

He was right.

Within minutes a rubber life raft was dumped from the plane. It plunged into the sea near us and when it bobbed up again, Browne, Barrett, and John paddled Number 7 toward it.

Lashed to the raft was a supply of food, which we could not use, and five one-gallon jugs of water.

There was also a handwritten note:
Have called for help. Will circle until they arrive to direct them to you. Don’t worry. If fog closes in, I will land near you. Thank whoever signaled us. Navigator spotted it at the last second.

Within an hour a sardine fishing boat out of Galway steamed alongside us. It took another hour for the crewmen to carefully hoist us aboard and lay us amid their nets.

Only Connor was able to climb from Number 7 into the trawler under his own power.

Three hours later we sailed past the Aran Islands and into Galway Bay.

We had been twenty miles from Ireland when we were rescued.

Connor—and his mother’s pocket handkerchief—had saved us.

23

GALWAY, IRELAND
AUTUMN 1940

S
ome days after our rescue I awakened in the bedroom of a white-plastered, two-room, thatched-roof cottage overlooking Galway Bay. The local doctor, Ignatius O’Toole, stood over me with a look of satisfaction on his ruddy face.

“Well done. Ye’ll live,” he pronounced.

Murphy was at my side. He had hitched a ride from England on a military cargo plane when news of our rescue came over the wire at the TENS office.

He received instructions for my care from the physician, who was grateful to hand me off to another and hurry to deliver a baby. Murphy and I were alone. I spoke for the first time in days as tears brimmed in his eyes. “The children?” I managed.

Murphy took my hand. He replied, knowing completely which children I meant. “You did good, my darling. Except for Patsy’s two little ones lost in the beginning, all the kids on Number 7 are alive and well.”

“Where?”

“Staying with local families.”

“Will they go home again? to England?” I thought of those who would never return to their waiting loved ones. Lindy’s notebook was on the lamp table beside my bed.

“We’re arranging transport for the kids. Back to their families in England. Elisa…” He kissed my fingertips. “It may be awhile before we’re able to get back to the U.S.”

“They’ve shut down the evacuation?”

“Several merchant ships have been sunk this week. Too dangerous for kids to cross to America. And Elisa, too dangerous for you to try again.”

I closed my eyes as warm tears spilled out. I silently prayed for strength. I thanked God our own babies had made it across the Atlantic before the deadly German U-boat attacks had been ramped up. “Okay, Murphy. Your mother and father…I can’t think of a better place for our children. Stiff upper lip?”

“There’s my girl. We’ll do what we can over here.”

“The others?”

“Mariah has taken Raquel and her girls home to her father’s farm.”

“Poor man. Mariah was so worried about him. Losing Patsy and the little ones. I never saw such a courageous woman as Mariah.”

“Officer Browne told me. He says a woman is like the makings of a cuppa tea. You never know how strong she’ll be ’til she’s in hot water. Seems he’s developed a liking for Irish tea. He tells me he has fallen in love with Mariah.”

I smiled faintly. “And she with him. A good man. We wouldn’t have made it without him.”

“There’ll be an Irish wedding to celebrate, come St. Bride’s Day, I think.”

The healing of my broken ribs was slow. The recurring nightmares of our ordeal receded day by day as Murphy held me in the night and kept me on a steady emotional keel. Weeks passed too quickly. Autumn turned to winter. I had come to love the peace of Ireland. For the first time in years, I forgot about the war.

News about England’s fate and the Blitz and the widely expected Nazi invasion trickled in days after the events. The protective flock of RAF pilots finally pushed back the assault of the German Luftwaffe, ending the Blitz for the time being. Churchill declared to the world on the wireless, “Never have so many owed so much to so few.”

In distant lands far to the south, the British army carried on the battle alone against the Nazis. Three times a week, Murphy traipsed the mile into the village for news and mail. He always returned with the question of the Irish on his lips, “When will the Yanks come into this thing? I wonder.”

The U.S. remained neutral. Convoys bearing food and supplies from America braved the dangers of the Atlantic. Many merchant ships were sunk in the crossing. Such information brought the fresh terror of nightmares to me, so Murphy stopped telling me what he heard in the village. We concentrated on being together in a way we had never experienced in our marriage before. It was almost a honeymoon. Hours were filled with long walks, good books, and making love without fear of being interrupted by an air raid siren or bomb exploding.

The cold rains of early December sluiced off the roof as Murphy and I warmed ourselves beside the peat fire. The doctor arrived for my final checkup, carrying a London newspaper. The front page displayed photos of the reunions of the children of Lifeboat Number 7 with their families in England.

I sat silently gazing at the images for a time, loving the small heroes who waved and smiled at the crowds who gathered to welcome them home. No one would ever really know what these young champions had endured. I also knew well that many mothers and fathers who had lost their children on the
Newcastle
looked at those same photos with wistful longing.

I thumbed through Lindy’s notebook and realized the time to return to England and to the war had come. When I raised my eyes, Murphy was studying me tenderly.

“Those kids,” he said slowly. “Little Connor. The rest. They are some strong tea, huh?”

“It was some hot water.”

“Ready to go back to the kettle?”

I squared my shoulders and nodded. “Yes. Ready.”

May the L
ORD
give strength to His people! May the Lord bless His people with peace!
P
SALM
29:11
ESV

VIENNA, AUSTRIA

MARCH 14, 1938

Austria is no more. The German army is at the border and will march into this beautiful little nation to devour it. Murphy has come back here to my flat for me. I scribble this final note in haste. When Leah comes we must leave Vienna quickly.

Murphy says my name is on a list with the Gestapo, and they will come knocking on my door. No matter that I am married to an American. They know I have been aiding Jewish children to escape from Germany. Murphy says he will not leave me. He is my safety and protector.

I play the Guarnarius one last time for Austria, for my lost father, and for Murphy.

I ask him, “It’s all over, isn’t it? Like the night we left Berlin?”

Murphy answers with a nod. I see his compassion for me reflected in his eyes. “I’m so sorry, Elisa.”

“I have been running my whole life. When will it end?”

“When the Jews have their own homeland. When Jerusalem is the capital of reborn Israel. Isn’t that what your friends are working for?”

“Leah? Yes. And why Rudy was murdered. Oh, Murphy! I pray that day will come.”

I am happy now that I wear Murphy’s lapis wedding band on my finger. I grieve for all those of Jewish heritage who have no plan, no place to run.

The wind is howling outside, like the night my father left the Reich in a plane. Murphy tells me again the story of my father’s escape from Berlin. How Papa bravely climbed into the tiny biplane and, against all odds, flew against the wind into the night. The storm raged around him, and he vanished.

I pray now for Papa. And for Mama. How she must long for him.

I am weary. Murphy’s arm is around me, and I lean against him. I know that if I am arrested and these are the last words I write, he will carry my story out to the West.

I hear footsteps now. Heavy on the stairs. Too heavy for Leah. Have the Nazis come for me?

I hear a man cough in the corridor. Murphy stands suddenly. His fists are clenched.

I hear my name! “Elisa?” Is that my father’s voice calling to me?

Murphy goes to the door and peers through the peephole into the hallway. He gasps and throws the door wide. “Theo! Theo! It’s you!”

My father asks, “Where is Elisa? Where? I’ve come so far. Escaped. Where is my daughter? They are coming now! The Nazis will swallow Austria whole by tomorrow! Is Elisa here? We must hurry!”