The Children of Willesden Lane: Beyond The Kindertransport: A Memoir of Music, Love, and Survival (7 page)

“Thank you, ma’am,” Lisa said, and stared around the room at the clothes, the perfume bottles, and the satin-covered chairs.

“But I haven’t called you in here to talk about diapers. I want you to be my lady’s maid.”

Lisa mouth dropped.

“My maid is pregnant and she’s leaving. I’ll find someone else to wash the diapers. Tomorrow she’ll teach you all you need to know. Just don’t throw out
my
underwear!” She laughed loudly and waved three fingers quickly in a good-bye gesture, turning back to her cosmetics table.

Every Friday Lisa was paid her salary and she stashed it proudly in a well-fingered envelope in the nightstand where she kept her mother’s picture and her copy of “Clair de Lune.” On Saturday, Lisa would accompany Gladys and Monty to the village for supplies. They would pile in an old pickup—Gladys and Monty in the cab and Lisa in back; occasionally she would catch them stealing a kiss. Lisa enjoyed looking out at the wide expanse of the English countryside. It was a welcome break from the routine.

One Saturday traffic came to a complete standstill. Lisa stuck her head out around the cab of the truck: The road was filled with a long green convoy of British army trucks and tanks, crawling like a centipede. She hadn’t seen tanks since Hitler’s army had moved into Vienna over a year ago. “Are we at war?” she asked breathlessly.

“Just getting ready in case, luv,” Gladys replied, then looked over at Monty’s fascinated gaze, which followed the convoy. “Don’t be getting any ideas, Monty!”

While the others shopped for groceries, Lisa wandered the high street. In the window of a secondhand shop, she saw an old red bicycle. She’d never had a bicycle; in Vienna they were important things for adults, not play toys for children. She had dreamed of the day when she would be older and could get one. She stared at the wheels— wheels that could take people to places they wanted to go someday. A honking horn disturbed her reverie, and she looked up to find Monty beckoning to her. She climbed back into the truck to return to Peacock Manor.

On special evenings, the staff cranked up the old Victrola and sang along to recordings of “Daisy, Daisy” or “Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree.” The simple, melancholy tunes lingered in her head and she wished she could try them out on a piano. Sometimes she would hum “Clair de Lune” and picture the moonlight glistening off the Danube. If she closed her eyes tight enough she could picture her mother and father, with Sonia and Rosie, walking along its banks. But each time she opened her eyes Vienna would fade more and more into the distance.

Lisa thrived as the lady’s maid. She carefully inspected skirts for torn hems, scoured blouses for missing buttons, and sewed in drooping shoulder pads without being asked. The lady of the house soon felt comfortable with Lisa’s choices of purses to match her shoes and joked that Lisa had a better sense of style than her!

Once, Lisa got up her nerve to show the lady a new-style shoe in the fashion magazine.

“You’ve been stealing my magazines?” she asked with an arched eyebrow.

Lisa looked stricken.

“I’m just kidding, Lisa, you don’t have to take things so seriously all the time.”

But Lisa did take everything seriously. She had to. Anxious weeks went by with no return letters from her family. One day Monty handed her a beat-up blue airmail letter with a German stamp. She was overjoyed to see that the address on the letter was 13 Franzenbrückestrasse; it was postmarked a month earlier. The letter was short; her mother said simply: “Make us proud of you; we miss you every day.” Monty put his arm around her when the tears came.

After dinner the staff would gather around the wireless and listen to the BBC broadcast. The news from Europe was disquieting. It had been almost a year since Hitler had annexed Austria and six months since he had taken over Sudetenland. In the three months since Lisa had been in England, she had heard nothing to ease her worry.

Lisa was tidying up the new office of the Home Guard (which had taken over the billiards room) when she heard loud voices coming from the captain’s study next door.

“I told you this is what it would come to!” a man’s voice shouted.

“What were we supposed to do!”

“Stop the bastard, that’s what.”

“It has nothing to do with us!”

When the voices quieted, Lisa could hear the frightening voice that made her shiver with fear. The voice of the Führer echoed through the manor house:
“Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer!”

She walked closer to the room where the men were gathered and stood in the hall listening, terrified by the voice of the man she so hated.

The captain was shouting. “Can you believe that madman has just marched into Czechoslovakia without a shot being fired?”

He walked into the hall, waving his arms in disgust, and caught sight of Lisa. “Aha! Come here, we need you.”

He took her arm gently and led her into the room, where five uniformed men were scattered on chairs in front of the radio.

“What is this maniac saying now?” he asked.
“Ausrottung, es ist nichts unmöglich!”
came the bone-chilling voice of Hitler.

“Extermination . . . nothing is impossible,” Lisa translated slowly, growing more upset with each word.

An officer, seeing her distress, exclaimed: “Have a heart, don’t make the poor girl listen to this.”

“All right, dear, that’s enough. Thank you,” the Captain said.

A young girl shouldn’t hear it? Lisa asked herself. I have lived it, I have seen it! She thought of Kristallnacht and saw her father on the ground, naked and humiliated, an image she could not erase from her mind. Suddenly, she was overwhelmed with a desire to be with others like her. Yes, Monty was friendly, Gladys meant well, and the lady was kind, too; she had enough to eat and she was safe; it should be enough, she told herself, but it wasn’t.

It was hard to get back to the routine of her job, but Lisa dutifully laid out the mistress’s outfits and matched the shoes to the purse and the skirt to the jacket. As always, the lady was very pleased.

“A wonderful choice, Lisa.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Lisa said. Her heart had been heavy with guilt. She needed to ask the most important question, and she’d been putting it off. “Madam? May I ask you something?”

“Certainly, what is it?”

“I have a sister in Vienna. She’s very sweet and she could work in the kitchen. We very much need someone to sponsor her so she can get on the kinder train, and if there’s any—”

The lady looked at her, interrupting. “How old is she?” “Twelve.”

The lady frowned.

“She’ll be thirteen in a week,” Lisa added, exaggerating. “I’d take care of her on my time off. She’d be no trouble, I promise. She’s very well behaved. . . .”

The lady gave her a sad smile. “I wish I could make these kinds of decisions on my own . . . but I promise I’ll ask my husband. You’ve got nerve, I like that.”

Sunday morning came and Gladys came into Lisa’s room as usual. “Are you certain I can’t coax you to church? There’s a lot of young boys there! Might be fun. It’d get you out of the house.”

“No, thank you,” Lisa said politely. She couldn’t imagine the idea of going to church. She listened to Gladys and Monty’s laughter echo through the hall, as they made their way out the kitchen door and into the pickup. She lay on her bed and listened to the wind rustling through the leaves out the window.

She missed her family so. Closing her eyes she pictured the ceramic tailor of Dresden on the sideboard of the living room and scanned the pictures on the wall in her mind’s eye. This was her ritual; she was determined not to forget a thing. She imagined she could hear her parents speaking in their native German—and missed their voices.

The wind reminded her of the last movement of the Chopin Sonata in B Minor. She got up and crept to the distant room where the piano was. She sat on the bench, lifted the lid, and put her fingers to the keys. Everyone was away, but still she was frightened—so she played the keys with silent strokes, not making a sound. Her fingers flew over the familiar patterns and for a moment she felt a great joy, connected to her music and to her family, even if it was only in her imagination. This was what her mother had begged her to do, so she played for her mother, and she played for herself, for the joy of it, until she could hear the sounds of the footsteps returning. Then she crept secretly back to her room.

The next day Lisa was polishing the two-toned open-toed pumps in the walk-in closet off the lady’s bedroom. The lady had seemed upset about many things—about the baby’s colic, about the Home Guard officers’ cigar smoke, about the perfume she had spilled—about the day in general. She called Lisa into the boudoir, where she was seated at the mirror.

“I’ve talked to the captain,” she said. “Unfortunately we won’t be able to take on another person . . . I’m sorry.”

The words fell heavily on Lisa and seemed to fall heavily on the lady as well. “You see, he’s given half the house to the government and he feels he’s done his duty.”

“Thank you for asking him,” Lisa said softly.

The woman kept powdering her face, and Lisa turned to go.

“Lisa? How old are you?” “I’ll be fifteen.”

“That’s a wonderful age. I wish I were fifteen again.” The woman’s voice was distant, unhappy. Lisa didn’t know how to respond. “When I was fifteen, I thought the world was my oyster. I thought I was going to make something of my life. . . .” She looked directly into Lisa’s eyes. “I’m sorry. . . .”

The lady’s voice trailed off. “Lay out my green jacket, would you?”

“Make something of yourself.” The phrase ran through Lisa’s mind as she ironed the jackets, pressed the skirts, and polished the shoes. Over and over came the calm voice of her mother—its gentle insistence invading her thoughts. Whom could she look to for guidance if not her mother?

That night she slept fitfully, tossing and turning as the summer rains beat down on the slanted roof close to her head. In the morning, she was awakened by a rap at the door.

“Are you coming or not, sleepyhead?” Gladys yelled. She dressed hurriedly, opened the drawer, and grabbed the envelope that held the money she had saved from her wages, stuffing it into her pocket.

The weekly trip to town didn’t have the same carefree air it normally did. Gladys and Monty seemed sad, sitting close to one another but saying nothing. Was it a lovers’ quarrel? Lisa had never had a boyfriend, and it seemed so mysterious. She watched Gladys lean her head on Monty’s huge shoulder; there were tears in her eyes.

Lisa helped Gladys pick through the parsnips and celery while Monty headed for the high street with a purposeful stride.

“You’re watching the last steps of a free man,” the head maid said, watching him go. “The big lout is signing up for the navy today.”

“The navy?” Lisa asked, filled with wonder.

“There’s a rumor that the mobilization is going to be announced any minute; he wanted to beat them to it.”

Lisa, filled with emotion, kept staring at Monty.

In an uncharacteristic gesture, Gladys put her arm around Lisa. “He’ll show those Germans, you’ll see . . . it’s going to be all right.” But Gladys started to cry. “I’m sorry, luv, look at this silly blubbering.”

They finished the shopping and Lisa carried the heavy vegetables to the truck.

“May I do an errand, ma’am?”

“Go ahead, of course you can.”

Lisa doubled back around the corner and found the secondhand shop. She summoned up all her courage and walked in.

“I want to buy the bicycle,” she said, trying as hard as she could to pronounce the “w” the way the English people did. She saw the curious expression of the shopkeeper and knew her accent was still dreadfully foreign.

“So, you must be that refugee we’ve heard about. My wife told me we had one of you nearby.”

“Yes,” Lisa said, feeling self-conscious.

“And you’re looking for a bicycle?”

“Yes . . . I have money.”

The man walked up to the bike that Lisa was pointing to and looked at the tag. “Four pound two shillings. Hmm, seems a bit pricey for what it is. How does two pound sound?” he asked with a wink.

Lisa fished in her envelope and handed two large coins to the man. She fought back a feeling of guilt; this was the money for Sonia! But she’d make more money soon, she promised herself.

“Can you keep it here until I come to get it?” “Whenever you need it, it’ll be here.”

7

L
ISA WAITED
until the day after she was paid her small wages, then arose before dawn and packed her things. The sun was coming up when she tiptoed into the kitchen and opened the cupboard. She cut a wedge of cheese from under the damp towel in the larder and took bite after bite, fearful of the hunger that had so often gnawed at her during the last months in Vienna. She cut a portion of dried meat, wrapped it in newspaper, and stuffed it in her coat pocket.

The cold damp of dawn greeted her as she opened the back door. She stood on the threshold for a long moment, then came back into the warmth of the kitchen, drawn by the kindness she had felt in this house. Using the pencil Gladys kept for the grocery list, she wrote carefully: “Thank you. I’m sorry, Lisa Jura.”

She walked the two miles to the village. When the secondhand shop opened, she collected her red bike, tied her small suitcase to the back, and was off. The sun was just breaking through the morning fog as she left the village. The sign read: “Brighton—45 miles.”

The rhythm of the pedals reminded her of a toccata and fugue by Bach, which she began to hum as she flew through the countryside, passing cows in the fields and birds on the telephone wires. She tapped out its staccato beat with her feet and began to sing at full volume. She was happy; she was free! She was going to London. She would go to Bloomsbury House and make them find a place for her in the big city.

As the day wore on and the miles got longer, she was hit by a wave of indecision. Was it terrible to have left a house with caring people who fed and sheltered her? The captain’s wife must hate her now; Gladys and Monty must think the worst of refugees. Would she even make it to London?