The English Girl (43 page)

‘I like your room, Stella.’

I show her my cupboard, open it up.

‘Look – you can walk right inside.’

She touches one of my dresses, delicately, with one finger.

‘You have very nice clothes,’ she says. Politely, trying to smile.

But then she goes to the window, staring out at the street, pressing her face to the glass, so when she turns back towards me, there’s a white misted oval from her breath on the pane.

‘Can I see my home from here?’ she asks me.

‘I think it’s in that direction.’ I point vaguely, thinking this might reassure her.

She stares.

‘I can’t see it.’ Her face falters.

I seat her beside me on the bed.

‘Listen, Lotte. This is very important.’

‘I’m listening.’ A little impatient.

‘It’s a secret that you’re here. I don’t want the other people who live in the house to know.’

‘Why not?’

I scrabble around in my mind for something to say – something safe.

‘It’s an adventure, Lotte. You’re going to hide here secretly.’

She knows I haven’t answered her question.

‘But I don’t really want an adventure, Stella,’ she says. Polite but definite. As though she feels patronised. I know that I’ve struck the wrong note.

‘Sometimes Janika the housekeeper can come in my bedroom to clean. I don’t want her to know you’re staying with me.’

‘Will she be cross if she finds me? Will she call the SS?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know what she’d do. It’s best if she doesn’t find you. So if I’m not here and you hear someone coming, you’ll have to go in the cupboard and pull the door to. Can you do that?’

She thinks about this.

‘Is it dark in the cupboard if you close the door?’

She’s a much younger child suddenly. She can sometimes be so grown-up, so knowing, but now she seems so young.

‘Yes,’ I tell her. ‘I think it would be quite dark.’

‘I don’t like the dark,’ she says.

She’s suddenly very afraid. She stares at me, pale, wide-eyed. As though all the terror and horror of the last few days are distilled into this one fear.

I feel helpless.

‘Lotte – you’re going to be so brave. I know you are.’ My voice bright and encouraging. ‘You’re like the girl in the story of Baba Yaga, d’you remember? When her comb turned into a forest of trees, and she escaped from the witch? You’re going to be brave like her.’

She ignores this.

‘Can’t you stay here with me?’ she says.

‘No. I have to go out for a while.’

‘Can’t you take me with you?’

‘No, I don’t think so.’

‘You said you’d never let go of me, when we went skating,’ she says. ‘You said you wouldn’t let me out of your sight.’ Her voice accusing.

‘I’m not going to leave you for long. It’s safer that way, Lotte. You have to trust me. Will you trust me?’

She nods, chewing her lip. Her eyes are raw holes in her white face.

‘I saw the men who came to take Harri away,’ she tells me then. Her voice is so full it spills over. ‘Harri didn’t do anything. He used to tease me, and he could be a bit annoying. But he never did anything really bad,’ she says.

I turn a little away, so Lotte can’t see my face.

‘No, he didn’t.’ I feel the ache that rises like dough beneath my breastbone.

She grabs my arm; her fingers bite into my wrist.

‘It’s my fault, isn’t it?’ she says.

The pain in her eyes pierces me.

‘No, of course not. Nothing’s your fault,’ I tell her. Not understanding.

‘School was closed today, Stella. That was my fault, wasn’t it? Is it all my fault, all the horrible things? The men taking Harri away? Is it because I wished for school to be shut?’

I put my arms around her. She’s trembling.

‘No, sweetheart, it isn’t your fault. We can’t make things happen by thinking about them, Lotte. We can’t make things happen by wishing for them. If we could, the world would be very different,’ I say.

Lotte’s dark eyes are troubled.

‘You said,
Wish for something else.
That’s what you told me,’ she says.

I walk past the queue of people waiting for visas, which stretches right down the street.

The receptionist eyes me suspiciously. She has a neat Peter Pan collar and severely scraped-back hair. She addresses me in German.

‘I’m English,’ I tell her.

Her stern expression eases, hearing my voice.

‘I need to see someone who works here,’ I tell her. ‘A friend of mine. Mr Reece.’

‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible. Mr Reece is busy.’

‘I think he’ll see me, if you say who I am.’

She shakes her head.

‘He’s occupied. You must realise. There’s a lot going on.’

I lean across the desk towards her.

‘Please. You have to try. You have to tell him I’m here.’

She frowns.

‘Your name?’

I tell her.

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ she says. ‘But I’m not promising anything.’

She indicates a chair, but I know I couldn’t sit still. I pace restlessly.

I only have to wait a few minutes, though it seems like an age. Then a door behind the desk bangs back, and Frank comes and shakes my hand.

‘Stella.’

He looks more dishevelled than ever. He’s badly in need of a shave, and his clothes are so creased that I wonder if he slept in his suit. He sees something in my face, perhaps: he nods, but doesn’t smile. He knows I haven’t just come to give him the date from Rainer’s diary.

He ushers me into his office. A wide walnut desk and leather armchairs; a smell of beeswax polish. On the wall, a portrait of our King, and a map of the world, with the British Empire coloured in pink and covering half the globe.

He indicates a chair. I sit.

He studies me, frowning slightly, trying to read me.

‘I’m surprised you’re still here in Vienna, Stella. I thought you’d have gone home by now.’

‘I have something I need to ask you,’ I tell him. ‘Something very important. Well, two things.’

I tell him what has happened – about Harri, about the SS. My voice is high and shrill, and sounds like someone else’s voice. As I speak, Frank’s expression becomes empathic, concerned.

‘Oh Stella. I’m so sorry, my dear.’

His tone is low and solemn. As at the news of a death. This chills me.

‘Then they came for his mother and grandfather. I was there when they came, and I went out the back way with Lotte – that’s Harri’s little sister…’ The words tumbling out of me.

He offers me a cigarette from a cedarwood box on his desk. Moving slowly, carefully, as though I am fragile as crystal, and a sudden movement might shatter me. As he leans in to light the cigarette, I catch the sharp smell of his sweat.

He lets me smoke for a moment before he starts to speak.

‘They’ve really got to work with quite extraordinary speed,’ he tells me. ‘Herr Himmler arrived at half past four on Saturday morning. At the airport, at Aspern.’

‘I don’t know who he is,’ I say.

‘Herr Himmler is one of Hitler’s closest lieutenants. From that moment on Saturday morning, all the Austrian police files were in Himmler’s hands,’ he tells me.

There are urgent sounds from the corridor. A telephone shrills in the distance. There are rapid running footsteps, the slamming of a door.

‘Can you help me find them – Harri and his family?’ I ask him.

He doesn’t respond for a moment. My heart thuds. There are little lines between his brows, precise as though cut with a blade.

‘It’s not that easy, Stella. Once they’re in the clutches of the SS. Occasionally they release them. Mostly they seem to disappear.’

‘But – people can’t just
vanish
.’ That high, panicked note in my voice.

‘When was Harri arrested?’

‘Saturday.’

‘Stella, my dear girl.’ He’s speaking so carefully, so gently. ‘I’m afraid he may not even be in Vienna any more.’

Rage flickers through me – that he’s being so negative. He stands here, in this imposing room, where everything seems to speak of Britain’s reach, of its power; and yet he sounds so helpless.

‘But
somebody
must know.
Somebody
must be able to help.’

‘When people enquire, the shutters come down. No influence seems to work.’

I won’t accept this.

‘You must know
someone
I could speak to.’

He doesn’t reply for a moment. He goes to stand in front of the window, smoking, looking out, not looking at me. His gangly body is dark against the wintry light outside, as though he’s made of shadow.

‘Stella, I’d help you if I could,’ he says then, rather slowly. ‘If only there was a way. You know that.’

His voice is empty. And I understand in that moment that he’s not just stalling or putting me off. That when he says he can’t help me, he means what he says.

I feel tears spilling. I pull a handkerchief out of my bag and try to scrub them away. Frank comes to stand beside me and pats my shoulder, wearing that awkward, helpless look that men always wear when you cry. I tell myself I have to keep control, for Lotte’s sake, but the tears keep falling, I can’t stop them.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say, through the tears.

He murmurs something soothing.

At last, I manage to stop crying. I blow my nose and take up my cigarette, hungrily drawing in smoke.

Frank props himself against the edge of his desk.

‘Stella, my dear. There were two things,’ he says then. ‘Two things you wanted to ask. What was the second thing? Perhaps at least I could help you with that.’

I think of what I’m about to tell him, of what I am planning to do. I have a sense of vertigo. It’s as though I’m balancing on a wire above vast acres of air, and the slightest move is perilous.

‘It’s Harri’s little sister, Lotte. I’m hiding her in my room.’

His eyes widen.

‘In Rainer Krause’s apartment?’

‘Yes.’

He has an appalled look.

‘My God, Stella. You’re taking one hell of a risk.’

‘But, Frank, you take risks
all the time
. And urge other people to take them.’

‘For our country, yes,’ he says. ‘But not just for one child.’

‘I need you to organise papers for her. So I can take her to England,’ I tell him.

He stares at me.

But this time I won’t let him refuse me.

‘You can do it, I know you can,’ I tell him.

‘It isn’t an easy thing, Stella. It would take time, to get papers for her. And I really think this whole idea is most unwise,’ he says.

‘I’m sure you can manage something.
Please
, Frank. You
have
to. I helped you, didn’t I? It’s your turn to do something for me. I mean, that’s fair play, isn’t it?’

I hope he’s the kind of Englishman who venerates fair play.

He looks at me uncertainly for a moment.

‘There might be a way. We’d have to forge something. But that would put you at risk as well as the child.’

‘All right. Do that. Forge something.’

‘You shouldn’t do this, Stella. I’d strongly advise against it. It’s far too dangerous.’

‘Look – you would do anything for our country, I know that. You’d twist things, break the law if you had to.
Use
people.’

He flinches slightly, when I say that. Perhaps this makes him uncomfortable. Perhaps he doesn’t like to see himself in this way.

‘You’d do what it takes,’ I say again. ‘I understand that. And I would do whatever it takes for Lotte.’

He says nothing.

I think of Lotte in my bedroom. The raw look in her face, her fingers biting into my wrist.
School was closed today, Stella. That was my fault, wasn’t it? Is it all my fault
? And I think,
No, it’s
my
fault, everything that’s happened
. The thought sears through me.

‘Harri would have got away if it wasn’t for me,’ I tell him. My voice splinters. ‘And this is the only way I can mend things. Well, not
mend
them exactly – I can’t do that – but make them better somehow. This is the one thing I can do – to take this child to safety. You
have
to help me.’

‘Stella.’ Frank’s voice has a practised, soothing tone. ‘When terrible things happen, we often blame ourselves. It’s natural. But we’re usually wrong to do so. That’s not a good reason for doing something so rash. You can’t solve everything, my dear.’

‘But she’s mine now. I’m responsible for her. As though she’s my own child.’

He’s silent for a moment.

I think of something he told me at the Franziskanerkirche.

‘You once said to me,
It’s your choice
. And now I’ve chosen,’ I say.

He sighs; and puts up his hands in a little gesture of capitulation.

‘Well, Stella. You really are very steely, aren’t you? Very determined. The iron hand in the velvet glove,’ he says. ‘All right. One way to do it – the easiest way … I don’t suppose you’ve brought your passport?’

I take it out of my bag, hand it to him.

‘The quickest way might be to doctor your passport. To put the girl on your passport, as your child. How old is she?’

‘She’s seven.’

‘We’d have to change your age – you’re not old enough to be her mother.’

He’s brisk now, taking control. This is what I came for. Though I have the sense that he, like me, is making things up as he goes.

‘It would be best to give you an identity as a married woman,’ he tells me. ‘That’s less conspicuous. So when you go, you should wear a ring on your ring finger. And you have a young face – you’d need to make yourself look as old as you can … But I’m really not happy with this, Stella. It wouldn’t pass close scrutiny,’ he says.

‘Just do it.’

‘Give me her details then.’ Reluctantly.

I realise I don’t know her birthday. I make up a birth date for her. I call her Charlotte, the English version of her name. He writes everything down on his notepad.

Suddenly it’s real to me – that I am going to do this. I feel the pulses that hammer in my head, at my throat.

‘How will you travel?’ he asks me.

‘What do you advise?’

‘Take the train to Switzerland. It will all depend on who looks at your papers, how scrupulous they are. Once you’re in Switzerland you’ll be safe.
If
you get there … Come back this time tomorrow and I’ll have the passport ready. But I think this is a rather sentimental decision, frankly. You’re absolutely sure I can’t persuade you to think again?’