The Girl With No Name Page 5

  Like Lisa’s, Harry’s father had been arrested on Kristallnacht, leaving the young Heinrich to try and look after his invalid mother. They had no money and no way of making any. Harry had taken to the streets, earning a few pfennigs wherever he could, doing the dirty jobs that were the province of Jews: cleaning the gutters, scrubbing the daubed graffiti, Juden Raus, from walls and windows so that the new German owners would no longer be reminded that Jews had once inhabited their homes. Other times he stole from market stalls, occasionally from the offertory box in the local church, but always on the lookout for the Hitler Youth who delighted in tormenting any hapless Jew happening to cross their paths. He had become a tough street kid, a feral animal, fighting hard and dirty to defend himself against those marauding gangs. Then one day his mother received a postcard telling her that her husband, Ezra Schwarz, had died of a fever in prison. No further explanation was given. Harry was filled with fury, angry at everyone and everything; his mother seemed to give up and simply faded away. Within a month she, too, was dead, and Harry was left an orphan.

  ‘So what did you do then?’ asked Lisa.

  ‘Hanau was too hot for Jews by then, so I got myself to Frankfurt. There was still a Jewish community there. They put me in an orphanage and then on the train, so here I am and here I’ll stay.’

  Like Lisa, he hadn’t been evacuated when war with Germany had once again burst upon England; that day, they were both too newly arrived, already refugees with nowhere further to run.

  Lisa didn’t take Harry home to meet Aunt Naomi and Uncle Dan. She knew, instinctively, that Aunt Naomi in particular wouldn’t approve of him. Though they, too, lived in a tough area, Aunt Naomi had very high standards. Her house, though small, was spotless, her doorstep scrubbed, her windows bright. Lisa was never allowed to go to school in anything but clean and pressed clothes and the food on the table, though plain, was always well-cooked. Even on their small income, Aunt Naomi managed to keep her little family well fed. She definitely wouldn’t approve of a street urchin like Harry in his scruffy clothes and workman’s boots. Secretly, Lisa knew that her own mother wouldn’t approve of him either. Back in Hanau their paths would never have crossed; their families came from entirely different social strata, but here Harry was special, Lisa’s private link with home, and so she didn’t even mention him in Kemble Street.

  Hilda knew about him of course, she’d heard how Harry had come to Lisa’s rescue, but she didn’t like him. She felt he wasn’t the sort of person someone like her should know and was surprised when Lisa continued to be friends with him. Part of it was jealousy; Lisa was her friend, it was she who had helped Lisa to learn English, it was her mother who had invited Lisa to come home with her at any time and Hilda resented Harry’s intrusion. For his part, Harry considered Hilda a snobby little madam. She lived in a posh house and he knew she looked down her nose at him. Well, let her. He didn’t care.

  Their mutual antipathy kept them apart, but Lisa drew strength from each of them.

  4

  The expected air raids had not happened. There was one a few days after the declaration of war. The siren wailed its warning into the early-morning sky and the Federmans insisted that Lisa should take shelter with them in the cellar. As before, she had frozen in the doorway, looking down into the underground room, and Dan almost had to drag her down the steps.

  ‘Come on, Lisa, me duck,’ he said encouragingly. ‘We have to go down. It won’t be for long.’

  Naomi, coming in behind them, had pulled the door closed and the draught from the closure had snuffed the candle, engulfing them for a moment in total darkness. Lisa began to scream in terror. Remembering her earlier fear, Dan held her close, his arms wrapped round her, his voice soothing, ‘It’s all right, me duck, you’re all right,’ but she had remained rigid against him, her breath coming in ragged bursts, until Naomi had struck a match and lit the candles stuck in their beer bottles, the only light they had. The raid lasted two hours and Lisa sat stiff with fear throughout. In the flickering candlelight the stone walls seemed to move, closing in round her, the ceiling pressing down.

  I’m buried alive, she thought wretchedly as the minutes dragged by. I’d rather be upstairs in the house and take my chance with the bombs. She gripped her hands together so hard that her fingernails dug into her palms.

  Watching her, Dan and Naomi spoke softly to each other.

  ‘D’you think she’s going to be like this every time there’s a raid?’ Naomi wondered.

  ‘Let’s hope not,’ said Dan. ‘P’raps she’ll get used to it. She’s terrified, poor kid.’

  When the all-clear finally sounded Lisa leaped from the chair and ran up the stairs, bursting the door open, and was out into the fresh morning air before Dan or Naomi had even got to their feet.

  ‘I don’t know what to do with her,’ Naomi confided to Mary later in the day. ‘She’s really afraid of being shut in. We could all go to the public shelter in Hope Street, but Dan thinks that would be worse.’

  ‘Difficult for you,’ Mary mused. ‘Don’t know what to suggest. Do you have to shut the door? Silly question, of course you do.’

  ‘Not sure it would help anyway,’ said Naomi. ‘If only we could discuss it with her properly, perhaps find out what’s behind it.’

  They all waited in fear for the next warning, but it didn’t come. The days turned into weeks and there was no sign of the Luftwaffe. Everyone began to relax a little, except perhaps the air raid wardens. The blackout was severely enforced and the wardens patrolled the streets as soon as darkness fell, banging on any door where a dangerous shaft of light leaked past badly fitting curtains or blinds. Everyone still carried a gas mask in its box slung over the shoulder and at school there were regular gas mask drills. Lisa still hated hers, but she’d learned how to put it on correctly and by taking steady, deep breaths managed to breathe through the filter without panicking.

  ‘I hate these things,’ she said to Harry on the way home one day.

  ‘Better’an being gassed,’ Harry said, who had no problem wearing his.

  ‘I know, but I can’t breathe and it makes me panicky.’

  Harry, seeing the fear in her eyes at the thought of the mask, changed the subject and said, ‘Not coming back to school after Christmas. Got a job.’

  ‘What job?’

  ‘Errand boy.’

  ‘Errand boy?’

  ‘Don’t say it like that. It’s a job, OK? I get paid for it. Working for a bloke what runs a market stall, delivering stuff.’

  ‘What sort of stuff?’ asked Lisa, intrigued.

  Harry just tapped the side of his nose and grinned. ‘Just stuff,’ he said. ‘He gets it for people, stuff they want.’

  ‘Black market?’ cried Lisa.

  ‘Ssh!’ Harry hissed, looking round anxiously. ‘Course not. It’s all legit.’

  But he knew it wasn’t. The previous Saturday, he’d been caught nicking a packet of Woodbines from one of the stalls in Petticoat Lane. He’d been grabbed by the ear by a big bloke with ginger hair, who held him in a painfully tight grip and dragged him over to the Black Bull, the pub his boss, Mikey Sharp, used as his headquarters.

  ‘Caught this blighter pinchin’ from your barrow,’ he said, giving Harry such a shove that he fell on to the floor at Mikey’s feet.

  ‘Did you now?’ Mikey looked down at Harry with interest. ‘You been stealin’ from me, sunshine?’

  ‘Only Woodbines,’ quavered Harry. ‘Only ten.’

  ‘Only Woodbines,’ repeated Mikey as if considering the offence. ‘Only ten? What’d happen if everyone thought they could half-inch fags off my barrow? Where would I be then, eh?’

  ‘Dunno, sir,’ Harry said miserably.

  ‘No, nor do I,’ Mikey said. ‘Reckon you’ll have to pay for them somehow. Got any money, have you?’

  Thankful that he’d left the few coins he did have back at the hostel, Harry said, ‘No, sir.’ It might mean he was in for a beating, but he was used to thos
e; far better than having what little cash he had, taken from him.

  ‘So how you gonna pay me, then?’

  ‘Could work for you,’ suggested Harry, feeling suddenly brave. ‘Do jobs for you an’ that.’

  Mikey had looked at him speculatively for a moment. ‘You’re not English, are you?’ he said. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Harry Black an’ I am English, now.’

  ‘Now?’ Mikey raised an eyebrow. ‘What was you before?’

  ‘A refugee.’

  ‘From?’

  Harry thought fast. Don’t say Germany, he thought, this bloke might kill you for that. ‘From Hitler,’ he said.

  ‘I suppose that means we’re on the same side,’ Mikey said with a laugh. The man who’d caught Harry laughed, too. Harry didn’t. He didn’t know if he was supposed to. He just stayed where he was, sitting on the floor, and waited.

  ‘I reckon you’re German,’ Mikey said and waited for Harry’s nod before saying, ‘but not a bleedin’ Nazi.’

  Harry shook his head vigorously. ‘No! Not Nazi!’

  ‘Good,’ Mikey said. ‘Well, sunshine, that’s all right, as long as you behave. I could make use of a lad like you. Speak German, do you?’

  Harry nodded.

  ‘Course you do. Even that might prove useful.’ Mikey turned to the other man. ‘OK, Ginger, back to the barrow. I reckon half my stuff’ll have gone missing while you’ve been pratting about in here. Go on, out!’

  ‘Yes, boss.’ And the man hurried from the room.

  ‘So what is your name... when it ain’t Harry Black?’

  ‘Heinrich Schwarz.’

  ‘Hmm. Just like to know who it really is who’s working for me. And that’s what you wanna do, is it? Work for me?’

  Harry nodded.

  ‘Well then, Harry, get up and listen to me. If I catch you nickin’ stuff from me or from any of my stalls ever again, you’ll wish you’d never been born. Understand that, do you?’

  Though scared, Harry had nodded again. ‘Yes, sir.’ It would be a risk, working for a man like Mikey, but anything was better than going back to that school.

  He grinned at Lisa. ‘Anyway,’ he went on, ‘I’m a working man now and I won’t be coming back to that school no more, not after Christmas.’

  ‘So I won’t see you,’ Lisa said.

  ‘Course you will,’ Harry assured her, ‘just not at school, but you tell me if that little shit Roger touches you again when I’m not there and I’ll come and break his neck for him.’

  ‘He won’t,’ Lisa said. ‘He leaves me alone, now.’

  ‘Yeah, well if he doesn’t, you just let me know,’ Harry said darkly. ‘Tell you what,’ his mind darting forward to the next thing, ‘tell you what, tomorrow we could go up west. What d’you think?’

  ‘Up west?’ replied Lisa uncertainly. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Up to the West End. Look at Buckingham Palace and Trafalgar Square. See the shops and that.’

  ‘Aunt Naomi would never let me.’

  ‘Then don’t ask her,’ came Harry’s reply. ‘We’ll just go.’

  Lisa thought about it. It was tempting. She had hardly been out of Shoreditch since she’d arrived and she did want to see the famous parts of London, the places she’d heard about before she came.

  ‘I could say I was going round Hilda’s, I suppose,’ she said thoughtfully.

  ‘Yeah, say that,’ grinned Harry. ‘She won’t know.’

  ‘’S all right as long as she don’t come looking for me.’

  ‘Why would she?’

  ‘All right for you.’ Lisa jabbed him in the ribs. ‘You can just walk out of your hostel and no one asks where you’re going. Aunt Naomi doesn’t let me go far. Always wants to know where I’m going, and who with.’ She glanced sideways at Harry. His dark, curly hair was unruly and needed cutting. He had a graze across his cheek and a streak of mud under his chin. He was always muddy or bloody, or both, Lisa thought. Always in a scrap or a scrape. ‘She wouldn’t approve of you!’

  ‘Why ever not?’ Harry cried. ‘What’s the matter with me?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Lisa said with a grin, ‘but she likes to keep me close. She lets me go to Hilda’s house, she knows Hilda’s parents, but she doesn’t know you.’

  ‘Then just say you’re going there. Come on, Lisa, let’s have a bit of a lark.’

  They’d reached the end of Kemble Street now and Harry stopped on the corner. ‘See you tomorrow morning,’ he said as if it had all been agreed. ‘Meet you in the park.’

  ‘Don’t know when I’ll be able to get there,’ Lisa said, knowing as she spoke that she was giving in.

  ‘I’ll wait,’ said Harry.

  ‘See you then, but I’m not going on the Tube. Not going underground!’

  ‘No, OK,’ Harry agreed easily. ‘We can go on the bus.’

  ‘You got money for the bus?’

  It was Harry’s turn to grin. ‘Don’t worry about that,’ he said. ‘I can get some.’

  Lisa ran the last hundred yards home. The evening air was bitter; they had lingered too long and she wanted to get into the warm. She found Mary and Naomi sharing a pot of tea in the kitchen and flopped down at the table beside them. The kitchen was the warmest room in the house, but even so, with the fire as yet unlit in the grate, it was December-cold.

  ‘Tea, love?’ Naomi said, looking at Lisa’s chilly face. ‘You look freezing.’

  ‘Yes, please, Aunt Naomi.’

  Naomi poured her a cup, topping up her own and Mary’s. She gave a half glance to a letter leaning against the clock on the mantelpiece. A letter for Lisa.

  After the declaration of war Lisa knew that she couldn’t write directly to her family any more and as her mother had told her, she’d written to them care of Nikolaus Becker’s Zurich address. There had been no reply and she wasn’t even sure if her letter had reached Cousin Nikolaus. She wrote again, this time to the man himself, asking if he had received the letter to forward. It was some time before Nikolaus wrote back to say that he had sent the letter on, but had heard nothing back.

  Lisa had been clinging to the hope that Cousin Nikolaus would have definite news of them all. She ached to hear from them, to know for certain that they were all right, to know if they were still living in Hanau, in the same small apartment she’d left five months earlier.

  ‘D’you think they’re OK?’ she’d asked Harry one afternoon, longing for reassurance to bolster her hope.

  Harry shrugged. ‘I don’t know, do I?’ Then, seeing his answer had upset her he said, ‘They’re probably OK if they keep their heads down, don’t draw attention to theirselves. Nazis’ll have other things to think about now, won’t they? Being at war with everyone, Poland, England, France. They won’t have no time to worry about a few Jews still scratching a living in a small town. Stands to reason.’

  ‘Suppose you’re right.’ Lisa was eager to accept this; the alternative was too awful to contemplate. She liked to be able to think of her parents and Martin being strong for each other. She wrote to them again care of Cousin Nikolaus, hoping that the letter might get through and they’d know she was thinking about them.

  Now, as she drank her tea, safe in the Kemble Street kitchen, she was about to get her answer.

  That morning, after she had left for school, a letter had plopped on to the mat; a letter with Swiss stamps and addressed to Lisa in neat, pointed handwriting. Naomi picked it up and looked at it.

  Is this the letter from her parents that she’s been longing for? she wondered as she put it up on the kitchen mantelpiece. I do hope so, it’s so hard for her to have no news at all.

  She and Dan knew Lisa had written again and there had been no reply, but neither of them dared mention it, for fear of reopening a partially healed wound.

  The morning passed slowly and Naomi was constantly aware of the thick envelope, propped against the clock, waiting, bringing who knew what news of Lisa’s family. She wished Dan was at home, so they’d b
oth be there when Lisa got in from school, but Dan was out driving his taxi and wouldn’t be back until the evening, when it would be too late. Should she hide the letter until Dan got home? she wondered. Keep it for a couple of days until they were all three together?

  I’ll go and see Mary, Naomi thought. See what she thinks.

  She hurried down the road to the Duke of Wellington and found Mary serving the lunchtime customers in the public bar.

  ‘I just don’t know what to do,’ Naomi told her. ‘There’s this letter from Switzerland come for Lisa. On the back is the name “Becker” and an address in Zurich. I think Lisa has relations there, so I’m hoping it’ll be good news about her family, but Dan isn’t home and in case it isn’t...’

  ‘In case it isn’t, I’ll come round before she gets home from school,’ Mary said with a smile. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be there. We shut at two and Tom and Betsy can manage the clearing up.’

  So, here they were, the three of them, sharing a pot of tea in the kitchen, Lisa cradling the cup in her hands to warm them as she drank the hot tea in tiny sips.

  Now was the time. Naomi reached the letter down from the mantelpiece and laid it on the table, saying, ‘This came for you this morning, Lisa.’

  For a long moment Lisa looked at it, then she put down her cup and picking up the envelope, turned it over.

  ‘Cousin Nikolaus in Zurich,’ she said and put it down again.

  ‘Aren’t you going to open it?’ Naomi asked.

  ‘Maybe when you’re alone,’ suggested Mary quietly.

  Lisa picked the letter up again. It was thick and squashy. What could be inside it? A letter from her mother? Surely that must be it. She slid her finger under the flap and pulled out the contents. Another, smaller envelope fell on to the table, wrapped in a single sheet of paper. Lisa looked at the second envelope, addressed in Cousin Nikolaus’s spiky writing to her parents’ address in Hanau. It had been opened and stamped on the back in smudged black letters were the words GONE AWAY. Inside was the letter she had sent to her parents weeks ago. The colour drained from her face and she dropped the letter back on to the table. Mary and Naomi looked at her with concern as she buried her head in her hands.