‘I’ve guessed what happens now,’ said Mark.
They were at the bus shelter. (‘You want to go early
The rain still melted from the clouds. Ben was still in bed with his cold.
‘What?’ asked Little Tracey eagerly.
‘I bet Heidi organised some escape plan for the Jews from the concentration camp. Now she’s found out what’s happening, I mean. Or she spies on Hitler and passes on the information.’
Anna looked at him steadily. ‘Would you spy on your father?’ she asked him quietly.
‘No,’ said Mark. ‘But my dad isn’t Hitler.’
Anna shook her head. ‘How could she spy on him? It had been months since she’d seen him. And even then just for a few minutes. Who would she pass information on to? Besides, she didn’t know all that much—she didn’t even know they were all meant to be killed in the camps. She only knew enough to wonder, what Jews were like? That’s what no one seemed to be able to tell her. Just that they were different.
‘Well, she was different too. And somehow she built up a picture of Jews in her mind. Jews were people just like her, with red marks on their faces and one leg just a little short. Different people, who had to be hidden away.’
‘So she did try to help them,’ said Mark at last.
Anna shrugged. ‘Sort of. She made a plan. She’d keep a watch out for any Jews who came to their garden, who needed help. And she’d hide them in the old hen-house down past the orchard where no one went except in summer when the plums were ripe.’
It was easy at first. She told Fraulein Gelber that she was going to clean out the hen-house for the rabbits, for when the doe had babies.
Then she shovelled out the muck. It was the first time she had held a spade and her hands became sore. She spread fresh straw down. Fraulein Gelber gave Frau Leib money for the straw and Frau Leib’s husband brought it to the house.
It didn’t look too bad when she had finished.
There had to be food, too. That was the next part of the plan. When they came to the garden for shelter she would have to feed them. She could take a little from the kitchen of course, but it might not be enough.
So she took jars from the cellar, just one each day—things like plum jam and cherries in liqueur and honey—and she hid them in the hay. There were some tins in the kitchen and she’d have liked to take them too, but Fraulein Gelber might have noticed and blamed Frau Leib. If she and Frau Leib both took food from the kitchen, Fraulein Gelber was sure to notice sooner or later.
It took her a month, and then it was finished. Then she settled down to wait.
‘When did the Jews come?’ asked Little Tracey eagerly.
‘They never came,’ said Anna. ‘Of course they never came. It was late in the war by then and they were in concentration camps and very few escaped from those. But it was all that she could do.’
‘But surely she could have done
‘What? Locked herself in her room and said she wasn’t coming out or wouldn’t eat till they shut down the concentration camps?’
‘Something like that,’ said Mark lamely.
‘What good would that have done?’ asked Anna fiercely. ‘Do you think they would have paid any attention?’
‘But she was Hitler’s daughter!’
‘But no-one knew that, and besides, who listens to kids?’ demanded Anna. ‘Especially not back then. Even today…’
She was right, thought Mark. She’d done what she could, even if it was no use at all.
‘Maybe it would have been different when she grew up,’ he said at last. ‘She could have organised protests then. People would have listened to her if she said she was Hitler’s daughter.’
‘Maybe,’ said Anna. ‘But that never happened. There was never any chance of it happening. Because things changed, just a few months later.’
‘Hey kids!’ It was Mrs Latter’s voice. Mark stared. They’d been so engrossed in the story they hadn’t even noticed the bus.
‘Thought you’d changed your minds and decided not to go to school today,’ joked Mrs Latter as they climbed on. She was wearing her teapot hat today, the one with the emu embroidered on the front. ‘What were you all gabbing on about down there?’
‘Oh, just things,’ said Mark. He hated to think what Mrs Latter would say if she’d heard Anna’s story. She’d be on at them about racism and all that.
He glanced at Anna. She sat remote in her seat, not looking at him. She had become quieter ever since she started telling the story, he realised. As though it disturbed her—just like it was disturbing him.
chapter fourteen
Wednesday
Drip, drip, drip went the water as it drizzled from the bus shelter roof.
The drips had dug a sort of trench along the edge of the shelter. There was quite a big hole now.
It had become a routine, thought Mark, as he looked at Anna. As soon as she arrived with Little Tracey the story began. He and Little Tracey listened. It was Anna’s story, and she’d tell it till it was finished.
How would it finish? wondered Mark suddenly. Would it go on and on till Heidi was grown up? Or did she die in the war?
Hitler had killed himself, he remembered, and that woman he married right at the end of the war. Eva Braun, that was her name. They had both killed themselves.
No, that couldn’t happen to Heidi. It couldn’t! Anna couldn’t make it end that way!
Anna frowned across the shelter, as though she hunted for the words that would make the story exactly right. Anna could make the story turn out any way she wanted.
Couldn’t she?
‘…and she could hear the sounds of planes above the house during the night,’ Anna continued. ‘More and more planes came now.’
Mark tried to empty his mind. He was missing the story. And anyway he was silly to worry. All of Anna’s stories ended happily. Like the one about the disappearing fish and the secret passage under the school.
But this was different.
‘That night was different,’ Anna said. ‘It was just before they went to bed. Fraulein Gelber had let the fire die down. It was a wood fire, but even wood was getting precious now.’
There had been a great stack of wood when they first arrived at the house. Sergeant Amchell was supposed to chop wood for them, but he had been helping with the ploughing over at the farm. It was more important than chopping wood, Fraulein Gelber agreed.
Suddenly there was a rumble in the distance. Not a plane sort of rumble; not even the faint echo of an air raid far away.
‘That is a motorbike,’ said Fraulein Gelber sharply. She went to the door as the motorbike pulled up outside and she opened it before anyone could knock.
Heidi strained her ears to hear. It would have been bad manners for her to go to the door as well. Anyway this might be one of those times when she wasn’t supposed to be noticed, as though she didn’t exist, had never existed.
Fraulein Gelber closed the door. Her eyes were shining.
‘We are to go to meet the Fuhrer,’ she whispered, as though spies might be listening at the window or round the door. ‘Quickly! Into your best dress, and your coat, and your good shoes. Hurry!’
A car arrived just as she came down the steps. Like the motorbike, its lights were shaded, so it could not be
