“Sally, that woman was talking about her son, with her husband. You want me to adopt two German children. The Germans stole the last five years from me, from us. They killed my brother, Sam, and countless other friends and relatives.”
“They killed Tom and Liesl’s father and their mother too, most likely. Their grandparents, their aunts, uncles, cousins. I’ve seen the footage of the concentration camps. All those little children. And you want me to send mine back to that country where they know nobody. I won’t do it. I can’t do it.”
Derek walked up the stairs. She heard the bathroom door shut. Sally sank onto the sofa, her head in her hands, weeping. She heard the door close. He stood in front of her, his bag in one hand, his hat in the other.
“I have to go to London. I have to see a specialist at St Thomas’s. I will stay with mother.”
“Derek, please don’t go. Not like this…”
“I’m sorry. I should have died out there. It would have been better for everyone. Goodbye, Sally.”
She wanted to run to him, to drag him home but she couldn’t move. She watched out the window as his figure disappeared down the path. How could he have said such a horrible thing? Wishing himself dead after so many had died. The pain was more than she could bear, worse than the day the telegram had arrived telling her he was dead.
She didn’t know how long she sat there but it had started getting dark before Tom returned. When she wouldn’t answer him, he ran for Maggie. She could hear him calling her friend’s name.
Maggie arrived, took one look at Sally and told Tom to get Rachel to collect Liesl from Mrs. Brown and then to cook him his tea in the rectory.
“Can Uncle Derek come too? He’s so nice.” Tom looked around. “Where is he?”
“Tom, go on now and leave me with Sally.”
35
Derek took the train to London. All around him, people were talking about the war but he made no effort to join in. He listened to two ex-servicemen sitting behind him.
“When we needed guns, the government found them. When we needed factories for making airplanes and bullets and goodness knows what else, the government built them. So, how come they find it so hard to build houses? I swear, I’ll go mad if I have to spend another month in my mother-in-law’s house. They should have set that woman on the Nazis and then the war would have been over in months, not years.”
“Least you get to stay with your missus. Ain’t no room for me, so my missus tells me. Neighbors say different. They said during the war, my missus had no problem putting up strangers. Had a fancy for Yanks, she did.”
“She never. What you going to do about it?”
“What do you think? Down the divorce courts, I’m going. I ain’t having that. Me away fighting for my country and her entertaining the troops.”
Amused, Derek watched the woman across from him. She was getting more irritated as the men talked.
“Can you listen to yourselves? You had it good, you men. Off fighting the war. Seeing those exotic places like Paris and France and everything. While us women got stuck here, with rationing and flying bombs and all sorts. I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep in five years. I’m sick of hearing how you men had it so hard. Always complaining you are.” The woman took a deep breath before continuing,
“You think about all the kids this war has left as orphans. Who’s going to look after them? Orphanages were full before the war, there won’t be anyone able to take them in. Some of us don’t have homes for our own families.”
An image of Tom and Liesl flashed into his mind. Derek thought the woman had finished as she stood up to leave the train. But she poked her finger into one man’s chest. “If I was your missus, I’d been happy to entertain the Yanks and anyone else that came my way, if it meant I didn’t have to put up with your miserable, old mug anymore. You’re a disgrace. Your wife is better off without ya.”
The woman left the men lost for words. Derek watched, as she heaved her bags along the Clapham Junction platform. In the distance, where there used to be houses, all he saw was large areas of what looked like building sites. He saw youngsters playing in them and it took a while to realize that was what was left of houses after the bombing. Was that where the woman had lived? Her remarks about having no home hit him hard but not as much as her comments about orphans. The children had already suffered enough by living through the bombs, their fathers away with the forces, their mothers caught up in war work. Tom’s face, as he’d sat telling Derek about the issues he had at school, filled his mind. Living as a Jewish refugee in England might not always be a bed of roses but it was heaven compared to what could happen if the children were sent back to Germany. Would there even be a Jewish community left alive to look after them? He shifted in his seat as his guilt weighed heavier on his mind.
When the train reached Waterloo, he decided to walk to his mother’s home. He wasn’t relishing the meeting. They’d never been close. He’d been measured against Roland and always found lacking.
Thirsty, he stopped at a public house.
“Pint of
