Days

We arrived in England from Vienna on 17 July 1939, my mother and father and I. The days that follow hold no horror to make any one day stand out from another, no nostalgia to etch any one day into my mind. There are the surprises of open fires and pineapple chunks in tins costing five and a half pennies. I have only seen one fresh, brown and yellow pineapple before, a present for a grandmother on a special occasion, a luxury I was not even given to taste. Once, when I begged for a pineapple in Vienna, my mother told me a story about a little girl in Africa who longs for an apple. Now we cannot afford a tin for five pence halfpenny. We live in a house crowded with refugees in West Hampstead in London. It is safe, although I am afraid of the open fires that burn to keep us warm during our first English summer. We have all been ‘guaranteed’ by a generous family of English Jews. We must not be a burden on the state and we must all move on to America as soon as we can. The American quota system dominates our lives. What is our number? Are all the papers in order? When will we go? In the meantime, there is the business of becoming domestic servants. But there are few jobs and prospective employers prefer married couples without a tenyear- old child. The day war is declared, six weeks after we arrive, changes everything again. We cannot travel to America and there will be no more refugees from the continent of Europe. We have failed to open doors for two grandmothers, five aunts and uncles and many cousins. The separation is suddenly final. Eighteen months ago we listened to the radio when Schuschnigg announced the threat to our existence; here we listen to Chamberlain and anticipate the annihilation of our families. It is not a time to keep secrets from children: the anguish is shared. Now servants are scarce and my parents have a choice of employment. They are hired as cook and butler in a manor house in Hertfordshire. My keep is their wage. Days in the country and a new school. Children I cannot understand, who cannot understand me. ‘This is a pencil,’ says the teacher, but she doesn’t show me where the lavatory is, and I wander around at playtime asking for the WC– as in the German alphabet. The other children think I’m funny; I won’t wet myself; I won’t cry. It hurts, but I make myself think of how much worse it was in Vienna. This is nothing. I find a lavatory in the end. And I have found a way of resisting pain that becomes a lifelong habit. Days of growing to love a language. By the end of the second term I win a prize for English. The lady of the manor advises my mother not to let me sit the scholarship exam – ‘It isn’t worth it for people like you,’ she says. She humiliates my parents but I fancy they are too dazed to notice or to care. The headmaster of the village school puts me in a room on my own and I sit the same scholarship papers at the same time as the official candidates. Mr Brue marks my papers himself and tells my parents to contact him when they are ready to send me to a grammar school. Later, when they are ready, he arranges a bursary for me. Days of making tentative connections. There are some evacuees in the village and Joyce Vick, who is billeted with the vicar, becomes my best friend. We learn to ride bicycles. My father teaches me on the manor lawns, on an abandoned bike, while the family is away. Joyce and I cycle around country lanes. When I fall a bed of nettles, I remember that it is easy to put up with pain and Joyce is impressed. We find a discarded tent in the vicarage and we camp out overnight in one of the fields of the manor. I am no longer an over-protected child; my parents have not enough time or peace of mind to supervise me. The children of the manor are not my friends. One day they take me ice skating on the pond. I’m pleased to be asked because I can skate well and skating is one of the things I miss. But I haven’t skated for two years and I don’t have my boots. They lend me rusty skates that have to be clamped on to my shoes. They are too loose. I cannot keep my balance on the ice and they laugh at me and say that I was boasting because I can’t skate at all. There are four of them, all older than I am: Peter, Nancy, Bunny and John. I hate them. The da y s in the manor a r ecircumscribed by rules about what servants do and do not do. What servants eat, what servants wear, how servants serve. We are not afraid but we are diminished. My mother submits, but my honest father regularly cuts me a slice of the Harrods cake which is still delivered twice a week. It is either coffee or lemon and it is strictly not for the servants. These days end abruptly when my father is interned as an enemy alien and then released to join the British army in the Pioneer Corps. A labouring battalion for the less able and least desirable soldiers – the only option open to refugees. My mother and I become camp followers. We go where my father is posted and we move when he moves. My mother can always find work as a cook. I don’t go to school because we never stay anywhere long enough. Although these days seem endless to me, they are not: I only miss one term of education. When my father is invalided out of the army, we happen to be in the Midlands, so that is where we settle. That is where I start my grammar school with Mr Brue’s bursary. And that is where the days become years. I am always the only Jew in the school. No fuss is made, but nothing is understood. Here the children do not know what I know. Perhaps their parents don’t know either. I try to forget it myself. I don’t want to be different; I want my parents to be ordinary. I am ashamed because we live in a half-furnished house without pictures, without curtains – the black-out blinds suffice – and without a companion set, an ornamental set of tools to clean the hearth. I yearn for this companion set until my parents capitulate and buy one. It isn’t made of brass, it falls over all the time and it doesn’t satisfy my longing. My parents have no friends, there are no relations, there are no other Jews where we live. My father cannot practise law in England; he will remain a managing clerk in lawyers’ offices. My mother will go on working with food. But to begin with they are both lost in war work. Literature fills their leisure hours. We do not fit in with my idea of an English family. I become a rebellious and troublesome 14-year-old. The days are smoother as I get older. As I develop again an interest in my origins, in my religion, in my culture. But then the worst days come. The end of the war brings the final news. There are few survivors. Not my grandmothers, not the five uncles and aunts or the cousins. My mother bellows her grief by the cooker, where she is standing when the letter is delivered from the Red Cross. In all the days after, she only ever goes through the motions of living. My father does better. He goes on playing chess. He is a survivor. Hedi Argent Schnabl