Finding Sophie Page 9

  Marianne takes my hand. “Sorry is such a little word. People use it all the time, don't they? When they make a mistake, or drop something, or bump into you in the blackout. I wish I knew how to …” She seems to be having trouble keeping her voice steady.

  “Marianne, do you think Mama knew she wouldn't see me again? Is that why she didn't make any promises, or say I'll see you in a little while, or when your holiday's over? I mean, she just handed me over, like a puppy you can't keep any longer.”

  “I think my father had a feeling that he wouldn't see us again too.” Marianne's voice is low.

  When I look at her, tears are rolling down her cheeks. After a few minutes, she wipes her face with the back of her hand. By this time I'm crying too.

  “Mother heard from the Red Cross,” Marianne says. “That's why I got leave. In 1942, Father was sent to Terezin, a concentration camp near Prague. It was liberated by the Russians on V-E Day. The letter said he died of malnutrition – a kind way of saying of hunger – at the end of April.”

  Marianne turns to me. She'd kept her head averted till then, as if she couldn't finish what she had to say if she looked at me. “It's not fair. Another week and the war would have been over. He'd never hurt anyone. He loved his books and he loved us. Hunted down and starved to death. …”

  “Because he was a Jew.” I finish the sentence for her.

  I touch my neck, feeling the choking sensation I felt the first time I'd tried on my Star of David that I keep hidden away in a cubbyhole in my desk. Had Mama been trying to save me from being punished, the way she'd been for marrying a Jew? From suffering like my father, or being starved to death like Mr. Kohn?

  People pass by on their Sunday outings. No one takes any notice of us.

  “I hope you'll see your father soon, Sophie.”

  I was going to tell Marianne how hard I was trying not to leave England and go and live with Papa in Germany. How can I tell her now?

  “Aunt Em's hoping to bring him over for a visit.”

  “I'm glad.” Marianne opens her handbag, takes out a powder compact, and dabs at her cheeks. “Look at me, Sophie. Awful. You're supposed to make a good impression on Bridget and her parents.” She pats my face with the powder puff.

  “You're always telling me to make a good impression.” I sneeze. Actually I enjoy her “big sister” act.

  “Gesundheit.”

  “I think I'll have to disgrace you with my shiny nose.” I sneeze again. “Anything with perfume always makes me sneeze.”

  “You're hopeless.” She smiles at me. “Come on, or we'll be late.”

  We run for the bus.

  At Circus Road, Marianne points out Bridget's house, “That big one on the corner of St. Anne's Terrace. Number twenty-two.”

  “Mary Anne. It is Mary Anne, isn't it?” A thin-lipped woman wearing a black straw hat comes toward us.

  “Good afternoon, Mrs. Abercrombie Jones.”

  “What a surprise to see you after all these years. And is this your sister?”

  “No, this is my friend, Sophie Mandel. You'll have to excuse us – we're on our way to visit Bridget O'Malley.”

  “You kept in touch, did you? My husband will be so interested to hear I've met you again. You've quite grown up.”

  “Is Gladys still with you?”

  “She left. Joined the forces. It's impossible to find good help these days. Are your parents well?”

  “Actually, my father died recently in a concentration camp in Czechoslovakia. Do you remember once you said to me that he must wait his turn like other refugees? ‘It is not a question of saving, but of good manners.’”

  “My dear Mary Anne, we had no possible way of knowing.”

  “I suppose not. Good-bye, Mrs. Abercrombie Jones.”

  Marianne links her arm through mine. “That felt good. I used to call her Aunt Wera, instead of Vera, before I could speak English properly. It used to drive her mad.”

  A slim girl with short dark curly hair runs down the steps to greet us. She kisses Marianne on both cheeks, then shakes hands with me.

  “I'm so pleased to see you both. Do come in. We're going to have tea in the garden.”

  “How nice to see you again, Sophie.” Dr. O'Malley emerges from his study to greet us. His arms go round Marianne and he murmurs: “My dear child, we are all deeply grieved for you and your mother. We have written to her.”

  Bridget and Marianne begin to cry, and then Mrs. O'Malley hugs us both and says, “Come along with me now. Dry your eyes and let's have tea.” She plies us with bread and honey that her sister sent from Galway in Ireland, chocolate biscuits Bridget brought back from Canada, and homemade Irish soda bread.

  Bridget is what Aunt Em would call a character. She talks nonstop, about Canada.

  “I've learned to curl and ski and skate and speak French, but there's nowhere like home.” She kisses her mother's cheek, and I think, I'll never be able to do that.

  The three of us do the dishes and then go upstairs to Bridget's room.

  “Presents.” Bridget tosses a beautifully wrapped parcel into Marianne's arms.

  “Bridget!” Marianne shrieks.

  Bridget says quickly, “Don't you dare say you'll never wear them.”

  “Thank you a million times. I've never in my whole life owned a pair of nylon stockings.”

  “Well, now you've got two pairs. They won't ladder if you roll them on very carefully – I'll show you how.”

  “I'm not going to wear them. I'll just look at them.”

  “I knew it was a waste to give them to you. I'll just have to take them back, I suppose.”

  “I will wear them. But it will have to be a very special occasion. Thank you, dear Bridget.”

  “This is for you, Sophie. I'm afraid it's only a small box of chocolates. I didn't know we were going to meet, you see.”

  “It's very kind of you, Bridget. Thank you.”

  I undo the blue ribbon, the tissue paper, and the little gold seal and offer the chocolates around.

  “Heaven! It melts in your mouth,” Marianne mumbles. “Six months of chocolate rations in there, Sophie.”

  Bridget refuses to take one. “I've been spoiled long enough. These are for you, Sophie. Now if you two can stop eating for a minute, I'm ready for a proper talk.”

  “Isn't that what we've been having?” I ask innocently.

  Marianne and Bridget look at each other.

  “All right, Bridget, confession time. Is it fit for Sophie to hear?”

  “Of course it is. I've been bursting to tell you. I've met someone.”

  “You've only been home a few days,” Marianne says.

  “Don't interrupt, I'm going to tell you everything. On Tuesday, I had my appointment with Matron. I can't tell you how nervous I was, but she was perfectly charming. Glanced at my Canadian hospital records and said, ‘It all seems very satisfactory.’ I'm to begin on Monday week. I was so relieved that I ran down the front steps of the hospital, and went flying.”

  “Into the arms of a handsome stranger?” Marianne says.

  “Almost. Everything in my purse scattered all over the sidewalk.”

  “It's hard to believe, Bridget O'Malley, that you once lectured me on speaking English. What is your ‘purse’ and could you please translate ‘sidewalk’ for us poor English girls?”

  “A purse is a handbag and the sidewalk is the pavement. Now for the exciting part. A young man in an air force uniform helped me up and asked me if I was hurt. The Royal Canadian Air Force, can you imagine? By the time we'd gathered my things, we'd introduced ourselves. His name is Dominic St. Pierre. He's from Longueuil, which is on the outskirts of Montreal. He's twenty-two, and he wants me to go out with him again.”

  “Again? Bridget O'Malley, I'm shocked. He's a perfect stranger.”

  I know Marianne is only pretending to be horrified.

  “We went to have a cup of coffee in Fullers. He asked for my phone number, and whether he could take me out. Maria
nne, don't look so scandalized! He's a most respectable Canadian boy, I can tell. I'll ask him to come to the house first to meet Mother.”

  “Just so long as you don't fall in love with him and go and live in Canada and leave us again,” Marianne says.

  When it is time to go home, Dr. O'Malley insists on driving us both.

  Mrs. O'Malley says, “I hope Marianne will bring you again, Sophie. We've missed young voices around the place.”

  After we drop Marianne off at the nurses' residence, I tell Dr. O'Malley about my parents.

  “You're a very brave girl,” he says. He takes me to the front door and Aunt Em asks him in.

  “Thank you for bringing me home,” I say. “Night, Aunt Em.”

  Upstairs I divide the tissue paper from the box of chocolates into three squares. There are fourteen chocolates left. Four for Mandy, four for Nigel, four for Aunt Em, and two for me. I cut up the ribbon and tie up each of the little parcels. I put Aunt Em's on her bedside table, and Mandy's in my satchel to give to her in school tomorrow. I'll see Nigel after his cricket match.

  Dr. O'Malley and Aunt Em talk for a long time before I hear her come upstairs.

  Uncle Gerald came down to London. He and Aunt Em and Dr. O'Malley consult endlessly about how to reunite me with my father. Uncle Gerald thumps the table and says, “Red tape. Stupid bureaucrats who do nothing but shuffle pieces of paper.”

  “Gerald, dear, you are not in a court of law. You don't have to convince us,” Aunt Em says.

  One afternoon three weeks later, Bridget, Marianne, and I are sitting in Bridget's garden. We've made lemonade from the first lemons to reach the shops in over a year. It would taste better with more sugar.

  “Father's on a crusade. If he can help to bring Mr. Mandel over, he feels it would make up for …” She looks at Marianne. “You know, some of the people he couldn't help.”

  I keep telling myself how grateful and happy I am – I mean, I'd be a monster if I wasn't – but deep down I'm dreading telling Father I want to stay with Aunt Em.

  Father and I write regularly to each other. More than anything else, it was the socks that pleased him.

  The wool is so soft and new. I look at the beautiful gifts that you and Fräulein Margaret packed for me. I wonder sometimes if I am dreaming.

  I have left the hospital now and am back in Berlin. The birds have not returned to the Grunewald. Trees are gone, cut down for firewood. Cities throughout Germany are flattened. Armies of woman – Trümmer Frauen – rubble women – work twelve hour days to clear the debris. I long for fields and trees and birdsong.

  Father writes of people I've never heard of whom he's trying to locate. Each letter ends with the same words – that he's impatient to see me again.

  I find it hard to know what to write about. It's usually a variation of the weather report and comments about his health. Aunt Em's not much help. She says I should write about my life, ordinary things. It feels dishonest somehow not to tell him about my plans to stay in England forever. I take Aunt Em's advice.

  Mandy and I play tennis. Our Girl Guide troop is planning its first overnight camp since the war. We're going to Windsor Great Park. Nigel and I are helping to plan the Guy Fawkes party. The first since 1939. November 5 is the anniversary of the Great Gunpowder Plot of 1605. There'll be fireworks this year and we'll be burning a huge guy – an effigy of the traitor who tried to blow up the king and the House of Lords.

  I write we're still short of food, queues for almost anything are endless, and that large parts of London are bombed and laid waste too. It's like writing to a stranger and the thought of meeting him unnerves me. I can't talk about that to anyone, least of all to Marianne, who is still mourning her father.

  One Friday afternoon in late July, a few days before the end of term, I find Aunt Em waiting for me outside school. She hasn't done that in years.

  “Is something wrong, Aunt Em?”

  “On the contrary. Your father has been granted a temporary visitor's permit. He'll be here in a few days. It's exciting news, isn't it, Sophie?”

  I wonder what Aunt Em really feels.

  “Yes, it is.” I do my best to sound enthusiastic.

  Marianne and I manage to get a ten minute break together in the cafeteria during my Saturday shift at the hospital.

  “I'll be thinking of you next Saturday,” Marianne says, when I tell her the news.

  “I'm frightened, Marianne.”

  “Don't be. I'm sure he's nervous about meeting you again too. Have you sent him a picture of yourself? Bother, times up. I've got to get back. We're horribly busy. Talk to you soon, Sophie.”

  I know I can't live up to being the only person Father's got left in the world. Being sorry for all he's been through is not enough to make me want to live in Germany again.

  On Monday morning a letter arrives from the Home Office. They apologize for the delay, due to the many enquiries they receive of a similar nature, etc.

  In order to be considered for British citizenship, the present law requires a person to have lived in the United Kingdom for a minimum of five years and to have reached the age of twenty-one.

  However, we anticipate modifications to this law in 1946. The changes under consideration will permit young people who were forced to leave their homes and have lived in Britain for five years to apply for naturalization if they meet the following criteria:

  They must be fifteen years or older and under the age of twenty-one.

  Neither mother nor father are living.

  They returned Matron's letter to me. I'll just have to find enough courage to tell my father how I feel.

  He's arriving today! I didn't sleep at all last night.

  Neither Aunt Em nor I manage to eat lunch. Tea is ready to be wheeled in on the little trolley in the kitchen. “Perhaps he'd prefer coffee. I'll make some,” Aunt Em says and leaves me alone in the sitting room, staring through the window, so I can open the front door the minute he arrives.

  Dr. O'Malley's gone to the airport to fetch Father. It was decided he'd stay with the O'Malleys because his health is not up to managing stairs yet, and Dr. O'Malley thinks it'd be a good idea if he was nearby. Father will spend most of the day with us.

  A car draws up outside. A frail-looking stooped man with white hair, wearing a suit that seems much too big for him, gets out of the car hesitantly. Dr. O'Malley offers his arm. I suddenly think of my grandfather.

  “Aunt Em, they're here.”

  I rush upstairs, and fasten the Star of David necklace around my neck. Voices drift up the stairs. “No, thank you. I can't stay for tea, Margaret. I'll be back for you in an hour or two, Jacob, and then you can settle in.”

  I don't know how I get back down. In the hall we stare at each other, the old man and I. He moves toward me, and touches my hair.

  “Wie deine Mutter. Like your mother.”

  Aunt Em disappears and we're alone in the sitting room. I've been practicing what to say.

  “Papa. I've been waiting for you. Did you have a good journey? You must be tired. Please sit down.” We sit beside each other. “I'm sorry, Papa, I've forgotten how to speak German.”

  “Don't be sorry. I am happy to speak English. Zoffie, you are a grown-up young lady. What a long time it has been.”

  “Yes. In English my name is pronounced Sophie. Sorry.”

  Now I have to apologize again. I shouldn't have corrected him.

  He smiles at me, showing broken teeth. Gaunt. Now I know what gaunt looks like – it's this – those dark sad eyes watching me. I look away, afraid I'm going to cry.

  I don't remember you at all. My real father is young and handsome and smells of pine trees.

  I try not to stare at the bent fingers and thick knuckles.

  Are you truly my father? Where is Aunt Em? Why isn't she here?

  Father takes a grubby piece of paper from his pocket. It's been folded many times. He offers it to me. I'd prefer not to touch it. I do, of course. The paper is almost transpare
nt. I look at the way his bony wrist protrudes below his shirtsleeve. He's wearing the white shirt I sent him from the Red Cross. I remember Mama ironing a clean shirt for him every day.

  “Allow me, Sophie.” Father unfolds the creases very carefully, as if afraid the precious paper might tear.

  It's a drawing of a house. Two windows decorated with window boxes. Red dots for geraniums. A crayoned yellow sun shines in a bright blue sky. Smoke billows from the chimney in perfect circles. The house is surrounded by a neat fence. Stick figures walk along the path. A man and a little girl with a bow in her hair. The girl holds a red balloon.

  The letters in the bottom right-hand corner are faded. I can just make them out: FÜR PAPA. SOPHIE 5.

  He takes the drawing back, folds it again. Puts it away in his pocket.

  “I kept it hidden – immer – always.”

  The days pass quickly. Papa and I gradually get to know each other again. There are so many things we can't talk about. When he looks at me, I can see him wondering where his “Zoffie” has gone, just as I puzzle about the half of my life he and Mama spent without me.

  I show him my favorite places, though Papa can't walk very far yet. He loves the penguin pool in Regent's Park. “I knew him.”

  “Who, Papa?”

  “Lubetkin – the man who designed the zoo. That was before he was famous.” I'm suitably impressed.

  Aunt Em drives us down to meet Uncle Gerald and Aunt Winifred. She gives me a long lecture about what she expects of me. I'm on my best behavior.

  Papa is an instant success. He bows over Aunt Winifred's hand. For a horrible moment, I think he is going to kiss it.

  “Let me show you my garden, Mr. Mandel.” Aunt Winifred takes his arm!

  Before we go home, Papa designs a rose arbor for Aunt Winifred, down by the place where the Anderson shelter used to be.

  In the car on the way home, Aunt Em says, “How did you do that, Jacob?”