A Stranger in the Family (11 page)

‘Yes, I am.’

‘Just send a letter to us here, with
PLEASE FORWARD
on it. I’ll keep an eye on the post and make doubly sure that it gets to her.’

‘I’ll write today.’

Two days later he received a phone call from Binkie – brusque but definitely friendly. Two days after that he was sitting in her front room in Twickenham, and she was ministering from a tray of tea and cakes.

‘I know from what you told me on the phone,’ said the rather old-fashioned-looking woman, probably in her late sixties, ‘that you are looking into the circumstances of your adoption by Jürgen and Genevieve and you’d welcome
any light Hilda may have thrown on the matter in conversation with me. Forgive me if I say that I’m used to and comfortable with the idea of an adopted child wishing to find out and make contact with his birth parents. The adopted child who wishes to find out about his adoptive parents seems a much odder phenomenon.’

She spoke precisely, almost pedantically. An ideal witness, Kit thought.

‘I understand your bewilderment,’ he said, matching his tone to hers. ‘Can we just say for the moment that, to the best of my knowledge, I was abducted from my birth parents at the age of three, while they were on holiday in Sicily.’

He said no more. Binkie’s face showed her shock. Then she shook herself and put her hand on his to show she trusted his account.

‘Ask what you like,’ she said.

‘Right. And thank you. How much did you know about Hilda’s German background?’

‘Not much. Nothing ordered. What I mean is we never sat down and talked about what happened chronologically. It was just a question of things coming up – when talking with me, with people at work, even with the local clergyman. I’m a churchgoer, by the way, but Hilda was a non-believer. Never practised Judaism.’

‘Perhaps not surprisingly,’ said Kit. ‘What kind of things came out in these conversations?’

‘Little things. Like having a ticket collector on the train to London with a kindly smile. “Somehow I knew from him that it was going to be all right,” she said. “We’d had so few kindly smiles at home.”’

‘Did she say much about her mother and father?’

‘The memories of them were mostly of her mother. Naturally. The memories I best remember her mentioning were of the days and weeks after Kristallnacht. Somebody rang her mother, and when she put the phone down – because you had to be very careful what you said on the phone – she turned to Hilda and Jürgen and clasped her hands: “They offered the people coffee and sandwiches. Think of it! They were welcoming!”’

‘Who was she talking about? Who were “the people”?’

‘The people who were applying for permits to go to Britain. And other places too – America, Australia and so on. After “the night of glass” the queue stretched along the streets around British embassies and consulates in all the bigger towns like Frankfurt. And when the applicants got into the consulates they were treated kindly – fed, given good advice, which was even more welcome. If you got a residence permit for the whole family you might get, for example, a husband or wife out of custody if they’d been
arrested, or even if they’d been sent to a camp. At that stage the Nazis wanted to be rid of the Jews by emigration more than they wanted to kill them.’

Kit was silent for a moment.

‘So far Hilda’s memories seem almost happy ones.’

Binkie considered this.

‘They mostly were. They were the only ones Hilda could cherish, the ones that enabled her, privately, to look into the darker ones. I remember her saying: “You can’t believe the fear we felt.” That was the only time that she mentioned the terrible things she had seen.’

‘Did her mother try to leave Germany with the children?’

‘Yes, she did, but she was not successful. She was the daughter of a very influential – once influential – rabbi. Maybe that was the reason – a family literate, educated, used to political action. Dangerous to let out abroad. Anyway, for the rest of 1938 and the first half of 1939 she put all her strength into getting the children to England, and strengthening Hilda’s nerve and resolve and trying to see potential danger and difficulties.’

‘What about the father?’

‘Ah yes – the father …’ She took a sip of her tea. ‘Hilda almost never mentioned her father
except once, when she said he helped to get permits for her and Jürgen.’

‘Why not mention him, then?’

‘Of course it could be mainly because he was almost never there – seldom at least. That was in Frankfurt, where the family had always lived. He, I think, was in Vienna.’

‘You would have thought that, if the mother couldn’t get out herself, the obvious person to go with the children was the father. If he’d been arrested she might have joined the queues to get an exit visa for him.’

‘Yes. You might have thought that. I think there must have been some reason, though. Why she didn’t do that, I mean.’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘Because Hilda once said, not long before she died, and said it as if it was a tribute to her mother, not a criticism: “At least she didn’t try to get a permit for father. She never joined a queue for him.”’

Kit looked at Binkie, and Binkie looked back at him. Both were wondering what was the significance of the gnomic praise. 

‘Think of it,’ said Binkie, pouring out another cup of tea and handing Kit a plate of cake. ‘Think of the bravery of the woman – sending her children out to completely unknown futures. And don’t just think of the bravery – think of the desolation.’

‘Yes, I was imagining the figure of the mother,’ admitted Kit, nodding vigorously. ‘Was she allowed to see the children off? Was she on the platform pretending the separation would only be for a short time? Inevitably one fixes on her, rather than on the father who was … well, what was he doing? Flitting around Germany or Europe as a whole? In hiding somewhere?’

Binkie did not answer at once.

‘And what about the children too?’ she said at last. ‘Particularly Hilda. She was just old enough to understand, but not really to understand in depth. Think of the desolation she must have felt! And the sense of being deserted by both parents – understanding that at least her mother knew it was for the best, the only possible escape, in fact, but still feeling that she was being shunted off.’

‘Did she show signs of bitterness towards her mother, then?’

‘Never,’ said Binkie forcefully, obviously regretting bringing that matter up. ‘Ignore what I said. Treat it as a piece of amateur psychoanalysis: that that was what she must have felt, though I have no evidence at all that she did.’

‘But of course, you knew her much later, when she must have come to see things more deeply, more clearly.’

‘That’s true.’

‘Was she the complete English girl when you first came to know her?’ asked Kit.

‘On the surface,’ said Binkie cautiously. ‘She’d been in England twelve years by then. No accent, nothing one could clutch on to that was foreign. Oh no … there was one thing I did notice, one odd thing: the fact that if anyone surprised her, by, for example, coming up behind her and speaking to her, she would not only jump (we
might all do that), but her face would be taken over entirely by fear, by blank terror.’

There was a silence for a few seconds in the room. Then Kit said: ‘I see. How horrible. Did that make you think?’

‘In a limited sort of way. I assumed she might have been bombed in the Blitz. But I never asked her, not then. And even as things came out I never asked. In our circles that was something one did not do. I just hoped things would emerge.’

‘And I’m guessing that they did. Was there any occasion that you remember particularly?’

Binkie put her cup down and leant against the back of her chair, breathing hard.

‘I remember the Coronation,’ she said at last. ‘1953. We were all wild with patriotic fervour: it was the beginning of a new age, we thought. Though with Mr Churchill as prime minister and Mr Attlee as leader of the opposition it was really the old men having their last throw. We couldn’t, of course, afford any of the places on offer on the route: rooms like that were fetching what then seemed like a fortune. We had to find a position on the Mall near Buckingham Palace the moment we left work the day before and hold it all night. That meant we saw the procession, kept the position for the period of the service in the abbey (some people had portable radios we could listen to it on), then we saw the procession
back to the palace, the queen wearing her crown now, and then the appearances on the balcony and all that. Thrilling!’

‘It must have been an exciting day.’

‘Oh it was – marvellous. But one thing I remember was when we were making plans. We were going through everything we must do, rather envying those who had an easier berth, and I said: “It’s worth it, putting up with a bit of hardship.” And out came from Hilda: “You don’t know what hardship is. You haven’t been a Jew in Nazi Germany.” I was flabbergasted. I just stammered: “I’m so sorry, I didn’t know,” and she said: “Forget I said it.” But of course, I never did. Couldn’t. But it made me wonder, all the time, what she had been through, and how she had escaped from it.’

‘And what did she tell you?’

‘Just disconnected bits. The remark about feeling fear “all the time”. A remark about her religion, which was almost an accusation that I could hold on to mine whereas someone who’d gone through the persecution and murder of the Jews could not.’

‘What did she say?’

‘Oh, it was probably in one of the long intervals on Coronation Day as we stood along the parade route with nothing very much happening – yes, I’m sure that’s when it was. I
mentioned what the radio said was going on behind the scenes, and I commented priggishly that it was a central part of the religious meaning of the Coronation. And she said: “Oh, I’ve given up all that.” I asked what she meant by “all that” and she said: “Religion and all that. You can’t have a faith, and certainly not a belief in the Jews as the chosen race, if you’ve lived through the Holocaust and lost all the people you loved.” And I said: “I suppose not,” and thought how feeble and inadequate it sounded.’

‘Did the conversation go any further?’

‘I felt it had to, so in another of the intervals I asked her when her mother died and how she knew. She said: “The occupying powers were very good at getting out information. She is believed to have died in Dachau.” “And did your father – did you lose him too?” I asked, never sure how these things were best put. She replied: “I don’t know. As good as.”’

‘And was that all she ever said about her father?’

Binkie was silent for a time.

‘I don’t know … There was a time, much later … This was a time, you understand, when we were much closer. Not sexually, because we neither of us wanted that. We were friends in the fullest and loveliest sense, and that was enough. This must have been … oh … early Seventies.
We were in Vienna for the opera, and she’d told me earlier that her father had been there for a time, but had slipped away after the outbreak of war, to Italy. How she knew that, I don’t know. But in one of the intervals of the opera – it was
Fidelio
– she said, almost apropos of nothing: “One has to beware of charm. It’s the most dangerous thing. And it’s not just handsome, amusing people who have it. There are hideous, misshapen, outrageously twisted people, and they have charm, and – bang! – they bring disaster.” I just murmured: “You’re right,” and left it at that.’

‘But you connected the comment with her father? Was this because he’d been in Austria before the German takeover?’

‘Not just that. But I’d never had the idea that Hilda had memories of her father. Now it seemed as though she had. Or – this is just a way-out guess – had met him during that holiday we took in Austria in 1971.’

‘By appointment, so to speak?’

‘Yes, maybe.’

‘What would give you that impression?’

Binkie thought hard, trying to be careful, precise in her thought.

‘Usually when we went away on holiday we did most things together. It just happened like that, naturally. I had my interest in religion,
Hilda had her interest in Nazism and the war, and her family background. But this time we did less together. Hilda would say she had something “on”, and I accepted that without question.’

‘She could have been conducting research,’ said Kit.

‘Yes, I thought of that – but why not tell me, discuss it with me, bring me in on it? And I don’t think she’d have found it easy. The Austrians were very cagey at that time about their past. Their complicity with the Nazis was a well-kept secret, at least until recently.’

‘You didn’t see her together with a man of the right age to be her father, then?’ asked Kit.

‘No … Or I don’t think so … I did one day see someone ahead of me with someone who could have been Hilda, and I sped up. We were all on the Schulerstrasse. And then I suddenly thought: “What am I doing? What business is it of mine if she doesn’t want to make it my business?” And I felt cheap.’

‘You just saw the back of this man?’

‘Yes, that’s all.’

‘How old would her father have been then?’

‘Hilda was born in 1931 and he could have been say twenty then – or fifty, come to that. If it was twenty he would have been around sixty when I saw them – if it was them. And he’d be ninety or a hundred now.’

There was silence as Kit thought. It was Binkie who broke it.

‘We’re into the realm of wild conjecture now. Are we allowed to stay in it?’

‘Of course.’

‘It’s just that if we don’t discuss it now, we might never. It’s one thing chatting over tea and cakes, quite another to put your impressions, and your conjectures from them, down on paper.’

‘Of course, you’re right. What does your conjecture spring from?’

‘Nothing. An impression. It concerns the Greenspan marriage.’

‘I see,’ said Kit. ‘Not much of a marriage by all accounts. At least, by the late Thirties they hardly ever saw each other – is that right?’

‘Yes. But that may have been the fate of a lot of marriages at that time. If one half of the marriage – usually the husband – was a likely target for arrest, interrogation, torture, execution, then he might well keep away from his family.’

‘Is that the impression you got from Hilda?’  

‘No, it’s not. From the little Hilda said, my impression is that her mother didn’t talk about the marriage and her husband unless she was forced to. When she did talk it was probably very guarded, maybe even ambiguous. She certainly didn’t try to arouse in the little girl admiration
or devotion for the absent parent. I think Hilda may have felt her mother was unjust: that there was suspicion and even hatred between the pair, and it was not all Walter Greenspan’s fault.’

‘Right. Anything more?’

‘I toyed with the idea that there might not have been a marriage at all. At most a liaison, maybe just a love affair, brief, and leaving an undercurrent of recrimination.’

‘Remember there were two offspring, five years apart.’

‘True. A liaison, then, on and off, but enduring.’

‘Can’t you dredge your memory and come up with some of the things that made you guess there was no marriage?’

‘I suppose I could try … The fact that Frau Greenspan made no attempt to get her husband out of the country. And I had the impression that she made hardly any attempt to leave with the children herself. I thought it was probably made clear to her early on that there was no question of her getting special treatment if she was not a married woman.’

‘That sounds possible,’ said Kit. ‘The sort of proviso that politicians made at that time to secure Church approval.’

‘And think of the dilemma that would face the poor mother: the only way she could save her children would be to get rid of them
– separate them entirely from herself. And the children would probably not understand, particularly if their illegitimacy was kept generally secret.’

‘Which it surely would have been, in that time and place,’ said Kit. He sighed. ‘If only Hilda was still alive.’

‘Yes. I think that every day of my life. For purely selfish reasons, I’m afraid. But if she had lived she would have been able to tell us everything – or at least everything a child might understand.’

‘It may be that a child in those times, that place, didn’t have very long to enjoy unclouded childhood,’ said Kit.

‘I suppose a specimen of her writing wouldn’t help,’ said Binkie without much hope in her voice.

‘It might,’ said Kit, though he couldn’t think of any ways it could. ‘Do you have letters, then?’

‘Not letters, no. We were almost always together, you see. And if we hadn’t been I don’t suppose I’d have kept her letters, or she mine. Two boring bank cashiers … No, it’s a diary.’ She saw Kit’s face lighting up with anticipation, but she immediately damped it down. ‘Not for the years in Frankfurt. I hoped for that and would have read it if it had been.’

‘How did you come to have it?’

‘I was executor of Hilda’s will. I’d done everything else – the money to an Anglo-Jewish Society, the furniture and books to Shelter and so on. The remainder to me. She knew you would have enough from your parents. We’d discussed it in advance, and I’d practically written the will. When I found the diary I took it and wondered what to do with it. Jürgen was dead by that time and I knew Genevieve was ill – she’d written me such a nice, brave letter. I suppose eventually I would have offered it to you, but the truth is I forgot it. It’s all about life with the Philipsons, you see. Not very interesting, and not at all useful.’

She got up. Kit admired the precision and elegance of her steps as she went out of the room – what an asset she must have been to the atmosphere at Coutts’! Soon she came back with a cheaply bound exercise book: the cover was almost khaki, and the pages were that grubby brown that spoke of wartime and restrictions, at least until recently, when that same brownness of cheap paper began to affect books again. She put it into his hand.

‘There. Take it. It’s yours. If you have any questions ring me or come again. I may know more about the Philipsons than you do, unless Jürgen talked about them a lot to you.’

‘He didn’t. Very seldom, but always admiring
and grateful. He’d have been taught to be that by Hilda as a child. I met the Philipsons a few times when they were very old and I was very young. What impressions there are remaining are of very kind, amiable people.’

He got up to go.

‘Good luck,’ said Binkie.

‘I need it,’ said Kit. But being a young man he added: ‘But sometimes that’s when it comes along.’

Kit sat in his small, utilitarian hotel bedroom – he had no desire to minister to the monstrous greed of most London hoteliers – and looked at the diary he had been given. He had glanced at the first page on the Underground. It had started in the middle of a sentence: ‘…
before we had been made to sit on our own. After that none of the children talked to me. It is so different here. Full of shortages and what we call “make-
do-and-mend
”, but all the children talk, and are happy usually, and ask about Germany, and Jews, and my family. I can’t tell them much. I try to forget.’

His heart had sunk immediately. He didn’t see himself getting much information from a child who was living in England and trying to forget. In any case her early years must have schooled her in not writing about the things most
interesting to her, for fear of their coming into the hands of Hitler’s hirelings.