A Stranger in the Family (12 page)

And as he read the first pages his hunch that nothing would be found about Hilda and Jürgen’s earlier years in Germany was confirmed. It was all about school: Miss Lucas’s kindness, Miss Campbell-Jeffries’ strictness, the fact that she was second in class in English (this was marked with an exclamation mark). Kit paid tribute to her diligence and flair: the school was in Hampstead – the competition would have been fierce.

Periodically there was an odd remark about the Philipsons:
‘Auntie May understanding as ever’; ‘Uncle Theo and Jürgen played cricket, and the latter picked it up very quickly’; ‘A wonderful birthday cake – where does Auntie get the stuff? I asked her. She smiled and didn’t say.’
All the remarks were affectionate and spoke of the Philipsons’ skill in earning the children’s trust and love.

It was ten pages into the diary when there came a note on the entry for January 1st: ‘
New Year
1943
.
War going better.
’ Kit had decided two pages earlier that that was where Binkie had given up the diary. The dust on the later pages was more pervasive than that on the earlier first five or six pages (three or four entries per page). So Hilda by then would have been about twelve or thirteen. A very accomplished and thinking
twelve or thirteen, but that was natural in the circumstances. So was the feeling of greater freedom in the writing. Freedom was working its liberating spell.

‘May no longer feels she has to walk me to school,’
ran an entry on March 4th.
‘I’m pleased – she has enough calls on her time, and she is not young. Not like Mutti – though Mutti never seemed young. The cares she bore had worn her down. Every time May has stood in the doorway now to see me off, I have been reminded of my last sight of Mutti. We had had to say goodbye in a mucky old field near to the Frankfurt railway station. Parents were not allowed on the platform. I suppose the officials were afraid that so many grieving parents seeing their children off to a foreign country that welcomed them might rouse a general sympathy for the parents and children in their plight. I don’t think! I never remember arousing the least sympathy in people who knew us but were not Jews – however tragic the things that happened to me were.

‘So I remembered stopping with Jürgen at the door into the station and, turning round, being just close enough to see the tears streaming down our mother’s face. She tried to wipe them quickly away.

‘I contrast this with May and her happy wave and proud smile. This is what living in a 
democracy means: safety. She still takes Jürgen to school, of course: he is only seven, but his primary school is only two streets away and he could easily go on his own if he needed to. But May is too conscientious to fail him, as my dear mother would never have failed us.

‘If only she had not told me …’

There was nothing more than that, nothing to explain the remark. No doubt the young Hilda knew she would not need reminders of what it was.

The diary entries ran from November 1942 to March 1944. Entries became scrappier as time went by, and Kit suspected that Hilda was feeling more and more at home in her new country, had fewer and fewer memories (almost none of them good ones) of her former homeland. The only good memory was her mother – comparisons of her and May, a few words each, memories of her tenderness towards Jürgen, who was a shy child. One that was a little longer came in April 1943.

‘24th. Today it is three years since we heard from our mother. I said nothing to Jürgen. He has almost no memories of her. There was a letter, of course. But I could not … the truth is I could not think of it as a letter from her. Reading it in 1940 I could not hear her voice or feel the tenderness of her embrace. It was so completely lacking in any reminder of her that I decided it
 
must have been a simple copy of a standard letter that all Jewish parents had to write out. I say “all Jewish parents” and I mean “in the camp”, because I am convinced Mutti has been arrested or interned. I described the letter to Magda Cohen, the only other Kindertransport child at Heathside School. She said she had had one similar, but had thrown it away. She thought to keep it would be a sort of victory for Hitler and his gang. I saw her point, but I could never have thrown mine away. It did have one reminder of her: her lovely round handwriting.’

There was another entry that caught Kit’s eye on that first reading of Hilda’s diary. The date was July 11th 1943, and Hilda went into capitals to announce the news:

E
NGLISH AND
US T
ROOPS
I
NVADE
I
TALY.

‘Yes! It’s true. They have landed in Sicily and are going to push their way up the country, ridding it for all time of Germans. I am so happy! I would pray to my God if I knew which one He is, and if I knew whether I believed at all. I hope that big creep Mussolini is quaking in his boots.’

At this point Hilda left a few lines of space, perhaps to fill in any later news if any should be made public. Nothing apparently was. On the line under the space Hilda had written:
‘I wish my mother had never told me those things about our father.’

‘Binkie?’  

‘Yes. Hello Kit.’  

‘You have a good ear for voices. I wouldn’t be so complimentary about your reading of manuscripts.’  

‘Oh Lord – did I miss something? I’m so sorry, Kit—’  

‘Don’t be. It gave me the joy of discovering something for myself. You didn’t exactly miss anything. It’s just that you gave up too early.’  

‘Did I? It was some time in 1942 or early the next year. I thought she was never going to go back to pre-war days.’  

‘She does, though – mostly in isolated sentences. I think she was emotionally liberated
to dig up memories by the preparations for the Allied invasion of Europe, starting in southern Italy. It actually happened in July 1943. Probably if you expected a German invasion of your sanctuary you would suppress memories of that country, or at least be careful about writing them down. But then came the hope that the war would soon be over – though it wasn’t – and that Germany would be defeated, as it was. And with that hope came a slight loosening of all the inhibitions about writing down things from her Frankfurt past. Just phrases, you understand, odd sentences.’

‘For example?’ came Binkie’s voice, eagerly.

‘“I wish my mother had never told me those things about our father.”’

There was silence, and then: ‘Good Lord.’

‘Yes. Does that chime in with anything she ever said to you?’

‘Not at all. I told you, or I implied: she said very little. It’s a difficult sentence to interpret, isn’t it? Is she talking about her father as a family man? As a husband and father? Or is she talking about him as a social or political animal – a Jew, an opponent of the regime, a plotter?’

‘Don’t know,’ said Kit, thinking that Binkie could make a more informed guess than he could. ‘The context doesn’t give any clues – there’s a blank left after the invasion of Sicily, then that. Is
there anyone she would be most likely to talk to about her father? A Jew perhaps – a Jewish girl, or even a boyfriend?’

‘No …’ said Binkie. ‘Or rather, what I really mean is, I don’t know. For example, I thought last night, not being able to get off to sleep, about another friend of Hilda’s – one whom I never met, though Hilda talked about her now and then. She called her Nora, but I think her name must have been Leonora – or perhaps Leonore with an “e”, as Hilda was really Hilde with an “e”.’

‘She was German?’

‘Austrian. She worked in the embassy in a slightly odd capacity because she wasn’t your usual embassy staff member, part of the diplomatic service. She was Austrian by birth, a British resident long ago naturalised, and she acted as some kind of liaison or advisor to Austrian residents in Britain.’

‘I see,’ said Kit slowly. ‘Or rather, I don’t quite. Why should they need a special advisor? And Hilda wasn’t an Austrian citizen, ever.’

‘No. But there was some kind of slant on her job. It was mainly to do with finding and honouring Austrians who had opposed the takeover of the country by the Nazis in 1938, the
Anschluss
– opposed it by leaving, sometimes by working from within, or by simply being Jews
and dying in the concentration camps in the years before 1945. The job was suddenly made for her at the time when Europe needed to feel better about their role in the Second World War.’

‘This sounds interesting. Especially as Hilda may have seen her father in Austria or he may have had some Austrian connection.’

‘Exactly,’ said Binkie cheerfully. ‘In any case the only point I’m making is that this friend may have been the one who brought the father and daughter together.’

‘Do you know her age? Is she likely to be still alive?’

‘My impression is that she was a year or two older than Hilda. No reason why she shouldn’t be alive.’

‘And no reason why she shouldn’t be dead,’ said Kit cheerfully. ‘But it’s worth a try. I’ll get on to the embassy.’

‘Good luck with that. And could you give me another look at the diaries?’

‘I’m itching to. I’m interested in anything that helps me to know Hilda better.’

Kit’s instinct, in matters that concerned his adoptive family, was to act at once. When he put down the phone he got on to Directory Enquiries and was told the number of the Austrian embassy. He introduced himself as the son of a man who had been on one of the Kindertransport
trains. The voice at the other end was slightly bored, as if she had heard from all too many such.

‘I think the person you want to speak to is Mrs Madison.’

‘I was given the name of Leonore or Nora.’

‘That’s right. English people usually settle for Nora. She’s in today, and she has some spare time. Would you like me to fit you into the three o’clock slot? That would give you up to an hour of her time.’

‘Please do slot me in. My name is Christopher Philipson. I’ll be there at ten to three.’

He examined his mental list of things he might take in during his London visit, and decided to go to the exhibition of Flemish art at the Queen’s Gallery. He thought it might prove soothing but he was, in fact, intensely excited by so many rarely seen masterpieces, and his mind was all the time on his mother, Genevieve, and how she would have illuminated the pictures for him. It was with a sense of impending revelations that he walked from the Underground station to the embassy, and this stomach-churning excitement grew in his ten-minute wait outside the door of ‘Leonore Madison, Special Advisor on Citizenship’.

The office he was ushered into was like a well-used domestic sitting room, complete with
TV, bookcases and easy chairs. There was a desk, but it was humanised by the substantial woman who sat behind it. She must, Kit felt, be at least seventy, but the eyes in her turtle-like face were alive with interest and enjoyment of life. The face was sallow, minimally but carefully made-up, and Kit was pretty sure she was wearing a wig.

‘Thank you for seeing me. My name is—’

‘Philipson. Yes, I have your name in front of me. It interests me because it is not common.’

‘No, it’s not. And I believe you have been a friend of my aunt.’

She smiled a smile of self-satisfaction.

‘Ah, so I am right. Dear Hilda. Yes, we were friends. Not close, intimate friends, you understand: people who shared every mood, every secret. No, we weren’t that, but we did enjoy each other’s company. She first came to me years ago with a problem, or let’s call it an enquiry, and we stayed friends for the rest of her life.’

‘Am I allowed to know what the enquiry was about?’

She raised her hand, palm outwards. She was no pushover.

‘Hold your horses, young man! Maybe, and maybe not. First I want to know who I’m talking to.’

Kit nodded.

‘I’m the son of Jürgen Philipson, Hilda’s brother, who was, like her, one of the Kindertransport children.’

‘And, of course, the adopted son of the Philipsons, having originally in Germany been called Greenspan. Jürgen no doubt found adoption of you easy to contemplate – which is not always the case among those from Central and Eastern Europe – because he had been successfully adopted himself. Because you were adopted by him and his wife, weren’t you?’

‘Yes, I was. I wasn’t trying to hide that. The fact is, it’s rather complicated, with lots of blank spaces.’

‘Finding one’s birth mother is very common these days, especially if the adoption went through the usual channels.’

Kit was disconcerted but heartened by her acumen.

‘I’ve already found my birth mother, even though the adoption didn’t go through the “usual channels”, as you call them. I’m perhaps misleading you when I call it an adoption at all.’

‘So what happened to put you into Jürgen Philipson’s care – excellent care, so Hilda always said?’

‘Yes, excellent care, from both him and his wife, my mother. The complicating factor is that
I became “available” as a result of abduction.’

She looked at him as if the world had turned upside down, then she whistled.

‘You mean you were kidnapped? At Jürgen’s instigation?’

‘Kidnapped, yes. At his instigation? I would very much doubt that. Jürgen was the most upstanding, the most moral person I’ve ever known.’

A glint came into Nora Madison’s eye.

‘Have you thought of selling your story to the Walt Disney Corporation? He likes British pantomime plot lines.’

Kit, after a moment’s pause, laughed heartily.

‘Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, Dick Whittington?
I’ve seen those. And does
Peter Pan
count? Yes, there is a sort of make-believe aspect to my story, in its early stages. I remember little from the abduction.’

‘How old were you?’

‘I was only three, the same age my father was when he took the train to England with Hilda. I remember my nursery, the pictures on the walls, and the smell of my birth mother when she’d been cooking.’

‘Not bad for a start. So what about your birth mother? You say you’ve found her. Is she happy to have you back?’

‘Deliriously.’

‘And happy you are making enquiries into the abduction?’

Kit shrugged, hiding his unease. ‘I suspect she thinks it’s a waste of time. I’m back, she’s got me home, and I’ve got her. We have time to get to know each other. I imagine she thinks I ought to be satisfied with that.’

‘I’d have thought … well, never mind. I don’t know her, do I? What do you know about the abduction?’

‘That’s the point – almost nothing. The people who did it I never saw again. Correction: I never remember seeing them again. Almost all my early memories are of Genevieve and Jürgen and a succession of au pairs. But odd things seem to attach themselves to the abduction. There was a confrontation between Jürgen and my birth father at a conference in Glasgow a few years ago.’

‘Who and what is – or was – your birth father?’

‘Frank Novello, a solicitor in Leeds. He has got some sort of reputation through sorting out rivalries between the various gangs – mostly of Italian origin – in Glasgow. He, my birth father, is a sardonic, mischief-making kind of man – to me not the peacemaking sort at all. When I went to see him recently he seemed to deny that he is my father, and he’s said similar things to others.
That is all rather odd, because he made no such assertions at the time of my birth parents’ separation or the divorce, which happened two or three years after the abduction.’

Nora looked intrigued, as if this were the sort of problem that she enjoyed.

‘Interesting. So how does Hilda come into this?’

‘She doesn’t. But that rather dramatic confrontation I mentioned, at the conference in Glasgow – from what I know about Jürgen there are two things that occur to me as possible grounds for the disagreement.’

‘And these are?’

‘First me. Jürgen, either knowingly or unknowingly, accepted a child who had been abducted and made that child his own. Perhaps Novello was threatening to take me away.’

‘Interesting still, though lots of unanswered questions occur to me. Go on.’

‘Here’s how you can perhaps help me. I have very little information about Jürgen and Hilda’s birth father. Hilda’s journal – we have just two years of it, while she was living with the Philipsons but before they legally adopted her – reveals that Hilda’s mother, before Hilda left on the train, had told her something upsetting about her father: the mother’s husband, or perhaps her lover, her seducer or whatever.’

‘Something to his discredit?’

‘That seems very likely. Hilda says she wishes she had not been told whatever it was.’

‘There is something rather ugly about one parent setting children against the other parent.’

‘Yes. And we do not learn from the diary or from anywhere else that Hilda’s mother was unpleasant by nature – quite the reverse. And when you think about it, and the circumstances in which the revelation to the daughter was made, it possibly was done only reluctantly, as a necessity.’

‘I see what you mean. That if the mother found herself trapped in Germany, with the concentration camps the only prospect—’

‘The camps which Jews were beginning to hear about, even though other Germans managed apparently to remain ignorant of them till 1945. The mother might have feared that the children would find themselves in England and being reclaimed by their father. If she had good reason to think that such a reunion would be a disaster, then she might have felt she had to issue a warning – impressing it on the child at a crucial moment in her life, when she was departing for a new country.’

‘And the child might understand her gesture in a quite different way.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘She thinks she is being set against her father, at this crucial, highly emotional moment, and she feels this is wrong – mean.’

‘That sounds convincing. But she was only eight …’

‘Agreed, but she hadn’t had the experience of a normal eight-year-old. She must have been terribly lacking in things – people – to cling to.’

‘And she clung to her father, the idea of her father, because otherwise she had only her mother, whom she was losing that very day.’

Nora mulled over that for a while.

‘Yes. That seems to me a possibility,’ she said at last.

‘I take your point about people to cling to, because I think Jürgen tried to be completely self-reliant for the same reason. You, who knew Hilda quite well, must have sensed the same reaction in her.’

‘I knew Hilda superficially well.’

‘Did you talk often about her father?’

‘I wouldn’t say often, but we did talk.’

‘Did you get the impression of her resenting her mother’s trying to manipulate her attitude to her father?’

Nora Madison hesitated.

‘I suppose I must have. But the idea only came to me now, as a result of hearing about the diaries. I have no doubt that Hilda loved her
mother very much, but I think she also wanted to think well of her father.’

‘Maybe that’s true of most children. Emotionally she was cut in half, as I see it.’

‘I wouldn’t want to exaggerate this feeling towards her father, whom she virtually never knew. If she had met him – which she may well have done – and if he had made an unpleasant or irresponsible impression on her – his behaviour generally does suggest a strain of irresponsibility – she would have discarded him without any hesitation as he in her babyhood had discarded her. But she would have gone to the meeting hoping not to have to do that.’