last it came to an end and a sad man in a pullover rose to read out extracts from a diary smuggled out through Switzerland which had been kept by a Jewish writer still at liberty in Germany. Anna knew how such people lived, of course, but it was still horrifying to hear the details – the penury, the petty persecutions, the constant threat of the concentration camp. When he had finished, the other writers sat in silence and gazed gratefully at the moulded ceiling, and the large windows overlooking Hyde Park. At least they had got out in time.
There followed a completely uninteresting dissertation on the regional differences between Frankfurt and Munich, and then Papa stood up.
“Berlin,” he said, and began to read.
When, at the age of eight or nine, Anna had first realised that Papa was a famous writer, she had begged him to let her see something he had written and he had finally given her a short piece that he thought she might understand. She could still remember her embarrassment after reading it. Why, she had thought in shame, why couldn’t Papa write like everyone else? She herself was going through a phase at school of writing long, convoluted sentences full of grandiose phrases. She had imagined that Papa’s writing would be the same, only even grander. But instead Papa’s sentences had been quite short. He used ordinary words that everyone knew, but put them together in unexpected ways, so that you were startled by them. It was true that once you got over your surprise you saw exactly what he meant, but even so…Why, Anna thought, oh why couldn’t he write like other people?
“A little too soon, I think,” Papa had said afterwards and for years she had been shy of trying again.
Now Papa was reading something he must have typed quite recently on the rickety typewriter in his room. It was about Berlin. She recognised the streets, the woods nearby, there was even a bit about their house. That’s just what it was like, thought Anna.
Then Papa had written about the people – neighbours, shopkeepers, the man who looked after the garden (Anna had almost forgotten him), the owl-eyed secretary who typed Papa’s work. This bit was rather funny and the writers in the audience all laughed. But where were all these people now? asked Papa. Did the owl-eyed secretary raise her hand in the Hitler salute? Had the grocer joined the Storm Troopers – or had he been dragged off to a concentration camp? What had become of them after the Nazis had stolen their country? (Here Papa used a very rude word which made the writers gasp and then titter in relief.) We do not know, said Papa. Hitler has swallowed them up. And yet, if one went back perhaps it would all look just as it had looked before. The streets, the woods nearby, the house…He ended with the words with which he had begun. “Once I lived in Berlin.”
There was a moment’s silence and then the writers rose up as one writer and clapped and clapped. As Papa came down from the platform a small crowd formed round him, congratulating him and shaking his hand. Anna kept back but he found her near the door and asked “Did you like it?” She nodded, but before she could say any more they were swept into the room beyond where tea had been prepared. It was a lavish spread and while some writers made an effort not to appear too keen, others could not resist flinging themselves upon it. The tea had been provided by the main English section of the club and a sprinkling of English writers appeared along with it. While Anna ate an éclair and tried to tell Papa how much she had liked the piece about Berlin, one of them came up to talk to them.
“I heard the applause,” he said to Papa. “What were you speaking about?”
Papa, as usual, did not understand, so Anna translated for him.
“Ach so!” said Papa and adjusted his face to speak English. “I talk-ed,” he said, mispronouncing the mute ed at the end of the word as usual, “about Germany.”
The Englishman was taken aback by the Shakespearean accent but recovered quickly.
“It must have been most exciting,” he said. “I wish so much that I could have understood it.”
When Anna got back to the Bartholomews’, much later, she found a letter from Max inviting her to Cambridge for the weekend. Everything is happening at once, she thought. She forgot her shyness in telling Mrs Bartholomew all about the invitation, about Papa’s reading at the club and about her new career.
“And when I’ve finished the course,” she ended triumphantly, “I’ll be able to earn three pounds a week!”
Like Papa, Mrs Bartholomew looked a little regretful.
“That’s very good news,” she said after a moment. “But you know, don’t you, that you can live in this house as long as you like, so that if ever you should change your mind …”
Then she went off to find a coat of Jinny’s for Anna to wear during her weekend with Max.
All the way to Cambridge in the train Anna wondered what it would be like. What would they do? What would Max’s friends be like? Would she be expected to talk to them and if so, what on earth would she say? The weather had turned cold again and soon after the train had left London it began to drizzle. Anna sat staring out at the soggy fields and the cattle sheltering under dripping trees and almost wished she hadn’t come. Supposing nobody liked her? And indeed, why should they like her? Nobody else did much, she thought morosely – at least not people of her own age. The girls at Miss Metcalfe’s had not thought much of her. They had never elected her as a prefect, or as dormitory captain, or even as dining-room table monitor. For a brief time there had been talk of making her guinea-pig orderly, but even that had come to nothing. And Max’s friends were boys. How did one talk to boys?
“Not a very nice day,” said a voice, echoing her thoughts. It belonged to a tweedy woman in the seat opposite. Anna agreed that it wasn’t and the woman smiled. She was wearing a hat and expensive, sensible shoes like the mothers at Miss Metcalfe’s on Parents’ Day.
“Going up to Cambridge for the weekend?” said the woman. Anna said, “Yes,” and the woman went at once into a description of the social delights of what she called the “varsity”. Her three brothers had been there years ago, and two of her cousins, and they had all invited her for weekends – a gel could have such fun. Theatre parties! cried the tweedy woman, and May balls, and picnics at Grantchester, and everywhere you went so many, many delightful young men!
Anna’s heart sank farther at this account but she comforted herself with the thought that there could hardly be May balls in March and that Max would surely have warned her if he had planned any grand goings-on.
“And where do you come from, my dear?” asked the tweedy woman, having exhausted her reminiscences.
Normally when people asked her where she came from Anna said, “London,” but this time for some inexplicable reason she found herself saying, “Berlin,” and immediately regretted it.
The woman had stopped in her tracks.
“Berlin?” she cried. “But you’re English!”
“No,” said Anna, feeling like Mama at the Refugee Relief Organisation. “My father is an anti-Nazi German writer. We left Germany in 1933.”
The tweedy woman tried to work it out. “Anti-Nazi,” she said. “That means you’re against Hitler.”
Anna nodded.
“I
