Page 22 of The Girl with a Secret
“You are new here?” she asked in careful, accented English.
“Yes,” Rosa replied in her own hesitant English. “We arrived today. Do you speak German?”
The woman’s expression, which had been guarded, cleared, and she smiled. “Ja. My name is Anna Gruber,” she replied in German. “I am here with my husband.”
“Rosa Herzelfeld,” Rosa replied in introduction. “I’m here with my mother and father.”
“I am from Vienna originally,” she explained. “You recently arrived?”
“From Berlin, yes. We came on theSt Louis, but we have been in Southampton for the last two weeks.”
Anna nodded her understanding. “We have been here a year, since right after the Anschluss.”
Ayear?
Rosa tried to keep her expression interested and friendly, although inwardly she was appalled. In a whole year, Anna Gruber had not been able to improve her circumstances? She was still living in the rented flat provided by the Quaker Relief Association, lugging her cooking pot out to the landing, sharing a toilet with four other flats. Rosa hoped their situation would be markedly different.
“How have you found it?” she asked, and Anna raised her eyebrows, shrugging a little. “Better than under Hitler, yes?”
“Yes, it certainly is.” Of that there could be no doubt, and Rosa told herself, rather sternly, not to be ungrateful. She could hardly lambast her parents for their sniffy attitudes if she was quietly feeling the same. “Do you work?” she asked. “We have been told we must look for jobs.”
Anna nodded. “I came here on a domestic worker’s visa. I am a maid for a grand house in St John’s Wood. In Vienna, I was apsychologist.” She smiled and shrugged again, while once more Rosa had to hide her horror.
A psychologist, now working as a maid?Admittedly, she’d known that sort of thing happened—plenty of people at the boarding house in Southampton had explained how Jews were unable to find professional jobs in Great Britain and had to make do scrubbing and sweeping. An acclaimed lawyer, Rosa had been told, now drove a bus. Still, she’d assumed, without even realizing she was doing it, that her father would be different. Thatshewould.
And even now, she found herself refusing to believe that they wouldn’t be. Anna Gruber might have had to work as a maid, but that didn’t mean Rosa would. She wasn’t on a domestic worker’s visa, after all; according to the Quaker Relief Association, they could get any job they liked. Rosa was hoping, at the very least, to be a secretary or typist. She’d done well in school, especially in the sciences. She hadn’t been able to go to university, thanks to the race laws, but she was smart and ambitious, and she wanted to do well for herself in this new country. More than being a maid, anyway. If that made her a snob, well then, so be it.
“If you are interested,” Anna continued, “the Jewish Day Center here in Belsize Park offers classes in English. They are free, and have certainly been worthwhile.”
“Thank you,” Rosa replied. Already she knew she needed to improve her English—and quickly.
The kettle began to boil, and Rosa took it by its handle as she pulled it off the stove.
“It was a great pleasure to meet you,” she told Anna, her voice politely formal, as if they were in a drawing room back in Berlin, making chitchat over champagne.
Anna smiled faintly, and Rosa had the uncomfortable feeling that the other woman had guessed at least some of her thoughts.“And you,” she said, as she slapped her pot down on top of the cooker. “I’m sure we’ll see more of each other.”
They certainly would, sharing this cooker, along with the toilet, Rosa thought. She smiled in return before heading back to the flat. As she came inside, she saw her mother was sitting on one of the rickety chairs by the table, looking forlorn, while her father was adjusting his hat, ready to go out.
“I’m going to visit the bank,” he announced. “And see what has happened to our funds. We surely won’t have to endure these dreadful conditions for much longer.”
“Thank you, Fritz, darling,” her mother murmured, with a grateful, adoring look for her husband, the kind that made Rosa grit her teeth, because her mother knew what her husband was like. Just as Rosa did.
It wasn’t until her father had left, closing the door smartly behind him, that Rosa realized they had no tea; they hadn’t yet bought any food at all. She put the kettle on the rough worktop, suddenly feeling exhausted by that simple effort.
Although it wasn’t just that, she knew. It was everything—the strangeness of their new lives, the list of chores she would have to do to make this place habitable, because she was already quite certain her mother wouldn’t lift a finger. It was the knowledge that they would be sharing this space with strangers, that she would have to venture out into this foreign world, trying to speak a foreign language, and get a job of some sort, if she even could. Considering the state of her English, it was likely she’d be a maid, as well, Rosa thought despondently—and that was if she was lucky enough to be hired in the first place.
“Rosa,” her mother said, a touch of impatience to her voice. “I thought you were making tea?”
“I’ll have to go out to buy some,” Rosa replied. Even that simple task felt daunting. She thought back to how she’d been on the ship, full of determined bravado, believing this brave newworld had met its match in her. Now, with a painful lump in her throat, she realized how foolish and false that façade of courage really was. She almost—almost—wished she was back on theSt Louis, sailing across the Atlantic and standing on the deck, a balmy breeze blowing over her as she chatted and laughed with her friends, dreaming of a future in Havana that had looked only bright.
Was Hannah feeling this same unsettling sense of lostness? Rosa wondered. Was Rachel? And what about Sophie? Rosa had assumed she was enjoying the high life in the United States, but maybe Washington DC was as strange and scary as London. The possibility gave her a sense of solidarity with her friends, now so far away, and she slipped her hand into her pocket, her fingers curling around the sliver of emerald she took with her everywhere. Then she straightened, determined not to be defeated at the first, admittedly small, hurdle.
“I’ll go get some tea now,” she told her mother, and with a firm, bright smile, she turned toward the door.
CHAPTER 10
JULY 1939—LONDON
