Page 36 of The Girl with a Secret
She pulled back, wiping her eyes. “Mother wouldn’t have bought the dress in the first place if you didn’t—” she blurted, only to stop abruptly at the forbidding look on her father’s face.
“Rosa, don’t.” The two words were flat, final. They never talked about what he did—the evenings out, the smell of perfume on his jacket when he came home, the way her mother’s face crumpled into agony. Long ago, Rosa had become complicit without even realizing she was—a chuck on the chin, a secret-sharing smile.No need to tell your mother.She’d feltproud, grownup enough to share a secret. To be trusted with one.
She’d long ago shed that childhood fancy, and yet she felt as good as complicit now, as her father put his arm around her, and they turned toward the underground station.
“Let’s go home, eh?” he said, squeezing her shoulders. “I promised to take your mother out to supper, after all, and I can’t go back on my promise.”
He’d gone back on far more important and even sacred promises than that, Rosa thought as she slipped her hand in her pocket and closed her fingers tightly around the sliver of emerald. How many more promises would he break?
And how many secrets would she be forced to keep?
Her throat too tight to make a reply, she walked with her father to the underground station and home. As they headed down the street, she noticed piles of sandbags heaped against the sides of shops. For a second, she had no idea what they were for—surely this part of London wouldn’t be flooded?
Her step faltered, and her father followed her gaze, his mouth tightening as he gave a nod. “They’re for protecting the shops from bomb blasts,” he told her. “When the war comes.”
Rosa recalled the empty panda enclosure, and what Peter had said earlier in the day. “You think it will come?” she asked her father.
“Yes, and soon.” His arm tightened around her. “And God knows how we’ll be seen then.”
“What do you mean?”
He gave her a somber look as he slid his arm from her shoulder. “We might be Jewish, Rosa, but we’re still Germans.”
“But weleftGermany?—”
“I fear there are many who won’t see it that way. Haven’t you ever noticed someone look at you askance, just for speaking German?”
Rosa thought of Peter saying the same thing. “Yes…” she admitted slowly. She’d had her fair share of suspicious looks whenever she opened her mouth.
“All the more reason to learn English, I suppose,” her father replied with an attempt at cheerfulness. “Perhaps I shouldattend those classes with you, especially if I am going to retake my medical exams.”
He didn’t look at her as he kept walking, although surprise had made Rosa stop in the street. She hurried to keep up with him. “You are? Really?”
He shrugged. “Well, I can’t have my daughter supporting me for all my days.”
“Oh,Vati, I’m glad.” Rosa reached for his hand and gave it a quick squeeze. She knew how proud her father was, and how hard and humbling a step this was for him. As difficult, arrogant and irritating as her father could be, Rosa still loved him, and always would. What he’d done for her today showed the true man beneath all the bluster. “Thank you,” she said softly, and he merely nodded and kept walking.
Rosa slipped her hand into her pocket and took out the emerald. Tears stung her eyes, and she blinked them back fiercely. She would never part with it again, she vowed, no matter what happened. Clutching the jewel, she hurried after her father.
CHAPTER 15
SEPTEMBER 1939—LONDON
The room was tautly hushed as the Herzelfelds and Rosenbaums huddled around the wireless, their faces drawn in tense lines of fearful expectation. It was the morning of the third of September, and the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, was due to give a report on yesterday’s demand that Germany withdraw from Poland.
Over the last month, the news of war had become grimmer and grimmer, a shadow that seemed to hover over the entire country, darkening by the day. Those first telltale signs of it coming had become commonplace—sandbags in the street, newspapers advising what to do in a bombing raid, even well-meaning advice on how to dispose of your pets, which was an apparently merciful thing to do, so they wouldn’t suffer when the country was bombed, and no one could take care of them.
Rosa had taken to searching the sky every time she went out, half-expecting fighter planes to veer menacingly across it. There were advertisements for gas masks and guidance on how to tape your windows. Blackouts had already been trialed in Nottingham and Leeds, and those in possession of a garden were instructed on how to erect an Anderson shelter, which were freeto those who qualified. The Herzelfelds, in their fourth-floor flat, did not.
Despite all these preparations, the threat of war still somehow did not seem real, at least not to Rosa. Her days were the same, scrubbing pots in the kitchen of the Lyons teashop, such drudgery punctuated by weekly English lessons at the Jewish Day Center and occasional afternoons with Peter Gelb.
Rosa and Peter had become good friends over the course of August, although—to both Rosa’s frustration and relief—not more than that. After the tempestuous passion that had been her experience with Ernst, friendship felt like a welcome and comforting thing. And yet… it was only friendship. And the more time Rosa spent with Peter, the more she liked him—his wry sense of humor, the teasing glint that so often lit up his eyes, his practical and cheerful way of looking at things. More than that, she liked the way his smile made her heart skip a beat, and when he’d once kissed her cheek in farewell, she’d felt dizzy. Nothing more had happened, but somehow that had made it all the sweeter.
Sometimes, when she thought about what Peter had endured in Germany, she was gripped with an uneasy sense of guilt, that he could be so accepting, so forgiving, while she still burned against the petty injustices she’d been dealt. What was losing a home—or your pride—compared to Peter’s crippled hand? And yet he seemed to bear no resentment or bitterness for the way he’d been treated, choosing to look toward the future instead.
“What annoys me, if anything,” he’d told her once when they’d been walking through Regent’s Park in late August, “is that with this hand, I won’t be able to fight when there is a war. I just hope Blighty finds another way for me to serve.”
“Don’t you think you’ve paid enough?” Rosa had blurted. “You’ve already lost so much, Peter. To risk your life?—”
