Page 45 of The Girl with a Secret
The woman looked supremely unsympathetic. “You don’t need any of your things,” she replied, and she took Rosa’s arm, none too gently.
Rosa tried to catch a glimpse of her father as she was marched through the corridors of the school to yet another BlackMaria idling out front, but she couldn’t see him anywhere. This van had half a dozen women inside it—some looked tearful, others surly. No one said a word as Rosa was half-flung inside, and then scrambled to sit on one of those benches, squeezed next to a small, prune-faced woman who averted her head.
This couldn’t be happening, she thought numbly. It simply couldn’t be! It made no sense. She was noNazi, for heaven’s sake…
For a second, she thought about shouting out, begging them to reconsider, but she knew it would do no good. She simply had to hope that the British government would come to their senses and release the Jews among the German internees before too long. Meanwhile, though, she would be taken to Holloway. Toprison. She hadn’t even had a chance to say goodbye to her mother… or Peter. What would either of them think? A strangled gasp escaped her, and she pressed her hand to her mouth as the Black Maria rumbled off.
No one spoke for the hour-long journey to the prison in North London; no one seemed even to want to look anyone else in the eye. Were her fellow prisoners Jews? Rosa wondered. Some of them, she realized, might well be Nazis, or at least Nazi sympathizers. And she’d be living cheek by jowl with them, for who knew how long! It was a horrendous thought, and one that was also perfectly ridiculous; for a second, a bubble of hysterical laughter rose in Rosa’s throat, but she forced herself to swallow it down. She could not collapse into hysterics here, of all places. She needed her wits about her.
As the Black Maria drove into the prison courtyard, Rosa glimpsed its forbidding, crenelated towers looming up toward a darkening sky. Then the gate shut with a clang behind them, locking them in—for how long? How on earth would she get out of this desperate situation?
Closing her eyes, whispering a wordless prayer, Rosa slipped her hand into her pocket, her fingers closing over the sliver of emerald. It had not served as much of a talisman so far, but it felt like her only comfort now, her only friend.
CHAPTER 18
JUNE 1940—ISLE OF MAN
The little island perched on the surface of the flat, gray water like the last outpost of humanity, the Irish Sea stretching all the way to a blank horizon. As Rosa disembarked the ferry that had transported several hundred female internees across the sea, her stomach still churning from the voyage, she had no idea what to expect.
The last month in Holloway Prison had been, in turns, stultifyingly boring and unbearably hellish. At the start, she’d shared a cell with a Jew, at least; some Jews had to share the small, barren cells with hostile Nazis sympathizers, which had seemed awful in the extreme, and they had come to both insults and blows, until the wardens had had the sense to separate them. She’d also been able to wear her own clothes, rather than the shapeless prison garments the other inmates wore, and so she was able to keep her sliver of emerald, which she had slipped into her brassiere, close to her skin.
It seemed the status of the German internees was somewhat in question; they were not quite prisoners, like the regular inmates, a rather rough group of women who eyed this new crop with surly suspicion, but they were certainly not free. They were able to move as they chose from their cells to the other areasof the prison, such as they were—a scrubby courtyard, a social hall—but they could not leave the prison and they were given nothing todo. They had no access to newspapers or a wireless, no ability to telephone or post letters, no visitors or contact with the outside world at all. Sometimes Rosa had felt as if she’d been enclosed in a tomb—a tomb with a thousand other women in it.
Rumors had flown, just as they had on that other, unlikely prison, theSt Louis. The women would be interned at Holloway for the entire war; they would be moved on as soon as possible. They would be let go, as no one saw the point of interning thousands of innocent people, some of them British citizens; they would disappear, forgotten by the country that had taken them in, just as they might have been back in Germany.
Rosa had forced herself to stop paying attention to the pointless hysteria, keeping to herself as much as she could. She had been acutely conscious that she fell uncomfortably between the innocent Jews, which most of the internees were, and the few dastardly Nazi sympathizers, who incurred enmity among just about everyone. She’d had no desire to explain what had got her reclassed as Category B, that she’d entertained Adolf Eichmann, of all people, in her own home. She feared what might happen to her if she did.
Three days after she’d arrived at Holloway, she had been shocked to see her mother in a corner of the crowded social hall, standing by herself, looking pale, forlorn and frightened.
“Mutti.” The name had fallen naturally from Rosa’s lips. She’d crossed the room to take her mother by both shoulders. “What on earth are you doing here?”
“My letter came the next day.” Her mother’s lips had trembled as she’d attempted to smile. “They did the same to me as they did to you. Oh, Rosa, whatever shall we do?” She’d sounded so pitiful, so unlike her usual self, that Rosa had felt asudden rush of not just sympathy, but love. Her poor mother. Nothing could have prepared her for this.
Quickly, tightly, Rosa had hugged her. She had been surprised at how glad she was to see her, a familiar face in this seething sea of strangers. Her mother had put her arms around her, hugging her back just as tightly in a way Rosa had not been able to ever remember her doing. For a second, they were united, a mother and daughter like any other, but in a prison, of all places.
“Do you know where your father is?” her mother had asked as she’d released her.
“I heard the men have been taken to a racecourse called Kempton Park, somewhere outside London,” Rosa had replied. “It’s been turned into a camp.” She hoped her father was there, and not somewhere further away, although in truth, as long as they were in Holloway, she wasn’t sure it mattered.
“Are we to stay here?” her mother had questioned in a faltering voice. “Forever?”
Rosa had briefly closed her eyes against such a terrible thought. “I certainly hope not.”
Fortunately, she’d been able to arrange for her mother to share her cell, as they’d waited to be moved on from Holloway… but to where?
The days had crawled past, with so little to do; there had been plenty of time to think, except Rosa hadn’t wanted to think. She couldn’t bear to consider the future, and the past felt far too painful. Oh, the sweet simplicity of the life she’d experienced so briefly in Belsize Park! Washing pots, taking coffee with Peter, learning English… she’d chafed against the smallness of it all sometimes, it was true, but now she’d take it all back with such glad relief. Withjoy. And yet she’d feared she would never get the chance. Every day, she’d kept hoping it would all turn out to be a dreadful mistake, someone would tell her she and hermother were free to go.Otherwomen left—all Jews, clutching their children, weeping with relief—but Rosa’s name had never been called, and neither had her mother’s.
Two weeks after they’d arrived at Holloway, Rosa had finally been allowed to post a letter, only to realize there was no one she’d actually wanted to write, to tell them where she was, or why. She couldn’t bear to admit to Sophie or Hannah or Rachel that she’d been interned, classed as a threat, as good as any Nazi… and for a reason. Neither had she wanted to write to Peter, who might have understood all too clearly why she and her parents had been interned. In the end, she didn’t write to anyone, and the lack of friendship or support caused an emptiness to whistle right through her. She hated that she’d been brought to this place of loneliness and despair… all because of her father and the choices he’d made back in Germany, choices they were all paying for.
Then, at the beginning of June, news finally came. They were to be moved somewhere up north, where a camp was being built for both male and female internees.
“The Isle of Man,” Rosa had told her mother. “I’ve never heard of the place.”
Her mother had shaken her head wearily, too resigned and dispirited to make a reply. She’d looked so different from her usual, glamorous self; there were white streaks in her hair, and without her usual powder and lipstick, her face looked careworn and haggard. The peevish tone she’d often take with Rosa had softened into a resigned weariness that, in some ways, had worried Rosa more than her mother’s petulance ever had. In Holloway, she’d spent her days lying on her bunk or listlessly flipping through one of the out-of-date magazines in the social hall.
“I don’t suppose it matters where we go,” she’d finally replied, on a sigh. “Do you think your father will be there?”
“I don’t know, but you’d think they’d want to keep all the internees together,” Rosa had replied with more optimism than she’d felt. “Especially if the camp is on an island. We aren’t likely to escape, are we, right into the sea?”
