Page 66 of The Girl with a Secret
Shock rippled through her, but she kept her voice even as she asked, “How do you know all that?”
Peter shrugged, his glance moving around the parkland, dusk deepening into shadow. “As part of my position. I know I shouldn’t talk about it, but I… I heard him speak myself.”
“You’re one of the listeners,” Rosa murmured, and Peter nodded.
“And that’s all you should know about that, I suppose, but I have to tell you, Rosa… I’ve been in agony since we last spoke. I know I was unfair to you, Iknowit.” He reached for her hands. “I just couldn’t help myself, somehow. I felt so angry, but not atyou, not really…”
“I understand, Peter.” Gently, she squeezed his hands, grateful for what he was telling her. “When I… when I saw Ernst face to face, when I spoke to him…” She shook her head slowly, recalling that moment in painful clarity. “I felt sick inside, that I could have ever convinced myself I was in love with him. Maybe I’d simply been starved of affection, or maybe I was naïve, but… I should have known better. Ishouldhave.” It was a thought which had been tormenting her since that night, but now she knew she needed to let it go.
“But, Rosa, don’t you see?” Peter protested. “I’m saying the opposite.Whyshould you have known better? He was a kind and handsome man who charmed you. When I heard him speak, when I listened to what he was saying—not just about you, but about everything, the war, his life, being here—I realized he was that, only that… aman. Not a monster.” He drew a shaky breath. “Perhaps it makes it easier, to believe such men are monsters, not worthy of any pity or regard. Perhaps it is harder to accept that men can act in monstrous ways and still be human—fallible, afraid, loving, weak. I don’t know.” He straightened,his expression turning resolute, her hands still clasped in his. “But the Nazis tried to demonize us Jews, turn us into something inhuman—beneath regard, unworthy of respect. Like rats, that’s how they treated us. I won’t do the same to another man—anyother man—no matter how odious his beliefs. And I understand why you were able to believe yourself in love with him, I do.”
“It was a long time ago,” Rosa whispered. She tightened her grip on his hands, as if she could anchor him to her. “When I saw Ernst last week, Peter, he meant nothing to me.Less?—”
Peter’s smile was soft, his expression tender. “I know.”
Her heart felt as if it were turning over in her chest. “Then…” she began, hardly daring to hope.To believe.
“You know I love you,” he reminded her wryly. “I told you so, and I’ll tell you again. I love you, Rosa Herzelfeld, maybe from the moment you first pretended to pour me tea, or maybe it simply grew from there, into something deep and strong and true. But it’s real, and I want you to know it.” He paused, squeezing her hands gently. “I suppose the question now is, do you love me too?”
Rosa gulped and nodded, her heart so very full, tears of both relief and elation starting in her eyes. “Yes, Peter,” she whispered. “Yes. I do. So much.”
“Good,” he whispered back, and then he drew her to him. Rosa came with relief and joy in her heart, and as Peter kissed her, this time there was nothing in it but sweetness.
In retrospect, the next few months passed in a blur of wonder and happiness. Yes, it was wartime, and the news was often grim, and Rosa was still worried for her friends in Europe, but… Peter was in love—in love!—with her, and she loved him and was doing important work, and the tide was surely turning, just as they’d hoped it would. There seemed every reason to be happy,tochooseto be happy. Even the news from home seemed happy—her mother’s dressmaking business was a success, and her father had sat his medical exams and passed with flying colors. The Rosenbaums, too, had happy news—Zlata was, somewhat miraculously, expecting a baby.
Like Sarah and Abraham! her mother had written. She and her father had, somewhat to Rosa’s surprise, started attending the liberal synagogue in Belsize Square that had been founded by refugees in 1939. They had embraced this new life, far better and more comprehensively than Rosa had even dared to hope, and seemed stronger as a couple, as well, seeming to put her father’s indiscretions behind them.
She even heard from Hannah—a letter had been smuggled through to Vichy France, and then posted on. It had taken months to arrive, and had been covered in the red ink of British Intelligence officers and signed only with her initials, H. L., but at least Rosa knew that Hannah and Lotte were safe… or they had been, all those months ago when she’d written it. Rosa could only hope it remained the case.
I am doing good work now, Hannah had written, which Rosa suspected was code for something secretive and probably dangerous.It feels more important than anything I’ve ever done.
Rosa understood that sentiment well; indeed, she shared it. She was glad Hannah had found a way to fight this war, even as she feared for her safety.
She’d also heard from Rachel, who had managed to send a letter through the channels in Portugal.
We struggle on—food is very scarce, and they have ordered all Jews to register with a central board, which doesn’t seem like a good sign, but who knows, maybe they just want to make sure we’re cared for! It is very difficult to get reliablenews, but there are good people here, and I know they will protect us.
Rosa’s heart had faltered at those stark words; it sounded as if Rachel and Franz were in terrible danger, even if Rachel was doing her best to make light of it. In any case, the truth of the situation in Netherlands could be heard on the BBC during the evening news—in February, Jews there were segregated from the rest of the population, and over fifteen thousand sent to forced labor camps. A month later, they were forced to wear a yellow star on their clothing. It felt like the beginning of something truly ominous. Rosa prayed that Rachel and Franz had not been arrested, and the good people her friend had mentioned had indeed been able to protect them from whatever came next.
Rosa heard from Sophie too, in March, that her sweetheart Sam had died in the attack on Pearl Harbor. Her friend’s matter-of-fact tone hid, Rosa suspected, an ocean of grief, and she ached for her, and the love she’d lost. After she’d folded up the letter, Rosa took out the sliver of emerald she still carried with her everywhere.What is happening to all of us? she wondered, her heart feeling as if it were twisting inside her, with anxiety and fear. All four of them had already suffered so much. Would they all survive—and not just survive, but emerge stronger, braver? Rosa longed to imagine them all at Henri’s, laughing, weeping, embracing. Together again, the emerald whole once more.
And yet the war was far from over. The happiness that she’d found with Peter felt then as precious and fragile as a glass bauble, achingly beautiful and yet so easily shattered.
In May, as the cherry blossoms came out on the trees in beautiful, blowsy pink puffballs, Rosa received anotherunexpected summons to the Blue Room. It had been ten months since that night at the 400 Club, and that whole evening with Ernst thankfully felt like a distant, shadowy memory, one she was more than happy to consign to history.
She’d had nearly a year of simply doing her work and falling more deeply in love with Peter, enjoying their snatched moments together—walks in the estate, drinks at the local pub, and twice, on their days off, a trip into London. He’d met her parents, and had shaken her father’s hand, charmed her mother. She’d told him about Sophie and Hannah and Rachel, shown him the emerald and tried to explain what it meant. All of it, taken together, had felt so very precious and sweet, and she realized she didn’t want any of it to change as she headed once more to the Blue Room.
“You’re wanted at the War Office,” Colonel Kendrick told her briskly, before Rosa had even sat down in the chair in front of his desk. “Seems they’ve found another use for you. I don’t know anything about it, so you might as well not bother asking me any questions.” He smiled to soften the words, but there was a flicker of something in his eyes that flooded Rosa with a sudden unease.
“Will it… will it be dangerous?” she asked.
“I’ve no idea, Miss Herzelfeld,” Kendrick replied briskly. “But I will tell you that just about everything we do these days is dangerous. There is a war on, after all.”
She left for London the next morning. It felt as surreal to leave Cockfosters Camp after a year as it had been to leave Rushen after ten months. Her life, Rosa reflected, was parceled out in days and months—first Belsize Park, and then Rushen, and then Cockfosters. Each experience felt strangely out of time, out of reality, existing in its own separate universe.
When she’d told Peter she’d been summoned to the War Office, he’d looked concerned. “The War Office? What do you think it’s about?” he’d asked, frowning. “Will you be transferred somewhere, do you think?”
Rosa had shrugged, nerves warring with a cautious excitement. “Maybe? I don’t know why I would, though, when I’m doing important work here.” She’d hugged him, wrapping her arms tightly around his middle as she’d pressed her cheek against his chest, savoring the feel of him. “I don’t want to be transferred,” she’d whispered. “I want to stay here with you.”
