Page 53 of The Girl with a Secret
Now Rosa’s head was truly whirling. To go all that way on her own… and what for? “But… why?” she asked, caught between fear and a cautious excitement. “Where am I going, exactly?”
Dame Joanna’s smile softened as she cocked her head. “I don’t know right know, but it seems, my dear,” she said, “that you might be wanted for war work.”
CHAPTER 21
APRIL 1941—COCKFOSTERS, LONDON
Rosa stepped off the train at Cockfosters and glanced around at the near-empty platform. Only a few people had got off with her, and they were walking briskly away while she stood there, holding her single, shabby suitcase, having no idea what to do or where to go. She was supposed to be met, according to Dame Joanna, but she had no idea by whom and in any case, no one was here.
The day had passed in something of a surreal haze. After Rosa had returned from speaking with Dame Joanna yesterday afternoon, she’d found her mother and explained her unexpected turn of events. Her mother, somewhat to her surprise, had been excited for her.
“Oh Rosa,” she’d exclaimed, “what an opportunity! And you’ll finally be able to leave Rushen, which I know you’ve always wanted.”
“Yes, but… why?” Rosa had not been able to shake a deepening sense of unease, that she’d had such a mysterious summons. “Why would they requestmein particular? How do they even know my name?”
Her mother had shrugged. “I imagine they have files on all of us,” she’d replied. “This is good news, Rosa, surely?”
“But I don’t want to leave you,” Rosa had admitted, half surprised she was saying it. She’d become close to her mother while they’d been in the camp, closer than she’d ever been before. She didn’t want to lose that, or the camaraderie and industry she’d found here—teaching at the kindergarten, taking classes.
“Oh, my dear.” Her mother had put her arms around her, and Rosa had hugged her back, breathing in the familiar scent of her perfume, Chanel No. 5, eked out a precious drop at a time. “We’ll be together again soon, I’m sure of it. More and more of us are being released—one of the ladies at the hairdresser’s told me three thousand internees have been able to go home since September.”
“That many?” The thought had been encouraging. Surely, her mother and father would both be released soon, then.
Although Rosa hadn’t been able to get word to her father about her news before she’d left, she’d written a letter for her mother to give to him at the next social. It had been short and simple, stating that she no longer blamed him for his choices, and she wished him well. It had felt oddly final, to write such a letter, and no matter what her mother had said, Rosa had wondered when—and even if—she would see her parents again. The future felt more unknown than ever.
She’d left the Isle of Man on the morning ferry, just past dawn, the sea still covered in shreds of mist. There were a handful of residents going to the mainland for one reason or another, as well as another handful of released internees, eager to start their life of freedom. The two groups kept resolutely separate. Rosa had stood at the ferry’s railing, watching the island and its jagged lining of barbed wire get smaller and smaller, until it was no more than a smudge on the horizon, and then it was nothing at all.
The other internees were talking excitedly about returning to their homes and jobs, yet with some apprehension about what still remained, ten months on from their detention. Rosa had not really been able to join in the conversation; she wasn’t returning to anything, and Dame Joanna had warned her not to speak of what she was doing—not that she even knew or could guess.
From the docks, she’d taken a train into Liverpool, and then another to London. Both were delayed and filled with soldiers, as well as women in various uniforms; now over eighteen months on from the start of the war, it had seemed as if everyone was serving in some way. After the relative isolation and quiet of the Isle of Man, Rosa had found it all chaotic and loud—the shouting and chatting and laughter, the squeeze and crush of too many people piled into a train, passing around a flask of tea, all very good-natured. She’d ended up pressed next to an elderly lady who was determined to keep on with her knitting, her suitcase on her lap, the ends of the knitting needles poking her in the arm as the excited jabber of a group of Wrens flew around her, for most of the wearying journey.
As the train had trundled slowly into London, she’d seen, with some shock, the extent of the city’s bomb damage—whole streets obliterated, houses half-crumbling, roads impassable with rubble. She glimpsed a house with its entire front ripped off, so it looked like a dollhouse, every room visible. On another street, a church had been reduced to nothing but its steeple, cracked in half and lying on the ground. Amidst it all, people went about their business, stepping over rubble, skirting craters in the pavement. Their stoical resilience, glimpsed from the window of a train, humbled her, and it had brought the awful reality of war home to her in a way like nothing else possibly could.
And now she was here, on this empty platform, wondering what on earth she should do.
“Miss Rosa Herzelfeld?” A young woman in the olive-green uniform of the Auxiliary Territorial Service, or ATS, walked smartly up to her.
“Yes…”
“I’m Lance Corporal Elaine Lister. If you could come with me…?”
“Yes, thank you,” Rosa murmured, and followed the woman to a waiting car. She was surprised to see the woman slide into the driver’s seat, as she hadn’t known many women to drive. Rosa put her case in the boot and slid into the back of the car, wondering what on earth would happen next.
“Where are we going, if I may ask?” she inquired after the lance corporal had started the car.
She threw Rosa a smiling glance. “Cockfosters Camp. I don’t suppose you’ve been told anything at all about it?”
“Not a word,” Rosa admitted, and Elaine nodded in understanding.
“That’s how it is with everyone. You’re told to take a train, you show up on a platform, and you’re more or less whisked away. It almost feels like a fairy tale.”
“As long as I don’t get eaten by a witch in the woods,” Rosa joked, and Elaine laughed.
“No fear of that, although Mrs. Gibbins, who runs the kitchen, has a fierce tongue when she’s of a mind to! Don’t worry, though. It will all be explained to you—well, notall, but enough. Everything we do is hush-hush, it’s true, and we’re not meant to talk among ourselves about our work. That is definitely rule number one, and it’s important you keep it.”
“All right,” Rosa replied, startled and more than a little alarmed by how stern the lance corporal suddenly sounded. It sounded, she thought, like Dame Joanne might have been right, and shewaswanted for war work. But what kind of war work, that was so hush-hush?
“There was a story going around,” Elaine continued, “that during one interview, Colonel Kendrick passed an Enfield pistol across the desk and told the poor chap that he knew what to do with it if he spilled any secrets! Mum’s the word, well and truly.”
