The Morning Gift

Chapter 21

‘I can’t,’ said Heini in a choking voice. ‘I can’t do it.’

The red face of the camp commandant with its

brutal jaw, its small blue eyes, thrust itself into Heini’s.

‘Oh, I think you can. I think you’ll find you can.’

Heini saw the flash of the knife in the commandant’s hand, and realized that he was defeated. There was not even a potato peeler — he was expected to peel three buckets of potatoes under a cold water tap. He had explained that he was a pianist, that his hands were not like other people’s, that they were his livelihood, and no one had listened, no one cared. One slip of the blade and he would not be able to practise, perhaps for weeks.

Beside him, Meierwitz had already started, neatly slicing off the discoloured eyes, dropping the naked potatoes into the water. But Meierwitz was different, he came from a working-class district in the Ruhr; Meierwitz was used to hardship; he whistled as he worked, he pointed out a robin on the fence post, watching them.

For Heini, the grey fields, the grey sky, the murmur of the sea on the shingle beach a mile away, were a featureless, nightmare world. The somnolent black and white cows grazing behind the barbed-wire perimeter of the camp might have been creatures from Hades. It was his third day in captivity and already he knew that he would crack up under the strain. The men slept six to a hut, they rose at seven to do PE in the freezing cold, breakfast was porridge which he had read about and never seen, and bread and dripping — and always tea, tea, tea — never once a cup of coffee. Then came these frightful chores — potato peeling, vegetable slicing, any of which could damage his hands, and in the evening the raucous noise of mouth organs or the wireless or people playing poker for matchsticks. And now lectures were being organized, compulsory ones, and the previous night there had been a film show where a mindless comic had run about playing the ukelele and losing his trousers. If this was what passed for culture among the British, he was going to be very unhappy here.

Meierwitz had chopped off a piece of potato and thrown it at the robin who considered it, his head on one side, and decided it was unworthy as an offering, and the brutal commandant, an ironmonger from Graz who was determined to lick this miscellaneous gaggle of refugees into a worthy task force, came by and told him not to bother. ‘He only eats worms,’ he said, already rather proud of the picky attitude of this most British of birds, and threw a contemptuous glance at Heini Radek. You’d think he’d be glad to get out of Europe instead of whinging on about his hands.

For Heini, the discovery that his visa was a forgery had come out of the blue. The hours spent in the immigration huts at the airport were a nightmare that he would remember to his dying day. Along with the others whose papers were not in order or those who had come over on block visas, he’d been taken to this transit camp and treated — he considered — like an animal; herded, rubber-stamped, pushed about. At first he had thought he might be sent back but public opinion in Britain had at last woken up to the plight of the refugees and after the first day, everyone at Dovercamp had learnt that they could remain. Those who volunteered for agricultural work or were willing to join the Pioneer Corps could be released quickly; the rest had to be processed, sorted, above all a sponsor had to be found to guarantee that they would not become a burden on the taxpayer.

The euphoria this had produced in the other inmates had passed Heini by. There was certainly no question of his volunteering for agricultural work or becoming a Pioneer. No one seemed to understand that music wasn’t some selfish pursuit; it was his mission. The volunteer ladies who took down his particulars in appallingly slow handwriting seemed to find this impossible to grasp. One had spelled ‘Conservatoire’ as ‘conservatory’ and thought he was a horticulturist, and another had said that there seemed to be an awful lot of music ‘over there’. It was two days before he had been allowed to phone Frau Berger, but the line was so bad that he could hardly hear her and it was difficult to remember that this family, who had once been able to open doors to every chancellory in Vienna, were now as penniless and stateless as he was himself. The Bergers could not guarantee him financially; their name, with the bullying ladies in the office, carried no weight. Yet they would find someone to sponsor him; they would help him. And Ruth would come. All his hope centred on her as he plunged his hands into the bucket and took out another spud.

More persecution followed in the long day. The commandant had decided to dig a vegetable patch on the perimeter of the camp and all the able-bodied men were marshalled to dig. The soggy earth, the blunt and heavy spade, made the task appallingly heavy and he could actually feel the callouses come up on his palms. Yet when he gave up after half an hour, there were nudges and glances and someone pointed out that if Professor Lipchitz, an elderly musicologist from Dresden, could work in the fields, then so could he.

It was as they sat drinking tea from enamel mugs and eating the dry biscuits they were issued in the afternoon, that a boy from the office poked his head round the door of the hut.

‘Mr Radek?’ he called.

Heini rose, his heart pounding.

‘There’s someone to see you in the office.’

‘Who…?’ stammered Heini.

‘A girl,’ said the messenger. ‘A stunner,’ and looked with new respect at Heini.

Ruth stood quietly, waiting for him to come. She had travelled since the previous night and had scarcely eaten, but she needed nothing, transfigured as she was by joy.

All the way down from Northumberland, in terror and despair, she had prayed, dedicating her life afresh to Heini, offering everything that she held dear if only he was safe. And then the thing had happened that never happened: the second chance. Leonie explaining that Heini was here, that she had misheard, that the camp was in England and she could go to him.

Then Heini entered and she could not speak for this was not the Wunderkind she had known, this was a frightened, shabby boy with stubble on his chin and a beaten look in his eyes — and overwhelmed by love and pity, she opened her arms and made the gesture that had always spelled sanctuary for him, shaking forward her hair so that it sheltered them both.

‘Thank God, Ruth! I thought you’d never come.’

‘Oh, darling; you’re really here. It’s you.’ Her voice broke ‘I thought you were in a proper camp, you see. I thought they’d got you.’

‘This is a proper camp. It’s awful, Ruth.’

‘Yes… yes… but you see I thought you were in Dachau or Oranienburg. My mother phoned and I couldn’t hear her properly. Then when I learnt you were safe… I’ll never forget it as long as I live.’

And she would never forget what she had vowed: to serve Heini for all her days and expiate for ever that time of betrayal she had spent Lotus-eating by the sea.

‘You’re going to take me home, aren’t you, darling? Now?’

‘Heini, I can’t this minute. I have to get hold of Dr Friedlander — I’m sure he’ll sponsor you, but he’s away for the weekend. I’ll be on his doorstep first thing tomorrow and then it’ll just be a very few days.’

‘A few days!’ Heini lifted his head. ‘Ruth, I can’t stay here that long. I can’t!’

‘Oh, please, darling! We’ll all be working for you — and they’re friendly here, aren’t they? I spoke to the secretary.’

‘Friendly!’ But there was such comfort in her presence that he decided to be brave and managing to change the subject, he said: ‘Did you get a piano?’

‘Yes. A Bösendorfer!’

‘A grand?’

‘No, love; we’ve only got a very small sitting room. But it’s a beauty!’

He was disappointed, but he would not reproach her. She was his lifeline; his saviour.

They were still clasped in each other’s arms when the secretary returned.

‘It’s time for your bus, dear,’ she said. ‘You mustn’t miss it: it’s the last one.’

It was as Ruth picked up her cloak that she saw a bird, untroubled by barbed wire, sitting on a fence post outside the window.

‘Oh, look Heini! It’s a starling! That’s an omen for us, isn’t it? It must mean good luck.’

She drew him to the window. The bird cocked its head, bright-eyed, but not looking quite right at the nether end.

‘He’s lost some tail feathers,’ said the secretary. ‘Been overdoing it.’

‘Yes.’ Ruth could see that, but it was of no consequence. An omen was an omen. Tail feathers did not come into a thing like that.