The Chilbury Ladies' Choir(94)

I wondered if I’d been wrong. Maybe she wouldn’t have come here. Looking around, I wasn’t sure I’d want to hang around. And what if Tom couldn’t help her get to London? He was only a child himself, after all.

Feeling like an intruder, I walked cautiously down the central scrub, remembering that Old George had been living there, fearful that he was still lurking around, ready to jump out at me with a knife in his hand. A sudden bang made me jump, but it was a door swinging shut in the wind, loose on its hinges. I walked over and closed it properly, just to be on the safe side.

That’s when I saw her.

Her eyes were the first thing I noticed, huge and black like a petrified mouse. Crouching at the end of the row, huddled between that and the next one, she sank lower and shifted back into the shadows, and I heard a whisk of movement before I realized that she’d escaped me, scooting off behind the huts and away into the cornfield behind. I raced after her, finding a new speed that I never knew I had, my legs shooting forward with newfound strength. Behind the huts, I found myself looking down a long avenue of grass, spying the blue skirt and a back leg vanishing behind another hut back to the central scrub.

I sprinted down and around, just in time to spot her flying across to the huts on the other side and swiftly opening a door and leaping inside, pulling it closed behind her.

I had her trapped.

Out of breath, I walked to the hut where she was hiding, then tried the door. It was locked.

“Silvie,” I said. “Open the door.”

There was no answer.

“Silvie,” I said more softly. “I want to help you.”

Still no answer.

“Silvie, please come out. I can help you get back home. I promise.”

There came a shuffle of movement, and then the metallic click of a bolt sliding over, and the door slowly creaked open, a musty smell of dirty clothes emanating from the dark interior. She sat crouched on the floor, her eyes big and red and unbearably sad.

Why should such a small girl have to go through so much grief?

I climbed into the doorway next to her and put my arm around her, and she cried great heaves of tears as she turned her face into my shoulder and wept. I looked out over the shabby scruff of land. What a miserable world to be born into.

“I need to get back to them,” she sobbed. “I must go.”

“I don’t know the best way,” I said, unsure if I should be aiding her escape, but feeling trapped as I’d promised her I would. I couldn’t imagine trying to get to Czechoslovakia. It seemed so distant and dangerous. Then it struck me, my only hope of getting her to stay would be to convince her of how hazardous the whole escapade would be. So I sat down in the doorway and pulled her down beside me. “I suppose our best bet is to go to Dover and see if we can get a boat to take us over to France.”

Her little body gave a shudder. “Aren’t the Nazis in France?”

“Yes,” I said slowly. “It might be hard to find someone to take us—I’m not sure many boats are heading that way—but I’m sure we have spies and such going over there, stowing away in a boat or pretending to be smugglers.”

“What is a smuggler?”

“Nasty criminals who steal things from other countries,” I paused, wondering if I was taking this too far. “We would stay hidden all the way, as they’d probably kill us if they found us.”

“How do we get from France to Czechoslovakia?” she whispered.

“Once we’re in France we’d have to hide away, probably in bushes and forests, because if we’re found we’d be taken to some kind of work camp—”

“Then I’ll be with my mother?”

“No, they would take us to a different one.”

“But once they knew who I was, wouldn’t they put me with my parents?”

“No, they like to keep everyone separated. So we’d have to stay hidden, which means we might end up being very hungry, as we wouldn’t be able to buy food. Now, do you speak French?”

“No,” she murmured despondently, and I could tell it was beginning to work.

“I suppose we could take some food with us, although I’m not sure it would last more than a month.”

“A month? Would it take that long to get there?”

“We couldn’t take trains or buses. We’d have to walk.”

She put her head back into my shoulder and began to cry again. “We will never make it! We will both die. We’ll starve or the Nazis will kill us.”

I held her to me as she wept with the futility of it all. “Silvie, I’m so sorry about your family.”

She sniveled a little longer, and then drew a finger to her lips and let out a quiet, shaking “Shhh.” Her eyes were boring into me with fear. “I know what has happened to my brother.” Her voice was tense and choked with tears, and she looked around trembling that someone should hear.

“What?” I whispered.

“My mama gave him away.” She put her face in her hands and began to cry, her narrow shoulders hunched and shuddering under the turmoil. “She gave him to her friend who is not Jewish.”

I held her closer as tears began coming from my own eyes. So that was her secret.

“It was terrible, she loved him—us—so much. He was too young to get the train with me. She knew it was his only chance. The day she came home without him, she pretended it was fine. But it was not fine. She cried all night. It was the end of her world.” Her voice trailed out to a frail whimper, and all I could think was how desperate these people were that they had to give away their children to save them.