Fifty-Eight
Fifty-Eight
F or three weeks and two days, the sun rises and sets. Very early in the morning of the twenty-fourth day since Stanley was born, I am wide awake and stand at the little dormer window in Erna’s attic room.
I watch him sleeping, cuddled in close to my chest. His eyes flicker beneath the pale lids, dark lashes delicately curled.
His chest rises and falls, calm and gentle.
He breathes through partly opened lips. Every now and then his little brow furrows, as if he knows what is to become of him.
As if he is struggling to understand it all.
But why are you sending me away?
Because I love you too much to keep you.
Erna and her mother will be here soon, to take him from me.
We’ve all agreed it’s better that I stay behind.
They will travel with him, together with Josef’s children, Lena’s boy, and five others—ten in all—to Berlin, where the children alone will board a train to Hamburg.
Then on to Rotterdam and to Harwich. They will be in the company of hundreds of other lost and confused Jewish children, sent away by desperate parents, bound for the safety of England.
Walter will meet them at Harwich and take the five children to their new home.
If only I could go with them, and never come back.
But the doors to the rest of the world have been slammed shut, and only a trickle of children are allowed to dash through the last tiny crack before England’s door closes too. Stanley must go now, and I will have to take my chances here.
I’ve written his name and his father’s name on the label to go around his neck, like a parcel to be sent in the post. His papers are prepared, stamped, and waiting with his little case of clothes, diapers, tins of evaporated milk and bottles, and a cardigan of mine that will smell of me.
It might help calm him if he becomes agitated.
I wonder how Stanley’s fifteen-year-old cousin, who has never met him, but will care for him on the journey, will cope.
I must have faith that all will go well.
Because faith is all I have left.
There is one more thing that must go into the case.
I open the drawer and take out my journal, filled to the very last page with my neat handwriting.
I place it carefully beneath the clothes.
If the worst should happen, and I am never reunited with my son, this is his story.
Everything is here, the best and the worst of me.
It will be up to Walter and Anna if they ever decide to share it with him.
There is a knock at the door.
“Come in,” I say, not taking my eyes off Stanley.
“Hello.” Erna comes to stand next to me. “It’s time,” she says quietly.
I nod, but don’t move.
“My father is waiting outside. We must meet the other children at the station in half an hour, if we’re to make the first train to Berlin,” she adds. “I’m sorry, Hetty, but we really don’t have much time.”
“Yes. I know,” I say. “Just give me one minute. I’ll bring him down.”
She nods and closes the door behind her.
“Well. This is it,” I tell Stanley. “I want you to have a good life. And I want you to know that I love you, and always will. I hope somehow, this awful prospect of war will go away, and that, very soon, I shall find a way to come for you. And I will come for you, my darling boy. I promise you that. I will come for you.”
Cuddling him close, I plant a kiss on his forehead and drag my eyes away to look out the window.
It is a glorious view. Higher than most of the surrounding buildings, I look eastward out over rooftops, trees, and squares.
The sun has not yet appeared over the horizon and the clouds, drifting away from the pool of yellow light, are lit red, then pink, fading to deep purple and charcoal where the rays have not yet reached.
The light in the sky grows quickly, becoming ever more intense and changing the color of the clouds as I watch.
They become paler, pink and fluffy, then white where the light is strongest. Suddenly, the top of the sun appears, a brilliant curve of shimmering gold, its rays finally penetrating the very edges of darkness in the sky.
It grows above the horizon with incredible speed until the whole sky is lit for a moment, like a pool of yellow fire.
The birth of a new day.