Free Bombs on Aunt Dainty by Judith Kerr Page A

before one o’clock. She added quickly, in case it was too expensive, “Or we could have a knickerbocker glory at Lyons.”
    Mama worked it out. The film would cost one shilling and three pence and the knickerbocker glory would be a shilling. She was looking in her purse, but suddenly she threw it down and cried, “I don’t care! You’re going to be sixteen and you’re going to have a proper birthday even if we are broke. We’ll do both.”
    “Are you sure?” said Anna.
    “Yes,” said Mama quite fiercely. “It’s your birthday and it’s going to be a nice day for you.” Then she said, “God knows what will have happened to us all by next year.”
    Papa said he did not want to come. He must have arranged it with Mama beforehand, thought Anna, for even in a fit of extravagance they could hardly have afforded cinema tickets and knickerbocker glories for three. So Anna and Mama went to see a film called Mr Deeds Goes To Town.
    It was about a young millionaire who wanted to give away his money to the poor. (“I wish he’d give us some!” whispered Mama.) But some other mean millionaires wanted to stop him and tried to have him declared insane. In the end he was saved by a girl journalist who loved him, and all ended happily.
    The leading part was played by a young actor called Gary Cooper, and both Anna and Mama thought it very good. Afterwards they went to Lyons and ate theirknickerbocker glories very slowly, to make them last. They were a recent importation from America and consisted of layers of strawberry and vanilla ice-cream, interspersed with other layers of cream, strawberries and nuts, all served in a tall glass with a special long spoon. Anna had only eaten one once before, and knowing how much it cost, was a little nervous in case it wasn’t quite as good as she remembered – but as soon as she tasted the first mouthful she was reassured.
    While they ate they talked – about the film, about Anna’s shorthand course and the money she would earn when she had finished. “Then we’ll be able to go to the cinema every day,” said Mama, “and buy knickerbocker glories for breakfast.”
    “And for lunch and for tea,” said Anna. When she got to the bottom of her glass she scraped it out so assiduously with her spoon that the waitress asked if she would like another. This made both her and Mama laugh, and they strolled back contentedly to the Hotel Continental.
    On the way they met Papa, who had been sunning himself on a bench in Russell Square.
    “How was the film?” he asked.
    “Marvellous,” said Anna.
    “And the other thing – the knickerbocker splendour or whatever it was?”
    “Marvellous too,” said Anna, and Papa seemed very pleased.
    It was a pity that the news of the fall of Paris had to come through that evening. Everyone had been expecting it, of course, but Anna had been hoping against hope that the French would manage to hold out until the next day. If it didn’t happen on her birthday it wouldn’t be quite so bad. As it was, it seemed somehow as though it were her fault. She thought of the French family who had befriended them when she and Max and Mama and Papa had first gone to live in Paris after leaving Germany, of her teacher who had taught her to speak French, of the Arc de Triomphe and the Champs Elysées, which she had passed every day on her way to school, of the chestnut trees and the people drinking in cafés and the Prisunic and the Metro. Now the Nazis had taken possession of it all and France, like Germany, had become a black hole on the map, a place you could no longer think about.
    She sat next to Papa in the lounge and tried not to cry because, after all, it was worse for the French. There was a middle-aged couple from Rouen staying in the hotel and they both wept when they heard the news. Afterwards the husband said to Papa, “It is the end,” and Papa could find no answer.
    A little later he got up and went to the telephone, and when he came back he