Free Pennies For Hitler by Jackie French Page A

her friends talked. He handed around cups of tea on a tray, just like Lotte had done. He bought a cake at the bakery and served it on little plates too. It wasn’t as good as Lotte’s Kugelhopf. The cream was thin and sweet and sort of rubbery, not like real cream at all. But Aunt Miriam’s friends smiled at him, and said how lucky Aunt Miriam was to have a nephew like him.
    ‘I know,’ said Aunt Miriam. He knew she meant it too.
    He sat on a stool by the door, so quiet that they mostly didn’t notice him, so he could listen to them talk, to hear things that even Aunt Miriam might not tell a child.
    They talked of the ‘Polish crisis’ and of how Hitler had offered not to fight England if the English allowed him to have the part of Poland called Danzig.
    It had seemed so simple back in Germany. The Führer had to free the Danzig Germans from Polish rule! But here it wasn’t simple at all.
    One of Aunt Miriam’s friends called Hitler ‘that frightful little man’. That hurt a little too, though he wasn’t quite sure why.
    The library was better. The stories there were far away: boys battled boa constrictors in the jungles; and a girl called Dorothy was swept up in a tornado and taken to a land called Oz.
    He took to going to the library earlier and earlier each day. It was shut at lunchtime, but one day when he was about to leavethe librarian asked if he would like to share her sandwiches. They were cheese and pickle, and she gave him a cup of milky tea, the first that he had drunk. He didn’t like it much, but drank it to be polite.
    Her name was Mrs Huntley. She told him about her daughter, quite grown up now. She and her husband had gone to Australia, the big pink splodge on the bottom of the world, ‘where there are lots of butterflies, dear, and it’s hot even in winter. They like it there, but it’s a dreadful long way away. I never get to see the grandbabies at all. They send me photographs, of course, but it isn’t the same.’
    Next day he brought his sandwiches down to the library, and hoped she would ask him to stay again. She did. She had made an apple teacake, and they had a slice each for lunch and for tea as well, before she closed the library to go home to make her husband’s supper.
    Now if there was no one else in the library who needed their books stamped Mrs Huntley would take him around the shelves and show him books that he might like, even books in the ‘Adults’ room. A book on keeping bees, which was most interesting, one called Birds of the Marshes and one on keeping hens too. Georg thought he would like to keep hens. Or a dog. A dog that he could hug for warmth and comfort. A dog would curl up on the sofa with him, on the long nights while he waited for Aunt Miriam to come home.
    But of course it was impossible in a flat.
     
    ‘I’ve found a place for you at the Gresham School,’ said Aunt Miriam one Saturday. It was omelettes for breakfast — asupper dish at home but something the English ate in the morning instead — with grilled summer tomatoes and toast with jam.
    ‘It’s a good school — a bus ride away, but better than the local. Your English is good enough to pass muster now.’ She smiled at him, the abstracted smile that was the only kind she had these days. ‘You’ve done very well, all on your own. I’m proud of you. We’ll go and buy your school uniform today.’
    It was a nice uniform: grey flannel pants, a dark blue blazer and a dark blue cap. He was glad now it was a day school, not a boarding school. He’d be able to see Mrs Huntley after school and there’d still be weekends with Aunt Miriam.
    He put the clothes on in the evenings, alone in the flat waiting for Aunt Miriam to return. He looked in the mirror and tried to imagine himself doing maths and playing cricket with his friends. An English boy with English friends.
     
    The chance of school vanished.
    The Gresham School announced that in August it would evacuate all its students to High Martin