Free Hannah & Emil by Belinda Castles Page A

Who but a wilful, impatient child could hold it against them?
    Mrs Reznik was quiet for a second or two, during which I rubbed the side of my aching fist, before going on: ‘Gregor, if you send the girl to me, I help you and Nina. I have a little bit money—’ she glanced sideways at me ‘—and I would take care of her like she is mine. She eats well and goes to good school, and when she is big there are good young men here that would not make disgrace for you. I pray the war ends soon and you send her to me in London. Then she is clever and successful and she brings you here. You can do anything in London if you work hard.’
    I shook my hand, blinked my eyes. Mrs Reznik had been speaking more quickly than usual, and it took all my concentration to structure the sentences in my brain as quickly in Yiddish as the woman spoke, to push the pencil across the page without losing the flow. I paused, waiting to see if there was more. After a moment I looked up. Mrs Reznik was staring at the wall. Just wait until I told Mother why she tucked all her money away and sent tins of beef to Russia while she herself starved, and hoarded paper and pencils in secret cupboards. She leaned back on her chair and closed her eyes briefly. I watched a little pulse flicker in the crepey skin under her left eye.
    â€˜Come now, Hannah,’ she said, gathering herself. ‘Is it books you have not read?’
    â€˜Oh yes.’
    â€˜Come and choose. I find your sixpence.’
    I decided I would chance my arm, as the barrow boys would say. ‘Mother says not to take the sixpence, Mrs Reznik.’
    â€˜She thinks I do not have it?’
    â€˜She says only that food is scarce and it is better for you to use it for your cousin’s family than to give me pocket money, which I shall only fritter on shows and riding the motorbus.’
    Mrs Reznik laughed, a harsh, brief sound that I only recognised as a laugh because I sensed that I might have just said something a certain sort of person could construe as amusing. ‘You will take shilling. You tell your mother I pay every bill.’

    It was a hot afternoon. The weekend seemed far. I trudged along the pavement, brothers at my heel, flushed and ready to pounce on any annoyance. Benjamin was dancing about in my path. ‘Hannah, I read from the blackboard. I read my name aloud.’
    â€˜Tell Papa,’ Geoffrey said. ‘You’ll get a sweet.’
    â€˜Really?’ Benjamin asked, still looking at me.
    â€˜Yes, really,’ I replied.
    â€˜Will we all get one?’
    â€˜No, just you,’ Geoffrey said. ‘He gives you one when you start to read.’
    We were not short of sweets, what with the shop and an indulgent father, but Benjamin was about to experience something special. I remembered the day I had run home from school, the boys still small and glued to Mother’s feet beneath the table, and I had told Father, as Benjamin had told us, that I had read my name on the blackboard. Father had clapped his hands, made me stand at the head of the table where he had been examining his ledgers, and gone to look in the pantry.
    â€˜Close your eyes,’ he ordered.
    I heard Mother whisper, ‘It is the wrong kind of sweet.’
    â€˜Shhh,’ he replied. ‘It is the sweetness who matters.’ And then, louder, to me: ‘What word did you read?’
    â€˜Hannah,’ I said proudly.
    â€˜You see it now, behind the eyes, how it looked on teacher’s board?’
    I nodded.
    â€˜Open the mouth now, very wide.’
    I put out my tongue and felt the chocolate, closed my lips over it, let the sweetness dissolve.
    â€˜Still, still you see your name?’
    I nodded, my mouth crammed with dissolving cocoa, cream, sugar.
    I felt his breath in my hair. ‘Knowledge is sweet,’ he whispered.
    Benjamin was still tugging at my hand as we walked along the street. I looked at his delighted face and felt a