3
" Nurse Spencer came back without tea. One look at her and I knew she had bad news.
‘Oh lord,’ she said, closing the curtain behind her. ‘Maybe you weren’t so lucky after all.’
I wanted to pull the covers up and hide, then she might go away and take her awful news with her. But I couldn’t bear not to know, either. ‘It’s not my brother? Or…’ I gulped. ‘My sister?’
‘It’s your mother. A bomb landed on the building where she was last night.’
The ringing sound was back in my ears; I wasn’t sure I’d heard her properly. ‘My mother?’
‘Yes, it was a direct hit. You mustn’t think that she suffered.’
She probably said this to every relative, every time, which I supposed was nice of her. The words, though, didn’t sink in. "
― Emma Carroll , Letters from the Lighthouse: ‘THE QUEEN OF HISTORICAL FICTION’ Guardian
4
" Olive,’ Mum said, stroking my fringe. ‘I need you to listen to me, and I need you to be brave.’
Opening my eyes again, I swallowed nervously. ‘What’s happened?’
‘Your sister didn’t arrive at work today.’
Sukie was a typist for an insurance company in Clerkenwell. She said it was the dullest job ever.
‘Isn’t today Saturday, though?’ I asked.
‘She was due in to do overtime. No one’s seen her since she was with you and Cliff last night. She’s missing.’
‘Missing?’ I didn’t understand.
Mum nodded.
The nurse added rather unhelpfully: ‘We’ve had casualties from all over London. It’s been chaos. All you can do is keep hoping for the best.’
It was obvious what she meant. I glanced at Mum, who always took the opposite view in any argument. But she stayed silent. Her hands, though, were trembling.
‘Missing isn’t the same as dead,’ I pointed out.
Mum grimaced. ‘That’s true, and I’ve spoken to the War Office: Sukie’s name isn’t on their list of dead or injured but-’
‘So she’s alive, then. She must be. I saw her in the street talking to a man,’ I said. ‘When she realised I’d followed her she was really furious about it.’
Mum looked at me, at the nurse, at the bump on my head. ‘Darling, you’re concussed. Don’t get overexcited now.’
‘But you can’t think she’s dead.’ I insisted. ‘There’s no proof, is ther?’
‘Sometimes it’s difficult to identify someone after…’ Mum faltered.
I knew what she couldn’t say: sometimes if a body got blown apart there’d be nothing left to tie a name tag to. It was why we’d never buried Dad. Perhaps if there’d been a coffin and a headstone and a vicar saying nice things, it would’ve seemed more real.
This felt different, though. After a big air raid the telephones were often down, letters got delayed, roads blocked. It might be a day or two before we heard from Sukie, and worried though I was, I knew she could look after herself. I wondered if it was part of Mum being ill, this painting the world black when it was grey.
My head was hurting again so I lay back against the pillows. I was fed up with this stupid, horrid war. Eighteen months ago when it started, everyone said it’d be over before Christmas, but they were wrong. It was still going on, tearing great holes in people’s lives. We’d already lost Dad, and half the time these days it felt like Mum wasn’t quite here. And now Sukie – who knew where she was?
I didn’t realise I was crying again until Mum touched my cheek.
‘It’s not fair,’ I said weakly.
‘War isn’t fair, I’m afraid,’ Mum replied. ‘You only have to walk through this hospital to see we’re not the only ones suffering. Though that’s just the top of the iceberg, believe me. There’s plenty worse going on in Europe.’
I remembered Sukie mentioning this too. She’d got really upset when she told me about the awful things happening to people Hitler didn’t like. She was in the kitchen chopping onions at the time so I wasn’t aware she was crying properly.
‘What sort of awful things?’ I’d asked her.
‘Food shortages, people being driven from their homes.’ Sukie took a deep breath, as if the list was really long. ‘People being attacked for no reason or sent no one knows where – Jewish people in particular. They’re made to wear yellow stars so everyone knows they’re Jews, and then barred from shops and schools and even parts of the towns where they live. It’s heartbreaking to think we can’t do anything about it.’
People threatened by soldiers. People queuing for food with stars on their coats. It was what I’d seen on last night’s newsreel at the cinema. My murky brain could just about remember those dismal scenes, and it made me even more angry. How I hated this lousy war.
I didn’t know what I could do about it, a thirteen-year-old girl with a bump on her head. Yet thinking there might be something made me feel a tiny bit better. "
― Emma Carroll , Letters from the Lighthouse: ‘THE QUEEN OF HISTORICAL FICTION’ Guardian
5
" Every Monday and Friday night, leaving us with awful suppers to reheat, our mum didn’t work late shifts at the printworks. She went to an office in Shoreditch. And from there, by radio, by note, by telephone and letters, she exchanged messages with Miss Carter and Mrs. Henderson and Queenie and others like them on what she called ‘humanitarian war work’. She’d never met any of them in person.
‘I can’t tell you any more details. It’s secret work. How you know even this much is really quite beyond me,’ she admitted.
‘I worked most of it out myself,’ I told her. She might’ve hidden it from me all this time, but I wasn’t stupid. ‘Sounds like Sukie did too.’
‘Your sister spied on me,’ Mum replied bitterly. ‘She stole paperwork, listened in to private conversations. She was very foolish to get caught up in something she knew nothing about.’
‘She did know about it, though. What Hitler’s doing really got to her. She was desperate to do something about it. All that post from Devon? It wasn’t from Queenie. Those were letters from the lighthouse, written by Ephraim, who feels the same about the Jewish people as Sukie does.’
‘It was stupid, impulsive behaviour,’ Mum argued, ‘of the sort your sister’s very good at.’
Yet to me she had missed a vital point.
‘You know Sukie wanted to help you, don’t you? She saw how ill you’d got over Dad. By standing in for you on this job, she was making sure you’d get some rest, like the doctor said you should.’
‘I might’ve known you’d stick up for your sister,’ Mum remarked. ‘But it didn’t help me – it worried me sick!’
‘It did help thirty-two refugees, though,’ I reminded her.
‘She was lucky she didn’t get arrested straight away.’ Mum went on as if she hadn’t heard me. ‘When I found out that night what she’d done, I was all for going after her, hauling her back and locking her in her bedroom, till this frightful war was over if I had to. But it was too late by then. She was already halfway to France.’
‘You knew the night she disappeared?’ I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘And admit that I do undercover work and Sukie was doing it too?’ Mum cried. ‘Good grief, Olive, it’s secret business. It was too dangerous to tell you. There’s a war on, remember!’
‘People always use that excuse,’ I muttered.
It stunned me that Mum had known all this time. But then, hadn’t there been signs? The looks in our kitchen between her and Gloria, the refusal to talk about Sukie, the bundling us off out of the way – to here, the very place Sukie might, with any luck, show up. It was a clever way of making sure we knew the moment she set foot on British soil again. "
― Emma Carroll , Letters from the Lighthouse: ‘THE QUEEN OF HISTORICAL FICTION’ Guardian
7
" I looked at her properly then, drinking in this person I thought I knew so well. Even the familiar bits – the chocolate brown eyes, the dark wavy hair – looked different somehow.
What surprised me most was the pride I had for my mum. These past months I’d seen her become a sad person who cried too much. Yet, even then, there were parts to her that were stronger than I’d ever imagined. Thinking over all she’d done, how Queenie and Ephraim and the others held her in such high regard, and how she’d inspired Sukie, I began to feel different too. The uneasiness that she wasn’t well was still there. Mixed in with it, though, was the belief that she’d recover. I supposed what I was feeling was hope. "
― Emma Carroll , Letters from the Lighthouse: ‘THE QUEEN OF HISTORICAL FICTION’ Guardian
9
" I can’t remember a specific time when the comments and the name-calling started, but one evening in November it all got much worse,’ she said. ‘My brother Tobias and me were doing our homework at the dining room table like we always did.’
‘You’ve got a brother?’
She hesitated before nodding. ‘Papa was working late at the clinic in a friend’s back room – it was against the law for Jews to work as doctors. Mama was making supper in the kitchen, and I remember her cursing because she’d just burned her hand on the griddle. Tobias and me couldn’t stop laughing because Mama never swore.’ The memory of it made her mouth twitch in an almost-smile.
Then someone banged on our front door. It was late – too late for social calling. Mama told us not to answer it. Everyone knew someone who’d had a knock on the door like that.’
‘Who was it?’
‘The police, usually. Sometimes Hitler’s soldiers. It was never for a good reason, and it never ended happily. We all dreaded it happening to us. So, Mama turned the lights out and put her hand over the dog’s nose.’ Esther, glancing sideways at me, explained: ‘We had a sausage dog called Gerta who barked at everything.
‘The knocking went on and they started shouting through the letter box, saying they’d burn the house down if we didn’t answer the door. Mama told us to hide under the table and went to speak to them. They wanted Papa. They said he’d been treating non-Jewish patients at the clinic and it had to stop. Mama told them he wasn’t here but they didn’t believe her and came in anyway. There were four of them in Nazi uniform, stomping through our house in their filthy great boots. Finding us hiding under the table, they decided to take Tobias as a substitute for Papa. ‘When your husband hands himself in, we’ll release the boy,’ was what they said.
‘It was cold outside – a freezing Austrian winter’s night – but they wouldn’t let Tobias fetch his coat. As soon as they laid hands on him, Mama started screaming. She let go of Gerta and grabbed Tobias – we both did – pulling on his arms, yelling that they couldn’t take him, that he’d done nothing wrong. Gerta was barking. I saw one of the men swing his boot at ther. She went flying across the room, hitting the mantelpiece. It was awful. She didn’t bark after that.’
It took a moment for the horror of what she was saying to sink in.
‘Don’t tell me any more if you don’t want to,’ I said gently.
She stared straight ahead like she hadn’t heard me. ‘They took my brother anyway. He was ten years old.
‘We ran into the street after them, and it was chaos – like the end of the world or something. The whole town was fully of Nazi uniforms. There were broken windows, burning houses, people sobbing in the gutter. The synagogue at the end of our street was on fire. I was terrified. So terrified I couldn’t move. But Mum kept running. Shouting and yelling and running after my brother. I didn’t see what happened but I heard the gunshot.’
She stopped. Rubbed her face in her hands. ‘Afterwards they gave it a very pretty name: Kristallnacht – meaning “the night of broken glass”. But it was the night I lost my mother and my brother. I was sent away soon after as part of the Kindertransport, though Papa never got used to losing us all at once. Nor did I. That’s why he came to find me. He always promised he’d try.’
Anything I might’ve said stayed stuck in my throat. There weren’t words for it, not really. So I put my arm through Esther’s and we sat, gazing out to sea, two old enemies who were, at last, friends. She was right – it was her story to tell. And I could think of plenty who might benefit from hearing it. "
― Emma Carroll , Letters from the Lighthouse: ‘THE QUEEN OF HISTORICAL FICTION’ Guardian
17
" Listen to that,’ she said, finger raised. ‘Planes.’
I frowned. ‘Planes? What, like aeroplanes?’
‘German ones, I’ll bet you, on their way to bomb poor Plymouth again.’
Mrs. Drummond was right. There, on the wind, was the unmistakable drone of aircraft. A familiar dread grew in the pit of my stomach.
‘I’d better go,’ I said and hurried away, anxious to find Cliff. "
― Emma Carroll , Letters from the Lighthouse: ‘THE QUEEN OF HISTORICAL FICTION’ Guardian
20
" Hearing their stories made me sadder, somehow, because these people weren’t strangers any more – they had names, did important jobs, had exciting futures ahead. One of them was only five days old.
Like the people in that miserable newsreel, they all had yellow badges sewn on to the left breast of their coats. They were star-shaped, the word Jude written in handwriting clumsier than Cliff’s. They weren’t badges to be proud of like the ones we got at school for good work. Their only purpose, it seemed, was to make sure people know: you were one of those ‘types’ Hitler loathed.
How could these people be made to feel ashamed of who they were? I hadn’t thought I could hate the Nazis more than I already did. Now, though, I really understood why Sukie was so distraught at what was happening in Europe. We weren’t Jewish, but we were human beings and that was more than enough reason to be outraged. "
― Emma Carroll , Letters from the Lighthouse: ‘THE QUEEN OF HISTORICAL FICTION’ Guardian
