The Air Raid Book Club(83)

“Don’t sit under the apple tree with anyone else but me,” she sang, making her way across the lawn to join her.

“Gertie!” Hedy’s face lit up. “I was feeling a little tired and thought the fresh air would do me good.”

“Great minds think alike,” said Gertie, sitting down beside her. She could see that Hedy’s eyes were tinged with red as if she’d been crying. Instinctively she placed a hand over hers as they sat in companionable silence.

After a while Hedy spoke. “Today is my mother’s forty-seventh birthday.”

The words hung in the air, laced with sorrow. Gertie burned with frustration that she couldn’t magic Else Fischer into this moment or offer sufficient words to console. There were no words that could do this. She squeezed Hedy’s hand in a gesture that felt woefully inadequate.

“I just want to know, Gertie. One way or the other, I want to know what’s happened to them.”

Gertie nodded. “I’ll do all I can to help you. I promise.”

There was a burst of the Andrews Sisters from the dining room as Sam opened the door. “Hedy, my love. Mother thinks we should cut the cake.”

“I’m coming,” she called, rising to her feet. Hedy turned back to Gertie. “You know I heard what you said to me in the hospital when I was ill.”

“You did?”

Hedy nodded and offered her hand. “I feel exactly the same.”



Back inside, Gertie found Charles by the buffet. “I feel like a proud mother hen today,” she told him.

He looked over at Hedy laughing with Sam. “And I feel like a doting father.”

Gertie touched him on the arm. “We have to help Hedy find out what’s happened to her parents and brother. Is there anything you can do?”

Charles’s face grew serious. “Leave it with me. It may take a while, but I’ll do whatever I can.”

There were cheers as Hedy and Sam sliced into the wedding cake. Charles offered Gertie his arm. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s risk a dance. It is a celebration, after all.”

“Are you sure your toes can take it?”

“I wore my steel-capped shoes on the off chance.”

Gertie laughed. “In that case, Mr. Ashford, I’d be delighted.”



The first reports from inside the death camps came a few weeks later. It was broadcast as part of the news one evening.

“Are you sure you want to listen?” asked Sam as he, Hedy, and Gertie gathered around the radio in the living room.

“Of course,” she replied.

As Richard Dimbleby delivered the facts in clipped, urgent tones, Hedy’s eyes remained fixed forward. No one seemed to breathe while they tried to comprehend this world of a nightmare, where typhus, typhoid, and dysentery raged, where living skeletons teetered on the brink of death, where ghosts wandered dazed and lost, where civilization had left long ago and monstrous evil had taken hold. There were no words of consolation, no glimpses of hope, no chinks of light in the terrifying darkness. The world had closed in on itself. Humanity was dead. As the broadcast ended, the silence was deafening. Hedy’s gaze hadn’t moved from the same spot, while Sam’s eyes were fixed on his wife with a look of despair and longing. Gertie understood how he felt. She would do anything to take this horror away from Hedy.

“They’re dead, aren’t they?” whispered Hedy after a while. “Mama. Papa. Arno. They’re all dead.”

“We don’t know that,” said Gertie, clasping her hands together. “There are survivors. The soldiers are doing all they can to help them.”

“They burned ten thousand people alive,” said Hedy. She looked from Gertie to Sam. “How are human beings capable of such hatred?”

“I don’t know, my love,” said Sam, his voice rippling with anger. “But they will be brought to justice. They won’t be allowed to get away with it.”

She reached out a hand to stroke his face. “Darling Sam. They already have.”



Gertie had never seen so much bunting, not even after the end of the Great War. Every street, house, and lamppost was adorned in red, white, and blue flags, fluttering in the May sunshine. Margery had promised the biggest and best VE Day party in the country and requisitioned the village hall for the purpose. Thanks to Gerald, two loudspeakers had been mounted on the stage, and a catalog of wartime favorites, from Gracie Fields to Vera Lynn and others, were drifting through the town. Emily Farthing had painted a large sheet with an image of Britannia and the words “There’ll Always Be an England” and draped it like a curtain at the back of the stage. But the highlight was the food. The women in charge of the households had saved up their ration stamps and worked together to serve up a feast. Half a dozen trestle tables groaned with all kinds of sandwiches, cakes, jellies, and blancmanges.

Gertie wasn’t sure if Hedy would want to join the party. The end of the war brought peace, of course, but the word “victory” seemed ill fitting when so many had suffered and continued to suffer. There was nothing triumphant about the growing number of stories filtering from the east as death camp after death camp was liberated. It wasn’t the ending to a story. It was only the beginning.

She was surprised, therefore, when Hedy appeared on the day of the party wearing a blue skirt, white blouse, and red silk scarf. Sam stood beside her, smart in his demob suit. “We have to honor those who fought and those who are no longer with us,” she said.