I draw aside a swathe of the mosquito netting, just enough to slip beneath it and ease myself on to Grace’s bed. I feel far less lonely here. Very gently, I gather my sleeping daughter into my arms. The torment of my raw, itching hands seems to lessen a little when I’m with her, soothing my troubled mind too.
A finger of moonlight slips between the gap in the shutters, pointing towards the pile of neatly folded fabric on the chest of drawers. Following Kate’s advice, I’ve washed the old clothes that I’m going to use to make the blocks and then starched and ironed them, so it’ll be easier to cut them into equal-sized squares. I’ve chosen a design called Tree of Life from the quilting book. Each block uses a geometrical pattern of simple triangles and squares, in what I’ve learned is called an on-point setting. Once I’ve sewn thirteen of the blocks, I’ll arrange them in three rows, held in place by sashing strips, and then stitch them on to the backing, adding a binding around the edges of the quilt. But that’ll come later. For the moment all I need to think about is sewing one triangle of fabric to the next, building up the branches of my first tree. I’m looking forward to getting started, once Kate shows me where to get a cutting mat, square-up rulers and a rotary cutter.
I stroke a wisp of Grace’s hair, as soft and ethereal as a moonbeam.
It reminds me of the dreamseller’s words to Josie about the moon being able to fill an infinite number of bowls of water. My love for my daughter is the same, I think: my heart overflows with it; as infinite as moonlight.
Reading Josie’s journal feels like stepping through a door and finding myself in another world. Her life here in this house – in this very room – almost feels more real to me than my own. I imagine her lying in this same bed, watching the moonlight and listening to the murmuring of the doves. Did she feel safe up here, with her family asleep in their rooms downstairs? Or did the ever present threat of Nazi Germany, in a world turned upside down by war, keep her awake at night? Despite her papa’s wealth, which certainly must have helped a great deal, it can’t have been easy being Jewish refugees in a strange land, where dark threats lurked around every corner, whether or not they’d ‘lapsed’， as Josie puts it.
Casablanca in the 1940s seems to have been the sort of place where people could easily fall through the cracks and disappear.
Am I all that different from Josie and her family, though? I, too, am a refugee of sorts, running from something I can never escape.
It would be very easy to fall through the cracks in my marriage. And simply disappear.
Josie’s Journal – Tuesday 11th February, 1941
The big excitement in Casablanca is the recent arrival of a very famous star called Josephine Baker. She is a singer and dancer and she used to put on shows in Paris. But now she’s come to Morocco and she’s going to be performing here at the Rialto Theatre. Papa has got tickets for him and Maman. Annette and I are not allowed to go because some of the dancing is a bit too exotic. I’d still be interested to see it, but Annette says ‘exotic’ means they don’t wear very many clothes and so it’s inappropriate for a child like me. I know she was only saying that because she’s annoyed that she can’t go either. She got even more annoyed when I said that must mean she’s still a child too. Maman calmed things down by promising to take us both horse riding next week, which will be a lot more fun than sitting in a hot theatre. There’s a place just outside the city where you can have lessons. I can’t wait!
It says in the newspaper that Josephine Baker travelled from Marseille with 28 pieces of luggage. Annette said that would be all her costumes, but she got annoyed again when I pointed out she’d just told me that exotic dancers don’t wear very many clothes. She’s started calling me Little Miss Know-All, but I’ve chosen to take that as a compliment. It’s certainly better than only ever thinking about boys and hairstyles.
The other very interesting thing that it says in the newspaper is that Josephine Baker travelled with her menagerie of animals. She has a Great Dane called Bonzo, several monkeys and two white mice. Nina agrees with me that seeing those animals would be much more interesting than seeing exotic dancing.
Kenza took Nina and me to the ocean at the weekend. Maman was a bit anxious about letting me go, but Papa paid for us to go in a taxi so it was fine. We drove along the coast a way, past the fishing boats in the harbour and one or two warships that were patrolling out at sea, until we came to a place where there was a peaceful stretch of beach with no one else on it. The driver parked up in a grove of olive trees and went off to lie in the shade. Kenza, Nina and I walked down to the beach and they took off their headscarves. We all let the wind blow over our faces and it was hot and cool at the same time. The ocean went on for ever. Its powerful waves were crashing on to the pebbles at the water’s edge, making them roll and tumble. I thought about the dreamseller’s instructions and I wondered if all those thousands of stones carried other people’s grief. I could see what she meant: the ocean was vast enough to contain it all.