She had at first been taken aback by Anna’s suggestion of getting a job but then had thrown herself into the search for some suitable training with her usual energy. She had been adamant that Anna must have training of some sort, but it was hard to decide what. A secretarial course was the obvious choice, but Anna’s complete inability to learn shorthand had been one of her many failures at Miss Metcalfe’s. “It’s not so much that it’s difficult but it’s so boring!” she had cried, and Miss Metcalfe had smiled pityingly as usual and had pointed out that arrogance never helped anyone.
Mama had quite understood about the shorthand and by dint of asking everyone she knew for advice had discovered a secretarial school where they taught a different system. It was not written down but tapped out on a little machine like a typewriter and had the further advantages of being quickly learned and easily adapted to other languages. The only trouble was that the full course cost twenty-five pounds.
“Mr and Mrs Zuckerman!” The receptionist had come in again, catching the elderly couple in the middle of their buns. They hastily stuffed the half-eaten remains back into the paper bag and followed her out.
“I think we’re bound to get some help,” said Mama. “We’ve never asked for anything before.” She had not wanted to ask the Refugee Organisation even this time, and it was only the fear that Anna, like herself, might have to get a job without any qualifications that had persuaded her. Mama spent five and a half days a week in a basement office typing and filing letters, and she hated it.
“Mr Rubenstein! Mr and Mrs Berg!”
A woman opposite Mama shifted uneasily. “What a long time they keep you waiting!” she cried. “I don’t think I can bear to sit here much longer, I really don’t!”
Her husband frowned. “Now then, Bertha,” he said. “It’s better than queueing at the frontier.” He turned to Anna and Mama. “My wife’s a bit nervous. We had a bad time in Germany. We only just managed to get out before the war started.”
“Oh, it was terrible!” wailed the woman. “The Nazis were shouting and threatening us all the time. There was one poor old man and he thought he’d got all his papers right, but they punched him and kicked him and wouldn’t let him go. And then they shouted at us, ‘You can go now, but we’ll still get you in the end!’”
“Bertha …” said her husband.
“That’s what they said,” cried the woman. “They said, ‘We’re going to get you wherever you go because we’re going to conquer the world!’ ”
The man patted her arm and smiled at Mama in embarrassment.
“When did you leave Germany?” he asked.
“In March 1933,” said Mama. Among refugees, the earlier you had left the more important you were. To have left in 1933 was like having arrived in America on the Mayflower, and Mama could never resist telling people the exact month.
“Really,” said the man, but his wife was unimpressed. She looked at Anna with her frightened eyes.
“You don’t know what it’s like,” she said.
Anna closed her mind automatically. She never thought about what it was like in Germany.
“Miss Goldstein!”
The next person to be called was a woman in a worn fur coat, clutching a briefcase. Then came a bespectacled man whom Mama recognised as a minor violinist and then suddenly it was Anna’s and Mama’s turn. The receptionist said, “You want the students’ section,” and led them to a room where a grey-haired lady was waiting behind a desk. She was reading through the application form which Anna had filled in before making the appointment and looked like a headmistress, but nicer than Miss Metcalfe.
“How do you do,” she said, waving them into two chairs. Then she turned to Anna and said, “So you want to be a secretary.”
“Yes,” said Anna.
The grey-haired lady glanced at her form. “You did extremely well in your School Certificate examinations,” she said. “Didn’t you want to stay on at school?”
“No,” said Anna.
“And why was that?”
“I didn’t like it,” said Anna. “And almost no one stayed on after School Certificate.” She hesitated. “They didn’t teach us very much.”
The lady consulted the form again. “The Lilian Metcalfe School For Girls,” she said. “I know it. Snob rather than academic. What a pity.” And having thus disposed of it, she applied herself to solving the problems of Anna’s secretarial course. Had Anna tried it? How long would it take? And what sort of job did Anna have in mind? Buoyed up by the demolition of Miss Metcalfe, Anna answered fully and less shyly than usual, and after a surprisingly short time the lady said, “Well, that all seems very satisfactory.”
For a moment Anna thought it was all over, but the lady said a little reluctantly to Mama, “Forgive me, but there are so many people needing help that I have to ask you a few questions as well. How long have you been in this country?”
“Since 1935,” said Mama, “but we left Germany in March 1933 …”
Anna had heard it all explained so many times that she almost knew it by heart. Six months in Switzerland…two years in France…the Depression…the film script on the strength of which they had come to England…No, the film had never been made…No, it didn’t seem to matter then that Papa didn’t speak English because the script had been translated, but now of course…A writer without a language …
“Forgive me,” said the lady again, “I do realise that your husband is a very distinguished man, but while you’re in this difficulty, is there not anything more practical he could do, even for a little while?”
Papa, thought Anna, who couldn’t bang a nail in straight, who couldn’t boil an egg, who could do nothing but put words together, beautifully.
“My husband,” said Mama, “is not a practical man. He is also a good deal older than I am.” She had flushed a little and the lady said very quickly, “Of course, of course, do excuse me.”
It was funny, thought Anna, that she should be so much more impressed by Papa’s age which no one meeting him would particularly notice, than by his impracticality, which stuck out a mile. Once, in Paris, Papa had spent nearly all the money they had on a sewing machine which didn’t work. Anna remembered going with him to try and return it to the second-hand dealer who had landed him with it. They had had no money in Paris either, but somehow it hadn’t mattered. She had felt as though she belonged there, not like a refugee.
Mama was telling the lady about her job.
“For a while I worked as social secretary,” she said. “To Lady Parker – you may have heard of her. But then her husband died and she moved to the country. So now I’m helping sort out the papers belonging to his estate.”
The lady looked embarrassed. “And – er – how much …?”
Mama told her how much she earned.
“I have no qualifications, you see,” she said. “I studied music as a girl. But it helps to pay the bills at the Hotel Continental.”
Perhaps, thought Anna, she had felt different in Paris because Mama hadn’t had to work, or because they had lived in a flat instead of a hotel – or perhaps it was simply that England didn’t suit her. She didn’t really know a lot of English people, of course, only the ones at Miss Metcalfe’s. But certainly a lot of things had gone wrong for her soon after her arrival. For one thing she had grown much fatter, bulging in unexpected places, so that all her clothes suddenly looked hideous on her. Mama had said it was puppy fat and that she would lose it again, and in fact much of it had already melted away, but Anna still suspected England of being somehow to blame. After all, she had never been fat before.
The