Summerland Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Praise for The Red Ribbon by Lucy Adlington

  Also by Lucy Adlington from Hot Key Books

  Dedication

  Fish-Paste Sandwiches

  Bacon Butties

  Hot Buttered Toast

  Porridge with Jam

  Apple-and-Blackberry Crumble

  Victoria Sponge Cake

  Fish ’n’ Chips

  Rice Pudding

  Yorkshire Parkin

  Toad in the Hole

  Lemon-Curd Tarts

  Liver and Onions

  Violet Creams

  Christmas Pudding

  Sherry Trifle

  Hard Cheese

  Sweet Cocoa

  Hungarian Goulash

  Rabbit Pie

  Sloe Gin

  French Fancies

  Author’s Note

  Lucy Adlington

  Copyright

  Praise for The Red Ribbon by Lucy Adlington

  ‘Captivates, inspires and ultimately enriches’

  Heather Morris, author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz

  ‘A tear-jerker. Bookworms are calling it a cross between The Diary of Anne Frank and The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and it’s a reading list essential’

  Maximum Pop

  ‘The best YA novel about the Holocaust I have read. The story it threads together is gripping, moving and important … deeply-researched, but wears its learning so lightly that the history is woven seamlessly into the fabric of the colourful story’

  Robert Eaglestone, Professor of Contemporary Literature and Thought, Holocaust Research Institute, University of London

  ‘In Auschwitz, teenagers Ella and Rose survive because they create clothes for the Commandant’s wife. Despite the dark situation, the friends’ compassion, friendship and humanity win out’

  Candis magazine

  ‘This powerful young-adult Holocaust novel is an incredibly moving and important read that resonates with its message of hope and compassion’

  Culture Fly

  ‘A sensitive and brilliantly-written look at the Holocaust’

  Book Murmuration

  ‘Compelling, illuminating … and female’

  Notes on Paper

  ‘A truly mesmerising tale of hope, sacrifice and friendship

  and I loved it!’

  Pretty Little Memoirs

  ‘An affecting and enlightening read’

  Black Plume

  ‘Adlington’s writing is beautiful and often moving. Keep the handkerchief ready’

  The Lady

  ‘Fashion and Auschwitz may seem an unlikely pairing … but this story is tremendously thought-provoking about the horrors of the Holocaust and the deeper meaning of clothes and the way you present yourself to the world … The Red Ribbon is a moving story of friendship, kindness and heroism under impossible circumstances’

  Booktrust

  ‘Gritty historical fiction with a symbol of hope’

  Times Educational Supplement

  Also by Lucy Adlington from Hot Key Books

  The Red Ribbon

  In memory of the real Hidden Children.

  Persecuted and driven into fearful secrecy, they lost their identities, their families, their youth. And in tribute to those who kept love, trust and joy alive.

  Fish-Paste Sandwiches

  There are lots of stories about war. Stories about glory. Suffering. Survival. But who talks about what happens afterwards, about life now, when we’ve scrambled out from under the rubble and stopped waving flags of victory or surrender? Who dares mention what we’ve become?

  Not me. I don’t talk. I watch, mostly, and wait.

  That day – the day we blew across the sea to England – I was so excited it felt as if minnows were swimming around inside me. There was so much to see in the port … ropes, cranes, sailors, seagulls … rainbows in oil slicks and fish guts in buckets.

  ‘Stick together!’ cried our Red Cross escorts. There were nearly fifty of us in our group, aged five to sixteen. Forty-seven orphans of war, and me. Leftovers.

  We lurched up a gangway onto the ship. Once that was pulled in, the only escape route was overboard.

  ‘Keep away from the railings!’ yelled a Red Cross woman. Then, in a quieter voice, ‘Honestly, it’s like herding cats.’

  I hid in the middle of the group, holding tight to my case. The air was a fug of fuel and salt spray. The deck thrummed. I’d never been to sea before. ‘One day we’ll go to England,’ my mutti had said, a lifetime ago. ‘When the sun shines, it’s the most beautiful country in the world. A true land of summer.’

  October clouds hid the sun now. Down we plunged into the murky green, then up to the white wave-tops. I wondered which bright spark had thought it was a good idea to give us fish-paste sandwiches for lunch. They looked and smelled horrible, but when you’ve sucked on pebbles out of hunger, you’re not too fussy. I was saving mine for later, which was just as well, because the other children hung like limp monkeys over the railings, sicking theirs up.

  I turned my face to the sky, amazed at how wide it was.

  Behind us … Europe, its ghosts swaying on the dawn beaches, thick as dune grass. Ahead of us … England. A new life.

  Had I been followed?

  Landfall.

  Crowds pulsing and pushing. Smells of sweat and wet clothes. Rain on the docks. I was hurried along with everyone else, off the ship, onto English ground, into a huge wooden hall that creaked as the wind gusted. Customs, said a sign. The crowd slowed. Men in uniforms ahead!

  Keep calm. Act natural.

  My fingers played a soundless piano tune against my thigh, a rhapsody by an Englishwoman my mutti had admired called Rebecca Clarke. The music was half ominous, half hopeful. I understood that feeling.

  ‘Stay together! That means you too, Arek,’ shouted one of the Red Cross women. Betty, her name was. Poor Betty, the kids called her behind her back. Always with a sniffle and no hanky. Arek was a Polish boy who’d survived a hell worse than hell by hiding in a toilet pit. Now he was free, it was as if his arms and legs had to be all places at once. I knew how it felt to be so trapped you wanted to run mad like a crazy spider. Instead I kept calm and ladylike, as I’d been taught.

  While Betty checked names, another Red Cross lady – Margaret – tried to line us up in order. Margaret had been a hockey player before the war – what was hockey? – and said she loved children, though she probably meant normal kids who picked flowers, not fights. Ones who didn’t lick the plate when the food was all gone. I’d been normal once, I think. It was hard to remember. I’d been happy before the war. There’d been a boat on a lake – a wooden toy with a cotton sail. A tall man with sun behind his shoulders.

  ‘Brigitta Iggle?’

  I blinked and the memory vanished. Someone had said a name I knew – the name I used, pronounced wrong. It was spelled Igeul in German, like eagle in English, and it meant hedgehog.

  Betty tapped her fingers on a clipboard. Her woollen gloves had unravelled at the tips.

  Margaret squinted at the list of names. ‘Brigitta? Like Bridget …?’

  They both glanced round the group, eyes passing right over me.

  Betty sneezed and called out again. ‘Is there a Bridget Iggle?’

  Much as I preferred being invisible, I didn’t want to be left off the list. I absolutely had to be let into England.

  ‘Here!’ I called. When no one looked my way, I realised no sound had come out. Too many years of just whispering, or talking with fingertips only. I raised my hand.

  ‘Oh, her,’ said Betty. ‘The dark one. Now I remember: she kicked up a stink at the clinic when she had to undress for the examination. In the end I told her to keep her undert
hings on. Hey, you, Arek, get down from that table! I swear that boy’s got ants in his pants – he never sits still. Er, what was I saying?’

  ‘About Brigitta,’ Margaret prompted.

  ‘Oh yes. Not a bad-looking kid. She’ll be a heartbreaker before long. A couple of eggs short of dozen of course,’ she added, tapping the side of her head.

  ‘Hush,’ said Margaret. ‘She’ll hear you.’

  ‘Her? Doesn’t speak a word of English, or any language, it seems. Doesn’t speak at all.’

  ‘Poor thing. Poor all of them. No homes, no parents …’

  ‘Oh, children are like rubber, don’t you worry. They soon bounce back. Even after …’ Betty’s voice trailed off. She sniffed and quickly looked back at her clipboard and stabbed the list of names. ‘How on earth do I pronounce this? Why can’t the Polish language have more vowels and fewer consonants? Arek Whateveryournameis, put whateverthatthingis down and line up with the rest of us …’

  The crowd shuffled forward, closer to the men in uniforms with shining buttons. Uniforms meant trouble. Questions. My heart was racing so fast the beats blurred into one continuous throb. I looked down at my hands, now fingering a tricky bit of Beethoven on the wool of my skirt.

  I can’t do this.

  I have to do this.

  One by one the officials crooked a finger for someone to step up and show their papers. My turn.

  Do what everyone else does.

  A customs man behind a big wooden desk looked me up and down. What did he see? A dark-haired girl in a red check coat, brown cardigan, brown skirt, brown socks, brown shoes. It was a smart coat at least, though it had been through a lot. All my clothes were cast-offs. A bit like me.

  ‘Name?’

  I was paralysed, unable to speak.

  ‘She’s Bridget Iggle,’ said Betty, looming over my shoulder.

  The man scanned my creased identity papers. ‘From Germany?’

  I shook my head and mouthed, ‘Austria. Vienna.’

  ‘Says here you trained as a seamstress.’

  What should I reply to that?

  The customs man frowned at Betty. ‘Here, you, miss, ask her if she’s a seamstress.’

  ‘Like I know!’ Betty spluttered. ‘My job’s just to fetch them here. I barely learned how to say parlez-vous in school, let alone German.’ She turned to me and did a pantomime of sewing.

  I nodded.

  ‘Coming to England to work?’ continued the customs man.

  Another nod.

  ‘Anything to declare?’

  I handed over my brown cardboard case, given to me at the Red Cross refugee centre in Berlin. The customs man clicked the lid and opened it. It didn’t take long for him to search through all I owned in the world.

  One nightshirt.

  One spare set of underwear.

  One small book with tiny, tiny writing.

  And, most precious of all: one grey glove. Just the one.

  ‘Anything else?’

  I shrank away. They wouldn’t do a body search, would they? That would be disastrous. Then I remembered my uneaten sandwich. Wordlessly I pulled it out of my pocket and handed it over. The customs man took one sniff at the fish paste and shoved the whole sandwich back at me. ‘Move along now. Nothing to declare.’

  I moved along, head down, eyes down. Eventually I allowed myself a quiet smile.

  Nothing to declare, the man had said? Well, we all have our secrets. No one needed to know about the knife in my sock.

  Bacon Butties

  ‘Late through customs and only just made it to the train,’ Betty fretted. ‘ Oi – Arek, get down from that rack – it’s for luggage, not boys.’

  We tumbled into the carriage, a mess of scabbed knees, sharp elbows and suitcase corners. The train seats were hairy. I got jammed between a soot-speckled window and a little Czech girl who had yet to take her thumb out of her mouth. She stroked her nose with a forefinger as she sucked.

  An Englishman in a cheap coat and thin leather gloves pushed through to the seats opposite. ‘Shift up,’ he told the two Polish boys who were trying the seats out for bounce. The man’s teeth were a spectrum of yellow, black and gold. He made a point of spreading his buttocks as wide as he could across the seat, then he opened his newspaper. The headlines were bold.

  NAZI TRIALS IN NUREMBERG! WAR CRIMINALS TO BE HANGED!

  JUSTICE MUST BE DONE!

  NAZI SPIES FEARED HIDING IN ENGLAND!

  So the few Nazi leaders who’d been captured alive at the end of the fighting were on trial for their crimes. Would the judges one day catch up with all the other little Hitlers who’d carried out the orders? I could think of a few. Before I could read more, the man folded the newspaper and took his lunch out of a bag. It was a floury bread roll cut in half, with two slices of warm fatty bacon dropping out of the side.

  Arek and the other refugees were drawn to the smell like hungry dogs.

  The man flapped his newspaper at them. ‘Get away, greedy beggars! A fella ought to be able to eat a bacon butty in peace. Hey, you, nurse! Are you in charge of these brats? Keep them under control or I’ll have them thrown off the train.’

  Margaret went pink. ‘Boys, sit down. You will get fed again, I promise.’

  ‘Ruddy foreigners,’ said the man, through a mouthful. ‘No manners! I blame the parents. They ought –’

  ‘They don’t have any parents,’ Margaret snapped. ‘They’re Jewish survivors of the Horror Camps, if you must know. I dare say you must’ve read about them in the papers – Auschwitz and Belsen and suchlike. We managed to get permission for one thousand orphaned survivors to come and find new homes in Britain. Unfortunately we couldn’t actually find one thousand camp children left alive. Not even eight hundred. This is the last batch.’

  The man looked down at his bacon butty – what was a butty? – then he looked at the boys clustered round him. ‘Oh. Well. They can have some if they like …’

  ‘They’re Jewish. They don’t eat pork.’

  I flinched. What was Margaret thinking, saying the J-word out loud? Anyone could be listening!

  The man wiped greasy fingers on his trousers. ‘Shocking what ’Itler did to them Jews,’ he said, picking at a piece of rind stuck in his teeth. Then he smiled at the little Czech girl sitting next to me. ‘Don’t cry, sweetie. You’re safe now. It couldn’t happen here. This is England.’

  I hadn’t noticed the girl crying. What was I supposed to do? I remembered my mama’s warm, firm voice: Here, hold my hand. Don’t let go. I felt for the Czech girl’s hand and gave it a squeeze. With a quiet sob, she turned and burrowed into me.

  There was a crackle from my coat lining. Had anyone else heard it?

  The Englishman nodded at me. ‘You’re a good girl, you are.’

  I held myself still. That’s what you think.

  Whistles, pistons, smoke and steam. On we rushed, to our future. Who’d welcome us? Who’d want us? Who’d want me?

  A faint sun shone on hedges, fields and villages. Kids pressed flat against the train windows, pointing things out and chattering away in half a dozen languages. Arek got locked in the lavatory and Margaret nearly blew a gasket trying to get him out again. Farms and countryside gave way to factories and wasteland, and rows of red-brick houses with pigeons on the roof tiles and washing strung in the yards.

  ‘This is it, this is London!’ cried Betty. ‘Make sure you’ve got everything. Whatever you do, stay together and don’t –’ The rest of her words were lost in a very wet sneeze.

  More clambering, shoving, lugging and bickering. I had my suitcase tight in one hand and the Czech girl limpeted to the other.

  Just as Arek tripped off the train and onto the platform there was a shout. ‘There they are!’ A cluster of men in hats jogged towards our carriage. Questions shot out like bullets. ‘How do you like England? Are you happy to be here? What was it like in the Nazi camps?’

  Then they hoisted up cameras with bulbs that flashed and shattered, cr
unching underfoot. ‘You there, the pretty dark girl, smile for us!’

  Too late I turned my head away. Too late I yanked my hand from the little Czech girl’s and raised it to my face. I was stabbed by the lights and caught on film.

  So I did what any self-respecting, honest citizen wouldn’t do. I ran.

  I burst out of the station, heart pounding, almost straight into a jam of traffic. Horns blared. ‘Watch where you’re going, darlin’!’

  I dodged cars, jumped puddles and slid between strangers on the far pavement. Then I slowed. You might look normal running towards a station, maybe late for a train, but you stand out running away. It’s best to blend in and be what everyone expects. Hide in plain sight.

  London looked endless and I was lost, of course. Still, if I didn’t know where I was, no one could track me down. But what if I ever wanted to be found? To answer that question I had to get to Summerland, which meant un-losing myself.

  Where are we, Mutti? I used to ask my mama.

  She’d peer through keyholes, or out from under beds, or along the moon-silver stones of a secret pathway, wherever we’d been hiding at the time. You could criss-cross an atlas with all the places in Europe we went, looking for refuge.

  Where are we? I’d ask, wondering if it was Romania, Moravia or Bavaria, and she’d say, ‘We’re exactly where we are on the surface of the planet, and we’re together. That’s all you need to know right now.’

  Before the war I’d known exactly where I was. I’d be swinging my legs at the dinner table as grown-ups talked and joked. Making dens among the fallen leaves in the park. Running to school with a bouncing satchel. Were these memories or did I make them up to pass the years of hiding, when we were everywhere and nowhere at once?

  Now I’d made it to the speck of the planet called London. I wished I could swing around lamp posts in celebration. I didn’t of course. A nice girl wouldn’t do such a thing, so neither did I.