The Sea House by Esther Freud

Author:Esther Freud [Freud, Esther]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, General
ISBN: 9780062030795
Google: ir5InBdtqfMC
Amazon: B00FDRL9NM
Publisher: Ecco
Published: 2013-11-04T16:00:00+00:00

23

Max stood at Hamburg central station with a small green suitcase at his side. Inside his coat, thrust deep into the pocket, was a wallet which contained the ten marks he was allowed. ‘Start looking for a place for us,’ his father said. ‘We will come soon.’ Everywhere people were whispering the same. Soon. The word seemed to slip along the rails, up and over the rim of the grey platform. ‘Soon, soon.’ Max looked around him, at the couriers holding out their clipboards, ticking the people off their lists.

‘The crooks of the stock exchange, slave-drivers of the nation…’ The Nazi youth song rose up in his brain, as the pale, over-padded children boarded the train. ‘When the blood of the Jews spurts from the knife’ – Max had seen those words swell in their marching mouths – ‘then everything will be better.’

‘We’ll only come if we can find no other way.’ No. Max shook his head. But he knew his mother was thinking of their garden, the wood behind the pond. The staircase and the landing, the attic windows that looked out over fields. ‘We’ll keep it safe for you.’ He saw the tears she was holding make a film over her eyes.

Max stepped on to the train. He was packed in with them now, the crooks and slave-drivers, and he imagined Helga watching him, her snub face pressed against the glass, relieved. He reached a window and stretched out to touch his mother’s cheek, and just as he did so, the hand of the clock that hung from the roof of the station shuddered into place.

‘Give our best love to Kaethe.’ They were both reaching up to him, and then a whistle must have blown. Max felt it shrilling through him, and with it, like a sea of birds, the mouths of all those on the platform opened in alarm. Max saw the noise, the stretched throats and the fingers, and then the train began to move. The faces fell back, white framed against the black of hats, and the children inside the carriage looked around as if they never expected, really, that the train would leave.

Max stumbled to his seat. There was a boy beside him with a violin, his fingers white against the canvas case. He was small, no more than twelve years old, but as Max caught his eye he saw a flicker of excitement. ‘I’ve never been to Great Britain,’ he said as Max sat down, and he took a deep breath.

Max sipped his tea and wondered what had become of that boy. His name was Walter Lampl, and he’d been on his way to Kent. There was a school there, set up especially for refugees. ‘My parents,’ Walter had told him, ‘will be coming soon. And if they can’t…’ – there was one fleeting moment of doubt – ‘take me home, I mean, then they can work at the school. My mother teaches piano and my father…’ What could Walter’s father do? ‘My father could work as a cook.

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