Somewhere Over England by Margaret Graham Page B

room and others were folded up ready for use if necessary in the studio. Heine was eager and young, his limp hardly noticeable. He talked until the early hours with the refugees until they left to go to jobs and countries Heine and his friends had organised. But always new ones came, occasionally bringing wives, sisters, children, and the sunshine of their honeymoon seemed never to have existed.
    The refugees were ‘placed’ but sometimes it was difficult as the flood of those escaping the swastikas and black boots increased and so some stayed on. Each night when she returned from carrying out commissions and Christoph was inbed, they talked over wine and sometimes remembered to speak in English until Helen left to work again or sleep, but she never slept soundly now and her dreams were bleak.
    Full of the horrors she had listened to, steeped in loneliness, one night she dreamed of a lichen-covered bridge and hands which held her safe and she woke up crying.
    At night Heine crept in beside her and sometimes he would hold her but he was tired, so tired, and so was she. Christoph was passed from one to another and did not know that his father was different to all these uncles.
    At the beginning of May in 1935 they had only four staying and on Silver Jubilee Day she helped the neighbours set out trestle tables in the street while red, white and blue bunting hung across the road, and she asked Heine who was sitting at his desk to carry down some cakes and to come and join her and watch his son enjoy himself.
    ‘I am so busy, my darling. I have letters to write.’
    He had said that too often and Helen felt the anger come. It crept from every pore of her skin and she knew now that it had been there for months and months but it had not formed into words in her head until now. But why this moment? She did not know, except that she was English and this was an English celebration and she asked nothing of him but that he should join her, as she had for so long joined him. She turned to the window, where they were on a level with the bunting. She watched Mr Frazer who lived above the tobacco shop hauling on a line festooned with flags which stretched from his flat window to Mrs Briggs who lived opposite. Heine had never met them, he did not even know their names.
    All she asked was a little of his time for the world which she and their son lived in and he would not give her even that. There were so many other people in their lives, so much that needed doing; but there should be time for happiness as there once was. She smoothed the curtain between her fingers, rubbing up and down, up and down. Then she turned, looking at Hans, Georg, Hermann, Ernst who had been with them for two months.
    ‘You will all come to see how we in England celebrate, and you, Heine, you will come too.’ And her voice was firm. She walked to the desk and covered the notepaper that he had pulled towards him. ‘You will come because you are part ofEngland now. You will come because your English-German son needs you there.’ The paper was cold and dead, the room was quiet.
    Heine looked at her, his eyes puzzled, surprised.
    ‘You will come because you are my husband and I need you there.’ Her voice was calm but the anger sounded in her own ears and she wondered when the child inside her had gone and this woman had taken her place.
    Helen turned then, walked past Hans standing awkwardly by the door, his face turned from her in embarrassment. She stooped and picked Christoph from his playpen, sitting him on her hip. She did not look back but walked from the door to the studio where she picked up her Leica, for she never went anywhere without it now.
    ‘You will come,’ she said as she walked down the stairs feeling so much older than twenty-two. The stairs needed painting. The pushchair had marked the walls and too many hands had felt their way up. Perhaps she would ask Hans and the others to help, and Heine too. But, of course, he would be too busy. As