The Children of Willesden Lane: Beyond The Kindertransport: A Memoir of Music, Love, and Survival by Mona Golabek, Lee Cohen Page B

proud of being thrifty. So I won’t tell him about the diapers, all right?”
    “Thank you, ma’am,” Lisa said, and stared around the room at the clothes, the perfume bottles, and the satin-covered chairs.
    “But I haven’t called you in here to talk about diapers. I want you to be my lady’s maid.”
    Lisa mouth dropped.
    “My maid is pregnant and she’s leaving. I’ll find someone else to wash the diapers. Tomorrow she’ll teach you all you need to know. Just don’t throw out
my
underwear!” She laughed loudly and waved three fingers quickly in a good-bye gesture, turning back to her cosmetics table.
    Every Friday Lisa was paid her salary and she stashed it proudly in a well-fingered envelope in the nightstand where she kept her mother’s picture and her copy of “Clair de Lune.” On Saturday, Lisa would accompany Gladys and Monty to the village for supplies. They would pile in an old pickup—Gladys and Monty in the cab and Lisa in back; occasionally she would catch them stealing a kiss. Lisa enjoyed looking out at the wide expanse of the English countryside. It was a welcome break from the routine.
    One Saturday traffic came to a complete standstill. Lisa stuck her head out around the cab of the truck: The road was filled with a long green convoy of British army trucks and tanks, crawling like a centipede. She hadn’t seen tanks since Hitler’s army had moved into Vienna over a year ago. “Are we at war?” she asked breathlessly.
    “Just getting ready in case, luv,” Gladys replied, then looked over at Monty’s fascinated gaze, which followed the convoy. “Don’t be getting any ideas, Monty!”
    While the others shopped for groceries, Lisa wandered the high street. In the window of a secondhand shop, she saw an old red bicycle. She’d never had a bicycle; in Vienna they were important things for adults, not play toys for children. She had dreamed of the day when she would be older and could get one. She stared at the wheels— wheels that could take people to places they wanted to go someday. A honking horn disturbed her reverie, and she looked up to find Monty beckoning to her. She climbed back into the truck to return to Peacock Manor.
    On special evenings, the staff cranked up the old Victrola and sang along to recordings of “Daisy, Daisy” or “Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree.” The simple, melancholy tunes lingered in her head and she wished she could try them out on a piano. Sometimes she would hum “Clair de Lune” and picture the moonlight glistening off the Danube. If she closed her eyes tight enough she could picture her mother and father, with Sonia and Rosie, walking along its banks. But each time she opened her eyes Vienna would fade more and more into the distance.
    Lisa thrived as the lady’s maid. She carefully inspected skirts for torn hems, scoured blouses for missing buttons, and sewed in drooping shoulder pads without being asked. The lady of the house soon felt comfortable with Lisa’s choices of purses to match her shoes and joked that Lisa had a better sense of style than her!
    Once, Lisa got up her nerve to show the lady a new-style shoe in the fashion magazine.
    “You’ve been stealing my magazines?” she asked with an arched eyebrow.
    Lisa looked stricken.
    “I’m just kidding, Lisa, you don’t have to take things so seriously all the time.”
    But Lisa did take everything seriously. She had to. Anxious weeks went by with no return letters from her family. One day Monty handed her a beat-up blue airmail letter with a German stamp. She was overjoyed to see that the address on the letter was 13 Franzenbrückestrasse; it was postmarked a month earlier. The letter was short; her mother said simply: “Make us proud of you; we miss you every day.” Monty put his arm around her when the tears came.
    After dinner the staff would gather around the wireless and listen to the BBC broadcast. The news from Europe was disquieting. It had been almost a year since