Page 15 of Hearts of Resistance
She sighed as she stared at her brother. ‘Well, you don’t,’ she replied, wishing he’d look after himself better and live on more than coffee, cigarettes and whisky. ‘Your clothes are hanging off you.’
The rest of the table was watching them now and, as her brother pulled another chair over, the woman she’d noticed stood.
‘You must be Rose,’ she said, kissing her cheeks as she introduced herself. ‘I’m Charlotte.’
‘Lovely to meet you. You’re a journalist, too?’ It surprised her to see a woman working alongside her brother and his male colleagues, and she felt a pang of envy. How fabulous it must be to have an exciting job.
‘I am. We’ve just returned from a trip to Poland. We were in Vienna before that.’
‘Was it terrible? Is it truly as bad as they say?’
Rose gulped at the pained look on Charlotte’s face. She moved her chair closer to her brother, glancing at him, realising now that perhaps it wasn’t the alcohol and unhealthy lifestyle that was making him look so gaunt. She could tell he didn’t want to talk to her about it, because when she glanced back again she caught him shaking his head to his female colleague.
‘Sebastian, she has a right to know,’ Charlotte insisted, reaching for a cigarette and offering one to her. Rose took it, holding it carefully between her fingers. She hadn’t smoked in years, but the urge to draw on the cigarette hit her hard. ‘If you won’t tell her then I will.’
The other two men, journalists she had met before, smoked their cigarettes and sipped their coffee as Rose turned to her brother.
‘Is this woman your girlfriend?’ Rose asked as politely as she was capable.
He shook his head, grinning at Charlotte behind her. ‘No.’
Rose reached out and gave him a slap across the head. ‘Stupid man. She ought to be.’
That made everyone except her brother laugh, and Rose settled into her chair, intent on finding out everything she could from this interesting woman now seated across from her.
‘Sebastian, more coffee please,’ she said, throwing her brother a sweet smile. ‘For both of us.’
Charlotte’s smile told her that she’d made a friend.
‘Now tell me, what did you see when you were away? What will you be reporting from your trip?’ Rose asked.
‘Hundreds of thousands of Jews are arriving in Poland. They don’t have passports, or if they do they’re marked with aJ.The Germans are just getting rid of them, running them like farm animals across the border to be done with them.’
Rose’s hand shook as she bent to light her cigarette. She took a slow, steady puff before lowering her hand again.
‘So it’s all true. Everything we’re hearing is true?’
‘I’m afraid so. But the reality is far worse than what anyone is hearing.’
‘Worse?’
‘Many of the sick and elderly, they’re living in old stables near the border. It’s atrocious, and worse still is what’s happening in Germany. They’re beating Jews on the street, torching their businesses, destroying everything they have. What they don’t destroy, they take for themselves.’
Rose was certain her husband had been trying to shelter her from everything that was going on in the world. He was a businessman and was surrounded by influential people who would know precisely what was happening. She hated being left in the dark, liked to know the latest news.
‘There are even more fleeing the atrocities in Austria and Czechoslovakia, but many fear that they won’t be able to get out.’ Charlotte blew out an audible breath. ‘And there are rumours of camps, terrible places that the remaining Jews will be sent to. It’s only going to get worse.’ She lowered her voice. ‘So much worse.’
‘Surely someone is doing something about that awful man. Not all Germans can be so cruel, can they?’
‘I don’t know.’ Charlotte shrugged. ‘I’m awake all night remembering what I’ve seen, trying to get the images from my mind of old men being beaten trying to protect their families, synagogues burning and streets of people saluting their leader as if he’s just taken over their minds somehow.’
‘But what use is all of that knowledge if we can’t get our photographs out?’ Sebastian said, finally breaking his silence. ‘We can’t write what we need to, and we can’t show the world what we’ve seen. They confiscated everything when we left.’
‘I think we should be drinking something stronger,’ Rose announced, her hands shaking from what she’d been told.
‘Now you know why I start drinking so early in the day,’ Sebastian muttered drily as he waved the waitress over.
Rose felt a surge of love for her roguish brother. For all the idiotic things he’d done in his life, risking himself to see what was truly happening in Germany wasn’t one of them.
