Emma - A Short Story

Murky water dragged her downward into its cold embrace. The current wrapped her long skirt around her legs and snatched her cloak from her shoulders. Her arms felt weightless, floating free as she drifted in the dark.

Her chest constricted with the first fluttering of panic as she tried, and failed to take a breath. Before her fear became real, rough arms had grabbed her, forcing her upwards towards the surface.

The stranger hauled her to the bank and dropped her unceremoniously onto the grass. She gasped and coughed, clawing air into her lungs.

“Does anyone know this girl?” the man demanded, addressing the group of curious onlookers who had gathered to watch. His face was craggy, but sympathetic as he leaned over her, apparently oblivious to his sopping wet workman’s clothes.

“That's Emma that is.” A woman is a grease stained dress pointed a quivering arm. “Her dad’s one ‘a them German cabinet makers.”

Shivering now in the inadequate spring sunshine, Emma spat sour water out of her mouth, bristling at the woman’s inaccuracy. ‘Father is Prussian’, she insisted silently, 'Mother’s parents came from Hamburg, but Muti was born in London. She'd spent all her life here. Yet everyone still referred to them as, ‘the Germans’.

The sprawl of neglected, unkempt streets of St Pancras was where the German immigrants congregated during the latter part of the last century. The bamboo and the stick workers, the cabinet makers and basket weavers, all crowded into the rickety, badly maintained houses they rented out in small portions.

“I see'd 'er!” the same woman’s voice rose in excitement. “Jumped right in she did.” She stared round at the row of interested faces. “One minute she was on the tow path, then she was in the canal, sinking. Di’nt even struggle.” Her flat East End vowels fell heavily on Emma’s ears.

She blinked dirty water out of her eyes and tried to focus on what had really happened. She remembered stepping off the tow path, teetering on the concrete edge of the canal and staring down into the grey water, but couldn’t recall jumping. It was as if she was pulled forward and had simply toppled into the smooth, grey surface, which opened to let her in.

A sudden bout of coughing made her chest burn, but too miserable to either argue or explain, she lay back on the grass and closed her eyes.

“She’s got brothers I think,” another man ventured. “They live in Disraeli Road somewhere.”

At the mention of her brothers, the full force of what had driven Emma into the water in the first place gripped her bowels with dread and she gave a low, keening moan.

The male arms closing around her to help her to her feet were familiar this time and when she opened her eyes again, she was peering into her brother's face. “Lou?” she mumbled.

Wordlessly he draped a rough woollen blanket over her shoulders and with a brief nod of thanks to the man in the wet clothes, he shouldered his way through the little crowd who had lost interest now and were drifting away.

“Are you alright Em?” Lou asked gently, guiding her into a narrow alley between the tightly packed houses where they lived. He was a year and a half younger than she, tall and rangy with a boy’s awkward body and a man’s serious face. Of all of her brothers, she was glad it was Lou who had come for her.

He didn’t question or scold her, just waited patiently for her to speak. He hadn’t always been this serious. Once he would have shaken her, loudly demanding what she thought she was doing.

But that was before, when he had been the confident eldest son, the noisy ringleader, always first into any scrap or mischief the neighbourhood boys and his brothers could devise.

When Louis was sixteen, it had all gone terribly wrong. There had been a street fight, some neighbourhood conflict which always occurred in a community where so many different nationalities jostled to exist side by side. This time a knife had been involved, no one had ever established whose, but they blamed Louis and the magistrate had sent him to the training ship moored off Purbeck.

The TS Cornwall was a seventy four-gun warship built a century before but after its de-commission, it was used as a correction facility for teenage boys. Their tiny, dark haired mother had cried hot, grief filled tears as he was taken away, and once his initial rage had abated, their proud father had remained stoically, but silently loyal. The other children old enough to understand had been forbidden to tell the younger ones where their brother had gone.

Its harsh regime was designed to be life changing and allowed no tolerance for backsliding. Louis had been gone three years and during the months since his return, the changes in him were set to be permanent.

Louis’ dark eyes were harder and warier, his body stronger and his ebullient spirit had been, well, broken, which Emma supposed was the purpose of a place like that. A place she had never dared ask him about.

Now she had done this terrible thing and brought even more disgrace on the family. She knew her father especially would never understand, so there had only been one thing she could have done, but she had messed that up too.

“Where are we going Lou?” the question was rhetorical, for the street ahead was horribly familiar. Beneath the borrowed blanket she shivered and sobbed, then because it had to be said before they reached the front door, she told him.

“We have to get you out of those wet things, Em.” Was all he said as they entered the shabby hallway of the big old house, with its mingled smells of soap and cabbage. Together they climbed creaking wooden stairs where her parents rented rooms, too few for their still growing family.

Emma sat alone in the back room, huddled in a chair by the range, listening to them decide her fate on the other side of the door. Her mother had hung up the drenched skirt and the filthy camisole to dry above the tiny range, but the grass and mud stains would need scrubbing, Emma told herself idly, trying to distract her thoughts from what was happening in the next room.

How could she have been so foolish, and without even having the excuse that she didn’t know any better? She should have known the pitfalls of being in service by now. After all, she was twenty-two and had been living away from home since she was eighteen.

It didn’t seem wrong at first, how could a few compliments and kind smiles hurt anyone? Her employer was so nice to her, far more considerate than to any of the other maids. Somehow it made the gruelling cooking and cleaning seem easier to get through, when he was there to appreciate her efforts.

Tall and commanding, Mr W always had a welcoming smile for her whenever they met in the lofty halls of his house. He told her she was pretty, something her own family were too busy with the business of daily survival to notice, much less make a point of.

Her proud father, with his superior expression and withering stare would have scorned such useless flattery, while her mother would have given her a firm but gentle warning. But she had told neither of them of his compliments.

Then Mr W’s attentions had become inappropriate somehow, even to an innocent like Emma, who had certainly never given him a whisper of encouragement. Having taken her acquiescence for consent, one night when his wife was away with the children, he had come to her room and…

Emma released a heartfelt, whimpering sigh at the memory of that one time when she had found herself powerless, reluctant to invoke Mr W's anger. After all he was her employer, and Emma was a good daughter, an obedient servant, who always did exactly as she was told.

“Sie geht!” Her father’s harsh voice dragged her back to the present, ‘she will go.’

Trembling, Emma murmured softly to herself. “I'm so sorry, Vater, but please, I cannot go back to that house. His wife will find out and he will deny everything, or he will blame me.”

"You can’t throw her out. She has nowhere to go.” Her second brother Albert’s voice spoke, lower than their father’s but just as firm.

Father’s voice came again, quieter now, so she only caught the end of his words,

“……ihre Schande.” ‘her shame.’

A sob of despair rose to Emma’s throat, the earthy taste of the canal rising in her mouth making her gag. If he wouldn’t listen to the boys, to whom would he listen?

Then her mother’s voice interrupted, so seldom raised yet commanding now, “Sie ist mein Kind auch.” ‘She is my child too.’

‘Please Muti’, Emma whispered to the empty room. “Convince him to let me stay.”

The squeal in protest as it was pushed open, stretching Emma's nerves further. Her sister Marie entered with a cup of tea which she lay carefully on a small table. Emma looked up to give her a tentative smile, wondering if Marie brought the tea of her own volition, or because her mother had told her to.

Marie’s curiosity was written on her face, but Emma offered no explanations. She sipped slowly, grateful for its milky sweetness which helped obliterate the nasty taste in her mouth.

Emma signalled the girl to go, aware that if Marie showed too much compassion, their father's anger may include her as well.

Marie smiled in obvious relief, tucked her hair behind one ear and scurried out.

No one came to talk to Emma that night, so she spent the dark hours until morning huddled in her childhood bed with Marie and another younger sister, ten-year-old Rosa beside her, trying not to cry too loudly for fear of waking them.

“Why did you do it Em?” Rosa asked her as morning broke through the grimy window overlooking the rear yard. Emma could only shake her head, turning her face to the wall, her hand drifting lazily across her still flat stomach.

*****

Her sisters had left for school before Emma summoned the energy to get out of bed the next morning. When she finally emerged into the gloomy kitchen, Marie Christina greeted her curtly, busying herself with feeding and dressing the younger children. In an effort to make herself invisible, Emma tiptoed round the cluttered rooms while her mother worked. If she did not make herself too obvious, perhaps they would stop noticing her. Emma was small built, like her mother, so didn’t take up much room.

The days passed into weeks and no one ever mentioned that awful incident at the canal. She helped ‘Muti’ scrub, wash and cook as she raised her family in the small but immaculately kept rooms, perched on the upper floor tall town house, whose upper windows gave onto the roof of St Pancras station.

With so little room for them all to eat, sleep, or even just sit, they eked out Albert Heinrich’s wages by renting one, sometimes even two rooms to a boarder. When Marie was old enough, she to would go into service. Her wages, along with those of the elder boys, would help keep them all fed and clothed.

It was a dismal, hard life with no ground won between one day and the next and Emma was keenly aware she was adding to the burden with not one mouth to feed but two, with even less money coming in.

Marie Christina, heavily pregnant with her eleventh child, treated Emma with silent understanding as Emma’s belly grew and the family ignored it. Her father remained aloof and tight lipped when he was at home, which was not often; he had taken extra hours at the workshop to earn more to put food on their undersized table.

Emma helped Marie Christina bring her baby into the world, a healthy boy they named Edward, and with the younger children to care for, Emma had little chance to think too much. Apart from Marie and Rosa, there was six-year-old Ernst, and the two youngest girls, four-year-old Katie and Esther, who was two. The older boys she didn’t have to worry about so much, for apart from Lou and Albert, Henry was sixteen and out working, while Wilhelm, a quiet thirteen year old, was never any trouble anyway.

Emma could sense her father’s disappointment receding as he adjusted to having her home, and before long she became his ‘Meine Libeling’ again.

When her own time came and Emma lay wracked with pain in the back bedroom, confused and horrified at the severity of her ordeal, it was her father who held her hand almost until the end.

Her son was a good baby, and Emma found a love she didn’t know existed, watching Arthur grow into a dark little boy, lying with his infant uncle Teddy in the crib Albert Heinrich had made for his son and grandson.

Uncle and nephew grew and played together in the rooms they shared, ran side by side in the streets, to fight and confide as best friends do. The neighbours were barely able to tell whose child was who’s, in a household amongst so many others.

One by one, the four older boys married and moved away to other cramped rooms in identical houses scattered among the adjacent streets in run down St Pancras and Marylebone. Emma sewed Marie’s aprons when she went into service, only coming home every other Sunday. The house now only held the five younger children and Marie Christina’s last baby, Lily, at home with Emma and her Arthur.

Emma had a friend who lived nearby in almost as much noisy chaos as herself. Annie was a tall, rangy girl from a large, boisterous Irish family and although not pretty, she could be described as handsome in a way that youthful health was appreciated in a time of high mortality. She had dark steady eyes and springy brown hair which refused to be tamed, the exact physical opposite of Emma, who felt small and child-like beside her.

Everyone said Emma seemed untouched by the years as her twenties passed, and often confused her for one of her younger sisters. Their amazement bewildered Emma sometimes, who did nothing to create this illusion. She could only be what she was, just as everyone else could not help what time and life did to them.

Emma’s devotion to the brothers continued, although she had never been able to find the words to thank them for championing her cause with their father. They would have brushed her away in embarrassment if she had, so she manifested her gratitude in her care of them and their children.

Then Albert began to notice Annie, and when they married, Emma was almost as delighted as the bride and groom.

Emma sat and cried with Annie when their first baby, a daughter, died before her first birthday. It had been frighteningly quick. One morning the fever began and the baby screamed and writhed, then her body grew horribly still and while Annie sobbed, Emma sat wide-eyed, holding eight-year-old Arthur so tightly, he wriggled and complained, eager to escape and run off to play with Teddy.

There had been no money for a gravestone for little Anne, so Albert, a cabinetmaker like his father, had skewed and shaped a wooden cross from a leftover piece of hardwood with the baby’s name etched proudly into the varnished surface.

It was a beautiful piece of work, and Emma had told him so. Albert had shrugged her away, but a faint blush came to his cheek. Emma would visit the little grave sometimes, while the wind and rain, together with the soot filled London air, had stripped the varnish and obliterated the inscription.

Each year at Christmas, Emma accompanied Annie, Albert and their other children on a pilgrimage to the little grave to bring their lost daughter a new cross. So all who saw it would know that short as her life had been, she had once been loved, and remembered.

Like Emma herself, Annie had a whole band of siblings, and over the years Emma found herself growing fonder of one of her brothers than the others. His name was Jim and he was almost eight years her junior. Some said he was, ‘Moon touched’ and ‘a bit fey’, but Emma had not understood their Irish superstition. Her even temper would never admit there was a serious flaw and she could always soothe him, winning him round with the same mothering she gave Arthur. Before long, they were making plans to marry.

But the year was 1914, and everything was about to change.

When war came, Albert’s four sons enlisted and Emma and Annie went to the station to wave them off to the front. Their rough army greens scratched Emma’s face as she hugged each of them in turn. Annie’s lip trembled as they climbed into the train, joking and teasing her and each other as if they were off to the seaside for the day. When the train pulled away, Emma took Annie’s hand and walked silently out of the echoing station, her heart too heavy to tell Annie she was afraid of losing them. How could her loss ever be worse than Annie’s?

Then Annie’s brother’s too were sent to France and slowly the London streets emptied completely of young men, leaving behind only uncomprehending children and the fearful elderly, who had seen it all before.

One morning Albert Heinrich mounted the stairs with dragging feet, dropping his precious toolbox on the floor as if it were a sack of coal, something he never did. Emma frowned as she looked at them, confused. Those tools were his living and he cared for them as if they were alive. She would watch him in the evenings, sharpening, oiling, wrapping and storing them in the shaped compartments reserved for each one.

He turned to his wife and daughter, his eyes cloudy with despair.

“Was geschehen ist?” ‘ What has happened? ‘ Marie Christina’s hand flew to her mouth in horror. “Ist es unsere Jungen?” ‘Is it the boys?’

Albert Heinrich shook his head. “Ich habe meinen Job verloren.” 'I have lost my job.'

He spoke slowly, in broken English, a language he had never quite mastered. “I am a German,” he said, “and Monsieur Ehrhard says it is hard for him, working here as a Frenchman in wartime. He says he cannot give me any more work, unless I take British citizenship.”

“Is it possible?” Marie Christina breathed, crumpling a piece of darning in her lap, “Can you do such a thing?”

"Mr Winstanley has agreed to stand for me,” Albert went on wearily, “he went with me today to the police station where we filled in all the….the dokumente.”

“The papers, Father.” Emma translated for him, just as she had always done. “That was kind of him,” she murmured, grateful to the neighbour whom she had known since she was small.

But Albert was not appeased. “I haf lived here for thirty four years.” He accentuated each word with his fist on the arm of his chair. “Longer than I lived in Prussia, yet still they call me a German.”

Emma looked away, unable to comfort him. Not that he would have allowed it, he was too proud, too, well…German. Marie Christina merely sighed and continued with her sewing, her eyes cast down. Emma went to make a pot of tea, knowing there was nothing to be gained from discussing the subject again, the family history was well known, some if it anyway.

Albert Heinrich’s reasons for coming to England had always been a mystery. He and his best friend, Joseph Kaiser had left Danzig in 1881, leaving whatever family they had there, neither of them ever to return.

Emma wondered if she had relatives still in Germany, but now with the war, she probably never would know. Joseph had married Marie Christine’s older sister Anna, and they too were bringing up a large family in the same neighbourhood, so Emma’s need for cousins was more than fulfilled.

The war went on and when men in uniform appeared in their road on weekend leave, Emma would rush into the street to see if it was one of her brothers, or Annie’s. They would sit awkwardly over teacups, or more casually in the local public house, fielding all questions about what the war was really like.

Even neighbours and childhood friends were questioned for news of the front, which they rarely told. A few drifted back over the next three years, some bandaged and with empty eyes, others ruined from mustard gas, shell shock or with missing limbs. Too many never came back at all.

A steady stream of embroidered French postcards arrived for Emma and her sisters, reading their brief, unrevealing messages repeatedly in the hope of detecting something implied or missed. She would show them to Annie, who would reveal her own from Albert and her brothers, all to be lovingly stored away in pasteboard boxes tied with ribbon.

The day in August 1914 when the inspector came to interview Albert for his naturalisation, Ernst crashed noisily into the room to announce in his high-pitched seventeen-year-old voice, that he had enlisted.

Marie Christina paled, while Albert stood up proudly to shake the boy’s hand. Emma, Rosa and Katie burst into tears.

Ernst ignored them all. “I'm in the Second Border regiment,” he shouted happily. “The same as Albert.”

He was sent to France.

With five sons now fighting for England, Albert Heinrich was granted his citizenship. Monsieur Ehrhard took him back into the workshop and the days passed slowly, everyone waiting for the war to be over, so their sons and husbands could come home.

Annie had her own boy now, also called Albert, whom she cared for devotedly, enduring the long days waiting for news.

Emma and Annie would often shop together for the meagre food still available, or simply go for walks to get some fresh air with the baby in his pram. One morning, they returned to Annie’s house and as they approached the door, Emma gasped.

“Annie, the sitting room window is smashed. Whatever happened?” She started forward to take a closer look, but Annie placed a hand on her arm

“Leave it, Em,” she said in a dull voice. “It happens sometimes.”

Emma turned to her shocked. “What do you mean?”

Annie shrugged, reaching into the pram to lift the baby. “We have a German name, and people round here have sent most of their men to the front. They have to take it out on someone.”

“But your husband is in the British Army, so are your brothers. And mine!” Emma was furious, gazing round at the street to see if any faces were waiting behind windows to see how Annie would react.

Annie just looked at her. “I'm surprised it hasn’t happened to you and Mother-In-Law yet.”

Emma opened her mouth and shut it again. She was about to deny it, but remembered her mother boarding up a small pane in the kitchen about a week ago. She had told Emma it was an accident; that young Teddy had thrown something. Annie’s window stayed that way for months. Glass cost money.

In 1915, Albert came home on leave and Emma went round to their house as often as she could during that wonderful few days, watching her brother get to know his infant son.

Then Albert Heinrich came home one day waving a newspaper. “The British have attacked the Turkish forts in the Dardanelles.” Emma exchanged a bemused look with Marie Christina, who frowned. Simply another campaing, another country. What could it mean to them?

Albert’s regiment was sent to Gallipoli.

One chill October morning, Emma sat reading by a tiny fire which burned in the grate. She had fed it scraps of paper, wood and cardboard cartons all morning in an attempt to keep it burning. Fuel was growing scarcer and she had already used all the coal she could allow herself that day.

She heard familiar footsteps on the stairs and stood up expectantly, reaching the door just as Annie burst into the room, her fizzy hair awry and the baby jolting precariously on her hip.

Emma froze at her sister-in-law’s tearstained face. “Is it Bert?”

 “Yes,” Annie breathed.

Emma sank back into her chair, her heart thudding painfully. She gave a tiny sob and covered her face with her hands.

 “There was a night attack,” Annie said. “A bomb exploded right behind him.” Annie pulled Emma’s hands away from her face. “But it’s all right, Em. He's alive, just. The Red Cross found him in time. He’s in a military hospital.”

“Is he badly hurt?” Emma couldn’t stop her voice from trembling.

“He has shrapnel embedded in his back. His uniform was completely shredded.” Annie blushed then, as if she was embarrassed at the thought of her husband lying naked in the mud.

“The fighting went on all night,” Annie paused to wipe the baby’s nose. “In the morning the navy picked up the wounded and Albert was still lying there on the cliff.”

“They left him?”

“Well yes,..…no listen!” The baby hiccoughed but Annie ignored him. “The Turks moved in afterwards, but they must have thought he was dead because they walked right over him.”

“Oh Annie don’t!” she winced, not wanting to hear any more. All that mattered to Emma was Albert was still alive and hot tears trickled down her cheeks at the thought of her brother’s injuries.

When Ernst was killed in France in 1915, Emma hid her tears from her mother. He was just eighteen and they hadn’t found his body. His army record described him as five feet seven inches, with black hair and blue eyes. He wouldn’t have a grave, the army told them, just a name carved in a memorial in Le Touret on the Armentiers Road his parents would never see.

Rosa took his death the hardest, the closest in age to Ernst she railed against the fates for the loss of her childhood companion. And what could Emma tell her? What had slight, boyish Ernst really died for? Even Emma had begun to question the reasons for continuing this dreadful war, but neither could they contemplate losing it.

Emma read the war reports avidly, not that she always understood them. The one which came in July 1916, said General Sir Douglas Haig was obsessed with breaking the German line. He was sending, it said, thousands of troops into battle at The Somme.

Another battle which meant nothing to Emma at the time, until Annie showed her the telegrams telling them two of Annie’s brothers were killed there. One of them was Jim.

Emma comforted Annie dry-eyed, too stunned to show any emotion. It was only on her solitary walk home that she realised her dreams of a family of her own lay shattered. She still had Arthur, her shy but healthy boy. He was ten now and she told herself there were many thousands of women her own age and much younger, whose hopes and futures had been taken, along with all those wasted lives.

With Albert and Marie Christina, Emma and the younger children welcomed the four eldest boys home, all of them more serious than they had been before. They shook their heads at young Teddy’s probing questions, or just smiled weakly when the girls asked them about France. Emma served them tea in her mother’s best cups, noticing but not commenting on the way their hands shook when they took them from her hand.

She wondered what terrible memories they carried, but she would never ask and they would not tell her. It was enough they were alive and whole, with the chance to take up their lives again, where so many would not.

One by one, Emma’s brothers and sisters moved away from the deteriorating, unhealthy streets where they had all grown up, into the wider countryside and cleaner air of North London.

Emma visited them often through the years, watching them become neighbours, friends and rivals, all loving, laughing and fighting as they raised their families together.

Her brother Albert healed, slowly. One summer morning, when Albert and Annie’s house rang with the sound of their five children, Emma bustled after them. She marched six year old Tom into the kitchen to wash his hands, when they came upon a shirtless Albert leaning over the sink.

Tom gasped and Emma lifted a hand to her mouth at the sight of the dreadful raised scars across his back.

“What have you done, Dad?” the boy asked, horrified.

Emma pressed his shoulder in warning and he glanced up at her, surprised. She gave a tiny shake of her head.

“It’s nothing son,” Albert muttered, shrugging his shirt back on. “It happened in the war, but it’s all right now.”

Young Tom broke away from Emma’s grasp and wandered off, his small face puzzled. Emma knew he would never mention the scars again.

*****

There would be no happy ending for Emma, but then there was no tragic one either. The years passed and she was happy with her life, doing her best to be a devoted aunt to her sibling’s children, always there with advice and cuddles, never impatient, critical or ill tempered.

Her shy son grew into a quiet man and left home, while she went to work at the biscuit factory, coming home to her parents every night. She made good friends and was well liked by everyone who knew her. Still youthful and clear eyed, with her gentle voice and warm smile.

She was often to be seen in the streets close to the Grand Union Canal where she had almost ended her life all those years ago, her skirts swinging on her tiny, now slightly plump frame, a nephew or a niece always in tow.

She was there at her father’s bedside when he died and again eleven years later when Marie Christina slipped away, caring and gentle to the end, forgiven and forgiving.

Her sister Rosa, dark haired and light eyed, married a quiet, dark man and they named their eldest son Ernest. Annie’s son, little Albert, the one his father went to a war which was to prevent all others, was killed at El Alamein in 1942.

There is a photograph, which sits on Emma’s bureau, taken in the street of tall, early Victorian houses where the family lived. Chairs had been dragged from wherever they could be found and lined up on the uneven cobbles. The aunts and uncles, cousins and in-laws all gathered in their best clothes, none of which seem to fit properly, maybe because they were made for someone else and destined to be passed down to others along the line.

The boys’ caps flop over eyes and pinafores drag the ground, while sleeves dip over skinny hands and trouser hems hover inches above their shoes. There are young girls with flowing hair tied with ribbons in creased skirts over too long petticoats.

The men stand with their chests thrust out, displaying nervous smiles, their collars either too tight or too loose, their roughly cut hair hastily brushed as an afterthought. Their clear, unlined faces squint into the sun, while the girls smile shyly and wait for the photographer to tell them the party they all turned out for can begin.

There is Emma, on the far left, at the end of the front row. Her face is still miraculously unlined and girlish, despite the fact it is 1921 and she is in her late thirties. Her softly waved hair forms a gentle frame to her face, topped by a chic little hat. She is not smiling exactly, but she looks serene, even happy.

Annie is beside her, as always, her long face self-conscious and her hair still all over the place, with her eldest daughter sprawled on her lap in an oversized cotton dress.

Emma’s eyes are still wide and light and there is no discernible pain there, no regrets or bitter disappointment has narrowed or hardened them. She is still lovely. Not a bad ending at all, for someone who had to find her own happiness.

Dedicated to the memory of

Emma Augusta Johanna Hahner

1882 –1956