“I live here, on this farm.”
We sat down again and worked our way through the chapter. I scribbled notes all the time.
After this, I was able to join Bill every day, quite openly. We sat where we could be seen, but there were always ways to brush each other’s hands. My English improved fast, but the desire to be alone with him grew desperate. When you are starving, a little food only makes you hungrier.
Sometimes our conversation was guided by a chapter in the book, but more often we just talked.
“Today I’d like to take you out,” he announced one day.
“Where we go?” I asked.
“Where would we go?” he corrected me, and I wrote it down.
“First I’d come and pick you up. I think that’s better than meeting under a clock or something. I’d bring you a little bunch of violets for your buttonhole.”
I didn’t know what this word meant. In his London accent it sounded like “bu’n’ole.” I repeated it, “Bu-u-nole?”
He laughed. “Blimey, I’m going to have to talk proper. Buttonhole,” he said, sounding the ts and the h. He pointed at his tunic. “Button. Buttonhole.”
I nodded and wrote it down.
“Then we’d catch a bus up west, and go for tea at Lyons’ Corner House, and the Nippy’d bring us great plates of sandwiches and scones.”
“Scones?”
“A kind of bready cake with butter and jam and cream.”
“It sound very good.”
“Sounds very good, with an s,” he said kindly, and I scribbled the correction as he continued. “Then we’d go to the pictures. Just stroll up to Leicester Square, looking at all the people. Would you like that?”
“Pichers?”
“Movies, film, cinema.”
“Ah, yes, I like pichers.” I didn’t tell him what a rare treat it was for me to see a film. We had a cinema in Neutitschein, but it wasn’t easy to get away from the farm. Sometimes the local girls would go together on our bikes.
“What kind of film would you like?” he asked.
“Film of love,” I suggested, with a shy, sideways glance, and he laughed. “With music,” I add decidedly.
“OK. We’ll go to a romantic musical. Top Hat. Music and dancing.” He began to sing softly, “‘Heaven, I’m in heaven, and my heart beats so that I can barely speak…’”
It was the first time I’d heard him sing, and his voice was a pleasant tenor. I wanted to know the song and be able to sing along with him.
“‘…when we’re out together dancing cheek to cheek.’”
I sighed, a deep sigh of longing for a world where this could be true.
“So then, after the pictures, I’ll take you dancing. Do you like dancing?”
“I love dance. But not get much…” I didn’t know the word, so I waved my hand around me at the farm.
“Not much chance. No, I can see that. A bit short of dance halls!”
The guard cut in, calling the men back to work. “Raus, raus.”
Bill ran his hand up through his hair. He stood up and reached down to pull me to my feet.
“Well, that was nice, Izzy. Now I’ll walk you home, and”—he lowered his voice so the others couldn’t hear—“we might kiss at your door.”
“I like that.”
“Me too.”
He let go of my hand, and I bent to gather my books.
• • •
Later that week, Mother decided it was time for the cherries to be picked. I never knew how she hit on the exact day when they’d be ripe. She said one day I would know it too, but I had no intention of staying on the farm that long.
We used long poles to carefully lift the nets from the three cherry trees, and then it was a race, us against the birds. My mother set two men to each tree and moved between them, watching that the fruit didn’t get bruised. Bill and Harry were picking one tree—“larking about,” as Bill would say—dangling pairs of cherries from their ears, laughing and singing a song called “Cherry Ripe” in high falsetto voices.
When the baskets were full, my mother came and inspected the tree to make sure no cherries had been missed. Wasps were already busy at the fruit. Mother brushed a wisp of hair from her eyes.
“You’d better take these baskets and the nets up to the house,” she said, then stopped and studied Bill. “Oh, it’s you.”
She hesitated and looked around, but the other prisoners were high in the trees, and she didn’t dare leave them unsupervised.
“Oh, I suppose it’ll be all right.” She scowled at me, “No dillydallying, and no funny business, or you’ll be locked up for a fortnight. Do you understand me?”
“I promise, Mother,” I said in my most saintly voice. “We won’t be long.”
She looked very deliberately at her watch. “You’d better not be.”
I lifted one brimming basket and Bill the other. He said, “Blimey, you’re as strong as I am.”
I strode away as fast as my heavy load would allow, and Bill hurried to keep pace. When I glanced back, Mother was helping Harry to sling the nets across his shoulders, keeping them clear of the ground.
Bill said, “I see there’s a lot more to you than a pretty face.”
He thought I had a pretty face! “We go gentle must,” I said, hunting for the words.
He guessed, “We must be cautious? Is that it? Not let them see too much?”
“Yes, yes. Cautious. My mother sees.”
“Mothers see everything,” he agreed.
Inside the house, we laid the baskets on the kitchen table. Bill quickly took my hand, and it was as if an electric jolt passed up my arm. He raised my fingers to his lips, and we heard Harry whistling the “Cherry Ripe” tune as he approached. My insides flickered with fire.
Harry coughed a warning as he pushed through the door, festooned with nets. Bill dropped my hand, and we laughed like children as we disentangled Harry and carefully laid the nets on the flagstones for mending.
Bill was saying, “I had no idea there was so much to do on a farm. City boy, see. London,” and looking all around him like a bird, this way and that, taking in everything: the sink, the table, the larder, the pans. “Oh, Lord, it’s so good to be in a house again.” He stroked the table. “So normal. I’ll be able to picture you here.”
Harry winked at Bill. “I’m just going outside to keep cavey.”
“Keep watch,” Bill explained as I closed the door on Harry’s retreating back.
I glanced quickly through the window into the farmyard and drew Bill to the dark wall between the door and window. He took my face between his hands and gazed at me, as if committing each element of my face to memory.
“Your eyes are so green,” he said, “like a cat’s.”
He bent and kissed me, and it was different from any of the boys I’d kissed before, like currents up and down my spine. I pressed myself tight against him, kissing so deeply, it made my knees tremble. The farm and my mother were completely forgotten until a whistle came from outside, and he pulled away.
“I mustn’t get sent back to Lamsdorf,” he said. “Not now.”