The Journey

The Traveller

"I'm cold, Mummy," I tell her, but she doesn't hear me for the noise; a rumbling clackety-clack sound, drowning out everything.

Having no other choice, I tug on her coat. She's crying, but she doesn't want me to know that. I'm eight years old, not a baby, I can tell when someone is sad, or when they are lying. My mother never lies to me, ever. When she is sad though, she tries to hide it.

I tug harder. She wipes her face, but I see her eyes, even in the half-light coming through a hole in the wall, they're both red and puffy. She looks down at me and gives me a big smile. "Yes, my angel," she says, loud enough for me to hear. She always calls me that, 'Angel' though I would like to hear my name now and then. 'Yes, Rachel, of course Rachel' but no, she prefers 'Angel'.

"I'm cold, Mummy, I can't feel my feet." I say, as loud as I can.

She's holding on to Daddy, his nose is still bleeding from the beating those men gave him. I heard Mummy say, as she examined it, 'I think it's broken, my dear.'

They broke his glasses too.

She squats down and holds her arms out to me and we embrace. She lifts me up; she's very strong.

"Are we there yet," I say to her, my lips close to her ear. Aah, I can smell her perfume. Aunt Miriam brought it all the way from Paris several years ago.

"No, my Angel, not yet," she says.

I don't know exactly how many sleeps have passed since we left Berlin, real sleeps I mean, the ones where you go to sleep in a bed with a big, soft duvet and wake up there too. I've been sleeping in my mother's arms, but only for little sleeps, so many that I can't count. I'm warmer now and I'm sleepy too. Maybe it's time for another...

I wake up, "Are we there yet," I say.

"No, not yet," she says. "Do you want to wee," she says as she sets me down; it was hard not to notice the relief in her features as she straightened up.

I shake my head; I haven't had anything to drink since we left our house; whenever that was, and I'm terribly thirsty, but I can't tell her as she'll only fret.

I've had to have a wee onto the pile of straw in the corner; I didn't want to at first with all these people standing round, also the smell, and as for poo-poo I just couldn't, maybe because I went before we left and because I haven't eaten anything since.

Daddy's nose has stopped bleeding; he's standing next to Aunt Miriam and Uncle Simon while supporting Mummy who has her eyes closed.

David, my sixteen-year-old cousin, is standing there his head held high, his yarmulke fastened to his black curly hair with clips. He'd laughed when I said we were going to a holiday camp in Bavaria, but it wasn't a real laugh, it was something that people do when they lie to you, pretending they are happy. But, when I asked him why he laughed, his father called out to him. 'David, be nice to Rachel, she's only eight, and she wants to go to the holiday camp with us, don't you Rachel. So go and pack your things, David, we have to be up early in the morning.'

"Are we really going by train, Uncle Simon," I'd said.

"Yes, of course," he'd said, smiling a real smile.

"Will it be a long journey?

"Yes, I believe it will be a long one."

He'd sounded a little sad when he said that. I'd assumed it was because we were forced to go, leave our family home. It was one of many things that were happening to us. Those men in their black uniforms, skull and cross-bone badges, screaming, addressing all of us in the familiar - which was, said David, something they would have been locked up in a lunatic asylum for over a hundred years ago. Why, he said, it was an affront for an adult to address a stranger that way, one could be prosecuted for insulting behaviour.