MORNING SERIAL
ISSIE was up to the knees when the ground shelved sharply: she went in up to the neck and gasping. But the cold would ease once her body became accustomed. She launched into the rhythm of a patient, disciplined breaststroke, making toward the gull island. There humans never went. Leaves eddied past her arms and mouth in patches of raw colour – yellow, ochre, scarlet – fleeing toward the shore.
So I must lay it all before you: or at least the bare facts, the skeleton. Firstly: I was not a mere nobody in Germany. I was a world-class swimmer who was only left out of the Olympic team for political reasons – but that came later.
I make no bones & tell you, I was a fervent believer in the Fatherland. I was young, an idealist. We all were. Everyone saw, you had to be blind not to see, how much better off Germany was in every way. And the fun, excitement, marches, drums, flags, singing & torchlight, the feeling of being all in this new thing together, I was swept off my feet, it was quite unimaginably thrilling. A sporty young blonde like myself, from humble origins, who married the right person, could move in high glamorous circles.
What can I say? It was normal. I do not now like to see men in uniform, even the Sally Army gives me the creeps, or the Remembrance Day procession along the seafront.
But the men in uniform were dashing. I did not like Jews.
That was normal too. We took that in with our mothers’ milk. I truly felt they would be happier in Madagascar where it was proposed to resettle them. But imagine my shock when my good friend Elisabeth was arrested. My friend – I can still see her face white and pinched – she was dragged away without slippers on her feet, all bare on the cold pavement & we never saw her again.
I didn’t actually believe she was a Jew. Imagine your Jenny being taken away by Swansea Police, just for being English, that was the shock.
I protested. It has always been my way to speak my mind, you know that.