Bombs on Aunt Dainty by Judith Kerr

about with rugs, and everyone helped to move the tables so as to make more room, and soon the lounge looked like a camp. There were people curled up with pillows in the brown leatherette chairs and people stretched out on blankets on the floor. Some had changed into pyjamas and dressing gowns, but others had kept on their ordinary clothes and covered themselves with their coats, in case a bomb dropped and they might suddenly have to rush out into the street. The author of the book on the nature of humour wore striped pyjamas, a tweed jacket and his hat.
    When everyone was more or less settled, Frau Gruber appeared in her dressing gown with cups and a jug of cocoa on a tray, as though they were having some kind of dormitory feast. At last the lights were put out, all except one small one in a corner, and Frau Gruber who had become astonishingly cheerful as a result of all this activity, said, “I hope you all have a very good night,” which Anna thought funny in the circumstances.
    She was lying on the floor with her head under one of the tables, next to Max – Mama and Papa were in two chairs the other side of the lounge – and as soon as theroom darkened, the thumps and bangs outside became impossible to ignore. She could hear the sound of the planes, a quivering hum like having a mosquito in the room with you only many octaves lower, and every so often the thud of a bomb. The bombs were mostly some distance away, but even so the explosions were quite loud. Some people, she knew, could tell the difference between German planes and British ones, but they all sounded the same to her. They all sounded German.
    All round her she could sense people moving and whispering – no one was finding it easy to go to sleep.
    “Max?” she said very quietly.
    He turned towards her, wide awake. “Are you all right?”
    “Yes,” she whispered. “Are you?”
    He nodded.
    Suddenly she remembered how, when she was quite small and frightened of thunderstorms, Max had kept her heart up by pretending that they were caused by God having indigestion.
    “Do you remember …” she said, and Max said, “Yes, I was just thinking – God’s indigestion. He’s really got himself upset this time.”
    She laughed and then they both stopped talking to listen to the buzzing of a plane, as it seemed right above their heads.
    “To think I could be peacefully in bed on the Isle of Man with Otto reading Wodehouse,” said Max.
    The sound of the plane grew fainter, then louder again – it must be circling, thought Anna – and finally faded away in the distance.
    “Max,” she said, “was it very bad in the camp?”
    “No,” said Max. “Not once we’d got settled. I mean, nobody was beastly or anything like that. The thing that got me was simply the fact of being there at all. I didn’t belong there.”
    Anna wondered where she belonged. Here, in the hotel, among the other refugees? Probably as much as anywhere, she thought.
    “You see,” said Max, “I know it sounds arrogant to say so, but I know I belong in this country. I’ve known it ever since my first year at school – a feeling of everything being suddenly absolutely right. And it wasn’t only me. Other people like George and Bill thought so too.”
    “Yes,” said Anna.
    “All I want,” said Max, “is just to be allowed to do the same things as everyone else. Do you know, there were some people in the camp who thought they were lucky to be there because it was safe. Well, I’m not a particularly warlike person and God knows I don’t want to be killed – but I’d a thousand times rather be in the Army with George or in the Air Force with Bill. I’m sick to death of always having to be different!”
    There was a crash, closer than the rest, which shook the building and as Anna felt the floor move a little beneath her the word “bombardment” came into her mind. I’m in a bombardment, she thought. I’m lying on the floor of theHotel Continental in my