Far to Go - By Alison Pick Page 0,82

He wanted them, immediately. His tata and mamenka. He wanted Marta to come and change him—he had wet himself in the night—and he started to whimper.

“It’s okay,” the freckled boy soothed, in the voice of a practised big brother. “They’ll be there to meet you.”

The children were herded onto the deck to eat sugar sandwiches while the sun rose. The bread was white and fluffy and tasted like cake. Pepik thought of the German soldiers, with their appetites for Czech desserts. He remembered Tata saying that only once every larder was bare would the Nazis go back where they came from. After the snack he and the others were herded down another gangplank and into a big glass-domed station, where a crowd of adults came down on them like an avalanche. There were mothers pushing prams and men in steel-toed workboots and couples with white hair leaning on canes. The freckled boy was whisked away by a woman with one arm in a sling. Pepik waved but his new friend didn’t see him, his face already buried in an ice-cream cone. Men were still unloading suitcases from the belly of the ship and heaping them in a big pile. A group of older boys were climbing on them; one made it all the way to the top and stood there, teetering dangerously, shouting, “Take that, Blaskowitz!” as he fired his imaginary rifle into the crowd.

A young woman arrived, in elbow-length gloves and a wide hat; she lifted the infant and left the empty drawer on the floor. She was smiling as though she’d won the lottery.

The station slowly emptied. Children went home with their new families. A slower trickle of adults was arriving now, more elderly people, a woman in a wasp-waisted bouffant dress and a garden-party hat, apologizing for being late. These adults squinted at the remaining boys and girls, trying to see which was theirs to take home. Pepik sat against the wall, wrapping the string of his rucksack around the tip of his finger, tighter and tighter, until the finger turned a violent red. He kept his eyes fixed on the station door. When it opened, he stood up, expectant. He was going to see his tata! And his mamenka! And Nanny.

Where were they?

Nobody came.

Pepik sat back down again.

There was an older girl who had not been fetched either. “I’m Inga,” she said.

Pepik looked at her blankly. She was the girl, he saw, with the Film Fun magazine, the one put in charge of the train carriage who’d been so excited to set off on such an adult journey.

“It’s Norse,” she said. “My name. I am guarded by Ing, the god of fertility and peace.”

She looked at Pepik, waiting for a reaction. She sat down beside him and started to cry into her hands.

It was a man with a briefcase, finally, who came over from a faraway table to where Pepik and Inga were sitting. He had droopy brown eyes and bushy sideburns. “What are your names?” he asked. Pepik didn’t understand the words. The man shook his head slowly, as though he had done something he was very sorry for. He had a long, thin loaf of the fluffy white bread in his hand, and he broke it in two and gave them each a piece. Inga stopped crying for just long enough to cram her portion into her mouth. The man motioned for them to get up and follow him; Inga smoothed down her green checked skirt, still chewing. She wiped her face and picked up her purse, digging in it for her tortoiseshell glasses.

The man led them out the station door and across a stretch of hot tarmac. He waddled a little, their two cases banging against his legs. His car was different from Tata’s, with two windshield wipers instead of one. A horse blanket covered the worn-out upholstery. Inside it was stifling hot, and the man leaned over and rolled down Inga’s window and then leaned into the back seat and rolled down Pepik’s. There was the sound of the engine turning over.

Pepik fell asleep the minute they started moving.

When he woke, Inga was looking over at him warily. “Kam jdeš?” she asked.

Pepik rubbed his eyes. “I’m going with you.”

Inga glared at him. “Now you are. But after. Where are you going?”

Pepik shrugged.

“I’m going to the Gillfords in the countryside,” Inga said. “I’m going to learn to ride a pony!” She fixed her gaze in the middle distance as though a pony had