A Mother’s Love
A tale of two selfless mothers
I hugged my son as tightly as I dared, careful not to overdo the public demonstration of maternal affection. I knew better than to cry, or to spend our last moments together giving motherly advice about washing powder or some such domestic irrelevance. Muttering an affectionate but firm ‘take care then,’ it was only as I watched the slight figure, almost dwarfed by an enormous backpack, walk away from me without another glance that I allowed the tears to fall. I tried not to think of the little boy who clung, limpet-like, to me on his first day of school, or demanded we search his bedroom for hedgehogs – a totally irrational but very real fear – each night. I knew deep down he found parting almost as hard as I did but was too worried about looking ‘uncool’ to show it. In truth this stiff upper lip-ness was as much for him as for me.
Months passed, during which I tried not to fret about the mountain climbing, paragliding, jungle trekking and other hazardous pursuits to which his emails alluded. I bit my nails to the quick when I knew he was doing a skydive, the only sign of his successful completion the brief text ‘mission accomplished’ followed by a winking face.
And sure enough, he returned to us in time, taller, suntanned and more confident than when he’d left, but still, thankfully, our son. Normal life could resume, that is, until the travel bug bit again.
But what if I had to say goodbye to a child who might never come back? What if I realised too late, that instead of sending him or her to safety, I had sent them to a war zone, and that my own future was so uncertain that I doubted if we would ever be reunited? And what if that child were not a twenty-one-year-old off on a gap year, but a terrified infant being sent to a land hundreds of miles away to stay with strangers? That was the impossible situation facing so many parents who waved their children off on the kinder transports in world war two, too often never to see them again.
When I was searching for a subject for my second novel, I became fascinated by the story of Nicholas Winton, the London stockbroker who rescued hundreds of children from Nazi-occupied Prague, and saw them safely onto trains for England. Inspired to write about this event, I created a young Jewish character named Eva, who, with her husband Josef, has a young daughter, Miriam. When the Germans march into Prague one fateful morning in March 1939, Eva is determined to protect Miriam at all costs. Josef, a brilliant scientist, believes his research will give the family immunity from the frightening misfortune that is beginning to befall their neighbours – being transported to the nearby Terezin ghetto, built on the site of an old fortress. Yet Eva, scarred by a terrible event in her past, senses they are in danger. In defiance of her husband, she makes arrangements for Miriam to travel to England under Nicholas Winton’s protection. But when Eva has to say goodbye to her frightened little girl on the station platform, her resolve falters….
When I wrote that scene, I had plenty of memories of parting from my own child to help me, even if I had every reason to suspect a different outcome. As writers, we pluck stories from our imaginations, yet the emotions we draw on are often real and heartfelt. I’ve had a few reviews of ‘The Child on Platform One’ now, and several of the reviewers refer to the way Eva and Miriam’s separation affected them. ‘Moved me from deep within’ wrote one critic and ‘it was so emotional’ declared another. I’m gratified that people are responding in that way. If people can empathise with those poor parents, then perhaps we can learn from the mistakes of the past. And if my book plays a small part in that, then it’ll be worthwhile.
My son lives apart from us permanently now – it’s only right: he’s married with a baby on the way! And one day I suspect he’ll feel for himself the pain of parent-child separation. It’s an inevitable rite of passage. But I hope none of us will ever know the trauma of the terrible partings that took place over eighty years ago. Because those events must never happen again.