The Children of Lingfield House
This is a true story – one almost too devastating to tell, but Marrone pulls it off with clarity and compassion. Twenty-five Jewish children from various countries, most between four and eight years old, were housed at Lingfield House in Surrey from 1947. The author groups them as the spoon children from Terezin; the others from Terezin; the children from Auschwitz, from the orphanage, from the convent and those who were in hiding. She ascribes tags— ‘the boy with the devil under his bed’, ‘the girl who eats flowers’, ‘the whispering girl’, ‘the hungry dancer’, ‘the tree boy’—which help immensely with identifying the children and their experiences.
Most of the narrative is told in expositional terms in intense narrative passages, with smatterings of dialogue. It’s better in third person; better with distance between reader and children; better to read the ideas that Anna Freud and Alice Goldberger employed, rather than to hear them being discussed. The children distrust adults, believe that the food is poisoned and that Lingfield is a Nazi set-up which will come crashing down around them any day. They don’t know how to play, they hide food rather than eat it, but what Marrone does so expertly is show us each of these children as an individual. They carry their pain differently and display it in their own unique way.
The novel starts with the children’s arrival, moving on to their background, their experiences, how they settled at Lingfield, and what their futures held. There’s a long list of epithets which could be used here, but I will follow Marrone’s example in using them minimally because this is beyond description. It is, most of all, confounding that such barbarity could be perpetrated on our most vulnerable citizens. Take a deep, calming breath before you begin.
