Heidi had escaped Austria – but what did New York have in store?
BY ALISON CARTER
Set in 1938
HEIDI had nearly turned down Mr Baring’s offer.
It seemed so self-indulgent to be given the chance to make money simply smiling at people while wearing nice clothes.
Mr Baring had guessed her thoughts.
“There’s work,” he said. “Girls find it tiring, though you look strong enough.
“Are you over from Germany?”
“Austria,” Heidi said.
Vienna seemed millions of miles away – her poor, annexed country.
“Austria, yeah,” Mr Baring said, as though he wasn’t sure what Austria was. “Well, come in at half past eight tomorrow.”
Heidi had come alone from Vienna a few months after the Anschluss and had been in New York for only ten days.
She’d brought nothing but enough money to buy food on the boat over and pay for a bed and board for a week or so.
She’d been wondering how to get a job, when she saw a man of about thirty-five outside a shop on a Manhattan sidewalk.
Beside him was an older woman.
“We need girls with a bit more about them,” he said.
The woman shrugged.
“They don’t stay,” she said. “Or they look pretty, but turn out to have black teeth that they’ve painted over for the interview.”
“A city with millions of girls in it,” the man said, “and we can’t get a few decent pattern models.”
Heidi could see, glancing through a long gauzy curtain at the window, that this was a garment place.
She stood up straight because the man was smiling at her.
She needed a job and anyone showing her kindness was to be appreciated.
The man said he was Mr Leyland Baring and five minutes later Heidi was a pattern model.
Heidi Meyer felt a great burden of guilt.
Here she was, wearing brand-new skirts, with Mr Baring promising to pay her at the end of October.
Meanwhile, her uncle and aunt were trapped in a Vienna suburb, possibly in danger, abandoned by her, their only relative.
Uncle Uwe and Aunt Lena had decided not to leave Austria. They’d taken her in at the age of twelve. Yes, they expected to be paid back, but who wouldn’t?
They had been obliged to clear out an entire room in their house so that she could live there.
Heidi’s life had changed immeasurably after the death of both her parents.
But she had been given a roof over her head and three square meals.
Heidi knew how much she owed them. S
