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get out of our place. The gates were locked, the downstairs windows were barred, all was heavily locked up at night, front door and side doors and windows and back door, no Yales or Chubbs, great grinding Gothic keys and heavy bars and bolts. The kitchen door had the most modern lock and it was oiled: some secret daytime practice and I learnt to turn it noiselessly. The right time to escape would be just before first light. It was spring and first light very early and this proved a new difficulty: I did not wake up in time. I tried not to go to sleep at all, but when I remained sitting up I expected icy hands to touch me through the bars of the brass bedstead (the house, we all believed, was haunted), and when I lay down I dropped off. Dawn after dawn was wasted. Then one morning I did wake up. I put on a cotton frock and, shoes in hand, crept downstairs. The stairs were stone and did not creak. The dogs did not stir, the kitchen lock turned smoothly (I left it un locked behind me, one of the things that appalled my father), I climbed over the wall. I then proceeded to walk, not run, at a good pace. I passed a man who knew us on his way to the fields and called out, Off for an early stroll (that too was held against me). I carried a purse and a book, a book about Red Indians, and nothing else. I’d taken no food, not even a crust (something seldom repeated in subsequent journeys). When after an hour or so I got to the railway station I went straight in and asked for a single ticket, half-fare, fourth class to Frankfurt. There really was a fourth class in those days. The half-fare, drawing attention to my age, was not the best of moves. I said Frankfurt instead of Wiesbaden partly because I did not know how my money would hold out, partly to cover my tracks. I was given the ticket and some change and no questions asked. I went out on the platform to wait for a train in the right direction. I first took a local to Freiburg then changed to another slow train to Karlsruhe. Only the slow ones had fourth class, and the German name for these trainswhich stopped everywhere was Bummelzug . At Karlsruhe I changed again. I don’t remember my route after that, only that there were more changes. I read my book; I felt no hunger, and I felt quite calm; this was probably my one and only journey without angst. I was resolved to get there – one step after another, and behaved and therefore probably looked as if travelling as an unaccompanied child were the most natural thing in the world. Of course fellow passengers and conductors were trying to ply me with questions and offers of sandwiches and sweets. I warded them off by saying that I was on my way to visit relatives (my luggage following) and plunging back into my book. The sandwiches I refused. To the pursuit that might be – that was – going on, I gave little intelligent thought.
    My absence had in fact been noticed early and by mid-morning the police were after me. I had been reported by the man who had seen me on his way to work and by the ticket clerk at the first station. Why I was not caught I do not understand, perhaps it had something to do with my taking so many Bummelzugs and sometimes the wrong one (we later heard that I had avoided detection at Karlsruhe by minutes), in any case I must have been incredibly lucky. When I got to Frankfurt I took a big chance, I remained in the train instead of going out to get another ticket. I was afraid that I didn’t have enough money. Wiesbaden then was occupied by the French. This I had heard but not that to enter the French sector you had to have a pass and that there was a control of passengers’ papers on the trains. In fact no one came. We pulled into Wiesbaden; it was mid-afternoon; at the barrier I handed in my ticket face down. No hand was clapped on my shoulder. I asked my way through the town and after a longish walk rang the bell at my brother-in-law’s house. I had not met him before. In my plan I had never gone further