‘Are you all right, Dora?’ Val said. ‘You’ve gone awfully quiet.’
‘I’m fine.’
Humans, Dora had read once, were the only animals that showed kindness. And went to war. You had to believe that, otherwise what hope was there?
‘Anyway,’ Roger said. ‘She got twenty-five years. That’s a hell of a sentence.’
‘I wouldn’t survive a day behind bars,’ Janet said. ‘Poor girl.’
‘Excuse me.’ Dora stubbed out her cigarette, pushed back her chair, left a five-pound note on the table and left.
She stood for a moment outside the restaurant, one hand against the plate-glass front, steadying herself.
‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ Val had followed her out. ‘Are your nerves bad today?’
‘Something I ate,’ Dora said. A bitter pill I swallowed. ‘I’ll be fine.’
She pulled herself up straight, walked as steadily as she could. She’d drunk too much, on an empty stomach.
‘I’ll ring you,’ Val said. ‘See how you are.’
Fixated. That’s what she’d been. She saw that now. That wasn’t love. Never had been. Never could be. Her world had become topsy-turvy, and she’d tried to make sense of it, to grope for something to hold onto, like a child in a funhouse with tipping floors and moving walls. She hadn’t played into his dreams. He had played into hers.
How long had it taken her to understand? Forty years. Forty bloody years. And all this time she’d held onto – what? Hope? That he’d find her? What kind of stupidity was that? She was an intelligent woman, yet she had fawned at the memory, licked the boots of a worthless fantasy, just as she had battened onto him in the flesh all those years ago.
Pathetic bloody woman.
She caught the bus home. Didn’t trust herself on the underground. It would be so easy to slip between the platform and the tracks as the train approached. She sat on the top, at the back, smoking. She should give up. That’s what the doctors all said. But it calmed her. Nerves. That was a very old-fashioned thing, these days.
She let herself in. She always left a light on when she went out. She told herself it was to fool a burglar, but it was for her. She couldn’t bear to come into a dark house. She walked towards her bedroom, snapping on more lights.
She kept it now in an old shoebox at the bottom of her wardrobe, with some other mementos, her old midwife’s badge, her nurse’s watch. She hadn’t thought about it for years. The wrapping paper was still stiff and the pencil lines unfaded, but the waxed paper beneath had softened. The soap was now almost odourless, so only the smallest hint of sweetness wafted in the air.
Savon de Violette.
Dora rushed through the house, out of the door, down the steps. She threw the soap into the dustbin, where it landed with a thud, tore up the wrapping paper into shreds and chucked them in after. She went back in, scrubbed her hands until the skin glowed pink, nausea churning and curdling her stomach.
If Val rang tomorrow, she’d say she had a bug, one of those twenty-four-hour things.
Jersey: May 1943
A week after the incident with the soldier, Dora cycled into the farmyard, propped the bike against the wall and knocked. Geoffrey didn’t come. She tried the handle, but it was locked. Something must be wrong. Had she missed a message? He said he’d send word to the hospital if he had to go out, cycle into St Martin and use the telephone box. She knocked again. If he didn’t answer, she’d check the cowshed, or the fields. You never knew, there could be an emergency. Then she heard footsteps, the grind of metal as the bolts were drawn free. He opened the door a crack and beckoned her inside.
‘Dora.’ His voice was hushed and urgent. ‘Thank God.’
She was unbuttoning her cape, pulling off her hat. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘I have to trust you.’ He looked at her, studied her face. ‘Can I?’
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Of course you can trust me.’
‘Regardless?’ He was looking over her shoulder as if someone was expected. She saw desperation, pleading.
‘What’s happened?’ Panic began to scratch and claw at her. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Come,’ he said. ‘Give me your bag.’ He took it from her before she could answer, went upstairs and stopped by the door that led to the attic. ‘Follow me.’
They climbed the narrow stairs to the garret. The room had a small window at one end and three dormer windows, but even so it was dark and dingy. It was barely high enough for them to walk upright, and the eaves were full of old furniture. Dora saw an iron bedpost, picture frames stacked against the wall, a table, a chair with its stuffing hanging out. Things that were too precious to throw away, too old to be of use. The dust made her cough.
‘Watch your step,’ he said, pointing to a broken floorboard through which the joists were visible.
She followed Geoffrey across the room, to a carved wooden screen. Behind it, an old mattress had been lain on the floor and on it an untidy pile of blankets. Breathing.
‘Geoffrey.’ She was unsure what else to say.
‘Can you help him?’
‘Who is he?’ She crouched on the floor, peeled back the blanket, saw a skull with tufts of hair and skin drawn tight across the bone, mouth open, breath sweet and fruity. The veins on his temple stood out, throbbing blue.
‘Bitte,’ the man said. ‘Bitte. Helfen Sie mir.’
Geoffrey was crouching on the floor beside her.
This was no deserter from the Wehrmacht. He was one of the labourers who were building ramparts, hollowing tunnels, whom she’d seen on the road in dusty, weary gangs. This man was too weak to work, too ill. Dora leaned close to him.
‘Do you speak English?’ He looked at her with vacant eyes. Dora didn’t think, just said it. ‘Sprechen Sie Deutsch?’
‘Ja,’ the man said. ‘Ich bin Deutscher.’ He coughed, a thin rasp of pain. ‘Ich bin ein Gefangener. Prisoner.’
He stopped, his face twisted with pain. It hurt to talk, but Dora could see he wanted to.
‘Wir sind Sklaven,’ he went on. ‘Slaves. Nicht genug zu essen. Hungernd.’ He began to cry, sobs rattling his bones like mallets on a xylophone, high and low.
‘Wie heissen Sie?’ Dora said.
‘Alfred,’ the man said.
‘Mein Vater heisst Alfred,’ she said. ‘Es ist ein guter Name.’ Without looking away from him, she said to Geoffrey, ‘Bring me some water. Towels. Sheets. I need to wash him.’
‘He’s wounded,’ Geoffrey said.
‘Where?’ She could feel his eyes on her, curious.
‘His thigh.’
Dora lifted the blanket from Alfred’s feet, rolled it up against his body. His trousers were torn below the knee, gaped at the fly from where the buttons had long since gone. His shins were bare, the skin smeared with dust and grease. Geoffrey had cut away the fabric from the wound, wrapped it in a bandage, but blood was soaking through, wet and crimson. The gash was deep, several inches long.
She heard steps echoing on the wooden floor of the attic.
‘How did you do it?’ she spoke in German.
‘I fell,’ he said. ‘On the edge of a shovel.’
‘When?’ she said.
‘Yesterday.’
The injury was old, but still weeping. He must have broken the scab. She’d have to clean it as best she could. Alfred would have to stay here. She’d instruct Geoffrey on how to keep the wound dry and clean.
‘Where?’ she said. ‘Where were you?’
His voice was dry, his throat rasping air. ‘On the beach.’
Sand. Dora was almost relieved. Geoffrey would have to watch for signs of lockjaw, but there wasn’t too much swelling, and the sand would be clean, washed by the sea.
Geoffrey appeared with the water and a flannel, and a storm light which he held as Dora cleaned the wound.
‘Sachte, sachte!’ Gently, gently.
The man screamed as she delved into the depths of the cut. She could hear her fat
her, How many layers does skin have, Doralein? Could see him, Look here. Probing. He’d done this, in his war, all the time. Deep wounds? Leave them. Let the air do the curing.
It would take time to heal. And then what? For what? He couldn’t be returned. He needed food, care. A place to hide. Here? For the duration of the war?
‘Has he had any food?’ Dora asked.
‘A little soup,’ Geoffrey said. ‘That’s all.’
‘Are you hungry?’ Dora said.
Alfred nodded.
‘Fetch him some more soup,’ she said to Geoffrey. ‘Little and often.’
Geoffrey had brought up a sheet and they lifted Alfred, one side, the other, laid the sheet taut and white on the bed, arranged the blanket around him, so the bad leg was exposed. She’d see if Geoffrey could make a cage to support the bedding. The attic was cold and dirty. He needed warmth, a bed, clean surroundings.
‘He should be in a hospital,’ Dora said, as she spooned the soup Geoffrey brought into his mouth, blowing on it to cool it down.
‘Danke,’ the man was saying between mouthfuls. ‘Danke.’
‘Why are you a prisoner?’ Dora said. He looked at her with watery eyes, their irises faded and purple, like an old man’s.
‘Kommunist.’
He was weeping.
The kitchen was warm. Geoffrey had found some fuel and fed the stove. Dora burned the soiled dressings, aware that Geoffrey was watching her, following her movements.
‘I didn’t know you spoke German,’ he said finally. She heard betrayal there, fear. She leaned forward on the range, her back to him, its heat seeping into her body.
‘Yes.’ She had no choice now, she had to tell him. ‘You trusted me, just now,’ she said. ‘Can I trust you?’
He looked at her, eyes level and suspicious. She took a breath, wait a moment.
‘I’m German,’ she said. ‘And Jewish.’
She heard him breathe in, a sharp huhhhh. He had not been expecting to hear that, she could tell.
‘I thought you were Swedish,’ he said. He was frowning, his lips tight in a snarl.
‘Does that make a difference?’ she said.
She’d met them, in London, two-faced liberals who hated Jews.
It was a beat before he spoke. What did that tell her?
‘No,’ he said.
‘You hesitated.’
‘Because I was thinking,’ he said. ‘If I were German. Or Jewish, would I tell a lie too?’
Are you sure? That’s why?
‘It’s not brave,’ Dora said. ‘Or honourable. But I don’t want to be rounded up. Sent away. Treated like a slave. Like these poor men. Or worse. Who knows what they’re doing, the Nazis?’
She could feel the anger grow inside her, bitterness, too.
‘But you wouldn’t know. You wouldn’t know what went on in Germany, before the war. Not to Jews. That was never talked about here. It was never in the papers.’ Except the Jewish ones, and the Communist ones, but who listened to Bolsheviks? Jewish Bolsheviks?
‘No,’ he said. ‘So tell me.’
‘They humiliated us,’ she went on. ‘Isolated us. Took our businesses. Our livelihoods. Like they did with the Jews here, in Jersey.’
He was sitting at the table, listening. He looked chastened, confused. She couldn’t stop, not now. It had been bottled up for too long.
‘They threw me out of school. I had no right, they said, to education. I wanted to be a doctor, like my father, but they threw me out of school with nothing. I was top of my class. Said I wasn’t worth it. They wouldn’t spend money on Jews.’ She paused. ‘There were rumours about camps. They locked the troublemakers in camps.’ She paused, blew through her lips. ‘And Jews. Such camps. The stories. People dying.’
He pushed himself up from the table, walked over and pulled her close.
‘I would never betray you,’ he said.
Did she believe him? He had hesitated, one beat.
‘Nor me you,’ she said. Easy words, easy words. How strong would she be?
He squeezed her close, took her hand, led her back to the table.
‘If you’ve kept a secret from me, then I’ve kept this one from you,’ he said. ‘A few of us do what we can against the Germans. We don’t do much, we can’t do much. We have no weapons, no support. Nowhere to hide.’
‘We?’
‘It’s best you don’t know names. Safer. There’s nothing you can tell, if you were caught.’
Whoever they were, this had been thought through.
‘If workers escape, we help them, if we can. Hide them. Feed them. Forge papers.’
‘But that’s dangerous,’ Dora said. ‘If you were caught–’
‘If we were caught, we’d be sent away, perhaps killed. Yes. It is dangerous. But who can stand by and watch…’ He searched for a word. ‘This criminality. That’s what these camps are. Criminal.’
‘Plenty do,’ Dora said. ‘Turn a blind eye.’
‘No one wants to play the hero.’ His voice softened, and he added, ‘I have no family, not now.’ He swallowed, as if the memory of Margaret had been there all along, stuck in his craw. ‘I have nothing to lose, no one to put in danger.’
You have me. Dora bit her lip instead.
He leaned over, brushed his fingers against her cheek, squeezed her hand. She smelled his sweat, the pungent onion of it. Nerves, it had to be nerves, for the room wasn’t hot, despite the range, not hot enough for natural sweat. ‘Now I’ve put you in danger. I am sorry.’
‘When would you have told me?’
‘Perhaps never,’ he said. ‘When would you have told me?’
‘Perhaps never,’ she said, smiled.
‘Have there been others, before Alfred?’
He nodded.
‘Hiding in the attic? How many? Who were they?’
‘I can’t say how many,’ he said. ‘Mainly Russians. But not all. They come from all over Europe. He is the first German.’
‘How do they find you?’
Geoffrey shrugged. He wouldn’t say.
‘Do you run this?’ She wasn’t sure what to call it. Resistance?
He shrugged again. Not a word.
‘You arrived on the wrong day.’
‘Or the right day,’ she said. ‘That wound is serious. He could have died. I’ll need to come back, in a few days, to check on it.’
‘You shouldn’t be involved. It’s too dangerous.’
‘I am involved now, Geoffrey,’ she said. ‘I’m glad to be. I want to be.’
He smiled, tipped his head to one side. ‘You can be our nurse,’ he said. ‘Our trusted nurse.’
‘What happens to them?’
‘We have safe houses.’
‘And if they die?’ Dora said. ‘What do you do then?’
‘We bury them, with dignity.’
‘Where?’
‘In the four-acre field,’ Geoffrey said, as if it was obvious, matter-of-fact. ‘And if we find a corpse that the Germans haven’t thrown in the sea or sunk in the cement, we bury that too.’
Dora looked at their hands, entwined, her skin pale against his. The grandfather clock in the hallway whirred and began to strike the hour. She counted out. One. Two. Three. Four. She had to go, be back in time for tea.
He took her elbow, led her out to her bike, held the handlebars while she mounted it.
‘Thank you, Dora,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’
Not a word.
CHAPTER EIGHT
JOE
Jersey: May 1985
As Joe went back indoors he had the feeling that he’d seen the Hummel woman before. She seemed familiar. He couldn’t think how. He never went anywhere these days, not to socialise, like, and she didn’t look to be the sort of woman he’d have met taking Geoffrey for his appointments, or going to the Co-op, or stocking up on animal supplies at Brouard’s. He couldn’t place her.
The saucepan was bubbling on the hob, the steam pushing the lid so it rose and fell. James
Watt had invented the steam engine from watching his mother’s kettle boil. He could see the picture now in his schoolbook, a little boy in old-fashioned knickerbockers staring at the stove. It took a particular kind of man, that, to go from seeing one thing, to discovering something else entirely. What did they call it these days? Lateral thinking. The fear and excitement. The anxiety. Would it work?Joe moved the pan to one side and the lid calmed down. Irish stew. He was good at that. He made it almost the way his mother did, neck of lamb boiled up with taters and carrots and onions. His mother made the stock from scratch, but Joe didn’t have time for that. He used Oxo cubes, crushed them up as he brought the meat to the boil, then let it simmer. He foraged like her, though, for wild garlic and other herbs, mushrooms in season, threw them into the pot. He made up a large pan at the start of each week and it did them for three days. Tasted better the longer it was left.
Joe wasn’t a fancy cook, but Geoffrey never complained. Fish on Fridays. Corned beef or sausages or hamburgers on the other days, though why they were called hamburgers he never knew. You could swear they hadn’t been near a pig in their life. More like the rissoles his daidí made in his shop, full of gristle and fat. Sometimes, on Sundays, he cooked a joint, a shoulder of lamb or a leg of pork with crackling. Chicken, too. That did them a meal for several days. He made desserts. Bird’s Instant Whip in the winter, or a rice pudding with milk baked in the Aga. He made sure they had fruit. An apple a day and all that, strawberries in the summer, or a tin of peaches with evaporated milk or Wall’s ice cream. He’d buy that in the Co-op, two slabs, Neapolitan for Geoffrey, vanilla for himself. It was a grand life. Joe wanted for nothing. He even owned half-shares in the farm.
‘Only fair,’ Geoffrey had said. ‘You invested your money and your time. And who else would I leave it to?’
Joe wondered much the same. Who would he leave his share to? Damned if any of those O’Clearys were going to put their thieving paws on it, not after the way they’d treated him, with their daidí not cold in his grave. For sure, he’d had a few whiskeys after the funeral, and who wouldn’t after what he’d been through? They’d all had a drop, and that was the truth. But to hound him out, that was harsh.
Pierre drove into the yard, yanking the handbrake before the car had stopped so it screamed in protest. Joe heard him crash the gears, put the thing into neutral. Pierre’d never learned to drive properly and was rich enough not to worry if he wore out the innards of a car long before the rust got to its bodywork. He’d be wanting his tea, too. Joe reached for three bowls and put them on the table as Pierre came into the kitchen. He didn’t bother knocking, not after all these years.
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